A Rare Moment of Good Taste: b.Sanhedrin 55

Yesterday’s daf, and the one that preceded it, saw the sages hard at work getting into the nitty gritty details of various behaviors they saw as sexual perversions meriting stoning. Today’s page continues in this vein, and honestly, I’m going to spare you all the details of the first few insights on the topic, which I read so that you don’t have to. Suffice to say, there’s some conversation comparing the sentences for attempted sexual assault to completed sexual assault, and the distinctions they make are everything you would expect from a group of old men debating this in a particularly crass locker room circa 400 CE. But then there’s a rare moment of redemptive good taste:

בְּעָא מִינֵּיהּ רַב אַחָדְבוּי בַּר אַמֵּי מֵרַב שֵׁשֶׁת: הַמְעָרֶה בְּעַצְמוֹ, מַהוּ? אֲמַר לֵיהּ: קְבַסְתַּן!

In other words, Rav Aḥadevoi bar Ami asked Rav Sheshet about the appropriate sentence for someone who attempts to engage in sexual activity with himself, and Rav Sheshet exclaims: Ewwwww! You’re gross! You make me barf! Not to worry, this refined sentiment fades fast, and they get straight to it (namely, whether it is possible, and how, etc.) Amazingly, the scenario that grossed Rav Sheshet out is pretty tame compared to all the other scenarios floated about and expounded upon in this daf, but I was encouraged to see a brief respite from the locker room talk.

One thing that did catch my eye about this daf, without too much elaboration, is that abusing animals here is not seen through the lens of צער בעלי חיים – the care for the animal’s pain and suffering – but through the lens of defilement, where the poor animal is being portrayed as complicit. The question arises whether, when a person is stoned to death for abusing an animal, the animal itself must also be killed–and not as euthanasia to prevent further suffering, but:

שֶׁלֹּא תְּהֵא בְּהֵמָה עוֹבֶרֶת בַּשּׁוּק וְיֹאמְרוּ: ״זוֹ הִיא שֶׁנִּסְקַל פְּלוֹנִי עַל יָדָהּ״.

You see, they don’t want the poor animal to pass through the market and to have people say, “this is the animal due to which so-and-so was stoned.”

You’ll forgive me, but I think I’m pretty done with Sanhedrin 55. We’ll continue with this tomorrow.