When I was in college, I loved reading week. The week before finals, everyone would troop over to the library to crack the bindings on the books we should have read earlier in the semester. I had my special chair that I would sit in for hours, reading book after book. I loved the quiet sense of harmony I felt in the library during those days, with each of us immersed in our own private world, yet somehow connected by a shared sense of purpose.
Compare that scene of study and learning to three other tableaux, all of which occurred in the past few months in the context of Jewish learning. In the first scene, I am teaching a group of third graders at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School on their first day of studying Chumash, the Five Books of Moses.
Each pair of children is given four index cards; each index card has one of the first four words of Genesis chapter 12, verse 1 on it: “God” “said” “to” and “Abraham” (written in biblical Hebrew). The pairs are given the task of putting the words in order. Some work quickly to produce a sentence that satisfies both children.
In some groups, however, discord is brewing. Differences of opinion emerge as to whether it should be “God said to Abraham” or “Abraham said to God.”In the disagreeing pairs, passionate speeches are heard: “How could Abraham know to talk to God if God didn’t start the conversation? He doesn’t even know God exists!” Or, “It has to be Abraham talking first.
That is how God knows that Abraham is the right one to be the first Jewish person, because he is the one who believes in God.” Eventually, the students will look at the verse in the Chumash and discover that indeed the order is “God said to Abraham.”But for now, creativity flourishes amidst disagreement.
In the second scene, I am the student, studying a sugya, section, from the Talmudic tractate Pesahim at Drisha last summer. I turn to my two hevruta partners, with whom I have now been studying for several weeks.
At first, I felt awkward with them. They are closer to my mother’s age than my own, and I am always a bit diffident at the beginning of Drisha classes, unsure of how I will be received as a Reform rabbi. Over time, as we have coalesced into a team, I have come to admire them. They come here all year long out of pure love for learning — not for “professional development.”
The question at hand is as follows: does one need to repeat kiddush if one begins a meal in one place (on Friday night) and then moves to another building or room? After some initial joking about what exact circumstances would cause such a situation, we settle down to look at the sugya. As usual, several positions are offered.
We tease out specifics, why each rabbi takes the stand he does. Proud of ourselves for having accomplished this, we turn to the teacher. Instead of beginning to review our work as usual, she asks us to probe further: “There is a deeper issue here about the role kiddush plays in bringing Shabbat.”
To me, the fact that Kiddush must be repeated at every Friday night meal suggests that making kiddush, in addition to the coming of sunset, seems to somehow be a necessary part of bringing in Shabbat. I am intrigued by the possibility that human action, making kiddush, may be necessary to enact the Divine command of bringing in Shabbat.
One of my partners is not convinced. Sunset is sunset. We are not the arbiters of Shabbat, it comes no matter what we do.The moment not exactly tense, but is an unusual experience for me.Neither of us is interested in letting go of our position.It is both a fascinating and an unexpected situation, as I notice both its lack of harmony and its lack of rancor.
In the final vignette, in an 11th grade Talmud class, which I attended recently at the invitation of Rabbi Dov Lerea, Heschel’s Dean of Judaic Studies, I am an observer.The students were beginning a sugya from Masekhet Sanhedrin (6b):
Rabbi Eliezer says: It is forbidden to compromise. Whoever compromises is committing a sin. Whoever blesses the one who compromises is committing blasphemy.
After some clarification of the meaning of certain terms and a discussion about structure, the essential question arises: “What is so bad about compromise?” The room starts to buzz; you can hear the hevruta pairs working through their opinions. Quietly but clearly, differences are bubbling to the surface about the value of compromise.
I smile as I hear one student make an important realization, “Maybe it’s important not to compromise because they are talking about God’s laws.” This moment in time is actually a perfect demonstration of what the text is trying to teach.
Generally, our culture views compromise as a virtue: we teach our children to search for compromise and common ground instead of insisting on sticking defiantly to their positions. We seek to harmonize viewpoints, just as I relished the harmony of reading week all those years ago. Studying Jewish texts and Talmud in particular, is different. In fact, “uncompromising” may be the best word to describe the process.
The beit midrash, the traditional house of study, is not a quiet, harmonious place. As students make their way through complicated sections of Talmud in pairs, they help one another piece things together, they argue, they take turns with different tasks. But in general they do not compromise.
This noisy, conflict-filled model for studying Talmud is of course a consequence of and a reflection of how the act of study is articulated in the Talmud itself. The Talmud can be seen as a record of the questions, challenges and diverging opinions that emerged when groups of students pored carefully through — and disagreed about — the teachings of older generations of rabbis.
While some rabbis’ opinions prevail more often, the disagreements are almost never harmonized into one final “right answer,” and minority opinions that do not carry the day are preserved, not deleted from the record.
I lean towards compromise in so many aspects of my life. The ability to bring people together by finding common ground is one of my personal strengths. Studying Talmud beckons and challenges me to take a different perspective, to tolerate the discomfort of allowing different positions to coexist without a need to harmonize them or effect a compromise.
As the rabbis of the Talmud understood so well, the dynamic tension between different positions can produce much more interesting ideas and consequences than what is achieved by blending them. The first four words of Genesis 12 may indeed be “God said to Abraham” but the learning that emerges from the lively argument about which order the words should go in is infinitely more interesting than having the right answer up front. While I still remember fondly the days of the quiet library, my ears are now more attuned to the boisterous noise of discord.
Rabbi Anne Ebersman, director of Judaic studies at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School, works in the elementary and early childhood division of the school.
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