Rabbi Joseph

Ilfa Gets a Job: Hunger and the Search for Authenticity   How do I know I’m making the right decisions in life? Should I listen to my doubts or muster the courage to make a radical change? Do I dare dedicate my life to what I’m passionate about even as I fear I will not find material success or even basic sustenance? In this Talmudic tale, two young men decide to change course, leaving the ivory tower of study and…

From Jerusalem To Yavneh: The Founding Myth of Talmudic Judaism Night time in Jerusalem, a starving and divided city under siege from the Roman Empire without and the knife of zealots within. One man sneaks out of the city walls, feigning death in order to escape – and gives Judaism new life in the process. In one short story, the Talmud epitomizes how Judaism turned from a Temple-based religion to a scholarly civilization that could survive 2000 years of diaspora…

CLASS 6 “It’s Not Heaven”: Power to Interpret, Power to Shame If there is one Talmudic story that became most crucial in the 20th century, it is this one. As the authority for interpretation and action in the Jewish world shifted – according to many readers– from Divine powers to human hands, Jews from across the spectrum reached back to study the“Oven of Akhnai,” in which two Rabbinic figures battle out whether the authority over truth lie sin the hands…

Epilogue to the Oven of Akhnai Years after the tale of the Oven of Akhnai, R. Eliezer, now an outcast, is on his deathbed. His students, despite the ban on socializing with him, come to pay their respects. How will the students, torn between their loyalty to their teacher and to their community, navigate this space? How will R. Eliezer receive them?

Moshe in Rabbi Akiva’s Beit Midrash   If you could visit the future, and see how your own writings are being studied – would you do it? How are we remembered, and who has the license to interpret our own body of work (or God’s)? These questions are explored by this tale, in which God transports Moses from Sinai to R. Akiva’s Beit Midrash. In the crises that unfold there, the Rabbis reveal their own humorous self-awareness at the extent…

Jewish Law and the Politics of Disagreement: Hillel and Shammai Revisited Of all the contributions of Talmudic culture to the Jewish world, the most central is the positive power of dispute, or machloket. Not all types of dispute, mind you, but rather disputes for the sake of heaven. These questions were explored first and foremost through the stories and disputes of Hillel and Shammai and their students, perhaps the first dispute within Judaism that did not lead to a schism,…

Yalta Breaks Some Barrels: The Talmud’s Most Learned Woman Teaches a Lesson Two of the Talmud’s sharpest minds face off in a battle of personal honor, learnedness and gender dynamics: Ullah, the perennial carrier of knowledge and rumors from land to land, and Yalta, the learned and sharp wife of R. Nachman. Ulla refuses to see in Yalta anything but an object, and she in response tries to reveal her opponent’s toxicity. The outcome of this tense encounter remains open…

Heresy or Not to Be: Eating the Fruit and Tossing the Peel The renegade teacher and beloved student meet for the last time. As Elisha ben Avuyah, the Talmud’s favorite heretic, and his student Rabbi Meir take a Shabbat stroll, they raise the most tense theological and personal questions through thinly veiled halakhic discourse. At the end, they stand before a line only the two of them can see. One will cross it, the other will not.

Rabban Gamliel Takes a Piss: Negotiating Public Space in a Multi-Cultural Society How does a minority culture navigate resistance and accommodation within the hegemony? How did Jews manage watching their land turn into a pagan playground? In the middle of the bath house, a roman philosopher accosts Rabban Gamliel for bathing in Aphrodite’s bathhouse, the most Roman and pagan practice, surely forbidden by the Torah itself. But Rabban Gamliel refuses to give an inch, answering with four responses that each…

  The Ivory Tower, Plato’s Cave and the First Story of Tikkun Olam What is the life worth living? The life of contemplation or the life of action? This ancient philosophical question is asked in the Talmud through the story of R. Shimon Bar Yochai, the seminal figure of Jewish mysticism, seclusion, and elitism – and the person who goes through numerous intense transformations as this story unfolds. With echoes of Elijah’s cave of zealotry, and Plato’s cave of reality…

The Tales of Destruction: Kamtza & Bar Kamtza A mistaken identity, a recalcitrant host, and a reigning elite that has lost its moral foundations – these are only three of the factors that brought about the destruction of the Temple, or so this story claims.

Desire and Authenticity: The Tzitzit and the Harlot Who am I really, and what is most important to me? Does sexual desire bring us farther away from the answers, or possibly closer to them? In this fantastical tale, an object of desire stands at the top of golden ladders, while a piece of cloth can fly and slap us in the face. In what might be the Talmudic reversal of Hollywood’s “Pretty Woman”, this story ends with the harlot riding…

Freedom, Intimacy and the Marital Bed: Heruta Seduces Her Husband Gender and feminist re-readings of our tradition have brought about some of the most profound insights into the intersection of our tradition and modern life. A gender reading of the Talmud's stories is especially juicy, since its authors were obsessed with that terrible yet necessary – or rather that terribly necessary – personality trait called The Yetzer, aka evil inclination. By examining the relationship between sexual desire and evil inclination,…

Spit in My Eye”: the Wife, the Husband, and the Sermon Marriage Counseling A scholarly woman finds herself caught between a charismatic teacher and a jealous and forlorn husband. Is there a way to maintain both worlds and bring peace back to the household without giving up what is most important to each side?

Nehunia Ben HaKane – Entering and Exiting In our closing text, we return to standing on the verge of the House of Study, entering and exiting, and make use of prayer as an opportunity to consider where we have been and where we are headed.