Herem (censure)

Although developed from the biblical ban, excommunication, as employed by the rabbis during Talmudic times and during the Middle Ages, became a rabbinic institution, the object of which was to preserve Jewish solidarity.

[citation needed] A system of laws was gradually developed by rabbis, by means of which this power was limited, so that it became one of the modes of legal punishment by rabbinic courts.

While it did not entirely lose its arbitrary character, since individuals were allowed to pronounce the ban of excommunication on particular occasions, it became chiefly a legal measure resorted to by a judicial court for certain prescribed offenses.

He was expected to go into mourning and to refrain from bathing, cutting his hair, and wearing shoes, and he had to observe all the laws that pertained to a mourner.

According to one opinion (recorded in the name of Sefer Agudah), the possibility that the offender might leave the Jewish community due to the severity of the excommunication did not prevent the court from adding rigor to its punishments so as to maintain its dignity and authority.

This extended for an indefinite period, and no one was permitted to teach the offender or work for him, or benefit him in any way, except when he was in need of the bare necessities of life.

(In modern Hebrew, nezifah generally means "a dressing-down" or "reading (someone) the riot act", i.e., a stern verbal rebuke.)

[7][8] Another renowned case is the herem the Vilna Gaon ruled against the early Hassidic groups in 1777 and then again in 1781, under the charge of believing in panentheism.