Today’s limmud is dedicated to the precious memories of Kfir, Ariel, and Shiri Bibas, and Oded Lifshitz. עַל־אֵ֣לֶּה ׀ אֲנִ֣י בוֹכִיָּ֗ה עֵינִ֤י ׀ עֵינִי֙ יֹ֣רְדָה מַּ֔יִם כִּֽי־רָחַ֥ק מִמֶּ֛נִּי מְנַחֵ֖ם מֵשִׁ֣יב נַפְשִׁ֑י הָי֤וּ בָנַי֙ שֽׁוֹמֵמִ֔ים כִּ֥י גָבַ֖ר אוֹיֵֽב׃ {ס} (Lamentations 1:16).
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“My Father in the Heavens, how far I’ve gone,” says the hero of Shai Agnon’s story The Lady and the Peddler. And so have we, my fellow Talmud travelers – a busy week of grading and preparing for a conference and sitting with the vast grief of the news set us back a few pages, so we’re catching up today.
Reading a bigger portion is not necessarily a bad thing. It reminded me that the Talmud is a little bit like Forrest Gump’s mom’s bag of chocolates—you never quite know what you’re going to get. Personally, I don’t feel obligated to find beauty in all of it; the misogynistic locker talk doesn’t tickle my fancy at all, which raises some worrisome questions about what will happen with this Substack the day we hit Tractate Sotah. But, as Aragorn says in Return of the King, “it is not this day”: today’s portion is peppered with peculiar curiosities, which is my jam!
It all starts as a continuation of yesterday’s discussion of how to count violations—the unit of prosecution issue—with the sages finding biblical anchoring for their legal opinions. For example, there are three biblical mentions of the prohibition to bow to idols, and since nothing in the Torah is deemed superfluous, the sages opine that the first is for worship that follows the protocol, the second for unconventional worship, and the third to call attention to the distinction: אַחַת לִכְדַרְכָּהּ, וְאַחַת שֶׁלֹּא כְּדַרְכָּהּ, וְאַחַת לְחַלֵּק.
A further issue pertains to the difference between speech and action–whether saying to an idol, “you are my god” differs, in terms of punishment, from actually performing ritual worship. The general view is that actual worship is a capital offense, and mere speech can be addressed through a guilt offering. Interestingly, they fold into this another issue: that of recognizing the right and wrong gods in the same speech.
The key biblical source for this is the worship of the golden calf, to which the worshippers said, “These are your gods, Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt” (Exodus 32:8). Rabi Yohana says it was lucky that they said “gods” and “they” (implying a partnership between the right god and the wrong one, but at least mentioning the former), rather than attributing the exodus *only* to the golden calf. But Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai believes that even this formulation is to be condemned: not only does it repudiate monotheism, but it might also imply *more* wrong gods beyond the golden calf.
The sages try to parse out the differences between the various types of idolatry using the speech-vs.-act distinction, but then they come up with another distinction: between the principal actor (the person who does the actual idolatry) and the inciter. While the latter is, technically, speech, it can also be seen as acting through others–causing idolatry to happen: וְלֹא יִגְרוֹם לַאֲחֵרִים שִׁידְּרוּ בִּשְׁמוֹ וְשֶׁיְּקַיְּימוּ בִּשְׁמוֹ. The concern about indirect idolatry extends to doing business with foreigners that might require taking an idolatrous oath alongside them, and also to situations such as this one:
כִּי אֲתָא עוּלָּא, בָּת בְּקַלְנְבוֹ. אֲמַר לֵיהּ רָבָא: וְהֵיכָא בָּת מָר? אֲמַר לֵיהּ: בְּקַלְנְבוֹ. אֲמַר לֵיהּ: וְהָכְתִיב ״וְשֵׁם אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים לֹא תַזְכִּירוּ״? אֲמַר לֵיהּ, הָכִי אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן: כׇּל עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה הַכְּתוּבָה בַּתּוֹרָה – מוּתָּר לְהַזְכִּיר שְׁמָהּ. וְהָא הֵיכָא כְּתִיבָא? דִּכְתִיב: ״כָּרַע בֵּל קֹרֵס נְבוֹ״
Ulla stayed in a place called Kalnevo, which also happens to be the name of an idol. So when asked, “where did you stay?” he said, “in Kalnevo.” When he was chided for blasphemy, Ulla explained that saying idol names that are mentioned in the Torah is allowed, and it says, in Isaiah 46:1, “כָּרַע בֵּל קֹרֵס נְבוֹ” (crouching Bel, hidden Nevo, if you will). While general clowning is disallowed, mockery of idolatry is allowed, and “כָּרַע בֵּל קֹרֵס נְבוֹ” is said to be a mockery of the idols, as if they crouched or knelt to defecate.
From here on, in pages 63 and 64, we get a lot of anthropology: the sages describe different forms of idolatry. These include: having a little pocket idol one can take out and kiss once in a while; placing pictures of rich people near the troughs of hungry cattle, so that the calves paw them; worshipping images of chickens, roosters, a bald goat, a dog and a donkey; sacrificing their children to images of a mule and a horse. Then, we get a side remark: turns out that even the father of Hezekiah, the king who fortified the walls of Jerusalem, wanted to burn him as sacrifice–אֶלָּא שֶׁסָּכַתּוּ אִמּוֹ סָלָמַנְדְּרָא–but his mom smeared salamander blood on him, which rendered him fireproof. The storytelling continues; some of the stories are distasteful, especially on a difficult day like today, so I’m going to leave them be and move on.
The sages observe, though, that biblical and mishnaic sources tend to treat the worship of the Molekh–the idol to whom people would sacrifice their children–as more severe than the worship of other idols. Perhaps, as some sages argue, this is about any idol said to be king (מולך means “reigning”), and perhaps there should be distinctions between worshipping temporary molekhs and permanent ones.
Page 65 turns to witchcraft, trying to distinguish the different kinds of divination based on biblical verses, including necromancers and tellers of omens. I think we’ll leave it at that for today and continue tomorrow.
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