The Oral Talmud: Episode 15 - Svara’ing Your Svara (Eruvin 13a and Sotah 20a)
SHOW NOTES
“It's only when you know why, and the essence behind the whys, that you are able to create. You're able to then be free of the momentary form of a practice, which is trying to achieve a certain goal, and create other forms that achieve that same goal.” - 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.
This week we return to the legend of Rabbi Meir, who we began learning about in Episode 13. When we met him, he was a master of Rabbinic acrobatics, able to turn any law inside out, and offer his incredible logic as support. Now we’re going back a page to learn about his origins, who his teachers were - and how he learned to “Gemar his Gemara & Savar his Svara!”
Why hone our gemirna and savirna? How do we learn to find the radical messages on every page of Talmud? What do we get from different teachers? When do we turn to Rashi’s commentary, and how do we put it in context? Why do we ask “why”?
This week’s text: Rabbi Meir’s Origins (Eruvin 13a and Sotah 20a)
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] Upcoming Oral Talmud interviews: Daniel Boyarin, Shai Secunda, Moulie Vidas (at Princeton’s website)
[2] The Oral Talmud: Episode 4 - Retelling the History - David Kraemer
[3] The Oral Talmud: Episode 14 - Reading the Angel of Death with Ruth Calderon
[4] Richard Elliot Friedman shares perspectives on the assemblage of the Bible on The Bible for Normal People Podcast
[5] Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, co-founder of Clal (their website)
[6] Dan’s connection between not wearing a mask to prevent the spread of COVID and other diseases being like Drunk Driving has been a common and compelling thought. As of writing these show notes in 2025, COVID is still the cause of death for more people than drunk driving, with far less cultural mitigation (article from Cambridge University Press for example)
[7] The Orchard by Yochi Brandes, translated by Dan Libenson (podcast episode of Judaism Unbound)
[8]“What’s Bothering Rashi: A Guide to In-Dept Analysis of his Torah Commentary” (on archive.org)
[9] The Oral Talmud: Episode 6 - Narrating the Law with Barry Wimpfheimer
[10] On the subject that Justices Scalia and Ginsburg were friends and enjoyed opera together: “Scalia/Ginsburg: A (Gentle) Parody of Operatic Proportions” by Derrick Wang (wikipedia entry)
[11] For Moses in Rabbi Akiva’s classroom listen to The Oral Talmud: Episode 9 - Turning Around
[12] “If you meet the buddha on the road, kill him,” a koan attributed to Linji (wikipedia)
[13] Jon A Levisohn’s “A Menu of Orientations to the Teaching of Rabbinic Literature” (free from Brandeis)
[14] Rava on What we will be asked when we die: Did you understand a thing from within a thing davar mee’tokh davar (Shabbat 31a)
[15] “Metaphors We Live By” by George Lakoff
[16] David Weiss Halivni (wikipedia entry)
[17] Menachem Elon (wikipedia entry)
-
DAN: This is The Oral Talmud - Episode 15: To Svara Your Svara Reading the Angel of Death with Ruth Calederon. 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 return to the legend of Rabbi Meir, who we began learning about in Episode 13. When we met him, he was a master of Rabbinic acrobatics, able to flip any law and offer his incredible logic as support. Now we’re going back a page to learn about his origins, who his teachers were - and along the way we’ll go deep on a term you just heard a minute ago: svara!
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: I wanna, um, just, um, let you know about some exciting things that are coming up before we jump in, which is for the next three weeks after this, we have three. Very, very important and exciting and prominent Talmud professors coming up each week. Uh, we have Daniel Boyarin next week, and then Professor Shai Secunda the next week who, uh, writes about the Persian context of the Talmud. So that's gonna be really interesting. And then, uh, professor Moulie Vidas from Princeton, who is a fascinating story of how he came to Talmud, as well as a fascinating take on the Talmud. So I should also note that those are three men in a row. That is not how it's gonna be, But, uh, right now we're in Corona world and we're dealing with people's schedules when we can get 'em, we're getting them and we have a lot of, uh, other folks coming up that are equally exciting and not men
BENAY: that's, when we talk about having Talmud professors, I have to say that sounds boring, Uhhuh, but it's, it's not at all boring. And what I think people don't generally realize, and we don. Think about a lot. Is that the understanding of the Talmud as its radical self has been living in the academy? Yeah. It's been living in critical Talmud scholarship, which has been in universities', graduate schools. And it hasn't done a good job of seeping out.
Yeah. From there. And it, it's not that the professors like have a boring take on Talmud. The boring take on Talmud unfortunately has gone into most yeshiva, not far, but other yeshiva. That's where Talmud is boring. Talmud is actually really exciting and radical in academics and I feel very grateful to have learned from academics, who particularly David Kramer and others who were in the academy and in rabbinical schools. And to have brought that take to SVARA. But so when we talk about professors of Talmud, people should know that tho that those are the, you know, exciting Talmud folks.
DAN: Yeah. And I'm, I'm grateful for you for saying that. 'cause I also wasn't even sure the right, I was thinking something very similar the other day.
It's also true of Bible, you know, it's, it's also true that, that a lot of, there's a lot of exciting things in, in biblical scholarship in the academy that most people don't know because they don't study that in Hebrew school and they don't study in Hebrew school. I think because the religious foc, you know, the religious purveyors of Hebrew school, you know, I don't mean that in a derogatory way.
I just mean like, it tends to come from religious institutions of various denominations. Like they don't exactly know what to do with a critical approach. I actually am looking forward to, and this is, these are projects that you and I are working on in, in various ways, creating that the third way, that's going to be some hybrid of the critical open.
It's not just critical, you know, but open, kind of thinking, you know, looking at every angle. It's kind of like, I don't know. I, I mean, I'm trying to think about like the night before Passover, when you get all the, you know, you're around with your, uh, feather finding all the crumbs, you know, and or something like that where you're just like willing to look anywhere, version. Which is lives in the academy like you're talking about. But then the engagement study for its own, like the, the, the love, I mean, you talk about love, you know, but the idea that, hey, this actually could be part of my life in a serious way that comes kind of from the Yeshiva world of studying the texts from a kind of what we might call a religious point of view. And how could we hybridize that.
And I think that's what we're trying to do on this show. So that's part of why I think what we're trying to do, I, I'm thinking about it as like, uh, you know, like when you like fold. Over like a batter, you know, and you like mix in the new, so we're bringing these professors in and then we're like mixing them into our evolving take on the text from a non-academic point of view. Something like that. And we're, yeah, really grateful and exciting. Excited that some of the most, uh, prominent and exciting professors that are out there are, are really, they're excited when we tell them about this show and that they, that they, we want them to join.
And obviously we had, it's not only professors and we had Ruth Calderon last week. It was amazing. And, um. I should note that my, my dad who watches this show, uh, hi dad, um, he suggested that we bring Ruth Calderon on as a third permanent co-host. And I was like, yeah, if only,
BENAY: oh, that would be amazing.
DAN: Yeah. But I don't think that's gonna happen. But, uh, you know, I was like, I think she has a lot to do as do we. No, but, um, so anyway, let's, uh, so that's what's coming up in the weeks ahead and, and we're really excited. It's a good time to grab some time from academics who are otherwise, teaching
BENAY: it. And I'll add that we have a bunch, not only a bunch of women coming on, but a bunch of queer and trans talmudists. So I'm really excited about that.
DAN: Yep. We have got. Lots and lots of great people.
Yeah. But we're also good people. So let's jump into to one of these explorations of the text where, where we're just studying a text together. And I guess, you know, I, I would just say about this, that we're trying to do a bunch of things here, including role modeling in some way, a way to just read these texts in a searching way and to, to, and, and I think with Ruth Calderon last week, it was an amazing experience of doing that. Right. A text that neither you nor I had, had too much familiarity with in the past, and what she brought out of it was astonishing. You know? I, I, so, you know, and, and, and,
and I think you talked to me about how David Kramer, when you were a student you kind of, you know, he has this more radical take and you said, um, well, is that just like, there's a few selected stories where you can see that, and he's like, no, no, no. Literally every page,
BENAY: Yes.
DAN: And, uh, that was an experience of that. Yeah.
So what we're so jumping into continuing from our last time that we were doing this together, we've been looking at a bunch of texts that in some fashion. Talk about the ideal way that the rabbis imagine one should think, and that can manifest in how you are a good judge on a court, how you're a good student in a, in a Talmud or in a, I wasn't a Talmud at the time of the Talmud.
You know, that's one of the interesting things that Richard Elliot Friedman says. He says, one of the really most important things to understand about the biblical times is that there was no Bible, you know? That's great. And, um, you know, in the Talmudic times, as we call them, there was no Talmud,
you know, but the way that people were, were imagined to be a good student, a good study, or a good creator of this. And ultimately like the kind of person that, that the Talmud really holds up as the kind of person that we hope people will become. And that's what we're, we're looking at various texts of that nature. Wanna give any another word of framing?
BENAY: Well, I would just say that the Talmud is kind of the, the most sophisticated repository of, and the learning of Talmud, the most sophisticated Jewish technology for becoming the kind of person that the entire Jewish enterprise exists to create. And it was really Yitz who took all of the trivia that I had gathered in my years of rabbinical school and sadly, rabbinic education can become just a learning of lots and lots of stuff.
DAN: Mm-hmm.
BENAY: And then rabbis who come out of rabbinical school transmit that as stuff without a co coherent, um. Understanding of what its purpose is, and it was really Yitz who, for the first time after I graduated rabbinical school,
DAN: we should just note that Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, the, the founder of Klal and, and an important Jewish thinker and theologian.
BENAY: Thank you. It was Yitz who, who really brought to my consciousness for the first time the idea that everything, all of the technologies, the rituals, the prayers, the holidays, the traditions, the customs, the everything is really in service of one thing. Oh my gosh. Who would've thought one thing?
And that is the creation of a certain kind of human being.
DAN: Hmm.
BENAY: And that human being will naturally create this kind of world. So it's real, it really isn't that the whole tradition is about fixing the world. The whole tradition is about fixing the person.
And the, that person will naturally fix the world and do a whole bunch of other things, but it's really about creating a certain kind of person.
And I would call that person a queer person in the broadest sense, but we can put a sticky on that and come back to it another time.
DAN: Yeah. And, and by the way, like I, I think I would call that person, I, I mean, I would also call that person a queer person, but I, in other times I've called that person an adult.
BENAY: Yes. Think
DAN: that
BENAY: a mature, I love that you're, you're like a mature adult.
DAN: Yeah. Mature adult. You know, that, that there have been times, and I'm trying to remember, I mean this is now back, I think when I was working with college students and people would say like, well, what are you trying to, what should they believe about Judaism?
Or what should they, you know, do to be a good Jew? And I said. I think that if they were a mature adult, I would feel very confident sort of leaving Judaism in their hands. Mm-hmm. The concern is that they're not a mature adult, and I don't, I don't mean about college students here, I just mean about anybody that, that there's some way in which I think a lot of the fear that people have about the future of Judaism.
Boils down to some lack of faith in humanity and people, which by the way, I really think is well, well placed. You know, like meaning, like, I think you should be concerned about human beings. When I walk out my door and I see half the people in my neighborhood not wearing masks and, et cetera, right?
Which is both, I think a, a sign of poor thinking, but also a sign of kind of poor values, right? In the sense that it's it, I've been saying about masking that it's, it's about other people, right? It's about protecting others. And it's not, sort of saying that masks should be optional is like saying that drunk driving should be optional.
It's not about you. And the fact that there are people out there who, you know, who are kind of, are going around, I'm like, well, I don't wanna put Judaism in, in your, uh, you know, in your, in your, uh, protection. Right? You know, I mean, I but if, if a person was the kind of person that I was hoping a person would be, then I would say, yeah, turn into whatever you want.
BENAY: Yeah, absolutely.
DAN: I think I might've cut you off. Was there something that you were about to say?
BENAY: I can't remember.
DAN: Okay. Well, let's jump in. Um, okay, so we're the text for today, they're actually, it's a, it's an almost identical text that's in two different places in the Talmud, in the tractate Eruvin, which is the same tractate that we've been studying, and that we have another text coming up from there. So in a certain sense, we're still in this particular part of the Talmud that seems to really be talking about this question.
But there's also another version of the text in a different tractate called Sotahh. And one of the reasons why we're highlighting that one is that the Rashi explanation is better in Sotahh, right?
BENAY: That's right. So this text is actually on the previous side of the page we learned last time we were learning. That is when we learned about the story of Rabbi Meir and how amazing he was. God says he like, “there's no one in his generation like Rabbi Meir.” That whole story is preceded immediately by the text we're gonna learn today.
And I always like to learn this one after learning about Rabbi Meir, because once you learn about how Rabbi Meir thought and forced his colleagues to think, and basically how we walked through the world as a human being, I always wanna ask, well, how did he get that way? That's my question. And to read the text in this backward order doesn't give away kind of his educational path before you really have the question. Wow. How, how did he get to be like that?
So. That's why I wanna save this text for after we know Rabbi Meir and we're learning the identical text over in Sotah, just as you say, because the commentary is much richer there - the Rashi commentary.
DAN: Okay. Let's just remind people very briefly that basically Rabbi Meir, as we learned about him last week, he's this genius guy. He's so brilliant that the Talmud, that the law is never decided based on his opinion because we can't figure out what his opinion is because he could make the argument for anything and we are never really sure which thing he actually believes. So we kind of can't go by his opinion. But everything he says is like so brilliant and he could that's basically who he is.
BENAY: And his, his brilliance. Influences others around him to think more deeply. They become more enlightened because of his confounding, pushing and destabilizing and forcing them to expand their thinking.
And the law, which is an a, a kind of accommodation to the need to have some smaller than big truth norm at any given moment is enriched because of him. But the law's never said, as you say, according to him.
DAN: Okay. So there's this, um, so I, I think, we'll, I, I just wanna actually start by reading it from Eruvin because one of the points that it starts with is related to this point that you were saying about Yitz Greenberg making clear to you in ways that you hadn't seen before, how things are tied together.
And for me, I had a similar experience when I was translating the book The Orchard by Yochi Brandes, that all of these little tiny stories that I had always read as individual stories and never even really remembered that it was the same rabbi that said this, that said that, yeah. That all of a sudden you, you start to see the narratives stitched together and you say, oh, actually now I get it, that the same rabbi showed these two statements because he is got a certain character trait.
And what I think is really interesting about the text in Eruvin the text, like you say, right before the one that we were studying, is that it's introduced by Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levy, who is the same character that we were just talking about with Ruth Calderon? That who, you know, who, uh, had that whole you know, incident where, you know, he not only was trying to, um, you know, jump into heaven, paradise without dying but also, right, the whole point that she was bringing out was that he's this person who wanted to sit with the people who were, were ill and wanted to, it took these chances. So I, I don't know if it's connected or not directly, but I thought it was interesting to note that it's that same character who introduces this idea.
So Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levy says anywhere that you find a statement introduced with the following quote, “A certain disciple said before Rabbi Akiva in the name of Rabbi Ishmael.” So a lot of times the Talmud has this kind of quote, like this person said in the name of this person who said it in the name of this person. You know, there's quotes upon quotes, a lot of citation of sources going on in the Talmud.
So Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi is saying a, a very particular way in which the source is cited. So when it says, “a student said, uh, to Rabbi Akiva quoting Rabbi Ishmael,” that that refers to it is none other than Rabbi Meir, who was the student of both Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva.
And the Talmud, there's a part where we took it out. But the Talmud is basically saying like, it's confused about what does it mean where it's says it served both Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva. How could you serve both of them? And, um, the, the Talmud is saying that that's not, that's not a problem. I can explain it to you how the same person could have served both professors, so to speak.
BENAY: So I think it's interesting that to learn what the teacher is referred to as serving a teacher. Mm. It I don't know what to do. It, it, I think it, it raises a much fuller relationship than we usually imagine when we think of teachers and students.
Hmm. It's deeper, it's fuller, it's richer. There's something more to it, but we can put a sticky on that. And before we, we jump into this next piece I kind of wanna set it up by saying, you know, whenever you look at a Rashi, your question should always be. Why is Rashi talking here? Why is Rashi piping up?
What's Rashi's question? What's bothering Rashi?
DAN: And I don't really introduced Rashi on this, on this show so much. So just to note that Rashi is a medieval commentator living sort of in France, but is it North Africa? Yeah, I'm not sure it's, he speaks French. And, um, he is, um, I mean he's seen today, right?
I mean we, we understand him today to be this the most prominent of the commentators on the entirety of the Bible in the Talmud. But I, I recently heard a lecture by Barry Wimpfheimer, who we had on the show before, who was really talking about this particular school of Rashi and his descendants who kind of were, were doing a kind of an important piece of work.
And, and when you think about the early medi medieval period, it's actually not that long after the Talmud was. As a document. And so they're actually, relatively speaking close in time to the finishing of the Talmud as a document, and, and they're playing a, an important role of, of trying.
And what, what I think, Barry, if I'm remembering this correctly, what I think Barry kind of pointed out is that what their project was to bring coherence to the Talmud. Sort of how you were talking about Yitz Greenberg, that trying to say it's actually all about one thing. So it's not necessarily that Rashi's saying it's all about one thing, but he's, he's trying to say there's not parts, it's not a disjunctive document where things are, you know, if it's here and if it's 2000 pages later and it's different, that's like a sign that the editor made a mistake.
It's no that we have to find some way to weave it all together and to, and to show you how it's really all one big point.
BENAY: Okay. And at the, at the risk of getting a little trippy you just reminded me of that experience, which I know I talk about often, that you helped me have, which was when I audited a law school class.
And it was a torts class and I purchased for the class, the textbook. And of course it's, three inches thick and it's got gold on the, I'm looking at it right now at the top of my bookshelf, gold on the binding. And it's got, about 500 cases in it. And you know, in the entire torts course we cover maybe a dozen cases.
And it's very obvious that all of the cases are there not to teach the specifics of, you know, the content of those cases, be it about tugboats or locomotives or, or whatever. But they're all there to do one single thing.
DAN: Mm-hmm.
BENAY: Which is to teach you how to think. Analytically how to think like a lawyer, right?
Mm-hmm. How to take complex situations. And I think that's really what the Talmud is doing as well.
To, to what, what, what our text today gets at is the question of what do you need to know? What do you need to learn? How much do you need to know? What kind of stuff what does your curriculum and your educational path need to do to you to be this kind of person that the tradition is trying to create?
And
DAN: but you were saying when you read a Rashi, you, you need to remember like the question, what's he trying to, what's bothering him?
BENAY: When you read the answer to a question, you really don't understand the depth of that answer unless you understand what the question was.
And. To understand the depth of the text we're learning today, you have to ask, what's the question?
This text is coming to answer. Mm-hmm. Just as a Rashi comment is always the answer to some question. Unless you figure out what his question was, you really can't understand the import of his answer.
And I think, and I, and I think in a backwards way, I, I, I said what I wanted to say, which was the question that this text is the answer to is what do you need to know?
How much do you need to know? What kind of education do you need to be that Jewish human being that the tradition is out to create that was embodied in Rabbi Meir.
DAN: Okay, so I'm jumping to the text in Sotah now because that's where the Rashi commentary is. Um, but it's the same it's the same, uh, piece from Ravi.
And so it, it really is coming after this question, like, well, what does it mean to say that Rabbi Meir served both Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva? We should note that Rabbi Ishmael is, is a character who's, who's more conservative, you know, more, more straightforward in his interpretations. Whereas Rabbi Akiva is a known, you know, as a much more creative out there kind of reader, right?
BENAY: And in fact, each of them becomes sort of the father of a way of reading Torah and the originator of a philis, a philosophy of our relationship to God and Torah and Rabbi Ishmael's. Slogan is to the Torah speaks the language of human beings. You should understand it for what it looks like it's saying and nothing more or, or really not much more than that. It does what every author is trying to do, which is communicate and what you think it says is what it says and what it means and nothing more.
Rabbi Akiva is the complete opposite of that. He's the symbol of the Torah has omni significance. The Torah can and does have an infinity of meanings, and it's our job to tease them out and for my money I think Rabbi Akiva believed that with a wink – meaning I think he thought that was expedient, but I don't really believe that he actually believed that. He just knew that was the way to, to be able to innovate, potentially infinitely to keep the Torah as a sacred document while also expanding its meaning.
Okay. So these are these two kind of opposite teachers, and it's unusual for a student to have two teachers generally, you know, you'd have, you'd be in one lineage.
DAN: Yeah. I mean, I, I would, I would. Um, it's just, you know, sometimes I make these comparisons to like American law and, and I would say like, it's analogous to something like saying that somebody served Justice Scalia and Justice Ginsburg, by the way, who were friend who were friends, right? And they both love up, loved opera. Uh, I mean, Justice Scalia's dead. But they, um. You know, it's saying, well, how could that be? Like somebody was a clerk for Justice Ginsburg and Justice Scalia. Like how could that be? Justice Scalia is a textualist like Rabbi Ishmael and Justice Ginsburg is a, you know, what, how you describe Rabbi Akiva, you know, like maybe there's winking and whatever, but she's clearly not just saying that the text is the plain text.
So they, so the tal, so the Talmud essay, how could, how, what does it mean? How did he serve both And the, the Talmud explains Initially, initially he came before Rabbi Akiva to study IE Justice Ginsburg. Initially he came before Rabbi Akiva to study, but he wasn't able to quote “stand on his Mind.” In the, we talked about this last week, uh, that people couldn't stand on Rabbi Meir's mind, meaning they just version of like, they couldn't understand what he was talking about.
BENAY: Right, exactly. So it's really interesting that the text uses that same exact language. That Rabbi Meir himself had that experience of what Uhhuh, when he went to, to learn with his first teacher, Rabbi. Rabbi Akiva and I wanted to translate this very close to the original because I think it, it has the opacity that the original has, and I think that's helpful because we're not quite sure what Rabbi Meir's experience was I think it could be a number of things.
It could be either he couldn't understand what Rabbi Akiva's intention was. He couldn't figure out what Rabbi Akiva's position on what the law should be was, or he couldn't tolerate what was going on in Rabbi Akiva's Academy. In other words, he couldn't. Stand, literally, he couldn't stand the sort of radical free for all and creativity beyond the text that that was happening. And this kind of creation of newfangled, unprecedented, unjustified, no leg to stand on in the Torah kind of law. So I think it could be either one of those.
What do you think?
DAN: Yeah, I mean, I'm just, it's reminding me, uh, of that we said last time that that it, you could, couldn't stand on his mind, which in Hebrew is "ta'amod adat". It really, that's literally is stand on his mind. And, and it's like, I can't stand because it's unstable. You know, I, it's, it's slippery. I can't, I, it's not that, I don't know what's what you're talking about.
It's that, I don't know if you finished talking maybe is a better way to put it. Right. Like I I'm not sure you're done. I, I, it's, it's a very confusing and, and actually making me think about the story that we studied a while ago with, uh, Moses going to Rabbi Akiva's Yeshiva Right. And kind of having a similar experience where he doesn't understand a word.
And it's actually interesting to think about it in terms of like, we assume that the right interpretation of that text is that he couldn't understand a word of it because it was all kind of newfangled and it wasn't. But, but maybe and, and Moses couldn't understand a word of it because he was from like the old times.
But here we're actually seeing a young guy, rabbi Meir, having exactly the same experience, which is that, I don't really understand what this guy's saying. And, um, I, it kinda makes me wonder if maybe the student in the story who raises his hand and says, where did you get this law to Rabbi Akiva? And then he says, it was from Moses at Sinai. Maybe that was Rabbi Meir.
BENAY: Oh my. Oh my God. That's blowing my mind. I love that. Wow.
DAN: But, um, you know, yeah, I, I, I think, and I, and that's why, you know, I think that's a great explanation for why you really don't love translations, and I think you have to be really careful with them, or you have to be really.
He humble about them? I would say better because I think sometimes it's just not realistic for somebody to read something without translation. But at the same time, it's almost like every translation should be have a star next to it by implication that, you know, there's more to it than this. So if you run into something, I mean, I guess I would say this about any translation, if you run into something that seems like you quite have some questions about it, you might wanna assume that maybe there's a problem with the translation.
And that's also why it's good. Actually, I just started, um, I got the audio book of Robert Alter's Translation of the Bible and it's really interesting that it starts with this question of why do we need another translation? And I think he is probably gonna go to a place saying, my translation is the best.
But I don't actually think that's the right answer. I think the answer is that we need multiple translations because that's kind of how you get a little bit closer to a sense of, you know, what the originals, ambiguities are. Yeah, if the original language,
BENAY: you know, as far we say, the revolution will not be translated as you were talking.
I just had this new idea. We, I think a, a title for a book that I'm gonna write someday is if you meet the translation on the road, kill it, playing off of if you meet the Buddha on the road, if if if you, if you have this idea that this is it, this is right – you're wrong.
DAN: Okay. Okay. So,
BENAY: so he's freaking out. Rabbi Meir's freaking out. He's in Rabbi Akiva's beit midrash and he can't, quote unquote stand it. He can't either figure out what's going on. He can't tolerate the instability. He, it's like he, he just wants to know
DAN: right. Right.
BENAY: He wants some clarity. Okay.
DAN: So what does he do?
He then he basically switches schools. Right? Transfer. And he goes over to, uh, rabbi Ishmael's school. He says he, he then came before Rabbi Ishmael and Gemara his Gemaraa which, you know, one could translate as learned his learning or something like that. But the, you know, you again have the Hebrew ama as, which is Gemara.
Gemaraa. That's what it is in Hebrew. Gemara Gemaraa. So you're saying he Gemaraa, he Gemara his Gemaraa, whatever that means. Exactly. Something like learned his learning.
BENAY: So I'd say, let's scroll down a little to the Rashi on this.
DAN: Okay.
BENAY: So Rashi helps us understand what does it mean to Gemara your Gemara? What does it mean to learn your learning? What, what was going on? Ishmael, while it was learning, learning. What does that mean?
So Rashi says here, the simple plain Mishnah or the oral teachings, let's remember that the Mishnah as a book doesn't yet exist. Mm-hmm. But the mission is as oral teachings that were most, if not all of which were probably pretty well established already in, in some larger, they, larger grouping than what was originally called than what was eventually called by Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi in two 20 is already kind of out there in the world. And it's unclear to me how distinct of a set of oral teachings existed then, but. Okay, so it's
DAN: also an issue that, you know, we're now dealing with three time periods at least, right? Because we're dealing with the time period in which the story purports to take place, which is in the, early second century.
We have the story, the time in which the Gemara is, edited, which is, sometime in the sixth, seventh century or so. And then we also have Rashi in the, I think 12th century, who is
BENAY: 11th century,
DAN: yeah, 11th century, who is, um, who is like right from his perspective. This is a true story that actually happened in the second century. So he, you know, so there's a constructed world in which maybe they were teaching these oral teachings. You know, it's hard to, we don't necessarily know what it was in, in the, you know, or if it was in the time of Rabbi Meir. There's what we probably know even more, more surely, as in that later time. There was some notion of a distinction between the plain meanings of the Mishnah versus this deeper level of commentary that ultimately became the Talmud.
BENAY: Okay, so just for simplicity sake, we'll call Mishnah what we know as Mishnah, which is the entirety of the Mishnah, each paragraph of which is called a Mishnah. So all the Mishnah together compile this book called or comprise this book called The Mishnah. This book is a really tiny book. Mm-hmm. I know I'm dating myself when I say picture a TV Guide. I don't know. Does anyone remember a TV Guide? It was this sort of fat pamphlet that you'd get every week in the mail and it would tell you what was on TV. Okay.
It's a really small book. Think of, I don't know. I don't know. It's maybe a half an inch in thickness and, four, six by nine inches. It could fit in your back pocket. Okay. The entirety of the Mishnah, if you took away all the commentaries would fit in your back pocket. It's really small.
So what did, what does it mean to Gamar your Gemara? What did he do in Rabbi Ishmael's Academy? He learned the simple plain Mishnahs, just as they are, as they were taught by his teacher and his teacher from his teacher. In other words, straight up simple laws - that the Mishnah is a kind of proto code. It's, um, it's very sort of recipe like, this is what you do, this is what the law is. It's very simple. There's very little back and forth or explanations. There's no. Very few, if any stories, so. It's straight up simple learning. This is kind of learning just the
DAN: fact, just the fact, ma'am,
BENAY: just the facts - this is learning your ABCs. This is learning the basics of the tradition. Mm-hmm. Okay. Nothing fancy. It's a memorization process. And you learn these mishnahs by heart. You memorize them exactly as your teacher taught them to you, and exactly as his teacher taught them to him and all the way back a handful of generations.
So these are the basics, and that's what sort of passed as education in Ishmael's Academy. That's what you needed to know. That's what it meant to be knowledgeable, to be gemirna - to know your stuff. Okay, great. So that's what, that's what he did. And now the question is, was he happy? Was that good? Where did they get him?
So let's see, what, what did he do?
DAN: Okay, so we'll go back. And so he did, he did that. And then afterward he returned and came before Rabbi Akiva. And as you write, Svar’ed his Svara, which one might on a, on a, in a, I guess in a Rabbi Ishmael kind of surface level reading reason reasoning. Like he, he just, he sort of like learned to reason or but whatever it is, it's being contrasted with the Gemar-ed his Gemara, so if, if the Gemara de Gemara is like some kind of memorization, then Svar/ Svara is some kind of deeper something, right?
BENAY: That's right. And you know what just jumped out at me really for the first time right now, is that we never asked the question. I, I had never asked the question, well, why wasn't he happy after having Gemar/Gemara with our, why didn't he stay there?
Presumably other students Gemara their Gemara with Rabbi Ishmael and stayed in that academy. Or maybe this Rabbi Acade, Rabbi Ishmael's Academy was a kind of, three month program. I'm not sure.
But somehow he knew that his education wasn't finished. He knew that he needed more. Or maybe having gotten this glimpse of what happened in Rabbi Akiva's Academy and holding onto that still, now that he's learned with Rabbi Ishmael, he realizes his learning is, is incomplete or inadequate. I'm not sure. But what he leaves Rabbi - Yeah, go ahead.
DAN: I mean, I, I think it's, I I do think it's like interesting to to note that I, I don't think Rabbi Ishmael was intentionally offering a sort of like intro course. You know, meaning like, I don't, I think if you asked Rabbi Ishmael, if, if his program was supposed to be something that you attended for three months in order to prepare to learn with Rabbi Akiva, I don't think Rabbi Ishmael would be too thrilled with that description.
BENAY: For sure. Agreed. And I'm sure Rabbi Ishmael thought, this is all you need to know. This is what it means to be an educated person. You're done now. Now go out and be a rabbi, be a teacher. This is all you need.
And it doesn't sound all that different to me from what I think the, you know, without being disparaging of anyone or any institution in particular – I think there are institutions that have this philosophy that, that to be learned it, they sort of have an or a literacy orientation to use, um, Jon Levisohn’s framing of Orientations. It's like if I know a bunch of stuff. I'm it, I've got all that I need. That's what it means to be educated and now I'm ready to, I don't know what exactly.
DAN: Well, I think it's, I think the sort of analogy to sort of whether let's like justice, uh, Ginsburg and Justice Scalia, like there's something to it in the sense that like, you know, you could imagine a story and there have been stories like this where somebody clerks for Justice Scalia and then they, get really good at you know, ferreting out dictionary definitions of words, and they get, you know, and then they're like, and, and if the story, and then usually the story goes, and then they went and worked for the Heritage Foundation and then for the Bush administration, and now they're the Secretary of State, you know, whatever. Right.
If the story is told, you know, the person clerked for Justice Scalia and then he went to Clerk for Justice Ginsburg, and then he really got it, you know, and then he went off to become a professor. I think the conservative world would not like that story, and rightly so. You know, because they're not, they don't believe that their approach is like a way of getting your sea legs and then you can go off and do the real thing with the liberals. You know? They don't, that's not how they see it.
And I think that's not how, you know, rabbi Ishmael saw it at the same po time. I think that a lot of, let's say progressives in, in law actually think that that's like a pretty good. Yeah. You know, like they say, a lot of people will say, um, Hey, you should go work for a law firm for a few years so that you can learn the mechanics of, uh, how to, you know, file briefs in a very comprehensive way. How to do the research really well, and then come work for the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department or something like that. Well, the law firm doesn't like to think that way. They think they're doing important work and you know, so I,
so I think that there's, um, something, there's something in there that's like, it's, it's also kind of a little offensive towards Rabbi Ishmael. Right. You know, it's not taking serious. Well, let, let me put it this way. I don't mean that it's offensive in the sense that, like, how dare they, what I mean is that it feels like it's coming from a very perspec, a very particular agenda driven perspective where in the view of the narrator of the, of the editor of the Talmud, they're sa they're saying like that conservative guy. Not impressed with his philosophy, but he had some good skills that he could teach. That's a negative view of that philosophy that I think in some ways it's like you've said I think before, like your slip is showing, right. You know, that allowing it's kind of giving you a hint as to what the editor really thinks.
BENAY: Yeah. So maybe we'll put a sticky on the question of whether, it seems like Rabbi Meir needed to go to Rabbi Ishmael's Academy before he could go back and understand, or hang with, or tolerate or be able to stand, Rabbi Akiva. But I know you and I talk all the time about how much you really need to know in order to be a player, to be creative.
And you know, I'll never forget you saying that to be literate isn't so much to be able to read, but to be able to write.
To, and that's always stayed with me because it, it speaks to what I think the rabbis are really trying to help us do. Not so much to be passive receptacles of information or what the tradition was and hand that down, but to be creators of – and I think we're gonna get at that when we see what it, what Svar/ Svara means and what Rabbi Meir was able to do with Rabbi Akiva.
DAN: Yeah. And, and I think it, I mean, I would say like with, without reference to the text, I tend to think it's different for different people. Like there's some people mm-hmm. Who, who don't need that early, you know, and, and some people who like don't have the patience for it. Like, I, like, I think, you know, like I don't feel like I have the patience for it. Like even if. I mean, there, it's complex. There are ways in which I do, and I do it kind of on my own time and I read a lot, but I mean, like, to sit in a class like it's, it's very difficult for me. Uh, but there are other people who, who couldn't do the really creative thinking if they don't have that under their belt. And so it's different for different people.
But I would say also that the, quote slip is showing maybe of the editor in the sense that I think that the editor believes that it's more. That, that not only like, not only is the editor, I think saying that ultimately the kind of person that we want is the super creative person like Rabbi Akiva or who Rabbi Meir becomes, but that we want that super creative person who gets their facts, you know, who, who learns a lot of information before they do that, because we should know that, right Rabbi Akiva, even though he comes from a kind of non-Jewish background and in a certain way is free from the nostalgia and the, and the kind of things that maybe make some of their other rabbis unable to be super creative with Judaism. Nevertheless, he is Rabbi Eliezar's main student for a long time and Rabbi Eliezar is kind of like a proto version of Rabbi Ishmael - in the sense that he is a guy who basically like knows a lot of stuff and is not known for his creativity, He is known for his knowledge.
BENAY: That's fascinating. So you're saying, I I never thought about how Rabbi Akiva himself got to be Rabbi Akiva. He himself got to be Rabbi Akiva. 'cause he had a teacher like Rabbi Eliezar first who - Oh, that's a, I love that.
DAN: Okay, so let's jump in. Let's look at the, the definition of svara from Rashi. Right, That's where we wanna go next. Okay, great.
BENAY: Okay, so what was it that Rabbi Meir was finally able to do when he went back to Rabbi a Akiva's Academy? He was able to savar his svara. He s his Svara. Okay. What does that mean? And let's remember that this uses the word Svara, which is the name of not only the noun but the verb. He svara’ed his svara - he, he put into practice his svara. Okay, so what does that mean? All right, here we go
to svara his svara means to stand on the essence of the reasons for the Mishnah. Okay, so just stopping there.
Let's contrast this with what it meant to Gemara Gemara to Gemara. Gemara meant to learn your Mishnah straight up and now tos. Your svara means to somehow get at not just the reasons for the Mishnah, which is one layer deeper than just knowing, knowing what they are. But you not only know the reasons, plural. For each Mishnah, you know, the essence of the reasons. That's a layer underneath that still.
So it, this is a whole different relationship to the tradition. You're now asking deeper questions. It's not enough to know. I think the implication is you have to understand the reasons behind something and then the essence behind that. Okay?
Then Rashi fleshes it out further, an account of what is this thing impure and this thing pure. So it's not enough to know just the surface Mishna level, what's pure, what's impure, but why is this thing, why does this thing have this status and this thing have this status? And you have to ask yourself, why do you need to know why?
It's, IM, I think that's important. And I think the implication is it's only when you know why or you know, the essence behind the whys that you are able to then create, you're able to then be free of the momentary form of a practice, which is trying to achieve a certain goal and create other forms that achieve that same goal. Yeah?
DAN: It's interesting because I, I just was thinking about like in a way that the negative side from a certain point of view of the why, it's like a lot of times with my kids, right, as soon as I tell them why I'm saying something, it's very dangerous because then they can try to lobby you that like your why isn't, you know what, what, you know, your rule doesn't flow from your why. So it's actually a lot safer to just say, 'cause I said so!
BENAY: Absolutely. And you are naming the millennia old dispute in the Jewish community that has a name. It, it is the dispute called "Ta'amei HaMitzvot", the Reasons Behind the Mitzvahs. And there are two camps throughout the Jewish tradition. One says you do the mitzvahs and you don't ask why, and you don't learn why, and you don't, you don't delve into the why's.
And the other says, no, of course you need to know the why's. And Maimonides is famous for being the proponent of course, you have to know the reasons why precisely for what your kids have in mind so that they can challenge the actual behavior they're being commanded to do and say, but that behavior is not getting me at the Why.
DAN: Mm-hmm.
BENAY: This other behavior would, and you know, that opens this giant door to. Questioning, undermining, changing, reimagining what the tradition looks like into lots of people. That's really scary.
DAN: Mm-hmm.
BENAY: Okay. All right. So getting back to what, what does it mean to, to have this, I would say more sophisticated, more creative, um, approach to the tradition.
Okay. An account of what, what is this thing pure in this thing? Impure. Why is an account of what is this forbidden and this permitted? So it's not enough to Gemara. Gemara means you learn what's permitted and what's forbidden. Done. That's all you need to note to s your, what Rabbi Akiva is out to do is to help his students understand why is this thing forbidden in this thing permitted and upon what is each thing supported, right? What, what, what? What are the foundations? What are our, what are our sources? Why did we go there? Or on which verse? So this thing with support and verses the mission is famously and notoriously what's called unjustified, meaning it doesn't give rationales support justifications by tying claims of what the law should be or what our behavior should be to the Torah or to any other sources. Svara being one of them, which okay.
But what's happening, rabbi Akiva's Academy is, is kind of educating folks in the ability to make the case for a practice, both current practices and I think by extension new practices. Okay. And this is what was called Talmud. In the days of the Tannaim, which is I don't know, it's sort of a beautiful sentence to me, and it feels very Un-Rashi like it, it kind of goes beyond simply explaining the meaning of something and it draws a bigger picture. But he's saying this is what it this is, you know, the when the rabbis talk about Talmud, like learning. This is what real learning was. Mm.
And by the way, let's not confuse Talmud with the Talmud because of course in their day, not only did the mission not live as a kind of fixed edited document, but Talmud did for sure didn't exist as a document. But this is, Talmud as in “real learning,”
DAN: by the way. I wonder if that's like a little bit of a lament from Rashi, you know, where he says. That's, in the old days, that's what they called Talmud. Now that they call Talmud is this thing where people are just like sitting around memorizing again, you know? Oh,
BENAY: I love that. I love that. That's fabulous
DAN: by the way. Like that's, I think, connected to what, how you have called SVARA, Svara, right? Because you're saying, look, in the old days, let me tell you what Svara really meant, you know? But, but in our times, Svara has come to mean just like logic, and you are bringing back the idea of Sava, meaning this, you know, uh, in, in a similar way to,
I wonder if Rashi is like, trying to say, I wanna bring back the old meaning of Talmud, which is, you know, really the searching exploration and not the current meaning of Talmud, which is like, reading this stuff and not, not in a deep way.
BENAY: Wow. That's great. And piggybacking on what you're saying, maybe Rashi is trying to say. That's what the Talmud actually is trying to still get you to be like and think like. And I guess what you're saying is already in Rashi's time, Talmud was seen as a kind of normative document as another code.I love that. Mm-hmm.
Okay. I'm looking at the time and I don't wanna, I wanna get to the end of, of this. Okay.
And to understand a thing from within a thing – and on its surface. I think it's saying to, to be able to understand, to take what you have and to create something that you don't have, but it's a reference to a phrase that our hero, Rava, who's a, a later rabbi to this text, but earlier to Rashi. He is, uh, late like fourth century rabbi who is really the expander of the concept of Svara and over contracting Shabbat, which you probably learned not too long ago, 'cause you're doing Daf Yomi, right. And 31a, he asked the question, what are the questions that you're gonna be asked when you die and go to heaven? Mm-hmm. What's, what's God gonna say to you? Ly that was like
DAN: two months ago, but yeah.
BENAY: Do did you learn it?
DAN: And we're still on the same book.
BENAY: So one of us, I know the
DAN: first one was How's business?
BENAY: That's Right. Exactly.
DAN: Which was a comedian said that but it's How did you conduct yourself in your business affairs?
BENAY: That's right. That's right. We should do that text. Okay. Sometime. But in any case, one of the six questions that God is going to ask you, I. According to Ava over there in tractate Shabbat is, did you understand a thing from within a thing?
And I'm not completely sure what it means, but I think it's really interesting that it's not just the scholars who learned in the Beit Midrash who learn how to do this. It's every single human being who is seen as having that goal and expectation.
So what, I don't know, what do you think is going on
DAN: is that davar mee’tokh davar is that how it
BENAY:la’havin l’vanta davar mee’tokh davar. Uhhuh
DAN:davar mee’tokh davara, so literally it's a thing within a thing. A thing from within the thing. Yeah. I, I wonder, you know, I, to me, that, that, with that,
the ring of that for me is like, did you look deeper? Yeah. You know? Did you, did you just. Was it your orientation in life to look deeper or to just accept things at face value and look deeper is the aspiration?
BENAY: Yeah. I, I think you're right. I think that's a piece of it. Did you look beyond the obvious or the apparent and realize there's something not only other, but different mm-hmm. Than, than what appears on the surface? Something like that?
DAN: Yeah. I mean, you know what I, what I hear that also, and I think we could spend an hour on it probably.
Maybe we should when we get there. Because, but like, 'cause I, 'cause as we, as you even just start to talk about it, I think about it as like, did you. Did you did you, uh, it's about creativity. It's like, did you just accept the world as you received it or did you say, no, that's not how I'm supposed to be towards the world. I'm supposed to, dig into something and find something else in it. That's just an orientation. It's not always there. It doesn't have to be that, like nothing is ever the way it is on the surface. Some things are, but it's,
…was that your orientation to say No, that's not how a person should live in the world?
BENAY: Yeah. Yeah.
DAN: So, um, okay. Let's finish that Rashi
BENAY: And we should note that this Rashi commentary on the story of Rabbi Meir's educational path is the richest source that I'm aware of in all of rabbinic literature on what it. What Svara – what it means to put your Svara into practice.
And the, what we know of Svara, we have to deduce from how it's used in rabbinic innovation. But, and I think it's pretty apparent it what you can deduce, but, but this is really the, the best definition of what it means to use your svara. Okay. Not only best, but the only one that I know of. Um, okay.
To understand a think from within a thing…
When a new thing would be asked in the bait from where would they learn it out and to which Mishnah would they analogize it – and by the way, I wanna say that I've put in the periods in commas. There are no periods in commas in Rashi or anywhere in the Talmud, so I'm not completely sure I've got the. Connections between these little pieces, right. Uhhuh, uh, you know, I'm not sure, for example, if I should have put, and this is what was called Talmud in the days of the tan colon. Because that completely changes the meaning, is what's about to come. But there's a similarity. I, so anyway, there, there are these little pieces and I'm not sure how they're all connected. But here we have this illustration of new things will be asked.
We're gonna have to figure out new situations and have bigger questions than we used to have, and new in insights that we want to bring in.And we have to know how to. Jewishly bring those things into the tradition. How am I going to justify or connect or, and use what I have to learn something completely new. What, what were you gonna say?
DAN: I was just gonna say that like, the assumption to me and the implied assumption here is that it's not easy and I think that, like, for example, think about the, the famous infamous statement in Leviticus about, you know, a man shouldn't lie with a man in the lungs of a woman. So if you say, oh, well, what's Judaism's approach towards homosexuality? The surface, you know, a certain way would be like, well, let's look it up. Let's see, where did Judaism ever talk about homosexuality?
It's like, oh, unfortunately, it's just one time here. And, uh, it's, it's a bad situation, guys. Sorry, sorry, sorry about this. That would be like, and that, that's the Gemar/Gemara approach. That's the Gemar/Gemara yeah. You some version of that.
You know, it's like, because, but when it says like, when a new thing would be asked. The Svara is from where would they learn it out? Which Mishnah would they analogize it? So it's like that one is one where you say, oh, what does the tom would have to say about homosexuality? Well, it ha it says, for example, that, um, you know, he saves one life, saves an entire world. And so if somebody, right, you know, and you say, well, if somebody is going to feel like this is their life, and, and if you weren't gonna be allowed to do this, then it would be as if their life were to end. And so of course you should say that it's good to do, you know, right. I mean, you could. That's it. That's an example that came to my head. So maybe it's a bad one.
But like, you know, the point is, is that you could look at a million different texts and the, the art, and by the way, this is true in law and in so many other areas, like the art of it is to, is to make that connection with something that other people see as, as maybe not straightforwardly connected. And the what you know from, you know, what we know from is that when that's done well, people don't even notice that it's being done at all. And people, you know, I can't think off the top of my head right now what's, but, you know, when people make an analogy or a metaphor, and it's a good one, it's just accepted.
I mean, one that comes to mind is that the beginning of George Lakoff's book the, the, um, George Lakoff is a linguist and he has a book called, uh, the, uh, metaphor. What's it called? Uh. Anyway, it's a, it's a book on, on metaphor. And, um, it starts out by giving an example of how we see the whole world through metaphors.
And he talks about argument that we, we have been taught to see argument through the metaphor of war. I, I defeated him in argument. I, you know, I, I was all over him, you know, whatever the, the words are. And he said, imagine that We had been taught to look at argument in the metaphor of a dance. You know, I took a step forward and he took a step back, and then he took a step forward and I took a step back and we, you know, we got across the room arguing, you know, it's a very different vision of what argument is, but actually a quite amazing one. And he says like, if that if we had grown up with that metaphor of argument is dance, we would've all accepted it because it totally works.It's just a random chance that it, what we ended up with a different metaphor.
And so, you know, I think, I feel like here what we're saying or what the, what Rashi is saying is that. What a person with real svara understands is that that is the case. That metaphors and analogies are not natural. They're not, it doesn't always have to be. It's, it's at somebody's genius is what makes it, and that's what we wanna cultivate is the ability to see sort of beyond the surface. And, and, and, and, and like we were saying earlier, but in all sorts of ways.
BENAY: I, I think that's beautiful. And take a look back at the text I ex, I excerpted a very brief definition of svara that David Weiss Halivni just below this.
DAN: I think this is the only one that I have in it.
BENAY: Oh, okay. Uh, Dave we'll, we'll add it to this. Maybe I added it to the wrong document, but he talks about svara as reasoning that allows you to create.
DAN: Hmm.
BENAY: And here, well, I'll just surface this idea of svara that Menachem Elon the late great scholar of Jewish law writes, he says, “svara itself is reasoning that penetrates into the essence of things.” So you hear the resonance of Rashi here when Rashi talked about knowing the essence of the reasons for a law, right? Anyway, I don't, I'm not seeing the text anymore, but.
DAN: No, it wasn't, that text wasn't in there. That was the Menachem Elon. Oh, oh, sorry. Nevermind. Uh, I got confused. Um, I,
BENAY: I jumped to the Menachem Elon.
DAN: Okay.
BENAY: Okay. So “reasoning that penetrates into the essence of things and reflects a profound understanding of human nature. It involves an appreciation of the characteristics of human beings in their social relationships and a careful study of the real world and its manifestations.”
And what I think when Menachem Elon is getting at here is your Svara is some combination of your moral sensitivity to the suffering and the situation of people in the real world. That is what drives you to then savar your svara in the way that we learned Rabbi Meir did in Rabbi Akiva's academy.
First you have to know that something needs fixing, something needs, creating something, needs getting rid of that. The tradition as we have it, is causing pain and suffering because I can, I'm in contact with, conversation with people out in the world. You know, at this moment, so many of us white folk are realizing sadly, and with embarrassment that we have very few relationships with black folk and, and so, because of the racism that has caused sort of systemic segregation and inequalities and we need to understand one another better to be even motivated to make the kinds of changes in our society that we need to make. And only then can we savar our svara, can we then try to get at, in underneath sort of systemic issues in our tradition, be it Jewish tradition or our world at large.
DAN: Yeah. And
BENAY: I realize we're going way over today.
DAN: it's okay. I mean, we'll, we'll wrap it up.
Um, just, you know, from a podcast perspective, since we started with a little announcements, we can go a little bit long, but, um, yeah, I, I think, I think this is a lot to, a lot for us to sort of keep coming back to. And obviously it will be, because SVARA is called Svara. This is obviously a really important, a really important topic.
You know, I, I just, I what I'm sitting with as we conclude is this question of, what if you're new to this, what if you and I know that this is what you do every day with SVARA, that it's not as simple as you come and you don't understand anything that people are talking about at this higher level svara kind of place, and so then you have to go for a while to study with Rabbi Ishmael or Rabbi Eliezer, and then you can come back there.
There's something a little, and I don't know if it's different people or maybe there's a way to spiral it and maybe, maybe what we're discovering today, what you've been discovering and what we've discovered in different ways is that there's a way to spiral it so that it, so that if we tell somebody, “Hey, I believe that you have within you the capacity to be a Rabbi Akiva or a Rabbi Meir. I know you might not see it in yourself right now because when you come and you see this, uh, you're confused and it's too high level. But don't go away to study for a year with Rabbi Ishmael. Let us find a way to give you a little bit of a taste of information and then a little taste of svara’ing it, and then a little bit more, and a little bit more.
And I, I actually, it's making me think about our show a little bit in that way. Like are, are, is it possible to understand what we're trying to do? And I don't know if we're doing it well, but that we're trying to do is like, go over these snippets of Talmud and try to both get out some of the detail and the understanding of it, but also every time, you know, trying to sort of push it into these more creative directions. And hopefully people are able to kind of ride along with that. Even if they're very new to it, I guess, I guess at least that would be my aspiration.
BENAY: Yeah, I think about that all the time because at SVARA, we, we really focus much more on teaching people to savar their svara and showing them how the rabbis did it and how it's done.
And I feel like that's the first phase of our project and the second and that's like getting the new team on the field to do that.
And then the next phase is, okay, what do we need to fix? And that's kind of the gamar gemara part. And I really haven't figured out whether we need to. To then take the people who have Savar’ed their svara, you know, give them the basics or do we get them in the room with people who have been in, you know, the Rabbi Ishmael Yeshivas, who have now jumped ship.
Mm-hmm. And that's one of the reasons I'm, I'm really fascinated by the possibility of folks who have gone OTD Off The Derech, who have grown up really deeply steeped in the Gemara Gemara stuff who have realized that isn't their path. Right. But who, who have a lot of the material. Uh, and, and maybe in conversation together, I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
DAN: Well, in some ways that's my story. But I also, I also am, I'm also fascinated by the other story, which I tend to think of as the Rabbi Akiva Rabbi Meir story. Although when you read these texts according to Talmud, at least, it's not quite that. Right. As I'm imagining it, these people come without a strong Jewish background. Right. And they're these greatest geniuses we ever had.
According to the Talmud, though, there's, they did spend some time having to do this basic study for a while, which doesn't fully fit with my, vision and, and dream.
My question, I guess, for us to consider and explore is maybe today it's different because at that time people didn't have any other education. Mm-hmm. And so when you're talking about somebody coming to learn Judaism, we're really talking about somebody coming to learn period. At least as far as like what we would call post-secondary studies, you know? Right.
And, and now we're talking about people who are extremely educated, extremely smart, sophisticated, and hopefully very mature people who then come to Judaism and fall in love with it or take an interest in it. And I feel like somewhere that the answer is, and I love the team idea that you, that you brought up the idea that yeah – there are gonna be some people who know a lot of Judaism 'cause they grew up religious, but there's gonna be a lot of people who maybe they don't know so much Judaism, but they really know a lot. And we wanna affirm and, and respect that and say, no, we actually need you to bring that stuff in. So don't go and unlearn that by studying with Rabbi Ishmael for two years. You know, it's like, so somehow, somewhere in there is is the something. And I think that's what we wanna be teasing out.
BENAY: Yeah, I love that.
DAN: So we'll keep teasing it out and, uh, great. But for the next three weeks we're gonna, we're gonna be looking at some really interesting perspectives, you know, bigger picture perspectives on different elements of the Talmud. And then, and then after that, we're gonna come back to what we think is the next text in this sequence, which, uh, we're excited to do.
So. We'll, we'll see you next week.
BENAY: Fantastic. Thanks, Dan.
DAN: Thanks Benay.
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)
