The Talmud first discusses a problem where our previous ruling is used for comparison and then continues with a series of difficulties helpful in training the mind.Let us say that debtor D owes $1,000 to his creditor C. Meanwhile, he owns two houses and sells them to buyer B, each for $500.
Now C wants his money, and D cannot pay, so C repossesses the first of the houses because real estate always guarantees the loan. B loses one of the houses he bought. Still, he wants to keep the second one, so he comes with $1,000 cash to C and proposes the following: if C wants to consider the first house, the one he just repossessed, as worth $1,000, then all is well; but if not, then this $1,000 should cover both houses, and C gets his money but loses the repossessed house.
Rami bar Chama wanted to say that this is precisely our previous rule: there, the orphans could not artificially inflate the worth of their mother's Ketubah, so here too, the argument of considering the $500 house worth $1,000 does not stand. Without this, the second part of the proposal does not stand either, and the creditor can collect the second house. However, Rava reversed him: in the case of orphans, their suggestion would hurt the other group of children, but in our case, the creditor would always get his $1,000 loan back.
The following cases are abbreviated with mnemonics ("thousand" - that is our case, "hundred," "mitzvah of Ketubah"...). Such abbreviations, or "signs," contain clues to the mystical meaning of the subjects discussed.
Art: A thinking girl by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
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