Study Bava Batra folio 116A with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
Text Excerpt
ולא תהא תורה שלמה שלנו, כשיחה בטלה שלכם. מה לבת בנו – שכן יפה כחה במקום האחין; תאמר בבתו – שהורע כחה במקום אחין. ונצחום, ואותו היום עשאוהו יום טוב.
but will our perfect Torah not be as worthy as your frivolous speech, as your inference is fallacious: What is notable about the inheritance of a daughter of the deceased’s son? It is notable in that her right is enhanced in that she inherits from her paternal grandfather together with the brothers of her father. Would you say that the same applies with regard to the deceased’s daughter, whose right to inherit is diminished in that she does not inherit from her father together with her brothers? The Sadducee’s a fortiori inference is thereby disproved. The Talmud concludes: And since the Sadducees had no counterargument, the rabbis were victorious over them, and they established that day, the 24th of Tevet, as a minor festival to celebrate the establishment of the halakha in accordance with the opinion of the rabbis.
״ויאמרו ירשת פלטה לבנימן, ולא ימחה שבט מישראל״ –
Having discussed the halakha of a son’s daughter’s right to inheritance, the Talmud cites a verse that relates to the matter. After the incident known as: The concubine in Gibeah, the men of the tribe of Benjamin numbered only 600, and each of these men had inherited large plots of land from their deceased relatives. The verse states: “And they said: They that are escaped must be as an inheritance for Benjamin, that a tribe be not blotted out from Israel” (Judges 21:17).
אמר רבי יצחק דבי רבי אמי: מלמד שהתנו על שבט בנימין, שלא תירש בת הבן עם האחין.
R' Yitzḥak of the house of R' Ami says: This teaches that the elders of that generation stipulated with regard to the tribe of Benjamin that a daughter of a son should not inherit with the brothers of her father. Since the daughter of a son who inherits her grandfather’s property may later bequeath it to her husband, who may be from another tribe, the elders instituted this temporary ordinance in order to ensure that other tribes would not inherit large quantities of land belonging to the tribe of Benjamin, lest the tribe of Benjamin be left with little land of its own.