The Oral Talmud: Episode 32 - Our Hands are Not Tied (Ketubot 2b & 3a)
SHOW NOTES
“ What this text is trying to say, as is the entire Talmud, is ‘my hands are tied’ is not how we do Jewish. It's never been how we do Jewish, ever since the rabbis at least, and can never be thought of as a legitimately Jewish response to any suffering ever.” - 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.
When this episode was recorded back in November of 2020 it was a moment of deep uncertainty surrounding the presidential election. The news felt unresolved, the ground unstable, and many of us were hovering between anxiety and numbness. Instead of rushing to conclusions, this episode slowed everything down and asked a different question: What does it look like to cultivate steadiness, moral clarity, and courage when the world won’t give us answers?
Turning to a startling passage in the Talmud, we explore a moment when the rabbis openly admit they are changing the law. Not because a verse demands it, but because human suffering does. At the center is svara, or moral intuition, and the refusal to say “my hands are tied.” This conversation pulls back the curtain on how Jewish law actually works and why uncertainty may be the very place where our deepest responsibility begins.
This week’s text: “Lev Yodea Marat Nafsho” (Ketubot 2b and 3a)
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.
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DAN LIBENSON: This is The Oral Talmud - Episode 32: “Our Hands are Not Tied.” 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.
When this episode was recorded back in November of 2020 it was a moment of deep uncertainty surrounding the presidential election. The news felt unresolved, the ground unstable, and many of us were hovering between anxiety and numbness. Instead of rushing to conclusions, this episode slowed everything down and asked a different question: What does it look like to cultivate steadiness, moral clarity, and courage when the world won’t give us answers?
Turning to a startling passage in the Talmud, we explore a moment when the rabbis openly admit they are changing the law. Not because a verse demands it, but because human suffering does. At the center is svara, or moral intuition, and the refusal to say “my hands are tied.” This conversation pulls back the curtain on how Jewish law actually works and why uncertainty may be the very place where our deepest responsibility begins.
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 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: Hey Benay.
BENAY LAPPE: Hey Dan. How are you?
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, I am, I'm good. I, you know, it's funny, I did not expect, uh, even though I think we said it, I, I did not expect that actually when we were together again this week, we would still not really know, uh, all of what happened at the election, even though we have our suspicion.
So here we are and, uh, we are in some kind of pseudo limbo and, um, we're gonna study Talmud for an hour.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, great. It's, it's, it's a great way to, um, to sink into a, a degree of presentness, which some call God, um, as both a relief from the anxiety of the world, and also a way to establish centeredness and resilience to face the uncertainty of the world.
So happy to be doing this right now.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. And, and I wonder if like, there's a way, I mean, I don't, I'm not, this is not a complete thought, so I'd love for if our listeners and viewers would wanna complete this thought, you know, but there's a sense in which I feel like it's almost like with the election, we're playing a game of inches.
You know, where is this is gonna go this way, everything's right on the edge, you know, on the knife edge, on the margin. Is it gonna go a little bit this way, a little bit that way? Is it gonna go a little bit this way with the president, a little bit that way with the Senate? And it's gonna be a kind of crazy situation.
And Ev and then it just became, becomes this, this game of tug of war, which, like, if the, if that flag goes a little bit over on your end, then it's, feels like a victory, but not a very sufficient victory. And if it goes on the other end, it feels like a defeat and probably feels like a worse defeat than the victory would've felt if it was the exact same amount of victory on the other side.
And, and all of that is what we're gonna be experiencing I think, for the next period of time. I think it, I think it's valuable to spend time during a period like that. Trying to, trying to explore what it feels like when we're really trying to reimagine the world much more profoundly than that, and what that exactly necessarily translates into.
I mean, does that mean that we'll ever have the chance to re reimagine the world that profoundly maybe we will be able to, in at least our part of the world, whether that's the certain, certain states in which we live that we might see as the avnets of democracy, you know, or the avnets of the next iteration in a more positive way about what America's becoming, or, or in the Jewish world at least, where maybe we have more capacity to reimagine in a bigger way.
But I think there's value in it, and I am excited to do it. I, I almost feel more excited even than before to be doing this with you for the months ahead because it, it just feels like at least we get to spend some time thinking big instead of thinking small.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Yeah. And I think you're right. I think, you know, we, we forget that in only 200 years, um, that we have actually more than 200 years of we've been here before to draw on.
Mm-hmm. And as Jews, we actually have a really, really long history of, yeah, this isn't just what happens, right. It, this is how it always happens and mm-hmm. We actually know what this moment is like and we know, um, what it means and, and what, what, what it, what inevitably comes and what it, it, it indicates.
I, I, I am, I am working on this, this sense that, oh, anyway, I won't get into commenting on the, the election, but yes, let's learn some talman.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. Well, one, one thing to think about, and I wanna sort of remind us where we were last week in a, in a few ways, but one of them was trying to keep in mind, you know, I, I was just talking about this with someone else again today, like, when we think about a text, we, we tend to imagine, and I think we're taught in Judaism to imagine a text as being timeless and almost out of time.
You know, that it, that it, it, once it's written as a text and it's applicable in all times and it's equally relevant in all times, but that's really not correct. And as modern people, I think we have to start to understand that this text was put down at a particular time. And there are layers in the text that were also laid down at other particular times, and some of that gets jumbled and confused and we don't always know.
That's part of what we're trying to do with when we talk to scholars is trying to, uh, figure out some of that textual archeology, but. If you think about the time when the Talmud was written down, that was, I think, a very unstable period in the Persian Empire. You know, that was a little bit before the, uh, Muslim, uh, takeovers, or I forget what we call it, the Muslim, uh, you know, expansion into, into a, a lot of these empires that were there from before.
And I, I wonder, you know, whether some of this is, some of their concerns are driven sometimes by this fe feeling like life as we knew it is ending and something, and, and we, we, you know, either we really gotta write some of this stuff down so it's not forgotten, or a lot has changed over the last bunch of years and, and we've really gotta take that on.
I don't know, but it feels to me like. Thinking about whether there are ways in which our time is like their time. And we often make that analogy between our time and the destruction of the temple and the time of the early Yna. But what about the late time of the Talmud? You know, the time of the stam, of the, the redact and I, I think it's worth having in the back of our minds.
Um, so we've been talking about, we were talking about the last few weeks, we were talking about this, uh, these various texts that have to do with, uh, saving a life or feeling like, uh, you, you're feeling like your life is in danger and on all of these cases, and they've be been getting more and more dramatic.
The rabbis seem to be laying down a principle that says that, that that is not from the Torah, that a principle that says human life, the preservation of human life is the, is the, or one of the primary values of this new Jewish rabbinic system that they're creating. And there are a variety of cases in which that need to save a life.
Uh, is in conflict with specific laws from the Torah. Most recently, last week, we were talking about the law that you have to fast on Yom Kippur. And in all of these cases, the, the rabbis are basically expanding the exceptions and, and finding ways to say that actually you can effectively break these laws from the Torah.
If the alternative is, uh, for sure if the alternative is that a life is going to be lost, but in last weeks, that even if it turns out that it might not actually be lost, but the person themselves feels they, they're suffering to this level, that they feel like, I feel like my life is in danger, that we go with that feeling.
And we talked towards the end of last week about this idea that, that maybe what we should be understanding from this is that the rabbis were holding up. Pain and suffering is such a, a, such a value that we, that, that our whole system is here to alleviate pain and suffering. So if our system is causing pain and suffering, then it can't be right.
Then it, it must be that our, our new system is going to have to give you an exception or overrule that law entirely, et cetera, et cetera. And so, so I think that's what brings us into this week. You you wanna say some more about where, where this week kind of fits in next to the puzzle?
BENAY LAPPE: Sure. And, and, and I think you're right.
I think what we've been seeing is a sensitivity to pain and suffering, and a willingness to prioritize the reduction or elimination of that pain and suffering even over and above what the Torah says with an effort to kind of win and make the case that that's really what our constitution always meant to say.
Whether it's the mission or the Torah with a verse read in a farfetched. That, that then hints if we look at how are they actually making the case that our constitution actually says this. And, and it's sort of upon us to read between the lines to see what they're really doing. The place where we're going today is one of those rare texts where you don't have to read with sort of a, a, your eye toward how are they proving what they're proving and what are they telescoping in their method of proving, uh, their claim that this, you know, new radical piece of Torah really comes from the, the Torah constitution and you don't have, you know, usually you have to believe that they're farfetched.
Proofs are actually a way to say, we, we know that we don't. We don't really believe that, that this comes from the Torah. We want you to actually see following David Kramer's approach. We, we actually are trying to tell you that we don't think we need the Torah to actually be saying this. We have the ability to in fact, say what the Torah means.
And um, but there are those rare examples where you have a scene like from the Wizard of Oz where Toto pulls the curtain aside and you see the wizard, you know, flipping the handles and you understand how, you know the magic works. And, and I think a, any legal system I've come to realize only pulls the curtain back rarely, if ever.
And today's text is one of those rare times when the system that the Talmudic tradition wants to show everybody. Who's a player in this jurisprudential project of creating a new way of being a human being. That we're actually pulling the levers and that we believe in a God who wants us to pull the levers even over and above what God said, just like the oven of story.
Um, and this says, yeah, this is how it works, and it names the mechanism as a legitimate mechanism, that mechanism of what we were feeling, the sensitivity to suffering. And that's called spar. Mm-hmm. So this is, this is a text that names that impulse as s farra. It makes very explicit, just in case you might have missed what's going on here.
I, I don't wanna give too much of the punchline away, but how powerful s farra is. So, so that's where we're going to, and. Should I set it up?
DAN LIBENSON: Well, so, so the, the text for today comes from the track Tate Katu boat, which basically has to do technically, and in this case really does with, uh, marriage set, setting up a marriage contract, but setting up a marriage and ultimately, you know, and of course that there's also a track Tate called tine of about divorces, which is kind of a bookend.
I mean, hopefully not to all, to some marriages, but, um, but, and you said, so this text that we're about to do, which is from the bottom part of page two B of, of, uh, KATU Bo by the way. So that's the very beginning of the track eight. Uh, and, uh, goes on to page three A, this same story, and this has been true for a couple of stories that we've looked at, is, is basically just repeated almost the same verbatim somewhere else.
Is is it in guillotine? It is. Mm-hmm. So, you know, I dunno what to make of that. We don't have to discuss it, but I mean, it's interesting that some of these are, are in twice my wife sometimes, you know, when we're studying Talmud, she says it's very repetitive and like, maybe there, you know, we always talk about how the editor of the Talmud was a genius.
You know, there's some question about maybe that, maybe not so much, but, um, or maybe there's a, maybe there's an intention. Maybe some of these are, are really some of the most important stories and that's why they're repeated.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And I think, I think they're repeated in different places, uh, to get at the underlying principles and methodologies and not so much the surface content.
You'll, you'll see stories repeated not for their content, I think, but for the methodology in places that deal with lots of other topics.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So, yeah. So let's set, let's set this up. So I, I think, and maybe this isn't where you'd wanna start, but I think there's a concept here that we really have to understand in a deep way, which is fundamentally what the Torah law is that's gonna be, uh, that's gonna be ultimately overruled here.
Uh, which is a concept called onus.
BENAY LAPPE: Well, there are actually several Torah laws that are gonna be overruled.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: But, but you're right. Um, so let's start with the concept of onus. Okay. Onus is, is the idea of force majeure. Um, and it's, it's the principle that we should not be in Jewish law does not hold us accountable for the negative.
Implications of an action, which we do, if that action was done against our will, if we were forced by someone or circumstances to do that thing, we shouldn't be held responsible. And it comes from the story in the Torah where, um, there's a, a description of a woman who is betrothed. That is, she has been promised to a man, of course, as a heteronormative context, she's promised to a man in marriage, which means, but yet she has not actually been married.
But the fact that she has betrothed means she is, while not yet available sexually to her husband, prohibited to all other men. So she's in a kind of sexual no man's land, if you will, where she is not allowed to have a sexual relationship with anyone. Okay. And the Torah describes her as being raped. Okay, she's in a field and the rabbis assume that she attempted to call out, but no one could have heard her.
And that therefore this sexual encounter, quote unquote sexual encounter with this man was unwanted and, um, therefore rape. Now, according to the Torah itself, she has in fact violated the prohibition of no sex with any man during this period of time. She is a rua tro. She cannot have sexual relations here.
She's having quote unquote, sexual relations with a man. Yet the Torah, um, penalizes the man and says, but to her do nothing, she is innocent. So the rabbis sort of scratch their heads and they say, wow. The fact that God says she's innocent means that God must recognize that. Violations of Torah that are done against our will, like in this case where she's had sex but was prohibited because of her betrothed status, must, must, uh, exonerate the person from the status of having in fact violated that law.
Hmm. Okay. So the rabbis derive from the fact that God says do nothing to her. She's not guilty. The principle called Unsa re, that means the merciful God. Remember how we've often mentioned that the particular name they choose for God is meaningful?
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: And here they choose the name Rahana, the merciful one.
Right? It's, it's God in God's mercy. Now, that kind, that sort of aspect of God, who is, um, um, freeing someone from, um. The, the negative consequences of an act, which was done through oes, through force majeure. So that becomes a big principle, which the rabbis root in Torah. They say that's a Torah IIG law, because it comes out of that story.
Okay? In other words, in this particular context, in the the Tractate Ktu boat, they were just talking about how people are married, heteronormative context, man, woman under the hpa. And once they come under the hpa, uh, it is the, uh, the man has a whole bunch of obligations in this heteronormative context to feed the woman, to pay her medical bills, to redeem her if she's taken captive, uh, to clothe her and so on.
So the, the question arises, well, what if the wedding day comes the woman standing under the hook and the husband doesn't appear? The question is, do his monetary obligations to her begin at that moment? Because that was the moment they set for the wedding, but he's not there. The question is, why is he not there?
Whether his obligations accrue at that moment or not, depends on why he's not there, and they conclude, well, if he's not there because he was detained against his will, a bear chased him up a tree, he, you know, was held captive by no good Nicks on the road, he fell into the river and you know, whatever, whatever.
If that was the reason, that's back on a
DAN LIBENSON: desert island,
BENAY LAPPE: right? If one of those things was the reason, that's onus, that's force majeure, then he is not obligated to begin his responsibilities to her. He's excused from that because Ona re force majeure excuses you. But if he chose to stay away, maybe 'cause he was nervous about the wedding, maybe he was having fun doing something else, then he is obligated because there was no onus there.
There was no force majeure. Okay. That's the setup. And at that moment we have our hero, Ava, who is our hero at Savara because he was the third, fourth century rabbi who really expanded the concept and application of this notion of savara from a mere logical deduction to a moral impulse or, you know, ethical instinct that we can all agree, disagree about.
Okay, here comes Ava.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. And I always like to remind people about Ava, that, that not only is Ava the hero of, of Safara, the organization, he's also the hero of the Talmud. And one of the ways that we know that he's not the only hero, but he's one of the top heroes of the Talmud. And the, the reason why we know that is that Ava was not his name, it was his title.
And what Ava means in Aramaic, and ah, at the end of a word, is the same as in Hebrew, having a ha at the end of, at the beginning of a word, which means the, so if somebody's name is Ava, that means their name is the Raav, the Rabbi. And if somebody in your big, huge book is called the Rabbi, you kind of know that that's the rabbi.
That's what they mean, the rabbi, like the this. So this is the guy that if he says something, we take it extra seriously.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: So, uh, so let's, uh, take a look at the text, uh, KATU boat to me. So Ava said. And although delays caused by circumstances beyond his, his control exempt the groom from providing support to his betroth at the time originally designated for the wedding.
Just like you said, just like you explained with regard to bills of divorce, that is not so.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, great. So let's just, let's just take that there. So RA is taking this unqualified giant principle that they understand to be rooted in the Torah in God's own words, essentially that. Force majeure, shall I? Is it okay to keep using that?
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, I mean, the one thing I would say about force majeure just for folks who are listening who are not, uh, lawyers, is that, um, 'cause sometimes we, we translate something, I always laugh when we translate to fill in as Flac, you know, because like we're just translating one incomprehensible word into another.
Uh, but so, so, uh, a force majeure, I, I think we can sometimes think of that as what we more colloquially or in insurance policies call an act of God. You know, that now it's a confusing in this, in this setting because God is actually a character. But what we, what we say today in American insurance policies, in act of God, that's what we mean is a, is a, is something that is outside of your control, that that happens to you because of a greater power.
Okay. But
BENAY LAPPE: I wanna challenge that a little bit because I'm not sure a bear chasing you up a tree is an act of God or the highway men. Yes. You know, tying you up. Yeah. Fair enough. As an act of God, but an act of something out of your control. Right. Okay. Okay. Um,
DAN LIBENSON: now we can call that force majeure from now on.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Fair enough. Okay. So what Raza is saying here is this giant broadband of, you know, with, with, with two arrows on either side of the, uh, spectrum going infinitely across all of life. The idea that if some, if something, if you're forced to do or fail to do by conditions beyond your control, you're excused, you're exonerated, you're not held responsible.
But what Ravi takes this gigantic eraser and he says, I'm going to erase The applicability of that principle in one area of life gets okay divorces, and that's pretty bold.
DAN LIBENSON: And, and this, it's a little more complicated than this because the, the, you know, this, we get into some of the nitty gritty of how a divorce is given in Jewish law, also heteronormative, et cetera.
But the idea is that there actually has to be a handing off. So you could say that, um, you, you gave the example of the groom who's, you know, uh, chased by a bear up a tree and can't make it to his wedding, he still becomes responsible for the. Financial commitments in the, uh, katuba in the, in the sort of marriage contract?
It, you could, you could say that the analogous case in divorce would be like if they're scheduled to come to court and have the divorce, but he's chased by a bear up a tree, uh, and he can't actually deliver the divorce document, so she would become divorced. That's not the case that we're talking about here, because in, in the, in, in, uh, typical, uh, you know, traditional Jewish divorce law, the divorce doesn't take effect until the man actually hands something to the woman.
So if he was chased up, uh, by a bear up a tree, it actually wouldn't, the divorce wouldn't take effect. Here we're talking about a particular case where what he, he has already given her a conditional divorce. Right where he's given her a document that says, if this happens, or, you know, if I don't come back, then you'll be divorced.
So he's already done all the mechanics of the divorce. So we're talking about a slightly different case. It may, may, you know, it's, it's, I don't think it's critical, fully critical for us to understand this, but, but the bottom line is that I don't want anyone to have the mis impression that it's exactly the same case, but it's analogous.
BENAY LAPPE: Great. That's exactly right. And my daughter is singing. I just wanna ask my daughter to stop singing for Oh, we don't hear,
DAN LIBENSON: I don't think we hear it. Oh, you
BENAY LAPPE: don't hear? Okay. That's fine. Okay. So I, I would actually like to spell out the situation of a conditional divorce and what is exactly, because I, I think it will help.
So, a conditional divorce I is the following situation. It's where in their heteronormative context, a man gives his wife a writ of divorce, a document that says I hereby divorce you,
DAN LIBENSON: which we call a get,
BENAY LAPPE: which we call a get. Thank you. But it says, I only hereby divorce you if the following condition is met.
Typically, that condition is my non-return after my trip abroad within a certain number of months or by a certain date. And this kind of conditional divorce was and still is given when in our current Norman system, a man who in most Halak context, is the only one who can initiate the divorce, knows he's going to be away on a business trip, on some sort of trip, and is afraid that if he doesn't return and there are no witnesses to his death, his wife will be left single.
Maybe he, he died, but also unable to remarry because there there's no witnessing to his death. Therefore, she can't be declared a widow and be free to remarry. That's a very bad situation. Um, and that's called being an Una. Mm-hmm. Okay. So a man who doesn't actually wanna divorce his wife, but doesn't want her to be left and abandoned, unable to be remarried, agana, if in fact he doesn't return against his own will, will write her a conditional get, because he'd rather have her be effectively a divorcee in the event of his non-return because that will allow her to remarry.
Rather than be a single attached to him and unable to remarry woman. So particularly in times of war and upheaval and particular persecution as well as business trips and so on, men would write and still do write their wives. Conditional gets, here's your get, keep it in the top drawer of our desk. This will go into effect.
If I do not return, let's say he's gonna go away for a week. He'll say, if I do not return within three months, you know, give him a little bit of leeway, but this will be your divorce and if I don't return against my will, it means something happened to me and you will be a divorced woman and free to remarry.
So the situation here is not a man who wants to divorce his wife. Okay? It's a man who's looking out for his wife. And he's given her a conditional get, and that's the specific case that Ava's concerned with because such a case brings up a very unique, likely situation of suffering, which we're gonna see in a minute.
Sorry, long, long intro. That's
DAN LIBENSON: super great. So, so then going back to the text, what, what it's saying here is that apparently Ava maintains that unavoidable circumstances. That's what you're translating as force majeure or onus. Uh, apparently Ava maintains that. Uh, doesn't have legal standing with regard to bills of divorce.
And, and that's the bottom line. The, what, what's written here is the explanation that you just gave by Steinfeld to the translator, and then the, this part of the Talmud ends by asking, where does Ava get this from? Like, right, because in the, because we figured out from the Torah that onus that if you are, if you are, uh, a force majeure causes you to, um, to do something that, that, you know, you weren't supposed to do, that you get a free pass.
Uh, and so, so you would think that that's just a general principle. You could either say, so I, I guess the options are to say either no, no, no, that's not a general principle that only applies to, uh, betrothed women. Or you could say it's a general principle that applies to everything. Or you could say it's a general principle that applies to everything except for exceptions, which in this case is, is divorce.
So what Ava, as if I understand this, the, the rabbis are basically agreeing that, that it's not just a ca onus that this idea of force majeure it, it doesn't only apply to betrothed women. It's a general principle that applies to everything that we learned from a case of a betrothed woman. And then Rafa is saying, yeah, everything except this one case of divorces.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I really appreciate that you brought that out, that we actually missed naming the radicalness of the leniency that the Torah only. Seem to apply in the case of a woman who is raped in the field and the rabbis expand that leniency that you are excused from the negative consequences of anything you've done or prevented from doing, um, to all of life.
Mm-hmm. And presumably so that's big, that, that's big and radical and I think that in and of itself as a broad principle speaks to the rabbi's desire to make sure we don't suffer because of things that were no fault of our own.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, and I mean that, that could probably be a, a discussion, you know, an hour in its own right of our discussion.
I don't know if there's a particular text that we should, where that actually is, is brought out, or, or this is the one. But, but that, that very, that's a, that's a huge, uh, what, what's the phrase? Like a huge tunnel that you could drive a train through or whatever. I mean, like that, that, that again, like nowhere in the, to, if I understand this correctly, nowhere in the Torah other than that particular case of a, of a betrothed woman being raped in the field, nowhere else in the Torah does it say that there's a get outta jail free card from if you, if you committed a bad act, uh, because somebody forced you to.
Uh, but the rabbis are, are, are reading that. And, and, and that kind of goes a little bit with that, you know, what we did a bunch of weeks ago where, where there was that idea that if somebody holds a gun to your head, you should do what they're telling you to do except for, uh, idle worship and, and, uh, prohibited sexual relations and killing another person.
So in a way that, that's, this is very much the same case of saying that's onus. That's where you're being forced by somebody to do it. And basically they're saying, you, you do, you don't, you don't, uh, you haven't sinned if you do the thing that you're being, you know, eat a ham sandwich or I'll shoot you.
It's no sin to eat a ham sandwich. Uh, you know, except, except for the cases of murder, idle worship and, and, uh, and sexual illicit sexual relations, which we talked about back then. That there, that those, that those, some of those categories at least are, are expanded.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. What's interesting now that you bring up these two cases in relationship to one another, it's interesting that over there when they're talking about, and you know the case, if you know someone holds a gun to your head, they don't mention the principle of re over there,
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh.
I
BENAY LAPPE: have to think more about why. Well,
DAN LIBENSON: maybe there, because it, it's meaning that that's the extreme case of your It's, I, I should, I gave that, you know, I said like, hold the gun to your head, meaning you'll be killed if you don't do this. But if I understand onus, the principle would be, and again, I'm wondering whether there's somewhere in the tal that it talks about this, but like, even if it's not, I'll kill you, but it's actually just, I'm, I'm forcing you in some other way.
I'll hurt you. I'll say, I'll, I'll tweet something bad about you, you know, whatever it might be. Uh, that if you, if you eat the Hampton sandwich, you know, you're, you're, you're okay because you were forced.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Um, I still think more about that. Okay. Okay. But yes, so the rabbis under expand this principle and presumably for hundreds of years, we don't know exactly how long, but for quite a while it was understood to be unequivocal.
Unqualified applies everywhere,
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh
BENAY LAPPE: until Ava comes along and he says, I, in spite of the fact that God wants it to be applied everywhere, this get out of jail, free card will not apply to men who give their wives conditional, gets a man cannot say, for example, shall I spell this out?
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: A man cannot say, for example, a man who has given his wife a conditional get behold.
Here is your get. If I do not return within three months, she puts it in her top drawer. He goes away. He meant to come back within a week. He actually got chased up the tree by the bear, took him. Three months in a day to get back. He runs back and says, uh, but a bear, chase me up a tree according to Ava.
Sorry, the get j outta jail free card does not apply to get, in other words, does not apply to you. We're pulling that right away from you. Um, because this is a case of a conditional get and this principle doesn't apply. And we're then the, then the, the Alad asks as our text is about to show where do Ravi get that?
DAN LIBENSON: Right. I just wanna give one example. I wanna see if you, what you think of this as a, a, an example, a live issue in our time in American constitutional law where we might be seeing something along these lines. Uh, so the Constitution, the, the First Amendment says that there should be freedom of religion.
Uh, that for much of American history was, was understood in a pretty narrow sense, you know, that, that you shouldn't be forced to be a certain religion or, you know, that you have basic freedoms. But, but, um, but over the, the, in the 20th century, it was, it was radically expanded. Uh, you know, in all kinds of ways.
Like, and this is also the establishment of religion. They sort of go together. They're opposite, but whatever the book, you know, there shouldn't be prayer in public schools. Well, there, there used to be prayer in public schools. They decided a certain way there shouldn't be prayer in public schools because, uh, that was perhaps, uh, pressuring kids to, uh, do religious things if they didn't want to, et cetera.
So that, that got very much expanded over time. And progressives would say, oh, this is wonderful that this expanded so much. It's so, it's so, it's so, uh, accepting of our diverse culture. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing. Uh, oh, wait a second, then some, uh, you know, very, uh. Uh, conservative Christians come along and they say, well, our religion says that we should be against homosexuality, so that means that we shouldn't have to hire gay people, or that we shouldn't have to make a cake for somebody's wedding.
Uh, you know, that's a same sex marriage. And then you say, oh, well wait a second. Our, our progressive expansion actually has now created a new way in which. Somebody can be oppressed. And so, so in the tal of this expansion of onus, this idea that you can get out of any, any, uh, uh, condition, if you claim correctly, that you were forced, that there was forced majeure sounds so wonderful and progressive, whoa, A couple hundred years later we were, wait a second, wait a second.
There's a real problem with ao with divorced or with women whose husband is missing and, and they're not divorced. So, so I feel like that's similar. And then you say, okay, well, well, so what are we, what are we gonna have to do here? Either we have to get rid of that exception, that, uh, expansion of the principle because now we're seeing pain here, but that'll cause pain, you know, back where it used to be causing pain.
Or we have to say, well, yeah, we, that, that is, that principle remains expanded. Now there's a, there's gonna be a, an exception made a, a particular case. So, you know, it would be like saying you have freedom of religion except in cases where your freedom of religion causes a certain degree of suffering upon, in this case, people based on sexual orientation.
Maybe that would be explained more broadly.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. My, my brain is trying to handle those, that, that example and this example, because they're not exactly anal, they're analogous in theory, but the, the exception. Hmm. I don't know. I can't even think my way through it.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Well, we don't have to go get into the depth of it.
I'm just saying that like what, what I'm just trying to show is that there can be an expansion of a principle that's really good, but it might be that at a certain point you realize that that expansion is now putting a new category of people in, in a vulnerable position. And you didn't mean that. That's the law of unintended consequences.
And now you have a chance to say, what am I gonna do about that? That's
BENAY LAPPE: great. Okay, great. I'll take it at that. And one thing I think we need to remember is that when Ava stands up and he says, wait, there's an un unintended consequence, which we're about to see. It's causing suffering and I think we should amend this law.
We shouldn't understand that he was the only one to identify that problem or to be aware of that problem. Mm-hmm. I presume that rabbis were aware of this problem as were people, as were husbands and wives for a long, long time, and they just said, my hands are tied.
DAN LIBENSON: Can I do? Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: You know, this is
DAN LIBENSON: still going on in the Orthodox community today.
And of course, maybe even beyond in terms of this exact problem of not, not exactly this problem of like people, 'cause for fortunately people are getting lost at sea less often these days and, and whatnot. But there, there are these cases where a husband is not willing to give his wife a divorce and then kind of just moves to Israel or whatever, you know, disappears from the legal system.
And then this is a, this is a case that that exists. There's, there's, you can, there's stories about it in the press that, that there's a woman who is an Orthodox woman who doesn't wanna leave orthodoxy and is, is now stuck. As an a, as somebody whose husband refused to give her divorce for decades and she's unable or feels herself unable to, to marry.
And it's tragic. And, and, and a lot of orthodox rabbis say, what can I do? My hands are tied, I feel for you, but there's nothing I can do. And then others like Blue Greenberg, not in this case, I don't know if she said in this case, but Blue Greenberg is famous for saying where there's a rabbinic will, there's a halek way, meaning that there don't say, my hands are tied.
Say, you know, this is, this is something that's so significant. I'm gonna figure out a way to, to to, to make it hal able to be not, not this tragedy anymore.
BENAY LAPPE: Absolutely. And this exact text as we're going to see when we get to the end of it, is precisely the text that says explicitly this excuse of my hands are tied.
In that particular case of, and iguana is, is, is a wrong approach. And in fact, my hands are tied. What, what this, this text is trying to say, as is the entire Talmud with a wink. And here there's no wink is my hands are tied, is not how we do Jewish, uh, it's never been how we do Jewish ever since the rabbis at least.
Mm-hmm. And can never be thought of as a legitimately Jewish response to any suffering ever. You can tell me that. I don't wanna untie my hands. Mm-hmm. I don't wanna fix this. I'm okay with that. Mm-hmm. You tell me why you don't wanna a humiliate, you know the suffering, but don't tell me you can't because that's not true.
You can, you won't. Fine. You tell me why you won't. I'll tell you why I will. And we can have that out. But don't tell me we can't. You think you can't. So you're illegitimate because we actually can't. That isn't true. And this suya is. One of those rare examples where it is so explicitly obvious that that's not true.
That anyone who knows it has a lot of power in their hands. And the only thing that those who wish to do otherwise can say is Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was fine for them. They were closer to God and closer to Mount Sinai, but we are not, which I think is not the way it works, but Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So, so the, so, so the question that we had here in the text is, where does Ava get this principle for?
How does he know that, where, where does, where is he getting that from?
BENAY LAPPE: Right. And in fact, that that is one of the agendas of the gamara. It's one of the agendas to say, what's your source? Um, and we know that there are, there are five possible sources and we're gonna see what source he, um, I don't know if I wanna say uses or where he understands.
That God in Torah really want him, in fact, to erase this leniency factor. Right. Um, in the context of conditional divorces,
DAN LIBENSON: although as, as the Talmud often does, and we've actually shortened this and taken some, some of this route out, the toad often kind of goes down to, well, maybe it's this, maybe it's this, maybe it's this.
So what we're gonna study right now is the last, maybe it's this, which turns out to be not the reason why it was, and then we'll study the reason why it was. That's right. Right. But is a helpful case to, to study. So just to note like this is actually not, it turns out where Ava gets it from, but this is the first, uh, thing that they're testing out here.
And, and like you said, they're these different sources of law. And one of them is, is a case that, that, that this is, that the re that we're deriving this principle from a case that we know from the past where it was decided. In a particular way that we'd be consistent with the principle that there is no onus in in divorce law.
That's right.
BENAY LAPPE: And that's called precedent. And it, it works in lots of legal systems, including our own American system.
DAN LIBENSON: Right? So they give this case, so they say, rather the proof might come from this case. There's, they had gone through a few other ones. So there's a rather no, the proof comes from maybe this case where a certain man who said to, who said to his wife or to agents that he gave the bill of divorce.
If, if I don't like the case that you said, if I don't return from now until after 30 days have passed, meaning if I'm missing, I'm going off on a trip. If I'm missing for not, you said three months. If I'm missing for just 30 days, let this bill be a bill of divorce. So, and that happened that 30 days came and he didn't, he didn't come back.
Why now? Why didn't he come back? It wasn't that he couldn't, that he, uh, didn't wanna come back. It was actually a case that he was prevented because there was a river there. And the ferry, you know, like imagine the scene, the, the movie, the person you know is, is coming back after 30 days and 29 days, right?
And he, and he's coming back and he's so excited to see his wife. And he gets to, and just as he's getting to the riverside, the ferry pulls off and starts going and he can't get it to the ferry. And he's, you know, dejected at the edge. And the next ferry doesn't come till the next day and that's it, 30 days pass.
And, uh, but he wasn't, it wasn't his fault. The, the ferry he missed the ferry, the ferry, the ferry left early, whatever the, the ferry went off. He couldn't, he couldn't get across the river. So he said to the people across the river, there's people, I guess, standing on the other side of the river, Hey, hey, tell my wife, you know, tell the agents I'm here.
I'm here, you know, but I can't actually get there physically, but I'm here. So he says, you know, he said to the, yeah, go ahead. He said, so, so in the Texas, he said to the people across the river, see that I have come see the, I have come. Yeah. And you could, you could really see this guy,
BENAY LAPPE: like in the repetition of this light.
He's waving his arms.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Look, consider me as having come. I, I, I, I'm here, I'm here. I'm wanting to come. I, I, I would be there except, but for this ferry that's actually taken off already. I can't get there until 31 days. But I'm here. I'm here, I'm here. Consider me as here and don't consider the condition in the get to have been fulfilled.
That is my non-return. Within 30 days. Consider me as effectively there because I wanna be there. I'm almost there.
DAN LIBENSON: Yes. Right. And so, so the Talmud reports that Schmuel, who is a previous generation, very important person.
BENAY LAPPE: Like Rabbi, rabbi, but he didn't have the title, but he was a sage and, and, uh, empowered because he was both gamina and Severna learned and morally intuitive.
He was empowered to make judicial rulings and here was his ruling on that case.
DAN LIBENSON: Right? So he ruled this is not considered to be a return, meaning the condition was not fulfilled. That no, it was, was fulfilled. The condition was meaning. The condition was that I, if I don't return within 30 days, and sure enough, he did not return within 30 days.
Therefore, the condition is fulfilled and therefore the divorce is, is, uh, is, uh, in enforce. Uh, and um, and, and, and so the point that the Talmud is saying here is that maybe this was the case that Ava took, derived the principle from, from this, that Schmuel must have believed and everybody must have believed that there's no.
Uh, that there's no onus in, in, uh, divorce law, meaning that yeah, it wasn't his fault that the ferry pulled away. That was force majeure. Uh, and Schmuel ruled that the condition is met and the divorce is therefore, uh, in enforce. And that, that's where we derive this principle.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. Because it looks like Schmo saying, we're not giving you a get outta jail free card.
The fact that the fairy detained you or the lack of a fairy being there detained you, which is on Sure. Looks like on, we are not gonna say, oh, well you've claimed by, by saying, Hey, I'm here. I'm here. It's only because of the ferry that I haven't come back that I was ownest. We're not gonna say, yeah, you were ownest.
We're going to disregard the actual reality of what appears to be onus. Not gonna give you, get out of jail free card. We're going to consider the condition of the get my non-return within 30 days to have been met and the get becomes a valid get. And in that moment, you know, while he's going, look, I've, I'm here, I'm here.
His wife becomes a divorce woman. Mm-hmm. Okay. Looks like Schmuel was making that ruling based on his own belief that we don't give, get outta jail free cards in the cases of Getz. 'cause this is a case of, uh, a divorce. So maybe Ava in making his broad legislation that a claim of onus will no longer count in the area of Gaetz was standing on Chino's shoulders.
He was using this precedent to make his broad legislative move seems reasonable.
DAN LIBENSON: Seems reasonable, but the gamara rejects that proof. Yeah. No, no. That's not where the, the principle comes from that larger principle. Why? Because the, the gamara is saying, no, no, this, this had to do with a very particular, more limited case where perhaps unavoidable circumstances that are common and could be anticipated are different since he should have stipulated that exception when establishing the condition that he did not stipulate it.
So he brought the failure to arrive upon himself, meaning that if we know that the ferry leaves only at noon on the 29th day and, you know, or something. Or the noon on the 30th or noon. Every
BENAY LAPPE: noon every day. Yeah. Noon every
DAN LIBENSON: day. And, and, you know, if you miss the ferry on that day, there's no way to get to the town.
Until it would be the 31st day and you would, you know, if you know that, then you got a plan for your, uh, trip that you get there an hour early to make sure that you don't miss the ferry. And that is a known common circumstance. And if you didn't plan for it properly, you know, you should have come back two days earlier.
Like, why did you wait till the last minute? That there's a certain level there of, of your own fault. And so you can't think of it as force majeure that, you know, an out, an act of God, an act of, you know, something outta your control. This actually was in your control and it's not that you didn't wanna come back, you did wanna come back, but you were so irresponsible.
It's kind of like recklessness or negligence in tort law that, that you know, it's your own fault and therefore that's why it doesn't, there's no get outta jail free card here. It's because it was your own fault.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. And or more specifically, you know, that. Fairies only leave once a day. You should have anticipated that problem and not returned earlier, but stipulated in your conditional divorce.
Hmm. If I don't ret return, if I don't return within 30 days bracket, unless I'm held up by the ferry, which only comes once a day, Uhhuh, this is your divorce, he should have put an extra, an extra writer Uhhuh on his conditional divorce saying, you know, except if this happens to be by the ferry, because I know that that is likely to hold me up.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm
BENAY LAPPE: If he was such a bozo as to not have stipulated that very common possibility, he can't now claim the get out of jail free card. He would've gotten the get outta jail free card. Um, the Talmud is saying. Schul would've given him the get out of jail free card if he had stipulated in his, get that which he should have anticipated.
So we can't conclude that Schmuel was actually a no get outta jail free card guy. I,
DAN LIBENSON: I, I think that, like if he had been chased up a tree by a bear, the implication here is that Schmuel would've given him the get outta jail. Like Schmuel would've said the divorce doesn't take effect. If the reason why he didn't arrive was 'cause he was chased up bere by a bear, because that is an uncommon situation, hopefully, whereas the missing of the ferry is not an uncommon situation.
So, so therefore, but, but Ava announced a much bigger principle. He said that no, no circumstance, uh, of, of, uh, claiming that something out of your control happened, whether it's a ferry mist or a bear. Chasing you up a tree or anything else, none of that is, is gonna work. So, whereas Schmuel would've said Bear, yes, very.
No,
BENAY LAPPE: that's right. So the mirror, and all we know of this precedent is the story of what happened and AL'S ruling, which is basically, sorry Charlie. Mm-hmm. We don't know Al's rationale. All we know is he didn't allow this case of on to be, uh, an exculpatory claim. The fact that he might've been, uh, get outta jail free card over any, you know, onus situation, or he could have been, uh, Hey Bozo, you should have stipulated.
It means that we can't conclusively Uhhuh know for sure that this, uh, case was Ava's source. Now having said that. I wanna make a sidebar. I think there's a possibility, this is maybe a little bit overly complicated. There is a possibility that that ruling of schmo, in that case, that precedent was exactly Ava's source
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh,
BENAY LAPPE: but the editor, the Staa, who's really wanting to up uplift the role of Savara, even beyond Rava, which he did, is actually wanting to shift RVA source from that precedent to sra.
So, I don't know, it's just a, a, a guess that I have. Um, but the, the passage is radical in and of itself, just the way it is. Mm-hmm. We can't actu we don't actually have Ava's words, so we can't really know, even if we could. Confidently say with a quote of Ava's, what? That, that really was his quote. But we don't have his own words.
We just have what was attributed to him as his rationale and the sta the editor attributes to, to Ava. The rationale of, not that case, not precedent, but as far as we're gonna now see, so, okay, so okay. Returns on the sidebar.
DAN LIBENSON: Great. No. So now we go. Okay. So, so that one, at least according to the text here, we're saying that, no, that's not the reason.
Okay. So what is the reason? So that's where we go next,
BENAY LAPPE: right? And again, reason or source? What's, what's, what's Ava standing on? Okay, good.
DAN LIBENSON: So the Talmud goes on to say, no, no, rather, Rafa is stating aha, uh, legal decision based on his own reasoning. Translated here, you, the word is savara, and you translate that as moral intuition.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. So often you'll see translations like this, reasoning, logic, something like that reason. Um, but I think this particular text makes it very clear that this is not a mere logical deduction, and it's something much more ethically informed and and sensitive to suffering, informed mm-hmm. Uh, than mere reasoning, which sounds like a, a, you know, an intellectual, um, conclusion.
This makes it very clear what Sava eventually came to represent. The legal system. So right, so now the text says, no, no, no. Ava was, was using his own savara, and I'm not sure what to make of this. This is one of the rare examples, not only of Sah, but where they, um, used the term Savara, the na sah, his own savara, Sah of his own soul, or his, um, his life's reasoning and, and maybe over, over translating.
But um, it's not just s Farah, which in other texts they would just say, oh, the source is s far here, it's his own spar. I'm not sure what to make of that. Um, maybe this is suggesting that you, I don't know that all the other guys around the table who saw the same suffering, um. They, their savara did not, um, sort of motivate them or move them to make a fix, but his did.
I'm not sure
DAN LIBENSON: there's something we should go back. We should think about that maybe next time. Like we should really go into that. 'cause that's very interesting. But, um, let's, let's finish, uh, today with just a little bit of like the explanation of what that, what that Sava was about. So, so, um, so Ava stating, haha, based on his own Sava, uh, due to virtuous women and due to licentious women in, in the, uh, Hebrew America, that's s and pr, which could be, um, translated as modest women or, or virtuous women.
But this sort of, and Prso can also be a kind of like a licentious is, I guess a nice way to put it, you know, but they're talking about sexually. Um, promiscuous or that kind of Right. People that really, really wanna have sex. Right. I mean, it's a kind of Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Well, I, I into it. I, I actually think licentious and, and the way the term prout is typically understood, um, by the rabbis is actually being unnecessarily negative.
Right. After all, you know, we know from the song Uta, this root of paras means to break forth. And this is, these are women, at least in this context, not who are licentious, but a woman who has a get in her hand. And if she wants to go forth and get remarried, there's nothing wrong with that.
DAN LIBENSON: We could say unbound, right?
That's right. Right. Um, Uhhuh Uhhuh.
BENAY LAPPE: So there, there is definitely a rabbinic overlay of, you know, someone who is anxious to. Act on her right to remarry quickly, you know, oh, there must be something licentious about her. But I really think we need to un unpeel that layer, um, because we're really only talking about a woman who wants her conditional get, goes into effect, is now going out there to remarry.
Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: And I don't know how far you wanna like go, you know, just in terms of today versus next time. I mean, just to like, leave folks with a understanding of what this is about. I mean, I, we can do it through the text or we can come back to the text next week and just sort of explain this. But I, I think that the, the fundamental idea here is, is that the, the issue is if you don't have a firm.
Rule, meaning if you don't, if you don't know whether the condition was fulfilled or not, then you have two kinds of people. And maybe like to put it, there's a, there's a very, uh, sexist way that this is all put, maybe because of the case or maybe for other reasons, but there, there, well, we can think of it more broadly.
There are people who are risk averse, they're cautious. They say like, look, if I don't know if this happened, then I'm gonna assume that it didn't happen, so I can be safe. You know? And there's other people that, that are more likely to say, you know, if I don't know one way or the other, I'm gonna, I'm gonna assume that it happened, you know, because, and I can go off on my way, you know, and I can, right, that's right.
Sorry, go ahead. No, and if you have a, a, a legal, uh, system that says like, we can, we actually are, we're, we're gonna, we're oriented towards making sure that the rule is, is that we, we have, we have certainty then. Then neither, neither of those problems, you're, you're will, will exist. You're not gonna have people that are like holding back because they're worried that maybe I'll get in trouble.
And you also don't have the people that are maybe going too far ahead and they will get in trouble. You know, you, you have, you, you, you, it's not that one is necessarily better than the other. It's just that like both are are unfortunate cases that you don't have res that you, that you're likely to have if you don't have certainty as to what, what's happened with the, what the law is, right?
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. And it's that recognition that you're, because people are people and there are two kinds of people. They're the, the cautious ones and they're not so cautious ones. And both are reasonable ways to be people. And it's Ava's recognition that there will be these two kinds of people. In this case it's women.
But I think you're right. It's people generally who will naturally respond in one of these two ways when there is uncertainty about. What law is actually in force at this moment. Um, and both can get into trouble. And, and it's a, I think it's Ava's recognition that the, the system that broadband of the exculpatory claim of onus in this circumstance actually puts all people mm-hmm.
In a bad situation and therefore can't be the right law. It
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: It needs to be modified.
DAN LIBENSON: And we'll get deeply into that next week. I, I think just to, just to put a, a just clear sort of pin on it, it's like the, the situation here is that we have a case where we don't know if this divorce has gone into effect or not fundamentally, right.
And it's almost like Schrodinger's cat, you know, right. Where, that's right. Where it's the, the divorce. Either she's divorced or not divorced, but we don't know. Uh, and they're the, what they're calling the virtuous woman is one who says, look, I don't know if I'm divorced or not. I better act as if I'm not divorced.
It turns out that maybe if she is divorced, then she has a right to go off and get married again and have a family and do everything that she want. And she's, and she's gonna hold back potentially for her whole life, saying maybe he's coming back tomorrow. Maybe a bear chase him uppe tree maybe. Right.
And she's gonna suffer in that way. And, and what a shame, what a tragedy if it turns out that he was turns, you know, that, that, that, that he's dead or whatever. Right. And that she is divorced, uh, and she spends her whole life not being able to, right,
BENAY LAPPE: right. But don't give away too much because the text is gonna spell that out.
Yeah. But let, let, let me also try to name the uncertainty. Okay. The, the dilemma here is that the condition as written in the conditional get, has gone into effect
DAN LIBENSON: uhhuh and
BENAY LAPPE: has triggered namely non-return within X number of days. The husband has not returned, the get has gone into effect the get. But in the law, according to the law of the land, before Ava stands up and makes his bold erasure according to the law of the land, if the husband hasn't yet returned and explained why he allowed that condition to be fulfilled, we can't know whether it was fulfilled due to onus because the bear chased him up a tree.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: In which case, prior to Ava, that get is not a valid get.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Or he was, uh, out sleeping with another woman, marrying a different woman, settling down, decided he didn't wanna come home and there was no onus. He allowed the condition to go into effect. The get is a get and it's a valid get and that woman holding that get doesn't know.
Because she lives in a world of, my husband can come home and legitimately claim onus and this get that I have in my hand, which looks like a valid get, will be retroactively, ult.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. That's precisely the situation that this broad law has put this woman in.
DAN LIBENSON: And on the flip side, there's a chance that, that it actually, uh, that it actually would, would be an old, in other words, that there's a woman who, who actually would be divorced, I'm sorry, wouldn't be divorced, and, and she believes that the husband is gone, is never coming back.
And so she goes off and marries another man and she's actually still married. I mean, that's the other ca that's what they're calling the licentious woman or the unbound woman. That's the worry there. That, that she might actually, in reality have two husbands and that's
BENAY LAPPE: bad, which would effectively make her, um.
Adult. Correct. Adult
DAN LIBENSON: and, and her children, uh, you know, moms there.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. Exactly. And the text is gonna spell that out next time.
DAN LIBENSON: Yep. Okay. Well, so next week we're, we'll fill, we'll, we'll, uh, continue with sort of understanding the depths of all this and then, and then the, the real, I mean the real meat of it all, which is where, what we've been talking about all along, where the Talmud really sort of understands what's going on here.
You know, pull the curtain and see what's, what's Ava really doing.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: All right. So we'll see you next week.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Bye.
DAN LIBENSON: Thanks so much for joining our chevruta today! We hope you’ve enjoyed learning with us… and with the Talmud. You can find links to the source sheets for all episodes in the show notes and on our website at oraltalmud.com. Your support helps keep Oral Talmud going. You can find a link on the website to contribute. We’d also love to hear from you! Email us with any questions, comments, or thoughts at hello@oraltalmud.com. Please, share your Oral Talmud with us – we’re so excited to learn from you. The Oral Talmud is a joint project of SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva and Judaism Unbound, two organizations that are dedicated to making Jewish texts and ideas more accessible for everyone. We are especially grateful to Sefaria for an incredible platform that makes the Talmud available to everyone. It’s free at sefaria.org. And we are grateful to SVARA-nik Ezra Furman for composing and performing The Oral Talmud’s musical theme. The Oral Talmud is produced by Joey Taylor, with help from Olivia Devorah Tucker, and with financial support from Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah. Thanks so much for listening–and with that, this has been the Oral Talmud. See ya next time.
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