The Oral Talmud

• Episode 26: Why We Show Our Work

  “And since they've shown us their work, we're able to say, ‘I'm not following the substantive rule in this case! I'm following the process rule – which says: How do I think about this new case?” - Dan LibensonWelcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. This episode is dedicated to the memory and legacies of Ruth Bader Ginsberg & Breonna Taylor.Dan & Benay pick up where we left off last week, in Nitza’s Attic, and the crucial decision that we should violate *almost* any Torah commandment to save a life or avoid being killed ourselves. This week we begin to explore the exceptions to this rule - but even more so, how those exceptions were narrowed, and the reason for showing the rationale the Talmud builds for narrowing these exceptions. We’ll continue the conversation next week!What was Talmudic about Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s life and work? How can Talmud’s process help us understand systemic contexts that led to the unjust death of Breonna Taylor at police hands. How do uncover and generalize or re-apply Talmud values to today’s subjects which Talmud does not discuss word-for-word? What is the influential relationship between foundational laws like Torah and Constitution, Custom (minhag), and svara, our moral intuition? When we re-read Torah, how do we learn to recognize which teachings about the Torah we’ve forgotten are not in the original text? What gifts was the stamma (the editor of the Talmud) giving us in showing us the reasoning behind shifting laws and narrowing exceptions?This week’s text: “Nitza’s Attic - The Exceptions” (Sanhedrin 74a - Part 2)Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

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• Episode 25: Nitza’s Attic

  “When the Rabbis start saying: Well, when does this line in the Torah apply? And when doesn't apply? – You forget that their first radical move was to imply: This doesn't always apply. That's enormous. It's that shift that makes anything possible.” - Benay LappeWelcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. So far, Dan & Benay have been exploring when the sages overturned Torah on a case-by-case basis, spending the last two weeks on pikuach nefesh and violating Shabbat to save a life. Now we move from a tricky question asked along the road, into a Judaism-defining vote held in a tiny attic: Is there any mitzvah we should allow ourselves to be killed over before transgressing it? How does tradition building work? How do we construct narratives about how tradition changes? How do we groove new traditions so that 2000 years from now people think of our innovations like we think of ya’avor v’al yay’ha’rayg (transgressing rather than dying)? Why is this monumental moment happening in an attic?Do we need to jettison existing traditions in order to make room for new, life-saving traditions? When are tzitzit, tefillin, and kippot serving the right purposes?This episode was recorded around Rosh Hashana 2020, when there were conflicts between the tradition of coming together in-person to celebrate the High Holy Days, and not gathering in large groups, which was unfamiliar to many people, but would increase the disabling and deadly spread of COVID.This week’s text: “Nitza’s Attic” (Sanhedrin 74a - Part 1)Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

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• Episode 24: Sacred Disobedience

  “Jewish law works like any legal system that survives for a long period of time – and it does so by the same mechanisms. And those mechanisms are the human insight that is brought to bear to modify, qualify, limit, and expand the law as one receives it.” - Benay LappeWelcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. Last week, Dan & Benay began to learn how the Talmud questions and defends the principle of Pikuach Nefesh, the teaching that we can and should break Shabbat and, therefore, (almost) any commandment in order to save a life. This conversation does start by getting new listeners caught up, and the previous episode is available for going deeper. This week, we learn the final proof, which, like many episodes, inspires many connections to American law; this time we get into more of the meta on why we make these connections...As the rabbis start to put together a new system, what are some of the values that they put at the center of that system? How do they make the transition from a previous system which may not have had those radical values to one that now does? How do they kind of maintain a sense of continuity through all that change? How can we learn from their techniques as we work to insert back into the tradition the missing innovations and values that are just as radical shifts to the tradition we’ve received as breaking Shabbat to save a life was for the Rabbis? How do we extend their work to save the lives of queer people too? How do we navigate and counter slippery slope arguments?  Where do we find svara in the American legal system? Why don’t we learn these techniques for change? Is it by design, fear, incompetence? What would it be like to teach the history and role of fixing the tradition? And finally, why does the Talmud give all these proofs and make the absurd claim that the final proof is one that can’t be refuted?This week’s text: “Pikuach Nefesh” (Yoma 83a & 85a/b)Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

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• Episode 23: Life Comes First

  “How do you take what you have and analogize, and tie some new radical thing that you don't have but you want to insert into the tradition? This entire passage is part of the instruction manual! This is some new twist of creativity, a twist of imagination.”  - Benay LappeWelcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. Benay & Dan turn to another essential Talmud text, the origins of Pikuach Nefesh, the teaching that we can and should break (almost) any commandment in order to save a life. What we find is that while the Mishnah has no qualms about giving clear examples of life-saving actions we can take on Shabbat, the Gemara wants some textual support for violating what is so clearly written in Torah. In this discussion we get into all of the explanations except for the final one, the one that tradition ends up hanging this law on.  What values can we recognize in the Rabbis? Which of them do we want to maintain in the next version of Judaism? When do we want to emulate the ways in which the sages sold the people on radical new ideas? When the Talmud quotes seven different sages giving seven different answers for a halakhic question, what’s going on there? One-upsmanship? Intentional absurdism? A meta teaching about how to develop new foundations for tradition? How do we see these arguments playing out in court cases in our own time? Speaking from 2020, Dan & Benay end up devastatingly prophetic in their discussion of the fragile foundations of Roe v. Wade and abortion laws… The discussion continues next week!This week’s text: “Pikuach Nefesh” (Yoma 83a & 85a/b)Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

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• Episode 22 - Hillel & Shammai: Beyond Elu v’Elu

  “Ultimately the only way that you actually take these lessons into your soul is through trying to implement it in your actual life. And often that's gonna be failure!“ - Dan LibensonWelcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. Dan & Benay return to the daf after a series of interviews, picking up where we left off in Episode 19, exploring where the editors of the Talmud went next after the famous “Eilu v’Eilu” moment between the Schools of Shammai and Hillel. While they were both decreed to be “Words of the Living God” (or some arrangement of those words), the halakha was said to be decided according to Beit Hillel because they taught the teachings of Beit Shammai before their own. But the very next line in the Talmud - which is rarely ever read - seems to undercut the entire message of this practice! Were we making too big a deal about Beit Hillel? Did the editor of this part of the Talmud misunderstand something? Are they intentionally undermining the first narrative? What do we do when we encounter texts that appear to reverse the radical potential we had seen in them before? And what is going on when Talmud brings in aphorism and folk sayings? Are they really able to help us recognize when we’re messing up? How can we offer and receive the loving rebuke of tokhecha? This week’s text: “Hillel & Shammai: After Elu v’Elu” (Eruvin 13b)Find an edited transcript and full show notes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

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