The Oral Talmud: Episode 36 - A One-Way Ratchet (Gittin 33a)
SHOW NOTES
“What you can't do is try to ratchet it backwards to the original law from the Torah. No, it does not have a special status because it was in the Torah. Once it's overruled, it's overruled. Period. End of story.” - 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.
In this episode of Oral Talmud, Benay and Dan continue to discuss a text about divorce, and they uncover a radical rabbinic principle hiding in plain sight: once the sages change Torah to reduce suffering, you don’t get to roll it back. No nostalgia. No appeals to “original intent.” Just a one-way moral ratchet toward dignity, toward protection, toward repair.
This conversation traces a daring throughline: we don’t inherit justice, we practice it. If you’ve ever wondered whether religious tradition can evolve without losing its soul, this episode doesn’t hedge. It leans all the way in. This Talmudic text is an argument for moral courage: when tradition causes harm, repair isn’t optional. Moving from ancient divorce law to modern constitutional law, Dan and Benay ask, who gets to change the system, and what is the cost when nobody does?
This week’s text: Gittin 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: This is The Oral Talmud - Episode 36: A One-Way Ratchet.
Welcome to the Oral Talmud, a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. I’m Dan Libenson…
BENAY: …and I’m Benay Lappe.
DAN: The Oral Talmud is our weekly deep dive study partnership, in which we try to figure out how voices from the Talmud – voices from 1500 to 2000 years ago – can help us think in new ways about Judaism today.
In this episode of Oral Talmud, Benay and I continue to discuss a text about divorce, and we uncover a radical rabbinic principle hiding in plain sight: once the sages change Torah to reduce suffering, you don’t get to roll it back. No nostalgia. No appeals to “original intent.” Just a one-way moral ratchet — toward dignity, toward protection, toward repair.
This conversation traces a daring throughline: we don’t inherit justice — we practice it. If you’ve ever wondered whether religious tradition can evolve without losing its soul, this episode doesn’t hedge. It leans all the way in. This Talmudic text is an argument for moral courage: when tradition causes harm, repair isn’t optional. Moving from ancient divorce law to modern constitutional law, we ask – who gets to change the system, and what is the cost when nobody does?
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: Hello everybody. Welcome to this week's episode of the Oral Talmud. I'm Dan Levison and I'm here with Bene Lei as always. Hey Bene. Hey
BENAY LAPPE: Dan. How are you?
DAN LIBENSON: Good. All right, so let's, uh, jump back into the text that we're looking at, which is this, uh, text from the track Take 18. Where on page 32 A and 33 A. And, um, and, um. The mission is on 32 a and the Mara that we're looking at is on 33 A. So not to go too much into review, but basically we're, we're dealing with this case of a man who's trying to take back his divorce. And, uh, but he's not, he's either not in the same city as the wife is, or he for some reason is choosing to do this in a different place. But he's convening a, uh, bein sort of a court, but really it's just a couple of friends and, or it could be a couple of friends, just a couple of guys. And they are kind of trying to, uh, invalidate the divorce while it's on route to the wife. So she hasn't received it yet, but it's on, it's already been fully executed and on route and maybe with a messenger, uh. I guess with a messenger in this case. And, uh, and, and there's all kinds of ways in which he's, he's trying to, uh, un undo this.
If, if he actually sends a messenger and overtakes the messenger and all that, then you can, you can undo the divorce that way. But the, this question of like, can he do it in, in this little court that he is convened and never really send a messenger at all, and she never knows. So she receives the divorce, but we actually know that it went poof in the middle.
Uh, is it, is that doable and that that's really the case that's being dealt with here? Right,
BENAY LAPPE: right. And and I would say even further, the mission acknowledges that back in the day, Barna, that's how, that was one of the mechanisms available to a man in a heteronormative marriage who wanted to rescind a divorce.
He could either rush to her before the get that he had sent reaches her. Are you still with us? Yep. He could send another me messenger to catch up to the first messenger that had the divorce document in his hand, or he could convene one of these bait things remotely in some distant location from her.
And that was a legitimate way to cancel a previously issued get. But, um, who is it who's doing this? Robin Gale. Right? Robin Gale. The elder says, no, no, no. This, that one way convening a remote Bain is just, causes too much suffering and we are just not, I'm not willing to allow that suffering to, to continue and I'm going to erase X out that one mechanism of convening a remote bein from the, you know, tool belt of, of divorce rescission.
Tools that men have, that's where we are. And um, and, and then the GMA goes into the question of, well, what exactly was bothering Robin Gale? What suffering was it that motivated him to abrogate Torah? Because the rabbis understood that one way to cancel a get namely remotely to be granted by God in the Torah.
And that's, that's a big deal to, to kind of cancel out something in the Torah. What was it that for him was such a big deal that he was willing to cancel Torah? And then, and then there's the, the debate about what that might have been because we don't have his own words.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. And, and just to reinforce that this is another one of these cases where something that a right that comes from the Torah is being canceled.
Well, it's two things actually. It's a right that's being, that's given by the Torah that's canceled. That's a big deal. And in this case of a marriage, it's a situation where, uh. Where if the divorce is canceled on route, which the Torah allows, then they are still married. If they're still married, then essentially you are then, but, but you're saying we don't recognize that rescission that then that what that means is a rabbi's willing to perform the marriage of this woman and her next.
Husband, so to speak. And, and essentially what they're doing is allowing a woman to essentially commit adultery, uh, according to the Torah. And they're saying, but we're not gonna see it that way. We're gonna see it as that she was divorced and then she's remarried. But the Torah actually, you know, sees her arguably as that she's married and, and committing adultery.
That's a huge deal. And so this is a case, another case where they're basically saying, we're gonna abrogate. It's not only we're taking away a right of a man, it's that we're, we're basically abrogating a, a status that the Torah establishes because we think it's a good idea, you know, because we think it's gonna make the world better.
That's a huge deal. And it's one of a number of huge deals like that, that we've been exploring over the last bunch of weeks.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. And maybe we should just surface why Is it a what, what, yeah. What might be the concern? Well, if. A husband cancel. It's either the husband has canceled the get remotely, the wife doesn't know it.
When she gets the document of divorce in her hand that the mess messenger has delivered. She'll, she'll do either or think one of two things. Either A, she's gonna go, oh, I'm divorced, and go off and remarry when in fact he has rescinded the divorce and she's not. And and effectively she's an adulterous and her children from that second marriage are moms aum.
Or she's gonna get that divorce in her hand and she's going to think, right, and this is probably the more halachically astute women are going to think, oh, I know my husband has the right to rescind this divorce. He might have done so remotely without my knowledge. How do I know if this divorce is actually a real divorce or not?
Maybe it's been invalidated. I'm not gonna take the chance of marrying, believing that he didn't rescind it. So I'm just gonna sit here and wait until the reality becomes obvious. And if the husband, in fact did rescind it, he has no intention of coming home because if he really cared about her, he would've knocked on her door and told her what the deal was.
Mm-hmm. And she will in fact sit there, um, as both a married woman. Because he did rescind the divorce. And as a woman whose husband is not there to support, protect, give her sex companionship, so she's without a husband and without the ability to remarry.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. So where we left it off last week was basically that there these two different points of view, trying to understand why Rob Van Goleal, the elder who remember he, him, he was, uh, an older character from, uh, even before the destruction of the temple.
Why would he have, uh. Uh, made this change. And, and, and so there, there's Rabbi Yohannan one has one explanation. Ra Rachel Ish has another explanation. And according to Rachel ish, he, he says at the end, you know, he says basically like, no, no, no. It's not what Rabbi Yohannan is concerned about because it's not this issue that the word's not gonna get out.
'cause you actually do have to have a quarter of three people, not a quarter of two people. But it's still an issue because of what you just said, that, that she might not remarry because of, and he's, and, and essentially we're, we're, we we're allowing a husband to kind of spite his wife in this certain way.
And if you wanna spite your wife, uh, by, by, um, not ever issuing a divorce, maybe our hands are tied, something we've talked about a lot. But once you issue the divorce, we're not gonna let you take it back. Uh, and, and, and essentially make her stuck in this marriage forever, when clearly you're sping her.
That's the ki that's basically where we ended. Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly.
DAN LIBENSON: All right. So, so now we, we go on to a another, um, another what's called a, a Bright tell, like another, um, story or piece of piece of, uh, of, of law that comes from the same period as the Mishna, but it's not actually in the Mishna.
BENAY LAPPE: Right,
DAN LIBENSON: right. And, and the, that often or always is introduced by this statement, Tony Ruben, on the stages or
BENAY LAPPE: some version of it.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Yes. It, it's considered as authoritative as a mission.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: There's a whole nother conversation. Maybe we should have some time.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Because, you know, like why, in other words, it's, it's kind of like, um, you know, I think about it like the Constitution versus the Federalist Papers. Maybe that's not a good example because it's almost like arguably stuff.
Kind of fell on the cutting room floor. Like it didn't even make it into the mishna.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: So why is it just as authoritative, or is it that we kind of misunderstand the mishna if we think that the mishna is this authoritative source and Theta or the other sources of, of, of these contemporaneous rulings are not as authoritative.
That, that, that never was the case. That, um, and the fact that the Talmud is kind of built structurally as an interpretation of the Mishnah is just a convenient way to organize the material, but actually the material is equally important. You know, I, I just, it's an interesting question that I
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, yeah.
Let's put stick on that and think about that. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: All right. Alright, so let's, uh, read on,
BENAY LAPPE: okay,
DAN LIBENSON: so the sage is taught even after Rob Van Gole, the elder instituted, or this is the, this is the, uh, background explanation that even after Rob Van Goleal, the elder instituted that a husband cannot render void bill of divorce when not in the presence of the wife for the agent, if he nevertheless rendered it void.
The bill of divorce is rendered void. This is a statement of Rabbi Yei.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, great. Let's stop there.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Okay. And by the way, rabbi Nessi, the compiler of the Mishna.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And that's very interesting. Mm-hmm. Because if the mishna, even if the mish is not, you know, super special with respect to other teachings of the same era, I don't know Robbie, he, he's, he's a pretty big guy.
He was the compiler of the mission. He was a big guy. And what he's saying here is, okay, we accept Robin Gale's decree that a man cannot rescind a divorce that he had previously issued remotely without the wife's knowledge. But if he goes ahead and does it in, what's the word in contravention in. If he flouts the law.
Is that a word?
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. I mean,
BENAY LAPPE: okay. In other words, if he says, I'm gonna do it anyway. Mm-hmm. I know, I know there's a rule that says I can't, I'm gonna do it anyway.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Robbie, Robbie, this big guy, he says that doing it anyway is going to be effective. Mm-hmm. And he did in fact, effectively rescind the get.
I, I find that surprising.
DAN LIBENSON: Surprising. And yeah, because it, so just to, just to make sure that I understand this point, it's saying like, the law is that you cannot do something. Trying to think like the law is that you cannot buy. Marijuana, you know, I dunno. But if you buy marijuana, okay, you're not, you're not gonna, nothing's gonna happen to you.
Maybe that's a good example because that's kind of what, what the law is. You know?
BENAY LAPPE: It's the punchline of half the Yiddish jokes out there. I don't know. It's D die. I don't know. Its, it's funny. It's, it's exactly that. It's, our law's now gonna be this, and if you violate the law, okay, you violate the law, no big deal.
You could still do it, I dunno.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, and okay, so a couple, couple questions here. A couple thoughts. One is that just what I was just talking about, the mission of versus the tota, the other sources of what we call a bright tote, the contemporaneous mishna contemporaneous law to the mishna. So here's a case where this is, uh, BIE Hoi saying this.
He's the compiler of the Mishna. He didn't put this thing into the mishna, nevertheless. So you would think, well, the guy, no,
BENAY LAPPE: he did, he did put it in.
DAN LIBENSON: No, he put in, he put in the law that we've been talking about into the mishna, but this last point about
BENAY LAPPE: Oh,
DAN LIBENSON: right, right. If he nevertheless rendered it vo, if he nevertheless did it, it still counts.
Good point. He didn't put that in the mishna.
BENAY LAPPE: You're right. That's a really good point
DAN LIBENSON: and number. Okay. That's point number one. And point number two is that Robbie Yehuda is the great-great grandson of Robin Goleal, the elder, I think, or no, no, no. Might I have that? Do I look,
BENAY LAPPE: I look at my Who's who? Hang on.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Oh, I might, I might be, I think that's right. I think that's right. Actually.
BENAY LAPPE: I have to look it up.
DAN LIBENSON: I'm not sure. It's a critically important point.
BENAY LAPPE: Uhhuh.
Mm-hmm.
It's not under his entry. Let me look under Rabbi.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, I might, I might have that wrong, but it's, I'm trying to, okay. My, my source of, for some of my, uh, knowledge on this is the book The Orchard that I translated. And I, I pretty sure that I remember that Rabbi you don't see as a descendant of Hillel, um, meaning that he would be from the line of Rabbi Anglia, but I, I, I could have that wrong.
Um, so, but I don't, I don't actually know that it's particularly, uh, you know, relevant in a substantial way here, but, okay.
BENAY LAPPE: I'm not sure. I'm not finding it, but, okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Well forget, but it, but if it's true, it's just a little interesting. But it, but it's more, it's more significant that, that they're citing as a source.
The person who could have put it in the mishna if he thought that it was worth putting in the mishna and he didn't. So either that means that he didn't necessarily think that. That like that even the compiler of the mishna didn't take the position that the mishna was the, uh, be all and end all of the law code, you know, that, that he also put things in a, in another or didn't put things in the mishna or, uh, it, it, or it's puzzling, you know, and, and thought provoking that he didn't put it in the mishna.
But anyway,
BENAY LAPPE: yeah, it, I think this statement of that if someone contravenes or whatever the word is, someone violates the, this law, this ana of Rabbi Gale, he still, he basically has the ability to do so with impunity, and it feels like it speaks to a certain sense of, of disempowerment or acknowledgement that, you know, we can overturn the, to.
But if, if the Torah really hollers back at us, in other words, someone tries to wave it at us, we're gonna be powerless to speak back to it. There, there's something of that in this statement that if he cancels it in spite of the prohibition of canceling it, it's still canceled. Mm-hmm. It's like, what can we do?
There's, there's something of that in it.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Okay. By the way, while you were talking, I looked it up and I'm, I'm right.
BENAY LAPPE: Uhhuh,
DAN LIBENSON: uh, and, um, and so therefore the next statement. Ben is the next to speak here. That's his, his father. Uh, okay.
BENAY LAPPE: So we have a family feud.
DAN LIBENSON: We have a family feud going on here. Like we, it's all in the family, this thing.
So I, I know that I'm like sort of sandbagging you with that because I was just thought about it as we're going here. So I don't know that I have anything to say here. I don't know that you have anything to say about it, but I do think it's quite interesting that all the characters in this part of the story are.
Are are related, you know, that they're all parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, you know, so, and, and, and I assume Rabbi Shimo al means rabbi. So the, so the, the, so just to be clear, the line of descent here is there's Hillel the Elder, and then his son is named Shimon. His Shiman son is named Gamliel the elder.
I mean, his name was Gamliel, but he ended up being Gamliel the elder.
BENAY LAPPE: We we're gonna name him Gamliel the Elder. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. Well, it's like, it's like, you know, there were these, uh, people who were, uh, early in the founding of, of, you know, Massachusetts Bay Colony and I, the president of Harvard, when it was named Increased Mather and his son was named Cotton Mather.
And Cotton is actually not. Cotton. Like we make our clothes out of it. Cotton is kaan small, so his father was great increase. And his son is Cotton. Decreased, right? Or small. Wow. Junior. That's
BENAY LAPPE: so cool. I never knew that.
DAN LIBENSON: So, so anyway, so there's Hillel, Shiman, Ben Hillel, Goleal the Elder, Shiman, Ben Goleal the first, then Goleal the second.
That's the famous Rabbi Gle that we think of as the, um, uh, head, the Rin of Yavneh. And, and then there's Ashima, Ben, Goleal ii, uh, you know, who's, who's his son. And then there's, uh, Yei. So, so the, um, so, so we're either. I, I think when it just says Shiman Van Gale, I think we're usually talking about the son of Rob Van Gale, the second, but conceivably it could be the son of Rob Lio, the first.
Again, not that it matters necessarily, but it's interesting and I think it's good for people watching this show to sort of know some of this interesting stuff about like, interest the relationships between some of these folks.
BENAY LAPPE: That's really interesting. I, I like the possibility that Robin, Ben Gale, whose voice comes in now, Uhhuh, um, is the son.
Is that a possibility? Yeah. The son of Robbie. That it makes sense. Oh,
DAN LIBENSON: Robbie. No, I don't know. Was his, I, I'm not sure what his name. So Yai ostensibly had a son. What was his No, but his name wouldn't be Shiman. Ben Galio.
BENAY LAPPE: Oh yeah, you're right.
DAN LIBENSON: Name would be.
BENAY LAPPE: So, so this Shiman Ben Galio might've been the father I, I the
DAN LIBENSON: father.
The father or the grandfather of
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, got it.
DAN LIBENSON: No, sorry. The father or the great-grandfather of, of, of you at Ms. C
BENAY LAPPE: Uhhuh.
DAN LIBENSON: Robbie, yeah. You. Ms. C also Na, known as Robbie.
BENAY LAPPE: Uh huh. I was hoping the later guy was gonna be mm-hmm. The more radical one.
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh
BENAY LAPPE: not the case actually, but, okay.
DAN LIBENSON: And then let's see where that takes us, but Okay.
Yeah. Okay. So, so anyway, sorry, we're getting all a little bit confused here, but I, I think like, I, I, I think like, part of why I bring it up is because like, maybe it matters. So let's, let's see. Like, at least let's get it nailed down here so that we can see if it matters. And if I've taken all of you down a completely, you know, a hole, then that goes nowhere, then that's, you know, part of the fun here too.
So, um, okay. So, so anyway, uh, uh, Robbie, uh, so, uh, Robin, uh, uh. Rather Yehuda Nessi, uh, the compiler of the Mishna is saying, yeah, the Mishna says that this, uh, that, that my, you know, my great-grandfather said that this, uh, that we, we've removed this, uh, option and we don't allow divorces to be poof on the way, uh, taken back by a, you know, court that the wife doesn't know about or, or even that she does know about that's far away, uh, or that's not, not right there.
And, um, and, but his, you know, great-grandson comes along and says, yeah, I put that in the mishna that my great-grandfather said that. But, uh, if it happens anyway, it's still valid. And right then his, either his, uh, father or great-grandfather comes along and says, um. Robin Shimo
BENAY LAPPE: basically says WTF.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So Robin Shimo, Ben Gole says he is unable to render it void and he also cannot add on to his condition if the bill of divorce contains some condition.
As if, so if he can render it void. What advantage does the court have if an ordinance of the court of Robin Gale can be ignored? So, okay, so, so basically, Shiman says, says like you say WTF, no way, you cannot,
BENAY LAPPE: right. What you cannot do is you cannot ignore a law that's been put into place to overturn Torah and you, because if you could do that
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: What that would mean is we as human beings would essentially have no power to. Evolve, amend the Torah.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: What, you know, like how here doesn't mean the bein of this chord, it means the rabbis, it means what power would we have?
DAN LIBENSON: I, so I don't think I read this, uh, the right way. So, so what, so let me, 'cause when you, let me just restate this a little bit.
What Shema Lio says that no, he cannot, uh, he cannot even, he cannot convene this court, even though the law says no, he cannot do it. And it's still valid. Because if he could, then that would mean that, what power would a court even have? What power would Robin Goleal the elder even have if he could just say, well, yeah, the Torah's overturned, but if you still do it, the Torah away anyway, it's still valid.
That would, that basically makes it a dead letter that, that, that, you know, and that that doesn't make any sense like that. So, so I just wanted, so just to be clear that Rob Shimo, Ben is saying, and by the way, that that also is kind of nice if it's his, if it's Robin Ben Gli, the elder's son, Shimon, you know, it could be Robin Gli, the elder's son, Shimon Ben.
Or it could be Gli the elder's. Great-grandson, Shimo Benal, they were both named Shimo Benal. Right. But, um, but if, um, but either way you're saying, wait, you know, my father, my great-great-grandfather, like, you know, he was a great man and he wanted to repair the world. And in order to do that, he was willing to go as far as to overturn Torah.
And once we go that far, and we accept it, now, you can't come along later and say, well, but if you wanna still do it the Torah way, it's okay. Like, once we've overturned Torah, it's overturned. And that, that makes me think about the, the story where the voice of God comes and says, no, no, actually, you know, Ravi Zer is right.
And Rabbi Yoshi stands up and says, sorry, not, you know, it's not in your hands anymore. God, you know. Oh,
BENAY LAPPE: that's interesting. I like that. I like that.
DAN LIBENSON: And it's like when we, once we act as human beings to overturn Torah. That's the new law. Like you can't go back to the Torah and say, well, you know, no harm, no foul.
The Torah said it. It's like, no, no, no, that's over.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. I like that. So not only can you not contravene what we've said, contravening what we've said actually prevents us from ever doing anything. We would never have the power to make any improvement in the law if anyone could contravene it and sort of hold the Torah in their hands and say, but, but the Torah used to allow it.
So I'm gonna just stand on that. No,
DAN LIBENSON: and Right, and I wanna clarify that it's a one-way ratchet, meaning that it's not that you can't, it's not that somebody, I mean it doesn't say one way or the other here, but it's conceivable that somebody could go, come along and say, Hey, you know what, Robin Goleal, the elder.
There were some cases that he didn't realize like it actually to, to really repair the world, you have to make a few even more adjustments to this law that is not. Off the table that might be able to be done. What you can't do is try to ratchet it backwards to the original law from the Torah and somehow say, well, because it was in the Torah, it has like a special status.
No, it does not have a special status because it was in the Torah Once. It's overruled, it's overruled. Period. End of story. I love that. That's right. And if it was now in the Torah the way we've done it, right?
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: I think that is an absolutely huge concept to wrap your mind around because it also connects to something that I, I forget if we talked about on this show, but I was thinking about, somebody reported to me that a, a particular rabbi in their sermon was talking about that week's Torah portion and said that something disturbed them.
I don't remember what it was. It might actually even have been the Ben Sore Morere, which we're gonna talk about next week. But I said like. Why did it disturb him? Like the rabbis legislated that out of existence 2000 years ago. Like so, so the fact that it disturbs him, I mean if he's just saying it disturbs me that we ever had such a thing, okay, fine, but it shouldn't disturb you about Judaism today because it's been a dead letter for 2000 years.
So it's not actually part of Judaism today. And that's part of the problem as I saw it, of uh, the weekly Torah reading being part of the Shabbat service where it's like a read a weekly Talmud reading is not because it gives the sense that the Torah is more important to Judaism than it actually is, or that it's still important to Judaism.
But it gives you the feeling like anything you read in the Torah is part of Judaism and that's not the case. So sir, you, you absolutely, if you're not a well educated in Talmud person, you might not even know that this thing that you just read in the Torah actually isn't. Actually isn't an operative part of Judaism and hasn't been for 2000 years.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly, exactly. And the difference between the Torah and Torah is significant here. Uhhuh, it turns Torah into the Torah, uhhuh as in this thing that you can carry and hold and see the beginning and the end of
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh.
BENAY LAPPE: I, I, I don't think the rabbis ever understood Torah to mean that. Mm-hmm. There was never the Torah.
There was Torah, which was an ongoing process of human beings teasing out what we think God wants of us in particular ways. And that was called Torah. It, it wasn't ever that there was the Torah, which could speak back to you and say, oh, but I originally said, and you it, it's never worked that way. There's, I, I think, a misunderstanding into.
Yeah, I, I actually think the Torah service, as much as I love it, I actually love the, the, the songs and the sound of the Torah service, I think as a thing, it makes no sense
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh right
BENAY LAPPE: at all.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. I, I would just say, just like to note, just like, you know, 'cause a lot of times we make sort of comparisons to American law and things like that.
So like, it's as if you were reading the Constitution and you, there's a number of things in the Constitution. First of all, in the, in the text of the Constitution, you could find the three fifth clause, for example, there is terrible clause that counted African Americans as three fifth of a person, uh, for purposes of allocation of, you know, of, of, of, uh, representatives in the state.
But that's a very con anyway, the point is you read that, you say, oh, what a terrible country America is. And, but then, you know, you didn't read the 13th, 14th, 15th Amendment. Where that's not the case anymore. Now America might still be the terrible country. You might still say we, we were very terrible back then.
And that would be true, but you haven't read the whole story if you just didn't read the amendments. And maybe a little bit of a less controversial if you, you know, you're reading down the amendments and you get to the 18th amendment says like alcohol is prohibited. And then you, you kind of say, ah, and you throw the Constitution in the garbage.
'cause you say, what a terrible country where you can't have any alcohol. If you would've read two more amendments, you know, or three more amendments down to the 21st Amendment, you would see that there's a repeal of prohibition. So it's like when you just read the Torah, you know, in the Torah service, it's as if you're only reading half the Constitution and you're having all these opinions about America based on reading half the Constitution.
Now those opinions are, were right as to America up till that point, but they're not true about America now.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, it's, it's just pedagogically. Wrongheaded.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. It and it, the, the idea of reading Torah to the community was what a really good idea when that was the status quo. When, when, when Torah was that.
And it, it feels like we've, you know, we've done the, put the cat out to die mm-hmm. Phenomenon where the students of the, you know, the guru sacrifice a cat because the guru put the cat out and it froze in the cold, and they think that's what you should, and, and we keep reading the Torah as an act instead of reciting out what our current way of understanding God is, which includes a lot of this.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. And I love what you just, I love what you said about Torah versus the Torah. I mean, I think a way to think about this is that. The rabbis are, are defining Torah. You know, what the law is and what's in the book called the Torah is, is part of it, is part, right. It's, it's it. But when they overturn something that's in the Torah, actually, it's not overturning Torah.
It's actually just creating Torah. It's just building up the Torah. And now the, and now Torah is, Torah includes a law that is different from what was in the Torah, but Torah is what we care about. Torah is the important thing. So if so Torah versus the Torah. Torah wins every time. Exactly.
BENAY LAPPE: That's
DAN LIBENSON: right.
Like that's the, that's how we have to look at it. So, um,
BENAY LAPPE: that's right. But I'm really interested in this one way ratchet. Does American law work the same way? You know, I'm thinking of what Alito and was it, who was it Who? Made some ugly comment three weeks or so ago about, um, Obergefell.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm.
BENAY LAPPE: It we know, we know that, we know that Supreme Court decisions are overturned.
We know that, you know, Hardwick, thank goodness was overturned for Lawrence.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: I don't,
DAN LIBENSON: well,
BENAY LAPPE: tell me about the ratchet in American law.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. It's complex. Um, and I wanna be clear that what I'm saying about the one-way ratchet is that it's not that you can't go backwards necessarily. It's not that you can't go backwards in the sense of, um, retro, what's it called?
Retrograde. In other words, you, it's not that you can't have a law that is less, uh, less. Uh, equal, you know, less open, less, less positive towards other people's, whatever it is. It's not that you can't go backwards, but you can't, and here I'm talking about the Talmud, you can't do it because you claim that something was written in the Torah uhhuh, and right.
You can, you, you can, you can write a new law that goes backwards again, but you have to justify it as, you know, something about forward looking. You can't say that because it's in the Torah. It has special status once the Torah has been overturned. I think that that's basically, uh, true in terms of American law because you can't say anything about alcohol based on the 18th amendment that of prohibition.
Now that we have a 21st amendment that repealed prohibition, you can't, you can't, you can't say the 18th amendment now no longer has any force whatsoever. So you can't draw anything from it. You don't look at the original intent of the 18th Amendment. You don't look at the legislative history of the 18th Amendment.
The 18th amendment doesn't matter. That doesn't mean that you can't prohibit alcohol again in the future. You would just have to write a new amendment and you'd have to do it for a new reason. So that's one key piece. And then the question about things like Obergefell and Roe v Wade, that came out in some of the Supreme Court hearings over the last few years, specifically with, uh, I believe it was Gorsuch originally talking about, uh, what he was calling a super precedent.
And then, uh, Amy Coney Barrett talking also somewhat about super precedent. She was much less willing to share her, her views in, in a sense. But, um, the idea there is that. There are certain cases, look, what this really is, is, is the conservatives are trying to figure out how can we play this game where we wanna leave open the possibility that we're gonna repeal Roe v Wade, but we're not going to then be accused of not caring about precedent.
So that then people are gonna say, well why don't you overrule Brown versus Board of Education? You know? 'cause if Roe v Wade is not settled law, then why is Brown versus Board of Education settled law? So they wanna look like they're not racist and they would never overturn Brown versus Board of Education.
But they can still find a way to say that they overturn Roe v. Wade. So the way they've come up with is to have this idea called a super precedent. And what they mean by that is a constitutional decision by the Supreme Court. That is so that that, that what was at some point in time, and I think it's very connected to this, so accepted.
That it became understood as part of the Constitution by everyone, basically
BENAY LAPPE: were Torah, not the Torah,
DAN LIBENSON: right? And that nobody wants to, no, nobody wanted, not nobody. 'cause of course there are always a few racists, but that no major forces in society would have wanted to overturn Brown versus Board of education.
Let's say from the 1960s to the 1990s, let's say. So it became so firm that it became, like you say, Torah now that maybe there's some racists that have come along and then we have a renewal of racist activity or white supremacy or whatever. Now, these people, now there are people in our society who would wanna overturn Brown versus Board of Education.
Well, if they bring a court, a Supreme Court case, Amy Coney Barrett says she's gonna say No. Brown versus Board of Education was a super precedent because it was accepted by everybody for a long period of time. And now that a new group of people has come along and wishes it was overturned, no, you can only do that through a constitutional amendment or you know.
Yeah, a constitutional amendment basically. So, so, so the fact that the, that the Constitution originally said three-fifths and all kinds of racist things doesn't matter anymore because the super precedent firmed up. How, and that's like Robin Gole the elder, saying that we have erased this, uh, idea that you can take back a divorce in midair from the Torah.
You, you could argue that Shiman Ben Gale, let's say that this is his great grandson, not his, not his son would say that was a hundred years that this has been true. Or you know, I dunno if it's exactly a hundred years, but it's been true for so long that that has become so firm that no, you can't even take that back.
Even if my great-grandfather was, was wrong. It's just become part of Torah. You wanna legislate a new law to that. You can do that, but you can't say that it, because it was in the Torah. It's, it's has some special status. Amy Coney Barrett's trying to say about Roe versus Wade. That, uh, it was never fully accepted, you know, like from the day that Roe versus Wade was decided there was a strong anti Roe cons contingency, which is true, you know, that, that, um, and, and so it never kind of got that firmed up status that Brown versus Board of Education did, uh, because it always was opposed.
And it was always seen as wrongly decided by a substantial number of people. And in that case, she's arguing we can go back to our reading of the original Constitution and say that Roe versus Wade was wrongly decided. And so we can essentially erase ROE as opposed to erasing the Constitution in the case of Brown versus like Brown versus Board of Education essentially erases the constitution.
That conflicts with it. Mm-hmm. Whereas Amy Coney Barrett is claiming that the right thing without Roe would be that we can erase Roe and then what's left if once we erase Roe, the old constitution is left so it can come back. And then we can sort of read the, and she would, for whatever set of reasons, read the Constitution to, to ban abortion.
That's basically
BENAY LAPPE: fascinating. And this seems to correspond, and I know we've talked about this before, the idea of a goof Torah. The goof means body. It's like the essence of Torah, which is a, a term that's trotted out to label something that you want to claim cannot be changed because it is so fundamental to Torah.
Famously trotted out, uh, by Joel Roth to defend what he felt was Leviticus prohibition of homosexuality. That's how we understood it, and he called that a goof Torah. And in spite of the fact that he was, uh, a staunch advocate of women's ordination and all sorts of other, granted different kinds of legal innovations, this one he said couldn't be changed because the prohibition of homosexuality, quote unquote, was a goof Torah
DAN LIBENSON: uhhuh.
BENAY LAPPE: Um,
DAN LIBENSON: well, and, and just to make that connection to, to Obergefell and Windsor and the various same sex, uh, rights and marriage cases in, in the us Right. I think that the, uh. You know, Amy Coney Barrett, I guess, and, and people that are, are trying, like what they're sort of thinking in this whole super precedent idea is like, if we can get that overturned quickly, then you know, then we can still do it.
Right? In other words, like one of the reasons why Obergefell is not a super precedent is 'cause it hasn't been around long enough. Mm-hmm. So if we can get, if we can overturn that quickly, then it will never have had a chance to kind of like settle. It's like thinking about concrete drying, you know, if it's been around for a long time, then it's firmed up and hard and you can't, right.
And, and, and so one way is like, how long has it been around? And another question is, how much has it been accepted by society? What's interesting about the, the same sex marriage cases, or not the same sex marriage, but the same sex rights cases and the trans Right. You know, it, it almost seems like miraculously right in this interesting way.
I mean, if you think about how it was 15 years ago. It is being, they are being accepted very, very widely by society. More, much more so I, I think, than Roe versus Wade ever was. And so really the concrete
BENAY LAPPE: has dried a lot faster.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, the concrete is Yeah, the concrete, right. Maybe that, maybe that the concrete is drying faster, but, so Yeah.
So it's all the more, so it's all the more like alarming to them. It's like, well, we've really gotta get rid of, rid of this quickly if we can, because otherwise it's gonna, it, it seems like it's a quick drying cement. Yeah. Maybe that's the way to talk that. Yeah. Yeah. Um,
BENAY LAPPE: I, I just wanna add that. Joel Roth himself, which Ma says in his book about how Halakha works, that actually it's within the power of the rabbis, meaning the authorities in any generation to overturn absolutely anything in the Torah.
This is where and when. He's not talking about homosexuality, when he's not talking about gay issues. And I, my read of the Talmud is precisely that, that the rabbis, they even say so explicitly that it's better to overturn the entire Torah and it's possible to do so for the benefit of achieving the ultimate goals of the system.
It's okay. In other words, everything is theoretically up for grabs.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm. But, but he says not in terms of the homosexuality. 'cause that's a particular category of goof Torah that if, that, that can't be overturned. Is that the idea
BENAY LAPPE: that, that that is what he said. I believe if I'm not misunderstanding.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah,
BENAY LAPPE: yeah, yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: We don't have to do it now. I Okay. That's for another time, because like, I'm fascinated by that because Okay. Anyway, then I'd like to find out like how you, I guess it get comes to that question of like, how do you know it's suppressant or super precedent? You know, like how do you, how do you know if something is goofed Torah or not?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, yeah. I, I'm, I'm sort of dubious about this designation of anything as goof Torah.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: I think it's, but we'll, we'll, we'll dig into that another time. We'll put a
DAN LIBENSON: together. Okay. Let's keep, let's keep it because we initially, we were wondering if we, uh, would take us the whole hour and now I'm worried that we're not gonna make it.
Okay. So, uh, so Robin Gomel says, you know what, what would be the whole point of the whole system if you could do that? You know, if you could, if you could overturn Torah and then say, but if you still do it the Torah way, it's fine. What would be the point of the whole thing? You know, the, what would be, what would be the point of, of having, uh, rabbinic power to overturn Torah.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. There would be no rabbinic power.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: And our hands really would be tied and we'd be stuck with, um, a Torah that we recognize is inadequate and creates situations in the world that need fixing. We would never be able to fix the harm that we acknowledge is being caused by this always inadequate system because people in the world develop.
Okay, fine.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so then the Gamara asks, um, and is there anything that by Torah law renders a bill of divorce void and the wife remains married and due to the reasoning of what advantage does the court have, meaning like, if, if that was, if that was true, then what would be the whole point of the whole thing?
Right? Like meaning like this is a kind of a, a logical, you know, like it's, it's a kind of a logical, um, what do you call that? Like a, a, you know, pro hoc proctor hub, you know, like, it's like a logical re it's like a, a tool of logical reasoning, right? It's basically saying like, if we allowed what. Uh, Ravi Azi is saying there, then the, there, there would be no real power to, uh, rabbinic law.
So therefore it cannot, we cannot allow the thing that Ravi Azi is saying. That's kind of a logical, uh, a logical reasoning, you know, set of steps and, and the, the Gamara is saying, and just because of a logical, you know, just because of you're saying those logical reasoning set of steps, you're, you're going to cause a situation where you permit a married woman to marry another person.
You know? Right. In other words, like you're, you're, you know, you're willing to, you're willing to, to cause a situation that's, that's effectively adultery. Just because you're claiming that if we didn't do that, there would be no point to the rabbinic system. Is that, is that the way to
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I think, I think that's right.
My, my translation, this is now a trope. What, what the editor puts in right here is a trope that we saw over in Kitbot in our last text. Um, where the editor comes in with the same trope and says, wait a minute, PS if you missed what was going on before, let me make sure you really see it. Do you mean to tell me that because you're concerned about, and then fill in the blank, this trope has fill in the blank spots.
Do you mean to tell me that Just because you're concerned about fill in the blank. Mm-hmm. And in this case, it's our ability to mess with the Torah.
DAN LIBENSON: And, and last time it was because you were concerned about the, the, uh, promis, what was it called? The promiscuous women and the, and the, um, and the agu note.
The right. Basically
BENAY LAPPE: women. Basically women. Because you're concerned about what women.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. True. Do you mean, tell me that because you're concerned about women, we can overturn the Torah and here, do you mean to tell me that because you're concerned about rabbinic power? You can, you can overturn the Torah, and by the way, I mean, I would say parentheses here, it's rabbinic power in order to tik la in order to make, make, you know, make the world's repaired.
So that's not just rabbinic tower, but
BENAY LAPPE: that's right. It's the ability of, uh, sage in any generation, to overturn Torah, to, to, to solve the harm mm-hmm. That the Torah we now recognize is causing and we now see as unconscionable. Mm-hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: Which by the way, in this particular case is also women. In other words, like they're both, a little bit means to tell me that you're gonna overturn the Torah for women.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: And the, and
BENAY LAPPE: the answer to this trope is always
DAN LIBENSON: the answer to this trope is yes.
BENAY LAPPE: Yes indeed.
DAN LIBENSON: Yes indeed. In, in Aramaic. So, right, right here. Yes. And, and again, we, if you look at the text, the way that, uh, Steinfeld, uh, translates and lays it out, there's a comma after that. Yes. In the actual text of the Tama.
There's no punctuation. You and I both agree and believe that that's where the original text ends with a period and that it's really just saying. Yep.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. And we know from the Rochelle, me
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Which is an earlier canonization of a different but similar parallel set of. Tdic conversations that the text not only ends there without qualification, it has a postscript, which is yes, the rabbis have the, the ability to overturn Torah, period.
The, the, the, the issue, which is a kind of question throughout history, can we really overturn tar, which it should be a non-question. And not only explicitly, they, themselves explicitly say, yes we can, and yes you can, but the entire corpus of the Talmud is a collection of examples of where they do it,
DAN LIBENSON: right.
BENAY LAPPE: Basically saying, I think here's where we did it. You do it where you need to do it.
DAN LIBENSON: I think it's a little more subtle than what you're saying, but I think you agree. No, no.
BENAY LAPPE: Probably
DAN LIBENSON: subtle. Not
BENAY LAPPE: my,
DAN LIBENSON: I think, but I think it's, it's in a way that, that you agree with and that it actually strengthens your point, which is that.
It's ultimately not trying to say that the rabbis ha or whoever might succeed the rabbis, it's not meaning to say that they have this unbridled power to overturn the Torah. They might have that power as a matter of, you know, as a matter of, of a fact. Meaning like they have the power to overturn the Torah, but should they, you know, and when it just says in Yep.
Yes, indeed. I think they're saying like, yeah, they have the power and we approve. And that is like I, I think about impeachment, right? The power of impeachment. Now, Congress has the power to impeach the president. It says in the, in the Constitution for high crimes and misdemeanors, but nobody knows what that means.
And so functionally, Congress can impeach the President for whatever reason they want, and the Senate can convict the president, right? If the Senate votes two thirds to convict. The president is removed from office. Now, somebody could come along and say they didn't convict him for the right reasons or whatever, but he's removed.
They have the power. But when law professors talk about impeachment and is some, is is something impeachable? It doesn't mean it's something as impeachable. If Congress impeaches, it's impeachable. But when we have that conversation, what we mean is, yeah, they have the power to do it. But will history approve that?
Will we, do we have a sense that it's the right thing, that it's actually constructive of the system and not destructive of the system to impeach in this case? And that's where we say, well, let's actually look at what they meant by a high crime and a high misdemeanor, and let's try to make sure that we're only impeaching for, for really legitimate reasons and not just because we have the power.
And here when I look at this, it's these cases that we're looking at. It's not that the rabbis wanted to overturn Torah because they wanted to make money. It's so, they wanted to overturn Torah because they saw that a person was being harmed. And at least in these two cases of women, they saw that functionally the most vulnerable people in our society, among the categories of the most functional, of the most vulnerable people in our society were being harmed.
And that was when they overturned Torah. And in those cases, when somebody comes along and says, do you mean to tell me that you're gonna overturn Torah just to protect these women? Then the answer is yes indeed. You know? Then the answer is, you know, yeah, that's exactly, because that is the Torah, you know, that is, that is what this system is here for.
It's not just an exercise of, of power. And, and, and I just say all that because if we wanna learn from this and take from this, the notion that we have power to overturn. What we now know as the Torah, which includes the Talmud, in order to build up Torah, right? The next version of Judaism that's going to do what we need it to do in the world, then we shouldn't just willy nilly be overturning stuff.
We should be doing it based on principles that might include protecting the most vulnerable in our society, but there might also be other principles that we're gonna introduce, like protecting the earth, right? That we might feel rise to the level where we do have that power and we should exercise that power.
BENAY LAPPE: Yes, absolutely. And let's stop having the conversation of, can we, can't we?
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Can we, yeah. In mm-hmm. The answer is in. Mm-hmm. It's always in.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: The right question is, should we.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: And that's a question I am willing to have with anyone on any given issue. Let's just start with the understanding that of course we can.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: You tell me why you think we shouldn't. You tell me while this why the suffering that we probably both agree is happening doesn't rise to the level of being ameliorated you. You tell me why. Mm-hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: And
BENAY LAPPE: I'll tell you why I think it does.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: That's, that's the right conversation to be having.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then it's like, I really stru, so, so I would love to, you know, that would be an interesting conversation to have with Joel Roth. You know, about homosexuality, for example, because I, how do you defend it, right? How do you say that? That there's a reason why we should not use the power that we have to alleviate suffering.
Of this particular category of people. And I suppose that the, that the claim must be some that, or even the version of that goof Torah idea, that that idea that like, somehow God or somewhere in an ancient past, because we see the suffering. I, I think he sees the suffering. I don't, I don't mean to, you know, pick on him 'cause I don't really know, you know?
So I just, but I mean, like, you know, the suffering in our time is, is is clearly visible and I think it's hard to deny. So then the question is like, well what, what do you really believe about the past, about the will of God or about some other will of the past? If you don't believe in God as a, like, personal God that has a, a dis distinct will, which I think a lot of believers today don't actually believe that.
So they're, they're believing in God is something much more abstract than that. Explain to me why that abstract notion that I can actually get behind, like I'm into that kind of a God, but why does that God want people to be suffering? Like I don't, you know, I, I, I find it really hard to, but I would like to have that conversation once we agreed to have it on those premises that we actually do have the power to change this law.
And it's not just a question of do we think it would be good to change this law? Because let's accept for the purposes of the conversation that we both agree that it would be good to change the, change the law. 'cause it would alleviate suffering. But what you are saying, you know, other person is you think that we shouldn't because of some other calculation.
And that's an interesting conversation. Like, explain to me what that other calculation is.
BENAY LAPPE: Yep. I, I, I think it's the answer not to. Sort of preempt the actual conversation. I think typically the answer is
we actually no longer have the power they did. I'll agree with you that they could change our, but we can't.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: That's one answer. That's the you, that's how the road, okay. Yeah. They, they could, we can't, and we're now just stuck with a frozen static Torah, no matter how much suffering it causes.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: That's one answer.
DAN LIBENSON: That's one. That's one. Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Stupid answer, but Okay. That's one answer. Another answer is
if we overturn Torah, even to alleviate the suffering, which I recognize is so horrible, people will lose trust in Torah.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And. None of whatever benefit our entire enterprise is able to do, w will be able to happen. 'cause the whole thing will collapse. You know, PE people will see the levers behind it mm-hmm.
Behind and then there will be no Torah. Mm-hmm. Everyone will go, oh, this whole thing is a crock.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: If we mess with it at all. And therefore better to keep people doing, the few people who are willing. I, I think that's one of the answers. I don't know.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: I dunno.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, yeah. And, and what's interesting about that, and, and maybe like, you know, I'm not necessarily like pushing schisms, but what's interesting is that there may be one group of people who would see that as a.
Losing trust in Torah because of that. And there's another group of people who would say, that's the only thing that would give me any trust in Torah. That's right. Any positive feeling about this? And, and, and at that point, do you have a schism or is there a way to keep those two groups connected in a meaningful way?
And do you want to, but
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And I think the answer to that question is the madic technique. That's what the Talmud is trying to teach you how to do. It's trying to teach you how to take both of those groups of people with you when you make radical change, you know, to the one group, to the people who are gonna go, now I really trust the tradition mm-hmm.
To the ones who can tolerate the radical change, even while seeing that you've done it. You've got them, the others, you've gotta make some case that the Torah always meant to mean this. It always said this, this is what it always had in mind. Wink, wink, wink. Because of the vve over here and the vve over here.
Uhhuh. And, and I think that's what is going on when the, when the Talmud is using very force proofs as a student of David Kramer, I think that's what's going on. It's, it's teaching you, you know, what he's saying is it that demonstrates the degree to which we don't need to tie law to Torah. But I think I maybe differ from him a little bit in saying it's a way to carry with you the portion of the community that really need, that cannot tolerate to changes.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So to them, you have to sell the idea that it's always been this way and there are ways to do it. It's not true, but you know, there's a you, there's a way to wink and they're gonna believe the wink uhhuh.
DAN LIBENSON: So then maybe we should conclude with two pieces. One is just to, just to note and to share.
'cause we talked about this, uh, two weeks ago. It's the same basically that this text ends with that same after, just yes or yes indeed. It then has that same explanation, which probably is added later by a later author who's a little bit afraid of this power and wants to moderate it or maybe wants to.
Not moderate it, but wants to give you the thing that you can say to that other group that's, that isn't afraid and to say, oh, well the reason is that anybody who betrays a woman today, anybody who gets married today is doing so under the law of the rabbis and not under the law of the Torah. And so in that case, we can change the rules of the Torah because it's not the Torah, it's not, it's a completely different thing.
The marriage and the Torah is a different thing for a marriage that we're talking about here, which is marriage of, of the rabbis. And so don't worry about it. Nothing to see here. Move, move along.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. We're we're, we're go. We're going to, yeah. Let me see if I could talk it out. Lemme see if I can talk it out that, okay.
Okay. For those of you who can't tolerate what we're really doing, we're not really doing that. Namely overturning to what we're doing is, let's see, to the marriage of the guy. Who says, I sent my wife a get. I tried. I wanted to divorce her. I changed my mind. I rescinded that divorce even after Robin Ga said I couldn't to that guy.
We're gonna say
if we had known when we married you that you were gonna be such a son of a gun as to do that, we wouldn't have married you in the first place you were married. On our. You know, approval. Mm. We now rescind that approval retroactively. You were never married to her. Mm. So all the shenanigans of divorcing her and I'm divorcing her, is moot because you were never married to her in the first place.
She's now a single woman and our ability to marry her is totally clean because no one could argue with your marriage now being rescinded retroactively that she is an eligible woman to be married again. Hmm. I think that's how it
DAN LIBENSON: works. That sounds right.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: And, and, and the second thing is just to note in this conversation that like the Talmud, when it was written was not meant for the masses.
And so all of this stuff that we're seeing here. Your average Jew would not know any of this, any of this kind of stuff. They would only know what the law is sometimes. I mean, they might know what the law is, and they would know what explanation their local rabbi gave to them. So if they said, Hey, rabbi, can I convene a court of three people and, you know, take back this divorce, the rabbi would say, no.
And, uh, why? Well, you, you know, it's just, it's not allowed. Robin Goleal, the elder said so, or whatever it would be. Right. And the fact, so, so there's, there's two points I have there. Like one is like, it's, it's in to now the fact that this is accessible to everybody. You know, even just thinking about Steinfels, the translator himself that, uh, that Right.
Whatever his personal religious views were, he was a habad Hasid and everything he. Gave us the ability to, or you know, most of, to, to read this in with some degree of clarity in our language. And so, so for the first time in history, really in the last few decades, the vast majority of Jews have the capacity to find out what was in the Talmud.
And that is both something that is empowering, it's gonna be something scary to many. And it raises this interesting question of like, well now can we still, do we, do we still have that ability to avoid the schism by telling the people who are the more hold onto tradition people, some slightly false story about two vs.
And whatever, because they can read this too. And it just raises a complexity of like, how, how does, how do we stay together or, or if we should, but you know, it's, it's a new world where everybody can read the Talmud.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. That's so interesting on so many levels, and I know we're over, but number one, because the Talmud never explicitly explicit, said what it was doing, people can still read it either in translation or not and not see the wink Uhhuh.
And most people who learn Talmud in the world don't see the wink. Mm-hmm. And don't, there's a wink there. Mm-hmm. Think there's a kind of pie relationship with her. Oh yeah. Since, you know,
DAN LIBENSON: so it's really our show. That's the problem.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Um, and you reminding me, I remember when I was in rabbinical school, so this is, I dunno, 25 or so years ago when the first translations in English were really coming out, even though the Cindo translation had existed for a hundred years.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm.
BENAY LAPPE: At that point. The English in Sino is so obscure that no one could understand it anyway, so nobody was really bothered by it. But once you had an intelligible translation, which really has only been out for about 25, 30 years
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: I remember the articles and the debates and the, you know, pearl wrench.
It was, it was really disturbing to people that, oh my God, what's gonna happen now that people can really understand what the one pers only the 1% understood. Um, and probably should put a stick.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. So to, to be continued on that. Okay. So next week we, so we did it, we finished this episode, this subject, today and next week we're gonna move on to another fascinating example of a Torah law, a Torah.
Category, actually something that has the death penalty attached to it, that the rabbis, uh, sort of legislate out of existence. And uh, it's gonna be a good one. So we'll look forward to seeing you then.
BENAY LAPPE: Thanks, Dan.
DAN LIBENSON: Thanks Bennet. Bye.
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