“What you can't do is try to ratchet it backwards to the original law from the Torah. No, it does not have a special status because it was in the Torah. Once it's overruled, it's overruled. Period. End of story.” - 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. 

In this episode of Oral Talmud, Benay and Dan continue to discuss a text about divorce, and they uncover a radical rabbinic principle hiding in plain sight: once the sages change Torah to reduce suffering, you don’t get to roll it back. No nostalgia. No appeals to “original intent.” Just a one-way moral ratchet toward dignity, toward protection, toward repair.

This conversation traces a daring throughline: we don’t inherit justice, we practice it. If you’ve ever wondered whether religious tradition can evolve without losing its soul, this episode doesn’t hedge. It leans all the way in. This Talmudic text is an argument for moral courage: when tradition causes harm, repair isn’t optional. Moving from ancient divorce law to modern constitutional law, Dan and Benay ask, who gets to change the system, and what is the cost when nobody does? 

This week’s text: Gittin 33a

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage   for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

“That is a point at which they're gonna say this is such a broken world that we can't let this stand. We're gonna have to repair the whole world to prevent people from falling into this category and that's going to mean overturning a Torah law.” - 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 a new Talmud passage. It’s about divorce again – but not really. Dan & Benay begin by thinking about how the law can look orderly on the page while quietly unraveling lives in practice. This episode starts with pointing out a strange rabbinic habit: naming how things used to be, even when that past was unjust. Instead of smoothing over the damage, the rabbis deliberately expose it, which invites us to notice where the system itself is doing harm.

From there, the conversation addresses the lives caught in the gap, the people who have slipped through the cracks, and suffering that cannot be fixed from within the rules. This episode lingers in the uncomfortable space where repair requires more than compassion. It requires changing the law itself, and asking whether we’re willing to do the same when our own systems break down.

This week’s text: “Lev Yodea Marat Nafsho” (Gittin 32a & 33a)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

 “What's really important is not just that they're doing it, but they're showing you that they're overturning Torah with what their own svara tells them is a better take on how to be a human being and that's why I think this entire document of the Talmud is an instruction manual for us. I think they meant to teach us how to do it so that we could do it.” -  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. 

This is the final part of Dan and Benay’s conversation about Tractate Ketubot, pages 2b and 3a, which is a case about conditional divorce that is really about showing us how to change the law when necessary to alleviate suffering. In this episode, we see the moment when the Talmud’s sages stop hiding their most radical move. The rabbis don’t just reinterpret the Torah – they openly claim the authority to override it.

BUT, as the text unfolds, we watch that boldness collide with fear…fear of instability, fear of power…fear of what happens when moral intuition is taken seriously. Throughout this podcast Benay and Dan have argued that the Talmud is a manual for how to handle moments of crash. Here we see the rabbis showing us how tradition can be rebuilt but then they hesitate. Dan and Benay ask the unsettling question: when suffering is clear and the tools to alleviate it are in our hands, why do we so often hold back?

This week’s text: Ketubot 2b & 3a

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

“It's always been that if we get to a point where svara tells us that this text is wrong, svara trumps the text.” - 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. 

When we were recording this episode in November of 2020, it was feeling very much like we were living in a time of crash in America and in the world, just like the world at the time of the Talmud. That sense still feels true to today, as we release the podcast version five years later. In times like this, the systems we rely on reveal their cracks. This episode leans into that unease, asking what happens when a law that is meant to protect people instead traps them in unending suffering.

Continuing the case we explored last week, from Tractate Ketubot, pages 2b and 3a, which is a text about divorce, we follow one rabbi’s willingness to do something pretty shocking about it: override the Torah itself in order to stop harm to human beings. At the center is svara, or moral intuition, and a radical claim that responsibility doesn’t end with saying “sorry, that’s the rule.”

This week’s text: Ketubot 2b & 3a

Find an edited transcript and full show notes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source  Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

“ What this text is trying to say, as is the entire Talmud, is ‘my hands are tied’ is not how we do Jewish. It's never been how we do Jewish, ever since the rabbis at least, and can never be thought of as a legitimately Jewish response to any suffering ever.” - 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. 

When this episode was recorded back in November of 2020 it was a moment of deep uncertainty surrounding the presidential election. The news felt unresolved, the ground unstable, and many of us were hovering between anxiety and numbness. Instead of rushing to conclusions, this episode slowed everything down and asked a different question: What does it look like to cultivate steadiness, moral clarity, and courage when the world won’t give us answers?

Turning to a startling passage in the Talmud, we explore a moment when the rabbis openly admit they are changing the law. Not because a verse demands it, but because human suffering does. At the center is svara, or moral intuition, and the refusal to say “my hands are tied.” This conversation pulls back the curtain on how Jewish law actually works and why uncertainty may be the very place where our deepest responsibility begins.

This week’s text: “Lev Yodea Marat Nafsho” (Ketubot 2b and 3a)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

“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 to eat (and not fast) on Yom Kippur. We recognize this whole section of Talmud to be a sampler - a presentation of the many moves available to the clever sage who is dedicated to the work of changing the system, rather than letting people suffer. 

Do we want Supreme Court justices who read and reinterpret text like the rabbis of this sugya? How do we react when people use otherwise liberatory tools in harmful ways? What might the results-oriented jurisprudence of this case indicate about the larger debates that our Talmud editors were dealing with in their time? Especially if we believe that by the time all of these defensive arguments were being spelled out, it was the established practice that people who need to should eat on Yom Kippur? What is the role of a constitution in protecting minorities? Recognizing and responding to suffering? When we’re suffering under a system now, what can we do? What can we utilize from our learning to help us?

This week’s text: “Lev Yodea Marat Nafsho” (Yoma 82a & 83a - Part 3)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

“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. 

This week Dan & Benay continue to work through the case of a person who is sick and needs to eat on the austere fasting day of Yom Kippur. We give special attention to the moves which the sages make in order to resolve an apparent contradiction between the earlier Mishnah and a later rabbi whose opinion they clearly want to settle on - instead of the primary text taking ultimate precedence. 

How do we appreciate the rabbis without being apologetic for their sexism or ableism? How does noticing the intended audience play into the Talmud and college admissions? Is the more essential value here listening to the individual? or stopping any potential harm? In what ways are Torah, Mishnah, and Talmud constitutions? What are the super “precedents” in Jewish law? What can we do when we recognize helpful legal concepts and tools being weaponized? When it comes to judges, do we prefer one who claims to treat the role as an umpire, or one who is honest about the impact of their worldview? How is studying Talmud like reading a book of magic tricks?

This week’s text: “Lev Yodea Marat Nafsho” (Yoma 82a & 83a - Part 2)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

“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 rethink Judaism today. 

This week Dan & Benay continue to build on the discussion of Pikuach Nefesh – how the Rabbis established and expressed their fundamental value that one should put the preservation of life before almost any Torah law. We bring in a core text in the SVARA yeshiva which explores the case of a person who is sick and needs to eat on Yom Kippur, instead of fasting. The interplay between Torah, Mishnah, and Gemara are fabulous illustrations of their differing agendas, the rules of Talmudic debate, and a timely gateway into discussions of originalism in legal interpretation. 

Is there a time for originalist readings, whether it be the American Constitution or foundations of Halakha? What is the job of law? Is it to define the only rights that we have? Or to assume we have a complete freedom unless otherwise limited? Reading Rashi’s commentary, what guesses can we make about where the debate developed in his time by noticing what he adds to the conversation? What are the implications of using a verse from Proverbs as a proof text?

This week’s text: “Lev Yodea Marat Nafsho” (Yoma 82a & 83a)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

“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 can help us rethink Judaism today. 

For the past few weeks, Dan & Benay have been exploring the rabbinic declaration that we should violate *almost* any Torah commandment to save a life or avoid being killed ourselves. But that “almost,” the exceptions to this rule, offer essential insights into the project of the Rabbis, and how we can be emulating their process for making the innovations we need now. In our final episode with this particular sugya, we work to connect the dots and make the analogies that put these fundamental principles into action!

How does our current sugya speak to moments when our society needs a new refounding? How do we help people who have only been taught Torah to understand and appreciate how much the Rabbis built onto Judaism? What do we do now if another layer has to be built We’ll find that the sages teach that we actually should accept being killed if the only other choice is transgressing mitzvot in public, and especially during a time of religious persecution. What’s the difference in these scenarios? What are the implications? When can martyrdom - or non-life-and-death sacrifices (such as sacrificing our jobs) - be necessary for liberation? How are you, the listener, applying what you believe to be the foundational principles of these sugyot to the crises of racism? Climate disaster?Like Benay’s Tile Contour Gauge, what are your metaphors for tradition? (The gauge is in the video version of this episode!)

This week’s text: “Nitza’s Attic - Public and Private” (Sanhedrin 74a - Part 4)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.

“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 chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

This week, Dan & Benay continue to unpack the exceptions to the rabbinic declaration that we should violate *almost* any Torah commandment to save a life or avoid being killed ourselves. The main focus this week is that we should accept being killed if the alternative is murdering another innocent person. We work our way into the fundamental principles which drive these exceptions, and show how these fundamental ideas map onto the most present issues today. We’ll continue the conversation next week!

What is the difference between killing and murder? How do we derive broader ideas from cases in Talmud? How does that practice diverge from attempts to protect queer Jews by reinterpreting Leviticus? What would we put on the “you can absolutely violate this law if someone will die otherwise” list when it comes to American Law? How do words change their meaning? Why does Steinsaltz translate svara as “logical reasoning”? How can we determine the fundamental principle under a rule, and not get stuck on the words of the rule itself?

This week’s text: “Nitza’s Attic - The Exceptions, cont.” (Sanhedrin 74a - Part 3)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes (references and further reading) on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.