Rav Yehuda and Our Mishna

On Sunday evening, we reviewed what we had done to date in the new sugyah:

The mishna rules that the edim zomimin pay the differential and not the full amount of the purported loan, since he was going to have to pay the full loan back eventually.

Rav Yehuda/Shmuel rule that a ten year loan is cancelled by Shemitta and that the reading of the pasuk is "don't claim the  money (even at the end of the ten year period" - because a שמיטה occurred prior to that .

Rav Kahana raises an objection to this ruling based on our mishna: If ten year loans were canceled by Shemitta, then the edim would have had to have paid the entire amount; by testifying that the loan is due within 30 days, they are effectively making Reuven part with 1000 zuz he would not otherwise have parted with!  It must be, therefore, that such a loan is not canceled  - and Rav Yehuda/Shmuel are wrong

Rava answers on behalf of Rav Yehuda/Shmuel by limiting the case of the mishna to either a case of 
מוסר שטרותיו לב"ד
cמלוה על המשכון

Both of these scenarios, Rashi explains, prevent the cancellation of the loan - because neither is a loan in which we can say לא יגוש.  Why? Rashi: In both scenarios, the lender would not legally be deemed to be demanding anything back; in the case of lending with collateral, the loan is - so to speak - already "collected" in the form of the collateral.  Therefore, there cannot be any legal "demand fo repayment" of that loan; in the case of מוסר שטרותיו - Rashi explains that it is not the actual giving over of the שטרות to the Beit Din, but rather the making of a declaration before Beit Din, that's considered as if I'd already given my שטרות to them - this is the Prozbul that Hillel initiated.  Here the loan is not cancelled, because (new explanation) it is not a private individual claiming the loan, but a public body/court.

Therefore, in principle, we stick with Rav Yehuda/Shmuel, and limit the mishna's non-cancellation rule to specific cases.

We began seeing the flip-side version of this mini=sugyah at the end of yesterday's session - and we will review that tonight.......