(Hillel and Shammai are packing their office)
Shammai: Just one last time, are you sure this means we can't die?
Hillel: I thought we were in agreement here!
Shammai: I just want to be certain.
Hillel: I've never been certain of anything in my life and I am of this! You couldn't be burned at the stake, I walked off a crucifix. I got shot with a bow and arrow, I lost three logs of blood.
Shammai: Again, I'm sorry about that.
Hillel: We can't be responsible for all our meshuggeh followers.
Shammai: ...Thank you for that.
Hillel: Then you got stabbed with a knife... how many times?
Shammai: Eighteen.
Hillel: Well, there you go, Chai's your sign.
Shammai: I'd rather we have the basis for this on law.
Hillel: I ruled that Vayikra 18:5 means that wherever possible you live to serve the law, not die to serve it. I ruled that and you agreed with me!
Shammai: It was under... compromised circumstances. We were worried every Jew was going to die.
Hillel: And this isn't? We've both been killed twice now, once by the Romans, once by the Jews, and neither of us died.
Shammai: Right, so?
Hillel: You're reasonably sure my followers killed you, I'm reasonably sure your followers killed me.
Shammai: Right...
Hillel: So if they can't kill us, they're going to kill our replacements.
Shammai: OK...
Hillel: So we have to get our followers out of Jerusalem before they kill each other and the Romans kill everybody else. You read the same report about the legions as me.
Shammai: I'm still not certain that's going to happen.
(Hillel laughs)
Hillel: You realize what's happening now...
Shammai: I'm a little confused.
Hillel: I'm the one who's certain and you're the one who's seeing ambiguity everywhere.
Shammai: I'm not uncertain I'm ju... alright I'm uncertain.
Hillel: Geb a kook, think again for a minute, it's the perfect system. We both set up Yeshivas, I go to Yavneh, you go to Tsfat. Once every eighteen months, you come to my school with a bodyguard, I come to yours, you interview my students, I interview your students, and from them we pick each others' students to be new Sanhedrin.
Shammai: This still just strikes me as compromise over truth.
Hillel: It IS compromise over truth. Compromise over truth is why we're still alive.
Shammai: The compromises might be what motivate us all to kill each other.
Hillel: That's why we have to keep them far apart!
Shammai: So that's a compromise within a compromise?
Hillel: OK, yeah, it's a compromise squared... but if they don't kill each other before they learn to behave, eventually we can fill the Sanhedrin with real khakhams who know their drek.
Shammai: If both of us are choosing the most moderate students we're not appointing the khakhams.
Hillel: Alright then, real rabbis. If they're mediocre they're mediocre, but it's better than Sanhedrin executing their own fathers.
Shammai: Well now we're gonna be under the auspices of Rome.
Hillel: So?
Shammai: They might put us under the same threats as Herod did.
Hillel: Of course they might.
Shammai: So es helft vi a teytn bankes.
Hillel: Alright, so it helps like leeches on a corpse, but at least it's one less threat to the Sanhedrin.
Shammai: We've got bigger threats.
Hillel: I know, I know, the Roman appointed priests.
Shammai: So don't you see what's coming next?
Hillel: Maybe?
Shammai: They don't try to rule through the Sanhedrin or Pharisees like us, they'll go through the Sadducees and the Priests.
Hillel: Oh those fucking Kohanim...
Shammai: LANGUAGE!
Hillel: I told you years ago to get me a swear jar. Of course it's going to be through them, that's why we need a united opposition that won't break and ally with those rich bogeds.
Shammai: ...emes.
Hillel: (pauses to consider this concession) I always appreciated what a mensch you are Shammai.
Shammai: Ir aykh Hillel. You might have been compromising, but you were never duplicitous.
Hillel: So you admit compromise doesn't lead to duplicity?
Shammai: Just in your case... which is why I trusted you.
Hillel: You always worked with me, I was genuinely dershteynt.
Shammai: Maybe it really does come down to the character of the man.
Hillel: What do you mean?
Shammai: We can put all the holds in place, make things as lawful as possible so nobody with a greyser yetzer ha'ra can exploit the rest of us, but if there's a person with enough yetzer ha'ra, they'll find a way.
Hillel: I'm not sure whether that's always been your point or mine.
Shammai: I can't believe I'm asking you this Hillel, but I have to ask.
Hillel: OK, I won't tell anybody.
Shammai: Did we solve more problems than we caused?
Hillel: (frankly) I don't know.
Shammai: It seems like everything we did, every ruling we made, Herod used it to his advantage. Yours, mine, it was all the same to him.
Hillel: He was a very gifted man, but we didn't do bad enough for him to kill us all.
Shammai: Apparently Hashem wants both of us not to be killed.
Hillel: (pats him on the shoulder) That's the ruakh.
Shammai: Maybe he does want us to start these schools.
Hillel: There's only one way to find out. Geb a kook, the sun's coming up, Shacharit's about to start. (grabs tefilin out of his desk)
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