Thursday, February 7, 2008

Things that belong to the Entire Nation

I haven't been posting much on the Daf Yomi thread recently. My Bad. Anyway, yesterday's page contained a discussion about how potent a vow can be in forbidding the use of property. The Mishna makes a distinction between municipal property, which can be affected by a vow - the central square, synagogue, the public bath - and things that were declared as belonging to the nation at the time of the return from Babylonia (that would mean about 400 years before the Mishna). These things are so public that vows cannot put them out of bounds.

And what are these super-public-national things? Three are mentioned in the Mishna. The Temple Mount, the courtyards on the Temple Mount, and the water cisterns on the roads up to Jerusalem that serve the needs of pilgrims.

Our rabbi wondered, as we passed this section, if this ruling might have any implications for negotiations about Jerusalem, and a possible obligation to include the Jews of the world as a party to the negotiations.
Nedarim 48a

This thread began here.

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