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Sep. 18th, 2012 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretThere's a pretty pointless argument on Daf 44, about which Rabbi ended the Al HaMichya blessing in which way. Al HaMichya is the blessing said after eating foods that don't constitute a meal sufficiently to say the full Grace After Meals. Remember, I explained a few weeks ago that the Grace After Meals is said because of a Biblical verse that says "V'achalta v'savata uverachta' You shall eat and you shall be satisfied and you shall bless. If you are not satisfied, that is, if you haven't eaten a full meal, you are not obligated to say the Grace. However, the Rabbis wanted to bless even if this weren't an obligation, to show that Israel is grateful for the food God provides even when it's not sufficient to make a meal. So they instituted Al Hamichya over snacks like eating fruit or eating baked goods like small cakes.
Al Hamichya's ending varies depending on what food was eaten. There is a specific ending for fruit. And it goes something like "For the land and for the fruit", that is, thank you for providing us with those things.
The Gemara cites Rav Chisda as saying it thus "For the land and for its fruit." And it cites Rabbi Yochanan as saying "For the land and for the fruit." It's a subtle distinction, which the Gemara says is because if you're in Israel, you say a different blessing than if you're outside Israel, because 'the land' refers to Israel, the land that God gave to the people of Israel, and the fruit of Israel are considered a special gift to the people of Israel.
But the Gemara raises an objection and immediately reverses itself: Rabbi Yochanan lived in Israel and Rav Chisda lived in Babylonian exile, so they would have said the opposite blessings of the original attribution mentioned. This reversal is accepted and the Gemara moves on.
It's a pretty pointless argument, as I said, but it's interesting for illustrating clearly a few themes I've mentioned before.
First, that the Talmud is the codification of an oral tradition. There are mistaken attributions being worked out over the course of its pages, and gaps in the transmission, and misunderstandings along the colossal game of telephone, and the Rabbis are aware of this and they do their best to apply logic rather than merely transmit information senselessly. If something is brought to them that doesn't make sense, they tear at it until they make sense of it.
Second, attribution matters. A law being brought by Rabbi Yochanan means something different than a law from Rav Chisda. I'm forty pages in and starting to get a better feel for the case of characters, who they are, what their approaches are, and that's making following along a bit easier in some cases, and this was one. I knew that Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai was living in Israel, so I anticipated the Gemara's objection ahead of it. That is tremendously satisfying. The Gemara is immensely complicated and contradictory, but there is a rhyme and reason to it that comes of knowing its contours intimately.
Still, let's ask a question on this. As I've said many times before, the reason to study the Talmud isn't to learn the laws, it's to learn how to interpret the laws. From that perspective, knowing Rav Chisda from Rabbi Yochanan is almost besides the point, right? They're the specific, but what we're trying to learn is the general. I keep saying that it's a pointless argument, and there's a reason I keep saying it. Whichever blessing you say, you're well within the bounds of Jewish law. So sure, I get an egoboost from solving the 'puzzle' hidden in the attributions. It's fun to treat the Talmud as a puzzle with secret answers hidden in its opacity, but the answers to the puzzles aren't valuable in and of themselves a lot of the time.
I think that's wrong, though. Firstly, the techniques used in these unimportant cases also work in the important ones. By practicing on sections in the Talmud that I don't care too much about, I'm gaining comfort to apply to the sections that are going to take a lot of study and effort to work through. Secondly, for all I say that it's about the general and not the specific, that's not wholly true. I say Al Hamichya, and even if it doesn't matter too much which blessing I say, studying the intention behind the law in all of its esoteric minutiae infuses meaning into my prayers and refocuses my attention. And thirdly, the mirror works both ways. Just as learning about the personalities teaches me hidden things about the laws, learning about the laws teaches me hidden things about the personalities and the lives of those expounding it. And that matters to me because these people are my ancestors, the still-breathing soul of my people. Learning about Rabbi Yochanan matters in and of itself, because of the point I'm about to discuss.
Third, Israel's unique status and the relation of Israeli and Babylonian Judaism at the time is important to the Talmud because it was composed as the exile was taking place. Judaism was negotiating a transition from a sacrifice-oriented cult with a Temple in Jerusalem to a prayer-oriented religion without a Temple. Yochanan ben Zakkai was at the center of that- he established the Sanhedrin at Yavneh, led the Sanhedrin as it reformulated the rules for this new Judaism, and was responsible for creating a whole new kind of Judaism. This was a traumatic process that saw the spinning off of a variety of sects from Judaism, ranging from those we hear of no longer to um... Christianity.
One of the lenses that I am studying the Talmud with is the historian's lens. There is so much that can be learned about the shape of modern day Judaism through learning about the decisions made in that crucial moment 2000 years ago, because that was really when Judaism took a lot of its modern shape. A surprising number of things haven't changed since then. And Rabbi Yochanan and Rav Chisda were at the center of that, of the move from an Israeli Judaism to a Judaism of exile and hope for redemption, and this tiny, pointless argument about the blessing over fruit encodes part of the tension of that moment.
Al Hamichya's ending varies depending on what food was eaten. There is a specific ending for fruit. And it goes something like "For the land and for the fruit", that is, thank you for providing us with those things.
The Gemara cites Rav Chisda as saying it thus "For the land and for its fruit." And it cites Rabbi Yochanan as saying "For the land and for the fruit." It's a subtle distinction, which the Gemara says is because if you're in Israel, you say a different blessing than if you're outside Israel, because 'the land' refers to Israel, the land that God gave to the people of Israel, and the fruit of Israel are considered a special gift to the people of Israel.
But the Gemara raises an objection and immediately reverses itself: Rabbi Yochanan lived in Israel and Rav Chisda lived in Babylonian exile, so they would have said the opposite blessings of the original attribution mentioned. This reversal is accepted and the Gemara moves on.
It's a pretty pointless argument, as I said, but it's interesting for illustrating clearly a few themes I've mentioned before.
First, that the Talmud is the codification of an oral tradition. There are mistaken attributions being worked out over the course of its pages, and gaps in the transmission, and misunderstandings along the colossal game of telephone, and the Rabbis are aware of this and they do their best to apply logic rather than merely transmit information senselessly. If something is brought to them that doesn't make sense, they tear at it until they make sense of it.
Second, attribution matters. A law being brought by Rabbi Yochanan means something different than a law from Rav Chisda. I'm forty pages in and starting to get a better feel for the case of characters, who they are, what their approaches are, and that's making following along a bit easier in some cases, and this was one. I knew that Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai was living in Israel, so I anticipated the Gemara's objection ahead of it. That is tremendously satisfying. The Gemara is immensely complicated and contradictory, but there is a rhyme and reason to it that comes of knowing its contours intimately.
Still, let's ask a question on this. As I've said many times before, the reason to study the Talmud isn't to learn the laws, it's to learn how to interpret the laws. From that perspective, knowing Rav Chisda from Rabbi Yochanan is almost besides the point, right? They're the specific, but what we're trying to learn is the general. I keep saying that it's a pointless argument, and there's a reason I keep saying it. Whichever blessing you say, you're well within the bounds of Jewish law. So sure, I get an egoboost from solving the 'puzzle' hidden in the attributions. It's fun to treat the Talmud as a puzzle with secret answers hidden in its opacity, but the answers to the puzzles aren't valuable in and of themselves a lot of the time.
I think that's wrong, though. Firstly, the techniques used in these unimportant cases also work in the important ones. By practicing on sections in the Talmud that I don't care too much about, I'm gaining comfort to apply to the sections that are going to take a lot of study and effort to work through. Secondly, for all I say that it's about the general and not the specific, that's not wholly true. I say Al Hamichya, and even if it doesn't matter too much which blessing I say, studying the intention behind the law in all of its esoteric minutiae infuses meaning into my prayers and refocuses my attention. And thirdly, the mirror works both ways. Just as learning about the personalities teaches me hidden things about the laws, learning about the laws teaches me hidden things about the personalities and the lives of those expounding it. And that matters to me because these people are my ancestors, the still-breathing soul of my people. Learning about Rabbi Yochanan matters in and of itself, because of the point I'm about to discuss.
Third, Israel's unique status and the relation of Israeli and Babylonian Judaism at the time is important to the Talmud because it was composed as the exile was taking place. Judaism was negotiating a transition from a sacrifice-oriented cult with a Temple in Jerusalem to a prayer-oriented religion without a Temple. Yochanan ben Zakkai was at the center of that- he established the Sanhedrin at Yavneh, led the Sanhedrin as it reformulated the rules for this new Judaism, and was responsible for creating a whole new kind of Judaism. This was a traumatic process that saw the spinning off of a variety of sects from Judaism, ranging from those we hear of no longer to um... Christianity.
One of the lenses that I am studying the Talmud with is the historian's lens. There is so much that can be learned about the shape of modern day Judaism through learning about the decisions made in that crucial moment 2000 years ago, because that was really when Judaism took a lot of its modern shape. A surprising number of things haven't changed since then. And Rabbi Yochanan and Rav Chisda were at the center of that, of the move from an Israeli Judaism to a Judaism of exile and hope for redemption, and this tiny, pointless argument about the blessing over fruit encodes part of the tension of that moment.