Talmudic debates rarely have agreed outcomes. The laws derived from the debates follow a majority rule principle that is so engrained in the Talmud that a majority of scholars can even overrule a heavenly decree. In today’s Daf this principle of the Rabbis overruling heaven comes into play as we resolve disputes between the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai. Recall that Chapter eight concerns the disputes between the two schools about the rules of meals. At the end of yesterday’s Daf, we read that a heavenly voice came and declared that the law always follows the House of Hillel. Today’s Daf opens with Rabbi Yehoshua saying we do not pay heed to heavenly voices. I am unaware of any other religion that says we should ignore messengers from God if we do not agree with their conclusions. 

The idea that a majority of scholars can overrule heaven comes from another tractate of the Talmud. The biblical authority comes from Deuteronomy 23:12 (“It is not in the heavens, that you should say, ‘Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?'”). Jewish law must be determined by human authorities following the guidelines given to Moses at Sinai. When there is not unanimous consensus, the law follows the majority, not messengers from heaven. 

Today’s Daf dives very much into the details of ritual purity and impurity, which are mind boggling to explain why we follow the school of Hillel, instead of the School of Shammai. I previewed these rules at a 100,000 foot level in an earlier post. I don’t intend to go into the details of those debates as we will cover those rules in depth in a later tractate. Just know that the rules are highly fact-specific and culturally specific to Babylonia in the 6th Century of the Common Era. For instance, in today’s Daf, one of the debates turns on the shape of the lip of a wine cup. I suppose that in those days, everyone understood what the lip of a wine cup looked like. Today, in modern America, we have a variety of vessels for drinking and dispensing wine, including aluminum cans. Of course, if we want to understand the laws of ritual purity and impurity for aluminum cans of wine, we will have to analogize to the rules for wine vessels in the Talmud. I promise that as we proceed we will consider those rules in depth.  

While I will not go into detail about today’s debates, today’s Daf gets really complicated primarily because of two rules that I should point out. First, there are levels of impurity and generally the more attenuated from the original impurity, the lower the level of impurity. However, liquids which come into contact with any level of impurity become rishon, which is an intermediate level of impurity, even if the object which made them impure was a lower level of impurity. Second, there is a rabbinic (not biblical) rule, that liquids transmit impurity to utensils. These two complicating factors make the debates very difficult to follow. The rules are so complicated that we learn in today’s Daf that “it is forbidden to use a waiter who is an ignoramous.” Such a waiter could inadvertently cause a transgression. The next time you are waited on by a server, make sure and inquire as to their level of Talmud learning before eating or drinking anything. 

One final note about today’s Daf. Towards the end we learn that in a particular dispute, we follow the school of Hillel because Hillel’s ruling follows the popular custom of the day. I am confused about this determination because customs change over time and across geographies. This implies that Jewish law should also change over time and geography as customs change. Somehow, this idea has been lost in traditional observant Judaism.