Questioning the Talmud

A Rabbi once said to me “far be it from you to question the Talmud”.

However, there is no logical reason to accept the Talmud, and not rational reason to accept concepts that are irrational.  So I will question some concepts of the Talmud which seem irrational to me, and it is not an attack on the entire Talmud, since there are many wise sayings  that can be found in that collection of rabbinic teachings.

One of the first pieces one will study in a yeshiva is the concept of “Ye’ush” – which is despair of ownership of lost goods.

The argument goes, that if a person loses something he owns, the title still belongs to him, until such point as he despairs.  If he despairs of ever finding it again, then when the property is found, he no longer has a claim to it.

This principal is used in rabbinic law  or halacha. It is quite a fundamental legal principle of Rabbinic Judaism.

It also, in my humble opinion, is false, or misleading.   A story in the news recently reported that  man lost his falcon 8 years ago, it flew away and did not return. He lost all hope of finding it,  dead or alive. But it was found, and he was reunited with it.

Ye-ush is a psychological principle,  i.e.  the rabbis are deriving a legal principle from a psychological  reaction.  We differ in psychology, so some may despair, some may hold out.  But why should that change our entitlement to own something?

Indeed, in many areas it is important, psychologically to let go of something.  But that is psychology.   My argument is that ye-ush is irrelevant.  One can despair  of something and then find it, or the other way around. I can lose my keys and despair, but then I find them again. Does mean I no longer have legal rights to my keys?

This is a most irrational idea, which forms one of the fundamental teachings of the Talmud.  Unfortunately, there are other such teachings.