Sotah 099

נושא: Sotah

BET MIDRASH VIRTUALI

The elders from Jerusalem leave and the elders of that particular township bring "a heifer of the herd, which hasn't been worked with and which has not drawn in the yoke". [Physical] blemishes do not disqualify it. They take it down to "a valley with running water": [the Hebrew] must be understood literally, a hard, fast flowing stream. But even if it is not fast flowing it is valid. It is decapitated with a hatchet from behind. The place [where this is done is then] forbidden for sowing seed or for tilling, but it is permitted to comb flax and to hew stones.

1:
Once the elders from Jerusalem have completed their task of measuring the distances and determining which is the township nearest to the corpse which has been found they take their leave. It is now the task of the members of the local bet Din to perform the actual ceremony of decapitation. As our mishnah points out the Torah itself has already determined the nature of the sacrificial victim: it must be a female calf which is too young to ever have been used for agricultural labour.

2:
The only other ritual which is even remotely similar to this ritual of the 'decapitated calf' is that of the 'red heifer'. We have discussed this topic considerably when we studied Tractate Yadayyim. According to Numbers 19 a red-haired cow, with no physical blemishes, was to be killed and then incinerated, and the ashes, when mixed with water, were to serve a a means of purification from contact with a corpse. Our mishnah points out that although this ritual also involves a young heifer (female calf) the Torah does not require it to be free of physical blemishes as is the case with the 'red heifer'.

3:
The ceremony is to take place on the banks of a 'fast flowing stream'. The Hebrew phrase used in the Torah, which we have translated 'running water' actually means 'strong, firm', which our mishnah points out. It is clear that the term refers to a perennial stream, a stream which is strong enough to be flowing in all seasons, rather than a mere wadi, a stream which often dries up. However, since it is obvious that in Eretz-Israel there could be many places which have no perennial stream nearby, our mishnah points out that the choice of a perennial stream is only as a first preference, but there is none available even a wadi will do.

4:
The calf is to be decapitated there beside the stream by a hatchet blow on the back of its neck.

5:
The Torah [Deuteronomy 21:4] describes the place where the ceremony is to be held as being ground "which is neither plowed nor sown". The sages understand this phrase to mean that after the ceremony, the place where the calf was decapitated may not be used for agricultural purposes. The sages noted that what is mentioned by the Torah is sowing seed. From this they determined that what is prohibited by the Torah is agricultural activity which involves the ground itself, such as plowing and seeding. This excludes agricultural activities which are not necessarily dependent on the ground itself. Therefore, the site may later be used for such activities as combing flax and smashing stones, making them ready for building purposes.

Bruce Yeamans writes that in Sotah 097 the following comment was made: During the early decades of the first century CE legislation was initiated by the sages which was designed to reduce socializing of Jews with non-Jews to a very great degree – the so-called 'eighteen decrees' enacted by the Sanhedrin. Could you elaborate a little more on what these decrees contained?

I respond:

The Mishnah [Shabbat 1:4] relates that

These are the halakhot that they determined in the upper apartment of Ĥananyah ben-Ĥizkiyyah ben-Guryon, when they went to visit him. They took a vote and the school of Shammai outvoted the school of Hillel. On that day they decreed eighteen things.

From this mishnah is seems reasonably clear that due to a chance meeting of sages in a private apartment where many had gone to visit a sage who was convalescing from an illness, discovering for once that the followers of Shammai had a majority over the followers of Hillel they took the opportunity to pass a series of measures. The next few mishnayot detail some of these measures, of which some are clearly designed to prevent casual social contact between Jews and non-Jews in Eretz-Israel. For example [Shabbat 1:7]:

The school of Shammai say that one may not sell [anything] to a non-Jew, may not help him load up his beast [of burden]… but the school of Hillel permit.

Elsewhere [Avodah Zarah 35b] we learn, for example, that it was forbidden to borrow oil from non-Jews – a measure which, it seems, the general public refused to accept.

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