The Oral Talmud: Episode 33 - It’s Svara All the Way Down (Ketubot 2b & 3a)
SHOW NOTES
“It's always been that if we get to a point where svara tells us that this text is wrong, svara trumps the text.” - Dan Libenson
Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.
When we were recording this episode in November of 2020, it was feeling very much like we were living in a time of crash in America and in the world, just like the world at the time of the Talmud. That sense still feels true to today, as we release the podcast version five years later. In times like this, the systems we rely on reveal their cracks. This episode leans into that unease, asking what happens when a law that is meant to protect people instead traps them in unending suffering.
Continuing the case we explored last week, from Tractate Ketubot, pages 2b and 3a, which is a text about divorce, we follow one rabbi’s willingness to do something pretty shocking about it: override the Torah itself in order to stop harm to human beings. At the center is svara, or moral intuition, and a radical claim that responsibility doesn’t end with saying “sorry, that’s the rule.”
This week’s text: Ketubot 2b & 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 33: “It’s Svara All the Way Down” 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 we were recording this episode in November of 2020, it was feeling very much like we were living in a time of crash in American and in the world, just like the world at the time of the Talmud. That sense still feels true to today, as we release the podcast version five years later. In times like this, the systems we rely on reveal their cracks. This episode leans into that unease, asking what happens when a law that is meant to protect people instead traps them in unending suffering.
Continuing the case we explored last week, from Tractate Ketubot, pages 2b and 3a, which is a text about divorce, we follow one rabbi’s willingness to do something pretty shocking about it: override the Torah itself in order to stop harm to human beings. At the center is svara, or moral intuition, and a radical claim that responsibility doesn’t end with saying “sorry, that’s the rule.”
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: Welcome back everyone. I'm Dan Levison, and I'm here with Bene Lape for this week's episode of the Oral Talmud. Hey Bene.
BENAY LAPPE: Hey, Dan. How are ya?
DAN LIBENSON: I'm, I'm pretty good. I, I'm trying to remember, like, I feel like now, like we've talked about this before, like we live in some weird, you know, time space continuum, you know, where like last Fri last Thursday, did we know what happened in the election yet?
You know, we had, we had our suspicions, but it wasn't clear, you know, and, and now this week do we, we, we do know, but not everybody agrees. It's a very strange time and, um. Very strange time. And, and, and again, I think we talked about this a little bit last week, but like the, the possibility, right? There's all this like controversy over when Exactly.
And why was the Tom Wood put into writing and there's like some possibility that it had to do with the rise of Islam and the sort of, the sense that that the, that the Persian Empire was being, was gonna be overrun and some sense of needing to preserve something. I'm starting to feel, I'm starting to feel like, uh, I, I might start to know what living in such a time feels like.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Um, okay. Totally miscellaneous, totally miscellaneous thought two weeks ago we were talking about, um, I had this realization or we together had this realization that the proof for what were we learning? It was, um. Oh, it was about the sick person eating on Kippur, remember Le? Mm-hmm. And there was a whole chain of proofs, and we were speculating as to whether these proofs were actually the proofs which yielded the law.
The revised much more radical, much more sort of compassionate person-centered suffering, uh, ameliorating legislation or whether they were sort of backfill and later explanations to provide a path. And, okay, I'm gonna go over to my bookshelf here. So, uh, where is it? Uh, here? So in Man Elon's, um, Jewish law, he talks about, oh, I'm not gonna find the page.
Anyway, he talks about the different, the difference between, um. Mid, um, reads of Torah to prove or explain it. It's at some point I'll find the terms, but anyway, it's a thing. Apparently it is a thing. Our suspicion was correct and the, and the, and Tud scholars recognize and debate and apparently that is an open question always as to whether, you know, these, these texts which provide proofs are really legislative history of the actual process or later, um, filled in.
Like possible ways to get to such a radical end. Hmm. Anyway, I don't know. That just, I was excited. Now I, I meant to tell you.
DAN LIBENSON: All right. Well, that's, you know, good for another day. Well, we'll dive into that even more. Yeah. Um, so today we're, we're continuing this text that we're doing from the track date Katu boat.
Uh, where, and, and you know, it's always, we're we're doing a particular, um, a particular case. There, there's so many layers, right? What we're trying to convey here, right, is that the Talmud is sort of a case book from a law school. So the case is, the case itself may be incidental. It may not be, I mean, it may be important to know that we have a particular, uh, approach towards marriage and divorce.
But in some ways the case is, is, uh, incidental to, to be able to learn certain, uh, uh, values and principles, and also certain processes like logical processes or other processes where we derive, you know, well, how do we figure out what the rule is? And so this case is, is a combination of all that, but at least the thing that we're really trying to emphasize right now is that in the rebuilding of a new Judaism, after the temple is destroyed, the rabbis are kind of looking at the, the source that was seen as the authoritative source, whether that's the, the Torah originally, and then later the Mishna.
And they're looking at those constitutions, so to speak, or, or something like that. And they're saying, well, something has changed. And, uh, I'm not sure, not so sure that, that this is how we wanna build our society anymore. And what do they do? And so we're suggesting that they're introducing, or some version of introducing higher values that are now going to overcome those, those laws or those, uh, standards or, or norms or whatever we wanna call them that are in those earlier works.
And, um, and, and, or that they might not be new. They might be dis discovering them that they were always there, but that's something that we'll, we'll get into.
BENAY LAPPE: Or the values came first, meaning the, that right receive tradition, the new values, uh, a new sensitivity to other issues and other questions, or new answers to old questions, which they didn't have before.
And then the perceived incompatibility of that. New value with the old system. I, I think the value comes first. Mm-hmm. Um,
DAN LIBENSON: okay. So this particular case, uh, and just a quick recap and correct me if I've gotten anything wrong, but I'm gonna try to do it very quickly just for anyone who wasn't here last week, by the way, you can always go and listen.
Maybe you should pause it right now, go listen to last week and then, or watch last week and then come back. Um, but, uh, the basic idea is that we're looking at this case that has to do with a concept called onus, which is the, the idea that, um, if you have a conditional promise, a conditional contract in this case, a conditional divorce, that, and you say, well, there's a certain condition.
This divorce, this contract is only going to be in enforced if a condition happens. In this case, the person is saying, if I don't come back within 30 days, uh, this divorce will become, uh. A finalized divorce, but if I do come back between uh, 30 days, you know, then it's not, so the condition is my non coming back.
And the, the, and, and in the to, uh, derived from the Torah, there's this concept called onus, which means that if the reason why that condition was, uh, was fulfilled was something that, uh, that, that was not in your hands. Essentially you force majeure in act of gods in, in jargon and act, not an actual act of God, but like something that was out of your control.
If that was why this thing happened, then you, uh, then you kind of, then, then it's as if it didn't happen, meaning that, that the, that the div that if, if, if the reason I was, uh, I, I I did not return after 30 days was because a bear chased me up a tree, then it's as if the I did return within 30 days, meaning that the divorce wouldn't be in play.
Yep,
BENAY LAPPE: that's right. The application of this principle of onus to this case. Is just one aspect, one tiny application that the Torah IIC notion at, at play here is the concept of onus. Namely that I will be relieved of any negative consequences that result from being forced to do something or prevented from doing something against my will.
The that's the rabbis understand that to be God's gift to all of us. We all get this Get outta jail free card and anything that happens as a result of that forced action or inaction is undone and reversed.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: According to Jewish law, that that's the starting point. And then comes this particular case of what about.
A conditional contract that goes into effect once the condition is met. But that condition was actually met through forced action. Through no fault of my own, I didn't want the condition to actually go into effect. And it went into effect, but it wasn't my fault. So according to this principle of onus, I should be able to undo, we should, we should back up the time clock to before the condition went into effect and say, no, it didn't tech, it didn't actually effectively go into effect.
Um, and in this case, a divorce, um, written with such a condition wouldn't be a valid divorce.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. And, and, and let's look at this. I mean, ultimately the, the, the text is gonna look at this from the perspective of the wife. Um, so looking at it a little bit from the perspective of the wife, without going into detail right now, it's just, just to imagine the case.
The case is that my husband. Went off to, uh, to travel. Of course, this isn't a heteronormative situation. The, my husband went off to travel somewhere and he gave me this conditional divorce, and it says if I'm not back within 30 days, then this is a divorce. Then you can go off and do whatever you need to do, get married again, you know, whatever.
Whatever you need to do. Um, and so here comes, it's 30 days. He's not here 31 days, 32 days. He's not here. So from, from what I can tell, as the wife, he, the condition is fulfilled. He is not here 30 days. I'm divorced. That would be, and, and, and, but the, the issue with onus is that. If we have this concept of onus, onus, then, then onus, which is kind of an onus in this case, that, that, that the, um, that what, that, what that would mean is that that wife would be looking at the divorce and say, well, it is a valid divorce unless the reason why he's not back is that something, something happened to him that, that, that, not that he's dead, but that he's in prison or he is chased up a tree by a bear and he can't come down.
You know, so, and how, and I can't know that. So then I'm looking at this, I say, well, I think I'm divorced, but I don't know that I'm divorced. Right. That's kind of the situation. And so there's, there's 'cause,
BENAY LAPPE: because in the world of oes being a broad, unqualified across every aspect of life. Permissibility, which the rabbis understand.
That woman knows that if her husband does come back and say, yeah, I was chased up a tree, that divorce will be retroactively annulled.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And she effectively never really would have been a divorced person and is still not a person. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. And, and so there's, this is, you know, this is one of the functions of law in general is to provide certainty.
I mean, this is why, for example, we have a statute of limitations.
BENAY LAPPE: That's why we're in this weird election situation.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, right. I mean, there's always, there's always relevance. No
BENAY LAPPE: certainty isn't certain. Okay. Right.
DAN LIBENSON: There's always relevance. But, but part of the thing is like, that's why we have a statute of limitations, for example, because you wanna say like, look, I don't think I did anything illegal, but if I accidentally did something illegal.
Uh, I wanna at least know that after five years, I can, I don't have to worry that that event that, you know, after 20 years, the IRS is gonna come and arrest me, you know, whatever that is. It's like, no, no, no. Like, there's a statute of limitations where, you know, if five years have passed, you're, you're good no matter what might have happened, you know, and there's, there's good and bad of, of that.
But the, the good part of it is that it does give you some sense of certainty, some sense. I know where I stand, you know? And, and the issue with onus is that in principle, you might never know where you stand because. There's always a possibility that you look, you think that you bought this house, you know, you think that you, uh, you know, got this job, whatever it might be.
You know, you think you have a contract for your job or whatever, you know. But if it, if it turns out that somebody comes along and says, no, no, no, I was forced this condition only was met because of, of, of something that happened that wast, you know, forced majeure and active guy, you know, then, then, then that can all be undone.
And so there's a, a certain lack of certainty that becomes, uh, inherent in a system that even has onus as a concept, especially if it's indefinite. Especially if you can say, well, you could come back two years later and say, I was, you know, I was put in prison and, you know, I couldn't communicate. So, so, uh, so that, that could be true of like a, a mortgage, you know, like a home purchase.
But then you say, well, okay, so, I mean, you'll have to move to another house, you know, I mean, it's, it's too bad. It's unfortunate, but the big deal. But the problem here in, in a case of a divorce is that you might remarry.
BENAY LAPPE: Well, let's do that. I mean, we're gonna get there too. We're get, let's do, get inside.
DAN LIBENSON: We're gonna get there. But the, but the obvious problem is that you might remarry and then, and then the problem is that you're married to two different people. I mean, that's the, that's the easy, that's the case. I think that's, that's a, that would be apparent to anybody. Why is it a problem to, to, not to, to think that you might be divorced, but you're not actually divorced, is you might get married again and be married to two people.
There's other cases well, we'll get to, but like, that's, that's why you would want some certainty in terms of divorce. It's a particularly important area to have certainty.
BENAY LAPPE: But let's remember that, that was precisely life. That dis that that uncertainty and problem was what obtained before Ava,
DAN LIBENSON: right?
BENAY LAPPE: This, the, the law that onus applies to everywhere, including gatz, including conditional gatz when husbands gave gatz and uh, divorce documents and then didn't show up, that problem existed.
And I think we always have to remember that. I highly doubt that Ava's colleagues were unaware of that obvious dilemma, um, that was presented to women. Um, but I have to conclude that they were willing to tolerate it.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And it's Ava who says, no, we shouldn't tolerate it. We can't tolerate it.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: And, and now the, the, the, the Talmud is looking for the justification he used.
DAN LIBENSON: Right? So Ava just is So, Ava says Ava, by the way, one of the greatest rabbis, if not the greatest, of the Talmud here, of the Talmud here of Savara, uh, it says, uh, it's an on there is we don't, the concept of onus, onus doesn't apply to divorces.
Uh, so meaning that. If you have a condition in your divorce and the condition is met, husband says it's it's, it's a good divorce. If I don't come back within 30 days, he doesn't come back within 30 days. Your divorce doesn't matter why he didn't come back. If it, if it happened, it's, that's so there is no onus out in, in divorce law.
And like you say, then the, the Talmud asked like, how did he get that idea? And we, we don't have to go into the first attempt 'cause we did that last show. So they, they tried, but
BENAY LAPPE: there are, there are a number of attempts that we didn't even go over. And then last week we went over one attempt that failed.
By the way, I just also wanna notice for us all that,
not allowing the get out of jail free card of onus actually disables it. It. It will force me. It, it, what, what, what I trying to say? It takes away a right. That men at that time understood Torah to give them Mm. Torah gave them a right to say, Hey, but it wasn't my fault.
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh.
BENAY LAPPE: And to have the consequences undone that has now been stripped from them.
And it's going to for sure. While it's trying to solve the suffering problem that we're going to fully surface today, it is also going to add a new problem, meaning the man who actually was chased up a tree, um, that he'll no longer be able to stay married to his wife when he gets back.
DAN LIBENSON: Yep.
BENAY LAPPE: And it tho, tho those people want to be married to each other.
They can no longer be married to each other. And that is. The, the unin not unintended, but it, it, it's the outcome. It's the consequence of a more pressing fix that they're willing to tolerate. Um, did that make sense?
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. And, and there are always unintended consequences because, and, and maybe we could talk about that more at the end if we have time, is like, because, because now knowing that I'm not gonna have this out in case I'm chased up a tree, put in jail, whatever.
Now, I might be less likely to give my wife a conditional divorce if I'm going off on a dangerous voyage of some kind. And as a result, if I actually do die on the voyage, uh, and she doesn't know that I'm dead, she might become an Una, right? Meaning a person who thinks that she's still married, but actually is a widow, uh, but doesn't know that and therefore is in the status of an unknown, unknown, whether she's married or not.
And, and that's a, so, and that might happen. More often if the husband is worried that, you know, if I give her a conditional divorce, I'll accidentally, I'll accidentally meet that condition when I, when I didn't want to. So there's all kinds of, you know, unintended consequences that result from any change in the law or any change in how we interpret the law.
So ultimately you're making a, yeah. You're kind of making a rebalancing,
BENAY LAPPE: right? Basically this, this, this erasure of the ability to utilize the onus get outta jail. Free cart is going to disable, one is gonna disable a different set of people.
DAN LIBENSON: Than the
BENAY LAPPE: set of people that it currently disables. Mm-hmm. So let's take a look at the set of people that Rava is actually most sensitive to, right.
And who's suffering he wants to address. And then we'll hopefully circle back to, okay, now who's gonna suffer as a result of that fix?
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, great. So, so, um, so Ava, so the Thomas says, first of all, that Ava is stating this rule based on his own Sava here translated as reasoning, but, uh, you translated as, uh, as a moral intuition.
Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: And, and I wanna say that people o often challenge me. They say, Hey, why are you making a big deal about this idea of spar? It's just a logical deduction. What's the big deal? And I always point to this particular soy, this exact. Case, because I think it illustrates that Savara is not operating, at least at this point in, uh, Jewish juris, Prudential history.
By the time we get to the late amim third, fourth century, Sava has been opened up far beyond a neurological deduction. And you're gonna be able to see the, the sort of, the moral intuition, the ethical impulse that many people will disagree about. And as I said before, I'm sure Ravi Ravi's colleagues disagreed with him.
But, but this is gonna illustrate how this isn't about logic. It's not a deduction. It's not. Even reason and or reasoning doesn't quite get at it. Okay?
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. So he says that the, the, the, or the Talmud says that, that, that he is using his Sava, uh, and it's based on the, he's, he's, he's concerned about the virtuous women and the licentious women.
They sn o then pr o and, and then the gamara. That's where we stopped last time. And the gamara then goes on to explain this. So, right. First of all, it talks about the SNU oath, the virtuous women, right? It says there, there's a concern due to the virtuous women, which is if you said, let this not be a bill of, of divorce.
So, okay.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Sorry, sorry to interrupt you. Yeah. That, that, that, if you said, let it not be a bill of divorce, that means if you, if you don't accept Ava's ruling, that onus should not apply.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: And you continue life the way we've been living it.
DAN LIBENSON: Right?
BENAY LAPPE: And you continue to allow husbands, for example, to come back after a conditional get, has gone into effect and say that condition only went into effect against my will.
So the document, the contract, the divorce document shouldn't be valid and therefore the get is not a valid get and we're remarried. In other words, we are retroactively still married. If you continue life as it was good then,
DAN LIBENSON: so if you do that, then sometimes when he was not detained, unavoidably Yeah. But, but he wasn't chased up a tree.
He just didn't, didn't feel like coming back. Uh, and the wife thinks that he was detained unavoidably. She will sit deserted forever, unable to remarry. Meaning that, that, um, you know, that, that, that in this case, the, the, she's saying, like we were talking about earlier, that was the case that we were talking about earlier.
That she's looking at this and says, you know, well, it, i, it, it, it, it, it seems that I, uh, the condition is met and I'm, I'm divorced, but I, I love him so much and I know he loves me. And, and I'm sure that it was, he would come back if he could, and I don't believe that he's dead. And so it must be that he was chased up a tree, that he is in jail, that he is detained, he is gonna come back, and I believe he's gonna come back and I'm gonna wait, and I'm gonna wait, and I'm gonna wait, and I'm gonna wait.
And then one day I'm gonna be old and die and he will never have come back. And that's right. And for that reason, this, this poor woman who actually is divorced because the reason why he didn't come back was because he found another woman or he didn't like her. We did, you know, went off to, you know, there, there were pe I mean this happened, you know, there were pe there's lo, I mean, there are people, I remember these stories of, like this from people from the old country, you know, Lithuania, where my family's from, and like the husband went off to South Africa and like they didn't know.
They didn't know is he coming back, you know? And, and, and that, that's the kind of thing happened, you know, and, and, um, and, and so the tragedy of it is that his wife is alone for the rest of her life, even though she's actually divorced,
BENAY LAPPE: right? She's holding on to a divorce document, which is valid because the reason the condition, his non-return within 30 days went into effect was because he wanted it to, was because he willingly chose to stay away.
So that is a valid. Get, but what Rah is saying is there are, there are women who are going to hold this get and not believe that their husbands actually wanted to stay away. Oh no. He loves me. Certainly the only reason he didn't come back within that conditioned uh, uh, stipulated period of time is because he got chased up a tree.
But he'll come back. I know he will come back and when he does, he'll say, oh, I was chased up a tree and this get will be retroactively nulled and we will be still married.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: But if that in fact is not the case, which is as you say, not on the common, she will sit forever and you could, I could just picture Ava's colleagues around the table.
What are they gonna say? They're gonna say that's her own fault. She's holding a valid, getting her head. She's an idiot. She could get married. What you want to abrogate Torah for this woman who's holding a valid get in her hand and could go out and remarry. I don't understand. That's her fault.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: Or she shouldn't have agreed to this conditional divorce thing in the first place.
BENAY LAPPE: Hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: I mean,
BENAY LAPPE: I don't know. I don't know about that because in their framework, A a divorce is a unilateral
DAN LIBENSON: uhhuh
BENAY LAPPE: Uhhuh. I, she doesn't need to agree uhhuh. So I, I, I think that's what they would be saying,
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh.
BENAY LAPPE: And I think, I think, and we've been doing
DAN LIBENSON: this forever, right?
We've been, this is how's always been. That's right.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. That's right. And, and I think, I think this is what, what's being implied here is, is that Ava is saying, I know, I know she has a valid get in her hand, but it's human nature. Mm-hmm. And you have to understand that it's the system's fault, not her fault.
It's the system's fault. That a lot, that puts in her into her head the doubt about this document because she knows it could be invalidated and and hopes that it will be, and it's our problem to fix. We are actually causing her. Suffering not herself. Right. But I, I think it's that shift of mm-hmm. Where really is the problem that probably happened and I could just feel it.
I could just, 'cause that's just such a, mm-hmm. That's such a guy thing, uh, to say, you know what I mean? It's, but, but somehow, and I really wanna understand what Ava's family life was like.
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh, like
BENAY LAPPE: what woman was really helping Ava understand Uhhuh, what it, what it's like to be uhhuh a female human being,
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh.
BENAY LAPPE: But someone did because he said, no, this, this is, this is how, of course women are gonna feel uhhuh, at least some of them. Probably half of them. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: It, it's so interesting that you're saying that because, um, because initially when you were talking, I was thinking like, when you said, oh, this is human nature.
I was thinking something along the lines of, well, or at least this is the, this is the human nature that we wanna support, that we want to, that we want to hold up and say, no, no, we want people who love their husband so much, who can't believe that he would abandon him. Like we want, we want that kind of naivete even like, we want that, it's good for our society.
But another way to look at it is like, that is, that is a more common human nature of, of women. I'm saying that this is what's going on at that time that, than, than of men that, that maybe men would if, if the roll wars reversed and, um. By the way, like I'm really interested, I dunno if we talked about it on this show, there's this project called Torah ta where uh, somebody is re gendering the entire Torah and changing the gender of everybody.
But that makes for some like really interesting cases. For example, where Abraham is now a woman and Isaac is a daughter, and God asks a iham, that's the, the, the female name of Abraham Iham. But anyway, but the point is like God asks the, the female Abraham to sacrifice her daughter. And part of the absurdity of that story for me is like, I don't believe that any mother would sacrifice her daughter if, if, if God called her.
But the problem is, is that we do believe that a father might, and that's something now, so in this, in this case, I mean you, you think like, first of all, all these laws are being made up by men. I mean, they have been from time immemorial. And, you know, maybe these rabbis sitting around are like, look, I mean, if it happened to me, I mean, if I, if my wife gave me a conditional divorce and they disappeared, I'd be like, look, I mean, I gotta get married again.
You know, like, like, like men and women, you know, stereotypically and at that time, but maybe like, thought about this differently. And so you're right to say like, there were some women that really got to Ava, right? Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: And it, it, it's, it, you can't separate out the, the power, um, the, the systemic power differential between men and women to even say this is a woman thing or a man thing.
It's, it, it's a probably a common predilection for some women. Mm-hmm. In a society where Uhhuh, a woman is far less able to survive, to be safe, um, what is, she's single. So this woman is not merely, naively in love with this guy who's out. Marrying somebody else. She knows it's gonna be really tough for her.
It's gonna be, it's gonna be, she has a, a vested interest in staying married to this guy. Mm-hmm. Because of the, of the power structure, so. Mm-hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, and yeah, and, and, and I think it's easy enough for men to say, well, if I were in this position, I would do. Right. The fact is that you would never be in that position.
That's right. Because the fact is, the way that our society is organized is that you're con, you're, you're, you're by definition protected from ever being in that position. So what you're doing is a thought experiment. What she is experiencing is real. And I, I just wanna say like, and I bring all that up in part because what we wanna ultimately talk about.
Going forward is not so much the question of Goetz divorces and, and, and women and men, that is also very important still in our time, and we should take that really seriously. But the additional question is, who in our time is occupying the role that women occupied in that time? Meaning who are the people who all of society is organized not around their experience and not to, so, you know, whether that's people with disabilities or or LGBT folks or, or, uh, people of color in white, uh, dominated societies, you know, whatever those might be and others that, that the question is maybe it's not divorces.
Maybe we should look around and say, what are the other, what are the, what are other legal categories that are the ones that are really causing an effect on those groups that the group in power doesn't even realize or doesn't even. Understand that, what the effect is. Yes. And ultimately those should be overcome in the same way that Ava's here overcoming Torah, doing that to women.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. Just yes, yes, yes.
DAN LIBENSON: And you were gonna say something I, I, yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: What I was gonna say was, we, you know, why is it that probably men are having a hard time empathizing with this woman? They, they live in a body, in a life where they have the ability to sever a marriage. Mm-hmm. Easily.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: A woman doesn't.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. A woman doesn't in this system have the ability to initiate a divorce. And let's just note that Ava is not, this entire dilemma would be solved if women had the ability to, I initiate. Divorces, but they don't, and Ava, let's note, is not standing up and saying that the real fix
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Is if a woman couldn't initiate a gap.
I mean, I don't think he was, I don't think anybody was able to go there. You know, it, it, it, it reminds me of the way that the rabbis in the Talmud describe what Ola haba the world to come. What's heaven gonna look like? Heaven is gonna look like you get up, you go to work, you do your job. You come home from work and nobody has schist you that I could go and come in peace and no one is going to torment me, abuse me, kill me, attack me.
That was heaven. That's what heaven's gonna look like. You know? That's as far as their imagination could take them. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I really don't think Ravi's imagination even could take him to, well, women should be able to give a gift that'll solve this whole problem.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Well, and I just, yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: No.
And that, and that's, and that's helpful because that's what, when I was saying like there's another unintended consequence that's gonna flow from RAA solution, which is that there might be more, a anot or different people will end up being anot because they won't even be given a conditional divorce.
Like for me, the solution to that is easy. Likes get rid of the category of an anot, you know? Now that might, that'll have also other unintended consequences. But I mean, ultimately, like I'm, that's better from my view. We can imagine that now. So the question is, you know, when we talked about this, this, there, there some, you know, more, uh, orthodox communities have this idea of Yuri DHA do, wrote the idea that in each, each generation is less great than the one before.
So, so we can do less mucking around with the. With the law than our, our, you know, ancestors could, but actually it, it could very well be the exact opposite. Not only, not, not only, maybe not at all, but also maybe it is that we actually are, are greater than the previous generations. Like we have more education and more, uh, experience and more, you know, experience and, and with diverse ideas and diverse people and all of that stuff that might make us greater.
But actually we, our imagination is greater, right? And we, we can imagine now a possibility that they couldn't even have imagined then. So now I could ask, now, if Ava could have imagined a situation in which there was no such thing as an Una, what would he have done? That, that's a thought experiment. But I believe he would've said, oh yeah, we, we should do that.
Like we shouldn't have. Right? But, so now that we can imagine that, what I think we can look to Ava and see like, oh, and Ava could imagine a way to, to overrule. The dominant legal paradigm of his time. He did. If, if it, if the reason was to, and, and I think we're getting to this idea to alleviate suffering.
So, so we could do that now.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. Exactly. Okay, so just so just to get back to this case, so in the new post rava world where his legislation flies and it does mm-hmm. That in the realm of Gaetz, the husband isn't gonna be able to claim, oh, but it wasn't my fault that this gat went into effect. Let's notice who now will suffer this woman who is not going to sit and hold onto this valid get and wait and wait and wait because she knows.
That when her husband comes home, if he should say, in fact, as she believed I was chased up a tree that get, is not gonna be ripped up. The fact that he says, but that condition went no effect against my will. The rabbis are gonna say tough luck and onus be, we're not gonna consider onus anymore in these matters.
She knows that we'll never, she knows that that get will never be ripped up. Therefore, she has no incentive to keep sitting.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: She will presumably remarry.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: But what if that husband does in fact, come home? Let's notice what's gonna happen when he, in fact, let's say, and this is sort of the case where he ran off, but if he hadn't run off and she was right, he's gonna come back, say, I was chased up a tree.
The rabbis are gonna say, sorry, Charlie, and here are these two people who wanna be married to each other. Always did. Now they can, they're present with each other again, and the law will not let them, they will not be able to remarry.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So that's sad,
DAN LIBENSON: but 'cause she's married or because you're not allowed to, uh, remarry someone that you, because could she divorce her current husband and
BENAY LAPPE: No, you can't, you can't.
Um, she couldn't have, um, sexual relations with somebody else. Legit, even legitimate ones divorce and then remarry her original husband that she can't do. Mm-hmm. And even though it, the, the text doesn't say this anywhere, and I've never found it written anywhere. I have to assume that it is correct. That even if she didn't remarry, she wouldn't be able to remarry, remarry him otherwise, this law would have no.
No teeth. Mm-hmm. So I, I have to assume that for sure she can't remarry him even if she doesn't.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Mm-hmm. Marry someone else in the interim. Okay. But, but that's the, that's the cost that Ava's willing to make or, or accept mm-hmm. To resolve the suffering of these women who will understandably sit with a valid get and not remarry.
Mm-hmm. Okay. That's one set of people he's concerned about.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So there, now there's another set of people.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Which is the, what's called the licentious women. And, um, and yeah,
BENAY LAPPE: I still, it still bothers me. That translation still bothers me. I
DAN LIBENSON: thought you liked it last time.
BENAY LAPPE: No, I didn't like it even last time.
It, what it means is just the literal meaning is the going out women.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: Uhhuh and
DAN LIBENSON: extroverted.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, willing to get up and respond by seeking a new relationship.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Licentious is when, you know, a woman is describing women who get up easily and enter into relationships that the rabbis find not particularly uhhuh, savory or kosher.
Even if they're permitted, like non-marital sex permitted, they're not thrilled by it Uhhuh. Um, but this is a woman who is just like, okay, done. Yeah. Um, I'm outta here. So let, let's take a look at this case.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So, so those women, uh, if you said, let it not be a bill of divorce
BENAY LAPPE: again, meaning if you keep the law the way the law was before Ava stood up mm-hmm.
Namely that a husband could come back after a conditional get, went into effect against his will. And he, and he could say, oh no, I was chased up Patrice, so we're now still married.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Then what, what Then
DAN LIBENSON: sometimes when he was detained unavoidably and she thinks that he was not detained unavoidably.
Right. So this is the opposite case. This is the case where the, in the previous case, the husband actually, uh, didn't wanna come back. He was gone and, and this woman kept thinking like, maybe he'll come back, maybe he'll come back. Here's the opposite case. He, he actually, um, he actually does, is detained, you know, chased up a tree, uh, and he wants to come back, but she is like 30 days, you know, like, um, you know, like it's, it's a divorce.
I, I'm off to my next adventure. Um, and, um. And, and then so she goes off and which by which by the
BENAY LAPPE: way, the, let's recognize the law allows her to do,
DAN LIBENSON: right, right, right.
BENAY LAPPE: She has a valid get in her hand. The condition went into effect. She has a valid get. I think there's a little bit of a suspicion about this woman.
The suspicion is that she heard, you know, there's maybe, maybe, maybe some rumor she might actually have some intel that her husband's up in a tree, you know? Mm-hmm. There's a little bit of buzz in town about the guy in the tree, and she might maybe, I don't know, have some suspicion that actually he was, um, detained against his will, but nevertheless, she says, Hey, here's my divorce.
It's a valid divorce. But in, in, in a, looking at her in a slightly better light, she has no premonition one way or the other, no intel. She simply knows she has a valid get and she's immediately willing to act on it and remarry.
DAN LIBENSON: And it could be like, he's, he's gone. He is not here on day 30, day 31, I go off and get married again or, or day 60, you know, but, but relatively fast.
And, um, and, and then, um, he, he could return, right? And so the result would be that the bill of divorce is, is actually void because he was, he did experience onus. He was chased up a tree and he, he came back. And, and that would mean that she is actually still married to the first man. So now she has gone and gotten married to a second man.
So she's married to two men. And, uh, and her, her children from the second marriage, because she's essentially officially committing adultery with the second man. And the children of an adulterous relationship are what's called mom, which is often translated as a bastards. But the idea is that they're in a particular category of, uh, people that are, is like a bad category to be in.
You know, you can, you can't, you can't marry everybody. You can only marry other moms, Irene.
BENAY LAPPE: It's a super bad category, and let's acknowledge that that category exists to this day,
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh.
BENAY LAPPE: And is one, like the case, like the situation of women who are not able to initiate it yet, is one of those just waiting to be mucked with halek, um, inequities.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. It's a very, very serious consequence. There are still roles, meaning, uh, lists of children born with the status of er, um, in many communities, including in Israel, where those people are not allowed to marry anyone but someone else on this list,
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, this is, it's, it's a very, very, very sad situation.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. And, and so what Rah is saying here is that in order to prevent these, these, uh, moms, these children from being mazare, uh, that what we're gonna do is we're going to, uh, is, is a second reason for wanting to not have onus and to have this certainty and divorces is that we're gonna say if the condition was fulfilled, doesn't matter why.
If he's not back within 30 days, in the case of that the condition was 30 days, if he's not back within 30 days, they're divorced. Period. End of sentence. She marries a second man. She's actually not married to the first man. Even if he comes back and says, I was chased up a tree. No, there is no onus in, in divorces.
And, uh, she's only married to the second man and her children are fine and everything's okay. That's, that, that's his, uh, decision. That, that, so, so in other words, this idea of not having onus in divorces solves both of those problems. It, it allows the women who would otherwise be believing and hoping that her man will come back.
It allows her to. To, to move on. And uh, you know, even if he comes back, you can't marry him. So move on. And, uh, and in the case of this woman who would happily move on or, or unhappily, but would quickly move on, she's good. She's okay. Her children are okay.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly.
DAN LIBENSON: And those are the people, like you were saying, that Rob is concerned about.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. Okay, so now we understand what was motivating Ava. It all of that was a description of his Sava. Mm-hmm. And, and I, as I said before, I think this really illustrates that Sava is much more immoral, um mm-hmm. Source than a, a, a source, which is simply logic or reasoning. Um, yeah, because
DAN LIBENSON: logic, it could, you could say logic could take you somewhere else, you know, lo 'cause it's like, it's a question of like, it's not the only, the logic.
It's like saying that, that. I want to have this moral result. Now I can logic my way there. That's right. But, but it only, but it's, but it's results driven jurisprudence, so to speak. It's saying like, no, no. And the result is not necessarily logical. It's moral.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. That's right. Because everyone around that table with Ava, I'm sure could articulate the very same outcome of the law as it stood
DAN LIBENSON: logically.
It's
BENAY LAPPE: logically, yes. But it's, it's the impulse to say that's not something we should tolerate, which is where the s Farah lives.
DAN LIBENSON: Right,
BENAY LAPPE: right. I think I absolutely, I think that was helpful for me to, to clarify for myself. Yeah. The spar is in the, not recognizing the suffering, but recognizing that it has to be addressed.
It's, it's at that place that Spar is recognized as, as. A VA valid, um, is valid. I don't know.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, well, because if you said that, because if you said the opposite, if you said that there is, we, we are going to maintain onus in divorce law, then, then you could say, and, and the, and the question is why? Well, we're doing it for the men.
Right? But, you know, Ava used his, his logic and he said, the reason is we're doing it for the men. Because if you don't have bonus, then there could be a man who's chased up a tree and then he comes and, you know, and his, his wife is, uh, married to somebody else and you know, his, what a tragedy. You know, and Right.
And so that's logical. Uh, that's, that's not only logical, it's driven by a moral, uh, you know, we care about these men. So what, what, what we're seeing here is that Ava is saying, I'm actually choosing these women over these men. That's not logical, that's moral. That's, that's, that's a, a, a weighing, that's a saying that, that this suffering is greater and or these, the, these people are more powerless in society and so they're gonna be more likely to suffer.
And I'm gonna address that.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. Exactly.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so then, uh, let's go on. So then the talmud's a little surprised, uh, by this, right?
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Now here comes, I, this is my favorite part of this, so, which is really my favorite Soge. Okay. So at this point, the editor of the Talmud, um, jumps in, and by the way, it has been the editor explaining out Ava's thinking Ava's, let's say.
And now the editor acts as if he can't believe what Ava has done and is shocked and. It, you know, incredulous. And he, he says, take it away.
DAN LIBENSON: And it, and it's really that second case that the editor's most concerned about here. He says both, but it's really that second case of the, the open woman, the quotes like genious women, that, that's really concerned about, we'll explain that in a second.
So the, to the editor says, and is there a matter where, by Torah law, it is not a bill of divorce, meaning o onus is from the Torah. So, right. If he's chased up a tree by Torah law, meaning the highest source of law, second highest potentially, that it's, um, that this is actually, this, this divorce was not actually enforced, but due to this SVA where you're concerned about the virtuous women and the licentious women, we permit a married woman to others.
Meaning that in that second case, right, if the Torah, if onus is a Torah. Law that means that he's chased up a tree according to the Torah, this divorce is not enforced, even though he is been away 30 days. But it's not enforced because he was chased up a tree. Uh, exactly. According to the Torah, his wife is still married to him and he or she's one of the licentious open women.
So she's gone off and married a second guy. She is now married to two men. She's committing adultery with the second man. I mean, she's not married to two men. The second marriage is not, uh, legal. She's, she is, uh, having sexual relations with the second man and then having children with them. Right? Uh, and, and all of that's happening.
And the Torah says that the, that the, the divorce was not valid and therefore she is married to the first woman. So you are allowed. So, so that's the, that's the Torah landscape. You are coming in and you're saying we're gonna overrule that Torah landscape and say that we're not gonna accept onus in the case of divorces.
But the Torah doesn't say that. You're just introducing that because you're concerned about these women. But the result is that there's a situation where, according to the Torah, you're letting a woman have an adulterous relationship with a second man. And, and you're gonna allow that situation to, to, to, to be just because of your concern.
BENAY LAPPE: And you're gonna stand under the hookah with them and marry
DAN LIBENSON: right.
BENAY LAPPE: That woman, right, whom the Torah says is still married to her first husband, right? You're gonna actually perform that. Next week and marry her legitimately and understanding that she, in the eyes of the Torah is gonna be an adulterous and enter into an adult alter adulterous relationship.
And the answer is,
DAN LIBENSON: and the answer is that my answer is yes.
BENAY LAPPE: And it's not just yes, it's yes indeed. Yes indeed. That's exactly what we're gonna do. Okay. So the, there is this recognition, it's like the, the, the editor is saying here to the reader, just in case you did it, see the import of what is going on here.
I'm really gonna point it out to you by making this sort of, uh, rhetorical, um, asking this rhetorical, wait a minute. Do you mean to tell me, do you mean to tell me. The eyes. This woman who should be right in the eyes, the she's a married woman to the first marry her and allow her to be, yes.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Yes, yes, yes.
Okay, stop sec.
At this point in the suya, it's very clear that RA is being used to overturn to Torah, IIC directives, number one, ONA re, the idea that onas is an exculpatory claim anywhere in the wor, anywhere in life.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Ava says No, but not here in the matter of Getz. And secondly, the prohibition of adultery is being erased right in this circumstance.
In other words, the avara is actually going to allow that which the Torah prohibits. And this is one of the very, very clear examples or example cases from which we see that SRA is equal to Torah in its ability to develop the legal system. It is the only other source in the whole system equal to Torah and can sometimes Trump Torah.
And actually every time it's evoked, that's exactly what it's doing. It's overturning Torah. So, um. We don't have a kind of systematic treatment of Jewish law except for, you know, works like this ham, malone's, you know, like modern day textbooks. 'cause that's just not the way rabbinic literature works. And so there's no line in any rabbinic safe there any book that says Sava Trumps Torah.
You can only understand that when you look at cases and you see it operating that way. Mm-hmm. And that's how we know that Sava is a source, not only a source, but the only source that actually trumps Torah. And, and I think this gets to this conversation that we often have about, it's every, everything is s farra.
The the, there's this recognition that the whole system is not only upgraded through s Farra. But I think the rabbis understood Torah in the first place to be our best savara, IIC guess at what God wants us to do and a product of S far itself. So there's nothing really new, I think, in their minds, um, in this use of savara to continue growing the tradition.
DAN LIBENSON: I mean, when, when the
BENAY LAPPE: turtles, the turtles.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, that's a story where, who, who was it that was speaking to a woman that who, you know, was it Darwin? I don't think so, but it was like some, some kind of, uh, conversation and a, and a woman, uh, they were talking about like the earth being in space. They said, no, no, the earth is being held up by a turtle.
You know, they say, well, well, what's holding up the turtle? She said, another turtle, you know, and he said, well, what's he, and ultimately said, it's turtles all the way down. Right. What's holding up
BENAY LAPPE: that? I love that.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Right. And so Sava all the way down the, the, that really like everything. You think, you think it's savara, overturning Torah?
No, no, no. The Torah is based on safara that, so it's just, it's just all Sava and, and periodically Sava gets translated. First from an intuition, you know, from a, from a, some, something in like your gut, your kishke, as you say, uh, it gets turned into oral Torah, into, into sort of an oral tradition and sort of norms not written anywhere.
Then eventually those norms get written down in writing, and then we could talk about this and, and, and I think we have a little bit and we will over time. The problem with putting something into writing, this is where we get into issues of originalism and all that is writing sometimes takes you in the wrong direction.
Eventually you don't realize that the way you wrote something wasn't written clearly, or the times change and the words have different meaning, or the understanding is different, and so 200 years later, your writing is actually a problem. I mean, think of the second, second Amendment there. I mean, this might be my, you know, not everyone has to agree, but it's pretty clear to me that the Second Amendment has to do with militias and has to do with, uh, it doesn't have to do with individuals having, uh, machine guns.
And, um, but, but you know, the words are not super clear. 'cause it says, uh, well, militia being necessary to the freedom, you know, the, and the the right of, uh, of, uh, uh, people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. You could, you could say that those are independent clauses and it just says the right is not to be infringed.
And that's really clear. That's probably not what they meant, but they wrote it that in a bad way. So now we've got a problem 200 some odd years later. Uh, that's the problem with writing. And so what do you do at that point? You're back to smu. You say, well, can, it's not, I can't mean that. And you know, that's not what we, right.
And then you say, well, we have a tradition that people can have. Yeah. You know, hunting guns, but not machine gun, you know, and you somehow, you, you eventually that's, well that's our case law, that, that interprets the constitution. But the time may come where you actually have to amend the constitution because, uh, you know, you basically need another writing.
And then we, and then the, the whole cycle continues, right? And that's what's going on here. We have the Torah, then the Mishna, and now we're in the post mna, uh, process where the gamara is being written. And here we have it written. And now here we are 2000 years later and we're asking, does that mean that we're stuck with this, this text?
Or do we still have safara? And it's actually not new safara. It's, it's safara all the way down. It's always beens. Right? And, and so, so the idea that we are being, um, sort of, um, controlled by a text that is, that does not accord with our sava with our sense of what's right and what's moral is completely wrongheaded.
That's never been the right way. It's always, it's always been that if there was a, uh, if we get to a point where as far tells us that this. Text is wrong. Sava trumps the text.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, so by the way, oh, the, the only other thing I wanna say, and I think it connects to what, what the last part of this text is that this happens to be a case where the Sava, as we understand it as a moral intuition, is very, very clear and state and front and, and stated explicitly.
Yeah. Once we see this, then we go back to all the other texts that have a wink. We've already covered so many of them that have a wink, they have a citation to the, to, or that obviously doesn't mean that, or that, or the text about, um, uh, you know, keeping, uh, uh, the um. The, uh, you know, the, uh, saving of a life and it, it attributes it again to some text.
You know, you should live by them, which is sort of questionable. All of that stuff. It's actually all savara. It's all Sava with a little bit of, uh, sort of papering over in an attempt. Because, because Sava is dangerous. If, if, if the point is that you went around and said, oh, there is no law. Everybody should, you know, this is what the, the end of the, uh, or see the end of the beginning of the book of Judges where it says, uh, there was no king in Israel and everybody did what was right in his own eyes.
That's seen in the book of judges is a negative. Like, that's a, that's a state of nature. That's a scary, you know, of what, that everybody can do what's right in their own. That's not a kind of a world that we wanna live in. Um. So that's, that's savara taken to the extreme. So there's, there's an attempt to tame Savara by trying to find an argument that really isn't the real reason we got here, but it's, it's, it could explain it.
And so therefore, so whenever we can do that, we, we do. And only every once in a while is it really explicit. And here too, there's a little bit of an attempt to, you know, say, oh, it's not quite, you know, there's a little explanation given it. Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: And I think we'll go there next week.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, and what's interesting is the Ymi, the Palestinian Talmud, which has this very Soviet in it really, um, is very comfortable.
Mm. With this open acknowledgement that SRA is going to be used to Trump Torah, it can trump, Trump Torah. And that's exactly what we're gonna do. And they explicitly say there, and the rabbis have the power to overturn Torah. They say it. It's like the eternal question, the 64,000 do. It's, it's not a question why is anybody thinking it's a question.
Can the rabbis overturn Torah? Of course they can. Of course we can overturn Torah. It's Talmud says we can, but the, the Babylonian Talmud doesn't repeat that line and it goes somewhere else. And we'll go there next week. Okay. The one, the one thing I wanna respond to is, I would say that the other, um, presumptive methodologies of using versus enforced ways to claim that a new, you know, more compassionate legislation or op whatever is rooted in Torah.
Um, those don't tame Torah as Farrah, they simply camouflaging.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So I, I wouldn't say that they suppressed or or tamed savara, but I completely agree with you and Man Malone, who lays out how the whole Jewish system works and names the sources says that of the five sources, Torah, custom legislation, precedent in s all the others besides Sah are driven by S.
Mm-hmm. Right. You, you're not to make an innovation except by anything other than your kiku by recognizing that something's wrong in the world mm-hmm. That the, the, the tradition as it is, is causing suffering, is hurting people, is not allowing. Right?
DAN LIBENSON: Yep.
BENAY LAPPE: So it's, it's, that motivates them all that, all the sort of five methodologies, but only one acknowledges.
Sort of shows its hand, and it doesn't do that often, just like any legal system can't do that often, as you're saying. Um, and I'm, I'm always interested in asking myself, why do they show their hand here and not there? And I don't know the answer to that.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Well, so I mean, that, that's an important, that's an important question and, uh, and one that we should keep our eye on and, and think about.
Um, you know, because again, for me, the, the, what's driving this in part is to say, um, when we look at the rest of, when we, not Jewish, just Jewish law, but when we look at Judaism today and we say, you know, who's it hurting? Um, that really, the answer ultimately that I'm seeing here is that if you can answer that question, if you can say that it's hurting someone, then we gotta fix it so it stops hurting that person.
And, um, and, and the, and then the question is, when do we do that dramatically and explicitly, and when do we do that a little bit more? Uh, a little bit more in a, in a little bit more of a hidden way. But, but either way, we're stopping the pain.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. And, and as you said, you have to understand every, um, example of how we have in the past upgraded Jewish law as being, um, an expression of savara.
So your meta question always has to be, where's the sari here? What, what? Mm-hmm. What's, where's, you know, where's the suffering that they're fixing and how are they doing it? As I learned from my teacher David Kramer, you not only have to look at the, the change in the law, you have to look at how the tradition is portraying.
The way in which they made that change. And that's where, um, you can sort of sniff out Savara at work. Hmm. Um, so to be,
DAN LIBENSON: yeah, to be continued.
BENAY LAPPE: To be continued. And We'll, I think Ed, as, as we keep learning, try to be pointing out the far that's driving
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: The, um, other method, methodologies of change.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
So next week, we'll, yeah. Like you say, we'll, we'll pick up a little bit at the very end here, talk about that. And we have a, a, an analogous, a similar case that, uh, we'll, we'll, uh, help us build on some of these ideas and, and that'll be fun. Yeah. So I'm looking forward to that.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: See you next week.
BENAY LAPPE: Thanks, Dan.
See you next week. Bye. Bye.
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