Yevamot II 120: I'm Not Dead Yet!

What a gruesome daf.  Although we begin with continuation of past conversations about potential widows, potentially dead husbands, and how that affects rival wives, we don't stay there.  Today we move on to the critical question: how can we be certain that the husband is dead?

A new Mishna teaches us that a witness must look upon the countenance (defined as the cheeks) of the face rather than other identifying marks or characteristics.  Even if an animal has begun to rip a person apart, the body must be identified within three days of dying.  Otherwise the face will have begun to change in early stages of decomposition.  Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava says that not every person, place or hour is identical.  Thus the Gemara hones in on how we might identify a missing husband as a dead husband.

We begin innocently enough - facial features, moles, etc.  The rabbis share many reasonable ideas as to why these distinctive markings might be identifiers or might be misleading.  Then we move on to clothing and other property - for example, a donkey saddle.  The rabbis share their concerns that certain things will not be given away or lent to another person - one's money purse, one's signet ring, one's donkey saddle (which would bruise another donkey, as they are made to measure).  

But then we dive into the gore.  Cut open bodes, found legs below the knee, those cut with a white hot knife - all of these husbands might still be alive.  We learn about how surgery is sometimes performed with exceedingly hot instruments in order to cauterize the blood vessels and to lessen the risk of infection.  We learn that people were sometimes taken down from their crucifixions before they died.  And often deaths met out by governments were designed to prolong the experience of dying both as a threat to other potential 'rebels' and as punishment.  

The detail with which the rabbis discuss these examples is disturbing.  Much of it might be imaginary, for one rabbi speaks of witnessing an Arab cutting open a camel which died immediately.  The others spoke about the state of that camel's health and the influence of wellness on the time of death.  It seems as though the rabbis had not necessarily witnessed most of the atrocities that they speak of at length.  

So why go into such detail? My guess is that the rabbis used this opportunity, as with other generally taboo subjects, to discuss what is fascinating, forbidden, and enthralling.  Like a group of boys talking about torture or about seeing nude women (although that experience is changing very quickly with the ubiquity of pornography), our Sages used the Torah to discuss almost every aspect they could think of regarding human existence.   Makes for a painful daf, though.