Sotah 051

18:
Our mishnah now brings a second group of women, five in number, who – like the fiancée and the woman waiting for her levir – are excused the drinking of the 'cursing waters' and also may not collect the money of their Ketubah. But each of these five women is in such a status for a reason different from the first two.

19:
The Torah itself [Leviticus 21:10-15] explicitly prohibits the High Priest from marrying a widow. The text reads as follows:

The priest – whether an ordinary priest or a high priest – was considered to have been hallowed, consecrated to his status and role. He had been deputed by God, as it were, from birth to serve in the sanctuary – and the high priest even more so. When the Bet Mikdash was still standing and the priests were active functionaries strict records were kept concerning the pedigree of the priestly caste. We described this when we studied both Tractate Kiddushin and Tractate Sanhedrin, and here is something I wrote then:

To be continued.

Quite some time ago I wrote that These four modes [of execution] were terminated, for all practical purposes, around the year 30 CE: people have not been put to death by a Jewish court for offences against the law for almost 2000 years.

Meir Noach writes:

I found this obscure quote: There was a period in thirteenth-century Spain when Beth Din exercised exigency jurisdiction, including carrying out of the death penalty. [A Restatement Of Rabbinic Civil Law Vol I, pg 25 Rabbi Emanuel Quint]. I also found in another book an example of this: In Jacob Isaacs, Our People History of the Jews, Volume 6 pages 199-200, I found what I think may be one of the last times a Jewish court gave a death sentence. The man executed was Joseph Pichon. He acted as the chief tax collector of King Henry of Christian Spain. He was found guilty of being an informer and a traitor to the Jewish community. The new King John I (1379-1390) was tricked by the rabbinical court into signing the death sentence. And when he found it was the tax collector that was killed, he put to death everyone who had taken part in the trail and forbade rabbinical courts from criminal trails and inflicting capital punishment.

I respond:

A careful reading of the very interesting information that Meir Noach provides will reveal that what I wrote is still essentially correct. The Spanish Bet Din to which the above excerpts refer was not able to inflict the death penalty and had to "trick" the civil authorities into carrying out a death sentence handed down by a Bet Din. The circumstances are extremely suspicious: the Bet Din was completely unqualified to try a capital case in Jewish law, and the case does not sound like one which would have incurred the death penalty even when there were such courts available.

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I wrote: The reason for Er's behaviour may be guessed at. It was probably caused for the same reasons as the Go'el in the story of Ruth refused to marry her: economic reasons.

Josh Greenfield corrects me:

I think you mean Onan's behavior here, not Er's. Er's sin is not mentioned – the Torah tells us in Bereishit 38:7 only that he was "evil in God's eyes, and God made him die." Various commentators speculate on what the sin was, but there seems to be no evidence in the text one way or another. It strikes me as curious, though, that Er (ayin-reish) is seen as evil (reish-ayin) in God's eyes. Perhaps God reads things differently than we do?