“The Talmud has one message, one and only one message, and it gives it in 14,000 different cases, and that one message is, reader, you are tasked with making the tradition as good as you possibly can, and you are not bound to the Torah in doing that.” - Benay Lappe
“The Talmud has one message, one and only one message, and it gives it in 14,000 different cases, and that one message is, reader, you are tasked with making the tradition as good as you possibly can, and you are not bound to the Torah in doing that.” - 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.
The Talmud wants you to think you’ve figured it out. Then it pulls the rug out from under you. A proof that seemed so convincing suddenly falls apart. An argument you accepted without question turns out to have a hole you should have noticed. And Benay and Dan suspect the frustration is intentional.
Because maybe the Talmud isn’t just teaching you how to interpret Torah. It’s training you to hold your truths lightly. In this episode, Dan and Benay continue to explore a text designed to destabilize certainty and form people capable of noticing when the tradition they inherited is no longer working. The goal isn’t endless doubt. It’s something harder: becoming confident enough to act, but flexible enough to realize when you’re wrong, and courageous enough to change.
This week’s text: Bava Kamma 83b
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 69: Juggling Arguments
Welcome to the Oral Talmud, a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. I’m Dan Libenson…
BENAY LAPPE: …and I’m Benay Lappe.
DAN LIBENSON: The Oral Talmud is our weekly deep dive study partnership, in which we try to figure out how voices from the Talmud – voices from 1500 to 2000 years ago – can help us think in new ways about Judaism today.
The Talmud wants you to think you’ve figured it out. Then it pulls the rug out from under you. A proof that seemed so convincing suddenly falls apart. An argument you accepted without question turns out to have a hole you should have noticed. And Benay and I suspect the frustration is intentional.
Because maybe the Talmud isn’t just teaching you how to interpret Torah. It’s training you to hold your truths lightly. In this episode, we continue to explore a text designed to destabilize certainty and form people capable of noticing when the tradition they inherited is no longer working. The goal isn’t endless doubt. It’s something harder: becoming confident enough to act, but flexible enough to realize when you’re wrong, and courageous enough to change.
Every episode of The Oral Talmud has a number of resources to support your learning and to share with your own study partners! If you’re using a podcast app to listen, you’ll find these links in our show notes: First, to a Source Sheet on Sefaria, where you can find pretty much any Jewish text in the original and in translation – there we excerpt the core Talmud texts we discuss and share a link to the original video of our learning.
In the show notes of your podcast app, you’ll also find a link to this episode on The Oral Talmud’s website, where we post an edited transcript, and where you can make a donation to keep the show going, if you feel so moved. On both the Sefaria Source Sheet and The Oral Talmud website.
And now, The Oral Talmud…
DAN LIBENSON: Hello everybody, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Oral Talmud. I'm Dan Levenson, and I'm here as always with Bnei Lapie. Hey, Bnei.
BENAY LAPPE: Hey, Dan.
DAN LIBENSON: Good to see you. Uh-
BENAY LAPPE: Nice to see you ...
DAN LIBENSON: happy New Year.
BENAY LAPPE: Thank you. And a Happy New Year to you.
DAN LIBENSON: Thanks. Uh, oh, by the way, like I forgot to, uh, talk to you before the show but I think we're gonna be off next week 'cause it's Yom Kippur-
BENAY LAPPE: Oh right
DAN LIBENSON: on Thursday. So,- That's right ...uh, eh- so program note, we'll see you in two weeks. But today- Okay ...we have a, a full show. And, um, actually I wanted to start out with, with two, uh, thoughts. One is that, and I sent you this a few days ago, you know, we've been doing the Daf Yomi, The Daily Talmud Page. And, uh, w- my wife and I were just talking about it in the car today, and I was saying, like I think that Daf Yomi is like a very high, uh, investment way to find a few nuggets here and there.
And one nugget that we found that I think is kind of really apropos to what we've been talking about is this idea that it talks about, and it's kind of random; I mean, I should probably go back to the context to see if it's not completely random, but it's pretty random where all of sudden it, it talks about all these great rabbis, Rabbi Yochanan, Shmuel, Raba, Abaye, they were all amazing jugglers.
Like, you know, and, um, and one of them juggled, you know, like knives, and one of them juggled glasses of wine without spilling any of it, and one of them juggled ... Then there's a dispute whether it was eight eggs or four eggs. And I've got to think that there's something metaphorical, like about, you know, it's not like th- they were actually great jugglers.
I mean maybe they were, and I actually love the idea that we should, you know, the juggling is a lost Jewish art that we should really recapture. Yeah. But I think that in the sense of what we've been talking about a lot, that there is this kind of magic g- ... You know, there is this kind of like, you know, sleight of hand or, you know, I can do a trick.
I don't know, I, I feel like there's something there about how, you know, it's telling us that all of these great rabbis were amazing jugglers. That, that feels significant to me.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I like that. I mean i- it, it's easy to see them juggling pieces of the Torah-
DAN LIBENSON: Right ...
BENAY LAPPE: right? As if they were, you know, all individual separable from one another.
Um, I, I like that. Um
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, so uh- Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: I, I think you're onto something
DAN LIBENSON: I think there's something there. I mean, I'm, now I'm, now I'm gonna be looking f- looking out for more, you know, examples of, of things like that, that they could do. Right, I mean, yeah, it's like juggling pieces of Torah. I mean, it's like that statement of the, the great, the great, uh, student is one who can find, you know, however 36, 72, whatever, you know, ways to, uh, purify the impure.
You know, that's like a juggling- Right ... of the pieces of Torah, right? And, and typically- Right ... that's some of what's going on here in, in, in this segment that we're, we're doing now. Um, I would also just wanted to float this idea that, um You know, well, last week we talked about how we were getting a little frustrated with the official translation that's on Sefaria by Steinsaltz.
And so we've started to more actively revise the translation, and so we're gonna use our revision today and go back even a little back- backtrack what we were doing last week just with a better translation so that we're not stumbling over the translation in the same way. One of the, uh, issues that you expressed frustration about in terms of the translation is that in the H- Hebrew or the, the, uh...
Well, it's the Hebrew, not Aramaic. It's th- that, um, that there are these really easy ways to refer to the two voices. The, the, right, remember those one who says, uh, that the Torah actually when it says an eye for an eye, it's saying you actually poke out somebody's eye. And another voice says when it says an eye for an eye, even in the Torah, it means you pay money, the value of an eye, uh, for the p- if somebody injured your eye, you pay the value o- of, of the eye.
And in Hebrew, that, that is mamash, is the voice that says an actual eye. Mamash means real, actual. And the other is mamon, which is, uh, money. And so with a very close two words, mamash and mamon, you can really in a quick way refer to these two voices. Uh, a- a- and remember that mamash, the actual eye being poked out, is ultimately the more radical voice because that one is saying the Torah meant poke out an actual eye.
But of course, we, everybody knows that we don't do that anymore; we do money. And so that means something happened at some point between when the Torah was given and now where somebody made a huge change. And that's very radical. Whereas the voice that says mamon, the, the, the Torah always meant money. It says, "Well, it's not so radical.
It al- it just means what it always meant." So I was thinking to float an idea that in English we could refer to those as actual eye is mamash, actual eye. And mamon, the money, is actually money. So actual eye and actually money maybe is a way that we could find a quick, a quick way to refer to those as we go on.
BENAY LAPPE: I like that. Okay, let's try that.
DAN LIBENSON: Let's see, let's see how it goes.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: All right. So to, so basically to, to remind everybody, I mean, I feel like I say it every week but, you know, just if you're catching up or this is, this is hard to keep it all in your head straight, so it's good to do a little bit of reminders.
We're doing this kind of sampler of all these techniques of interpretation in the... And, and the specific case happens to be about this question of an eye for an eye, but that is important in and of itself. But also this seg- segment is important, and the main reason why we've chosen it is to give you this, like, sampler of all these different techniques that we've seen some of them in the past and we'll see them in the future.
And, and so you could kinda refer back to this segment for a, a real analysis of each one. And, and where we are now is that we've kind of gone through three stitches in that sampler: the gesher hashavah, the fact that there are two words in two different places, um And even though the, the two verses are not really connected but since the same word is in both you can kind of derive a principle from one to the other.
That's gezeirah shavah or the verbal analogy it's translated. The second is the diyuk which is a kind of a hyper literal, uh, meaning and, and so, uh, that's the one right where it says, uh, well because it said, because, because it said that you should, um, uh, uh, not take, uh, a, a ransom for a killing, that means not only can you but you must take a ransom for anything else.
You know, right? Is that-
BENAY LAPPE: Well, well actually may- only you may.
DAN LIBENSON: Oh, only you may?
BENAY LAPPE: W- yeah, we're gonna get to the fact that it precise- DAFKA doesn't say must or the, the deduction isn't must, which is going to be articulated as a weakness of that proof.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: So what we deduce from this Diyuk is you may take ransom or money for non murderers.
Mm-hmm. Meaning injurers, yep.
DAN LIBENSON: And, and th- and that was, you know, as, as kind of... And I don't, maybe a better adjective, but as kind of silly as we may think like Gezerah Shavah is, this idea that two random verses have a connection 'cause they happen to use the same word, thisdiyuk is also kind of on the silly side.
You know, it's saying that, um, you know, we know, we know that that's now how things are written. You know? That, that, that, and even God, like if God, yeah okay, God could put maybe like s- hidden meanings into things but, but why should God put hidden meanings? Like, if God wants us to know something why doesn't God just tell us?
So this idea that it says that it has really nothing to do with this, and it says talking about like a ransom for a murderer, you know, you shouldn't sort of pay off the authorities or the other, the oth- the victim's family. You shouldn't pay them off so that they won't bring charges against you, and that somehow means that you, you can pay people off to, you know, not bring charges against you for something less than murder.
I mean, it's not necessarily a, a, a crazy idea, but to read the verse that way i- it seems like a clear
BENAY LAPPE: overreach. Yeah. Th- what you're describing is the split between two fir- l- first, second, second century guys, Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva Who started two different schools of thought about how we should read Torah and, and what we should assume about the author's intent.
Rabbi Ishmael's assumption was, and his slogan was, The Torah spoke in human language with sometimes redundancies and sometimes inconsistencies, and that's just the way people talk and you shouldn't make a big tzimmes out of it. Um, and even though Rabbi Ishmael had, you know, these 13 literary interpretive techniques, there was a limit to how far he was willing to imagine we could interpret meanings beyond the simple plain meaning Rabbi Akiva was an adherent of what we now call, and I- I'm looking for a Hebrew term for it, I don't know what it is, but we now call omnisignificance.
And his assumption, and I th- my sense is that it was just clever and he knew very well that this wasn't true, but it was handy, was that there is an infinite number of meanings in the Torah, and they live beyond the simple plain meaning of the text, and they're hidden and they're there for us to discover.
Um, and this al- allowed infinite flexibility of what we could claim the Torah was saying or that God wanted us to do. And Rabbi Akiva's camp eventually won out, and we are basically allAkivans, um, which I think has been the secret of how we've m- juggled this, this sort of dichotomy of a sacred God authored text on the one hand, and a tradition that has evolved to keep up with our Sefar- Mm-hmm
on the other hand. So y- your, your description is actually quite historical.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. It's interesting 'cause we're also, we're Akivans and yet then I think back to, I think I mentioned it last week or ... Like, the, the story of the Oven of Akhnai where, you know, the, the claim is that, "God, you had your chance to speak, and what, if you didn't say what you meant clearly, then we can kinda do what we vote to do."
Which is, seems a little bit intentioned with that, that notion that God has buried all these hidden meanings in the Torah because, I mean, it's not, it's not irreconcilable tension, but it's- Yeah ... a tension. Because it kind of feels like you can kinda take it both ways.
BENAY LAPPE: Y- y- y- y- i wonder if that tension is really the difference between audience, right?
That conversation, that Tanur Shel Achna conversation where Rabi Yehoshua stands up and says, "God, sit down"-
I wonder if that's sort of an insider conversation- Uh-huh ... that the rabbis want to have with each other, and all of these exegetical techniques are what they're ... It, this is your, I think, your . Uh-huh. Yeah. Right? Your perspective. That this them learning how to sell-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm ...
BENAY LAPPE: their innovations to the people.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. So I don't think they would've taught the story of we told God to sit down- Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh ...
BENAY LAPPE: to the people, but-
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh. No, that makes a lot of sense. And, and, um, yeah, 'cause the people, the people wanna see that you have a, a source and a basis for this still today. Right? I mean, so many people kind of say, "But where do you
I, I'm not gonna just accept that you have that authority to make stuff up, so show me where, where you're getting that from."
BENAY LAPPE: Right. But-
DAN LIBENSON: If you're showing me a, kind of like strange way, right?
BENAY LAPPE: You know what popped into my mind? I, it, it like, it's like the folks who say, "I wanna know what's in the vaccine."
Yeah. I, I suppose we could put a sticky on that, but okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Like- No, but I mean, like, there w-... I was reading stuff online that says like do you- .... do you ask what's in, you know- It- ... aspirin? Do you
BENAY LAPPE: ask what- Exactly.
DAN LIBENSON: Like why just this one, right?
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. Exactly. Um,
DAN LIBENSON: but if they're asking- Like
BENAY LAPPE: show me, show me where it's written.
Sh-
DAN LIBENSON: Yes. But if you're asking, but if they're asking, you, you are better off saying something rather than saying, "Oh, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna tell you," you know? Because, uh- Hey ... 'Cause you didn't ask about this, and you didn't ask about this, and you didn't ask about this. That might be true, but it also raises, uh, you know, raises peoples guard, and it gets people thinking you're hiding something.
Whereas if you say, "Oh, yeah, I'm gonna tell you," even if it's a dumbed down version or it's not quite accurate, which is always the case when scientists... Like do I really need- Right ... to understand what's in the vaccine? I think I do, but, you know, I'm sure that I only have a kind of partial notion of it.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Or-
DAN LIBENSON: That I'm telling you ...
BENAY LAPPE: or , or that, or even if you have an answer, forget the vaccine. Any kind of scientific answer is still gonna be something that you, you don't really, oh, because it, you know, it changes the whatever, the valance of the recept-- Oh, okay. Okay. There you go. Like now I understa- no, I still don't understand.
Yeah. But I've gotten an explanation.
DAN LIBENSON: That's a good ana- it's a good analogy. I thi- I think I wanna kind of dwell, you know, fo- think about that for a while and then come back to it 'cause I think that's really... We, we make a lot of analogies to law on this show, but I think it'd be interesting to sort of think about some of the analogies to science.
And, and think about in a certain way these rabbis are functioning in, in this society in a way like scientists do in our society. They are people that we trust to know a lot about an area that we don't know that much about, and we trust their good intent, and we trust their, uh, ability to, that they understand this in a deep way.
And every o- cer- certain times we want an explanation from them about how it works, and other times we don't want that explanation. Somehow, and when they give us an explanation they have to give it to us in a way that we can understand and not, which may be impossible to give us the full explanation because by definition we can't understand the full explanation.
But if they say that so I can't tell you anything, then we're suspicious. So they're gonna have to tell us something. It may be definitionally inaccurate. By the way, like since we have like quantum theory and stuff, like basically everything is inaccurate because it doesn't fully tell us; they're not telling us the whole, whole story 'cause- Yeah
probably three people in the world could understand that. You know, but, but that's how it goes. Okay, so we have these two first stitches: The Gezeira Shava, the verbal analogy, and the Adiop, the kind of hyper little read. And then we had a third one which is the Hekesh, which is, uh, understood or translated as a juxtaposition, and it's that the verse, uh, that talks about, uh, this is, is next to
A, a, a verse that talks about, uh, um-
BENAY LAPPE: Striking ...
DAN LIBENSON: striking is next to two other verses. Uh, one of, right, one of which is, um ... So one, one of which, the one I remember is the one that says that we, we, uh, give, you know, you give a strike and- Gi-
BENAY LAPPE: you give a blemish ...
DAN LIBENSON: you give a blemish and you then give, uh, a compensation, right?
Something li- ... Eh, and, and si- since it says give ... No, that's not quite right.
BENAY LAPPE: Yes, that's, that's right. One of i-, th- it's like a double, uh, Hehesh, a double juxtaposition. S- this verse about striking a person h- is right next to a verse that says, "One who strikes an animal pays." Hmm. It explicitly says pay because the two are next to each other.
We can learn, we could sort of, you know, Chutes and Ladders the word play over to the first verse, one who strikes a man pays. Great. And furthermore, says the Talmud, our verse about striking is also juxtaposed to another verse about giving a blemish, uh, where money is... No, giving a blemish- So
DAN LIBENSON: if someone gave a, if you give a blemish, a blemish will be given to you.
BENAY LAPPE: There you go. And gives
DAN LIBENSON: means money. You know, becau- That's
BENAY LAPPE: right. What is given? M- money is what's given. Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. And, and, and so, so I mean, what's interesting to read about that is like not only is that itself a kind of ridiculous read, you know? You, 'Cause it say you, you give somebody... It's like I give somebody a punch in the nose and he gives me a punch in the nose in return.
That means that we give money. Like, oh- . Right ... that's not what it means. It means that you c- punch him in the nose. That's how you say punch in the nose. You say you give them a punch in the nose, right? And, um, so the j- so first of all, that read is, is strained and, and, you know, obviously wrong. And then they're using that read to say, "And because this verse that so clearly means that you give money," 'cause it said give a punch in the nose, "that verse is next to this verse which is about, uh, striking, so that means that if you strike somebody you should give them money."
You know, like it's so strained.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. But it's only strained in the world in which a piece of literature, including the Bible Means what it looks like it means, and that's all. But in the- Yeah ... world in which I can convince my listener that there's ma- there are magical meanings-
DAN LIBENSON: Yes ...
BENAY LAPPE: right? S- hidden, and there are magical ways to conjure up those hidden meanings, it's not strange at all.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So i- in th- Hmm ... a- and there are debates. In fact, there are conferences. I remember years ago, there was a conference in Jerusalem on the question of whether the rabbis themselves believed in the magic, meaning believed, uh, that when they said, you know, "There's a vav over here and a vav over here," or the
Did they really believe it, or w- did they know they were, you know, doing sleight of hand?
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: I personally think they knew.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: But many people think they really believed, and I think that's- it's, it's possible that they really believe that this document had secret meanings that could be discovered in these myriad 13-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm
BENAY LAPPE: uh, ways, and pulled out with these unique stitches. So-
DAN LIBENSON: But we should point out, I mean, be that as it may, and, and maybe, like, in this particular case, in this particular, uh, passage that we're studying, it's like the actually money voice, you know, the one that's trying to say the Torah was money all along, is, like, falling over itself with all kinds of really strange proofs.
And they might have believed that there's, like, magical meanings buried in the Torah, but the question that I would sort of love to have a conversation with such a person about is, like, okay, but how do you know in any particular case whether there's a magical meaning or not? C- because yeah, okay, even if I accepted that you could, you could read it to say that it says, "You give him a punch in the nose," and he gives you a punch in the nose back, that that means money.
If you didn't want it to mean money, you would just read it as you punched somebody in the nose back. So your motivation here is to try to prove that the Torah meant money all along, which is the much less likely scenario, and you are now falling all over yourself trying to find one place where you can find a convincing proof.
And like I think you've said before, if you can't find one, you'd find 10 bad ones, right? You know, and, and that's just because of your, your motivation. So it's like two things. It's one, it's a, yeah, the ... Uh, e- even if I accept your point that the Torah might have magical hidden meanings, that doesn't really solve the problem about how do I know when it does and when it doesn't.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. It... And I don't believe for a minute that they did anyway.
DAN LIBENSON: And- Well, th- Yeah. Well, that almost is a proof to me that they didn't, because it, at obviously, it's, it's a hard, it's a hard one to answer. Uh, you know, other, other than it just basically completely opens the door to sort of un- unrestrained reasoning.
And it's one thing to say that we can use that as a rhetorical technique, but it's another thing to think that a smart person actually believes that.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. I, I think the best argument for the rabbis really n- knowing precisely what they were doing and not believing in their own sleight of hand is that there are lots of better proofs that they could have used.
Uh-huh. More convincing proofs without the, you know, um Without the belief in enormous magic that they could have made. And if- Mm ... if, if their goal was t- to really convince people that the Torah really meant our innovative, our innovation all along
they would've used those. What's- Yeah ... what's hard to do is think about the audience of the Talmud at this, at the same time as thinking about the audience for the audience of the Talmud.
DAN LIBENSON: Yes.
BENAY LAPPE: Because they're two different g-... Two different audiences, two different goals. The first audience is the, the learning rabbi, right?
The rabbinical student. Rabbi
DAN LIBENSON: student effectively, yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: The rabbinal student. The Yeshiva bocher who's learning this. And I think the message ... Let, let, let me see if I can clarify because my brain gets confused with these two th-. Okay. The, I think the goal of the Talmud for the f- primary audience of the Talmud is we don't need the Torah to justify the innovations we're gonna make in the tradition.
Uh-huh.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Period. Mm-hmm. That's it. That's the message. The Talmud, you know, like I always say, I was very flattered that David quoted me yesterday. Yes, every rabbi has one sermon, and they give that one sermon a thousand different ways. The Talmud has one message, one and only one message, and it gives it in 14,000 different cases, and that one message is, "Reader, you are tasked with making the tradition as good as you possibly can, and you are not bound to the Torah in doing that."
You neither need justification from the Torah, nor is there going to be justification there, and you still are empowered to make, okay, the changes you need to make to make the tradition work better. Mm-hmm. Done. That person then has a different goal in selling those innovations to the people. Mm-hmm. And I think that's when th- that end primary audience person needs techniques.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Th- th- the techniques which they understand as demonstrating n- lack of reliance on the Torah, they need to s- use to prove consistency with Torah. I think that's it. Okay, I think I got it.
DAN LIBENSON: I think you're 100% right, and- ... then question for our time is what happens when the secondary audience c- is now potentially the primary audience, and- Right
read the Talmud directly and, and can, and will either read it as, "This stuff is ridiculous," you know, or will read it as, "Oh, I see what was goin' on", right? And we want them to read it the latter way.
BENAY LAPPE: Or, or worse, and more tragically, will, will read it go, "Oh, yes." Th- Mm-hmm. Because there's maakat over here and maakat over here, God said that.
And- Either we're not allowed to use those techniques anymore, so now my hands are tied. Mm-hmm. I can't make any other similarly radical innovations. Or I always need the Torah to justify even through these methods, and I can't find any way to do it So my hands are tied again.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And I-
DAN LIBENSON: Yep.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. We
BENAY LAPPE: gotta, I got to write that
DAN LIBENSON: down . Okay. Well, well fortunately this is being recorded. Um, okay. So we ha- so we, we go through the sampler. We have the gezeirah shavah, the verbal analogy. We have the diyuk, the hyper literal meaning. We have the hekesh, this juxtaposition of verses. And then now where we are is, is the Talmud is saying, "Okay, we've gone through three techniques here, but hey, we kind of fooled you because you never asked why...
What was wrong with the first one." You know, like you just... So we've... So actually, like, I don't know if we said this last week, like coming back to this I'm thinking, oh, that's one of the juggles right there. It's like the magician has just, they've gone through three steps in the trick and said, "Hey, you know what?
You never actually asked about the first step.” So we're, we're, we're kind of going back to that first gezeirah shavah, and we're saying, you know, putting aside, you know, wa- we, we think that it's a kind of ridiculous type of, of approach, but in this context they don't think that, or they don't... They, they're talking, thinking about an audience that doesn't think it.
So they're saying, "Hey, you know, the gezeirah shavah is a legitimate form of interpretation," and what was wrong with it? Uh- Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Because- But due to that- That initial- Due to
DAN LIBENSON: the second one ...
BENAY LAPPE: That, right. That initial baraita said, "Here's our gezeirah shavah, and if you don't like that, do- uh, don't even tell me.
I don't want to hear about it. Don't tell me what your problem is with it. Here's another one.”
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. “
BENAY LAPPE: Go learn that the Torah actually meant an eye all along be- because of this second proof, the diyuk.” Mm-hmm. And you're right. Now the Gemara itself is saying, “Well wait a minute, why if the, if you had a gezeirah shavah did you offer me a second proof?”
Wha- what did you anticipate that I was gonna find fault with-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm ...
BENAY LAPPE: that you needed to offer that second proof? Okay, great.
DAN LIBENSON: And just to remind what that first gezeirah shavah was, was that in the verse Exodus where it introduces this whole eye for an eye business it says, adam, a person who strikes a man.
And somewhere else in Leviticus it says, uh, something about striking an animal, and where it sa-... In Leviticus where it says striking an animal it says that you should pay compensation. So that must mean that here in, uh, in Exodus where it says , that al- the strikes, that also must mean compensation, right?
Uh, monetary. That's
BENAY LAPPE: right. Although by the time you get to this point in the Gemara you've already kneaded to... The, the Gemara itself has walked you through an interrogation of the gezeirah shavah itself to the point where the initial two versus that it was being built on are, are not the verses that really work.
Fair. There are two other re-- So e- even the gezeirah shavah is crumbly at this point- Uh-huh ... but we're accepting it.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. Okay. So, um, so, so this is again a little bit of, uh, where we were last week, but we'll go through it quickly. Uh, so and we've revised the translation, so hopefully it's a little more easy to understand So the Gemara asks, uh, to which verse is...
Oh, sorry. No, this is not, uh ... Sorry, this is The Gemara asks: And why did the Brita offer the second proof that started with the phrase "If it is your wish to say"? So the, the... We have the Gezeirah Shava and then the, the Talmud said, "But if it's your wish to say," meaning if you don't like that we'll go to the second one, which was the Diyuk, the hyper-literal meaning.
So why did, why did they say it? In other words, what was wrong with the Gezeirah Shava? And the Gemara explains there was a potential challenge that the Tana, meaning the author of that, of that, uh, uh, Gezeirah Shava, uh, recognized, uh, or that, that says, uh ... Uh, n- namely, the challenge is this: What do you see that lets you learn anything about a case of one who strikes a person from the case of one who strikes an animal?
BENAY LAPPE: Mm-hmm.
DAN LIBENSON: That there's a problem learning from animals to people, and you talked about it last week, like, if we, uh, you know, in our time we wouldn't necessarily say because you can euthanize an animal that's, uh, you know, that's suffering a lot but it's not necessarily gonna die, that doesn't mean that we ... I- If we understand that that's, uh, the right thing to do with animals, there are many, many agree that it is, but that doesn't meant that those people would automatically say that you should do the same thing to a person.
So th- there's fundamentally a problem learning from a case of an animal to a case of a person.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Right. So that, that, that's a legitimate weakness of the gezeirah shavah.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: So we should learn the case of one who strikes a person from a case of striking a person, and we don't have that here.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. So it seems to be a weakness but not a fatal flaw of the gezeirah shavah. The author of it knew it wasn't an ideal proof because it was dis- deducing something about people from animals, but still somehow it was good enough to stand.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: But it had a, a, an acknowledged and recognized weakness.
Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh, and also, right, y- also you could say that we should learn damages from damages and not learn damages from death.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. So this is now a, an imagined debate, and the, the challenger to this acknowledged weakness- Uh-huh ... is saying, “I don't think that was such a b- w- a weakness. I don't think learning about injuries to people from injuries to animals is really a problem.”
I think as long as you're learning injuries from injuries, that's fine. But you shouldn't learn injuries from cases of death. So it doesn't really matter who the people are as long as it's injuries to injuries. In that case, in the Gezeira Shavas, injuries from injuries. So I don't think there's a weakness.
To which the acknowledger of the weakness of the Gezeira Shavas says, "No, no, no. That is, that is the real significant weakness." It's okay to learn injuries from... Sorry, I'm, I'm jumping the translations.
DAN LIBENSON: Well, so he- Right, so the, so the, so the reply back is on the contrary.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: I, I disagree with you, right?
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, we do need to analogize the case of a person from the case of a person, and we really should not analogize the case of a person from a case about animals, and that's why the Brita needed the second proof.
BENAY LAPPE: Yes.
DAN LIBENSON: And the, and this, uh, the second proof, which is the deuk, uh, w- which teaches if it is your wish to say there's an objection to the first proof, there's an alternative proof as the verse states, "You shall not take ransom for the life of a murderer who's guilty of death, for he shall die."
This indicates that it is only for the life of a murderer you should not take ransom, but you shall take ransom even for extremities that don't grow back. So that was, that's just a restatement of the, the second proof, the deuk, which, which said that we have a different verse somewhere that says, "Don't take the r-" Don't take ransom," basically meaning a, like a payoff for, uh, somebody who should be dealt with as a murderer.
Like, don't let a murderer pay you, pay you off so that you don't do whatever the punishment is, probably the death penalty. Um, but, uh, but, but since it said, "Don't let a murderer pay you off," the implication is that you can essentially take monetary payment for, for something less than murder, which is, you know, more or less I think how things work in our society.
I mean, like, if, if somebody says, "Would you drop the charges if I give you a million dollars?" You know, I think usually, I mean, you know, it usually the per- Th- That get, kind of gets worked out. So, um, okay. So, so basically the, the bottom line here is that the clarification, at least where this is leaving us, of what was the problem with that first gezeirah shavah is that it was trying to learn a case f- of people from a case with animals.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Exactly.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: So we've settled that yes, that was a weakness. It
DAN LIBENSON: was a weakness, it was problematic. Okay. So now we come to, uh... Okay, but now, now let's go, go back to the second proof, the diyuk, right? And, uh, the Gemara challenges the merits of the second proof now. Um-
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Okay. So, so remember earlier several weeks ago, the Gemara was challenging the gezeirah shavah.
Wait a minute, is it these two verses? Can't be this verse because this verse over here is talking about death, back and forth. Now the Gemara's gonna do that same kind of close challenging of the diyuk itself.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. That's where we are.
DAN LIBENSON: Which it didn't really do, um, which it real- didn't really do at the time.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: You know, interestingly, like I'm thinking about this maybe we'll come, we'll come back to this in future weeks as we do the next seven stitches or however... You know, in the, in the thing. Because they don't ha-... If I recall correctly, right, they don't have this, the same level of analysis and I wonder if what's going on here where they're introducing this, 'cause we were asking, like sort of offline I think, "Why are they reintroducing this after the third stitch?"
After the third... Right. And th- and they're kinda going like, "Aha, we got you," 'Cause you didn't ask enough good questions about the first and the second ones." And I wonder if, if, um, that's kind of, you know, the good student will know now I have to really ask myself all the questions about each of the ones that follow even, even if the text itself isn't going to do that at the same level.
I, I dunno. I wonder.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Yeah, let's think about that.
One of my feelings has always been that the editor is trying to teach the reader how to think.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Is trying to teach you how to be a careful analytical really clear thinker. And it's walking you through
A way to think more deeply about something, and as you said, essentially hoping you'll do that on your own. And if you don't do it on your own, when it shows you what you should have thought to question, it's teaching you to question in such a way in the future. Not just text, but the world around you.
Mm-hmm. So at the very least, that's I think the, the agenda of the Gemara in these kinds of sections. Mm-hmm. They... T- teaching you how to think more clearly. Um-
DAN LIBENSON: I've just been struggling with, like, the structure of it and why it goes one, two, three. Ah, ah, ah, ah. Uh-huh. You forgot to ask about one and two, and then it goes to four.
As opposed to, like- Mm-hmm ... why didn't it just, like, finish with one, and then finish with two? 'Cause this is edited. I mean, it's not like this was- Right ... a conversation that somebody decided to structure it this way, and I wonder if it, if it, like you just say, it's, uh, teaching you how to think, and it's kind of like we have to do the third one through before we can say to you, "Ah, we just caught you," 'cause you didn't ask enough questions about the first and the second.
But after that, now they've taught that lesson. So in a certain way, you could even argue that this is, like, a fourth stitch in the, in the sample- Yeah ... of saying, like, always make sure that you ask yourself, "Did I ask all the right questions about..." Before I moved on to the next one. Something like that.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, I like that.
This is t- total, a total guess, um, but one thing I've learned is that there were actually m- several generations of editors.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So I wonder if the text went through one editing, and that lived for a while, and then another editor or group of editors then said, "Wait a minute. Let, let's add some more-"
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh
BENAY LAPPE: techniques of interrogation."
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh. "
BENAY LAPPE: Add it up.”
DAN LIBENSON: Yep. Okay. Well, so now- Okay ... we're going back to the interrogation of the duke. Right. Of the ... Which again, re- remember it says, you know, because the Torah says you shall take a ransom for the life of a murderer, that means that you, you shall not take ran- ransom for the life of the murderer; that means you sh- can take ransom for, for anything else.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: So the Gemara challenges the merits of this proof. But in the verse, "You shall not take ransom for the life of the murderer,” which you used for this proof, do you really think it came to exclude the case of one who severs another's extremities from the prohibition against taking ransom? In other words, I think they're asking the question that w-...
Like, do y- ... Is that a fair reading, just to say that because it says you should, you shouldn't do it in this case, that means it's saying you should do it in, in all the other cases? That's, that's-
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. That, that's exactly the question being answered. Like, really? Basically, this is saying, “Really? Do you think the deduction that you're making by means of the duke is a fair deduction?
You think that's what God put this verse in the Torah to teach us? Really?” That's exactly what it's saying. Yeah.
DAN LIBENSON: There, there's a more straightforward understanding f- of what the point of this verse was trying to do, saying isn't this verse necessary to teach that which the merciful one states: You shall not mete out two punishments to him.
Do not take money from him as ransom and also kill him
BENAY LAPPE: Right. Okay, so the suggestion is that this verse, "Don't take ransom for the life of a murderer, he should die," is really here to teach you something else. It's here to teach you that when someone is punished for a sin, you shouldn't do two things to them.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: You shouldn't fine them and kill them if they, if they do a capital crime, right? If they're a murderer, you shouldn't take money from them and kill them.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: That's what this verse is here to teach. And i- and this challenge by the way is, is Is a challenge because there's an assumed rule of the game, uh, a rule of the interpreting the Bible game.
Figuring out what God is saying game. And the rule is, I call it the, uh, one coat on one hanger rule. Every verse teaches one and only one thing.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: PS, it's violated, that rule is violated a lot, but that's assumed to be the rule. If a verse teaches X, it can't also be teaching Y. Mm-hmm. So if I can convince you that this verse, our verse, is here to teach don't do two things to a murderer, that verse can't also be used or understood to be teaching the diuk, meaning that for the life of a murderer you shouldn't take ransom, but for the life of anyone else you may take ransom.
Therefore, we can learn that one who injures, you may take money. So, uh, it's a good, it's a good challenge.
DAN LIBENSON: And, and if I'm understanding the, the s- point about the verse correctly, like they're basically saying, like we've been reading it, you and I have been reading it as, um, you shouldn't allow a murderer to kind of pay off the victim or the state to avoid the death penalty.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: They're reading it a different way. They're saying, "If we didn't have this verse, then you might think that the court could both impose the death penalty and also impose a kind of a fine." Uh, and we're saying... And, and the reason why this verse is here is to tell courts to decide wha- you know, decide one or the other.
Or, you know, you don't decide to give the death penalty, but you can't also assess a financial penalty on a murderer and also give them the death penalty.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. And if that's true, if we accept that that's what that verse is here to do, that it's here to be the hanger on which to hang don't do two things-
DAN LIBENSON: Hmm
BENAY LAPPE: to a mu- a murderer or a person who's convicted of something, then it can't also hold the jacket of money for injuries. Right,
DAN LIBENSON: right.
BENAY LAPPE: Great. Seems like a good challenge at this point.
DAN LIBENSON: Seems good.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Aside from the fact that the ver- the, the simple plain meaning of the verse doesn't really look like it means don't do two things to a person either
DAN LIBENSON: Right. It doesn't say seem to mean either of those, but ...
BENAY LAPPE: Right
DAN LIBENSON: I mean, what it seems to mean to me by the, the most straightforward thing that it means is, is like, you know, don't let the rich get away with murder. You know, by... In other words, like if a poor person would be put to death for a murder, you know, a murder, don't let a rich person evade the death penalty by paying off somebody.
Yeah. I mean, that's my, that's my most straightforward reading.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah, and that precise challenge is going to be articulated-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm ...
BENAY LAPPE: in one, one more line. It's gonna say, I, I think his verse is here to teach exactly what it says.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. So, so the Gemara answers no. We actually derive that principle, the principle that we don't have two penalties for one wrongdoing, we have a different verse that we get that from; and if we have a different version we get that from, then this verse is still available potentially for our original meaning, right?
Right.
BENAY LAPPE: That's right. We can put the jacket of don't do two things on a different hanger- Right ... and now the hangar's available to teach money for injuries.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, and that other verse is from Deuteronomy 25:2, and it says that, "Then it shall be, if the guilty deserves to be lashed, that the judge shall lie him down and flog him before him according to the measure of his evildoing."
From the fact that evildoing is singular, the Gemara homiletically infers for one evil doing you can render him liable, but you cannot render him liable for two evil doings. We're a little, uh, sha-... That, that ... We, we... That translation even though we adjusted it is still a little, uh, doesn't s- doesn't quite capture it; and I've, I've looked at some other Bible translations to try to capture this.
But the, the basic idea is that not that you cannot render him liable for two evil doings, but that you should evil do to him, m- meaning punish him, uh, not twice but only once per hi- his evilddoing. So one evildoing should lead to one evildoing in return, meaning a punishment, and not to two evil doings in return for one evildoing, right?
Not
two punishments for one bad behavior.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. Exactly Okay. So now-
DAN LIBENSON: So, so since we have... Mm-hmm
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Our verse- Since we
DAN LIBENSON: have that principle from Deuteronomy, we can go back to this, this verse
BENAY LAPPE: Great. So it looks like our verse is now free to learn out, as they say, exactly what we were learning out from it initially, which is you can, you may take money for a non-murderer, i.e.,
an injurer. Okay. Another challenge is coming.
DAN LIBENSON: So the G- so the Gemara at this point is basically accepting that and saying, "Okay, okay, so we're not gonna ... We're, we, we're not gonna ... You know, we, we made a mistake. This, this verse isn't here to tell you that there's only one punishment per crime." You know? That, that, you got...
You're right, that was in Deuteronomy. Uh, but the verse, "You shall not take ransom for the life of a murderer," is still necessary to teach that, to ta- to teach that which The Merciful One states, "You shall not take money and thereby exempt the guilty from being put to death". The, and the explanation here is the, the plain meaning of the verse, what we just said.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly. Yeah, wait a minute. I think this verse is here to teach its plain meaning. It's pshat. And if it's here to teach its plain meaning, you can't also de- do a diyuk on it- Uh-huh .... to learn out something completely different.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: If it's living there to say and mean what it says, it's already busy doing that, and it can't also be occupied to do a second thing.
Okay
DAN LIBENSON: Shocker, we read it for the plain meaning.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Yeah, it... W- w- what's funny is that that's actually, it needs to be offered as a technique.
DAN LIBENSON: Right, and like late in the game, you know? It's like... But, um-
BENAY LAPPE: Hey, a new technique.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah.
BENAY LAPPE: Oh, the Torah means exactly what it says. Oh wow, okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Rabbi исмаил just woke up, you know.
He's like, "Wait a second, wait a second." Um, all right. The Gemara answers: If so, then the merciful one should have written in the Torah, “You shall not take ransom,” and follow it immediately with the phrase, “For one who is guilty of death.” Uh, as opposed to what it actually says; why do I need the Torah to also state for the life of a murderer?
So it says, "You shall not take, You shall not take ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death," uh, as opposed to, why didn't it just say, "You shall not take ransom for one who is guilty of death"? And so that, so what they're saying, if I understand that, is like, yeah, you're right, the verse, the whole verse can't hold two coats on, on one hanger, but if we can divide that verse into sort of two parts and say one of the hangers is occupied by this idea that-
BENAY LAPPE: No, I don't think so.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay.
BENAY LAPPE: I don't, I don't, I don't think it's going to still be allowed to teach its pshat. I think the, the resolution here to the challenge of, hey, this verse is here to teach exactly what it looks like, is no, no, no, no, no. God's not a blabbermouth. That's a principle. That's an assumption. Uh-huh. God's not a blabbermouth.
Th- God would never use unnecessary extraneous words to teach something that could be taught without those extraneous words. Th- the existence of what look like extraneous words to the meaning you think the verse has- Mm-hmm ... is an indication that the verse doesn't have that meaning. It ha- it has some other meaning that those seemingly extraneous words, um, tip you off to.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Because if God wanted you to read the f- simple meaning, God wouldn't have included those. The fact that God included those is your signal that God wants you to do something special and more complicated with this verse, and therefore not to learn from it its wordy redundant pshat because there are no wordy redundant pshats in the Torah.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So- If so, let the merciful one have written in the Torah, "You shall not take ransom," and follow it immediately with a phrase for one who is guilty of death. Why do I need the Torah to also state, "For the life of the murderer?" Learn from the addition of that phrase that it's precisely for the case of a murderer that you shall not take ransom, but you shall take ransom for the one who severed other extremities which don't grow back.
So that's back- That's, that's the diyuk that we started with. So right. That...
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
DAN LIBENSON: So they're saying that the, the, the sort of proof or the, the confirmation that it did mean what we thought it meant w- back when in the second proof, in the diyuk, is that it has these extraneous words for the life of a murderer, and that is signaling to us that this word- that this verse has a more mystical meaning and th- that less, uh, you know, it's not the plain meaning, meaning, and that meaning is what we thought it was, which was that you can take, uh, ransoms for limb injuries or severings, but not for murder.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. These words which would be extraneous to the simple meaning, 'Don't take ransom and let a murderer off,' provide you with the specification that limits this verse to Being applicable only to that specified case, meaning a murder case. And therefore the don't take money only applies to murderers, and Dafka doesn't apply to non-murderers.
Therefore you may take money f- from non-murderers, i.e. injurers. QED. Right.
DAN LIBENSON: Fun. Okay. Okay.Now... Uh, so now the Gemara asks, "And once it is written, 'You shall not take ransom,' why do I need the Baraita's first proof? Which, uh, which juxtaposes one who strikes a person to one who strikes an animal." In other words, so if I'm understanding this, it's saying, "Okay, well we just, we just proved it.
Like, we just did it with the, the Diyuk, the second proof. We just established it. So if, if so, then why didn't it just sort of start with that? And why did we have to have that whole Gezeira Shava in the first place?" Is there, is there any kind of a problem with the Diyuk, is what it's asking, right?
BENAY LAPPE: That's right.
That's right. If your Diyuk is so good, why didn't you just give me a Diyuk, and why did you bother me with the Gezeira Shava? Why did you say there are two proofs for teaching that the Torah meant money all along? And you know what occurred to me as you were talking it out just now, that never occurred to me before, is that the ge- In the Baraita that provides the Gezeira Shava and the Diyuk at the very beginning of the Gemara here, the author of that Baraita telescopes by saying, "And if you've got a problem with that, I don't even wanna hear it.
Here's another proof," that there's a problem with the Gezeira Shava. But we never have any sense that there was a problem with the Diyuk. Uh-huh. And now the Gemara's going out of its way to show us a problem with something we never realized had a problem before. Mm-hmm. And it could be that it's doing that to make us better reasoners.
In other words, it's, you know, kind of rapping us on the knuckle saying, "You should have recognized that the Diyuk was faulty."
DAN LIBENSON: Um- Is it really, is it really telling us that the Diyuk is faulty? Or it's sort of going back and saying, "No actually, the Gezeira Shava was okay"?
BENAY LAPPE: No. It's now saying the Diyuk was faulty, and it's gonna show us where the fault is.
To-
DAN LIBENSON: Okay ...
BENAY LAPPE: to answer the question, "If your Diyuk is so good, why did you need the Gezeira Shava?" And the answer is, the Diyuk wasn't so good. Okay. It had a fault, and it needed to be shored up by a proof that didn't have that fault.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Just as, and w- we'll see- Okay ... that the, that the Diyuks
Uh, sort of has the, um Important feature that the Gezeira Shava didn't, namely learning people from people.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay.
DAN LIBENSON: Okay. So, and, and by the way structurally like again, like I think that this is ... Like I, I sort of came into this thinking like this is kind of in the wrong place, it should have been earlier.
And now I'm like, oh no, I really do think this is like another one of the stitches in the sampler 'cause it's kind of saying to you, like it's wrapping you on the knuckles again. It's like, "You, you thought you had it and now, you know, you really..." So, so one of the, one of the techniques is, is like don't just take our word for it.
You know? Don't, don't just kind of, um, say, "Okay, okay." Right? And, and by the way, the question there is a little bit like which audience is that aimed at? Right. 'Cause it seems to me like it's more aimed at the rabbinical students.
BENAY LAPPE: Yes.
DAN LIBENSON: Right? For, for sure. But, you know, maybe it's also saying to the rabbinical students like, "You know, we're giving you these 10 rhetorical proofs that, that you're gonna take to the people," you know, but don't, don't fool yourself to thinking...
D- We don't, we want you to know that they're not quite as convincing as you might be selling it to, you know, as, right? And so, and we're not going to tell you that for each and every one of them maybe, but we're, but we're gonna call your attention here so that you really understand the distinction between your s- understanding of what this is really about and what's really going on versus maybe what you're gonna share with your constituents.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And, and that s- that sense that you were referring to that y- you thought everything was fine and now you're gonna get destabilized, I think that is part of
The, it's one of the pedagogic goals of how the Gemara is structured to leave the reader feeling like, "Okay, I get it now. I understand it." Mm-hmm. "This is right." And then to say, "Oh no, no, not so fast," and to, to make you realize that you missed something, and you shouldn't have been as sure as you were. Mm-hmm.
And I, I... What I think is that the Gemara is trying to, to shape the learner into a person that can hold their truths lightly.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And to be, you know, not to be constantly doubtful, but to be, um, you know Certain with the ability to see the fault of their certainty without too much difficulty. In other words, to be crash flex- Mm-hmm
because th- that, it's that kind of person that's going to be best suited to be a person who can notice when the tradition they've inherited isn't working, and to not be overly attached and deny and say, "Oh, no, no, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. We're sorry, but it has to be this." No. Y- you want innovators to be sort of f- flexible in like tuned into where the tradition is, is not working and hurting people, and willing and able to let go of how it's been and then fix it.
Mm-hmm. So I think it's a curriculum in being the kind of person who- Hmm ... can utilize these techniques, and I think that's, that's really where the tradition has gone off the rails.
DAN LIBENSON: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: Because the people who are taught to use the techniques are no longer the kind of people who have the disposition to be able to let go of how it used to be to make it better.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. Hmm. All right, so let's, uh, finish this up. So the, the, so the Gemara asks, so, right, uh, you thought the Dyuk your second proof was so good, why do we need the first one? The Gemara asked him, what's it is written, you shall not take ransom. Why do we need the brightest first proof? Which juxtaposes one who strikes a person to one who strikes an animal, which is that problematic idea learning from animals to people.
And the Gemara says, "Say in response, if we derive this principle only from that verse," only from the dyuk's verse, the second proof's verse, you should not take a ransom for the life of a murderer who's, uh, condemned to death. I would say that if the one who caused the damage desires, he may choose to give his eye, and if he desires, he may choose to give the monetary value of his eye.
So who are they talking about here? The, the ... So they're, they're saying that the injurer, the bad guy, uh, the i- the injurer could say, "Well, I poked out your eye. I'm going to, uh, choose to... You know, I, I, I don't really, um, wanna, you know, I don't really want to, um, uh, you know, give you, uh, my eye so I can afford to give you money.
So I'm gonna..." In other words, that they're gonna deci- That, so is that the issue? That the- They- ... giving too much power to the injurer?
BENAY LAPPE: Uh, in a way. I, I think the weakness of the dyuk was that we learned that
While one who murders may not buy himself out of the death penalty by paying money, one who does anything short of murder may, and the important word here is may use money to exonerate himself. Mm-hmm. The may is precisely the problem. The dyuk leaves us only with may.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And the problem with may is if, if I poke out your- Hmm
If y- no, if you poke out my eye-
DAN LIBENSON: Yep
BENAY LAPPE: You may give me money, or you may say, "I'm not giving you any money. Go ahead and take my eye out."
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah, I'll say like I just... I prefer audiobooks, and so- ... I don't really care about having an eye, and that's all well and good if you're a per- sort of vengeful person. But if you're a person who actually has just lost your, your, your livelihood because you actually needed your eye, it doesn't really actually do you any good to poke out my eye.
You'd much rather have compensation.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. And, and the rabbis wanted everyone to get compensation.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: So the fact that the diyuk allows made, you may do this or y- or you may do that, you may take money or you may simply offer your own eye in return, is a weakness of the diyuk.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: That particular weakness is precisely, like that opening gets closed down by the gezeira shava, because the gezeira shava teaches us that while one, just as one who strikes an animal must pay money, so too one who strikes a person must pay money.
So we get the absolute must of money from the gezeira shava, and that's why the diyuk needed... That's why the beraita needed the gezeira shava, right? The diyuk is weak in that way, and the gezeira shava needs the diyuk to shore up its weakness. The gezeira shava is learning people from animals, and the diyuk is learning people from people.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, I'm learning about what a person should do when a person injures another person from what a person should do when a person murders another person.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm. So just to finish the, the, the- Mm-hmm ... verse, or to finish the section-
BENAY LAPPE: Mm-hmm ...
DAN LIBENSON: um, so the Talmud says, um, same response, "If we derive this principle only from that verse, 'You shall not take ransom,' I would say if the one who caused the damage desires, he may choose to give his eye.
And if he desires, he may choose to give the monetary value of his eye. Therefore, the Torah teaches us to derive it from an animal," from the gezeira shava, "Just as one who strikes an animal must pay monetary compensation and may not receive corporal punishment," may not choose corporal punishment for himself or his animal, I guess.
"So too, one who strikes a person and injures a person must pay mo- monetary compensation and may not receive corporal punishment," which is what you just said. Now, I, I wanna r- just remind us that- This is that actually money voice, the non-radical voice. Right? The voice that's trying to say, "Hey, the Torah always meant money all along."
This was the Torah from the very beginning, the Torah was saying that not only should you... It, it was even more than, uh, it's not only that an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a limb for a limb doesn't onl-... You know, doesn't mean that you have to poke out people's eyes in response. You know, it, it mean, it doesn't only mean that you may pay them money in response.
It means that you must pay them money in response. In, in other words, that this voice is saying that the Torah, from day one at Mount Sinai, right, even though it said an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a limb for a limb, that always meant that you may not give an e- take an eye for an eye. That's right
It means that you must pay money. And my, you know, I'm like, "Why would God not wr- just write that?" That is so much, that's, that is so much more simple, that's so much more straightforward. The fact that you have to go through all these machinations and all these, you know, and, and, and then, and then you can't even, even with your machinations, you can't even get the text to mean that using only one interpretive technique, right?
The only way that you can get that text to shoehorn in to mean that is by having these two unpersuasive techniques kind of, like, circling around each other. Really, that is juggling, right? I mean, like, it, it only works if there, if everything's in the air together.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: And, uh, you know, and, and that is, is solely driven by this voice who doesn't wanna admit that we've changed Judaism since the time of the Torah.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. But, you know, I, I think David Kramer really does a beautiful job of articulating that how we, how the Talmud proves, quote-unquote, that the Torah means something completely different from what it clearly originally meant is what we should be paying attention to. And the m- the meta message is, of course, it never did, and we wouldn't have needed it to, nor do we need it to now on some other issue.
Um, and, and as David Kramer points out in, in his article about this sugya, at the end of this first proof, f- forget at the end of the 10 proofs, and we're gonna get 10. At the end of even this first proof, you are hard-pressed to be able to say, if someone said to you, "Where in the Torah does it teach us that we should pay monetary comp-" You, but you would be hard-pressed to answer that, right?-
It, right? Well, it... How can you- I would- You, you actually couldn't Yeah. And that's the message.
DAN LIBENSON: Right. Right. I ... well, you couldn't to a regular person, right? You, you, you, you couldn't say to somebody who hasn't studied, you know, who's not at, like... You couldn't say, "Okay, you know, sit down in this, uh, easy chair here and I'm gonna explain it to you."
That person's head would start to spin so quickly. You know, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's just not, it's- Right ... totally self-referential and, right- Right. But- ... spinning around each other.
BENAY LAPPE: Right. And, and, but the message to the student is clearly you can't.
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And you don't need to. No. And don't worry about that.
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: What's interesting is if you look at Rambam, right, which, who comes 1,000 years after th-, the Gemara
Gemara's, uh, Rambam says in a way that feels like he's talking to the people. 'Cause he's kind of talking, like, to the dumb rabbis who don't learn Gemara .
DAN LIBENSON: Uh-huh.
BENAY LAPPE: I, I shouldn't say that. A- anyway, he, anyway, he says, "I f-" Uh, monetary compensation for injuries in these five categories because it says in the Torah, and it is our tradition that we learn ,"eye an tachas ayin," an eye for an eye.
So when Rambam, in his really brief code wants to point to where we learn monet- etary compensation, he points to the words eye for an eye. Mm-hmm. And he says the oral tradition on that means money. Mm-hmm,
DAN LIBENSON: mm-hmm. Done. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: Anyway.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. Well-
BENAY LAPPE: And this is the backstory to how that means money. Okay. Ssh.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. No, and I, I'm just ... When you said it that way, it just, you know, like something popped into my head but it's not fully there. And I'm thinking, like, yeah, where else do we have these, um, these, um, you know, phrases that, that sort of come to mean the opposite of what they, they mean on the surface? And, and I know we have them in English.
I mean, I, we were just talking, I think, last week. I was thinking about how there are... Or somebody else was as- somebody was asking me, uh... Oh, I, I was talking about The, The Orchard, Yochi Brandes' book that I translated, and somebody was asking me about some of these phrases that are in it, like the law of the cucumber or the, um, the, uh, pr- acts of the chariot, and, you know, what, what did these things mean?
And I was like, those are euphemisms for various kinds of spiritual ideas, like sort of secrets, um, you know, kind of secret knowledge, and they call it the act of the chariot or the law of the cucumber. And I said to him, There are all kinds of euphemisms in the Talmud. You know, sometimes when it says, like, "This, this should be done to the enemies of the Jews," it actually means, "This should be done to the Jews."
And they're trying to, you know, for various reasons, not say it outright. And so in that sense, it, it doesn't... It, it's possible, right? It's possible that we al-... In the same way that we know that the act of the chariot or the law of the cucumber or this should be done to the enemies of the Jews, they actually don't mean those things in that simple meaning.
We know that about the Talmud, and we all agree. It's not, this is not some post hoc jus- justification. We know that these are euphemisms. You could, you could say, “Hey, we also know that there's things in the Torah that are euphemism,” like an eye for an eye is a euphemism. Now, i- it's not. We know that it's not, but I mean, like, it does- it doesn't completely fail a test of plausibility because we know there are euphemisms in, in literature.
So it's interesting. But, you know, y- like you say, here's the, here's the backstory.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. And, and what I think is is sort of the saddest part of this whole history, is that if you pull a Chumash off the shelf, you pull a, a Torah off the shelf, and you open it up to the Parsha where it says an eye for an eye, underneath the line where there are tr- the translator notes-
DAN LIBENSON: Mm-hmm
BENAY LAPPE: it'll say, "But of course, this alw- this always meant monetary compensation." Hmm. You know what I mean? It's like stop teaching that. D- you know?
DAN LIBENSON: Well, that's a good conversation that we're gonna be able to have when we go through the other seven stitches as well. So, uh- Uh, you say there are 10, I'm already, I already feel we're up to five, but, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna count them.
There's different counts, so nobody agrees which, what the Ten Commandments are exactly anyway, so, you know, we, we have – That's also a Jewish tradition. But anyway, we'll, we'll pick that up not next week 'cause it's Yom Kippur, so we'll be back together in two weeks to, uh, reach the next stitch in the sampler.
BENAY LAPPE: Great.
DAN LIBENSON: Thanks. All right. See you then, and, and, uh, meaningful Yom Kippur to those who observe
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