Unit 11 · Sugyot in Paraphrase II: Argument and Mercy

Hillel and Shammai were two teachers who lived in Jerusalem around 30 BCE, in the time of King Herod. The Mishnah names them as the last of the zugot, the pairs of leaders who came before the rabbis. Hillel is remembered in the Talmud as patient and gentle. Shammai is remembered as strict and quick. Each gathered students, and each group kept teaching after its founder died.

The students formed two schools. The Talmud calls them Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai. The word beit means house. The two Houses argued about hundreds of questions. How should the Hanukkah lamps be lit? What may a person carry on Shabbat? Which blessing comes first at a meal? Most of the time, Beit Shammai took the stricter reading and Beit Hillel the more lenient one. Not always.

The Mishnah records both sides of these debates. In most cases it does not say who won. That is important. The Mishnah, edited around the year 200 CE, was written long after both Houses were gone. By then Jewish practice followed Beit Hillel almost everywhere. Yet the editors kept Beit Shammai’s words on the page. The next lesson tells the story the Talmud gives for why.

The tractate Eruvin is about the boundaries of Shabbat, where a person may walk and carry. On page 13b it pauses for a story. The Gemara says that Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel argued for three years. Each side said: the law follows us. Then a bat kol, a voice from heaven, spoke. The Gemara reports its words this way: these and those are the words of the living God, and the law follows Beit Hillel.

Readers have found this puzzling for centuries. If both are the words of the living God, how can one side be wrong? The Gemara does not treat the two as one right and one wrong. It treats them as two true ways to read the Torah. Yet a community needs one practice. People must know which lamp to light and which blessing to say first. So the voice picked one for daily life without calling the other false.

Different Jewish readers explain this in different ways. Some traditional commentators say each House saw a real side of the truth. Some modern academic readers say the story reflects a time when Beit Hillel had already won, and the story explains why. Rabbinic tradition holds both ideas together: the argument is kept, and one ruling is followed. This is the pattern for the whole Talmud.

The Gemara in Eruvin 13b asks a fair question. If both Houses spoke the words of the living God, why did the voice pick Beit Hillel? The answer it gives is not about being smarter. It says the students of Hillel were kind and humble. They taught their own opinions and the opinions of Beit Shammai. And when they taught, they put Beit Shammai’s words before their own.

Think about what that means in a classroom. Before you say why you are right, you say what the other side thinks, in their words, fairly. You even say it first. The Gemara treats this habit as a reason to trust a school’s rulings. A teacher who has really listened to the other side is more likely to get the law right. And a community can follow such a teacher without feeling that one side was crushed.

The Gemara adds a lesson it draws from the story: whoever makes themselves low, the Holy One raises up. Rabbinic tradition reads the Hillel story as a lesson in anavah, humility. Historians add another layer. The Mishnah was edited by Judah the Prince, who traced his family line to Hillel. Both readings can be true of the same text. One is about character; the other is about who was holding the pen.

The story begins in the Mishnah, in the tractate Kelim, which deals with vessels. An oven was built in pieces, with sand packed between them. Rabbi Eliezer said that such an oven could not become ritually impure, because it was not really one object. The other sages said it could. The Mishnah calls it the oven of Akhnai. The Gemara says the name means snake, because the arguments wound around it like a snake.

The Gemara in Bava Metzia 59b tells what happened. Rabbi Eliezer brought every proof he could think of. The sages did not accept them. So he said: if the law is with me, let this carob tree prove it. The tree pulled itself up and moved a long way. The sages answered that no proof comes from a carob tree. He said: let the stream prove it. The water ran backward. They said no proof comes from a stream.

Then he said: let the walls of the study hall prove it. The walls began to fall in. Rabbi Joshua scolded the walls. He said that when scholars argue about the law, walls have no business joining in. The Gemara adds a gentle detail. Out of respect for Rabbi Joshua the walls did not fall, and out of respect for Rabbi Eliezer they did not stand straight again. They stayed leaning.

Notice what the sages are doing. They never say the miracles did not happen. They say the miracles are not the kind of proof that counts. A rule of the Torah is decided by reasons and by the vote of the scholars. Rabbi Eliezer, a tanna of the generation after the Temple’s fall in 70 CE, was one of the greatest scholars alive. That is what makes the story hard, and the next lesson shows the turn.

Rabbi Eliezer had one proof left. He said: if the law is with me, let heaven prove it. The Gemara says a bat kol went out and said: why do you argue with Rabbi Eliezer, when the law follows him in every place? This was the moment. A voice from heaven had taken a side. The whole room heard it.

Rabbi Joshua stood on his feet and quoted the Torah. The verse is Deuteronomy 30:12, and it says the commandment "is not in heaven." In Deuteronomy the verse means that the Torah is not far away or too hard to reach. Rabbi Joshua reads it in a new way. The Torah has already been given. It is on earth now, in the hands of people who study it.

The Gemara asks what Rabbi Joshua meant, and it lets a later teacher explain. Rabbi Jeremiah, an amora who taught in the Land of Israel in the fourth century, says: the Torah was already given at Mount Sinai, so we pay no attention to a heavenly voice. He points to another verse, Exodus 23:2, which the rabbis read as: follow the majority. Once the Torah was given, the rule is decided by the vote of the scholars.

This is one of the most quoted moments in the Talmud. Readers have used it to say that the law lives in human hands and human argument. Others add that this freedom has limits: the majority must reason from the text, not invent. Notice too that Rabbi Joshua does not call the voice a lie. He says it is not the way the law is decided. The Gemara has one more scene, and it changes everything.

The Gemara adds a short scene. Rabbi Nathan, a tanna of the second century, met the prophet Elijah. In rabbinic stories Elijah is a figure who did not die and who appears to certain rabbis to tell them things. Rabbi Nathan asked him: what did the Holy One do at that hour, when Rabbi Joshua overruled the voice?

Elijah answered that God laughed and said: my children have defeated me, my children have defeated me. In the story the response is not anger. It is something like a parent’s delight when a child wins an argument fairly. Rabbinic tradition reads this as approval. The rabbis were supposed to take the Torah into their own hands and reason with it.

Different readers stress different things here. Many traditional readers see the laugh as proof that human courts have real authority. Some academic readers point out that the story was told by rabbis and gives authority to rabbis, so it should be read as their own view of themselves. Both agree on what the text does: it makes the majority’s decision stand, and it makes heaven agree.

Stop and notice the shape of the sugya so far. A Mishnah states a dispute. The Gemara brings proofs, and each is rejected. A voice gives an answer, and a verse answers the voice. A later amora explains the verse. A story confirms the result. This is a full argument, with every move in place. And then the Gemara asks what happened next.

The Gemara does not end with the laugh. It says that on that day the sages gathered everything Rabbi Eliezer had declared pure and burned it. Then they voted to place him under a ban, a kind of separation from the community. They asked: who will go and tell him? Rabbi Akiva, his own student, said he would, so that no one less careful would break the news and destroy the world.

Rabbi Akiva dressed in black and sat at a distance. Rabbi Eliezer asked why this day was different. Rabbi Akiva said gently that it seemed his friends were keeping away from him. Rabbi Eliezer understood. He tore his clothes and wept. The Gemara says that at that hour a third of the olives, wheat and barley in the world were struck. It is telling the reader that his pain was not small.

Rabban Gamliel, the head of the court, was on a ship. A great wave rose against him. He said: I know this is because of Rabbi Eliezer. He prayed that he had not acted for his own honor but to stop disputes from spreading, and the sea grew calm. Later, his sister Imma Shalom, who was Rabbi Eliezer’s wife, tried to keep her husband from a certain prayer. One day she failed. The Gemara says Rabban Gamliel died. Told gently, the point is this: the majority won, and it still caused harm.

Why is this story in Bava Metzia, a tractate about money? Because the Mishnah before it, Bava Metzia 4:10, is about ona'at devarim, wronging with words. The Gemara says that all the gates of heaven may be locked except the gate through which a wounded person’s cry enters. The Akhnai story is placed there as an example. Rabbi Eliezer was wronged with words. Authority and mercy are argued on the same page.

Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah, the same teacher who answered the heavenly voice, appears in many stories with Romans. The tractate Ta'anit, which is about fast days, tells one on page 7a. The emperor’s daughter said to him: such beautiful wisdom in such an ugly vessel. She was mocking his face. He did not get angry. He asked a question instead.

He asked her what her father kept his wine in. She said: in plain clay jars. He said: everyone keeps wine in clay jars. A great emperor should keep his in gold and silver. So she had the wine moved into gold and silver vessels, and it turned sour. When she asked him why, he said: wisdom is the same. It keeps best in a plain vessel.

The Gemara adds a small twist. She asked whether there were not handsome people who were also wise. He said yes, but they would be wiser if they were plain. The story is aggadah, a story rather than a law. It shows the rabbis’ picture of Rabbi Joshua: quick, calm and able to turn an insult into a lesson without returning it. That is the same skill he used against the voice from heaven.

A small tractate of the Mishnah called Eduyot, meaning testimonies, asks a question most law books never ask. Why record the words of a single sage against the majority, when the law follows the majority? The Mishnah gives two answers in its first chapter, in mishnayot 1:4 through 1:6.

The first answer, in Eduyot 1:4, is about the Houses. Why keep Shammai’s and Hillel’s words when they were not accepted? To teach future generations that a person should not stand stubbornly on their own words, since even these great teachers did not have every word accepted. The second answer, in 1:5, is about courts. A later court may see the minority view and rely on it, because it was recorded. If it were erased, no one could ever use it.

This is the opposite of how many systems work. In many places the losing side is forgotten. The Mishnah keeps it. Rabbi Judah, in Eduyot 1:6, adds a third reason: so that if someone later says, I have a tradition like this, you can answer, you heard it from that individual, not from the majority. Keeping the minority view lets you know exactly what is and is not the rule.

Historians note that this habit is one reason the Talmud looks the way it does: pages of disagreement rather than a list of answers. For readers of the Akhnai story, it adds something. Rabbi Eliezer lost the vote. His opinion is still on the page, with his name. Being overruled is not the same as being erased.

Pirkei Avot, the Chapters of the Fathers, is a tractate of the Mishnah made entirely of sayings. In chapter 5, mishnah 17, it sorts arguments into two kinds. An argument that is for the sake of heaven will endure. An argument that is not for the sake of heaven will not endure. Then it gives one example of each.

The example of an argument for the sake of heaven is Hillel and Shammai. The example of the other kind is Korah and his group, who in the book of Numbers rebelled against Moses. Readers have asked what "endure" means here. Many say it means the argument keeps giving fruit: both sides are studied, both are remembered, and people keep learning from it. The Houses’ debates are still studied today. Korah’s rebellion ended and taught nothing.

What makes an argument for the sake of heaven? Commentators such as Rabbi Ovadiah of Bartenura, who wrote on the Mishnah in the fifteenth century, say it is one in which both sides want the truth, not victory. Each side is willing to be shown wrong. Both sides respect the other. That fits Beit Hillel teaching Beit Shammai’s view first. It also gives a way to think about the Akhnai story: the argument was for the sake of heaven, and yet the way it ended still hurt.

This mishnah is often used in Jewish schools and adult study today, across Orthodox, Conservative and Reform communities, as a rule for how to disagree. In a public school it can be read the same way any wisdom text is read: as one tradition’s answer to a question everyone faces. When you argue, are you trying to win, or trying to find out what is true?

The Oven of Akhnai is one of the most discussed passages in the Talmud. Different Jewish readers use it to say different things. Many Orthodox readers stress that the majority won because it followed the rules of the Torah itself, including the verse about the majority. For them the story shows that the law is decided by trained scholars using the text, not by miracles and not by whatever a person feels.

Many Conservative readers stress the same story as proof that the law grows through human decision. If the rabbis could overrule a heavenly voice, then later courts can also make changes, as long as they reason from the sources. Many Reform readers go further and read the story as a charter for human freedom and conscience in interpreting tradition. These are ways of reading one text; the text does not settle which is right.

Academic readers, in universities including those in Chicago, often ask a different set of questions. Who told this story and when? The heroes are rabbis, and the story gives authority to rabbis. Its second half, they note, was likely edited into place by the Talmud’s redactors to fit the theme of wronging with words. Some also compare the version in the Jerusalem Talmud, which is shorter.

None of these readings has to be the only one. The Talmud itself kept the argument, the voice, the laugh, the ban and the wave together. A reader in a public school can do the same: describe what the text says, describe how each group reads it, and then think for yourself. That is what this unit means by argument. The next chapter turns to the other thread, mercy.

Open almost any tractate and you find two kinds of writing. One kind argues about rules. How much must a finder announce? When may a worker leave a job? That legal part is called halakhah. The other kind tells stories, gives advice and explains verses. That part is called aggadah, from an Aramaic word for telling.

The two are mixed together on the same page. A debate about the Sabbath may stop for a story about Hillel. A list of rules about damages may end with a saying about kindness. Scholars estimate that aggadah fills about a quarter to a third of the Babylonian Talmud. Estimates vary by how it is counted.

Readers have used aggadah in different ways. Many Jewish teachers read it as the heart of the law, the reason behind the rules. Maimonides warned readers not to take every story only at face value. Academic scholars study it as a window into the rabbis’ world. In this chapter you will read the aggadah that teaches ethics: how to speak, how to change and how to treat people.

Pirkei Avot means Chapters of the Fathers. It is a tractate of the Mishnah, but it has almost no law in it. It is a collection of sayings by teachers across about five hundred years. Many Jews read one chapter each Sabbath afternoon in the summer.

The first mishnah names a chain. Moses received the Torah at Sinai and passed it to Joshua. Joshua passed it to the elders, the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly. Then the chain runs through named teachers, down to Hillel and Shammai and the rabbis after them. This line is called the mesorah, the handing down.

Rabbinic tradition holds that this chain carried the Oral Torah beside the written one. Historians study the chain as a statement of the rabbis’ authority. It tells readers why the rabbis felt they could interpret the Torah. Both groups agree on one thing. The chain puts teachers, not kings or priests, at the center of the story.

One of the most quoted lines in Avot comes from Hillel. It is Avot 1:14. It is three short questions. If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?

Each question pulls against the one before. The first says a person has a duty to stand up for their own life and needs. The second warns that a life only for yourself is too small. The third says good plans mean nothing until you act. Teachers call this a balance, not a list.

Readers have heard the saying in many ways. Jewish commentators linked the first question to a person’s own learning and good deeds. Some modern readers hear it as a call for self-advocacy, speaking up for what helps you. Others hear it as a call to join the community. The saying leaves room for all of these readings.

Rabbi Tarfon lived around the year 100 CE, after the Temple was destroyed. Avot gives two of his sayings together. The day is short, the work is great, the workers are lazy, the reward is much, and the master of the house is pressing. That is the first one.

The second is the famous one. It is not your duty to finish the work, but you are not free to stop doing it. In most printed editions it is Avot 2:16. Some older editions, like Taylor’s, number it a little differently.

The ’work’ in the saying is the study of Torah, as the next line makes clear. Readers have widened it. Jewish teachers apply it to repairing the world, a job no one person can complete. Students apply it to big projects. The saying makes room for doing a part well without carrying the whole.

Ben Zoma was a student-scholar of the early 100s CE. The Talmud says he was so sharp that seeing him in a dream was a sign of wisdom. In Avot 4:1 he asks four questions and answers each with a surprise.

Who is wise? The one who learns from every person. Who is strong? The one who controls their own temper. Who is rich? The one who is happy with what they have. Who is honored? The one who honors other people. Each answer turns a prize people chase into a habit anyone can practice.

Ben Zoma backs each answer with a verse from the Bible. That is how Avot often works. A saying is not just advice; it is tied to a text. Readers notice that none of the four answers needs money or power. A child can be wise, strong, rich and honored by this measure.

Lashon hara means evil tongue. In rabbinic teaching it is saying something true but harmful about another person. Spreading lies is a separate wrong. The Talmud treats both as serious.

The Talmud in Arakhin 15b says harmful gossip hurts three people. It hurts the one who speaks, the one who listens and the one spoken about. The Gemara reads the Bible’s stories of skin disease, such as Miriam’s in Numbers 12, as warnings about speech.

Rabbinic tradition builds these teachings on a verse. Leviticus 19:16 says do not go up and down as a talebearer. Later teachers wrote whole books on the ethics of speech. The best known is by the Chafetz Chaim, a rabbi in Poland who died in 1933. Many schools today teach his rules as a guide to kind talk.

In Bava Metzia 58b, the Gemara discusses ona'at devarim, wronging with words. A teacher of the Mishnah period taught that making a friend’s face turn pale in public is like shedding blood. Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak explained the image. The red leaves the face, and the face goes white, as if blood were spilled.

The Gemara gives examples of wronging with words. Do not remind a person who has changed their ways of what they used to do. Do not tell someone who is sick or grieving that their troubles are their own fault. Do not ask a seller the price of something you have no plan to buy.

The same page goes further. It says it is better for a person to throw themselves into a fiery furnace than to shame another in public. It supports this with the story of Tamar in Genesis 38. Readers have called this a strong way of saying that a person’s dignity must be protected.

Teshuvah means returning or turning. In rabbinic teaching it is the way a person turns from a wrong. The steps, as later teachers such as Maimonides describe them, include stopping, feeling regret, confessing and deciding not to do it again.

The tractate Yoma is about Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Its last mishnah, Yoma 8:9, draws a clear line. Yom Kippur atones for wrongs between a person and God. For wrongs between one person and another, it does not atone until the person makes peace with the one they hurt.

The Gemara on that mishnah, in Yoma 87a, tells how far rabbis went to make peace. It tells of Rav, who waited for a butcher who had wronged him to come and make up. When he did not, Rav went to the butcher himself. The teaching protects the person who was hurt. Their feelings are part of the repair.

Elisha ben Abuyah was a great scholar of the early 100s CE. The Talmud says he stopped following the rabbis’ way. After that it calls him Acher, meaning the Other. The stories about him are in Chagigah 14b to 15b and in the Jerusalem Talmud.

The Talmud does not agree on why he left. It gives several reasons in different stories. One tells of a story in which a boy obeyed two commandments that promise long life and yet died. The Talmud also says Greek songs never stopped on his lips. Scholars read these as the rabbis working through hard questions of their own.

His student Rabbi Meir kept learning from him. The Gemara in Chagigah 15b explains this with an image. Rabbi Meir found a pomegranate. He ate the inside and threw away the peel. Readers have argued over this. Some praise Rabbi Meir’s loyalty. Others ask whether anyone can do what he did. The Talmud keeps both views.

The Talmud is famous for argument. It is also full of teachings about mercy. In Berakhot 7a the Gemara says, in the words of a rabbinic story, that God prays too. The prayer is that mercy may overcome anger.

This idea shows up in the law as well. In Bava Metzia 30b Rabbi Yochanan says Jerusalem was destroyed because its judges ruled only by the strict letter of the law. The Talmud calls going past strict law lifnim mishurat hadin, inside the line of the law. It means giving more than the rule requires.

Readers see the two threads as partners. Argument keeps the rules sharp and honest. Mercy keeps them from hurting people. Aggadah, the sayings of Avot, the teachings on speech and on teshuvah all belong to this second thread. The rabbis did not treat it as softer than the law. They treated it as part of the law’s purpose.

Avot’s sayings are short on purpose. They are easy to remember. Many families and schools study them one line at a time. Some students pick one saying for a week and write down where it helped.

Take Ben Zoma’s question, who is rich? A student notices she wanted new shoes like a friend’s. She remembers the saying and counts what she already has. Take Hillel’s questions. A student who needs a quiet place to test can ask for it. That is being for yourself. Then he helps a classmate find the room. That is not being only for yourself.

Readers across Judaism use Avot this way. Orthodox, Conservative and Reform communities all study it. Scholars study it too, as a record of how the rabbis taught. The sayings do not tell a reader what to believe. They give a question to carry through a day.