6

THE TALMUDIC CONCEPT HAMAR GAMAL (DONKEY DRIVER–CAMEL DRIVER)

A Legal and Literary-Somatic Analysis of Talmudic Imagery

LYNN KAYE

INTRODUCTION

Examining the Talmud’s images that appear in legal passages can bring Talmudic literature, which incorporates many different kinds of reasoning and thinking practices, into productive collision with areas of philosophy that question how one might deal with concepts that are not fully determined, or that intentionally signify in such a way as to leave room for future engagement without resolution. This collision allows for the construction of Talmudic thought that can engage philosophical questions without forcing Talmud to fit into philosophical categories, nor does it limit inquiry to the Talmudic authors’ own interests. The process of finding Talmudic thought in its images starts with reading the text while cognizant of its historical context, visualizing the images offered by figurative language or images from case law, and then allowing those images to suggest their range of meanings without reducing them to a single message.¹ It can be more productive to think in images because they contain more than a single definition: they do not definitively delineate the boundaries of an idea but rather invite association and multivalent interpretation. Furthermore, images are not purely cognitive; they can communicate somatically as well, and this point is not often described in literary-analytic Talmudic studies. The case study of this chapter is the rhetorical operator hamar gamal (someone trying to lead both a donkey and a camel at once), and it signifies its legal meaning both intellectually and somatically. By somatically, I mean that hamar gamal evokes sensations in the human body through its specific imagery and deployment in a legal context about limiting physical movement. This chapter analyzes the hamar gamal through a multidisciplinary analysis of the hamar gamal incorporating historical contextualization, literary analysis, legal significance, and kinesthetic theory from performance studies. It demonstrates that Talmudic legal imagery demands a nonreductive definition of thought and reasoning, one that can signify in many different ways concurrently and that also offers challenging modes of thinking to philosophers interested in language, modes of communication, and the relationship between thought and expression.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND SCHOLARLY CONTEXT

Hamar gamal is a Tannaitic phrase adopted by the Amoraim in both Palestine and Babylonia. Most scholars understand the figure hamar gamal as an image or a metaphor that describes an unfortunate legal status related to an eruv tehumin (pl. eruvei tehumin), which creates a temporary home for a person at a distance of two thousand cubits from their residence, enabling the person to walk farther than would ordinarily be allowed on the Sabbath. Sometimes, a situation can arise in which, due to unclear speech or action or because of events beyond a person’s control, the eruv is possibly in effect and possibly not in effect. This results in the situation of hamar gamal, which describes being subject to two contradictory legal realities at once. In the first reality, the eruv is in effect, and the person’s home for the Sabbath is at the eruv. In the second, the eruv is not in effect and the person’s home for the Sabbath is their primary residence. Rather than attempt to decide which of these possibilities is correct, hamar gamal describes, leaves unresolved, and legally accommodates two competing realities—to the detriment of the person who must observe the laws pertaining to both. Without knowing why the Tannaim chose this image, it is nevertheless notable how particularly well suited it is to describing the effects of indeterminate eruvei tehumin on people. And though hamar gamal is a relatively rare image within Tannaitic, Amoraic, and post-Amoraic language, it is worth studying because it exemplifies the way images capture conceptual complexity differently from rabbinic argumentation.

Hamar gamal is an image that resists conceptual resolution. Talmudic images like this one can productively unsettle conceptual inquiry by being elusive and yielding final judgments that are not entirely definitive because of their invitation to interpretation. Figurative speech in Talmudic texts, like in poetry and fiction, demands a reading strategy that respects an image’s indirect and irreducible significance.

This chapter builds on two areas of conceptual Talmudic scholarship that do not consistently engage with one another, even as each analyzes the conceptual implications of figurative language of the Talmud. One body of research is the interdisciplinary field of Talmudic legal conceptualization, research of which is conducted in a variety of ways, including by means of intellectual history, text criticism as well as through the philosophy of language. Scholars such as Leib Moscovitz, Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, and Shana Strauch Schick are each scholars of Talmud who employ aspects of intellectual history and text-critical methods, while Ariel Furstenberg engaged philosophy of language, as well as knowledge of Talmud, to trace the development of concepts and their relationship to thought. Their research differs from one another in method and emphasis, but all address the manner in which concepts develop in rabbinic texts over time.² Conceptual growth is charted in legal passages: the style of law (case-based or conceptual), naming a concept where it had been implicit before, or applying a concept to a new case. Sometimes conceptual change is signaled by the use of figurative language or parables to convey a concept. Alternatively, an image may be applied to a new case, changing, or expanding the significance of the image.³

The other area of research that studies figurative language in normative Talmudic texts is literary-critical Talmudic scholarship. It incorporates not only theories of interpretation from literary studies, including approaches to metaphor, but also more broadly feminist and gender theories, narratology, and prosody or poetics, all of which aid in interpreting figurative language. Scholars including Charlotte Fonrobert, Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Suzanne Last Stone, and many writing in Hebrew, such as Ofra Meir, have advanced the current understanding of the Talmud’s legal texts as requiring literary analytical tools for comprehensive understanding.⁴ This chapter knits together the field of Talmudic legal conceptualization and the literary study of rabbinic figurative language. It adds a somatic interpretation drawn from dance studies, incorporating the insights of dance historian and movement analyst, Hannah Kosstrin, and an interest in the reception of Talmudic imagery in the modern period.⁵

THE LEGAL SENSE OF HAMAR GAMAL: SUGGESTING MEANING THROUGH FEELING

Hamar gamal suggests the idea of being limited by the strictures of two competing realities with a visceral sense of physical pressure. This conveys the law’s limitation on travel in a physical way, not just a conceptual one. Hamar gamal is an image that, when visualized by the audience, appeals to what they know in their bodies (kinesthetic knowledge). It therefore has more potential significance than a prosaic description. Dance studies scholar Tomie Hahn describes how a student learns movement through “kinesthetic empathy, an empathy rooted in the body that draws on kinesthesia, the sense that comprehends the body’s weight, spatial orientation, and movement of muscles, tendons and joints. Kinesthetic empathy is mediated via visual and tactile modes of transmission.”⁶

According to Hahn, the student observes a teacher’s movement and learns it through empathetic feelings in her body. Picturing an image from a text is also a form of visual engagement that creates a bodily empathy and enables comprehension of the text in the feeling of physical force.⁷ The concept of taking in the significance of a textual image through the body also aligns with Kimmerer LaMothe’s description of religion as dance. She describes “a defiantly dialectical relation between reason and experience [which] produces meaning of different kinds, both conceptual and kinesthetic.”⁸ The image of a hamar gamal does not stop its signifying at the intellect but reaches toward the body to suggest the “bind” the legal subjects are in as they occupy a legal reality in which two contradictory possibilities operate. This operator could have potentially fruitful and enriching connections with social and political philosophy engaged with normative discourse, the ways language can bind and limit people, and related studies of the philosophy of language.⁹

Visualization and empathetic imagination are also modes that feminist archaeologist Janet Spector uses to shift her discipline from being “objective, object-oriented and objectifying.”¹⁰ While kinesthetic empathy is not primary in Spector’s “reverse archaeology,” she describes her affiliation with what Nobel prize winner Toni Morrison called “the feelings that accompany the picture.”¹¹ Like the Talmudic use of hamar gamal, Spector’s archaeological method uses visual images to incorporate, whether through bodily sensation or other feelings, a broader range of sources of meaning than just intellectual meaning.

I eventually developed more precise pictures of the array of sites the Dakota used over the course of a year by analyzing women’s and men’s activity patterns as described in written sources. I supplemented those images with information from nineteenth-century illustrations of Dakota communities. Then, in a kind of reverse archaeology, I imagined the same places as they might appear shortly after people had left them and intentionally or inadvertently abandoned items that might enter the archaeological record as imperishable remnants of their daily lives. Finally, I compared what we actually found at Little Rapids with what would be found at these idealized types of sites.¹²

When analyzing Talmudic images like hamar gamal, body feelings and emotional feelings could be important sources of knowledge for interpretation. Those feelings are accessible through the visualization of the images portrayed in the written texts. Talmudic images offer different ways to conceptualize law from those in the analysis of rabbinic legal argumentation. Images and the potential feelings they evoke can ground Talmudic thought in material objects, emotions, and the body.

HAMAR GAMAL IN MODERN TEXTS

Hamar gamal is a relatively rare expression in rabbinic literature. It occurs twice in the Mishnah as well as twice in the Tosefta.¹³ It appears in three places in the Palestinian Talmud and in two different contexts in the Babylonian Talmud.¹⁴ As far as I know, it does not appear in midrashim or minor tractates. Despite the small number of occurrences of hamar gamal in classical rabbinic literature, the phrase lived on and expanded after the Talmuds in responsa and even in early modern Hebrew literature, which reflects the potency of the image. It also sparks curiosity about the fact that in classical rabbinic literature, this image with so much potential to express the difficulty of legal indeterminacy was applied narrowly to Sabbath boundaries.

In modern Hebrew and halakhic literature, the term hamar gamal has been used to express contradictory forces pulling a person or subject in opposite directions. This creates a picture of dysfunction and intense traction in two directions that results in no forward movement. Mendele Mokher Seforim (the pen-name of S. Y. Abramovitsh), a major early figure in nineteenth-century Hebrew and Yiddish literature, introduced hamar gamal in quite a few of his Hebrew writings. Abramovitsh invoked this image as a physical expression of conflict, such as a conversation swirling out of control as more people participated, pulling it in different directions, or two internal voices struggling inside a narrator’s head, “pulling me in this direction and that” so that “I do not know whither I can escape from them,” or a description of disparate groups of people, “one pulls here and one pulls there,” while the winner of such a pointless struggle is “the one with the biggest fists” riding a hamar gamal.¹⁵ These conflicts do not turn inward but instead face outward, pulling against each other with neither benefit nor escape for those involved.¹⁶

Hamar gamal expanded in medieval and modern halakhic literature as well. It became an expression of an intolerable legal predicament in which a legal action undermines itself, sometimes because of the performance of a foolish action. In a number of modern responsa by Sephardic and Ashkenazic rabbis, hamar gamal helped writers express a legally contradictory situation in which two conflicting legal statuses undermined the requirements of one another. For instance, the eighteenth-century responsum Shevut Ya’akov by Rabbi Ya’akov Reischer, later quoted in the contemporary responsa Yabia Omer and Lehorot Natan, deliberated about whether an onen—a mourner who is relieved of obligations to pray except on the Sabbath—should say the evening prayer that concludes the Sabbath. Rabbi Reischer writes of hamar gamal: “[An onen] is like he is riding on two horses, since he is initially required to pray because it is Shabbat and onen status does not pertain to him, but afterwards when he prays and divides Sabbath from the weekday, he is forbidden to pray because of being onen; behold this is hamar gamal.”¹⁷

In other words, by virtue of the person fulfilling an obligation to pray, it becomes forbidden for him to pray. The legal range of hamar gamal in modern halakhic literature extends well beyond its origin in Talmudic discussions of Sabbath boundaries. The phrase expresses a variety of conflicts including two substances that are applied to a circumcision wound that work against each other, a foolish stringency in divorce law, a studious shopkeeper criticized by a rabbi for getting himself into a hamar gamal position in which he “dishonors torah” and has to pay taxes—which is portrayed as a doubly negative outcome.¹⁸ These examples provide a glimpse into the life of hamar gamal after the Talmud, a reminder of the importance of Talmudic images in the development of Judaism and Jewish cultures.

THE COLLISION OF TALMUD AND PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES OF SIGNIFICATION

Images can provoke a multifaceted set of responses—emotional, somatic, and intellectual—which may be less rigidly structured than propositions with truth-values when the latter are organized into a dialectical argument. Rather than beginning with a stated problem, interrogating possibilities, and delving into the limitations and advantages of these possibilities, an image engages senses, whether visual or visceral, and unfolds possibilities in less structured ways. By a differently structured or less-structured way, I mean that images may prompt analogical connections, as well as somatic or emotional responses, which can link ideas in contradictory ways or offer two different, simultaneous, and even contradictory meanings held in suspension. Here it is possible to suggest an interaction between Talmudic conceptual images and the fields of philosophy of language, semiotics, and semantic theory. The Talmudic hamar gamal image could enter into dialogue with these fields, offering a different set of tests for how words make meaning relative to their contexts. The hamar gamal image and its unusual ways of signifying in its Talmudic context also contribute to reevaluating Kant’s notion of an image.

Attending to the images of thought in Talmudic texts exposes their thinking practices without making the mistake of describing or evaluating Talmudic texts by their success in answering questions they are not asking. Sergey Dolgopolski, in his 2009 book, What Is Talmud: The Art of Disagreement, argued for the need to “return Talmud to the Talmud” by considering the intellectual art of Talmud, which he situates in relation to “the major intellectual projects and traditions of the West: philosophy, rhetoric, sophistry and, more specifically, the philosophical arts of logic, grammar, and rhetoric.”¹⁹ Talmudic images include the concrete examples, analogies, and proofs from which analysis sharpens into concepts or with which a rabbinic thinker will convey his insight. These include biblical quotations, where the operative imagery is not created by a rabbi but is rather selected and recontextualized. Imagery includes folk sayings or original analogies that convey a legal difficulty. Some images or references may be original to a speaker, whereas others were shared broadly across the culture in late antique Mesopotamia or Palestine. Some may recur, while others leave few echoes.²⁰ In that spirit, Talmudic texts might enhance different traditions of philosophical thought through collision. Studying images in Talmud allows for the discovery of new material for comparisons and dialogue between Talmud and various fields of philosophy concerned with signification, coercion, paradox, multiplicity of meanings, and ambiguity.

THE CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF HAMAR GAMAL INTO A TALMUDIC EXPRESSION OF INDETERMINACY

The Semantic Field

Images of donkeys and camels and their human companions form part of a larger group of images in rabbinic texts that consider legal problems involving priority or conflicts, by imagining bodies moving in relation to one another.²¹ These images aid rabbinic legal conceptualization. Hamar gamal likely developed from two words for human professions in a longer list, into an image that signifies abstract content through visual and somatic suggestion. This development adds weight to the argument that Talmudic thought and the interaction between Talmud and philosophy deepen in reference to Talmudic images.

Donkey and camel caravans facilitated trade in the late ancient Near East.²² The familiarity with these caravans likely enabled the images to become ready sources for conceptualization. For example, b. Sanhedrin 32b considers the different legal standards for evidence. The Babylonian Talmud’s description of two camel drivers trying to safely navigate a narrow mountain pass conveys the importance of compromise in financial disputes.²³ “Similarly, two camels that were climbing the ascent of Beth Horon and they meet each other. If they both climb, they will both fall off. If they climb one after the other, then they can both climb up” (b. Sanhedrin 32b).²⁴

Richard Hidary’s commentary on this passage notes that Beth Horon was a city about eleven miles from Jerusalem “with a steep narrow Roman road between the upper and lower settlements.”²⁵ According to Josephus, in 66 CE, that road was the site of a Jewish ambush on retreating Roman troops. Using its steep incline and lack of alternative routes, Judeans blocked Roman soldiers and forced them over the edge.²⁶ The Babylonian Talmud sketches an image of camels and their human partners traversing a precarious path and choosing to pass in succession rather than trying to force the caravan onto the path at the same time. By allowing one party to go first, both are saved from falling. Similarly, compromise in a financial dispute allows both parties to gain something, even if neither party gains everything they wanted. The loss is shared between both parties and neither experiences a total loss. The image of camels and humans moving past one another across a narrow area helps the Talmud depict competing financial claims and hope for compromise.

The Tannaitic Evidence of Conceptual Content

According to Catherine Hezser, in the Mishnah, the phrase hamar vegamal (“donkey driver and camel driver”) refers to two individuals who, due to the nature of their professions, are considered by rabbis to be suspect in their commitment to rabbinic laws.²⁷ The donkey driver is described in disparaging terms later in rabbinic literature, for example, in tractate Sanhedrin in the Palestinian Talmud, where Rabbi Yohanan criticizes Hizkiyah for asking a “donkey driver’s question.”²⁸ In the Babylonian Talmud, however, the image hamar gamal comes to mean more than two professions. The conceptual development of the phrase “donkey driver and camel driver” (hamar vegamal) begins in Mishnah Eruvin 3:4. In that mishnah, hamar vegamal represents a legal position, one of a pair of rulings given by rabbis in response to a questionable eruv.²⁹ The legal background to the case is that rabbinic law allows a Jew to travel up to two thousand cubits in any direction from their residence on the Sabbath (see fig. 6.1 and fig. 6.2).

FIGURE 6.1.

Image by author and Sofia Xenia Economou.

FIGURE 6.2.

Image by author and Sofia Xenia Economou.

If a person needs to travel more than that distance, an eruv can be established at a distance of two thousand cubits in a certain direction from that person’s home (in the form of food, represented in fig. 6.2 as a black dot). The location of the eruv then becomes the person’s legal residence for the Sabbath, allowing them to travel a further two thousand cubits in the same direction as the eruv.

In m. Eruvin 3:4, something happens to the eruv so that it is no longer accessible, edible, or permitted to be eaten, which means it does not function as it was intended.

If [the food for the eruv] rolled outside of the boundary or a rock fell on it, or if it burned or if it was consecrated for priestly use and became impure, if this happened while it was still Friday during the day, this is not a valid eruv. If it happened once it was dark (on Sabbath eve), behold this is a valid eruv. If it is unknown (safeq) [whether it happened while it was day or once it was night], Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehudah say, “Behold this is a donkey driver and a camel driver (hamar vegamal).” Rabbi Yose and Rabbi Shimon say, “It is valid.”³⁰

The decisive time for an eruv to become a person’s legal residence for the Sabbath is Friday at twilight. Hence, the Mishnah reasons, as long as the eruv was not ruined until after dark on Friday, the person’s change of legal residence took effect. Whatever happened to that food afterward is of no consequence. However, if the eruv food was ruined before it had a chance to take effect at twilight, the eruv is invalid. The interesting, in-between case occurs when it is unknown or “in doubt” (safeq) when the eruv was ruined. “If it is in doubt [whether it happened while it was day or once it was night], Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehudah say, ‘Behold this is a donkey driver and a camel driver.’ Rabbi Yose and Rabbi Shimon say, ‘It is valid.’”

Hezser understands Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehudah’s comment “Behold this is a donkey driver and a camel driver” as a typical thing to happen to careless people. But according to that interpretation, “a donkey driver and a camel driver” does not directly address the validity of the eruv. A better explanation seems to be that, hamar vegamal (and hamar gamal)³¹ expresses an in-between legal state, one that is apparently at odds with the eruv being valid and also with the eruv being invalid.³² Perhaps Hezser means to explain why “behold this is hamar gamal” is chosen as a metaphor for conflicting legal situations. In my opinion, Albeck and Goldberg are right to believe that hamar gamal is understood as a metaphor with conceptual content from the Tannaitic period.³³

The Talmudic Evidence of Conceptual Development

There is only a little development in the conceptual content of this image from the Tannaitic period through the Talmuds, mainly because the connection between the donkey and camel drivers, and the legal position represented by hamar gamal, are not explained until the medieval period. There are three ways that hamar gamal develops as a concept in the Talmuds. First, Amoraic and post-Amoraic statements clearly use hamar gamal as a legal position or concept. Therefore, even if there was some ambiguity in the Tannaitic period, the concept is recognized in the Talmuds. Second, a passage in the Palestinian Talmud (Eruvin 3:5, 21b) compares Rabbi Meir’s idea of hamar gamal to Rabbi Yehudah’s idea of hamar gamal.³⁴ While in m. Eruvin 3:4, “behold this is hamar gamal” is attributed to Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehudah together, the Palestinian Talmud separates the Tannaim and interprets them as meaning different things by hamar gamal in light of the rabbis’ rulings in other matters. Comparing different Tannaitic meanings of hamar gamal constitutes a serious conceptual engagement with the position, if not the meaning, of the image and therefore is a development beyond the Tannaitic sources. Third, b. Eruvin 49b extends hamar gamal to a mishnaic case that the Mishnah itself does not describe as hamar gamal. In summary, hamar gamal develops modestly as a concept in transmission to the Talmuds. The meaning of the image is understood and applied, but only after the close of the Babylonian Talmud do medieval Jewish interpreters, Rashi and Rabbenu Hananel, explain why hamar gamal means what it appears to mean: being subject to legal stringencies of two contradictory possible realities: an in-between legal state at odds with the eruv being valid, and also with the eruv being invalid.

Precisely how one should imagine this donkey driver and camel driver is not explicit. Later interpreters such as Rashi explain the image of hamar gamal as a single person trying to guide two different animals, coaxing one from behind and leading one from the front, never able to focus attention on either direction for long enough to lead effectively.³⁵ One of two mutually contradictory legal events took place, but it is unknown which of the two actually happened.³⁶ If it is unknown whether or not an eruv took effect, the person’s legal residence for the Sabbath may be their house or the location of their eruv. The person is hamar gamal: stringently subject to both locations as Sabbath residences. This person can only travel within the two thousand cubits that are in both the diameter surrounding the house and the diameter surrounding the eruv (see fig. 6.3).³⁷

The person’s ineffective establishment of an eruv reduces their Sabbath travel rather than extending it. The indeterminacy of hamar gamal is more precise than the Mishnah’s phrase safeq, “in doubt.” Doubt could mean a state of indecision that will eventually be resolved once there is enough information. In this case, semantic laxity allows two conflicting legal systems to act on the person, of which each could be the case and each could have purchase on legal reality at that moment.³⁸

FIGURE 6.3.

Image by author and Sofia Xenia Economou.

FIGURE 6.4.

Image by author.

Babylonian Talmud Eruvin 49b, as previously mentioned, extends the semantic and conceptual reach of the image, hamar gamal, by applying it to a location; specifically, at the base of a tree. Here, too, the image hamar gamal describes a situation where an individual is legally limited in their movement. The Talmud analyzes m. Eruvin 4:7.

In that law, a person wants to establish an eruv to continue traveling to their destination on the Sabbath. This person uses their sight, walking, and words, as opposed to food, to establish a Sabbath residence. The individual identifies aloud the particular location of their eruv on Friday before Sabbath begins. The eruv is two thousand cubits from their current position, and the ultimate destination is a further two thousand cubits beyond the eruv. Therefore, establishing the location of the eruv as a legal residence would allow the individual to walk the four thousand cubits to the final destination on the Sabbath.

One who was travelling on a journey, and it was getting dark, and he recognized a tree or a wall, if he said, “my Sabbath camp will be below it” he has not said anything.

If he said, “my Sabbath camp is at its base,” he can walk from the position of his feet to its base, and from its base to his home, two thousand cubits, with the result that he walks 4000 cubits after it gets dark. (m. Eruvin 4:7; see fig. 6.4.)

This mishnah raises questions for its Amoraic and later interpreters (b. Eruvin 49b) because its two cases seem almost identical. Why is saying “my camp will be below it” ineffective but specifying “at its base” creates an eruv? The intention in both cases is the same, but the semantic laxity in one statement creates a legal problem. Most interpreters decide that the first statement (“below” the tree) is insufficiently specific, potentially including too much territory. “What does ‘he has not said anything’ mean? Rav said, ‘He did not achieve anything at all [in establishing a settled residence for the Sabbath], so he cannot even travel to the base of the tree.’ Shemuel said, ‘It means “he did not say anything regarding getting to his home, but he is allowed to walk to beneath the tree.”’”

Rav suggests that the traveler has no fixed abode for the Sabbath, so they may not travel even two thousand cubits toward home on the Sabbath.³⁹ Shemuel is a little more lenient. The Talmudic editors use the term hamar gamal, though it does not appear in this mishnah, to specify the travel limitations even with respect to Shemuel’s relatively lenient view. “And below the tree is made hamar gamal: If he comes to measure (how far he can walk) from the north, (the law) measures for him from the south, if he comes to measure (how far he can walk) from the south, (the law) measures for him from the north” (b. Eruvin 49b).

FIGURE 6.5.

Image by author.

Since “below the tree” was not specific, the traveler’s walking distance is measured to his disadvantage. If he wants to walk north, the two thousand cubits are measured starting at the south side of the tree, pulling him south (see fig. 6.5). If he wishes to travel south, his distance is measured starting at the north side of the tree, pulling him north and limiting how far he can travel south (see fig. 6.6).

VISUALIZING AND FEELING A HAMAR GAMAL

The hamar gamal embodies the Babylonian Talmud’s definition of being subject to two stringent legal predicaments.⁴⁰ It is an image of physical tension expressing conceptual dissonance and emphasizing its seriousness through a suggestion of physical discomfort. It is difficult to know how exactly the Talmudic authors imagined the hamar gamal. The sketch in figure 6.7 depicts someone trying to lead both a donkey and a camel as Rashi and other Talmudic interpreters understood those activities.

FIGURE 6.6.

Image by author.

According to Talmudic rules governing methods to acquire animals, the orientation of the hamar gamal’s body is uncomfortable. His chest is opened out toward the reader because he is trying to get the camel to move along with him. If he were to square his shoulders to face in the same direction as the donkey, he would have a comfortable position from which to encourage the donkey forward, but his arm holding the reins of the camel would be pulling out directly behind him. In this position, he could perhaps move a step at a time, turning one way and then the other to encourage the two animals forward, but his attention and body orientation are not optimal for communicating with both animals at the same time. The hamar gamal is unable to face a single direction and move forward. He is like a legal subject governed by two legal realities simultaneously.

FIGURE 6.7.

Image by Tamara Kaminsky.

Another way to visualize the hamar gamal is as a single person who is trying to be in two places at once, but who cannot be. Chanoch Albeck suggests a “middle path,” conceptually, and here in the illustrations I suggest imagining the physical manifestations of those options suggested by the images.⁴¹

In figure 6.8, the donkey driver is behind his donkey, and the camel driver is ahead of his camel. The sense of the physical pressure of being pulled in two directions comes from the driver desiring to stand in between the animals at the position of the question mark, or perhaps moving towards that position. One is unable to be both behind the donkey and ahead of the camel, but one might imagine themselves moving sideways, pulling against the weight of the forward direction of the animals, as the human tries to position themselves both from behind and ahead of two animals. The animals do not understand the instructions and cannot move in harmony with the person, or each other. The experience is halting, and a physical bind. This contrasts with the ordinary connotations of the image of donkey or camel driver: that of profitable movement towards a destination.

FIGURE 6.8.

Image by Tamara Kaminsky.

Finally, Rabbenu Hananel offers a third possibility. The hamar gamal is a single figure who has reversed his orientation toward the two animals such that he is behind the camel and ahead of the donkey. In this position, his attempts to move the animals are met with resistance—the animals are not accustomed to receiving direction in this way, and progress is not possible.⁴²

However one visualizes hamar gamal, two legal potentialities exist and pull or push the subject into a position where it is impossible to move. Crucially, in Talmudic uses of hamar gamal, the pull is legal and material; the force exerted by two competing legal realities is concretized in the limitations on the traveler. These limitations hold one back from their destination, pulling back from north or south like a leash. In the earlier passages (b. Eruvin 49b, figs. 6.6 and 6.7, as well as b. Eruvin 35b, fig. 6.3), the legal subject is also held back from walking as far as desired by opposing possible legal realities, one in which their legal residence is the eruv, and the other in which their legal residence is the home. Because the law treats one’s legal residence as whatever would give the person less room to walk, the two conflicting and overlapping legal realities tether the person to their disadvantage.

As previously described, later rabbinic writing uses hamar gamal to convey two possibilities in tension with one another, in a wide variety of legal applications. In the Babylonian Talmud, however, hamar gamal is limited to cases of restricted travel due to eruvin (pl. of eruv). In both Talmuds, the hamar gamal remains closely associated with eruvin, and it is not until the post-Talmudic period that the image moves beyond the rules of eruvin.⁴³ The limitation of the figure to this legal context emphasizes just how well-suited hamar gamal is to describe the force of rules preventing a person from walking from one area to another. The hamar gamal suggests feelings of conflicting forces on a body, concretizing somatically the outcome of two coexisting possibilities. The person’s attempt to alter their legal home changed them from a person using the law to their advantage by establishing reality through legal means, into a person suffering under the law, as two operative legal possibilities pull them like reins. A camel driver–donkey driver tries to exert force, but their attempt to direct the animals results in being subject to the animals’ weight and direction. When the Talmud suggests the image hamar gamal, it is more than a figure for undetermined legal facts due to sloppy designation or unwise action. It expresses the coexistence of competing legal realities visually and somatically.⁴⁴

CONCLUSION

The methodology I suggest begins with studying a text with knowledge of its historical context, tracing conceptual development of a Talmudic image, picturing an image in a legal expression and allowing the image’s ways of signifying (intellectual, somatic, emotional) to expand beyond a simple correlation of one image to one message. This methodology indicates that imagery, particularly imagery that can signify somatically through practices akin to “kinesthetic empathy,” can mean more than declarative sentences.

In her novel Always Coming Home (1985), Ursula K. Le Guin gives substance to how an image might signify within a culture through many different ways, including visually and aurally. The novel’s narrator says that “the heyiya-if, two spirals centered on the same (empty) space was the material or visual representation of the idea of heyiya.” The narrator goes on to call this “heyiya-if” a “visual form of an idea,” “an inexhaustible metaphor” that was a “gesture in dance,” an element in architecture, musical instruments, movement in dramatic staging, and “a subject of meditation.”⁴⁵ Le Guin’s narrator creates an image that is meaningful beyond a single idea and a solely visual-conceptual connection. As Hannah Kosstrin noted to me, Le Guin is arguing for “a kinesthetic way of thinking,” and for valuing knowledge that is not logocentric.⁴⁶ The same is true for my interpretation of hamar gamal. Hamar gamal is an expression of indeterminacy, related to Talmudic “doubt.” But it is not a general, blank idea of doubt; it is specific and rooted to its legal context, which concerns restriction of movement on the Sabbath. Therefore, hamar gamal expresses how legal doubt can produce a situation of almost physical discomfort. Through visualization and kinesthetic engagement, the rabbinic authors warn against actions that could create this difficult legal predicament by helping their audience imagine themselves feeling physically uncomfortable.

Le Guin expresses how narratives, like metaphors and other images, cannot be reduced to a message. She argues that readers of such material should try to allow the various meanings to permeate their understanding instead of looking for a clean and direct “message.” I contend that the same argument can be made regarding conceptual images like hamar gamal in the Talmud. They, too, demand an analytical approach that respects an image’s enriching indirectness and the many ways it might signify in addition to the intellectual. Le Guin writes, “As a fiction writer, I don’t speak message. I speak story. Sure, my story means something, but if you want to know what it means, you have to ask the question in terms appropriate to storytelling. . . . Any reduction of that language into intellectual messages is radically, destructively incomplete.”⁴⁷

Hamar gamal situations show that Talmudic imagery has significance even if the Talmud’s discussion cannot determine a truth value for a statement or establish facts decisively about a case.⁴⁸ The capaciousness of an image allows the Talmud to emphasize the difficulty of being subject to two competing legal possibilities rather than gloss over it as a situation whose full facts are unknown or in “doubt.” A definitive declarative statement could not have conveyed this meaning as fully. The hamar gamal as a possibility operator does more than convey what might or might not be the case. It expresses the feeling of opposing forces on a body and magnifies the tension of being subject to the stringencies of two competing legal realities.

Analyzing this kind of imagery is a necessary complement to studying rabbinic modes of argumentation, in order to trace rabbinic conceptualization. The images rabbis generate or adopt are crucial to studying the methods of signification, definitions of ambiguity, and the ability to hold contradictory possibilities in abeyance. Potential meanings in images, such as legal force, may be suggested sensorily, through weight in the body, and, in the case of hamar gamal, an image may bolster the presence of indeterminacy in a legal position, by virtue of expressing it through an image, which is itself irreducible to a simple “message.”

Talmudic images and modes of signification can engage philosophical, as well as literary theoretical discourses, without requiring the Talmud to share the same concerns as philosophers. This approach takes neither a purely external nor a purely internal position toward Talmudic thinking. It is not “thinking about” rabbinic thought from the outside, nor is it “thinking within” the limits of Talmudic imaginative boundaries.⁴⁹ Studying rabbinic images is another way into Talmudic thought, allowing the theoretical and Talmudic corpora to maintain their divergent concerns and methods, without limiting the reader to either of them.

LYNN KAYE is Associate Professor of Rabbinic Literature and Thought at Brandeis University and author of Time in the Babylonian Talmud: Natural and Imagined Times in Jewish Law and Narrative and, with ed. with Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Time: A Multidisciplinary Introduction.

NOTES

* I wish to thank Sergey Dolgopolski for inviting me to reflect on this topic and for his help and suggestions as I developed the ideas. I am grateful to Leigh Bloch, Alexander Kaye, Hannah Kosstrin, Ila Nagar, and Alex Weisberg for commenting on drafts and to Dana Hollander for sharing her valuable thoughts in conversation. I wish to thank Aharon Amit and Arnon Atzmon of the Talmud and Oral Law Department at Bar-Ilan University for inviting me to present a paper at the 2019 conference, “Generations: Evolution and Transmission of the Rabbinic Text” and to thank those who responded to that presentation. I am also grateful to Judaica librarian Jim Rosenbloom for his research assistance. This chapter owes a debt to the affinity group “Thinking with Rabbinic Texts” organized by Dana Hollander, Chaya Halberstam, and others. Thank-you as well to the copy editor at Indiana University Press for their work on this chapter.

1. This is a central idea in literary studies. In Talmudic scholarship, Barry Wimpfheimer articulated this when he wrote that narratives in the Talmud should not be reduced to a single message, even though the Babylonian Talmud’s editorial layer sometimes does precisely that, “flattening the story into a singular moral or didactic legal message.” Wimpfheimer, Narrating the Law, 164.

2. Moscovitz, Talmudic Reasoning; Furstenberg, Languages of Talmudic Discourse. Furstenberg’s book, as well as his articles on lost property in early rabbinic law, explain the way that concepts form in rabbinic texts in light of scholarship in the philosophy of language. Shana Strauch Schick takes an intellectual historical approach, situating conceptual development in its Sasanian historical context in Intention in Jewish Law. Jeffrey L. Rubenstein contributed to the study of rabbinic conceptualization as well as to the study of rabbinic culture and literature. See “On Some Abstract Concepts in Rabbinic Literature,” and idem, “Explanation of Tannaitic Sources by Abstract Concepts.”

3. For a longer history of Talmudic logic and rhetoric, those interested may consult earlier scholarship, for example, Jacobs, Studies in Talmudic Logic as well as his Talmudic Argument; and Friedman, “Pereq Ha-Isha Rabba in the Babylonian Talmud.” Of relevance for philosophers and scholars of Jewish thought and philosophy is the significant scholarship in comparative logic, including Abraham, Gabbay, and Schild, Studies in Talmudic Logic. This recent work adds subject-specific depth and new methodology to previous scholarship on Talmudic logic and reason, including Kraemer, Mind of the Talmud; Sion, Judaic Logic; Fisch, Rational Rabbis; and Maccoby, Philosophy of the Talmud. Another approach with both earlier and more recent examples are comparative studies of Greco-Roman structures and rhetoric in Talmudic argumentation, such as Brodsky, “From Disagreement to Talmudic Discourse”; Hidary, “Classical Rhetorical Arrangement,” and note Hidary’s references to previous scholarship on pp. 33–36 as well as Hidary’s Rabbis and Classical Rhetoric. In Controversy and Dialogue in the Halakhic Sources, Ben-Menahem, Hecht, and Wosner also examine the dialogical means of reasoning and argumentation in a comparative legal framework.

4. Wimpfheimer, Narrating the Law and Belser, Power, Ethics, and Ecology each focus on the role of aggadah in Talmudic legal reasoning, as does the work of Jeffrey Rubenstein on the interpretation of Talmudic narratives in their halakhic contexts, such as Talmudic Stories. For further engagements of law and narrative see Suzanne Last Stone, “Rabbinic Legal Magic,” Aryeh Cohen, Rereading Talmud, and Ofra Meir, Poetics of Rabbinic Stories. Ochs and Levene, Textual Reasonings addressed thinking in relation to texts in a similar direction to that taken here. The scholarship of Charlotte Fonrobert, “Regulating the Human Body,” idem, Menstrual Purity, and Labovitz, Marriage and Metaphor, analyze rabbinic metaphor; this chapter continues that work and adds a somatic perspective.

5. Kosstrin, “Kinesthetic Seeing,” 26–28.

6. Hahn, Sensational Knowledge, 83–84. See also Bakan, Music of Death and New Creation, 281–91; Sklar, Dancing with the Virgin; and Smyth, “Kinesthetic Communication in Dance.”

7. I am indebted to Hannah Kosstrin for introducing me to dance studies and kinesthetic knowledge in her work, for example, Kosstrin, Honest Bodies.

8. LaMothe, Between Dancing and Writing, 60, quoted in Schaefer, Religious Affects, 190. See also Schaefer, Religious Affects, 181 for an affective description of religion as something that creates ties between bodies and their environment and causes bodies to move: “moves bodies by creating affective ligatures between bodies and their worlds.”

9. Such as the work of Samia Hesni, “How to Disrupt a Social Script” and “Normative Generics and Social Kind Terms.”

10. Spector, What This Awl Means, 3. Dry writing, furthermore, led to feelings of boredom with the subjects of the scholarship—an ethical problem for Spector, as was the issue of academics, “archaeologists and anthropologists [that] exploit Indian sites and materials to build their own careers.” Spector, What This Awl Means, p. 13, citing McNickle, “American Indians Who Never Were,” and Medicine, Ortiz, and McNickle, “The Anthropologist,” in Spector, What This Awl Means, 1–3. I think it is worth considering this as a problem for scholarship of rabbinics as well.

11. Morrison, “Site of Memory,” 112, quoted in Spector, What This Awl Means, 79.

12. Ibid. This sympathetic use of imagination allowed Spector to advance specific archaeological knowledge about the different types of sites that existed. Previous observers and archaeologists “labeled any Indian community, settlement or site, a ‘village,’ regardless of the community’s size, composition of function,” while Spector describes a more specific set of Dakota encampments to life through a dialogue among imagining lived life, written and visual sources, and tangible remains.

13. m. Eruvin 3:4 and 4:10 and t. Eruvin 4:2 and 6:10.

14. y. Qiddushin 3:3 (64a) by Rabbi Yose, y. Eruvin 3:4 (21a), which is a Mishnah excerpt, and y. Terumot 3:1 (14b) by Rabbi Yonah. b. Eruvin 35a and 49b: the first is a quotation from the Mishnah, while in 49b, it appears twice by Rav Sheshet and the anonymous editors.

15. Abramovitsh, Lo nachat be-ya’akov, 39; and Bimei ha-ra’ash, 48; I think Abramovitsh is describing a forceful figure riding atop the struggle, which he has described as hamar gamal, donkey driver–camel driver, and he uses “riding atop” to tie into the meaning of this figure. Abramovitz, Mah anu?, 472.

16. Moshe Leib Lilienblum, a Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian writer and maskil, used hamar gamal to express how loving couples needed to be matched in their ideas and intellects for them to succeed. In his autobiography, he wrote that they should not be “like hamar gamal, so one pulls this way and one pulls that way, rather both of them should aim to one place.” Hata’ot Ne’urim, II:109. Hamar gamal was also the title of a short-lived Hebrew humorous newspaper published in 1908–9, according to Malachi, Mineged Tir’eh, 194.

17. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Yabia Omer, vol. 6, Yoreh De’ah 33 (Jerusalem, 1956–1993), and Rabbi Nosson Gestetner, Lehorot Natan, vol. 5:16 (Bnei Brak, 1986). Each one quotes eighteenth-century Rabbi Yaakov ben Yosef Reischer in his responsum Shevut Yaakov, vol. 1, no. 8 (Lemberg, 1861). Interestingly, the responsum uses another Amoraic image that deserves its own study: “riding two horses.” In its Talmudic context (b. Ketubot 55b, b. Bava Batra 152a), it means something different from the way Reischer appears to be using it. As Michael Sokoloff translates: “he gave his claim double force.” Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic, 1083.

18. Twentieth-century Rabbi Chaim Eliezer Shapiro, Minchat Elazar: Selections 15 (Jerusalem, 1996); sixteenth-century Rabbi Shemuel de Medina of Salonika, Shut Meharashdam Even Ha’ezer 31 (Lemberg, 1862); seventeenth-century Egyptian Rabbi Mordechai Halevy Darchei Noam (Venice, 1697). Cited by twentieth-century Rabbi Benzion Uzziel, Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Palestine, then Israel, in Mishpetei Uzziel, vol. 2, Yoreh De’ah 40 (Jerusalem, 1995–2000), and Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliashiv in his commentary on Talmud Berakhot, Shiurei Maran, Berakhot 27b, 300. See also the exegetical comment by Rabbi Shmuel Eidels of seventeenth-century Poland (Maharsha) on Berakhot 61a (Vilna: Romm, 1886–1897, all accessed digitally via the Responsa Project Database).

Maharsha notes that if the first woman and man were, as one midrash has it, created as a single figure back-to-back, it must be that one side led and the other followed, or else they would be like hamar gamal. He uses this to explain why, in general, men should walk in front of women.

19. Dolgopolski, What Is Talmud?, 1.

20. It is not my goal to compile a comprehensive lexicon of rabbinic thought imagery, though assembling lexicons specific to Amoraic generation and locale might be possible in light of scholarship charting the intellectual history of rabbinic Babylonia, for example, Elman, “A Tale of Two Cities”; Cohen, Legal Methodology; Schick, “Negligence and Strict Liability,” “Reading Aristotle in Mahoza?” and Intention in Talmudic Law.

21. Rabbinic texts consider the temporal sequence of activities by imagining human bodies running or walking and passing one another in Kaye, Time in the Babylonian Talmud, 33–38.

22. Hezser, Jewish Travel in Antiquity, discusses donkeys and donkey drivers as well as camel caravans on pp. 130–60. See also Aberbach, Labor, Crafts and Commerce, 220–24; and Safrai, Economy of Roman Palestine, 234–37, 264–68, 289–91.

23. Building on an image of boats passing one another on a river (cited in t. Bava Qamma 2:10).

24. Translation by Hidary, “A Proposal for a New Translation and Commentary,” 10.

25. See ibid., 13n58–59.

26. Ibid.

27. Hezser, Jewish Travel in Antiquity, 140, writes, “According to a statement attributed to Rabbi Meir in m. Er. 4:10 ‘Everyone who was able to make an eruv and did not make one behold this is an ass driver [or] a camel driver.’ And according to m. Dem. 4:7 ass drivers are not always considered trustworthy in regard to tithing. The suspicions regarding ass drivers and camel drivers may have been based on the fact that they worked outside of the spheres of local supervision.” Hezser’s interpretation of “Behold this is a donkey diver and a camel driver” aligns with the comment “anyone who could make an eruv and did not, behold this is a donkey driver and a camel driver” in m. Eruvin 4:10, but even in that case, the label hamar vegamal could also mean what I argue it means in m. Eruvin 3:4. Both Goldberg and Albeck interpret hamar vegamal in m. Eruvin 3:4 as a legal position or, in Albeck’s case, “a parable.” Goldberg, The Mishnah Treatise Eruvin, 129; and Albeck and Yalon, Shishah Sidre Mishnah, 92–93.

28. y. Sanhedrin 6:1 (23b). It could mean a donkey’s question, but both Jastrow and Sokoloff translate it as a question of a “donkey driver.” Jastrow, A Dictionary of the Targumim, 480; Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, 530.

29. I translate “donkey driver and a camel driver” not “donkey driver or a camel driver,” as Hezser did in her discussion of m. Eruvin 4:10 because in this case, the force of this image is due to the presence of two figures, not in them as alternatives. For scholarship on eruvin (pl. of eruv), see Fonrobert, “Neighborhood as Ritual Space”; “Gender Politics in the Rabbinic Neighborhood”; “The Political Symbolism of the Eruv”; Fonrobert, “From Separatism to Urbanism”; Klein, “Squaring the City” and “Torah in Triclinia”; Cousineau, “Rabbinic Urbanism in London”; Weissman, Sefer Yetsi’ot ha-Shabat; Ades, Sefer ‘Eruv ke-hilkhato; Mintz, Halakhah in America.

30. Translation of ms. Kaufmann in Goldberg, The Mishnah Treatise Eruvin, 77.

31. The phrase hamar vegamal joined with the conjunction ve (“and”) appears in the Kaufmann manuscript, but as Goldberg notes in his critical edition, the conjunction is omitted by many other manuscripts of the Mishnah (including Parma), Goldberg, The Mishnah Treatise Eruvin, 77. Goldberg also notes that ms. Kaufmann tends to add and omit vav conjunctions, and, in fact, m. Eruvin 3:4 is an example of how ms. Kaufmann adds vav conjunctions between words in an expression describing a single matter. Goldberg, The Mishnah Treatise Eruvin, 41 in the Hebrew numbering. Therefore, I do not think it advisable to claim that the shift from ms. Kaufmann’s term hamar vegamal (using and) to the consistent Babylonian Talmud term hamar gamal (without and) signifies a shift toward concretizing the phrase as a legal abstraction. In the Tosefta (Eruvin 4:2 and 6:10 in Lieberman’s edition numbering), hamar gamal appears without the conjunction vav in rules that in Mishnaic parallels, in ms. Kaufmann, have the conjunction. In the Babylonian Talmud, hamar gamal appears without the conjunction in every textual witness to Eruvin 35a and 49b. The only Babylonian Talmud passage that has hamar vegamal (with and) is ms. Vatican 110–11 of Qiddushin 82a, in which the professions appear in a list of undesirable professions a Jewish man should not teach his son. There, the two professions of donkey driver and camel driver are linked with a conjunction, and several other professions in the same list are also paired with a conjunction. The Palestinian Talmud uses hamar gamal and hamar vegamal (the phrase with and without the conjunction) when referring to the image as a Tannaitic legal position. For example, the Venice ed. Qiddushin 4:9 (66b) and Qiddushin 3:3 (64a) reads hamar gamal, but Venice Eruvin 3:4 (21a) reads hamar vegamal. In all of those cases, the phrase refers to a legal position, in other words, a concept rather than two professions. In summary, the Babylonian Talmud always reads hamar gamal without a conjunction, in all available witnesses, while the Palestinian Talmud may or may not use a conjunction in Amoraic discourses and still refers to the image as a concept.

32. Goldberg interprets hamar gamal in the Mishnah as a legal situation as well, “he cannot walk from the place of his eruv 2000 cubits, perhaps his eruv was not established for him. And likewise he is not like those of his town, since perhaps his eruv was established for him.” Goldberg, The Mishnah Treatise Eruvin, 78.

33. Both Albeck and Goldberg understand “harei zeh hamar vegamal” as a legal position, which Albeck calls a “parable,” and I share this view. This is also the sense in t. Eruvin 4:2 (Lieberman) t. Eruvin 6:10 (Lieberman). Further evidence can be found in two instances in the Palestinian Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud, in which the phrase changes from “behold this is hamar gamal” to “na‘aseh hamar gamal,” or “becomes hamar gamal.” If someone or something can “become” hamar gamal, this indicates that hamar gamal is certainly a legal predicament and a concept. y. Terumot 3:1 (14b); b. Eruvin 49b, in all extant versions.

34. Lieberman, Hayerushalmi Kifshuto, I:268–69 discusses this passage.

35. Rashi, b. Eruvin 35a, s.v. hamar gamal. Following Rashi, Frank, A Practical Talmud Dictionary, 108, writes “One individual who is simultaneously serving as both a donkey-driver and a camel-driver. Since a donkey is driven from behind, while a camel is led from the front it is difficult to drive both animals simultaneously. Hence this expression is used to describe a person who is confronted by a paradoxical halakhic situation.” I have not determined whether being a donkey driver and camel driver is part of a broader cultural context in the rabbinic period, and I continue to seek parallels in Roman Palestine or earlier Hebrew texts. In b. Bava Metzi‘a 8b–9a, one acquires a camel with different actions than one does a donkey: a camel is pulled from the front, while a donkey is driven forward from behind. In both cases, the owner has to cause the animal to move, but they are moved in ways conventional to them. That same passage describes two people attempting to both drive a donkey and lead a camel, not one person alone. B. Ketubbot 62b observes that the occupations of camel driver and donkey driver are different enough that a man who is a donkey driver cannot become a camel driver without his wife’s permission because the travel patterns and home time are different. In other words, these professions are not interchangeable, whether at the specific level expressed by a “donkey driver and camel driver” who is pulled in two different directions, or at a more general level of travel and lifestyle.

36. This degree of indeterminacy is circumscribed: the eruv was either fit or unfit. Other options, such as A could have happened, B could have happened, or neither A nor B could have happened, are not entertained. Goldberg comments about this mishnah that the simple reading should be that even with a hamar gamal situation, the person can still travel the two thousand cubits from home to the eruv. The Palestinian Talmud (21a) cites disagreement among Amoraim about whether the person can even travel back home in this case. Goldberg, The Mishnah Treatise Eruvin, 78.

37. There is a dispute about whether an eruv is a circle or square of two thousand cubits about a person’s residence; see Kaye, Time in the Babylonian Talmud, 114n11. I am using a circle here for simplicity.

38. I thank Sergey Dolgopolski for this formulation.

39. Rabbenu Hananel b. Eruvin 49b. According to Rav, when the traveler tried to designate “below the tree” as his residence, he lost his current position as a stable residence. But since he never actually acquired that new residence, he does not even have two thousand cubits diameter from his current position, just the four cubits around him. He is in a worse position than if he had said nothing and made his current location his Sabbath residence.

40. y. Eruvin 3:4 (22a) takes hamar vegamal as a legal predicament as well.

41. “This is a parable: One who leads the donkey walks after him and urges him with a stick to run fast, and one who leads a camel walks in front of him and pulls him forward, and behold he is forced to walk in the middle path, not like a donkey driver and not like one who leads a camel. Such is one in whose eruv appears a doubt.” Albeck, Shishah Sidre Mishnah, 92–93.

42. Rabbenu Hananel on Eruvin 35a–b, s.v. hamar gamal.

43. While hamar gamal appears in a discussion of betrothal and terumot (priestly portions), in both passages, the term is closely tied to cases of eruvin. y. Qiddushin 3:3 (64a), in Guggenheimer, The Jerusalem Talmud: Nashim, 284, debates whether the key legal issue in a contingent betrothal is the proper formulation of the contingency or whether it is “doubt.” The Talmud brings the eruv case of Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehudah “behold this is hamar gamal” (omitting the conjunction in the Mishnah’s version of their statement) as an example of “doubt.” While the passage is interested in problematic legal declarations beyond eruvin, its use of the image hamar gamal remains tied to eruvin. y. Terumot 3:1 (14b) in Guggenheimer, The Jerusalem Talmud: Terumot and Ma’aserot, 97, presents another case of “doubt” when a bitter melon might be either terumah or not terumah (priestly portion), depending on whether it is considered food or not. As an example, if the terumah was used to make an eruv, would it make its owner hamar gamal, limiting movement? There is no difference in this phrase in the Venice edition, ms. Leiden, or ms. Vatican of the Palestinian Talmud.

44. In personal communication during the editing of this chapter, Sergey Dolgopolski suggested that hamar gamal is like a Kantian schema for unwise action and forces of coeventuality. As a philosophical echo, a schema could be especially resonant because the image of donkey driver and camel driver reaches beyond a relationship between image and concept to the sensation of forces on a body and the plurality of possibilities rooted in the single expression. “Schemata are needed by Kant in order to overcome two apparent gaps: an ontological gap between abstract universals and concrete particulars on the one hand, and a cognitive gap between concepts and intuitions on the other hand . . . schemata can mediate between the one side (abstract universals, empirical concepts, pure concepts) and the other side (concrete particulars, empirical intuitions, objects of experience) precisely because they are at once figural-formal and also intrinsically sensory.” Hanna, “Kant’s Theory of Judgment.”

45. Le Guin, Always Coming Home, 45.

46. Personal communication.

47. Le Guin, “A Message about Messages.”

48. For further work on indeterminacy in Talmudic thinking, see Schiffman, “Ha-safeq be-halakhah u-ve-mishpat”; Ben-Menahem, “Is there Always One”; Koppel, “Probabilistic Foundations”; Halberstam, Law and Truth; Hidary, Dispute for the Sake of Heaven; Halbertal, “The Limits of Prayer”; Halbertal, Birth of Doubt; and Kaye, Time in the Babylonian Talmud, 110–39.

49. Thanks to Sergey Dolgopolski for the language for these options.