Vows and teaching fees in the Talmud

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: Is It Fair To Charge Fees for Religious Education? This week’s Talmudic debate is centered on the perceived and real benefits of study, teaching, and sacrifice.

As summer rolls on, Jewish parents everywhere are getting ready for the annual tradition of writing tuition checks for Hebrew school or Jewish day school and the accompanying tradition of complaining about the high cost of Jewish education. But is it, in fact, permitted under Jewish law to charge for the teaching of Torah? This week’s Daf Yomi reading raised that interesting question, in connection with the core subject of Tractate Nedarim, the taking of vows. The most common form of vow-taking, the Talmud has shown over the last few weeks, is vowing to forbid a certain individual from “deriving benefit” from oneself—or vice versa, to refuse to derive benefit from a given person. This kind of one-on-one excommunication is frowned upon by the rabbis, since it involves God in what is usually just a personal dispute. But once such a vow is taken, the Talmud asks, what is its scope? What sorts of actions are defined as “benefits” in a legal sense?

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Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.