The Mishnah assumes a practice that has since vanished. In the era of the Mishnah and Gemara the spoken language of the Jews was Aramaic. A meturgeman stood beside the reader and rendered the Torah and Prophets aloud, verse by verse, so the assembly could understand.

The whole sugya turns on that point of contact: not what the text says, but what is made audible to those with no direct access to it. The question is never "is this verse true?" but "what happens when a mixed assembly hears it in the clear?"

Nearly every case follows the same movement, and you must see it to understand the page. The Beraita states a case. The Gemara immediately objects: פְּשִׁיטָא — obviously, why teach this? Then it answers: מַהוּ דְּתֵימָא — "you might have said…", laying out the objection a reasonable person could have raised.

1 · Ma'aseh Bereshit Genesis 1 One might have feared that translation opens the door to metaphysical speculation — what is above, below, before, after (Chagigah 11b). Read and translated: speculative risk is not enough.

2 · Lot and his two daughters Genesis 19:31-36 After Sodom the daughters believe humanity has been wiped out; they make their father drunk and conceive by him. Objection: the honour of Abraham, their great-uncle. Rejected — the Meiri: a righteous man and a wicked one are not bound together, even by blood. Another reading (Menachem Meshiv Nefesh): they acted out of concern for the survival of the species, and from them descend Ruth and then David.

3 · Tamar and Yehudah Genesis 38 Objection: the honour of Yehudah, forefather of the monarchy. Rejected — and the reversal is total: the passage is in truth his praise, for he admitted his fault publicly.

4 · First account of the Golden Calf Exodus 32:1-20 Objection: it disparages Israel. Rejected.

5 · Curses and blessings Leviticus 26 · Deuteronomy 27-28 A serious objection (Rashi): hearing the curses translated, the assembly might conclude that punishment is inevitable and give itself over to the pleasures of this world. Rejected. The blessings are named alongside them because the two form a single subject (Maharsha).

6 · Warnings and punishments Objection: people would keep the mitzvot out of fear of punishment rather than out of reverence. Rejected — the Ritva: one who observes out of fear still fulfils the commandments completely. The Bach has the reverse version, out of love and not out of fear.

7 · Amnon and Tamar II Samuel 13 Read and translated — in the verses where the text writes simply Amnon.

8 · Avshalom II Samuel 16:21-22 Public relations with his father's concubines. Objection: the honour of David. Rejected.

9 · The concubine at Giv'ah Judges 19 Objection: the honour of the tribe of Binyamin. Rejected.

10 · "Make known to Jerusalem her abominations" Ezekiel 16 Read and translated — and the Beraita states this case precisely in order to rule against R' Eliezer.

11 · Ma'aseh Reuven Genesis 35:22 Reuven moves Bilhah's bed. The Sages (Shabbat 55b) warn that the plain sense is false: he was defending his mother Leah's honour, and his piety was such that a minor lapse is counted against him as a major one. It is read — but not translated, since those who do not know Hebrew would grasp only the letter. R' Chanina ben Gamliel, officiating at Kavul, instructed the translator to render only the end of the verse: and the sons of Yaakov were twelve. The Sages praised him.

12 · Second account of the Golden Calf Exodus 32:21-25 Aharon's answer to Moses — I threw the gold into the fire and this calf came out — leads the ignorant to think the calf made itself, and therefore had a reality of its own. That is an error about the nature of the idol, not an embarrassment.

13 · Birkat Kohanim Numbers 6:24-26 "May Hashem lift His face toward you" suggests divine favouritism — see the box below.

14 · Amnon son of David II Samuel 13 Where the text writes simply Amnon, it is read and translated: the sin remains an individual's. Where it writes Amnon son of David, translating would reflect on the king. The Bach and the Hagahot HaGra emend to read but not translated, in line with our Mishnah.

15 · The Merkavah Ezekiel 1 The vision of the divine chariot: the Chayot, the ofanim, the firmament, the likeness of a throne and, above it, the likeness of a human figure. The founding text of Ma'aseh Merkavah, which the Mishnah in Chagigah restricts to a single mature student at a time. Reading it as a haftarah would expose the highest esoteric material to an unprepared assembly. R' Yehudah permits it — and the halakhah follows him: it is the haftarah of the first day of Shavuot, the day of the revelation at Sinai.

16 · Ezekiel 16, per R' Eliezer alone The chapter is an allegory: Jerusalem is a child abandoned at birth, whom God takes in, raises, marries and adorns with royal jewels — and who then prostitutes herself. She uses the gold He gave her to serve idols; she gives herself to Egyptians, Assyrians, Chaldeans; she is worse than a harlot, for she pays her lovers instead of being paid; she sacrifices her children to idols; measured against Sodom and Samaria, she is declared worse than both.

The last part of the sugya shifts register. It is no longer about what is said but about how it sounds. The Beraita's rule: every verse written in coarse terms is read in decent ones — and the status invoked is considerable: according to the Sefer HaEshkol and the Seder HaSedarim, a halakhah leMoshe miSinai.

R' Yehoshua ben Korchah disputes the last case. Here, he says, lemacharaot is read exactly as written — because the coarseness is not an accident of the text, it is the message: the degradation of the idol. To soften it would be to spare idolatry.

Hence the general rule that closes the chapter. Rav Nachman: all mockery is forbidden, except mockery of idolatry, which is permitted. Proof from Isaiah 46:1 — Bel crouches, Nevo is crushed: the idols cannot even hold in their own bowels. R' Yannai adds Hosea 10:5 — the priests who rejoiced in the idol's glory now mourn its burden.

The sugya closes with one further halakhah, to be handled with care: one whose reputation is tarnished may be shamed; one whose reputation is excellent may be praised, and blessings rest on the head of the one who praises him. The Chafetz Chaim (Kelal 7, Be'er Mayim Chaim 8) sharply narrows the first half: it applies only to someone who transgresses constantly and whose reputation is deserved; where there is only rumour, relying on it is forbidden.

Take stock. Of sixteen passages, thirteen are read and ten are fully translated, despite the incest, rape, idolatry and betrayal they report. The only three withheld from translation are withheld for one traceable reason: they are easily misunderstood. Reuven, because the plain sense is false. The second Golden Calf account, because it suggests the idol had a reality of its own. Birkat Kohanim, because it would imply a partial God.

What the page leaves open must be left open: the Ritva's objection. Every act of censorship points at what it hides. That is a real tension, raised twice, never resolved.

On that point the sugya says something few religious traditions are willing to say: the founding narrative keeps its disgraces, and they are read aloud.

The sugya does not go down in one swallow: it advances by objections. This breakdown follows its movement rather than the order of the pages.