Daf Yomi (daily study of a page), Chav Tet (twenty-nine), Amud Aleph (column one), 29a. You have to make up the 28. I’ll make it up; I hope you made it up. It’s the last page of this perek (chapter), okay? Shevuot. I don’t know if you’re a fan. They’re learning in yeshiva what’s called shevuat shav (vain oath). He swore to contradict what’s known to everyone. For example, you see a pillar of stone, and he says, “It’s not stone; it’s gold.” He says, “That man is a woman,” or, “That woman is a man.” They say that nowadays it’s not so simple, but Tumar (uncertain) is someone who is the opposite of what everyone knows. That’s called shevuat shav, a vain oath.
Another kind of vain oath is swearing that you saw something impossible. “I saw a donkey, a camel flying in the air.” He swore, “I saw a snake as big as the beam of an olive press,” which is huge. Allah is going to say, “It’s not that it’s huge; it’s a different shape, different, different.” Yes, exaggerated to the point where everyone knows it’s wrong.
The third case: Amar la'edim: bo'u veha'idu (come testify for me). He says, “Shibu'al Shiloha.” “We swear we’re not doing it.” So they’re going against the law. They’re swearing not to do a mitzvah (commandment); they’re swearing to go against a mitzvah. That’s also shevuat shav. It’s a way not to do a mitzvah, for example. Any oath that goes against a mitzvah—it’s impossible to swear against the Torah because you’re already sworn by Har Sinai (Mount Sinai). Therefore, that oath is called shevuat shav, a vain oath. What does it have to 29a1?
Here’s another case: he swore, “I’m going to eat this,” and then, “I’m not eating it.” So you have a double trouble. He swore he was going to eat it, so he has to eat it. Then he says, “I swore I’m not eating it.” Is the second oath able to be chal (take effect)? No. The first one is good. That’s why I’m going to eat it. That’s bitui (utterance); that’s the oath of utterance. The second one is connected. It’s a sin. Once I have a desire to eat it, you can’t swear not to eat it. You’re going against what you’re supposed to do. If he ate it, he violated the vain oath, the second one. If he didn’t eat it, he violated the first one.
Now, really, you guys should be jumping out of your seats and asking me, “If it’s vain, it’s worthless. So what do you have to eat in order to violate it? You violate it right away.” Yeah, correct. The Mishnah says—that’s a good kasha (question). The Gemara is going to ask it on the B-side.
When I say something that people know is wrong—“This is gold,” when it’s a pillar of stone—how many people have to know about it? Three. If three people know about it, then it’s stone. If I say it’s gold, that’s called shevuat shav. He said, “I swore that I didn’t see a camel flying there.” What kind of oath is this? He’s supposed to say, “I swear I saw a camel flying”—that’s a bad oath. “I swear I didn’t see a camel.” He didn’t see one; he didn’t see one. So why is that an oath? Why is there a bad oath? You have to change it. It’s not meant as, “I swear I saw an oath.” Don’t change anything.
Ha'omer (the one who says) tied something to that oath: “If I didn’t see a flying camel, let all the fruits in the world be forbidden to me.” So really, he’s saying that he saw a flying camel, because he doesn’t want all the fruits in the world to be forbidden to him. So he must mean to say that he saw a flying camel, which is impossible. That’s what makes it banal.
So now I’m going to go into a beautiful tangent like this. Amar Ravina. Maybe he saw a large bird. He called it, he nicked it. That bird looks like a camel. So when he’s swearing, he’s swearing according to his understanding: “I saw this big bat; I saw a big eagle. It looked to me like a camel.” So he said, “Let everything be forbidden to me if I didn’t see this bird, this camel flying.” Camel flying? No, it’s a big bird. It looks like a camel. So maybe his oath is good if you go by his own interpretation.
Iteima, basar pumei azlinan (If you wish, we follow his words). And if you’re going to say we follow only the pre-meaning of his words, and he said “camel,” we don’t go by his understanding; we go by the words he said: camel, camel. That’s why it’s no good. We learn that when Beit Din (court) makes a guy swear, they make him swear according to his own understanding, our understanding, and the Beit Din’s. We don’t want a guy to say, “I swore I paid him my time.” I say he gave them wooden chips—you know, the chips that they play with at the casino. I don’t play casino. You know, the chips, the chips you have in the shoe when they mark it on you; they just have little chips. In my day they had little round things. “I paid him. I paid him monopoly money.” He’ll say, “I didn’t swear policy; I swore I gave him $1,000. I gave him monopoly money.” How do I know it’s not? So therefore, we tell the guy, “Hello, when you’re swearing, you swear on our da'at (understanding), not on your da'at.” So it’s clear: if we don’t make that declaration, we would consider it according to his own understanding of his words. So maybe he meant the flying camera; he meant this flying bird. I said, “Look, that’s not—because otherwise, if we don’t make that declaration, the guy could say his own thing.”
Ha de-mishum kania de-Rava (the case of the cane of Rava). Remember the case of Rava in Nedarim? Everyone remember the case? Great case. The guy says, “You owe me a thousand dollars. Why don’t you pay me?” “I paid you.” “You’re a liar. What a thief.” That’s what it made me into. The guy goes home and makes himself a cane, like a walking stick. It’s hollow. He puts a thousand dollars in coins in there. A thousand-dollar coins. Ten gold coins was worth a hundred. He puts it in there and hobbles into Beit Din. He tells the creditor, “Could you hold my stick while I make the oath? I have to hold the stick with the Torah.” So he gives it to him. “I swear I gave it al da'at (according to the understanding).” The guy got so mad, he took the stick, hit on the ground, and he came out. They say, “Oh, that guy’s trying to do that.” So you know what? We tell him al da'at and al da'at Beit Din. When you say, “I paid it,” that’s what you think you may say. So if that’s true, even if the judge would not say this, the oath would be only according to the plain meaning of the words.
So now the Mishnah says the oath of the Lord is certainly vain, because according to his words it’s vain. That’s Shema Abba, you’re not approved in that case in Mishnah. This is by us. No, I’m saying in the case of that Mishnah. When Moshe Rabbeinu made the children of Yisrael swear by a lot of people, he said to them, “Don’t swear according to your own understanding, but swear on the place of my understanding”—my understanding and my understanding of Hashem. He made them swear that they were going to accept the Torah. Why did Moshe have to make this declaration? Let him just say, “I’m making you swear that you have to observe whatever God has commanded.” You know, what else could it be?
Mai lav (Isn’t it?), maybe they’re going to say like this: when he told them, “You have to observe whatever Hashem said,” they’re going to say, “Yeah, Eloah (God)? I have this God. God, the Zenith, Pluto, Mercury.” They’re going to say, “That’s God.” They’re going to say, “That’s why you made me swear; thank you, I swore on that.” That’s why Moshe had to say, “You see, the words themselves would mean whatever the words are, whatever the guy thinks, unless you make that declaration.”
He says, “No, that’s not true, because there the words themselves do mean that. So I would understand it to mean, ‘Keep what the God says,’ and they are called gods. I am keeping what the God says, so it includes my words—not because I would have made it up and said that’s what I meant. It includes the words.” So Moshe just said, “Why do I have to make the whole declaration, ‘Keep the Torah’? Of course it meant I have to keep the Torah.”
He says, “No, Torah achat (there’s one Torah) is Torah shebikhtav (Written Torah). Even then they know Torah shebe'al peh (Oral Torah); they know such a thing. So let me write two Torahs: Torah of Hathad and Torah of Hashem.” Is it Torah of Hathad and Torah of Hashem? The Torah in the Torah says, “This is the Torah of Hathad; this is the Torah of Hashem.” They call it those words. So he says, “You know, Moshiach says, ‘Write all the Torah; do the whole Torah.’” No, Avodat Kochavim (worship of stars). Maybe they would say that keeping the whole Torah means we’re going not to do Avodah Zarah (idolatry). That’s like keeping the whole Torah. When you do Avodah Zarah, when you don’t do Avodah Zarah, it’s like you’re keeping the entire Torah. So if Moshe had made them say, “Keep the entire Torah,” they would have said, “Yeah, we’re going to keep Avodah Zarah but not everything else.” No, keep the mitzvah.
If it’s one mitzvah, it’s one mitzvah. What do you want? Do mitzvot (commandments). No, tartei (two): mitzvot is two. All the mitzvot—do all the mitzvot. Ha, mitzvat tzitzit (commandment of tzitzit). You know, “I don’t want all the mitzvot tzitzit.” It says, “Whoever has tzitzit (fringes).” You have tzitzit? When you have tzitzit, it’s like you have all the mitzvot. And for them, he made 313 mitzvot. Do 613?
So, meaning, Moshe could have just said that without having to make this whole introduction. Why do you have to tell me you’re not swearing according to your own understanding? You want to say, “One minute, why would Moshe have to say both things? I want you to swear according to mine and according to the prayer of God. What do you say both for?” You’re asking a good question.
The reason Moshe told them this, he said, “I don’t want you to think that you can annul this oath. You go to Beit Din and say, ‘You know, I made an oath; I’m going to hatara (annulment).’ But if you make an oath based on the will of another person, you cannot have it annulled unless that other person gives you consent.” So by telling the children of Yisrael to swear based on the will of Hashem, Moshe precludes the father's will of having the oath annulled. And the reason he says his own oath is because he’s the emissary of Hashem.
So, in conclusion, the fact that Moshe needed to make the declaration does not prove that an absent or an out-committer in any way he desires. He always follows the plain meaning of his words. So therefore he said, gamal poreach (flying camel); it’s impossible. “If I didn’t see a snake as like a beam of an alpars.” Below, they found the snake. But in the time of Shapur Malka (King Shapur), there was one snake that could contain 13 stable-folds of hay. It used to swallow people alive. It was so big. They had that in India a few months ago. “Yeah?” “A lady was swallowed by a snake.” “Yeah.”
So here, to kill the snake, you know what they did? They took beasts wrapped up in enormous bundles of hay, put glowing embers concealed inside the bundles, and fed them to the snake. They were feeding the snake. The snake consumed enough 13 lines of horse stools before it was gone. As it was eating them, the glowing embers inside of it started burning it up inside until they finally killed it. You see, the thing is humongous. It’s as big as this korah de'beit habad (beam of an olive press).
So why is this guy so much chappel? How much he will eat—the snake was spotted. That’s it; they were spotted. The snake’s back was spotted. They said, “No, that usually doesn’t happen. Although some snakes have spots on their backs, none have spots resembling indentations of the beam of an olive press.” That’s how Rashi learned. Others learned they have grooves, grooves like the beam itself. Never saw other enemies with a square shape like the beam of an olive press. They said, “Yes, the snakes are square, flat on their bellies, but none are square-backed.” Sometimes you ever see a picture of a snake, the bottom is flat. Flat, yeah. Not necessarily; sometimes they have a flat bottom, but not the top.
What did he say? “I swear I’m going to eat it.” Then he said, “So I’m not eating it?” It says when he ate it, that one is in vain. When he ate it, he’s over. The man says, “Hashtag mishum shevuat bitui (oath of utterance) mechayev. Mishum shevuat shav, no mechayev?” How do you say shevuat shav? You tell me: if he did not eat it, he’s liable only for violating the oath of Allah. No. Also because the shevuat shav, as soon as the second one came out, it’s the shevuat shav. You don’t have to eat it for that. As soon as it came out, it’s Amar Mirmiya, tani af shevuat bitui. You’re right. When the Mishnah says he’s chayav (liable), he means even on shevuat bitui. Right away, he’s chayav for shevuat shav, and also shevuat bitui. If he doesn’t eat it, it’s going to be chayav ba'us.
Now the rest of the Mishnah of the perek gives us the different rules. Shevuat bitui: these are all the other ones we’ve been talking about in the last couple of pages. These guys say, “I’m going to eat,” or, “I’m not going to eat.” Men, women; relatives, non-relatives. It doesn’t matter if you’re cultured to testify or not. Whether it was in Beit Din or outside Beit Din. Only by his own mouth do you have to say it yourself. Really, you’re going to say in a minute that you don’t have to say it yourself; you can say amen also. But besides that, it’s cool: you have to say it yourself. We’re going to see in the next one, the oath of testimony. I don’t have to swear myself. I don’t even have to say amen. Even if he says, “I accept it,” that would be good enough. We’ll see what that means now.
What’s the halakha in this shevuat between—this is the korban (sacrifice) that we’ve been told, up and down, up and down; it depends on your DMV, it depends on your parnasa (livelihood). That’s shevuat bitui. However, shevuat shav: men and women, far and near, related or not, both qualified or not, whether bifnei Beit Din (before the court) or not bifnei Beit Din. Also, it could be outside the court, inside the court, or mipi atzmo (by his own mouth). It has to be by your own now. That one, you’re chayav on purpose if you leave it in the court, and if it’s shogeg (inadvertent), there’s no korban. Ahad Zuhur is Ahad Zuhur, both arguments and oath. You’re liable even if you’re adjured by others to swear. How? The guy said like this, like this: “I make you swear. I adjure you.” “I’m in, I’m in, I’m in.” “I didn’t swear.” “Yes, you did. I just said ‘I’m in,’ because I told you, ‘I adjure you’”—A-D-J-U-R-E, “I’m making you swear.” That’s what the Mishnah is teaching us. Any time you say amen on the oath, it’s like you swore yourself. As you know, the Mishnah and the Baraita (early rabbinic teaching) also indicate this ruling. Meaning, we’re going to have a contradiction between the Mishnah and the Baraita, and the only reconciliation is that this law is about a man.
Why? What does it say? Diktani (we learned) in this Mishnah, on tomorrow’s page: Shevuat ha'edut (oath of testimony) noheget ba'anashim velo banashim (applies to men, not women). You know why? Women can’t testify. Ba'rechokim velo be'kerovim (to distant people, not relatives). Only far people, not relatives. Bak'sherim velo be'pesulim (kosher people, not a gambler, not a thief), and so on. It’s only possible by someone who is fit to testify. I was going to say, “Let’s come and take a suit of king.” A king is a coach. He doesn’t testify.
Now, he’s liable whether in front of court or not in front of court. Either he made the oath himself or by other people. No, I said it wrong. If you ask me, period. If you ask me, period. I am not going to say anything about the religion. The prayer will be made. The oath is only to be done by yourself. If you do it by other people, they’re only going to be chayav if they deny in court. If a litigant sets the two witnesses out of court, a jury will testify with me. And they reply, “We do not know any testimony.” They have to deny in court that they know the testimony. They have to deny that they don’t know. That’s what he said. If you are Harim, if you have someone else doing it, it’s only going to be in Beit Din if you deny yourself.
Your friend sees you in the street: “Hey, Joe, you know the testimony from me?” “No.” “Swear to me; I make you swear.” “I’m in,” he said. “I’m in.” You end up knowing because he did it himself, but if he does it from—no, I’m saying that’s why he says, “I swear.” But if someone else makes him swear, it has to be in Beit Din. That’s what it means in the Mishnah. We’re going to see later, tomorrow’s message, but there’s another that says differently.
Shevuat ha'edut keitzad (how so)? Amar la'edim: bo'u veha'idu. That guy tells them, “Come testify for me.” They say, “Shevuah, Hashem, we don’t know.” “We swear we don’t know,” or they just say, “We don’t know,” and he says, “I make you swear.” “I’m not a man.” I mean, here it says whether in Beit Din or not, whether he did it or not, he’s going to be chayav. The Mishnah is contradictory. The Mishnah says that if you’re outside the court, you’re only chayav if you did it yourself, not by witnesses telling you, not by the during the witness, and they said not by doing them. Here it says you are chayav.
I’ll tell you what: the guy answered amen. The witnesses said the guy told the witness outside the court, “You know testimony about me; I make you swear.” “Yeah, amen.” He goes, “Amen.” Oh, he said amen; that’s what counts. Ha, they don’t want amen, Amishnah, it says, “Those who cannot serve Beit Din.” He’ll say, “I’m Amishnah, I’m Aminah.” You see, truth like that.
Amar we have said Rabah, but it didn't happen Amidehka. You don’t have to make this country, Amishnah; you can see that. Tani, shevuat bitui. You just said now before, Amishnah. Shevuat bitui: the altar of Aramid applies everywhere—men, women, far, near, kasher (kosher), pasul (disqualified). Bifnei Beit Din is not bifnei Beit Din; mipi atzmo is not. But others know. Uk'tani seifa (the whole Mishnah says in the next part). Seifa is there. Mipi acherim (by others) chayav. The whole Mishnah says in the next part what you do: you serve other, mipi acherim, chayav. Kash'ana Hadadeh. He says only mipi atzmo; he says both. Ela hav sh'ma'amina hada'ana amen hada'ana amen. That’s true. Ela hav sh'ma'al ma'ikamash ma'alan. If you tell me from the Mishnah itself, it’s clear that that’s what it meant. So what is Sh'ma'al teaching me? They have to say amen. He said, “You’re right. He told us you have to look at the Mishnah’s words and look at it precisely. When you look at it precisely, you’re going to know that’s what the Mishnah is teaching us.” Sometimes a guy could read Mishnah and not pay attention. Pay attention, and you’ll see exactly what I’m saying.
Baruch Adonai le'olam (Blessed be the Lord forever). Amen ve'amen.