The most quoted story in the Talmud starts with an oven. People split over whether the one called the oven of Achnai was pure or impure.
The subject is trivial. And this argument climbs all the way to heaven. And heaven loses.
Split Over a Single Oven
On one side stood Rabbi Eliezer. He was alone. On the other stood all the remaining sages.
Eliezer was a formidable scholar. But his numbers were small. Precisely, his side was himself.
The argument dragged on, and he reached for another method.
Three Miracles, Three Refusals
First he said, if the law is as I say, let this carob tree prove it. The tree was torn up by the roots and replanted far away.
The sages answered. A carob tree is not proof.
He said again, let this stream of water prove it. The water ran backward. The sages answered. A stream is not proof.
He said again, let the walls of this study hall prove it. The walls began to fall.
Then Rabbi Yehoshua rebuked the walls. When scholars are contending over the law, what business is it of yours? The walls neither fell nor straightened. They stayed leaning where they were.
When Heaven Took a Side
Eliezer had one instrument left.
He said, let heaven prove it. A voice came down from heaven.
Why do you contend with Eliezer? The law is as he says, everywhere.
At this point the argument looks finished. Then Rabbi Yehoshua rose to his feet.
לֹא בַשָּׁמַיִם הִיא (lo vashamayim hi) It is not in heaven. (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 59b, translated directly)
God Laughed and Said
What Yehoshua meant was this. The Torah has already been given to people, so people do the interpreting now.
And written inside that Torah is the principle of following the majority. So a voice from heaven does not count as an argument in this room.
Later Rabbi Natan met Elijah and asked him. What was the Holy One doing in that hour?
Elijah answered. He was laughing, and he said this.
נִצְחוּנִי בָּנַי (nitzchuni banai) My children have defeated me. (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 59b, translated directly)
The Wound the Winners Left
Ending here would make it a satisfying story. The Talmud does not end it.
Later in the same passage Eliezer is pushed out of the community. He is left alone, and the injury his heart takes comes back as real damage.
The majority was right. The procedure was right. And a person was hurt, and the story does not erase that fact.
Today, After the Majority Has Won
This story gets used in two places.
One is in front of someone using authority as an argument. I have done this for twenty years. It was decided upstairs. Words like these belong to the same species as moving a tree and reversing a stream. Overwhelming, but not an argument.
The other is on the opposite side. After the vote is counted, how do you treat the one who objected to the end?
That treatment decides whether we get a dissenting opinion the next time.