1 00:00:01,440 --> 00:00:05,520 Welcome to Judaism Demystified, a podcast for the perplexed. 2 00:00:06,080 --> 00:00:09,320 Join us as we explore some of the most fascinating Jewish and 3 00:00:09,320 --> 00:00:12,200 Torah related topics with our esteemed guests. 4 00:00:12,640 --> 00:00:15,560 By tackling some of the biggest questions you likely won't find 5 00:00:15,560 --> 00:00:18,960 addressed elsewhere, we aim to shed light on important issues 6 00:00:19,320 --> 00:00:21,600 and inspire a return to the fundamentals. 7 00:00:21,920 --> 00:00:32,560 Enjoy the show. Thank you for joining the 8 00:00:32,560 --> 00:00:35,640 Judaism Demystified podcast. It is an absolute honor and 9 00:00:35,640 --> 00:00:40,800 pleasure to have Gila Fine, remarkable author of the book, 10 00:00:40,880 --> 00:00:42,800 The Madwoman and the Rabbi's Attic. 11 00:00:43,160 --> 00:00:45,720 First of all, we want to say personally that this is probably 12 00:00:45,720 --> 00:00:47,440 our favorite book that we've read this year. 13 00:00:48,400 --> 00:00:52,040 And you know, in this genre, probably we we put you up there 14 00:00:52,040 --> 00:00:54,120 with Professor Jeffrey Rubenstein. 15 00:00:54,120 --> 00:00:56,840 We've had on the podcast multiple times and I know you 16 00:00:56,840 --> 00:00:59,760 cited him in the book a lot, but your book is phenomenal. 17 00:00:59,760 --> 00:01:01,440 So everyone has to read this book. 18 00:01:01,800 --> 00:01:06,040 Number one, we want to ask you if you can just tell our 19 00:01:06,040 --> 00:01:08,280 audience a little bit about yourself, your background, and 20 00:01:08,280 --> 00:01:09,720 what inspired you to write this book. 21 00:01:11,400 --> 00:01:15,880 So thank you for that very generous introduction that's I 22 00:01:15,880 --> 00:01:18,040 can die a happy woman. Now that I've been referred to 23 00:01:18,120 --> 00:01:22,720 Professor Rubenstein, a little bit about me. 24 00:01:22,760 --> 00:01:28,400 I learn, teach, and write about Talmudic stories. 25 00:01:29,680 --> 00:01:33,000 I live in Jerusalem. I recently published this book 26 00:01:33,400 --> 00:01:37,200 and I've spent the past year talking to people about it, 27 00:01:37,200 --> 00:01:42,480 which has been a lot of fun and sort of the story behind it. 28 00:01:42,480 --> 00:01:46,040 And this is is more or less how I open the book. 29 00:01:47,240 --> 00:01:52,120 It really does go back to a religious crisis that I had that 30 00:01:52,120 --> 00:01:54,920 began 3 days before my 12th birthday. 31 00:01:54,920 --> 00:01:59,160 Where I was charged with writing my own bar Mitzvah speech. 32 00:01:59,160 --> 00:02:01,600 My family. I was visiting my grandparents 33 00:02:01,600 --> 00:02:04,680 in London at the time, and my whole family had gone out to the 34 00:02:04,680 --> 00:02:07,360 Science Museum for the day and I was left behind with a pile of 35 00:02:07,360 --> 00:02:11,280 my grandfather's books and told to basically try and come up 36 00:02:11,280 --> 00:02:13,360 with something to say by the time everyone came home. 37 00:02:14,080 --> 00:02:17,800 And so, not knowing much about anything, I reached for the 38 00:02:17,800 --> 00:02:20,360 first book on the pile, which was Sofil had a Gaddaf, or the 39 00:02:20,360 --> 00:02:24,000 Book of Legends, a collection of the stories in the Talmud, 40 00:02:24,000 --> 00:02:27,680 organized according to theme. And I opened to the theme woman 41 00:02:27,680 --> 00:02:31,920 because I figured about Mitzvah 3 stories in. 42 00:02:31,920 --> 00:02:36,080 I felt a bit uncomfortable. By the 10th I was in tears, 43 00:02:36,840 --> 00:02:39,640 sobbing as only a nearly 12 year old can. 44 00:02:40,440 --> 00:02:45,880 I was so hurt. I was so deeply offended that 45 00:02:45,880 --> 00:02:49,480 the Rabbi's could have such a low opinion of me and my kind. 46 00:02:50,560 --> 00:02:52,680 The women in their stories were weak. 47 00:02:53,200 --> 00:02:57,600 They were irrational. They were greedy and petty and 48 00:02:57,600 --> 00:03:03,280 promiscuous and vain, One of the sources read Nivreya Isha 49 00:03:03,280 --> 00:03:07,560 Nivratan IMA. Once woman was created, the 50 00:03:07,560 --> 00:03:10,960 devil was created with her. So woman was the mother of all 51 00:03:10,960 --> 00:03:15,680 vice. I ended up cobbling together 52 00:03:15,680 --> 00:03:19,480 some quotes in my speech, but everything changed for me that 53 00:03:19,480 --> 00:03:22,320 day. The simple faith of my childhood 54 00:03:22,320 --> 00:03:27,680 was gone, and in its place were pain and confusion and doubt. 55 00:03:28,680 --> 00:03:32,000 I struggled hard and for many years to make peace with the 56 00:03:32,000 --> 00:03:35,400 religion I so loved, knowing that its founding fathers felt 57 00:03:35,400 --> 00:03:39,120 about me the way that they did. I spent years struggling, 58 00:03:39,240 --> 00:03:42,240 searching for answers, reading really anything I could get my 59 00:03:42,240 --> 00:03:47,400 hands on. After high school and National 60 00:03:47,400 --> 00:03:49,840 Youth Service, I went to seminary to study Talmud, which 61 00:03:49,840 --> 00:03:54,720 was forbidden to me growing up, but it wasn't until I went to 62 00:03:54,720 --> 00:03:58,840 university to study literature that I started finding the 63 00:03:58,840 --> 00:04:03,880 answers that I was looking for. Learning to read the stories of 64 00:04:03,880 --> 00:04:07,200 the Talmud as the stories of the Talmud ought to be read, I 65 00:04:07,200 --> 00:04:09,920 discovered that these narratives are not at all what they first 66 00:04:09,920 --> 00:04:12,600 appeared to be. That there was a great deal more 67 00:04:12,600 --> 00:04:16,160 to the women of the Talmud than initially meets the eye, and 68 00:04:16,160 --> 00:04:18,560 that the rabbis had some surprising, so as not to say 69 00:04:18,560 --> 00:04:26,080 surprisingly feminist, ideas of marriage, sex, childbirth, and 70 00:04:26,080 --> 00:04:28,000 what it meant to be a woman in the world. 71 00:04:28,480 --> 00:04:32,360 And so it took over a decade of intense religious struggle. 72 00:04:32,360 --> 00:04:35,160 But the stories of the Talmud which had so bothered me at 12 73 00:04:35,800 --> 00:04:38,760 ended up becoming my constant study and my greatest joy. 74 00:04:39,440 --> 00:04:42,960 And this book is very much a result of that struggle. 75 00:04:46,080 --> 00:04:49,600 It's it's, you know, a lot of people will take like your 76 00:04:49,600 --> 00:04:55,800 experience and will, you know, you know, take it to, to, to, to 77 00:04:55,800 --> 00:05:00,000 sometimes negative extremes or, you know, just, you know, it's 78 00:05:00,000 --> 00:05:05,560 amazing to me that you were willing and sort of you, you 79 00:05:05,560 --> 00:05:10,680 were, you were consistently willing to confront the issue 80 00:05:10,760 --> 00:05:13,760 that was put in front of you. It was almost like from the 81 00:05:13,760 --> 00:05:15,920 sense I'm getting is almost became your life mission. 82 00:05:16,400 --> 00:05:21,120 You know, like you just you, you had to figure it out because 83 00:05:21,200 --> 00:05:26,040 because it was like an existential reality in front of 84 00:05:26,040 --> 00:05:29,120 you that you didn't want to just, you know, gloss, gloss 85 00:05:29,120 --> 00:05:30,640 over. You don't want to, you don't 86 00:05:30,640 --> 00:05:33,560 want to, you don't want to just break away. 87 00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:36,760 You wanted to confront it. I think that's incredible. 88 00:05:36,760 --> 00:05:40,880 And I think that we, you know, I wish that people would, would 89 00:05:41,360 --> 00:05:43,200 hopefully learn from that, right? 90 00:05:43,200 --> 00:05:46,640 That, you know, we're, we're supposed to confront the the 91 00:05:46,640 --> 00:05:50,200 issues, especially when it comes to religion and Judaism, right? 92 00:05:50,200 --> 00:05:54,160 We need to confront the issues instead of just trying to, you 93 00:05:54,160 --> 00:06:00,560 know, find ways to to not have to deal with it. 94 00:06:02,080 --> 00:06:06,280 I, I say in the introduction of the book, the reading is a 95 00:06:06,280 --> 00:06:11,480 relationship and the reading of a text, certainly a sacred text 96 00:06:12,080 --> 00:06:14,880 ought to be like a relationship that we have with a significant 97 00:06:14,880 --> 00:06:17,240 other. And so I, I, I start off by 98 00:06:17,240 --> 00:06:22,240 listing different models of relationships, bad relationships 99 00:06:22,240 --> 00:06:27,160 initially, whether it's walking away entirely or staying and 100 00:06:27,160 --> 00:06:31,680 imposing myself onto my significant other or allowing 101 00:06:31,680 --> 00:06:34,240 the significant other to impose themselves onto me. 102 00:06:34,760 --> 00:06:38,240 And I end up with what in my mind is the ideal model, which 103 00:06:38,240 --> 00:06:41,520 is a negotiation. Like in any good relationship, 104 00:06:41,720 --> 00:06:45,520 you don't walk away once there's a problem and you don't gloss 105 00:06:45,520 --> 00:06:48,040 over the problem hoping that it would sort itself out, because 106 00:06:48,040 --> 00:06:51,240 it won't. What you do in a relationship 107 00:06:51,280 --> 00:06:54,800 with someone you care about is you stay and you try and fight 108 00:06:54,800 --> 00:06:57,080 it out. You try and negotiate some sort 109 00:06:57,080 --> 00:07:00,000 of way of being together in spite of the differences. 110 00:07:00,000 --> 00:07:03,000 And that's very much been my approach to the Talmud as well, 111 00:07:03,720 --> 00:07:07,160 which is a significant other in my life and with which I do 112 00:07:07,160 --> 00:07:09,320 sometimes have my problems. I've had problems for many 113 00:07:09,320 --> 00:07:13,800 years, but I love it deeply. And so I stay and I try and 114 00:07:13,800 --> 00:07:17,120 fight it out. And I, I'd like to believe that 115 00:07:17,120 --> 00:07:19,520 Talmud tries to fight it out with me as well because it cares 116 00:07:19,520 --> 00:07:21,160 about me as much as I care about it. 117 00:07:21,160 --> 00:07:26,440 And in that negotiation, we've, we've made our peace and, and, 118 00:07:26,440 --> 00:07:29,800 and I love the Talmud all the more for this struggle. 119 00:07:31,440 --> 00:07:34,440 And, and we, we're so grateful that you had that struggle 120 00:07:34,440 --> 00:07:35,880 because we get to benefit from it. 121 00:07:35,880 --> 00:07:38,720 We, we want to once again plug your book. 122 00:07:39,520 --> 00:07:42,600 That is the mad women in the Rabbi's attic rereading the 123 00:07:42,600 --> 00:07:44,880 women of the Talmud. So we want everybody again to 124 00:07:44,880 --> 00:07:46,520 get this book. And now you're going to find out 125 00:07:46,520 --> 00:07:49,040 why you should get the book. So Ben, see, take it away. 126 00:07:50,240 --> 00:07:57,040 OK, so we wanted to, we wanted to go through your methodology 127 00:07:57,040 --> 00:07:58,440 as you outline in your introduction. 128 00:07:58,440 --> 00:08:02,320 In your introduction, can you share with our audience the 129 00:08:02,320 --> 00:08:06,360 approach you took, the reasoning behind the, the way you read the 130 00:08:06,360 --> 00:08:11,040 stories of each heroine? And, and I also wanted to ask 131 00:08:11,040 --> 00:08:18,080 you as, as a, as a add on, knowing that you had this in a 132 00:08:18,080 --> 00:08:24,000 sense friction with the text. How did, how do you make sure 133 00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:30,320 when, when you're approaching it that let's say biased or you 134 00:08:30,320 --> 00:08:32,919 know, how do you, how do you keep it that you're looking at 135 00:08:32,919 --> 00:08:37,720 these stories objectively and not and not and not take 136 00:08:37,720 --> 00:08:41,000 liberties too much? How do you deal with that when 137 00:08:41,000 --> 00:08:44,480 you're when you're going through these these stories, at least in 138 00:08:44,480 --> 00:08:46,520 the beginning? I'm just wondering. 139 00:08:47,200 --> 00:08:50,520 I think I might start with that last piece of the question and 140 00:08:50,520 --> 00:08:53,640 then go back to the more general piece because that last piece 141 00:08:53,640 --> 00:08:59,040 ties on to what I just said in in, in, in positing the reading 142 00:08:59,040 --> 00:09:00,600 as a relationship. Yes. 143 00:09:00,840 --> 00:09:04,760 And so again, in any healthy relationship, you should not go 144 00:09:04,760 --> 00:09:08,120 imposing yourself on the other person, nor should the other 145 00:09:08,120 --> 00:09:10,840 person go imposing his or herself on you. 146 00:09:11,400 --> 00:09:16,520 And so you have to be very careful to do that with reading, 147 00:09:16,520 --> 00:09:20,880 especially as the significant other in reading a text isn't as 148 00:09:20,880 --> 00:09:26,240 vocal about their needs or wants as as another person might be. 149 00:09:26,640 --> 00:09:30,840 And so first of all, you have to be aware of the danger. 150 00:09:32,440 --> 00:09:38,120 And 2nd, you have to be deeply aware of your own biases to make 151 00:09:38,120 --> 00:09:40,160 sure that you don't get, they don't get in the way. 152 00:09:40,160 --> 00:09:43,760 And 3rd, you really have to come to know the text on its own 153 00:09:43,760 --> 00:09:52,920 terms. And So what I say is we, like in 154 00:09:52,920 --> 00:09:55,800 any good relationship, we have to come to this encounter with 155 00:09:55,800 --> 00:09:57,720 the text, with all our beliefs and our biases. 156 00:09:58,000 --> 00:10:01,120 But we have to let the Talmud come to its encounter with us, 157 00:10:01,120 --> 00:10:03,200 with all of its beliefs and its biases. 158 00:10:03,800 --> 00:10:07,880 And we have to be prepared not just to talk at the Talmud, but 159 00:10:07,880 --> 00:10:11,560 to listen to the Talmud, even perhaps especially when the 160 00:10:11,560 --> 00:10:13,360 Talmud doesn't say what we want to hear. 161 00:10:14,200 --> 00:10:17,600 And that's where the friction, which is the beginning of a 162 00:10:17,600 --> 00:10:20,120 negotiation, which is the beginning of of any kind of 163 00:10:20,120 --> 00:10:23,200 growth experience happens. It doesn't happen in those 164 00:10:23,200 --> 00:10:24,520 moments where we agree with the text. 165 00:10:24,520 --> 00:10:27,400 It happens in the problems where we have to negotiate our way 166 00:10:27,400 --> 00:10:31,000 with the text and if we've emerged from an act of reading, 167 00:10:31,000 --> 00:10:34,560 this is usually quite a good test to see if we've gone 168 00:10:34,560 --> 00:10:37,440 imposing ourselves on the text. If you emerge from an act of 169 00:10:37,440 --> 00:10:40,040 reading believing everything you've already believed anyway, 170 00:10:41,080 --> 00:10:42,680 then you haven't really read the text. 171 00:10:43,040 --> 00:10:45,520 Then you've seen you've read yourself into the text. 172 00:10:45,520 --> 00:10:48,320 It's only when you come away with something new, with some 173 00:10:48,720 --> 00:10:52,040 insight, with some cognitive dissonance that there's really 174 00:10:52,040 --> 00:10:55,800 been that kind of give and take. And, and I generally say that 175 00:10:57,040 --> 00:11:00,600 unabashed feminist that I am, I absolutely did allow my feminist 176 00:11:00,600 --> 00:11:02,800 to dictate the subject matter for the book. 177 00:11:03,600 --> 00:11:06,800 I struggled mightily as a woman within the Jewish tradition, and 178 00:11:06,800 --> 00:11:11,080 it was important for me to try and uncover the voices of women 179 00:11:11,080 --> 00:11:14,160 within the Talmud. So I, I allowed my feminism, my 180 00:11:14,160 --> 00:11:18,840 feminism to dictate where I was going to start out, but I never 181 00:11:18,840 --> 00:11:20,760 allowed it to dictate where I would end up. 182 00:11:21,880 --> 00:11:25,560 So my feminism determined which stories I would read, but I was 183 00:11:25,560 --> 00:11:29,440 very careful to not allow it to determine how I was going to 184 00:11:29,440 --> 00:11:31,720 read them. That was really up to the Talmud 185 00:11:31,720 --> 00:11:37,160 to dictate. So that's the last question that 186 00:11:37,160 --> 00:11:39,520 you asked me as far as my methodology is concerned. 187 00:11:42,000 --> 00:11:44,840 So my own religious struggle aside, and, and that was very 188 00:11:44,840 --> 00:11:48,120 much the point of departure for the book and, and, and yes, and 189 00:11:48,400 --> 00:11:50,440 very much in line with what you were just suggesting. 190 00:11:50,920 --> 00:11:56,320 I wrote the book very much with the hope of trying to spare 191 00:11:56,320 --> 00:11:59,360 others the kind of journey, the very painful journey that I had 192 00:11:59,360 --> 00:12:01,640 to go through. And my thought was if I went 193 00:12:01,640 --> 00:12:04,560 through this journey and I came out on the other end and, and 194 00:12:04,560 --> 00:12:09,280 managed to, you know, reach certain insights, then then it 195 00:12:09,280 --> 00:12:11,960 might be helpful to share those with other people who might be 196 00:12:11,960 --> 00:12:13,280 struggling with the same questions. 197 00:12:14,240 --> 00:12:18,480 But as I started working, a second objective for the book 198 00:12:18,480 --> 00:12:21,920 emerged, and in time it became obvious to me that this 199 00:12:21,920 --> 00:12:25,240 objective was just as important, if not perhaps more important 200 00:12:25,240 --> 00:12:29,400 than the first objective. And that is to really try and 201 00:12:29,400 --> 00:12:31,800 show people how to read the stories of the Talmud. 202 00:12:32,920 --> 00:12:36,160 Because we all know some stories of the Talmud, those of us who 203 00:12:36,160 --> 00:12:38,520 are interested in Talmud or even Judaism writ large. 204 00:12:38,920 --> 00:12:44,360 And we all, you know, many of us like to cite them and yet 205 00:12:44,440 --> 00:12:47,440 they're far trickier than they first appear to be. 206 00:12:47,440 --> 00:12:49,560 And they're so often misinterpreted. 207 00:12:49,960 --> 00:12:54,600 And I couldn't really find a popular work out there that was 208 00:12:56,200 --> 00:13:00,120 geared to allay readership, to non academics, kind of giving a 209 00:13:00,720 --> 00:13:04,120 step by step program as to how to read these stories. 210 00:13:04,560 --> 00:13:07,440 And the lack of such a program can actually be quite dangerous, 211 00:13:07,440 --> 00:13:10,880 because one of the hallmarks of rabbinic storytelling is what I 212 00:13:10,880 --> 00:13:12,720 call in the book the false front. 213 00:13:13,720 --> 00:13:16,480 What these stories seem to be saying and what they are 214 00:13:16,480 --> 00:13:19,600 actually saying are often diametrically opposite to one 215 00:13:19,600 --> 00:13:22,000 another. The Rabbi's construct their 216 00:13:22,000 --> 00:13:26,040 stories so as to deliberately mislead us, such if we only read 217 00:13:26,040 --> 00:13:28,480 them once, we will come away with the wrong idea. 218 00:13:29,120 --> 00:13:32,120 So the stories of the Talmud can never just be read, they must 219 00:13:32,120 --> 00:13:35,880 always be reread. Hence my book subtitle, 220 00:13:35,880 --> 00:13:37,520 Rereading the Women of the Talmud. 221 00:13:38,240 --> 00:13:41,000 But it is not just about technically reading the story a 222 00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:43,920 second time. There's a very distinct list of 223 00:13:43,920 --> 00:13:47,320 rules that we have to apply to our rereading if we're going to 224 00:13:47,320 --> 00:13:50,360 sort of breakthrough the story's facade and uncover the deeper 225 00:13:50,360 --> 00:13:52,960 truth that lies hidden between the lines. 226 00:13:53,280 --> 00:14:00,160 And so, as I describe it in the book, to read and unpack a story 227 00:14:00,160 --> 00:14:02,240 in the Talmud, there are basically two things we need to 228 00:14:02,240 --> 00:14:03,680 do. We have to zoom in and do a 229 00:14:03,680 --> 00:14:07,360 close reading of the text, and we have to zoom out and look at 230 00:14:07,360 --> 00:14:10,000 the context. And so by zooming in, what I 231 00:14:10,000 --> 00:14:13,960 mean is looking closely at each and every word of the text and 232 00:14:13,960 --> 00:14:17,320 listening carefully to the silences, breaking the story 233 00:14:17,320 --> 00:14:19,640 down into its literary building blocks. 234 00:14:19,680 --> 00:14:23,760 These are structure, setting, characters, plot elements, and 235 00:14:23,760 --> 00:14:29,400 then themes, symbols and motifs. Really trying to read the story 236 00:14:29,400 --> 00:14:31,760 between the lines. So that's the first thing that 237 00:14:31,760 --> 00:14:34,440 we need to do. The second thing we need to do 238 00:14:34,440 --> 00:14:36,400 is zoom out and look at the context. 239 00:14:37,080 --> 00:14:40,520 And specifically with the case of Talmudic stories, they always 240 00:14:40,520 --> 00:14:44,360 come to us embedded within several layers of context. 241 00:14:44,360 --> 00:14:48,160 So the first layer will be the immediate context of the sugiya, 242 00:14:48,600 --> 00:14:52,200 the unit of Talmudic discussion with which a story is embedded. 243 00:14:52,680 --> 00:14:56,640 And excuse me, we can learn a lot about the story itself if we 244 00:14:56,640 --> 00:14:59,200 look at how the Talmudic editors choose to frame it. 245 00:15:00,040 --> 00:15:02,960 So that's the first thing to do, to do sort of see what comes 246 00:15:03,280 --> 00:15:05,280 directly before and directly after the story. 247 00:15:06,200 --> 00:15:08,840 Next, we have to zoom out even further and read the story in 248 00:15:08,840 --> 00:15:11,600 light of the broad context of greater rabbinic literature. 249 00:15:12,160 --> 00:15:15,560 So for every character in the story, every motif, every plot 250 00:15:15,560 --> 00:15:18,680 element, every element of setting, we have to look for 251 00:15:18,680 --> 00:15:22,840 stories that feature that same literary element to see what 252 00:15:22,840 --> 00:15:25,080 role it played within the rabbinic imagination. 253 00:15:25,400 --> 00:15:29,080 And this is particularly true of characters, because the Rabbi's 254 00:15:29,080 --> 00:15:32,360 tell their stories with the assumption that you already know 255 00:15:32,360 --> 00:15:36,040 you, the reader already know the other stories that Talmud tells 256 00:15:36,040 --> 00:15:38,560 about this same character, and that you will bring that 257 00:15:38,560 --> 00:15:41,200 knowledge to bear on your reading of this story. 258 00:15:41,320 --> 00:15:42,800 But not to read them in isolation. 259 00:15:43,520 --> 00:15:45,360 Not to read them in isolation exactly. 260 00:15:45,360 --> 00:15:48,200 To read them into textually, to read them in relationship to one 261 00:15:48,200 --> 00:15:52,000 another within the broader matrix of rabbinic literature. 262 00:15:52,640 --> 00:15:55,760 The third level of context is the historical context. 263 00:15:56,080 --> 00:15:58,480 Now, the stories of the Talmud are not historical. 264 00:15:59,480 --> 00:16:02,680 The rabbis were not historians. History didn't interest them, 265 00:16:02,680 --> 00:16:07,040 not in the way that it's interests us modern moderns. 266 00:16:07,200 --> 00:16:11,640 The rabbis were educators. They tell their stories in order 267 00:16:11,640 --> 00:16:15,520 to educate us, to impart a certain moral or religious 268 00:16:15,520 --> 00:16:20,080 message of value or world view. But although the stories are not 269 00:16:20,080 --> 00:16:24,200 historical, they are set within a definite historical context, A 270 00:16:24,200 --> 00:16:27,720 context that is removed from our own historical context by at 271 00:16:27,720 --> 00:16:31,360 least a Millennium and a half. And too many readers make the 272 00:16:31,360 --> 00:16:35,640 mistake of imposing their own historical understanding or 273 00:16:35,640 --> 00:16:39,440 their own historical reality, I should say, onto the historical 274 00:16:39,440 --> 00:16:43,640 reality of the rabbis. And so in order to not make that 275 00:16:43,640 --> 00:16:47,040 mistake and to go back to your, the, the last part of your 276 00:16:47,560 --> 00:16:51,600 question, in order to not read ourselves into these stories, we 277 00:16:51,600 --> 00:16:55,160 have to really familiarize ourselves with the political 278 00:16:55,160 --> 00:16:59,280 climate and the economic structures, with the social 279 00:16:59,280 --> 00:17:02,440 conventions, with the cultural mores, with the scientific 280 00:17:02,840 --> 00:17:06,960 knowledge, the material objects, everything that define the world 281 00:17:06,960 --> 00:17:11,720 of the rabbis. And so I'll say one final, I'll 282 00:17:11,720 --> 00:17:15,119 give one final piece. These two methodologies, the 283 00:17:15,119 --> 00:17:18,560 close reading and the contextual reading, they're not 284 00:17:18,560 --> 00:17:21,480 particularly new. I'm not the first person to kind 285 00:17:21,480 --> 00:17:27,079 of put them forth. I did try and put them all in 286 00:17:27,079 --> 00:17:30,360 one place in a way that would be accessible to a non academic 287 00:17:30,360 --> 00:17:32,800 reader. As I said, that was a very 288 00:17:32,800 --> 00:17:35,400 important objective to for me when writing the book. 289 00:17:35,800 --> 00:17:38,640 But there's a third element of methodology and this one really 290 00:17:38,640 --> 00:17:40,400 is more unique to what I do in the book. 291 00:17:40,440 --> 00:17:42,520 Very few people use this methodology. 292 00:17:43,560 --> 00:17:46,080 Almost no one uses it consistently, although I think 293 00:17:46,080 --> 00:17:49,560 it's one of the most rich and fruitful ways of reading the 294 00:17:49,560 --> 00:17:53,800 Talmud or Talmudic stories, and that is archetypal criticism. 295 00:17:54,680 --> 00:17:59,960 So archetypal criticism is a particular literary methodology 296 00:18:00,360 --> 00:18:04,400 based on the thought of Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung who 297 00:18:04,960 --> 00:18:08,720 posit that telling stories is one of the best ways we human 298 00:18:08,720 --> 00:18:12,440 creatures have of working through our primal fears and 299 00:18:12,440 --> 00:18:16,240 fantasies. That the stories that we tell 300 00:18:16,920 --> 00:18:20,760 everywhere from ancient Chinese myths to contemporary Hollywood 301 00:18:20,760 --> 00:18:24,840 cinema are all essentially the same because they all present a 302 00:18:24,840 --> 00:18:29,600 working through of the same unconscious forces, what Jung 303 00:18:29,600 --> 00:18:32,560 calls the collective unconscious. 304 00:18:33,040 --> 00:18:38,000 And so if we see a particular archetype, and by archetype I 305 00:18:38,000 --> 00:18:42,480 mean character type, but also a plot device or a motif, if we 306 00:18:42,480 --> 00:18:44,920 see a particular archetype crop up in stories throughout history 307 00:18:44,920 --> 00:18:47,840 and across cultures, we can assume with a high degree of 308 00:18:47,840 --> 00:18:53,760 probability that the stories are not cultural, that the archetype 309 00:18:53,760 --> 00:18:55,880 is not cultural by origin, but psychological. 310 00:18:55,880 --> 00:19:00,960 That is, it is an expression of something deep within the human 311 00:19:00,960 --> 00:19:10,920 psyche. And excuse me, looking for 312 00:19:10,920 --> 00:19:14,760 archetypes has really been has always been the way that I've 313 00:19:14,760 --> 00:19:18,400 learnt and taught Talmud, and when I first started doing it, I 314 00:19:18,400 --> 00:19:20,800 had no consciousness that this was in any way unique or 315 00:19:20,800 --> 00:19:23,560 different to how other people were doing Talmud. 316 00:19:23,560 --> 00:19:25,360 In my mind, that's just how you did it. 317 00:19:25,640 --> 00:19:31,000 I think my my assumption was that the Talmud can be quite 318 00:19:31,000 --> 00:19:34,040 foreign and forbidding to many readers and bringing in other 319 00:19:34,040 --> 00:19:38,280 literary examples from other literary traditions, both 320 00:19:38,280 --> 00:19:40,920 classical and popular. It was just a way of 321 00:19:40,920 --> 00:19:45,680 familiarizing the Talmudic text. It was making it closer and and 322 00:19:45,680 --> 00:19:49,520 feel more alive and relevant. And so the very first time of 323 00:19:49,520 --> 00:19:52,840 class I ever taught was in a living room of a friend of mine, 324 00:19:53,200 --> 00:19:55,680 and I basically brought the Talmudic text that I wanted to 325 00:19:55,680 --> 00:20:01,040 teach, and then I surrounded it with similar literary 326 00:20:01,040 --> 00:20:04,240 narratives, from mythology to folklore to fiction to film. 327 00:20:05,680 --> 00:20:10,920 And I taught this class, which then became a weekly class. 328 00:20:10,960 --> 00:20:15,800 And about 3 weeks into this class, one of the participants 329 00:20:15,800 --> 00:20:17,920 said, why are you bringing in all these goyim? 330 00:20:19,760 --> 00:20:22,080 Why do I need goyim to understand Talmud? 331 00:20:22,080 --> 00:20:24,640 And I thought, OK, that's that's a fair question. 332 00:20:24,640 --> 00:20:30,240 I should think about it. And so I went away and I thought 333 00:20:30,240 --> 00:20:32,520 about it, and I came back with the following answer. 334 00:20:33,160 --> 00:20:35,520 Talmudic stories are fundamentally scenic. 335 00:20:35,720 --> 00:20:39,040 They are written like plays, so they give us what the characters 336 00:20:39,040 --> 00:20:41,160 say and do, but not what they think or feel. 337 00:20:41,600 --> 00:20:45,000 And it's up to us, the readers, to really tease out the unstated 338 00:20:45,000 --> 00:20:48,920 thoughts and emotions of the characters throughout the drama. 339 00:20:50,880 --> 00:20:55,440 And bringing in other literary examples is a very helpful way 340 00:20:55,440 --> 00:20:58,360 of doing that. Talmudic characters never tell 341 00:20:58,360 --> 00:21:01,640 us what they think or feel, but we have analogous dramatic 342 00:21:01,640 --> 00:21:05,880 situations in Homer or Shakespeare or Bronte of 343 00:21:05,880 --> 00:21:08,600 characters that go on and on for pages at a time telling us 344 00:21:08,600 --> 00:21:10,360 exactly what they're thinking of feeling. 345 00:21:10,720 --> 00:21:14,160 And so it's just a good way of of teasing out the thoughts and 346 00:21:14,160 --> 00:21:17,520 emotions of the characters. And so that's the answer that I 347 00:21:17,520 --> 00:21:20,360 gave. But the question stayed with me 348 00:21:20,440 --> 00:21:24,120 the more I taught Talmud and the more I realized not everybody 349 00:21:24,120 --> 00:21:26,840 was teaching Talmud this way. In fact, really nobody was 350 00:21:26,840 --> 00:21:28,400 teaching Talmud this way consistently. 351 00:21:30,000 --> 00:21:33,120 And so I, I, I, I looked into the question more deeply and I 352 00:21:33,120 --> 00:21:36,680 discovered, as I said, that this was in fact a, a, a legit 353 00:21:36,720 --> 00:21:39,240 literary theory called archetypal criticism. 354 00:21:39,680 --> 00:21:43,240 And what archetypal criticism does in the assumption that 355 00:21:43,240 --> 00:21:47,640 these archetypes are expressions of the collective unconscious is 356 00:21:47,640 --> 00:21:52,360 a try and identify archetypes by comparing literary texts to 357 00:21:52,360 --> 00:21:56,280 other texts from other literary traditions, from different 358 00:21:56,280 --> 00:21:59,840 cultures and throughout history, and then try and uncover the 359 00:22:00,320 --> 00:22:03,880 psychological motivation for telling this same story in the 360 00:22:03,880 --> 00:22:07,440 1st place. So for instance, why is it that 361 00:22:07,640 --> 00:22:12,240 really every single culture that we have has a story of a man who 362 00:22:12,240 --> 00:22:15,760 is seduced and destroyed by an irresistibly beautiful font 363 00:22:15,760 --> 00:22:17,920 fatale? And what does that tell us about 364 00:22:17,920 --> 00:22:20,560 our own anxieties surrounding our sexual desire? 365 00:22:21,800 --> 00:22:24,960 And that's kind of what I do in the book. 366 00:22:24,960 --> 00:22:27,400 When I look at different archetypes, I try and uncover 367 00:22:27,400 --> 00:22:31,320 the psychological motivation for using these archetypes as 368 00:22:31,320 --> 00:22:34,000 frequently as frequently as we humans do in our stories. 369 00:22:34,480 --> 00:22:39,200 But the final reason that I find archetypal criticism so 370 00:22:39,200 --> 00:22:43,360 fascinating is this. The rabbis were not just experts 371 00:22:43,360 --> 00:22:46,280 in adopting archetypes from other literary traditions. 372 00:22:46,280 --> 00:22:51,360 They were experts in adapting them as well in like turning 373 00:22:51,360 --> 00:22:56,280 them on their head in order to suit their own educational 374 00:22:56,280 --> 00:23:00,680 agenda. And in the case of the 375 00:23:00,680 --> 00:23:04,200 archetypes that I look at in the book, which are all these very 376 00:23:04,200 --> 00:23:08,040 well known anti feminine archetypes, the rabbis almost 377 00:23:08,040 --> 00:23:11,120 consistently will invoke an anti feminine archetype in order to 378 00:23:11,120 --> 00:23:17,880 deconstruct it to basically, as I say, turn it on its head to 379 00:23:17,920 --> 00:23:20,320 undermine it. You think you're reading the 380 00:23:20,320 --> 00:23:26,480 story of a raging shrew or a manipulative fan fatale or a 381 00:23:26,480 --> 00:23:29,840 perfect Angel in the house, but in fact the rabbi seem to say 382 00:23:30,160 --> 00:23:31,920 you were doing nothing of the sort. 383 00:23:32,720 --> 00:23:36,000 These stories, as I said earlier, are far more complex 384 00:23:36,520 --> 00:23:38,800 than they first appear to be. These women are far more 385 00:23:38,800 --> 00:23:42,920 multidimensional than the very flat archetype that you thought 386 00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:45,640 that they were, and the fact that that is what you thought 387 00:23:45,640 --> 00:23:47,760 that they were in your primary reading. 388 00:23:48,200 --> 00:23:50,920 Or to tell you something about the ways in which you misread 389 00:23:50,920 --> 00:23:55,000 the text, but also the ways in which you misinterpret other 390 00:23:55,000 --> 00:23:57,120 people in your life. So it's not just about 391 00:23:57,120 --> 00:23:59,480 misreading characters in a story, It's also about 392 00:23:59,480 --> 00:24:02,800 misreading the characters in your life and teaching you how 393 00:24:02,800 --> 00:24:06,000 to read other people more correctly, more sensitively. 394 00:24:07,160 --> 00:24:10,560 That was very well said. You, you, you have a, you 395 00:24:10,560 --> 00:24:13,240 express yourself very well. You're a natural teacher. 396 00:24:14,200 --> 00:24:18,720 I was actually going through the three, the three, the three 397 00:24:19,120 --> 00:24:22,320 approaches of close reading and then not to read it in isolation 398 00:24:22,320 --> 00:24:23,680 and then put in a spherical context. 399 00:24:24,360 --> 00:24:29,640 When you said close, when you said isolation, not to read, not 400 00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:32,880 to read a Gadot in isolation. You know, when I was in yeshiva, 401 00:24:33,560 --> 00:24:36,920 I, I mean, I don't remember a single time that an agada was 402 00:24:36,920 --> 00:24:41,000 not just invoked as an isolated reading that just became, became 403 00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:44,440 like a catch phrase or, you know, you take, you take like 404 00:24:44,520 --> 00:24:48,640 what seems to be like the, the main, you know, last line or 405 00:24:48,640 --> 00:24:50,200 whatever. And you kind of just keep 406 00:24:50,200 --> 00:24:53,800 repeating it over and over. Like, and I remember when I was, 407 00:24:54,360 --> 00:24:58,040 when I was starting to try to reread agada myself, you know 408 00:24:58,040 --> 00:24:59,680 what I mean? Like I realized like, wow, I 409 00:24:59,680 --> 00:25:02,800 can't learn this. Like, I don't even understand, 410 00:25:03,280 --> 00:25:07,800 like I'm not even understanding the, the, the basic flow not 411 00:25:07,800 --> 00:25:09,200 working. You know what I mean? 412 00:25:09,200 --> 00:25:11,280 Like, and it was very frustrating because I'm, I 413 00:25:11,280 --> 00:25:13,400 can't, I can't even get the flow down. 414 00:25:13,600 --> 00:25:16,920 It wasn't until I read Rubenstein, who I really, you 415 00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:20,480 guys have a lot of basically it's very similar the approaches 416 00:25:20,880 --> 00:25:24,240 where Rubenstein and his book starts to break it down to you 417 00:25:24,240 --> 00:25:28,200 the entire flow, the exact stop start everything, how the story 418 00:25:28,200 --> 00:25:30,520 goes together. You do the same exact thing in 419 00:25:30,520 --> 00:25:32,640 your book. And I'm like, oh, I'm like, wow, 420 00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:35,480 I understood this just at the base level. 421 00:25:36,080 --> 00:25:37,480 I understand what's going on in this. 422 00:25:37,480 --> 00:25:40,600 I got that right. And then you were talking about 423 00:25:40,600 --> 00:25:43,560 the historical context, something which I wanted to also 424 00:25:43,560 --> 00:25:47,000 ask you before we go into very briefly, the six archetypes, 425 00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:49,040 then we can get into one of your chapters. 426 00:25:49,520 --> 00:25:53,480 So what do you suggest? How do we, how do we better 427 00:25:53,480 --> 00:25:55,840 acquaint ourselves with historical context? 428 00:25:55,880 --> 00:25:59,240 What, what, what if I'm reading and I got that, like what, how 429 00:25:59,240 --> 00:26:01,720 do we, how do we go about that? Because it's it's not a. 430 00:26:01,720 --> 00:26:04,440 It's not a simple thing to to work out. 431 00:26:06,960 --> 00:26:12,160 So credit where credit is due. The the similarity to Professor 432 00:26:12,160 --> 00:26:14,400 Rumenstein's work is not coincidental. 433 00:26:14,400 --> 00:26:17,440 When I first started teaching the stories of the Talmud, his 434 00:26:17,440 --> 00:26:20,800 book Talmudic Stories was basically my Bible. 435 00:26:20,880 --> 00:26:24,000 It's, it's it, it, it opened that world up to me. 436 00:26:24,000 --> 00:26:27,560 Everything that I knew about Agadat for many years was 437 00:26:27,560 --> 00:26:28,920 everything that I learnt from him. 438 00:26:29,360 --> 00:26:32,760 And when I, when I was about to write this book, I basically 439 00:26:32,760 --> 00:26:34,720 reached out to him, didn't know me at all. 440 00:26:34,720 --> 00:26:36,920 I had no connection to him. He knew he, he told me 441 00:26:36,920 --> 00:26:39,800 absolutely nothing, but I reached out to him and I said, 442 00:26:39,800 --> 00:26:42,440 hello, you don't know me, but I'm a huge fan and I need a 443 00:26:42,440 --> 00:26:44,640 mentor. And Professor Rivasim very 444 00:26:44,640 --> 00:26:47,400 graciously, very generously agreed to mentor me through my 445 00:26:47,400 --> 00:26:50,440 writing. And so he's very much the 446 00:26:50,440 --> 00:26:52,960 godfather of, of this book and I owe him. 447 00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:54,200 He's a. Tremendous person. 448 00:26:54,200 --> 00:26:56,040 We've had him on HE4. Times we've had him. 449 00:26:56,040 --> 00:26:59,320 On four times he's he's the he's really like a Mensch, if we can 450 00:26:59,320 --> 00:27:05,080 call it really a Mensch. So, so just regarding historical 451 00:27:05,080 --> 00:27:08,600 context, is that just familiarizing yourself like with 452 00:27:08,600 --> 00:27:13,320 like just reading books on, on on the time periods? 453 00:27:13,320 --> 00:27:17,480 And is that the only way to like, how do we, how do we do 454 00:27:17,480 --> 00:27:21,560 that? So I, I teach this material a 455 00:27:21,560 --> 00:27:25,120 lot and for the different elements of context and the 456 00:27:25,120 --> 00:27:27,080 different elements of close reading, there are some 457 00:27:27,080 --> 00:27:31,400 shortcuts and some shortcuts and there are some tricks and places 458 00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:36,880 to go that kind of do the work for you, as it were. 459 00:27:37,320 --> 00:27:40,400 Unfortunately, when it comes to historical context, there are 460 00:27:40,400 --> 00:27:43,200 very few shortcuts. You really have to do the 461 00:27:43,200 --> 00:27:45,720 legwork. You really have to read up on 462 00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:50,240 rabbinic politics, rabbinic economics, rabbinic material 463 00:27:50,240 --> 00:27:54,520 culture. And that means reading, 464 00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:59,960 familiarizing yourself obviously with just the actual primary 465 00:27:59,960 --> 00:28:02,640 sources, which are the the writings of the rabbis 466 00:28:02,640 --> 00:28:04,760 themselves, but also a lot of secondary sources. 467 00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:08,280 There is a lot of research out there these days about rabbinic 468 00:28:08,280 --> 00:28:12,720 history, and I should say not even rabbinic history. 469 00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:16,560 A big part of what I do is I go into Greco, Roman and Persian 470 00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:19,960 history because these are the worlds in which the rabbis live. 471 00:28:19,960 --> 00:28:23,800 And you have to understand that is a vital part, part of 472 00:28:24,640 --> 00:28:27,320 rabbinic historical context, Christianity as well. 473 00:28:28,600 --> 00:28:31,480 And so, yeah, there are no shortcuts when it comes to this. 474 00:28:31,480 --> 00:28:34,440 You really have to just the more you know, the more you know. 475 00:28:36,600 --> 00:28:39,760 I'm sorry, I wish, I wish there was some tricks of the trade, 476 00:28:39,760 --> 00:28:42,000 but in some cases. But it also comes to show. 477 00:28:42,640 --> 00:28:45,160 But I think the main idea here is I think it comes to show that 478 00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:48,480 we shouldn't be to hasty and just, you know, trying to go 479 00:28:48,480 --> 00:28:51,880 through a Gadot and thinking we get everything and, you know, we 480 00:28:51,880 --> 00:28:54,760 have to in a sense appeal to the experts sometimes on these 481 00:28:54,760 --> 00:28:56,520 forests. Absolutely. 482 00:28:56,520 --> 00:29:01,440 And I would say that in this, as in many things, asking the 483 00:29:01,440 --> 00:29:06,720 question is 50% of the work, avoiding the assumption that I 484 00:29:06,720 --> 00:29:09,680 understand what is happening here because there's a 485 00:29:09,680 --> 00:29:11,760 description of the Batman dash. And I think I understand the 486 00:29:11,760 --> 00:29:13,920 architecture and you don't. And the architecture is 487 00:29:13,920 --> 00:29:16,280 extremely important to the reading of this story. 488 00:29:16,520 --> 00:29:19,680 For instance, just knowing that just knowing that there's some 489 00:29:19,680 --> 00:29:22,280 historical context that you might be missing is already a 490 00:29:22,280 --> 00:29:26,760 huge part in in in understanding these stories more correctly. 491 00:29:26,760 --> 00:29:30,120 Because I think most of the misreadings that we have of 492 00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:35,080 these stories are not by people who didn't understand and didn't 493 00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:37,400 find and went looking and didn't find. 494 00:29:37,400 --> 00:29:39,480 The answer is for the people who just made the assumption that 495 00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:42,040 they do understand. Do you see what I'm saying? 496 00:29:43,800 --> 00:29:45,280 And I appreciate that response. Thank you. 497 00:29:45,440 --> 00:29:47,960 And one of the things you mentioned, which I thought to be 498 00:29:47,960 --> 00:29:50,600 really important actually earlier on when you mentioned 499 00:29:50,600 --> 00:29:54,720 that you only started, it only started clicking in your head 500 00:29:55,000 --> 00:29:58,360 once you started studying literature in college. 501 00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:03,040 You know, that to me is one of the telltale signs that we need 502 00:30:03,040 --> 00:30:06,080 to also study works that are outside of our tradition in 503 00:30:06,080 --> 00:30:09,080 order to inform our tradition. Because history and literary 504 00:30:09,080 --> 00:30:11,280 tools, the only things we have at our disposal that they didn't 505 00:30:11,280 --> 00:30:15,960 have 100 years ago, 1000 years ago, are so vital because they 506 00:30:15,960 --> 00:30:19,200 can awaken, you know, something like what you went through. 507 00:30:19,440 --> 00:30:22,760 They can just revitalize a person and then give you so much 508 00:30:22,760 --> 00:30:25,720 that you didn't think you had. So I think that's such a 509 00:30:25,720 --> 00:30:27,760 important part of it. I just wanted to point that out 510 00:30:28,720 --> 00:30:32,280 and I'll. Just count and say 100% agree 511 00:30:32,280 --> 00:30:36,400 with you. And I do want to point out that 512 00:30:36,800 --> 00:30:39,800 reading the stories of the Talmud as literature is not me 513 00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:43,240 coming in with like a Western discipline and imposing it onto 514 00:30:43,240 --> 00:30:45,920 the Talmud. These stories are created as 515 00:30:45,920 --> 00:30:48,000 literature. They are created as literary 516 00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:50,680 works. The rabbis say so explicitly in 517 00:30:50,680 --> 00:30:54,400 several places in rabbinic text. These stories are literature. 518 00:30:54,400 --> 00:30:55,880 They have to be read as literature. 519 00:30:56,320 --> 00:31:01,440 And so I'm, I'm not doing, I'd like to think, and I'm very, 520 00:31:01,440 --> 00:31:03,720 very, I was extremely careful in this. 521 00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:06,960 I'd like to think that I'm not doing anything the rabbis in a 522 00:31:06,960 --> 00:31:11,000 sense didn't already do. I'm not finding things the 523 00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:13,440 rabbis didn't put there for me to find. 524 00:31:15,280 --> 00:31:19,120 Great point, excellent point. So moving on to the next 525 00:31:19,120 --> 00:31:24,360 segment, we want to discuss the breakdown of the six archetypes 526 00:31:24,680 --> 00:31:27,840 by going down the list of the heroines and and their 527 00:31:27,840 --> 00:31:30,560 archetypes, just to give our audience a tease of what they 528 00:31:30,560 --> 00:31:35,320 can expect to read. So the book The Madwoman and the 529 00:31:35,320 --> 00:31:39,400 Rabbi's Attic is essentially dedicated to the six, the 530 00:31:39,400 --> 00:31:44,280 stories of the six named heroines of the Talmud in all of 531 00:31:44,280 --> 00:31:46,920 rabbinic literature. There are just, I should say, 532 00:31:46,920 --> 00:31:50,320 women in rabbinic literature are notoriously anonymous. 533 00:31:51,520 --> 00:31:52,920 It's not. They don't appear at all. 534 00:31:52,920 --> 00:31:56,240 They do appear. They appear as frequently as you 535 00:31:56,240 --> 00:31:59,680 might find a non rabbinic man in the Talmud, which is to say not 536 00:31:59,680 --> 00:32:02,640 terribly often because the Talmud is a text created by 537 00:32:02,640 --> 00:32:06,760 rabbis. 4 rabbis. But when women do appear, they 538 00:32:06,760 --> 00:32:09,920 generally take on the name of the important rabbi in the in 539 00:32:09,920 --> 00:32:12,720 their lives. And so we have many the rabbi of 540 00:32:12,920 --> 00:32:17,440 the mother of Rabbi X, or the wife of Rabbi Y, or the daughter 541 00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:21,080 of Rabbi Zedd. We have very few women appearing 542 00:32:21,080 --> 00:32:24,760 under their own name. In all of rabbinic literature, 543 00:32:25,520 --> 00:32:29,960 there are just 52 named women, which is quite negligible if you 544 00:32:29,960 --> 00:32:32,800 think about the fact that there are over 1000 named men. 545 00:32:33,800 --> 00:32:36,880 And of these 52, and I know this because I actually went down the 546 00:32:36,880 --> 00:32:40,400 list one by one, there are exactly 6 who are heroines of 547 00:32:40,400 --> 00:32:43,320 their own rich literary narrative. 548 00:32:44,080 --> 00:32:49,200 And these six are Yalta, Homa, Malta, Keguta, Broya and IMA 549 00:32:49,200 --> 00:32:56,440 Shalom. And so sorry, do you hear the 550 00:32:56,560 --> 00:32:59,320 Nachman Ka that has just stopped under my window? 551 00:33:00,320 --> 00:33:03,360 But every time I swear they know when I'm doing a podcast because 552 00:33:03,360 --> 00:33:06,520 that isn't where they choose to park under my window and blast 553 00:33:06,520 --> 00:33:08,280 their music. I apologize for that. 554 00:33:08,880 --> 00:33:12,640 No problem. And so going back to archetypal 555 00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:18,200 criticism, I essentially use this lens of archetypal 556 00:33:18,200 --> 00:33:21,680 criticism in order to read these six different women. 557 00:33:23,240 --> 00:33:27,000 I read them as an embodiment of a different anti feminine 558 00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:30,360 archetype. So Yata, for instance, is a 559 00:33:30,400 --> 00:33:34,360 perfect shrew. I'm going to pause for the 560 00:33:34,360 --> 00:33:36,320 Nahmani now. You can hear them now, can't you 561 00:33:36,320 --> 00:33:39,560 do? They pass by, they stick around, 562 00:33:39,560 --> 00:33:42,480 they park over there. Sorry, do they they pass by or 563 00:33:42,480 --> 00:33:44,240 they or they park in front of your? 564 00:33:44,480 --> 00:33:48,000 They park only when I'm recording the podcast paying. 565 00:33:48,000 --> 00:33:50,160 No, I'm not. I'm not picking this out of the 566 00:33:50,200 --> 00:33:50,920 park. This is great. 567 00:33:50,920 --> 00:33:54,040 This is the. You know this is authentic 568 00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:59,960 Jerusalem soundscape. So Yatta, when we meet history 569 00:33:59,960 --> 00:34:02,360 for the first time, appears to be a classic shroom. 570 00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:09,600 And Homa is a perfect fan. Fatale Mata is a paradigmatic 571 00:34:09,600 --> 00:34:13,320 prima Donna. Kota is a Madonna whore, that 572 00:34:13,320 --> 00:34:16,679 sort of Madonna whore paradigm that humanity has used to view 573 00:34:16,679 --> 00:34:18,040 women since the beginning of time. 574 00:34:19,080 --> 00:34:24,080 Bouya is an Ovarytrix, which is a word I had to coin to try and 575 00:34:24,080 --> 00:34:26,000 capture her very complicated character. 576 00:34:26,000 --> 00:34:29,400 But although I coined the word, this is in fact I go to great 577 00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:31,880 lengths to show why this is an archetype that is used time and 578 00:34:31,880 --> 00:34:35,520 again in stories that humanity has told of women, of powerful 579 00:34:35,520 --> 00:34:38,639 women. And IMA Shalom is the Angel in 580 00:34:38,639 --> 00:34:42,440 the house. And So what I generally do in 581 00:34:42,440 --> 00:34:48,280 the book is I, I, I begin each chapter with an exploration of 582 00:34:48,320 --> 00:34:53,480 the archetype through a cross cultural survey. 583 00:34:53,480 --> 00:34:57,000 So in order to understand the story of Yalta the shrew, for 584 00:34:57,000 --> 00:35:00,440 instance, I look at the notable shrews from other literary 585 00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:03,200 traditions. So I'll look at Vashti and 586 00:35:03,200 --> 00:35:07,760 Zanthippi and the wife of Bath and Katarina Minola from 587 00:35:08,000 --> 00:35:14,440 Shakespeare and Dane Van Winkle. Or to understand the story of 588 00:35:14,440 --> 00:35:19,960 Malta, the prima Donna, I'll look at the narratives of Madame 589 00:35:19,960 --> 00:35:25,680 Bovary and Marie Antoinette and Lady Catherine de Berg and Norma 590 00:35:25,680 --> 00:35:30,480 Desmond and Miss Piggy. And so I'll really draw on very 591 00:35:30,480 --> 00:35:34,280 wide examples, as I said, from mythology to fiction to folklore 592 00:35:34,280 --> 00:35:37,240 to fiction to film, in order to understand the archetype. 593 00:35:37,560 --> 00:35:40,720 And then I will do what I call a primary reading of the story of 594 00:35:40,720 --> 00:35:44,240 the woman in the Talmud, and I'll show that she appears to be 595 00:35:44,240 --> 00:35:47,520 a perfect embodiment of this anti feminine archetype. 596 00:35:48,760 --> 00:35:53,160 And then I do a rereading. I do, I zoom in and do a close 597 00:35:53,160 --> 00:35:55,480 reading of the text. I zoom out and look at the story 598 00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:58,120 within its context. And in the course of doing that, 599 00:35:58,840 --> 00:36:00,640 what happens? And this usually happens. 600 00:36:00,640 --> 00:36:02,480 And with the stories of the Talmud, not just with the 601 00:36:02,480 --> 00:36:05,400 stories of the women of the Talmud, the false front, as I 602 00:36:05,400 --> 00:36:10,680 said, breaks down. The primary meaning of the story 603 00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:13,680 falls away. And in its place there emerges a 604 00:36:13,680 --> 00:36:17,320 far deeper, more complicated, often far more radical truth 605 00:36:18,040 --> 00:36:19,600 that the rabbis wish for us to learn. 606 00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:23,000 And that is absolutely the case here with the six named women of 607 00:36:23,000 --> 00:36:30,720 the Talmud. Just such a great methodology 608 00:36:30,880 --> 00:36:33,880 with the methodology itself. It's just, it's such a it's, 609 00:36:34,000 --> 00:36:36,440 it's compelling. If you know, God willing, the 610 00:36:36,440 --> 00:36:38,200 reader should should read the book. 611 00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:42,800 Every single one of these, we're going to choose one right now to 612 00:36:42,800 --> 00:36:44,560 kind of just go into to give the readers. 613 00:36:45,080 --> 00:36:48,240 But like every single one is just as compelling as the other. 614 00:36:48,480 --> 00:36:50,920 And you tell me that this is not just regarding the woman, but 615 00:36:50,920 --> 00:36:52,480 you can find this kind of throughout. 616 00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:59,120 It's just it's almost like I wish that we'd have more people 617 00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:02,840 kind of digging everything up so we can we can gobble up this 618 00:37:02,840 --> 00:37:04,480 material because it's really compelling. 619 00:37:04,800 --> 00:37:10,920 And if we can, if we can go through the first chapter to 620 00:37:10,920 --> 00:37:14,680 kind of give a glimpse of how this plays out, we'd really 621 00:37:14,680 --> 00:37:24,480 appreciate it. So. 622 00:37:24,880 --> 00:37:27,520 We're going to do a pair screen. Yeah, you we're going to share a 623 00:37:27,520 --> 00:37:28,960 screen or you could share your screen. 624 00:37:29,000 --> 00:37:32,800 Oh, OK, so, so before I share the screen, because I, I'm, 625 00:37:32,840 --> 00:37:35,400 we're going to do this in a very abbreviated form. 626 00:37:35,400 --> 00:37:40,000 So I'm going to, I'm going to paraphrase a lot, but as I said, 627 00:37:40,000 --> 00:37:43,360 so the the the 1st chapter is the chapter on Yalta the shrew. 628 00:37:43,720 --> 00:37:46,760 And I begin the chapter by looking, as I said at the other 629 00:37:46,760 --> 00:37:48,960 notable shrews from western culture. 630 00:37:49,840 --> 00:37:53,960 As I said, Vashti Zanthippi, the wife of Bath, Katerina Manola 631 00:37:53,960 --> 00:37:56,760 from Shakespeare, Dame Van Winkle, and I should also add 632 00:37:56,760 --> 00:38:01,120 Bertha Mason who is like the OG mad woman in the attic who lends 633 00:38:01,120 --> 00:38:03,480 her name to to the title of the book. 634 00:38:03,960 --> 00:38:07,040 And by looking at all of these notable shrews from the Western 635 00:38:07,040 --> 00:38:11,320 Canon, I define the archetype as essentially a mad woman. 636 00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:15,480 And I use mad in the double sense or at least the American 637 00:38:15,480 --> 00:38:19,800 double sense of angry and crazy or raging and deranged. 638 00:38:20,600 --> 00:38:23,680 She is the wife of a timid and terrorized husband. 639 00:38:23,760 --> 00:38:26,880 The shrew husband in these stories is always kind of really 640 00:38:26,880 --> 00:38:30,640 scared of her and doing his best to appease her very volatile 641 00:38:30,640 --> 00:38:34,760 temper. She is a comedic character. 642 00:38:34,760 --> 00:38:38,840 Shrew's story is almost always going to be comedies featuring 643 00:38:38,840 --> 00:38:42,400 scenes of verbal abuse, of physical violence, often times 644 00:38:42,400 --> 00:38:44,560 both. And the story will almost 645 00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:47,400 universally be told from the point of view of said suffering 646 00:38:47,400 --> 00:38:51,400 husband, never from the shrew's point of view herself. 647 00:38:51,880 --> 00:38:54,040 And so in light of that definition of the archetype of 648 00:38:54,040 --> 00:38:58,280 the shrew, I then do my primary or my initial reading of the 649 00:38:58,280 --> 00:39:01,880 story of Yatta and I will share my screen at this point. 650 00:39:03,160 --> 00:39:09,240 And, and maybe to give the listeners a pause in my voice, 651 00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:12,000 one of you wouldn't mind taking up the reading for us. 652 00:39:14,120 --> 00:39:17,400 Sure Ullah was once at the House of Rabnachman. 653 00:39:17,960 --> 00:39:20,120 Thank you. I'm going to just interrupt you 654 00:39:20,120 --> 00:39:24,320 all the time very rudely. So the story, as I say, not 655 00:39:24,320 --> 00:39:27,160 historical, but it is set in a historical context. 656 00:39:27,160 --> 00:39:30,400 It's said in 3rd century Babylon, and at the time the 657 00:39:30,400 --> 00:39:35,040 Jewish world is operating around 2 rabbinic epicenters, the one 658 00:39:35,040 --> 00:39:36,440 in Israel and the one in Babylon. 659 00:39:36,840 --> 00:39:40,280 And these two centers would communicate via nehote, or 660 00:39:40,280 --> 00:39:44,320 rabbinic messengers, rabbis who would travel backwards and 661 00:39:44,320 --> 00:39:47,560 forwards between Israel and Babylon and teach each rabbinic 662 00:39:47,560 --> 00:39:51,040 community what they were saying in the other rabbinic community. 663 00:39:51,520 --> 00:39:55,480 Ola is a prominent Israeli sage who worked professionally as a 664 00:39:55,480 --> 00:39:58,320 merchant and who often travel to Babylon on business. 665 00:39:58,640 --> 00:40:03,360 And so he on one, he acted as once such rabbinic messenger. 666 00:40:03,960 --> 00:40:06,720 And on one of his many visits to Babylon, we are told he is 667 00:40:06,720 --> 00:40:10,440 hosted by his friend and rabbinic colleague, Rav Nachman. 668 00:40:10,480 --> 00:40:11,480 Let's continue. We. 669 00:40:12,360 --> 00:40:17,040 Had a meal that the grace after meals and handed the cup of 670 00:40:17,040 --> 00:40:19,240 blessing to Rabbnach. Thank you. 671 00:40:19,280 --> 00:40:22,840 And so the two men have a meal, they say bill carte mazon or the 672 00:40:22,840 --> 00:40:27,240 blessing after the meal, Ola, as the guest is given the honor of 673 00:40:27,240 --> 00:40:29,120 leading the blessing after the meal. 674 00:40:29,120 --> 00:40:32,120 And at the end of the meal, he drinks from the cup of wine over 675 00:40:32,120 --> 00:40:35,560 the which the blessing is traditionally recited. 676 00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:38,760 We see it to this day in in Jewish weddings. 677 00:40:38,800 --> 00:40:42,840 I don't know what the the Persian custom is, but people do 678 00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:45,960 it in their homes to this day. They'll pour a glass of wine and 679 00:40:45,960 --> 00:40:48,080 they will recite all of the cart Amazon, and then they will 680 00:40:48,080 --> 00:40:50,440 drink. And so ula recites the blessing. 681 00:40:50,440 --> 00:40:52,520 And then he drinks. And then he hands the cup to his 682 00:40:52,520 --> 00:40:54,800 host of Nachman, who also drinks. 683 00:40:55,400 --> 00:40:57,680 Let's read on. Abin Nachman said to him, 684 00:40:57,760 --> 00:41:00,600 Master, please send the cup of blessing to Yalta. 685 00:41:01,440 --> 00:41:03,360 Thank you. And then Abin Nachman says 686 00:41:03,360 --> 00:41:08,760 please send the cup to my wife so that she can partake of the 687 00:41:08,760 --> 00:41:13,240 blessing in the cup. The use of the verb send or 688 00:41:13,240 --> 00:41:16,760 lichdal in the original Aramaic implies that yatta is not 689 00:41:16,760 --> 00:41:19,480 actually at the table with the men, although presumably she's 690 00:41:19,480 --> 00:41:21,960 not she's she's somewhere close by. 691 00:41:22,600 --> 00:41:24,920 Let's read on. Ullah responded. 692 00:41:25,200 --> 00:41:29,200 So said Rabi Okhanan, The fruit of a woman's body is blessed 693 00:41:29,240 --> 00:41:31,240 only from the fruit of a man's body. 694 00:41:31,560 --> 00:41:34,920 As it is written, he will bless the fruit of your body. 695 00:41:35,160 --> 00:41:38,960 It does not say the fruit of her body, but the fruit of your 696 00:41:38,960 --> 00:41:40,560 body. Thank you. 697 00:41:41,120 --> 00:41:45,080 And so all, I think so this is a perfect opportunity to teach his 698 00:41:45,080 --> 00:41:47,800 Babylonian friends some words of Israeli Torah. 699 00:41:48,760 --> 00:41:51,800 And so, according to Rabi Johanan, the great rabbi back in 700 00:41:51,800 --> 00:41:56,360 Israel, women do not drink from the cup of blessing, because the 701 00:41:56,360 --> 00:41:59,320 blessing in the cup, which is generally understood to be the 702 00:41:59,320 --> 00:42:03,600 blessing of childbirth, will be transmitted to the woman through 703 00:42:03,600 --> 00:42:06,320 her husband. So it is enough that the husband 704 00:42:06,320 --> 00:42:09,960 drink and be blessed. Let's read on. 705 00:42:10,400 --> 00:42:14,800 Meanwhile, Yalta heard and she got up in a passion and went to 706 00:42:14,800 --> 00:42:18,400 the wine storehouse and broke 400 jars of wine. 707 00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:22,400 Thank you. So Yata overhears this and flies 708 00:42:22,400 --> 00:42:25,360 into a rage. She storms up to the wine 709 00:42:25,360 --> 00:42:28,960 storehouse, and, mad woman in the attic that she is, smashes 710 00:42:29,000 --> 00:42:34,520 400 jars of wine. So passionate is her temper, so 711 00:42:34,520 --> 00:42:38,160 violent and vindictive, she doesn't even care that the wine 712 00:42:38,160 --> 00:42:40,800 she's destroying here is in fact her own. 713 00:42:40,800 --> 00:42:43,880 If she can't have wine, no one is having wine. 714 00:42:45,080 --> 00:42:47,720 Let's read on. Abhinachman said to him, let the 715 00:42:47,720 --> 00:42:51,000 master send her another cup. Thank you. 716 00:42:51,320 --> 00:42:54,840 You get the comedy in this line. I think it's hilarious this is 717 00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:58,720 such a whipped husband. His wife has just destroyed 400 718 00:42:58,720 --> 00:43:02,400 jars of their wine and all poor of Nachman can say is please 719 00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:05,840 send her another cup please before she breaks anything else. 720 00:43:07,960 --> 00:43:11,320 She returned the answer. Oh, sorry, he sent it. 721 00:43:11,320 --> 00:43:13,440 He sent it. Oh, so he sent it with to her 722 00:43:13,440 --> 00:43:16,560 with a message. All that wine can be counted as 723 00:43:16,560 --> 00:43:18,840 a blessing. All that can be counted as a 724 00:43:18,840 --> 00:43:22,760 blessing. So Ola, per his host's wishes, 725 00:43:22,800 --> 00:43:25,720 does in fact send Yata another cup. 726 00:43:26,120 --> 00:43:28,080 But he can't help. But he's a rabbinic messenger. 727 00:43:28,080 --> 00:43:30,720 He's got to teach something. And so he sends it to her with a 728 00:43:30,720 --> 00:43:32,680 message. All that wine can be counted as 729 00:43:32,680 --> 00:43:35,240 a blessing, which is in fact halachically true. 730 00:43:36,000 --> 00:43:39,360 According to the Shulkan AO, the great code of Jewish law, if you 731 00:43:39,360 --> 00:43:43,080 make a blessing over a cup of wine, all the wine in the 732 00:43:43,080 --> 00:43:47,040 vicinity is considered blessed. And So what all I was basically 733 00:43:47,040 --> 00:43:50,120 saying to you, Alta, is A, you're ignorant, you don't know 734 00:43:50,120 --> 00:43:53,600 the law, and B, if you didn't know the law, you'd realize that 735 00:43:53,600 --> 00:43:57,800 you just completely overreacted. You did not need to drink from 736 00:43:57,800 --> 00:44:00,000 this particular cup. You could have drunk from any 737 00:44:00,000 --> 00:44:03,520 cup and there was no cause for this violent outburst. 738 00:44:05,400 --> 00:44:09,440 She returned answer. Gossip comes from peddlers and 739 00:44:09,440 --> 00:44:13,320 lice from rags. Thank you, I love this. 740 00:44:13,320 --> 00:44:15,600 It's one of the great comebacks in all of the Talmud. 741 00:44:15,600 --> 00:44:18,680 Gossip comes from peddlers and lice from rags. 742 00:44:19,200 --> 00:44:22,160 And it's a bit of a strange final line. 743 00:44:22,160 --> 00:44:24,200 Scholars don't really know what to make of it. 744 00:44:24,200 --> 00:44:27,600 It's generally understood as the Alta trying to insult Ola any 745 00:44:27,600 --> 00:44:31,360 which way she possibly can. We know that Ola was a merchant, 746 00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:34,240 so it's as if she's saying to him you Ola and nothing and 747 00:44:34,240 --> 00:44:39,560 nothing but a gossiping, lice infested, rag wearing peddler. 748 00:44:41,720 --> 00:44:45,280 And so that is the primary reading of the story of Yalta 749 00:44:45,280 --> 00:44:49,680 and it appears that we have before us a classic shrew story. 750 00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:56,160 We have the comedy, we have the whipped husband, we have the 751 00:44:56,160 --> 00:45:01,000 violence, both verbal and physical, and we have, most 752 00:45:01,000 --> 00:45:04,400 importantly, the bad tempered mad woman who doesn't get her 753 00:45:04,400 --> 00:45:07,600 own way and unleashes her anger at everything in her path. 754 00:45:09,960 --> 00:45:12,960 But I like to ask, as I generally ask with every chapter 755 00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:16,600 in this book, is this really the story that Talmud is telling? 756 00:45:17,000 --> 00:45:20,600 And because I opened, we opened this conversation by me saying 757 00:45:20,600 --> 00:45:25,360 that the stories of the Talmud have a false front, you will 758 00:45:25,360 --> 00:45:27,880 assume correctly that the answer is generally no. 759 00:45:28,560 --> 00:45:33,040 And so the next step to do is to go back and try and reread the 760 00:45:33,040 --> 00:45:36,480 story of Yalta. And I begin the rereading of 761 00:45:36,480 --> 00:45:40,640 Yalta with a rereading of the story again of the original 762 00:45:40,640 --> 00:45:44,440 Madwoman in the Attic. And that is Bertha Mason from 763 00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:49,320 Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. So the novel Jane Eyre was 764 00:45:49,480 --> 00:45:52,880 published in the 19th century. Huge hit. 765 00:45:53,400 --> 00:45:57,280 About 120 years after that novel was published, the British 766 00:45:57,280 --> 00:46:01,120 Dominican novelist Jean Reese came along and said, hang on, 767 00:46:01,840 --> 00:46:05,760 you don't really know anything about Bertha Mason save the fact 768 00:46:05,760 --> 00:46:07,440 that she is a mad woman in an attic. 769 00:46:08,360 --> 00:46:10,840 Actually, I'm going to stop sharing because we don't need 770 00:46:10,840 --> 00:46:13,320 the text before us right now. I'd much rather talk to you. 771 00:46:14,640 --> 00:46:17,000 We don't know anything about Bertha Mason save the fact that 772 00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:21,400 she's a mad woman in an attic. But no mad woman in an attic is 773 00:46:21,400 --> 00:46:25,280 a mad woman in an attic bone. Something must have happened to 774 00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:29,200 get her to be this way, and so genius decides to write her 775 00:46:29,200 --> 00:46:32,600 story. The result is a very beautiful, 776 00:46:32,600 --> 00:46:35,720 very sad novel. Wide Surgasso Sea, which is a 777 00:46:35,720 --> 00:46:39,760 prequel to Jane Eyre, tells the story of what happened before 778 00:46:39,760 --> 00:46:42,680 Jane Eyre, the story of Bertha Mason's childhood, and 779 00:46:42,680 --> 00:46:45,880 essentially what led to her mental breakdown. 780 00:46:46,120 --> 00:46:50,840 And without going into it too deeply, Reese posits that Bertha 781 00:46:50,840 --> 00:46:55,320 Mason was treated as if she was crazy by the people around her 782 00:46:56,000 --> 00:46:58,200 until she was ultimately driven mad. 783 00:47:00,880 --> 00:47:03,840 There's a very similar argument made by the 20th century 784 00:47:03,840 --> 00:47:06,920 theorist Susie Kaplow in an essay titled Getting Angry, 785 00:47:07,240 --> 00:47:10,120 where Kaplow discusses the fraught relationship between 786 00:47:10,120 --> 00:47:14,160 women and anger. When men get angry, Kaplow says, 787 00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:18,840 they are indignant. When women get angry, they are 788 00:47:18,840 --> 00:47:22,320 irrational. And this too is a self 789 00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:24,600 fulfilling prophecy. Treat a woman as if she is 790 00:47:24,600 --> 00:47:28,800 irrational, I'll tempered and shrewish and she will become 791 00:47:29,120 --> 00:47:31,680 irrational, I'll tempered and shrewish. 792 00:47:32,040 --> 00:47:35,360 And so that's really kind of where the archetype comes from. 793 00:47:35,840 --> 00:47:38,520 And now that we've deconstructed it, now that we've understood 794 00:47:39,040 --> 00:47:44,800 how a mad woman goes from angry to crazy, from raging to 795 00:47:44,800 --> 00:47:48,680 deranged, a woman who is mad becomes a mad woman when she is 796 00:47:48,680 --> 00:47:52,640 dismissed as such. Now we have to go back and in 797 00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:54,720 light of this, reread the story of Yatta. 798 00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:57,520 And so I begin with the broad context. 799 00:47:57,520 --> 00:48:00,520 I look at all the other places in the Talmud where Yatta is 800 00:48:01,280 --> 00:48:03,280 referenced. Yatta is, in fact, the most 801 00:48:03,280 --> 00:48:06,760 referenced woman in the Talmud. There are several other mentions 802 00:48:06,760 --> 00:48:08,480 of her. And if you look at the other 803 00:48:08,480 --> 00:48:11,640 mentions of her, you will come to the conclusion that this is 804 00:48:11,760 --> 00:48:16,400 actually a highly intelligent, deeply rational, very 805 00:48:16,400 --> 00:48:20,080 knowledgeable of Jewish law, kind, compassionate, even 806 00:48:20,080 --> 00:48:22,800 tempered woman who is actually quite concerned with her 807 00:48:22,800 --> 00:48:25,920 husband's honor. So hardly your typical shrew. 808 00:48:27,960 --> 00:48:31,520 The next thing we do is that was the broad context. 809 00:48:31,520 --> 00:48:34,280 If we zoomed out to look at the story within its broad context, 810 00:48:34,480 --> 00:48:36,520 the next thing to do is zoom in a little bit and look at the 811 00:48:36,520 --> 00:48:39,280 story within its immediate context of the sugiya. 812 00:48:40,280 --> 00:48:43,200 The story appears interacted by heart as part of a lengthy 813 00:48:43,200 --> 00:48:46,080 discussion of this cup of blessing, the blessing over 814 00:48:46,080 --> 00:48:50,080 which bilkhat a mazon, or the blessing after meal is recited. 815 00:48:50,080 --> 00:48:53,120 And there are various do's and don'ts to do with this cup. 816 00:48:53,400 --> 00:48:55,920 And then the last thing that rabbis tell us before they tell 817 00:48:55,920 --> 00:48:59,440 us the story of Yalta is you were meant to send this cup 818 00:48:59,440 --> 00:49:04,120 round to your wife. Which implies that the rabbis, 819 00:49:04,120 --> 00:49:07,000 or at least the rabbis in Babylon, believe that sending 820 00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:10,360 the cup to 1's wife is absolutely what you were meant 821 00:49:10,360 --> 00:49:12,560 to do. And Yata was well within her 822 00:49:12,560 --> 00:49:17,680 rights to expect it. By the way, a second clue with 823 00:49:17,680 --> 00:49:23,160 regards to the framing of the story is, excuse me, the fact 824 00:49:23,160 --> 00:49:25,560 that Yata has given the last words in the story. 825 00:49:26,360 --> 00:49:29,760 You can generally tell whose side the rabbinic storyteller is 826 00:49:29,760 --> 00:49:32,480 on if you look at who they choose to give the final word 827 00:49:32,480 --> 00:49:37,840 to. And so we've looked at the broad 828 00:49:37,840 --> 00:49:39,920 context. We've, well, we've discussed the 829 00:49:39,920 --> 00:49:42,440 broad context, we've discussed the immediate context. 830 00:49:42,440 --> 00:49:46,520 And now let's zoom in and do a second closer rereading of the 831 00:49:46,520 --> 00:49:48,440 text. And this time we're going to try 832 00:49:48,440 --> 00:49:50,800 and do it, unlike shrew narratives, from the point of 833 00:49:50,800 --> 00:49:53,600 view of the shrew herself. So I'm going to flash up the 834 00:49:53,600 --> 00:49:59,320 text once more. We're not going to reread it, 835 00:49:59,320 --> 00:50:02,640 but if people are actually viewing rather than just 836 00:50:02,640 --> 00:50:05,400 listening, they can see the the text on the screen. 837 00:50:06,440 --> 00:50:09,000 So once again, the two men have a meal. 838 00:50:09,320 --> 00:50:12,160 They pour the glass of wine. They recite the blessing, they 839 00:50:12,160 --> 00:50:15,320 drink the wine. Ravnachman asks that the guest 840 00:50:15,320 --> 00:50:18,240 honour his wife by sending her the cup, which we now know to be 841 00:50:18,240 --> 00:50:23,240 the local custom in Babylon. And all I count is by saying, 842 00:50:23,240 --> 00:50:26,600 well, according to the Israeli custom, we don't do this because 843 00:50:26,600 --> 00:50:28,480 it's enough that the husband be blessed. 844 00:50:28,920 --> 00:50:35,000 Now many is the feminist reader who says Ola is sexist and what 845 00:50:35,000 --> 00:50:38,360 he's doing here is excluding women from the cup of blessing. 846 00:50:41,440 --> 00:50:46,480 Not so, because if we were to once again zoom out and look at 847 00:50:46,480 --> 00:50:48,960 the story in its context, and here I want to talk about the 848 00:50:48,960 --> 00:50:52,880 historical context, we would find, we would find that what 849 00:50:52,880 --> 00:50:57,360 Ola is doing here is stating a basic biological fact. 850 00:50:58,880 --> 00:51:02,040 Because according to most ancient theories of 851 00:51:02,040 --> 00:51:08,720 reproduction, the power of birth belonged exclusively to man, the 852 00:51:08,720 --> 00:51:12,240 power of procreation. It was actually man who created 853 00:51:12,240 --> 00:51:16,640 life through the generative force of his seat, his semen, 854 00:51:16,920 --> 00:51:21,120 whereas woman was merely A vessel or human incubator that 855 00:51:21,120 --> 00:51:25,800 carried that life inside of her. If we read Greco Roman 856 00:51:25,800 --> 00:51:28,680 biological writings and then Rabbinic writings that were 857 00:51:28,680 --> 00:51:32,680 influenced by Greco Roman biological theories, we will 858 00:51:32,680 --> 00:51:37,120 find that the woman's body, the woman's womb, is time and again 859 00:51:37,120 --> 00:51:41,320 compared to like an upside down jar that is lying hollow within 860 00:51:41,320 --> 00:51:44,280 a woman's body, empty and waiting to be filled. 861 00:51:46,320 --> 00:51:49,840 And so in light of this theory, which again was very dominant in 862 00:51:49,840 --> 00:51:52,920 the ancient world, what Ola says makes perfect sense. 863 00:51:53,840 --> 00:51:57,120 Man is the primary agent of childbirth and he alone should 864 00:51:57,120 --> 00:52:01,560 be blessed for it. Woman is ancillary at best and 865 00:52:01,560 --> 00:52:05,800 she will receive the blessing once she receives man's blessed 866 00:52:05,800 --> 00:52:08,760 seed into the vessel that is her womb. 867 00:52:10,600 --> 00:52:13,560 So that's act one of the story. I break the story down into 868 00:52:13,560 --> 00:52:16,160 three acts, most stories in Talmud or a three act drama. 869 00:52:16,640 --> 00:52:19,480 That changes everything. Absolutely. 870 00:52:19,600 --> 00:52:21,440 Now it changes, right? OK. 871 00:52:21,880 --> 00:52:24,520 Exactly, which is again why historical context is so 872 00:52:24,520 --> 00:52:27,160 supremely important to understanding these stories. 873 00:52:27,880 --> 00:52:31,200 So I read Act 2 Meanwhile Yacht ahead, and she got up in a 874 00:52:31,200 --> 00:52:34,240 passion and went to the wine storehouse and broke 400 jars of 875 00:52:34,240 --> 00:52:37,160 wine. And I want to claim that this is 876 00:52:37,160 --> 00:52:41,440 no temper tantrum. This is not Yata breaking all 877 00:52:41,440 --> 00:52:43,800 these jars of wine out of jealous spite. 878 00:52:43,800 --> 00:52:48,720 This is a very clever, very sophisticated response to the 879 00:52:48,720 --> 00:52:51,360 biological argument that ula has just made. 880 00:52:53,040 --> 00:52:54,600 Vessels are unimportant, are they? 881 00:52:55,800 --> 00:52:59,240 OK, let's see how you do without vessels. 882 00:53:01,600 --> 00:53:05,680 I'm not going to touch the wine. I'm just going to deconstruct 883 00:53:05,680 --> 00:53:07,960 the vessels. And if vessels are so 884 00:53:07,960 --> 00:53:10,880 unimportant, shouldn't make any difference now, should it? 885 00:53:10,880 --> 00:53:14,560 That's. So clever. 886 00:53:14,640 --> 00:53:15,720 Amazing. Such a clever input. 887 00:53:17,320 --> 00:53:21,360 OK. Act 3 Rav Nachman says to Ola, 888 00:53:21,360 --> 00:53:23,440 please send her another cup. Another cup. 889 00:53:23,440 --> 00:53:27,080 And Ola does once again with the message, all that wine can be 890 00:53:27,080 --> 00:53:29,840 counted as a blessing. And once again, I'm going to 891 00:53:29,840 --> 00:53:33,600 claim that there is some serious subtext here, because if Ola 892 00:53:33,600 --> 00:53:37,960 genuinely believed that this was the plain law, that all the wine 893 00:53:37,960 --> 00:53:41,280 in the area is equally blessed, he would have said that the 894 00:53:41,280 --> 00:53:45,600 first time that Avnachman asked him to send Yata the cup. 895 00:53:46,480 --> 00:53:50,680 But Ola, who was a smart man, understands perfectly well what 896 00:53:50,680 --> 00:53:54,400 Yata has just tried to tell him, and he responds in kind. 897 00:53:54,760 --> 00:53:57,480 Now, if we review the symbolism in the story, we'll find that 898 00:53:57,480 --> 00:54:01,480 there are two primary symbols. There is the wine which 899 00:54:01,480 --> 00:54:05,600 symbolizes man's seed or semen, and there is the vessel which 900 00:54:05,600 --> 00:54:10,720 symbolizes woman's womb. By telling Yatta, all the wine 901 00:54:10,720 --> 00:54:13,600 is equally blessed. You do not need this particular 902 00:54:13,600 --> 00:54:16,520 cup. Ola is doubling down. 903 00:54:17,480 --> 00:54:21,520 Yes, vessels are not important, they're interchangeable. 904 00:54:22,240 --> 00:54:27,000 It doesn't matter what cup you drink from, the only thing that 905 00:54:27,000 --> 00:54:32,520 is important is what is inside the cup, IE the wine or per the 906 00:54:32,520 --> 00:54:35,160 symbolism of the story, man's seed. 907 00:54:37,560 --> 00:54:41,120 And yes, procreation absolutely is a male act. 908 00:54:44,560 --> 00:54:47,560 So now that we know that there is this biological subtext in 909 00:54:47,560 --> 00:54:52,160 the story, and the argument is actually an argument over the 910 00:54:52,160 --> 00:54:55,680 power of procreation and who it belongs to, we can now 911 00:54:55,680 --> 00:54:58,200 understand the final line of the story. 912 00:54:58,720 --> 00:55:02,920 I think gossip comes from peddlers and lice from rags. 913 00:55:02,920 --> 00:55:06,200 And once again, I don't think this is Yata heaping verbal 914 00:55:06,200 --> 00:55:10,120 abuse on ula Once again, we have to understand this within the 915 00:55:10,120 --> 00:55:13,840 context of ancient biology because the ancients believed 916 00:55:13,840 --> 00:55:16,480 that lice spontaneously generated. 917 00:55:17,560 --> 00:55:20,800 You do not need a mother louse and a father louse to create a 918 00:55:20,800 --> 00:55:22,920 little baby louse. They were simply born out of the 919 00:55:22,920 --> 00:55:26,800 air. Yata essentially saying to Ola, 920 00:55:27,040 --> 00:55:32,120 if you remove the female from the procreative process, you 921 00:55:32,120 --> 00:55:37,840 might be able to generate lice, you might be able to reproduce 922 00:55:37,840 --> 00:55:41,760 gossip. But for any real act of 923 00:55:41,760 --> 00:55:48,240 procreation, you need both male and female, seed and and vessel. 924 00:55:48,400 --> 00:55:52,440 Women may be vessels, but they are no less essential to the 925 00:55:52,440 --> 00:55:58,960 creation of life. And so now that we've done our 926 00:55:58,960 --> 00:56:02,640 rereading of the story of Yalta, I think we can tell how 927 00:56:02,640 --> 00:56:05,960 different it is to how we had read it the first time. 928 00:56:06,520 --> 00:56:09,000 This is not a petty fight over a cup of wine. 929 00:56:09,000 --> 00:56:12,160 This is a principal debate over the power of procreation. 930 00:56:13,520 --> 00:56:17,760 This is not a torrent of verbal and physical abuse. 931 00:56:18,080 --> 00:56:25,360 This is a principle debate over the power of of of a woman's 932 00:56:25,400 --> 00:56:30,800 reproductive worth and her right to the blessing of childbirth. 933 00:56:32,520 --> 00:56:35,640 And this is not a a shrew storming off in a tantrum. 934 00:56:35,640 --> 00:56:39,400 This is a rational, self possessed woman who stays and 935 00:56:39,400 --> 00:56:43,320 fights the system from within. And I want to say that this 936 00:56:43,320 --> 00:56:47,200 final point, to me at least, is Yatta at her most remarkable. 937 00:56:47,600 --> 00:56:50,560 Notice that at no point does she say I am not a vessel. 938 00:56:52,440 --> 00:56:55,760 No, the dominant biological tradition of her time decreed 939 00:56:55,760 --> 00:56:58,720 that women were vessels, and Yatta accepts that. 940 00:57:00,240 --> 00:57:04,640 But within that tradition, Yatta tries to carve out a space for 941 00:57:04,640 --> 00:57:08,680 herself. In this respect, Yatta for me is 942 00:57:08,680 --> 00:57:12,760 the ideal reader, and it is her strategy that I adopt in the 943 00:57:12,760 --> 00:57:15,600 book as I make my way through the stories of the six named 944 00:57:15,920 --> 00:57:19,920 heroines of the Talmud. Because not everything in the 945 00:57:19,920 --> 00:57:22,920 Talmud is going to sit well with our 21st century feminist 946 00:57:22,920 --> 00:57:26,160 sensibilities. A lot of the traditions are 947 00:57:26,160 --> 00:57:29,400 difficult. There was a reason that I cried 948 00:57:29,400 --> 00:57:34,040 3 days before my 12th birthday. But the point is, like Yalta, 949 00:57:34,040 --> 00:57:37,400 not to reject these traditions, but rather to accept them as our 950 00:57:37,400 --> 00:57:40,600 own and try and carve out a space for ourselves within them. 951 00:57:42,080 --> 00:57:45,160 And if we try to do that, we might just find, as we did with 952 00:57:45,160 --> 00:57:48,680 Yalta's story, that these traditions might not be as far 953 00:57:48,680 --> 00:57:53,000 removed from what we believe in as we initially thought. 954 00:57:53,000 --> 00:57:55,880 But I'll say one final thing. And with this, I will end. 955 00:57:56,760 --> 00:57:59,480 I end every chapter on an ethical note. 956 00:58:00,400 --> 00:58:03,040 One of the claims that I make in the book is that women, for the 957 00:58:03,040 --> 00:58:05,760 rabbi's, were the ultimate other with a capital O. 958 00:58:05,760 --> 00:58:10,320 And then when the rabbi's tell a story of a woman, 9/9 times out 959 00:58:10,320 --> 00:58:13,800 of 10 they're telling a story of an other with an aim of 960 00:58:13,800 --> 00:58:17,200 articulating an ethic of otherness, of imparting moral 961 00:58:17,200 --> 00:58:20,520 messages, of how to treat the others in our midst. 962 00:58:22,560 --> 00:58:26,720 And so the ultimate lesson, I believe, of the story of Yata is 963 00:58:26,720 --> 00:58:31,840 an ethical 1. As we saw, Ola dismisses Yalta 964 00:58:31,920 --> 00:58:36,200 as a raging shrew, and so have generations of readers after him 965 00:58:36,200 --> 00:58:38,840 who've never bothered to look at the story more closely or from 966 00:58:38,840 --> 00:58:43,280 her point of view. And dismissal, as we've seen, is 967 00:58:43,280 --> 00:58:45,560 the worst kind of self fulfilling prophecy. 968 00:58:46,960 --> 00:58:51,080 Katarina in Shakespeare said if I be waspish, best beware my 969 00:58:51,080 --> 00:58:54,000 sting. Treat me like a snarling, 970 00:58:54,000 --> 00:58:57,760 scratching, biting shrew and I will be snarling, scratching, 971 00:58:57,800 --> 00:59:01,720 biting shrew. Shylock, another famous 972 00:59:01,720 --> 00:59:05,520 Shakespearean others said thou callest me dog before thou hadst 973 00:59:05,520 --> 00:59:07,760 the cause. But since I am a dog, beware my 974 00:59:07,760 --> 00:59:11,120 fangs. Treat me like a heartless drew 975 00:59:11,120 --> 00:59:14,200 monster and I will be a heartless drew monster and I 976 00:59:14,200 --> 00:59:19,440 will demand my pound of flesh. We spoke about how Bertha Mason 977 00:59:19,440 --> 00:59:22,880 was treated as if she was crazy until she was in fact driven mad 978 00:59:24,640 --> 00:59:27,280 and going to the meat lash. The rabbis tell us the story of 979 00:59:27,280 --> 00:59:30,600 Timna. Timna the horite Princess who 980 00:59:30,600 --> 00:59:32,960 more than anything wanted to convert and join the Jewish 981 00:59:32,960 --> 00:59:35,280 people. But our forefathers, Abraham, 982 00:59:35,280 --> 00:59:37,600 Isaac and Jacob dismiss her as unworthy. 983 00:59:37,800 --> 00:59:41,960 And so Timna goes off and gives birth to Amalek, arch enemy of 984 00:59:41,960 --> 00:59:47,360 the Jewish people. Dismiss someone as irrational or 985 00:59:47,360 --> 00:59:51,400 wicked or unworthy, and they will become the very thing you 986 00:59:51,400 --> 00:59:56,600 dismiss them for. And this is a moral error very 987 00:59:56,600 --> 01:00:01,680 few of us avoid. We saw how men, through this 988 01:00:01,680 --> 01:00:04,480 archetype of the shrew, will sometimes dismiss women, but 989 01:00:05,440 --> 01:00:07,960 adults dismiss children all the time. 990 01:00:09,480 --> 01:00:12,360 We dismiss people from whose culture we do not. 991 01:00:13,560 --> 01:00:18,280 Initially, understand, and these days we dismiss just about 992 01:00:18,280 --> 01:00:21,160 anyone who doesn't see things exactly the same way that we do. 993 01:00:23,040 --> 01:00:26,480 And so the next time you're about to dismiss someone, and we 994 01:00:26,480 --> 01:00:32,800 all inevitably do, pause and think of Yalta, of how unfairly 995 01:00:32,800 --> 01:00:36,240 she was dismissed, and give that person a hearing. 996 01:00:37,520 --> 01:00:41,200 You may not end up agreeing with them, and that's fine, but at 997 01:00:41,200 --> 01:00:44,960 least you will not have created another mad woman in the attic. 998 01:00:46,880 --> 01:00:49,280 Unbelievable. That was so beautiful. 999 01:00:49,800 --> 01:00:53,960 And you know, just when when when we read when we read the 1000 01:00:53,960 --> 01:00:58,680 Torah itself and we see the constant, you know, reminder 1001 01:00:58,680 --> 01:01:01,680 about taking care of the orphan and the widow. 1002 01:01:02,000 --> 01:01:04,080 And there's, you know, even through we just finished 1003 01:01:04,480 --> 01:01:07,800 previously the Exodus, all of almost all the heroes in the 1004 01:01:07,800 --> 01:01:11,120 story were women. You have, you know, the bat Paro 1005 01:01:11,200 --> 01:01:14,280 and then Shifran, Pua and Miriam and you'll have it. 1006 01:01:14,280 --> 01:01:17,600 And then at the end you have Tipora. 1007 01:01:17,600 --> 01:01:21,600 There's just like never ending. And it's they're almost like 1008 01:01:21,600 --> 01:01:26,400 bookmarks to remind us that the other is is what we're doing it 1009 01:01:26,400 --> 01:01:29,280 all for. If this is and and like what you 1010 01:01:29,280 --> 01:01:33,600 said here, the rap is giving her the last word is really them 1011 01:01:33,600 --> 01:01:37,520 confirming that she has a great point and we have to really take 1012 01:01:37,520 --> 01:01:39,480 them seriously. It's not just something to 1013 01:01:39,480 --> 01:01:41,440 dismiss. So I think you just put it 1014 01:01:41,440 --> 01:01:43,240 beautifully and I'm I'm I'm butchering it. 1015 01:01:43,240 --> 01:01:45,440 You really did an amazing job so that. 1016 01:01:45,880 --> 01:01:49,200 Was very beautifully put. I I will say in connection to 1017 01:01:49,200 --> 01:01:54,480 that I end up the book by talking about why I think it is 1018 01:01:54,480 --> 01:01:59,360 that the rabbi's are able to so profoundly empathize with women 1019 01:02:00,040 --> 01:02:03,240 in a way that no other culture at their time was able to do. 1020 01:02:03,240 --> 01:02:05,840 They really are quite proto feminist in their way. 1021 01:02:06,240 --> 01:02:10,800 And I will often I often have students who say to me, I love 1022 01:02:10,800 --> 01:02:12,200 your reading, but I don't buy it. 1023 01:02:12,200 --> 01:02:15,760 How could the rabbis be so feminist living so far back as 1024 01:02:15,760 --> 01:02:19,160 they as they did and at a time where women were considered so 1025 01:02:19,160 --> 01:02:24,400 foreign and so inferior, so essentially other and without 1026 01:02:24,400 --> 01:02:28,400 sort of going too deeply into it because I, I, I feel like we're 1027 01:02:28,480 --> 01:02:32,840 nearly out of time. But I I speak about the 1028 01:02:33,560 --> 01:02:37,640 historical woman Jew analogy that has accompanied Jews 1029 01:02:37,640 --> 01:02:41,560 throughout history where other peoples have historically looked 1030 01:02:41,560 --> 01:02:45,400 at Jews as feminized and specifically looked at rabbinic 1031 01:02:45,400 --> 01:02:49,200 Jews as rabbis as feminized and how this was a big part of 1032 01:02:49,200 --> 01:02:52,600 rabbinic self perception. There are several places in the 1033 01:02:52,720 --> 01:02:55,160 in rabbinic literature where the rabbis outrightly compare 1034 01:02:55,160 --> 01:02:58,640 themselves to women. And this goes on to form a a 1035 01:02:59,000 --> 01:03:03,600 very integral part of how Jews have seen themselves throughout 1036 01:03:03,600 --> 01:03:10,080 diasporic existence. And so the rabbi's understand 1037 01:03:10,080 --> 01:03:14,440 what it means to be disempowered, to be oppressed, 1038 01:03:14,920 --> 01:03:18,320 to be sometimes even persecuted, because this was their existence 1039 01:03:18,320 --> 01:03:21,080 too. And I kind of show at the end of 1040 01:03:21,080 --> 01:03:25,560 the book about why this analogy between woman and Jew runs so 1041 01:03:25,560 --> 01:03:27,880 deep within Jewish consciousness. 1042 01:03:31,320 --> 01:03:34,640 Excellent point you make. Actually, you brought up the 1043 01:03:35,120 --> 01:03:38,080 conclusion of, well, the end of your book. 1044 01:03:38,880 --> 01:03:40,560 I think you would be remiss with not bringing up. 1045 01:03:41,000 --> 01:03:47,040 You did ask the question at the end of well, the rabbis meant 1046 01:03:47,040 --> 01:03:51,000 what they meant with all these stories then. 1047 01:03:51,440 --> 01:03:55,280 Then why not tell us why? Why put it? 1048 01:03:55,280 --> 01:03:59,920 Why package it in in such a? You know, like you have to 1049 01:04:00,280 --> 01:04:03,400 decode it and have a close reading and all that? 1050 01:04:03,920 --> 01:04:09,160 Why didn't they just say it? So I, I kind of allude to that. 1051 01:04:09,320 --> 01:04:13,960 I alluded to that earlier on Excuse Me when I spoke about how 1052 01:04:13,960 --> 01:04:17,040 the rabbis construct their stories so as to deliberately 1053 01:04:17,040 --> 01:04:20,760 mislead us. And I believe it's because the 1054 01:04:20,760 --> 01:04:25,600 Rabbis want us to be misled. The Rabbi's want us to 1055 01:04:25,600 --> 01:04:29,960 experience first hand how easy it is to misread something, to 1056 01:04:29,960 --> 01:04:32,440 misinterpret, to come away with the wrong idea. 1057 01:04:33,440 --> 01:04:36,560 We are meant to read the altar as a shrew as we are meant to 1058 01:04:36,560 --> 01:04:40,600 read Homer as a fan fatale, so that we can then go back and 1059 01:04:40,600 --> 01:04:44,240 reread and realise how deeply what wrong we were in our 1060 01:04:44,240 --> 01:04:48,400 initial reading, how prone we ourselves are to 1061 01:04:48,400 --> 01:04:51,280 misinterpretation and how important it is to try and avoid 1062 01:04:51,280 --> 01:04:54,760 this kind of misinterpretation both in reading and in life. 1063 01:04:55,040 --> 01:04:57,880 And so how do we avoid this kind of misinterpretation both in 1064 01:04:57,880 --> 01:05:01,840 reading and in life? We apply to the reading of the 1065 01:05:01,840 --> 01:05:05,200 people in our lives the very same reading rules that were 1066 01:05:05,200 --> 01:05:09,400 meant to apply and that we hone as we read rabbinic stories, 1067 01:05:09,880 --> 01:05:13,560 which is you zoom in and do a close reading and that means, as 1068 01:05:13,560 --> 01:05:15,920 I said, looking closely at each and every word and listening, 1069 01:05:16,080 --> 01:05:17,800 listening carefully to the silences. 1070 01:05:17,800 --> 01:05:22,320 It means being sensitive. Then we zoom out and look at the 1071 01:05:22,320 --> 01:05:23,880 context. That means knowing that there is 1072 01:05:23,880 --> 01:05:26,880 a bigger picture, that there might be other circumstances of 1073 01:05:26,880 --> 01:05:30,440 which we may be unaware. That means being humble. 1074 01:05:30,960 --> 01:05:33,640 I spoke earlier about how these stories are scenic, giving us 1075 01:05:33,640 --> 01:05:36,280 what characters say or do, but not what they think and feel, 1076 01:05:36,480 --> 01:05:39,640 and it's up to us to tease out the unstated emotion. 1077 01:05:39,640 --> 01:05:44,560 That means being empathetic. And So what the rabbi's do here, 1078 01:05:44,560 --> 01:05:47,760 and this is to me the height of their storytelling genius, which 1079 01:05:47,760 --> 01:05:50,160 is just brilliant. And I don't know of any other 1080 01:05:50,160 --> 01:05:54,280 literary tradition that does it quite as ingeniously as rabbinic 1081 01:05:54,280 --> 01:05:57,480 storytelling. The stories of the Talmud don't 1082 01:05:57,480 --> 01:06:01,720 just teach us to be more moral. The very act of reading them 1083 01:06:01,800 --> 01:06:07,040 makes us so in the course of reading of these stories, of 1084 01:06:07,040 --> 01:06:11,000 rereading them, of trying to get beneath the surface between the 1085 01:06:11,000 --> 01:06:16,160 lines, we end up exercising the same interpretive skills that 1086 01:06:16,160 --> 01:06:20,160 make us more sensitive, more humble, more empathetic, 1087 01:06:20,360 --> 01:06:23,120 essentially more moral. Amazing. 1088 01:06:23,880 --> 01:06:25,560 Well said. Amazing, amazing. 1089 01:06:26,320 --> 01:06:30,440 So, but before we go, can you tell our audience where they can 1090 01:06:30,440 --> 01:06:33,960 find you, get your book and if you have any upcoming projects? 1091 01:06:33,960 --> 01:06:36,640 Because we definitely want to have you on again for for that. 1092 01:06:38,840 --> 01:06:41,080 I hope it won't take that long because my next project might be 1093 01:06:41,080 --> 01:06:44,440 a couple of years. But thank you for asking. 1094 01:06:44,520 --> 01:06:50,000 I guess I'm I'm very googleablegilafine.com is where 1095 01:06:50,000 --> 01:06:54,800 I live online. The book can be purchased at the 1096 01:06:54,800 --> 01:06:59,720 publishers website, whichiskoenpub.com, KORENP, 1097 01:06:59,720 --> 01:07:05,680 ub.com or on Amazon or in any of the finer Jewish bookshops. 1098 01:07:08,440 --> 01:07:14,400 And my next project, which I'm beginning to work on now. 1099 01:07:14,400 --> 01:07:17,440 But it it it. This book took me quite a few 1100 01:07:17,440 --> 01:07:19,800 years, and I imagine that will be the case with the next one. 1101 01:07:20,960 --> 01:07:24,200 This book was always written as the first of a trilogy. 1102 01:07:24,200 --> 01:07:28,680 There are two more, at least two more that I am very much hoping 1103 01:07:28,680 --> 01:07:32,680 and intending to write. The other two will still be 1104 01:07:32,680 --> 01:07:36,680 about Talmudic's stories and how to read the stories of the 1105 01:07:36,680 --> 01:07:39,120 Talmud, but they will not be about women. 1106 01:07:39,800 --> 01:07:42,640 They will be about different themes, different genres and 1107 01:07:43,040 --> 01:07:45,680 different messages. I believe that the rabbi's 1108 01:07:45,680 --> 01:07:48,520 wanted for us to learn, and I don't think I'm going to say 1109 01:07:48,920 --> 01:07:53,080 much more than that because I'm at the very beginning and I do 1110 01:07:53,080 --> 01:07:56,200 firmly believe in the rabbinic idea of Ennobel hashawa 1111 01:07:56,200 --> 01:07:59,600 Elabadaba hassamuimila ayn. I love that. 1112 01:08:00,080 --> 01:08:03,120 Which is hidden, sorry. I love that you're doing that, 1113 01:08:03,120 --> 01:08:05,000 that you're just taking the methodology and you want to 1114 01:08:05,000 --> 01:08:10,520 expand it into different areas because, because it will further 1115 01:08:10,520 --> 01:08:15,680 solidify how the methodology works and how it, how it comes 1116 01:08:15,680 --> 01:08:19,120 into play and how it, how it is compelling, not just in a 1117 01:08:19,120 --> 01:08:22,240 specific, let's say the woman genre, but it is, but it is 1118 01:08:22,240 --> 01:08:25,240 something that can be carried into all, all of Agathic 1119 01:08:25,240 --> 01:08:27,640 literature. And that's something which, and 1120 01:08:27,680 --> 01:08:30,760 I, I mentioned it before. I think that we need more of it 1121 01:08:31,080 --> 01:08:35,359 right now. You know, Agatha is a, is a, is 1122 01:08:35,439 --> 01:08:39,399 a in, in, in the, in the religious world. 1123 01:08:39,960 --> 01:08:44,120 It's not read properly. And for someone who's, who's 1124 01:08:44,120 --> 01:08:47,680 just, you know, either secular or, or not like, you know, they, 1125 01:08:47,720 --> 01:08:50,040 they, they don't take me, Agatha seriously. 1126 01:08:50,040 --> 01:08:52,840 You have from both ends. We have this problem that either 1127 01:08:52,840 --> 01:08:57,680 it's read incorrectly or it's just plugged off. 1128 01:08:57,840 --> 01:09:01,279 And I think a modern difficulty, if I may add, is that the, you 1129 01:09:01,479 --> 01:09:03,920 know, everybody has access to the Talmud today. 1130 01:09:04,160 --> 01:09:08,880 So you see online our enemies are attacking Jews and say 1131 01:09:08,880 --> 01:09:11,960 hello, what is it says this to the Talmud And and and the Jews 1132 01:09:11,960 --> 01:09:16,120 don't have the refinement of often times to actually respond. 1133 01:09:16,720 --> 01:09:20,600 So this this example of your book and hopefully more like it 1134 01:09:20,960 --> 01:09:24,840 actually will give people the proper tools to to defend our 1135 01:09:24,840 --> 01:09:27,920 tradition and appreciate our the wisdom of ghazal. 1136 01:09:27,920 --> 01:09:29,760 So I think that you're doing an amazing service. 1137 01:09:29,760 --> 01:09:31,720 Absolutely. Thank you. 1138 01:09:32,560 --> 01:09:40,000 Yes, I it's, it's in the rabbi's defense. 1139 01:09:40,000 --> 01:09:42,520 As I I said earlier, the rabbi's created the Talmud. 1140 01:09:42,560 --> 01:09:44,920 It's text created by rabbis for rabbis. 1141 01:09:45,520 --> 01:09:48,319 It would have absolutely blown their mind, I think, to see the 1142 01:09:48,319 --> 01:09:53,439 Talmud has become such common, not common knowledge, but like 1143 01:09:53,560 --> 01:09:57,600 it's become so accessible to so many. 1144 01:09:57,840 --> 01:10:00,040 I don't think it's anything that they would have envisioned. 1145 01:10:00,480 --> 01:10:04,480 That is a great blessing, but it does carry with it some very 1146 01:10:04,480 --> 01:10:08,000 serious dangers. And I think the greatest victim 1147 01:10:08,160 --> 01:10:11,800 of this is specifically the stories, because as opposed to 1148 01:10:11,800 --> 01:10:15,080 the legal sections of the Talmud, they seem accessible. 1149 01:10:15,080 --> 01:10:18,120 They seem simple. They are so often 1150 01:10:18,120 --> 01:10:21,480 misinterpreted. They're so often marshaled as 1151 01:10:21,480 --> 01:10:28,480 evidence to make precisely the wrong point by people who either 1152 01:10:28,480 --> 01:10:32,120 just don't know enough or by people who have a very distinct 1153 01:10:32,120 --> 01:10:34,280 agenda. And it's very easy to impose 1154 01:10:34,280 --> 01:10:39,360 that agenda on these stories. And so, as I say, a big part of 1155 01:10:39,360 --> 01:10:44,080 what I try to do with this book is to show readers that not all 1156 01:10:44,080 --> 01:10:49,480 interpretations are created equal, that the stories have a 1157 01:10:49,480 --> 01:10:52,000 very definite interpretation that they are driving you 1158 01:10:52,000 --> 01:10:53,440 toward. And if you listen to them 1159 01:10:53,440 --> 01:10:56,040 closely enough, they will tell you how they want to be read. 1160 01:10:57,520 --> 01:11:00,640 And I think it's never been a more exciting time to be an A 1161 01:11:00,640 --> 01:11:02,560 goddess. There are more and more people 1162 01:11:02,560 --> 01:11:05,120 doing it. I hope that trickles out of the 1163 01:11:05,120 --> 01:11:10,120 ivory tower and and makes its way to to lay readers, and I'm 1164 01:11:10,160 --> 01:11:11,920 quite optimistic in that respect. 1165 01:11:12,920 --> 01:11:15,920 We appreciate you and everything you're doing for the for the 1166 01:11:15,920 --> 01:11:21,880 genre and for the for the, for, for we, we are excited for your 1167 01:11:21,880 --> 01:11:24,920 upcoming projects and we wish you the absolute best. 1168 01:11:25,200 --> 01:11:28,720 And we hope that you come back on with us because this was very 1169 01:11:28,720 --> 01:11:32,360 educational, very important. And one more time I'll just put 1170 01:11:32,360 --> 01:11:35,280 the book for everyone to see. Please get the book. 1171 01:11:35,280 --> 01:11:38,320 You will not regret it. It is phenomenal. 1172 01:11:39,320 --> 01:11:41,400 Thank you. Thank you so much.