The Oral Talmud: Episode 27 - Who’s To Say Your Blood is Redder? (Sanhedrin 74a)
SHOW NOTES
“What's inherent in racism is the idea that you are judging groups of people in terms of value one against another. And I think that's precisely what's underneath – that's the svara essentially – about why you can't murder someone else to save your own life. Because you cannot say: I know my life is more valuable than that person's.” - Benay Lappe
Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.
This week, Dan & Benay continue to unpack the exceptions to the rabbinic declaration that we should violate *almost* any Torah commandment to save a life or avoid being killed ourselves. The main focus this week is that we should accept being killed if the alternative is murdering another innocent person. We work our way into the fundamental principles which drive these exceptions, and show how these fundamental ideas map onto the most present issues today. We’ll continue the conversation next week!
What is the difference between killing and murder? How do we derive broader ideas from cases in Talmud? How does that practice diverge from attempts to protect queer Jews by reinterpreting Leviticus? What would we put on the “you can absolutely violate this law if someone will die otherwise” list when it comes to American Law? How do words change their meaning? Why does Steinsaltz translate svara as “logical reasoning”? How can we determine the fundamental principle under a rule, and not get stuck on the words of the rule itself?
This week’s text: “Nitza’s Attic - The Exceptions, cont.” (Sanhedrin 74a - Part 3)
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] For a discussion of Conscientious Objection which considers our sugya, explore “Military Ethics in Jewish Law” by Michael J. Broyde (2004, pdf on his website), and for more on the subject, the book “Conscientious Objectors in Israel: Citizenship, Sacrifice, Trials of Fealty” by Erica Weiss (2014, on JSTOR)
[2] Gilui Ariyot, “Uncovering Nakedness,” is a category of Forbidden sexual relations in Judaism, found in Leviticus 18:6 (Wikipedia entry)
[3] Show Notes editor Olivia Devorah here to say that I couldn’t find the place in Talmud which Benay was referring to where mishkav zachar “[a man] lying with a man” is included explicitly in the list of “Idol Worship, Uncovering Nakedness, and Murder/Spilling Blood” (Explore examples of this list elsewhere in Talmud on Sefaria)
[4] For Demons in the Bathroom, explore Berakhot 62a, Gittin 70a, and Shabbat 67a
[5] Find Justice Anthony Kennedy’s full opinion for the majority on the Lawrence v. Texas case (Wikipedia) when Sodomy Laws were deemed unconstitutional (on Justia)
[6] For more on Rosh Hashana/Yom Teruah as a Day of Joy/Day of Trumpets which express joy, read “Rosh Hashanah: The Original Meaning of Blowing a Teruah” by Rabbi Shawn Ruby (on TheTorah dot com)
[7] An article on the bugle call “Reveille” (Wikipedia)
[8] “"The Trolley Problem" in Judaism” by Yehuda Shurpin (2019, on Chabad’s website)
[9] Meises is the Yiddish Plural of Ma’aseh (such as in the phrase bubbe meises, old wives’ tales). Jewish Virtual Library has a fine article on Ma’aseh as precedent.
[10] Rabbi Yitz Greenberg on the equality, infinite value, and uniqueness, of every human being (youtube)
[11] Ibram X. Kendi writes, “A racist idea is any idea that suggests one racial group is inferior or superior to another racial group in any way. Racist ideas argue that the inferiorities and superiorities of racial groups explain racial inequities in society,” from “Ibram X. Kendi defines what it means to be an antiracist” (June 2020, Penguin Books)
[12] “Shaming someone in public is tantamount to murder” is the topic of Bava Metzia 58b
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DAN: This is The Oral Talmud - Episode 27: “Who’s To Say Your Blood is Redder?” Welcome to The Oral Talmud, a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. I’m Dan Libenson…
BENAY: …and I’m Benay Lappe.
DAN: The Oral Talmud is our weekly deep dive study partnership, in which we try to figure out how voices from the Talmud – voices from 1500 to 2000 years ago – can help us think in new ways about Judaism today.
This week, we’re continuing to unpack the exceptions to the rabbinic declaration that we should violate *almost* any Torah commandment to save a life, or to avoid being killed ourselves. In the previous weeks we’ve discussed the context that this ruling came out of - made by an early generation of Rabbis, in the attic of the otherwise anonymous Nitza – and then last week, our focus was on how and why later sages narrowed the exceptions to this rule!
The main focus of today’s episode is the idea that we should accept being killed if the alternative is murdering another innocent person. We work our way into the fundamental principles that drive all of these exceptions – and show how these fundamental ideas map onto the most pressing issues of our own day. We’ll continue the conversation next week!
For new listeners, these episodes were recorded in the Fall of 2020, amidst the groundswell of protests in defense of Black lives, and long before October 7, 2023, meaning all of the tragedies and debates from the past two years were in the future. We encourage you to make whatever connections you see.
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 these links in our show notes: First, to a Source Sheet on Sefaria, where you can find pretty much any Jewish text in the original and in translation – there we excerpt 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 from 2020.
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 Talmud.
And now, The Oral Talmud…
DAN LIBENSON: Hello everybody, this is Dan Libenson, and we are back here with Benay Lappe for this week's episode of the Oral Talmud. Hey Benay!
BENAY LAPPE: Hey Dan. How are you?
DAN LIBENSON: Good, how are you?
BENAY LAPPE: Good.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, well, we are, um. We are back in this text, uh, that we've been exploring for a couple of weeks, and, uh, and it's connected to the text that we were exploring before that. And just a, a quick introduction and then I know you wanna jump into a certain lens that we wanna use, uh, that we're, we're here in a text from the Tractate, Sanhedrin, which is about, uh, about, about, uh, criminal law mostly. Right. And, and, uh, it's about, um,
This text is about essentially when you can violate Torah prohibitions, if the stakes of not violating it would be that, um, that, that you would be killed. Right? Right. I mean, meaning somebody saying: you should violate this, or the stakes, you should violate this, or I'll kill you. Uh, here's when you shouldn't.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. And right. And as we've pointed out for the last, how many weeks have you, we've been learning this? I think this
DAN LIBENSON: is the third week that we're at this.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Okay. So for the last two weeks, we, we can't lose sight of the fact that the question: when can you? sits on a more fundamental question of: can you? Which is, which these guys assume the answer is, yes! which is the radical move – just to think you can,
And we can take it upon ourselves to say, okay, here's the Torah. It says to do this and don't do this. We, we actually have the authority to violate that and decide that we're not going to do what God said – is the radical move that the, the, okay, “when can we?” sits on. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. And there's, and there's, so the answer is that, that you can do it. You can violate all the Torah prohibitions in order to save a life or two, uh, or if somebody says: I'll kill you if you don't to save your own life. Uh, except for three,
Except for three prohibitions. Uh, some version of idolatry, you know, the, whatever that means exactly. Uh, some version of, uh, forbidden sexual, uh, activities. And the third is, uh, if, if the, the command not to kill somebody else, not to murder somebody else. So if somebody says, you should murder this person, or I'll murder you, you should be murdered rather than murder somebody else.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. And by the way, let's make sure we understand that killing is different than murder, in Jewish law, right. There are all sorts of instances of killing that are understood by the Torah to be permitted.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. Mm-hmm. It, it is interesting to think about, uh, Conscientious Objection with regard to this because I, I, I, I mean, it's not something that I'm an expert in.
I, I don't know if you, but, you know, I, it, it would, it would seem, the logic would seem to work for me that if you, if the, if you were just a, a pacifist who, you know, kind of didn't wanna, didn't think you should fight, it's not so clear that this text gives you an out, you know, because at least in terms of law, killing somebody in a war is not inherently murder if, uh, it's a legal war, et cetera.
However, if you're a person who says, I believe this particular war that our country is in is an illegal war, and I'm being essentially asked to murder people, that would seem to be a, a more, a more valid, uh, basis to say, and therefore I, I shouldn't do this.
BENAY LAPPE: Absolutely. Absolutely. And another example of killing that isn't considered murder is killing in self-defense.
So what's understood by this text is if someone comes to you and says, I'm gonna kill you unless you do X, Y, or z. If you can kill that person to prevent them from killing you, you are obligated to do so. And that's not considered murder. Of course - if you can shoot him in the knee and disable that person rather than killing him, you have to do that. But self killing and self-defense is not, uh, even debated here.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, so, but that, but that is an interesting, I know it's a minor point we should move on from, but it, but that would seem to create a hierarchy that if somebody holds a gun to your head and says, kill that person, or I'll kill you. The first thing you should try do if you, if you can, is kill the, the, the person who's threatening you. - I mean, if you can't shoot 'em in the knee -
Like the first, the first person to be killed is actually the person threatening you. The second person to be killed would be you. And, and, and only the third person or the person who definitely shouldn't be killed in this whole story is the person who they're telling you to kill.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: That's interesting.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: I mean, I don't know why it's interesting there something, something kind of -
BENAY LAPPE: there's something there.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah Um, okay. Well, so today, so, so in the previous weeks we, we looked a little, or last week I guess we, we looked primarily at the exceptions. So, so two weeks ago we, we were looking with this remarkable thing, which we had looked at the week before as well, when we were talking about, um, about, about, uh, uh, pikuach nefesh, the idea of, of saving a life - violating Torah laws to save a life.
Just the extraordinary, uh, thing that the rabbis are doing, where the Torah doesn't say that. The Torah doesn't say that you can, uh, transgress Torah laws in order to save a life or to avoid, uh, being killed – but the rabbis get there, and that was sort of thing number one that we looked at.
And thing number two that we looked at last week and that we're looking at this week, uh, is – and all these are intermixed, of course – but the ones that, that the, the basic things that we're looking at now is, um, the exceptions.
And so last week we really looked at the exceptions about idolatry and about, uh, sexual relations somewhat. We didn't get too deep into that. Uh, but then, and then this week we wanna look at the exception that's about murdering somebody else.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And, and as you're listing them, it occurs to me that we haven't really asked the question: why these particular exceptions?
What is it about murder, idolatry, and certain sexual transgressions, which are what? So undermining of the fabric of humanity or society that it's better to die? Is that, is that it? I'm not really sure, but I don't know. What do you, what do you think is going on?
DAN LIBENSON: Well, first of all, it's a good question, and second of all, the question is: Why does the sexual relations or the sexual relations part come into it? Right? Meaning like it seems more, it seems very obvious why not to kill somebody or murder somebody. Right?
It seems obvious from a- if to the extent that you're talking about a theological, you know, situation. It's makes sense to not engage in the, the cardinal sin of, of the theology, which is idol worship. I mean, if you're within that system – if you're outside the system, it seems a little petty. But, you know, but, but within the system it, it, it kind of makes some sense.
It's the sexual part. It's not that it doesn't make sense, it's just that, it's interesting to me that, that it's, that it's there – because, I mean, I think what we would say today about rape, for example, is that, um, that is very close to murder, right? I mean, on, on all sorts of levels. It's, it's, it's, it's - right -You know, so it makes sense to us today, but I, my sense of kind of what it meant back then was that it wasn't quite at that level. And, and, you know, so, so what, so what is it that, what is it that the sexual, uh. I mean, I'm not using the right word - The sexual crimes essentially that they're talking about. Why, why that and not some other really terrible things that you could do.
BENAY LAPPE: Well, maybe this is their way of saying: you know what? … Our law as we have it, we haven't developed our law to such an extent that it really reflects how bad we think rape and incest, for example, are. But we can say it here! I don't know. Maybe.
Maybe this is them saying: yeah, we actually understand it to be. Hand them out to murder. Mm-hmm. It's, it's, it's murdering a soul in, in some very real way. I don't know, maybe that that's what they're saying. I'm not sure.
DAN LIBENSON: And I don't know if there's a really a source to know because, just because a later commentator said, it doesn't mean necessarily this was on their mind, but do you have a sense of when they, did they mean all of the forbidden sexual acts in the Torah? Like how, what did they mean most,
BENAY LAPPE: Most definitely not. Um, so I'm not an expert on this, but I've done a little bit of digging and the category of gilui ariyot, of uncovering nakedness is, includes lots and lots of sexual prohibitions – including having sexual relations with certain, you know, people in your family who are more distant than your immediate family, um, rape… Anyway, a la a large set of things -
But with respect to the, this being an exception to what you shouldn't give up your life for – in other words, the, the set of things for which you should rather give up your life than commit is named differently in different places in rabbinic literature. In some places it expl- is explicitly named as rape and incest. In other places it's rape, incest, and mishkav zachar. Which is super problematic. Okay. What does that mean? That means, um, “male, male sexual intercourse.” Um. In some places that one isn't included. That, that's all I know.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, huh.
BENAY LAPPE: So, you know, the problematic ness of male, male intercourse being included is that homosexuality gets laid down on top of male, male intercourse, and then there – probably erroneously, I would say, because I don't think that's what they were talking about –
And you know, then, then there's this sort of retrojected horribleness about quote unquote “homosexuality,” – which again, I don't, I don't think is actually what they meant. And I think it that the dots being connected that way is wrong – but it's, it is for sure a problematic piece of our history to. To look at.
And I, for one, am encouraged by the fact that that one mishkav zachar, male, male intercourse isn't included in all of the groupings of what you should die rather than do.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. But like, another, another way to look at this whole thing and, and it connects to what we were talking about last week that, you know, when we were talking about how, uh, people ask, well, when are you gonna do an episode on climate change? And we're like, every episode is about climate change because this is about a process of thinking, not necessarily about sort of topics - you know. and, and
I think that we could look at a little, at a higher level of abstraction at what's going on here and say: Look, these are the three topics that were particularly significant to them at that point in history. And we could look at the topics and say, well, you know what? Right now we wouldn't necessarily say idolatry is a big one. So maybe we would take that off the list if we were rewriting this today. Um, but now, but what's interesting about — and murder, we would probably leave on the list. 'cause yeah, we still agree with that.
The sexual part is interesting because like we would say, I, I mean I would say right, what they thought were problematic sexual relationships - some of them I don't think are today, and many of us, if not most of us don't think they are. So, for example, male, male sexual intercourse, I would say take that off the list, of course.
But the idea that sex, you know, that that abusive use of sex is something that. Might belong on the list of exceptions to thi- you know, to to, to things that you can violate at the, at the cost of, of your own life - Uh, I think that we actually do agree with that to,
So the, the, the idea that, that there's something about sex may relate, may, may continue to be true, but the specific sexual, you know, concerns that they had may be different. I mean, so something about that, that strikes me and, and yeah. Talk about that then I wanna expand it a little more even.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I, I think you're absolutely right and I think, I think for them, male-male intercourse was understood to be a coercive act by someone with greater power, um, against someone with a - a man with greater power against a man with lesser power.
But I, I really wanna be a thousand percent clear that. First of all, the, the text goes on to then give exceptions to the exceptions, which we're gonna talk about. “Oh, oh, okay. Idolatry, yes. But not in this case, but not in this case.” But, and, and it becomes virtually nothing.
And we have a legislative, um, history, which shows us how they narrowed and eliminated some of those cases, and the methodology for doing so generally. And I think the message of the Talmud is: you are gonna know what you need to limit in your time. Here's how to do it. You know, so. ..
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: No one should take either what the Torah says as the last word on anything in Jewish law. For sure. It's the beginning. No one should take what the Talmud says as the last word on Jewish law. We've had 2000 years of development of the law law, and there's no one - zero, nobody - um, in the Jewish world who would say, you should rather die than, um, have male-male intercourse. That-
We're talking about a, a, um, a snapshot from 2000 years ago for which we have a, a, a long, uh, set of precedents, um, to, to work out in a very different way, and we have.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Uh, so, um, when my wife and I are still doing this, uh, daily Talmud page together; and it's, it's, you know, there's, there's interesting things like – so she, her perspective is gonna, she, she keeps bringing up this idea that we should write a Talmud that accords better to our day. You know, like she in other words, she's trying to find inspiration from the Talmud that we're reading, but also feels that a lot of it is not relevant or not right.
And, and, um, I, we've talked a little bit about like, even something as simple as, um, in the, in, in the Tractate Berachot there's all this stuff about demons in the bathroom. Well, we know that there are actually germs in the bathroom. So actually it makes sense. Like there are things that we could derive for outta that we could say like, oh, well how could we actually take this seriously, but different, you know?
And, and so actually when I'm looking at this, and I know this is where you're getting at also, it's, it's kind of thinking about: what is this telling us about, about our, about our society and the way we should think about law? Whether that's Jewish law or American law.
And it, you know, and it really is saying, look, the law is there for a reason. The law is there to construct a good society or whatever that might be. If you're being asked to, uh, violate the law - um, you know, the, or you know – if, if you're being asked to violate the law and the consequence for not violating it would be that something even worse is gonna happen, you're gonna die or somebody else is gonna die – Like, of course you should violate the law! Like that's not what the law, the law is the, and,
And the idea of like, “you should live by it.” Even though that's a misquotation of the Talm- of the Torah. The point makes a lot of sense. Like, of course the law is there so that you should live and thrive. So, so there has to be some layer of judgment that is being applied there, whether by actual judges or by people that says: like, you know, we can't tell you exactly when you're not supposed to observe this, but we also wanna give you some level of understanding that there are gonna be those times - and you're gonna have to do your best and use your best judgment. But let us give you some examples, because the, the ones where really the, the, the, the violation, uh, it, you know, the, the, the consequences worse than the violation. Like, well, of course you should violate then.
And so, so what's interesting to me is like what we might put on that list, whether Jewishly or in other legal systems today, you know, what, what, what would be the – if we were gonna go out and say, you can violate any American law, uh, you know, if somebody, if the consequences that you're gonna die or somebody else is gonna die? Well, we know, we know that! Of course you can speed to the hospital if you're having a baby, you know, your spouse is having a baby, or somebody's having a baby in your car, you know, of course you, everybody knows that you can do that, you know?
Um, and, and so the, the question is like, what are the other imperatives that would allow you to violate laws? Because the point of the law is to achieve that imperative. And if the law is the thing that's actually getting in the way of the imperative, then of course you should violate the law. I mean, that's the, that's the logic, right?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I love that. Um, I'm, I'm, I'm still worried, I'm still worried about people misunderstanding the, the instances where the Talmud says, maybe it includes this.
DAN LIBENSON: Yes.
BENAY LAPPE: So, I, I just wanna go back there one more time.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, I am certain that the rabbis didn't understand what it means to be queer or gay as we do. And what I think is, is fa- fabulous is that they actually gave us the yardstick. V’chai ba’hem is a yardstick – you know, it, it – Does “living by this,” whatever, “this” is, law in front of you, cause you to die? Cause your soul to die, or cause your soul to live? And I, I don't, I don't think there's a queer person who doesn't understand that, you know, as did Justice Anthony Kennedy, when he gave the decision for the majority and the Lawrence decision, that it is part of the humanity of every person to have sexual expression. And one can't be imagined as a dignified human being if we prohibit them that – that's what Kennedy said, um – that that expression.
So we know that v’chai ba’hem applies to living as a queer person with a sexual life – Rather than, um, you know, quote unquote male, male intercourse being one of those things that you should rather die for. We understand, um, that if you are gay, if you're queer, your sexuality is part of what is required for you to live. So v’chai ba’hem applies to you. It, it, it's a shift of categories because of what we now understand about what it means to be queer. Okay. Just wanted to say that.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. I mean, no, and and it's what you said last week too, and I, I just to reiterate that what we said – that, that it's about like they're show the fact that they're showing us their work. The fact that they're showing us how they got there - empowers us to, to do the very same if it turns out that we can say about their work, what they were saying about the Torah. Which is that it's not working for this, for that reason, or it doesn't accord, it doesn't accord the way we understand the world anymore. It doesn't, you know, it, it violates our sense of moral, uh, you know, moral judgment, which we're gonna talk about soon. is so, so, uh, so that,
And that's the part that if you see the Talmud as a law code, you're completely missing. You're completely missing that actually the vast majority of it is not a law code. So then what is it? Well, it's the showing of the work. It's the, it's the training of the mind specifically so that we can continue to do that work. Otherwise, what would be the point of the whole thing?
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. I agree completely.
DAN LIBENSON: So, uh, but, so you wanted to talk a little bit about the sources of, of law in, in Jewish law.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. So. Once the text says you should violate any law in the Torah, with the exception of these three, it then moves to what we had last week, which was: Hey, w-w- how do we know that those three exceptions are exceptions? Which is interesting, and I think we pointed this out before, it's interesting that they never ask for a source for the idea that you can violate Torah in the first place! That goes without saying that the text doesn't even even ask: wait, wait a minute, where, where did you get that? Where did you get this idea that you can violate the Torah for any reason at any time? That just is an as assumed to be so,
But now they're looking for when - How do you know that, how do we know these three exceptions are exceptions? And whenever the Talmud asks, “how do you know” it's code for – what I think, and you could tell me because you're a, you're a legal scholar – what any legal system has; Which is a small number of authentic sources. You know? “My Aunt Gertrude told me so” is not one of the sources. But every legal system has sources that are recognized as legitimate places to draw from to know what the system should approve of, right?
So in, in Jewish law, there are five sources, and the fact that there's more than one, more than the Torah itself was the innovation of the rabbis. I think we've talked about that before. Before it used to be how do you know what God wants of you? How do you know what is the right way to behave in the world? Oh, look in the Torah! And that was it. That was the beginning and the end of what you could know.
The rabbis added four more.
Precedent. So has there been a case in the past where someone with Gemirna and Savirna, someone with learning and recognized moral intuition, has ruled on a case, and we can stand on that case? Precedent. I think every legal system has that
Legislation. Was there a past leg-?
DAN LIBENSON: Go ahead. When is it just on the question of precedent, is it, is it like, um, precedent from, uh, certain sources? Meaning like, is it like, how does that judge? Like it's only if a great rabbi, uh, did it, or, um, you know, how do you, 'cause you know, there's also a precedent if somebody commits a crime, well then there's a precedent you could commit that crime. You know?
BENAY LAPPE: I think precedent refers to a case in which there has been a ruling by a, let's just say a sage. Not all sages were rabbis. That's why I say it had to be someone who was recognized by the system to make rulings or judgements, and those qualifications never included ordination. Ordination has actually nothing to do with authority.
The qualifications were only is this person learned, learning, steeped in the texts and principles of the tradition? That's Gemirna. And Savirna - is this person, someone who has a broad experience of human beings, and the way people interact, and, and the way people think and live and, you know, have this deeply informed sense of, of moral intuition. I call it moral intuition.
So those are the qualifications. So one, if one of these people has ruled on a case, we can use that as precedent. We're gonna see something like that today. Um, so that's two, uh, that's the first one. Precedent, Torah, that was the one that, you know, the rabbis inherited and kept, although they also gave themselves lots of room to play with it. Um, legislation. So has there been legislation in the past that I can stand on?
Custom what secular legal systems often call “anonymous legislation,” I think? Look and see what the people are doing. “If we're not prophets, we're children of prophets,” say the rabbis. And you can go out and look and see how people behave and make law based on that – super problematic. Like who exactly do you look at? But, okay. Custom.
And then finally, svara, one's moral intuition. So these are the five sources, and only two of these sources are considered equal to Torah. Torah itself, Torah's Torah, Torah's understood to be, yeah, that's what God said directly to us. And svara. Svara is absolutely equal to Torah in our understanding that you know, we're not making this up. This is what we understand from God, which is really fascinating.
The other sources, custom legislation and precedent, are recognized as humanly created and yield a law, which has a, a lower status in the system. There are two statuses of any new legislation, any new law, d’Oriata or d’Rabbanan, straight from the Torah, straight from God, or we made the shit up, you know? Rabbinic.
And if it's of the higher status, d’Oriata, from the Torah, uh, that means the penalty for violating it is pretty severe. The ability to play with it, not so much, uh, taken very seriously. d’Rabbanan, I dunno, three hours between meat and milk, six hour, whatever. You know, you, different communities will do different things. If I take a glass of water between the steak, you know, you can play with it -
DAN LIBENSON: and you can have legal fictions, you know, more legal fictions to get around it and things like that.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. And svara is understood to be equal to Torah. So it's a, it's a, i I, I think that was a- that's the move the rabbis made, which created the entire rest of Jewish tradition. I think Jewish, I don't know. I don't know if, if I wanna say “Jewish thinking”, but the way we've learned to operate in the world as Jewish people is because of that move. The Rabbis saying: what my moral intuition tells me – if I'm deeply steeped in the tradition, is something we should trust. And we're gonna trust it as much as we trust Torah.
That, that's a profound, profound innovation that has changed our culture, our way of being in the world and the world around us because of the, I think the influence we've had. Okay. Whatever.
So knowing that, knowing that svara is a source and knowing what they had in their, you know, bag of tricks – um, now we're gonna look at the answer to their question: well, how do we know? what's our source for the idea that murder is an exception to something you should violate rather than give up, give up your life? And in fact, you should give up your life rather than commit murder?
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so,
BENAY LAPPE: Sorry, that was a long introduction.
DAN LIBENSON: No, that was good. So, we'll, we'll jump into the text and, uh, we can read it here.
So the Gamara asks: From where do we derive this halakha with regard to a murderer himself? That one must allow himself to be killed rather than commit murder? The gamara answers: it is based on – and here it says “logical reasoning,”-- but that in the Aramaic is svara. So it is based, which, you know, you translate as “moral intuition.” Um,
BENAY LAPPE: That's right, that's right. And I, I really think one of the things that we all as Jewish educators and translators need to do is stop translating the word svara as “logic or deduction or reasoning.” Because the concept of svara has had a life of its own in Jewish history and it has evolved.
And in the early era of svara as an idea, it was a legal deduction. And the only thing that was accepted as svara was something that absolutely followed that everyone would agree with. You couldn't disagree with it. Um,
But the concept ex- the rabbis expanded it over the Amoraic period and the Stamaitic period too – what it, you know, intuition, uh, moral reasoning; something which is informed by values and a certain worldview and priorities; and something which people will absolutely disagree about! depending on what you think is more important than something else. So, um, I I, I, I think “logical reasoning” is way too small of a, of a way to translate svara here.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Uh, I wish I could think off the top of my head of an English word that has had that kind of experience where, you know, that where its meaning has traveled over time. And, and if you, if you continued to, you know, if you translated it into, um, into something, into another language, you know, based on, its, its, its sort of previous meaning.
I mean, actually I, I was talking about that, uh, recently in a, in a, a class that I was, or, you know, sort of discussion group that I was leading about the, uh, the High Holy Days in the Torah. And, you know, like the Torah says- talks about, uh, Rosh Hashanah as a Yom Teruah. Which we translate sort of as a Day of Trumpets. Um, but it's not at all clear that the Torah meant a Day of Trumpets. The, the tru’ah could have meant something like joy. And the way that, you know, over time, the way that you expressed joy was through trumpeting. Um, right. So eventually it does mean trumpeting, but it's not clear that it meant that in the original.
And, and I gave as an example, like we have the, the song Reveille, you know, that you play to wake up in the morning on a bugle, you know? Right. And, but it comes from a French word, which means “wake up” and, um, and, and there was a time when it just meant “wake up.” There was no bugle song yet, you know, and, and so if somebody were, were translating that in that old French text as, you know, Reveille; and people thought it meant a bugle call, you know, they would, they would have the wrong idea or,
Or, you know, vice versa. If they translated a, a modern, uh, text where, where the word Reveille was used and they translated it as, you know, “wake up,” then, then people wouldn't quite get it. You know, they'd know that it's time to wake up, but they wouldn't realize that you're talking about a specific way of waking up with a bugle call.
You know, so that, that's how these words kind of, when the words migrate in their meanings, but the translator doesn't really pay attention to that, then you're actually getting a wrong translation.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I wonder if actually the word intuition has had that similar kind of trajectory. I wish I had a, a dictionary right here, but, you know, and it, it, it occurs to me that sometimes people use it to mean: what, you know, because you were born somehow knowing this. Um, and that most people are, are born knowing it, although not, not everyone.
For example, if you have a jar and you, you are trying to get the lid off of the jar, most people know intuitively by which we generally mean all human beings are born with this – P.S. even though that's not exactly true, because I've seen it – that, that if you tighten your grip, you'll have a better chance of opening the jar. And the idea of tightening your grip is, is intuition. You, you know that as a human being. Um,
But. If we think about a, a mother's intuition, I, you know, there's this idea that, oh, women are born knowing how to nurture children, and it, it, it, it actually isn't that way. And men can develop the same quote unquote, mother's intuition if they hang out with children and, you know, deal with babies.
And a doctor's intuition isn't something a doctor's born with, right? It's, it's actually a product of a lot of gemirna. And after a lot of learning, you see a patient and you go, oh, I, I, I know what's going on here. It's so, I don't know. I, I have a feeling that, that the word intuition may be a good translation of svara because it has that similar… openness, actually. It's used kind of both ways. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm. Okay. So, uh, the Gemara asks, so, so the Gemara asks, where, where we get this idea that, uh, to not murder somebody, uh, you should be murdered instead, uh, the gemara answers, it's based on svara, the idea and that, so it's based, it's based on svara and the rest is, uh, a bit of Steinsaltz, uh, explanation here. But the, the, you know, he's saying that the svara here is that one life is not preferable to another. Um, and, and therefore there's no need to specifically, uh, teach that. Um, so then the Gemara gives –
BENAY LAPPE: which by the way, that explanation itself is a reading back earlier into the text of what is gonna come up and Rashi's fleshing out of “Where's the svara?” The fact that we have two and a half lines of not-bolded means it's not at all so obvious,
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Where the svara is in knowing you should let yourself be killed rather than murder.
DAN LIBENSON: So, so taking, so taking out the, the Steinsaltz out sort of helpful stuff, you know, the Talmud is really saying like: how do we know about the exception about murdering somebody else? And the Talmud says: svara, that's how we know, svara. Uh, how, right? And,
And then there's this story that's told, uh, right. So there was a certain person who came before Rabba, one of the rabbis, uh, and said to him: the lord of my place - like a local official, like, you know, the big, the, the, the big, uh, you know, like landlord guy, the, the powerful prince of the city, right? – Says to me, told me: go kill this person, and if not, I will kill you. What should I do?
And Rabba said to him: it would be preferable that he should kill you and that you should not kill. And he goes on and he says, who is to say that your blood is, that your blood is redder? Perhaps that man's blood is redder.
However we wanna understand that, uh, right. But that, that's the story that the, that the, the sage said to this man, uh, right. You should allow yourself to be killed, because who's to say that your blood is redder than the person who you're being asked to kill?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. So there's so much, there's so much there. Um… I, I often, I, I love this question. How do you know that your blood is redder? And I, you know, Rashi fleshes out what the tradition was in understanding what that meant. And what Rashi says there is: that it, it means, How do you know that you are more valuable to God than that other person? Who's an innocent person who you've been told to murder?
You know, it's an ambiguous question actually, because it could mean either: one of you is more important to God, but you just don't know which one, right?
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Or it's that sort of rhetorical: What makes you think that one of you is more important, such that you should prioritize your life over that person's and murder them? In other words, no one's life is more important.
Is, is this saying no one's life is more important – therefore, you can't shift the reality and say, I'm going to kill them? because that assumes you're putting your life above the other person and no one's life is more valuable than any others? We're all infinitely valuable and so on.
Or is it that actually God likes some of us better than others? Some people's lives are more valuable; you just don't know what the metric is! You don't know what God's metric is, so you can't decide: oh, I think my life is more valuable, therefore I am gonna shoot him rather than allow myself to be killed.
I, I think it's the former, but, but there's an ambiguity here. I don't know. What do you think? Is there anything?
DAN LIBENSON: Well, and the latter would, the latter would carry an assumption with it that God is more active. Because if it turns out that, uh, that I, yeah, right – because if, because if, because if my assumption is that I'm more important than the other guy. So if somebody says, you know, kill that person, or I'll kill you. Right? I would kill the other person because, you know, I'm, I'm probably the most important.
And then this person is said this, you know, Rabba is saying: you know, who's to say, you know, maybe the other person is more important than you? Uh, but what if it's not, then I'm gonna allow myself to be killed. Right? So the whole thing kind of premises on the fact that like the right person is gonna end up killed in all this. Um, right.
If, if the whole idea that one person's blood is redder than another person, if there, if one person's blood is redder, then the only, then the only way that this is ultimately gonna be determined is that God is gonna, you know, decide which is the, which is the person that God is gonna allow to be killed – which doesn't feel like it's how we think about it, and it doesn't really feel like it's how they think about it. So that also lends credence to, to what you're saying, that that rhetorically what, what's being said here is that at least as insofar as we human beings are able to discern nobody's blood is redder than anybody else's. Right. There's, there's no inherent–
BENAY LAPPE: but, but even more than that. More than we're, as much as we're able to discern, I think the alternative is that the implied idea that no one's blood is redder than anyone else's. I, or maybe those are three different options in the end, but I think you're right. It's, it's super problematic.
DAN LIBENSON: But, but the, the bottom line is that, and I think this is where we wanna go with the Rashi, is that like, none of this is logical reasoning.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. E-exactly. Like really?... It's for sure. I definitely wouldn't say it's logical, but it's svara in that it's someone's idea of the kind of world we wanna create, based on a certain value. That's where this svara is.
DAN LIBENSON: Yes. But that's what I'm saying, like this is, this is what we might call, you know, moral philosophy or, or you know, like you say, moral intuition sometimes that's called like in, in academic courses, you know, moral reasoning, but that's, that's very different from logical reason.
I mean, this is the problem with like utilitarianism – is that ultimately it's not, it's not really something that you can reason your way to. And we talked about it I think last week. I mean, this is where the, the, uh, Trolley Problem comes from. You know, all these problems that are like, well, you think that it's so easy to know, you know: if a trolley's coming and you could switch it onto the tracks and it should kill, you know, five people rather than one? then of course we should switch it to the track where it's only gonna kill one person.But then you can very quickly change that problem such that your head starts to spin and it's not at all clear what the right choice is.
And, and, and ultimately it doesn't come down to logic as, as we generally think of logic working in math or other disciplines. It ultimately comes down to a, a moral vision of the world, you know, and that that's what it ultimately comes out. So to call that logic or to call that reasoning is really, uh, not right. It, it, it comes, what it is, is a, is a deep seated moral sense – which may be arrived at through some form of reasoning, but usually is arrived at through culture, through parents, you know, through some other, through religion, you know, through some other way of cultivating, you know, here's, here's the value system that I'm using.
And it sort of feels like when what I would read it is like, where do we derive this from? Where it says: it is, it is svara. You know, you could translate that, maybe it is “values,” you know, or it is right? It is, it is. Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: I love that. I, I I love your I idea of moral vision, because that's what it seems like they're doing. It seems like they're saying: we wanna create the kind of world where none of us looks at someone else and says: I'm more valuable than you.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Right.
BENAY LAPPE: And even if that means I'm gonna lose my life - it's worse for the world, and it's worse for the kind of human beings we're gonna end up shaping, if we have a world where someone can say: Hmm, let me think according to my, you know, ideas, I'm more valuable than you.
An I think you've helped me understand why they use svara here as the source. Because one of the things that's very subtle but obvious in the Hebrew is that this story is introduced by the technical term that introduces meises, meaning precedents. And they actually didn't need to name this exception as standing on svara. In other words, they didn't need to name svara as its source.
They could have just said, it's a ma’aseh, it's a precedent because they have a precedent. They have a story where a sage ruled on a question of, you know, someone's life being endangered if they didn't murder an innocent person. And what they would've come up with had they left it as: oh, we know this from precedent - is they would've had that lower status of law: A d’rabbanan or rabbinic law, which is very weak and doesn't really, it doesn't take a stand at a fundamental principle or value of the system that is going to affect everything else – and, but svara does.
And maybe that's why, in spite of the fact that they have a, a precedent, they say, precedent isn't our source, svara is the source.
DAN LIBENSON: I mean there, there's a, you know, I, I know this starts to like, this is now adding layers of, of much more contemporary thought. But, you know, I'm, I'm thinking about how Yitz Greenberg talks about that the – uh, the, you know, I think it's also Maimonides, you know – it talks about this idea of why Adam was created alone. And, and there's this idea that nobody should say my father was greater than your father.
And, you know, there's this, basically this idea, and Yitz Greenberg really takes this to the idea that like, fundamental to the Torah's vision of the world, or to Judaism's vision of the world, let's say, is that, um, we're all equal human beings. We're- every human being is simply a human being. Uh, to the extent that there's inequality, it's human beings vis-a-vis God. Every human being is equally a human being. And, and if, or,
BENAY LAPPE: or the extent to which there's inequality, it's because we're not living up to.. okay, fine. Go ahead.
DAN LIBENSON: But I mean, to the extent that there's like justified inequality, it's only vis-a-vis God, you know, yes. If there's inequality among people, it's, it's not the ideal world. And that if you believe that that's like true in the very fabric, that that's kind of the underlying principle in, in –
In America, you know, of course we haven't lived up to this, but you could say, like, if we say: well, what is the principle that's supposed to undergird all of America? All men are created equal. Right. You know, um, so if we have a situation, even if it's the cons in the Constitution itself, where people, all people are not being treated equal, uh, that, that's, that creates a dissonance.
You can, now, sometimes you can say: well, if we're talking about women, it says all men. Okay, well then maybe we have to amend the constitution. Or maybe we have to re-understand. But men, they didn't mean men, they meant people. But, you know, look, well just what about minorities? They didn't see them as people. Okay. So we have to, so there are all these things that have to be either done or addressed.
But, but you can, and, and I think Martin Luther King did do this. You, you can come to the American system making a claim that what you are doing now with Jim Crow, with uh, you know, stopping us from voting - is a fundamental breach of the very nature of the society that your legal system, as admirable as it may be, is trying to build. And if that's the case, then it means that the law is wrong. Not that the fundamental ideal is wrong.
And what I think that, you know, to my mind, svara here is kind of trying to identify… What the project of Judaism is really all about is a notion that nobody should be able to say, my life is worth more than somebody else's life.
And if it turns out that you might find yourself in a position where, uh, you might be tempted to say that your life is more valuable than somebody else's, that's gonna be one of the ones that we make an exception say and say, no, no, no, you have to die in that case. Right. Just, just to even prove it one step more. Something like that.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think what, what, what I, I'm hearing you saying, and, and, and I said something that led me there, but I didn't even connect the dots myself when I said it - but now you're helping me connect the dots, and that is…
If the fundamental violation, the fundamental reason why you have to give up your life rather than murder an innocent person if forced to do so… is that you are saying: my life – it, it, it's implicitly requiring you to say: I think my life is more valuable. And that's such a, that's sort of the fatal mistake.
It's, it isn't even a jump to say that, to be racist. Any racist act or utterance or policy is something that we should rather give up our lives than to commit! It isn't a jump to say that, that a racist act, utterance, policy, word, action is in fact in the same category as the murder of an innocent person. And we should rather give up our lives than do that. That- I'm loving this. This is right. This is so right. Well, it's this. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Look. Okay. I, I just, I just, I, you know – I feel like we're living in a time that I never really imagined I would live in, where a choice like that is not so unimaginable.
You know, meaning that if things happen and we're forced to sort of take to the streets to try to salvage our democracy, some of us might be killed. And like, and, and, and I think that's pretty hard for like, you know, prosperous white people to imagine. It's hard for me. Uh, you know, and,
BENAY LAPPE: and I, and I think that was precisely the calculus that so many people made when they said, I'm gonna leave my home in the midst of a pandemic, and go out onto the streets. Right. Because this is even more important.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, right. And by the way, I didn't make that choice. Um, uh, uh, you know? Yeah. And, and I think, and I think like, um, I think that, um, I think it's helpful to abstract from the abstract the principle a little bit here. Right.
Which is, which is that it's something like, and I don't quite have the, you know, but it's something like: the exceptions are right where you should lay down your life is when the, when the laying – what the laying down of your life is about and perhaps the way the logic get - right to go to rescue, the idea of logical reasoning - is that once you have the principle, then perhaps you can actually use some degree of logic to ask whether we're there? is, but, but,
But it's, it's moral intuition to lay down the principle. Which is to say that if the system itself is, is being undermined such that the law basically becomes a joke! Because the law is, has a purpose, and the purpose is to build a good society. If observing the law is actually undercutting the good society – because, for example, it's preventing you from fighting against a, a dictator, you know, or, or an authoritarian who's trying to take over the society and we'll turn it into a bad society. Well, of course, that's where you should lay down your life or at least risk your life. And, and if, if not, then the whole project is just a joke. Right?
And, and that's the one thing that we're not, we don't wanna say, is that the whole project is a joke – whether that's the Jewish project or the American project. Right.
BENAY LAPPE: I'm just tot- I'm sorry. My mind is just tripping out here about what I think the obvious implications are. Once we got it, and I never got at this before, until today, that… that what's at the root of the svara is simply the idea that you cannot say: my life is more valuable.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm.
BENAY LAPPE: And any act, which, any act – and I never thought to take it out of murder, but if you look at - right - at that principle, which, which tells us why murder is a problem. Why murdering this person is a problem, rather than giving up your own life. Then that, that principle makes it so clear how the, the, the mandate that our tradition has already put on creating an anti-racist world.
DAN LIBENSON: Can you cl- can you totally close that connection about sort of how you go to the racism as the modern day interpretation of it?
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, so, so I'm, I'm, I'm using Ibram Kendi’s really simple definition of racism or a racist act. I, I would have to take off my, my headset and go to my bedroom to, to actually read it. But, but let me see if I can remember. He, he says very simply: Racism is believing that… I really feel like I wanna get the definition. Should I go get it? I don't wanna leave. Okay. Um, anyway — …that a group of people, um, I, I'm not gonna do it justice. Um,
DAN LIBENSON: But fundamentally that, that one group of people is more important than another group of people?
BENAY LAPPE: Yes. Basically that. Right. Um, and a racist act, or utterance or policy, which treats one group of people differently, either better or worse than any other group of people, is racist.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Period.
And what I think he's getting at is: what's inherent in racism is the idea that you are judging groups of people in terms of value one against another. And I think that's precisely what's underneath – that's the svara essentially, about why you can't murder someone else to save your own life. Because you cannot say: I know my life is more valuable than that person's. Um, and if that's –
It's not about murder, it's about making the judgment of value. That, that is the fundamental violation of the kind of world that the rabbis are trying to create. And if that's the fundamental value that they wanna preserve, the idea that you cannot do that, then you cannot do it on a thousand other things beside murder! Murder then is only an example one playing out of the valuing of one life over another, or one group of people's life over another – and racism becomes another playing out, which has to be equally prioritized, such that you should rather give up your life than do. It's..
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Right?
DAN LIBENSON: Well, and, and that connects the, you know, to at least a, at least a more modern, uh, view of the sexual transgressions. Right. To the extent that we see them as abusive. Right? Because they're about Power. Uh, that, that is along those same lines. It's, it's that, that, that fundamentally to use, to use sex to abuse - and not only sex, to use other, other, uh, any form of abuse, right? But that, that, but you know, so again –
It's an example. It's the most dramatic example. Uh, but it's one that would say, you know, that of course that is, that, that fundamental, you could never do that if you thought that the other person was of equal value, that that would be nonsensical! So it, it's, it's, ipso facto, uh, uh, uh, proof that you don't see the other person as equally valuable and therefore you've, you should lay down your life before you do it.v
What, what's interesting is, is where you're taking it, I think is really interesting is to say to, if these are example, uh, then, you know: can we dial down the egregiousness of the act itself, right? I mean, there, there's a difference between a racist act and murder in terms of its impact. It's still very bad if it's a racist act, but it's, it's not quite murdering somebody - directly. Right? With your hands.
So, but we're saying, but it's still, it's bad enough to cross the threshold of, you know. Right? And then you would kind of keep going and say: well, you know, is it even a little, a little act of proving that I think I'm better than more important than somebody else, that, that ultimately I have to lay down my life for. And maybe even that itself is, is almost metaphorical in the sense that, that what it's really saying is, is that: we're gonna give you the extreme form of it, which says: you should lay down your life rather than do this. But what that really means is that you should never, ever do this.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. You're reminding me of the way the rabbis use hyperbole – you know, to say things like, um: Shaming someone in public is tantamount to murder.
DAN LIBENSON: uhhuh.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. I - they're making a value statement. I don't think they're exactly saying that these two things are morally equal. What they're saying is it's so, so, so bad. You should, you should be so careful about not shaming someone in public. You, you, you should be as careful as you would be about not murdering someone. It's, it's that important.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. But wait a second. But like, if you're saying, but that's, but if you're saying that, that, that, that, that, that rhetoric may not, there's another way to look at that, which is to say: if shaming somebody in public is tantamount to murder, and I should lay down my life rather than murder somebody else, that means by the process of, you know, right. That I should lay down my life rather than shame somebody in public.
But, but, then you're getting closer to the racist act. Question. Right? Because then you're, you're saying that like maybe there are other - there's a, there's a variety of acts that we see as fundamentally tantamount murder, perhaps in that rhetorical way, but nevertheless – the whole thing operates in a, in a, as a sort of rhetorical, uh, on a rhetorical level that says like, there are these things that fundamentally are, are, you know, violations of everything that this whole system is set up to do and therefore do –
Are we really imagining we - do we really think people are going around holding up guns to people's heads saying: violate this to our prohibition and or I'll kill you? I mean, the whole thing is, is sort of a rhetorical construction that's fundamentally about, in the strongest possible form, saying: there, there are things that are more important than the letter of the law.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I don't know. I haven't quite decided. I, I feel like the, the hyperbole, the example of shaming someone in public kind of dials back the, the seriousness, which you could claim - very easily, I think - that we should consider a racist act as murder. And you should rather give up your life than do it.
I mean, what kind of world would we have? If people actually behave that way. And actually had to understand so deeply what a racist act looked like? And how much of what we do is actually racist without realizing it? That… we didn't do it. That I had - I forgot where that sentence started, but anyway.
So I'm kind of really interested in playing that world out, but at the very least, I know that the rabbis also use other methods to really dial up the, the heat on how important something is. And I really don't wanna crank it back to that – because I'm really interested in playing out what a world would look like if we really did believe we should rather lay our life down, rather. Um,
But at the very least, they use that mechanism to say: this is shaming someone in public is, is shaming - it's just such a violation of someone's humanity that we should take it super, super, super, super seriously. As if it were murder. Racism is at least in that category. If not shfikhut damim, spilling blood - Literally. I, I, I really kind of wanna leave it there, but…
DAN LIBENSON: No, let's leave it there. And I, what I'm curious about, and maybe this isn't like a Talmud thing, you know, this is more of a Jewish practice thing. It's like, has Judaism been successful at translating these values into practices or not? And, and maybe that's the less important question then if we,
I wanna play out the world that you're talking about too and, and sort of see where that leads and, and I'm, I'm just as curious, if not more so about the practices it would lead to. Not just the values that it would, that it would have us walking around claiming. you know, and what,
What would that mean? What would that, what would, what would the obligations look like? The positive commandments, not only the negative commandments. What, what would they look like in a world like that? Of course, I shouldn't engage in a racist act, but what should I do? You know, like what… it's a very fascinating, very important world to think about.
BENAY LAPPE: I think we, we should seriously put together… laboratory to play, to start figuring that out. I mean that, that, that's our job now! That that's what you do when you are living through a CRASH and you yeah, realize there are values that your sys- your system either hasn't had or it has had, but they've been so deeply buried that you haven't been able to surface them to see how they apply to challenges that seem new. And then you have to develop practices, new practices that are not gonna look Jewish for a while, but they will to our grandchildren.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. And, and, and then we gotta go. But then, but, but I think it's also that we, some of these questions don't get raised when we are in the position of the powerless. Um, and both in Israel and in in the US for the most part, Jews are in a position of being more, uh, more powerful in society. Not all Jews of course, but a lot of Jews.
And, um, so these questions get raised, you know, these questions get raised and sometimes they get raised and we find the tradition lacking, you know, and that's okay, especially when what we find in the tradition and it's deep, deepest place here - And sometimes like we're doing, you have to like scratch at it to get to that deepest place. What you find is the, that principle that Martin Luther King brought, you know that, that the principle that says: this is what it's really all about, and we haven't, we, we haven't made it! It it like, and it's not Make America Great Again, it was never great! Like it was great in certain ways, but it was never great on this one.
You know, Judaism not make America- Judaism great again, it's make Judaism great for the first time, because actually we've, we've, we never, were in a position before where we had the privilege to try to live out our deepest principle. Because we were, we were in the position where, where we could help others rather than sort of just kind of make it through ourselves.
BENAY LAPPE: At the very least, it's make it greater.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. All right. So to be continued.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. To be continued. All right. Good to see you.
DAN LIBENSON: Thanks Benay, Bye.
BENAY LAPPE: Thank you. Bye.
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