Monday was my last day staying at Victor's. I was up at 5:45 am, made the 6:30 train from Summit to Penn Station, and had a leisurely walk up to Drisha, on 65th street. Although it began to pour heavily during the day, the morning was clear. Continued to make my way through Burke on my Kindle, reviewing all his Francophobe fulminations. The man was clearly smart, but also had very different political opinions than I do.
Monday morning, we took a tangent to look at the history behind a single aggadic statement (אע״פ שחטא ישראל הוא) in our Talmudic passage, and how that had been interpreted (or ignored) variously by Geonim (Nitrai Gaon), Rishonim (Rashi's students), the Acharonim (the Avnei Nezer), and the Conservative movement. Abbie and I were both fascinated by how complicated the legal question had become, and, as the Conservative writer pointed out, the extent to which contemporary circumstances affected Rabbis' opinions. I did a very poor job leading Minchah, and then had my afternoon class with Jon, beginning to discuss the laws of burial, its relative importance, and its source, Biblical or Rabbinic, which even the Rabbis leave in an ambiguous state (assuming that we're not mis-reading the Talmud). Ranana Dine has become my regular chevruta in this class, which I very much enjoy; I think that she's sweet, and I'm already good friends with her older brother Elliot, who lived next door to me during the fall 2012 semester (he has been abroad since). I was able to leave relatively early in the afternoon because it was a Monday, and made it back to Summit a little bit before 7:00 pm. Victor picked me up in the downpour, and, after I packed my bags, he drove me to my next host house, 11 Fenton Drive, Short Hills, NJ. I'm staying with Victor's family friends, Patricia and Eduardo, to whom I'm very grateful for giving me a comfortable place to stay, and plenty of support (Eduardo is willing to drive me to and from the train station, which is otherwise about a 40-minute walk, when I need it, if he is awake). Monday night I skyped with Rachel Silverman (hooray!).
Tuesday morning, I had early-morning class beginning at 7:30 am, so I needed to be up by 4:45 am in order to catch the 5:45 am train from Millburn station. This was not fun, but I made it, surprisingly without getting lost. Early morning class on Tuesdays is led by Aaron, describing the Shemoneh Esrei, and this week, we reviewed the basic structure, highlighting many of the ambiguities between nationalism and universalism present in the first three berakhot. I find that every time I learn something new about Shemoneh Esrei, directly or indirectly, it permanently affects my recitation. Morning class was tragically cut short when an instructor burst into the Beit Midrash asking if anyone knew CPR. A man in an adjacent building had jumped out of his 14th-story window, and landed on the roof of the apartment building next to Drisha's. Cheryl, Marissa, and Aaron, who all know CPR, gave the man what first aid they could until the ambulance could arrive. The medics needed to pass through Drisha in order to find and carry away the victim, who was not responding. This whole sequence of events, which, all told, lasted under thirty minutes, affected the rest of the day; I only hope that it does not affect the rest of the term. Several of the girls cried, and many people were distressed. The staff invited us to share our feelings. Everyone since then has been acutely conscious of how much death has been appearing in our curriculum. I realize that my early-morning class had discussed the phrase "mechayei hameitim," both my Talmud class and my Mishnah class on Sanhedrin discuss capital punishment, and my last class deals exclusively with Jewish rituals of death and mourning. Furthermore, my individual chevruta with Josefin, on Hilchot Teshuva, ended last week with discussions of death. Mishnah class on Tuesday with Yaffah went on as scheduled, much to my relief (I may seem callous to you, but I never met this man who jumped, do not know his name, and there is absolutely no way I can do anything for his benefit by continuing to brood on his death). Talia and I worked our way through the fourth and fifth chapters of Sanhedrin, and the class ended with a manuscript comparison of a very famous passage in Sanhedrin 4:3; the question was whether the word מישראל had originally been in the Mishnah, and when it had been deleted or added. It seems most likely to me, given our review, that the word was absent in the original Mishnah, added sometime during the middle ages, and then censored out again among some editions of the Talmud in the 19th century. I'm only about 60% certain about this, though. Before Devorah's night lesson on Aggada began, I had about an hour in the Beit Midrash with Josefin, continuing to study Hilchot Teshuvah. Mishneh Torah must be one of the easiest Jewish books ever written. With the exception of an occasional unusual word, Josefin and I can read fairly fluently. Eli showed up, too, and spent most of his time with Raymond, Isaac, and (I think) Ezra. Devorah's night lesson described the tradition of Rabbi Yehushua discussing with his students Elazar ben Azaryah's innovative lectures, and how that tradition fit with the subsequent narrative describing Rabbi Eliezer, and last week's narrative (about the confrontation between Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Yehushua). Again, Devorah is excellent, and did a fantastic job, trying to show how a narrative had essentially been plundered for its elements, that had been scattered across Rabbinic writings. I got home quite late on Tuesday night.
This morning (Wednesday), I was up at 5:45 am, easily making the 6:57 express train to Penn Station. Most of the morning's Talmud lesson was taken up by discussions of the unfortunate event of Tuesday, as well as students' individual thoughts and feelings regarding studying Talmud. Personally, I have felt the same pleasure that I feel when decoding a page of Talmud somewhere else -- when I was first able to read books written in French. The idea is the same: what was before just paper and ink becomes a transmission of thought from human mind to human mind across time and space, which is pretty incredible, when you think about it. (The fact that I'm able to make sense of a language written in script other than the Roman alphabet is an added bonus, a phenomenon Willard Spiegelman brings up in his essay on the joy of reading in Seven Pleasures.) Eventually, though, we sat down with our Talmud again, and began to read an interesting narrative, told differently in the Babylonian Talmud, Jerusalem Talmud, and Tosefta, regarding one convict's last words. We also began a very long Rashi passage, but ran out of time. I lead Minchah, somewhat better than I had on Monday. I'm trying very hard to improve. The truth of the matter is, my principal obstacle is my own stagefright and nervousness, and I know that only through repetition can I learn to stop tripping over my consonants (and swallowing my final-kafs). In Jon's class, Ranana and I surprisingly successfully struggled through a few responsa regarding reburial, including a very challenging Gaonic one in Aramaic. We make a good team, and I'm very glad to be able to study with her; she has only slightly better linguistic skills, but we otherwise have complementary study skill sets. Devorah then gave a fantastic (but rather long) class on egalitarian tefillah, and two and a half different approaches to reach the conclusion that women should count towards making a minyan for tefillah. I thought that she made a very good argument. Following this was a continuation of last week's lesson on Judaism as art (bringing up the rather unusual aggadah of Moshe's visit to Rabbi Akiva), and, after this, a presentation about human dignity as presented by Sanhedrin 4:3 by Yitz Greenberg, a guest speaker. Apparently, Rabbi Greenberg is a very big deal, and there was a sense of awe among some of my fellow students. I had never heard of him before I came to Drisha. I thought that he made some interesting points, but I nothing terribly incredible. I barely made the 9:51 pm train back to Millburn, where Eduardo picked me up from the station. On Tuesday night, I had felt unsafe walking down the busy road after dark, and even though Patricia was already in bed, Eduardo graciously drove me back to their house.
Tomorrow, it's supposed to rain. We're going to be outside, unfortunately, on a service learning trip. Unfortunate because, meteorologically speaking, today would have made such a better day to spend walking the East Side.
~JD
No comments:
Post a Comment