Rav says, "The ear that often listens to song shall be rooted out." Music, according to the idea here, raises the price of provisions. Do away with music and provisions will be so abundant that a goose would be considered dear at a penny. Theatres and music-halls are abominations to orthodox Jews, and the Talmud considers the voice of a woman to be immoral. When Rabbi Zira returned to the land of Israel he fasted a hundred times in order that he might forget the Babylonian Talmud. _Bava Metzia_, fol. 85, col. 1. This passage, as also that on another page, will appear surprising to many a reader, as we confess it does to ourselves. We must, however, give the Talmud great credit for recording such passages, and also the custodians of the Talmud for not having expunged them from its pages. "Ye shall hear the small as well as the great" (Deut. i. 17). Resh Lakish said, "A lawsuit about a prutah (the smallest coin there is) should be esteemed of as much account as a suit of a hundred manahs." _Sanhedrin_, fol. 8, col. 1. Rav Yitzchak asks, "Why was Obadiah accounted worthy to be a prophet?" Because, he answers, he concealed a hundred prophets in a cave; as it is said (1 Kings xviii. 4), "When Jezebel cut off the prophets of the Lord, Obadiah took a hundred prophets and hid them by fifty in a cave." Why by fifties? Rabbi Eliezer explains, "He copied the plan from Jacob, who said, 'If Esau come to one company and smite it, then the other company which is left may escape.'" Rabbi Abuhu says, "It was because the caves would not hold any more." _Sanhedrin_, fol. 39, col. 2.