Interleaved: A Talmudic Podcast

Shabbat No.1: Space to Space

April 05, 2020 Netanel Zellis-Paley Season 2 Episode 1
Interleaved: A Talmudic Podcast
Shabbat No.1: Space to Space
Show Notes Transcript

In the midst of a global pandemic and widespread quarantine―when every day seems like Shabbat―how do we preserve the sanctity of our cherished sanctuary in time and space?

Zackary Sholem Berger, MD, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the Johns Hopkins Division of General Internal Medicine and Core Faculty in the Berman Institute of Bioethics, with joint appointment at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. A clinical epidemiologist, bioethicist, and practicing primary care physician, Zack is the author of two books for the lay public on doctor-patient communication and on patient preference in the context of medical evidence. He is also the co-founder of Clinicians for Progressive Care

Special thanks to our executive producer, Adina Karp.

View a source sheet for this episode here.

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Music from https://filmmusic.io

"Midnight Tale" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)

License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

spk_0:   0:00
Welcome to Inter League, where we take a deep dive into topics from the Daf Yomi with modern day stages of the Torah and the world. I'm the tunnels Alice play on today's episode. Personal

spk_1:   0:11
space, Virtual space and headspace. Shabbas depends on other people's work as various people in my life, over my enemy and various times completely legitimately, because oi make Chablis when someone else is doing the work and you can only the rest in a pandemic world when other people are doing that essential way.

spk_0:   0:34
We're not the first to ask why. An entire book about Shabak, a centerpiece of Jewish life for millennia and the focus of one of the longest track dates in the Talmud at that begins with a discussion of where one cannot go and where one cannot carry things. Isn't she bought about presence about being here, not about going there, as one does every other day? And I think we're especially equipped in this fraught moment in the middle of a global pandemic that has confined us to our homes. That has made every day a quasi Chabot to think about this question, joining me today to carry us towards some answers is Dr Zachary Burger. Zachary Shellenberger, MD. PhD, is associate professor in the Johns Hopkins Division of General Internal Medicine and the core faculty at the Berman Institute of Bioethics, with joint appointment in the Bloomberg School of Public Health. Clinical epidemiologist, bioethicist and practicing primary care physician Zack is the author of two books for the lay public on Doctor Patient Communication and on patient preference in the Context of Medical Evidence. Zach, Welcome to the Podcast.

spk_1:   1:36
Thanks for having me

spk_0:   1:37
In the nearly 100 year history of the Daf Yomi, there have been many instances where the content of the doff aligns with the world, whether in terms of the Jewish calendar or current events. Many people have been talking about this recently, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts as an epidemiologist and physician on the front lines, as well as someone familiar with Jewish history and culture. What do you make of the fact that we are learning about the difference between public and private spaces and transmission between them as we face a global pandemic?

spk_1:   2:04
I think that it was very interesting to me that the transition between brought coat and Shobha between attracted, which is so much about bodies and attracted that so much about space came just as the world was entering into this pandemic. Spaced and brought food and Shabbat are both as much about constructing bodies in constructing space as it is about noticing. Describing bodies in space because there have been a HK world is prescriptive as much as D script and its creative as much as it is investigational. So it's not just about the rabbi's noticing human bodies. It's the rabbi's making a world out of the bodies they want to construct and similarly tracked it. Shabbat is about spaces. The rabbi's want to construct how you carve the world in particular kinds of space. And what struck me about the introduction you gave was about how the pandemic makes how many shoppers for so many of us, and how the rabbi's construction of space assumes given definitions of who lives in those spaces. So talking about what's really juicy often refuse a robin. What is the private and the public space depends on assumptions and definitions of what is he often what is an individual and when it's a public whom moves in these spaces. Who is carrying these things from place to place? Who was running into each other, right? What? Who are active individuals? Who are these individuals? Between space and space and obviously the first mission? Chavez talks about the bus ticket into the honor. The homeowner, the archetypal Homo economic has ever been in a butcher who is, of course, a man giving tone on me, a poor person who is, of course, a man. So these people are operating in these two spaces, so we're talking about defining spaces around which people exist in them. So when you're defining domains about who moves through them, you need to consider who you're living out and who you're letting in, right. And when we say a pandemic is like a mini Chavez, which I've seen, it's been made pretty frequently. The thing that is potentially problematic about the observation, which I take it is mostly made with benign intentions is that Shabbas depends on other people's work as various people in my life, from my enemy, at various times completely legitimately, because oi make shoppers when someone else is doing the work and you can only the rest in a pandemic world. But when other people are doing that essential labor and you can on Lee, rest at home, stay at home when people are working grocery stores, when healthcare workers are doing their thing, when people are clean roads and and clean up after accidents and putting out fires. So every domain depends on those who helped to find that domain, rest depends on those who make that rest possible. So thinking of domains is actively created. Space is something that lines up very much with our idea of the rabbis as creative individuals off telephone rabbinical traffic. My mind's a hugely creative literature

spk_0:   5:18
that's really far provoking. I was thinking, just in terms of how the pandemic has kind of melted, are different spaces into another in terms of our private spaces are homes being now places where we can transmit a disease that can affect someone else on the other side of the world, the private space becoming a public space and even in terms of tele work and zoom, everyone's ah, you know, personal living rooms have becoming the public domain in terms of being able to be seen by everyone, but that's uneven. Ah, more fundamental point. I think that you're making about how this pandemic is really forcing us to deconstruct how we look at the spaces themselves and, like you say, who allows us to define them and tow, construct them and thank you for bringing that up. That's a very important point, and that's something that could be lost on some sections of our community or the world that are not as affected. So as you mentioned, the connections really start from the first mission. A of the track tape. The 1st 2 words of the mission Are you Seo Chabot? Literally the goings out, the departures of Shabbat. The mission continues, as you explained by listing cases of carrying between public space and private. So now we're all learning about what it means to go about our daily if disrupted routines without leaving the house. As I said before, and many people have been saying, it's like quasi shabba I saw a tweet or the other day that said there now only two days, Charvis and not Travis. And yet, in many ways, life right now is far more stressful than usual. As you said, obviously, for the people on the front lines. Well, even people at home, obviously not on this, not to the same degree or scale at all, but so even though it seems like she bought it, doesn't feel like shit lot at all. So I was thinking maybe the track dates start with these law because this is the bare minimum prerequisite for observing and appreciating. Chabot, as best as we can, is just to be here. Now it's about present. So I'm wondering how has remote work and social distancing and the other things that this pandemic has brought? How has it changed? How you think of the limitations of Shabbat, but also what it means to be present?

spk_1:   7:27
That's a great question. I think presence is only it's done in relation to other people. I am here because someone else's every there name. And so that brings us back to the first mission. Gets dark shadows of all of us there that they're the inside one, right? The Ani. The poor person's the outside one. So who gets to be present in the first mission? It is of all of us. The Ani is coming to him. Could honey but pass off. I got like a poor person at the at the gate waiting for the donation. Of course, the mission and the good Maura consider various ringing the changes on who's giving to who, right and there's one person stick out an empty hand and the other person put something into right, sir Set and how many interests and exits are there. But the mission A makes it clear. I think, that there's one person situated in their domain and the Ani is coming to ask for something, and I think that's the community. Are shoppers should be built on. We don't want the Chavez of the gated community. You are this Travis of if we want. If there any committees gave it to a certain extent, we want that gate to be reached by those around us. We want to think about a shopper's which is invaded on which is more foolish, which is penetrated by the life of those We don't think about who are around us all the time. Those of us who are living hand to mouth, who are cleaning our floors, who are doing that work, who are imprisoned and disenfranchised, otherwise ignored in so many settings, and you know as recently, and the doctor only were learned. We learned about Bitola Name that Paya, that leaving things for the poor is not a demonstration of magnanimity inside a demonstration of how nice we are and that there's this vast gray under French of massive poor people were gonna leave payoff for no. The whole concept of it'll a name is that you have to leave the right things for the right people. You're not supposed to give everything of yours away willy nilly like like some of the utilitarian would say that you just need to get every you need to get every excess bit of goods out of your pocket into someone else's pocket. No, you need to give the right things. The right people have the right sort of distribution. So Chablis is about letting that breach happen and recognizing who you are in community with and recognizing which they're your uber depends on and Shabazz is not a silent occasion. It is punctuated by the shofar blast. And that's significant because, as we honor the chauffeur, blessed also knotes societal crisis. Of course, the round bomb, I think based on the camera says that there's so far is used in fast days to call people to assembly. And it's also used to mark the beginning of the shot of Chavez. So suicidal restructuring and the liberation can happen in the context of a real showers. So that's what I think of when I think of domains and here and there about that first mission A. Letting our equanimity, letting our contentment, our equanimity, us to use the medical term be breached. That's that's what Travis could be

spk_0:   10:35
as beautiful. And it brings him on another idea that perhaps we have to make distinctions between the spaces in our lives the public and the private so we can bridge those spaces can weaken, build the roof. We can combine the different private domains, like in a really hot, she wrote, combining different private domains into one public domain. So that's, Ah, it's another way to think about it.

spk_1:   11:04
A dark green beer has OKed, right, everybody, everybody dwelling together,

spk_0:   11:07
right? So the next connection comes up On the very next page, the Thoma discussions the question of whether one is viable for carrying if one did not pick up an object on their own. But the object was loaded onto their back by another. The same discussion raises the question of whether a person's hand is considered by Jewish law to function as private property, such that one is liable for merely placing an object in someone's hand. Botha, reminiscent of some of society's own questions the Tom would of infectious transmission and interpersonal responsibility that is being written now by health professionals, scientists, politicians and the general public is one required to practice social distancing to its most severe extent. If one is severely careful about their own personal hygiene because of the chance one could be coughed on by someone else was less scrupulous. How should we relate to those who have neglected to keep their own private property their bodies to themselves during this vulnerable time? Is there some of the questions that this Talmud as being written now is asking? And perhaps most fundamentally, how do we told the line between relating to people as people possessing agency and deserving of our trust rather than as mere vectors?

spk_1:   12:15
Yeah, so So that makes me think of a face opposed that a friend of mine who I won't quote because you don't know she must recorded in a physician who said that, um, social distancing, if done properly, reminds her of a lot of fruit that on laws that even if even if you have your own kosher Bolin stewing in your own food, you shouldn't be in a bushel establishment because people might be led to think that it is okay to be concessions to establishment. So even if you're a scrupulously run hygiene, you shouldn't really be doing a uh something that I haven't really seen, actually, anyone that I know you do, but I know people do or read about like us, a six foot picnic where people do ordinary social gathering type things. Let me just take pains to stay six foot away from the belt from their fellow person, the idea being that it's a good Zahra. That social distancing is primarily so that one does not participate in the activities that cause actual bodily contact and and droplet contact, but also lest one does MME. Or less one transgresses. Even if one plans not which, as you say, it raises questions off personal responsibility and hewing to suggested practices and who is doing the right thing and who is not on that leads to two thoughts. Just as one should not moralize the medical when shouldn't medicalize the moral and I'll explain what I mean. So 11 obvious and very prevalent thought is that if you see people who are not behaving like you in a way that certain other groups of people may be powerful people are influential. People are knowledgeable. People said should not be done that you think those group of people are the officers are lesser than you owe. Those people are not a bank's toe distancing. Oh, those people are using Substance X, where they don't look like the way I think healthy people should look. They're lesser people. So definitely at first blush, I think the moral intuition is correct about as a an incorrect thing to do. That's a morally problematic thing to Dio, and it's something that I as a physician, any clinician and I strive to to remind the people I teach that if someone has a medical condition, it's not their fault. No matter what behaviors people practice because people practice all sorts of behaviors and that doesn't run them deserving of harm to their cell, for her body. That's one point to make that someone that doesn't properly social distance. One shouldn't seo. They got what's coming to them, I think, as as a moral human being, because everybody is flawed and everybody makes mistakes and the converse of that When I said you shouldn't medicalize the moral is as, ah, sort of a point I was making about Chavez in a point. I think that many of us take pains to make some people important. To have to pop me about is that there are social structures and equitable social structures that are causing how risks of disease they're distributed. Friend of mine Josh Gruner is a sociologist at Wisconsin's. Help me understand this point. There is no place to go back to before the pandemic. There are merely social structures of inequity and injustice that have created the ground on which pandemics act. It is not the case that those who are working today, even though people are not supposed to be at work, are behaving badly and is also not the case that is only relevant because of disease. These things intersect there. There are moral qualities of the way societies and economies. They're structured that promote the spread of disease. So that's in first blush. You shouldn't moralize the medical. You shouldn't say this person doing Behavior X, which helps read This disease is morally culpable, and you shouldn't go the other way. You shouldn't say this disease is a merely medical thing lacks any moral import on the level of social or political structures. But the third thing to say about this intersection is that these realms intersect in so many ways no more on the medical, more complicated level. Now who is worth a certain diagnosis? Who gets the treatment? Who do we tend? We shouldn't. But it's part and parcel of the of the healthcare professions that certain people are deemed more worthy of helping than others. That's an is not enought. But the way historically that health care has been structured is that doctors make diagnoses which put people in various categories, and you immediately see the comparison to There have been a world that who is a person. McClure oven mitts us, who is a person that is deemed an actor in this whole ASIC world and who is demon marginal, who is deemed to be a construction instructor of comings. And who's not, Um, these are very much constructed categories and there rich with moral implications. So the moral and the medical very much intersect. So who is being corn keen right now? Right. Quarantine is not universal, so there are people whom quarantine will affect more. And there are people who are more expected to obey quarantine more than others. There are people right now. I am sure we're working because they're being told to work right because of some. If someone is that there's an essential establishment open, someone's working that essential establishment. Many people are there, like those people that I take care of her undocumented immigrants, that on which our service industry, especially in Baltimore, in prison, the other cities depend. And they can't say, You know what? I'm not supposed to be here. I'm not essential. So the more on the medical very much intersect. Andi Israel constructed domains just like Like who said it wasn't the hand of the parachutes, right? Who said that that is very much a creation of It's a way of looking at the person human being and the well, the time. Very much the male human being as a builder, a constructor, a doer of things. And the hand is so important that it's a separate domain because hands build on that Carrie and they throw right. You could imagine other parts about being their separate doings with reverence. Don't do that. So it it implies a very specific construction of the world,

spk_0:   18:35
right, And that's a very good Segway. Into my next question, Tom would record the dispute between Ravi Huda and the SAGES about the nature of her shoot her robin, the public domain. The Buddha holds that the enclosed space can be considered a reshoot, or IBM, while the SAGES hold it cannot pursue into the general discussion. The later stage Abyei adds that when the nascent Jewish nation was traveling in the desert before entering the land of Israel, even the desert was rendered overshoot Arabian by virtue of their sheer population. His assertion floats the possibility that our holiday definitions of public versus private domains are dependent on time and circumstance and, as you said, the current crisis forcing us to reconsider so many definitions and norms that have been ingrained in our societal fabric for years, if not decades. And as you said to realize how much inequity is really built into the system, all of us, not just our governments are asking ourselves what it means for something a business and employees. A personal need to be essential. Something invention as a doctor, an epidemiologist whose expertise is so needed in this moment. Right? What variation of this question are you asking yourself now?

spk_1:   19:48
You gotta thinking about actually connection to Shabbat and the connection between Shut. But on the most, Melissa to Michigan, right, The labor of the Tabernacle, all those enumerated labours. There's 39 labors and labor just like those air, not all off encompassing labors. Each one of those dependent further labor is beneath him, and I'm not. I'm not talking about the total sometime all the labors that required to get up to that moment. And so who is an essential worker in this moment? And I'm thinking about not just the health care workers, but not just that the clinicians, but the people that clean the hospitals and all the people that make a society who are the families and loved ones of those essential workers. I don't think I have an answer of who is essential, who isn't essential. But it would be interesting to think about the domains of society itself. I was thinking and preparation for a child I was thinking about. What are the definitions of the different showed and really they're partially my little definitions, right? So about Richard's a Robbie, um, and how are you going to be traveling through it? But they're also really physical about physics and nature and deep holes and airspace and rivers and pits, and they're about high pits of walls. But they're not about fully realized structures. And so what would different domains of society look like? If we were to construct things that were fully realized, I would have looked like What would a public domain look like? And a Jewish idiom when institutes used what institutions would make that up and where there were areas in which we wouldn't enter into their be areas, that we would call Mom welcome mature, which wouldn't really be included in any of our definitions with the areas that we recover ships. The outfit which Jewish organization, Christian and Jewish political entity wouldn't enter into. And so when I think about this pandemic moment and essential workers. I think not just about the larger societal questions, but how do we as a Jewish community, participate in response and participate in those if, as those affected by the pandemic and I mean the Jewish community in the in the broader sense and even thinking about it politically and internal Jewish politics? How should one sector of Judah of Jews react when another sector of juices so deeply affected? Obviously, we have to react in the moment with compassion and morning. But we also need to understand why the epidemic affected such a sec so deeply. Figure out how our domain should better intersect in the future.

spk_0:   22:24
Does he really poignant way to think about it? Yeah, that's definitely something that's on my mind, and I'm sure the minds of many of us in this moment one of the major implications of the differences between the public and private domains is actually not a Shabbat implication. Tom. It brings up in several places the case of a Suffolk HQ. Doubt about Touma, ritual impurity. It makes a special distinction between Never should Ha Hayden Parachute Arabian. If a doubt stems from an encounter with impurity that incurred in the public domain, the SAGES will leniently, and we can consider anyone or anything involved and then encounter as a whore or ritually pure. If, on the other hand, the encounter took place in the private domain, we must have some Thoma impurity knowing that it is a natural human instinct to rationalize illness and particularly with the use of metaphors you talked about, not moralizing the medical earlier. Should we resist the temptation to compare infection? Tomo and tahara and metaphors in general,

spk_1:   23:24
I think I might approach the question from the other direction in talking in learning Torah and talking to people about two men, Tara as Torre categories or anything you contemporary Hladik categories that our query. Which human Tara, for example? In Health. Nida, You could argue that those are different countries into Montoro, but the overlap is there. So the question is how one sees those categories. It's always made an impression on me. The discussion by Jacob Milgram, his anchor Bible on Leviticus on using sociological categories, is how to matar our ways of sublimating deep rooted instincts about what is proper One is improper. De Proceeded ain't just discomfort with bodily fluids and death. So using those categories to approach disease is perhaps a national intuitive thing. But I would say after that that I don't think there is any wisdom and repugnance I think are our natural tendencies are often to be resisted. Our natural tendency to find other people, you know, off putting a repugnant if they're unlike us is ah, not an instinct we should encourage. We should, uh, recognize other instincts of universal human kind and recognize that everybody has the potential to fall ill. Everyone has a perfect body. So using tuned para and saying to monitor Robyn Sutra is a powerful metaphor. And if you use the right way to acknowledge that we're all unclean and all, I'm perfect. I think it was a very powerful thing to say without falling into this fallacy that these are really and periodical categories to describe actual human beings that we're seeing today. I think that would be a mistake. It is so easy to call people unclean. It is something we do as a society, right? Really. You know, in my profession, people talk about clean air and clean your ins, right? Someone as someone taking opiates for pain. And you're supposed to give a urine test in some quarters before you get that prescription to make sure that you're not misusing the prescription. And is your urine cleaner unclean? That's a very concrete use of the that metaphor. You know, that's an easy slippage from saying you're in is cleaner, unclean. The same people are. People are cleaner, unclean. That's the slippers, I think is to be avoided.

spk_0:   25:50
So the tourist perspectives on the moral implications of illness reflect aspect of his theology. How are you thinking about this pandemic from a theological perspective? Perhaps in light of the discussions, you bet on the bet about visiting the sick, and you know how the FINA, the divine presence hovers by the bed of a sick person, an idea that when you pray for a sick person, you have to pray for all said people

spk_1:   26:17
way. No, the subpoena can answer for injury, right? And that and that God can suffer pain. So understanding that, um, when we're praying, when when when we see the one with the shipment is present at the bad of the Oiler. That's that's the representation of the the sickness of the entire world. You know, I don't think of myself is a couple of a catalyst, but I think I understand that there are multiple domains to the divine and that divine interacts with the world. Um, through those domains is very useful concept And that where together with God and I'll dialogue and creation and trying to perfecting it in perfect creation and all those things I feel very deeply in these days and get that kind

spk_0:   27:12
of a beautiful way to go. Standoff. Thank you so much. Thank you. Between episodes, you can keep up with interleague on Facebook and at Inter Leaned Underscore pod on Twitter. Subscribe to our podcast. And while you're at it, leave review. We'd love to know what you think Special Thanks to our executive producer, Dean a car. Come back next time for another deep dive