Study Bava Metzia folio 12B with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
The rabbis instituted an ordinance rendering a son of the sharecropper, who does not have the right to acquire property, like one who has the right to acquire property; i.e., they granted him a special right to acquire the gleanings. What is the reason for this ordinance? This arrangement is satisfa
The Talmud comments: And Shmuel, in his above explanation of the Mishnah, disagrees with the opinion of R' Ḥiyya bar Abba. As R' Ḥiyya bar Abba says that R' Yoḥanan says: The word adult in the Mishnah is not referring to an actual adult, and the word minor is not referring to an actual minor. Rathe
§ The Mishnah teaches: The found item of his Hebrew slave or female slave, it is theirs. The Talmud asks: Why does it not belong to the master? Let the slave be considered merely a laborer; and it is taught in a baraita: The found item of a laborer, i.e., a lost item that he found, belongs to him
The baraita continues: But if the employer said to the laborer: Work for me today, without specifying the nature of the work, the found item is the employer’s, as finding ownerless items is included within the general category of work. Since a Hebrew slave is duty-bound to perform all types of lab
R' Ḥiyya bar Abba said that R' Yoḥanan said: Here we are dealing with a slave who pierces pearls [margaliyyot], which is such a profitable activity that his master would not want to transfer him to another line of work even for a moment. Therefore his status is like that of a laborer who is hired to