Kids Daf Quest

Daf Yomi for kids · Talmud Bavli · Masechet Arakhin

Arakhin 31 for kids: A Year to Redeem

ערכין ל״א

🏠 This daf asks when a seller may redeem a house in a walled city. It explores how to count the year and what happens if the buyer cannot be found on the last day.

Daf Yomi day:

📖 Open Arakhin 31a in Daf QuestOpen Arakhin 31b in Daf Quest

In the app: the Gemara with Rashi and Tosafot, the printed page, games made from this daf, play coins and treasure chests.

Stories from Arakhin 31

Words to know

Rashi and Tosafot on Arakhin 31 in simple English

Rashi on Arakhin 31a, in English Tab translation (22)
  1. One baraita teaches — Someone who consecrates an ancestral field may borrow money to redeem it. This is the earlier teaching based on “if he redeems, he shall redeem.” Rabbi Shimon taught it; the other baraita follows the Rabbis, who disagree with him.
  2. Mishna: He may redeem it immediately — Unlike an ancestral field, for which he must wait two years.
  3. This is like a form of interest — If the seller returns the money within a year without deducting anything, the buyer has used the house in return for letting the seller keep his money.
  4. But it is not interest — It is not actual interest, because interest applies to a loan, not a sale.
  5. His son may redeem it — If the seller dies, his son may redeem the house within the year. After the year, it belongs permanently to the buyer and can never be redeemed, as the verse says, “If it is not redeemed by the end of a full year…”
  6. Rather, from when it was first sold — If Reuven sold it to Shimon in Nisan and Shimon sold it to Levi in Iyar, it becomes Levi’s permanently the following Nisan. The year is counted from the first sale, not the second.
  7. As it says, “until a full year has passed for him” — The year is counted for the person whose property it originally was.
  8. The leap month — If it is a leap year, the house does not become the buyer’s permanently until thirteen months have passed.
  9. A year and its addition — Whether it is an ordinary year or a leap year, the seller is given a lunar year plus the eleven days by which a solar year exceeds it. Those extra days are used to intercalate the year.
  10. And likewise one given as a gift — The giver may redeem it within a year; otherwise, it belongs permanently to the recipient.
  11. Gemara: Our mishna — It says that he may redeem the house immediately, meaning even on the day he sold it. This differs from Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi’s opinion.
  12. “For days he shall have the right of redemption”—and ‘days’ means at least two — The house must remain with the buyer for at least two days.
  13. And the Rabbis — They agree that “from its sale” means the year is counted from the sale, not by the calendar year. They use “days” to require counting a full year to the hour: if he sold it at midday on the first of Nisan, the year ends at midday on the first of Nisan the following year.
  14. From day to day — If he sold it on the first of Nisan, the year is not counted by the calendar year, so that it would end when Tishrei arrives. The house does not become the buyer’s permanently until the following first of Nisan.
  15. The year after its sale — Not the calendar year.
  16. The mishna follows Rabbi Yehuda — He permits interest that depends on one possible outcome. Interest arising from a sale is conditional: if the seller does not redeem the property and it becomes the buyer’s permanently, there is no interest. With a loan, by contrast, the property does not become the lender’s permanently.
  17. And he made his field the subject of a sale — He pledged his field as security for the hundred dinars and wrote, “If I do not pay you the hundred dinars within three years, the field is yours.”
  18. When the seller eats the produce — It is permitted for him to use the field’s produce throughout those years.
  19. If the buyer eats the produce, it is forbidden — The seller might redeem the field within three years, in which case the buyer will have taken its produce as interest.
  20. The mishna follows Rabbi Yehuda — He permits interest that depends on one possible outcome. Interest arising from a sale is conditional: if the seller does not redeem the property and it becomes the buyer’s permanently, there is no interest. With a loan, by contrast, the property does not become the lender’s permanently.
  21. An incident involving Beitus ben Zonin — This is the correct reading of the text.
  22. Interest that depends on one possible outcome — If the seller redeems the property, the buyer’s use of it will have been interest; if not, it will not have been interest.
Tosafot on Arakhin 31a, in English Tab translation (5)
  1. One baraita teaches that one may borrow money and redeem in installments — Rashi says this concerns a consecrated ancestral field. But then the Mishnah’s unqualified permission to do both would follow Rabbi Shimon and not the Rabbis. Rabbi Yitzhak therefore says the baraitot concern a house in a walled city, as the discussion in Kiddushin indicates. For a consecrated ancestral field, even the Rabbis agree that one may borrow and redeem in installments.
  2. A teaching about the sale of an ancestral field — The Sifra says that, in calculating its redemption price, one counts years, not months, but may treat months as a year if one wishes. How can both choices benefit the seller? Counting months helps when the seller redeems midyear: the buyer’s months of use reduce the price, just as full years do. Not counting months helps, for example, if he sold the field in Nisan for ten and a half litrin, with ten and a half years until the Jubilee, and comes to redeem it on Rosh HaShana, with five years still remaining.
  3. From day to day and hour to hour is derived from ‘until the completion of the year after it is sold’ — Rabbi Elchanan explains that only for houses in walled cities must a year be measured to the hour; the other cases discussed in Niddah need only follow their own years rather than calendar years. The Tosafot here say that those cases, too, are measured to the hour: the repeated word ‘year’ links them to houses in walled cities, as the Gemara later does for another law.
  4. But a baraita teaches: ‘This is full-fledged interest, except that the Torah permitted it’ — Rabbi Yohanan concludes that the Mishnah follows Rabbi Yehuda, who permits a transaction in which interest arises only under one possible outcome, while the baraita follows the Rabbis. Why, then, is an undeducted mortgage treated only as rabbinically prohibited interest? Rashi distinguishes a field, which might yield no produce, from a house, whose occupant necessarily benefits. This could explain why living in the house is called full-fledged interest. Rabbeinu Tam rejects the distinction: a house, too, might collapse or burn. He instead explains why a lender may rent mortgaged property at a reduced rate: the borrower cannot rent it to anyone else while the lender holds it, so it would otherwise stand unused. Renting the lender other property cheaply is interest because the borrower could rent it to someone else. Since this does not distinguish a field from a house, ‘full-fledged interest’ here must mean interest fully prohibited by the Rabbis. The Torah’s permission for houses in walled cities shows that such a case is not interest prohibited by Torah law.
  5. And Rabbi Yehuda holds that interest arising under one possible outcome is permitted — Why, then, does he not permit an undeducted mortgage, since the borrower might never redeem the property? A conditional sale of a field has a possible outcome in which it remains sold if it is not redeemed on time. A mortgage has no such outcome: the borrower may always redeem it. If he does, the lender’s use of the property without a deduction from the debt is interest. Likewise, Rabbi Yehuda does not permit lending a measure of grain to be repaid with the same measure merely because its price might not rise; there is no possible sale involved.
Rashi on Arakhin 31b, in English Tab translation (27)
  1. Everyone agrees that interest arising from only one possible outcome — In this case it is forbidden, since the buyer initially received the property as a loan. Rabbi Yehuda’s permission concerns a case where they agreed from the outset that, if the seller redeemed it within three years, the buyer would repay him for the produce he had consumed. Their dispute is about interest given on condition that it be returned. The mishna and the baraita also differ: the tanna of our mishna holds that this is not even interest arising from one possible outcome, since the buyer received the property as a purchase. The tanna of the baraita holds that, because it might ultimately lead to interest, it counts as full-fledged interest, though the Torah permitted it.
  2. ‘If a man sells,’ says the Merciful One — The verse speaks of the man who sold the house.
  3. ‘He shall have the right of redemption’ in any case — Otherwise, the verse could have said, ‘He may redeem it until the end of the year after its sale.’ By saying instead, ‘He shall have the right of redemption,’ it implies that redemption may be carried out even by someone else.
  4. ‘The one who bought it’ — This suggests that, if the house is not redeemed within a year, it becomes permanently the buyer’s. If it is redeemed, the buyer must return it—but perhaps his son need not. Therefore the verse teaches, ‘He shall have the right of redemption,’ in any case.
  5. ‘Year’ — Had the verse said ‘until a full year has passed’ without saying ‘for him,’ I would not know whether to count from the first or second sale. For example, if Reuben sold to Shimon in Nisan and Shimon sold to Levi in Tishrei, one might think Reuben could redeem it from Levi until the following Tishrei. ‘For him’ indicates that the year is reckoned from the first seller’s sale.
  6. To whom does it belong permanently? — When a year has passed since the first seller’s sale, which buyer gains permanent ownership?
  7. It belongs permanently to the first buyer — Reuben can no longer redeem it from Shimon, but Shimon can redeem it from Levi until a year has passed since the second sale, since it has not become permanently Levi’s.
  8. It belongs permanently to the second buyer — Shimon cannot redeem it from Levi.
  9. A full year has elapsed for him — A year is counted from date to date. For the house sold on the fifteenth of the first Adar, a full year does not pass until the fifteenth of Adar the next year. Although thirteen months have passed, it must be counted from the fifteenth of Adar to the fifteenth of Adar.
  10. Let him say to him — Let the first buyer say to the second: ‘I lit the fire first’—I began using my house before you. How can yours become permanently yours on the first of Adar while mine does not?
  11. You entered during the intercalated month — You acquired your house in the added month, so you must bear its effect: ‘a full year’ gives the seller that extra month. I did not acquire mine during it.
  12. Two lambs were born to him — They are firstborn lambs, which he is commanded to offer within their first year, as it is written: ‘You shall eat it year by year’ (Deuteronomy 15:20).
  13. It does not say ‘full’ — Without that word, one might not give it the extra month and would count its year as completed on the fifteenth of Shevat.
  14. According to the number of days in a solar year — This applies in both an ordinary year and a leap year.
  15. Twelve months from date to date — Counted according to the lunar months as we establish them.
  16. The year was intercalated for him — The seller must allow the added month, for the verse says ‘a full year.’
  17. But he said — In the last chapter of tractate Bekhorot (52b), it says that a gift is unlike a sale: the property returns in the Jubilee year to the person who gave it.
  18. ‘You shall return’ — From ‘You shall return, each man to his holding,’ the Sages derive that a gift is included.
  19. And he may redeem it forever — It never becomes permanently the Temple treasury’s property. The reason is explained below.
  20. The day marking twelve months arrived — Twelve months after he bought it from the Temple treasurer.
  21. For it has no generations — There is no procreation before Heaven.
  22. Why say ‘it does not go out in the Jubilee year’? — The verse already says it remains theirs ‘in perpetuity.’
  23. Mishna: He would hide — On the day marking twelve months, the buyer would hide so the seller could not find him to pay him, and the house would become permanently the buyer’s.
  24. So that he could deposit — As in ‘who cast lots over nations’ (Isaiah 14:12), and as the Sages say, ‘They cast lots for the offerings’ (Shabbat 148b). The seller could deposit his money in the chambers of the Temple courtyard.
  25. And he may break down the door — Of the house he sold, and enter it.
  26. With his consent — he accepts the money willingly.
  27. Against his will — the seller throws the money into the buyer’s house; this is the kind of case Hillel addressed with his enactment in the Mishnah.
Tosafot on Arakhin 31b, in English Tab translation (3)
  1. Rava said: Everyone agrees that contingent interest is forbidden — Rashi explains that the mishna and the baraita disagree about this case. The baraita holds that because the arrangement may ultimately produce interest, it counts as full-fledged interest; the Torah nevertheless permitted it here. Alternatively, they disagree about a buyer who enters the house on condition that, if the seller redeems it within twelve months, the buyer will pay him a year’s rent. The mishna permits interest that is to be returned, while the baraita forbids it. Or they do not disagree: the mishna concerns a buyer who repays the rent if the house is redeemed, and the baraita concerns one who does not.
  2. For Rabbi Meir says that a gift is not like a sale — This could mean that the giver cannot redeem the house at all, even within twelve months. That would revive the question raised earlier: since Scripture says that priests’ and Levites’ houses are their ancestral holding forever, should they be unable to give them away? Alternatively, a gift is not like a sale because the giver can redeem the house at any time, even after twelve months. On that reading, priests and Levites can give their houses to others.
  3. Hillel instituted — This passage implies that the Jubilee was observed in the Second Temple period, when Hillel lived: redemption of houses in walled cities applied only while the Jubilee was in force. This is difficult for Rashi’s explanation elsewhere. There, when the Gemara asks how Hillel could institute the prozbul to prevent a biblical cancellation of debts, it answers that cancellation of debts in his time was rabbinic. Rashi explains that Hillel held that the Jubilee was not observed in the Second Temple period, so biblical debt cancellation did not apply; the counting of Jubilees to establish sabbatical years was only rabbinic. Another passage also indicates that the Jubilee was observed then: Rav Hisda understands the people who pledged to send away their wives and bring guilt offerings to have had relations with betrothed bondwomen—that is, women who were half enslaved and half free, betrothed to Hebrew slaves. But Hebrew slavery applies only while the Jubilee is in force. We must therefore say that the Jubilee was observed in the Second Temple period. Although not all Israel returned in Ezra’s day, some returned from every tribe, satisfying the requirement that ‘all its inhabitants’ be there; as stated below, they counted Jubilees despite not all having returned. Hillel’s prozbul, then, was not instituted for his own generation: he knew the Temple would be destroyed and instituted it for the future. Although the Gemara there asks whether he instituted it for his generation or for all future generations, that question is not asked according to Abaye, but according to Rava, who explains the prozbul through a court’s power to declare property ownerless.

Sources

Kid summary and story cards written by Tab from the William Davidson Edition English (Sefaria, CC BY-NC 4.0).

Tab translation (machine-assisted) of Rashi and Tosafot, from the Vilna Edition Hebrew (public domain) on Sefaria. May contain mistakes.

In the app, the Gemara text comes from Sefaria (William Davidson Edition, CC BY-NC 4.0; Hebrew/Aramaic Vilna Edition). Rashi and Tosafot Hebrew: Vilna Edition (public domain) via Sefaria.

Also spelled: Arachin, Erchin 31.