A Odd Status (Avodah Zarah 71b)

I learned something very interesting about theivery from the notes to the daf a few days ago.

When someone wants to acquire an item they can't just pay money for it. Instead they must do an act that shows that they are acquiring it. This goes for all moveable items (keys, chickens, wine etc). There are many ways to do this, each with their own name. Kinyan Meshicha means I pull an item toward me. Kinyan Mesirah means someone hands the item to me. Kinyan Hagbah means I lift the object off the ground.  Kinyan Chatzer means I pay for an item while it is in my courtyard and that simple fact allows the courtyard to in effect "swallow it up" so that that I now own it.  Although these technical terms may be complicated they all share one simple feature. We need to do some act in order to fully acquire something.

Now, here's where this system gets complicated. If I steal someone's chicken, no matter what I do, I can't acquire it. As much as I want it to be mine, the chicken will remain the property of the original owner. I may steal it and take it into my domain, however, the chicken will never be mine. This rule is fair. It keeps people from snatching other people's things and using them with a full and clean conscience.

However, here's the tricky part. Assuming that a thief steals a chicken and brings it to another place, all we can really say about the thief is that they moved the chicken without the permission of the owner. That is because, as I have explained, thieves don't acquire their stolen goods.

For this reason the rabbis came in and created a new kind of acquisition, kinyan g'nivah. This deals with the thief's odd status. A kinyan g'nivah means that if I do any normal act of acquisition (lifting, pulling, being handed the object), I acquire the object enough to consider it stolen (I'm not just moving it from place to place), but not enough to take it out of the possession and control of it's original owner. It is still his, and I have an obligation to return it and make amends for my mistake.