Safe, Studying and Smart Silliness

{posted by Sarah}

It has been pointed out to me that I’m behind in the blogging business. I have a good reason for this: I’ve been studying Torah eight hours a day plus Hebrew five hours a week for the last two weeks (one week to go with the Torah!). Before I go into what the study program is about, I want to take a minute to comment on the “situation” here. Or rather, not comment but explain why I’m not going into it.

The truth is, I’m not any more informed than any of you may be. I’m getting my news from CNN, Ha’aretz (Israeli newspaper), the Washington Post, and bloggers who live where these events are unfolding. Mostly, I manage not to get completely freaked out by the fact that people are dying and killing just a few hours away. I swing violently between the ever-ready feelings of Jewish victim-hood and the more realistic picture that says for every Israeli killed, 5 have been killed in Lebanon or in Gaza. The latest figures I’ve seen claim 21 Israelis (both civilian and soldier) and 93 Lebanese. There’s a lot of heated rhetoric on both sides and good people on both sides screaming for peace. I can’t do it any better than they can. I encourage you to check in with your various preferred news sites and also direct you to one blog that I check in with frequently; you’ll notice the author has a ton of links on her blog, so you can easily get many different views just from her site alone. Rest assured that should it get hairy where we live (we’re quite a ways from the range of the Hezbollah missiles), we will be cutting our Israel experience short—a fact I hate to admit, as it feels wimpy and undermining of Israel’s morale, but a fact nonetheless.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

I’m studying alongside almost 100 people from all over, most from English-speaking countries, of all ages and at all different places in life. One rabbi wanted to take some time for himself and get re-energized about study, something that might be difficult to do when you’re leading a congregation; one principal of a Hebrew school wanted to challenge herself to study Torah in a non-reform environment; several people wanted to learn how to learn Jewishly; one non-Jewish woman wanted to figure out why she’s so attracted to Judaism; and one guy made aliyah (moved to Israel) less than a week before the program started and wanted to have some structure in his life. My reason for attending was that I thought it would be ridiculous to have come to Israel for so long and not to do any Judaic learning. If not here, where??

I’m really tempted to get all boring on you and give excruciating details about Jewish texts and learning—we have been at this for approximately 4-5,000 years, so there’s a lot of material to cover—but I won’t. I’ll go with the broad outlines and leave you to comment or ask if you want more info.

I. Beginning Chumash—otherwise known as the “five books of Moses” (chumash is related to chamesh, the word for 5 in Hebrew), or the Old Testament. This class has been the most useful and the most frustrating experience for me—useful in that it is very basic, and we’ve learned some tools for how to learn Torah, how to ask questions of the texts, how to go to various commentators to find possible answers, how to chunk the texts to see themes as well as how to hone in on one word to derive multi-faceted messages from it; but frustrating in that the teacher is an orthodox woman who is unwilling/unable to approach the texts from a non-believing position. Nevertheless, as you might expect, I’m still the most vocal person in class. (And often, without knowing it, posit questions that the ancient commentators have asked, or ask a question that it seems no one has asked before, so she likes me anyway!)

II. Maimonides’ 13 Principles—the title is somewhat misleading because we’re only dealing with four of the principles. Maimonides (also known as the Rambam—an acronym of his name) lived from 1130-1215, primarily in Egypt, and at the age of 23(!) compiled a book that was a major re-statement of Jewish law. No slouch, he. During his lifetime, the questions “who is a Jew?,” “what do Jews believe?” were important (much like today), and he sought to answer these questions with a set of principles that all Jews should adhere to. We’re looking at his principles and commentaries about the ideas through the ages, including modern times. We’re asking, and attempting to answer, the question “what happens to traditional Jewish belief when it is challenged by new ideas?”

III. Interpersonal Ethics—in a way, this class shows how varied Jewish tradition is and how interpretations color all. Our teacher has compiled all the places the concept of “rebuking” comes up in Jewish sacred texts with an aim to understanding something about interpersonal ethics and how concepts can be interpreted to meet modern-day challenges.

IV. Life and Justice—or, why do bad things happen to good people? I definitely can’t get behind the rabbi’s perspective on this, but I so enjoy his pedagogical approach that it’s ok. He’s clearly spent many, many years in yeshiva (school for Judaic learning), and he delivers his lectures in the quintessential, sing-song voice of the Yeshiva environment, even when speaking in English.

In addition to the regular classes, there are special, one-time lectures throughout the week, and one of these really blew my mind. We read something that looked (to me) to be redundant, and the teacher was able to tease out the differences and come up with a paradigm of the three fundamental pillars of Judaism (the people, the Land, God). Awesome class. And just today we had the treat of learning a bit of Talmud (commentary on the Torah) from a guy who uses tiny ninja figurines to do his teaching/theater. Really.