Bava Batra 162 - December 4, 3 Kislev

This week's learning is sponsored by Debbie and Yossi Gevir for the refuah shleima of Eitan Asher ben Dvora v'Haim Zelig. "Eitan was wounded while protecting Am Yisrael in Lebanon two and a half weeks ago. May he and his buddies continue to  heal steadily along with all of Tzahal's wounded soldiers." Rav Amram explained the reasoning behind Rabbi Yochanan's ruling that the last line of a document should contain a review of the main part of the document. Since there is often a bit of space between the end of the document and the signatures, there is concern that the last line could have been added after the witnesses signed. Therefore, nothing new is added, as it would not be upheld, and instead, the last line should include a review of the document's content. Rav Amram supports his explanation from a braita that permitted one line of space but forbade leaving two lines of space between the end of a document and the signatures. He explains that one line is permitted because the last line contains only a review, but two would be a problem as something additional can be added. A question was then raised about leaving a line and a half. Initially, they attempted to answer the question from the braita, but inferences could be made in either direction. They quoted another braita from which it was clearly stated that anything less than two lines would be valid. The braita continues with another ruling about witnesses' signatures. If four or five witnesses signed on a document and some were disqualified witnesses or relatives, those signatures are ignored and the document is validated by the other signatures. This supports Chizkiya's ruling that if more than two lines were left blank before the signatures but were subsequently filled in with disqualified witnesses' signatures, the document is still valid. He draws a parallel to the laws of s'chach in a sukka, where a space of three handsbreadths disqualifies the sukka, but if the space is filled with disqualified s'chach, it is only problematic if it is four handsbreadths wide.