The Oral Talmud: Episode 18 - What Tisha b’Av Can Learn From Yom Kippur
SHOW NOTES
“We have to imagine that everything that we love today, or don't love, might end up in the Tisha b’Av of the future.” - Dan Libenson
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 episode was originally released for Tisha b’Av in 2020, the Jewish calendar’s most essential day of mourning and remembrance. In our new podcast re-release schedule, this episode is coming out much closer to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. As Hashem would have it, Dan Libenson and Benay Lappe draw some fascinating connections between Tisha b’Av and Yom Kippur, deepening our appreciation and intentions for both.
How do holidays slip away from their most potent purposes? What does it mean to mourn for something, somewhen, or someone without wanting it or them back? How do we deal with a guilt of not being in a constant state of mourning? How can we use Tisha b’Av to reflect on the great CRASHes of history, the shifting eras of authority and responsibility? What we can’t imagine losing?
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 the top right corner of this website.
Further Learning
[1] A telling of “The Guru’s Cat” from Gurumayi Chidvilasananda (on Siddha Yoga - click the arrows next to the image to read the story)
[2] The book “Goodnight Moon,” chanted in Torah Trop (news article)
[3] For Rabbi Eliezer and the Oven of Achnai story listen to The Oral Talmud: Episode 3 - Misquoting God and Episode 5 - Excommunicating Dissent
[4] MyJewishLearning articles for: the Avodah and Yizkor services during Yom Kippur
[5] For an intersection of the Yahrzeit practice and Day of the Dead, read “I Say Mourner’s Kaddish on Day of the Dead” by Madison Ciaffone (on HeyAlma)
[6] The episode of Stay Tuned with Preet Bharara interviewing Jake Tapper from July 2020 (on CAFE)
[7] Al Jaffee on MAD Magazine Fold-Ins (on YouTube)
[8] For more on David Kraemer, listen to our interview The Oral Talmud: Episode 4 - Retelling the History
[9] Yitz Greenberg on Judaism Unbound Podcast (Episode 100)
[10] Rabbi Harold Schulweis’s speech before the Rabbinical Assembly in 1993 (on the Valley Beth Shalom website)
[11] Ibram X. Kendi’s “Stamped From the Beginning” (on his website)
[12] Chris Wallace interview with Trump in July 2020 discussing Project 1619 (trasncript on FoxNews)
[13] The Talmud retrojecting the story of The Spies onto Tisha b’Av is on Taanit 29a
[14] Amotz Asa-El discussing his view and book “The Jewish March of Folly” on the podcast Rosner's Domain (at the Jewish Journal)
[15] “The March of Folly” by Barbara Tuchman (on Wikipedia)
[16] “The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis” by Leon R. Kass (at the University of Chicago)
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DAN LIBENSON: This is The Oral Talmud - Episode 18: What Tisha b’Av Can Learn From Yom Kippur. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. I’m Dan Libenson…
BENAY LAPPE: …and I’m Benay Lappe.
DAN LIBENSON: 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 episode was originally released for Tisha b’Av in 2020, known as the Jewish calendar’s most essential day of mourning and remembrance. In our new podcast re-release schedule, this episode is coming out much closer to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Listening back we noticed how many connections we were making between the purposes, developments, and possibilities for reconstructing both Yom Kippur and Tisha b’Av - and we decided that releasing the episode now would still help to deepen our appreciation and intentions for both holidays.
For more on Tisha b’Av and Yom Kippur, we invite you to listen to this year’s episodes on both holidays from our sibling podcast, Judaism Unbound.
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 LIBENSON: Today is the holiday or fast day, I guess, I dunno, holiday is the right word. But, uh, fast day of the ninth of Av - Tisha b’Av and, um. That does, that's a fast day. That has a lot to do with the meta story. The, as you say, they were, the master story that we tend to be talking about on this show. Uh, whether, or I guess all, all three of the right there, there's a,
There's a way in which Tisha b’Av has to do with the biblical master story. There's a way that Tisha b’Av has to do with the rabbinic replacement master story, and, and I think we're exploring, as we always are, the question about what happens to Tisha b’Av and what happens to the master story when we are potentially in a new one or when the old one is scratched.
So, so it is a, it's a kind of a, it is kind of an appropriate story for us to be talking about and we don't, I don't think we're gonna be anchoring in a particular Talmudic text today. It's just gonna be more of a free flowing conversation about this and I think, we'll, we'll get to some interesting places.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. You know, when I think about Tisha b’Av, I feel like it should be the yontif of, of Option 3. It should be, it should be like the holiday of the crash theory and where we're gonna go next, but it's somewhere along the line it feels like it went off the rails. Like a, like, I think a lot of Jewish holidays.
And as I was thinking about, I, like, I'm actually not into most Jewish holidays, Uhhuh, it's, it's really hard for me. And, and I think this is why I think they're all really smart, but they got stupid somewhere along the way. And that actually, it makes sense to me that they would've gotten stupid that, that along the way they got, you know, like the story of the guru who puts the cat out. You know, that story?
DAN LIBENSON: I don't think so.
BENAY LAPPE: It, it's the story that circulates in Buddhist circles of why there are certain, um, sort of illogical or unexpected surprising practices like sacrificing a cat. “Oh, we sacrifice a cat every year.” This is a, you know, not a real thing that people do, but it's a story. “Why did we sacrifice a cat every year? Well, it turns out that the guru years ago put the cat out to not disturb the meditators, and the cat died in the cold. And ever since then, people have been sacrificing a cat every year.”
So there's a certain amount of that that happens. A kind of misunderstanding of what a commemoration or a holiday is really about, and then it becomes something else, and then it, it gets stupid. Hmm. Um, so I think Tisha b’Av was probably really smart when it started.
DAN LIBENSON: So what do you, so say a little bit more about that. Like when it, when it's smart, when it's stupid, but like what, what do you see as what it's really about? I guess let's start there.
BENAY LAPPE: Well, I, I think it's about. I'm, I feel very influenced by your, um, realization that moving forward requires a mourning of what is passed. Mm-hmm. I mean, I think that's really, really, really important and I think that's what Tisha b’Av is.
You know, I remember when Molly was little and before she would go to bed, she would say goodnight to every little thing in her room, you know, goodnight. Picture the bunnies, goodnight carrot, goodnight lettuce. And it's like the book. Goodnight Moon. Uh, that book is wildly popular because parents know that kids will go to sleep more easily after they've said goodbye, goodnight to the things around them. They can let go.
It's kind of miraculous and I think, I think Tisha b’Av is like Goodnight Moon. It's like goodnight tempo. Mm-hmm. And now we can go to sleep. Now we can move on. I think you're really right about that. It's, it's a way to say it's okay goodbye to that.
But the problem is when you just say goodbye and then you don't say, okay, now let's roll up our sleeves. Mm-hmm. Then, then it becomes stupid. Then it becomes like sad and mourn-y – and, oh, oh, I wish we had that back. Rather than let that go and what can we get now?
DAN LIBENSON: Well, it's, it's interesting 'cause I, I heard, uh, from my, our mutual friend that I said that about Tisha b’Av and I was trying to remember, did I say that, you know, it's very possible because it's entirely consistent with things that I'm sure that I did say, which is that, you know, that I, I I tend to talk about the Messiah as a character in Jewish, in Jewish lore, and, um.
And, um, the, the study of Torah for its own sake, as these two – meaning in particular, why do we study things that we no longer do? Why do we, why is the Talmud full of so much about the temple practice when it was, uh, composed? I mean, when, when the, you know, the beginning of the composition was long after the temple practice had been over. I mean, it'd been over for 150 years or, or so by the time the, the Mishnah was put into writing. So it seemed like it wasn't coming back anytime soon. Uh, and I mean, 150 years, you know, it's like in, in historical terms, it's like, yeah, you know, 150 years is like, uh, one lecture in a, in a history survey.
But if you think about 150 years, you know, before now we're, we're talking about, you know, the, the, the, the time of the Civil War. I mean, we're talking about a, a long period of time ago, right? And so anything that, you know, hadn't happened since the time of the Civil War, it's unlikely that if you were to write a book about it in today's America, you know, that it had to, that, that you were making a serious, uh, thought that we were gonna like go back to that time. I mean, so much has, has changed. So that's the, the order magnitude.
But when the Talmud was actually, uh, you know, completed as a, as a, as a document, you know, we're talking about an additional three, 400 years. And so, you know, this is the entire history of, uh, of, of Europeans having arrived in the Americas, right? I mean, like, that is a long time ago. Christopher Columbus, you know, that was a long time ago.
And, um, and so, so the idea that this book that was written, you know, in the equivalent of 2020, that is talking about things that, that haven't existed since the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, uh, would in some fashion be a serious, uh, attempt to, to do something about that. Like, that's absurd.
So the idea, so then the question is, why is the Talmud full of this information and. So my thinking about it and, and why should we keep studying it is really the more, you know and that, you know, another 1500 years later, why should we keep studying this stuff? Um, you know, the,
BENAY LAPPE: hang on one sec. When you say, when you say full of this information, are you referring to references to the temple and one day we'll have it again? May it, may we that
DAN LIBENSON: No, not so much that, more just the, the, the details of like what you used to do., I mean, like, it's full of, we, you know, we, we've been doing this daily Talmud page and we're in the tractate of Shabbat and everything is about, well, if you do this wrong thing, then you're liable to bring a sin offering.
Well, when the time this was, was, was put into its, uh, you know, edited state, nobody had brought a sin offering in more than 500 years. So what is this about, you know, why are we even talking about this way? And, you know, it, it, so it um, so, and, and, and the question for me is even less, why did the editor put all this stuff in there, but why should we keep studying that 1500 years later?
Uh, and and my answer is because that is actually a core technology in Judaism that allows us to keep moving forward – because we sort of make a pledge. The reason I, I mean, my hypothesis is that the reason we still study that stuff today is because we sort of made a covenant to do so 2000 years ago, 1500 years ago, we, we kind of meaning that, I'm not sure there actually is a good reason to keep studying that stuff today, but I think that the reason is because our ancestors 1500 years ago sort of promised to do so, and we're fulfilling their promise.
And the question is, why did they promise to do so? And I think they promised to do so because they understood that it was the only way to kind of get the permission from their society to move forward, to say like, we promise you, we will never, ever, ever forget this stuff. And we're gonna make it the most central thing that we're gonna pass on to our children and our children's children. That we have this principle, that we study these ancient things, and that we have this myth, this character of the Messiah who one day is going to bring them back.
And we know that's not gonna happen. Like, but we, but we promise that we are going to keep that story going. Because we know that you folks, you more conservative folks, you need to hear that in order to let go of those things. And if we don't have an idea like that, then the conservative folks will hold us back from being able to do the innovation that we need to do in order to move forward. And that goes back to our conversation about Rabbi Eliezer and the Oven of Achnai story and how, you know, that conservative voice has so much power that if you don't treat it with respect, it's gonna come back and bite you.
You know? And so I think that this now, and, and, and I don't remember if I said it about the Ninth of Av, but it's very, it's very much of a piece that, that to say, and also we, and I, I, by the way, I know that I have said it about Yom Kippur, right? Why do we do the Avodah service in the Yom Kippur service? Why do we kind of reenact and tell the story about the sac[rifice], the service in the temple? Again, I, I think it's part of this idea that
part of the way that at least Rabbinic Judaism has been built is that we have these kind of ritualized remembrances of the past. I think it's misunderstood by most people and, and not wrongly. So, I mean, I think that's kind of part of the deal, uh, that it should have been misunderstood, but it, but, but in a time like now, it's a little bit dysfunctional to misunderstand it. And what I'm saying is
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. That, that's what I mean about it. Getting dumb.
DAN LIBENSON: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. No, exactly. Well, it get, get dumb or, or like, there's certain times when you have to go back to the, the core, uh, the core, uh, you know, memory, the core, the core practice of, like you say, the, the, the, the idea that the, that what's in the Talmud is a handbook for what we should do when their system breaks down. If their system has worked for 1500 years. The problem is, is that we forgot that that's what the Talmud is about. Yeah. And it gets dumb in that way.
But the, the, um, but, but whether it's the, the Avodas service and the Yom Kippur service, or a whole holiday, a whole fast day, like the Ninth of Av, and there are other fast days that also commemorate elements of the destructions, right: The 17th of Tammuz and whatever. And, um, that. We, we, we actually have those.
I mean, the best way I guess to think about it is that they're analogous to a Yahrzeit or the Yizkor service where we remember our human, uh, our human ancestors who have died and nobody is confused about those. Nobody thinks that that means that we should dwell on that person's life the rest of the year and, and like hold back from, you know, doing what we need to do in our lives because maybe, you know, you know what grandma wouldn't have approved. It's, it's exactly the opposite. It's that, well,
BENAY LAPPE: Or let’s bring grandma back. Grandma's not coming back.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, right. You know, but by the way, by the way, that, that's why I, I actually love the Day of the Dead, and maybe we could talk about that. I, I, of all the holidays that I know about from like other religions that I feel like Judaism is missing one, I I actually think the Day of the Dead would be a beneficial one to, to try to sort of figure out how to create a Jewish version of that. Because I think that idea that the Dead actually come to visit us, there's something, there's something about it that I can't, I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something about it that I actually feel is, is valuable.
But, um. But the idea that we have the, the annual day where the person died, their Yahrzeit, and also some number I, is it four, some number of days a year where we say the Yizkor service. Traditionally. most people only do it on Yom Kippur, but um, but there are some others. And, um, that, that
The point there is that I think that what all of this does is it helps us alleviate our guilt that we have moved forward. So it says, it says we are going to spend x number of days, x number of hours a year, sort of focusing on the stuff that has died so that we feel we've done it enough honor so that we can spend the rest of the year doing something completely different and not feeling guilty about it because we've done that honor.
Something like that is,
BENAY LAPPE: I, I love that,
DAN LIBENSON: where I'm going with it all.
BENAY LAPPE: Big snaps on that. I love that. That sounds absolutely right.
DAN LIBENSON: And, and I think maybe when you say it's gotten stupid, you know, it's like, it feels like, um, the way that people think about Tisha b’Av, the Ninth of Av, this day that commemorates the destruction of, of both Temples is that somehow we should be mourning in the style of, we wish it would come back.
You know, like we, we actually, we actually, what we're doing actually is a, is a, is a second rate. Uh, and you know, maybe that's actually part of it. Maybe it you should kind of, maybe you should do that once a year because it's actually good. But we don't really think that in the same way, that we don't really think that Messiah's coming.
Um, but we should take it seriously on that one day, maybe, I don't know, like maybe I should mourn more on the Ninth of Av. I tend to not be that focused on it because I'm not that upset that we don't have a temple, but maybe I'm actually doing it wrong, I think.
BENAY LAPPE: but I think what you're, what you're getting at is: we're still naming the thing that we're actually well enough past that we're no longer really guilty about it – and what we, we need to, to, to plug in to the place of Temple a whole bunch of other things which we wanna alleviate our guilt over, leaving behind. And I think that's the question of Tisha b’Av
DAN LIBENSON: So in that sense. Yes. So I think that what I would say is that the problem is that our mourning for the temple is now crowding out our bandwidth to do the mourning for the Judaism that we grew up with. You know that right. That we also need to,
BENAY LAPPE: which has crashed. That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: Which has crashed. Right. And that we need to move into the mourning category, but because the mourning category is too full of this other stuff. We don't feel like Right. There's something, and, and, and that we've forgotten that that's actually part of our technology.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: that we are not able to mourn the loss of rabbinic Judaism and or elements thereof. And as a result, we clinging to them. Because we would feel too guilty to move away from them and so and so, and that is actually stifling the innovation. Right. That is making the innovation too conservative and too, because, you know, everybody wants to try to save the synagogues as opposed to grieve the synagogues, for example.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. You, you know what just passed through my mind. It's like we've, we've so misunderstood Tisha b’Av, whereas it should be a framework we're looking at the content.
It, it would be as if every year on Yom Kippur you did Teshuva for the same thing you did Teshuva for a long time ago because that's what you do on Yom Kippur you did Teshuva for that thing. No! Teshuva is the framework and you do it for whatever you need to do it on this year.
And so Yom Kippur actually isn't stupid. Mm-hmm. It's really still smart because we've remembered that it's a framework and not. Right?
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm. It's so interesting because it actually relates to, uh, this morning I was listening to the podcast of Preet Bharara, you know, the former, uh, uh, US attorney in New York, and he was fired by Trump and he has a podcast, and his guest today was Jake Tapper the CNN reporter. And Preet Bharara opens it by saying, “you know, Hey Jake, I, I actually did some research on you,” and I had heard this story before “and it turns out that you were,” and he didn't give all the details, “but it, but the, but that you got in trouble in your Jewish day school.” He didn't say the Jewish Day school. He, I, you know, but, but I know it was a Jewish day school. “Uh, you got in trouble in your Jewish day school because of a certain cartoon that you did, uh, in the yearbook.” Right.
And it turned out what the story was that Jake Tapper had, uh, created this kind of Mad Magazine style fold in that if you folded it in, it was a, uh, piece of the male anatomy.
BENAY LAPPE: Oh my God, I've totally forgotten about those. I remember that from when I was a kid.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Right. And this was in his like Jewish day school, high school, uh, yearbook. Right. So it was really an, you know, caused a, a scandal and a, you know, in an uproar. And he, it was discovered, I think on the day of graduation, and they held back their diploma and made them do community service and whatever.
And, um, and Preet Bharara says to Jake Tapper, this, this is 30 years ago. Right. Or more, uh, Preet Bharara says to Jake Tapper, you know, well, um, you know, kind of, uh, do you feel bad about that? Or something like that, you know, and Jake Tapper's like, look, I mean. If you're asking me if I would've done that again in my 51-year-old body, you know, if my 51-year-old brain was in that 18-year-old body, like, I wouldn't have done that.
But if you're asking me if, like, I, I sort of feel terrible now that I did that when I was 18. I mean, I was a different person than I was, I was rebelling against authority. I was like, it, you know, should I maybe not have done it? Maybe, but like, you know, I don't have to keep repenting for that. That's my point.
Right. You know, 30 years later, Jake Tapper doesn't have to keep repenting for the fact that he made a, you know, x-rated fold in his high school yearbook at some point. Right. And, and that's what you're saying about the teshuva, about like, you know, we all know that we should be repenting on Yom Kippur for the sins we did this year, not for the sins that we, we did 30 years ago.
And, and yet we are still mourning the destruction of two Judaisms ago. You know, that's the, that's the thing. And, and that's fine. There's no, there's, it's not necessarily, it's not as silly to mourn the destruction of two Judaisms ago. Um, as it might be to be repenting over some, you know, minor sin that you committed 30 years ago.
But if that is so crowding out, your, you know, meaning like if you're, if you're spending the entire day mourning that sin, that you don't have time to mourn the fact that you just, you know, embezzled money last week, you know, I mean, that's, Sad,
BENAY LAPPE: yeah. Yeah. And, and the more I think about this analogy, which just came to me as we're talking between Tisha b’Av and Yom Kippur, Tisha b’Av is kind of the institutional morning holiday, right?
It's, it's when we mourn our, we mourn communally and we mourn for our communal, you know, it's, it's been framed that way, communal sins. And we'll put a sticky on the wisdom of saying, oh, it was my, it was my fault. It's our fault that these things happened to us. We, we'll go back to that later. If this really is a communal Yom Kippur, a kind of institutional Jewish institutional Yom Kippur, then it makes even more sense that we, that at a certain point we stop mourning for, or like you say, add the new institutional things.
I think we should flesh out, I mean, let's get into retail a little bit.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: What should we be putting in this container of Tisha b’Av, that God willing, you know, in 2000 years people will be talking about, on Tisha b’Av that they’re mourning?
DAN LIBENSON: And just to, before we do that, I just to reinforce what you said about the, the changing or the adding on. I, I learned this text from Yehuda Kurzer, I don't remember where it's from exactly in the Talmud, but it's, um, it's basically a description about the, the, the prayer that the high priest would say on Yom Kippur. And it's very clear from that text that in the Talmud's, at least understanding of the Second Temple period, Yom Kippur was not a holiday of personal atonement, It was a holiday of communal atonement. And so that the personal atonement part was added on.
And there was a interesting, one of the prayers is that God should not like asking God not to listen to the prayers of travelers, uh, because the traveler wants it not to rain. So that, um, but the community needs rain. So, so specifically it's a holiday focusing on the community's needs and not the individual's needs. And our Yom Kippur is very much about the individual's needs and, and not the community's needs. So these, these holidays change is, is really my point.
And, and, and it's so, so that idea that, that Tisha b’Av would be, would be tweaked wouldn't be any more scandalous than Yom Kippur would be tweaked. And Yom Kippur has been tweaked.
BENAY LAPPE: Wow. I love that. And you reminded me of parts of the liturgy. You know, like when the Hazan, I dunno, when I was a kid in our shul, the Hazan would walk down, you know, the center aisle and it was, you know, the Hineni and Oh my gosh, right? And he's saying, I, I'm, I, I need to do this on behalf of the whole community. And we, you're right, we lose that. We, we have lost that. We've made that shift.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And it's, and it's been in a really effective shift. You're right.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Um, and you know, one of my thoughts, uh, that I've been thinking about Yom Kippur is like, what, what would be next for Yom Kippur? That's a different conversation.
But, um, for, Tisha b’Av. So yeah, let's go to retail. I mean, like, because. Yeah. I mean, there's two aspects, right? One is what is the practice? And two is what are we, what are we mourning for? Right? And so right now, you know, in a way like, that feels a little bit, um, that those two are like out of sync for me because, uh, the idea of, of a, of a full on fast, um, I, I find it, I find it hard on, on, on, um, on uh, uh, Tisha b’Av because I feel like, um, you know,
the Holocaust happened not too long ago. If you want me to spend a day in grief and fasting, like, let's have that be about the Holocaust and Holocaust Day. Like, you know, so here for Holocaust Day, we, we don't do much. I mean, we maybe have like an evening program, uh, you know, and for Tisha b’Av we're fasting and, and, you know, torturing our souls or whatever, you know, for something for the temp, you know, like that.
So I, so I feel like I, I could accept the, the practice if the, uh, other, if, if things that I was really sad about were. We're lumped over there, or I would want a less onerous practice.
BENAY LAPPE: Well, I think it's really interesting that you bring up Yom HaShoah because this day that we, it, it's, I, I don't know so much the history of how it came, but I know there was a debate, right? About shouldn't Yom HaShoah actually be incorporated in, in Tisha b’Av this is what Tisha b’Av is about. And I think that the decision to not do that yeah. Is precisely the, I would call it a mistake yes. To misunderstand that Tisha b’Av is actually a container and not the thing the container's containing.
DAN LIBENSON: The only, the only piece that I'm think as I'm thinking this through now, that I'm, that I, I would wonder about in terms of that, which I, I would have said the same and would've thought the same that Tisha b’Av, uh, that the Holocaust should have been folded into, into Tisha b’Av, um, is that if Tisha b’Av is these, holiday is these commemorations of destructions that we aren't really so sad about anymore, you know, like that we, right. Meaning that we're sad sort of in a removed kind of way, but we're actually doing it in a, we're we're actually commemorating them because there's a minority within our community that's, that can't stop thinking about that and that we need to help them let go.
Like the Holocaust is actually a much more, you know, active thing to be sad about. So, so I'm not sure. I mean, part of, there's, there's, I I think that the reason why Holocaust Day was made separate, had more to do, I think with Israel and Zionism and things like that. So I'm not sure exactly what the history was, but, um, but I, I, I, I could see it both ways.
Um, but, but I, I, but I think that, um, yeah, I, I think that for me it's kind of, it would be like, um, I mean, it sounds a little silly almost to say it because there hasn't been a physical destruction and maybe COVID allows, maybe COVID is, is really, you know what, but it, but to put, put. Synagogue services, you know, the, the in there, you know, to say like, before COVID there was such a thing as synagogue services, you know, and, and a and a building that Shabbat and people grav-, you know, and, and after COVID, it kind of fizzled out and it didn't, it never came back after COVID.
You know, it, I mean, you know, and, and then they're saying, oh, but there was, there was a synagogue in Los Angeles that continued to have services, you know, like, yeah. And there was also a, a temple in Egypt that tried to bring back the temple service, but it didn't really last very long, you know, and, and of course right now we don't know if that's the story or not, but I mean that, but it, it could, it could be. And, and I suppose, yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And your point about we don't know yet, I think is really important. Um, because maybe you don't fill the container of Tisha b’Av. You don't mourn for the thing unless, until you're past it and, you know, yeah. Uhhuh, yeah, it's over
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, you know, we don't, we don't. Treat a dying person as if they're already dead. We right, we, we sure that in all ways we treat them as a fully alive human being. And I don't know, so, so may, maybe it's not time right to, you know, fill out the death certificate for the synagogue. Um, but I think your point that the fact that there are some synagogues that do it great, may not actually mean the synagogue isn't dead.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: I hate to, I mean, it's hard to, I, I shouldn't, I don't know. I'm a little reluctant to talk about it in public this way.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, who should we throw into the bus publicly?
BENAY LAPPE: Um, but anyway, I think, I think, I think this synagogue is, is for sure. It's, the question is, is that, is that what is not gonna make it into the next Option 3.
DAN LIBENSON: I, I agree with you though. Like I, I think it's good to do a little bit of retail, a little bit speculation, but I think that part of it is that we don't know and we can't know and that we aren't trying to, you know, we don't want anybody to be in that position.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Okay. I just thought of something I'm thinking of, of, of my teacher, David Kraemer, and maybe. We shouldn't be thinking about structures and institutions and practices that no longer work, but the ideas that no longer work. Mm-hmm. And the ideas that we need.
Because one of the things I learned from David Kraemer is that the rabbinic revolution at its core was really about a single idea. It was the idea that truth is indeterminate, unlike the past where you could know, or we felt we could know the truth, and everyone thought they had a line in the truth and could access it – What Kraemer says is that the rabbinic revolution was the idea. And, and he says, this is an idea that not only changed Judaism but changed Western thought completely for everybody, is that is the stance that yeah, there may be a truth, but not one of us can actually get at it.
So it's this deep humility, um, which is the, the new idea. So it's not like it's this holiday, this practice, um, but it's a shift in thoughts. So that makes me, what do you think? What do you think about that? And, and it makes me wonder what those shifts in thought should be. And I, I have some ideas about that.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. Well, first of all, it makes me think that we should have him back on the show because he didn't say that when we were talking. Like, I don't, I don't remember that part. So, so, um, I'd like to hear more from him.
Um, but, um, yeah, well, I'll tell you the one, the one that, that, that most. The one that, that feels most powerful to me, but I don't know that I've been articulating it as well as I can. And, and it's a little frustrating to me because I want to, uh, and it's a complex notion, but it, it comes from Yitz Greenberg's theology, which I, I don't know if I really like, I'm not, I'm not sure what he really thinks was true theologically. Meaning like what God actually was doing in the past, or is he sort of saying that the, the understanding of God has changed over over time? Maybe it doesn't matter,
But I think that the way that I understand his theology is that in each of these great eras of, of Judaism, God has moved further away from a kind of, um, responsibility taking role in the world. So that in the biblical era, God actually is a, is an actor God is, is, is physically, you know, God is, is first of all, is imminent and is literally fed by the odor of sacrifices. But God is also there stopping the sun and creating miracles and helping people win wars. And that's the God that of the understanding of the biblical era.
In the rabbinic era, there's a notion that God's not doing that anymore. You know, God is still there. He is - God is still around enough to that it's worth bothering to pray to God because God is somehow involved. I, I'm not a hundred percent sure that I have a clear read on the rabbi's understanding of God. Maybe you, you could explain that a little, but you do. But somehow it was, it wasn't a waste of time to be praying and blessing. It's God that somehow that might inure to your benefit. And, and God was, but God doesn't do these grand miracles anymore. Uh, prophecy is over and we don't, God's no longer being fed by our sacrifices. And so we don't have to do that anymore.
And, and, and Yitz Greenberg's idea is that as God withdraws from the responsibility taking element of the world, that God's responsibility now rests on human shoulders. And as God's responsibility is, is left on the, on the earth, we need more humans to shoulder that responsibility. And so we get an expansion of the leadership class. So you move from a hereditary priesthood, which is very small to a rabbinic, uh, to rabbis by ordination, which is larger, but still pretty small. And that's the shift from biblical to rabbinic Judaism.
And then the current. Era in which we're in the, in the shift, you know, we're, we're part of the shift. And Yitz talks, I think his theology was very much informed by the Holocaust that not that God, um, that the Holocaust in a way was evidence that God had already withdrawn even further from the, that kind of responsibility taking in the world. To the point that, as I understand it functionally God is, is not around to take responsibility.
God is around in a new way. That's the part of Y's theology that I don't quite get, you know, but, but he, it's very important to him to say that as God withdraws, like from involvement, God is actually closer to us in a certain way. I don't, I don't know that I quite understand that, but um, but at least in terms of the responsibility taking, God has basically completely withdrawn.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I remember Yitz. Um, I, I was so blessed to be able to learn with Yitz when I, when I worked at Clal and, and later, and I loved the way he talked about the relationship with God as a partner. And used to be that we were junior partners. That's how, that's how he talks about it. Uhhuh, we're sort of junior non-voting partners, Uhhuh at the board meeting and for sure in the rabbinic era, But definitely with the Holocaust, we are becoming senior partners, Uhhuh, and you know, God becomes the junior non-voting partner.
I think it’s both a shift in who our level of responsibility in our relation to God – and as you said, A democratizing shift from an elite class to
DAN LIBENSON: right.
BENAY LAPPE: The entire people.
DAN LIBENSON: I'm not sure if Yitz has said this, but I, I suppose it's kind of like as a, the, the relationship between a parent and a child, and as the child grows up, the parent has less and less, uh, responsibility for the child and power over the child. But nevertheless, if it's a good relationship, you, you actually hope that there's a sweetness and a closeness which actually increases over that time. So, so I guess there's a way in which I, I do understand. I think that's what he's trying to get at.
But his, his real point in this next era, which we're still in the process of, of transitioning to, and this is where I'm going to, this is where I think is like the big shift, is that all of God's responsibility is no longer with God. All of God's responsibility has shifted to human beings, and Yitz’s paradigm, therefore we need even more human beings to shoulder that responsibility. It's a huge responsibility. So maybe everyone. You know, we need everyone to shoulder that responsibility.
But once, once you are understanding yourself to be shouldering one 7 Billionth of God's responsibility, right, or something like that, then I think there's no more authority, like nobody has authority. It's not that God doesn't have authority, it's that humans also don't have authority over other humans. The rabbis no longer have authority. Every, every person, every Jew is equally responsible for a piece of God's responsibility. And so to me it is that in a world like that, the rabbinic, the notion of the rabbis that the rabbis had of themselves, as in some fashion channeling God's responsibility, you know, God's authority, to me, that's gone.
So there's nobody who can, who can, uh, claim authority in this next era. And, and my question is, what does the Judaism look like where there is no authority?
BENAY LAPPE: here's what comes up for me as you're saying that the truth is the rabbis never really did have any more authority than any other person.
They just understood that their learning qualified them or sort of certified them to make rulings on behalf of other people. And it's just probably in the reality of who has enough time to learn enough to make informed decisions that it, it – When that, I don't know. I'm not sure,
DAN LIBENSON: but I think, I think what I'm saying is like the people, of course they didn't, I mean, I don't believe that they actually had authority, like meaning, I don't really believe that God gave them authority or that they had.
BENAY LAPPE: Right But I don't think they did either – Go ahead. Go ahead.
DAN LIBENSON: But people accepted that authority and, and in a way, what I'm saying, And, and a lot of people today will say, but people still accepting that authority there. There's a lot of people that wanna know what the Rabbi thinks would've, and I think that that's true, but most of the people who don't accept the authority are just leaving 'cause they can.
So yes, the people who are staying accept the authority. But that's like saying that the one synagogue, yeah, there was still a synagogue in LA that was having services after. It's like, yeah, there's still always gonna be some, I mean, there's still some people that would, we know that actually there's, there's a lot of people that if there was, if they somehow could, they would wanna bring sacrifices. You know, they're those people, they're gonna continue and God bless them. They, they, I don't want, you know, they, they, that's fine.
But, but don't confuse the fact that there's still some people who are, who are, you know, into that uh, structure. Who, for whom the master, that master story has not crashed. Don't confuse that for that the master story hasn't crashed. Like it crashed for most people.
And, and so the question to me for the, the person who is kind of, you know, outta the game because they're like, but I'm, I'm a doctor. Why, why should I tell this guy to, you know, uh, I, I might have told a story like a, a friend who, um, uh, you know, sort of overheard a, a, a doctor, an orthodox doctor, I think saying, you know, he was asking to rabbi what should he do with a cake that he'd been given by a neighbor? And whether – and, and her takeaway from this was, I can't believe that this guy is, is a, a brilliant doctor, and he has to ask a rabbi what to do with a cake. Like, it's crazy. Like, decide what you, for yourself, what you wanna do with a cake, you know?
And it just doesn't, it just doesn't stand to reason to me that there's gonna be a lot of doctors and lawyers and business people and billionaires and all these people. And all just, just regular people, uh, that will say, yeah, I really wanna live in a world where I have to ask somebody else what to do with a cake. You know? It's like, no, no. I wanna live in a world that respects me as a, as a thinking person, as an educated person. And, and, and I don't, you know, is it really so complicated, you know?
BENAY LAPPE: I remember I, you know, you're reminding me of, and maybe this is the shift, I think this is what you're suggesting, that the shift, the, the thought shift of today is from a small group of people that we've been calling rabbis have the authority to tell the rest of us what to do and that, and that's gonna be different. And what is that gonna look like?
Anyway, I'm remembering, gosh, it was probably 1992 or so. It was the Rabbinical Assembly convention and there were thousands of rabbis there. And I was a rabbinic student at the time, and Harold Schulweis alav hashalom was giving this sort of big plenary speech. And I remember him saying, and I remember it because you could feel sort of the shock and pain in the room when he said, “Jews will no longer be told when to marry and whom to marry. They will no longer be told what to eat and when to eat” and, and so on. And was like, oh my God, somebody said it and it re- like, are we really there? Oh. Oh. I don't know. There was just so much emotion in the room and now, you know, it, it doesn't seem as is shocking, or, right? But, but we're still in that period of, of rabbis, you know, um, having a hard time letting go of, of that fact.
And you're right, the folks, so many Jews have left because long ago they wouldn't be told. And if the assumption is the community is a place where you are told, uh, you know, I'm gonna go Option 2 on that. That's, that's not what I want.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Well you said you had, you had other thoughts on like, what was, what was the big Yeah,
BENAY LAPPE: so, so… I think we, we know that feminist insights and queer insights have got to be part of the Jewish future. Mm-hmm. The Jewish future I think has gotta be feminist, it's gotta be non heteronormative. Right. It has to have a very different take on what it means to be a human being. Yeah. So I think that's part of our current shift.
DAN LIBENSON: I, I think not, you know, there's a part of me, I mean, I wanna say this with, uh, um, understanding that there's a part, you know, it's, it's, it may just be my wishful thinking to like draw these things together. In my mind it's, of these two things are of a piece. They're, they're saying they're, they're fundamentally, and I'm not sure like which is primary and which is like, which is driving witch, you know?
But because I think there's a way of saying that in a non patriarchal world, uh, part of what it means to be non patriarchal is to not accept that, that way of thinking about how the organization of the world works, which is that there's like somebody in charge because of their power in, in the traditional case, their power because of race or gender or, you know, but, but.
I think it's interesting to think about rabbinic authority in relation to other forms of patriarchy because it's, and I don't mean that as an insult. I mean that as a, as a question about whether all systems that are fundamentally authority based are basically outflows of, of a patriarchal system, which, you know, I've said this before in different contexts, like
I'm always asking this question about like, what would Judaism or any system that we have today look like Through a universal design approach? which would say, what would it look like if we're designed, uh, ab initio as, as the translation of the Talmud in the Steinsaltz l’chatchila, you know, but it's, if, if it was designed initially by, and for those folks who were understood by the previous system to have, quote, “a disability” is not even actually a disability. It's only a disability in reference to the old system, which didn't, which wasn't designed by them and therefore made them have a disability, including being queer or being a woman, which is like fundamentally, you know, you have to see it as being treated by the patriarchal world as a form of disability.
So put, of all those cate- all those folks in one category, you actually have a majority of humanity, right? Um. 'cause you have all women and then you have, you know, queer men and then you have, you know, all kinds of other people that don't fit in. And you have a majority of humanity. And you say, well actually, what would the world look like if that majority of humanity was the one that that created it?
BENAY LAPPE: And, and it told the story about it.
DAN LIBENSON: And it told the story. And especially if it's in reaction to a, a, a a thousands of years of history that had come before of, of a patriarchal authority based approach. And then, you know, that one of the pieces of the, uh, of that universally designed new approach is gonna be like a smashing of the patriarchy. And it's gonna be saying like, we want, whatever that was. We want the opposite, you know? Yeah. And, um, so that, that, you know, that becomes, uh…
and yet we wanna feel connected to it. Right? Like, that becomes the interesting part about the, about Tisha b’Av and all that, you know, is there, is there a way that we can smash the patriarchy and, and still say, “ahh, but you know, we have fond memory.” You know, I don't know, like how we think about that.
BENAY LAPPE: I'm reading, I'm reading Ibram Kendi right now, and my mind is just being absolutely blown.
DAN LIBENSON: Which book are you reading?
BENAY LAPPE: Um, I just finished Stamped
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh,
BENAY LAPPE: which is actually the young adult version of Stamped From the Beginning.
DAN LIBENSON: Ah.
BENAY LAPPE: And so I have to go back and now read Stamped From the Beginning.
But for my anti-racism study group, I needed to get it read before the conversation.
DAN LIBENSON: You basically read the cliff notes?
BENAY LAPPE: I read the, yeah. Um, and now I'm reading How to Be an Anti-Racist
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh.
BENAY LAPPE: And the shift in what the story is, depending on who's telling the story is just, is just unbelievable. And that we allowed ourselves to accept the story of racism or not even to, to have it be a non-story because white people were telling it or failing to tell it and not listening to the folks, folks upon whose bodies it was being told. It's just unbelievable. I mean, it's right.
DAN LIBENSON: I mean, the way that I think about that story, that is, that for me as a white man, but also as somebody who was kind of late to this story, right? Because my family immigrated to America, you know, in the last century. Um, it, the Master Story of America is crashing and has crashed for me. But what's interesting, like, I mean, interesting, it's like troubling. It's, it's, I don't know what the worst possible word is -
It's, it's horrifying that it, it never really crashed for Black Americans. It, it was crashed from the beginning. Like meaning, it was, it was so, what do you call that? You know? And yeah. So, you know, when you talk about, you talk about how it crashes for the queer folk first. Yeah. What about the queerest of the folk for whom it crashed before it even started, you know, like, that's.
BENAY LAPPE: I know I, you know, next week I'm going to be doing a CRASH Talk on what I'm learning about racism, anti-racism, white supremacy, and I'm having such a difficult time plotting it out over the scheme because I'm not sure what the master story is and for whom it's crashing. My, my brain is exploding.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Because there's Right. Oh my God.
DAN LIBENSON: I mean, I think, I think the only way to tell the story of America through the CRASH Talk I is to say we're talking about white America's story and, but, and how
BENAY LAPPE: that's crashing and how
DAN LIBENSON: that's crashing
BENAY LAPPE: for white
DAN LIBENSON: white Yeah. For white Americans, right? Yeah. But, but then it's like, but then I, then, then what that, what that raises for me though, is that when you tell the CRASH story about Judaism, it's like, whose story are we not telling in the Jewish story? For who It never worked, ever. You know who, yeah. That's right.
And, and so both are important. I mean, both are, both are worth telling, but in the, but, but I think we, you know, it, it, it's, it, you know, obviously, obviously all, all of these stories are, are, uh, uh, you know, they're no, no story that can be told well is gonna be accurate. Either you have to simplify it and make it powerful, right, which your CRASH Talk is. And yet then you kind of hit the, the reality and it's like, okay, how do I really, how do I think about this?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. It's trying to figure out this theory over our reality and our lives has really helped me understand like the Option 3 on the racism and white supremacy story is what black folk knew way before the master story. This quote unquote master, I mean, just the name, “master story.” Let's put a sticky on that. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's, it's what you're saying. It's um, and
Now I'm realizing that, that some of the stuff that goes into the Option 3 story isn't just stuff that the folks from the crumble knew. Mm-hmm. It's the stuff that the folks before this master story came about because it was oppressive from the get go uhhuh, like you're saying, because a certain class. For whom it was gonna work, uh, was creating it. Uh, right. It's, it's going, oh my God.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, it's funny. It, it, it reminds me, it just made me think of that, I dunno if you saw it. There was this, um, part of the Chris Wallace interview with Donald Trump where he says like, you know, 1776, like, that's the beginning of America. That's the important time. And I don't know, they're trying to do this 1619 thing. I don't even know what that's about. Or, you know, and Chris Wallace says “slavery” and he is like, “That's what they say.”
You know, but, and, and, um, and it's like, but, but fundamentally that's the question is like, where does the American story begin? And for whom? And it's not only a question of, you know, for whom and who had never questioned, it's like, if you tell this story from the perspective of African Americans, it's like, it, it actually starts long before. Before, long before, you know, and, and where you decide to start the story is, is part of the, what the story is. You know, it's, it's also fraught.
Yeah. Um, look, I mean, there's a way actually to try to bring this back around to, to, Tisha b’Av and the Jewish part of the story. Um, you know, at least, at least, um, in the, in the, um, at least I, I, I don't know exactly. I haven't, you know, 'cause we didn't know we were necessarily gonna be talking about this, so I didn't do all the research.
But do we know, do you know if Tisha b’Av, if there's any evidence that Tisha b’Av existed before the time of the rabbis?
BENAY LAPPE: Yes. Yes. In, um, in the story of well, that's the rabbis in Taanit, in the Talmud talking about the story of the Spies and retro rejecting Tisha b’Av back right? You know that?
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. No, no. But, but what I'm, what I'm suggesting, or what I wanna suggest when I, what I'm floating, but I wanna know if there's any evidence, you know, against me here, is that the rabbis invent Tisha b’Av as a holiday of a day of mourning to remember, you know, for, you know, basically for their most recent tragedy, which is the destruction of the 2nd Temple.
But then they, they say, but actually it's not only for the Second Temple, it's also for the First Temple. And, um, and, and,
BENAY LAPPE: and they say it's also for the lack of, of courage and creativity way back. In the biblical era when, when the spies came back and said, you know, we're like grasshoppers and they're giants and, oh no, we can't do that. And, and I think that's how, that, that's what we've lost of Tisha b’Av. Oh,
DAN LIBENSON: that's interesting.
BENAY LAPPE: Tisha b’Av has to be paired with: let go of that and have not only hope, but courage and a sense of, um, experimentation and adventure and even radical innovation. They, they have to go together. And I think the rabbis pointing back to the failure of the spies is the rabbis saying that that's the part of Tisha b’Av, that you can't let go of.
It's not only about what, what's lost, it's about having that courage to, to look at. The giants and say, yeah, we can, or the, the those who look like giants and I don't know, there's something there.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. But I, I think that, um, what I'm trying to figure out is like, um, I don't know how we kind of retroject something into previous versions of the story.
Like the right in the rabbi's imagined world, the, the Tisha b’Av was, was observed, um, you know, ever since the destruction of the first temple as remembering the day, you know, and, and even before that, that during the time of the first temple, it was observed to remember the, the spies failure and, and you know, this holiday that they invented, they actually kind of retro reject or, you know, they create a pa a past history for it. Um, that kind of pulls the, the, the, uh, you know, that pulls together.
You know, and I, I guess that I'm, I'm, I'm suggesting that, um. What, what would it look like? You know, what would it look like to do that today? I, I, I think, you know, I, I'm not sure if I'm talking about Tisha b’Av specifically, or I'm talking about some way in which we re understand our past in a way that actually the Jews have never understood it before. So, so let's, you know, and, and then we, and, and, um, it may or may not be true, you know, it may or may, but
it may be that we discover something in our past. Like, actually there's a, there's a book that came out in Hebrew within the last year, which I haven't really read, but it's called the, the Jewish March of Folly. You know, the March of Folly was an important book by Barbara Tuckman about all these, all these failures of leadership that, that, that. You know, we're kind of obvious in retrospect and, but that caused all these disasters in, in world history. And so this book is, is kind of like taking that and applying that idea to Jewish history and saying, you know, in the rear view mirror, there are all these things that we can see where we're so botched throughout Jewish history. And I think his argument is that they were botched for, in a very specific and recurring way that there was there. And I don't, I don't know exactly much more than that because I haven't read it.
But, um, but it's interesting to say like, well now something happened to us just now take COVID and all of a sudden we realize we, we've, we've messed this thing up all along for, not just for the last 50 years, for 3000 years. And I now have a new way of telling the Jewish story, which either I believe is factually correct or. It helps me today with what I'm trying to accomplish to look at it that way. And it's not wrong to look at it that way. I can't prove it to you, but I'm, but I'm gonna start telling the story in a new way. Not only looking forward, but also looking backward.
And, um, I don't know, I think earlier in the conversation, I, I was clear on exactly where I was going with this idea, but like, something, something about it feels like it, you know, it's something in our, in our quiver of arrows.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. It, you're reminding me of, um, who is it that I've been quoting incessantly? Um, philosophy professor from the University, University of Chicago.
DAN LIBENSON: I think Leon Kass.
BENAY LAPPE: Leon Kass. Leon Kass, his idea that the power of, of traditional stories is not that they tell us what happened, but what always happens. And I think that that's, that's. The task with, to, to look at your own time and to see what's failing, not as some unique new failure, but what's the failure that this is a symptom of, that we keep doing over and over and over? What, what's the mistake here?
DAN LIBENSON: Well, yeah, and, and I guess what I would say, like for me, what, what it, what feels like, um, the mistake that keeps happening these days is the, is the belief that what makes something Jewish is if it was Jewish before, where if you actually look at Jewish history, you actually see that most of what's Jewish previously wasn't Jewish. It was something that was Judaized.
And so if we are insisting that what it means to be Jewish as we move into the future is to have this conservationist mentality, then we're gonna get it wrong. And that wasn't the approach of our ancestors by definition, because we see over and over again that they took things from the, that's why I was interested last week when we were talking to Shai Secunda about like, well, what did we get from ancient Iran? You know, what did we, you know, because, and it turns out like everything, you know, we got from somewhere and, and, but there's no less Jewish. We made it Jewish.
Um, and so it's like, what would it look like today to be able to, so, so then when we say, Hey, look, we've got a, you know, situation. A lot of Jews don't wanna be so, so Jewish, you know, whatever. They're moving away. They don't like the rabbinic authority. They, it's like, okay, well let's do something really new that is based on what they do, like, and we'll turn it into Jewish, we'll, we'll bring the Jewish stuff into this discussion with that, and that'll be the most Jewish thing ever. And it's like, you couldn't get funding for that because that's not exactly understood to be like, not a Jewish thing. And it's the most Jewish thing.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. I, I'm just sitting with what you just said. That's it. That's it. That's it. I don't even wanna say anything else. I mean, I think we have to sit with that. I think you put your finger right on it. That is the mistake of today.
DAN LIBENSON: no. So then I think that just the connection to, to Tisha b’Av is like, is it possible, I suppose, is it possible that we have this genius technology that we have also forgotten, which is that in order to free ourselves to go where we need to go, we at least can imagine.
And so, like, like we were saying earlier, we don't wanna say synagogues are the thing that we're gonna remember, but, but we have to imagine that everything that we love today or don't love might end up in the Tisha b’Av, of the future. And. That means that there's maybe the, the, the, the bookend to what I said about not only things that are Jewish is that we have to be prepared to let go everything that is, that we do understand to be Jewish and we actually have technologies for both of those things.
And if we misunderstand the technologies that we have as simply about the grief of the loss of the thing that we actually don't want anymore, and that we're, we're totally misunderstanding. What it is. And it's like when you say that, we totally misunderstand the Talmud because we think it's about the content, but it's actually about the thinking process and how we can move forward.
If we look at our holidays and we misunderstand them to be about grieving over something that was really the best kind of Judaism and what, you know, we're just, nothings now, you know, then we're just missing it and it's, and actually what these things are is like psychological, brilliant psychological tools that actually allow us to, to move forward and instead they're holding us back.
BENAY LAPPE: Mic drop. I think that's it. I think that's it. I think, I think that insight, you know, that Kraemer talks about that happened at the last major, major crash that we can no longer actually know truth. We have to have, we have to, with humility, hold onto our best guess of Truth, of what very lightly – and we have to, we actually be started holding onto all of our practices and, and, and holidays and ideas so tight that we've kind of strangled them and we have to go back, like you say, be willing to have everything be in the Tisha b’Av of 2000 years from now. And hold it lightly. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. I mean, it reminds me of a conversation. I know we were wrapping up, is that a few weeks ago or months ago, I was having a conversation with Lex, my co-host on Judaism Unbound, and I said to him something about, we were talking about reimagining the High Holidays, and I, and I said something or other, and he, he thought he was agreeing with me and he said, “yeah, I, I, I really could get rid of most of the things that we do in High Holidays, except there's like five things that I would say I wanna hold onto.” And I said to him, “okay, now imagine the high holidays without those five things.” You know, that, that, that, because that's where the hard work is.
And that's where, um, and that's where, you know, you say like, I can't, I can't imagine without those five things, that's why we have Tisha b’Av. You know, that's why we have studying the things we no longer do. That's why we have the Messiah, is because we have this idea that it's somehow you have to let go.
I also don't feel like I could let go of, of beloved family members, but we know that they die and we have, and then we have things that we do about it. So that allow us to continue and live our lives. And you would never say in advance like, I want this beloved family member to die. Of course not. You, you would want them to drink from the fountain of youth and live forever. But you also know that when they die, they shouldn't hold you back. And so you, you, you, you come up with ways, how do I do that? And it's not easy, but, but we do, and
and that's why I always say like, Judaism is so good at death. You know, everyone says it. Judaism is so good at like death of a person. I actually think we have been really great at the death of Judaism too. It's just that we've forgotten, we've forgotten that stuff. So, so maybe, you know, maybe a holiday like this is one that allows us to, as at a time like this is, is that it allows us to try to remember, try to remember that we actually do have these traditions.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And, and you've also shifted Tisha b’Av for me from the letting go of the things you really don't want to the, the real pain of having to let go of the things you wanted, but you can't have anymore.
DAN LIBENSON: That's the most important thing, I think.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Mm. Wow. Bye-bye.
DAN LIBENSON: Thanks so much for joining our chevruta today! We hope you’ve enjoyed learning with us… and with the Talmud. You can find links to the source sheets for all episodes in the show notes and on our website at oraltalmud.com. Your support helps keep Oral Talmud going. You can find a link on the website to contribute. We’d also love to hear from you! Email us with any questions, comments, or thoughts at hello@oraltalmud.com. Please, share your Oral Talmud with us – we’re so excited to learn from you. The Oral Talmud is a joint project of SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva and Judaism Unbound, two organizations that are dedicated to making Jewish texts and ideas more accessible for everyone. We are especially grateful to Sefaria for an incredible platform that makes the Talmud available to everyone. It’s free at sefaria.org. And we are grateful to SVARA-nik Ezra Furman for composing and performing The Oral Talmud’s musical theme. The Oral Talmud is produced by Joey Taylor, with help from Olivia Devorah Tucker, and with financial support from Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah. Thanks so much for listening–and with that, this has been the Oral Talmud. See ya next time.
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