Plotting the Tube of Blood: b.Sanhedrin 52

There’s a 60-year-old apocryphal story about Haim Hanani, then-President of the Technion (one of Israel’s most prominent STEM educational institutions and home to Nobel prize winners), according to which he once asked candidates for the entering engineering class, how to plan a 200-mile-long tube to transport blood. The students all asked questions about the technical specs, and not a single student asked, “why would you want to transport blood, and where would the blood come from?” According to the story, Hanani used this experiment to advocate for the introduction of humanities’ studies at the Technion. 

This story is a good introduction to several upcoming talmud pages, in which the sages discuss the nitty-gritty details of executions they never ordered or performed–for the sake of the intellectual exercise. To see what such information looks like when it’s actually drafted to be put to use, I looked up current execution protocols in all U.S. states. One interesting detail about this table is the prevalence of secrecy provisions. Nebraska law, for example, states: “(2) The iden­ti­ty of all mem­bers of the exe­cu­tion team, and any infor­ma­tion rea­son­ably cal­cu­lat­ed to lead to the iden­ti­ty of such mem­bers, shall be con­fi­den­tial and exempt from dis­clo­sure pur­suant to sec­tions 84 – 712 to 84 – 712.09 and shall not be sub­ject to dis­cov­ery or intro­duc­tion as evi­dence in any civ­il pro­ceed­ing unless extra­or­di­nary good cause is shown and a pro­tec­tive order is issued by a dis­trict court lim­it­ing dis­sem­i­na­tion of such information.” Ohio law states: “(B) If, at any time pri­or to the day that is twen­ty-four months after the effec­tive date of this sec­tion, a per­son man­u­fac­tures, com­pounds, imports, trans­ports, dis­trib­utes, sup­plies, pre­scribes, pre­pares, admin­is­ters, uses, or tests any of the com­pound­ing equip­ment or com­po­nents, the active phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal ingre­di­ents, the drugs or com­bi­na­tion of drugs, the med­ical sup­plies, or the med­ical equip­ment used in the appli­ca­tion of a lethal injec­tion of a drug or com­bi­na­tion of drugs in the admin­is­tra­tion of a death sen­tence by lethal injec­tion as pro­vid­ed for in divi­sion (A) of sec­tion 2949.22 of the Revised Code, notwith­stand­ing any pro­vi­sion of law to the con­trary, all of the fol­low­ing apply regard­ing any infor­ma­tion or record in the pos­ses­sion of any pub­lic office that iden­ti­fies or rea­son­ably leads to the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the per­son and the per­son­’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in any activ­i­ty described in this divi­sion: (1) The infor­ma­tion or record shall be clas­si­fied as con­fi­den­tial, is priv­i­leged under law, and is not sub­ject to dis­clo­sure by any per­son, state agency, gov­ern­men­tal enti­ty, board, or com­mis­sion or any polit­i­cal sub­di­vi­sion as a pub­lic record under sec­tion 149.43 of the Revised Code or otherwise.” Which raises the question: if what is happening here is not cruel or unusual–maybe even kind and usual–then why the secrecy?

I think the talmudic lack of shame about this, and many other crass subjects, stems from the fact that they are not in the business of prescribing or proscribing rules, but rather elucidating and interpreting biblical verses according to logical structures. Still, it’s jarring to see them dig for verses to support the minutiae of different forms of execution. Today we’re looking at three execution protocols: burning, decapitation, and strangulation.

Burning

The mishna provides a truly absurd mix of pain and pain alleviation. The condemned must be sunk in dung to his knees and his neck must be wrapped in a hard scarf wrapped in a soft scarf (after all, we want to burn you to death, not scratch your neck). Two people grab the ends of the scarf and pull until the condemned opens his mouth; then, they light up the wick and throw it into his mouth, where it descends into his intestines and burns them. An episode in which a priest’s daughter was placed amidst piles of sticks to which the executioners set fire is explained away as inexperience (one sage even says, “I remember being little on my father’s shoulder and seeing that,” and others replying, “you were little and you’re probably misremembering,” קָטָן הָיִיתָ, וְאֵין מְבִיאִין רְאָיָה מִן הַקָּטָן).

That’s a pretty specific description of a sentence the sages had never seen, so to support the description they rely on two biblical stories: the burning of Korah and his clan and the death of the sons of Aaron. From the language in the biblical description, the sages deduce that those were internal, rather than external burnings (“burning the soul but the body exists”, שְׂרֵיפַת נְשָׁמָה וְגוּף קַיָּים). The wildest of proofs comes from Aba Yosi ben Dostai, who describes the sons’ deaths as if two strings of fire coming out of the temple, splitting into four, with each string entering the nostril of one of the brothers (שְׁנֵי חוּטִין שֶׁל אֵשׁ יָצְאוּ מִבֵּית קוֹדֶשׁ הַקֳּדָשִׁים וְנֶחְלְקוּ לְאַרְבַּע, וְנִכְנְסוּ שְׁנַיִם בְּחוֹטְמוֹ שֶׁל זֶה וּשְׁנַיִם בְּחוֹטְמוֹ שֶׁל זֶה וּשְׂרָפוּם). The amazing thing is that there’s an effort to sanitize the execution through the idea that loving the other as yourself means choosing “a beautiful death” for them – אָמַר קְרָא ״וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוֹךָ״, בְּרוֹר לוֹ מִיתָה יָפָה – which is so much like the constant efforts to sanitize, medicalize, and silo killing, from executions to euthanasia.

Decapitation

I’m sure you’re all eager to find out about decapitation now. What’s notable is that the talmudic description struggles with the fact that foreign nations use the same sentence. The mishna says that the Israelite sentence was performed with a sword “as the king does” (כְּדֶרֶךְ שֶׁהַמַּלְכוּת עוֹשָׂה). Rabbi Yehuda points out the degradation involved and says that the condemned head must be placed on a block and chopped with a cleaver. In the gemara, there’s an expansion of this debate. Rabbi Yehuda says, “I know it’s a rough death, but what can I do (אֲבָל מָה אֶעֱשֶׂה)? We’ve been ordered not to follow the gentiles, so we have do do it a different way.” The other rabbis reply that execution by sword is actually prescribed in the Torah, which uses the term “by the sword” (לְפִי חָרֶב) and the saying, “I shall bring the sword of revenge of the covenant upon you” (הֵבֵאתִי עֲלֵיכֶם חֶרֶב נֹקֶמֶת נְקַם בְּרִית). The precise nature of the use of the sword is also deduced from the terminology: the rabbis deduce that the term לְפִי חָרֶב implies the edge of the sword, rather than the point, and thus we have decapitation rather than stabbing. And as to the issue that someone actually brings up–what if the executioner just decides to cut the person by half–the rabbis say, remember to love the other as your own and pick a beautiful death for him.

Strangulation

The mishnaic description of strangulation is very much like the beginning of burning: the condemned is sunk in dung to his knees, wrapped in a hard scarf padded by a soft scarf (for comfort) and two people pull the edges away to cut air support. The gemara sees this sentence as the most humane, least painful, of the lot (see here) and use the rule of lenity to argue that any unspecified death must be the most lenient one (כָּל מָקוֹם שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר מִיתָה בְּתוֹרָה סְתָם, אֵין אַתָּה רַשַּׁאי לְמוֹשְׁכָהּ לְהַחְמִיר עָלֶיהָ, אֶלָּא לְהָקֵל עָלֶיהָ). This discussion, however, is still marred by the original debate over which execution method truly is the least severe (with some still arguing that decapitation should be the most lenient default option).

Tune in tomorrow for the fourth execution method: stoning.