2,711 pages of Talmud. A gem a day.

One really powerful moment in the Torah is when our recently freed ancestors are standing around Mt. Sinai and they say, naaseh v’nishma, “We will do and we will hear.” There is a lot to unpack about this declaration, including how sometimes we have to do things before we can really understand them (like you can read a book about how to ice-skate but you won’t really get it till you’re on the ice). We often quote this line with pride, that we so trusted in god that we agreed to God’s terms without full understanding of what they would be. But today’s gem might be warning us not to agree without knowing – at least when it comes to people.

One who says to his wife: All vows that you will vow from now until I arrive from such and such a place are hereby ratified, has not said anything, i.e., the vows are not ratified. However, if he states that all vows that she will take until then are hereby nullified, Rabbi Eliezer said: They are nullified, while the Rabbis say: They are not nullified.

Here, a man can’t agree to uphold his wife’s vow until he hears it. The daf seems to be teaching us a lesson when it comes to people: look before you leap/read before you sign/ (and a social media addition) read and watch to the end before you re-post.

(Are you re-posting this? Thanks.)

Do you ever replay conversations? Do you ever talk to yourself afterward? On our daf today, Ben Azzai has a moment where he regrets what he has argued.

The baraita adds a comment: Ben Azzai stated his response to hearing this discussion in this language: Woe [ḥaval] to you, ben Azzai, that you did not serve Rabbi Akiva properly.

I noticed two things, 1) that he calls himself out, and 2) that he uses 3rd person.

So, I did some research and learned a new word, (from The Free Dictionary)

illeism

the tendency in some individuals to refer to themselves in the third person. — illeist, n.

And I read some articles about people who tend to refer to themselves in 3rd person (Trump and Lebron James both do this, and this is probably the only sentence that has ever been written that puts them in the same category about anything).

While some pointed to illeism as a sign of narcissism or a mental disorder, there were also articles that talked about how 3rd person self-talk actually helps us to distance ourselves emotionally from what we are saying to ourselves.

“Ethan Kross, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, doesn’t believe speaking in third person deserves its bad rap. Kross studies self-talk, the introspective conversations we have with ourselves about ourselves. Through his research, Kross has found that people who don’t refer to themselves in the first person during self-talk have an easier time dealing with stressful situations. Basically, treating ourselves as though we’re other people can change how we think, feel and behave.”

We often give better advice to other people than we give ourselves. We are more positive, we pump them up more – and so treating ourselves, in moments of stress, as a third person might be a good thing.

It reminds me of “Love your neighbor as yourself.” While we often talk about how this teaches us to treat our neighbors – it also teaches us how to treat ourselves. Would you verbally beat someone else up for making a comment that wasn’t perfect? Would you talk to someone else in the same harsh manner you talk to yourself? Would you judge them the way you judge yourself?

Maybe a bit of illeism is a good thing. We can treat ourselves at least as kindly as we treat other people.

The Gemara has been discussing if it’s really possible for a man to nullify a woman’s vows without having heard them. So, Rami bar Hama asks the next logical question: What if he is deaf?

Rami bar Ḥama asks: With regard to a deaf man, what is the halakha with regard to his nullifying vows for his wife? If you say that a husband who is not deaf can nullify a vow without hearing it, then perhaps this is because he is capable of hearing. . . Or perhaps the phrase “and her husband hears it” (Numbers 30:8) does not mean that hearing is indispensable to the nullification of a vow, so that even a deaf man can nullify his wife’s vows.

So, I am going to give away the ending. Rava rules that, even though a man who is capable of hearing can nullify her vow WITHOUT hearing it, a deaf man cannot nullify her vow. Offended? Me too.

Yet . . .

The reason I chose this as my gem is that I appreciate that the rabbis are asking a question that we should all be asking whenever we make a rule or put together a program or get-together. How will those with disability be able to participate? Or not? How can I make sure people with disability are included in community? In our conversations?

Here, we see that not everything can become accommodating, but everything can be questioned and challenged to be MORE accommodating.

Today introduces us to a Mishna that reemphasizes how the rabbis considered vows to be a bad thing.

MISHNA:The practice of Torah scholars is to ensure that a woman about to be married should not be encumbered by any vows. A father, before his daughter would leave him through marriage, would say to her: All vows that you vowed in my house are hereby nullified. And similarly, the husband, before she would enter his jurisdiction, i.e., while they were still betrothed, would say to her: All vows that you vowed before you entered my jurisdiction are hereby nullified.

Here, we see that educated people would nullify all the vows that a young woman made before she left home. We also see that her husband would nullify all vows before she entered the house. So, she would start with a clean slate.

The rest of the daf discusses if a man can nullify a woman’s vows without having heard them. But I like the idea that, even if he cannot, he can make this statement so that, whenever he DOES hear the vow, it will be nullified because it shows that, even if a vow can be seen as a positive idea, they still would rather it be annulled.

Why is this my gem?

I think about the ways we mould ourselves to be who we need to be/are expected to be in our homes of origin and how we have this opportunity when we leave home to figure out who we are without those pressures. I think about how we play different (and similar) roles in our families of choice – or even when we are just living on our own. This is my gem because it’s a starting over. It’s a moment where she has the opportunity to do things differently, to see things anew. It’s pretty powerful. And, she gets to reassess who and what she needs and wants to be without any judgement by her home or origin or her new partner about what she should or should not change.

We learned in Yevamot 87b that, “silence is considered like an admission.” In Shabbat 33a we learned, “Rav Naḥman bar Yitzḥak said: Even one who hears vulgar speech and is silent is punished, as it is stated: “He that is abhorred of the Lord shall fall therein,” even if he himself does not speak at all.” Which taught us that silence is like ascent. So, today’s daf asks if silence is always an agreement:

A dilemma was raised before the Sages: Is a husband’s divorce of his wife after she took a vow considered like silence, or is it considered like ratification of the vow?

In a normal situation, once the husband knows what his wife has sworn, he can either object immediately and nullify her vow, or he can remain silent, which is consent, or ratification of her vow.

But, what if he divorces her? Is he protesting her vow? If so, he should have nullified it before leaving her, because after a divorce you have no say over what your ex-wife does. Is he accenting? If so, then silence is ascent . . . but then why does the Mishna teach: If she took a vow as a betrothed woman and then was divorced on the same day, and she was again betrothed on the same day to another man, or even to one hundred men, one after the other, on a single day, her father and her last husband nullify her vows.

While silence is usually ascent, here we see that a man calling off the engagement shows that he does not agree with her actions . . . or at least doesn’t care enough to nullify or ratify before he leaves her.

(But lucky girl who has 100 other suitors waiting for her. Thank you, next.)

So, we are still talking about women who are betrothed and who gets to annul their vows (yay! can somebody please annul that yay?). Within this conversation we read:

With regard to a grown woman, why do I need a twelve-month waiting period before her betrothed is obligated to marry her? For a grown woman, thirty days suffice for her to prepare what she needs for her marriage after she is betrothed.

As someone who has the privilege to preside at weddings, this little nugget stuck out to me. People are marrying later and later, especially educated people, and especially non-orthodox Jews. There used to be a stigma around having a big wedding for an older bride (yes, it always had to do with the bride, ugh). But why? Wouldn’t it be a miraculous feeling? And even for a second wedding – to find love again? Someone you want to spend your life with?

Finding love at any time should be celebrated. It can be a huge celebration with everyone you know, or just the two of you and the officiant. But, more than anything, it should be what you want it to be. If the couple wants a year to plan – so be it. If they can’t wait another minute – that’s good too.

Enjoy this graph of the Median Age at First Marriage by Educational Attainment, 2020 (PS, the averages have gone up over a year since this graph was made!)

Source: NCFMR analyses of American Community Survey 1-year estimates (IPUMS USA University of Minnesota, http://www.ipums.org), 2020

Today’s daf discusses the question of, if a woman makes a vow twice, dies it need to be nullified twice? What if she is told it is ratified and annulled? Or annulled just once?

The Gemara answers: Come and hear that which Rava said with regard to one who said: I take an oath that I will not eat, I take an oath that I will not eat: If a halakhic authority was requested to dissolve the first oath and dissolved it, the second oath goes into effect for him. Similarly, the second ratification goes into effect. Rabba further asks: If he said to her: The vow is ratified for you and nullified for you, and the ratification will not take effect unless the nullification takes effect, what is the halakha?

What this has me thinking about are the promises we make to others. How, when we repeat those promises they may take on more depth. What are the promises we make to our partners? How do they change or evolve over time? What are vows we nullify? completely or partially? What are ones we ratify again and again? What are the promises we make to our children? Our parents? How do they change and evolve? When is a halakhic authority necessary?

We are still discussing what happens when a betrothed woman makes a vow. Yesterday, we learned that both her father and her soon-to-be-husband must nullify her vow. Today, the questions is: What if one of these men nullify her vow but the other one dies before nullifying it? Does the vow stay in tact? Does the surviving man have complete authority now?

If the father dies, the authority over her vows does not revert to the husband, i.e., a young woman’s betrothed cannot nullify her vows alone, without the father. If her husband heard the vow and nullified it for her, and the father did not manage to hear of the vow before the husband died, this is what we learned in the mishna: If the husband dies, the authority reverts to the father.

If her husband heard and nullified the vow for her, and the father did not manage to hear of the vow before he died, the husband cannot nullify it, although she no longer has a father, as the husband can nullify vows only in partnership with the father.

So, if her father dies without nullifying, the husband CANNOT nullify. However if the husband dies the father CAN nullify the vow.

This makes me question why. Is it because she can (and likely will) remarry, but you only get one father? Is it that she is likely quite young? Is it that her father had complete authority until she became engaged?

And it makes me wonder at the silence. Did these men dies before they could nullify, or die refusing to nullify?

And it makes me wonder at that battle between trying to please your family of origin and your new family. When you can’t please both – who do you chose?

Well, not the best daf to end the New Year with…

MISHNA: With regard to a betrothed young woman, her father and her husband together nullify her vows. If the father nullified her vow and the husband did not nullify it, or if the husband nullified it and the father did not nullify it, then the vow is not nullified. And needless to say, it is not nullified if one of them ratified the vow.

Ugh. Patriarchy.

So, here the daf is discussing this limbo time where a woman is engaged and therefor considered in most ways to be married, but she is still in her fathers house. So, who gets to control her? Both men!

The only gem I really pull from this is how the time when one is engaged is a very interesting time. Often when couples are planning their weddings there is this pull between the parents wanting to throw the last party for the kid and the person marrying wanting to throw their first get-together as a new family. It’s a strange time when you’re somewhat between families.

Having both your dad and your soon-to-be-husband make decisions for you? Sounds terrible. But, having two men who love and care for you? Sounds wonderful.

Lots of familiar stories finish out today’s Mishna including a wife who takes everything her husband says literally (a la Amelia Badelia) and ends up breaking a gourd over a rabbis head. And this one I will share as it’s a horrible . . . and funny.

The Gemara relates: There was a certain person who said to his wife: Benefiting from me is konam for you until you show some beautiful [yafeh] part of you to Rabbi Yishmael, son of Rabbi Yosei. Rabbi Yishmael attempted to find something beautiful about the woman.

Clearly, this guy thinks his wife is repulsive and is challenging Rabbi Yishmael to find something beautiful about her. (You should know that he had a reputaiton for doing great makeovers for women: And they brought her into Rabbi Yishmael’s house and he beautified her.)

He said to his students: Perhaps her head is beautiful? They said to him: It is round [segalgal]. Perhaps her hair is beautiful? They replied: Her hair resembles stalks of flax. Perhaps her eyes are beautiful? They are narrow [terutot]. Perhaps her ears are beautiful? They are double in size. Perhaps her nose is beautiful? It is stubby. Perhaps her lips are beautiful? They are thick. Perhaps her neck is beautiful? It is low and short. Perhaps her stomach is beautiful? It is swollen. Perhaps her feet are beautiful? They are as wide as a goose’s. Perhaps her name is beautiful? Her name is Likhlukhit. He said to them: It is fitting [yafeh] that she is called by the name Likhlukhit, as she is dirty [melukhlekhet] with blemishes, and he permitted her to benefit from her husband, because she did have one beautiful feature, her fitting name.

So, here is our gem. He finds that her name suits her. But I like it because you read it and realize how much beauty standards have changed. Flaxen hair and big lips are considered beautiful today. But not for them.

Is it all shallow? Yes.