נמצא טמון בגל או תלוי באילן או צף על פני המים לא היו עורפין שנאמר באדמה ולא טמון בגל נופל ולא תלוי באילן בשדה ולא צף על פני המים
has committed a transgression and returns home under the war-regulations? With whom [does it accord]? With R. Jose the Galilean. Who is the Tanna of the following: Our Rabbis taught: If he heard the sound of trumpets and was terror-stricken, or the crash of shields and was terror-stricken, or [beheld] the brandishing of swords and the urine discharged itself upon his knees, he returns home? With whom [does it accord]? Are we to say that it is with R. Akiba and not R. Jose the Galilean?<span class="x" onmousemove="('comment',' Since the latter does not understand 'fainthearted' as relating to physical fear.
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Sefer HaChinukh
From the laws of the commandment is that which they, may their memory be blessed, said (Sotah 45b) that Jerusalem does not bring a beheaded calf; as it is stated about this, "on the land that the Lord, you God, gives to you" - and Jerusalem was not divided [by] the tribes. And likewise we do not bring a calf if it is found near the border or [near] a town the majority of which are gentiles, as the assumption is that the gentiles killed him. [If] there were two towns there, one of which was closer and one of which was not closer but there is a greater multitude of people there than in the closer one, we go after the further one that has many [people] - as so did they, may their memory be blessed, say in the Gemara (Bava Batra 23b), "[In a case where one can decide based on] majority or proximity, one goes after majority." And even though majority and proximity are both from Torah writ - meaning that the Torah commanded us to consider proximity and majority - majority is preferred. And from where we measure, from the nostrils of the killed; the law of its beheading, which is with a kofits (a large knife) from behind it; the law of the washing of the hands; the law of [when] the body is found in one place and the head is found in another place; the law of that which they said (Sotah 44b-45a), "'Slain person' and not strangled person, 'on the land' and not covered by a pile of stones, 'fallen' and not hanging on a tree, 'in the field' and not floating on top of the water"; and the rest of its details are [all] elucidated in the last chapter of Tractate Sotah (see Mishneh Torah, Laws of Murderer and the Preservation of Life 6).
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