The following is a transcript of Episode 3 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. TEXTing is generously sponsored by the Walder Charitable Fund and Micah Philanthropies. If you’d like to follow along with today’s text, you can find the link to our source sheet in the episode description. 

Many of us check the news each and every day and are saddened to see the numbers of casualties climb in this war. While we may try to read about each individual lost, the scope and the pace of loss are so fast that it’s virtually impossible to mourn each person as they deserve in times of peace. We live our lives as individuals who participate in larger communities, and the loss of each and every life is able to be experienced for the tragedy that it is. 

But in times of war, the identity of each individual takes less priority than the identity of a larger collective, be it a state or a people. Individuals are conscripted as soldiers to make personal sacrifices that may result in the loss of their lives for the good of that collective. While this may reflect a deep sense of belonging, it also results in tragedy for individuals and their families and friends. This is also true of civilians who aren’t conscripted, who lose family, friends, or their own lives as a result of their inclusion within and the decisions of their collective.

 In today’s episode, I’d like to learn some Torah that addresses this paradigm shift from individual to collective and to think about how to cope with it. The text for today is the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Bava Kamma, 60A to B, and it discusses the spread of wildfire, a case of calamity that spins out of control and overtakes the lives of so many individuals in its path.

My study partner today is Dr. Leora Batnitzky, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute and Professor of Jewish Studies and Religion at Princeton University, where she’s been on the faculty since 1997. Leora is a philosopher who focuses on modern Jewish thought, philosophy of religion, and legal and political theory, and I’m always inspired by hearing what a trained philosophical lens can add to conversations about classical Jewish texts. 

Welcome Leora. Thanks so much for being here.

Leora: Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.

Elana: You know, to start with, is there a philosophical framing that you could offer that can help us think about individuals and collectives?

Leora: Sure. I think the question, and it’s a particularly acute question for Americans is, is the basic unit of “human being,” is it an individual, and therefore a collective is just a bunch of individuals put together? Or do we see the collective as more than the sum of its parts? This raises all kinds of questions about what kind of freedom and control and individual has, how it affects the group, how the group affects the individuals, et cetera.

And I mentioned that it’s, I think, particularly interesting and challenging for Americans, because we really do in the United States, take the individual as the basic unit.

Elana: So you’re saying maybe our Canadian friends and those who may be listening from other places may have an easier time having this conversation, but maybe that’s why it’s so important to have the conversation actually, especially for some of our American listeners.

Leora: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that in the United States of America, we, tend to think that we are basically the way in which the rest of the world is, or the rest of the world is the way in which we are, but really we’re the exceptions. I think also on this issue of autonomy and individuality.

Elana: Hmm. Powerful. Alright, so let’s look at the Torah. Let’s take a look. There’s this Mishna in Bava Kamma 60A that seems to be talking about a very legal situation, right? It’s, if one started a fire and it consumed wood or stones or earth meaning belonging to someone else, then the person who started the fire is liable and a verse is cited. 

Right, and the verse is from Exodus 22:5, Shemot 22:5: “When a fire is started and spreads to thorns so that stacked, standing or growing green is consumed, the one who started the fire must make restitution.” So seemingly a very clear cut, I start a fire, it consumes other people’s possessions, I am liable. 

But what the Gemara, what the Talmud does with it is rather magnificent in asking, well, can we talk about starting a fire that isn’t about the realm of damages and civil torts, but can we talk about what it means to have a catastrophe that spreads like wildfire and impacts many people? And so the Talmud gives us the following. And I’m gonna read two parts of it and then see what you have to say about it, Leora.

“Rabbi Shmuel son of Nachmeni says in the name of Rabbi Yonatan: ‘Calamity befalls this world only when wicked people are in the world. Nonetheless, calamity begins first with the righteous, as it is stated, and the same verse is quoted from Exodus 22:5, ‘If a fire breaks out and catches thorns.’ What does this mean? When does a fire meaning calamity break out? Only at a time when there are thorns, there are those who are wicked, but calamity even begins with the righteous, as the verse says, ‘And what’s going to be consumed? The stacked, standing or growing grain.’’” And that’s a reference to the righteous.

And Rav Yosef actually goes perhaps a step further than suggesting just when the wicked do something bad, the righteous are impacted. Rav Yosef taught in a Baraita: “What is the meaning of that which is written with regard to the plague of the firstborn in the Exodus, ‘And none of you shall go out of the opening of your house until morning.’” Meaning, the night of the Exodus, when the firstborn of Egypt are slain, the Israelites are told you cannot leave your houses. Why not? 

And so Rav Yosef says, actually, “Once permission is granted to the destroyer to kill, it does not distinguish between the righteous and the wicked. And not only that, but it begins with the righteous first, as it is stated in the verse, ‘And I will cut off from you, the righteous and the wicked in Ezekiel 21:8.’”

So Leora, not exactly encouraging stuff.

Leora: Well. It depends on how you look at it. I mean, I think that, it, it’s not encouraging if one thinks that the righteous are people who can separate themselves from everyone else, and therefore what it means to be righteous is just to be good and just to worry about yourself. So it’s not good news for that. And it’s also not good news if you assume that God is in control of absolutely everything. 

So I think what, what this text calls into question is, both of those assumptions. First, it’s making a really strong claim that not only are the righteous connected to the wicked, but the righteous are in some sense responsible for the wicked. That it’s the righteous who bear the responsibility for the wickedness of others. 

And at the same time, even God can’t stop the kind of, evil, for lack of a better term that is put out into the world, or the chaos that is put out into the world, when, the slaying of the Egyptians’ first son takes place. This is bad news.

But I think that it’s good news, in another way, because I think it actually gives us a very profound sense of what it means to be a human being, which is to be completely connected to one another, and also that in the end of the day, we have a lot of responsibility for what goes on in the world, so we can, in this case, stay in our homes and not go out, and not be killed. That it’s not all up to God. And to me, those are both very Jewish perspectives.

Elana: Okay. This is fascinating. You’ve said so much. Okay, let’s, I’m gonna break these into two, the interconnectedness of people on the one hand and the role of God on the other. So in terms of the interconnectedness of people, what I hear you saying is both, look, we are by necessity impacted by each other because even our identity of who we are, are not, we’re the righteous and you’re the wicked. But we’re all one fabric. 

But does that mean that in some ways, cause you did go further and say this, does that mean in some ways that the righteous are to blame for what the wicked have done? Do you have to go to that next step?

Leora: So I think there’s a difference between blame and responsibility. Each of us is part of a larger whole, we are responsible for that whole.

Elana: Responsibility is not culpability. Responsibility is you’re going to bear the consequences. That’s a really helpful distinction.

And then let’s talk about God for a minute. Because I am a God person, in the sense of God is all powerful. And what I think is so subversive about this is Rav Yoseg saying, and I’m gonna read it in Hebrew, “Keivan shenitan reshut l’mashchit,” once permission has been granted to the destroyer, then the destroyer doesn’t distinguish between the wicked and the righteous. 

That terminology of someone granted permission to the destroyer to come out here. And certainly in the Exodus paradigm, God clearly granted that permission. And what I find subversive and really theologically interesting here is God is willing to say, here, chaos, have at it. And then it’s up to us. Like you say, stay inside. Stay out of harm’s way. 

Leora: Yes. No, I think, I think that’s right. I think it is really fascinating that God unleashes something into the world that God cannot control. I. That’s what it seems to be suggesting. Now, maybe in theory God could have chosen to control it, but for whatever reason, God has chosen, let’s say, to unleash something that God can’t control. I think that in a way, that’s where human freedom comes from. If God did control it all, there’d be nothing for us to do and we would have no responsibility. 

And I just wanna add that I think it’s really fascinating the way in which fire and chaos are related here. If we think about the creation, because, of course, Bereshit begins with creation from nothing. But rather from tohu v’vohu, that there is some kind of chaos at the beginning and God orders the chaos. 

Jon Levenson, who teaches at Harvard, has written many excellent books. One of his many excellent books is called Creation and the Persistence of Evil, which I recommend to everybody. And in that book, he talks about creation as God’s attempt to put order where there was chaos. But the point is that chaos is something that can always erupt once again.

Elana: Oof. Can I tell you? I’ll tell you honestly, I actually picked that book up a few weeks after October 7th, because essentially it’s about the persistence of evil. And it’s deeply troubling. The persistence of evil is deeply, deeply troubling, and I love the idea that you’re basically saying, the default without someone pulling it back, the default would be chaos. 

It’s not so dissimilar from what you’re saying about the default is our identity as collectives actually, or as members of a collective. We kind of look at it wrong. We assume that order is the natural way of the world, and chaos is the aberration. And you’re saying. No, no. The fact that we don’t have more fires is, is surprising and shocking and takes some holding back. 

I wanna continue for a second because Rav Yoseg himself, who was the one who introduced this notion of once the mashchit, once the destroyer is out there, it doesn’t distinguish between the good and the bad. He then cries about it. It’s literally the next line is, Rav Yosef cried and said, wait, are all these righteous people now compared to nothing when calamity strikes?

And so Abaye comforts him by trying to maintain the uniqueness of the righteous, right? Trying to undo the connection that you just described. Abaye said to him, no, it’s good for the righteous that they die first. As it is written, and if you look in Isaiah 57:1, this really does seem to be the plain meaning of the verse, “The righteous is taken away because of the evil that’s to come.” Meaning this is something that’s useful to them, it’s almost a kindness to them, that they don’t have to see the suffering that’s gonna befall everyone.

Leora: Yeah, I think that this is also really remarkable. I think that, what we do see here is first of all an acknowledgement, as you said, Elana, that there is evil in the world. There is chaos in a world. And in some sense that is, the way in which things are going to be unless we try and do otherwise. 

That’s one of the reasons to talk about our current moment, that what’s going on, in this war, all of the loss on both sides, all of the difficulty, is that we might think that this war, represents something anomalous, right? This isn’t the way things really are, but I think that the Torah, I’ll just use that term very broadly, recognizes that no, actually there is evil and suffering in the world, and it’s really sad. And our job is to fight against it. 

So I think it, basically, this is some kind of theodicy where the righteous do something in a very simplistic sense like go to heaven or Olam Haba’ah and things are great there. So I wanna be really clear that I don’t think that this is suggesting that somehow life is not worthwhile. I think it’s suggesting that, suffering is so difficult precisely because life is so worthwhile. We don’t wanna end in chaos, but even in terms of what we’ve just read, I think this is where you began, or the second text that you read, where people are told to stay inside when, this terrible force that’s going to kill the firstborn of the Egyptians, we see this emphasis on human freedom because we do have a choice and we do need to use our reason actually to make things better. I just wanna suggest that.

Elana: And in that manner of responsibility that you’re talking about, not culpability, necessarily, but responsibility to reocgnize. 

Leora: Right. And think and think about the word responsibility. It is about responding 

Elana: Yeah. The next part of the Gemara actually continues on this same theme of going inside. It goes with the indoor theme, and it goes like this: “The Sages taught, Tanu Rabanan, if there is a plague in the city, meaning that’s what they’re imagining as the great calamity, right? You might have a fire that’s spreading. You might have a plague that’s hit the city. So the Gemara says, gather your feet, meaning stay inside, as it is stated in the verse, and it cites that verse that we were just discussing. “And none of you should go out of the opening of your house unti morning.”

And there’s another verse that it cites, which goes as follows. “Come, my people, enter into your chambers and shut your doors behind you, hide yourself for a little moment until the anger has passed by.” Right now I added the hide yourself, which you don’t see in the Hebrew, but it’s important to recognize that that’s what it’s really saying. Sort of take refuge inside. 

And there’s even another verse: Outside, the sword will bereave, and in the chambers you might find some terror, right? Meaning even if you’re worried inside, if you go outside, it’s even more dangerous, right? 

And so it’s kind of interesting, you know, the Gemara says, well, you know, maybe you might think you should only stay inside when there’s no fear inside. But when there is fear inside, maybe you should go outside and sit among other people. And that’s why the Gemara says, no, no, no. If outside the sword bereaves, even if in the chamber there is terror, it’s still better to remain indoors.

Leora: Right. So I think there are at least two really interesting points here. First of all, we do see value that is placed on life. And I’m trying to survive. That’s important to say in the context of a text that is so open about the chaotic nature of reality, that there is this value to life.

I think the second thing that we learn is that it’s very important to ground oneself in some way. That’s what it means to go inside, both literally and figuratively to ground oneself in oneself. 

So part of what we see here is that it’s not simply that we’re all interconnected and there’s a collective and there’s no individuality, rather it’s a both/and situation. We are all interconnected, but at the same time, there is a kind of resource we can take refuge in, and that is actually the safety of ourselves. We have a home and a place to go and that, that’s really nothing to be taken for granted. It’s actually something that’s, that’s really necessary.

Elana: It is interesting because I think if I were to think about what it means to be inside, social media has kind of killed it. Meaning, cause since October 7th, I’m sitting in my home where I’m comfortable and trying to stabilize myself within what I believe and who I’m connected to, and be able to mourn and also have joy. And yet all I have to do is look on my phone and I’m outside again.

I think that is a really, it’s really telling that when that sense of being inside is broken, you actually do lose something of a coping mechanism.

Leora: Absolutely. That’s why Rava shuts his windows, right? So his windows are technology for us. He wants to shut out the outside world. It’s necessary sometimes to shut out the outside world.

Elana: So Rava would say be a little less tethered to your phone and to the news. A little bit less. 

Leora: That’s my view for sure. 

Elana: Yeah, it’s, the difficulty with it, if we’re gonna be frank, is there is a lot of activism that’s required right now. There’s activism in the form of lobbying. There’s activism in the form of just protesting. There’s activism in the form of online activism. 

And I think to be able to distinguish between when am I sitting in my house in order to stabilize myself within this world of chaos, and when am I choosing to allow that world of chaos into my house or to go out and meet it? Those are choices that have to be made. They’re not just geographical locations, they’re actually choices that have to be made.

Leora: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are choices that have to be made and there are way different ways of actually being in the world, and we need both ways of being in the world.

Elana: Yeah. And I, I actually like the fact that this Gemara is not, it’s not talking about war. It actually is talking about contagion. Meaning, it’s possible that Rava closes his windows because he’s worried that whatever the pestilence is that’s outside can get to him through that. But actually, contagion is a good metaphor for this. It is a good metaphor, and I know this as a parent, what do I let my kids see or not let my kids see? It’s because it sticks to them. It literally sticks to them. They internalize it. So there is a type of contagion that’s we’re thinking about.

But, of course, as the Gemara often does, there’s sort of like an accordion structure, right, you have the beginning of this conversation as chaos is hitting everybody and everyone is connected. Then you sort of, you might call it sort of a consolidation of the individual in their home. Sort of the opposite, the privacy. 

And then as the Gemara often does, it gives us something in between. And I wanna end on that, something in between because it also negotiates this question of individuals and collectives in the following way. It goes as follows: Tanu Rabanan, the Sages taught, if there is a plague in the city, a person should not enter the synagogue alone because the angel of death that we talked about from the beginning, the angel of death leaves his utensils there. 

The synagogue, which was the place of gathering, which was the place of, I don’t know if it’s safety, but a representation of healthy relationship to God, you shouldn’t go there alone because no longer is it the representation of that. It’s actually a place where the Angel of Death has taken up residence or at least uses as his locker. Right? That’s very disturbing. The places of joy, the places of connection, the places of belief and faith have become places of deep despair, right?

But then the Gemara continues and says, but this is only the case if there are no children learning in the synagogue or you don’t have a quorum praying there. Meaning, if there are children sitting there learning in the synagogue, or you do have a quorum of people praying there, then it’s safe to go there

By the way, even though maybe the Angel of Death still keeps it as their locker, right? Like, I don’t know, still storing their stuff, but there’s an antidote to it, and the antidote to it, to me when I look at this is, first of all, continuity, right, meaning you have children who are obviously not yet, evil or good. They’re not yet people who understand this whole chaos conversation, they are living in their day-to-day. They are reciting their verses as children. That’s what they’re learning. The innocence is right there, but also the continuity, the Jewish continuity is right there.

Could you imagine an Angel of Death watching children reading their Biblical verses? It’s such a searing and their power overpowers the Angel of Death.

Or you just have a group of 10 who come together and say, within all this chaos, we’re continuing to pray. Within all this chaos, we are continuing to have a collective that believes in something that has its own continued rhythm that has not been destroyed by the chaos, and I find that incredibly powerful. 

Leora: I agree. I think this is where we see a notion that the collective is more than the sum of its parts. And so the collective is very powerful in this sense because it is both about past and future. I mean, children. But I think that this is where we see that it’s not just about figuring out in some kind of utilitarian sense, how we can maximize the good. Rather, it is about being part of something that is much larger, not just in ourselves, but then the sum of ourselves.

Elana: So in a that this Gemara ends, it is interesting to note how the Gemata begins with the fact of being connected to others and our identity not really being individual as we might like to think, can be a major liability for us. And at the same time, the response to experiencing that liability is reconnect with that collective. And reconnect with that collective in a constructive way.

Right, I remember early on, one of the rabbis in one of our Hartman sessions, he said, well, look, if all we’re gonna talk about is the war, and that’s the only Torah that anybody’s learning when they come to synagogue, then how are we building Jewish identity and Jewish life? Right, and this kind of ends with don’t just connect with the sorrow, which, of course; don’t just connect with the protest and the lobbying, which, of course; but connect with the stuff of community of the everyday, and don’t forget about it, because it’s an anchor in a certain sense.

Leora: Yeah, I think it’s particularly poignant in relationship to October 7th, since it did take place on Simchat Torah. And so I know that in a lot of communities, people weren’t on social media or watching TV or whatever, the news still nevertheless trickled in. But I think that there was a concerted effort in a lot of places. We still have to have Simchat Torah, and I think that’s part of it, is that it’s about not giving up, about celebrating the community we do have, even when there are so many terrible things happening at the same time, that that’s not complacency, that’s actually this affirmation of, of life.

Elana: Yeah. Well, I really wanna thank you, Leora, for bringing an elevated lens to these topics of, you know, the collective subsuming, the individual, and the sense that the individual can find themselves in interiority, and then the return back of the individual, deciding not to be subsumed in a way that erases, but actually to be swept up in a way that magnifies a feeling of belonging and magnifies a possibility of persistence and survival.

So thank you so very much. It’s been wonderful to learn with you, as it always is. 

Leora: Oh, thank you, Elana.

Elana: Thank you so much for learning with us, and special thanks to my chavruta this week, Leora Batnitzky. TEXTing is produced by Tessa Zitter and our executive producer is Maital Friedman with production assistance from Tamar Marvin. M Louis Gordon is our senior producer. This episode was mixed by Ben Azavedo at Bear Cave Audio with music provided by Luke Allen. 

You can now sponsor an episode of this show. Follow the link in the show notes or visit shalomhartman.org/texting. We will acknowledge your gift on a future episode.

And we’re always looking for ideas of what we should cover in future episodes, so if you have a topic you’d like to hear about or if you have comments about this episode, please write to us at [email protected]. And thank you for those who have already written to us. I can’t tell you how exciting it was to be learning with you off-air. 

For more ideas from the Shalom Hartman Institute about what’s unfolding right now, sign up for our newsletter in the show notes and subscribe to this podcast everywhere podcasts are available. See you next time, and thanks for listening.