The Oral Talmud Episode 60: The Bottom of the Toolbox (Berakhot 19b)
SHOW NOTES
“ I'm really starting to land somewhere for me with this text. I think this is an instruction manual for how to apply that very radical and broad directive of prioritizing human dignity over the precise following of the Torah when they conflict.” - Benay Lappe
Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.
What if one of Judaism's most revolutionary teachings wasn't rejected, but deliberately buried? Deep inside the Talmud sits a breathtaking claim: human dignity overrides the Torah. And then, almost immediately, the rabbis begin qualifying it, narrowing it, and surrounding it with exceptions. The question is no longer whether the principle exists. The question is why the tradition seems so nervous about it.
In this episode, we explore whether the Talmud is suppressing a dangerous idea or teaching future generations how to handle it responsibly. Is human dignity the hidden center of the Jewish way, tucked carefully beneath layers of argument? Or is the real lesson that even our most beautiful principles require wisdom, restraint, and judgment? By the end, our conversation moves from ancient legal debates to a question every tradition must face: when do we follow the rule, and when do we need to remind ourselves what the rule was for?
This week’s text: Berakhot 19b
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 60: The Bottom of the Toolbox
Welcome to the Oral Talmud, a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. I’m Dan Libenson…
BENAY LAPPE: …and I’m Benay Lappe.
DAN LIBENSON: The Oral Talmud is our weekly deep dive study partnership, in which we try to figure out how voices from the Talmud – voices from 1500 to 2000 years ago – can help us think in new ways about Judaism today.
What if one of Judaism's most revolutionary teachings wasn't rejected, but deliberately buried? Deep inside the Talmud sits a breathtaking claim: human dignity overrides the Torah. And then, almost immediately, the rabbis begin qualifying it, narrowing it, and surrounding it with exceptions. The question is no longer whether the principle exists. The question is why the tradition seems so nervous about it.
In this episode, we explore whether the Talmud is suppressing a dangerous idea or teaching future generations how to handle it responsibly. Is human dignity the hidden center of the Jewish way, tucked carefully beneath layers of argument? Or is the real lesson that even our most beautiful principles require wisdom, restraint, and judgment? By the end, our conversation moves from ancient legal debates to a question every tradition must face: when do we follow the rule, and when do we need to remind ourselves what the rule was for?
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, everybody, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Oral Talmud. I'm Dan Levenson, and I'm here with Denis Lapid. It's always hey, Denis. Hey,
BENAY LAPPE: Dan.
DAN LIBENSON: Good to see you. I'm excited- It- ... to get back into this text.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, me too. This text is bothering me.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, how come?
BENAY LAPPE: I think because it doesn't go as far as I want it to go.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And, you know, I love the rabbis, and I love what they're doing, and it- I'm, I'm always disappointed when they could go to the place I want them to go and they don't. Right. And, and, you know, their project isn't done. I get it. We're, we're here to finish it, and they're just giving us the instructions.
I think that is the deal. Um, but I, I like the, the uncovering of a really ridiculously radical, um- Precedent that we can now use wholesale, ready to go
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm
BENAY LAPPE: But I, I think in this case, it's not quite there
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, I think it's, I think it's there in this interesting way that is similar to what you've said and taught us all about the idea of svara, of this moral intuition, right?
I mean, your big thing is that, uh, that svara, this idea that our own moral intuition is more powerful than Torah. You know, that, that the Talmud says that svara can, uh, can, can overcome any rule in the Torah, you know, our own sort of moral sense of right and wrong, et cetera. And I- you know, you've convinced me.
I, I believe it's there, but it's not like people were running around for the last 2,000 years, you know, trumpeting this. You know, they ... And, and why? Because it's very dangerous. It's very dangerous to a kind of a conservative mindset that says, "Wait a second. If you're saying that your own moral intuition can overcome anything in the law, then people are gonna be r- it's gonna be chaos.
You know, it's gonna be, it's gonna be just crazy." And, um, and so it's dangerous. And so you kind of, uh, have it there, it, but it's a little bit suppressed. And it feels to me that the same idea that we're exploring here, whether human dignity, uh, is, is, uh, is something that, you know, that a violation of human dignity can overcome any law in the Torah, that's, that's again, it's, it's very dangerous because it can get very, very big very, very fast.
And it feels like on the one hand, th- both of those things are, are obviously true, right? If, if my sense of mor- You know, think about like a, a, a, a soldier who is being, who is given an i- an illegal order or something. You know, the Nuremberg trials or whatever, you know, have, have said like, you, you may not follow a, an order that is, uh, illegal or whatever the language is, and if you do, then you're gonna be h- up for war crimes trials, even if you're like a private.
You know, you can't just say, "I was just following orders." But that's a very powerful idea that potentially gives that private a lot of leeway to claim, "Well, I thought that this was an illegal order," or whatever. So, so on the one hand ... But, uh, anyway, but on the one hand, like it's, it's obvious that a person can't just use an excuse that they were following orders to do bad things.
And, um, and, and so it's obvious in the same way that if your conscience is violated by fulfilling a certain law, then you shouldn't have to fulfill that law. And if you think that another person's dignity or life would be, uh, violated if you followed this law, then you shouldn't follow the law. So on the one hand, these things are obvious, and it's kind of nice to see it confirmed in the Talmud that, that the Jewish tradition also believes that, and yet, you know, it's this very dangerous- brew that you can see, uh, uh, later, or, you know, uh, you can see this like, well, it's not even later and earlier.
You can see this, this struggle that would be true in any legal system between these two values of making the system able to work on the one hand, and, and making sure that we honor the true point of the system, which is human dignity, uh, at the same time.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Well, today we're gonna get to that piece Which is so beautiful, which I want to end up being, you know, the winning opinion.
And I guess I'm happy that it's gonna, that it's been recorded, and they're showing us what happened to it. So, so let, let's get into it. We'll see. Th- th- this is, this is the piece today.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So this is, as a quick reminder of, of last week, so we, we actually previewed, we started with this piece that we're gonna get to in a few minutes because we, we, there is a long stuff in, in before it and after it, and we sandwiched around it, and we kind of wanted to show that ultimately we're, we're getting at this question of, uh, that there is a piece of law i- not from the Mishnah, but from a contemporaneous source which of, of similar authority, that says that, uh, you can violate any law in the Torah in order to protect human dignity.
And-
BENAY LAPPE: It, e- even, even, but even more than that, it specifically says any prohibition in the Torah. Which is, it's not just any law which could be construed as, oh, just the o- the ones of the positive commandments of do this so that you can refrain from doing it. No, it specifically says the prohibitions, and those are much more severe violations.
So, and, and it follows, it would be obvious that if you can violate a prohibition, do not.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And you certainly can violate a do. So it's, it's, it's an even higher bar. Um, okay, fine.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, and as I'm thinking about it, in the case of, uh, that we're, we've been analogizing this to the saving of a life, Pikuach nefesh, and that there too you can overcome, you know, you can do the various prohibitions in the Torah, but there are exceptions.
Here, there are actually no exceptions. So in theory-
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly ...
DAN LIBENSON: right, you could worship another god in order to preserve human dignity. I mean, according to the text itself, of whether that would actually end up being the law is another question. But it's a very, it's a very, it's a very big deal kind of a text.
BENAY LAPPE: It is. It is. And the fact that there are no exceptions is, it, it's either really notable or the assumption is those exceptions that applied to Pikuach nefesh apply here.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
DAN LIBENSON: So that's sandwiched in the middle. So what, what we did last week was we kind of looked at the, the part, and we're gonna a- just for a couple minutes, uh, just finish up that section, which is the, the part that's before that little, uh, piece of law comes in, and then there's a, there's some stuff after it.
And the, the struggle is with this question of- Uh, that, you know, c- can you, can you really do anything to protect human dignity? It started with this question of do you have to say the Shema, which is honoring God. Do you have to say the Shema if you're there at, at a funeral to honor a, a dead person or the family?
And, and, you know, they struggle with this question of on the one hand, we know that, that you, you don't have to say the Shema, so there's, there's some level of human dignity that overcomes the, the dignity to be shown to God. But h- maybe that's limited only to a certain category of people. We can, you know, we, we can go back to last week to get into that in more depth.
And then, and then, yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: You just made me think of something.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: O- you're right that all of the other teachings in this text are cases, except for the really big rule that we're gonna get to today. So maybe the deduction of a big rule from the various cases is overly broad.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: I don't know, maybe there's something there
DAN LIBENSON: That, in other words, that you shouldn't-
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
For, for example, the, the, the- Just make these
DAN LIBENSON: broad deductions from cases?
BENAY LAPPE: Right. A- after we get, after the case of do you say the Shema if you're engaged in honoring the dignity of the mourners of the dead, comes the next case, which is, uh, if you're in the marketplace and you discover you're wearing a garment that has shatnez, right, the mixture of wool and lin- wool and linen.
Yes. Um, y- it's, it says in that case you should take off your garment, even in the middle of the marketplace, even if it violates your dignity, you're going to be embarrassed or shamed, because to continue wearing this prohibited garment would be an affront to God, and a violation of a do not do in the Torah.
Um, and we've been assuming that we can draw a rule, it, and I think it's a fair assumption from this case. But you just made me realize that maybe that isn't so. I mean, I think that the Gemara assumes it's so. The Gemara assumes that we should read that case to say, "No, if there is a prohibition at hand, a Torah prohibition, you should rather violate your or someone else's dignity than transgress that prohibition."
But, uh, may- maybe not. I don't know. I don't know.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, so, so there's, um, so there are these cases that we, that, that... And, and the, the pattern seems to be something like that, you know, that more or less they're coming along saying, "Wait a second, you, but there's this case where we know that either you should or you shouldn't, um, violate your dignity rather, you know, rather than, uh, do some prohibition in the Torah."
And either that case gets limited or expanded in order to try to, uh, you know, make, yes, the, yes, we know that there are a few cases where this, the dignity is so important, like the case of a mourner, the dignity is so important that you can, uh, take away God's honor. But that's going to be a very limited set of cases and v- very particular.
Or, you know, there, there are some cases where it looked like we have a, a very broad, uh, a very broad situation where you could do this. No, no, no, that's very limited to a case where it's like, it's so- tenuous that you might violate God's dignity in the ... So in this other case that they give is, like, when you're walking through a, a, sort of near a cemetery, and there could be a body buried under the, the road, in which case you would be, you would be, uh, if you're a priest, you would be impure.
And, and so, and we know that you are supposed to follow the mourner on this path, but, but it's only if the, you can blow on the path and make sure that there's no bones, and there could still be bones there just buried. That could happen. So normally we would say, "Don't do it. You know, if there's another path, take the other path."
But in this case, we'll say that you can do it just because it ... Right? So it's not that there's no chance that you might violate God's d- dignity, but the, the chance is so low that in this particular case we're gonna give you an exception. You know, and that, that's to limit this case, you know, so, so much.
And, and, and so there's an, so ... And, and, and that's kind of the pattern that we have here, uh, that we see. I would say that we see from here that there is some legitimate question that the rabbis are kind of allowing to remain that says there are times when a person's dignity is, uh, you know, more significant than, than God's dignity or, or some rule in the Torah.
But maybe that is so small. You know, we know that there are times, you know, but maybe those times are so small that they're not really a general big principle that we're going to establish here. They, so you, you can see, it feels to me like you can see that they, they feel that they're kind of playing with fire here, you know?
They don't, they're very nervous about a rule like this.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: So let's jump into the next case, the next example. Yeah. Um, which is, uh, and, and we'll go through this one, uh, relatively quickly. Um- I, I would
BENAY LAPPE: say at the ver- uh, sorry. At the very least, I think they're uncomfortable with this really, really the opening salvo case of the take your shirt off, take your garment off in the middle of the market.
I think they're uncomfortable with that, which is why over, and over, and over they keep bringing possibly contradictory cases in, and then they very obviously knock down the contrad- but there's something in the texture of this sugya that they start out with this kind of problematic case. A- and I think they keep, they keep trying to make it go away.
Mm-hmm. And maybe the ultimate message that I'm gonna hang onto is-
They're just uncom- they, they want it to go away. I don't know. Okay, okay, let's g- let's go anyway.
DAN LIBENSON: All right. Well, so here's another, here's another sort of interesting case where, uh, the, uh, the, there, there's another, uh, another case that we have, uh, from, uh, y- you know, a, a, a case, uh, sort of an old case, like of the time of the Mishnah.
Come in here, the Talmud says, "As Rabbi Eleazar bar Tzadok the priest said," so he's a priest. He said, "I and my fellow priests would jump over the coffins of the deceased in order to hurry toward the kings of Israel to greet them." So again, the idea here is that priests shouldn't come into contact with the dead.
Uh, they aren't supposed to be going into, uh, cemeteries. A- and, and, uh, I don't think it's... I mean, it's, it's from the case here, it's not so much that they can't be in a cemetery. It's like they, they gotta be, stay very far away from the dead bodies, and the, and you might as well not go in the cemetery 'cause it's hard to stay away from the dead bodies there.
So-
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And, and I s- I think we have to understand that tumah, the ritual impurity that comes from a dead body, sort of wafts upward toward the sky.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? It's like airspace. It takes it, right it's got airspace rights. And the jumping over the coffin, I'm not sure if the text is gonna be explicit about this, but the issue is they're going through the impure airspace- Yeah
right?
DAN LIBENSON: No, that's the issue. Okay. Yeah. I'll give that answer. And, and, and the case is basically that a, a, a king of Israel is coming towards them, and they wanna rush to the king of Israel to honor him. He's a human being, not God, right? So that's the key here. He's a human being. They wanna honor him as you should to a king.
Uh, it would make sense to take the most direct path possible, right, because you wanna rush as fast as you can to give the king his honor. Uh, and so they're saying rather than find a path around the cemetery to, to get to the king to, to honor the king, they're taking the direct path. And if there are dead bodies or coffins in the way, they would jump over them, uh, meaning they would take the most direct path and, as you say, go into the impure airspace and therefore take on that impurity in order to, uh, honor the king.
And, and that's really bad because when a priest gets impure, that means that he can't do his priestly duties and show God his honor. That, that might mean that he has to, you have to kill a red heifer and have, you know, all kinds of ways to... There's all kinds of problems there. So this is a big deal if priests are, are impurifying themselves to see a king.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And more to the point, they are violating a don't do of the Torah. They're violating a prohibition. Right. It is prohibited by the Torah, at least the rabbis understand that. Uh, acquisition of impurity by a Kohen to be prohibited by the Torah. And here they are violating the Torah in other, in order to show dignity or honor, the dignity of the kings.
Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. And, uh, and they did not say this only toward the kings of Israel, but they said this even towards the kings of the nation of the world, so that if one will be privileged to witness the redemption of Israel, he will distinguish between kings of Israel and kings of the nations of the world. So the, the point here is that the...
You, maybe you could argue that a king of Israel is kind of God's designate on Earth or something. So, you know, if there's an exception to give honor to the king of Israel because that really is giving honor to God, so then you're kind of weighing two ways to honor God, either by acknowledging and honoring his king or by, uh, you know, s- uh, failing, you know, making, avoiding impurity.
And in this case, they s- they'll, they'll pick the king because he's the most like God. You could make some argument like that. They say, "No, no, no." But here they would do it even for kings of, of other nations, which are clearly not God's representative on Earth. So this is clearly a case of honoring a human, uh, the dignity of a human, you know, in violation of, of a prohibition, uh, from the Torah.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Okay. I, I'm really starting to feel like the cases on their face are obvious. Um- are, are successfully knocking down any presumption that we should violate human dignity rather than violate the Torah. And the limit- limitation of these cases, one after the other, is the far-fetched- Uh-huh ... obviously far-fetched read, which I think we're not- we're meant to laugh at.
Uh-huh. I, I think that's what's going on. Okay. I think this is a David Kramer-esque sugya where the meta message is, of course you violate the Torah, and each of these cases is a dart. Uh, okay. All right.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, good. So let's, let's see. So now here's the, the conversation about that. So they say, "And, and why?" I mean, right, so again, this is the, this is the structure that we saw last week.
The Talmud then comes in, the, the later editor, and he s- and says, "Well, well, why?" You know, we have this line from Proverbs that there's neither wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the Lord, meaning nothing should overcome God's, uh, rules. Y- human wisdom, human thinking can't overcome God's rules, so there's just no reason to, to do anything that's contrary to the Torah.
Uh, and so why, why would we allow such a thing? Um, and so the, the response is that in accordance with the opinion of Rava, as Rava said, "By Torah law, a tent over a corpse, as long as there is a hand breadth of space between the corpse and the tent over it, constitutes a barrier before the spread of impurity."
So the idea here is that if it's just a dead body lying on the road or ly- lying down and not covered, then you couldn't, then you couldn't jump over that without becoming impure. But in this case, this was a very particular case where there was a coffin or there was a tent or a shroud somehow that was
But somehow there was a, a barrier of a hand breadth, so, you know, a fist, and between the dead body and some barrier. And, and once you have that, the, the impurity stops at the barrier and you can jump over it without ... So don't d- so, you know, don't even, uh, confuse yourself here. The priests weren't becoming impure at all.
They, because there were barriers over all these dead bodies. So this is a very limited ca- yeah, and I think, like you say, it's, you have to laugh.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm, I'm starting to get the feel for this, for this. Okay
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so, um, so the hand breadth of space, uh, constitutes a barrier before the spread of impurity.
Uh, and when there's not a hand breadth of space between the corpse and the tent, it does not, uh, does not constitute a barrier before the spread of impurity, uh, and, and then you shouldn't do it. So most coffins are saying most coffins have a ha- do have a hand breadth between the top of the body and the bottom of the coffin.
So, you know, if you're in a coffin, if there's coffins, you can assume that they're all, uh, sufficient barriers from impurity. And so consequently, the sages, uh, issued a decree regarding coffins in which there's a hand breadth of space, uh, becau- because of those... Oh, so but, but there could be a case where there are some coffins that, you know, are, like, poorly made or whatever, you know, or maybe a person, you know, was, was larger than an average person, and somehow there wasn't an actual fist of, of space between the person and the edge of the coffin.
And because of that potential case, the rabbis had made this larger rule that said nobody should, you know, that, that, that let's treat a coffin like a dead body. You know, like, let's not let priests go near even coffins, even though there was technically nothing wrong with it from the Torah. And in this case, they're saying, you know, this, so that's just a rabbinic prohibition.
And so when a king is coming, we can make an exception to the rabbinic prohibitions, but you're not violating anything in the Torah here, or most likely you're not, right? And this, it's the same as the beta pras- uh, the one that we did previously, that you blow the dirt and there could be a, maybe the bone there.
There's a very limited, very unlikely case where you're gonna be violating anything in the Torah here. It could happen, and we're sort of saying, like, we'll t- we'll be willing to take that risk in order to greet the king of Israel or I guess the king of, of any country. Uh, but, you know, it's only this v- because of this very, very limited situation, and it's only because this is actually a rabbinic law, not a Torah law as you might have thought.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Okay. So now we're laughing. Um... Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Uh-huh.
DAN LIBENSON: So, uh, so nevertheless, due to the respect of kings, the sages did not issue a decree in that case. So, right, so, so they, they did issue a decree that you shouldn't, priests shouldn't, uh, go o- over coffins, uh, i- uh, for other reasons, but for a king, it's okay.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: So that's the... So now here we come to the, to the gen- So we had a couple of, uh, cases, like you say, a couple of cases that, um, seem to suggest that there are times when the dignity of a person is greater than the law of following the Torah. I
BENAY LAPPE: think more than suggest. I think make it very clear that the practice was and that the rabbinic directive was to violate the Torah rather than violate human dignity.
And in each case, the editor is scrambling to say, "No, no, no, no, no, don't, don't think that's, don't think that's what's going on. This is what's going on." And now comes the big gun. Okay- Right ... now here's this other piece of evidence that looks like for sure it's going to put to rest the question of what do you do when a Torah violation and human dignity are in conflict, and here it comes.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. And it's kind of like, right, you got a bunch of cases and then you're like, "Oh, wait a second, you know, actually in the Constitution itself it says this. We, we didn't even have to go to those cases." Yeah. Like, yes, we have it. I, I forgot that it actually said it in the Constitution or, you know, at least in the Federalist Papers.
And so, so let's take a look at this. And so the Gemara says, you know, coming here from a baraita, from a contemporaneous source to the Mishnah, "Great is human dignity, as it overrides a prohibition in the Torah." And we looked at it last week, that Rashi explains that where it says it, it overrides a prohibition in the Torah, that means any prohibition.
Uh- Yeah,
BENAY LAPPE: all.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, all.
BENAY LAPPE: Absolutely all. W- which it's a, it's an enormous statement.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Now, I guess my question is, why didn't we start here? And I do wonder, i- it, this h- this, this particular state... I, there may not be an answer to my question here, but this, this statement feels to me like it's a little bit more like a proverb than a law.
You know, it's like, it, great is human dignity. That, that sort of feels like a, the opening line of an aphorism or, you know, a proverb. Uh, great is human d- human dignity is so great that it overrides a prohibition of the Torah, as opposed to the structure of a law which would say one may, one may override any prohibition of the Torah in order to preserve human dignity.
Like, that would have the structure of more of a law. So I don't know if that's... I mean, I would note also that the whole, that the whole argument here that human dignity does not override the, uh, you know, anything in the Torah is also, it's coming literally from the Book of Proverbs. So- Mm-hmm ... you know, but it, it may be, maybe that's intentional to put one proverb against another, or maybe this does have a little bit less than the force of law and, and that's why it's not carrying all the water from the beginning.
BENAY LAPPE: Mm-hmm. I'm not sure. It, but when you mention the proverb, the piece of Proverbs that the law that you should rather violate human dignity than violate Torah, the, the pr- that proof text- Mm-hmm ... is, let's just remember, remember that it's an obviously forced read. Mm-hmm. I mean, it is, it's a forced read of a forced read- Right
of, of that proverb. Okay. Yeah, I am starting to see this. And when you say why didn't the Gemara start with this rule, it's remind- my question is why doesn't it end with it?
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: And that reminds me of what we talked about last week, which is that the Yerushalmi, the Jerusalem Talmud, does end with it.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm.
BENAY LAPPE: It gets to this point, and that's this opinion, this beraita, holds the day. That becomes the Halakha in the Yerushalmi.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm.
BENAY LAPPE: The Bavli then says, you know, "I, I don't want, we don't, we're a little uncomfortable it seems going that far, leaving that on the table, and but yet we're gonna put it out there for you." I don't know.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, and I would just remind our, you know, viewers, listeners here that when we talk about the Bavli, the Babylonian Talmud, versus the Yerushalmi, the Jerusalem or the Pal- Palestinian Talmud, the, these are two independent works.
I mean, they, they had, uh, certainly the Bavli has knowledge of the Yerushalmi. I think also the Yerushalmi knows what's going on in Babylonia, so they're not fully independent, but they are two different works of rabbinic literature. And, um- When we say what does Judaism say about something, you know, yes, it's true that the Judaism that we have descended from is a Judaism that accepted the Babylonian Talmud as the main source of Jewish thinking.
I wouldn't say law necessarily because the whole idea of law as a kind of a fixed codes comes later. So, uh, you know, but, but really kind of is anchored more in the Babylonian. So we could say, we could say that, you know, well, our Judaism is this one that's, that's not, that's more nuanced, that, that doesn't just end with it.
On the other hand, you know, I'm not sure that so many people today, uh, particularly non-Orthodox people, are so emphatic about the, the Babylonian Talmud versus the Palestinian Talmud being the, the most important work, et cetera. And so it feels to me like when we have a source like the Jerusalem Talmud that says, that, that ends and, and is much more emphatic, then that says human dignity overrides anything in the Torah, that I feel like when we're thinking about a Judaism of the future, we could hang our hat on that and say, "Yeah, we like that one.
Well, like, let's, let's build that one into our system." And it's, it's just as, uh, you know, it's, it's, it's a way of sort of treating the Babylonian Talmud and the Palestinian Talmud in sort of the way that the Talmuds treat the Mishnah versus the, the Tosefta, the other sources of Brit Chadasha. It's like, you know, it's also authoritative, and just because it happens not to be the main line that we're using, we can use that as well.
So, so I think there's something there to think about, you know, the Jerusalem Talmud as being more significant for the future than maybe it was in the past.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I like that. And I keep asking myself if this, if the Talmud is a kind of law textbook, it's, it's not teaching you law, it's teaching you how to do law.
It's teaching you how to think about, um, difficult cases, and the Bavli is a much more intricate, sophisticated document. I, I wonder if that could help us understand what's going on in this sugya. Hmm. You know, is, is a law student learning the sugya in the Bavli gonna actually be better at teasing out the issues in any given case than a law student learning the Yerushalmi that just has kind of, you know- Ends with the broad rule
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
Uh-huh. Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Maybe.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Okay, so, so basically the, the Talmud at this point lays down the broad rule.
BENAY LAPPE: Mm-hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: You know, well, hey, we got this Brit time. It says human dignity overrides every prohibition in the Torah. And then the Gemara, the editor, uh, responds as the editor is responding in each of these cases, and say, "But why?
Why don't we also bring in the, the pro- the proverb here that says there's no wisdom nor understanding, no counsel against the Lord," meaning, uh, you know, no nothing overrides the, the Torah. Um, and Rav Bar Shabba interpreted this prohibition, uh, before Rav Kahana is referring to the prohibition of you shall not deviate to the left or the right.
So there's something specifically in the Torah in Deuteronomy that says you shouldn't, you should, you should do exactly what the Torah says. Don't deviate to the left and to the right. And, uh, the, and he's saying, "Yeah, that's consistent with this idea of nothing overrides the Torah." You know, right, don't deviate.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, I think we need to, th- this is, this is where it gets super, super complicated, and I think we have to s- I need to talk it out again. Okay. Okay. So we have this very broad rule that looks like it's going to Hold the day and override the i- that Proverbs, which is understood to mean follow the Torah even if it cau- causes you to violate human dignity.
And now, Rav Barshabba says, "No, no, no, no, no. That broad rule isn't referring to all of the don't do's in the Torah." Mm-hmm. Mm. "It's only referring to the one don't do."
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Only this one.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: The one don't do that says, "Don't deviate to the left or to the right from what God says."
DAN LIBENSON: Yes. That makes more sense than what I said.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Oh, it might've been the same thing. I just needed- No,
DAN LIBENSON: no, I- ... to help it out ... you, y- I, yeah, you got it.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Okay, great. So, so far, it, and, you know, I see the next line in the text is the- Right ... the students laughed at him. We're already laughing. I mean, it's so obvious that that broad statement is broad.
Right. It, it, it does what it... Exactly, it means what it says. And, and I think that the Stammah is m- making us see how very forced the limiting read of this radical statement is. Uh- Right. But
DAN LIBENSON: it... Okay. So let me see if I have this right. So, so we have this quote from the, a Brita that says, "Human dignity is so important that it overrides a prohibition in the T- in the Torah."
And like we said, Rashi said it means all prohibitions. But, but Rav Barshabba is coming along and saying, "Oh, no, no, no. That, that's not so broad that it overrides all prohibitions. It only ri- overrides a prohibition of the Torah." Which one? The one that says, "Don't deviate to the left or to the right of what it says in the Torah."
And the students then laugh at him, and they say, "But the idea that you shouldn't deviate to the left or the right of what the Torah says applies to the whole Torah." So, so if, so yeah, even if you say that it only refers to that one prohibition, by extension it refers to all prohibitions. Uh, right? Because that's just a, that's just a, a general, a general prohibition that applies to all prohibitions, and you're saying that this one overcomes that.
So by, by the process of whatever that is in math, it, it all, it does all of them.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Exactly.
DAN LIBENSON: So, so, um, so the yeshiva students laughed at him as the prohibition of you shall not deviate is by Torah law like all other Torah prohibitions. Um, and Rav Kahana replies to them, "A great man has spoken, don't laugh at him."
Um, so okay, that's, uh, good to, good to know. Um, the sages ba- and he goes on to explain the, the sages based all of rabbinic law on the prohibition of you shall not deviate. However, due to the concern for dignity, the sages permitted suspension of rabbinic law in cases where the two collide. So if I'm understanding this correctly, Rav Kahana is trying to salvage, uh, Rav Bar Shabba's reputation, uh, by saying that that Torah prohibition of you shall not deviate is the basis for rabbinic law.
And so then when you say that, um, that, that that is the one Torah prohibition that can be overcome by human dignity, what you're really saying is all of rabbinic law can be overcome by human dignity, but not all of Torah law, only that one Torah prohibition.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. Something like that. It, yeah. It, th- there's a sleight of hand which Rav Kahana's doing, and he's saying, "Okay- When we say that you can override that one Torah law, we're not really even saying you can override that one Torah law.
That one Torah law is shorthand for the rabbinic, for rabbinic authority
And what our broad radical statement really means then, just like you said, is you can override any rabbinic authority, any rabbinic law, rather than violate human dignity, bracket, but not Torah law. I-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: It's, it's just so ridiculously forced. Mm-hmm. And it's so obvious what it actually says and what it actually means, and that they know it.
I, I think that's the meta message. But okay
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so I, I mean, before, so w- now we're about to go onto another case, but I mean, before we do, like, I think it's kind of ... I mean, this is it for the, for the, for the m- for that general statement. Like, it was like we have a general statement in the literature that says that any Torah law can be violated for the sake of human dignity.
Like you explained in the Yerushalmi, in the Palestinian Talmud, it stops there, meaning that's the law. And so, so in the Yerushalmi you do have this general, you end up with a general principle like, yeah, human dignity overcomes any law in the Torah. In the Bavli, the Babylonian Talmud, we kind of have relatively short shrift given to it.
We have some kind of bumbling rabbi story who, you know, gets laughed at, and maybe he gets salvaged by his colleague. But I mean, it sort of ends up, it, it, it feels like it's putting it in the realm of a little bit of a, you know, bumbling chum, you know, idiot kind of story. And then it's going on to another case where it's gonna limit it again.
So it's, it does seem to be kinda, you know, th- this big principle seems to be kind of buried in here. And now what's interesting to me is that when we talked about this a couple of weeks ago, and we were talking about the, the additional exceptions to, to the, the rules of, of, uh, you know, when you could, um, when you could violate the Torah and, and, you know, you said, "Oh, that makes me think of this quote from the, from, from here," where, where we have great is human dignity, it overcomes anything in the Torah.
You know, that's the thing that, that you had primary in your mind, and it turns out- Right, right ... that it's kind of buried here by the Talmud itself. And the question is, like, what do we do with it? I mean, meaning in other words, like, it seems like there are multiple voices going on here. Like, on the one hand was, is, is like this is an ancient text that they have.
S- people are bringing it up and saying, "Hey, we've got this. Human dignity is the greatest thing." And then there's some sense like, "Oh yeah, this is really important. We should put it in the Tal-" And then there's this other sense that like, "Oh no, we're gonna kind of bury it here so that it kind of gets smothered by these other cases."
And then, but then, you know, 1,500 years later, Ben E. Lappe comes along and, and it's the, it's the core quote again that jumps out at you and that says, "Wait, this is really important," and ancient, right? In other words, this is ... The, the, the quote itself, "Great is human dignity that overcomes-" Yeah ... "everything in the Torah," is more ancient than any of the other material on this page.
So in that sense, it's more authentic, more original, right, if, if, if those are the things that drive you. So I, I think it's an interesting case of like, what is, what is the real ... You know, it's like, will the real Judaism please stand up here? You know, what is the real- Right ... what is the, the anchor? So I just think it's interesting that we kind of move on from this so quickly in the, in the- T- page of Talmud itself.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Um, it's really interesting that you point out that what really lived was the radical statement.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And maybe that, that was the Stama's goal all along.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And, and these very forced limitations and, mm, were, y- are certainly difficult to remember.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: And would likely not, uh, live as predominantly in one's mind.
That's re- it's really interesting.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. I mean, I remember, I remember, actually this was in the, um, I mean, this, this really stuck with me. It was in the, the additional features to, uh, Sandy Dubowski's film, Trembling Before God, you know, which was this early film about gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews, and, and how, you know, they were trying to live.
They ... And, and so, uh, it was a very important movie in all kinds of ways, but in the, in the, um, extra features, Rabbi Steve Greenberg talks about this case, which is a w- well-known kind of case that, that in the, in, in, that in the old times, you know, when a rabbi was confronted with a question, he was making an analogy here, like, here the question is, like, "Can I be gay and Orthodox?"
You know, but, but he is saying, you know, it's the kind of question where somebody brings a chicken to the rabbi and asks, "Is this chicken kosher?" That the rabbi, that today the way people have been taught to think about it, it's either kosher or it's not kosher. And what rabbis do is they look in the book and they check, and then they tell the person if it's kosher or not kosher.
But what Steve Greenberg says is that the traditional approach of a rabbi is to ask the person, "Tell me about yourself," you know. "Are you poor? Uh, was this a chicken that you were really depending on 'cause you're welcoming guests?" You know, "Is there something going on?" And if you really need it to be kosher, then I'm gonna try as hard as I possibly can to make it kosher.
I m- may not be able to at the end, but I'm gonna ... That's, that's part of the factor. And it feels to me like what that's really getting at is this question of that human dignity is part of the equation here. And that, and, and it feels to me like a text like this, when taught sort of properly in, like, a rabbinical school, and I don- and I don't know that any rabbinical school these days is teaching it, quote, "properly", but, like, in the old times, it feels to me like what Steve Greenberg had internalized was that reading a text like this at least says to you human dignity is a real factor here, and- Like we've said many times, in the world of the Talmud, the expectation is that only rabbis will ever read this know how to read it.
And so on the one hand, it's a dangerous tool. On the other hand, it's a tool that we can give you so that you understand that to, you know, that a way to be a rabbi, part of it is to be conscious of the person and, and here's an ex- here's, here's a tool that you can use if you need it, but be careful with it.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: It feels more dangerous when it's a time like ours when everybody can read it, and then you say, "Hey, wait a second, the human dignity overrides everything," so, like, everybody free reign, everybody go crazy. You know, so, like, there-- So you can kind of understand how it's both important and, and, uh, and, and something that you shouldn't be afraid of.
You should actually just be wise and use sparingly. And on the other hand, the fear that it can be in the wrong hands or with less care, it can be used too broadly. And maybe what we're seeing here is neither the suppression nor the holding up of this principle, but almost a kind of an attempt to just, like, drop it in there.
Some people will use it, some people won't, but we, we put it in the toolbox, but it's kind of, like, under a bunch of tools. You know, something, something like that.
BENAY LAPPE: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I like that a lot. Um-
You know what else this text is reminding me of? And I'm just, I'm trying to get at, you know, what's really going on in this sugya. Why is it organized this way? And I, I, and I r- really like what you're saying. Um, if you rearrange the pieces of this text, and you started out with the baraita, that radical statement of human dignity overrides any prohibition in the Torah, and then you had all of these cases that say, "Oh, no, no, no.
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute," you'd have the exact structure of, uh, a very famous sugya in another tractate of Talmud called Bava Kamma on the question of how we handle, um, personal injuries, right? So the Mishnah, that, that Tannaic early authoritative statement, like our baraita, equal in authority, starts out with, "If one person injures another, the injurer has to compensate the injured party in five different ways," all financial And then the Gemara opens up with, "What's, what are you talking about?
That can't be true, because doesn't the Torah say, 'Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth?'" And then what follows is a chain of proof after proof that the Torah is actually true. That eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, physical retaliation is how we should handle personal injuries. And the, the sugya of 10 proofs never ends with, oh, but all these proofs which fail or succeed, uh, determine that the law is as the Torah says or the law is as the Mishnah says.
It's understood that the Mishnah is true. Monetary compensation is the way we do things. The Gemara is not trying to either support it or overturn it. It's, it's making it very clear that, I, I think, and I follow David Kramer's approach to this, it's making it clear that that radical statement has no basis in the Torah, and the rabbis don't feel they need any basis in the Torah to make that radical statement.
Mm. So if, if I translate that Sugya over to this Sugya, you, you have the same situation. If you just s- cut and paste the Baraita to the top- Mm ... do you have... Right? You, you have that same, the same message. The message is this earliest case is the law, period. And here are all these possible ways to challenge it and to say, "Hey, but we have a verse over here that says n-," but- Those aren't actually there to overturn the early...
Yeah, do you follow me?
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. I, I'm, I'm just- But, so then the question is, is there a reason why we, it's not put in that structure in this case?
BENAY LAPPE: Mm-hmm. Well, we know that Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi didn't choose to put this in the Mishnah, and he did choose to put eye f- uh, monetary compensation rather than eye for an eye in the Mishnah.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: I think the question is, why didn't he do that? It, he couldn't, also he couldn't have known everything.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? The Gemara brings in teachings from Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi's time. It, you know, I always imagine, if I were to write the ultimate parenting guide, I would gather all the parenting advice from all the parents I know in my time, and all of their parents, and what they had learned from their grandparents, and I'd write a guide.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And 100 years from now, someone would say, "Oh, but Benet n- never heard this piece of advice."
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And for sure there'd be pieces of advice from my contemporaries that I, I can't possibly have known. There are more contemporaries than I even know, right? I, I think that's the deal, and the Gemara w- wants to say, "Hey, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi didn't know about this."
But just because he didn't know about it w- doesn't mean it, it wasn't authoritative. So I don't think he necessarily knew it and disregarded it and kept it out of the Mishnah, this radical statement.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: I think there was-
DAN LIBENSON: Are, are there, are there radical statements of the, of this sort of general nature in the Mishnah that...
Like, because it feels to me like, right, the Mishnah also doesn't have a statement that says, uh, saving a life overcomes-
BENAY LAPPE: Exa- exactly. That wasn't in the Mishnah either.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So it, it feels to me like that's not how the Mishnah does business. You know, whether he knew about it or not, like, it's not, it's not...
Like, the Mishnah is more of a law code that says, "Okay, so you can say by implication the Mishnah is, is doing those things." Because if there's a law that isn't in the Torah but it is in the Mishnah, and it's there, maybe like the eye for an eye- Yeah ... being overcome, to say, like, "Well, that's not dignified," or whatever.
You could say, like, "Well, we have these..." I mean, maybe this is where we go back to that question of, like, penumbras and emanations. It's like, we do understand that the Mishnah is being driven by these sensibilities, but this wasn't the kind of line that Yehuda HaNasi put in the Mishnah because- Yeah ... that's not how the Mishnah works.
BENAY LAPPE: I like that. I like that because the section of Talmud that results in that broad law of- Um, you should violate any law rather than risk a life with the three exceptions. That is standing on the Mishnah of a case. Rabbi Matia ben Cheresh says, if a person is suffering from a sore throat on Shabbat You give him medicine-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm
BENAY LAPPE: on Shabbat. And the, we know that, I, I think we learned this together, didn't we?
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. So, uh, you know, you can violate Shabbat to pull up the, the weeds to boil the, not the weeds, the, the medicinal herbs to boil them to make the medicine. That's what Yehudahanasi put in the Mishnah. He did not put in the Mishnah, although presumably he could have, violate any law on Shabbat to save a life- Mm-hmm
or in the Torah. I like what you're saying, that it's just not the Mishnah's style to do that.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. So then I, I would have to know more, you know, I'd have to, like, study a lot more Talmud, which I guess we are, uh, to see if, like, at what point can I make a definitive statement that would say that the Talmud, as a rule, puts these, you know, general principles not at the beginning of the, you know, not at the beginning of the- Mm-hmm
discussion. Because I mean, just, see, also from a law standpoint, um, you know, I think it's, I think it's fair to say that especially when you have some potential principle that could undo a lot of law, that you might not want to bring out the big gun right away if you don't have to. Um, I'm not sure that totally fits here because these are edited, structured arguments, so by the time they're writing them down, they already know what's gonna carry the day.
So, you know, I, I think there's a little more decision-making going on here in terms of how to, to structure these arguments in the Talmud. But it, it does kind of feel like, I don't know. I mean, I am, I am kind of... The, the, the idea that you, you might kind of, um, throw the tool in but you're trying to cover it up a little because, not, not to suppress it, but to just kind of not make it the one that's whipped out all the time, um, may be part of the tradition.
I mean, I, you know, I think, I also think about how, like, sometimes Orthodox Jews today can be dismissive of Reform Judaism for taking this principle of tikkun olam, you know, the repair of the world, and making it kind of the, the, the greatest principle of the Torah. And like, they, they'll say, you know, "Everything is tikkun olam now," and it's just like, what's the point of Judaism if everything is tikkun olam and tikkun olam trumps everything, and then it's just like all you have to know is one thing?
You know, that, there's a little bit of, of, of sense to that. You know, they say, like, well, well, it's gotta be, it, it, it would be a smarter system if it was a little more subtle than that. So let's not just have these general principles that end up coming out, you could pull them out of the drawer no matter what, you know, and they just like beat down everything.
Let's, let's be a little more subtle about it. So I don't know. I think there's some, there's some, there's some sense to, to- I don't know, what's the word? Not suppress, but to kind of like soften some of these general principles that might get too big too fast in the, in the kind of-
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah ... horizontal thing.
Or, or, or to show you how to complicate them. I think you, you've, you've suggested this a couple of times, last week and this week. To show cases that complicate them, or ways to complicate them so that in any given case you don't overuse it. Right. And, a- and, and one thing we really haven't dug into is what are the limits of what we understand human dignity to refer to?
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: You know, is human dignity mild embarrassment? Is it, um, you know, something more profound? It... A- anyway, w- w- probably it isn't the mildest of embarrassments. And so- Having a broad statement runs the risk of sort of being too big of a hammer
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm ...
BENAY LAPPE: right, to be used in cases where it really shouldn't be used.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So I, I like, I like, I like that. Um, I'm not sure we're gonna go back into the details, but the Bavli... Should, should I just sort of say where the Bavli ends up with this?
DAN LIBENSON: What do we- We can zip through the, the next one- Okay, great ... um, because I think we have time. So-
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, great ...
DAN LIBENSON: so let's, um, so, so there's one more case that, that follows this.
And so the Gemara brings another baraita. It says come in here, and here we're talking about there, there's a, a, a rule in Deuteronomy that, uh, if you see the ox of your brother or sheep go astray and disregard them, uh, you shall not do that and you should return it to your brother. So if you see somebody's lost animal, you should return it to them.
And the baraita, uh, explains the, uh, seemingly extraneous, uh, expression here. It says, "If you see... You shall not see the ox of your brother, uh, uh, sheep go astray and disregard them. Return them to your brother." So why do we need and disregard them? It could have just said you shall not see the ox of your brother or sheep go astray, return them to your brother.
So why does it say and disregard them? Extra words must have some meaning. Um, and that is to... The, the Talmud is saying that is for a particular case that, um, that at times you do disregard lost objects and at times you don't disregard them. So sometimes, uh, it could be appropriate to disregard a, a lost object even if you see that it's lost.
How so? If a person was a priest and the lost object was in the cemetery, uh, or if he was an elder and it was beneath his dignity to tend to some lost object of a regular person. So if there are cases where it would be, be a violation of the Torah or a violation of the person's dignity to return the lost object, then you don't have to.
Uh, or if he had more work to do than another person, uh, and therefore the, the, to those cases it's stated and disregard them to permit one to refrain from returning the object. So it's a very strained reading, but the bottom line is they're saying that this extra language is in there to cover a set of cases where it would be okay to not return the lost object.
You're, you're very busy, you're very important, you're, you're a priest. Uh, and so, so the, the, the implication here too is that, uh, there are cases where somebody's dignity is greater than the Torah, and they wouldn't have to do it, right? And, and, and so they can essentially violate the Torah prohibition of failing to return the lost object because it would harm their dignity to, to do that.
Right. And, and the Talmud says, "Why?" Let, you know, same thing, why would we have this statement, you know, uh, there's neither wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the Lord, so really the Torah should always trump human dignity. Uh, and, and so the Talmud is explaining, so yeah, that's why it's... So there it's different because it's written and disregard them.
In other words, the, but the Torah's actually adding language, so it's not violating the Torah, it's actually in the Torah, right? The, the idea that there are these exceptions is actually written in the Torah in this subtle way through extra words, right? Right. Um, so, so that does, that does allow the person to, to disregard them.
So then, then the Talmud goes on and says, "Oh, great. So we found a case in which human dignity overrides a Torah prohibition, so let's, let's derive a general principle from this case." Uh, right? Let's, uh, let's, let's, uh, right, let's say that because we found this case where there is a situation where the Torah itself says-
that human dignity can override the Torah, let's take, let's take a general principle out of this case of lost objects and say, so in all cases if, if human dignity, uh, is at stake, then, then it overrides the Torah. And the Talmud-
BENAY LAPPE: But, which, which would be consistent with our radical baraita. Right.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
Right? Now- And the Tal- Sorry. And the Talmud says, "No, no, no, that's taking it too far." And, and also laying down another sort of general principle, right? We don't derive, uh, we don't derive laws about other prohibitions from monetary law. So this case of a lost animal is simply monetary, and we're not going to say, you know, that you can violate a prohibition in the Torah that's non-monetary, you know, like don't worship idols or something like that, based on some law that is only dealing with money.
BENAY LAPPE: I'm really starting to land somewhere for me with this text. I think this is an instruction manual for how to apply, uh, that very radical and broad- directive of prioritizing human dignity over the f- the precise following of the Torah when they conflict. Uh, i- it's an instruction manual in, in, in how to not over-apply it.
Okay. How to, how to know in any particular case whether this is a situation where a- y- you actually should limit it. Th- this is, this is teaching forced but important ways to limit broad, wonderful principles when they should be limited, because even broad, wonderful principles sometimes should be limited.
I think that's what's going on.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh. Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Anyway.
DAN LIBENSON: Let's, um, pause on that and, uh, we'll, we'll see where we, where we wanna come back to it next week. But, um, do, is there anything sort of more global that you want to say in terms of summing up, sort of set apart from this particular case?
BENAY LAPPE: Well, what I know, our broad statement that human dignity overru- y- you, you should rather, um, do something to prevent indignity to someone rather than, e- e- even when it causes you to violate the Torah, um, is something that at the end of the day is understood to apply to all rabbinic Toraitic directives.
I, that's a little bit contradictory. All rabbinic law and all Torah laws that are dos, positive commandments, um-
The, the negative commandments remain, um
In the codes, things that you shouldn't violate even to preserve human dignity. But I, I don't know. For, for me, at the end of the day, th- this is example after example of even forced ways to limit a very wonderful but c- possibly dangerous and overly applied rule. In other words, be careful. Don't overapply it, and if in a, in a certain case you sh- you know you shouldn't apply it, here are a half a dozen ways to actually limit it so that you're not forced to follow a, a rule that in a, in a certain case you know is, is, is not the right thing to do.
DAN LIBENSON: So we'll come back to this next time- Okay ... and, and wrap it up in a more proper way. I think that also there's implications of, of this text and these ideas that we're talking about that I'd love to talk through with you. So, so I think what we'll do next time is, uh, finish this last part and, uh, and, and just go through some of that.
So, so 'cause I- Great ... I think that this is, this is really important, uh, material that we should spend some time on.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I would love to flesh out the practical implications of it today. Let's do that next.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Okay, great. So we'll see- Okay ... you next week.
BENAY LAPPE: All right.
DAN LIBENSON: All right.
BENAY LAPPE: Thanks, Dan.
DAN LIBENSON: Bye, Vinay.
BENAY LAPPE: Bye.
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