Talmudic Property Law and the Question of Who Owns the Torah

June 28 2024

This week, those who follow the daily regimen of Talmud study known as daf yomi completed Bava Metzia, perhaps the most studied tractate. It contains one of the most famous of all talmudic tales, in which Rabbi Eliezer summons miracles to convince his colleagues that his opinion on an issue of ritual law is correct—and still loses the argument. David Bashevkin seeks to interpret this story in its wider context:

Most of Tractate Bava Metzia centers on the principles that establish ownership: the muhzak, the person who currently has possession of the item in question; methods of acquisition of an object; and the different evidentiary rules required to establish who owns what.

Yet, upon closer examination, this story [of Rabbi Eliezer’s dispute] reframes the central theme of ownership that occupies our tractate: who owns the Torah? Like the [disputed garment with which the tractate begins], the traditions of the Torah are held by two parties: God and the Jewish people. . . . The Jewish people, however, are the muhzakim of Torah—the Torah is not in heaven, it is in our possession.

For much of Jewish history, the Jewish people, like Rabbi Eliezer, looked upward for prophetic revelation to know the proper way forward. . . . Rabbinic law, however, is built on the central idea that even after the destruction of the Temple, even after the explicit divine voice has been muted, God has not abandoned the Jewish people—God speaks through the Jewish people. The collective body of the Jewish people still possesses the divine word. Now however, the divine voice no longer emanates from the heavens—the Torah is not in heaven—but through the interpretive community of the Jewish people.

Read more at Tablet

More about: Judaism, Talmud, Torah

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023