Chapter 49: How Much Memory Do You Need?
No, the title isn’t a question about your next laptop… On The Good Place, Janet brings everyone including the Judge and Timothy Olyphant into her void, where Chidi presents his concept for an updated afterlife based on multiple reboots and learning from one’s prior lives. On the podcast, Rebecca and Jon talk about how we access and use our imperfect memories, and how Judaism tries to help us retrieve and use our memories for teshuvah -- via Yom Kippur and other practices while we’re still alive the first time. We ponder Jon’s off-the-cuff surmise that the Torah is Team Punishment and the Talmud is Team Learning, and reflect on how the Talmud addresses punishment through careful attention to the individuality of the one who was wronged and the one who did the wrong.
Texts
(Go to Jewish Lexicon on this site for more on Jewish terminology, names of texts and other background. The links here in the citations take you to the specific quotes in their full contexts.)
Rebecca refers to the Talmud’s analysis of punishments imposed by courts. One example is Mishnah Bava Kamma 8:1, which enumerates five dimensions of compensation for personal injury: physical harm, suffering, medical expense, time unable to work, and embarrassment (alternatively indignity or humiliation). The immediate discussion in the Babylonian Talmud (Bava Kamma 83b and going on for a while) uses the fact that people experience most of these five dimensions uniquely as a rebuttal to the idea that the Torah’s “eye for an eye” statement could even be taken literally, for to treat each person’s eye the same would mean to deny the individual experience of being harmed. (See here on 84a, for instance.)
Rebecca also references the general approach toward the death penalty of the Mishnah and Talmud in Masechet Sanhedrin, where the procedures are so strict that it is essentially made impossible. In Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5, the warning given to witnesses includes the famous statement that “one who destroys a single life, it is as if they had destroyed an entire world” — the statement is made with reference to the possibility that the accused will be put to death. In Mishnah Makkot 1:10 it is taught:
A Sanhedrin that executes once in seven years is characterized as destructive. Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya says: Once in seventy years.
Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Akiva say: If we had been on the Sanhedrin, no person would have ever been executed.
Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says: They [the foregoing rabbis] would indeed increase the number of murderers among the Jewish people.
Jon refers once again to our primary text from Rabbi Moses Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah (Laws of Teshuvah) 2:1
And what is teshuvah? It is that one who has done wrong leaves the wrongdoing and pushes it out of one’s thoughts, and resolves in one’s heart not to do it again, as it is said (Isaiah 55:7), “Let the wicked leave his way and the evil one his thoughts and let him return to Adonai…”, and so/then/similarly will have regret about one has done, as it is said (Jeremiah 31:19), “After I went back, I regretted”...
Jon refers to the second paragraph of the Sh’ma, which is a central prayer composed of three passages from the Torah. The second paragraph is Deuteronomy 11:13-21, which is here in the context of the Torah and here in the context of the prayerbook.
Now it shall be: if you hearken, yes, hearken to my commandments that I command you today,
to love YHWH your God and to serve God with all your heart and with all your being:
I will give forth the rain of your land in its due-time, shooting-rain and later-rain;
you shall gather in your grain, your new-wine and your shining-oil;
I will give forth herbage in your field, for your animals,
and you will eat and you will be satisfied.
Take you care, lest your heart be seduced,
so that you turn aside and serve other gods and bow down to them,
and the anger of YHWH flare up against you
so that God shuts up the heavens, and there is no rain,
and the earth does not give forth its yield,
and you perish quickly from off the good land that YHWH is giving you!
You are to place these my words upon your heart and upon your being;
you are to tie them as a sign on your hand,
and let them be as bands between your eyes;
you are to teach them to your children, by speaking of them
in your sitting in your house, in your walking on the way,
in your lying down, in your rising up;
you are to write them upon the doorposts of your house, and on your gates,
in order that your days may be many, along with the days of your children
on the land that YHWH swore to your fathers, to give them
[as long] as the days of the heavens over the earth.
In this vein, Jon talks about the book of Devarim (Deuteronomy) as a whole, and in particular contrasts two chapters toward the end. Deuteronomy frequently talks about learning words of Torah. Still, chapters 28 and the last part of 29 talk about blessings and in particular curses related to fulfilling and not fulfilling the Divine covenant — but immediately Chapter 30 teaches the idea of teshuvah explicitly the first time in all of Torah.
Other Links and Deeper Dives
Judith Shklar’s essay, “Putting Cruelty First” (referenced by Chidi)
David Biale’s book, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History explores the different kinds of power that Jews have experienced with and without national sovereignty through our history and how Jews have interpreted power and its ethics in different situations
Sarah Kolopsky’s Bat Mitzvah D’var Torah on the second paragraph of the Sh’ma
Learn more about Rebecca and Jon on our Hosts page!
