Kiddushin: Three Ways

The Mishnah in Kiddushin opens with three ways of accomplishing betrothal — money, a betrothal document, and intercourse.

To stir the pot, I’ll suggest that the third is parallel to chazaka. How does one acquire a servant, or a field? עֶבֶד כְּנַעֲנִי נִקְנֶה בְכֶסֶף וּבִשְׁטָר וּבַחֲזָקָה. נְכָסִים שֶׁיֵּשׁ לָהֶם אַחֲרָיוּת נִקְנִין בְּכֶסֶף וּבִשְׁטָר וּבַחֲזָקָה. Chazaka is essentially establishing that the relationship holds. You can direct a servant to perform some action a servant would do. You can dig holes in land that you own. So too, one can have intercourse with one’s spouse.

The Stamma (Talmudic Narrator) begins by analyzing the grammar of derech, and whether it is masculine or feminine. After all, the number given is שלש, without a final heh. And numbers take gender in Hebrew, and act weirdly compared with nouns and adjectives. Atypically, the kametz heh ending is used for masculine, and its absence is used for feminine, the opposite of what we see for nouns and adjectives.

This extreme focus on a minor grammatical point, and what motivates it, is typical of the Stamma. See e.g. the focus on what אור can designate in or le’arba asar — day or night, and what it means across many sources (though there is a little bit of Amoraic input here and there). Or see the beginning of Chullin, and the concern as to whether hakol shochatin indicates lechatchila or bedieved, with an examination of all sources.

The Talmudic manuscripts are all consistent in having שלש in the Mishnah. This is what you would expect, since the gender of the word is a major discussion in the gemara. However, they are not as good when it comes to שני vs. שתי in how the woman can leave the marriage. This because the sofer can forget his dikduk and it actually wasn’t discussed in the gemara.

Also, in Ktav Yad Kaufmann (the complete and vocalized manuscript of the Mishnah), they mess it up, and write שלשה. This makes sense since other times in the Mishnah, numbers associated with דרכים are masculine. And, the sofer writing this does not have the gemara at the top of his mind. Thus:

Also interesting is what the Nakdan chose to do with the definite article. בכסף could either be ba-kkesef or be-khesef. He chose the patach under the bet and a dagesh in the kaf. (Note there is no rafe line above the kaf.) Same for ba-bbiah. However, it it uvishtar.

Rashi, and Artscroll following, said that the Italian issar is a silver coin, and base their explanation of other things on that. Someone in the daf yomi chaburah, Rabbi Binyamin Yablock, who collects these coins and knows about them, brought in a silver shekel and a copper perutah. He also brought in a copper Italian issar, and explained that there are no silver Italian issars, only copper. Presumably, Rashi did not have access to Italian coins from the time of Chazal when he wrote his commentary.

I noticed an interesting feature of the Vilna Shas. Aand associated with it, Artscroll which uses the same tzurat hadaf, also copy this into their interpolated interlinear translation. Towards the end of amud bet, two Mishnayot are cited which employ דברים rather than דרכים.

And instead of spelling it out as שבעה and שלשה, like all manuscripts and the other printings, Vilna shortens it to ז׳ and ג׳. And that is how yesterday’s maggid shiur read it. This has an impact of not only saving a little bit of space on the page, but transferring one’s mental energy away from the masculine / feminine question (where שבעה and שלשה are masculine) and onto the usage of devarim instead of derachim. That is, after all, the immediate question, and only secondary to that would be that since they use devarim, it and the number would be masculine. It is a little easier to focus on, and understand.