S1E7: Parashat Bells

A montage derash about the house of gooseBUMPS, meats, high standards, Sergei Eisenstein, The Talmud, Beit Shammai vs Beit Hillel, and Elu V'Elu—but also SIKE, kinda.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Open your Talmud and call the plumber. It's ParaShot Bells this week on Jew Girl. Hello and welcome to Jew Girl, a New Girl podcast for the Jew Curious, in which I make my brother watch my favorite TV show New Girl for the first time and learn some stuff about Judaism. My name's Robin.

SPEAKER_04 0:31

My name's Jay. And the little bumps on your skin when you're cold are called goosebumps, not goose pimples. Get it right, Schmidt.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Everyone a memory. Is that what he said?

SPEAKER_04 0:43

Everyone a memory, exactly. Uh but it's funny. I I had I Googled that like half an hour ago, and apparently that's what they call it in England. They call them goose pimples. Yeah, I mean, I've definitely when I'm when I'm trying to be cheeky, hello.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Sometimes I'll make a joke and call them goose pimples. Maybe I only know it from the show. I don't know. But yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:03

Yeah, no, I I had absolutely no idea. I thought that was just the actor being silly or the writer.

SPEAKER_01 1:08

Uh kind of makes you wish that that 90s, those those horror books for kids, goose pimple. You know, instead of goosebumps, goosebimples, scary stories.

SPEAKER_04 1:17

Right? I mean, I was thinking. I was like, oh, goosebumps. Like there's literally like a book series and a show to back me up. That's what it's actually called.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Oh, we're gonna come back to that.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Remind me at the end of the episode, we're gonna circle back to this debate, okay?

SPEAKER_04 1:31

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

And for now, let me uh just recap the episode real quickly. So this is the episode in which Jess brings home some troubled youths from school to rehearse as a handbell ensemble. Ensemble. Uh, it comes to light that Winston has an unbelievable talent for playing the handbells, so he agrees to help work with the kids. Unfortunately, Winston gets way too intense and competitive about stuff like this, so he pushes the kids too hard and just um just kicks him out of the group for being a jerk. But by the end of the episode, he realizes the error of his ways and he joins in on the mediocre performance in the park. Meanwhile, in the Nick and Schmidt plot, we learned that Nick fixes things around the apartment in the most jerry-rigged of ways, just enough to make them work. And Schmidt prefers to get things done properly, and he goes around his back to hire a plumber to fix the toilet. Nick takes that as a jab at him, resents Schmidt throwing money at every problem. It blows up into a huge fight. Uh, Schmidt starts pointing out that he paid for a lot of the stuff in the apartment, the sofa, the fridge, stuff like that, and taking them back. And Nick retaliates by unfixing things he had previously fixed. And this whole tension over the, you know, over the ability to throw money at problems, it all escalates to the point where Schmidt calls Nick a loser for dropping out of law school. But then by the end of the episode, they have uh reconciled. So that was this one. And Jay, tell me about your favorite moments.

SPEAKER_04 2:58

It was a good episode. I I really liked it. Favorite moments, the eye of the tiger, uh, when Winston says that it ended the Cold War. And Jess says, that's not even a little true. She said that. Such a good one. The quote, they sound like a guy covered in bells falling down a staircase, also made of bells.

SPEAKER_03 3:20

So glad these are both on my I cut it from my list because I was like, I have too many favorite moments. Those are both on them. I love that.

SPEAKER_04 3:27

I feel like in my mind that's like a very you joke. I don't know. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

What a high compliment.

SPEAKER_04 3:33

Yeah, right. And then uh, of course, the cardigan, cardigan, I'm wearing a cardigan, which I knew from that time many years ago when I had started trying to watch this show. And I'm I'm actually kind of shocked that I remembered that of all things, because it's like playing at or it's said as the credits are playing.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

Yeah, it's totally throwaway, but maybe you remember it because it was how you introduced me to New Girl. And I feel like I cite this a lot. Like it's the one thing I remember. And I remember it because I was wearing a cardigan in life. And you said, cardigan, cardigan, I'm wearing a cardigan, and I didn't know what you were referencing.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

And so you sat me down and you showed me this clip from this show you had been watching.

SPEAKER_03 4:17

So this is a real full circle moment that we have finally come to the cardigan, cardigan, I'm wearing a cardigan episode. I'm thrilled to be here. That's just so great.

SPEAKER_04 4:27

In honor of it, I am wearing a cardigan.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Oh, beautiful.

SPEAKER_04 4:31

I wish that I could say that that was intentional, but that was actually a mistake. I'm just cold in my office. Kind of a cardigan. Would you call it a cardigan?

unknown 4:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

I call it my grandpa's. Then I think it counts perfectly well as a cardigan.

SPEAKER_04 4:50

Okay, okay. Yeah, maybe Schmidt got me into wearing cardigans. Maybe you got me into wearing cardigans, I guess, if you were wearing them back then.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

I don't know. They're not the most stylish thing I was wearing at the time.

SPEAKER_04 5:01

What were your favorite moments?

SPEAKER_01 5:04

You know, in the very beginning, when Schmidt asks her, is this something a mean creative judge made you do? I really like that line. Um, I like how their fight devolves into an argument about Midori Sours. And, you know, Nick is like, who drinks Midori Sours?

SPEAKER_02 5:20

Everyone drinks Midori Sours. No, they don't. And then Smith's like, it's a melon liqueur. I would never drink one. It's an American classic with Asian influences. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:28

And then he's like, Winston would never drink one. So I like that whole back and forth. And then I also like when Jess asks, also, what happened to the refrigerator and the sofa? Did we get robbed by giants? So those are my those are my standouts.

SPEAKER_04 5:41

All fantastic quotes.

SPEAKER_02 5:43

Did you have anything you wanted to add to the douchebag Tadaka Box?

SPEAKER_04 5:48

Maybe. It's sort of a question. I want to get your thought on this. When Winston is criticizing all of the students and being kind of harsh, he says to Desiree, who is the black teenage girl in the ensemble, he calls her WNBA. And I'm wondering if that's just because she's a black woman. Like, interesting. Is it just playing into uh one of those stereotypes about who's good at basketball?

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Oh, that's interesting. I mean, maybe it is. I have I read it as her being like aggressive and I don't know, masculine is the right word, but like just aggressive. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 6:24

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe a combination.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

No, but I think that's a legitimate. I'm also trying to remember like, is she really tall? I don't think she is really tall. That would be the other angle, right?

SPEAKER_04 6:33

She wasn't really tall. She wasn't dressed up like a jock or anything, or like there were any.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

I wonder. That is.

SPEAKER_04 6:47

I think it was a little, a little like dig at that.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

Today's donation goes to the WNBA and to black women every more importantly, yeah. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Well, uh, let's pass around that feeling shtick. Tell me how you felt about it. I know you liked some of it, like the funny ha-has. Yeah. How do you feel overall? You got thoughts, you got questions, you got feelings.

SPEAKER_04 7:08

I do. Here's the big one. I I wrote a lot of thoughts on this. Oh. With all the issues in and around their apartment, don't they have a landlord that should handle these things? Right? Like, sure. Is it just the case of them having like a slumlord who like doesn't fix anything and so they have to do it themselves? But like a slumlord that owns this beautiful sun soaked beigey bazillion square foot apartment with communal style college bathroom. Like, that seems unlikely, right? So why is it up to Nick to fix these things? Which also led me to think like, do they own this apartment? It seems unlikely given the income disparity at the heart of this episode, right? It seems unlikely that they would all go in on this together. And the fact that Coach used to be there, right? So the fact that Coach could just dip and Winston could come in suggests that they really are just renting, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:01

Right.

SPEAKER_04 8:01

Makes me wonder if they have a landlord. Will we ever meet their landlord? The world will never know.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

We will find out. Yeah, and I also, you know, why are they fixing it? Why are they paying for it? Also, why does Nick have uh that I was confused about the whole Nick Schmidt, like, why can't Schmidt why aren't they all going in on it? Why does it why why can Nick not afford it? Why is he responsible for it? And like the fact that Schmidt does it doesn't make sense to them. I don't know. Anyway, a lot of questions about the logistics around who's taking care of this apartment, this gorgeous, gigantic apartment.

SPEAKER_04 8:36

Right. Another feeling Schtick thought is that there was a lot of angst in this episode. The shouting felt like it was on a different level between Nick and Schmidt than previous episodes.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 8:47

It got really intense.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

It was aggressive.

SPEAKER_04 8:50

Yeah. It did. Also, just a small note, they call Jess Miss Day. Was I supposed to know that her last name is Day? She's Jess Day. Maybe not. I did not know that.

SPEAKER_02 9:00

So Oh nice.

SPEAKER_04 9:02

That is her last name, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:03

Yeah, Jessica Day. Yep, Miss Day. Oh, that's cool. I didn't realize this might be the first time they it might not be.

SPEAKER_04 9:11

Well, you know, we'll say it is. Really bad with names on this. But I did pick up on, I I made sure to remember the name of Desiree, that student, both for the WBA thing, but also because a little trivia for you, Raven Goodwin is the actress. And my wife and I were like, I feel like she's in other things. Like I like, I think she became like an actual big full-time actress. And she kind of is. She has been on the show Abbott Elementary and also a Disney Channel show back in the day called Good Luck Charlie. I went through and I don't think I've actually seen anything that she's been in, but I must have seen clips here or there because I recognized her. Probably the Abbott Elementary.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:54

So.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Oh, that's good. I too was Googling her, but just with the word Jewish after, because that's now apparently all I'm doing for trivia. If there's no real trivia, I'm just trying to see if any of the actors are Jewish. I don't think she's Jewish, but uh I did find out that one of the other kids is the one who I guess plays Crystal. Her name is Esther Povitzki. So of course she's Jewish. Esther Povitzki. And um she's I guess she's a comedian now. That's her shtick. So that's great.

SPEAKER_04 10:24

Yeah, I did not look up any of the other students. Only the one I recognize.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

Yeah, that's fair. These were the only two I think that had headshots. Oh no, the guy had a headshot too, so he must be doing stuff. But speaking of doing stuff in the industry, Jay, Oive, you got a little Oyive Oedip for us?

SPEAKER_04 10:43

I do have a little Oive Oedip.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Let's step into it.

SPEAKER_04 10:46

First, let me just say that I loved all of the DIY props for the fix the DIY fixes that Nick has been doing, right? So like the water bottle in the wall. I just it looked so funny. Um they must have had a lot of fun setting that up. Also, the wooden spoon. The spoon being used to to ladle out soap into his hand in the bathroom because the dispenser's broken. Crazy, but such a funny detail. We love prop comedy. We also love montages, right? That's a big film thing. Montage, the idea and history of montage. And we get a good montage with Nick going around fixing things like stuff he's fixed in the past at the apartment, right?

SPEAKER_02 11:29

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 11:30

And I wanted to ask how much history you know about the history of montage.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

I'll tell you, I don't know a lot of the history, but I will say that when I think of montage, I think of Eye of the Tiger. So that's funny that this is coming up in this episode. I don't know why. Is that the big Rocky Montage song or something, maybe? Yeah. Well, there you go. Look at that. I knew a thing.

SPEAKER_04 11:53

At least that's my understanding of it. It's been a long time since I've seen Rocky. But the thing that I did want to mention is so from Wikipedia, just quickly, montage is a film editing technique in which a series of short shots are sequenced to condense space, time, and information, right? It's the way to like cram in a bunch of information in a short amount of time, showing a lot of successive images that sort of together convey an idea, right? One of the pioneers of montage, maybe the pioneer that at least I remembered from film school enough to look up from this, was Sergei Eisenstein. Oh Eisenstein, right? He was a Soviet filmmaker.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

Eisenstein, we know what this means. Is he Jewish?

SPEAKER_04 12:38

No, he actually was not Jewish.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

Wait, really?

SPEAKER_04 12:41

His grandfather was. So he's a little Jewish. He's kind of Jewish, right?

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Count it. He that's where the last name comes from, I'm taking it. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 12:52

Exactly. His paternal grandfather was Eisenstein. He himself, Sergei, was raised as Russian Orthodox. Okay, okay. But later became an atheist.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Oh fun.

SPEAKER_04 13:01

Yeah, and the jokester in me likes to think that becoming atheist made him a little bit more Jewish.

SPEAKER_03 13:06

Yeah, honestly, that's a good yes, I love that. Shh I was gonna say. Get right in.

SPEAKER_04 13:11

Yeah. Rejoin the tribe, brother. Um, the only other thing I'll add about him, which is interesting and you should look it up after this, or I'll send it to you, is in film school, it's a very notorious thing to watch this one scene from one of his movies called Battleship Potemkin. Okay. There's this like infamous scene of people running away from soldiers while soldiers are like shooting into a crowd of civilians on a staircase. And it this scene goes on. I actually watched it again like half an hour ago. It goes on for like over six minutes. Just this scene, it's this montage kind of of people running down stairs and then soldiers marching, and more people running downstairs, and people tripping and falling, and a carriage going down, and a boy with no legs running down. And it's a it's a very long scene in and it's a silent film. Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

So, anyways, I'll have to look it up. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:04

Sergei Eisenstein, Battleship of Tempkin, montage. Kind of Jewish, just a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 14:09

Yeah, I love it.

SPEAKER_04 14:10

Uh thanks. Yeah. One other Jay's Oive Edipe, and I know I'm I know I'm pushing for time here, so sorry about this. Oh, you're not. Maybe you caught up on this, maybe you noticed this. There were no dangly bits in the bells when they were playing. Except sometimes. Right? Going back to that idea of sounds on set that you don't want to capture. They were moved. I meant to look up the name of the part of a bell that actually hits the sides.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

Maybe the hammer. I feel like she made a joke about it being the hammer, though I also did not look this up.

SPEAKER_04 14:42

Let's call it the hammer. Hey, Jay from the future here. I looked it up. It is not called the hammer. Apparently it is called the clapper. But we're gonna keep calling it the hammer. Enjoy. Uh they rem they removed it in a lot of the scenes. Like when Jess is doing the robot, that's where I noticed it. When Jess does the robot, she angles it towards the camera just enough that you can see they removed it for that part. But to their credit, they remembered to put them back when we saw like a wide shot of all of them and Winston playing in the apartment. So so they were very strategic in when they wanted and didn't want the actors to actually be able to make noise with them. And you know, so much of what Winston is doing is totally just. I know.

SPEAKER_02 15:27

It drives me a little crazy, actually, but yeah, it is funny. Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah, cool. So love it.

SPEAKER_04 15:37

That's it. There, there's there's all the film knowledge I could tie to this episode.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Thank you. That was I mean, that was a lot. That's really interesting stuff. It was very, one might say, observant of you to notice the bell thing. Oh. And speaking of observance, I think it's time for us two Jews to be observant Jews and talk about how observant we were this episode as we kept an eye out for those two elusive things, Jewish content and the bear. Zh. So, Jay, did you observe this week any Jewish content?

SPEAKER_02 16:17

Jewish jokes?

SPEAKER_04 16:19

I did. I did. I caught two jokes in this. Uh when Schmidt says that it would be a mitzvah for Winston. Right? To to like be a role model for the kids and help them out. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 16:34

You gotta do it. It's a mitzvah, bro.

SPEAKER_04 16:36

And also uh joking about Schmidt having a$40,000 bar mitzvah, the theme was sports jams. It was an amazing event. Which is sports jams just like is that like a proper noun that I just don't know? Or was he saying that as just like a generic about sports?

SPEAKER_01 16:56

No, I think it was uh CD. I'm looking it up now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's uh a CD from the 90s. Uh there were a bunch of CDs. Oh wait, no, that's jock jams. What's the difference between jock jams and sports jams?

SPEAKER_05 17:07

Oh, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Is sports jam that movie with the that guy and the uh the cartoons?

SPEAKER_04 17:15

The cartoon? No, no, no, no, no. No, wait, that's space jam. That's space jam. Space jam, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

What's sports jam? I think sports jams is a thing. Maybe it's just a different CD. Yeah. Maybe I got it wrong. People are looking for sports jam CD here. It's just jock jams is coming. Did we all Mandela effect jock jams being called sports jams? No, it's a thing. It's a it's just a different thing.

SPEAKER_04 17:35

Was it possible that he did say space jams and I just misheard sports jam?

SPEAKER_01 17:40

It's definitely, definitely sports jams. Okay. I wrote it down. Yeah, definitely sports jams. But all I'm finding is jock jams. This is very confusing. Maybe they rebranded. I don't know. Someone write in and tell us what the deal is with sports jams versus jock jams versus they got too much notoriety from being on New Girl, then they were like, oh, we gotta change our name.

SPEAKER_04 18:02

We're not cool on me. Gotta shut down. Was there anything else?

SPEAKER_01 18:05

No, those are the two I got. But uh, I also got some bears. Did you find some bears?

SPEAKER_04 18:11

On my second watch through, yes, I saw the bear on the fridge when it's inside Schmidt's room.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

There's a bear on the fridge, but what if I told you there's an even bigger bear somewhere?

SPEAKER_04 18:22

No. Okay. Where?

SPEAKER_01 18:24

There is. When we're in Winston's room, when Jess comes to talk to him, there's a big old bear poster on the wall.

SPEAKER_04 18:32

And I missed it.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

And you missed the big old bear. Granted, you can't see the whole bear, but you can see the majority of a bear. It's like uh I'm gonna say you can see 80 to 90 percent of a bear. And it's a big bear, and it's right behind Jess, so you'll have to pull that scene up later and see.

SPEAKER_04 18:50

Rats.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

That's okay, that's okay. Well, how about we talk about our our main man Schmidt for a second, our canonical Jew of the Loft, and do a little segment I like to call Schmidbits, in which I give you a little Jewish tidbit based on something our dude Schmidt did this episode, did or said. And this week's Schmidbit is inspired by him eating sushi and also a cheese board. A cheese board with the watercrackers that are for adults to eat with adult cheeses. All right, so we're talking about these two snacks that came up at the beginning of the episode with Schmidt.

SPEAKER_04 19:26

Perfect.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

Munchin' on sushi and some cheese. So we're gonna talk a little bit about kashroot, which are the rules for keeping kosher. One of the big ones, among others, which I'm sure we'll talk about later, one of the big rules is that you're not supposed to eat meat and dairy together. And this comes from a commandment in the Torah that says you shall not boil a kid, which means a baby goat should not boil a kid in its mother's milk. Um, so it's kind of a nice ethical sentiment there, right? Like you're already taking life. It shouldn't you shouldn't be extra morally cruel by like, you know, literally boiling the baby animal that you're killing in the milk that would have nourished it otherwise, you know. So there's something interesting there.

SPEAKER_04 20:05

Add insult to injury.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Exactly. That's exactly right. Yeah. So we have extended that to be any meat, not just goat. Um, and any dairy, not just goat milk. Okay, so that's sort of the rule now is you're not supposed to mix your meat and your dairy. So the big question here is do fish count as meat? Oh. And the answer is no. Oh. The answer is they are not considered meat. They are considered what was called parv, which is the category that is neither meat nor dairy. It's neutral. So you can eat it in a meat dish, or you could eat it in a dairy dish. If you're having steak for dinner, you can have some fish on the side, or if you're having mac and cheese, you can have some fish. Um, however, I say that, but actually, some communities still don't eat milk and fish together, which I always assumed was like, oh, I guess they're thinking of it as meat, but they're not. I guess it's for different reasons entirely. So randomly in the Talmud, there is a warning against eating fish. Get this. There's a warning against eating fish and meat together because they thought there were health concerns. And so then people like extrapolated that to also mean you shouldn't. They thought that there was a similar health concern between fish and milk. And, you know, it's really weird. And and health concerns do carry a lot of weight when you're talking about Jewish law. They place a high, you know, priority on health and life and things like that. But anyway, it's weird. And there are now different rulings on that original concern and how universal or modernly applicable or non-applicable it is, since there don't actually seem to be any health concerns we now realize. So Sephardic Jews, they do tend to hold by that ruling of like a prohibition not to mix fish and milk. But most Ashkenazi Jews are more lenient in the matter. Although I guess some Hasidic Jews do keep the restriction. I guess Chabad has a tradition at least of like permitting. Oh, this is crazy. They'll permit. Not crazy. I don't mean it's crazy. It's just interesting. They'll permit fish, fish plus milk products, but not straight milk. So that locks and cream cheese on their bagels is still okay. So anyway. So that's my little schmid bit about, you know, fish and milk and meat together and whether fish counts and why people would or would not mix the two.

SPEAKER_04 22:24

I was gonna joke. Oh, so you can have fish and your milk chocolate. But uh no, the locks made a lot more sense with that.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

Chocolate dipped salmon. Would or would not eat it? I may try it.

SPEAKER_04 22:38

Was there ever a point in like the modern era when any rabbis or someone came together and said, well, you know, we know more now, and like, yeah, fish is meat. Like, sure, it's not a land animal, but like if we're just being objective about what meat is.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

How do you define meat? I mean, it's an interesting question because there are vegetarians who are pescatarian, right? True, but treating me differently.

SPEAKER_04 23:03

That's why we give them a separate name, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Special name.

SPEAKER_04 23:07

Yeah, maybe I'm vegetarian. Let me eat this fish.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

I don't know. That's true. Although sometimes they say I'm a vegetarian, well, I'm a I'm a pescatarian, so I'll I don't know. You're right, you're right. But actually, maybe it also has to do in this context at least, maybe it has to do with the fact that in the Torah you get entirely different rules for sea animals. So you've got the like you've got your land animal rules, which they're their own thing, and then you've got a separate category of swimmy things. So maybe that can explain it here.

SPEAKER_04 23:38

I can, I can, yeah, I can I can accept that differentiation there, I guess. Thanks for indulging me.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Thanks for indulging me and Schmidt in that$80 sushi that he was eating before offering the children some cheese. And uh, you know, now if we want to I'm gonna give a little drosh. I decided I'm gonna start thinking this is my drosh when we talk about an overarching theme that we're gonna discuss. Drosh is uh like a Jewish way of saying sermon, basically.

SPEAKER_03 24:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 24:10

Which I I guess also some Jewish communities just call them sermons. That's what I learned from watching uh Nobody Wants This.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

Did you watch that show? Nobody wants this? No, what's that?

SPEAKER_03 24:20

Oh, Jake. Stop watching New Girl. No more new girl. Just watch Nobody Wants This.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

No, it's a fun show. It's on Netflix. It's with um go watch it. Anyway, they I guess so they're in a reformed Jewish context and they're using the word sermon a lot. So I assume that means reformed Jews say the word sermon more, or maybe they're just doing it because of all the non-Jewish audience that's watching, but whatever. A drosh is what we call it in my community. A sermon is a drosh. Okay. And by the way, you don't have to be a rabbi to give a drosh in my congregation. Any old person can be like, I'm giving the drosh this week. Oh, nice. So I'm thinking, oh, this is my drosh now, okay? Okay. So today the theme we're gonna talk about, the little drosh I'm gonna give you, the theme this week is high standards.

SPEAKER_05 25:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Okay. And so in the episode, of course, I'm sure you can intuit some of where this is going. We've got in the the Nick and Schmidt plot line, Schmidt wants things around the apartment repaired correctly. He wants the fancy fix. He has higher standards for his quality of life. He's eating that$80 sushi. He wants functioning toilets.

SPEAKER_03 25:29

Hoity, hoity toity Schmidt over here has got some pretty high standards, one might say.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

And on the other end, Nick has lower standards, you know. He is he's valuing other things, he's valuing being pragmatic and being frugal. You know, he doesn't need to go above and beyond. His his just enough fixes are enough for him, you know? And he has been making pretty ingenious improvised fixes. The plumber is like, oh, you're the soda bottle guy. That's pretty good, you know? So high standards versus not so high standards. And then, of course, in the other plot we've got going on between Jess and Winston, Winston's standards for the handbell ensemble are just way too high. Way too high, the highest. These are just children, Winston. They are not professionals, they do not need to win the concert, as he keeps saying. He's just got these unrealistically high expectations. You know, they're they're just learning this new song. He's expecting them to be perfect. It's crazy. So that's how I'm seeing high standards in both plots of the episode. And uh in Judaism, I'm not gonna talk about what you think I'm gonna talk about. I know it sounds like I'm about to say.

SPEAKER_04 26:49

I actually don't know what you what you think I think you think. Or no, what you think I think I'll say. I don't know if that was right.

SPEAKER_01 26:59

It would be easy to assume, oh, she's about to talk about Judaism's high standards for ethics or performing mitzvot or something like that, right? I mean, and I could, I guess I could have talked about high ethical standards in Judaism. That's a legitimate topic, but I'm talking about something that's more fun. Okay. Uh I'm gonna talk about, and it's kind of random. So come with me, Jay, on a on a journey back to the end of the first century BCE.

SPEAKER_03 27:27

To the first century CE. All right, we're really spanning that BCE to CE.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

Come back in time with me to antiquity. We call this in Jerusalem. It's the second temple period, which maybe I've mentioned before, and you're gonna hear me mention it again in the future. So you might as well start memorizing it. The second temple period in Jerusalem. Are you there with me? Are you back in time with me, Jay?

SPEAKER_04 27:52

I am.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

Wearing a little toga, wearing some slippers, some sandals, not some slippers.

SPEAKER_04 27:59

I got my nice plush polyester slippers on.

SPEAKER_02 28:05

Well, look over there.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

Look, two prominent Jewish sages. Okay, so we're talking about we're talking about these two scholars, these two Jewish rabbis who are mentioned a lot in the Talmud.

SPEAKER_04 28:19

Okay. Have we ever said what the Talmud is?

SPEAKER_01 28:21

That's you read my mind. Let me just say real fast, it is the it is the major text of Rabbinic Judaism. Um, so it's a big deal. It's so okay, so in in Judaism and Rabbinic Judaism, there's this idea of the written Torah, which is, you know, the thing we've got in a book, and also the oral Torah, which are the traditions that have been passed down verbally from teacher to student to teacher to student to teacher to student. You know, they would say it goes back to Moses being spoken to on the mountain by God Himself, right? But that oral tradition of sort of supplementary knowledge that complements what you read in the written Torah. So you've got the written Torah and then you've got the Oral Torah, which helps explain the written Torah and how you would apply it to your daily life. So the Talmud is like the compilation. Eventually, they decided, okay, let's take this oral tradition and put it in writing because of various historical reasons. And so they started writing it down, and that's what we talk about when we're talking about the Talmud. It's the main repository of that oral Torah tradition. So, what does this mean? It means that it's a bunch of legal rulings mostly on how to apply Jewish law in practice. So it's like a lot of daily life questions. You know, this thing is in the Torah. What does this mean for the most mundane thing that we do every single day? Gotcha. And then there's another layer of that because it's then commentaries upon commentaries on those rulings and then debates about those rulings. So you'll see things like, well, this person said this, but this person actually says this, okay? So that's the context. That's what the Talmud is. It's this compilation, written compilation of all these different disagreements about how to apply Torah to everyday life.

SPEAKER_04 30:06

Is it fun to read? It sounds like it would be fun to read.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

I mean, I have fun reading it when I'm guided through it by a knowledgeable person who it's very, very dense. It's also it uses a lot of shorthand. So anytime you see a translation of a Talmud passage, it is really fun. I didn't mean to hedge so much. It is fun. I think it's really interesting. Um, but it's so also so interesting because every time you see it, you'll see some of the words are bolded, and then like a huge number of the words are not bolded. This is when you're reading like a translation of it. And that's because it's the bolded words that there are the actual literal words in the text, and everything else is what they have to fill in so that you understand the context. Because it's like these people were living in this world where you could say like goat, and that one word goat, like they could be like, you know, the goat. And it's meant, right? They're like, if you say the goat, it's like, oh, he's referring to this whole incident with the goat in this other situation in which this was the conclusion of that other situation. And so, like, you need all of this contextual, this is how people spend their lives studying Talmud, you know, you can really start to see how it's very intricate. Um, but yeah, but no, it is really interesting. And the best part about it is that everybody's arguing with each other. I think it's so funny. So that's actually what I'm here to talk about now. It's uh these two guys that argued with each other a lot. So we've got these two scholars, these two Jewish sages, rabbis, and their names are Hillel or Hillel. The emphasis I'm gonna just keep mixing it up because it depends on if you're saying it like a Yiddish speaker, like Yiddish speaking Hebrew, but whatever. Hillel and Shammai. I'm putting that in the chat for you. Hillel and Shemai. So these two guys, they each led their own community of study. They had each of them had their own school of thought, like literally a school of thought. You know, they were rabbis, they were teaching people. So there was that they're called the House of Hillel or Beit Hillel in Hebrew, and the House of Shemai, Beit Shemai.

SPEAKER_05 32:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

And these two houses, by the way, the traditions of their houses carried on even after they themselves were dead. So you'll still hear talk of, you know, Beit Hillel, the house of Hillel and the House of Shemai, even after they're dead, because it's just that the school that grew up around them, they're still interpreting things in that tradition. So Gotcha.

SPEAKER_04 32:23

Hillel sounds familiar.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

I was gonna ask you if it sounded familiar. Do you know why?

SPEAKER_04 32:28

Uh no. Is there just a lot of Hillel in the US?

SPEAKER_01 32:33

Hillel, what?

SPEAKER_04 32:35

Uh it's an organization, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:37

Or maybe It is an organization. Yes, yes, yes. You may remember it from the campus organizations on college campuses.

SPEAKER_04 32:45

Oh, yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

It is often what the Jewish center is called, Hillel, and the Jewish programming. They've, yeah, it's an organization on college campuses for Jews.

SPEAKER_04 32:56

Do they follow the House of Hillel thinking? Is that why they are called that?

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Well, interesting you asked that. So pause on that question and we'll circle back to see what you think by the end of this.

SPEAKER_05 33:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

So they disagreed about a lot of things. They had a debate about a lot of things, and this is the trend. Shammai, whose name you don't know, he was notoriously far more rigid. He had the high standards. He was very strict, very stringent, very restrictive in all of his rulings, in most of his rulings. It was always more legalistic, much more literal interpretation of the rules. So, yeah, just far higher standards in most of the conclusions that he drew about things. And famously, Hillel's rulings and those of the school that came after him were almost always, almost always more lenient, more tolerant, open, flexible, pragmatic, much more inclusive. So the Talmud records both sides of these debates, right? So anytime you've got two people disagreeing, typically it'll lay out both arguments, but it will also, because this is a compilation that really does try to help people make decisions on how to live, it also sort of states which school of thought won out in practice, which one wins out in practice, and and you know, which one people are actually abiding by. And in almost every, almost every debate between the strict high standards of Shemai and the lenient, you know, practicality of Hillel, Hillel wins out. Like almost every single time Hilal wins out. It always says the halakha, which is like, you know, the path of what you're doing in life, the halakha follows Beit Hillel. So his rulings and those of his more flexible house after him, they become essentially they become Jewish law. And so Hillel, for that reason, hugely influential. And to your point, he's everywhere on college campuses. And you can sort of see why, right? You can say he's more welcoming, he's open. He's sort of saying to the college kids, hey kids, we're not crazy, we're fun, you know?

SPEAKER_04 35:10

Right, right. Yeah, no, I could definitely see why that one would uh persist more favorably, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

And it's fortunate because it's not even like it's just modern day people looking back and saying, you know what, I like this lenient guy a little bit more. Let's make the halacha follow him. It's like, no, back in the day, the rabbi, this was codified in the Talmud itself as they're recounting these different, you know, back and forth. It's like even they were like, the Halacha follows Beit Hillel, follows the house of Hillel. So some examples of this are just a few where I wrote down, let's say there's who could study Torah. Shammai said, he had high standards. He said, only those who are worthy can study Torah. And Hillel's like, anyone, they'll become they'll become worthy. So I guess that's another great reason he's probably held up on things like college campuses, right? But he's like, anyone can do it, they'll become worthy as they study it.

SPEAKER_04 36:00

Oh, nice.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

A question on white lies. Shemmai is like, don't tell an ugly bride she's beautiful. That's a lie. Don't tell, you know, on somebody's wedding day, if she's ugly, don't don't pretend. Don't tell her she's beautiful. Pillel is like, all brides are beautiful on their wedding day.

SPEAKER_04 36:17

Oh nice. Isn't that nice? And of course, you know, the unsaid part is you should lie.

SPEAKER_03 36:24

You should lie, you should lie.

SPEAKER_04 36:26

And you should lie. It's a good cause.

SPEAKER_03 36:27

For a good cause.

SPEAKER_01 36:28

Sometimes you should, yeah, exactly. How practical. Uh divorce. Shemai is like, you can only divorce for super serious matters. Hill's like, yeah, you can divorce for small stuff if you feel like it. That's fine. And then the last one I wrote down, let's see, carrying things on Shabbat and holidays. Shemmai is just far more restrictive. Hill is a little more permissive. So anyway, this all sort of ties into this idea, this phrase that's really big in Judaism. And it's called Eilu Ve Elu. I'll write that in the chat too, because this is a nice one to remember. So Judaism, as you know, it has a tradition of not shying away from incompatible truths, right? Sort of holding two competing truths in tension. And this is encapsulated in a Talmudic story from which we get this famous phrase. We have Beit Hillel and Beit Shemai, they're arguing over something. And each one is saying that the Halacha is in agreement with their view, you know? Hilal's like, it's my view. And the other guy's like, no, no, it accords with my view. And then, as they're arguing back and forth about who's right, a voice from heaven, not the first time we've had a voice from heaven weighing in on these things and stories, right? But in this one too, a voice from heaven announces Eilu Veilu, which means these and these are the words of the living God. Elu Veilu, these and these are the words of the living God. Which is meaning these two opposing arguments are both true in some sense. Even though they're saying the exact opposite things, it's like they are both true. They are both the words of the living God, which you can interpret to mean that the debate itself is sort of godly, right? Just the act of debating. But it also, you know, it also ties into two things can be true.

SPEAKER_04 38:22

Right.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

But the story does finish by saying, but the halacha follows Beit Hillel.

SPEAKER_03 38:29

So you've got this voice from heaven.

SPEAKER_04 38:33

Did the voice from heaven also say, but but yes.

SPEAKER_03 38:38

Honestly, yes. I think that is the culmination of the story. Elu Ba Elu, these and these are the words of the living God, but the halaha follows Beit Hillel.

SPEAKER_01 38:47

That's like in the Talmud.

SPEAKER_04 38:49

So But but was it the heavenly voice that said the Halaha follows? I think it was.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure it was. I know.

SPEAKER_03 38:55

I feel like I Googled this to make sure.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

Yeah, isn't it great? And the reason that has been given, you know, why, why is Hillel always winning? Why even is in this sense when a voice from heaven is coming down to weigh in and saying, yeah, they're both kind of right. Why does Hillel still win out? And a reason that's commonly given now is that it is because Hillel taught Shammai's teaching and his own. So he would present both arguments. Whereas Shemai would just be like, this is my way and it's right. Hillel would be like, well, Shamai says this and I say this. And people think, oh, you know, he was humble. That's the thing about humility, and presenting multiple sides to an argument. So there's worth in presenting both sides instead of just insisting that yours is right.

SPEAKER_04 39:44

There's value to the difference in the argument itself. Value in knowing even the thing that you're not gonna do.

SPEAKER_01 39:50

Yes, that's right. And so I see, you know, I see Eluva Elu, honestly, in Nick and Schmidt's uh situation. I think that fancy fixes are good. And also Nick's fixes are sometimes sufficient, right?

SPEAKER_04 40:08

That's great.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

And more importantly, frugality can be an important virtue, especially when you're not rich.

SPEAKER_05 40:14

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:16

And also, Schmidt did grow up rich and can't afford to throw money at things. He can throw money around in ways that Nick can't, and like that's that's also true. And it's also also also true that part of the reason that you know Nick can't afford to throw money around is that he did choose to drop out of law school. Like, on some sense, even that criticism is like, yeah, that isn't there is truth in that too. So all of these competing it's complex. It is complex, but whom does the law follow, Jay? Whom does the halaha follow? You know, whose house? House of Nick or House of Schmidt?

SPEAKER_04 40:52

Oh, I should have seen this coming. Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

In the episode, I mean, if we think about it, well, the fancy fix does get done.

SPEAKER_04 41:03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:06

And Schmidt, he's the one who has to humble himself and like retract the fact that he called Nick a loser.

SPEAKER_04 41:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:13

Yeah, I don't know. It's hard to say. What were your thoughts on the resolution of their fight? The quote resolution, in which it really is only Schmidt being like, you know what, I really think you're a loser, and then they share some gum.

SPEAKER_04 41:25

Yeah, I, you know, it's interesting because on one hand, I feel like I feel like it would be really easy to say, like, oh, well, well, it shouldn't be Schmidt, because he's from a higher position of power, right? And and you'd want to think, like, why are you rooting for the person with the higher power, the money that can just be spent frivolously? But also just like, it's I think maybe it's best viewed not from a position of power and just like what's more practical than trying to keep this hodgepodge jerry-rigged plastic bottle in the wall to keep things afloat, you know what I mean, and functioning, versus like sucking it up and actually paying the money and just doing the sensible thing in the long run. And maybe that is itself a more humble approach because you're paying someone else to do it, right? You're admitting defeat in that way a little bit. I mean, Nick doesn't admit defeat because he doesn't pay the plumber, right? But but you know, like he has to live with the fact that he is giving up his rigidity around no, my my good enough fixes are what we're gonna have here in the system.

SPEAKER_00 42:31

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, so I it's definitely a blow to his self-identity. Yeah, it humbles it that, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 42:37

So yeah, I think it I think it does follow Nick. The hollow, the hollow high, we didn't put that in the chat, so I have no idea.

SPEAKER_01 42:45

Holla. How do you like the huh sound spelled out? Holla. Uh however you want. I can give you something like that. Yeah, that's yeah, that works. Yeah, there's I feel like there's something. Do they ever acknowledge the merit of the other's perspective as they're resolving? Because, like, uh, you know, we've got Hillal winning because he's humble enough to present both ideas sort of along like Shemai's ideas alongside his own. I feel like they could both learn from that because I'm not sure that either of them ceded any ground, right? Or did maybe they did, and I just can't remember.

SPEAKER_04 43:17

I don't remember them doing it either. But I mean, we know intrinsically that Schmidt has allowed Nick's fixes to be the way of the land, the law of the land for so long, right? Because like that's how they are, and and only now is it becoming an issue, right? Right. Nick himself is even like, oh, you want to have this fight now? Like clearly it hasn't been too much of an issue in the past. So so I think in that way Schmidt gets the the benefit of it, you know. He wasn't saying that they needed to fix all of Nick's things, right? Like the basketball hoop fix was good enough for Schmidt to want to do a layup.

unknown 43:59

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 44:01

That's right. So and I do all I feel like I've been talking about these high standards as negative in a lot of these contexts, right? I mean, I guess the whole Hill Al and Shammai thing proves pretty concretely I was saying, oh, boo on high standards and yay on flexibility. But firstly, I do empathize with Schmidt wanting to have a working toilet.

SPEAKER_05 44:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:22

But also, I guess I hadn't thought of this, but Jess, in her own way, has high standards for how Winston is acting. I mean, they're not, they're not actually that high. It's not a high bar. She just wants him to not be a jerk. But you know, she like stands by that and is like, no, I'm not gonna let you be like this. These kids have no one in their life that's encouraging them. Like, I need to hold you to this high standard and not be like that. So yeah, there's something to all the sides. Yeah, that's great. The halaha follows the house of kind of a lot of them. I feel like Winston.

SPEAKER_04 44:57

Yeah, right. I feel like you could really quickly summarize the Nick and Schmidt thing by saying that Schmidt has the high standards, but Nick has the rigidity, the stubbornness.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

Yeah, good point. That sounds right. Well gosh.

SPEAKER_04 45:15

What a great theme. Good job, Robin.

SPEAKER_01 45:18

You like that theme? Oh good. You learned all something. Oh my god, this whole time I forgot to bring us back to the present. We're stuck in the past. In Second Temple Jerusalem.

SPEAKER_02 45:29

Okay, this is the sound of the of 2,000 years happening.

SPEAKER_04 45:37

Oh wow. Here we are.

SPEAKER_02 45:39

Here we are. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 45:40

Where did my slippers go? I still have my nylon toga and my polyester.

SPEAKER_02 45:48

Oh, by the way, let's go back to that goosebumps versus goose pimples. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Whom does the halacha follow?

SPEAKER_03 45:57

Oh. Who is winning out in the in the debate of goosebumps versus goose pimples? These and these are both words of the living God, obviously. God has weighed in. Both are fine, but the halacha follows who? Does it follow the house of Jay or the House of Schmidt here?

SPEAKER_04 46:15

Goosebumps, obviously. Book series, TV show. More Americans than Brits. Gotta. Gotta.

SPEAKER_03 46:23

House of Jay. You've heard it here, folks. The Halacha follows the House of Jay. The House of Goosebumps. No, not me. Oh, thanks for coming on that journey with me, Jay. And thanks so much to all of our listeners. Thanks for listening. If you want to get in touch with us and tell me everything I'm getting wrong about Judaism and the Talmud, please do at shoegirl podcast at gmail.com. I am not an expert. I hope I don't sound like I'm pretending to be one.

SPEAKER_04 46:55

Hey, but you don't have to be to give a Drosh!

SPEAKER_03 46:59

That's right! Oh see, this is what I get for not putting stuff in the chat. That's right.

SPEAKER_04 47:04

Join us next time when this becomes a nobody wants this wash fruit podcast.

unknown 47:10

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 47:11

And instead of having to connect it to Judaism because it's already about Judaism, we have to connect it to new fireworks. I'm not sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:21

Join us next time when we eat$80 worth of sushi while staring at the big bear poster on Winston's wall that Jay didn't see.

SPEAKER_04 47:31

Join us next time when Raven Goodwin is on the show.

SPEAKER_03 47:36

That's right!

SPEAKER_04 47:37

And join us next time when we boil fish, not in milk, but in dairy byproducts, because we can.

SPEAKER_03 47:45

Because we can! And we'll feed it to all the brides who are ugly on their wedding days, but we won't tell. She's more of a tinkle than a toggle.