[Avodah] Determining Shemitta by prozbul

[Zev Sero]

Daniel Eidensohn wrote:

> The Rambam ends up relying on the  gaonim because they have a tradition 
> that says that is what people do - even though it is against his 
> understanding of Chazal. The question is why wasn't the question of what 
> people have done resolved by simply looking at the prozbul documents. 
> After all it is every seven years that a new set of documents is 
> produced. There must be clear documentary evidence that predates the 
> gaonim or at least is from the time of the gaonim.

Documents?  At least in my experience, nowadays a pruzbul is verbal,
and I don't know why it would have been different in the Rambam's day.
And even if some people did write documents, where would they have
been kept for so many years, that the Rambam should have had access
to them, and why?  Even in the case of a bill of sale for land, which
is quite important, we assume that people only keep it for three years
unless they have reason to believe they'll need it later; a shtar
pruzbul would presumably be discarded as soon as the last debt was
collected, if not earlier.


-- 
Zev Sero               Something has gone seriously awry with this Court's
zev at sero.name          interpretation of the Constitution.
                       	                          - Clarence Thomas