Daf Yomi

This would, no doubt, turn into a massive page during the project going through the entire cycle. What I’m going to do is put the section of whichever tractate I’m currently going through on this page, and as I finish them during the cycle, I’ll move the finished one onto a separate linked sub-page. I’m going to organize it as an outline so it’s reasonably easy to follow. I’m also, while well aware of the deep spiritual stuff that’s going on in each discussion, not going to go down that path – there are a zillion websites and commentaries that already do that. In general, I find the idea of a glimpse of a historical culture from what amounts to transcripts of conversations between spiritual and secular leaders to be fascinating, and not surprisingly, for me, I’m particularly drawn to topics that relate to food and wine, sexuality, and comedy.

  • Seder Zeraim – “Book of Seeds”
    • Berakhot – “Blessings” – Blessed things, actions, and events
    • I hit a momentary “WTF?” when Berakhot finished and we didn’t move on to Pe’ah, the next tractate in Zeraim. Apparently the remaining ten tractates in Zeraim do not have Gemara commentary in the Babylonian Talmud, just the Jerusalem Talmud, which the Daf Yomi doesn’t cover. Despite living in a predominately agrarian society, the Babylonian rabbis apparently had nothing to say on agriculture and related subjects like tithing, offerings, and challah bread. Though now I get “Book of Seeds”, I do feel a bit cheated and I want to know if there’s a good challah recipe in there. My plan is to at some point read through the various tractates throughout the Talmud that aren’t included in the Daf Yomi, just out of curiosity. I’ll put those in a different color so that they stand out.
    • Pe’ah – “Corner” – Pay it Forward
    • Demai – “Doubtful” – Provenance and Taxes
    • Kil’ayim – “Mixed Species” – Mixing it up in the Fields
    • Shevi’it – “Seventh” – Taking a Sabbatical from Life
    • Terumot – “Donations” –
    • Ma’aser Rishon – “First Tithes” – 
    • Ma’aser Sheni – “Second Tithes” – 
    • Challah – “Dough” – 
    • Orlah – “First Fruits of Trees” – 
    • Bikkurim – “First Fruits” –
  • Seder Moed – “Book of Festivals”
  • Seder Nashim – “Book of Women”
  • Seder Nezikin – “Book of Damages”
    • Bava Kamma – “The First Gate” – Who’s Responsible?
    • Bava Metzia – “The Middle Gate” – Who Owns the Truth?
    • Bava Batra – “The Last Gate” – You’re Responsible, and Here’s Why
    • Sanhedrin – “Assembly” – Judging You
      • The Sanhedrin itself was a council of 71 Jewish sages during the Roman era, who adjudicated major disputes, somewhat like a supreme court. The word is a loan word from Greek. This tractate focuses on the court system and civil law for the most part, with a section on criminal particularly around discussions of capital punishment.
      • 2/4/25, Chapter 7, Page 49 – Stoning, burning, decapitation, strangulation. Or is it burning, stoning, strangulation, decapitation? The order, it seems, was worthy of an entire page’s arguments, with comparisons drawn to the orders of lists of what order ritual clothing is put on, and what sorts of stains are hardest to get out of linen fabric. Because, we are left to gather, the choice of death penalty indicates just how severe the crime was, and therefore just how dead the convicted is.
      • 2/5/25, Page 50 – Yesterday’s argument over which form of capital punishment is more severe continues by comparing types of crimes with required punishments. Example – a priest’s daughter who commits adultery is burned, rather than stoned, the mandated punishment for adulteresses. One side says Burning is more severe because she besmirched her father’s honor, the other says Stoning is more severe because she’s being treated better because of her family connections.
      • 2/6/25, Page 51 – A long and involved discussion about whether a woman who engages in adultery should be burned, stoned, or strangled. Most of it is weird familial connections and twisted logic. But the take-away point of note over the last couple of pages is that, so far anyway, there’s been no mention of capital punishment for the man who engaged in the adultery.
      • 2/7/25, Page 52 – Sometimes, I’m just appalled at passages in the Talmud. A few pages back the details of how stoning is to be carried out were covered. So today, they tackle “burning” – the convicted is buried to his waist in cow dung, then his mouth is forced open, and molten lead is poured down his throat. Then there’s a long argument over whether decapitation should be performed by sword or butcher’s cleaver, and whether it’s just cutting the head off or cutting the body in half.
      • 2/8/25, Page 53 – A large percentage of the things the Talmud metes out capital punishment for are sex related – adultery, incest, bestiality, and homosexuality – and don’t seem to merit such severe response. Why not imprisonment? Which led to internet searching to discover that the concept of mass incarceration over longer periods of time, i.e., prison, for crimes, didn’t come into being until the late 1700s. Prior to that, jail was generally a short term, more individual punishment, usually while awaiting trial, or, death.
      • 2/9/25, Page 54 – Oh boy… let’s see if I can cram all this in. Boiled down, if you sleep with a married woman, it is as if you have violated her husband as well. The rabbis discuss whether or not, then, an act of adultery, or incest, is, in fact, a type of homosexual act, and therefore punishable for two offenses. And are minor’s exempt? And at what age is male considered a minor – we’ve seen three definitions over time in the Talmud – bar mitzvah at 13, puberty, and age 9. And is there a link between homosexuality and bestiality that we could punish as well? Someone was clearly pissed off about something.
      • 2/10/25, Page 55 – Well you can’t say the rabbis of the Talmudic era don’t get into the nitty gritty of things. In the midst of the ongoing conversation over homosexuality and bestiality, one asks if it is a homosexual act for a man to sodomize himself. The leader of the discussion responds with disgust, but then they all get down to discussing the mechanics of how a man would achieve that, arriving at the conclusion that a) he couldn’t be erect, and b) he would have to be extraordinarily well endowed.
      • 2/11/25, Page 56 – In a capital punishment sentencing decision, the judges call back the key witnesses on whose testimony that decision will rely. Each is required to swear a holy oath, using God’s name (something which is otherwise prohibited), at which point each judge makes a tear in the hem of their robe, in mourning for having heard God’s name used in an oath. They are not allowed to ever repair those tears. A reminder for their careers of the gravity of sentencing someone to death.
      • 2/12/25, Page 57 – The Noahide laws state that humanity must establish a legal system, and ban the cursing of God, idolatry, illicit sexuality, bloodshed, robbery, and eating flesh from a still living animal. And “any descendant of Noah” who violates one of these is subject to the death penalty. Based on the story of the Flood, everyone afterwards is a descendant of Noah, as no one else survived the Flood. Humanity was rebooted. And consider that next time you’re offered still twitching sushi.
      • 2/13/25, Page 58 – We’re into one of those paradox areas of the Talmud, and this one they don’t even acknowledge. The discussion ranges over several of the previous topics in this chapter, reiterating the various prohibitions, specifically for those descended from Noah, but not necessarily applying to everyone. Except… according to the Torah, and Talmud, everyone is a descendant of Noah, because Noah and his family were the only ones left after The Flood. So who, exactly, are these exempt folk? Did God do a bunch of re-creating after The Flood?
      • 2/14/25, Page 59 – The question arises as to gentiles following the Noahide laws mentioned on page 57 – some of the rabbis proposed that them doing so was a mockery of Judaism, since they weren’t invested in following all of the Torah mitzvot, the must dos and must not dos of Judaic law. Not so, rules the council, finally recognizing the whole Noah and Flood thing – after all, if everyone is descended from Noah, then the Noahide laws apply to everyone.
      • 2/15/25, Page 60 – Idol worship is punishable by the death penalty. But what is idol worship? According to the rabbis it’s not something innocuous like cleaning or polishing the idol, but something recognizable as an act of worship – praying to it, declaring it your god, burning incense, offering a sacrifice, etc. Which led to a discussion of odd practices, like throwing stones at statues of Mercury, or taking a dump or having anal intercourse in front of statues of Ba’al Peor – Lord of the Open Holes, a Moabite sex deity. Yes, humanity has invented some interesting Gods.
      • 2/16/25, Page 61 – As noted yesterday, certain actions are considered normal, honorable acts of worship – bowing, praying, burning incense, offering sacrifices. And that’s held to be true even if the act is performed for an idol or object (a mountain is given as an example) that would not normally have that practice associated with it. Given yesterday’s mentions of throwing stones at Mercury or defecating in front of Ba’al Peor, these too are discussed, but it’s decided that they are sufficiently abnormal and dishonorable, that if one were to throw stones or defecate in front of a different idol, it wouldn’t be prohibited, it might even be encouraged.
      • 2/17/25, Page 62 – If one commits an idolatrous act on the Sabbath that involves something that is prohibited on the Sabbath – lighting a fire, lighting incense, burning a sacrifice, some sort of manual labor, etc., one is doubly liable for punishment. I’m not precisely clear how being sentenced to a double death penalty works, but it’s apparently worse than a single one. Also, if you commit idolatrous acts while under duress or coercion, the death penalty is taken off the table, but other forms of penance are still applied.
      • 2/18/25, Page 63 – Amidst the various discussions of different penalties and acts of worship, we have a sidebar where the Talmud’s sages issue a caution. It’s all well and good for the Jewish people to offer an oath or allegiance to the country they live in, but, the wise ones remind us, we must be careful that allegiance to country is not the same thing as allegiance to its form of worship, be that to another god, or, to a person, such as its leader. Seems particularly poignant right now.
      • 2/19/25, Page 64 – These guys keep coming back to the worship of Ba’al Peor – eat lots of spinach and drink lots of beer – allowing you to defecate with the appropriate “consistency”, which is, well, liquid. But, on the B side, we move on to Molekh, and learn that the proper form of worship involves giving your child to the priests of Molekh and having him “pass through fire”. It doesn’t, we learn, matter whether the firewalking occurs before or after the priests get their hands on your kid, just that both occur.
      • 2/20/25, Page 65 – I have read a lot of fantasy, magic, sorcery sorts of fiction over my life. In none of them was a sorcerer defined as one who takes animal bones, sticks them in his mouth, and calls forth the spirit of the animal to cause things to happen. In none of them was a necromancer defined as someone who invites the spirits of dead people to sit in his armpit and speak to the living. I’m not sure who needs more psychiatric help – the accused sorcerer or necromancer, or the rabbis who conjured up these images.
      • 2/21/25, Page 66 – Having dispensed with sorcerers and necromancers yesterday, we move on to define enchanters – those who see signs in nature and treat them as omens; and soothsayers, who receive their “second sight” by applying the semen of seven different men to their eyelids, in some sort of bizarre bukake ritual. Suddenly, the text pivots, to inform us that if two or more men rape a young, virgin woman, only the first is liable to death by stoning; the others are given the lesser punishment of strangulation, because… she wasn’t a virgin. At least they all end up dead.