The Oral Talmud Episode 72: When Comedy Becomes Tragedy
SHOW NOTES
“It’s intentionally a joke. And the tragedy is to imagine how this sugya might be studied and nobody's laughing. If you miss the joke, you're actually missing what's being taught, which is that this is not how we figured out the law. This is how we're selling the law.” - 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.
What if the rabbis knew their arguments were ridiculous? And what if that was precisely the point? In this episode, Benay and Dan uncover a startling possibility: some of the Talmud's most elaborate interpretations weren't designed to discover what the Torah meant, but rather to persuade people to accept what the rabbis had already decided was right. From sleight-of-hand magic to political messaging, they explore one of the uncomfortable ethical questions at the heart of leadership: Is it ever okay to mislead people if you're leading them toward something good?
But the real revelation might be hiding in the laughter. As they examine a rabbinic technique built on the premise that God never wastes a word, they discover arguments so spectacularly inconsistent that we begin to suspect the absurdity is intentional. What if the Talmud is winking at its readers, inviting them to recognize the difference between discovering truth and selling it? And what happens to a tradition when generations of readers stop getting the joke?
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 72: When Comedy Becomes Tragedy
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 the rabbis knew their arguments were ridiculous? And what if that was precisely the point? In this episode, Benay and I uncover a startling possibility: some of the Talmud's most elaborate interpretations weren't designed to discover what the Torah meant, but rather to persuade people to accept what the rabbis had already decided was right. From sleight-of-hand magic to political messaging, we explore one of the uncomfortable ethical questions at the heart of leadership: Is it ever okay to mislead people if you're leading them toward something good?
But the real revelation might be hiding in the laughter. As we examine a rabbinic technique built on the premise that God never wastes a word, we discover arguments so spectacularly inconsistent that we begin to suspect the absurdity is intentional. What if the Talmud is winking at its readers, inviting them to recognize the difference between discovering truth and selling it? And what happens to a tradition when generations of readers stop getting the joke?
Every episode of The Oral Talmud has a number of resources to support your learning and to share with your own study partners! If you’re using a podcast app to listen, you’ll find these links in our show notes: First, to a Source Sheet on Sefaria, where you can find pretty much any Jewish text in the original and in translation – there we excerpt the core Talmud texts we discuss and share a link to the original video of our learning.
In the show notes of your podcast app, you’ll also find a link to this episode on The Oral Talmud’s website, where we post an edited transcript, and where you can make a donation to keep the show going, if you feel so moved. On both the Sefaria Source Sheet and The Oral Talmud website.
And now, The Oral Talmud…
DAN LIBENSON: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Oral Talmud. I'm Dan Liebeson, and I'm here, as always, with Benay Lappe. Hey, Benay.
BENAY LAPPE: Hey, Dan. How are you?
DAN LIBENSON: Hey, good. Great to see you.
BENAY LAPPE: Good to see you, too.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, all right. So today we're just jumping into it. Um, we're, we're in this sampler of techniques, which, you know, I'm getting more and more excited about it, honestly, because it's like on the one hand you could say, "Hey, we're spending a lot of weeks on this one case."
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I hope the I hope I'm not worried people are getting bored with this text. I hope not.
DAN LIBENSON: I hope not, too, but I mean, I, I, you know, I actually changed my orientation toward it recently 'cause I, 'cause I was also looking forward and I was like, "Oh, we're gonna actually be on this text for quite a few more weeks."
But it doesn't matter because the point is that the, the specific, uh, case is, is as you are always saying, is sort of incidental, that what we're really learning here is a set of techniques. But it's different from like you normally think of like, oh, you're learning a set of techniques, and this is the way that the profession operates, and, you know, you're gonna learn these techniques and then you're gonna be, you know, able to be a professional in this area.
And on the one hand, that's true of we really are learning these techniques, but, uh, we're also learning under the techniques sort of. We're, we're learning, uh, you know, philosophy. We're, we're... You and I are sort of developing hypotheses about what's really going on, and, you know, because we're seeing how these techniques are deployed, but we're also seeing how, like you're always saying, there's a wink and there's, there's...
So I, I really think that th- that, that this particular case by giving us a chance to like not have to think so much each time about the case that we're talking about allows us to really focus only on the techniques, and that allows us to dig deeper into these kind of meta questions. So I'm really enjoying it.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's my hypothesis that that was the agenda of the Talmud from the very beginning-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm ...
BENAY LAPPE: to provide these techniques and- And I think I've, I've shifted what I've understood the techniques to before. Whereas bef- early on in my learning, I thought these were techniques to prove something, to really know the source for some innovation.
Which raised the question of, really, are they that silly? Right? Could- did they really believe this? Right? And as I think we've referenced before, there have been international conferences devoted to that question of, did the ral- rabbis really believe the proofs that they were offering? And that question's only a question if you think that the techniques and the proofs were to convince them, the rabbis themselves, that the innovations they were making were justified and rooted in the Torah.
But if you shift what you think the technique is for and who the technique is for, that the technique is not for them to convince them that an innovation is rooted in the Torah, but to allow them to sell that fact or that idea, which of course is not a fact, to other people, then you see that what they're doing, it, it, it's not silly, it's effective.
Mm-hmm. And if anything, it leaves you with a little bit of a feeling of, gosh, how, how do I feel about them kind of tricking people? Mm-hmm. Mm. That's a s- that's a new question. Um, but I think there's some holy purpose, right- Mm ... in calming people, even if you calm them with not exactly what's going on so that they'll feel comfortable that their God is still in place, their Torah is still in place, and it's okay for them not to poke somebody's eye out.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Right?
DAN LIBENSON: Right. I mean, yeah, I, I think that there are ethical concerns that we have talked about and should talk about as we go on, but when I think about it, like, we've used this analogy, I think I introduced it. I think it's a good one, but it's also problematic to a magician, and- Right ... think about how a magician learns to do the trick, and how a magician sells the trick.
And the magician doesn't really believe that in blowing on his hand, the, the coin is disappearing, but that's part of the selling of it. It's what's really happening is the coin's in his other hand, and he's putting it in his pocket while you're blowing on the... And we could look at that, and I think it's a good analogy.
But when you think about what's an analogy for, we can think about people doing things like that for very nefarious purposes, like- Mm-hmm ... they're trying to, uh, you know, gain personal money, and want the people not to notice that they're moving money from this account to that account. And so you could say, "Oh, well, they're gonna do a trick.
They're gonna kind of fool the people into thinking..." And by the way, there are all sorts of accusations about this is really how the econ- economic system works, you know, that the people are basically being duped and fooled by these financiers who, you know, know how to move money around, and all that kind of thing, and that's kind of a bad version.
But then I think what's going on here, at least in large part, is that it's really savara what's driving these decisions. It's an ethical, moral intuition that says, right, like, for this, this case is a great case because they're like, "Of course we don't wanna be poking out people's eyes." That's every- now we- I mean, it's almost so simple to us today that it's almost hard to imagine back then, but, like, that it was a debate.
But- Right ... you know, there's a sense that maybe we shouldn't be poking out people's eyes. No, of course we shouldn't be poking out people's eyes. Now, what are we gonna do, like you say, about the people who say, "But I just read the Torah that you're supposed to be poking out people's eyes" You know, and so we have to, we have to account for that.
And, you know, I, I actually think about this a lot today in terms of communications and, and selling and, and one of my favorite thinkers is George Lakoff, who's a linguist at Berkeley, who writes about sort of the political use of language. And he, and, and, and some- to some extent, the implication of it is, like, in a post-enlightenment world, we wish that we could just explain things to people, and they would be like, "Oh yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense.
I'm gonna change the way I think." science. But we know that's not working today, right? That, that all these people who are denying science, about climate change, about COVID. So we know that there's, you know, uh, close to 50% of the population, maybe 30- 30%, uh, whatever the percentage, but a lot of people that it doesn't matter how much you explain to them the rational basis for this thing that's gonna save their life and the world, they, they won't take it in.
And so then the ethical question comes, what if I could get them to behave in the right way, to get vaccinated, to stop throwing out garbage, you know, instead of recycling it? What if I could get them to do the right thing, but it would have to be through telling them a certain story that's fictional, you know, that I don't believe is true in the sense that it really happened, or that it's a little bit of a trick, you know, that I have to tell them, like, "Oh, you, you know, what it says here in the Bible really means that you should recycle."
Mm-hmm. You know? And I don't really believe that that's what Jesus meant, you know, or whatever, but, like, I'm gonna say it because I think it'll work. And I think the ethics of that are, are complicated. And, and, but, but that's kind of what I see going on here, is the, is an attempt to say, like, we've got to get the people to do the right thing, but we can't just tell them, "Of course you know it's the right thing."
They won't, they're, they're not gonna accept it that way. Yeah. So that, that's a, a, I would- I,
BENAY LAPPE: I love that. And I have to- ... about
DAN LIBENSON: it in, like, moral theory, but I don't, I don't know the word.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I have to read George Lakoff. I don't know about him.
DAN LIBENSON: Oh.
BENAY LAPPE: And you, you know what else has been occurring to me as I've been thinking about this passage?
Over the last, I don't know, six months or three months or so, I've been hearing about Biden traveling around trying to sell his new infrastructure plan. Uh-huh. Right? And it's, every time I hear that I think- Who's he selling it to? Why does he need to sell it? But apparently he does, right? I- Yeah ... I, what is it that, so that people will tell their senators, "Yes, vote for it when it comes up for v-", is that how it, how it works?
Yeah,
DAN LIBENSON: I think that that's the idea.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. So maybe there's an analogy there to what the rabbis need to do. Right. They know this infrastructure plan needs to be put into place, and they've got to sell it to people. And I'm wondering how Biden, right, is speaking when he's going to all these cities trying to sell the infrastructure plan to the people.
I'll bet it's the same concern and the same dynamic of probably translating it into some slightly more fuzzy- Right ... you know, pushing emotional buttons. I don't know what it is. But I wonder if, if, if it's the same kind of thing. A- as, as I'm shifting my understanding of these techniques from techniques of understanding where something came from to under- to techniques to sell what w- you know, we already know we're gonna put into place to the people.
So- Uh-huh.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, Lakoff, uh, you know, there's a complicated thing, but it's, it's right up this line, so I- I'll just mention it as briefly as I can just to explain. Lakoff is a, is a linguist, and he thinks about how pol- politics, politicians use language, and his claim is that there's basically, uh, ways in which we think of metaphors.
I mean, his real expertise is metaphor. And he says that metaphors tend to be powerful because they're things that are kind of hardwired into the way that people see the world. And in this p- in the case of politics, he focuses on the kind of way you see the family. And there's a idea of a family that has, like, a dominant father.
Usually, I mean, he, it's always the father, just classically, and what he calls a nurturant parent. It tends to be how we think of as classically the mother, but he says it's always the dominant father. In this case, it, sometimes the nurturant parent could be the mother or the father. It's usually the mother.
But that we have these ideas of, like, how a family's supposed to work. Mm-hmm. And he says that everybody has both of these hardwired into them, uh, but for some people, the dominant father is more powerful in the way that they see the world, and for other people, the nurturant parent is more powerful in the way they see the world, and that politicians can get people to think a certain policy is the right thing by activating one or the other of those kind of family ideas.
And so therefore you hear a lot of generally Republicans talking about, um- Mm-hmm ... kind of things that a father, a dominant father might say. You know, these are- Uh-huh ... this is, these are the rules. These are how we should behave, you know, what- whatever they might be. You know, we shouldn't have somebody telling us what to do, you know?
And, um, Democrats will often have the n- the nurturant parent, uh, perspective, which is like, um, you know, this is the right thing. Let's help one another, you know? And, um- But his advice, and he's mostly giving advice to Democrats, is that, you know, you, you should be very conscious of, uh, how to sell your policy.
If you're trying to sell it to Republicans, you're, you're going to have to sell it either using a more of a dominant father frame, or you... They also do have, you know, Republicans also do have the nurturing parent frame. You're gonna have to work a little harder to, to get it, but you, you might be able to sell it that way as well because they do have it, it's just less dominant, right?
And like, the point is, is that you're, you're kind of choosing your language. So classically, he'll give an example, like Republicans were very successful with the language of call, of thinking about cutting taxes as calling it tax relief. Because, uh- Oh ... to call it tax relief is to say that it's a burden that we're now relieved from.
Who could be against that? To be relief of a burden, I mean, of course we want that. You know, and so, uh, you know, he thinks about, well, what if you wanna raise taxes? How would you, how would you frame that? How, what language would you have to use? Not just to use, like, sexy language, right? His point is that what you're doing with language is you're activating a metaphor, and what you're doing with a metaphor is actually activating something really kind of, like, biological in people in terms of how they see, uh, you know, how they see hu- human relationships.
And, and it's not- Hm ... it's totally subconscious. And, you know, again, we could get into questions of ethics. Like, once you figure out sort of how people tick in this deep way, you know, that becomes a powerful, that's, that's potentially a powerful tool that you can use for bad, you know? But what if you can use it for good?
Is it okay? You know, or is, or should we be solely, you know, post-Enlightenment sort of truth tellers in the sense that we objectively say the, the thing and the science, right? And then we hope that people will, will do the right thing based on that. But people don't do the right thing based on that. So if we were only going to use science and post-Enlightenment kind of talk, then probably we would lose.
You know, so what do we do, right? That's- Hm ... that's on one foot, uh, kind of-
BENAY LAPPE: Wow, really interesting.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. So if the rabbis here are understanding, you know, again, I don't know if my particular example is, is the right one. You know, we could think about others, but, like, if the rabbis are understanding that in a world in which we have gotten all these people to come to synagogue every week, you know, and they're hearing the Torah reading every week because we said that was part of Judaism, now the, like we talked about it last week or a couple weeks ago, there's an unintended consequence, which is now that they, they know all these Torah laws.
But we've tr- we've changed those Torah laws. Like, we don't agree that people should be poking out, so we've now got a problem. And the, you know, so we can either stop the weekly Torah reading so they won't hear that anymore. We could tell them, we could try to tell them, "Hey, look, you know, we haven't been doing that for 1,000 years.
You know, don't worry about that. Like, you don't have to know why, but that's not part of Judaism anymore." They're gonna be like, "But I just read it in the Torah." You know, so the, the third option is that we're gonna tell them, you know, we're gonna come up with all these ways of- Saying that, you know, that's not what the Torah ever meant, you know, that you're misunderstanding what you read in the Torah, and that maybe if that's the most likely to work, then is it ethical for that to be the one that we use?
And I think the Talmud's take is yes. Mm-hmm. And, you know, o- one, one of the questions that we have is, is, uh, were they right? Were they right at the time but no longer because now- Right ... people are sophisticated, and, uh, and either it's not gonna work anymore or it's bec- it's unethical now. And what would it look like if we were writing our own Talmud today?
How would we deal with that problem, which remains a problem 'cause we see it in, in the, in the sense of the COVID vaccination, r- you know, hesitancy, and global warming, and everything. And we see that people are still not, many people are still not taking their, their, uh, you know, decisions based on cold facts.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. And as a, as a lawyer and a legal scholar, do you see the same kind of conscious, self-aware move, sort of linguistic move in Supreme Court decisions? And-
DAN LIBENSON: That's a great question. I think that that might be a real failure of the American, uh, legal system when I think of it. In, in other words that, a failure in the sense that I, I feel like the ethos of judges is to be very scientific, you know, to be- Mm-hmm
very-
BENAY LAPPE: Mm-hmm ...
DAN LIBENSON: uh, you know, maybe I'm, may- maybe there's, uh, there's more to it. I mean, for sure, like, it would be interesting to go through a certain ca- I mean, it might be, I think we've talked about this early on in the show, right? There was this criticism of Brown versus Board of Education-
BENAY LAPPE: Mm-hmm ...
DAN LIBENSON: that, that there was this kind of, uh, evidence brought in that wasn't really legal, you know, it was about whether the kids played with the white doll or the Brown doll and things like that, you know?
And it was like, that's not really material that we generally talk about in a word opinion, and maybe that was really there kind of to sell, to sell the decision in, in a different way. So you know what? I- it could be that there is, and I'm sure that there is some degree of it, but, but I think that there's an ethos of Anglo-American, or I'd say American judges that's very much that our job is to be very, like, dispassionate, very, very focused on the law and not selling.
Um, I- Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm ... I'm curious if our la- lawyer, uh, viewers might, might say that I, that actually there's more, more of it than, than I might be saying.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I wonder, it, it, the last point in this then we should get to our text. I wonder if s- the common references to, you know, our Judeo-Christian tradition or Biblic- Mm.
There's s- right? So many references to, to Bible, if those are one way to persuade by pushing the- God said so, button
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh. Interesting.
BENAY LAPPE: I don't know.
DAN LIBENSON: It's a great question. I, I'm gonna do some more thinking about it because I think, I think that's a really good question, and maybe one that we would be well-served to have a, an American legal scholar back on the show to talk about.
Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: I think that's
DAN LIBENSON: a really good question.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. But again, again, there's the issue of are those decisions meant for the audience of legal scholars, and then there's some other rhetoric- Uh-huh ... which somebody uses to sell those to people. I- Uh-huh ... I'd love to find more evidence that this hypothesis we're onto with the Talmud- Uh-huh
is actually, you know, might, might be right because it just matches what other l- legal systems do. Because this is a, this is a case book. Right. And it's for lawyers doing the same kinds of things that all legal systems and legal players do, so.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, and there is a, uh, but there has also been a change and, and it's gonna be even more and more with the Supreme Court in the US, for example.
Mm-hmm. Maybe also lower courts, where there's just so much more access to their work product than there used to be. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That it's like what we're saying here about the Talmud, that at the point where we have Sefaria and Steinsaltz and people can, anybody can just turn on their computer and find any passages of Talmud and actually start to understand it because it's relatively well-translated, like we've seen sometimes there are problems in the translation.
But that's a different world, and that's a world in which, uh, it may be that Supreme Court cases 100 years ago were mostly talking to this small group of insiders who would kind of re- read between the lines and know all kinds of things. And now they're really, I mean, even if people aren't reading the cases directly, there's a tremendous amount of coverage on The New York Times and podcasts and whatever.
And so there's a lot more access and, and is that changing the way the Supreme Court is writing or thinking, or is it actually not changing it and that's a problem because now they're still putting out and they're, they're kind of like have blinders on almost or they have this kind of, you know, mindset that, "Oh, what we write, it's just for lawyers," but really it's not.
And now when they do things that are particularly controversial or particularly sort of- changes from what's been before. The stakes are actually higher. And, and we are seeing, for example, a, uh, there was just- I just was hearing something. I think that, um, I, I think it was that only 40% of Americans have, like, a- Yeah
positive view of the Supreme Court or something like that. Yeah. And that's a huge drop. And, um, and, and maybe that this is why. You know, maybe as, as, uh, because n- because as people have more and more access to what's going on, but the Supreme Court isn't really changing, and they're not going around selling like the way Biden is- Mm-hmm
'cause they think that's not, that's below them or beneath them. They, they think that, or that's not what judges are supposed to do, and they might be right. But the result of not going around and selling is that people are gonna misunderstand what you're doing, and it could be that a reckoning will come from that.
BENAY LAPPE: Hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: Interesting. All right. So, so let's, uh, let's go into this, uh, uh, uh, stitch in their sampler. We're just, uh, a little spoiler, we're gonna be talking about something called the ‹kraiet Sefer›, the superfluous verse, and this comes from, you've said many times, "God is not a blabbermouth." It's one of the, uh, sort of Talmudic, uh, uh, axioms.
And, um, or whether it's an axiom in the sense that they really believe it or it's an axiom in, in their sales technique, right? But there's this idea that if there's words in the Torah that are, um, more than necessary to express the idea, that those extra words must be there to teach us something else.
That's basically the idea.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. And basically, this is the hammer, the one tool that Rabbi Akiva has in his tool belt. He's got Rabbi Ishmael's 13 little techniques like the Gezeira Shava, which we saw, and the Kal Vachomer, which we haven't yet seen, but these sort of moderate tools. Rabbi Akiva says, "I've got another tool, and my tool's bigger than your tool.
And this tool can do anything. Anything. I don't even need, uh, the repetition of a verse here and there. I can use a feature of all language that occurs frequently and in, I mean, incessantly in all language, spoken and written." And here he's got this written text of the Torah that is chock-full of what every language has, which is redundancy.
You know, the tell him what you're gonna tell him, tell him, tell him what you told him. Oh my God. Is rich with unnecessary stuff, and that's how language is. And his insight was, if I can mine or if I can use that inherent redundancy in language to make a case for something new, I'm gonna have an enormous amount of material to do so.
And if I can convince people that God is not a blabbermouth, and God never repeats God's self, then a, a piece of literature that has lots of repetition, because I would say it was meant for ordinary people and written by ordinary people, he's, he's gonna, he, he's gonna win. Mm-hmm. Because he's got, he's got a, a great tool.
And we're all Achivens. Uh-huh. And, and this is his main tool. It's called the Criatura, and as you said, it is the making something out of the probably nothing natural feature of language, which is redundancy.
DAN LIBENSON: And is there a basis, do you know, for this notion that, that God is not a blabbermouth? I mean, maybe God is a blabbermouth.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Uh- I don't know. I mean, I s- Is it- My personal feeling- There is- Eh, my personal feeling is that Rabbi Akiva made it up and he d- he didn't think God was not a blab- blabbermouth
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, yeah. No, right. But I mean, like, you know, this idea, I mean, it almost seems like I... It is just occurring to me, 'cause it al- seems like sort of, especially if you've grown up learning Talmud, and learning Torah interpretation, or whatever, you think, like, this basic idea that, like, every word matters is, like, ancient, and of course, and like- Yeah
isn't even up for debate. But I'm like, why? You know, maybe, maybe, like, why, why do we think necessarily that God would have to be such a concise writer? It's not always the best way to write. Yeah. You know, it's not the most interesting way. 'Cause I was thinking, like, when you think about somebody writing, and of course, by the way, parenthetically, like, you know, if we don't believe that God wrote the Torah, but we believe that people wrote it, then it's of course even a bigger, uh, everything I'm about to say is even more true.
But one possibility is that it's just better, easier, more lovely writing- Yeah ... to have more words, uh, sometimes. You know, there's a, a good balance. Uh, but to say that s- you know, any writing teacher would say, you know, you should try to sharpen your language to make it shorter, but they don't say sharpen your language to make it, like, no, no adjectives at all.
You know, like, then that's not good writing either. And the other possibility is that to the extent that we think of writing as, as kind of, that, that somebody's writing a form of poetry, then sometimes it's actually extra words that makes the poetry work, for all kinds of reasons. So, you know, uh, the idea that God's not a blabbermouth, I'm not totally sure that I buy it.
BENAY LAPPE: Well, well, this was precisely the debate between Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Ishmael said, "God did write this thing, uh, but God purposely added redundancies so that we would understand it." Uh-huh God doesn't speak that way- Uh-huh ... but God writes that way. God doesn't think that way or, or, or speak that way, but God does write that way when we're the audience.
And you shouldn't make a big deal out of them because God just did it as an accommodation to our human brains. Uh-huh, uh-huh. And Rabbi Akiva said, "No, no, no. God writes the way God thinks." Uh-huh, uh-huh. F- or, or, a- and wasn't, you know, bow- bending down to accommodate us. That, that would be too lowly for God to do.
And
DAN LIBENSON: there- And if there's, if there's only one God, the problem is that we can't see how God would talk to a different god because- ... there's only one. We can't even... It's, it's really not a very good scientific theory 'cause it's not falsifiable. Okay. But let's, uh, let's... So, so what we're, what we're looking here, we're gonna, we're gonna, um, see again, and it makes sense because when we are looking at this case of an eye for an eye, there are a few texts that, that in the Torah where this concept really, really comes from.
So we're gonna see texts from the Torah that we've already seen, but now we're seeing them from another angle. So the, the Torah texts that we're gonna be referring to are gonna be familiar to, to our w- viewers and listeners, but, um, but, but we're gonna see, see them from a slightly different angle. So here we are on, uh, on page, uh, 84 A of Bava Kamma.
And, uh, the house of, uh, Rabbi Ishmael. So Rabbi Ishmael is, um, a, a rabbi in the... This is the Rabbi Ishmael, like, uh- Yeah. So he, you were just talking about Rabbi Akiva's counterpart.
BENAY LAPPE: So second- Third century
DAN LIBENSON: Yep
BENAY LAPPE: Right?
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, second century, I think. Second. So the, um, so the House of Rabbi Ishmael... But this is the House of Rabbi Ishmael, so it could be, you know, third, it could be his, his student, uh, taught in a Brita.
So again, a, a piece of material from the time of the Mishnah, but it's not really in the Mi- it's not in the Mishnah. And they taught that the Torah says, "Thus at, thus, thus it shall be given to him." So just to see that really quick, in Leviticus 24, we're looking at this line, "And if a man gives a blemish to his neighbor as he did, thus it shall be done to him; fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth.
As he has given a blemish to a person, thus it shall be given unto him." So that's what we're looking at here.
BENAY LAPPE: And it looks pretty clear.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. Poke out their eye. Right. Break their bone. Right? The, the... You know, as it's done, thus it shall be done back. So the House of Rabbi Ishmael is saying, "Ah, but it says, 'Thus it shall be given to him.'"
Uh, right? And so again, let's look at that and just see here that it says, uh, "As he has given a blemish to a person, thus it shall be given unto him." So, so the House of Rabbi Ishmael says, "Thus it shall be given unto him," and giving can refer only to a payment of money. We saw that a few weeks ago.
BENAY LAPPE: You know what?
Now it occurs to me that this is a great example of a diyuk, which is not a miut. This is a, a hyper-precise reading that isn't one of those narrowing readings, which is a subset of a hyper-precise reading. This is a hyper-precise reading, stop. It's a, this is a diyuk. This is one of our stitches. Yeah. It's to, it's to take language in a hyper-literal sense when w- It may just be there because colloquially that's how we talk.
Um- Right,
DAN LIBENSON: because the, the idea is like the, the Torah could have said, like, "If a person blemishes another, something will happen," you know? Or, or that's, "He shall be blemished." I mean, that would- Exactly.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly ...
DAN LIBENSON: that would have been, right, that would've been a sim- a more straightforward way. But here it says, "If somebody gives somebody a blemish, so shall be given to him."
And they're saying, "Well, why did it say given?" And like you said, well, maybe that's just how they talked. You know, that, that, we, it's just, we have a lot of that kind of thing where we have a- Right.
BENAY LAPPE: It's, it's, it's like what we say, it's like, "I threw my back out." Okay, everybody knows I threw my back out means I strained a muscle in my back.
It has nothing to do with balls. Right. But someone might say, "Ah, threw. Because God said threw your back out, it means this is something that is, you know, a trajectory from here to there. And what is a trajectory from here to there but a food fight?"
DAN LIBENSON: Right, and it could have said, it could have said I strained my back.
But why does it not say I strained my back? Because that's not how people talk. People say, "I threw my back out." Exactly. You know, so here it says, "They gave you a blemish." But, you know, I gave him a punch in the nose instead of I punched him in the nose. I mean, you could say both, but, uh, usually people say, "I gave him a punch in the nose."
BENAY LAPPE: Right. And
DAN LIBENSON: so that's, you know, but, but here they're saying, "No, no, no. It says gave." That-
BENAY LAPPE: That's meanit- that that's meaningful ...
DAN LIBENSON: right, that's meaningful, and what do you give? You give money.
BENAY LAPPE: Money. You
DAN LIBENSON: don't give blemishes, you give money. So when it says give the blemish or, you know, give to him, it sa- it means you give money for the blemish.
Right. Um, okay. So, uh, but, and so then there's an objection. Uh, but if that is so, then in the statement when he will give a blemish to a man, so that's the first part of the, uh, so that's, that's, um, uh, that's, that's the, I think what that's referring to here, uh, the previous version. Yes. And if a man gives a blemish to his neighbor, um, or maybe it's here, a- as he has given a blemish to a person.
We have it translated as person, they have it translated as man. Uh- Yeah,
BENAY LAPPE: you're right. Uh, uh-
Yeah. Hmm. No, I'm not sure. I need to see the verse again.
DAN LIBENSON: Oh, okay
BENAY LAPPE: No, I think it, I think now it's referencing 19. Wait a minute
I think it's, i- it's unclear actually
DAN LIBENSON: Mm. Mm-hmm. Uh- Well, well, 'cause here, 'cause in, in 19 it actually says, uh, uh, "And if a man gives a blemish to, uh, his friend," whereas in 20 it says, uh, it says, uh, "When a man gi- or when a person gives, uh, a blemish- Ah ... to a man. So I think it's referring to 20. But in any event, uh, it says, I thought I- You're
BENAY LAPPE: right.
You're right. You're right. You're right- I thought I
DAN LIBENSON: successfully- ... 'cause it says man ... I thought I successfully matched all the, all the translations, but now I see that this one I, I, I didn't get right in both places. But, but in any event, um, they're saying, okay, but wait a second. But y- you're saying that give only means money, and it says, "Thus it shall be..."
You know, with, when a man gives a blemish to a man, thus it shall be given to him. You're saying thus it shall be given to him means money because, uh, giving is money. But the previous clause in the, in the, in the verse said when he gives a blemish to a person, so that should also be money. It says give, right?
That, that, so if you, if you wanna say that give always refers to money, then how do you explain the first part of the, of the, uh, verse? 'Cause, 'cause it, it can mean when you... Y- you know, you could write it this way. When a person blemishes another person, the same should, blemish should be given to him. Then you could say, okay, well, the second clause says give, so that means money.
The first clause said when a person blemishes a person, it didn't say give, so that means that we're talking about a blemish. So if you give a pers- if you, if you cause a harm to a person, then you give them money. But here it says when you give a blemish to a person, so shall be given to him. So wha- what does that mean?
It can't, it, it must, the give there must, must have a, um, a reason as well, right?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And, and I think this is being held up as obviously ridi- the, the idea that the use of the word give actually means money is ridiculous because here it clearly is part of colloquial language to say, um, to give
A blemish
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm
BENAY LAPPE: Clearly that's not giving anything, it's to cause a blemish
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm
BENAY LAPPE: So,
DAN LIBENSON: okay. I mean, may- maybe using your example is, is more helpful for the English listener, right? It's, if it... Let's say, let's imagine that it said, uh, you know, "If you throw out somebody's back, your back shall be thrown out in return," or something like that.
And you say, "Well, it says your back should be thrown out in return. That means that you should have to be thrown, you know, that means you have to leave the camp for a week. You're thrown out, you know, right? You're thrown out of the camp." It says, "Okay, okay. I, I get that you could say that, but what about the first part?
It says if you throw out somebody's back. Does that really mean if I throw him out of the camp? Or... No, it means I threw out his back. You know, it means I hurt his back." So you can't, you can't say that in one half of the sentence it means throw him out of the camp, and in another part of the sentence it means hurt him if it's the same language.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, so, so the, so that, the, that's the objection. Um, and the reply, right, is, uh-
BENAY LAPPE: Oh, oh, okay. So I'm s- so I'm realizing now that this Baraita has r- the, the School of Rabbi Ishmael making a diyuk on the word give. The objection to, and the conclusion meaning money. The objection is, well, if you make a diyuk on give here, you have to make a diyuk on give there, and there, in this other instance, it's obviously, uh, not what the text means.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Okay, got it. Yep.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So, so the... Is this the, uh, is this, does this come back to d- as you read this, is this, is this, uh, the House of Ishmael's response or is this the objector saying, "Let me help you out a little bit. Not that it really matters, but let, let me tell you what's really going on here."
BENAY LAPPE: I think the Baraita is over.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: That is the whole of this Tannaic piece of material, and now the Stamma jumps in, and the Stamma says... No. The objector in the Baraita misunderstood Rabbi Ishmael.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Which I don't- He wasn't
DAN LIBENSON: making a diyuk.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. I don't, I don't think the objector misunderstood.
Right. And that's what the Stamma's saying. The Stamma's saying, "No, no, no, Rabbi Ishmael's not making a diyuk. Rabbi Ishmael's using a different stitch."
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Using a different technique, um, which reader, audience, you can also use if you don't get any mileage out of the diyuk tactic.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Okay. So the, so the Stamma, the editor, says, "Say instead, 'Oh, no, you've misunderstood Rabbi Ishmael.'"
Mm-hmm. The school of Rabbi Ishmael are interpreting a super- a superfluous verse. That's what we said. That's the stitch, the . The God is not a blabbermouth, and we see the same thing written twice, so there must be a- another meaning to the second one. Right. Uh, it is written in the previous verse, it is written, "And if a man gives a blemish to his neighbor, as he did, thus such, thus it shall be done to him."
So there, by the way, it doesn't say give in the second part. It only says give in the first part. So they're, they're saying th- this one is more clear, right? If a person gives somebody an injury, if s- if a person injures somebody, it should be done back to him what, what he did, right? That's, that's Leviticus 24:19, uh, what we see here.
Um, "And if a man gives a blemish to his neighbor as he did, thus it shall be done to him." In the very next verse it says, "Fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has given a blemish to a person, thus it shall be given to him," which seems like it's the same concept in the second- Right
second verse.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. Done to him and given to him seem redundant, one to the other. Great.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: So-
DAN LIBENSON: So,
BENAY LAPPE: mm-hmm ...
DAN LIBENSON: so it says it, it's written, in the first verse it's written, "And if a man gives a blemish to his neighbor as he did, thus it shall be done to him." So why do I need the statement in the second, in the second verse, "Thus it shall be given to him"?
Why, why did I n- why did that get repeated? There must be a reason.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. And the second seeming repetition must not actually be a repetition. It must be saying something unique and different. And what I think is really interesting about this move is that it requires the first instance of, "So shall it be, uh, given to him," that res- reciprocity- Is being accepted in a kind of tentative, temporary way as being mamash, as being physical retaliation.
I- literally eye for an eye.
DAN LIBENSON: If I just read Leviticus 24:19 but hadn't read Leviticus, uh-
BENAY LAPPE: Right ... 24:20. If God, right, if God hadn't said verse 20, you would be fine to understand verse 19 as physical-
DAN LIBENSON: Right ...
BENAY LAPPE: retaliation. But because God made this seemingly superfluous, but never because God isn't a blabbermouth, um, verse about, "So shall it be given," which sounds a lot like and is essentially like, "So it shall be done."
Mm-hmm. I, I said that backwards. So shall be done, which looks like so shall it be given. The so shall it be done to him. Do I have that right? Uh.
DAN LIBENSON: The first, the first verse is, "So shall it be done," and the second verse- Oh,
BENAY LAPPE: okay, fine ...
DAN LIBENSON: is so shall
BENAY LAPPE: it be given. So shall it be given must mean something else, and what's the else with relation to, uh, physical retaliation?
Money.
DAN LIBENSON: Money. And that's where we know... Also, also 'cause given, you know, there, we're sort of, I, I guess- But,
BENAY LAPPE: but I s- I think we're out of that
DAN LIBENSON: I don't think we're interpreting the word given anymore.
BENAY LAPPE: No.
DAN LIBENSON: I think, mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Mm-mm. Mm-mm.
DAN LIBENSON: It's just a repetition. Just basically why did we say basically the same thing twice?
It's to explain to you that y- it, it, it's something else than the easy read, than the, the straightforward read, and that must be money.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. I think we've let go of the dyuke, even though we should acknowledge that back on our previous page The, and what is given, money, using this very verse- Mm-hmm ... was accepted and not challenged- Mm-hmm
the first time it was brought onto the table. Here it is challenged. Here the dyuk on giving, uh, as meaning money, what else can be given but money, is rejected.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: And yeah. Mm-hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So, so then there's an objection to that though.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: It says, "But if this is so," meaning if that second part, uh, "so shall it be given to him," is there to say money, why do I need the first part of the second verse?
The first part of, of verse 20 where it said, again, let's look at it, "As he has given a blemish to a person, thus it shall be given to him." Why didn't it just say, "Fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, thus it shall be given to him," or something like that? Why, why did they stick in this other part, "As he has given a blemish to a person, thus it shall be given to him"?
If we're using this claim that God is not a blabbermouth, then doesn't this also have to be there for, for a reason? Because we have here, "And if a man..." In the previous verse we have, "And if a man gives a blemish to his neighbor." Exactly. And here in the second verse we have, "As he has given a blemish to a person."
That would seem to be equally repetitive. What's the, what's the meaning of that repetition?
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. You know? That's exactly right.
DAN LIBENSON: That's the question. So it's like you have to, you have to account for that. Like, you can't just say God is not a blabbermouth sometimes. Either God is not a blabbermouth or God is not not a blabbermouth.
Um, so- Right ... so the Talmud says, "But, but if this is so, why do I need 'As he has given a blemish to a person'?" Uh, and the answer is it does not teach anything. Uh, since God needed to write at the end of the verse, "Thus it shall be given unto him," 'cause that was actually the, the, the way that God was gonna teach us that it's money, God needed to stick in that clause.
So he also, God also wrote, "As he has given a blemish to a person," basically 'cause, 'cause God want, did wanna be a good writer. Right? I mean, God wanted... God didn't... Right? 'Cause y- you're, essentially what we're saying is it s- could have said, "And if a man gives a blemish to his neighbor as he did, thus it shall be done to him, fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, thus it shall be given to him."
You could, you could have imagined that, but the, the Talmud is like saying, "But that wouldn't be very nice writing." You know? That, that would be just all of a sudden just sticking in, "Thus it shall be given to him." It's better, it's, it's more lovely to add, "As he has given a blemish to a person, thus it shall be given to him."
So there's nothing actually to learn from the first part of the clause. It was just there to set up the second part of the clause, and that's what we learn from.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. So the, the, the person who's arguing with the tool of the cryatara, which requires as a premise that God is not a blabbermouth, is now, when challenged with, "Hey, this other thing seems like it's superfluous, and according to your theory, it must mean something unique," this person responds, "No, God's sometimes a blabbermouth."
Which completely undermines the, the sort of, I don't know if it's the veracity, the believability of, or the sincerity of y- the stitch of the cryatara. So I, I, you know, i- if this is, if these are, like, sample dialogues, which you can expect once you go out into the world and you try to bring your congregation along, that you can...
So I wonder if, if, if the assumption is that the person you're talking to is going to be calmed and satisfied with the, eh, but sometimes God is a blabbermouth Mm-hmm And, uh, maybe they, maybe they actually they had less of a need for consistency than we do. I mean, maybe that was a thing. I don't know.
Well,
DAN LIBENSON: the way that I think about it is, like, if, if this is kind of really about selling it, then I, I would just imagine the scene of the person who comes and says, "You know, Rabbi, I think I have to poke out my, my friend's eye because he poked out my eye, and that's, I just, I didn't, I, I didn't think that I had to do that.
But I, I, we attended synagogue this week and, and we read this parsha, and, uh, it says that I have to poke out his eye. So I just, before I go poke out his eye, I just wanted to check with you if that's okay." You know, the rabbi, "No, no, no, no, no, we don't, we don't do that anymore." Um, and he says, "Well, well, how can we not do it anymore?
I, I just read it right here in the Torah." Uh, and the rabbi says, "Well, uh, let, let me explain to you that, uh, there, there's this thing, it says it actually twice in the Torah. It says, it says that, 'The, so shall be d- done to him,' and then in the next verse it says, 'Thus shall be given to him.' And actually, given, uh, thus shall be given to him, we have a concept called the superfluous verse.
And for many generations we've said that that means, uh, that it, you only take money from him." And your average person, I mean, here we're talking about somebody who's illiterate, right? I think most of the people are, are, like, they can't, they're not, they don't have a Bible at home. The, the, you know what I mean?
I'm saying your average Jew. They don't have a Bible at home. They can't read it pro- most likely. They're not going to go back and look at it carefully and say, "Oh, wait a second, Rabbi, but it says, it says, 'Uh, and if he, if he gives, you know, if he gives a blemish to a person right, right before that.' So what are you gonna do with that?"
That's not, most people aren't that sophisticated. So I, I think then, and they're, and they're not gonna hear it again in the Torah reading for another year. By that time they, they probably aren't gonna- Or,
BENAY LAPPE: or maybe three
DAN LIBENSON: Maybe three Where they
BENAY LAPPE: had triennial cycles. I don't know.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So they're not gonna be like that.
Most average people, and I'm not saying they're stupid, I'm, I'm saying that they're just not that, you know, they're not that knowledgeable. They're not that sophisticated. They haven't been taught these techniques. So mo- so if the idea here is that this is helping you sell something that seems like somebody had just heard an eye for an eye in synagogue, but now you say, "Oh no, we have these various interpretive principles, and one of them is, uh, this superfluous verse," I think most people will be relatively satisfied with that.
And so that question that says, "But what about the first part of the verse? You know, what, what, what about that?" The only objector of that, making that kind of an objection would be another rabbi. Like another- Yeah ... very sophisticated person.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, that's what was just occurring to me as you were talking, that maybe that, "But wait a minute, what about this seemingly superfluous verse?"
might actually be the voice of the student-
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah ...
BENAY LAPPE: saying to the teacher who just taught them the technique of That, that doesn't make any sense. And basically the teacher's saying, "Yeah, I know. It's a, it, it's, it's really not a thing. It's a technique. It's a selling point. Don't worry about it."
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, and the-
BENAY LAPPE: So, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, I like this.
DAN LIBENSON: This makes sense. And the, and the way that that's said in the Talmud is not directly, like it's just for selling. The, the way that that's said in the Talmud is to make a bit of a joke, and to say, "Oh, that's not there to teach us anything, it's just there because God, you know, had to set up the, the next part."
And it's hilarious, and it's supposed to be, because the point is, is that in the laughter, I just imagine the yeshiva starting to lau- you know, breaking out into laughter. And it's not that they're breaking out into laughter and saying, "And therefore this is stupid," it's breaking- Right ... out into laughter and saying, "Oh, now I get it."
Yeah. "Now I
BENAY LAPPE: get it."
DAN LIBENSON: Like, we're here to help the people, guide them towards the right ethical thing. We don't want them poking out each other's eyes. And the fact that it's not actually completely logically true, yeah, that's our, that's our coin and trade, you know, our stock and trade, right?
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
That's right. And I don't think it's an accident that I keep hearing Jackie Mason in my head, right? The late Jackie Mason. First of all, he was a rabbi, right? Right. So i- he, he was completely steeped in, in th- these arguments. In his comedy, it... S- somebody needs to, like, line up a Jackie Mason routine with a sotah, because it just s- this, the comedy is so similar, right?
He'll s- he'll say one thing and immediately, like, everybody, "Yeah, okay." I don't know. So- Yeah ... um, and it's funny. I, I'm
DAN LIBENSON: hearing that in, I'm hearing that too, and I, I can't remember the joke but there's something, like, you know, I just remember there was, like, some setup to a joke, and then there's an objection.
You know, it says, like, "So it's this way," and then there's an objection that says, "So it's not this way."
BENAY LAPPE: Right. You know? And like- It, it, I think it's his routine on, um- R- Ronald Reagan
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Like, he, he's kind of saying, like he, he's poking fun at Ronald Reagan that he's like this idiot. But there's a certain way in which he's also a genius, and he says- That's right
something people object to, and he says, "So it's not that way." You know?
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Exactly. It, it- Like ... the hostages, they moved from here to there. They were... But, but they did move from there. Okay, so they did it. They, they were not Right. Right.
DAN LIBENSON: So, so the, the fact, the fact that this is hilarious, it's a joke. It's, it's intentionally a joke.
And, and the tragedy to me is to imagine how this sugya might be studied in a more tr- you know, Orthodox, ultra-Orthodox yeshiva today, where people would read it and say, "Oh yeah, so that, that's why it's there, 'cause God needed to set it up." And, and nobody's laughing, and it's like you've completely missed the joke.
And if you miss the joke, you're actually missing what's being taught, which is that this is not how we figured out the law. This is how we're selling the law.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I'm not sure joke, joke is just so loaded.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: I'm not sure joke is exactly the right word. Is it sleight of hand? You know, getting back to the magician.
DAN LIBENSON: But I just, I say joke, and I agree with you that it's-
BENAY LAPPE: Because it's funny. It-
DAN LIBENSON: It's so funny, and like- Yeah ... and if you don't laugh, then you didn't understand it, I think.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Yeah, I get it. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: And so maybe there's a better word. But, but the, but the idea is that it's, it's ... And, and, and that makes sense too.
Like, I just, I don't know, you know, you know the Talmud better than me. Like, it's, I, I don't think that there are places in the Talmud where it just says explicitly, um, this is a technique, or this is not really the derivation, or something like that. But the way that the Talmud says that is to do something absurd, which is obviously absurd to anybody who actually is understanding what's going on, and then you know that, to me, that's like the signal.
That, think of it as like a, a, a, a star. You know, like putting a star next to ... And, and, or a highlight or whatever. And that, that's marking for you that this one is a communications technique versus that one, which is actually a real derivation. Yeah. And that's how they ... And, and there's other ways. We, we were talking, uh, last week, and maybe we'll, we'll go into that.
There's one, I, it's one of, it's been my, one of my favorites for a long, long time, where they're, they're talking about, like, a bird, and whether if it's on this side of the line, it's belongs to you, and if it's on that side of the line, it belongs to the public. And w- well, one rabbi, Rabbi Yirmeyahu, stands up and he says, "Well, what if the bird has a foot on one side of the line and a foot on the other side of the line?"
And the Talmud says he was thrown out of the yeshiva for this question. And to, again, like, to me, that's, like, hilarious. You know? It's like, because it's like, well, that's the kind of question that we see all the time. What's going on here? And it's kind of like it's just, it's just kind of marking to us that that wasn't really the, the way that they figured out what the law was, that this was a way of putting into place, you know, kind of rules of the road for average people.
And for those, we don't really go into that level of nuance. That's not what it's about.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I lo- I love your take that him being thrown out isn't a sign of his- Impudence?
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? Is that the right word? That's
DAN LIBENSON: often how it's taught, yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. That's how it's taught, that, that he was, he was, he was being disrespectful to his teacher or argumentative, um, and he wasn't nice so he was thrown out.
But rather, that he was so lacking in appreciation for what was really going on, and that that statement reflected that. Ah, okay. That he was just not even, you know, he was, he was... It's not exactly that he was expelled. His, his admission was revoked- ... because they realized they let in the wrong guy. Uh-huh.
Because he didn't have the capacity to really understand what the project of the Beit Midrash was. Uh-huh,
DAN LIBENSON: uh-huh. All right. Well, let's, uh, look at, to, to, to prove... I mean, so lest you think that this is, like, a one-off, you know, and we're making more out of this, let's, there's the next, uh, short segment is a, is a parallel structure, and it's, it's very, very similar.
And I think in its similarity, it sort of shows that what they're, they really are showing us this, because we see another laugh line at the end. And it's the same, it's the same, uh, technique. So this, so, so there's some suggestion that this technique is fundamentally about, about, uh, you know, this whole kryia tera technique, God is not a blabbermouth, is really a technique for selling as opposed to a technique for derivation, for really, you know, ethical figuring out, and, uh, this kind of shows us that.
Yeah. So the very next, uh, one, so now we're looking at the house of Rabbi Chiya, another early rabbi, uh, or mid, mid-early rabbi, and he taught it in another Brita, or his students taught it in another Brita. The Torah says a hand for, or it could be translated as in, so where it says for in it's just because it's Yad Be Yad.
It, it's, it's in. But, and when we say, like, a, a, um, a, an eye for an eye, that's ayin tachat ayin. Like an, and which technically is, like, an eye under an eye, or an eye... So it's, it is a different word than an eye for an eye. It's a hand for a hand. But it basically functionally means more or less the same, uh, we think.
So the Torah says i- in a different place. Here now we're Deuteronomy. Before we were in Leviticus. Uh, the, the Torah says a hand for a hand, and this is where, this is also something that we talked about last week I think, or two weeks ago, this idea of the, the false witnesses who come and they are trying to get somebody convicted for a, a crime and they didn't really witness it.
And you say if they get caught, then they should be punished in the same way that the person that they were falsely witnessing about would have been punished. So they're saying if you were, if you were a witness in a, in a case and the punishment for the person that you were witnessing against would have had their hand chopped off, then you, false witness, should get your hand chopped off.
A hand for a hand is basically- So, I mean, we can look at it here, just Deuteronomy, but we don't have to read the whole thing. Uh, but it's, but it's here, uh, u- under the text. And, and, uh, here it says at the end, you know, you shouldn't show any pity. Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, right?
That's kind of the structure that we have here. And, um, so So the, uh, so the, the, the Talmud says, in this, or the Brita says, "This refers to a thing that is given from hand to hand." Right, 'cause it says, uh, it doesn't say given, but it says, "A hand for, a hand in a hand, a hand for a hand." Somehow two hands are involved, and where, when are two hands involved?
When money is being passed.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I, I think this is actually another diyuk. I think the Midrash on this verse, a hand for a hand, is focusing on the bet.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: The, the hand literally in a hand- Okay ... because what is it that you put in somebody's hand? Money. Money. Right. So I think that's what's going on here.
Mm-hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: And j- just again, just a real quick look at the, the verse. I mean, clearly that's completely out of context, right? 'Cause we got a list of, you know, life for life, i- or l- life and life, eye and eye, tooth and tooth, hand and hand, foot and foot. I mean, the hands, you could sort of make that argument that hand, money is passing from a hand to a hand, but what about the other ones?
I mean, it's clearly- ... you know, just not really. You know, that's obvious, right, just by looking at it. Um, okay.
BENAY LAPPE: And in fact, that is the, uh, the objection that's gonna be brought right now.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So was it... So although it's limited, I mean, it, the, the, the objection says foot, foot, and foot. But I mean, you could say it's also tooth and tooth.
Like, what, what- Right ... would be all this stuff? You know, so the, so the objection says, "But if that is so, what are you gonna do with a foot and a foot?" Is this also apply money? I mean, are we now giving money with feet, you know? And, and what about the teeth, right? I mean, there's just like... Come on, right?
That's what I'm hearing. So, so it's like you can't just... I mean, you know, you could say, I mean, but you, you gotta, you gotta have a modicum of, of rationality to these claims, is kind of the ob- objection. So you got a list of things. One of them happens to be a hand, and now you're gonna say that that means that the whole thing is money, even though it also said foot and tooth and life, and...
Okay, so the, um, so the rescuer, the, the editorial rescuer comes in and says, "No, no, no. Say instead the House of Rabbi Hiyya are interpreting a super- a superfluous term." So the same structure as before.
BENAY LAPPE: Uh- Right. So you, you, r- this editor is coming in to say Rabbi Hiyya was right. The thing he said before, his conclusion of money, is right, but you misunderstood how he got to that.
He didn't get to it by being hyper literal, making a diyuk on the bet. He got there by this other technique.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. And- Okay ... and that other technique being the superfluous verse. And so the, uh, so the, the, the Talmud says, and we'll look at this in the, in the Torah verse in a second, but, "Once it is written, 'And you shall do to him as he plotted to do to his brother,' in the, in a few verses prior, if it enters your mind to say that this means actual eye-" Why would we need a hand in a hand?
In other words, if you... So, um, so if you, that, that, here's the, here's the verse in the Torah. Um, "If the man who testifies a false witness, if he has testified falsely against his fellow, you shall do to him as he plotted to do to his brother." So that would be the one where, where it says like, well, that's, that, if we just read that, if we didn't have the rest of this, and we just read this, then we would say, "Okay, yeah, I get that.
If he, if he was gonna testify in such a way that somebody's eye was gonna get poked out, and he was actually a false witness, you shall do to him as he plotted to do to his brother. That means you poke out his eye." Right. But then we have this whole business that comes after it, so that's not needed, and the only reason that it should be there is because apparently it's trying to teach us something else.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: Yep. So- So learn from it. Learn from the superfluous phrase, money.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: So now we're not really talking about, like, the hand-in-hand like you said earlier. We're not talking about the, we're interpreting the hand-in-hand means money anymore. W- in the same way that in the previous one we weren't saying giving is really the reason for the money anymore.
We're just saying it, it's because it's superfluous. It could say anything, but it would be superfluous. Why would we have to say the same thing twice? Because it's trying to say, "Don't read it the way you would initially read it. Read it in a different way." And what's left? If it's not poke out another eye, then it must be money.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right, because these are the only two options. It's either actual eye or money. So if in fact this additional seemingly superfluous but not actually superfluous signal tells us it's not the previous thing, actual, it must be the only other possible alternative, money. Okay, great.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, if so, why do I need the phrase a foot and a foot?
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, so now this is a challenge to the suggestion that this apparent but not actual superfluous, superfluity of hand in hand means money. Oh, then, okay, so you're telling me God's not a blabbermouth. Hey, God looks like a blabbermouth over here. What does this mean? What, what unique teaching does this have if you've convinced me that God doesn't repeat God's self?
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, so the, the thing, why doesn't the verse just say, "Nor must you show pity, hand in a hand," right? Or something like that. Now, I, I do, by the way, I'm, this is where I'm a little thinking like they're still trying to kind of hang on this idea that hand in hand does mean something about passing money. So I'm not 100% convinced that they're completely giving up on that sort of dyukey sort of meaning.
But y- 'cause I, because it does feel to me like hand in hand would be a little bit out of left field, you know, if it was, if it just said hand in hand. But fundamentally- Mm-hmm ... that's what the objection is, that, well, why do we need this whole string, life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand in hand, foot for foot?
Why do we... It's, they're just saying foot for foot, but they're saying like why, why do we need this whole bunch of examples? Why not just have one, maybe two, you know? But, but why, why have five? And, um, the, the, whichever way you see it, the, the response is, "It doesn't mean anything." Uh-
BENAY LAPPE: That's why, oh, G- G- God just said it.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. And- '
BENAY LAPPE: Cause God sometimes says, says things that don't mean anything.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. The same, the same exact structure as before, since it is written a hand in a hand, God also wrote a foot and a foot. You know, in other words, like, again, God's trying to make the writing a little more vibrant. And which, by the way, I am very sympathetic to in the sense that, this is what I was trying to say at the beginning, that if we think of God as a poet, or certainly if a human being wrote this and, and they're a poet, then I agree that writing little more ex- little more words, a little more parallelism, you know, uh, makes the writ- makes the poetry sing more.
S- but the whole claim here is that God is not a, a poet, that God is not a blabbermouth, that Go- every word matters. And once you say that every word matters, then you have to stick with every word matters, and you can't just then say when you have extra words, "Oh, those extra words were there for, like, writing style, you know, style points.
And but these extra words are there to teach you something that's the exact opposite of what the previous text just told us." Yes. That it, it's... And, and it's just hilarious, you know? Again, I, it's, it's, it's funny, and you, you look at this and it's absurd, and you laugh, and that's what you're supposed to do.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Agreed. And I'm really excited about this new idea that these, "Oh, don't worry about it," are a shift from the selling point to the stu- the teacher reassuring the student that it's just a selling point. It's not actually, it's not actually what's going on. Don't believe the hype. Or don't, yeah, right, don't, don't believe the marketing language.
Mm-hmm. Or something like that.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and it's like we're all in on the, we're all in on the joke here. Now, again, not that it's a joke in the sense that, like, same with what I said about magic, you know? I'm, these are analogies. Here, it's a little more than an analogy 'cause it actually is funny. But it's, they're not saying that the whole thing is a joke or a scam.
They're- they're saying that there's a difference between communication and actually figuring out the right thing to do. And we know this. We know this in our time. And that, again, that, it feels to me like a, a tragic situation when you get to a time when you no longer believe that there's a difference between the communication and the figuring out and y- and you're reading this stuff to say, all this stuff that was actually there about how to communicate this stuff, you're reading it as if, like, that's how they were making their decisions.
And either you then look at it and you say, "Oh, these rabbis are so stupid. I mean, what, these are terrible def- terrible derivations. Why would they do it?" Like, and that, and you have a disdain for the Talmud's rabbis, instead of an admiration for their communications abilities, right? Or you have this notion of them that they, that they were so holy, so amazing, that what I find to be absurd and confusing, they understood.
And so we're less than them, and that's why we can't do innovations anymore today, because we're, we're so much lesser than them. Because this thing that seems kinda like a joke to me, I know it can't be a joke, so I know that I must not be understanding it, and therefore I'm not permitted to make innovations.
And that's so sad.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Exactly.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, I, it reminds me of a story, like I don't remember if I've told it on this show, but, uh, my kids were in a Jewish day school at one point, and there was a rabbi who questioned evolution. And I said to the principal, like, "Is, what's the school's position on evolution? 'Cause I don't want my s- my kids in a school w- that denies evolution."
And the principal said, um, "Oh, don't w- uh, you know, don't worry about it. Like, I'm sure your kids are gonna, uh, believe in evolution. Like, you shouldn't be so concerned about it. Yeah, we do agree with evolution in the school, but sometimes, you know, we can't control what everybody says and, you know, don't worry about it though.
Y- I'm sure your kids will believe in evolution." And my response was, "No, you don't understand my concern. Like, my concern isn't that my kids are not gonna believe in evolution. I'm sure my kids are gonna believe in evolution. My concern is that my kids are gonna think Judaism is stupid-
BENAY LAPPE: Right ... 'cause
DAN LIBENSON: it doesn't believe in evolution."
Right. "And that's not why I'm sending my kids to this school." Yeah. And that's kinda here, like if you read this to say, and your, your outcome is like, oh, they thought this was a good argument, you know, uh, like a s- it's not, r- right, the, the, the most sophisticated rabbis thought this was a good argument, then, then you'll have to stand for them.
And that's- Right ... not, that's not what's going on. It's, it strikes me as, so then, then the joke becomes a tragedy. The comedy becomes a tragedy, right?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Um-
Yeah, I had, the, I'm thinking about your story. The sad part of it, the, the story and what is that, that Rabbi may not believe in evolution.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Whereas these Rabbis actually do, yet talk as if they don't, and it's a mistake to think they don't. Whereas in the case of your children's school, it's actually accurate to think that this Rabbi doesn't, and is maybe a little bit of a dope.
Anyway.
DAN LIBENSON: All right, well-
BENAY LAPPE: Sorry.
DAN LIBENSON: No, but I, but I mean, I, I, I'm glad we got through this, and, and I think this is a really great, um, thing for, I hope, our viewers to really, like, think about this one deeply. Because I, I think that what you really see here is, I mean, the wink is a huge wink. You know, you talk about the wink, but I mean, here it's like if y- if you're laughing, you've got it.
And, and- Yeah ... most people today are capable of getting it to that level, and then the big question arises, n- now what do we do? When, in a world in which the average Jew can read this and see it in, in this way and, and be in on the joke, you know, then obviously the joke isn't gonna work. Or, you know, obviously the sales job- Right
isn't gonna work anymore. Right. So that's when we don't need to sell. We c- or, you know, we sell it in a different way. But now what does a world look like in which, you know, everybody's, uh, capable of, of the most sophisticated thought? And I think that's exciting to imagine a, a Judaism in which that's true.
BENAY LAPPE: Yep. And that's why I think we're in the era of Svara. Svara the concept, not Svara the issue.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Both.
DAN LIBENSON: So just as a, and just as a reminder on that is, like, like, I think what we're fundamentally saying here is that, uh, and maybe this is an overly hyperbolic, I think you'll agree, but I mean, maybe this is saying too much, but that the, the way that the Rabbis are deciding what to do is always Svara.
Always. It's always they have a sense of this is the right thing, and that it's very rarely actually being derived through a mindless application of a technique. And so when we see the techniques, I don't know, nine times out of 10 or d- maybe 10 times out of 10, it's really they're much more about the selling than it is about the, how they got there.
BENAY LAPPE: Yep, absolutely.
DAN LIBENSON: All right. Well, the progress will-
BENAY LAPPE: So fun ...
DAN LIBENSON: with the, with the next Stitch.
BENAY LAPPE: Yep.
DAN LIBENSON: All right. See you then, Benay.
BENAY LAPPE: 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, 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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