People talking without speaking: The semiotics of the rabbinic legal exemplum as reflected in bavli Berakhot 11a

This paper deals with uses of exemplars and exempla to transmit religious law in rabbinic literature. After a general survey of the place of narrative in rabbinic legal literature, I explore the interpretive difficulties involved in deriving law from accounts of the deeds of great rabbis. The main section of the paper presents a reading of what we might call a meta-exemplum, a Talmudic narrative that not only records the opposing behaviors of two rabbis but also illustrates the difficulties involved in the transmission of law through exemplary actions. This text demonstrates that the rabbis were self-conscious about the ambiguity of this mode of transmission and of the potential for misinterpretation on the part of students. This very rabbinic self-consciousness is recommended by the text as the best way to ensure that one's deeds are properly understood. In the final section I discuss another set of Talmudic narratives that illustrate how this institution of selfconscious exemplar, if taken to an extreme, can have Orwellian implications for rabbis, placing them under constant and dehumanizing scrutiny from their students.