Hi friends, and welcome back to Talmud Daily, and today we’re going to explore the deeper meaning of Tractate Eruvin. Now Tractate Eruvin is one of the most complex, legally difficult tractates in the entire Talmud. It requires a lot of spatial understanding, architecture. This is literally how communities were conceptualized through the idea of eruvin in the eyes of halachah.
But there’s something very interesting in a passage of Talmud that really recasts what this entire tractate is all about, and it appears in Tractate Eruvin on page 13b. I’m going to read the beginning of this story, which is absolutely foundational in the entire Talmud. You may even have heard this phrase before. It’s a phrase that is uttered all the times in Talmudic and non-Talmudic contexts. We’re going to talk about what this means, why it appears here, and how this really highlights the much deeper meaning of what Eruvin is all about.
Amar Rabbi Abba amar Shmuel, Rabbi Abba says in the name of Shmuel: shalosh shanim, “For three years,” nechlaku Beis Shammai u-Beis Hillel. “For three consecutive years, the schools of thought of Shammai and Hillel were arguing with each other.” Halalu omrim, they said, one says that halachah kemosenu, “We’re the ones who are right, Jewish law should accord with us,” ve-halalu omrim, and they said, halachah kemosenu, and they also said, “We also think we’re right and the halachah should accord with us.”
Yatzah bas kol ve-amrah, a heavenly voice came out and announced: Elu ve-elu divrei Elokim chayim, “These and these are the words of the living God,” ve-halachah ke-Beis Hillel, “and the halachah is like Beis Hillel.” You’re both right, but we only follow one of you.
And then the Talmud asks: Vechi mei’achar she-elu ve-elu divrei Elokim chayim, “Since both of them are the words of the living God, both of them represent this living God,” mipnei mah zachu Beis Hillel likboa halachah kemosan? “Why is Beis Hillel the ones who halachah follows their opinion?” Why did they get to win this? So says the Talmud: Mipnei she-nochin ve-aluvin hayu, “They were very agreeable and very deferential,” veshonin divreihem ve-divrei Beis Shammai, “And they taught both sides of the argument,” velo od, “And not only that,” ela she-makdimim divrei Beis Shammai le-divreihem, “They actually taught Beis Shammai’s words first.”
Now this is absolutely fascinating. First, I want to repeat what I believe is the central line of this passage, and that is: Elu ve-elu divrei Elokim chayim, these and these are the words of the living God. This is a phrase that you will find throughout Talmudic works and commentaries when they’re trying to show that there is truth to both sides of an argument.
One very famous example is the dispute whether or not the world was created in the Hebrew month of Tishrei, which is the time of Rosh Hashanah, or was the world created in the time of Nisan, Pesach time. They’re both about beginnings, and the Tosafists make a commentary in Tractate Rosh Hashanah: Elu ve-elu, these, that both opinions, divrei Elokim chayim, are both the words of the living God.
There is a spark of truth in both of these opinions that are canonized in our text. Now, there are a lot of really important takeaways to understand from this. First and foremost, we have to understand that there is a spectrum for truth. This is not unvarnished pluralism. It just, it comes out from the words, elu ve-elu means these and these. That also limits. That doesn’t mean everything has truth. It means that these are both true opinions. There is a divinity in them.
But there’s something very profound that the next line actually establishes: But who is the halachah like? Halachah is specifically designed to be a unifier. It is not just a system that connects us to God. Halachah is a system that connects us to other Jews, to other communities. We have operational definition. What is Shabbos? What is Sukkos? What is Yom Tov? What is Passover? They have operational definitions. What does it mean to pray?
This is the value add, the beauty of halachah, that it provides operational definitions that allows people to connect not only to their spiritual lives, and kind of gives you that anchor, but it allows you to connect to other Jews. And that is why we have to say halachah, the halachah,accords like one.
Now, I want to say a word about Shammai and Hillel. These are schools of thought that appear throughout the Talmud, and there are many, many, many times that the school of Shammai, what’s known as Beis Shammai, and the school of Hillel, Beis Hillel, are arguing with one another.
Now, something to understand stand is very often we will find the conceptual commonality from one Talmudic opinion or a Talmudic school of thought. Like there’s an underlying disagreement and it’s manifest in countless ways. There is an obvious underlying disagreement between Shammai and Hillel, and you can almost hear it out in their names. Shammai in his name comes from the word sham, you have it right there, which means over there. There’s something very idealistic about it, “over there,” like sham, the ideal, what that should be.
Hillel, the word Hillel literally means to praise. Hallel, to praise. That is the subjective experience. That is what emerges, and that’s why Hillel is actually complimented. Why the halachah follows himis because he incorporates the ideal. The school of Hillel incorporates the opinion of Beis Shammai, incorporates ideals, but still is very deferential and is very understanding about the human experience.
The most conceptual, like the typology of Shammai and Hillel, emerges from one very fascinating dispute, and it’s a dispute on the first verse of the Torah: that it says God created the heavens and the earth. And if you look at the Midrash right on that verse, there is a dispute: What was created first, the heavens or the earth?
Now you guess who said what. Shammai, sham, there, the ideal, obviously says the heavens were created first. He’s the one who puts priority and primacy on that ideal, as opposed to Hillel. What came first? The eretz, the land. The human experience, that’s what we need to prioritize.
Now a question, and a very fair question, is why does this appear in Tractate Eruvin? Eruvin, we said, is about creating communal structures and boundaries. Why is this the world of Eruvin? And there’s something extraordinarily profound that emerges from here. Rav Tzadok HaKohen mi-Lublin, a Chassidic thinker that I quote constantly, that animates nearly all of my thought. Born in 1823, died in 1900. Get used to me quoting Rav Tzadok, because my entire approach to the Talmud really derives from his writing. [He] has an entire essay on Tractate Eruvin. And he explains that this is actually the cosmic battle between that ideal world of Beis Shammai and that lived world of Beis Hillel, the school of Hillel.
What is that battle? It is the battle, says Rav Tzadok, between the collective domain, where there is room for everyone to simultaneously coexist, and of course that private domain, where we have our opinions and our unique take on the world. And what Eruvin is all about is balancing private domain with public domain—knowing where we end and public discourse begins. What Eruvin is actually all about, and the reason why this passage appears specifically in Tractate Eruvin, explains Rav Tzadok, is something so incredibly profound.
The way that we create boundaries between public and private domain is not just geographic, it’s existential, it is spiritual. Anybody who has ever posted on social media or even just shared your opinions in the public knows how difficult it is to almost let go of your words and say, “Look, now the public is reading it. Now they’re going to comment and say what it means to them and what it provokes in them and how it makes them feel, and they’re going to argue and they’re going to pick it apart.” You’re almost giving it to that public discourse. That’s the world of Shammai. But we all live in the world of Hillel, that is the world of private domains. And what Eruvin is all about is how you create a space that allows for both. How do you create a world that properly governs both our private opinions, our individual ideas, the way we each see the world, and that public collective space where everything is supposed to cohere and coexist together? How in fact do we do this?
And this is the world of eilu ve-eilu divrei Elokim chayim. These and these are the words of the living God, that we’re able to find divinity in multiple opinions, but we still have halachah ke-Beis Hillel. We still have a way to proceed forward. And this is why, in fact, if you look throughout the Talmud, we always preserve opinions even if we don’t agree with them, even if the law does not accord with them. Even in the Mishnah, we accord these opinions. Why? So there is a wonderful article by Rabbi Michael Rosensweig, which is all about this concept of eilu ve-eilu divrei Elokim chayim. How do we apply pluralism in the Jewish world? And it needs to be bounded. Not everything is a right idea, not everything is good. Not everything is going to contribute to your spiritual life.
But he says something very amazing, and he concludes the article with, I think, a brilliant imagery. And he takes it from the introduction of the Aruch HaShulchan—we’re introducing a lot of works. The Aruch HaShulchan was a work written by Reb Yechiel Michel Epstein in the nineteenth century. It is a collection of Jewish law. It is an introduction to civil law. And he has this beautiful imagery, and this is how Rabbi Michael Rosensweig, a current rosh yeshiva in Yeshiva University, concludes this beautiful examination of the concept of eilu v’eilu divrei Elokim chayim, which I think is at the heart and the core of tractate Eruvin.
He compares it to music. Torah in general is called a song. And what makes a song beautiful? What makes a song beautiful is you have multiple instruments:you have piano, you have violin, you have drums, you have guitar, you have harmony, and you have melody. When all of the instruments, when all of the voices, the harmony, the melody, the low, the high. When everything is working together, you have this beautiful musical harmony. That is the song of Torah. That is the world of eilu v’eilu divrei Elokim chayim.
There is a world where all the different opinions, not all opinions, but all the differing opinions that are contributing to furthering the spiritual depth of the Jewish people, they’re all speaking together. One’s harmony, one’s melody, one’s on piano, one’s on guitar. But all of these voices combined together to create the beautiful song that we call Torah itself.
So thank you so much for listening to Talmud Daily, and let’s keep making Torah sweet.