"Can you name all of the fifteen forbidden women listed in the first mishnah of Mesechet Yevamot?"

This was the challenge hurled at the Torah scholar by a Jerusalem cab driver whose rough appearance seemed to suggest that he would be the last to even know that such a mishnah existed.

When the passenger embarrassedly admitted that he could not quite recall all of them from memory, the driver proceeded to rattle them off without missing a beat. He went on to boast that he often stumped scholarly passengers before showing his stuff.

Asked for the secret to his own mastery of such a complex matter, the cabbie explained that he had a volume of Mesechet Yevamot in the cab and would review the mishnah every time he waited for a traffic light to turn green.

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