What is the pretext of R' Yannai, to say, "go and see, if I have cut it down, cut yours down?" How should he not have said more simply, "I judged it, cut my own tree, and command you do the same," (to save the litigant a trip?)
H David Levine, Roanoke, VA USA
Shalom R' Levine,
Great to hear from you! This is a fascinating question. Yasher Koach!
My first thought is that Rebbe Yanai didn't actually intend to insist that the man go look. Rather, he just meant "I fixed my error, now you should fix yours." According to this, his phraseology "Go look" was not meant literally, but was rather just a manner of speaking.
On second thought, maybe he literally meant for the man to go look. Why? It could be that Rebbe Yanai knew this man was somewhat stubborn, and it would potentially be difficult to influence him to trim his tree. We might see some evidence of this, since when the man initially heard Rebbe Yanai's Psak to cut it down, the man did not accept it submissively; rather, he challenged it, possibly with some nerve, as if to say "I refuse to cut mine, if the Rabbi himself has not done so!" If so, Rebbe Yanai may have reasoned that it was necessary to make a strong impression on this man, by visually demonstrating that he -- Rebbe Yanai -- had in fact already cut his own tree down. Physically witnessing this conduct of the great Rebbe Yanai might make it easier to persuade the man to comply with the Psak.
Lastly, it is possible that the location of Rebbe Yanai's chopped tree was not very far away. If so, it was not considered being "demanding" on the fellow to have a look at Rebbe Yanai's tree.
I cannot say any of these is a definitive answer, but they seem like reasonable possibilities.
May you continue to attain greatness in Torah and Yiras Shamayim!
Warmly,
Yishai Rasowsky