Sotah 043

We come now to the most difficult (and grisly) part of the tractate: the actual carrying out of an execution – the judicial killing of a man or a woman found guilty of a capital crime. No amount of apologetics will cover up the fact that up to a certain point in Israel's history such executions did take place. However, there is no guarantee whatsoever that when they were carried out that it was according to the procedures described in our tractate! On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that the procedures that will be described in … our tractate were purely the result of academic extrapolation: two preconceived basic premises determined the form of midrash to be used on the Biblical texts. There is no other way to explain how there could have been a difference of view between Rabbi Yehudah and the rest of the sages on such a particular detail of procedure as whether there was or was not any difference between the execution of a man and the execution of a woman as regards their clothing. It must be that they are not describing a historical reality, but that their difference derives solely from their hermeneutical elucidation of the Biblical text.

We have already had occasion to quote the Biblical text [Leviticus 24:10-14] in question in a different context:

This time the phrase that is being elucidated is the very last one in the quotation: "the whole community shall stone him to death". In the Gemara [Sanhedrin 45a] the sages point out the word 'him'. They reason: the word 'him cannot be in the text in order to indicate that only men were to be executed ('him to the exclusion of 'her") since there is another text [Deuteronomy 17:5] in which the execution of women is specifically mentioned:

It follows, say the sages, that the word 'him in our present context must indicate some other idea: that 'he alone is to be stoned – 'him and not his clothes. And, if 'he is to be stoned without his clothes then obviously 'she is to be stoned clothed! This kind of reasoning, too, clearly indicates that the text is being elucidated in order to arrive at a preconceived answer – and Rabbi Yehudah is swift to point out that the conclusion is entirely unwarranted by the text! The Gemara [Sanhedrin 45a] proceeds to question what the preconceived idea that is motivating the hermeneutics of the sages can be. The response is that the sages are concerned to prevent lascivious thoughts ["Hirhura"] among the bystanders, thoughts that may be prompted by the sight of a woman's nakedness. Rabbi Yehudah is of the opinion that such thoughts would be farthest from people's minds when witnessing the woman's execution.

To us it must seem that such considerations are bordering on the ridiculous. And, indeed, the Gemara also brings another interpretation of the difference between Rabbi Yehudah and the sages in this matter. One of the best-known verses of the Torah [Leviticus 19:18] teaches us: Love your fellow-man as yourself. Most people are also familiar with the negative rendition of this precept as given by Hillel [Shabbat 31a]: Do not do to other people what you would not like them to do to you. Thus the difference of opinion between the sages and Rabbi Yehudah is concerned with what might be presumed to be a condemned person's preference. According to Rabbi Yehudah a woman in such a terrible situation would prefer the consideration of a swift death over the consideration of her personal propriety. The sages believe that even under such circumstances no woman would want to be displayed naked in public.