Man with three wives

Kia Ora Torah is a Limmud-style series of lectures and discussions bringing together different religious and academic perspectives for members of the Wellington Jewish community and their partners. We meet at the Realm, a pub in HataItai, a kosher pizza with a range of topings is available, We have a regular attendance of between 20 and 30, sometimes more. The talks cover a variety of topics and you never know where the discussions would lead. This week I hosted the speaker, Noam Greenberg, Associate Professor of mathematics, Rutherford Fellow, and Turing Fellow, a very bright young man indeed. His research interests focus on set and computability theory. He is Israeli who graduated from Hebrew University in 1998, and with Ph.D from Cornell in 2004. He is young to be one of the outstanding scholars of Victoria University.

He talked about the story of the man who had three wives and on his death didn't have sufficient funds to fulfil his obligation to each according to  their kethuba  (Babylonian  Talmud: Tractate Kethuboth, Folio 93a) The first wife was entitled to 100 maneh,the second  200 maneh,  the third 300 maneh,  but the entire estate amounted to only to 200 maneh so it was divided not proportionally according to each claimants entitlement but in proportion of 50:75:75. On the face of it this seemed unfair, inequitable. Noam explained the mathematical logic behind this seemingly unfair division. The first claimant received half the claim she was entitled to, leaving the remainder of the estate between the other two claimants, who divided it equally. He likened it to a series of connected vessels, where the vessels are filled in a similar ratio until they can all be completely filled.

There were questions about fairness, about distribution according to needs, but the mishnah didn't talk about that. The mishnah looked at a real life situation, and came down with a ruling using an unexpected and complicated mathematical formula. I don't know what one can learn about life from this. I don't know what the receiver of a bankrupt firm would make of this. The gemarra argues about the case. Some say that the case was exceptional. Noam said that this Mishnah is not halacha, and we don't follow it. Whatever, it was an interesting evening, and marvellous to have such a discussion on an ordinary miserable wet and stormy Monday night in Wellington.