Sanhedrin 051

1:
Our mishnah divides into three sections: Reisha [first section], Emtza'ita [middle section], and Seifa [last section]. The Reisha states what kind of person is disqualified from acting as arbitrator (and as a witness too). The Emtza'ita consists of an explanatory statement by Rabbi Shim'on [ben-Yoĥai]. In the Seifa Rabbi Yehudah [ben-Ilai] qualifies the statement of Tanna Kamma in the Reisha. (Tanna Kamma, you will recall, is a technical term indicating the anonymous sage whose opinion is quoted in the Reisha and whose view Rabbi Yehudah seeks to qualify in the Seifa.)

2:
The Reisha of our mishnah states that one who engages in three activities in particular is disqualified from sitting as an arbitrator in a Bet Din shel Hedyotot [Court of lay people arbitrating in a case of a claim for repayment of a loan]. The two previous mishnayot in this chapter have mentioned persons who might be disqualified or related to one of the litigants. Our present mishnah seeks to define the term "disqualified" and Mishnah Four will seek to define the term "related".

3:
The Torah [Exodus 23:1] commands us "not to set your hand with a wicked person to act as a perjured witness". Since the halakhic system requires two witnesses to substantiate a prosecution a situation might arise in which one was asked to act as a second witness for a claimant who has no other. The very request makes the principal witness a "wicked person" because he would be prepared to perjure himself by saying that both witnesses were present at the time the defendant admitted his indebtedness. (If you were to do so you too, of course, would be perjuring yourself.) The Gemara [Sanhedrin 27a] simplifies the Torah command: "Do not let a wicked person be a witness". This certainly widens the field! But how does the system define "a wicked person" in this context? Me'iri [Rabbi Menaĥem ben-Shelomo, southern France, 1249-1316 CE], one of the great commentators on the Talmud, in his commentary on Sanhedrin 27a expands the term "wicked" to include: a person who has been convicted of perjuring himself in the past, of theft (in the widest sense of the term – depriving someone of their property illicitly), anyone who transgresses a law whose punishment is flogging, "and obviously sceptics [Epikoros], people who betray Jews [to non-Jewish authorities] and schismatics". All the above are disqualified from being a witness, and each litigant is free to to dismiss such a person if put forward by his opponent as a prosecuting witness [see Mishnah 1 of this chapter]. We have mentioned on several occasions the principal of mutuality in such matters: if you are a king who may not be judged you may not sit in judgment upon others; so too, if you may not act as a witness you may also not act as a judge or arbitrator.

4:
It now becomes apparent that our present mishnah is not defining the only circumstances in which a person is disqualified from acting as a judge, but is singling out three activities that might not be considered disqualifying "sins" at first glance, but which nevertheless do disqualify.

5:
The first activity is "games of chance". Actually, the term used in the Hebrew is more accurately translated "throwing dice", but it is obvious to common sense (as well as to all the commentators!) that throwing dice is just an example, and in modern times would include card-playing, roulette and so forth. For a moment, let us assume that the qualifier of Rabbi Yehudah in the Seifa is directed (inclusively or exclusively) at the first item in the Reisha. It then becomes clear that who is being disqualified is someone who earns his living at getting people to play games of chance for real stakes – money. Such a person is not "occupied with the real world" [Sanhedrin 24b]. They may well lie and cheat and use slight of hand in order to deprive people of their hard-earned cash, while they themselves are doing nothing to improve the world around them. They are seen as parasites, living off other people's labours. As such, they are little better than thieves, "depriving someone of their property illicitly".

6:
The second disqualifying "profession" is that of the moneylender who charges interest. The Torah specifically outlaws this kind of lending:

As long as the base of the economy was simple and unsophisticated agriculture such an arrangement was noble and plausible. Neither the produce of the earth nor any money that you may earn from it really belong to you, so it would be immoral of you to make a profit at the expense of your brother's distress. Give him the money and let him return to you the same amount as he took, no more and no less. With increasing urbanization this arrangement was no longer tenable. Borrowing and lending money were no longer activities only associated with impoverishment and economic distress. One could want cash in hand today in order to make a good industrial profit tomorrow. For this kind of transaction the sages created a very necessary loophole: where the loan was being made so that the borrower could make a profit it was only fair that the lender should be permitted to share in that profit. The transaction should be documented in a temporary "partnership" between the borrower and the lender, and then what we now call interest would not be interest at all, but the lender's share of the profits. Such an arrangement is called Heter Iska [permission to do a deal] – and to this day such a document is usually displayed somewhere in most branches of Israel's banks. However, people who take pure and unadulterated interest, in the Biblical sense of the term, are also "parasites, living off other people's labours". As such, they are little better than thieves, depriving someone of their property illicitly.

To be continued..