Today we’re going over two pages (the Shabbat page and today’s). I might make this a habit, as our family Saturdays are packed with the holy religion of children’s sports. We’ll see how it goes. Anyway, the bulk of both pages is a continuous discussion of the offense of idolatry.
The beginning of p. 60, though, continues the rabbinical discussion from pp. 57-59 about the universal application of various obligations. Rabbi Shimon, you might remember, thought the prohibition on witchcraft applies to Jews and gentiles alike. The reasoning is that the prohibition uses universal language: ״מְכַשֵּׁפָה לֹא תְחַיֶּה״ (“thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”), which includes various commandments, including the prohibition against bestiality, that do have universal application. A similar maneuver is used by Rabbi Elazar to universalize the prohibition on mixing different types of seed and textile. This issue relates directly to the question of the two covenants, which came up in the previous pages: the Noahide one, which applies to all humans, and the Sinaitic one, which applies to Israelites/Jews. The rabbis carefully parse the obligation language: the phrase ״וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם אֶת חֻקֹּתַי״ (and you shall keep my statutes) refers to statutes handed now, whereas the phrase ״אֶת חֻקֹּתַי תִּשְׁמֹרוּ״ (my statutes you shall keep) refers to statutes generally, in principle (including the ones already in place.) Which, to me at least, sounds like the vast difference between the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front.
The page now returns to an issue we had discarded halfway through: the criminal trials of blasphemers, specifically the prohibition on witnesses to utter the blasphemy even when reporting the out-of-court statement. Remember that the witnesses have to use the euphemism YOSE in lieu of the actual name? They carve out the elements of the offense: to be liable, one must use at least the Tetragrammaton (the four-letter name of God); the two-leter YH is not enough for committing the offense.
Thing is, if the witnesses and judges were all talking around the issue, how can we be sure what the defendant said? The mishna teaches that when the judgment is over, one witness (the eldest) says the actual name that was uttered, and then the judges rise and tear their garment. The gemara finds biblical anchoring for this custom. In Judges 3:20, when Ehud comes to give news to Eglon the Moabite, he says, “I have a message from God to you”, and Eglon rises => the judges must rise (and if a gentile rose, Israelites surely must!). And in II Kings 18:37, after Rabshakeh gives his Mouth-of-Sauron speech, the Judean officials tear their garments => so must the judges. The judges must not mend their clothes, which they get from the emphasis and repetition in the description of Elisha tearing his garments (וַיִּקְרָעֵם לִשְׁנַיִם קְרָעִים, and he tore them into two pieces). The witnesses do not need to do so, as they would presumably have already done so when they heard the blasphemy in the first place. And the best zinger of the lot is this:
וּפְלִיגִי דְּרַבִּי חִיָּיא בְּתַרְוַיְיהוּ, דְּאָמַר רַבִּי חִיָּיא: הַשּׁוֹמֵעַ אַזְכָּרָה בִּזְמַן הַזֶּה אֵינוֹ חַיָּיב לִקְרוֹעַ, שֶׁאִם אִי אַתָּה אוֹמֵר כֵּן – נִתְמַלֵּא כׇּל הַבֶּגֶד קְרָעִים.
Meaning, there’s a controversy over whether, nowadays there’s a need to tear one’s cloth when hearing blasphemy; Rabbi Hiya says one doesn’t have to, otherwise the entire garment will be torn to pieces, which is such a poetic way to convey desensitization; others dispute this, doubting we’ve become so bad-spoken and suggesting that one still needs to tear their clothes when hearing blasphemy by a Jew.
The last issue the sages flag here is the deviation from the usual procedure, in which witnesses do not testify in each other’s presence to prevent them from hearing each other’s testimony (and thus tailoring their testimony to harmonize with that of other witnesses.) In modern U.S. evidence law, this is addressed in Rule 615, which was recently amended to clarify that, in addition to excluding witnesses from the courtroom, the court may also prohibit the excluded witness from learning about, obtaining, or being provided with trial testimony. The blasphemy business, though, requires an exception from this rule, because how will witness #2 be able to say “I heard that also”? Apparently, the concern about repeating the blasphemy outweighs the concern of witness collusion–both in two witnesses and in three.
Which brings us to a new issue: the definition of idolatry, an offense punishable by death. The mishna lists the forms of punshable idolatry, distinguishing them other forms of dealing with idols, such as cuddling and bathing them, which are not punishable:
מַתְנִי׳ הָעוֹבֵד עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה: אֶחָד הָעוֹבֵד, וְאֶחָד הַמְזַבֵּחַ, וְאֶחָד הַמְקַטֵּר, וְאֶחָד הַמְנַסֵּךְ, וְאֶחָד הַמִּשְׁתַּחֲוֶה, וְאֶחָד הַמְקַבְּלוֹ עָלָיו לֶאֱלוֹהַּ, וְהָאוֹמֵר לוֹ ״אֵלִי אַתָּה״.
אֲבָל הַמְגַפֵּף, וְהַמְנַשֵּׁק, וְהַמְכַבֵּד, וְהַמְרַבֵּץ, וְהַמְרַחֵץ, וְהַסָּךְ, וְהַמַּלְבִּישׁ, וְהַמַּנְעִיל – עוֹבֵר בְּלֹא תַעֲשֶׂה. הַנּוֹדֵר בִּשְׁמוֹ, וְהַמְקַיֵּים בִּשְׁמוֹ – עוֹבֵר בְּלֹא תַעֲשֶׂה.
הַפּוֹעֵר עַצְמוֹ לְבַעַל פְּעוֹר – זוֹ הִיא עֲבוֹדָתָהּ. הַזּוֹרֵק אֶבֶן לְמַרְקוּלִיס – זוֹ הִיא עֲבוֹדָתָהּ.
One of the most interesting bits about the gemara on this is the interest the sages have in foreign forms of worship. Rabbi Yirmeyah says that bowing to an idol, even if it’s not the usual manner of worshiping that particular idol, is prohibited (there are verses about idol worship that specifically mention bowing, from which they deduce that bowing is especially offensive). The sages pay special attention to the punishable worship of idols in the same way that the Jewish God is worshipped, to prevent a situation where they accidentally prohibit the proper form and target of worship. Some sages believe that cuddling with idols, which is not mentioned, is not forbidden; others believe that the term “bowing” is a general term meant to imply all forms of idol worship–or at least to any worshipful behavior that would be honorable re the Jewish God but is dishonorable re idols.
The rabbis then elicit a principle of “transferred intention”: if one performs an idolatrous labor thinking of another idolatrous labor, the offense is still punishable, as the intent shifts from labor to labor (דִּמְחַשְּׁבִין מֵעֲבוֹדָה לַעֲבוֹדָה). This reminds me a bit of the transferred intent doctrine in modern criminal law: if you wanted to kill A but killed B, your intent to commit murder carries and you are culpable either way. But the sages raise another problem with transferred intention in the context of idolatry: Slaughtering animals, they say, is allowed for mundane purposes. But what if the intent (to use the blood for idol worship) does not come to fruition? There’s a conflict of opinion, and some debate over whether the issue is the person’s liability or the dead animal’s suitability for mundane labors.
So, there’s a lot more of this here, but I want to turn to a little side issue. Often, when relaying a debate, there’s a little tidbit about when and where the conversation happened. Somewhere on page 61, we learn the following:
רַב הַמְנוּנָא אִירְכַסוּ לֵיהּ תּוֹרֵי. פְּגַע בֵּיהּ רַבָּה, רְמָא לֵיהּ מַתְנְיָתִין אַהֲדָדֵי: תְּנַן ״הָעוֹבֵד עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה״ – עוֹבֵד אִין, אוֹמֵר לָא. וְהָאֲנַן תְּנַן: ״הָאוֹמֵר ׳אֶעֱבוֹד׳, ׳אֵלֵךְ וְאֶעֱבוֹד׳, ׳נֵלֵךְ וְנַעֲבוֹד׳״?
Rav Hamnuna lost his oxen and, presumably when searching for them, ran into Rabba, who joined him, and along the way they chatted about a contradiction between two mishnayot, which reach opposite conclusions about the liability of someone who declares he’s going to worship an idol but doesn’t actually do it. I love that whoever redacted this stuff wanted to provide us the mental image of these two guys, walking around, looking for oxen, and hashing out the mishnaic contradictions. But the linguistic issue they raise is interesting, because modern law, too, struggles with the point at which declaring an intent becomes an act. Is declaring “I’m going to go worship idols” merely speech, or is it speech-act, which might spur toward idol worship, or which is somehow performative on its own?
One difficult case involves a person who posits themselves as a god and asks others to worship them. The way the sages address this scenario is pretty cool. Some worry that this incitement is worrisome, because folks might be persuaded (שָׁמְעִי לֵיהּ) and some think that it’s harmless, because people will likely say, “how is he different than us?” mock the guy, and then no harm is done. The sages consider that inciting an individual can work, but trying to sway a whole group of people will likely not work, as there will probably be more inertia in a group and less deviant energy.
וּמַתְנְיָתִין: כָּאן בְּיָחִיד הַנִּיסָּת, כָּאן בְּרַבִּים הַנִּיסָּתִים. יָחִיד – לָא מִימְּלַךְ, וְטָעֵי בָּתְרֵיהּ; רַבִּים – מִימַּלְכִי, וְלָא טָעוּ בָּתְרֵיהּ.
And the contradiction between the mishnayot can be resolved as follows: There, where the mishna states that one is liable for speech alone, the reference is to an individual who was incited; here, where the mishna indicates that one is not liable for speech alone, it is referring to a case of an incited multitude of people. The Gemara explains: An individual who was incited does not typically change his mind, and he goes astray after idol worship. Therefore, once he agrees to the suggestion to worship an idol, he has fully accepted the idol upon himself as a god and is liable. By contrast, a multitude of people are apt to change their minds, and consequently they do not go astray after idol worship.
This makes me think of the many studies on cults I read when working on Yesterday’s Monsters, and on the acquisition of followers one by one. The sages don’t seem to consider a scenario in which the cult leader accrues a critical mass of worshippers, which would make it easier to tip the scales for the as-of-yet unconvinced. To the extent that the matter of who is swayed, how many, and by whom, has some implications as to the punishment–and the sages debate whether it makes a difference re stoning-vs.-beheading–the arguments that are being made are more about anchoring the punishments in verse than about the psychology of cult suasion.
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