The Oral Talmud: Episode 23 - Life Comes First (Yoma 83a & 85a/b)
SHOW NOTES
“How do you take what you have and analogize, and tie some new radical thing that you don't have but you want to insert into the tradition? This entire passage is part of the instruction manual! This is some new twist of creativity, a twist of imagination.” - 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.
Benay & Dan turn to another essential Talmud text, the origins of Pikuach Nefesh, the teaching that we can and should break (almost) any commandment in order to save a life. What we find is that while the Mishnah has no qualms about giving clear examples of life-saving actions we can take on Shabbat, the Gemara wants some textual support for violating what is so clearly written in Torah. In this discussion we get into all of the explanations except for the final one, the one that tradition ends up hanging this law on.
What values can we recognize in the Rabbis? Which of them do we want to maintain in the next version of Judaism? When do we want to emulate the ways in which the sages sold the people on radical new ideas? When the Talmud quotes seven different sages giving seven different answers for a halakhic question, what’s going on there? One-upsmanship? Intentional absurdism? A meta teaching about how to develop new foundations for tradition? How do we see these arguments playing out in court cases in our own time? Speaking from 2020, Dan & Benay end up devastatingly prophetic in their discussion of the fragile foundations of Roe v. Wade and abortion laws… The discussion continues next week!
This week’s text: “Pikuach Nefesh” (Yoma 83a & 85a/b)
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 at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.
Further Learning
[1] More reflections on Dr. Eliezer Slomovic z”l “Ahavat Hinam (“Senseless Love”)” by Beth Huppin (on her WordPress)
[2] The Oral Talmud discussed The Oven of Akhnai story in: The Oral Talmud: Episode 3 - Misquoting God and The Oral Talmud: Episode 5 - Excommunicating Dissent
[3] For Rabbi Meir in the schools of Rabbi Yishmael & Rabbi Akiva, listen to The Oral Talmud: Episode 15 - Svara’ing Your Svara (Eruvin 13a and Sotah 20a)
[4] For Rabbi Elezar’s Cow, listen to The Oral Talmud: Episode 10 - The Obligation to Protest (Shabbat 54b-55a)
[5] For Moses in Rabbi Akiva’s Classroom, listen to The Oral Talmud: Episode 9 - Turning Around
[6] For Rabbi Yishmael’s 13 Exegetical Principles explore this PDF, suggested to us by SVARA Fellow Emet Monts (unknown author)
[7] “The Torah speaks in human language” is a Talmud principle found on Berakhot 31b. A dvar torah on the subject from Rabbi Yitz Greenberg (at Hadar)
[8] “The surprisingly Jewish history of the Rorschach inkblot test” on the Forward
[9] Rabbi Joel Roth, author of notorious teshuvot against homosexuality (wikipedia)
[10] Teshuvot from the Trans Halakha Project (their website after incubation with SVARA)
[11] On the US Supreme Court and the Penumbra of Emanations, in regards to clarifying a right to privacy & Roe v. Wade (wikipedia)
[12] For the case which decided that Title VII's clause "discrimination by sex" does include transgender people, explore R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (wikipedia)
[13] For Jane Kanarek’s theories on what the Rabbis were up to, listen to “The Oral Talmud: Episode 20 - Transforming Story into Law with Jane Kanarek”
[14] Benay uses the fine Yiddish word “shmaysed,” meaning “to be whacked” - for a fabulous example, check out Jane Peppler’s research on the song “Shmaysn vet men mikh shoyn say vi say (They're going to smite me anyway)” on Yiddish Penny Songs
[15] Regarding the Maccabees fighting on Shabbat: “The Chashmonaim and War on the Sabbath” on Jewish Adventure’s Blogspot (with a dissenting viewpoint from Jubilees), and a scholarly paper “To Fight Or Not To Fight: The Sabbath And The Maccabean Revolt” by Sigve K. Tonstad (Andrew’s University, Seventh Day Adventists)
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DAN LIBENSON: This is The Oral Talmud - Episode 23: Life Comes First. Welcome to the Oral Talmud, 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 week we explore another essential idea in the Talmud, Pikuach Nefesh, the teaching that we can and should break (almost) any commandment in order to save a life. Today’s text is really the origin text for this idea. What we find is that, while the Mishnah has no qualms about giving clear examples of life-saving actions that break the no-work-allowed laws of Shabbat, the Gemara seems to demand some textual support for violating what is so clearly written in Torah. This is Part One of our discussion, where we explore all the explanations that the Talmud does not end up accepting!
We’re fascinated by how the Talmud tells the story of the foundations of laws that radically shift the tradition. In this episode, we find connections between various legal moves in Talmud and paradigm-shifting – and now precarious or worse – Supreme Court cases of our own time and place here in the United States, cases such as Roe v. Wade and advocacy for trans rights. Perhaps our conversations will inspire some Talmud learners to become creative lawyers!
Every episode of The Oral Talmud has a number of resources to support your learning and to share with your own study partners! If you’re using a podcast app to listen, you’ll find links to these resources in our show notes: First, to a Source Sheet on a website called Sefaria, where you can find pretty much any Jewish text in the original and in translation. On each episode’s Source Sheet we include the core Talmud texts we discuss, draw out the central questions of each episode, and share a link to the original video of our learning.
In the show notes of your podcast app, you’ll also find a link to this episode on The Oral Talmud’s website, where we post an edited transcript, and where you can make a donation to keep the show going, if you feel so moved. On both the Sefaria Source Sheet and The Oral Talmud website, you’ll find extensive footnotes for exploring our many references inside and outside of the Talmud.
And now, The Oral Talmud…
DAN LIBENSON: Hello and welcome back everybody. I'm Dan Libenson and I'm here again with Benay Lappe for this week's episode of the Oral Talmud. Hi Benay.
BENAY LAPPE: Hey Dan. How you doing?
DAN LIBENSON: I'm good. I'm good. How are you?
Benay: Good.
Dan: Strange days.
BENAY LAPPE: They definitely are
DAN LIBENSON: starting school. We were talking about the challenges, um, but I was really excited to be back with you here to talk about Talmud. And, um, so, uh, just so I,
I wanna throw it to you to give us a little bit of context to where, where we've been over the last bunch of weeks and where we're gonna be going.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, great. The, actually the first thing that occurred to me when, when you mentioned the, the challenge of these days is that my professor from rabbinical school, Eliezer Slomovic alav haShalom whom I uh, mentioned last time, used to always say: whenever I'm depressed, I learn a little mishna and I always feel better.
So that's kind of how I feel about Talmud generally. So, um. You know, in the midst of these challenging days, uh, learning along with everything else that it does, uh, really for me creates a sense of presentness and the whole world goes away and, uh, that's really healing.
So, okay, so where are we going today? Um, uh, just to be transparent with folks, you and I have this, uh, growing Google Doc of Talmud texts that are my, and SVARA’s greatest hits, which we're adding to, and we've kind of chosen which ones to do in a very seat of the pants, you know, kind of way. And as we've we're moving from the, the text we've learned to this new set of texts, it occurs to me that they really fall into some big categories. And it's really, I'm, I'm still in the middle of figuring this out, but it's helping me clarify for myself the kinds of material in the projects that the Gemara is interested in.
And I think the first set of texts that we dealt with, and we will deal with more in this category for sure, because we're still sorting all the texts out, is that the project of what kind of human being is our Jewish system, uh, seeking to create. And I apologize, there's a little bit of noise in the background. That's my daughter, um, making some lunch. She's homeschooling, I mean, uh, zoom schooling.
So what kind of human being? And I used to think that the Jewish enterprise kept that as a constant. That was our North star. What kind of human being are we out to create? And that, that's always been the same no matter throughout history. And no matter how we have decided to achieve that kind of person. But I don't think that's true at all. I think the rabbis radically changed the kind of human being they wanted to create; from a human being who was obedient compliant, one who, um, you know, followed what someone else said is right to a human being who was questioning, challenging, uh, and so on and so forth. So they're, they're putting out their new idea in this new system for who are we trying to raise up as people.
And I think now we're entering a set of texts where they're, they're surfacing a new set of foundational principles, new values that were not at all in the old system, that they're now wanting to scoot under this new Jewish project. Um, you know, and it occurs to me in our moment in America that, you know, if, if we're gonna remake our country, we're gonna have to remake it with some very different, different foundational principles. Right? And Option 3 America of, you know, the American Dream has got to have, for example, anti-racism at the bottom. And the human being who's gonna live that out's gonna be look like a, a really different kind of human being. So I think that's what the rabbis are doing.
DAN LIBENSON: And at the bottom, by the way, just clarifying, you mean like, as a fundamental pillar?
BENAY LAPPE: That's what I mean, yeah. Thank you. That's what I mean as, as what we're standing on. Exactly. Um, and, and
I think today's text begins to show us what we're they were doing to insert some very new values and principles, um, which changed how they played out life, and the kind of human being, um, who that they were creating.
Okay. So that's where we are. We're in the tractate of Yoma. Uh
DAN LIBENSON: which before we go there, I just like, I think it's an open question. I just wanna like, reinforce this for people that are watching, listening, that it's an open question whether in the next version of Judaism, like to what extent the values that the rabbis placed at the center of Rabbinic Judaism, to what extent do those remain the values? And it may be that they do, and to what extent does simply the act is actually the act of their having changed the values from what ostensibly are in the Torah.
Um, that, that signifies to us, like we've looked at in, in the Oven of Akhnai story, for example, when we said, well, if, if what that story is saying is that the rabbis don't need to listen to the voice of God, then maybe what it's saying to us in the message in the bottle sent to us, we don't have to listen to the voice of the rabbis necessarily. That doesn't mean we should ignore them. Just because it just means we have, we have an option. Like that's, that's one of the questions on the table.
So, so we may, as we look at this particular question and the others that we'll look at in the weeks ahead, we may say, yeah, that's a great value. Maybe we've actually kind of missed - maybe like over the last two thou 1500 years, you know, that we've lost track of that value. That's actually a really cool one. Like that we should reprioritize or it could be that we say, well, just as that one, uh, was such a shift from the Torah, now we need to make a shift from that one. And that's what the rabbis wanted.
BENAY LAPPE: Agreed. And let's remember that we've been in this process of, you know, the crumble before the crash, for I'd say the last 150 years, and some people have gone, some Jewish communities have gone Option 3 in very different ways on what kind of human being they wanna create. They don't so much wanna create a challenging questioning human being. Mm-hmm. They're, they wanna revert back to the compliant, who am I to say, you know, the, the ask your rabbi if you can eat the cake
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Kind of person. Mm-hmm. And, and that's a legitimate move. They can do that. You know, I, I think it behooves all of us to be transparent about the fact that that's a move and it's a shift and, uh, it isn't the way it's always been. The human being. We've always been out to create. Um. Yeah.
So I, I think you're right. The, the lesson for the takeaway for us is, okay, what of these values that they're newly inserting into the tradition are still good? Which ones aren't so good? Which ones we're always missing that we actually know a lot about that we wanna insert?
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, good. So you wanna go to the mishna?
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Yeah. So the text we're gonna learn today is a piece of Gemara. It's a, a conversation explication fleshing, out, interrogating of a previous text, the Mishna, um, which comes from the, the earlier chronological period of the first two centuries of the common era.
And it's one of a series of mishnas in this tractate that are surfacing, um, what seems to already have. Become a common and accepted practice, or a slightly disputed, but generally, uh, accepted practice of violating certain laws in order to save a life or to prevent harm.
And they begin their conversation in the area of Yom Kippur in the previous mishna of, to the one that is gonna be on our page where they talk about the, actually the permissibility of a pregnant person. Um, and of course they use the term pregnant woman, but we know that in our time, lots of people can become pregnant. Pregnant, who don't identify as women. A pregnant person can actually eat on Yom Kippur if they feel the need to. Okay. That's, that's, doesn't say that anywhere in the Torah. And that's a severe, uh, radical shift.
And then in, in the previous mishnah, immediately previous mishna to our Gemara, they talk about someone who was bitten by a dog and um, you know, maybe the dog was rabid, now they have a disease. Maybe it's rabies from the dog. And the question is, can you eat the liver of the dog? Can you feed the liver of that rabid dog to the person, which seemed to be some sort of homeopathic cure for the disease. And we have to know that eating the liver of a dog is prohibited. Mm-hmm. Generally speaking,
DAN LIBENSON: not kosher.
BENAY LAPPE: Not kosher. So the question is, can you feed something that is not kosher to someone in the hopes of curing them? And the only dispute, and, you know. Rabbi X says, yes, Rabbi Y says no. And the only dispute is over whether it's effective. If it's an effective cure, they all agree: for sure you can eat non-kosher things. Okay, that's a radical move. Nowhere in the Torah does it say this, you can eat this, you can't eat, but if you're gonna lose your luck, no. So this is a, a big right, right? A big move.
Now comes the question, well, what if a person is sick on Shabbat? Can you give them medicine on Shabbat? And while it's not immediately obvious why that's even a question, I think the issue is that medicine was herbal, primarily for them. And what that meant was, can you go out in your backyard garden and pull up a plant? which is prohibited on Shabbat.
Generally speaking, the question is if pulling up that plant and, and maybe boiling - another violation - the herbs is, and then giving that medicine to someone which will cure them or maybe cure them. We're not even sure is that permitted on Shabbat? And the answer is, yes, it is. Even if you're not sure it's gonna cure them. So again, giant move. Remember violating Shabbat is a capital offense, right?
So the rabbis are now saying, you can now do this thing that the Torah said don't do lest you should be put to death. And it's like, if it might help someone live, go ahead and do it. Okay? That's a radical move in the Mishna. And just like Mishna culture generally, it doesn't, uh, tend to justify itself or say, we know that's what God wants of us now, in spite of the fact that in the Torah, God for sure didn't seem to want that of us for this reason,
But that's what the rabbis and the Gemara are gonna do. They're now going to say, wait a minute, where did that come from? How do you know that that's one of the five agendas of Gemara, generally speaking: what's the source for this new radical law? and that, and that launches us into today's passage.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So here we go.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. I like when you read. Okay. And I can, I can think and then I can jump in and interrupt you.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Okay. So, uh, so we're looking at this part of the mishna, which is, uh, the most, the, the, the Talmud that we're gonna be looking at is mostly on page 85, but this is on tractate Yoma, which like you said, has its central concern is Yom Kippur, uh, that it's on page 83a. There's a lot of pages on Yom Kippur. Um, and,
BENAY LAPPE: but I think, I think we could just skip the mishna and go right to the Gemara.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So, um, 'cause
BENAY LAPPE: I kind of talked out that, okay, so the
DAN LIBENSON: Mishna basically says that you can have medicine on Shabbat, uh, if it's gonna save your life.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So we're going to, uh, page 85.
Great. So the Gemara says, the Gemara tells a story: It once happened that Rabbi Yishmael, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya - I, I remind people that Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Akiva, we just talked about them. They were the two teachers of Rabbi Meir. Rabbi Yishmael was the person who was more about like the learning, the content learning. And Rabbi Akiva was more the person who was about the svara – the, you know, the, the clever innovation, you know, the really sort of new, new thinking.
Uh, and Rabbi Elizar, Ben Azaria, he was the guy who was the replacement for Rabbi Gamliel when they threw him out of his position as the head of the Yeshiva. And he was the guy that, you know, let the 700 benches come in.
So these are three significant characters walking along the road.
BENAY LAPPE: And the guy, and the guy with the cow
DAN LIBENSON: The story him did not protest his neighbors. Right. We're not gonna let him forget that. That's a, that's a, um, and um, and so, uh,
They were walking along the road, uh, and Levi HaSadar and Rabbi Yishmael, son of Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya were walking behind them. Steinsaltz tells us they were walking respectfully behind them as the younger people didn't walk next to their teachers – and the question was asked before them, or they was asked of them: From where is it derived that saving a life overrides Shabbat? Where do you get that from? Right? So they're saying that we, we have this mishnah that we know that you can, um, have the, you know, make the, like you said, make the medicine on Shabbat if it's gonna save somebody's life. But, but where do we get that from?
I would also remind you, you know, like intertextual reminders, right? Remember, this is exactly the kind of question that was asked in the story where Moses comes to Rabbi Akiva yeshiva and he is sitting in the back row and he's saying something and the student says, where'd you, where did you get that from? Right? Meaning there's, there's a concern. Like you, we can't just be making stuff up and that that seems to be a recurring theme. And it's like, no, no, no, we, it doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from somewhere. We're, we're gonna tell you.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? And, and let's remember that text over in Eruvin that we learned where the, the whole project of Rabbi Akive’s academy was teaching his students to savar their svara. And the Rashi there explains it: What that means is to, to go to learn, not just what to do, You know, we're gonna go beyond, go like this Judaism, it's what are the, what are the essences underneath the reasons for the behave, the norms, and how do you take what you have and analogize and tie some new radical thing that you don't have, but you want to insert into the tradition. It's really the, the class and how to be an innovative activist legislator.
And I think this, this entire passage is part of the instruction manual because it's technique after technique. How white - might we go from what we've gotten to Torah to this new radical thing that for sure is not only not in it, it's antithetical to it.
DAN LIBENSON: And I think as we tease those things out, right, there's the, there's the analytic question, oh, how did you actually come up with this? Like, did you actually come up with this from the Torah? You came up with it for some other reason and now you're gonna ground it in the Torah. But there, so there's, how did you actually get this idea?
Number two, how do you connect it to the Torah or to other sources if you are being like honest about it?
And then maybe the third level is like the marketing question, which is like, how are you going to tell the world where this comes from in a way that it'll be ultimately accepted? Because it's important. And it's not only for the elites to come up with some clever idea, like we actually at the end of the day have to make the people feel like they're not in violation of Judaism as they've learned it to do this thing that, that we think needs to be done.
And by the way, like I think that we're experiencing this in our day all the time now with COVID because I mean, the high holidays are coming up and, and basically everybody is about to be violating the high holidays as they understood them. Even if your understanding of it was that you, you know, come to synagogue once a year and you're, but you're gonna say yizkor for your parents or whatever, that's not gonna happen.
So everybody, almost no matter what your level of observance or your style of observance is, it's going to be violating the Judaism as they've known it. And part of the task I think of Jewish leadership today is to help people feel like that's okay. So that marketing piece is, is not insignificant. And not just stupid marketing, it's, it's, marketing may be the wrong word, but it's about helping people understand that this is okay.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right, that's right. And I would also say, how, how are you gonna sell it? But you're right, it's, it's, it's how do you bring people along?
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And say, you still have a system for holding your life together, for creating meaning, for remembering. You know, those whom you've lost for, for doing all the the human things you need to do. We still have a way to do that. Don't worry.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Don't despair, don't leave. Um, it's gonna look different, but the difference isn't a deal breaker. And it's legitimate. And it's authentic. It's, it's what, it's what all civilizations that survive do what all legal systems that survive do. Yeah. I've, I've come to not feel resentful about the sleight of hand, the wink, the, the marketing selling aspect of it. It's, it's a very important and meaningful thing.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. And, and true on a certain level. So, so we should explore that. Um, by the way, one thing I just wanted to point out about this, the way that the story is positioned, like this idea of the three rabbis and their two students walking along the way, I mean, in some ways that actually may be one of these, uh, closer to history, kind of memories in that a lot of people talk about those early, early rabbis as kind of these like, uh, analogous to the Greek philosopher circles, which were very, very tiny. And there was a, a philosopher, a couple of philosophers that would kind of hang out together and they would have a few other hangers on. And that was basically it, you know, and, and that was how it was done in those days. And so it, it actually seems, you know,
As opposed to the idea that there were these big academies, uh, right, which is probably a, a retrojection of a much later period in, in history, you know, the, the, the period that we've talked about about the Babylonian academies in the, in the fourth century, you know, that kind of area. Uh, and, um, and, and so this idea that the rabbis are walking along the road and having this conversation is probably closer to what, what it actually was.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, for sure. And it occurs to me how, how much easier it is to create new things and be radical and be courageous when you just have a few buddies to work it out with. And, and it's not a committee and it's not an institution and it's not a giant community. It's, you know, he's just thinking it up.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. What, what, what we're not gonna find at the end of the story is, is the funder asking them how they can scale up this idea?
Benay: Exactly. Oh my God.
Dan: And yet, by the way, it, it totally went to scale. Right. Everybody ba everybody accepts this idea that, uh, you can violate Jewish law in order to save lives. So, so, you know, there's something deep in there too about how change happens. Yeah. I love that. Okay. So should we, uh, go, go back into it?
Benay: Yeah.
Dan: Okay. Um, so. So, uh, so the question is, where did we get this, that, that saving a life overrides Shabbat. So the first person who answers is Rabbi Yishmael, who, right, is the kind of the law guy, right? Um,
BENAY LAPPE: and, and let's, let's give away a tiny bit of the text and say, on this walk, they're going to entertain six different possibilities for how we can go from here to there. In other words, how we can root this radical innovation in the tradition as we received it? Where exactly in the Torah? And how can we make the case that it's here in the Torah, not there in the Torah or there in the Torah? that we know that God wants us to violate even Shabbat, uh, to save a life. That that's the, that's the question. And we're gonna have six different answers to that question.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So first is Rabbi Yishmael. Who answers and says: That the, it's stated, the Torah says if a thief is to be, if a, if a thief is found breaking in and is struck so that he dies, there shall be no blood guiltiness for guiltiness for him. Meaning that if a thief is breaking into your house, then you kill him. You're not guilty of murder. Uh, that's from the book of Exodus.
And, uh, Rabbi Yishmael says, if this is true for a thief where there's uncertainty, whether he comes to take your money or to take lives, meaning he might just, he might not be there to kill anybody. He might just there, be there to rob, you know, take your, your property. And nevertheless, the Torah says that if you kill him, uh, uh, you’re, you’re not guilty – Even though the Torah also says that bloodshed, uh, renders the land impure since it's stated about a murder. And you shall not defile the land in the Book of Numbers. So, so if you, if you murder somebody that's defiling the whole land, that's a very terrible thing. If you're only doing that because somebody is there to steal your property and not even to kill you, and that's allowed, and, and you're, you're not guilty of murder if you do that. Uh.
And by the way, you know, right, and I should have noted that not only does it defile the land, it also makes God leave the, the people. Because the Torah also says in, uh, that, that, uh, in that same verse, in the midst of, of which I dwell for either the Lord dwell in the midst of the children of Israel. So if you, if you defile the land, then you're also basically defiling God's place of, of where God is, and God will depart. That's really, really bad. Uh,
And nevertheless, the homeowner’s permitted to save himself at the cost of the thief's life, right? Meaning to save himself because the thief might be there to kill him, and you're allowed to kill him. Then a fortiori, that's a concept of kal v’chomer, which I don't think we've talked about. So we could say a word about it. But then, uh, this lo through this logical inference process called kal v’chomer which basically means if X is true in an easy case, then all the more, is it true in a harder case, uh, that, um, that, that, uh, that's saving a life overrides Shabbat. So, so if it meaning that to, uh, sorry, I should, should have said the opposite. So if it's true in the harder case, then it's, uh, true in the, in the easier case, right?
That meaning to, to kill somebody and defile the land and make God depart from the people is a, uh, really terrible thing. The worst thing that we can imagine. And if you're allowed to kill somebody in order where, where that might be the result, then all the more so if you kill somebody, uh, or, uh, sorry, I've got this mixed up.
Benay: It's complicated,
Dan: right? It, so let's, let's get the logic, uh, uh, right again, so, okay. You wanna say it?
Benay: You, you wanna keep going?
Dan: No, you can, you can do it because I've got myself mixed up.
BENAY LAPPE: No. Okay. Lemme see if I got it. It's, it's really complicated. Okay. So if this thief is burrowing under your kitchen floor, and you see the thief like. Half in your kitchen, you're not sure if he's coming for your samovar or he is coming to kill you. You actually don't know. He is a thief. He's an intruder, right? The Torah says you can kill him. Well, gosh, that's surprising because if it turns out he was only a thief, you've now killed a thief. You're not allowed to kill a thief, right?
You are allowed to kill someone who's coming to kill you. You can kill him first to prevent him from killing you. But the Torah says, surprisingly, you can actually, with impunity, go ahead and kill this intruder, even though he might turn out to be a thief. Right? And under other circumstances, had you known that, that would've been tantamount to murder, which is so awful, makes God go away, defiles the earth and so on.
But here you can - you can kill this intruder. Because maybe, maybe you're gonna, maybe he's a murderer. He himself is seeking to kill you and you'd be saving your life. Okay. If that's true, if you can kill a life that might actually be an innocent life to save a life your own, for sure, you can do something less severe. You can quote unquote, “violate”, make a, a less severe violation of Torah to save a life. And violating Shabbat is actually considered, even though it's also a capital offense, it's less severe than murder because murder is even worse because it defiles the land and God leaves.
Okay. So, so that kind of deduction is called a kal v’chomer. I'll give an example of a kal v’chomer so people understand how this deduction works and it's, it's merely a logical deduction, even though the Torah understands it to be this, if you make this logical deduction from something in the Torah, the conclusion you come up with your deduction is considered directly from the Torah, which is interesting. Okay.
So let's say you, you have a bad back and you go to your doctor. You say doctor, you know, I have this sore back every time I whatever. The doctor says, okay, I don't want you wearing a backpack because it's gonna put strain on your disc. Your disc is dislocated. Don't wear a backpack. That's my prescription.
Okay? You go home and the question is, what can I know absolutely for sure that the doctor never said based on what he did say? Well, what about the question? Can I move my refrigerator from my kitchen to my basement? Would that be okay with the doctor? Everybody would know, of course not! I can bet my life that the doctor would say, no, you absolutely can't do it. Even though I, the doctor never said anything about a refrigerator. Because if a carrying a backpack, which is relatively light is gonna be harmful, I know from my life experience that something heavier is gonna be even more risky for me. So I can know that for sure. That's a kal v’chomer.
DAN LIBENSON: And and what you were saying about the way that the rabbis understand the kal v’chomer is from the Torah is that I could go to my spouse and say, sorry, I can't move the refrigerator 'cause my doctor told me not to move a refrigerator. Meaning that because I've gotten there through a logical deduction, it's as if the doctor said it to me.
BENAY LAPPE: That's exactly right. That's right. I love that.
DAN LIBENSON: So now
BENAY LAPPE: your, your wife can blame you, your doctor, and not say, Hey Dan, you're just being lazy.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, exactly. That's a good one. Um, and, and, and just, and,
And kal v’chomer Right. One of the things that, uh, Rabbi Yishmael is famous for is these principles of, of interpretation that are these kind of more basic, you know, straightforward ones and, and I, that's one of them, right?
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. It is in fact, the siddur, a traditional siddur, every single one of them has in the Shacharit, the morning service, the 13 Exegetical Principles of Rabbi Yishmael that he came up with - one of which is kal v’chomer. This kind of deduction through which we go from the imperfect, inadequate tradition we have to the possibly unrecognizable better tradition that we wanna make.
And I've always thought it was really cool that these are in the siddur, that every day the average Jew, this isn't like a, a law school textbook. It's the most popular in the sense of populous document we have. It's kind of cool that every person who's doing their morning davening is kind of becoming a creative legal mind and, and being trained up in the mechanisms of innovation. That's neat, right?
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. But, but I'll also remind that, that when we were learning about Rabbi Yishmael versus Rabbi Akiva - that even though these principles can, and are often used to derive things from the Torah and kind of claim that they're based in the Torah. When you might say that's a bit of a stretch, they're still less radical than the more radical moves that somebody like Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Meir makes.
BENAY LAPPE: Absolutely. And Rabbi Yishmael wouldn't publicly say that if you use a kal v’chomer - what, what he would publicly say is if you use these principles, whatever you come up with is kind of within the bounds, legitimately within the bounds of what the Torah says because his principle was dib’ra Torah keel’shon b’nai adam the Torah speaks in human language and what it says is what it means, and you can't derive something that's contrary and obviously opposite of what it says because, Don't play those games!
It, it, it wasn't here to be an Rorschach test, you know, to, to give you literary freedom to make up anything you want. (side mouth:) Rabbi Akiva… that, you know, you can only go so far.
But the truth is, he, his mechanisms do allow, and he, I think would have endorsed, um, moves that really did go beyond the binding of the Torah content wise.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Okay. So, uh, should we move on to the next, the next, okay.
BENAY LAPPE: So, great. So let's just summarize. That's our first proof. We have our first attempt at finding a source in the tradition in the Torah for the idea that you can violate Shabbat to save a life. It's - I think it's pretty reasonable. Don't you think? I don't think it's too really super farfetched.
DAN LIBENSON: No, not at all. I mean, it seems, it seems very reasonable. Uh, you know, it's, it's interesting that they spend a lot of, a lot of ink, you know, because the Talmud is, tends to be kind of, uh, brief in a lot of, it's, a lot of it's stories and a lot of it's reasoning that they actually spend so much, so much ink on this.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. But, okay, so that's the first attempt. That's Rabbi Yishmael's volley.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So, and
BENAY LAPPE: now another one of the guys speaks up, says: I got a better idea.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So, and it's Rabbi Akiva, right? The, the more, uh, the more radical one. Um, okay. So he says, uh,
Rabbi Akiva answers and says: that it is stated in the Torah. If a man comes purposefully upon his neighbor to slay him with guile, meaning that here we're talking about a intentional murderer, that, that that has killed somebody, you shall take him from my altar, that he may die. Right?
Meaning that even if he, he goes to the altar and holds onto the altar. There are stories about this with, uh, one of King David's sons that if you, there was this idea that if you hold onto the altar, that's kind of like a safe zone and nobody can, can, can do anything to you if you're holding onto the altar. And, uh, and here, uh, the Book of Exodus is saying, yeah, but if it's a murderer, then you can take him away and, and, uh, sort of do what you need to do to him.
Benay: Great.
Dan: Um, but one should not take him from
BENAY LAPPE: I think we better read the interstitial explanation. Okay
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, okay. So the, so the phrase, uh, Steinsaltz says: the phrase “taken from my altar” implies that if the murder is a priest and comes to perform the service, one does not wait for him to do so, but takes him to execution immediately.
Benay: okay.
Dan: But one should not take him from on top of my altar, meaning if he already began the service and is in the midst of it, when does not take him down from the altar immediately, but instead allows him to finish his service. And Rabba bar bar Chana said that Rabbi Yochanan said they taught only that a priest is not removed from the altar in order to execute him for murder, but to,
BENAY LAPPE: to ex, to execute him for murder. You can't remove a priest while he's performing his service because you think he might be a murderer and taking him to the court right might result in him being executed that you can't do, but.
DAN LIBENSON: But If, if, uh, but if it's in order to preserve a life, so the, for example, how, how would it be to preserve a life? Uh, you know, because if, uh, Steinsaltz explains that if, um, if, uh, the, uh, uh, priest had been a witness to a murder or to a non murder or guess, or you know, I guess to a murder, whatever, and a witness and knows that a certain person who would be convicted of murder was actually innocent and, uh, can come to be a witness to, to, to the innocence of this person and thereby would save his life, that you can, uh, remove him even in the, in the middle of the service in order to. Go and, and, uh, save that life by, by being a witness,
BENAY LAPPE: right? Even if you don't know, as the text says, even if you don't know whether there's substance or not substance to his words. In other words, even if you're not sure his testimony is going to be accepted, maybe it's not valid. Maybe he can't prove that he was there. Maybe there isn't a second witness. Maybe his memory is so, um, fuzzy that they can't accept his testimony and it isn't going to eventually exonerate the defendant.
Even if you're not sure of that, if there's a possibility that as a witness to this alleged murder, his words might save the life of an innocent defendant, you can take this priest, you can interrupt the Shabbat Sacrifice, you can interrupt a sacrifice in or any, yeah. Mm-hmm. In order to do that. Mm-hmm. Okay.
So that establishes that you can do something pretty significant, because let's remember that the Shabbat sacrifice is itself overriding Shabbat. The, the temple service on Shabbat overrides normal Shabbat prohibitions: It takes precedence over Shabbat itself. So if you can interrupt the temple service to possibly save a life, Shabbat, which is sort of a lesser, uh, the pro, the, the prohibition of violating Shabbat as a lesser prohibition, certainly you can do that.
DAN LIBENSON: So, so just to read that part, that, that, um, that in the, in the Talmud it says, just as this priest about whom there is uncertainty, whether there are substance to his words of testimony or whether there is no substance to his words - Where just as he has taken from the temple service in order to save a life and the temple service overrides Shabbat, so to a fortiori, kal v’chomer, saving life overrides Shabbat. So that's exactly what you just said.
I mean, the one thing that I would say about Rabbi Akiva here is like, this seems to me like a, a second order, kal v’chomer, a fortiori, thing, because I think where I was going initially was that what the Torah really means. I, I think in that, that thing about taking somebody from the altar is what I was saying at the beginning, that
Benay: Yes, yes.
Dan: The idea was that the altar is this like home base where, you know, and so the, the, the Torah, what the Torah is saying is if there's a murderer there, you can actually rip him away from the altar and execute him. Um,
This whole idea that, oh, no, no, that's not what it means. What it means is that it was of course talking about a priest, because who else would be anywhere near an altar, but a priest? And what does it mean that he's on the altar? Not that he's a murderer, but that he's holding onto the altar for safety. But no, that he is just involved with the priestly's service. That itself is a, is, you know, I would say comfortably a complete and total misread of the Torah. That's not the case that the Torah is talking about, but it's therefore, so,
So the first step is that Rabbi Akiva's misreading what this Torah is about here. Then he is
Benay: purposely, purposely,
Dan: purposely, and then he is doing a standard, kal v’chomer which is totally fine. I mean, like, yeah. If that's what it's about, right then Yeah, you're right. Then the reason, I mean, of course the Temple service is more important than Shabbat. So if you can stop the Temple service in order to save a life, then of course you can stop Shabbat in order to save a life. But that's not what it is about.
So what's interesting to me is like why, you know, for example, like why Rabbi Akiva? Like is it just a game of like a game of one upsmanship here, you know, where really like, I mean, we'll see, we'll talk about it later, but really, Rabbi Yishmael's, uh, kal v’chomer was fine. You know, like that, that's an actual case from the Torah. Rabbi Akiva makes up a fake case from the Torah and you know, says, well, my kal v’chomer better. You know,
BENAY LAPPE: you know, you reminded me of something I learned, um, from one of my teachers in rabbinical school, Rabbi Joel, uh, Roth. And he taught us about how tshuvas are written, how legal response, uh, answering, uh, a question are written.
He says, you always want to include explanations that you're going to reject for the claim you're trying to make. Because if you don't make them, if you don't make them explicit and say why those are bad, um, explanations or why those don't actually contradict the conclusion or, or why those actually do contradict the conclusion, you're gonna come up with – someone in the future can come along and say, oh, but you never mentioned this, and therefore your conclusion is invalid because I, I have this other case that you never even thought of that contradicts your claim.
So I think what Rabbi Akiva is doing here is. Or what the editor of the Talmud is doing and including Rabbi Akiva is he's saying, lest you think that the only me kal v’chomer kind of mechanism at your disposal is a straight up kosher kal v’chomer, don't think that you can also make, you know, this winky Winky kind of kal v’chomer - here comes, um, the laying out of this additional valid procedure for going from what you, not what you do have to, what you don't have, but what you never had to what you don't have. So that's also kosher,
I think is what Rabbi Akiva is saying. You can also tell a story about what the Torah says that isn't true and then use that as your foundation. To learn out something that you don't have. Uh, and that, and I think that's, it's very Rabbi Akiva. And, um, and I think what he's saying essentially is you actually need that. You need the ability to, you know, as the, the Supreme Court did to say, you know, in the “Penumbra of the Emanations” You know, the right to privacy was always there.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, right.
BENAY LAPPE: And since that was always there, the right to an abortion. Right. You can easily learn that.
DAN LIBENSON: Although, although one of the criticisms of the Roe v Wade opinion by liberals, by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, right. For example, it's been that it didn't, it wasn't the best to hang it on Penumbras and Emanations because that's too shaky. And you could have, you could have rested it on, on equality, uh, which is a much more, uh, strong foundation and uh, you know. That would've been, it would've been stronger. So, you know,
BENAY LAPPE: it it in your, I get that and it reminds me of a conversation, um, that I had, I won't name names, but with one of the authors of the teshuvot the legal response on the gay issue, 20, gosh, over 20 years ago in the Conservative Movement. And what he said to me was: if I write the truth, if I write an argument that makes sense, nobody's gonna vote for it. No one on the law committee is going to be willing to vote this into law. I have to make an argument, which is actually one that turns my stomach and is inadequate, but will get me to the result I want, Because that's the only thing that I'm gonna be able to pass through the committee. and, you know, I get it.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. All right, so should we go to the next explanation? Yeah. Yeah. Next guy. Well, there were, there were three rabbis walking together. So the next one is Rabbi Elazar ben Azaria.
Benay: With the cow.
Dan: With the cow. Uh, and, uh, he says, uh, he answers and says: just as the mitzvah of circumcision, which rectifies only one of the 248 limbs of the body. I think by limbs they mean, you know, parts. Uh, but, um, so just as that override Shabbat meaning you can have a bris on Shabbat, uh, even though there are actions that you're doing on the bris, like, you know, cutting things and whatever that are not normally allowed in Shabbat, right? Uh,
So if you can have a bris on Shabbat in order to fix one of the limbs of the body. So too kal v’chomer, a fortiori, saving one's whole body, which is entirely involved in mitzvot, uh, overrides Shabbat. So that's the, that that's his, uh, that's his take.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. And at this point, I think the editor of the Talmud wants us to start chuckling. Yeah. I'm always wondering where did, where did the chuckles start and where do the out and out like bursts of laughter come in?
Um, yeah. I, I, I think, I think this is creative, super creative and a little bit comical, right? The idea that because you can draw blood, I think is essentially the problem because you can draw blood on Shabbat for the purpose of a bris, which normally you can't do, you can't normally draw blood in Shabbat and you're doing it to quote unquote save one of the whatever, 248 or however many, I forget how many, one of the limbs of the body. For sure. You can violate. Shabbat to save every limb of the body, i.e. to save a life.
It's, it's, it's clever. It's funny, you know, I think the reaction had to have been: oh, that's a good one. That's a good one.
DAN LIBENSON:It's a good one because, I mean, it's a good one. And that, it's funny because, um, I mean, you can read what he's saying is actually this, but the reason why you can't, why you, why you perform the, I mean, there's, I don't know exactly how, how you can define the reason, but like, like a circumcision. It's not that you're allowed to do it on Shabbat because it's, um, you know, a medical procedure that that's very important for a part of the body. You know, it's because it's a particular, it's, it's, it happens to be involved in the body, but it's really a, like a, a covenantal responsibility or you know, whatever that you, that kind of overrides Shabbat because it's, It's, you know, the covenant itself.
Like, I don't know exactly if there's explanations in the Talmud about why you can do a circumcision on Shabbat, but like, it just seems like it's very strained here to say, like, if you can do a circumcision on Shabbat, that's just a little tiny piece of the body, then all the more so for the whole body, you know, because the whole body is necessary for the covenant, which is of course is true. But it just seems like a, a lot of twisted, you know, strange reasoning
BENAY LAPPE: You're right. And, and you reminded me that they could have made a better, more logical, less comical explanation for why circumcision can be done in Shabbat. Because not doing it, you know, it, it's the father/parent's obligation to make sure the boy-identified child has the circumcision, and that is a capital offense not to, uh, right?
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So they could have actually made a more logical argument. And I, and I think you're right, that. They're making a more comical argument to set forth, I think another pathway that is now gonna be recognized as legitimate for not only going from what you have to what you need, but going from what you don't have to what you need.
And, uh, this is some new, new twist of creativity, new, new twist of imagination.
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh,
BENAY LAPPE: like re I don't, I don't even know how to, how to name exactly what this is doing.
DAN LIBENSON: Like, I'm not sure. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out the, like, the dynamic here in terms of like the, the one-upmanship or you know, what's going on.
But the, what's interesting is the next one, now we start to move away from that original story where you had these three rabbis and their, and their, uh, and their two students, uh, along for the ride. And now you're talking about, um, later rabbis on the same question, right?
BENAY LAPPE: Yes.
DAN LIBENSON: Um,
BENAY LAPPE: so, so we now have the editor of the Talmud expanding the story of the rabbis walking on the way to other rabbis later who continued that conversation, and presumably were coming up with better, more convincing, more effective, more lasting, I don't know what um, arguments. It's, it's sort of like what, what Ruth Bader Ginsburg then did to Roe v. Wade, you know what? That, that wasn't a great rationale or mechanism. We should have done it this way.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. And, you know, that's exactly what's happening. That's interesting because that's exactly, you know, right. Uh, Roe v. Wade was decided in 1970 something, I think. And, and, um, and you know, it's this very, it's this, it's actually from a line of cases that had this whole thing with the Penumbras and Emanations and like Right. All that means is they couldn't find, they couldn't find a specific place in the Constitution that kind of gave a right to abortion. And so they, they, and it started with, uh, questions about the rights to contraception and, and it sort of flows from that line of cases.
And they're saying, well, yeah, but there's these like. We have a right to, to to a freedom of speech and a right to this, and out of that comes like a kind of a right to privacy, sort of emerges out of the emanations from all these rights. And so we can kind of see a very blurry right that kind of explains like, well why do we have a right to privacy? Why do we have a right to, uh, sorry, why do we have a right to speech and religion to this? Well, because there's this larger right of privacy that kind of, you know, you, you have to see it there. You can't understand these rights any other way.
And that's very strange reasoning. 'cause you could also say, well no, this is just the rights that the founders thought were important. So they said, this one, this one, this one, they didn't see any larger, uh, emanation or right. Like, that wasn't how they were thinking. They were just giving very specific rights and any other, you want any other rights, you gotta get the constitution to be amended or at least congress to make a law or whatever.
So, so that was how it was and that's where Roe v. Wade leaves it for whatever reason that it went down that line of cases. And then years later, you have somebody like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and, and, uh, many, many law professors who say, well, I can give, I, yeah, look, that's how, that's currently the law of the land of the Supreme Court. It's actually very shaky, shaky. And we're worried that eventually some smart, you know, conservative lawyer's gonna come along and, and show the Supreme Court or the, or the court's composition's gonna change and they're gonna expose the shakiness of this reasoning and undo all of, all of that work and, and all of these rights.
And, and so, um, now, so we'd better give it a, a, a more solid ground, you know, so, so there's been a lot of work over the last decades in law schools and, uh, about can we find a more solid basis for the right to abortion?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: That's what's going on here, perhaps.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I think so. And look, looking at it that way, it, and knowing where this text is gonna end, I don't wanna give away the ending, but it makes me realize that maybe a better, better and better, um, mechanisms are also gonna be seen as better because they can also root other, um, new norms that we want in our system beyond just the one in question beyond pikuach nefesh. And I think where they land does that precisely. So I'm wondering if that's why it's gonna be understood to be better. But we'll get there when we see it.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. And by the way, we should probably at this stage tell our, our viewers that this is a two part episode. So, uh, you know, that, you know, you might have to tune in next week for that, denouement, that, okay.
So we'll go to the next one. Uh, rabbi, rabbi, um, Rabbi Yosei son of Rabbi Yehuda says that it is stated again in the Torah: But keep my Shabbatot. Um, uh, and um. One might have thought that this applies to everyone in all circumstances. Therefore, the verse states “But” - a term that restricts and qualifies, it implies that there are circumstances where one must keep Shabbat and circumstances where one must desecrate it in order, such as in order to save a life.
BENAY LAPPE: So again, I think, I think the volume of the laughter and the chuckles increases.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Right, right. But this, so, so this is like, not what we were just talking about yet we are not at the Ruth Bader Ginsburg stage yet, where we're trying to get a better, we're actually getting other rabbis actually pushing it even more absurd. You know, like, just saying like, how, you know, I'm gonna explain to this. It's all I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna rest this whole thing on the word, “but”
Benay: Right.
Dan: You know, on a particular interpretation of the word “but”
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. Exactly. And, and now that you mention it, I think that the absurdity is increasing. It's not like the Ruth Bader Ginsburg argument. Is going to be the one that is the most obvious or reasonable or rational.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: It's the actual opposite. But again, we'll get there when we get there.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, yeah. I'm not sure about we, but that'll be, that'll be an interesting, I mean, yes, I would say like yes and no.
Look, I mean, the, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg argument is also, I, I, you know, I wouldn't say absurd, but it's also strained in a certain way. It's just uhhuh strained in a more acceptable way, you know? Right. Meaning it's like, yeah. It might be a strain to, especially if you are thinking about the intent of the, of the authors of the amendments. But we talked some weeks ago about how, you know, the right to, um, uh, you know, like the, the trans, the transgender cases are resting on this “because of sex” discrimination, you know, the same sex marriage kind of cases, right. That say, you know, but I'm being discriminated against because I am a woman who loves a woman, you know, uh, and, and et cetera. And, and so that's because of sex, right?
Well, that's true, but it's not what the found- framers of that amendment or of that law, in this case, the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. It's not really what they meant. We all know that. Yeah. Uh, but it's a more solid 'cause it's kind of, it does work from a linguistic standpoint, so it's more solid than penumbras and examinations, which are not even claiming to be based on texts.
Um, so, you know, it could be, could be a version of that. Yes. But, but here we're still in, in like absurdist, territorial, although, I mean, there is this one. Element here where at least it's based on text, right? At least now what he's saying is like, yeah, no, no, it's a word. But you know, like, why would you say? But it's not some logical reasoning, it's just, you know, well how do I interpret this, this word?
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. And, and the rabbis make a lot of the word, but uhhuh, whenever they occur, it's like, it's this red flag that jumps up for them, especially those in the Rabbi Akiva camp
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh,
BENAY LAPPE: who are willing to make, um, interpretations that actually contradict the Torah. And are looking for, in my opinion, in my opinion, are looking for pretexts in the text to hook those, um, radical deviations from, to, to bring Jane Kanarek and and others back into our conversation. They would say it differently. They would say the rabbis really were doing what they believed - They, they authentically believed that they were s they were teasing out, uh, God's intent
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: In making a lot of the word “but” and saying: oh, the word, but God, put your, God didn't need to put the word, but in God could have just said, remember my sabbaths, God didn't need to say, but, and, and God must have meant there to be some limitation implied here, this must be the limit. Right. I can't believe that.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, and, and modern biblical scholars would tell you, uh, that's, that the rabbis didn't know, and no casual reader would understand that that's just how they wrote in those days. You know, that that doesn't actually mean, “but” in that sense, you know, it's just, it's just was the way that sentences were constructed in ancient Hebrew, you know?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Right. Okay, so, so the, the mechanism of this proof, this attempted proof is okay. God said, “remember my Sabbaths” you that looks like. All of them, but the word “but” means, “but not when it is going to entail possibly losing a life.” Those are the ones where you don't remember my Sabbath or observe my sabbaths. That's when it's okay to violate, quote unquote violate Shabbat. In this case, it isn't considered a violation
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: In order to save a life. Okay. That's, it's clever.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. I mean, by the way, what's, one of the things that's interesting is just that like, uh, and this is a, a form of reasoning that in like, you know, the Torah knows how to say things explicitly and does say things explicitly. What's interesting is the idea that like, yeah, you know, like, it, it could have said this in two more words, you know, or three, right? But not when - save a lot. But it didn't, but we're gonna interpret this. But, so it's not that you can't interpret the, but that way, I mean, maybe you could,
But it's, it, it does become absurd, you know, when you realize that there are plenty of cases where the Torah wants us to learn a particular limitation on the law and says so explicitly. Um,
BENAY LAPPE: abso- absolutely.
DAN LIBENSON: So let's look at the last one before the, the final one, because that'll be for next week. But let's, let's look at the ones that kind of don't make it in the end. The, the last version of that Okay. Is, um:
Rabbi Yonatan ben Yosef, who says, um, he says: uh, for it is that is stated in the Torah and Exodus for it is sacred to you. This implies that Shabbat is given into your hands and you are not given to it to die in account of Shabbat. – Like it is sacred to you, not you are sacred to it.
Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya said: it is stated, and the children of Israel shall keep Shabbat to observe Shabbat. The Torah said desecrate one Shabbat on his behalf, so he will observe many Shabbatot.
BENAY LAPPE: you know, I'm now realizing then that we should have put a paragraph break
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh. I
BENAY LAPPE: think we, we conflated these two as if they were one, right?
I think these are two proofs.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: So we'll, uh, we'll I'll add that to the,
BENAY LAPPE: okay. So, um,
DAN LIBENSON: so let's look first in at, uh, Rabbi Yonatan ben Yosef, who says, he's quoting the Torah saying it is sacred to you, which implies that, that it is sacred to you, not your sacred to it. So if it's gonna cau, if Shabbat's gonna cause you to die, you've got it wrong.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. That's it. And that, that's the beginning and the end of his proof. So he's, he's quote unquote “drashing” those words to you. He's saying, you know what, there those words seem to be superfluous. And one thing we know is: God's not a blabbermouth. Anything that looks superfluous isn't, it's there to teach you something unique and additional because it could have just said that Shabbat is sacred. Period.
No, “say to you” means it's sacred. It it, it's given to you to decide how to reasonably deploy it and observe it, and you are not subordinate to it. And therefore, right.
DAN LIBENSON: And this is, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's not likely that that's what it means, but it's not, at least it's not using some overly twisted uh, you know, form of reasoning. It's just using a kind of a, a clever, uh, you know, language interpretation. Meaning in some ways, like, I don't,
I think maybe the fulcrum of the absurdity is, uh. Know is, um, I, I'm just trying to think like, where, where is the, where does it, it it gets to its most absurd, you know, is that, is that with, uh, Rabbi Elezar ben Azaria or Rabbi Yosei son of Rabbi Yehuda with the “but” – you know, but like, it, it, it, from my perspective, it, it gets like more absurd and then less absurd, you know? And, you know, in the sense that it's, it's still absurd, you know, meaning any of these readings are stretches absurd may be the wrong reason, but like, they're stretches, but they're stretches in a slightly different way.
And, and I think Rabbi Yishmael's in, in some ways is the, is the, is is not absurd in one way. And the ultimate one from, from, um, from, uh, Shmuel is, is going to be also not absurd in a different way, but, but both are strained a little, you know, and, and actually probably the Shmuel one is more strained. Um.
So, yeah. So the second to last, and we'll just conclude on this one, is Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya, who, who said in from also quoting Exodus that, uh, the Torah says the children of Israel shall keep Shabbat. And, uh, you know, I, I think his point is that basically, uh, that the main commandment here is that the children, we want people to be keeping Shabbat. So it's a kind of a utilitarian argument. The more Shabbat keeping the better. So if we can keep a person alive so that they can, they can. Fulfill, you know, hundreds more shabbats in their life than that is, on balance, a good trade off from desecrating one Shabbat.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I think this is really creative too. If the idea is I can't do what you want me to do, God if I'm dead. Mm-hmm. So if you want me to fulfill this, I have to do whatever I need to do to stay alive, even if it means once violating this so that I can, in all subsequent weeks for God willing, a long lifetime carry out this command.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. I mean, it's actually, it's actually seeing the goal, it's seeing, it's actually, it's actually quite good reading. It says that the, the, the goal is to observe Shabbat as a concept, meaning that, not this Shabbat, but to observe Shabbat. So if I can, if I live longer, I'm gonna observe a lot more Shabbat in like with a capital S then if I die, just because I observed this Shabbat, so it's, it's, it's a, it's re understanding that it's, it's, I don't know, quite the right language. It's understanding Shabbat to be a larger concept rather than a particular day this week. Right. You know? And I actually think that's quite beautiful.
BENAY LAPPE: It is, it is beautiful. And in my opinion for sure, that's not what it meant.
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh
BENAY LAPPE: for sure. What it meant in biblical times was keep Shabbat period.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Whatever happens, even if you die. I mean, we know that, you know, the, the, the genius of the Maccabees, their innovation was fighting on Shabbat, even though you weren't supposed to, you were supposed to let yourself get shmaysed. And, you know, lose the battle, lose the war, even if fighting on Shabbat was necessary because you weren't supposed to fight in Shabbat. You know, you're supposed to lose if that, if it came to that. That's how we understood the Torah. And it was, that's pretty clear what it must have meant.
And, and the Maccabees innovation was saying, screw that, I'm gonna stay alive and I am gonna fight in Shabbat and that's what I think God wants of us. And it, it wasn't until the rabbis hundreds of years later who actually took what the Maccabees did and put and put it in our Mishnah. So there's something interesting about, you know, what the activists on the front lines do that becomes… It enters the legal system and the legislative process much later, not the other way around.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, I, I would say though that Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya, uh, way of going about it, this, this last one before the final one, it just feels to me like that's, that's the kind of reasoning that like, feels like what people, like, I can imagine the Maccabees is saying that like, why should we, why should we fight on Shabbat? Because this is not about this Shabbat, it's about Shabbat. It's about doing the most observance that we possibly can. That means we have to stay alive, so of course we can, uh, you know, break the law right now in order to stay alive so that we can observe the law forever more.
That just feels like very common human reasoning. Yeah. It's actually like the least quote rabbinic in the sense of like, you know, that we might stereotype the rabbis as this, like, you know, totally over, you know, crazy type of reasoning that like we see from Rabbi Akiva, for example, and, you know, for better or worse, I, I think there's like, there's something to it where we say like, yeah, okay, this was, this seems, this seems reasonable to me.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, agreed. But we have to all, and for us pikuach nefesh 2000 years into a tradition where it's assumed that, of course we as Jews are going to violate a law. I know there are three exceptions, but leaving that aside - to save life, it's so second nature to us that we don't realize how radical that idea was in biblical times.
It was not given to the individual to say, oh, but for me it seems ridiculous to lose my life by going following the letter of the law. Of course, the tradition, of course, God wants that kind of svara was not at all, um, sort of recognized as legitimate.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: It, it's only in the rabbinic reshaping of the tradition that they say that that kind of svara is exactly what we are allowed to do. That was the radical shift.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Well, so next week we're gonna pick up on this, uh, story by looking at the one that ultimately carries the day, which we haven't looked at yet, and to talk through why, why that's the one, and, and what we can take from there in terms of starting to understand what the rabbis are doing here, what their project is.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And just as a teaser, next week's text, the final attempt at finding a source for pikuach nefesh is going to give us what for me is the ultimate, um, the ultimate litmus test, the ultimate guide, the ultimate North star of how should I be living my life and what is it that the tradition really wants for me? So it's a, it's a biggie.
DAN LIBENSON: All right. Well I'm looking forward to it. I'll see you next week.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, thanks Dan.
DAN LIBENSON: Bye. Bye.
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