Remembrance of Tractates Past

by Eliezer Diamond

Growing up I learned that you don’t read the Talmud, you chant it. In high school, college and rabbinical school I studied Talmud in a beit midrash, or study hall, full of chanting boys and men. Everyone had his own song to sing. We sang because studying the Talmud is hard work, and singing while you labor always makes the work more pleasant. We sang because we wanted to give ourselves over to the text, to be fully present in the act of study.

Now I teach Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary. My students are young and old, men and women. At JTS I don’t hear the Talmud chanted very often the way I heard it as a boy. Once when I was sitting in the beit midrash chanting the Talmud someone asked if he could record my chant. I know that he meant well, but I felt like the subject of an ethnographic study. Still, when I listen carefully I realize that my students have a chant of their own — not the one that I learned, but a chant just the same. They, too, have a song to sing.

No one studied alone in the yeshivot I attended. Each of us had a hevruta, a study partner. We would work together to understand the Talmud, sometimes arguing with, and even shouting at, each other. Studying the Talmud was serious business, and getting it right — and, to be honest, being right — was crucial to each of us.

I rarely get to study the Talmud with a hevruta these days because of my complicated and demanding schedule. Usually my only hevruta is a volume of the Talmud. I compensate for this by seeking out places where there are other people when I want to study. The background noise that they provide approximates for me the buzz of a beit midrash.

Some of the questions that we addressed when I began to study Talmud in the fifth grade, mainly those that dealt with ritual, were immediately relevant to my life. If while eating an apple I realize that I may not have recited a blessing before beginning to eat should I hedge my bets and recite a blessing before eating the rest of the apple? What should I do if I were strolling down the street on Shabbat and discovered that I had a key in my pocket, thereby violating the prohibition against carrying in the public domain? Keep walking or put the key down somewhere? What blessing do I recite before eating mushrooms?

Others struck me as being strange and exotic. If someone borrows an animal from his neighbor to plow his field and the rigors of plowing cause the animal’s death does the borrower have to compensate the owner for his loss? A’s field is surrounded by B’s property. If B has already fenced in A’s field on three sides for his own benefit, and then A puts up a fence on the fourth side, does he have to compensate B for part of the cost of fencing in the other three sides? If two people share a courtyard is one permitted to open a shop in his house even though this will bring customers into the courtyard and thereby subject his neighbor to a significant degree of noise?

It was only later that I found these questions surfacing in my own life. I borrowed my cousin’s Cadillac and the engine died as I was driving it. Was I obligated to pay for the repairs? I organized a carpool and we used my car. Was I entitled to ask the other members of the carpool to help pay for gas and parking, given that I was planning to drive in anyway? When I lived in central New Jersey my neighbors complained that my children were making too much noise playing in our backyard. Was I required to monitor my children’s noise level in response to their complaint?

My students want to study Talmud because they see it as a path to authenticity. I tell them that it’s fine to study Talmud because your grandfather did. At the end of the day, though, if Talmud study doesn’t enrich your own life you’re probably wasting your time studying it. I want them to see the Talmud not simply as a storehouse of information but as a path to wisdom. In what way, I ask them, does the Talmud’s discussion of business partnerships bear on the personal and professional partnerships in their own lives? Does the Talmud’s consideration of how to prioritize mitzvot lead them to reflect on and question their own priorities? I tell them that the most important text to interpret and understand is not the Talmud but themselves. The Talmud, both its methods and its content, can be a key to that self-knowledge.

A few years back Robert Fulghum wrote a book entitled “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” I can honestly say that everything I really need to know I learned in the Talmud. I learned the following:

1. Never trust anyone who is certain that he or she knows the truth. The Talmud doesn’t hesitate to portray the rabbis as the flawed human beings that they are. What this tells me is that even as the rabbis sought to understand God’s will they knew that their very humanity put the absolute knowledge of the truth beyond them. I need to remind myself of this every time I’m certain that I’m right.

2. We learn more from the people who challenge us than we do from anyone else. They’re the people who keep us honest; they force us to sharpen our beliefs and ideas. Sometimes we even discover that they’re right and we’re wrong.

3. If you want to know if you truly love someone look at your actions as well as your emotions. The rabbis have taught me that it is through deeds that I can show my love for God and my fellow human beings. In fact I’ve learned that deeds change and create feelings. When I’m angry at those close to me the most effective way for me to feel close to them again is to do something for them.

4. Even those rabbis who thought that our fate down here depends on the luck of the draw discussed how much matzah you need to eat at the seder. In other words, when life gives you chaos and absurdity, make order and meaning.

5. Keep learning and keep growing your whole life.

I realize that I’ve left out something important, even though it’s probably obvious. I love studying and teaching Talmud. On a good day I love the exhilaration of involving myself in the Talmudic give and take. On a bad day, the Talmud is a consoling friend, distracting me from the seemingly insoluble difficulties of life by providing me with problems that can be discussed and resolved calmly and logically. I suppose that Talmud is for me what the New York Times crossword puzzle is for my father.

Speaking of love, I’ll leave you with a love story.

A Torah scholar died, leaving behind no wife or children. At his graveside a mysterious woman appeared. When questioned she would not explain her presence at the funeral, saying only that she bore the unusual name of Hagigah. Immediately after the funeral the woman disappeared. Needless to say, people began whispering that apparently the recently departed scholar was not as pious as he professed to be.

When the townspeople went through the deceased’s belongings they found a manuscript containing an extensive commentary on the Talmudic tractate Hagigah. It was then that everyone realized that the mysterious woman had been a manifestation of the tractate to which the scholar had devoted so much of his energies. Just as the deceased scholar had honored Hagigah in life, Hagigah had come to his grave to honor him in death.

I wonder if any of the tractates will show up at my funeral.

Eliezer Diamond was educated in Orthodox yeshivot and received his semichah at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University and his doctorate at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he is Rabbi Judah Nadich Associate Professor of Talmud and Rabbinics. His scholarly interests include asceticism and the technical terminology of the Talmud.

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization