The Oral Talmud: Episode 13 - Using Tradition to Overturn Tradition (Eruvin 13b)

SHOW NOTES
“You don't have to stand outside of the tradition to fix it. If you realize where the tradition is wrong, that doesn't put you outside of it. That puts you squarely in the center of it, standing on the shoulders of the greatest ones who have the ability to, from the inside of tradition, using the Torah’s mechanisms and ideas to overturn it.” - Benay Lappe

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. 

Part 2 of our exploration of L’Taher et HaSheretz! Using the Torah to make ritually pure the very creepy crawlies which the Torah says are ritually impure! Last week we learned that this feat of Rabbinic acrobatics was a requirement for holding a position in the Sanhedrin, the ancient Jewish court system. This week we learn about Rabbi Meir, who could justify changing ritually purity and impurity statuses like he was juggling! 

What is the discussion of shifting ritual purity status a radical metaphor for in the Talmud? When does argument get us closer to the truth, and when is it just arguing to derail? How do we peel apart the historical figures in the Talmud from what they’ve come to symbolize? How would YOU purify the sheretz?

Tune in next week for an exciting interview with Ruth Calderon, author of “A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales”

This week’s text: Rabbi Meir, Sumakhus, Ravina, and the Sheretz (Eruvin 13b)

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] Benay's reference to Rambam/Maimonides teaching that all of Judaism is designed to create a certain kind of ideal and holy person might be connected to Mishnah Torah: Laws of the Sabbatical Year & Jubilee 13:13 (Hilchot Shmita V’Yovel on Sefaria) "Anyone can become as sanctified as the Holy of Holies."

[2] Moshe Halbertal on the Talmud as "formative" rather than "normative" in "People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority" (1997 - on JSTOR)

[3] Ruth Calderon - our guest in Episode 14 (on Jewish Women's Archive)

[4] Bruriah sources organized by Olivia Devorah Tucker (pgs 18-24 of this class PDF)

[5] Named Women in Talmud - a Source Sheet from Olivia Devorah Tucker (who writes the Show Notes for The Oral Talmud), based on an appendix in Tal Ilan's "Mine and Yours Are Hers: Retrieving Women's History from Rabbinic Literature"

[6] More on "The Orchard" by Yochi Brandes, the novel that Dan translated - on Judaism Unbound

[7] The Mountain Over Our Heads - Episode 2

[8] Rabbi Elazar ben Arakh's Forgotten Torah (Shabbat 147b)

[9] "How ‘Sex’ Got Into Title VII: Persistent Opportunism as a Maker of Public Policy" by Jo Freeman, Ph.D., J.D. (on her website)

• Transcript

  DAN: This is The Oral Talmud - Episode 13: Using Tradition to Overturn Tradition. 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. 

  This week, we are building off of last week’s conversation – where we discussed the qualities that the sages required of a person before they could serve on the ancient Jewish court, the Sanhedrin. This week we’re hopping over to a different tractrate, Masechet Eruvin, to focus more on the cryptic concept of “L’taher et HaShertez” or… “Purifying a creature that the Torah says is ritually impure” – by using the Torah itself. Last week’s text said that the ability to do so was a requirement for serving on the Sanhedrin. Today’s conversation can work on its own, but if you’re interested in the larger theme, we recommend returning to Episode 12 for more context. 

  Also, an exciting program note – We’ll be continuing this theme in Episode 15, but tune in next week for an exciting interview with Talmudist, author, and social/political leader Ruth Calderon, founder of ALMA and author of the book “A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales”

  Each episode of The Oral Talmud has a Source Sheet linked 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 wish, 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: So Beney, last week we looked at this question that fundamentally you're framing as how does Judaism think about the ideal human being?

  And it was framed in the criteria for a judge for what kind of person we expect or want to be a judge or what kind of we might actually it, what's described there is more like what we might call a jury today, but which actually in some ways is even more consistent with what you're trying to say about the ideal person, because we're talking about lay people in the role of judging, which is what we call a jury today.

  BENAY: That's interesting. I never thought of that. Yeah, that does make sense.

  DAN: It's yeah, it's interesting to think about what that might say in our day about who's selected for a jury who should be selected for a jury as opposed to who's actually selected for a jury in our time. So that would be.

  Yeah. And today we wanna really continue that analysis through a related text from a completely different part of the Talmud, but there actually overlap even in the content. So some of the same stories or ideas are present in both texts. So this is also gonna be a way where we can refer back to the other text.

  But today's text is from the Tractate a Ravine, which technically has to do with, I dunno what you would actually call that. It sort of weighs around the law in, in, in certain clever ways. Famously people think of an AUV as when you tie a string around an amount of land. And that kind of in a legal fiction sort of way, weaves together these parcels of private property to create sort of one shared private area that's called an a roof.

  But there's all kinds of other a roofs.

  BENAY: I love that idea of legal fictions. That's probably the best translation of this track tape.

  DAN: Oh, I didn't even say that directly, but I think that's right. Yeah, I think that's a great, that's a great way to, yeah. Legal fiction, right? I love it. But this text as see that, that's

  BENAY: why we, that's why we love each other.

  We make each other realize things we say that we didn't think we're smart, but end up being smart than we realized. Yeah. I,

  DAN: I love that. That's great. Yes I totally believe that you do that for me and I do that for you. So the, so this, so I guess most of the time this the text that we're studying doesn't necessarily directly relate to that topic, but there are ways, especially in terms of legal fictions that it does.

  So I think let's jump into that. So can you maybe bridge for us a little bit, the previous text and then frame this text.

  BENAY: Yeah, I think both of these texts ultimately have to do with what kind of human being are we interested in creating? And my sense of the entire tradition, and I borrow this from Rambam, this is not an original idea, is that the entire Jewish enterprise with all of its technologies, its rituals, holidays, prayers, customs laws, everything is in service of one thing.

  And that is the creation of a certain kind of human being. A human being who is deeply empathic, who feels connected to all other human beings, who can not only tolerate, but has a real appetite for contradiction. Paradox, uncertainty, complexity because. Because I think we know that when you walk through the world that way, you do a better job of managing the world because the world is like that.

  The world is complicated and so on and, okay. So it's really about what kind of human being are we out to create? And I wanna also remind us of something that we've mentioned in the past on this show, which is the idea that Mosha Bertel, who is a Talmud scholar at Hartman Institute in Israel, the way he talks about the Talmud, not so much as a normative document, but a formative document.

  In other words it was never meant to be a book of laws. It was never meant to tell you how to act. It was there to shape you into a certain kind of human being. So the learning of Talmud and the ideas in it. Are there to help us be a certain kind of person. And last week's text and this week's text, I think even explicitly deal with on the content level, what kind of person should we be?

  And today's exemplar is Robbie Mayer. So we're gonna be looking at this guy and asking how did he get to be like he is? So that's what's really interesting to me. Not only what kind of person is he who's being held up as this ideal or exemplary human being. But as a parent and a teacher, I'm really interested in the traditions, the Talmud story, about how we got that way.

  So keep that in your back pocket. We should all keep that in our back pocket. 'cause that's where we're gonna go next week.

  DAN: In two weeks. 'cause next

  BENAY: two, two weeks. In two weeks. In two weeks, we're gonna turn the page backward. One and ask how, what's the story of how he got to be the person he's described as in today's text.

  DAN: And I should just note for those who are confused by what just happened, that the reason why it's gonna be in two weeks is because next week we have our next guest on the show who is Ruth Calderone, who is the founder of an important, what you could call a secular yeshiva in Israel called Alma. And she's also been a member of the Knesset in Israel, but she's somebody who is, has a PhD in Talmud and is very much one of the most important Talmud teachers of our age.

  And somebody who has really brought Talmud to the world of. What in Israel called secular Jews? What here I think we could call liberal Jews and that and particularly artists and and has seen the Talmud as both a creative act in and of itself. And I think a font of creativity for those who learn it, which is, like you were saying earlier about codes and about the idea that the Talmud is some kind of source of norms as opposed to form formative that she's really a representative of the formative idea.

  Yeah. So before we jump into the text so next time we look at the story of Robbie Mayer, we'll get to know a little bit more about him, but just to. Frame for people a little bit who don't know who this character is at all. He is one of the early generations of rabbis. Not the earliest he is, I don't know if you call it the third generation but he's a student of Rabbi Akiva, meaning he's the next generation after Rabbi Akiva and some of the other people that we've been talking about.

  Rabbi er and Rabbi Joshua and Rabbi Van Galio and Elza Azaria, that's one generation. And their students include Rabbi Mayer. So that's one thing that, that we know about him. We also know about him that there's lore in the Talmud, that he is a convert, right? That he is actually, that's right.

  Dependent of Nero. The Roman Emperor Nero and that he becomes Jewish and also marries, again, this is a tradition there. I think one of our guests I think Barry Heimer suggested that there's no real evidence of this, but that there's a idea that he's married, meaning historical evidence.

  It's not clear at all, but that in the Talmud, he's married to a woman named Ria, who's an important figure a very self-possessed woman, which was unusual at the time of the Talmud, or at least unusual in the reporting of the Talmud. Yeah. Probably not unusual at all.

  BENAY: And in fact, she was one of the very, very few women actually named with a name in the Talmud.

  I think there are two or three, so really few. And she is one of them. So Robbie Mayer is living in the generation right before the destruction.

  DAN: No. Right after, I think because because we're talking about, we're talking about rabbi Akiva, we're talk, we're talking about the destruction is Jo Zaki, and then his students are the ones who lived through it, who are Rabbi Kiva and all those folks. And then I mean it, and I think their students are

  BENAY: fair enough. I'm bad with dates and numbers. Yes. You're quite right. You're quite right.

  So he lived. Not right before the destruction, but right before the redaction of the mission. Okay, great. So this, by the

  DAN: way, the main things, the main reason I know this things is because I was the translator of a novel about this period. So I had to wrap my mind around the characters, which was actually the greatest gift for me.

  And what, one of the things that was interesting in terms of a response that people gave me to the novel was like, oh, it's too bad that you didn't include a couple of pages of identifying these rabbis and when they lived and what generation they were. And I was like, it didn't even occur to me to do that because for me.

  Being into the process of translating and wrapping my mind around it, it all became so clear for the first time in my life and I didn't have that sense of empathy with the reader who hasn't sunk in quite as much to realize that, that would still be needed. Live and learn.

  BENAY: Yeah. And reading your book I realized for the first time, oh my gosh, these people have actual physical characteristics,

  DAN: right?

  BENAY: Their face looks a certain way, their body looks a certain, never had, never really thought about that.

  DAN: Because the way that we tend to be taught the Talmud, even in the more.

  Story based times, even when people are trying to teach things as like that they do interconnect, but it's still playing off of an original way of looking at the Talmud as if, yes, on the one hand it's this conversation across the ages, but on the other hand that people don't really matter.

  What matters is this statement or that statement, whatever. So you tend to learn these things as these separated, rabbi Zer said blah, blah, blah. And sometimes you'd never connect that to the Rabbi Zer over here that said a different thing and ask the question how does that fit with that?

  Now the Talmud sometimes does stuff like that and says how does this connect to this other statement that the person made in a previous time? But at least my experience studying tends to be like, that's a I, they knew something. I can't really even follow that. So I'm just looking at the logic of what they're saying.

  But what the novel really does is it actually. All pull pulls all those stories together and creates characters out of these people, including physical characteristics but also also their philosophical characteristics which I think we talked about a little bit. Like I'm starting to have a different view of some of that from Yohi Brandis the novelist view.

  I think she's trying to harmonize certain things and I'm starting to think maybe the historical characters were actually quite different from the legend characters that were written a few hundred years later. Yeah. And Rabbi Mayer, is one of these, he's seen right?

  His, what he symbolizes is a like next level genius, right? A, a next level kind of creative thinker. We'll get to that in, in today's text. But so much that he's, is it that he's not named in the mishna? ' cause it was just we'll see a little bit.

  But that's one of the, but that's a key context that Rabbi Mayer is not named in the Mishna, even though he's an important rabbi. And he's talked about a lot in the Talmud. But he's not a character in the Mishna.

  BENAY: Something that the anonymous opinions are his, but the fact that he's not named is, it might even be the driving fact behind this story.

  It's what? What's going on here?

  DAN: Okay.

  BENAY: But we'll see.

  DAN: So should we jump into the text?

  BENAY: Yeah, let's do it.

  DAN: Okay. So again, we're in tractate Ravine. 13 B. And for those who are newer to this show, there is a Sefaria source sheet. So the text begins, rabbi Aha Barina said it is revealed and known before the one who spoke, and the world came into being IE God, that in the, and by

  BENAY: the way, and by the way, before we just run over that particular name of God, every time you get a specific name of God in a text, you have to ask yourself, why did the rabbis choose this particular name?

  There are. Probably more than a dozen names of God. The holy blessed one the merciful one, the great compassionate and merciful one, the one who spoke in the world, came into being and so on and so forth. And I don't think it's just an accident that they grab one name versus another out of the air.

  So I think the name that the one who spoke in the world came into being some, a, being a, an entity that creates worlds with words I think is an important idea to keep in the air. So that's the God who's being invoked here. And this particular God says hanina we know, said.

  The following, it's revealed and known before this God, in other words, absolutely perfectly clear before this God, that

  DAN: by the way, I think it would be interesting to go back to some of the texts that we've studied and look at what name of God was used in those texts. Like I remember the text about Rabbi Akiva and the Crowns being tied on was, I believe the Holy Blessed one, as was the text about the mountain being held over the heads?

  I'm not sure about the oven of what? I think it's, that was the bot, that was the bot called Bot Cole. So not even using the specific name for God more like a heavenly voice.

  BENAY: And

  DAN: so it would be interesting just to track whether some of these more radical texts use one or the other, or whether they're trying to when they're using the Holy Blessed one there, maybe it's even a more powerful reversal.

  It'd be interesting to see.

  BENAY: Yeah. I've never mapped them, but. That's a, that there's a PhD dissertation in that I think

  DAN: maybe somebody's already written it. , by the way, let us know if there is a PhD dissertation, we'd like to interview that person. Rabbi Aha Barina said it is revealed and known before the one who spoke in the world came into being that in the generation of Rabbi Mayer, meaning the, that third generation, I dunno if it's called the third or the fourth generation, but that, that generation of the students of that first group of the Knights of the Round table that in the generation of Rabbi Mayer, there was no one of the sages who was his equal.

  BENAY: Okay? So this is a big statement, right? It's like God's saying there's nobody like Rabbi Mayer. He's it, he's the real deal. He's the best. That's a big statement. So I'm interested to know, wow, God thinks he's the best of everyone in his generation. What kind of person is he?

  What makes someone, now I'm saying best, actually the text doesn't say best. It says there was no one like him. But still, I have a sense that it's suggesting po a positive valence. What do you think?

  DAN: I, first of all that, you said two things that didn't occur to me. One, I'm such a bad reader.

  I think that I even though we just talked about it, I glossed over the whole God part, and I was like, okay, something about God and Rabbi Mayer was the best student, as opposed to what it actually says, which is like you just said, that God knew. That Rabbi Mayer was the best or whatever, and so I think that, that's a question that maybe we should keep in mind as we go on. Like it's not necessarily saying that anyone else knew. It's saying that God knew. Yeah. Yeah. And number two that, where has no one was his equal doesn't mean the best. I would read it that way too, but I think it's interesting to consider another possibility or other possibilities, which maybe we will.

  Yeah.

  BENAY: Okay. There was none other li there was none. Yeah. None like him. Yeah.

  DAN: That the originals really should be translated as there was none like him,

  BENAY: like him, I

  DAN: suppose Uhhuh, because that's moto, right? Yeah.

  BENAY: And this express revealed it known that's. A revealed and known before God.

  That's a set phrase. And it appears all over. And it's the idea that you should accept this as divine truth. Uhhuh, this is objective capital T truth. So pay attention here. It's not just the opinion of someone uhhuh. This is truth. Okay. Now I'm sitting up straight for this.

  DAN: Although what I'm just interested in, we don't have to discuss it now, but I'm interested in the move that says, like the way that we say this is the known truth, to say that God knew it, but in all these other texts that we've looked at, the fact that God thinks something is not necessarily of paramount importance to Rabbi.

  That's an interesting,

  BENAY: that's true as well. Plus what A chupa move to say, I know for a fact what God knows for a fact.

  DAN: That's funny. Probably another rabbi ran into Elijah Buffet and he told him, I okay. So why the alade then? Why didn't the sages establish the halakha? Meaning the law the tradition in accordance with his opinions.

  BENAY: So if he's so great.

  How come we don't have any record? And in fact, in his own generation, no one said, oh yeah, you are right. We're gonna make the law. Just as you say it should be. They never did that. That's surprising. Really surprising. Yeah. And this guy who is presumably so great, so smart.

  So why, so who knows? What, why wouldn't you? Like he seems to know God's will the way in the story. Zer is identified as always being right, always being, his opinion is always in accordance with God's will. How come they didn't set the law according to him? Wouldn't you want the law to be as God?

  Would say it should be, or as the person God identifies as the greatest as it should be. That's funny.

  DAN: Although that is consistent with the things that we've been studying where that's not necessarily the case. Where absolutely. Where it may be the opposite of the case. So that's an interesting

  BENAY: yeah.

  I think there's a wink in the question. It's wouldn't you want that? No, actually that is not at all what we want.

  DAN: Uhhuh. But and so the Talmud answers because his colleagues couldn't and now this is a place where you changed the translation because the translation made it much simpler. But the original is they couldn't stand on the, his colleagues couldn't stand on the end of his mind.

  Wanna talk about what it says and what that means.

  BENAY: Yeah. I wanted to add a little bit more ambiguity back into our translation because I don't think it's completely clear what it means. It seems to be saying something like it's either they couldn't really suss out what he was talking about, or they couldn't tolerate the implications of what he was saying, or they couldn't figure out if what he was saying was what he actually believed.

  Or he, and the text itself is going to flesh out the opacity of this phrase. They couldn't stand on the end of his mind. So let's go to the text's, own fleshing out and see maybe what it might mean.

  DAN: Although, I just want to say from the perspective of a translator and of the original that the Hebrew or says la, which means now la aod to stand, which you've translated correctly as stand.

  la’amod al sof da’at’o

  It's a it's absolutely a correct translation because it's English. We have the idea of stand, like I can't stand it. Yeah. Like it's too destabilizing, something like that. And also, I can't stand meaning it's unstable, it's, I can't, right? And on the end of his mind that is a reasonable translation.

  I, I don't have a better one, but, so a to could also mean of at the end of his, at the end of his statement, at the end of his opinion, maybe is, would be another way to put it. That and meaning that they couldn't stand on the end of his opinion, meaning it's not clear that it is the end of his opinion.

  Like that that it's wait, he says something and then stops. I think of people that I know that are they stop talking and you're like, did you finish this statement? Like I'm still, I'm confused still, and or you like, is that really what you're saying?

  Or I'm waiting for the next sentence and it never comes, and so then I'm kinda like, I don't know, is that the Android and what we're gonna read feels like something like that.

  BENAY: I like that. I never thought of it exactly that way.

  DAN: So he would, so the explanation is that they couldn't stand on the end of his mind as, because he would state with regard to a ritually impure item.

  It's pure. And he would justify that ruling. And likewise, he would, meaning he would justify that ruling with logic, right? I mean with reasons. And likewise, he would state with regard to a ritually pure item that is impure and justify that ruling. And then the explanation from steinfels, from the original translators that the sages were enabled to distinguish between the statements that were Hal ha and those that were not right.

  Meaning that if he could easily explain to you why a ritually pure item was impure and a impure item was pure, then how do you know which one he actually believes, right? Yeah.

  BENAY: Yeah. So a couple things to get on the table here. Let's notice that just like last week's text, the subject matter here is ritual impurity and impurity.

  And I'm really convinced, this is my own theory, but I'm convinced I'm sure some scholars, I'm not a great. I'm not a scholar, I'm not an academic, so it could be that some scholars and academics have already talked about this, and I've only stumbled onto, the inkling of this idea on my own.

  But I'm, I feel quite confident that every time the rabbis are talking about whether something is pure or impure, it's a signal. To us it's a signal of legal plasticity. The topic of how far can we go in changing, overturning, uprooting, and the answer is always infinitely

  DAN: far.

  BENAY: There, there's nothing if something that is ritually.

  Pure or impure can be changed or argued to be. The other thing, everything else is what they call a calva Homer to that. In other words, everything else is the easy case to that hard case.

  So let's notice that they're talking about ritual purity and impurity. So we should know in our heads, oh, they're talking about how far can we really go?

  It's that question again. It's how radical can we actually be with our received tradition?

  Yeah. So he seemed to be that annoying guy in the bait madre who, would take something that was clearly a cup of coffee, and by the end of his argument he'd proved to you that this was a glass of milk.

  And you'd go, oh. And because you couldn't be settled, and I like your translation of destabilized, he was destabilizing because you couldn't relax and go, oh my God, is that a glass of milk or is that a cup of coffee? You couldn't trust that you should just set the law according to Robby Mayer because you're not sure if he is trying to destabilize you, or he is actually trying to prove something.

  The implicit questions, I think is why would he wanna be destabilizing everybody?

  DAN: , on this, on the most simplistic level, the point is if we knew what he thought, we would totally decide according to his opinion, but we just never knew what he thought. Yeah. So that's the simple reason.

  And then the more complex. Point of view in it is and why did he wanna be that way? What was he after? What was and by the way, I don't think that any of that is necessarily in contradiction to the idea that nobody was his equal. That there's some idea that this is the biggest genius in the world.

  And that's true. That's so true that we're saying, God knew, right? Meaning that's, we're establishing that as a fact in a similar way to when I'm thinking about it when we did the text of the mountain being held over the people's heads and the one rabbi said and therefore the Talmud is a, or sorry.

  And therefore the Torah is a contract under duress. Nobody actually argued with him. Everybody said they accepted it. Yeah. That's what happened. And it is under duress. The argument was like whether it was ratified in the future. So in a way, there's no argument here. He is the best. But this is how he conducted himself and why.

  Yeah.

  BENAY: Okay. So the text is going to, I think, give us a, an important piece of that answer right now.

  DAN: All right. So it was taught in a Brita, and I'm not sure if we've talked about a Brita before, but a Brita is a piece of literature, a piece of lore that they had or claimed to have in the later years of the Rabbinic project before the Talmud was written down. And it was said to be from the contemporary period of time as the Mica.

  So it was the outtakes of the Mishna or the stuff that, was on the cutting room floor. But they take it just about as seriously as the Mishna, which is interesting, maybe something to talk about sometime. But, so they say it was taught in a Brita that Rabbi Mayer was not his name. His name was actually not mayor rather, his Rabbi Nera was his name.

  Why was he called by the name Rabbi Mayer if his name was actually Nera? Because he illuminates, which is the translation of Meir, the eyes of the sages in matters of the halakha.

  BENAY: Great. Okay, let's stop there a sec.

  DAN: Okay.

  BENAY: So I'm sure what to make of the, by the way, Nera is an Aramaic word, and it is the translation into Aramaic of the word Meir.

  Meir is Hebrew for, to make light, to enlighten. Now, hara is the same thing. I'm not sure what to make of that piece of lore, as you say, but the fact that he is being labeled as illuminating the eyes in halakah of everyone else, I think is really important. It, what it's saying is, they couldn't trust what he was saying was what they should make the practical norms.

  But without him in the conversation, pushing them, destabilizing them, complicating, they couldn't arrive at a norm that was as good as they were able to with him in the conversation.

  And for me this surfaces that the halaka the norms are a kind of accommodation to, in, to a lower reality.

  That the world and the complexity of the world exists in a much bigger way than the laws able to embody. And he wanted to get their feet off the ground. He wanted them to be in the awareness of that, of the larger, complicated truths of the world, so that when they had to make some law. Knowing that it would be inadequate to that larger truth, it would be at least bigger than it would've been otherwise.

  And I think that's what his gift was. I don't know. What do you think of that?

  DAN: No I agree with that. I, it's interesting 'cause I actually relate to it in the sense that sometimes people including my dad, will ask me in a way what's your vision for the future of Judaism?

  'cause I talk so much about that we're on the cusp of a new era and all this stuff. And I tend to say I, that's not, I don't think that's actually my job. I don't think I'm necessarily good at that. I don't think that's what I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to lead us toward a particular future Judaism.

  I'm trying to, I'm trying to foster a project of. Working on that challenge. And and actually part of that project is to be a contrarian and to say, look, I can definitely tell you why the old Judaism is not gonna make it. I can also be pretty critical of everybody's idea of what the new Judaism would be, but that doesn't mean that.

  I don't think that one of those ideas will make it, it means that I feel like that's my job in the world. And, you get a lot of pushback that says, but that's not a good job. A good job is to be decisive and to be the one who like says this is how it's gonna be.

  Or and I, I've pushed back against that. I relate to it. Not that I'm the greatest light of the world. I relate to the idea that there are different jobs in the world, and one of them Yeah. Is to push forward the project of just just think. I guess that's another piece that I'm constantly trying to say can we just think, can we just have an open mind?

  Can we just push ourselves to not stop? As soon as some interesting idea comes along, can we keep pushing through that and say maybe there's a better idea. And I understand that there's a limit to that. At some point you have to choose a path, but. Let somebody else play that role.

  BENAY: Yeah. And as a Yeshiva, my project is to create as many Robbie Mays.

  As we can create, there will always be the guys around the table who will say, Hey, we need to know what the law is. So we don't have to, we don't have to worry about making those kind of people. They're always gonna be there, but we need at least one Rabbi Mayer in every generation.

  And gosh, what would the halaka look like? What would our path, our best guess at what God wants of us look like? If we had a whole bunch of rabbi mayors at the table?

  DAN: If everybody is a Rabbi Mayer, then it's then it's chaos and we'll never get anywhere. That's, that would, I think that's probably right.

  BENAY: Yeah, fair enough. But I'm not worried about that. There will always be the, I don't know what to call the other one. So there will always be the like practical.

  DAN: Right.

  BENAY: Whatever. Just tell me what to do. Let's just figure out what we're gonna tell people to do. Alright.

  DAN: Absolutely. That is the natural, that is the natural human desire.

  And again I'm just trying to say also that I'm not critical of that. I, meaning I think that there's a place for that as well. It's just that there's a place for the Robbie Mayer too. And maybe a more important place, maybe an equally important place. But it's something that tends not to be valued.

  It's something that tends to be people tend to be annoyed by it because it feels like lack of decision making. It feels like just. Being smart for the sake of being smart. It's like a smart alec, it's not, and I think that a lot of the people that are trying to do that are like no, that's not what I'm doing at all.

  I'm trying to, yeah. I'm trying to get us all as collectively to be more creative than we would've been, because I know that the tendency of an object is to remain at rest, right? Or Yeah. Is that a thing? Yeah. You, an object at rest tends to remain at rest, right?

  BENAY: Yeah. I think that's it. Rabbi Mayer reminds me a little bit of my father. I has, he, he would, he loved to argue in the sense of debate. And it was very, it was always frustrating because I never knew if he believed what he was arguing about, if he believed in that position. Because often he didn't, he just loved the kind of mind expanding, or I.

  Presume he was hoping to expand my mind, but that exercise of let's dig into this. Let's figure out what's under the surface and make our thinking bigger. But it was also annoying for sure,

  DAN: for sure. Yeah. And I suppose there, there's something that like as I think about that I'm not sure that either one of these is bad, but I think that there's one kind of person that I aspire to be, whether I actually achieve it, but that's saying can we, I, my goal is to keep us pushing past the easy answer and just to make sure that we're surfacing all the possibilities and, let somebody else make the decision.

  I'm not against somebody making the decision. I just feel like my best role is to, fuzzy it up and make sure that we're really thinking. But I also know that there are people who argue for the sake of arguing. I don't think I'm one of those, but I could easily imagine that I could be regarded as one of those, and I wonder if it's a continuum and and your dad and I are the same just maybe slightly along a continuum or there are two different versions and one is more logical than the other. I don't know.

  BENAY: Yeah. Yeah. I think I like the idea of a continuum because I don't think my dad was exactly like Robbie Mayer. The, there is the annoying end of the spectrum.

  Love you dad. But there was something there about, there's something bigger we need to get to. And that's what everyone on the spectrum somewhere, I think is onto and I love the fact that this guy who they could never pin down

  DAN: is

  BENAY: recognized this having this crucial role.

  Mm-hmm. They imagine God saying, which is their way of saying this is really good. That that he was the best of his generation. Okay.

  DAN: So I don't know, do we wanna continue with this? The next part is just saying if rabbi Mayer was actually named Neri, then who is it?

  Rabbi Neri, when that about, and then there's a whole chain of rabbi Neri was actually this other guy. What? And then who was that other guy? But there's I'm not sure that we need to read that part.

  BENAY: I'm happy to skip it. I don't know what to make of that part for me.

  DAN: There is something in it just where they're saying like if Rabbi Nera was actually Rabbi Nya, but, may, maybe he was Han Azar Ben, interesting character that from those early days of Rabbinic Judaism, he was also one of the students of rabbi Yo and Zaki.

  And he is actually somebody who goes off on his own and secludes himself and as a result forgets all his Torah. So he is an interesting guy. It's interesting that the chain of events, goes from the most brilliant guy who can make any argument to the rabbi who forgot all this Torah.

  Maybe there's something there that, bears some investigation, but I think it's gonna deflect us from our agenda today. Yeah. So let's not alright.

  BENAY: We'll put a, we'll put a sticky on that.

  DAN: Put a sticky on it. Yes. So the Gamara relates that Rabbi Yehuda, who was the person who compiled the mishna, the editor of the MNA.

  BENAY: So who is really standing on Robbie Mayer's shoulders?

  It, he's understood to have really admired and taken Robbie Mayer's. There. There was something about Robbie Mayer's work that Robbie Hui was using to make his mission. Mission, I know too much about it, but was a student of an admirer of Meyer.

  DAN: So Rabbi says, the fact that I am sharper than my colleagues. Is due to the fact that I saw Rabbi Mayer from behind, which is explained here as I sat behind him when I was his student. I sat behind him when I was his student. That's interesting.

  BENAY: Yeah. I think, when we think about the Yeshivas that these guys had what we have to picture is not like a yeshiva today. It was probably a tree. It was the grass under that tree or the grass under that tree. And I think they were sitting o often outside around completely enc their teacher. So if you imagine the teacher with a bunch of students, sitting on the grass around him

  Robia saying I, my place on the grass was behind him as he was facing, think of it as like a concert in the round or something. He would be facing that direction and I'd be sitting behind it. I never got to see his face,

  DAN: Uhhuh.

  BENAY: I'm so smart because I got to see a little bit of him.

  I got to see him even from behind.

  And just that shaped me.

  DAN: And the implication has to be that my colleagues didn't get to study with him at all because he then says, had I seen him from the front, I would be even sharper as it is written, and your eyes shall see your teacher that's from Isaiah, so that you're, if you are actually looking at a teacher you absorb more.

  But ostensibly there were other colleagues who were sitting in the front. So the only way to understand, I think what he is trying to say here is that none of his present colleagues got the chance to study at all with Rabbi Mayer. And since he got to study with him, even just a little from behind, he's sharper than the rest of the people.

  Right?

  BENAY: Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's a lot to, to be surfaced about. What could this mean from behind, from front? What is someone's face? I, I think there are metaphors in here that could be unpacked. But probably wanna put a sticky in there as well, unless something's coming up for you.

  One

  DAN: connection that I would just make is that, the sort of previous great founder, let's say, which was Johan Zaki, is TA talked about in the Talmud as the youngest or the last student of Hillel. So it's just interesting to think about that there's this kind of tradition of the last student that's the last standing student in some way that takes on the mantle of their teacher.

  And I think that's interesting in terms of just how the Tom would thinks about what the chain looks like. I'm not sure exactly what to make of it, but it's not the only case like this.

  BENAY: Yeah. Okay. This next piece.

  DAN: Okay.

  BENAY: I think it's really interesting. All

  DAN: So in

  BENAY: texting and I don't totally get it.

  DAN: Okay. So Rabbi Abba said that Rabbi Yohannan said Rabbi May had a disciple and his name was, who would state with regard to each and every matter of ritual impurity. 48 reasons In support of the ruling of impurity and with regard to each and every matter of ritual purity. 48 reasons in support of the ruling of purity.

  BENAY: Okay. Alright, let's stop here. Okay, so in this section of the text, we're going to have a little snapshot of two different students of the time.

  DAN: And by, by the way, I'm just not sure that I read that right. The point is just that, that this guy could tell you 48 reasons why something was impure and 48 reasons why something is pure.

  Right?

  BENAY: Meaning 48 reasons why something that was known to be pure wasn't fact pure. He could,

  DAN: ah,

  BENAY: this is a coffee cup. Everybody knows it's a coffee cup and I can prove to you that it's a coffee cup with, in 48 different ways. Isn't my watch, I could, or my glass, the glass of milk, whatever he can.

  Name what is and prove what is.

  DAN: So this is not the guy, this is not Rabbi Mayer that can make arguments for both sides. This is a guy that is just great at making a million different arguments for one side.

  BENAY: Exactly. And he's always

  DAN: on the winner side.

  BENAY: He's always like calling it like it is. He's Mr.

  This is what it is. I don't, I'm not sure what to make of him except that I know one. Just a couple things to bring out. First of all, his name is, it's a Greek name. Not sure what to make of the fact that a student has, this student has a Greek name. Typically students with Greek names. You have to imagine that they are assimilated.

  You have to picture some kind of, I, I'm not sure there's that. And I'm wondering why does the. Why is the Gamara invested in describing this student as like Mr. Straighty basically? Is he saying is the text, and I really don't know. Is the text saying, okay, this is Robbie Mayer's student, and you should know that in spite of the fact that Robbie Mayer could prove that something was, which was black, was actually white, and something that was white was actually black.

  He had this student who, his students weren't confused. His students knew what was what and could be I'm not really sure. But this seems to be a student who was that kind of a straight thinker. I don't know. What do you make of this? No, it, it,

  DAN: that, that was actually a very generous reading, which I appreciate.

  I as I was thinking it through, I was thinking like, this is a way of saying Rabbi Mayer had this student who just didn't get it. Yeah, this guy thought that the point was come up with a million different arguments and show how smart you are by showing that you could prove this thing a million different ways.

  But if the thing is the way if the thing is the way that we're saying it is, you only have to say one reason. Like this guy was he's a, he's an Emile, like everyone thought that he was smart because, and I know these people, like that are particularly in law school, that they just and that's not what actually makes somebody a great thinker.

  What makes you a great thinker is that you can come up with the reasons that it wouldn't be the case that, you know and maybe. Maybe again, when we were talking about this is the kind of guy that we also need, this is the kind of guy that, that, that makes sure that we are making decisions and maybe in some way, telling you 48 reasons, it helps feel good about the decision, but it's not what Rabbi May is trying to teach the way.

  Right.

  BENAY: I love it. I like your read that this guy didn't get it, especially in light of the student. We're about to see

  DAN: Uhhuh. But what's interesting is that this guy that has a name Yeah. And our next student is not right. So it was taught in a Brita, there was a distinguished student at Yavneh.

  Actually, it doesn't say there was a distinguished student at Yav, right? It was

  BENAY:Talmud Va’teek

  DAN: Oh, so we should have, this just got un bolded. It should have been bold. Oh, sorry.

  BENAY: That was my fault.

  DAN: It's okay. So it was taught in a Brita, there was a distinguished student at Yavneh, Yavneh being this main academy.

  In those early days of rabbinic Judaism, there was a distinguished student at Yavneh who could, with his sharp intellect, purify the shats, which we could translate as a creeping animal. You often say a creepy crawly that, so he could purify the shares explicitly. Deemed impure by the Torah. Like the Torah explicitly in the text of the Torah says a sheret is an impure thing.

  And this distinguished student could give you 150 different proofs to tell you why something specifically said to be impure in the Torah was actually pure. So this is really the opposite of

  BENAY: Exactly. And this is the only other time in the Talmud that we have this idea that we got last week in sun Heran of the not only the possibility of overturning the Torah, but the ideal characteristic of having the moral sensitivity to know when the Torah needs to be overturned and to have the ability to do so there are two places in the TMA that explicitly name that and they, it's talked about as being able to. Purify the share it purify one of those eight definitionally impure creatures. To be able to say it's spite of the fact that God deemed this thing immutably, impure, it's actually pure and I can prove it to you.

  To be able to do that as seen as the ultimate in humane, it's like the ultimate skillset for humanity. And I think that's just a really powerful thing.

  To be able to take what you know, that the last generation's best guess at what God thought was true and say, you know what, I have a better guess and I have enough confidence.

  I'm so able to see the harm it's causing and enough confidence in myself and belief that God wants me to have the confidence in myself to overturn that I'm going do so and I'm going to. Maybe even radically.

  Al alter the tradition or our world

  DAN: And he could do it 150 different ways.

  Meaning it wasn't just like one clever comment as we'll. See actually the next thing, it's like an attempt to do it with one clever idea, but he could do 150. So you don't like this one? I got another 149 for you.

  BENAY: That's right. Which is even goes further than last week's text. And at this point I'm reminded of a piece that I, we forgot to bring out in last week's text, which was the idea of being able to purify the share.

  Its the part that we skipped was that the phrase right after, to be able to purify the shats was from the Torah.

  To be able to purify the shats from the Torah, meaning using the tradition itself to overturn itself, using the Torah to say here, to say the Torah over there. In other words to use, practically speaking what it's saying is you don't have to stand outside of the tradition

  To fix it.

  That if you realize where the tradition is wrong, that doesn't put you outside of it. That puts you squarely in the center of it, standing on the shoulders of the greatest ones who have the ability to, from the inside of tradition, using the Torahs mechanisms itself and ideas itself to overturn it.

  DAN: The it's, it's confusing because it's a little confusing because the. The idea that something is explicitly that stated in the Torah and that you can overturn that. On the one hand, it's like, how could you do that? There's some internal logic that maybe you could use, but the other thing that it's making me think about is just these previous sessions that we've done where they explicitly overturn things from the Torah using a twisted form of content from the Torah.

  And maybe that's all they mean, which is much easier, right? Yeah. I mean if you if the idea, because option number one is that it's explicitly stated in the Torah as impure or not allowed or whatever, and somehow we come up with some kind of logic to show some kind of, but maybe we define that away and we say Ahart is just, like a, yeah, Ahart you would is impure.

  But this thing that we've been calling Ahart all the time, that's not actually ahart, with the, there's all kinds of ways that maybe you can make that argument, but. There's another way that you can just say or you could say there's two contradictory things in the Torah, and we can say we're gonna pick this one over that one.

  You could argue actually that what, for example, some of the folks that have been trying to do with the terrible verse in Leviticus about homosexuality, is saying Yes, but there are other values that are in the Torah that are, that at that time they didn't fully understand.

  And then now that we do, we can overturn that from another value in the Torah. That's another move that you can make. But you can also make the move that basically we see being made a lot of times, which is we're just gonna misquote something from the Torah and we're going to say that we're using the Torah to overturn the Torah.

  But actually the Torah that we're using to overturn the Torah isn't really the real Torah. We, 'cause we misquoted it.

  BENAY: Exactly and I think that's, this is the birth story of the Wink

  DAN: Uhhuh.

  BENAY: This is the birth story of the legal fiction. And maybe this, that's why we're here in Ravine it.

  This is actually saying, you know what? You actually can't do it logically. It's impossible.

  Rationally. But don't let that stop you Uhhuh, because this is the point at which you have permission to actually pretend to be doing it logically. This is where you do have to misquote.

  This is where you have to do a little sleight of hand. This is where you have to pretend this is and I, I'd love to hear you talk as a lawyer about the role of that moment in law, because my sense is that it's not about Jewish law, it's about all law. All legal systems have that. Technique.

  Right?

  DAN: And yes and no. It's, I think that in a functioning legal system, it tends to be very hidden. And the question is though, are we talking here within a functioning legal system or are we talking here about a time in which the existing legal system was unstable and they needed to replace it and they wanted to do it in some way that connected it to tradition?

  But when we're having this conversation, I'm thinking about the very recent Supreme Court case that made the title VII of the employment discrimination law, a applicable to to people to gay, lesbian, transgender folks. And it's based on this statement that says in Title VII, that says that discrimination isn't allowed because of sex.

  Right Now, everybody knows that when they wrote that. They didn't mean they weren't trying to protect gay and lesbian, transgender people at all. And if you would ask them, even the progressive ones, many of them would've said, no, that's not what it's about. It's, it was about women. And actually, the interesting legal history of that particular phrase because of sex was that the.

  Republicans, it was really, it was originally just about race and national origin and whatever. And in an attempt to destroy it, to kill the bill, the Republicans added because of sex into it. Wow. 'cause they thought, I didn't know that people would be like we're not gonna expand this to women.

  Come on. That would be opening up a real can of worms. And then they did it anyway, and so the whole protection of women snuck into this bill, which was supposed to be a race-based civil rights bill in the first place. So not, it's not even clear that most of the people were even carrying that much about women, much less gay and lesbian, transgender folks.

  And so anyway, so then they say, and now, but you hear progressives today saying, and me first among them, but much more important legal thinkers than me. Like I heard pre pra talking about this the other day on his podcast that. People say of course that's the correct reading.

  'cause there's a logical argument, which is a, which is ironclad logic, right? And this was the logic that actually carried the day in that case with Justice Gorsuch, right? Who's a conservative, right? Which is that if you, if the, if discrimination because of sex is not allowed and you are not hiring this woman because she loves a woman as opposed to not hiring this woman because she loves a man, or you would've hired a man that loves this woman, but not the woman that loves this woman, that of course you're discriminating because of sex.

  Now that is absolutely ironclad fantastic logic, right? But everybody knows that's not really what the law meant when it was passed, or it certainly wasn't what people intended it to mean. And so you could say they screwed up, they should have written the law better. And that's absolutely, in a way, the right response.

  But, it's also clear that what's going on there is a. Are just clever arguments on both sides. And this particular clever argument carried the day, in part because it was so clever that the conservative guy couldn't find his way out of it, or, maybe really did wanna protect people on the basis of sexual orientation.

  And so was able to figure out a way how to do that and still be conservative, whatever the, I don't know what's happening in Justice Gorsuch's mind, but Yeah. But it's this kind of argumentation and if everybody, if you walked everybody into a room and just said, okay, let's not, nobody's ever gonna hear about any of this.

  We're just talking as lawyers. Let's just what really happened here? And everybody would say that's not, that, that was a clever argument as opposed to of course that was what the law means.

  BENAY: In last week's discussion of Helms, was it last week?

  DAN: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. No, two two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, it was, we were talking about Kaa and Bara actually on the podcast. It's a long time ago because we,

  BENAY: right. So the idea of helm stories is coming back to mind. This case, Gorsuch's logic, there's a helm about it, but of course we're gonna grab it because it comes out the way we want it to come out.

  But there is a certain helm nature to it. And let's remember that these helm stories, which are logical but ridiculous

  Were meant to parody the rabbis.

  They were a parody of the Talmudic logic used to do things that were obviously not founded in the tradition. And the, is machinations the right word?

  Whatever.

  DAN: Anyway, I forget where we jumped off of, but

  BENAY: I. Okay. I think we're gonna soon be out of time, but where the text goes next is it actually demonstrates one possible way to actually prove that something that's impure is pure.

  DAN: And this was this same exact example was given in last week's text.

  We didn't get to it. Yeah. In part because we knew we were gonna do this text and we didn't need to do it twice. But this example was given both times to say, you don't understand what that looks like. Let me give you a, an example. Or maybe that was, maybe that maybe not. That was the intent, but or the intent is for this Rabbi Ravina to show off a little. He says I can do that. He says, am we gonna go there this week? Oh do you wanna? Not, either way. Either way. I think we could take a couple more minutes. Okay. Okay, great. So Ravina says, I can do that.

  I can purify the creeping animal, the, shes from the Torah. So let me show you this reasoning, just as a snake kills people and thereby, and kills animals and thereby increases impurity in the world,

  BENAY: right? And let's remember that a snake is not itself impure, but I, a snake

  DAN: is something pure that kills and then causes impurity, right?

  Because that corpses are impure, right? A share. Its, which does not kill anybody. So it's not increasing any impurity in the world. It must be pure but, and so the Gemara rejects this and says, no, that's not that's wrong. That's a unreasonable argument. It's not a call or what's translated as an a fortu argument, which basically says we can take a kind of easier case and learn from it to a harder case.

  It says it's not that. Because we have another example of a thorn, which is pure, right? Yeah. And a thorn causes injury and death, but everybody knows that the thorn's not impure. So that can be true for a snake as well, meaning that we have different Is that

  BENAY: that's a really thick proof.

  I'm not sure we're able to get that across. Okay. If the translation really requires some unpacking. Yeah. Okay. Shall we try it a little bit outside? Yeah. Okay. So Ravi says, yeah. Prove that something that's impure is pure or pure. That's impure using the tar. Yeah, I can do that. This is what it looks like.

  So he says, here we go.

  DAN: We know that a snake, which is itself pure,

  okay, I'll say different, sorry. Differently.

  BENAY: A snake is deadly. And kills people or animals by biting them right with its okay. And after it kills a person, let's say that dead body is impure because corpses are impure. So if a snake, which causes impurity all over the place is itself nevertheless pure, which we know that a snake is.

  Like a shares which doesn't kill 'cause it's a shares is not deadly. It doesn't kill. And since it doesn't kill, it doesn't produce impure corpses, shouldn't it all the more so be pure.

  DAN: Okay.

  BENAY: So whenever I teach this text at this point, I say to my students, good proof. And they all go, yeah, good proof.

  Good proof. And I, what

  DAN: I say is but the Torah actually says specifically that A, she isn't pure.

  BENAY: Yeah. But didn't I just prove to you that a shared should be pure because if a snake is pure, even though it causes impurity, shouldn't a share what doesn't cause impurity? Shouldn't that be pure by deduction?

  Yeah, it should

  DAN: uhhuh,

  BENAY: even though the Torah says it is by definition. So all of a sudden you've created this. Contradiction of people's minds, but the proof looks convincing.

  DAN: Uhhuh,

  BENAY: but there's a slight of hand in it.

  DAN: Uhhuh. And,

  BENAY: and I think that Talmud is organized in such a way as to teach you how to think

  DAN: uhhuh

  BENAY: and to lure you into a hole of not having thought deeply enough, Uhhuh.

  And it wants you to fall into that hole just so it can wrap you on the knuckles and say, Hey, you fell for it. You need to be a better thinker. Or you need to learn how to do this. By understanding what I just did to you. I just pulled the wool over your eyes because what I just did was actually illogical.

  It appears logical. And without thinking really hard about it, everyone's gonna go, oh yeah. Wow. Yeah, that makes sense. But there's a fault in the logic and the fault is revealed by the thorn. Okay. What's the issue with the thorn? A thorn, everybody knows that anything that grows is pure

  DAN: uhhuh.

  BENAY: A thorn is a growing thing.

  A thorn can cause death. A think like sleeping beauty. And was it sleeping beauty where she gets prick by the thorn and whatever? Yeah. Whatever it was. Okay. Think of a thorn as being deadly.

  DAN: A thorn

  BENAY: can be deadly. You can be scratched by a thorn from a poisonous bush and die.

  DAN: Okay.

  BENAY: We know that's a fact. We know that the thorn is pure.

  So if that's just a, if those two things are a fact that a thorn can kill and increase impurity in the world by creating corpses. But we know it's impure. It's pure, sorry. We know it's pure. Then we realize, if we think of the thorn, we realize that the status, the pure impure status of something actually has no bearing on whether it produces impurity in the world.

  So we realized we were, we got the world pulled over our heads when we were led to believe that increasing purity in the world was a characteristic of something that must be impure. But actually those two things are separate and you can't deduce anything about the nature of something from what it does in the world.

  Okay. But the fact that when you read the text and you listen, you go, oh yeah, that sounds right. I think it's, even though the text then says, no, that's a bad proof. I think it's suggesting this is how we do it. It's actually a trick. Skill that you need to make the tradition better, to make the world better is actually the willingness to sometimes get out of a corner that, that the tradition or the world doesn't let you out of.

  Do you know what I mean?

  DAN: Yeah. Although I wanna at a later time, I wanna pick this up maybe the next time, in two weeks. But because my question at the end of the day is like, who's the Talmud saying in this story? Who's the hero and who's the, idiot, basically because I'm, I, when Rena gives this proof and then the Talmud quickly slams it down, my question is possibly number one, they're just saying Rena's kind of stupid.

  This is a stupid proof and we can show it. Option number two is the wise, sim is the hero, the wise student, it was like a wise guy, yeah. He could come up with 150 proofs for something, but they were all easily able to be kicked down or, the point is to give 150 proofs, 'cause then you can maybe kick down one or two, but it's overwhelming and that's what we need to do.

  Or you should be more explicit about it. The problem with Ravina is he's got this cockamamie logic as opposed to some of those other stories that we've done where the people just misquoted the Torah, and like you, you could easily have the Talmud come back and say, but that is not, so you misquoted the Torah.

  That would be an easy way to defeat the proof. But the Talmud doesn't do that. So what the Talmud is doing here is it's knocking down the proof of this kind of like extended logic, hel like logic, but it's accepting these proofs that are mis quotations. And I think that's a really interesting, what's the agenda there?

  BENAY: Yeah, I, we should probably put a sticky here because I have lots of ideas. I've never. Spin. I don't have a lock on this section of the text. It's always vexed me. Why does the Talmud say no? That's not a good proof. My, my sense is that this is the classroom part of the text. This is the place where the text is showing you how to overturn the Torah uhhuh.

  And it's saying none of the ways that you can overturn the Torah are actually logical

  DAN: Uhhuh.

  BENAY: But when you actually do it, everyone's gonna go, oh yeah, okay. Uhhuh. But I dunno. We'll see.

  DAN: All right. To be continued, that was great. So thanks Benet and we'll see you next week. Oh and I'll say that we'll see everybody next week with Ruth Calderone, which is really exciting.

  And so people should spread the word.

  BENAY: Great. And then the week after that we're going to look at how Robby Mayer got to be Robby Mayor and how you can become one of these people who can overturn the Torah. Say that which is yeses no. And the nos are yeses.

  DAN: Amazing. And maybe what we'll see there is the d the difference between Rabbi Mayer, who is not described as have, trotting out 48 or 150 proofs or whatever, is just known and acknowledged that God says, he was the greatest.

  And maybe we'll be able to see some of maybe how Rabbi Mayer is different from some of these students that are described.

  BENAY: I like, I love it.

  DAN: All right, see you

  BENAY: next time.

  DAN: All right, thanks. Alright, bye.

  DAN: Thanks so much for joining our chevruta today! We hope you’ve enjoyed learning with us… and with the Talmud. You can find links to the source sheets for all episodes in the show notes and on our website at oraltalmud.com. Your support helps keep Oral Talmud going. You can find a link on the website to contribute. We’d also love to hear from you! Email us with any questions, comments, or thoughts at hello@oraltalmud.com. Please, share your Oral Talmud with us – we’re so excited to learn from you. The Oral Talmud is a joint project of SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva and Judaism Unbound, two organizations that are dedicated to making Jewish texts and ideas more accessible for everyone. We are especially grateful to Sefaria for an incredible platform that makes the Talmud available to everyone. It’s free at sefaria.org. And we are grateful to SVARA-nik Ezra Furman for composing and performing The Oral Talmud’s musical theme. The Oral Talmud is produced by Joey Taylor, with help from Olivia Devorah Tucker, and with financial support from Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah. Thanks so much for listening–and with that, this has been the Oral Talmud. See ya next time. 

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