Q&A: On Ancient Laws and Legal Rules in the Torah
On Ancient Laws and Legal Rules in the Torah
Question
Hello,
I noticed that in the Torah there are all sorts of laws and legal rules that are no longer acceptable today, like stoning people to death, burning, and from Maimonides' laws I understood that there are various laws regarding women, like if she doesn't do what is incumbent upon her, then she should be punished / beaten or something along those lines. Now, the fact that this is very primitive and in my opinion was never right for any period is one thing, but I have a few questions about it—
1) Why do people basically "ignore" this, so to speak? It makes a lot of sense that over the years it fell away and wasn't accepted in Judaism because of its glaring mismatch with reality, but do people not relate to it that way spontaneously and naturally, or was there some point in history when they simply ruled that this is not how we act?
2) What is the difference between these legal rules and laws and other commandments in Judaism? Why were other laws kept relevant? Because they aren't harmful?
If so, doesn't that somewhat indicate that they dropped this purely for practical reasons and because it didn't fit reality, and not because "that's what God commanded"…
Answer
These questions require systematic study, and it is clear that you are missing a great deal of information and understanding in the field of Jewish law. It is hard to spell it all out here. Briefly: many of the punishments were not written in the first place in order to be carried out, and the policy was always not to implement them in practice. A Sanhedrin that executed one person in seventy years was called destructive. Some argue that this was never implemented at all (Prof. Aharon Shemesh, of blessed memory, in his book on punishment). I would remind you that even today there are death penalties in the world, and it is not at all clear that countries that abolished them are more enlightened. There are laws that depend on the existence of an authorized religious court, which has not existed for thousands of years. There are many laws that are definitely practical and appropriate even though to a modern eye they do not look that way. Not everything modern is necessarily better. Modern society and morality also have their own pathologies.
Discussion on Answer
1. Indeed, unfortunately girls are not taught Torah seriously enough (and boys aren't always either, of course), and that's a shame.
But if you are interested, I would recommend that you fill in the gaps.
2. Punishments can be written in order to sharpen the severity of the act. For example, that is how they explain “an eye for an eye,” where Jewish law rules that monetary compensation is collected.
3. Regarding the death penalty, you made assumptions and I responded to them. So I do not understand how you are now saying that this is a matter for experts. If it is a matter for experts, then leave it to them. To say that it is anachronistic and unhelpful is legitimate, but to say that it is appropriate and beneficial is a matter for experts?! It's hard to have a discussion that way.
4. There is definitely room to learn from and apply what is good and right, and that is done. But in order to apply it, one has to know Jewish law and its assumptions, the relationship between it and morality, between the rulings and their implementation, and then one can examine how and whether to apply it.
I'll respond only to point 3, because on the rest I understood and accepted what you said. I was talking about punishments in the Torah, not in the modern world. Even if there is a death penalty in certain countries, I'm sure that's under very severe circumstances, and not for sexual orientation for example, or for beating a woman who supposedly doesn't do what is incumbent upon her. That is mainly where my puzzlement comes from—about the reason for the punishment, not the punishment itself. The punishment itself also isn't understandable, because as far as I know nobody burns or stones people, not even in the most severe cases… From that point on, determining whether the death penalty, even in extreme cases, is generally right or wrong—that's no longer my place. But my puzzlement was about the Torah, given the puzzling circumstances. That's just what I wanted to clarify.
Here we have to get into the question of what counts as severe circumstances. In a secular world, where only morality plays a role, severity applies only to murder, rape, and the like. In a religious world there are additional values, and some of them are treated with great severity. Of course one may reject that, but then you are not religious and there is no common basis for discussion.
Beyond that, a person who acts on his sexual orientation would not be stoned by anyone (in practice, almost no one is ever stoned, as I already wrote). He is completely under compulsion. The same applies to someone who desecrates the Sabbath and does not believe in the Torah. In Jewish law there is no stringency regarding the circumstances that obligate the death penalty. Very extreme conditions have to be met in order to execute a person: two witnesses and not circumstantial evidence; prior warning that includes the transgression and the punishment; the transgressor must answer: yes, I know all that, and with that in mind I am doing it. This cannot really happen (and if someone actually does answer and accepts the warning upon himself, in my opinion he is exempt from execution under the law of an incompetent person). So there is nothing unusual or special here that requires justification.
So are you basically saying that someone who does not accept the Torah and its laws is considered "under compulsion" in his way of thinking, so to speak? And the laws don't really apply to him? And if he accepts the existence of God but not the Torah, is he still exempt?
It's not that he does not accept it upon himself, but that he does not think it is binding. That is a very big difference, because the first is a transgressor and the second is under compulsion (in his thinking).
Hello Rabbi,
If there is no possibility of execution because anyone who accepts the warning and says “I desecrate the Sabbath even though I will die” is deemed incompetent,
then how did they execute Zelophehad
and the son of Shimon ben Shetach?
I added the remark about an incompetent person somewhat jokingly. But truthfully, it is fairly reasonable. Maybe we are talking about a person who kills out of anger but is loyal to the Jewish law that makes him liable to death. In any case, this really does seem like a declarative law rather than a practical one (see the most recent column, 636).
Who said that they executed Zelophehad according to that procedure? Especially since Tosafot on Bava Batra wrote that they executed him not in accordance with the law, in order that people should see and fear.
And regarding the son of Shimon ben Shetach, same thing.
You should have asked from the Mishnah in Makkot about a destructive Sanhedrin.
I'll start by saying that I'm a woman, and they don't teach us Torah from a broad or outside-looking perspective on Jewish law (maybe for men it's different). The knowledge of Jewish law is mainly just the simple and relevant laws themselves, that's it—like the laws of the Sabbath, modesty, and whatever is relevant to us (say, the laws of tefillin are not, to put it mildly). So the meaning of Jewish law and its underlying reasons, all the more so, are not my area, and that's okay—everyone has what they're good at. That's why I came and asked. There are people who can draw conclusions on their own without checking, so I'm still an easy case. I just happened to come across various things that puzzled me and that I'd never heard of, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. As for the matter itself—
Why would punishments be written not in order to be carried out?
As for the death penalty, I'm not getting into whether it's good or not; many people better than me can judge that based on statistics, surveys, and worldwide studies. That's not my place.
As for laws that depend on an authorized religious court, specifically that I do know on a superficial level, but I don't think it changes the basic fact that they are still not moral…
I didn't say that everything modern is necessarily good. I was actually trying to speak generally and say that in no period was this relevant. Maybe there are things in modernization that aren't so good, but nothing is perfect, unlike the Torah, which yes, should be (in the end, after weighing everything, I don't have the energy to get into definitions and what exactly perfection means), and therefore my expectations of it are higher. Maybe one can learn from the modern world in terms of actual results and see what is good and what isn't, but I am not making that comparison from the outset.