What's the difference between Torah, Tanakh, Talmud, Mishnah, Gemara and Midrash?

Why are there so many Jewish books? What's the difference between Torah, Tanakh, Talmud, Mishnah, Gemara and Midrash? Will memes be added to the canon in the future? In this episode, Shoshana explains all to Tami who's ashamed to admit she had never seen a page of Talmud before they recorded this episode. Plus, a Jewish Facebook weighs in on whether or not a dating app profile picture has been made using AI. 

This episode was filmed and edited by Alleyway Productions 

Watch it on YouTube

The vocalist in the theme song is Sara Yael 

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Transcript

Cold Open And Big Questions

SPEAKER_00 0:00

A shame to ask, ashamed to admit, got dewy, dewy questions. This is it, this is it. Why is wicked simple or unsure how to ask? We'll open up the books, the ark will open up your cynical heart. No such a thing as a dumb question. Okay, that's mostly true. Tammy and Shashan are here for you. Ashamed to admit.

New Studio And Listener Feedback

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Ashamed to ask. It's everything you didn't get in Jewish studies class. Hello everyone. Welcome back to Ashamed to Admit Again. Brought to you by the Jewish Independent. I am Shoshana Gottlieb Becker.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

And I'm Tammy Sussman. Nice. Oh, there's a camera there too. I think that's my camera. Sorry. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

I was like, why are you looking at the camera?

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Hang on, that's my camera, right? Yeah, good. Okay. We'll keep all the time.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

We're glad we've established that. We're in a new space. We found a new home again.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

So it's orientation day for us today.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

And it's our 10th episode. Is it? Congratulations, muzzletum.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

Congrats, everyone. How does it feel? 10 episodes is crazy. That's established. That's legit. Yeah, that's legit. You haven't gone to the gin dependent and been like, I need a new co-host. I'm proud of us.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

I'm proud of you, especially.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

I want to know about the feedback you've been getting getting. Yeah, both good and bad.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

So I I've been told that they want longer episodes. They, the people, longer episodes. Okay. So we can really dive in and like get into meaty.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Meaty the meaty things. You know. Um, I keep getting the same piece of feedback. And that is it's I love it. It's amazing. I'm learning so much. And then I say, because I'm a teacher, I say, Well, what have you been learning? And they say, I couldn't tell you. I have forgotten everything you've ever said. And so I do fear that most of our listeners may have ADHD, or kind of like you, don't listen when I talk.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

I do listen. I just every so often I just zone out a little bit. That's interesting. I've been told that we have too much banter at the start of an episode. I've been told There's no such thing. No, I've been told we don't have enough banter. This is like peak Jewish community.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

When you try to please everyone, you please no one. Exactly. And that's why my my thesis in life, like my guiding light, is just I make myself laugh. I please myself.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

We're not really pleasing the boomers, though. They think we talk too fast.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

That that I I have gotten not because of this podcast, just because of my my general candor and speed. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Um on the topic of your general candor and speed, otherwise known as your Riz. Um, some of the feedback I've been getting.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

I don't think that's what Riz means.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

What does Riz mean? Charisma. Yeah. And that that comes into it. Your speed and your candor. That's part of your Riz.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

I can agree to disagree on that one. I don't know what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_01 3:18

Um, I'll probably cut that anyway. So other things.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

I hate that I hate that you have the editorial power that you're like, oh, I've made a mistake. Cut it. Shoshana's made a mistake. I'll play it three times. Roll the clips.

SPEAKER_01 3:31

I cut a lot of your mistakes. Um where were we? Feedback. A lot of people have been telling me that they have a crush on you. Who is it? Not telling you. Who is it? People asking me things about you. They think that now that I have like this proximity to a celebrity, that they can ask me questions. Someone asked me where your sunglasses were from.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

And I'm not sure what sunglasses.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

They're kind of hexagonal.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

Oh, okay. So those are from a store called Carolina Lemake in Israel. That it's an Israeli brand.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Is it?

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Uh, I have two uh two pairs of the same shape. Okay. I love them. They are so cool. I convinced when I like I was in Israel in December, I convinced my coworker to get the same pair. And so now we both have them.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

I'm kind of mad at you that you've told her where they're from because I was like, if you I don't believe in gatekeeping. If but I was like, if you want to know, you reach out to Shoshana. I'm not her freaking agent.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

You if you wanted to be, you probably could be.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

The only other important bit of feedback, yes, which is important to mention here. Oh, yeah. Because you've been sitting on this for a while.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

I'm still so mad at it.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Is my Hebrew teacher, my old Hebrew teacher from high school, she wrote to me.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

She And you're you're saying this because you know that she's not listening anymore.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

She does not listen anymore because of one, too much vocal fry.

SPEAKER_02 4:56

That's on me, I think.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

And two, because you mispronounce the word according to her Minhametsah. She said it's Minhametsah.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

And she's fucking wrong.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

She's wrong.

SPEAKER_02 5:09

It's minhametzar with a raish at the end. And if you want me to point you in the direction of a Sidor to figure that out, I'll do it. I'm like, I'm still angry at that. I was filthy when you sent me that text.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

The thing is, I was also really disappointed in her because she was actually the nicest Hebrew teacher that I ever had.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Was she also the dumbest? Did she know what she was talking about?

SPEAKER_01 5:35

It didn't matter because the Hebrew teachers from my generation at the modern Orthodox High School that I went to.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

It was just an Israeli who kind of could handle sitting in a classroom with children for an extended amount of time.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

And so like their army general or commander, whatever, was like, you need to take some time off. Go teach Hebrew in Sydney, Australia. And that's where they came to traumatize us.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

I can't I only had very good teachers, I'm not gonna lie. Yeah. I I had pretty solid teachers. All right. Um, but I when I got that message from you, because you forwarded it to me because we're best friends and we talk all the time. Um I you can say whatever you want about my voice, the way I look, the way I don't care about you. But when you tell me that I get like information wrong that I've gotten right, I get I was livid. I was so mad at that lady.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

You were I was and I found your anger so funny.

SPEAKER_02 6:39

And I like I'm still mad.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Well now you've got it off your chest.

SPEAKER_02 6:43

It's still on there, it's it's still sitting right here. I'll I will remain angry at her forever.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 6:49

I don't even know who I don't even know who you are, but you suck.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

I'm not gonna mention her name, but now the relationship. The relationship is now well and truly over.

SPEAKER_02 7:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Okay, you mentioned your Hebrew teachers at your you'd say Orthodox high school.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

And primary school.

Jewish Studies Classes Compared

SPEAKER_01 7:08

And primary school. Yeah. Um, you loved them. You're pretty good. So I'm assuming in high school you had Hebrew, you had Jewish studies, Jewish history.

SPEAKER_02 7:19

So the high school I went to is different to the one that you went to, I'm assuming. Because when you went to your Jewish studies classes, you went to a single class called Jewish Studies. Yes. And they taught you everything there is to know about the Jewish world in approximately five periods, a fortnight or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 7:39

Potentially.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

Yeah. So the school I went to had Khumash class, which is the five books. Okay. You had Navi class, which was the prophet stories. So that's things like King David, King Solomon, all of that stuff. You had a class on Jewish law. You had a class at one point we had a class on like the Megillot, so Esther and Ruth. We had a class on Chasid, so like um Jewish mysticism. Wow. We had so we had, and then we had Jewish history as well. So we had lots of And Hebrew. And also then our language was modern Hebrew, yeah. Uh so we had lots of different we broke them down into the different subjects because we spent fifty approximately 50% of our time studying Jewish studies.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Wow. Yeah. It's a miracle that you came out so smart in other areas of your life.

SPEAKER_02 8:28

I don't know. I think that when you're doing it properly, the Jewish study sort of aids you in the other areas of your life in terms of critical thinking, how to read a story, how to analyze a story. A lot of the I mean, we weren't really doing a lot of like heavy-hitting Talmwood, but to understand Jewish law, you have to have and also a different kind of analytical mind to understand like the law processes and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Right. At some point in high school, there was a subject that they called Tanakh.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:02

And to this day, I still do not know what Tanakh means.

Tanakh Defined Torah Prophets Writings

SPEAKER_02 9:06

So you want to like get into it? I do. Okay. Wait, so we're starting with Tanakh?

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Well, we don't have to. Today's episode is called Jewish Bookshelf because Jewish bookshelf. For many episodes, when you're explaining something to me, you've said, oh, we should do an episode on all the books.

SPEAKER_02 9:25

That would take a really long time. Okay. Right. But we can start with Tanakh. Okay. Tanakh's my favorite book of all time.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

If you are currently watching the screen, I'm holding it to camera.

SPEAKER_01 9:37

So that is a book.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

This is a Tanakh.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

It's a Tanakh. So Tanakh is singular, not plural.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Yeah.

unknown 9:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

A Tanakh is.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

So the Tanakh is kind of the central book. It's made up of three individual books. And I'm putting books in inverted commas because it's three different collections of books. Oh. So Tanakh is an acronym. It stands for Torah Naviim Kutzovim. And so when you take those letters and you put them together, it's Tanakh. The Torah, I hope you know.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

I've I've as if you've heard of it. I have heard of the Torah.

SPEAKER_02 10:12

Okay. Do you want to tell us a bit about the Torah?

SPEAKER_01 10:15

The Torah is the one that gets for those of you who are listening and not watching, I'm making the display. I'm gesturing with my hands of like opening and closing the scroll. The Torah is the one that is in the synagogue that has a pretty dress around it, and you can't drop it in synagogue. Yes. Otherwise, you get have bad sex for seven years. So that's a Torah. Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:43

So that's the when it's written in that form, it's called a Torah. Yeah. Uh when it's written in a book form, it's often called a Khumash or a Khumish if you have a different accent. So those are synonymous. And it's the five books of Moses. So it's made up of those five books. And then those five books are broken down further by. You're good? You reach your sorry.

SPEAKER_01 11:02

I interrupted, I had to reach for my my beverage.

SPEAKER_02 11:05

So those five books are then further broken down, and you have like weekly Torah portions, and yeah. So you've got so that's the Torah.

SPEAKER_01 11:14

Okay. So whatever's written in the physical Torah, the same text is in a Khumash. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

Yeah, and a Khomash also usually has extra analysis at the bottom and commentaries.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

Um, our friend Rashi is pretty much printed in almost every Khomash you'll find underneath the Torah text. It'll also have Rashi because you have to kind of learn them hand in hand. Okay. Um the Torah starts with Genesis. And then so it goes Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Can you say those again slower for the boomers?

SPEAKER_02 11:48

Sure. Genesis. Yeah. In Hebrew is Baratiat. Yeah. Exodus, which is Shemot, Leviticus, Vyikra, Numbers, Bamidbar, and Deuteronomy, which is Devarim. Okay. It starts with Genesis, so that's I describe it like the mythology of the Jewish people and the world at large. Then Shemot is the uh the genesis of the Jewish nation. Okay. Right? Us coming out of Egypt, getting the Torah, kind of building up as a nation. And then we skip a few books, other stuff happens when we're in the desert. It ends right as we're about to enter the land of Israel. Okay. Moses dies. Spoiler alert. Literally in the last chapter of the Torah. He dies, and the people are entering the land. Okay. Torah ends. The sequel picks up in Neveim, which is prophets, uh-huh. In the book of Joshua. So it starts as we enter the land and it turns into a history, kind of. And so it's us settling in the land and conquering the land. It goes to the period of the judges, Shoftim, and that's when you get stories like Samson and Delilah come from there. If you've heard of Devorah, she's a really famous judge as well. Yeah. It moves into stories about King Saul, King David, King Solomon, and then the kings that come after that as the kingdom splits into Judah and Israel. Okay. Then it goes from and then and then the pro so that's the first half of prophets. And then you've got the latter half of prophets, and that is prophecy, actual prophets. And so it's prophets who are talking about things God's told them about the Jews leaving the land and coming back and the land being conquered and we have to do the right thing, otherwise we'll lose what God has given us and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Okay, I'm ashamed to ask this. Okay. When you mean prophecy, do you mean like making predictions about the future? The word of God that they have been given. Okay, that they need to impart that they spread. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

The prophets, the names that you might be familiar with are names like Ezekiel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, those are all prophets. One is also a bullfrog.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

I was also gonna say their names for um, like they're also Bogan names these days.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

It's or it's really like Christian America. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

Yeah, or if you're in Australia, it's Bogan names, or it is Christian, yeah, like boy bands. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

And then the other name that's really famous from the latter half of Prophets is Jonah. So he's one of the minor prophets. Jonah and the whale? Yeah. So that story happens in in Prophets. Okay. Then, so that's Navim. That's like the whole book. And then Ketuvim is it just means the writings, which I love that they had all of these core names, and then they're like, what do we call the rest of the writings?

SPEAKER_00 14:53

The writings.

SPEAKER_02 14:55

And so you've got a mixture of history, poetry, storytelling, things like that. That's where you get psalms in Ketovim. It's where you get Esther, Ruth, stories about Daniel, Daniel on the lion's dens. Yeah. It's where you get Job, the guy whose life sucks. It's where you get Proverbs, um, all of that kind of stuff. Uh yeah. So that's Tanakh. And that's kind of what the Torah is what our laws are based out of. We don't really get laws as far as I know from. We get some, but not the majority of our laws come from the Torah portion. And then the rest is sort of more of a history of the people.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Okay, so before we move on, just to recap, you mentioned the word Tanakh, and Tanakh is this book for the people watching. I'm pointing to a book called the Koran Tanakh, not to be confused with the Korean Tanakh. And inside the Tanakh, there are three collections. Yes. And the Torah is not in that book.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

Yeah, so the Torah is the first book of Tanakh. Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

Okay. Got it. Now, what's the second collection in the Tanakh?

SPEAKER_02 16:08

Oh, okay. And then guess what the third one is?

SPEAKER_01 16:13

The writings. Right. I thought all of those were in the Torah.

SPEAKER_02 16:18

No, no, no, no. So those that's that's what I was like. When the Torah ends at the Jews entering the land, and then that next compendium is the history, and then the history kind of stops, and then it becomes this more eclectic collection. The Song of Solomon or the Song of Songs is also in Kutzovim.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

Okay. So it's all inside one really quite dense book. Yep. Alright. So then there are other things like Gemara, or are we not ready for that yet? Am I jumping the gun? No, it's are we ever ready for Gemara? Well, I don't know. What's the next logical step to talk about?

Oral Torah And Why It Was Written

SPEAKER_02 16:55

So the original step is actually taking a step back. Um and stepping onto Mount Sinai, Har Sinai, when the Jews receive the Torah. And religious Jews believe that Moses goes up Mount Sinai. He receives the Ten Commandments, and at the same time, he receives the whole Torah. Like he is on Har Sinai for 40 days copying down what God is telling him to write in the Torah. Yeah. At the same time, he is given what we know as the oral law. So there's actually on Harsenai, we believe there's two Torahs given. It's called the Torah Shabihtav, the written Torah, and the Torah She Balpair, the Oral Torah. And they kind of come hand in hand. The Oral Torah explains things from the written Torah, it adds more detail, things like that. But the number one rule is that it shouldn't be written down. Oh. So it's not written down for a long time. It's discussed and it's talked about. And as Israelites and Jewish people sort of spread throughout Israel and they establish their own learning houses, the way that you teach Torah might change slightly to the tradition and that of how I teach it. And so you've got that kind of separation. And I think in around the year like 200 CE or so, there's a guy named Yehuda Hanasi, maybe a bit earlier than that. And he sees diasporas happening. And you know, and the it's a tumultuous time in the land, people are being kicked down and exiled, all of these things. And he foresees a future that if we keep it as an oral tradition, we'll lose it. Because if we're traveling all over the world, if we're kicked out, if there's not this continuous, this continuum of teacher to student, teacher to student, something's gonna go wrong. So he says that it can be written down. And so we write it down in a really laconic, sparse way, using very few, as few words as possible to understand it. And that becomes known as the Mishnah. Have you heard of the Mishnah?

SPEAKER_01 18:52

I've heard, yeah. So the Mishnah is the writing down of the Gemara.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

No.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Right.

SPEAKER_02 18:59

Incorrect. The Mishnah is the writing down of the oral Torah. Yes. Okay. We haven't gotten to Gemara yet.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

So we've written down the Mishnah. Okay. That is the oral law.

SPEAKER_01 19:09

But isn't that not allowed if there was like only one, you only have one job, and that job is to not write it down.

SPEAKER_02 19:14

And I think this is kind of the thing about Judaism is that sometimes we do have to adapt when it calls for it. Because if it wasn't written down, who knows how it would have survived or what it would look like today?

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Oh no, I'm all for it. I'm all for writing a list. I I get very anxious when I'm ordering food at a restaurant and the service doesn't write it down. I can't remember.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

And they never do. It's always something one thing wrong.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

And I think that's a beautiful analogy for this.

SPEAKER_02 19:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

You know? Clearly.

Mishnah Gemara And The Talmud Page

SPEAKER_02 19:41

And this is and you the next time you're at a restaurant, you're like, hey, do you have a quick 20 minutes so I can play you a podcast? So you can go and get a pad of paper. Yeah. Um that's Mishnah. That's the Mishnah. The Mishnah is the oral law, the Torah is the written law. Um, and then what happens is, is you've got all of these discussions about the Mishnah that all of these different learning houses or Bhate Midrash are having. And then that gets compiled into the Gemara. So the Gemara is this, it spans space and time, and it is a commentary of rabbinic or Tamuric rabbis as they've been discussing the Mishnah and how it applies in different lives, and how they are discussing the intricacies of sort of pushing these laws to their limits. Okay. All of the hypotheticals. What happens, but what happens if the water bottle's green instead of blue? Does it still count? You know what I mean? And it's and it's rabbis responding to other rabbis, rabbis responding to rabbis who lived 30 years ago or 100 years ago, and having all of these sort of roundabout conversations.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Can you name drop some of these rabbis?

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Yeah, so you've got um, I've immediately forgotten every rabbi who's ever existed.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Maimonides.

SPEAKER_02 20:53

Comes later. Alright. This is more like sort of um Hilel and Shammai are really big in the Mishnah times. You've got rabbis like the Reshla Kish, Rabbi Yochanan. Okay, people like that.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

Never heard of I've heard of Hillel.

SPEAKER_02 21:07

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Yeah, Rabbi Yakiva.

SPEAKER_02 21:09

Huge one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Yakiva. Yeah, yeah. Rabbi Akiva.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

So that's that Talmud time.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

Um, and so then the Mishnah and the Gemara are sort of coupled together, and the two of them are called the Talmud when you're referring to them collectively. So the Talmud is the written law, like sorry, the oral law written down the Mishnah, plus this compendium of rabbis discussing it. And so the its structure, and maybe I can we can put this in the show notes because there's a couple of really good diagrams, but the structure of a page of Gemara is you've got a line of the Mishnah.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 21:41

Then you've got all of this discussion about it, and then you've got the next line of the Mishnah.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

And then you and then the discussion on that. So And then around the edges, you've got all of the commentaries of the rabbis, like Rashi, like, and like the medieval also ones, like that's all around the outside.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

And that All of that together is on one page of Talmud. Right. I've never seen a page of Talmud. I'll pull up. Do you want to see a photo? Do you want me? Well, I'll show you after. Show me after. I'm I feel ashamed that I went through all this. I mean, there is a chance that I was shown one and I was not concentrated. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:22

Yeah. Um, it's also why when you come across anti-Semites who are like, I've learnt the Talmud, and it says this about Jews, they haven't learned the Talmud. No. Because you're telling me that you've learned ancient Aramaic in order to read a book and then also understand all of the commentaries on the outside. No. And it's like a gazillion volumes in length. Right? It takes it takes seven. If you learn a page a day, it takes you seven years to complete.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

They've seen one carousel on an anti-Zionist's Instagram page.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

Or they've seen well, actually, the Talmud as an anti-Semitic weapon, like the weaponization of the Talmud, dates back to like 19th century Germany. And even before then, actually. It's based in old, like whenever they used to do book burnings in medieval Europe, it was always the Talmud. They were scared that it talked about Jesus too much, or that it said bad things about Jesus. Uh it mentions him a couple times, maybe. And then they would burn the book. And then there was a guy in the 19th century who wrote a book called The Talmudic Jew, where he kind of took quotes out of context or stretched quotes beyond their meaning and said, you know, there's the Jews have these secrets that they're not teaching us, and it's about how to rule the world and all of this horrible stuff. And then that was used as a basis for a lot of Nazi propaganda.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 23:45

And then now is used to today again on the internet of Jews in the Talmud and Candace Owens bullshit. Do you think we could get her on the podcast?

SPEAKER_01 23:55

No. Do you think we need to bleep out her name?

SPEAKER_02 23:58

Why?

SPEAKER_01 23:58

I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 23:59

You think she listens to us?

SPEAKER_01 24:00

No, I'm just saying there's like this argument that like you shouldn't platform people, you shouldn't even like mention their name, you know?

SPEAKER_02 24:09

You're like, no. No, I don't get it.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Alright. So let me just summarize. Summarize. Again. Hopefully this time I'll get it right. I'm not even getting it wrong on purpose. No, it's a lot to get your head around. Okay. So there's Tanakh. Within the Tanakh, there's three collections. One is Torah, one is prophets, one is the writings.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

Fantastic. We should do this every episode to prove that you're listening to me.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

Okay. Then there is Mishnah. And that is the writing down of the oral law. Because in Mount Sinai, Moses was given the Ten Commandments. Some people believe that the Torah was him writing down everything that God told him and an oral law. Yes. And then there's also Gemara, which is old, old, old rabbis like Hillel and Ko who are giving their interpretations of the oral.

SPEAKER_02 25:11

Sorry, Hillel's actually the more Mishnah than Tamud, but a Kiva.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 25:15

A new Akiva.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

A new Akiva. So they have their opinions. We've all got our opinions, and they've got some about the oral law that's been written down. Yep. So they have what they want to say. Yep. And then there's like rabbis in the future who have their opinions on the outside. On the outside in the borders. Yes. Okay. Of the document. Yeah. And that's where we're at now. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 25:40

That's actually a really good job.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

Thank you. Yeah. Any other books?

Talmud Misquotes And Antisemitic Myths

SPEAKER_02 25:44

Yeah, a few. So that, so the I'm trying to think of where to go next. Okay, so at the same time that the Mishnah's sort of been written down, there's this other subset of Mishnah that comes forward. That's not oral law, but it's midrash. Midrash is rabbinic storytelling. And so it's kind of like it's a secondary oral tradition that has been passed down that fills in the blanks of Torah stories to help us understand the story and the characters more.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

Aha. I got confused because it sounds similar to Mishnah.

SPEAKER_02 26:20

Everything sounds the same.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

Midrash.

SPEAKER_02 26:22

Yeah, midrash.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Different.

SPEAKER_02 26:24

Different. So midrash is more, or the midrash I'm talking about is rabbinic storytelling.

SPEAKER_01 26:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 26:32

So for example, when we first meet Avraham or Abraham in the Torah, it's kind of just out of nowhere. God comes and tells him to go and find this land that he's talking about. In the Mish, oh, sorry, in the Midrash. See, because I also get confused. It's a tongue twister. In the Midrash, it fills in the blanks. Well, how did God choose Avram? And how did Avram know that God existed in an idol worshipping society? And so it fills in the blanks by telling us new stories about those characters based on older traditions. Okay. A lot of people call midrash rabbinic fanfic.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 27:06

That's the way that they remember it.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:08

But it's it's storytelling for the sake of understanding the story.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 27:13

Um, so that so then that's also kind of working alongside Talmud and Mishnah.

SPEAKER_01 27:18

Do you think in a thousand years' time they'll also include me making as another subset and you will be included?

SPEAKER_02 27:26

Fingers crossed on that one. I think that the Yeah, so mid so Midrash as a creative practice of you know telling stories around these characters that we have is something that is also modern. So you can find modern collections of Midrash. There's a really famous one called Dir Shuni, and that is Midrash written by women. And it's like a really nice collection. I do recommend it. If anyone wants to read it.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

I do now.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

Um yeah, and then so and then I personally, when I write poetry or stories and things like that, a lot of that is also considered midrash because it's usually based in biblical storytelling.

SPEAKER_01 28:01

Who decides if it's midrash or not?

SPEAKER_02 28:03

Midrash, it's just the the name almost for the creative practice. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

I think you are doing midrash with your memes. I wasn't sometimes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:13

Some so sometimes it's midrash, and then sometimes it's what we might call mefaresh, which is which is rabbinic analysis of text. Okay. And that's people like our friend Rushi. And that's happening in medieval times a bit later. So every again, everything sounds the same because you've got Mishnah, Midrash, Mefaresh.

SPEAKER_01 28:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:31

It's a lot.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

I think we need a whole episode on Rushi because we didn't get time. And you've brought him up a few times since.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

Yeah, he's a cool guy.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Yeah. So is there anything else you want to say now before we move on? Yeah. Because we have to wrap up this episode.

Halacha Codified From Talmud To Today

SPEAKER_02 28:48

There's actually so much more. Yeah. Those are the basic books.

SPEAKER_01 28:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:51

After the Tumult is codified in like 500 CE, you move into the secondary stage of letter writing and people asking rabbis' opinions. And so we've got these compendiums of letters and opinions written. You also move on to people doing commentary on the Torah after that. And so you've got people writing books of halacha and sort of taking the Talmud and trying to, instead of like every lay person sorting through all of these crazy things, they distill all of the main headline mitzvot and commandments that we have to do and follow. And so you've got these books that are um yeah, like sort of trying to codify the Talmud further to make it easier to follow. Right. Here's the here's the here's what it says basically. Okay. The most famous one is called the Shulchan Aruch. I have heard that word before. Because I wrote it in our show notes, maybe.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

No, no, I remember it from school.

SPEAKER_02 29:45

So the Shulchan Aruch kind of is like, it's really hard for a regular person to read the Talmud. I'm gonna, and because remember, the Talmud is including all rabbis' opinions, and then at the end it says, and we follow this guy. And then after that, you've got all of these rabbis writing, you know, now that the Jews have moved to Greece, how do they follow these laws? And so you have rabbis writing letters answering questions. So it's taking all of the evolution of Halacha and Jewish law that's happened since the Talmud's been written, and saying how we follow it today.

SPEAKER_01 30:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 30:16

So you've got this whole period of rabbis who are analyzing the Torah, that's our friend's Rashi, codifying Torah and Talmud, like our friend Ram Bam and this guy Yosef Karo. And then anything after that is this sort of from the writing of the Shulchan Arach on is Shokan Aruch. Um writing from that on is what we call the Achronim, the later stage. And that's when you get things like philosophies coming into it, um, people writing in the modern day, dealing with the Holocaust, dealing with other kinds of persecution and writing what Jews should be doing, philosophy I said already. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:55

You meant you mentioned, sorry, the word halakha. Halacha. Halacha. Yes. And that means Jewish law. Yeah. And the laws come from all the Tanakh, Torah, Mishnah, or is it from where where do we get Jewish law from?

SPEAKER_02 31:14

So Jewish law, everything sort of kind of can be s traced back to the Torah, but it's but it evolves from there. So for example, the the law is don't cook a kid in its mother's milk. And then today we have on Pesach, I have to cover my kitchen in foil. Yeah. You know what I mean? Or today it's I can eat a cheeseburger if it's fake cheese at a kosher restaurant, but I can't eat a McDonald's cheeseburger. Yes. Right? And so it's kind of that is traced through the books through history because it goes from the kid in the mother's milk to the next step in the Mishnah and expanding on that. And then the Talmud again, the rabbis expanding on that. And then you've got today rabbis who are still writing laws about what do we do with lab-grown meat? How do we handle that? Well, let's go look in all of the old books that we've got so I can write new responses about it.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

Right. So you're saying halakha.

SPEAKER_02 32:12

Yeah. The first one's a h. Yeah. The second one's a h. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

Um, it evolves.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

It evolves, but it stems from those roots. And there's also this hierarchy of well, if a rabbi in the Talmud says it, a rabbi who comes after him can't really negate that thing. So that hierarchy plays into it. Um, but yeah, so and the the biggest an example again, one of the biggest hot topic issues right now in Israel, besides, you know, the inherent threat of Iran, um, is this new milk that they've started making? Like, and it's like lab grown lactose-free milk. Ooh. And is it milk, is it milk like milchic? Can I have it at the same time as meat? Or is it because it functions as a so it's all of these- I say yes. Thank you, rabbi. What do you say? I don't know enough about it because I'm not a rabbi. Um so it is always uh evolving, and there are always new books being written because the way that we interact with Halacha is constantly changing because the world around us is moving and changing at a rapid space. Pace. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

Do you want to say that again and I'll edit out?

SPEAKER_02 33:32

No, it's okay. You can I like to people to know that I am flawed.

Shame Or No Shame AI Dating Scam

SPEAKER_01 33:35

And sometimes I trip over my words after a long day at work. It's time for our favorite segment: Shame or No Shame, or Shame in the Steddel, or ach shame. We we've decided we're not gonna settle on a name. We're gonna be fluid. Shoshana sent me a screenshot from a Facebook group. We're not gonna tell you the name. We're not gonna tell you who posted this. All we're gonna tell you is that someone posted a screenshot of a dating app. A screenshot from a dating app. So for those of you who are listening, there's a picture of a man that looks like he's flying first class. It has his name, his age, it says just Jewish, not kosher, and 723 miles away. It says he's an engineer by profession, he's widowed, he's grounded, kind, sincere, built for depth, not drama, and ready to love again.

SPEAKER_02 34:45

And then this person has said You are missing an important aspect about you read the the thing, and then I'll say the very important aspect of the image.

SPEAKER_01 34:56

Yeah. It says, Hi all. My divorced cousin in London is conversing with a Jewish single quote in Sydney. We want to make sure it's not a scam. I'm posting photo here. Anybody with any advice, let me know. Thanks. Shoshana, what did I miss?

SPEAKER_02 35:16

The photo of the man that they've included is the most clearly AI photo you've ever seen. Because of name it. So Anonymous Member 208 says the following complete scam. No one posts a photo of themselves in a suit in business class, which I think is funny because people do that all the time. Yes. Also, if you look at the shape of the seats, the lighting, etc., it looks generated. And then if you look at the angle of the plane out the window, it's physically impossible. If you look at for some reason, the screen on the back of the seat looks like it's come out of 1953. Yes. It's got the chunkiest tray you've ever seen that wouldn't possibly work. Yep. And I just do fear that it takes maybe 35 seconds of looking at that image to realize that it's a fake image.

SPEAKER_01 36:04

Okay. So, yes. Are we. Do we know? I've asked you to go back to the post.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

It's mostly people being like, This is fake in your stupid.

SPEAKER_01 36:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 36:15

And then someone being like, call them, and someone else being like, Well, AI has video technology now and capability, and so the world is too scary. And then no one's really being helpful.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Shame. I feel sorry for the cousin in London who's been caught up in this scam.

SPEAKER_02 36:35

But the person never posted any responses. I think she just had to go back to her cousin and was like, hey bestie, don't think he's real.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Oh shame. See, at first I thought that we were gonna shame the person who would post a picture of someone else on a group. Like it's people are vulnerable to go on a dating app, and it kind of feels icky that you someone could just screenshot it and put it in a group.

SPEAKER_02 37:00

Like, what if he was real? I think the funniest part is she's like, is this a scam? All of the comments are saying it's AI. And then someone goes, Here's what I found according to ChatGPT. You're part of the problem, ma'am. Stop relying on AI to do critical thinking.

SPEAKER_01 37:17

I learned that the hard way when I asked AI what the Jewish holiday schedule was for 2026, and it gave it to me all wrong.

SPEAKER_02 37:24

Yeah, I'm an AI doomer. Don't talk to me about it, but like. Okay. Anyway, that just made me laugh and also angry.

Wrap Up And How To Support

SPEAKER_01 37:31

And that's it for today's show. Hooray. You've been watching or listening to Asham to Admit with Shoshana Gottlieb, Becca, and me, Tammy Sussman.

SPEAKER_02 37:42

This episode was brought to you by the Jewish Independent with Alleyway Productions in our brand new space. Hooray. The vocalist in our theme song is Sarah Ya L. More credits are in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

If you enjoyed this episode, share it around and join Ian in the comments section with some really encouraging words.

SPEAKER_02 38:02

And if you don't, if if words are hard for you, just rate it. Five stars. Emoji. Emoji. And then if you enjoyed it, oh no, you already said that. Thank you so much. See you next week. See you guys next week. Bye, love you.