[Avodah] Geirut

[Chana Luntz]

I wrote:

> >Dunno, but this is why I find the whole concept of KOM, that you seem to
> >swim through so easily, so messy and complicated.  Can somebody give me
> >another paradigm for KOM that is not a shavuah and not devarim shebelev?
> 
> >>>>>

And RTK replied:

> When the would-be ger agrees verbally that he will keep the mitzvos, the
> Bais Din believes him and accepts him for gerus (unless of course they
> have some good reason to suspect that he is not sincere).  But if, after
> the conversion ceremony, he does not in fact /ever/ keep any mitzvos, then
> his gerus is invalidated and his own actions prove that his KOM was not
> real -- that there never was any actual KOM on his part.

Yes, I know that is the way it is generally understood. 

The thing is, you are not thinking like a halachist.  What you appear to be
creating here is a new paradigm within halacha, without reference to the
traditional discussions.  You see, verbal statements, including agreements
to something or promises to do something is discussed extensively throughout
shas, under the rubric of nedarim and shavuos (vows and oaths).  There is a
lot of discussion about what happens when somebody has one thing in his
heart and another thing in his mouth.  Sometimes this occurs by accident,
the wrong thing pops out (I am intending to vow never to eat cheese, but say
bread by mistake). Somebody someone says something because they are subject
to an ones, compulsion, and the consequences of that are discussed. And
sometimes people say something which they intended to say, but is blatently
untrue (they swear an oath before Beis Din, for example, that they did not
misappropriate money and they did).

What you are saying here is there occurs a case - that of KOM, where a
person can stand up in front of beis din and say something.  They can fully
mean to say exactly what they said.  They understand (as it has been
explained to them) the consequences of what they have said.  They are in
fact lying through teeth - as they never intended to do what they have
promised to do - and the consequence is, not that they are considered a
violator of their shavuah (bemazid or beshoggeg) and chayav the consequences
of that, which is what you might deduce from every other case in which a
person stands in front of beis din and says something untrue - but that the
statement never was, and the whole thing is undone.

Now there is a mechanism for undoing a shavuah or a neder, a procedure for
being matir neder or shavuah, and that is detailed extensively in the
sources.  Admittedly there is a problem with doing that if the shavuah or
neder is made al daas rabim, so I am not sure it could possibly be applied
here, but *in theory* one might understand a situation where a ger came
along and said - hey, I didn't really understand what being KOM was when I
said, it, can beis din please release me from my shavuah so I am no longer
obligated with ol mitzvos.  That fits within the halachic paradigm.

Now there are also some other cases where a verbal statement is not
technically required, but daas and willingness is, such as the giving of a
get - where we get into the whole question as to whether if you beat a man
to give a get and he says "Rotze ani" is that sufficient daas.  But again
what you are proposing here goes way beyond that kind of query.  To make
this analogous you would be saying that even if a man were to say "I want
to" and gives the get you need to look behind his words and see what he is
really doing (maybe go to his house and check whether he is still grieving
for no longer being married to his wife).  Note of course that the reason
for this requirement of daas is learnt out of a posuk.

Other than that - where do we get verbal statements or implied verbal
statements in halacha - that have this kind of consequence?

It is of course possible that this is a completely different paradigm of
statement from all others within halacha.  But if so, it is so interesting
you would expect extensive discussion on this, and why the usual paradigms -
such as shavuah, do not apply.  And also where you learn it out from.  All
of this is absent from the halachic literature, as far as I am aware  That
is why, in many ways, proposing this type of KOM concept seems in many ways
to really be very radical, even though it is being brought as being
traditional.
 

> --Toby Katz

Regards

Chana