[Avodah] Ben sorer et al

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Oct 29, 2025 at 05:31:47PM +0000, Joseph Kaplan via Avodah wrote:
> It always seemed to be that the witness was not being literal because what
> is the likelihood that he actually saw all the things he said he saw which
> none of his contemporaries had heard of...

I thought that "ani ra'isiv veyshavti al qivro" (Sanh 71a) or "...
veyachavti al tilah" for the ir hanidachas wasn't tesimony that he saw
such cases, but that he saw the grave or ruin where they were.

The whole "al qiviro" or "al tilah" is problematic anyway, since R
Yonasan was a kohein. So some do indeed do not take it literally.

But if we read him as I did, your question isn't the motive.

By the way "al" does sometimes mean "next to" (like the American idom
"he was standing on top of me"). Like Avraham "omeid aleihem" when
feeding his guests. (18:8) It is also idiomatic in "omedim aleinu
lekhaloseinu". That would get rid of the kohein problem while still
keeping the point of his statement intact.

By the way, the Ben Soreir uMoreh is one of four cases where the chiyu
misah requires hachrazah first. The reason for hachrazah is given in
the other three as "velo yosifu la'asos" or "velo yezidun od". Here,
there is no explanation. Perhaps hinting that it would never be done in
the first place, nevermind preventing it being done again!

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 Live as if you were living already for the
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   second time and as if you had acted the first
Author: Widen Your Tent      time as wrongly as you are about to act now!
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF          - Victor Frankl, Man's search for Meaning