Monday 19 June 2017

Bava Batra 146: Returning the Gifts: Grooms, Dying Men

A very brief review of today’s daf:

A new Mishna teaches us that a betrothed  groom who gives even 10,000 dinars to his father-in-law does not receive the gift back if the marriage is not effected.  No gifts are returned at all (unless the bride brings them to her betrothed’s home to be used there, briefly).

The rabbis discuss this Mishna by suggesting relatively wild circumstances where we might think that gifts should be collected back by the giver.

We learn that there are minor differences in the halacha around returning gifts between gifts that can be consumed and gifts that cannot be consumed.

Before our daf ends, we learn a second new Mishna:
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When a man gives his land away on his death bed and he in fact survives, those gifts are only returned if he left no land for himself.  In such a case, it is clear that his wishes were to be effected only if he were to die.


The Gemara takes issue with this - how might we assume a person’s intentions?  Ever?

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