[Avodah] Tikkun Olam

[Zev Sero]

On 20/03/2012 4:34 PM, Micha Berger wrote:

>     5-  If a slave was made collateral and freed, the owner is forced
>         to free him. (And a machloqes as to whether he owe the owner
>         a shetar al damav.) (4:4)

Not the owner, who has already freed him; the mortgage-holder, who has no
rights over him, but who might not realise that, or might resent the way
the security on his loan was dishonestly wrested from him, and might
therefore ignorantly or maliciously initiate futile proceedings to
recover the ex-slave.  Having him write a get ensures that he's aware of
the law, and precludes any future action he might have taken.



>     6-  Similarly we force an owner to free a chetzi eved chetzi ben
>         chorin. (4:5)
>
>         Edios 1:13 repeates #6, freeing the chatzi eved, chatzi ben
>         chorin. But the reason given is that "lo nivra ha'olam ela lepiryah
>         verivyah", and this fellow can't marry. The same reason is given
>         by the gemara, Pesachim 88b, Chagiga 2b, and EIrakhim 2b.

AIUI that *is* the tikun ha'olam in question.


>     10- If a person divoces his wife because of a qonam, chakhamim allow
>         them to remarry. (4:7)

Look closer; it seems that the tikun ha'olam is in *not* allowing them
to remarry in the usual case, and the case where they were allowed was
an exception because the reason for the tikun didn't apply.


> The first 12 are all, as RnCL characterized it on Areivim, to protect
> "the down trodden of Chazal's society."

I don't think so.  On the contrary, the common denominator that stands out
is that they are all minor tinkering around the edges of the existing system,
fine tuning it to make it work better.


> Gittin 33a asks what "tiqun olam"
> means WRT not anulling the get in an outside BD unrelated to the shaliach
> and gets two answers: R' Yochanan says tiqun mamzeirim, Reish Laqish,
> tiqun agunos.

I don't see any indication that this has to do with agunos or mamzerim
being "downtrodden", but merely that they are an undesirable consequence
of the anomaly that was found in the law, so a technical regulation was
invented to fix it.  Now the system works well again.


> The 13th is about encouraging hashavas aveidah, and thus protects
> anyone who lost anything, whether the downtrodden or the wealthy and
> powerful. Perhaps you could say they are needy "ledavar echad".

It also works in favour of the *finder*, by removing a powerful
disincentive from fulfilling his obligation to return the metziah.
Again, the existing law was found to work against *everybody's*
interest, so a minor change was made and it could now work properly.


> In most cases, it seems to be to avoid a marriage issue -- mamzeirus,
> agnuah, the chatzi eved chatzi ben chorin.

Because hilchos gittin has such important consequences for people, it's
more important to debug it properly, and that's what that list is about.
Debugging a life-critical application.  In fact that's another word for
what I think "tikun ha'olam" is about; debugging halacha.


> But not when feeding maaser to orphans

Another technical fix.  The balabos could achieve the same result from
his own POV by expelling the orphan from his home and then giving him
the maaser.  But who would benefit from that?  How would anyone be better
off?  So Chazal wisely fixed the anomaly by allowing him to use his
maaser to feed the orphan while keeping him in his household.


> or when not helping one captive in order to prevent harm to future captives.

At the time that the tikkun was made, these captives were not "lefaneinu".
All captives were potential or hypothetical future ones.  And the tikun
helped them all, by reducing the probability that they would *become*
captives.  Ditto for STaM that don't get stolen in the first place because
the thief knows that he can't get too much for them.


The bottom line is that none of these are social activism; none of them
are consistent with a radical political agenda.  On the contrary, they're
all profoundly *conservative* regulations, tinkering on the edges of the
existing system to lubricate it and make it work more smoothly while
disturbing it as little as possible.   In other words, debugging halacha,
not rewriting it.  The goal is not to help "the downtrodden" but to make
the whole system work as it was designed to.

-- 
Zev Sero        "Natural resources are not finite in any meaningful
zev at sero.name    economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion
                  may be. The stocks of them are not fixed but rather
		 are expanding through human ingenuity."
		                            - Julian Simon