daf bit: Bava Metzia 19

[cellio]

Rabbah b. Bar Chanah once lost a bill of divorce in the beit midrash. When it was found, he said to the finders: there is a distinguishing mark that shows it is mine, and if you don't accept that, I would know my document by sight. The document was returned to him. The g'mara teaches that a distinguishing mark is sufficient identification of a lost object under biblical law, while recognizing one's property on sight is acceptable proof only for a torah scholar, whose word can be trusted. For this reason, Rabbah did not know which reason applied when his document was returned. (19a)

(Torah scholars get special privilege? I wonder how they reconcile that with the torah's various instructions to treat people equally regardless of circumstances.)

This story is tangential to a larger discussion of lost documents, but it does make me wonder: doesn't a divorce document contain the names of the spouses and issuers? Wouldn't that be a de-facto distinguishing mark?

Comments

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

One could say that everyone _is_ being treated equally, in that they are being treated according to their trustability rather than their social position or economic state. That certain social positions which imply certain trustabilities exist is separate (or abstracted out).

Alternately, it might be akin to something you mentioned a very long time ago when presented with a saying that the person who prays the Amidah thrice a day will be accepted to heaven--such close and constant association with a highly virtuous thing causes the person to understand it so well that they become virtuous themselves through immersion. Or, to phrase it pseudorhetorically, how could someone who spends all their time studying torah fail to internalize it to the extent that they can blithely lie and cheat and steal?