talmudic humor

[cellio]

I heard a story the other day at minyan:

A rabbi has a long-time friend who's a gentile. One day the friend comes to him and says "Rabbi, we've been friends for decades and I've heard you talk about the talmud; will you teach me some?" The rabbi shakes his head and says "look, you aren't one of us, you haven't been trained in this, you won't think about it the way we do -- I'm sorry, but I can't teach you this". The friend persists, and the rabbi finally says "ok, tell you what -- I'll ask you a question, and if you can correctly answer it, we'll study some talmud together". The friend eagerly agrees.

The rabbi says: "Two men climbed down a chimney together. One of them was dirty and one was clean. Which one washed himself?" The friend responds "Oh that's easy. The one who was dirty washed himself."

The rabbi shakes his head. "No no, my friend. The one who was dirty looked at his friend who was clean and concluded that he was fine. The clean one looked at his dirty friend and rushed off to wash up."

"Oh please, give me another chance!" The friend pleads. "Ask me another question!"

"Ok," the rabbi says. "Two men climbed down a chimney together. One of them was dirty and one was clean. Which one washed himself?" The friend, having learned from the previous response, says "the clean one did, because he saw his dirty friend and assumed he was dirty".

The rabbi shakes his head. "No no. The dirty one looked in the mirror, saw he was dirty, and washed." "Wait," the friend objects, "you didn't say anything about a mirror!" The rabbi shrugs. "So it turned out there was a mirror."

"Let me try again," the friend begs. The rabbi sighs and asks again. "Two men climbed down a chimney together. One of them was dirty and one was clean. Which one washed himself?" The friend responds, "if there was a mirror or other reflective surface, the dirty man could see that he was dirty and he washed. Otherwise, each man looked at the other, so the clean man thought he was dirty because of what he saw and he washed."

The rabbi shakes his head once more. "How is it possible that two men come down the same chimney and one is dirty and the other is clean? Clearly this never happened!"

Comments

[conuly]

The rabbi shakes his head once more. "How is it possible that two men come down the same chimney and one is dirty and the other is clean? Clearly this never happened!"

Because all the soot came off on the first man's clothes and body, and there was none left for the second one. Can't fool me that easily.

[siderea]

Accurate.

[minoanmiss]

*cracks up laughing*

Artscroll's version

[moe37x3]

I don't know what the origin of this story is, but a version of it appears in Artscroll's Bedtime Stories to Make you Smile (and conveniently happens to be the sample pages you can see on their website), with the part of the gentile played by "a professor from the local university."

My kids have this book, and I take offense to this story, at least the way it's presented there. It promotes the "stupid secularist professor" trope. It presents the rabbi's conversational technique as gotcha/gaslighting, which strikes me as mean and damaging to rational discourse. Thus, it promotes such conversational technique normatively as a way to deal with secularists, which I consider odious.

In addition, it possibly promotes this style positively as a stereotype of Talmudic analysis, which seems unfair and malign to me. Talmudic back-and-forth will indeed sucker-punch the reader from time to time, but usually, most exchanges in the Talmud that seem logically silly on superficial reading make a great deal more sense when studied with the appropriate background and context. Perhaps tolerance for passages that appear illogical at first is an important trait for a would-be Talmud student, and perhaps this story is an amusing way to make that point, but in this story, I think it runs the risk of giving kids a poor impression of the Talmud.

In our copy of this book, I used whiteout and a pen to bowdlerize the text, replacing "rabbi" with "clown" and "Talmud" with "joke book." It's fine for my kids to get a smile out of the story, but I don't want them getting bad messages about Judaism.

[/triggered]

[hlinspjalda]

chuckle

[osewalrus]

As always, it's cute. It makes me think of this as it might actually appear.

Mishna: If two men come down a chimney, and one is clean, who should wash? Rav A says, the clean one. As it is stated "oy le rasha oy l'schano (ill will befall the evil doer and his neighbor). Rav B says, the dirty one, as it is written tov la tzadik tov l'schano (good will befall the righteous and his neighbor). It happed on one occasion that two chimney sweeps came to the house of Rebbi Yehuda and both we clean. He exclaimed "He who watches the wind will not plough!" (Eccl.)


Talmud: Hachi Maschis lei? (Where do we find such a case, i.e., where one is clean and one is dirty). Rabba says: Where one obeys OSHA regulations and one does not. Abeye says, when the chimney is first built. Why would two men come down the chimney. Rabba says: they are chimney sweeps, and the union contract requires two. Abeye says: One is an engineer and another is a county inspector.

Abeye was asked: If the chimney was just built, why would the engineer be dirty coming down the chimney? Abeye answered: You ever eat with one?