Originally, Bava Kamma, Bava Metzia, and Bava Batra were one single (very long) tractate called tractate Nezikin. Only in the medieval period did scribes start to break tractate Nezikin into three sections or “gates” (bava means gate in Aramaic) — probably simply because the tractate was so long. Indeed, Bava Batra, the third of the set, is still the longest tractate in the entire Talmud.
Bava Kamma, opens with the four “primary categories of damage”: the ox, the pit, the maveh (which the Talmud concludes refers to human beings) and the fire. These archetypes of damage have to do with whether the accidental damage was done actively or passively, whether it was predictable or not, and a range of other factors. Each of these primary categories is then divided into subcategories, with nuances galore. Here we meet two different kinds of oxen — the innocent ox, and the goring ox — and learn how animal owners are assessed for the damage caused by their animals based in part on how much they are expected to anticipate that their animal will cause harm. Each of these four categories causes damage, but that damage is unintentional (at least by the human owner of the animal or pit, or the starter of the fire).
Bava Kamma then shifts to thinking about the kinds of financial loss caused by intentional harm: theft, robbery, physical violence. Beyond simple compensation, the people who perpetrate these acts have to pay additional penalties for the harm that they’ve caused. For example, we learned on Bava Kamma 83b that:
One who injures another is liable for that due to five types of indemnity: for damage, for pain, for medical costs, for loss of livelihood, and for humiliation.
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Bava Kamma reminds us that we are responsible for the damage we cause intentionally, but we are also responsible for any unintentional damage that we caused, even damage we set in motion years earlier (like digging a pit and then forgetting about it). For the rabbis, to be a human in the world is to be considered always “forewarned” (Bava Kamma 26a), meaning to be aware that our actions can cause harm and that we must take extra caution in everything we do.
Bava Metzia opens with a discussion of how to determine ownership of lost objects. Since the previous tractate ended on the topic of the laws of taking ownership, the Talmud continues by exploring the legal mechanisms by which things are bought and sold. At what exact moment of an exchange of money for goods, for example, does the buyer take ownership of whatever they are buying? And if it turns out that the buyer is unhappy with the product, when is the seller required to take it back and give back the buyer’s money?
The tractate then shifts again to thinking about four different kinds of people who take legal possession of other people’s things: paid and unpaid guardians, renters, and borrowers. Each kind of person has a different degree of responsibility if the thing they are watching or using is damaged or stolen.
Both Bava Kamma and Bava Metzia are explicitly rooted in biblical civil law. The rabbis conclude that Exodus 21 and 22 are the source texts for the laws of damages, theft, robbery, guardianship, renting and borrowing. But the final tractate in the Bavas, Bava Batra, shifts the discussion away from interpreting biblical laws and toward the rabbinic construction of property law.
Bava Batra opens by considering what property owners owe their neighbors (spoiler alert: don’t be a loud, smelly peeping tom, and don’t infringe on your neighbor’s presumptive rights). Here we also learned how property can be individually or jointly owned, purchased, given as an inheritance or gifted. Finally, since good contracts make good neighbors, the entire corpus ends with a discusison of how to write clear, legally-valid contracts that meet the expectations of all parties involved, and how to interpret and validate contracts in court.
Taken together, the Bavas are traditionally understood to be the foundation of Jewish civil law. They lay out how rabbinic society deals with the kinds of damage that leads to financial loss, and the various principles that the rabbis use to think about individual property rights, buying and selling, inheritance and how to be a good neighbor. Like all talmudic tractates, they also contain fascinating diversions to other topics that are less legal nature, including: the ten conditions that Joshua stipulated when the Israelites settled the land (Bava Kamma 81a) and the ten ordinances that Ezra instituted when the Jews returned from the Babylonian Exile (Bava Kamma 82), the story of the legendary relationship between Rabbi Yohanan and Reish Lakish (Bava Metzia 84a), how Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi’s callousness toward a calf being led to slaughter led to him being punished for 13 years and how his kindness toward baby weasels led God to finally take compassion on him (Bava Metzia 85), an exploration of the biblical Job (Bava Batra15b), and wonderful stories of Rabbah bar bar Hana’s adventures at sea (Bava Batra 73a).
The final pages of Bava Batra remind us that the foundation of Jewish wisdom may well lie in these three tractates:
Rabbi Yishmael said: One who wants to become wise should engage in the study of civil law, as there is no greater discipline in the Torah, and it is like a flowing spring.
The project of diving into civil law enables us to think in nuanced ways about parts of our life experience that we often don’t question — owning things, buying and selling, signing contracts. Throughout, the rabbis continually remind us that all these laws are rooted in a belief that to be part of the Jewish community is to owe each other respect for our individual rights and property.
