Toward the start of today’s daf, Rabba attributes three teachings to Ukvan bar Nehemaya the Exilarch, the third of which is:
In the case of tax officials who sold land in order to pay the land tax, the sale is valid.
If a government tax official confiscates land on which tax is owed and sells it to satisfy the land tax, that sale is valid and the purchaser has proper title to the land. The Gemara notes that this applies only to a sale that satisfies the land tax; selling property to pay off, say, a head tax (which is unrelated to the property itself) is not valid. Rav Huna, son of Rav Yehoshua, however, disagrees:
Everything, even the barley in the pitcher, is mortgaged for the payment of the head tax.
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That is, the government can sell a person’s land to pay the head tax. Rav Huna’s statement itself is then challenged:
Rav Ashi said: Huna bar Natan said to me that Ameimar raised a difficulty with regard to this statement of Rav Huna, son of Rav Yehoshua: If so, you have abolished the inheritance of the firstborn son. It is only a potential inheritance, and the halakhah is that the firstborn does not take a double share in a potential inheritance as he does in property that the deceased possessed.
Jewish law allots the eldest son a double portion of his father’s estate. For example, if there are three surviving sons, the estate is divided into four portions and the eldest gets two of them. However, this right to a double portion extends only to property that’s solidly part of the father’s estate, not to property that could potentially (but not definitely) be inherited. If a tax can be collected from any piece of property, it would render the entire inheritance conditional, and no eldest son could collect a double portion due to this uncertainty.
Huna bar Natan responds:
And I said to Ameimar: If so, then even the land tax would present this difficulty. Rather, what have you to say to deflect this question? In a case where the father gave the land tax and then died. Here too, the firstborn son maintains his rights in a case where the father gave the head tax and then died.
Huna argues that if the potential for the land to be confiscated to pay taxes really interfered with the double inheritance of the firstborn, the land tax would also be a concern. Further, in situations where the father paid the taxes in full before dying, there’s no question that it’s part of the inheritance, so the rule about double portions applies.
Rav Ashi tries to untangle this:
Rav Ashi said: Huna bar Natan said to me: I asked the scribes who wrote documents and recorded halakhic rulings in the court of Rava, and they said to me that the halakhah is in accordance with the opinion of Rav Huna, son of Rav Yehoshua, who states that one’s possessions are all mortgaged for the payment of the head tax. But that is not so, as there, Huna bar Natan said that in order to buttress his previous statement.
It turns out that not all property can be seized to cover a person’s head tax. So why would Rav Huna say it was the case? Dina demalkhuta dina — the law of the kingdom is the law. Secular legal decisions are binding on Jewish residents. This serves as an attempt by Jewish leaders, who hold limited and easily revoked authority as a marginalized minority in the Diaspora, to precariously balance Jewish legal principles with the overwhelming power of the governments under which they live.
In this context, seizing a person’s property to pay off the head tax might not mesh with halakhic principles. But what can the rabbis do about it? Not much, in truth. So while Huna might not be halakhically correct, his position is meant to legitimize what the scribes are doing about land sales: upholding the far-more-powerful government’s right to take people’s property to cover their tax debts and finding that any subsequent sale is proper. Sometimes, it seems, Jewish practice is flexible, even if halakhah isn’t.
Read all of Bava Batra 55 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on August 19, 2024. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
