Q&A: Advice for Restarting Talmud Study
Advice for Restarting Talmud Study
Question
Hi Michi.
I’m a graduate of a well-regarded yeshiva, and I studied for two years in yeshiva with two Talmud study sessions a day (analytical study and breadth study). In the rest of the time I learned a lot of Jewish thought, and especially philosophy, with an emphasis on your books, which from my perspective completely changed my life.
Ever since I left the yeshiva (about 5 years ago), I haven’t studied Talmud at all in any organized way, and certainly not in the kind of in-depth way one should. Recently I bought the Responsa Project, thinking of returning to Talmud study at least once a week, and right now I’m trying to find the ideal tractate to review and to use as a fresh start for serious learning. I should say that at the moment I’m looking more for tractates with lots of philosophical topics and less for complicated legal and monetary topics (an ox that gored a cow and the like). I’d be glad to get advice about an interesting tractate worth starting with, and maybe more generally how you would recommend I return to learning. Should I study the Talmud on my own in depth, or at least start with some kind of guidance, for example with your sheets on topics you taught and published on the site?
Thanks for the help.
Answer
I don’t know how to recommend studies in Jewish thought or aggadic topics. I don’t deal with that, and I also don’t see much value in it.
Sorry.
To the dear questioner,
In my humble opinion, your direction is a positive one. Maimonides in fact writes that the philosophical topics in the Talmud are the most fascinating, and that they contain secrets of the Torah that are worthy of deep study (several times in the Guide for the Perplexed). But of course one needs a great deal of background and preparation in order to try to decipher their meaning, assuming, of course, as the Rabbi does, that they are parables and not to be taken literally.
Unfortunately, our Ashkenazi brethren—and it hardly matters from which stream—see the main religious elevation in understanding and dialectical argumentation in the legal topics of the Talmud, without realizing, as Maimonides noted, that all those topics were originally written for the sake of clarifying the Oral Torah, and therefore they are no longer needed after the halakhic ruling was decided in the Mishneh Torah. (In my humble opinion, Maimonides did not mean an actual abandonment of Talmud study, but only leaving behind the mode of casuistic argumentation.) In any case, if you want to broaden your knowledge on the matter, I recommend the introductions at the beginning of the edition of the Guide for the Perplexed edited by Rabbi Dr. Yohai Makbili.