196. Demonic Smorgasbord

[Music] Am I grainy to you? Do I look kind of grainy and weird? No, you look normal. No, you're so grainy right now. Web cam normal. I don't know what to tell you. You're less crisp. I want to see crisp Hava. I'm just naturally grainy, Michael. What can I say? I'm just not crisp today. You like the Coatsgar Reb? Very grainy. Oh my god. Don't get me started. Well, have you had more time to think about the Coatsgar Reb? And you decided you. Yeah, you know, the other day I wanted to cry and I couldn't cry. And I thought this is the best cry ever. This is the best cry of my life. I've had the cry of my life and I owe it all to you. Sometimes when I edit the pot, I feel like I come up with things to say that are a lot more articulate than what we actually say in the bonk. It's like a second time around. And everyone's not editing the Coatsgar Reb. It's not like what he says is wrong. It's how he says it. Instead of saying, I think X is true. If you think Y is true, you're stupid. Yeah, right. Everybody always talks about this, but nobody talks about this. Yeah, it reminds me of some friends I used to have. So you're saying you wouldn't be friends with the Coatsgar Reb? There were times in my life where I would be unconsciously attracted to people who were like the Coatsgar Reb, if that makes sense. I could picture you too as a couple. Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? My goal, how are you? Uh, how am I? I did wake up from an absolute. It's real good right now. Welcome to the world. Welcome back. Thank you. Um, Grinch Grille and I went to the dump today. We picked up a nice wooden chair. Ooh, a lot. Yeah, because we got like a little swap table going on, you know? Sure. You've gone to rural dumps before, right? Yeah, I have. But none that had this kind of situation you're talking about. But I've been in the recipient of dump gifts from you before. Yes, you have. Some of them, you really appreciated some of them overwhelmed you quite a bit. Yeah, there's just a lot. There's just a lot of whatever it is. Yeah, I love getting weird things at the dump. It's great. I got a carved wooden duck at the dump couple weeks ago. Yeah. My grandma on my dad's side used to collect these little like glass chickens. They're like ceramic or glass and they are made in the shape of a chicken and like the top comes off. So it's like a little bowl, like a little cookie jar. Apparently this was like a popular item to make in mid-century. So just like there's like hundreds. It's like, you know, collecting nutcrackers, you know? Like there's a million different variations of this one kind of chicken container that she collects. I'm familiar. I've been in people's houses who are chicken fanatics, like chicken kitchen people. Right. Or the entire kitchen is chicken themed. God bless them. Somebody's got to be rooting for the chickens. Yeah. You know, want somebody to think of the chickens? No, I'm definitely not. I was at Popeye's as a matter of fact a few days ago. At the opportunity, I took advantage. Wow. Yeah. A chicken hater. A lover in a way. So you got a nice wooden chair, anything else going on? How's the house? How's the garden? How's Skeeter? Skeeter's good. House is fine. Wood stove is going. Nice. Are you cooking anything on your wood stove? Only when the power goes out. Hopefully not. I guess that's more good for keeping things warm than for cooking anything. Made a pumpkin pie for the fangirl. And like a little slow cooker. Ooh, delicious. Oh yeah. Delicious. So, you know, everything's good and common nice. Hopefully it'll stay that way forever until I die. We'll see what happens. Well, good luck with that. Thank you. Thank you. How are you, Hava? I'm not doing okay. You know, I have that same feeling I get every time we come to record the podcast where I get sleepy the moment we start recording. I don't know what it is about our dynamic. We have like the opposite of a free song. We have like a nap cell. Great. But, you know, I'm doing pretty good. I've been learning a lot of really cool stuff as part of my work on Transalacha project, just like a lot of really cool halacha. You know, I get a lot of opportunities to study Talmud, but I haven't gotten that many opportunities to study halacha like extensively and broadly to study the work of different halacha folks like the Mary, like Shulchanaru. So it's really nice to get a chance to delve into those and to be surprised by some of the gyms I'm finding. Do you want to share any gyms right now? No, I don't want to share them because they're for Transalacha project. I really did think about bringing something from this collection of gyms, but I'm keeping them saving them for a future date. They've got a ferment, you know, they're like pickles, they're like sauerkraut. Got it. Yep, that's fine. So yeah, so I'm chillin. I'm preparing myself psychologically and practically to go see my family in Texas very soon. That's just going to be a whirlwind. But I'm going to meet my baby nephew. I'm so excited. This is the brother that got married, right? Yes, exactly. This is the brother that got married, whatever amount of time ago, not very long ago. They got that baby together quick. Yes, this is the brother, the righteous brother, the good brother. Right, right. What kind of vibe is that the brother and the wife in the home? I kind of imagine that your brother is like your boyfriend, but that's probably not accurate, you know? I would say my brother is actually a look, he's more, I mean, he's definitely quiet, but he's more extroverted than my boyfriend. He is very goofy. I think that's a family quality we share. Currently, he's a middle school music teacher. So I feel like that actually should tell you everything you need to know, specifically a middle school orchestra teacher, although he got his degree in guitar performance. So the most harmless earnest person you can imagine. Yeah. He is a pure angel baby and his wife is a pure angel baby as well. So I'm assuming their baby will be a pure angel baby baby. Wow, wow, wow. Are you like the God parent? Well, that's like a Catholic thing, right? Do Protestants do that? Yeah, that's not a thing. That's not a thing. What do Protestants do with angels like? Well, I guess something happens will figure it out. Is that kind of the Protestant approach? Yeah, that's the vibe. All right. That's the vibe. Yeah, there is no. I did get the little baby some cute clothes as a present that I will bring. Very nice. I'm not very much of a gift giver within my family, mostly because we've been estranged for the majority of my adult life. So I'm still kind of trying to get the feel for like what are the appropriate social expectations on gift giving holidays. It's a weird experience to have at this time in my life. Well, I hope you're going to have a lot of fun. I wish I could come with you. I want to be there. That would be a real I can try. I am going to need some barbecue and I know that that's going to be good. Oh, so good. I'm imagining for some reason just one incredibly long ranch style home with dust bunnies rolling or not dust bunnies. You know what I'm talking about dust those weed those rolling weed, rolling tumble weed. Tumble weed. I mean, dust bunnies are the tumble weeds of the home. That's true. That is true. Yeah, that's the code's corretto. He said that. Yeah, they're actually the same species. He didn't say dust bunnies are the tumble weeds of the home. He said, whoever thinks tumble weeds are tumble weeds is wrong. They're actually the dust bunnies of outdoors. You idiot. Yeah. Exactly. You, face of shit. If you don't understand the centro, go back and listen to last week's episode about the coach Greppy and how he is negging us all into being his disciples. Famous pickup artist, the coach. Anyway, before we slander the coach, who are up too much more, I brought this thing continuing on our theme of continuing on our theme. This is a little bit of a smorgasbord. It's like this little section of Talmud. I was looking for something to bring for this week and I didn't know what to bring and I found like a little part of this that was interesting and then I went to look at the broader context and I was like, well, this is both preceded and followed by other really weird and interesting things. I'll just bring them all into a big mishmatch. And so now we're just going to experience this weird flow between stories and halacha that come from Kedushin 29b. So on Kedushin 29b, let's say just taught, if one wants to study torn himself and his son also wants to study, he should take precedence over his son. Ruby, who does says if the son is diligent and sharp and his study shall endure, his son takes precedence over him. So basically, if you're a parent and you want to study, you should be allowed to study unless your kid is smarter than you in which case you have to make way for the next generation. Yeah, I don't know if there's a relative comparison between father and son being made there, but that is one way to take it, I guess. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I was jumping a little ahead by making it relative, but it's going to be clear that that was the intent here in just a second. Oh, good, oh, good. I love comparing people's intelligence. This is healthy. I know, right, especially between fathers and sons. Oh, yeah. Nothing that has ever come of this. So this is like the time when Raviyakov, the son of Acha Baryakov, whose father sent him to a baye to study Torah. When the son came, his father saw that his studies were not sharp and Rav Acha Baryakov said to his son, I am preferable to you. Oh, wow. Unless you know this story, there's no way you can know where this is going. It is just wackado and it only gets more wackado as we continue. So Rav Acha Baryakov says to his son, basically, I'm better than you. Anything you can do, I can do better, including Torah study. Therefore, you stay at home and be taken care of the house so that I can go study. So Baye heard that Rav Acha Baryakov was coming. Now there was a certain demon in the study hall of a Baye. Oh, yeah. Okay. All right. And I didn't know there was a demon going to come in here, which was so powerful that even when two people would enter the study hall together, even during the day, they would be harmed. And so Abay said, the people of the town do not give Rav Acha Baryakov any lodging when he comes to town. Don't show him any hospitality. Shut him out. Say you don't have room. Say you have a headache. Don't let him stay at your house. The implication of being here so that he'll have to stay at the Baye midrush. Okay. Because perhaps a miracle will occur on his behalf, either the demon's going to fuck him up in which case too bad or God will save him in which case we'll get rid of the demon and lucky for us. Now are you adding that aside that perhaps a miracle will happen? Perhaps a miracle is directly in the text. Okay. Okay. Okay. So. Yes. Abay is not a total asshole in this case. I mean, we'll see. We'll see. Um, so Rob Acha came to town and he didn't have any place to spend the night. And so he went to spend the night in the Baye midrush and the demon appeared to him as a serpent with seven heads. So Rav Acha began to pray and with every bow that he bowed in his prayer, one of the demon's heads fell off until it eventually died. And the next day Rob Acha said, if a miracle had not occurred, you would have placed me in danger. That's the end of part one of this Marcus Bordeaux. That seems very reasonable. So the part that initially drew me in is I just read this story about the demon in the Baye midrush because I was like, Oh, what if I bring a story about a dragon? We've been getting metaphysical recently and we've talked about the fenix. So we've talked about the love of our youth. But are there any dragons in Judaism that I could be bringing? And this demon is sort of like a dragon analog. So I went to look at the broader context and saw the proceeding teaching, which is just like if this dude literally literally saying to his son, you're not good enough to study Torah. So to me, it seems like seven headed demon is the appropriate punishment for this behavior. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's, it's a little uncouth to do that. But like, maybe it was true. Maybe maybe his son was a little shit. Michael, things have to be both true and timely and kind in order to be worthy of being said or funny. True. True, timely and kind or funny. And this was only one of those things. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I see. I see. Or we think it could have been one of those things, which is true. Right. Right. We don't know. We just know that he saw that it was that way. Right. He thought that it was that way. Okay. Also sort of like interesting inside into the life of a, a bar, a bar, a, specifically like there are a lot of stories of sages going off to study at the payment rush and leaving their wives alone at home, um, desperate stage wives. And it seems like a narrative convenience that his son needed to say home because it seems like it was normal in that time to basically leave your family all alone while you went off to the payment rush. So why couldn't they just both go? Yeah. Suspish. Hmm. Hmm. Suspish. So I don't want to say there are no other examples. This is the first example I encountered where one of the sages defeats a demon through prayer. Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was interesting. Usually they're like, well, you're a bitch, demon. And the demon was so embarrassed that it ran away and never came around again. Right. Like usually they have like a direct confrontation of some kind, whether physical or verbal. Right. Right. Now this is just straight. We're defeating it with prayer. It's a power of prayer. Right. Yeah. It's a power of a spirit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. If you pray enough, you can become a millionaire and defeat seven headed snakes. Exactly. With every one of your prayers, you'll cut off the head of a dragon. I like it. I like it. Yeah. I don't know. It's a fun little story, fun little fable. I like that. Listen, this guy was a real jerk. So I want to get him locked in the pavement rush with the demon. So just like back me up here. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so far it didn't work. So far the jerk's winning. Right. I guess the moral of the story is it doesn't matter if you're a jerk as long as you can cut off the head of a demon with your prayers. So now let's stick the last glob of this mortgage board together. It's had two globs so far. Glob number one inferiority complexes. Glob number two seven headed demons and the power of prayer. The glob number three, as is always glob number three on our show, gay shit. Oh, I know this stuff really has it all. Oh, okay. Wow. So at least in my opinion, gay shit. The say just taught if one had to decide whether to study Torah or Mary a woman, which should he do first? They said he should study Torah and afterwards, Mary a woman. If it is impossible for him to be without a wife, he should marry a woman and then study Torah. Ravya Huda said that Shmul said the halacha is that one should marry a woman and afterwards study Torah. Raviyohan says, how can one do this? The millstone hanging around their neck. How will they be able to engage in Torah study? Basically saying like with the old ball and chain. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And the Gapmarah comments the sages do not disagree. This is for us. And that is for them. The reason I interpret this as gays, one is because it's specifically Raviyohan saying it right, famously like top five gays of the town. Right. Right. And two, there's one group of people saying like, no, like we really need to have wives. Like we can't make it without a wife. And Raviyohan is like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like, I'm fine. I'm doing great. Yeah. What was the this is for us and this is for them? What do you think that line is talking about? So the paraphrasing in the translation says in other words, one statement applies to the residents of Babylonia and the other one refers to Eritz Israel because Yohanah was living in Eritz Israel and the Raviyohan Shmul were living in Bavel. So they are saying basically if you lived in Eritz Israel, the culture there is that you Torah before wife because you're fine without a wife because everyone's gay. Here, then Yohanah Shmul are a part of the culture of Bavel where they are like, no, we got to have wives. We can't fuck around with all this. Yeah, that's interesting. Always strange when they're making the trade off between women and Torah. If only they had let women into the Bay Midrash, they could have had it all. I know. I have to probably would have been too much. Nothing would have gotten done. You know, nothing would have gotten done. You let them in the Bay Midrash. I don't think anything was getting done anyway. That might be true. Something about the way Yohanah, he doesn't just say like, oh no, I love Torah so much. I have to focus on my Torah. He says, who would want a wife? Why would you want a wife dragging you down? It is very closeted gay experience. He's like, why? Why does everyone care about that so much? It is a little weird. Yeah, it makes me think like he's married to Raysh Lockheed's sister, right? Or was it really to Raysh Lockheed's sister? Was Raysh Lockheed's sister? No, other way around. Yeah. Yeah, Raysh Lockheed's just married to Rui Piyohanah's sister. Well, did Yohanah never have a wife? Does Yohanah's wife important? Yeah. I just haven't heard about her. You never know about the women in Talmud only in so few places. I don't know anything about Rui Piyohanah's wife. Yeah, I don't know anything. Did he even have a wife? Maybe he didn't have a wife. This is a question for a future episode. Yeah. And he was fine. Yeah. He was doing great. He was chilling. He did not need the woman in his life. He had Torah and he had his big burly gladiator. And I'm lucky enough to say the same. You do. Small burly gladiator. Very, yeah. Not very small, but small. At heat. Yeah, exactly. They got a mini-cooper. Mini-cooper man. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a fiat. Yeah. Yeah, like a little miata, you know, Mazda miata. How many more compact cars could we name? Find out next time. I'm not sure. Of course there was. Yeah. Yeah. I just felt like this passage had a little bit of everything we love here. Yeah. On the show. There's really no like serious lessons I was able to derive from it. I guess just like passion for studying Torah seems to be the unifying theme between the three globs of this mixture. Like the fact that Rev. Acha Barayakhov is willing to be sort of rule in his pursuit of Torah. The fact that Ravi Okhanan is willing to be, you know, willing to be gay for Torah, gay for pay, but the pay is Torah. And then in the middle, just sort of like the power of Torah, I guess it's all just like it feels like a study advertisement. For how are you? I feel like. Exactly. Well, that's everything. It has psychological issues, right? It's got magic mythology and homorodicism. Yeah. There you go. That's basic. What more could you ask for? Yeah. I feel like you could categorize all of our episodes into those three buckets. Well, sometimes we get into cool dense ethical shit. Right. Right. Right. Which I love that other category of ours. There just wasn't much of it in this particular passage. Anyway, that's what I brought for today, Michael. I hope you enjoyed it. I did. It was a good, I feel like a good palette cleanser after our, you know, after our kind of nagging, the post-correby. Yeah. Yeah. This is nice. Maybe we can break our streak of continuing our theme. We'll have to see. Do you want to? I'm kind of enjoying it. No, I kind of just want to continue it forever like an eternal soup. Yeah. I kind of am enjoying it. I feel like it's paying homage to the Talmud itself. Right. True. Very stream of consciousness. It's good. I feel like it's, I'm engaging with the creative. I'm just going to cut this out. No, no, it's great. I'm just engaging. If you're like, we're engaging with the creative process or whatever. Yeah. Hell yeah. So I hope you all enjoyed this. If you are a better Torah student than your child, get over yourself. Okay. They're great in their own ways. Don't tell them you're not as smart as I am. So stay home and watch the farm. Never do like the Kotsgar Reb says and tell them that they should never believe in themselves. The Kotsgar Reb would have said that exact same shit. Yeah. Anyway, thanks for listening, dear listeners. Go sign up for the lovely, sexy, mysterious, metaphysical, Pabala workings of Lexi at Shalmala's next class who created these. I'll put the link in the description. And you know, she would tell. (upbeat music)