Question

Hello Rabbi Michi,
With your permission, I’m gathering here a few comments/questions that came to me regarding the beginning of tractate Sanhedrin (which I learned in part with the Rabbi’s excellent pages on the tractate—many thanks). I’d be glad if the Rabbi could briefly address some of them, and apologies in advance for the length (I tried to shorten it as much as I could) –

1. On page 8a, the Talmud offers a series of explanations for how to set up the dispute between Rabbi Meir and the Sages regarding one who brings a false defamation claim against his wife. How does the Rabbi understand those explanations? What is the idea of setting up a simple dispute in the Mishnah as a very marginal case? Are these ukimtot? If so, what are they meant to teach us, according to the Rabbi’s approach that an ukimta comes to remove a side obstacle? Is what the Sages and Rabbi Meir wanted to teach us specifically some small law about warning a learned woman, and they chose to teach it in the vague language of “one who brings a false defamation claim is judged by twenty-three,” in the middle of a Mishnah that is otherwise dealing not with side details but with core laws?
2. On page 13b: during the dispute between Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Yehuda about the laying on of hands by the elders on the bull brought for the community’s unwitting error, Rabbi Yehuda proves that the word “and they shall lay” must be expounded (adding two more to the count of elders) with the answer: “For if not—if ‘and they shall lay’ were not coming for exposition—then it should have written: ‘the elders of the congregation, their hands, on the head of the bull.’” At first glance the exposition is strange—was the verse supposed to say, “The elders of the congregation their hands on the head of the bull before the Lord, and he shall slaughter the bull before the Lord”? That wording makes no sense at all. I found Malbim who explains it (though it seems somewhat forced linguistically—he assumes it should have said “and the elders of the congregation shall lay”), and I’d be glad to hear whether the Rabbi has another explanation.
3. On page 15a, in the discussion of one who copulates with a male animal—the Talmud there seems to derive the law in two stages, as I understand it. First, it derives the verse “whoever lies with an animal” via the hermeneutic of “if it is not needed for the matter itself” to refer to the passive party; then afterward there is an analogy between the active and passive parties—so is this an analogy between the plain meaning and the exposition of the verse? Between the word actually written and the word we derived through “if it is not needed for the matter itself”? I heard an explanation that the analogy is between the verse in Leviticus (“a man who gives his emission”) and the verse in Exodus, but I seem to remember hearing from the Rabbi that an analogy must be within the same verse or the same context in the Torah (and certainly not between different books). How should this derivation be understood?
4. On page 16a, the Talmud derives several matters from an exposition on “every major matter,” and infers from differences in wording between Jethro’s words and Moses’ description of the implementation. Is it reasonable to infer so precisely from the wording of an incidental statement of Jethro’s? This is really deriving substantive Jewish laws about the number of judges from something Jethro said. Could it be that Jethro said something in one formulation, and when Moses our Teacher wrote the Torah he wrote a different formulation so that something could be derived from it? If so, where is the line drawn? Maybe statements of Aaron, or of the daughters of Zelophehad, from which things are learned, were not said that way at all, and Moses wrote them on his own? It is hard for me, as a matter of logic, to accept the derivation of laws from something that was not a command from the Holy One, especially when it is such a statement…
5. On page 17a, regarding Rav’s a fortiori argument about declaring the creeping animal pure—I thought this is an interesting example of an a fortiori argument in which the refutation is not a refutation of columns/rows, but a refutation of the very basic assumption of the a fortiori argument (that there is a common characteristic producing the stringency in the columns and rows). Here there is an a fortiori argument like the ones that appear in the Torah (with one given factor): a snake is at a level of killing and impurity of 2X and yet is pure; a creeping animal, which is at a level of killing and impurity of X—should it not be pure? And the refutation is not something lighter than a creeping animal that is impure, but a thorn, which is, say, at level 1.5X and impure—meaning the very connection between the degree of “killing” and purity is rejected. Does the Rabbi also understand the a fortiori argument this way?
6. On page 18a, when the Talmud tries to determine whether a High Priest goes into exile, it raises the initial possibility that one who has no remedy in a city of refuge would not go into exile—and brings as proof a Mishnah that assumes the High Priest is already there in a city of refuge in exile (“he never leaves there”—meaning he was exiled there!). How can anything be derived from that at all?

Many thanks in advance!