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parsha bit: Noach
There's a point in the morning service where we study a little bit of torah. For reasons unknown to me, the weekday morning minyan almost always reads something from Pirke Avot in that slot, rather than the usual text called for in the siddur. So I've been doing that since starting to lead that service because, well, that's what they do. But I've sometimes seen variation from this norm, and these readings didn't really seem to be doing their job, so I decided to try something new -- short bits about the weekly parsha. (Yeah, I should have started last week. Didn't think of it then.) This is supposed to be study, not a d'var torah, so my plan is to repeat something from a source, not add my own layer of interpretation. We'll see how this goes over (no noticable reactions today).
Today's bit:
We might ask: why was it necessary for God to destroy the whole world with the flood? Was there no possibility of redemption? We learn in Midrash Tanchuma that when Noach was commanded to build the ark, he began by planting cedar trees. The people asked him what he was doing and he told them about the coming flood, but they ridiculed him. Later, he cut down the grown trees to make planks, and again the people asked him and ridiculed him when they heard his answer. Noach then built the ark, and only after all of that did God send the flood.
Meta: When we were doing Pirke Avot I just read out of a siddur; with this my choices were to carry a book in with me (the one where I found the passage), make a copy, or do it from memory. I opted for the last. I was a little nervous, but I think it'll be fine next time.
There are, I think, a couple reasons for the formalized study. First, if we study we can then say kaddish d'rabannan (a version of the kaddish that comes after study); there seems to be a desire in traditional Judaism to have lots of uses of the kaddish in the service. (Originally each would be recited by a single person, a mourner if any were present, so you wanted enough that every mourner got a turn. There are congregations that do it that way today, but this isn't one of them. Still, try to remove that kaddish and the sparks fly; I actually got flack once for omitting it because while we had studied, we didn't have the required minyan.)
The other reason (and here I speculate) is so that everyone will have at least studied some torah every day. Studying torah is meritorious, but most of us don't make time to do it in substantial amounts at all, let alone on a daily basis. I speculate that including it in the service is meant to plant a small seed.
Having a specific text to study satisfies the first goal but might not do much for the second. Maybe that's why they changed it to vary the text -- but over time the replacement readings became repetitive, and I've noticed that most people weren't paying any attention while I was doing them. So keeping the study as study (repeating text, not giving my own opinions) but varying the content more widely to cut down on the "I've heard this before" reaction seems a worthwhile experiment.
My own congregation reads the same text every week for Shabbat in this slot and it doesn't get old for us, by the way.
Today's bit:
We might ask: why was it necessary for God to destroy the whole world with the flood? Was there no possibility of redemption? We learn in Midrash Tanchuma that when Noach was commanded to build the ark, he began by planting cedar trees. The people asked him what he was doing and he told them about the coming flood, but they ridiculed him. Later, he cut down the grown trees to make planks, and again the people asked him and ridiculed him when they heard his answer. Noach then built the ark, and only after all of that did God send the flood.
Meta: When we were doing Pirke Avot I just read out of a siddur; with this my choices were to carry a book in with me (the one where I found the passage), make a copy, or do it from memory. I opted for the last. I was a little nervous, but I think it'll be fine next time.
There are, I think, a couple reasons for the formalized study. First, if we study we can then say kaddish d'rabannan (a version of the kaddish that comes after study); there seems to be a desire in traditional Judaism to have lots of uses of the kaddish in the service. (Originally each would be recited by a single person, a mourner if any were present, so you wanted enough that every mourner got a turn. There are congregations that do it that way today, but this isn't one of them. Still, try to remove that kaddish and the sparks fly; I actually got flack once for omitting it because while we had studied, we didn't have the required minyan.)
The other reason (and here I speculate) is so that everyone will have at least studied some torah every day. Studying torah is meritorious, but most of us don't make time to do it in substantial amounts at all, let alone on a daily basis. I speculate that including it in the service is meant to plant a small seed.
Having a specific text to study satisfies the first goal but might not do much for the second. Maybe that's why they changed it to vary the text -- but over time the replacement readings became repetitive, and I've noticed that most people weren't paying any attention while I was doing them. So keeping the study as study (repeating text, not giving my own opinions) but varying the content more widely to cut down on the "I've heard this before" reaction seems a worthwhile experiment.
My own congregation reads the same text every week for Shabbat in this slot and it doesn't get old for us, by the way.
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Acc. to the Gemara in Brachot, we are to study Mikra (scripture), Mishnah (established law), and Gemara (methods of logic and exegesis) in approximately equal doses. So the sacrifices (scripture), the Mishnah chapter Eizehu Meqoman (where different sacrifices were offered), and the passage of Rabbi Ishmael's rules for deriving Torah laws from verses, fulfill that minimum requirement.
What sort of synagogue do you go to for daily minyan? Conservative? They may not be concerned with sacrifices, as Conservative doesn't generally believe they will ever be restored, so they might substitute something else in that slot.
As for kaddish derabbanan, that is triggered by two conditions:
1) group study by a minyan of a particular text; and
2) study of some piece of aggadita (narrative, moralistic passages, as opposed to halachic passages).
The latter is why we say "rabbi chanania ben akashya..." before kaddish derabbanan after some group study sessions.
So doing your own bit there is fine, as long as there is a minyan doing whatever the group has decided the "official" study text will be.
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Which text?
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I was taught that reciting kaddish was a marker between (mostly) discrete sections of the davening. Not that I could tell you what those sections are anymore, but there's still this feeling of structure and order (Siddur/Seder) when I pray.
With that in mind, I can understand why removing a recitation could ruffle feathers, even if you didn't really understand why your feathers were ruffled.
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