The Oral Talmud Episode 67: Sleight of Hand (Bava Kamma 83b)
SHOW NOTES
“ Imagine you're reading some magician textbook, how to do magic… the magician is saying since he transferred the coin from his right hand to his left hand the coin disappeared. But he doesn't actually believe that it disappeared. He's showing you how to make the audience believe it disappeared. If the person reading the handbook thinks the way that you make something disappear is you move it to another hand, the joke is on that person.” - Dan Libenson
Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.
If you have one good argument, you make it. If you don’t have a single good argument, you make ten. That may be exactly what the rabbis are doing with “an eye for an eye.” As each new proof that the Torah really always meant monetary compensation gets weaker, stranger, and more strained, Benay and Dan begin to wonder whether the arguments are actually designed to fail.
Because maybe the Talmud isn’t trying to convince us that the Torah always meant money. Maybe it’s trying to make sure we realize that it didn’t. In this episode, we follow the rabbis through some spectacular interpretive gymnastics and uncover a possibility hiding underneath them: sometimes changing the tradition requires admitting that you’re changing it.
This week’s text: Bava Kamma 83b
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 67: Sleight of Hand
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.
If you have one good argument, you make it. If you don’t have a single good argument, you make ten. That may be exactly what the rabbis are doing with “an eye for an eye.” As each new proof that the Torah really always meant monetary compensation gets weaker, stranger, and more strained, Benay and I begin to wonder whether the arguments are actually designed to fail.
Because maybe the Talmud isn’t trying to convince us that the Torah always meant money. Maybe it’s trying to make sure we realize that it didn’t. In this episode, we follow the rabbis through some spectacular interpretive gymnastics and uncover a possibility hiding underneath them: sometimes changing the tradition requires admitting that you’re changing it.
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: Welcome back everyone, I'm Dan Leibson and I am here with Benay Lappe for another episode of The Oral Talmud. Hey,
BENAY LAPPE: Benay. Hey, Dan. How are you?
DAN LIBENSON: I'm good. Good to see you.
BENAY LAPPE: Good to see you too.
DAN LIBENSON: All right, so let's just jump right into it because now we're really rock and rolling on this- on this very long and complex and important text.
So just as a reminder, we're looking at the text about the eye for an eye, and we're, uh... And- and like you've said that this is kind of a sampler where the Talmud is kind of showing us basically 10 different, maybe more than 10, 10 different, uh, sort of analytical or interpretive techniques that you, meaning in, for them a rabbi but now anyone can use once you sort of learn these for various purposes.
And- and one of the great conversations that we've been having is, well, what i- is the purpose? You know, is the purpose because sometimes there's certain students or rabbis that are a little more conservative, and there are ones that are a little more progressive or radical; and then there's, uh, but maybe it's...
No, maybe it's because it's the regular people are hearing something and they're not gonna be reading the Talmud, and so some of these arguments are, "Here's what, how you should kind of tell the regular people, and here's what it- what it really is for us to know on the inside."
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And- and- and so it's the- th- the Talmud seems to be addressing the issue of having a sacred document That is understood to be God's word, which seems to be a, a static thing or we want it to be perfect and therefore static with the necessity of actually changing what we think is the best way to live.
So, um, so either the Gemara here is dealing with a possible challenge from the everyday person who says, "Wait a minute, I know we punish, uh, injurers by making them pay money to the injured party," but I just heard like you said, uh, like you are often saying, "I heard in the m- in the marketplace when the Torah was read last Thursday that the Torah says an eye for an eye.
Wait a minute, how come we don't do that?" To shore up the Torah. Or is it, is it someone questioning the actual law of monetary compensation in this case? In which case they're questioning our law and wanting it to be like the Torah. Or is, is the Talmud simply using an example, a case study from history of the difference between what the Torah says about the issue of personal injuries and what the law became that everyone agreed on, um, as a, as a way to play out this sampler of techniques that one can use to either justify the deviation to other people or to make a deviation that doesn't yet exist but should exist.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Uh, to equip future generations to have the confidence that they can make radical deviations from the Torah to make the tradition more liberatory, more just, and to say A, this is traditional. You're standing on the shoulders of the guys who did it on 100 other issues. Here are their stories. And B, here are their methods.
You can use these methods too.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So, so far in our learning of this sugya... And I just wanna say again and again and again- This passage in the Talmud isn't really about personal injuries, okay? The Talmud is never about what it looks like it's about. It's never about the surface content. It's using the content of the topic of personal injuries to play out and just to demonstrate these exegetical creative techniques.
Um- You
DAN LIBENSON: know what it's making me think about? It's... Y- remember months ago when we studied about the, the different rabbis, Rabbi Meir, and there was this whole thing where, uh, to be a really certified rabbi you had to be able to impure, to purify the impure, meaning to show that a creepy crawly impure animal is pure, and you had to be able to do it at 72 different ways.
And, like, once you could do it 72 different ways, like, you could be authorized to be a rabbi. And that, and the basic idea there is that the Torah is explicit that that thing is impure, and if you can find 72 ways to say that it's pure then, you know, we've really got someone here. And so I feel like then they always say, "And I can do it," and they give one example.
You know, but here- Right ... we have a case where it's also not 72, but it's 10, but it's, it's 10 ways to, to basically show that the Torah, something explicit in the Torah doesn't mean what it obviously means on the surface and, and there's sort of no way to s-... Just in the same way that you can't... There's no way that you could say that a creepy crawly animal is pure; it's so obvious from the Torah that it's impure, same here.
It says an eye for an eye. It says it explicitly, Gods. God says so, right? So it-
BENAY LAPPE: That's
DAN LIBENSON: right So this is, like, the examples. So just like you said, like, you don't read the Talmud for, for what it says on the surface, you know? But here's an example where it happens to be about an eye for an eye, but it's really about the creepy crawly thing w- 'cause they only gave us one example of that, and that's not really about that.
It's, it's about- .... the whole process of how do you, like... Right, because if you could do this in the hardest case-
BENAY LAPPE: That's
DAN LIBENSON: right ... where the Torah explicitly says that this thing is to be done or is p- impure or whatever, then of course in the easier case where the Torah's actually unclear, then of course you can do what you're trying to do.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. Exactly.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. So, so the Mishnah states what the law is and what the law has been for hundreds of years. No one is disputing the law. The law in this context is if a person injures another person, the injurer pays money to compensate the injured party in five different categories. We talked about that.
Great. The Gemara then opens up with surfacing and making transparent just how problematic that law is if you are a verse pointer, if you are a literalist by saying, "Wait a minute, the Torah clearly says an eye for an eye. Why are you talking about monetary compensation?"
And really what this voice is saying is, it's not that I think we should all do physical retaliation, eye for an eye retributive justice. We should be doing monetary compensation. Let's just not claim that that's what the Torah says. Just call it like it is and say, "This is a radical deviation." Okay? So all of you learners out there at the very least, all of you rabbinic students learning this know that the mission is a deviation, know that we can make deviations.
We have in the past. Here's an example. You can in the future.
DAN LIBENSON: And, and I think we should at some point, not now, but at some point we should maybe go back to that point because I think a lot of us, like me, I would say f- speaking for myself these days, I want to be more transparent about what we're doing. I mean, I guess that's the point of our show so I, I think you agree, you know, that we want to say, no, no, no, you, you actually can change things that are in the Torah.
And so part of me says, oh, I wish the other side won out here because I, I think we should be more honest and, and I don't mean honest in the moral sense like it's dishonest otherwise, but like proud. You know? Like, there is an element of this and, and maybe... But maybe at this time that's premature, and that goes back to what we've talked about in terms of that story of the third.
We'll, we'll ultimately come up with the story of a third Torah that was given at Sinai, you know, the Svara Torah, because that's the one where once we accept that, then we say, "Oh yeah, we can make these changes," because really it was always Svara all the way down.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I, what ... I'm, I'm also teaching this in our three week hardcore Talmud intensive at Svara right now, and one of the students said exactly that.
She said, "It, it makes me so mad to hear these arguments where y- you know they're pulling the wool over your eyes. You know they're actually tricking you. When you know they're tricking you, it's really-" You don't like to be manipulated. And y- y-... I imagine these, these arguments that say, "Oh no, the Torah always meant money," might be fine for someone who isn't gonna pick up on the fact that you're fooling them.
Mm-hmm. But when you know you're being fooled, it's like, stop that. That makes me mad . Don't, don't do that. Which I think speaks to the difference in the intended audience-
DAN LIBENSON: Right ...
BENAY LAPPE: of the Talmud today and the Talmud then. The audience of the Talmud today, especially Sfarim Yeks, who have been queued right up or, um, teed up to know that radical innovation is native to the tradition, don't want that to be covered up.
They- Yeah ... they want it to be c- you know, named. And, um, maybe at this time, maybe 2,000 years ago, the rabbis who we know had a very low opinion of the everyday person. Right. They didn't believe the everyday person could tolerate that radical deviation from Torah. Maybe it was more, I don't know, acceptable- Well what
DAN LIBENSON: you're saying is maybe it was more justifiable, right?
B- because it really would've thrown these people for a loop, and they wouldn't have been able to know what to do with it, et cetera. Uh, look, I don't like, I don't like to read an ancient text and to say, "Oh well, they, they had a disdain for the common people back then." You know, in other words, I, I wish that they had more honor for the common person back then.
I think they probably, the common person back then deserved more honor than they actually got, you know, more respect. But I think it's also true to say that the common person today is not the common person of 2,000 years ago. You know, the common Jew, so to speak, today, who's not a rabbi, is a lawyer or a doctor or an accountant or whatever.
You know, if their mothers, the Jewish mothers were happy, that's what they... You know, if not, they could be an actor. No, I'm just kidding. But th- uh, um, but they're somebody very sophisticated, somebody who reads almost for a living.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: So th- but they just don't read this stuff for a living. That was not true in a world in which the common person was a farmer or a merchant or whatever.
Like, they were not in the habit of reading anything. They didn't have reading for pleasure. You know, they didn't have classics. They didn't have, you know, right, they, they didn't have light, you know? I mean, they had to go to bed when, when it got dark. So the, the, the, the idea that, um, it's not only that our morals have changed, but actually the people have changed, is very, very important.
BENAY LAPPE: And as, as you and I were talking about last time once we had gone off air, as you pointed out I think really astutely, the irony is the, most of the people are actually learning Talmud now have more of the amcha everyday person mi- Right ... you know, naive, pietistic mindset, and are actually looking at these farfetched ridi- obviously ridiculous proofs and going, "Oh yeah.
Oh yeah." Because God put the word makay here, and God put the word makay ... oh yeah, for- Mm-hmm. I, I mean, it's like a topsy-turvy world. That's
DAN LIBENSON: It is a topsy-turvy. It is topsy-turvy. And, and that's critical to understand that, that if we were to map the, let's say educational attainment, subtlety of mind, you know, of people back then, we would say the rabbis were at the top and the people were at the bottom, the common people.
Now, I don't wanna v- I'm not here meaning to insult, you know, rabbis for sure or, or very Orthodox communities or whatever, but there is, there is a sense in which you're talking about a common person who's not Orthodox, and not, you know, in part of a very ob- orthodox, very observant community. Ha- You know, I d- I want to be careful with the language, but you know what we're talking about.
That person is probably or very likely to be a person with vast education, vast educational attainments, vast professional experience and knowhow and life experience and all of this. And your average person sitting in the yeshiva studying Talmud, that's all they've ever done. They may be, they may know a lot of Jewish stuff, but they don't have a lot of life experience.
They don't have a lot of education in other fields, you know? And, and they have been t- taught for 1,000 years maybe that, that these things are, are more serious than the Talmud believed they were. You know, th- th- th- that they've been taught from i-... There Somehow there was founder's effect of, of, uh, some school of Talmud learning that became the majority school of Talmud learning that is this very conservative, very, um, literalistic sort of voice.
And that, in fact, is not the tradition. The tradition was the winks, like, like we've been looking at. And it's an, it's a weird state of affairs when the tables have turned in this way.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And a- as I think we've said before, in effect the Talmud has failed.
DAN LIBENSON: Yes.
BENAY LAPPE: Talmud has failed because of who's learning it.
Now, I would like to say as far as turning that around-
DAN LIBENSON: I,
BENAY LAPPE: I get
DAN LIBENSON: it ...
BENAY LAPPE: but Yeah. Um, but because of who is now learning it, uh, inside of Sfar haZohar walls and maybe a few other Yeshivas walls, most of those people are reading it in a hyper-pietistic way that I think it's clear was never meant to be and are absolutely missing the winks, and therefore missing the tools that it was intended to give us to be able to make changes to the tradition.
Okay All right. So, so far what have we got? We've got two stitches in the sampler. Um, we've got two techniques that... The voice which is articulating arguments for how in fact the Torah always meant monetary compensation and not eye-for-an-eye literally, uh, have made to either equip us with those techniques or whatever.
The first technique was the Gezeirah Shavah. The tool that allows you to conclude that something true in one verse or one context is also true in another if the two contexts share the same word . Okay? And the second tool or stitch in the sampler was the technique of a diyuk, which is a hyper literal read which limits the application of what's being said to the specific case that is named such that you can conclude that the opposite of what is being said here applies to all other cases not named Great.
And it's left us with two proofs that the Torah always meant the same thing as the Mishnah, Mamon. They both make us... Both left us sort of une- like,
DAN LIBENSON: mm,
BENAY LAPPE: eh. We're uneasy with both of them, but it leaves us here for now. The Gemara in fact is gonna circle back, uh, a few inches down and address the uneasiness that we have, but we'll get there.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so I think now we're getting to the... It's really not the third stitch, it's kind of, in a way, we're back to the first stitch and we're saying, "You remember when you felt uneasy about that first stitch and that's why we went to the second stitch? Let's return to that uneasiness. Actually maybe, maybe you had something there."
So- That's
BENAY LAPPE: right ...
DAN LIBENSON: so, uh, and I've learned a new trick, uh, for, for Sefaria where, uh, so here's where, where we are in the Talmud. But if, if and when it's appropriate, we can flip over to here where we'll see the Talmud on the left and the Torah on the right. So we'll be able to really look closely at the verses and, uh, that they're talking about so we, we hopefully won't get as confused.
Um, so if we looked at the original, the original, uh, Gezeirah Shavah here, we were looking at th- these lines from Leviticus 24 all the way down here when... Or we thought we were. That, that was where we originally thought that the, the... or, and the Talmud, it's not just us that, that thought it. It's that the reader would think that when you look around and you see where does it say the word maaqe two times, uh, you see it in this verse 21 here.
And, and you say, well, one who kills a beast, uh, one who kills a beast shall make restitution for it. One who kills a human being shall be put to death. We remember we said, well, let's pretend we didn't see that put to death part. Now we're confused. And so now we look and we say, Well, if you kill a beast, you make restitution.
Well actually it's not kill. The translation is if you s-... If you, uh, uh-
BENAY LAPPE: Strike ...
DAN LIBENSON: strike. If you strike a beast, you should make restitution for it. But if you strike a human being, you should also make restitution for it because it's got to be the same because it's the same word. That was kind of this original Gezeirah Shavah using that word of maaqe or strike.
And now the Talmud is saying, Uh, you know, h- here if you, if you, um, let your mind not go there, um Sorry No, further on ... I'm in the wrong place. Uh, so the, the, the-
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah ...
DAN LIBENSON: Talmud says now, okay, wait a second, let's go back to that Kderesheva and say, "Wait, which verse was it talking about? Because there was a problem with that verse.
Let's, let's look at that again."
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. So, so the Gemara is now articulating what it hopes we already articulated ourselves as a learner. It, I believe that the editor constructed the flow of the Gemara text to walk you through a thinking process and to show you how to be a sharp thinker.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm.
BENAY LAPPE: As soon as the Gemara says, "Wait a minute.
Which ma'akeh? Which Gezeira Shava built on the word ma'akeh are we talking about here?" It actually wants you to have come up with that first and it a little bit is kind of rapping your knuckles... If when you see the Gemara articulating a challenge or discomfort that you didn't have, you should go, "Oh wait a minute, I was supposed to have been uncomfortable- Mm-hmm
but I wasn't." Okay, now I'm gonna learn to be a little bit more attentive.
DAN LIBENSON: And, and maybe that's why they gave us like that, that other little stitch in between so that we would be like almost like lulled into, "Oh well, we got that one. Now we're moving on," And then you're like, "Oh, well..." And then, and then it comes back and they're like, "Yeah, you thought you were so smart.
You thought you got it, but actually you didn't get it," Or, "You were right"- Yeah ... "you were right at first. So don't be so, don't be so, uh, uh, suggestible." You know, like you- Yeah ... you, you saw a problem there and then, uh, we thought, you know, we s- we kind of did a little, uh, a little slight of hand and, and made you think it wasn't really a problem and, But actually, you were right when th- the
When you thought that y- there was a problem in the first place.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. Exactly. Mm-hmm. So the problem is, wait a minute, which two verses with ma'akeh in it are we talking about? And here it goes on to articulate precisely the problem that you and I identified and pointed out about that word, you know, 'He shall surely be put to death.'
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Because-
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, and just so, you know, by the way, like just so people see, like we, we're all... Initially, we were all in this one verse, 21, but they didn't have verses numbered back then, so I think they thought of this as two different verses for, for- That's right ... whatever, you know, whatever it matters. But one- Yeah The, the first verse is: One who kills a beast shall make restitution.
The sec- or one who smi- uh, strikes a beast shall make restitution. The second one is: One who strikes a person shall be killed. Um-
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So then the, the, the Talmud says to us, okay, so to which verse is the Brit referring when it quotes, "One who strikes a person", Makeh Adam, uh, and one who strikes an animal?
If we say that the Brit is referring to the verse that we thought it was about, Verse 21; "One who strikes an animal shall pay its compensation and one who strikes a person shall be put to death," This cannot be, as that verse is regard-- Is written with regard to killing. Right? Because tha- there is that part at the end that says he shall be put to death, That we said, oh, don't look at that.
Like that part's not important. That's just... You right. There's no, No, actually now we're looking at it, and we're like, yeah, wait, so it can't be that one because the only way that we could put somebody to death would be if he killed somebody. We know we don't put to death people for striking and not killing.
So the only possible way meaning that this can have is that somebody strikes, meaning killed a person shall be put to death. So therefore this other one about striking an animal- It's not, it's not the same concept, right? I mean, I, I don't know if that, if it means that the, that this is about killing an animal also necessarily.
Uh, but it certainly isn't the same concept in, in the two parts, what we have as parts of verse.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Yeah, y- you're right. I'm not sure if the critique of, "Hey, that's about killing," refers only to the human portion or the animal portion or both. I'm not sure. That's a good question. Never thought of that.
But i- in any case, for sure it's human killing because the verse clearly says you must and now that's being brought onto the table, and we can't... The assumption is you can't learn out or deduce anything about non-fatal injury cases and what the punishment should be for the non-fatal injurer from the case of a fatal injurer.
Mm-hmm. Uh, there, there's, they're such different phenomena that nothing can deduced one from the other, so.
DAN LIBENSON: And, and I think that in that we're, we're also being told that there's a s-, that there are certain limitations to the concept of the gezeira shava, this analogy just based on a word, that yes, it's true that if the same word is found in two different verses that might be on totally different topics, you can find a point of connection between them, but if they are in two totally different topics that make no sense to connect them, then you can't.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. A- and you're reminding me that there's this tradition that you can't – I don’t, I hate thi- I don't like this at all. The tradition is that we're limited to the gezeiras chavas that the rabbis came up with, and that tool, that particular stitch in the sampler should never be done again, meaning on new i-, on new issues.
Because it's just so potentially random. But-
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. I, yeah, I mean, like, the, uh, th- then, then the defense of a rule like that would be it's so random, but in a, in a control, you know, social control theory you might say, “It's too dangerous.” It's like, I mean, if you- Yeah ... can really go to any verse with the same word and spin it into some kind of new law that we can't put that, uh, that power even in the hands of rabbis.
You know, we just gotta stop- Yeah … and say it's only for rabbis from the past.
BENAY LAPPE: I know. Although, I, I hate that concept because I don't see that arc of limiting, We can't do that anymore anywhere else, and it could've been just a minority opinion. I dunno. We'll put a sticky on that
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so-
BENAY LAPPE: Okay ...
DAN LIBENSON: the, um, so the, the Talmud is telling us given the problems with this verse it must be referring to a, there must be a different verse some of that, that they were talking about when they said that there was a gezeirat shava that, uh, that we could use.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: And that verse, so just to, just to be clear, we're not talking about verses from completely different places in this Leviticus area; we were looking at verse 21. But there are some other, there are other verses in this area that I've ex- excerpted from between 17 and 21 are the verses that are gonna come into play at various points.
And so they're just looking for, they're, they're looking at a verse that's just a couple verses, uh, earlier. So, so the verse that- Two,
BENAY LAPPE: two verses again ...
DAN LIBENSON: Two, two verses that are, but they're in the same paragraph basically. Um, I mean, it's not really a paragraph, but you know, they're very close together.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, so he says, so the Talmud says, uh, "Okay, rather the Brita ref- references the verse from here," fr- what, uh, from Leviticus 24:18, "One who strikes an animal mortally shall pay its compensation a life for a life." And juxtaposed to that is another verse from Leviticus 24:19 right nearby, "And if a man maims his neighbor as he has done, shall, so it shall be done to him."
So well let's, we just look at those in context over here, right? Uh, one who strikes an animal mortally shall pay its compensational life for a life, and if a man maims his neighbor, as he has done so it shall be done to him. So these are the two verses that they're trying to, to bring into contact with one another.
And remember that the gezeirat shava has to have a common word.
BENAY LAPPE: Oh, well, you're giving away the whole, the whole movie Well,
DAN LIBENSON: I am just because we're going to have set that up. But I mean, the, the point is, is that, that ostensibly this is where it's good to have the translation because we can believe that, th- there's a common word here.
We're about to find out that there isn't. But, but, uh, on the assumption that there was a common word here, what would be the argument? That, that basically because, uh, here we have one about animals, and we know that even if you, uh, kill an animal you only have to pay compensation, and then it says a life for a life.
So somehow a life for a life doesn't mean to kill a person, to kill somebody. It doesn't mean the death penalty even though that's what it would appear to, to mean. Then when we look and we see here that if a man maim- maims a neighbor as he has done so it shall be done to him. Like, like that also has got to be a little more complex.
Something like that?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I think the gezeir- the, the, the second offer of this is where the gezeirat shava comes from is also ignoring the word mortally.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: And is also ignoring the life for life in verse 18. So basically, it's zeroing in on "makeh behemah," one who strikes an animal, period. Dot, dot, dot pays compensation, "yeshalmenah."
Okay, so now we have makehing, striking-
DAN LIBENSON: That's- ...
BENAY LAPPE: in the context of an animal, and we've got money. Okay, money is the punishment for that. And then in the next verse, we've got this maim- maiming a person. Okay, we're ... 'Cause that's what we wanna learn out. We wanna learn out what i- what is the proper punishment for someone who harms, injures a fellow person?
And wink, wink, we don't know in that context what the punishment is. They're totally bracketing off and not acknowledging the existence of, "As he has done, so shall be done to him," which is screaming eye for an eye, right? Uh-huh.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: A- and they're ignoring that. They're saying, "Oh, we don't know, but this is what we want to learn.
What do you do when a man maims his neighbor?" Ah, we can borrow the money verdict from the animal context and bring it over to the man context because they both share the word strike To which, uh, you know, the objector, the Gemara then voices the voice of that person who's going, "What? That's also- Yeah ... a crappy gezeirah shavah.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: And- That doesn't work either. Go ahead.
DAN LIBENSON: And why?
BENAY LAPPE: Because we, everybody knows that a gezeirah shavah, the deduction based on an analogy is based on an analogy between two contexts where a single word is shared. The, the magic that God creates to allow us to make this deduction is that God put the same word in two different places to signal to you that that which applies to case one, the context one, applies to the other.
And there's no word , just as you said or suggested, in the second verse.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So here- Does it say it, right? In the first verse
BENAY LAPPE: we
DAN LIBENSON: see - Yep ... right over here, but in the second verse, there is no .
BENAY LAPPE: There's no word .
DAN LIBENSON: Yep.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay? So, so there's this, like, quicksilver quality to, you know, q-... You know, I, when I was a kid, we had these, uh, ceramic bathroom floor tiles.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: This could explain a lot about me.
DAN LIBENSON: But- Yeah, wait, where
BENAY LAPPE: is this going? I remember when I was a kid, we had this little test tube of mercury.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Um- From from broken thermometers. You know, when a m- a thermometer would break, it would be glass and it had mercury in it, and my parents would collect up the mercury-
and we'd play with it on the bathroom floor. It-
DAN LIBENSON: When does the statute of limitations run on that?
BENAY LAPPE: On, on abuse?
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Well, in their- Or negligence or
DAN LIBENSON: whatever, yeah ...
BENAY LAPPE: in their, in their, in their defense, I don't think they knew the effects of mercury. But we used to take a pencil and scoot the little ball of mercury, and it would hit the tile, you know, the t-, what e-.
It would break up. It was so fun to play with the mercury. All right. So this, this passage in the Talmud has this mer- Mercury-like, quicksilver nature. It's like as soon as this gezeirah shavah's offered, the challenge is brought, "Hey, the gezeirah shavah can't be in on these verses," and then the author of the gezeirah shavah says, "Okay, okay, okay, it's not there.
It's over here." Wait a minute, that's a gez- bad gezeirah shavah. It doesn't have the same word in it. Okay, okay, that's not what I meant. I meant this one over here.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. A- and just, just so that folks understand, like a, like gezeirah shavah, like, in the world that we live in- An analogy is made powerful not because of a shared word, but because of a shared concept.
So you could analogize a animal situation to a human situation. That makes a lot of sense to us. It's just that the only thing to understand is like that's not gezeira shava. Gezeira shava only works if you have a shared word. That's, by definition, that's what it is. It may be a bad form of reasoning, but it, that's the, that's the, the tool or w- that's the formula, let's say.
Right. And you gotta find the shared word, otherwise ev- however smart your analogy is, you cannot claim it's a gezeira shava. You can claim it's something else.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. And it-
DAN LIBENSON: We're not there yet ...
BENAY LAPPE: you, you just raised a, a possible answer to me for a question I've had for years which is we know even though the words gezeira shava never appear in the Talmud here, we know that the technique being offered is a gezeira shava because the style of articulating a gezeira shava is word X blank, blank, blank, word X blank, blank, blank.
It, that's just- Yeah ... the formula for saying, "I've got a gezeira shava bui- built on the word X." The second time the gezeira shava's offered as referring to the second, the second set of verses, it says d- you, you read it. I th- I think the translation said juxtaposed to or something like that. Ves- in, in, uh, Aramaic it's vesamichleh.
And let's see, what does it, what does it have there? Juxtaposed to. What's interesting about that, this is a little bit hyper geeky, is that there is another tool in the exegetical toolbox, another stitch in the sampler called a juxtaposition.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: It's called a hekesh. Um, and or it could be a smuchin meaning right next to.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: A right next to juxtaposition or a close juxtaposition. Either way, that is a technique but- And if you look at the words that articulate these two verses being next to each other, it's easy to think, "Oh, they're now offering a juxtaposition."
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: A or a . But it's not. And, and I always wondered why do they use those words, juxtaposition, when they're not offering a juxtaposition?
'Cause it's very confusing. And I wonder if it's to suggest... Let's see if I can get this out. To suggest that this actually would have been a perfect juxtaposition.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: These two verses would have been a convincing - Mm-hmm .... or if you said, "This is the technique I'm now using." But they make a terrible .
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So I wonder if the fact that it says the word juxtapose is even more of a meta message of
I could, what is it? I could have made a bud- better argument But I'm s- I'm, I'm telegraphing too that this is a bad argument. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what to do with it, but there might be something there
DAN LIBENSON: It's interesting. It, it also feels like some kind of, like, movie about a crazy... One of those, like, law cases where, you know, you just filled out the wrong form.
Like, you actually deserve to win the case, but you, you didn't know to fill out the right form. So like that- Yeah ... you know, I don't know, like that-
BENAY LAPPE: Something .... I,
DAN LIBENSON: I don't think that's its intent, but it's @- I- When you say that, it strikes me. Because the way that we know, the way that we know that they're not trying to offer a juxtaposition here is that the objection to it is an objection to Akeret Shavua, which we're about to see, right?
BENAY LAPPE: W- and it, that's accepted as a valid challenge.
DAN LIBENSON: Right
BENAY LAPPE: And the Quicksilver go, "Okay, okay, not those two."
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh
BENAY LAPPE: Another one. Ah. I
DAN LIBENSON: mean, like maybe part of it is... I, I, I don't, I mean, I'm not sure that I really think this is all intentional, this part, but maybe some of that stuff is there to just kind of signal that this is like Quicksilver, like you were talking.
That, that what you're doing with this objector who read this in the Torah, is you're just throwing the kitchen sink at them. You know? And you're just kind of, "Oh, th- you know, this, go over here. We'll go this, go there." You know, and it's just like, um, it's all kinda half baked, but it's enough to kinda get somebody so confused to say, "Okay, okay, Rabbi, you know, that I guess I'm wrong."
Yeah. I
BENAY LAPPE: dunno It, it, and this reminds me of something that, um, that I think I learned from David Cramer. I apologize if I'm imputing this to him and, and he doesn't either subscribe to it or believe it or, or m- didn't teach us. But I remember learning the idea that I think is probably true in rhetoric or persuasion or argumentation generally, which is if you have one good proof- Uh-huh
for the claim you're trying to make, you give it. And if you don't have even a single good proof for the claim you're trying to make, you give 10.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: And this is a suggiah of 10 proofs-
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh …
BENAY LAPPE: for how the Torah actually means monetary compensation for personal injuries, which David Cramer does bring out, um, in his book Read- I think it's Reading the Rabbis.
Um, which is basically it makes it abundantly clear the further you go into all these multiple, multiple, multiple proofs, all of which are really sketchy- Right ….that f- they didn't have a single proof-
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Right …..that could have-
DAN LIBENSON: Right ……
BENAY LAPPE: convinced any real thinking person that the Torah meant, uh, money- Right ….because the Torah doesn't.
Because it doesn't And that's really what they want the learner to know.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: No, the Torah never did. Right And yes, our mission is radical. Right. And yes, that’s how-
DAN LIBENSON: Right …
BENAY LAPPE: that's how it works. But don't tell the people. Right.
DAN LIBENSON: Um-
BENAY LAPPE: Right. That's a problem ..
DAN LIBENSON: but in, in, uh, law there's a I learned this as, uh, as a legal aphorism where if you, if the, if the law is against you, pound the facts; if the facts are against you, pound the law; and if the facts and the law are against you, pound the table.
BENAY LAPPE: I love that. Yeah, so- That's great. Um-
DAN LIBENSON: That's great. Okay, so, so moving forward, um, the Gemara isn't challenging this and saying but... Again, they're just thinking, "But if this is a Gezeira Shava there has to be the same word in both ver- in both verses. But this latter verse, the second verse, 19, does not use the expression 'one who strikes,' Makeh, which is the basis for the comparison in the Beraita."
Right. "So it can't be a Gezeira
BENAY LAPPE: Shava.” Right. So the person, the voice that offered the gezeira shava now comes back and says, "Okay, okay, okay.”
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, okay, okay. The Gemara responds, "We are stating an analogy from striking to striking that is not based on the exact phrasing." I mean, that's, that part is added in by the translator.
But yeah, we're, we're making... We're, they're basically saying we're, we're making a conceptual analogy that is different from a gezeira shava, but it's, it's like a gezeira shava.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly, which is precisely not a gezeira shava. A gezeira shava needs a word. Right. And here they're saying, "Don't get so picky, you, and tell need a word.
We're comparing two verses where the context, the concept is a striking of some sort." So when the second verse says, "If a man should give a wound, give a blemish to his fellow," that's striking. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Like how do you give someone a wound? You strike them. Didn't say that, it was implied. Right. Actually, it's not so silly.
I mean, there, there's, it is silly, and it's silly in the sense that the technique of the gezeira shava requires a word. But as I'm, as I was, like, stating it I'm like, no, no, like, we talk about implied stuff all the time in law. You know? That, that there are, uh, that there are ways in which you can read a statute or you can read, uh, the facts to sort of basically say that something must have happened.
It was a but for, it was nec-... You know, right? It couldn't... This, this, uh, wound could not have happened without a person striking another person, so therefore we know by implication that he struck him, and now we've got it. It doesn't work for a gezeira shava because it requires that God put the same word there, not the same concept, but, you know, it's, it's analogous to, it's adjacent to a good argument.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. And what's funny is- We were initially uneasy with the Gezeira Shava, and now that it's been defended we're more uneasy with it. Right. It's not like oh now, now the Gezeira Shava feels good. It's like, it's like I give up in, in the ... The Gemara gives up here. It's like okay, the person hearing it is like all right, but we're really uncomfortable.
We feel very unconfident that this Gezeira Shava actually proves that the Torah meant money. And, uh, you know, the David Kramer school of thought is that's its very purpose. Mm-hmm. The purpose of this argumentation is to let us know in no uncertain terms that the Torah never did mean money, and the rabbis created this money idea out of their own authority and want to distance themselves from the Torah and are saying, "We don't need the Torah to have said it in order to do it."
DAN LIBENSON: Yep.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: So the, so the Talmud says that, uh, you know, saying analogy from striking to striking, just as the act of striking that is stated with regard to an animal, that's stated explicitly with regard to the animal renders one liable to pay monetary compensation. So too, the active striking that is stated here implied with regard to a person renders one liable to pay monetary compensation in parentheses...
Uh, well actually we're about to get there, but in parenthesis, but it actually says he should be put to death literally. It d- it doesn't say, it, it doesn't say strike, and it does say put to death, but let's pretend it didn't.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. There are half a dozen objections that we could have made to the Gezeira Shaveh that aren't even in the Talmud here.
Um, okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Okay. So the Talmud now goes on to, um, to, to challenge this and says, "Uh, wait a second. Uh, but isn't it written in the verses discussing one who injures another?" So now we're on Leviticus, uh, 24:17.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. This is a big hard return.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: What's about to come up is not referring to the Gezeira Shaveh, it's not referring to, to the diyuk.
Um, this is a whole new thing, and I just wanna put a sticky on the fact that this section coming up is known by Talmud scholars, and I learned this from Shamma Friedman, it's extremely problematic. It's probably the result of manuscript issues. Uh-huh. Uh, and it's, it's weird, but let's take it on its face value because it's typically learned on its face value, but it's very far-fetched.
Here we go.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So, so this is another stitch in the sampler?
BENAY LAPPE: Not yet. Okay. We're still in the problematic... We're still in objections to the claim that the Torah means mamon, money, um, that are kind of sidebars.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, we'll g- I'll holler out the stitch when we get there.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Okay. So Gemara's challenging.
So Gemara's looking at this verse. So again, just to look at Leviticus here, we, we've been talking about verse 21, then we talked about verse 18 and 19. Now we're talking about verse 17, which says, "If anyone kills or strikes a human being," it's that word, yakeh, makeh. So if a person strikes a human being, he shall be surely put to death."
BENAY LAPPE: Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: That's the, that's the verse.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. So h- here comes a voice saying, «Wait a minute, Vahakativ.» It's like w- whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. It's written in the Torah, If a man shall strike another man, he shall be put to death.
Doesn't that-- Isn't that a kind of mamash Punish? Isn't that mamash, like-
DAN LIBENSON: That's not money.
BENAY LAPPE: It's not money, right? To which... Go ahead.
DAN LIBENSON: Because it, it says, it, it says shall surely be put to death. I mean, it's a really mot yumot when you hear the, the verb being doubled. Mot Yumot. It's a very, it's a very strong form of a verb.
It's like, you could say, well, if it just said death, okay maybe then we could say money. You know? I mean, not really. But, but when it says mot yumot, I mean, that's, that can only mean, like, he's actually put to death.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And in, as I see there's a lot of non-bolded-
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah …
BENAY LAPPE: this requires a lot of unpacking and justifying because what's being presented looks like an argument of an injury case where the punishment is
A mamish punishment. Uh, death. Okay, let, let's read, let's read the, the, this explanatory
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, 'cause at least Steinsaltz, I mean, this is what we saw last time, that Steinsaltz believes that when you're talking about death, that there are two dimensions that the Torah is talking about death when he s- when it says death.
There's a obvious one; if you kill a person completely, they, they're dead, and you should take life for life, meaning they should be put to death by the death penalty. But there's another case where if your arm is chopped off, your arm has been killed because it can't grow back and it can't be reattached.
I mean, now, now it can a little bit depending on if you have a good doctor like my father-in-law who was an excellent hand surgeon. But, uh, but usually you can't really put it back, and it's definitely not gonna grow back. And so you've, you've killed the arm, and Steinsaltz saying that, that, that one way to read this verse is to say, "And if, so if you killed somebody's arm, you, your arm should be put to death," meaning your arm should be cut off in compensation.
I mean, that's the conceptual idea that, that they're getting at here.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. And that's an objection to the proposition that the Torah means mammon. Right. That the Torah wants us to do monetary compensation. Right. To which, that voice that is defending the Torah as meaning monetary compensation comes back and then says-
DAN LIBENSON: No, it should be, it should be paid with money
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, no, that verse that says explicitly, "Mo timat," you shall surely be put to death, that means money.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: To which the other voice says, "Ooh, oo, mima d'bemamod?" Well, fr- from where do you get ... Yeah, I see that. Fr- from where so you say that this refer- this verse is referring to money? Where do you get the money out of this verse?
DAN LIBENSON: Like, it says, "Mo timat." You shall surely be put to death. Okay. That cannot be more clear.
And th- and the, that other voice just said, "Oh, yeah, that means money." It's like, what are you talking about? That it, it couldn't be more clearer.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. And the answer now is, oh, when it said, "Shall surely die," it was talking about, um
I should say there, uh. What... Oh, this voice is saying, "Why are you talking about money? You have to say this verse is talking about actual death because it says he shall be put to death." It's talking about actual death as a penalty, right? I
DAN LIBENSON: mean, fir- there's a stretch to even say that it's not talking about killing a person, but it's talking about chopping their arm off or whatever.
That's already a stretch, but this voice is accepting that and saying, "Okay, but let's say that it does refer to arms and legs and noses and whatever. You know, um, okay, but it's definitely saying she'll surely be put to death which at the very least means you should chop his arm off in return." Um- That's right
and then he says, "No, no, that means with money." And he said, "What are you talking about with money? Where'd you get money?" Uh, and so then the, the Gemara answers that, um ... So then they s- says, "We're talking about money. Uh, y- he should, i- it must be the actual death." And the Gemara says, "That interpretation should not enter your mind."
BENAY LAPPE: Good. And now here comes stitch number three. Okay. Here's a new exegetical k- technique, and this one is identified as ahekesh, which is the grounds you have to make an analogy from one context to another bakes- based on the juxtaposition or the closeness, the closeness of one to the other. The idea is that if God put the mention of monetary compensation for something in one place, and nearby God talked about something else, and that thing is what you're trying to learn about, you can, you know, transfer that clarity about money from the nearby case to the case that you don't know.
This is ahekesh. This is a new stitch, a new exegetical technique that I think the Gemara’s trying to equip its learner with.
DAN LIBENSON: And I just wanna point out that here's, again, the verse: If anyone kills a human being, he shall be put to death. And what the Talmud is saying here is, "You think that actually means you should put him to death?
Don't let that enter your mind, even. It shouldn't even enter your mind.”
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: M- Why? And because it's juxtaposed to a different verse that doesn't, that, that says not, not put t-... Yeah, and it's about totally different subject, but it's saying, you know, not put to death. So here th- what is the other verse?
It's Leviticus 24:18, right? So the very next verse. One who strikes an animal mortally, when he kills an animal, shall pay its compensation So that verse, Leviticus 17, uh, 24:17, "If anyone kills a human being, he shall be put to death," is right before the next verse which says, "When he strikes an animal mortally, shall pay its compensation."
So the argument is, right, of the juxtaposition is that that's why you should not read put to death as put to death. You should read it based on what the next verse is about, which is about monetary compensation, 'cause it's right next to it and God put it there to clarify. Yeah?
BENAY LAPPE: Great. That's good.
DAN LIBENSON: All right.
BENAY LAPPE: That's good. And now furthermore, it's gonna pile on another reason why this verse that says, "Shall surely die," actually means money. Here comes the second reason.
DAN LIBENSON: So furthermore, right after that is written, "A fracture for a fracture, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. As he has given blemish to a person, shall, so it shall be given to him."
Oh, no. Which again would seem to say, well, th- yeah, that, that's exactly what I've been saying all along. It means that you should do the same thing to the person who, what they did to you. So if they gave you a blemish, you should give them a blemish. Like, so they're using- Well- ... they're using this as a proof that that's not the right way to read it.
Right. And, and how, uh, and learn from the use of the word given that this verse is referring to money.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. In other words, you should learn money from that verse because that verse has, has the phrase, "So shall it be given to him." You know, just as one gives a blemish it, to his friend, so it shall be given to him back.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? The s- the plain meaning of that is certainly physical retribution in, you know- Equal measure in the same form. But because the, uh, th- the phrase give a blemish has the word "give" in it, the rabbis are saying give can only mean money 'cause money is something you give to someone else. So, the secret meaning under give a blemish is don't give a blemish, give money.
Because g- give implies something which is given, i.e., money.
DAN LIBENSON: Right Which I just want to note, we can change this translation. But the transition that Sefaria has doesn't show us this because th- where it says in Hebrew if you give someone a blemish, you should give him the same basically. H- here they translate it "The injury he inflicted on another shall be inflicted on him."
But it doesn't say inflicting. I mean, it says the Hebrew word for given. He- Hebrew is much more simple language, simple vocabulary. There aren't as many, uh, there aren't as many, uh, synonyms. So inflicted I think is actually a correct translation but truth be told, it, it does say give. The, the word is give so you, so you can kind of say okay, so give.
We know, like you said, we know we give money, gi- use the word give. But it's very, very weak.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, all right.
BENAY LAPPE: Th- So at the, at the very, very least, the Gemara is line after line after line eroding f- more and more and more our sense that the Torah actually means money. Because each proof is more ridiculous than the one before that the Torah means money.
So, you know, I'm very much of, of, in Kramer's camp which is that the, the m- the message here is the Torah of course never meant money. It doesn't mean money now, it didn't mean money then. We are, um, ignoring what the Torah actually says, and we are overturning it, and that's the meta, meta message. You can- Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, I mean, and I, I think it's just ... it's really important to keep reiterating for people watching this that these arguments are not good. Like, these ... It's not like th- there's some genius argument that's hidden here or something, or there's some really clever... These are just bad arguments. They're just strained arguments.
And anybody who has any experience with sophisticated argument making would see that. I assume that anybody would see it. In other words, like, I assumed that you could sit down ... Like, th- these people were not complete idiots. I mean, they were, they were sofis- they were farmers who were selling their goods.
You know, merchants who were selling things. I mean, these are people who if you sat down and kind of explained to them what the argument is, I think they would say, "That do- That doesn't seem to make much sense." Um, so it is a kind of ... It, it, it's almost like it seems to be like it has to be almost fast, like sleight of hand.
It has to be happening before you can even think about it. Oh yeah, again, then you don't like that one so I'll go to this one. You al- you almost hear, like, the, uh, Harold Hill from The Music Man kind of making his patter.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Yeah, and y- you, you touched on something that's very important, and that is The rabbis themselves are not idiots.
Okay? You, you can't deduce that, oh they believe these arguments. You can't, uh, you can't think that they're so unintelligent that they think, you know, their gezaira shav is really what they are presenting it to be. And therefore, you have to ask what are they actually doing? So y- I, I'm certain we would be wrong to think, "Oh, these are terri- these are s- terrible, naive," you know, pious theol-" No, they're not.
Yeah. Because these guys were smart.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, it's like offensive that it's... That, that in a... In-- That we think, I mean, I, I, I don't, I haven't actually studied this text in a very observant kind of yeshiva. But I, I think that the odds are that they're taking these arguments so seriously that it's almost insulting to the intelligence of the rabbis of the Talmud who put them down because it's like if you think that they really believed that, what...
You must not think that they were very sophisticated, and that's insulting. They w-... You know, right? But I mean, that has to kind of be the flavor of how this is studied because otherwise the whole, the whole system wouldn't make sense. It's just so obvious that, that these are here in a kind of sleight of hand.
BENAY LAPPE: I think so.
DAN LIBENSON: I mean, I guess it's like sleight of hand maybe it's, it's a helpful... Like imagine that you're reading some magician textbook, you know, how to do magic, and somehow, I mean, I haven't... I'm just thinking of this now, so I can't fully... I haven't spun out fully like how it would be written in the magician's handbook.
But, but you kind of read it as if like you think that the magician is saying since he transferred the coin from his right hand to his left hand, therefore the coin disappeared. You know? He, he doesn't actually believe that it disappeared. He's showing, he, he's showing you how to make the audience believe it's d- it disappeared.
But if the audience saw that it was in his left hand, they would also know that it didn't disappear, and he, who was holding it in his left hand, also knows that it des- didn't disappear. The, the person reading the handbook to think that somehow the way that you make something disappear is you move it to another hand, like that's
The joke is on that person.
BENAY LAPPE: Oh my God, that's such a fabulous analogy. That is so good. I love that. That's
DAN LIBENSON: amazing. Well, then that's a good place to end because, because I think we're out of time.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Amazing.
DAN LIBENSON: And we'll, we'll pick this up next week with-
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, we have to write this up. We have to write this up.
The magician. That's so
DAN LIBENSON: good.Okay. Well, we... Earlier today we made a list of, of, uh, started a list of things we should write, so we'll add this to the list.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Great. All right Denaye, so I'll see you next week.
BENAY LAPPE: All right. Thanks 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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