Hey there, and welcome back to Take One, the podcast that brings you just one,

healing page of Talmud each day.

And on today's page, Menachot 46, the rabbis are talking about

the obligations of the priests in the city of Yavne, the center of Jewish life after the destruction

of the temple in 70C.E. The anecdote of Yavne is one worth considering because, well, it feels mighty relevant to a lot of us right now.

A lot of us, left, right, and center, are watching institutions we've admired for decades, universities, newspapers, political parties, you name it, descend into some unrecognizable form of chaos and bigotry. A lot feels

broken right now. That leaves us with a question of what to do when the world as we thought

we knew it changes radically. Thankfully, the Talmud, as always, has the answers.

It tells us the story of Rabi Ohanan bin Zaki, who lived in the first century C.E.

And was widely considered his generation's leading scholar.

When he realized that the Romans were about to sack Jerusalem, he went to see Vespasian,

who was then the main Roman general and would soon become the Roman emperor. How he managed to smuggle himself out of besieged Jerusalem is a story worthy of a really

great action movie. But what he did next is a guide to life right here and right now.

The Roman general respected Rabbi Yohanan, so he granted him three wishes.

A lesser man, like myself, would have asked for just one. Hey, dude, please just don't destroy

Jerusalem. But Rabbi Yohanan knew better. He knew that asking the Roman general not to act like

a Roman general was a losing bid.

So instead, he made three seemingly strange wishes.

First, he asked Vespasian to spare Yavne, a town in central Israel, known as a vibrant center

of Torah study.

He asked Vespasian also to protect the family of Raban Gamliel, a communal leader and the

sion of a celebrated rabbinic dynasty. And he asked the general to send doctors to heal a wise and

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