Daily Talk
A sacrifice brought by seventy one men who may never have tasted the forbidden food, and nothing at all from the hundreds of thousands who did. Twelve bulls, one from every tribe, including the tribes that never transgressed. And then three chapters of conditions so narrow that a single judge clearing his throat moves the whole obligation off the court and onto the people. Why should a sentence spoken in a chamber cost more than every hand that acted on it?
Twelve Bulls for One Sentence
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About This Talk
Chapter 12 rules that when the High Court errs in a ruling and the people transgress while relying on it, the court brings the sacrifice and the people bring nothing, twelve bulls for an ordinary prohibition and twelve bulls with twelve goats where the error concerned foreign worship, and it sets out the eight conditions that must all hold for that transfer to happen. Chapter 13 takes those conditions apart one at a time, showing what a tribal court, an unfit judge, a spoken objection, a silent one, an overheard conversation or a minority of the people each do to the accounting, and how the majority is counted, from Eretz Yisrael alone and without the members of the Sanhedrin. Chapter 14 draws the line between a ruling and a plain mistake, exempting the court that uproots an entire principle instead of part of one, or that errs about clouds instead of about law, or that can no longer name the prohibition it permitted, and it leaves a provisional guilt offering for the person who simply stopped asking.