Sanhedrin 107

2:
This means that the path to limitation now becomes a veritable highway. What does this son eat? What does he drink? The Reisha [first section] of our mishnah provides the answer: he eats meat and drinks wine. The interpretation that the over-drinking involves wine is a logical consequence of the Hebrew verb used by the Torah, which invariably indicates intoxication by wine. But even the sages themselves admitted that they had no real justification for limiting the "over-eating" to the consumption of meat. At the very end of our mishnah they lamely quote a verse from Proverbs that links "over-eating" with meat. But they admit that this is no proof that this was the intention of the Biblical text, it is merely a support for their interpretation of that text.

3:
The sages must now define how much constitutes "over-eating" meat and "over-drinking" wine. The amount of meat consumed is defined as Tartemar. This is a word borrowed from the Greek Τριταμηριον, which is an amount which we can colloquially translate as "a thirder" – i.e. one third of the major unit. When the sages use this term they mean it to indicate one third of a Maneh. In modern terms the Tartemar is probably the equivalent of about 100 grams of meat. This is a modest amount, which is probably why Rabbi Yosé, in our mishnah, seeks to augment the amounts; however, of course, halakhah follows Tanna Kamma. The Log is about 275 cc's, thus half of one Log (Tanna Kamma) would be about twice the minimal amount of wine to be drunk at Kiddush. (The Gemara [Sanhedrin 70a] adds further qualifications, such as that the meat must only be rare, neither raw nor fully cooked, but these added limitations need not detain us here.)

4:
These amounts are very modest. (The consumption of only 100 grams of meat by someone on a reducing diet would delight a dietitian – though I suppose they would not approve of the 150 cc's of wine.) It is probably this that prompts Rabbi Shim'on ben-Yoĥai to ask incredulously [Gemara Sanhedrin 71a]:

6:
I should note parenthetically that some editions of our mishnah contain a short segment that does not really belong there. Although it is quoted in the Babylonian Talmud, I have omitted it, in accordance with the text found in the Talmud of Eretz-Israel.

7:
At the end of our last shiur I gave a resumé of what the sages had done with the Biblical text. I shall now repeat it and add to it.

Having circumscribed some of the parameters mentioned in the biblical text, the sages have now reduced the applicability of the text as follows:

If a man has a riotous and rebellious son [but not daughter, and who happens to be between the ages of 13 years and 13 years and three months] who disobeys his parents [by consuming 100 grams of rare-cooked meat together with about 150 cc's of half-diluted wine] …

Having come in a bit late to RMSG, a few questions:

• Is there a particular English translation of the Mishnah that's being used or that you'd recommend?
• Where you quote Gemara, are you using a particular translation/commentary?
• Is there any intention to compile and redact these shiurim into texts for wider distribution and study – say, in adult education groups?

I respond:

All the translations are done by myself. To translate the language of the sages successfully (Midrash, Mishnah, Gemara) is an impossible task. Look upon them, rather, as a rendition designed to make the text as approachable as possible to the modern English-speaker, while still remaining within the general parameters of translation.

I am at present working on a project (under the general auspices of the Rabbinical Assembly in Israel) that will make RMSG and many other topics of study available from the Internet, with graphics and so forth – a Virtual Bet Midrash. These shiurim will eventually be fully indexed. In all probability I shall try to make each tractate available also on CD when it is completed. I hope that the Virtual Bet Midrash will open some time during the coming months. It is taking up a lot of my time (which is one of the reasons I have not been able to post as many RMSG shiurim as I would wish). There is a wonderful and dedicated group of computer experts (all also committed Masorti Jews) who are advising me all along the way. The only thing that is greatly lacking is money… Like the "riotous and rebellious son", RMSG has never existed in book form and will never exist in book form – it would lose its very soul.

Richard Friedman writes:

In Sanhedrin 106, you made a statement "by the way" that I found striking. You said that, compared with the literal meaning of the biblical text, the sages were liberal in their outlook (though I do not think that this was their conscious intent). It's the parenthetical that struck me. So much of what one hears from Jews (both scholar and lay) outside the Orthodox community makes the first statement and at least implies that liberalization (here, minimization of the domain of capital punishment) was their intent.

I respond:

I believe that the sages were unintentional liberals. Their conscious intent was to elucidate Torah according to the tradition passed on to them and by them "ever since Sinai". It is what motivated the direction that their elucidations took that indicates their liberality of outlook. I believe that they had an awareness that they were changing the Written Torah beyond all recognition, but that they believed that this was the true intent of the text in the first place. They did not feel that they were interpolating their own views into Torah; they felt that they were extrapolating from the Torah what was there all the time. What we may think about what they thought is another issue…