Jewishprudence

Jewish Press (Link) - Richard Kronenfeld (December 17, 2025)

It occurred to me the other day that since the re-established state of Israel is now 77 years old – about the same as the average human lifespan – perhaps the time has come to consider re-establishing the Sanhedrin.

Think of it this way: Is it preferable to have a self-perpetuating Supreme Court comprised mainly of secular Leftists who often rule in contravention to halacha, or a rabbinical court that bases its decisions on halacha, interpreted with a measure of leniency? The time is especially ripe because prominent rabbi-writers such as Rabbi Raphael Shore and Rabbi Josh Wander have raised the possibility that recent events, especially arising from the October 7 massacre, may portend the imminent coming of Mashiach. As we shall see, sporadic efforts to restore the Sanhedrin have been made over the centuries, but none of them have lasted – at least not yet.

Naturally, matters aren’t quite so simple. Questions arise, such as: What do we do about the 20% of Israel’s population that isn’t Jewish? What if the Muslims demand that they be judged under sharia law? And how do we deal with the multiplicity of criminal offenses that didn’t even exist in the Talmudic era? The latter question is, in my opinion, the easiest to resolve: The present secular court system needs to be retained to adjudicate criminal offenses to ensure uniform justice for all demographic strata, leaving only jurisdiction over civil litigation and religious matters to the Sanhedrin for now. To determine the other answers, we need first to examine how the original Sanhedrin was composed and functioned.

To begin, a history refresher is in order. “Sanhedrin” generally refers to the Great Sanhedrin, the highest judicial body in Israel during the Second Temple era, which had 71 rabbis as judges, the 71^st being the nasi (head), who ruled jointly with another official, the av beis din (literally, “father of the court”). It traces its origin to the body of 70 sages that G-d directed Moshe Rabbeinu to appoint to assist him in ruling the nation (Numbers 11:16).

Britannica Online summarizes its function as follows: “Politically, it could appoint the king and the High Priest, declare war, and expand the territory of Jerusalem and the Temple. Judicially, it could try a High Priest, a false prophet, a rebellious elder, or an errant tribe. Religiously, it supervised certain rituals, including the Yom Kippur liturgy. The Great Sanhedrin also supervised the smaller, local Sanhedrins and was the court of last resort.” Unlike modern secular courts, the Sanhedrin was not an appellate court for litigants to appeal verdicts of lower courts. But a lower court that was unable to reach a decision could send the case upward to the Great Sanhedrin, which met, appropriately, on the Temple Mount.

The lower courts, known as lesser Sanhedrins, had 23 members, the minimum needed to judge capital cases. However, they weren’t allowed jurisdiction over cases involving the king, capital crimes committed by the High Priest, or crimes committed by an entire tribe or city, according to Chabad.com. Below them were standard rabbinical courts called batei din, usually with three judges, whose jurisdiction was limited to civil suits and cases involving corporal punishment. These latter courts are still in existence today.

Obviously, the Sanhedrin was disrupted when the rebellion against Rome failed in 70 CE, the Temple was destroyed, along with much of the city, and a million Jews were slaughtered. All was not lost, however.

Many of us are familiar with the story of how the great sage Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai had himself smuggled out of Jerusalem inside a coffin and brought to the headquarters of Vespasian, the Roman general besieging the city. Though angered at first, Vespasian was amazed when Rabbi Yochanan predicted that he would be elected the new emperor, which was confirmed when the messenger bearing the news from Rome “just happened to arrive” while the rabbi was meeting with the general. The newly elected emperor rewarded Rabbi Yochanan by granting his wish to allow him to evacuate his court to the town of Yavneh (it later moved to Tiberias). Thus, the Sanhedrin, whose nasi was recognized by Rome as the patriarch (political leader) of the Jews, was able to survive until the patriarchate was dissolved in 425 CE.

It took nearly a thousand years before the ordination of rabbis was reintroduced, since that had been a power of the Sanhedrin; the term “rav” was widely used instead. When Sephardim began using the term as well as Ashkenazim, a Sephardic rabbi, Rabbi Yakov Berav (1474-1546), gathered 25 rabbis in Tzfat in 1538 CE to re-establish the Sanhedrin, but soon had to flee back to Egypt because of opposition from the chief rabbi of Jerusalem, the Ralbach (Rabbi Levi ibn Habib, c. 1480-1545) and from the Turks, who ruled Eretz Yisrael as part of the Ottoman Empire. Before leaving, however, he ordained Rabbi Yosef Karo (1488-1575), composer of the Shulchan Aruch, who in turn ordained Rabbi Moshe Alshich (1508-93), who then ordained Rabbi Chaim Vital (1543-1620), the primary disciple of the Arizal.

Over the succeeding centuries, the concept of the Sanhedrin faded from memory, only to be revived in an unexpected way. Following the French Revolution, many restrictive laws against Jews were repealed in accordance with the Enlightenment view that disorder and crime reflected imperfections in society, so that if Jews were associated with usury and swindling, eliminating restrictive laws against them would cause them to stop. (Of course, they never considered that it was their laws restricting Jews from entering trades and professions that left moneylending as their only alternative.)

In support of granting Jews full citizenship, Stanislas Clement-Tonnerre argued in the National Assembly, “We should refuse the Jews any rights as a separate nation, but grant them the same as individuals. They must not make in the State either a distinctive corps or an order. They must become individual citizens.”

And the demagogue Robespierre, a devotee of la guillotine, opined that, “The vices of the Jews have their roots in the degradation into which you have plunged them. They will be good when they see some benefit in being so.”

The turbulent final days of the Revolution prevented the completion of the emancipation of the Jews, but after Napoleon overthrew the Directory government and made himself emperor, change came more rapidly. Napoleon essentially agreed with Robespierre, writing that “integrating the Jews into French society through social institutions like the army would eliminate the tendency of Jewish people to practice a very great number of activities that are harmful to civilization and to public order in society in all the countries of the world.” He therefore set out to subordinate and regulate Jewish institutions to the extent that he convened a Great Sanhedrin to ratify the proposition that conscripting Jews into the army was religiously valid. (As we know, Israel still hasn’t settled the issue.)

Napoleon succeeded to some degree in getting Jews to assimilate, but the persistent antisemitism which gave rise to the Dreyfus case got in the way. As Berr Isaac Berr, a Jewish delegate to the National Assembly, wrote in 1806, “Hardly had the decree which granted Jews the title of citizen been handed down than they were reproached with not yet having become worthy as a group for this great favor.”

Coming down to the present, interest in the Sanhedrin is increasing, perhaps because recent events have been interpreted in some quarters as precursors to the coming of Mashiach, so much so that according to Mayim Achronim, a Chabad publication, “Rabbi Tzvi Idan … gathered over 100 rabbis in Tiberias in October 2004 to formally re-establish the Sanhedrin. He ordained 70 rabbis, and they appointed him the temporary nasi.” About a year later, the Sanhedrin unanimously selected Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz (1937-2020), who is famed for compiling the Steinsaltz Talmud. Rabbi Steinsaltz resigned in 2008, and the reconstituted Sanhedrin “has gained little acceptance or recognition, and hasn’t been able to accomplish much at all.” Mayim Achronim concludes: “We must continue to wait for Mashiach himself to come and properly re-establish the ancient council of elders that first began with Moses so long ago.”

To adapt a lyric from Barry Manilow to this context, “When will this long yearning end – for the Final Redemption, that is?” Just as the aforementioned Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai, lying weeping on his deathbed, explained to his puzzled students that two roads were before him and he didn’t know on which one he was being led, neither do we. Stay tuned. †

Israel ~ Signs of the Times