Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] If there's a person who is acting as a guarantor, then he has to pay up the money if the one who owes the debt cannot. Right? That's the whole idea of a grantor.
[00:00:14] The question is, why does he have to pay it up?
[00:00:18] What is it that obligates him? The Torah says that a person can become obligated to do something only as a result of him receiving something in return or as a result of some physical action just out of nowhere becoming obligated in something. In Judaism, Jewish law doesn't happen. And that's why actually in Jewish tradition there is such a thing as kinyan. There are several ways of kinyan. Kinyan literally means acquiring something, a purchase.
[00:00:51] So one of the most common ways of kinyan is me taking object and giving it to you. So this object, when I'm giving it to you is a kinyan, is an action that now obligates me to do something. Just like when I go to a store and I tell them I want to buy a can of Coke, and they are telling me that you can have this can of Coke if you'll give me a dollar.
[00:01:14] So this dollar is the kin yan, is the action that allows me to take a can of Coke. Why is it a dollar, not ten dollars? Because this is what the guy who's selling it said. It's up to him. He could say whatever he wants, and then it's going to be up to me to decide whether I want to buy it for this amount or not. But me giving the money is kin yan, and now I can take the call. So by this general rule, I can obligate myself of anything I want, or I could get anything I want, or I could give anything I want. By me taking object, whatever this object is, that's worth something and at least. And giving it to you, just like I give you a dollar to get a Coke, I can give you this object to make any transaction, just like any legal document in the US Law, any legal document of acquiring anything. What does it say in consideration of. That's what it starts with, because I got something. That's why I'm giving you something. Otherwise, why should I give you anything? So the question is, when somebody becomes a grantor, what makes him obligated?
[00:02:16] So there are two opinions.
[00:02:18] One is the opinion of Babylonian Talmud, one is the opinion of Jerusalem Talmud. And Jerusalem Talmud is saying that actually he is acquiring something. A person who's become a grantor has a benefit. What's the benefit? It's the emotional benefit.
[00:02:34] First of all, if he is a guarantor for somebody, it's usually somebody who he cares for. And he gets a benefit of knowing that some somebody who cares for is now going to be able to do what he wants to do. So it's an emotional benefit. And because of this emotional benefit, we can say that now he's obligated. Or Talmud says, even if he doesn't personally care for this individual, but the very fact that he is acting as a guarantor gives him an emotional gratification that he is important enough to be a guarantor for somebody else. And there's a third party who is ready to give something to someone else based on his backing that makes him feel better about himself. So this emotional part is what is allowing him to become obligated. He's getting an emotional benefit. Babylonian Talmud says, no, no, no, no. We don't consider emotional benefit as a benefit. It's not tangible. This is why, according to Babylonian Talmud, if somebody becomes a grantor, he actually has to make a Kenyan. He cannot become a guarantor without taking an object and saying, I'm becoming now obligated because of this object that I got from you, whatever this object is. But it has to be something that's worth at least something.
[00:03:42] So it has to be a symbolic transfer of something valuable, you know, a kippah or a gartel or something which is a. An object that's worth at least something. It has a meaning. And they give it from one person to another.
[00:03:56] Now what is the spiritual meaning of all of this?
[00:04:00] We are now in exile. And in exile we became indebted to not necessarily positive forces in this world. What does exile mean? Exile means that we feel like we have to do things that the world around us wants us to do. We are indebted, we feel like we are indebted. We voluntarily became indebted because we sunk in many ways of nations around us.
[00:04:25] That's an outcome of the exile we are in. We are dispersed among the nations of the world, and that's why we feel like we are indebted to them. We feel like we have to follow their ways. And very often they are actually forcing us to follow their ways. So how do we get out of a debt? We have a guarantor. Who is our guarantor? Our guarantor is God. God is taking us out of this debt prison. Now, how did he become our guarantor?
[00:04:52] So Jerusalem Talmud, that was written in Jerusalem, where exile was not felt as much because it was in Jerusalem. It was in Israel. Jerusalem Talmud says, God feels good about taking us out, and that alone should be enough for him to take us out. That alone should be enough of a reason for him to become obligated to take us out. Babylonian Talmud, which is written in exile in Babylonia, says, no, no, this is not enough. We actually need to have a kinyan, which means we have to be acquired by Him. We have to have a transaction. So what is transaction? Transaction was when we became a Jewish nation. He said, I am buying you. These were actually words that God said, I am acquiring you, you are becoming mine.
[00:05:43] So we became acquired by God, and that's why he has to get us out of this exile as a guarantor for us.
[00:05:51] And the Torah says that God makes sure to specify that he is our guarantor, according to both opinions, because God says that whenever you are in exile, I'm in exile together with you. Which means that God shows that he has an emotional benefit from being our guarantor, from getting us out. God specifically said it. And God also said that he has acquired us. So whichever way you look at it, according to Babylonian Talmud or according to Jerusalem Talmud, God is our grand tour and he has to get us out of here.
