The Talmud

One of the quips about Judaism is that where there are 5 Jews there are 7 opinions. Nowhere is this clearer than in the phenomenal collection of opinions trying to understand how best to live ethically in this world called the Talmud. Page after page, volume after volume, are discussions and arguments over time and space between rabbis from other eras who use precedents and ‘what if’ scenarios to try to explicate what the Torah, the first five books of the Bible and the heart of Judaism, is asking us to do.

In a way, the relationship of the Torah and the Talmud is very similar to the U.S. Constitution and the American Legal system. For example, our Constitution tells us that people have freedom of speech. But what if someone cries “fire!” in a crowded theater or joke about bombs at an airport? Is that freedom of speech, our Supreme court Justices asked. No! Well, what if a group of Nazis parade in a Jewish area or an anti-abortion group demonstrates in front of an abortion clinic? Is that freedom of speech? Yes. And then there’s the question as to what constitutes a ‘person.’ What if there’s a major corporation donating a lot of money to politicians? Is that to be considered a person? Unfortunately, in today’s Court, the answer is yes. Although, as with the rabbis of the Talmud, the Justices do not all agree on the answers to issues.

Based on a phrase or a commandment from the Torah, each page of the Talmud tries to work out how to apply it to everyday life. For example, in the book Exodus, it says “Do not boil the kid (baby goat) in its mother’s milk.” “What does that mean?” asked the rabbis? Well… they worked out, don’t mix meat foods with dairy foods. “But what if you have a plate that meat gravy had permeated, or was not entirely washed off?” Well then, you must use separate plates and silverware for meat and dairy. “What if … a person eats a piece of cheese, how long before they can have a piece of meat – and does it count differently if they have the meat first?” they asked. Yes, you can eat meat half an hour to an hour after dairy, but you must wait six hours after meat to eat dairy because meat takes longer to digest. (Don’t ask what if it’s hard cheese or a piece of meat between your teeth! The rabbis did, and there are answers.) These are how the laws of kashrut or keeping kosher developed. And there are Talmudic books on how to keep the Sabbath, marriage, holidays, civil law such as who constitutes a witness and what forms of punishment there should be for different crimes.

But my favorite Talmudic discussions are the ones that are ethically thorny. For example, the book of Leviticus is full of a lot of dos and don’ts for the people of Israel once they get settled into their new land. It gets quite wordy and – for me – it’s easy to zone out in a ‘yadda, yadda, yadda’ state. So I would miss a line like Leviticus 25.36 that says: “…If your … so that your brother might live with thee.” But the rabbis didn’t miss anything. Believing that every word and phrase was there as part of G-d’s message, they felt a need to understand what that meant in order to live a good life. And so they asked, “What does it mean that my brother might live with me and who constitutes my brother anyway?” And the ‘what if’ they posed is as follows:

What if two people are out in a desert with only one flask of water that’s enough to keep one of them alive, but not both of them. Who gets the water and why? When you stop trying to find a way out of the situation, you begin to consider seriously additional questions: Would it be better for both of them to die or only one of them? What is the relationship of the two people and does that make a difference? What if one of them is the parent of the other? Does age matter and if so, how? Does position or contributions to society matter – for example, what if one person is a cancer researcher and the other is a drug addict? Does over-all health matter? Or does possession (who brought the water in) matter?
And the questions – and answers -- raised by the scenario no longer apply just to this old and improbable situation, but some very real, very modern examples of limited resources as well. How do we as a society decide who gets an organ transplant when there are a limited number of donors? Do we let the wealthiest or healthiest people on the top of the list? Should it be by potential for doing good for society? Should it be first-come first serve? And what about the international black market for organs? Is that fair?

Water itself is a growing modern, global problem. In a world where there is a dramatically decreasing supply of clean, fresh water, we are already arguing about who gets it and why. Should the farmers in California get the water coming from Colorado or should the suburban citizens of L.A.? Should water continue to be sold as a bottled commodity or should it be available to all people? Is it fair that in our country that is less than 20% of the world’s population should consume 80% of this and other limited resources?

Every religious tradition has a way of asking and answering the hard questions of how best to live life in an ethical and humane way. (Although we don’t always follow the answers we give!) Japanese Zen koan, Catholic catechism, Hindu literature such as the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana, the Buddhist Jakata tales, all are ways of posing and grappling with life lessons. They may look to different sources, they may come to vastly different conclusions based on their understanding of the source. But they all are looking and providing guidance – whether it’s followed or not.