Trust Your Ancestors, Trust Your Descendants

אמר רב יהודה אמר רב בשעה שעלה משה למרום מצאו להקב”ה שיושב וקושר כתרים לאותיות אמר לפניו רבש”ע מי מעכב על ידך אמר לו אדם אחד יש שעתיד להיות בסוף כמה דורות ועקיבא בן יוסף שמו שעתיד לדרוש על כל קוץ וקוץ תילין תילין של הלכות אמר לפניו רבש”ע הראהו לי אמר לו חזור לאחורך הלך וישב בסוף שמונה שורות ולא היה יודע מה הן אומרים תשש כחו כיון שהגיע לדבר אחד אמרו לו תלמידיו רבי מנין לך אמר להן הלכה למשה מסיני נתיישבה דעתו
Menachot 29b ¹

Inside-Leaning-Outside: Rav Yehuda said that Rav said: In the hour that Moshe went up to the heights, he found that HaKadosh Baruch Hu was sitting and binding thorns/crowns to the letters. He said before Him, “Ribbono Shel Olam what delays upon your hand?” He said to him, “There will be one man in the future who will exist at the end of many generations, Akiva ben Yosef is his name, who will expound upon each and every thorn [making] mounds and mounds of pathways/halakhot.” He said before Him, “Ribbono Shel Olam, show him to me.” He said to him, “Turn around to your back.” He walked and sat at the end of eight rows and he did not know what they were saying. His strength was weakened. As soon as it arrived to one matter, his students said to him, “Rabbi, where does that come from?” He said to them, “It is a pathway/halakha to/for Moshe from Sinai.” His mind was eased. 

Wayyy Outside: Moshe comes upon HaKadosh Baruch Hu on Mt. Sinai taking His sweet time finishing up the Torah, drawing thorny little crows atop those holy letters. “What’s the hold up?” Moses asks –why delay Torah’s deliverance for ornamentations? HaKadosh Baruch Hu’s response is to foretell of the great tannaitic sage Rabbi Akiva who will exist either centuries after Moshe or in a different dimension, depending on who you ask, and will make immense meaning out of these little embellishments that mean nothing to Moshe. Upon Mosehe’s request, HaKadosh Baruch Hu transports him through time to Akiva’s learning space and Moshe settles on a bench in the back (which, rabbinically speaking, is where the newbies sit). As Moshe listens to their conversation, he doesn’t know what they’re talking about and his strength is weakened. But when the conversation turns to a matter that prompts a student to ask “where do you get that from?” Akiva responds, “it was given to Moshe from Sinai,” and Moshe was comforted.

This sugya and I have been following each other around since we first met in the fall of 2019. I held these words close to my heart over the first year of COVID, continuously reciting and eventually creating pages of art about them. When I got to grad school in 2023, it seemed like every article I read that mentioned Talmud would reference this sugya, and each reference felt like I was encountering a piece of myself. Those moments of recognition were gifts, reminding me of my own belonging in academic spaces—spaces that are set up to make me and my queerness feel like an imposter. 

There is so much happening in this sugya! Iconic time travel exemplifies the Talmud’s boldness in suspensions of disbelief. Moshe’s apparent non-belonging in Akiva’s learning space offers remarkable transparency about the unrecognizable Jewish future the Rabbis were building. It’s also one of the rare moments where the Rabbis self-consciously and explicitly grapple with the complex connection between their innovations and the tradition they inherited. Maybe it’s not so surprising that we (academically and in the Jewish world) keep returning to this sugya, turning it over and over. 

If I’m being honest, narrative (aggadic) sugyot like Menachot 29b often live in my body more loudly than those focused on the minutiae of practice. Stories—with their emotional hooks and reflections of human complexity— stick in my stomach. Aggadic texts alongside practical guidance allows the Talmud to address both how to conduct our lives, and the “Big Questions” about our place in the world. And I think one of the Big Questions at hand in this piece of aggadah is where to look for/how to determine what’s true.

As it unfolds, this sugya pushes us to recognize both Written and Oral Torah as some of truth’s deepest sources. It opens with an explicit reference to the Written Torah when describing HaKadosh Baruch Hu doodling on its letters (perhaps as can be found on a sefer torah today). The Oral Torah, as usual, is a little more elusive as it hovers around this story. I tend towards an expansive view on Oral Torah, understanding it as an unfolding conversation that includes and extends beyond what has been codified in the Mishna. In our story, HaKadosh Baruch Hu hints at that continuous unfolding through a prediction that the embellishments that delay Torah’s delivery will inspire mountains of drashot (seekings/inquiries/expoundings) in future generations. Something was seeded in those words that wasn’t ready to bloom during Moshe’s revelation, which means that torah unrecognizable to Moshe was always meant to sprout from what he experienced on Sinai. Moshe was the bridge that allowed the living waters of Torah to flow from the mythic realm to the human—a catalyst to open a channel through which a river could flow from the cosmic world to water the garden of Earth. HaKadosh Baruch Hu drew thorns on the letters of what was written to remind us to seek and tend what grows out of those words.

While Moshe’s confusion punctuates the story, another group’s confusion is central and equally important: Akiva’s students do not understand the origin of his teaching, asking “Rabbi, where do you get that from?” By citing Moshe’s revelation at Sinai as the source of the (unnamed) matter, Rabbi Akiva uncovers the divine connection between what Moshe can recognize (the Written Torah) and what he can’t (the Oral), and doing so seems to address both the students’ and Moshe’s confusion. To the students operating in and continuing to build that future unrecognizable to Moshe, the sugya says: there is ancient wisdom beyond what human intellect can “prove” in every generation. Trust your ancestors. And to Moshe, who is overwhelmed and disheartened by immense change, the sugya says: you have not been forgotten amidst this transformation. Trust your descendents.

For me, this story calls us to consider truths that are beyond the scope of our understanding- truths that (b’’h) will be revealed by the generations to come as well as truths that were available to our ancestors, but not to us. The contexts of our lives dictate what truth is accessible to us. Part of what is extraordinary to me about this tradition that has stretched through hundreds of generations is the opportunity to be in relationship with what’s been true at such different moments in human history. While I think there is plenty that was true for the Rabbis that is/should not (be) true today, I return to the Beit Midrash because I know I have something to learn from what was true for them, in their context. And I know this because the time I spend learning with and from the Rabbis consistently helps me envision what a liberated world will look like and clarify what my work is to help us get there. 

This tension in honoring both the truth of my generation and of the Rabbis’ comes up for me all the time, and can be especially present when I move from chevrutah to shiur. Chevrutah feels like frolicking in the field, like we’re really playing with the sages. In chevrutah, we get to freely associate alongside them, making connections between roots and masechtot and the worlds beyond and between the words. In a way, the movement between chevrutah and shiur offers opportunities to experience the different joys of the Oral and Written Torah. In chevrutah we get to be a part of the unfolding. In shiur, we get to experience the reverberations of mic drops from the past. 

But at the same time, coming to the masora (the traditional interpretation of a suyga) in shiur can feel jarring in comparison to the expanse of chevrutah. “Oh, you’re saying that’s just a prefix and suffix smashed together? And (traditionally) has nothing to do with the incredible journey my chevrutah and I went on that unlocked, not only this sugya, but the meaning of life for me?!?!?!?!” These are the moments when I think about Moshe, and how little about my life and teachings he would recognize. I think about how grateful I am to be in shared lineage with him, how connected I feel to his experience on Sinai and the Torah it catalyzed. I don’t want to lose that connection to him by simply reinterpreting everything that he (and Hillel and Shammai and Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi and Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish and Shmuel and Rav Papa, and Rashi, and Maimonides, and the Ba’al Shem Tov and and and) would recognize. And more importantly, I don’t think Judaism will exist for the generations to come if we reimagine everything that was passed down.

In this spirit, this story is a plea for us to ditch our egos and accept that we will never have a complete picture of what is true and why. This is not to say that we should cease our struggles to understand and upgrade the tradition, but to cultivate the humility that ensures we are both transforming and being transformed by this tradition we’ve inherited. I’m feeling an invitation to upgrade with restraint, a nervousness about change making that happens with abandon, and an expectation that we do our best to understand the what and whys of the teachings our ancestors have so painstakingly passed down to us, before we decide we know better. This is our call to get gemirna, to know our tradition inside and out, so that we may change it with intention, careful to hold ourselves accountable to both what has crashed and what hasn’t.

 

1 Note this is only part of the story! Check out Kendra Watkin’s HOTS from November 2023 for what happens next.

2 Check out Becky Silverstein’s HOTS from March 2024 to think more about Moshe’s confusion!