Menachot 68 and 69 - The Elephant in the Restroom

0:00Hey there, and welcome back to Take One, the podcast that brings you just one fragrant page of Talmud each day. Now look, I share my home with a very precocious 12-year-old Talmud enthusiast, and though he is genuinely and impressively interested in the finer points of Halacha or Jewish law, he's also a 12-year-old boy, which means that whenever the Talmud mentions poop, he is overjoyed. And the Talmud mentions poop, as we know, quite a bit, like in today's pages, Manachot 68 and 69. The rabbis are discussing tools, which play an important part in the temple work. You know, all those sacred shovels we have been reading about for weeks now. We know that most tools are susceptible to become ritually impure, should they come into contact,

1:03say, with a dead body, tools made for metal, or wood, or bone, or pottery. Both according to the Torah and according to the rabbis can become defiled, and therefore would need to be purified before they are used again. But on today's stuff, we learned that there are three categories of utensils that can absolutely never, ever become ritually defiled, no matter what they touch. Utensils made of stone, utensils made of earth that was not fully baked and refined, and utensils involving, you guessed it, poop. What does that mean? I will let Rabbi Rami Barchama explain. Rami Barchama raises yet another dilemma, in the case of an elephant that swallowed an Egyptian wicker basket and excreted it, intact along with its waist. What is the halaha? The Gammara asks, with regard to what matter was this dilemma raised. At first blush, this story may seem strange, maybe even a little bit silly. Okay, can we consider a utensil that was swallowed by an elephant and

2:09then pooped out whole to be technically not ever susceptible to ritual impurity? But if you read another famous tamudic story, having to do with the purity of tools and utensils, you will see this one, the one about the pooping elephant, in a brand new light. Let's read that other story. It comes to us from Tractate Yoma, maybe my own personal favorite Tractate in the entire Talmud. And it's a terrifying tale. Here goes. The sage is taught in the Tasefta. An incident occurred where there were two priests who were equal as they were running and ascending the ramp. They were hurrying, you see, to perform the sacred service in the temple. One of them, the Talmud continues, one of them reached the four qubits before his colleague, who then, out of anger, took a knife and stabbed him in the heart. The two priests were so competitive, they both so

3:10eagerly wanted to be the one who gets to perform the sacred service so that the loser was so irate and enraged she took out a knife and stabbed his competitor in the heart with it. Terrifying, but the truly terrifying part comes next, the Talmud continues. The father of the boy, i.e. the young priest who was stabbed, came and found that he was still convulsing. He said, may my son's death be an atonement for you, but my son is still convulsing and has not yet died and is such the knife which is in his body has not become ritually impure through contact with the corpse. If you remove it promptly, it will still be pure for future use. The Tehsefta comments, this incident comes to teach you that the ritual purity of utensils was of more concern to them than the shedding of blood. Even the boy's father voiced more concern over the purity of the knife than over the death of his child. And similarly, it says, quote, furthermore, Minasha spilled innocent blood very much till he had filled Jerusalem

4:10from one end to another, 2nd King's 2116, which shows that in his day as well, people paid little attention to bloodshed. The rabbis are issuing a clear warning here, never ever become the sort of people who care more about utensils, about being the ones who have the correct tools and get to perform the correct functions and merit everyone's adoration and respect, then they do about other human beings. Don't, in other words, ever become so obsessed with whether you could do something that you forget to ask if you should do it to begin with or meditate on its larger meaning and purpose. And tools are a perfect metaphor for that dark mindset because tools tend to make us focus on the utilitarian function. If we hold a powerful hammer, we run the risk of eventually seeing everything as a nail. Enter Rami Bahramah. His question is a fair halakhic anundrum, and if you're interested, crack open today's death for more insight on the answer,

5:12but it's also, in a sense, abiding in hilarious bit of satire. Hey guys, he seems to be saying, you know how obsessed we sometimes get with our rules and with the purity of our tools, we'll guess one, an elephant could poop out an Egyptian wicker basket and it would be perfectly pure, but also, you know, terribly smelly. Let us keep that elephant in mind. The next time we become so concerned about our utensils and our tools that we forget what it was that they were meant to help us do to begin with. This has been Take One. If you enjoy the show and I hope that you do, you are really going to love the new-ish book by me called How the Thomas Could Change Your Life, surprisingly modern advice

6:16from a very old book. You can order it now at your local bookstore or directly from the publisher just by clicking the link in this here podcast description or, you know, through that big online store whose logo is a smile. Please go and rate and review Take One on Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to our weekly newsletter at tabletm.ag slash Take One newsletter. Take One is a tablet studio's production. The show is hosted by Mealia, Leiboritz, our executive producer is Josh Cross and the show is produced and edited by Josh, as well as by Quinn Wall. For more information, go to tabletmag.com slash take one or email us at podcasts at tabletmag.com. I hope we have made your day a little bit more tumbledic.