Chapters 29-30: A Threefold Cord Is Not Easily Broken
On The Good Place, the group assembled in Australia is tested by Trevor’s efforts at sabotage and Eleanor’s frustration at sharing Chidi, and Michael and Janet come up with new ways to keep the four from leaving. On the podcast, Rebecca and Jon discuss how the group is a biblical threefold cord, something different from both pair relationships and a bigger community. We also explore the Jewish teaching about the absolute and equal value of lives even though people are so different, and how the characters are learning to believe that about each other and themselves.
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.)
Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) 4:9-12
Better are two than one
that they have great benefit from their labor.
For if they fall, the one will raise up the other, but woe to one who falls alone and there is no second to raise him up.
Also if two lie down they have warmth; for just one, how to be warm?
And if one attacks him, two will stand up against him — and the threefold cord is not easily broken/undone.
We didn’t discuss it directly but could have and probably will in the future:
Pirkei Avot 1:6
Yehoshua ben Perachya used to say: Make yourself a teacher/rav, and get yourself a study-friend/chaver, and judge all people with a bias toward merit.
Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5
How do they intimidate/warn the witnesses concerning capital crimes? They would bring them in and intimidate them: Lest you say something out of guesswork, or from hearsay, or from the mouth of another witness, or “from the mouth of a trustworthy person we heard it”, or lest you not know that in the end we will examine your words through inquiry and investigation.
Know that capital cases are not like monetary cases. Monetary cases: a person gives money and is atoned for through it Capital cases: his blood and the blood of his descendents are contingent on it until the end of time (olam), for thus we find in the case of Cain, who killed his brother, as it is said (Genesis 4), “the bloods of your brother cry out” — it does not say “the blood of your brother” but rather “the bloods of your brother”...this is why Adam/the first human was created alone, to teach you that anyone who destroys a single soul (nefesh) the Torah regards him as if he destoys a complete universe (olam), and anyone who sustains a single soul the Torah regards him as if he sustains a complete universe. And because of peace among creatures, so that no person (adam) can say, “My father is greater than your father.” And so the heretics cannot say, “There are many powers in the heavens”
Deeper Dive:
Rebecca references Rabbi Yitz Greenberg’s teachings about this Mishnah and the ideas about the value of human life that he draws from it. You can find more directly here (video) and here (download to read).
Learn more about Rebecca and Jon on our Hosts page!
