Entries tagged with study with my rabbis

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Shavuot

I didn't make it to the evening service (with confirmation), due to impractical timing, but I did go to the tikkun that followed. There is a tradition of staying up all night studying torah on Shavuot; our congregation doesn't do the entire night, but we usually go until about 1:30 or 2:00. (If that's not enough, you can always go over to Kollel where they go all night.)

We had a small but good group this year (peaked around 16-18). Three of the eight confirmation students joined us, and they had good insights and questions to offer. Another wanted to join us but lost an argument with her mother. ( Sinai, chosenness, talmud, modern midrash, and is persecution necessary? )

At morning services, after the torah and haftarah, we read the book of Ruth. I don't think I'd quite noticed before that the slacker relative, the one whose responsibility is to bail out Naomi and her family after her husband dies but who punts, doesn't even get mentioned by name. I guess some people just aren't meant to be remembered. :-)

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communities and consumers

This is going to be kind of rambly. I'm trying to record a thought stream, not make an explicit point.

Launch point: B'rachot 8a, where the Amoraim are discussing places for torah study versus places for prayer and (later commenters) whether it is appropriate to suspend study in order to pray with a minyan. That is, if you're already in the study hall and there's no minyan and it's time to pray, do you pray there or go join the minyan? Some argue that study is more important than supporting the community in the minyan. This led us to a more general discussion: the tension between supporting community values and partaking of community offerings. ( Read more... )

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talmud study

I'm studying with my rabbi tomorrow, and I still haven't written much about last time. Oops; I meant to do that. Before we talked (briefly; we'll return to it) what God prays for, we talked about the passage on B'rachot 6b (6b3 in the Shottenstein edition) that reads as follows:

"R' Elazar said: The Holy One, blessed is He, said the entire world was created only for the sake of [the person who fears God and keeps his commandments]. R' Abba bar Kahana says [the person] is equal in importance to the entire world. R' Shimon ben Azzai, or some say R' Shimon ben Zoma, the entire world was created only to serve as an accompaniment for this person."

The footnotes expand on this: R' Elazar says the purpose of creation was to get one person who fears God and keeps his commandments, and once that state is reached everything else is superfluous. R' Abba says other people do serve a purpose, but their combined value is less than the value of the one God-fearing person. R' Shimon says the rest of creation provides for the social and material needs of that one person, so it has value, though it's still a lesser value. And the Maharal argues that the rest of humanity is there to serve this person; the one who fears God is special, rising above trivialities and focusing on what matters, and he's an example for others.

(Aside: the word used for "fear" is "yirah" or its cognates -- good ol' yud-reish-alef of which I wrote a few days ago.)

I have a problem with these statements. We are also told that we -- every single one of us -- is created b'tzeit Elo[k]im, in God's image. Somewhere in Pirke Avot, in a wonderful passage that I can't quote or cite from memory, it says that every person should remind himself that for his sake the world exists. Yet, here we have the rabbis of the talmud elevating certain people above the rest, not on the basis of something that can really be demonstrated, like scholarship, but based on an internal matter. It seems incongruous.

Now sure, I'm being colored by my post-Enlightenment modernistic ideas about human worth and so on. And also by the way that passages such as these have been interpreted by those who choose not to work (living off of society) so that they can study all their lives. (To them I say: remember the other half of "without Torah there is no bread; without bread there is no Torah".) But it still seems a challenging, risky argument to try to put forth.

Perhaps it's meant to teach humility -- "while I do my best, surely I am not the sort of person they're talking about, so I should do my best to support my betters and learn from them". And if everyone acts that way, I suppose it can work. But everyone doesn't act that way, and a lot of friction and little good can come of contests to show who's more God-fearing. After all, isn't that, fundamentally, what every single religious war is about?

So I'm still challenged to fit this statement into its proper context, and into a context in which it makes sense.

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last few days

Saturday's D&D game was a lot of fun. It was a sub-group (two characters are currently elsewhere), and we got to do a lot of role-playing and story, and some nice little character bits came out. It was quite nifty. I think being (largely) unconstrained by time helped, too -- most sessions are on weeknights and people have to worry about getting to bed at a reasonable hour. Here, we could just play until a natural stopping point. (We're at the point where we need the other two players now.)

I talked with my parents yesterday. I enthused about some of the recent loot, particularly the scanner. They said that my nephew, who had seemed utterly indifferent to the DVD we bought him, went home, watched it, and was happy. That's good to hear. The kid still needs to learn some basic manners, though, like "thank you" and at least feigning interest in gifts.

I was surprised to learn that my parents knew basically nothing about the show 1776, either stage or movie. (I said this to a friend last night who said he didn't know it either, but he didn't grow up in a musicals-intensive house in one of the 13 colonies, so that's not surprising.) I remember seeing the movie as a kid; I mistakingly thought my parents had taken me. (We also saw it on a school outing.) The CLO is doing it this summer, which is what brought this up, and now I'm thinking that Dani and I, and maybe some friends, should go. I've never seen the stage version. I worry a bit about having my illusions shattered -- some other things I remember fondly didn't work out so well on more recent viewing, and maybe I should leave well enough alone. But it's probably safe.

Study with my rabbi today was very good, in a hard-to-summarize way. Maybe there'll be a separate entry later. (Aside: according to the talmud, God prays. This prompted me to say "what and to whom?" before my rabbi could continue. We've looked at "what", and then had to stop. In a sense, that's the less-interesting question.)

Most people were back at work today. Naturally, the single person who understands the part of the software that is currently getting in my way is out for a few more days. Oops. Tomorrow I begin plaintively asking not-so-random developers "do you know anything about [module]?". :-) (It's got to be pilot error; no one gets this right on the first try near as I can tell. If I figure out what that error is, then not only can I move past it but I can also improve the documentation.)

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short takes

One of the cats is apparently taunting Dani.

A few months ago, Baldur started going off early in the morning (6ish), meowing in the bedroom. I've been chasing him out and, if it happens a second time, throwing him out and closing the door. This has been happening on a regular basis -- not necessarily every day, but most of them.

Dani left for Origins (gaming con) on Wednesday and returned Sunday. Baldur did not do this even once during those four days. This morning, he was back to normal.

Heh. Baldur is yanking Dani's chain, it appears. I wonder why.

Sunday dinner last night was just three of us; Dani had spent the last several days around a convention full of people, so he bowed out, and the other regulars were busy with various things. So Ralph, Lori, and I sat around chatting about various things, including a fair bit of D&D geeking. (We've decided what to do about polymorph and templates.) Ralph made wonderful steaks on the grill. I've never learned the art of cooking steaks -- I can do good things with roasts, with birds, with stews and soups and chili, but steaks elude me. Ralph has the knack.

Dani did not come home from Origins with many bags of games this year. It was apparently a slow shopping year. :-) He did play some interesting games, but didn't find them for sale.

I spent some of Saturday studying the Torah portion I'm chanting next month. It's a longer portion than I would have bitten off on my own initiative, but it's managable. So far it's going fairly well, and I've internalized a couple more of the trope symbols.

Today while studying with my rabbi we came to the justification in the talmud for all of the Torah and all of the oral law having been given to Moshe at Sinai. (I actually anticipated where the argument was going, and I think my rabbi was pleased that I saw it before we got there.) I had not realized before that according to this argument all of scripture, not just all of torah, was given at Sinai. In other words, that collection includes prophets and writings. That's an idea I'm having trouble with. (Berachot 5a, for those who care.)

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more talmud study

Today while studying with my rabbi I encountered some "interesting" reasoning patterns in the talmud.

We often see comments of the form "one who does such-and-such is worthy of a place in the world to come", or, conversely, "one who does such-and-such forfeits his place". But we don't hold that a single action either guarantees your spot or dooms you forever, so what gives?

One common approach is to view oneself -- and, perhaps, the entire world -- as teetering on a balance point at all times. A single mitzvah tips the balance for good; a single aveira (sin) tips the balance for bad. If you were to be judged at that time, that single action would have determined your fate. So each time you commit a sin you're betting on getting a chance to compensate for it. (My rabbi explained the basic argument; the conclusions are mine, so don't blame him for them.)

I saw another approach today. Tractate B'rachot (4b, page 4b4 in Shottenstein) says that one who recites Ashrei three times a day earns a place in the world to come. Why? Because, as it's explained in the gemara and later works, one who does this will surely come to understand its deep significance, and given that understanding will act accordingly, and thus will by his actions earn a place in the world to come.

I find the style of reasoning suspect. Why not just say that one who truly understands these words and acts accordingly earns a place in the world to come? Wouldn't that be more direct and more accurate?

We have a couple references to chase that might shed light on this, but we ran out of time. Next time, then.

At the end of the session he told me he enjoys studying with me, which makes me happy. I really enjoy studying with him, and would hate for it to be too one-sided. I'm looking forward to Thursday night's tikkun, too. We don't go all night, but we'll probably go until about 2am. A few years ago I went to another tikkun afterwards with the goal of going all night, but the style wasn't to my taste and going to it broke the mood that we'd achieved, so I don't do that any more. When my rabbi's done, I go home.

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when geeks meet Talmud

Questions to remember for next Talmud session:

The rabbis declare a death penalty for not saying the evening Shema. Are they really asserting that rabbinic decrees have that protection, or are they saying that the requirement for Shema is from Torah -- and if the latter, what's the citation for that particular Torah commandment being a capital case? They aren't all. (The gemara supplies several interpretations on the first question, but it's a little confusing.)

One earns a place in Olam ha-Ba (the world to come) by connecting the evening Shema and the Tefilah (Amidah, Shemona Esrei). One earns a place in Olam ha-Ba for all sorts of things; one also forfeits a place in Olam ha-Ba for all sorts of things. What's the operator precedence? Do you merely have to balance out on the good side, or are there show-stoppers? If there are show-stoppers, are there also guarantees?

The Olam ha-Ba question is similar to the idea that the sins of the father are visited onto the children, but kindness is remembered for a thousand generations. If that's true and grandpa was a lout, what is my state? (This question has actually been on the back burner for a while, and it'll probably stay there. But now I've recorded it.)

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law, process, and study

(I've been writing this in dribs and drabs over a few days, so sorry if it's choppy.)

Last week's Torah study produced an interesting conversation (which I predict will continue this week). What do we do when confronted with a Torah commandment we find distasteful? (The triggering issue isn't really important for this discussion, though we kept coming back to it.) ( Read more... )

This thought was queued up in the back of my brain when I met my rabbi Thursday to study and he asked me what I think of the war. ( Read more... )

Then we went on to study. When last we left our heroes, Rabbi Yose was standing in the ruins of the Temple having a conversation with the prophet Eliyahu. (And you thought the talmud was dry!) ( Read more... )

Somehow we wandered onto the subject of studying Torah for its own sake -- that God desires this behavior, and so it is salvivic even if we gain nothing practical from it. (Ah yes, I remember how we got there: there is a discussion, after the Yose part, about the prayer/study habits of King David, who some say studied all night. Some Chasidim strive to emulate him.) We then discussed why we study, as this is not the theology that either of us follows. I'm not going to share my rabbi's reasons here, but I will share my own. (Hey, he knows about this journal, though I don't know if he reads. If he wants to share his reasons, he will. :-) )( Read more... )

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liturgical minutiae

We were supposed to study talmud again today, but never quite got there: when I walked in, my rabbi asked me what I thought of the new siddur. We talked about some of the issues there, and ended up on a hunt for the alternate R'tzei.

( liturgical research ahead )

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talmud geeking

I think talmud study has a lot in common with solving multi-variable equation sets. Today we attempted to follow a particularly twisty chain of reasoning that involved a lot of "this case equals that case" instances. We were both having trouble, and we're going to (independently) try to lay it out on paper before next time.

To give an example of the sort of thing I'm talking about, though you should assume that the details are ficticous:

Question: when is the correct time to say a certain evening prayer?
Rabbi Chanina: when priests can eat trumah (special meat).
Rabbi Akiva: when a poor man eats dinner.
Rabbi Yonatan: when a priest goes to the mikvah, which he has to do before eating trumah.
Rabbi Chanina: Yonatan is wrong, because it's not dark yet then.
Rabbi Yehoshua: when Shabbat starts.
Rabbi Meir: When a priest eats trumah and when a poor man eats dinner are the same time.
Rabbi Chanina: No it's not. When a poor man eats dinner and when Shabbat starts are the same time.
Rashi: These are all different times.

And so on. In this particular case there ended up being a lot of layers to wind and unwind, and I'm still confused by the outcome. (Yes, the subject is the time of the evening shema, and most of the positions I gave are in the discussion somewhere, though not necessarily with those names attached.)

On my way out my rabbi said that with my internet skills I can probably find someone who can tell me the answer, but I'd actually prefer the challenge of working it out. I don't need the answer; I do need to develop the skill.

Current Mood: bouncy

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study with my rabbis

bounce

On my way out this morning, my rabbi said "it's fun studying with you". Yay! I certainly have fun studying with him, but sometimes fear that it's too close to one-way -- that I'm taking much more than giving. This would be the natural state of affairs in many ways; he is, after all, the teacher, while I am the student. I'm so glad to know that he's getting something out of this too, rather than just doing it out of some sense of obligation to a congregant or something.

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talmud geeking

I've mentioned before that the Talmud tends to meander quite a bit. It'll be talking about something, and that'll remind one of the authors/commenters of something else, and so it'll talk about that for a while, and then that'll remind someone... and, as far as I know, no one has produced an index to the complete set of 63 tractates [1]. If you want to know where the Talmud discusses such-and-such topic, and you don't have either an expert or an electronic copy and a search engine, you're probably doomed.

But studying it -- on its terms, not to find out something specific -- can be amazingly cool, as I've said before.

Something did make me wonder today, though. (Note: you do not need to chase the following footnotes to understand the main part of this entry!) My rabbi and I are currently working through the beginning of Tractate Berachot, which begins with the question of how early one can say the evening Shema [2]. The mishna (earlier part of the Talmud) says "at the same time that kohanim who were tamei can eat t'rumah" [3]. Which happens to be "nightfall" [4], but it doesn't come out and say that.

Ok, so the gemara (commentary on the mishna) asks, "why didn't the mishna just say 'nightfall', instead of bringing t'rumah into it?". A good question, in my opinion. :-) Quite a bit of commentary then follows, rooted in the premise that "the mishna (or gemara, in some cases) must be trying to teach us something" (about t'rumah, in this case).

Um, must it? Must every comment be an effort to teach something? Are there really no asides, no oh-by-the-ways, no off-topic thoughts? I find that possibility astonishing.

The mishna was written down by someone who, basically, wrote down everything he had been taught -- I gather, in the order that he remembered it. Of course there are going to be digressions. The gemara seems to assume that every statement or answer that is not straightforward was deliberately round-about in order to make some other point. This seems odd to me; I know how people write, and how at least some people think, when they're doing data dumps. I don't understand why the gemara looks for motives. In some places the commentaries quibble over the order in which the mishna and gemara present topics, as if the order was completely planned. But I don't get the impression that it was.

Perhaps I'll ask my rabbi about this when we study on Monday.

( followup from a previous conversation )

( footnotes )

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misc

If you're in the SCA and interested in persona development, check out

sca_persona. It's an interesting experiment.

Tonight was fiannaharpar and lrstrobel's wedding. The local SCA choir was doing processional and recessional pieces, combined with their church choir. It went well, and all reports are that we sounded good. The accoustics of the place helped; so did having about 30 singers. (Our choir has around a dozen; the rest were from their church.)

Ray and Jenn had asked me to sing a psalm (in Hebrew). I ended up doing Psalm 29 ("Havu l-Adonai...") I was worried that the melody I know (which seems to be pretty common around here) would be too boring/repetitive, but when I tried it out on Ray and Jenn they liked it so we went with it. It went well, and I got a lot of compliments at the reception. I am also pleased that I did not need to use a microphone to make myself heard in the largish room. (Accoustics, support, and, um, natural loudness at work...)

Dani helpfully pointed out that most of the people there didn't actually know Hebrew, so I could have sung anything I wanted and no one would be the wiser (except lefkowitzga, I pointed out). Don't worry, Ray and Jenn; I didn't listen to him. :-) (Actually, we had this conversation at the reception.)

I got to meet celebrin at the reception. It's always nice to put faces and names together! I also got to meet Alper, finally. (I hope we didn't scare him off.) I also saw sk4p there; he read Psalm 27 (in English) during the ceremony. I don't think I've seen him since Don's new year's party last year, so it was nice to see him again. rani23 seemed to have the food under control. (Thanks for the fruit and veggies to offset the sugar!)

Wednesday my rabbi and I started on Tractate B'rachot. It was great! My rabbi absolutely rocks. Maybe I'll write more about that later. Anyway, partly because of this tractate, I decided that it was time to re-read Donin's To Pray as a Jew (well, reread some and skim other parts), so I started to do that this afternoon. My rabbi is right: the part about the evening (ma'ariv) service originally being optional, and never requiring a chazan's repetition of the Amidah, is in there. I missed it when I first read the book about four years ago.

My rabbi is on his way to Jerusalem for some sort of solidarity mission. I pray he returns safely. I'm somewhat saddened to realize that if he were going to DC a week ago, I wouldn't have made that comment.

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prayer

We were supposed to study Talmud yesterday, but the combination of 9/11 and rabbinic obligations did that in. So we studied today. But neat as that always is, that wasn't the neatest part today.

( Lots and lots of stuff about prayer, obligation, and interpretation. )

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The Mishkan came from IKEA

Ok, maybe not. But it would explain some things.

Wednesday I met with my rabbi again to study talmud. We've been working our way through the 39 categories of forbidden work on Shabbat. A unifying principle is that everything on this list is a kind of work that was done to build the Mishkan (the portable sanctuary that travelled in the desert). That's important, actually; the reason these types of work are forbidden is that right after we get the instructions for building the Mishkan God says "keep the Sabbath". So the rabbis interpreted that as meaning "don't build the Mishkan on Shabbat".

(There are a few explicit directives, like not kindling fire, but most are derived from Mishkan-building.)

Ok, so one of the categories is writing (and its inverse, erasing in order to write). Specifically, it is forbidden to write two letters together; a lone letter is fine. Why?

Because the various poles and things that held up the walls in the Mishkan were labelled. And we thought "insert tab A into slot B" was a modern construct. Who'd've thought?

I guess IKEA is the wrong model, though. IKEA never gives you anything as straightforward as text. "Insert the thing that looks kind of like this doohicky into the hole that isn't quite in the right place but is your best guess" would be more the IKEA style.

lj bug

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leading prayers and song

Sometimes when I meet with my rabbi we have these very-high-bandwidth discussions that turn out to have only been 20 minutes when they felt like an hour -- not because they dragged but rather because there is so much content. It's pretty nifty when that happens. (The first meeting I ever had with him, when I was shopping for a congregation and a rabbi, was like that too.)

( Read more... )

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how involved is God?

Well, all right. Maybe I will write more tonight. (I was going to watch West Wing, but Dani has already gone to sleep.)

I suspect that most people who believe in God believe in a God who intervenes, who (potentially) responds to individual prayer, who involves himself at least a little bit in each person's life. I'm not really any different here except to the extent that we might differ in degree. But there are problems with believing this.

( Read more... )

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study with my rabbis

(no subject)

I've been studying talmud with my rabbi (for an hour or so every couple weeks; he's got a busy schedule). It's really nifty, as I've gushed about elsewhere.

One thing that's particularly neat for me is that I'm starting to anticipate the arguments before they're made. No, I am not reading ahead. I think I'm actually starting to learn to analyze problems the way they do! And I've got enough random bits of knowledge tucked away that occasionally I can make a connection, sometimes even to something my rabbi hadn't thought about.

Yeah, I'm a beginner, but I'm an enthusiastic beginner. :-)

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study with my rabbis

talmud geeking

In the mishna discussion of the 39 melachot (forbidden labors on Shabbat), there are some paired opposites -- e.g. tying and untying knots, writing and erasing two letters, sewing and ripping stitches out, etc. In most, but not all, cases, the mishna casts this as follows: doing the destructive act in order to do the constructive act is forbidden. Erasing isn't inherently wrong; it's just wrong if you're doing that so you can write in that space.

I will be interested to see how this plays out in the gemara. I'll also be interested in studying the cases where this isn't the case more closely, to see what distinguishes them.

And I'll be especially interested in seeing how the discussion of extinguishing a flame plays out, as the mishna qualifies it as "so you can make charcoal" (i.e. a destructive act leading to a constructive act). I think extinguishing a flame is prohibited regardless of intent, but either it's elsewhere or the gemara is going to expound on this.

Current Mood: high

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study with my rabbis

Wow

One-on-one talmud study is a fantastic experience (at least with the right person, which I have).