I have been interested in learning Gemara since I took a Talmud class in college in the 1980s. I tried to learn daf yomi on my own, reading Nazir on my own in the last cycle and then starting Berachot when the new cycle began, but my daf yomi journey only successfully took off during the pandemic when I began learning Gemara in the South Philadelphia Shtiebel class led by Rabbanit Dasi Fruchter, in the middle of Masechet Shabbat. She is a great teacher and her shiur has been a wonderful experience. She welcomes questions, wrestling with problems in the text, and even my attempts to wring theological meaning out of dry halachic sections. She brings a feminist lens to the text, not hesitating to talk about problematic sections that do not treat women, lgbt folk, non-Jews, slaves, and others well. Nevertheless, prior to Yevamot, I enjoyed the learning the various tractates. Eruvin was meaningful to me in the pandemic, living as I do two blocks south of the northern border of the Center City Eruv, because at a time when we were shut out of sacred buildings, it made my neighborhood feel like a sacred enclosure. I enjoyed the various festival tractates in Seder Moed, being intrigued in particular by the Kohen Gadol’s learning as he stayed up on the night of Yom Kippur. Chagigah’s mystical speculations and stories fed my soul. But as a gay man committed to full equality for women, Yevamot has been very challenging, apart from the sugya on conversion.
It
is a central tenet of Judaism that the Torah contains G!d’s revelation to the
Jewish people (and, at least to a certain extent through the Noachide laws, all
of humankind) in the form of law to be followed in serving G!d and living a
full human life as one made in the image and likeness of G!d (Gen. 1:26-27). This
law is seen an expression of G!d’s love for the Jewish people, a gift for which
G!d is praised twice a day in the blessing immediately before the recitation of
the Shema. There are many differing views between movements about what exactly Torah
means – and even about what constitutes the content, since Karaite Judaism
holds only the Tanach as the authoritative revelations, whereas Rabbinic
Judaism accepts the Talmud as the record of the Oral Law, also part of the
divine revelation. As is always the case with scripture in any text-based religious
tradition, the scripture must be interpreted. Judaism has a very long and rich
tradition of interpretive commentary – indeed, the Mishnah itself is a systematic
codification of the laws found in the Written Torah together with teachings of
the Oral Torah, and the Gemara, also part of the Oral Torah, is the
interpretive commentary on the Mishnah, often pulling psukim, or verses, from
the Tanach (and especially the Five Books) to back up a position, with frequent
discussion of the interpretive principles used to determine the halacha.
Discussions
of interpretation of the Torah are central to the halachic deliberations of the
Gemara. Indeed, these discussions occur in the first sections of Gemara in
Yevamot. On Yevamot 4a, Rabbi Elazar gives verses from the Psalms to justify
the principle of smuchim, of juxtaposition, as an interpretive principle, from
which one can derive halacha – and Rav Yosef states that while Rabbi Yehuda rejects
this principle for the most part, he does accept it when interpretations are derived
from juxtaposition in Deuteronomy, with a lengthy discussion of why Deuteronomy
is the exception. Interpretive principles are so important that the section of
Torah study which precedes Psukei d’Zimra in Shacharit concludes with the
recitation of the baraita containing Rabbi Yishmael’s thirteen interpretive principles.
Rabbi
Yishmael’s principles involve logical ways to derive halachic interpretations
from the words of the Torah. But I believe we can also ask if there an overarching
interpretive principle that speaks to the purpose of the Torah. There is a
beautiful text of the Kedushat Levi, the Berditchever Rebbe, quoting his
teacher Rebbe Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezeritch, that speaks to exactly this
question. In his commentary on Exodus 34:6, the verse that begins G!d’s
recitation of the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy, he comments:
[M]y late and revered teacher Rabbi Dov
Baer said that the 13 attributes the Torah mentions here are the spiritual
equivalent of the 13 principles of Rabbi Yishmael that are considered as
legitimate tools of exegesis of the written Torah. For instance, the principle
known as kal v’chomer, using logical conclusions, is the counterpart of the
attribute Kel, G!d, whereas the principle known as gezera shava, replicas of
the same word used for apparently divergent subjects, is the equivalent of the
Divine attribute Rachum, mercy.
When a wealthy person takes pity on a poor, destitute person, he automatically
begins to understand the pain and near despair experienced by the poor so that
he lowers himself mentally to that level. He experiences the pain endured by
the poor and his feelings of being hemmed in from all sides. When this
happens, the wealthy person, - parallel to G!d -, extends pity and mercy to
the poor so that the poor and the rich have reached the same level. A similar
process occurs when G!d looks with mercy on the Jewish people in distress.
This is what Moses referred to when he said in psalms 91,15: “I am with him
in distress;” this is what is meant by “equating” the Divine attribute of
mercy to the exegetical tool known as gezera shava , “establishing common
ground based on identical words used in texts speaking of different
subjects.” (Kedushat Levi on Exodus, Ki Tisa 14)
This
beautiful teaching exhorts us to live out the divine attributes of mercy (because
we are made in the image and likeness of G!d) as the way of interpreting the
Torah in the living of our lives. I believe that we can conclude from this that
we should use the interpretive principles to see the G!d of mercy in the text
and construct the halacha accordingly – the Torah is the blueprint for the
world, a world created as an expression of G!d’s love – and only by reading the
Torah in this framework can we correctly interpret it.
We
see the Talmudic sage Beruriah doing exactly this in an incident related in
Berachot 10a – her husband is mugged by bandits and prays for them to die – and
she reads Psalm 104:35, usually read as “let sinners cease from
the earth, and the wicked shall be no more” – instead as “let sins cease
from the earth” (a legitimate alternate reading of the Hebrew) through the
repentance of the sinners, which will result in the wicked no longer existing because
of their repentance and transformation into righteous people. He prays as his
wife instructs him, resulting in the bandits’ repentance. If we adopt Beruriah’s
model of reading the text of the Torah in ways that transform, the Torah can be
“the tree of life to those who take hold it, and those who hold it fast are
happy” (Proverbs 3:18, one of the verses sung as the Torah scroll is lifted after
the Torah reading and after it is returned to the Ark).
I
would like to offer three examples of the smuchim, juxtapositions advocated by
Rabbi Elazar in Yevamot, taken not from the text of the Tanach itself but from
the liturgy, whose structure is derived from the Oral Torah.
First,
in the daily Torah study texts in Shacharit that end with Rabbi Yishmael’s thirteen
interpretive principles, the first text recited after the blessing for Torah
study is the priestly benediction, asking G!d to bless and keep the people and
to grant peace, followed by passages from the Mishnah and Gemara that
emphasized deeds of lovingkindness. Thus, the first sections of Torah one
studies each morning are to be sections that emphasize G!d’s blessing – and our
translation of G!d’s blessing into blessing others with acts of mercy. Perhaps
the liturgy is telling us that all of Torah study is ultimately directed to this
end – of extending G!d’s blessing to others.
The
other two examples concern the verse from the Torah that prohibits a man “lying
with a man as with a woman” (Leviticus 18:22). This verse, used to prohibit
homosexuality, has been a source of great pain for the LGBTQ community. I find
it interesting to see how the Haftarah indirectly comments on it by being
juxtaposed with the Torah reading on Yom Kippur at Mincha, when it is read, and
on Shabbat Acharei Mot when it falls on the day before Rosh Chodesh, as it did
this year (5782).
The
Haftarah for Mincha on Yom Kippur is the book of Jonah/Yonah. Yonah, “pigeon”,
can be either a masculine or a feminine noun, introducing some gender ambiguity
from the title of the book and the name of its prophet. He is swallowed by a
fish that changes gender, first being a “dag,” a male fish, then a “dagah,” a female
fish, and then a “dag” again. While the Midrash attempts to make them separate
fish, the pshat, the plain meaning of the text, is clearly that the same fish
alternates between genders. I read this as a subversive commentary on
Leviticus, undermining the very concept of a sex/gender binary necessary for
the prohibition in Leviticus 18:22 to exist.
The
reading for the Shabbat that occurs the day before Rosh Chodesh, read in some
years when Acharei Mot is read, contains the story of David and Jonathan, which
can be read as a gay love story. I Samuel 20:41, in particular, gives support
to this: “And as soon as the lad was gone, David arose out of a place toward
the South, and fell on his face to the ground, and bowed down three times; and they
kissed one another, and wept one with another, until David exceeded.” It has
been suggested that the word “exceeded” refers to an erection, making this an
explicitly sexual text. After Jonathan’s death, David laments his death in words
saying that his love for Jonathan exceeded that of women: “I am distressed for
thee, my brother Jonathan; Very pleasant hast thou been unto me; Wonderful was
thy love to me, Passing the love of women.” Thus, we see the text of Leviticus
given another subversive commentary with a gay love story in this Haftarah.
It
is my hope that, as we continue to learn Yevamot, we may search for ways to read
it subversively in ways that can bring blessing and tikkun.
