“ The big idea of what we're doing is to say, well, if we can see what the rabbis were doing to the Torah, then we can potentially do that to the rabbis in the next era. Then I think the question gets raised, what are the categories that Judaism over the last 2000 years, may have constructed or approved of, that we now would not approve of?” - Dan Libenson
“ The big idea of what we're doing is to say, well, if we can see what the rabbis were doing to the Torah, then we can potentially do that to the rabbis in the next era. Then I think the question gets raised, what are the categories that Judaism over the last 2000 years, may have constructed or approved of, that we now would not approve of?” - Dan Libenson
Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.
What happens when a label becomes a death sentence? In this episode, we continue exploring the case of the “wayward and rebellious son” — a law that authorizes killing a kid not for what he’s done, but for who he’s assumed to be. This text reveals the danger of turning identity into destiny.
As we’ve seen in previous episodes, the rabbis again pull a quiet revolution. Instead of rejecting the law outright, they squeeze it — narrowing it, complicating it, stacking impossible conditions — until it practically disappears. Identity becomes behavior. Certainty becomes doubt. Punishment gives way to accountability. We follow this move into urgent territory: who we amplify, who we silence, how private actors spark systemic change, and why justice doesn’t descend from institutions — it rises from people refusing to participate in harm.
This week’s text: (Sanhedrin 70a, 71a)
Find an edited transcript and full show notes (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 39: “A Glutton for Punishment.” Welcome to the Oral Talmud, a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. I’m Dan Libenson…
BENAY LAPPE: …and I’m Benay Lappe.
DAN LIBENSON: The Oral Talmud is our weekly deep dive study partnership, in which we try to figure out how voices from the Talmud – voices from 1500 to 2000 years ago – can help us think in new ways about Judaism today.
What happens when a label becomes a death sentence? In this episode, we continue exploring the case of the “wayward and rebellious son” — a law that authorizes killing a kid not for what he’s done, but for who he’s assumed to be. This text reveals the danger of turning identity into destiny.
As we’ve seen in previous episodes, the rabbis again pull a quiet revolution. Instead of rejecting the law outright, they squeeze it — narrowing it, complicating it, stacking impossible conditions — until it practically disappears. Identity becomes behavior. Certainty becomes doubt. Punishment gives way to accountability. We follow this move into urgent territory: who we amplify, who we silence, how private actors spark systemic change, and why justice doesn’t descend from institutions — it rises from people refusing to participate in harm.
Every episode of The Oral Talmud has a number of resources to support your learning and to share with your own study partners! If you’re using a podcast app to listen, you’ll find these links in our show notes: First, to a Source Sheet on Sefaria, where you can find pretty much any Jewish text in the original and in translation – there we excerpt the core Talmud texts we discuss and share a link to the original video of our learning.
In the show notes of your podcast app, you’ll also find a link to this episode on The Oral Talmud’s website, where we post an edited transcript, and where you can make a donation to keep the show going, if you feel so moved.
And now, The Oral Talmud…
DAN LIBENSON: Hey Benay.
BENAY LAPPE: Hey, Dan. How are you?
DAN LIBENSON: I'm good. I, you know, making it through it's, uh, adventurous times that we're living through, but I guess when we were here together last week, it was just the day after the, uh, coup attempt and now it's a week later.
It's the day after the impeachment. Um, and obviously it's like very different, but I do keep thinking about that, you know, very early text that we studied about Robin Goleal being impeached, you know, so there, there, it's like you, we were talking earlier before the show that there's a lot of ways in which it's the opposite story actually, and the, and the kind of uprising is by the good people, you know?
But, um, but still, uh, I I, I, I keep, my mind keeps going back there.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. E even in the, in their opposite ness, some of the anti parallels are illuminating. Maybe we should go back to that. I don't know. But you had a really interesting point. I think you should share it.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, it wasn't my point, but somebody had asked me about it and said, you know, wasn't there something in the Talmud somewhere where the.
And I think it's the Met Gaman, which is like in the, in the, but I don't know if it, I'm not, first of all, I'm not sure what it says in the text that there were two categories of people in that era. There was the, yeah, met Gaman who was kinda a translator who would make sure that, who would like, translate things that people didn't understand.
But then there was something like an amplifier, uh, and that was just because they didn't have microphones. And so there would be somebody at the front of the room lecturing and then there would be someone in the middle of the room kind of re repeating what he was saying and so that the people in the back could hear it.
And. And I think like as of my recollection of the text and when, when neither of us, I don't think is looking at it right now, that it was, that that was the idea and that that person kind of at a certain point, so what's happening is that Rabbi Goleal is haranguing, rabbi Joshua, you know, over some matter.
And he's just, you know, being mean and mean and more mean. And it eventually the person who's like the, the repeater just kind of like stops talking, you know, he's just like, I'm just not gonna participate in this anymore. And, um, yeah, I mean, it just sort of feels a little bit like what Twitter did.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I love that.
I love that. I think what we decide to amplify and, um, yeah, and, and whose voices are being heard and what, and what, what we can do to, um, if not silence, prevent the amplification of other voices. It is just really interesting. Uh,
DAN LIBENSON: I think that maybe that has a little bit to do with what we're doing today and what we've been talking about for the last many weeks, which are these times when the rabbis in the Talmud are kind of deciding that it's time to overturn various Torah rules over some principle.
And, you know, in, in contrast to, we've talked about the people who today will say, you know, my hands are tied. I mean, I would love to, you know, allow the ordination of LGBT people. I would love to let women out of bad marriages, you know, or when they're in UNA it's stuck in a marriage, but what can I do? My hands are tied and we're looking at the text here saying, no, no, your hands aren't tied.
Like you actually have options. And yet there's also this other argument that says, but there's some. Value to imagining that our hands are tied because otherwise there's no law otherwise we're just, you know, we're just changing things all the time. There's no stability, there's no, uh, sense that, that there really is governance by something other than people's whims.
And, you know, I think that that question about Twitter and whether Twitter should be de platforming people, even if we. Profoundly disagree with what they're saying or, you know, and I mean, I think Twitter, in, in the cases that they're doing it now, it has to do with danger to, to, to life and all and things like that, which obviously I'm, I'm in favor of, but it it, but I still recognize the counter argument that it's, where does it stop where it's dangerous, you know?
And so in a case like that, where we see one guy, you know, here's Robin Goleal, he's the head guy, and then here's this amplifying guy, and he is like, I'm not doing this anymore. Mm-hmm. Is that okay? You know, is that e even though we think Robin Goleal was being overly mean to Rabbi Joshua, you know, or, or is it really right to happen?
What happens next? Which is that they, that they do it through a more of a process and say, well, we're gonna remove him from his position.
BENAY LAPPE: And, and maybe it speaks to the fact that both are right. Mm-hmm. That one is an individual response and the other is a systemic response. Mm-hmm. And maybe it's, you know, suggesting that both are.
Necessary or both are legitimate or possible.
DAN LIBENSON: And actually that's what happened in this most recent political, you know, story with, with Trump, uh, was that first the private actors acted, you know, and many have said way too late, but first, you know, Facebook, uh, suspended him. And then all the other companies, uh, started to suspend his, his accounts and everything.
And then the next phase we haven't really talked about, but now there's all this stuff where the, all these private companies are saying that they're not gonna donate political donations to people that voted to, uh, not accept the electoral college results. And so there's this, uh, the wave of, of private actors acting.
And then the question is, is does that embolden the political actors, does that, um, does that not embolden them? But it kind of makes them feel like, maybe we can do this or we should do it. Because I mean, if these private people are doing it, then, then we're supposed to be representative, right? So there is that relationship between the person who just decides, I'm not doing this anymore, and the process getting going.
BENAY LAPPE: For sure. I think McConnell's response to corporate funding of the Republican party being pulled and saying, uhoh, this is gonna be bad for us. Um, and how that seems to have influenced his willingness to speak out, I think shows the interrelatedness of the individual res response and the, and the governmental or, you know
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Systemic response.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, so in the text that we're doing here about the benzo,
the,
BENAY LAPPE: wait one more. I'm sorry to interrupt you. One more thought. And I think it gets to that issue we talked about earlier and on a number of occasion, which is the power of min hug to push samsara. In other words, the, the power of the kind of non legislative, uh, popular behaviors to push those who have the power in the system to make systemic change.
Um, yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. I mean, it's kind of about the arrow, like where's the arrow? We, we, I think we've been conditioned to think, even in a democracy, we've been conditioned to think about the arrow of causation being that the government mm-hmm. Debates and decides and. Yes, they're representative of the people. So there's some way in which they're in touch with the will of the people.
But really it's, it's only in the rarest of cases that maybe there'll be a popular protest or something that really changes minds or, or a very long popular protest like the Civil Rights Movement, where eventually, you know, the elected representatives come around, but, but that somehow, you know, the, the causation is coming from the decision makers as opposed to this idea that it's much more clear, clearly stated, I guess, or, or clearly sort of understood in, in Jewish law in the Talmud.
But, but that we see also here, if we're looking at it, which is that no, no, no, it's actually kind of, the law often follows what the people are doing. Not, not necessarily what they're protesting to do, but what they're actually doing. You know, what they're, what they're, what the sort of sense and expectation is.
I mean, it's interesting, even the, um, granted, I mean this is true only in a certain. Uh, world in which I live. Uh, and there was another world which I think saw it very differently, but when Trump's Twitter account was suspended, there was just incredible relief. You know, there were lots, a lot of people say, it wasn't even like a political, like, oh, I'm so, you know, glad because I hate him politically.
It was just like, oh my gosh, it's so quiet. It's, it's like nice and quiet. Right? Like, and, and there was just some sense that, that I, I even think that that relief being greater than a kind of, I, I told you so, um, you know, this is, but just that sense of kind of quiet may have actually been a, a larger factor than we understand yet in, in emboldening the other, uh, the other corporate actors to say, you know, we should do this too.
Because it's not that we're not actually entering into a, a political partisan, it's actually just that, that we were actually in some ways causing suffering. Uh, people were suffering because of having to, you know, contend with this all the time.
BENAY LAPPE: Absolutely.
DAN LIBENSON: All right. Well, uh, so now look at our text that we've been doing, the Ben Mora, uh, which, how did you, in the first, uh, I, it's like a wayward in rebellious somewhere.
You say. What, what's your favorite translation of that?
BENAY LAPPE: I think my favorite translation is wayward in rebellious, but I have so many, uh, inputs in my ear of stubborn and rebellious. Mm-hmm. That's the, the common traditional translation that I, I sometimes, uh, inadvertently default to translating it as stubborn and rebellious.
But I think, I think, um, wayward, I think sore is more like wayward, gone off the path.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, I don't think stubborn is so much it. I think it is wayward and rebellious.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so there's wayward and rebellious sun. And the, the basic idea, not to repeat too much of what we've already done, but the basic idea that we covered, you know, two weeks ago is that the, the fundamental idea, which by the way, like for those who haven't tuned into the last couple of weeks, the Torah says if you have a quote wayward and rebellious sun, uh, and the parents kind of can't deal with them and they bring 'em to the town elders and they say, this is a wayward and rebellious son, and the town elders agree, then that person should be stoned and killed.
And, uh, the. And, and initially we, we looked at, well, uh, what age does that person have to be? And the answer became that the rabbis were narrowing it to a very, very small band of age, uh, early, you know, just the earlier from the early stages of puberty to the late stages of puberty. Uh, and older than that, he's not really a, a, you know, a son anymore and younger than that.
He is, uh, not a man yet, or whatever, you know, whatever, not responsible. Anyway, long story short, the, the, the, the real idea here is that you're punishing, you're not punishing, you're, you would be stoning and killing this person, not because of a, a crime that he committed, not as a punishment, but as a deterrent, or not a deterrent.
What's the other word that says that you just to take him, you know, just to take him outta society so that he, it's, it's really to prevent future crimes. It's, it's seeing somebody who has the potential for criminality or bad behavior and saying. He has the potential to be so bad that he needs to be killed before he can get to that age.
BENAY LAPPE: And I would say they, it, it's to put an even sharper point on potential. It's someone who shows the signs that they think indicate that he will inevitably,
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Come to commit crimes for which the punishment is death. In other words, he would eventually become a murderer and that it other capital crimes, right?
Mm-hmm. So it's not just, uh, we're gonna kill these people we think have the potential to be this. We're, we're only going to feel good about killing the ones who we think are inevitably going to do it. Which as a, as an approach isn't any different from what the rabbis have already done, which is to sort of caution the killing of someone.
Or to permit the killing of someone who is a road a pursuer, someone who is imminently and inevitably out to kill someone. So that's already okay. No one at this point in Jewish history is questioning the legitimacy of killing if you can't injure and disable and prevent, uh, the killing of someone who is running after someone else with a, a sword to kill him.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: For sure. To do the same to you. That, that they could already do. So in a way, they're, they're shoehorning the Ben Morre into that category, which I think they've already established as something they can stomach.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm. So, but they most likely, for the same reasons that we today, would have a sense that that doesn't sound right.
You know, you're telling somebody because of something that they might, you know, do in the future,
BENAY LAPPE: right. Because this, but this guy doesn't have a sword in his hand.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? He's a, this is a 13, 14-year-old kid who's not running after someone. He doesn't have a sword in his hand, and the rabbis are saying, but he will.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Well, the Torah is saying, but he will. Right? I mean, the, the, in other words that, that I think that the rabbis, my sense is that the rabbis don't really like this idea. They get yet, like you say, they, they accept the idea of the road. If they accept the idea that if you know that somebody's actually out to kill you, then you can kill that Torah says you can kill him before he kills you.
And, and I think that the rabbis are. Okay with that. Like, that, that kind of makes sense. Uh, that if you really know somebody's out to kill you, then you don't have to wait for them to make the attempt. You can, you can kill them first. Right. Uh, but here, this idea that there's a kind of a, almost like a, a thought crime, but like a future, you know, I think we talked about like, it's that Tom Cruise movie, uh, where, um, minority
BENAY LAPPE: Report,
DAN LIBENSON: minority Report where, where, you know, if somehow, if somehow, you know, like in that movie, you know that the person's gonna do it.
Uh, so that's more of a version, like a, but in this case, it's like you, you suspect, right? You have the sense that this is the kind of person who would do something like that. I think that the rabbis really aren't, aren't thrilled about that idea and so Right. So they ultimately try to legislate it out of existence.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. But I don't think the Torah makes it, I don't think it's clear from the Torah that the Torah understands this kid. Is that,
DAN LIBENSON: ah, I,
BENAY LAPPE: I think the rabbis have a real theological dilemma.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Their dilemma is H how can I love a God or obey a God who looks to me like a God who wants to kill this kid who is merely, uh, wayward and obedient Uhhuh, he's, he's drinking.
He is Ahuh. He is, he is a glutton, he is a drunk. He's quote unquote, he's not heeding his parents' word. That's all that I, I think is really going on in the Torah. And they either don't want a God who does that.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So they're trying to redeem God or they don't wanna a tradition that does that or both.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And so I think they're redefining and retro rejecting this definition back into the Torah of who this eligible for death eligible to be stone person is. Which is. So for me, so obviously different from who the Torah is talking about. Mm-hmm. That it redeems God uhhuh and it limits who this can ever be done to.
Uhhuh it can be labeled this.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So, so that, so the first thing that the, so, so just so you're saying that the Torah is basically looking, you know, the, is the, and this I think is the straightforward read in the Torah, that it isn't just, it's a punishment. This is a, this is a bad kid, uh, bad person. Uh, you know, we don't, we don't need to have people like that in our community, you know, young people like that.
So it's, you know, kill him, uh, if the parents don't want him. Right?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And, and I would, we talked about this the very first week, which was this is a giant moral step forward from what we know existed before, which was pates. The, the father has the right to. I brought you into this world, I can take you out to kill any child for any reason.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Now it's no, a parent doesn't have that. Right. That's the moral move of the Torah.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And I think everybody must have been happy with that, for it to be recorded, um, and left alone for at least somewhere around 1500 years. Now, the moral dilemma is not who does the killing and who has the right to kill this kid, but really, do we wanna be killing kids?
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Maybe we're willing to get bit, kill this kinda kid. So let's say that's the kind of kid that was talking about.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So the first narrowing is to say, we're only gonna kill a kid if we believe that he has the potential, the, the likelihood, the near certainty that he's going to become a killer, you know, someone worthy of the death penalty in in the future.
Then. We start to narrow it even further, right? So then in the world of people who are likely to become, you know, right now it's only if you're a certain age when we figure this out, a very limited band of age when, until you figure it out and, and last week we really
BENAY LAPPE: maybe a, maybe a six month range. The rest I say super down,
DAN LIBENSON: right?
And then, and then last week we, we, we started to look at, and only if you, when you kind of catch him, like when you, when you decide this is the moment where I'm gonna take him in, these various things have to be happening, which is that, you know, in the, what we talked about last week, that he has to be eating a certain amount of meat.
Well, he has to be eating meat and drinking wine when you catch him and decide to take him to the elders and it has to be certain amount of meat and wine.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I'm not sure if he has to be in the act of it. That's an interesting take. I actually never thought about that. But at the very least, he has to have checked off these behaviors.
DAN LIBENSON: I, I, I think he has to, I, I read it as, I ha I can't read it any way other than you catch him in the act because everybody has eaten, uh, a, a certain amount of meat and wine in their life.
BENAY LAPPE: Well, one of the reasons I don't think it's catching him in the act is because of what the next mission says. The next mission actually talks about where this kid has to eat this meat and drink this wine, and under what conditions.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So I, I don't think the where ends up being in the presence of the Paris, but we'll get there.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Um, so yeah, it's
BENAY LAPPE: sort of like I read
DAN LIBENSON: the, I read
BENAY LAPPE: the end of this story,
DAN LIBENSON: right? That's true. Okay. I fair enough. I I That makes sense. Okay. But the, um, so, but in any event, like, but there has to be at least an episode where it's, it's not just somebody that ate meat and drank wine.
'cause everybody does. It's, there's some particular episode where, where he is gotta have eaten meat and drunk wine. And then it's like, okay, but not only eat meat and drunk wine, but eat a certain amount of meat and a certain amount of wine. And the, uh, and he can't have been doing that on his way to do a mitzvah.
And so, so like, right. And it has to actually be kosher, which this is like the opposite of what you might think. Like, you might think it's like, no, no. If he, if he's using non-kosher meat that shows that he is wayward and rebellious, no, no, no. But like, that may be true, but in, but we're only going to allow you to take him in to the cups, you know, take him in if he was eating kosher.
Meet or, you know. Right. And, and we talked last week a lot about if people can go back to last week about why maybe that is. But, but bottom line is that we're, uh, that, that our, our point, you know, what we're seeing here is that it's just narrowing and narrowing and narrowing and narrowing these cases, and we're gonna keep narrowing.
But, you know, spoiler alert, it's gonna get so narrow that functionally there can't ever be such a thing.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. It, and for my, for me, the chuckles of how they narrow get louder and louder and more obvious, and I have to ask myself, what are they really trying to say here? What's the real message?
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: You know?
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, remember the Talmud is never about what it's about. The, the, the specifics of the content of the case at hand aren't what we're trying to learn about. We're not ultimately learning about the benra marre. We are not being taught to deal with stubborn and rebellious children.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, right.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, so we'll just, we'll leave that on the table for now.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So should we keep going in the
BENAY LAPPE: Yep. Yep.
DAN LIBENSON: So. We, uh, so we talked about that, that the food has to be, uh, uh, particularly, uh, kosher, but, but it's also, it's beyond, there's all kinds of elements of kosher. We don't, we don't just mean that it was slaughtered properly, but it's gotta be like this, uh, food that, that, uh, you know, a regular person's allowed to eat, you know, not something that was supposed to be given to priests or something that was, like, something that was supposed to be given to priests or could have been given to priests.
Well, the bottom line is the food that he is eating, eating has to be food that he was fully allowed to eat. And, uh, you know, again, actually, if you were trying to eat food that you're not allowed to eat, which you would think is something really bad that you should be, you know, in trouble for, actually, that's the time when you know for sure that he can't be turned in as a stubborn, rebellious son if he was eating non-kosher food.
BENAY LAPPE: Right?
DAN LIBENSON: Um, so the, so here, uh, Steinfels, the translator explains the mission to summarizes. If he ate an item that involves a mitzvah or an item that involves a com, a transgression or, or Right. So it's like part of you is like, well then what's left? Well, the answer is that what's left is neutral. Right. You know, like, but if, if he, if he was tr doing something particularly good or particularly bad, doesn't count.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I would hear right here a not particularly good. It's a, it's a commanded, like you're not commanded to eat lunch Uhhuh. Right. You are commanded to have a celebratory, uh, wedding meal. So that's an example of a mitzvah situation. Mm-hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh,
BENAY LAPPE: matza the matza at the Seder, you are commanded to eat matza, the sedar.
Are you commanded to eat Matza the rest of Pesach? No, you're actually not. So that's something if you do eat matza on the third day of Pesach, that's neither in the category of mitzvah nor in the category of transgression. There's an example.
DAN LIBENSON: But, and up till where we are now, if you're eating lunch, that could be, 'cause ostensibly, if you're eating lunch, it's kosher.
And, uh, you know, it's not on the way to a mitzvah. So yeah, if you're eating lunch, you, that, that's one of the cases where you could be right. That seems to be a sub rebellious son. Right? But, um, okay, so, uh,
BENAY LAPPE: you know, what comes to mind, this is kind of miscellaneous, um, but what just came to mind in this focus on the ordinary dealings is, um, over in the tract head of Shabbat Rah says, when you come before the final judge at the end of your life, you know, this is sort of God imagined, is the final judge.
You know, you're going to be asked, it's one of my favorite texts, I forget if it's six or seven things. The very first thing you're asked is, were you honest in your business dealings? It's not, you know, were you a murderer? You know, did you do the, you know, were you a thief? Obviously horrible things. It. It was, how did you behave in your everyday affairs where it's actually the most challenging to constantly be an ethical, you know, kind human being.
So maybe that's an, that's going on here. I'm not sure.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm. I, I think I've told you, I don't know, even maybe on the show, but I once heard a comedian, you know, a Jewish comedian, you know, talking about them, and he said it's very, very Jewish. The first thing after you die, they ask you how's business, right?
Um, anyway, so the, um, so, so, um, so the summary is if you ate an item that involves performing a mitzvah or an item that involves a transgression, or he ate any food in the world that wasn't meat or drank any beverage in the world, that, but that wasn't wine. He does not become a stubborn or rebellious son, meaning he can't be caught or he can't be declared to be a stubborn or rebellious son unless he particularly ate a meal.
A, a neutral at a neutral time that was meat and wine. Uh, unless he actually, it's meat and drinks wine as it is stated. And here they're quoting Deuteronomy. This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He does not listen to our voice. He is a glutton, zelle and a drunkard. Ve and the, uh, michan goes on to say one is not called a glutton and a drunkard unless he eats meat and drinks wine.
And although there's no explicit proof right, that the Torah in Deuteronomy doesn't say, uh, meat and wine, uh. There's an allusion to that matter in another verse from Proverbs that says, be not among the wine drinkers and says, Beso yin. The, the drink, the, uh, uh, drunkard the drinkers of wine, uh, using that word and the gluttonous eaters, Bizo Le Basar is what it says in Proverbs, the, the gluttons of meat.
And so, because in Proverbs it says, uh, the drinkers of wine and the gluttons of meat, we can, we can read that back to the Torah where it just says the, uh, glu, he is a glutton and a drunker, that that must mean he's eating meat and wine. That's the logic here.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? So, I, I wanna sit here for a minute because first of all, we should notice that it's uncharacteristic of a mishna to cite Torah as a proof text.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: The mishna is famously what's called unjustified. In other words, it doesn't feel itself as needing. Proof to justify any of its often very radical claims radical in relation to the Torah from which it's deviating. Um, and here is an example of one of the rare instances where the, it's not unheard of, but it's not at all common where the, the mishna.
Acknowledges the verse in the Torah that it's trying to deal with, right? The stubborn, rebellious son who is named by his parents as glutton and drunkard, okay? Refers to that. And then it brings up not, and it not so much a proof text and it says, you know, this isn't actually a proof text, but there's some hinting in this text.
Again, this is rare, uh, that, as you said, the glutton and drunkard named over there in Deuteronomy where it describes who this governor rebellious son is, is specifically referring to someone who eats this meat and drinks this wine that we are somewhat ridiculously defining as evidentiary requirements and, uh, what constitutes being a drunkard and a glutton.
I don't know what to make of it.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Well and like what's interesting about it to me is a little bit of a different point, but it's just that in the Torah it's saying, we have this son, he, he, it's not that he had some meat and drank some wine. He is a definitionally. He's a glutton and a drunkard. You know, meaning that the problem with him is that he's a drunkard.
The problem with him is that he's gluttonous he, whether that just means he eats a lot or he just has, you know, it most likely means something more like he has, uh, appetites that are insatiable and that this is much more definitional about him, where the mishna is taking it in a different direction and saying that it means that he like had a meal in which he was gluttonous and drank a lot.
Right.
BENAY LAPPE: That's true. Yeah. That's interesting. It's, it's like taking the label, liar. If you're a liar and saying if you lied once, you're that right?
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. And I'm not sure exactly what to make of it. 'cause I'm, because part of it feels like, well that's actually widening the category. 'cause it's saying like, not that you have to be deemed a liar, it's just that you told a, a lie once or a really bad lie or something like that.
So on the one hand it kind of feels like going in the opposite direction, but there's another way in which it feels like ultimately it's, it's moving you in the direction of, of closing it down. Because it says like, this isn't actually definitional about somebody's overall behavior. It's it, it really is looking to a moment in time and that moment in time, all these different things have to happen.
And it's so unlikely and impossible for that to be that. It's really quite clearly telling us like, this is not a thing anymore. You know, this is So, I don't know if that's totally intentional, but it feels like it connects.
BENAY LAPPE: You know what you're reminding me of, you're reminding me of the way that Leviticus, specifically Leviticus 1822 and EL in elsewhere, um, 1921, have been read in our contemp in modern times when the category of homosexuality has, has become an identity where homosexual, quote unquote, has become an identity, not a behavior.
It's been understood to represent anyone in this identity category.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And more recently. Those who don't take my approach, but who take a different approach, say no, it refers to a behavior. And, and actually it implicates a much narrower band of people. It's not talking about people in this identity category.
It's talking about, you know, two men who engage in anal intercourse. That's what it's talking about. Or even more men with a specific relationship to one another, a power differential. Um, and that feels like the kind of move that you're suggesting the rabbis may be making here from a kind of vague, very easily abused labeling, fuzzy labeling thing to know what, what are the be behaviors?
I don't know.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. And, and that's gonna, I think what we're about to read next is, is very much it, it only works if it's, if it's about a particular incident rather than an identity. And so, you know, it may be that. You know, it's, it's, I, I think the thing to point out here is that the language of the Torah.
Clearly seems to be implying a person with a character defect, right? A person who is as an identity, a glutton and a drunkard, and the mishna is moving that to a person who did something at a time. Uh, and. They're then going to take that thing that the person did at that time and narrow the circumstances so much about when that time can be that it sort of legislates it out of existence.
And what that means functionally is that there were probably a lot of people that there Torah would have defined as a Ben Rero, Morere, like, you know, people that are gluttonous and drunk a a lot, you know what we, we know what that person is, looks like. And, um, all those people are, are, you know, not that they're necessarily gonna get away scot-free because there still might be a time when they had a big meal and had a big amount of wine.
But somehow that the fact that you see somebody walking around who looks like quote a glutton, you know, uh, no longer is gonna be necessarily a, a shame shameful mark on them.
BENAY LAPPE: Yep.
DAN LIBENSON: I, I think it's interesting how it connects to what you're talking about in terms of like other identity categories, like, like homosexuality and, and whether there's actually something going on here as well that tend, that has a tendency to remove identity as something that one should, that, that should mark somebody that you should ever make any judgment on somebody based on their identity.
No. Only based on a, a particular action at a particular time.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I like this. I like this direction we're going in. I think, I think you may be right, I think it may be getting at the dangers of the abuse of labels and identity categories and, and the, you know, the tendency to impute certain values.
Assume certain behaviors from people who we label in this category, that category.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, and I wonder since we've been talking about this, right. The big idea of what we're doing is to say, well, if we can see what the rabbis we're doing to the Torah, then we can potentially do that to the rabbis in the next era.
Then. Then I think the question gets raised, what are the categories that Judaism over the last 2000 years may have constructed or approved of that we now would not approve of? Just like the Torah established the category of. The wayward and rebellious sun, or perhaps the category of the glutton and the drunkard, which the rabbis for various reasons say that we don't wanna have those categories anymore.
So instead of looking at somebody as a categorical problem, we're gonna look at somebody as, as look at their behavior. What might those categories be in the next era? And, and, you know, homosexual might be one of them, but are there others that are even less, you know,
BENAY LAPPE: you know what, this is also bringing up for me, it's bringing up for me the shift that I see happening in, i, in the world of social justice, particularly in, um, in, in looking at racism and, you know, iram kendi saying, and other black scholars saying, no, it's not about the identity racist, it's about.
Saying racist things and doing racist things.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And you, you, it's not helpful nor true to identify people as racist or not racist? Mm-hmm. First of all, we've all been raised in a racist society, so we, we all are racist, right? In a certain way. Black people, white people, indigenous people, all people.
Um, and he says it's, it's much more right to acknowledge or point to racist acts, racist utterances, and not right uhhuh. So that's feels like the same kind of move away from an identity to behaviors.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, it's also it, yeah. It's, and it's interesting because it, it, it. Raises, like you could imagine a situation where somebody, some, some previous document that we were looking at said, you know, racists should be treated in this particular way, right?
In this, uh, and, and by the way, I think we say that a lot about, uh, the implication a lot. You know, people say this is about the north, that the implication, when we talk about racists, a lot of times the implication is we're talking about white southerners and that's allowing the northern people who, you know, sort of don't, IM, uh, don't imagine themselves to be racist, aren't out there saying bad words and, you know, actively trying to be mean.
They say, well, I'm not a racist, you know, because I know what a racist is and that's not me. And one possibility is to say, no, no, no, actually you are a racist too, and let's expand the category of racist and another. Approach may be to say, okay, whatever, let's not debate about that. It's let's debate about what you should do and shouldn't do.
And you know, Mr. Northern White person, you're doing a lot of things that you shouldn't be doing, so let's focus on that and, uh, not worry some as much about the label.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. It's, it's interesting. And, and then I would say, you know, within Judaism too, what are the, again, some racist for sure is also one a problem within Judaism, but are there other categories of, of where we label people Jewishly?
BENAY LAPPE: I think the category Jewish uhhuh might be that same. We might be moving in the, or should move in the same direction. Should we really? I don't know. I'm, I'm, I'm talking as I'm thinking, and I feel, I can feel myself going to the edge here, but should we have like Jews and not Jews? Mm-hmm. Or should we have people who do Jewish things
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Or have or sort of follow, have Jewish values. People who don't.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. And I'm, and I'm also, you know, standing on your shoulders as someone who has really opened up possibilities for what it might look like in the future to be part of, you know, what we now call Jewish.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. And I think this is sort of, uh, tangentially related, but we've been talking on Judaism Unbound over the last few weeks about Jewish philanthropy and, and, uh, asking like, well, what is Jewish philanthropy?
What do we mean by that? Does that mean that the person receiving the money is Jewish? Does that mean that the person giving the money is Jewish? Or does that mean that it might be both or neither, but the process of. Deciding how to give the money was Jewish, right. Or is it something else? And, you know, all of that.
I, I think that when, previously when somebody said Jewish philanthropy, they probably meant that it was somebody who is Jewish giving to somebody else who is Jewish, not necessarily through a process that is inherently Jewish. Whereas it, it may be that, um, it may be that, that that's not the right way to look at it at all, or certainly not the way that we wanna look at it going into the future.
BENAY LAPPE: I'm kind of excited, I'm kinda excited about my idea here. Yeah. My, your, our idea here that what Jewish means is not actually going to mean necessarily either you were born of a Jewish mother or converted.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: But that you choose these Jewish behaviors. I don't know how many Jewish behaviors do you have to choose to be Jew?
Or maybe we're gonna let go of the identity category of Jewish altogether.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: I don't know.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, no. And we talked about this, um, early on when we talked about actually that same text about the impeachment and removal of Al, where the first thing that they bring up is who is a Jew, you know, the, the, it says they solved every problem that was on the table in the study hall, that, that time.
And the, the only example that they give is this example of who is a Jew, which is somebody who is specifically the kind of person who the Torah says can never be a Jew, and they decide that he can be a Jew. Right. And so, uh, I think that some, that, where that takes me is that, that I, I really think that.
If and when we imagine that we're actually in the, uh, switchover from one era of Judaism to the next, at least in the previous two, we've seen the definition of who can be a Jew change. And so in the Bible, it's, it's, uh, a, a patrilineal descent and specific categories of people can never become a Jew. In the rabbinic era, it's matrilineal descent.
And those categories that the Bible said can't be a Jew, actually can be a Jew, uh, you know, for all kinds of like legalistic reasons. But bottom line is that, that it can, and the third era would suggest, I mean, not, doesn't have to be I guess just because it was the previous two times, but it certainly, uh, open to be that there's a new definition of who is a Jew.
And, you know, I've advocated for a non lineal, you know, that it's, that it's, uh, it's solely based on choice, uh, but. It could be other things as well. And, um, and, and, and yeah, like maybe the category itself becomes problematic, you know, may, maybe, maybe saying non lineal descent is, you know, I've thought that was such a radical thing to say, but actually it's even more radical to say that the category itself should be put into question.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. All right. We could put a stinky on that, but I'm kind of excited about that.
DAN LIBENSON: All right, well, we'll go back there. So let's go. Uh, so I think we wanna jump back into the text now. Well, no, you wanna, we, we didn't, um, we don't have this in our source sheet, but I think we wanna talk a little bit about what the Gemara says about the mission and that we've been talking about.
It's, it's mostly not critical for moving our argument forward, but you wanna share a little bit of that?
BENAY LAPPE: Sure. I, the Guara does, um. What Gamara often does, it will either, and, and we might remember that the Gamara will always do one of five things. It has one of five agendas always on any particular piece of mission.
It's gonna ask who the author is. Uh, it's gonna clarify the mission. It might deal with any perceived conflict between this mission and the Torah, or this Micah and another Micah. Um, it's going to deal with scope. Well, what about this case? What about that case? How far does that apply? And it's gonna ask for sources.
Wait a minute, wait, where, where do you get that? And the gamara on this mission opens up with a question of clarification. The agenda of clarification. What? Wait a minute, how much is a tartar of meat, that measure we talked about, and how much wine Exactly. And then it's gonna go on to deal with the scope and it's going to further narrow the meat eating.
Qualification to be, not just meat generally, but actually raw meat and act that that eliminates a whole bunch of, uh, meat eating episodes as implicating, right? Because it has to be eating the, this boy has to eat raw meat, has to be salted. Well, how much of it salt. So they're gonna go and, and then the wine, what, uh, not just regular Italian wine, but undiluted Italian wine and so on and so forth.
So they're gonna continue to narrow, um, what meat is. Implicating and what wine is implicating. Okay, then let's move to the next Mishna. So we're again, jumping back in history.
DAN LIBENSON: So, and by the way, I, I'm blanking, I'm trying to remember where this was, but this is another one of these cases where you see the mishna already limiting the Torah and then the Gamara limits the mishna even more.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: Then that's not always the case. Like, well, like you were saying, a lot of times the, the mishna doesn't even talk about the Torah. It's certainly not directly. Um, but, but, um, so sometimes it's really just the Gamara li, you know, limiting the Mishna. But here, here we're seeing both, we're seeing both steps,
BENAY LAPPE: right.
Maybe we should note that Mishna as a category, and I would say, you know, option three. You know, new master stories. Um, but we see this in the mission and that's where I'm getting this idea. It really has sort of three buckets of material. It's basically gonna be doing three things to the received tradition, Torah, and whatever oral tradition, uh, added to that, by the time we get to the mishna, it's either going to limit, right?
It's either doing restrictive legislation and limiting what the Torah has. It's either gonna be expanding expansive legislation, expanding on what the Torah said, like, Ooh, this is good. Let's make that a big deal. Uh, Kashrut, right? They love Kush roots. Now they wanna really blow it up, um, stubborn and rebellious on, they're really gonna limit.
And then the third category is new stuff they're making up and throwing against the wall that either has some traction. Has has had some traction in on the ground. And you know, oral history was already developing over some number of years. Probably most is in this category. Maybe some is let's just try this out.
Let's try this new practice. You know, let's try this new thing called Brahas, you know, and here we have the Mishna staying in this limiting category. Mm-hmm. Something that they didn't like that they wanna squeeze down basically out of existence.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay, so let's go on and go to the next, the Mishna, which is now on page 71 A of the, of the Talmud.
And uh, it says if he stole, so he is this wayward and rebellious son, if he stole that, which belonged to his father and ate on its father's property. Or he stole that which belonged to others and ate on the property of others, or he stole that which belonged to others and ate on his father's property.
He does not become a stubborn and rebellious son.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Unless so, I mean Okay, good. You know, so just unless he steals that, which belonged to his father and eats on the property of others. So if you imagine like a box of four where you know it belongs to father, others ate it on the property of father, others.
Right. And you, you get four possibilities. The only one that could possibly make him turn out to be a stubborn, rebellious son is if he still steals the food from the father and eats somewhere and like, runs off and eats somewhere else.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Well one thing I, I was also thinking of that like Gregor Mendels four.
Yeah. Right. I don't forget what those are called. Um, what I forgot to say was the previous Gamara also limited. Um.
The, um, I think it was the previous, yes, it was the previous Gemara. Um, sin, they, they do a play on words and they say, uh, the word glutton, Zelle, no, uh, drunkard Zelle has within it the word Z or zul Zion v lame. And that also means inexpensive or cheap. They say, oh, he also has to buy this meat, you know, on bargain closeout.
He has to buy it at a cheap price. Okay, so this is when the, the chuckles get really big knowing that he has to himself have bought the meat and bought it at a cheap price. Not its going price. This mishna is playing on. Or, or assuming he has to get that money from an illegitimate place as well, and he has to have stolen the money from his father.
Not that he has to eat it in front of his father, but he has to steal the money. Um, the thing he's stealing isn't the meat from his father. He's stealing the money to buy it cheaply from his father. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. But that, but that's only based on the fact that the gamara had made that word play from the previous mishna.
Meaning if we were just looking at the mishna, you wouldn't necessarily see that part, that it has to be stolen money. You would assume it's stolen food, right? Just based on the mishna
BENAY LAPPE: itself. Y you know, I think you're right. And maybe the, the shot, the simple understanding and the way the mishna was understood in its time might have been steal the meat from the father.
I'm not sure. Uhhuh, maybe, maybe, because you're right. It, it's, it, all it says is steal from his father. Mm-hmm. It doesn't say steal money to buy the meat. It just says steal. And you're right. You would presume it means steal the meat itself.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. But anyway, the,
BENAY LAPPE: yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: But where we're at now is that, you know, not only does he have to be having this neutral meal, it's not a mitzvah, it's not, uh, a crime, you know, non kosher.
It's lunch. But, uh, he, he stole it from his father. And, you know, whether he stole the food or the money, you know, if he stole the money, not only did he steal the money, but he bought, bought, bought really low quality meat and wine. 'cause it was cheap. And then he ran that.
BENAY LAPPE: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It, it's trickier than that.
It's not low quality wine. Uh, I'm not sure about the meat. It's high quality wine, super high quality wine at a low price, which is gonna be even more. Even harder to find and less likely for him to be able to do. Right, right. This is a bottle of, I don't even know the name. So it's
DAN LIBENSON: like, it's like when Musco gets like a really special deal where they get like some close out of a high end, you know, Louis Vuitton bag or something, and they sell it for cheap, you know?
There
BENAY LAPPE: you go.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Um, so, okay,
BENAY LAPPE: so, so what, so what are the, the four boxes possibility? He, let's just say money, just to keep it simple. Either he steals money from his father, buys the meat and eats it in his father's house. Okay. Or he steals money from other people and he eats, buys the stuff and eats it in other someone else's house.
His buddy's house. Or he steals the money from his father, buys the stuff and eats it at his buddy's house, or steals the money from his buddy's friend's, right from his friend's father's dresser buys the stuff. And comes back to his own house and eats the stuff there. Okay. Those are the four boxes?
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay, fine.
DAN LIBENSON: And the only one that he is in trouble for is if he steals it from his father and goes and eats it over at his buddy's house.
BENAY LAPPE: Great. Great. Okay. So that's what the mission says. And then there's the additional opinion. We get an opinion rabbi, uh, yo, the Rabbi Yehuda.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So we haven't looked at that yet.
So the, okay, so the, um, so then Rabbi Yos, rabbi Huda says he does not become a servant brother son unless he steals that, which belonged to his father and to his mother. So,
BENAY LAPPE: okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. And, which by the way, just to point, like, to point out, I think that there's a, like, this might not sound so. Shocking or, you know, what's surprising to us today?
Because it's like, whatever is mine, it's my wife's, et cetera, you know? But in those days, the understanding was that once she got married, the mother didn't own anything. Right. So there, there really wouldn't be such a thing as something owned by the father and the mother.
BENAY LAPPE: And that's one of the things precisely that the Gamara says, how is that even possible?
How can the mother have anything halachically from which the child could steal?
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: That's a challenge that Gamara brings to this very opinion.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: So clearly, I mean, just the fact that it just so convoluted and funny. I mean, you know, you say like, you almost feel the chuckle coming. Like, we're laughing.
Like it's just, the whole thing is, is is funny.
BENAY LAPPE: Right? And again, people shouldn't think the laughing is laughing at the rabbis. Mm-hmm. They're not silly, stupid, or foolish.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: This is a laugh. We're, we're laughing with them. We're laughing in acknowledgement of the, of the sophisticated argumentation that they want to, what's the word?
Telescope. Not telescope. They wanna
DAN LIBENSON: telegraph.
BENAY LAPPE: That's it. Telegraph. I knew it was a tele us something they wanna tell, they wanna telegraph to us as deliberate, uh, un you know, radical reads. Mm-hmm. So that we can know how to do that in the future on other issues when we need to.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, I mean, the only way that I would like just make a slight tweak to what you just said is, is that I've been saying this, it's like they didn't ever expected that we would be reading this.
They, they were trying to telegraph to other rabbis that this is kind of so, and, and they were expecting that other rabbis would have the same reaction that we're having because we now have this, the, basically the same education, better education than most rabbis had throughout history, general education.
I mean, and you know, enough Jewish knowledge to see that this is funny and we're having a good laugh about it. They would, they were having a good laugh about it back then. Right. And, and. But it wasn't like such a good laugh that it was, it was farce. Like, in other words, if, if, if this was like a Purim play, you know, it wouldn't have made its way into the Talmud.
You know, they would've, I'm sure that the rabbis back then had a lot of fun jokes that they would have with each other and, and have a good laugh about some crazy convoluted way of talking about some law that wouldn't make it into the Talmud, because they were like, that was just, you know, rabbi Joshua's funny joke that day.
You know, this is like, no, no, no, this is funny, but serious enough that they wanna hold onto it as real. So, so what that means is that this is real, authentic rabbinic Jewish legal reasoning. That is funny. And they knew it. And, and, you know, meaning that, like, again, I take and say like, well, if there's something that we don't like, like, you know, that we really don't like too, like let's say that Leviticus, you know, a man shall not lie down with a man.
You know, like actually there's a certain way of. If you look at Steve Greenberg's book about this wrestling with God and men, you know, where he tries to take on the halakha conversation. I don't, it's been a long time since I read it. I don't remember this, but I don't think that he had a chapter in there that was kind of like trying to almost like, make it so convoluted that it became funny.
But I actually think he should have included that chapter because that was, because that was, that would be authentic halachic reasoning to try to get rid of this awful line by kind of making all these kind of, uh, strange convolutions that would ultimately say, oh yeah. And so of course that only applies on Wednesdays in, in, you know, outside of Jerusalem and whatever, you know, it's such that it wouldn't really be, have any effect.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I, Steve is a friend of mine and we, we have very different approaches and I'm not sure he shares my, uh, right belief that there's actually a wink here.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Um. And, and also I, I wanna point out again that what's, this is funny. Only if you have a istic understanding of Torah. Only if you assume that Torah is the fixed, unchanging, immutable word of God and that that's what they believed and that's what we're supposed to, only then is it funny, but I don't believe they thought that.
Hmm. And so for them, I don't think it was so much funny as, oh, that's a good one. Great Uhhuh. Right? And so it wasn't like surprising and outrageous it was to them. And I don't think it should be surprising and outrageous to us. I think it should be. Oh, yeah. That's a good one.
DAN LIBENSON: But I, I do think that I, I mean, I don't disagree with you, but I also think that there are cases where they're very serious.
Where, and, and even cases, like the kind of cases where, you know, they also said, my hands are tied. Right. What can I, what can I do here? Or there are cases like,
BENAY LAPPE: wait, I'm not sure I agree with that. Where did they say?
DAN LIBENSON: But did they never say that my hands are tied?
BENAY LAPPE: I can't think of an example.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Uh, but then there's a case, like we looked at a couple of weeks ago, these, those divorce cases where they weren't really funny.
Right. They, in other words, they were, they were taking, they, Ava found a way to. Kind of legislate that out of existence, but not necessarily in a funny way, uh, or in an overly convoluted way, actually in a very straightforward way. Right. That just said, well, this doesn't make sense. You could say here, like, um, you know, you could have, you could have done this in a different way.
You could have said, uh, we shouldn't, uh, kill a pious, uh, wayward and rebellious son because of, there are some sons that are just funny, and we would accidentally think that they were wayward, and there's some sons that are wayward, but we wouldn't, you know, some analogous reasoning. And you would say, what?
And you're gonna like, get rid of something from the Torah, just because to protect somebody who is a, a comedian, you know? And then, and they would say in, you know, yes. So you could imagine, but for some reason they choose to go a different route here, which is this kind of convoluted limitation, funny route.
So,
BENAY LAPPE: yeah. Yeah. I think. I think, my guess is that the rabbis know that the people to whom they have to sell these innovations and deviations from Torah do have a more istic understanding or, or they're instilling in folks a very simplistic, um, view of what Torah is to compel compliance. And they, they need to, they, they need to empower.
You know, the, the, the salespeople with the techniques to justify
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: The changes, I don't know. Mm-hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, it's interesting again, right? I sort of raised this question of like, who would've been expected to hear the justification? Uh, because it may be that, that people, that people would, because if you read something like there is a difference between the divorce cases and this, which is that in the divorce cases, it doesn't specifically say in the Torah, you know, you can't get divorced, you can't do this, you can't do that.
If there's a conditional divorce, they're using a principle that they're deriving from the Torah onus. Right. And it would, it would, it would, the, the, the argument against it would be kind of too, um, detailed for the most people to come up with. So whereas here is something that you read every year in the Torah portion where it says, if you have a stubborn rib, it's very direct, right?
So you would expect that your average. You know, Joe, your average saf, uh, would have heard of this stubborn and rebellious son, in fact would hear about it every year. And if he had a son like this, you might come to the rabbi and say, I've got a stubborn and rebellious son. I think I have to kill him. I read that in the Torah last week.
And it may be that actually,
BENAY LAPPE: well, I think you have to kill him.
DAN LIBENSON: You have to kill him. Right. You know, and, and, um, it may be that that part of what's going on here is there is an expectation that these arguments are gonna be made to regular Jews. And those regular Jews are not particularly. Knowledgeable, but they may be istic and so they might not actually laugh the way we are because we know more than them and we're more sophisticated.
But, and actually what the tamala is trying to give the rabbis here is a lot of arguments because you're probably gonna get a lot of pushback from the regular person who keeps saying, but I read about it in the Torah was in last week's report. She said, yeah, but it's this and it's that. And there's so many excuses that eventually they're like, okay.
I mean, I guess, I guess so. Yeah, I guess we're
BENAY LAPPE: that. I think so. I, uh, I can see that and I, I think that's how it works.
DAN LIBENSON: Uhhuh Uhhuh. And so again, I think that that raises this point that. Part of why it's hard for us to read some of this stuff today and understand exactly what was in the mind of, of those who wrote it, is that they didn't expect, like we think of ourselves as regular Jew.
I mean, you know, you're a rabbi, but, uh, you know, but like we, we think of ourselves as like we people and regular people never expected to be reading this. And so I think the only way to kind of, um, fully get into the experience of this is to, is to pretend at least while we're sitting here, that we are rabbis, right?
That, and that, and that we are the people who are expected to, to hear this, but that there weren't very many of us. And so if we, if we get this and we say, Hey, this is actually kind of funny. This is, uh, this is, this is. So convoluted that it, it's just sort of, uh, obviously some, some effort to circumvent the, you know, then, then we, just by knowing that, just by having that experience of the text, we are revealing that we are actually quite sophisticated.
Like, and the only people who are that sophisticated back then we're probably rabbis and, uh, that there's someone else who this text is, you know, is sort of for, who wouldn't necessarily see that it's so sophisticated. That's kind of who it's aimed, that's who the, the bottom line is aimed at.
BENAY LAPPE: I think that's right.
And I see our time running out, so I won't go into this story now, but when we pick up next time, remind me to tell you the story of the conservative, conservative movement's decision at a certain point. To share that you vote the, the legal opinions on new decisions with the, the conservative laity.
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm,
BENAY LAPPE: okay.
And what they were willing not to share. So we'll talk about that next time. Alright, let's talk about that. 'cause I think it relates to this.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. I, I, not even knowing the story, I suspect that it does. So,
BENAY LAPPE: yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: So, okay. We'll, we'll leave that on a cliffhanger and we'll pick that up next week. Okay, great.
Great to see you then. Uh, wait. And by the way, I guess next week, uh, this time next week, we, we, uh, should have a new president.
BENAY LAPPE: God willing. God willing.
DAN LIBENSON: All right. See you next week.
BENAY LAPPE: Bye, Dan.
DAN LIBENSON: Bye.
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