Wimpfheimer_ Is it not so.pdf

Toward a Poetics of Legal Narrative in the Talmud ❙ 55
surprising. The scholars in attendance translate his new category of employee,
conceptually formed, into proximate reality by suggesting that Rava, their teacher, is
in this category. In this move, the students note that their subject matterÐthe
hiring of this new category of employeesÐreplicates itself within their relationship
to their teacher.
The students' legal extension o²ends and enrages Rava. As readers, we are
surprised by his rage, which strikes us as counterintuitive. Why is there such rage
from one who is clearly still the teacherÐone who in spite of his students' joke, still
bests them in knowledge and wisdom? Our surprise at his rage motivates a reading
inspired by the strategies of deconstructionist criticismÐa reading that uses Rava's
own rhetoric to gain insight into the ways in which the text reads itself.
The exchange between Rava and his students is a structural parallel of the
opening lines of our narrative, in which a borrower seeks blanket liability protection.
Like the lender, the students attempt to utilize mastery of law as a means of avoiding
responsibility. The cleverness of their comment, as in the opening, is the legal
application. The borrower of the initial passage attempts to exploit the formal
possibilities of tannaitic law by satisfying a technical requirement of exonerationÐ
prior contractual hiring. The students' question similarly exploits a formal possibility
in Rava's articulation. Rava, as a teacher, is in their service. Rather than
concede the point, he is enraged. Using his own mastery of law, Rava, in parallel
with the wily lender in his initial passage, manipulates the situation to defend
against the blanket exoneration sought by his students.
But Rava's response is not as straightforward an application of law as the
parallel of the wily lender might imply. Powerfully and unsubtly, he changes the
currency in the notion of service. Instantly, the topic of conversation shifts from
hiring or borrowingÐthe transaction of goodsÐto that of choosing the subject
matter. The shift enables Rava, unlike the lender, not simply to evade service but to
turn the service relationship on his students and make them his employees. While
the lender's reaction is defensive, Rava's is o²ensive. Unlike a teacher who is paid in
®nancial currency, Rava is a teacher who pays in educational currency. When the
currency is rabbinic law, the service relationship is reversed. Rava is the hirer because
he controls the currency, its direction, and its coinage. He is not ``hired,'' because the
salary of a teacher is irrelevant.²⁵ He asserts his control over the conversation by