Sanhedrin 020

Today's shiur is dedicated by Cliff Fishman in memory of his father, Carl Fishman, Kalmon ben Moshe Leb v'Riva, whose Yahrzeit falls today.

1:
At the very beginning of Chapter One we explained the basic division of halakhic jurisprudence into Dinei Mamonot and Dinei Nefashot. The former was the subject of the first three mishnayot of this chapter, and is concerned with judgment of cases in which the accused, if found guilty, will forfeit some of his property. We now come to deal with the latter, which are crimes in which the accused, if found guilty, will forfeit his life. We have seen that Dinei Mamonot may be heard before a panel of three judges (in some cases just ordinary laymen sitting as a court of arbitration, and in others only fully qualified justices) – and in certain circumstances by one judge. Dinei Nefashot [capital indictments], must be heard before a panel of twenty-three fully qualified judges. These judges, therefore, fulfill the functions of both judge and jury in the Anglo-Saxon system: the are judges of both fact and law. In rabbinic terminology, such a court was also often referred to as a "minor Sanhedrin". (The term Sanhedrin is borrowed by Hebrew from the Greek, meaning a convocation, or a coming together.)

2:
Our mishnah skips over the obvious: that such a court has jurisdiction primarily over human beings indicted with having committed a capital offence, and moves straight to cases that are not immediately obvious: certain animals have to be killed only by judgment of the court – thus the juridical killing of an animal is just as serious as the juridical
killing of a human being!

3:
The Torah [Leviticus 20:15-16] reads as follows:-

In the case of these most unnatural acts the Torah stipulates that both the human and the non-human animal shall be put to death. In the case of the man it is obvious that the charge must be heard before a Court of Twenty-Three; the juxtaposition of the fate of the animal with the fate of the human being teaches, by hermeneutics, that whatever applies to the human animal shall also apply to the non-human animal. Thus an animal with whom a man cohabited must be put to death by order of a Court of Twenty-Three as well. The same hermeneutics can be applied in the case of a woman who submits herself to such unnatural intercourse: just as she is tried and condemned by a Court
of Twenty-Three, so shall the animal involved be killed by order of a Court of Twenty-Three.

4:
We have already had occasion to mention the ruling of the Torah concerning an ox that gores someone – but that was in a different context. We remind ourselves that the Torah [Exodus 21:28-30] stipulates that

The above translation is more interpretative than strictly accurate, and is also literal rather than reflecting the rabbinic interpretation of the text (as we reviewed it some weeks ago). This is in order to make the midrash of the Torah's text as presently done by the rabbis more easily understood.

5:
The Torah here stipulates that the ox be killed by stoning; thus, by proximate association, it may be assumed that the death of the owner [who failed to restrain his homicidal ox] should also be by stoning. (We here ignore the fact that the Torah also leaves room for a monetary forfeit to be accepted in lieu of the human life.) Since it would be impossible to conceive of a human being deprived of his life by judicial process except at the hands of a Court of Twenty- Three, it follows – by the same hermeneutics of proximate association – that the ox be judged similarly.

To be continued.