For the source text click/tap here: Nedarim 43
To download, click/tap here: PDF
A new Mishna teaches us about another ploy to get around one's vows. The rabbis offer three cases where a friend can do just that. In the first case, a person can say that his friend needs food and the storekeeper will use credit to provide that food. In the second case, a person can say that his friend needs help with physical labour (housebuilding, fence building, etc.) but that the vow is in effect. The work will be done and payment will go to the friend. In the third case, a person can give his friend food while travelling by giving the food to another person to pass on, or he can leave the food on a rock, etc., to be taken by his friend.
In all of these cases, he cannot directly tell the intermediary to pass along the food or to do the work for his friend, because that would create a situation of shelihut – effectively making that person his agent to carry out the transfer. Such an agreement would be forbidden because of the neder.
We explore the scholarship on RASHI and his interpretive methods.