![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Daf Yomi Sanhedrin
Dec. 19th, 2024 09:58 amHere we go again...
Daf 2
The Torah commands Israel to establish courts and enforce justice, but isn't as clear on how to regulate the courts. Masechet Sanhedrin lays out the rules by which courts, both civil and criminal, are regulated. It's not immediately clear to what extent these rules are derived from the Torah or word of God transmitted orally from Sinai, and to what extent these rules are just rules that made sense to the Rabbis as being just and fair and appropriate. A mix, I think.
The first Mishna is about the number of judges required to adjudicate different issues. Typically the division is that civil/monetary/status issues are decided by a Beis Din of 3 judges and potentially capital cases are decided by a Sanhedrin of 23 judges. There are civil issues of greater import that are decided by a court of 5 or 9 judges, and cases of national significance are decided by the Great Sanhedrin of 71 judges. The Mishna is also clearly using this as an opportunity to lay out a list of all of the different kinds of court cases that can exist because rather than laying out some broad systematic principle of this is what makes a three judge case, the Mishna lists out all the different types of cases and individually says that they are judged by three judges. The first daf just goes through the whole first perek of the Mishna, which is unusual and means it's a little hard to hold onto everything when moving at daf yomi pace. I'm not going to go through all the cases mentioned, I assume a lot of them will come back in the Gemara going forward.
I do want to note that cases of raping an unmarried woman are judged by a three judge panel solely on the economic restitution due her father, which is disgusting. I could say more, but I don't intend to talk about it today.
Why 71 on the Great Sanhedrin? The Torah model is Moshe's council of elders, who numbered 70, plus Moshe makes 71. These numbers will always be odd because an even court could lead to a tie vote. Rabbi Yehuda says the Great Sanhedrin is only 70. R' Streinsaltz's gloss is that this is because Moshe did not count as part of the Zakenim, which maybe means that all Rabbi Yehuda is arguing is that similarly the Nasi has the 71st vote but isn't technically on the Sanhedrin. But he could also mean that as a matter of history the Second Temple Sanhedrin only had 70, or that the Third Temple Sanhedrin will for unclear reasons only have 70. R' Rosner brings a hasidic vort that the reason a Sanhedrin is 70 is to emphasize the significance of them being zakenim- it's ideally a group of 70 septuagenarians, because our minds grow and become wiser with time and the best justice comes from experience. And also somehow the fact that as our bodies deteriorate, our minds get stronger is a testimony to our immortal souls and a proof that therefore true justice comes from Hashem. Of course there are plenty of 70 year old assumes, it'll be interesting to see if they Gemara grapples with how to balance things with youthful perspectives. Seems unlikely.
Why 23 on a lesser Sanhedrin that decides capital cases? The basic idea comes from midrashic interpretation of the law of the goel hadam, the family avenger who is allowed to hunt down and kill the person who murdered his relative. The Torah is apparently envisioning this in a sort of tribal law setup where there aren't national courts and a stable criminal code with government law enforcement, so if someone is murdered, it's a tribal/familial obligation to execute justice or else the murderer will just go about their business. Therefore the goel makes a testimony of his intention to kill the murderer in front of his tribe, and only then can he go out and kill. The Torah uses the word edut twice in referring to this testimony, and we use the same gezerah shavah used to derive the size of a minyan to say say this means the goel's testimony must be in front of at least two minyans or 20 judges. We then jump to 22 because separately the Torah warns not to convict based on a rabim, and since that two minyanim concept would allow a person to be convicted based conceptually on a single minyan worth of people and that feels uncomfortably like convicting based on a rabim, we bump it up to 22 so that it's more than just a minimum crowd size. And that then becomes 23 so there can't be a tie.
The metahistorical concept here, though, is that the Torah is dealing with a society wracked by cycles of tribal revenge killings and comes up with a way to sanction these cycles while limiting them, and the Mishna is going a step further by trying to limit tribal violence altogether by unifying that tribal authority into a national legal system where the Beis Din is the only authorized institution that can decide if an execution will be carried out. The goel rather than being an agent of tribal rage is coopted by being deputized an authorized law enforcement official, enforcing the court's justice rather than his own personal sense of justice.
The Mishna concludes by asking how many people must there be in a town with a lesser Sanhedrin of 23 that can hear capital cases. One opinion is 120 people, with no explanation, which I assume is just a legal logic of that's enough people that you can be tried by people who are not your close friends or enemies. The other opinion is it must be a town of at least 230 people based on Moshe's rule in Shoftim that there be a shofet for every ten people, so 23 dayanim requires at least 230.
Daf 2
The Torah commands Israel to establish courts and enforce justice, but isn't as clear on how to regulate the courts. Masechet Sanhedrin lays out the rules by which courts, both civil and criminal, are regulated. It's not immediately clear to what extent these rules are derived from the Torah or word of God transmitted orally from Sinai, and to what extent these rules are just rules that made sense to the Rabbis as being just and fair and appropriate. A mix, I think.
The first Mishna is about the number of judges required to adjudicate different issues. Typically the division is that civil/monetary/status issues are decided by a Beis Din of 3 judges and potentially capital cases are decided by a Sanhedrin of 23 judges. There are civil issues of greater import that are decided by a court of 5 or 9 judges, and cases of national significance are decided by the Great Sanhedrin of 71 judges. The Mishna is also clearly using this as an opportunity to lay out a list of all of the different kinds of court cases that can exist because rather than laying out some broad systematic principle of this is what makes a three judge case, the Mishna lists out all the different types of cases and individually says that they are judged by three judges. The first daf just goes through the whole first perek of the Mishna, which is unusual and means it's a little hard to hold onto everything when moving at daf yomi pace. I'm not going to go through all the cases mentioned, I assume a lot of them will come back in the Gemara going forward.
I do want to note that cases of raping an unmarried woman are judged by a three judge panel solely on the economic restitution due her father, which is disgusting. I could say more, but I don't intend to talk about it today.
Why 71 on the Great Sanhedrin? The Torah model is Moshe's council of elders, who numbered 70, plus Moshe makes 71. These numbers will always be odd because an even court could lead to a tie vote. Rabbi Yehuda says the Great Sanhedrin is only 70. R' Streinsaltz's gloss is that this is because Moshe did not count as part of the Zakenim, which maybe means that all Rabbi Yehuda is arguing is that similarly the Nasi has the 71st vote but isn't technically on the Sanhedrin. But he could also mean that as a matter of history the Second Temple Sanhedrin only had 70, or that the Third Temple Sanhedrin will for unclear reasons only have 70. R' Rosner brings a hasidic vort that the reason a Sanhedrin is 70 is to emphasize the significance of them being zakenim- it's ideally a group of 70 septuagenarians, because our minds grow and become wiser with time and the best justice comes from experience. And also somehow the fact that as our bodies deteriorate, our minds get stronger is a testimony to our immortal souls and a proof that therefore true justice comes from Hashem. Of course there are plenty of 70 year old assumes, it'll be interesting to see if they Gemara grapples with how to balance things with youthful perspectives. Seems unlikely.
Why 23 on a lesser Sanhedrin that decides capital cases? The basic idea comes from midrashic interpretation of the law of the goel hadam, the family avenger who is allowed to hunt down and kill the person who murdered his relative. The Torah is apparently envisioning this in a sort of tribal law setup where there aren't national courts and a stable criminal code with government law enforcement, so if someone is murdered, it's a tribal/familial obligation to execute justice or else the murderer will just go about their business. Therefore the goel makes a testimony of his intention to kill the murderer in front of his tribe, and only then can he go out and kill. The Torah uses the word edut twice in referring to this testimony, and we use the same gezerah shavah used to derive the size of a minyan to say say this means the goel's testimony must be in front of at least two minyans or 20 judges. We then jump to 22 because separately the Torah warns not to convict based on a rabim, and since that two minyanim concept would allow a person to be convicted based conceptually on a single minyan worth of people and that feels uncomfortably like convicting based on a rabim, we bump it up to 22 so that it's more than just a minimum crowd size. And that then becomes 23 so there can't be a tie.
The metahistorical concept here, though, is that the Torah is dealing with a society wracked by cycles of tribal revenge killings and comes up with a way to sanction these cycles while limiting them, and the Mishna is going a step further by trying to limit tribal violence altogether by unifying that tribal authority into a national legal system where the Beis Din is the only authorized institution that can decide if an execution will be carried out. The goel rather than being an agent of tribal rage is coopted by being deputized an authorized law enforcement official, enforcing the court's justice rather than his own personal sense of justice.
The Mishna concludes by asking how many people must there be in a town with a lesser Sanhedrin of 23 that can hear capital cases. One opinion is 120 people, with no explanation, which I assume is just a legal logic of that's enough people that you can be tried by people who are not your close friends or enemies. The other opinion is it must be a town of at least 230 people based on Moshe's rule in Shoftim that there be a shofet for every ten people, so 23 dayanim requires at least 230.
