Sanhedrin 082

1:
We now arrive at the immediate preparations for the execution. The removal of the condemned person's clothes is not, of course, in order to shame them, but in order to lessen the suffering that they were about to undergo and in order to make their death as swift as possible [Rambam, Mishnah Commentary]. Men, it is explained, were stripped and then their genitals were covered in front with a small cloth. As regards women, our mishnah describes a difference of view in this matter between Rabbi Yehudah and the rest of the sages. According to Rabbi Yehudah, women too were stripped, but their genitalia were then covered both in front and behind; the rest of the sages held that women were completely covered in a smock. Let me remind us at this point of what I wrote in our shiur of January 11th:

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.

2:
We have already had occasion [Sanhedrin 080] to quote the Biblical text in question in a different context. It is to be found in the book of Leviticus 24:10-14:

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.

3:
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.

4:
I would like to add here a consideration that is not part of our text. We have quoted the Biblical verse "Love your fellow-man as yourself" and we have also quoted the equally famous elaboration of that verse given by Hillel: "Do not do to other people what you would not like them to do to you: this is the whole [essence of] Torah and the rest is elucidation. Now go and study [the elucidation]". Hillel lived during the last decades of the previous era and during the first decades of the common era. (He died probably around the year 20 CE.) In the world at large certainly better-known is the interpretation of the verse given by Hillel's younger contemporary, Jesus of Nazareth (and often referred to as "the Golden Rule"). It is interesting to point out that the latter quotes (or misquotes) Hillel but gives his version in the positive: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". I suggest that each person ponder how he or she would like the rest of the world to "love" them. Is it to be preferred that they act towards us according to what they would want? Or is it to be preferred that they would never act towards us in a way that they would find untoward? At the risk of seeming flippant I would like to quote in this regard the great Irish savant George Bernard Shaw. One of Shaw's greatest plays was "Man and Superman", and he appended to that play "Maxims for Revolutionaries" – witty and iconoclastic. About "the Golden Rule" he says the following:

The Golden Rule is that there are no golden rules.

More to the point of our discussion is his quip:

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

I can't help feeling that Hillel would have approved.

In our shiur of January 28th I used the term "Afterlife". Rémy Landau writes:

If this is not getting too far ahead of your shiurim, there is reference to "a share in the world to come" in the text that opens the discussion. Can you or will you be explaining the concept of that phrase?

I respond:

The Hebrew term which I translated "Afterlife" is Olam ha-Ba. A literal rendition of that term would be "the world to come". However we translate the term it is fraught with problems! I have deliberately refrained from addressing this issue at this stage since it is the direct object of discussion in the first mishnah of Chapter Ten. I suspect that when we get there it will take no small amount of our time!