Hillel: Are you sure this is the way?
Shammai: This is the only way.
Hillel: Not what I meant.
Shammai: This is the way we get to his cave.
Hillel: I don't understand why we couldn't have taken a bedouin with us who knows the caves.
Shammai: And compromise our identity?
Hillel: What identity? We're in disguise!
Shammai: We can't take the chance.
Hillel: Nobody knows we're missing yet. If we don't get back by sunup tomorrow everyone will assume we've fled and they'll kill us.
Shammai: They might kill us if we stay.
Hillel: They'll kill us if we go, they'll kill us if we stay, why don't I go and you stay and we'll see who's alive by next week.
Shammai: You want to go? Go. But it's your beloved people we're trying to save.
Hillel: Wait, what are you trying to save?
Shammai: The sanctity of Hashem of course.
Hillel: So you admit that Hashem means nothing without people to worship Him.
Shammai: If I had known a brief walk in the desert is the only thing that would make Rabban Hillel grouchy I'd have taken him on a walk eighteen years ago.
Hillel: I'm grouchy because we're about to get killed and you're taking me on a walk to a cave to visit a Rabbi we don't even know is alive.
Shammai: He's alive.
Hillel: You'll have to excuse me for doubting you when you just told me for the first time that he survived the massacre of the Sanhedrin.
Shammai: He's here.
Hillel: How do you know?
Shammai: Because he said he would be.
Hillel: What did he say? When did he say it?
Shammai: He told me in a dream.
Hillel: Doesn't your school reject dreams as an otherworldly temptation?
Shammai: We reject dreams unless we can prove to an authority that they come from God.
Hillel: And your proof is?..
Shammai: My proof is when we find who we're looking for.
Hillel: That's a dumb rationalization even for the School of Shammai.
Shammai: There is no school of Shammai, there's a school of Bava ben Buta. I'm just the Rabbi who spreads his word.
Hillel: 'Spreads his word?' What on earth? You sound like a goy!
Shammai: Once you meet him you'll understand.
Hillel: What's there to understand? Herod had a stroke and went meshuggeh. It doesn't get more simple than that.
Shammai: That's why we need Rav Bava. He'll know.
Hillel: What will he know?
Shammai: I don't know, but I know he'll know.
had his right arm amputated. He's killed one son and thrown the other two in jail; he's about to literally issue an order killing babies around the country and he still has a bodyguard of 2,000 so no one can stop him.
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