The Problem Isn’t Playing Ball on Shabbat

In a recent article, an author shared how children can “upgrade their kdeushas Shabbos” by not playing ball or riding on scooters. In other words, they can improve the way they sanctify Shabbat by refraining from these activities. He cited a story that, during the time of the Second Temple, an entire city called Tur Shimon “was destroyed because ball was played on Shabbos.” The citation for the story is listed as the Jerusalem Talmud Taanit 4:5.

This past week on X, the account the Jewish Meme Queen shared the excerpt from the article, posting that “There is no way a city was destroyed because people played ball on Shabbos. It’s not even Halacha. This is not Judaism. This is extremism.”

The responses were heated. “Modern orthodoxy is when the gemara isn’t Judaism?” “So Judaism is based on your personal common sense? Do what you want but don’t call it Judaism.” “What do you mean this is not Judaism? That’s literally one of the Talmudim, the very basis of Rabbinic Yiddishkeit.”

The worst was “look at this shiktza [sic] denying the torah … nobody cares about your opinion goya, you are the extreme one and we Charedim have preserved true orthodoxy.”

It was an astonishingly vicious response to what seemed to be a reasonable objection, albeit garbed in more radical criticism.

Of course, the notion that the city was destroyed on Shabbos wasn’t actually stated in the Jerusalem Talmud. The article contained a faulty citation.

For context, this section of Taanit includes a discussion of, among other things, the terrible things that happened on Tisha b’Av, the ninth of Av (the day when, apocryphally, both temples were destroyed), and, the Jerusalem Talmud relates, the decision that the children of Israel would not enter the land of Israel. Among these calamities is included the destruction of the city of Betar in Judea, the Bar Kochba-era fortress.

When it comes to the passage in question, the Talmud discusses the town of Tur Shimon, questioning why it was destroyed. “Some say because of prostitution; but some say it was because they were playing ball.” It then describes three other cities that were destroyed. “Kabul because of quarrel, Shihin because of sorcery, and Magdala of the Dyers because of prostitution.”

The story, then, appears in the context of a number of cities that were destroyed because of apparent sin — for prostitution, or for sorcery.

So where does the suggestion emerge that this happened on Shabbat?

It’s actually in the Midrash, in Eichah Rabbah 2:4, where it’s related that the destruction of the town occurred “because they would play ball on Shabbos.” (Joseph Karo’s Shulchan Arukh, for its part, forbids playing ball on Shabbat, although it was written more than a thousand years later).

In other words, the original Talmudic story doesn’t mention anything about Shabbat.

A literal reading of the story would imply that ball playing itself (regardless of the timing) is a sin on the level of harlotry and witchcraft.

It’s not unreasonable to find that equation odd. The Pentateuch bans witchcraft. The Pentateuch condemns prostitution. But it does not mention ball playing.

That leads to several other reasonable questions. Perhaps there was a text-critical issue. Perhaps here “playing ball” is a metaphor. Maybe other sections of the Talmud are instructive. In the Babylonian Talmud, for example, tractate Sanhedrin 77b describes a situation where “those who were playing with a ball killed [another person],” where a ball rebounding off the wall ends up causing deadly injury. In other words, in the Talmudic context, this kind of ball playing is a potentially dangerous activity. Perhaps this is the kind of ball-playing (one that the Talmud here suggests requires training) the Jerusalem Talmud is describing, not a simple child’s ball game.

But here’s the thing — the exegesis is secondary. What’s important is whether we can actually have this conversation.

What matters is the insinuation — unfortunately far too common — that questioning any kind of Rabbinic precept – means that one is not even really Jewish.

The apparent thinking from these kinds of comments is that Rabbinic — and particularly Talmudic — literature is beyond criticism and beyond criticism. To question it is to yield one’s Judaism, to effectively leave the faith. It is the same kind of thinking that turns many Orthodox Jews against their Reform brethren.

What a sad development.

The tapestry of Judaism, particularly in the post-Biblical period, is an intricate, ornate one, woven with the wisdom of hundreds, if not thousands, of thinkers and writers, of myriad sects and philosophies; Judaism in its post-Biblical form has taken on many forms, from Karaism to Hasidism, from Neoplatonist rationalism to Kabbalah (which, let’s not forget, was initially far more controversial than it is today, when it has become essential to much of Orthodox Judaism) to Sabbateanism. It is not a monolith, and no one has a monopoly on who is a Jew — or what it means to be one.

Can a Rabbinic thought ever be questioned? At what point to the opinions of men become elevated to something divine and thus beyond mortal criticism? Does questioning a fellow human’s opinion somehow dilute someone’s faith?

Do we really need a hierarchy of purity within Judaism, where some people are more Jewish than others? Who are we to make that determination?

This is not to challenge one’s level of observance — that is everyone’s inalienable right. This is to ask whether there is room within the continuum of Jewish thought for reasonable debate, for reasonable questions, for historical inquiry. This reminds me of a similarly-heated discussion on the shape of the Biblical Menorah — where Rabbi Litvin suggested that the field of Jewish Studies had an “Anti-Judaism mindset,” and that “so much of Jewish studies” aligns with Hamas.

I should also note, that respect does need to go both ways — and this does not excuse those seeking the deconstruction of Judaism in the guise of academic criticism, either.

But in an era that is the most difficult for Jews worldwide nearly a century, this kind of thinking is dangerous.

Because, to the kinds of vicious antisemites who are proliferating around the world today, both the Jewish Meme Queen and the person accusing her of being a “shiktza” are equally Jewish.

In a time like this, that means that when it comes to playing ball, Jews need to realize that we’re all on the same team. And we should start acting like it.