James Randi on the Sanhedrin?

On Sanhedrin 17a, we see characteristics required of those who would be members of the Sanhedrin. Thus,

אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן: אֵין מוֹשִׁיבִין בְּסַנְהֶדְרִי אֶלָּא בַּעֲלֵי קוֹמָה, וּבַעֲלֵי חׇכְמָה, וּבַעֲלֵי מַרְאֶה, וּבַעֲלֵי זִקְנָה, וּבַעֲלֵי כְשָׁפִים, וְיוֹדְעִים בְּשִׁבְעִים לָשׁוֹן – שֶׁלֹּא תְּהֵא סַנְהֶדְרִי שׁוֹמַעַת מִפִּי הַמְתוּרְגְּמָן.

§ Rabbi Yoḥanan says: They place on the Great Sanhedrin only men of high stature, and of wisdom, and of pleasant appearance, and of suitable age so that they will be respected. And they must also be masters of sorcery, i.e., they know the nature of sorcery, so that they can judge sorcerers, and they must know all seventy languages in order that the Sanhedrin will not need to hear testimony from the mouth of a translator in a case where a witness speaks a different language.

See Rav Steinsaltz’s interpolated commentary. That would be my straightforward reading as well. Compare with Rashi, which also interestingly has a censored portion. To judge capitol cases involving sorcerers who trust in their sorcery to be saved from bet din — meaning to effect countermeasures to magic, as well as to reveal the sorcerers who lead people astray with their magic, such as “the Egyptians” (who were famous for their magical arts):

ובעלי כשפים - להמית מכשפים הבוטחים בכשפיהם להנצל מידי ב"ד ולגלות על המכשפין המסיתין ומדיחין בכשפיהן כגון (גירסת הצנזורה: המצרים) [ישו הנוצרי]:

I would say something similar, maybe not as straightforward peshat but as something that speaks to me. When considering evidence, they need to avoid being tricked. And magic is essentially illusion, sleight of hand¹, cold and warm reading, and the like. Only someone trained in the magical arts will be able to detect such trickery.

Much as James Randi was a stage magician and mentalist and later worked to debunk / investigate paranormal claims. Lehavdil, we had Rabbi Eli Teitelman ztz”l, who was able to convince people not to believe in psychics and fake mekubalim, because he could repeat their tricks.

---

On the same daf, a somewhat humorous interpretation of Yehoshua’s request to Moshe regarding Eldad and Meidad, to halt their prophecy:

מַאי ״כְּלָאֵם״? אֲמַר לֵיהּ: הַטֵּל עֲלֵיהֶן צׇרְכֵי צִיבּוּר, וְהֵן כָּלִין מֵאֵילֵיהֶן.

The Gemara asks: What is the meaning of: “Imprison them [kela’em]”? The Gemara answers: Joshua said to him: Place responsibility for the needs of the public upon them, so that they will be occupied like the other Elders of Israel and they will cease [kalin] prophesying, on their own. Due to the burden of public responsibility they would not be able to be prophets.

Tosafot write:

והם כלים מאליהם - פירוש נבואתם כלה דאין שכינה שורה מתוך עצבות אלא מתוך שמחה:

"and they will cease on their own" -- the interpretation is that their prophecy will cease, because the Shechinah does not descend in the midst of sadness, but rather in the midst of joy.

This ties in nicely to the Vayigash dvar Torah about Radak’s censored explanation of why Hashem didn’t inform Yaakov that Yosef was still alive.

The idea of כלים מאליהם, as meaning wither on their own as a result of the burdens of higher office, pictures of how US presidents aged in office often circulate. For instance, here’s a before and after of President Obama:

---

After my creative idea of what it means to know kishuf, I’d similarly read the gemara about being able to purify a sheretz. From amud aleph going on to amud bet:

אָמַר רַב יְהוּדָה אָמַר רַב: אֵין מוֹשִׁיבִין בְּסַנְהֶדְרִין אֶלָּא מִי שֶׁיּוֹדֵעַ לְטַהֵר אֶת הַשֶּׁרֶץ מִן הַתּוֹרָה. אָמַר רַב: אֲנִי אָדוּן וַאֲטַהֲרֶנּוּ.

Rav Yehuda says that Rav says: They place on the Sanhedrin only one who knows how to render a carcass of a creeping animal pure by Torah law. The judges on the Sanhedrin must be so skilled at logical reasoning that they could even produce a convincing argument that creeping animals, which the Torah states explicitly are ritually impure, are actually pure. Rav said: I will discuss the halakha of the creeping animal and render it pure, i.e., I am able to demonstrate how it is possible to construct such a proof:

וּמָה נָחָשׁ שֶׁמֵּמִית וּמַרְבֶּה טוּמְאָה, טָהוֹר; שֶׁרֶץ שֶׁאֵינוֹ מֵמִית וּמַרְבֶּה טוּמְאָה, אֵינוֹ דִּין שֶׁיְּהֵא טָהוֹר? וְלָא הִיא, מִידֵּי דְּהָוֵה אַקּוֹץ בְּעָלְמָא.

If a snake, which kills other creatures whose carcasses are impure and thereby increases impurity in the world, is itself nevertheless pure, as it is not included in the list of impure creeping animals, then concerning a creeping animal that does not kill and does not increase impurity, isn’t it logical that it should be pure? This argument is rejected: But it is not so; the logic of the halakha of a creeping animal is just as it is concerning the halakha with regard to an ordinary thorn, which can injure people or animals and can even kill and thereby increase impurity, but is nevertheless pure. It is therefore apparent that this consideration is not relevant to the halakhot of impurity.

Note that the parallel sugya is Eruvin 13b, where it is a much later Sage, Ravina, who puts forth this snake argument and who’s claim is identically rejected. Ravina and Rav are words that begin the same, and we just had Rav Yehuda cite Rav, so that may influence the name.

Indeed, even local to our sugya, I just checked, and manuscripts have Rava or Ravina.

Regardless, the maggid shiur on Friday read this is a failure on Rav’s part. After stating the requirement, Rav thought that he could be part of the Sanhedrin, by giving such a proof to be metaher a sheretz, but he was wrong. He could not muster up a valid proof of this, as the gemara is able to readily shlug up his attempt! (And Rashi explains לאו קל וחומר הוא.)

I disagree with this reading. I think that Rav or Ravina was successful. Of course you cannot give a correct path of reason to an incorrect halachic conclusion. It is a proof by contradiction. If you came to an incorrect result, you must have reasoned incorrectly somewhere along the way.

But to be on the Sanhedrin, you need to be as sharp as Rabbi Meir, who gave many explanations of matters that didn’t end up being lehalacha, which thus confused students; or his sharp student Symmachus, who could readily devise 48 reasons to declare pure and 48 reasons to declare impure. Many of those reasons are not true.

Rather, you need to know the halachic reasoning process so well that you can figure out mistaken reasonings that sound credible. That level of mastery is one that will allow you to spot flaws in your own reasoning and the reasonings of your colleagues. This is similar to knowledge of kishuf in order to debunk.

I tell my CS students that the best and strongest computer programmers are often not the ones who managed to write programs without mistakes. Rather, it is the ones who programmed enough and made lots of syntactic and logical errors. The process of struggling with those programs, debugging them, and fixing them greatly strengthens a programmer’s intuition, and his / her ability to spot and understand the inevitable mistakes that will arise in the future.

(To connect this to the ChatGPT discussion in other posts, say we train an LLM to halachically reason. Is there negative training data, to show what sorts of reasoning are silly and should not be made? Will an LLM be able to be metaher a sheretz and explain why that argument is faulty?)

1. Yes, elsewhere, Chazal distinguish between real magic and achizat einayim. Even so.