Shevuot 31

In 1976, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Estelle v. Williams that a defendant has the right to wear civilian garb, rather than an orange jump suit, at trial. After all, if you look like a criminal, the jury is more likely to find you guilty of committing a crime.  In making this decision, the Supreme Court recognized that, whether intentional or not, people judge each other based on their appearance. And their ruling was meant to visually uphold the idea that defendants are innocent until proven guilty.  

The rabbis of the Talmud also knew that we make implicit judgments about each other’s appearances all the time. On today’s daf, they too work to minimize the impact of those judgments in court. The rabbis start with the assumption that both parties to a court case should be dressed in clothing of a similar class. What they want to know is which biblical verse is the source for that practice.  

From where do we learn that if two came to judgment, one dressed in rags and one dressed in a garment worth 10,000 dinars, they say to him: Dress like the poor person or dress him like yourself? From the verse that states: “Distance yourself from a false matter.” (Exodus 23:7)

We learned in Tractate Sanhedrin that rabbinic courts don’t have trials by a jury of one’s peers. Instead, judgments are made by a panel of judges, with the number of judges depending on the kind of case. So in its concern about visual appearance, the Talmud is not simply acknowledging that everyday people might be swayed by visual appearance, but is more boldly acknowledging that learned rabbinic judges may be implicitly biased against those of lower socio-economic status. And that implicit bias may lead them to make the wrong decision, which would create the “false matter” prohibited by the verse. 

That acknowledgement leads the rabbis to place an additional responsibility on the richer of the two parties: to either dress himself down, or dress his rival up. 

Admittedly, this responsibility seems a little unfair to me. After all, if the court wants all parties to be dressed alike, shouldn’t it be the court’s responsibility to provide clothing to both parties? But perhaps this teaching is meant to recognize that with greater wealth comes greater responsibility. 

The rabbis’ discussion of court fashion ends with an account of what this looked like in practice: 

When individuals would come before Rava bar Rav Huna, he would say to them: Remove your fine shoes and descend for judgment.

Rava bar Rav Huna, an important talmudic sage, would require the wealthier party to remove the signs of his wealth. He didn’t even give the man a choice about whether to keep his fancy shoes and buy the other party a matching pair. Rather, in his court, everyone was required to appear in humble dress. 

You might think that the more famous and respected a sage, the more we can trust that they will not be biased. But this story reminds us that simply isn’t true. The best we can do is be aware of our biases and take measures to compensate for them.

Read all of Shevuot 31 on Sefaria.

This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on June 1, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.