The Oral Talmud

“The big error is to imagine that a general principle of interpretation applies only to the case in which we learned it.” - Dan Libenson Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  This week Dan & Benay work through to the end of the case of a person who is sick and needs t...

“Talmud is showing people how you do the sleight of hand. It's like magician school! And this is the manual! A magician never reveals his tricks! But the democratization of the old tricks allows for the new tricks.” - Dan Libenson Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. ...

“As almost always, there's a wink in this text. And the question is: has that wink been successful? Or have we lost track of the wink and opened ourselves up to the misinterpretation of this radical approach, for an originalist approach?” - Benay Lappe Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us r...

“In these moments of new foundings, I wonder the extent to which you have to make some kind of a plausible argument that your changes are actually an expansion of ancient principles. Otherwise, I wonder if they’ll be cast out by the immune system.” - Dan Libenson Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago ca...

“What's inherent in racism is the idea that you are judging groups of people in terms of value one against another. And I think that's precisely what's underneath – that's the svara essentially – about why you can't murder someone else to save your own life. Because you cannot say: I know my life is more valuable than that person's.” - Benay Lappe Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive c...

“And since they've shown us their work, we're able to say, ‘I'm not following the substantive rule in this case! I'm following the process rule – which says: How do I think about this new case?” - Dan Libenson Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  This episode is dedi...

“When the Rabbis start saying: Well, when does this line in the Torah apply? And when doesn't apply? – You forget that their first radical move was to imply: This doesn't always apply. That's enormous. It's that shift that makes anything possible.” - Benay Lappe Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can...

“Jewish law works like any legal system that survives for a long period of time – and it does so by the same mechanisms. And those mechanisms are the human insight that is brought to bear to modify, qualify, limit, and expand the law as one receives it.” - Benay Lappe Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years a...

“How do you take what you have and analogize, and tie some new radical thing that you don't have but you want to insert into the tradition? This entire passage is part of the instruction manual! This is some new twist of creativity, a twist of imagination.”  - Benay Lappe Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 yea...

“Ultimately the only way that you actually take these lessons into your soul is through trying to implement it in your actual life. And often that's gonna be failure!“ - Dan Libenson Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  Dan & Benay return to the daf after a series of...

“Part of what I love about Talmud is that even if you're just listening, there's so many gaps, so many rough edges, so many places that don't quite fit together. There're all these holes and you, the reader, burrow into those holes. You find your nook, your cranny, your space, your neek’rat ha’tzur . And it's the nature of the discourse that has you do that. I don't think it's possible to learn th...

“I want activist reads to also be responsible reads, which is why I’m so committed to people being anchored and being able to actually read these classical texts.” - Jane Kanarek Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  This week Dan & Benay learn with special guest Prof...

“Opinions that are contradictory to one another, the opposite of one another are both the words of God.” - Dan Libenson Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  This episode is dedicated to beloved Talmud translator Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz who passed in 2020, in the days b...

“We have to imagine that everything that we love today, or don't love, might end up in the Tisha b’Av of the future.” - Dan Libenson Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  This episode was originally released for Tisha b’Av in 2020, the Jewish calendar’s most essential...

“I love the world of the Talmud. I love the fact that they need to justify, they wanna justify, they wanna talk and talk and talk; the way that people who are less socially confident sometimes find themselves doing, when we're in a situation where we're in a new community, and we just, you know, ramble! That's something I love about the Talmud.” - Shai Secunda Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekl...

“I find it deeply moving and worthy of homilies that arguably the most influential voices in the history of Jewish thinking are anonymous.” - Daniel Boyarin Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  This week Dan & Benay learn with special guest scholar Daniel Boyarin! Bo...

“It's only when you know why, and the essence behind the whys, that you are able to create. You're able to then be free of the momentary form of a practice, which is trying to achieve a certain goal, and create other forms that achieve that same goal.” - Benay Lappe Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago...

“Even if the good book was not written by God, the Talmudic page is often a good place to encounter the Divine.” - Ruth Calderon Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  This week Dan & Benay learn with special guest scholar Ruth Calderon, author of “A Bride for One Nigh...

“You don't have to stand outside of the tradition to fix it. If you realize where the tradition is wrong, that doesn't put you outside of it. That puts you squarely in the center of it, standing on the shoulders of the greatest ones who have the ability to, from the inside of tradition, using the Torah’s mechanisms and ideas to overturn it.” - Benay Lappe Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly dee...

“And in Jewish law, if you get 23 Jews to agree on something? You know something is wrong!” - Benay Lappe Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  Come and learn BENAY’s favourite text in all Talmud: L’Taher et HaSheretz! Here the Rabbis ask what qualities are required i...

Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  Like our previous week’s episode, this was recorded in June of 2020, in response to the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of police. Likewise, we turn to another text which emphasizes the culpability of bystanders and tho...

“You’ve got to decide with whom and where your voice is going to be heeded. Where are you going to have the power to effect change? That’s your olam. If we get to this big world, we can become actually overcome with powerlessness. But I think that’s the driving question of the bottom line of this text. What’s your world? Who’s your kahal?” - Benay Lappe Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep...

“That was the rabbinic genius, to say that that which is wholly new also is given from God at Mount Sinai. That’s a genius sleight of hand that allows you to feel a sense of continuity and connection and history and sacredness in what is absolutely new.” - Benay Lappe Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years a...

“I don’t have to win; I don’t have to get the person to capitulate to me. I don’t have to hear the person’s apology – as long as I’ve gotten the world to be the way I need the world to be.” - Dan Libenson Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.  This week we continue dis...

“There are barriers being put up that say ‘You’re not a good Jew if you don’t do it our way’ – but as soon as those barriers come down, there’s actually a huge interest! And then the question is: What do you do with that engagement? What does that involvement produce?” - Dan Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500...