Talmud Class

My first Talmud class in many years.  As a student, now 50 years ago, the Hillel Rabbi, who to this day I regard as my Rav, offered students an introduction to Talmud.  We had a monograph introductory text and xerox of Mishnah in translation.  I attended a few weekly classes, the oldest student there amid some undergrads, and enjoyed being there.  The class included the content of the Mishnah, but more importantly it focused on how to tease out text to elaborate not only on what was expressed but on challenges that each text invited.

Then a very long gap, decades.  My congregational rabbi now retired, decided to have a Talmud class at a long table in the synagogue library.  Artscroll's multi-volume Talmud Bavli had been mostly issued, with a few volumes to go.  This class attracted about ten men on a weeknight, all solidly experienced at Jewish liturgy, reasonably experienced at Torah, and familiar with Jewish law and how it is derived.  While not beginners like at university Hillel, only a few of the men at the table, with no targeted exclusion of women, had previous significant experience with Mishnah or Gemara as primary text.  I did not.  Artscroll produced a useful format.  The page in Hebrew/Aramaic was a reproduction of an actual Talmud.  The English translation tried to stay within that format as best as the editors could accomplish.  So we read from our xeroxes while the Rabbi retained the original printed volume in front of him as we read the original text from the big print in the center of a page, then the translation, followed by a discussion of its implications.

As much as I enjoyed it for the hour or so devoted to it, studying Talmud text this way was not something I would want to do for hours at a time as they do in yeshivot.  Our group of about ten was suitable for a small seminar, the type that the mostly professionals in our group had come to expect from previous university experience.  We all knew that the pros practiced with a personal study partner, sometimes of comparable ability though often of highly disparate experience, depending on the more capable partner to advance the junior partner.  More like a tutor than a peer.

The Artscroll Talmud Bavli sat on the library shelf, all volumes eventually translated and displayed, for many years.  It would be interesting, I suppose, to pull random volumes off the shelf, open to a few random pages, and have a Scout with a fingerprinting Merit Badge figure out who, if anyone, had even opened that page in decades.

Our new congregational Rabbi is an authentic maven of all types of Jewish sources, including Talmud.  He opted to offer as his first series, Tuesday evenings twice a month to study Talmud together.  In the years since I last looked at Artscroll's Talmud, we now have cellphone access via Sefaria.org.  We also have Zoom classroom options.  The Rabbi or his Influencers and Planners, from which I was excluded, opted to begin with a hybrid format.  It is tough to classify the mission of the class as anything but pluripotent.  Those attending live at the synagogue slurped on spaghetti with sauce before the session, bringing a social element to the program.  As a Zoomer, I was kept in the Waiting Room by the host until the discussion was ready to begin, maybe an hour after the announced starting time, though it is likely they may have capitalized on men in the flesh to have a maariv service before the pasta and sauce came out.

Notification was ample.  I had mixed feelings about enrolling, as the Influencers have labelled me a mere consumer without any role in the more fulfilling parts of project design of this or anything else congregational, something I would be dishonest with myself if I denied at least a minor element of resentment.  But the new Rabbi has made being part of the synagogue more fulfilling, totally devoid of Hebrew School flashbacks that had irritated me so, that I owed myself a sampling.

I registered for the Zoom option a few hours before the class.  Within an hour, the secretary acknowledged my interest, forwarding me the class materials.  I read all the English sources in their entirety in two sessions before the announced starting time, something that a fair number of others in attendance did not.   Despite my upper tier literacy, I found them a little difficult to follow.  There were three pieces, ranging from 1 to 3 pages each, a page of footnotes that required navigating on a computer screen.  The connection between the annotated comments and its original source found difficult to correlate.  

While cooling my fingers in the Zoom Waiting Room, those live finished their suppers and somebody let me onto the screen.  The agenda sent to me included schmooze, as connection is a purpose of a kehillah, one that I give my congregation a very mixed and sometimes unflattering review.  Zoom was not part of schmooze, and once in the room nobody really greeted me, nor did I take the initiative to offer a shalom to anyone else.  Attendance seemed about twenty, half live, half zoom.  The people the project attracted had the usual people in attendance but also a few whose presence was less ubiquitous and the dominance of Influencers that give me flashbacks of USY Cliques of my 1960s did not overwhelm.

The session began.  Questions were provided by the rabbi in advance to help focus our attention.  This is mostly a good thing, but with its limitations.  If a doctor looks at an X-ray with no hints, he will see what is on the X-ray.  If he is told that the patient has a cough, he will look for things that cause a cough, overlooking the fractured clavicle.  If a visit to the art museum presents a painting, the viewer will look at the painting's features.  If the painting has a title, like a Biblical figure, confirmation bias and attention shift take over the viewer will describe Abraham's beard or something about the city in the background being pre-devastation Sodom.  Having questions to answer while reading adds focus, but at the price of often helpful mind and imagination wandering.

Talmud is traditionally studied as a partnership, called Chevruta.  The pairs may be of comparable experience or one may dominate the other.  But for that type of learning to be effective it has to be sustained in increments over time, so that sophistication of analysis can progress.  One or two times often leaves you with a setting of pooled ignorance where nobody is really proficient but everyone is a Dunning-Kruger who thinks they are.  And that is largely what I found.  Breakout groups of two to four are easily done in person.  They are possible on Zoom but we did not go that way.  Instead, we had two dominant men among the ten with very little questioning or challenging, which is really how Talmudic study advances, even in a one and done setting as ours.  If subsequent session are still ten people on Zoom pooling their druthers, it may not be my best option for advancing my own proficiency.  And since the social aspect did not materialize on Zoom enrollment, my tenure with the group may need to be reconsidered after another class or two.

Since the Rabbi has the expertise, I think the medical model or law school Socratic method of teaching a group of that size works better for the format they have chosen.  People read the material in advance.  The expert poses a question.  People respond, either voluntarily or by calling on somebody randomly.  Others, including the expert then respond to the response and take the discussion in a new direction.  Or if you want to have Chevruta, then do that, but definitely not the illusion of Chevruta or a discussion group of ten with negligible individual expertise.

Finally, would I have chosen the topic and literature that began the series?  It was interesting, maybe a bit esoteric.  It also wandered a bit.  The original translated passage and its literary expansion were challenging to compare and contrast, as they likely had different purposes.  I think a better topic, one that comprises my past experience with Talmud, would be to select a practice of familiarity.  It could be shabbos, tfillin, why we sit for certain portions but stand for others.  All things for which we already have a personal frame of reference, for which we know the outcome of the discussion.  Then work in reverse, start with the Torah reference and follow the passages of Talmudic discussion that generate not only our current familiar practice but often purposefully reject advocates of other alternatives.  I think that would be much more rewarding than short literary adaptations of Talmudic passages, particularly those for which there really is no end resolution.

So that's my initial encounter.  I bring interest for sure.  I also bring with me a mixed expectation based on a synagogue familiarity.  Dear Therapist of The Atlantic fame realizes people come to these programs with their story already written, as do I.  Her writers usually express themselves as I'm Trapped.  I am not trapped.  OK experience for now, probably not OK experience indefinitely.  I want them to change, to which she usually responds, no you have to change.  Up to a point I'm willing, but Influencers being external to me, eventually the decision to continue becomes a very binary Y/N.  For another week, I can leave it as a Y.