{"id":46536,"date":"2025-04-25T01:54:54","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T08:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=46536"},"modified":"2025-04-24T18:23:14","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T01:23:14","slug":"flying-camels-still-dont-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2025\/04\/25\/flying-camels-still-dont-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"Flying camels still don\u2019t exist"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve been getting a lot of weird phone calls lately. The caller ID says it is from our credit card company or the bank. Yet, the person on the phone seems a little off. What we realize, before giving away any important information, is that it\u2019s likely some new kind of scam. The person calling knows our names, or knows where we shop or bank. Maybe that person has seen our mail. Maybe they work at the store and noticed our info when we ordered online. Maybe the information has been sold to them. No matter, it becomes clear it\u2019s a scam. We hang up. Later, we might log on and check our accounts. Is everything fine? Is someone stealing money or information?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is well worth asking because, sometimes, there is theft happening. If you read the news, there are often articles saying \u201cCaution! Look out! There\u2019s a new scam out there, beware!\u201d Like everything we read, it\u2019s helpful to think critically about this. Criminals are always upping their game to catch new victims. This isn\u2019t a new phenomenon.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve just started studying a new tractate of the Babylonian Talmud, Makkot. So far, it\u2019s mostly about how a court of law rules and doles out punishment. I\u2019ve learned about \u201cconspiring witnesses.\u201d That is, witnesses who arrange in advance to lie about something to the court. For instance, imagine there was a crime in Saskatoon and there were witnesses to it. The conspiring witnesses might swear that, in fact, the criminal was in Winnipeg that day, and not in Saskatoon. It\u2019s clear to the court that the conspiring witnesses were lying, due to the testimony of others. How should the court punish those conspiring witnesses? How are they held accountable for lying?<\/p>\n

This topic continues for awhile, but my absolute favourite moment happens on Makkot 5a. The situation is as follows, in summary:<\/p>\n

Rava says: If two witnesses came and said, So-and-so killed a person in Sura on Sunday morning and two other witnesses came to court and said to the first witnesses, on Sunday evening, you were with us in Nehardea \u2013 if one can travel from Sura to Nehardea from the morning and arrive by the evening, fine, nobody is misleading us. If not? They are \u201cconspiring witnesses.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Gemara (later commentators) say: This is obvious. Don\u2019t be concerned that these witnesses traveled via \u201cflying camel\u201d \u2013 that is, using a magical or impossible way to travel with great speed. You don\u2019t have to take that kind of thinking into account.<\/p>\n

In practical terms, Sura and Nehardea were both places in Babylon with Jewish academies of learning, but they were far apart. Nehardea was destroyed in 259 CE. More than 1,766 years ago, the Mishnah described this. Later rabbis advised students not to be taken in by somebody lying outright in court. After all, these lying witnesses didn\u2019t travel by \u201cflying camels.\u201d<\/p>\n

It often feels like that we\u2019re struggling with ever new and complicated scams. The pace and amount of information via the internet and social media is astounding. Yet, I sometimes hear the most interesting things close to home, in the old-fashioned way people have always communicated. When is that? Well, when I\u2019m visiting with friends, having a cup of coffee after lunch on Shabbat, or at synagogue.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Both world news and \u201ctrue accounts\u201d are only as good as the people who tell them and how much trust we have in those sources. If those sources rely on witnesses who like to offer bald-faced lies, well, that\u2019s not a good source. If we have trouble with the veracity of someone\u2019s account, we must ask: What flying camel did you ride in on?! How were you in two places at once, that you witnessed both these things?<\/p>\n

Jewish tradition is amazing. We have these ancient sources to remind us that \u201cthere\u2019s nothing new under the sun.\u201d The bigger point is a modern one: we must get out of our usual news bubbles or coffee klatches. We are so easily lulled into believing some versions of the \u201ctruth\u201d when we trust our sources without question. For example, some Canadian news outlets suggest that Israel is targeting specific Gazan locations with a vengeance. Yet these same outlets fail to mention the Hamas rocket fire that came from that location just before the Israeli response. So, if the story conveniently fails to mention why the Israeli army is firing at a specific location, the news article may not be an objective source of war coverage.<\/p>\n

In the Winnipeg Free Press<\/em> newspaper, I read about a new lecture series created by professors supposedly concerned about freedom of expression. Their invited speaker, a professor from York University, brought up the suspension of her colleague, who had been charged with \u201cvandalism of a bookstore.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Notably, the article did not mention which bookstore. My household strongly suspected it had been the incidents targeting Indigo, when Jews and Israelis were targeted by protesters. Further, the article didn\u2019t mention that freedom of expression doesn\u2019t mean freedom to commit crimes against businesses.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The article\u2019s tone was matter of fact. A person could read such an article and feel that the professors were rightfully concerned about the loss of freedom of expression. To me, it seemed like the example given before, of the distance between Sura and Nehardea. If you don\u2019t know the particulars, such as the distance between these two locations, you can miss the absurdity of the situation. In the guise of defending free speech, the professors wanted readers to bemoan the suspension of a professor who was charged with vandalism \u2013 a crime.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, when someone presents a news story or a court defence that seems so smooth and practised as to be suspicious, well, perhaps that\u2019s because it is. Likewise, the tidbits we gain at Kiddush lunch after services may also vary in their reliability. We may have faster transportation and cellphone connections today, but, sometimes, things still aren\u2019t as they seem. As much as things change, much is still the same. Yes, a juicy bit of news is an interesting truth to ponder, but a lie is still a lie. We still have conspiring witnesses to contend with and, even now, we still don\u2019t have flying camels.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Joanne Seiff<\/b> has written regularly for the <\/i>Winnipeg Free Press and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including <\/i>From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner<\/a> or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve been getting a lot of weird phone calls lately. The caller ID says it is from our credit card company or the bank. Yet, the person on the phone seems a little off. What we realize, before giving away any important information, is that it\u2019s likely some new kind of scam. The person calling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[23997,20883,2251,2529,23998,2231],"class_list":["post-46536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-op-ed","tag-courts","tag-gemara","tag-law","tag-newspapers","tag-reporting","tag-talmud"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46536","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46536"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46536\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46536"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46536"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46536"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}