Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Rosh Hashana 22b - How many witnesses?

1. The gemara concludes that there must be 2 witnesses testifying on anyone that the beis din in yerushalaim doesn't recognize, but 1 witness is not enough.
The Ritvah has a different girsa in which the outcome of the gemara is that 1 witness is enough. The Ritvah explains his approach that "although normally to testify on a chashud you need 2 witnesses, bec. 'eid echad' is only believed to testify on the actual issur rather than testify on the individual, here it is different since the whole concern is due to a takana derabonon... and they were lenient to rely on 1 witness".
Based on the Ritvah, we can explain why according to our girsa we require 2 witnesses. The gezeiras hakasuv of 'eid echad ne'eman b'issurin' is only to testify that an object is mutar, but not to testify on a person. I think that the rationale is that testifying on a person is not a one time license, rather it gives power to this person to testify many times in the future, and we therefore require 2 witnesses to create such a status.

2. The question was rasied whether the witnesses testifying on the eidim of kiddush hachodesh must also be recognized by the beis din or do we believe any 2 people to testify that the eidim who saw the new moon are ne'emanim? It seems to me that we would require the beis din to recognize them, bec. otherwise they should allow any 4 eidim to testify on seeing the new moon since there is no advantage to 2 witnesses testifying on the 2 eidim over 4 witnesses serving as eidim.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't get your second heara here.
It is a big chiddush to suggest that the Beis Din must recognize the two eidim and I don't understand your raiyah at all. They can't be mesaken that two eidim are unacceptable but 4 are ok - there is just no such thing as needing more than 2 eidim.