Kiddushin, Daf Yod Aleph, Part 5

 

Introduction

Today s daf asks why R. Assi needed to even tell us that any amount fixed by the Torah is reckoned in Tyrian currency.

 

מאי קמ"ל תנינא חמש סלעים של בן שלשים של עבד חמשים של אונס ושל מפתה מאה של מוציא שם רע כולם בשקל הקודש במנה צורי ושל דבריהם כסף מדינה

 

Then what does he teach us? We have already learned it: The five sela’s [for redeeming] a firstborn, the thirty [for accidentally killing] a slave, the fifty [shekel penalty for killing] a rapist and a seducer, and the hundred [shekel penalty for] a slanderer, all these are [reckoned] in the holy shekel according to the Tyrian maneh!

 

There is a baraita that basically teaches exactly what R. Assi had stated. So why the repetition?

 

איצטריכא ליה דלא תנן דתניא התוקע לחבירו נותן לו סלע

ולא תימא מאי סלע ארבע זוזי אלא מאי סלע פלגא דזוזא דעבידי אינשי דקרו לפלגא דזוזא איסתירא

 

It was necessary for him [to say], whereas in rabbinic law, it refers to provincial currency which we did not learn.

For we learned: If one boxes his neighbor’s ears, he must pay him a sela.

That you should not say, what is a sela? Four zuz, but rather what is a sela? Half a zuz, for it happens that people call half a zuz an istira.

 

R. Assi needed to teach us the second half of his statement, that if the amount is not set by the Torah, it is reckoned in provincial currency, which in rabbinic literature means is considered 1/8 the value of Tyrian currency.

We might have not known this because of a baraita with regard to personal injury. The baraita refers to the payment for embarrassing another person. One who boxes another person s ears must pay a sela. Now normally a sela is worth four zuz (dinar). This would be according to a Tyrian standard and would seem to indicate that the Tyrian standard was used even if the amount is not set in the Torah. However, in light of R. Assi we can interpret this as a lower value, only half a zuz, 1/8 the value of a Tyrian sela. To back this up, the Talmud claims that people do call half a zuz an istira an Aramaic word which here seems to be equivalent to the Hebrew word sela.