[Avodah] Matana Al M'nas L'hachzir

[Akiva Miller via Avodah]

Suppose I give you my lulav on condition that you return it, but you
*don't* return it. Mechaber 658:4 says that you failed to fulfill the
tenai, so my gift to you is void, so it never left my ownership, and you're
not yotzay.

Now suppose an adult gives his lulav to a child, clearly and expressly
invoking that it is a Matana Al M'nas L'hachzir. It appears to me that the
child is halachically incapable of fulfilling the tenai, so the gift is
never chal to begin with. This would totally eliminate the problem of
transferring ownership back to the adult, because the child never acquired
it to begin with. The lulav was, and still is, property of the adult. This
would seem to be a great way for the same lulav to be used by any group
containing both adults and children. The procedure has the advantage that
the exact same words are said regardless of whether the recipient is an
adult or a child.

(I do realize that there's a side problem, regarding Mitzvas Chinuch,
because if the child doesn't own it, then the child is not doing the
mitzvah properly, so how is the parent doing Chinuch? This is dealt with in
the second half of MB 658:28.)

If this procedure works, I wonder why the poskim don't suggest it. Could it
be that if one makes a tenai which is not possible to fulfill, then the
halacha ignores it, and the kinyan is valid as if there had been no
stipulation? Suppose I am mekadesh a woman Al Tenai that two equals three.
Is the kiddushin valid?

Akiva Miller
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