Money in Halachah

by R. Gidon Rothstein

Summarizing Two Years of AH Choshen Mishpat

For this week’s summary, I took the two years of essays on chapters of Choshen Mishpat, and had an AI (I don’t remember which one, and it’s a big document, so it might have been a few) condense it by removing all words unnecessary to understanding the substance (there were a lot of them, like this whole parenthesis!).

Armed with those shorter versions, I asked Claude/Anthropic, Gemini/Google, and Grok/xAI if they saw overall themes in these sources (I think I had maxed out my time on ChatGPT for the day, and have not yet pulled the trigger on choosing a paid subscription. Nominations welcome. I did also read through myself, but with big data like this, I thought it would be helpful to have an outsider’s view). Here’s what they came up with.

Documents Help!

Only one theme appeared on all three lists, the need for documentation. (They each phrased it slightly differently, Claude focused on truth and documentation, Gemini documentation and witnesses, Grok documentation and procedural integrity).

Claude noted the many issues of dating a shetar. Gemini pointed us to Choshen Mishpat 107, with the differences between a milveh bi-shetar, a loan recorded in writing, and one be’al peh, completely oral. The latter leaves the lender with fewer rights to collect, certainly from other people, but even sometimes from the borrower.

Getting back to Claude, it focused on the need to have dates that reflect reality (for example, we put the day of the week in a shetar in case the scribe gets the date wrong; the day of the week will help us spot it). Those dates were important to protect the rights of a lender to foreclose as well as to ensure the lender does not wrongly do so from someone who had bought the property from the borrower before the loan happened.

Grok had three further aspects of this idea, the invalidity of a shetar mukdam, a predated deed, because it can foster false foreclosure. On this, Grok, like Claude, was taken with the possibility witnesses would be disqualified if they knowingly signed a falsely dated document, although they have many exculpatory claims (they didn’t notice the date, for example). Grok also gave the citation, Choshen Mishpat 81, se’ifim three and four.

Postdated documents only hurt the lender and are therefore valid, we learned later in that chapter, as long as the document says the borrower accepts a lien on all property s/he buys in the future. Similarly, a document signed at night after a daytime loan is ok, if the loan had been formalized with a kinyan, an act of acquisition, and the wording of the shetar clarifies the order in which events occurred.

Sticking with shetar, Claude (and Grok, for the dates’ difference) reminded us of situations where documents conflict, such as if one has the month of Adar with no date, another with a day of the month; how references to Adar mean the first or second in a leap year; how we decide whom to pay first, but also whether a later document (such as a sale) can indicate a loan formalized in a previous document has been paid.

Gemini and Claude noted situations where a shetar might not do the trick. For Gemini, the issue was mecha’ah, from siman 147, a person announces (somewhere else) s/he does not mean the commitments in the document s/he is about to sign. Such mecha’ot are effective, leading to a sort of arms race, where each side tries to find the formula to nullify those nullifications, to be sure what is being signed is what is meant.

Grok also reminded us—I was surprised it was only Grok, because it felt significant to me—of the role of custom in a shetar, in what we expect a scribe to write, or not, what missing parts we can ignore because local scribes just don’t do that.

Claude’s other documentation example was chazakah, a documented three years of residency absolves the resident (who claims s/he bought the property) from the responsibility to still have the written shetar of sale. Grok addressed chazakah questions, too, although it grouped it elsewhere, including what action of ownership over a new property might be enough to effectuate an immediate acquisition.

That was the only theme all three spotted, a valuable reminder that documentation is one way to reach clarity, to avoid arguments about rights. In three other cases, two of the AIs named a theme, but not the third. Let’s look.

Community Vs. Individual

Two of Claude’s three examples seem to me not to fit the name it gave it, although they are interesting ideas. We saw the requirement for heirs to pay a deceased’s debts, generally from the estate, but even from their own funds if they are wealthy. To me, that’s not community vs. the individual, it is the individual’s obligation to family and those close to him/her.

When partners can insist on dissolving a partnership, if there is enough land to do so, struck Claude as part of this theme, although Gemini and Grok called it what it is, Partnerships. The one example Claude gives that fits the name it gave it was where a member of a courtyard wishes to start a home business. There, but for mitzvah obligations such as teaching Torah, the residents can object if the business will affect them, such as by increasing traffic.

Gemini added the idea of chezkat ha-yishuv, residents of a place have the right to restrict access to avoid excess competition with pre-existing businesses. It moves from there to more examples of what Claude had discussed, when can a taxpaying member of a community insist on his/her right to ply a trade, and how far s/he has to be not to be encroaching on others in the same business.

With the exception of Torah scholars and schoolteachers, as we said.

Protection

Claude and Grok both saw places where Choshen Mishpat focused on protection, for Claude of the vulnerable and of dignity, for Grok of debtors, heirs, widows, and the poor. Claude saw it in the ban on a lender entering a borrower’s home to take collateral, and the exclusion from seizure of essential items (basic clothing, food preparation tools, what the borrower needs for his/her trade).

Grok noted the latter, adding more from siman 97, a lender may not pressure a borrower, even implicitly, if the borrower lacks the funds, a preservation of the borrower’s dignity, and widows—halachically often portrayed as the most vulnerable figures in society—are protected from having any property taken as collateral, though they may volunteer it.

Claude also saw chazakah on property, the end of the need to still have the bill of sale after three years’ residence, as protection for him/her, and the many court procedures aimed at treating all litigants equally as a way to protect the poor.

For Grok, the call on heirs’ to repay the testator’s debts, what we might only see as honoring parents, most centrally protected the deceased’s reputation.

Finally, mixing inheritance and loans, if an heir claims to have received no inheritance, the lender is sure there was one, the latter can demand an oath, a way to protect the lender from false avoidance of repayment.

Ownership and Partnership

Our last two-AI theme, Gemini and Grok, had Gemini offer Choshen Mishpat 171, partnerships and when they can be dissolved (Claude had grouped it differently, as we saw above). Gemini adds the idea of middat Sodom, where a partner can be required to split a property in a way that helps the other if it doesn’t matter to him/her either way.

Claude and Grok had more examples, although they seemed less overarching themes than attempts to be sure that everything we had discussed appears somewhere in their summary (I know the urge). I think if we stop here, though, we are left with an interesting perspective on Choshen Mishpat, the parts of which we saw seemed to look at how property works, how we protect the rights of the whole, of the parts, and of the vulnerable parts, with particular attention to how we can document the truth, to know who is in the right, who in the wrong.

Next time, we’ll give Orach Chayyim the same treatment!