Shor Rhymes with Bor (article summary)
Here is my article in last week’s Jewish Link (HTML, flipbooks, paid Substack):
There are many points interwoven, so the summary doesn’t necessarily do it justice. But here are a few points:
Lead with a joke about extreme be’iyun. Chafetz Chaim is renowned for their focus on iyun. So we have to understand the hava amina in and of itself, at this stage in the gemara.
There seems to be lots of editorial reworking here. At a glance, I can see the parenthesized definition of bekius, or changing Rabbi to Rebbi, or adding shlita to Rav Schachter.
Shor / Bor / Mav’eh / Hev’er is a mnemonic, so the rhyming and sound similarity is part of the goal. It is easier to memorize that way. Rashi explains the order in one way, based on the sequence of pesukim. I believe he is correct, as a matter of simple peshat of the mnemonic and how it relates to the pesukim.
Amoraim argue about the meaning of Shor and Mav’eh, which would mess up this simple reading / sequence. Tosafot discuss ways to still justify that order.
Rav Schachter points out the biographical issue, that Rav and Shmuel both learned from Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, so how could they argue about the meaning of terms in the mnemonic? He answers that the mnemonic is deliberately ambiguous, to support already extant groups of avot nezikin. I’d still stay that the peshat is aligned with the simple pesukim in Mishpatim and their order / juxtaposition.
Mav’eh / בעה then means grazing, even though the verse itself employs a בער root. Cassuto suggests that the Tannaim actually had a verse with the בעה root at points to the Samaritan Pentateuch with extends the verse and uses a בעה root. I think it shows the opposite, because they know and use the בעה root in the extension, but the primary pasuk they maintain the same root as in the Masoretic Text. I agree that בעה is a related root. While ambiguity and wordplay is great for Biblical verses, when it comes to discussing halachic categories, Tannaim don’t want to use a term which will be confused with fire. (The Samaritan extension aligns with the best being of the damaged party’s fields, and distinguishes between paying meitav when all was consumed so there’s no evidence, versus when only some wa consumed so we can assess.)
I suggest a reading of the pesukim. Why is someone clearing / בער his field or vineyard? There is a standard agricultural practice to remove the stubble from the field at the end of a harvest. You want to be able to plant new crops, and to return the nutrients to the soil. Stubble burning is one way to clear a field. Another would be to have your animals graze, and they will produce fertilizer. Either seems a plausible reading (or it could even be intended as a general term to encompass both), though you need to consider that the very next verse discusses a fire, and how that would differ. If so, we could understand the meitav sadeihu and meitav karmo that the damager pays as matching the sadeh and kerem at the beginning of the verse. Not as the best of all his fields, but the best of the harvest of the field whose stubble you were clearing.
Here is Vetus Testamentum, showing the diff, with the Samaritan text on the left and the Masoretic text on the right
