The Oral Talmud: Episode 35 - Repairing the World Means Admitting It’s Broken (Gittin 32a & 33a)
SHOW NOTES
“That is a point at which they're gonna say this is such a broken world that we can't let this stand. We're gonna have to repair the whole world to prevent people from falling into this category and that's going to mean overturning a Torah law.” - Dan Libenson
Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.
This episode is a new Talmud passage. It’s about divorce again – but not really. Dan & Benay begin by thinking about how the law can look orderly on the page while quietly unraveling lives in practice. This episode starts with pointing out a strange rabbinic habit: naming how things used to be, even when that past was unjust. Instead of smoothing over the damage, the rabbis deliberately expose it, which invites us to notice where the system itself is doing harm.
From there, the conversation addresses the lives caught in the gap, the people who have slipped through the cracks, and suffering that cannot be fixed from within the rules. This episode lingers in the uncomfortable space where repair requires more than compassion. It requires changing the law itself, and asking whether we’re willing to do the same when our own systems break down.
This week’s text: “Lev Yodea Marat Nafsho” (Gittin 32a & 33a)
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 35: “Repairing the World Means Admitting It’s Broken” 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.
Today, we start a new Talmud passage. It’s about divorce again – but not really. We begin by thinking about how the law can look orderly on the page while quietly unraveling lives in practice. This episode starts with pointing out a strange rabbinic habit: naming how things used to be, even when that past was unjust. Instead of smoothing over the damage, the rabbis deliberately expose it, which invites us to notice where the system itself is doing harm.
From there, the conversation addresses the lives caught in the gap, the people who have slipped through the cracks, and suffering that cannot be fixed from within the rules. This episode lingers in the uncomfortable space where repair requires more than compassion. It requires changing the law itself, and asking whether we’re willing to do the same when our own systems break down.
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 Bene.
BENAY LAPPE: Hey Dan.
DAN LIBENSON: You must have better heating than mine. This is the first week that I think I've given up on my Spar t-shirt because it's too cold. I noticed that. I noticed
BENAY LAPPE: that. And when I put mine on, I thought, is this our uniform now?
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. I think it's, but I think that, um, s needs to do some long, long sleeve shirts. Good idea. Yeah. We'll, we'll work on that then. I'll wear Okay. Okay. Um, wear sweatshirts. Actually that would be good. That's what, that's Wear a sweatshirt anyway. Um, okay. Stay tuned. What'd you say?
BENAY LAPPE: Stay tuned. We have hats though.
DAN LIBENSON: Hats I can't wear because my hair is going crazy, you know.
BENAY LAPPE: I see. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, I do have a hat. You sent me a hat.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, well let's get back to business. So, um, so we are, um, going back to this basic idea that we've been explo well there's, there's the big, then, now we've got like multiple levels of ideas, but there's the, the big idea that.
Part of what the rabbis are doing in their construction of this new version of Judaism is that they're actually, uh, they're actually trumping the Torah in, in certain cases. And in particular, we're teasing out this idea that it seems like initially it's it's health, it's it's wellbeing. It's like if you were to be harmed physically by obeying the Torah rules as written, that would be a bad thing.
So that idea of fer saving a life becomes very significant to them. So if your life is going to be at risk for doing something that the Torah would indicate you should do, then you should actually violate the Torah. You must violate the Torah, uh, rather than be killed either that being killed 'cause you're sick and you're gonna die, or somebody's somehow threatening to kill you.
And then we started to move. Into this zone where it's not just about your physical body being harmed, but also your, uh, sort of wellbeing in other ways that, that you're suffering and that, that the rabbis take suffering very seriously and they don't want people to suffer, not only 'cause of physical reasons, but also, uh, I mean, initially it was because of physical reasons about eating Onion Kippur.
You know? And now we're sort of going into suffering for other kinds of reasons.
BENAY LAPPE: And you know what, as you're talking, I'm realizing that the rabbis are moving from the situation, driving the change to the system, being identified as what's problematic. Right. It's not the person who's sick. Mm-hmm. That's situational issue.
That's causing difficulty in light of the system. It's the system that's driving the disability. I don't, interesting. Yeah. I, that just popped up in my mind.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Well, and by the way, like it's a little hard to, you know, when you say that the rabbis are moving in that direction, you know, it's kind of like we are reading these texts, we've put them in a certain order.
Mm-hmm. But we didn't have, this all worked out in advance. Maybe you, probably more than me, but like we didn't have, it all worked out in advance. We were just kind of putting texts that we think kind of linked to one another. And so somehow we're, we're finding this arc there. And, and I wonder perhaps, and, and it's very possible that it, it is that case and that some of those more simple, straightforward texts, like if somebody's got a gun to your head, you know that that is actually an earlier conception.
Whereas the more sort of subtle version that says, if. Your, you know, husband is divorcing you in a bad way, you know, whatever that, that, that's gonna end up putting you in a bad place like that is a, a sort of later, and maybe that did happen over time and, and maybe much earlier. The rabbis already had this set of principles worked out in a deep way that just manifest in, in these different ways.
And, and it's the kind of thing where you, you, when you look at the more simple version of the text, you, you kind of think that it's that simpler version, but actually it's the complex version all, all the time. It's just that it was, in this case being applied to a simple case. And in this case it's being applied to a more complex case.
I'm not, I'm not sure.
BENAY LAPPE: I, I'm not sure either. And the fact that the Talmud has no beginning and no end really. Right, right. Every page assumes, you know, all the other pages means that you can't deduce anything from the location. It's not like, does this come before that there, that doesn't help. And,
DAN LIBENSON: and, and there's this other piece that we talked about last week also of the, there is a layer, there are layers in the Talmud, but they're on every page.
Not, like you say, it's not that. The beginning is earlier stuff and the end is later stuff. It's that on every page. There's, there's multiple layers. And, and I've started reading a book, uh, called re Reconstructing the Talmud. I, I can't remember, but it's, yeah. Is that, and, and it really kind of, um, I, I think does a nice job of, of laying out some of those layers and how you can kind of see them and find them.
But, um, but really we saw it last week that, that the, that probably in the original version of this text, it ended in a very kind of. Definitive way. Like do you mean to tell me that you're going to overcome the Torah? That you're going to trump the Torah just because some woman is going to suffer because of the, you know, and the answer from Ava is Yep.
And, uh, and then later there's some additional,
BENAY LAPPE: although let's remember that, that answer Yep. That was put into the mouth of Ava. That's actually still the editor
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: Saying that, but yes. So, so, but
DAN LIBENSON: then, so this earlier version of an editor, we speculate Yes. And I think with some, with some evidence that, uh, that the first edit said, yep.
You know, like, do you want me to tell me? Yes. Uh, and then some later editor came along and said, that's too radical for me. I'm not gonna take that part out, but I'm going to add another sentence that says yes. And it's because of this somewhat less radical reasoning that anybody who gets married does so under the auspices of the rabbis.
So what the rabbis give it, the rabbis can take it away, and it's not actually over. Trumping the Torah, you know, it's, it's, uh, it's really just less, you know, less intense than that. But
BENAY LAPPE: yeah,
DAN LIBENSON: stripping away that and that, you know what, that reminds me a little bit of like the, the gunk a little bit like that, you know, and what is it like Da Vinci's, uh, last Supper where they like cleaned off the gunk, you know, and found that it was actually this beautiful, colorful painting and we thought it was kind of a dark scene, but it actually is a very light scene.
And it kind of like, if you can kind of strip off that layer of, of that edit, you know, you can actually see the, the drama in a, in a more stark way.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, exactly. And I'm kind of excited about this theory that we're developing about two STAs, an early stama, an early editor, and a later editor.
DAN LIBENSON: I,
BENAY LAPPE: I may venture an email to my professor Shama Friedman, who, um, really was one of the.
Creators, along with David Ney, his teacher of the idea of the Stama. And that the Talmud, isn't this a historical conversation? It it really had a creator and editor, so,
DAN LIBENSON: right. Uh, Sama Freeman, by the way, is kind of the, uh, you know, major, uh, uh, you know, one of two kind of living legends of Talmud, uh, criticism.
And so in that email you want, I hesitate to invite him to come on our show, but if, if he, you know, if he, he might, he, he
BENAY LAPPE: might. I'll ask him.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, check it out. That'd be fun. I'll ask, um, I'd love to talk about that with him. Okay. So, so now we, we are looking at an analogous story, an analogous case that's slightly different.
The, the, the case that we've been talking about involves a situation where a husband is, has given his wife a conditional divorce. Because he is about to go outta town on a trip and something might happen to him. And it might be that if, if he, if they, if his body comes back, then we know that he's dead.
But if the body never comes back, but he never comes back either. Maybe he died, maybe he, he ran off to some other, we don't know. So he's saying, I'm planning to come back, but if I don't, you would, you should know that it's because I died. And so I'm gonna give you this conditional divorce that says if I don't come back by such and such a date, then you're divorced.
And then everything kind of flowed from there. And, and we ultimately, uh, had this conclusion that there's no, there's no, uh, there's no, uh, in, in the, in the cases of divorce, there's no. Claim of what's called onus of this fact that, yeah, it's true that I didn't come back, but it was because I couldn't come back.
I was in prison, I was chased up a tree, I, I, I couldn't come back. And in the Torah, ostensibly you would be able to say, well, so we're actually not divorced, but the, the rabbis here are saying, no, no, we don't take that excuse. And there's a whole complex, you can listen to the last couple, you know, very detailed data.
But, but we, we went through that case. Today's case is, is a somewhat different but analogous also about divorces. It comes from a different page in, in the, uh, track date of guillotine, which is the track date called divorces. Uh, the mission is on page 32 A and the gamara is on page 33 A. And, and this case, we'll read it in a second, but this case is about, um, not the case of, of somebody being waylaid.
Uh, you know, and having given a conditional divorce, this is somebody who hasn't given a conditional divorce, but has gone off on a trip and, uh, is now trying to send his wife a divorce, like through the mail, essentially, like through an agent.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. But he hasn't, there's no trip involved, I would say. But this is a guy who is divorcing his wife and has decided he has changed his mind and he now wishes to rescind the get he dis he wants to rescind the divorce document and become, to stay married.
So that's, that's the setup he has sent.
DAN LIBENSON: Go ahead. But it's, but it's, he is trying to rescind it before she's received it. So that's why I was thinking he was on a trip.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I don't think he's on a trip. Uh, let's do the text and, and we'll see what, what's probably going on.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So you wanna start to read the text?
I mean, you want me to start to read the text?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, you can start and we'll go real slowly. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: So.
Okay, so in the case of one who sends a bill of divorce to his wife with an agent and he reached the agent, or where he sent another agent after him, and he said, so the point is that he, he's send, he's not handing her the divorce. He is sending her the divorce via another person.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. And what's, what's missing in the text that we should put in bracket is, and after he sends that, get through the agent and the agent is on his way.
You know, like little Red Riding Hood on the way to grandma's house. She's in the forest. That shalia the, the messenger's in the forest going to the wife's house with the get in his hand. Uh, the husband changes his mind. Right. And he said, I, I, I don't wanna divorce my wife. I wanna, I wanna make sure she doesn't receive that divorce document at this point.
He can, he has a couple of options. Go ahead.
DAN LIBENSON: So, so, and so the two cases are that, that either he himself like ran and, and found the agent again and told him, uh, wait a second, I don't wanna do this. Or he sent another agent to find the first agent to try to say, I take it back. I don't wanna divorce.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, so, and he can
BENAY LAPPE: absolutely do that. A great procedure, totally fine. That's a way that he can change his mind about divorcing his wife, cancel the get, and remain married.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. And so the Gamara says the bill of, or the mission that says the bill of divorce that I gave you, it is void. Then this bill of divorce is hereby void.
So if he reaches the agent before the agent reaches the wife and says, I take it back, then it's taken back.
BENAY LAPPE: Great.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Similarly, if the husband reached his wife before the bill of divorce reached her. So he doesn't try to overtake the agent, he just goes straight to the wife, right? Or in a case where he sent an agent to her as opposed to sending the agent to the other agent.
Here he is sending the agent to the wife and saying, you know, you're about to get a divorce, but don't, you know, just tear it up. It's not, you know, by the way, if, if, uh, you know, I think a lot of wives got that. Uh, I'm not sure they would wanna, um, I did think they might wanna actually get divorced at that point, but that's another story.
Um, you know, but I, I did send you a divorce, but it's gonna come, but don't just tear it up or don't, you know, the joke in my family was that my sister would say, uh, don't look at the crumpled up paper in the bottom of my school deck. So, um, so if that happens, uh, then the bill of divorce is void. So the bill of, right, so the bill of divorce I sent you is void.
Then the bill of divorce is void.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay? So let's picture the second actually cases in a way. Three and four. He either if, if he precedes the arrival of the get or sends a messenger to the wife who precedes the arrival of the get and says, Hey, you're gonna get this piece of paper that is a get, I hereby declare that, get that you will receive null and void.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: If he does that or the he or the agent does that, that get is effectively null and void, but they have to precede the arrival of that, get for that, get to sort of existentially be just a piece of paper with scribbles and not an effective divorce. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: And, and just to like, give a little bit of an analogy, it's, it's not quite the same, but in, in American law, I think Anglo American law, there's this thing called the mailbox Rule, which has to do with actually the acceptance of a contract.
Not, not the here, which is sort of the offer here. This is kind of an offer of a divorce, but, but it's the, and, and actually it's, I think it's actually very similar about, about an offer. Yeah. I think it is because like, the idea is that if there's a contract that's being, uh, worked out through the mail, which often would be the case in, in older times, you know, um, that, so you would send somebody an offer and let's say they received the offer, uh, and you tried to rescind the offer.
If they had already put their acceptance into the mailbox, it, the contract is accepted and you can't rescind the offer anymore. Hmm. Uh, if you. I'm pretty sure that this is the rule. I used to teach contracts, but it's a long time ago, so it's a little foggy, but I'm pretty sure that if you send an offer in the mail and then you send another, a reci, a rescission of the offer in the mail and the rescission gets there first, or any of these other scenarios like you, any of these scenarios where you say, you know, you're gonna get an offer, but I take it back then, then they can't accept it, you know?
But if they, but if they get the offer before they get the rescission and, and they accept the offer, then there's a contract. So it's a very analogous kind of situation.
BENAY LAPPE: Great.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, okay, so, okay, so now we go to case five, right? Right. Um, however, if he stated, if he stated this, that the bill of divorce I sent you is void, if he, if he made that, tried to make that statement, uh, once the bill of divorce had entered her possession, he can no longer rendered void.
BENAY LAPPE: Great. So once she receives the get that he has sent via Messenger, the divorce goes into effect and there's nothing the husband can do after that point to rescind it and say, no, no, no. But I changed my mind. I wanna still be married. They're divorced. Done.
DAN LIBENSON: And you explained something last week or two weeks ago that I think was really important here, which is that it appears to be the case that once you're divorced, you, you can't get remarried again.
So it's not only that this bad thing happened, but it can be undone. It's basically like a bad thing happened that can't be undone. Right?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I, I, to be honest, I'm a little fuzzy about it because my understanding is that if she does not sleep with somebody else after the divorce, she can remarry him.
But I can't imagine that that is actually the case in the situation where. We, what we were talking about a few weeks last week, a few weeks ago, which is where a get a conditional get has gone into effect. Um, and he comes back claiming onus that he was detained against his will. And only by virtue of that did the get go into effect.
It didn't go into effect willingly because her being able to remarry him cancels out the, the benefit for which that revision was made. So, I'm, I'm honestly not sure.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: In this case. It, it doesn't seem overly problematic for the husband to be able to then come to her the next day and say, I know you're divorced.
I know the get reached your hand. I acknowledge we're divorced, but let's remarry. I, I there would be no problem. She doesn't have to agree to remarry. So she's, uh, she, she doesn't have any sort of disability or she's not put in a problematic situation if he has the ability to effectuate a marriage with her, if she's willing.
So I think in this case he probably could, but, okay. Mm-hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Well, I mean, again, I mean, I, and I think it's complex in the ancient world. 'cause you know, I, as a joking way, I, I'm still kind of saying like she probably wouldn't want to, but yeah, there are reasons that she would want to in terms of her being supported, et cetera.
So it's yes, complex. Um, okay. So. So if, if she al, if, if the divorce reached her before he did, whether through an agent or by himself, then it's, it's, it's val, it's the divorce is valid even though he now regrets it. And That's right. Tells her so.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. And at this point there's a hard return for those of you who remember typewriters typewriter, hard return, new paragraph.
And now here comes this new thing.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So initially, so the mission, the mission tell is telling us now that initially in the old days, you know, back, back, way back when you might remember a husband who wished to render a bill of divorce would convene a court elsewhere. Render the bill of divorce void in the presence of the court before it reached his wife.
So just, I think if I'm understanding this case, he sent a bill of divorce to his wife. The agent has been on the road for a few days. This is again, this is why I think he's on a trip, but whatever. No, he's,
BENAY LAPPE: he's probably not a trip, but he might have a separate re, he could be on a trip
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh.
BENAY LAPPE: Or he could have taken up resident.
Okay. Maybe he's on a trip. Maybe he's on a trip. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So let's say he's on a trip. The point is that, that, that he's like, sent this agent, but it takes the agent time to get there. So to his wife's house. To the wife's house. So the divorce is like traveling some way. If the divorce is like on the way, I mean, we could picture it as like, it's in the mail and Right.
Um, and like the
BENAY LAPPE: check that's in the mail,
DAN LIBENSON: right? And, and meanwhile he says, oh, shoot, I don't, I, I regret it. He, for whatever reason, doesn't wanna go to his wife, uh, doesn't wanna send another agent to his wife. What he could do instead was simply,
BENAY LAPPE: and he doesn't, and he doesn't wanna rush from wherever he is to the wife's house to precede that divorce, right?
He used to have another option.
DAN LIBENSON: He used to have another option, which is that he could convene a court. And in the Gamara we're gonna see a little bit more about what kind of court, what that means exactly. But he could convene a court and that, and by the way, a
BENAY LAPPE: court is just three guys
DAN LIBENSON: or two. Right? And that's one of the, or,
BENAY LAPPE: or, or two.
We'll get there, a couple of guys. Yeah. This is not like a big court, you know, proceeding. It's a couple of guys say, Hey, picture
DAN LIBENSON: that he is at the jcc and it's on the court, the basketball court. And he says, Hey guys, before we play in a pickup game, let's erase this divorce. You know, I,
BENAY LAPPE: I hereby rescind the divorce I sent to my wife.
Right? Did you witness it? You witness it? Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Now get the ball ready. Okay. No, the, so, so, yeah, so the, so the idea is that what you could do was you could just gather a couple of guys and you could say, let's all, uh, you know, let's kind of formally rescind this divorce, but. And then it would just be rescinded in, in the air.
Right. So, so meanwhile, that's right. So, so what you're doing is that basically, imagine this divorce is like traveling in the mail and all of a sudden it's like halfway there and somehow it's no longer valid, you know, but it still gets to her house and she opens it up and she's like, Ugh, I'm divorced.
Like, what a, you know, what a bummer. But it actually turns out that it wasn't a divorce,
BENAY LAPPE: right? Because it has existentially gone poof.
DAN LIBENSON: Right?
BENAY LAPPE: Because he has gathered this remote distant baine, and the moment that happens unbeknownst to the messenger and unbeknownst to the wife that get, is not a valid get.
But they don't know that,
DAN LIBENSON: right? That that's the whole like, like it doesn't actually go poof. Like nothing actually happens to it, right? It's just, it's just that it turns out. And that's the broad, right. There's no way to know that this is invalid. That's the issue. Like it's just, and, and, and, and yet, you know, according to essentially they're saying, and I wanna understand this a little more Torah law.
Yeah. But that the husband has the right to have done that. And so, based on Torah law, this divorce isn't valid, but it looks valid. It was actually signed and sealed properly. And it's, it, there's no way to know. It's not valid other than the fact that something happened far away and it went poof. And, and so, you know, obviously the issue that is that the woman opens this up thinks, well, I guess I'm divorced.
And, but it turns out that she's not and that's gonna cause problems.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. But back in the olden days, because the woman also knew that the husband had the right to convene a court elsewhere.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: She can't know for sure whether he actually did that while the get was on the way. Or didn't. So it puts her in a difficult situation, which is gonna be fleshed out in the gamara.
But I wanna take, um, a moment, but to, to focus on something that appears in the Mishna here. Um, which is that the introduction of this information about what used to be the, the right, the husband used to have, and the rabbis do understand the Torah to give him that. Right. The Torah rite, um, is introduced with the word in the beginning, and the word in Hebrew is barna, just like it, very similar to the first word of the Torah bere sheet in the beginning and last week, I opened up a book that's been sitting on my desk for months and it's this book.
It's called the rhetoric of innovation, self-conscious, legal change in rabbinic literature. And it was written by a co, a late colleague of mine, Aaron PanIN, just a manch of all Mans, such a wonderful
DAN LIBENSON: guy. He, he, he became the president of the Hebrew Union College.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. That's when he passed. That's right.
And I think this is the book version of his PhD dissertation. Mm-hmm. And I opened it up and fully half the book is dedicated to the one word by
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And I haven't completely read the book yet, but I'm, you know, excitedly looking through it. And what he is saying here is that this. Barna, which appears many, many, many times in the Talmud, is the rabbi's way of making sure that we see the legislative history.
So that, in other words, the, the, the Talmud is visualizing what used to be, why that was difficult in order to create sort of a presidential history that we can stand on when our current system is problematic so that we have more of a sense of, of, uh, a, you know, an authentic historical right to, to name.
Our time now is Barna. And to move forward the way the rabbis did. And I, I, I'll say more when I read more of the book, but it's really beautiful and I just thought it was oddly and beautifully coincidental that we were about to learn this text with the Baruna. Yeah. And I totally separate from this in, in my email two days ago, I get an email from Lisa Messenger.
Lisa Messenger is Erin Pink's wife.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm.
BENAY LAPPE: And she says to me, Benet, we've never met, uh, but I saw your crash talk. I heard you speak here or there, and I think you would be interested to know what my late husband, Aaron. Used to think about and talk about and write about, and she copies a page from this book.
And, and this is even before we, we learned this text. Yeah. And it was just so beautiful. Wow. And I, I feel, I feel so honored to be, um, teaching in his name today. And, um, I didn't realize how much my interest in what the rabbis are doing, it was, was what he was teaching about. And, um, anyway.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, no, and I, I didn't know it either.
I only met him once at a conference and I actually know Lisa's sister, uh, and um. It's, that's very fascinating and, and sad because it makes me wanna have a conversation with him.
BENAY LAPPE: I know. Me too. Um, but now I have this extra appreciation. Before I just thought, oh, yeah. Back, you know, back in the day. But now I see from his work that this is a very deliberate attempt by the rabbis to, to surface the problematics of the past.
They, they don't really have to do that. Right. They could have just said, this is what we do now.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. So you're saying that the, the, the reason to kind of have that back in the day, this is how it was done, is that it allows us to do things differently from what we are currently doing today because we, 'cause, because what we're currently doing today is different from what that past was.
And so if today is different from the past, then tomorrow can be different from today or something a little different.
BENAY LAPPE: It, I, I think it's, it's the idea that.
When you simply have a statement of what the law is, the way a code does it, and the mishna is kind of a proto code, right? It's very code like. Mm. There, there's, it's not a conversation, it's not a debate. It's not an attempt to prove It's very much like this is the law. And, and occasionally you get minority opinions o occasionally, but you rarely get sources.
It's very code like. Mm-hmm. But this convention of adding, you know, it used to be different.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm. Is
BENAY LAPPE: is unusual in,
DAN LIBENSON: go ahead. No, it's just that it's reminding like that the answer to my question is that this is the mna, not the gamara. Like in my mind. I, I, I hadn't fully, you know, brought to, we're talking about the mishna here.
I mean, obviously I, but like that, and so this is old, old, old, you know, this is this. So, so this is being written in the year, you know, hun, hundreds of years before the kamara. And, and they're saying Barish in the, that's right. In the old days. So this is like the really, the super old days. So it definitely gives that at least what, whatever its intent was.
It, it definitely gives that permission structure to the later, to the Talmud to say, and we can take it even further.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? And I, and I would say, and then gives even more, I don't know if permission is exactly the right word, but it surfaces the, the fact that what they were saying is our system was causing harm.
It was problematic. Mm-hmm. And this is what we did to fix it. And this is what the law is now. I think that gives us more permission to say, Hey, if our system is problematic, don't respond to that with Oh, but our hands are tied. I'm sorry. It causes you pain. No, we today could be the Barna.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: That you know, in the future they'll look back on and say, yeah, that was our system.
Today was a problem and it was causing, right? Mm-hmm. We have to be the people to fix it. Mm-hmm. So that the story they tell later about us is Barna
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, and we're always in this process of looking at our current system and saying who's being hurt.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And feeling that we have mechanisms and a history and a tradition of fixing when that happens because they did it before.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Because if we didn't have this, this, um. Section of the Mishna that says, oh, a guy used to be able to convene a, a bait dean remotely and re you, you wouldn't even know that such a problem happened. That actually generated as we're about to see an enormous radical change that overturned Torah. That part of the story is really important.
Mm-hmm. You know? Mm-hmm. As Paul Harvey used to say, and now you know the rest of the story. The rest of the story is really important. Okay. So,
DAN LIBENSON: yeah. Okay. So, um, so good. So, so now, and I think, by the way, this is gonna, this is clarifying something for me later for the Gamara, so let's, we'll, we'll get there when we get there, but, um, so the next, the next line in the mishna is just, I just wanna clarify something.
It, it comes from Rabbi Gamliel the elder, and I just wanna, is Rabbi Van Gamliel the elder, he's the grandfather of the Rabbi Van Gale that we think of as Rabbi Van Gale. Or is it the same guy?
BENAY LAPPE: No, I think it's his grandfather. Yeah. I have to look. I have to look, but
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Because, because if it's his grandfather while you're looking, um, yeah.
If it's his grandfather, the grand, so Robin Goleal was the head of the Yavneh, you know, academy in the time of the early days of post destruction rabbinic Judaism. So, uh, a a lot of things where we just talk about Rabbi Van Gamliel, that that's who we're talking about. His grandfather was also named Rabbi Van Gamliel.
And he actually is found in the New Testament. That's the, that's the gamliel. There's a gamliel that's talks about as kind of the head of the, of the, of the court or whatever in, in, in various times in the New Testament. And, and that would be the grandfather. So if we're talking about Robin Gile, the elder, if that's who Robin Gile Yes.
The elder is. Yeah,
BENAY LAPPE: I, I've just confirmed that. With who's who. Yes. You're giving us a
DAN LIBENSON: great, uh, reading list now.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Yes. The Robin Gale we talked about earlier who got deposed and the doors of the Raven drafts were thrown open. That's the grandson of this one. Yeah. Robin Gale, the elder. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So when we're talking about Rob and Galeel, the Elder, then there's two, two things of note.
One is just FYI, he was the guy in the New Testament, so that's interesting. I mean it, but, but number two, we're talking about a much longer ago time. Right. In other words, we're, we're not saying that the rabbis of the Mishna made this ruling. What they're saying is that this ruling was, was substantially, it was like 200 years before the Mishna.
This is the early, early, uh, first century. Right? This time Jesus is the early first century.
BENAY LAPPE: Yes. It, um. Who's, who says that, uh, Robin Gamliel, the elder died two decades before, before the destruction of the temple. So he died in the year 50, approximately.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So he's really early and PS he's the grandson of Hillel.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, right.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Right. So that's a whole nother story. Yeah. Okay. For some reason, by the way, the, the Hillel family used the name Shimo and Goleal frequently. So, you know, so Hillel son Ison, and then his son is Goleal, then his son is Shimo, then his son is Goleal, then his son is Shimo, and then it goes to Judah for some reason.
But the, but the, the, but it's an interesting family and, and you know, kind of a very elite and important family. Not so relevant, I think, well, it probably is relevant to this. I mean, there, when they, when you say something is Robin Goli the elder, you're giving it some serious pedigree, right? Ab Absolutely.
Okay. So, so what does Robin Goli the elder say? In explaining this, this, uh, change, right? So back in the old days, uh, in Barric na, a man could kind of convene this court and make the divorce go poof. And while it was still on the way, uh, and, uh, but now we don't do that anymore because Rob Ngal, the elder, instituted an ordinance that one should not do this.
Why? For the benefit of the world in Hebrew. That's Tik. And that's Tik. Aam is is a sort of phrase that people are familiar with the, the betterment of the world or the repair of the world, right?
BENAY LAPPE: Right, exactly. So the first thing is, we know that because we had this problematic situation, which the mission is visualizing, Robin Gale said, Ooh, that that's problematic.
That's gonna cause suffering. Although it doesn't articulate here in the mission of precisely what suffering that ability of a man. Uh, to rescind the divorce remotely created. But Robin Gamal recognized it and made a ana. This is like declaration by fiat that doesn't have articulated along with it. I rationale just, I, I declare that that can no longer be done.
And the sort of vague rationale is, or, or for what purpose is Tik Ola. And I think it bears saying that, by the way, we are in a section of the Talmud where we have mission after Mishna recording, um, radical abrogation of Torah that were done, quote unquote for the sake of the betterment of the world. And this term, which we now has come down to us as Tikun, um, has come down in a much impoverished.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm.
BENAY LAPPE: Form, I mean, you know, handing out sandwiches, right. Tik Lum, anything social justice lum. This usage, the original usage of the term makes it very clear that they were talking about something much deeper and more systemic. Yeah. It's a affix to the system is what they understood to be tikun lum, not a, you know, a a kind act of social justice.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, and I'm not even sure that the, that the usage of Tikun Ola nowadays is actually drawn from the Talmud, this usage. I, I think it comes via the Kabbalah or something like that, where I'm not totally sure, but, but I think it's already gone through a few. A few iterations, and it's also an impoverished version of that, but
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah,
BENAY LAPPE: that's right. And that also has an, a different problematic history. But we'll put a stickie on that.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Maybe at another time we'll talk about the, the evolution of tikun ola. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So I, so I think that the important thing here is to sort of note. And like you say, put a sticky that note that it is this, this wor, these words that are used Tik ola are pretty ancient.
Uh, now, again, we don't know that Rabbi and Gael actually said maybe Tik ola. If he did, then we're talking about a term that goes all the way back to, to the early, early first century. Uh, if he didn't and it's only being put in his mouth in the Mishna, then that's 150 years later, fine. You know? But it's still a pretty old Jewish idea.
This idea of Tik tikun ola, whatever that means. Exactly.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. At the very least, it's second, third century.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. What,
BENAY LAPPE: what I think is interesting about it is the word tikun, the fixing
DAN LIBENSON: uhhuh.
BENAY LAPPE: I, I think it recognizes that the Torah as it's being lived out, is causing brokenness. That, that, that somehow, the Torah itself is.
Is imperfect. Mm. Ma immaculate. To use the words of David Weis livni, it, it, it's, it's inadequate and it needs to be fixed. For me, that's a radical idea.
DAN LIBENSON: I totally agree. It's not, it's not me. Pun Torah, for example. It's not saying we're repairing the Torah, it's saying we're repairing the world. That the Torah either is causing this thing that needs to be repaired or, or at least it's not repairing it.
Uh, and to the extent that the ultimate mission is the repairing of the world in that big way that you're talking about then. We're not limited to Torah at the very least, right? We're not limited to, we can't say, oh, well Torah doesn't have, you know, I think a lot about, for example, the issue of Kashrut, you know, kosher food and the question of whether the slaughterhouses are treating the workers well or violating immigration laws or whatever, you know, paying people under the table.
And there are a lot of, uh, observant Jews who observe kosher laws and they say, well, look, I look in the Torah here, the Talmud, it just says that the animal has to be slaughtered with a sharp knife and one blow and whatever, you know, and it doesn't say anything about how to teach the, how to treat the workers.
So, yeah, what can I do? You know, it's not, it's just not, it's not something that the Torah cares about or the Talmud cares about. And it's like, well, that, that's not the, that's not the end of the story. That's the beginning of the story. You know, the, the, and you could say, uh, we're now gonna, uh, issue an ordinance that kosher food must have a.
Treating of the workers Well, in addition to the other criteria. I'm not saying instead of, I mean, I personally would say instead of, but I'm just saying, you know, I think you could just say in addition to, uh, alum, I mean, that, that seems very right. It's, we're not limited to what the Torah says or what the Talmud says.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: So that's cool. Okay. That's cool. Okay. Go, go on to the, to the gamara.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. So now we turn the page and we're going from Mishna to the Gamara, so we're moving ahead maybe 400 years, more or less. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So the Gamara says, the Mishna taught that Rabbi Ga Elder Institute, this is the interpret, this is the just set up.
But the mic taught that Rabbi Goli the elder. I instituted that one may not render a bill of divorce in a court elsewhere 'cause of the benef betterment of the world. Tiara asks, what problem did Rabbi Goleal solve that is considered to be for the betterment of the world? Rabbi Hannan says, this is for the benefit of potential children born from an adulterous relationship, um, Zare.
So we want to just remind this is the same issue as last, as last time, right? Like that, that basically if a woman. If a woman, so let's set this up. So, if a woman, um, receives the divorce, so if what happened was that the husband sent the divorce while it was in midair, you know, in the mail convenes, this court makes her go poop.
Change is mine, change mine. Don't wanna be
BENAY LAPPE: divorced, I wanna stay married to her.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. Convenes his friends, you know, court, JCC, Mexico poop, that's not a divorce anymore, but it arrives at her house and she never hears about this changing. So she gets it in the mail, Oop, looks, looks like I'm divorced. She goes ahead and marries another husband has children.
Those children now, now married,
BENAY LAPPE: quote unquote, she thinks she's gotten married. You
DAN LIBENSON: think she's gotten married, but she was actually married to the first husband in, in, you know, patriarchal sort of ways. She can't have two husbands, but he can have two wives. That's the whole another thing. But, uh, but she can only have one husband at a time.
She has still has the first husband 'cause the divorce went poof. She didn't know that. So she's quote, marries this other guy, but actually they're having adultery, uh, and they have children from that relationship. Those children are mazare ambassadors. That's a very bad category to be in, and we don't want that.
So Rabbi Yohannan is saying that what rabbi. Uh, sorry, Rob, the elder is trying to do here by saying that you can't take a back a divorce that way is preventing their, from being these moms heirs born, uh, by saying that it, that if you get a divorce that looks valid, it's valid.
BENAY LAPPE: Great.
DAN LIBENSON: And that always gets, make it clean.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. So what we're looking at here is the gamara, or later rabbis trying to get into Robin Gale's head. Mm-hmm. What was he thinking? What was bothering him? And nobody knows because apparently there, he, you know, we have no exact record of it. So they're trying to guess what, what was he trying to solve?
Okay. And,
DAN LIBENSON: and he's saying basically that the world is broken in this way. That you know that based on the Torah laws, such as they understood it, there's gonna be all these moms ire born. All these, and that's a bad category. Luke talks about they can only marry each other, et cetera. And, and we don't want, and their
BENAY LAPPE: children are limited in the same way for all eternity.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. And we don't want a world full of mazare if we could avoid it. Right. So, and the Torah kind of allowing this to happen. So let's change that so that that brokenness doesn't happen.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. So Rabbi Yohannan saying that must be what was bothering Robin Gale. Robin Gamal knew that the law as it was ps everybody had to know this.
Okay. Same note I made about Ava. It's not like Robin Gale was the only one who noticed the problem. Everyone had to notice the problem. These, these guys are not stupid, super smart. Everybody knew that this situation, the right toic right of a man to rescind a divorce remotely was causing mazare in the world and women to be inadvertently adulterous.
I imagine Robin Gale was the only one who stood up and said. That's not their problem. That's the problem of the Torah. That's the, the Torah putting them in that position. The Torah's broken and needs to be fixed or mm-hmm. The Torah's inadequate. It needs to. Right. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: By the way, by the way, I would just note, I would just note that, uh, try not to be too political, but what a, what a nice world where, because the one thing about Rob Conley the elder, is that he was the top guy.
So, um, so like, what a nice world where the leader, if somebody's gonna step up and notice this and, and say we gotta fix this. It's nice to imagine that that's actually the leader rather than the leader is the cause of the problems and the, you know, and, and some other random person, you know, notices it Yeah.
And says Pamper has no clothes. You know?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Although I'm always interested in the backstory. I'm always interested in how many women did it take knocking on Robin Gale, the elder's door to say. You have to do something. We're suffering. Yeah. My poor child. How, how can you let this go on? You know what I mean?
DAN LIBENSON: Probably it happened to his sister or something.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. So, okay. In any case, I presume that everyone knew of this problem, but only Robin Gum level's one, who finally, for whatever reasons motivated him, said, okay, we've gotta do something about it. Now the question is, why does Robin Robbie Johannan think that this was Robin Gale in Robin Gale's mind?
Why does Rabbi Johannan think Robin Gale was motivated by Mazare? And now the text is gonna answer that question.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, does it?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Oh, okay. Do you want, do you want me to read this, this part that's in shines out or go to ish?
BENAY LAPPE: No. Um,
yeah. Okay. Let's go to racial ish. Um. Yeah, so sorry, I, I jumped the gun later. In a couple of lines. It's gonna explain why Robin Ga, why Robbi Yohannan thought Robin Gamal was bothered by the MA problem and ish Laish said, no, no, no, I disagree with you. I think Robin Gamal was bothered by some other problem.
And here we go with Ish Laish. And
DAN LIBENSON: Rachel Laish, by the way, is like Nan's other, other, uh, you know, other side, right? Meaning like, there's Rabba, Ava ab, there's Vin Schmuel, there's Ish Laish and Hannan. So like, these are these kind of two that often are. Talking to each other. They're, they're actually very close.
Uh, they're, I think brothers-in-law, but they're, you know, and, but they, they're just a pair. It's not just too random,
BENAY LAPPE: right? They're verta and have a very profound and intimate relationship. And we'll put a sticky on that and come to back to that at some other point,
DAN LIBENSON: right? So Rachel ish says, no, he's saying no, no, no.
The reason why Rob Gole, the elder said this, that the, the problem that he was trying to solve was not that there were gonna be all these mom's heirs, uh, because the, the, the wife would go off and marry someone else. It's actually for the benefit of the, a agonot that the deserted wives, uh, that, and this is analogous to last time also, that there, that this other problem, uh, so correct me if I understand this right, but that basically what's gonna happen is that because women know that this is possible, that, that a husband might take back the divorce.
While it's in midair, uh, that when they get a divorce, she'll be like, well, this is like a bummer that he ever wrote this, but like, I'm sure that he convened a court and took this away because he would never wanna divorce me. So even though I'm holding a valid divorce in my hand, I'm gonna assume that I'm not divorced and I'm just gonna wait for him to return.
And he never returns because from his perspective, he never convened that court. He's divorced and so he's off and is, you know, doing his own thing. And so she's just sitting there waiting around for the rest of her life certain that he's gonna come back and that she was never actually divorced. Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Or, or she's just, she doesn't believe he did cancel the get remotely, but she just doesn't know. And her fear that maybe he did, and if he did, and I remarry. I'll be adulterous and my children will be, mom is enough to get her to sit and wait until the actual reality clarifies itself. And if in fact I been, um, has no intention of coming back, she will remain
actually married to him, yet he will not actually be present in her life. Mm-hmm. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so now we get some explanations of why. Now it's like another person saying like, why do we think that they thought that, you know, like, that's like, they're asking what, what was in Robin Gle, the elder's mind? And that one says it was because of the, uh, mom's heirs.
And one says it was because of the Anot. And so then people are coming along saying like, well, what was in their mind? Like, why would they have thought that he thought, you know? So anyway, um, that's right. So, um, so, so the Gamar explains that Rabbi Yohannan says the reason for this ordinance is for the benefit of Mazare, that he must be holding in accordance with the opinion of Av Nachman, who says that the, that a husband can render the bill of divorce void in the presence of two people.
Meaning that the court, so to speak, that is gathered to, uh, void the divorce. It just can be just two people. Uh, it's not even as opposed to
BENAY LAPPE: three because generally, uh,
DAN LIBENSON: a
BENAY LAPPE: court is three. People, but this kind of procedure, I, I had an ex lover who was a legislative law judge, and it was like, you know, it wasn't like the TV courtroom administrative law, sorry.
That's what administrative law, an administrative law judge and she presided over are very administrative issues. So it, it wasn't that kind of court, it was, uh, this kind of court and you only need, according to the text, two people to, um, have a get declared void. You didn't need three. It could be done with two.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, it's, um, it's, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's like in our court, so like we have a district court that's just one judge and a court of appeals that has three judges and a Supreme court that has nine judges. So you're saying like, look, this is the category of cases that goes to the one judge, you know, in this case too.
Right? Right there. And, and, and so, you know, a criminal case that would go to a three judge panel, but this only goes to a two judge panel. So if you can, and so they, and then they have this idea that it's sort of a, like, almost like an aphorism, I guess, that, um. That. Um, so the
BENAY LAPPE: question is, what, what difference does it make whether such a cancellation of a previously issued get is adjudicated by two or three judges,
DAN LIBENSON: right?
And they, and they have this, this kind of notion that since matters that occur in the presence of two people, do not generate publicity, it's possible that you won't hear about the bill of divorce. So the, like, their idea here is that, like, if there's only two people there, like they, the kind of like, it doesn't get, it doesn't, the, the gossip mills don't start, you know, like, it just like, just, not that necessarily, they're trying to keep it a secret, but it's just like, it doesn't get out into the world when there's only two people that hear about something.
So, and, and, and that the issue there is that if it doesn't get into the gossip mills, right, like she's less likely to find out about it. If she's less likely to find out about it. That means that she's more likely to think that the divorce is valid. If she thinks that the divorce is valid, she's more likely to get married.
You know? Get falsely married again and have moms ear children. So that, that must be why Rabbi Yohannan is worried more about the moms ears is because he knows that this is a case that's decided only among two judges. And so the big issue is just that the word doesn't get out and that, and that leads to the case, that's more likely that she will get married again.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. That's exactly right. There's no mechanism for her to have found out that that get actually isn't a get any longer because her husband changed his mind and rescinded it.
DAN LIBENSON: There's fewer mechanism. So it's, it's less likely. It, obviously Fair enough. Hopefully he will still tell her, but there's more of a chance that the word wouldn't get to her.
And, uh, similarly, um. So I forget if we read this and, and since she does not know that the husband rendered the bill of divorce, she will go and marry and their moms as a result of second marriages like these and ish laish who says that the issue is the, for the betterment of the anot, the deserted wives who are not allowed to marry again.
Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. In other re Laish thinks that Robbie Robin Gamal's motivation was that women will sit and not move on. Mm-hmm. That was his motivation. That was the suffering that he was out to fix. Because,
DAN LIBENSON: because he must, uh, hold in accordance with the opinion of Rev Shehe who says. That one can only render a bill of divorce in the presence of three people.
So is this other rabbi? And he says, no, no, no. Like you, you do need three judges to, you know, judges, but you need three people to, to render a bill of divorce. So, and, and you know, they, they have this asion that since matters that occurred in the presence of three people do generate publicity, that concern isn't, isn't there, we're not concerned that the gossip mills aren't gonna hear about this.
We are actually quite certain that the gossip mills will hear about it. Meaning that we're quite sure that she would hear that he, um, that he has taken back the divorce. So, so what's the issue? It's that, that she, she thinks to herself, if he had taken back the divorce, then uh, I would've heard about it.
No, that's, no,
BENAY LAPPE: no. She does in fact hear that there was a proceeding in Chupe. She lives in Hudson puts and in Chupe where the husband is. He had three of his buddies witness that he was rescinding the get. She does hear about it because the, you know, gossip does get out. So, so what's the problem she's sitting with an invalid get, in other words, she knows she is still married.
Why is that a problem? Why is she, quote unquote in Una? Because this guy, the, the assumption of Robin Gale, or, or what Reish Laish thinks Robin Gale is thinking, is that a guy who is such a jerk as to. Remotely rescind his divorce and not bother to come and tell Rush to get to her before it arrives or to send another messenger to the first messenger is the guy who's gonna stay in Ville and not go back to her in spite of the fact that he
rescinds the divorce document and is keeping her married. In other words, he's out of spite, rescinding the divorce document so that she's legally married to him, but he has no intention of actually living together with her, providing her with sustenance protection, companionship, sex, whatever. And he's gonna stay in Ville Uhhuh, and he's deliberately sort of chaining her in this way.
DAN LIBENSON: And, and so what's the difference between that and a man who just decided to abandon his wife one day and moved to Ville and never issued the divorce? Is, is basically the thing is that like once you issue a divorce in that situation, we're gonna make it binding because even, you know, even if you try to take it back, we can't do it if you didn't issue the divorce.
But if you did issue the divorce, that's right. Then we're gonna take away that chance to take it back and to, you know, like, we're gonna at least give her that.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. Mm-hmm. That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So the, the, okay, so, so, um, one render a divorce only the presence of three people. And since matters that occur in the presence of three people do generate publicity, she does hear and know that her husband rendered the bill of divorce and she would not marry again.
BENAY LAPPE: Rendered, rendered it invalid. I hope it says that.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, rendered void, the bill of divorce rendered void, right? And, and she would not marry again. Therefore, there's no concern that this will result in Mom's re because she, she knows she is not divorced, and so she's not marrying again, like you explained. But there's a need to institute this orate ordinance for the benefit of, of the deserted wifes in o in other words, to reduce the number of AGU note I, right?
Like
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. BT
DAN LIBENSON: or AGU note,
BENAY LAPPE: right? Stein salts puts, I think this is Stein salts, right? He, the word deserted here, um, comes out of the, this comes through Rashi, by the way. It it because the text is not clear about why a woman whose husband rescinded a divorce remotely. Is it Una? Why is she an Una?
She's actually an Asia D, she's a married woman. Uhhuh. Why is she Una? Why is she abandoned? The assumption is that a man who would rescind a divorce in that manner also has no intention of returning to her. And it's, it's really rashi's clarification of this. The text doesn't make it clear at all why she's an ana, she's a married woman.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, she's only Ana in the sense that her husband isn't present with her. And that's deduced from the fact that he knows that this is a lousy thing to do. Mm-hmm. To use this mechanism to rescind a divorce rather than other mechanisms he had, which the mission had talked about.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: You know, running to her to say, Hey, hey, hey, you're gonna get a divorce, don't pay.
Or sending another. Shale that, that his willingness to utilize that anticip problematic mechanism is precisely the sign that he's not going to, he has no intention of returning and therefore is doing it this way to screw her. Sorry about my language.
DAN LIBENSON: No, that's good. Yeah. Well, um, so I think we should leave it there for now, 'cause of time, and we'll come back this next week.
And also, my dog is barking, so, uh,
BENAY LAPPE: we, we almost made it through. We did it.
DAN LIBENSON: It's okay. Well, we'll, we'll, uh, complete this text and, and talk a little bit about it. And then, um, you know, hopefully, we'll, we'll have time next week to start to jump into our next text, which, uh, you know, really is, is continuing this exploration of ways that the rabbis are, uh, more explicitly and less explicitly, uh, um.
You know, what's the word? I, I, I don't wanna say trumping, you know, but that they're overturning, overturning or, uh, Torah, Torah laws, some of which are more explicit than others. And, and, uh, you know, and, and why are they doing that? I mean, again, we're cont we're, we've been exploring this hypothesis that it has to do with the reduction of suffering.
And here, here we see it again, right? I mean, a mom's there is someone who's suffering in the world because he or she is not. Um. It, it's so limited in their ability to be part of society and in Una, a deserted wife is obviously a person who's suffering and who's in this state of lifetime suffering basically.
Actually, as is the moms there, like there's basically almost like nothing they can do. Like they're, they're, I guess maybe that's a, a way to sort of, maybe that's another layer even to explore here that an A and Aamer are people that are basically, it's impossible for them to alleviate their own suffering.
There's nothing they can do. They're the. And you know, it nowadays, you could say, well, you, you not can't get married again. You could live with somebody. But back then that wasn't a thing, you know? And, and so there, there are just so many ways in which the, so we, we've created a category of people who are just like, I mean, just, it's like a, a cast, you know, an untouchable cast.
It's like, there's just, there's literally nothing you can do to, to, to, to go into a better fate. And that is a, a, a level of suffering that is just almost unthinkable. And, and so, so I wonder, you know, again, I I, I think that maybe as we explore more, we'll see that, does it have to be a suffering of that magnitude or will the rabbis also be looking to help people with less magnitude of suffering?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And, and, and the fact that that. Suffering is recognized as being so enormous itself, I think had to have been a move. Mm-hmm. 'cause as I, as I really suspect others recognize this, the problem in the system, but the level of suffering for them didn't rise to unconscionable until it takes until, yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: And yeah, and unconscionable by the way, is a, is a term in, in Anglo American law, you know, that a contract that is unconscionable is not noten enforceable. Um, but I wa I wonder as we, as we explore this, um, you know, I'm just gonna be on the lookout for the, that, that question, especially when, you know, I, I wonder if the me alum justification, I mean, you know, maybe that goes along with something that is at that level of, not even, it's not even just that it's unconscionable.
It's that it's, it's like. It's irreparable within the system. Meaning once you accept the system, there's nothing you can do to help IAM there or Anuna as if once you accept that that's what they are, then there's nothing that you can do. The only thing you can do is prevent them from becoming that in the first place.
And you know, we talked a couple weeks ago, a few weeks ago about this idea that today a lot of rabbinic, um, authorities, particularly male orthodox ones are, are, you know, say about anuna, uh, whose husband has actually abandoned them and has disappeared. You know, my hands are tied, there's nothing I can do, you know, I really wanna help you.
Uh, we talked about how it looks like there are actually some ways that we see right here and in the previous text that they actually can help but they don't. Um, and you know, all the more, so that becomes all the more shocking when, if and when we, we see that what's really going on here is that. When the rabbis in the Talmud are seeing something so unjust, so brutal, so categorical.
And I mean that in the sense of a category, you know, it's putting you in a category that makes you an unperson. That, that, that is a point at which they're gonna say that this is such a, this is, this is such a broken world that we can't let this stand. We're gonna have to repair the whole world to prevent people from falling into this category.
And that's going to mean overturning a Torah law.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. I think that's beautiful. And that the, that observation that these are unfixable categories and the only way to fix the problem of people being put in them is to prevent them being put in. That's what Tikun Ola is about. Mm-hmm. That's the kind of systemic change that is being described with this term.
Tikun ola. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: And, and we may wanna add that question to some of the contemporary. Uh, relevancy that we're trying to find and say, you know, which categories that we're seeing today are in that category of a kind of, if we, if we continue the law as it is, it puts somebody into a category that they like, can't escape.
And that is, um, definitionally a lesser category in the law versus, you know, something else that might also be very terrible or very important. Like, let's say I don't, I mean, climate change may be in that category too, 'cause it's ultimately unfixable. But if you say, you know, we're, we're really trying to, like, if that's something that we should do, you know, it's, it would be, it would be important.
It's, it is our responsibility to do this thing. We should take it on as it more of an obligation. Ver But over here, this is where there's a real injustice going on. That, that if we continue to allow the system to be the way it is, that person is going to be stuck as a version of an unperson forever. And that we can't abide.
And that may be a category of person that we weren't fully aware of in the. Talmudic times, now we're aware. So we've, we've gotta fix this mi in exactly the way that, that they did.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm sort of fascinated by this
path of unconscionability. It seems that things be, you know, certain injustices and, and unperson hoods are tolerated. Mm-hmm. Not even noticed as problematic probably originally, and then recogniz as problematic, but our hands are tied and then cognize as intolerable unconscionable such that I'm just interested in, in that.
Anyway. Alright. We'll put a sticky. All
DAN LIBENSON: right, well, we'll, we'll come back to that. This is great and, um, and look forward to continuing this conversation next week.
BENAY LAPPE: Me too. Thanks Dan.
DAN LIBENSON: Thanks.
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