Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 62a

Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 11a

Mishnah Niddah 8:3

Sponsor an upcoming episode of TEXTing!
Click here to learn more.

Subscribe on all major platforms

TEXTing with Elana Stein Hain delves deeply into Jewish texts to guide and inspire us as we grapple with the concerns and meaning of this moment. Join Elana as she addresses the issues of our day through the lens of classical Jewish texts, in conversation with Hartman scholars Christine Hayes, Yonah Hain, and Leora Batnitzky.

TEXTing. Where ancient wisdom meets contemporary relevance.

The Rabbinic Panopticon Transcript

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 live in Jerusalem on July 15th, 2024, in front of what we call RTS, the Rabbinic Torah Seminar, Hartman’s annual learning retreat for 200 North American rabbis. If you’d like to follow along with today’s text, you can find the link to our source sheet in the episode description.

Have you ever been looking over your shoulder as you decide when to like a comment on social media? What I mean is something like this. You see a post that you agree with, but you’re not sure whether you want to publicly like the post. So what do you do? You look at who else has commented positively, or has shared it, or has attacked the post. Not in order to learn more or think more deeply, but to figure out whether you’ll feel safe publicly aligning yourself with the idea.

Whether I’d like to admit it or not, I definitely do this. These kinds of moments bring up questions that are salient to our culture today. How we perform our identities publicly for others who we prop up as trendsetters or find ourselves parroting, consciously or unconsciously. I think it’s worth talking about these issues because culture is deeply shaped by these interactions and decisions. And it may surprise people to know that this notion of being watched or curating oneself and one’s actions for others who are observing them is a consistent thread running through rabbinic life and literature.

So today we’re gonna talk about what we might call the rabbinic panopticon, ancient rabbis who are being watched by their students. Sometimes they don’t want to be watched. Other times they are glad to curate their presentations for their understood audience. And to talk about this today, I have the person who, to my knowledge, coined the term “the Rabbinic Panopticon,” which is Dr. Christine Hayes. Chris, thank you so much for being here.

Chris: Thanks so much, Elana. I don’t know if I coined the term. Maybe Moshe Simon-Shoshan did. I’ll have to go back and read his article.

Elana: Okay, you coined it for me.

Chris: For you, yeah.

Elana: Okay, you coined it for me, personally. We’re going to get started as though we’re like just TEXTing, which usually is, if you could describe where you are usually when we are TEXTing…?

Chris: I’m usually sitting in my son’s bedroom on the floor with my computer on a, kind of a little bench, facing into his closet, because they told me I need to speak into something that will absorb the sound, so it’s usually, this is a much more comfortable position I have to say.

Elana: Exactly. And sometimes I’m at Hartman, but oftentimes I’m in the very front like ante room of my two bedroom apartment, basically sitting in the closet so that I could get that same surround sound. So essentially they’ve let us out to be here today.

Chris: They let us out of the closet. We’re out of the closet.

Elana: And it’s like, wow.

Chris: They might regret it.

Elana: Amazing. All right, so let’s get started. What I will say is we’re going to do something a little different than we often do, which is we’re going to be looking at multiple texts today, rather than trying to analyze deeply one particular text.

And how I want to start, is actually with this question of, generally speaking, when you think about the rabbinic consciousness of being watched or watching others, what’s the big picture before we get to our particular sources?

Chris: Well, I think there’s a couple of big picture concepts that emerge that can help us think about this. And one of them really comes up, it came up for me anyway, doing Daf Yomi, right? So if any of you are doing Daf Yomi and we’re in Bava Batra right now, the very first Mishna in Bava Batra talks about partitions. And it talks about partitions dividing jointly owned property, or fields that adjoin one another.

So imagine two people who own a joint courtyard or a garden, or they have neighboring fields and one of them wants to build a partition to divide them, and the other person doesn’t want to build a partition. So can the reluctant person be compelled to build a partition? And there are lots of considerations that go into whether or not you can compel someone to participate in building the partition. But one consideration is whether the purpose of the partition is to prevent some sort of harm or damage, financial harm or damage. And if it is, then the reluctant party can be compelled to help build the partition. And if they don’t or they refuse, then they’re liable for the damage that might arise.

So what if one party, this is one of the things we’re considering, what if one party wants a partition for the sake of privacy, right? They don’t want the other owner or their neighbor to be able to observe them. And do we say that they suffer a form of damage or injury from the gaze of their partner or at their neighbor, from the loss of privacy?

So the way the Gemara phrases this question is with this term, “hezek re’iyah,” the damage that comes from seeing or from observing another. And that’s the question. Is that really a kind of damage we would put in the legal category of damage and compel someone.

Elana: Right. So you’re already starting by telling us, before we get to these stories of rabbis who know that they’re being watched and they’re curating what they do, the everyday person, right, doesn’t always want to be watched.

Chris: Right, exactly. So there’s this concept that we can do harm by observing others in private places, right? But we can flip it around. So, they do flip it around, because sometimes the harm can flow in the other direction. And it’s not the person being observed who’s harmed, but possibly the observer. And that’s the idea that stands behind the companion principle, which we’re really going to see in our sources.

And that’s the principle of marit ayin, right? The principle that, which literally means appearance to the eye, marit ayin. And this is a worry, that an observer can misinterpret something that they’re seeing and that can have negative effects. And because of that, the rabbis will sometimes prohibit something that technically is permitted, but they prohibit it because there’s a danger someone will misinterpret the action and they’ll draw the wrong conclusion.

And so the trouble with that misperception in Ma’arit Ayin is you could make one of two errors, right? Either the person looking will assume the worst of you, right? Look at that person, they’re performing a prohibited act when they shouldn’t. Or they’ll assume the best of you. Well, that person is a good person, and they’re carrying this ladder to go fix their roof, so I guess doing that kind of labor is okay on the holiday, right, on the festival. So either one of those things is going to be an error, so to avoid that, Beit Shammai prohibit carrying the ladder because of marit ayin. These two concepts work together, right?

Elana: So this is actually important because it’s not just about privacy, it’s also about misperception.

Chris: Exactly.

Elana: And that’s actually what’s going to underlie in terms of our themes today and the texts that we’re going to look at, is this dual problem of lack of privacy and what people are learning that they shouldn’t be learning or actually should be thinking about on their own, right? Are they learning something wrong? Are they learning not to think? But, misperception and privacy.

Chris: Right, and I think both of those, those are really flip sides of the same coin, and I think the rabbis are sensitive to these issues of the harms of observation that flow in both directions, because they did understand themselves to be living in a kind of panopticon, which is a great word, it actually originally referred to a type of architecture, a building in which a watchperson could see everyone in the cells in the building. And you know, it was a type of architecture that allowed for complete surveillance of people

Elana: So that people can feel like they’re in a cell, being watched.

Chris: Well, that’s the thing is they can’t see the watchman, right? So there were a number of prisons that were built in this panopticon style. I toured one. It’s in Philadelphia. It’s really astonishing, right? You’ve been there? But the idea is the watchman can see every cell because they’re fanning out like spokes of a wheel, but the people in the cells don’t know whether or not they’re being watched. And so they have to assume all the time that they’re being observed. Which is a kind of prison inside a prison, isn’t it? And so the rabbis do kind of assume that they’re always being watched.

Elana: Wow. Wow. So, let’s get started. We have three cases that we’re going to be looking at. The first case I would say is probably the most uncomfortable. Right? It’s probably the most uncomfortable case. It’s the Babylonian Talmud, Brachot 62a. And we have a number of stories where rabbis talk, students really, talk about following their rabbi into strange places.

So the first two stories, which we’ll probably refer to later, but we’re not going to read inside at this point, are stories of following the rabbi into the bathroom, and insisting, I have to be there in order to learn. But the third story, which I think is the most uncomfortable, in my perspective, is about Rav Kahana following Rav into the bedroom. Or better yet, making his way under the bed so that Rav and his spouse will not know that Rav Kahana is there.

So here’s how it goes. Rav Kahana al genat puryah d’Rav. Rav Kahana went under the bed of Rav, his teacher. He heard Rav chatting, laughing with his wife, literally seeing to his needs, which means having sex, right? And he said to him, I just want you to imagine he’s hiding under the bed, and then he’s sort of like, wait a second, rabbi. Okay. Amar lei, he said to him, damei pumei d’Abba kidla sareif tavshila. It sounds like, and Rav’s name is Abba, but I do think it’s interesting that he’s calling him father, right? Rav, your mouth seems like it’s never tasted any cooked food. In other words, you seem to be rather voracious in this activity. So here he is, he outs himself as being under the bed because he’s so shocked by his rabbi’s, right, did you really think that you were going to come here to Hartman and at 11:20 in the morning, this is where we were going? No, you didn’t. And you’re welcome. Okay?

Chris: That’s what happens when they let us out of the closet.

Elana: This is what happens! Back in there, I’m much, it’s like the panopticon, I’m much more careful. Right? So, amar lei, so Rav says, now of course, as a woman, would I love to know what Rav’s wife is thinking? Guess what? I know what Rav’s wife is thinking. Okay? He says, Kahana, hacha at, you’re here? Puk, get out of here. D’lav orach arah, this is not appropriate. This is not derech eretz. This is not the way this should be. Amar lei, he says, Torah hi v’lilmot ani tzarich. This is Torah, and I need to learn it.

Now, you are queen of Talmudic satire. Tell me what’s going on here.

Chris: So first of all, I’m really glad to see everybody in the audience is laughing and appreciates that this is a funny story. There’s a reason it’s the last in a long sequence, they save the most absurd to the last, etc. So that’s a clue to you that we’re supposed to understand it as funny. And the fact that he seems to be so completely unaware of the inappropriateness of what he’s doing. That’s also a classic feature of funny texts when somebody is just innocent of how inappropriate they are, so it is terrific that in the middle of the act he sees fit to, you know, share the lesson that he’s learning, if you will, as if he’s sort of watching a laboratory experiment and look at that, he goes at this with such vigor and, you know, in the middle of the act and, startling Rav and presumably his wife as well.

But what’s so ironic about the whole thing is that he says to Rav, well I’m here to learn. I’m here to understand how to behave in the bedroom. I’m here to understand how to engage in sexual relations. Well the way to behave in a bedroom is privately. The way to have sexual relations is not in front of other people, right? And so he sort of undermined the effort in the very doing of it. And I think Rav really kind of flips the gaze, right? He says you’re observing and commenting on my behavior? Let me observe and comment on your behavior. Puk! Lav orach arah! This is rude. This is not how we behave in general, right? Forget about how we behave in the bedroom. Forget about how we behave in sexual relations. This is not how you behave as a civil human being.

Stories can both be funny and have a serious point, by the way. They’re not contradictory. And so, you know, learning proper behavior by observing exemplars is one thing. But if observing means invading their privacy, then there’s actually a deeper, more basic lesson that you need to be learning, a more basic level of proper behavior you need to be learning about the importance of privacy, especially in the context of intimacy and emotional and physical vulnerability and so on. So there’s just this delicious irony of the whole thing as well, when he crosses that line.

Elana: And I think I would also want to flip it because I think we live in a culture where we share way too much of our private lives. And I’m very glad to see Rav saying, no, you are not supposed to be here. There are actual limitations on what I need to share, or should share, or how I’m supposed to share it. And I think that’s kind of a lost art in our culture. So that’s another piece that I see here.

And then there’s another layer to this, in my opinion, because, you know, what does it mean that he thinks that he needs to imitate everything about his teacher? That kind of parroting and mimicry, meaning, I understand we have different teachers for different things, and I’m not, I’m not sure that we might not be seeing something here that is kind of a lack of just reflecting on one’s own.

Chris: Yeah, I there’s two issues, really. I think, to get more to the first point of what you said, certainly it’s important to have teachers. We’re lifelong learners. We need teachers. We need exemplars to model behavior for us. But there might be a kind of observance that actually is detrimental to us, that desensitizes us. And I think that’s what we’re seeing here, that Rav Kahana is so obsessed with, you know, learning that he becomes desensitized to the importance of privacy, he becomes desensitized to the fact that there are some things which are spoiled in the act of observation, some things that require intimacy, and so not respecting people’s privacy in those moments actually degrades our humanity, it isn’t contributing to our learning and growth, it degrades our humanity, it degrades our ethical sensibility and sensitivity.

So yes, you’re right. But it’s because we want so much to have a certain answer, right? That’s why we do it. Anyway, there’s this desire to have certainty to know what to do. Maybe even to feel virtuous. If that person is doing it, and they’re virtuous than by my mimicking that, I am also virtuous. Virtuous character goes a little deeper than that though, right, than just mimicking someone’s behavior. So the absurdity of it, I think, exposes some of those problems with the whole culture of exemplarity, of being an example, of having models, of mimicking others.

Elana: And to be fair, I would love it if Rav had a class for his students on Jewish approaches to intimacy. Right. That’s, that’s very different.

Chris: Hygiene 101. I think they used to call it that, back in the day.

Elana: Oh my gosh. Talk about like really taking the passion out of it. But the the idea that I, as a leader would actually be an exhibitionist in that way, I think is highly problematic. And it also, it also puts his wife in a position of being something and someone who’s watched, whether she likes it or not.

Chris: Right. They’ve both been put in that position, right? He didn’t want it to be, either.

Elana: Look, I’m married to a rabbi’s son. We know exactly what it is to be watched all the time, whether you like it or not. And you didn’t choose it. Right? There’s real sensitivity there.

I want to actually just make reference to some of the stories that come before this in that Talmudic passage because it is very rich, first of all, that we kind of up the ante from following someone into the bathroom to following someone into their marital bed. Right? I do think that’s an upping of the ante. But within those earlier stories, what you basically have is Rabbi Akiva says, I followed Rabbi Yehoshua to the bathroom and this is what I learned. And Ben Azzai turns to him and says, How dare you, right? Ad kan heazta panecha b’rabecha? Did you have such azut panim, did you have such brazenness that you would follow your teacher like that? And then he says, no, amar lo torah hi v’lilmod ani tzarich, I need to learn it.

And then in the next incident, Ben Azzai, who was so shocked that Rabbi Akiva would follow his teacher into the bathroom, says, oh, once I followed Rabbi Akiva into the bathroom, and this is what I learned. And somebody else asks him, ad kan heazta panecha b’rabecha? Did you actually have such azut panim? So I think there’s also a learned behavior of this. Right? It’s sort of, at first you look at something and you say, this is too, this is, there’s no privacy here. This is too much exhibitionism. It’s sharing too much. It’s exposing too much. And then the next thing you know, you’ve actually learned like, nah, this is normal, this is something that, that we come to expect. And I think that’s sort of the way that cultures become layer down by layer, difficult to change in that regard. And I think our social media culture is really there in a very deep way.

But I want to move us to another example, because that example is, it’s so obvious, you know, what the problems are and what’s being taught and what shouldn’t be taught and how it shouldn’t be taught. I want to move us to another example where I think we’re not, we’re actually looking at a situation where it is healthy to learn and it’s right to be watching and the rabbis are aware that they’re being watched, and I think the payoff, in some sense, for our thinking from this one comes less about whether privacy is needed or not and what’s exhibitionist, and more on the score of, what are you trying to teach when you know people are watching? What is it that you’re trying to put forth?

So we’re looking at the Babylonian Talmud, Brachot 11a. Do you want to read, Chris?

Chris: Sure, I will. And you’re right, we’re flipping now from thinking about, you know, hezek re’iyah, the harm through invasion of privacy, and we’re flipping now to thinking more about marit ayin and how you can sort of curate your behavior so that we have a positive kind of, you know, exemplar behavior.

Elana: From privacy to misperception.

Chris: Yeah. We’re shifting to this other side of the coin. So Tanu Rabanan, we have a braita, which teaches that Beit Hillel omrim, so Beit Hillel say, and these are their rules for when and how you should position yourself to recite the Shema. And they’re going to say, you can do it in any position. They’re going to say, omdim v’korin, you can stand and recite the Shema. Yoshvin v’korin, you can sit. Matin, holchin baderech, osin b’malachatan. All of these you can do and read. You can do it when you’re reclining. You can do it when you’re walking by the way. You can do it while you’re engaged in work.

Elana: I just want to admit, as someone who has, on occasion, had to daven on the subway, I’m a big fan of Beit Hillel out there. Big, big, big fan.

Chris: I hope you lie down while you’re on the subway to do it.

Elana: I, no. I live in New York. I don’t lie down on the subway.

Chris: So then this is followed by a ma’ase where we have Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Elazar Ben Azariah, they’re mesubin b’makom achad, so they are feasting, which means they’re relaxed and sort of reclining. And the time comes to recite the Shema, keivan shehigiah hazman kriat shema, Rabbi Elazar, reclines, Rabbi Yishmael is upright, maybe stands, but becomes upright in some way. And so Rabbi Elazar Ben Azaria says to Rabbi Yishmael, Yishmael, my brother, what is this? Let me draw you an example of the behavior that you’ve just engaged in. It’s as if somebody has a beard and someone pays him a compliment, you have a full beard, it suits you. And they simply indicate that they have a beard just for spite. Yeah, this is to just stick it to all those who shave their beards off or something. You’re just, in other words, you’re just being ornery. I did one thing and so you just chose to do the opposite, just to be ornery, right?

And this gives Rabbi Yishmael a chance to explain what it is that he did. He said, no, I acted in accordance with the opinion of Beit Hillel, right. Ani asiti k’divrei Beit Hillel, according to whom you can recite the Shema in any position. So I chose to be upright. You acted in accordance with the view of Beit Shammai, who says you must recite it lying down at this particular time, right? At night, in the morning, standing up. So you, you followed the opinion of Beit Shammai. And so I followed the opinion of Beit Hillel. Why?

And they’re going to go on and give an explanation. He starts to give the explanation here, but it gets explained a little better further on. He says essentially that, keivan d’ad asha, because until this point you were upright and then when the time to recite the Shema came, you laid down, students might look at you and say well then the law has been fixed according to Beit Shammai because you went out of way to change your position and lie down. So you must think that you have to lie down.

Elana: Right, meaning it’s one thing if you were already lying down. The point is you were sitting up. It’s evening and you, it’s so obvious that the only reason you would lie down is because you’re following Beit Shammai.

Chris: I’m afraid people will therefore draw the erroneous conclusion that the law has been fixed according to Beit Shammai. So even though I was lying down, and even though I follow Beit Hillel, which allows me to choose any position, and I could have remained lying down, I decided to go upright as a signal to some offstage set of onlookers that the law hasn’t been fixed. It’s still an open question. Very different kind of observing.

Elana: Okay, I want to actually, I want to do this in two parts. Because I think the moment where they’re each in their natural positions, right? It’s Rabbi Elazar Ben Azaria sitting up, Rabbi Yishmael happens to be lying down, and then it’s time for Shema at night, right? And when Rabbi Elazar Ben Azaria sees Rabbi Yishmael change his position, he sort of looks at him and says, are you just doing this so you don’t look like me? And I have to be honest, I think I’ve probably been in situations, I think we’ve probably all been in situations where we actually do do something in order to make sure that people know that we’re not aligned with this other person who’s doing this other thing.It may be we use different language than they use. It may be we sit in a certain way that’s different. There are all sorts of things that communicate, I’m sitting here with you, but I’m not quite with you. Which I’m, I don’t feel that about you.

Chris: No, I don’t either. Here, have some challah.

Elana: Thank you so much, I really appreciate that.

I’m telling you, if we sat in the closet together, I think things would be a lot easier in life, I think. But I think the point is, it’s, there are actually times, I don’t think Rabbi Elazar Ben Azaria is so off by saying, hey, I did one thing and you did the other. It looks like you’re just trying to spite me or do something different. Sometimes you actually have to do that.

Chris: That’s true. And I think also to add another layer to this, the same action can send two messages to do two different receiving parties. And I think that’s what’s going on here. So he takes an action to send a message. He does send a message, but he sends two. So, from Rav Elazar Ben Azaria’s perspective, the message is that, you know, I want to differentiate, I’m just, I’m being an ornery, you did that, I’m just going to be ornery, I’m going to do something different. But, he, then, therefore has to explain.

So sometimes we actually have to explain the reason for our behaviors. It’s not enough, we can’t assume that people will draw from our behaviors the conclusion or the message that we want them to draw. So sometimes we actually have to add a little commentary. I wasn’t doing this just to be ornery, I understand how from your perspective it looked that way. And so he explains to him that wasn’t it, I’m trying to send a larger message, that people shouldn’t draw the erroneous conclusion that the law has been fixed. Right? According to Beit Shammai. So I actually inconvenienced myself. I went out of my way. I could have just remained lying down and let the chips fall where they may. People can make their own mistaken conclusions, it’s not my problem.

Elana: Well, it’s also funny because there are parallels to this text elsewhere. There’s a parallel in the Yerushalmi, there’s a parallel in the Tosefta, and I can’t remember in which one right now, but actually it’s Rabbi Yishmael who speaks first, and says, Rabbi Elazar, what are you doing? You were already in a position, just stay in that position. I know what you’re doing. You’re moving so that people will think they should follow Beit Shammai. And I’m not going to let you just do that and take advantage of the fact that I’m already sitting here. I’m going to let you kasher Beit Shammai’s version because I’m here, right?

So I really love that version because it’s Rabbi Yishmael saying, I’m not the one who changed. You’re the one who changed, and don’t pretend that you weren’t trying to do something to take advantage of the fact that I was lying down and get people to think that everybody agrees that the law is Beit Shammai. Right? Like, that also happens. With

Chris: With signaling and counter signaling and counter counter signaling sometimes, right?

Elana: Correct! But I think, let’s actually get to the second part, where, as you’re saying, he says, it’s not that I’m ornery, it’s that I want people to know that the halakha is not fixed. Now, this is interesting, because the way I read this text I want people to know that the halakha doesn’t follow Beit Shammai. The way you read this text is, I want people to know that the halakha is not fixed. Tell me more about that choice of, I want people to know that the halakha is not fixed.

Chris: Well, I think the very word they use, v’yikba’u, right? He says, shema yir’u hatalmidim v’yikba’u halakha l’dorot, lest students see and the law become fixed eternally, and in fact, it’s still open. So I think that’s what pushed me in that direction.

Elana: Well, what’s interesting about what you’re suggesting, right? And by the way, the other versions say we don’t want them to establish it like Beit Shammai for generations. This one’s open, right? Not surprising, we chose the open one. But I think it’s interesting to consider that what you’re really asking here is, what are you trying to communicate to people? There’s one type of communication, which is by the way, the communication that Ra Kahana is looking for, for Rav, which is, give me the answer. Tell me what I’m supposed to do.

And there’s another kind of communication that you’re seeing through this, it’s open, and it hasn’t yet been established, as you’re saying, I actually want you to think about which position makes more sense, which position you’re going to follow. I don’t want you to just parrot me. It’s a little bit like, you know, you have things going around. Somebody actually just posted this yesterday, I saw, things going around to teach people how to be media critical, right? Don’t just believe what you see, but here are some things that should make you think or ask questions, right?

So it’s, we don’t want you to just parrot, because actually sometimes that parroting itself can lead to misperception and sometimes that parroting is just bad, you need to actually think for yourself. So this is like a real rebuttal to the Kahana story, in a certain sense, if you view it as we wanted to be left open.

Chris: Right. I think there’s a, there are different kinds of exemplars. You can, he is not modeling a particular position or opinion. He’s modeling an approach. He’s modeling an attitude that acknowledges difference, maybe even respects difference, doesn’t try to shut down difference, right, with one final answer. But again, models the importance of acknowledging difference and uncertainty, as opposed to modeling a position, a final answer.

Elana: Right, and you know that I, I instinctively,

Chris: We’re all about uncertainty.

Elana: No, I’m saying, but you know also that I instinctively like the other versions better, where he essentially says, I want to make sure that people know it’s not Beit Shammai. Right? I understand that’s not the same as saying, I want people, because in this,

Chris: I think they’re really close. I’m not sure I see a huge difference between them.

Elana: Okay. I’m going to give you an example. I’m going to give you an example. There was a recent assassination attempt on a presidential candidate in America, rachmana litzlan. What a crazy world we live in. And I was like, ah, do I post about it? I’m in Israel. I’m in Jerusalem. I’m busy. And I said to myself, I do not want people to think that I don’t consider this a grave endangerment of democracy and something that is completely forbidden by Jewish law and by law, right? So because I wanted people to, meaning I wanted to make a statement that the law is not like X, whoever’s making jokes, whoever’s making light, whoever’s suggesting well, right? Like my head went straight to Yigal Amir and Rabin. Straight there. Straight there. Right? And I think that that was very important.

Meaning, who cares about my stupid social media posts? But you know what? The people who I teach, where I actually do post other things, I want them to know, law is not like X. It is like this. I’m not looking for open texture there. I’m not looking for anybody to parrot me either, but I am looking to stand against something. And I think sometimes it’s really important to stand against something.

Chris: Absolutely, and I am sure that Rabbi Yishmael would feel exactly the same way as you on many important issues, right? This doesn’t happen to fall into that category from his perspective, and this is a category in which he thinks a plurality of practices is maybe not even not harmful, but a positive thing, right? I don’t think that he would think that plurality of practice around things like assassination is a positive thing and something we’d want to encourage, right? So contextually, but you’re absolutely right. I mean, if we shift the context, there are times in which this isn’t going to be the ideal.

Elana: Okay, so then this is what we’re really asking people to think about. We’re asking people to think about the question of, when do you actually want to you evoke or model a type of certainty, and when do you want to model a certain kind of openness where you want people to be thinking for themselves? Great, and you need to be able to do both at different times. And maybe if you’re always using one and not the other, there are serious dangers. There’s the danger of getting into the Rav Kahana/Rav situation. If you’re too dogmatic, too certain, and there’s the danger of not condemning things that need to be condemned, if you’re too open and too sort of letting everything be a matter of individual thought, even when you’re responsible.

Great, let’s move to the third. Right, now that we solved that problem.

Chris: Yeah, thank goodness.

Elana: Let’s move to the third, because the third is also bringing us in a slightly different direction, right? if our first was sort of examples where privacy is being undermined and parroting is the order of the day, sort of influencer culture, we might call it, like proto-influencer culture. And our second is an ability to express to people, sometimes anti, but in this case, likely, an open texture and purposely expressing that. And that doesn’t make you wishy washy. It makes you someone who recognizes that there’s an ecosystem out there, that people should be participating in.

I think that our third is sort of a way of, not just a principle of openness, but a way of dealing with people and with the world. This is, I guess, really a pushback on the idea that, you know, in an educational medium, it’s very important to see what’s going on in the context. You would not necessarily say, oh, let me see how leadership is exemplified in the case of lying down for Shema. But to be honest, I think that in mundane acts, you actually do find those kinds of examples.

I mean, how many things have I learned from my teachers based on what they’re doing when they think no one’s watching or when they’re not sitting up here? Right? That’s so much, to an extent, more important. Right?

So, our last piece is the Mishna in Niddah. Mishnah in Niddah, chapter 8, Mishnah 3, is talking about a situation where a woman shows up to Rabbi Akiva, and she says that she’s seen a menstrual stain. Now a menstrual stain, again, not sure if you thought that at 11:43, on a, whatever day today is, you would have heard this here, but that’s what you’re hearing here. Welcome to TEXTing, okay?

So, a woman walks up to Rabbi Akiva and tells him, excuse me, that she has seen a menstrual stain. Now, in Halakha, a menstrual stain, depending on, you know, how, I’ll say it like this. In Halakha, a menstrual stain is a need to issue from a rabbinic perspective and not from a biblical perspective. And as such, it has many, many leniencies. Like, shocking leniencies. And one of the leniencies that is going to come to bear here is if somebody thinks that it may not actually be menstrual blood, it actually may be some sort of wound, right? Some sort of cut, some sort of infection, something that isn’t actually uterine menstrual blood.

And so this woman comes to Rabbi Akiva, maaseh isha achat shebat lifnei Rabbi Akiva, amra lo and she said to him, ra’iti keta, I saw a stain. So the idea is, presumably, he’s supposed to say to her, okay, how big is it? What either material or body part? What color is it? Right? Like all the sort of like checkbox, if you’re thinking, right, the way that the Rabbinic literature deals with these things is very clinically, right? It’s almost like a doctor’s office. That’s the feeling you get. So it’s like, okay, so tell me, we’re gonna check the things and ‘m gonna tell you do you have this or do you have that, right? So are you tehora? Are you still ritually not…? What’s a better word?

Chris: Pure.

Elana: No, I don’t like that word.

Chris: Clean. I like clean, no, clean is like hygiene, and it’s not about hygiene. I like pure, but that’s alright. Pick another word.

Elana: No, not clean. But I don’t love pure either. I don’t know.

Chris: Fit? I don’t know, fit is really kosher.

Elana: Okay, ritually pure. I’ll do that. Ritually pure. Ritually pure. Right? You’re ritually pure, or no, you’re tameiah, you are ritually impure. So look at what happens. She says, I see a stain. Amar lah, he says to her, shema makah haita bich. Maybe you had a wound. Right? He doesn’t just say, tell me, what is it? How big? How small? He says, not the checklist. He says, let’s talk about this. Maybe you had a wound. Amra lo, hein, v’chayta. She says, yeah, yeah, I did, but it’s healed. So it’s definitely not that. Amar la, he says to her, shema yechola lehigala velehotzi dam, maybe actually it’s a wound that could be opened, reopened, and maybe blood could come out of it, right? Maybe. Perhaps. Amrah lo hein, she says to him, yeah, that’s possible, right? Right? Maybe. Vetehirah Rabbi, Akiva says, doesn’t sound like you’re a niddah. Sounds like you, doesn’t sound like you’re a niddah.

It’s kind of an interesting, like she sort of came probably thinking she was, right? And she left saying, I guess I’m not, right? And so it turns out, Rabia Akiva then turns around and sees that his students are watching this. He looks at his students and he sees they’re like, you know, looking at each other, like what did he just do? I mean, obviously he should have done the checkbox and said, was it this? Where’d you see it? What’s the color? How big, right? Like, what is he doing?

And I love that he notices that they’re looking at each other and says, teachable moment. He says to them, meh davar kashe b’eineichem, what’s so difficult about this in your eyes? Shelo amar hachachamim hadavar lehachmir elah lehakel. The purpose of the impurity, the ritual impurity of stains is actually not supposed to be trying to be strict. It’s actually supposed to be the more lenient version. So I’m trying to find that for this person, right?

Sheneemar, and then he cites a verse, which, I think it’s an interesting verse that he cites, because the verse that he cites is “Veisha ki tihiyeh zavach dam yihiye zova bevasara.” Leviticus 15, “When a woman is flowing and there’s blood flowing in her flesh,” and then the answer is “dam velo ketem,” it’s blood but not a stain, which is very strange because it’s actually implying that staining would not be ritually impure, which is not necessary, that’s not the way that halakha ends up going, and it’s also not the way he seems to talk to her. He seems to talk to her as like, if we figure out that this stain is ritually impure, it’s ritually impure. But in this case, it’s not. It’s a very strange verse that he quotes. I sort of read it as, well, to be honest, this whole, this whole arena is pretty,

Chris: It’s rabbinic. It’s rabbinic. It’s not biblical. He’s reading it out of the biblical verse and putting it into the rabbinic category and saying, therefore, we can be lenient because in cases of doubt, if it’s biblical, we are stringent, but if it’s rabbinic, we’re lenient.

Elana: Correct. Yeah, so let’s talk about this kind of leadership. And I know, we have to say, we have to say, obviously, if we were doing a feminist reading of this work, it would be a very different kind of conversation. One of the things that Chris and I, you know what, I won’t speak for you. One of the things that I do, is I know that I can figure out which hat I am putting on at which times. Some people hate that about the way that I teach. For me, it’s the only way that I know how, right? I need to know what is my orientation, so I apologize if it offends anybody that we’re not doing that piece of it, because I think it does matter a lot, but in this moment because I’m focused on that aspect of it, that’s why I’m going there. But I don’t speak for you.

Chris: No, you do speak for me, and there are lots of questions we can ask of any text.

Elana: Did everybody hear that? She said I speak for her.

Chris: I did. She speaks for me.

Elana: Okay, great. Amazing. Sign it. Sign seal deliver to me. Amazing.

Chris: There are lots of questions we could ask of any text. It’s hard to ask all of them at the same time. Right now we’re asking certain ones, but we could sit down and have a really great conversation that asks a different set of questions and reveals a different set of ideas. So I think that’s fine.

But you know, what I love about this story is the way it unfolds. So when it starts, we think that we’re just witnessing a dialogue between Rabbi Akiva and a woman. That’s all. And the important thing is that it is a situation of doubt, right? The status of this stain that the woman sees is a question of doubt. And it’s one that, about which we cannot get certainty, right? Its status is simply something that can’t be determined as a matter of fact. And so, when we are in situations of doubt, where we can’t determine the legal status of something as a matter of fact, then we have to invoke a presumption, like a legal presumption.

And you might think that in a case of something like ritual impurity, you might want to be stringent. And we know that there were whole communities of Jews, some who lived off in the desert, who decided unlike these texts, that when it came to ritual impurity there was no room for leniency and that you were as stringent as absolutely possible. And they would have ruled very differently in this kind of case.

So, the students evidently too think that that would be the right way to go, right? In the case of doubt, that we ought to be going with stringency here. That’s, so after this little interesting exchange where we see some serious witness leading on the part of Rabbi Akiva, right, to extract from her, a certain, you know, yes, I suppose it’s possible I had a scab that came off in its blood, great, that’s enough for me. So after we see this witness leading, then the camera pulls back and we realize that there are students there and they’ve been watching this. I kind of feel like he knows they’re there, right?

It’s not, so then he turns to see what’s their reaction, which means I think he knows it’s a performance and he sees them all looking at each other: Why was he so lenient? We’re talking about menstrual impurity. This is a serious thing. What if her husband has intercourse with her? That’s like hugely problematic, right? So they’re concerned about that. Their instinct is that this is something you would want to be stringent about.

And then, as you say, teachable moment. He asks from, you know, why is this so astonishing? And he already knows the answer. He doesn’t need to hear it from them, because he supplies, and I tend to think that we’re actually seeing the moment in which this principle is being created. This principle, he says, let me cite this verse for you, it talks about the impurity of a blood flow in her body. And a stain is not a blood flow anymore. It’s outside her body. It is no longer flowing. And so the biblical laws cover blood flow. And it’s really a siyag l’Torah, sort of a fence. It’s a kind of rabbinic that we see stains as impure.

So when I look at what he’s doing here, he’s doing three things. First of all, he’s applying the law. Somebody comes to him and asks, what is the law in my case? So he’s applying the law. He’s also teaching his students about interpreting biblical text. So he’s interpreting the law, and he’s doing it, I think, in an innovative way, which means he’s making the law. All three things in one moment. He’s applying, he’s interpreting, he’s making.

And so really what he’s modeling, again, is not so much a specific position. It’s not so much just to teach that the laws of bloodstains are rabbinic and we’re lenient. That’s there too. But I think it’s something much more, right? He’s teaching them a certain kind of practical reasoning. How to handle situations in life that present themselves to you and to do so with response to the person’s situation, to the tradition, to the text, to our own resourcefulness and independent creative thinking. So he’s really modeling a whole approach.

You know, they say you can feed a man, if somebody’s hungry, what’s the saying? You can feed, you give him a fish, you feed him for a day, teach him to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. So that’s what we’re doing here. Something like that with fish going on here. I think it’s a fishy story, right? So, it’s the same, same kind of idea. Yes, they saw him carry out this, or he could have just walked in and said, no, pure, impure, period. But he didn’t. He went through this process fully aware that it’s a room full of students, I think.

Elana: Yeah. Well, you know what’s so interesting? If you look in the Mishna of before, this is actually just the bottom line law. Like, if someone has a wound, even if it’s healed, if it can open up again, If they see a stain, we assume. But how different does it feel when you hear a story and a discussion, and it almost makes me think, you know, the students, are they like theoretically aware, yeah, yeah, yeah, in theory we say this, but in practice, like, once you come to the rabbi and ask a question, aren’t you expecting the rabbi to be, right, and they’re sort of like, oh, I guess that’s not necessarily just the purpose of a rabbi. And the second thing that’s interesting is that in the earlier Mishnah, it’s for a person herself. You don’t have to go anywhere and ask anybody anything.

Chris: That’s right, she herself can.

Elana: It’s a woman herself when she sees this, right? So there’s also a question of who does he empower besides for his students? He empowers a lot of people who don’t have to now come and ask.

Chris: See, we got to a feminist point after all.

Elana: You know what, it’s hard not to. Gotta be honest, hard not to. But I will say one of the things that I really like about this text and thinking about it right now is being dialogical, being creative, not being necessarily, predictable, and not in a, not in an erratic way, but in a way that you can then source and essentially say, let me explain to you why I’m not being dogmatic here, because I have this principle that I’m working with, and I’m actually trying to work with, and I find that in a moment like this, where everything is so much about what’s your dogma and what do you hold to. The idea of being able to have a conversation, try to work things out in a way that might make other people kind of look askance at you, I think that’s happening a lot. It’s a very suspect kind of engagement that somebody would have and say, well let’s see if we can figure this out rather than hey, does it check my boxes? Does it check my boxes? If so, yes, if not, no, right, right.

Chris: I think you’re right. It’s a process, but it’s a principled process, right? It’s not just in anything goes kinds of process a kind of process. It’s one that’s principled and I think that’s the difference between a performance, we often dismiss certain behaviors as, oh, that’s purely performative. You know, that person’s just being performative, virtue signaling, right? There’s nothing, nothing really behind it. They’re just acting in a particular way because they want to score points, or win approval, or get likes on is Facebook the one to get likes? Social media?

Elana: Just say social media.

Chris: I don’t do any social media. Not at all. So I don’t even know, likes, from,

Elana: That’s fine. You’re a very healthy person.

Chris: Anyway, so. But, right? Virtue signaling is this idea of doing things to win approval and to get likes on social media or score some other benefit. And that can often be quite unprincipled, it’s just, which group do I want to belong to, where do I want to be located on this field of players, and what’s safest, and that, of course, is a problem, but I don’t think that’s what we’ve seen in these last two stories, I think we have, you know, both Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Akiva, who are reaching for something that is principled. Rabbi Yishmael, for sure, he does inconvenience himself in some way in order to either show his commitment to Beit Hillel or his commitment to openness, whatever we want to understand it as being, but he’s inconveniencing himself some way to sort of craft that message, not to win points for himself, but to do something that is principled.

And I think that’s also the case with Rabbi Akiva, right? He’s definitely trying to model something which empowers other people, gives them certain sorts of resources to engage in a process of practical thinking that will meet the needs of the community and, as you say, the woman herself, because the previous mishnah does make it clear, if a woman sees, then it is not, she doesn’t have to even consult with anybody if she sees these kinds of scenes and these kinds of situations.

Elana: So we’re moving from parroting, to openness, to giving people the tools to figure out what they’re supposed to do in the openness.

Chris: And those are the true exemplars. Not just the people we, I want to be like them.

Elana: Right. And I’m not going to say that that’s something that we, that we always reach that final stage or even that we always should reach that final stage. But I do think that there’s something to thinking in this moment about which of these we want to be doing and when we want to be doing it. And to be honest, I think as people who both have others whom we educate and others to whom, who we look up to, right, we may be guilty of this ourselves as the observer sometimes and as the observed.

Chris: Yeah, we all occupy those, all those positions, right? At different times of the day. Even as a parent, you know.

Elana: Especially as a parent.

Chris: And still a child of our own parents, we’re always occupying these multiple roles at different times.

Elana: Well, one of the things that’s incredible about our podcast today is not that it’s double the length. So anybody who chooses to listen to the podcast, it’s usually 30 minutes. But we have an incredible number of people sitting in this room who also sometimes find themselves in the Rabbi Yishmael position and sometimes find themselves in the Rabbi Akiva position.

As I mentioned before we started the recording, one of the things that I think is most difficult, is, I never get to hear what other people think, besides for the person I’m talking to. So I’m curious, people in this crowd who are sitting here with us. What resonates? What do you relate to? What questions does this bring up for you? And let’s open it up.

Elyssa: Hi, I’m Elyssa Moss Rabinowitz, I’m thinking about the two relevant things that came up for me from these two texts. So, the first is, in the Rav story, when we say there are certain things that we’re not, prices we’re not willing to pay in order to learn because it desensitizes us, to me that immediately gave me an association of how we choose to watch or not watch the horrors from October 7th. And are we willing, what’s the price we’re willing to pay in order to have that learning of what happened? But what does it do to our humanity to see those things?

And the second, which is the price in the other direction, is in the last story, with Rebbe Akiva. Now that we know that there’s the whole, all the students watching, this woman is sort of paying a price of her privacy by being an exemplar or a learning, teachable moment for Rabbi Akiva’s students, which reminds me also of like what we do in medical rounds or things like with, for doctors, you know, when they need to, we’re willing to expose someone’s privacy for the learning of others. So I guess, in both cases, like, where do we put the line?

Chris: Yeah. The sort of my, the desensitization moment. Yeah, that’s something that I, you know, I mentioned it because it is something that I feel strongly about. I will tell you that to this day, I have not watched footage of 9/11. I have not seen the planes crash into the Twin Towers. I can’t. The images in my head are worse than anything I could see.

So that’s why I always like to listen to baseball on the radio. The pictures are so much better. Have you ever heard that? Yeah, that’s, it’s the same way, right? Sometimes what your mind can do, you know, so, you know, we all have to know our limits, we all have to know what we can do, what we can tolerate. Some people, seeing certain things sensitizes them, right? I don’t want to be prescriptive about that. We’re all really different. Some people need to be shown certain things because they just can’t imagine the most terrible things that can happen. I’m blessed with a pretty active imagination. I feel like I can.

So I do think that’s an important point. I think it is interesting to think about the woman in this case. I tell myself, well, she approaches with, it wasn’t somebody went to her and said, you have a stain, you must treat it this way. But she approached with a question because it concerned her and received this particular answer, which seemed to be a kind answer. So that bothers me a little bit less there, but you’re right, there is something a little odd about the fact that she becomes then, like, you know, the medical students looking at someone, none of us loves that feeling when there’s 12 medical students around the foot of your bed. Yeah, that’s great.

Elana: All right, why don’t we take one more?

Josh: Josh Winston, thank you so much. In particular, the Brachot 11a text. It raised for me this issue of, you know, we see oftentimes in social media, right, we, we’re just getting very small snapshots, right, of a person’s life. And also I think anytime we’re out in public too, we’re just getting, maybe it’s a little bit wider of a lens, but it’s still a small snapshot, and that we often don’t take the time to ask what’s going on, why are you choosing to sit or stand for the Shema, and oftentimes, if we are willing, in today’s society, in at least American society, to ask, it often is interpreted as a judgment of the action of the person. And I think that it complicates the narrative that’s being presented.

Chris: Yeah, this is such an interesting point about, and this is one of the things I mentioned about Rabbi Yishmael needing to accompany his action with some explanation because of those different perceptions. Rabbi Elazar Ben Azaria draws his conclusions, which really wasn’t necessarily the point that he was trying to make, which doesn’t make Rabbi Elazar’s, you know, interpretation wrong, it’s just not the message that Rabbi Yishmael was trying to do. And so we don’t know. We often don’t know the circumstances or the backgrounds. So often the very same action can mean very different things, depending on the context and the background. And we’re very quick to label and say, you did that because. We’re very quick to narrate the reasons that people do things. I would only be able to do what you did if I were thinking or feeling X and that would be terrible so you must be thinking and feeling those things and I can now judge you.

We need to slow down and listen. Allow people to narrate their own actions and behaviors before we really begin to, you know, engage with them critically or evaluate them in any kind of way.

Elana: So it’s really interesting. A few years back, I wrote something on social media. It’s always social media. You’re so smart. It’s always social media.

Chris: That’s why I don’t do it.

Elana: So I wrote something on social media that was about Jewish and democratic Israel, and there was a terrible sad thing that happened that day that was essentially to uphold Israeli democracy, but it was very, very painful. So somebody wrote, oh, crocodile tears. And I was like, what? Like, we don’t even know each other. So we switched to Messenger, which of course is much better. I mean, the only thing, look, the only thing that’s better about it is that it’s not, it’s not in the public eye in the same way, right? It’s still not the best, it’s still not the face to face, although sometimes when you’re angry, face to face is actually not the best move, but it’s less in the public eye, right? So we’re less performative, we’re all less performative.

And we kept going back and forth, and he just kept not being able to figure out how to say something in a way that didn’t already assume things and wasn’t already mean. So I said, all right, I need you to try again, and then I’m happy to continue the conversation. It took about 11 times until he was able to say, so can you explain your perspective on X, right? But I actually, I want to flip the script also, because I think sometimes we’re so close to like, we’re right up here worrying about who’s threatening us and who disapproves or disagrees or is going to criticize us, that even when somebody asks a totally legitimate question, a totally innocuous question, tell me more, you’re like, what do you mean tell you more? It’s obvious. Everybody knows. This is so clear. Why are you questioning what I think, right?

So I, I think that is really important. To be aware of our own interpretation of what we’re hearing. Not when somebody says crocodile tears, but when somebody just asks you a question, right, and I think that’s important.

The other thing that I wanted to say is, you know, you’re sensitizing me, Elyssa, to a lot of things, but you’re also sensitizing me to the fact that not only do we not have the perspective of Rav’s wife in that first story, we don’t actually have the perspective of what it did to Rav Kahana to be there. Because from now on, he can picture his teacher in the bedroom. Like, that is not healthy, that is not good, that is the stuff of sitting on a psychologist’s couch. And I do think it’s really worth asking, like, when we’re saying to ourselves, how much are we revealing? How much are we oversharing? There’s also a question of what is that going to do to the listeners who actually look to you as, sometimes they look to you as they want you to just be strong, right? So you can’t admit vulnerability. I don’t think that’s particularly healthy, but sometimes, and there are times when that’s actually needed, right? Or they don’t want to think about your personal life. That’s really not what they’re looking for from you, right?

And to an extent, I think being somebody who’s aware of being watched is a manifestation of vulnerability. Agreeing to be public to an extent. Where are the limits of that? Sometimes the limits of that are even things you would want to overshare. And you shouldn’t overshare. Because that’s not what they need from you, right?

So, I appreciate the sensitization, and in terms of the October 7th footage, I haven’t watched it. And I also, because I’m living in Israel this coming year, God willing, I haven’t gone down to the South. Because I am afraid, it’s not just dehumanization. I am afraid that before I go to sleep at night and when I wake up in the morning, that’s what I’m gonna think living here is, right? So there are a lot of different ways that it could permeate someone’s soul and psyche.

Other comments or questions?

Linda: Hi, Linda Henry Goodman. If I could just speak for a second to the October 7th. I’m sure a number of us in here have seen Sheryl Sandberg’s documentary.

Elana: Silent before screams? Screaming?

Linda: Yeah. And there was one clip of a volunteer with ZAKA, a rather extended piece of the interview with him. And he told her that in general the practice of, I mean, the mandate for the ZAKA folks is not to take pictures. Do not take pictures of what we see all the time. And the mandate, dafka, when they went down there, was you must take pictures, you must record this. And when I really forced myself to watch the whole film, it’s impossible for so many of us to actually conceive that members of the human race, I guess, perpetrated these acts on other members of the human race, that we must be forced to watch it at least once, so that we believe that it actually happened.

Elana: Yeah, and I, and I appreciate that intervention. And at some point I will, but I can’t yet. And I think that’s honest, you know? Meaning, I’ve seen plenty of, lehavdil, I’ve seen plenty of Holocaust footage. I’m not sure I could have watched it in 1945. Right, like that’s, that’s real.

Okay, other thoughts?

Jessica: Hi, Jessica Lott. I’ll just share the, like, Rav Kahana and Rav text is of course like one of the top five texts that campus rabbis teach to their students because it’s about sex, but what I think is really interesting, like one of the things that I’ve learned from my students that they brought up, especially a group of students brought up to me this year in their read was that sometimes, for the sake of privacy or propriety, we have a tendency to fear talking about things like bathrooms and sex, and that when we don’t talk about them in intentional, explicit ways, right, this is the like, Torah hi, if we don’t make space for that, then people will seek information in inappropriate wats.

And this, for them, they were like, this is why when you don’t have sex education, people learn sex from porn, and that they’re going to seek the information, and I sort of saw this as a call to say, and they taught me to see this text as a call to say to the rabbis, don’t, for the sake of your own, like, I’m afraid of the consequences for my public image, if I talk to my students about sex, you should actually say, I need to like, embrace the way in which this is Torah, and teach it in a way that doesn’t violate my privacy, but it invites the conversation so they don’t seek the information inappropriately.

Elana: Yeah, it’s so interesting, is it okay if I jump in first? One of the things that I think about as the core of education is empathy, right? Can you empathize with the people you’re supposed to be educating? And if you can, that’s actually going to lead you to think about, how do they need to learn something? What do they need to learn? And what am I doing wrong if I put my image above what they need, right? That’s a huge mistake, right? Like half the time when I don’t want to say something controversial, I look out at the audience, and I see the person for whom I have to say it, and I have to be my fully honest self, and that’s what makes me say it. Right? Because empathy, that’s what it’s about, so I totally agree.

I would add, Louis, what I would add to your point is I would say that sometimes I think we’re, also, it’s not just parroting or correcting, it’s also teaching people how to think, or teaching people how to be courageous, I think is also really important. How many times have you seen someone be courageous, whether it’s because they’re being dialogical or they’re being creative, and you said, you know, if they can do that, I can do that too, right? At some point, probably in our training in life, we’ve all seen someone do something like that, and the walls didn’t cave in, and the heavens didn’t open and strike them down, and they still went on to have a good career, except for Arthur Hertzberg’s father, who apparently was fired 24 hours after he gave a particular sermon. Other than that, I’m glad we have that on record.

What did you want to say?

Chris: Huh. Interesting. 100%. I agree with you. I mean, I think that’s really the whole point, and that’s the contrast between the different stories, right? It is perfectly, there is a Torah centered way to approach all of these topics. The way he did it at the end was not, and perhaps it indicates that he felt that he had to go and do it this way. I think that’s really a wonderful point. And I think that part of the parody that’s going on there is that Torah is not an excuse, though, to be able to violate those boundaries, right? So, yes, Torah hi, but it’s still not okay.

So we might think that if we declare something to be Torah, then, you know, then anything I do to acquire it is fine. And this is sort of drawing attention to the fact that that may not be so. Part of Torah, too, is, you know, empathy, respect, etc. Right? So I think that all goes in there, but I love that point. I think that’s right.

And yeah, as for the the other point, on the mutuality of watching, I think that’s so important this idea, you know, ra’ah, he sees that the Talmidim are, you know, mistaklim zeh bezeh, that they are watched. So there’s a lot of watching going on. There is this mutuality of watching. Because he’s trying to read them. So some of the other comments we’ve had have been about how people jump to conclusions, assume that people are saying or, or speaking in a certain way for certain reasons. But here they’re looking, there’s a lot of looking going on and trying to assess what’s going on. And he looks and he notes that they’re astonished. And he says, I see you think this is, there’s something kasheh about this, there’s something difficult, so let me explain. So he’s trying to be sympathetic to their position, their posture, and then offer an explanation, knowing that they’ve also been watching him.

But I think that if I were to, I’m not so sure that I see it as a contrast between imitating. I think there is that, but I think there’s also, within imitating, I think one of the things we’re trying to suggest is that there are two different ways to think about imitation or modeling, and one is that we look to exemplars as people who have the truth and who have the answers and who just need to give them to us, or to understand exemplars as people who are modeling a way of being, a way of being in the world that is thoughtful and resourceful and creative and able to rise to new situations and new occasions and situations of doubt where we don’t have a road map. We need to know how to handle those situations. I think that’s what we’re seeing in these texts.

Elana: I think so too. I would say in the name of empathy, because I’m looking around this room, I think it’s time to close.

Chris: Yeah, never stand between a group and their lunch.

Elana: Thanks for listening to our show. And special thanks to my chavruta this week, Christine Hayes, and to our live audience at RTS.

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

You can now sponsor an episode of our show. Follow the link in the shownotes, 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 on this episode please write to us at [email protected]. And I always write back.

For more ideas from the Shalom Hartman Institute 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.