Q&A: How Do You Study Talmud?
How Do You Study Talmud?
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Recently I had occasion to read some of the lectures on the Talmud that appear on the site. I learn a great deal from them, and although I am fairly familiar with the literature of the “roshei yeshiva,” I find in them a unique benefit in several respects. My impression is that the Rabbi tries to study all the passages related to the topic, together with their commentators, and not only the passage “in its place,” and also tries to situate the passage conceptually within a broader framework. I greatly enjoyed, for example, the discussion of “either divide or buy me out,” which among roshei yeshiva usually comes down to an inquiry whether this is a law of “division” or of “sale,” together with a bundle of practical ramifications, whereas with the Rabbi—besides the fact that the analytical treatment is more complex—it is based on several layers, cascading and built one upon another: defining partnership, defining the division of partners [by the way, from the passage in Bava Batra 3a you can see that the Rosh and the Rashba are consistent with their views in another passage], defining the deficiency in something that has no independent designation, and only then defining the solution of “either divide or buy me out.”
I assume that even with more thorough work one can arrive at a significant scope of medieval and later authorities on the passage, through study of parallels, critical editions, and source references as is customary. From experience, though, placing it within a broader conceptual framework requires extensive analytical knowledge of the passage, beyond familiarity with the standard “reid” and the basic conceptual distinctions. From this follow several questions:
A. Are these lectures the product of an initial study of the passages? Or are they a processed presentation based on a broader analytical background in the passages mentioned and the surrounding passages?
B. How does the Rabbi approach writing the lectures? After a comprehensive study do you put the ideas into writing, or is the writing continuous in the course of studying the passage?
C. If this isn’t too much to ask, could the Rabbi describe, even briefly, the process of analytical study: which books you open first, when you move on to parallels, at what stage you try to conceptualize the disputes among the medieval authorities, and at what stage you try to connect this to a broader conceptual picture, and so on? (I ask this despite the built-in limitations of describing a dynamic, lively, living process and turning it into a kind of abstract algorithm.)
I hope this is not too much trouble.
Answer
These lectures are not articles. They are written in the course of my regular lecture preparation, literally at the pace of the thinking and writing itself (I make a few corrections after I give the lecture). They are written very quickly. So one should not assume that behind them stands the kind of comprehensive picture of the passage that one may assume in formal articles.
I don’t know how to define a particular method or fixed order of study. I do focus on reading the plain meaning of the Talmudic text, and in fact once I have finished the plain meaning I have almost finished everything. The medieval and later authorities usually mainly fill in slots in a structure that has already occurred to me while reading the Talmud. After the plain meaning, I have no defined order at all—neither chronological nor thematic. I just roll along.
It is true that I try to understand the underlying principles and the connection to broader pictures, and in particular to look for a good definition of the concepts being used (which is not really done in the usual style of lomdus). That understanding is achieved mainly a priori and less from the commentators. The conceptual analysis gives me the structure and the connections between the principles and concepts, and therefore also the skeleton of the analytical picture of the passage.
I really do not work on coverage, and it is not very important to me to cover the commentators. As far as I’m concerned, questions come up for me, and I look for answers, different opinions, and ramifications. The commentators are chosen based on which of them provides a response to those questions.
Interesting. It reminds me very much of Rabbi Lichtenstein’s lectures (the primacy of a priori analysis in studying the passage, the comparison to parallels, situating the passage, and so on).
Maybe the experts can point to the differences. Presumably the Rabbi’s terminology is more philosophical, but I don’t know how essential that really is.