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Episode 73: Taking it Too Far
Episode 73
“The Talmud can be understood as a case book or a teaching tool and… the Talmud may very intentionally be leaving out good proofs because the whole p…
11 hours ago
Episode 72: When Comedy Becomes Tragedy
Episode 72
“It’s intentionally a joke. And the tragedy is to imagine how this sugya might be studied and nobody's laughing. If you miss the joke, you're actuall…
1 week ago
Episode 71: Hard Cases Make Bad Law
Episode 71
“Hard cases make bad law. You don't take the existence of theoretical hard cases that may rarely occur but do occur and make law based on those hard …
2 weeks ago
Episode 70: Cultivated Common Sense
Episode 70
“Don't think for a minute that the Torah actually meant money at the beginning. It actually did mean an eye and we changed it because that's what we …
3 weeks ago
Episode 69: Juggling Arguments
Episode 69
“The Talmud has one message, one and only one message, and it gives it in 14,000 different cases, and that one message is, reader, you are tasked wit…
4 weeks ago
Episode 68: Thou Doth Protest Too Much
Episode 68
“The entire Talmud is a response to the bind that we got ourselves into before the rabbis ever existed by claiming that our God writes books. That wa…
1 month ago
Episode 67: Sleight of Hand
Episode 67
“ Imagine you're reading some magician textbook, how to do magic… the magician is saying since he transferred the coin from his right hand to his lef…
1 month, 1 week ago
Episode 66: Rules of Interpretation
Episode 66
“This is a really great text to be learning because it shows that something as clear as day in the Torah doesn't mean what the words purport to mean.…
1 month, 2 weeks ago
Episode 65: Attractive Instability
Episode 65
“The process that made the eye for an eye a dead letter is exactly the same process that could be used to make the Leviticus against homosexuality a …
1 month, 3 weeks ago
Episode 64: Showing Their Hand with Menachem Fisch
Episode 64
“ I'm always asked, 'You're obviously an anti-traditionalist, so why are you going back to the Talmud all the time?' An anti-traditionalist doesn't n…
2 months ago