The Oral Talmud Episode 58: Living After the End of the World (Sanhedrin 75a)
SHOW NOTES
“That's what Rabbi Yitzchak is saying, once the temple is destroyed, we are all in a state of unhealthy living, and our desires can only be satisfied in forbidden ways.” - Benay Lappe
Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.
The rabbis began with a thought experiment about a lovesick man, which we discussed last week, and they end their analysis with something far stranger: the suggestion that the entire world has been broken ever since the Temple fell. Maybe that man wasn’t sick with love at all. Maybe he’s simply human. His desires are disordered, his longings are misplaced, and his inability to find satisfaction becomes a mirror for everyone else. What starts as a legal argument about one troubled man gradually turns into a meditation on what it means to live after a catastrophe.
Along the way, we stumble into questions far beyond sex. What if the rabbis understood themselves to be living after the end of the world? What if our deepest desires are shaped by loss? And what if the work of tradition is not inventing new values, but discovering the old values that were hidden there all along? The conversation moves from forbidden desire to human dignity, from constitutional law to climate change, and from a broken Temple to our own broken age.
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.
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DAN LIBENSON: This is The Oral Talmud - Episode 58: Living After the End of the World
Welcome to the Oral Talmud, a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. I’m Dan Libenson…
BENAY LAPPE: …and I’m Benay Lappe.
DAN LIBENSON: The Oral Talmud is our weekly deep dive study partnership, in which we try to figure out how voices from the Talmud – voices from 1500 to 2000 years ago – can help us think in new ways about Judaism today.
The rabbis began with a thought experiment about a lovesick man, which we discussed last week, and they end their analysis with something far stranger: the suggestion that the entire world has been broken ever since the Temple fell. Maybe that man wasn’t sick with love at all. Maybe he’s simply human. His desires are disordered, his longings are misplaced, and his inability to find satisfaction becomes a mirror for everyone else. What starts as a legal argument about one troubled man gradually turns into a meditation on what it means to live after a catastrophe.
Along the way, we stumble into questions far beyond sex. What if the rabbis understood themselves to be living after the end of the world? What if our deepest desires are shaped by loss? And what if the work of tradition is not inventing new values, but discovering the old values that were hidden there all along? The conversation moves from forbidden desire to human dignity, from constitutional law to climate change, and from a broken Temple to our own broken age.
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: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to this week's episode of the Oral Talmud. I'm Dan Levenson, and I'm here with Benay Lafey. How you doing, Benay?
BENAY LAPPE: Hey, Dan. I'm doing great. How are you?
DAN LIBENSON: I'm good. I, I actually just had a, a, like a session, a learning session with some of our viewers yesterday, and it was a lot of fun, and they pointed out to, you know, they sort of implied to me that I start the, the show in the same way every time and, and now I can't remember how I start it.
Interesting. Um, but you know, I think it's the, "Hi, Benay. Hi, Dan." Anyway- Yeah ... um, by the way, I'll note that if there are other, uh, groups out there that are watching this show or listening to this show and, and would like to have real time conversation with us, or at least I'll volunteer myself, I would, I would love to do that.
That was a lot of fun for me. So, um, so, so we're gonna jump back into our text that we did last week. I would say that probably this is one of those episodes that if you haven't watched last week's episode, which was number 57, I believe, uh, that you should, you should watch that one before you watch this one, 'cause we're mostly gonna just jump into a conversation that we started last week.
But to do a little bit of a, a recap, we're talking about this famous story of, you know, what's called the lovesick man. You know, seems like a misnomer 'cause I'm not sure that it's love. Uh, but in-
BENAY LAPPE: That's one of the issues-
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh ...
BENAY LAPPE: that we're gonna get to this week. Okay. Is it love or is it something else?
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, good. Um, but, but in any event, so, you know, we, we say that with consciousness of the, the problematic of the, the title, but it's known as the lovesick man story. And, uh, and so just a quick recap of, of where we were last week. The first thing that I just wanna point out, because it will come back, uh, in our conversation I think in the second half, is just where this stems from in the Mishnah, which is this idea that, um, that, that there's this principle that if a person is told, "Transgress or I will kill you," uh, in other words, that you
That there's a, a rule or a law that in the Torah and, uh, somebody saying, "You should eat that, you should eat that ham and cheese sandwich or I'll kill you," you should eat the ham and cheese sandwich. And that's a, that's a, a principle, a rabbinic principle that, that they, uh, established. I mean, they claim that they didn't establish it, that it's always been there.
Uh, but that, that basically allows any Torah, uh, rule to be evaded or avoided or whatever, uh, verb you wanna use, uh, if the consequence of performing it is that you would be killed. Either that you would be killed because of somebody's going to kill you or in the case of that, you know, uh, an illness. I mean, to some extent this is a source for the idea of pikuach nefesh, which a lot of people are, are aware of, which is the idea that if
Not, it's not that somebody's gonna kill you, it's just that you're gonna die, uh, if you don't do something. You know, for example, taking medicine on Shabbat. Nobody's gonna kill you, but you need the medicine and you have to cook it on Shabbat. You can do that because it's, it's basically the same principle that you shouldn't be killed, you shouldn't die in the, in the, uh, effort to live up to all the Torah's commandments.
Except for three exceptions, which are idol worship, forbidden sexual relations, whatever that means exactly, and bloodshed, which basically means killing another person. So you shouldn't, you shouldn't kill another person.
BENAY LAPPE: I, I would put a, an even sharper point on bloodshed. I would say it's murder. In other words, killing an innocent person.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh,
BENAY LAPPE: uh-huh. Because Killing the person, it, if the threat to your life is another person threatening your life- Right ... killing the person who's threatening your life is permitted.
DAN LIBENSON: Yes.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, and that isn't considered murder. That's considered killing, but not an innocent person, and therefore that would be okay.
So it, it's actually murder, killing of an innocent person, that's forbidden-
DAN LIBENSON: Okay ...
BENAY LAPPE: even to save your life. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: So there's a lot, you know, it's sometimes a little hard to hold all this in your head, 'cause there's, like, double negatives and, and all kinds of things like that. But basically what's going on here is that the, the rabbis are saying, "Don't, don't, don't allow yourself to be killed just because you're trying to follow the rules of the Torah," except for only three, you know, three and only three exceptions, which are idol worship, forbidden sexual relations, and bloodshed.
And then we get into this story in the Talmud, in the Gemara, where they're essentially adding a fourth category or maybe a number of fourth categories, uh, fifth, sixth, right? Uh, that, but they're, they're saying that there's a case here that ... So here's the case of the lovesick man. There's a, there's a man who claims, doctors affirm, that if he doesn't have sex with a particular woman, uh, it's not, by the way, that's occurring to me, right?
It's not just any woman, it's a particular woman, uh, that if he doesn't have sex with her, he's going to die. And the, the Talmud says, "Well, let him die, uh, because we're not going to force this woman to have sex with him in order to preserve his life," even though that's actually not in, in the technical case of what forbidden sexual relations means in the Mishnah.
It's, this ca- this situation is not one of them, or app- apparently. They, they do float this idea that maybe it is one of them. But there's a se- but there's a, a sense that no, no, no, even if it's wouldn't be forbidden, it's, we're not going to allow him to do that just to preserve his life. And so that's potentially adding some kind of fourth category.
You know, we could call it, uh, you know, inadvisable sexual relations. We could call it, uh, you know, we could, we could define the category in different ways. Uh, and, and, and, yeah, go ahead.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, it could be u- unwanted, uh, w- non-mutual. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, when the sexual encounter, you know, is an objectifica- something.
There's something. It, and it's really interesting that this story comes to undermine the very radical law that was established just one page ago.
DAN LIBENSON: About, about that you can violate any commandment in order to preserve your
BENAY LAPPE: life. Right, to save a life. Mm-hmm. Like, and then all of a sudden we have a story of a person whose life is in danger, and even if the- The possibility of him s- having sex with this woman is in the category of, of the sexual relations exception, which is something that you shouldn't do even to save a life.
Certainly, the other possible behaviors that he should, uh, speak to her from be- that, that, uh, she should appear naked before him and he doesn't touch her or that he should be able to speak to her from be- behind a wall. Certainly, those aren't in the category of the exception of sexual relations that you should not violate even to save your life and the question is whether- The rabbis are letting him die.
So, so that's very, um, much an undermining of that law that we just saw, and that's what's interesting about this story.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. And, and so, and, and that's the thing. It's like if, if it's about their having sex, then you could say, well, we're adding some kind of, uh, unwanted sexual relations category or something like that.
Or the, one of the objections that the rabbis raise is, or one of the explanations that they float as to why this might be, uh, the rule is that maybe she was married, in which case it would be a, it would be a forbidden sexual relation. So they're saying we- we're not adding a fourth category. We're j- it's, this happens to just be a case of that second category, but that's dismissed.
And, and then there's also this issue, like you just mentioned, that, that later, and this is to me kind of comical, you know, that the, that, that they say, "Well, no, let him die," and then the doctors come back, "No, no, no, actually he could just, she could just stand there naked, or she could just talk to him from behind a wall."
So, you know, there's something also going on here where, you know, well, maybe that initial claim, maybe we wanna push against the initial claim because maybe it's not so simple. It's not actually needed to, to... And we, you know, we wanna be very careful not to treat somebody as an object or, uh, mistreat somebody, so we're at least gonna push against the claim that this is gonna cause me to die.
But, but they get to this point where they say, "No, no, even if all he needs is to talk to her from behind a wall, he's not even gonna see her, just needs to talk to her, we're not gonna force her to talk to him in order to preserve his life." And you can't really say, well, that's f- a kind of forbidden sexual relation at that point.
So there's some fourth category that's being added here. One of the possibilities that gets floated is what's called family flaw, which is basically this idea of a reputational harm to the family. And so then, you know, you would, you would- To the
BENAY LAPPE: family of the woman ...
DAN LIBENSON: to the family of the woman, right. Uh, that, that, and, and, you know, then you would kind of go back and you'd say, "Well, this is the, this, uh, the halacha.
You know, this is the, the rule that you should, uh, you should be, uh, you should violate any Torah prohibition if, if it's going, i- if, if you would die if you didn't violate it, except for the cases of idol worship, forbidden sexual relations, bloodshed, and causing reputational harm," right? I mean, that would be the, the implication there.
And, um, so it, it seems that what they're doing is in some fashion adding a fourth category. And ultimately, o- one thing that I want to talk about later is how big is that fourth category, and, and why are they adding it, and are we... You know, is it really right to say that they've added a fourth category, et cetera, et cetera.
Where, what's the basis for that? But that seems to be what's going on here.
BENAY LAPPE: Well, w- what I was excited about in the place we got to at the end of last week was that as you're surfacing maybe this is about a fourth category, the idea that maybe it's not a fourth category at all. There, maybe the, this story is leaving open- Um, the question of this fourth category and not nailing it down to say, to, to sort of permanently open the paradigm of the three exceptions that you should rather die for than violate so that in any given time in the future, there's always the possibility of another category of harm that's so profound that we should really allow ourselves to die rather than commit.
Mm-hmm. I think that's a much more powerful takeaway than even nailing down the fourth category. It's like- Mm ... there will always be The possibility of another category
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm
BENAY LAPPE: Whatever it is in your time you have, you know, that's your job to figure out what's our fourth category-
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh, uh-huh ...
BENAY LAPPE: that never e- it never is nailed down.
Anyway.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh. No, that's interesting. I mean, you know, it, it does get so complex with the double negatives because, you know, s- at some point there's, there, you know, we have to look at, well, these are idol worship, forbidden sexual relations, and bloodshed. Like, these are, these are prohibitions that the Torah very explicitly states.
They could have, you know, it might not be clear exactly what falls under them. So if we're adding a fourth category, does that have to be something that the Torah explicitly states? Like for example, this idea of the family flaw, right? Well, I, you know, there are things in the Torah that talk about not, um, not, not harming people with, with words.
You know, there, there are ways that we could say, well, that actually is a prohibition of the Torah that you're not allowed to violate. But there's also, it, it seems like something like that is a, is a little bit, um, goes beyond that. It's, it's adding a prohibition that we don't even see explicitly in the Torah.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. W- which I think is an even more powerful precedent, this, even the suggestion that that's the concern which w- we're so care- we should be so careful about that we should even let someone die rather than violate. Um, m- that's r- and I think that's really interesting. And there are all sorts of m- Negative commandments that we're allowed to violate, um, to save our life that aren't in the list.
I don't know.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Anyway. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: It does get very confusing.
BENAY LAPPE: It is, it is. The, the negatives are confusing.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. Um, well let's... So, so that's basically where we left it last week, and let's, um, go back and just finish the, the text and talk about the text, and then I think we'll have time after that to talk about some of these larger implications.
Uh, s- so, so, um, so we were, uh, so we were here saying that basically, okay, so there's this thing, there's may- well, maybe the reason is because it'll cause reputational harm to the woman's family. Um, the, um, so, so then Rav, Rav Aha, son of Rav Ika says, "This is so that the daughters of Israel should not be promiscuous with regard to forbidden sexual relations."
So say, "No, no, no. It's not that. It's that, it's that if we allowed, if we allowed this to happen, if we allowed this sex to happen that shouldn't have happened, but it's done to save a life, that might somehow be misinterpreted as, uh, that it's okay to have these kind of sexual relations that we're trying to not encourage, and we don't wanna slide down that slippery slope."
O- one thing that I would just say is that some of these kind of objections are standard rabbinic c- uh, sort of ways that they construct legal rules. That's often famously known as building a fence around the law, right? Meaning that we're going to say s- a certain thing that actually isn't forbidden, we're going to forbid it because if you do it, then you might c- be more likely to do the thing that actually is forbidden.
The, the problem here is that- It feels to me like you can't really use that legal reasoning in a situation that's saying these are the cases where it's obligatory to violate law in order to save a life, you know, because saving a life is so important, and then you expand the exception real- right? By expanding an exception, right, this is where the double negatives get confusing, but by accept- expanding a cons- an, an exception, you're actually contracting the rule, right?
By definition. And if the rule is that we will do everything that we can to save a life except for these very limited exceptions, if you expand those exceptions, then you're causing somebody to die unnecessarily because you're trying to build a fence around the law, which seems like something that you shouldn't do.
And, and so it feels to me like on the one hand, you can, you can be- you can appreciate these concerns and say, "We don't wanna cause reputational harm to families," or, "We don't want to send the wrong message that things, that, you know, s- sex should be had more freely." Uh, but, but actually it, it would be troubling to use those, that reasoning at the expense of somebody's life if you, if you think that that's so important.
BENAY LAPPE: You, you're making me wonder whether the
The, the p- the, these-
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm ...
BENAY LAPPE: these two possibilities. The, the Gemara, the s- the, the Gemara here is trying to figure out why the rabbis are letting this guy die. I think they're strug- the, the, the text is struggling with that, and they're trying to find some way to reconcile letting him die with the law we had on the last page, and, and the inadequacy of these solutions.
Oh, maybe we're letting him die, maybe it makes sense to let him die because these possibilities, the reputational harm or the, um, diminishment of out- s- sort of sexual mores, m- maybe that's a, a justification for letting him die. The inadequacy of these explanations could be what motivates the text to go where it goes next- Mm-hmm
which is the final attempt to reconcile the rabbis letting h- this man die with our r- r- enormous concern for life and our willingness to violate virtually the entire Torah to save a life at, at any given moment. So-
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so let's go to that. So-
BENAY LAPPE: Okay ...
DAN LIBENSON: so the, the, the Talmud goes on to say, "Okay, but wait a second.
If the woman was unmarried, let him marry her." Right? So if he, if he marries her, then it's not a forbidden sexual relation in any way. There's no family, uh, reputational harm. There's no concerns about a slippery slope because it, we're not, um, having some kind of illicit sex that's okay in a, one circumstance but not in a, another circumstance.
This is a, a man marries a woman. They can do whatever they want. It's, this is standard. So-
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: He,
DAN LIBENSON: he- Why, why isn't that a clean solution to the problem?
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. If he marries her, he can have sex with her, and then he'll be cured and he'll live.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Seems like a great solution.
DAN LIBENSON: Now, I would note that, and, and there are other texts that we'll look at in a few weeks, I think, that, you know, where, where I think there's a little bit of a, I don't know if this is exactly the right way to use it, like the dog didn't bark kind of, uh, issue here, where, where you wish that they would come in and say, "No, that can't happen because she's a person and she shouldn't have to marry a man she doesn't love," et cetera, et cetera, but that just doesn't, that just doesn't come up.
Right? Mm-hmm. That's not, that's not said, that, no, this would somehow be a problem for her. So.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. It, I, I think that's the unarticulated-
Message underneath the text? For me, that seems obvious. Um, but you're right, it would be nice if they said it.
DAN LIBENSON: Oh, you think it's obvious that they are, are concerned about that?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. I- I, I think, I think that's, that feels right to me on a certain level, and, and then the question is, well, why don't they say it more explicitly?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Well, let's unpack the end. Okay. And let's figure out whether- The end of the story as the editor has constructed the story undermines our confidence that the rabbis were really concerned with the dignity of the woman in
DAN LIBENSON: question. Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay,
DAN LIBENSON: so, so the, the Talmud is raising this seemingly simple and effective answer to the problem, which is that, uh, if she was unmarried, if she's married, of course he can't do it.
That would be a forbidden sexual relation, and that's one of our three exceptions. If she's not married, then let him just marry her, and then it's fine. And the response is, "No, that wouldn't work. His mind would not have been eased." Uh, that's, that's the, the response is to say, "No, no, that, it's just that that wouldn't work."
Uh, in accordance with the statement of Rabbi Yitzchak, as Rabbi Yitzchak says, "Ever since the day the temple was destroyed, sexual pleasure was taken away." Uh, and the explanation here is from those who engage in permitted intercourse. In other words, there's, there's this very sad, you know, it seems to me like a very sad, uh, sort of worldview.
But the, the idea is that, uh, nobody gets sexual pleasure anymore from, you know, permitted sex, uh, since the temple was destroyed. Yeah, and it- It, it really makes me wonder about, you know, Rabbi Yitzchak.
BENAY LAPPE: Well, let's come back to that because w- what Rabbi Yitzchak is suggesting is that, you know, the world was disrupted- Mm-hmm
in such a profound way that once the temple was destroyed, that without a temple, none of us can actually be healthy human beings. Uh- Mm-hmm ... but we'll get, we'll get there.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So, uh, so ever since the day the temple was destroyed, sexual pleasure was taken away and given to transgressors. As it is stated s- in Proverbs, "Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant."
So, and then the explanation here is that, that therefore, that, you know, in other words, what, what was bothering hi- He was looking for some kind of, uh, pleasure. This, this man who said, "I'm gonna die if I don't have her," he's saying he, he's looking for something, a, a feeling, like a charge, a pleasure, so- you know, whatever we wanna call it, and he could only get that if he was not married to her and the sex was illicit.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: And as soon as he married her, it would not be illicit anymore, and then it wouldn't actually cure his, his disease, so he would die anyway is, is the implication.
BENAY LAPPE: Ex- exactly. Well, oh my God, there's so much to unpack here. Um, so one thing is this, this last story, this last piece of the story that Rabbi Yitzchak says is, it's like, no, no, no, this guy wasn't lovesick.
This guy was sick.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: This has nothing to do with love, Rabbi Yitzchak is saying. He's saying, "This is- Uh-huh ... this, this man had a..." I don't wanna, I don't wanna use the word perverted, but i- i- it, some sort of m- unhealthy desire Mm-hmm ... a desire which could only be satisfied if there was a forbidden aspect to the sex.
And
It, it feels like, Rabbi, it's cl- the, the Talmud is basically saying You thought we were dealing with sort of a, a healthy love. That, that's not what... The whole story, you misunderstood the story. You misunderstood what was going on. This guy has a problem, and what's fascinating is we all have a problem.
That's what Rabbi Yitzchak is saying, that once the temple is destroyed, we are all in a state of unhealthy living, and our desires can only be satisfied in forbidden ways. I, that's, I don't know. That, that's in- It's profound. It's, it's a categorical condemnation of healthy sexuality. I don't know what is going on- Mm-hmm
for Rabbi Yitzchak, but he's pointing to the, the destruction of the temple, and he's saying the world from that point is messed up. Mm-hmm. And we're all messed up, and I don't know. What do you make of it?
DAN LIBENSON: Well, uh, uh, it's that, it's that all we're messed up, that we're all messed up is, is, is, it's challenging because it, it, 'cause on the one hand you could see like if, if they're saying forget about the temple being destroyed part, if it was just saying, look, th- let's actually limit this case. Like, y- you thought that we, that this was a broad case about people that claim that they can only, you know, that they'll die if they don't have sex with a particular pers- Turns out no, no, no, it's a more limited case of a man who has this disease, or this whatever, and part of it is that he, he can only have sex with people that he's not married to.
You know, right? Th- th- that this is a very, very narrow case of a person with a particular issue, and we're not going to, you know, introduce some new principle of Torah in order to solve some issue of a very narrow group of people, and this was actually a case that's about a person who would die only if he, if he couldn't, you know, if he could have sex with somebody he wasn't married.
And okay, so then you could say, all right, well, that's that... Th- then we could have a certain conversation about where that leads. Uh, right, because you could, you could say, um, actually we got a note from a, a viewer from last week who said, um, you know, maybe what the rabbis are just saying here to this particular man is, you know, "You gotta grow up."
You know? Like y- like this is, this is a simple case. This is saying like, this is, this is kind of a ridic- As I understood the listener comment here, that this, this is a ridiculous notion, you know, that you say you're gonna die if you don't, you know, or, or maybe that's an over, maybe that's too harsh of a way.
You know, th- th- that what he really has is, is that he needs therapy or that he, he ne- you know, in other words there are ways to help this man other than having sex with the woman, and we're not really that into this claim that he's gonna die immediately. What does that me- You know, does that mean he's gonna kill himself?
He's gonna die. You know, we, we don't quite, we're not really on board with this, uh, and we're gonna intervene in some other way and he should just kinda grow up. Uh, that was how the, the comment that was sent to us said. He, he should grow up. But if it is all of us, that's a different story.
BENAY LAPPE: Well, addressing the, the listener's comment- I, I still think the rabbis are letting this guy die
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: I think they're accepting the, the doctor's claim that he will die if he doesn't either have sex or talk to her behind a wall or see her naked. And they're saying th- there's no cure for him. The- A, we're not, we're not going to, to demean this woman for his benefit and allow an illicit encounter. And I think they're still standing by their concern for the, for women generally.
Um, but I think they are letting him die, and I can't make up my mind as to whether this last piece that Rabbi Yitzchak is saying ex- is a positive or a negative. It could be a positive in that it's basically interrogating the notion that the, that a love s- a person who would die if he doesn't have sex with someone or, you know, look at a woman naked or so on, the, the rabbis are saying, "That's messed up.
We're, we're not... It... And, and, and we're n- we're not going to demean a woman to help such a person." Um, and you know, Barry Wimpfheimer notes in his book narrating the law that this type of story is a common Greco-Roman tale, and the rabbis are borrowing it, um, from that culture. And one thing I want to ask Barry, and maybe we can have him on our show to talk about this, is whether the, what the rabbis are adding to the Greco-Roman tale is the undermining of the assumption that this is a person, um, who really is in love.
You know, could the, could the rabbinic contribution here be the interrogation of the claim of real love?
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So I like that about it, if that's what's going on. Um, I- the downside of Rabbi Yitzchak could be that the opening up of a fourth category only applies to a person in this super narrow category of- Unhealthy sexual...
And, and I don't want that to be the case, and I don't think that's really what's going on. Um, but I'm, I'm not sure. I, I can't make up my mind.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Well, so I, to do full justice to the listener comment, I, I think as I understand it, he was saying, and this, this is just a disagreement with the way that you framed it, that the rabbis are a little bit playing chicken with this guy, and they're saying, "We really don't believe you.
You know, that you're gonna- Oh ... that you're gonna die if you don't. And we're not going to set a precedent for everybody based on this claim. And so, you know, if you're gonna die, then we, we, then we made a mistake. You know, right, or something like that, right? That, but in other words, that we're gonna test.
You know, and I do think there is some support for that in the, in the sense that they say no, and then the doctors come back and say, "Well, they don't have to have sex." You know, and, "Oh, well, they don't have to see her naked." Right. So just putting it out there.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Well, here's an, a, another possibility.
Barry Wimpfheimer also points out that this story appears in the Yerushalmi, right? The, the Palestinian Talmud as well as the Babylonian Talmud. And over there in the Yerushalmi, there's no mention of doctors at all.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: The, the, the doctors aren't players in the story at all. It's the rabbis who are diagnosing the man.
As Unhelpable and saying they should die. I, now I'm wondering whether the introduction of the doctors is a way for the rabbis to go, "You know, it's not us saying he's gonna die. He's really, really, really gonna die- Uh-huh ... because the doctor said so."
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: So that, that could speak to this listener's idea that, um, you know, they're, they're playing chicken.
Yeah. That the rabbis are, are, are really saying, "No, doctor said so. He is gonna die. Know that. That's a given."
DAN LIBENSON: Except it's not. Except it's not. That's the only thing that I want to... Right? Because they do back off of it. It's, it... So, I, there is something, there's something there. I'm not totally sure that we, you know, have this-
BENAY LAPPE: Stop, but they stop backing off.
They, they- There's a point,
DAN LIBENSON: there's a point ... at a certain point, yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. So, at any rate, I don't think that's the most important, uh, thing- Yeah ... necessarily to, to, but I think there, it's interesting, both possibilities are interesting. I would note just for the, just for the, a little bit of, uh, co- comedy, uh, you know, comedic interlude, the, the, this commenter also says, "I realize this doesn't lead to your discussion of how the rabbis give us the keys to rebuild in our new era, but does every session have to be used to demonstrate that?"
And I kind of say, well, that is kind of our mission on this show, so maybe yes, but yes, not, not, it doesn't always have to be, for sure. Yeah. But we do, we do try to pick texts that have some relation to that. So, you know, we could, we could do a parallel oral Talmud show where we would not look at Ta- I mean, you might claim and, and other people, like, uh, you know, our, our first guest, David Kramer, might claim that every page of the Talmud is that, you know?
So, uh, maybe we can't even do a, a separate oral Talmud show where we only look at texts that don't give you the keys to undo the... But in any event, um, I, I feel, I feel seen and, and understood by this listener, so thank you. Yeah. Um-
BENAY LAPPE: He's getting it.
DAN LIBENSON: So, um, the, the, the, um, so but, well, okay, so but here's the thing.
Like, I think that if it's not just this, so I mean, it may be another contribution here of the, of the Bavli in this last part, which I find sort of troubling, right? In other words, like, I, I find the, it sort of troubling this idea that ever since the temple was destroyed, there's no such thing as sexual pleasure anymore in permitted sex.
I mean, I, I don't think that that's true. Um, you know, I, so what does that mean? Uh, but I will say at least from a kind of argument construction standpoint, it feels to me like what a claim like that is saying is this isn't just about this one. Don't read this as a story about this, this one sort of deviant person who has his own stuff, and it's, doesn't really relate to you.
You know, somehow there's an effort to say, this is actually a story, this is a case that actually has wide applicability in the sense that we all, we all have elements of it. It may not be exactly the same case. So it may not be that we all wanna have sex with somebody or we're gonna die, you know, but there is something where we're living in a broken world, all kinds of- If the, the idea that we should kind of live by the rules is unsatisfying in a way that maybe it wasn't unsatisfying in a previous, you know, glorious golden era,
BENAY LAPPE: and- Imagin- imagined era
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, imagined. And, and we're going to have to, and, and it may not be this case, but there are gonna be other cases that all of us are going to have where it's only in the violation of some rule from that imagined golden age that we're going to have our pleasure or our joy. And we can make these claims that say the only way that we can, uh, express that, that joy is to do various things, and some of those things are fine, and some of those things may not be fine.
And then the question would be what is the principle being articulated here of when it's not fine? And that goes back to what you've been saying. And, and I agree. I don't know if it's what the rabbi, I don't know exactly if we got the rabbis into a time machine and explained to them some of our modern concepts.
Would, would they be saying, "Oh, yeah, that's what we were saying all along, that we, we don't wanna treat a woman as an object," or would they have some other reason why they were concerned here? I don't know. I'm not sure. But-
BENAY LAPPE: Well, the rabbis themselves, they already have a concept called kavod habriyot.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Respect for creatures. In other words, human dignity. That's their term for human dignity. And elsewhere in the Talmud, they say you can violate any prohibition in the Torah, and over there they don't even name an exception-
DAN LIBENSON: Huh ...
BENAY LAPPE: rather than violate someone's human dignity.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm. Well, we should look at
BENAY LAPPE: that.
We should g- we should go there next.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. S-
BENAY LAPPE: so now that I've, I, I hadn't thought about that before in relation to this text. Okay. But knowing that I think is what made me assume that that was the concern that the rabbis for sure had. Because I know elsewhere they say, "We're so concerned about human dignity that rather than violate someone's human dignity, you should violate any prohibition in the Torah."
Um, I, I, I, I had another thought as you were talking, and that is maybe this last piece about, um, a- Sexual desire can on- once the temple was destroyed, could only be fulfilled in illicit ways. I wonder if this is like one of those stories, you know, why the giraffe has a long neck, and what are those called?
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, just-so stories.
BENAY LAPPE: Just-so stories, right. Maybe this is a just-so story about sexual desire, and they're trying to explain why is it that there's something extra tasty about sex in socially forbidden ways. Like, that, that's... I think there's a th- there's something there, right? Uh-huh.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, and maybe the rabbis are kind of- normalizing that by, by saying, "Oh yeah, th- that's part of human nature now."
Uh-huh, uh-huh You know? It, it, because the temple's destroyed, and that's why we all have that impulse. Now that's a natural impulse. There, there's something, there's something there.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. It, it kind of like, uh, I think, I feel like a lot of times when Jews talk about what's the difference between Judaism and Christianity, we'll s- you know, we'll, they'll, they'll talk about how Christianity has this idea of the fall in, in the creation story, in the Adam and Eve story, and ever since then we are fallen.
Yeah, yeah. We're, we're, right, you know, we're... And, and we don't have that in Judaism. We don't believe in that in Judaism. And, and actually a story like this makes you think, "Oh, actually we do, it's just not located to the, to the creation story, it's located to the destruction of the temple." And there's some notion here, it's not exactly the same thing, but there's some notion here that, that that's the kind of mythic divide between a sort of imagined past and a real present and future.
And we understand about ourselves that we have all kinds of, you know, sh- things that we're ashamed of, let's say. And, um, it wasn't always that way. And, and so you have to understand that some of the rules in the Torah and some of the worldview of the Torah is, is it for people who are living in that, in that golden age?
But now we're living in this fallen age, and, and maybe it's a little different. Or, you know, or, or not. But I mean that, that we have to under- I mean, I'm not, I have to think through exactly what the implications are of that. But, but at least there's a con- there's something here that I'm seeing that, that suggests, wow.
Like, again, I don't know exactly what this means that, that licit sexual pleasure was taken away ever since... Again, like I don't think that that accords with, with, you know, I, I this just feels like, that don- that just feels like an unhealthy... Like I, I just again, I like, I feel, like, kind of weird about Rabbi Yitzchak you know?
It's like, what? Like, it's, it feels like this comment kind of suggests something that, that I don't think is, is correct. So- Yeah, but- I'm not 100% sure, you know, uh-
BENAY LAPPE: The sexual outlaw myself. There's something here that now I'm starting to see as, as normalizing and as kashering-
DAN LIBENSON: Yes ...
BENAY LAPPE: of what had previously been bad and now is just human nature.
There's... And even though in this particular case, we're, you know, this has gone beyond the line.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh, right.
BENAY LAPPE: I think there's, I think this is opening up some- Uh-huh, uh-huh ... spectrum of yeah, that's-
Understandable. That's- Yeah ... human now. That, that, I don't know. There's some- Well, that,
DAN LIBENSON: that's very interesting, right? Like, that, that is something that I feel like, yeah, we should come back to. You know, we should sort of figure that out and find are there other texts that kind of suggest... Y- because I think you're right.
Like, in this particular text, e- even though w- whatever you think of that, that comment and that i- that notion, they're saying, "Well, okay, but, you know, there, something has changed," and, uh, joy, you know, pleasure only comes to, to illicit sex now, but you can't do it-
BENAY LAPPE: Well,
DAN LIBENSON: you c- ... if it's going to objectify another person.
BENAY LAPPE: You c- Right. Right. I think they're opening up a giant can of worms while trying to close up a little can of worms over here. Right. Right. Right? Right. And, and maybe the, the, the message of Rabbi Yitzchak's addition here ultimately isn't about this guy. It's getting out onto the table the notion that, um
Don't feel bad that, you know, don't feel like there's something wrong with you if, uh, I don't know, maybe I'm overly personalizing this. But I, I just think it's, it's, it's, it's opening up A recognition that there's something that's extra charged in th- the sexual desire or the, the, I don't know what, um, in ways that are not yet, um, socially acceptable.
Which might be okay, that, that are okay until they cross over a certain line of non-consensual or something else. Mm-hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: I mean, there's another way that, that this sort of is registering with, with me in a, in a particular way right now because, you know, as I've said a number of times, we- my wife and I have been doing the, the Daily Talmud page together.
And now while we're recording this, we're on the, uh, we're on the tractate called Yoma, which is about Yom Kippur and all its practices. And it's just this feeling to me like th- what they're describing is just, it just never happened. Like, there's so much description about, like, golden shovels and, you know, all kinds of, all kinds of, like, incredibly ornate things and customs.
It's, it's very hard for me to believe that that's really how it was. It really has the feel of this imagined, you know, fairy tale world of, of how things were in the good old days. And now it's possible that in Herod's temple, which was in the last 100 years of the Second Temple period, some of this really fancy stuff did happen because Herod was very, uh, wanting things to be, uh, extremely great and the fanciest of the whole Roman Empire and everything.
So maybe, maybe some of this did happen in the last years of the, the temple that these services became so ornate. But, but even if they did, it, it was not the way that it was for the thousand years before. And nevertheless, the, the Mishnah and then, then the Talmud imagines this extremely, uh, you know, this, this really, I mean, literally a golden age.
Everything was gold, you know? And, um, and it just strikes me, you know, that it's interesting to look at a, a little comment like this that s- that, that really looks at this temple period as a... I think there's a word for, like, a mythic time. Like, it's a, it's a, not a, can't remember the, the, the terminology.
But, like, it, it, it really, it's not, it, th- people don't really think it happened. It, but it's almost like Lord of the Rings. Like, it's really, it's like, you know, Lord of the Rings was written to be a mythic prehistory of England. Of course, nobody believes that there was actually, that, that story happened.
Everyone knows J.R.R. Tolkien wrote it. But nevertheless, he, he wrote it to kind of function as a kind of mythic prehistory for England, which didn't have a mythic prehistory because it's an island and not that many people lived there before the Norman conquest. You know, whatever. I don't know the history so well.
I don't want to get it wrong. But they, they didn't have the same kind of mythology that they had in, in Norse mythology and whatever. So, um, so it just sort of has this feeling like, well, like in, in, ag- again, in the way that I think in Christianity they sort of imagine the Garden of Eden being this sort of that mythic time where, where something, there was a break.
It, it's just interesting to me to, to note that, that I think that in the mind of the rabbis, uh, that time before rabbinic Judaism- They, they, they had a very, uh, a very, like, inter-flowing, unclear difference between myth and, and fact. You know, history and reality. You know, and I, and I think that they... And it strikes me that they didn't really care that much.
That they, that they had, that they were looking at that whole thing as this golden age that may or may not have ever g- They could say whatever they want about it. You know, like, in other words, they're constructing a golden age as opposed to I think how we're taught to think about it, as like, "Oh, this happened, and then this happened, and this happened, and then Rabbinic Judaism came along."
You know? And, um, I don't know if that's an important point, but it's just striking me, uh, with a comment like this that says, y- wow, the, the destruction of the temple was so, such a, such an enormous... It wasn't just like the temple was destroyed and then we needed to have a new kind of Judaism. It was like the temple was destroyed, and the world changed i- in a profound way that changed internal feelings of sexual pleasure, right?
I mean, it's, uh, right? I don't know. Yeah. I don't know
BENAY LAPPE: if
DAN LIBENSON: that's an important point.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I'm not quite clear about this thought that you're helping me form, but I, I'm beginning to see that th- that mythologization, I don't know, the, the, the mythology making, the mythic making of the past could be a way to- explain the messy, imperfect nature of the present.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's like, don't blame us. Right. It's not that our new system is raggedy.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: It's that things are raggedy because that mythic time is over, and this is okay. The raggediness and the messed up, it's o- it's all okay, and it's not a reflection on us. And, and this, this, what you're describing could be a way to explain or, or comfort themselves- Mm
and, and their detractors. I don't know.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm. Well, and, and I think what I'm, maybe what I'm trying to get is, like, the, there's a notion here that people have changed. It's not just that times have changed. It's not just that we find ourselves in this exile. It's that, that we're like different people from, something really broke in humanity when the temple was destroyed.
And so there's gonna have to be a reckoning there, where we look at the Torah, we look even at the, at the temple period, and we say, "Okay, it happened this way, it happened this way, but those were different people. They were, they were pure people. We are broken people, so it's gonna have to be different."
Something like that is, is there, and I hope maybe we can tease it out over time.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. You, you know what just came up for me? Uh, you know, the, this period we're in of not exactly post-pandemic, but coming out of pandemic, and there's some way that we're still a little broken- Mm-hmm ... and we haven't quite recovered, and I'm not sure if we're going to be like we were.
Um- Yeah
I don't know. There's, there's something that's resonating for me in that
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. So I wanna make, like, a little bit of a, maybe a sharp turn here in the, in the 15 minutes or so that we have remaining, just to talk about a little bit of a legal analysis that I think is going on here, that, that I think is interesting and ultimately, you know, this goes to the listener comment about does everything have to be about the key is to the- You know, and, and I actually think there is a key here that, that I wanna spend some time on, because I, I think it's actually pretty significant.
And, and maybe when we connect it to that text that you mentioned about violating anything for the dignity of, of creation, uh, w- we'll find some, some connection there. So, so I think it's this question about the fourth category. So, so the, the basic, uh, the ba- the basic claim here is that there are three ca- three Torah prohibitions that you cannot violate even if you're gonna be killed.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Now, I don't- Do not, do not murder, do not worship idols, do not have these kinds of sexual relationships: incest, adultery
DAN LIBENSON: Right. Okay. And apparently there is at least a fourth, because there is some, there, there, we don't really resolve it here, but there is some reason why you're not allowed to even talk to a woman behind a fence if your claim is that, uh, you're gonna die otherwise.
Now, we can, we can imagine all kinds of possibilit- well, so what is that fourth category, and is it narrow? Does it only relate to sex in some way? Uh, you know, not sex, but relations between men and women or something, what- however you wanna define that category. Uh, or is it a broad category that could relate to any relations with people?
Or is it an even broader category that goes beyond? So how, what is that category, and, and how is it defined? And it makes me think about the right of privacy in the Constitution, which is similarly not actually in the Constitution, right? In other words, that, that there's nowhere in the Constitution where it says that people have a right to privacy.
And, um, the reasoning in, I think the initial case was Griswold versus Connecticut, the case that established that, uh, that, that married people could have birth control. I think that's what, you know, that, but it, it was a pre-progenitor case ultimately to Roe v. Wade, uh, so it's in that line of cases, that established this, uh, right to privacy.
And the way that they got there was they said, "Okay, we have various rights in the Constitution that are explicit. There's a right to be free from, uh, unlawful searches and seizures," right? There's an, a law to not have to incriminate yourself, you know, to not have... I think, again, I'm not, I haven't looked back at the case, but I'm not, I think it's like, right, 'cause that's, that's private.
Like, I shouldn't be forced to say what's in my heart that I did if it's going to incriminate me, right? So, and I shouldn't al- have to allow the police to come to my house without a warrant to search my house. And you can read those in a very narrow way and say, "Well, that's because your home is inviolate.
That's because we don't wanna force you to, um, y- a person shouldn't be forced to put themselves in prison or whatever." But the Supreme Court, in that line of cases, um, and I think that it was Louis Brandeis that originally had written an article, uh, that they had based this on before he was a Supreme Court justice, was that they said, "Well- You have to understand in the term that they used, and I think we've talked about on this show before, was penumbras and emanations, that each of these rules, each of these n- you know, there's a, a right to be free of searches and seizures.
That's a narrow thing, but imagine there's kind of like a cloud around it. You know, it's not just that narrow thing, it's kind of a cloud around it. And so... And that's maybe a, a fence around the law in a certain way, you know, that you could s- it's a similar idea. There, there's, there's, it's a, it's broader than it might seem in its most narrowest reading.
And if you see a number of rules like that in the Constitution, then they all have this kind of cloud around them. You can start to see that that cloud might merge together, right? And in some fashion, you actually see a right that's there even though it hasn't been explicitly stated. And in this case, that is a right to privacy.
So you could look at that. Now, I'm not sure that that was the best way to make the case, to say, you know, penumbras and emanations, it sounds kind of we, you know, woo-woo-
BENAY LAPPE: Hocus pocus ...
DAN LIBENSON: yeah. You know what? I mean, it, it might have been better to say something like, you know, you have to understand that there are abstract principles that aren't stated because they're so obvious that they don't need to be stated, or that they're so foundational that you can't have one without the other, that actually undergird these rights.
So then when you look at a number of rights in the Constitution, you say, "Oh, they all rest on this foundation of privacy." That might have been a more, a stronger way to put it. Uh, it might have flaws of its own, but it feels a little bit less, you know, magical, you know, uh, woo-woo. So, um, so but, but in any event, they're, they're saying, "We're not, we're not just inserting random new rights into the Constitution.
We, we can't, we can't do that." That's, that's a step too far in terms of legal reasoning. Uh, because the Constitution, or in this case the Torah, the, the claim is that it's kind of like that was, this was there all along, that this was part of the original- architecture of it. So we can't just make something up because we like it today and drop it in there.
So nobody has ever said the Constitution, you know, directly, uh, permits abortion. You know, they- it says somewhere in the Constitution abortion is permitted. It, or it's, it doesn't, nobody makes that claim because that would be overly, uh, that, that would be overly, uh, unbelievable. But to say there is this fundamental right to privacy that flows out of these other rights, and that right to privacy naturally leads its way through various other steps to protecting a woman's right to have an abortion, that is a more reasonable way to do law.
So it feels to me like when we look here and we say, okay, so what we're s- what we're saying here is that it's not just these three categories, these three Torah prohibitions, uh, sor- Torah prohibitions that you, you can't violate, uh, that you, that you're not allowed to violate even if it means that your life would be lost.
There's actually a fourth
BENAY LAPPE: Even if it means your life would be saved
DAN LIBENSON: Even if it means your life would be saved. Uh, there's actually a fourth. Um, that fourth would seem to have to, in some way, either flow from those three, or it could be somewhere else in the Torah. Um, but it has to anchor itself somewhere.
So, so, so, um, so there's, so there's a, a ... And, and, and now, and, and then we would say, so, and, and, and there's another piece where once you say there's a prohibition here that you, um, would even have to die rather than transgress, then there's, you would come in with the principle of kal vachomer that says, right, that, that if, if, uh, in a case where you would, you would have to die rather than transgress it, then, then clearly if there's something less than death, uh, you know, if it's just in conflict with another Torah prohibition, that you wouldn't have to die rather than transgress, then, then you should, then, then this is a more fundamental, more important one.
So, so, you know, so this idea of, of kind of, uh, adding, uh, or, or elevating the importance of certain Torah prohibitions is, uh, ultimately very powerful. And, and the, the reason I bring up the penumbras and emanations issue is that it's possible to say that there's a fourth category. Like, let's say that we would say that the fourth category is, "Don't treat a person as an object," and, or, "Treat a person with dignity."
And, and y- like you're saying that, that's why I wanna really look hard at this text, that you might say, "Well, but it doesn't actually say that explicitly in the Torah in the way that it explicitly says, 'Don't, um, don't, don't, uh, worship idols, and don't murder somebody, and don't, uh, have forbidden sexual relations.'
It doesn't say anything about treating people with dignity." Uh, but that's where we would bring in this idea, whether it's penumbras and emanations or an abstract principle, and we'd say, "Okay, well, there are these 10 other principles in the Torah that put them together, and they fundamentally stand for this idea that you should not treat a person as an object.
You sh- sh- treat someone with dignity." So I think that as we ... I- it's an interesting exercise as we try to expand our sense of, or change, you know, and, and to do whatever within the system that the rabbis laid down. Uh, it, it w- it's an interesting exercise to try to see, can we locate some of these principles in the Torah itself through a kind of penumbras and emanations type of, or analysis- You know, and, and, and that seems to be, like, implicitly what they might be doing here-
BENAY LAPPE: Mm-hmm
DAN LIBENSON: without naming it. That they're finding that, um, you know, that, that, that, that they're finding somehow this idea of we're not even gonna allow a woman t- we're not even gonna force a woman to speak from behind a wall, uh, that maybe that has to do, like we say, with Kavod HaBriyot, with the dignity of all cr- creations.
They're finding that. That's one that, that they're finding in the more penumbras and emanations kind of category. So-
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah ...
DAN LIBENSON: that's clear.
BENAY LAPPE: It's really interesting. Um, it- the, the penumbras and emanations technique seems to be in the category of textual interpretation Which is A different category than svara.
And what, and we've been focusing, I think, more and more on the svara underneath the various, um, methods of tradition upgrading. But the penumbras and emanations is going back to the technique of a little bit of a wink, but not, not so much of a wink, right? I, I always make fun of penumbras and emanations.
You're actually making it sound much more, um, reasonable than I understood it
DAN LIBENSON: Well, it's, it's, I think that, you know, I'm trying to fully think this through, but I think that it has to do with, like, um, you know, there, there's a, there's a, a statement in the Torah that says you may not add or subtract from these laws.
And you could argue that they're actually adding when they- because the Torah doesn't say treat everybody with dignity. So, so you're adding a law to the Torah. The Torah explicitly says don't do that. Now, we've seen on a lot of cases in this show so far where the rabbis, you know, there's something that Torah explicitly says, and they don't, they...
You know, but, but, but typically they-- Now, we could say it's a wink, and we could say it's actually a reasonable, "That's how law works," and maybe it's both. But there's a difference between just saying, "We care about this now, so we're gonna- Mm. "... add it in." Yeah. And making the claim that, no, like, there's a way in which, yeah, we care about this now, but we've always cared about this.
I mean, for me, it's often, I, I would say, like, taking care of the Earth. Uh, climate change is a, is an interesting category because, of course, that's not directly in the Torah because nobody imagined back then that there was something that human beings could do that would affect the whole Earth, you know?
But, but there are all kinds of things in the Torah that, uh, you know, it says that God is, uh, responsible for the he- the heavens and the Earth, for example. And if you, if you say, "Okay, well now, but now things have changed, right? It's a broken time. The temple is destroyed. Things have changed. We've changed.
Human beings have grown in our abilities. Now we're able to destroy the Earth in the same way that God was, so therefore where it says in the Torah that God is responsible for the heavens and the Earth, now humans too are responsible for the heavens and the Earth." Boom, there you go. We didn't add anything to the Torah.
It was there all along. Right now there's a prohibition against climate change, and since we, uh, see here in this text that there are certain laws that you must b- be killed rather than transgress, we could say not only is climate change, you know, fighting against climate change in the Torah, it's actually such an important and fundamental principle of the Torah that we're adding it to the list of ones that you should die rather than transgress.
And so therefore if, you know, it's a question of your own life versus something that you might be doing to pollute the Earth, you know, you should not pollute the Earth, even at the risk of your life. You know, boom, we have made climate change a, a foundational principle of Judaism without, I would argue, you know, making stuff up, right?
In other words-
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: So that, I did that quickly, but you, you could do that.
BENAY LAPPE: I, I th- the, the part that's jumping out at me in what you said that's so important is the move to say, "No, this is not a new thing we care about. We've always cared about it." Well, it's not exactly true. What's, what's true is that we have in some general way cared about this principle, but we missed until now that this principle that we cared about actually is playing out over here.
That's the new piece.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Mm-hmm. And it's really powerful to say it's not a new concern, it's an old concern, but a new application, a, a realization that this concern is what's at stake here. Um-
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. And, and then I, I wonder, and this is, this I haven't, I, I, I, you know, didn't come to this conversation with this part sort of thought through or worked out, so I'm just floating it as something to consider for the future, is that You know, maybe it has to do with the specifics versus the general, in the sense that I think that a lot of us, and this actually is sometimes something that we've talked about on this show too, if we're looking at the Torah, I mean, I think that most people see this more in the Torah because most regular Jews are more familiar with the Torah than with the Talmud, and the Torah is full of these pithy statement, you should do this, you should do that, you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that.
And you could get, you could, you could get, I- I'm sort of showing my, my, my prejudice here, but, you know, but you, you could get lost in the details of it and say, "Okay, so what all the Torah is saying is that there's a bunch of things you should do and a bunch of things you shouldn't do, and they're extremely s- specific."
Or you could say, "No, the specifics are meant to articulate general principles." Why, so why would they not articulate as general principles? Well, sometimes they are, but sometimes it may be that it's just at that time they didn't know how to say that as a general principle. There wasn't, right, there wasn't a concept 3,000 years ago about the right to privacy, so it, it wouldn't have been able to be written in the Torah.
When we have an idea about a right to privacy from, from our time, and we can look back and sort of see concerns in the Torah that amount to a right of privacy, or in the Constitution, you know, I, I think it's legitimate to say, "Well, this actually has been..." You, you can see this concern in our, not in the words of the Torah specifically and only, but you can see this concern in the early history of Judaism or in the early history of America.
You can see this concern. And so it's not, it's, and, and, and because we admire these people that, that were the founders, right? And, and so we don't think that they knew everything, but we, we admire their, their, you know, we have a sense of their sefarah, right, of their, of their... And they, and they, they didn't, they didn't always do a good job of living it out.
You know, Thomas Jefferson had slaves. Uh, there are all kinds of ways in which i- they were deeply problematic, and yet we have some sense that, that their sefarah was on target, uh, s- so much so, at least as much as we're willing to kind of keep going with the system that they, they, that they laid down. But that's very different from saying that we're therefore locked in to the specifics of what they put on the page at a certain time.
And you could take that, and I probably, I often do, too far and say, "So we're throwing the whole thing out. We're doing, we're redoing it. We're inspired by, we're connected by, we're gonna retell the story that connects it," et cetera, et cetera. And I think you can do that. But, but I think it, it, it's probably more, more powerful in all kinds of ways to say, "Let's really interrogate the system that they laid down and let's see if we can derive the principles that our sefarah tells us is what it needs to be today.
Let's see if we can derive it from what they said." Now, and it might look to, like we look at the Talmud, it might look to people 1,000 years from now like we were just having, you know, we were just playing around with it and we weren't serious, and we were just winking, winking, winking, winking. And I think maybe this is helping me see that it's not- Just winks.
It's, it's like they w- they were, they were s- engaged in a serious effort where they were trying, and they knew that it wasn't really, you know, perfect, and it wasn't really explicitly in the mind of the original t- You know, and there is a wink there too. Something like that.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Well, it occurs to me that traditions don't last for thousands of years unless they have really good foundational- Mm-hmm
principles and values.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And so I think, I think they're there. Um, what we need to work with is already there, we just have to apply them to the, the cases and the aspects of life that they didn't realize they needed to be expanded to. It's the same with democracy and, and I think every story of A tradition that, that, that works.
It, it works because it's got the right stuff. It just needs to be continually expanded to be applied to the places where folks didn't realize, you know, those principles were, were absent or, or, or missing.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Well, I think that next week we will continue this conversation in some fashion one way or another.
We have a few ideas. Uh, and, um, and, uh, but, but not, and with a different text or, or with a different agenda, but we're, we're continuing along similar lines. So I think it's a good time to, to end it for today and to pick up this, this conversation, which I think has, uh, moved our ball forward in ways that I didn't expect two weeks ago, so.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, so we'll see you, uh, next week, Vinay.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, great. Bye. Bye, Dan.
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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