Sanhedrin – “Assembly”

Sanhedrin – “Assembly” – Judging You

• • The Sanhedrin itself was a council of 71 Jewish sages during the Roman era, who adjudicated major disputes, somewhat like a supreme court. The word is a loan word from Greek. This tractate focuses on the court system and civil law for the most part, with a section on criminal particularly around discussions of capital punishment.
  • 12/19/24, Chapter 1, Page 2 – We jump right in with the make-up of the courts. Most court cases are to by tried by a panel of three judges. Cases that might involve capital punishment are heard by a panel of 23 judges (a “Lesser Sanhedrin”), cases regarding land and estate valuation are judged by nine judges, and cases which involve a suit against an entire tribe, community, town, city, or other similar groups are to be heard by a “Great Sanhedrin”, a full 71 judges.
  • 12/20/24, Page 3 – In most civil cases, like personal injury, the three judge panel is to be chosen from qualified judges – experts in both law and the genre of the case. There is one exception – cases related to the lending of money. Here, the three judges are laypeople, with no expertise in either law or finances. Why? Because, say the sages, if lenders knew they’d have to explain their lending practices to experts, they’d never lend anyone money, thus depriving needy borrowers of any source of loans.
  • 12/21/24, Page 4 – The fact that scriptural Hebrew is written without vowels often leads to differing interpretations of passages. Here we have the same issue, as some of the words regarding the penalties in civil cases could be interpreted as either singular or plural, depending on the missing vowel endings. Or even just general commandments – the four compartments of the traditional tefillin are based on a passage that enumerates three, but a group of rabbis decided that one of them was plural, so four. Why not five, or six, or….?
  • 12/22/24, Page 5 – Harking back to page 3, where the three judges are not required to be experts in monetary matters. If, however, one of them claims to be an expert, he can recommend that he, solely, be the judge in the case, as the other two are not. If the litigants accept this, his judgement is final. If they decline, and he pronounces judgement anyway, he is liable for the costs of any errors he makes, since he claimed to be an expert.
  • 12/23/24, Page 6 – Let’s see, you have to have an odd number of judges, so that a tied ruling is not possible. Once the litigants have accepted the judges, they are required to accept their ruling. No mediation or negotiation after the fact is allowed, unless the judges order it, in fact, the rabbis determine, once they, as judges, have issued a ruling, anything that changes that ruling is a sin, and punishable, even if the litigants are both in agreement. Just a bit self-important, no?
  • 12/24/24, Page 7 – When it is appropriate to compromise in regard to taking the righteous path? What it really boils down to in the eyes of the Talmudic sages is that there is always a correct choice to make if you keep your faith. Compromising your faith, your beliefs, your principles, is like cutting a slit in a hose, it’s just going to get worse, it’s never going to mend itself. An interesting analogy, but seems awfully fatalistic in regard to the possibility of redemption for doing something wrong.
  • 12/25/24, Page 8 – A judge who is selected for a panel, regardless of how many are on the panel, must recuse himself if he knows either of the litigants socially or professionally, he also must consider if one or the other is in an economic or social situation that makes him feel uncomfortable to be a part of judging, and, if he feels, or finds, that the matter before him is, in modern parlance, above his paygrade, he should immediately refer the case to a higher level judge.
  • 12/26/24, Page 9 – Qualifying witnesses to a crime: First, there must be at least two. Second, none of the witnesses can be close relatives of the accused, unless one can prove that they tried to stop him from committing the crime, but only one of them can fall into that category. Third, you can’t be a witness against yourself, so no testimony you give that implicates you in a crime is considered valid.
  • 12/27/24, Page 10 – If witnesses testify that a certain man engaged in either adultery or bestiality, without identifying the woman or beast, they are put to death. If they testify to not just that, but identify the woman or beast, they have to pay a fine to the woman’s family, or the beast’s owner, prior to being put to death, along with said woman or beast.
  • 12/28/24, Page 11 – A series of stories are posited, in which someone leading or teaching an assembled group of others, finds something objectionable going on – a smell, a sound, something in the room that shouldn’t be – and demands to know who caused it, clearly with the intent of embarrassing the person. In each case, those assembled know who did it, and en masse, they all take the blame so that no one is embarrassed. The rest of the page is all about how leap months are calculated.
  • 12/29/24, Page 12 – Most of today’s page is dedicated to a discussion of when an intercalated month (leap month) can occur and who and how it is calculated. But a side story about a couple of cloth dyers who were specialists in the famous blue dye (from murex snails) cloth being apprehended by the Romans, and then released because of how revered these dyers were, caught my eye. I just recently read the definitive, and fascinating, book on the topic… out of the blue.
  • 12/30/24, Page 13 – When we add a leap day to the calendar every four years, it’s only serious impact is on 0.06% of the world’s population, those born on February 29th. But when you’re adding an entire leap month, there are some things to consider. For example, the autumn equinox festival, Sukkot, has to remain more or less at the autumn equinox, and the sages determine that a 16 day variance is the maximum allowed when determining whether to add a leap month for the year.
  • 12/31/24, Page 14 – We end the Gregorian calendar year with a look back at the oppression of the Jewish people in Israel by the Romans, 2000 years ago. As part of their attempt at (an actual) genocide, they decreed that anyone who ordained another as a rabbi or teacher would be put to death, along with the person ordained, and the entire town where it took place. Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava, in his last act, took a group to the mountains, ordained them, and told them to flee to other lands. The Romans tracked him down and killed him by sticking him with spears 300 times, until “he looked like a sieve”.
  • 1/1/25, Page 15 – Okay, they’re just high again. The discussion starts at the point of a woman engaging in bestiality with an ox, and that she and the ox are to be stoned to death. One rabbi tosses out the question of whether it’s the same for a man, and does it depend on whether he’s… the top or the bottom? And are they being judged for bestiality or homosexuality at that point? It then segues into whether two oxen that engage in sex are to be judged for homosexuality… or bestiality?
  • 1/2/25, Page 16 – A long series of examples that the rabbis debate over whether they constitute sufficiently “great matters” that require judgement by the Great Sanhedrin of 71 judges, or just a regular Sanhedrin of 23. In the midst of it all, we have a tangent, and guess who’s back? David, again. Here, his advisors let him know that supplies for the kingdom are running low. His response? “Go expand our borders, kill some people, take their stuff.” Someone needs to write a real expose of just what a “piece of work” David really was.
  • 1/3/25, Page 17 – In another tangent there’s a note about “creeping animals” being impure, non-kosher. Leviticus 11:42 states “all animals that crawl on the ground, on their bellies or all four legs. But here, it is noted that snakes are not impure, and that Leviticus 11:29 is quite specific about what creeping animals are: mole, mouse, dab lizard, gecko, land-crocodile, lizard, skink, and chameleon. Nonetheless, rabbinic tradition is to honor the more general later statement, treating the former as “just some examples”.
  • 1/4/25, Chapter 2, Page 18 – While most people are required to give testimony in court when summoned, there are those who are not. The High Priest, kings, elderly people whose dignity would be compromised, wealthy people who have better things to do with their time. All fall into the category of “it’s not worth their time to stop what they’re doing and give testimony”. Reminiscent of the apocryphal story of Bill Gates and the $100 bill on the sidewalk. (Apocryphal because it’s actually the opposite of what he said, but is used to make a point about his wealth.)
  • 1/5/25, Page 19 – Okay, I have just discovered the two millennia old origin of women’s bathroom etiquette. Rabbi Yosei declared that women who are in public bathhouses must constantly talk with each other. Why? You might ask. Because, he explains, if a man with ill-intent were to enter the women’s bathhouse, he would be scared off by the constant chatter of the women and not carry out his evil plans, thus keeping them safe from harm.
  • 1/6/25, Page 20 – They’re doing a lot of tangents this time. I don’t even want to touch (pun intended) the whole comparison of Boaz’ and Joseph’s levels of restraint when seeing a beautiful woman (Joseph, apparently, became as hard as a turnip head and barely tore himself away from raping a friend’s wife). Today, however, I learned about using dried shark or ray skin as sandpaper (“shagreen”) to polish wood, and, a new word for my vocabulary.
  • 1/7/25, Page 21 – It’s moments like these that I wonder about the editing of the Hebrew Bible. Today, the rabbis are discussing the story of Ammon raping his half-sister Tamar, from II Samuel 13. Now, I remember reading that in my “other” study project, but I don’t remember the story ending with Tamar having “tied a hair around his penis and severing it” being his reason for hating her. And there’s no reference to this that I can find online. But the rabbis talk over this whole scene, discussing it as the ending of the story written in that chapter.
  • 1/8/25, Page 22 – So much on this page. The infamous mene mene tekel upharsin that only King David could read, or could he? Because maybe it was encoded?! Or that each person is born with a soulmate and will only be complete after having intercourse with his/her designated (while in the womb) partner, all the rest is just sex and leaves one unfulfilled? Or, perhaps, the blaming of the priests with long hair who got drunk and that somehow that led to the destruction of the Temple (leading to the Nazarenes – shave their heads and never touching grapes or wine)?
  • 1/9/25, Chapter 3, Page 23 – You may recall from page 3 that in financial matters, a panel of three judges is selected, but they don’t have to be experts in the field of finances. So, how are they selected? Each litigant selects one person to be one of the judges, and those two judges select the third. Each litigant can disqualify the other’s choice of judge if it can be shown that they are related to the other litigant, or have a conflict of interest in the case. Once the judges are agreed on, the panel is locked in, even if a conflict or relationship is later discovered.
  • 1/10/25, Page 24 – Like judges, witnesses may be excluded because of conflict of interest or their relationship to one or the other of the litigants. Too, solo witnesses, with no corroborating evidence, may be disqualified. And then there are the professional reasons – gamblers are disqualified from being witnesses, as are loan sharks, and those who trade in sabbatical year goods – remember, we’re talking about financial cases here. And then the oddity – those who raise pigeons. No reason for the last is given.
  • 1/11/25, Page 25 – Oh, we’re getting into the pigeons today. Basically, three of the categories for disqualifying witnesses that we saw yesterday are based on the prohibition on gambling. They weren’t talking about simply raising pigeons, but raising them to race them. The prohibition on gambling, racing animals (not just pigeons, they were an example), and loan sharking, are based on that no one should be put in a position of owing money to another without clear amounts, date, and outcomes, with no duress involved.
  • 1/12/25, Page 26 – Today we’re off on a tangent about Shebna, advisor to King Hezekiah. While Hezekiah was busy dismantling the Jewish way of life and religion, in support of some young upstart named Jesus, Shebna was busy parading about making grand pronouncements about his own importance and how he was going to change the world by shaking things up, and treating Hezekiah as a means to reshape things to his vision. It didn’t go well for him, as Hezekiah wasn’t up for being overshadowed. Does this sound at all similar to a modern day situation?
  • 1/13/25, Page 27 – A couple of witnesses testify to an event. Some time after their testimony, two other witnesses testify that they first pair are lying. Who is to be believed? Abaye says that the Torah says the second set are always to be believed, and disqualifies their past testimony. Rava says that it should only apply to future testimony, and of both pairs of witnesses, because… who knows which pair is lying? He doesn’t address the past testimony’s veracity.
  • 1/14/25, Page 28 – How far does the disqualification of a relative to be a witness go? One generation, say the rabbis – which includes one’s siblings and half-siblings (but not step-siblings), parents, children, spouses, spouse’s siblings or children from a previous marriage (but not spouse’s parents, interestingly), uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces. As soon as you hit grandchildren or grandparents of your self or your siblings or your spouse, they’re not included.
  • 1/15/25, Page 29 – Someone who is known to love or hate one of the litigants is also disqualified from giving testimony. What all this is boiling down to is something long established in various parts of the Talmud – witnesses for pretty much anything have to be impartial, there has to be at least two witnesses and/or corroborating evidence, and there can’t be other impartial witnesses discrediting their testimony.
  • 1/16/25, Page 30 – In order for a boy or girl to be considered as an adult for testifying purposes, they must have gone through at least the start of puberty. How is that determined? Either one must have a minimum of two pubic hairs. And how is that determined? There have to be two adult witnesses who have examined their genitals to see if they have those two hairs. This seems a bit shady to me, agents of the State examining children’s genitals to determine their status, we’d never allow that today… oh wait… yeah, we’re allowing that today.
  • 1/17/25, Page 31 – Most of today’s page is about whether secondary details from eyewitnesses matter – was man’s shirt black or white – which, for the most part, they deem irrelevant if not germane to the crime. Of note to me, they reiterate that a panel of judges must present a united front when delivering a verdict. No dissenting opinions are to be offered, no interviews about why they disagree with their colleagues, no commentary on the case to anyone, or they lose their judgeship and are punished financially.
  • 1/18/25, Chapter 4, Page 32 – This chapter is focused on the similarities and differences between civil and criminal cases. While noting that the process of legal adjudication is to be the same – things like judges, advocates, witnesses, and evidence, they then start on differences. My takeaway of the key one holds true today in most jurisdictions – in financial cases we start from neutral, and the case is decided based on strength of evidence for or against, while in criminal cases we start from a presumption of innocence, and the prosecution must prove guilt with no reasonable doubt.
  • 1/19/25, Page 33 – Double jeopardy prohibitions do not exist when it comes to cases adjudicated by courts, lesser or greater. The Sanhedrin had the power to re-open a case and re-judge it based on a variety of factors: new evidence coming to light, witnesses appearing who could testify to details not originally heard, procedural errors in the courtroom, and even judges having been found to have either a conflict of interest or lack of expertise in the subject matter.
  • 1/20/25, Page 34 – The Sanhedrin instituted the practice of having two court scribes whose job it was to write down everything said by witnesses, advocates, and judges, so that when it came time for deliberation on the part of the judges, they could refer back to those notes. More, that since judges actively participated in the questioning process, it could be see if a judge suddenly changed their view from acquittal to liable, or vice versa, and to see why and when he did so.
  • 1/21/25, Page 35 – The Sanhedrin and the rabbinic council took a very different stance on capital punishment than we do in modern times. First, they were almost unanimously in favor of it. Second, executions were required to happen within 24 hours of sentencing, the assumption being that a panel of judges had weighed all evidence and reached a correct verdict, no appeal to be offered. And third, because of that, no capital punishment verdicts could be announced on Fridays because you couldn’t execute someone on Saturday, the Sabbath.
  • 1/22/25, Page 36 – Who is not qualified to be a judge? You can’t have a father and son on the same panel, nor a teacher and student, as it is assumed they will have too much influence on each other’s decisions. Or, if you do have them together, their votes count only as one vote. No one elderly (not defined), no one childless (assumed lack of compassion), no one castrated (same reason?), no one who worships idols (bad person), and only as regards money matters, no one who was born from an incestuous or adulterous relationship (inheritance envy).
  • 1/23/25, Page 37 – Much time today is given to witness instruction. Witnesses are not just under oath, but the judges are to make sure they understand the gravity of the oath. In a financial case, if they lie and are found out, they will be held liable for the payment of judgments or penalties. If it’s a capital case, they may end up receiving the same sentence as the wrongly convicted, or vice versa, the sentence he would have received if they hadn’t lied for him. And either way, they are to be “marked” for the rest of their life as a liar.
  • 1/24/25, Page 38 – Well then. The things we find out in the Talmud. Did you know that it is impossible for a woman to conceive a child if she has intercourse while standing up? Ergo, any child conceived in such a manner was “planted by God” rather than being a child of the man with whom she had sex. Which leads me to believe that the entirety of Christianity is based on Joseph and Mary having a quickie up against the wall in the barn.
  • 1/25/25, Page 39 – I love some of these stories. The Roman emperor chastises a leading rabbi over Judaism’s origin story for mankind, accusing the Jewish God of being a thief, having “stolen” Adam’s rib to create Eve, while he was sleeping. The emperor’s daughter, wiser than he, responds, basically preparing his favorite sausages. Repulsed at witnessing the sausage making process, her father doesn’t want to eat them. She replies, “and that’s why God took Adam’s rib in his sleep.”
  • 1/26/25, Chapter 5, Page 40 – The new chapter starts with a look at disparities. If two witnesses have differing testimony, who different must it be before their statements are simply considered too contradictory and therefore invalid? How many days or hours apart do they claim an event happened? Also, judges – in a capital case, a simple one vote majority is not sufficient for a death sentence, it must be a minimum of 37 to 35 (full Sanhedrin of 72 judges), at least two votes.
  • 1/27/25, Page 41 – As the sages detail more about the exact sorts of conflicting testimony that are a problem and the sorts that are not, we learn that differing circumstances in a capital case end in different executions of the death penalty. Some situations require a quick and merciful death – by sword or ariran (believed to be a type of axe), while others, apparently, merit the suffering of stoning.
  • 1/28/25, Chapter 6, Page 42 – When someone is sentenced to be stoned to death, the place of execution is set away from the city – a distance of “three camps” away, which is not specified in detail, but sounds like a bit of a distance. The judges remain by the city. During the time the prisoner is being taken to the execution site, anyone with acquitting evidence can approach the judges and offer it. If they deem it valid enough to stay the execution, they send a runner to have the prisoner brought back and his sentence reconsidered. This, apparently, can happen multiple times. That seems like as much torture as the stoning.
  • 1/29/25, Page 43 – Well this comes out of the blue. We all grew up, Jews and Christians alike, with the whole Jesus being crucified by the Romans (possibly at the request of the Sanhedrin, depending on which source you read). But according to this, Jesus and five of his disciples were stoned to death and then hung from trees by the Sanhedrin for the crimes of sorcery, idol worship, and trying to corrupt the Jewish community. Further, that his sentence was announced daily for forty days in advance, giving his supporters time to present evidence for their acquittal, and none of them even made an effort to.
  • 1/30/25, Page 44 – We are directed to Joshua 7, the story of Achan, who stole some stuff during the sacking of Jericho, later confessed, and was then punished by being lit on fire and stoned to death while burning. Along with his wife, kids, servants, and livestock. Why, some ask, were all those close to him punished for his crime? Were they complicit? Some say yes, but others say, despite the clearly stated text, that all those others were just there to witness his death, they only died metaphorically.
  • 1/31/25, Page 45 – Death sentence by stoning: Guilty party is stripped naked other than a genital covering (plus butt covering for women). The process starts with the primary witness against him shoving him off a platform roughly 12′ high. Then the second witness casts the proverbial first stone from the same platform (it’s a stone big enough to potentially crush the person’s chest, not something small and thrown). If that doesn’t do it, everyone around takes a turn shoving other big stones on top of him from on high. Participatory death penalty.
  • 2/1/25, Page 46 – Nitty gritty details here. After someone is stoned to death, their corpse is either hung from a tree or a T-bar (the bar is at the top, the cross approach was used by the Romans). Men’s corpses are hung facing the people, women’s corpses are faced away from them. A message to those who might commit similar crimes. But it’s noted, they’re already dead, not hung there to die (Romans, again), and they’re only hung until sundown, because the law requires same day burial.
  • 2/2/25, Page 47 – Talmudic law doesn’t allow for the wicked to be buried next to the righteous, and there are gradations. It is proposed, and discussed, that four graveyards be established – for the righteous, the good, the bad, and the wicked, to keep some separation. It is also noted that with the Jewish concept of Sheol, one’s soul, in most cases, atones over the course of a year, so once “the body has decomposed”, it’s assumed the soul has atoned, and the bones can be moved to one of the good side plots.
  • 2/3/25, Page 48 – We’re back on intention again. If an object, or money, has been designated for a specific ritual purpose, but has not yet been used for that purpose, can it be used for something else? Some of the rabbis say yes, though most condition that on that the intended beneficiary (the Temple, a charity, a particular person) has not been made aware of it, there’s no issue. Others say no, the act of committing to an intended ritual is sacrosanct, and the path laid out must be followed.
  • 2/4/25, Chapter 7, Page 49 – Stoning, burning, decapitation, strangulation. Or is it burning, stoning, strangulation, decapitation? The order, it seems, was worthy of an entire page’s arguments, with comparisons drawn to the orders of lists of what order ritual clothing is put on, and what sorts of stains are hardest to get out of linen fabric. Because, we are left to gather, the choice of death penalty indicates just how severe the crime was, and therefore just how dead the convicted is.
  • 2/5/25, Page 50 – Yesterday’s argument over which form of capital punishment is more severe continues by comparing types of crimes with required punishments. Example – a priest’s daughter who commits adultery is burned, rather than stoned, the mandated punishment for adulteresses. One side says Burning is more severe because she besmirched her father’s honor, the other says Stoning is more severe because she’s being treated better because of her family connections.
  • 2/6/25, Page 51 – A long and involved discussion about whether a woman who engages in adultery should be burned, stoned, or strangled. Most of it is weird familial connections and twisted logic. But the take-away point of note over the last couple of pages is that, so far anyway, there’s been no mention of capital punishment for the man who engaged in the adultery.
  • 2/7/25, Page 52 – Sometimes, I’m just appalled at passages in the Talmud. A few pages back the details of how stoning is to be carried out were covered. So today, they tackle “burning” – the convicted is buried to his waist in cow dung, then his mouth is forced open, and molten lead is poured down his throat. Then there’s a long argument over whether decapitation should be performed by sword or butcher’s cleaver, and whether it’s just cutting the head off or cutting the body in half.
  • 2/8/25, Page 53 – A large percentage of the things the Talmud metes out capital punishment for are sex related – adultery, incest, bestiality, and homosexuality – and don’t seem to merit such severe response. Why not imprisonment? Which led to internet searching to discover that the concept of mass incarceration over longer periods of time, i.e., prison, for crimes, didn’t come into being until the late 1700s. Prior to that, jail was generally a short term, more individual punishment, usually while awaiting trial, or, death.
  • 2/9/25, Page 54 – Oh boy… let’s see if I can cram all this in. Boiled down, if you sleep with a married woman, it is as if you have violated her husband as well. The rabbis discuss whether or not, then, an act of adultery, or incest, is, in fact, a type of homosexual act, and therefore punishable for two offenses. And are minor’s exempt? And at what age is male considered a minor – we’ve seen three definitions over time in the Talmud – bar mitzvah at 13, puberty, and age 9. And is there a link between homosexuality and bestiality that we could punish as well? Someone was clearly pissed off about something.
  • 2/10/25, Page 55 – Well you can’t say the rabbis of the Talmudic era don’t get into the nitty gritty of things. In the midst of the ongoing conversation over homosexuality and bestiality, one asks if it is a homosexual act for a man to sodomize himself. The leader of the discussion responds with disgust, but then they all get down to discussing the mechanics of how a man would achieve that, arriving at the conclusion that a) he couldn’t be erect, and b) he would have to be extraordinarily well endowed.
  • 2/11/25, Page 56 – In a capital punishment sentencing decision, the judges call back the key witnesses on whose testimony that decision will rely. Each is required to swear a holy oath, using God’s name (something which is otherwise prohibited), at which point each judge makes a tear in the hem of their robe, in mourning for having heard God’s name used in an oath. They are not allowed to ever repair those tears. A reminder for their careers of the gravity of sentencing someone to death.
  • 2/12/25, Page 57 – The Noahide laws state that humanity must establish a legal system, and ban the cursing of God, idolatry, illicit sexuality, bloodshed, robbery, and eating flesh from a still living animal. And “any descendant of Noah” who violates one of these is subject to the death penalty. Based on the story of the Flood, everyone afterwards is a descendant of Noah, as no one else survived the Flood. Humanity was rebooted. And consider that next time you’re offered still twitching sushi.
  • 2/13/25, Page 58 – We’re into one of those paradox areas of the Talmud, and this one they don’t even acknowledge. The discussion ranges over several of the previous topics in this chapter, reiterating the various prohibitions, specifically for those descended from Noah, but not necessarily applying to everyone. Except… according to the Torah, and Talmud, everyone is a descendant of Noah, because Noah and his family were the only ones left after The Flood. So who, exactly, are these exempt folk? Did God do a bunch of re-creating after The Flood?
  • 2/14/25, Page 59 – The question arises as to gentiles following the Noahide laws mentioned on page 57 – some of the rabbis proposed that them doing so was a mockery of Judaism, since they weren’t invested in following all of the Torah mitzvot, the must dos and must not dos of Judaic law. Not so, rules the council, finally recognizing the whole Noah and Flood thing – after all, if everyone is descended from Noah, then the Noahide laws apply to everyone.
  • 2/15/25, Page 60 – Idol worship is punishable by the death penalty. But what is idol worship? According to the rabbis it’s not something innocuous like cleaning or polishing the idol, but something recognizable as an act of worship – praying to it, declaring it your god, burning incense, offering a sacrifice, etc. Which led to a discussion of odd practices, like throwing stones at statues of Mercury, or taking a dump or having anal intercourse in front of statues of Ba’al Peor – Lord of the Open Holes, a Moabite sex deity. Yes, humanity has invented some interesting Gods.
  • 2/16/25, Page 61 – As noted yesterday, certain actions are considered normal, honorable acts of worship – bowing, praying, burning incense, offering sacrifices. And that’s held to be true even if the act is performed for an idol or object (a mountain is given as an example) that would not normally have that practice associated with it. Given yesterday’s mentions of throwing stones at Mercury or defecating in front of Ba’al Peor, these too are discussed, but it’s decided that they are sufficiently abnormal and dishonorable, that if one were to throw stones or defecate in front of a different idol, it wouldn’t be prohibited, it might even be encouraged.
  • 2/17/25, Page 62 – If one commits an idolatrous act on the Sabbath that involves something that is prohibited on the Sabbath – lighting a fire, lighting incense, burning a sacrifice, some sort of manual labor, etc., one is doubly liable for punishment. I’m not precisely clear how being sentenced to a double death penalty works, but it’s apparently worse than a single one. Also, if you commit idolatrous acts while under duress or coercion, the death penalty is taken off the table, but other forms of penance are still applied.
  • 2/18/25, Page 63 – Amidst the various discussions of different penalties and acts of worship, we have a sidebar where the Talmud’s sages issue a caution. It’s all well and good for the Jewish people to offer an oath or allegiance to the country they live in, but, the wise ones remind us, we must be careful that allegiance to country is not the same thing as allegiance to its form of worship, be that to another god, or, to a person, such as its leader. Seems particularly poignant right now.
  • 2/19/25, Page 64 – These guys keep coming back to the worship of Ba’al Peor – eat lots of spinach and drink lots of beer – allowing you to defecate with the appropriate “consistency”, which is, well, liquid. But, on the B side, we move on to Molekh, and learn that the proper form of worship involves giving your child to the priests of Molekh and having him “pass through fire”. It doesn’t, we learn, matter whether the firewalking occurs before or after the priests get their hands on your kid, just that both occur.
  • 2/20/25, Page 65 – I have read a lot of fantasy, magic, sorcery sorts of fiction over my life. In none of them was a sorcerer defined as one who takes animal bones, sticks them in his mouth, and calls forth the spirit of the animal to cause things to happen. In none of them was a necromancer defined as someone who invites the spirits of dead people to sit in his armpit and speak to the living. I’m not sure who needs more psychiatric help – the accused sorcerer or necromancer, or the rabbis who conjured up these images.
  • 2/21/25, Page 66 – Having dispensed with sorcerers and necromancers yesterday, we move on to define enchanters – those who see signs in nature and treat them as omens; and soothsayers, who receive their “second sight” by applying the semen of seven different men to their eyelids, in some sort of bizarre bukake ritual. Suddenly, the text pivots, to inform us that if two or more men rape a young, virgin woman, only the first is liable to death by stoning; the others are given the lesser punishment of strangulation, because… she wasn’t a virgin. At least they all end up dead.
  • 2/22/25, Page 67 – I am getting such an education in the various folk of the magic world. None of it will be useful in a D&D campaign, because their ideas are so different, but who knows? Maybe I can slip in a reference. Today we find out that male witches are warlocks (okay, they got one right), and witchcraft should be actually witnessed, since pretty much all women are familiar with how to do it, they only get offed if they are caught using it. Oh, and magicians use demons to accomplish their nefarious deeds.
  • 2/23/25, Page 68 – We have spent pages on the punishments for practicing magic. So it seems a surprise when the elderly and ailing Rabbi Eliezer lectures would-be students on his deep knowledge of sorcery, particularly, around planting of cucumbers. Three thousand forms of sorcery, he claims to use on cucurbits. But, he says, he’s not liable for sorcery punishments, because he only uses it for teaching purposes, never for personal gain. I don’t think that exception is in the Torah or Talmud.
  • 2/24/25, Chapter 8, Page 69 – I don’t even know that I have to comment on the awfulness of the question the rabbis delver into here. This is the question they start with: “Why is a man who engaged in intercourse with a three-year-old girl who was married to another man liable to receive the death penalty?” Their entire analysis from that point on revolves around whether such an act involves adultery or incest…. I know it was a different era of human history, but jeez.
  • 2/25/25, Page 70 – This is such a rabbinical discussion. Yosei: “A stubborn and rebellious son not only doesn’t obey his parents, but he eats and drinks a lot.” Zeira: “Yosei, you eat and drink a lot, so let’s define it as double the amount you would eat or drink.” Huna: “I eat and drink at least that much, let’s say it’s talking about cheap meat and wine”. Ravina: “Some of us don’t have your money, so, let’s say its cheap, raw meat, and cheap, undiluted wine.” Rabba and Yosef: “Some of us kinda like that, so let’s make an exception for if the raw meat is salted, and wine is only partially fermented.” Then they all go out to eat meat and drink wine, because making up rules for other people to follow is such a lot of work.
  • 2/26/25, Page 71 – This might be one of the most important pages I’ve seen in my Talmud readings. As they narrow down what constitutes a stubborn and rebellious son, what constitutes a city of idolatry, what constitutes an impure house, it is posited that no son, no city, no house, would ever actually fulfill every nitty gritty detail, so there really is no such thing as a stubborn and rebellious son, an idolatrous city, an impure house – so why are we making these rules? Ah, say the wisest of the sages – it forces people to think about the Torah and its laws as they go about every day life, and makes them better for it as they make their choices of what to do.
  • 2/27/25, Page 72 – Okay, now the rabbis are treading on my turf. Not only, they have decided, is a stubborn and rebellious son defined by having regularly drunk cheap wine, but… worse, they say, as they really drill down, he drinks… gasp… Italian wine. I’m ready to just chuck the entire Talmud in the trash now.
  • 2/28/25, Page 73 – There are three situations where the rabbis say, in qualified circumstances, you can kill someone for their intent, before they act. If someone is actively pursuing someone to murder them, rape them, or sodomize them. But it is a qualified situation, since, at least for the second two, the rabbis take into consideration whether the person being raped or sodomized might have wanted it and/or whether or not they would be embarrassed by it if others found out. It’s about status, not the act.
  • 3/1/25, Page 74 – The most important mitzvah in the Torah and Talmud is to preserve human life whenever possible. A wide range of examples are covered, including from yesterday’s post, that if you can stop a criminal from committing murder, rape, or sodomy by injuring them rather than killing them, that is preferable. And if you must violate a commandment or mitzvah in order to save your life, that is, generally, preferable. Though, they except situations where it is a stark “violate it or die” situation with no other reason for the dichotomy, in that case, choose death.
  • 3/2/25, Chapter 9, Page 75 – A long-winded explanation of what’s considered incest. Just to make sure that a guy doesn’t put it where it doesn’t belong, the rabbis want to make sure that he understands that incest isn’t limited to his own mother, sisters, and daughters, but includes aunts, great-aunts, nieces, in-laws, mothers and daughters of in-laws, sisters-in-law and their mothers and daughters, and the mothers and daughters of exes. Because guys will, they claim, try.
  • 3/3/25, Page 76 – Just to make sure they’ve covered all the stuff, the rabbis continue yesterday’s list – as they’d not included in the incest list, sleeping with your own and your siblings’ granddaughters. Also, no pimping any of the above, from today or yesterday, out to your friends, especially “dirty old men” (okay, they said the Hebrew word for “licentious” rather than dirty, but, same same). Then they have a debate as to which of these acts are punished by stoning and which by burning. I still say, dead is dead, however you get there.
  • 3/4/25, Page 77 – We’re off on another weird liability tangent. If you tie someone up and leave them in the desert sun, or on a frigid mountaintop, you are liable for their death, because the process of dying begins immediately. If, however, you tie them up somewhere and they die from starvation, or because of a gas leak, or from a lion attack (even if the lion was present when you left them), you are not liable, because death was not an assured outcome of leaving them. Similar discussions are then covered over pushing someone into a pit, and shooting arrows at them. Sometimes I think these guys were just nuts.
  • 3/5/25, Page 78 – The rabbis compare sodomy, for which the punishment is execution, and necrophilia, for which it’s not. The key focus is on the morality of the interaction, not the act itself, claiming that the person being sodomized is being harmed, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and doing harm to another is immoral, while having sex with a corpse causes no physical, emotional, or spiritual harm, and therefore, while repugnant, is not immoral. They acknowledge that this assumes that the person being sodomized is not enjoying it, and assert that they can’t imagine a situation where sodomy is not a form of rape.
  • 3/6/25, Page 79 – We’re back to intent, which is pretty much, if you look back, what this chapter has been about in terms of liability and punishment. The rabbis compare various types of attacks and their results, basically coming down to that if you didn’t intend to kill someone but did, or there is collateral damage or death to someone else other than your intended target, while you may be liable for restitution and incarceration, the death penalty is not imposed except in situations where you intended to kill a particular person and then did so.
  • 3/7/25, Page 80 – A group of people who have all been sentenced to die – some by stoning, some by burning, some by another method. For some reason, you don’t know who has been sentenced to which. The rabbis argue over whether all should be killed by the most lenient method, the most severe method, or the method that the majority were sentenced to, and of course, reach no decision. My question, if you don’t know who’s been sentenced to which method, how could you determine any of those anyway?
  • 3/8/25, Page 81 – I’ve said it before… dead is dead. These guys are really hung up on which method is used to fulfill the death penalty, and particularly, arguing over which ones are more serious than the other. And now, they’re discussing a lesser punishment method – locking someone in a cell, starving them until near death, and then force feeding them until their internal organs burst. That’s the “lesser punishment”? Sounds like far and away the most brutal of all the ones they’ve been discussing, all of which are over in a matter of seconds or minutes.
  • 3/9/25, Page 82 – At issue on today’s page, the prohibitions on intercourse with a gentile, a married woman, a maidservant, or a menstruating woman, and the practice of sentencing violators to death. What they contend with is that the Torah does not prescribe the death penalty for these, that was a rabbinical decision based on societal convention. and there are numerous examples in the Torah of violations of those by famed ancestors, with no consequences. Their decision – extrajudicial killing. Encourage a zealot to execute the perpetrator, without court sanction, and then look the other way.
  • 3/10/25, Page 83 – If a priest in the Temple performs a holy act (be it sacrifice, consecration, or leading a service) using an object, produce, or container that is impure, he has violated a prohibition and is punished, generally with lashes, because the thing used could have been thought to be purified. If a priest himself is impure when he performs a holy act, even with a pure object, he is punished by death, as he knows at the time he is not pure. Exceptions are made for some obscure situations.
  • 3/11/25, Chapter 10, Page 84 – The rabbis turn to the death penalty by strangulation. As usual, they can’t agree on whether this is a more or less severe form of the death penalty than the others, and that, of course, informs which crimes they want to apply it to. It’s worth noting that strangulation is not a method that is specified as a punishment anywhere in the Torah, so they kind of sort of decide it can be applied to any crimes that don’t have specific punishments listed. Isn’t that convenient….
  • 3/12/25, Page 85 – Cursing your parents is worse than striking them, according to the rabbis. Why? Because if you curse your parents while they’re alive, or after their death, you can be sentenced to death. The same is true if you hit your parents while they’re alive, because there is the potential that you might kill them. But… if you hit your parents after they’re dead, you’re exempt from liability, because you can’t potentially cause a fatal wound. Ergo, cursing them is worse than hitting them.
  • 3/13/25, Page 86 – A man engages in adultery with a married woman (it’s never about whether the man is married) – both are, by rabbinical decree, put to death. Except… not if they are caught together “in a place where married women go to engage in licentious behavior”, like, say, a pick-up bar, brothel, hourly hotel…. My reading of the reasoning is that it isn’t so much about the adultery itself, but that if they engage in it in either of their homes, it is violation of the sanctity of the home. I find myself musing how this might equally apply to rabbinical penalties around homosexuality, incest, bestiality, etc. that are equally prohibited.
  • 3/14/25, Page 87 – Though the sages have focused several times on the duties of a child to his or her parent, or a student to his or her teacher, and a bit on parent to child, today they tackle teacher to student. But not the sort of day to day classroom relationship, but rather a “rebellious elder” – a teacher who instructs his students to violate Torah law, using his own interpretation. Here, his colleagues can challenge him in a series of three courts – sort of local, appellate, and supreme. If he is ordered by all three to cease and desist, and refuses, it’s… you guessed it… death penalty time!
  • 3/15/25, Page 88 – We continue with the “rebellious elder”. If he can show that what he teaches is tradition where he lives, that he learned it from his teachers, he is no longer considered rebellious, even if in need of correction. As long as he didn’t make up his own logical derivation for his approach, he’s not liable to be punished. But that raises the question of how new interpretations to old questions can be derived – apparently not by a solo teacher or sage, but only by group consensus.
  • 3/16/25, Page 89 – Recognizing that the rebellious elder of whom we’ve been reading the last couple of days might well be a prophet, the rabbis have to confront this shake-up to the status quo. So they decide that if he goes around spouting prophecy without their permission, he’s to be executed. If he just shares his thoughts with other sages, he is to be flogged. If he keeps his mouth shut, they leave it in the hands of God to punish him for not prophesying. This, to me, seems more like a method of maintaining the status quo, and their power.