Throughout the Talmud, we’ve seen how laws can turn on specific word choices that render an action allowed or prohibited. Today’s daf presents exactly that situation in the context of paying taxes.
With regard to Jewish craftsmen to whom a gentile sent a barrel of wine used for a libation in lieu of their wage, it is permitted for them to say to him: Give us its monetary value instead. But once it has entered into their possession, it is prohibited.
It has been a long time since anyone offered to pay me using alcohol as currency, but the mishnah raises precisely this scenario: What if a non-Jew offers wine to a Jew in compensation for work? The general rule seems to hinge on possession. The Jewish craftsman can refuse delivery of the wine and ask for payment in some other form. But once the craftsman has taken ownership of the wine, they’re out of luck. They can’t benefit from the wine itself and they can’t send it back because that would be the equivalent of selling forbidden wine.
This seems pretty clear. But the Gemara uses it as a jumping off point for a discussion of taxes on wine:
Rav Yehuda says that Rav says: It is permitted for a person to say to a gentile: Go and placate the governmental tax (on wine) for me.
Here we have a non-Jew acting as an intermediary between a Jewish vendor and the government as a way of paying the vendor’s tax obligations. The non-Jew pays the Jew’s tax, and the Jew pays them back. It’s possible that he non-Jew will pay the government with wine, which was customary at the time. But even if they do, the Gemara takes no issue with this practice.
But there’s a wrinkle — a beraita that teaches the following:
A person may not say to a gentile: Go in my stead to the commissary.
According to the beraita, a Jewish vendor may not direct a non-Jew to go to a government office in the vendor’s place. Commentators say this refers to a situation in which the non-Jew is going to pay the wine tax with wine that could then be used for idolatrous purposes.
So how does Rav square the circle? With a pretty fine distinction. According to Rav, the phrase in the beraita “in my stead” indicates that the non-Jew’s actions are considered as if they were taken by the Jew who gave the instructions. Because a Jew couldn’t trade wine in this way, the non-Jew acting in their stead can’t either. However, when this phrase is omitted and the language is more general, the non-Jew’s actions are considered as if they are their own choices, not those of the Jew, and thus are permissible.
It seems like a small difference in language that in both cases leads to the same action on the part of the non-Jew: the Jew’s tax is paid by a non-Jew with idolatrous wine. But when the non-Jew is seen as having their own authority and agency, it changes the ruling of whether it’s permitted or not. Which if nothing else should remind us to pay attention to how we speak.
Read all of Avodah Zarah 70 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on August 28, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
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