Rabbanit Sally Mayer: Turning the Jewish Home Into an Altar

Transcripts are produced by Sofer.ai and lightly edited—please excuse any imperfections. 

Dovid Bashevkin: It is my absolute privilege and pleasure to welcome to Talmud Daily, our 40-week tour in just 10 minutes a day, for our weekly conversation about the tractate. And we just finished our overview of Tractate Pesachim, and it is my privilege and pleasure to introduce Rabbanit Sally Mayer, who is the Rosh Midrashah of Midreshet Lindenbaum’s overseas program. Thank you so much, Rabbanit Mayer, for joining us today.

Sally Mayer: Thank you so much.

It’s a pleasure to be here.

Dovid Bashevkin: So I know this is very strange and surreal and we’re going to break the fourth wall a little bit, but we are recording this right before Sukkos. So it is strange to be talking about Pesach right before Sukkos, but one of the strange features of Pesach is that all of the holidays, and so often, we come back to this idea of being zeicher, a memory, l’yetzias Mitzrayim, that everything kind of derives from that original story, the Pesach story of leaving Egypt. And I wanted to begin by by really focusing on one very central aspect of this story that is very clearly centered and very often overlooked in our rituals that when we celebrate Pesach or Passover, and that is the sacrificial paschal lamb, what is known as the korban Pesach.

And I wanted to begin by hearing from you, especially being grounded in Israel, where really Passover and this experience changed the entire experience, when you have your seder, what do you think the significance of the korban Pesach was all about?

Sally Mayer: That’s a great question, and you’re right that we are so focused on chametz and matzah and maror and all of the things that we have to do to get ready for Pesach and to get ready for the seder, that we don’t really think about the korban Pesach much, right? We eat a piece of matzah for afikoman, kind of force that down, try to get to there before midnight, right, before chatzos. I actually think that when you learn Maseches Pesachim, you really see the great significance of the korban Pesach. It was a sacrifice that brought everybody together by family, and if your family was too small, you joined with another family. It was this very communal experience, and the Beis HaMikdash, the Holy Temple, was the busiest day of the year.

It was like the Black Friday, you know, of of of the Temple, and just the sheer number of sacrifices that were being brought and the excitement that that brought, that’s described actually in the tractate that we’re discussing. And then you bring it home, and you roast it at home, and you eat it in home, where you are in Jerusalem for the chag, right, for the holiday, and then you eat, everyone shares in a piece of the sacrifice, of this korban, and we are really reenacting what our forefathers and foremothers did all those years ago in Egypt when they took the god of the Egyptians and used it to declare that they were committed to Hashem, to our God, which was a massive, massive statement on their part. Actually, a whole bunch of the rules of the korban Pesach actually have to do with that. Interesting.

Dovid Bashevkin: So tell me a little bit, because Talmud Daily, our audience, we’re like introducing some of the peculiarities of these rituals for the very first time. And in so many ways, korban Pesach, this sacrifice, it contrasts and it’s different from so many other sacrifices, which somebody who, if you don’t have the background, you know, we don’t bring sacrifices anymore, you may not be able to pick up on some of the oddities or unusual ceremonies or differences specifically with this korban. Can you tell us a little bit about some of those laws that come up differently, and maybe what they’re meant to impart to the Jewish people?

Sally Mayer: Absolutely. It’s such a great question.

There are a few different types of sacrifices that we bring: one that is brought fully to God, that’s called an olah. The korban Pesach is not that because we eat it. There’s also a chatas, which is a sin offering that’s usually brought connected to a sin, sometimes other reasons, but we’re not talking about that right now, but that’s also not this offering. This is actually a type of a third kind of offering called a shelamim, the peace offering, where some of it is brought on the altar and most of it is eaten: some by the Kohanim, by the priests in the Beis HaMikdash, right, and most of it by the person who brought that sacrifice.

And most peace offerings, most korbanos shelamim, you actually get two days and one night to eat them, most of them. So one change is that this has to be eaten on that night, only on that night, and we have a much shorter amount of time to eat it. So that’s one sort of anomaly, right, that makes us ask, wait, why is that? Another anomaly about this is that it has to be roasted whole. And you know, most meat is cut up into pieces, and you know, when we get it, we don’t sort of envision the animal, right? And that’s that works.

Dovid Bashevkin: Yes. You don’t want to envision the animal.

Sally Mayer: Exactly, that works well for us. However, the korban Pesach, the rule is that we are not allowed to break any bones and it may not be cut up, and it has to be roasted whole, which is also an anomaly. And why is that, right? Which is really interesting, and I think that both of those are actually explained by going back to the original paschal lamb that we brought in Egypt.

The paschal lamb that we brought in Egypt, I believe that the reason, this is actually something my husband Rabbi Eitan Mayer suggested, the reason I think it has to be roasted whole is that there’s no hiding it. You are roasting the god of the Egyptians. Once we cut that animal up, it could be anything, right? That steak or that piece of meat could be anything. But if it is roasted whole, it is that statement that we made to the Egyptians and actually really to ourselves that we are committed to God.

That’s actually also why in the original paschal lamb, we put the blood on the doorposts. Why are we putting the blood on the doorposts, right? Actually, this is something my colleague Rabbanit Dina Rock suggested, I’m quoting all my friends and colleagues and relatives, but she suggests that actually it is making our home into the altar, right? The blood is brought on the altar usually, but we made each home, each Jewish home, into an altar. Now, fortunately, we don’t have to put blood on our doorposts, you know, after that, thank God, exactly, but it actually I think shows how we are really trying to make We’re making a statement about our commitment to God over the other gods, right? At the time that was a big deal. And we’re trying to say that each and every Jewish home is a place of worship of God.

And that’s actually a message that we can keep today even when we’re not roasting the korban whole and we’re not putting blood on our doorposts even when the Temple’s rebuilt. We are making that firm commitment to Hashem, and it’s actually a very beautiful idea because Pesach is really about God choosing us as a nation and taking us out from amongst another nation and really choosing us as His own. And this is our choosing Him as well. It’s really like a marriage, right? And both sides have to agree and commit and show their love for each other.

And that’s actually what we’re doing really with the paschal lamb.

Dovid Bashevkin: That is so incredibly beautiful. One of the things that you mentioned, which is transforming your home into the central place of worship, where there is something very familial about Passover, both in contemporary times, it’s probably the most observed familial holiday, maybe neck and neck with Chanukah, but it it’s really the time where families to this very day come together, and that has roots exactly as you mentioned, in the way that families would kind of come together for the sacrifice itself. But I want to kind of go back and talk a little bit about that home transformation, specifically about the way the tractate opens up, and that is clearing your home from all chametz, which is any sort of remnant of that unleavened bread.

I am sure many of our listeners have a range of memories in their own home. I certainly have I wouldn’t quite call it trauma, it’s kind of metastasized into kind of an ongoing joke, but we grew up in a home where certainly my mother was incredibly zealous. I think like maybe halfway through the Purim seudah, the Purim meal, which is a month before, she’s already cleaning out the refrigerator, she’s taken out cupboards. And I wanted to kind of hear from you specifically as somebody who’s educating people who are going to run their own homes, how do you understand and conceptualize why there’s so much intensity, almost, sometimes there might be, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, almost almost sometimes it can be too intense, but that desire of making a home ready for Passover.

Why chametz and this this desire of ridding unleavened bread is treated so differently in halacha, even more stringently than we normally treat regular kosher and non-kosher? So explain a little bit about some of the differences about preparing your actual home nowadays for Passover.

Sally Mayer: It’s a really, really interesting question because, as you said, you’re so right that we go more crazy about chametz both in actual fact, like your mom and most of our moms, right, and even in the halacha, in Jewish law, chametz is treated more severely in certain ways than pig, right? Which is like crazy, that’s like the most classic not-kosher thing, right? And I think that it has to do with the fact that chametz is usually allowed and sometimes not allowed, that makes it some thing that the halacha treats more stringently, because bacon is something that, if a person keeps kosher, they will never have, they will never have it in the house, they will never be tempted to reach over and taste it. I mean, maybe it smells really good when your neighbor is eating it, but it’s something that you’re conditioned not to take. Chametz is the opposite.

Chametz is actually a mitzvah to eat. Every Shabbos, we eat challah, and that’s a wonderful thing, and that’s positive, and we’re supposed to. And we treat bread with such respect in halacha, and and we, you know, we take care of it in in, you know, lots of different ways. And all of a sudden, that thing that’s really an article of a commandment, of a mitzvah, turns into something that’s not allowed.

And I think that on a very just sort of strictly halachic level, I think it has to do with saying something that’s normally allowed is now not allowed, and we need to keep on reinforcing that for ourselves. We can even suggest, and some suggest, that the prohibition against owning chametz is the Torah’s own fence around its own law. Basically, usually the Torah has a law, and then the rabbis make fences around the law, right? So like, the Torah says not to eat meat and milk cooked together, so we don’t even eat meat and milk not cooked together, right, if they’re, you know, cold meat and milk together, because we might warm it up, right? And so we don’t even eat chicken and milk together, because it looks like meat, and, you know, right? Exactly. You know, that’s the rabbis helping us out and making sure that we don’t trip up and make a make a mistake about something that is so important, such as a a biblical commandment.

In this case, and this is so interesting, the Torah itself, God Himself said, “Don’t eat chametz. It’s a very, very severe, aveirah, very severe transgression to eat chametz, and I’m going to tell you not even to own it during that week.” That is perhaps the Torah making a fence around its own law, right, to kind of help us not stumble. So that’s on a very sort of halachic level. I think on a on a philosophical level, why did God do that? Unleavened bread, right, matzah is very flat, very simple, right, poor man’s bread.

Chametz is bread that has come to fruition. It’s bread that has swollen, right? It’s bread that has perhaps become arrogant in a certain way, right? Even though, of course, we are very big fans of bread, right, and, you know, and some some some of your listeners may be still on the sourdough craze, right, and

Dovid Bashevkin: We We This is a very sourdough-centric home. I’m so happy that you mentioned it. And honestly, I I’ve been begging my wife, I said, “Let this go.

It’s taking over our lives.” It starts in the middle of the week, it’s it’s a lot. Sourdough craze still going strong, but please continue. Totally.

Sally Mayer: My daughter as well, and I love it.

I I think it’s great. So, it is bread that has come to its full form, and I think that matzah is taking us back to our roots, to a certain kind of humility, to a certain kind of basic, right? Number one, it’s meant to remind us of the suffering in Egypt. But number two, it reminds us of our place in the world. Like, we are, at the end of the day, servants of God.

We are we are nothing in in His presence, right? And to appreciate the magnitude of Hashem and His choice to to take us out of Egypt and to choose us as His nation, maybe that’s why we rid ourselves of chametz, right, of anything that’s leavened, anything that’s swollen, anything that’s arrogant, and we go back to our roots. I want to actually suggest one other idea, though, and that goes back to the idea of the of making our homes into an altar, into a mizbe’ach. One is not allowed to bring chametz on the mizbe’ach. The altar can never have chametz on it throughout the year.

Even when we do have any kind of minchah, a a meal offering that has chametz, it’s never brought on the mizbe’ach. It’s never brought on the altar. And if our homes are meant to be altars, then maybe there can be no chametz.

Dovid Bashevkin: That is so, so beautiful, really.

Like the the idea of like cleansing our home, and I I I love what you said earlier, because to me, it relates to the very heart of Pesach, which is that we’re prohibiting something that normally is not just permissible, but is encouraged, and you use the term, we have to learn how to recondition ourselves. And I thought, like, just as you were saying that, that that’s so much about the idea of Passover, learning how to recondition ourselves from scratch. That if Passover is almost the birth of the Jewish people and the Jewish nation, then what is a child first learning? What is a child’s first discovery? How to really condition yourself about boundaries and limitations and relearning, what does it mean to, you know, don’t touch the stove, don’t touch the oven. And like chametz is like this process where all of us, we recondition ourselves and draw new boundaries, which is such a profound idea as it relates to the the general process of what Pesach does for the Jewish people.

Sally Mayer: Totally. I want to add one more idea, which is that you know what else can never be brought on the altar? Devash, sweet things. So what do we have at the Seder? maror. So you’re eating matzah and maror, bitter herbs, right? With your Paschal lamb, because here we are at the altar, and on the altar, we don’t have leaven, and we don’t have sweet things.

So there’s something really, I mean, that is really the symbolism is there for us to, you know, to grab on to.

Dovid Bashevkin: And I can’t emphasize enough how much I return to this idea, but that the ultimate redemption, the ultimate ability, you know, redemption before that, you know, the final realization of redemption, but having redemption before our eyes within our lives, it begins by transforming the home. It begins by finding that purposefulness and that transcendence in the home. And that’s why I’m so grateful for that idea that what Passover is all about and and representing for us is transforming the home itself into that altar of service.

I’m so, so grateful. I would like to begin our Talmud questionnaire. This is I would call it medium rapid-fire. It doesn’t have to be one-word answers.

My first question is who do you consider your primary teacher of Talmud, and what did they teach you?

Sally Mayer: So my primary teacher of Talmud was Rabbi Moshe Kahn, zecher tzaddik livracha, who passed away only couple, two, three years ago. He was really the father of women’s Talmud learning in the New York area. I had him as a teacher at Stern College, at Drisha Institute, which were basically most of the places you could learn at that time. He taught me a rigorous method for learning.

He took us so seriously. He never compromised with us. He wanted us to get it right and to understand it well, and he combined that with a deep piety, deep commitment to Torah and to mitzvos, and with incredible humility. And these are things that I that I take with me to this day and still try to emulate.

Dovid Bashevkin: I absolutely love that. I never merited to really study with him. I think we may have met in passing once or twice, but his his legacy, his memory should continue to be a blessing for the entire Jewish people. My next question may be something that you have actually done pretty much on a regular basis, and that is if you were introducing someone to the Talmud for the very first time, how would you explain what it is, and where would you begin?

Sally Mayer: I love introducing the Talmud to people for the first time because it’s really my love.

It’s the thing I love the most to learn, and so to share that with someone who’s never done it before is just an incredible privilege. The Talmud is how we get from the Word of God in the Torah to what we need to do today, and how we need to think about it. And so, if you are curious about why God commanded certain things or why we practice a certain way, the Talmud is going to give you the answers. And it’s not just about halacha and practice, it’s about philosophy.

All of Jewish philosophy comes from the Talmud. There are even recipes in the Talmud. There are great stories in the Talmud. It’s the treasure of Jewish law and thought.

It’s a tremendous, tremendous privilege to be able to get a window into it and to even become a part of it, because it is Torah shebe’al peh. It is actually ultimately, it was the oral tradition, and we are links in that tradition to this day. So it’s a way of becoming part of the mesorah and part of the tradition in a in a really palpable way. And if I were starting, I would probably start either from Berachos, from the fourth chapter of Berachos, which introduces prayer—Davening.

—Exactly, davening. —or from what is really my favorite tractate, which is Maseches Ta’anis.

Dovid Bashevkin: Very interesting, and you’re already spoiler, so maybe you could explain My next question actually is what is your favorite tractate? And maybe you can add, because you already spoiled your answer, why is that your favorite tractate?

Sally Mayer: So my favorite tractate is Ta’anis, if you’re allowed to have a favorite. I always feel a little bad choosing a favorite, and—

Dovid Bashevkin: I think you’re for sure allowed to have favorites, and it bothers me when people like, “Oh, I don’t want to pick favorites.” That’s part of the relationship that we develop, so I’m with you 100%.

Sally Mayer: Yes. So Ta’anis is my favorite for two reasons. Number one, it is a maseches that is fundamentally about our relationship with God. It is about when we pray for rain, when we begin to daven for rain, and about what we do when there’s no rain, God forbid, and we have to start fasting and davening in extra ways, and then it goes into talking about what happens when other calamities, God forbid, come upon us.

And I learn Maseches Ta’anis every year with my students. I have a a lunchtime Gemara shiur that I give to, you know, those who want to learn even more. Every year we begin with Maseches Ta’anis, and I’ve learned it with a couple of my kids. I think I’ve learned it like around 25 times by now, every time I learn it, there’s something that jumps out to me.

During COVID, it was when you were davening for a plague. You know, how do we daven about a plague? After October 7th, it was when enemies are surrounding a town, and what do we do when we when we daven, it was about captives, and redeeming captives. There’s something in there that touches you differently every time, and is so relevant and real, and meaningful. So, I find Maseches Ta’anis to be really to be to be a beautiful, beautiful maseches, and there’s so many amazing stories in there and miracles that it’s just a fascinating, fascinating maseches.

Dovid Bashevkin: So so you already teed up, you’re you’re really good at this ’cause you’re always introducing you’re preempting our next Actually, you know, I I thought for a moment, I’ll I’ll just let you know, I thought about trying to match up every interview to their favorite tractate, but that would have required such a Herculean effort of like it just would have been too hard, but I’m glad that we got you on Pesachim, but I’m glad that we got to talk a little bit about Ta’anis. But my next question, which: What is your favorite story in the Talmud?

Sally Mayer: Okay, so my favorite story does come from Maseches Ta’anis. It’s actually a very tiny little passage that is two stories in one that go together. There was a plague in the town of one great rabbi, but the plague skipped over his neighborhood, and the townspeople thought that it was because of the great merit of that tzaddik, the zechus of that tzaddik.

And the townspeople have a dream, and they say, “No, it wasn’t because of that tzaddik. It was because of a man who remains anonymous, who used to lend out his shovel for people to use when they needed to bury their dead.” Apparently, at the time, people used to dig the graves themselves, the family members, “and he used to lend out his shovel, and that’s why the plague skipped his that that guy’s neighborhood.” And then there was another city where there was a fire, and a different great rabbi. The neighborhood of that great rabbi, the fire skipped over, and everyone thought it was because of the great rabbi. And again, the townspeople have a dream, and they say, “No, it’s because of a woman who used to lend out her oven on erev Shabbos for other women to use to bake their to cook their Shabbos food.” And it’s such a beautiful set of stories.

First of all, note that what saves from the plague is somebody who lends out his shovel to bury the dead, and what saves from the fire is the fire of the oven. So, there’s a beautiful middah k’neged middah there.

Dovid Bashevkin: Wow. Yes.

I missed that, that’s beautiful.

Sally Mayer: Yes. And it’s also the two rabbis are named, but the two townspeople are not named. Those townspeople remain anonymous.

And I think that the anonymity of those two people is so significant. First of all, it’s also a man and a woman, so it’s trying to say, this could be any of us. This could be you, this could be me, this could be any of us, right, who saves the town? And then once you think of that, that it could be me, like, what could I be doing to save my town, you also can think, maybe the person next to me is that anonymous person, and I have no idea that he or she is the one saving the town. And so that message of chesed that helps, and looking and and realizing that there are hidden treasures in every person is something I take with me all the time.

Dovid Bashevkin: So beautiful. My next question: What is your favorite sugya, meaning legal topic, in the Talmud?

Sally Mayer: That’s a really good question. One of my favorites is the topic of oseik b’mitzvah patur min hamitzvah. That’s in Maseches Sukkah, so now we’ve mentioned Sukkos.

That sugya is about if you’re involved in one mitzvah and another mitzvah comes along, do you have to stop to do the second mitzvah, or should you continue doing the mitzvah that you’re doing and even miss out on the other mitzvah? So oseik b’mitzvah patur min hamitzvah says that you should not stop and you should continue with the first one, right? But there’s a big, big debate amongst the Rishonim, amongst the commentaries, and it’s supported by different like all of the commentaries bring different Gemoras that show this way or that way: What if it’s easy to do the second? What if you could do it at the same time, right? Or you could take a quick break and come back to it, right? Do you have to stop and do it and do the other one? And what that debate gets to, to me, is like so fundamental: What are we doing here? Like, what is our job here? Are we meant to be doing as many mitzvos as we can, ’cause mitzvos are great, and like we should be doing them, and as many as we can do, even if it’s two at the same time, great? Or are we trying to justify each moment of our existence by serving God with that moment? And if we are doing that, then why are you running to do a different thing? Like, just do it. And it has also this mindfulness aspect of trying to really be in a moment, right? And at the same time, of course, like, I don’t know, let’s say, like, a man is wearing tzitzis, and does he not have to do no mitzvos now, right? Like obviously no one thinks that, right? It’s just a really, really interesting and rich sugya that gets into like some fundamental ideas about what we’re doing

Dovid Bashevkin: What an absolute brilliant read on that topic, oseik b’mitzvah patur min hamitzvah, almost like two different perspectives on the role of mitzvah in our lives. Like one is like maximization, like just grab as much as possible, and the other’s like be as focused and disciplined as possible with each and every moment. I find that so, so beautiful.

So my next question, I’m sure a lot of students, people come to you, especially in Midreshet Lindenbaum, I’m sure there are many people who they’re learning in depth and really like immersing themselves in Talmud study for the first time. What advice and direction do you give to somebody who’s like first, you know, colloquially like breaking their teeth on the Talmud for the first time?

Sally Mayer: So we definitely have, we have some students who come in with tons of background and some students who come in, like you say, who have no, have no experience with it yet. What I would say is number one is don’t be discouraged. It’s a big corpus, and there are a lot of concepts and a lot of important words, and you have to just keep at it.

One thing I would suggest is learning a lot of Gemara. Just listen to The Talmud Daily Podcast, perhaps, or or, you know, Daf Yomi recordings or just to get the cadence of the Gemara, get the concepts, get some of the words. Have a chavrusa, have a study partner, go to a class. It’s such an exciting thing, and I actually remember I first started learning Gemara when I was in ninth grade.

My elementary school didn’t teach Gemara to the girls, and so I learned it for the first time in ninth grade. And I remember thinking that it was so vast, and like how would I ever, how would I ever master it? Or how would I ever feel And I remember the first moment that something in the Gemara was quoted and I had heard of it before in a different Gemara, and I was like oh, like there’s like land on the other side. Like I, you know, like I can find myself. And now I’m actually like, I’m just a few weeks away from actually finishing the entire Talmud for the first time.

Dovid Bashevkin: Mazel Tov! Wow!

Sally Mayer: In Daf Yomi, so it’s it’s really exciting to me to like be, you know, to be talking to you right now about this, because it really is, you know, an exciting moment.

Dovid Bashevkin: That is so incredible. You have like a prophetic knack at anticipating my next questions like I’ve never seen before in my whole life. Like there is genuinely something prophetic.

But my next question was, and maybe that was already the answer, do you remember when you first fell in love with studying Talmud?

Sally Mayer: Okay, that’s a really fun question, because when I first learned Talmud, I have to like we just finished Yom Kippur and ashamnu, bagadnu, al chet, you know, like we talk about our sins. The first time I learned Talmud, I remember saying to my teacher like, “I don’t know why we’re going around and around in circles just to get to a conclusion that we already knew already. Like what’s the point of this?” And I I don’t know if I formulated it in even as respectful a way as I just said it to you. I it was a little kid, and and I remember the teacher saying, you know, like, “The process is important, and you learn a lot from the process.” And it was sometime in the middle of ninth grade when I was like, “This is so fascinating, and this is so cool.” And I started learning Gemara in my spare time.

By the time I was in tenth grade, I was learning it like after school, and I and in the summer, and I just fell in love with the Talmud. To me, it is just like the living, breathing Torah that just keeps on going.

Dovid Bashevkin: Do you have a favorite commentary on the Talmud and why?

Sally Mayer: Okay, that’s a fun question. I really like the Meiri on the Talmud.

The Meiri is it’s a little bit of a me’asef lechol hamachanos, like he kind of like summarizes a lot of what other people say. He has little nicknames for each one, for each for each commentary, which is kind of fun. And he’s actually written in surprisingly accessible Hebrew.

Dovid Bashevkin: Very.

I sometimes call Meiri like the original ArtScroll. It just opens up and takes you through in a very orderly way.

Sally Mayer: Yeah, so the Meiri is a really great go-to commentary for me.

Dovid Bashevkin: To someone who does not study Talmud, and they’re they’re just like this is not a part of their world or their life, do you have an elevator pitch about why studying Talmud is for everyone or or why it’s worth giving it a shot?

Sally Mayer: The Talmud helps us really, really understand what’s behind everything that we do.

And if you’re curious, if you like to know where things come from, if you have questions and you’ve never understood something, the Talmud is for you. It’s the place where questions are encouraged and nurtured and answered in multiple different ways. Sometimes I hear people say, you know, Judaism believes in X or Judaism doesn’t believe in in Y. And yeah, there are things that Judaism absolutely believes in and absolutely doesn’t believe in, but there are so many different opinions about so many things.

And once you open the Talmud, you see. I’ll give you one quick example. The problem of theodicy, the problem of why bad things happen to good people, good things happen to bad people, is something that we all struggle with. And we all encounter at some point in our lives.

And the rabbis in the Talmud had multiple different answers to that question. Maybe the wicked people are being rewarded here because they’re going to be punished fully there, and the righteous people are being punished for any tiny thing they did here, but they’ll be rewarded fully in the next world, right? So, okay, that’s one, you know, we’re really on a train. It doesn’t matter as much where you sit on the train; it matters where you’re going to be when you get to the destination. Okay, that’s one answer.

Another answer is we don’t really understand, whatever, right? But at the end of Maseches Horayos, Rava, one of the great sages of the Talmud, one of the great Amoraim, he says, you know, “I know that we say that the righteous suffer in this world so they could have a good, good experience in the next world, but I’d like to suggest that the tzaddikim, that the righteous, get good in this world and the next world. Could we have that?” And I just feel like, aren’t we all Rava? You know, it’s like when the rabbis give you a glimmer of like, “Yeah, we hear you. We also struggle with that,” right? Or when one of the rabbis in Berachos—I think this is actually in the Yerushalmi—you know, thanks his head for bowing at Modim because he’s not really focused. When the rabbis show us that they understand our experience, that to me just brings everybody in.

So if you have questions, if you’re not sure about things, the Talmud is totally where to go. You’ll actually find camaraderie, and you might even find some answers that satisfy you.

Dovid Bashevkin: Absolutely lovely. Do you have a favorite person, personality, in the Talmud?

Sally Mayer: Okay, I do.

Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai is my favorite personality in the Talmud. He was the head of the Sanhedrin, of the great court, the high court, at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, the second Beis HaMikdash, and he transitioned the Jewish people from a life with the holy Temple, with the Beis HaMikdash, to a life without it. For us, we can hardly imagine a life with the Temple, going back to our first discussion about the sacrifices, right? But the people at the time could not imagine a life without it, and could think Judaism is over. And Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, very wisely and often in, like, really audacious ways, actually helped us transition to being a people who could last all the way to this day by making Torah the center.

Ten li Yavneh v’chachameha—give me the rabbis of Yavneh, give me the people who are going to continue transmitting the mesorah, he says to Vespasian, right? And that is how we got to today. It’s because of that decision. And at the same time, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, it is said about him that nobody ever greeted him first. He greeted every individual first, even the non-Jew in the marketplace.

What we would call in Israel the invisible people, the people that people just pass by, the shomer, the guard, the bus driver, whoever it is, he would say hello to every person like that. So to me, he was a giant in Torah, but a giant in bein adam l’chaveiro, in interpersonal relationships. And my husband and I actually named our third son after Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai. His name is Yochanan, after this tanna.

Dovid Bashevkin: Wow, that is so, so beautiful. My final question is really just about your very personal relationship with Talmud: when and where do you most enjoy studying Talmud?

Sally Mayer: I most enjoy studying Talmud all the time. I study it with my students. If I have to pick one time, I listen to Talmud shiurim in the car, and I learn it on the couch, you know, on Shabbos afternoon, but my favorite time is learning with my students at Ohr Torah Stone’s Midreshet Lindenbaum.

It’s just such an incredible group of young women who are so bright, so motivated, and really come up with the best questions and with new insights, and every time I learn with them, I learn something new.

Dovid Bashevkin: Rabbanit Sally Mayer, thank you so much for joining us on Talmud Daily.

Sally Mayer: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.