The following is a transcript of Episode 8 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 Monday, April 15th, 2024. This week’s episode is sponsored by Nancy and Brad Bell in appreciation of the meaningful learning experiences that Hartman is providing in these difficult times. If you’d like to follow along with today’s text, you can find the link to our source sheet in the episode description. 

Chaos can be defined as a state of utter confusion or disorder. And when we encounter it, things feel out of control. Just a few years ago, at the height of the COVID outbreak, that was a near worldwide sentiment. And the question rang, will we ever be able to get the chaos under control? Can we put the genie back into the bottle? 

For Jews around the world, for Israelis, and for Palestinians in Gaza, that feeling is deeply rooted right now as well. And we might say the same for Americans, watching our own political system spiral. Things are chaotic, with little understanding of if, when, and how the chaos will abate. 

That sense of chaos for me was compounded this week by the progression of hearing that Hamas claims not to know where the majority of the hostages are, followed by a missile barrage launched by Iran at Israel that followed some very tense days of anticipation. Thank God, most were intercepted, but there’s a little girl from a Bedouin village right now who’s fighting for her life as we record because Iran decided to sow chaos. 

While I don’t have answers about when and how the chaos will abate, I do want to spend some time thinking about it. To think about this phenomenon of chaos and living with it, I’m learning today with Leora Batnitzky.

Welcome, Leora. It’s good to be back with you.

Leora: Great to be here, Elana.

Elana: In a previous episode, you mentioned Jon Levenson’s book, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, where he talks about creation itself as an act of beating back chaos. And I’m wondering how you think that way of looking at things relates in this moment for you.

Leora: So I think that this book, Creation and the Persistence of Evil, and also thinking about evil as chaos, becomes unfortunately only more and more relevant each day in the last number of months. Even if we think about this last weekend and maybe how we were thinking last week, it’s just one event on top of another.

And there was another incident that I was thinking about, which was the little earthquake that we had in the New York, New Jersey area. And it was very strange. I was in my house. I was in my kitchen and my cabinets shook. It was weird, but I think that it’s it’s actually very powerful for thinking about this idea of Creation and the Persistence of Evil, in the sense that whatever is beneath the earth is shaking, shaking. And the question is, is it going to be contained in some kind of a way? And thankfully, in New Jersey and the New York area, it was, but this kind of thing just comes up all all of a sudden. So it’s not I want to, I want to be clear that I think it’s not just a metaphor. This idea, I think there’s actually very much something to it. 

Something else I mentioned to you, Elana when we spoke about this briefly was some of the free speech debates on campuses today. I think that free speech is actually a way of beating back chaos, of actually allowing some order to come from the chaos.

Elana: Wow, that’s really, that’s really intriguing and I hope we talk about it as we think together because I think for some people they might say free speech when it gets out of hand could itself sow chaos. So let’s get back to that a little bit later. That’s great.

So the Torah that we’re going to look at today is actually, I don’t know that we’ve done this yet, we’re looking at a Talmud Yerushalmi, a passage in the Jerusalem Talmud, and it is so incredibly rich, and it really speaks to, you know, your notion that it’s a metaphor, but it’s also not a metaphor. And almost like the image that we’re going to see is an image of whatever it is that is shaking under the earth, whatever rumblings are always there, threatens to get out, as though it’s always there, but it’s contained.

Leora: That’s where I thought after you, after you sent this text and we discussed it briefly, that’s when it occurred to me. Wow. This just happened on April 5th. 

Elana: Right, you know, I had one kid who recognized it as chaos and loved it, and another kid who recognized it as chaos and hated it. 

So, it’s the Jerusalem Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, Chapter 10, Section 2, 29a, So, it goes like this. This is what happened when King David, came to dig the foundations of the temple. He dug 1,500 cubits, but he couldn’t find the Tehoma, the abyss. 

Huh. King David wants to build the temple, and he wants to dig the foundation so deep that they reach what we call the Tehom. Now, the Tehom, the abyss, in biblical and rabbinic thought, is like the primordial waters. You see it in Genesis, right? There’s darkness upon the deep. Choshech al pnei tehom, right? 

But what’s interesting about it is that it has this connotation of being both, like, a source of fertility and just what the world needs, right? Water. So Joseph, for example, his blessing from Jacob in Genesis 49 is he should have the blessings of Tehom. He should have the blessings of the deep. 

And yet Tehom is also a place that threatens to erupt. Like when Genesis tells the flood narrative, it’s the, to home opened up, nivkeu kol ma’ayenot tehom, in Genesis 7. So David looking for the tehom is really, it’s almost like he’s trying to get to the most stable foundational ground, but we know that what he’s trying to get to is itself inherently unstable, right? 

And so this little section ends with, okay, as he’s looking and he’s digging these 1,500 cubits down, what does he find? The Talmud says, uvesofa, in the end, ashkach chad atzitz. He finds a little ceramic pot, uva’amir mateh, and he wants to pull it out. 

It seems like he’s looking for it tehom, can’t reach it, and what’s in his way? This little piece of shard, nothingness, is in his way and it’s blocking his way. What do you make of this image of David reaching down to the tehom? What’s the metaphor and the concrete here?

Leora: So I think it’s about David overreaching in a certain way. We can appreciate why he wants to get down to the bottom of it all because he wants to secure the temple, but he’s not recognizing that when you kind of break everything in court, including the, you know, the opening up the abyss, that one can be overwhelmed, the world can be overwhelmed, both physically and otherwise. 

So I think, I think it’s, this is kind of a really remarkable text, that it is this little, little shard of pottery that’s keeping everything in place, something that we would think of as being in some ways entirely insignificant, that’s, that’s keeping it in place.

I think life is a lot like this in a lot of ways, that a lot of the things that we take for granted when, when chaos erupts again, it’s those little things that allows chaos to go too far and to overwhelm.

Elana: Right, like a bat from a laboratory. 

Leora: Exactly, like a bat from a laboratory. 

Elana: Right, meaning like, so simple, prosaic. It’s so interesting because I think that in many situations, the idea of finding, getting down to the bottom, the pure, the unsullied, I mean, take even human relationships. I want to know more about you. Tell me more. Tell me more. Tell me more. 

Well, wait a second. Maybe there’s a point at which you got to stop. Right? Maybe there’s a point at which you’ve got to stop. And so what’s interesting is what happens next is, this piece of pottery starts talking to David. Right? So it goes like this. If you can imagine, it’s so vivid, right, to think about David is looking down at this little shard that stands between him and chaos, but also between him and his ambition, right, to really get to the pure, unsullied foundation of everything, right? 

And this piece of pottery, amar lei, says to him, leitak yachil. You can’t do it. You can’t do it. Don’t pick me up. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Right? Amar lei says, lamah, why not? And so the pottery says, I’m here to hold back the abyss, to subdue the abyss. That’s what I’m here for. And David says to him, and it’s hard to imagine tone, right? But David says, since when have you been here? Which to me, it can be either a, well, who are you? Like, I’m King David. Like, really, who are you? Or it can be, you know, I wasn’t aware that this is actually so frightening. Or maybe, well, if I know when you got here, I’ll know whether I can actually overcome you or not. 

And so this pottery answers, I’ve been here since the time that God pronounced at Sinai, I am the Lord your God. Because at that time, the earth trembled so much, and it sank, which, parenthetically, means the waters have their opportunity to completely drown the world. And so I was put here, says this little piece of pottery, on the tehom. 

And either David takes this as a challenge or David says, well, okay, it’s not like you were here from creation. You were here from a moment in time. Maybe this is a different moment in time. And maybe we can try again. And so, even so, even though the pottery said to him, don’t do it, he didn’t listen. And when David picked up that piece of pottery, indeed the tehom came up and threatened to flood the world. 

Do you think David was feeling curious or defiant? How do you read it?

Leora: I see David is being defiant here. I mean, those can be related, curious and defiant, but I think curiosity can also, as opposed to defiance, be a little bit more humble. So I think the fact that he goes ahead and does it, I think it is an act of defiance. And obviously, there’s a larger context that it’s not David himself who builds the temple, this also tells us something, I think, in the broader scope of things. But yeah, I think I see it as defiance. 

Elana: Right, it’s almost like this is a moment where he’s trying and overreaching, and the overreaching in some ways can be looked at as the prequel to him not building the temple, which is really interesting because when we get to the end of the story, we’ll see that the rabbis are still trying to give him a role in some way, but it’s kind of a tragic role.

So I’m curious, can we get back to this free speech thing that you mentioned before? Because I’m saying to myself, are you looking at this piece of pottery that is supposed to subdue the chaos? Like, free speech is an example of it? How? What?

Leora: Well, again, I want to stress, I think different people can think about this in different ways and there can, I think there are lots of different kinds of shards of pottery holding back different kinds of chaos, but I think I, yeah, I see free speech in universities, I want to be clear as holding back the abyss and that’s because the abyss or chaos is actually the pursuit of knowledge. And the pursuit of knowledge is a wonderful thing. And just like chaos, in a way, is a wonderful thing. And the waters are a wonderful thing, because that’s what gives us life. 

So without that chaos or that abyss, we wouldn’t actually have life. But there’s a way in which that can be overwhelming and it can also destroy everything. And so I do think that free speech within universities is a way of keeping that chaos at a distance. 

What I mean by that in more prosaic terms is simply the fact that people should and can answer speech with speech, allows for the possibility of containing the chaos. And so the danger of pulling up that shard of free speech is that the chaos won’t be contained. We won’t have that tool anymore. We won’t have the tool to argue back. And I think that that destroys the possibility of the pursuit of knowledge. All kinds of knowledge. And I think it’s also very damaging to university and other kinds of environments where people don’t feel that they can speak freely.

Elana: So in a certain way, in a certain way, what you’re doing is instead of saying that chaos means you have lots of forces or voices going in different directions, to an extent, you’re talking about chaos as a wave that overwhelms, that brooks no response. That you, you can’t stop it. You can’t respond to it. And you’re saying the ability to have a back-and-forth dialogue is a way of saying, hold on. Just because that’s your opinion doesn’t mean you get to overwhelm the entire discourse and the entire society with it. 

I guess the question becomes, and this is part of, I think, what campuses are trying to navigate, when does free speech itself end up becoming chaotic in the sense that it sows division, it sows danger, it sows um, irrepressed violence in a way, right?

Leora: Yeah, I think obviously, these are extraordinarily complicated questions, and I don’t want to make an overall statement about campuses in the US in general, because I think that that I think different campuses are different from each other.

But I, yeah, but I do think that as a general principle, when we’re speaking about just speech, okay, we’re not talking about behavior right now. We’re just talking about speech. I think that speech is fairly important. Far less dangerous when we can answer speech with speech, then suppressing that speech is, 

Elana: Yeah, that’s really interesting. It’s, let’s put it this way, regardless of whether listeners agree with your particular application of it, what you’re basically saying is, I want to look at this shard as, what is it that keeps the abyss from coming out? There are certain rules, and the rules aren’t always rules that say no. Sometimes the rules are rules that guide in saying yes. 

And I think that’s really interesting because when we think about this shard that literally says, I’m suppressing the tehom, we often might think that rules or norms should be things that are suppressing something rather than necessarily guiding the chaos in a way that will make it less chaotic, right? It doesn’t quite fit with the metaphor which I think is interesting to consider. 

Leora: Can I jump in is it does it? Yeah, it does fit, though, with Levenson’s arguments in Creation and the Persistence of Evil, and that’s relevant much beyond the book, because one of his arguments, which I find very compelling is that liturgy itself is a kind of controlling of the chaos. So it’s not passivity, meaning the point is not just to let the shard sit there and then do nothing, but it’s actually to allow, the shard is something that can organize the chaos in certain ways. And so people should read this book, again but, but I think, but I think it’s very powerful because what it does is it shows, again, that the chaos isn’t intrinsically problematic. It’s just the chaos, when it’s entirely, when it’s not controlled at all is when it’s problematic.

Elana: Not standardized. Well, I guess we’ll get to that. So it’s interesting. Let’s say, if this is sort of scene one, where we see David trying to do something that we might call revolutionary, right? Meaning he’s trying to get to the source, which we know is always dangerous. I mean, I’m reading this book, The Whispers about Stalinist Russia, and it’s like, doesn’t matter who we hurt. We have a vision and we’re going to go for that vision, no matter what kind of chaos erupts, it’s sort of a revolutionary move. We see that there is such a thin line between chaos and the world. And we also ask ourselves, what is it that is holding back that chaos? What is it that’s holding back that chaos? And sometimes it’s things that are very, very simple that we even take for granted. 

So let’s go to scene two. Scene two is great because, you know, we’re in Tractate Sanhedrin. When you’re in a Tractate, the story’s going to take on the, you know, it’s like, I can’t remember the name of the animal right now that changes colors.

Leora: Chameleon.

Elana: Thank you. It’s like a chameleon. Go figure, it’s Monday. It’s like a chameleon. It’s going to take on the colors of its tractate. So, Sanhedrin, you know, there’s going to be something in here about capital punishment, certainly in the chapter that it’s found, right? And it goes like this. 

Achithophel, who was an advisor of David, who in the Bible famously betrays David, and goes to David’s son, Absalom’s, Avshalom’s side, and ends up killing himself, actually, eventually. But here we have Achitophel in an earlier time in life. 

Achitophel was there, and he said to himself, ooh, I see an opportunity. David is going to be asphyxiated. He’s going to drown. And I’m going to get to be the ruler. And just at that moment, almost like Achitophel, like, feels like his thoughts were heard. David says, if somebody who’s wise knows how to put this thing back, how to put this shard back, and they don’t, that person is gonna die by asphyxiation, is gonna die by choking. 

Almost like, wait, did, did what I say, like, did I just say that out loud, Achitophel’s thinking? Or did I think it and then Achitophel, being the wise man who’s there, right, that’s why he’s the advisor, he says something, we don’t know what, and he puts it, he puts that atzitz, he puts that piece of pottery back and fixes the situation. 

And this, I think, is, I mean, the opportunists who take advantage of the chaos, instead of helping in the disordered moments, let’s tear this down further because it will have good results for me, personally.

Leora: Sadly, we see a lot of this in life I mean, certainly this is one aspect of American politics right now. Israeli politics right now. Politics elsewhere in the world right now. That’s right. So it’s the way in which the chaos becomes even worse, more evil, we could say, because people are out for something for themselves. It allows people, then, to not be restrained themselves.

Elana: Right, it’s, no-holds barred. and it’s like, who do you want to be during the chaos? Do you want to be a person who tries to benefit from the chaos for themselves, or do you want to be a person who tries to help put things back together? Because ultimately that’s best for everybody, right?

Like, I was so shocked by seeing, I don’t know, it must have been some athlete who posted today on social media, you know, we are not, we are Iran, and we are not the Islamic Republic. And this is an Iranian athlete. You know, his way of saying, that chaos that they’re trying to sow, that’s not, they’re not doing that on my behalf. Right? And I don’t want to be part of that, and that’s the wrong thing to do. And the truth is, starting a regional war, who’s going to benefit from that? Literally, who’s going to benefit from that? No one, except ideologues who are just looking to kill and find the pure and unsullied and get to the bottom of it all no matter who they have to kill, no matter who they have to hurt, even their own people, right? It’s a really sick, Achitophel really appears here as a kind of sick person.

Leora: He is a sick person and unfortunately, he’s not that unusual. I mean, certainly the heads of various governments are unusual in what they’re doing, but I think Achitophel also is, in some ways, just a regular person. And so I think that part of what I think he is obviously really self interested, but I think one could also see him as kind of a true believer in himself and whatever it is that he represents and one can see why it might be attractive to someone to think, wow, now’s my chance to really get in on this moment of world history and change things.

And that’s just very dangerous and it’s obviously less attractive to feel like, maybe I need to take a step back and think about, in a much more slow manner, how things can be repaired.

Elana: Right, there is something to that sort of like, the speed of it all, the pace of it all. Like, now is my moment. This is, now is my moment. I’m gonna grab this right now. 

Well, it’s very interesting because Achitophel, as we said, he ends up betraying David. And it’s, you know, it’s like the rabbis are actually, they’re bringing that back to this moment and essentially saying, you know when he did that? When he saw that there was enough room for him to jockey, that’s when he got the idea. In a moment where instead of being the chacham, instead of being the wise person who can fix it, and he can fix it, he fixed it, right? He is the person who does something else.

And you know who comes out squeaky clean, in an interesting way, is David. Because the passage continues and says, ah, once this happened and now the waters of Tehom are able to be subdued, hitchil David omer shira, King David sings psalms, he sings songs. 

And it’s so interesting because the Talmud here doesn’t talk about it, but there are 15 chapters of Psalms, starting with number 120, going to 134. There are 16, 15, excuse me, chapters of Psalms that start with either shir hama’alot, a song of going up, or shir lama’alot, a song of going up, right, and the rabbis say that these 15 actually are the reason behind the 15 steps on which the Levites would stand, because ma’alot are also steps, and the Levites would stand and sing their song, right? 

So, David singing, because of this moment, he sings shir hama’alot, a song of ascents, shir l’meyah olot, a song for every hundred qubits that the water had come up and, parentheses, had receded, al kol meyah omah hayah omer shira, every hundred cubits got its own Psalm. 

So here you have David, even though he didn’t get to build the temple, he still has his legacy in the temple, and his legacy is instead of being the one who got them to the abyss, he’s the one who rejected the abyss. He’s the one who ultimately celebrated, you know what, that’s not where we’re going, and what happens to Achitophel? Even though he helped, the Talmud ends, he ended up dying by choking. He killed himself, he hanged himself.

Leora: You know, just to, I’ll go back to Levenson’s book once more, is when I said before that Levenson argues that liturgy is what helps keep the chaos at bay. I think that this passage that we’re looking at is exactly what Levenson’s talking about, which is that David sings, that singing, that prayer. I mean, it’s not just singing, right? I mean, it is prayer. Prayer itself is an active force in the world in terms of keeping the chaos at bay.

Elana: Can you say a little bit more? Do you mean that in a metaphysical sense? Meaning, prayer to God and God holds back the chaos? Do you also mean that in an emotional sense?

Leora: I think it could be any of these. I think certainly if we want to talk about the history of the Jewish tradition, if one thinks about different Kabbalistic ideas and how they relate to prayer, it is much more metaphysical there. We definitely have those components,

But I also think emotional, but I’d say it’s also social because even though David is singing himself, I think since he is the king, he also represents a community, and so part of what singing is, or prayer is, is praying in a community. And Achitophel is by himself. And that is one reason why, maybe, he dies in the way that he does.

Elana: It’s so interesting because we could ask ourselves, looking at this, what weakens that pottery shard that’s between us and chaos? And what strengthens it? Right? We know that something that strengthens against chaos is the ability for people to come together. We know that the ability to, the strengthening of the pottery is the humility to pray. We know that the strengthening of the pottery is the ability to abide by certain rules and not just be sort of a cowboy, as it were, right? 

And what weakens it, and part of what weakens it is, sometimes ambition can weaken it. Opportunism can weaken it. The inability to think about the greater group can weaken it. And honestly, just the inability to accept limitation.

Leora: Yes. Hubris.

Elana: Hubris, that’s it, hubris, right? 

So it’s so interesting because there is, of course, a Babylonian Talmud version of this story and it’s not in Tractate Sanhedrin. It’s in Tractate Sukkah. And once it’s in Tractate Sukkah, it’s no longer about capital punishment. We don’t care about Achitophel dying. It’s about rain. It’s about moisture. It’s about water. Which is necessary. 

So actually there’s a Mishnah in the fifth chapter of Tractate Sukkah that talks about the 15 steps in the temple where they stood and they sang, and that specifically there were those who stood and sang when they were having the big, beautiful party that they used to do at the temple on Sukkot, the Simchat Beit HaShoeva, which is a water drawing ceremony after party, essentially, right? So it’s all about water. 

And so in that version, which is Sukkah 53 A-B, it goes back to what you said, which is, instead of having David just be happy that we got rid of this water, it has a bit of a different ending. It goes like this. 

When he saw that the water descended too far, right? Meaning they’re managing to subdue the abyss, but the water goes down too far. And he said, well, you know, the higher the water is, the moister and more fertile the world would be. We don’t want the water to go so far down that everything is going to be totally subdued and it’s going to be dried out, right? 

So what does he do? He recites the 15 Shir Hamalot, Song of Ascents, to bring the water back up 1,500 cubits, excuse me, 15,000 cubits, okay? And it stays beneath the earth 1,000 cubits, right? Pretty remarkable. This is a little bit different. Because it seems like the water had gone down. 16,000 cubits, that’s too much. And David, instead of praying, thank you God that the water went down, David prays, please bring some of that water back up. Huh. Not chaos, but maybe dynamism? Maybe creative forces?

Leora: Yeah, again, I think this really does go back to creation, which is that creation is not out of nothing. Creation is out of the void, tohu vavohu, however, we describe it, it’s out of stuff. And that’s a very interesting topic for lots and lots of reasons, why there’s stuff beforehand and what that means.

But I think I think it does suggest that the chaos itself or is vibrant, that there’s a vibrancy. There’s a vibrancy that can go too far. Let’s put it that way. And then it becomes chaos, but there’s a vibrancy that we need and that’s life. I mean, and so I think it’s illustrated beautifully with the water, because we do obviously need water for life. And I think it’s, I think it’s very powerful.

Elana: I think so too. I wish we were in a moment where we could feel that we were working on the exciting foment of dynamism and not under this sort of pressure of the explosive to home. 

And I also think, like, one of the things that is a scary thing to imagine, in my opinion, it’s a scary thing to imagine David and Achitophel as the same person, where the one who we desperately need to close things up, is actually the one who’s being opportunistic rather than in this case where David says, you got to close this up, and at least that puts pressure, right? 

So the question is, how do you make sure that the people who you need to try to close the chaos, you need to try to guide the chaos, you need to try to guide the dynamism. Right? How do you make sure that they do what they’re supposed to do, as though I have a crystal ball and know what that is? But sometimes we know what it’s not. 

Leora: Absolutely.

Elana: And I think that can be really hard. 

Leora: And I think this is also why many ancient thinkers, including rabbis and others, think that, you know, part of wisdom is prudence, is actually the recognition that revolutions are going to be extraordinarily damaging. And I think it’s, even if we leave Achitophel off to the side for a moment, I think the different Davids that we see here, the David that’s very defiant, but then also the David who has the humility to learn, I think that’s what’s interesting, is David actually learns something and he, therefore, responds in a much more constructive manner.

I think that’s in all of us. We all are like David in this way, we can be very defiant and hubristic and think that we’re right all the time and that we need to take extraordinarily strong action and change everything, or we can step back a little bit and think, how is it that my actions are going to affect others? And what can I do, therefore, to not just to destroy, but also to preserve and build?

Elana: Yeah, that’s beautiful. And I would even say, how can I engage others who may have abilities to do that, that I don’t, in the task? That’s really, really beautiful. 

Thank you so much, everyone, for learning with us and special thanks to my chavruta this week, Leora. 

May our next session be about order and stability, rather than chaos and trying to reign it in. And in the meantime, I’m wishing everyone a redemptive Pesach. 

TEXTing is produced by Tessa Zitter and our executive producer, Maital 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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