The Oral Talmud: Episode 37 - Wayward Sons of a Certain Age (Sanhedrin 68b)
SHOW NOTES
“The Talmud is giving you a toolbox of methodologies and mechanisms to use to write repugnant understandings of God’s will out of existence.” - Benay Lappe
Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.
What do you do with a sacred text that tells you to stone your own child? In this episode, Dan & Benay confront one of the Torah’s most disturbing passages: the law of the “wayward and rebellious son.” The Talmudic text we discuss - Sanhedrin 68b - is a masterclass in moral engineering, as the rabbis methodically dismantle a death sentence, while hiding what they are doing in plain sight.
This episode dives deep into predictive justice, rabbinic power, and the spiritual technology of narrowing bad laws out of existence. It’s not just interpretation, it’s transformation. And it asks a question that still burns today: when adherence to tradition becomes dangerous, do we have the courage to rewrite the tradition?
This week’s text: Sanhedrin 68b
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 37: “Wayward Sons of a Certain Age.”
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.
What do you do with a sacred text that tells you to stone your own child? In this episode, we confront one of the Torah’s most disturbing passages: the law of the “wayward and rebellious son.” The Talmudic text we discuss - Sanhedrin 68b - is a masterclass in moral engineering, as the rabbis methodically dismantle a death sentence, while hiding what they are doing in plain sight.
In this episode, we dive deep into predictive justice, rabbinic power, and the spiritual technology of narrowing bad laws out of existence. It’s not just interpretation — it’s transformation. And it asks a question that still burns today: when adherence to tradition becomes dangerous, do we have the courage to rewrite the tradition?
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. I'm Dan Levison and I'm here with Bene Lape for this week's episode of the Oral Talmud. Hey Bene.
BENAY LAPPE: Hey Dan. How are you?
DAN LIBENSON: I'm good. Have I said this before? Like I have this like, recurring nightmare now when we start a show that I'm gonna forget what show I'm on or I'm going, you know, something like that.
Uh, so I'm always relieved when I, when I say the right thing, uh, but, um,
BENAY LAPPE: remind you if,
DAN LIBENSON: yeah,
BENAY LAPPE: when I, when I was a kid, my parents used to listen to an album called If, if it's Tuesday, this must be. Belgium, is that how it, do you remember that?
DAN LIBENSON: No, I don't think I know that one.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. So if it's, if it's 11:00 AM on Thursday, this must be oral Talmud.
You
DAN LIBENSON: okay if I said you? I know it's, you know, probably something to do with Talmud at least. And that'll jog my memory.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: By the way,
BENAY LAPPE: I think that was a movie, whatever. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Anyway, how's your Hanukkah going?
BENAY LAPPE: Good. It's fun. Um, I'm so into the lights.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm. Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: You know, the display. So I'm very excited about my outdoor display and, and yesterday my daughter and I had the most fun experience.
We noticed that a squirrel had chewed through the wire between the bush lights and the plug. Huh. And we figured out how to reconnect the wires.
DAN LIBENSON: Wow.
BENAY LAPPE: There are two rows. One has white dots on the rubber and the other doesn't. And apparently they need to get connected to each other, not just generally. Uh huh So discovering that was a lot of fun.
And then they went on. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: And now the squirrel's gonna be electrocuted if it goes to that part of the wire. That's it. Well, first of all, send me a picture of that, uh, display. So I've, I've actually had a little bit like the opposite experience. 'cause I've been very focused on the idea that in from the Talmud, that this is all that's required.
A oil lamp.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: And, uh, I got this, I was in Greece last year and I just was looking for like, the simplest oil lamp. 'cause I kind of wanted to make the point that it's not, it's, it's actually a functional object. It's not a menorah that's been designed. This was really the tradition. I don't know what the, what the.
So takeaway is necessarily of that. Um, but somehow it's been significant for me. So I've been having fun lighting an oil lamp this year.
BENAY LAPPE: I love that. And one of the things I love about that passage in the Talmud where it tells how to light is I, it seems kind of rare. That is an example where they say, well, you could do it this way if you don't wanna do it that way, you could do it this way.
Mm-hmm. Some people do it this way. I don't know. A lot of examples where we're given a variety of ways to do something right off the bat. And, and that's explicit in the tradition. Mm-hmm. There are, you know, we know of other practices that evolve. Oh, I, I wait six hours between meat and milk. They wait three.
But, but where the tradition itself says, you could do it this way, you could do it that way. Some people, I think that's interesting. Mm-hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: I also,
DAN LIBENSON: and I wonder if it's because they, they think it's like low stakes. Like they, the rabbis in the Talmud weren't such big fans of Lanica or of the Maccabees.
Maybe they think, eh, well it doesn't really matter, you know, but, um, yeah, maybe, but I, I still like, I still like that idea, you know? I, I think maybe we can, maybe we could take it further. Yeah. Well, so let's, uh, let's hop into today's subject. We, we've kind of, uh, completed a, a, a. Topic, or not exactly a topic, but a particular area.
'cause we spent, we did two different texts about this question about a divorce that's, that's, that's kind of getting modified and what happens. And all of the takeaway from that, for us, a lot of it was that the, it's, it's a, it's a case connected to those previous cases that we were looking at about saving a life.
That fundamentally what's going on here is that the rabbis are introducing a deep set of values that have to do with preserving life, preserving mental health, reducing suffering, and they are allowing those values to trump Torah laws when they feel it's necessary. And in those ca, in in those mo more recent cases, when the Talmud has that line, you know, do you mean to tell me that you're gonna trump the Torah because there's some women suffering?
The answer is, yep. So and so they're actually pretty upfront about it. And, and I think in today's text we're, we're also gonna see. Uh, uh, in certain cases a wink, but not so much winking. It's actually pretty upfront. And, uh, and, and again, like, and, and another case, a very different case, but one in which ultimately the rabbis are, again, finding a way to look at the Torah and say, yeah, there's something kind of terrible and horrifying here, and very problematic.
And, and we don't do that anymore and don't worry about it.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. And, and one of the things I love about the text we're about to go into is that it feels to me that it's not just one more example, yet another example of the rabbis over journeying tower. It feels to me like it's a, a super example. Mm-hmm.
You know, the way we were talking about super precedent, somehow this is meta on top of the meta. Every, every passage in Talmud is meta in that it's never really about what it's about. It's never really about the content of the case at hand, just like any. Case in a torts class in law school is really not about locomotive law or tugboat law, right?
It's about the deeper principles that come out in that case, this is one of those that's not only about the principles, there's a meta principle. I don't wanna give too much away. That is gonna come at the end in completely reorient, um, our relation to Torah. So I think this is not just one more case, it's a monumental, um, relationship shifting case.
Again, relationship between us and God or US and Torah.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So let's introduce the, again, the, the, the topic, the the case, which, like you say, isn't necessarily the most important case. It's just that it's the case that they're using to establish this principle. And it's the case of the, in Hebrew, the Ben sore Morre, the.
Often translated as the stubborn and rebellious sun. I dunno if you have a better translation.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I, I think I like wayward
DAN LIBENSON: uhhuh
BENAY LAPPE: and rebellious. So rare is more like going off the path. He's off the de off the path. So way wayward. I kind of like wayward, but
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Same wayward and rebellious. Mm-hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: So, so how do you wanna start, do you wanna read the passage in the, in from the Torah, from the book of Deuteronomy or do you wanna introduce it a little bit before we get there?
BENAY LAPPE: No, I think that's a great way to start.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: Feel you can feel free to take diverse.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So let's look at, we have it in our, uh, safari source sheet that we have this running source sheet. So from Deuteronomy 21, there are, starting at verse 18, the, the verse says, if a man has a wayward and defiant son.
Who does not.
BENAY LAPPE: I see. I, I see. They like my translation as
DAN LIBENSON: well. Yeah. They like wayward, they got defiant rather than rebellious. But a man has a wayward and defiant son who does not heed his father or mother. Interesting. That it says if a man has a wayward son who does not heed his father or mother. So that's, that's kind of interesting way to phrase the sentence.
And
BENAY LAPPE: it's, and it's notable that the mother is, even, the mother even appears at all.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. No, that's what I'm saying. Like, if it's, and why not say if, if a man and or and a woman have a wayward or if a man has a wayward, so it's not obey him. But anyway,
BENAY LAPPE: uh, and as we're gonna see, the rabbis are gonna make a lot of that piece of the verse that says if a man has
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So it, it's, it's completely unanticipated what they're gonna do with it. But they're gonna do a lot with it. Not what we might think in relationship to the mother part, but, okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. If Aman is a wayward and defiant son who does not heed his father or mother, and does not obey them, even after they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town, at the public place of his community, they shall say to the elders of his town, this son of ours is disloyal and defiant.
He does not heed us. He is a glutton and a drunkard, thereon. The men of his talent shall stone him to death. Thus, you'll sweep out evil from your midst, all Israel will hear and be afraid. It's pretty dark.
BENAY LAPPE: It is. And so I, it, it should jump out at all of us with a little bit of shock and horror, like really.
Um, but, but one thing I think it's important to remember is. The Torah was not kind of our or master story. You know, referring back to the crash theory, the Torah itself was a retelling wasn't option three on a prior master story that crashed. So you, I think it's important to see that what's in the Torah was an upgrade on the prior ex extent law in the ancient Near East, which was in the case of wayward and defiant sons.
If you have a son like that, what do you do? You can kill him.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm?
BENAY LAPPE: You yourself, you as a parent, right? This is Patria protest us the power of the child to. The parent power of the parent to kill the child, right? I brought you into this world. I could take you out. And this is an upgrade on that. This is saying, no, no, no, you can no longer do that.
Parent. I know you wanna kill your kid. You used to be able to do that. We're gonna take that power away from you. Now you've gotta bring that child to the elders of the town. So there's the upgrade there that makes this less horrific than what preceded it. Barna, back in the day, that isn't obvious here.
You're not seeing that level of, um, judicial or legislative transparency. You don't see that in the Torah, but, but it was there. So I just wanna note that
DAN LIBENSON: that's, that's helpful and interesting because, you know, my initial reaction, sort of not thinking about it that way was like, oh wow, this, this feels almost like a child sacrifice.
Type of thing. And one of the things that I learned, we don't have to get into this 'cause it's kind of a minutiae and not really connected to this, I don't think, but one of the things that I learned from Richard Elliot Friedman on his show on Jewish Life is that even though the Torah is always talking about the other nations and there's sacrificing sacrificing of children to mole and all that kind of terrible stuff, and we shouldn't do that, all the evidence suggests that actually the people around the Israelites did not sacrifice their children.
That it was actually the Israelites who sacrificed their children, the early proto Israelites that sacrificed their children. And they were the only ones, meaning it was this horrific practice that only we engaged in, or primarily we engaged in. And late prophets came along and said, you have to stop that.
That's terrible. And eventually they did, you know, but, but it almost felt to me like, gee, what a horrible thing. This is another case where parents are killing children. You're right. It's in the, in the, in the text of Deuteronomy. It's not actually parents, it's the parents bringing the child to the elders of the town in some kind of pseudo court case going on here.
But it still seems like another one of these like horrifying moments.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And, and I think by the time we get to the rabbis, they react to Deuteronomy the same way we do. Like, that's horrible.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: That this is horrible. Even to have the elders stone your kid, not you, yourself. That's horrible. That's unconscionable.
We, we can't imagine that's what God really wants. Mm-hmm. And I think they're a little embarrassed and ashamed of God. Mm-hmm. And I think they wanna. Their, their treatment of this verse, which we're about to see and we will be playing with over the next several weeks, at the end of the day, might just be an attempt to restore their trust in God or the trust of other people in a God who seemingly wants you to do this.
Mm-hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: And by the way, I know we're gonna get to this eventually, in some number of weeks, uh, that there's, or months, I dunno, when, when our plan is to, to cover this text. Uh, but there's the eye for an eye text, which is similar in that it seems horrifying to us today that you should poke out somebody's eye because they poke out your eye or even accidentally.
And, uh, but if the alternative was that it was you poke out somebody's eye, we kill you, then actually an eye for an eye is a more, uh, a more, uh, limited punishment. You don't necessarily from a modern perspective, know, know that unless you know what, like you said, Barna, what, what happened before.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
That's, that's an equally parallel example and we should go there next,
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh. Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: And you're right. That's, that's another great example of the, the horrific law of the Torah being actually an upgrade on a prior, more horrific
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh
BENAY LAPPE: law.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, right. Um, and maybe as I'm thinking about it, maybe, maybe we'll come back around to that.
'cause I, that, that makes me think about like, I, I mean, I'll say it now, just to put a, a sticky on it or a, uh, whatever, you know, like a, a kind of a, a chip on it. Just that, that in the same way that you say that a lot of the cases aren't really about the case. It's about a methodology. I think that there's an element that says, like you think that the, that the law here is that we are easing back on this particular case, but actually what this case is about is the.
Is the, is the trend that's always to, to make it a little more just, and a little more just, and, and that maybe we can't always just completely overturn it in one swoop because the society won't accept that. So just keep chipping away at it. That's what we're telling you here. Keep chipping away at this until eventually it's gone.
And with the Torah and, and that, that idea of seeing the Barna or like what it was before the Torah, it's like even the Torah was chipping away at it. They, they didn't go as far as, now we can go farther because more time has passed, so we're gonna take another hack at this. And that, that's actually what we're seeing here.
Especially if we see that it's also happened in the Mishna and in the Torah, right. That this just keeps, keeps getting hacked away.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. And you know, sometimes I have students who say, how can you learn that this is so, like even where the rabbis in the Talmud have left something. Is still so distasteful.
How do you deal with that? You know, they still e even though they said an onus spa, we're not going right. And they, but, but they left the woman in a position of not being able to initiate her own divorce.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: You know, my students say, some students say to me, but how do you live with what they, what they did?
And I say, that's your job now. It's your turn. You have to notice where it's still broken and it still needs to be upgraded. And that's for you to do.
DAN LIBENSON: And they, and they wanted you to, you know, they didn't know. That's right. They didn't know specifically about you and about when it was gonna be, but they, they wanted you to take the next step as they had in their time.
BENAY LAPPE: I believe that with all my heart.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Okay. So we got this situation of this, this wayward and rebellious or defiant son who ends up getting taken by his, uh, father or his parents too. The elders and the elders. The men of the town are the ones who end up stoning him.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. And by the way, I've never been completely sure how exactly this is an upgrade.
I mean, is the implication that the elders might not stone all the kids whom the parent would have? It's on. It's under clear, but it's different. We know for sure it's different. And I have to believe bringing the child to the elders is an upgrade in that it's probably less likely that that child is gonna end up being stoned.
At least you've, you've gone beyond that period of, uh, passionate reactivity. Right. Isn't there a thing in secular law, you know, when people act out of, you know, the classical case of the husband who comes home and in a heteronormative. He finds his wife in bed with a man and kills this guy Uhhuh, there's yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: A crime of passion.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? Right. So we've taken the son out of the realm of the passionate moment of
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm
BENAY LAPPE: You're driving me crazy, I'm gonna kill you. Right? Mm-hmm. By the time they get to the elders, there's probably been a cooling off. Maybe that's what is going on. I dunno.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. I mean, there, there are two other piece things that I would just note here.
I'm not entirely sure that they connect to what the Talmud is about to do, but one is just to notice that there are actually three players here. 'cause there's the elders who I guess pass judgment. And then there's the men of the town who do the stoning. So that's interesting. And
BENAY LAPPE: there's, and there's the A mother
DAN LIBENSON: and the mother and the person.
The the son.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Right.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Um. The other thing that just feels a little bit like, uh, you know, Jeff, session Z at the end here, all Israel will hear and be afraid, right? I mean, like, we're putting kids in cages in as a deterrent. So here we're gonna execute a sun. I mean, yes. That's how we'll sweep evil out of your midst maybe.
Uh, it's not unclear if those two parts are, are connected. They, they are in the, in the translation here, there's a colon, but there's no punctuation in the Torah. But the, um, but the idea is that, you know, maybe we're sweeping out the evil by killing this evil son. It's not clear how evil he really is, but this idea of all Israel will hear and be afraid that that's kind of the ultimate justification.
It's a deterrent is very much a, a, you know, the kind of using of somebody to make a point that we kind of also in our time are not comfortable with. Don't, don't like, uh. Find abhorrent. You know, so that's their, that's their,
BENAY LAPPE: yeah. Yeah. That, that deter that. The distasteful of the deterrent motive reminds me of the issue of the maser, right?
Mm-hmm. We're the tradition originally seemed to be justifying the vilification of the offspring of an adulterous or incestuous relationship in order to deter people from those adulterous and incestuous relationships. It seems cut sort of. Sort of hard. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: So the structure of what we're about to see in the Talmud is, is interesting in terms of like, things that we're often used to in the Talmud.
Like we're often, the Talmud often has these short pieces of mishna and then pages upon pages upon pages of, of Gemara. Of, of commer. Here we're actually seeing kind of a short mishna. Short gamara. Short mishna. Short gamara. Can you, is there a, do you have a reason, sense of why that is, or,
BENAY LAPPE: um, well, the first thing I wanna say is we're only gonna go into short pieces of Gamara on Mishna while there is much more gamara that we're skipping.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So. I don't know if,
DAN LIBENSON: no, it's not pages and pages, it's just we're, you know, we're skipping like a page here and there, but
BENAY LAPPE: yeah,
DAN LIBENSON: I don't know. It just struck me. It doesn't just, just, just like, I guess, I guess that like, part of it also may be that the mishna, there's actually a fair bit of mishna on this question.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Usually, right? So, so meaning like, I, I guess I would say that what, what that brings for me is this idea that even the, the mishna is already very uncomfortable with this. And so there's a lot for one, you know, three verses in the Torah, there's a lot of mishna, and then theara kind of is
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Even more disturbed.
BENAY LAPPE: I never thought about that. I have to think more about what that might mean. And I think you're absolutely right. Th there isn't that much job for the gamara to do because the mission has already done. So much of what we're gonna see is essentially writing that verse in dvar, that process out of existence.
So maybe that's why there's Les Kumar. I dunno, I have to think more about that.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Well, there's Les Kumar and there's also more Mishna. Like, I was just thinking like, I, I have to look, but there's, feels like there's, I don't know. It would be, there's almost as much mishna on this case of the wayward and rebellious sun as there is on the Passover Seder.
You know, like, it's not like it's, it's not that much. Like there's, the point is maybe there's not that much mishna actually on the Passover Seder. Uh, but there's a lot of mishna about this one little thing.
BENAY LAPPE: That's true. That's interesting. That's really interesting. Okay, we'll put a sneaky there.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: So should we go to the Mishna?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, let's do it.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
So there's a little bit of a, of a, um, explanation here, right? Which I don't think we have to read. It's really what we just read from Deuteronomy, so we have that context and. Then the Mishna says,
BENAY LAPPE: yeah,
DAN LIBENSON: from when does a stubborn and rebellious son become liable to receive the death penalty imposed upon a stubborn and rebellious son?
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, great. Let's stop there.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, so the, the first question is pretty radical because to ask the question from when is to accept the unspoken unarticulated premise that there is some eligibility period in the first place,
DAN LIBENSON: meaning that's not all. I don't from when means basically what age.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
At what point does a child, a misbehaving child enter the category of stubborn and rebellious? And this category is the libel for death category. So simply to ask when. Does that eligibility period begin? What behaviors or what time or, we don't know yet. The fact that there is a a when before which there was a not.
Mm-hmm. Possible by itself is a radical move
DAN LIBENSON: because it doesn't say that in the Torah.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. I mean, think about, um, honor thy mother and thy father that, you know, like a whole lot of things in the Torah. It's a pretty broad, un um, qualified statement. And I think the intent was that we are obligated to honor our parents, period.
Similar to this situation, the rabbis in the Talmud say, well. What, how, not only how exactly, but when does that obligation end? Oh wow. The idea that that obligation can end is interesting and new. Um, and an invention of the rabbis because they realize how problematic parents can be and they actually, they could behave in ways.
Right. Okay. We, we could do that another time. But it's similar here that just by saying there's an eligibility period is already the first move at narrowing the applicability of this law.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Okay. And by the way, like I would just say that maybe the toros already. Doing that a little bit, you could argue because the Torah talks about when the parents bring him to the elders, they say he is a glutton and a drunkard, which I know the Talmud is gonna pick up on.
But they, the fact that, like, I don't think that a 10-year-old can really be a glutton and a drunkard most likely. Mm-hmm. You know, we're already talking about someone who's a little bit older. So, which, what strikes me as, as, um, relevant in the sense that you could, you could imagine a parents. Having like a seven, 7-year-old saying, you know, this kid is, uh, is burning, you know, is burning things and you know, do well, you know, there's stuff that like serial killers do in their youth, you know, they burn things in their torture animals and things like that.
And you could kind of imagine a situation where a parent, even if a young, if you could imagine any parent ever wanting to execute their child, that's a whole nother question. But you could say, if we're already accepting that, then, then when, and you might say, well, this kid is a really bad kid, you know, the, this kid is definitely gonna grow up to be a serial killer.
We better, you know, we have this thing, we're supposed to get rid of these bad kids. We should do it now. You know, and, and the Torah already, I think by saying he is a drunkard is already suggesting that it's prob we're probably talking about an older child here. We're not talking about a little kid.
BENAY LAPPE: That's interesting. I never thought about that.
DAN LIBENSON: Whereas the, the original law that the Torah used, that you said that the Torah is already a more, uh. Enlightened version of may have been that you could just do it to any kid that was bad
BENAY LAPPE: for any reason. Yeah, that's probably So the, just to point out again, how radical the pres, the, the assumed question of there's an eligibility period, there's a period at which, right, think of, think of Leviticus, right?
1822, man Shall Not live with a man Mish Kakar. It would be like the Rabbi saying, well, at what point, what is the eligibility period for someone being potentially guilty of mish kakar? That movement and of itself. Mm-hmm. I mean, it's interesting and, and we, it strikes us as obviously an attempt to narrow the applicability of something we find repugnant.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, actually that's interesting because it gives you a, i i it never really occurred to me that on that particular example, you might be able to legislate that one out of existence by just saying, oh, well this, it's, it's referring to a very, very old man, you know, only a very, very old man. And then it, then it's like most people are fine.
BENAY LAPPE: EE exactly. So the, the, the Talmud is giving you a whole toolbox of methodologies and mechanisms to use to, to write repugnant understandings of, of God's will out of existence. And we realize that they are such.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Okay. So the, so, so from when. What is that period? And again, just to be clear, from when basically means like from what age or from what time of life does a stubborn and rebellious son become liable to receive this death penalty?
Uh, from when he grows two pubic hairs, or I guess it should say from when he grows two hairs, because they're about to explain that from, from where, when he grows two hairs until he has grown a beard around. And then the, the Talmud goes on to explain the reference here to the lower beard, not the upper beard.
So, so meaning it's talking about genital hair, not about a beard on your face? Um, I'm not sure which generally happens first and you know, if that makes a difference.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I'm not sure
DAN LIBENSON: not, I, I assume it probably does, but I'm just not sure which is which. Uh, yeah. Anyway.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. So what they're talking about are the physical signs of puberty that.
Demarcate the lower end, the lower end of, um, what's the word I'm looking for? Um, liability period or mm-hmm,
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Candidacy for this horrible status and the upper end. So, go ahead.
DAN LIBENSON: I was just, I was just thinking like, this is like, maybe this is reading too much into it, it's more than is intended here, but, uh, it was just occurring to me that pubic hairs are not visible unless you're looking for them, and whereas like a facial hair would be, so you're more likely to be able to make a claim that I, I was, I hadn't reached that point yet.
If it's about pubic hair and you could always like run to the. Pull them out or something, you know, and just kind of, um, basically give you a little bit more of a window to get away with not doing this than you could if it was facial hair.
BENAY LAPPE: That's interesting. I never thought of that. And it's more likely that the child would pass through this window of opportunity, so to speak, without anyone knowing, because that,
DAN LIBENSON: uh,
BENAY LAPPE: period isn't obvious.
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh Uhhuh. Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: And, okay, so what, what's this window of eligibility was the word I was looking for? Eligibility. The window of eligibility for this horrible stat, deadly status is from when the child has two pubic hair until when. Um, and we're talking about a son here, and we'll get to that in a minute.
Until when the boy has full pubic hair surrounding his penis, that's what the period is. And elsewhere in the gamara, the rabbis are going,
DAN LIBENSON: oh,
BENAY LAPPE: did. Did I?
DAN LIBENSON: No, I, I just misread it. No, you're so, so, so I just wanna be clear because I, I didn't, I I, I kind of, um, didn't emphasize the word until, so, yes. So just so from when he grows two hairs until he has grown a full beard, and that means, uh, pubic hair, beard, the lower beard.
Uh, so, so it's only, it's only a period. The only period when you're eligible to have this death penalty is from basically the beginning of puberty until some version of full puberty has been reached. And after that, you're no longer eligible. So it's a very narrow window.
BENAY LAPPE: Very narrow. The rabbis in the gamara say that's about six months.
Uh, okay. So in one sentence, they've already interpreted the. God to mean that this potential deadly status of a, of a boy who is wayward in rebellion is only about a six month period.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Only boys within that six month period are even eligible to be schlep to the elders of the town to be killed.
DAN LIBENSON: And that really doesn't seem like what the Torah had in mind because like when I think about a son who's a drunkard and a glutton, I'm thinking about, you know, a. Well, this is ancient, you know, 16, 17-year-old, somebody who is like supposed to be working in the fields, but instead he just never gets up and he goes out to the town and he drinks and he is just not helping on the farm.
And that is somebody who almost definitionally is likely to have a quote full beard by that point. So according to the talima, to the mishna, that person is ineligible for this punishment. Specifically at the age when it, the Torah, it looks most from the Torah. Like that's the age we're talking about.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I think that's right.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So that that kid, that 16, 17, 18-year-old kid is already off the hook. Ineligible to be stoned.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. 'cause like as a 11-year-old or 12-year-old, which is probably the age I'm thinking between the two. Is that person gonna be a glutton and a drunkard? You know, it's gonna be so terrible that we wanna stone him to death like it's uhhuh.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? And we're about to see what is the status of the child? Who's most likely to be within that six month period?
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh,
BENAY LAPPE: in terms of being of majority or not. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh uh. And do you, but I mean, so that, that's, so the mishna, like, we, we don't have any understanding of kind of where the mishna came up with that idea, right?
I mean, that, that seems to be like, I know we're gonna get to a lot of other really, uh, really open, really, uh, obvious types of winks. But like that one already seems to be the biggest one of all. It's like, this came outta nowhere. It doesn't make sense at all when you think about the intent of the text.
And it's just dropped here, like, well, yeah, of course. That's when this particular window, you know, as if like you just, oh, well yeah, that must be when that must be it. You know, it's like, there's no, it just makes no sense, but it's just dropped as just a basic fact there in Axiom even.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. And other, other aspects of this increasing narrowing that we're gonna see.
I hate to give away too much, but we can already see it will be taken up by the gamar. Like, what, where'd you get that? And as far as I know this one, the, the definition of two hairs to a full beard is not explicitly taken up. Like where, where did you get that?
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: I don't think, now I haven't learned this entirely all the way through, so it could be that I skipped it, I just wanna put
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: A note on that, but I don't recall that actually specifically being questioned. Mm-hmm. What's your source for two hairs or a full beard?
DAN LIBENSON: Very interesting. Okay, so, okay. Um, so the mission goes on just, just a. We should have read this, but it says, but you know, it, it means the lower beard, not the upper beard, but the sages spoke in euphemistic terms as it is stated if a man has a son, uh, which indicates that the penalty for the re this is opposed upon a son, but not upon a daughter and upon a son, but not a fully grown man.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay? There is no way It's very difficult to understand this in English. And the first part that's confusing is the words as it is stated, because that makes it look like there's some connection between this note about euphemism and the verse, and there is no connection. This note about euphemism is a parenthetical, really bracketed off by square brackets if you lift that off.
Then you see the connection between the claim that was made before, which was the eligibility period is between two hairs and a full beard. And here comes the, as it is stated, here comes now the verse from which the rabbis learn out, wink, wink, that eligibility period. Okay? So, and it's really hard to understand the way the verse is being understood.
In other words, the midrash in the English. So let me, let me try, let me see if I can do it without getting too much into the Hebrew. Okay. So the verse says, when a man will have a son who is wayward, rebellious, and so on and so on. So the first thing that the rabbis quote unquote learn out from the verse is that the verse says, son.
Oh, the rabbi say it explicitly says Ben son, and it doesn't say daughter.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Ah. So we can deduce from the fact that God chose the word Ben to mean that this verse in Deuteronomy about a wayward and rebellious Ben or son only refers to male offspring sons and not daughters. So we've just eliminated from eligibility 51% of the population because the Torah says Ben pe, you know, now we wanna say sidebar, that the Torah uses the word Ben all the time to mean offspring of any gender.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm.
BENAY LAPPE: It doesn't always mean male offspring. So the rabbis are, I think, are taking the opportunity to claim, oh no, here, God explicitly meant male offspring and shoot. Now we don't have to worry about. Female females being stoned. Okay? So that's the first thing we've done. We've, we've further limited the eligibility to males.
And then the second thing, the rabbis learn out from the word Ben is not just been and not a son, and not a daughter, but a son to the exclusion. A ben and not an ish, not a man. So now they're saying, oh, God chose the word son to mean like a, a young person.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: In a contradistinction to a fully grown man.
Oh, that. Then what's a fully grown man? A fully grown man is someone who has hair. Uh, pubic hair around his penis. That's what it means to be a fully grown man. Where they get that, I don't know. That's what I was referring to earlier. I don't know, but this is the best sort of source for this is this is where they're getting the idea that once one a, a child, a male child shows signs of manhood, he's ineligible because the verse says, when a man will have a son, male and not female and young and not adult.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Does that make sense?
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. So, and that, and, and then, and then it follows up from that to say that of, you know, of course. Well, of course we all know that. A, a, a real youth, you know, a a essentially what we would think of as like someone before his bar mitzvah.
BENAY LAPPE: That's
DAN LIBENSON: right. That that person is not obligated to the, to the commandments.
So, of course that person can't be executed for.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. So the, the, the mission that is now uncharacteristically, I might add, it doesn't typically do this. We've noted that before. It doesn't typically justify, its even radical claims of deviation from the Torah Here. It's providing a source for the lower end and the upper end.
The source for the upper end of the eligibility period is the interpretation that men are not included in the word Ben.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: The source for the lower limit to heres is, that's the sign, that's the physical sign of transition between a child of minority and a child of majority. In other words, that's the Bar Mitzvah.
Point two hairs A actually, bar Mitzvah is 13 plus two hairs. It's not 13. So you didn't know that.
DAN LIBENSON: I didn't, that was me. Sorry. I I didn't know that. And, uh, I, I, I didn't, uh, inspect.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, that's right. A child, a, a, a male child actually is not bar mitzvah in ize at least 13, but then also has two hairs. Okay. So the two heres is the bottom limit because the rabbis say for sure anything below two, heres this, this kid is a kaan, a minor, and we know minors aren't obligated to any meets vote.
Therefore, if they violate any of them, they can't be held liable for doing so because they weren't held liable for obeying them in the first place. Okay, great.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So do
BENAY LAPPE: we wanna see that in the translation?
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Okay. Um,
hold on a second. I.
So in the translation it just says here, um,
it says, as I say, if a man has a stubborn or rebellious son, which indicates that the penalty is opposed upon a son, but not upon a daughter and upon a son, but not a fully grown man, a minor under the age of 13 or under the two hairs is exempt from the penalty imposed upon a stubborn, rebellious son because he has not yet reached the age of inclusion in meets vote.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay,
DAN LIBENSON: so go to the Gamara.
BENAY LAPPE: Yes.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So the Gamara inquires according toal. So Gamara inquires about the source of the haha Todd and the mishna. From Where do we derive that? A minor is exempt from the punishment imposed upon the stubborn and rebellious son.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, great. Let's stop there for a second. Okay.
So, so remembering that one of the five possible agendas of the Gamara is where do you get, where'd you get that? What's your source? The gamara is now doing that. It's saying, what's your source for saying that a kaan, a minor, um, minor is exempt from being a stubborn, rebellious son. Where's your source for that?
Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Well then it'll go to this, but I mean, that's basically like, like my, like in a way, like my perspective today is like, well, I mean, we know that, or bar mitzvah, like you're just not responsible for, but the assumption here is, well, but maybe this is a particular category of law that, that it's not really exactly a commandment, right?
It's, it's like we think of like, you're not responsible for the commandments before you're 13. This isn't a commandment on the kid. This is saying to the parents, if you have a really bad kid. It's more about like, what was that movie with Tom Cruise where he could see what was gonna happen in the future?
Yeah. Like they had some technology, uh, uh, I can now, I can't remember the, um, and you would, they would like, uh, I don't remember if they killed people or they put them in prison based on a crime that they had not yet committed and that didn't have anything to do with the person being punished that had to do with society being, uh, being, um, you know, be that that was about deter not deterrent even that was just about the safety of society.
And in a sense that's a little bit what's going on. So, so you, you know, you could, you, so part of me is like, oh, it's obvious. And part of me is like, oh, you can actually make the case not
BENAY LAPPE: okay. So you're already thinking like a rabbi. The, the, the Talmud doesn't anticipate that you are going to think it makes sense to challenge.
To say, Hey, what's your source for the fact that a minor is exempt? It anticipates that the learner, the reader of the Talmud is going to go, oh yeah, that makes sense. Right? When the mission says a ka, a minor is exempt, you're gonna go, oh, yeah, oh yeah. Of course a minor is exempt. Just like a minor is exempt.
And one of the intentions I believe, of the gamara is to teach you how to think. Mm-hmm. To teach you how to be an idiot.
DAN LIBENSON: So accepting. Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So accepting, so gullible, so naive to, to be a more complex thinker.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So it's gonna walk you through the process of thinking something makes sense, accepting it, and then going, wrapping your knuckles and saying, Hey, you weren't on your toes.
You need to be a better thinker than that, not just on this issue, but to be a men, to be a human being, to walk through the world as a responsible adult. So, yeah, I'm gonna go.
DAN LIBENSON: No, and, and like the, just to reinforce a point that we made at the end of last time, and that we've made a number of times that the Talmud doesn't really anticipate that regular people are gonna be reading this.
It's meant to be a training manual for rabbis, basically. So you could, you could say, well, of course this is like law school. It's like, that's the whole point of the first year of law school is like, you read all these things, you, the normal person reads it. Like, I remember having a, an argument with my, uh, cousin at one point about the Second Amendment, and he's like, and Second Amendment says, you know, there should be no law that you can't have guns.
And I said, well, actually, there's a, a sentence begins, you know, a well-regulated militia being necessary, right? And there's, so you could potentially read that as a clause that limits the right to bear arms, you know? And he is like. Oh yeah, I guess I never thought of that. You know, why, why was that? So that was like, that's part of the training program.
And, and so, so what you see here, like this is a, it's a little mean if you're saying, oh, this is just a, I mean, not mean, but it's kind of like maybe a little much to say it's, it's for regular people. So it's telling you to be a more sophisticated person back then. Now, what's interesting today is first of all, now that we're all capable of reading this because it's translated in part and because we're better educated than we used to be.
Uh. The question is now is that technology that used to be for training rabbis or in modern times translate to, to, um, train lawyers. Now maybe that technology is actually more applicable to other kinds of people. And actually it's good for everybody to be a sophisticated thinker who doesn't just accept things.
And so, you know, it's just interesting to think about the job that the Talmud might be able to be doing now and to say, well, we can embrace that job and we can be excited about it. But actually that's not what it was trying to do 1500 years ago, which may be part of why it needs a little bit of an upgrade to, but
BENAY LAPPE: yeah.
And, and that's what Spar is all about, right? Spar recognizes that this, this spiritual technology was only ever aimed at the 1%.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And we did a fairly good job with the 1%. You know, once you have feminism, you realize, oh, wait a minute. Maybe there were a whole bunch of things that our tradition could have done but didn't do because it didn't, it didn't even occur to them to do, or that this was problematic or that was a problem because the other 99% didn't have it.
And then you start realizing how many other people in the 99% could contribute to this process, such that what we could have done with it, or what we can do over the next 2000 years with the other 99% having this available to us is gonna blow the last two millennia out of the water.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, right. Yeah, because I was gonna say, like, to be fair, you know, feminism really only takes you from 1% to 2%.
You know, because it's still an elite, you know, it's really, it's like feminism plus, uh, uh, anti-elitism or, or a, um. Or not anti-elitism per se, but a fact that many more people are now capable of being elite, so to speak, either, either way. Like that's where it really takes you into this. Like, yeah, now it's 99%, or at least 25%, it's a lot more people that can be involved in this now.
And, and where does that take you? Okay, so let's, let's continue. Okay. Okay. Um, so the, um, okay, so,
BENAY LAPPE: so let's remember again that once you go from mission to Gamara, you've gone to a different genre of literature. It feels different. It's, it's now in a different language. It's in a combination of Hebrew and Aramaic, whereas Mission was in Hebrew and most characteristically, you're now in a dialogic document.
We're in a document, the Gamara, which was created as an artificial conversation. It's a back and forth, so you have to keep tabs on. Who's talking? In other words, is it the person making a claim talking? Is this a person challenging? Is it we, are we back to the person who originally made the claim, who's now resolving the challenge?
So there's, there's this back and forth now that we're gonna feel. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So from where we derive that a minor is exempt from, for the punishment from, uh, the question is, uh, the gamara comments. This question is puzzling weder.
BENAY LAPPE: This is now a responder to the question, what's your source for the idea that a minor is exempt from this punishment?
DAN LIBENSON: Right. And so it's like. What, what kinda question is that? From where do we drive this haha from? Where do we drive this halakha? The reason is this, Todd is the MNA because he is not yet reached the age of inclusion and meets vote like that was in the mitzvah it said, because he hasn't been bar mitzvah yet.
So yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: So why are you asking, why are you asking me for a source? The mission itself explained itself. It said a minor is exempt because a minor isn't even included in what? What's the like has no standing even in the question of did I violate, did I conform to the meets vote in the first place? So why are you asking me for a source?
The mission already dispensed with the need for a source. 'cause it explained that a minor is exempt from all mitzvahs. Okay. Further.
DAN LIBENSON: And furthermore, where do we find that the verse punishes a minor so that a special verse should be required here in order to exempt him, in other words. Right. Well, like why would you even read this to say that a minor was responsible in the first place?
I guess maybe that goes, goes to my saying like once you're talking about a glutton and a drunkard, I mean, obviously we're not talking about a minor, right? Is that, is that what it's saying?
BENAY LAPPE: Well, I don't think that's ex, I think you're right, but I don't think that's exactly what the responder here is saying.
The second thing the responder is saying is, wait a minute, why would I even need a source? There's no need for a source to tell me that a minor is exempt from being on the hook for being a waver and rebellious son for having that status. Because the minor, sorry for being off the hook. How? What's my, I don't need a source for the minor being off the hook, because a minor was never on the hook for, you know.
Compliant behavior in the first place.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Minors can be as wayward and rebellious as they wanna be. And that's not a violation of any law because minors are exempt from all laws. So they weren't even, there was no reason to think they were in violation of something such that I would need a verse to get them out of that status of violation.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So, if I read this correctly, so this Thomas is saying, look, uh, no. Number one, the mishna explicitly says that minors aren't, aren't, uh, aren't, aren't, are exempt. So we don't have to derive it from anywhere. The mic says it, and number two, the mission didn't even have to say it because we all know that miners are exempt in from the stuff in the Torah.
So what, what, why is this even a question?
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. And at this point the Gamara is leaving you going, that's right. That's right. And it anticipates that you are again, going to fall into the hole of being a naive, simple thinker. Mm-hmm. And it's gonna wrap you on the knuckles again and say, if you thought those were two good reasons for not needing a source to exempt a minor, you are not thinking deeply enough.
And now it's gonna tell you, in fact, that was a very good reason, a very good question. What's your source for exempting a minor? We actually do have to ask that question now. It's gonna tell us why.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Hold on. I'm my, uh, my thing went a little crazy. Um, okay,
so the gamara clarifies, this is what we're saying. Is this to say that a stubborn or rebellious son is killed for a sin that he already committed. In other words, the gamar is saying you're no, no, you're thinking that the reason why we kill the stubborn, rebellious son is be, is to punish him for his sin.
And then we would know that a minor, that's not what you should do to a minor.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? Because sin as in behavior, a certain
DAN LIBENSON: behavior. Right? Because minors are not responsible for their behavior.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: According to Jewish law. But as will be explained on a later page, he's actually killed for what he will become in the end.
That's, that's what I was saying about the Tom Cruise. That's
BENAY LAPPE: right. You see your thoughts, you jumped in sophistication because of who you are all the way to this
course.
DAN LIBENSON: Although I read this last week and I probably remembered it.
BENAY LAPPE: Fair enough.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, I don't wanna take all the credit, but yeah. So, so No, no, no.
He's not being killed. Because of his sin that in the past he's, he's being killed because his past behavior indicates future dangerous behavior. That is so I would, I would add this so dangerous. So worries that, that it would be better to kill him so that he won't have an opportunity to engage in that dangerous behavior.
But it's not about punishing him, it's about protecting everybody else from him.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. Okay, so let me say that again, just to clarify in my own mind, the gamar is now saying, Hey reader,
you didn't realize that this issue of a stubborn, rebellious son who is killed for, for being that is actually in a different category of violation. This is the category of preventing future capital crime. Just like the law of the ef, the law of the Pursuer. We know from elsewhere in the Talmud that if someone is, you know, running with a gun in their hand or a sword in their hand, chasing after someone else to kill them
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: We are obligated to stop them, even if it requires killing them before they've had a chance to kill.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So, you know, you might say, how can you kill them? They haven't killed anybody yet.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: But Jewish law says you're obligated to prevent a murder.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Even at the ex, even at the risk of killing the not yet.
Murdered not, not yet. Murdering person.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, right.
BENAY LAPPE: Killing.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, this, yeah. Although this is like taking that even another level because it's saying this isn't someone running around with a gun. This is somebody who seems to have a personality trait that suggests that he might one day run after somebody with a gun or a knife or what.
And we're gonna, I mean, this is the, this is the case of like, what if you, what if you could have killed Hitler when he was a boy and he hasn't actually done anything bad yet, but you, and here, here, this is like that, that time machine question is, is often one of these conundrums. Like, what if you knew that Hitler was gonna be Hitler?
Could you go back in time and kill him when he was an innocent boy? Some people say, you know, yeah, you could because we know what's gonna happen. But this is a case where we don't know that this person is going to be Hitler or even kill one person. But there's something about the way he is that suggests that he might, and the Torahs.
According to this view, the, the point of the Torah is that yeah, you can kill that, that person out of that fear, uh, that concern.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. That's right. And by the way, I think it was the Minority Report.
DAN LIBENSON: Minority Report. That's right. That's the Tom Cruise movie that I'm thinking of.
BENAY LAPPE: Right?
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: So, so what this is saying is the nature of this wayward, rebellious son situation is that we can, we believe, reliably recognize behaviors which indicate a future murderer.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And those behaviors could show up in childhood.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Therefore, actually a child is conceivably on the hook for being, uh, this status Spencer or more. And if we. Want to exempt minors, we are going to have to find some source because without some special source exempting them, they are on the hook for being future murderers.
And because we kill known future murderers before they murder, if we can't stop them without killing them, uh, this minor actually could be a benra morat.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. And just the, the look at the Talmud there that it says, and since he is executed for what he will become in the end, one might have thought that even a minor could be sent, sentenced to the death penalty as a stubborn and rebellious son.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: And furthermore,
BENAY LAPPE: so that's reason number one. Why you, you actually need to officially get this kid off the hook
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: With a verse. Mm-hmm. Or with some, okay, good. And I've got another reason why a minor. Actually should be considered on the hook without any other getting off the hook source. And that's this.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, and that's where, where earlier it had said, it, it, this is how we know that it's not a grown man because it says a son. Okay, fine. So that will accept that, that means for now we'll accept that that means that a grown man is not eligible for this penalty. But like all, all non grown men are. And that includes minors.
You know that's, that's right. Most of the time of being a non grown man, you're a minor. So it's almost like it turns out that this is actually the, the, the claim that's being made, but they're kind of saying, but that's an absurd result. You're, you're saying that the same language that causes somebody who is, uh, older than.
Bar mitzvah or whatever, a little bit older than that, that, that, that person can't, can't be falling under this law because it says son and not man. And you're also saying that because it says son, and you know that, that, that a minor can't be, uh, eligible, that would mean nobody would be eligible. That that's an absurd result.
Why would we have a thing like that in the Torah now, you know, fast forward, that's gonna be basically how it turns out. But, but they're saying rightly so. That's an absurd result. Why would we, why would we have this whole verse in the Torah to cover a case that's basically non-existent? So the only understanding that we could derive from that is if it says son and not man, that means, okay.
It doesn't include grown men. But that must mean include, it includes all minors, all children.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. The interpretation that eliminated any adults actually got us in trouble.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Because it included, it included all non-adults. As eligible? Well, once you include, as you said, all non-adult, that includes, includes all beings from birth to adulthood, oh gosh.
We've actually just included little kids problematically. Now we're gonna need some other source to actually exclude them from the category that we just put them in. Mm-hmm. With our, with our mid rush on Ben and not ish a child and not a man. Okay. Mm-hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Well, since we're at the, uh, end of the hour, I think that's a good place to leave it and we will pick it up again next week.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, great.
DAN LIBENSON: All right, see you then.
BENAY LAPPE: Bye.
DAN LIBENSON: Bye.
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