Pesachim 2: The Light of the Fourteenth

jyungar November 23, 2020

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Eruvin 105: HADRAN

jyungar November 22, 2020

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Before COVID (BC!) I would pay visits (homage) to Prof Weiss-Halivni in his apartment in Wolfson (Jerusalem). A widower his apartment was spartan (the absence of a woman’s touch apparent). It was spotless and almost bare of clutter. He sat at his dining room table with a few folios of the talmud in front of him and a pencil and writing pad.

I was told he was an iluy in Chaim Berlin Yeshiva and Rav Hutner kept him away from the regular shiurim to cultivate him. Then Prof Saul Lieberman saw his brilliance and “stole” him to the Seminary.

I was taken by the honesty of his autobiographical writing and his ascetic 24/7 study of our sacred texts WITHOUT the piety and pomposity that accompanies those who wear their learning on their sleeves and make you feel like an am Haaretz. His humility shines through.

Like a child he recalled recently how “5 yeshiva bochurim form the Mir came on Tisha B’av to his apartment to understand his method in learning! From the Mir! At this age he reveled in the validation from the frum yeshiva world albeit from these bochurim.

Ah we are cursed with the looking over our charedi shoulder for validation no matter how great!!!

Eruvin 104: The Sound of (Shabbes) Music

jyungar November 21, 2020

For the source text click/tap here: Eruvin 104

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Confession

I was walking on West End Ave one summer erev Shabbat and had some time befor attending Kabbalat Shabbat at my father in law’s shul (Young Israel of the West Side). I past 86th street where Bnei Jeshurun would hold services earlier and saw throngs of people standing in line to enter. What was so attractive about this shul (other than the location of the movie “Keeping the Faith”?

I wondered in to see some 800 people davening together. There was music to accompany the Carlebach melodies, there was a silent moment before Kriyat Sh’ma where you could hear a pin drop, there was dancing after Lecha Dodi…I had never heard musical instruments before during a Shabbat service. I found myself weeping.

What had happened to orthodoxy? Why was this alive in ways I had never experienced before? I was overcome with grief.

How had we come to this place in time and history?

I present some historical framing below as a balance to the Rishonim quoted above.

Eruvin 103: Papyrus, Bandaging, Despair

jyungar November 20, 2020

For the source text click/tap here: Eruvin 103

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The Soul has Bandaged moments -

When too appalled to stir -

She feels some ghastly Fright come up

And stop to look at her -

Eruvin 102: The Fedora

jyungar November 19, 2020

For the source text click/tap here: Eruvin 102

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Allegorical depiction of the Four Seasons (Horae) and smaller attendant figures that flank a Roman double-doorway representing the entrance to the afterlife, on a mid-3rd century AD sarcophagus

Eruvin 101: Hinged and Unhinged

jyungar November 18, 2020

For the source text click/tap here: Eruvin 101

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Eruvin 100: Animal Morality

jyungar November 17, 2020

For the source text click/tap here: Eruvin 100

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Unfortunately, I am too much of a historicist and learn nothing about “truth” for the sacred texts cited and the learned discussion above. Spirit for me, is so incarnated in this beautiful cosmos as it unfolds that these texts, albeit sacred, reveal more about their authors than about what is out there.

If postmodern reading means anything, it taught me to see my own biases in these texts, and thus a mirror of myself and my reading practices and (lack of) mastery of the entire corpus of rabbinic literature.

When it comes to nature and morality or nature and Torah, these are cultural constructions we have built, however magnificent the edifices, and are just that. What is my connection with the animal world? DO I learn anything moral from an animal? How absurd! I must move away from these literal readings for them to still make sense.

Which brings me to the fantasy world of Rebbe Nachman who uses animals as tropes of the imagination as we shall see below.