For the source text click/tap here: Bechorot 29
To download, click/tap here: PDF
Our Mishnah in Bekhorot 4:6 voids the rulings of a judge who takes a fee, and the Gemara on 29a grounds the rule in Moses: mah ani be-hinam, af atem be-hinam, as I received for nothing, so you.
We explore the sugya as a theory of what a teacher may and may not take from a student. It distinguishes two distances between rebbe and talmid: the distance of awe, which the halakhah commands, and the distance of ownership, which the verse "buy truth and do not sell it" forbids. It then argues that modern kiruv, which suspends the first distance to draw the student near, is exposed to the second: the student is charged an existential fee, the repudiation of his secular past.
Against that model I propose a story of R. Yohanan and Reish Lakish (Bava Metzia 84a), the rabbinic theology of teshuvah as elevation and not erasure, and the apophatic tradition. Its constructive claim is that the returnee's experience of a complete worldview failing is a preparation for negative theology that those raised wholly within observance may not acquire in the same way, and that a kiruv which demands its erasure sells what cannot be sold.