When Jews Were Like ISIS

Over the last few weeks, Daf Yomi readers have followed the debates in Tractate Ketubot about how to punish a man who rapes or seduces an unmarried young girl. In most circumstances, his penalty involves paying a fine to the girl’s father and offering to marry the girl himself. But what if a girl, while she is betrothed to one man, has sexual relations with another? What is her punishment—a fine, or forced marriage? Alas, the answer we learned this week in chapter 4 of Ketubot is very different. In accordance with the explicit statement in Deuteronomy 22:21, a bride who is found not to be a virgin on her wedding night is stoned to death: “They shall bring out the maiden to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones so that she die; because she has done a wanton deed in Israel, to play the harlot in her father’s house.”