The Oral Talmud: Episode 14 - Reading the Angel of Death with Ruth Calderon (Ketubot 77b)
SHOW NOTES
"Even if the good book was not written by God, the Talmudic page is often a good place to encounter the Divine. ” - Ruth Calderon
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.
This week Dan & Benay learn with special guest scholar Ruth Calderon, author of “A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales” (2014). In 1996, Calderon founded ALMA: A Home for Jewish Culture in Tel Aviv, where she built pathways for secular Jews to enter into Talmud study. Calderon also served on the Knesset from 2013-2015, and reflects on dynamics between secular and religious Israelis, as well as the impact of coronavirus in 2020 (when this episode was recorded).
How do we find our paths to Talmud? What is Talmud doing that gives the sense of the Divine? What does it mean to “read against grain,” and how can it help us expand our perspective? What can the story Ruth brings teach us about how the Rabbis thought of approaching death? Who do we see in this relationship with Death now?
This week’s text: Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi and the Angel of Death (Ketubot 77b)
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] Alma: Home for Hebrew Culture in Tel Aviv
[2] Ruth Calderon’s 1st Speech at the Knesset featuring a call for Talmud study and actual group Talmud study in the speech (on YouTube)
[3] Yentl, a film about a woman dressing as man to gain access to the yeshiva in the Old World (Free on TUBI) – Based on Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “Yentl, the Yeshiva Boy” short story, which is even more a trans narrative (more at the Yiddish Book Center)
[4] Oranim College/Kibbutz (their website)
[5] Elul, the Beit Midrash that RUTH Calderon founded with Moti Bar-Or (their website)
[6] Tehran, Fauda, and Shtisel are all Israeli TV Shows (more at Kveller)
[7] On Compromise (from the Jewish Virtual Library)
[8] Ruth shares a drash based on Genesis 2:23 “This-time, she-is-it! Bone from my bones, and flesh from my flesh!” (Everett Fox Translation on Sefaria)
[9] More on chaplains in Israel, tmihka ruhanit תמיכה רוחנית (article on eJewishPhilanthropy)
[10] Angel of Death in Talmud: “Entirely full of eyes” (Avodah Zarah 20b), Study as protection from the Angel of Death (Shabbat 30a-30b)
[11] The comedic actor Charlie Chaplin (blogging about his death)
[12] A Snopes article debunking a hoax announcing Woody Allen’s death (on Snopes)
[13] Reporting from Bnei Brak during the first months of the coronavirus pandemic (on MiddleEastEye)
-
DAN: This is The Oral Talmud - Episode 14: Reading the Angel of Death. 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 features our third guest, scholar and, for a time, politician Ruth Calderon. Ruth Calderon is the founder of ALMA: A Home for Hebrew Culture in Tel Aviv, which is a center for Jewish culture and the study of rabbinic and other Jewish sources, especially Talmud, from an open secular perspective. Ruth Calderon is also a former member of the Israeli Knesset, or parliament, where she was known for deepening policy proposals with Talmud and for conducting Jewish learning sessions with politicians from across the political and religious spectrums. She is also the author of “A Bride for One Night: Talmud Tales.”
For new listeners, these early episodes were recorded in the summer of 2020, amidst the groundswell of protests in defense of Black lives, and in the earliest waves and challenging reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic, both in the US and in Israel/Palestine where Ruth Calederon joined the conversation from. Note also that this conversation took place long before October 7, 2023, so all the tragedies of the past two years had not yet occurred.
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: Ruth Calderon, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the Oral Talmud.
RUTH: Thank you so much for having me. I was looking forward to being with you and to jump above this gap that we have now. The impossible getting to you and for you to get here. So to meet on the pages of the Talmud is like the perfect place to, to be together.
So thank you for having me.
DAN: It's so great to be with you. I thought that we could just start a little bit by talking about the story of how you came to the Talmud and what you've been doing. What is your life's work with the Talmud in particular? What are you trying to accomplish in terms of how the Talmud will live in our time, I guess is a way to ask it.
And then I think we'll talk a little bit about that. I know Benay is full of questions and then it's amazing. I'm thrilled about the fact that you've actually brought a section of Talmud to learn with us. And so I've never learned Talmud with you before. So I'm really excited to have that opportunity.
And I know that so many others who listen are in a watch are gonna be thrilled to have the opportunity to actually learn Talmud with you. So could we start with just a little bit of a framing and what is your story of Talmud and where are you trying to take us?
RUTH: That's a hard story to tell because it keep changing in my mind. How did it actually happen? It's like, how did I meet your mother kind of story. And every time I think about it, it's a little different. I know that I grew up in a secular family and I belong to the secular Jewish community, meaning we are not, and yet in the Israeli Jewish way, very Jewish and traditional.
And growing up here, I. In this apartment. I was born here. Growing up in this neighborhood that is very mainstream secular like it used to be in the fifties and sixties, I felt, although I was very, I bought into the Zionist story very easily and I still amidst, but I felt, I think when I was becoming bat mitzvah, which is interesting Benay now you are, you have a bat mitzvah on your hands.
BENAY: Yes, I do.
RUTH: It's very interesting year when you're still a kid, but you are beginning to be a grownup, although it doesn't show on you yet, and then a fast forward and suddenly you are a grownup. So these were the years when I felt something is I need something more. Something is missing in the Zionist, secular story that start in 48, 67.
Yeah. And I want to be connected to where my parents came from and what happened before. And because this, the Israeli story was before we all came here, it was a disaster. And now we are saving ourselves and, building the new Jew and the new Jewish life and being sovereign and. Respectful and having a way to protect ourselves and all of those things that I know in my parents' life were a fact, yeah.
And yet I felt something about Judaism as spirituality, as religion, but not in the mainstream religious, institution way, something about prayer was calling me. And I didn't know where to go to get it because I was like the wrong person to get into. Yeshiva was not a man and not religious or not halakhic.
And so I was always on the outside and envious of the people that could get in. And I had a strong feeling that it's mine and something is wrong here. Why can't I get in? And I don't wanna dress up as something else - Like Yentl. I wanna come in as I'm and so that started a journey that was very long and slow and like a bird.
I collected little pieces to try and make my Jewish nest. Bits and pieces, and I also felt like the ugly duckling because I did not belong to any flock. And I was always a little wrong for the secular people. I was too Jewish for the religious people. I was too secular. But slowly I started like the puzzle started filling.
And in the army I met some teachers. And after the army, I went up to the north to Oranim, which is a kibbutz movement university connected to the Haifa University. And I started studying philosophy,
I might say even more important than that. I connected and was part of the chaburah, the community, of Oranim, that later became a midrasha. And there I started fantasizing about actually having a beit midrash and standing in the way, in the pedagogy of beit midrash like they did in the Talmud. And until today, I believe that's the most sophisticated, wonderful, magical, smart, and good for me pedagogy.
It's actually going on with kindergarten all your life. Like in kindergarten, you don't have to sit there still in someone teaching you, but you can play with your friends and move from one center to another to do some drawing, then to play with cube boxes, cubes, and then, and so I wanted to be part of a bet midrash, couldn't find one that will have me.
So I had to start one. And we did start in 1989 Elul, which was the first egalitarian beit midrash for men and women, secular through Orthodox. And I think Elul together with Moti Bar-Or, who was Orthodox. Who is Orthodox. We started Elul and ran it for the first seven years. And I think that's, historically that started the movement of of the, chuti orit?
the re Jewish Renaissance in Israel. And like many visions of revolution, they don't always do the things you hope them to do, but they do other things that I'm sometimes more important. So what I feel lately that, happened after all and, and all of those centers of study that were free and let everyone in.
Women and men and secular and everyone, even the religious people, the ones that were brought up religious, but left halakha, there was a new, there is now a new sense of freedom and a lot of new music, art forms, as DAN said in Alma in Tel Aviv we focus on the connection between art and culture and classic Jewish text.
And something big is happening in Israel, vis-a-vis the freedom to, to recreate to give new music, to give new words to make. I'm still waiting for the big, series of television series of Talmud after Tehran, Fauda, and Shtisel
and so my journey was just to find my place to study and I can study and I have a community and I'm happy, and the other hope is that the Israeli public space will be filled in interesting and rich and colorful with that meeting place between Jewish culture and what's called here, general culture between religion and non-religion, religious people, secularity serious how do you say it?
DAN: Heresy, maybe?
RUTH: Heresy, but not in the negative way, but in the positive secularity and so forth. So Alma is a center of culture in the middle, in the center of Tel Aviv. And even in these days, it's full of these discussions, disputes and open to anyone who wants to study with us. There's no way that you have to be in order to study at Alma.
I feel, I always felt that it's not, polite to tell someone what to do religiously or spiritually or culturally, but what I would tell everyone, the students, the fellows to do is to learn and to take advice from the great book cases before making decisions. And then you make a decision and then you own it. So that's like a, if I, in a different day it's a different story.
BENAY: Ruth, I. I, first of all, I want to say how honored I am to be able to have this conversation with you and my work at Svara the creation of Svara really owes a debt to you. I stand on your shoulders and Svara stands on Alma's shoulders are alongside, arm in arm.
RUTH: We are partners and it's such a, it's such a, I'm so grateful for knowing that you are over there and that we are not alone, that something is happening and there's no, in this sense,
BENAY: yes.
So
RUTH: thank you.
BENAY: Thank you so much. I have your book in my lap. A Bride for One Night. Here. I'll hold it up. Let's see. Can we see it? Little bit?
RUTH: I have the Hebrew
BENAY: uhhuh and there's so many things I wanna ask you merely from your introduction. Thank, in your introduction, you talk about, encountering the divine in the Talmud and that, that really rang true for me.
I grew up in a traditional Orthodox, but non observant home. Going to an Orthodox shul, left, the community and then really found my place in a Buddhist world. Living in Japan for a decade. And what I found meditate, I found a sense of God in meditation. And when I eventually went to rabbinical school, I fully expected to find that same experience in prayer.
And I didn't at all, but was completely surprised to find it in the beit midrash. And that's where I found this sense of God. And when I, and I, when I read your words, I thought, I think we're talking about the same thing there. And I'm gonna read just one line from your preface. You say, even if the good book was not written by God, the Talmudic page is often a good place to encounter the divine.
Can you talk more about that?
RUTH: Yes. I'm so envious that you spend time in Japan and no Buddhism because in my road not taken, that's where I would go.
BENAY: Uhhuh.
RUTH: I think I felt the design or was very close to God when I was a little girl. I felt that my mother, I knew that my mo, my mother is talking to God.
It was not ever, how do you call it, mediated by synagogue Rabbis. We didn't have those, but I, she used to say li in. Beloved God. And she would talk to him and they had a relationship, in, in the war here when my brothers were in the front and she was so scared. I heard her, praying in the most
simple and honest way, not in, and, we didn't have prayer books. The only prayer that we had at home was shechecheyanu, and that was used for everything, for when you are healthy, after you were sick for a new fruit, for the rain, for being happy generally. And we, it did, it was enough. And so I felt, I knew God and I'm close to God, but all my grownup years, there's no avenue, there's, you can't talk about it to anyone.
It's not, it's not politically correct and the people who do talk about God, I don't wanna, that's not that I don't hear that. It's not working for me. I did try, I went, we have three synagogues here, Yemenite, Sephardi, and Ashkenazi. And I tried them all, but I felt I don't know, that's not the language.
And so like you, when I entered the bet midrash, even when I was looking at it. I knew that this is what I'm looking for. And the Talmud is like a big bath that I can soak in. Like I say to the students that I wanna marinate them for a year or two in it, and it's always bigger than me. There's always something new to, to try to understand.
They always, it's like still having grownups in your life. When you become a grownup, there are less and less people to ask what to do and more and more people that want you to have answers, which you don't have. In the Talmud, you can always be, always study from someone. They're so good and it doesn't end.
There is something magical there doesn't end.
BENAY: Absolutely.
RUTH: So yeah I feel the divine also in good days when it rains or when, when I, when meeting a person or it happens in, in everywhere. But in the beit midrash, I feel I can really, I dunno why today I feel like a Turkish bath because I'm in soaked in goodness.
Yeah.
BENAY: Yeah. Okay. Dan, you're gonna have to stop me because I'm just gonna take over.
DAN: I was gonna say that you, you should, but we should make sure that we have time for this, for the learning. But also I was just one, one related question that I had is just can you talk a little bit about what’s happening in the Talmud?
What are the rabbis doing that gives you that feeling like that makes it an, I don't know if an escape is the right word. I don't think so. But to go to the Turkish bath where you feel refreshed and then you go back into the world having taken what you've gotten from the bath, and then you can go back into your life, like what is it that we can be bringing from the approach that the rabbis are taking in the Talmud back into our world that would help us make our lives better, make the world better?
RUTH: Yeah. So being marinated, it's a kind of a practice that brings it into you. It becomes part of you. And so when you come out of it, it's part of you. So many things. I don't think the rabbis do one thing. I think things happen to them. The Talmud is not just the rabbis, it's this, for me, it's a kind of a magical box.
And things happen there by many generations in these amazing editors that made something that is much more than, one project that they do. For me, what I take out of it is both a political way of thinking how to think about running, public space of a community. We are very much into that.
And Moshe says they know how to find small solutions for big questions, like huge questions. And they make, they answer small and specific answers, and that's what you need to do in politics or in motherhood or in life. So that's one thing. The other thing is they train us in thinking usually they say that they make you think very logically.
I don't think of what they helped me do is open my Persian, middle Eastern, more vivid imagination because they're wild and open, courageous in thinking. The other big thing they taught me is that debate is a very good thing. And that compromise in Hebrew, compromise is a bad word, pshara in English, I learned that it's a good thing.
And to find compromise is something growing up to do. They taught me so many things. I wanted to say something about imagination, about when I was teaching at Harvard this past fall. You asked me what did I did. The connection in law between law and narrative is so interwoven into whatever, integrated in such an interesting, sophisticated way, that when you learn something, you learn it in a story.
The depth of what story is that it's not something to wrest from Halakhah. It is a whole Torah that I love to study. They have language that is just unbelievable in Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek and Persian. And the last thing I wanna say, it runs away from me every time I try to put my hand on it.
BENAY: Okay let me jump in there and maybe this will also be a good way to transition into our text today. And that is, you talk in your book about how the stories in the Talmud are meant to be read, both conventionally and as Walter Benjamin says, against the grain. And I think that against the grain reading, which they mean to also put on the table is what I call a queer reading.
What jumps out at me as being queer. And some people talk about queering a text and I always say to them, I'm not queering the text. The text is already queer. It's already meant to be read against the grain, in other words, to challenge accepted norms. So I suppose when we learn this text together, you'll show us both, but can you talk a little bit about these two ways that the rabbis may be helping us not only read the text, but maybe read the world?
RUTH: Yes, thank you. It's a to the point of how I see them the thing I forgot before to say when I saw you, I remember is that they show me beauty like how to see beauty in so many things. They just. My world bigger and more beautiful. And this queering the text or what the simple word of midrash to [hebrew] do lidrosh to interpret.
But Hebrew lidrosh is to also insist. So when they read a text that says, zot ha’pa’am this time this woman is the flesh of my flesh in one of my bones. They'll stand there until it'll open up and say something more because they need something more for, to be relevant to, for their life. And this insisting is against the grain because with the grain, it already said what it had to say in my vault.
This time she is a bone of my bones. And, but I need now another answer. And I'm not leaving this, verse until it opens up and give me something else. And the way to get something else while you are committed to the verse, you're not, putting it aside and taking another Bible. This is the Bible. This is what we have.
And then they say zot ha’pa’am This is the one that made me, if she made me like a bell ring all night and it's already, no, it's clear. It's not simple. It's not shot, but it was in there. And we have to believe that there, it's in the text and it's waiting for us to put it out and to, you have to commit, commit to it, and not move until you find it.
And so in the stories of the Talmud, it's very sophisticated. They against the grain because they actually build miniature Greek drama, Greek like stories, films could be short films or long film features. And when you hear a story or see a movie, it's never simple. The protagonist has to have kind of a conflict and it goes back and forth in writing.
When it's one dimensional the way for them. It's you know those cards that you open up and they become three dimensions. So they, you get a page of story and it's like simple. The good guy killed the bad guy. But then it opens up and you are oh my goodness. The good is not so good and the bad was not so bad.
And Yom Kippur sounds like something different. Completely. So that's how I see the work. And that's why what the way you say that being Jewish is being queer. Because always until Zionism, when we were always a minority, everyone, you have to look at the world always in different eyes. And so I think we have practice in reading against the grain.
BENAY: Yeah.
DAN: Thank you. Yeah.
RUTH: By the way, it doesn't, it doesn't take away the reading, the pshat. What is so beautiful it's, is that they live together. It's both this and the other. I think.
DAN: And just to explain to the pshat means the original me, the surface level meaning the plain meaning of the text. And you're talking about how it's both at the same time, the plane meaning is still there and also the under the surface, meaning at some point, I dunno
RUTH: just a second for studying Hebrew
DAN: Yes.
RUTH: That I have to do every time we study peshat is "to be naked". Hebrew is saying everything easily.
BENAY: Yeah. And you don't, and you don't need to convince us at SVARA, you, do you know that SVARA--
RUTH: I'm trying to convince, I'm trying to convince our, whoever listens to us
BENAY: that yes, it at SVARA, we only learn in the original Hebrew Aramaic. Never ever in translation. Ever.
RUTH: Wow.
So that we can pick up for a thousand reasons, but that's one of the reasons
RUTH: I, with you, I feel like I always say that you can study in any language, but studying in not in Hebrew is like taking a shower with your clothes on. And
DAN: And from experience, sometimes you have to do that, but yeah.
RUTH: And it could be fun.
DAN: Yeah. I want, I think we should jump into the text. I do think though that this last point that you've made is actually related to something that Benay and I have talked about, but before, and that probably we won't have time to talk about today, but hopefully another time, which is this question of, the experience of teaching at Harvard Law School and the idea that, we've been talking about some of the recent Supreme Court decisions in the US on this level of trying to understand how even in law in, in legal scholarship today we see some of the things that we're talking about, is the justification that the Supreme Court Justice gives is that really what's driving him?
Is he doing something more subtle? Are there multiple levels to, to read these? And it would be very interesting at some, I think at a future point to talk about that encounter that you had with the am Anglo American legal system through, through that. Experience and also through talking to the students who are immersed in learning about both things for the first time.
But let's start, let's jump into this text. Maybe you could set it up for us a little bit and explain, what, why you chose it and whatever, however much you want. And then I'll share the text on the screen and then we can dive in.
RUTH: I'm taking you up on the invitation to talk about Harvard because I learned a lot there and I enjoyed the students tremendously. And so talk I hope in the future.
But this text I chose with a little bit of worry because it is a tough one. It's talking about a time of plague and what happens when death, the angel of death is walking in the streets. And it is a story about Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Levy, one of my favorite protagonists. And he, knows it's dangerous, but still studies with people that are, coronavirus positive.
He sits with them and he, and studies with them. Now, I was worried about studying it because we do have today in Israel challenges with community. Will not accept the laws of of the Corona. And they still want to either go to synagogue or meet or have ceremonies. And it's a very scary, and it, I don't wanna talk about that, like straightforward, but I think the story has the guts to confront that too.
And that's very special. I learned it years before I even imagine living a time of a plague. You think it's in the middle ages. And so it's very interesting and strong. So Levy does that mingles with the sick people. I'm sure his wife tells him, don't do it. Don't go, there's a lockdown and he still goes and he actually dies. And then the story begins. And here, I'll start from the second paragraph.
RUTH: [reads the Hebrew from Ketubot 77b]
Will one of you please read it in English? Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi
DAN: I'm usually the, I'm usually the English reader, so I'll read it. Rabbi Yehoshua be Levi would attach himself to them and study Torah. Them, I assume are the people who are sick with the plague. He would, so he would,
RUTH: it's a different plague then. It was a, it was I guess a pla the skin or something. But in the same way that they had to be not touched and not live next to and so on.
DAN: Yes. So he would come close to them and study Torah. Justify saying as a justification, the verse, the Torah is a loving hind and a grateful doe. I think a hind is a kind of a, of an animal of a,
RUTH: yeah, like a doe.
Yeah. If it bestows grace on those who learn it, does it not protect them from illness?
RUTH: So his logic is quite far out, and he says he stands on this verse and says, the Torah makes you beautiful, and if it makes you beautiful, I'm sure it will save your life. That's a, I think it is worthwhile to go deeper into why did he do that?
Isn't he afraid to get sick? Doesn't he know that, there's biology and if you stay close to sick people, you will get sick. What was his real logic? Why does he do that? And it's, we don't have enough time to dive into that. I wonder what you think. I would just say that I think he felt that leaving them alone is not moral and that he has to do that like a nurse, but in but in how do you call it?
The people that like chaplainship, people that, that's tmihka ruhanit
DAN:Yeah. Chaplain. Yeah.
RUTH: Spiritual guidance,
DAN: spiritual guide. Yeah. Yeah. But I think actually when I was in a situation in Israel where such a person came, when my mother was dying, she introduced herself as a tmihka ruhanit. But she said in English you would call that a chaplain, even though she said it has nothing to do with religion.
She was very insistent and nothing to do with religion. We were like, oh, it would be okay if it did, but she was, a secular,
RUTH: no, Israelis can't have it with religion, but I think Rabbi Yeshoshua ben Levi is a spiritual guide chaplain, and he says, they need me now and I'm going to be next to them. I don't think that he, I don't know, maybe he does naively that the Torah protects him, because there is this concept that whenever you study, the angel of death cannot come and take you.
But I don't think they were naive in such a sense. I think it is his choice. And so the story will be about, it's very Buddhist. How do you prepare yourself to die? How do you come to the moment when you meet the angel of death in a way that you are true and that you are in the right place for yourself.
How you are not ashamed, you're not weak. You, because everyone will die. And this choice is not, I studied it with someone, that really got offended because they thought it meant, that the story tells you not to. Mask. And I don't think that's what t he story says. I think it is that what I learned in a little bit in Buddhism, that preparation for you, for that moment to live your life in a way that when the angel does come, you can look him in the eye in more rightly to say in the eyes, because the angel of death is full of eyes.
He's an angel with many open eyes. And that's what you see when you meet him. And normal people are frightened from seeing him opening all his eyes and they open their mouth and his knife has a drop of poison and they die. But scholars, when they meet him, it's a challenge of equal power.
'cause they have the Torah and he has all these eyes. And so I think Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi was saying, I will have to die sometimes now, sometime now when I am needed to these sick people, I'm going to be there for them.
BENAY: Ruth, I so appreciate this read because the conventional, the surface read, made me think of those news segments that most people in America will remember from the early days of Coronavirus when reporters were standing outside of these enormous churches and interviewing the churchgoers as they were driving away, clearly without masks, but having been in these congregations of hundreds, if not thousands of people, and the interviewer would say, aren't you afraid of getting sick? And they say things like, “no, I'm not gonna get sick. The blood of Jesus will cure me. And the”
RUTH: Same happens in Israel with synagogues Yeah. And other places. Yeah.
BENAY: I really appreciate a read of Yehoshua Ben Levi that where he's, that is not what he's saying. Don't misunderstand him. You're saying he's smarter than that.
RUTH: It's, it looks very similar. It comes from the same logic that the Torah protects you, but it doesn't say that you will not die. It says that you'll die in the right way, but if you have to die, you'll die like you're supposed to die. And so the next sentence –
DAN: Can I, before, before you say the next sentence, I just wanna suggest that it actually is making me think of one other thing, which we don't have to discuss, but I just wanna put it on the table, which is what I've been struggling with about the protests for Black Lives Matter, and the question of whether people are gonna get sick from Coronavirus for going to those protests. And there's something about this that makes me feel like it, it resonates with what you're saying, that maybe you would die, but in the right way. So it's just something that, that it made me think of.
RUTH: That's very strong. Yeah. That I thought about it yesterday. Yeah. There are some things that we'll take a risk for.
DAN: Yeah.
RUTH: Because it's the right thing to do. To be with the sick people for him was the right thing to do.
DAN: Yeah.
RUTH: So the next sentence that the Talmud never goes into, north landscape the, goes straight to the point.The next sentence.
RUTH: [reads the next link in Hebrew]
I'll do the, let's do the whole paragraph. Dan, Please read.
DAN: When Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi was on the verge of dying, they said to the angel of death, go and perform his bidding as he is a righteous man and deserves to die in the manner he sees fit. The angel of death went and appeared to him. Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said to him, show me my place in paradise.
He said to him, very well. Yehoshua ben Levi said to him, give me your knife that you use to kill mortals, lest you frighten me on the way he gave it to him. When he arrived there in Paradise, he lifted Rabbi Yehoshua so he could see his place, and he showed it to him, and Rabbi Yehoshua jumped and fell into that on the other side, thereby escaping into paradise.
RUTH: So let's stop for a minute. The English is always trying to be nice and says, when was on the verge of dying, they said to the angel of death. But the story says it happened immediately after the last paragraph. He went to pray with them, to study with them, and he died. So the Torah seems to not protect you from dying, but then,
I think now they change into a kind of a Charlie Chaplin black and white, funny movie. And they met they portray the angel of death in a kind of a, I see him as a kind of a Woody Allen, Charlie Chaplin kind of guy who is a bit of a neb and he has to do his job. He is not bad. He work, he, he has a list. He goes in the morning, he gets a list. And he has to bring these people and he hopes they will not give him trouble.
But when he has a scholar, he knows this is going to be long and difficult because they start studying and I can't kill them, and they're not afraid of me. And he is oh my goodness. I have, this guy is not only a scholar, but he is like with a little star. That means his business class. And now I have to be nice to him and bring him something to drink and take his suit and it's gonna take me the whole day.
So the angel of death gets to him and Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi doesn't say, I don't wanna die, or, I was a good man. And he says, show me, what's my seat? I wanna see what seat are you going to put me on in, in the next world? Before, even before that, he says to him, give me the knife. The Angel of Death does the whole thing with the wings and the eyes to scare him.
He doesn't get scared. He says to him, give me your knife. And the angel says, I can give you my knife. It's part of my outfit. And then says, it frightens me. I. Like when people say I don't feel comfortable, like something very modern. And so the angel has to give him his knife and that imagine the scene of a scholar and the angel of death walking the road to paradise, and the scholar is holding the knife.
If we're in Hollywood, it's this big knife with a, like angel of death. They work together when they get to paradise, then Levy says, show me. I wanna see the neighborhood if it's good for me. And so the angel has to give him a kind of a Robber's ladder. Is that something you say in English that you, someone puts his hands like this and you step on him and
DAN: Oh yeah.
What do we call that in English? Like when you boost
BENAY: A boost. A boost,
DAN: yeah.
RUTH: Maybe
DAN: when you like Yeah. Boost.
RUTH: in Hebrew it’s Sulam Gnavim - Robber's Ladder.
So the angel of death now without a knife has to do like this, and this guy steps on him and walks and jumps up to look beyond the fence at Paradise. He looks over and he says, I don't see well enough.
Make it a little higher. And the angel of death has to push him a little higher. It's all, I think very funny. And to make a funny story about the angel of death in the time of plague is a very big deal. Anyway, he lifts him up a little more and then levy jumps over and gets to paradise without dying. He ran away from the angel of death.
It's not allowed, you can't get into paradise without going through the front, getting your temperature measured and all of that. It's not allowed. And not only that, he took the knife with him. So now we have the fence of paradise. We have the rabbi inside with a righteous men, dancing and eating the whale with God,
And the angel of death, a child whose toy was taken from him, crying, give it back to me. It's not fair, you're not allowed. And he catches his frock and tries to pull him back to this world. And it's, it becomes like a children's quarrel. And they go to Mommy to God and they say, took my knife and it was my turn. And God says, who is it? Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi.
RUTH: [Reads in Hebrew from the daf]
If he ever gave his word. And how does it say it in, in English? English? It
DAN: says if he ever requested dissolution of an oath, he, that he had taken, he must return to the world with the angel of death. But if he did not ever request, then he'd not return.
RUTH: He can stay there. So like we would say, if he has a word, if he is, if he doesn't go back from his word and, he's a trustable, honest person and he never, made a vow and did not, commit to it.
And so they check in the books and they find out that Rabbi Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi never got, how do you say?
DAN: Never got an oath reversed, basically.
RUTH: Never reversed an oath or even a promise or something like that. And so we can stay in paradise without dying. No one else can get there without dying.
DAN: And just to clarify one thing, 'cause I, in the text, we didn't read it, but it, but basically it says that Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi says, I swear I won't come with you like he makes an oath. I won't come with you. ,
RUTH: Oh, nice.
DAN: So God says if he ever, if he always observed his oaths in life, then there's nothing do
RUTH: what can I do?
DAN: if he ever had a time in life when he made an oath and wanted to reverse it, then we have something to work with. But if he's a man who, and it turned out he had never made a, an oath that he didn't keep before. So what can we do? We have to let him stay.
RUTH: That's an amazing point you are making. 'cause you are saying that God himself says this man, although he died, is stronger than all of us up here.
You cannot reverse his oath when he says He is not coming back. He's not coming back. What can I do? And so that he one over death by dying or although he died, he is stronger than the angel of death
BENAY: because of how he lived. Because of how he lived before that.
RUTH: Because of how and the choice of staying with the sick uhhuh. And so again, this is, we are coming close to a dangerous thought that maybe is what was taught in that church and in that synagogue to say, if you do the right thing, you will be. But the story doesn't say, you will not die. It says, if you'll die, you'll be you. You can get over death itself, but you can still die. You know what I mean? It's very sophisticated.
DAN: Also, it's something like, maybe I would interpret it as you can die on your own terms or you can die, with your head held high or something. Because in a sense, the question is what's the difference between jumping into, paradise, into heaven without dying, without the angel of death killing you versus jumping in, or versus he puts his knife in the poison in you, and then you go, at the end of the day, you end up in the same place, which is dead, but in a way he's saying that there's a way to die. That's not a death of fear and of sadness and shame or whatever. There's a way to die where you know that you lived the right way.
And I think to reinforce what Benay is saying that even that question of whether, if you try to die the right way, can they try to send you back and get you to die on the terms of the angel of death in the wrong way. And God is saying if you lived your life the right way all along, then no then you get to die on your own terms. Something like that. Which I think
RUTH: I agree, but I want to push on to Benay’s Buddhism or stand on your shoulders in that and say that. I think they believe in the legends that Eliahu, for example. Although he is up there, he can come here. When you get to paradise without dying, you have a visa and you can go back and forth. You die, but you're not locked up there. And so it's a very big deal to, to get to the next world without dying. Wow. It's like you have a special status thing.
And I just finished with, so angel is crying to God, but I don't have my knife. And so a Bat Kol, a voice of heaven comes out and says, give them the knife. People need it. The universe will, the humanity will die without, will not be able to live without death.
And then in the end, he, if I was the director, we see the knife thrown back from the wall of the paradise back to the poor angel of death that walks like Charlie Chaplin to, and we see the end of. Film. And although
DAN: the end of the film is one even better scene in a way, which is just like you said, that the other guy who didn't die, Elijah welcomes him and says, “make way, make way. He is come, this next person has come without dying.”
BENAY: I also, I wanna tell you what's coming up for me, what's coming up for me is the part where he wants to peek over and Yeah. And for me, I'm seeing not just him tricking the angel of death and getting himself in there alive but what, like when he says, “show me,” he, I think he really wants the assurance, or I'm really feeling that hope of some reassurance that there is going to be this place of paradise on the other side, in, in this time of so much death.
And, as I was telling you before we started, I'm a single mom of a 14-year-old, and it's a really scary time. And my father died recently, not from COVID before. And we talk about death and she says to me, if you die, how do I know you? I will get there. And I have this belief that we join all those who have died before us, who are watching over us now. And she wants the reassurance that I'll be there or I'll be watching her, or somehow she'll be able to connect with me. And I think there's this real, comfort that comes from the belief or the trust that, that it's gonna be okay.
RUTH: And there isn't what you, I am very moved by what you say. 'cause I remember this conversation I had with my mother, and I think what you are teaching me here is that the Angel of death becomes the chaplain of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi. And he is doing spiritual guidance to him. Yeah. He's telling me, he's telling him “it's okay. There is a paradise. I'll show you. Yeah. And I, you want my knife? I'll give you my knife. I'm here with you.”
With you. And what is, I think so tragic about the COVID, death is that people are alone. I think that's so terrible. And the story says even when he was alone, the angel of death became his his chaperone. He wasn't alone. And that's very beautiful. I never thought of that.
BENAY: Thank you. That's
RUTH: showing him.
DAN: So that, I get, you know what I, one thing that I have to say is that I hope this is not the last time that we get to study Talmud with you, because that was amazing. Me too. And and so moving. I think I feel like I wanna end our discussion, but I also, I feel like I'm gonna sit with this for a while to think about, what does it mean in terms of people that are, like in a way,
When you started the text I thought I was thinking of Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi as a doctor – that in a way studying Torah in their mind was - and I think that you're right, it's problematic to talk about this because there are people who still think this in a very direct way. And it's bad, it's wrong, but in that time, they really thought like this was a kind of a medicine, and so if we might say today we don't believe that studying Torah is going to stop you from death, in that same way, the wisdom is still that those who actually can help you, doctors, that they are exposing themselves by that they're, they have chosen a life where they can't be protected. They can't do what Benay and I have been doing for the last four months of locking ourselves in our house.
And then you ask what about the protestors who, when there was, you know, something terrible happening in society where other people, or well other people perhaps of their race, perhaps not, were being killed by the police, and they felt themselves to have a holy obligation to, to get out on the streets and fight that. And, again, they made a choice to live a kind of life where they can't protect themselves in the same way.
And I feel like that's who this wisdom is for. So it's like what we were talking about earlier, that if you read only the pshat, only the simple meaning, then you'll say this is about Torah study and this is about rabbis, and this is, and if you read the deeper, interpretive or insisting meaning that says no, this applies to those people today who occupy that same space. Then it, it has that power.
And then I'm sitting with the question of how do we think about that the pshat and the drash live together? Both, that, in other words, that they're both there and, and then what do I do with the pshat? But with the, with that original, surface meaning but it's very powerful.
RUTH: I feel that it's my obligation and also something that calls me to understand the people that say God will protect me. I don't need a mask. Not to say just that they're stupid and evil, but to try to step into their shoes and, 'cause they can't be all stupid. It's another way of seeing things. And when I read this text, I try to give them the best, reading that I can to understand what in, for, in my life, what do they think up there in the Bnei Brak?
Why don't they, why do they still go to weddings and so on? Because I cannot think that people are, parted into the good people and the bad people. It doesn't make sense to me. And sometimes these texts allow me for a short while, at least, to get into the road not taken and to read it in the, in, in a generous read.
And I feel that's what we did today. And it feels very good.
BENAY: I so appreciate that because I'm always asking myself, is being a Talmud learner really making me a better person? And it's the claim I make. Yes, it does. And. In all honesty, I'm really not sure if I'm a better person. I second guess myself for sure.
And what you're saying to me is I need to look at those people in that, in those cars who are saying, the blood of Jesus will protect me and give them the most generous read possible and read what they're saying against the grain and underneath. That's go, that is gonna make me a better person as I walk through the world I see how those dots are connected.
RUTH: I think we just did that when we can l’hiz’da’hot when we can identify with them in going to the protest or going to the army or, and oh, that's what they feel. So they're not idiots. It's, and many times, even in chauvinism in the Talmud or racism in the Talmud, which is plenty, I try to get into it and see what are they thinking.
They can't be complete. And I learn a lot from it. It's, I'm where I am and I stand where I stand and I'm a feminist and I'm a liberal. But that's part of the reason I love this book so much. 'cause it gives, it opens my mind not to just be what I think that open-minded people are, but to really open my mind to sometimes to places I didn't think.
Thank you. I really enjoyed studying with you today.
BENAY: Amazing. I just wanted to say that I asked you to explain what you mean by encountering the Divine in Talmud and you just created that experience for us, and I think very likely for folks who are watching and listening. So thank you so much.
RUTH: No, thank you, Ette. It's, I feel so close and that's one of the beautiful things in Corona that we started living like this and we, so many years I wanted to meet you. And now thanks to DAN, we can do that. So yes, we'll stay close.
DAN: I feel like there's a way to understand that we are now, have all had an exodus from Egypt and we're all together in the wilderness and we are actually all in the same place.
The digital wilderness, and actually it's like what you're saying about the peshat and the drash living together. We are actually in both, we're both in the place where we physically are and we're in this place where we're actually neighbors, and I don't know where that's gonna lead us, but I think it's gonna lead us somewhere.
Good. So you have an open invitation to always come back and teach us and learn with us. It was amazing. And thank you so much for being with us, Ruth.
RUTH: Thank you so much. And we have toll plan something then we, I count on your practicality. Build some kind of beit midrash that is in this limbo place.
Good evening. Okay, good. Thank you. Went away.
DAN: Thank you.
RUTH: I love too. Bye-Bye. Okay,
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.
Watch on Video (original unedited stream)
