אם רוצח שעשה במזיד פטור מערי מקלט (כי דינו מיתה) — קל וחומר שרוצח בשגגה זקוק להן.
If a willful murderer is excluded from the cities of refuge (his sentence is death), then certainly the inadvertent killer needs them.
מכות י' / Makkot 10b
middot · 13 · deep · interactive
middot
the 13 · live · deep
Rabbi Yishmael's 13 hermeneutic principles, encoded as functions you can run on your own cases. Each middah: source, two classical applications, your own practice — journaled.
רבי ישמעאל אומר: בשלוש עשרה מידות התורה נדרשת
Rabbi Yishmael said: by thirteen principles is the Torah expounded.
— Beraita d'Rabbi Yishmael · opening of the Sifra
pick a middah →
middah 1/13
קל וחומר
Kal vaChomer (a fortiori)
principle
If a ruling applies to the lenient case, it certainly applies to the strict case.
source
Beraita, principle 1. Explicit in the Torah: Deut 31:27 (Moses: 'if you were rebellious while I lived among you — kal vachomer after my death').
when to use
When two parallel cases share a property but one is 'stricter' in some dimension, and the ruling on the lenient case should extend to the stricter (or vice versa, strict-to-lenient).
common pitfall
Pircha — find the flaw: maybe the lenient case is lenient FOR THE VERY REASON that blocks the ruling in the strict case. 'Dayo lavo min hadin lihiyot kanidon' — the derived case can't be stricter than the source.
classical
אם כהן בעל מום פסול מעבודה — קל וחומר זב או טמא מת.
If a blemished priest is disqualified from service, then certainly a zav or one defiled by the dead.
ספרא, מקור הברייתא
practice — your own case
lenient case
strict case
journal (0)
Nothing journaled yet. Try a practice below.