The Oral Talmud: Episode 11 - The Broken Social Contract (Gittin 55b-56a)
SHOW NOTES
“And the people in this story who failed to protest are being pointed at precisely because they have influence and power in the situation.” - Benay
Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.
Like our previous week’s episode, this was recorded in June of 2020, in response to the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of police. Likewise, we turn to another text which emphasizes the culpability of bystanders and those who remain silent when witnessing cruelty – a story of how one wrong party invitation devolves into the Fall of Jerusalem. When is it time to speak up? How do victims of harm understand our silence? What compromises are we willing to make to avoid worse consequences? Which actions become understandable when we recognize how deeply the social contract has been violated? When we tell stories about our past, what are we saying about our present?
This week’s text: Kamtza, bar Kamtza, and the Fall of Jerusalem (Gittin 55b-56a)
Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation.
Further Learning
[1] For Rabbi Elazar's Cow: Episode 10
[2] For Rabbi Elazar adding 700 benches to the study hall: Episode 7and Episode 8
[3] For Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai being smuggled out of Jerusalem in a coffin: Episode 1
[4] More on Law & Order "cold openings" on TvTropes
[5] "If you don't follow the commandments, the land will vomit you out" - start with Leviticus 18:28
[6] "Senseless Hatred/Sinat Chinam" on Yoma 9b
[7] Bar Kochba Revolt on Wikipedia
[8] "To shame someone in public is akin to murder.” Bava Metzia 58b
[9] For David Kraemer on the early Rabbis: Episode 4
[10] The Oven of Akhnai: Episode 3 and Episode 5
[11] Trevor Noah on the Social Contract - Daily Show video on YouTube
[12] An animated intro to Pikuach Nefesh via BimBam
[13] Nitza's Attic/Yehareg V'al Ya'avor ("Laws that one should be killed before violating")Sanhedrin 74a
[14] A search for Chelm Stories from the Town of Wise Fools on Archive.org (many good options to borrow!)
[15] Mount Sinai held over our Heads & Contract Law - Episode 2
[16] Absurdity in Statutory Inquiry - "Rationalizing Absurdity" by Jim Huang at The Yale Law Journal
[17] Roman à clef on Wikipedia
[18] Leon Kass "Stories are not about what happened, but what always happens" - on UChicago
[19] Jeffrey Rubinstein's "Stories of the Babylonian Talmud" - on Archive.org
[20] The word for wimpiness/humility is עָנָו/עִנְוְותָנוּתוֹ - referring to Moses (Number 12:3) and Hillel (Shabbat 31a)
[21] Anna Quindlen's website (couldn't find her quote “Pioneers tend to be conservative,”)
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DAN: This is The Oral Talmud - Episode 11: The Broken Social Contract. Welcome to The Oral Talmud, a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. I’m Dan Libenson…
BENAY: …and I’m Benay Lappe.
DAN: The Oral Talmud is our weekly deep dive study partnership, in which we try to figure out how voices from the Talmud – voices from 1500 to 2000 years ago – can help us think in new ways about Judaism today.
Today’s episode connects to the learning we did on our last episode, where we look at what the Talmud has to say about the obligation to protest and the culpability of bystanders. Today’s episode was recorded in the Spring of 2020, which is when the Oral Talmud started as a live streaming video. As you might remember, only a few months into the COVID-19 pandemic, George Flyod was murdered by a police officer, while other police officers didn’t intervene. The murder was followed by a groundswell of protests and political action, and it was during this period that we recorded this week’s conversation.
In last week’s episode, we discussed a text about the Jewish responsibility to protest. Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah did not protest when he saw his neighbor working her cow on Shabbat (which was understood to be prohibited by Jewish tradition) – and because he didn’t protest, the tradition forever remembers the cow as “Rabbi Elazar’s cow” even though it didn’t actually belong to him. The Talmud expands this principle to say that anyone who can protest against something and does not is regarded as bearing responsibility for what they could have protested against – first at the level of their household, then their town, and finally the actions of the whole world. In our chevruta, BENAY and I discussed what it means to be able to effectively protest within our personal world, or olam in Hebrew.
This week, we explore another Talmud narrative that emphasizes the culpability of bystanders and those who remain silent when witnessing cruelty – a story of how one mistaken party invitation devolves into the Fall of Jerusalem. A few times in this episode we refer to Rabbi Elazar’s Cow as shorthand for the lessons of our previous study, so listening to last week’s conversation if you haven't already heard it will help you deepen your learning here.
Each episode of The Oral Talmud has a Source Sheet linked to in the show notes on a web site called Sefaria, where you can find pretty much any Jewish text in the original and in translation. If you like, you can follow along with the texts we discuss and share them with your study partners or just listen to our conversation!
And now, The Oral Talmud…
DAN: Hello everyone. This is Dan Levison and I'm here again with Benay Lappe for the next episode of the Oral Talmud and Benay it's great to be here with you again. We're going to continue our conversation about protest in the Talmudic tradition, and it, of course connects to what we've been talking about for the last couple of weeks in terms of everything that's going on in America today with the events that followed the murder of George Floyd and all the uprisings and protests and everything that follows from that.
And this deep question about how do we think about the role that we should play in events like these. And it also though connects back to everything that we've been talking about throughout the whole time of the Oral Talmud and really throughout the whole time of Judaism. Or we should have been talking about it at least.
And so there are ways in which we, I mean, I would say in every way, we don't see these episodes as a break from our normal Oral Talmud shows. This is very much connected to the whole process that we've been talking about, so I'm really looking forward to getting into this with you. I wanted to see, before we jump into today's text, whether you had other comments that you've been thinking about between last week and this week?
BENAY: Um, let's see. There's so many things. I'm not sure where to start, but let's, let's, get into today’s text, I think they’ll come up, because there are a lot of resonance between this text and last week's text. What's really sitting with me from last week is sort of the refrain, “Whose cow is it?” Last week the driving event was, just to refresh people's memory, the labeling of Rabbi Elazar Ben Azariah as responsible for his neighbor's violation of Shabbat, by the way, in which he sort of treated the harness on his cow. And, and that cow is called Rabbi Elazar’s Cow. And I love this idea as a shorthand for, you know, whose job is it to speak up. And I think it's a great potential meme.
Right. And, and something we can take from the tradition as a reminder that the primary person pointed to isn't, and wasn't in that story, isn't in this story, and maybe isn't across the board the person who committed the wrong. But the person who doesn't speak up. That's the one who's really being, called out, pointed to, that's sort of the worst offense. So I'm just loving this question that I think we should always be sitting with, which is “Whose cow is it?” Okay. There's a cow! But is it that person's cow? Is it my cow? So that's what's sitting with me this week.
DAN: And, and you know, I should say, we got a couple of, and particularly one extraordinary email about that whole conversation.
So I at this point don't know what are my ideas, your ideas, the email person's ideas. You know, so I both apologize and acknowledge that, all these ideas are seeping in, and, and that's very much what this is all about. So we encourage more thoughtful and amazing emails and let's just create this, this whole thing together.
But one of the things I think was in the email that we got that this really is sitting with me, is this idea that, Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria, he is one of the most important rabbis there was. He is one of the most famous, one of the most well-regarded. He's in the Haggadah of Passover, you know, and, and most of the time we think of him as this great, or he was the guy that led in the, the, the 700 benches worth of students in the text that we studied earlier and, and yet.
He is like labeled with this, you know, Rabbi Elazar’s Cow, about this one time when he didn't protest against a person's violation of Shabbat. And, and I think that that's really a really significant piece of the whole thing that, that however great you are in your life, you, you might screw up. And that time might be the time that's remembered.
And by the way, it doesn't mean that your name goes down in infamy, you know, it just means that you have this little asterisk next to your name and you know, if you don't want an asterisk next to your name, then you're gonna have to really step up your game. And, and even if you're the greatest rabbi we had. And, and I, I love that.
BENAY: Yeah. It's great.
DAN: So.
BENAY: And a little bit he can be proud, that he's kind of the poster child for this, what, what I think was a newish idea or an old idea that's now being lifted up and really amplified – this idea that it's not so much the offender who's, who's really… who we need to focus on, but, but those who remain silent.
DAN: Absolutely. So, so let's, uh, jump into today's text because it's really on that story. So this is actually this, this, uh, text that we're doing today. It's in the tractate Gittin which means “Divorces.” So it's, uh, you know, it, this particular – well, I mean, there are ways in which this is kind of, you could think of it as a certain kind of divorce. But it actually kind of comes from a diversion from that specific subject and it connects, it’s a text that comes just before, not exactly, there's something in between, but almost just before the story that we, that was the first story that we explored on this, on this show, which was the story of Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai being smuggled out of Jerusalem in a coffin.
And by the way, you know, representative potentially of the death of the previous form of Judaism – and then going to Vespasian and asking for Yavneh, which is kind of where that baby Judaism is, is being incubated, right? That place where the stage is all gathered outside of Jerusalem to reimagine Judaism. And this story is basically there as like the pre-story.
Uh, you know, it's like, well, what, why did, why was Jerusalem destroyed in the first place? And you could say, “because the Roman army was extremely powerful and they basically defeated every country in the world.” But that's not what the rabbis say, right? The rabbis basically say, no, no, no. The reason why Jerusalem was destroyed 'cause we messed up.
And, um, yeah. And that this, that's gonna be the story. So should we just jump into, to starting?
BENAY: Sure. But, but one thing I wanna point out, which is: as I was re-relearning this story, it occurred to me that this is very much like the opening of one of the Law & Order shows. Hard to say –
DAN: Have a sound effect, like, b-bumm.
BENAY: I know it's hard to say “law and order” right now, um, without entering into a whole lot of commentary, but, we'll, we'll put a sticky on that. Um, but, but, but the innovation of the Law & Order format or formula was that the show, it wasn't a kind of murder mystery where you get to the murder at the end. Right? The murder happens in the opening scene,
DAN: Right.
BENAY: And you know, you know the end of the story, the whole show is about how do we figure out who did it and how are we gonna prosecute that person, right? So that's really how this story begins. It begins with kind of a slogan, Jerusalem is destroyed because of these two guys: Kamtza and bar Kamtza.
And then the story is the unpacking of that, which I think is. I don't know. I think it's kind of interesting. It's like, okay. There’s a cow here! Where's the person with the cow in this story?
DAN: Right. So I guess before we even share the screen, we can say that because I think there's something to discuss here that the first line of the text that we're looking at is exactly what you said: Jerusalem was destroyed because of Kamtza and bar Kamtza. And these are names of two people. And what I really just wanna point out is that there are sort of two possibilities here: One is that Bar means the “son of”. So conceivably it's a guy named Kamtza and his son Bar Kamtza. That's one way that we might understand that.
And the other is that, like, I just, I was thinking about like, how might this like fall on our American ears? You know, it's something like Jerusalem was destroyed because of John and Johnson, you know, or Green and Greenberg, right. You know, that there's, that there's some kind of confusion in the names. Is is an important point here.
BENAY: Right! The storytelling, um, like utility of saying this enormous world changing, God exiling event, like there can be no bigger tragedy – is caused by these two guys. Like what? What, what some, some fight, how, how could that possibly be? So, you know, from the outset that there's more to this story. Um, there has to be more to this story.
Jerusalem, the Temple, our exile, you know, can't have been an outgrowth of a simple fight between two people. So that's one thing. And the other thing is, let's remember that the Talmud is full of explanations for why this horrible tragedy happened, and I think that's part of what you have to do when you move from an old Master Story to a new Master Story, um, you have to tell a story about why that old one died.
And you know, you talk a lot about how we need to mourn and acknowledge the things that are lost in that old story, but I think we also have to tell a story about why. There are a number of stories about why the temples destroyed Jerusalem destroyed and so on, and the one answer that kind of has had staying power is because of sinat chinam, “senseless hatred.”
So I think we have to remember that the reader is likely to enter this story with that framework of, “oh, it's because of senseless hatred that Jerusalem was destroyed.” Where's the senseless hatred in this story? I think that's something that the Talmud expects you to do.
DAN: Yeah. I think that's right.
BENAY: But it overturns that.
DAN: I think that's right. And also I think it's worth, it's worth just pointing out at this stage, and maybe we'll come back to it, maybe we won't. That there is this ancient Jewish tradition, I mean ancient at the time of the Talmud, that understands our suffering as our own fault. Right?
That, that even though, uh, it usually has to do with some world power, which has caused suffering to lots and lots of different peoples. The Torah talks about, you know, if you don't follow the commandments, the land will vomit you out. You know, and after the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BCE like the first time the Babylonian exile, you know, one of the kind of innovations of Judaism was this idea that: we were the reason why this happened – and that it wasn't that our God was weaker than another God or that we defeated by another God. It was like our God did this to us, not another god defeated our God. Our God did this to us and he did it to us, God did it to us, because we were, we were bad.
And the response should be that we should figure out why we were bad, how we were bad, and, and not do that anymore, and then we'll be able to go back and to be restored. Right? And, and so this is actually carrying on a long Jewish tradition of that mentality that says if something bad happened to us, we ought to look inward.
And ultimately, I think what's remarkable about this story is it looks really inward, you know, in ways that that might be even more than, than you would've expected.
BENAY: yeah.
DAN: So do you wanna, so let's read some of the story here. So, um, I am going to share this on my screen…
And so, uh, “Jerusalem was destroyed on account of Kamtza and bar Kamtza. The place known as the King's Mountain (Jerusalem) was destroyed on the account of a rooster and a hen.” Any idea what that means?
BENAY: I actually don't, and, and I, I don't know. I, I wanna put a sticky on it.
DAN: Okay? Okay. Um. “The city of Beitar was destroyed on the account of a shaft from a chariot.” The City of Beitar, that means the Bar Kochba Revolt, which is 60 years or so later. So the Talmud is talking about why these destructions – oh, sorry, I started too early, 'cause it says Jerusalem was destroyed on account of Kamtza and bar Kamtza twice.
So here's the next, it says it again, right? “They explained Jerusalem was destroyed on account of Kamtza and bar Kamtza.”
BENAY: Right. That's where we're gonna jump in first.
DAN: That's where we're gonna really go into it. Um, “This is as there was a certain man, so there was a certain man, whose friend was named Kamtza, and whose enemy was named Bar Kamtza. He, the friend, the other, the third person once made a large feast, and said to his servant, “Go bring me my friend Kamtza.” The servant went and mistakenly brought him his enemy Bar Kamtza. The man who was holding the feast came and found Bar Kamtza sitting at the feast, and he said to Bar Kamtza. “That man is the enemy of that man” meaning, “You're my enemy. Get outta here. What, what are you doing here? Get outta here and leave. Get up and leave.” Bar Kamtza said to him, “Since I've already come, let me stay and I'll give you money for whatever I eat and drink. Just don't-” in the explanation here, “Just don't embarrass me by sending me out.”
BENAY: Yeah. It's like, and in the, and, and in the original Aramaic he's like, “just leave me alone. Don't, don't, don't, don't do this”
DAN: Uhhuh,
BENAY: “you know this, this is embarrassing. Okay, I get that. I was invited by mistake.” You can imagine that he probably was happy that he was invited. Knowing he was the enemy of the host, he was probably like, “oh wow, the host wants to do teshuva with me. He wants to repair our relationship. That's so nice.” And here he is probably feeling all optimistic and the host comes to him and says, “What are you doing here? You're my enemy. Get outta here.” And he is like, “Okay, just please, please don't embarrass me in front of the whole group. I'll, I'll pay for, I'll pay for my meal.” Okay, go ahead. Take it from there.
DAN: Okay. Um, so,
DAN: oops. Um, okay. So, um, I'm just getting it back on the screen. Um, so he says, um, he says, uh, just, just, I'll, I'll give you money for what I, what I've eaten. Just don't send me out. The host says, no, you have to leave. Bar Kaso said to him, I'll give you money for half the feast. Just don't send me away. The host says to him, no, you have to leave.
Bar Kaso said to him, I'll give you money for the entire feast. Just let me stay. And the host said, no, you must leave.
BENAY: Right. Finally, you're, you're. The, like pleading like, please part, I mean, I'm really feeling this for Bar Kamtza. So he's like, please, please. He, he's begging with the host to not embarrass him.
And he'll, he'll do anything. I'll, I'll pay for mice, I'll pay for half the entire fee. Just please, please don't embarrass me. I'll pay for the whole thing. Just leave me alone. Let me just, let me just stay here.
DAN: Mm-hmm.
BENAY: Okay.
DAN: Um, I, I mean, it's interesting, like why, why is that so important to him? You know? And maybe it's something that we wanna pick up, but, you know, it's, why, why is it
BENAY: so important to Bar Kamtza so that he not be ashamed?
DAN: Yeah, yeah. And like, why is it even shaming to say that this person is not a friend Uhhuh? And you know, I, and it's like, I just wonder what sensibility that's mm-hmm. That's bringing, uh, whether that's like a normal human sensibility or there or there or the, the idea here is to, is to, is that. Is that we should even, you know, bend over backwards to make sure that we don't shame a person, even if it's not something that we would feel was shameful.
I guess that's my, I guess that's where, where I would sit with it. I, I would sort of say like, well, look, I mean, how is it so shaming if, uh, somebody asked me to leave a party? Like if I was mistakenly invited to a party and it turned out that it was being hosted by, you know, somebody I really don't like.
And, um, and first of all, like, I wouldn't have come in the first place, but like, let's say that I, I came and they, and he kind of said, oh, it was a mistake that you're invited. Yeah. I don't, I'd be like, okay, you know, whatever.
BENAY: Yeah. I, I think we have to assume that this isn't a one-on-one interaction. I think we have to assume that the entire, you know, guest, everyone there is aware of what's going on and is watching this.
Mm-hmm. Um, I, that's what I'm guessing. I think especially knowing where the story's gonna go, Barkuma is feeling the eyes of everyone in the room on him and on the host who's threatening to kick him out.
DAN: Mm-hmm. And,
BENAY: and, and I think he's imagining if I get up and leave, everyone here is gonna see me leave.
It's not like I'm gonna slip out the back door and people are gonna think I'm just going to the bathroom or something. I, I think he, it's, everyone is gonna see that I've been ejected. Mm-hmm. And, and we know that the rabbis, I'm not sure how much, I'm not sure of the timeline, of the rabbis elevating this, um, transgression of shaming someone in public to murder.
We know that they, they do that. They say, you know. To, to, to whiten someone's face, meaning to, to shame them in public so that the blood drains from their face is akin to murder. And, um, again, I'm not sure what the cause and effect is, if, if that's looking back, but regardless, it's seen as a very big deal mm-hmm.
To shame someone in public.
DAN: Mm-hmm. Right. Okay. So, um, so, so he's ultimately, uh, basically escorted out and Yeah,
BENAY: escorted out, I think is mild. The hose grabs him, the grabs him by the shirt, grabs him by the body, and physically tosses him out.
DAN: Right.
BENAY: Okay. So I think this is pretty, this is pretty embarrassing.
DAN: Right. Okay. And, and Barza says to himself. Since the sages or the rabbis we were gonna translate. 'cause, uh, the, in the original it says the rabbis. Yeah. Since the rabbis were sitting there and did not protest the actions of the host, and they saw that he, he shamed me. We should learn from it. That they were contempt or that they accepted what he did.
Right. That So their silence equals a affirmation. Right. Which is a critical point.
BENAY: Absolutely. So first, let's notice that this word protest here is the exact same word we had in last week's text.
DAN: Okay.
BENAY: Um, and all of a sudden we are now seeing a bigger picture of who's in the room. Let's notice that interestingly, the story doesn't begin with Kmsa threw a big banquet at which the rabbis were present.
I'm not sure exactly what to make of that, but now all of a sudden we're, we're seeing the, the lens zoom out as Barka is reflecting to himself, Hey, all these rabbis were there. Now we, the reader are being clued in that, oh, there were a bunch of rabbis there and they did nothing. And either they did nothing, means we can deduce that they were fine with this behavior.
They saw nothing wrong with it, which is a problem. Or even worse, they knew it was wrong and were silent. Um, and now they're holding the cow. Right? In other words, that that's. We're not quite sure what's being pointed at, but um, but we know that, uh, Bart Compa says other rabbis were there and they did nothing.
And that's now being pointed at as the driver of the next part of the story. Like, that's, that's the offense here. It's interesting that Barza doesn't point to the host as saying, you know, the more this story is, don't shame someone. Mm-hmm. That's not, that's not the sin. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Or the, the transgression being highlighted in the story.
It's the folks who saw that transgression and did nothing. Okay.
DAN: Well, and right, and, and I would say like, well, two things I wanted to note about this. One is that it's not crystal clear that there was any such thing as like the rabbis, uh, at this time in history, which is the year, uh, you know, 69, 70 something around there.
Uh, it's not at all clear that that. That, no, it could be that there were people that were called Rabbi in different, but the, the idea that there was like a collective of rabbis that, that had some role in, in Jewish society and Judean society, it's not at all clear that that's the case. So that's, uh, some evidence that maybe there is a retro rejection happening here.
Where, where the story is written at a time when there were rabbis, when rabbis were, were maybe in a dominant, uh, social position and, and they're, they're kind of, uh, constructing a story where they were there and in some ways caused the destruction of Jerusalem, which is an interesting decision to make.
BENAY: Yeah, abso absolutely. This is a story of self-critique and of distancing. I think it's, it's, and I think you are right, and I, I never saw that in the story before, that the rabbis, I think are the ones who. Saw this situation and left. We're, we're gonna see that in a minute. The, the rabbis being pointed at here, I think are being shown to be these, these sort of proto capital R rabbis who were so in bed with the, the, the priestly class or the way of doing law, um, that they're now being pointed at as problematic.
Mm-hmm. And, and this brings us back to things that David Kramer brought out, um, a number of episodes ago. I think he brought, he brought it out when we were live that the early rabbis were not as radical as they're being read by later history to have been.
DAN: Right.
BENAY: Um. Now I'm seeing that in this story that the rabbis being critiqued here and we're gonna see the critique fleshed out even more are the rabbis from which the rabbis really split and became a.
The radical rabbis that we all know and love.
DAN: Yeah. And, and the other point just to reinforce is that this really is a Rabbi Azar cow situation because just like in that story last week with, with the woman who, who was violent? Uh, was it a woman? I don't, well, for some reason I think of the neighbor as a woman.
I'm not sure if that was in the text or I'm just making that up. But, but in any event, the, the neighbor who, uh. Who let the cow out on Shabbat and there with a strap around its horns and therefore violated Shabbat, that person seems to get not a, not a free ride because they're probably guilty, you know, I mean, they probably would, would, would be judged in a negative way.
But the, the Talmud story seems to not care about that person at all. It only cares about Rabbi Azar and says it was his cow because he didn't protest. And here very much never and matches never hear about the host again. Right. Like the host is. That's right. It's kinda like, you know, he did what he did.
He's probably sinned, you know, he shouldn't have shamed the guy. But from now on, it's not, we don't hear about him. We only hear about the people who failed to protest or, or do other bad things in the story.
BENAY: That's right. And the people who failed to protest are being pointed at precisely because they have influence and power in the situation.
DAN: Uhhuh
BENAY: and did nothing. I mean, the, the, I think the, the, the elements of power and influence
DAN: Uhhuh,
BENAY: um, are critical here.
DAN: Uhhuh,
BENAY: Uhhuh, and, well,
DAN: I wanna definitely put a sticky on that one because, uh, I de I, I, I'm, I'm trying to think about some of the associations with what's going on today. And yeah, I wanna get, make progress in the text, but I, I think that's actually, that's a, a really important, uh, dimension that we wanna bring out in some discussion.
BENAY: Yeah, definitely. It gets back to the question we had last week, which was, what's your lum, what's, what's that place? That's your world where you have power and influence? And ironic, ironically, it may not be the big world, it may be your organization, it may be your community, it may be the, you know, the white folk that listen to you.
DAN: Right. But I mean, I think it, there's also an element where if you're a white
BENAY: person and you're asking that, yeah.
DAN: Right. But there's also, I feel like an element where it's, um, there's some suggestion, right? That, that human beings do bad things. It's part of what it is to be a human being. And actually it's not clear that the human being that did the bad thing is the most culpable in the story.
It it because that person is in the hot, you know, hotness of the reaction or, or, and, and maybe in terms of the hotness of their own prejudices. And that's bad and they shouldn't. We, we wanna, we wanna re reimagine and rebuild society so that people don't have those prejudices, but maybe in certain circumstances it's actually the, the bystander that is more guilty than the, uh, perpetrator.
And, uh, by the way, I mean, I think it's a really interesting take on the. The, the, the killing of George Floyd. There was the one officer who actually had his knee on the neck, but there were three other officers who basically didn't do anything to stop him. And some people I've been hearing in the news are saying, oh, they were rookie cops.
Some of them what, you know, what were they supposed to do? You know? But, but I think this is a take that says, actually they might be more guilty or certainly equally guilty and let's at least, so it's not unfair to them to hold them up in, in as much guilt as the person who actually did the deed. And maybe even more, you know, I mean, there's something there that I think is not our usual way of thinking where the bystander may be culpable, but not as culpable as the person who actually did the wrong.
And this might be actually saying the bystander is more culpable.
BENAY: Yeah, absolutely. And let, let's not fail to. Zoom out further to all of us who, you know, weren't screaming and in the streets and speaking out against this system where that was going on for years and years and years and years. Right,
DAN: right, right.
And right. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, let's, uh, continue. Okay, this story. Um, so the, um, so Bar Kamtza says to himself, since the rabbis were sitting there and didn't protest the actions of the host, that that, that means that they must have been approving of what the host did. I will therefore go and inform against them to the king.
Meaning I'm going to wrap them out, you know, I'm gonna turn them, I'm gonna, I'm gonna actually say something untrue about them in this case. Right. But, so inform means to. To, uh, tell, you know, what would be the right word? I don't think inform is quite the word in, in that we, that we mean here.
BENAY: Yeah.
DAN: Um, I know like slander them in front, you know, I'm gonna accuse, I'm gonna accuse them of something, uh, you know, to the ruler.
BENAY: Absolutely. And, and this story has two halves and we're about to enter into the second half of the story. And it's just like the oven of story, where the first half of the story makes it really clear who the good guy is and who the bad guy is, and who's the victim, and her, who's the perpetrator. And the second half of the story turns that around.
Hmm. And destabilizes who you thought was good and who you thought was bad. And so in the first part of the story, Barza is clearly the victim. Um, and now you know this wrong. That was done to him and his anger over the bystanders who were silent and didn't intervene or protest. These events send him into a place that we're not gonna justify, um, a place that's understandable, but n nor is it seem to be justifiable, but we get it.
He be, he becomes an informant against the entire Jewish community. And you're right, he slanders we're, we're about to see to the emperor, he basically, he wants to bring down the entire Jewish world
DAN: Yeah. '
BENAY: cause of this event.
DAN: And I would go even slightly further, maybe a lot further than, than what you just said.
Um, in the sense that this is what I've been trying to say over the last couple of weeks in terms of the social contracts. I have to say that I, I got this in a powerful way from a video that Trevor Noah did about, about the, the whole situation of, you know, of the, the, the looting and the rioting that followed the murder of George, George Floyd, and.
He was talking about the, the social contract and, and saying that if the social, that the social contract is the basic idea that we agree to live by these rules because we all agree to live by the rules if the police aren't living by the rules, you know, and if more importantly, the entire society isn't living by the rules vis-a-vis African-Americans, in this case, people of color, and more generally, then, then they're not really bound by the rules.
And so now that doesn't mean that it's right to be looting, it doesn't mean that it's right to be slandering somebody to the authorities. But on the other hand, it's not exactly wrong. You know, it's, it's meaning like we hope that somebody would have a, an internal personal moral compass that would say, well, I don't wanna do that.
But it's not clear that they don't have a right to do that. It's, it's in the sense that. Sorry, go ahead. No, just in the sense that they've been, um, that they're, that it's not clear that they are subject to the source of the rules. And so, so what is the, so if you say that they're wrong to do it, what rule structure are you using to say that they did something wrong?
Even if it was looting, even if it was destroying, even if it was slandering, you know, if they have been so abused by the system and you know, here it was a man that was shamed and, you know, I mean, is it, how can we, I mean maybe, you know, right, if, if the, the, the Talmud often uses this idea called the, you know, that, that we learned from the easier case to the harder case, right?
So if a, if a man who was shamed can go out and slander the people and he's ultimately not really the one held responsible, then all the more so somebody who's been, you know, shamed and demeaned by the system for 400 years. Right. So, so I think there's something there that, that, that again suggests that we can understand in the hotness of the, the pain and the, the hotness of the sense of, of that, well this, this society doesn't actually, it's not, it's not there to help me.
So why should I be there to help it, you know, in fact, I wanna burn it all down and, you know, maybe I'll be better off, my people will be better off in a different way. Like, you can, you can accept that as a, as a moral claim. And that doesn't necessarily mean people should exercise that. Right. Uh, but I'm not sure that it's right to say that they don't have the right
BENAY: and to focus only on that behavior, to focus only on the looting and the absence of the awareness of the other violations of the moral, of the social con contract is just a distortion.
It's just a
DAN: uhhuh.
BENAY: I agree with you completely. And, and what. Bar Comsa is about to do, brings down the whole system.
DAN: Mm-hmm.
BENAY: And I think there's ambivalence in the story that, we'll, we'll see as we get to the very last line about, actually that may have been a good thing. Mm-hmm. And this whole story about the end of Jerusalem may actually be a story about how to bring down systems or the, the, the stuff that happens when systems are need to go down and maybe let's watch for them.
Mm-hmm. I don't know. I'm not sure maybe mixing aspects of the story. I'm still in the process of figuring it out.
DAN: Yeah. And by the way, that's what I was, we were saying at the beginning, like, if folks are out there watching this, listening to this, you know, help us think this through. Yeah. Um, okay. So. What Barza does is he goes and he, uh, informs to the emperor.
He says, the Jews have rebelled against you. By the way, the Jews always an interesting phraseology. Yeah. Um, the Jews have rebelled against you. The emperor said to him, who says, so,
BENAY: okay, we have to, we have to know that that's, that's not true. Right. So this begins his, his s lie. Mm-hmm. Okay, fine. Right,
DAN: right.
They all, they, I mean, at least look, there, there was actually a Jewish rebellion, but like, this was not it. And this is not, that's not what he's describing here, right there, right. There were the, the zealots and the, you know, all those, there was right. This, there was actually a war going on. So, you know, it's a, but, but this story is not, is not that the, the, the rabbis weren't the people who were rebelling against the Romans.
Um, but he says to the Jews have rebelled against you. The emperor says, who says? So Baram said to him, go and test them. See if they're really loyal to you, send them an offering to, you know, an animal. Send them an offering to be brought in honor of the government and see whether they'll do it, whether they'll, they'll make that sacrifice.
Okay. So let,
BENAY: so let's notice by the way, it, that not only Jews brought, brought sacrifices to the temple, that's an important just historical fact. The Romans also and other non-Jews, uh, brought, sacrifice it to the temple. I'm not sure what to make of that. Hmm. Um, but that's something that I've learned over the years happened and, and we're seeing it right here in this story, it wasn't unusual, wouldn't have been unusual for, um, a Roman, a non-Jew to bring a sacrifice to the temple.
DAN: Hmm. Okay. Okay. So, so the, uh, emperor says, you know, by the way, the idea that any Jews were talking to the Roman Emperor right. Is absurd. Right? I mean, that's obviously not actually a historical story, but, so the emperor, um. The emperor went and sent him with a three-year-old calf. So he, he sents bar kaso with the calf to go sacrifice at the temple.
So maybe here
BENAY: Here comes another reference to Ravi Leazar's Cow. Okay. Here's somebody's cow.
DAN: Right, right, right. So his cow, so bar Kaso is now leading this cow towards the temple, and he made a blemish on either the calf's lip or eyelid. And the, the bottom line here is that he, according to the Talmud, that he, um, in some way injured the cow in a way that makes it under Jewish law not appropriate to offer as a sacrifice, but according to Roman law, it would've still been okay to offer as a sacrifice.
Right. That's the bottom line of, of what's going on here. Right.
BENAY: Right. He makes, he makes that cow ineligible for sacrifice. And he knows the rabbis when they see the blemish. I are gonna say, we, we can't accept this cow as an offering. Okay.
DAN: Right. But the whole point is that a Roman would've said it was okay.
Right? This is a place where there's a, a divergence between Jewish law and Roman law, and he barza does something to the cow that makes it bad under Jewish law. Good. Under Roman law. And so if the Jews don't sacrifice it, then ostensibly they're saying, we're not, we don't really see ourselves as, as, uh, subject to Roman law where we have our own rules and this, we're not gonna do it.
Um, right. So, so the sages, uh, thought to sacrifice the, the cow in order to maintain peace with the government. Right. So they, they can, they had a conversation. The rabbis had a conversation. Well, maybe we should say that the sacrifice is okay anyway, even though it's technically not okay. But we know we're gonna have trouble with the authorities if we don't sacrifice it.
So maybe we should just do it anyway, you know, outta it. Right. Sense of, you know, in, in, in Jewish law today, people are familiar with this idea of the idea that to save a life you can violate the, the letter of the law in certain cases. And, and they're suggesting that, you know, this is like a big, big pfe because if we don't sacrifice this, this animal right now, we might all die.
BENAY: Which makes a lot of sense and that's their first impulse. And by the way, that the, the sort of canonization of that idea of probably is not yet in place. We know that the rabbis met in secret and an attic to sort of bring that into the tradition, but probably part of this setting is one in which that kind of.
Savara iic impulse, the impulse to kind of use your common sense to say, we think we have the right to put life over adherence
BENAY: to the law, uh, that wasn't kind of extant and accepted at this point, and even though that was their first impulse, go ahead.
DAN: Okay. That
BENAY: gets, that gets knocked down.
DAN: Right. So that was their, their first, uh, idea, like maybe we should do it anyway. And then, um, rabbi Zaria, Ben [00:33:00] of Coal said to them.
If, if we do that, if the, then people will say that we can sacrifice blemished animals. So, you know, you know, it's a slippery slope argument. If, if we allow it in this case, people are gonna wanna do it in every case. And then before you know it, everybody's gonna be bringing blemished animals to be sacrificed
BENAY: for.
For me, this is the moment in the text where you have to burst out laughing because the story becomes ahum story. Um, you know, this Rob becomes, okay, so stories are these, these stories about. You know, this fictitious town of fools. Of course there is a real hum in real life, but we'll leave that aside for a minute.
And, and the stories are humorous because they're people who do things that are logical but nonsensical. Right? They, um.
You know, they have these dilemmas where [00:34:00] they, they do things that are ridiculous, um, even though in some way, logical. So here comes, um, Robbie, what's his name? Azar Ovus. Zaria Zaria.
DAN: Which is by the way, means, uh, to remember, you know, so we should remember his name. I wonder if that's so intentional.
BENAY: That's good.
So he, he's like, no, no, no, no, no. If we, if we sacrifice this animal, which everyone said. I dunno about everyone, but some of the other rabbis said, we'll, save us. We'll save the temple. We'll save Jerusalem, we'll save all of our lives. Oh, no, no. God forbid if we do that, people will think that the law is that it's okay to sacrifice a cow with a blemish on its lip.
It, it's, it's ridiculous. Oh's. Absolute. It'll laughable.
DAN: What's interesting actually is ridiculous on another level because there's also right this concept of vo meaning there are certain. Laws that you should be killed before you would violate. And these are like the most important [00:35:00] laws. Don't kill another person even if you would be killed, because you know, this also might be later.
But, but the idea, I think I that here them saying like, we should all be killed, like render. We should let the Romans kill the entire, destroy our entire society because the alternative is that we're not killed, but. We're gonna be around, but sacrificing blemished cows, right? That's right.
BENAY: The blemished cows, God forbid, might actually, it, it's just, it's outrageous.
And for me, that's what, what, what jumped out at me, relearning this story for today was, oh my God, this is the last final gasping moment of. The early, early pro rabbinic, fundamentalist way of doing law Uhhuh and the birth story of Spar Uhhuh. It's the birth not spar. The issue of spar, the concept, the, the idea that we have, have.[00:36:00]
Common sense and the concern for life and the, you know, the reduction of suffering, be the driver of everything we do and how we understand law. And I think this is a snapshot of what it was like before that was a native part of the system.
DAN: Right. And, and actually it reminds me, you know, early on in the, in the show I talked about, when we talked about the mountain being held over the heads, you know, I was bringing in some of my concepts from contract law in Amer, you know, American contract law in Glo, American contract law, you know, contract under duress and ratifications.
There's actually, in statutory interpretation, there's a, a statutory interpretation concept that says, you know, if the interpretation that we're giving this statute would lead to absurd results, then it's the wrong interpretation. And, and this would be a basic. Case it says like, of course it, well, this can't be the right thing to do if it means that our society's gonna be destroyed.
And you're saying that the reason why we don't want it to be destroyed, you know, because then people are gonna go down [00:37:00] the slippery slope and bring the wrong kind of sacrifices. There's gotta be a different way to prevent people from bringing the wrong kind of sacrifices other than destroying our entire.
Country of society. Right, exactly.
BENAY: And I don't even think there's a slippery slope here. It's, there's a little tiny step. It's not, it's not a slope. It's not, oh, this will eventually happen. It's, this will precisely happen.
DAN: It's also not really even a good slippery slope argument. 'cause the, the slippery slope argument tends to be.
That you start with the easy case. That's right. And then's, you fly down towards the hard cases here. You're starting with the hardest cases. It's like, wait, so that you're, you're arguing that the slippery slope is because we are gonna sacrifice one blemished animal in order to save our entire society from the Romans and most powerful army in the world.
Therefore, some farmer and the gey is gonna decide that they can bring a, you know, blemished cow in order to, you know, apologize for breaking Shabbat. You know, like that is not. A slippery slope like that is a, that is an absurdist version of the slippery slope. Yeah. Uh, just like you say, like a helm version of the slippery slope.[00:38:00]
BENAY: It's a kind of parody. It's a, it's a parody or a caricature of how the rabbis or some small proto group of rabbis were doing Jewish flaw. And let's remember that this is their new system, but it, it seems to be so fundamentalist or their. They're doing it in such a, a tight manner that it's ridiculous that, well, and I
DAN: wanna, and I wanna suggest that if this story was actually constructed in the fourth century, fifth century, that I.
Really the parody, it's a, it's a Romana cleft. It's like a parody. There's something going on in their society in the, in, in the fourth, fifth century century that is gotten to a point where this Jewish law has become so absurd. We can recognize that in our time today. Yeah. That, that some of the ways in which, uh, Jewish laws being.
Uh, you know, done in, in our world is, is so crazy that of course you would wanna make a story [00:39:00] about how that kind of thinking led to the destruction of Jerusalem. And the upshot of that is like, let's not do that again today. You know, and, and the story may or may not have any real historical antecedents, but what, what the, what the real interesting thing is, is that I think somebody in those later centuries was saying.
You know, let this story cause the destruction of Jerusalem. Let's not do it in our time about like, the violation of Shabbat. Right. Or like smaller, uh, matters.
BENAY: That's right. You know, I'm, as you know, I'm obsessed with, with Leon Kess now who you turned me on to and his idea that stories are not about what happened, but what always happens mm-hmm.
Just changes the way I read every story now. So, so what if this story is not about. How Jerusalem was destroyed, but how every system is destroyed, right? How every system falls and what are the contributing factors to a, a, a system that it, you need to push off the [00:40:00] cliff essentially. And you know, I, when I talk about the master story becoming fossilized and distorted and becoming just.
Messed up, um, as a result of many, many years of holding on super tightly for fear that change might happen. That that's a, that's about, you know, what happens when it, when the crack, when option three really needs to come about, and in this kind of fundamentalist distortion of what a legal system. Needs to do.
Um, I think we are seeing happening right now. It's like, oh yeah, check. Yeah, that's happening. That's happening. I, I think we're there.
DAN: Right? Okay. Okay. Let's, let's, uh, keep reading. So we, we, we get through the story and then have a, a little, little more time to. Okay. Make them connections, uh, to our times. [00:41:00] Um, so, so that, so Ra, so zha Ben says, don't do that because it'll cause a slippery slope.
Other rabbi say if we,
BENAY: I don't think it's a slippery slope,
DAN: right? No. The, or whatever, but yes, I agree with you. It'll
BENAY: cause this horrible outcome.
DAN: Cause this horrible outcome.
BENAY: People thinking they think it bring a sacrifice of an animal with a blemish, God forbid. Okay?
DAN: Right. So, so then the sages are, the rabbis are worried that, okay, but if we don't sacrifice this.
Cow Barza will go and tell the Roman authorities and, and so then we're gonna be in big trouble. So they say, well, maybe we should kill Bar Kanza. And Rabbi Zaria says to them, if you kill bar Kanza, people will say that anyone who makes a blemish on his on a sacrifice animal should be killed. Right. Okay.
So.
BENAY: Exactly. Exactly. So, so let's not forget that the idea that an informant to the non-Jewish authorities, um, is subject to death is actually, that was [00:42:00] understandable. That for, for them, that was a reasonable thing to do. It's like, I, I don't know, you know, better about, uh, American law espionage and, yeah.
It's,
DAN: yeah, that's why espionage is so carefully, uh, described in the Constitution to make sure that, that nobody, uh, is, is given a, a death penalty or something of, of that nature for something that's less than what we really are trying to get at here, which is the Abso, you know, a time of war where you, you, uh, damage the country, you know, to towards an enemy, you know, in a time of war.
Uh, because the penalty is so severe in the.
BENAY: Right. But for them, I think what the rabbis are saying is this is about to be a time of war. Right. If it isn't already right, and it actually is a reasonable thing to entertain. Namely, that we should kill Bara for being about to trigger this war where we'll all be killed.
Right.
DAN: But instead of engaging with that to say, right, maybe we should, maybe we [00:43:00] shouldn't. This Zaria Benko says, the reason why we shouldn't do it is because then that, you know, those random people who thought who were gonna go down the fall slippery slope and say that because we the wrong animal and save ourselves some Romans, we can do it, you know, for some small matter are gonna say, now we can kill people for small matters.
Like, you know, blemishing a cow where it would be obvious to everybody that the reason why this guy's being killed is because he's a traitor, you know? Right. Why is this guy thinking that everybody's gonna think that he's being killed because he blemished a cow, you know? Um, but so somehow, so, so then, um, so they do.
So, you know, so, so basically, but the point here also is that dha Ovalis basically creates a, a, a, a, an absolute, you know, trap of the situation, right? We can't, we can't sacrifice the cow because then, you know, people will have this absurd thing and we can't. Uh, decide not to sacrifice the cow and kill the guy before he tells the Romans, because people have some other absurd thing, so we're stuck.
So we're gonna have to not [00:44:00] sacrifice the cow. The Romans are gonna find out, destroy our society. What can we do?
BENAY: Yeah. Right. It's like, I, I, I, I guess Well, yeah. So, so now here again is another episode of this story where. The re these, these proto I keep wanting not to, I wanna distance 'cause I love the rabbis.
Right. I love them a lot. Right. And I wanna distance the rabbis whom I love from these guys who are being absolutely ridiculous and, and conceding to zha Ben. Oh. Oh, okay. You're right. So we, we won't sacrifice the cow. We'll leave Baram alone, and we know that that's gonna result in the Romans thinking that we're revolting against them.
And it does. And Jerusalem is destroyed. The temple's destroyed. Everyone is exiled. And.
Yeah. It's kind of [00:45:00] ridiculous. Okay. Then we get, then we get the postscript,
DAN: right? We get the, the sort of the final punchline. So Rabbi Yoman says,
BENAY: yeah,
DAN: the excessive humility, I dunno if you think that's a good translation, the, the meekness of right.
BENAY: Yeah, it maybe wimp ness, uhhuh, you know, and, and I wanna give a nod to Jeffrey Rubenstein, who does a beautiful treatment of this story in his book, um, what's it called here?
Talmudic Stories. And he says, uh, wimp ness is probably a better translation. Mm-hmm. I think he's right. It's like he, he, he points out that this word meekness or humility, everywhere else in the Talmud is seen as a good thing. And this is the one time in all rabbinic literature where it's being pointed out as the wrong time and the wrong place to be.
That. And I think it's interesting that it's, you know, there, there are qualities and character traits that are important most of the time, and sometimes there you gotta suppress them. Mm-hmm. [00:46:00] Sometimes it's actually right. Mm-hmm. To be, mm-hmm. Something else and not cautious, and not careful and not, oh, God forbid, uh, but to be bold and courageous and take a chance and, and color outside of the lines mm-hmm.
To do something which is outside of the narrow understanding of what's right today. Um. So, yeah, it's
DAN: so,
BENAY: yeah,
DAN: no, so, so just the, so the wim of the Wim of Rabbi Zha Ovulus destroyed our temple, burned our sanctuary, and exiled us from our land. That's just that, that's the last line in this story. Right? So, so just to finish the sentence, so let's go back to, so by the way, it's the same word that, that, uh, says that, that said about Moses, right?
That he's the most modest man in the world. Right? That it's the same word here. So whatever that. That word is modest, humble, um, or wimpy, um, you know, or, or may be right.
BENAY: And it's the same word used to describe Hillel. Why when Hillel and [00:47:00] Shama disagree and you know the heavenly voice as they're both right.
Why is it that we follow Hillel? Because he was this. Uhhuh, he, you know, he was humble and a number of other things, but this word is used there as well. But here it's pointed out that being that way in this circumstance at this time is wrong. And this, this inability to see the bigger picture, to, to use your common sense or your sense of, of, you know, maybe compassion or of.
Politics is, is being pointed out as, you know, the the real sin here as well as the rabbis who go along with him. It's, it's another one of those lacking, you know, the, the failure to protest,
DAN: right? I mean, like, actually, like, I'm thinking a little bit about where's the failure to protest [00:48:00] in the second story.
And I feel like this would, meaning the second story be being the, uh, Zaria Ovus material. I almost feel like the, the consistent telling of the story that would go along with Rabbi Eliza's cow would be one where Zakaria Ovus isn't actually the villain of the story. The villain of the story is, that's right.
The other rabbis who didn't say, this is ridiculous. You know, we're not doing that.
BENAY: I agree completely. Which is why this time when I read this story, I actually mistook this last line, Nan, for Rabbi Yohanan Zaki. And whether it's Rabbi Yohan Zaki, or a different rabbi, I finally, I understood the story we're reading today as being that, that last straw story, um, which propels robbi, Jochen zaki to say, you know what?
This, this particular group of rabbis, the way we're doing things right now, it, [00:49:00] it's, it's hopeless and I'm outta here. I and a couple of other of, you know, my colleagues who want to be, you know, in legal reform and be more radical, um, rereads of the tradition. Our, we, we just need to take this project outta here.
Mm-hmm. And they leave And, and I, and I just understand now these, these rabbis as the ones who were the fir first ones out of the gates. And, and I think it's part of the deal that, you know, when you are the, the, the pioneer, you know, I, I, I remember Anna Quinlan who was a feminist columnist and and journalist saying, once that.
Pioneers tend to be conservative, and that's counterintuitive, right? You think pioneers are the ones who are revolutionaries and they're the ones breaking out. But the, the ear early folks, and this is true [00:50:00] as much as I hate to say it, for early feminist politicians and you know, leaders in many spheres, they, they need to be accepted to a certain extent and recognized by.
The, the ruling authority. So they tend to be conservative because if they're not, they're not gonna get any power. And that just may be a feature of early option threes and early systems. And I think that's what this story is about. And finally, rabbi Zaki says, okay, great. You know, we had a beginning of something, but now we have to take it so much further than you all are willing to take it.
That we need to start. Somewhere.
DAN: Well, there's two parts of this, uh, analysis that I think are, are interesting. One, I don't really have evidence, I haven't really done a lot of study about this, but I'm intrigued by the idea that. As we've talked about before, Ava is the hero of the Talmud. Uh, it's, this is a, a man.
His name wasn't Ava. That's a title. It means the [00:51:00] rabbi, uh, the Raav. And when your name is the Raav, that means you're pretty much the hero of the story. And so, um. What's interesting about Ava is that there were these two great, uh, academies in Babylonia called Surah and Pita, and Ava goes to this place called Za and starts sort of his own place.
It's my understanding of, of what happens there, and I wonder whether Ava is the Yohan zaki of reality, right? Meaning that mm-hmm. Whether there was actually something had gone wrong in Surah and Pita, that they had become these like absurdist homelike, you know. Um, obsessive, you know, you know, just folk just stuck in the details of it.
And, and Ava was there for a while and tried to fix it and, and ended up couldn't. And then, you know, he left and, and started this new thing in Za and in some way this story and, and also the aka story, like these are stories that are actually retro [00:52:00] rejecting. A similar experience back to the origin and saying, see what we did.
It's just like what they did 400 years ago, 300 years ago, whatever. And, and, uh, 200, you know, whatever it was. And, um, and, and that's what you have to do. You know, the times come. 'cause honestly, that's what we're doing right now. You know, we're, we're saying, we're saying like, uh, you know, this seems like another one of those times where we gotta sort of start over, whether we're talking about Judaism or America and or the world, you know, and, and it actually does feel really great to us to be able to.
Point to these old stories and say, look, there's precedent for this. Our tradition says that this is what we should do. We're not being, uh, lawless rebels. You know, we're actually, this is a cycle that happens in Judaism and we're embracing it. You know, so, so there's that piece that I'm interested in.
That's our, you know, long-term thread for the oral Talmud. And then there's this more recent thread of the protest, you know, and the, and, and, and the, the, the role and, and, and duty of bystanders and, and. I don't want to, I don't want that to [00:53:00] get lost in what I think is also critical, which is this bigger story that, that we're exploring all the time, which is how much this story places the, uh, blame for these terrible events that occur on the people who failed protest rather than on the people who precipitated the
BENAY: right the actions.
Yeah. I thi I think that's a. It's a beautiful No, or, or I
DAN: was just say, or, or in the case of Zakari Benko is not necessarily the person who failed to protest, but the person who sort of failed to interpret the situation properly, but again, wasn't the primary driver of the action that that sort of caused the situation.
BENAY: Yeah. Yeah. I, I think that's a, a beautiful analysis and um, and we know that Ava is. The one who expands the notion of savara, of, of u, of using your moral [00:54:00] intuition, that that is informed by your life experience to, to shape and drive, uh, the, the norms, um, that create our system. And. I think this is, this is a kind of caricature of what happens when Savara is out of the equation, right?
Zha, AVCAL is, is like the picture of, of what you would do if Sahara weren't let in the room.
DAN: And just to clarify, like VRA is moral intuition is means it's that, it is really, is that idea of you an interpretation that leads to absurd results can't be the right interpretation. It's, it's, it's saying, and, and absurd results are not necessarily defined.
It's saying an absurd result is, is where you feel in your gut. Like this is absurd. Right. That's v that's this the deep seated sense of wrongness
BENAY: and there's, there's, there's something about this story which.
Points out the falsity of imagining that the, the failure of the system is because of this single event. It's not the single event.
DAN: Mm-hmm.
BENAY: It's, it's not, it's not actually about George Floyd. George Floyd is this moment of realizing. You know, the, what's wrong with the system? Mm-hmm. You know? Mm-hmm. Like, as Dr.Phil always says, it's not about the doily. You know, it's not about this thing you're fighting about, it's the deep problem in your relationship that makes the doily a problem that you're fighting about. Right. Well, it's, go ahead.
DAN: Right? No, no. I just, the, the fact that the rabbis in the story stood idly by when this man was shamed. It's not about the fact that they stood, I lead by when this man was shamed. It's about the fact that they were so low in their moral intuition, their safara, that why should they be in charge? You know, meaning like they, they, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's symbolic of the failure of society. It's not, it's itself the, it's not itself, the the reason.
You know? And, and, and so it's interesting though that then it says that Jerusalem was destroyed because of Bar Kamtza 'cause it's actually not. That's actually not correct. It's, it was, it was destroyed because of the moral failure of the society that predated the story of Bar Kamtza. That was only the last domino that fell.
That caused the That's right. Final. That's right. That's right. Which feels very right to today.
BENAY: It does.
DAN: So, uh, our time is up. Um, but, uh, our, uh, thinking is not so we'll. We'll, uh, we'll, we'll pick, uh, we'll pick this up, uh, not necessarily directly, but, but I think that these two texts are gonna inform a lot of our thinking going forward. And we'll, uh, we'll be back next week with another meaty, uh, episode from the Talmud.
BENAY: So fun. Thank you, Dan.
DAN: See you then.
BENAY: Bye. Okay.
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