Welcome to Judaism Demystified, a podcast for the perplexed.
Join us as we explore some of the most fascinating Jewish and
Torah related topics with our esteemed guests.
By tackling some of the biggest questions you likely won't find
addressed elsewhere, we aim to shed light on important issues
and inspire a return to the fundamentals.
Enjoy the show. Thank you for joining the
Judaism Demystified podcast. We are joined by Doctor Ruth
Calderon, the legend. We are so excited that this has
been months in the making. And before we begin, we'd like
to ask you to tell our audience a little bit about yourself and
your background. I want to say thank you for
having me here. I was looking forward.
So my name is Ruth Calderon. I'm in Tel Aviv.
As you can see, background I lived in, grew up in the same
apartment that I live in now. I studied in Tel Aviv.
I belong to the general public not not not to any religious
community in Israel. It's called secular, but not in
the American meaning of it. And I was intrigued by Judaism
and was looking for a place to study.
And Long story short, I found myself at the Talmo department
of Hebrew University, where I did my PHDI say sometimes that I
was the only one in the room without a beard.
And many things changed since then.
And today I'm the president of Alma, which is a home for Hebrew
culture in Tel Aviv. We do three studies.
We have a Batman draft that is just now beginning.
All the it's not exactly students.
The learners have come. And I'm part of the leadership
team in at the Mandela Institute in Jerusalem.
And I have a grandchild and the children and together with all
of us worried and sad and hoping that that there will be peace
soon and that everyone will come home.
Amen. Amen.
We're all we're all with you. This is a terrible time.
Hopefully it's going to get better.
So leading I. Want to say the fact that we
are, that I know that you're with me and that we connect is a
great source of comfort. We are two alone here and every
meeting like this, and especially in studying Torah is
is a real boost of optimism. We feel the same way, you know,
we that we have people, you, you guys are the front lines
protecting us. You know, we're also, we feel
like we're in danger as well. There's some.
So many. The front line is moving.
Yeah. Yeah.
Around the world, yeah. Absolutely.
So we wanted to now that you brought up your your upbringing
slightly, we'd like to get more into that.
You thank your father and mother for instilling you in you a love
for Torah in the dedication page of your book, A Bride for One
Night. Can you tell us about your back?
Tell us about how your mother and father instilled that love
of Torah in you. It's a very good question, but
I'm not sure I have such a precise answer.
How do we as parents, give our children any kind of, you know,
value or loyalty to something? I had parents from very
different backgrounds. My mother is Ashkenazi.
She came from Germany. She was brought up in Mana and
in Germany. Her parents came from Galicia.
And my father is the Sephardic Jew, grew up in Bulgaria.
His mother is from Turkey and his father from Bulgaria.
So the house was very rich in Jewish cultures.
Different dishes, different different takes on holidays.
I was happy that both sides felt a bit like nothing inferior is
the superior for the others, so nobody got hurt.
The Bulgarians did not completely consider the
Ashkenazis as Jews, and the Jews didn't consider anyone who's not
from Germany as a member of culture.
So it was for me, it was funny. I think my, my mother took it a
little more. It was more challenging for her.
And the thing I knew, although we were all not Alakhic, we were
traditional Jews in a way that is not Alakhic at all.
I know that the most important thing about who we are is that
we're Jewish. And there was a certain feeling
of loyalty and pride. My father would say, you should
know that you are the daughter of the king.
Like you wouldn't eat pork. You are the daughter of the
king. That was really, that was the
logic. And they never said this is not
allowed to us or forbidden. And I felt that for both of
them, being Jewish was a source of depth and and.
Identity. Identity, very deep identity.
And also because my father spent two years in the work camp for
the Germans in Bulgaria and my mother was a little kid in
Germany. They appreciated the, the good,
not not exactly good fortune, the gift of being able to live
in a free Jewish state and being feeling at home and raising us.
As you know what they kind of looked up to Sabarim that we, we
feel safe and nobody hits us on the way back from school and
that we have a flag and that we have symbols.
It was a very big deal for my father.
Later, when I I did my service at the Knesset, I I thought that
he would be overwhelmed with the signs of Israeli serenity of the
mineral wine, all its leaves. So they did not.
Both of them were very learned people.
When there was a scientist in in agriculture, he was a specialist
of storage of agricultural products in the UN and of course
in Israel. And my mother, they spoke many
languages. My mother read a lot and theatre
and and literature and so forth. But they know very little of
Jewish text. I think they know the stories.
Kaha kaha. Once a friend of mine called his
daughter Hagar. So my father said, how can you
call a, a girl in the name of a prostitute?
He said ABBA, she was not a prostitute.
So my dad said in the Bulgarian Bible she was a prostitute.
He did not get any Jews like serious Jewish education.
But he, I, we knew that that is the most important thing for
him. We did kidosh.
We couldn't go out before we come home and do kidosh.
I told you the reason to never eat work, at least in public you
would say so. It was not electric, but it was
very different. We are and and I.
Without speaking about it too much, I inherited both of them
and at the very early age I became very saccharinite.
Curious. Curious what is it exactly that
they have and we don't have We got a lot of Israeli education
and we knew the names of the birds and the flowers and we
took trips all over the country and you know we did all the
connecting to Yadiyata. It's not knowing the land in an
intimate way, but I felt they have something that is more
grounded, that is more with more gravitas and I wanted to learn.
And so they, Although finally, when I would come back from
school from the university and my father would ask me, So what?
Khalid Mishna is Talmud or Talmud is Gamala or he never got
that exactly right or maybe he was joking.
But I knew that I'm making them happy, although they were a
little afraid that I would go too far and away from them.
But I'm here in the middle. That's very beautiful.
Yeah. And and you're, you're, you're
describing basically a Sephardic household.
I was thinking about that. I was thinking about that.
Yeah, and only when you meet Ashkenazi religious Jews.
Did I ever hear that I am secular.
My dad would never say secular about himself.
Is a Jew? Is a traditional Jew?
No, we don't have that concept. It hurts us when these labels
get thrown like it's really something that is, it's it's not
something that's faradim that, you know, we, we resonate with,
we just don't it's a it's, it's a shame.
It's, I think we've spoken about this before, but it comes from
like a denominational influence from Christianity.
And, and that's what we believe at least we're like, everything
has a category, right? And and you know the the famous
joke that when 2 Ashkenazis get into an argument, they're open 3
shuls, you know like. The one they don't go to.
Yeah. We, we, we don't, they don't go
to exactly. So we, we, we just don't have
that. We don't relate to that at all.
So. And I enjoy being with Jews that
are not like me. I don't want to be in a silo of
Jews that are all the same. What's the point?
I enjoy. Maybe because my mom was like
this and my dad, you know, the different grandparents.
But you know, the sweets in the Ashkenazi house are not like the
sweets in the safari house. I wrote a children's book about
the safari, the Dubishwat, the the little bag with a with a
fruit, the fortas that we got when we were little.
And maybe I'll show you some of my children's books were were
translated into English by PJ Library, but this one, I'm not
sure that was translated yet. I actually received, I think I
received that book from them actually, I guess it's.
Called the Sukichel Gagua something of longing about the
little photos that I go I. Think I recall that book.
That's so. I didn't even put it together
that it's you. That it's cool.
Did you get it when you were little kids?
A little bag with a date and a carob and.
School they would give us, they would give us like carbs and and
fruits. Yeah, for sure.
'Cause my grandfather would travel with two buses from
Holland to bring me the little plastic bag.
And I remember as a child that I thought that must be very
important to him to travel in two buses to give me one carob 1
date and one mish mish. Like what And and how
generations pass on even without so many words and not scholarly
discussions. What is really important to
them? To their grand grandchildren?
Very wise words. So we want to get into your book
a little bit. I have it right here.
Ruth Calderon, a bride for one night.
You know why I love the the cover?
Look at the picture. So you have here a girl that
seems that she's a OK, so just for the audience, because you're
going to talk about it. It's an American photographer
from the 50s, Ruth, he'll tell me what's her name, What's the
last name. It was very expensive to get her
picture, so I wanted it very much.
It's called an American woman in Rome or in Italy, the picture
and you see a young woman walking in Italy with sandals
and she's kind of strong, but the only man in the street on
Vespas and, you know, so saying things to her and, and I felt
that first of all, I thought it's a beautiful picture.
But I felt that being a woman studying Talmud when I started
studying was like going in a street with all men and you are
trying to keep your balance. Also call it the barefoot
reading and she's with sandals there and staying on your track
and enjoying the company as as opposed to being scared of them,
so I'll tell. You something though, recently
we've had an explosion of of incredible women that have
written incredible things. We just recently interviewed
Gila Fine, Yael Ziegler. I don't know if you've heard of
her, Yael Ziegler, many more that don't come off the top of
my head, but really the the contribution of women to both
Tanakh and Talmud has been it's a big.
Revolution. I mean, I saw the the classes
where there was no woman in the room.
It was professor varied Noah. She was before me and she was my
teacher and friend. But then there were no women.
And today, like in every other profession, when they come in,
they they know how to. Work and having a female
perspective of things is important.
You're getting a very there's a there's a lot that there's a lot
that men don't either don't think about or not or not
concentrating on specifically. But a woman does have certain,
how do you say it like they have certain which, which, which
really contribute, but not just from just from the intellectual
standpoint, of course, that, you know, doesn't make a difference,
man or woman, right. So there's an intellectual
contribution, but specifically also from being a woman like
Gila Fine, what she did and whoever listened to the podcast,
which we hope you read her book because it's what she did it you
have to have a woman that's really looking at that.
You know what I mean? It's it's very difficult.
It's a perspective that only a woman can really dig into.
Exactly. So you know I wrote an.
Article in the 80s I was 20 something and I called it it's
it's a take on on Bialik and I said only half the people read
the book and it was given to what was given to 100% of us not
only to 1/2 and the Torah I wrote them is looking for is
waiting for the woman's perspective of reading and I
mean and I think during the last 30 years I'm seeing it it's
really amazing and beautiful there's so.
Many. You're a big part of that
movement, I think. Yeah, to give you credit.
We're going to we're going to talk about that, that in your
your the Knesset speech, which we'll we'll talk about later,
which was revolutionary in its own right.
But now regarding your book, so in the introduction to your book
A Bride for One Night, you expressed that you are not
reading the Talmud religiously, academically or even
educationally, but rather as texts that have the ability to
move us, namely as literature. This was also the catalyst for
your plea in your legendary Knesset address, which we will
will speak by later, that the Talmud should be a part of the
Israeli curriculum and culture, regardless of religious
ideology, as these texts have something to say to the modern
Israeli. Indeed, whether you view Agada
as sacred or not, the author's desire to move us is an
unquestioned truth. Can you elaborate on your
methodology and those who inspired it?
Wow, it's like a question of tell me about your life.
Yes, I I was amazed when I met the Talmud.
I was 20, something very young, just of out of the army and for
the first time at Oranim College with Menachem Hirschmann, Mark
Hirschmann, he was our teacher and he made us learn by heart
the Rashi Tosvot and the the chapter we studied.
And I was just amazed that this text exists.
And I've never, I never met. I didn't know that.
It's so incredible. And what really moved me most
was the literary depth, the language, the humor, the, the,
the, it's sometimes wild. It's kind of radical.
And like, who knew that this is what the rabbis are studying in
the Shibata all the time. They don't look like radical
literary. We must I and I felt like like
I'm finding a treasure and I have to bring it home to my
people, to the people in the Israeli community of literature
and art and music and film and so on.
It's like when you read a good book and you tell your friends
you must look at this. It's so, but the methodology, I
was a student of Professor Yonah Frankel.
He was, I think the first one at Eber University that studies the
legends as works of art. He would say it's, it doesn't
matter if they put it in this sugiya.
It's not that it doesn't matter, but I don't read it as only
belonging to this sugiya because it it existed before it was put
in. It's like a it's like poetry.
You don't need to know anything before you start the story and
you don't know need to know anything after.
It's a work of art. And that amazed me.
And then he would just read with us these small jewels of I
remember the day he taught us that accord Safui.
And you know, you say it in Israel.
It's like something that you say 1,000,000 times in school.
And he said the courts are full is not that everything is
predicted, but that everything is seen.
There's the speech. Someone big eye is seeing
everything. And still you have the right to
decide what you're doing. Simple, just good serious
readings to the bottom of the text and I love that.
I was also studying with Ari Elon who was student of Franklin
few years before me and he wrote Almadid small short but not
small book of reading legends and I studied with both of them
and learned that meeting a short story in the Talmud.
Is the beginning of a relationship.
It takes a while to let it. It's like you get something very
intense and you need to fill it with water in order for it to
come to its right size. So, so as a student of Frank,
and I think at the time, again, it was in the 80s, early 90s,
nineties, he was very different from all the other teachers of
the Talmo department. He was in the literature
department because they did not learn agada in the Talmo
department. That's Hebrew University
politics. But where in all the other
classes we studied, you know where the sources are from and
is there a mistake in the you then maybe there's another
manuscript and so on, but did not touch the deep meaning of
things as such. It was much more technology.
Frankel got went straight into the values and that moved me.
And so I understood that we are taking all our tools from
literature. I did not study in the academia
literature, but that was that is what I love and and work with
the same tools on Talmud. And it's funny to say today it's
a given for you, but it was new. And so I went and many of the
stories were not no one wrote about them yet.
For example, I was very a young student still in Owani.
I noticed that Rabia Kiva and his wife the classic story of 12
years and 12 years that it comes with 24,000 students.
It reminded me of something and I thought that it is similar to
a very, very classic script play played by Nathan Alderman, who
is our greatest poet and and writer that is called Pundakal
Hot the Pundak. How would you say it in English?
The spirit Pundak is like an inn.
It's a classic story about a violinist that is very poor
living with his wife and he's leaving her at night without
saying anything because he wants to be a famous musician.
And they're too poor. And she wakes up and she says,
no, don't go in hiding, I'll give you the money and go.
And he goes for 12 years and he comes back and he hears her.
Someone is mocking her. And she says, if you would ask
me, can go for another 12 years. And he goes for another 12
years. And when he comes back, he's the
most famous violinist in the world.
But when he comes back to meet her, she already is coming from
the cemetery. It's it's too late.
And no one ever mentioned that this is the same story of Rabi
Akiva, 12 years and 12 years. And Rabi Akiva says, if I, if I
would have, I would give you Jerusalem of gold, which goes to
the famous song Alterman says I would give you wings of gold.
I, I, I wrote an academic little essay saying this is the midrash
of that. And at that time, the secular
people that knew Pundako hot by heart didn't know of Akiva.
They. Couldn't trail it.
Back of Akiva from kindergarten, never heard of.
So that connection is I feel where I work to connect this
treasure with these wonderful artists and people, not only
religiously and not educationally.
I meant I don't want to be like a kindergarten teacher that
tells you what's right and what's wrong.
The text is much more cool and radical than that.
It's not a text of the good kids.
When Rabi Akiva says, when there's a question on what
ground can you divorce a woman and Betty Lennon that she might
say if they if she cheated on you or if she burned your food.
Rabi Akiva says even if you found someone more beautiful
than her, just don't stay here out of pity.
If you want to go, go. That is not educational.
Oh, it's not something, you know, not banal.
They're very not banal. And I feel that unfortunately,
many times when they are taught, they're taught in a kind of
Hamish not, not as wild as they are.
I think that's what I meant. And also, you know, I'm not, I'm
not a rabbi. I am not telling people, giving
advice what to do. I'm appreciating a beautiful
piece of art together with with others.
And so I'm trying to understand the young woman that wrote it.
It's not me anymore. It's a what?
What are your thoughts about the fact that as far as 2000 years
ago, these these stages had the abilities and the and
specifically the methods of such rich literary texts, the way the
way they they presented, what does that tell you about them
from your perspective? They're a big mystery to me
because we don't exactly know who they are.
The most of their Godot are not signed.
There's like a hypothesis of hypothesis that they might be in
the 5th century and maybe they're in Babylon, but who are
they exactly? And I imagine some kind of a
literary circle like what is it called in New York?
The like a kind of a circle of people that had a language
together. In my PhD, I tried to claim that
if you see the hundreds of short stories or miniature stories,
they share language in the sense of wherever you will find a
cave, there would be a few dozens caves in stories.
In most of them, someone will go through transformation.
It's like a topo, and everywhere the matronita, the Roman matron
will appear, she's always the same character and what happens
to the rabbi with her is usually something vis A vis body,
sexuality, sin. When they meet the poor man, it
would always be meeting chaos, meeting the other, meeting fear,
Sometimes the Angel of death, they would be the home owner
meeting the the other when they meet a baby.
So I think that they created not only these beautiful stories,
these deep, profound stories, but a kind of a network of a
Gothic language and also landscape, as I wrote there in
the book that there is, it's like a map, it's like a world, a
little universe where all the stories happen between the bath
house, the bed with rash and the bedding, the field, the house,
the second Storey of the house, the roof.
It's only there you can film the whole series in a little, you
know, scenery. And that's very modern.
It's very ancient, but it's very modern artistically.
Usually in every scene there'll be only two characters, a rabbi
and someone. Someone liking Greek tragedies
could be a group of someones, but it's always 2 and many, many
other things. I'm thinking about them a lot,
although someone will. Want to, well, you're basically
you're saying that, that, that you can track an internal,
internal logic and internal sort of language and world that they,
that it's almost like they created their own little
internal mental map that they, that they, that they, that they
used for to, to to channel through their values and ideas.
And but they did it within a, a sort of like an internal
language like you're saying, yes.
Like a whole world maybe. I don't know what it could be be
similar to, but that the people that knew the stories, the
audience didn't only know this rabbi and the the Roman matron
from this story, They remember. It's like a series.
The you know, the the beautiful and the brave, you already know
them. And in the seventh season, you
don't have to introduce them again.
If someone will come. We know that the coves, the the
person that washes the clothes that smells bad is the lowest
rank of professions you So it's a series like today.
Maybe you know, when we see on television.
And so there's something about this group.
It's not just personal stories. It's it's a, it's an amazing
creation. Yeah, they're, they're going off
of like known cultural motifs that people are familiar with
and they're constantly reusing those as like the the, the
backdrop, right of the story. So.
In their special way. So a cave is not anymore just a
cave. The Israeli cave in the
Palestinian Talmud would be a cave with bats and flies and
smell the Babylonian cave. It is a magical cave.
It's a Walt Disney cave with the the the we seem the that the
carrot tree grows and the miracles and the water comes and
it's like sabbatical in I don't know what would be your
Greenland that you with your son and you it's so The Cave comes
out of what it really is in their history and their time,
and it becomes the Talmudic cave and yeah.
It's very interesting because you bring up The Cave, but I, I
was just thinking about always comes to my mind when I read
like the, the story of ABI Shimon going into The Cave.
They're similar. There's something similar that
connects it to Plato's cave, the store of famous Plato's cave.
And you know, because in Plato's cave, for those who don't know,
I might be butchering it, but the the idea is, is that there
are people who are facing a wall in The Cave and there's there's
light behind them and they're seeing these people who are
walking behind them. They're casting shadows on the
wall and the all tied. In.
Their hands all tied. Yeah.
They can't come out. And then one person escapes.
And then when he escapes, he sees, oh, my God, there's a
world out here that's unbelievable.
And he comes back to tell them that you guys are missing out.
There's really, like, there's an amazing world out there that you
don't even know this. These are all just images.
These are just imagination. This is not the real thing.
These are projections and they like laughed him off and like
you don't, you don't know reality.
We know what we see. We know this, this is our life.
And it's reminds me of almost like kind of like the rabbits
are in a way. I don't know if they were, I
know they were exposed to to, you know, Hellenism and so on.
But they when they came out, whenever he's showing comes out
of The Cave, he also thinks he, he perceives reality a certain
way that that is not correct. And then he has to go back into
The Cave to, to contemplate and then come back and then
understand the reality for what it really is.
And I found that The Cave motif is kind of building off of the,
the Greek, you know, explanation of it.
I don't know if you if that resonates.
I, I believe, I'm not sure, but I believe that they looked up to
the Greek philosophy and myth and they absorbed it like we
know what's happening in the world today, but then they take
it in and they make something new of it.
They make it their. Own.
They make it their own. Their own.
And what happens to Shivan Bhai is that he goes in to The Cave a
rebel and a zealot and he says about the Romans, whatever they
know they did for their own good and he's against them.
After 12 years and another year that God puts in there to think,
he comes out and he says, can I let the can, Can I do something?
And that transformation and becoming an adult and taking
responsibility is something very interesting of people changing
The Cave. They like a butterfly.
They become something. The next stage of the it's it's
interesting when we as that would I got the readers when we
all know the stories, we can start talking not about not only
about a specific story, but about the the top post that the
symbol that is like, for example, The Cave.
So I'm still waiting for to have enough colleagues to talk about
that. You know, nobody reads your PhD.
So maybe one day. So in your introductory chapter,
The Imaginative Map, you discussed literary landscape
used by our sages in telling over agatic stories.
You mentioned that modern academics have always been,
quote UN quote, embarrassed by the unconventional depictions of
time, space, and reality in these stories.
What is your understanding of the imagery, imaginary map of
the sages and the consequential consequential error of modern
academics in understanding it? You're talking about academics
30 years ago, 20 years ago, and I think today there's so many
colleagues that have joined us. But I felt at the time and back
many years before me, in the beginning of the reason shaft in
the student terms, they were embarrassed with Agada and
something childish. Maybe it's folklore, it's not
serious and only Alaka is legal work that they used to say it
doesn't have embezzle basal, it doesn't have meat on it.
It's just agada, fluffy women's stuff.
And today I think people realise that it's all literature.
Alaka is also literature and Agada is so well made, so deep
and profound and precise and today it deserves and it's
getting it's academic attention and many more scholars from
different fields came to to know it and to study it.
So it's not only Talmud is not only legal, it is there is there
are legal many legal discussions, but I wouldn't say
that it's more than 1/2. That's a big question.
The Eniaco, you know, different people will count differently,
but there's no question, I think that the maybe the smaller half
of Agadda this and not just let's let's jump beyond it and
go to the next electric chapter. Yeah, it's it's treated more
like a science today, like there is so much to unpack.
And before it was kind of overlooked, not really so
focused on and and totally I think in many circles.
In the in the picture book. Yeah, I mean.
Pictures. What I love about the academic
world today with regards to these agadotta, is that I find
that they're the focus on it. It's it's actually unique
because you don't always experience that depending on the
yeshiva you go to. Usually you kind of just like
brush off or you you kind of run through the Agadoth.
You're not really analyzing them so much all the time depending
on the yeshiva, obviously. So it's really like a breath of
fresh air. Like we were discussing off
camera professor Jeffrey Rubenstein, who like, I feel
that should be like yeshiva curriculum.
You know, people should must learn that before to really
appreciate Agadah and his contribute his contribution is
so it's so refreshing. And our own our our Rabbi is the
one who who got us into him. Rabbi Joshua Maroof.
We have to give him credit for that.
And it just opened up a whole world for us.
You know we. Really did.
Because we, we studied Gemara since we were like in what, 5th
grade, 6th grade. And we never, never even
considered this. But we never no, no.
No, it we learned it in a very It was.
It was not. It was.
Yes. But I envy that too.
But you know, we all all the world of the studying Maha is
studying in a Lithuanian way, which is a kind of a way that
they decided back there that we will study law and which is a
fine way to study. But all the part of the time
that doesn't go doesn't pack into that.
They just kind of let go. And Jeffrey Rubinstein is is
doing an amazing job in doing it academically.
So nobody can say a word. It's not.
It's not only he is not only literary, he's very
scientifically showing and proving it.
And so, yeah. It's undeniable when you, when
you start to see if you in his book Talmudic stories, he, he'll
start charting for you and showing you how these stories
have chiasms and, you know, parallel, parallelisms to other.
And it's once you like, you know, it's, it's undeniable when
you see it. And I don't think that that
needs to take away from the religious message for people who
are religious that might get intimidated by such things.
I say the opposite. I think that it actually
enriches the religious aspect if you so choose that way.
It's it's it, it, it shows you that it shows you that these
were very, very structured, pointed, specific.
There's something to unpack here.
And the sages, you know, they were at least for in their
minds, they're giving a religious message.
There's no reason why a religious person can't should
get intimidated or think that. The fact that Agadot or or have
a literary structure, it somehow devalues it.
I think it increases the value. It's just, it's just a matter of
learning how to reframe and like, you know, shape your lens
in a different way. And then you actually it becomes
even more enriching than you'd ever imagined.
So Javal, you know. That you mentioned that, I mean,
I felt it, but we never actually said it.
I think that I wouldn't say religious because religiosity is
something that is not divided between Alaric and non Alaric
people, but traditional religious, you know what I mean?
People maybe we're intimidated by the freedom of literature.
It's not summed into, but for me that is religious text because
they move your deepest heart. Absolutely.
Appreciate this world and and what kind, what is expected from
you as a human being and what it is to be a Jew and what it is to
be human and what does God want from us and.
Absolutely. The the the word religious that
I used was the wrong wording. It wasn't.
I didn't mean to. That's the wrong wording that I
chose. My point was instead these were
these are stories that are speaking to the to the depth of
the of the human condition and depth of of the Jewish
consciousness. And I, I always respect fear
when people are intimidated. I try to understand what is what
is frightening here. And usually they have a point.
But in this case, I think it's funny to say that it's time to
study the whole Your Mama and not only the few traditional
chapters that she would do. Yeah.
And, and actually you mentioned that it there's, it's very
creative, which is different than a lot of the other fields
of study within Judaism where everything is kind of like black
and white and not black and white in a sense where there's
no depth, but but like it's, there's a.
Clarity. Is clarity and it's
systematized, right? Everything is systematized.
So you, you progress in your understanding as you learn it
more and more, right? But for example, Midrash, when
you learned Midrash as a kid, you never really develop that,
that skill of honing and understanding and unpacking A
Midrash. You're really learning it when
you're 6 years old, the same way you're learning it when you're
26 years old. But for some reason, you know,
for some reason Agadam Midrash stays in that place and, and
every other feel like Gemara and everything else you study,
you're constantly developing and evolving and, and, and deepening
your understanding. And it's a shame because you
know, I, but it, like you said, it's, it's, we understand that
there's, you know, people have these fears for a good reason.
You know when there's something too creative.
If you don't understand how to work with it, you might go too
far. Yeah, I think that's what you
meant when you said I don't, I don't, I don't look, I don't
that you don't look at it. You don't teach it
educationally, meaning you don't want it to be something that,
you know, this is Kaka, the Kaka.
And you know, that's it. It's supposed to open something
up. That's that's the that's the
idea of an artistic expression, right?
It's supposed to, it's supposed to create something versus just,
you know, sitting in a classroom and ABCDEFG and goodnight.
I agree. And also as you say, you said a
lot of the vision, vision shaft, the study of Jewish studies of
the 19th century was objecting. You learn something and then you
divide it to three levels and four answers in here you go
through something happens to you it it's not something that
you're objective about. The story touches you and I feel
changes me, wakes me up. Like in the Knesset, I wanted to
say something to the ultra Orthodox and to the secular.
And the story was so relevant that sometimes when the right
story comes in the right time, for example, now when we went
through this horrible war in the 7th of October and we lost our
concept. Concept.
Yeah, they say in Israel we something about what what's
happening here was kind of lost. And I felt that it's very
similar to the giving of the Torah.
And when Moses comes down and breaks it, and then there's a
time without Torah and there is a time of just being quiet and
waiting to realise what what's going to happen.
And then God says to Moses, come now, you will write the Torah
again. You're not going to get a Torah
made by heaven. You're going to write it
yourself. And I felt about Israel that we
are now in a, in a time between Torah and we have to heal and
write the Torah ourselves, even if it's not perfect and it's
it's with this wound inside it. And many times the the text is
holding some deep meaning that until you don't get to the point
that you need it, or for example, the Agadakis that God
is crying. I learned it so many years ago,
but I, I was impressed by it. But I know when, what did they
feel when they wrote it? God is crying and and the Angel
is saying to him, please don't cry here.
I will cry and you don't cry. And God says, no, if you don't
let me cry here, I'll go to my room that is called my misterim
and I'll cry there. And again last year I felt that
God is crying and that there are moments to just say, you know,
that's where we are now. And if I wouldn't have that
text, I would feel lost. There's something that the sages
have left us, this treasure of human responses to life that
thank God we don't need all of them all the time.
But when we do, I felt like coming home to I, I go back to
them like, you know, you go to your grandparents to, to learn
some wisdom and get some comfort.
Amazing, Amazingly said. Wow, what?
I got chills from that example that you gave.
That's really beautiful. And now that you touched on your
Knesset speech, we'd like you to tell our audience first of all
what that was about and what led you to that moment.
And before you, before you talk about it, I just want to say if,
if the, if anyone in the audience has not heard Ruth's
Knesset speech runs about, I believe it was about 1520
minutes or my or something. It's about 15 to 20 minutes.
Her Knesset speech trying to trying to promote Talmud to the
wider Israeli society. It is one of the most incredible
speeches you will ever hear. Everyone should go on YouTube.
Everyone needs to listen to it. It is incredible.
OK, sorry now. Thank you very much.
It's so moving that you heard it.
It was very simple. We came.
I was only maybe a week in the Knesset.
And also Sheila, one of the guys that was in charge, he said,
tomorrow you have to introduce yourselves.
You have 10 minutes, 15 minutes. And I thought, can I be next
week? And he said no tomorrow.
So I went home and I thought, how will I introduce myself?
What, what do I know how to do? And he said to myself, I'll read
the story. And I thought, what could be
relevant for today in the Knesset?
There's all this, you know, tension between this and that.
And I thought of this beautiful story of Robert Khomeini's wife,
and I brought my Talmud, and then they told me you're not
allowed to hold anything when you're talking to the Knesset.
So I kept it very low, and I started teaching.
Now, usually not very many people listen.
They do other things. So I was teaching, but then the
speaker, the Knesset that day was from Shas Vakhman is his
name Vakhman, and he is a traditional Jew.
So he was interested and he heard that I'm reading the
Taliban. He started talking to me.
So the the more secular people in the Knesset thought that he's
attacking me. So they woke up.
So the ultra Orthodox in the Knesset thought that we're
fighting. So they woke up while we were
really enjoying studying together.
And so I really read that story about the wife and the husband
that forgets to come back home for young people.
I'm afraid to ruin the beauty of the story, but there's a very
deep, it's not exactly something to learn, but something that the
story touches on that if you rely on someone and you stand on
their soldiers shoulders, you should be very sensitive to
their needs. And if they break, you will
break with them. And it's, it's so true about
America and Israel, about the Middle East and us, about
different groups of Jews. When you rely on someone, you
have to see if you didn't push them just a little bit more than
they can take because if they will collapse, you will
collapse. And the story is so beautiful
because you can see both sides as the wife and both sides as
the husband. It's not just one sided.
So I didn't know it's taped and I didn't know anyone would put
it on online. And then I learned what an
amazing world it is. Well, you didn't know that it
was going to be on. No, I was first week I didn't
know everything was dead. I.
And I mean, was the reaction in the audience because it's such
a, you know, divided audience. Not often times.
And like, I felt like, you know, you, you really, it was just
such a unique reaction, you know, I thought it was amazing,
so. Actually, I think the connection
with Vaknin that was special because we come from 2 two
different worlds and they would expect us to be rivals.
But he's a safari Jew. I don't want to fight with him.
I like him and he didn't have nothing to fight with me.
He he was intrigued. Let's study some time.
And you have to sit there as a, as a speaker for four hours or 8
hours. I I joined him afterwards to be
here. So so you.
Give you gave that speech, the room was stunned.
You could see they were stunned it it was a stunning speech and
they were stunned. What happened after?
Did what what? What was the?
Did it have an effect or or or or did it not have an effect or
what What? What was the the events that
followed? Things don't happen very.
Quickly, of course, that was the nature of the world.
That was the nature of the world.
But I did feel that that I broke the line in some ways and I
could form coalitions with not only with the people that are
supposed to be on my side, because politics is very much
either you're here or you're there.
And some surprising people came to say Charcoar.
And it comes granted from the in the outside of politics, but
inside, it's very hard to break the lines.
And so unknowingly, the Talmud was really a source of help here
and we managed to do some things.
And I also want to say that I believe in politics and I think
good people should go and give service for a few years if they
can, because if you're not at the table, you're on the table.
And we always leave it to other people and then we complain.
So I was surprised how well the Talmud was accepted there.
But I mean, that's what we do every day.
But suddenly in that scene, everything was surprising and
and different. And for me, it was amazing to
meet people like you that heard it.
And suddenly I had connections with Jews in the world that I
don't know. And that also made me feel how
the language of the Talmud is such a potential connector.
Uniting factor. It could be a uniting factor.
So yeah, a lot, I'm assuming a lot of women sort of knocking on
your door to teach us at that point, huh?
Not women dafka. Really.
OK. Not women dafka.
No, it's it's not a good thing. It's.
A It's a great. You're you.
You, you have an incredible life where you're trying to bring
back our ancient roots and trying to connect it with our
modern times. You, you, you have you, You, you
want the our our traditions to be a force of unification, not a
division. You, you, we share in your
vision that one day our ancient texts will not be relegated to a
specific group or specific, you know, ideology, but that the
ancient texts of Israel belonged to the people of Israel
regardless. It's going to be the night of
Shavuot. We all were there.
I remember standing there when we received it to our it was all
of us women and men and there was number different.
There was number secular or not secular or religious there, and
we should all live with it. And I feel I just met 60 young
people from a machina program for the Army, and they're great
young people today. And they asked me about, you
know, the project that I'm trying to work on.
And I told them that our life is shorter than the moves of
culture and history. And I tried to, together with my
friends and my generation to push the rock a little bit
forward. And it's not moving so fast, but
maybe something is changing. And I do feel that in Israel it
is. And unfortunately, in this last
very hard two years, many more people are looking for meaning,
for identity, for that. Yeah.
I feel here at Alma that we have more and more people that come
to study young people and and older people and everyone.
Change. Change is always slow.
That's the nature of the world. Maimonides actually says that
the reason why Hashem God made made the Jewish people wander
for 40 years in the desert was because being that they were
just, they were slaves for all those years.
It was, it was not, it was, it was not practical to take a
slave minded people and just, you know, immediately throw them
into Israel as a, you know, a, a, a, a country and a nation and
a political. They needed to have a time to,
to readjust Exactly. Change comes slow, but change
does happen. And the explosion, as I was
saying before, the explosion of, of incredible, incredible works
of, of, of, of Talmud and Agadah and Midrash and all these, it is
what's going on in Israel. There's like a renaissance of
sort. And it's just a matter of time.
It's a matter of time that, that it will, it will, it will, it
will, it will spread into all, all the different, all the
different places. It's and, and we appreciate so
much your contribution to that vision and, and we so much, we
appreciate the time that you gave us Kolakavod, keep doing
what you're doing and keep inspiring Israelis towards
towards connecting with our ancient texts.
Thank you so much. It is so moving that that I feel
that we are connected like in a minute because we we share the
the love of this and that even if things move slowly, knowing
that this is our job and that we do it and that we have partners,
even ones that we didn't know until today is a very warm
feeling. Thank you.
Thank you for having me and thank you for being there.
Absolutely. Thank you.
It's our pleasure. Thank you.
So joining your audience. Thank you.
Shavuotov and be safe and. Happy Shavuot, and maybe we may
we be Zakahim who is worthy of the Torah that we keep
receiving.