[Avodah] T'uM

[Micha Berger]

To look at the cases already raised:
Qiddushin and qinyan in general require shaveh kesef. I don't think the
question of defining money applies to them directly. Except that...

1- Hilkhos Shabbos requires knowing when masa umatan occured
and
2- Mi shepara distinguishes between payment with kesef the thing
   bought.

We also raised:
3- Mitzvos that are defined in sheqalim, such as pidyon haben and
   machatzis hasheqel.

On Wed, Jul 09, 2008 at 12:10:13AM -0400, Richard Wolpoe wrote:
: So how did Golden Acres get around the issue of Muktzeh with scrip? What
: about  those rabbis who instituted this procedure?  Waht did they gain?

I'm not sure. I don't even know if my rav would agree with the pesaq.

On Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:28:24 -0400, R Zev Sero <zev at sero.name> wrote:
>                                  From RRW's description it sounds like
> we are talking about actual scrip, not tokens, i.e. it could be exchanged
> for *anything*, both in the canteen and in private transactions between
> people; the examples he gave were "extra wine" and "a baby sitter".

I am not sure if RZS realized that "paying for babysitting" meant paying
Golden Acres for an employee's labor. Presumably she isn't working for
commission on Shabbos, so her pay for the night is the same if she is
needed to watch someone or not.

So it would seem that the only difference between scrip and money is that
GA scrip is only accepted by two parties: Golden Acres in exchange for
goods or services, and the customer, if he asks for a refund on motza"sh.

What would happen if the customers made a secondary market for them?
There already is such a thing going on with Yeshiva Ketana of Passaic
"Chessed Dollars" (scrip accepted by numerous stores in Passaic, Brooklyn
and Monsey which supports YKP and whichever schools subcontract under
them to sell scrip for their institution).

The question here is not "what is money" as much as "when did the qinyan
occur"? The same question exists if scrip were kesef or scrip were
barter with a shaveh kesef. Without hereing the rationale of GA's rabbi
(or the one who set up the Homowak's tea room) I would think, like RZS,
that until both items to be exchanged are defined, there is no qinyan,
and the qinyan would be on Shabbos.


Back to RRW's post, he asks:
: When is shava kessef kessef?

I would have asked the reverse: When is kessef, kessef?

On Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:16:42 (EDT) RZS responded to a post from RRW:
>> Fiat money, like life insruance is an astraction.

> No more than silver-as-money was an abstraction in Chazal's time and
> through most of history.

It wasn't so much an abstraction as a standardization. For small business,
you trusted the coinage and didn't bother weighing each one.

How far can you drift from kesef in the sense of silver and still be
talking about what chazal were talking about? I don't know if Chazal
ever dealt with the homonimity of kesef, that it means both silver and
money. The split between the two meanings came later.

At the time Chazal wrote about mi shepara, coinage had its inherent
value. A sheqel was a sheqel's weight of silver. If it wasn't in coin
form, it had the same value. If a coin were shaved, it was worth less.
How is payment with such a coin "payment" and not "barter"? Is the silver
(kesef) any different than trading pelts?

Why would mi shepara apply to the silver rather than the cloth you bought
for it? What makes the silver "money"?

I think the answer is simpler than that... It's not that silver is
money, it's that the norm for doing business is that people treat the
deal closed when the silver changes hands.


Then they introduced money that is more like stock -- proof of ownership
of something of value. But by the later days of the gold backed dollar,
the US didn't actually provide a means of getting to Fort Knox and
putting in a claim for the gold. So even at that point, it wasn't too
different than today's fiat money.

I do not understand the discussion of fiat money as shetar chov. A shetar
chov means that the bearer of the shetar can come to me for goods or
services. Here, the goods and services are not obtained from the author
of the bill. Not that I disagree with the position. I fail to see the
similarity taken for granted to understand the suggestion.

If you wanted to buy a beautiful piece of artwork, does it not have value
beyond that of the paint and canvas? What if you didn't like the artwork,
and only bought it because you know someone else would, and they would
pay you a profit for it. Now, what if you didn't know that someone else,
and were only betting that such people exist? Doesn't that opportunity
constitute the inherent value of the picture? I would argue that fiat
money has inherent value in the same way -- the value of betting that
someone would take it off your hands for something or some service you
(or after 120, your yorshim) do want. Chazal recognized the value of
a business opportunity. In the case of legal tender, it's not a very
risky bet.

I would consider that more abstract than the money actually be made
of silver of that value, but that's neither here nor there; a possible
debate over the meanings of the word "abstract".

I think the only time we can't rely on the value of the bill because
of the opportunity it grants me is in my last subject, mitzvos that are
defined in sheqalim.


Last, if the mitzvah calls for a sheqel, then something equal in value
to a sheqel weight of silver may be shaveh eksef, but it's not the
cheftzah shel mitzvah.

To summarize:

1- Qinyan doesn't care whether or not you're using money, so for things
like hilkhos Shabbos, the question isn't whether scrip is money, but
whether one can make a qinyan before Shabbos without knowing until
Shabbos what he's making the qinyan on.

2- Mi shepara does distinguish between money and the goods being bought,
but that may just be social norms. The norm in business is that the
deal is closed when the money changed hands. If the goods changed hands
without the money, it's not violating expectations as badly.

3- The value of fiat money is arguably inherent, simply in that you now
have something someone will give you objects for. The value of an object
is often far more than the value of what it's made of. And often more
even than combination of parts and labor.

4- Sheqel can be defined as a cheftzah shel mitzvah, in which case kesef
must be silver. Machatzis hasheqel (possibly) is by definition a certain
amount of silver.

:-)BBii!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Nearly all men can stand adversity,
micha at aishdas.org        but if you want to test a man's character,
http://www.aishdas.org   give him power.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                      -Abraham Lincoln