The Oral Talmud Episode 55: The Wisdom of Crowds (Eruvin 14b)
SHOW NOTES
“The rabbis ultimately see us being the Rabbi Akiva character, that everyone is an innovator, an upgrader, a potentially radical rewriter. That's the story that they're telling over and over and over and over in the Talmud. That's the message that they're trying to tell one another, to empower one another.” - Benay Lappe
Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.
What happens when the people start changing Judaism before the rabbis are ready? This episode begins with a tiny legal question about the blessing over water and the width of an eruv beam, but it quickly explodes into something far bigger: who actually shapes Jewish law: the authorities at the top or the ordinary Jews already living differently?
As Benay and Dan unpack the rabbinic principle of puk chazi, which translates as “go out and see what the people are doing,” the conversation turns radical. The rabbis aren’t just tolerating the behavior of everyday people. In some cases, they’re treating it as revelation. Which means the future of Judaism may not emerge first from rabbinic rulings or institutions, but from the people already stretching, resisting, and quietly remaking the tradition from below.
This week’s text: Eruvin 14b
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 55: The Wisdom of Crowds.
Welcome to the Oral Talmud, a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. I’m Dan Libenson…
BENAY LAPPE: …and I’m Benay Lappe.
DAN LIBENSON: The Oral Talmud is our weekly deep dive study partnership, in which we try to figure out how voices from the Talmud – voices from 1500 to 2000 years ago – can help us think in new ways about Judaism today.
What happens when the people start changing Judaism before the rabbis are ready? This episode begins with a tiny legal question about the blessing over water and the width of an eruv beam, but it quickly explodes into something far bigger: who actually shapes Jewish law — the authorities at the top, or the ordinary Jews already living differently?
As Benay and I unpack the rabbinic principle of puk chazi — “go out and see what the people are doing” — the conversation turns radical. The rabbis aren’t just tolerating the behavior of everyday people. In some cases, they’re treating it as revelation. Which means the future of Judaism may not emerge first from rabbinic rulings or institutions, but from the people already stretching, resisting, and quietly remaking the tradition from below.
Every episode of The Oral Talmud has a number of resources to support your learning and to share with your own study partners! If you’re using a podcast app to listen, you’ll find these links in our show notes: First, to a Source Sheet on Sefaria, where you can find pretty much any Jewish text in the original and in translation – there we excerpt the core Talmud texts we discuss and share a link to the original video of our learning.
In the show notes of your podcast app, you’ll also find a link to this episode on The Oral Talmud’s website, where we post an edited transcript, and where you can make a donation to keep the show going, if you feel so moved. On both the Sefaria Source Sheet and The Oral Talmud website.
And now, The Oral Talmud…
DAN LIBENSON: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Oral Talmud. I'm Dan Levinson, and I'm here, as always, with Benay Lappe. Hey, Benay.
BENAY LAPPE: Hey, Dan. How are you?
DAN LIBENSON: I'm good. I'm good. Um-
BENAY LAPPE: We're match- we're matchy-matchy again. Yeah,
DAN LIBENSON: I think finally, right? I mean, that we're- I- ... both wearing Svara shirts ...
BENAY LAPPE: I've done my laundry.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, and I'm finally warm enough to wear a short-sleeve shirt.
Um- ... I think I said this already, but I, I'm gonna need some, uh, Svara long-sleeve swag for next winter. Um-
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. We'll be, we'll be on that right away ...
DAN LIBENSON: a fleece or something. Yeah. Um, okay, so, um, so let, I, let's just jump into it this week. I think what, what we did... You know, we've been talking about... Well, first of all, uh, one thing actually that I'll mention is that, uh, Shavuot is coming up, and Shavuot is this holiday where, uh, you know, and all kinds of w- it has all kinds of meanings, but one of them is kind of a re-enactment of the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.
And you and I are doing a session, so our, uh, Jewish Life Shavuot begins at 6:00 PM on Saturday the 15th, which is actually 24 hours or so before Shavuot, and we're going for 30 hours. So we're going into Shavuot, but instead of doing the all-night session and then the next day, we're doing it before.
BENAY LAPPE: Is that 6:00 PM Central?
DAN LIBENSON: 6:00 PM Eastern Time, yeah. Eastern, okay. Uh, and sorry. And, um, right, so 5:00 PM our time. And, um, and then, but that's when it starts, but then you and I are doing something an hour later at 6:00 PM Central, 7:00 PM Eastern, uh, that you and I are doing a session. And then you and I are doing another session at, I think, 10:00 PM Eastern, along with, uh, Gary Stevens, who has this podcast called History in the Bible that has been, uh, exploring this season the sort of divergence between Judaism and Christianity.
The previous seasons were about the Old Test- you know, the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and then he's not Jewish, and then the New Testament, and then, um, now it's kind of the divergence between Judaism and Christianity. So I'm excited to talk to him. Uh, he's an amateur, you know, who's just done a tremendous amount of research.
And so it's- Unlike,
BENAY LAPPE: unlike us.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, so it's, like, fun to talk to somebody who's kind of, like, discovered this stuff for the first time, but really well, you know? And, and then to kinda, like, see what he thinks and, you know, we'll see how that accords with some of what we've internalized, and I think that'll be a lot of fun.
But I say all that only because I, I think that this whole idea of Shavuot and reenacting the Sinai moment is, you know, it's particularly- It's particularly connected to what we've been doing for the last year on this show, where we're both talking about the origins of the oral To- or the story of the oral Torah, you know, which is, in myth, the second Torah given at Sinai.
And, um, you know, we've been talking about and we wrote about this, like, third Torah. A- and whether it's the Torah of Sefarah, like we talked about, like the Torah of what's written into our moral conscience, or some other way of putting it, but the idea, to my mind, is that this year we may be doing more than reenacting, and not just this year, the, the next century, we may be doing more than reenacting the moment of the giving of the Torah at Sinai as if it's some kind of historical moment that we are, like, play acting, the, you know, uh, the experience of it.
And, and by the way, the tradition is, like, to experience it as if you're a common Israelite, you know, standing at the foot of the mountain, sort of, you know, a- and as opposed to that you're Moses, right? Or that you are somehow on the mountain. And, and I think that this period is an opportunity, which I think is what the rabbis were doing in what we're looking at at the Talmud, to almost reenact it more like we're in the Moses role, and what would that feel like, and what, what would be the new Torah that we would be receiving or that would be revealed to us?
But here it's revealed to us through our moral conscience, you know, our moral intuition. And so, you know, I, I, I'm look- so I'm, so all that's to say that I'm, A, looking forward to doing that with you on, on Saturday night, and B, that it's very much connected to what we've been doing all year, so I hope folks that are watching this participate.
And by the way, if you wanna do that, just go to jewishlife.org/shavuot or judaismunbound.com/shavuot and you can sign up and you'll get a, you'll get a, um, Zoom link. But th- th- so, so I say all that, um, to s- to say that, uh, what we've been talking about the last few weeks is kind of this idea of, you know, sort of who, who, i- in what way, wa- you know, where does the, where does the kind of right, let's say, to change the law or to make the law, where does that come from?
You know, and, um, we've talked a- about all kinds of elements of it, including this idea of that, that third Torah being given, that, uh, we, that we have the right because actually the Torah all along was only Sefarah, was only people's moral intuition, and now more people can have it. Um, last week we talked about this idea of, you know, well, who really owns the Torah?
Who can, who can say that the Torah really belongs to me? And, and that is, uh, you know, has to do w- with that it's not God at a certain point. We've seen that in so many stories, you know, but that the person who studies has that sense of ownership. Uh, and, and this week I think we wanna, it's, it, it may look a little different, but it's still an extension of that idea that says what does the regular person, what does the everyday Jew really have to say about the law itself?
You know, and is that, is, is the everyday Jew a source of law? And, you know, spoiler alert, the answer will be yes, but it'll be an interesting journey to get there.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I've- my brain is still thinking about what you were saying about seeing ourselves in the Moses position, and I think the rabbinic- m- my first thought was the rabbinic move was that we would all- we should all see ourselves in the Moses position.
But then I'm thinking of the text we learn from Menachot where, um, you know, there's this scene where Moses goes to get the Torah, and, you know, the, the, the story ends up with the idea that even Moses wasn't the kind of person that God knew could, um, play with the tradition and revise it as it needed to be.
So it's not even the Moses, um, character or type of character that I think the rabbis ultimately see us being. They see us being, um, the Rabbi Akiva character, that every- everyone is an innovator, an upgrader, a potentially radical rewriter. Um, and I think that's the story that they're telling over and over and over and over in the Talmud.
That's the message that they're trying to tell one another, to empower one another, and anyone who, you know, has those two qualifications.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, and I, yeah, and I, and I think that the, the connection to this week's text is kind of like, what I think we've been saying a lot over the last year is that the rabbis were a particular elite at their time.
They were better educated, they were better trained, they had mentors, et cetera. And so when they say everyone is in that role, they mean everyone like us, everyone who's really, you know, in this elevated position. We've been saying now, for all kinds of reasons, more, if not everybody, of the regular everyday Jews is kind of in the position that the rabbis were at this time 1,500 years ago or so.
We're all so well-educated, we have access to so much information, we have highly developed moral intuitions based on all kinds of life experience that they didn't have, we live longer. All kinds of reasons like that to say we don't need to only leave this to an elite anymore. We can all read now. We can all read the Talmud.
It's in translation. It's, you know, like you say, it's not perfect, but you know, it's better, it's a lot better than nothing. And, and, um, so there's so much that we have that we could say, "Oh, that everybody's like, we're like a nation of rabbis." You know, the Torah talks about we're a nation of priests, and we could say we're a nation of rabbis.
But the other piece that I think this text kind of suggests, which, by the way, I agree with all that, right? But this, this text actually looks back and says, "Well, wait a second. It, it may be, that may be true, but it's not even true that the rabbis simply treated the regular people as, you know, a, a mob of, you know, uneducated nobodies."
You know, that there was actually a respect back then for the common person and their, their sense of, of what the law is or should be, and putting those two together, right- Mm-hmm ... to say that the tradition already honors the regular person, and we're all in this position where we're kind of quasi rabbis, that, that becomes a very powerful combination.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I really appreciate that, um, because it's, it's even m- bigger to s- to say not the everyday person has the potential to. You know, if you're learning it, n- no, the everyday person is in, already in a position with presumably n- any or no amount of learning or other qualification to impact the law. And you're right, that was always recognized, and that's this area we're gonna get into, the area of, you know, what's called minhag, custom.
And it's, it's fascinating, and if I hadn't called my yeshiva Svara, I would have called it Minhag.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Because I was fascinated with the idea of, oh my God, there's this concept in our tradition that our moral intuition has the power of Torah, and I, it took me y- a number of years to realize the role of custom in the triggering or the activating of the Svara of those who are sort of authorized to have had enough learning to use their Svara to change the law.
Then I realized, oh, this is where the, the real radical is. So that's what we're gonna dig into, and I'm very excited about this.
DAN LIBENSON: All right, now I'm thinking, like, maybe I should start a yeshiva and call it Minhag or something. Yes. You know, 'cause then we, you know, there were all these, these, like, uh, paired yeshivas back in the day.
You know, there was- Right ... Torah MiTzion, you know, so it'd be... And, and actually, you know, I mean, famously the, the siddur of, of, uh, Isaac Mayer Wise was called Minhag America, the American custom, right, the American tradition sort of. Right. Right? Right. And, and Anita Diamond has talked about that. And so the idea of, like, minhag as m- as being beyond just meaning custom, but it actually is a call to this long history, now 150 years or so, of, of, uh, of the idea of trying to honor the American Jewish world through the use of that word.
It's interesting. Anyway, let's jump in. It's, okay. So we, we have two texts, um, that we're looking at today if we have time, and if not, then we'll, we'll carry it on to next week. But we have two texts. Um, one is from the tractate of Eruvin, which has to do with- With eruvs, which are these kind of legal fictions, uh, about c- how to carry on Shabbat, but also other kinds of things.
And, uh, and then the other is from the tractate Pesachim, which is technically about Passover, although there's a lot of other stuff in it, of course, as is always true of the Talmud. Um, the, um, and the- we're gonna start with Eruvin. It's, uh, page 14A, or sorry, 14B, and, um, we are ... And, and the main reason we're starting with Eruvin and not starting with Pesachim is because the Eruvin text has this phrase that is used, that becomes kind of a term of art to describe what we're talking about.
And so we thought it would be better to learn the, the phrase first, and then we can learn basically the same thing in a different story that doesn't specifically use that phrase. Uh, but th- this becomes, and maybe this could be the name of a third yeshiva, um, if you think about it. Uh, so, um- I love,
BENAY LAPPE: I, I, I'm very, you're giving me lots of ideas because we're about to, we're about, th- this is a teaser here.
We're about to start a division of Smara that is going to be, um, the Torah of our students, that they are going to be presenting, um, their own classes and sharing and circulating the new, the new traditions and the new Torah that they're developing. So s- one of these might be the name for it.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, and, and the o- the last thing I'll just say, uh, by word of, uh, introduction is that, um, you know, I, I k- you were very busy this week, and I kind of put together the text-
and I, and as I'm want to do, like, I, I don't edit. You know, like, I, I put more in there than probably strictly speaking belongs. Like, you could have just picked a very short paragraph here. But I wanted the whole longer part just to give a little bit of a flavor of what's going on here, which I think is more fun than necessarily connected, but we'll see.
So we're gonna, like, zip through the first part, uh, just to give a little bit of a flavor, and then we'll kind of, uh, talk more about the, the later part. So, um-
BENAY LAPPE: Very excited that you're driving today.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, you might have not let me do this if, you know, we were really discussing it. Okay, so, uh, so Eruvin 14B, we're, so, so I also left in the Mishnah that we're, we're starting to kind of interpret here because, like, just to remind people that the way the Talmud is structured is that the Mishnah is this book with, like, law after law after law, and the Talmud kind of is, as if it cut up that book and, and, um, you know, pasted each little paragraph on a page, and then wrote a page of, of sort of, uh- Not necessarily commentary, but also all kinds of other thoughts that arose, you know, and, and, and working out and figuring out what it all means and extending it to other things.
And so the, the, each piece of Talmud is kind of at least tangentially connected to a piece of Mishnah. And so I thought it would be, just be interesting to show what the Mishnah is that kind of led to this whole thing in the first place. So in Eruvin, the Mishnah says, and this is talking about that basically, uh, it's compl- uh, Eruvin, Eruvs are so complex, but the b- the basic idea is that you're supposed to have a bunch of poles or posts, uh, and, and kind of, uh, lintels, which can be like wires, but you're supposed to kind of have these doorways and, like, you know, fiction- fictionalized doorways, and it kind of allows you to have a, a pretend courtyard or to make an alleyway a shared space, and it allows people to carry on Shabbat where th- they're really not supposed to be carrying on Shabbat according to the rabbis.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. So just to add one more thing, what, what it does is it creates the fiction of a private space- Okay ... in what is effectively a public space, right? Because you can carry within your private space, but you can't carry beyond the boundary between your private space and a public space because that is tantamount to transferring ownership from, right, if an object lives in a public space, in, i- in, in some legal sense you're no longer the owner, that would be business.
You can't do that on Shabbos. Okay, great.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So the basic question here is just how thick, how wide do the sort of s- up and down posts need to be in order to count as, you know, valid to, as to be part of the Eruv. And the Mishnah is saying that these side posts, they're calling them, in the translation, "These side posts," uh, "the sages spoke of, uh, their height must be 10 handbreadths, at least 10 handbreadths high, and their width and thickness may be any amount."
And Rabbi Yose, who's a, you know, a rabbi of the time of, uh, prior to the Mishnah, he says, uh, "No, their width must be at least three handbreadths." So there's this dis- disagreement. The majority says it, it does, it could be any width, and the, um, and, and Rabbi Yose, uh, says it has to be a pr- pretty wide. Three handbreadths is a pretty wide beam.
A- and spoiler alert, the answer is, you know, that it doesn't have to be very wide, and that's why you see, i- if you actually look at Eruvs, you can see that this can be accomplished through just kind of like a plastic thing that's, that's, you know, nailed onto a telephone pole, but it's actually the plastic thing that's the, that's the side post, not the telephone pole.
So whatever. It's not, not our mission to go into the details of Eruvs. Um, so then the Gemara is, uh, is, is interpreting or, or talking about this. It says, "We learn to the Mishnah that Rabbi Yose says the width of the side post must be at least h- three handbreadths." Now, another rabbi, Rav Yosef, this is a little confusing 'cause some of the names sound similar, but this is a different rabbi, Rav Yosef- Uh, who's a later rabbi says that Rav Yehuda said that Shmuel said the Halakhah, the law, is not in accordance with the opinion of Rabbi Yose, right?
It's, it's not, uh, the three handbreadths. And he's, he's just kind of giving almost like a, like a, an aphorism that he heard or something like that. You know, like he heard something broader than this, right? That Rabbi Yose said something about, uh, preparing, uh, salt, salt brine on Shabbat, and also something about side posts.
And he said, "You know, I heard the law's not according to Rabbi Yose in either, in, in either of these two topics." Um, Rav Huna bar Hinena says to him, "With regard to brine, yeah, you, you told us that before," right? You know, like I remember you telling us that. But with regard to the side posts, you never, you didn't tell us that.
You know, like, like wait a second, if, if that's true that there was actually this, this k- known, you know, thing that said Rabbi Yose is wrong about both brine and side posts, you, you would think you would have told us that. But I, I remember that you said that it was only about the brine. So- Maybe you're just tacking things on here.
Right. You know, it's like this is, this is suspicious, you know? Um, so Rabbi Yose says, "What, what i- you know, what is different about the brine with regard to which the sages disagree with Rabbi Yose?" Like what, uh, you know, what, what would be the, what, what's, you know, what's, what's different about that? In the, in the case of the side posts, also the sages disagree with him.
Uh, and, and so therefore, you know, we see in the Mishnah that the sages disagreed with him on, on both of these topics, and therefore it makes sense that there would be this, this statement that the la- the law is, is against Rabbi, uh, Yose in both these cases. And, uh, Rav Huna says, uh, "Well, side posts are, are different.
Uh, uh, side posts are different, um, uh, as Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi holds in accordance with the opinion of Rabbi Yose." So this other great, great rabbi, the author of the Mishnah, uh, he, he actually agreed with Rabbi Yose, so it's a different case. It's not just the simple case of the majority versus the one, it's actually the majority versus the two, and the other one is a great, great rabbi.
So, you know, maybe that, that's the reason why there's a difference. So that's how it could be different that, that the law might be according to Rabbi Yose in one case and, and not in the other. Again, not the most significant. We don't have to go into the details of this, but this is a bit of a flavor of what's going on here.
And then the Gemara, but this is part of why I wanted to leave the whole thing in because there's like a fun little... Uh, so there's an analogous situation reported here where the Gemara reports that Rav Rechumi, note those who have, uh, watched Ruth Calderon's famous speech at the Knesset, uh, and she was a previous guest of ours and hopefully a future one.
Um, sh- she has this great story about Rav Rechumi. So here he is, and this is actually, uh, I believe the, the first case where he's mentioned in the Talmud. Uh, and he says, um, he taught the version of the previous discussion. He says, "Rav Yehuda, the son of Rav Shmuel bar Shilat, said in the name of Rav, the Halakha is not in accordance with Rabbi Yose, not with regard to brine and not with regard to side posts."
So same idea. Somebody heard this statement in the name of some other people. Uh, and um, and, and then someone says to him, "Did you really say this?" And he said to him, he said to them, "No." And Rava, our friend, says, "By God, he did say this, and I learned it from him." Right? So, you you know, it's like, I love, I just love the flavor of the, of the kind of, you know, this whole thing.
It's, and the, the point here is that it's a confused situation, you know? I mean, it's like, it's like they, they're pretty sure, or some of them are pretty sure that I know what the law is based on, that I learned it from my teacher, and here's... And I even remember that the way I learned it from my teacher was that there's this statement that Ravi- Rabbi Yose is wrong in both cases.
And then they're saying, like, "But it's not. Did you really say this?" "No, no." "Yeah, you did," you know? And, um- This, this,
BENAY LAPPE: this sounds like Facebook. I don't know. Yeah. It sounds like a whole, a whole string of posts, and someone got nailed a little.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, like I just love it. I just love, you know, "By God, he did say this, and I learned it from him."
BENAY LAPPE: What are you talking about now?
DAN LIBENSON: Um, but he later retracted this ruling, and the Talmud said, "What is the reason that he retracted it? Due to the well-known principle that Rabbi Yose's reasoning is with him, and the Halakha follows his opinion, even against the majority view." So, so the idea is that, um, that while we've learned this before, that in most cases, the, you follow the majority.
We learned that in the case of the oven of Akhnai, for example. Uh, but in this particular case, there's an idea that Rabbi Yose was a particular genius or a particular knowledgeable or whatever and, and, and that actually we follow him and not the majority. So, so therefore it, it makes sense that you might say, um, that, that there's a case, that the two cases are different.
That just because Rabbi Yose is in the major- minority doesn't necessarily mean that the law is not what he says. That, that's, so that, that's the bottom line, uh, you know, kind of of this, of this, uh, fun, uh, part. But the, the, the... I don't know if you want to say anything, but the, the point here is that there's very confused situation among the rabbis as to what the law is based on the, the way that they might usually go about trying to figure out what the law is.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Okay. So tell me if, if you think I've got this right. Basically, what we've set up is this is not a novel question. This is not something for which there's no precedent or existing Halakha. There is existing Halakha, or rather there's an existing debate or There's an existing disagreement about what the Halakha should be.
And, and I point that out because I, I think there are different situations in which, as we're about to see, what the people do, um, m- matters. One scenario is where there's a disagreement about what we should do. Right.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay,
BENAY LAPPE: and that's this situation.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. And then, so right. So then we come to the main text that, the main point that we wanted to, to, to discuss today and, and, and why we're doing this.
So Rava bar Rav Hanan- Said to Abaye, "What is the accepted Halakha with regard to the width of a side post?" And he said to him, "Go out and observe what the people are doing." So, uh, and th- and then the, the... What's told to us here in the, by Steinsaltz is that it, it was actually the practice not to have it have to be three, three, uh, hand breadths.
That the people were actually, uh, accepting as valid eruvs that had, uh, posts that were less than three hand breadths wide.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. So this is the line, right? This is the famous line that becomes a term of art. It's Puk Chazi, go out and see. Ma amadavar. There it is.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: The vocalization is slightly different here.
Uh, go out and see what ama, the people, like am as in Am Yisrael, what the people do, davar. And by the way, th- that's an interesting use of the root daled, bet, reish, davar. Um, I just grabbed my dictionary off the shelf and I'm looking it up, and we're familiar with it from Hebrew w- as it means to speak. Um, and in, but in Aramaic it, it really is, it's slightly different.
It's, uh, to h- to conduct oneself, like nahag.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: It's interesting. So go out and see what the people, how the people are conducting themselves.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Cool. So that- that's a term of art, and it gets shortened to Puk Chazi. Mm-hmm. So Puk Chazi is the shorthand for, uh, we don't know.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Let's, let's, we don't know what we should do.
Let's go see what people are doing, and the implication is, and the answer will be what they're doing.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? And it's not even we'll take into consideration what they're doing.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: It's we will follow what they're doing as the Halakha.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: A- and I think it's important to know that the Halakha isn't just the law, it's what we believe God wants us to do.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: It, it's very powerful. So we're gonna do what we see people doing is a profound s- theological statement of the rabbis' belief that God trusts the ordinary people, right?
DAN LIBENSON: Right. Now, there, there is, I mean, at le- at least in these particular cases, there is the... We should, we should just sort of note that these are cases in which the rabbis have created some kind of legislation.
In other words, like, these aren't cases from the Torah where the rabbis are saying, "If the people are doing something that conflicts with the Torah or with our interpretation of the To- or with the possible interpretation of the Torah, we should go out and see what the people are doing." These happen to be cases where the rabbis have imposed this- uh, obligation or this prohibition about carrying, and they've also created a legal fiction to get around it, and they're saying in the case where we're not sure if the legal fiction is, rules are met or not, we can go out and see what the people are doing, and we'll accept that as, as a, uh, a- as, as the law.
So I'm just saying that because it's a little bit of a narrow- it just happen- I mean, I'm not, I'm not saying it should- we shouldn't take it further, but I'm saying it is, it is good to n- note that this is a re- relatively, uh, circumscribed set of cases where we're talking about the additional set of laws that the rabbis have imposed, and they're saying, "We, we will accept the, the common person's, uh, practice as the definitive ruling about whether that system that we very consciously set up ourselves, that we're not claiming is directly from the Torah, has been met or not."
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. That's for sure this situation. And we should put a sticky on the question of and how far-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm ...
BENAY LAPPE: do the r- you know, to what extent do the rabbis give weight, authority to the people's practice? It goes beyond this, but we'll wait to really start answering that question until we have other texts that deal with that scenario.
Mm-hmm. But yeah, you're right.
DAN LIBENSON: And, um, you know, there, there are various, like, uh, the- we, we haven't, uh, supplied all these texts, but the, you know, there, there are a variety of, of, um, concepts like that that are connected to this text, including the, I think about this one, which is again, it's a, it's a, it's a statement about the rabbis imposing new laws and the limits of that.
So there's a, there's a phrase that says you shouldn't impose a rabbinic law, legislation on the, on the people that they wouldn't be able to stand up to, that they wouldn't be able to observe. So, uh- Or wouldn't
BENAY LAPPE: be willing to ...
DAN LIBENSON: or, or wouldn't, wouldn't be willing to. So the, you know, and so I think that that, by the way, is like, is very interesting as far as our current times go because there's a lot of cases that say, well, the people aren't doing the thing that we think, you know, it, we should be doing.
Like, for example, there's nothing, there's nothing in the, uh, in the, in the Torah for sure, but there's nothing in like rabbinic, the rabbinic system that says that a Shabbat service has to take three and a half hours. You know, it's, it's gotten to take three and a half hours in, you know, for example, conservative synagogues because of all kinds of things that have happened along the way that are actually not required.
And you could look at that and say, "And, and the people aren't coming to synagogue." So, you know, I think a lot of people say, "Well, they're not holding up their end of the bargain. They're not coming to synagogue." But the truth is, is that to ask them to give three and a half hours of their time- weekly. It, it's not clear that that's even acceptable, an acceptable thing to ask of them because in a sense it's a, it's a requirement that they can't stand up to, or that they can't, or, or won't.
You know, right? And, and so they're, they, and, and so I, I say that, you know, I agree with you that there, that we can take this concept further into the realm of the Torah and other places. But at, at the very least, what these cases are saying to us is where we, whoever that we is, the rabbis, the, the extended community today.
But where, where we are thinking about what's the best way to be Jewish, uh, and we're gonna set up a, a system that the common person's willingness to be p- to, to, to do, to do, to participate in that system is actually a fundamental part of whether the system itself is considered proper.
BENAY LAPPE: Absolutely. A- and I think the question that's so sticky is what is the, how are we defining the amah, the people?
Yeah. Go out and see what the people do. The, uh, who, who, whose behavior, whose conduct are we going to sort of validate, right? There are people who don't care. Peop- uh, the, anyway, that's, the, it's, it's, I think it's very sticky.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. But it's
BENAY LAPPE: relevant. You know, it... There's a recognition, I think, that we're gonna tolerate the discomfort that we're gonna feel when we see people's behavior that's different from what we would want.
Because after all, the two parties in this dispute, the dispute in this case about how wide should these, uh, beams be, one party for sure is going to be disappointed when they see the behavior of the people.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: And they're willing to say, "You know what? That's okay. They're not gonna, they're doing what I think they shouldn't be doing, but I'm gonna go along with it because I believe in the concept of pukazi."
Mm-hmm. That the behavior of the people, right, is we're gonna, I, I think we're gonna see later, and not to be a spoiler, but, you know, the rabbis have this idea that i- if we're not prophets, we're children of prophets. Mm-hmm. And the people can be trusted, which is an enormous statement. Um, but are there people who aren't tr- are there some people who you're gonna sort of cut out of your sample because, you know, they're-
Self-designated apostates, you think they're in a power... Y- you know what I mean? Right. Right They're not stakeholders. I, I, I think that's a really interesting, and s- messy, and scary question.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, I, and, and, you know, I, I mean, I, I just have in mind the, the new Pew study which just came out this, this week as we're recording this.
And, you know, there's this question about, like, who's a Jew, which is, which is always out there. And, you know, the, the, the Pew study has ta- or the Pew Foundation has, has taken this, um, definition of who is a Jew as somebody with, um, one Jewish parent, either one. You know, and I, I agree. I actually think that's overly limited.
You know, I, I think of, I think the definition should be expanded beyond that in all kinds of ways. But, uh, as far as the, let's say, Orthodox community goes, that's a very wide definition. And then they say, "Oh, hey, no problem. Like, the Jewish community is growing. I mean, we got, we got more." Don- why are you all so concerned about...
This is not what they're saying, but I mean, this is the implication. Like, what, don't be so concerned about, uh, the sh- the shrinking Jewish community. Like, it's actually growing. And, and from that perspective, you say intermarriage is actually good for the Jews because, you know, the, uh, replacement rate of two Jews marry each other, you know, then they have to have two children, and they only keep the same number of Jews.
Whereas, if, uh, Jews marry non-Jews and each has two children, we're actually doubling the number of Jews, right? By that definition. So, you know, so on the one hand, you could say, "And, and so now we have this expanded Jewish community, and those are the people that we're gonna look to to see what their custom is," et cetera, et cetera, "and that's how we're gonna..."
Right? And, and you could easily say other people saying, "No, no, those people are not really committed to the system. They're, they're not the people that we're talking about." You know, if you wanna say we should look and see what the common person is doing, we're talking about the common Orthodox person.
You know, who really believes, uh, you know, and buys into this whole system. And, and they have maybe, maybe the issue is more that they're receiving traditions from their parents, and from their parents, and from their parents. And so it's not just that we think people have common sense, it's that we think maybe people are remembering the tradition through memetic passing on, right?
I mean, there's all kinds of ways that you could cut into this, but it's at least open to the interpretation that says it's, it's the, it's the common sense of the common person, et cetera.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And what you said about the people who are following the system, what's interesting about this concept to me is they're likely not to be following the system.
They're, the reason that custom is a thing and that their behavior is gonna determine the Halakha, uh, I, I don't know if I can articulate this. Maybe I haven't enough, haven't had enough coffee yet this morning. But it's, it's their deviation from the system that is seen as interesting and something to look at.
And so, and that deviation could easily- Portray them as, you know, non-stakeholders, not the people we should- Uh-huh ... look at.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: But, but no, they're, they're being recognized as people whose behavior is significant even when their be- behavior is contradictory to the system. You know what I mean?
DAN LIBENSON: Right. I think by, by that they're part of the system, what I meant was that they, that they are even caring about eruvs.
You know, like in other words, we're, we're looking at the people who care enough about an eruv to say, "I wouldn't carry without one," and then they're saying, "Oh, but like look, these people are carrying, and the, the posts are less than three handbredths," so that means that within the system of eruvs, which they do accept, we can look at their judgment as to what defines an eruv, as opposed to looking at the, quote, "apostate" who says, "I don't care about eruvs at all."
So of course, that person's not gonna care how wide the eruv is, you know, but maybe they care- Mm-hmm ... about something else. Um, but you could say, you could say, well, how, you know, which prayer ... Actually, the next case we might look at is, or we're gonna look at is like which prayer does this person say when they're drinking water?
Well, you could say, "Well, we don't care which prayer this person says if, when they're drinking water because they don't really care about eruvs, so they're not really part of the system. You know, they're not, they don't count as one of the people that we're looking to." Or, or you could say, "No, it's a much more expansive category than that, and it's case by case.
And so, yeah, of course, if you don't care at all about an eruv, we're not gonna trust your judgment about how wide an eruv has to be. But, but, um, we will trust your, your ju- you know, your judgment about the things that you do care about." And, and, you know, I, I, I don't know, like, I think there's maybe an interesting case there to, to talk about, like, what is the J- you know, this, this, this, uh, stuff that's often said by people, uh, for various reasons that are kind of inconvenient to their politics, you know, they'll, they'll say things like, "You know what?
Judaism doesn't have a position one way or the other on this issue." Um, but then you could say, "Oh, let's go out and see what the people are doing," and the vast majority of Jews actually believe, for example, that Judaism is about tikkun olam, you know, I mean, to use a kind of a cliche. But I mean, that Judaism is fundamentally about making the world better and repairing the world.
So then you could say, "Oh, well, those are, you know, reformed Jews. I mean, they're not really partic- you know, they're not really in the system, and so we don't care what they say." And y- but another way to say it is, like, "No, these are actually Jews. They care about being Jewish. They, what they're saying is they don't care about your eruv.
They do care about, uh, you know, tikkun olam. You care about an eruv and don't care so much about tikkun olam." You know, well, so what are, what are the common people really saying, you know? And, and it, it's complex, right? Because obv- and, and obviously it's self-serving. Everybody will define the common people that they're gonna look to based on, you know, uh, argu- you know, they probably will do it based on a results-oriented- approach what, what supports what I want.
But the point is, is that there's, that, that I think there's arguably precedent here that, or, you know, uh, ideas here that could be seen to support an approach that says, "You know what? If the Jewish people are really changing their idea of what's really f- the most fundamental elements of Judaism," that, that, that's actually a significant thumb on the scale of saying they're right even before we get to the point where we're saying in the 21st century the vast majority of Jews are, are not just common people, they're, they're quasi-rabbis in terms of their learning and their, uh, you know, education.
Anyway, so I, I don't know what you think about that. Too far?
BENAY LAPPE: No, I...
Let's look at the, this next text, the one about water.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: Because I think that'll give us a little more concreteness, and you're hinting at it, and I think it's interesting. So I have an idea that relates to this.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So the, so right after this, the Gemara brings another case, uh, that they say... Uh, I'm not, I'm not totally sure that I understand this first line, that, like, there are those who taught this answer with regard to this discussion.
So there's, there's some connection. There, there's a, is this a, are they saying that there's an analogy that they're learning from here?
BENAY LAPPE: No. This, this principle, pukazi, ma'ama davar, go out and see how people act, that also was the punchline. Uh- That was the conclusion in the dispute over the following case.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So the case is one who drinks water to quench his thirst recites the following blessing pri- prior to drinking. By whose word all things came to be, that's Shehecheyanu b'varo.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Which- And, uh, l- let's get out on the table the, the whole question of what blessing. So first of all, let's remember that the rabbis made up blessings.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay? There's no Baruch atah Adonai in
DAN LIBENSON: the Torah. In the Torah.
BENAY LAPPE: Th- this is a spiritual technology, the, a, a tool that the rabbis invented to create the experience of being with God that was lost once the temple was destroyed or, or possibly even before when people just didn't feel the experience of God in what happened in the temple.
They said, "You know what? You can e- have that experience. God will be with you when you utter these words." This is a kind of God-invoking magic formula. The, it's, uh, a little overly, I'm playing a little fast and loose here, but, um- And now the quest- w- the debate on the table is, well, which magic formula, which do you say over water?
And I just have to imagine that there weren't that many people that were going along with this new, you know, magic formula practice. I j- I just really can't imagine that in the first few centuries of the practice there were so many people. So I wonder how many people the people, you know, go out and see what the people are doing.
I don't- I wonder how many people that is. But okay. Right.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, so and this scene, because Rabbi Tarfon is involved, this scene is, is kind of in the, uh, early days of, of this invention of this technology, right? And so the, the basic principle that there's, that they're putting out there is that, "Oh, y- we all know that the blessing for water is Shehakol nihiyya bidvaro, by whose word these all things can be."
That's, and by the way, that's the general blessing for, like, if you don't have a more specific blessing, then this is a kind of a catch-all. It's a catch-all. Yeah. It's
BENAY LAPPE: a catch-all. You can use it for anything, and you're covered, right.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. So s- if it's like a fruit then you say it's from the tr- you know, the blessing for the tree, and if it's from the ground, the blessing for the ground, and if it's, uh, you know, bread, you say you know?
But if it's just some water, it's kind of like, quote, "neutral." Yeah, what do you do? Okay, this, there's this one, Shehakol nihiyya bidvaro. And, um, and Rabbi Tarfon says, "No," and he has another blessing, which is not actually in sort of common use for... I don't- I think this is a blessing that we say before eating i- for anything now.
Um- It didn't,
BENAY LAPPE: it didn't make it ...
DAN LIBENSON: didn't make it, right. So he, so he has this other blessing, uh, who creates the many forms of life and their needs for all that you have created. So I think it's like um, and, um, Rav Hanan said to Abaye, "What is the halakha?" And-
BENAY LAPPE: Like, like, what, what, what's the pr- what is the proper blessing for water?
DAN LIBENSON: Yep. And, uh, he said to him, and the implication is, "I don't know from principles. I, I can't figure it out. I don't have, I don't have that law anywhere accessible to me." So he says, "Go out and observe what the people are doing." And, you know, then we're told by the, by Scheindlin that it, you know, as we know, that the, it turns out that they must've been saying, uh, Shehakol nihiyya bidvaro, uh, because that's what we say to this day.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Which is, by the way, I think it's pretty cool that what the people were doing back then d- has determined what we do, and we're still doing it, those of us who say a blessing. Mm-hmm. 2,000 years later, that's pretty cool
DAN LIBENSON: I remember in the, uh, Trump impeachment, the second impeachment, one of his lawyers was an Orthodox Jew and- Right.
Remember ... when he was speaking, uh, he would, um, and he needed to take a drink of water, he did something where he put his hand on his head and he drank the water and, and I- I remember, like, the Jewish commentators like, I think, Jake Tapper on CNN were explaining, I don't know if this is exactly accurate, but they were explaining that he was, I think, using the cap and putting it on his head like a kippah and he was saying the blessing which would've been Shehakol Nihya Bidvaro and drinking the water, you know, silently.
So contemporary, contemporary manifestations to this day.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Okay, so getting back to the question that I- I'm really interested in which is who is in that category of people called the people whose conduct we're going to look at and elevate? You're saying the, the people eligible for this particular Pew study of what blessing do we say for water are the people who say something.
Mm-hmm. Right? Right. Your suggestion is people who say nothing are not stakeholders on the question, and therefore they're not part of Amah. Am I right? Well, I'm not, I'm not
DAN LIBENSON: necessarily saying that, but I'm saying, like, I think that's probably what they were thinking.
BENAY LAPPE: Mm-hmm. So I'm, I'm just wondering if people didn't say anything, if, over water, would that have been-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm ... you know,
BENAY LAPPE: would they have gone, "Oh, wow, people don't say anything on water," so maybe water is, you know, outside of the things for which we should have a blessing? Mm-hmm. Would that have been a possibility? I don't know.
DAN LIBENSON: I think no. I think that would definitely have been a possi- Well, not definitely, but I think there's a, there's a good chance that that would've been a possibility.
What I'm trying to suggest more, and again, I don't sort of support this, I'm- I'm trying to tease out what this might look like or might have looked like to them, and I'm saying we might take the principle and apply it more broadly than they applied it. But my thought is that they were thinking about people who are fundamentally bought into the system of Halakhah, right?
Of, of, that the rabbis have authority, that there's laws that they have to... You know, and they're, and they're saying if- if you're a, if you're an apostate, you know, or you're a, uh, whatever, you know, you- you- you're a post-legal Jew, you know, they didn't have them in those days. And by the way, I think that's a big part of it, uh, a big part of the, the, the, uh, why this is not quite an analogy that we can use directly, but it still helps us.
But back then, you know, I think they were saying, "Well, if you're fundamentally connected to the system..." I guess actually there were, because there were Karaites who didn't believe in the system in that way, right? Uh, they're saying, "Well, we're not gonna look to a Karaite to, because Karaites don't believe in the oral law, so we're not gonna, we're not gonna, we might say that Karaites are Jews, but we're not going to observe their behavior as a way of knowing what the- Rabbinic law is because they don't accept the Rabbinic law.
So they're, so now once you're a person who accepts the Rabbinic law, then if it turns out that you don't say a blessing over water, we'll look at you and we'll say, "Oh, if the majority of people who accept Rabbinic law don't say a blessing over water, then I guess the law is that you don't say a blessing over water."
BENAY LAPPE: Right. I, I'm trying to apply this to today, and I'm thinking about you and me. Yeah. Okay? And I'm not gonna, you know, ex- like, name what we do and what we don't do. Yeah. But generally speaking, w- we're, we're stakeholders, I think. I think we can say that in a pretty serious way.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Yet if someone were asking from the framework of the current Halakhic- Right
framework, you know, should this be the Halakha or should that be the Halakha, I think we wouldn't be counted. Right, but that- And that's obviously problematic.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, but that's why I'm saying that I think this principle is valuable, but not as a direct application today. In other words, what, what I think this principle is telling us is that as an ancient tradition in, or as an ancient understanding of how Judaism works, the practice of the common person is significant.
Now, exactly which common person we're talking about, that, that is a question about where we might disagree. Um, but, but what we can say is that at least, uh, in terms of this, the people who accept the system itself, the rabbis are saying, "We honor, we take seriously the practice of the common person as a source of law," you know, or as a source of- I think- Now, go ahead.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, but what's problematic is, the, the, the concept has to be ... I'm trying to figure out how the concept works when you have stakeholders who don't accept the system.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. Period.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? Right.
DAN LIBENSON: So I'm saying in our time, we would extend that concept-
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah ...
DAN LIBENSON: and we would say, we are, we are defining the system much more broadly.
Right. And in our broader definition of the system, we have a principle that we can include as part of how we n- navigate this new system to understand that actually, we have an old principle that the common person's practice is a significant part of figuring out how that system should operate. So now, again, I wouldn't look to a, you know, uh, a, a- Christian, you know, who has no Jewish connection.
You know, meaning there's Christians that could be whatever. But the point is, like, I'm not looking to somebody who has no stake at all in Judaism. I wouldn't say, "Oh, I, I don't know whether we should have a mezuzah or not. Let's check and see what the Christians are doing." Like, no- Yeah, no ... of course not.
Well, but, but we check to see what the Jews are doing. Now who, which Jews are we talking about? We today, you and I I think would agree, on a much more expansive understanding of who those Jews are. Other people might say, "No, we, we, we believe that what the rabbi... We, we don't believe that. You know, Dan and Benay, we don't believe you're interpreting this correctly.
You know, the rabbis were actually saying something very narrow, which is that the people who believe in our authority-based rabbinic system, but we, it just happens to be these particular cases where we forgot what the law was. In those limited cases, we can look to the most, quote, 'religious people' and see what they're doing, and we can kind of trust that they probably remember something that we've forgotten or have it right, or they heard it from their parents who heard it from their..."
And there's some very narrow way to look at that, and I think there's a very expansive way to look at this which says, you know, that we believe that the common person has a certain kind of common sense that is very significant. And I, I'm not, I wouldn't say that either of those interpretations is wrong, you know, or i- i- inconsistent with the text.
But I would say that for us today, it gives us a strong anchor to say, "Hey, there actually is this longstanding serious taking of the common person's intuition," which I think we can play with.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I love that. And,
and one's noncompliance with any particular Halakhic behavior doesn't put that person outside of the set of people whose behavior or non-behavior we're interested in, right? And, and I think you're right that the ques- our questions now have to be so much bigger, um, because the...
Yeah. It,
they just have to be so much bigger.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Right? Yeah. Um, yeah. I mean, I don't personally think this is, like, the biggest point in the world. You know, like, I, I think that, I actually, I'm much more excited about the point that we're now like rabbis, you know, in many ways. You know, we have that capacity too.
But I think that this is a, a piece of a larger puzzle. Yeah. Yeah. Do you see it as, as bigger than that even?
BENAY LAPPE: Um,
I think it's enormous. I think it's, I think it's enormous, and I think you've, you've articulated it well. It's, it's the recognition- That the everyday person who has no title, not even the two qualifications that for me have been so exciting because the everyday person can achieve them, and that is to be gamir na and savir na, right?
And, and I think, you know, we've debated how much learning does it take to be gamir na. But th- this is even more exciting because this is not even those people. It's not like you too can- Uh-huh ... get into this little category. Uh-huh. It's you already are- Mm ... in the category of believed, trusted people.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, and,
and I think there's this recognition that the behavior of the everyday person is, is so trustworthy that actually that's what m- motivates those who have that s- you know, more refined set of authorizing skills to be, you know, learning, learned, and deemed to have svara, to, to trigger them to change the law.
I, I may have told this story before, but the, the
Let me tell you this story. When I was in rabbinical school, I think it was in my last year, my hevruta Eddie and I were sitting in the halls of JTS. We were in one of the, like, hallway lounges, and he was writing his dissertation on the question of what the Halakhic basis could be for a two-ring wedding ceremony, right?
Um, where in a heteronormative context, that's what he was dealing with. He wasn't dealing with same-sex, um, scenario, but in a, quote-unquote, "male/female relationship," how could he engineer a Halakhic rationale such that the exchange of rings between the bride and the groom and the groom and the bride, he gives her a ring, she gives him a ring, are both valid?
And the- And the,
DAN LIBENSON: the issue is in the traditional ceremony the man is acquiring the woman, uh, through the ring, and the concern is that if the woman also gives the man a ring, then it's not really an acquisition, it's an exchange of rings as opposed to a ring for a bride, and that might sort of undermine the transaction that's going on.
BENAY LAPPE: Precisely. He was writing in a moment when there were two Halakhic positions. One was the man acquires the woman by giving her the ring and h- her accepting the ring, and if the woman gives the man a ring, uh, her action has no Halakhic consequence. It's as if she's whistling dixie under the chuppah. It's n- Nothing happens.
Uh-huh. Neither good nor bad. Her action is insignificant, but his remains significant. What do you think? It's a
DAN LIBENSON: nice way of allowing the exchange of rings to happen, but in a completely offensive way, but anyway, yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. Precisely. Yeah. Uh-huh. And, and he wasn't happy with that. Uh-huh. The other opinion was that the woman giving the man a ring undermined-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm
BENAY LAPPE: the, his acquisition of her- Right ... and canceled-
DAN LIBENSON: Right ...
BENAY LAPPE: the husband's acquisition of the bride, in which case nothing happened under the chuppah. They were both whistling Dixie.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Those were the two- It's, like, offensive
DAN LIBENSON: or more offensive.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. Those were the two positions. And, and now I'm seeing this situation very much in the context of the text we learned just now, where there are two conflicting positions.
Is this the berakhah for water or is that the berakhah for water? Uh-huh. Should the beam be this wide or that wide? We're debating it out, trying to think of what a Halakhic rationale could be, and our professor, our Talmud professor, David Kramer, walks down the hall. And we said, "David, David, what do you think about this?
W- how can we find a way to make double ring wedding ceremonies?" And you know what he said?
DAN LIBENSON: I think you've told me the story. Sorry, shoot. So you-
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Now, I remember it with a swear word involved, so I'm not, I don't want to say for sure he said it, but the impact of it had an F word in it, and it was, "Just effing do it."
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: He said, "Just do it." In other words, do the two ring wedding ceremony. And when enough people do it- Mm-hmm ... and, you know, the law committee, the rabbis, see that these people are not undermining the tradition, that they're not leaving, they want in, it's a good thing, th- they will, you know, come up with the Halakhic justification for it.
In other words, he was saying- Mm-hmm ... encourage the people.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, and that is what is gonna change how we understand the law eventually- Mm-hmm ... that, that, the power is what people are doing.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. I mean, that sounds like a little bit, like a form of civil disobedience, where he's saying, you know, that's how- Yeah
the law changes.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And, and that's what I was trying to get at earlier when I was saying that the people you're looking at are gonna be people who are-
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh ...
BENAY LAPPE: quote unquote- Uh-huh ... violating the law. Uh-huh.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh. That's
BENAY LAPPE: interesting. A- and you have to be, you know, able to tolerate that. It's not that if they're violating the law, those are the people you don't want to look at.
Those are precisely the people- Uh-huh ... you do want to look at.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: The, um, yeah, the conscientious objectors and the violators.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, like, the thing that... I, I mean, I totally agree with what you're saying. I'm, I'm just trying to tease out that what I'm asking about when we look at civil disobedience is- You know, how bought into the larger society are you, and how bought in do you need to be?
C- and, and, and I, I'm not ... I, I think I have a, I, I have a very low threshold for, that you don't have to be that bought in. I wanna l- I'm gonna listen to you. You know, uh, you might be so civil diso- civilly disobedient because the society has failed you in such profound way. You know, and by the way, this is what I've been trying to say about things like, like the, like the riots in, in the various, uh, inner cities last year.
You know, I was trying to say, like, I, I actually feel that this, our society has so failed African Americans that, that the social contract is broken, and they therefore don't have an obligation to live up to the social contract. You know, I don't think that rioting is a good thing to do for all kinds of reasons.
I don't think it's so helpful. But I don't necessarily think it's something that they don't have a right to do. Um, and, and so, so that could be a very low level of, of, uh, you know, acceptance of the system and a whole lot of civil disobedience towards ultimately, and this is what the rioters or at least some of, you know, the, the philosophers behind it or whatever want.
Right? Right? Which is a profound remaking of the system so that it will have justice and that it will be ... Right? So that's, that's a level of engagement that's serious, and yet it, it might look like a very low-level engagement because it doesn't include a lot of concern about what the laws on the books are, right?
And, and, and so, you know, versus a level of, you know, a, a level of, of acceptance that says, um, you know, like let's say the African American, uh, civil rights movement in the '60s, which said basically, or, you know, Martin Luther King, but basically said, like, "We're completely bought into the system. You know, we're not, we're not rioting.
We're, we're not saying that the social contract is broken to that extent. We're saying that you failed us. Uh, and we are going to observe all the laws, like almost to a fault, except for a certain set of ones which we are gonna use to draw attention to the absolute injustice." Right? And those are ... And, and different
Some people will say, "Oh, Martin Luther King, that was a good way. He was enough bought into the system that we could take his civil disobedience as something that was relatively small, so, you know, all things being said, and, and therefore we'll, we'll listen to him," right? "And we'll say, oh, well, yeah, we need to go by the law that, that he's reflecting in his actions."
Versus rioters, no, no, that's, that's too ... You know, they're, they're not bought into the system enough. But you could easily say, no, no, no, we're ... Uh, rioters too. What, what they're ... Right? What they're saying is, is, is more fu- they're just saying that the system is more fundamentally broken- That's true ... and that's why they're not, that's why they're not observing more laws, right?
You know, and, and so maybe that's an extreme case, but it helps us see it, and then we can come back to the Jewish world and say, you know, we're not talking about rioting. What we're talking about people that are ... You know, they might be kind of Orthodox, but they believe women should be rabbis, right? So what are they doing?
They're starting a women's rabbinical school and- You know, there, it's, this is, it's, it's actually interesting what's happening in the Orthodox world in terms of rabi- uh, women rabbis because it's kind of, it's exactly like that. It's a kind of a civil disobedience, and it's becoming accepted in mo- broader and broader ways versus you could say a secular Jew who is saying, like, "This whole thing is completely not working for me.
Um, I'm not observing any of these laws. The whole idea that we should have laws and that we should be under the jurisdiction of rabbis who have power over us, that doesn't make any sense to me. But when the pew people come along and ask me is being Jewish is important to me, I say yes." You know, and so- And, and I wanna
BENAY LAPPE: be sure that person is in the set of people we're looking at.
I
DAN LIBENSON: agree. Right. I, I- It could be... Yeah. Yes. Yes, 100%. But, but so, so then when we look at a text like this and we say, "Well, what does that mean for us today?" And, and this is, I think we can, we can wrap it up today and, and we'll go to the other text next week, is that, um, is that it, it goes back to this question that we've talked about, which is that when we study Talmud, are we looking at the rabbis like they were very wise people who had a certain kind of person that they were trying to make, and if we could only understand what kind of person they were trying to make, then we can really kind of revise our system a bit so that we're kind of back on track?
And/or are we saying this is really a profound new era of Judaism, like Yitz Greenberg talks about, that the Rabbinic Judaism is, is, has some really amazing parts to it, and certainly the, the system and the process and the bravery and the chutzpah for changing the Biblical system is all things we wanna carry forward.
But some of the details of it, a lot of the details of it, are not working anymore, and the people for whom it crashed first are the first out of the system. They're the first into the wilderness. And some of us are latecomers to the wilderness, and we actually should have great respect for the people who left 50 years ago because we've now, we're now seeing what they saw 50 years, right, that it's broken.
And it's, and so we- Right ... have to profoundly build it anew. And yes, and of course we should be looking at what they're actually doing, what they care about. And it turns out, like, by the way, this is one of my pet peeves about the demographic studies is, you know, they say things like, "Do you light Shabbat candles?"
It's like if you didn't light Shabbat candles, like, you're a bad Jew, as opposed to like, "Do you treat other people like the image of God?" You know, "Do you love strangers?" And I think a lot of the people who've kind of left the system, so to speak, are actually out there, you know, leading social justice movements and loving strangers and treating other people as the image of God.
And I think you could easily do a demographic study saying, "Wow, those people are so Jewish." You know? Absolutely. And, uh, so, so, so I think that, that, that's where I see this idea as being, you know, critical, but you know, I'm trying to be like intellectually honest about, but I'm not necessarily saying that, that these rabbis, these specific rabbis would agree.
Um- Yeah ... but I think that they've given us a tool that allows us to do exactly what they did to the Torah, which is in certain cases to, you know, undermine their own system with, with their own rules.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, absolutely. I, I think that's a great place to stop. I-
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So- I don't have ... so then, so it's good because th- then we'll, we'll continue this next week with the other text.
The other text is great because it even involves Hillel, who's arguably the founder of Rabbinic Judaism, and, um, and, uh, you know, he, he doesn't come out so, looking so hot on, on this, uh, ca- uh, category. So, so it really shows it even more profoundly, so look forward to, to doing that text next week.
BENAY LAPPE: Great.
DAN LIBENSON: We'll see you then, and we'll see you on- All right ... on Saturday night, Benay. And, uh, so folks, again, who are watching this, if you wanna sign up for the J- uh, Judaism Unbound Jewish Life Shavuot, uh, program, just go to either homepage and you'll, you'll be able to find it there, and we'll, we'll see you for two hours on Saturday night.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I can't wait. I love Shavuot.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, me too. It's like the
BENAY LAPPE: yon- Great ... yontif
DAN LIBENSON: for me. Great. I know, the holiday that's where Jewish learning is the main practice, uh, you know. Yeah. Good one for Svara. It is. All right. See you next All right ... see you soon. Bye.
BENAY LAPPE: Bye-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 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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