This study session was part of Hartman's Summer 2020 Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Thought Leaders.
Source #1: Ezra Klein, "America is changing, and so is the media," Vox, June 10, 2020
Part II: The Story Continues
Source #1: Bava Metzia 59b
Part III: How to Argue Like a Torah Scholar (Without Killing Anyone)
Source #2: Chaya Halberstam, "Encircling the Law: Legal Boundaries of Rabbinic Judaism," Jewish Studies Quarterly, Vol. 16, 2009, pp. 422-23
Source #3: David Hartman, A Living Covenant, pp. 48-49
Think about a time when you started arguing about one thing, and somehow ended up arguing about something else. Were there unintended consequences of that argument?
Part I: Who Gets to Be Part of the Argument?
Ezra Klein, "America is changing, and so is the media," Vox, June 10, 2020
In January 1939, the Atlantic published an article titled “I Married a Jew.” In it, the author set out “to tell the world how it really is between a Jew and a Christian, since the world is evidently so intensely interested.”
She confesses that her husband, though lovely in many respects, “still has the Jewish hypersensitivity toward all criticism of his race.” She admits that she frequently tries “to see things from the Nazis’ point of view and to find excuses for the things they do,” only to be met by the “hurt confusion of my husband.” She argues that Jews “must make some practical and rational effort to adapt their ways more graciously to the Gentile pattern, since they prefer to live in Gentile lands.” She confesses that “our hottest argument concerns the question whether there exists such a thing as a Jewish problem.”
This piece makes its way around the internet every so often as a memento from an anti-Semitic time capsule. The appended comment is always along the lines of: Can you believe the Atlantic published that? The unstated, but obvious, corollary, is no reputable outlet — least of all the Atlantic — would publish any such piece today. An editor would read the words “It is only when Ben is surrounded by his family that he lapses into Jewish ways, and then, no doubt, because of his early Jewish training,” DM her colleagues in astonishment, and send the submission to the trash.
There have always been boundaries around acceptable discourse, and the media has always been involved, in a complex and often unacknowledged way, in both enforcing and contesting them. In 1986, the media historian Daniel Hallin argued that journalists treat ideas as belonging to three spheres, each of which is governed by different rules of coverage. There’s the “sphere of consensus,” in which agreement is assumed. There’s the “sphere of deviance,” in which a view is considered universally repugnant, and it need not be entertained. And then, in the middle, is the “sphere of legitimate controversy,” wherein journalists are expected to cover all sides, and op-ed pages to represent all points of view.
Those boundaries, thankfully, change over time. In 1939, the ideas in “I Married a Jew” were in the sphere of legitimate controversy. In 2020, they’re firmly in the sphere of deviance. Those boundaries are changing again now. The difference is that the change — and the conversation behind it — is playing out in public.
You can read the rest of the article here.
Let's use this article as a lens to look back at the story from the Talmud:
Who won the argument in the Talmud? Why or how did he win?
What is won or lost in this argument? Clearly, the argument has gone beyond an oven. What is proven - or not proven - by this story?
The debate started with an oven, which might be pure or impure. Does one option get taken off the table? Why or how?
Part II: The Story Continues
The original argument was about whether an oven was pure or impure. Rabbi Eliezer was overruled. How did we get from that to burning things he had ruled to be pure?
Why do you think that Rabbi Eliezer's colleagues ostracized him?
The idea that if Rabbi Akiva doesn't break the news gently, Rabbi Eliezer will "destroy the entire world" is a little mysterious. Read on to unpack that concept...
What did Rabbi Akiva do? He wore black and wrapped himself in black, as an expression of mourning and pain, and sat before Rabbi Eliezer at a distance of four cubits, which is the distance that one must maintain from an ostracized individual. Rabbi Eliezer said to him: Akiva, what is different about today from other days, that you comport yourself in this manner? Rabbi Akiva said to him: My teacher, it appears to me that your colleagues are distancing themselves from you. Rabbi Eliezer too, rent his garments and removed his shoes, as is the custom of an ostracized person, and he dropped from his seat and sat upon the ground.
What is Rabbi Eliezer's initial reaction to the news that he has been ostracized?
How does Rabbi Eliezer's reaction unfold?
The Talmud is full of stories in which a Torah scholar's distress has real-world impact. What do you think is the significance of these claims? Why would these be the ways that Rabbi Eliezer's distress would manifest in the world?
(Note: We are going to skip a small part of the story here. It's a good part, though - if you want to go back and read it on your own, you can find it here).
אימא שלום דביתהו דר"א אחתיה דר"ג הואי מההוא מעשה ואילך לא הוה שבקה ליה לר"א למיפל על אפיה
The Gemara further relates: Imma Shalom, the wife of Rabbi Eliezer, was the sister of Rabban Gamliel. From that incident forward, she would not allow Rabbi Eliezer to lower his head and recite the taḥanun prayer, which includes supplication and entreaties. She feared that were her husband to bemoan his fate and pray at that moment, her brother would be punished.
Having already seen the ways in which Rabbi Eliezer's wrath can wreak havoc on the world, Imma Shalom steps in to stop things from getting any worse.
What do you think would have been so powerful about Rabbi Eliezer's prayer?
How do you imagine that she stopped her husband from praying?
ההוא יומא ריש ירחא הוה ואיחלף לה בין מלא לחסר איכא דאמרי אתא עניא וקאי אבבא אפיקא ליה ריפתא
A certain day was around the day of the New Moon, and she inadvertently substituted a full thirty-day month for a deficient twenty-nine-day month, i.e., she thought that it was the New Moon, when one does not lower his head in supplication, but it was not. Some say that a pauper came and stood at the door, and she took bread out to him. The result was that she left her husband momentarily unsupervised.
What distracts Imma Shalom from keeping watch over her husband? Why do you think it matters what it is that made her lose focus?
What do you think the consequences will be?
אשכחתיה דנפל על אנפיה אמרה ליה קום קטלית לאחי אדהכי נפק שיפורא מבית רבן גמליאל דשכיב
When she returned, she found him and saw that he had lowered his head in prayer. She said to him: Arise, you already killed my brother. Meanwhile, the sound of a shofar emerged from the house of Rabban Gamliel to announce that the Nasi had died.
Why do you think Rabbi Eliezer's prayer had the power to kill Rabban Gamliel? Which side was God really on, and why?
אמר לה מנא ידעת אמרה ליה כך מקובלני מבית אבי אבא כל השערים ננעלים חוץ משערי אונאה
Rabbi Eliezer said to her: From where did you know that your brother would die? She said to him: This is the tradition that I received from the house of the father of my father: All the gates of Heaven are apt to be locked, except for the gates of prayer for victims of verbal mistreatment.
Do you think Rabbi Eliezer knew what the impact of his prayer would be? Why or why not?
According to Imma Shalom, why did God intervene on behalf of Rabbi Eliezer?
And, circling back to where we started from:
Who won the argument? Why or how did he win?
What is won or lost in this argument? We got very far away from pure ovens. What is proven - or not proven - by this story?
Part III: How to Argue Like a Torah Scholar (Without Killing Anyone)
In this understanding of the paradox of simultaneously acting rightly and wrongly when examined from two different codes of behavior, the perpetrator of the act deserves both accolade and punishment. Both Waltzer and Luban seek to make the actor accountable not only in the formal, legal-political realm, but in the more inchoate sphere of morality as well: "we must make sure he pays the price." Within the Oven of Akhnai story, the authority who may easily monitor this unstructured world is God; thus God "punishes" R. Gamaliel once R. Eliezer voices his concern about R. Gamaliel's wrongdoing. Once again, however, it is the language of accountability, complaint and punishment that threatens to discursively merge the private sphere into the juridical realm. Notably, these terms are never used in the Oven of Akhnai story itself. No one is accused, judged or punished...The events that occur in the narrative...occur outside of any juridical logic. Thus it is this "same act [that] can be at once the right thing to do and morally wrong" - in other words, the right legal thing to do and morally wrong - which defines the border of the legal sphere, the boundary between the realm of accountability and punishment and a network of private relationships and obscured connections between events...
...Law, then, incorporates morality when it can but seals itself off from moral concerns when it must contend with its own "formal requirements," its very constitution as an authoritative, (relatively) autonomous system that can judge and punish. In the Oven of Akhnai narrative, we witness both the success of formal legal procedure within the walls of the academy or court, and the private flourishing of the moral - to the point of harnessing divine power over the forces of nature and life and death. Thus the story neither allows for the possibility of "proper" legal conduct that is entirely coterminous with the moral code, as Rubenstein wishes, nor does it assert the "primacy of the personal," as Luban suggests. Rather, it depicts a multifaceted Jewish religious culture comprised of both legal and moral spheres that inform each other but remain distinct.
David Hartman, A Living Covenant, pp. 48-49
The majority has the right to rule, but it cannot always assert that right with impunity. Human justice is autonomous from Divine justice, but woe betide the human judges if they imagine that divine justice is no longer concerned with their actions. When the court decided a question of ritual purity, God laughingly accepted His defeat, but when it went on to victimize Rabbi Eliezer, His anger was aroused...
Up to this last episode, it was possible to understand this story in terms of the gap between human justice and divine justice. The furious intervention of divine justice - blighted crops and sudden death - makes human adequacy and autonomy acutely problematic, but at least it is intelligible: the victimization of Rabbi Eliezer, over and above the rejection of his views, may also seem to offend our sense of natural justice. But a sensitive reading of the end of the story detects that here the divine judgment becomes unintelligible. It appears that Rabbi Eliezer did not wish the death of Rabbi Gamliel; he did not realize that God would respond to his supplication in that way. When he turns to God in his misery, the result is an increase in his misfortune. According to one version of events reported, moreover, it was the arrival of a poor man asking for food that brought about Ima Shalom's momentary absence from her husband's presence. She was distracted by her own compassion and by her readiness to fulfill the mitzvah of giving to the poor. Her struggle to keep her brother alive is defeated by her loyalty to God's covenantal mitzvah.