Ketubot 21 - July 27, 28 Tamuz

Today's daf is sponsored by Ilana Friedman for the shloshim of her grandmother, Henna Malka bat Harav Yaakov Yitzchak, yesterday. "She was a descendant of the Noam Elimelech, student of Sarah Schneirer, she survived Schindler's list, illegally immigrated to Israel in 1946, and helped build the fledgling State of Israel. She merited to live just shy of 103 years and see 5 generations of descendants. May our learning give her neshama comfort and may we continue to have hatzlacha in our learning."

When witnesses verify their own signatures, do they need another witness as well? Rebbi and the rabbis disagree – what is the root of the debate? The Gemara points out that it needed to be stated what the debate was so that we wouldn’t assume that Rebbi was just being stringent out of uncertainty. In what case would there be a relevant ramification if Rebbi was ruling out of uncertainty? Rav Yehuda quoted Shmuel’s ruling that he held like the rabbis. Why was it necessary for him to say this – don’t we always hold by the majority. Did Shmuel really hold this way? Wasn’t there a case with a document of orphans in which Shmuel ratified it by having each witness testify about his own signature and that of the other!? Why was that case unique and not indicative of Shmuel’s general policy? Another halacha that Rav Yehuda quoted in the name of Shmuel was that one can ratify a document if one witness testifies about himself and one of the judges testifies about his signature on the document called a henpeik that the judges issue when they ratify a document. While Rami bar Hama praised this ruling, Rava rejected it as each one is validating something different and therefore the two cannot be combined. Rav Safra ruled on how to handle a case where of the three judges who were ratifying the document, two recognized the signatures and were able to validate them. The Gemara derives three different halachot from there and Rav Ashi raises questions against the last two as it is not clear that they can be derived from his ruling. The first halacha derived was that a witness can become a judge. Is this really true? In determining the new moon, it is not the case. Why is there a distinction made between that case and the verification of documents. If a question is raised about one of the judges, can the other judges vouch for him? On what does it depend?