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JUICE 2000 Jewish University in CyberspacE

This past Sunday, JUICE featured its first real-time on-line session in Talmud. We had participants from all over the world discussing the Mishnah which has been the focal point of our JUICE CAFE forum these past few weeks (the first Mishnah in Bava Metzia which tries to determine who has the right to a found object). Several questions were raised in the course of the session which led us to new areas of discussion, creating a true cyber Torah-sheb'al peh.

Here is just a small sample:

Werner> Why do they need to take an oath? If it's clear that we don't know who owns it, let's just tell them divide it and finished? It's like a parent who can't tell which child started the fight or who gets the last piece of cake. Divide it! Tell them what to do

Nomi> It seems that with the oath they are more cautious in their claiming >How so?

Nomi> The one who claimed the whole will then settle for a half under oath, and the one who claimed a half will be satisfied with a quarter under oath.

ilan> what makes this situation different from others where the one who finds first wins or kol d'ealim gvar > Can you explain kol de'alim gavar means?

ilan> the strong one wins > Fight it out (ie solve your own problems and stop bothering the bet din with a no-win situation)

Nomi> Here it seems there's some consideration of the weak one's claim, and not immediate cowtowing to the aggresive one.

but why does there have to be a weak side?

Rachmiel> SInce there is an oath being taken here, is there an implicit assumption that the claimants will be honest? What if they are not?

There is more, naturally, but to get the real flavor of the discussion, you have to be in it. Therefore, we are happy to announce that we are continuing the discussion on Monday, March 20 at 4:00 PM Jerusalem time. The JUICE CAFE Chat Room will be open from then for approximately one hour. We will be posting a transcript of the two discussions combined after Monday's session.

For those of you who plan to join us in the JUICE CAFE Chat Room on Monday and want to do a little preparation, please review the Mishnah and study the Talmud Sanhedrin, 6b which cites the argument between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua ben Karha whether arbitration (instead of going through a legal process) is a mitzvah or sin. Why should it be a sin? Perhaps understanding the reasons behind the argument will enable us to better understand our Mishnah.

For those of you who have joined discussions in other chat rooms on other servers you will find that this works much like the rest. If this is your first time in a chat room, a few points of advice:

1. Write your message in the text window and click 'enter' on your keyboard. Your message will appear as text in the large window.
2. Response times in the chat rooms vary from computer to computer and occasionally lead to some very odd conversation streams and non-sequiters.
Please give other guests in the chat room the opportunity to respond to what you write before you react.
3. The one rule in the Chat Rooms is safety. This means, everyone should feel safe that their own rights will not be infringed upon by what they say or what they hear.