As we have already learned in the mishnah on Sanhedrin 49b, there are four primary methods of execution in a Jewish court: stoning, burning, beheading and strangulation. The mishnah on Sanhedrin 52b described how this last punishment is meted out: A scarf is wrapped around the neck of the condemned, then the two witnesses whose testimony brought about the conviction pull on opposite ends of the scarf until the prisoner is choked to death.

Today, the penultimate chapter of Tractate Sanhedrin begins with a mishnah listing the offenders that meet this specific end:

These are the transgressors who are strangled in the implementation of the court-imposed death penalty: One who strikes his father or his mother, one who abducts a Jewish person, a rebellious elder according to the court, a false prophet, one who prophesies in the name of idol worship, one who engages in intercourse with a married woman, conspiring witnesses who (falsely) testify that the daughter of a priest committed adultery. And her paramour is also executed via strangulation (in the case where a man engages in intercourse with a married woman).

To recap, the offenses punished by strangulation are something of a hodgepodge: striking a parent, kidnapping, rebelling, false prophecy, adultery and falsely accusing a priest’s daughter of adultery. To this list, the Gemara adds:

Every death stated in the Torah without specification is referring to nothing other than strangulation.

We’ve seen this statement before, on Sanhedrin 52b, attributed to Rabbi Yonatan. On what basis do the sages rule that choking is the default method of execution, rather than stoning, burning or beheading? According to Maimonides (Hilchot Sanhedrin 14:1), this is halakhah l’Moshe mi’Sinai: a law given orally by God to Moses on Mount Sinai. 

In the introduction to his commentary on the Mishnah, Maimonides enumerates 31 laws that are similarly identified as “laws of Moses from Sinai” — meaning that they have no textual basis in the Torah and are, rather, oral tradition passed down from God directly to Moses. Some of these laws involve the details of making tefillin, agricultural minutiae and more. Interestingly, however, this particular law — that strangulation is the default form of execution when none is specified — is not among them. In this case, it appears that the phrase means simply that this is a dictum that is accepted as if it were one of the laws that God gave Moses orally on Mount Sinai, even though a textual reference does not appear in the Torah. 

At this point, I (perhaps sacrilegiously) hear Dana Carvey in the guise of Saturday Night Live’s Church Lady character sneering: “Well, isn’t that convenient?!” Does this mean that we can say that anything we can’t prove from the Torah is halakhah l’Moshe mi’Sinai?

I don’t think we can, and here’s why: The entire rabbinic enterprise of the Oral Law — the Talmud — relies on underpinning every law with some kind of source material. If you’ve been studying Daf Yomi for any portion of the five years since we began this current cycle, you’ve seen yourself that interpreting the Torah to get to a legal ruling typically takes many rounds of discussion with various rabbis unravelling different Torah verses to support their views. In our case, interrogating all the times in the Torah that capital punishment is required, but no specific method of execution is identified, forms that basis. 

It seems to me that the purpose of identifying a law as halakhah l’Moshe mi’Sinai isn’t to put a cap on the conversation or to make an irrefutable ruling with no real basis. Rather, the sages of the Talmud needed a mechanism that would allow future rulings necessitated by a changing society to evolve. The understanding of the rabbis that oral tradition is as authoritative as the written text has allowed that tradition to continue, change and grow, both in their day and in our own time.

Read all of Sanhedrin 84 on Sefaria.

This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on March 11, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.