Near the start of yesterday’s Torah reading we find the strange commandment of ben sorer umoreh (wayward and rebellious son), the rabbinic interpretation of which serves only to intensify its perplexity:
If one of his parents had a hand cut off, or was lame, mute, blind or deaf, he cannot become a “wayward and rebellious son”, because it says “his father and mother shall take hold of him”—not those with a hand cut off; “and bring him out”—not parents who are lame; “and they shall say”—and not parents who are mute; “this our son”—and not parents who are blind; “he will not obey our voice”—and not parents who are deaf.
Talmud Reclaimed explores this extremely narrow line of interpretation, contrasting it with commandments elsewhere in the parashah which are interpreted considerably more expansively. Consider this passage of the hungry vineyard worker (a law I was privileged to observe for the first time while volunteering last week!):
“How do we know it of all other things? We infer them from the vineyard: just as regarding the vineyard its produce grows from the earth, and once it is ripe the labourer may eat of it, so too everything which grows from the soil and is ripe, the labourer may eat from…”
It seems surprising that the same interpretative tradition that renders seemingly simple verbs such as holding, bringing and speaking to exclude certain categories of parent, can also read vineyard and grapes to include anything that grows from the ground. Other commandments in the parashah such as not muzzling an ox on the threshing floor and not ploughing with a combination of donkey and ox are similarly expanded to apply to all members of the animal kingdom (including fish!).
In addition to such efforts to discover the interpretative methodology of our sages, the law of the ben sorer umoreh contains a further – particularly peculiar – interpretive idiosyncrasy which Judaism Reclaimed explores. Was this case of ben sorer umoreh a law that could ever have had practical application?
The Gemara in Sanhedrin (71a) presents a fascinating Tannaitic discussion regarding ben sorer umoreh and ir hanidachat (idolatrous city): Rabbi Yehudah derives from a close interpretation of the relevant verses (and his colleague R' Shimon from logic) that these laws can have no practical application. If so why do they feature in the Torah? The answer is “doresh umekabel s'char” (study and receive a reward). Rabbi Yonatan emphatically disagrees with his colleagues: not only do these laws have practical application but, he reports, he has personally sat upon the grave of an executed youth.
This apparent dispute is very strange. Rabbi Yonatan and the other Tannaim were contemporaries who all studied under Rabbi Akiva. On the assumption that the Sanhedrin's destruction of a whole city or the judicial execution of a child would have been remarkable and therefore well-known events, it is extremely unlikely that only Rabbi Yonatan would have known of them, even if the Tannaim in question lived some time after the Sanhedrin had ceased to rule in capital cases. Even more strangely, the Gemara and commentaries do not question the source of this Tannaitic argument. Does Rabbi Yonatan reject the textual interpretation and logical deduction made by his contemporaries in order to render these cases possible?
One solution is offered by Rabbeinu Bachaye, who suggests that Rabbi Yonatan may not be referring to a ben sorer umoreh or ir hanidachat that was actually tried by the Sanhedrin. Another Talmudic passage teaches a principle that, when the death penalty cannot be imposed, the Heavenly Court may arrange for it to be carried out in other ways. Rabbi Yonatan therefore may not be arguing with the teaching of his colleagues who maintained that the legal requirements for ben sorer umoreh rendered the case impossible for the Sanhedrin to implement. He is simply adding that, despite this impossibility, the ben sorer umoreh and ir hanidachat may still be subject to a Divine decree. It is such a Divine decree which Rabbi Yonatan claims to have caused the early death of the ‘ben sorer umoreh’ whose grave he sat upon.
If this understanding is correct, it would appear that we have an agreed upon transmitted tradition that ben sorer umoreh – in contrast to other commandments in the parashah which are interpreted expansively – must be read so narrowly so as to prevent it from ever occurring.
But what would really be the point of such an exercise? Are there not plenty of other biblical verses which could serve as a basis for more practical rabbinic midrash – why have a law on the biblical books which was never intended to be applied? Rabbi S. R. Hirsch, implicitly addressing this question, identifies a swathe of ethical lessons and pearls of parental guidance that can be gleaned from these verses and their midrash.
A more recent answer from a historical perspective was suggested by Professor Moshe Halbertal. Halbertal argues that the Torah’s primary function with this law (perhaps alongside others in the parashah) was to prevent the father and mother of the young delinquent from taking the law into their own hands and performing some form of “honour killing”. Instead of this apparently accepted ancient practice, the father and mother are instructed to “bring their son to the city elders and the gates” for the matter to be dealt with by a proper court. A court which, it would seem, has a longstanding tradition to interpret the verses sufficiently narrowly so as to avoid handing the wayward and rebellious youth a death sentence.
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First posted on Facebook yesterday, here.
