Don’t Reassure Me: When Kindness Feeds the Compulsion And More Chulin 30-32

Chulin 30

Better Together: When the Group Speaks With One Voice

Our Gemara on Amud Aleph uses an interesting phrase to describe the emergence of a Torah idea or ruling: “Nizreka mi-pi chaburah,” which translates as “it came out from the group of sages.”

The Hebrew word “Nizreka” has a connotation of thrown or ejected. Meleches Shlomo (Mishna Tamid 3:8) explains it as a phenomenon where everyone in the group spontaneously and independently arrived at the same conclusion — giving it increased veracity since many thoughts and personalities aligned and just suddenly were shared.

This phrase occurs several times in Shas, but I believe exclusively in relation to one sage, Chiyyah bar Gamda. (See Shabbos 3a, and Pesachim 64a, 73b.)

Is there some connection to Rav Chiyyah bar Gamda’s mode of thought that evokes this unanimity and connection amongst his colleagues? Perhaps. One such Torah thought that “came out from the group” is (Shabbos 3a) where the ruling is that if two people performed a forbidden act of work on Shabbos, it’s not a violation. (Shnayim sh-asa-uhu peturim.) Together is apparently a different energy, and not like a single person doing a single act.

Is the idea of the distinct dynamic of a group part of a broader personal philosophy that allowed Rav Chiyyah bar Gamda to energize his colleagues?

Another teaching of Rav Chiyyah bar Gamda is from Bereishis Rabbah (17:2): “Whoever is without a wife is not considered a full human.”

Possibly this teaching is also connected to a broader philosophy, in respecting the quality of partnership. The most significant partnership that one can have is with their spouse. The ability to collaborate, connect and negotiate the built-in masculine and feminine traits and perspectives is what allows creation to occur, literally and figuratively. Creation is evoked in the presence of opposites. Successfully hearing and integrating the disparate views of the groups can lead to an eruption of spontaneous, unanimous truth.

I’ll conclude with my own home-grown chassidish vort: Shnayim sh-asa-uhu peturim — When two people act in unison together, it exempts them from harsh judgment and misfortune.

Chulin 31

Don’t Reassure Me: When Kindness Feeds the Compulsion

Our Gemara on Amud Aleph discusses the halacha of an accidental immersion of a woman in the Mikvah without intent. One opinion holds that she is permitted to have relations but she still remains forbidden to eat Terumah and other holy foods.

However, Rava raised a logical objection to this. If we rely on this immersion to permit her from being Niddah, which carries a severe penalty of kares, surely it should permit Terumah, which carries a less severe punishment.

This is taken as a strong argument; however, the Rishonim raise a question because, in point of fact, there are other instances where the Niddah status is treated as less severe than the Terumah purity status. For example, the first Mishna in Niddah rules that if a woman sees a blood stain of color and quantity that would render her a Niddah, the assumption is it happened now, and not earlier, (despite it being a stain that could have happened from a discharge a day earlier.) Yet, when it comes to purity for Terumah there is a retroactive look back period. So here we are more lenient by Niddah and more strict by Terumah. The Ramban answers, technically we should have been strict by Niddah too. But if we make the impurity retroactive, it would lead to excessive fear about her becoming Niddah, and the anxiety could interfere with normal marital relations.

While the Gemara had no clinical name for this, nor did they assign it as pathology, they were identifying a pattern of human behavior: When the stakes are high (such as heaven or hell), there is a tendency to obsess, fear, check, and double check. The rabbis were sensitive to the impact that such overscrupulousity could have on a relationship and tried to mitigate triggers.

Religious overscrupulosity can manifest as a subset of obsessive compulsive behaviors. If such a condition is OCD, it should be treated as such and there are evidenced based practices and clinicians that specialize in that area.

There is a specific aspect that I would like to address because well-meaning family members and rabbonim can fall into a trap. “Symptom Accommodation” is the clinical term for efforts to comfort or reassure the concern or the obsession. “Don’t worry, it’s not a problem. I’m telling you it’s fine, etc.”

Ordinarily, this is a kind and human thing to do, in this case, it feeds the central challenge of obsessional thinking. Often, there is an unrealistic need for certainty. The obsessor worries about something that could happen, and that’s true, it’s that they’re not able to take perspective and manage the risks associated with it and the downside. Part of the treatment involves learning how to accept uncertainty and to bear the anxiety and the pain. It may sound strange, but it is true. We all worry that we might commit a sin and burn in hell. There’s no reassurance. There is caution, conservative and careful approaches, but there’s no reassurance.

Research consistently demonstrates that symptom accommodation is associated with increased symptom severity. Instead of decreasing distress, doing what comes naturally to comfort someone inadvertently strengthens their disorder.

Symptom accommodation also tends to escalate over time. What seems like a small and easy adjustment to make at first (e.g., providing a guarantee), evolves into more elaborate and difficult accommodations (e.g., longer and more involved reassurances and psakim according to rigid rules, frustrating and seemingly unending conversations.) (International OCD Foundation https://iocdf.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Clergy-Packet.pdf)

Here is what can be helpful to say:

Your anxiety says:

“If I check one more time, I will finally feel calm.”

But experience teaches: The calm never lasts — the mind simply finds a new detail.”

Chazal, in their wisdom, built boundaries of time, repetition, and sufficiency into the halachos themselves precisely to protect from this spiral. The requirements are not to create a guarantee; rather they are to show respect and due diligence. After that, “the Torah was not given to ministering angels.” (This is a bona fide halachic principle; there are limits to how much checking is required. See the following blog post on this topic: “Not Angels Not Anxious Menachos 23 Psychology of the Daf.”)

Chulin 32

Fear and Learning: The Right Amount of Awe in the Study Hall

Our Gemara on Amud Aleph relates an interesting response that Rav gave to explain why he did not ask a particular halachic question of his sagely uncle, Rav Chiyya: “I did not feel sufficiently intimate with my beloved uncle, Rabbi Ḥiyya, such that I could ask him that question.”

This is puzzling because the actual subject matter, involving a detail about ritual slaughter, does not seem particularly esoteric. Furthermore, both Rav and Rav Chiyya would seem to be not behaving in accordance with the directive in Pirke Avos (2:5): “Someone who is too ashamed (to ask) will not learn nor will an overly demanding person be able to teach.”

There is an exception to this principle, first directly articulated by the Rambam but codified by Shulchan Aruch (YD 246:11) as follows:

“A student should not be embarrassed before his fellow students who learned the material the first or second time when he did not learn it even after many times, for if he is embarrassed because of this, he will be found entering and exiting the study hall without having learned anything. Therefore, the Sages said, ‘The bashful one cannot learn, nor can the impatient one teach.’

“What are these things referring to? When the students did not understand the matter because of its depth or because their understanding is limited. But if it is apparent to the rabbi that they are negligent in the words of Torah and are lax about them, and therefore they do not understand, he is obligated to be angry with them and to shame them with words in order to sharpen them. Regarding this, the Sages said, ‘Throw gall (cast fear or dread) at the students.’”

This is based on a different teaching, from Gemara Kesuvos (103b):

“Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi said to Rabban Gamliel: My son, conduct your term as Nasi with assertiveness and throw gall (cast fear or dread) at the students.”

The challenge with our Gemara is that we have little evidence that Rav was intellectually lazy nor that Rav Chiyya thought that. We must answer that this was a personal high standard that Rav held himself to, and may also have believed that his uncle did as well. Though he did not know the answer, and we can be sure he tried, he felt he did not try hard enough and his uncle would think the same.

This is an important fifth Shulchan Aruch aspect of the student teacher relationship. The goal is always the same: to teach and learn Torah with excellence. The means to achieve vary from teacher to student, culture, and perhaps even the age of both parties.

Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik was known to be harsh and demanding on his students, having little tolerance for foolishness and those whose mouth emitted it. Yet some biographers assert that in the mid-1960s, after his personal battle with cancer, he became softer and more patient. (https://etzion.org.il/en/philosophy/great-thinkers/rav-soloveitchik/life-and-thought-rav-soloveitchik-2)

In the end, different personalities make the world go around, and even though kindness and patience would seem to be a universal, it’s not as simple as it seems. Fear of authority, fear of heaven and appropriate gravity are a necessary part of the wisdom acquisition process, for both the student and the teacher. It’s all a matter of degree. The Hebrew word for character traits is Middos, which actually means “measures.” This is significant because it’s never about never. Instead it’s about how much or how little.