I've been thinking about the part of the story of Akhnai's Oven that we don't often focus on as much, and how it relates to Jewish communities that have different ways of doing things.

For background - the story of Akhnai's Oven starts in Bava Metzia 59b. It's the one where R. Eliezer disagrees with everyone about the purity of a particular kind of oven, and to prove he's right he keeps invoking miracles.

First he says the carob trees will move if he's right, then that the streams will reverse directions if he's right, then that the walls of the hall of study will collapse if he's right. Each time Rabbi Yehoshua says "One does not cite halakhic proof" from these miracles.

Finally Rabbi Eliezer says that the voice of God will prove him right, and sure enough a Heavenly Voice booms out and says yes, R. Eliezer is right and everyone should listen to him. And R. Yehoshua says (this is the part everyone loves) "It is not in the heavens"

By which he means that God gave the Torah to *us*, and now that we have it and it's no longer in the heavens it's up to *us* to interpret it, God doesn't get a vote. And God accepts that. So R. Eliezer loses, and the rabbis determine halakha, not God.

It's an awesome story, and a lot of us love the lesson that we can stand up to God and win, and that WE determine our ethical/legal system, it's not an eternal divine mandate. BUT. That is not the end of the story. And I think there are important lessons in the next part.

What happens next is that R. Eliezer gets ostracized. They burn his previous rulings on what is pure and what what is iimpure, and they agree by consensus that he will be ostracized from the community. That's about as harsh as punishment gets in Jewish circles.

So they all agree that they're going to just burn R. Eliezer's reputation and standing to the ground, and then they look around and say "Who's going to tell him?" The implication here, I think, is that no one really wants to do it. And I think it's because they're ashamed.

I think they *know* deep down, that this kind of total victory method of debate is not the way things are supposed to be done. I think they know that they're crossing a line, and no one wants to be the one that actually takes the step, but no one wants to back down either.

So finally R. Akiva, who is a student of R. Eliezer, says 'ok, I'll do it, better that it comes from me and maybe then R. Eliezer won't destroy the entire world.'

That's the stakes here. We are doing something with the potential to *destroy creation*.

So R. Akiva dresses in mourning and goes and sits in the dirt four cubits away from R. Eliezer and tells him what's happened in the gentlest way he can. And R. Eliezer is so hurt, so wounded, that a third of the crops in the whole world die. Dough spoils as it's being kneaded.

R. Eliezer's anger is so great that, in true rabbinic fashion, anything he fixes his gaze upon is burned. And this is not presented as an overreaction - the implication is that if Akiva hadn't been so careful and so kind in the way he told R. Eliezer, it would have been worse.

So the story is that this rift between the sages is so devastating and so terrible that an ecological disaster occurs. One of the things that happens is that Rabban Gamliel, who is on a boat, almost gets capsized by a giant wave.

R. Gamliel - who is the nasi, and led the ostracization proceedings - immediately and correctly recognizes that this is for the sake of R. Eliezer *because God punishes those who mistreat others*. In other words, He *knows* that he's being punished for his own wrongdoing.

He *knows* that he was wrong to treat Eliezer so harshly, and God is pissed about it. It seems like this might be a good time for some teshuva - Gamliel has the option here of backing down, admitting he was wrong and trying to make things right. He doesn't take that option.

Instead he stands up in his boat and tells God 'hey, I didn't do this for MY sake, I'm not trying to protect MY honor, I'm protection YOUR honor!' And this kind of works. The sea calms down. But it doesn't end things.

Meanwhile, back at the rabbinic ranch, R. Eliezer's wife who is R. Gamliel's sister, Imma Shalom (lit. "Mother Peace") has forbidden R. Eliezer to recite the prayer in which there is room for supplication to God.

She doesn't want her husband asking God for anything, because she is afraid that God would answer his prayers and smite her brother for his mistreatment. This goes on for a while, but at some point she slips.

Either she miscounts the days or she goes to the door to give bread to a poor person, but one way or another she leaves her husband unattended for just a moment, and in that moment he prays and his prayer is immediately answered and R. Gamliel is struck dead.

R. Eliezer asks her how she knew that her brother would be killed from his prayer and she answers "All the gates of Heaven are apt to be locked, except the gates of prayer for victims of verbal mistreatment."

A brief sidebar about the relationships and characters here:
Rabban Gamliel and R. Yehoshua, the two named rabbis in opposition to R. Eliezer, have their own history.

Rabban Gamliel had a policy as Nasi of extremely restricting access to the hall of study. He had a (almost certainly classist) policy of only admitting people who's outward presentation matched their inward virtue - that is, people who spoke and comported themselves well.

At one point R. Gamliel shamed R. Yehoshua for asking a particular question so deeply that he was removed from his position as nasi. R. Elazer ben Azarya was appointed in his place, and radically changed the yeshiva policies, opening the doors to anyone who wanted to learn.

R. Gamliel sees the massive influx of students - 7,000 benches had to be added to accommodate them - and questions whether he was wrong to be so restrictive. Eventually he goes and apologizes (kind of) to R. Yehoshua, and is reinstated as Nasi.

So - this is not a one-off for Gamliel. He has a pattern of reacting harshly and in excess to things he views as transgressions. His standards of proper behavior are extremely high. He's been taken down a peg before, but from this story I'm not sure he learned from it.

R. Yehoshua has been shamed before. He's been a victim of R. Gamliel's mistreatment, and seen R. Gamliel punished for it. We don't learn, and I'm extremely curious, if R. Yehoshua is part of the majority that votes for R. Eliezer's ostracism.

I like to think that he is not - I like to think that he knows what it is like to be dealt with harshly, and he's capable of arguing strenuously against R. Eliezer's halakhic opinions without wanting him punished for being wrong. But we don't know.

So, what happened here? What I see is that one rabbi had a dramatically different approach to determining halakha than the majority. The majority get to set the prevailing ruling, which is fine, that's how it's supposed to go - but then they escalate the situation.

And that, I think, is *not* how it's supposed to go. We're supposed to welcome disagreement, even deep, foundational disagreement. We're supposed to tolerate our differences, and that's not what happens here. Instead, the dissenter is driven out and erased.

And then it keeps escalating. At no point does anyone stand down. Those who have mistreated one of their fellows (and *know* they've mistreated him) never take a step back and say 'hey, let's stop this.'

The person who has been mistreated never takes a breath and says 'you know what? I need to let this go. I can't solve this by holding on to my anger.' No one is willing to step down. And as a result there is death and destruction and catastrophe.

I am not finished yet, but I'm reading this interview of Chaim Saiman by @DBashIdeas (link here: http://18forty.org/talmud/ ) and thinking about the importance of Aggadah.

I think, if someone told me that I could only keep one part of the Talmud, the halakha or the Aggadah, I would pick the Aggadah. Given the right tools, we can reconstruct the halakha. It is not in the heavens. We're allowed and responsible for making those determinations.

The Aggadah is one of the tools we have to do that with. The stories are in there because they teach us, not what the law *is*, but how we're supposed to determine and use and apply the law. They tell us who we are as a People.

Part of who we are, or who we're supposed to be, is a People who tolerate and accept differences. We aren't supposed to blot out other opinions and keep only one way of being and thinking. When we try to do that, it's a Big Deal. It's disastrous. It's cataclysmic.