On Thursday, those following the seven-year cycle of Talmud study known as daf yomi (literally, “daily page”) completed tractate Bava Kama. One of the most commonly studied tractates, its name means “first gate” and it deals almost exclusively with torts, giving much attention to the biblical case of one man’s ox goring his neighbor’s. Dovid Bashevkin explores the relevance these topics, seemingly devoid of religious content, have to the believer:
The 12th-century scholar Rabbi Meir Abulafia explained this well in his commentary Yad Ramah. The entire prohibition of causing damages, he suggested, is an outgrowth of the biblical commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. [Bava Kama, like other civil-law tractates], may not feel otherworldly, but it requires us, acting as emissaries of God, to transform and infuse our mundane world with religious idealism. As Rabbi Jonah of Girona [d. 1264] explains, . . . the laws of damages contain the ingredients necessary to bake divinity within the very fabric of our mundane world.
The Talmud itself seems to confirm this worldview, doubling down on the holiness of being very careful not to cause pain and discomfort to your fellow human beings. If you want to become a hasid, [i.e., a person of exemplary piety], the Talmud writes, learn the laws of damages. . . . A hasid, the Talmud reminds us, is someone who can find divinity not just everywhere but within everyone.
If religious growth does not also translate into everyday decency and care for others, one should rightly wonder if there has even been any religious growth at all.
Read more on Tablet: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/belief/articles/sweating-small-stuff-talmud-tractate-bava-kama