Rabbi YY Jacobson: Crime and Punishment

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi YY Jacobson’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

If you have a Sanhedrin, a Supreme Court, and all of them unanimously deem the person who comes to court guilty, potrin oso, this person is exempt. This person is exonerated, he's acquitted. Mai ta'ama? What is the reason? Kivan d'gamiri halonus din l'mevad l'zchus aval ani suloi chazulei. The reason is, whenever they were trying somebody in a case and there was no side for merit, nobody was standing up to the defense of the defendant, so what happens is they sleep, they sleep on it as we say in English. They delay the verdict to the next day so that the judges can deliberate over the night to perhaps find a meritorious angle in order to acquit this person, but in this case, suloi chazulei, nobody's finding any merit for him and thus Rav Kahana says, this person is exempt. Now let me explain the technicalities of what this halacha says. The way the Jewish nation was set up, it's articulated in the opening verse of parshas shoftim shoftim v'shotrim titin l'cha b'chol sha'arecha asher Hashem Elokecha nosein lach In all your cities, in all the cities of the holy land, there had to be a they appointed shoftim. They appointed judges, courts, in order to be able to deal with various disputes that come up. And in order to deal with various situations that come up, including, of course, criminals of all different types of sorts. The number the members of this court, the court was known as a Sanhedrin. There was the Sanhedrei Gedolah, which

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1. 0:31If you have a Sanhedrin, a Supreme Court, and all of them unanimously deem the person…
2. 6:36person, but you have to be able to have a balance. So, that means the court…
3. 12:59So, therefore, if you have, for example, 12 people saying innocent and 11 people saying guilty,…
4. 19:21and even capital punishments the Sanhedrin stopped before the destruction of the Second Temple because they…
5. 25:48"Guilty. Obviously, this guy is guilty." Sadly, just do what you got to do, and let's…
6. 32:13The law of Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel are alike. Not only that, when discussing the…
7. 38:37intellectual integrity. That's the quality of insecurity. That's the quality of primitiveness. That's the quality of…
8. 44:49ego. But for you, God has become your ego. You don't know of a God outside…
9. 51:20Torah of Hashem. The Halakha is when there is machlokes l'shem shamayim. The problem here is…
10. 57:40chance to learn about any self-value, whether it's a person with a serious internal condition, whatever…

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