Shetarot are Hebrew business documents. They may be divided into two groups: those written in the name of a Jewish court, and those written in the name of witnesses. A court consisted of three Jewish men, ideally scholars, but in many cases laymen. The most common types of Shetarot issued by a court were formal court judgments, and even more common, official copies of other Shetarot. A number of Shetarot also conclude with a validation by a court of the signatures of the witnesses.(1)
Shetarot issued by witnesses include the most common sorts of documents: bills of sale, loans, gifts, receipts and other acknowledgements. Jewish law required two witnesses who were male, respectable, and not related to each other. Many of those with business to transact may have used friends as witnesses. However, there are certain names which recur frequently as witnesses, raising the possibility that there were Jews who specialized in the execution of documents. This possibility is enhanced by the fact that in many cases, we can identify one of the two witnesses as the scribe by the similarity of handwriting.
Shetarot are divided into the tofes (formula or template) and the toref (specific details filled in for a particular transaction). Less formally, their structure is defined by the change of speaker. The shetar begins with an invocation by the witnesses or court in the first person: "we the undersigned . . ." The voice then shifts to a summary of the business in the words of the seller, borrower or giver which comprises the bulk of the shetar. Only at the end do the witnesses or court resume speaking in their own voice for the concluding formulae and signatures. (2)
Shetarot also had more technical requirements. These were defined by Sa'adia Gaon (Baghdad, tenth century) as: the date, place and participants, aharaiut (responsibility, security), ne'emanut (trust, good faith) and qinyan (formal acquisition). (3) Finally, the middle section of the shetar generally contained a variety of clauses inserted to strengthen its effectiveness called shufra de-shetara (embellishments of the shetar). These embellishments often contained elements of redundancy, saying the same thing several times in various languages, employing all possible synonyms, or simply covering as many circumstances as possible. (4)
Taking the most common type of shetar, the bill of sale, as a model, these elements worked as follows in Spanish Shetarot:
1. Invocation of witnesses
- Testimony of the witnesses that the seller had asked them to witnesses the transaction.
2. Summary of the business
- Statement by sellers of their desire to perform the transaction
- Receipt of money in exchange for the property
- description of what is sold by size and/or borders
- specification of rights included in the sale
- authorization to buyer to take possession
- guarantees of freedom from challenge; aharaiut (security or lien on the property of the seller), etc.
3. Concluding formulae
- qinyan (formal acquisition)
- statement that "all is firm and established"
- date and place of execution of the shetar
- identification of any interlinear words or words written over erasures
- signatures of the witnesses
Shetarot were legally valid in Christian courts. It is to this fact that we owe their survival. With few exceptions, those that survive were preserved because they passed into the hands of Christians along with the land to which they related. In some cases they were preserved along with substantial dossiers of related documents; in others, they were separated from their supporting documents over the course of time. But their initial preservation in either case depended on the fact that they were potentially useful proof of title even to a Christian who could not read them.
Particularly intriguing are a small number of Shetarot which were written for Christians in the first place. Two of the oldest surviving Shetarot fall into this category: a 1073 bill of sale recording a sale of property to the Christian Ricard Guillem, and a loan received by the Jew Yitzhak b. Menahem from the Christian Pere Ricard in 1112. (5) The other examples involve copies made for Christians of documents held by Jews which related to land which had passed into the hands of the Christians: a copy of a 1267 will made in 1277, a 1276 copy of a marriage contract, and a 1293 copy of a court judgment. (6)
FOOTNOTES
1. For formal court judgements, see J.M. Millàs i Vallicrosa, Documents hebraics de jueus catalans (Barcelona: Institut d'Estudis Catalans, 1927), docs. 10, 18 and Joaquim Miret y Sans and Moïse Schwab, "Documents sur les juifs Catalans aux XIe, XIIe et XIIIe siècles," Révue des Études Juives 68 (1914-16): doc. 36. For official copies and validations, see Millàs i Vallicrosa, Documents hebraics, 1, 17, 25, 26, 28 and Miret y Sans and Schwab, "Documents sur les Juifs Catalans," 30, 36.
2. See JT Gittin III (44c).
3. Menahem Ben-Sasson, "Fragments from Saadya's Sefer Ha-Edut Ve Ha-Shetarot," [Hebrew], Shenaton Ha-Mishpat Ha-Ivri 11-12 (1984-86): 184-88. Aharaiut and qinyan are explained below, section III. Ne'manut is discussed with examples by Yosef Rivlin, Bills and Contracts from Lucena (1020-1025 C.E.), (Hebrew) (Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1994), 97-98, but does not appear in any of our shetarot.
4. See the discussion in Menahem Elon, Jewish Law: History, Sources, Principles, translated by Bernard Auerbach and Melvin J. Sykes, reprint, 1988 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), 1533-35.
5. ACA DH 1 and 2 (ed. Millàs i Vallicrosa, Documents hebraics, docs. 30 and 31; Jaume Riera i Sans and F.M. Udina i Martorell, "Els documents en hebreu conservats a l'Arxiu de la Corona d'Aragó," Miscellanea Barcinonensia 17 (1978): docs.1 and 2).
6. Millàs i Vallicrosa, Documents hebraics, docs. 26 and 28 and Miret y Sans and Schwab, "Documents sur les Juifs Catalans," doc. 36, now ACB Hebreus s/n.
