The following is a transcript of Episode 10 of the TEXTing Podcast. Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of a conversation, please excuse any errors.

Elana: Welcome to TEXTing, where we consider issues relevant to Jewish life through the lens of classical and modern Torah texts. I’m your host, Elana Stein Hain. We’re recording on Friday, May 3rd, 2024. If you’d like to follow along with today’s text, you can find the link to our source sheet in the episode description.

You’ve probably heard about the campus protests at my alma mater, Columbia University. I went there for undergraduate and graduate, and as you may know, I’m married to the campus rabbi. In short, I’ve been there for 24 years. And on one of the last days of Pesach, I had a really interesting experience there. I was walking around Columbia because I wanted to see what would become of a 2 p.m. deadline for the encampment to be removed. 

So I’m standing on campus within a protest of hundreds of people, students, Graduate students and undergraduate, faculty, staff, marching around the main quad of the campus. Mostly people are chanting for divestment and chanting the words free Palestine. And I’m walking around greeting Jewish students, many of whom seem bewildered, wondering about their belonging to that campus community. 

And looking on with curiosity. So, I’m standing a few feet from protesters, and that’s when a handful of students march by me and start chanting for Intifada. It wasn’t through a megaphone, and it didn’t immediately spread through the crowd. So I yelled to them over the din: Why would you say that? It’s a call for violence. Don’t say that. And here’s something weird. They stopped. They went back to shouting free Palestine and kept marching. It was a really surprising moment.

For weeks, people have been chanting for Intifada from a megaphone on campus. And they continued after that too. And I couldn’t stop any of that. But in that limited moment, they went back to something that didn’t call for violence explicitly.

 I don’t know why they listened to me. Maybe they thought I was part of their protest movement. Maybe they felt embarrassed. I really don’t know. But I do know why I said it. I said it because I’ve belonged to that campus community for 24 years, and they were doing something that violates what it’s supposed to be. And I wasn’t going to keep my mouth shut. And it reminded me, that moment, of both the possibilities of my own agency and influence, as someone who belongs to that campus community, as well as the limitations of my own agency and influence.

And that’s what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about belonging and not belonging. Lots of people are asking themselves if they belong in places they thought they did before. Today we’re going to study two Talmudic stories that reflect a quest for belonging that’s tougher than expected.

It’s the Jerusalem Talmud, Brachot chapter two, what’s called Halacha, or we might say section eight. If you’re looking on Sefaria, The Venice edition, it’s 5C, and the Vilna edition, it’s 20B. In these stories, Jews are having a hard time finding belonging in the Land of Israel, even within Jewish communities themselves.

So many of you are familiar with my long-time, ongoing guests, Leora, Chris, Yonah. But every so often, I bring someone new. That someone new today is Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Zuckier. Shlomo, a Hartman Research Fellow, is a Research Associate at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He’s both academically and traditionally Torah-trained. He recently completed his PhD in Religious Studies at Yale University, and he also completed his studies in Yeshiva University’s Advanced Kollel.

One of the things I like most about Shlomo is his interest in convening and shaping public conversations about the important issues. You know, before there was the Lehrhaus in Boston, and sometime after there was the 1930s Lehrhaus, there was the online forum called Lehrhaus, and Shlomo is one of the founders of that forum. By its own mission statement, the Lehrhaus is “a forum to generate thoughtful and dynamic discourse among individuals within the Orthodox community and beyond who enjoy exploring the depth and diversity of Jewish ideas.”

Shlomo, welcome. Thanks so much for being here. 

Shlomo: It’s great to be here and let me say, a special thank you to you for all of the work you’re doing unofficially on campus at Columbia to support students there.

Elana: Thanks. And might I say, I do not speak officially for Hillel, for my spouse, or for anybody else. I speak only for myself on this podcast. 

So Shlomo, let’s talk about belonging. When I say something like imperfect belonging, what does it make you think of right now?

Shlomo: One case of imperfect belonging that I feel is, over the last few months, I’ve seen my Israeli friends and colleagues called up for reserve duty, leaving their family to defend Israel. And I’m here in the United States, rather more comfortably than their situation. I’ve been feeling a fair amount that I’m in the wrong place, even though certainly I belong, in many ways. But also I feel it’s an imperfect belonging. Even if I’m following the news and what’s going on in Israel. It really feels like a part of me is really in Israel, and maybe, maybe that’s where I really belong, where I really should be with the Jewish people in their extended time of crisis. 

Elana: Well, so first of all, thank you so much for that honest reflection. What’s fascinating about our two examples is that they’re actually different sources of feeling a lack of belonging, right? What I described was maybe feeling mistreated, feeling endangered in some way, whether ideologically or physically intimidated or harassed.

And what you’re talking about is that maybe I want to be somewhere else for my own principles and life goals. And maybe my lack of belonging is a result of that. Or maybe sometimes it’s even a result of guilt, we might say, right? So maybe there’s a spectrum on which people can explain why it is that they’re feeling that something is out of sync in terms of where they are. 

So let’s take a look at our texts in the Jerusalem Talmud. The first story is about Rav Kahana, who here is just introduced as Kahana. So it starts by saying Kahana was very young when he ascended here, meaning when he came to the land of Israel. And an empty man, Bar Pachin, sort of like a brute, saw him and asked him “Mah kalah bishmaya?” “What’s being said in heaven?” Which we may not realize what that means, but think about it this way: Hey, you want to go to heaven? I mean, it was sort of a threat, right? 

And so Kahana answers sort of strongly, well, actually, I’ll tell you what’s being said in heaven, that the judgment over this man, meaning you, the person who’s attacking me has been sealed. And the Talmud continues, “v’chein havat leih,” and that’s exactly what happened. The man was stricken. And then it happens again. 

Another good-for-nothing sees Rav Kahana and says, Hey, what’s being said in heaven? And of course he says again, that the judgment over this man, meaning you, has already been sealed. And again, v’chein havat leih. And so it happened. 

So he has these ugly confrontations. And he seems to win, quote unquote. But he says, well, “mah slikit mizakei v’ana ichatei,” “I came here to do good.” I didn’t come here to do bad. I didn’t come to the Land of Israel to kill people. I want to go back from where I came. 

And I find this to be an incredibly vivid and moving moment, because Rav Kahana is confronted, he’s very young, right? So maybe that makes him an easy target. Maybe it makes him a little impulsive, right? Like we don’t know what it means that he’s very young, but he fights back in some sort of, you know, metaphysical kind of way. But he realizes, this is not who I want to be, right? Sometimes we might come to a place for good reasons. He said, I came, mizakei, I came to do good. But then he finds himself embattled. And then you don’t want to be there anymore because that’s not why we came. 

Right? I don’t know. What do you think about it?

Shlomo: It’s interesting to look at how they got dragged into the confrontation, so to speak. So they, they, these people who meet Rav Kahana, they ask him what’s happening in heaven. So maybe that’s about going to heaven. Maybe it’s a way of teasing him a little bit. You’re young, but you think you’re such a great Torah scholar, you know what’s going on in heaven. You know, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what’s going on there? 

And the response, instead of, instead of lowering the temperature, as you said, the response is this sort of upgrade and say, well, you know, you’re going to die. And it makes you wonder, is this presented as, you know, he’s just informing them of their fate? Or is it, in some sense, is Rav Kahana determining the death of these people? Is he making them die?

We have a long tradition of rabbis giving the death stare. Stare at someone and they, they die immediately. Is this, is this a version of that? Either way, it’s definitely ramping up the fight here and raising the stakes.

Elana: Yeah, it’s also interesting to consider, like, why is he so triggered by what they said? Right? We have this story about him in the Babylonian Talmud, which we don’t know if the, you know, the shapers of this story know that story, but the story about him in the Babylonian Talmud, Bava Kamma 117 A and B, anybody who wants to check it out, is that Rav Kahana actually has an experience himself where he dies and is brought back to life. So is there something in the “what’s being told in heaven” that’s sort of like, hey, wait a second. You just really, you just really stepped on something. 

But I, you know, I do relate, actually, to this issue, though, of, you go somewhere for good reasons and then you find yourself embattled. I remember when I was a kid in high school, I decided to go, I asked my parents to go to the high school that I went to because I wanted to study Talmud. I wanted to study Gemara there. And the high school that my sister went to, girls didn’t study Talmud.

And I remember, distinctly, my mom and I on a Shabbat afternoon, we were walking together and she said, so how’s school? And I start telling her about all the things that are uncomfortable This one’s doing this and this one’s doing that. And I, I, I feel a little. So she, she stopped me. She said, Elana, why’d you go to this school? I said, to study Talmud. She said, so how come when I ask you how you’re doing, you don’t tell me what you learned in Gemara class? 

And it actually made a big impression on me because she was basically saying, don’t become so entangled in the things that make you uncomfortable. Right? So for Rav Kahana, it’s not just something that made him uncomfortable. It seems like it was something that made it unlivable for him, right? 

Shlomo: And he’s aware of his goal. He’s aware, right? Why did I go to Israel to study Talmud or to gain merits? And if that’s not working out, if, for whatever reason, I’m getting triggered, I can’t hold back and I’m causing sin, then maybe I should transfer, so to speak.

Elana: So it’s kind of amazing. He has to go to teacher there, Rabbi Yochanan, to ask for permission to leave, but he does it in a pretty roundabout way, which, in itself, I think, is kind of, speaks to a sense of like squeamishness, of when you’re not quite fitting, but you maybe don’t know if it’s the right thing to do to stay or to leave. So it says the Talmud continues before he left, I’m adding that, he came to Rav Yochanan and asked him: “If a person’s own mother despises him, but his stepmother, meaning his father’s wife, respects him, where should he go? Right? 

It’s a great way to ask it. He’s sort of saying, my own mother, the land of Israel, where I’m supposed to fit despises me. But my stepmother, Babylonia, where maybe I would have thought I don’t belong, and no offense to stepmothers, obviously, but the point is it was not a blood relation, treats me well. So where should I go? It’s a perfect common sense question without the baggage of the land of Israel and Babylonia. It’s just a common sense question. Do you stay somewhere where you’re being mistreated? 

And so Rav Yochanan says, yeah, of course you don’t stay somewhere where you’re being mistreated. Rav Yochanan says, you should go to the place where mokrin leih, where you’re honored.

And so Kahana left. He went down from exactly where he came, right? But he still doesn’t seem to want to tell Rebbe Yochanan what it’s really about. So it’s like a soft exit, like I’m not going to make a big deal, but I’m getting myself out of here. And then of course they come and tell Rebbe Yochanan that he’s left and Rebbe Yochanan says, what do you mean? And how could he have gone without asking permission? 

So people said, what do you mean? Hah hi milta, that thing that he said to you, that was him asking for permission. So Rabbi Yochanan doesn’t even understand what’s going on with Kahana. And that I find interesting too, what happens when someone’s feeling like they don’t belong and the people who are supposed to guide them don’t even understand the extent of that feeling.

Shlomo: Yeah, there’s a really important pastoral lesson here, right? Because Rav Yochanan thought he was just answering a question about guidance and in-laws. And he didn’t, sort of, think through, not just to, to think about the question, but think about the person who’s asking the question, right? What’s the question behind the question? And he may have given him different advice. If he had, if he had really understood, he may have reassured him. He may have been able to support Rav Kahana rather than cutting short his visit.

Elana: But that’s interesting because is there a possibility of this having gone differently. And whose onus is it to have it go differently? If there’s that possibility, right? So like, should Rav Kahana have said to Rabbi Yochanan, Hey, I’m having a hard time here, let me explain why. And Rabbi Yochanan, who’s interested in keeping him there, could have said, let me help you. This is what we’re going to do.

Or is that not Rav Kahana’s job? Like, is it enough for us to come and say, my mother is mistreating me, why would I stay with her? And Rabbi Yochanan just uses plain common sense. You know what? You’re right. 

So I think there’s a question here. And I think by the way, both the stories that we’re going to learn in these passages, they reflect like a surety on the part of the person who feels a lack of belonging, but they raise a question, certainly in a time when so many Jews are feeling like they’re not sure that they belong, whether it’s with colleagues at work, whether it’s in progressive spaces, whether it’s in universities, right?

Like, I think it’s an interesting question to say in a time of uncertainty, how do you know when you stay and invest? How do you know when you communicate more with people who can help? How do you know who might even be able to understand you? Is it possible that Rabbi Yochanan couldn’t understand what Rav Kahane was going through, given Rabbi Yochanan’s venerated stature in that place? He’s not going to get what the issues are that Kahane’s coming with. 

Shlomo: Right. And one more angle here, and I think this is something that is historically important in understanding the Talmudic period, and also in thinking about the Jewish community today, is this whole idea of traveling from Babylonia to the Land of Israel to study. There were two different centers. There were two Torah centers in late antiquity, in the Land of Israel and in Babylonia, and the way that they were held together is by people traveling from one center to the other, studying there, and then bringing back their traditions to their home community. And that’s what allowed for the different, the two Talmuds to be in conversation to one another.

Actually, Rabbi Yochanan is probably the most often cited Amora in the Babylonian Talmud, because he had all of these students who took his teachings back to Babylonia, where they were from. And when it’s impossible, when there’s not a mutually intelligible conversation, people can’t talk to each other, you go from Babylonia to Israel and people taunt you and, you react strongly, you can’t, you can’t really fit in, and you go back home instead of taking that Torah with you, that just leads to this crack, this divide between the two Torah centers.
And of course today, we have North American Jewish community and of course the Israeli Jewish community and the question is, is there an increasing rift? Are there things we have, we have much more communication than we did, but maybe the experience of being in one place as opposed to the other makes it more challenging to bridge that divide. And I think it’s an instructive parallel and a real challenge. Can we build bridges the way that they did in the time of the Talmud, even as it was challenging as we see in this story?

Elana: It’s so funny because I’m thinking so much more autobiographically. I’m thinking about the fact that my PhD in Talmud was only possible because Professor David Weiss Halivni of blessed memory, from the yeshiva world, was in the university. The fact is that you yourself go between the Yeshiva University world and the Yale world where you did your PhD, right? Like, and you take each of those and bring them in whatever limited or expansive way you want to or can or feel is appropriate because you can comfortably move between those two spaces, right? 

So this is, you know, as we always say, when we’re doing things on TEXTing, it’s not just about this particular application of an issue, but as we can see, the question of belonging, and multiple belongings and the possibility of multiple belongings is really, really at stake in a bunch of different ways, in this moment for people. 

But I know that when you and I were talking about the possibility of learning this together, you actually mentioned a different passage that we felt was kind of an intertext to this. You know, there’s, and we’ll put it in the show notes also, the Babylonian Talmud in Pesachim, right? Let’s keep ourselves in Passover a little bit longer, even though this isn’t gonna air for a while. Let me tell you, we do this nice and early. Pesachim 87 A and B actually has a discussion where, funnily enough mentions this sort of mother idea for a place. But instead of Israel being the mother, Babylonia is called the mother. 

And I’m wondering if, wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. Cause I think it also sheds light on what we started with of the question of ideologically, where do you fit? Not just where can you survive, but where can you thrive? And where do you want to thrive? 

Shlomo: Yeah, so actually that’s, there’s a line there, from Rabbi Yochanan, who we also have in our story, and he talks about the, he talks about the Jewish community in Babylonia as God sending the Jewish people to their mother’s house, and that being to Babylonia, where the forefathers and foremothers are from, from Babylonia, and in some ways that’s like the flip side of what we have here, that home is for the Babylonian Talmud, home is Babylonia, and this is his explanation for exile, for why there is a Jewish community there in Babylonia.

Elana: They’re going home. Fascinating.

Shlomo: Yeah, and what’s interesting about that passage is it starts with a Mishnah in like a totally unrelated area talking about when you eat the Passover offering, so generally you eat it in a group, in a chavura, and the question is, a married woman, what’s the default? Is the assumption that she’s going to join the chavura of her father, or of her husband? And does it matter if, let’s say, she’s staying with her parents for the holiday, which chavura, which group is she a part of?

So jumping off of that mission of first, there’s like three stages. First, the rabbis say, okay, this is talking about a scenario, of where she’s on vacation. She’s staying with her parents. She leaves her husband and goes to stay with her parents. And that resolves the legal issue there, the halakhic issue there.

But then the Talmud jumps off of that and says, well, this is just like the fact that there’s this Jewish community in Babylonia that we were sent away, we, the wife, were sent away by our husband, by God to exile, to go to, but that’s really just visiting our parents. That’s how we should understand the community in Babylonia.

But then the third section of the discussion there gets into this issue of, you know, how should we conceptualize exile. Is it, you know, like a vacation, like we saw? Is it a punishment? Maybe there are other benefits like the fact that, you know, exile allows for bringing in converts to join the Jewish people, diversifying the Jewish people, in some sense. And maybe there’s hope for reuniting in the future. 

But it’s really fascinating how it takes this technical question of a Passover offering and the scenario of a wife staying with her parents, and turns that into the theological question of where do I belong? Where am I supposed to be? And why are, you know, how bad is it, if it’s bad at all, that Jews are in Babylonia rather than the land of Israel?

Elana: So why do you think the rabbis do that? Why do you think they take something that seems to be technical, legal, and they turn it into this metaphor for where do we belong?

Shlomo: Yeah. So I wonder whether, because this is Pesachim, right, this is talking about Pesach and the rabbis in the Talmud, just like us today, we celebrate Passover without a Passover offering. The very namesake of the holiday isn’t practiced. And it makes you wonder maybe this was why there was a little bit of discomfort.

The rabbis used this to reflect on what does it mean that we have Pesach without a temple and therefore without a Korban Pesach? And how do we conceptualize exile in general? And this Mishnah, this teaching about the wife being away from her husband, maybe was ripe for a metaphor for thinking about that question. 

Elana: So good. So good. I mean, it’s so funny. You’re like encapsulating modern Jewish history debates in a Sugya, in a passage, right? Meaning it’s a question of, do you think that where you are now is an evolution of where you came from? And ooh, look, we’ve evolved. This is amazing. We have diversity. We’re in a new place.

Or do you think nostalgically, oh, it’s only because we don’t have that other thing that we’re here. It reminds me of some of the conversations people have now about imperfect belonging. Is imperfect belonging something like, no, we want imperfect belonging. Look at what we get and look at what we give and look at how we, or is it just, I just, I just want to go home. I just want to go home. 

Shlomo: I think having mixed feelings is an important piece of the puzzle. There’s a reason why there are so many different perspectives in that Talmudic passage. And maybe, the imperfect belonging, you want to feel like you belong where you are. And you also want to have a messianic hope for being in a more perfect existence.

Elana: Right, I mean, you don’t, it’s, if you’re working within a messianic system or a redemptive system, you may see a few different stages to this experience, right? So you may, as you say, pick up more diverse members of the Jewish people while you’re in exile, and then ultimately end up back where you belong, so to speak, with all of those people.

Now, how do you take some of those virtues and values that you learned while in exile back to where you are? I mean, that’s a major, that’s a major question that I think you and I talk about a lot in terms of the question of how do we bring some of the values of rabbinic Judaism into like a sovereign Judaism that often sort of thinks about itself in biblical ways, right? How do you bring a more diasporic virtue to a more landed reality? 

And by the way, vice versa, how can you appreciate a landed reality and a sovereign reality when living in a more soft power kind of experience, right? So this there’s a lot of resonance. 

I want to look at the second story because I think the second story is a little bit different. Do you want to read it, Shlomo?

Shlomo: Sure. So, This is a story about, Rabbi Ze’eira, so Rabbi Ze’eira went to have himself bled, bloodletting, when he ascended to the land of Israel. He went and then wanted to buy a pound of meat from the butcher to restore his blood. And he asked, how much is, how much does a pound cost? And he was told it costs 50 minas plus one slap. And it’s a real, real intense, intense experience, you know, he does, it’s not just cash, he has to pay with flesh, or at least with a slap, as well.

Elana: Come on. You’ve never been in a foreign country and you try to get something and you kind of, the answer is, yeah, 50 bucks and a slap, right? Something to that extent

Shlomo: Definitely reminds me of some experiences I’ve had in the Shuk, in Jerusalem. 

Elana: Exactly. Exactly.

Shlomo: And, you know, this is, yeah, the idea of being in a foreign country, a foreign place, and having that experience. So how does he respond? He says, well, what if I paid you 60? Would that cover the slap? And, or 70 or 80, 90, a hundred? In the end, he said, okay, if you need to, if you need to do your routine, your minhag, you can, you can slap me. And that’s what he does. He takes the slap, pays for his meat, and goes home. 

Elana: So what do you think, it’s the newcomer slap, meaning it’s the immigrant tax. Is that what’s going on here? Is this, is this someone taking advantage of the newcomer?

Shlomo: So that, that’s one way of reading it. And in that way, you know, you can read it like the previous story, right? Someone’s, you see the new yeshiva student shows up, you, you poke a little fun, you’re a little mean to them, you know, you can tell they have an accent, something like that. 

I think it’s also possible to read it differently. I saw Rav Chaim Kanievsky suggests this, that maybe it was a joke. Maybe he, he, he said the slap, he was just kidding. But Rav Ze’eira took it so literally that in the end, he insisted that this person slapping say, look, if that’s your minhag, who am I to resist? And then we’d read the story in a really different way, it’s almost like Rav Ze’eira decided coming in that it was going to be a terrible experience and made sure that it was. And someone sharing an innocuous joke, turns out he insists on getting a bit of a beating.

Elana: Wow. That is really intriguing. That is really intriguing. Cause you’re not even saying he’s Amelia Bedelia. You’re not even saying he didn’t get the joke. You’re saying maybe even he sort of knows somewhat that it’s a joke, but he’s still sort of like, no, no, do it. Like, let’s do this. Really interesting, right? Takes two to tango, right? In some ways it’s kind of saying there’s a dynamic at play here. That’s absolutely fascinating. All right, so let’s see what happens next.

Shlomo: It feels like one of those Twitter feeds that goes south, you know. 

Elana: Totally. You can’t read tone.

Shlomo: So he goes, Rav Ze’eira goes home and the next morning he goes to the study house, to the yeshiva, and says to the rabbis, he says, what, what is this practice that you can’t have meat without getting a slap? And they ask him, who said to do that? He said, this butcher. And they said, okay, let’s go, let’s go get the butcher. And they found, he wasn’t in his shop that morning, they found that his coffin was being carried out. He had died. And, they said, they said, you know, to such a degree, kol kach, kol hachin? Is it, does it go that far? Presumably implying that Rav Ze’eira had somehow prayed or, or caused this person to die.

Elana: He pulled a Rav Kahana. He pulled a Rav Kahana.

Shlomo: And he said, no, it wasn’t me. I swear I wasn’t angry at them. I just thought this was the practice. So they, they died, you know, it wasn’t me, uh, says, says Rav Ze’eira. So it’s a bit of a mystery at the end of this, why, exactly, they die. Is it if they, maybe if they were taking advantage of Rav Ze’eira, maybe this is, God punishing them. If it was Rav Rav Ze’eira who insisted on it, though, it’s not really clear, it’s not really clear why this person died.

Elana: So interesting, because I want to get a little sober here. Which is, hey, maybe it’s your fault for being mad at the way you were treated, right? Like, let’s not take Rav Kanievsky’s read. Let’s take it as it wasn’t a joke. And there was an insistence that you get a slap. And then the next day it turns out, things obviously did go south, because this guy died. And who do they blame? Not the fact that the butcher shouldn’t have spoken that way and shouldn’t have done that. But they blame the guy who was offended. 

And I gotta be honest, I see a little bit of that too. Why are you the killjoy? What’s your problem? Can’t you just take a little discomfort? What’s your problem? You should be able to handle, don’t ruin what we have here. We have a good thing here. Right. And I think that happens a lot, in a lot of different ways. Right. So it’s kind of, again, it’s kind of, on whom is the onus and who is the burden?
But I love this second story. And I love that they’re back to back. And of course, we always invite, for those who are ambitious, there’s a third story in that same section, for those who want to check it out. I love this story because it’s a little bit different than Rav Kahana, even if it’s not a joke, because he asks for help at some point, and he says, hey, what’s going on here? This isn’t the way it should be done. And they want to help him. They say, we’re going to bring that guy in and talk to him. Then when they try to bring the butcher in and talk to him, they realize it’s a little more difficult than they thought, right? It’s not as simple as they’re going to give him a slap on the wrist. There is no risk to slap at this point.

But I do think that there’s a metaphor in that too, right? We want to help you. But then when it comes time to help, it’s a question of how do you continue to advocate and respect everybody involved? Which I think is very, very, very difficult. Very, very, very difficult.

Shlomo: Yeah. And with all these difficulties, with all these challenges, as we see in these stories of having people from Babylonia fit in, in the land of Israel and be able to stay, seems like it’s a very dangerous proposition, but a little bit of hope is that we know historically that the Babylonian Talmud is full of traditions from the land of Israel. In fact, all of the Babylonian Talmud is commenting on and elaborating on those traditions. And so we know it did work in the end. Enough, enough Babylonian rabbis were able to study in the land of Israel and build bridges between those communities and take it back to their home community. And that’s why, that’s why and how we have the Babylonian Talmud.

Elana: It’s great. It’s great. You know, it’s funny because in the passage that we referenced before, Bava Kamma 17 A and B, Kahana ends up as the hero. He resolves all of the questions that Rabbi Yochanan has and they say, whoa, you Babylonians, you know better than we do. So it’s not just that Babylonian rabbis are able to go to the land of Israel and take back stuff. Babylonian rabbis are able to go to the land of Israel and be fully themselves and bring their knowledge and impress everybody with who they are. 

Right? There’s, there’s a lot there. So, right. So it’s interesting. So let’s, summarize for a second, because, you know, some people are driving their cars. Let’s summarize. We’re thinking here about the question of what it means to be somewhere and to not know if being there is really where you want to be. Maybe because you’re being mistreated. Maybe because there’s a lot of distraction. Maybe because you’re missing out on being somewhere else. Maybe because you have guilt. Maybe because you don’t like who you’re becoming. Maybe because you don’t feel safe, right? And we have all of that. 

And then we have two stories here that reflect on that and in both stories, people end up dead at the end. So I guess my way of ending for us today would be to think about possible alternative endings. What could be the alternative endings that would take more than a short anecdote to tell? And I think we’re in an uncertain moment, whether it’s about American Jews and Israeli Jews and vice versa. Whether it’s about Jews in progressive spaces, on campus, with colleagues. Whether it’s about people’s personal experiences of not feeling like they belong irrespective of Israel, Hamas, just life, like things in life that really happen. I think these stories taken in this context, they ask us seriously to consider what happens if you just allow things to end up this way. And is there another way? 

So Shlomo, I want to thank you so much for being here and speaking with me.

Shlomo: Thank you. This was really great.

Elana: Thank you for learning with us and special thanks to my guest this week, Shlomo Zuckier. Today’s episode is sponsored by an anonymous donor whose gift is in deep appreciation for the TEXTIng podcast. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. 

TEXTing is produced by Tessa Zitter and our executive producer Maitel Friedman, with production assistance from Tamar Marvin. M Louis Gordon is our senior producer. This episode was mixed by Ben Azevedo at Bear Cave Audio, with music provided by Luke Allen.

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