Hey cool
people! Sorry about being so late to complete and publish this
post! It's somewhat lacking in detail, due to the fact that I'm trying to
recall events from several weeks ago, missing most of my notes. Josh
Mitrani, thank you for cheering me on in this effort, and motivating me to
finish (eventually).
On Monday, I was
up at 5:45 am to catch the 6:57 am train, and I met Raymond and Hannah on my
walk from Penn Station to Drisha. Aaron was not present in class that
day, but had left the class with several recordings of himself explaining the
lesson (for the last time). For Kavod Hamet afternoon seder, Jon had
arranged to have a visiting speaker, who discussed his work as a hospital
chaplain. Class was out at 5:00, although I ended up staying a little bit
longer than usual to discuss the end-of-term celebration with the planners,
Ariel, Fiona, and Shoshana. It was also Raphi's last day, and I heard him
play guitar for the last time. He's quite good, as I've mentioned
before. Rachel and I had our regular chevruta in the evening, beginning
Sefer Malachi.
On Tuesday, I was
up at 4:50 am, caught the 5:40 am train to New York Penn Station, and had a
very pleasant walk to Drisha Institute. It was the fast day of the 17th
of Tammuz, so I spent the day slightly mentally disconnected from my
surroundings, struggling to stay in touch. Yaffe taught the early morning
shiur on keriat shema, focusing on the berachot before the evening shema.
Aaron was with us for the full length of the morning lesson that morning, but
not before I had taken the opportunity to write dinosaur jokes all over the
white board (Sarah Cohen became sworn to be my mortal enemy in the process,
because she had drawn the Tyrannosaurus on the board in the first place, that
had instigated all of my jokes). In the morning seder, we continued to
read 47b and 48a, in the middle of a sugya. There was a debate revolving
around an Amoraic dispute between Rava and Abayye, which began with a simple
disagreement over the following question: if one weaves a garments, and
designates them as shrouds for a corpse, can one change one's mind and benefit
from them? The Gemara turned this specific debate into a much greater
disagreement, regarding whether or not designating items for a particular purpose
is capable of changing their legal status. The sentence structure was
repetitive, and the vocabulary was fairly simple (it was mostly in Hebrew,
without any obscure Aramaic words). We also explored the Rif on this same
passage, which was my first time encountering this work. Yitzchak al-Fasi
essentially re-wrote the Gemara, eliminating the sections that lacking legal
relevance, and omitting the sections that were no longer relevant after the
diaspora. He was part of the school of Sepharadi simplifiers, including
Maimonides, who tried to make the material of the Talmud more concise as a
straightforward legal document. I now know why Eli thinks that he's so
amazing -- he really does cut out so much of the debate in the Talmud!
Talmud class ended fairly early, because we had another speaker who does social
work in New York City address Drisha as a whole. During Mishnah class,
Talia needed to leave early to attend a wedding (there seem to have been an
awful lot of weddings, recently), but we completed chapters 8 and 9 of
Sanhedrin together, albeit fairly quickly. Mostly words we'd seen before,
so nothing too difficult or new. Eli stopped by in the evening, and we
got in a fierce debate over something, and found ourselves arguing over the Guide
for the Perplexed; very typical, really (someone took a photo of us, which
is actually the only online photo of me at Drisha). Afterwards, Devorah gave her last Yavneh aggada
class, describing the death of Rabbi Eliezer, which is found in the mishnah
about Rabbi Akiva's opinions on cucumber-gathering (Sanhedrin 7:11, for those
interested) Again, Devorah just has a
way of reading and analyzing tropes and themes in aggadah that I wouldn't
recognize, even if I could read these stories without help.
Wednesday was the
last full day of class at Drisha. In the
morning, with Aaron, we began to wind down, reading the Talmud's discussion of the
Yo'av narrative. In the afternoon, we
had our last Kavod Hamet class, and discussed the speaker from Monday, as well
as the themes we had touched upon from the beginning of the class. As I've said before, this class was really an
excellent experience for me, not least because my chevruta Ranana is awesome
(and I finally get to see her brother Elliot, who is back in rainy Ithaca). Speaking of Elliot, his Rosh Yeshiva, who is
also Mati's Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Bigman, visited Drisha. Before giving a general talk in Drisha's
weekly series on meta-Halakhah, he had a one-hour question-and-answer session
with the students and instructors.
Raymond asked him some intelligent questions on the subject of agunot –
women whose husbands refuse to issue them divorce documents – the hot topic of
this Drisha term. Ranana and I also
asked about a question that had come up in Talmud class about halakhic
methodology, namely why some codifiers decide that a certain Talmudic passage
has legal implications, while others do not.
Rav Bigman is smart, socially aware, and very Israeli.
Thursday was my
last class at Drisha. With Aaron, my
Talmud class read straight to the end of the chapter, finishing the discussion
of the death of Yo'av, and its connection to the very beginning of the chapter,
discussing the topic of where the court carries out death penalties. Aaron brought an incredibly interesting argument
among the Rishonim, between Maimonides and the Ran, about the source of
authority of the court in Jewish law.
Spending so much time with people like Eli, Isaac, and Aaron Levy, it
never occurred to me that the court was anything but the source of legitimate
authority established by the Torah; this, anyway is the Maimonidean reading. In the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides goes
on and on about how the beit din can, in exceptional circumstances, go beyond
its stated limits of power and do almost anything, even sentencing people
without trial. According to the Ran
(14th-century Spain), however, the authority that the beit din has to carry out
criminal sentences (cases other than family cases and dinei mammonot,
monetary cases, in other words) is only granted by the permission of the king,
what we would now call the secular state.
I don't know about you, but I think that this debate is
fascinating. In the afternoon, I was
unfortunately detained while picking up my suit for Andrew's wedding, and,
quite typically of me, missed the group picture taken at the end of term (I
asked later to have it retaken, but many people had already left Drisha by that
point). I joined a sex-bura (six-person
learning circle; don't question Latin roots mixed with partial Hebrew roots)
for the discussion of Mishnah Sanhedrin chapters 10 and 11. When we came together afterwards to discuss
the reading, we debated the correct ordering of these two chapters within
tractate Sanhedrin. The order of these
chapters within the mishnah is reversed as the order in the Babylonian Talmud
(at least the Vilna edition; the order in the Jerusalem Talmud is the same as
that in the mishnah). Yaffa made a very
good argument for the correct, original order being that found in the
mishnah. Afterwards, while everyone else
was beginning dinner, Aaron led his students who were interested through the
remaining sections of our chapter of Sanhedrin.
In other words, we finished the chapter, which is really exciting! I'm not certain if I could explain the ins
and outs of every sugya, but, hey, I felt great! Now I understand how happy my friends are
whenever they finish a whole tractate together (♥ Ezra & Ben). So the Drisha students had dinner together,
for the last time (I went after the Greek salad, as usual). Afterwards, spiel and awards. The students wrote skits for the classes of all
of the instructors except Rabbi Silber's.
Ariel, Fiona, Shoshana, and I had put together the spiel for Aaron's
class, and, yes, I played Aaron. Due to
a shortage of males, Ariel and Isaac played each other, while Julie played
Danielle, and Shoshana played Amy (Ariel brought the house down). For those of you interested, I've posted
below the videos made of the various spiels. Full credit goes to the superb Fion♥ Gued♥li♥. Everyone did a really fantastic job in the
other spiels especially Aviva and Scott, and, although you there wasn't a video
made of it, Lani, Meir, and Avi put on a great version of our Afterwards, everyone received awards. I was present for the decision-making
process, which was almost as funny as the awards themselves. Ariel and Fiona did not assign themselves
awards, so Shoshana and I assigned Fiona the Pink Energizer Bunny Award for
Most Energy, and Ariel the Qoheleth Award for Happiest Approach to Life. They both totally deserved their awards; Ezra
the award for Best Kugel-maker – somewhat less so. (Does anyone have a full list of awards? If so, I'd be more than happy to post them on
my blog, so that everyone can be remembered for why they are special to the
rest of us.)
After the fun was
over, I left from Drisha at around 9:30 pm, and boarded the 11:00 pm Shortline
bus from Port Authority to Ithaca. After
the weekend, on Tuesday, I flew out to Andrew and Allison's wedding; read about
that next post (if I ever manage to write it).
Hey cool Drisha
people, if you've read this, know that because of you, this June was one of the
best months of my life. I mean you as a
group, but also you as an individual, reading this blog post. Keep in touch, please.
~JD
Esther's Shiur: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnHzWqprceA
Aaron's Shiur Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GypoMGeJ_Ds&feature=youtu.be
Aaron's Shiur Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-xGN9dykGs
Ben-Zion's Shiur: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VVUmwN5JzQ&feature=youtu.be
Devora's Shiur: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W7w5nwYPTk&feature=youtu.be
Interview Shpiel Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6TGK2UJeZ0&feature=youtu.be
Slideshow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMn39dDrpc8
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