We’ve been discussing when and how possession of land confers ownership rights. If someone is living on land and working it, someone else can object and say the land belongs to them. Today’s daf is concerned with the following: What if the protester tries to keep their protest a secret from the possessor?
If the one lodging a protest also said: “Do not tell the possessor of the protest,” — what is the halakhah?
Rav Zevid said: “It is not a valid protest … word of the protest will not reach the possessor and it is meaningless.”
Rav Pappa disagreed and said: “The owner merely meant: ‘Do not tell him personally,’ but they (i.e., the witnesses) should tell others, since your friend has a friend and your friend’s friend has a friend.”
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If the protester tells witnesses not to tell the possessor of the protest, Rav Zevid assumes the possessor won’t know that someone has lodged a complaint. In his view, this makes the objection invalid. Rav Pappa, however, presumes the possessor will hear about the objection through the community grapevine, so the objection is a valid one.
But what if the witnesses who hear the complaint explicitly say they won’t tell the possessor?
If the witnesses before whom the owner lodged the protest said to him: “We are not going to tell the possessor about your protest,” — what is the halakhah?
Rav Zevid said: “It is not a valid protest, and he has to lodge a protest before other witnesses …”
Rav Pappa disagreed and said: “They merely meant: ‘We are not going to tell him personally, but we are going to tell others.’ In that case, word of the protest will reach the possessor, since your friend has a friend and your friend’s friend has a friend … therefore, it is a valid protest.”
Again, Rav Zevid finds the objection ineffective: If those hearing it say they will not pass word along, how can the possessor find out? But Rav Pappa still has faith that word will get around. Even if the witnesses say they won’t tell the possessor, they’ll tell others and eventually the news will reach the possessor.
Finally, what if the protester tells the witnesses not to speak of this to anyone, not just the possessor?
If the one lodging the protest also said to them: “A word should not emerge from you about this,” — what is the halakhah?
Rav Zevid said: “It is not a valid protest …”
Rav Pappa said: “It is not a valid protest, as aren’t they saying to him: ‘We will not have a word emerge from us?’”
Rav Huna, the son of Rav Yehoshua, disagreed and said: “It is a valid protest, because with regard to any matter that is not actually incumbent on a person to keep secret, it is likely that he will say it to others unawares, and therefore the presumption is that word will reach the possessor.”
Not surprisingly, for a third time Rav Zevid finds this to be an invalid protest. But this time even Rav Pappa thinks the possessor will not find out and so he also deems it an invalid protest. Except now a new voice, Rav Huna, enters the fray. In his view, word will reach the possessor because even though the protester charged the witnesses not to tell anyone, that charge has no legal force, and so he expects they will still pass along the hot gossip and it will eventually reach the possessor.
How do we resolve this? The Mishneh Torah and the Shulchan Aruch agree with Rav Zevid that, in the absence of a response from the witnesses, the objector’s direction not to speak negates his protest. However, both codes accept a protest as valid when the witnesses spontaneously say they won’t talk about the protest. The reasoning is that the witnesses will not remain silent unless charged to do so — even if they volunteer to keep mum. The codes also uphold the protest when the instruction is specifically not to notify the possessor. In this case, they feel it is safe to assume the information will reach the possessor through a third party. In this way, they split the difference between the two sides.
Read all of Bava Batra 39 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on August 3, 2024. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
