The Oral Talmud Episode 57: The Lovesick Man (Sanhedrin 75a)
SHOW NOTES
“ The issue here isn't sex. The issue here is objectification. So that can take place in a sexual context, but it can also take place in other contexts. So this potentially gives us the opening to say in a case where you have a disease that you're going to die where the cure would require the treating of another person as an object, that is not permitted. That's a much larger category. ” - Dan Libenson
Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.
This week’s conversation begins with a lovesick man, a woman he barely knows, and a rabbinic ruling that seems almost impossible to understand. The doctors insist the man will die unless he has the woman. The rabbis refuse. They refuse when sex is proposed. They refuse when the doctors suggest she merely stand before him. They even refuse when all that’s required is a conversation from behind a fence. Again and again, they choose to let him die.
What unfolds is far larger than an ancient argument about desire or modesty. We discover a hidden crack inside the rabbinic system itself: a moment that’s in conflict with a principle we thought we had established: saving a life trumps everything. But here, saving a life is not the highest value. The conversation moves from misogyny and objectification to feminism, queer liberation, systemic injustice, and the possibility that every tradition contains the tools needed to remake itself. If the rabbis could add new values to Torah, what values might we be called to add today?
This week’s text: Sanhedrin 75a
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 57: The Lovesick Man
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.
This week’s conversation begins with a lovesick man, a woman he barely knows, and a rabbinic ruling that seems almost impossible to understand. The doctors insist the man will die unless he has the woman. The rabbis refuse. They refuse when sex is proposed. They refuse when the doctors suggest she merely stand before him. They even refuse when all that’s required is a conversation from behind a fence. Again and again, they choose to let him die.
What unfolds is far larger than an ancient argument about desire or modesty. We discover a hidden crack inside the rabbinic system itself: a moment that’s in conflict with a principle we thought we had established – that saving a life trumps everything. But here, saving a life is not the highest value. Our conversation moves from misogyny and objectification to feminism, queer liberation, systemic injustice, and the possibility that every tradition contains the tools needed to remake itself. If the rabbis could add new values to Torah, what values might we be called to add today?
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, and welcome back to this week's episode of The Oral Talmud. I'm Dan Leventon, and I'm here with Bene Lappe. Hey, Bene.
BENAY LAPPE: Hey, Dan. How are you?
DAN LIBENSON: Good. Great to see you.
BENAY LAPPE: Good to see you. I was just, uh, fever- feverishly looking through my Jastro, looking up a word- Oh ... that I'm excited about.
DAN LIBENSON: All right.
Well, very exciting news. So yeah. Sh- So let's, let's jump right into it. So today we are looking at a text that comes from the tractate of Sanhedrin page 75A, and, um, it... You wanna set it up for us?
BENAY LAPPE: Sure. So it's a story, and i- as I think we've mentioned before, scholars and learners generally have historically divided up all the material in the Talmud into two very neat categories: Halakha, law, and Aggadah, story or narrative.
And that's kind of been, you know, until I would say the last 40 years or so, the general understanding, and the law has been seen as, like, the real deal. That's the important stuff, and the narrative, the Aggadah, has been seen as material for sermons and the stuff you teach women, with a giant sticky on that.
Um, you know, the unimportant fluff. But more recently, uh, scholars have been realizing that that's not only an artificial but a, a misleading, um- characterization. And beginning with Rob- the late Robert Cover and, uh, Peter Wimp- uh, Scott Wimpfi- Barry, sorry. Barry. Barry, Barry芯impfheimer, who we've had on our show, um, also develops this even further.
And, and Barry says, and Cover, they both say there, there's an interlocking relationship between the stories of people's real lived life experiences and law. And the stories come to problematize, and undermine, and subvert, and make you re-question, and challenge, and critique the, the simple law. And it gives us a very complex, thick, not so clear, um, understanding of how we should live.
And, uh, Barry calls, um, this narrative a legal narrative, so it's not just story, in order to tie it back into law. Okay, so the text we have today is one of these legal narratives. It's a story that comes immediately after one of the most famous statements of new law in the Talmud, which we learned together, which is on pa- the, the very page right before 774A, where the rabbis, uh, where I think we're gonna show that on the screen, right?
DAN LIBENSON: Yep.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, and this is the famous scene in Nitsa's attic. So I'll let, I'll let you r- r- run us through this.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so we've studied this before, um, but it goes like this. Rabbi Yochanan says, in the name of Rabbi Shimon Ben Yochai, "The sages who discussed this, this issue," which is the issue of, uh, of, of whether, of whether you can, uh, transgress certain laws if you're, uh, told that you're gonna be killed otherwise.
Uh, the s- uh, the sages who discussed this issue counted the votes of those assembled and concluded in the upper story of the house of Nitsa in the city of Lod, or also called Nitsa's attic, all transgressions that are mentioned in the Torah, if a person is told, "Transgress this prohibition, or else I will kill you," he may transgress the prohibition and not be killed.
This is the Halakha concerning all prohibitions, except for those of idol worship, forbidden sexual relations, and bloodshed.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, so this is the really chutzpadik move of the rabbis to say, "Okay, we've got this Torah. Here's God's word. God told us to do these things and not do these other things." And we're going to say, "Actually, it's okay.
You may violate those laws, even the prohibitions, which are the stickier ones to violate. You may do that which Torah says is forbidden." In order to save your life. For example, if a no-goodnik, someone from the, the malchut, the non-Jewish government or some bad person says, "Violate this piece of Torah, eat this cheeseburger, you know, build a fire on Shabbat," whatever it is, "or else I'll kill you."
Until this moment in history, the law was God's word is God's word. You don't violate God's word and let yourself be killed.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And at this moment, the rabbis say, "No. Uh, we don't think that is really our best guess at the kind of God we actually have or, or want. We think God wants us to live and even if it cause, requires us to violate Torah."
And they say, "It's okay to violate Torah." It's incredibly chutzpadik, and we all think of it as, you know, po-hum because we live, you know, 2,000 years into, "Of course you save your life. Of course that's what it means to be a Jew." Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So- By the way, recently, I don't remember where, but recently I heard somebody talking about the Jewish law and the Torah, and they said something like, "Well, and of course, uh, you know, anything can be violated for saving a life."
You know, as if it... And like, the way they talked about it was, like, in their mind, and I think this was an Orthodox, if I'm recalling correctly, an Orthodox rabbi, you know, saying, like, as if, like, in, in that person's mind, it's like it's in, it actually says this in the Torah. Right. You know, which it doesn't.
Um, but, you know, that's become so solidified.
BENAY LAPPE: Absolutely. Okay. So the rabbis established that law, that saving a life is of paramount importance, violate any law in the Torah with three exceptions to save a life. Great. The very next page, we get into the messiness of carrying out that value, and, and I think this speaks to- The difficulty of living with multiple, sometimes conflicting values.
And that happens. That, that's how life is, and the rabbis recognize that. And, um, so here comes a conflicting value in this story that makes them not so sure that life is always to be preserved. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. And, and just, and just to remind what, what the, um-
BENAY LAPPE: All right
DAN LIBENSON: And, and just to remind what the p- what the exceptions are to that, right?
That, that they are, uh, number one, uh, idolatry, number two, uh, forbidden sexual relations, which is a very particular set of s- uh, forbidden sexual... So it's not just, like, anything that involves sex that's forbidden, it's the, a particular set of, you know, essentially incest and, uh, uh- Adultery ... and adultery, and that kind of thing.
It's not just sort of having sex outside of marriage. That's, that's important for this.
BENAY LAPPE: Wh- which by the way, is not forbidden.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh. But it's not, it's frowned upon.
BENAY LAPPE: It is frowned upon. I mean,
DAN LIBENSON: in, in other words, like, it, it, you're not supposed to do it, even in the Torah. You're not supposed to, you're not supposed to just, you know, just, uh, willy-nilly, right?
I mean, like, you're supposed to marry the woman if you have sex with her before you're married.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. But, but just to be clear, when I said it's permitted, it's permitted if that person who you're not married to ... Let me say it differently. Um, you're permitted to have sex with someone who you would be permitted to marry.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Even if you're not married to that person.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: As long as, um, you're not a woman. Okay. Oh, gosh, I said that in such a, a complicated way. I, let me say it, let me try it one more time. Back in the day, in the rabbis' day when men were allowed to have multiple wives-
And women were not. Um, a married man... Oh, I'm getting, I'm, this is probably not necessary. But we- we- well, forget it. Let's just say single people. Here's a simple case. Single people can have sex with one another if they are also potentially permitted to marry one another. Right. That's not forbidden. The rabbis preferred them to get married because back in the day, that would've been beneficial to women, because otherwise she would've been, quote-unquote, less desirable.
There are just so many stickies- Right ... to put on this conversation.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Anyway.
DAN LIBENSON: We'll delete some of this from the podcast, Bridget. No, um, so the, um, so the, uh, and the la- and the last one is, is, uh, bloodshed, which, which means, uh, you know, again, uh, specific categories. We don't have to get into it. But, um, but I, I just wanted to point that out because the, the case here is gonna involve sex, and the, the point, uh, to understand is that it's not in the category of, of those forbidden sexual relations that, that you would, that you would, that the Torah prohibits, right?
BENAY LAPPE: Well, that de- that depends. Okay. Is the sex ultra sex? Is the, is, is the sex in question in our text, that's one of the central questions- Ah, okay, okay ... is it in the category of one of those kinds of sexual, um, prohibitions that you should rather die than commit?
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Or is it one of those that normally it, it's okay to- violate to save your life?
That's gonna be a question.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so let's look, let's look at the, at the text from the Gemara now.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, so Rav Yehuda said that Rav said, "There was an incident involving a certain man who set his eyes upon a certain woman and passion rose in his heart, to the point that he- O- ... became deathly ill."
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, so there's, there, there's so much even in this first setup line.
First of all, this is, uh, in English the translation is incident, but it actually has a really technical frame, and in Hebrew that term is ma'aseh. So this is a ma'aseh. This is a precedent. Mm. Okay? So it's being named as a case that happened with a ruling on it, and we should use this as a precedent.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Mkay? So this is not just a story, once upon a time, or I heard about the time. This was actually a legal case.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. That came from a story, came from a, a, a, an event, a, an incident in somebody's real life.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, so that's what m- ma'asesh, ma'asehs are. Which, and they're fascinating because they're real life making law messy.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And that's what the rabbis are letting real life do.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And as someone whose real life makes the law I was born into messy, I really appreciate-
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh ...
BENAY LAPPE: this dynamic.
DAN LIBENSON: So, a- and, and this particular weird ca- Like, it's, it's sort of funny because when you were talking about, and I, I knew what was coming here, but when you were talking about, like, this whole question about, like, doing things that are forbidden, and you said eating a cheeseburger.
You know, I was just thinking about the phrase, like, "I'm dying for a cheeseburger." You know? And, and it's like, if you're actually dying for a cheeseburger, in Judaism you can have one. In, in other words, like, if you're gonna die- ... if you don't have a cheeseburger, then you can have the cheeseburger. Now, the question is, is that ever really the situation, that you're dying for a cheeseburger, or is that just a phrase, just a, you know, expression?
And here the person is saying, like, "I'm dying to have sex with that woman." Yeah. And the Talmud is taking that claim seriously, that he actually would die if he did not.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. So th- this guy has some malady,
and, and one of the questions is what's the matter with this guy? Seriously.
DAN LIBENSON: Maybe he, he's an ancient man. That's the malady.
BENAY LAPPE: But, but i- yeah, uh, y- you know, the text says he is, he is, um, like- He has, uh, set his eyes upon this woman, and his heart has become ill, basically. Hmm. And, and Rashi explains this how...
That was the word I was looking up. Um, and the explanation for what has happened to him is that his heart has become s- sort of it stopped working. It stopped because it's been so overwhelmed. So there is the recognition that because of his love, and I'm gonna put love in quotes here- Yeah ... because from the get-go, it strikes a, the modern reader as kind of fishy.
Yeah. And a person who lives in a patriarchal society and hears about a man who's gonna die unless he has, you know... Well, we'll, we'll see soon. He, he's gonna die because of his feelings for this woman. We're like- Really? Like, really? What, like, what, what, what's his deal? Yeah. You know? Um,
DAN LIBENSON: it's- Well, that, that's where, like to me it, it actually kind of raises this question is like, is this a serious story?
Like, I mean even to the, like, in other words, like I hear a story like this and my initial response is like, "That is ridiculous." Like, that is, that is not a thing. You know? That, in other words, like that is, like we have this expression, right? I, I would die for a cheeseburger. I, I give you a million dollars for that cheeseburger.
It's like in none of these cases-
BENAY LAPPE: By the, by the way, I've n- I've never heard of this, I would die for a ch- Is that a thing?
DAN LIBENSON: Oh, not for a cheeseburger, but I mean like I'm dying to do something. Oh,
BENAY LAPPE: oh, got it. Right? Like I- Got it. I w- Right. I'm dying for whatever.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Got it.
DAN LIBENSON: I mean, I'm sure somebody said, "I'm dying for a cheeseburger," but, um, you're not just traveling in those inside of circles.
No, but I mean, like, people talk about like I'm dying for something or-
BENAY LAPPE: Right ...
DAN LIBENSON: or I, I would give you a million dollars for something. Actually, uh, a lot of times, uh, Richard Elliott Friedman, who, who's a scholar of the Bible, he actually talks about how in the Bible where it says, um, you know, "I will give you half my kingdom for this," or, "I will, I will, uh, give you," you know, in the story of Abraham buying the burial plot for his wife Sarah, you know, he says, the, the, the person says, um, you know, "Take it for nothing."
You know, in other words, and, and, and Richard Elliott Friedman talks about how these are just rhetorical expressions just like we have rhetorical expressions like I'd pay a million dollars for that or I'd die for that, and they don't really mean that. And if you read them as like the person actually was saying to Abraham he was gonna give it to him for free, like you're not actually understanding what the Biblical author is trying to say.
Uh, just, and, and here too, like I, and I don't think this is resolvable, I don't think you and I know, but I, I'm just pointing it out that it strikes me a little bit like something so absurd as this notion that's explored here makes me wonder whether the case is meant seriously, that like this is really a thing that happens, or there's als- there's a tongue-in-cheek just in the setting up of this case, or there's something, maybe it's not tongue in cheek, maybe it's rhetoric.
You know, whatever it is, worth considering.
BENAY LAPPE: Maybe. And I realize that we've anticipated, um, the next line in the text which really spells out his condition. Uh, I, I personally think this is a for real thing. Mm-hmm. Meaning I think this was a real case. I don't know what, what, what's the matter with this guy- Yeah
but I think he felt that he was going, he was like dying of love sickness, and this- Mm ... this story is often called the love sick man. Yeah. He is, he is physically sick from whatever it is that he's feeling, um, about this woman w- who he has set his eyes upon. He's never even met her.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh. And
BENAY LAPPE: in my, in my imagination he's gone to the rabbis and he said, you know, and that's not in the text- But I think that this is the bracketed part that you have to assume.
He's gone to the rabbi and said, "What, what can I do? Can I- Mm. It, what, I don't know what to do."
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And then here comes the next line.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Um, so, so, "And they came and asked doctors what was to be done with him."
BENAY LAPPE: Right. So that's, the fact that they, and I think they is the rabbis.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: The rabbis that are asking the doctors what to do is because they've already been presented with the dilemma.
This man has already been brought to the rabbis, and that's kind of interesting that he'd be brought to the rabbis before doctors. Maybe- The initial question is What's the right thing for him to do rather than what is his actual condition? Mm-hmm. And the rabbis are saying, "You know what? It actually depends on what your real condition is.
We don't know. W- we don't know how ill you really are- Mm-hmm ... and how much this love sickness is really threatening your life." So the rabbis go to doctors, and that all by itself is interesting-
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Uh-huh ... because what it's saying is there are, quote-unquote, "extra- extra-halakhic sources."
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: In other words, there are sources outside of the Torah corpus or rabbinic corpus that are trusted- Mm-hmm
as relevant to what we think God wants.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And doctors are for sure trusted. So-
DAN LIBENSON: Which, interesting and important given everything that's going on today with the COVID vaccine, for example, in the, or with COVID in general in the ultra-Orthodox communities, for example.
BENAY LAPPE: Absolutely.
DAN LIBENSON: But there seems to be not that level of trust that apparently the Talmud has for doctors- Yes
and would say that they should have, I
BENAY LAPPE: think. Agreed. Agreed.
DAN LIBENSON: So the doctor said, "He will have no cure until she engages with sex- in sexual intercourse with him."
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, so let's stop there.
DAN LIBENSON: I mean, okay, yeah. I just think, I just think there's a lot of bad medical information in the Talmud, and this- Yes ... may be one of them.
BENAY LAPPE: Yes. I think this is definitely bad medicine, but I think they're, this is really their sincere and authentic diagnosis.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: They think he will die if he doesn't have sex with her. And the rabbis accept that. The rabbis accept the doctor's diagnosis that if he doesn't have sex with this woman, he will die.
Okay, so in the, the reader's mind, that definitely triggers the text from the previous page. In other words, the law as has just been set up, that you do anything, you break any law, you violate any prohibition to save a life, except for idolatry. You don't commit idolatry, even to save your life. Murder, you don't murder an innocent person, even to save your own life or for the purpose of saving your own life.
And you don't engage in that set of sexual prohibitions like incest and adultery even to save your life. Um, okay, but let's note already the reader is, has to be saying, "Wait, would that be a forbidden, one of those forbidden sexual intercourses in that category of things that you should rather die for?"
Nothing in the story makes us think that. That's gonna come up later explicitly, but so far you're like, "Wait a minute. What's going on?" Okay, and what do the rabbis say when they have the diagnosis? They have all the information they need to know what's the matter with this guy, and they believe the doctors.
DAN LIBENSON: So the sages said, "Let him die, and let her not engage in sexual intercourse with him."
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. So that's really notable. Given the previous page, you would have thought that they would say, "Yeah, bring the woman in. Call her up, bring her into our office, give them a room. W- we ha- we have to do whatever we can to, to, to save this guy's life."
Mm-hmm. "Let him do it and, and he'll survive." And they say, "No, let him die."
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Hmm. Interesting.
DAN LIBENSON: So is your read on that that they, what, what they're saying by implication is that this is, this is, this counts as a forbidden sexual relations under the previous text, the previous statement?
BENAY LAPPE: I think without evidence that this woman is married-
DAN LIBENSON: Right
BENAY LAPPE: which would make sex with this lovesick man adulterous for her, and therefore forbidden for him, and in the category of things you should rather die than do, I think, I think the assumption is she is not in that category.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So that, that's what I was trying to set up earlier. W- I was trying to say that, that if this, if this particular case...
And, and, like, just to explain what you're saying, like, if th- he had been married or she had been married or they were siblings or whatever the case might have been, that would have been in the description given to us.
BENAY LAPPE: Yes. Yes.
DAN LIBENSON: So the fact that it just says a man and a woman suggests that it's just any old man, any old woman.
It, it, maybe they're single. Maybe it's somehow it's otherwise. Maybe he's married and she's, like, you know, whatever, but that, that they're, they're somehow permitted to each other under the law that, as they have it. I
BENAY LAPPE: think so. A- and the Gemara itself is going to articulate this very conversation that you and I are having in a minute.
Okay. But at this point, y- y- I think the assumption is- They would have been permitted because if she were married, that's, that's what the text would have said. The text clearly would have said, "No, they can't because that's an example of- Right ... what we taught in the previous page, and therefore he has to die."
Be- but they don't.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So if it turns out that that's the situation, that they are permitted to each other from a kind of legalistic standpoint... Again, you know, like, the, I mean, I, I'm sure we, we've talked about, like, this is a terrible story in all kinds of ways in that it, it, it, it puts the woman in the position of an object.
It says that somehow because a man might die if he doesn't have sex with... There, there's even a question that they should, you know, have sex because, or do anything, you know, that she doesn't want to do because of this man's situation. Uh, you know, that, that, th- they're not asking, you know, are they allowed to have sex if she wants to.
I mean, there's some kind of, you know, treatment here of the woman as essentially an object, as property, which is part of what was the condition of women at that time, and they're, you know, right, it's terrible in all kinds of ways. Within the, the schema that they're setting up, though, it's not a forbidden sexual relation under the, the Torah law.
So what, what the implication would be if this is forbidden, I mean, in other words, if he's supposed to be allowed to die rather than to have sex with her, then either that sort of adds another ca- So it's, so it's, it's, uh, idolatry, forbidden sexual relations, uh, and bloodshed, and this other category, whatever this is gonna be.
You know, or some version of, like, it doesn't count if it's, like, a sickness, a, a heart, you know, there was, in other words, it's not somebody with a gun to your head. It's some kind of... You know, but, but it's one or the other. It's, it, in other words, it doesn't fall naturally into what we just read, is the point that I'm trying to bring out.
BENAY LAPPE: I, I agree. I think the fact that the case doesn't present her as a married woman, and therefore it's an easy case, he cannot save his life by engaging in adultery. It doesn't say that. It simply says, "Let him die."
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. "
BENAY LAPPE: And let him not have sex with her," not because that would be adulterous, and we are, we just learned a minute ago that adultery is something that you can't transgress even to save your life.
Mm-hmm. So you're right. I, what, what the story at this point is raising is, huh, maybe we've got a fourth category-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm ...
BENAY LAPPE: of, uh, of value, something that's so important to us that we wouldn't permit the violation of it, even to save a life.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And I think that's, that's what we're getting at.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
Okay, s- continue
BENAY LAPPE: A- and thank you for articulating how, how, how difficult and problematic this text is in terms of this, this ob- the woman who is an object who's being discussed, you know, as to whether we should You know, a, a, and, and, and the, the actual text is even more clear. It's, it's even more Painful in the way it is articulated, that to have sexual intercourse with her is a nice outside translation.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: The, the actual text says that, that she be penetrated-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm ...
BENAY LAPPE: for him. Yeah. It, it, it's very difficult. Mm-hmm. It's a, it's a really painful scenario, picture, understanding of women and- Mm-hmm ... let's not minimize that, for sure.
DAN LIBENSON: No, and, and I think that in the, in, you know, in the time ahead on this show, I think there'll be opportunities to talk about, uh, you know, as I've been thinking about it more and more lately, it feels to me...
Like, when you say, when you ask this question of, uh, that you talk about, like, has there been a crash, uh, and after, you know, the crash as opposed to a hiccup, let's say. You know? And, and it's, if there's a hiccup, you know, it feels like, okay, so then we, we do some little surgery and we fix the hiccup and everything's back to normal.
So if you think, for example, so and, and, and by the way, like, to, there's a, well, I, you know, there's a way in which saying, "Oh, we didn't used to let women be rabbis, now we're gonna admit women to rabbinical school. We didn't let, used to let LGBT folks be rabbis, now we're gonna admit them to a rabbinical school."
It's like, there's one way of looking at it, that was a hiccup. Oh, silly us, you know, we, we shoul- we, why, why should we have been denying these people to be rabbis? Let's fix that. Now everything's okay, let's continue to move on. You know, but there's another possibility that, that, that, that fact that we're not admitting so-and-so to be a rabbi, you know, is actually sort of wrapped up in a, in a much deeper, uh, reality that, that this whole system was, was built on a foundation of certain things being seen to be true.
That once we see that those foundational things, even if they're not foundational principles of Judaism per se, but they're foundational things about the society in which Judaism... Rabbi, you say, well, the, if this is a foundational thing and the whole system is actually built on that foundation, it's like a game of Jenga.
You know, once we take out that piece, the whole thing would fall down. You know, that's more of a crash. And, and I'm interested in this question about whether, as we think about it more, things that have to do with feminism, with, uh, with, uh, you know, uh, w- well, with, with direct homophobia or transphobia, or that those things just naturally flow from feminism, but what, you know, from, from misogyny, that, um, that, that if we, if we, we might start to see those things as more foundational.
And if so, what does that mean? And I don't think it means, I mean, if, we wouldn't be doing this show if we thought that it meant that you take everything and you flush it down the toilet and go do something else. You know, there's so- so there's something to be done with the material, but it's not quite just we have to do a little bit of minor or major surgery.
And, and I'm starting to feel like the, the whole question of misogyny and where that leads- Uh, in, in terms of things like homophobia and transphobia, et cetera, that, that those actually might represent in and of themselves, even if you didn't have anything else, which we do, like belief in God or other kind of factors that are important.
But, but that in and of itself feels to me like it, it's significant enough to represent a crash that would require a complete reworking of Judaism as opposed to just something that we can patch with some more, you know, openness or admissions to rabbinical school.
BENAY LAPPE: I, I agree. I agree completely. And, you know, it's funny that you mention, you know, admitting queer people to rabbinical school because this question, the entertaining the possibility that the foundation or the as- or the foundational assumptions of our system, you know, and, and, and what it mirrors from its time and surrounding cultures about gender generally- Mm-hmm
DAN LIBENSON: which
BENAY LAPPE: have, which have implications for patriarchy, misogyny, sexuality, gender expression, that whole-
that, that we can entertain that question is what happens- Yeah ... when you let women go to rabbinical school. I was
DAN LIBENSON: gonna say the same thing, yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: And when you let queer people go to rabbinical school, even if you don't let them, if you don't watch Oprah enough to know that they're there, I mean, how did they let me in?
I don't know. In any case- Right.
DAN LIBENSON: No, no, but... Go ahead.
BENAY LAPPE: So, so you gotta start somewhere and, and even though, you know, letting women into rabbinical school isn't the fix, it's the beginning of the end. L- or, or beginning of the beginning. It's a beginning of a new beginning-
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah ...
BENAY LAPPE: which is going to have n- a new foundation.
I mean, that's what we're doing, right?
DAN LIBENSON: Well, yeah. And, and, and I just wanna point out, not because I, uh, because obviously I, I oppose the not letting in, but I would point out that that is a bit of a confirmation for the people who don't wanna let certain people in-
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah,
DAN LIBENSON: sure ... that they're kind of right. I mean, like from their own perspective.
Like, it, it is gonna, it is gonna- Yeah ... potentially undo what they're trying to save.
BENAY LAPPE: I know. I, I always objected to the, to the reassurance that back in the day queer people used to give to the straight world. It's like- This isn't gonna upturn your world. This isn't gonna upset the apple cart. This isn't gonna destroy...
It, it is. Mm-hmm. You should be afraid.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Be very afraid. Yeah. Right. But of course, strategically, that wasn't the right thing to say.
DAN LIBENSON: No, of course, you know, right. But, but it is interesting to ponder. And, and the other question, I mean, so then I think there's two questions, and then we should get back to the text.
But I think there's two questions that kind of arise from this. One is, like, like you said, and this is descriptively true, that the set of dominoes falling that has led us to raise this question of maybe misogyny actually undoes the whole system, and is, is itself the reason or a reason that this is actually a crash and a new Judaism is needed, as opposed to just a hiccup.
That that set of dominoes started falling when women were, uh, initially when women, and then later when LGBTQ folks were admitted into rabbinical school. Uh, and, uh, that, that, that once you start educating people formally, they will discover things that maybe you didn't want them to discover, and they will start to raise questions that might actually ultimately undo the system.
The question, though, to my mind is also, is there an alternative direction? And I, and I think that there is, uh, but we're trying to, uh, you know, in other words, I think that part of my mission, like part of what I'm trying to do to some extent, is to make it possible for people to educate themselves without going to rabbinical school.
You know, and, and is there a way to, to do that on the fringes, you know, on the margins, without needing to- That's what
BENAY LAPPE: Sefar is about
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Right. So, so, and you know, led by a person who went to rabbinical, you know, who got it. Right. I mean, I, I, always tell your story like as a Prometheus story, and I think you've, you described it, I don't think you used that language, but y- when you describe it to me, I say, "Oh, that's like Prometheus, like stealing- Yeah
fire from the gods." You know? And,
BENAY LAPPE: um- Yeah. I, I, I talk about it as Robin Hooding-
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah,
BENAY LAPPE: yeah ... the Talmud or the Judaism
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. So you know, may- so that's like somebody's gotta go in, get the knowledge, and then bring it out to the margins, uh, and make it available without having to, you know, run that, that gauntlet.
So in any event, it, there's a lot of interesting stuff here that we will return to on this show.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I'll just add one more thing, and then we'll get back to our text. Yeah. Which is not only do these folks who, you know, sneak in or get let in- See what's really in the tradition, for good and for bad. Um, you know, lots of bad stuff.
But also, you know, discover amazingly radical ideas like the concept of Sfar. But bring their life experience, of the experience of people on the margins, which is, it has so much important insights to sh- you know, bring to the tradition, and shake it up, and make it better. So it's both those things. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Okay, so returning to the text. So I mean, th- this is like another part that, that, um, makes me like laugh a little bit at this text. Like, again, it's, it's like a grotesque laughter, you know? But it's, but it, there's something where it makes me feel like a little bit like this text isn't 100% serious because, you know, they say he'll have no cure until he, she engages in sexual intercourse with him.
The sages said, "Let him die, and let her not engage in sexual intercourse with him." Then the doctor said, "Oh, wait, he still can be cured." You know? Yeah. Actually it turns out that they don't have to have sex, that let her stand naked before him.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Okay. So I, I, I agree. Th- this always made me think as soon as the doctors say, "Okay, okay.
He can do this and he'll survive," then you have, then maybe the rabbis were like- ... "We're not gonna listen to you anymore." But- I don't know. I, you know, I'm thinking of medical scenarios where You know, the treatment was such and such to cure the thing, but the patient couldn't undergo that for some other complication, and so the doctors taken another way around.
"Okay, we're gonna do it this way." So I, I think that's possible. I really think this was a case. I think this is for real, and I think at the very least that, that the rabbis are taking the doctors at their word at each step. Hm. Yeah. So it... Okay, at the second step, the doctors come back with a second opinion and say, "Okay, we can still save the patient."
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Well, there, there is, by the way, there is, like, a serious, like, issue here about doctors also, and, like, sort of, for example, racist and misogynist, uh, things happening in medicine, right? Because there's certainly a lot of evidence in medical literature that when it comes to women, when it comes to minorities, particularly Black Americans or, I don't...
You know, m- other countries as well. But in America, uh, Black people, that, that doctors often did things that were... You know, they did a more aggressive thing that was very damaging to the patient faster than they would have to a man or to a white person. You know, it- Or,
BENAY LAPPE: or dismissed the symptoms and taken a much more cavalier approach because...
Absolutely.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. But, but here, like, saying like, "Oh, this man says he's, has- he's gonna die if he doesn't have sex with this woman, so he has to have sex with this woman." And then somebody tells, "Oh, you can't do that." "Oh, well, actually it's not, he doesn't have to have sex. Uh-huh. I mean, it could just, uh, they could just be naked."
"Well, why didn't you say she could- ... be naked at the beginning?" When you might say, like, the- Uh-huh ... the charitable way is to say, um, "Well, they, they, they, they had to go to plan B 'cause they, you know, plan A wasn't allowed. So they really worked hard and they figured out, 'Oh, may- there's another- Mm-hmm ... option here.'"
But, uh, the other possibility is that they went to an, a- Mm ... You know, they went to plan A. It was, plan B would always have worked, they just never even bothered to think about it because they, they just think that this person is an object, so what difference does it make if they're a little harmed in the process?
So, you know, might as well. We know that having sex with her is gonna work, so do that. You know, and only when they're not allowed to do that do they kind of consider whether there's another option. And, and there's a lot of, right, there's a lot of, um, sort of treatments that were, you know, e- extreme treatments that were, uh, placed on women and, and Black people in, in American history.
Uh, to, you know, things like, things like, uh, a hysterectomy for a woman, uh, you know, for something like, uh, fibroids or something, which isn't necessary, but it's easier. Mm. You know, and that was done a lot, um, you know, until, until feminism. Until women started to say, "Wait a second, you don't need, you know, that's not right."
Uh, and, and then doctors realized, "Oh, we, we don't have to actually do a hysterectomy."
BENAY LAPPE: Uh-huh.
DAN LIBENSON: You know, so, so-
BENAY LAPPE: I, that's, I, I, I love that. I, I think that's great, and that's a great- solution to the problem that the text has always presented to me, which is how do we take the doctors seriously on their first diagnosis when they keep changing-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm
BENAY LAPPE: what will save this guy?
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So, uh, that, that, that, I think that's a great insight. I love that.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, and it also gives the rabbis, like, a little, I don't wanna overstate this, uh, 'cause I think this text is deeply problematic, but it, it potentially gives the, the rabbis, gives the Talmud, gives the tradition a little bit of a feminist positive note, you know, in the sense that they're not, in this case, they're not exactly, or they may be taking the doctors that they're worried about, like, this is the cure, but they're not saying you can do that.
They are, they're not willing to do that, and then it turns out that there actually is a lesser- Mm ... thing that you could do. And I don't know exactly how to say it, but at least you, there's some pushback here from the tradition, like, against the most extreme version of using the woman as an object here, so.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I love that. I, I'd love to hear the, um, thoughts of our, of our doctor listeners, and I know we have some- Yeah ... out there.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Laurie, Laurie, this one's for you. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so, um, okay, so, so plan B, she can stand there naked, and, um, the sages said, "Let him die, and let her not stand naked before him."
BENAY LAPPE: Right. So we're not even going to call up the woman, have her stand naked in front of him so we can save this guy's life, and that's, that's the given. The given is he's gonna die unless he looks at her naked.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: No, we're not gonna do that. Let him die.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Again, this is, it's really surprising because if we weren't sure whether having sex with him was actually an adulterous proposition or not, which I don't think it was, but even if that was a somewhat a question, s- having him look at her naked is clearly not in one of those three things- Right
which you should not violate and, and rather die. Right. Certainly that seems to be something that is, as awful as it is-
DAN LIBENSON: Right ...
BENAY LAPPE: and as, as demeaning and objectifying for this woman, it's not in the three exceptions, and you would think the doctors would say, "We, we gotta save this guy's life. Oh, we can save his life by having him merely look at this woman naked.
Let's do it." Mm-hmm. "Call her in." And they say, "No, let him die."
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. And, uh, yeah, and, and, um, and then the, the next part, the do- so then the doctors go to plan C, which again, you know, raises all the same questions as before, uh, and, uh, that he can still be cured. Let her converse with him from behind a fence, so he's not even gonna see her.
He's just gonna talk to her.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. So, so now we know we can save his life. We know he will die if he doesn't- Talk to her. She's behind a fence. She doesn't even have to come into the office. She doesn't e- right?
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Let her stay there and just talk to him. If he hears her voice, he'll live, and if he doesn't, he'll die.
That's the given. Yeah. And the rabbis say?
DAN LIBENSON: Let him die and let her not converse with him behind a fence.
BENAY LAPPE: Right So we're not even, for me, uh, uh, already what is, what is suggested here is we're not even going to objectify her to the point where we're gonna say, "Listen, I know this is weird. We gotta ask you a favor.
We hope it's not too much of an imposition. We've got this guy, and he's, you know, fallen in love with you in such, uh, an all-encompassing way. In some way, he is actually gonna die unless you talk. Could we impose upon you to just s- stay in your yard?"
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh. "
BENAY LAPPE: We'll put him on the other s- We just talk." No, they're not even gonna do that.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And for me, I, I think, you know, as misogynistic as this text is, I think this is of them pushing back-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm ...
BENAY LAPPE: on the misogyny which I think the law, until this moment, would've called for them to exercise-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm ...
BENAY LAPPE: to save this guy's life. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, and I don't disagree with you. And in fact, like, I think we'll come back to this later, but one of my questions is whether this is one of those process keys that ultimately allows us to undo, to, to, to rework what the rabbis themselves built based on the principle that they themselves laid down if we take this principle as being even bigger than sex, right?
And, and- Mm-hmm ... uh, we'll get there, but, but I think that it, it's both a, um, it's both like in praise of the rabbis to say that they, their misogyny didn't go as far as it could have, for example. And a- again, I don't mean their misogyny like they were horrible, terrible people. Like, the misogyny of their society or the patriarchal patri- patriarchy of their society.
You know, they, they weren't actually willing to go all the way, and they did stop at, at certain things, and that's praiseworthy. And it's not enough. It's, it's, it's possible for both of those things to be and they didn't go far enough, and they didn't go far enough so much so that now it requires a complete reworking.
But it's a, it's a better step forward even to say a- and that completely reworking, they gave us the keys how to do it right here. We, you know, we can get there, but I, I think that it's interesting to, to see this.
BENAY LAPPE: Absolutely. And on the one hand, this story didn't rewrite the, you know, the, the earlier three, only three exceptions law.
Yeah,
DAN LIBENSON: uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: But as Barry Wimpfheimer points out in his book, this story is attached to every Halakhic compilation in code.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh ...
BENAY LAPPE: where that previous statement of the law with three exceptions- Uh-huh ... is recorded. So I'm not sure what to make of that. It, it's-
DAN LIBENSON: Well, I would even expand the, expand the case, but I don't wanna, I'm not ready to do it yet.
So, so- Okay ... in other, I think, I think it could be much, much bigger than, than that. Um, okay, so, so let's go back- Oh,
BENAY LAPPE: wait a minute. M- maybe that's why they don't re- re- they don't just state a fourth category. Maybe this, this story is the opening up, it, like to other To the fourth and whatever more. Whatever-
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, yeah.
So actually, right, that raises a, a... Well, look, I mean, I'll, I'll just put it out there and then we can sort of go back to the text and talk about it. But, but I think there's actually two ways to potentially open this exception up even further. Actually, there's three. I mean, w- right, one is to say this is restricted in the category of sex, you know, of relations between men and women or, you know, of a sexual nature, whatever you wanna call that, as opposed to forbidden sexual relations, which is a technical term.
You know, anything that has to do with, like, sexy stuff you know? Um, like that, we have a special case and we're, we're gonna, um, you know, have more w- and, and we're gonna expand that or we're gonna add that case. To, but to blow it up even further is to say the issue here isn't sex, the issue here is, is objectification, right?
The, the issue here... So that can take place in, in a sexual context, but it can also take place in other contexts. Right. So this potentially gives us the opening to say in any case where... In other words, if you're f- gonna be killed or you are told that you feel, you know, you have a disease that you're gonna die, in, in any case where the cure would require the treating of another person as an object, that is not permitted.
That's an, that's a, that's a much larger category. We could talk about what those cases might be. Um, but you know, you could, you could easily imagine that things like racism will go in there and, and all kinds of other, uh, categories. So, so, and, and potentially we could even expand that category further to say, well, what does it really mean to treat somebody as an object?
Uh, you know, to treat... In other words, if, if the cost of your saving yourself is going to be borne by others, then it's not permitted. And then we could get into things like climate change, for example, you know, destructing, destroying the Earth 'cause that, 'cause that's ex- you know, in economics that's called an externality.
When you're, when you're putting your, you know, when you're getting something by imposing a cost on society, that's, right? So we're gonna say this is actually about externalities and, and you can't save yourself with externalities. And the, and y- to blow it open even further is to say this is just one example of adding to the category- Yeah
and this one happens to be about externalities and objectification. We can do it. We don't have to go through the whole, you know, machinations- Right ... to get to climate change. We can just say we now identify climate as something very s- important to protect, and so we're gonna add that as a new category.
So there's, so that's why I'm saying, like, this is a key that potentially unlocks the entire category. But I do think it's important to point out that- Once you use the key in that way, I think you could make the argument that we're still living within the rabbinic system. But in other words, 'cause you say, "Well, this- they gave us this key," so it's not, it's traditionally radical, like your shirt said.
You know, in other words, it's not, it's not a complete rework- You know, it's, it's part of their system. Um, or y- But I don't know. Like, I, I think it's, it's more the, it strikes me as more honest and, and I think, again, not, not, not problematic in my view to say it's, it is a new system. It is, it does represent the building of a new system that the rabbis wouldn't have recognized, just like Moses didn't recognize, you know, in that story about Ra- He's in Rabbi Akiva's yeshiva.
They wouldn't have recognized it. They wouldn't approved of it. You know, they would've thought it, it, there were all kinds of things that, that they didn't care about or whatever. And yet, if we say that it came from them, in other words, you know, just like it says- Right, right ... Torah from Moses at Sinai, so we're saying, "Yeah, we got this from Sanhedrin 75A," they would, their, their hearts would become eased.
You know, they would, they would be like- Right, right ... "Okay, you know, it, it's, it's reasonable to call that Judaism." Yes. That-
BENAY LAPPE: Yes to all that. I'm very excited about this new way of understand- extending this story, like you say, as the key, as the as, I don't know, of paradigm, whatever it is, it, it's, it's the launching pad for whatever you come to realize is of value that is-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm
BENAY LAPPE: now so inviolable-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm ...
BENAY LAPPE: that we, we didn't realize should've been so important-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm ...
BENAY LAPPE: that you wanna make even more important than saving a life.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm,
BENAY LAPPE: mm-hmm. Th- this is the opening. The... I love that.
DAN LIBENSON: Which is what they did with saving a life to the Torah's rules, right? You know, so it's- Right ... actually the fact that it's part of the same text, part of the same, uh, you know, it's one page later, two pages later.
It's, um, it's part of that whole... So they're saying, "Hey, w- right now we're, we're undoing a big chunk of the Torah by inserting this new value of saving a life, and we're also showing you how you can, how you can limit that, uh, in a, in a different way that actually expands it, uh, you know, by using this key that we're about to give you," right?
So- Ah, I
BENAY LAPPE: love that. I love that ...
DAN LIBENSON: um, okay. So, so now let's go to the, the, back into the text where here's the, here's where there's some, you know, capturing of the, "Wait a second. What, what's actually going on here?" You know, from, from the rabbis' perspective.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Um- So, so, so the, the end of the, the mise itself, the, the story itself is over, and now there's this additional bracketed sort of sidebar conversation about that story.
And probably we're gonna have to continue this next week.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: I'm guessing, but
DAN LIBENSON: okay.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah,
DAN LIBENSON: probably. Okay. So the Gemara comments, Rabbi Yaakov bar Idi and Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani disagree about this issue. One of them says the woman in question was a married woman, and the other one says she was unmarried.
So this is to this point. So if she's married, then it is a forbidden sexual relation, and then it's just a clear-cut case. Well, it obviously falls into this exception, so no big issue here.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. So the, the unspoken question that these two rabbis are disagreeing about is, why are the rabbis letting this guy die?
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: That's the question.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And one of them says, "Oh, it makes sense. I get it. They're letting him die because this woman was married, and having sex with her would've been adulterous. And therefore it, this case conforms, and the, the psak, the decision to let him die, is consistent with the law as it was established one page ago."
Sidebar to the sidebar that I'm adding- That doesn't explain why the rabbis... Uh, the position that says she was married, "Oh, now I get it, she was married. Okay, I'm good." Doesn't explain why the rabbis would have let him die rather than see her naked or speak with her. It only clearly addresses why the rabbis wouldn't let him have sex with her.
So just wanted to say that. Right.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, because that's not, I mean, you know, it's obviously not, not, uh, not, not, uh, appreciated or, you know, it's not, not considered something you ought to be doing. But there's nothing specifically, you know, to that level of seeing a married woman naked. You know? It's not, that's not what the prohibition is.
Uh-
BENAY LAPPE: Right. And it's kind of interesting that the text doesn't point out the problematic nature of the position of the one who said she's married, therefore, "Oh, I'm fine. I understand that," maisa. Uh, the assumption I think of the Gemara is that all of the-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm ...
BENAY LAPPE: scenarios, the speaking with her from behind a fence, seeing her naked, somehow all of them constitute
adultery.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: But they don't. So-
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. And you could, you could, by the way, see that as a, as a key that could be used to clamp- Uh-huh ... down on women by, by... You could see a, a very conservative reader saying, "Oh, well this means that, uh, married women shouldn't even be talking to men, and so therefore we have to keep them, you know, very separated."
You know, see, that-
BENAY LAPPE: Oh, yeah. Or, or, now, now that you say that, now I realize or it could be a positive that all those behaviors are essentially tantamount to the violation of a woman that is obvious in an adulterous relationship. Uh-huh. So, but... And now I'm seeing that as a possibility. But okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So, um, so the G- the Gemara tries to clarify the issue.
Granted, according to the one who says she was a married woman, the matter is properly understood. But according to the one who says she was unmarried, what is the reason for all this opposition? Uh, w-
BENAY LAPPE: Right? If she was unmarried, how do we understand the rabbi saying, "Let him die, let him die, let him die"?
DAN LIBENSON: Right. 'Cause-
BENAY LAPPE: Because none of those three- That prohibition- ... things would've been a violation so awful that it constitutes, uh, the adultery that you should rather die than commit. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So Rav Papa says this is due to the potential family flaw, and the- there it's explained here, it's sort of like a harm to the family's reputation.
Um-
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Right. So now what's happening is we're gonna have three different, what, two different rabbis explaining how if the woman was in fact unmarried, we can even rationalize and justify letting this guy die. Why would you let the guy die? What's the value that's in conflict with saving a life here that's so big that we should prioritize over saving a life?
And Rav Papa says, well, maybe it was this. May- maybe this concern about family flaw, the concern that it would be- bring shame to the whole family's name to know that their daughter had, you know, been called in to have sex with- Mm-hmm ... or had been even speaking from behind a fence. Mm-hmm. That that would've brought shame to the family.
And maybe that is a value so big that we should let someone die. Maybe that should sort of be in the list of things.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. And essentially, effectively, that would be adding a fourth category, right? Uh- Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Right ...
DAN LIBENSON: uh, adultery, forbidden sexual relations, bloodshed, and harm to family reputation.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, s- and Rav, Rav Aha, son of Rav Ika says, "This is so the daughters of Israel should not be promiscuous with regard to forbidden sexual relations."
So-
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. So, s- so, so he's saying- Slippery slope ... he's saying, "No, I, I, I don't think it's about family flaw. I think the reason the rabbis let this guy die- rather than do XYZ with this unmarried permitted woman was because somehow And, and I think this is not really clear. Somehow permitting this woman or, you know, calling her in, asking her to do us this favor so we could save this guy's life, somehow this contributes to th- the idea that this beha- th- this is going to make Jewish women, the daughters of Israel, be more likely to engage in unseemly sexual behavior.
Because we're essentially kashering this unseemly sexual behavior.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: We're saying, "D- do this unseemly thing-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm ...
BENAY LAPPE: to save a life. Oh, unseemly thing. Yeah, I mean, it's okay."
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Like, yeah, you know, if you could do it to save a life, then maybe, you know, for other reasons. Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: It's not so bad. Yeah.
It's, maybe it's not so bad. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: And, b- but let's just n- put note that, uh, the misogyny under the misogyny. The- Uh-huh ... the, the misogyny under this concern that Rav Aha is, I don't know, th- this, this, the, this system here that objectifies and, and sort of owns women's sexual agency, it, it's just so thick it's hard to even cut through.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, no. And, and, um, a- and it's just wha- it, it's one of those things where, again, like I think, I think that you, there are a lot of... Look, I mean, this comes up in America all the time, that, that right there's, there's wonderful principles laid down in the Constitution by people who own slaves. Once we reckon with the fact that they own slaves, does that mean that their, you know, principles about freedom of religion need to, you know, should g- are called into question?
Well, we should question them because, like, maybe there's a way in which they're connected to slavery in a bad wa- You know, we should, we should call them into question. But at the end of the day, if we find that they actually turn out to be solid on their own, that, that doesn't... So, so that, so that means that we now have the mixed bag of a system that has a lot of good in it, that has all these kind of foundational flaws.
And the question becomes, you know, how found- You know, can the flaws be excised like a cancer, you know, or, and the system kind of still can remain? Or does the system have to be completely rebuilt because it actually can't be disconnected from those foundational flaws? Or, or something in between, where, where you have a kind of a, a reconstruction, uh, you know, a moment, like a, you know, right, a Civil Rights Movement kind of moment.
Which, like again, because its success was only limited, it might suggest that that doesn't really work, and you, you p- you have to remake the whole t- You know, but, but these are reasonable questions that, that come up be- uh, you know, not only in Judaism. And, and yet e- even those who say that we wanna completely remake the system- Um, you know, right, in America, I'm just giving that as an example, like are, are often not saying, "And we are starting from scratch," like we're gonna, we're gonna, it's gonna be as if the last 300 years didn't happen.
It's like, no, no, no, there is, really is a lot of good things here. We do like the idea of freedom of the press and freedom of religion, whatever, so we're gonna keep all that stuff. Uh, we're just gonna rebuild, we just have to rebuild the system in all kinds of ways so that, you know, it, it, it, it's the, the, the things that were so bad that continue to be so bad aren't gonna happen.
You know, th- those are-
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah ...
DAN LIBENSON: those are, those are not just limited to Judaism.
BENAY LAPPE: Absolutely. And, and I think, yeah, we, we have to hold both at the same time. We have to hold an understanding, for example, that America is built on a foundation of racism, systemic racism exists, and we can't maybe fix it all, we can't tear the whole thing apart all at once.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: I mean, I think that, that's the painful and difficult part, because you want to. You want, oh, th- this whole foundation is bad? Let's rip out the foundation. Well- You don't wanna be saying, "Let's go. No, let's go slow." But let's not forget at any moment that the foundation is, is, is rotted. Yeah. And let's have one hand reminding and keeping that in mind while we're fixing pieces of it.
Don't they do that actually with buildings?
DAN LIBENSON: Yes. I think
BENAY LAPPE: so. Right? I, I, I mean, right. They replace, like, parts. Yeah. I don't know. There's some metaphor here. I don't know what it is, but I'm sure there's some metaphor of how to replace piece by piece a foundation that is bad without the whole thing collapsing.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, there is, and, and I know we have to, we're gonna take a pause in a second. But, um, I, I, I have been playing around with this other metaphor, which I think ... I don't s- I haven't figured out how you do it with a country. Like, with America, I'm not sure what you'd do. With Judaism, I can see it a little bit better, where you imagine a building that's built on a rotten foundation.
You could ... And maybe even think about, remember when we did the text about the, uh, the, the, the, the leprosy is in the building? You know, like, is in the ... Like, if so somehow it's not just a rotten foundation, right? Like, the foundation is kind of, like, something that's kind of like making more of the building rotten than just the foundation.
You know, but so one thing that you could do is you could kinda try to take out the, the rotten bricks and the rotten foundation and, and, like, hold up the building with, like, like you're talking about, with some kind of crane while you're replacing the foundation. Again, we're not architects, you know. But, um, but the other possibility is that you go over and, you know, next, next door to it.
You, you lay a new foundation. Uh, and then you take the bricks from the old building that are still good and you bring them over, and you build the new building out of the old bricks, or something like that. And you, you don't take the rotten bricks, you know? And, and maybe it's true that there are some rotten bricks that are interconnected with good bricks, and so you kinda have to leave something behind that you regret leaving behind because it actually was a very beautiful brick.
So then you're gonna have to build a new brick, but maybe it's gonna be inspired by that one. And maybe since it's more modern architectural methods, it's gonna actually turn out to be more solid or more beautiful or whatever. So there's some story like that that I, I think- Yeah ... potentially works here.
BENAY LAPPE: I love that.
And I've seen that happen.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. I think that- I've s- I think so.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, they do that. When- When there's a, a community center that they wanna tear down, but they want kids to still be able to go ice-skating and whatever, whatever. They build this, they start, they leave it while they're building the new one on, next to...
Yes, I love that.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, and, and just to complete the thought, like I think that the way that, the reason I can see it in Judaism more easily is because I kind of feel like you don't actually have to take down the old building. You can just say, uh, uh, you know, 'cause in other words, like it's, it's sort of like a digital good.
You know, like the, when you have digital like this, right? Y- there's a, a zero marginal cost to distribution, right? If a, if a million people watch the oral Talmud versus 1,000, it doesn't cost us any more. You know, it's just the same digital. So that's how it is with like Judaism. It's like we can, you know, each of us has our own Jewish building, and so you and I can decide to go over here and rebuild our building.
That doesn't really affect, sometimes they think it does, but that doesn't really affect somebody who wants to live a more, you know, old school lifestyle. Like, we just won't be together, you know? And, and we might regret that, they might regret that, but for a time we're gonna be separate, and we do our own little thing in a separate place.
You know, and, and then maybe one day what we've built is so awesome that those people come over. You know, that, that's what I imagine happening. How do you do that with a country? I'm not really sure. You know, that's the, like how do you build a kind of new America, you know, at the margins? Uh, uh, you know, like how do you, how do you do that?
Uh, you know, there, so that, that's the, that's the piece where, where I actually feel more optimistic about our ability to do that, uh, with Judaism. Uh, so maybe we should end on a note of optimism.
BENAY LAPPE: Well, I'm, I'm, I'm very excited about this.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Well, maybe it'll be our next, uh, article. Um, all right. So I will, so we will, uh, pick this text up back next week.
BENAY LAPPE: Great.
DAN LIBENSON: All right, see you then. All right. Great. Thanks, Dan. 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.
Watch on Video (original unedited stream)
