In Bava Batra 83a, Rabbi Yirmeya raises two dilemmas. Shmuel had earlier specified a distance between a set of three trees to be considered one unit, such that the land is acquired along with the trees. Rabbi Yirmeya inquired whether the measurement is from the narrow place (perhaps the very bottom of the tree trunk or just the tree trunk) or the wide place (higher up the tree trunk, or perhaps the branches). Rabbi Yirmeya also inquired about three tree branches which grew from a single root, but were covered with dirt, such that they emerged in three places. Do these count as one tree or three?
Rabbi Yirmeya was a third and early-fourth generation Amora who was born in Bavel and moved to Israel early on, perhaps (as Rav Aharon Hyman suggests) at the same time his primary teacher Rabbi Zeira I moved there. He was an elder operating in Israel when Abaye and Rava were in their fourth-generation primes. Many times through the Talmud, he poses this sort of inquiry, and almost always the Gemara concludes with teiku, that the question stands unresolved.
His questions are of similar quality and direction, trying to explore edge cases and determine with precision the nature of an item’s status. Above, what does it mean to measure from the edge of a tree? Does a shared root system or human experience determine an independent tree? Famously, he was thrown out of the beit midrash for asking one of these questions. Thus, in Bava Batra 23b, the Mishna had stated that a dove chick found in proximity of 50 cubits to a dovecote belongs to the dovecote owner; further out, it belongs to the finder. Rabbi Yirmeya posed the question: What if one leg of the chick was without 50 cubits and the other was out of bounds? Tosafot ad loc. ועל דא אפקוהו grapple with what would cause them to react so strongly. It isn’t because such a case is unreasonable to occur because the Mishna itself grapples with a half-and-half case. Rather, as Rabbeinu Tam states, it’s because all halachic measures, and any thresholds you can specify, work in this way.
Status of Teiku
Generally, concluding with a teiku has halachic ramifications. It is treated as a safeik (doubt), so that regarding ritual matters, in biblical law one would act stringently; in rabbinic law, leniently. Meanwhile, in monetary matters, the generally accepted approach is that the current person in possession of an object keeps it, because of the principle,1 הַמּוֹצִיא מֵחֲבֵרוֹ עָלָיו הָרְאָיָה. (i.e. If a certain article’s possession is under dispute, the party claiming it belongs to him must bring proof of it). The same is true for all of Rabbi Yirmeya’s teikus, though I must wonder if his rabbinic colleagues losing patience with his sort of questions (contra Rabbeinu Tam) might indicate that they don’t buy into all these fine distinctions.
But,what is a teiku? As Rav Schachter discussed in shiur,2 teiku only occurs upon an unresolved question, an אִיבְעַיָּא דְּלָא אִפְשְׁטָא. The Chida cites Shita Mekubetzet that תיקו is an acronym for Tishbi (Eliyahu HaNavi) Yetaretz (will resolve) Kushyot (challenges) U’vaayot (and inquiries). This is to take place in messianic times.
One might raise two objections. First, Amoraim did speak to Eliyahu HaNavi. For instance, Rabbi Evyatar, a second-generation Amora of the Land of Israel, asked Eliyahu what sparked the פילגש בגבעה argument. Why can’t Eliyahu have resolved these questions now? An answer given is to distinguish between Eliyahu appearing as an angelic revelation, experienced by Amoraim vs. as a human talmid chacham in messianic times. Only the latter has dispositive halachic force.3 Second, when teiku occasionally appears, it’s at the end of unresolved inquiries (ibayot). We never see a teiku at the end of attack questions (kushyot). The acronym makes no sense!
Rav Velvele Soloveitchik explains that that teiku explanation is spurious, and was invented by melamdim to strengthen the faith in Mashiach’s eventual arrival. Based on a derasha that Eliyahu would establish the Sanhedrin the day before Mashiach would arrive, they propagated this incorrect explanation. However, teiku is really a shorthand for teikum, which means that the question stands.
Can someone come later and resolve a teiku? Or is teiku effectively a conclusion / pesak itself that it cannot be resolved? This might be a pragmatic distinction between the Chida approach and the Soloveitchik approach.4 In an article on Social Science Research Network (SSRN), the Maymin brothers5 use economics and mathematics to resolve either two or four teikus from Rabbi Yirmeyah in Bava Metzia 21a about scattered fruit over a certain area. I’m not sure I agree with their resolution, but is it even legitimate?
I fuzzily recall reading a story about a brilliant Torah scholar (perhaps the Vilna Gaon) who in his early youth managed to resolve a teiku. While his teacher was impressed with his answer, he was told not to make the answer public. While searching for this story on the web, I found someone asking about resolving a teiku, in which the reply from someone at the Kolel Iyun HaDaf ended, “It is related that a certain person answered all of the teiku questions and came to the Vilna Gaon for an approbation but was told that teiku implies that human intelligence cannot answer these questions.” I am not sure about the source for this lore, or if one person could truly answer all teikus, but it also may play into the Eliyahu teiku conception.
I would suggest that by using the word בעי, an Amora introduced an open problem. He wasn’t sure which analysis was appropriate and thought either was possible, so he framed the question for his yeshiva. This in itself was a contribution. In many modern fields, such as physics, chemistry, mathematics and computer science, there are “open questions,” which are important unknowns that researchers might hope to eventually solve. So too, maybe Rabbi Yirmeya, or elsewhere Rami bar Chama, asks these questions in the hope that a colleague or student, or maybe an Amora down the line, might solve it. And ending in teiku just means that the question is left unresolved, for later scholars to take up.
Rav Geviha of Bei Khatil
Back in our sugya, Rabbi Yirmeya’s questions are resolved. An Amora from a later generation, Rav Geviha of Bei Khatil, speaking to sixth-generation Rav Ashi, brings proofs (תָּא שְׁמַע) from Mishnayot. This was before the closing (redaction?) of the Talmud, but this might indeed demonstrate that these were open questions which could be resolved by later Sages.
Rav Aharon Hyman writes that Rav Gevihah seems to have been Rava’s student. Furthermore, in Avoda Zara 22a, where a Jewish and gentile saffron grower jointly owned a field, in which the Jew worked on Sunday and the gentile worked on Shabbat, Rava permitted this partnership. His student, Ravina I, objected based on a brayta, which caused Rava to be embarrassed. Then Rav Gevihah says that the incident was slightly different: the gentile would work and profit from orlah; Rava permitted, and Ravina’s response was a support, not an attack. Therefore, Rava wasn’t embarrassed. Rav Hyman assumes that this was Rav Gevihah’s eyewitness testimony, thus identifying him as starting off as a fifth-generation student and continuing his activity into the sixth-generation.
I’m not convinced by this. As Rav Hyman writes, when Rav Ashi redacted the Talmud in Mata Mechasia (near Sura), Rav Geviha took a major role in the endeavor, as we find in Yevamot 60a and Chullin 26b, and interacts with Rav Ashi as a colleague, as we see in our sugya, as well as in Menachot 8a, Chullin 64v, and Meilah 10a. He also notes Rav Saadia Gaon’s position that Rav Gevihah presided over Pumbedita academy from 418 – 432 CE, succeeding Rav Acha b. Rava, and followed by Rafram. Perhaps what we have isn’t eyewitness testimony, but different traditions about the story as related in Pumbedita (which Rava led for a while) and elsewhere (such as Sura or Mata Mechasia), which were incorporated into the Talmud at its redaction.
Rav Hyman also points to Beitza 23a, where by the entrance of the Exilarch’s house, he expounds that “ketura” — whatever that is –—is permitted, and (fifth- and sixth-generation) Ameimar and Rav Ashi react. This suggests he’s well established as a gadol hador. I’m not convinced by this interaction. Rav Gevihah may be simply sixth-generation. He responds to the much earlier Rabbi Yirmeya’s open question, and this may suggest that other unresolved questions may be resolved, even post-Talmudically, with strong enough evidence.
Rabbi Dr. Joshua Waxman teaches computer science at Stern College for Women, and his research includes programmatically finding scholars and scholastic relationships in the Babylonian Talmud.
1 But see e.g. Rav Hai Gaon that says the litigants split it.
2 See scribalerror.substack.com/p/the-meaning-of-teiku for Rav Schachter audio and my analysis.
3 We do see Eliyahu weigh in on non-aggadic matters, such as that one should not pray in a ruin.
4 Of course, one could also say that post-Talmudic rabbis don’t have the same binding halachic force in their analyses as the Talmud, even if it just means the question stands.
5 “Behavioral Despair in the Talmud: New Solutions to Unsolved Millennium-Old Legal Problems”, at papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2738350
