About this episode
This week's learning is sponsored in honor of Elana Storch on her birthday. With love from her kids - Ruth, Ira, Elsa, Julianna, Reuben, Elia, Adele, Emanuel and Arianne. "We are inspired by the example you continue to set for us in your commitment to your learning." Rav and Shmuel disagree on a few different situations regarding a gift given on one's deathbed. If there was a document in which it states that a gift was given on one's deathbed with an act of acquisition - Rav and Shmuel disagree about whether the kinyan was added to override the laws of one on one's deathbed and only wanted it to be effective with a document, which cannot be given after one's death (Shmuel), or do we assume it was done to strengthen the ownership of the receipt of the gift (Rav)? Rav and Shmuel's position on this issue seems to contradict their opinions in a different case where one says to write and give a document to another and then dies before it is given. The Gemara resolves the contradiction by differentiating between the cases. The contradiction regarding Rav's position is resolved by explaining that there was no act of kinyan in the second case. The contradiction regarding Shmuel's position is resolved by establishing ( u'kimta ) the second case as one in which the giver was clear about the document's purpose - that it was only to strengthen the recipient's power. A second difficulty is raised against Shmuel's position in the first case (there is a concern that the gift was only to be effected with a document, which cannot be done after death) from a ruling of Shmuel regarding one who gave away all of one's possessions with a kinyan , whose gift can be retracted if one gets better, implying that if the person dies, the gift is effective. This too is resolved by establishing the latter ruling in a case where the giver was clear that the kinyan was done to strengthen the recipient's power. If one writes to give all one's possessions to one and gives them a document and then does the same to another, does the first one acquire it or the second? Rav and Shmuel disagree as they do in the first case discussed earlier. Why was there a need to say they disagreed in both cases? In Pumbedita there was a different version of Shmuel's opinion.