I haven't posted in nearly a year, which is wild because I used to post every few days or at the very least every week. That's life, I guess, with its seasons and struggles and priorities.
I pondered posting something on Instagram, because that's where I live these days, but the format just didn't fit the content, so here I am.
I recently started reading The Madwoman in the Rabbi's Attic: Rereading the Women of the Talmud by Gila Fine, and I'm really enjoying not only the content but how it's written. Although I've only finished the introduction and the first chapter, I wanted to share some of what I've read because the introduction presented something so incredibly beautiful that I feel is hyper relevant to the polarized world we're currently living in where everyone is an Other.
But first, Gila Fine has a footnote as she discusses the difference between what we find in the rabbinic literature. There is halacha, which is Jewish law, and there is aggada, which is the narratives or "stories." Basically, everything you find in the Talmud that isn't halacha is aggada. Fine says (emphasis my own),
"... there is a whole range of aggadic sub-genres: midrash and rabbinic legends and philosophical inquiry and parables and sermons and folktales and epigrams and jokes. But it is not just a multiplicity of form that defines aggada, it is also a multiplicity of content: from the lofty discussions of metaphysics and theology to small, everyday tales of friendship and family, food and money, study and sex. Herein is the profound humanism of the rabbis; nothing is deemed too trivial or mundane to be the subject of a rabbinic story. In aggada, everything is included because everything is important; everything is meaningful, everything carries a lesson to be learned."
And it's the footnote to this that really hit me. It comes from Rosemary Radford Ruether:
"Classical Judaism produced a literature which looks at first sight like someone's grandmother's attic in which endless quantities of curious things which 'might someday come in handy' have been passed down like so many balls of string lovingly collected over the years and piled on top of each other without apparent concern for distinctions between wieghy and trivial matters ... This apparent jumble of piety and trivia is the medium of the rabbinic message which is the effort to penetrate every corner of ordinary life with God's presence ... "
I've always held to the understanding that everything we need to live our lives is contained in Jewish literature, but that not everything was relevant at the time of composition, but "might someday come in handy" when the time is right and the situation makes sense. It's how we have modern medicine, electrical devices that work on Shabbat, and so much more. I just loved this image of the attic brimming with everything you need at the exact time you need it.
Okay, now let's roll back to the Other. In referencing how the heroines of the Talmud fit into a specific group (the second one in the following quote), Gila Fine says,
"The relationship with the Other is one of the central themes of rabbinic narrative. Indeed, it's been suggested that the stories of the Talmud all fall into one of two categories: those that show the gap between man and God is smaller than we think, and those that show that the gap between man and man is greater than we imagine."
Wow wow wow. I mean wow. Reread that quote. Do you see it? This is true more now than ever. She goes on to explain how we respond to the Other when they don't see things as we do. Gila Fine is really focusing on what the Talmud has to say and how we react when the Talmud doesn't see things as we do, but I think these responses are ridiculously appropriate for how humans in 2025 view the Other who isn't them.
I'm going to summarize her take on these responses to the Other here:
- Rejection: We are too different and disagree on too much. This relationship can never be.
- Accommodation: We're clearly very different, even divergent, but I want this relationship so badly I will change everything about myself to make it work.
- Subjection: We're different, so if you want this relationship, you have to change everything about yourself.
- Negotiation: We're very different, and there's a lot we disagree about, but this relationship is something we both want, so I'll come with my opinions and you with yours; we'll figure out a way to make it work.
"We must give full voice to our beliefs and our biases, and let the Talmud speak its own (for we are no less conditioned by the 21st century than the Talmud is by Antiquity)."