The Oral Talmud Episode 47: The Maidservant’s Moral Power (Ketubot 104a)
SHOW NOTES
“This story raises the questions of who's in our community, who can be in our community, and who’s svara should we be listening to? The answer is much broader on all of those questions than we typically think. She changed the entire tradition. She changed how we think about prayer and life and suffering and our role vis-a-vis God and what should happen in the world because we listened to her, we listened to her svara.” - 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.
The most powerful rabbi in the world is dying and everyone around him is fighting to keep him alive. Prayers are flying, desperation is rising, and no one is willing to let go. No one, that is, except the one person who sees what’s actually happening.
In this episode, Benay and Dan dive into a story that flips everything: authority, compassion, even what it means to do the “right” thing. A nameless maidservant dares to break ranks, not out of rebellion, but out of clarity. In doing so, she exposes a deeper truth that the sages can’t see. This isn’t just a story about death. It’s about who gets to decide what mercy looks like and whether moral courage sometimes means going against the very tradition you’re trying to honor.
This week’s text: Ketubot 104a
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.
-
DAN LIBENSON: This is The Oral Talmud - Episode 47: The Maidservant’s Moral Power.
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 most powerful rabbi in the world is dying—and everyone around him is fighting to keep him alive. Prayers are flying, desperation is rising, and no one is willing to let go. No one, that is, except the one person who sees what’s actually happening.
In this episode, Benay and I dive into a story that flips everything: authority, compassion, even what it means to do the “right” thing. A nameless maidservant dares to break ranks—not out of rebellion, but out of clarity—and in doing so, she exposes a deeper truth that the sages can’t see. This isn’t just a story about death. It’s about who gets to decide what mercy looks like—and whether moral courage sometimes means going against the very tradition you’re trying to honor.
DAN LIBENSON: Hello everyone. I'm Dan Levison and I'm here with Bene lpi, as always for this week's episode of the Oral Talmud. Hey Bene.
BENAY LAPPE: Hey, Dan. How are you?
DAN LIBENSON: I'm good. And we are here at our, our usual, at our new time or new temporary time, which means that my hair is wet and, um, and mine too. And we're, and we're, we're, you know, kind of getting, uh, you know, it's, I was gonna say like, uh, as painful as it might be for you to watch this show two hours earlier than usual.
Painful for us, but no, uh, it's good. And, uh, and folks who are sort of surprised that this just popped up on Facebook and are expecting it in two hours, you could come back in two hours and watch it then when it's more convenient for you. So, uh, anyway, we're, we're here for a couple months at this hour at least, uh, for scheduling reasons, but we're happy to be here at any time.
So Renee, um, today, so, so just a couple. I mean, we have some, uh, some fun, uh, great guests coming up, starting next week. So we're really excited about that. We have a constitutional law professor coming on to talk with us about constitutions and interpretation of constitutions and comparing that to the Talmud.
So we're really excited about that. And then we have some more, you know, Talmud scholars coming up, so it'll be great. And we're gonna continue studying these texts interspersed with those. So today we, we have a, a text that is from the Tractate of Katu Boat 1 0 4 A, and it is the story that pertains to the death of Rabbi Yei, who, I just wanna say a couple of words of introduction about him.
Uh. Because I'll, I'll, I'll say this. I, I don't know that I, um, said this, I probably did early on in this show, but I translated a novel by Yohi Brandis, who's an Israeli novelist. It's called The Orchard, and it's about the early rabbis of Yavneh. And uh, for me, as someone who had studied Talmud before, it was transformational to read that book and translate that book because all of a sudden these names, which I just kind of.
I would like skip over the names. Usually, you know, you're like, like so and so said in the name of so and so, and then they said something and you would read what the thing that they said. And somehow the names were just such a jumble and so confusing and you were just kinda like, well that's just filler.
And um, and then when I read the novel. I understood. Like she was tying together this se, you know, rabbi Zer says this over here and says this over here. And actually those actually are aligned. They make sense, you know? And so then it's actually important to know who Rabbi Zer was. I, it was, it was just changed everything for me.
And it, it gave me a sense of like these people as characters in a story that were playing a role and maybe that role is historical and maybe that role is just, okay, who's Rabbi Elliot are supposed to symbolize in the Talmudic landscape? You know? And, and, um, it, it may be that it's like poorly written, poorly edited in that that doesn't like, pop off on its own, right?
I mean, you, you could argue, or you could argue that, you know, I was a bad reader. Um, and they actually are bending over backwards to constantly be telling you which character is saying what, right. So, so, uh, in any event, I, I'll just note that the. That, that experience was so transformational for me that I actually neglected in the translation to suggest something which other readers then suggested, which would've been a great idea, which would've been to include a kind of glossary of who's who in the book.
And, and my experience had been, oh, that I don't need that because that's exactly what the book is doing for me. But I didn't realize that others who hadn't already kind of been familiar with these kind of names, even though they didn't really know who they were, that they would've been encountering these people for the first time and would've had that same sense of confusion, like, who is this for?
Because their name all starts with rabbi, you know? So it was like very confusing to people. Right. But anyway, um, so I, do you have something to say about that and, and then we can talk about
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Well, here on my desk, I always have my who's who. Um, that gives some stories and background. This one was poor.
This one, you know, almost starved because he was sitting on the roof, you know, and in the wintertime he almost froze while he was needing to, you know, listen to the, I wish he had pictures. Picture. Although after reading your, uh, book or your translation of the orchard, I now have a picture of Rabbi Kiva in my head that I can't get outta my head.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, but you're right. I think I, if you think that the editor of the Talmud assumed you were gonna learn the whole thing, you actually can put together a, a sense of their personalities. When you read, oh, rabbi Ra, I know Rabbi Ra, he was the one who used to walk in front of the home of someone who had heard him before.
Yo Kipp, oh, I have a sense of what kind of guy he was. I just learned about him last night and another so, so it, but it takes a lot of attention. To put together the personality profile or to imagine who they're,
DAN LIBENSON: yeah. And, and by the way, like I, that book that you held up who's, who's who in the Talmud? Is that what it's called?
Yeah. I think it's extremely expensive. Like, I, I think I tried to like get it and I was like, oh, I'm not paying that.
BENAY LAPPE: It's about $50.
DAN LIBENSON: Oh, I thought it was more That's, that's expensive. Terrible. But the, um, but there are other books too. There's there and, and there's, there's a series of books by, um, by, uh, Benny Lau called The Sages.
And there's, and that's a little bit more. It's not just biographies, but, and, and then there's like, uh, there's a bunch of others you're holding up one or That's a Hebrew
BENAY LAPPE: one. Yeah, that's a Hebrew one. Yeah. Yeah. There are a bunch.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, there are a bunch. There's one called, called the Sages. There's another, there's, there are a bunch of them.
And, and I would suggest that for folks who are getting into Talmud learning, it's, it's worth uh, getting one of those. It's a really helpful reference and, um. And, and a as is just studying Talmud. I, I remember we were doing the daily Talmud page, OMI, and there's this whole thing about Rav Papa, I forget which, which track date it's in maybe, and that he was kind of like a bumbling sort of guy or something like that.
And that, and that was like striking to me because what the sort of, um, refrain that you say when you complete a track t date has to do with Rav Papa and all his descendants. So in some ways he is like a, an important guy, but he is kind of like not talked about that respectfully in, in this part at least.
So there's all kinds of interesting things that that lens can give you. Uh, so just about Rabbi Nessi here, just to set this, uh, the, the stage for this, uh, text that we're gonna study, he, uh, had a, so first of all, I'll just note in the orchard, I, I really don't wanna give any spoilers, but he actually has a significant character in the orchard, although he's not actually.
In most of the book, but, but it is sort of, uh, arguably about, uh, Yei. So I'll tease that for readers out there. He is the person who's sort of famous in, in the world. You know, if you know who Rabbi NuSI is, you know that he's the person, uh, known to be the compiler of the mishna, what that means exactly. A little bit unclear because the Mishna was oral for a long time, even after that quote compilation.
It wasn't like he sat down and wrote a book, but he somehow decided what was gonna be elevated to this category of the mishna, this important sort of collection of, of laws and practices and, um. That's his kind of, from a professional standpoint, that would basically be his professional biography. Uh, he, you, you talk about how you have this imagining of him that he was like living at this time where maybe people are starting to forget things or was kind of a little chaotic.
And he was just running around the Northern Galilee and just asking people like, what do you do? What do you do? What do you do? You know, and then he was kind of deciding what was the best stuff and he, he was, you know, he said, well, we're gonna put this in the submission.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: You know,
BENAY LAPPE: he, he really created the new cannon.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And as, who is it that, that wrote the New Cannon just last year? Was it, you had
DAN LIBENSON: and Claire different.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Um, I imagine they're, they're both, I imagine they're getting pushback
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: From calling their book to New Canada. They talk about that a little bit. And I imagine Robbie Nessi also was getting some pushback because he was saying, you know, of all the things we do.
In all the variety of ways we do them, this is gonna be the, the, the official way to be Jewish. Right. So that was a pretty bold move on his part.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. And I'm thinking, oh, go ahead.
BENAY LAPPE: I, I and, and I think that's the right thing to do periodically, and I happen to think we are in another time when it's probably time
DAN LIBENSON: uhhuh,
BENAY LAPPE: you know, to make this bold declaration.
This is the shape of Judaism that I propose. And some of it's old stuff and some of it's tweaked stuff and some of it's new stuff. We're, we're it trying out and we hope is gonna take and stuff that we do just because we're American. But I, I think it's time for another, this is it. And let's not pay so much attention to all the other stuff because traditions get too big and too complicated and you forget what it's really about and what the.
Core foundational principles and values are, I think we need a new restatement.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. It's interesting. Like I, I am a few minds about it. I, I, on the one hand, I think that, and on the other hand, I'm just thinking to our conversation with Man fish and thinking about that the real authentic Talmudic Judaism is one that doesn't resolve things.
And, and yet there's also, uh, and I, but I've been holding that for weeks now and I've been thinking about, you know, it's, it's, on the one hand, it's true that the Talmud in its sort of purest form, is trying not to decide matters of controversy, but it's also. Kind of drawing lines or, or reaffirming lines or like you say, rest statement restating lines that are, that kind of have emerged already and that nobody at least in their corner of the world is disputing.
And, and so it's, so that's, that's actually is deciding a lot of things. It's actually, we, we could maybe, uh, in a future week we should call in a, uh, critical legal studies scholar, because I think there's a lot of, uh, work today in the legal academy that that's kind of about that. It's about, you know, on the one hand making a distinction between the really controversial matters where you can't necessarily resolve them from within the system.
But there's still a world of matters that society more or less agrees upon, or at least like I say, the, the, the part of society that you really wanna be writing for. And there you actually are. Defining, okay, this is who we are. And, um, so, and by the way, like I, I've actually been thinking about that a lot in terms of our time too, saying like, is this a, actually I was in a meeting recently, it's like, is this a yna moment and in our time today?
And, and one of the things that I said, I think there's nuance to this, and I'm not sure I totally agree with what I said, but I, I said, um, that if the temple. That the, the, the, the, the pre predicate for the Yavneh moment is that the temple was destroyed and that the temple form of Judaism was destroyed.
If you believe that rabbinic Judaism has been destroyed, you know, or is on the process of being destroyed, I don't mean destroyed it, collapsing, however you wanna say it, uh, then it could be a yna moment. But if you don't believe that rabbinic Judaism is on the decline, then it's not a yna moment by definition.
So don't call it that. Don't let, let's, let's not call everything a yna moment. If it's a yna moment, that means we're, we're saying that the previous form of Judaism is not going to be the future form of Judaism, and most people aren't willing to admit that,
BENAY LAPPE: right?
DAN LIBENSON: It's not AAV moment. I, I think so.
BENAY LAPPE: Until you're ready to declare that over.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: You, you know what that reminds me of? I, I'm in this wonderful program that, um, April Baskin and others are doing called, uh, whiteness Verta. Produced by her Joyous Justice, um, organization. And one of the ideas that came up in one of our sessions last week was that you can't have PTSD until the trauma is over
DAN LIBENSON: uhhuh.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? Like if the trauma traumatic. Exactly. You can't be post-traumatic until the trauma is over. And if the trauma is still going on, you can't even begin to deal with PTSD Uhhuh. So it's like what you're saying, it's like you can't have a moment until you declare that the former form of Judaism is over.
That that's a necessary condition to the reframing, the healing, the dealing with the new.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. And now if it is a Yna moment, and by the way, maybe that we should just have a conversation about this at some point, like without a text, like just sort of think this through. Uh, but if it is a yna moment, then you say, okay, who's going to Yna?
What's interesting, now I'm going back to the characters question because the characters that we have that went to Yavneh range from, you know, the, the radical Rabbi Mayer, or e you know, to the conservative, uh, rabbi, uh, Ishmael and, and Rabbi Elzer. And then, then on the one hand you have Alicia Beya, uh, also called, who is a radical.
And then he gets too radical and he's kind of out on the one end, on the radical, he's too radical for Yavneh. And then you, you end up with Zer getting excommunicated. 'cause it turns out that he's too conservative, right? And so on the one hand, you, you have this group who says in the beginning point, yeah, we believe that Temple Judaism is over and we're going to Yavneh.
But then it turns out that on both ends of the group, it it's not, it's actually not right. And so it is important to sort of understand who these characters are and, and why it ended up not right for them. And, and then you end up with even Rabbi Akiva, who's one of the more radical voices that ends up supporting the Barko Revolt, which is an attempt to kind of try to get back to the old version, right?
I mean, the whole idea of barko is eventually to rebuild the, the temple again and go back to that. So even the radical Rabbi Akiva you, you see to some extent is actually not quite done with, with, uh, temple Judaism. And, um, so, you know, then maybe even a Yna moment isn't really the moment. And really the moment is after the Barba Revolt.
You know, we could call that Usha, which was another city where, where some of the things were happening or, or a Babylon moment or, or whatever it might be. And, um, you know, when we use these, this terminology, I, I, I'm saying two different things, but they're connected. One is when we use this terminology, let's, and these metaphors and, and analogies, let's actually understand what we're really talking about.
And number two is that, uh, it is a good reason to understand these characters because a lot of these characters are like characters in our day. There are people like these, you could, you could say like, who today Bene Lapi. She's like, you know, rabbi Kiva, you know, uh, so and so is more like rabbi. But, um, you know, uh, I'll take that.
Well, you know, uh, anyway, but the, the, the, so it's helpful. It's helpful. So Rabbi uh, so he's a,
BENAY LAPPE: lemme just add one thing about moment question. Just as I came to realize that the crash moment isn't a moment but is preceded by a long period of crumble. I think the yna moment is also a span of time uhhuh, that there's a moment of beginning uhhuh and then there's a moment of, okay, this really is it.
There's no going back. And I think it was 2000 years ago between the beginning of folks while the temple was standing saying, I, I just don't believe this anymore. It's just not how I believe what I think God wants up until it's, there is no temple. It's no longer possible. And we've now given up trying to make that happen again.
So I think it's a it, the Yav moment is really a yavneh span.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, okay, good. And, and, and so is an interesting character. 'cause in a sense he represents that span because, uh, so he in a Right as the compiler of the mishna, in a way, he is the last rabbi of the pre Mishna era. Right. And he's the first rabbi of the post mishna, or we could call the Talmudic era arguably.
Uh, he, he is also the lineal descendant of Hillel, the elder that's Hillel of Hillel and Shamai. Right. And, um, Hillel, the elder lived in the time of the temple. Uh, he lived in the time of Herod. And, uh, Herod is the person who built the. What we call the, the, the late second temple, I mean, in essentially was the third temple.
He had actually raised the second temple to the ground, actually raised the mountain to rebuilt the mountain and put a new, you know, Roman style, more beautiful temple there. Uh, Hillel was alive during this period where Herod is creating, this, is building this, this fancy temple. And Hillel is basically arguably a dissident.
I mean, he's the, he's one of these early guys who's, it's crumbling for him. It's, he is not, he's not, he is, you know, he, he may or may not actually be in favor of that. Does he want it to end to be destroyed? Certainly not. But does he want it to, to end? I mean, maybe he sees it coming anyway. He is, you know, arguably, again, one of the founders of what we now understand to have become rabbinic Judaism.
He's an enormously important figure in the Talmud. Uh, uh, and um, and, and so his lineal line of descent is his son is named Shimon. Ben Hillel. The Simon, the son of Hillel. His son is Gamliel, the first, his son is Shimo Ben. Gael the first, his son is Goleal. I second his son is Shimo. Ben go the second and his son is Yei.
And so I don't know what that means. Makes it great, great, great. You know, but, but, um, but what that means is that, and, and. Could get translated different ways, but, but an ee was kind of the, like the person in charge. Um, sometimes it gets translated as the prince, but it doesn't mean the prince. Like we think it's a, the father is a king.
But in this particular case, it's not so clear that it's not a prince in that way. You, you could think of him a little bit as a prince in the sense of that he comes from probably the most, uh, the most, uh, you know, what do you call that? Like, uh, you know, the, the, the most
BENAY LAPPE: well connected or
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. You know, elite family in the rabbinic world.
And, um, and, and, you know, so he's, he's, he's a lineal, uh, descendant of that. And his, his also, his job is, you know, his office is, uh, this top guy, right? And so this is a very, very significant guy, no matter which direction. You, if you look at a, like, more progressive, you know, okay, this is a guy that, you know, started the Mishna, you know, but if you look in a more conservative way, well, this is the guy who was like, you know, for 200 years, he was the, his family was the top family in the, in the, in the place, right?
So this is very, very top guy. Say more about that.
BENAY LAPPE: I learned more about Youi than I ever knew from you right now. Thank you.
DAN LIBENSON: All right, good. So let's, uh, so let's jump into the text. So he's on his deathbed, or he's,
BENAY LAPPE: yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Very sick.
BENAY LAPPE: He's, he's on his deathbed and there are a few reasons why I love this text. I just wanna say what this, why this text for a moment before we jump in.
And I think there are three reasons. One is we're moving to this text because. Kind of in this arc that we are working out as we, you know, have our discussions. Each week we're, we're at the point at which we have seen how far works when it's named. We've seen how it works when it's so screamingly obvious.
It's at play like with the wayward and rebellious sun, even though it's not named. But now we're into examples of SVA working when it's very subtle and in an attempt to help us all, like develop SRA eyeglasses so that we can see it working in the tradition for, in my mind, the ultimate goal of gaining confidence that we.
Stand on a tradition that wants us to use our SRA and so that we can identify our SVA and go, oh, that's a actually a legitimate source. That's a legitimate thing to lead with. I, if it seems to disagree with the tradition as it's come down to me, I don't have to either take it or leave it the tradition and leave.
I can do what you know the rabbis did, which is take mys, farra, and. Critique destabilize, upgrade the tradition. So this is an example of spar working in a very subtle way, but once you learn how to see it, you, you can see it next. Uh, it's a text where the star of the show is a woman, and I think that's significant.
And finally, it is one of the go-to texts for anyone doing Jewish medical ethics. And we've already learned about the concept of Pi Nefe, this mandate to overturn any law in the Torah with three exceptions in order to save a life or prevent harm to a life. This is the text at the other end of the spectrum on medical ethics questions.
And I don't wanna give it away. You'll, you will see it when we get there, but, um, it's a very important text. For those issues as well.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so let's jump into it.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay,
DAN LIBENSON: so it starts here on the, on the day. This, again, this is Katu Boat 1 0 4 a. And just reminding folks that we have these, uh, safaria source sheet.
We have a running sheet for all our texts that are all in one sheet, but we also have individual short sheets for each episode. Now with the video there, with the source. So there'll be that for this right after, right after the show. Okay. So on the, on the day that Rabbi Yei died, the sages, by the way, the spoiler alert here, but uh, on the day that Rabbi Yei died, the sage is decree a fast and begged for divine mercy so that he would not die.
And they said, anyone who says that Rabbi Yei has died will be stabbed with a sword.
BENAY LAPPE: I wanna say that I've never really understood this line. It are they worried about are. It makes sense to me that they'd be worried. Let's not give him a khar. Right? Let's not like cast the evil eye on him. My grandmother very much believed in a khar.
You couldn't say something bad might happen or else it might happen. So I totally understand why, from a superstition point of view, they wouldn't want someone to say, oh, he's dying, or it looks like it's close, or he's gonna die less. He might like less that might push his death. But this looks like it's saying you can't say he died after he died.
I, I never understood that. What do you make of this?
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, I, I, I suppose it, it, it's, it's, I, I, I would think, I would think that it's, um, something along the lines of, I, I, it could be, it could be about like a superstition. I, I think that, um, like I, I think that maybe, maybe it's, it's suggests to me that the stakes are so high here.
They're, they're concerned that if, if word gets out that he's died, it would cause such panic and such.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: You know, that, that, that, um, you know, like I feel like there's some example that's come that's in my mind that I can't, there was actually something, I mean, you know, I remember that there was something, I mean, this is a, a much lower stakes kind of thing, but there was something not too long ago where the, um, I can't remember what her name is, but one of the actresses from the show, Charlie's Angels, and she was very sick and, and, uh, Twitter had, you know, put the word out that she died.
And there, you know, a lot of people were really sad and upset. And, and I think that actually her, her husband, her boyfriend hadn't been told, and he found out from Twitter and there was a whole thing. And then it turned out that she hadn't died, but like, then she died the next day, you know, meaning she was actually dying.
But there was just something about, you know, if somebody is on their deathbed, you know, just kind of stay out of it, you know, just kind of like, don't, you know, there's a lot at stake here. Let's be very, very careful. Uh, something like that, you know, like, I, I don't, it's hard to understand why they would be saying like, if he actually died.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. But you know, now that I've raised the question of is it about before or after? Now I'm remembering that after this soya that we're learning today, there are little stories of once he dies, people in a kind of a cagey way, saying something to convey that he died without saying he died. After which the listener, the person they're talking to says, oh my gosh, did he die?
And then the person saying, I didn't say it. You know what I mean? So I think they were concerned about saying he died after he died in, maybe it is like, like what you're saying, if like, God forbid a president. Should die. They, they probably wanna know the game plan uhhuh of like, who's in charge, what's
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh Uhhuh
BENAY LAPPE: to re, like you said, to reassure people before they know, you know, like, like what they say in England, don't they say, uh, queen, queen, queen is that long, live the queen.
Right. It's like you don't say one before you say the other way. You don't say you don't have a queen until you also say at the same time you have a new queen. Maybe it's that I, I'm not sure.
DAN LIBENSON: Interesting. I mean, it's also, but it's also, I love to look at those stories. It's also interesting what you, what you're saying, 'cause like maybe there is some.
Superstitious. I get also, that's making me think of, of uh, cases where other places in the Talmud are, I'm also even thinking about like the New Testament where, you know, people come up to Jesus and they say like, are you, you know, are you the Messiah? Are you the Lord? And he says, like, I didn't say it. You know, like, uh, right, right.
Are you, you said it, you know, you, you said that. And I always remember reading that and I'm like, what, what is that about? So, you know, but maybe like there was some sense of like, that's just so sort of not, we don't talk that way. Maybe for superstitious reasons. Maybe for practical reasons. Interesting.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. May now you're giving me the idea that maybe it is about a certain humility. Like it's, it's it's arrogant in the extreme to name, I dunno, I dunno. We'll leave this as an open question. We'll put a sticky on that. Open a sticky there.
DAN LIBENSON: All right. So the maid servant of Rabbi Huno Sea ascended to the roof and said.
The upper ones are requesting Rabbi Yehuda Hae and the lower ones are requesting Rabbi Yehuda Hae.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I'd love this. This is such a visual thing. I can picture her. Okay. So the maid servant is, uh, a woman. It's unclear to me whether she's Jewish or not. Lots of maid servants and servants were not Jewish, and it's not unheard of or that uncommon in the Talmud that their teaching becomes the teaching that influences their, you know, master the Rabbi.
And then he changes his mind. So, I don't know. Um, so she, she goes up to the roof and she's praying this is her prayer and what's going on in the scene? Is it it, she's talking about the lower ones, what she's talking about, and I think it's Rashi that clarifies it. She's about all of the students, disciples and followers of Robby Hui.
There must have been hundreds of them, that's my imagination. Hundreds or thousands surrounding his home, surrounding his bed, praying that he should live right there. Probably reciting Psalms and their hope is that he should not die. Right.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. And the story, that's true. I mean, I, I think we can think about these like Hasidic funerals and stuff where there's just like, you just imagine, you know, and imagine that probably when the re is dying, it's some in the, in the real case, I think that probably wasn't historically true, right?
Like historically, there probably were very few people around him in the
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Maybe there were a dozen people. I dunno.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. I mean, you often say like, when you're giving a talk, the number of rabbis were fewer than the number of people in this room right now. You know? And I think that's right, but it, but it certainly doesn't really matter.
And the story, I think that's the image that, that there's these. Huge numbers of people down below humans who say, please don't let this man die. We need him. And, and the, and the heavens, right? The upper ones are saying essentially God or the heavenly angels or whoever, you know, right. Are saying like, it's time for this man to come to us.
BENAY LAPPE: Right?
DAN LIBENSON: There's this tug war kind of,
BENAY LAPPE: right? There's this tug of war. The angels are sort of pulling rubi soul up. They're, they're, they're sort of saying, yeah, it's time.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And the people are saying, no, no, no. It's not time. Not now, not now, not now. And, and the handmaiden goes up to the roof and praise to God.
And she's saying, let those of, let the lower ones who are saying, keep him alive. Keep him alive. Win out over the angels who are saying, Hey, it's time.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Well you jumped the gun because we didn't read that part yet. But um. So, so, yeah. So then, so then the, the, um, so, so the maid servant says the, oh,
BENAY LAPPE: sorry, sorry, sorry.
I forget that. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: The, the maid servant one, the maid says the upper ones are requesting rabbi you to see, and the lower ones are requesting rabbi you to see may it be the will of God, that the lower ones should prevail over the, over the upper ones. So may it be May. So basically what that means is like, may he live right?
May he like, i, I just please let him live. Which of course is anybody's prayer. When somebody's dying, usually.
BENAY LAPPE: Yes. And I think that, I think that is the hava Amina
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: That this text is speaking to. Okay, so what's a hava? Mina Haina is that, which you would have said is the right thing to do had you not heard this text.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: It's speaking to some common understanding of what's right, and it wants to say no, what you thought was right isn't right. And lately I've been realizing that a Haba Mina, which we un typically understand to mean what you would've erroneously thought was true actually is, is what you were right to know was true yesterday.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm.
BENAY LAPPE: But today is no longer true. I think that is more of what, of how this dynamic works. When a text is saying, you know, you would've thought that thing, but you would've been wrong to think that the truth is you would've been right to think that that was the right thing to do yesterday went without changing what we think is right.
That's what this moment of this text is. It's a moment saying you thought that the right thing to do is to pray that somebody lived, um, as they're dying, not necessarily so as we'll see.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so.
So, however, when she saw how many times he would enter the bathroom and remove his fillin and then exit and put them back on and how he was suffering, and the explanation here is with intestinal disease. So I just wanna clarify what this image is about. So in the T, the at least, I mean, who knows, but at least in the talmuds imagination of these rabbis they would wear to fill in all the time.
And that was just sort of part of their, it wasn't just we, we think of people who wear to fill in that they only do it when they're going to prayers in the morning. But these are people, the, the idea here is that people wore to fill in all of the time. Oh, the entire day. Not at night, but in the day. And if you went to the bathroom, you had to take the fill in off and hang them on a hook outside.
And actually there's places in the Talmud where there's all kinds of concerns that people might take your T fill in and that maybe they would even take your to fill in and like, um. Uh, you know, uh, set you up as if you visited a prostitute because they would put the fillin in the prostitute's house.
You know, there's all kinds of like stuff going on with the fillin here, you know, as if you paid the prostitute with your fillin, you know, 'cause you didn't have any cash on you and things like that, you know? So there are all kinds of stuff about this, like what bad things could happen when you have left your fillin unattended.
'cause you've hung it up outside the bathroom. But the bottom line here is that a good Jew would wear to fill in all the time and would never wear the fillin in the bathroom. So if you have an intestinal disease where you have to go to the bathroom all the time, you're constantly putting it on, taking off, putting on, take it off,
BENAY LAPPE: right?
And let's remember that, that your fillin has, uh, a clef theme. It has, uh, parchments with pieces of the Torah written on it. So it's like little, little pieces of the Torah inside the toilet. And that can't go into a bathroom or a, a space that's not clean, just like your towel. Right. In a traditional shoul outside of the bathroom, you'll see lots of Taes hook, you know, draped over the banister.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: People take them off. Okay. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Their iPhone, but they're not wearing
BENAY LAPPE: love that.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, but, um, okay,
BENAY LAPPE: so, so what I, what I love about this piece of the text is that didn't everybody else see him also
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Struggling and suffering in pain to unwind his fill in each time he had to go to the bathroom and put it back on in pain. I love that. It, it's naming the handmaiden as the one for sure.
They all saw it, but it's, it's her that said, oh my god. It's in. I can't, I can't stand that. He should be, he should not be in this kind of pain and suffering. I need to do something to address his pain.
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh
BENAY LAPPE: it and
DAN LIBENSON: Go ahead. No,
BENAY LAPPE: you go it. It's like every time I see Spar at work in a text, I used to think it was only this person who's naming it who saw it, but not the problem.
Whatever the problem was, whatever the suffering was. And I feel quite sure that everyone was aware of the suffering, but it's the person who names it, who's saying, and this is intolerable. It can't be God's will to this continue. And I'm willing to overturn what our tradition says is right in order to fix that suffering.
And here the person doing that is this woman, is this handmade. And I just, I think that's. Beautiful. It doesn't seem surprising to me.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: At all of his students, you know, are around his bed thinking more about he should live, he should live, he should live than his suffering. I don't know, maybe I'm being too centered.
DAN LIBENSON: No, I, I think that, okay. Well, so a couple things. One, I think that's a beautiful read. And within that read, I think there are two significant things. One is that she's a woman and the other, and the, and the rest of the students are all men, by definition at that time. And the other one is that she's a maid servant, and the others are like aristocrats.
That's the word I was looking for before. Uh, or that they've somehow become, you know, elites. And so they're, they're like, and, and that it's actually the maid servant, the regular person, the woman
BENAY LAPPE: who, the marginalized person, the one who's not so caught into the system of it's all, this is what you do, this is what you have to do
DAN LIBENSON: well, and, and who sees the humanity of this?
Of this person who the others see as a, as a, as a role. You know, they see, he's our rabbi. She says he's a person who I care for. I see his humanity. They only are seeing what he represents or who he is professionally or to their, you know, and she only, she sees what's, what's true ultimately what's we, we, we are shown that she was, she's right.
But that, but that she sees what's true. I, I, so I accept your reading. I think it's beautiful that I would, I I was just thinking, and I I put it out as an alternative that's still very similar. It's one that, that they're not around his bed. They're, they're outside. They actually don't see his suffering.
They only know that he is dying and they're, and because they don't see his suffering, they, they only focus on the loss that they're going to have about his death. Uh, and only she, 'cause she is attending to him directly. She only, only she really sees his suffering. And either way, it's, I think the same takeaway, which is that only she sees him as a person.
And, uh, and that matters.
BENAY LAPPE: Mm-hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: So, so she sees this terrible sufferer that he basically, he's just, he can't get comfortable. He just is going to the bathroom. We have, we've had that feeling all of us in different times, you know, the LDR, but, uh, the uht MI, you know, but, um, but you know, not this sort of like existentially and she, she understands that this is just, he's, he's just suffering.
He's just suffering so much. Um, and uh, she said, so then she says, uh, after she sees how much he's suffering, she says, may it be the will of God that the upper ones should prevail over the lower ones.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: So she changes her prayer.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. And I, I imagine her going back up on the roof.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: And, and now she completely reverses her prayer in hopes that the angels win.
Yeah. The tug of war. And essentially she's praying that he should die.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. And the sages though, the, the other rabbis students, they would not be silent.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. But I wanna stay for a minute on the difficulty of praying that someone should die. Mm. I I just think it's both a very, um, it's a bold move. It's, it feels like guilt inducing.
It, it feels like a hard thing to do. I, I, I get it. Um, I really do get it. And I imagine that for sure in her time. And I think that's part of the point of the story. It was not seen as the thing to do. It was not seen as, okay, you can't pray that someone should die because God forbid that might hasten their death.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, and when we get to the question of how is this used in medical ethics, we're gonna come back to that question, but it, I, I think still, it's just a really hard thing to do. And the tradition then, after this story, deals with that question. Can you pray that someone should die? Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: I would just put out there also that she has a, a self, a self-interested reason also that he shouldn't die, which is like, he is her employer.
Like maybe she'll lose her job after he dies. So, so it's not like she and the rabbis are actually in the same position. Like they, they don't want him to die, uh, because it'll be bad for them in terms of he has an important role in their life. Uh, but, but ultimately she sees his humanity in a way that they don't.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, okay, so, okay, so, um,
so the sages would not be silent, meaning they would not stop begging for mercy,
BENAY LAPPE: right? So they're pulling on the other end of the rope, keeping azis soul, and this is also an, an important part of the text. What it's saying is, prayer is efficacious. When you pray that someone should stay alive, it it, I think the implication here is that it's working.
Her prayer that he should die is not working because their prayer that he should stay alive is stronger and their prayer is keeping him alive. That that's. Interesting. All by itself.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. And is it stronger because they're more of them? Is it stronger because they're sages and so they're, I, you know, again, if we look at these things as metaphorical literary ways, like these are the powerful people.
The, and you could say prayer is prayer, but you could say like, the powerful people have more power than the powerless people. That's our society today. You know, it's getting worse and worse. The, the consolidation of wealth. Like, we know that, you know, Jeff Bezos has a lot more power than, than any of us.
Not only because, not 'cause there's more of him. He is just extremely powerful, you know? And so if I, if I'm coming to, you know, again, we could, we could take this outta the realm of the, the heavenly, you know, I'm coming to Congress, you know, asking for a certain. Or, or even better, you know, I mean, African Americans are coming to Congress, you know, uh, trans folk are coming to Congress, you know, asking for changes to the law or this voting rights stuff that's going on now, you know, and, and, but, but powerful financial interests are on the other side, you know, they're more powerful.
And if we, and if it's just, we say this, we say that, then the more powerful are gonna prevail. So,
BENAY LAPPE: and I, yeah. And I dunno if it's more powerful or if it's more numerous.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: I'm not sure.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. Uh, but I think, you know, that's the question. And then, and there's no answer. I mean, we could, but what I, what I'm encouraging is that we do a little bit of translation here to.
That, that these, the, we can look at these in the simple, um, meaning of the case itself. Uh, but we can also see this as, and then, and then we could say that's somewhat, it's not relevant. I mean, it's relevant, uh, in terms of what we're gonna talk about with s Farah, but it's not relevant in terms of the case because we don't really believe that prayer is efficacious in that way anymore.
Uh, but if we translate this into other realms, then I think we can also see that just as a literary as a story, this is actually quite relevant.
BENAY LAPPE: And Ps I'm not sure if we believe, generally speaking, the prayer isn't efficacious. You know, when that's Yeah. I'll, I'll tell you, when someone I love is sick, I'm asking everyone I know to pray for them, and I am too.
Yeah. So I don't know what to do with that because it also doesn't fit in with my own theology. I don't think the world works that way. But, you know, when you're in a, what's it called? Uh, the what the. People who are fighting when they're in the foxhole.
DAN LIBENSON: Foxhole, yeah. There's no atheist in foxholes.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, exactly.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Or, or you know, it's like pascal's wager, it doesn't hurt, you know, but, um
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: You know. Okay. So, um, so anyway, so, so it's not working. So she is reversed her prayer. She's up on the roof having cha said, you know, no, he's suffering so much, uh, it's time for him to go. Which, you know, it's just interesting to, to just also think about like, that, that, that, you know, we've been talking about, you alluded to this at the beginning, but we, uh, when we first started talking about some of this stuff, we were talking about pfe, the idea of saving a life, being top, the top thing.
But then later we looked at texts that were more about the alleviation of suffering, and here we actually see a case where death and suffering are not aligned, you know, and that if that, that you can live with suffering or die. Without suffering, and at least in this maidservant calculus is in this end of life situation, it would be better to, to stop the suffering, which is irreversible, you know, I think in the story here.
And, um, and so that, so at that point, suffering the, the, either the end of suffering now comes to Trump, uh, saving a life at all costs, or, that's
BENAY LAPPE: right. That's
DAN LIBENSON: right. Better yet, I think actually might be that you thought it was about saving a life. No, that was just an application of the greater principle, which is the alleviation of suffering.
BENAY LAPPE: Oh, I like that. I like that.
DAN LIBENSON: And that's what I was saying last week or two weeks ago, you know, about like, you thought it was the, the, the written Torah and the Oral Torah. No, it's been savara all along. It's just been s far in the, in the form of a, of a written Torah and Sava in the form of an oral Torah.
And now maybe in the third era, it's savara abstract. We can, we, we, we, we are, we can have Sava live. Uh, justice Savara and, and here, you know, we, we, we can open our eyes wide enough to see that it's always been about the alleviation of suffering. Mm.
BENAY LAPPE: Wow. Wow. That's beautiful.
DAN LIBENSON: So she takes a jug, uh, so it is called a za.
So they're translating that as a jug, and she throws it from the roof to the ground, which ostensibly makes a loud, explosive noise, and it startles the sages. And the sages became silent and momentarily ceased, praying for mercy. And the soul of Rabbi Yehuda Nessi rested. In other words, he died.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I love this image of her going, gosh, my prayer isn't working, that the upper one should win out and Robbi should die because all these sages are keeping his soul down here.
And she plays dirty.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: I love that she says, okay, how can I get them to stop, you know, let go of the rope so that the angels can win the tug of war. And so she throws down this jug, which makes a noise and just being startled for a moment. They stop their prayer in that, in that instant, her prayer wins out and he dies.
I just, I just, I love it. I love the, the breaking the rules, playing dirty. Um, so that her prayer should win and he should die.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. And I think like the tug of war image is, is helpful there. 'cause it's like there's this constant tug of war. It's, it's exactly. Even, uh, which by the way, well there's stuff to unpack there about the, the.
Is it, her prayer is, is equal to those of the sage even before. So it's, so, it's uh, or I guess, I guess not. 'cause he is not like suspended necessarily. They're winning. He is, he is not dying. Uh, but then, but then if they stop polling, boom, you know, the other side wins the tug of war. Right. It's, it's,
BENAY LAPPE: yeah.
And, and the way this text is usually understood now you have to know that when you're, when you are drawing on the tradition to answer new questions, there's always the subjective element of which texts are you going to draw on? Which texts are you going to choose? To create a foundation for your position.
So not everyone uses this text and not everyone reads it the same way, but most, uh, people who are trying to decide what to do, particularly in the case of end of life issues, namely on the question of euthanasia
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Are using this text to say, oh wow, this looks like a case where something we are doing is artificially keeping someone alive.
Mm-hmm. Who the heavens say should be dead. I mean, the, we've, we've passed the line, you know, in tug of war, there's the line and you gotta get the other team across that line. It's like the line of, okay, this is your time has already been crossed for this person and we're. Adding something artificial to sustaining this person's life beyond the point at which they quote unquote should have died.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And in this case, it's the sages who are praying that is the impediment to Rabbi Hanoi's death beyond the point at which he should have died. And the typical read on this text is, oh, since the handmaiden is not vilified, she's praised for what she did. Um, it must be okay to remove an impediment to death if that impediment is keeping someone alive beyond that line.
Mm-hmm. And I think that's what's typically called passive euthanasia, in other words, right. Unplugging.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Um. But a as opposed to active euthanasia, which is hasting someone's death, pushing them more quickly to that line by doing something that will cause them to die sooner than they otherwise would have.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. Like actively giving a lot of morphine or something like that.
BENAY LAPPE: Well, morphine actually palliative. The morphine question is, oh, but
DAN LIBENSON: like enough to kill the person
BENAY LAPPE: if your intention is to kill the person. Yeah. It, it's, it's actually a complicated gray area with morphine because. Again, I don't, by the way, to everyone, I don't want this to be a, a medical ethics.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, don't,
BENAY LAPPE: don't, don't
DAN LIBENSON: think any of this is medical advice.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. Or, or, or haik. So, um, and I really recommend that anyone read Elliot do's writings on this, but with regard to morphine, what he says is, if your intention is to relieve the suffering uhhuh with the morphine, and it also
DAN LIBENSON: causes
BENAY LAPPE: and causes death uhhuh, that isn't considered active euthanasia.
It's a super fuzzy, uhhuh fuzzy area. Um,
DAN LIBENSON: but the bottom line is that this text is, it, it, it most likely doesn't have a lot to say about active euthanasia, but it does say regarding passive euthanasia. I'm not sure that I've called it, heard it called that or, you know, but I mean that basically, uh, stopping heroic measures that.
That could arguably be seen to be fitting into this, into this paradigm because the prayer is being translated into that, those active measures. And so the ceasing of those active measures is mm-hmm. Well, what's interesting though, although actually when I think about it, this text, right? She, she actually is engaging in active measures.
The maid sermon.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. That's, that's one of the critiques of how this text is typically used. They point to her throwing down the vase as active.
DAN LIBENSON: No, no, I, I mean it's more that her prayer is the active measure.
BENAY LAPPE: Oh, the, her prayer uhhuh,
DAN LIBENSON: you know that so, so, so that, that she is, so her throwing down the vase is, is causing the ceasing of the heroic measures.
That's clear. And she's done something active, but you're always doing something active. I mean, if you turn up, pulling the plug
BENAY LAPPE: is an active,
DAN LIBENSON: active, you know, and that, that has always been a, that's been an issue in medical ethics as well. But, you know, that you could argue. But, so that's one category and that sort of feels like the easy thing to see in this text.
And, and, but I think it's also there that she's, by reversing her prayer, if we're, if we're taking the prayer to be mm-hmm. Analogous to the active measure, you know, to the mm-hmm. To, to the measures that, and again, like I, I bring it in here too, you know, I, I appreciate and love your, your belief in the efficacious of prayer, the possibility of it.
Like, but as somebody who, who really doesn't. I, I, I see this as like very powerful by analogy. And, and so to say that the analogy here is about medical intervention and in the same way that we believe in today and we believe in the efficacious of medical intervention, they really believed back then in the efficacious of prayer.
So it's, so it actually is the same. They believe they bel so, so, but, but anyway, so, so her active reversal of the prayer and praying that he should die is arguably, I'm not, I'm not trying to make halal talks here too, but is arguably analogous to more active measures.
BENAY LAPPE: Only if he is understood to be to the right hand side, meaning past the point at which he quote unquote would have naturally died without the intervention.
So if he's before that point and her prayer that he should die. Is trying to make him die sooner than he would have with no prayer. I think that's active euthanasia. And I think the understanding of this text based on how it ends, which is that he dies when the sage's prayer is removed.
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh,
BENAY LAPPE: is it, I think that the, the scenario, sort of the fact pattern is that he's not at that line yet.
Uhhuh, if it were, thought it, if he's at that, if he's before that line for sure. Her action, her prayer that he should die would be perceived as has sending his death. And this would be a text. Justifying active euthanasia. I haven't seen anyone read it that way, although,
DAN LIBENSON: well, I I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to justify or not justify 'cause really it's not how I kind of make decision, whatever, you know, whatever.
So like, everybody watching this should take this to its, you know, grains of salt and that I'm not trying to assert anything, but I am trying to read the text the way I read it. I, I, I might be, so then I might be the first that you encounter that reads it that way. Because like, as I, as I'm thinking about it, I, I feel like she is engaging in an active measure, understanding that, that analogy
BENAY LAPPE: uhhuh
DAN LIBENSON: as, and, and, and what I would say, and maybe I think this is where you wanna go a little bit on the question of Sava, is that I think there's something here about the maid, the maid servants.
The maid servant is actually powerful and important in this story. She's important because she sees the world as it truly is. She sees his humanity as he truly is. She understands in a way that either they don't or refuse to, that it's, it's actually about alleviation of suffering and not about living, you know, and, and, and she understands that it's, that even though his continuing to live would give them and her important value, you know, uh, her job maybe also, I assume she feels fondly towards him.
There's all kinds of reasons why it's, it's a loss to her that he should die. But at the end of the day, she cuts through all of that, and the fact that she's a woman, the fact that she's a maid servant, that, and all of these things are, say, you know, to me that her sava her, you know, again, that means her moral, her moral capacity to reason and to, and to, to, to see the right thing just through her own moral.
Uh, perspective is, is El highly elevated? It's, it's, it's better. She's got the best savara of anyone here. She changes her mind. I mean, the things that, right. She, she, so, so then I, I look at that story that way and say, well, so actually maybe her plus, it's not just that she made them stop the prayer and that allowed the angels to be stronger.
It's the angels plus her was enough to pull, pull him over once they stopped pulling for a moment. And, and maybe if she hadn't been one of the ones pulling in the other direction, their momentary stopping of the prayer, but didn't have quite been enough and the angels wouldn't have gotten them over and they would've pulled back.
You know, and somehow she, so like, I, I wanna like play that, that like, she actually really, it, everything she does in this story is critical, including I. Active measure that that's, again, I think the story reads perfectly beautiful and fine without that. And, and, and it's still all the s Farra is still there, but I would at least suggest the reading that she's actually engaging in an active measure here.
BENAY LAPPE: That's, I think that's beautiful. And you know, what you brought up for me as you're describing her and her savara, is the issue of how much learning do you need Mm. To consider your sra sra and not just what I feel like doing.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And you know, in the early days when I would talk about Savara, I would hear my students saying, well, that means I can do anything.
And I was like, whoa. I. Is, is that what I've, wait a minute. And then I really always was careful to say the rabbis link learning being gamina and having s farra being severe now. And you can't use your S farra unless you've got some amount of learning. And you know, it used to be a very little amount.
They talk about knowing your mission is backward and forward. That was it. And I don't quite know how much learning you need to be a player, but. I love the, you you're pointing out she probably has no learning. I mean, I don't think she's a,
DAN LIBENSON: because she's a woman and she's a maid servant.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly.
DAN LIBENSON: There are a couple of women in the Talmud that have some learning, but probably not.
Maid, servant
BENAY LAPPE: probably. Exactly. So here's an example of safara being, playing out, being lauded with no learning attached. That's really interesting. And I never noticed that in this text.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, I would, I would say, let's not call it no learning, let's call it a different learning uhhuh. And that's something that I think is really significant in, in our time too.
Although it's, it's, it's a little different. So it's her learning is, is is the learning at his bedside. I mean, it's the learning in other words, like it's learning maybe the, the wrong word, but it, it's, it's, you know, we call it life experience. I mean, she, so they have learning, the rabbis have learning and she, and, but they don't have, they don't know him.
She may not have the learning, but she knows him, you know, and at this time, at this particular case, her savara is at least equal to their savara, you know? And, um, and it may be not greater than because they have to stop for a second before she can prevail. But it's not nothing. And so don't say she can't do so.
So it's not your students saying, oh, I can do anything, but it's saying, but you also can't do nothing. You know, there, there are some things that, so it's a question of like calculating what you, where the liberties are that you can take based on the spar that you do have. And is, is that applicable to this particular case in question?
And this case could be seen as narrowly as one man's death for parenthetical. It's the most important man in the world at this moment, you know? Uh, or it can be, um. Seen more globally as about end of life death, right? So we might say like, end of life doulas have, have, have enough Sava today to be able to apply that savara to any death, you know, that there, right?
And or, and, and, and maybe even beyond, you could say, well, no, we're seeing in the stories that she has so much far that apparently she could even decide if something's Scotia. You know, like I, I, I don't think the story supports that, but you know, you could argue what the, the way reason I say all that is to apply that to today is that I've been trying to kind of, um, tease out this, this thought that, you know, let's say that there's a person in the world who doesn't have a lot of learning, but.
Some of those people are doctors, a professor of literature, you know, a, a lawyer who's done trust and estates things, you know, and I mean, you're telling me that the, that these people are, have, have insufficient sava, you know, moral intuition compared to some kid that just graduated from rabbinical school.
Like, come on. You know, so, so you're telling me that the, the kid that just graduated from rabbinical school can decide on, you know, an end of life subject, but like the doctor who's been doing it for 45 years cannot, you know, Jewishly That doesn't seem right. So, so somehow I think what this story is, is suggesting is that it's not all, it's not, it's not, there's not a moment where you like, get your sari and now you're sari.
You know, it's like, it's, it's, it's contextual. There's, there's, there's lots of ways to look at it, and it's not all or nothing.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I, I think that's beautiful and I really appreciate the expansion of the idea of what learning really is.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I think about, um. Richard Elliot Friedman, who it's on a, another, uh, program like this on Jewish Live.
And, and he talks about Sigmund Freud wrote that Moses and Monotheism. And, uh, you know, he had these theories that, like Anaan, who was this king of Egypt who had, who was a monotheist, and that that was really kind of the origin of Moses stuff and whatever, you know, there's all kinds of theories like this.
And, you know, he said like there are certain scholars who say, you know, Freud didn't know anything. Like he wasn't a scholar of, of Bible and Judaism, and like, what is, you know, what is, what does he know? And they just sort of just utterly dismissive of anything that Freud has to say about the Bible. And Richard Elliot Freeman, who's like one of the greatest scholars of Bible, and he really tends to also be kind of not, not a fan of amateurs, you know, uh, he says, but look, this is Freud.
You know, this is Sigmund Freud. Uhhuh Uhhuh. Like he's one of the greatest geniuses of the, of the 20th century. Like, or 19th I, whatever, you know, whatever. The 20th. Uh, so, so like, I'm gonna be dismissive of Sigmund Freud, like, you know, my impulse is that if Sigmund Freud says something, I'm at least gonna give it a second read, you know?
And I think that that makes sense to me.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: And not, and, but, but, but here she is, like the Sigmund Freud of, of this particular case, actually, there's a, in um, law, there's this idea of like, the law of the case. You know, it's kind of like a narrow, uh, I'm not a hundred percent sure that I remember exactly how to define it, but like, there sometimes the law is the law for, for the whole country in all time.
And sometimes it's like the law that applies to this particular circumstance. And, and in this circumstance, I, I, I think something here is saying like that the attendance to this human being is the wisest person to, in this case, and we should, and at least of equal value.
BENAY LAPPE: Absolutely. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: All right. Well, uh, we're outta time, but any, but if there, is there anything else you wanna really say about this Farrah here?
No.
BENAY LAPPE: No, I think I, I think you've said it all. I, I, I, I, I think this, for me, this story raises up the question of who's in our community, who can be in our community, and who SRA should we be listening to? And I think the answer is much broader on all of those questions than we typically think. Um, and, and she changed the entire tradition.
She, she changed how we think about prayer and life and suffering, and our role vis-a-vis God and you know, what should happen in the world. Um, because we listen to her. We listen to her sari.
DAN LIBENSON: And I think it's just important to note that this story was preserved in the Talmud. I mean, what that means is that the rabbis, they, they didn't have to keep this story in, you know, so, so in other words, they're saying they're agreeing with the, what?
This is not a counter, this is not an anti no noal, anti clerical perspective. This is what the, the rabbis end up saying was that actually it's the sava of quote, the common person that that does matter. Maybe not in all cases, but don't, don't dismiss it. It's, it's, and this is the most important, one of the most important figures in the whole Talmud, right?
So this is not just some side case, like this is, and, and, and, and it was a normal regular woman maid servant who determined the outcome, and they preserve that in a positive, with a positive valence. It's incredible.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Well, uh, that was a great, a great text. Uh, exciting. Um, okay, so, uh, TV continued.
We are excited. We'll be back next week. Our, our, um, show will be prerecorded next week. So, uh, don't, doesn't really affect you, uh, folks watching, but just know that it won't actually be live when you're watching it, even if you watch it at the regular time. But it'll go up at the regular time and we will be back live the following week.
We'll see you then.
BENAY LAPPE: Great. Bye Dan.
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.
Watch on Video (original unedited stream)
