Testimony in Jewish law
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Testimony in Jewish law consists of
testimony In law and in religion, testimony is a solemn attestation as to the truth of a matter. Etymology The words "testimony" and "testify" both derive from the Latin word ''testis'', referring to the notion of a disinterested third-party witness. La ...
by eligible
witness In law, a witness is someone who has knowledge about a matter, whether they have sensed it or are testifying on another witnesses' behalf. In law a witness is someone who, either voluntarily or under compulsion, provides testimonial evidence, e ...
es to a
Beit Din A beit din ( he, בית דין, Bet Din, house of judgment, , Ashkenazic: ''beis din'', plural: batei din) is a rabbinical court of Judaism. In ancient times, it was the building block of the legal system in the Biblical Land of Israel. Today, it ...
(court) authorized to render decisions according to ''
halakhah ''Halakha'' (; he, הֲלָכָה, ), also transliterated as ''halacha'', ''halakhah'', and ''halocho'' ( ), is the collective body of Jewish religious laws which is derived from the written and Oral Torah. Halakha is based on biblical commandm ...
'' (Jewish law). Eligible witnesses must in almost all cases be free men who are not deaf, mentally or morally unsuitable, or too young for Bar Mitzvah; in particular, women are in most cases not eligible. The principles of testimony in halakhah have been applied to Mishpat Ivri (Hebrew jurisprudence).


Criteria for valid testimony

A valid witness to an event in ''halakhah'' must have seen the event with his eyes or heard it with his ears. Generally
hearsay Hearsay evidence, in a legal forum, is testimony from an under-oath witness who is reciting an out-of-court statement, the content of which is being offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted. In most courts, hearsay evidence is inadmis ...
from another person is inadmissible, except in rare cases such as confirming that a missing husband has died (see Agunah). A Beit Din may accept testimony only from a witness who speaks directly to the judges, not from a written deposition. A witness may not
recant Recantation means a personal public act of denial of a previously published opinion or belief. It is derived from the Latin "''re cantare''", to re-sing. Philosophy Philosophically recantation is linked to a genuine change of opinion, often ...
his testimony.


Two witnesses

The
Torah The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the s ...
says (
Deuteronomy Deuteronomy ( grc, Δευτερονόμιον, Deuteronómion, second law) is the fifth and last book of the Torah (in Judaism), where it is called (Hebrew: hbo, , Dəḇārīm, hewords Moses.html"_;"title="f_Moses">f_Moseslabel=none)_and_th ...
19:15): "One witness shall not arise against a man for any sin or guilt that he may commit; according to two witnesses or according to three witnesses a matter shall stand." Thus, two witnesses provide conclusive proof of reality, but one witness does not. (However, the testimony of one witness can require a defendant to swear to his innocence or else pay the debt alleged against him.) In monetary law two witnesses may absolutely require someone to pay a debt or absolve them from that obligation. In capital cases two witnesses may testify that a person has committed a crime punishable by the death penalty in Jewish law, and the
Sanhedrin The Sanhedrin (Hebrew and Aramaic: סַנְהֶדְרִין; Greek: , ''synedrion'', 'sitting together,' hence 'assembly' or 'council') was an assembly of either 23 or 71 elders (known as "rabbis" after the destruction of the Second Temple), ap ...
may execute the person on their word; however capital punishment is no longer applied. The testimony of two witnesses is equal in its force to the testimony of three or more witnesses. Thus if two witnesses say an event occurred, and one hundred witnesses say it did not occur, the groups of witnesses are considered to contradict one another, but no more weight is given to the larger group; other evidence is needed to reach a judgment. If one of the witnesses is disqualified, his entire group is disqualified, even if the other witnesses are themselves qualified and could present a valid testimony without his assistance. (Source:
Makkot Makot (in Hebrew: מכות) (in English: "Lashes") is a tractate of the Mishnah and Talmud. It is the fifth volume of the order of Nezikin. Makkot deals primarily with laws of the Jewish courts (beis din) and the punishments which they may adminis ...
chapter 1.) In monetary law examination of witnesses is less stringent than in capital law, and testimony is accepted even despite minor contradictions that may exist in the testimony of two separate witnesses. (If one witness says a defendant owes 100, and the other says the sum is 200, the judges accept that both witnesses agree to the existence of a 100 lien, even though only one witness testifies to each individual lien. Similarly, if one witness says a defendant owes 100 based on a loan granted on Monday, and another witness says the debt is 100 based on a loan granted on Thursday, the defendant is considered to owe 100 by the combined testimony of the two witnesses even though they disagree as to the source of the obligation.) In contrast, in capital cases the judges threaten the witnesses by warning of the consequences of
perjury Perjury (also known as foreswearing) is the intentional act of swearing a false oath or falsifying an affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to an official proceeding."Perjury The act or an inst ...
(source: Mishnah Sanhedrin chapter 4), and they ask many questions and will invalidate testimony even for minor inconsistencies, even if the contradiction seems substantively irrelevant to the case at hand. The purpose of these stringencies is to prevent the killing of an innocent defendant.


Ceremonial versus evidentiary witnesses

In some instances two witnesses are required to perform a certain action, such as '' kiddushin'' (betrothal). If there are not two valid witnesses, the ''kiddushin'' does not take effect. These are ceremonial witnesses (Hebrew: ''eidei kiyum''). Likewise,
shtar
requires two witnesses, and in particular a ''
get Get or GET may refer to: * Get (animal), the offspring of an animal * Get (divorce document), in Jewish religious law * GET (HTTP), a type of HTTP request * "Get" (song), by the Groggers * Georgia Time, used in the Republic of Georgia * Get AS, a ...
'' requires two witnesses to sign the document or see the delivery. Witnesses in monetary cases are evidentiary: even if they do not witness a robbery, the robber is still obligated to compensate the owner for damages. Evidentiary witnesses are known in Hebrew as ''eidei beirur''.


Invalidation of a pair of witnesses

A pair of witnesses may be invalidated if: *Two other witnesses directly contradict their testimony. (In Hebrew, this is ''hakchasha'', הכחשה.) *Two other witnesses testify that at the moment the original witnesses claim they saw the incident, those witnesses were with them and could not have witnessed an event elsewhere. The second pair of witnesses knows nothing about the substance of the matter, but rather undermines the standing of the first pair of witnesses to claim they saw the incident. This undermining is called ''hazama'', הזמה. Witnesses found to have lied under this provision are punished with whatever punishment would have befallen their intended victim. Thus, if they plotted to make a victim suffer capital punishment, the witnesses themselves must suffer capital punishment. *Blood relatives are not allowed to be witnesses or judges in the same case (Sanhedrin chapter 3 lists which blood relatives are included). This is a fundamental exclusion, without regard to the specific nature of a possible conflict of interest in a particular case. *Any witness who is established by other witnesses as a liar or robber or other miscreant is invalid. There is a general rule that if one person among a group of witnesses is disqualified, they are all disqualified, even if the original disqualification does not question the truthfulness of the disqualified witness, and even if there remain two other witnesses (Makkot chapter 1).


Powers of a lone witness

A lone witness cannot give testimony in capital cases. His testimony is useless unless there is a second witness to join him. In monetary cases a lone witness has limited powers. He can require a defendant to take an oath stating that the defendant is in the right, and if the defendant refuses to take the oath he must pay instead. (In most cases, it is at the defendant's discretion whether to swear but, in rare instances, the court may require the defendant to pay without the option of swearing hevu'ot chapter 7) In the case of a classical Agunah, a woman whose husband has disappeared and it is not known whether the husband is still alive, a single witness (even a woman or slave, normally invalid as witnesses) may testify that the husband has died, and on that basis the woman may remarry.


Ineligible witnesses

Testimony of a deaf, mentally incompetent or young person (before Bar Mitzvah) is excluded. Testimony from women is also generally excluded. Anyone who is caught guilty of a sin which demonstrates greed, i.e. who sins in order to acquire money, is also disqualified. Tractate Sanhedrin lists other categories of witnesses who are disqualified. The
Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cente ...
, in the third chapter of
Sanhedrin The Sanhedrin (Hebrew and Aramaic: סַנְהֶדְרִין; Greek: , ''synedrion'', 'sitting together,' hence 'assembly' or 'council') was an assembly of either 23 or 71 elders (known as "rabbis" after the destruction of the Second Temple), ap ...
, delineates the rules governing who may provide written or oral testimony. A valid witness in a Jewish
Beit Din A beit din ( he, בית דין, Bet Din, house of judgment, , Ashkenazic: ''beis din'', plural: batei din) is a rabbinical court of Judaism. In ancient times, it was the building block of the legal system in the Biblical Land of Israel. Today, it ...
must be an adult (see Bar Mitzvah) free man, not a woman or a slave, and not be related to any of the other witnesses or judges. The witness must be an honest person who can be trusted not to lie. The
Mishnah The Mishnah or the Mishna (; he, מִשְׁנָה, "study by repetition", from the verb ''shanah'' , or "to study and review", also "secondary") is the first major written collection of the Jewish oral traditions which is known as the Oral Torah ...
(Sanhedrin 24b) states: "The following people are disqualified: a gambler with dice, a lender who collects
interest In finance and economics, interest is payment from a borrower or deposit-taking financial institution to a lender or depositor of an amount above repayment of the principal sum (that is, the amount borrowed), at a particular rate. It is distinct ...
, a chaser of
dove Columbidae () is a bird family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with short necks and short slender bills that in some species feature fleshy ceres. They primarily ...
s, and a merchant who profits from produce of
Shemittah The sabbath year (shmita; he, שמיטה, literally "release"), also called the sabbatical year or ''shǝvi'it'' (, literally "seventh"), or "Sabbath of The Land", is the seventh year of the seven-year agricultural cycle mandated by the Torah ...
." The Talmud explains that each of these four activities falls within an expanded definition of theft because people who violate
Torah The Torah (; hbo, ''Tōrā'', "Instruction", "Teaching" or "Law") is the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, namely the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. In that sense, Torah means the s ...
laws or social norms in pursuit of money cannot be trusted to tell the truth. "Chasers of doves" are those training them for races (or to lure other people's birds away), as well as those who bet on them; it includes pigeons, and by extension the use and luring of any animals in such fashion, domesticated or otherwise. Additionally, "one who eats in the street is comparable to a dog, and there are those who say that he is disqualified from serving as a witness." (Talmud, Kiddushin 40b)


Reinstatement

However, anyone who has engaged in these forbidden activities may be reinstated upon undertaking a complete reversal to demonstrate especially honest conduct by renouncing a permitted activity.
*Gamblers with dice...when are they reinstated? When they destroy their dice and completely reverse themselves, so that they do not play even for free. *Lenders who collect interest...when are they reinstated? When they tear up their
promissory note A promissory note, sometimes referred to as a note payable, is a legal instrument (more particularly, a financing instrument and a debt instrument), in which one party (the ''maker'' or ''issuer'') promises in writing to pay a determinate sum of ...
s and completely reverse themselves, so that they do not collect interest even from a non-Jewish lender. *Chasers of doves...when are they reinstated? When they destroy their tools for chasing and completely reverse themselves, so that they do not chase doves even in the desert here there is nobody from whom to steal *Merchants who profit from produce of Shemittah...when are they reinstated? When the next Shemittah year arrives even years laterand they withdraw. **
Rabbi Nehemiah Rabbi Nehemiah was a rabbi who lived circa 150 AD (fourth generation of tannaim). He was one of the great students of Rabbi Akiva, and one of the rabbis who received semicha from R' Judah ben Baba The Talmud equated R' Nechemiah with Rabbi Ne ...
said: They required not only a reversal of words, but also a reversal of money. How so? A person proclaims, "I,
John Doe John Doe (male) and Jane Doe (female) are multiple-use placeholder names that are used when the true name of a person is unknown or is being intentionally concealed. In the context of law enforcement in the United States, such names are often ...
, profited 200 Zuz from selling fruits of Shemittah, and I am now giving this money to charity." (Sanhedrin 25b)


References

{{Reflist Evidence law Jewish courts and civil law
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...