“ Learning Talmud specifically was a spiritual practice designed to shape us into the kinds of morally sophisticated thinkers that can create a certain kind of world. So, at moments like this, it's not necessarily an odd thing to do.” - Benay Lappe
“ Learning Talmud specifically was a spiritual practice designed to shape us into the kinds of morally sophisticated thinkers that can create a certain kind of world. So, at moments like this, it's not necessarily an odd thing to do.” - Benay Lappe
Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.
What do you do when the world feels like it’s on fire? This episode was recorded the day after the January 6th storming of the Capitol in 2021. Dan and Benay wrestle with a raw question: when democracy feels fragile, is studying Talmud an escape or a form of resistance? They argue that learning itself is a discipline of moral formation, a way of shaping people capable of building and re-building a just society.
Returning to the text about the “wayward and rebellious son” from last episode, they push the conversation beyond ancient law into urgent territory: vigilance, social responsibility, systemic failure, and the danger of trying to “solve” society’s problems by simply eliminating the bad actors. Not easy punishment, but harder accountability. We ask what kind of people we must become when the flames are real, and we ask whether cognitive development is itself a civic act.
This week’s text: (Sanhedrin 68b, 70a)
Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.
DAN LIBENSON: This is The Oral Talmud - Episode 38: “Bad Seeds in the Capitol.”
Welcome to the Oral Talmud, a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. I’m Dan Libenson…
BENAY LAPPE: …and I’m Benay Lappe.
DAN LIBENSON: The Oral Talmud is our weekly deep dive study partnership, in which we try to figure out how voices from the Talmud – voices from 1500 to 2000 years ago – can help us think in new ways about Judaism today.
What do you do when the world feels like it’s on fire? This episode was recorded the day after the January 6th storming of the Capitol in 2021. We wrestle with a raw question: when democracy feels fragile, is studying Talmud an escape — or a form of resistance? We argue that learning itself is a discipline of moral formation, a way of shaping people capable of building — and re-building — a just society.
Returning to the text about the “wayward and rebellious son” from last episode, we push the conversation beyond ancient law into urgent territory: vigilance, social responsibility, systemic failure, and the danger of trying to “solve” society’s problems by simply eliminating the bad actors. Not easy punishment, but harder accountability. We ask what kind of people we must become when the flames are real, and we ask whether cognitive development is itself a civic act.
DAN LIBENSON: Hey Bene.
BENAY LAPPE: Hey, Dan. How are you?
DAN LIBENSON: Um, okay. Uh, it's an interesting day that we've decided to come back from our, our winter vacation. But anyway, first of all, saying I'm glad to see you again after a couple of weeks, and I'm glad to see our people that we're not seeing, but the folks that are watching here.
So, welcome back.
BENAY LAPPE: Thank you. It's, it's great to be back and it's so good to see you.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. And, uh, we're gonna stay some Talmud. It's a weird day. Uh, so today is the day after the kind of. Who attempts, or whatever you wanna call it in the, uh, Washington. It's also, it's also the day after, uh, uh, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris were officially, um, certified by the Senate, well, well by the Congress to, to be the next, the president-elect.
So, I mean, so it's a, it's, you know, it's a weird, a lot of things happened yesterday, uh, you know, at the beginning of the day and the,
BENAY LAPPE: and the day after the Democratic Party took the Senate,
DAN LIBENSON: right. So, you know, these things are not unrelated, obviously.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, and we don't know, you know, as we're, as we're on here talking, we don't really know what's happening.
All kinds of drama is happening in, in Washington. So it's a day that, on the one hand it's like very distracting. And, and on the other hand, we're gonna study some almed. I know you wanna talk a little bit about that.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I, I think I, I wanna reflect on the fact that at moments like this, I'm always asking myself.
We're always asking ourselves at Sfar, and unfortunately, over the past four years, we've had many opportunities to have, you know, tragedies in the world and world events happen. And to ask ourselves, you know, do you go into the Beit meteor rush when the world is burning around you? Or when it feels like that, is that the right thing to do?
And, and a lot of us are sort of activists at heart, and it feels like the right thing to do is either to be on the front lines, to be engaged in direct activism or activism in other ways. Um, and why sit and study? Why sit and learn at these moments, and then if you sit and learn, what should you be learning and.
You know, I, you, you and I spoke yesterday after this happened, and I think our first impulse was to ask what should be we, what should we be learning from May, maybe we should put, put a hold on the text we've been learning and find something else that speaks to this moment. Um, and that's, I think that's a reasonable thing to do, to say what text in the tradition, in its content actually can help us think through in a better way, you know, government or the fragility of, of the systems that ground our values or the fragility of our values or, or whatever the, the particular take is or, or what we're looking to answer.
Um, and I think that's a reasonable way to go and. The thing that I also don't ever wanna lose track of is the fact that learning itself, I believe is a person shaping activity and learning. Talmud specifically was de was a, a spiritual practice designed to shape us into the kinds of morally sophisticated thinkers who can create a certain kind of world.
Um, and so at moments like this, it's not necessarily a, an odd thing to do
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: To, to kind of re-up on making sure we're those kinds of people or to renew ourselves. Right. Um, there's, I don't know. And,
DAN LIBENSON: and we couldn't come up with a really good alternative check.
BENAY LAPPE: That's also true.
DAN LIBENSON: But, um, yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: What are you thinking?
DAN LIBENSON: Well, I, I'm thinking a couple things. One, what you just said was very helpful and actually it. Reminds me to mention something that I'm sure you, you don't want me to, but that, that you were recently put on this list of the forward 50, you know, top 50 most influential or something like that, Jews, and rightly so.
So because of, of that kind of perspective. So, um, first of all, I just wanted to congratulate you on that and, and also just say, you know, what an honor it is to, to get to learn every week with one of the top 50 Jews. Um,
BENAY LAPPE: thank
DAN LIBENSON: you. But, um, you know, I, I, as we were talking earlier, I, I thought like, actually what we're talking about now is this text.
I mean, like there's this piece that, that you could choose the text. I don't know. It's a little corny to say, or the text chooses you. But I mean, I, I, I think that it's kind of as, as I thought about it more and realized here, what's the text that we're talking about here? We're talking about this text from the Torah that talks about this stubborn and rebellious son, this, this young boy or young.
Well, that's part of what we're talking about. A young man or a, a person who, a younger person who has, who is showing you some signs that they're going on a wrong path and whatever person you wanna imagine in that role, whether that's a political leader or the people who stormed the capitol yesterday, uh, that.
Many of them might have shown signs in their youth of the going on a way that wouldn't, uh, turn out very well for, for themselves. But more than that, I, I think what we're seeing is that it's not turning out well for the country. Uh, meaning it's not turning out well for other people. And so you could make the argument, not that you should kill them, you know, that wouldn't be my choice.
But you could make the argument that something should be done about these people when they're only showing the signs that they're going wrong. Or you could say, that's not how we operate. It's not how we should operate. Yeah, that's a simpler way may, you know, in a sense. But ultimately Judaism works out a different approach.
And that, that approach, I mean, spoiler alert, I, I think it was clear from last week, but like, spoiler alert, the Talmud. Ends up reversing course from what the Torah says. The Torah says, you know, you see somebody with signs that they're gonna be this stubborn, rebellious son, whatever that means. Exactly.
And you should kill them now, uh, perhaps because of what they're going to become.
BENAY LAPPE: Actually, I think my read of the Torah is you identify this person based on their current behavior. And what I think the rabbinic genius was to do was to set up a system of evidentiary signs.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Before they get to that actual behavior that the, to redeems worthy of causing their death.
And, and I think that that's what the, the rabbis do. That's their upgrade on the Torah. Uhhuh is not, it's not just to say, no, we don't wanna kill him, but we actually want a process of being able to. Predict the future better
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh,
BENAY LAPPE: and they identify this, this kid precisely not by his current behavior uhhuh, but by what we anticipate with some amount of confidence, actually certainty if he right in the future, if he fulfills this long set of requirements.
And I think it's that, it's, it's that period of, uh, or it's that move to say what do we need to be watchful about? That I think actually does speak to this moment.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, and, and I was gonna, it's interesting 'cause I was gonna say, I think you're right, and I was gonna say that by not killing them now or otherwise, you know, jailing them, whatever you wanna, you know, giving them, uh, drugs, you know, to, to turn them into a, a, you know, person who can't really function, you know, whatever, you know, whatever different things society in the past has done to people that they disapprove of.
Sterilizing them, you know, whatever it might be that Judaism or here the rabbis are saying, we're not gonna do that. And like you say, number one, that means that we have to be vigilant on the front end to, to try to hopefully not let them reach that point. And, and what I was thinking about was that we have to remain vigilant on the back end saying that we can't just wash our hands of this person.
We can't just get rid of them. We're go, we're going to put ourselves in a difficult situation, in a more difficult situation by choice. That means we're gonna have to remain vigilant always after they reach, after they pass through the period of the, of the sun. You know, the, and, and that there, and I, and I think it'll be, it's interesting to explore the values that are at work there, uh, and the responsibility that that means that we're going to have to, uh, we can't take the easy way out, I guess, and.
Just what we were talking about last week, that you are narrowing the definition of when a person can even be this stubborn, rebellious son. And it's, and it was getting narrowed on both ends. They, they have to be of a, of a certain age and development that they're older than X and also younger then y And as X and Y become closer and closer and closer and closer together to the point of a of a point.
And there, you know, there actually becomes legislated out of existence that there's even an age where this could possibly happen. That means that we have to be vigilant all the time. To, to try to make this not happen. And now, and now what does that mean? And, and that's where I feel like I, I, to some extent, I feel like what we're having now is the conversation that maybe we would have in a couple of weeks.
And, and we'll have again that about, you know, what are the kind of the social policy implications of this, but it's relevant to what we're going through now. So we're having a little bit of a, of a preview, which, which does to me, like if we're on the front end, the, the younger age, right? This is about all our kind of policies about making sure that, you know, education and, uh, nutrition and, and everything that we're concerned about children.
And making sure that children grow up in an environment that's not going to make them, uh, harmed or bitter, you know, that, that they might reach young adulthood and want to act out in this way. And on the other end is, is all the social policies that have to do with adults that are jobless, that are.
Embittered by society for whatever reason, and who are going to act out maybe in, in physical revolution type of ways. And maybe just at the ballot box by, by voting for people who are playing to their, to their grievance. And we're seeing all of that now. And so it kind of feels to me like an ancient society's solution to this might be, let's just kill all the, all the malfactors, you know?
You know, let's just, let's just, just with the power of, of the, of the fist, you know, we're gonna, and, and, and I think this is a different approach that says that's, that's, no, we, that's not how we're gonna solve the, we're gonna solve these problems, but we're gonna solve them in a more and morally sophisticated and awake kind of way.
BENAY LAPPE: I, I, I really like that. And I love this idea that you've spun out that the narrowing is actually. Maximizing globalizing of the concern of the watchfulness, of the vigilance, of the awareness. That's really interesting. And, and this, and this potentially murderous child has actually not been eliminated from our concern or awareness, uh, during a certain, even during a certain period, but has now become on our radar screen always.
Mm-hmm. Not for whether to kill him or not to kill him, but just as a person of concern. Right.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. And, and do we, yeah. And do we, you know, do we, how, how, how much do we think about this notion of like the bad seed, you know, versus a person is bad because. Their circumstances have facilitated their badness or both, you know?
Right. But, but I think that, I dunno, there's something I'm trying to get at it, at that, um, you know, society can't just wash its hands. I mean, I, I think that there, look, there, there are ways in which I, I think about what's going on in our world today and in our country today, that I think a lot of this sort of bad behavior that people look, there was a confederate flag in the Congress yesterday.
So the question is, is, is the policy that's set that kind of tries to like, through force of various kinds, suppress that and drive it all under the surface effective? Because on the one hand, it, it was effective for a long period of time and, and a lot of people live better lives because that stuff was suppressed.
But it wasn't actually gotten rid of it turns out. Mm-hmm. And then when that suppression is released, you know, like I, and, and the suppression will always be released somehow or another, that, that's what I, I feel like I, I see in this, you know, like I, and with the antisemitism, I remember a couple years ago when there was the Pittsburgh, uh, synagogue shooting, and, and I, I was trying to explain that why I thought that Trump is responsible and it's not because Trump himself is an anti-Semite may or may not be.
I mean, you know, in classic way. But because for whatever reasons he had stopped pumping in, I was calling it like the inert gas, like antisemitism is a flame. And if you, and if you have oxygen, then the flame turns into a fire and, and, and is engulfs right? And that's like the antisemitism sort of rising up and, and actually killing people.
Um, so. One thing you could try to do is put out the flame, but another thing you could try to do is, is replace the oxygen with like an inert gas that doesn't burn. So the flame will still burn, but it'll burn at a very low level. And if you, but if you stop for a minute pumping in that inert gas, the, the oxygen comes in and the flame rises up.
And, and so that, and so what Trump had done, in my view, was to not as vigorously pump in the inert gas as previous presidents had done. Mm-hmm. And that had nothing to do with partisanship or it was just, it was just, that's not his way, uh, for whatever reasons. Right. And, um, and I feel like that is inevitable.
It's inevitable that an incompetent president will come along or a malevolent one, but it's in, it's inevitable that somebody's gonna come along and fail to do the suppression. And, and so, so what you have to always be concerned about when you're suppressing something is what are you going to do? Not if, but when the suppression.
Or eases. Mm-hmm. And so I feel like the, the various forces that we saw in play yesterday have been suppressed, but not, but people were diluted to, you know, not in the last few years, but before that people were diluted to think that, that these forces weren't there anymore somehow. And I feel like the Torah's idea of the Ben Morere, the stubborn or rebellious sun that he should be killed is like a version of that suppression idea.
You know, that idea that, that we can, that, that we can suppress and the suppression will, will always work. And so it allows us to be like, not. Seriously vigilant and not really have, you know, policies that prevent the, like you're saying, like that prevent the, a, a son from becoming a southern rebellious son, or that deal with a former sub rebellious son who is now a bad person.
You know? And we don't have to have those policies 'cause we know we'll just kill him when he is, you know, when, when he like reaches the criteria and eventually, you know, one gets through, you know, even if it was moral, which is, you know, but one gets through the thing and, and then becomes, you know, Hitler or whatever.
So, so it feels like that's not the right approach, the right approach is to understand that we have a responsibility to always be vi vigilant and to always have, do the hard work that hopefully minimizes the likelihood that people will wanna be that way in the first place. Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: I, I love, I love your image of the flame.
The gas necessary and the fact that they're both necessary. And it looks, I think what, what I'm taking away from what you're saying is the, the flame itself will always be there. And if you only focus on the role of the flame in the conflagration, you're missing, you're missing the picture. And what you're saying is the oxygen is equally responsible.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: And the failure to remove the oxygen is, or the, or the right, when we fail to remove the oxygen, we're equally culpable to the person who's lighting the match or holding the flame. That's,
DAN LIBENSON: I
BENAY LAPPE: love that. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: I, you know, I wanna be cautious about the equally culpable, because I don't, I don't mean morally, but I do mean, but I do think practically, by the way, uh, Irwin Kula has been saying stuff like this of late, you know, for a while.
And I can't speak for him. He is one of our, both of our teachers. Uh, I can't. Speak directly for him, but I think this is what he's trying to say as well, you know, that it's not a, it's, and, and I think he may be, well, I don't know what he is trying to say, so it may be that he is being misunderstood or being understood properly, but like, I don't, I, I wouldn't say that it's necessarily the same level of moral culpability, but I would say it's the, it's probably, uh, equal, equal shared responsibility from a practical perspective.
And, and by the way, I think that's something that's misunderstood when people talk about relationships as well, that, you know, if, if you have a breach in a relationship that both parties are at fault or both parties, you know, it's true that both parties have a, a capacity to, uh, to, to, to improve the relationship or to make the outcome less bad or whatever.
But that doesn't necessarily mean that both are morally responsible to the same degree. Yeah. Um. So, but I, I, I guess, like what I'm saying is that let's talk about the morally responsible part a little bit, because I, I think that, um. Well, I would say that about like the antisemitism, right? In other words, if the flame is actual antisemites and the, the, the gas is, is, or the, you know, the oxygen is the envir is the normal environment.
It's the inert gas that's the putting in the inert gas, like reducing the oxygen. That's the work of the non antisemites. And so then if you, the non antisemites relax, that allows the flame of antisemitism to rise up. And so, yes, the non antisemites were culpable in the sense that they got lazy and stopped pumping in the, the inert gas.
Uh, but they're not morally culpable in quite the same way. 'cause they're actually not hateful. Uh, you know, like the actual flame antisemite people are. In this case, when we're talking about, now let's go away from the image, you know, from the, uh, metaphor, you know, but like in a, in a case of, of like a person who is, you know, your son, right?
Or who is, um, a person who, who, uh, a member of the community, you know, who's kind of going wrong. What is it? It's, I think it's a little bit more, there is a moral level. I think that that, that by reducing the, the scope of the stubborn, rebellious son who you can deal with in a more, uh, in a more, um, final kind of way.
And like, again, the Torah talks about killing, but they didn't have, you know, prisons in those days in the same way. So we don't have to go quite that far. We could say like, our society has, has done a lot of imprisoning of people as a way of getting them out of society as opposed to trying to figure out why did they become bad in the first place, or maybe they weren't even so bad, or, you know, could we, and then there are all kinds of programs of rehabilitation and, and et cetera, right?
So, um, so we could say like, so, so I, I do think that there is a, a higher degree of moral, there is a moral, um, how can I say this? Like, it's good, it's good morally for society. To choose not to solve its problems through incarceration and other kinds of easy fixes in a way that just take bad people out of society.
It's better morally for society to say, we are going to struggle with how to keep these people in society. Society, but hopefully not as, as destructive of a way
BENAY LAPPE: a and to be self-reflective to say, what is it about Yes, our, our systems of justice or injustice that are putting these people in a position of so much oppression, disenfranchisement, right.
Lack of opportunity that,
DAN LIBENSON: yeah. Yep. And, and by the way, I wanna be super clear that I'm not saying that once they do the bad act, they shouldn't be incarcerated like I think they should be. Uh, meaning like, I, I hope that all these people who stormed the Capitol yesterday go to prison for a long time. Uh, I'm just saying that that's a solution after they've committed the crime.
But, but ideally, it's, it's not a way to try to remove them from society so that they won't do other bad things. It's like they should be punished for the crime that they committed. But, but, you know, we, we should still nevertheless take, take all the situations much more seriously, uh, as a society,
BENAY LAPPE: right?
And I just, I, I can't even let that go by without putting at least a sticky and an an acknowledgement on the lens of. Of racism over who's being arrested. Yeah. Who's being placed. Yeah. And who's not. So let's just be sure that's on the table.
DAN LIBENSON: A hundred percent. Yeah. I mean, that's right. That's a whole, another shocking dimension to the, I mean, shocking.
I only mean morally shocking. It's not shocking in the sense that it's, it's surprising. Yeah. But that, that here, you know, the same people who are saying that the Black Lives Matter protesters should be tried for sedition because they, you know, didn't even, but they claim claiming that they were like, you know, vandalizing the park, um, you know, didn't even arrest these people that were storming the capitol.
I mean, it's, uh, astonishing. Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Incredible. Okay. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Um, all right, well, so should we go back into the text?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, let's,
DAN LIBENSON: all right. Um, you wanna give us a little bit of a review of where we were?
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, sure. So throughout our learning of the text, we're gonna be jumping back and forth between the earlier layer of the post biblical legal tradition, which is the mishna, and the later layer, which is the gamara on top of that Mishna and the Talmud excerpts.
The earlier layer, the mishna paragraph by paragraph in into itself with the later gamara cut and pasted onto each paragraph. So each time we do a piece of mna, we're gonna learn the later. Take or analysis or unpacking of that layer, then we're gonna go back in time to another Mishna and then forward to the gamar on that and then back in time.
Um, because the presumption of, of the text is that the learner has learned the mishna all of a piece, um, and understands that foundational layer. And now is going back to see the later pieces, but we actually haven't, as we walk our way through the text, so I just wanna say we're gonna be going back and forth.
Something, uh, always keep in mind. So, so the, our, our text opened with Mishna saying that, um, asking the question, when is this quote unquote stubborn and rebellious son actually. Such a person. In other words, when does a human being attain the identity of a stubborn and rebellious son, such that that person is eligible for the to idly mandated death penalty, um, carried out by that child's parents taking them to the elders of the town to be stoned.
And as we pointed out last week, that question itself is interesting because it presumes that it imputes to the, the rabbis impute to themselves the right to say, we can limit, we can define and limit when a person or what constitutes such a person, whereas the Torah actually defines the prison. Uh, my child doesn't heed my words.
Stubborn and rebellious, uh, or is wayward and is a drunkard and a glutton. That's sort of the definition. But the rabbis say, no, no, no. That, that's not really enough of a definition. Uh, we're gonna create a definition, the parameters outside of which out right? When someone is outside of these parameters, they're not Ben Marette.
Okay? And the first set of parameters are chronological. So when in a person's life is someone even eligible for this identity? And the rabbis decide that it is a period of time between when two, uh, pubic hairs sprout until a full quote unquote lower beard, um, grows. So during this period of adolescence between.
Uh, the beginning of signs of, of maturity to full maturity as evidenced by, um, full pubic hair. Okay? And, and then they make a kind of passing acknowledgement that a minor, of course, is exempt from this identity. Anyone below for a boy the age of 13? A girl at the age of 12, roughly speaking. Uh, not, not eligible.
Okay. That's the mishna. And then last week the Gamara came in and said, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Not so fast. Um, how do we know that a minor isn't even eligible? And then the gomar walks us through the thought process of. That, that the Talmud is trying to disabuse us of. In other words, it's trying to point out if you were satisfied with the way the mishna, you know, offhandedly, um, came to the conclusion that a minor is exempt from this status.
You weren't thinking deeply enough. And this is one of the ways that I think the Gamara is a kind of curriculum for how to be a sharper, more analytical, more sophisticated thinker. And in fact, it comes, the gamara comes to the conclusion that there really needs to be a greater, um, kind of proof or justification for eliminating minors.
It's not good enough to say, oh, a minor is not obligated to the commandment, so we don't have to worry about minors even being on the hook. Um. For this identity, actually for a couple of reasons. Number one, the fact that this identity of a person so evil that they would need to be killed, um, is not an identity marked by current behavior.
They say it's an identity marked by future behavior.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, it's,
BENAY LAPPE: go
DAN LIBENSON: ahead. The present behavior is, has to be enough to justify the, the labeling Prediction. Yeah, the prediction. And, and then, but, but that'll, the real concern is not what he is done up till now. The real concern is what he is done, what he will do in the future.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. When he will in fact be in a state of majority. Right. In other words, when he is no longer a minor. Oh, so for not this, a minor being off the hook is neither here nor there. If we're looking at the minor's future behavior, okay. So that's a good reason why we can't offhandedly, uh, eliminate minors from possible culpability.
And furthermore, we already said that. Um, what was it? Um,
oh, that one of the ways we defined the upper limit. I say yes. The upper limit of eligibility was not a man. Okay? A man being defined by, uh, a boy who has full pubic hair, full pubic hair. You're now a man. Well, if. That is the upper limit. It includes everything, you know, on a timeline to the left of it. And I wish people could see on my hands if this is a future for previous
DAN LIBENSON: to it.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? Previous, previous to it, and previous to being a man is anyone from an infant to a toddler, to a young person. Right. Even, even someone in their minority. So we better figure out a, a more substantive way of, um, justifying the exclusion of minors from this possible category. Okay. Um, and that's where, I think that's where we left off.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. So, yeah. So, um, wait, so so are we, is there one more sentence in the, the Mara that we
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, there is. There is, because all we've done so far is. Resuscitate the actual validity of the question. How do you know that a minor is exempt? A minor's not exempt, simply because a minor is a minor and not on the hook for any commandment, therefore, can't be on the hook for violating a commandment.
And we actually learn that that is a, it's a good challenge.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And here comes the resolution to that challenge. Here comes now, um, the answer to why actually a minor, um, is exempt.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So, Ravi Huda says that AV says, mm-hmm a mi a minor is exempt from the punishment imposed upon a stubborn and rebellious son.
As the verse states from Deuteronomy, if a man has a son, which indicates that the haha applies to a son who is close to the stage of having the strength of a man that is close to full maturity, but not the younger boy.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. And this, this proof is very difficult to understand in the English.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Because it's actually a play on Hebrew, um, um, what's the word? Not semantics. Um, what's the word for word order?
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, I don't know. Grammar. Not grammar, but, uh,
BENAY LAPPE: syntax.
DAN LIBENSON: Syntax. Oh,
BENAY LAPPE: syntax. It's, it's, they're playing, they're doing word play on Hebrew syntax, which doesn't come through in the English. So let's, let's, let's take a look at that.
DAN LIBENSON: So here's the Hebrew, here's the Hebrew Arabic, Amara Yehuda.
That's the, that's the herz.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. So the, exactly the Torah says, um. We translated it as when a man shall have a son mm-hmm. Who is stubborn and rebellious. The Hebrew literally reads when there will be to a man, a son, because that's the way that Hebrew, um, and probably other languages mm-hmm. Um, make the possessive construction.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: So disappointed out, there's a, this first word here, so when will be to a man, son.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. Which we translate simply as when a man will have a son. Right. To have means to be to the possessor. When there will be to me. When I will have, so since the language of the text is technically when there will be to a man, a son, the rabbis are using one of the tools in their midrashic interpretive toolbox.
Which is, which is called a duk. And a duk means a, a hyper, hyper, literal, precise read, which actually pulls meaning out of even grammatical structures. So when there will be to a man, think of the word to as toward or approaching right when there will be the son toward going toward man, meaning going toward the identity of himself being a man, which is absolutely not the shot or the simple plain meaning.
And we are kind of overinterpreting this, the grammar. Grammatical structure of possessiveness, but that's what the rabbis are doing because in a kind of a kivan fashion, rabbi Akiva really invented this idea that the Torah is omnis significant. That, that there are a potentially infinite number of meanings that are hidden in the text and can be trashed out or interpreted out even by, um, interpreting the grammatical structure.
So this la here, this one letter which creates merely a possessive, is being interpreted to mean toward the age status of,
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. And toward the age status of a man is a child with the first signs of puberty, the two hairs, and therefore not a minor. Right. Does that make sense?
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. I mean, I was just trying to think of like, some clever way you could translate as like, when there will be a Manson, you know, like, like what's a mans son?
Yeah. You know? Right.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, like what's a what I feel like there's one of those like, uh, like third grader jokes, you know, like, um, like what's a, like what, what is it? There's a, there's a joke where you say, uh, you know, it's like a knock, knock joke and I don't remember, but it's like, you know what?
When you say, oh yeah, it's like, oh, it's like, knock, knock.
BENAY LAPPE: Who's,
DAN LIBENSON: you say, like when you say, when you say, um. Like, like there's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's, there's a lot of UPD dog around here and somebody says, what's up dog? And you say, Hey, what's up dog with you? What's up? I dunno. What's up dog with you?
You know, what's up with you? Right. Um, so, you know, it's like when there'll be a man dog, like a Manson, what's, what's a Manson you, or actually like Manson, you know, but like, I don't know, something like that. Yeah. So it's so fundamentally they're, they're, but that's, that's the level of it. I mean, they're kind of creating a little bit of a, of a pun here, which is obviously not intent.
It's not the original intent of the text, but that's how it goes. Right. That's, that's what they can do.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. And, and I, I, I also really buy into my teacher David Kramer's perspective on these kinds of proofs, which is to say, if it makes you chuckle, pay attention to that.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: You know, these guys weren't idiots.
Don't, don't think that they're idiots. And, and have this kind of naive istic relationship with the Torah. They knew exactly what they were doing, just as we suspect we know what they're doing and it's laughable. In other words, they want us, at least some of us, to see what they're doing. They want some of us to notice that this is a deliberate, um, forcing of new meaning on the text, um, in order to come out.
With what we think is gonna be a more moral
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Way to live our life. What were you gonna say?
DAN LIBENSON: Well, I was just gonna say like, because I was almost gonna say the opposite of what you just said, but it's the same point, which is that they never expected you, listener, watcher, you know, they never expected you to read this.
Right? I mean, this was a text that they never expected that an average Jew was ever going to read. So who did they expect to read it? Are they rabbis right? Or rabbinical students, uh, what we would call today rabbinical students. Right. And, uh, and, and that was it. That nobody was, would ever read this text.
And, and as far as they expected it, so now, and, and, and it's not. And, and it's not like not only did they not expect people to read the text, they didn't expect anybody to have a question at this level of. They're not gonna, uh, expect a regular Jew to come along to the rabbi and say, well, can you explain to me the whole logical reasoning why we don't have a, you know, stubborn or rebellious sun?
They, they would just, it's like, like imagine any law in America today. Like, you don't, you don't. Asked to see the legislative history of the 65 mile an hour speed limit. You just know that the speed limit is 65. 'cause there's a sign on the highway that tells you it's 65 and that's it. If you get pulled over by a cop, you be, you get a ticket.
If you, you know, if you, if you, you know, most people don't challenge the ticket. If you cha if you really, you know, every once in a while there's one person who, like, I remember I had a friend from college who like researched the law of like interstate bridges and like found that, you know, he, his speeding ticket was unconstitutional because he was actually on the other side of the bridge, which was technically the other state or whatever it was.
But that is the exception that proves the rule. And that's only, even that story was only in modern society where he had access to, uh, you know, the internet and, and whatnot. So the, the point of, of all that is, is that, um. Now, now the fact that, that we now can access this, and now if, like, in a way that itself is a, a another reason for what you call the crash.
I think it's, it's that, uh, at the point at which, uh, any Jew has the access to, uh, or anyone. Or anyone, right? It, it's actually two things, right? One is that you can look at it and you can say, oh, it's all bullshit. That wasn't really available to people before. But the other thing that you can do is look at it and say, ah, I get how this system works now and I like it and I can work, right?
And, and so, which, whatever your takeaway from it is, it's a new phenomenon that you even have the capacity to have any takeaway because you, for you to have any, any kind of access whatsoever. So all that's to say that we can then say. Did they expect the other rabbinical students to chuckle?
BENAY LAPPE: Yes.
DAN LIBENSON: They,
BENAY LAPPE: I, I I love that.
Or here's where I was going with what you're saying. The rabbinical students wouldn't have been chuckling. We're only chuckling because we find it surprising that, that they would read against the grain of the biblical text. I'll bet a rabbi, a rabbinic student at the time would go, oh yeah, that's a great one.
Oh yeah, that's a great one. Because that's what they're learning how to do. That's what they expect, um, in their learning how to be legislators.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, and, but the, and the other thing that I wanna say is like, they weren't learning these things in order to use them to convince anyone. Right? Meaning like, they, they didn't need to, all they needed to do to tell a, a regular Jew on the street is like, don't stone your kid.
We don't do that anymore. They, they're like, well, I found it in the Torah right here. It says that we do. He says, well, you don't know. They, we've had a lot of, that's not how we make law anymore. Now we have the rabbis and it's in the Talmud. We don't do it anymore. And most people walk away with, oh, okay, I didn't know it's in the Talmud.
Okay, fine. Uh, and you, you wanna say, like, even show me that it's in the Talmud, they'll show them here, right here it says, we don't have, we don't do benor. Or they don't, they're not gonna look at the logical reasoning. So what's the logical reasoning for I think it's, it's one of two things, or maybe both.
Number one, it's that maybe you have to persuade another rabbi, you know, if you're on a, a court or something like that. So it's, so it's a very. Inside game of this is, this is the highest level, this is how we're gonna persuade one another that we can do these things. 'cause it, it's, it's also like the, my hands are tied people that we've talked about before.
You know, if, if you say, like, if somebody says, look, I really want to, I, I hate this old zare thing. I, I don't wanna have be stoning kids, but my hands are tied. The Torah says, you could say, well no, no, look, there's this really sophisticated Yes. You know, kind of roundabout this is how we do. And that, and some of those, my hands are tied.
People will say, oh, okay, I can go along with that.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. That's number one. And number two, I think it's, it's, it's for, it's to persuade yourself, right? It's to say like, I don't wanna kill any kids. You know, and so is there any way, you know, that I can find, that I can kind of get out? And so if it's a pun, great, you know, like I, as long as it makes me feel like I can kind of find some justification to not have to do this thing.
So. That, that's, that's who this stuff is being written for. Now, the, the, the reason why I think there's like a crash involved is like at the point at which we all have access or potential access, right? Because a show like this is giving people access to, who wouldn't even get it just from reading. It's not enough that there's a digital revolution.
You can open up the text and read it because a lot of people, like you just said, like the translation doesn't quite get it. It's not clear, right? So, but then you start to have teachers like you and programs like Savara and shows like this that really give somebody access to the inner workings of all of this reasoning.
At that point, it's like, well, well we, we can't, I mean that system where we just had to tell people what the law was and nobody was looking under the hood, like that system is gone. And that, again, that could go in either direction. Like one person could say it's gone and it's over, and another person, like it's gone because everybody can be part of it.
Now how cool is that? But that's, of course gonna change the, the, the way that the system operates. Once everybody knows that this stuff is kind of half made up and it's from puns, you know, then it's hard to have the same weight of authority that says, you know, somehow if I don't do it this way, I'm gonna go to hell.
I mean, that's not gonna happen. So, you know, so it, it changes the system
BENAY LAPPE: and these new people who now have access to the system are bringing in new insights, bringing in mm-hmm. Their s and saying, oh wow. Now I see that there is a methodology there. There's, there's a system. There are mechanisms for bringing our moral intuition to bear on the tradition.
I've got some moral intuition that hasn't been brought to bear. Yet in the last 3,500 years. Okay. I, I, I, I realize now that I've been empowered all this time and nobody told me. It's like, you know, the last scene from the Wizard of Oz, click, click, click. You had the power all along, right?
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: What you, why didn't she tell her?
Why didn't the, the, the whatever that the fairy good witch, why didn't she tell Dorothy at the beginning that she had the power all along that would've saved her a long journey? Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Well that, that's kind of like, uh, I dunno if you've ever seen the Ted Talk by Benjamin Zander, who's the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic, uh, orchestra.
And he, he talks about how, um, Hamlet, you know, it's like, why, why didn't he just, uh, why didn't he just, why He says like, why did, why, why does he have to be so tortured? You know, why does he have to say you have to be or not to be this or that, or whatever? Just because if he resolved it, the story would be over, you know?
But then, then, then it would be too short. You know, so you gotta kind of keep, keep having the angst, otherwise there's no story. So it's, you know, it's kinda like, well, we just, you know, um. So, okay, so, so let's, so just to, to wrap this up. So, so based on basically a pun, uh, is how the, the right here, the Talmud, the Gamara is really ultimately resolving it and saying, um, you know, that, that, that, that, what the Torah is really saying is that it really is talking about this very specific age, which is a boy, that's almost a man, you know, and, and that's, you get that from the text itself.
And so at the end of the day, it's not a problem that we've defined this into such a narrow age, uh, gap. Even though there, you could make the argument that there are reasons that it should be, uh, a minor because it's really about his future acts. But actually the text itself says not a minor. The text itself says only a man, boy can, can be, uh, part of this, and what are we gonna do?
The text says it.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly, exactly. So the Gama doesn't actually. Change the parameters of the chronological markers of eligibility. It just, just, it challenges them and justifies them, um, I think in order to ultimately, um, make you a better thinker.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And, and probably practically also to, to give these early legislators some good answer to the challenge of, hey, but why would a kid, uh, you know, why wouldn't this kid be eligible?
Or, um,
or, or even as a technique to be applied to other situations later. Right. If I'm a student in the rabbinical school of, uh, rabbi Akiva, which is probably a tree and a, a bunch of grass, right out in the field. I'm now gonna know that I can use a ed, use the structure of to have, which in Hebrew, you know, is, is constructed with the letter Ed and I now I know I can draw the letter ed to make new worlds of meaning in future situations when I need to upgrade the tradition in some other way.
Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So, uh, so just to completely, I don't remember if I read, but the bottom line is the verse states if a man has a son, which indicates that the haha place to a son who's close to the stage of having the strength of a man that is close to full maturity, but not a younger boy. So they've narrowed the, they've, so bottom line is they've narrowed the, the age eligibility of someone who can be a stubborn and rebellious son to somebody who, who really is just before puberty, you know, just before being a man.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. At the beginning of puberty, and we're back to that three to six month period of time between mm-hmm. The sprouting of two pubic hair and full pubic hair growth. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: As I'm not, I'm not, you know, fully, fully, uh, aware of all of the medical, you know Yes. Of, of the definitions of puberty. Okay. Yeah. So, but that, that specific ar area of a very short window.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. Exactly. And, and we are now turning the page, we're skipping about a full DAF to full, uh, folio sides of, uh, two sides of one folio page. Uh, we're skipping a bunch of guara to go, uh, now to where the Talmud excerpts the next piece of Mishna. So we're going back in time to that earlier layer of treatment.
Uh. On the Torahs, uh, verse about the stubborn and rebellious side.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so the mishna goes on to say, the mishna goes on to say from when is a stubborn and rebellious sun liable from when he eats a tar ma of meat and drinks a half log of Italian wine. Oh, sorry. When he eats a Tarte mar of meat and drinks a half log of Italian wine.
So meaning he's could be only liable if he's had a meal and, and some wine.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I don't even know if it has to be yet at the same time, but for sure we now have behavioral, um, parameters. Right. Before we had a a, a chronological time period, what is the period of time in a person's life that they're eligible to be labeled with this?
Identity, which could end up in them being stoned. And now once they're in this, let's say six month period of time, what do they need to do? What are those signs? And um, yeah, sort of the, the evidentiary behaviors that will implicate them in this identity that will allow us to predict with certainty that in the future they're going to be murderous, in fact, essentially commit a capital crime.
So one of, uh, uh, the, the first, you know, they're filling up this bucket of behaviors and other qualifications, and the first one is eating a certain amount of meat and drinking a certain amount of wine. And there's a debate about exactly how much meat and exactly how much wine. Um.
DAN LIBENSON: So Rabbi says from when he eats a man meat and drinks a log of wine.
So a log is obviously twice as much as a half log. I don't know. Do you know if with a, if a man meat, I assume, is more than a Tarte mar?
BENAY LAPPE: Yes. And in fact, the, the Gamar is going to make, ask that exact question. It's gonna say, based on the relationship between the second opinion about how much wine is necessary with respect to the first position, can we even understand maybe what a monnet is and what a tartar is?
Because the rabbis acknowledge they don't, they're not even even familiar with these, uh, terms, uhhuh. And we know that one of the agendas is of the gamara is to clarify what the mission even means. And the gamara is going to go say what? What is this
DAN LIBENSON: script?
BENAY LAPPE: If
DAN LIBENSON: somebody said, if you eat two stone of meat, and That's right.
You know, and a, a liter of, uh, wine we're like, I don't know how much that is.
BENAY LAPPE: What, what is that exactly?
DAN LIBENSON: It's like British people know how much that is, but, okay. So, um, so the mission now lists a series of conditions concerning is eating and drinking. And
BENAY LAPPE: I I just wanna add one more thing. Okay. While the meat for me remains kind of puzzling, like, what's the deal with the meat?
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh,
BENAY LAPPE: Rashi takes up the question of what's the deal with the wine? Like, what, what, why? Mm-hmm. And Rashi says that the traditional understanding of what's going on here with the wine qualification is that this Italian wine was highly addictive. It was a very, very fine wine. It seems like something that, what Rashi says that it, it pull, it pulls you in with just a small amount.
So that's why I used the word addictive. Hmm. It's something that they're imagining if this young person drinks this wine, they'll kind of, it's like, it's like crack. They'll have, you know, an instant taste and appetite hunger for this wine. So to me that suggests that they're, they're looking at a single behavior which they think is going to I is implying a kind of addictive downward spiraling.
And
DAN LIBENSON: just, yeah. Yeah,
BENAY LAPPE: go ahead.
DAN LIBENSON: No, and just to be clear for people, it's like what they're saying here is that if you wanna bring this guy to the elders to stone him, like, not only does he have to be in this very particular band of age, you know, this, this man, boy, but he also has to be having crack, you know, at the time that you're taking him.
Right? Like it's, in other words, now we've just narrowed the, we've just narrowed the, the criteria even more is the bottom line.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: In a, in a serious way. Because you know somebody, it's not, I think it's not saying that he, he has to be, have ever had crack in his life. It's like he has to be having it right now in order for you to be able to take him to the elders.
BENAY LAPPE: Well, I'm not sure about right now, but it, I think as soon as he has that half a lobe, which is a pretty small amount of. Of what at least Rashi thinks is. Uh, and he was a vintner, by the way, so he prob maybe he knew that Italian wine was qualitatively different for than usual wine. I think once, once this kid, you know, does his first line of cocaine or whatever,
DAN LIBENSON: uhhuh.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: We, we think he's hooked. And, and the meat, I'm not quite sure what's going on with the meat.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, so, so if he ate these items with a group assembled for the purpose of, for the performance of a mitzvah, or he ate them at a meal cel celebrating the interpolation of a month, like that's like the new, the new month.
Or he Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Like if he's at a Roche Kish party or he's at a, he's at a bar mitzvah or a wedding,
DAN LIBENSON: right. Or he ate the items when they had second tithe status in Jerusalem. He does not become a stubborn, rebellious son because each of these circumstances involve some aspect of a mitzvah. So like if he is doing the cocaine at a Roche Kish party, he cannot be dragged out to the elders to be stoned.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. At this point, the cocaine or crack, I, I probably should make drug analogies. It's not really a great thing to do and I apologize for that, that, uh, let you know. Let's say it's, um, I don't know what's like whiskey, I don't know. It's some kind of drink. Everybody takes a, a little schnapps, uhhuh, you know, for the la at a wedding.
So that's that behavior. In this context, in the context of a wedding, the context of a party, we're not gonna see as diagnostic for this kid.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, it, it also, it also, the, the way that you just put it was helpful because it, it suggests that like some people, again, it's hard to fully imagine this about a parents and a child, you know, whatever.
But like, just for the sake of the, the discussion, some, some people might say like, I'm really, I'm like looking to get this kid, you know, like, I'm, I'm, I'm done with it, you know? So, so like it says you just have to have a little bit of wine, so, oh, I know that they serve Italian wine at the Rosh Kish party, so, so I'm gonna go to the Rho party, and the second he, you know, drinks that wine, I'm, I'm gonna pull him out of the, you know, no, no, no, you can't do that.
You know, like, this only works if he's doing it on his own volition for bad reasons. Like, you can't, you can't just technical use the technicalities of the law to like entrap somebody.
BENAY LAPPE: Oh, I like that. I like that.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, okay, so, so, uh,
BENAY LAPPE: oh, you know what you're also reminding me of, you are reminding me that it's interesting that along with this list of.
Behaviors that we should be watching out for. There are, they are taking the, going to pains to articulate behaviors that we should not misinterpret. And you are right that it's interesting that, that they are articulate those just as they are because that's what we're, I, I kind of stopped you in the middle of a sentence.
We're gonna have a whole chain of thing of contexts in which these behaviors are not. Of concern. And you're right, they're going out of their way to say the, all of these following things do not put someone in the category of Ben. Okay?
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So this is interesting because here, just to, this comes at the end, but I'll preview that if he ate the following things, he cannot be dragged off to be a benter Mars.
So if he ate the meat of an slaughtered animal carcasses, which is, you know, not kosher, or animals that had wounds that would've caused them to die within 12 months, which were called treo, also not kosher or repugnant creatures or creeping animals, not kosher, or he ate untied produce from which tides in true mode have not yet been separated, you're not allowed to eat that right.
Or first tithe from which Truman was not separated, also not allowed, or second tithe outside of Jerusalem. Not allowed or a consecrated food that was not redeemed, each of which is a transgression. He does, he does not become a stubborn, rebellious son. So the point is, is that on the we like he. He, he, if he is, if he is, he shouldn't be drink, you know, if he's drinking wine, you can drag him out to be a, uh, a, a a, a sub rebellious son.
But not if he's drinking wine for a mitzvah for, you know, good deed or a party. If he's eating this amount of meat, you can drag him out to, to be a sub rebellious sun. But not if the meat is not kosher. If he's eating not, you would think that if he's eating not kosher meat, you could take him out to be a sub rebellious sun.
But here they're saying, actually no, no, no. The meat has to be kosher.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And I'm not sure what to make of it. I think we could probably think of it or figure it out together, but it's like these things are too on the nose,
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh,
BENAY LAPPE: you know, the current rebellious behavior that looks like this. I, it's like, that's not the kid we're talking about.
That's a naughty kid. As naughty, but we're not talking about naughty again, we're talking about something much different. Maybe, uh, maybe that's what this is. I've never totally wrapped my head around why these things actually don't implicate this kid. One possibility is these are
like, in some ways minorly, rebellious uhhuh. Okay, now I'm gonna tell a story because I think it might connect. I remember when I was in rabbinical school and I was learning at the University of Judaism, um, and now called American Jewish University, and
one of my teachers said, um, you know, one of the reasons we have all of these mitzvah is, and a lot of them are really small, is so that when your kid gets rebellious. Your kid doesn't hold up a seven 11 mm. Your kid eats a cheeseburger. Mm. You know, and, and I remember having a friend who, who had grown up Amish, who told me that when we were kids and we wanted to act out, we'd buy a shirt with buttons.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, and it, the, these examples come to mind because it could be that these examples of things that don't make you a benzo or mere are kind of like eating a cheeseburger. Actually. It is literally.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: That is what it's talking about. Or buying a shirt with buttons. In other words, these are mundane, everyday kind of Jewish rebelliousness.
That's not what we're talking about in Benor Murrow. We're talking about something much more significant may. Maybe that's what's going on in these things, which don't. Qualify you? I don't know. What do you think? Well,
DAN LIBENSON: okay. Well, and then we gotta wrap it up, but I, I think, I don't know. So I, I, I wanted like, sort of let this marinate, which is a good place to, to pause, I think.
But like on the wine, I think it, like, my sense was that it was, you can't entrap somebody, um, for the meat. I, I think it, it does have something, it's like we're actually, I, I think it's something like this actually. We, we, we put this meet requirement in there to really limit the, the cases where you can, where you can drag somebody out as a er.
Um, and that had nothing to do with the fact that they were sinning in the eating of the meat. It just had to do with, we were just putting like a, a random, we'll look at it later. Maybe it's not random, but a, a ran, we were just putting a little extra something in there to try to reduce the number of cases.
We don't wanna give you an opening to use that thing that we put in there to limit the cases where you can. Drag someone out to be a benzo, to actually somehow expand it or to expand your thinking about it by saying, oh, look, he, he did something bad. That's why we're about to drag him out. No, no. You don't drag somebody as a benzo because they just, uh, ate something not kosher.
You, you drag them out because of what they're gonna do in the future. And that's not about eating non-kosher foods. That's about much worse, you know, societal harms than, than that. So don't, don't use this as an excuse. You know, it's, it's basically saying like, don't use these things as you know, again, it's a form, it's a not exactly entrapment 'cause you're not necessarily, uh, bringing 'em intentionally to eat the, the non-kosher food.
But it's saying like, don't use these things as excuses. We're, we're trying to get these things to limit the cases.
BENAY LAPPE: Mm-hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: Something like that.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I like that.
DAN LIBENSON: All right. Well, I, I guess that's a good place to leave it just for time.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. All right. Great.
DAN LIBENSON: And we'll, we'll come back to this submission of next week.
BENAY LAPPE: God willing,
DAN LIBENSON: uh, God willing and, uh, yeah, and, and, and everything will be more stable next week.
BENAY LAPPE: Bye may yourself. Thanks,
DAN LIBENSON: Dan. Bye
BENAY LAPPE: bye.
DAN LIBENSON: Thanks so much for joining our chevruta today! We hope you’ve enjoyed learning with us… and with the Talmud. You can find links to the source sheets for all episodes in the show notes and on our website at oraltalmud.com. Your support helps keep Oral Talmud going. You can find a link on the website to contribute. We’d also love to hear from you! Email us with any questions, comments, or thoughts at hello@oraltalmud.com. Please, share your Oral Talmud with us – we’re so excited to learn from you. The Oral Talmud is a joint project of SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva and Judaism Unbound, two organizations that are dedicated to making Jewish texts and ideas more accessible for everyone. We are especially grateful to Sefaria for an incredible platform that makes the Talmud available to everyone. It’s free at sefaria.org. And we are grateful to SVARA-nik Ezra Furman for composing and performing The Oral Talmud’s musical theme. The Oral Talmud is produced by Joey Taylor, with help from Olivia Devorah Tucker, and with financial support from Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah. Thanks so much for listening–and with that, this has been the Oral Talmud. See ya next time.