Tuesday's Thoughts On The Daf - Nazir 12

Nazir 12a contains a quandary involving a man who sends another to betroth a girl on his behalf. The agent (presumably after completing his task) dies and does not return. The man then is left in limbo as according to R' Yochanan he cannot marry any woman because there is the possibility that she will be forbidden to him as she may be one of the seven relatives of the woman that his agent had betrothed.

In attempting to resolve the hypothetical question posed by R' Yochanan, the Gemara discusses the concept of rov or majority. This a fundamental concept for talmudical analysis and it is for this reason that I selected it for this post.

There is a general concept that when we are unsure about the status of an item (or person) we may follow the majority (rov) in certain circumstances. The classic example involves meat found in the town square. If a city has ten butcher shops -- nine of which are kosher and one of which sells meat that is not kosher, and a person finds a piece of meat in the town square - can we treat the meat as kosher or not. Applying the principle of rov, we say that since most butcher shops are kosher, the meat must be kosher as well.

As should be expected, there are numerous exceptions to the rule of rov. One of these involves the source of the product. If a person obtained the product in a fixed (kavua) environment, we do not blanketly apply the concept of rov. An example of this would be a person who has purchased the meat, but cannot recall where he purchased it. In this instance, because at the time that he purchased the meat it was in a fixed location, there is no greater than a fifty/fifty chance that the meat is kosher, notwithstanding the ratio of kosher to non-kosher butchers in the city. Given this scenario, we can not allow the meat to be eaten as there is no majority that we can rely on.

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