atim - Dr. Shlomo Chertok
“You shall not let a sorceress live"
A Matter Learned from its Context
Dr. Shlomo Chertok is a resident of Yeruham, and an educator, teaching English and Jewish Thought at the Lev Academic Center in Jerusalem. He was a Shaliach at the Torah Mitzion kollel during its first year in Chicago (1996-1997)
Our parashah furnishes the underpinnings of Israel’s social order and civil law. Most of the laws presented therein are formulated as case law: "When you acquire a Hebrew slave... When men fight and hurt a pregnant woman... When a man opens a pit... When a man gives to his neighbor a donkey or an ox..." The Oral Law, in turn, defines, explicates, and shapes upon these cases both legal and spiritual concepts.
Yet one commandment, vague and laconic, at the heart of parasha, deviates from this pattern: "You shall not permit a sorceress to live." (Ex. 22:17). This instruction leaves the reader wondering: Who is this sorceress? What is the definition of sorcery that seals her fate? Does the Torah's very engagement with this subject confer actual validity upon sorcery? Why is her sentence formulated indirectly? (The more familiar formulation "he shall surely be put to death" appears four times in the parashah.)
Beyond these, reverberates the question of contextual belonging-does this commandment have any practical application, as do the other commandments of the parashah? May it too constitute the foundation for a legal or spiritual concept?
Elsewhere the Torah prohibits recourse to the world of magic: "...You shall not practice divination or soothsaying... Do not turn to ghosts and familiar spirits..." (Leviticus 19:26, 31). The prohibition of sorcery appears explicitly in a comprehensive catalogue of similar prohibitions in Parashat Shoftim: "Let no one be found among you who consigns his son or daughter to the fire, or who is an augur, a soothsayer, a diviner, a sorcerer, one who casts spells, or one who consults ghosts or familiar spirits, or one who inquires of the dead" (Deuteronomy 18:10-12).
From these contexts one may infer that the prohibition belongs to a general injunction to distance oneself from the idolatry of the Canaanite nations, and more specifically from those attempting to divine the future in order to control or influence it.
Maimonides defines each of these in his Laws of Idolatry. When he arrives at the sorcerer, he does not define the act itself, contenting himself with a legal distinction between "one who deceives the eye," who is subject to flogging, and an act of sorcery proper, which is punishable by stoning. This difference is explained on technical grounds: the former is a negative commandment not involving an action, while the latter is a negative commandment involving an action. Maimonides immediately clarifies that substantively both are "falsehood and deception... with which the ancient idol-worshiping nations misled the nations of the lands so that they would follow after them, and it is not fitting for Israel, who are wise and intelligent, to be drawn after these vanities" (hilkhot Avodah Zarah 11:16).
A different perspective emerges from the words of Ibn Ezra and Hizkuni, who interpret the verse according to its juxtaposition to the law concerning seduction. Both note tersely that in the grip of his passion, the lustful man will do anything to obtain his desire, even turn to sorcery. In other words, after failed attempts at courtship and seduction, the one driven by lust may turn to the possessor of magical knowledge to obtain some potion or other to slip into the drink of the object of his desire so that she will fall, powerless or unconscious, into his arms.
Regrettably, such cases are familiar not only from ancient cultures but also in the modern era-only the terminology has changed: today’s headlines do not speak of sorcery and magic potions, but of drug dealers, date-rape drugs, and the like. The fact that today science explains precisely the action of the substance in the human body does not alter the circumstances of its use nor the prohibition itself. It is possible, then, that the essence of the law does not focus on putting the sorceress to death but rather on the recruitment and practical use of her esoteric knowledge. It is understandable, then, why the law is formulated indirectly as "not to let live"-that is, do not sustain or grant legitimacy to sorcery in Israelite culture.
Maimonides' definition of sorcery (together with eye-deception) as "falsehood and deception," the exclusive portion of the nations of the lands, as opposed to Israel characterized by wisdom, requires further examination. One would expect to contrast falsehood with truth and wisdom with folly. The Torah instructs concerning our relationship to truth and falsehood indirectly: later in our parashah it is written in a legal context "Distance yourself from a false matter..." and in Psalms in a more abstract context "Loving kindness and truth have met... truth will spring up from the earth and righteousness will look down from heaven."(Ps. 85:11-12).
The concepts are clear and lucid only in theory. When we encounter them in reality, they are elusive. An example of this is the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel concerning how one dances before the bride, (BT, Ketubot 17a) as well as the words of the Hafetz Haim that praising a person can be considered lashon hara (gossip) if said before his enemy. In these cases, circumstances and context dictate the proper action even when it does not align with our intuition to cling exclusively to the truth and categorically reject falsehood.
It is understandable, then, why Maimonides specifies the wisdom required to withstand the deceptions of sorcery. Perhaps he had in mind the wisdom of Israel, hinted at by the style of the parashah's laws, which present laws within social contexts.
Quite ironic is Immanuel Kant's critique of Judaism as blind obedience to the verses of the Torah, without discretion, insight or input of a human moral standard. HIs accusations flounder in light of the witch hunts, trials and brutal executions in Germany, France and Salem Massachusetts, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by devout Christians, God-fearing souls who blindly obeyed the verse "You shall not permit a sorceress to live."
Toward the end of the parashah, Israel declares "All that the Lord has spoken we will do and we will hear." Read through the rabbinic lens, the novelty of this declaration lies in the order of the words. The precedence of "we will do"-the commitment to observing the Torah-over "we will hear"-understanding its commandments and studying their content-is an expression of faith in God and devotion to Torah study. However, this declaration follows closely on the heels of two previous declarations "...all the things that the Lord has spoken we will do" (Exodus 19:8 and 24:3), and therefore, prima facie, it is implied that its novelty lies in the added "we will hear."
Sweeping blind obedience does not require inference of one law from another, nor the meticulous reasoning of a fortiori, gezeirah shavah, deducing, a matter from its context or from its conclusion. The foundation for the social order proposed in this week’s parasha, developed and explicated in the tractates of Bava Kamma, Bava Metzia, and Bava Batra-and continuously evolving through the study of their folios throughout history-is the product of Israel’s declaration "we will hear."
Wisdom, like truth and falsehood, is not evaluated solely according to the sum of knowledge derived from it. The message of "You shall not permit a sorceress to live" ringing true in today’s information age as it did initially at Sinai, may be that the context of this knowledge and the manner of its application in reality are themselves an expression and embodiment of the wisdom characteristic of Israel.