Sotah 095

נושא: Sotah

BET MIDRASH VIRTUALI

I will not be afraid of tens of thousands of people who have set themselves against me on every side. Arise, God! Save me, my God! For you have struck all of my enemies on the cheek. You have broken the teeth of the wicked. Salvation belongs to God. Your blessing be on your people. [Psalm 3:7-9]

The decapitated calf [declaration] must be in the holy tongue, for it says: "If a corpse be found on the ground … then shall your elders and judges go forth" – three [justices] from the Supreme Court would go forth. Rabbi Yehudah says [that] five [would go forth], for it says "your elders" – two, "and your judges" – two, and [since] a court may not be of an even number we add on yet another.

3:
The long quotation from Deuteronomy shows that there were several rituals to be acted out when a corpse is found in the open. The problem is that since the death did not occur within the jurisdiction of an 'local authority' the ’cause of death' had to be attributed to one of the local authorities. The reason for this is the concept of blood guilt. If someone dies an unnatural death (which this death must be presumed to be) the land is polluted and the deceased blood which has been shed must be 'accounted for'. Normally. this would be done by apprehending the perpetrator of the deed and dealing with him according to the prescriptions of the judicial system. However, when a dead body is found 'lying in a field' it is highly unlikely that the ’causer of death' (if I may coin a phrase) will be apprehended. However the blood guilt is there. Right at the beginning of human history the Torah [Genesis 9:5-6] teaches:

I will surely require your blood of your lives. At the hand of every animal I will require it. At the hand of man, even at the hand of every man’s brother, I will require the life of man. Whoever sheds man’s blood by man will his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man.

The various ritual acts in the law of 'the decapitated calf' as it is called are designed to answer to this problem.

4:
These are the stages of the ritual acts involved. First of all "your elders, your judges' are to visit the place of the crime and from there ascertain by accurate measurement which of all the nearby 'local authorities' is the nearest to the corpse. It is thus established upon which settlement falls the duty of purging the land (and the people) from guilt for the death of this John Doe. In the second stage the elders of the chosen settlement must select a young calf from the herd and take it to the banks of a nearby stream, where they shall slaughter it by decapitation. Now there occurs the third stage of the ritual: the elders symbolically wash their hands in the stream and make a solemn declaration to the effect that they (representing the people of the settlement) are not the cause of this man's death and they do not know who did the deed. It is this declaration which must be uttered in the Hebrew language.

5:
Our present mishnah discusses the first stage in the propitiatory process, the stage whereby justices must be sent to determine the area of jurisdiction for this cleansing ceremony. The minimum number of justices in a duly constituted Bet Din is three, as we learned when we studied the first chapter of Tractate Sanhedrin [1:3], part of which reads:

… The Decapitation of the Calf [is] done before [a Bet Din of] three, according to Rabbi Shim'on; Rabbi Yehudah is of the opinion [that the number is] five…

As part of the explanations of that mishnah I wrote:

The difference between our present mishnah and the previous ones in this chapter is that, while they all deal with the functions of a "Bet Din shel Sheloshah" – a Court of Three [members] – our present mishnah is not concerned with a judicial case as such, but with the required participation of the Bet Din in a ceremony. In most of these cases the ceremony, as interpreted by the sages, requires the participation of a very special Bet Din: the members had to be members of the Sanhedrin, which is often perceived as the Bet Din established by the incumbent President of the Sanhedrin… Our mishnah presents a "maĥloket" between Rabbi Shim'on [ben-Yoĥai] and Rabbi Yehudah [ben-Ilai]. The former … is of the opinion that three members of the Sanhedrin are sufficient … whereas the latter teaches that five are required. The very fact that we find these two sages differing in this matter less than a century after the cessation of the sacrificial system can teach volumes about the last time in Jewish history when this law was invoked. Both sages base their opinion purely on midrashic interpretation and neither claim 'received teaching' for their view.

6:
Normally a Bet Din consists of three members unless more are specifically stipulated in the first chapter of Tractate Sanhedrin. Three is the minimum number of justices because in all matters judicial the sages understood the Torah [Exodus 23:2] as requiring a majority verdict, and the minimum number that will yield the possibility of a majority is three. In our mishnah, Rabbi Yehudah ben-Ilai is of the opinion that in the specific instance of the 'decapitated calf' the Torah requires five justices: the words "your elders" indicate a minimum of two justices and the words "your judges" indicate two more. Since a Bet Din may not consist of an even number of members a fifth member must be added. Rambam, in his commentary on our mishnah, states that in this matter the view of Rabbi Yehudah is accepted halakhah, and in his Mishneh Torah [Hilkhot Rotze'ach 9:1] he states that –

When a person is found killed lying on the ground and it is not known who struck him he is to be left where he is and five elders from the Supreme Court in Jerusalem proceed there…

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