Monica

I'm short on time right now, so I'll summarize what we covered now and fill in details later. (Those of you who know these references should of course feel free to discuss here.)

( Read more... )

(Email post. LJ seems to be down?)

( Read more... )

A discussion in talmud tries to determine who is and is not permitted to do the public reading of the megillah for Purim, and three cases are raised: a deranged man, a deaf man, and a child. Everyone's clear that the deranged man is out. There's a lot of argument about the deaf man (who can speak but can't hear his own words), and then there's an aside by Rashi -- surprisingly not supported in text -- about the child. He says it depends on whether the child has reached the "age of training" -- that is, the age at which he can be trained to perform mitzvot. (While one is not obligated until the age of 13, you've got to learn and practice before then so you'll be ready.) The argument is mostly focusing on ex-post-facto cases (b'diaved) -- that is, someone questionable has gone and done a megillah reading; does it count?

Check me on this: we are having a discussion of whether the child who just read the megillah is of an age where he can be trained to do so? I am obviously missing something.

My guess -- also not supported in text -- is that this hinges on the typical age of training, not any individual case; if custom is that you can't learn to do this until you're 10, a 9-year-old prodigy is disqualified.

(B'rachot 15b, if you're curious.)

After this week's talmud-study session my rabbi told me about a situation he witnessed recently, and it caught my "reason it out talmudically" fancy.

( Read more... )

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.

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.

(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... )

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.