It's not a joke. It's an old Jewish illustration about how close they expected the students to be with their instructors, who they called 'rabbis'. Maybe it was told as a true story. The point is that the student was to learn about every area of his life.My point was if this was the philosophy back then, maybe Paul learned to juggle fire from Gamaliel back then.In a lot of ways, Judaism was a party religion. God commanded the Israelites to partake of seven feasts, and certain other feasts were added, like Purim as we read in Esther