daf bit: Sanhedrin 97

The g'mara on today's daf is discussing the timing of the coming of the moshiach. R. Kattina said the world would exist for 6000 years and then be desolate for another thousand -- just as in the seventh year we are commanded to let our fields lie fallow, so too with the seventh millennium for the world. The tanna Eliyahu also said the world would exist for 6000 years, but that is: 2000 of desolation, 2000 in which the torah flourished, and the next 2000 is the messianic era -- that was the design, but through our iniquities it has been lost. (A different) Eliyahu said to R. Yehudah: the world shall exist not fewer than 85 jubilees (which occur every 50 years). And R. Chanan b. Tahlifa once met a man in possession of a scroll written in Assyrian characters that said the world would be orphaned 4231 years after creation. After that come the war of the great sea monsters and the war of Gog and Magog and only then the messianic era. Opinions differ on how long that takes, either 7000 years (total) or 5000. (97a-b)

tikkun leil Shavuot

There is a tradition on Shavuot, the holiday about the giving of torah at Sinai, to stay up all night studying torah. (This is called tikkun leil Shavuot.) This was, in fact, the holiday that got me to actually venture into a synagogue lo these many years ago, specifically for this: that sounded cool. I haven't actually stayed up all night in recent years, but I try to get in as much study as I can.

For the second time we had a community-wide tikkun from 10PM to 1AM. There were three sessions with a total of a couple dozen classes, with rabbis from across the spectrum. As I did last year, I set out to study with rabbis I'd never studied with (or met, as it turned out) before. It was a good experience; details of the classes will have to wait until after Shabbat.

In the last timeslot I attended a class taught by the rosh yeshiva (dean) of the Kollel, a local Orthodox institution that offers classes to adults. I've never been able to get a good read on Kollel -- in particular, I haven't been able to tell if women are welcome to study text there. (They have women-only classes on topics I'm not generally interested in, men-only classes on topics I am interested in, and under-specified opportunities for individual study.) So partly because of that, partly because of a recommendation, and partly because the topic sounded interesting, I went to the rosh yeshiva's class at the tikkun.

It was a good lecture (at that hour something a little more participatory might have been better), and at the end he said that people were welcome to go to Kollel after the community tikkun and continue studying. So I did that. They had several classes going (I saw mostly men); the rosh yeshiva was going to be studying the book of Ruth, so I opted for that. Apparently each year he's been spending all night (well, starting after the community tikkun last year and this) on one chapter of the book; this year was chapter 4. It kind of reminds me of our Shabbat morning torah study (20 years to complete the torah). :-) There were seven or eight students there (two other women). I held my own on prior knowledge (at least as expressed at the table). I only stayed until about 3:00 (too tired; hadn't been able to leave work early and get a nap). Next year I will try to go there again and stay longer. I may also try to find out what else the rosh yeshiva teaches throughout the year.