home with scuffed shoes, surely the parent will punish his or her child with a major punishment should the latter return home with scuffed shoes, ripped pants and a torn shirt. This is an illogical deduction; although it might be a fair speculation, it cannot be proven with logic. All that can be proven is at least the result of the lesser offense. This would be akin to asserting "if a junior varsity basketball player can make a three-pointer, surely an excellent professional basketball player could make a half-court shot." The discovery of a fallacy in the process of deduction is called "teshuvah" (objection), or, in the terminology of the amoraim, "pirka". The possibility of such an objection is never wholly excluded, hence the deduction of the kal va-chomer has no absolute certainty. The consequences of this are: (a) that the conclusions have, according to many teachers, no real value in criminal procedure, a view expressed in the axiom that the conclusion is insufficient to punish the violator of an inferred prohibition (אין עונשין מן הדין ; Sifre, Num. 1); (b) that very often a passage is interpreted to mean something which may be inferred by means of a kal va-chomer (מילתא דאתיא בק"ו טרח וכתב לה קרא ; Pesahim 18b; Yoma 43a). An example of a situation in which transgressions are specifically not punished according to kal va-chomer is as follows: Leviticus 18:21 speaks of the prohibition of worshiping Molech, a form of worship in which children were passed through fire (presumably until dead). Now, one would assume that if it were prohibited to pass some of one's children through the fire, surely it would be prohibited to pass all of one's children through the fire –- a kal va-chomer. However, it is derived from the verse's use of the word "ומזרעך", lit. "and from your seed", that this prohibition is only when some of one's children are sacrificed in this worship; when all of one's children are sacrificed, this is not punishable. This is explained with the reasoning that the intention of the Molech worship is to improve the health and well-being of one's remaining children, whereas complete sacrifice defeats the purported purpose of the service, rendering it unpunishable by lack of intent to perform it properly. Gezerah shavah (גזירה שוה) The gezerah shavah ("Similar laws, similar verdicts") is the second rule of Hillel and of Rabbi Ishmael,