On September 11, 1923, Rabbi Moshe Menachem Mendel Spivak commenced the first program to read a page of the Talmud each day, allowing completion of the full text in a cycle which lasts a little more than seven years. The program is designed to do several things. First, allow people who have never been exposed to the Talmud to learn it. Second, to provide an opportunity for Jewish unity because people engaged in the study know that Jews throughout the Jewish world are reading the same page. And along with the study, allow those who participate to experience communal joy at the accomplishment of completing a tractate, or treatise—one of the subdivisions of the Talmud—with a celebration, raising a glass of schnapps or other beverage to toast the occasion.
Our little Daf Yomi (page of the day) group completed the most recent tractate for study, which has the Hebrew title, Sh’vu’ot, “Oaths.” It was a difficult tractate as it seemingly involved much study of things of little or no use to the modern community—Jews or anyone else.
And yet, on deeper reflection, oaths remain important in most modern societies. If one is called as a witness to a trial in the USA, a person will be asked to swear to tell the truth. There are workarounds for those who do not accept the Bible or are unwilling to invoke a deity. But when you think about it, those workarounds are really the essence of the Talmudic process. The Talmud is all about finding ways to adapt the requirements of the Torah and the rest of the Bible to the circumstances of the day.
If the witness is determined to have testified unfaithfully, there are consequences. While flogging is less common in modern societies than it once was, a deceitful witness can be fined or even charged with a crime and be imprisoned. One passage we found somewhat amusing was the observation that the technique of grabbing a man by his testicles until he tells the truth was not deemed acceptable. But those familiar with etymology might know that that is precisely how the word testimony comes to us, apparently in Roman courts, men were required to swear by placing their hand on their testes.
We may not think about them as oaths, but our signatures on contracts are nevertheless the attestation that we are telling the truth about our willingness to fulfill the contract. And again, there are consequences for violating those obligations in every society.
The subject may not have been the most exciting or entertaining of those we have taken up before, but they were well worth our attention. We find that the customs of one generation may have changed to the next, but perhaps the operative notion is “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
2 Responses
I think your analogy is very apt! Your other comments would require me to get off my duff (so to speak), so maybe some other time–or maybe another reader will chime in!
Sounds like a world-wide Torah book club. About testimony, when did the bible replace balls? In the absence of a bible, what do other cultures “swear on” ? Maybe testicles are the great leveler, shared by all of us (males) –would a woman swear on some man’s balls? husband, for example?