“The Oven of Achnai”
Sermon for Yom Kippur Morning, 5771
Rabbi Jefffrey W. Goldwasser
Congregation Beth Israel, North Adams, MA
September 19, 2010
Even in the world of the rabbis of the Talmud, Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus was as “old school” as you could get. He believed that the teachings of Torah he received from his teachers were correct for their time, and he believed that they would remain correct for all time. From his early youth, he had always been the first to arrive at the House of Study each day, and he always was the last to leave. He never engaged in idle conversation in the House of Study, and, he said, he never taught a thing which his teachers did not teach him [B. Sukkot 28a].
He also was regarded as a true genius of Torah—a man who was so adept in Torah that he could perform miracles. One argued with Rabbi Eliezer at ones peril.
There is a story in the Talmud that says that Rabbi Eliezer once called down the power of heaven to strike a colleague blind for saying that the rabbis of his own time had created a particular law by majority vote. Rabbi Eliezer then spent an hour angrily telling his fellow rabbi how this law actually had been handed down to him by his teacher, and to his teacher by a teacher before him, and another before him, all the way back to Moses at Sinai. It was only after Eliezer had spent all of his energy lecturing his blinded colleague that his anger relented and, with his mind calmed, he prayed, “May it be granted that his sight be restored.” And it was. [B. Chagigah 3b]
He was a piece of work. No one could compare with him in the ability to strike terror into his students and colleagues alike. And no one had a deeper devotion or a keener grasp of the tradition of the rabbis who had come before.
All the years of Eliezer’s tyrannical behavior, however, came to a end when a controversial issue came before the rabbis. The question was whether a certain type of oven was immune from becoming ritually unclean.
Ovens in the second century were like large clay pots that were plastered around the outside to hold the heat in. Like all vessels that were used for food, ovens had to conform to the rules of kashrut. If a vessel came in contact with anything that was ritually unclean, the oven would no longer be kosher and could not be used again. An oven that would stay kosher forever, even if it came into contact with something unclean, would have great practical value to the rabbis and their community.
Rabbi Eliezer believed that there was such an oven — the “Oven of Achnai” [B. Bava Metzia 59a], which was formed by taking broken pieces of clay and cementing them together with sand. The word “Achnai,” means, “a coiled snake,” and the oven’s name may have come from the way it looked, with winding loops of cement going all around it.
Rabbi Eliezer ruled that an Oven of Achani was ritually clean and that it was not subject to becoming unclean because neither broken shards of clay nor the sand in cement could become ritually unclean according to the laws of the rabbis.
The other rabbis, though, were unanimously opposed to Rabbi Eliezer’s ruling. The Oven of Achnai, they thought, was just a clever argument designed to get around a basic law of kashrut that they dared not overturn. They reasoned that if it was used as an oven, it had to obey the rules for ovens, no matter what it was made of.
Still, despite the fact that he was a minority of one, Rabbi Eliezer insisted on his point. He spent an entire day arguing before his colleagues with every argument he could muster. In his mind, his position only could be denied if the rabbis were willing to state that the law as they themselves taught it was wrong.
Exasperated by his colleagues’ failure to agree with him, Rabbi Eliezer instead used a miraculous demonstration to prove his point. He declared, “If I am right, and the law is according to what I have said, let this carob tree prove it!” As the other rabbis watched, a carob tree standing next to Rabbi Eliezer lifted itself out of the ground, moved a hundred cubits away, and settled back into the ground. Some say that it was more like four hundred cubits.
The rabbis, however, were unmoved. “Rabbi Eliezer, we make laws with logical arguments and majority rule. No proof can come from a carob tree.”
Undeterred, Eliezer said to them, “If the law agrees with me, let this stream of water prove it!” Immediately, the stream of water changed its course and began to flow uphill.
But, the rabbis said to him, “No proof can come from a stream of water, either.”
Again Rabbi Eliezer said, “If the law agrees with me, let the walls of the House of Study prove it!” At that moment, the walls of Rabbi Eliezer’s beloved House of Study began to lean inward as if they were about to fall.
Instead of accepting the miracle as a divine proof, though, Rabbi Joshua turned to the walls and began to yell at them: “When the rabbis are engaged in an argument over the law, what right do you have to interfere? You walls, stay out of this!”
Out of respect to Rabbi Joshua, the walls stopped falling. Yet, out of respect to Rabbi Eliezer, they did not straighten up. The Talmud says that, to this day, the walls are still standing crooked.
Finally, using his last and best trump card, Rabbi Eliezer said, “If the law agrees with me, let it be proved by Heaven!” The rabbis at this point could not have been surprised when a voice came down from heaven and declared: “Why are you arguing with Rabbi Eliezer. Don’t you know that he never forgets anything that he has been taught. The law always agrees with him.”
It’s one thing to argue with a wall, but how do you argue with the voice of God from heaven? Still, Rabbi Joshua stood up and said, “Lo bashamayim hee. It is not in heaven” [Deuteronomy 30:12].
What did he mean by that? He was quoting a verse from Torah that we read this very morning in which Moses says, “The Torah which I command to you is not hidden from you or far away. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who shall go up to heaven, and get it for us?’ … No, it is in your mouth and in your heart to do it.”
The Torah, argued Rabbi Joshua, was given to human beings to understand and interpret. Once given, God has no say on how the Torah is interpreted. Rabbi Joshua claimed that not even God can overrule a majority of rabbis.
This story from the Talmud, as you might imagine, is a favorite among liberal Jews today. Just as the rabbis of ancient Israel used this argument to justify their interpretations of Torah, even when they appeared to differ from the tradition they had received, contemporary Jews cite this story to defend the changes in Jewish tradition that we regard as important to our evolving understanding of humanity and the needs of our times.
For example, for two thousand years, there was no such thing as a female rabbi. When the first woman rabbi was ordained, how was the change from tradition justified? “Lo bashamayim hee.” The Torah is not in heaven; it was given to us. As the roles of men and women have changed, and as our understanding of the rights and dignity of all human beings has changed, we have changed our interpretation of Torah to include the possibility of women as rabbis.
There is not a single mention in the Torah or in the rabbinic literature of a same-sex marriage. How then can today’s rabbis justify reciting the seven wedding blessings to sanctify the marriage of gay and lesbian couples? “Lo bashamayim hee.” The Torah is not in heaven. It is for our own hearts to discover the highest values of the Torah, and how to express them in the realities of a changing world.
This radical view of the right of human beings to interpret the Torah is entirely endorsed by the Talmud itself. In fact, the Talmud says that one of the rabbis who was present when Rabbi Joshua declared “Lo bashamayim hee,” later encountered Elijah the Prophet and asked him how God had responded to the rabbis’ ruling. Since Elijah is the only human being who ever went up to heaven alive, he is the only person who could ever give a first-person account on earth of the events in heaven. Elijah told the rabbi that when Rabbi Joshua said, “Lo bashamayim hee. It is not in heaven,” God laughed. God laughed with joy and said, “My children have defeated Me, My children have defeated Me!”
Like parents who take pride in a child who has grown mature enough to surpass them in ability and achievement, God delights in human beings who make the Torah their own and who take on the responsibility to interpret it in accordance with its basic principles of justice, compassion and reverence. It is with naches that God says, “My children have defeated me!”
Yet, what of Rabbi Eliezer? Should we forget about him and his devotion to the “old school”? In his defeat by the majority rule of the rabbis, do we just label him as hopelessly out of touch with the changing ways of the world?
Listen, please, to the rest of the story of the Oven of Achnai — the part of the story that liberal Jews usually leave out.
The Talmud says that on the day that the rabbis ruled against Rabbi Eliezer regarding the Oven of Achnai, they brought all of the things that Rabbi Eliezer had ever ruled to be ritually clean and they burned them in fire. Having defeated him in one case, they triumphed over Rabbi Eliezer’s past arrogance and tyranny by vacating all his other decisions regarding ritual purity.
And then they went even further. The rabbis voted to expel Rabbi Eliezer from the sages of Israel. It was only after they voted to expel him, though, that they asked, trembling, “Who is going to go and tell him?” They remembered what a fearful thing it was to disagree with Rabbi Eliezer. Would they all be struck blind?
It was Rabbi Akiva, the greatest of the sages of that time, who understood that the consequences could be even more dire than blindness. He said, “I will tell him. If he his told by someone who does not understand how this must be done, it will bring about the destruction of the entire world.”
What did Rabbi Akiva do? How did he tell Rabbi Eliezer that he was no longer welcome in the House of Study, the place where, from his youth, he was always the first to enter, the last to leave. How did he tell him that he no longer had a home in the place where he had sat so many years listening to the words of his teachers?
Rabbi Akiva went to pay a visit to Rabbi Eliezer, as he had done many times before. Only, on this occasion, he dressed in black and sat close by his beloved colleague and teacher. When Rabbi Eliezer asked him, “Akiva, what’s going on? Why are you behaving this way?” Akiva answered as diplomatically as he could. He said, “My master, it seems that our colleagues have decided to remove themselves from you.”
Even with such diplomatic wording, Rabbi Akiva’s message was devastating to Rabbi Eliezer. He tore his clothes and took off his shoes as if he were in mourning. He slid off his chair and slumped on the ground, tears flowing from his eyes.
According to the Talmud, at that moment, the world was struck by a plague. A third of the olive crop, a third of the wheat crop, and a third of the barley crop were ruined. Lest anyone imagine that this disaster was caused by some natural occurrence, the rabbis further recorded that even the grain that had been ground into flour and shaped into dough also was ruined as it was kneaded in the hands of the bread bakers.
In this legend, Rabbi Akiva was worried that the entire world might be destroyed by the disgrace of Rabbi Eliezer, and, in this respect, he was right: the rabbis’ vainglorious triumph over a vexing old man did spell the ruin of something dear to heaven and earth. Memory, honor, respect and humility were destroyed that day. Certainly, the world of Rabbi Eliezer was destroyed on the day that the rabbis decided that they no longer had to pay any attention to him.
This is the reason, says the Talmud, why the Oven of Achnai was called the “oven of the coiled snake.” It was because the rabbis chose to surround Rabbi Eliezer with words in the way that a snake coils around its victim to devour it.
This, too, is part of the lesson of the Oven of Achanai. There is peril in too easily dismissing the wisdom that we have learned in the past. Though we have the right and the obligation to change Judaism with the changing world around us, we must not do so in a way that denigrates the tradition and those who carefully and lovingly preserved it and transmitted it to us. The problem is not that the world changes; the problem is not that Judaism changes; the problem is in the way we treat each other through changing times.
Contemporary liberal Judaism says that it has the right to reinterpret Jewish tradition in the face of a changing world, and so it does. We declare that things that once were permitted — like relegating women to second-class status — are now forbidden. We declare that things that once were forbidden — like same-sex marriages and the inclusion of gays and lesbians — are now permitted. What gives us that right? “Lo bashamayim hee.” The Torah is not in heaven. It has been placed in our mouths and in our hearts so that we will grapple with it and rediscover in our times what it means to treat every person as a being created in the image of God.
But that right comes with a warning. The right to change the tradition is not a right to trash the past. Neither is it a right to treat the people who disagree with us like trash. We must act with humility when we venture to change old traditions. We must treat each other with civility even when we disagree.
That kind of humility and respect are not often evident in the relationship today between liberal and orthodox branches of Judaism. For example, the Israeli orthodox rabbinate has used its political power to shut out liberal rabbis from officiating at weddings and funerals in the Land of Israel, and they are now trying to deny recognition in Israel of conversions officiated by liberal rabbis anywhere in the world. Such behavior is the equivalent of burning the vessels that Rabbi Eliezer deemed ritually clean. It should have no place in a faith that esteems the right to disagree as highly as Judaism does.
Yet, the most important lesson of the Oven of Achnai may be for our American secular culture. In recent decades we have become used to the idea that political disagreements justify any kind of personal attack that one can level against an adversary. Listening to commentators on the radio and television, there is such harsh and personal vilification of liberals by conservatives, and of conservatives by liberals, that one wonders how they could be talking about the same country.
Triumph over the other side, rather than seeking policies that are best for society as a whole, has become the basis of our public discourse. Even if one believes that it is the “other side” that has dripped most of the venom, there is no justification for attacking the integrity and patriotism of people who simply disagree about policies.
In the story of Rabbi Eliezer and the Oven of Achnai, the walls of the House of Study stopped falling out of respect to Rabbi Joshua, but they did not straighten up out of respect to Rabbi Eliezer. Rabbi Eliezer said the Oven of Achnai was clean; Rabbi Joshua said it was unclean. One of them had to be right and one of them had to be wrong. Yet, it is still possible to treat both with dignity and respect. We need to learn again how to do that.
If we don’t — if personal attacks continue to be the norm, and if scoring political points takes the place of governing — we will bring about the destruction of our world. The world of civic duty and the rule of law will be replaced by the world of demagoguery, distrust and disunity. Already, we appear to have forgotten that getting along with people is one of the basic skills of citizenship. If we are not careful, we soon will be a society of isolated ideologies in which everyone has contempt for anyone outside their own small circle.
Today, I want to suggest some specific things we can all do to make our society more respectful of difference and better able to address the issues we face with humility:
1) Like Rabbi Eliezer, we should be bold in using “every argument on earth” to persuade others of the things we believe in deeply, but we also must recognize that there is a time for arguing and a time for accepting majority rule. At some point, the arguments need to end. At some point, the campaign bumper stickers need to come off the fender so that we can get on with the business of actually governing, not campaigning.
2) We need more practice at actually talking with people who hold different opinions. The paradox of the age of cable and the internet is that it has made it more possible than ever to listen only to people with whom we agree. If you have a point of view, “there’s an app for that” — one which will make it possible to hear only the opinions you want to hear. We need to recognize how dangerous that is. A free society depends upon a free discourse of ideas, which means we must talk to and listen to people of different opinions. Otherwise, we will just be driven further and further from each other.
3) The rules of civic responsibility have to be taught from an early age. We cannot keep teaching our kids that it is okay to hate people because they have different opinions. However, we do that unintentionally every time we allow our schools to be used as a battleground for ideologies. Partisan debates about evolution, prayer, merit pay and the separation of church and state are being played out in classrooms with children as pawns. Instead, we should be using our schools to teach the fundamentals of democracy on which we all agree. The obligations of citizenship, the skills of public discourse, and the institutions of democracy should be prominent in the curriculum of the oldest democracy on earth.
Times change — and the pace of change has never been faster than it is today. As we see changes in the world around us, we do have an obligation to change to meet the challenges of the times. However, we also have an obligation to recognize that some things never change. Our commitment to the dignity of every human being and our respect for a world that has been given to us as a gift are part of our eternal obligations. It becomes more important than ever in a time of change for us to be mindful of the fundamental ideals we all share.
No one ever said that Rabbi Eliezer was an easy person to get along with. No one ever said that building a just and compassionate society is easy, either. In this new year of 5771, may we face the future and the changes it will bring with courage and also humility. May we bring wisdom and compassion.
G’mar chatimah tovah. May you be sealed for a good year.
