Riddles of the Week
Answer to Last Week’s Riddles
1) The Torah admonishes (Devorim 16:19) judges against accepting bribes and warns that doing so will blind the eyes of the wise and twist the words of the righteous. If they are so problematic, why does the Torah forbid the judge to take a bribe but does not similarly prohibit the parties from giving a bribe?
Rav Boruch HaLevi Epstein in his Tosfos Berachah suggests that if the Torah explicitly forbade litigants to bribe the judge, they would be even more inclined to do so. Because they would know that the other party was unlikely to do something which is prohibited, they would be tempted to offer a bribe in an attempt to gain the upper hand in the judge’s eyes. However, in the absence of a prohibition against giving a bribe, they will assume that there is no reason to do so. The other litigant will have no reason to refrain from offering a bribe of his own, and no advantage will be gained. In other words, by not forbidding this undesired behavior, the Torah made it much less prevalent. (R’ Ozer Alport)
בנוגע לשוחד אין צורך להזהיר את הבעלי דנים לא לתת שאחר שנוגעים בדבר אחר שיודעים שהשוחד יכול להביא אי להם תועלת כל שהיא הם יעשו כל מיני תחבולות כדי להצליח בדין ואין סוף לתחבולותם יש חושך הרבה בעולם וועלת ולאט לאט עד שתמלא הארץ כמים לים אפשר להוציא את החושך כולו אבל להנמיך אותו עד כמה שאפשר יש ת.מכסים. כמה פעמים חז"ל אומרים: לאו בשופטני עסקינן. לא עושים תקנות לפושעים אלא מחזירים אותם בתשובה (Aferyat Raphael)
2) A king was not permitted to have more than 18 wives (Rashi 17:17). If a man was married to 19 women and was subsequently appointed king, was he required to divorce one of them?
R’ Chaim Kanievsky (Tama DeKra) discusses the above and he brings a rayah from the case of a Kohen who marries a widow, and he then gets appointed as the Kohen Gadol. The halachah is that a Kohen Gadol is not allowed to marry a widow, however, since he got married before he was appointed, he may stay married. Just like a Kohen Gadol is allowed to stay married, similarly a king may stay married to any wives he was married to beforehand.
New Riddles
1) Reuven is walking down the street, and he sees a hat lying there nearby the bins. He bends down, picks up the hat and finds a name and number inside. He brings it home, calls the number and tracks down the owner, and the owner comes to retrieve the hat. The owner then realizes that this is the hat he just threw in the bin, does the “finder” fulfill the mitzvah of hashovas aveidah, or has he simply wasted his time?
2) Why is there no berachah on the mitzvah of hashovas aveidah?
3) How is it possible for a regular Jewish woman to permissibly marry her husband’s full brother via chuppah and kiddushin, not through yibum?
4) If a narah me’urosah [betrothed girl] is violated in the field, her assailant is put to death, but she is not punished, for he did so against her will, and although she screamed for help, there was nobody to hear her cries and rescue her (Devorim 22:25-27). As the man may only be killed if he sinned in the presence of two witnesses who warned him, why didn’t the witnesses come to her aid, and how can the Torah say that there was nobody present in the field?
5) The Torah teaches (24:5) that if a man marries a new wife, he does not serve in the army for one year. Rashi writes that this law only applies if his wife is new, but if he remarries a woman that he had previously divorced, he is not entitled to this exemption. If a man marries a woman and divorces her shortly thereafter, only to remarry her before one year has passed from their original wedding date, does he go out to battle?
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