The Oral Talmud Episode 43: Black Mold (Sanhedrin 71a)
SHOW NOTES
“ The rabbis would acknowledge that's not the reading that is closest probably to the original intent. It's nevertheless a justifiable reading because the ends is justifiable. And we're using our reading as a way of not completely breaking the chain. We still wanna have some connection to the past, even though we know this is the most strained connection possible to the past. And that actually feels like a more laudable reason to do misreadings than one in which you're trying to fool people.” - 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.
The rabbis don’t just read the text, they bend it on purpose. In this episode, Benay and Dan pull back the curtain on one of the Talmud’s boldest moves: deliberate misreading in service of a better world. From constitutional debates to ancient law, they trace a throughline — sometimes the reading isn’t the goal. The outcome is. And the text gets stretched just far enough to carry it.
Then the stakes get real. A city must be destroyed. A house must be torn down. The rabbis refuse both, twisting the text, again, until violence becomes impossible. But just when it feels clean, controlled and resolved the tradition interrupts itself again. Just like what we saw in the case of the wayward and rebellious son: yes, it did happen. Cities did fall. Houses were destroyed. This episode lives in that tension, between moral imagination and moral memory, and asks again what it takes to change a system without lying about the harm it once caused.
This week’s text: Sanhedrin 71a
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 43: Black Mold.
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.
The rabbis don’t just read the text - they bend it on purpose. In this episode, Benay and I pull back the curtain on one of the Talmud’s boldest moves: deliberate misreading in service of a better world. From constitutional debates to ancient law, we trace a throughline — sometimes the reading isn’t the goal. The outcome is. And the text gets stretched just far enough to carry it.
Then the stakes get real. A city must be destroyed. A house must be torn down. The rabbis refuse both — twisting the text, again, until violence becomes impossible. But just when it feels clean, controlled, resolved — the tradition interrupts itself again – just like what we saw in the case of the wayward and rebellious son: yes, it did happen. Cities did fall. Houses were destroyed. This episode lives in that tension — between moral imagination and moral memory — and asks again what it takes to change a system without lying about the harm it once caused.
DAN LIBENSON: Hey Benay.
BENAY LAPPE: Hey, Dan. How are you?
DAN LIBENSON: I'm good. Um, you know, it's another, another exciting week. It is probably, it's probably Talmudic, uh, Talmudic, uh, implications to, you know, these various arguments in the impeachment trial, which is going on now as we record this.
Uh, I think we talked a little bit last week, you know, just of that, the, that question about, uh, you know, the Constitution and whether the constitution allows, uh, the impeachment of a former president, and that actually involves all this interesting, logical reasoning that is similar to some of what we've been doing in the Talmud.
So. So it's, uh, it's, it's, you know, uh, the more I, the more we do the show, I mean, the more convergences there are. So it's, it's kind of interesting to use some of the techniques that we're doing on what's going on around us.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I've been having fun reading up, um, William Es on William Eskridge. You, you recommended him to me.
And, uh, right now I'm learning about the pet fish cannon. I dunno if you remember that from law school.
DAN LIBENSON: I think I remember that, yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Oh, it's so fun. So, so you directed me to learn to read up on his ideas of, you know, text
DAN LIBENSON: statutory interpretation,
BENAY LAPPE: statutory interpretation. Yeah. And it's straight up mid rush.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Straight up mid rush.
DAN LIBENSON: So what's the, what's the pet fish?
BENAY LAPPE: The pet fish cannon is the idea that two words, which have easily understandable and commonly. Shared understandings in their separateness can have a completely different meaning when they're together, like pet fish. So, um, a pet is the word pet conjures up cats and dogs, fish all by itself conjures up, I don't know, salmon, trout, right?
But when you put pet fish together, it doesn't conjure up anything other than a goldfish and um. It that provides a kind of, um, lens to read words together in a unique way than the words appear. It's, it's, it's, and there's actually a mechanism like that in Midrash, it's called, and another one, FRA, which says that, which Robbie Ishmael 2000 years ago invented that says that if two words are next to each other, like apple and fruit, apple limits, what the verse talking about.
From all fruit to just apple. And conversely, another rule is if the order is reversed, apple ex uh, fruit extends the application from merely apple to all fruit, neither of which is supported actually by the simple, plain meaning of the verse. But it's a technique to reach some additional unique meaning out of.
The text anyway.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, what, what I've been thinking about, so I don't know if you heard this in the presentation on this past Tuesday, which was when they were talking about the constitutionality of trying a president for impeachment after he is left office. He, the, the president, the, uh, Trump's lawyer said something like, well, if you just read the Constitution, it says that the, that the power of the Senate shall extend no further than removal from office.
And that was like, uh, a blatant mis quotation, right? Because it says that shall extend no further than removal from office and barring from future office or something like that. Right. You know, and, and, um. And, you know, and, and so part of me felt like very annoyed. Like this is just blatant, like this is not even, you know, this is just like assuming, I mean, but this is what we talk about here, that, that in the world of the Talmud and the rabbis, right, there's an underlying assumption that everybody who's reading this actually knows when you're doing a mis quotation.
So if you're doing a mis quotation, it's not because you're trying to fool somebody, it's, it's for some other reason. And that's interesting in this case, because first of all, that's not necessarily true in this particular case, right? Most Americans who are sitting there watching it on c spanner more accurately, in this case, probably Fox News, have not actually read the Constitution and don't know that it says, and the, the following part.
And so that's actually functionally a, a lie by that mis quotation, right? So that, that was like one piece that, that struck me. But then the other piece that struck me is that. With that particular provision in the Constitution. You know, I, and probably 99% of constitutional scholars agree that the way the Constitution is written there, it, it means that you can try a president after he's left office.
Because even though it says the power flow extend no further than removal and barring from future office, it doesn't mean that it has to be both. And there, there's some quote, now I'm forgetting it, but there was some, uh, quote that they're citing from somebody, uh, back in the, uh, in, in a very early impeachment who, who was kind of saying the same thing.
And, um, you know, that, that and really should be read as, or, uh, you know, functionally it means, or, but, but in any event there, there's a 1% that could say, it says, and, and it really means that it has to be both and, okay, fine. So then the question becomes, okay, if you can read this provision. In other words, if, if the, if the text will hold the meaning that you're trying to put on it, even though that meaning is illogical and grammatical, you know, doesn't make sense, but it can hold the meaning.
Then I go back to the, what we're doing here in the Talmud and, and saying, well, some extent what's happening here in some of the cases that we've been going over is that the rabbis are, uh, quite intentionally doing that kind of 1% right. The, the misreading, the, the, pretty much a misreading, um. And even though they would acknowledge that that's not the E, that's not the best reading, that's not the reading that is closest probably to the original intent.
It's nevertheless a justifiable reading. But it's not so much that it's a justifiable reading because the reading is justifiable. It's justifiable because the objective, the ends is justifiable. Mm-hmm. And, and then we're using our reading
BENAY LAPPE: mm-hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: As a way sort of, of not completely breaking the chain.
Right. Saying we still wanna have some connection to the past, even though we know this is the most strained connection possible to the past. But we wanna have that. And that actually feels like, to some extent, a more laudable. Reason to, to do misreadings than one in which you're trying to hide. You know, you're trying to essentially lie, you're trying to fool people.
And so I I, so to me, the idea that they weren't fooling anybody, everybody knew that it was a misreading, actually holds up their virtue because it, it means that within that community of knowing misreads, they also have a intentional desire to stay connected to the past, even through a strained reading.
And, and I just think there's something worth exploring and thinking about there, especially when we look at maybe for both, um, co confirmation and also differences in terms of what's happening these days in, in the impeachment trial.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. What, what you're saying is so interesting, the, the idea that what's really important is the, in the intent.
Like what are you trying to get out of this read and is that. Consistent with the foundational principles of the system. Um, right now I'm rereading Ezer Berkovitz Shalom, um, not in Heaven. And essentially the whole book is about the concept of Sava. And what he says is he and, and David Kramer as well, I'm rereading him on s farra.
And, and they, they both share this idea that savara the, the, the moral intuition or impulse, uh, that all human beings have and that gets refined by learning and being steeped in the tradition is really more primary than the text itself, the Torah itself, because that's what you use to judge whether your read of the text is.
Could that be what God wants or not? So, you know, the litmus test is how does this land with my, um, not what does the text say or what could we make it mean, or what could we get out of it?
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm. Well, I think that's a good, that's a good way to get into our text for today. Um, because, you know, again, we're gonna see some, uh, what, what you could call misreadings and, uh, it, it's.
And, and, and in, in a number of directions, in a number of ways. And so I, I think we wanna track that question as we also get into, you know, well, what are they trying to do? And is what they're trying to do good? And why are they doing it this way? So we are actually continuing on the same page that we've been on for the last bunch of weeks, but we're going on to not necessarily a new topic.
It's a, it's a continuation of what we were talking about, but some new examples. And so we spend a lot of weeks on this specific example of the benra, more the wayward and rebellious sun. And now we're gonna go actually quite quickly through two more examples. And one thing that, as I was thinking about it preparing for today, I was thinking about like, we're gonna go through these two examples pretty quickly.
The Talmud is, uh, and, and I, I'm sort of thinking to myself. You often say that the examples that the Talmud is using is not the point. The point is that's the, the way of thinking. And so I'm thinking to myself, could we have gone through the same long, long, long process of finding all kinds of readings relating to these two examples that we're about to do, which the Talmud doesn't do because it doesn't need to.
'cause it says that you wanna talk about this, you know, idol your city we're That's right. We gonna talk about like, do the same whole mechanisms as the Ben Red. We're not gonna do that right now 'cause we don't have to. We just did it.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. You know, or so, so that's, uh, so, so, you know, I, I wanna hold that thought 'cause I actually think that part of these two examples that we're talking about here, and just to say clearly what the category is, that these are examples like the re mora, wayward and Rebellious Sun that are explicit in the Torah, explicit in the Torah, that you have to do something really destructive, uh, to people, to, to property and the rabbis.
Don't want us to do that anymore if we ever did it. And they are going to basically read out of existence, explicit Torah commandments because of their new, their new priorities. And I, you know, I've been floating this theory that there's a particular category of Torah commandments that are super explicit in the Torah, where it's actually really important to have a particular mechanism for mm-hmm.
How we get rid of them. Because the regular people are actually gonna ask us about them because they know about them. 'cause they read it in the Torah. I mean, they was, they sat in synagogue and they heard it. And so those are the ones that are gonna require extra special argumentation because it's the expectation that.
We, we are gonna have questions from the regular people, and that's a different set of cases from the ones that we, I was just mentioning earlier, the ones where, where it says like, it's only rabbis reading this. It's only rabbis who even knew that this was a question. And there where we're misquoting and hiding the ball and whatever, like that doll in inside baseball, everybody knows it's a, it's, it's, it's not real.
And, you know, we're, there's more hidden messages there. Here, there may be a little bit more explicit messages that are meant for, you know, quote the people.
BENAY LAPPE: I, I love that. I hope that's somebody's PhD dissertation to, to do a survey and study of every example of where the Torah is abrogated and what mechanism is used and what the relationship is between what the people might have questioned.
I love that theory. I love it. And one other thing I wanna bring out about these next two examples is, um, there's a, there's a. In understanding in Jewish law that to do something three times is to make it clear to you and to others around you that you are doing that action not as an accident. It wasn't inadvertent, it was knowing you did it knowingly.
You did it deliberately, thoughtfully, purposefully, and that was what you wanted to do. You know, the example that comes to mind sadly is, you know, we've, we've probably all seen at a funeral, people shovel three shovel fulls of dirt over the casket and then put the shovel back. And the three shovel fulls is really to say, I, I didn't accidentally knock some dirt.
With my foot or to, you know, this is what I meant to do. I'm here to perform this mitzvah. I get it. This person's gone. And okay, so that comes to mind. That idea of three times tells you it's a thing because we have, in this soya that looks like it's about benra Marette, it's a chapter, it's named Benra Marette.
It's multiple pages about this. One example. And I think that the editor is saying, lest you think, unless you forget that you think we're talking about the benra mort, we're not. The chapter really is about writing shit outta the Torah, like making the Torah better when it's really, really hard. And it wasn't this one case where it was really, really hard.
There were a bunch of cases, and this is a thing, this is a method and you can use it. And it wa this one issue of the ben more the wayward, rebellious on isn't sui generous. And, and we're not, our hands aren't tied just to this one case. As soon as you have two more, it's a thing. Okay. Just wanted to say that.
DAN LIBENSON: And, and, and where we ended last time in the Ben Torah Marra case was basically the question was like, well, if there's never such a thing as this, you know, if this is, if this is something that God never wanted us to do, why did it say it in the Torah? Like, why did it? And the, the answer there is Dr. Kabel scar that you, it's there so that you should have the exercise of writing it out of existence, of legislating it out of existence, and you'll be rewarded.
Ostensibly by God for that, that, that it's that this, this terrible thing is in the Torah, so that you will notice that it's terrible with your sari, with your kishkes. You will then be motivated and understand that we're not, our hands are not tied. We can legislate it out of existence. You'll go through the process of figuring out how to legislate it out of existence.
You'll succeed in doing that, and you will be rewarded. That is the reason why it's in the Torah and, and,
BENAY LAPPE: and, and not only that you write this out of existence, but that you have the lenses on always when reading the Torah as to what else should I have to write out of existence.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, and and that's the three times that you were talking about.
So we, if it was only the Ben Monroe, he might have thought it was just a one, one case, you know, whoops, you know, God forgot, you know, whatever. God forgot it. Um, but now, but here we have it three times. We're gonna have it. Two more times. And now, now it's really what you're saying, the lens, you now, now that you've seen it three times, know that you should always have that, those lenses on.
And uh, and you know, and we talked about last week or two weeks ago, we talked about what are the contemporary cases. Uh, could be homosexuality, it could be inner marriage, it could be whatever you might think it is. Uh, laws. I, you know, I actually have been thinking a lot lately with Passover coming up of, of the way that a lot of people are, you know, papering their kitchen with, uh, aluminum foil.
And, you know, we're concerned about the environment now. You know, maybe we need to, uh, uh, legislate some of those Passover rules out of existence to the extreme version because it's harming the earth. And that would be another example of a new, a new motivation. Why we have to, you know, and, and, and we can do that.
That's, that's what, that's what we're supposed to do, so, right.
BENAY LAPPE: And, and let's also remember that the end of the Ben. Section ended with what you just said. There never was such a thing. There never will be. It's a why is it even there? Why did God put it there if there never was and never will be. Uh, that you should write it out of existence and put on those lenses.
But the, the important part then to remember before we move on is the Robbie Anaan standing up and down. Whatcha talking about never was and never will be. There sure was.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Let's, and his role, I think in, in this text is to say it is very dangerous to write violent legislative history out of our story.
Mm-hmm. You actually need to keep that in. You need to keep in the acknowledgement in the memory that this tradition did harm.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So that other traditions that do harm. Ping for you. Oh, maybe this is one of those, not that we only have power to, you know, mess with things that never were a problem.
Mm-hmm. That's the danger of saying never was and never will be.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. So now we'll move on. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: So now we'll move on to these next examples. And these come directly after the previous one. So here, same page, sun Heran 71 a and the to the Talmud says, Gamara says, in accordance with whose opinion is that which is taught in a Brita in another, uh, in another, uh, teaching From the time of the Mishna, there has never been an idolatrous city and there never will be one in the future.
That's, uh, there, there's never been an idolatrous city and there will never be one in the future. Uh, and why was that passage written in the Torah? So what are we talking about here?
BENAY LAPPE: Great. Okay, so here comes example number two. First example was the wave war in rebellious sun, and now they repeat the same language.
Oh, by and by the way, there also never was an idolatrous city and never will be. Alright, so what are they talking about?
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so they're, so they're talking about a case from the book of Deuteronomy, I think. Right? Um, so, so uh, in the case of Deutero book of Deuteronomy, uh, there, uh, which is, uh, Deuteronomy uh, uh, chapter 13.
And, um, and I actually have the whole thing, uh, here because I think there's some things that we're gonna come back to, but there's a very particular section here that starts at verse 13. Where, uh, where the Torah says, if you hear it said of one of the towns that the Lord your God is giving you to dwell in, meaning one of the towns in Canaan that you're supposed to, that, that ultimately is meant for Israelites to inhabit.
It's some scoundrels and
BENAY LAPPE: we'll put, we'll, we'll put a stinky on that whole concept.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Well, in the Torah.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, fine.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. I'm not endorsing it. Um, yeah. Um, so, right. Remember this is a book of Deuteronomy, which purports to be Moses's speech at the, at the, the border, just before they're coming into the land of Israel.
Right? So Moses is saying, you know, God is saying via Moses, if you, if you hear it said that, that that one of the towns that God is giving you, that there's some scoundrels from among you, meaning Israelites that have gone and subverted the inhabitants of their town saying, come let's worship other gods.
So there, there, there's, there's people trying to get them to be worship, uh, other gods, uh, which you have not experienced. You shall investigate and inquire and interrogate thoroughly. And if it's true that this has happened, that this, that these. Kind of snake oil salesmen have gotten the town to start worshiping other gods.
Uh, it's
BENAY LAPPE: like Q anon. Yeah. If, if they've gotten the town to believe in Q anon.
DAN LIBENSON: Exactly.
BENAY LAPPE: Conspiracy theories.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So at that, at that, if that is true, and remember we're talking here about Jews, if, if it, if it is true that the fact ISS established is a poor thing, was perpetrated in your midst, put the inhabitants of that town to the sword and put its cattle to the sword, doom it and all that is in it to destruction.
Uh, that's called, uh, and gather all its spoil into the open square and burn the town. And it spoils as a holocaust to the Lord. And the Holocaust here means there's a burnt, uh, uh, completely burnt offering. Not a, not the holocaust, although that's where it word comes from, as a holocaust to the Lord your God.
And it shall remain an everlasting ruin never to be rebuilt. So not only are you supposed to, uh, kill everybody and all the animals that live there and burn it to the ground, but you actually should never build another city there. And so it just becomes a, a ruin. That's the, that's what the Torah is saying.
So if you, if there's a, if you, you know, so if, I mean that would, that would be a big problem in America to, I mean, you know, if there's a town that's awful of QAN people, you should, you know, destroy it, burn it to the ground and never build another town there. That would be a lot of problems, a lot of, lot of burn towns in America.
BENAY LAPPE: And there probably a lot of. Potentially or effectively burnt towns in Canan at the time.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So, so the, so the, the, you know, so I mean this is, uh, clear that, that the destructiveness of this is enormous, right? I mean the, and look, I mean, and, and I think that, um, you could, you could just imagine that we're being a little jokey about it, but you could imagine that, that in Canaan, I mean, or, or in the land of Israel in the time of the Mishna even, or you know, people just thinking about it, but the people saying, but wait a second.
There's this, that town where, you know, Tel Aviv, it's all the secular people. It's all the right, there's really bad things happening there. Maybe we're supposed to go and destroy it. You could think about it in Israel today. You could easily imagine that there's certain extremists that are looking at Tel Aviv and saying, you know, if we get power, you know, we should, we gotta wipe this place off the map because these people are really.
You know, they're really, uh, violating everything that that judaism's all about. So that's a scary concern that people might take this seriously, you know, in the way that, for example, uh, the, the man who killed, uh, Rabin, you know, believed that it was taking a, a certain, uh, a certain, uh, something from the Talmud serious from the Torah, seriously, that this idea of a rod, somebody who's out to kill you, that you should kill him first, and that by making peace, he was gonna cause Arabs to kill Jews.
And so essentially he's killing Jews, so therefore I should take it into my own hands to assassinate the Prime Minister. And, uh, you know, that kind of thing happens. And so you say, well, I'm concerned that the Torah potentially gives license to that person. I, I better, um, see if, uh, it really does. Right,
BENAY LAPPE: right.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So, uh, so, so that's the case that we're talking about. And, uh, we go back to the Talmud. And so the Talmud is, is saying that, uh, this is another example of something that, uh, never was and never will be, and quote unquote. And so the Talmud, then why was the passage written in the Torah? And the answer, so you may expound and receive reward.
Dr. Kakar. The same reason that we said for the why is the, uh, Ben way word in rebellious. And why is that in the Torah? So that you will go through the exercise of, of legislating it out of existence and thereby be rewarded. So that, that's why it's there. Same reason. And, um, and. They say, and who's, and, and, and who, who in accordance with whose opinion is this?
In other words, like, who interpreted this case in some way that legislated it out of existence? And the Talmud says, ah, it was, it's in accordance with the opinion of Rabbi Elzer as it's taught in a Brita that Rabbi Elzer says, any city that has even one meza or any other sacred scroll cannot become an idolatrous city.
So this is similar language to when they were saying, any person who has not eaten a Tarte mar of meat and a, you know, Italian wine cannot become a wayward and rebellious sun. Right? They're saying like, we can't, it, it can't be because as, as long as there's just one meza in the whole place, it, you couldn't, it couldn't count as a, uh,
BENAY LAPPE: you know, what is coming up for me?
This is one of those examples where someone who is a literalist. Actually has the power to use that literalism to be extremely lenient. That's the thing. That's the thing you say
DAN LIBENSON: because Rabbi Elzer is a
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Rabbi Elzer is a famous literalist and you know, he's the verse pointer. He saying, whatcha talking about, this is what it says right here.
How are you make playing all these games? And his ability to do that, um, or, or that kind of read isn't, doesn't always result in conservative, um, effect. It sometimes can be used to, um, make very radical, uh, rereads.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So, so here, he's, he's, he, he's doing that same thing. He's saying for sure you can't burn azua.
Everybody knows that.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh,
BENAY LAPPE: and since you can't burn Azu. And for sure they had to be at least one mezuzah in this town, in one of these idolatrous towns. It never, no such town could ever have been burnt because that would've been violating the don't burn a mezuzah law. And certainly that couldn't have been done.
That could be possible. So therefore, this whole thing is impossible.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm.
BENAY LAPPE: It's, it's clever.
DAN LIBENSON: Right? And so, you know, and I was thinking, well, why don't you just take down the mezas first, but you can never know if maybe there was a meza that you missed. Right? So you gotta, just on the sake of, uh, airing on the side of caution, don't burn the town.
Right. So, um, so Rabbi says, any city that has even one miss or any other sacred squirrel cannot become an idol city. Uh. What is the reason that a city can't become an ideologist if there's even one mea and, uh, he's citing to the verse or the Talmud is, is telling us that the, that it's based on this verse from Deuteronomy that says, and you shall gather the spoil.
We just, we read this and you shall gather all the spoil of it into the midst of the open space of the city, and you shall burn it with fire, both the city and the entire plunder taken in it. Uh, in other words, there even what I said, why don't you just take down the mezas? Well, you, that you couldn't do that because the Torah's very explicit, uh, about that you have to burn everything that was in there.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. Here he is a verse pointer. Right.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So, so here's where, where the, everything is really helping him, right, as the first pointer to be lenient, specifically because he is a literalist, right? So he says, well, everything is everything. And so if there's, if there was a there when we did the investigation, we can't take it out and then burn the city.
'cause the tower says burn everything. So, but we can't burn everything because you can't burn a za. So therefore we're, it's, you know, catch 22, right? And it's, it's really what it is. Um, so, uh, it scissors in za it's impossible to burn all the contents of the city as it is written, and you shall overthrow their altars and break their pillars and burn their Asher with fire.
This you shall not do. So the Lord, uh, to the Lord your God. Um, so I mean, just to, just to be clear about this one, because I, I, I feel like this is a misquotation actually. Uh, so here he's, he's quoting. The tal is quoting Deuteronomy 12. Right. So in other words, like the, the question that's, that's arising here is, okay, I, I get, I get what you're saying, that you, you say that the, the verse here says we have to burn everything up and you can't burn a meza, so we can't burn everything up.
But where'd you get this thing that you can't burn a mea, right? Where does it say in the Torah that you can't burn a mea? It doesn't say it, right? So they're saying, oh, yeah, but it does actually, because in Deuteronomy 12 it says that you should burn up, um, cities that idolatrous cities that are actually, you know, not Jews.
I, I idol worshipers, you know, and then it says, uh, this, you shall not do, uh, to the Lord your God, meaning you should burn up the idolatrous, uh, paraphernalia, but you should not burn the Jewish paraphernalia, you know, like the mezuzah. But if you go and look at Deuteronomy 12. Where this quote is coming from.
It actually says here. So here is where, um, so it's on, it's the next one here. So, so here is where, uh, it now, so for example, just, I'm just showing you that, that whatever, uh, translation, I think it's JPS translation that Safaria uses, it's translating this verse, which the Talmud, which the Steinfels translation of the Talmud and the Talmud is trying to use this, the, the Hebrew to mean don't do this to God, meaning don't burn God's paraphernalia.
The, the JPS is, is, uh, translating the words, do not worship God in, in that manner. In other words, don't worship, don't worship God through idols, through right now. So now if we, if we, so that's Deuteronomy 12, four. If we just look at the Hebrew, um, just so that we can see it says.
Don't, don't do this. So it's ambiguous. It's, they're saying, don't do this to God. Um, and it can potentially hold the translation that's don't burn God's paraphernalia, but that is definitely the more strained version of what's going on here. It it in the, in, in this part of, um, 'cause we can, we can read it here in Deuteronomy, right?
Just reading from the beginning. It says, these are the laws and rules that you must carefully observe in the land that the Lord, your God or your fathers is giving you to possess. As long as you live on earth, you must destroy all the sites at which the nation. You are to dispossess worship their gods weather on lofty mountains and on hills and under a luxurious tree, tear down their altars, smash their pillars, put their sacred posts to the fire and cut down the images of their gods, obliterating their name for their, from that site.
And then it's saying, and don't do this to God. Don't do this to our God now. And you know, and then says, but look only to the site that the Lord your God will choose. Amidst all your tribes has this habitation right here that starts to say,
BENAY LAPPE: where you should worship God is at the temple.
DAN LIBENSON: So the in context, what it's saying is that you should tear down the altars of the idol worshipers, and you should only worship God at the temple in Jerusalem.
The, the fact that, that here it says you should put their sacred post to the fire in verse three, that's just incidental. That's just saying don't. You know, that, that's just saying tear down, destroy their worship sites and burn the ones that burn. In other words, the trees are the burn. Right. The stones don't burn.
So, so the, the, the burning is just incidental. It's just saying, you know, get, destroy their altars and you should not worship God at alters you, you are not allowed to worship God anywhere other than the temple in Jerusalem. It doesn't, it doesn't, it's not actually saying here that you should not burn God Jewish stuff.
It just, you know. Right. I mean, you, you could, there's this, there's a 0.0001% chance that you could read it that way and it could, it hold the meaning just linguistically. Okay. But it, that's not in context of what it, what it's about. And so this is again, one of these like sort of deliberate mis quotations.
BENAY LAPPE: Yep. Great.
DAN LIBENSON: And, you know, and, and, and again, like it's not, it's not an important, right, because, because what's going on here is that Ravizza is saying. There never could possibly be a Jewish idolatry city that needs to be destroyed. How do I know this? Because it says, burn everything in such a city, and there would always have to be a meza there.
And you can't burn a meza. How do I know that? You can't burn a meza from a misquotation from the previous chapter. Right? So, so the whole thing, what if, if I read Deuteronomy 12 properly, you know, in quotes to, to, to not say that you're not allowed to burn a meza, then the whole rest of the reading falls apart.
And then I, I can destroy a Jewish idolatry city because it's actually okay to burn a meza. And so the whole art logical argument here rests on a misreading, uh, um, on a mis quotation. And everybody who read this knows it, right? Everybody, all, every rabbi who read this knows it. And, and, and so it's just another one of these cases where, you know, the, the wink or the, the signal to us is that this is how we do it, right?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. So you are helping me understand this piece of the text and the second verse that's brought in to say, and how do we know you can't burn a mezuzah? Doesn't feel rabbi ish to me.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? Because it's not a literalist read. And I'm wondering if this second verse is actually the editor, the the editor, bringing in that second verse to be, it doesn't feel like Ravi Lazar.
It's not an important point, Uhhuh, but, um, it's also, it's also introduced with, um, iv, which is an Aramaic. Introductory transition word, uh, which makes me think even more, it's possible that Azar didn't himself invoke that verse, but the editor felt the need to give a source for the idea that you can't burn a mezuzah.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And this is, you know, a forest read, maybe an accept, maybe one that was common, I don't know. But. I just, I just wonder if that maybe wasn't ra
DAN LIBENSON: but this particular read really calls to mind for me. The, in the, in the benzo mo, the wayward and rebellious sun one where the, the, the, the one that we did last week that where it's like, you know, the way that they're reading the verse, it means like, you should grab hold of him.
That means the parents all have to have hands, you know? Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Absolutely.
DAN LIBENSON: You listen to our voice, that means that they all have to be, they can't be a deaf mute, you know? It's a very strained, I mean, more than strained reading that is ultimately, you know, and here they didn't, this is what I was saying at the beginning.
They, they're not walking us through the entire. Way that you could possibly read this out of existence. They're just giving us one example here, and it's, and it's an extremely strained example, like that last example in the previous one. And, um, and, and really what it's saying here, what it's basically telling us is like, yeah, this is what you have to do.
Like if, for a case like this where we don't want anyone to get the idea. Look, I mean, again, it's relevant to what we're going through today in America because it's like we don't want anyone to get the idea that somehow it could possibly be valid to use violence to overthrow the capital and stop the counting of the electoral votes.
Like whatever you are reading, it's the constitution that you're reading. Some thinker that makes you think that somehow, right? 'cause they're saying the people, we're the people, the people rule, right? The democracy, the power flows from the people. These people work for us. And they said it when they occupied the capitol and they said that you work for us.
Right? And in somehow, in at least some of their heads, they were actually resting their, their, uh, beliefs that what they were doing was right on some kind of notion of the early revolutionary America saying, you know, we have to believe in this kind of right to revolution because we have to justify the revolution from Great Britain and.
200 plus years later, you know, we don't really want that to be used to overthrow the government of the United States. So you have to get to a point where you say, yeah, you know, I, yeah, I get that. There's some statements there, but we have to shut down the possibility that you could read that statement in a way that justifies violence.
Because we don't want violence internally, and we know that there's gonna be a lot of extremists who, you know, read this stuff and wanna have violence like Yal Amir, who killed Yak Rabin. We don't want that. So what we're gonna have to do in those cases where the Torah would seem to allow Jew ew violence, we're gonna have to get rid of that one.
Right? We're gonna have to shut that one down. And so this, so that's the motivation, I think. And this is the, the mechanism of saying, look, I, I'm not sure that I can, you know, exactly, uh, do that, you know, in, in some, uh, more limited way. So we're gonna have to put that in the extreme category here, like the Ben Sue and Marrero.
We're gonna use extreme readings. To legislate this out of existence and ultimately say that that's what God always wanted.
BENAY LAPPE: That's beautiful. Love it. And now comes the But wait a minute.
DAN LIBENSON: Yep.
BENAY LAPPE: But wait a minute. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. So now, so having done all that, uh, rabbi Yan is back. Um, my, my wife and I are always laughing.
We do the, the Dfi Me daily page, but of Talmud, because a lot of times there's the, the, the Zav, which is a person with gonorrhea basically, and he's constantly popping up in the Talmud, whereas I got this his back. So he's like Rabbi Y on his back, you know, he's the party pooper,
BENAY LAPPE: right? What's, what's a little toy that da
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
The uh, the jack in the box. Yeah, Jack in
BENAY LAPPE: the box. Here's the rub you wanna of the box.
So
DAN LIBENSON: he popped up rubbing, he says, this is not so, no, it's not true. Like I actually once saw an idol, you city, and I sat on its ruin. Right, the same, same exact quote, right. Is where he said, no, no, no, I, with the boy win rebellious sun.
I sat on his grave like, who this guy, you know, what is he doing walking around? You know? Um, but yeah. You know, so, so again, um, he, he, you know, your argument from last time was that this is the editor wanting, or somebody wanting to make sure that our takeaway from that is, is not to sort of whitewash history and say, we've always been good and this never happened at all.
Say, no, no, no. Like, uh, like, by the way, like, one of the questions for me is like, is the idea here that it's even more tragic because it actually was in the Torah to Dro and Kabels Klara, it was actually in the Torah in order to legislate it out of existence. But tragically it took a long time to, for us to legislate it out of existence.
And in the interim, like people actually died. In other words, it, you could read it two ways, right? One is that, you know, wink, wink, you know? No, no. Actually the original, it was in there to kill people and people died. Yeah. Now we wanna change it and we'll, we'll, we're gonna revise our sense of why it was put there.
Um, and yeah, it was tragic that people died, but you know, now moving forward, they won't. But an even kind of more tragic way to say it is that it was placed there by God, so that we would use our safara to notice how awful this was and legislated out of existence. But unfortunately, somebody didn't notice that it was awful and didn't use their safara, and they actually killed people.
BENAY LAPPE: That's beautiful. EEE. It works either way.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, but for me, the important part of Rabbi Yoan is saying it sets us up so much better. To make a better world moving forward if we know that it's not only legitimate to, but has been done in the past that we've taken that, which looks like God said to do and said, yeah, God said to do that, and we're not gonna do that anymore.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Well, not, there never has been anything. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, I, I wanna mention here, just again, a, you know, another tie to, to both the, what's going on now with the impeachment and also to Purim, because which is coming up, because I think that what we're looking at here is a case where, at least as of now in the Talmud, right, the rabbis are saying the way that a good person should read this line in the Torah.
As soon as you read something like this, your SVA antenna should go up. You should be alarmed. You should say not. Oh gee, God wants me to kill people. You should say, oh my God, how could, you know? How could God want me to kill? This can't be right. Right. I can't. And, and, and every motivation in your body should be to write this out of existence, to find a way to make it so that this terrible thing doesn't have to happen.
And I feel like what's going on around us in America today? You know, it's like, I think what we're seeing is that there's people, some of them are politicians, some of them are, many of them are not. Who their Sava is a miss. Right. They're, they're, they're doing things. I mean, look like it was in the testimony yesterday that one of the, um, Capitol police officers, I think was crying in the.
The capitol saying, I was called the N word 15 times today. Is this America? You know, in other words, like there are people who think that's somehow okay, they wait, their savara is, is damaged. Right? And, um, you know, and so, so the question becomes, you know, well that's really the most fundamental. How can we first cultivate people's sava people's goodness?
You know, people's ability to see moral problems as moral tragedies. Right? And then that's step one. And then step two is, and when they do. What are we supposed to do about it? And that's where, you know, for me, the Purim thing that I've been thinking about so much lately is this line, which, you know, I, I, I wanna look at it so that I can see, can it hold a translation that I really wanna really emphasize.
But it's this line where Mordecai goes to Esther and he's saying, you know, you, you need to do something to um, save the Jews. You gotta go to the king and tell him that Haman has this sea plot and he is gonna kill the Jews, including your people. And if you don't, you know, the, we're all gonna die. Your, your family's gonna die every, you know, and, and, uh, and he says, you know, in the traditional interpretation is perhaps it is just for this moment that you have arrived at this position.
And that's a nice line. But another way to think about the line is that what's the point of your having reached this position if you're not willing to, to, to take the chance that you might be hurt to, to implement what you have are in a position to be able to do. And maybe you'll save us all and maybe you'll be killed and you won't save us all.
But if this, if a, if a situation where saving us all is in play is not a situation where you're willing to take that risk, then there never was any point in your having been there in the first place. And, and that's what I wanna say to all these politicians who I believe they, some of them, they're sava.
They do know that these things are wrong. And when the point comes to say that the future of democracy in America is at stake, the republic itself is at stake, then it doesn't matter that, you know, if you are voted out of office, you might not be able to do other good. You know, which is, I think the justification that a lot of them say it's like, but no, but there's a moment that comes when your far has to tell you.
Like, this is when you sacrifice yourself or you take that risk. Right? And, and so that's for me, like what, what's coming up in, in all this is, is saying let, like, I think what the rabbis are wanting us to do is to read these lines in the Torah. And say and and say, oh my, I cannot, this is the moment, this is the moment where I can't allow this to continue anymore.
And again, I wanna bring it into things like, you know, for me, whether it's, whether it's homosexuality or inner marriage or the environment, I mean, I think there are things that we now can start to recognize that have been there all along, that maybe in previous generations, their Sava hadn't yet been cultivated such to see that this was a problem and now ours hopefully has been, but that's only half the game.
Then you have to say, and now I have to step up and do something about it.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
I think that's what the Talmud is trying to get us to do. It's trying to get us to be the, that kind of person who. Is morally sensitive enough to notice what needs fixing, courageous enough to do it, and informed enough to know that we stand on the shoulders of people who have done it this way, this way, this way, this way.
And here's the instruction manual. Mm-hmm. And go do it.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I think that's, that's the whole point.
DAN LIBENSON: There's actually, there was one thing that I wanted to point out before we move on to the second example in Deuteronomy 13, because I just noticed it. You know, by the way, again, like we've said this on the show a few times, when the Torah, when the Talmud quotes something from the Bible, go check the quote, you know, and don't normally go check the quote.
Check the quote in its immediate context, you know, the verses that surround it. But sometimes, and I, and I didn't do this on purpose, I did this because in Safaria it's easier to just put the chapter in and then to like delete the lines that you don't want. And so oftentimes I'll just happen to kind of scam through the whole chapter.
And Deuteronomy 13, this is where that, uh, the, the case mm-hmm. Of the IHA is, um, is, is the fir very first line of Deuteronomy 13 is, oops, hold on. Sorry. Um, is, be careful to observe only that which I enjoin upon you, neither add nor take away from it. Mm-hmm. So, so in other words, arguably this is one of the lines in the Torah that most explicitly says, don't change the Torah.
And this is the case where. Where the Talmud is taking as one of the examples where they're gonna write something outta the Torah, and that might be an accident and it might be on purpose, you know? And, and we've also been talking about Purim, you know, because we, I think in our episode too, we talked about that case where the, the mountain is held over the Jews and God says he's gonna drop it on them if they don't, uh, observe the tow.
And then ultimately the proof text, why they ultimately accepted it is from the Book of Esther. And you said that that's kinda like citing the Flintstones. It's like the whole point that you cited the book of Esther was itself. Showing that you're not serious about what you're about to say. 'cause we know the book of Esther, the satire, and here it, it feels to me like it's not an accident to pick a case from exactly the part of the, they didn't have necessarily chapters back then, you know, but, but from exactly the part of the Torah where this famous line says that you shouldn't change anything in the Torah, and we're gonna take something from, you know, 30 lines later as our case for where we're going to write something outta the Torah.
I don't, to me that doesn't feel like an accident.
BENAY LAPPE: I love that. I never noticed that. And I think you're, you're probably right, a, as my teachers always reminded me, they knew the Torah by heart much better than we did. So it, it would've pinged for them immediately where this verse came from.
DAN LIBENSON: Yep. Uh, and, um, it's, and it's actually only like 13 lines, not 30 lines, so Yeah.
It's very, very close. All right. So let's, uh, jump to the next, uh, uh, case. Um, which is something. So, so here it is in, um, same page, 171 A. The Gamar asked a similar question in accordance with whose opinion is that? Which is taught in a, in another bright, there has never been a house afflicted with leprosy of the house.
We'll talk about that. Uh, and there never will be one in the future. So there's an idea in the, for what's, what's the
BENAY LAPPE: deal? Yeah,
DAN LIBENSON: yeah. So, so what was leprosy? The has, so there's an idea of leprosy is not clear that that's the right translation of the word in the to ra, but there's like some kind of skin disease that the Torah calls Rah, and they also talk about it rahs that you can, that your house can get.
It's not clear to me if they mean it's the same exact disease or they just mean that in the same way. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a metaphor. It's, or it's a, you know, it's language. Like, I can't think of an exact word, but it's like language, like saying you, you have a skin disease on your skin and when your house gets, you know, stuff growing on it, that.
Analogous. It's also a kind of a disease of the house. Not necessarily, it's saying it's the same bacteria, you know? Um,
BENAY LAPPE: it's always struck me as black mold.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, well, that's what I think. I think it's mold, right? Yeah. I, I think mold, you know, I think they're talking about mold. And by the way, I think that's actually part of why, what the issue is here, but they're, they're talking about, you know, your house gets, gets moldy, bad, bad, bad kind of mold and, uh, they're calling that leprosy of the house.
Right? But, um, and,
BENAY LAPPE: and they probably knew that this, there, uh, as people generally know, there are certain molds that are harmless and there are certain molds that are actually quite deadly and dangerous to people's health. And Yeah. So it's this a dangerous thing,
DAN LIBENSON: right? And in the book of Leviticus chapter 14, there, there's a whole long thing.
You know, we're not gonna read all the details of it, but, you know, the bottom line is like that. You, you, you might have to even. Destroy the whole house to get rid of this leprosy of the house. You, maybe you can just replace some stones, maybe you can not do anything, and then we'll come back next year.
But it's very possible that you have to actually destroy the house. Um, and yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Are we gonna look at the verse where it talks about this house?
DAN LIBENSON: We're going to, when we get to it in the chapter. Lemme get alud. Lemme Okay,
BENAY LAPPE: great.
DAN LIBENSON: But we're not, we don't have to like, read the whole chapter from Leviticus.
Yeah. Um, go ahead.
BENAY LAPPE: But the door calls for the house to be destroyed, right?
DAN LIBENSON: In certain cases. Yep.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, great.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, okay, so the, so the Talmud here is saying, this is another case where there was never such a thing, you know, there, there there's never been a, a house that, that needs to be destroyed because of leprosy of the house.
And why then was that passage written about in the Torah? Same reason. So you may expound upon it and receive a reward and they say, and, and you know, is there an opinion that. You know, is there, show me where somebody did legislate that out of opinion in accordance with whose opinion is this? They say it's in accordance with the opinion of Rabbi Azar, son of Rabbi Shimon.
As we learned in a Mishna that Rabbi Azar son of Shimon says, A house never becomes impure with leprosy until a mark about the size of two split beings is seen on two stones in two walls that form a corner between them. The mark being about two split beans in length and about one split bean in width.
So, so, you know, the idea here is like, go back to the benra mare, you know, the idea is like, yeah, there could be such a, but only if he eats a certain amount of wine, Italian wine, and a certain amount of, you know, it's not quite as, you don't I think, necessarily see the absurdity quite as much in this example, but it's like, it has to be exactly a corner.
There has to be exact size. It has to be on the either side, you know, right here.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. This is the, this is the mold. Having had to drink a tarte, eat a tar mar meat and drink a half a logue of Italian wine. Right. It, it is the same kind of absurd and unlikely to ever occur definition of what it means to have a moldy house.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. And so, um, so,
BENAY LAPPE: and I'm, I'm guessing, I'm guessing it was pretty difficult to have your house be destroyed and be able to afford another house. And this had, you know, the idea of. Commanding you to destroy your house in times where there was probably a lot of mold.
DAN LIBENSON: Yep.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, was just untenable and unsustainable for human beings.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, that's what I think the issue is here. I mean, right. And, and this is where, like I come back to my hypothesis about certain cases being particularly significant because the regular people. Can read them or can hear them in the synagogue. And so I think the case here is that somebody goes to shul, you know, in, in, in, uh, whenever Leviticus is read, you know, like April, you know, something like that, you know, probably right spring when mold is starting, right?
I'm thinking like, when is Leviticus red, you know, in the, in the spring, right? So I, you know, and it's probably a situation that a lot of times right around that week, you're starting to see some stuff on your walls, you know, and you, and says, and you shall destroy this house. And people are like going to the rabbi, like, I, I think I have to destroy my house, you know, but I can't afford that.
You know, what should I do? And they're freaking out and somehow they have to say like, no, no, don't worry about it. That's not, that's, this is not what they, there's molds not
BENAY LAPPE: God said, but the Torah says,
DAN LIBENSON: um. And so you could, you could, one option is to say, oh, that's not rasad. It's a different thing. This is just, you know, mold, whatever. But, but you know, you could say like, okay, well, it would be easier to say, oh, that actually never happened. Right? Um, so, so what is the reason for the statement of Rabbi Alazar, son of Rabbi Shimon?
Um, and, uh, he's looking at Leviticus chapter 14, uh, where this is talking about verse 37, where in that part it is written wall. And in another part of the, uh, verse, it is written walls. Uh, we'll look at it in a second. Oh, well. So let's look at it now. So, in Leviticus here, here's the verse that, that they're referring to.
Uh, verse 37, it says, if, when he examines this means the priest examines the plague. Uh, the leprosy, the plague in the walls of the house is found to consist of greenish or red, his streaks that appear to go deep into the wall. So, you know, here, there, this is just the description of like, this is how the doctor comes right in.
In this case it's a house doctor, you know, a priest. And he said like, how do you know if it's leprosy of the, so he's like, well, if he, when he examines the walls, he, he notices that there's these green and red streaks that go into the wall. Um, you know, obviously the most straightforward reading here is that he looks at all the walls and if he notices on one of the walls that there's this green and red mold stuff, then he knows that it's got the disease.
But the Talmud is reading it to say that, no, he's looking at the, it says walls and wall in the same verse. Right? And so they must be specifically talking about a corner. Because only, only a corner would be a place where there would be a wall and walls.
BENAY LAPPE: It it, it reminds me of the old joke. When is a door, not a door when it's a jar?
Like what are two walls? One wall. Oh, that's only at the corner.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So I
BENAY LAPPE: don't know. Somehow this is the, the pet fish doctrine. I dunno. Okay, good.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, so the comment is saying it's written wall and in another part of the verse is written walls. Which wall is like two walls? You must say it's a corner, you know.
No, totally. Which, which door? It was door. Not a door when it's a Right, which wall is like two walls at the corner. So that's how you know that it, that this is only if it's in the corner, number one. And by the way, like what does it matter if it's, if you have to destroy your house because it has, you know, black mold then.
You know, it just doesn't matter whether it's in the corner. It's like, if it's, so the whole idea here that somehow the fact that it's in the corner matters is absurd itself. Uh, other than as a reading, but as a concept. It's, it's absurd. Right. Um, so, uh, so it was taught in a, uh, bright, uh, the Rabbi Center, rabbi Saddo.
So there was a place in the area of Gaza and it was called Ris Ruin. Um, and, uh, oh, so I guess, I guess this is, these two are, are part, so I guess these two, uh, parts here are kind of like, I sat on, its, I sat on its grave. I sat on its wall. So, so just to stop, yeah. Before we get there, the, the first part is just that the, the bottom line here is that this is another case of an absurd reading.
To try to legislate this out of existence. And, you know, I think we agree that the reason to legislate it out of existence is because the rabbis don't want people destroying their houses or maybe other people's houses or being nervous or upset that God wants 'em to destroy their house, but they can't afford it.
And so they're, you know, who knows what they're gonna do, steal whatever they might do. They don't want any of that bad stuff. Just like they don't want the violence of, you know, thinking that God wants me to kill somebody who's engaging in idolatry or to kill my son who's, you know, wayward. Uh, and, and sort of, and, but since it's explicit in the Torah and the people might ask about it, know about it, we have.
Essentially legislated out of existence and, and, um, be really firm about that and say that really it's only there to be legislated out of existence. And then, you know, the hammer gets strapped again with these cases. It's not Rabbi Onan this time, uh, that say, but wait a second. There was, I do know about a case like that.
So Rabbi there, son of Rabbi had Oak says there was a place in Gaza and it was called the Lepers Ruin. So I think that probably was a place that Right. And then, uh, rabbi, she, one of the village of said, I once went to the Galilee and I saw a place that was being marked off as an impure place. And they said that that was where the stones afflicted with leprosy were cast.
So in other words, that that suggests that this actually did happen.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. So getting back to the example or the connection that you made to violence in the Capitol and you know, this is my house and revolution.
These Postscripts, the tonton, and then these other guys, these postscripts, I think are speaking to the danger of closing down the possibility of horrible things by saying, we've never done that. We don't do revolutions, we never did. That might help at this moment, but there's a danger in saying that.
DAN LIBENSON: Yep.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, and, and, and this, these postscripts are trying to, I don't know, help us learn to manage the really difficult reality of
both what was, and knowing when to, to actually, um. Make radical cha. I don't know. I'm losing my train of thought. What am I saying?
DAN LIBENSON: No. Well, I'm not sure what you're saying, but No, I mean, but I think, I think that the, I think that the, the connection to what we're going through right now is like, I mean, we do, look, we did have a revolution and Thomas Jefferson wrote stuff about how it's actually good to have a revolution every, I forget if he said 50 years or something like he, but that was a different time, you know, that was, that was before we had 50 states and had the entire continent and had this whole bureaucracy and had all these things like this, this, it's the way that a modern state is 200 years later.
It's probably not, I don't think Thomas Jefferson, if he were to come back from the past, would, would look at America today and say we should have another revolution. Even if he disagreed with the policies it, but he said it in his time and it was the right thing to do. You know, again, arguably, I mean, probably.
Back then to have a revolution against Great Britain. But there's a danger in that. And so one way to say it is like, oh, we never, we never were for revolutions, but if we were never for revolutions, then how do we have an independent United States? So we, so that can't be right, but we're gonna have to say we're not for revolutions anymore.
Or,
BENAY LAPPE: or, yes, you actually can't have a real, but you shouldn't write. Now this isn't, this isn't the thing, and this isn't the time, and this isn't the enemy. It, I, I think that for me, that's the point. It, it's like my old, you know, my, my, my realization, um, that the tradition, that the, the important move is not to say, can we or can't we?
Can we radically overturn Torah? Can we radically change the tradition? Of course we can. The question is, should we on this issue or that issue and it's easier to live with? No, you can't because then you can stop thinking. You can rest, you can relax. You don't have to roll up your sleeves. You don't have to be in pain over what isn't right.
You can't, your hands are tied. It's much more difficult to live with. You can, because then you have to constantly be in conversation with, should I hear, should I hear? You know, is this the moment that I should roush va kakar? But I think that's what we have to do. We have to live with that. Yes, we can.
Should we now? Um, yes. Revolution has to be part of our vocabulary. Is now the time? Is this the cause? Is this the enemy? You have to be able to say no.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm.
BENAY LAPPE: Sometimes. In order to meaningfully be able to say yes, but to say no, it never was. This is impossible. That's, it's both untrue, violent to the past and doesn't allow us to have this mechanism that we use very thoughtfully, very rarely, very.
Right. I don't know.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. And, and, uh, and on the flip side, I'm also thinking about this question of, in a world where it's not so clear anymore that we have an elite and the umra, you know, the people, how, how does that change some of these analyses? And I, I don't have a clear answer on that right now for Judaism or America, but it's interesting to think about a world in which you can't, you can't fool people.
And by the way, you never. You never, were trying to fool at least a certain part of the people. It's just the part of the people that you shouldn't, you're not trying to fool, is now grown. And so how does that change the dynamic of everything? And on the one hand, the, the danger is, is that more people, they're like more cases that are analogous to the person who heard it read in the Torah, because people know a lot more stuff.
And so a lot more people can come and say, well, I know that Thomas Jefferson said X, or I know that Thomas Payne said x. And so we, and we can't shut that down by just saying, oh yeah, but uh, you know, some, you know, Marbury versus Madison, you know, some great lawyer law case from the past said, you're wrong.
And you're like, oh, I guess I'm wrong. I, I didn't know. It's like, that person's gonna fight you. And so there's gonna have to be a new way of talking that says, you know. Yeah, I know you read that. I know that's real. Um, and I also. Think that what it's really, uh, you know, or we have to cultivate society in which we could say, but what it's really about is, is that with what you're saying is the should, should we, you know, is those, those deep questions?
And let's have that conversation before, before we start, you know, quoting or misquoting texts and, and then let's figure out what to do with the text later. Uh, and I go back to where we started. I mean, I kind of appreciate the possibility that after the fact you may wanna misquote the text in writing the history book so that you can maintain some continuity, but don't delude yourself or others to think that that was how we actually arrived at the decision of what to do.
We arrived at the decision of what to do based on our sari.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: So, uh, we'll be back next week. Um, uh, I think at our usual time we're actually gonna prerecord that, but we'll put it out on Facebook. We, we, we're gonna have a guest and, and we'll, we'll put that at the usual time and just wanna let people know.
We'll say it again next week, but that after next week, I think we're gonna be switching to a different two, two hours earlier when we're recording live. You can still watch it at the same time because it'll be on Facebook or on our website, oral alma.com. Uh, and you can still watch it at the usual time if that works better for you.
But if you want to, and you're available, we're gonna for a bunch of weeks, we're gonna be recording a couple hours earlier, uh, because, uh, Bennet's gonna be teaching a class at this time. Um, so hopefully it shouldn't ma really matter for anybody. But, uh, just letting you know. Don't be surprised if it pops up on your Facebook two hours earlier in a couple weeks.
All right. So we'll see you next week.
BENAY LAPPE: Bye, Dan. Thanks.
DAN LIBENSON: Bye.
DAN LIBENSON: Thanks so much for joining our chevruta today! We hope you’ve enjoyed learning with us… and with the Talmud. You can find links to the source sheets for all episodes in the show notes and on our website at oraltalmud.com. Your support helps keep Oral Talmud going. You can find a link on the website to contribute. We’d also love to hear from you! Email us with any questions, comments, or thoughts at hello@oraltalmud.com. Please, share your Oral Talmud with us – we’re so excited to learn from you. The Oral Talmud is a joint project of SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva and Judaism Unbound, two organizations that are dedicated to making Jewish texts and ideas more accessible for everyone. We are especially grateful to Sefaria for an incredible platform that makes the Talmud available to everyone. It’s free at sefaria.org. And we are grateful to SVARA-nik Ezra Furman for composing and performing The Oral Talmud’s musical theme. The Oral Talmud is produced by Joey Taylor, with help from Olivia Devorah Tucker, and with financial support from Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah. Thanks so much for listening–and with that, this has been the Oral Talmud. See ya next time.
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