Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Levi is one of the most quoted scholars in the Talmud - assuming he was one scholar and not two, which he may have been. Whether one or two, he or they lived a very long time ago, in the 3rd century give or take a generation. (And either he, or they, or someone else of the same name, seems to be buried until this very day in Mitch Pilcer's back yard in Zippori).
In any case. Back in the 3rd century Jerusalem was a small town, roughly the size of today's Old City, which is one square kilometer. Yet the Talmud on page 50a of the Pessachim tractate cites Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi as foretelling that in the future the city will be so large that a galloping horse will need half a day, from dawn until noon, to get from the edge of town to its center, and this in all directions.
I'm not an expert in galloping horses, but assuming one can gallop without stopping for all those hours, I expect the Jerusalem of 2013 hasn't yet reached the dimensions Yehoshua ben Lvi had in mind. Give us another 10-20 years and we'll get there, only 1,800 after he said we would.
(The Daf Yomi series, I remind you, is presented and explained here).
Showing posts with label Daf Yomi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daf Yomi. Show all posts
Sunday, August 11, 2013
How Many Jews Followed those Rabbis?
Menachem Ellon passed away a few months ago. He was 89. As a mark of respect I took upon myself to finally read his magisterial two-volume study of Jewish Law, which has been on my shelf for decades but which I never read cover-to-cover. Since it's more than 1,500 pages long and makes no pretensions of being a beach-book, I gave myself the entire year of mourning to get thru it. So far I'm behind schedule, but I have finally gotten the hang of it and it's fascinating, so I may yet stay on target. It may even be the case that I'm getting more out of the reading now, than I would have had I read it back when I bought it; important books can be like that.
One of the very first things I learned from the book is the importance of Jewish law as a living and developing legal system from 2nd temple era right up until the 18th century in Europe, and even into the 20th century in Arab lands. I hadn't given this much thought, but the claim that Jews are a nation, not only a religion, is strongly bolstered by the fact that until just yesterday in terms of history, Jews were running their own nation with their own laws and their own legal system, and the system was mostly common to them all while distinct from their surroundings.
Which then raises the question about the numbers: OK, so the elite studied the common literature throughout the millennia. But what about the broad public? Hundreds of thousands of us study Daf Yomi these days, but how common was such an education a thousand years ago? Two thousand?
Actually, just the other day we daf-yomi-folks passed a troubling section in Pessachim (page 49 a and b). The Gemara had been talking, in an idle sort of way, about how marrying into a family of Cohanim could be a smart move; then, suddenly, it veered into a discussion about how the scholars and the general public couldn't stand each other. One should spend as much as it takes, even one's entire fortune if need be, to have one's daughter marry a scholar. If that's not possible, then the son of a just man; Not that, then the son of a leader of the community. Not that, then the son of a philanthropist. If even the son of a philanthropist couldn't be found, one should marry off one's daughter to a teacher. But in no case should one ever have his daughter marry an Am Haaretz, a coarse "man of the land", probably best translated as an unschooled yokel. This then set off a string of invective against the Ami Aratzot. Rabbi Akiva, perhaps the greatest of the scholars of his age, told how in his days as an Am Haaretz (he began learning only at 40) he wanted to bite the scholars like a donkey - and why a donkey rather than a dog? Because a donkey, unlike a dog, breaks the bone when he bites. His disciple, Rabbi Meir, then added that marrying one's daughter to an Am Haaretz is like binding her and laying her in the path of a lion, because the Ami Haaretz, like a hungry beast, tears apart his woman and has no shame. The Braita then continues: Ami Haaretz hate us scholars even more than the gentiles hate Jews; and worst of all are those who once learned with us and then left, since they know our opinion of all the others.
The sources for all these harsh sentiments are Mishnaic, i.e 1-2 century Tana'im in Israel; the Babylonian Amoraim of the following centuries who created the bulk of the Gemara seem simply to have passed on the story with no comment, which is unusual. On the other hand, no-one ever censored it, either. The section is still there, and as I said, we passed it last week.
This thread is presented and explained here.
One of the very first things I learned from the book is the importance of Jewish law as a living and developing legal system from 2nd temple era right up until the 18th century in Europe, and even into the 20th century in Arab lands. I hadn't given this much thought, but the claim that Jews are a nation, not only a religion, is strongly bolstered by the fact that until just yesterday in terms of history, Jews were running their own nation with their own laws and their own legal system, and the system was mostly common to them all while distinct from their surroundings.
Which then raises the question about the numbers: OK, so the elite studied the common literature throughout the millennia. But what about the broad public? Hundreds of thousands of us study Daf Yomi these days, but how common was such an education a thousand years ago? Two thousand?
Actually, just the other day we daf-yomi-folks passed a troubling section in Pessachim (page 49 a and b). The Gemara had been talking, in an idle sort of way, about how marrying into a family of Cohanim could be a smart move; then, suddenly, it veered into a discussion about how the scholars and the general public couldn't stand each other. One should spend as much as it takes, even one's entire fortune if need be, to have one's daughter marry a scholar. If that's not possible, then the son of a just man; Not that, then the son of a leader of the community. Not that, then the son of a philanthropist. If even the son of a philanthropist couldn't be found, one should marry off one's daughter to a teacher. But in no case should one ever have his daughter marry an Am Haaretz, a coarse "man of the land", probably best translated as an unschooled yokel. This then set off a string of invective against the Ami Aratzot. Rabbi Akiva, perhaps the greatest of the scholars of his age, told how in his days as an Am Haaretz (he began learning only at 40) he wanted to bite the scholars like a donkey - and why a donkey rather than a dog? Because a donkey, unlike a dog, breaks the bone when he bites. His disciple, Rabbi Meir, then added that marrying one's daughter to an Am Haaretz is like binding her and laying her in the path of a lion, because the Ami Haaretz, like a hungry beast, tears apart his woman and has no shame. The Braita then continues: Ami Haaretz hate us scholars even more than the gentiles hate Jews; and worst of all are those who once learned with us and then left, since they know our opinion of all the others.
The sources for all these harsh sentiments are Mishnaic, i.e 1-2 century Tana'im in Israel; the Babylonian Amoraim of the following centuries who created the bulk of the Gemara seem simply to have passed on the story with no comment, which is unusual. On the other hand, no-one ever censored it, either. The section is still there, and as I said, we passed it last week.
This thread is presented and explained here.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Rabbi Eliezer wasn't like Cleopatra
There's a poignant story early in the Nidda tractate we're working our way through these days. Rabbi Eliezer had a big disagreement with some of his peers about an arcane matter of ritual purity. Rabbi Yehoshua forced through his position and it was generally adopted. After the death of Rabbi Eliezer, however, Rabbi Yehoshua changed the ruling to the position of Eliezer. So far, the Mishna. The Gemara, maybe 200 years later or more, picks up the story and asks for an explanation. The one given is that R. Eliezer was too close to the Sadducies ("Shmuti" is the term used), and R. Yehoshua felt that giving him any ground would give credibility to his other positions and that couldn't be allowed. Once he was dead there was no danger, so his positions where correct could now be acknowledged.
Nidda 7b.
Later in the tractate there's another discussion about sources of authority for knowledge and determining Halacha. The duscussion turns on a factual question about how far a feotus develops in its first 40 days. Rabbi Yishmael outlines his position, at which point someone (unnamed) tells him of a case where Cleopatra queen of Alexandria (that's how she's described) carried out an experiment on two of her slaves whom she had sentenced to death. She had them both inseminated, and then executed on the 41st day; on opening their wombs it was fond that both the male and female feotus had recognizable form. R. Yishmael responded sharply: I'm proving my point with a passage from the Bible,and you're bringing proof from the fools?!?
That's a pretty clear position, you'd think: that scholastic investigation trumps empiric investigation. It's also what you'd expect from large swathes of pre-modern scientific investigation. Except that the Gemara then offers a series of possible empiric explanations for Cleopatra's findings: perhaps one of the women was pregnant before she was convicted and inseminated? Or perhaps the guard had a bit of fun of his own, and the true insemination wasn't 41 days before the execution but less? The subtext being that empiric experimentation can be convincing - if your methodology is watertight. A very modern idea, that.
Nidda 30b
This thread is introduced and explained here. And then here's an item from Tablet Magazine which explains why I don't blog anymore.
Nidda 7b.
Later in the tractate there's another discussion about sources of authority for knowledge and determining Halacha. The duscussion turns on a factual question about how far a feotus develops in its first 40 days. Rabbi Yishmael outlines his position, at which point someone (unnamed) tells him of a case where Cleopatra queen of Alexandria (that's how she's described) carried out an experiment on two of her slaves whom she had sentenced to death. She had them both inseminated, and then executed on the 41st day; on opening their wombs it was fond that both the male and female feotus had recognizable form. R. Yishmael responded sharply: I'm proving my point with a passage from the Bible,and you're bringing proof from the fools?!?
That's a pretty clear position, you'd think: that scholastic investigation trumps empiric investigation. It's also what you'd expect from large swathes of pre-modern scientific investigation. Except that the Gemara then offers a series of possible empiric explanations for Cleopatra's findings: perhaps one of the women was pregnant before she was convicted and inseminated? Or perhaps the guard had a bit of fun of his own, and the true insemination wasn't 41 days before the execution but less? The subtext being that empiric experimentation can be convincing - if your methodology is watertight. A very modern idea, that.
Nidda 30b
This thread is introduced and explained here. And then here's an item from Tablet Magazine which explains why I don't blog anymore.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Law isn't Objective Science
The Mishna is instructing how to determine if various physical defects make an animal permanently impure and ineligible to be sacrificed while still being permitted for non-sacred consumption. At one point Rabbi Akiva suggests a method of checking a particular defect, in which a lamb seems to have only one testicle. The Gemara then brings a story of a case in which his method was used, yet after slaughtering the lamb it turned out the second testicle was there all along, only not visible. Rabbi Akiva permitted the animal to be eaten, while Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri forbade the animal to be eaten (as a fistrborn it should have been given to a cohen). This led to a sharp excahnge between the two rabbis:
Rabbi Akiva to Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri: how long are you going to waste the money of [the people of] Israel?
Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri to Rabbi Akiva: how long are you going to feed forbidden carcasses to Israel?
the original Hebrew is more pithy:
עד מתי אתה מכלה ממונם של ישראל?
עד מתי אתה מאכיל את ישראל נבילות?
Both scholars start from the same set of facts: the lamb seemed to have a defect, Akiva's proposed method of checking was used and proved the defect was permanent, and the animal was slaughtered based on that tested proposition. Then, they both agree, an external fact, unknowable at the moment of slaughter, was revealed. They differ on the ultimate outcome. Is doing your best enough? Is there an objective commandment which supercedes informed intentions? Do social considerations trump (unknowable) facts? Is there a legal truth which overrides all social measures and intentions?
This deliberation is exactly as fresh today as it was two thousand years ago when Akiva and Yochanan had their altercation; each side brings a set of values which precedes their interpretation of the law and informs it. It's the reason there can be no permanent, immutable and universal legal system: every legal system has to reflect the values of the society which legislated it and applies it and adapts it as the underlying values change.
B'chorot 40a.
If you've never visited this blog before, well, now it's too late; I've stopped blogging as described here.
Rabbi Akiva to Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri: how long are you going to waste the money of [the people of] Israel?
Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri to Rabbi Akiva: how long are you going to feed forbidden carcasses to Israel?
the original Hebrew is more pithy:
עד מתי אתה מכלה ממונם של ישראל?
עד מתי אתה מאכיל את ישראל נבילות?
Both scholars start from the same set of facts: the lamb seemed to have a defect, Akiva's proposed method of checking was used and proved the defect was permanent, and the animal was slaughtered based on that tested proposition. Then, they both agree, an external fact, unknowable at the moment of slaughter, was revealed. They differ on the ultimate outcome. Is doing your best enough? Is there an objective commandment which supercedes informed intentions? Do social considerations trump (unknowable) facts? Is there a legal truth which overrides all social measures and intentions?
This deliberation is exactly as fresh today as it was two thousand years ago when Akiva and Yochanan had their altercation; each side brings a set of values which precedes their interpretation of the law and informs it. It's the reason there can be no permanent, immutable and universal legal system: every legal system has to reflect the values of the society which legislated it and applies it and adapts it as the underlying values change.
B'chorot 40a.
If you've never visited this blog before, well, now it's too late; I've stopped blogging as described here.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Do Ants have a King? Is it Permissible to Ask?
It's been almost two months since I shut down this blog. The reason for the shutdown is still in place: Having been appointed as Israel's State Archivist and a high-ish civil servant, I can't write a political blog. (Nor, to be honest, do I have the time). Interestingly, however, since the shutdown there's a steady stream of a few hundred daily visitors to this dormant blog; apparently, if one believes the visitor stats, some of the posts are useful even long after they were written. Which poses a problem since truly dormant blogs eventually get deleted by the owners of the servers on which they reside (Google, in this case). So by way of staving off that fate, I will ocasionally post here, never on political matters, and only rarely - just enough to keep the appearence of a live blog.
Here's a nice Daf Yomi story from Hulin 56b, which we passed earlier this week. It is written, in Proverbs chapter 6 verses 6-8:
Go to the ant, you sluggard;
consider its ways and be wise!
7 It has no commander,
no overseer or ruler,
8 yet it stores its provisions in summer
and gathers its food at harvest.
Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta asked himself if this was really so, and decided to test it. On a hot summer day he found an anthill, and used his cloak to cast shade over it, since ants (so the story) like shade and dislike the hot sun. Soon an ant came out and saw the shade. Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta marked the ant so he could recognize it. The ant went back into the anthill and annonced that there was shade outside, and soon enough other ants began swarming out. Rabbi Shimon then removed the shading cloak; When the new ants saw there was in fact no shade, they killed the first ant; from this Rabbi Shimon infered that they indeed have no king, since if they had one they would have required his permission before killing the errant ant.
The Gemarah then tells of a discussion between a number of Amoraim, scholars of a latter generation, who aren't sure Rabbi Shimon's research reslts were vaild. Isn't it possible, for example, that the ants had standing permission from the king to kill individual ants who lie to the community? Or perhaps the king was one of the ants that came out and felt tricked, and he authorized the killing on the spot? Or perhaps it just so happened that the experiment fell on a transitional moment between kings, as is told in the book of Judges (17, 6) In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Rashi (11th century) and Tosafot (12-13 century) debate how it's possible that Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta didn't take King Solomon's word (King Solomon being traditionally regarded as the author of Proverbs); they also wonder how the Amoraim ask so many questions: after all, King Solomon must have known what he was talking about, no? This discussion continued at least until recent centuries, when some rabbis resolved it by pointing out that King Solomon himself said we should go and observe the ants, back in the original verse.
--------------------
If you've never visited this blog before, and now, as I said, it's dormant, see my reading recommendations here.
Here's a nice Daf Yomi story from Hulin 56b, which we passed earlier this week. It is written, in Proverbs chapter 6 verses 6-8:
Go to the ant, you sluggard;
consider its ways and be wise!
7 It has no commander,
no overseer or ruler,
8 yet it stores its provisions in summer
and gathers its food at harvest.
Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta asked himself if this was really so, and decided to test it. On a hot summer day he found an anthill, and used his cloak to cast shade over it, since ants (so the story) like shade and dislike the hot sun. Soon an ant came out and saw the shade. Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta marked the ant so he could recognize it. The ant went back into the anthill and annonced that there was shade outside, and soon enough other ants began swarming out. Rabbi Shimon then removed the shading cloak; When the new ants saw there was in fact no shade, they killed the first ant; from this Rabbi Shimon infered that they indeed have no king, since if they had one they would have required his permission before killing the errant ant.
The Gemarah then tells of a discussion between a number of Amoraim, scholars of a latter generation, who aren't sure Rabbi Shimon's research reslts were vaild. Isn't it possible, for example, that the ants had standing permission from the king to kill individual ants who lie to the community? Or perhaps the king was one of the ants that came out and felt tricked, and he authorized the killing on the spot? Or perhaps it just so happened that the experiment fell on a transitional moment between kings, as is told in the book of Judges (17, 6) In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes. Rashi (11th century) and Tosafot (12-13 century) debate how it's possible that Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta didn't take King Solomon's word (King Solomon being traditionally regarded as the author of Proverbs); they also wonder how the Amoraim ask so many questions: after all, King Solomon must have known what he was talking about, no? This discussion continued at least until recent centuries, when some rabbis resolved it by pointing out that King Solomon himself said we should go and observe the ants, back in the original verse.
--------------------
If you've never visited this blog before, and now, as I said, it's dormant, see my reading recommendations here.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Judaism on its Own Evolution
Judaism is famously both a religion and a nationality, though this is not a matter everyone likes to accept. Recently I've been revisiting various topics and seeing them through the prism of the knowledge I've accumulated over the years, and I'm beginning to suspect the case for Jews being a nation is even stronger than Jews as a religious belief; at the very least, the beliefs have repeatedly and dramatically evolved over the ages. Given Judaism's unusual longevity, there's been a lot of time for evolution.
Of course this isn't a particularly startling insight. The entire Koran reflects divine words handed down in the single lifetime of Mohamed. The New Testament covers, what, two centuries? The Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament) spans at least 1,500 years, if you start counting with Abraham. Most of what was recognizably Jewish on the eve of the Emancipation, in the 18th century, was created or added after the completion of the Bible. So it's banal to say that Judaism contains very thick layers of historical memory. King David and his contemporaries, whatever their culture was, didn't much resemble the earliest creators of the Mishna, who were roughly contemporaries of Jesus, and while we can trace the line from them to the Lubavitcher Rebbe and to his contemporary Abraham Joshua Heschel, it's unlikely the Tanaim would have foreseen either scholar.
This also works backwards. The Holocaust plays a central role in the identity of America's Jews, yet it obviously didn't play any role in the identity of their great grandparents who migrated at the turn of the 20th century. The destruction of the (2nd) Temple and the yearning for Jerusalem were absolutely central to the identity of Jews for some 2000 years, but no-one had ever heard of them when the Hasmoneans. What did Judaism in Jerusalem in Isaiah's time look like, in the 8th century BCE? There's no real way of knowing, but even if it was as memory based as Judaism has become, it was laden by perhaps 8 centuries of it, not 35. (I'm not discussing modern theories of ancient history here, nor am I discounting them. That's not the topic, and doesn't change my point).
Predictably, but perhaps not fully appreciated, the Jews have long been aware of this dynamic. Nothing better demonstrates this than the story of Moses' visit to the yeshiva of Rabbi Akiva, as told on a daf we passed last week.
Rabbi Yehuda told in the name of Rav: When Moses went to the heavens [to receive the Torah] he saw the Holy One Be He Blessed tying ktarim to the letters [ktarim being decorations which appear above some letters which have no use since the letters are recognizable without them]. Said Moses
- Creator of the World, who's delaying You [who needs the ktarim]?
- There will one day be a man, after some generations [about 1,400 years, to be precise], named Akiva son of Josef, and he will learn many halachot from each thorn and thorn [katrim look a bit like thorns].
- Creator of the World, can you show him to me?
- Walk back behind you.
Moses found himself in the yeshiva, and sat at the back of the room behind all the scholars. He didn't understand anything that was being discussed no matter how hard he tried, until at one point the disiples said to Rabbi Akiva "Rabbi, how do you know that?" "It was given to Moses at Sinai".
Reassured, Moses returned to God.
- Creator of the World, You have such a man in your world, and you've chosen me to bring down the Torah?
- Silence. That is my intention.
- Creator of the World, You've shown me his greatness in Torah, can you show me his reward?
- Walk back behind you.
Moses found himself at Rabbi Akiva's execution, as the Romans were slowly torturing him to death.
- Creator of the World, that's Torah and that's it's reward (zo Torah ve-zo sechara)?
- Silence. That is my intention.
Menachot 29b. This thread is introduced and explained here.
Of course this isn't a particularly startling insight. The entire Koran reflects divine words handed down in the single lifetime of Mohamed. The New Testament covers, what, two centuries? The Hebrew Bible (aka Old Testament) spans at least 1,500 years, if you start counting with Abraham. Most of what was recognizably Jewish on the eve of the Emancipation, in the 18th century, was created or added after the completion of the Bible. So it's banal to say that Judaism contains very thick layers of historical memory. King David and his contemporaries, whatever their culture was, didn't much resemble the earliest creators of the Mishna, who were roughly contemporaries of Jesus, and while we can trace the line from them to the Lubavitcher Rebbe and to his contemporary Abraham Joshua Heschel, it's unlikely the Tanaim would have foreseen either scholar.
This also works backwards. The Holocaust plays a central role in the identity of America's Jews, yet it obviously didn't play any role in the identity of their great grandparents who migrated at the turn of the 20th century. The destruction of the (2nd) Temple and the yearning for Jerusalem were absolutely central to the identity of Jews for some 2000 years, but no-one had ever heard of them when the Hasmoneans. What did Judaism in Jerusalem in Isaiah's time look like, in the 8th century BCE? There's no real way of knowing, but even if it was as memory based as Judaism has become, it was laden by perhaps 8 centuries of it, not 35. (I'm not discussing modern theories of ancient history here, nor am I discounting them. That's not the topic, and doesn't change my point).
Predictably, but perhaps not fully appreciated, the Jews have long been aware of this dynamic. Nothing better demonstrates this than the story of Moses' visit to the yeshiva of Rabbi Akiva, as told on a daf we passed last week.
Rabbi Yehuda told in the name of Rav: When Moses went to the heavens [to receive the Torah] he saw the Holy One Be He Blessed tying ktarim to the letters [ktarim being decorations which appear above some letters which have no use since the letters are recognizable without them]. Said Moses
- Creator of the World, who's delaying You [who needs the ktarim]?
- There will one day be a man, after some generations [about 1,400 years, to be precise], named Akiva son of Josef, and he will learn many halachot from each thorn and thorn [katrim look a bit like thorns].
- Creator of the World, can you show him to me?
- Walk back behind you.
Moses found himself in the yeshiva, and sat at the back of the room behind all the scholars. He didn't understand anything that was being discussed no matter how hard he tried, until at one point the disiples said to Rabbi Akiva "Rabbi, how do you know that?" "It was given to Moses at Sinai".
Reassured, Moses returned to God.
- Creator of the World, You have such a man in your world, and you've chosen me to bring down the Torah?
- Silence. That is my intention.
- Creator of the World, You've shown me his greatness in Torah, can you show me his reward?
- Walk back behind you.
Moses found himself at Rabbi Akiva's execution, as the Romans were slowly torturing him to death.
- Creator of the World, that's Torah and that's it's reward (zo Torah ve-zo sechara)?
- Silence. That is my intention.
Menachot 29b. This thread is introduced and explained here.
Monday, March 28, 2011
Daf Yomi in South Korea
I don't know what to make of this story, except to say that the world is a curious place.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Besieging the Temple
The Talmud isn't a history book. If you know how to read history from whatever you've got, however, there is much to be learned from the Talmud about Jewish life in the 500 years of its creation. Sometimes it's little snippets, that come and go even before you have time to notice them.
Yesterday's daf dealt with the question how many components of a meal-offering, if any, can be dropped and still the offering will be acceptable (and what does "acceptable" mean). Then, at the very bottom of the page, there was a sudden question: "How do we know that if heathens have surrounded the Temple Mount, the priests are allowed to eat the offering even inside the Temple itself [take shelter there]?" The Gemara then finds a verse, which clearly didn't have that scenario in mind, and the discussion wanders off to other matters.
Heartbreaking, if you think about it.
Menachot 8b. This thread began and is explained here.
Yesterday's daf dealt with the question how many components of a meal-offering, if any, can be dropped and still the offering will be acceptable (and what does "acceptable" mean). Then, at the very bottom of the page, there was a sudden question: "How do we know that if heathens have surrounded the Temple Mount, the priests are allowed to eat the offering even inside the Temple itself [take shelter there]?" The Gemara then finds a verse, which clearly didn't have that scenario in mind, and the discussion wanders off to other matters.
Heartbreaking, if you think about it.
Menachot 8b. This thread began and is explained here.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Sacrifying to be Jewish
Veteran readers may have noted that it's been quite a while since I blogged in the Daf Yomi series. (Recent readers can find the introduction and explanation of this thread here). The main reason has been that about three months ago we finished the Nezikim order, which deals with commonplace things such as legal transactions, courts and contracts, which are as relevant today as they were 1,800 years ago, and started the Kodashim order, which concentrates (mostly) on holy ritual, some of which is rather outlandish from a modern perspective. The first tractate, which we finished today, was Zevachim, Sacrifices (120 pages).
How outlandish? Quite, to be honest. The Bible commands four types of sacrifices, which are then divided into sub-groups. Each sacrificial act is divided into a series of actions, which need to be done in very specific places, mostly but not always by priests (cohens) of varying degrees of purity, with specific tools, in specific order, and with specific intentions. The time of day (or night) is also important, as are lots of very detailed aspects of the alter (blood from sacrifice A has to be splattered above the red line on the left side of the alter, or below the line in a different context). Then the accidents have to be taken into account: what happens if something falls, onto what, and is then replaced. Or not. Also, was the priest wearing the correct uniform when it happened, and does it need to be laundered immediately, or later, or not at all? Quantities are important, sometimes. Or is it always, but in different ways? Did I mention the problem of scarifying an animal which is in the wrong section of the Temple Mount but it's throat was in the right place, or was it the other way around, the animal was in the right place but it's throat reached out over the line but then turned back just in time not to be too late, if it isn't already irrevocably too late because the intention to eat it by whomever changed in the meanwhile?
It's not the arcane details which make all this so strange. Observe any present day insurance company lawyer doing her best to prove her client actually doesn't owe you anything, and it will rapidly become just as arcane. What makes it so strange is the content. We can't imagine sacrifices, and only dimly can we appreciate matters of purity and impurity, or even religious tithes and all that goes with them.
The thing that's historically so interesting about the tractate is that the rabbis can't really imagine it, either. The Temple was destroyed in the early mishnaic era, which means only the earliest generations of the Mishnaic rabbis, the Tana'im, had any personal knowledge of the matter; the latter Tanaim and all the Amoraim, i.e the large majority of the Talmudic rabbis, had never seen any of this, nor had it been happening in living memory. Occasionally the tractate cites a Zkan Hacohanim, which seems to mean the last of the cohanim still alive to tell how things were, but even then their authority isn't clear. At one point the tractate spends many pages discussing the dimensions of the alter and Temple plaza; the entire section is scholasticism, meaning it's based upon interpreting the verses of the Bible, not reconstructing the physical place (which, having been razed, can't be done) or looking for someone who might have preserved or recorded real memory.
Actually, scholasticism plays an unusually large part in the tractate, even more than usual. Many of the detailed arguments aren't about how things were supposed to work, but rather how they can be learned from which words in which verses. Some of the discussions in Nezikin move so far away from the original Biblical verses it's obvious the rabbis have enacted laws which relate to their social reality, not the one of Deuteronomy. (The laws of inheritance, for example, which are developed well beyond the rudimentary commandments in the Pentateuch). Not so in Zevachim, which goes on endlessly about who learns which arcane detail from which confluence of words in two separate verses, but has no reason - obviously - to adapt the practice to the real world of the rabbis.
At one point the tractate even says this explicitly. An Amora has pronounced on halacha: the law is that it's done this way, not that, and the tractate basically says "Huh? Who cares? No-one does any of this anyway? We're studying so as not to forget". Yet the deeper we got into it, the more it became clear to me that even that wasn't the case. Keep in mind that the Tamud is the central creation of the Pharisees, rabbinical Judaism, who were often at war - sometimes even violent war - with the Sadducees .The Saducees were the ones running the Temple, and they decidedly didn't use the rabbinical form of learning, which means that even if we could invent a time machine and go back to the Temple, we wouldn't see the practices described in great length in the Talmud. There must have been some resemblance, but it would have been limited.
The Talmudic scholars spent centuries discussing the most arcane minutiae of the practice of the Temple so as not to forget it, and never to loosen the Jewish ties to a physical place which had been gone for centuries, and they did so by describing a reality which never existed in the form they created for it.
Yet it worked. Judaism became a religion which could exist without its concrete, physical heart, because the imagination of that heart had become central to Jewish civilization.
Ironically, almost everyone I talked to about the tractate these past few months has agreed that it's very outlandish, and we're not particularly enjoying it; it's too foreign. But that's part of the greater irony of Zionism, which arose and succeeded in a historical era when the old forms of preservation were losing their potency. Either Zionism arrived at the last possible moment, as the civilizational binds that held the Jews together were about to slip off, or it arose because the old forms were weakening and there was no option but to go back to the basics of land, language and national political life. Choose whichever explanation you prefer.
Either way, the slowly widening gap between the Jews of Israel and America is very serious. For most of America's Jews, not only Zvachim is outlandish, the entire Talmud is also, as is the prayer book, the Jewish calender, and of course Jewish rituals of all kinds. It may not be urgent, but after a while one does need to ask what holds Jews together when the traditional ties are gone, and the more common national-political ones aren't compelling either. I come by this theme from time to time, it's not new. Shmuel Rosner has apparently just written a book about it (in Hebrew), and has an interesting chapter (in English) here. What happens, he asks, when the political agenda of the Israelis is different from the political agenda of American Jews, on American subjects, not on Israel's security or well-being. Say, if Israeli Jews admire an American president the American Jews despise. Well, when it was George Bush II, the resounding answer was that America's Jews split from Israel. Yet not because of any major argument. It was simply that the Israeli position didn't interest America's Jews, and this itself was a sign of the growing indifference large numbers of American Jews display towards Israel.
Which brings me back to Zvachim. You can find it outlandish, and look forward to the time when the Daf Yomi series will return to less far-fetched topics. That's qualitatively different than having a Judaism which is indifferent both to the cultural and also the geographical center. A Judaism which focuses mainly on its local agenda and not on the ones which unify all Jews, will someday have to explain to itself what makes it Jewish, and why the rest of the Jews should care.
Update: Yehuda Mirsky has thoughts on Jewish identity in America today, here. Some of it (not all: don't jump on me) doesn't much look like Judaism at all to me.
How outlandish? Quite, to be honest. The Bible commands four types of sacrifices, which are then divided into sub-groups. Each sacrificial act is divided into a series of actions, which need to be done in very specific places, mostly but not always by priests (cohens) of varying degrees of purity, with specific tools, in specific order, and with specific intentions. The time of day (or night) is also important, as are lots of very detailed aspects of the alter (blood from sacrifice A has to be splattered above the red line on the left side of the alter, or below the line in a different context). Then the accidents have to be taken into account: what happens if something falls, onto what, and is then replaced. Or not. Also, was the priest wearing the correct uniform when it happened, and does it need to be laundered immediately, or later, or not at all? Quantities are important, sometimes. Or is it always, but in different ways? Did I mention the problem of scarifying an animal which is in the wrong section of the Temple Mount but it's throat was in the right place, or was it the other way around, the animal was in the right place but it's throat reached out over the line but then turned back just in time not to be too late, if it isn't already irrevocably too late because the intention to eat it by whomever changed in the meanwhile?
It's not the arcane details which make all this so strange. Observe any present day insurance company lawyer doing her best to prove her client actually doesn't owe you anything, and it will rapidly become just as arcane. What makes it so strange is the content. We can't imagine sacrifices, and only dimly can we appreciate matters of purity and impurity, or even religious tithes and all that goes with them.
The thing that's historically so interesting about the tractate is that the rabbis can't really imagine it, either. The Temple was destroyed in the early mishnaic era, which means only the earliest generations of the Mishnaic rabbis, the Tana'im, had any personal knowledge of the matter; the latter Tanaim and all the Amoraim, i.e the large majority of the Talmudic rabbis, had never seen any of this, nor had it been happening in living memory. Occasionally the tractate cites a Zkan Hacohanim, which seems to mean the last of the cohanim still alive to tell how things were, but even then their authority isn't clear. At one point the tractate spends many pages discussing the dimensions of the alter and Temple plaza; the entire section is scholasticism, meaning it's based upon interpreting the verses of the Bible, not reconstructing the physical place (which, having been razed, can't be done) or looking for someone who might have preserved or recorded real memory.
Actually, scholasticism plays an unusually large part in the tractate, even more than usual. Many of the detailed arguments aren't about how things were supposed to work, but rather how they can be learned from which words in which verses. Some of the discussions in Nezikin move so far away from the original Biblical verses it's obvious the rabbis have enacted laws which relate to their social reality, not the one of Deuteronomy. (The laws of inheritance, for example, which are developed well beyond the rudimentary commandments in the Pentateuch). Not so in Zevachim, which goes on endlessly about who learns which arcane detail from which confluence of words in two separate verses, but has no reason - obviously - to adapt the practice to the real world of the rabbis.
At one point the tractate even says this explicitly. An Amora has pronounced on halacha: the law is that it's done this way, not that, and the tractate basically says "Huh? Who cares? No-one does any of this anyway? We're studying so as not to forget". Yet the deeper we got into it, the more it became clear to me that even that wasn't the case. Keep in mind that the Tamud is the central creation of the Pharisees, rabbinical Judaism, who were often at war - sometimes even violent war - with the Sadducees .The Saducees were the ones running the Temple, and they decidedly didn't use the rabbinical form of learning, which means that even if we could invent a time machine and go back to the Temple, we wouldn't see the practices described in great length in the Talmud. There must have been some resemblance, but it would have been limited.
The Talmudic scholars spent centuries discussing the most arcane minutiae of the practice of the Temple so as not to forget it, and never to loosen the Jewish ties to a physical place which had been gone for centuries, and they did so by describing a reality which never existed in the form they created for it.
Yet it worked. Judaism became a religion which could exist without its concrete, physical heart, because the imagination of that heart had become central to Jewish civilization.
Ironically, almost everyone I talked to about the tractate these past few months has agreed that it's very outlandish, and we're not particularly enjoying it; it's too foreign. But that's part of the greater irony of Zionism, which arose and succeeded in a historical era when the old forms of preservation were losing their potency. Either Zionism arrived at the last possible moment, as the civilizational binds that held the Jews together were about to slip off, or it arose because the old forms were weakening and there was no option but to go back to the basics of land, language and national political life. Choose whichever explanation you prefer.
Either way, the slowly widening gap between the Jews of Israel and America is very serious. For most of America's Jews, not only Zvachim is outlandish, the entire Talmud is also, as is the prayer book, the Jewish calender, and of course Jewish rituals of all kinds. It may not be urgent, but after a while one does need to ask what holds Jews together when the traditional ties are gone, and the more common national-political ones aren't compelling either. I come by this theme from time to time, it's not new. Shmuel Rosner has apparently just written a book about it (in Hebrew), and has an interesting chapter (in English) here. What happens, he asks, when the political agenda of the Israelis is different from the political agenda of American Jews, on American subjects, not on Israel's security or well-being. Say, if Israeli Jews admire an American president the American Jews despise. Well, when it was George Bush II, the resounding answer was that America's Jews split from Israel. Yet not because of any major argument. It was simply that the Israeli position didn't interest America's Jews, and this itself was a sign of the growing indifference large numbers of American Jews display towards Israel.
Which brings me back to Zvachim. You can find it outlandish, and look forward to the time when the Daf Yomi series will return to less far-fetched topics. That's qualitatively different than having a Judaism which is indifferent both to the cultural and also the geographical center. A Judaism which focuses mainly on its local agenda and not on the ones which unify all Jews, will someday have to explain to itself what makes it Jewish, and why the rest of the Jews should care.
Update: Yehuda Mirsky has thoughts on Jewish identity in America today, here. Some of it (not all: don't jump on me) doesn't much look like Judaism at all to me.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Start -Up Nation
Last year Dan Senor and Saul Singer published Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle
. It's a great read, and doesn't require more than a few hours of pleasurable effort. The starting point for the book is that Israel is a world-class center of innovation, second only to Silicon Valley. There's more technological innovation happening here than on entire continents elsewhere, and the political and military turmoil of the past decade has never dented this. The authors set out to explain this.
First, they state their case, which turns out to be even more compelling than often recognized, since they look not only at the very long list of successful or wildly successful Israeli start-up companies, but also at the centrality of Israeli innovators to the development efforts of some of the world's largest technology companies - Intel, say, or Microsoft. The also show how it's not only high-technology, it's lots of other things, too, such as drip irrigation - not to mention the once famous and now defunct kibbutz movement, which was magnificent in its time, before the world moved on.
They compare Israel's economy to other economies, by way of attempting to identify what's unique about Israel. Since you ought to read the book I won't go through all its arguments, but the bottom line is that Israelis are anti-hierarchical, even in the army; they have no respect for accepted wisdom and even less for its representatives; they're brazen questioners of everything and everyone; but also they've got motivations to succeed that come from being proud of what they are and what they're doing. The Arab boycott and Charles De Gaulle's abrupt ban on military supplies days before the Six Day War, say the authors, must be given credit for at least part of Israel's prowess, since they shut the easy avenues to success, and forced the Israelis to forge new ones, and then, once they had the culture, to keep on forging them.
They also describe how early Israeli innovation was steered by the government, until that lost steam in the early 1970s; they are honest and clear-eyed about the wasted decades between the early 1970s and the early 1990s.
As I said, it's a fun book, and presents an Israel which is much more interesting - and real - than the one which the world's media obsesses about most days of the year (as does this blog). I do however have one significant quibble.
The technology sector of Israel may well be the economy's main motor, and the cultural characteristics which underpin it are all really there, very much thriving. Not all of Israel participates, however. The army really is a crucially important part of the story - but there are other parts of the army which do the exact opposite of encouraging innovation. Many Israelis really do fit the descriptions presented in the book - but more don't. Or at any rate, many don't: I wouldn't know how to quantify it. There are as many conservative and unimaginative plodders in Israel as anywhere else. Thankfully, they don't hamper the mad scientists and iconoclasts out to turn the world on its head; there are enough of them, however, to make Israel a place of growing inequality and considerable waste.
Finally, two minor comments: some of Israel's homegrown detractors, the folks I regularly dislike on this blog, have the same all-around gumption as their engineer cousins. It really is a cultural thing. Also, as anyone who has ever seriously studied the Talmud will attest, some of this ability comes from there. Spend 2,000 years studying Talmud, and it will be astonishing if you don't obsessively see things from novel perspectives and insanely unlikely vantages.
. It's a great read, and doesn't require more than a few hours of pleasurable effort. The starting point for the book is that Israel is a world-class center of innovation, second only to Silicon Valley. There's more technological innovation happening here than on entire continents elsewhere, and the political and military turmoil of the past decade has never dented this. The authors set out to explain this.First, they state their case, which turns out to be even more compelling than often recognized, since they look not only at the very long list of successful or wildly successful Israeli start-up companies, but also at the centrality of Israeli innovators to the development efforts of some of the world's largest technology companies - Intel, say, or Microsoft. The also show how it's not only high-technology, it's lots of other things, too, such as drip irrigation - not to mention the once famous and now defunct kibbutz movement, which was magnificent in its time, before the world moved on.
They compare Israel's economy to other economies, by way of attempting to identify what's unique about Israel. Since you ought to read the book I won't go through all its arguments, but the bottom line is that Israelis are anti-hierarchical, even in the army; they have no respect for accepted wisdom and even less for its representatives; they're brazen questioners of everything and everyone; but also they've got motivations to succeed that come from being proud of what they are and what they're doing. The Arab boycott and Charles De Gaulle's abrupt ban on military supplies days before the Six Day War, say the authors, must be given credit for at least part of Israel's prowess, since they shut the easy avenues to success, and forced the Israelis to forge new ones, and then, once they had the culture, to keep on forging them.
They also describe how early Israeli innovation was steered by the government, until that lost steam in the early 1970s; they are honest and clear-eyed about the wasted decades between the early 1970s and the early 1990s.
As I said, it's a fun book, and presents an Israel which is much more interesting - and real - than the one which the world's media obsesses about most days of the year (as does this blog). I do however have one significant quibble.
The technology sector of Israel may well be the economy's main motor, and the cultural characteristics which underpin it are all really there, very much thriving. Not all of Israel participates, however. The army really is a crucially important part of the story - but there are other parts of the army which do the exact opposite of encouraging innovation. Many Israelis really do fit the descriptions presented in the book - but more don't. Or at any rate, many don't: I wouldn't know how to quantify it. There are as many conservative and unimaginative plodders in Israel as anywhere else. Thankfully, they don't hamper the mad scientists and iconoclasts out to turn the world on its head; there are enough of them, however, to make Israel a place of growing inequality and considerable waste.
Finally, two minor comments: some of Israel's homegrown detractors, the folks I regularly dislike on this blog, have the same all-around gumption as their engineer cousins. It really is a cultural thing. Also, as anyone who has ever seriously studied the Talmud will attest, some of this ability comes from there. Spend 2,000 years studying Talmud, and it will be astonishing if you don't obsessively see things from novel perspectives and insanely unlikely vantages.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Re'em Hacohen Combines Belief and Clear Thinking
Here's a link to a fascinating talk by the Rav Re'em Hacohen about the divine origins of the Torah, and the impact of human choice upon them. It's in Hebrew, and it's long. If you can deal with those two, I recommend.
Due disclosure: Back when the rav was a child in short pants and sandals, he and I were in the same class at school.
Due disclosure: Back when the rav was a child in short pants and sandals, he and I were in the same class at school.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Adin Steinsaltz Completes the Talmud
It took 45 years,but the Rav Steinsaltz has completed his annotation of the entire Talmud. Three million volumes have been sold so far, and even taking into account that the complete set (now) has 45 volumes, that's still quite a number. Add to that the fact that the Schottenstein translation now competes for the same market and may well be more popular, and the additional fact that real professionals won't touch either of them because they make the study a bit less challenging, and the fact that most people purchase only the volumes they're currently studying not the entire set, and you get a sense of how many people are studying Talmud these days. I expect this hasn't been the case for many centuries, but that's a topic for another day.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Public Service as Indenture
Raban Gamliel (the leader of the Jews of Galilee after the destruction of the Temple by the Romans) and Rabbi Yehoshua were together on a ship. Raban Gamliel had brought bread; Rabbi Yehoshua, bread and flour. When Raban Gamliel's bread ran out, they subsisted on the flour.
Raban Gamliel: How did you know we'd be delayed, and need flour?
Rabbi Yehoshua: There's a star in the sky, and once in 70 years it confuses sailors and they lose their way. I feared we might be affected and so brought additional flour.
Raban Gamliel: If you're so wise, how did you allow yourself on a ship in the first place? Couldn't you make a living with less danger? [Sea faring in those days was rather often fatal, a subject often discussed in the Talmud].
Rabbi Yehoshua: If you're wondering about me, think of your two students Rabbi Elazar Hisma and Rabbi Yochanan ben Gudgeda, who are so intelligent they can compute the number of water drops in the sea, yet they don't earn enough to feed or clothe themselves!
Raban Gamliel decided to promote them. When he returned to port he had them summoned, but they didn't appear. He summoned them again, and this time they came. When they came he said to them:
You think I'm offering you power and honor (שררה)? That's why you didn't come the first time? Indenture is what I'm giving you [since leadership posts carry obligations to the people]. As it is said (1 Kings chapter 12 verses 6-7)
And king Rehoboam consulted with the old men, that stood before Solomon his father while he yet lived, and said, How do ye advise that I may answer this people?
7And they spake unto him, saying, If thou wilt be a servant unto this people this day, and wilt serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be thy servants for ever.
Just saying.
Horayot,10a-b.
This thread is introduced and explained here.
Raban Gamliel: How did you know we'd be delayed, and need flour?
Rabbi Yehoshua: There's a star in the sky, and once in 70 years it confuses sailors and they lose their way. I feared we might be affected and so brought additional flour.
Raban Gamliel: If you're so wise, how did you allow yourself on a ship in the first place? Couldn't you make a living with less danger? [Sea faring in those days was rather often fatal, a subject often discussed in the Talmud].
Rabbi Yehoshua: If you're wondering about me, think of your two students Rabbi Elazar Hisma and Rabbi Yochanan ben Gudgeda, who are so intelligent they can compute the number of water drops in the sea, yet they don't earn enough to feed or clothe themselves!
Raban Gamliel decided to promote them. When he returned to port he had them summoned, but they didn't appear. He summoned them again, and this time they came. When they came he said to them:
You think I'm offering you power and honor (שררה)? That's why you didn't come the first time? Indenture is what I'm giving you [since leadership posts carry obligations to the people]. As it is said (1 Kings chapter 12 verses 6-7)
And king Rehoboam consulted with the old men, that stood before Solomon his father while he yet lived, and said, How do ye advise that I may answer this people?
7And they spake unto him, saying, If thou wilt be a servant unto this people this day, and wilt serve them, and answer them, and speak good words to them, then they will be thy servants for ever.
Just saying.
Horayot,10a-b.
This thread is introduced and explained here.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Putting Babylon back into the Babylonian Talmud
Yehuda Mirsky reports on efforts to study the Persian context of the Babylonian Talmud, and tells that it's a promising line of inquiry.There's even a book about it, though it's a bit pricey and isn't readily available anyway: Talmud in Its Iranian Context (Texts & Studies in Ancient Judaism)
.
.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Explaining Halachot is Problematic (or Not?)
As I mentioned earlier, I'm reading Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People
and finding it remarkably unconvincing. Perhaps the single weirdest thing about it is that Sand is offering a revolutionary new reading of Jewish history, yet he never - not once - cites the relevant Jewish sources. If there's one thing Jews did throughout their history it's read and write books; some of the more important of them relate directly to his subject matter: say, the Talmud, for example. He seems never to have glanced at them, nor even to have any idea what's in them via the ample modern academic literature about them. I cannot stress enough how truly bizarre this is.
Admittedly, learning history from the Talmud requires some careful scholarship, since its creators were in no way recording the annals of their times, nor were they interested in what modern historians do. So what? Lots of historians spend lots of time and effort deciphering past issues from oblique sources.
An example of a matter the Talmud never actually tells us, though it would have been of major significance, is the relationship between their scholarly efforts and the broad, non-scholarly Jewish public. The rabbis haggled endlessly over the tiniest minutiae of countless matters; how did this relate to the daily life of the general public?
Today I passed an interesting hint. The topic is a convoluted discussion about which cheeses produced by pagans can be eaten by Jews, if at all, and what are the Biblical sources for the different positions. Back in Mishnaic times there had been an early discussion between Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Ishmael (2nd century); it was cited by Rav Dimi when he moved from Eretz Israel to Babylonia (4th century). At one point in the original discussion Rabbi Yehoshua had admonished Rabbi Yishmael not to explain: "Yishmael my brother! Keep your lips sealed!"
The Gemara asks why Rabbi Yishmael wasn't allowed to explain his position, and answers that it was a new, recent rule. The Gemara interrupts itself and insists: so what was the reason for the proscription, and gives a technical explanation about the method of cheese production. Having clarified that, the Gemara goes back to ask what was special about new rules that it was forbidden to explain them, and cites a report from Ulla (a 3rd century rabbi who lived in the Galilee but traveled frequently to Babylonia): the rabbis in the west (=Eretz Israel) never explained their halachic rulings for 12 months, fearing that if they did the people might decide they weren't convinced and not act as instructed; after 12 months people would have gotten used to the new instruction and there would no longer be any harm in explaining it.
Avoda Zara 35a. This thread starts and is explained here.
and finding it remarkably unconvincing. Perhaps the single weirdest thing about it is that Sand is offering a revolutionary new reading of Jewish history, yet he never - not once - cites the relevant Jewish sources. If there's one thing Jews did throughout their history it's read and write books; some of the more important of them relate directly to his subject matter: say, the Talmud, for example. He seems never to have glanced at them, nor even to have any idea what's in them via the ample modern academic literature about them. I cannot stress enough how truly bizarre this is.Admittedly, learning history from the Talmud requires some careful scholarship, since its creators were in no way recording the annals of their times, nor were they interested in what modern historians do. So what? Lots of historians spend lots of time and effort deciphering past issues from oblique sources.
An example of a matter the Talmud never actually tells us, though it would have been of major significance, is the relationship between their scholarly efforts and the broad, non-scholarly Jewish public. The rabbis haggled endlessly over the tiniest minutiae of countless matters; how did this relate to the daily life of the general public?
Today I passed an interesting hint. The topic is a convoluted discussion about which cheeses produced by pagans can be eaten by Jews, if at all, and what are the Biblical sources for the different positions. Back in Mishnaic times there had been an early discussion between Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Ishmael (2nd century); it was cited by Rav Dimi when he moved from Eretz Israel to Babylonia (4th century). At one point in the original discussion Rabbi Yehoshua had admonished Rabbi Yishmael not to explain: "Yishmael my brother! Keep your lips sealed!"
The Gemara asks why Rabbi Yishmael wasn't allowed to explain his position, and answers that it was a new, recent rule. The Gemara interrupts itself and insists: so what was the reason for the proscription, and gives a technical explanation about the method of cheese production. Having clarified that, the Gemara goes back to ask what was special about new rules that it was forbidden to explain them, and cites a report from Ulla (a 3rd century rabbi who lived in the Galilee but traveled frequently to Babylonia): the rabbis in the west (=Eretz Israel) never explained their halachic rulings for 12 months, fearing that if they did the people might decide they weren't convinced and not act as instructed; after 12 months people would have gotten used to the new instruction and there would no longer be any harm in explaining it.
Avoda Zara 35a. This thread starts and is explained here.
Monday, August 30, 2010
That Was Then...
It's been a while since I did a Daf Yomi post. Partly this was because the Shavuot tractate was unusually complicated and rather remote, and frankly I didn't enjoy crossing it. Now we're in Avoda Zara, however, which is one of my favorites. Avoda Zara means paganism, but mostly the tractate deals with the relations of Jews and their surrounding societies.
The first two layers of the Talmud, I remind you, are the Mishna and Mishnaic literature, created in Hebrew in Erez Yisrael roughly between 30-200 CE, and the Gemara, mostly in Aramaic with lots of Hebrew, mostly in Babylonia, Bavel, (present day Iraq), between about 200-500 CE. Then there are the medieval layers, written mostly in Hebrew, sort of, with quite a bit of Aramaic interspersed. The whole edifice assumes its students know the entire Bible (Old Testament) by heart, so the Biblical texts are all over but rarely written except in three-word snippets which everyone recognizes in context, obviously. Additional layers are still being created to this very day, but the first two are the heart of the project.
The Mishna was created under a mostly antagonistic Roman Empire, sometimes genocidal. The Gemara was created under the Sassinids, a Persian dynasty. While life for the Jews in Erez Yisrael got steadily worse (with some exceptions) from 30CE for many centuries, life in Bavel generally got better, at least until the 6th century by which time the Gemara was mostly completed.
If you're studying the relations with the surrounding society, as the Avoda Zara tractate does, you're going to find expressions of these differing contexts. As for example when the Mishna forbids Jews to sell various things to heathens.
[This thread began and is explained here]
Update: Joe in Australia, in the comments below, adds some fascinating context:
The first two layers of the Talmud, I remind you, are the Mishna and Mishnaic literature, created in Hebrew in Erez Yisrael roughly between 30-200 CE, and the Gemara, mostly in Aramaic with lots of Hebrew, mostly in Babylonia, Bavel, (present day Iraq), between about 200-500 CE. Then there are the medieval layers, written mostly in Hebrew, sort of, with quite a bit of Aramaic interspersed. The whole edifice assumes its students know the entire Bible (Old Testament) by heart, so the Biblical texts are all over but rarely written except in three-word snippets which everyone recognizes in context, obviously. Additional layers are still being created to this very day, but the first two are the heart of the project.
The Mishna was created under a mostly antagonistic Roman Empire, sometimes genocidal. The Gemara was created under the Sassinids, a Persian dynasty. While life for the Jews in Erez Yisrael got steadily worse (with some exceptions) from 30CE for many centuries, life in Bavel generally got better, at least until the 6th century by which time the Gemara was mostly completed.
If you're studying the relations with the surrounding society, as the Avoda Zara tractate does, you're going to find expressions of these differing contexts. As for example when the Mishna forbids Jews to sell various things to heathens.
Rav Ada ben Ahava says: it is forbidden to sell them sheets of iron.Why? Lest they beat them into weapons.
The Gemara asks: If so, it should be forbidden to sell them even hoes and shovels [which they might also beat into weapons]?
Rav Zvid explains: Iron sheets from India are forbidden, because they serve only for weapons [but hoes and shovels may be sold].
The Gemara: But we do, today, we sell even Indian sheet iron to the heathens?
Rav Ashi explains: we sell [Indian sheet iron] only to the Persians, who protect us.Avoda Zara 16a
[This thread began and is explained here]
Update: Joe in Australia, in the comments below, adds some fascinating context:
Wow! You know what they're talking about? The iron that came from India was the famous "Wootz". The secret of its manufacture has been lost, but it's both hard and flexible, and it was used to produce quite beautiful patterned blades. In this form it's called Damascene (i.e., "from Damascus") steel. It would only have been used for weapons, as the Talmud says, because it was enormously expensive.
So, this sugya tells us that Jews were the ones who imported the billets of wootz from India to Persian Babylon! I wonder if this is generally known?
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Reflections about the Edge of the Jewish World
There's been too much excitement around here recently about matters that may well not be remembered six months from now, not to say six years. Time to take a longer look at things that have survived all tests of time.
The late Second Temple era saw the greatest diversity of cultural and religious creation in the Jewish world, to an extent not replicated until the 20th century. In spite of considerable political turmoil and occasional wars, Jews allowed themselves to express their Jewishness in all sorts of ways, some of them hardly mutually compatible. Not everyone liked it that way, and at times the arguments turned violent. Still, so long as there was a temple in Jerusalem which everyone could accept as the center, everyone muddled along.
Immediately after the destruction the rabbinic authorities focused like a laser (they wouldn't have recognized my term): if you're with us, this is how we do Judaism; if you don't, you're out. Good-by, and good riddance. Quite a gamble, if you stop to think about it, but they were uncompromising. Nor was this a temporary measure: it went on for centuries - arguably, more than a millennium. A long time indeed.
The story of Ben Sira can demonstrate this - sort of.
Ben Sira is a book written in Hebrew around 200 BCE, give or take a generation. Its author probably thought he was writing a treatise about ethical behaviour, and had someone told him that later on some such treatises would be canonized into the Bible, he might have expected his to be included. In any case, it was regarded as a religious tome.
It was also translated to Greek, apparently by the author's grandson, which was a good thing because when the laser started cutting things out, 200 years later, Ben Sira was out. The practical implication was that it wasn't copied and recopied in Hebrew, nor learned by heart as the oral tradition was, and so was lost; the Greek version, however, having entered the Septuagint, waspreserved; in some traditions it is even part of the New Testament (in Greek it's called Sirach). Only in the 20th century were largish sections of the original Hebrew discovered, in the Cairo Geniza and on Massada. (More on the book, here).
One of the operators of that laser was rabbi Akiva, and there's a Mishna in Sanhedrin where he rules that Jews who read the wrong books (Sefarim Hitzoni'im, external books) won't go to heaven. On page 100b there is then a fascinating discussion among Amora'im, another few centuries on, about Ben Sira: the rabbis agree that rabbi Akiva had it on his list of forbidden books, but they're not quite certain why. The entire page is a series of quotations from the book (by now 500 years old, and say 250 years since the casting out) which are evaluated: this saying is OK, that one isn't and must have been what generated rabbi Akiva's ire, oh come on that's harmless, maybe it was this section.
You get my point: it's forbidden literature, but the rabbis know it by heart, even as they shudder over it's content (or not). Did the general Jewish public also know it? I expect not, but I doubt anyone really knows. It's hard enough figuring out what people think right now; reconstructing popular literacy at a distance of 1700 years is impossible.
That was my first story about the edge of Jewish identity. Here's a second, which appears on page 102b in Sanhedrin.
The Mishna lists three Biblical kings who were not allowed into heaven: Yerovam, Ahab and Menashe. Rav Ashi (later 4th century CE) once told his students in the yeshiva that their next day's lesson would deal with "our friends" or perhaps "our collegues" (haverin), those three kings (he was saying they were scholars before they were sinners) - and note how the Gemara observes itself in action: rav Ashi is teaching it and is in it, simultaneously. That's what you get when you spend 700 years creating one book.
That night Menashe appeared to rav Ashi in his dream:
- You dare call us your colleagues? (who do you think you are, little upstart). If you think you know so much, tell me from what part of the loaf are you to eat first upon blessing over the bread?
- I don't know.
- Such a simple thing, you don't know it, and you dare call yourself our colleague?
- So tell me, and I'll teach it tomorrow in class, in your name.
- You eat first from right under the crust.
- If you know so much (if you're such a scholar, this is rav Ashi asking the terrible sinner Menashe), how come you (and the other sinners) succumbed to idolatry?
- Ah, what do you know. Had you been alive in those days, you'd have raised the hem of your garment so as to run faster to worship those idols, so great was their attraction.
Then next morning, the Gemara tells us, rav Ashi opened his lecture by saying: Today we'll learn from our rabbis (our betters, not our colleagues).
Defining the edges seems to have been problematic, even in the days when doing it was an existential imperative.
[This thread started and is explained here]
The late Second Temple era saw the greatest diversity of cultural and religious creation in the Jewish world, to an extent not replicated until the 20th century. In spite of considerable political turmoil and occasional wars, Jews allowed themselves to express their Jewishness in all sorts of ways, some of them hardly mutually compatible. Not everyone liked it that way, and at times the arguments turned violent. Still, so long as there was a temple in Jerusalem which everyone could accept as the center, everyone muddled along.
Immediately after the destruction the rabbinic authorities focused like a laser (they wouldn't have recognized my term): if you're with us, this is how we do Judaism; if you don't, you're out. Good-by, and good riddance. Quite a gamble, if you stop to think about it, but they were uncompromising. Nor was this a temporary measure: it went on for centuries - arguably, more than a millennium. A long time indeed.
The story of Ben Sira can demonstrate this - sort of.
Ben Sira is a book written in Hebrew around 200 BCE, give or take a generation. Its author probably thought he was writing a treatise about ethical behaviour, and had someone told him that later on some such treatises would be canonized into the Bible, he might have expected his to be included. In any case, it was regarded as a religious tome.
It was also translated to Greek, apparently by the author's grandson, which was a good thing because when the laser started cutting things out, 200 years later, Ben Sira was out. The practical implication was that it wasn't copied and recopied in Hebrew, nor learned by heart as the oral tradition was, and so was lost; the Greek version, however, having entered the Septuagint, waspreserved; in some traditions it is even part of the New Testament (in Greek it's called Sirach). Only in the 20th century were largish sections of the original Hebrew discovered, in the Cairo Geniza and on Massada. (More on the book, here).
One of the operators of that laser was rabbi Akiva, and there's a Mishna in Sanhedrin where he rules that Jews who read the wrong books (Sefarim Hitzoni'im, external books) won't go to heaven. On page 100b there is then a fascinating discussion among Amora'im, another few centuries on, about Ben Sira: the rabbis agree that rabbi Akiva had it on his list of forbidden books, but they're not quite certain why. The entire page is a series of quotations from the book (by now 500 years old, and say 250 years since the casting out) which are evaluated: this saying is OK, that one isn't and must have been what generated rabbi Akiva's ire, oh come on that's harmless, maybe it was this section.
You get my point: it's forbidden literature, but the rabbis know it by heart, even as they shudder over it's content (or not). Did the general Jewish public also know it? I expect not, but I doubt anyone really knows. It's hard enough figuring out what people think right now; reconstructing popular literacy at a distance of 1700 years is impossible.
That was my first story about the edge of Jewish identity. Here's a second, which appears on page 102b in Sanhedrin.
The Mishna lists three Biblical kings who were not allowed into heaven: Yerovam, Ahab and Menashe. Rav Ashi (later 4th century CE) once told his students in the yeshiva that their next day's lesson would deal with "our friends" or perhaps "our collegues" (haverin), those three kings (he was saying they were scholars before they were sinners) - and note how the Gemara observes itself in action: rav Ashi is teaching it and is in it, simultaneously. That's what you get when you spend 700 years creating one book.
That night Menashe appeared to rav Ashi in his dream:
- You dare call us your colleagues? (who do you think you are, little upstart). If you think you know so much, tell me from what part of the loaf are you to eat first upon blessing over the bread?
- I don't know.
- Such a simple thing, you don't know it, and you dare call yourself our colleague?
- So tell me, and I'll teach it tomorrow in class, in your name.
- You eat first from right under the crust.
- If you know so much (if you're such a scholar, this is rav Ashi asking the terrible sinner Menashe), how come you (and the other sinners) succumbed to idolatry?
- Ah, what do you know. Had you been alive in those days, you'd have raised the hem of your garment so as to run faster to worship those idols, so great was their attraction.
Then next morning, the Gemara tells us, rav Ashi opened his lecture by saying: Today we'll learn from our rabbis (our betters, not our colleagues).
Defining the edges seems to have been problematic, even in the days when doing it was an existential imperative.
[This thread started and is explained here]
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Three Stories about Staying Power
From time to time I pose the question - as a question, not an answer - of the ability of non-Israeli Jewry to sustain itself over time. I usually ask if it has staying power, since without it, Jews don't remain Jews for more than a few generations. Here are three recent stories about Jewish staying power.
The Bible doesn't much deal with non-military threats to Jewish existence, except a bit in some of the latter sections. Thus, the commandments to hold on no matter what, and the conceptual-religious-cultural mechanisms of doing so were mostly developed in the second millennium of Jewish existence. No single source for this is more important than the discussion initiated at Lod (Lyyda), where a wealthy Jew named Nitza gave his attic to a group of scholars to study. In the attic, so we're told, rabbi Yochanan taught what he had learned from Shimon ben Yehotzadak: All of the laws of the Torah, if a man is told to break them or be killed, he should break them and not be killed, except for idolatry, incest and murder.
The Gemara then goes into a long discussion which introduces distinctions such as if the demand is private (then there's more leeway to save one's life) or public (in which in some cases it is forbidden to give in at all). The motivation of the person making the demand and the threats is also relevant; if it's personal, or national, and so on. (Sanhedrin 74a and b)
At the time this was not a theoretical discussion, as many in the Talmud are, as there was a war going on with the Romans. Yet the rabbis could not have foreseen how serious their discussion would someday be; their conflict with the Romans was still largely political, or at least concentrated on the degree of autonomy the Jews of Judea would have within the Roman Empire. Many centuries later, after the Roman empire was no more, there would repeatedly be cases in Medieval Europe where the Jews would be faced with the full enormity of the dilemma, and large numbers of them would choose to die rather than to give in. (One assumes there were also large numbers who chose to give in, but their descendants were not Jews so their decision is lost). The horrible but extraordinarily powerful concept of Kiddush Hashem - Sanctifying His Name even through martyrdom - starts with this passage in the Talmud, which we passed last week.
During the Shoah, a number of rabbis reversed the logic of the ruling: if the enemy is attempting to destroy all of the Jews, without offering them any choice in the matter, perhaps they may transgress so as to survive, a few of them. A twist the earlier rabbis had not foreseen.
The second story began six years ago today, on May 2nd 2004, when Tali Hatuel, eight months pregnant with her first son, loaded her four daughters into the family van. Hila was 11, Hadar was 9, Ronny was 7,and Meirav was 2. They all lived in the village of Katif, and they were off to pick up their husband-father David, and go vote in the internal Likud poll on Ariel Sharon's plan to pull them out of Gaza. On the road to Ashkelon Tali was shot by Palestinian murderers, who then walked up to the stalled van and shot the four girls at close range.
The five were buried in a row: Tali, her foetus still in her, and to either side of her, two daughters.
I assume the murderers understood that such a murder on that particular day would likely hamper Sharon's plan of leaving Gaza. To the best of my knowledge the murderer or murderers were never apprehended, though one may hope they died in the 2009 attack on Hamas.
David Hatuel mourned his entire family, was forced out of their home the following summer, then remarried and now has three small children. His new wife is scrupulously left alone by our usually irrepressible media: there are some lines that are still not to be crossed. David himself, however, talks from time to time. In an interview over the weekend he said that he hasn't built a new family, he has built a second floor. Tali and her daughters are the first floor, Limor and her three (so far) are the second floor of the same family. His three new children have three sets of grandparents.
So that's the second story about staying power. Sort of puts things into perspective, doesn't it.
The third was this morning. We went to a Brit- the celebration of circumcision which Jewish boys undergo on their eighth day after birth. The great grandparents were there, and the grandparents, and lots of siblings and cousins and friends. The new-born is the first-born to his parents, and his mother looked deeply distressed as the moment approached. New mothers of new-born Jewish boys usually are, but the first is the hardest. Nearby I noticed another young woman, deep into her first pregnancy: she also has a boy coming, and she literally had tears in her eyes as the moment approached.
The baby, by the way, cried for about 30 seconds and then was given a pacifier with wine on it and went back to sleep, as always happens. Still, I'm always struck at this event by the underlying message that being Jewish hurts.
The Bible doesn't much deal with non-military threats to Jewish existence, except a bit in some of the latter sections. Thus, the commandments to hold on no matter what, and the conceptual-religious-cultural mechanisms of doing so were mostly developed in the second millennium of Jewish existence. No single source for this is more important than the discussion initiated at Lod (Lyyda), where a wealthy Jew named Nitza gave his attic to a group of scholars to study. In the attic, so we're told, rabbi Yochanan taught what he had learned from Shimon ben Yehotzadak: All of the laws of the Torah, if a man is told to break them or be killed, he should break them and not be killed, except for idolatry, incest and murder.
The Gemara then goes into a long discussion which introduces distinctions such as if the demand is private (then there's more leeway to save one's life) or public (in which in some cases it is forbidden to give in at all). The motivation of the person making the demand and the threats is also relevant; if it's personal, or national, and so on. (Sanhedrin 74a and b)
At the time this was not a theoretical discussion, as many in the Talmud are, as there was a war going on with the Romans. Yet the rabbis could not have foreseen how serious their discussion would someday be; their conflict with the Romans was still largely political, or at least concentrated on the degree of autonomy the Jews of Judea would have within the Roman Empire. Many centuries later, after the Roman empire was no more, there would repeatedly be cases in Medieval Europe where the Jews would be faced with the full enormity of the dilemma, and large numbers of them would choose to die rather than to give in. (One assumes there were also large numbers who chose to give in, but their descendants were not Jews so their decision is lost). The horrible but extraordinarily powerful concept of Kiddush Hashem - Sanctifying His Name even through martyrdom - starts with this passage in the Talmud, which we passed last week.
During the Shoah, a number of rabbis reversed the logic of the ruling: if the enemy is attempting to destroy all of the Jews, without offering them any choice in the matter, perhaps they may transgress so as to survive, a few of them. A twist the earlier rabbis had not foreseen.
The second story began six years ago today, on May 2nd 2004, when Tali Hatuel, eight months pregnant with her first son, loaded her four daughters into the family van. Hila was 11, Hadar was 9, Ronny was 7,and Meirav was 2. They all lived in the village of Katif, and they were off to pick up their husband-father David, and go vote in the internal Likud poll on Ariel Sharon's plan to pull them out of Gaza. On the road to Ashkelon Tali was shot by Palestinian murderers, who then walked up to the stalled van and shot the four girls at close range.
The five were buried in a row: Tali, her foetus still in her, and to either side of her, two daughters.
I assume the murderers understood that such a murder on that particular day would likely hamper Sharon's plan of leaving Gaza. To the best of my knowledge the murderer or murderers were never apprehended, though one may hope they died in the 2009 attack on Hamas.
David Hatuel mourned his entire family, was forced out of their home the following summer, then remarried and now has three small children. His new wife is scrupulously left alone by our usually irrepressible media: there are some lines that are still not to be crossed. David himself, however, talks from time to time. In an interview over the weekend he said that he hasn't built a new family, he has built a second floor. Tali and her daughters are the first floor, Limor and her three (so far) are the second floor of the same family. His three new children have three sets of grandparents.
So that's the second story about staying power. Sort of puts things into perspective, doesn't it.
The third was this morning. We went to a Brit- the celebration of circumcision which Jewish boys undergo on their eighth day after birth. The great grandparents were there, and the grandparents, and lots of siblings and cousins and friends. The new-born is the first-born to his parents, and his mother looked deeply distressed as the moment approached. New mothers of new-born Jewish boys usually are, but the first is the hardest. Nearby I noticed another young woman, deep into her first pregnancy: she also has a boy coming, and she literally had tears in her eyes as the moment approached.
The baby, by the way, cried for about 30 seconds and then was given a pacifier with wine on it and went back to sleep, as always happens. Still, I'm always struck at this event by the underlying message that being Jewish hurts.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Even the Greatest of Them
There's been a flurry of condemnation of some South African Jews who disapprove of Richard Goldstone to the extent that he won't be joining the synagogue services of his grandson's bar mitzva. JTA says he has been barred; the Jerusalem Post offers a fudged version of the story, in which some of the protagonists seem to be backing away from the appearance of their decision without changing it. J.J. Goldberg at The Forward notes the story, and many of his readers think it's disgraceful.
The story emphasizes an aspect of the story of the Goldstone report not often directly mentioned: that Jews are a community, and always have been; that the community has its own internal dynamics; and that Richard Goldstone dealt his community a grievous blow by adding his stature to a nasty defamation of it. (I'm not going into the issue of the report here, because I've already done so here, but having read the entire 575 pages of it I have no problem in calling it a nasty defamation).
The tool of nidui (roughly similar to the Greek practice of ostracism) has been one of the most powerful methods of sanction and censure in Jewish communal life. During the millennia in which the Jews had no state power to wield, it was perhaps the most powerful tool in their arsenal, but it predates even those times.
Perhaps the most famous nidui ever was the casting out of rabbi Eliezer in the 2nd century CE. Rabbi Eliezer was one of the greatest of the tanaim, the scholars who created the Mishna; indeed, he is one of fountainheads of the Mishna; he appears thousands of times in the Talmud and his impact was enormous. He also seems to have been a stubborn pedant, unwavering in his puristic interpretations, a fact that eventually led to his clash with the other scholars of his generation. In one of the most fascinating discussions in the history of religion (any religion), R. Eliezer took the side of God against the scholars but lost, and when he refused to accept this he was cast out.
As he lay on his deathbed a group of his disciples came to visit him, among them rabbis Akiva and Yehoshua. First they loitered outside his chamber, as R. Eliezer rebuked his son for putting care of him above preparations for the approaching Shabbat. The disciples then entered, while sitting across the room because of the nidui order.
- R. Eliezer: Why did you come?
- We came to learn.
- Where were you up till now?
- We were busy [they didn't want to pain him by saying they had been respecting the order]
- We'll see how you die
- R. Akiva: What will my death be like?
- Yours will be the worst of them all [R. Akiva was later tortured to death by the Romans, in an emblematic act of martyrdom]
R. Eliezer then crossed his arms across his chest: Oh, what will be lost when I go. I studied much Torah from my teachers, but what I took from them was like a dog lapping at the sea [so great was what I didn't have time to learn]; I taught much Torah to my students, but they didn't take more than a drop from a vessel. I have studied 300 rules about the affliction of leprosy that no-one ever asked me; I've studied 300 rules of the farming of squash that no-one ever asked me except R. Akiva once [These are arcane matters; his passing would mean the loss of such details that are not common knowledge].
The disciples and R. Eliezer got into a detailed discussion of holiness and impurity; to one of the questions he added that a leather item if treated in a particular manner is pure - and on the word Pure he died.
Rabbi Yehoshua stood up and said The nidui is over, the nidui is over [otherwise it could also have affected the burial arrangements].
Richard Goldstone is not an important Jew, not in any Jewish context; ostracizing him may make him feel sorry for himself, but it's no great matter in a Jewish context.
Sanhedrin 68a; the Daf Yomi thread is presented and explained here.
The story emphasizes an aspect of the story of the Goldstone report not often directly mentioned: that Jews are a community, and always have been; that the community has its own internal dynamics; and that Richard Goldstone dealt his community a grievous blow by adding his stature to a nasty defamation of it. (I'm not going into the issue of the report here, because I've already done so here, but having read the entire 575 pages of it I have no problem in calling it a nasty defamation).
The tool of nidui (roughly similar to the Greek practice of ostracism) has been one of the most powerful methods of sanction and censure in Jewish communal life. During the millennia in which the Jews had no state power to wield, it was perhaps the most powerful tool in their arsenal, but it predates even those times.
Perhaps the most famous nidui ever was the casting out of rabbi Eliezer in the 2nd century CE. Rabbi Eliezer was one of the greatest of the tanaim, the scholars who created the Mishna; indeed, he is one of fountainheads of the Mishna; he appears thousands of times in the Talmud and his impact was enormous. He also seems to have been a stubborn pedant, unwavering in his puristic interpretations, a fact that eventually led to his clash with the other scholars of his generation. In one of the most fascinating discussions in the history of religion (any religion), R. Eliezer took the side of God against the scholars but lost, and when he refused to accept this he was cast out.
As he lay on his deathbed a group of his disciples came to visit him, among them rabbis Akiva and Yehoshua. First they loitered outside his chamber, as R. Eliezer rebuked his son for putting care of him above preparations for the approaching Shabbat. The disciples then entered, while sitting across the room because of the nidui order.
- R. Eliezer: Why did you come?
- We came to learn.
- Where were you up till now?
- We were busy [they didn't want to pain him by saying they had been respecting the order]
- We'll see how you die
- R. Akiva: What will my death be like?
- Yours will be the worst of them all [R. Akiva was later tortured to death by the Romans, in an emblematic act of martyrdom]
R. Eliezer then crossed his arms across his chest: Oh, what will be lost when I go. I studied much Torah from my teachers, but what I took from them was like a dog lapping at the sea [so great was what I didn't have time to learn]; I taught much Torah to my students, but they didn't take more than a drop from a vessel. I have studied 300 rules about the affliction of leprosy that no-one ever asked me; I've studied 300 rules of the farming of squash that no-one ever asked me except R. Akiva once [These are arcane matters; his passing would mean the loss of such details that are not common knowledge].
The disciples and R. Eliezer got into a detailed discussion of holiness and impurity; to one of the questions he added that a leather item if treated in a particular manner is pure - and on the word Pure he died.
Rabbi Yehoshua stood up and said The nidui is over, the nidui is over [otherwise it could also have affected the burial arrangements].
Richard Goldstone is not an important Jew, not in any Jewish context; ostracizing him may make him feel sorry for himself, but it's no great matter in a Jewish context.
Sanhedrin 68a; the Daf Yomi thread is presented and explained here.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Rescuing Lust from Extinction
The following story appears at least twice in the Talmud, the more detailed version (if memory serves) near the end of the Yoma tracate. However, having recently passed it in Sanhedrin, I'm posting from there.
The context is a discussion of the laws of idolatry. As is standard practice in the Talmud, there's lots of extremely detailed discussion of hypothetical matters that don't happen in the real lives of the scholars doing the discussing. Sometimes (tho often not) these discussions eventually mention the fact that they're religious and intellectual exercises, not practical discourses. So in this case. Having spent days on the minutiae of idolatry, the Gemara wonders how it came to be that the Jews lost their interest in the practice. After all, it was clearly a major issue in the early biblical times, yet the scholars of the Talmudic era apparently had never heard of Jews engaging in it for many centuries.
If you're into modern historical analysis of documents as a primary way to decipher the events of the past, the Gemara's answer won't satisfy you, because it's a fable (or myth, or metaphor, or allegory, or something. The literary folks will better know which term it is). According to this fable, the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem once managed to capture the flaming lion cub of idolatry which had emerged from the Holy of Holies in the Temple. Its roars were terrible to hear, but the prophet Zachariya told them to force it into a cage and pore molten lead over it; lead apparently having special sealing properties, as any reader of Superman comics will confirm.
(If you're less than 40-some years of age and don't know what I'm talking about with the Superman allusion, forget it. Not important).
Since they were having such a good day (Et ratzon) the Sanhedrin decided also to do away with lust. They prayed that the beast of lust be handed over, and when it was they caged it for three days, waiting to see the implications. (They realized the danger of their actions, and were being careful). As they had feared, the absence of lust in the world wreaked havoc; as the Gemara describes it, during those three days even the hens stopped laying eggs. Wondering if they might request that Lust be so limited than men would have it only for their rightful wife, the Sanhedrin recognized that this would not be granted. So they blinded the Beast of Lust but then let it free; as a result, men no longer lust after their immediate female relatives, and incest became rare.
Sanhedrin 64a
This thread is introduced and explained here.
The context is a discussion of the laws of idolatry. As is standard practice in the Talmud, there's lots of extremely detailed discussion of hypothetical matters that don't happen in the real lives of the scholars doing the discussing. Sometimes (tho often not) these discussions eventually mention the fact that they're religious and intellectual exercises, not practical discourses. So in this case. Having spent days on the minutiae of idolatry, the Gemara wonders how it came to be that the Jews lost their interest in the practice. After all, it was clearly a major issue in the early biblical times, yet the scholars of the Talmudic era apparently had never heard of Jews engaging in it for many centuries.
If you're into modern historical analysis of documents as a primary way to decipher the events of the past, the Gemara's answer won't satisfy you, because it's a fable (or myth, or metaphor, or allegory, or something. The literary folks will better know which term it is). According to this fable, the Great Sanhedrin in Jerusalem once managed to capture the flaming lion cub of idolatry which had emerged from the Holy of Holies in the Temple. Its roars were terrible to hear, but the prophet Zachariya told them to force it into a cage and pore molten lead over it; lead apparently having special sealing properties, as any reader of Superman comics will confirm.
(If you're less than 40-some years of age and don't know what I'm talking about with the Superman allusion, forget it. Not important).
Since they were having such a good day (Et ratzon) the Sanhedrin decided also to do away with lust. They prayed that the beast of lust be handed over, and when it was they caged it for three days, waiting to see the implications. (They realized the danger of their actions, and were being careful). As they had feared, the absence of lust in the world wreaked havoc; as the Gemara describes it, during those three days even the hens stopped laying eggs. Wondering if they might request that Lust be so limited than men would have it only for their rightful wife, the Sanhedrin recognized that this would not be granted. So they blinded the Beast of Lust but then let it free; as a result, men no longer lust after their immediate female relatives, and incest became rare.
Sanhedrin 64a
This thread is introduced and explained here.
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