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When someone pushes you onto a child and you could stop yourself but don't, who is the murderer? The shiur develops the fundamental dispute between Rashi (רש"י)/Tosafos (תוספות) and the Rambam (רמב"ם): does controlling someone else's force make it your act, or does it remain theirs? This chakira flows directly into the machlokes about adam hamazik—whether indirect causation through controlling forces creates liability.
The shiur opens with a foundational case: if someone pushes you into water and you could stop yourself but don't, resulting in a death, who is the murderer? This question crystallizes a fundamental dispute between Rashi (רש"י)/Tosafos (תוספות) and the Rambam (רמב"ם) about koach rishon (primary force) versus koach sheini (secondary force). Rabbi Zweig develops the position of Tosafos in Sanhedrin regarding shev v'al ta'aseh (passive killing). Tosafos holds that in a case where X pushes you onto a child and you could stop yourself from crushing the child but don't, you are considered the murderer even though you're acting passively (shev v'al ta'aseh). The logic: when you have control over someone else's koach (force), you've taken ownership of that force. Though X initiated the push, your ability to stop it means you now control whether the koach reaches its target. Control equals ownership in halacha (הלכה).
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Bava Kamma 4b
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