Welcome to Judaism, Demystified, a podcast for the perplexed.
We are joined once again by Professor Jeffrey Rubenstein.
Professor Rubenstein is doing a three-part series on Alicia
Benabuya, otherwise known as Achar, on this podcast.
The previous episode, Episode 80, was the first part of this
series. It was the stories of Alicia
Benabuya in the Tosefta. In this episode we're going to
be discussing Alicia Benabuya in the Shami tradition.
So without further ado, Professor Rubenstein, thank you
for joining the Judaism Demystified podcast.
So this is Part 2 of the series on Alicia Benavuya with
Professor Jeffrey Rubenstein. Professor, Take it Away.
OK, thanks. So in in this Part 2 we're
continuing the exploration of the figure of Alicia Benavuya in
the rabbinic sources here in the Urushami.
Last time we part one, we looked at the first in the original
source of Alicia Benavuya's life, which is a very cryptic
passage in the Tosefta. It was had to do with mysticism
and this form of early mysticism.
Heikhalo der Merkava mysticism and the Tosefta itself was very
hard to understand, but it seemed even more that the the
Tosefta wasn't understood by the rabbis in the times of the
Urshami or the Bavli. They took it in slightly
different directions and in a very interesting way they
interpreted the Tosefta to generate events in the life of
Alicia Benavuya. So this is, this kind of thing
is much more common in Midrash, where verses in the Torah are
elaborated on, or the stories of the Torah are interpreted to
generate more stories about the biblical characters.
It's very rare in rabbinic sources, but that seems to be
what happened now that gave part of the stories in the Urushami
and in the Boboli two different stories about Alician Venezuela.
And we're going to continue now with the rest of the story in
the Urushami, which I'm actually going to argue is a different
story. They're really two different
stories in the Urushami, although sometimes they're
conflated. So I'm going to get the text up
here and we'll follow along with this text.
Here we go. OK, so this, this is the text in
your Xiaomi in in English. And just to give us a brief
overview, it's it's it really divides itself into five parts.
You can see part A, this is going to be Part B, CD and E and
one thing we should appreciate is that this is this story in
the Urshami is I think the most highly developed rabbinic story
in all of the Urshami. It's among the longest, and I
think it's the most sophisticated from a literary
point of view, from a narrative art point of view.
Now why that is I'm not sure, other than the fact that the
Rabbis were apparently very interested in the story and
worked over it and worked over it such that it became a real
gem. We don't really have statistics
on the length of stories in either the Babli V or Xiaomi.
No one's looked at that yet. It's a good topic if anybody
wants to, to go into it. But again by my judgement I
think this is is probably the longest or certainly among the
top few stories in terms of length in the Urushami and
really kind of the heights of rabbinic storytelling.
So. So to get right into it Part A
is actually what I call here. Part A is actually what we
looked at last time. That is, this is the Urushami
interpretation of the Tosefta. You can see right at the top
here, it says Akhar gazed and cut the shoots, which is a
citation from the Tosefta. And then you have what we we
dealt with last time, the Yurashami interpreting the
Tosefta to generate this one story about Alicia and a very,
very negative story. In this story, he kills young
students of Torah, and he also advises persecutors how to force
Jews to violate the Sabbath. So he's construed in a very,
very negative way. And I emphasize this because
we'll see in this story, we'll look at now the continuation of
the Yurashami. He's not portrayed in quite as
negative a way and I think this is one of the indications that
we really have two separate stories, even though biographers
who take these stories as biographically accurate
traditions or more or less accurate traditions tend to
conflate them. You know, they say they see them
as two sources about the real life of Alicia, Benabuja and
acid Driven Leaf. And other people who kind of
take these sources more historically or biographically
are forced to put these together in a very awkward way.
But if we understand that these are not biographical traditions,
these are rabbinic didactic fictions.
These are meant to teach lessons.
And you know, really they might have a historical kernel, that
they're not biography in our sense of the term.
We can understand that different people told different stories
about Alicia in different ways, and they don't necessarily go
back to any historical persona. And anyway, what we saw about
Part A was that it's not historical, it's an
interpretation of Sosefta. So that that should totally free
us from this problem. But you can see the end of Part
A actually concludes right here with the last part of the
Tosefta. Rabbi Akiba entered in peace and
went down in peace about him. Scripture says, draw me after
you. So the Yerushalmes makes very
clear that this source is over. You know, it goes on to the next
section of the Tosefta, the quotation about Rebbe Akiba.
And that's all Tosefta, you know, it's not a continuous
narrative before we get to Part B.
So I probably shouldn't have even called this Part B except
that I was dealing with this whole text.
This should be, you know, up above.
I should have called it one, and then I should have called this
Section 2. But that's how I did it.
So that's how I have it here. But the point is that we had one
totally separate story, and now we're getting into a different
story that the Urshami tells. Far more interesting one about
Alisha Benabuya. Now, the source of this story is
unclear. The source of that first story
was the Tosefta. The source of this, the source
of this story, we just don't know.
So that is a bit of an enigma. You know, apparently they had
other traditions about him and we just can't trace the those
back past the Urushami. So we'll look at this story and
we'll just try to understand it on its own terms.
That is, what is the story that Yurashami's telling and what are
they trying to accomplish by telling this story Now, just to
give you my thesis or just so we sort of have an overview before
we work through the whole story. What I think is going on in this
story is that Yurashami is actually dealing with a
theological problem that troubled the rabbi, so that they
were interested in it. And that theological problem or
sort of series of theological questions issues was is the
merit that you earned from the study of Torah absolute or can
it be lost? Can it be counteracted?
That is, if you sin, do you lose your merits for study Torah?
I mean in general we think of on Yom Kippur, you do good deeds,
you do meets vote, you get some merit, you do sins, you get some
you know punishments. And these kind of are balanced
off and in the end to see if you're a good person or not a
good person. But Torah for the rabbis had
such incredible status, they sort of believed that the they
had trouble believing you could really lose the merit of Torah
or they were they were interested in that question.
Is it like sort of other meets vote or could you really if you
sinned enough, would you lose that merit for studying Torah?
Or to put this in slightly different terms, could you have
a person who is a great master of Torah, a great rabbi, and yet
was a Sinner? Because the Torah itself was
supposed to give you merit, like it was supposed to protect you
from sin? If you knew a great deal of
Torah, you knew God's power, you knew the greatness of Torah.
How could you possibly be a Sinner?
I mean that that's the way they, you know, at least one stream of
thought. On the other hand, you know,
they might have known people who were great small collars of
Torah and they threw it away. I mean, we ourselves probably
know people like that. They lost faith.
You know, they went astray in one way or another.
In the Middle Ages, we know they were rabbis, great scholars of
Torah converted for various reasons.
You know, so the rabbis are interested in this question.
So what What they what they're doing throughout the story to
give us a kind of bird's eye view from the beginning is
constructing someone it was a great master of Torah but is
also a Sinner. And then trying to figure out
what happens to him. Does the sin counteract the
Torah? Does the Torah outweigh the sin?
What happens in the end? Does he get olam haba, the world
to come, or does he lose his portion there?
Yeah. OK, so when you're saying
constructing the source of Lucia Benavuya in general is in the
Tosefta so that you're so. So when you say constructing,
you're not, you don't mean necessarily constructing the
entire thing from scratch, but basically constructing the
existing Tosefta in a way that shapes their more immediate
theological conundrums that they're trying to shed light on.
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think here they are
actually departing from the Tosefta completely.
There seems to be very, very little connection between what
we saw before and the way Alicia is portrayed in the Tosefta, the
Yurasami's interpretation of the Tosefta, and this story.
The one thing that they do take is the fact that you had a
rabbinic figure who did something.
Terrible. Uh huh.
OK, it's it's that way. Then you just say gotcha.
Gotcha. So now they, they say, OK, we
have this idea there's a, there's a rabbinic figure.
For reasons we don't even probably understand, he did
something terrible. Now we're going to just take him
to construct and I mean make up to, you know, invent a character
who is a great master of Torah. We'll call him Alicia Benabuya.
They could have called him anything else too, for, you
know, for this purpose. But probably because they had
the Tosefta, they had this notion that there was a guy,
Alicia Benabuya, and something terribly wrong happened.
So we're going to use that name in this figure to construct, and
we'll see how they do it. Someone who knew a great deal of
Torah and yet then became a Sinner.
So we had Torah and we had sin. And then the question becomes
what prevails in the end? So let's look at the story and
we will see how this happens. So the story begins, Rabbi Mayor
was sinning and expounding in the House of Study in Tiberius,
the Bateman, Grash and Tiberia. His master Alicia passed by
riding on a horse on the Sabbath.
They came and said to Rabbi Mayer, behold, your master is
outside. He ceased his homily and went
out to him. So we're so right from the
beginning we we are presented with the two characters who are
going to be central to this story, Rabbi Mayer and Alicia
Benavuya. And again, this is part of the
reason why it's a separate story.
Rabbi Mayer doesn't appear in the in the success at all So and
Rabbi Mayer is portrayed as the student of Alicia, so Alicia's
Rabbi Minger's master, his rabbi.
But we're immediately surprised because Alicia is doing
something not just that the rabbi shouldn't do, but no Jew
should do, right? He's riding his horse on the
Sabbath. Now riding a horse is prohibited
on the Sabbath. It's not the worst kind of
Sabbath infraction. If you think of like technically
by the laws of Shabbat it's not an Abdullah Ka.
But we do know that even from non other non rabbinic sources,
riding a horse on the Sabbath was sort of the way it had.
It had much greater symbolism. It's the way you came out and
said I'm kind of renouncing Judaism.
So it's very symbolic in this sense.
Obviously Alicia is sinning and yet he's called Rabbi Mayer's
master. So the story already sets us up
with kind of this conundrum. What is going on?
How is Alicia the Sinner from the get go, Rabbi Mayer's
master? And how did this all happen?
And there's actually a nice word play.
And again, I want to, I want to lastly go through these stories,
pay attention to the literary aspects.
You know, this is something that really interests me.
And again, this is part of the reason we know these stories are
kind of more fictional compositions.
It's because of that use of word play and reversals, the kind of
narrative techniques we tend to associate with great fictional
writing. It's very hard, much harder to
do when you're writing history and biography, but so pay
attention to that so you can see it's it says his master Alicia
passed by riding on his horse Avar.
Now the word avar over, of course, does mean to pass by.
What else does the word avar mean?
Avera sin? Sin.
So this is double entendre. It could mean his master Alicia
sinned riding a horse on Shabbat.
So the the story's already telling us it's a Sinner if we
didn't even know that. And that just makes the the, the
conundrum kind of greater. So what?
And then then Reverend Mayer ceases his homily, he ceases his
Russia, and he goes out to to to meet him.
So we want to know what's going on and why Reverend Mayer is
apparently wanting to engage with Alicia.
You know, if Alicia's sitting like this, he could have
abandoned him. I mean, he could have said, OK,
you know, this is my rabbi, he went astray, but he doesn't say
that. So what happens now what we're
going to get, and this is part of the literary artistry, is you
can see the story has a very set tripartite structure.
Each of these five parts, I mean part A from the Toseftas
interpretation and then BCD and E are divided into 3 parts one.
You can see I've illustrated them 1-2 and and then three and
we'll get to see also has 1-2 and three.
OK, so we have a very, very set structure and what happens in
this section is that Alicia is going to ask Rabin Mayer what he
was expounding. That's how it starts.
He Alicia said to him, what were you expounding today?
And then in Part 2 he says, what were you expounding again?
And part three, what else were you expounding?
So it it includes 3 Dreschot of Rabin Mayer, followed by some
conversation about them, all of which is significant.
So Alicia asked Rebbe Mayer. Oh, here you were in the Bate
Midrash. I was outside.
What were you expounding? What were you talking about in
the Bate Midrash? And Remy Mayer quotes him this
verse. The Lord bless the latter days
of Job's life more than the beginning.
OK, that's what that happened to me, is text.
And he said to him, Alicia says to him, How did you begin it?
And he said to him, the Lord gave Job twice what he had
before, that he doubled his money.
OK, so this book, this quote from the book of EO, from the
book of Job, At the end the verse said, God bless Job more
and at the end of his life than his beginning.
And the Lord said and and and another verse there says he gave
Job twice what he had before. And Alicia says he doubled his
money. Now, this is not the greatest
Russia, if you think about it, because Rev Mayer is basically
just explaining exactly what the verse says.
He's not really adding anything. There's no novel insight.
What does it mean? The Lord gave twice what he had
before that he doubled his money, you know?
OK, that's what the verse means. So what?
What's going on here is the the story's trying to make very
clear that Alicia Benabelia is still Rev Mayer superior, So
we'll see that because Alicia says to him, Alas for things
lost and not found, this is some kind of lament, right?
Atiba, Your master did not expound it like that.
Rather, the Lord blessed the latter days of Job's life more
than the beginning on account of the meets, vote and good deeds
that he had done from the beginning.
So this is a much better Russia, because it it's it it, it takes
the verse to in a new way. It's a novel insight.
What is actually drushing is the last word more than the
beginning. May reishito the mem there.
The shot of it is more than the beginning, that's how we
translate it. But the preparation mem can mean
different things and and Alicia's interpreting from the
beginning or on account of the beginning.
So what does it mean? The Lord blessed the latter days
of Job's life, Mehre Chito. It means he blessed them from
the beginning in the sense of an account of the meets vote and
the good deeds that he done from the beginning.
So this Alicia Benabuya has already established himself as
superior to mayor. He knows Akiba's tradition he he
attributes this to Akiba but he knows this tradition and Rabi
mayor doesn't and it's a much better to Russia.
So what we have initially is again kind of this more of a
enigma or more questions surprise at the beginning.
Here's Rebbe Mayer, the head of the Bateman.
Russian tavaria looks like Alicia Benabuya the Sinner.
And yet Alicia knows more Torah and he knows Akiba's Torah,
which mayor doesn't know. Also, I want us to think about
this Russia. I don't think it's accidental
that they quote this verse about the latter days in the beginning
and an encounter that meets voted good deeds that he'd done
from the beginning. I think all of the dress show
we're going to see a really self referential.
That is, they're not random teachings that happened, you
know, they're just quoted for the sake of being quoted.
But these all are going to also apply to the story of Alicia
Benavuya and to the question the rabbis are trying to figure out.
So here the question is, let's say you do become a Sinner and
you do lose credit, Let's say for some of your meets vote
still do, the ones you did at the beginning of the life, do
they? Does the merit for those still
still accrue to you? Would those still be a way to
get to Alam haba? You know, Jove lost his merits
or he lost the things he had. He didn't really lose his
merits, you know, because of this funny story in the book of
EO with Satan and so on. That's not exactly the same as
Alicia of course, but this story is kind of asking that question.
Can you lose the merit of Torah that you've got in the beginning
of your life if you go astray or or do you still get it?
OK, so that's Russia #1. So now Alicia says to Rebbe
Mayer what else were you expounded?
And he said to him the end of it thing is better than its
beginning. Now this verse from the book of
Cohelate Ecclesiastes, you notice it also ends.
Then it's beginning. It ends with the same word as
the previous verse from Job. The end of The thing is better
than its beginning me Reshito. And he said to him and how do
you begin it? You know, how did you start your
Russia? And now Rabbi Mayer gives a
slightly better Russia than he did before.
He gives us 3 parables again. You can see this tripartite
structure AB and C3 subunit. So Rabbi Mayer said he said to
him to Alicia, I was doing my Russia.
I was explaining this this verse by comparing it to a man who had
children and his youth who died and his old age who live.
Behold, the end of it. Thing is better than its
beginning. What is this verse talking
about? It's talking about this kind of
man or comparing it to a man who did business in his youth and
lost money and it's in his old age and earned money.
Behold, the end of it thing is better than its beginning.
There's another way to understand this verse, or what
this verse is talking about, by comparing it to a man who
learned Torah in his youth and forgot it and in his old age and
fulfilled it. Behold, the end of The thing is
better than its beginning. So I think this is, you know, a
slightly better Grusha Bradley Mayer's not just repeating the
verse, he's actually illustrating it.
But nevertheless, these are rather routine interpretations
of the verse. I mean, it's basically what the
verse says and it's not. It's not so insightful.
I mean, obviously these things are are better than its
beginning. The end is better than its
beginning. If we look at this third one
again, I think this is where we see the self referential self
referentiality of it too. A man who learned Torah and his
youth and forgot it in his old age and fulfilled it.
Again, it doesn't apply directly to Alicia because what we're
going to see is Alicia. It's not that he forgot his
Torah. As we can see, he actually knows
his Torah, but it's someone who basically threw out his Torah,
you know, before his old age, someone who rejected his Torah.
And so it's kind of asking again about how does that play out,
You know, how does this situation play out in Alicia?
Is the end of the thing better than its beginning?
Will he still get to Lamaba or, you know, has he lost it?
OK, but it's so it's a very subtle illusion.
But again, I think it's cluing us in as to that's one of the
questions here. And in case Alicia now responds
to Meyer as he did before with the same lament.
Alas for things lost and not found, Akiba, your master did
not expound it like that. Rather, the end of a thing is
better than its beginning, when it is good from the beginning.
OK, so here's again a better Russia, because it's not just
giving you the simple explanation.
It's not just repeating what the verse says.
It's again playing on this, that mem.
What does it mean? The end of The thing is better
than its beginning, Mei reshito. It means from its beginning when
it's good. From the beginning.
The end of The thing is better only if it's good from its
beginning. And now Alicia actually, very
surprisingly, makes it explicitly referring to him.
Here's the self referentiality being explicit.
And this matter happened to me. Abuya, my father, was one of the
notables of Jerusalem, one of the elites, one of the rich of
Jerusalem. On the day he was to circumcise
me, he invited all the notables of Jerusalem and seated them in
one house. Or it could be one room.
The word by each refers to house or room.
He invited Rabi Elias and Rabi Yeshua and seated them in a
separate house. Or maybe we should say in a
separate room or separate place in the house when they were
eating and drinking and singing and clapping and dancing, That
is, Alicia and his friends Rabbi Eliezer said to Rebbi Yeshua.
As long as they are busying themselves with their own
business, let us busy ourselves with ours.
They sat and busied themselves with words of Torah from the
Torah to the prophets and the prophets to the Writings and
fire came down from heavens and encircled them.
So they were engaging in Torah with such passion and such
energy that actually fire, you know, came down from from
heaven. And Abuja said to them, my
masters, have you come to burn down my house upon me?
They said to him, God forbid. But we were sitting and turning
Khosrin, and I want us to pay attention to this word because
the word khosrin khosair is going to appear over and over
again. It's actually a keyword to this
composition, to the whole story. So we were sitting and turning
words of Torah from the Torah to the prophets, from the Prophets
to the Writings, and the words rejoiced is when they were given
at Sinai and fire enveloped them as the fire enveloped them at
Sinai. At Sinai they were given
primarily in fire, and the mountain was ablaze with flames
to the very skies. And so here too, the fire came
out, And Abuya my father said to them, my masters, if that is the
power of Torah, if this son of mine prospers, Nikayem, if he
survives, I will dedicate him to Torah.
And now the narrator or or Alicia continues, since his
intention was not for the sake of Torah, for not for the sake
of heavens. It's my mask.
My father Abuyah's intention was not for the sake of heaven,
therefore did not prosper lo Nikai move for that man meaning
for me. In other words, Abuyah said, I
see this power of Torah. You guys were engaging in Torah
and this fire just exploded there.
Look how powerful Torah is. So I'm going to dedicate my son
to Torah, but he wasn't dedicating him to the for the
right reasons. He was dedicating him to Torah
just because he he saw this kind of fire, you know, these
pyrotechnics. It wasn't out of real piety and
a sense of worship of God and commitment to Torah for its own
sake. And because of that, it did not
prosper for that man. That is for me, Alicia,
Benabuya. I was kind of ruined from the
start, you know. And that's what that comes back
to the illustration of the verse.
The end of The thing is better than its beginning, when it's
good from the beginning. But he, Alicia, it wasn't good
from the beginning. It was lo la shame, shame, we
would say So. Alicia, here is giving a little
account of what went wrong. His father was this, we would
say, a kind of assimilated Jew. I mean, not totally assimilated,
but not not the most pious Jew. He's he's hanging out with these
notables. They're rejoicing in some ways.
They have the rabbis in a separate section.
It looks like he's got these rabbis there just kind of to
honor him or to honor his son for some reason, but not 'cause
he's really committed to them. He sees their power and that's
when he makes his dedication of his son to Torah, but in a kind
of midah connected to midah or measure for measure way.
Yeah, he he dedicated him Nikayem, right?
He wanted him to succeed. But lo nikayem, he didn't really
succeed. He didn't prosper because it's
fun. The wrong reason, as the verse
says. Now what?
What's a very important here is the rabbis are beginning to
construct how the figure of a sinning sage could develop.
How could it be, as we said from the beginning, that someone who
knows a great deal of Torah would go astray or would turn
out bad or would become a Sinner because Torah should protect him
and he should know the power of Torah.
So what this explanation is saying is, is that it was kind
of faded that way. It's like if we have a a genetic
flaw in our body so that we're going to develop, you know, some
disease, whatever it is, there's nothing we can do about it and
sort of built into us from our genetic makeup from the
beginning. And Alicia Benabuya, the
storytellers are saying Alicia had that built in flaw because
his father's intention was wrong from the beginning and therefore
he turned out to be a Sinner. So we can understand now, we can
begin to understand how you could get a sage who was a
Sinner. It's because right from the
right from the Greco, it was doomed.
It was, it was fated, you know, not to come out to be a
righteous person. Yeah, yeah.
They're trying to present it in the most realistic way possible,
from their perspective. Yeah, I wouldn't say realistic,
but in a plausible way or what we might say what
verisimilitude, the way that kind of makes sense, right for
the. Area that would sit well with
the people. Huh.
A way that would sit well with the people.
Well, it said, well, to the other rabbis would say it makes
sense. To the rabbis themselves, they
would say look and think of yourself.
If you think of a great Tommy Hakam, you know, one of these,
the great rabbis today, how would he go?
How would he become a Sinner? It sort of doesn't make sense.
So what they're saying is, no, this is a way that does make
sense. It makes sense because from the
beginning he was he was doomed to go astray because the
intention of his father it was Lola Shem Shamain, and so he
turned out Lola Shem Shamain. Now again you can say that that
that idea doesn't make sense to me, or I don't like it, or you
know, we shouldn't be punished for the sins of our father, But
the storyteller apparently believed that was plausible.
So in his world this was a way of making sense of it.
As we'll see, he works harder to make more sense of it.
Bull. He wasn't totally satisfied with
this, but this was his initial salvo to explain how sin and
Torah would coexist. He became a great master of
Torah because elite because Abuya dedicated him to Torah.
But he was going to become a master who sinned because his
attention was bad. It wasn't for the sake of Torah,
it was just for the sake of his power he saw OK, so again we see
Alicia Benabuya, you know is superior really to A to Rebbe
mayor. First of all, he knows Akiba's
interpretation. It's a better Russia.
It plays on the it's not simply the simple explanation of the
verse illustrated in parables. And actually it's got a real
life application. So whereas Reverend Mayer gives
us hypothetical parables illustrating it, Alicia Benabuya
gives you a real life example. You know, he lived it in this
way. He exemplified the verse.
OK, so now we get to the third part of this section.
So he said to him, Alicia says to him, what else were you
expounding? He said to him gold and glass
cannot match its value. OK, so now we have a different
verse, not, not one that deals with the beginning, but a
different book from the different verse from the book of
EOV of Job. Gold or Glass cannot match its
value. Now in context, this is a
section of chapter 28 here that deals with wisdom.
Wisdom or Hochman was this kind of idea in the ancient Near
East. It's not just in Judaism of a
kind of personified, you know, wisdom that that different sages
kind of could access or it almost had a kind of angelic
force to itself. It was considered kind of like
an Angel. But in any case, the rabbis
associated this Kokomo with Torah.
So in context, they understood this verse to be talking about
Torah, gold or glass cannot match its value, the value of
wisdom or the value of Torah. So Rabbi Mayer is expanding this
verse. He said to him.
And how did you begin it? Alicia asks him.
He said the words of Torah are as difficult to acquire as
vessels of gold, and it's easy to lose as vessels of glass.
All right, so that's why it's kind of an interesting metaphor
or image. Why is gold or glass mentioned
in this verse compared to Torah? It's because words of Torah are
difficult to acquire like gold. They're easy to lose.
Is glass. Glass shatters very easily, as
we know. So that's what the images.
But just as vessels of gold and vessels of glass are broken, one
can return and make them vessels as they were.
Like one can return. The word from word for return is
Luxor again. We saw that word above.
We're going to see it again. So a sage who forgets his Torah
can return Luxor and learn it at the beginning.
And so this is actually a very nice structure.
Rabin Mayer has raised his game by the 3rd Russia.
Here he's explained why gold and glasses is compared to the value
of Torah. But why they're not equal to
Torah, But why they're mentioned in the same verse?
Because Torah is hard to acquire.
It's easy to lose, but you know if gold or glass breaks, you
can. You can put it together again.
You could heat up the glass. You could melt the gold and and
restore it as it was. And so too a sage who forgets
his Torah can learn it as the beginner.
Now at this point we have a variation of what we saw before.
This time Alicia does not say as he said, in both parts one and
two. Alas for the things that are
lost and not found, right? Saying how said it again in the
first one. Ativa, your master did not
expand it like that. In the first cases he showed he
was a better rabbi than mayor. But here mayor has raised his
game. But now Alicia says something
different. He says to him enough mayor, the
Sabbath limit is up to this point.
In other words, we've already walked a certain distance.
You're only allowed to travel a certain distance outside of your
place of residence on the Sabbath. 2000 Amot is known as
the Tkhub Shabak, not measured from exactly where you are, but
measured from the limits of the city.
But apparently they walked 2000 cubits already out of Tiberius,
Alicia riding on the horse and Rabbi Mayer following behind
him. And Mayer says to him, how did
you know this? You know, I mean, they didn't
have ways or you know, Fitbits there, they didn't know how far
they travelled. So Alicia says to him from the
steps of my horse, which I've been counting, and he's walked
2000 cubits, Which again should tell us how great Alicia
Benabuya is. Because while he's having this
discussion of Toro with Ravi Mayer, he has simultaneously
been monitoring the steps of his horse and keeping count on them.
And he knows that they've gone this far.
Which again, shows you just how observant he is, how great a
sage he is. I mean, he's been aware of this
all the time. You know, had he been someone
who wanted to observe this law, he could have observed this law.
As we're saying, he doesn't want to do it.
But you can see it's to portray him again as such a great safe,
which is what Rabbi Mayer says. He said to him, you have all
this wisdom, yet you will not repent, will you not, Hazar?
So here's this play on Hazor, right?
If you forget your Torah, you can return and get it.
And we saw it up above that they were returning, 'cause reading
the words of Torah. And of course, what else does
the word kosair mean? As in kosair bechuva, it means
repent. So we've got this word play
going through this whole section.
And now Rabbit Mayer makes it explicit, right?
He he, Alicia, tells mayor to turn back so he doesn't violate
Shabbat. And the mayor says to him, well,
why don't you turn back? Why don't you repent?
Why, why, why are you continuing as a Sinner?
And Alicia now says I cannot. And he explains, he said to him,
why he said to him, Once I was passing by the holy of Holies,
riding my horse on Yom Kippur that fell on Shabbat.
So this is the holiest time Yom Kippur, not just Yom Kippur, but
Yom Kippur and Shabbat together. And it's the holiest place.
It's by the Kurdisha, Kurdishim, And he was sinning.
He was riding his horse, which of course you're not supposed to
do. I heard a heavenly voice come
out of the holy of Holies and say, return rebellious children.
Shuvu, Banim Shuvavim, a call to repentance.
Shuva except Alicia Benabuya, for he knew my power and
rebelled against me. So this, this is the point of
view that where you talked about earlier when we started this,
that once you do a certain amount of sins, you can't come
back. That's it.
It's over. Well, see, that's that's the
point here that I think this is what that's exactly the question
that the the story is trying to preclude right here.
Your question is excellent. You know what's the the simple
solution for a sinning sage, for a rabbi who sins is to do chuva
to Jose. That's exactly what Rabbi Mayer
says. And normally we say you can
always do Chuva. You can do Chuva on Yom Kippur.
You can do Chuva any day of the year.
You can do chuva by just before you die.
You know, the gates of Chuva are always open.
So yeah, let's say Alicia Benavuya violated Shabbat, and
let's say he lost his face. So he should do chuva.
And the Torah, he knows, should even give him an impetus to do
chuva. So what's happening in this
section is it's precluding that simple solution.
Alicia Benabuya is a is a is an exception.
He can't do Chuva because he heard this voice and the voice
said you're not allowed to do Chuva.
So for Alicia Benabuya, there's no solution.
And the Torah that he learned in his youth and the sins that he's
done are going to coexist until he dies, or they're just going
to continue in that mode until he dies because he can't do
Chuva. Now, is it fair that he can't do
Chuva? Well, apparently, again, by the
logic of this of the story, it is normally, you can always do
Chuva. But if you ride your horse,
Tafka Kapor Dafka in the Holy of Holies right next to the Holy of
Holies, that is such a rebellion, right?
This is what the verse says. You know, you knew my power, you
were a great rabbi, and you rebelled against me.
So I'm rejecting you. So Chuva is not an option.
So the rabbis have now successfully, or the storyteller
has successfully constructed this figure, a great master of
Torah, but a Sinner. And we can't solve it by doing
chuva. So we're going to, you know,
eventually see what happens when he dies.
Does he get a llama bad? Does he not?
Does he get the merit for the Torah?
You know what happens. Yeah, so.
So by constructing by by, by inserting this whole point of he
can't do truva. It sets the stage for the
ultimate question being posed. Exactly.
Is the is the merit of the Torah absolute so that even though
you've you've recruit all these sins, you still get that merit?
Or is it? Is it you know, can it be lost?
Like the verse kind of says, you know, words of Torah could be
lost or you know things can be lost.
Can it? Can it be?
Can it be lost? But you can't solve the the
problem by doing Tuva because Tuva is not an option.
All right, good. Everyone good.
So so just one one other point before we go on.
You can see how beautifully this section of the story is
constructed because how did it start?
It started with Reverend Mayer was in the House of study
expounding and leash a passed by riding his horse on the Sabbath.
And how does it end? It ends with a flashback to when
Alicia Buna Bouya was was riding his horse on the Sabbath and Yom
Kippur. So you know, those kind of two
moments of horse riding converge right?
The present riding the horse and the past riding the horse.
That was one factor that led to the whole problem.
And and you can see there's a very artful construction of
time. Again, the present moment, you
know where we're in the story, the time of the story is Alicia
and Abuya travelling, you know, a leash on his horse, Rabbi
Mayor walking together and having these discussions.
But meanwhile we have two very interesting flashbacks.
There's one to Abuya and the birth of Alicia and then another
flashback to Alicia when he when he heard the the voice from the
Holy of Holies precluding repentance.
So the the storyteller you know is, is is really using
flashbacks and in in a very, very complex narrative way.
He could have told the story in a different order.
He could have started with a booyah scene one and the birth
of Alicia. And then he could have had
Alicia growing up and learning Torah.
And then he could have had him you know, going astray and
rejecting in this scene and then he could have had it the mayor.
But he doesn't do it right. He he does it in a in a
different way. And again, this is just part of
the beautiful narrative art of the Torah, of the of the story,
and just one other. I I have a question.
So when he for he knew my power and rebelled against me.
The power is corresponding to the story about his father,
correct? I think the power here is just
the power of Torah in general. That is, the greater the Rabbi,
the more Torah he knows. He knows the greatness of Torah,
the greatness of God. So you knew my power.
You were such a great rabbi, and yet you rebelled against me.
So you know, you're not like someone who was a tinook
shanishba. You know, a Jew never learned
anything. You didn't know much about
Torah. You know, those people go astray
or rebel. We might understand it.
But, you know, of all the people in the world, you should.
You knew my power. So this is you rejected me.
You rebelled against me. I'm going to reject you.
It's kind of again the midaka negative Bidah got.
It. And and notice also this I mean
there's the imagery is is very important he he he he you know
he he tells Rebbe Mayer turn back the Sabbath limit is here
and Alicia Vandebujian is going to go forward on his horse
beyond the Sabbath boundary. So again, it's symbolic of him
leaving the community of Torah, you know, leaving the meets
vote, He's taking himself outside there, riding outside,
violating Shabbat, not just by riding the horse, but now by
leaving tum Shabbat. And there's the the separation,
the barrier. I mean, again, it's it's
invisible, but you know, he's. Concerned, he's concerned about
his talmid. And.
And the fact that he is, he doesn't want him to sin in a
way, because he's like, there's still hope for you.
I I already went too far. He's already doubling down.
He's riding on Shabbat again. Yeah, and and his student, you
know, he's like, listen, you still have hope I I already went
too far. Yeah, I mean, that's right.
That's why I'm saying it's almost like saying there's
nothing I can do. That's what, you know, even if I
wanted to do Chuva, maybe I do want to do Chuva, but I can't,
you know, 'cause I went too far. But, you know, I I am concerned
about you. Exactly.
That's a nice way to put it. And you shouldn't, you know, you
shouldn't violate Shabbat. This is, by the way, why I think
this is an independent story 'cause if we go back to the
first section, Alicia Benabuya, killing young students of Torah
and sending them away from Torah and telling the Romans or
persecutors how to get Jews to violate Shabbat, that just
doesn't fit with Alicia here, who's who's telling mayor?
You know, you don't violate Shabbat.
You know, I'm rebelling against God, but I'm not harming
anybody, you know? I think it's also symbolic,
possibly that the riding of the horse on so that you're going
too far represents going too far, like he's gone too far with
his ideas and his actions. Yeah.
And we don't know exactly what they were, but whatever they
were, he's now beyond the pale. You know, that's symbolic
boundary. OK, so that's, that's the second
section. Now see, you know, the third
section, or I think we could say the second section of this
second story now actually asks a question, why did all this
happen to him? And we're going to get again 3
answers, 123. Now, I actually think this
section might have been yet another tradition about Alicia
Ben Abuja. And it's not really part of the
story we just saw because we already got an explanation of
why this happened to him. Why did this happen to him?
It happened to him because of his father Abuja's bad
intention. That was not Lashem Shamayim,
and then because of this episode by the Holy of Holies.
So in a way where we might be getting some other traditions
here. But I think what's going on is
the storyteller is really bothered by this question of how
could a master of Torah go astray and sin.
So he's working super hard to construct that figure, to
explain it and he's got to provide many explanations.
You know, a lot of things went wrong to get to this position.
So let's look at these explanations.
So, so why did all this happen to him Once he was sitting and
learning in the plain of geniserat.
Geniserat is what the geniserat is.
The key narrat. You know the key narratus.
OK. The, the, the GUR in and the
clerk sometimes switch. OK, so in in Christian
literature, in Greek literature, it's called the geniserat, but
it appears in rabbinic literature too.
OK, so once he was in the plain of the kinarit, he was up there
in the Galilee, and he saw a man ascem to the top of a palm and
take the mother bird together with their young and descend
safely from there. And what's wrong with this?
We know there's a mitzvah. Actually, it's going to be
quoted right here. The next day he saw a man ascend
to the top of the palm and take the young.
After shooing away the mother, he descended from there and a
snake bit him and he died. He said that, as Alicia said it
is written, do not take the mother together with her young.
Let the mother go and take only the young in order that you may
live well and have a long life, that you're not supposed to take
a mother with her eggs or with her chicks.
So you're supposed to shoo the mother away.
And that's exactly what this person did who died, whereas the
first one who took the mother and her young, nothing bad
happened to him. And what's what are you promised
if you actually, you know, it's usually seen as kind of ethical
sensitivity to the mother bird, though sometimes they don't like
us to see this. But in any case, you know, what
are you promised for observing this mitzvah in order that you
may live well and have a long life, but this man died.
So he says, where is the welfare of this man?
Where is the long life of this man?
So in other words, Alicia Benabuja had a problem with what
we call theodicy, the justice of God or the suffering of the
righteous. Here is a case where the wicked
prospered the man who took the mother with the young and the
righteous man suffered the one who shooed the mother away.
And the Torah promised him a long life, and he didn't get a
long life, so he lost faith. And of course, this is a very
serious problem. Who doesn't have a an issue with
the Odyssey, with the justice of God?
It's something with we struggle over and over again, you know,
especially after the Holocaust, but really all of Jewish
history. So this is a plausible
explanation for why you could lose faith, you know.
Again, This is why you could understand a Torah scholar going
astray and becoming a Sinner, you know, because I think the
storyteller is working very hard to try to make that plausible.
Now the storyteller throws in. He did not know that rebel
Yaakov had previously expounded it in order that you may live.
Well, when the verse says don't take the motherboard in order
that you may live well, it means in the world to come that it's
all good and have a long life in the future.
That is all long. OK, so Alicia Benabuya, it was
unfortunate, didn't know the real meaning of this verse.
When the verse promises you a long life, it means an Alamaba
in the next World. That's where if you do this
mitzvah, you'll get your reward. So storyteller saying Alicia
Benabuya tragically didn't know this explanation, so he thought
the Torah was false. He thought the Torah had
promised this man a long life and then he ended up dying.
And had he had known this, maybe he would have gone astray again.
I think this might. This is a little bit in tension
with the section we saw before that portrays Alicia Benabuya,
Such a great sage. He even knows Akiba's
explanations that may or didn't know.
And here he doesn't seem to know.
A kind of basic explanation for this verse.
But OK, you know for the story, sorry, tell his point of view.
For whatever reason he took the verse literally and then he then
he lost his faith because he saw the righteous were were
suffering, dying in the in the wicked were prospering.
So that's one way he might have gone astray or, you know, one
way one, the reason he did go astray, you know, it makes it a
plausible reason. And then secondly, some say it
happened to him because he saw the tongue of Rebi Yehuda, the
Baker, dripping with blood, dripping blood in the mouth of
the dog. In other words, this was a great
rabbi and he had been martyred. Usually this is interpreted
during the Barkochba rebellion. And the rabbis, you know, the
asarah, haru, Gaya, Mal flutes that we say on Yom Kippur, the
10 martyrs. I don't know if it really is,
but you know, some martyr, this great rabbi who was killed and
then his body was humiliatingly, you know, eaten by a dog.
His body was thrown to the dogs. He said this is Torah and this
is its reward. This is the tongue that used to
bring forth fitting words of Torah.
This is the tongue that labored in Torah all of its days.
It seems that there is no giving of reward and no resurrection of
the death. So because of this incident
again he lost faith. This is again this the righteous
suffering and he couldn't understand how a great rabbi
should have this faith. I mean where is the reward for
Torah? And maybe seeing his his, his
head or his tongue in the mouth of a dog suggested to him there
was no resurrection for the dead.
I mean the the connection there is not totally clear.
But any case, he he lost faith because of this event.
By the way, again, I think this could be self referential.
That is, I think this is the Torah and this is its reward.
This question that Alicia Benavuya asks is the question
the storytellers are asking of Alicia Benavuya himself.
You know, we're any great stage. Once you learn Torah, are you
guaranteed a reward? Or if you sin, can you lose that
reward? But OK, here it's in, you know,
Alicia Benavuya's mouth, supposedly because of this
incident he saw. And then we have another
explanation. And some say that when his
mother was pregnant with him, she would pass by houses of idol
worship and smell that stuff. That is, she smelled the
incense, the sacrifices that were offered to idols, and the
aroma seeped into his body like the venom of a snake.
OK, again, we had a snake. And part of the thematic unity
right here was the snake who bit him and he died.
Snake bit him and he died. Snake always the symbol of evil
or the symbol of of sin. So in this case, what happened?
His mother inhaled idolatrous sacrifices when he was in utero.
And it kind of again caused a genetic, you know, problem for
him, a kind of genetic mutation such that he was programmed to
go astray. He was programmed to go to lose
his faith or lose Torah and, you know, become an idolater or or
reject God. So we have these three
explanations. Now again, the fact that his
mother was pregnant with him, I don't know, seems to contradict
or stand in tension with the one about his father.
Abuja is the reason to blame. But at least again it gives you
an explanation that takes the to blame or makes it a plausible in
the rabbi's or the storytellers point of view way that you could
get a great tourist scholar who went astray or became a Sinner.
Because from the beginning he was he had this you know this
idolatrous substance inside of him because his mother had has
gotten too close and smelled it. So I think the storyteller is
working very hard to explain how we could get a great sage, a
great scholar of Torah, and yet someone who he becomes a Sinner.
You know, the these explanations, you could
harmonize them with what we saw with the booyah.
You could say, yeah, his father had the bad intention, Lolashem
Shamayim. So he knew he was going to come
out bad. He knew he was going to become a
Sinner. And then this is how he became a
Sinner. This was what precipitated it.
It was how what happened to Alicia himself.
He saw this event. He lost his faith.
He saw the martyrdom. He lost his faith.
His mother was also, you know, had this problem and all these
things kind of together made him reject Torah.
And then you had that voice by the holy of Holies.
So there we have it right. The master of Torah, the sinning
sage, can't repent, rebelled against God, went astray because
of this terrible theological issue We all, we all struggle
with because of the sins of his father and mother.
And now the question is what happens Torah?
Does Torah prevail? Does he get the merit of Torah,
or does he lose it because of his sin?
OK, so we'll go on to Section D Just one other point.
Notice again there's a deep interest in in mothers and young
or parents and children, right? The mother bird and the young
chicks. Alicia, Booyah's mother, And
being pregnant with him and his father and his circumcision,
right? These parents and children,
these issues keep coming up. Again, there's themes.
It's just a very tightly held story, right?
The same motifs and themes, and there's a great amount of
thematic unity in this narrative.
Also, the maybe it's not connected, but the theodicy
brought up in this section corresponds potentially to EO,
which is It is the book on theodicy.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
I mean, there could be a sort of allusion to that in those books,
in the verses quoted from Joe from the book of EO.
Yeah. OK, so let's see what happens.
OK, so Section D now takes place years later.
Alicia became sick. They came and said to Remy
Mayer, behold, your master is sick.
He went to desiring to visit him and found him sick.
And he said to him, will you not repent?
OK, so this section again starts similar to section B.
Remember Reverend Mayor was sitting and he's founding in the
House of studying Tiberius. His master Alicia passed by.
They came in this section. They came and said to Reverend
Mayor, behold, your master is outside.
OK, so now in section D, behold your master, they came and said
to Reverend Mayor, Behold, your master is sick.
So again, you can see this is these repetitions tell you.
It's a very cohesive story. It's all part of the same story.
So here we are later in in Alicia's life.
He's sick. They tell Rabin Mayer, he goes
to visit him and he still wants Alicia to repent, just like he
asked him to at the end of Section B.
Maybe now he's sick. It's the end of his days.
And now Alicia says he said to him, if one repents isn't
accepted. You know, can Alicia's asking
Rabbi Mayer, can I repent at this point, you know, so close
to death or maybe in my state, you know, having been a Sinner,
it's not totally clear. But he's asking Rabbi Mayer,
it's a little bit of a reversal of what we said before, when
Alicia knew all the answers and he knew the better dress out.
But now, years later, Reverend Mayer has become a great rabbi
and Alicia has kind of been weakened.
So we we have a little bit of a reversal of of the positions.
Now Alicia asked Rabbi Mayer the question.
I mean, Rabbi Mayer asked him, will you repent?
But Alicia says it's an accepted.
And Rabbi Mayer says basically yes.
He said, is it not written, You return man to dust, you decreed,
return you mortals. He quotes him a verse from
Tehillim Psalm 93. Until life is crushed, it is
accepted. So in other words, this verse
that says you return man to dust and then tells humans to do
chuva, you said return to new mortals means you can do chuva
until man returns to dust. You know, until you're dead, you
can always do Chuva, yeah? So by the response of Mayor, it
seems to be that his original question was regarding his
state, not his sins, because he's answering and it's not
until you die, meaning it's not too late even in your old age.
Yeah, Rabbit Mayer seems to believe no matter what your sins
are, you can do Chuva until you die, right?
He he. Rabbit Mayer didn't hear that
voice from the Holy of Holies that excluded Alicia Only Alicia
excluded, you know, heard that voice.
So from Rabbit Mayer's point of view, he's still holding out
hope in general. You can do Chuva until you die.
So he's saying to Alicia, yeah, you can, you can still do Chuva,
and he's hoping he'll still do Chuva.
He's not convinced that Alicia can't do Chuva.
Now at that point, Alicia wept and passed away and died.
Rabbi Mayor rejoiced in his heart and said, it seems to it
seems that my master died repenting.
So, you know, I think there are two ways to take the weeping At
that point, Alicia wept and passed away and died.
Rabbi Mayer seems to understand the weeping as chuva.
We actually know that crying is part of doing chuva.
There are different ways to do chuva, one of which is to to
cry. So he thinks that Alicia's
weeping is a sign that he did chuva and he's happy about that.
But there's another way to take it, and I think we could take
it. That Alicia is weeping at the
bitterness of his fate, that is, it's not meant as Chuva, because
Alicia himself knows that he can't do Chuva because he heard
that voice from the holy of Holies, precluding him doing
Chuva. So Alicia now has heard a drush
of it says any human being can do Chuva till the moment of his
death. It's never too late, except for
me. And he's weeping at the
bitterness of of that fate. And we'll see That seems to be
what's happened. That is, it seems that Reverend
Mayer is wrong because it says after they buried him, fire came
down from heaven and buried and burned his grave.
They came and said to Reverend Mayer, behold, your master's
grave is burning. So what is a burning grave
symbolize? These are the fires of dehennum
or something like that. He's being punished.
So it looks like and at this point he's not getting the merit
from his Torah and he's not getting Allahabad.
The opposite, he has lost his hoot, he has lost his merits and
he's rebelled against God and and since he can't repent
anymore, at the end of the day all he's got is sins on his
Ledger for those sins outweigh his his Torah.
But that's not the end of the story.
So what happens? What did he do?
What did mayor, mayor do? He took his cloak and spread it
upon it. He put his own cloak on Alicia,
Venezuela's grave. And he said, and now he's going
to give Adrusha based on the book of Ruth.
OK, so the book of Ruth, if you remember, there's the scene
where Boaz spreads his cloak on Ruth.
He comes upon her, you know, in the in the fields.
And then he says that he's going to redeem her and do the kind of
ye boom ceremony. Because remember, Ruth died and
Ruth's husband died, and he's the nearest kinsman.
But but Boa says there's one mirror kinsman.
So I got to see if that kinsman will redeem you.
If he does, that's fine. Otherwise I'll do it.
So he says to Ruth, stay the night.
Then in the morning, if he will act as a Redeemer, good.
If the other guy will redeem you and marry you, that's good.
But if he does not want to act as a Redeemer for you, I will do
so myself as God lives. Now the now mayor is going to
make a drush on this verse, as the rabbis often do by totally
decontextualizing it. So forget the context in the
book of Ruth. If you just look at these words,
as this verse is kind of a free floating thing, stay the night
in the morning if he will act as a Redeemer, good.
But if he doesn't want to act as a Redeemer for you, I'll do it
myself. Hey, this is how Rabbi Mayor is
going to interpret it. Nothing to do with the book of
Ruth, but as thus showed, often worked, totally decontextualized
as a kind of free floating verse stay the night in this world
that is similar to night. So you, Alicia Benabuya, stay in
this world that's similar to night.
And then in the morning this is the world to come that is
completely mourning. So in the world to come, if He
will redeem you, good. This refers to the Holy One.
Blessed be see who is blessed be He who is good, as it says He is
good to all, and His mercy is upon all these creatures.
So the Word, if He will redeem you, good is He's reading it as
if Mr. Good will redeem you. And who is Mr. Good?
That is God, because it says He is good to all.
So if God will redeem you, that's good.
If God will redeem you, Rebbe Mayer, in the world to come,
that's good. But if he does not redeem you, I
will redeem you myself. As God lives, you know, I, Rabbi
Mayer, will redeem you. I will get you into a llama Bah.
And it was extinguished. Now it's a remarkable Russia.
And I have to say, I don't even understand exactly how it works.
It's almost like Reverend Mayer is blackmailing.
I've got his Baraku here and he's saying, you know if you
Akadishbar who will redeem Alicia Benabuya, great, go ahead
and do it. If you'll get him out of of to
have him and take him to Alamaba and if you're not going to do
it, I'll do it. Now I don't know how he plans to
do it, what what he would do if God says no, I'm not going to do
it. He rebelled against me.
That's it. The bodily will will will give
us a little bit of a hint how this might occur, but your
Psalmic doesn't. But in any case it doesn't need
to because the fire is extinguished.
In other words, God listens. So this this kind of strong arm
tactics of revving mayor using this verse from the the book of
Ruth convinces God or prevails upon God or or ends up getting
getting Alicia Benabuya out of the flames of Gehenna and
presumably to Alam Haba. So I think part of the answer
the rabbis are giving us in this story is one of the ways that
the merit of Torah is actually absolute.
I mean this is the direction that it's going in that the
merits of Torah will actually kick in that you can't
completely lose the merits of Torah despite sin is because of
your disciples. You know, your Torah has a kind
of afterlife and because you've taught that Torah, it ends up
getting you some credit because you're, you know, in this case,
your disciples really end up fighting for you and and you
know there are, there are all those traditions as you know
about the the lips of the sage moves in the grave when someone
quotes traditions in his name and you get a kind of
immortality when your Torah is quoted.
So part of the narrative Torah, part of the way it confers a
kind of afterlife with immortality or a llama BA, is
through the Torah, continuing to exist in the mouths of the
disciples. You know, we have a kind of more
concrete representation of this. Rabbi Meyer actually goes to
bat, you know, goes to fight for Alicia Benabuya, but ends up
saving him. And then they make this point in
the story even more explicit because they said, they said to
Rabbi Meyer. And again, you notice the
beautiful literary construction, three parts.
They came and said to Rebbe Mayer, your master is sick.
And then they came and said to Rebbe Mayer, your master's grave
is burning. Then they said to Rebbe Mayer,
right. So three kind of questions of
Rebbe Mayer, if they say to you in that world, whom do you
desire to visit? And again that's a repetition.
Does he went desiring to visit or trying to visit?
Desiring to visit him when he was sick?
Desiring to visit his grave? If they say to you, whom do you
desire to visit in that world? So we get a little bit of a
flash forward. We have these flashbacks again,
this very artful use of time. Your father or your master.
When you Rev the mayor get to Alamaba, who will you honor
more? Will you honor your father or
will you honor your master? Here's another father, parent,
child reference that we've seen before, he said to them.
I will first approach my master and then my father.
OK, so I'll go first to Alicia Benabuya.
He will still be my master even though he was a Sinner because
he taught me Torah, he didn't lose that status.
And they said to them, will they listen to you?
You know, I don't know who the day is, but the people in charge
of Alamaba or the angels or, you know the police up there, you
know will will they listen to you?
Will they let you honor your your spiritual father, Alicia
Benabuya, before your biological father because he taught you
Torah? That is your spiritual father
Alicia told you Torah and he says, Rabbi Mayer says, did we
not learn they saved the casings of the scroll?
With the scroll, the casings of the phylacteries of the filling
with the filling? They save Alicia Akher for the
merit of his Torah. I mean, I think this first of
all, this last line just is the key to the whole story.
You could just sum it up that way.
You know, ultimately Torah is absolute.
It does prevail. Alicia Benabuya will be saved
despite his sin because of the merit of his Torah.
But but Rabbit Mayer proves this by quoting a really opposite,
really appropriate Mishnah. There's a Mishnah that says they
save the casings of the scroll with the scroll, the casings of
the filling with the filling. What it's talking about is if
there's a fire on Shabbat and it's burning up a shawl, or it's
burning up a house, you're allowed to carry out sacred
objects. You can carry out the tourist
scrolls, you can carry out filling, even though normally
that violates Shabbat. Carrying from a private to a
public domain you're not allowed to do on Shabbat.
But if you're saving holy writings from fire, you're
allowed to do it on Shabbat, right?
That mitzvah supersede Shabbat. And then the Mishra says you can
also take the scroll of the Torah out and the and the casing
of the trilling. In other words, you don't have
to. You can even violate Shabbat by
taking the Torah casing and the trilling boxes out.
It's not just the scroll that you can save, you save
everything all together. So they save Alicia for the
merit of his Torah. So he's got that Torah inside
him and ultimately like the casing around him, maybe he's
got some sin around him or his bodies around that.
But because it contained the Torah that ultimately he can
ultimately be saved, saved from the fire of Gehenna.
So he was saved from the fire of Gehenna ultimately because of
the Torah that he contained. Just like the Torah scrolls are
saved with the casings or the casings are saved with the
scroll and it's filling boxes with the filling.
It's by the way very, very unusual to have a Mishnah quoted
in a story, in an A gothic story, basically a Hawaii, you
know, Mishnah for a Gothic purposes.
Again, it's one of the really neat, fascinating things in this
story, makes it really distinctive.
Apart from all the drashot and the verses, beautiful use of the
Mishnah being drushed. You know, you don't get that
that often. So here Ravi Mayor kind of
explains to everyone basically why Alicia Benabuya was saved,
why he adopted these tactics, why ultimately Torah should
prevail. By the way, this mention of
Akhir here is probably a scribal error.
I don't think Akhir no other ever appears in the Yurushami,
that's what. That's a bodily term might
appear in the Tosefta again under influence of the bodily,
but in any case it seems to have got in the Yurushami here.
Anyway, that's a very, very minor point.
So the the question, the mentioning of his choosing his
rabbi over his father is really just to It implies that his
father didn't give him Torah but his Rabbi did so therefore.
Right, because you have a lot of sources where the rabbis say
like if you find if they're who do you honor more, your father
or your master. If you find a lost object, you
return it. Or two lost objects, do you
first return the one to your master or to your father?
In other words, who takes precedence?
And their general answer is your rabbi should take precedence
because he gets you to Alamaba and your father brought you into
Alamaze. But you know that world, the
next World versus this world. But So what this part of the
story is saying is that Alicia remains Rabbi Meyer's master.
He doesn't lose that status. And therefore that's another
reason why his Torah ultimately prevails.
His Torah ultimately gets the merits from it and you can't
lose it. He doesn't lose it.
So that's the basic answer to our story.
This is how the Rabbis answer it.
I mean, it's a little complicated because Alicia, you
know, we did kind of require some help from Rabbi Mayer, from
his disciples. But ultimately the message is,
you know, the the you can't lose your scoot, you can't lose your
merits for studying Torah. And then that message is
rehearsed in the last part of the story, a very brief part.
This is often the way rabbinic stories work.
They kind of repeat themselves in different ways to emphasize
things, but since it's in a narrative mode, they give you
another story or another part of the story.
So years later, the daughter, his daughters, Alicia Benabuya's
daughters, went to ask for arms alms charity from Rebi Yehuda
Nasi. OK, so we're talking about the
next generation, the daughters of Alicia and the student of
Mayor. I mean, Rev Yehuda Nasi is not
explicitly stated as a student of Revie Mayor.
There are a couple sources to that effect.
But we do know Revie Huda Nasi's Mishnah was based on the mission
of Revie Mayor, so I think it's fair to call him a student.
I think that's really what's going on.
That's the storytellers idea. So Rabbi, Rabbi, Rabbi Huda Nasi
decreed and said may no one show him mercy, may none pity his
orphans. So again quoting a verse from
tahilim and there's a section in this chapter of tahilim about
the wicked man and it goes about all the things you shouldn't do
to a wicked man, you know, all these things should happen to
him and no one should show him mercy and no one should pity his
orphans. So Rabbi, Rabbi Yuda Nasi is
initially saying we can't give any charity to his daughters
because he was a wicked man and that wickedness, his sins
continue after his death and even affect his daughters.
They said to rabbis to Rebbeyuda Nasi do not look at his deeds,
look at his Torah. So they appeal to Torah, meaning
again, symbolically they're committed to Torah and again
they appeal to exactly what Rebbey Mayer was talking about.
The sins are less important than his Torah.
The Torah should have merit and his deeds are outweighed by that
Torah. At that point Rabbi wept and
decreed that that beast they'd be supported.
Hey, so he retracted and he gave charity to the daughters on the
basis of their father Alicia's merit his Torah Again, here we
have the parents and children like fathers and daughters.
Again we have sons and mothers. He said to him, if this one who
labored in Torah not for the sake of heaven, see what
children he raised. He who labored in Torah for its
own sake. How much the more so the
Alicia's daughters, despite his labor in in Torah, Lola Shem
Shamain, not for the sake of heaven, Despite his came to
Torah, his daughters came out good, you know.
They appealed to Rabbi on the basis of his Torah.
They talk about Torah. They were pious.
You know, someone who labours in Torah.
How much? The more so, how much the more
so will he have pious children? So again, this kind of rehearses
the whole message of the story. In the next generation.
We have Alicia's daughters, We have mayor, student.
Initially they're not supported. The sin sign seems to outweigh
the Torah, but then Rebbe is convinced they should be
supported because the Torah ultimately confers merit it and
outweighs the deeds. Look at his Torah, not at his.
Look at his Torah, not at his deeds, not at the sins.
And therefore ultimately the merit does prevail.
So I think this this little section basically says what we
saw before with Reverend Mayer and Alicia Benabuya himself, you
know, in a slightly different way.
Again, the sin versus Torah and the Torah prevails.
So overall, what the Torah, what the what the story of the
Yershami is telling us is when you you know Torah is is is of
such high status, right? Torah is so great.
And of course the Rabbis have other expressions of this Tamu
Torah kinegat kulam, tamu Toro is as great as all the other
mitzvos and there's no greater mitzvah than Torah and so on.
But it's so great that its merit will ultimately save you no
matter what. So even if there is such a
figure, even if there's someone who learns Torah and ends up
sinning for whatever reason and those reasons, it's hard to
understand how that figure would actually exist.
But the rabbi's work and the storytellers work in figuring
out the plausible construction of someone who knows Torah but
sins can't repent. He's stuck in that odd
configuration of two like oil and water, things that shouldn't
go together. But they do.
But if that does happen and you do ultimately sin, lose faith,
rebel, violate Shabbat, no matter what you do in the world
to come your your Torah will ultimately prevail.
You cannot lose that merit. And and it's absolute, yeah.
Incredible breakdown. I just want to few points that I
want to bring out. I just want to make sure that
comprehending the methodology that you're placing.
So essentially the way to attack in Agada.
I don't know if it would work for every single one, but at
least for a large corpus of Agadotes, right?
I think that we tend to try to read it or learn it linearly.
If I'm if that's the wrong word, maybe, I don't know, Meaning a
lot of times you know you go through when I got done and each
points like you know you'll start to try to derive a lesson
or go into that point. What you're doing is you're more
creating a general theme of a premise, let's call it that.
That premise is not obvious. You have to in a sense extract
out that premise and then every step of the story is basically
you're reading how the Rabbi's constructed a story with
literary techniques to achieve to achieve that premise that
they're looking to create via this character and then answer
it within that structure as well.
So really it's one point if you what I'm trying to say is so if
you're getting stuck in the details of the story
independently or trying to get something kind of outside of
this structure out of maybe a certain point in the story,
that's kind of a waste of time because essentially what you're
what you're doing is you're you're you're reading it as one
whole unit from beginning to end.
Yeah, I think that's a good way of putting it, I think.
I think you want to. I mean, first of all you have
to, you have to see that the storyteller was telling a
cohesive and coherent story. And one of the way you see that
is the repetition and themes, repetition and language.
You can see he wants you to make these connections.
And yeah, those are clues, those are way of of making it hang
together. And then what's also important
is the structure, you know that I divided it and it's not just
me. I mean people who analyze
stories in this way. You can see the five parts and
the sub units of each part and and once you appreciate the
structure exactly like you say, you don't have to read the story
in a purely linear way. One Section 2, Section 3,
Section 4, Section 5. That's normally how we would
encounter a story and read it. But you can relate different
sections to different other sections.
Section D is actually more related to section B and section
E you know then comes back to section D but with the father
and children. It has some motifs in common
with the other ones. So you want to be able to take
different sections out of their linear order and see how they
relate to other sections in the story.
So it's very useful to make structures.
If you look at my books or you know, the books of other
scholars of rabbinic stories now, this is one part of the
method of reading and analyzing stories.
So you're right, you don't want to look at each detail and sort
of get bogged down on, you know, what is exactly does the horse
imagery mean And look at every other case of a horse on Shabbat
right within the story. You try to figure out what it's
doing and how it relates to the other sections of this story.
Right. Relates to the other sections of
the story. That's the key.
That's that's the key point. Right.
So we're we're. Yeah.
And you're right. And it's such an important point
because I can tell you myself, and I can tell you in general,
people tend to kind of read each part of the story and kind of
just go off a tangent with them not really realizing.
They'll they'll go like full pill pull on it, you know
they'll. Pill pull or even even a lesson
per Southeast. Like the way I understood it,
it's not Even so much about the lesson, it's it's about trying
to get to the story, to a certain place where they can
address the grand question. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I I I don't totally say that you know, different parts
of the story cannot be analyzed on their own terms and kind of
related to other stories or holistic issues.
I mean, there's tremendous amount you could do with every
single, every one of those brush should be looked at in terms of
all the other readings of that verse and similar Dreschund and
so on. But what often happens is what
you're saying is people lose sight of the story as a whole.
So it shouldn't be mutually, it's not mutually exclusive, but
sometimes you know that you lose sight of the entirety of the
story. So you want to look at the story
also as kind of an integrated narrative unit and unity and,
you know, not loose, not sort of just go astray with all this
kind of pimple and kind of digressions all the time.
It's OK sometimes that'll then feedback into the overall, you
know, the overall story. But it is, it is one textual
unit and it is one integrated story.
So you have to read the whole thing to try to understand what
the storyteller is trying to tell us.
And just to make one final point, you could see by the end,
I think there's a relatively sympathetic portrayal of Alicia
Benavuya in this story. He's crying by the end, Rabbi
Mayer's trying to save him. Maybe he even does Tuva.
It's very hard to harmonize with that first story, the one the
interpretation of Docefta, where he kills children, you know, and
collaborates with persecutors. It's very hard to see Rabbi
Mayer like going to bat with A to bat for a person like that in
this story. His rebellion is against God,
right? He loses faith in God because of
theodicy. All his sins are de Madame
Macomb, you know, he's, he's, he's going outside the holy of
Holies on Yom Kippur. He's not harming anybody else,
you know. So every mayor is trying to
redeem him in that sense. I I guess it's a question you
could ask is well, what happens if he did more heinous things?
What happens if he, you know, if this Sinner actually did kill
young students of Torah, well, that jeopardizes merit of Torah.
But you know, I I don't know, the Bavli actually does flirt
with that a little bit. We'll see that when we when we
get to the Bavli. But at least the Yurasami's
answer in in this story is that you know this this rather mayor
who did the sins that he did in this story no matter what they
were. Although again they didn't see,
they seemed to be morbid on Nama Macomb never learned, lost his
merit for the study of Torah. One last question.
So in relation with Tosefta, you see the Tosefta, it doesn't
really give you an inkling of his personality.
All Dershami comes and we have a full-fledged personality on it.
So how do we understand? So, so the so the Tosefta is
really the Tosefta is really just focused on entering the
parties and you know the the fallout of of of trying to jump
too far in the, you know, mystical tree and Yoshami sort
of goes a whole different direction, not interested on
that at all and just comes into a whole.
New. Like, you know, designed story
that really has no at all to the Tosefta anymore.
Yeah, that section of the Yoshami is just interested in
interpreting the Tosefta. He gives us 3 interpretations,
does the best it can do. It's very hard to make sense of
because it's such a cryptic tradition, knows something bad
happened and plays with different scenarios and then
it's done. And this story, we don't really
know the origin and starts in medius race right in the middle
of the whole episode. Alicia Benabuya is coming by the
baby garage and he's already become a Sinner and he's already
Reverend Mayer's master. You know, that's all in the
background. But we don't know where this
tradition comes from. Yeah, we just can't trace it
back. It's here.
It appears to be Roshami, but already in a very, very highly
developed form. I mean, it's like I said, you
can see such a sophisticated narrative, which I think tells
me that the, the rabbis and Roshami were interested in this.
They were interested in this problem.
They were interested in this theological conundrum.
And at some point, they began telling the story and it
developed and it developed and it became this very highly
sophisticated, literally polished narrative that's also
very, very deep from a theological perspective.
Amazing. Professor, thank you so much.
We really enjoyed this and we look forward to the final
segment, God willing, which which is the story of Alicia
Gonabuya in the Talmud Bhavli. So we hope to see you soon.
Sounds good. Thank you both.
Thank you for your. Thank you.
Good. Night.
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