The Oral Talmud

“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.

“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 dedicated to the memory and legacies of Ruth Bader Ginsberg & Breonna Taylor.

Dan & Benay pick up where we left off last week, in Nitza’s Attic, and the crucial decision that we should violate *almost* any Torah commandment to save a life or avoid being killed ourselves. This week we begin to explore the exceptions to this rule - but even more so, how those exceptions were narrowed, and the reason for showing the rationale the Talmud builds for narrowing these exceptions. We’ll continue the conversation next week!

What was Talmudic about Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s life and work? How can Talmud’s process help us understand systemic contexts that led to the unjust death of Breonna Taylor at police hands. How do uncover and generalize or re-apply Talmud values to today’s subjects which Talmud does not discuss word-for-word? What is the influential relationship between foundational laws like Torah and Constitution, Custom (minhag), and svara, our moral intuition? When we re-read Torah, how do we learn to recognize which teachings about the Torah we’ve forgotten are not in the original text? What gifts was the stamma (the editor of the Talmud) giving us in showing us the reasoning behind shifting laws and narrowing exceptions?

This week’s text: “Nitza’s Attic - The Exceptions” (Sanhedrin 74a - 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.

“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 help us rethink Judaism today. 

So far, Dan & Benay have been exploring when the sages overturned Torah on a case-by-case basis, spending the last two weeks on pikuach nefesh and violating Shabbat to save a life. Now we move from a tricky question asked along the road, into a Judaism-defining vote held in a tiny attic: Is there any mitzvah we should allow ourselves to be killed over before transgressing it? How does tradition building work? How do we construct narratives about how tradition changes? How do we groove new traditions so that 2000 years from now people think of our innovations like we think of ya’avor v’al yay’ha’rayg (transgressing rather than dying)? Why is this monumental moment happening in an attic?Do we need to jettison existing traditions in order to make room for new, life-saving traditions? When are tzitzit, tefillin, and kippot serving the right purposes?

This episode was recorded around Rosh Hashana 2020, when there were conflicts between the tradition of coming together in-person to celebrate the High Holy Days, and not gathering in large groups, which was unfamiliar to many people, but would increase the disabling and deadly spread of COVID.

This week’s text: “Nitza’s Attic” (Sanhedrin 74a - Part 1)

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.

“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 ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

Last week, Dan & Benay began to learn how the Talmud questions and defends the principle of Pikuach Nefesh, the teaching that we can and should break Shabbat and, therefore, (almost) any commandment in order to save a life. This conversation does start by getting new listeners caught up, and the previous episode is available for going deeper. This week, we learn the final proof, which, like many episodes, inspires many connections to American law; this time we get into more of the meta on why we make these connections...

As the rabbis start to put together a new system, what are some of the values that they put at the center of that system? How do they make the transition from a previous system which may not have had those radical values to one that now does? How do they kind of maintain a sense of continuity through all that change? How can we learn from their techniques as we work to insert back into the tradition the missing innovations and values that are just as radical shifts to the tradition we’ve received as breaking Shabbat to save a life was for the Rabbis? How do we extend their work to save the lives of queer people too? How do we navigate and counter slippery slope arguments?  Where do we find svara in the American legal system? Why don’t we learn these techniques for change? Is it by design, fear, incompetence? What would it be like to teach the history and role of fixing the tradition? And finally, why does the Talmud give all these proofs and make the absurd claim that the final proof is one that can’t be refuted?

This week’s text: “Pikuach Nefesh” (Yoma 83a & 85a/b)

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.

“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 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today. 

Benay & Dan turn to another essential Talmud text, the origins of Pikuach Nefesh, the teaching that we can and should break (almost) any commandment in order to save a life. What we find is that while the Mishnah has no qualms about giving clear examples of life-saving actions we can take on Shabbat, the Gemara wants some textual support for violating what is so clearly written in Torah. In this discussion we get into all of the explanations except for the final one, the one that tradition ends up hanging this law on.  

What values can we recognize in the Rabbis? Which of them do we want to maintain in the next version of Judaism? When do we want to emulate the ways in which the sages sold the people on radical new ideas? When the Talmud quotes seven different sages giving seven different answers for a halakhic question, what’s going on there? One-upsmanship? Intentional absurdism? A meta teaching about how to develop new foundations for tradition? How do we see these arguments playing out in court cases in our own time? Speaking from 2020, Dan & Benay end up devastatingly prophetic in their discussion of the fragile foundations of Roe v. Wade and abortion laws… The discussion continues next week!

This week’s text: “Pikuach Nefesh” (Yoma 83a & 85a/b)

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.

“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 interviews, picking up where we left off in Episode 19, exploring where the editors of the Talmud went next after the famous “Eilu v’Eilu” moment between the Schools of Shammai and Hillel. While they were both decreed to be “Words of the Living God” (or some arrangement of those words), the halakha was said to be decided according to Beit Hillel because they taught the teachings of Beit Shammai before their own. 

But the very next line in the Talmud - which is rarely ever read - seems to undercut the entire message of this practice! Were we making too big a deal about Beit Hillel? Did the editor of this part of the Talmud misunderstand something? Are they intentionally undermining the first narrative? What do we do when we encounter texts that appear to reverse the radical potential we had seen in them before? And what is going on when Talmud brings in aphorism and folk sayings? Are they really able to help us recognize when we’re messing up? How can we offer and receive the loving rebuke of tokhecha? 

This week’s text: “Hillel & Shammai: After Elu v’Elu” (Eruvin 13b)

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.

“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 this text passively!”  - Ilana Kurshan

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 Ilana Kurshan, author of the award-winning “If All the Seas Were Ink: A Memoir” (2017) through the lens of Daf Yomi, the practice of studying a whole page of Talmud each day. Ilana Kurshan has worked in literary publishing both in New York and in Jerusalem as a translator and foreign rights agent, and as the books editor of Lilith Magazine. Since our interview, she has published, “Children of the Book: A Memoir of Reading Together” (2025) about raising kids and a love of books.

Long-time listeners of The Oral Talmud will have picked up on split opinions between Dan & and Benay regarding the practice of Daf Yomi, and Ilana joins perfectly suited to plead the case for this fast-paced daily learning! What’s at stake in different methods of Talmud study? How can a reader avoid giving up when the Talmud gets boring? How can we find additional excitement when starting a new masechet (tractate/volume)? What are the unique benefits and spiritual opportunities of Daf Yomi? What happens when we bring our own literary and background interests as lenses to Talmud? And, in the end, how can we avoid a passive learning position in Daf Yomi (or in any method of study) and always ensure that our learning is empowering?

For this episode, we’d like to remind listeners, that every episode exists as an unedited video recording from our first broadcast in 2020. Ilana is a very animated guest! (Find this episode on YouTube)

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes of 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.

“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 Professor Jane Kanarek of Hebrew College Rabbinical School, author of “Biblical Narrative and the Formation of Rabbinic Law” (2014), “The Pedagogy of Slowing Down: Teaching Talmud in a Summer Kollel” (2010), and “Throwing the Talmud Across the Room: Emotions and the Cultivation of Subjectivity in Talmud Study” (2025, via Taylor & Francis). Jane Kanarek joins the Oral Talmud to discuss her understand of what the sages were doing in constructing the Talmud, and her pedagogic values in building a Rabbinic School classroom. 

What are the Rabbis doing with the Book of Genesis when they transform stories into law, especially when it comes to the most shocking narratives? What is the Rabbis’ relationship to Torah, especially in the moments that we’ve labeled them as misquoting torah in past episodes of The Oral Talmud? What evidence do we actually have for the Rabbis’ relationship to God and Talmud, beyond the winking? Why do we teach Talmud, and what are our goals for our students? How can a thoughtful teacher incorporate secondary texts as new commentaries for helping students develop lenses to read the Talmud through? What comes to the surface when we really slow down our learning?

Find an edited transcript and full shownotes of 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.