1. Simon-Shoshan, Moshe, “Halakhah lema‘aseh: Narrative and Legal Discourse in the Mishnah” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2005)Google Scholar.

2. Simon-Shoshan, ‘Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 1.

3. Some contemporary historians continue to mine rabbinical stories for historical information, and others have suggested that, even after taking full account of the literary qualities and goals of rabbinic stories, a reliable kernel of historical information often remains. Recent scholars who have surveyed the approaches and the literature include Rubenstein, J., Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 3–15Google Scholar; Gafni, I., “’Ereẓ yisra'el bitkufat hamishnah vehatalmud, ḥeker shenot dor—heseigim uteḥiyot,” Kathedra 100 (2001): 215–26Google Scholar; Goshen-Gottstein, A., The Sinner and the Amnesiac (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 1–20Google Scholar; and Fox, H., “Biography, Stories, Tall Tales: Fishing for Gullibility,” Jewish Studies 41 (2002): 105–41Google Scholar.

4. See Wellek, R. and Warren, A., Theory of Literature (London: Penguin, 1949), 20–28Google Scholar. In contemporary literary theory, often the debate regarding what Simon-Shoshan terms the “privileging” of “literary” texts is formulated in terms of the value of what has come to be called the “literary canon.” For a defense of the concept of a literary canon, see Altieri, C., Canons and Consequences (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1990), esp. 33–47Google Scholar.

5. While I share Simon-Shoshan's discomfort with overly rigid divisions between literary and nonliterary and between halakhic and aggadic, I believe that he goes too far in the opposite direction and risks blurring distinctions that are often useful and instructive. Specifically, I would argue that, although “nonliterary” texts, including halakhic texts such as the Mishnah, may display many literary features (this has been a central preoccupation in my own work, reviewed in this symposium), and although many rabbinic texts may straddle the boundary between halakhic and aggadic, there are nonetheless important differences in the ways in which different kinds of texts deploy these features.

6. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 4.

7. Simon-Shoshan, M., “Halakhic Mimesis: Rhetorical and Redactional Strategies in Tannaitic Narrative,” Dine Israel 24 (2007): 119*Google Scholar.

8. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 7.

9. Ibid., 30. Elsewhere (25), Simon-Shoshan follows Fleischman, Suzanne, Tense and Narrativity: From Medieval Performance to Modern Fiction (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 104Google Scholar, in differentiating between “realis” accounts, which represent the narrated events as “having been realized in the material world,” and “irrealis” accounts, which “are verbalizations of experience that is unrealized either because it is predicated on taking place in the future or because it is in some sense hypothetical.”

10. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 43.

11. Ibid., 51.

12. Ibid., 54.

13. Alexander, E. S., Transmitting Mishnah: The Shaping Influence of Oral Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 138CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. Ibid., esp. 167ff.

15. Emphasis added. Simon-Shoshan borrows the term “antistory” from Chatman, Seymour, Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 56–57Google Scholar.

16. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 54–55. Elsewhere, in the context of discussing stories in the Mishnah, Simon-Shoshan argues in similar fashion that the specificity of mishnaic narrative enhances their claim to “authenticity and authority” while paradoxically “undermin[ing] their usefulness as didactic tools” (ibid., 114).

17. I have employed the term “dialectical” to describe the interplay between the two counterposed purposes of the halakhic system. Simon-Shoshan, however, generally prefers Bakhtinian categories, such as “multivocal.”

18. Ibid., 55.

19. Ibid., 56.

20. Ibid., 58. Simon-Shoshan further differentiates ritual narratives that employ the kotel form from those that employ the katal form, arguing that the former highlight the prescriptive, whereas the latter are more descriptive, and might even be “seen as pseudo-stories, which very closely approximate the experience of an actual story.

21. Ibid., 64.

22. Ibid., 68.

23. Ibid., 77.

24. Ibid., 96.

25. Ibid., 99.

26. Ibid., 79–80.

27. Ibid., 211, based on Neusner's, discussion in The Mishnah: An Introduction (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1989), 19Google Scholar.

28. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 212.

29. See, for example, Hayes, C., “Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds” (PhD diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1993), 37–38Google Scholar: “The bulk of evidence supports a description of the redactor(s) as the agent of a multivocal community, the servant of conflicting forces…the polyphony has been encoded and preserved by a redactor/editor who exercises a certain amount of literary and rhetorical freedom like any redactor/editor, but who can hardly be said to be authoring a book that represents his own conclusions, opinions or agenda.” In my “Shitat ha‘arikhah hasifrutit bamishnah al-pi massekhet Ro'sh Hashanah” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2001), 26 n. 95, I largely concur with this reading, demurring with regard to the redactor's “agenda,” which I believe does exist and is encoded in his literary methods of redaction. Similarly, I would argue that underlying the Bakhtinian heteroglossia that Simon-Shoshan finds in the Mishnah, one may detect motifs and ideas that may be “complex” rather than “clearcut” but are nonetheless presented in a coherent and well-structured manner.

30. Moscovitz, Leib, Talmudic Reasoning from Casuistics to Conceptualization (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002)Google Scholar.

31. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 33.

32. Moscovitz, Talmudic Reasoning, 63 ff., esp. 66–68.

33. Moscovitz, Talmudic Reasoning, 63ff., following Yitzhak Englard, rejects Shalom Albeck's “dogmatic, a priori assumptions” that all rabbinic law is grounded in conceptualization, implicit when not explicit. He does not fully accept E. E. Urbach's highly skeptical claim that implicit conceptualization tends to reflect the thinking of the predisposed scholar rather than of the rabbinic texts; however, his own demanding criteria for accepting claims of implicit conceptualization (66ff.) also seem to presuppose a lack of conceptualization unless proven otherwise.

34. See Alexander, Transmitting Mishnah, 138–39. A further issue that needs clarification is the relationship between conceptualization and formalization. For Moscovitz, conceptualization means roughly the same thing as abstraction and formalistic reasoning. However, legal reasoning, in the view of some scholars, may be grounded in conceptualization of a significantly different kind than abstract formal thought. Chaim Perlman, for example, has argued that legal reasoning is “rhetorical” in nature, and Kraemer, David, “Composition and Meaning in the Bavli,” Prooftexts 8 (1988): 273ffGoogle Scholar.; and idem, The Mind of the Talmud (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 100ff., has suggested that the reasoning of the Bavli corresponds to this model. Brown, Benjamin, “Haḥazon ish: halakhah, ‘emunah veḥevrah” (PhD diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2003), 86–100Google Scholar, has argued that the Hazon Ish (Rabbi Abraham Isaiah Karelitz), who opposed the “analytic” school of talmudic conceptualization founded by R. Haim Soloveitchik of Brisk, operated with a case-sensitive, nonabstract form of conceptualization. My work in the Mishnah suggests that here, too, nonabstract forms of conceptualization predominate. A possible interrelationship between this point and the relatively high degree of “narrativity” in the Mishnah might be indicated on the basis of a distinction suggested by Jackson, B. S., Studies in the Semiotics of Biblical Law (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield University Press, 2000), 79Google Scholar, between the “semantic” model of legal formulation, in which cases must be judged on the basis of defining the terms of the law and seeing whether they apply to the case at hand, and the “narrative” model, in which the law is “applied to the typical cases whose images are evoked by the words of the rule.”

35. The alternative texts presented here are entirely theoretical and appear nowhere in talmudic sources.

36. This example compares the Mishnah to a baraita' cited in the Talmud, but there are many similar examples that emerge from comparing the Mishnah to baraitot in the Tosefta or in tannaitic midrashim. For instance, in T. Zavim 1:5–6, responding to R. Akiva's invitation to his disciples, R. Eliezer ben Judah cites a limiting condition regarding a dispute between the Houses of Hillel and Shammai. R. Akiva chides his disciple for failing to produce a reason for this claim, followed by a reason suggested by R. Simeon, which R. Akiva accepts and teaches in R. Simeon's name. M. Zavim 1:1 merely cites the limiting condition in the name of R. Eliezer ben Judah.

37. In somewhat similar fashion, Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, Transmitting Mishnah, 54, has argued that differences in formulation between the Mishnah and the Tosefta may reflect the fact “that the materials preserved in the Mishnah and the Tosephta [sic] were performed in different contexts with different pedagogical purposes.” I would suggest that such differences may be rooted in literary, as well as in “performative,” considerations, and that these considerations might be conceptual as well as “pedagogical.”

38. Elsewhere, Simon-Shoshan argues that comparison of mishnaic narrative with parallel versions brought in baraitot usually reveals the Mishnah to favor “Spartan narrative,” “strip[ped]… of all mimetic detail,” thus rendering the material appropriate to “theoretical halakhic discourse” but less appropriate to showing “how halakhic practice might be integrated into a broader life experience” (Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhic Mimesis,” 120*–21*). Here as well, the notion that “mimetic details” are designed to render the halakhic discourse truer to life stands in need of support; see the discussion herein of the “illustrative” and “representative” functions of narrative.

39. The Grammar of Stories (The Hague: Mouton, 1973).

40. Fleischman, Tense and Narrativity.

41. Simon-Shoshan draws here on Chatman, S., Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 117Google Scholar.

42. Culler, J., Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Language (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1975), 207Google Scholar.

43. Herrnstein-Smith, B., “Narrative Versions, Narrative Theories,” in On Narrative, ed. Mitchell, W. J. T. (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980), 213Google Scholar.

44. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 103.

45. See Jaffee, M., “The Taqqanah in Tannaitic Literature: Jurisprudence and the Construction of Rabbinic Memory,” Journal of Jewish Studies 41 (1990): 211CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 213 (cited in Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 79).

46. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 114.

47. Ibid., 114.

48. Ibid., 106. In arguing for a “more nuanced portrayal of rabbis and their authority,” Simon-Shoshan (ibid., 104–106) compares mishnaic stories to chreiae, the sage stories common in classical literature. Even though Fischel, H., “Studies in Cynicism and the Ancient Near East,” in Religions in Antiquity, ed. Neusner, J. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968), 409Google Scholar; and Hezser, C., “Interfaces Between Rabbinic Literature and Graeco-Roman Philosophy,” in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture, ed. Schaefer, and Hezser, C. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 2:167Google Scholar, have observed that the rabbis “halakhized” chreiae, there is a significant difference between these stories, designed to demonstrate the wisdom of the sage, and the halakhic rabbinic story, designed for legal purposes. My thanks to Dr. Amram Tropper for helping me on this point.

49. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 212.

50. Ibid., 214.

51. Here I am following the lead of Fraade, Steven, From Tradition to Commentary (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 18Google Scholar; and Kraemer, David, “The Intended Reader and the Bavli,” Prooftexts 13 (1993): 125–40Google Scholar, who have analyzed, respectively, tannaitic midrashim and the Babylonian Talmud on the basis of attempting to reconstruct from the text who was its intended reader. The method is grounded, of course, in the work of “reader-response” theorists such as Wolfgang Iser and Michael Riffaterre.

52. As demonstrated in my work on the Mishnah. The argument here is based on Yonah Fraenkel's correlation of the sophisticated literary features of aggadic literature with the rabbinic beit midrash audience for whom it is intended. Regarding the “intended reader” of aggadic literature, Herr, M. D., “’Aggadah umidrash be‘olamam shel Ḥazal b'ereẓ yisra'el: Mekomot hithavut, sibbot ẓemihah uzmanei ’arikhah,” in Higayon L'Yona, ed. Levinson, J. et al. . (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2006), 134–39Google Scholar, accepts a modified version of Fraenkel's claim, noting that Fraenkel himself has presented a somewhat modified version of this claim in some of his writings. Using different methods, Steven Fraade (From Tradition to Commentary) and David Kraemer (“The Intended Reader and the Bavli,” 132–33, 138) arrive at similar conclusions regarding the “intended readers” of the Sifre to Deuteronomy and the Bavli.

53. It bears noting once again that, in Simon-Shoshan's view, halakhic authority is simultaneously enhanced and diminished by being rooted in concrete historical reality: enhanced by the authenticity of a real-life ruling and diminished by the questions attending the extrapolation of a specific ruling to other cases.

54. See the interesting debate on this issue recorded in the Responsa of R. Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin, Meshiv Davar (Jerusalem, 5728²), 1:24.

55. For example, although the rabbis likely were well aware that midrashic stories frequently did not accurately reflect either the plain sense of the biblical text or the historical reality (this is the view of Fraenkel, Y., Darkhei ha'aggadah vehamidrash [Givatayim: Yad Hatalmud, 1991], 83–85Google Scholar, many scholars would modify this view to a greater or a lesser extent, but few scholars would erase entirely the gap between scripture's plain sense and midrashic interpretation), they did not refrain from deriving halakhic conclusions from them. See, for example, B. Berakhot 60a, which discusses the boundaries of acceptable prayer in light of a midrash that Leah prayed to have her fetus's gender changed. It may be argued that, while halakhic authority may sometimes be grounded in fictional stories, the rabbis regarded historically accurate stories as superior sources of authority. However, the correspondence of such a claim to the thrust of rabbinic thought is not obvious and would need to be supported.

56. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 178–79, citing Gerrig, Richard J., Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 2–17Google Scholar.

57. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhic Mimesis,” 116*.

58. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhic Mimesis,” 116*, citing Scholes, Robert E. and Kellogg, Robert, “Meaning in Narrative,” in The Nature of Narrative (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 82–159Google Scholar. Cf. C. Altieri, Canons and Consequences, 46.

59. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhic Mimesis,” 122*. Simon-Shoshan qualifies this conclusion to some degree by stating, “A full understanding of these phenomena must await a broad study of the stylistics and editorial considerations of the composers of rabbinic sage stories.”

60. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhic Mimesis,” 121*. Simon-Shoshan qualifies this generalization somewhat, noting that the Mishnah “tends to present stories that are crafted to fit a particular halakhic argument,” but, “Most mishnaic stories contain some details that are extraneous to, and even undermine, the halakhic point they are supposed to make” (121*–22*).

61. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 179–80. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhic Mimesis,” 120*–21*, describes the function of “mimetic details” in rabbinic narratives in a similar fashion. See n. 38 herein.

62. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 198–204.

63. Aside from the main point of discussion regarding reading strategies, there are further issues that affect the validity of Simon-Shoshan's reading. Not all scholars agree that the Honi narrative indeed exemplifies the rule of section A; see the discussion by Stone, Suzanne Last, “On the Interplay of Rules, ‘Cases,’ and Concepts in Rabbinic Legal Literature: Another Look at the Aggadot on Honi the Circle-Drawer,” Dine Israel 24 (2004): 136*–43*Google Scholar, and literature cited at 136* n. 34. Even if the Mishnah intends Honi's behavior at the end of section B to exemplify the principle stated in section A, Yonah Fraenkel has repeatedly cautioned against taking the editorial purposes of the redactor as a fully reliable guide to the meaning of the story. Moreover, attention should be paid to a subtle but potentially significant difference between sections A and B: Section A discourages fasting as a method of halting rains, whereas section B knows only of prayer. Insofar as fasting is a far more drastic form of behavior than prayer, one might differentiate between them in this context, and Honi thus emerges as one who—quite characteristically for “miracle workers”—exceeds the mandate of the halakhah, indicating that his behavior ought to be understood in aggadic, rather than in halakhic, categories. Moreover, it may be (cf. Lerner, cited by Stone, 136* n. 34) that the statement in section A is not the source of Honi's behavior but rather its result, in which case I would suggest that section A be read as an aggadic imperative rather than a halakhic ruling. The location of the general statement, referring to fasting, prior to the case relating to prayer on which it is based, may be explained as the redactor's way of justifying the introduction of the Honi narrative at this point by means of a bridging unit: Section A both concludes the previous (halakhic) discussion of occasions for fasting and introduces the Honi narrative by discouraging petitions against excessive rainfall. Simon-Shoshan notes (136 n. 174) that some commentators, led by Maimonides in his Mishnah commentary, have suggested that Honi did in fact pray for the cessation of the rain, thus flouting the principle stated in section A. As noted by R. Yosef Kafih in his editorial note to the Maimonidean commentary, Maimonides seems not to have a clear source for this comment, and in any event Maimonides' commentary is designed to interpret the Mishnah in light of talmudic interpretation, regardless of whether the plain sense of the Mishnah supports such a reading.

64. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 201.

65. Simon-Shoshan also suggests that perhaps “Simeon b. Shetah's words are not a theological complaint, but merely a rationalization meant to explain how someone like Honi could flaunt the rabbis” (204). This reading is closer to the standard understanding of the story, reading Simeon's citation of Proverbs 23:25 as standing on its own, without any implied allusion to the previous verse.

66. Simeon ben Shetah's frustration at being unable to place Honi under the ban is not a limitation on his authority but a recognition that it would be theologically unacceptable to exercise his authority. If we accept Simon-Shoshan's suggestion that Simeon's citation of Proverbs 23:25 alludes to the previous verse as well, then this would imply dismay on his part that God accords a sympathetic hearing to a prayer that reflects on his son's impudence rather than on his wisdom or righteousness. Simeon's consternation, then, would reflect his identification with the rabbinic values of wisdom and righteousness, as opposed to Honi's spiritualistic piety. However, here as well, it is the rabbinic value system that is being challenged, and I see no warrant here for Simon-Shoshan's identification of challenges to rabbinic norms with challenges to rabbinic authority. Suzanne Last Stone, “Aggadot on Honi the Circle-Drawer,” 138*–40*, cogently suggests that the mishnaic narrative employs Honi and Simeon to exemplify the problematic status of hasidim in the eyes of the rabbis. However, I think our story clearly indicates that the rabbis' attitude toward these figures was ambivalent rather than uniformly negative, and I would add that the Mishnah accords a similar role to the yehidim (individuals) of the first chapter of Tractate Ta‘anit (M. Ta‘anit 1:4, 7). Cf. my brief remarks on the role of the yehidim in “Shitat Ha‘ arikhah,” 13.

67. See, for example, Hannah's threat in B. Berakhot 31b to “force” God to grant her a child by undergoing the ordeal of the wayward woman.

68. Some of Simon-Shoshan's formulations indicate that he sees Simeon ben Shetah as maintaining an unequivocally negative position regarding Honi: “Simeon b. Shetah has nothing but scorn for Honi. He is outraged to have met his match in such a character” (Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 203). As noted, I believe that the language of the story suggests that Simeon relates to Honi in a more nuanced and ambivalent manner.

69. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhic Mimesis,”122*.

70. The translation here is taken from Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 144–45, with minor modifications. I have marked some words by italics or bold font in order to highlight literary points to which I will refer further on.

71. As Simon-Shoshan notes, this reading is based on Rashi's and Tiferet Yisrael's construal of the words lo nir'ah as meaning that on the second night, following the court's ruling, nobody, including the members of the court, saw the new moon. Other commentators follow Maimonides' understanding that these words were spoken by the witnesses, who arrived a day late and seek to have the new month established retroactively. This reading would lead to a significantly different understanding of R. Gamliel's position, as I have noted in “Shitat ha‘arikhah,” 91–93, and in “Halakic Confrontation Dramatized: A Study of Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 2:8–9,” Hebrew Union College Annual 79 (forthcoming).

72. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 151.

73. See my brief discussion in “Shitat Ha‘arikhah,” 97–99, and the fuller discussion in “Halakic Confrontation Dramatized.”

74. A further difference between Simon-Shoshan's reading strategy and a “representational” approach relates to the role in this story of R. Dosa. Simon-Shoshan struggles with the apparent reversal of R. Dosa's position, from harsh criticism and open rebellion in scene A to submissive loyalty in scene D, ultimately inclining toward the suggestion of Daniel Schwartz—since then published in his article, “Mikohanim biyeminam lenotẓrim bismolam: leferusho vehitpatḥuto shel sippur mishna'i (m. Ro'sh Hashanah 2:8–9),” Tarbiẓ 74 (1): 2005, 21–41—that in scene D, it is R. Joshua who attempts to persuade R. Dosa to accept R. Gamliel's ruling, not the other way around. However, close examination of the language and nuances of the story fail to support this reading, as I have argued in my article, “Ha‘immut hahilkhati be‘iẓuv dramati.”

75. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 160.

76. Ibid., 166.

77. See Jackson, Studies in the Semiotics of Biblical Law, 144–45.

78. In the work of Rubenstein, Jeffrey, especially in his book, The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003)Google Scholar, one may find many instructive examples of how knowledge of the sitz im leben both of halakhic and of aggadic texts guides how one understands and interprets them. Rubenstein is concerned with the stammaitic culture and with analyzing their values and social concerns, but his methods can readily be extended to tannaitic culture and to legal ramifications as well.

79. See Alexander, Transmitting Mishnah, 180–87.

80. See Nussbaum, M., Love's Knowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990)Google Scholar, regarding the importance of narrative in fostering moral thinking, and see idem, Poetic Justice (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), regarding the role of narrative imagination as a thinking tool to shape legal thought.

81. Wimpfheimer, B., “Talmudic Legal Narrative: Broadening the Discourse of Jewish Law,” Dine Israel 24 (2004): 159*Google Scholar. Wimpfheimer thus finds the use of narrative form in legal contexts as important both for humanizing the law and for producing more nuanced legal thought and interpretation. See further idem, “‘But It Is Not So’: Towards a Poetics of Legal Narrative in the Talmud,” Prooftexts 24 (2004): 51–86 (my thanks to Steven Fraade for calling my attention to Wimpfheimer's work). Simon-Shoshan also notes that many of the details in rabbinic legal narratives may complicate the application of the ruling to other cases. However, whereas for Simon-Shoshan, the ambiguity ultimately boils down to the question of whether a ruling is or is not applicable, for Wimpfheimer—as for Nussbaum—narrative detail opens up richer vistas for construing the legal situation in subtler, imaginative, and innovative ways.

82. The tools of cultural criticism would also provide a different perspective on the reading of aggadic stories, as well as halakhic narratives. Earlier (see n. 78) I noted the work of Jeffrey Rubenstein, which also focuses on uncovering the sociocultural values reflected in rabbinic texts; however, Rubenstein's interpretive tools differ in significant ways from the tools of “cultural criticism.”

83. A modified version of this claim was argued by E. E. Urbach, who asserted that the Mishnah served as the foundation for all halakhic discussions, even if the ultimate ruling was not always in accord with the Mishnah.

84. Similarly, Abraham Goldberg argues that Mishnah is designed in accordance with educational principles.

85. Simon-Shoshan, “Halakhah lema‘aseh,” 205ff.

86. I have not included Beth Berkowitz and Chaya Halberstam in my survey of different ways of reading this story because I believe that their methods would tend to focus either on issues of authority or on issues of social stratification—or quite possibly on both. As Judith Hauptman noted in her lecture at the conference, her own work is focused on a completely different issue, the relationship between Mishnah and Tosefta; hence, her work does not present an independent model for reading mishnaic narratives.

87. I have discussed the mishnahs at the end of the chapter, and the meaning of their literary connection to the mishnah at the beginning of the chapter in my article, “Hasukkah umeshal ha‘eved: haḥidah shebapesher” (in preparation).