SHOW NOTES
“Imagine the rabbinical assembly has to have a set of meetings where they're like, ‘Hey, guys, the people are onto us…Either we're gonna have to change our position on this or we're gonna have to change the marketing because our old marketing isn't working.’ Maybe we're seeing the transcript of that meeting where they’re like, ‘Let's try this argument. Eh, let's not. They're gonna pick up on this one. Let’s not use that one.’” - 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 happens when people stop buying what their leaders are selling? The rabbis of the Talmud weren't just rewriting Jewish practice. They were figuring out how to convince everyone else that their radical innovations were what God had intended all along. But in this episode, Benay and Dan uncover a surprising possibility: What if some of the Talmud's arguments were deliberately designed to fail? What if the rabbis were teaching their students not just what to say, but what not to say?
From eye-for-an-eye justice to interfaith marriage and LGBTQ inclusion, they explore the uncomfortable relationship between truth, persuasion, and changing a tradition. Sometimes the argument most likely to convince people isn't the one you actually believe. So when you're trying to move a tradition toward something better, how much truth can you afford to tell? And at what point does finding the right message become something more troubling than persuasion?
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 74: Bad Arguments
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 happens when people stop buying what their leaders are selling? The rabbis of the Talmud weren't just rewriting Jewish practice. They were figuring out how to convince everyone else that their radical innovations were what God had intended all along. But in this episode, Benay and I uncover a surprising possibility: What if some of the Talmud's arguments were deliberately designed to fail? What if the rabbis were teaching their students not just what to say, but what not to say?
From eye-for-an-eye justice to interfaith marriage and LGBTQ inclusion, we explore the uncomfortable relationship between truth, persuasion, and changing a tradition. Sometimes the argument most likely to convince people isn't the one you actually believe. So when you're trying to move a tradition toward something better, how much truth can you afford to tell? And at what point does finding the right message become something more troubling than persuasion?
Every episode of The Oral Talmud has a number of resources to support your learning and to share with your own study partners! If you’re using a podcast app to listen, you’ll find these links in our show notes: First, to a Source Sheet on Sefaria, where you can find pretty much any Jewish text in the original and in translation – there we excerpt the core Talmud texts we discuss and share a link to the original video of our learning.
In the show notes of your podcast app, you’ll also find a link to this episode on The Oral Talmud’s website, where we post an edited transcript, and where you can make a donation to keep the show going, if you feel so moved. On both the Sefaria Source Sheet and The Oral Talmud website.
And now, The Oral Talmud…
DAN LIBENSON: Hello everybody, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Oral Talmud. I'm Dan Levenson, and I'm here as always with Benay Lappé. How are you, Benay? Hey.
BENAY LAPPE: I'm great. How are you?
DAN LIBENSON: Good. Uh- As
BENAY LAPPE: you see, I've got my last Svara shirt before I have to do laundry on
DAN LIBENSON: I was thinking this is like the motorcycle gang, uh- Yeah
version of the Oral Talmud.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. We're getting tough now.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. This is my exercise Svara shirt, and, and the last one in the pile.
DAN LIBENSON: I like it. That... It, it really, uh... It really kind of gives a- ... a new, a new, you know, attitude about Torah study, you know, Talmud study.
BENAY LAPPE: Thank you.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, so, um, f- so, so here we're back, uh, again looking at...
And this is will be probably our second to last, uh, episode where we're looking at this, this sampler of, from the Eye for an Eye text. But I mean, it's been an amazing, like, journey through both a lot of interpretive techniques that we've seen before and that we'll see again, and we'll be able to refer back to this.
And also, uh, it's generated a lot of, a lot of interesting, uh, thoughts and, and ideas, some of which we're, we're already booking guests to follow up on, on some of what's come up. So we're excited about that coming up in the weeks ahead. I'm not gonna say who, who they are, but I think it'll be a lot of fun.
Um, so... And Benay, you said right before we came on that you had some, some new thoughts. So I thought that that would be a good place to start, 'cause I don't even know what they are.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. So okay. So we've been developing this theory or hypothesis that these proofs aren't actually proofs in the usual sense to understand that this innovation of monetary compensation really does come from the Torah.
And that the role of the proofs is to convince the audience, the primary audience, the rabbinic students back in Yavne, that that's the case. Um, but rather that these are arguments that they can use, a sampler of- Uh, sort of persuasive techniques to bring the people along. To convince people that, who have just heard an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, right, in the marketplace, that this is the right- we are doing the right thing.
We are doing the thing that, that God and the Torah want. And, you know, over the last three days I've given three CRASH talks three days in a row, and, and I'm looking at my board where the CRASH diagram is remaining from the other night, and the moment, the moment in the theory where I try to ... where I bring out the fact that when the rabbis come up with this really unrecognizable Jewish future, unrecognizable in relation to Biblical Judaism, they have a problem, and their problem is a sales problem, right?
How do you get people to think that's actually what is authentic Judaism? Mm-hmm. And, you know, they have a number of techniques. One is calling it Torah, and saying God gave this to Moses too. And-
The more that I think about it, the more that I think that the real task of an option three architect is the bringing people along and convincing them and how, how are we gonna get people to come along? And so If that's the case of these various stitches and proofs, the ones that don't work are problematic, right?
We have to explain why does the Talmud include the ones that don't work, right? Right. And I, I think I was, up until today when I went over the translation, and I have to give a plug. I... You know me, I hate really learning in translation primarily, but once you've learned in the original, to learn in translation really does give you a kind of forest perspective.
Like, it gets your- Right ... head out of the details. Uh-huh. And, and something jumped out at me when I wasn't so inside of the text and that is maybe those proofs, quote-unquote proofs, that fail are the ones where the teacher is teaching the student, "Don't try this one. This one's not gonna work."
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? Uh-huh. Instead of these are the ones that are there to really remind you not to believe your hype and to remember that the Torah never really... Maybe they are... Because remember, they're all knocked down with Svara. They're all knocked down with a certain common sense.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So maybe these are the ones where people will inevitabl- where the teacher is saying, "The, the...
People will inevitably find the holes in this, so don't go down this road." Uh-huh. Maybe. I don't know. That's, that's my thought for the day.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh. And okay. Well, and we'll, we'll explore these particular... If these were the cases that brought up that thought, it'll be interesting.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. T- today, the next, the next two are those again, that they're quote-unquote the proo- of, of the category of the proofs that fail.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. So- That's helpful because I puzzled over why they were here too when I was preparing, so yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Um, all right, so, so, so let... Well, let's look at them.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Um, all right, so I think... Is this, like, the sixth, the seventh? Something like that, right?
BENAY LAPPE: Seven, eight. I think seven. I think we're on seven.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So here we're looking at a proof brought by the, uh, rabbi named Rav Zevid in the name of Raba or maybe Rava, right?
You have a, you have a version that suggests that there's a potential scribal error and that, that the, that the, that the person he's quoting is actually Rava who's a different person from Raba, and, uh, Rava is, is the more famous, the one that we like the most, you know?
BENAY LAPPE: Right. I, I always- Better? ... pronounce this guy's name S- Zvid, Rav Zvid.
But-
DAN LIBENSON: Oh, Zvid? Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Whatever.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, I'm going by the translation, uh, you know, how they sounded it out in the translation. But anyway. Right So we'll call him Rav Zvi to make it happen. Okay. Okay, so Rav Zvi said in the name of Raba or maybe Rava, "The Torah states a wound for a wound." So in the, in the, uh, if you remember in that, in the various, well, in this, in g- this case in Exodus, there's a whole list of things s- uh, that, oh, sorry, this way, um, where when men fight and one of them is injured, if other damage ensues, it's eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
So there's this whole long list, and God is not a blabbermouth, so it, so in theory, if we have so many different examples that are basically saying the same thing, there must be meaning to the various ones, right?
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Exactly.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, so in this case, he's trying to say, "Well, what, what is the meaning that wound for wound is carrying?"
Right. And he says that what, why it lists wound for wound is, is to teach this particular point that the injurer must pay to compensate for pain at the v- remember now v- many months ago or weeks ago, at the very beginning, we started learning this with a list of types of damages that you have to pay.
That was in the Mishnah, right? And one of them was to compensate for pain. Exactly. And-
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Okay. So-
Rav Zvi is, is starting out with the premise that everyone agrees on, everyone, whether they're convinced or willing to acknowledge that eye for an eye means an actual eye or money, everyone agrees that that seemingly superfluous wound for wound must mean something other than actual because it's superfluous to, uh, a- actually all those other phrases.
Um, burn for burn specifically is the one that's named as the one to which it's superfluous. And therefore, everyone agrees this means money for pain, compensation for pain, regardless of how you carry out the damage. We all agree that the damage has to be compensated for. The actual people say, "Well, the Torah means that's actually poking out an eye."
The money people say, "No, no, no, that always meant money." But rega- regardless, all agree there must be money- Mm-hmm ... for pain in addition to however you compensate for damage. And r- it's not obvious how it does that, but Rashi points out that it's on the next page that this is identified as a , a seemingly superfluous verse from which blah, blah, blah, we learn money for pain
Regardless of how you take care of the actual damage requirement, right?
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so the basic case is that somebody, the injurer, pokes out somebody's eye, and what's gonna happen? One group says we poke out his eye. The other group says he only pays damages for the value of the eye. But both agree that he also pays extra money to compensate for the pain that the person who's initially, uh, eye poked out suffered.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: That's the starting place
DAN LIBENSON: of- And so starting place, like we all agree on that, right? Right. We, we all agree on this. So the next... So then he, this is, I think as this Rav Zvi, uh, going on,
BENAY LAPPE: he's saying- Yes, he's saying given that-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm ...
BENAY LAPPE: okay.
DAN LIBENSON: And if it enters your mind that an eye for an eye means the removal of an actual eye, so in other words, if you, if you think that what this means is that we might actually poke out the injurer's eye and also charge him for pain, right?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, ex- yeah, except it's not- Yeah. It's not that if you think this means an actual eye, it's if you believe that when the Torah says-
DAN LIBENSON: Right ...
BENAY LAPPE: eye for an eye, that means an actual eye.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: You- that's not true. If you think that God generally, in the Torah, as in when God says, "Eye for an eye," God means an actual eye, that can't possibly be workable or feasible or plausible-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
Because- For the
BENAY LAPPE: following
DAN LIBENSON: reasons For the following reason, 'cause we know that if the, the injurer, if the malefactor's eye gets poked out-
BENAY LAPPE: Right ...
DAN LIBENSON: then he will also have pain.
BENAY LAPPE: Right, as a result of that procedure.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? And therefore, through experiencing that pain as a result of that procedure, he's kind of discharged his- Mm-hmm
pain obligation. Mm-hmm. His pain compensation obligation. And therefore, he wouldn't have to pay money to the injured party for that pain. And if he does, it's kind of a double pain.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Obligation. Right. Uh-huh.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. I- it's interesting because, like, uh, for the first time when I was, like, trying to process this, it was striking me, like, oh, wait, the, the lex talionis, right, the, the actual eye for an eye idea, right, the, the, the old punishment fit the crime idea, right, it actually doesn't compensate the injured party other than, you know, some, like, revenge is a best dish, sort of a dish best served cold idea, right?
Like, somehow I'm gonna feel compensated that he got the same, but I, I'm actually not getting any money for my lost wages. I'm not getting any money for my... You know, so it's not, it's actually not necessarily the preferred, uh, punishment from the sake of, from the, from the perspective of, of kind of making things as best as they can be for the person who is injured.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I think, I think the original concern of the Torah was never the injured party.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: It was probably deterrence. It was sort of the rectification of the soul of the injurer.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And, and I don't think it was, you know, until we get to proto-rabbis, because by the time we have rabbis, we have monetary compensation.
But- Mm-hmm ... s- somewhere, you know, in the maybe few hundred years before the rabbis or in the early, early, early, early guys, um, there starts to be that, um, perspective of- What's it called? There's a fancy name for a debt What's it, something something justice. Not res- Oh, uh- Is it restorative, restorative justice?
I
DAN LIBENSON: think so. Something like that, yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: It, it's interesting too, 'cause I, I've been thinking, I've been teaching another class about the Moses stories, you know, from the Bible, and there's this really odd story that's told right after the, the, um, burning bush story where, you know, God comes in the middle of the night to Moses' camp, and he basically wants to kill Moses.
And Moses' wife circumcises their son and kind of holds up the foreskin and says, you know, "You're a bridegroom of blood to me," somehow gets God to not kill him because of this. And, and there's this like mise- like, what is this about? And I, I have a take on it, but, which is very different, but, but, um, I was listening to Richard Elliott Friedman, and I think he was quoting, uh, another scholar saying that what this is about is that Moses had killed the Egyptian taskmaster.
He basically had murdered somebody, and he had never paid the price for that murder. And the, the, the price to be paid for murder is the death penalty. And so really, Moses was, uh, sort of eligible or, you know, he was supposed to receive the death penalty 'cause he had murdered somebody. And what's actually happening in this kind of like very archaic, you know, story is that God is coming to exact the penalty even though he's just hired Moses to lead the people.
Like, it sort of doesn't make sense to us as modern people because we have such a different idea of justice or how there are exceptions made to justice that have to do with other principles. But in the ancient world, there was a very clear, almost like, it was almost like it wasn't like a decision or a justice system, it was almost like a, a kind of a agglomeration of like, you know, muck in the universe, you know?
And if you, if you kind of- Right ... mucked the universe by killing someone, the only way to unmuck it is for you to be killed, and it had nothing really to do with justice to an individual and any of that. So your savara coming in and saying, "Wait a second, this doesn't make any sense." Like, how is that helping anybody?
You know, at this point if we kill Moses, now the entire, that God has just put him in charge of the people, now there's gonna be no one in charge. How does that make any sense? It's kinda like that's not a question that is, um, on, on the table in the ancient world. It's not how they thought. And so then when we come to the Torah, you know, in the time of the Talmud and we say, "Well, what does an eye for an eye mean?"
Well, it probably is much more likely that it comes out of that notion that this is really about setting right the muck in the universe rather than any kind of justice. And so when we say, "Okay, we're gonna bring our savara to it," I mean, that itself is an innovation because there was no savara in the ancient literature.
At least, I mean, I'm not sure that I buy all of that, but it's an interesting take.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I, I, and I'm not sure if it's muck in the universe or muck for the person that, that this, the physical retribution is the expiation, and the death penalty is exp- atory. Uh-huh It's what, it's the thing that is understood to release, you know- Uh- That's it.
Uh-huh. That's the kaparah- Uh-huh ... that this person needs for, in order... That's, that's the framework of the Torah- Right ... f- I think, for their soul to go up to heaven. So it's sort of like, "This is for your own good." Right. It, it hurts me more than... Right? More than- Well- ... it's gonna hurt you. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. Because what really confused me, like, the first six times I read this, was I was kind of like, "Wait, why, why just the fact that the injurer got pain when his eye was poked out by the court, like, why in any way does that relieve him of having to compensate the injured party for his pain?
Because that doesn't help the injured party at all." And then, you know, at a certain point I realized like, wait, that's not what it, it's not what it's about.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. I think that's right.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Until they said, "That is what it needs to be about."
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Correct. Or, so what we're g- gonna see here i- is, like, you know, the rabbis are saying, yeah, and that's why this can't be how it, how it, how we should understand it because that doesn't sort of make sense, or that doesn't accord with our Seforah.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right, exactly. And, and probably just as the rabbis were kind of over the temple, and no longer believed that standing knee-deep in blood killing an animal so God would smell it and love you was any longer a reasonable thing to believe, they probably s- no longer believed that people needed to be harmed in precisely the same way that they harmed in order for their soul to be expiated.
Mm-hmm. But rather, they could do it with this f- you know, newfangled process that we're gonna call teshuvah.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. Right. Yeah. Teshuvah meaning repentance and prayer and that kind of thing, yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: So okay. So, so if it enters your mind that an eye for an eye means the removal of an actual eye, that can't be.
BENAY LAPPE: And compensation. The, the, the, what, what the teshuvah required is compensation. Uh-huh. Making the injured party whole. Okay. Sorry, sorry, sorry.
DAN LIBENSON: All right. So if it, if it enters your mind that we, we actually poke out the eye of the, uh, malefactor, that can't be because what would then happen is that just as the injured party has pain, now the injurer also has pain, and that's, that means that he's gonna kind of wipe the slate clean just based on his own pain.
But we know from the wound for wound that it actually means money, so the two don't square. Right? So, so the- Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: But care, but careful. The wound for wound means money only for the pain- Pain ... part.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Every... W- what's funny to me, and I'm trying to wrap my head around it, is that the premise here is that everyone agrees, even those who are willing to point out that the Torah for sure always meant an actual eye- They themselves believe that it's an actual life plus money for the pain component Makes no
DAN LIBENSON: sense.
BENAY LAPPE: It, it's, yeah, I won- I'm wondering if this could have been an intermediate stage in the shift from People actually poking out eyes, 'cause I'm certain, I am absolutely certain that at one point in the early Torah days, they were poking inju- Yeah ... you know-
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah ...
BENAY LAPPE: people's eyes out. But maybe somewhere before it went to full monetary compensation, I wonder if there was an intermediate stage of, "Yeah, we're gonna poke your eye out."
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. "
BENAY LAPPE: And we're gonna make you pay on top for money, and we're gonna see..." We're not gonna actually cover this far into this text. Yeah. But there are other monetary categories that seem to be accepted by the folks who are saying an actual eye.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So maybe there was this intermediate phase where people's eyes were being poked out, and additionally they were compensating the injured party.
Um, so maybe, you, you know what I mean? It was- Right ... somewhere in the middle of expiation and compensation mindsets.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, and I, I can imagine it either, like, two different ways. Either there was, like you're saying, there was this intermediate phase, let's say it was for 500 years even, where people were getting their eyes poked out and they were being forced to pay money for pain.
Uh, or that- They had a couple of options ... never happened, right? Or, or- Uh-huh ... they're just, like, leading you through, it's almost like a cross-examination, where they're leading you through a thing and they're saying, like, "Okay, well, let's take the first step first." And what's interesting is, like, we're not really given the first step here, where, like you said, it's on a different page, or Rashi's telling us it's somewhere else.
But, you know, I kind of imagine the cross-examination where they're saying, "Okay, well, you think that the eye for an eye means poke out somebody's eye, correct?" "Yes." "Okay. Now, uh, what does wound for a wound mean?" "Uh, well, I don't, I don't know." "Well, let's work it through. Wound for wound, it shouldn't say wound for wound 'cause it already says burn for burn, right?
And so that's obviously extra verbiage, right?" He's like, "Yes." "And then God- ... is not a blabbermouth, correct?" "Yes." "Uh, and so wound for wound must mean something else, correct?" "Yes." "Uh, well, so maybe wound for wound means you pay for the pain, uh, even though you're compensating for the eye, you know, separately?" "Yes."
"Well, I got you, because now it means that now that you've admitted that, then how can you a- actually poke out somebody's eye? Because then they'll have pain, but their pain paid for the other pain. But you admitted in the previous sentence that pain, that there was monetary compensation for pain. So now I've caught you, you know, in this kind of..."
And, um, you know, again, it's like one, it strikes me as one of these things that, like, there's actually, like, a few holes in this cross-examination you know? There's all kinds of, like, that you kind of caught the guy, like the guy shouldn't have admitted that wound for wound meant pain, you know, meant them paying for pain.
But since we already, since he already admitted it, we, we kind of brought him down a, a path and we've caught him in the, in the, in the, uh, you know, logical failure like two steps later. Uh- He could say, "You know what? Well, let's backtrack. I actually don't... Okay, fine. I don't agree that he should pay for it.
Wound for wound must have a different meaning," which the Talmud does a lot. It says, "Well, you know, we've, we've messed it up here, so let's- For sure ... go back and say, 'Well, maybe wound for wound doesn't mean...'" So I, I don't know which one, which one it is. And, and if it's the first one that said like, "Hey, we've been, for a few hundred years already we've been doing this thing where you get your eye poked out and you also have to pay damages for the pain," you're kind of like, "Well, it's, it turns out we've been doing it wrong for the last 500 years or 200 years.
Because when you think about it logically, we can't actually charge somebody for pain and also poke their eye out. So sorry for the people who got their eyes poked out, but now it turns out that we've, we ha- in order to logically make it all work, we, we can't be poking eyes out anymore." So I, you know, which-
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah
its
DAN LIBENSON: own kind of weird situation.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, yeah. I like it, but I think if, if, if my new theory is right, that these are the sample arguments that you shouldn't offer the people to bring them along because they're gonna see right through it- Uh-huh ... and they're gonna offer the following common sense, um, challenge, then...
I forgot where I started that sentence, but in any case
DAN LIBENSON: But it confirms your, your idea that this is kind of ultimately like a not super convincing one, and it's short of like telling the students- Yeah ... like, "Don't use this one. It's actually, it's got too many holes in it." Yeah Yeah. Um, okay. So, uh, so that, so that can't be.
That, so right, so, uh- Right.
BENAY LAPPE: So, so this is the beginning of one of those arguments it starts out with the Torah couldn't possibly mean an actual eye.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, because that would make the pain not work, the pain payment not work.
BENAY LAPPE: Right, because you'd have this following problem. Okay, wait, let me think through this.
So let's say I'm an early rabbi, I'm a, like, a student at Yavne, and I wanna tell the people that, "It's okay, it's okay. This is what God wants: money." Um, I might say, "The Torah, of, of course it's money because the Torah could never..." Yeah, this is right. This works. "The Torah could never have meant an actual eye because of this."
This is gonna get you in trouble. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, don't-
BENAY LAPPE: Don't go down this path. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So, but before we agree not to go down this path, the other side brings up this, uh, reply that says, "Well, so what's the difficulty? Maybe we're talking about a case where there's a person who is delicate, so he has more pain, and there's a person who's not delicate, so he does not have the same amount of pain."
So basically the, the victim had a lot of pain from their poking out of the eye because they have a l- very, you know, very pain in- oriented nervous system, you know, so they're in t- intense pain. And the, uh, init- the perpetrator, he's just not so, uh, you know, not so pain, uh, sensitive, and so he poked out his eye.
He's sad about it, now he can't see, but he's not really having a lot of pain. Not a lot of pain. So now there's a, so now there's a delta, a pain delta, you know. There's a- Right. Exactly ... much more pain felt w- with one than the other. So that's the case in which you compensate monetarily for that pain even though you got your eye actually poked out.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, and I think the, the assumption is that there will inevitably be... In fact, most cases- Uh-huh ... will be a case where there's a delta.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: And so what happens? Keep, we'll keep going. In this, in this- So,
DAN LIBENSON: and in, in, in such a case, what is the practical difference of the Torah stating a wound for a wound?
Uh, in other words, why, so then why do we unders- what do we understand the meaning of wound for wound to be? It means that the injurer has to give compensation for the difference between them and, and the pain. So it doesn't mean that the injurer has to pay compensation for all the pain, it's just that they have to pay compensation for the difference in the pain between the two.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. And that, that delta of pain... Let me s- I'm working out n- it out myself. It's so slippery. Okay, that delta pain compensation isn't duplicative- Right ... of the, of the perpetrator's pain, and therefore not, and therefore doing actual eye wouldn't be unfair and a violation of- The pain compensation component.
He's not giving two pain compensations. He's- Right. Right ... the sum of his own experience plus the delta- Right ... equals essentially one demanded pain compensation. And see? Th- there is actually no fundamental reason, at least given here, with respect to this pain issue, this money for pain as an additional compensation, that comes from the Torah actually meaning a literal eye.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. And- Yeah. Okay ... so, and, and, and I think it refers back to this earlier, right? Remember we were, like, looking at this going, what if he has a big eye and a small eye or a, you know, whatever? And like- Absolutely ... we said, like, you know, at the end of the day, like, what you're getting is eyesight for eyesight.
And so the compensation is full because it's, he's losing his eyesight in compensation for having taken the eyesight of, of the first one. So that's kind of fair. It's 100% for 100%. Uh, here we're saying, well, okay, and, and, and so in that spiritual notion, right, that the, the getting rid of the muck or the expiation or whatever, the expiation is complete because you paid the same price that you exacted from the- Yeah
first, from the party that you injured. But here, because of the pain, let's say this person has pain at 100 and your pain was only a 10. Just because you suffered pain when your eye was poked out and, uh, the injurer's eye was poked out, he didn't, he, he, there's still a 90 per- a 90 pain deficit. You know, he still owes compensation for the 90 pain difference.
And, and that's what the Torah's getting at with wound for wound. So, so at the end of the day, it, it means here that don't think that the Torah couldn't have meant poke out an actual eye. It could have, and wound for wound is not saying that in every case you have to pay money for the pain. It just means that, that in every case you have to pay money for the difference in pain.
Right. And that, that saves the possibility that the Torah does mean an actual eye for an actual eye.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. So this line of persuasive pitching that our, our ac- our current law of monetary compensation- It's not gonna work to convince people that what we do now is really in line with the Torah they just heard in the marketplace.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: I'm kinda liking this new theory, I really am.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, I, I, I'm also trying to think about, like, um, yeah, I mean, what you said at the beginning, it's like, okay, so I'm just, uh, like I'm thinking back to the agenda. Okay, so the, like, the agenda, the, the pedagogic agenda here of the Talmud is trying to teach the students that actually the Torah does mean or, or certainly could mean an actual eye for an eye, and we've changed that.
So in that sense, this little piece of Talmud is kind of confirming for the students, like, "Don't, don't get fooled that the Torah couldn't possibly have meant money." Uh, sorry, the, "Don't, don't get fooled to think that the Torah couldn't possibly have meant poke out an actual eye. It, it actually could, could have meant poke out an actual eye and, and probably did."
The marketing side, you know, we're also trying to teach you how to market this to the, the regular people. Um, I also think, like, it, there, I, I also think, like, it's saying, like, look, I mean, probably the regular people are not gonna come up with these, like, uh, these, these three different, uh, you know, arguments about what these...
So you know, I, I actually think it sort of means like, yeah, if you wanna throw the wound for a wound point in, you know, as, as, as another one of your 10 reasons for telling the people that the Torah always meant money, uh, y- you know, they probably won't pick up on it. I don't know. Uh.
BENAY LAPPE: I don't know. I don't know.
I'm not sure. You think they
DAN LIBENSON: won't pick up on it? Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: M- my new theory is these are the things, these quote unquote proofs that fail-
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh ...
BENAY LAPPE: are actually, because they all fail from people bringing common sense. That's what the people are gonna bring, common sense. They're not gonna bring ridiculously convoluted, you know, Gezeira Shavas and whatever.
That's what you can bring to them. Uh-huh. But they're gonna bring back to you arguments from Svara.
DAN LIBENSON: And what is their argument here from Svara?
BENAY LAPPE: Their argument here is the common sense of-
DAN LIBENSON: We ca- the Torah could have meant an actual eye because
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I know that the eye poker outer has to pay a monetary compensation for pain separate from whether or not he gets his eye poked out.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: But if he gets his eye poked out, um, it's not actually a problem for him to pay money because ... And it won't be duplicative or doubling his pain, um category because there will always be or likely to be, or, and sometimes there are and where there aren't, I, who cares about it, we've already determined where we can do it, we can do it, where we can't, we can't.
There will be these cases where there will be a difference between the injured party's pain and the pain he experienced when he had his eye poked out, and in those cases, he can fulfill his obligation to do monetary pain compensation while also getting his eye poked out, and it isn't unfair to him in the pain category.
He's not getting two pain-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm ...
BENAY LAPPE: obligations. Mm-hmm. So I, I, I, I'm really, I'm really
DAN LIBENSON: f- Okay ...
BENAY LAPPE: I think a hu- a regular person could think through that. You don't need-
DAN LIBENSON: That's my question. It, still is pretty sophisticated. Uh, but, but no, but I hear, I
BENAY LAPPE: don't disagree with you. I don't think so. I, I think this is everyday reasoning.
Thi- Uh-huh ... this is not forced. It, it's, it's ch- it's sharp, for sure, but, um, it doesn't require kind of knowing the rules of the game and being in on the kind of secret, exegetical, kind of far-fetched-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm ...
BENAY LAPPE: you know, ridiculous techniques of the expert in biblical exegesis to come up with some new idea.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: I, I'm, I'm li- I'm liking this new theory. I think, I think this is, watch out, this isn't gonna work 'cause people will come up with this.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Don't go, don't go down this road. That's a, that, I'm sticking with that for now. Mm-hmm. Because last week, the way I was understanding these failed proofs was, you know, like that sedimentary rock or whatever it was called, where, you know, the rock that has a number of layers.
That the Talmud is this mixture of, um, three layers of material all mixed up in different orders. A- and if you color-coded them and then re-sifted them, you could put them in buckets. Mm-hmm. One category being w- ways to convince others that what you're doing is really what the Torah meant. So the marketing tools is one layer.
The, but d- r- but remember, this is a radical move.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: You can, you know, overturn Torah. That's a second agenda.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And the third agenda being let me- Organize this text so that when you learn it, you become- Mm ... crash flex, you become a, a sharper thinker and so on and so forth. But if you assume that, like, you've convinced me that everyone in the room at Yavneh was down with, of course, the Torah meant this before, and of course, we have radically deviated and we can- Mm-hmm
then the Talmud doesn't actually need to send that message home. Right. That's the premise of it.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. Right.
BENAY LAPPE: So then we have to think of some other reason why it includes these sections that make it obvious that we're-
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh ...
BENAY LAPPE: deviating and that s- that fail. You know what I mean? Mm.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah,
DAN LIBENSON: yeah. Okay.
I'm, I'm not sure I totally think it doesn't have to send it home, 'cause I think it still is being used for students. So I think that there is, it is trying to message that, that, uh, we can radically depart from the Torah, and it does, it does, it doesn't have to, it doesn't necessarily assume that it-
BENAY LAPPE: Mm-hmm
DAN LIBENSON: but, but it's also, uh, it's also working on the marketing. So, uh, yeah, we should pursue. I, you know, the one thing that I'm thinking about as you're talking is, like, you know, I've, I, I haven't had a lot of experience as, you know, I've had no experience as, like, a congregational rabbi or anything like that. So I don't know, like, how often this is.
I, I'm not even that involved of a congregant, but there have been a few times when I've been, like, on a committee with... And I've been in the category of, like, regular people, uh, but I tended to know more, you know, more like a rabbi, like, knowing stuff. And so then I can kind of be, like, an observer to watch the dynamic between the rabbi and the people.
And, um, and, and, and I was on a search committee once for, for a rabbi and, um, you know, it was interesting because at one point there was, they were asking the rabbi, the rabbinical candidate if they would perform an intermarriage and, and this was sort of like an older, you know, old school rabbi. I think he was kind of used to, not to stereotype, but he was kind of used to the people not being that sophisticated.
And this was also, like, a very smart group of people. They weren't necessarily Jewishly so sophisticated, although I think some of them were relatively so. But, um, but, but anyway, the rabbi said he can't perform an intermarriage because, like, um- 'Cause what a marriage is, you know, w- a rabbi performing a marriage is, like, actually, you know, creating some s- mystical bond.
And, uh, since there w- the other person's not Jewish, he actually doesn't have the authority to perform that marriage. Even if he wanted to, he doesn't have the authority because, like, a rabbi isn't, has no jurisdiction over non-Jews, basically was his point. And the people on the committee were having none of that.
They were like, "That's..." I think one of them actually said, "Well, that is absurd. That is silly because the state gives you that authority. Like, you know, so you're, you're just the officiant conducting the... So, fine, so don't consider it to be, like, a Jewishly official bond or whatever, but you have the authority to perform this wedding because the state gives you that authority.
And so don't tell me that you're not able to, you know. You, you gotta tell me that you don't want to. That's another story." So they kind of weren't buying that one. And then there was another case where the, they said, "Could a non-Jew have a, uh, c- be called to the Torah at a bar mitzvah, like, of, of his child," let's say.
And the r- rabbi, the same one, I think, said, um, "No, because the, the blessing for the, uh, reading of the Torah is that we were chosen from among the nations. And since a non-Jew wouldn't have been chosen from the nations, you know, no, no down- Not, uh, not to insult them, but I mean, just like we believe that the Jews are a chosen people.
So you, that wouldn't actually be a correct statement, and therefore you couldn't have a non-Jew saying it, 'cause it's basically, like, kind of a lie. And, uh, we don't want to, like, you know, endorse lying." And the people actually, like, they would have accepted that ac- you know, because they don't know. They, they didn't know Hebrew, you know, so they're like, "Oh, it..."
But what was funny was that they actually said, "Oh, that's what it means?" You know? And, um, the rabbi said, "Yeah, what did you think it meant?" And, and they th- thought it meant, like, now we're gonna read the next part of the Torah. And, um- You know, I was kinda like, "Well, actually, I think it doesn't mean now we're gonna read the next part of the Torah," because the meaning is not what the words technically mean.
The meaning is what the community thinks they mean, and clearly the rabbi was the one who, like, didn't, who, who had the wrong idea about what the meaning was, 'cause the rabbi was looking at an overly narrow sense of meaning. But anyway, the, the point was that they, that, that, that, that these word, that that was an argument because it was technical, right?
Because- Yes ... it was, like, what is the- Yes ... what is the meaning of the words, where he could have carried the day potentially, um, because they would just say, "Oh, I didn't know that," right? Whereas in the one about the marriage, it was like, it w- there was a technical aspect to it, but the, the people were, they knew about the technicalities of the government, you know, and they were, they actually in a way knew more than the rabbi, or their savara or their logic was working better than the rabbi, and they weren't, they weren't buying it.
So there, there, there are, you know, it, it is- interesting to, to see, like, how these cases come up.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I love, I love that analogy because I, I've lived through it. I've lived through this shift on intermarriage. And not that we're at completely in a different place than we were 20, 30, 1,000 years ago, but
Watching, watching conservative rabbis try to justify why they're not doing intermarriages has been exactly, it's been a study in this. Yeah. This phenomenon of sometimes them saying things that you know they don't actually believe.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: But they're not even conscious of the fact that they don't actually believe it.
They just know they're not ready to get in trouble with the RA.
DAN LIBENSON: The rab- the-
BENAY LAPPE: With the rabbinical assembly ...
DAN LIBENSON: yes, I know. The, like, union. Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Right, the union which forbid, for- they, I don't know where they are now exactly, but I think that... I'm not sure.
DAN LIBENSON: I think they still forbid it.
BENAY LAPPE: I think they still forbid it, right.
Even attending an intermarriage, uh, was possibly s- It's grounds
DAN LIBENSON: now maybe, yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, was grounds for dismissal.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm
BENAY LAPPE: And to see them tr... It, it, and they're gi- I think you're onto something, Dan, I really do. Um- Well, and,
DAN LIBENSON: and I think some of these older rabbis, like they were given a party line at some point. Exactly. Like they were told, they were taught what to say.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. And now
DAN LIBENSON: they're still doing it. That's, that's ... Yeah, it's exactly.
And they're still, they're just saying what they were taught to say, but the people aren't buying it anymore because the people- That's right ... have either gotten more sophisticated or less, um, uh, naive or, or something, you know? And, and, and yeah, so just like you're saying. So we're seeing what it looks like.
And, and so then, so then maybe to understand what's going on here, it's like, okay, imagine that now the rabbinical as- assembly or whatever has to have a set of meetings where they're like, "Hey, guys, the people are onto us," you know? Like they, "We're gonna have to..." Like, so either we're gonna have to change our position on this, or we're gonna have to change the marketing because our old marketing isn't working.
And so maybe we're seeing a version of the, uh, protocols of that meeting, you know, the, the transcript of that meeting where- Yeah ... we're kind of seeing, okay, well, like let's try this argument. Eh, let's not. They're gonna pick up on this one. Uh, but let's not use that one, uh, et cetera.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, you know what else this has brought up for me?
The way The, the way queer folk have had to message differently depending on, you know, what, what the world out there could accept. I remember back in the day, gosh, it was probably in the mid-'90s, after the conservative movement had begun to entertain the, quote-unquote, "gay question," and things had been essentially tabled.
And with, uh, a, what they call the consensus statement. It was a general agreement, we're not gonna accept openly gay candidates, we're not gonna ordain them, um, but we're gonna take a period of time to study. And I remember this was when I was starting Svara, and the, the one thing I had in my mind about why I wanted queer folk to come to this yeshiva was, I don't know if I can write the teshuvah that's going to, you know, do it, that's gonna pass, but I could train other people with what they're gonna need to know to write that teshuvah.
And- While, while I was thinking that maybe I could write it, I remember having a conversation with Elliot Dorff, one of my teachers whom I love. He's one of my heroes. And I told him what I thought the rationale should be, and he said to me, "Yes, of course. That's right, but it will never pass." And he was writing the teshuvah, and he said, "I can't write that.
Even though that's what I wanna write, it will never pass." Hmm. "So it's not gonna help us-"
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm "...
BENAY LAPPE: to say the truth."
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: And, and it reminded me of the argument that queer p- queer folk had to give back in the day, which was, "We were born this way. There's nothing we can do. This is who we are." Hmm. "We have no choice."
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So therefore, anti-gay laws are kind of inhumane because it's not my fault, and those arguments worked. And for some people, that is, was the truth of their experience. Fine.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: But a, a bunch of us knew that that wasn't actually the truth for everybody, and if you look at today, it's, I think it's very much that lots of people, not everyone, some people feel, "This is how I was born, and that's it."
Great. But lots and lots of people feel, "I have a choice."
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. "I
BENAY LAPPE: could be with a man, I could be with a woman, I could be with a non-bi- binary person. The whole gender thing is messed up in the first place. It is wrong, therefore..." But we couldn't say that then.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: We, we, we couldn't say, "Of course I can choose to be whomever I want and love whomever."
That was not gonna fly because it didn't press a button that was gonna work. Hmm. But the y- you know, I have no choice argument was gonna work. Anyway, all this is just to say that-
I don't know even what it is. But it's something about you have to find the messaging that works to get where you know it's right to go.
DAN LIBENSON: That's what it is, yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. And, and what we're seeing here is, um... Yeah, I mean, what, what, what, what, you know, it, it's interesting. It's, I feel like it's another layer to what we've been talking about in terms of what we're seeing here, 'cause what we're seeing here is partly training of the students to have the level of kind of chutzpah to say, "We can change things if we need to."
Uh, which by the way is part of the problem with the Rabbinical Assembly and everything, is that they, at that time about the gay question and, you know, and lots of other things. For some reason, they, they don't think they have the power that they do have. That, a- and we've talked about that in other places, the whole I have, my hands are tied with the- They
BENAY LAPPE: pretend they don't have the power that they do have.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, they pretend- Some believe
BENAY LAPPE: it ...
DAN LIBENSON: I feel like some of them probably think it, because they've been trained a certain way. They have, they haven't been trained to, to think that they have. I mean, I don't think that the conservative movement's training, even though there are some amazing-
BENAY LAPPE: You're right.
You're right ...
DAN LIBENSON: professors there, like, like David Kramer, who do say this. But, like, at the end of the day, it feels like people are coming out with this notion of a, um, a kind of a, a, the, a, a, a demand of fidelity to some older conservative with a small C, you know, kind of approach, which is not- It's clearly not, you know, sort of original to the Talmud and, and like, but it's a take.
And, um, so they think that they, they can't. But so here we're seeing a different kind of pedagogy where it's telling the people like, "Actually, you can." Uh, and then they're- on the sort of marketing side there's like, "Okay, and here's how we're gonna market it to your kind of standard, you know, yokels who don't really know anything."
But then there's another layer that says, "But wait a second. What happens as the people start to not be yokels?" You know, and as they, or, you know, as they pick up on this, or maybe, you know, even as times change and maybe they did have it. And m- you know, I said like the one thing that I feel about the Talmud is that they never imagined that any regular people were ever gonna be reading the Talmud.
But maybe they did imagine that some would or some version of, that, that people do get more sophisticated. You know, maybe there's something here that we're seeing like as people either personally get older, learn more, become more sophisticated, or as society as a whole becomes more sophisticated, some of the questions are gonna be tougher.
And as a rabbi or as a decision-maker, you're gonna have sort of two choices and, and maybe you'll do both. One is to change the law as needed, and you have the power to do that. And the other is if you don't think that the law should be changed, you're gonna have to get smarter about how you, uh, market the law as it is.
So I, I don't feel great about that. I mean, I, I, I, I, part of the reason why I think we need like a third way, you know, a new, a new Talmud or a new whatever is because I, I think we're beyond that point where I don't think we should be marketing stuff falsely. You know? Or like, and, and if we need to, and if we don't feel good about marketing the stuff as it is, then I think probably the answer is to change the stuff as it is.
But, but anyway, you know, in the same way that when we look back at the Torah and we see what was really going on there was this notion of like spiritual muck that had to be, you know, mucked out or, or, you know, same for same, you know, is the way that you cancel it out, like matter and anti-matter. Uh, in the Talmud there was kind of more of a sense of, um, you know, elitism and maybe benevolent elitism, but, but now maybe that's where w- our, in our future we're gonna look at that with the same kind of like puzzlement that we now look at the spiritual muck.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. That sounds right.
DAN LIBENSON: All right, so, uh, I think we can go through the next one because it's very similar structure like we did last week. Yes. And we can sort of just look at it, and it's sort of more or less the same and, and, and, uh, that'll, that'll work. Yes. So the next one is, uh, Rav Papa, uh, who says in the name of this time Rava, so maybe, you know, again, maybe they were both Rava.
We don't know. Anyway, the Torah states, "And he shall surely heal him." Uh, so, um, so that's, uh, that's here. "When, uh, when men quarrel and one strikes the other with a stone or fist and he does not die but he takes to bed, if he then gets up and walks outdoors, the assailant shall go unpunished except that he must pay for his idleness, and shall cause him to be thoroughly healed."
So this is a, a, a notion that if you injure somebody and he doesn't die, then you have to pay for his lost wages basically and for his medical expenses, right?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. A- and yes, "And shall cause him to be thoroughly healed." Sorry I didn't change that. That's w- what, uh, I was translating as, "And he shall surely heal him," «ve-rapo yerape».
That, that's the same place. And this is another one of those seemingly superfluous, um-
Phrases because he, he shall surely heal him, or in some translations, he shall thoroughly heal him. The surely or the thoroughly part is the way nicey nice translations translate a doubling- Mm-hmm ... of a verb. But the rabbis, um, have a different way of dealing with the doubling of a verb. For them it's like, "Big opportunity here."
Uh, this is an obvious criatura, seemingly superfluous verse. One of these verbs means what it looks like, healing. The other means something completely different. Raw material to make new meaning. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm. Uh, so right. And just to explain- Thank- So it just hap- repo- europe- it basically means, like, he shall heal him, heal him.
And- Right ... and we know kind of from linguistics that heal him, heal him, that's a way that the Torah emphasizes, and that's why it, it, it gets usually translated as he shall surely heal him or he shall thoroughly heal them because it's like he shall really heal him. Uh, it's, uh, that's what the doubling means from a linguistic standpoint in ancient Hebrew, but the rabbis-
don't know that or don't believe it or don't want to believe it, and they think that if it says heal him, heal him, it must mean that the, the second heal him has a different meaning.
BENAY LAPPE: Thank you for that translation. You said it much more clearly than I did. Exactly right. And in any case, Rav Pappa's argument begins with the idea that that second occurrence of the word heal means, and everyone does agree, that it means- It means a monetary compensation for healing, i.e.
medical bills, is required of any injurer, even if that injurer has been punished with the same injury being done to him.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, uh-huh. Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: So we're just like back when we had, um, the pain compensation is a monetary additional compensation even if you understand the Torah to require an actual eye to be poked out.
That guy had to give also money for pain. Here, the guy also has to give money for medical expenses to the injured party even when he gets his own eye poked out. And if you either say that's what the Torah meant or refer to when the Torah was carried out in that way, that guy, everyone agrees, did give money for medical ex- expenses to the injured party.
Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh. Uh, it's interesting because, so I mean, w- it's probably more... But here, so in the case that's given here, uh, when men quarrel and one strikes the other and he does not die but takes to his bed, you're saying in a way, like, but if his eye gets poked out in this fight, from the other verse we know it's an eye for an eye, so, so the, uh, assailant's eye should be taken.
He's not punished in the sense that he's not killed, 'cause the other person didn't die. Uh, and you would think that maybe he doesn't have to pay for the medical expenses, 'cause he also had medical expenses. Well, we're gonna get to that. But, uh, but y- but the, the Torah here is saying no, no, he, he does have to pay for the medical expenses, um, even if he's, he's also been given an injury, his eye is poked out as well.
And, and so that's basically just where the Talmud is gonna go. So if it enters your mind that the phrase an eye for an eye, which comes, you know, a few verses after this, means the removal of an actual eye, that can't be so because just as a- as it is that the injured party needs healing, the injurer would also need healing.
So structurally it's the same as the previous case. Uh, if, if the injurer's eye is poked out, he has pain, like that was the previous case, and he also has the need for medical expenses. And in that old, you know, uh, tit for tat expiation, uh, that, that the fact that he also has medical expenses means that he shouldn't have to pay the first guy's medical expenses because he's paid for it based on needing medical care for, for himself.
Right? That's right. He's spiritually paid for it.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, so why would the Torah require that he pay compensation to the injured party? And, and again, the Talmud says, or the reply is, "And what's the difficulty? Uh, perhaps there is one whose flesh heals quickly, and there is another whose flesh does not heal quickly.
And in such a case, what is the practical difference of the Torah stating, 'And he shall surely heal him'? It means that the injurer has to give compensation for the difference between their respective medical costs." So structurally, exact- it's the same exact as the previous.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. So this, this reasoning, this just common logical reasoning which- Is the challenge to the contention that the Torah couldn't possibly mean poking the actual injurer's eye out Oh my God, I haven't had enough coffee today.
My sentences are, it, uh... The English is, it requires too many words, and I'm losing track of the beginning. Anyway, doing actual compensation actually is a possibility. You can ac- do actual poking out of injurer's eyes, and the m- required monetary compensation for medical bills that he then has to pay without unfairly burdening him with two medical bill compensations, which certainly that Torah didn't require.
Because in many cases or inevitably, there will be a difference in the medical bills between the two, and the injured party, injurer get, can get his eye poked out and pay that difference, and now he's done what the Torah wants.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, I mean, I think a good, like, case is, like, let's say somebody with a bleeding disorder.
Let's say the in- initial injured party has a bleeding disorder, so their eye gets poked out and they also have to have a blood transfusion because they have a bleeding disorder and they don't clot as quickly, whatever. And the, the injurer, his, he, he's get sentenced and his, as punishment, his eye is poked out, and he doesn't have a bleeding disorder, so his blood just clots, and he gets a scar and whatever, and he didn't- Yeah
have any extra medical. So, so now we see that, that the first guy has medical expenses that the second guy didn't have. And so now we see a case where you can actually poke out the injurer's eye, and he would have to pay medical expenses because his medical expenses were not sufficient to spiritually wipe out the first guy's medical expenses.
So he has to add some money to it.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, so okay, so my question is, and I, you know, we don't really... I mean, I, I don't know if you have an eas- a quick answer, or it's just something to think about, is, like, why this week, and I think it was last week, or maybe it was two weeks ago, we have these, these two cases that are structurally exactly the same in a row.
Mm-hmm. Where, where in other cases, we just have, like, one stitch. It's almost like, you know, we have one stitch, and in these cases, we have, like, two of the same stitch. And the question is, is it because, like, when it doesn't work out well, they're giving us, again? Like, or is it, you know, is it just a... Like, it feels like there's something there that I- Yeah
I wanna think about.
BENAY LAPPE: Maybe, but earlier we also had two, quote unquote, "proofs" that didn't work.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: We had the big eye, little eye.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: It's like- We're not talking about literal eyes, we're talking about eyesight. That failed as... Right? If you're looking at it as a proof for actual. Okay. That, that one was an, of this type, and the, the one immediately after that,
Yeah. Where we can do it, we can do it. Where we can't, we can't, and we let them go, right? Weren't those next to each other?
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, yeah. So maybe we have three... And wasn't, like- I
BENAY LAPPE: don't know. We need to, we need, we need to turn the camera and write these up on the board.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Next time.
DAN LIBENSON: Maybe, maybe, like, next ti- for next time, let's, let's look...
I mean, I... We'll see. Uh, we'll see if next time we, um, we have two more to go through, right? Uh, after this, or one more?
BENAY LAPPE: Two more.
DAN LIBENSON: Two more. So-
BENAY LAPPE: Today we did, today we did seven and eight.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. So either next week or maybe, maybe the week after if we wanna look back at the whole thing and try to, like, put some of...
Maybe we really should get a board up and stuff. But it, it, it really, like, once we've gone through them all to sort of have this global look at, like, the case, but more importantly than the case is this, this, what we're learning about the argumentation here and the structure and, and are we learning something separate from the cases where the Talmud is giving us two of the same style of argument versus the cases- Mm-hmm
where we're only getting one, and, uh, that, that'll be interesting to see if we see a commonality there.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Well, let's do that.
DAN LIBENSON: All right. So we will, uh, be back next week with, uh, with the, with the, perhaps the conclusion of this, of this section.
BENAY LAPPE: Great.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, thanks.
BENAY LAPPE: Thanks, Dan.
DAN LIBENSON: All right, take care.
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