Bava Kamma 084

10:
We saw in the previous shiur that Tanna Kamma holds that the sums of money allocated by our mishnah in recompense for shaming are maximal sums and that the actual sum will be decided upon by the judges in accordance with the plaintiff's social status ("all is according to a person's honour"). Tanna Kamma holds that a well-to-do person might feel acute shame for something that another person might not feel was a significant slight. It follows that the judge, when adjudicating a case, must order recompense according to the plaintiff's personal standing in society.

11:
Rabbi Akiva will have none of this! He holds that all Jews are of the same honourable social standing because all Jews descend from the same ancestors: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. (In the era of the sages much of one's social standing was dictated by the standing of one's ancestry. When Rabbi El'azar ben-Azarya was being considered as a replacement for Rabban Gamli'el as head of the Sanhedrin the arguments were [Berakhot 27b] that "he is wise, he is rich and he is a tenth generation descendent of [the biblical] Ezra." In similar fashion Rabbi Akiva argues that all Jews are umpteenth generation from the founding fathers of our people!

12:
Rabbi Akiva himself knew what it meant to live in dire poverty. Well-known is the story of how Rachel, the daughter of one of Jerusalem's tycoons, fell in love with this illiterate shepherd of her father's flocks and suggested marriage – against her father's will – if Akiva would learn Torah (which first involved, of course, learning to read and write). Another source tells of how this grown man took his little son in his hand and sat before the local teacher and said "teach us both". While he was learning the couple were so destitute that they lived in barns and haystacks. Later on in life Akiva would recall how he had pulled straw from his wife's hair every morning. It is even recounted that on one occasion they were so desperate that she sold her hair for money!

13:
One might be tempted to think that such stories are romantic fabrications; but that would be wrong, I think. Later in life Akiva became rich. (I do not know how he gained his riches.) On one occasion he bought his wife a beautiful and very expensive tiara for her hair. When the wife of Rabban Gamli'el saw this tiara she was jealous. "Why don't you buy me a tiara like that?" she complained to her husband. He replied, "I would if you had made for me all the sacrifices that she made for him!"

14:
So, Rabbi Akiva is the defender of the honour of Israel's poor and indigent. Our mishnah tells of a case that came before him. A man had shamed a woman in a public place by knocking off her headgear. (In the previous shiur we noted how atrocious it was for a married woman to be bareheaded in the street.) The woman sued the man in Rabbi Akiva's court and demanded recompense for the shame she had suffered. Rabbi Akiva awarded her the full amount of compensation permitted by our mishnah, 400 dinars.

15:
Instead of paying up the man asked for time to pay. Presumably Rabbi Akiva thought that the man needed the time to raise the money and he agreed to postpone payment. But this man was cunning – or thought he was. He arranged for some of his friends to be around as witnesses and then waited for the woman to emerge from her courtyard. (We have explained several times that in the era of the sages courtyards served the same function as our modern apartment blocks.) As she did so he dashed onto the ground in front of her a pitcher of precious oil (which suggests that he was not lacking in means). The woman took off her headgear to use it to mop up the oil.

16:
The man now had the testimony that he wanted. He brought the woman back into Rabbi Akiba's court together with his witnesses. How could Rabbi Akiva require him to pay a princely sum for having shamed a woman when she 'shamed' herself in exactly the same way? Rabbi Akiva was not impressed. He ruled that the second incident was irrelevant to to the first. While it is forbidden for a person to deliberately cause injury to themselves nevertheless they cannot be sued for doing so. (Only the plaintiff can initiate legal proceedings and one cannot sue oneself!) So, even though this woman did to her honour something that she should not have done the deed was not actionable.

17:
Similarly, the Torah [Deuteronomy 20:19] forbids us to needlessly destroy fruit trees (and other plants). If someone destroys his own trees he cannot sue himself for damages; someone else who destroys that man's trees certainly can be sued for damages. So, the defendant had to pay up in this case.

18:
However, in this matter accepted halakhah does not follow the opinion of Rabbi Akiva but that of Tanna Kamma: "all [compensation] is according to a person's honour."