Christine Hayes: Derech Eretz of Civil Discourse (RTS)

we often receive contradictory advice especially in the form of proverbs right he who hesitates is lost look before you leap clothes make the man don't judge a book by its cover the squeaky wheel gets the grease all good things come to he who waits these contradictions don't make these statements untrue each of these statements is good advice in certain situations there are situations in which it's good advice to take stop before acting and there are situations in which immediate action is required there are situations in which waiting one's turn guarantees the best results and there are situations in which some self-advocacy is required so the book of Michel a gives us contradictory advice on how to deal with a fool Michel a 26 verse 4 tells us not to answer a fool and the very next verse verse 5 tells us to answer a fool now these verses are about speech should we speak to those we deemed to be fools we're not even asking how we speak to them yet we're asking actually a more basic question a first-order question of should we even speak to them at all so the first test of the civil treatment of a fool is whether we even oh them the civility of engagement because the very act of speaking after all not ignoring someone not dismissing them speaking to them is an act of civility that in and of itself the very act of speech is derech Eretz towards another person and one verse says no I'll tie make a seal don't answer a fool and the other verse says yes anika seal answer a fool now since these contradictory verses are not scattered in diverse parts of the book of Proverbs but are actually right next to one another side-by-side I think we have to assume that they don't cancel one another out they don't render each other untrue I think we have to assume just like the contradictory English proverbs that sited that each is probably good advice in a particular situation sorting out which is the better advice in which situation that's the challenge that lies before us and I don't mean it's the challenge that lies before us in this you're I mean it's the challenge that lies before us each and every day in the moment of our lives when to engage a fool when not to engage a fool and if engaging a fool how to engage the fool in any given moment how do I know which situation I'm in a situation in which I should engage a fool a situation in which I should not what does the decision turn on what does it depend on so we're going to explore a few possibilities let's first flesh out Proverbs itself on this particular question does proverbs endorse one particular view over the other and on what does it depend perhaps it depends on the fool on the seal perhaps verses four and five give us different advice because they are imagining different kinds of fools to whom we should respond in different ways are there different kinds of fools well to answer that question I gather together some sources for you on page three most of these are from Proverbs as I said before and they give us some insight into the biblical conception of tools or rather the conception of fools that's in the book of Proverbs specifically what are the qualities that the book of Proverbs attributes to fools so if you take a look at the first two verses that I listed you'll see that they focus on the fools wickedness right verse 23 of chapter 10 a fool is someone who takes pleasure in Zima I know the translation there says mischief Zima is a little stronger than mischief azeema is is evil particularly of sexual obscenity wickedness around sexuality so fool is someone who is is is wicked who takes pleasure in evil in Zima and that's reinforced by the verse from the psalm here a fool and the word use now is neva we have several words for fools that's interesting I think we only have one word for a wise man in the Bible but we have several words for fool we have seal and Avila and Navarre and the fool the neva is someone who sees only corruption and evil they don't even believe in the existence of virtue and presumably therefore they don't practice it now it's true that the novel's wickedness in this particular case is based on a prior belief that fosters that wickedness right the belief that ain't eloheem there is no God in the view of probs proverbs it's that belief which in general emboldened people to do evil and these verse 2 verses connect the fool with wickedness the next two verses emphasize the fools ignorant or intellectual deficit if you will the fool in proverbs 1:7 despises wisdom now it's in an AVL oh ma you moose are bazoo he despises wisdom or in proverbs 1:22 the fool hates knowledge coelom eise no you dad so times proverbs defines the fool or describes the full as wicked and at times as ignorant and the two are somewhat intertwined in proverbs right they just place emphasis alternatingly on one or the other the fool is primarily wicked and that's because and because of that he despises knowledge or the fool is primarily ignorant and because of his ignorant he is therefore wicked so they're intertwined but they will sometimes speak as if he's primarily wicked or primarily ignorant now interestingly the same assessment is made by Plato Plato tries to give an account of vice and folly and in one of his early dialogues the Protagoras Plato has Socrates say that no one makes mistakes or behaves foolishly willingly mistakes and action are due to mistaken beliefs about the merits of different goals or ends or things that we desire so if vice of folly are grounded in ignorance he holds then virtue is achieved by acquiring knowledge the fool just needs instruction but in a later work in the Republic Plato gives a different account of Vice and he atributes it to a lack of not to a lack of knowledge but to the irrational parts of the soul sort of the Greek equivalent of the yetzer Hara right thus is this evil inclination these appetites and passions in us that are not controlled by reason and for virtue to be achieved the irrational parts of the soul the appetites the passions they have to be subjugated they have to be trained to obey what reason commands and that kind of obedience is not the result of intellectual understanding it's the result of habituation over time so if vice and folly are grounded in a wicked impulse if you will then the fool needs not instruction not information but discipline in the sense of training needs commands it means prohibitions that he can't disobey it has to have obedience inculcated through habituation in order to control and subjugate these wicked desires so similarly we see that according to proverbs a fool may be wicked or a fool may be ignorant but what else does the does proverbs tell us about the fool well the next three verses on page three convey a rather pessimistic view of the fool as incorrigible in these verses a key attribute of the biblical fool is that he or she spurns discipline or correction by those who are older and wiser they can't be taught so proverbs 15 5av Lynott's Messara vivre a fool spurns the discipline of his father or proverbs 23 9 which tells us not to bother even speaking to a fool because they're just going to disdain and despise your reasonable words Alta to bear Kiev was LaSalle Malaysia according to proverbs 12 15 to 16 the fool doesn't accept advice because he thinks he's right Dara velia Charvet enough he thinks his path is right in his eyes so unlike the wise man los llame Itza he will not listen to advice so the fool in Proverbs may be wicked he may be ignorant but either way he seems to be incorrigible right he cannot be corrected so what are we to do with people who are incorrigible well proverbs gives us an answer it's not a very pleasant one the rabbi's will see you're gonna give us a different answer but first let's look at proverbs answer in keeping with its general pessimism about the fool proverbs tells us that our only resort is to the rod I've given you one more quote proverbs 19 29 punishments are in store for scoffers and blows for the backs of fools Muhammad Allah gave coelom right scoffers and fools are often class together later in one of our ribbon exteriors will have a scoffer it's a sign that he's a fool right so scoffers and fools are coupled together this idea that's the only resort for the incorrigible fool is the rod right this is an idea that we see also at the beginning of chapter 26 of mission age so if you go back to text 1 which is all of chapter 26 let's take a look at at the first verse the first verse tells us that honor kavod is not befitting a fool a fool deserves no honor no kavod and as the as the people who have been participating in my elective no learning I'm sorry foundational to the idea of kavod of human dignity or kavod is the idea that all human persons have a certain guaranteed and inalienable immunity from humiliation degradation and abuse it can't be degraded humiliated or physically harmed but according to proverbs the fool by virtue of his foolishness forfeits his vote he forfeits his immunity to abuse loan of a Lucille kavod he deserves therefore no honor and therefore no protection so a fool is fair game in fact his very Humanity is in question as we see if you just continue to verse 3 there is grouped with animals like the horse who can be whipped or the donkey who can be coerced with a bridle so the fool should be beaten with a rod Vivat 'la give sealing so if you believe that the fool has lost that which makes him human right if you believe that the fool is little more than a beast then you'll believe he has no claim to dignity no claim to the kavod owing to humans no claim therefore to your regard to your protection to your civility and will best be dealt with violently to be clear proverbs isn't just saying just ignore the fool right witnesses don't answer the fool it's not just saying ignore the fool it's a little more aggressive than that look at verse 10 in Misha day 26 one who stops a fool is like one who stops a flood in other words fools are dangerous and they must be stopped and if so proverbs would have us reach for the rod all right but what if the fool is the one with the rod the one with power what do we do then well based on everything that we've learned about fools and proverbs let's go back now to look in more detail at our contradictory verses verses 4 & 5 we're gonna try to make sense of them and what I hope becomes immediately apparent is that one of these verses is completely consistent with the general tenor of the book of Proverbs as I've just described it and one of them is not one of them stands out as utterly unique maybe even radical remember the general tenor of the book of Proverbs is that fools may be wicked they may be ignorant but either way the most important thing about them is they are incorrigible talking to them as useless don't waste your time so one can be uncivil to them right off the bat just by not engaging to them at all right you don't even extend to them the civility of speech don't dignify them by speaking to them in fact show them the back of your hand that's all they deserve that's the view that prevails throughout proverbs and it's the view expressed in which of the two verses really number four right don't answer a fool and so then it hits us that verse five is an utter anomaly it's a radical surprise because it doesn't just contradict verse four it contradicts all of proverbs it expresses a sentiment that breaks with the rest of the book of Proverbs because verse five says no go ahead answer the fool engage the fool speak to the fool why well we have to dig a little bit further in these verses we there are more words in each of these verses and we want to see if those words hold any clues to the difference between a situation in which we should engage a fool in a situation in which we should not engage a pool now each verse gives us a reason for the advice it has offered verse 4 says do not answer the fool lest you become like him Penta fail oh come Atta do not answer a fool in other words if the only change it's going to bring about is a change in you and a negative change at that making you no better than him don't answer a fool if the only outcome is that you too will become a fool how do you become his equal no better than the fool well there's only one other word in this first we've we've yet to talk about and it's one that sheds light on that question ke Votto the verse doesn't say don't answer a fool period the verse says don't answer a fool Cavuto in accordance with his folly and this of course brings us to the civility debate that's raging right now in the United States as you know two years ago Michelle Obama quite famously said and she was quite rightly applauded for this when they go low we go high but today many are clamoring for a different approach fight fire with fire they say so proverbs 26 for I think is the Michelle Obama verse right this is Michelle Obama's verse do not answer the uncivil and foul-mouthed opponent according to his incivility and foul Ness lest you become like him all right don't answer him get a vote Oh in the same way that he has spoken to you and you will become like him an uncivil intemperate bombastic fool the verse says in deciding whether to answer or not and more important in deciding how to answer yveltal in the same uncivil tone or not be guided by the outcome if it won't change your opponent and moreover if it will only change you debase you lower you to the same station as your opponent then don't engage or at least don't get swept up in the exchange of in civilities but what about verse five it's a little more problematic well here too when deciding whether to answer a fool be guided by the outcome you should answer a fool penny a Hossam be enough lest he thinks himself wise now if we skip down to verse 12 very quickly of that same chapter the very last burst on your handout for for this section verse 12 actually tells us that the one thing worse than a fool is a person who's wise in his own eyes it's actually not the same thing they actually make a gradation of a distinction between them verse 12 is distinguishing between a fool who says foolish things and a person who actually really is beginning to believe them and who really thinks he's right and is wise in his own eyes they say there's actually more hope for a fool than someone who is right in his own eyes who has become entrenched and is incorrigible a person who is wise in his own Y eyes is too far gone but the fool perhaps has some hope and can be changed so verse 5 seems to be advising us answer a fool if in so doing you can save him from that fate fate of becoming an entrenched and incorrigible fool if by answering the fool you can make him aware of his folly and then prevent him from that even worse fate of thinking and believing he is wise when he is not if in other words there is a hope and a chance of change but there's something odd still about verse 5 and we're not going to have an answer to this oddity until quite a bit later and that is it also uses this term Cavuto according to his folly what can this possibly mean answer the fool according to his folly so that he will see he is mistaken so does that mean if he's uncivil and uninformed you should answer him in a way that's uncivil and uninformed in response I don't understand that how is that going to educate him to his unfortunate so that's a puzzle rabbinic sources are going to help us understand this puzzle and answer this question what it means to say answer the fool according to his folly and we will get to that but before we turn to the innovations and the nuances that are in the rabbinic sources I just want to sum up where we are with proverbs so proverbs as a whole is pessimistic it holds out very little hope The Fool is weak wicked or ignorant but either way incorrigible and for that reason engaging the fool is useless it will change nothing engaging them on their own uncivil terms is even worse since not only does it not change them it's sullies and it debase is you however ignoring them is also not possible because they're dangerous so our only options are coercive and punitive you reach for the rod because the fool like an animal is afforded no dignity and has no claim to civility in stark contrast to that general position is one verse we should lay 26:5 clinging to the hope that perhaps the fool is not completely not too far gone is not incorrigible verse 5 urges us to answer the fool engage the fool so that he will not believe that he is wise when he is not show him where he's wrong but how exactly Cavuto how can answering him according to his folly does that mean in the same uncivil and uninformed terms how can that help him see he's not as wise as he believes wouldn't he feel attacked become defensive and DoubleDown we will leave that aside we've explained the contradictory advice in Proverbs based on different notions perhaps of the fool right a prevailing pessimistic notion that the fool is encouraged Abul incorrigible can't be engaged and then the less prominent but but optimistic notion that perhaps a fool is is corrigible is correctable and should be engaged now the rabbi's are also going to try to make sense of the contradictory verses and they're also going to do it by applying them to different situations and that's what we see in your source number three it's going to be different from the one that we've just deduced however from reading proverbs in their first attempt in in their attempt to explain this contradiction they're going to focus a distinction that we have yet to consider and that is the topic that's under discussion at any given time one should answer a fool right so verse five applies on matters of Torah be defrayed Torah but not on ordinary matters but me lady Alma in other words it all depends on the on the issue at hand so on some issues you engage in the hope of bringing change but on some issues you do not it depends on the issue so the Cydia as so often happens gives us some kind of important overarching statement or principle you must respond to the fool when important matters are ecstatic basically and for the rabbis sets devrait Torah now there are then a number of stories that follow and some of these stories seem to have a rather constrained notion of devrait Torah they really mean quite literally sort of talking about Scripture if you will but there's no reason not to think of Torah in a more expansive way as the rabbi's themselves often do and to ask ourselves you know in our world what do we consider to be devrait Torah matters of Torah things that are important enough that we should enter the fray that we should answer the fool there's at the source number four from Jeffrey Guin I think is an attempt to help us answer the question or actually his statement is not prescriptive it's really descriptive he's trying to explain how and why it is that certain issues become politically or morally salient to us such that we are willing in fact almost feel compelled to enter the fray and to answer the annoying fool and Gulen tells us why we choose to answer fools on some matters and not others why we choose to die on some hills and not others and going in asserts that issues take on moral salience for us political and moral salience for us to the extent that they are central to our individual or community identity those are the things over which we will engage now different individuals and different communities may have different ideas of the most morally salient issue of the day and it's not the one is wrong and one is right it's simply that the core identity of one will be touched by a certain issue and the core identity of another will be touched by a different issue so on Wednesday nights Daniel talked about two issues that have different degrees of moral salience for two different communities they're both morally salient but they different degrees of moral salience for two different communities for American Jews the struggle over the Kotel is a struggle over their core identity as Jews it's a symbol of their inclusion or exclusion their acceptance or rejection as equal partners in ami so L can Israelis ask them to be quiet and courteous about a matter of such personal moral salience I'm not sure they can try and for Israeli Jews the struggle over alternative marriage is a struggle over their core identity as I don't know as Israelis as Israeli Jews as Jews as citizens of a civil and democratic society I've heard all of those and for them that's personal and that's pressing but the fact that alternative marriage is morally and politically salient to Israeli Jews does not increase or decrease the moral salience of the Kotel for American Jews and vice-versa communities don't need to share the same lists of pressing moral and political issues the same agenda different communities whatever their similarities are they do have different identities and each will prioritize what is salient to its core identity and it's absurd to think otherwise American Jews and Israeli Jews are not required to agree on what is the most moral or the moral issue of greatest importance but the civil thing to do the path of Dera haratz is to respect what is morally salient to the other and perhaps even to cheer them on as they pursue it moral progress as it happens is not a battle with one front it's a battle with many fronts and I can fight for what's of moral salience to me while recognizing that it may not be of moral salience to someone else but asking them to be civil enough to cheer me on and I can fight for what's of moral salience to me while cheering on others who are fighting for what is of moral salience to them it is not a zero-sum game and in an age of multiple moral challenges we need to be multitaskers and so with any two communities our different agendas need not be in competition they need not tear us apart if we have the courtesy to recognize that my moral fight doesn't negate or invalidate yours and your moral fight doesn't negate and invalidate mine so we were given a general statement in this first cydia source 3 that you looked at the first part of the Sevilla source 3 engage the fool when important matters are at stake devrait Torah recognizing that we might prioritize these important matters differently based on their centrality to our core identity recognizing that derech Eretz requires us to accept that friends and allies may prioritize things differently that's ok but what follows the general statement is then a series of stories with actual examples of encounters with fools and we see from these stories that it's just much more complicated and nuanced than the first general statement would suggest and that's the great thing about rabbinic sources of course never give you a general principle never stop there you know go on and read all of them s-seem and all the stories and so on in fact it turns out that it's not even really true that we should always disengage on non Torah matters and that we should always engage only in Torah matters so the long study that follows presents us with a number of examples first we're going to have a couple of examples that embody or exemplify verse 4 do not answer a fool do not engage in dialogue with a fool Cavuto and then we'll have examples of verse 5 where there is engagement and dialogue with a fool in some sense the evil toe will come back to that and as we read these stories we will see that there are multiple variables at work and multiple variables in play not just one of matters of Torah not matters of Torah our response to fool depends on more than topic Torah Anantara in fact as we move through the examples provided by these by this video I think we're going to see three different approaches to the ethics of engagement with a fool the first approach I would call a consequentialist approach in which the potentially harmful consequences of the fool's speech the fool's words play a key role in determining whether and how to engage right so again looking at the this the stories that are presented first towards the bottom of source 3 so these are the first two cases we get in our sukiya these cases involve slander a man says of rub you a Tennessee that he himself is the true father of Rebbe who does children slandering Rebbe who does wife as an adulteress and Rebbe who does children as mom's areum and these are not insignificant charges they have severe legal consequences similarly a man says of Revilla that he himself is rubbishy as true father slandering rubbish Gia's mother as an adulteress and rubbish via himself as a mom's heir and these slanderers are described there as as a pen name they are boldface - they are insolent now these examples concern ordinary matters right so the rabbi's are obviously bringing them as an example of of which piece of advice which one should we follow here ordinary matters not Torah don't answer full right this is this is for you have no duty or obligation to answer the fool don't engage this is exactly the kind of case the rabbi's say which is governed by the dominant approach in Proverbs not just verse 4 but the dominant approach in Proverbs these are wicked people they're bent on belittling and humiliating others through slanderous speech right and let me just pause to say that as with any of these examples any similarities to contemporary world leaders is entirely not coincidental but on the view that that such people are incorrigible right then stooping to their level by trading insults search or dignifying their lies as legitimate topics of conversation it's not going to change them and it's only going to debase you but their lives are dangerous it's still carrying over that view of Proverbs their lies are dangerous the social consequences are real so here the rabbi's agree with proverbs you don't engage them but you also don't have the option to ignore them they must be stopped even if it requires an extreme measure so in these stories each of the slanders is slanderers is offered what I think must be the equivalent of a Molotov cocktail that's all - a drink that makes them explode and they die so these first examples follow mislay in providing a simple a nuanced lesson in how to stop a fool the assumption is he's been on harm he's incorrigible and his attack strikes at your core identity right so the calculus is this reputa doesn't owe the slander a response it's not a matter of Torah he doesn't owe him a civil response and certainly not a nun civil and uncivil response because that would only debase Derby hooda however because the slanderer has crossed a line and he's landed an attack that can have devastating consequences for the identity of the rabbi the identity of his wife the identity of his children which is going to have consequences on their marriage rights he also can't just be ignored he has to be stopped this line of thought has surfaced in recent years as people consider the limits of tolerance for harmful speech especially as that speech espouses harmful ideologies is more than just insults but really espouses harmful ideologies and especially when you yourself are the target of that harmful speech and that ideology in other words it's all well and good for a non mexican-american to say that declaring all Mexican immigrants as rapists is hateful speech but it must be tolerated in a free society in the name of free speech can we honestly expect a Mexican American to adopt this posture do we think the capacity to tolerate hate speech should be the same for the targets of that speech as it is for the bystanders or is it legitimate for differently situated people to respond differently for different people to play different roles depending on the moral salience for them of the issue depending on the extent to which it touches and even threatens their core identity we've often heard that free speech has a price we have to sacrifice a little of our comfort and safety and allow things to be said that make us very uncomfortable perhaps but consider this the price of the free and unchecked speech of the slanderer in our rabbinic stories like the price of the free and unchecked speech of the white nationalist or the homophobe or the misogynist in our own day is rarely paid by the speaker it's paid by the targets of his speech it's paid by those who haven't generated the speech who have done nothing wrong and who are in fact harmed and victimized by the speech when an absolute commitment an absolutist commitment to free speech allows powerful leaders to call Muslims animals and Mexicans rapists and asylum-seekers criminals who pays the price not the powerful leader the Muslim child who is bullied at school the Mexican American citizen who can suddenly no longer find a job the asylum seeker escaping domestic abuse whose child is two years old and is taken from her and sent thousands of miles away though a price is imposed on them and though they have said and done nothing hateful is that a price anyone has a right to impose on another in the name of free speech does such speech and do such speakers deserve the courtesy of tolerance from everyone even its victims text 5 is a passage from Devante tor ents I don't owe you my tolerance how civil discourse functions to uphold systems of oppression and it's a point of view we need to think about this is his claim it's time for us to do away with the idea that we must be respectful or courteous to be entitled to our rights politeness isn't a requirement when we are confronting anyone who uses their political and social power to further disenfranchise us we are now we are now charged with ushering in a new era of normalized discomfort in which people in positions of power know that in this fight for our community we will not concede the raw power of our indignation in this age of entitlement by those with problematic or seemingly unpopular views remember this I don't owe you my tolerance especially not when my life is at stake Tory auntie says hateful speech and intolerant ideas especially issuing from persons in a position of privilege and power exact a price on me on my body my life and that's not a price I'm prepared to pay for your freedom to speak I've been made uncomfortable for too long so that you can speak freely no more the words and ideas that threatened my body and my life words and ideas you have told me I must tolerate so that you can have the privilege of your freedom do not deserve my courteous respect they deserve the full measure of my unvarnished indignation and outrage and that should make you the speaker uncomfortable you should be the one to pay the price for hateful words and speech not me well there's a certain logic to that you can say terrible things absolutely as long as you bear the cost the suffering the pain of it and that's someone else I think exploding drinks aside the point of the story of rebel you who don't really hear right is that rebby you who don't really see us see to it that the slanderer and not them or their families pay the price for their hateful harmful words but a parallel story in a different track tape resolves a very similar situation in a very different way this is text six this is also from the babylonian talmud bava metzia 84 a and it contains a very comic story in which a Roman nobleman casts aspersions on the legitimacy of the children of rubbish mail rubbish mail baby Josie and Ruby Eleazar Babycham on the very famous fad rabbis but here the offending matron is not handed a Molotov cocktail to drink instead rabbi eliezer a Rebbe Eleazar excuse me and maybe she moon sorry rubbish Malin Rebbe Eleazar is too many names here rubbish mail and reveal Azhar answer her they engage her and this prompts the anonymous voice of the Talmud to ask wait a minute why did they answer her at all this is a case that where proverbs 26 4 applies proverbs 26 4 says do not answer a fool why do they answer her how is this case different from the one in Shabbat first of all the noble woman doesn't seem to be motivated by a desire to slander the rabbi's she doesn't seem to be wicked she just seems to be mistaken and quite understandably so actually based on an empirical observation she draws what is in her view a perfectly reasonable conclusion now the text says that these rabbis have such enormous abdomens right that when they stand belly to belly a pair of oxen can pass underneath them without touching either of them and she says you know how do these guys engage in sexual intercourse just seems incredible to her their children can't be theirs their abdomens are so large they can't possibly have intimate contact with their their wives their abdomens are gonna get in the way and so she concludes mistakenly not viciously mistakenly that their children are not their own the dialogue that ensues is a classic case of like in British comedy you know they always have double entendre where people are talking past each other they think one is talking about X and they're actually talking about Y right and that's what happens in what follows she says your children can't be yours the rabbi's rather veinly imagined that the noblewoman is admiring their large genitals and assuming that they're far too large to have intercourse with an ordinary woman so the rabbi's assure her no no our wives are larger than ours meaning our wives private organs are larger than ours and so they can accommodate us now it's the noble woman's turn to misunderstand because she thinks we're talking about bellies abdomens so she thinks the response means your wives have equally large abdomens that only confirms my conclusion how do you two ever you know get together when you have these giant bellies in the way so she says all the more so is it impossible for you to be intimate with your wives with such large bellies on both sides so the rabbi's at this point you know this is when it the comedy clears itself up and they said oh no believe us we're capable of sexual intimacy the Talmud says they offer to answer answers one of which is our genitals are just as big as our bellies everything's fine and the other one is no no love compresses the flesh when you get down to it everything's fine okay so intercourse is possible now as in the previous story right the noblewoman has spoken in a way that that would have devastating consequences consequences for the identity of the rabbi's their wives the moral stature of their wives right the marriage rights of their children so it would seem to be the same kind of case similarly her words cannot be ignored right because they have dangerous consequences and she must be stopped all right so it's not a matter of Torah so you don't have an obligation to respond right it's it's a fool to whom you can just you can ignore but the consequences could be devastating and therefore the person must be stopped so so far it's really very much like the story rub you don't really hear she has to be stopped but because her words stem from ignorance rather than wickedness and from a plausible misunderstanding of the circumstances as she sees them and because she's not incorrigible therefore because it really is a mistake that could be corrected with more information and perhaps because she occupies a position of power this is a noblewoman rabbis are not gonna go around exploding noblewomen Roman no noble women in the Roman Empire so let's not forget the power plays some role here too she is in a position of power and so because it's ignorance rather than a willful wickedness because it seems corrigible rather than incorrigible and because she's in a position of power then even though it's not a matter of Torah and the rabbi's don't have to answer they do answer because of the consequences they answer they educate her they resolve the danger so the first approach that we've seen is a kind of consequentialist approach to the ethics of engagement and to the question of when and how we respond to the fool it's determined by the potential harmful consequences there are real-world consequences those consequences determine the rabbis response in the case of the incorrigible fool who's bent on evil the potentially harmful consequences seem to dictate disengagement and possibly even coercive action or at least not tolerating the pain on our own bodies in the case of the corrigible full engagement that corrects the fools ignorance presents itself as an option now the second approach to encountering a fool appears in the sagas next story and this is a duty oriented approach right in this story involving Roman Gamliel engagement is determined not by considering the consequences engagement is quite simply a duty the three stories involving ribbond Gamliel follow a set pattern Roman Gamliel it gives an interpretation of a scriptural verse and is subjected to by a certain student he scoffs at him and as we know scoffers and fools are very closely aligned so he's playing the role of the fool in this story all three cases involve a matter of Torah specifically to our interpretation and we know that in matters of Torah one has a duty to answer the fool that's the rabbinic view so instead of rebuking the student silencing him demanding his unquestioning obedience and respect Roman Gamliel takes the time to demonstrate the students error and the plausibility of robbing gamle Elle's interpretation the story seems simple enough right sometimes students say foolish things but they deserve a civil answer but is that really what's happening in this story because on closer examination the student isn't really the one who appears foolish in this story remin Gamliel is the one who appears foolish raman Gamliel interprets these verses in ways that are not only implausible they are patently totally impossible he interprets a verse in Jeremiah to mean that women will give birth every day he interprets a verse in Ezekiel to mean that trees will produce fruit every day and a verse in Psalms to mean that the land will produce cakes and fine wool garments every day and student laughs and scoffs because these things are impossible and therefore will not happen not just based on empirical evidence but he's got a proof he's got qohelet 1:9 it says there is nothing new Under the Sun though the order of nature the course of nature doesn't change I have to ask you if you were there and you were listening to this conversation honestly who would you deem a fool and who would you deem wise if we're gonna be honest for a moment I know that in the rabbinic mind scoffers and fools are one in the same so it's clear that for the author the scoffing student is the fool the plain meaning of the story is you shouldn't rebuke or explode or or explode the scoffing fool you should educate him and yet surely the storyteller could have told us that story by having the rabbi say something reasonable and the student asked a fool in quiet a foolish question the storyteller chose to tell the story in a way that I think communicates something more he put foolish sounding words in the mouth of the rabbi it's the rabbi who sounds foolish he predicts plainly impossible things and it's the scoffing students words that seem utterly sensible denying plainly impossible things perhaps the storyteller is telling us not to be too confident in our ability to determine who is wise and who is a fool and if I can't be completely sure who is fool who is a fool and who is wise then perhaps I owe the duty of a response a civil and informed response to everyone the rub and Gamliel stories deal with the duty of answering a fool and even raise questions about whether we ever even know if someone fool according to the principle laid out at the very beginning of the su-hyun sorcery one has a duty to answer a fool and matters of Torah rubbing Gamliel is interpreting Torah so he has a duty to respond to the scoffing student the third approach to encounters with fools is the virtue oriented approach we've had a consequentialist approach a duties oriented approach and now a virtue oriented approach and that can be seen in the very next story in the Cydia involving Hillel in the story hello will answer a fool a particularly provoking fool though he has no duty to do so because the topic is not Torah by any means so first the story the story two men make a bet for 400 zoos says one man he will provoke the usually patient Hillel to anger so he goes to Hillel at the most inopportune time he's preparing for Shabbat he's undressed he's washing his head and the man stands at the door and calls out to him Hillel puts on a robe and he comes outside only to be greeted by a silly question of no particular importance or urgency I would think that if you're coming to my door on the eve of Shabbat while I'm trying to get ready it better be an important question yes a question of no particular importance and no particular urgency why are the heads of Babylonians round in fact the question might be a dig at Hillel right because he is an an immigrant he's immigrated to the Land of Israel from from Babylonia somebody figured that out oh good okay and how does Hillel respond not only is he not irritated he actually complements the question delecia Alta you have asked a great question an important question and so he answers the man and he goes back inside the man let's a little time pass I love the way the story puts that detail in it does not immediate he lets a little time pass we're getting even closer to Shabbat right he lets a little time pass and then he comes calling again even closer to the beginning of Shabbat to pose yet again a silly question of no particular importance or urgency about the eyes of the pal Marian's and once again he'll out complements the question badal asha alta and he answers him he goes back inside the man lets a little more time pass and then he comes calling again and he poses yet another silly question this time about the feat of africans and without missing a beat Hillel complements the question she logged Alicia alte and the man realizes he's lost his bet Hillel will not lose his patience or his civility or wait a minute perhaps civility is patience nothing more and nothing less Hillel remains respectful and patient in the face of the man's deliberately provocative and inconvenient behavior and it takes the wind out of his sails love your enemy it will drive him crazy there's no point anymore he was only in it for the provocation and if no provocation is forthcoming well then he gives up the game why does Hillel answer him at all and why was such a civility right two different questions why answer him at all didn't have to and why was such a civility they weren't genuine questions that he was asking this wasn't an ignorant man seeking genuine knowledge these are deliberate provocations of a troll we would say today right he's trolling Hillel he's a mischief maker he simply wants to harass and the questions do not concerns matter of Taurus so by the rabbi's own rules Hillel has no obligation no duty to answer why then does he answer not because it's a duty to answer but because it's a virtue to answer and to answer civilly a virtue a virtue is an intrinsic good performed for its own sake not in view of potential consequences and not out of a sense of obligation or duty but because it is a good so rabbi yehuda and Rebbe here rubbish my elder C and rabbi Elazar Bariba Shimon they exemplified a consequentialist approach they encountered fools they determined whether and how to engage them based on the potential harmful consequences of their foolish speech and the relative incorrigibility of the fool right what was the likely outcome their engagement ramen Gamliel exemplified a duty oriented ethics was a matter of Torah he answered the fool who was a student because they had a duty to do so but Hillel exemplifies a virtue oriented ethics he answered the fool not out of concern for the consequences indeed the fools questions are clearly and explicitly of zero importance nothing is at stake he answers the fool not out of a sense of duty there's no duty in a non Torah case he answers the fool because it's an intrinsic good of virtue and Hillel is a man who chooses virtue he answers the fool and he does so in a way that doesn't make him the equal of the fool on the contrary his very civility establishes the difference between them and establishes his virtue let's move to text 9 it's a very familiar text I'm sure and there are many important ideas that emerge from this text so I don't want to go through the details I just want to pull out some of the important ideas this text is important because I think it finally opens a window onto what it means to answer the fool could evil tow according to his folly which Shah has been troubling us from the beginning or at least me from the beginning what answering the fool according to his folly how can that be a positive thing so this text I think is going to help us understand that and the other important point that's going to emerge from this text is that different people will assess the situation differently and they will respond according to their assessment and their capacities for better or for worse but that is just how life is so in this very famous passage we have three non-jews first they come before Shem eye one after the other they asked to be converted but on a particular condition that on the face of it is foolish the first has to be converted on the condition that Shamai teach him only the written Torah and not the oral torah even though rabbinic Judaism asserts tutto wrote right seems to be an impossibility the second has to be converted on the condition that she might teach him the entire Torah whilst and while he is standing on one foot a seemingly impossible demand and the third asked to be converted on the condition that he be made a high priest a patently imposter demand Shamai responds to these three ignorant and foolish demands in accordance with verse 5 of michl 826 he doesn't engage the fool he drives him away with a rod a stick the builders qubit in his hand so really the story I think is really very much informed by proverbs 26 verses 4 & 5 I think Shamai & Hillel are exemplifying the two verses each and that's why he has that that builders on my the rod in his hand if you will jahmai assesses this situation this is a fool he's either wicked or he's ignorant he seems to me to be incorrigibles a matter of Torah but he's a non Jew do I have an obligation to engage with someone outside the Torah about matters of Torah no I my assessment I do not I think that this is a case where verse 4 applies I shall not engage him and in fact I'm not gonna ignore him either I'm gonna drive him away with the rod perhaps because jamai knows himself he knows that if he does engage him he will lose his patience and he will become like him uncivil but when each of these non-jews comes to Hillel he agrees to their condition he knows that their demands are foolish and impossible but he doesn't allow their foolishness to be an obstacle to engaging with them he assesses the situation differently yes they're foolish probably more out of ignorance than wickedness and therefore it's probably corrigible and it is a matter of Torah maybe we're not obligated to discuss Torah with non-jews but I don't engage with people because it's a duty or because of the consequences I engage with people because it's a virtue and therefore it is a virtue to engage with anyone I deem a fool on any topic and so he agrees to their conditions what he does is that he meets each fool precisely where he is okay the written Torah only no problem sure on one foot yep we'll do that high priest sure just make sure you read and sign here that you accept the terms and conditions Hillel meets each one of these non-jews where he is he validates him where he is and establishes a trust and slowly leads each one to realize his error not by rebuking or scolding him not by lecturing him but providing him or creating the circumstances or conditions right in which the person can come to see for himself that his demands were unreasonable and foolish the change came from inside and this I would suggest is what it means to answer the fool according to his folly in verse 5 answer the fool doesn't mean with the same hostility or mockery or incivility or aggression with which he addressed you it means answer the fool in the fool in full acceptance of his current limited capacity and understandings according to his state of foolishness as he is now don't hunker down in your superior knowledge so that he feels himself belittled and humiliated and excluded and rejected that will only drive the two of you further apart make you more entrenched in your opposition to one another meet the fool right where he is hear what he has to say understand his perspective and understand what a person standing right where he is standing would need in order to emerge from his ignorance and his folly that's what it is to answer the fool according to his foolish Ness and this is hard to do and I think we have to be honest that not everyone is in a position to do this not everyone can write a play not everyone can run a four-minute mile we have different temperaments we have different talents we have different natures some are gifted patient patient teachers some are not Sham I knew that he was not better not to engage and become like him uncivil intemperate fool better to send him away shim I couldn't escape from his own frame of reference so far removed from the limited and mistaken understanding of the non Jew he couldn't escape the Pinet enter in empathetically and move forward Hillel was capable of it hello has patience Hillel is a gifted patient teacher and fully aware of the deficit in the non-jews understanding he doesn't bring it to his attention directly instead he answers a fool according to his folly folly written Torah only no problem let's start with the out of bait he enters his frame of reference and then he helps him find his way forward the last two Talmudic stories are stories of what happens when we refuse to engage and more than that when civil discourse gives way to shaming and shunning and exclusion the oven of aconite story is one of the best Stone stories in the Talmud the first half is much more famous however than the second half the tragic conclusion the good-natured humility that God shows in defeat right when he allows the majority of the rabbi's overruled him God's defeated the good-natured humility that God shows in defeat seems to make very little impression on the rabbi's who despite being victorious right you would think they'd be a little humble since their victorious but despite being victorious they show no good-natured humility and they turn on the defeated rabbi eliezer a sage and they treat him as a fool rabbi eliezer is of course no fool he merely disagreed with the other rabbis on a certain point of law and yet he is treated like the fool of proverbs 26 verse 5 for Headey from their victory perhaps infused with the zealous self-righteousness that majorities and mobs are so often prone to the rabbi's treat the one who merely disagreed with them as if he were a fool unworthy of kavod undeserving of protection from humiliation they don't physically strike him but they come pretty close they take everything he has declared pure they gathered together and they burn it in a violent and humiliating display of poor sportsmanship they were the winners and then they vote to excommunicate him which of course inflicts grievous suffering on him and arouses the ire of God who stands ready to avenge Rabbi Eliezer against those who are shaming and shunning him he is neither wicked nor ignorant nor in fact wrong as it happens Rabbi Eliezer is beloved of God and he has avenged by God now this story of course wasn't written by somebody else about the rabbi's it was written by the rabbis it's themselves we have to remember that their capacity for self-reflection and self critique is enormous and extraordinary so this is written by the rabbi's about themselves it's a story about the dangers that arise from adopting a posture of self-righteousness and victory right the dangers to civility the loss of civility that arises from the self-righteousness of a majority we live in a time when the art of civil disagreement is on the wane when too often our self-righteous certainty about the singular virtue and rationality of our positions leads us like the rabbi's in this story to the view that those who disagree with us are more than just contrary they are ignorant or wicked fools and this label in turn justifies justifies the abandonment of civility and it encourages both shaming and engagement that some kind of engagement that humiliates or degrades or shunning a complete disengagement the last source is a remarkably self-critical text also written by the rabbi's in criticism of they themselves and is about the apostasy of Jesus and this text proposes a middle way between the approaches that have been modeled here Jesus makes a foolish remark when his teacher Rubio schwaben Praja complements the in in which they are staying the asagna Jesus thinks he's complimenting the ox on yah same word the female innkeeper to attribute such a lascivious thought to his teacher you know and to make a remark on it himself is an insult and it's also a mark of his own folly and the teacher bans him but he bans him with what seems to be a humiliatingly excessive four hundred blasts of the shofar each and every day Jesus tries to find his way back to his teacher he tries to return and each and every day he's turned away finally the day comes when Rebbe oh she would decides yes I will accept him when he comes back but again in a comedy of errors his gesture of acceptance is misread misinterpreted the body language is misread by Jesus as yet another rejection and in despair Jesus a pasta sizes had Reb yoshua been less severe less disengaged disciplining Jesus perhaps while yet drawing him near the rabbi's say the story might have ended quite differently the choice between shunning and shaming versus engagement with its possibility for change and integration is seen in the last story that I gave you the very moving story actually of Derrick black it's a very contemporary relevant example Derrick black as I said in the outset at the outset was born into the insular world of white nationalism son of Don black the founder of the website storm front as as a kid he ran the storm front site for children he was proudly known as the devil child when he went off to college and his parents were very afraid of what might happen to him in the multi multicultural environment of college he hid his white nationalism his his Holocaust denying anti-immigrant views from his college classmates and he even socialized with liberals he enjoyed playing video games with them and so on all the while he continued his daily radio broadcasts decrying the white genocide that was happening under the anti white white radical President Obama until one day when his identity was discovered and posted on campus social media friends and classmates were shocked an angry feeling betrayed many acted like Shem I already hear Roberta many ostracized him Derek moved off campus he avoided public spaces but some students felt that ostracizing Derek black complete disengagement wouldn't accomplish anything and they began to wonder how they could change his mind perhaps he wasn't incorrigible so one former acquaintance a Jewish student as I think the contemporary embodiment of Hillel he decided to meet Derek black where he was in his folly he sat down and he read Stormfront I'm sure it wasn't easy he listened to Derek's broadcasts and one week in September he sent Derek a text and asked what he was doing that Friday night and he invited him to his weekly Shabbat dinner a dinner that he hosted on campus in his campus apartment every week it was a college with a very small Jewish population not much Jewish infrastructure I'll read to you what the passage says in case some of you didn't have time to read it in full Matthew had spent a few weeks debating whether it was a good idea verse 4 verse 5 which one should I follow he and Derek had lived near each other in the dorm but they hadn't spoken since Derek was exposed on the social media forum Matthew who almost always wore a yarmulke had experienced enough anti-semitism in his life to be familiar with the KKK David Duke Derek black was the godson of David Duke and Stormfront he went back and he read some of Derek's posts on the site from 2007 and 2008 Jews are not white Jews worm their way into power over our society they must go Matthew decided that his best chance to affect Derek's thinking was not to ignore him ignore him not to confront him with the Builders rod but simply to include him maybe he'd never spent time with a Jewish person before Matthew remembered thinking it was the only social invitation Derek had received since returning to campus so he agreed to go the Shabbat meals had sometimes included eight or ten students this time only a few showed up let's try to treat him like anyone else Matthew remembered instructing them not like a fool Derek arrived with a bottle of wine nobody mentioned white nationalism or the forum out of respect for matthew derek was quiet and polite and he came back the next week and then the next until after a few months nobody felt all that threatened and the Shabbat group group grew back to its original size on the rare occasions when Derek directed conversation during those dinners it was about the particulars of Arabic grammar or marine aquatics or the roots of Christianity in medieval times he came across as smart and curious and mostly he listened he heard of removing an immigrant tell stories about attending a high school that was 90% Hispanic he asked Matthew about his opinions on Israel and Palestine they were both still wary at wary of each other but they also liked each other and they started playing pool at a bar near campus well slowly as you know the conversations proceeded to actually cover Derrick's views what did he really think and what did he believe and evidence against some of those views was presented in a civil way and as time passed and as his friends continued to engage and challenge his ideas Derrick became more confused about exactly what it was he believed he began to think that his website message threads about Obama's birth certificate were kind of bizarre and conspiratorial he stopped posting on storm front he ended his radio show and in time as you know from reading this he would sit down one night and write a letter to the 7 Southern Poverty Law Center renouncing his former beliefs Mathew Stevenson was willing to meet Derek black right where he was entering his frame of reference without adopting it or being debased by it himself and providing just what he needed over the course of more than a year for Derek to find his way out of the ideologies and the hatred he had been born and bred to who among us could do that I tell you frankly had I met Derek black I likely would have decided he was incorrigible in fact I'm sure I would have decided he was incorrigible I can be a pessimist sometimes like Shamai with the builders cubed in my hand I imagine I would have spurned him I would not have answered that fool lest in my uncivil rebuke of him I become like him but maybe there's a role for those people to play too after all that is how many people did treat him he was publicly outed and he was ostracized and that set up a moment in which someone like Matthew Stevenson could come in Matthew Stephenson was capable of believing that perhaps Derek black could change for Matthew verse 4 was the wrong approach ignoring and ostracizing he said that would change nothing and so he tried the verse the approach of verse 5 he engaged him he met him where he was he provided space for his internal realization of a better way would that we all find someone to believe in our moments of utter folly and we've all had them that we're not incorrigible someone who will answer our folly with civility and respect to meet us where we are and accompany us on our path to a better place how can we deny that to others [Music] [Applause] no questions [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] we do want to get something out of that text other than just leave my strength again and I guess I didn't go in the direction that your group went because I think other stories are telling us that that there are times when someone seems in the orange way and you do engage them so I think that the story with the Roman noblewoman you know is one where it's saying no no as harmful as the consequences are and even though it's not a matter of Torah and I don't have a duty to engage I will engage we you know we are going to have a civil conversation with her and try to so I think that story does that so III want to reserve this story be to be doing something else actually and so the way I draw derive something from that particular story is that there are times when something is someone is perhaps incorrigible or something is so so so wicked and harmful and does have such terrible consequences engaging is not going to do anything engaging will only make you as uncivil as the person which will delight them and provoke them and fire up their base to be convinced that you are worse than the person themselves right so it actually only feeds their game it's a it's it's playing their game and that's a game you can't win because they're experts at it so um I think rather than seeing it as that I took it to be a way of saying all right we're not gonna engage you you're gonna say those things but you should bear the consequences of those words not me don't ask me to be the one who bears the pain of it or the suffering I used to do that I refused to be the one to suffer for this and you have to bear the consequences of it not me not my child etc so that that's how I understood it and I and I think that is a voice we're hearing more and more stop asking me to be courteous and polite back or ignore I I don't have to be civil to you I'm not gonna engage you but I also don't have to be civil and I can stand up and say this is this is just intolerable other people let them play that role and that's the other thing I think there are different roles for different people to play based on their their position their positionality their situation whether you're a bystander versus a victim I don't think we have a right to dictate to victims how to handle their outrage in their fear and I think it's perverse to call them snowflakes when they stand up for themselves and cry out an indignation over their treatment from those who are in positions of power that's a snowflake to me that's a powerful lion right and yet we have the temerity to call them snowflakes because they're angry and indignant no no no no right but there's but then other people perhaps less touched in their core identity they can be the restraint they can be the one to say let's try to keep things more civil I understand your anger don't invalidate their anger and indignity but at the same time also remind us that ultimately we want to arrive at a place where we're all civil again I just think we don't have different roles to play right and we have to figure that out for ourselves okay let's maybe we'll just kind of go left to right maybe I'll take two or three would that be a better thing to do so um so we'll have you and then Sarah and then we'll move over to is Michael right sorry Jeff you changed your names no no sorry Jeff hold on we're gonna start here and then Sarah and then Jeff [Music] [Music] or leave with these words [Music] [Music] samples [Music] and it's almost about - it's interesting that you you heard the flood verse in that way because I think that is an important issue I don't I don't think the verse the verse is talking about you need to stop their wickedness if you because that will turn into a flood but you're saying something different and very important which is incivility has a way of once you've crossed a certain rate as we've all seen once one norm is down other norms fall very very quickly and you know it's like those games at the fair where you're hitting the thing on the head that it keeps popping up you know everybody that's go whack them all right now Wacka norm yes it's but but you it where do you what what do you take on next you know which norm so you're right but I think that only validates the point that the Proverbs verse is making there are times to say stop this is gonna start a flood right and so we need to stop incivility on one side it will lead to a burgeoning of incivility and I take your point on all sides right not just the increasing falling of norms but increasing harshness and civility in response to those following norms it's a flood from every direction so maybe we can maybe that's how we can really understand the Proverbs first right if you stop the fool then you stop a flood of incivility not just from the fool but from every direction I think maybe you know that would be a good way to understand that verse and as for Sarah's point yes I don't mean to be divvying up roles and responsibilities among people apps it's up to in each individual to know their their temperament their position what they're capable of Shammai was in every bit as much a position to help that those those non-jews with their ignorance as Hillel wears nothing different about his position ality in society right but he knew his own temperament he knew that he didn't have the patience in that situation on those issues perhaps in another he does perhaps the moral salience of that was such for him that he couldn't but something else he might be able to be an advocate with a different voice because it's a little lower on his list of things that are morally salient and so it's one he can have a little more composure about and it's not that I was saying that the targets of speech have a right to indignation I wasn't being prescriptive I'm being descriptive we cannot expect of people who are the targets of hate speech and activity to respond courteously and chastise them for being snowflakes when they do not that's what I was saying how they respond if they respond like Michael Stevenson or it was that no Matthew Stevenson it's amazing this is someone who himself could have felt so targeted by that so alienated that a friend of his could have those views he can't engage but he didn't so I wouldn't presume to know where people fall out on the spectrum of postures that you can adopt and there are people who are not immediately targeted by something but feels so completely empathetic and so completely outraged that they will be the ones to stand up with indignation and outrage and there's every reason for them to do so and for us to appreciate that they they understand that to be morally salient for themselves especially as you point out when the targets of some of these the speech are themselves so disempowered they rely upon your right that's missing in these particular texts so maybe if I expand this I will try to find a text somewhere I'm sure there is some which is more of a bystander right when someone is in a position of disempowerment how does one advocate while not erasing the other person's subjectivity right there are ways to do that appropriately and not erasing their subjectivity so that's that's a lacunae I will try to fill and then Jeff's question it is true and I did give some more obvious examples but you're absolutely right and I you know I framed it at the beginning my examples did not live up to the framing but they did frame it at the beginning as something that is going on on both sides I will I will give you a couple of examples that disturb me very much so one of the obvious ones is of course extreme left positions that turn around being as uncivil and D legitimizing and demonizing and analyzing people who hold different views which again opens the door for every bit you know things that are every bit as dangerous as what's happening right guilty as charged right that does happen absolutely I watched a video and I don't usually do this but I guess it was in some newspaper or something and so I clicked on it because it was a triumphalist look at this poor clansmen or I think maybe was a Klansman or white supremacist in some kind of a March or something he shows up as a counter protest to some kind of a March I don't know what the the protest was perhaps it was a you know immigration protest and he takes the sign of one of the protesters to rip it up I don't know if any of you saw this but it was made of some kind of material fabric where you can't rip it up and he's trying and trying and soon before you know it somebody's videotaping him on their camera say go ahead rip it up go ahead and soon a small crowd is there mocking him and I'm watching this and I'm getting more and more uncomfortable and I'm starting to feel real panic and really anxiety because there's a mob against this person and I know that he's a Klansmen I know he's a counter protester I know he has ideas that I despise but I started to hyperventilate watching the mob against this person and mocking him for being unable he was a he was and he was getting more and more embarrassed and more and more flustered and so on and and in that moment he was he was a human who was being set upon by a crowd as far as I was concerned so that happens they and I tried that was the point of the text dealing with the rabbis themselves the rabbis who are supposedly the heroes right the rabbis who are the good guys but in their self-righteousness and in their sense of their majority and they are so yesh are they in a hem right there there Derek is so Yashar bein a hem that they can treat even one of their own as if he is a wicked fool and an enemy and shun and shame him to my mind that was a way of saying let's be critical of ourselves when we in our own position of our own political views or views that we agree with when we adopt these behaviors we have to be critical of that as well so it's not it's not the issue it's the bate behavior and the and the tenor but I will work to make that a little bit more explicit what can we do about those people you asked well Matthew Stephenson and Hillel would say meet them where they are and educate them it's long hard path look how long it took Matthew Stephenson right that's a long journey Derek black had it took over a year and in meetings every Friday night for over a year it's hard work and it takes the right kind of person to do it [Applause]

Channel: Shalom Hartman Institute מכון שלום הרטמן

Views: 6,594

Keywords: Jewish, Judaism, Jerusalem, Hartman Institute, pluralism, Israel, Torah, Talmud

Id: LunP7Q5Dulg

Length: 82min 32sec (4952 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 23 2018