Sanhedrin 088

Today's shiur is dedicated by Eva and Harry Pick in memory of their Mother, Margareth Pick, Yochebed bat Yosef, whose first Yahrzeit falls today.

1:
The four methods of putting a person to death that were available to the courts were as defined by our mishnah: stoning (which has already been the subject of a detailed description) burning, decapitation and strangulation. This does not mean that the courts had the right to select which of these ways would be used to remove a criminal from this world. Each of the four procedures was linked with specific infractions of Torah law, and if a person had been found guilty then the method of execution associated with that crime was mandatory.

2:
The Gemara [Sanhedrin 49b-50a] explains that these four deaths are listed by our mishnah in order of descending severity. The reason for this is that – as we shall learn in chapter 9 – if a criminal were found guilty on two separate counts and each of those counts had a different mode of execution associated with it, then – since only one mode could be used on any one person! – the more severe mode of the two was to be applied, whichever one was nearer the head of the list. This also explains the maĥloket [difference of opinion] between Rabbi Shim'on bar-Yoĥai and Tanna Kamma: Rabbi Shim'on accepts, of course, the four modes of execution, but he sees them in a different order of descending severity. (As is almost invariable, his view is rejected in favour of the view of Tanna Kamma.)

3:
Rambam [Maimonides] in his Mishnah Commentary points out that the rather enigmatic last sentence of our mishnah merely remarks that in previous mishnayot (in chapter 6) we have been given a full description of execution by stoning. The next mishnah (7:2) will describe "burning" and 7:3 will describe decapitation and strangulation.

4:
The Mishnah will enumerate later on for which infractions of the law each mode was mandated. However, it might be useful to do so at this point as well in order to afford us some orientation and also in order to show the extent of the embrace of judicial execution.

In his great code Mishneh Torah, Rambam [Moses Maimonides, North Africa, 12th century CE] lists the offences [Sanhedrin 15:10-13] as follows:

STONING was mandated for the 18 offences for which the Bible had expressly prescribed it:

Illicit copulation with one's mother, step-mother or daughter-in-law; with an affianced woman; homosexual acts; bestiality; blasphemy; idolatry; holding a seance; Shabbat desecration; insubordination to parents and a couple of other offences – eighteen in all.

BURNING

Burning remained confined to the adultery of a priest's daughter and to certain forms of incest not included in the previous category – ten offences in all.

DECAPITATION

Decapitation by the sword was the mode of executing murderers and the inhabitants of the subverted town – two offences in all.

STRANGULATION

Strangulation is mandated where no other mode of execution is prescribed: in cases of adultery, mayhem on a parent, kidnapping, the insubordinate sage, the false prophet and the idolatrous prophet – six offences in all.

As Rambam points out: this makes a total of 36 capital offences.

5:
These offences will be detailed again in chapter 9, so I do not intend discussing them in detail at this stage. Nowadays, with no Sanhedrin, they are all academic. However, it may be instructive to note which offences were considered so heinous by the Torah that they deserved the ultimate penalty. Perhaps two categories seem to us today to be incongruous: the death penalty for certain sexual offences as the death penalty for Sabbath desecration.

In our last shiur we mentioned that the relatives would collect the bones of the deceased after the putrefaction of the flesh [Likkut Atzamot] and would bury them finally.

Albert Ringer asks:

In modern Ashkenazy judaism (I don't know about sephardim) it is custumary to put the matzevah on the grave after a year. Where does the custom come from? Is there any relation to likud atzamot?

I respond:

Our sources make no connection between the ancient custom of Likkut Atzamot and the setting up of a headstone [Matzevah] over a grave. The most immediate source for the custom to wait one year before setting up a tombstone is in the Kitzur Shulĥan Arukh of Rabbi Shelomo Ganzfried [Central Europe, 1804-1886] in paragraph 193:17, where he explains that "there are places where it is the custom not to set up a tombstone before twelve months have elapsed [after the burial] because sadness is with us for twelve months and this [the setting up of the stone] signifies importance [which is incongruous with a sombre mood]. Another reason is that the purpose of the stone is so that we do not forget the deceased, and that process would not start until twelve months have passed". Ganzfried also notes that many places do not observe thus custom of waiting one year before setting up the tombstone. This is certainly the case in the State of Israel, where the prevalent custom is to set up the tombstone on the day of the Sheloshim, the 30th day after burial, which marks the end of the second stage of mourning.

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In our last shiur I wrote (on this same subject) that At the end of the first year the family were permitted to come and retrieve the skeletal remains and bury them in their own place of burial.

Ze'ev Orzech writes:

Does this imply that there were publicly owned places (caves) in which the body of a criminal was laid out to which the family had no access until a year had passed? Was this true of all metim [cadavers]?

I respond:

We learned at the end of mishnah 5 of chapter 6 that the court had two cemeteries, one for those executed by decapitation or strangulation, and the other for those executed by stoning or burning. Thus it is clear that these were "publicly owned places (caves) in which the body of a criminal was laid out. I do not see why we would also have to infer that the family had no access to this place. This was certainly not true of other burials, which traditionally took place in the "family plot", as I explained in that shiur. The remains of the criminal were united with the remains of his family and ancestors only after "atonement" for his crime had been achieved by his violent death, subsequent humiliation, separate burial and the complete decomposition of the flesh.