The Oral Talmud: Episode 20 - Transforming Story into Law with Jane Kanarek
SHOW NOTES
“I want activist reads to also be responsible reads, which is why I’m so committed to people being anchored and being able to actually read these classical texts.” - Jane Kanarek
Welcome to The Oral Talmud, our weekly deep dive chevruta study partnership, discovering how voices of the Talmud from 1500 years ago can help us rethink Judaism today.
This week Dan & Benay learn with special guest Professor Jane Kanarek of Hebrew College Rabbinical School, author of “Biblical Narrative and the Formation of Rabbinic Law” (2014), “The Pedagogy of Slowing Down: Teaching Talmud in a Summer Kollel” (2010), and “Throwing the Talmud Across the Room: Emotions and the Cultivation of Subjectivity in Talmud Study” (2025, via Taylor & Francis). Jane Kanarek joins the Oral Talmud to discuss her understand of what the sages were doing in constructing the Talmud, and her pedagogic values in building a Rabbinic School classroom.
What are the Rabbis doing with the Book of Genesis when they transform stories into law, especially when it comes to the most shocking narratives? What is the Rabbis’ relationship to Torah, especially in the moments that we’ve labeled them as misquoting torah in past episodes of The Oral Talmud? What evidence do we actually have for the Rabbis’ relationship to God and Talmud, beyond the winking? Why do we teach Talmud, and what are our goals for our students? How can a thoughtful teacher incorporate secondary texts as new commentaries for helping students develop lenses to read the Talmud through? What comes to the surface when we really slow down our learning
Find an edited transcript and full shownotes of references and further reading on The Oral Talmud webpage for this episode! Access the Sefaria Source Sheet to explore key Talmud texts and find the original video of our discussion. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please help us keep both fabulous Jewish organizations going with a one-time or monthly tax-deductible donation at oraltalmud.com. You can find a donate button on the top right corner of the website.
Further Learning
[1] “Nomos and Narrative” by Robert Cover (1982 - PDF on Yale’s Law Library site)t
[2] Rooting a minyan being a ten-person prayer quorum in Genesis and Joseph’s brothers is Yerushalmi Talmud Berakhot 7:3 (Sefaria)
[3] On Jacob studying in Yeshiva “The First Beit Midrash: The Yeshivah of Shem and Eber” by Miriam Pearl Klahr (on Kol Hamevaser/Yeshiva University’s website)
[4] For the Akeidah, The Binding of Isaac, explore Genesis 22 (Sefaria)
[5] Moshe Halbertal’s “People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority” (1997, on Jstor)
[6] Shamma Friedman on Wikipedia (I could not find his article about the marginalia note on Perek HaChovel/Eye for an Eye making its way into the standard Talmud text - Olivia Devorah Tucker, footnotes editor)
[7] Judith Hauptman, Rabbi and author of “Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman's Voice” (1998, entry in the Jewish Women’s Archive)
[8] Charlotte Fonrobert, author of “Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender” (2000), and published in “Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in Jewish Community” (2010) (Wikipedia article)
[9] Daniel Boyarin, author of “Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture” (1993), “Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man” (1997) – Listen to our interview The Oral Talmud: Episode 16 - The Greatest Voices Are Anonymous with Daniel Boyarin!
[10] Gwynn Kessler, author of "Queering Jewish Theology In Parables" (2019, on Swarthmore’s archive)
[11] Sarra Lev, Rabbi and Associate Professor of Rabbinic Literature at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Jewish Reconstructionist Communities (RRC’s website)
[12] Yochi Brandes, author of “The Secret Book of Kings” and "The Orchard" (translated by Dan), on Judaism Unbound
[13] Tikva Frymer-Kensky’s writing on the Dinah narrative may be found in “Gender and Law in the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East” (1998, pgs 79-96, mostly available on Google Books)
[14] The curious betrothal narratives may be found on Kiddushin 8b-9a (Sefaria)
[15] Marjorie Lehman, co-author with Jane of “Learning to Read Talmud: What it Looks Like and How It Happens” (2019) (Bio on JTS website)
[16] Mira Wasserman, author of “Jews, Gentiles, and other Animals: The Talmud after the Humanities” (Penn Press, 2017) (Bio on RRC’s website)
[17] Read Jane Kanarek’s article “The Pedagogy of Slowing Down: Teaching Talmud in a Summer Kollel” (2010, on Brandeis’s digital library)
[18] The article which Jane Kanarek wrote with Katie Light Soloway interviewing Rabbinical School students about their experience in learning Talmud is “Throwing the Talmud Across the Room: Emotions and the Cultivation of Subjectivity in Talmud Study” (2025, via Taylor & Francis)
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DAN LIBENSON: This is The Oral Talmud - Episode 20: Transforming Story into Law with Jane Kanarek. The Oral Talmud is a co-production of Judaism Unbound and SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva. I’m Dan Libenson…
BENAY: …and I’m Banay Lappe.
DAN LIBENSON: The Oral Talmud is our weekly deep dive study partnership, in which we try to figure out how voices from the Talmud – voices from 1500 to 2000 years ago – can help us think in new ways about Judaism today.
Today’s episode features our sixth guest, Jane Kanarek! Her bio was a little different when we interviewed her in 2020, but she’s still a Rabbi with ordination through the Jewish Theological Seminary, and holds a Doctorate from the University of Chicago. Jane Kanarek is now the Associate Professor of Rabbinics and Dean of Faculty at the Hebrew College Rabbinical School. She is the author of “Biblical Narrative and the Formation of Rabbinic Law” and the co-editor of “Learning to Read Talmud: What It Looks Like and How it Happens” and “Mothers in the Jewish Cultural Imagination,” the latter two of which were finalists for the National Jewish Book Awards.
Each episode of The Oral Talmud has a Source Sheet linked in the show notes on a web site called Sefaria where you can find pretty much any Jewish text in the original and in translation. If you wish, you can follow along with the texts we discuss and share them with your study partners or just listen to our conversation!
And now, The Oral Talmud…
DAN LIBENSON: We're thrilled today to have a guest, uh, professor Jane Kanarek is the, uh, is an associate professor of rabbinics and Associate Dean of Academic Development and advising at Hebrew College.
And, uh, we're, we'll, we'll, we'll stop the introduction at that. But, uh, Jane, thank you so much for joining us. It's really exciting to be able to have this conversation with you about the Talmud.
JANE KANAREK: Thank you for having me. It's really, really wonderful to be here.
DAN LIBENSON: So we're gonna try to cover a lot of ground today and talk about, about, uh, stuff that we've been talking about all along, uh, as well as something that's really the, the subject of your research these days and Benay’s passion. So I'm gonna kind of sit back for that part, which is the teaching of Talmud and, and how we, how we approach the Talmud and, and try to, you know, and, and how different people approach it and get, get into it and how, what the role of pedagogy is and all that. So, so that's itself an important and interesting conversation.
We, we wanna start out a little bit with some conversation though, about this topic that we've kind of been, uh, obsessed with, with probably be a little bit of an overstatement, but a topic that's recurred a lot and that we've thought about a lot, which is the question of the way that the rabbis of the Talmud related to the Torah and to the Bible more broadly. And you've written a book about that, uh, called Biblical narrative and the formation of Rabbinic Law. And, um, so it seemed like, uh, at least based on book titles alone, that this would be a, a place to really, uh, to ask you to, to talk a little bit about, um, both in terms of,
Could you share a little bit about, about your research on that topic and your book and, and also more generally, like if somebody were to wake you up in the middle of the night and ask you how did the rabbis relate to the Torah, what would you say?
JANE KANAREK: I love the last question, but I'll start earlier. Um, my interest in the topic actually became, um, began a number, a number of years ago when one of my teachers and Benay’s teachers actually, um, at the Jewish Theological Summit gave me Robert Cover’s article, Nomos & Narrative to read. He actually gave it to me at Camp Ramah in Palmer, where I was staff. And I really started to get interested in what, what was the connection between the stories we tell, the foundational stories we tell as Jews and, and what we do with them, um, how they, how they shape our law.
And I, I became also really interested in what are the stories we tell and what are the stories that we don't tell and how do both of those shape what kind of laws we consider important to observe or to pass? Where do we change laws? Where do we not change laws?
Um, and eventually as I kept thinking about it, I decided what I wanted to work on was the most are foundational, canonical book, the Torah, and the most narrative of all the books of the Torah, um,Sefer Bereshit, the Book of Genesis. And I decided that I would look at selected stories from the Book of Genesis and try and understand, um, how did the Bavli, how did the Babylonian Talmud transform these stories into law? And, um, what might it mean that they were taking these stories and making them law.
So if you've read the Book of Genesis, you'll know it contains a few laws, but circumcised your child. But by and large it's, it's stories. Um, and what I decided to look at was the Akeida, the binding of Isaac. Um, Rebecca's Betrothal story, which is one of my favorite narratives in in the Torah, um, Joseph's death and, and minyan.
Um, the Bavli links minyan to, um, Joseph's 10 brothers who go down, sorry. The Yerushalmi links minyan to Joseph's 10 brothers who go down, um, to Egypt to get rations for the family when there's no food in Canaan.
Um, and I guess the, the, the big picture thing that I would say is a few things. One is that the rabbis really want us to understand that, um, the way I like to say it to my students is that we're not Protestants, we're Catholics another way. There's no way to read the Bible unmediated. I can't just read it as JANE KANAREK and open it and know what it's supposed to mean and what it's supposed to say. I'm supposed to read it through them and I'm supposed to read it through the ways that they're teaching me. To read it. So that's Number One.
Number Two is I think they very much want law to be part of our foundational narratives. They want it to be part of the stories of our matriarchs and our patriarchs, not something that just happens after Sinai. Um, and they take that project really, really seriously. It's not just funny, Hey, look who learned in Yeshiva? Did Jacob really learn in Yeshiva? No, no, no. They, they actually really have an ideology behind that.
Um, and I think that what part of what they were trying to do consciously or unconsciously, um, was to make law not just what we do and don't do, but actually to imbue it with meaning and to imbue it with, um, many, many levels of, of meaning.
So for example, um, this is, this might sound kind of shocking, but, um, they actually, um, derive or link some of the laws to do with shechita, ritual slaughter to the Akeida. So it seems like a small law that the knife has to be detached from the ground. You can't like use a reed that's stuck in the ground or something they derive that from vah’yee’kach et ha’mah’ah’khe’let “And Abraham took the knife” to slaughter his son.
So it's a pretty horrifying text. Um. I think for us Postmoderns, we like to kind of erase how could the Akeida be connected with law? Um, but for the medievals, it very much was as well. This isn't, this is something that was live in their culture. If you read the Crusade Chronicles, um, they imagine themselves as Abraham kind of slaughtering their children, the parents who actually killed their children or committed suicide. So I think if I, if I was woken up at midnight, I just went to a very depressing place.
If I was woken up at midnight to say, um, what's their project with the Torah? Um, I'd say it's to make sure we know that we have to read it through them. Um, you have to learn how to read it rabbinically. And I think it's also to make sure that, um, we know that law can be found anywhere, but also that law isn't just do's and don'ts. It's actually supposed to be this rich universe through which one can create meaning and, and make meaning
BENAY LAPPE: that that example you gave is fascinating about the knife connected to the Akeida. Number one. I never knew that. And your suggestion that what they were trying to do was imbue me- or one of the things was to imbue meaning in the law makes me think. Maybe what they were wanting to say about how we kill animals is, you know, ideally you wouldn't do this. Maybe just as. You know, I ideally we wouldn't kill our children and you know, Abraham is actually lauded in the rabbinic tradition for refusing to do what God said. And, and could that be kind of an implicit suggestion about slaughtering and eating, slaughtering animals and eating meat?
Is that part of it?
JANE KANAREK: They never go there, uhhuh. They never go there. They, in fact also connect the that verse to, um, temple stuff as well. But I think one certainly could go there with it and say, okay, if we're gonna say that they're connecting it to the Akeida, what white we as moderns do with that, with our horror of the story?
Part of what I, um, what I like to do with it in is just say, they're also trying to teach us when you do shechita, that's actually part of the narrative that you're supposed to be remembering. So it's not only about eating food, killing food the correct way, but then you're going back into the narrative of the Akeida and the rabbinic way of reading the Akeida with all of the layers that are, are built up on that.
DAN LIBENSON: I just, I'm just curious when, I mean, I know that it's hard to know, I, I imagine, but like when you, when they do something like that. Do you think that they're trying to, to soften the Akeida, the sense of saying, Hey, you know, it's not really about that, about killing Isaac. It's actually was a way of telling us the laws about how to kill animals, you know? And so, so kind of, you can look at it that way and it's not quite as horrifying or,
Or is it actually just as horrifying? They, they, it is about Isaac and it is really that, but also we learn a few tips for it about how to sacrifice animals.
JANE KANAREK: Um, I think it's both actually for them. Um, it's both for them because both traditions are existing side by side. Um, so we have all the midrashic traditions about, um, about the Akeida alongside that in addition to it, we have this, this halakhic tradition. And there's even, um, the,
The Bavli actually has two different things that one could possibly learn from it. Um, one of it is this laws of shechita and the other is actually, um, that one should be none, that one should be zealous in, in fulfilling commandments.So I don't think we have to choose, actually. I think it can be both for them.
BENAY LAPPE: I'm fascinated by the question of what was the rabbi's relationship to Torah? And some phrases that you use in your writing really jumped out at me, and I'm gonna quote some of them. You talk about the rabbinic project of rewriting scripture or the rabbinic reconfiguration of its biblical inheritance, and you talk about how tanaitic literature remakes the Bible.
And for me as a, as a reader of Talmud, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that they are in a very self-aware manner, playing fast and loose with Torah, which to me suggests that they don't have the kind of pietistic, precious, this is the word of God and we can't touch it relationship that we, we have come to accept for ourselves.
And I'm intrigued by, um, your ideas that they're not maybe playing fast and loose. They're not misquoting. So I'd love to hear you talk about any of that.
JANE KANAREK: Such a great question. It's such a great question. I, um, I think they do think the to is the word of God. Mm-hmm. Um, I just think that for them it means something very different than it does for a kind of pietistic. You can't, you can't touch it sense that perhaps we have today.
Somehow your question triggered into me something very tactile, um, that for them they really understand drash as in seeking out God's words, that they're really doing it in the letters of the Torah. So if you are really gonna seek out God's words, you can't just put your hands back. You actually have to get them dirty.
And so that in a sense, when they're doing this literary playfulness, what they're doing is they're digging in and getting their hands dirty to actually figure out what God wants of them. And that's gonna lead to conflicting opinions. That's going to lead to, um, breaking apart letters, words, and a verse into different letters. But, um, the process of finding God's will can't be something that's just done from a distance.
BENAY LAPPE: Hmm. So you can have both, you can have the Torah as the word of God, and you can have the playing or the sometimes radical re-interpretation of it and not have to let go of the idea that this is the word of God. It's a different, I love that. It's fascinating.
JANE KANAREK: Yeah, absolutely. I absolutely think that that one can, um, and I think that's part of what makes Rabbinic reading so powerful. Um, Midrash, Talmud. It's just, it's their willingness to get in there and they’re readers par excellence of this. Of these texts. I mean, they are just absolutely phenomenal, phenomenal literary readers.
And I think the other part that is sometimes so hard to remember because we have these books as books in front of us already, is that they're in the process of creating this literature. So it's not static for them. They're, they're creating it and we're getting these different snapshots along the way of their process of, of creation and, and creativity.
DAN LIBENSON: I wanna ask you a, a ver a question. I, I don't think we've asked the previous scholars that we've had on the show, even though we've. We've, uh, we've, we've asked, you know, sort of about elements of, you know, what were the rabbis up to? I mean, that's often our question. And I, I think I have a meta question, which is like, how do we know, like how, how do in scholarship in Talmudic academic scholarship, like how do, how do you look at what the rabbis are doing and how do you judge whether they were actually believed that the Torah is the word of God? And they were trying to sort of hear it on a different register?
versus, and some scholars have made a more radical versions of claims, which actually quite appealed to me that they were, they were not actually, they didn't really believe that the Torah was the word of God, at least not in the sense of a, of a kind of direct that the words themselves mattered so much. They, they, they might have believed that it was inspired by God the way that we might have said, but they understood that they were creating a new Judaism. And when they're quoting the Torah, they're kind of winking at all of us. And they say it's not really, that's not really what the Torah says. Um, but we think for various reasons, it's, it's good to quote it in, in this way.
And, and how, how would we know one way or the other, what evidence do we have?
JANE KANAREK: Um, so I'll say first, some of it I think is the personality of the scholar. Um, and what's the social aim that the scholar's aiming at?
So I'm just not that cynical about them. Um, I, there are kinds of cynicism that I think serve me well, but that's not a cynicism that I, that I hold.
Um, honestly, I think one reads their words, one reads the texts, one spends a lot of time with it, and then comes up with different models and tries them out, and then people argue with you, and then you revise and then you try again. I don't think that there's, um, a foolproof way of, of testing it. For me, it's really been a process of reading, continuous reading and continuous thinking and trying to decide which arguments do I think actually appeal to me the most.
I, um, I really like what Moshe Helbertal actually does. I think it's in “People of the Book” where he creates this, a couple principles, but, um, one of the things that he argues for is reading charity. Um, and he makes an argument that, um, that when the rabbis say something, for example, with the rebellious son that it never could be and never was, they're saying, you know, there is no way that because God is just, there's no way that God could command something that is unjust. And therefore, this verse in the Torah can't mean what it looks like. It means on the surface it must mean something else.
So in that case, are they conscious that they're changing it? Maybe, maybe not, but maybe they truly believe it can't mean A, because I conceive of God as Y, so it has to mean B
And of course, that's gonna be tied up with one's own social prejudices. Right? Because if you think, for example, that God could say, um, certain people can be slaves, or God could say that women can be X, Y, and Z, then of course you're gonna interpret the verse in the Torah one way. But if you think there's no way God could ask parents to kill their children because God is just, then you're gonna interpret that verse in a different way.
BENAY LAPPE: And I think that speaks to that, that willingness to say, I can't possibly believe that this can't be what a, a just God could say, uh, to me feels like an example of svara being brought to bear on kra, on Torah and. I I, I just see that at work in the way the rabbis read Torah, and I think it, it bears surfacing what that implies.
It implies that my, my lived ex life experience and what I, like you said, one social, what did you call it?
JANE KANAREK: Social construct or social context in which you live.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. That, that, that can be brought to bear on the Torah to say, no, this can't possibly mean what it looks like. It means, I I just think that's not, um, in an insignificant move.
JANE KANAREK: I think it's, I think it's a major move. And I think one of the big differences is that today we're very conscious that we're doing it. That's what we sometimes get criticized for. But you're conscious today the rabbis were unconscious, but, um, they did that. And so I, I think it's worthwhile for us also to say if our God is a just God, then how could God possibly say X, Y, or Z? Right? Maybe, um, there's some kind of intervention that we need to do.
Now, 'cause I'm also a Talmudist, and a teacher of Talmudists, Talmud. I believe that what we do has to be grounded in the text, right? It has to be a convincing reading. I just think that the more one works at reading and the better one gets at learning Talmud or, and playing with these texts. The more you can make A means Z.
Um, that's what the Tosofot do with their best is read sugya and you think it means A, and then you read Tosofot on it and all of a sudden it means G instead of A. And I can't imagine that if had ever meant A, so I feel like that's part of the, the challenge for us is how do we read in that way
BENAY LAPPE: apropo of that. We, we just learned a text at queer Talmud camp for five days. We learned this text and on the morning of the last day, I learned a Maharsha with one of my fellow faculty members. And the Maharsha completely reads the sugya differently. And I thought, oh my God, did I just spend five days teaching almost 200 people this text the wrong way?
Or were the, were the later commentator saying, this is what it meant there in the gemara, or this is what, how does that work? Are, are, are the Rishonim, the medieval commentators who have the G reading, not the A reading. Are they saying, saying that A reading always meant G or are they saying it can also mean G or let's go here from where they were.
JANE KANAREK: Great question and I'm gonna hedge a little, but I'll say Tosofot sometimes says Rashi's wrong.
BENAY LAPPE: Uhhuh.
JANE KANAREK: So he's saying, look, reading A was proposed to the sugya, I actually don't think that makes sense, Uhhuh. I'm gonna propose a different reading of it. Uhhuh and um, I think midrash with its yesh omrim, yesh omrim when it presents an anthology of different readings, then it's saying all of these are possible readings.
I think when someone says X is wrong, then they're saying, I really prefer, prefer my reading. But the medievals had different senses of history than, than we do as well. So they're not saying, oh, what's the historical contextual meaning of the text? They're saying, Hey, this is how I read, this is how I read it.
But I don't think you taught your students wrong. I think it's sometimes really a totally great thing to do. I love doing this exercise is you read it, right? You come to something as a class, you think it's really convincing, and then you throw them another interpreter and then by the end of it you play and say, can you read it the way you did originally anymore?
BENAY LAPPE: Right?
JANE KANAREK: Um, and it's both a really confounding, but I think can also be a really empowering exercise as putting the challenge out to people and see what, in your case, the Maharshah did. Yeah. So how are you gonna get to the point where you can do that?
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. So is that your ultimate goal for your students? To teach them how to make the kinds of moves and the, the widening or perhaps narrowing or the destabilizing where necessary or shifting of the tradition, the way the rabbis did?
Now we're getting into pedagogy, maybe, right?
JANE KANAREK: Um, happy to stay on the topic-
BENAY LAPPE: or why we're, or, or why we teach Talmud. I'd love to hear you talk about, you know, what, what is your goal for your students? Why, why, why do you teach Talmud?
JANE KANAREK: So those are two different questions. Um, I teach Talmud, um, I think at, at some point because I fell in love with it. It was the biggest intellectual challenge I'd ever felt. And to be honest, to a certain extent, I felt like it was power. Um, you can do this. You have a kind of voice in the Jewish world that, um, only Talmud gives you, at least in the part of the Jewish world that I located myself in. I know that's not true in the whole Jewish world.And it was very hard for me. And I decided I wanted to learn how to do it. So I invested a lot of energy in it.
Um, for my students, um, there are a few different things that I want them to have. Um, on a really basic level, I want them to have the technical skills, just the really raw technical skills, to be able to translate and explain, unpack an argument, know how a decent amount of the technical terms work and feel like they can sit down with the sugya, and they can, um, translate it and make sense of it. That's just Level One.
The Level Two is meaning making. Um, something I like to say to my students is we usually think of translation and how the technical skills, like we're a m[???] work as, those are skills that need to be built.
Um, but I like to speak to my students and tell them that meaning making is as much a skill that has to be learned as these technical skills of translation and parsing an argument. So meaning making is really, really important to me because if a student can't make meaning of it, they're not gonna be able to make meaning of it for their future communities.
Um, and then Third is I want them ideally to see them, their own voices as another link in this chain of tradition. And that they too can add their interpretive voices to the Bavli as they, as they read it.
So I want them to, um, be able to create a dialogue really where they are able to both let the Bavli speak to them and then them speak back to the Bavli and through that process of, of dialogue, um, be able to create something that is both old and and new at the, at the same time.
BENAY LAPPE: Um, I'm smiling and my heart is, is bubbling over because your students, um, uh, are, are well represented among the faculty SVARA and I just heard them teaching over those ideas about adding their voices to the margins and um, to our students at SVARA. So your Torah is being taught, uh, by your students far and wide.
JANE KANAREK: Oh, that's so nice. I have to actually, since you mentioned that. I have to tell you, I'm giving away all my teaching secrets, but just as an example of kind of integration of academic Talmud with that, ideology with my students, um,
There's this great article by Shamma Friedman, so one of the great talmudist of the 20 and 21st century. And, um, he's writing about, um, a sugya in Perek HaChovel, the famous “Eye for an Eye” sugya. And my students wanna kill me when I teach this. I teach them this sugya that almost makes no sense, um, about the way in which I think damage is repaid for, for idleness. And they wanna kill me. I give them Tosofot and another Rishonim
and we get to the end. And it turns out that there's this part of the, that actually was a marginal. Note on a manuscript and the Spanish traditions of the manuscript don't have it in the body of the Gemara itself. So, um, what happened was at some point some scribe saw this marginal comment, which was just like a student writing, “oh yeah, this is what I think is going on in the Talmud” and moved its smack into the middle of the Bavli. So when you read the Bavli now you read it with that and all the Rishonim sit there trying to figure out what's going on in the sugya. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense because it was a comment that was moved, a marginal comment that was moved to the center.
So when we get to the end of the, I get to have this whole conversation with my students about the different ways in which things that are marginal, um, become central and in fact become read that they are part of the tradition and such that they give rise to a further layer of dialogue.
So it's really fun. Um, I would never have gotten to this little comment, I think it's the Nohomot Hashem that alerts you to this - without the article of Shamma Friedman. I don't assign Friedman's article, but it's been a great way for me that I can take academic scholarship on Talmud and then help, um, filter it for my students so that they can, um, make it something that might help them in their finding their own voices and in their own sense of what's possible in the Rabbinate. And of course they say, no, you had to learn to read the sugya. Right? I didn't let you do this in an unground way. You have to be grounded. You had to be able to read the text Rishonim, but now look what happened once you could do that.
BENAY LAPPE: Oh my God, that's an amazing, amazing story. And that completely captures the, the project of spar. I mean, what we're trying to do is, you know, bring the voices from the margins into conversation with the tradition to shape it. And, and that's such an amazing illustration of it.
Which part of the story, by the way? Is it the story of the, of the, the child whose hand is bitten off by the donkey? That's not the the one is it?
JANE KANAREK: No, that's not, that's not the one.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. You'll have to tell me later. We'll geek out.
JANE KANAREK: Yeah, I'll send you, I'll send you the, I'll send you the source sheet. Okay. That I, that I assign. And then you'll, you'll see what it is. I love the donkey story too.
BENAY LAPPE: I know. Wow. That's an amazing -
DAN LIBENSON: BENAY LAPPE loves donkey stories.
BENAY LAPPE: I do. That's an amazing story.
And it brings us back to our conversations. What, like 30 years ago now? of whether I should get that PhD in Talmud. That's a great, another great argument for why I should have or should still get that PhD. That's…
JANE KANAREK: Or you could just, you know, ask your friends, are there any interesting articles on this particular sugya that I'm teaching now and we could zap into you and
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. Okay. We'll do that.
JANE KANAREK: You can still do the PhD if you want, but that's another route.
DAN LIBENSON: No, I don't, but I mean, and all seriously, like I think that, that's an interesting question about this whole, what we're talking about the, the teaching of Talmud because it feels like. I don't know. Like, I'm thinking back to what you said earlier about the people say, but now we're conscious and the rabbis we're unconscious.
I, I wonder how unconscious the rabbis were, meaning that, um, that, you know, Benet talks a lot about the Talmud itself, like this question that we often don't ask a lot. Like, what is the Talmud, you know, what, what was the, had meant to be? And, you know, BENAY LAPPE’s hypothesis is that it's sort of like
BENAY LAPPE: –based on nothing because I didn't get that PhD.
DAN LIBENSON: Yeah. But I mean, I, I think that's a good, that's a good voice. I, I look, I mean, I, as someone who also doesn't have a PhD, um, I, I think that like sometimes there's the Emperor's New Clothes voice, right? Where it's the, the child who looks at and just says, but this is what I see. Right? Right.
And, um, so there's, there's some element that says like, when you, when you really encounter something, for example, as a teacher, you might see in it, well, this is a teaching text. This is a primer, right? This is a teaching text. This is a text. This isn't about, you know, donkeys eating hands and whatever. This is about how you should think and somebody who's actually putting together a primer that's that sophisticated about how you should think is a sophisticated person, right? Who probably understands things more deeply about what the Torah itself is then we might imagine a pietist of today does. And that may not be right, you know?
But I, but I think what's interesting now about the teaching of Talmud that I'm curious about in, in the academy, but also in particular in a rabbinical school where it's full of people who do have a PhD from the academy, but are also teaching people who are doing something sort of different with it maybe and maybe not. Uh, and how do those two approaches kind of come together in the teaching of Talmud?
And, and I guess like the, in part the question is also, um, does our ability to bring academic scholarship to bear on the teaching of Talmud to those who are not going to be expected to use it in an academic way, does that help them or hurt them in their ability to play with it in the way that actually rabbis have always played with the Talmud that the Talmud's probably meant to be played with? But if you know too much, you're like, well, can I really ethically tell this story that this is what the Talmud says? Even though, like, I know that, you know, that's kind of the question that, that I'm always kind of poking around with.
JANE KANAREK: Such great questions, such great questions. Um, I'll really talk about my own approach to it. I'm not gonna speak, um, to how others do it.
But, um, I'm very conscious that I'm teaching in a rabbinical school. I'm very, very conscious that I'm not training PhDs for masters in Talmud. So that's number one - that's gonna shape the kinds of assignments that I give and the kinds of skills that I wanna master. What that I want my students to know, not necessarily master, but have in a strong way.
And it's going to also shape the kind of academic scholarship that I ask them to read and the stuff that I choose to filter through myself and not actually give them to read.
So, for example, to go back to the Shamma Friedman example, I don't think I've ever assigned anything by Shamma Friedman to my students. Um, it's much more, um, historical development of the layers of the Talmud, then I want them to be able to do on their own. But if I think that there is something important that Shamma Friedman is bringing forth, then I'll kind of figure out how do I integrate that into the way in which I'm teaching the sugya,
So for example, I mean, this is kind of basic, feels basic now, but my students should be able to give a good guess about the different layers of the Talmud: taanitic, amoraic, stam. They should have an idea of an editorial voice that's reworking the material. Um, but I don't need them to be able to do that in any kind of definitive way. But they should have an idea of the Talmud as a document that developed over, over time. Um.
So what kind of scholarship do I choose? is actually for me, the really interesting question. Um, when I think of what I'm trying to have my students do, I'm trying to give them multiple lenses through which they can read a sugya, not just one sugya. Um, and so
What I wanna do is give them just a range of different ways of reading. So what that means, for example, when we're teaching, when we're in the Nashim part of our curriculum in the years two, three, and four, we cycle through Seder Moed a and Seder Nashim and Seder Nezikin. So they'll do a perek, two parkim sections from two parkim. So when I'm in the Nashim, the woman part of the curriculum, what I basically do for the, for my courses is they read tons of different approaches, not tons, one each week, um, to the study of women in rabbinic Judaism in the Talmud, um, gender and queer theory.
And so by the time they're done reading, say Judith Hauptman and Charlotte Fonrobert and Daniel Boyarin, and Gwynn Kessler and Sarra Lev, um, they have a whole range of different lenses that they can read through. Am I just digging to excavate for the woman's voice? or am I looking at how gender is implicated in power and authority? and I am looking at how, um, binaries are created and reinforced and broken apart?
And then my hope is they'll be able to take that and apply it to other things that they read. So really, I kind of look at secondary literature. That's what I'm gonna call academic literature right now. As another Rishon, it's another commentary, form of commentary literature. And so just like Tosofot has a methodology for reading, um, Judith Hauptman has a methodology for reading, and that's what I'm, I'm trying to give them is, is a, is a ways in.
And yes, ideally it should give them, um, room to play. So part of what I like to do is then actually give them an assignment which ask asks them to read a sugya through a few of these lenses and then through their own voice. Um, and I just call it, I'm titling it now to you “Grounded Playing,” which is the theme I keep coming back to. It's kind of your feet on the ground, your feet anchored in the text, and then how do I help give you the tools to then go and, and play. So that's how I, I look at it as being very conscious that I'm not trying to transform them into academics, but I am, I do really believe that the world of academia has given us really wonderful tools for reading. So that's what I try and give them is these tools for reading.
And I'll add one more thing on - is I think there's this myth out there that we're just supposed to be able to open a gemara. And once we can translate this sugya, just have something amazing to say about it. At least for me, it doesn't work that way. Um, I need to actually sit and think I need to ideally read what other people have said about it. And so I wanna teach my students you're not alone. Um, just 'cause you don't read something and say, oh, that's phenomenal. I have this new chidush! actually I'm giving you tools. Use these, play with these and, and find it.
BENAY LAPPE: can I start geeking out with Jane about pedagogy? Can we do that? Go ahead. Dan, did you have another question? Because I'm, you're on mute.
DAN LIBENSON: Oh, no, I have, I have one comment and then you can geek out.
But my, my one comment is just kind of like, I'm, I'm thinking back actually to what you were talking about, about the rabbis, um, you know, and how they, how they waw the Torah and, and, and just connecting it to this and just thinking about like some of the conversations that Benay and I have had over the, the, the last weeks where, where it's,
it's funny like when we're looking at a story and saying like, we, we really, truly believe that this is what the rabbis are are doing here and this is the message that they're sending to us, which is fundamentally a message that says. Um, you can be radical
in other words, so for example, the, you know, we, BENAY LAPPE and I, I think sincerely believe that the rabbis have sent us this message in a bottle, that when they're reading the story of The Oven of Akhnai, and saying that we don't have to listen to a heavenly voice, right? That they're signaling to us that when the day comes where, um, you have a problem with what we've done. You don't have to listen to us either. You know, like, because like we're the heavenly voice of you, your generation, and you don't have to listen to us. Just like we didn't listen to the heavenly voice of our –
Now. Is that what they really were saying? I don't know. Um, and it's also, and I'm a little scared to ask an academic because they might tell me and prove to me through scholarship that that's not what they were saying! So I, so that's why this, this part where we interview scholars is a little scary for me and BENAY LAPPE sometimes.
BENAY LAPPE: Me too!
DAN LIBENSON: Um, but, but there's this other element of it where I, I kind of feel like, but even if an academic were to say, to show me something and, and this, I don't know that this speaks very well of me, but I, I would probably discount it and say, well, they don't know. You know? Because, because I believe it so firmly. And, and I, and I understand, and,
And the reason I bring it up is just because I'm, I'm trying to, um, square a circle where in a sense, I, I think I'm seeing how the rabbis can be both, um. both kind of, uh, intentionally, um, misreading or winking because I know that I'm doing that – but also that they truly and deeply believe it, on some level they truly and deeply believe that this is really what's, what's going on here.
And it actually reminds me, I, I've done some translation of, of an Israeli novelist, Yochi Brandes. And, and I,
JANE KANAREK: I'm just reading her, “The Secret Book of Kings” right now, actually in English.
DAN LIBENSON: No, I, edited that and then I translated her book The Orchard on the, about the early, uh, rabbis.
JANE KANAREK: I have the Hebrew version of that. Sorry, that I'm interrupting you. I have the Hebrew HaPardes sitting on my bedstand as my next thing to read.
DAN LIBENSON: Oh, great. Well, we should talk about that then
JANE KANAREK: So nice. I would love to talk to you about them.
DAN LIBENSON: And I, and I, and I have this whole novel that I've been thinking about and working around in my head for years. It, it has, it's about Hillel. And, and I said to Yochi at one point, like, you know, I'm, I'm thinking about all this. I'm like, I actually, I really feel like it's true. Like I, I know I made it up, but I, I feel like this is really what happened. And she says, you know, that's how every novelist feels all the time. You know? Right.
When you're writing historical novels, you just, you, you end up feeling like you've discovered, but of course you've done no academic research. Like there's, you didn't real, you know, but there's something, so there's something really deep in that, in that, that the both/and of that, that it's, so, I'm, I'm just kind of, anyway, I was just like a comment to say that I'm mulling that over.
But Benay-
JANE KANAREK: so first since I interrupted you, yes. I would love to talk about Yochi Brandes. I got a little bit obsessed with King David this summer because I could never hold his story in my head. So I've been reading novels, King David novels this summer. Um, but. Um, I actually think you've put it really well, um, that the rabbis can be, I think both playful, winking, and at the same time truly believe it's the word of God.
Um, yeah, I, I, the academic will say to you, I actually don't think the rabbis are as radical as Benay thinks.
BENAY LAPPE: No, don't say it. Don't say it.
JANE KANAREK: Um, and at the same time, um, I don't think that that negates what you are feeling, Dan or Benay, what you're trying to do, because I think that that's kind of part of the project of Parshanut. And I, I also think that there is a way in which, um, when I'm in my mode of the Darshan, Darshanit, there's also an opportunistic element to it to say kind of, what am I trying to use these sacred texts now for? and what am I trying to correct for now in society? So I think about that often with the Dinah story. Most people read it as the Rape of Dina. Tikva Frymer-Kensky has a wonderful article. I don't know if you've read it 'cause you're smiling, but
BENAY LAPPE: I'm smiling because I know we've both, we both had such a love for Tikva, so, no, I dunno this article-
JANE KANAREK: So Tikva Frymer-Kensky has a wonderful article where she looks at that story and the way in which inna, ayin-nun-hey is, is used there and basically argues that it doesn't necessarily need to have been rape. It might have been consensual, but that's actually not the point of the story at all. And she presents a really, really convincing reading of the story.
And so in that reading, the Dina's story becomes actually not a story of rape, but an honor killing? Where she actually, um, had consensual sexual intercourse and then perhaps wanted to marry him, stay with him, with Shechem, and she had no voice in the matter.
So when I read the Dina's story, and I actually think Tikva's reading is correct, is academically correct, um, am I gonna be reading that and talking about it in the context where what we need to speak out against is rape? in which case I might choose the rape reading, which has been such a predominant reading of that narrative.
Or am I in a context where what we need to speak out about is women's lack of autonomy and choice and honor killing, in which case I might choose to actually take, Tikva’s reading. So both of those I think, are valid readings of the story. And for me, the question becomes really one of, of context. What am I trying to, what am I trying to do?
Charlotte Fonrobert talks about this really beautifully as well when she talks about the difference between say, her scholarship and Judith Hauptman’s type of scholarship as well. That the question is really one of context and both can be true. Not about Dina, just to be clear. She talks about it in there, the way in which they approach studying gender.
BENAY LAPPE: Okay. I'm gonna put off the pedagogy question for a minute. 'cause now you've reminded me of your distinction between teaching activist reads and teaching. I don't know what it is, I can't remember the, what you juxtaposed to that
JANE KANAREK: Academically responsible reads? I don't know.
BENAY LAPPE: Great. Can you say a little bit more about that?
JANE KANAREK: Yeah. Um, so I'll start again with something that I've repeated so many times, which is I want academic, I mean, activist reads to also be responsible and just so committed to, um, people really being anchored and being able to actually read these classical texts. And it's so central to what we're trying to do at Hebrew College.
Um, so, um, one of my favorite examples to compare that is, uh, passage that I like to teach from, um, Bavli Kiddushin . It's the end of 8b, beginning of 9a, and it's this wonderful series of really short vignettes. Um, three of them. Um, and
In the first one, this man is selling glass beads. And a woman comes and says, “Give me a string of those.” And he says, “If I give it to you, will you be betrothed to me?” or “Be betrothed to me.” It's not clear If it's a question or a command, and she just says, “give it to me. Give it to me.” And, um, so that's the end of the story right there. Um, and then the, um, a voice of an amora comes in and says, Oh says Rav Hama “every, give it, give it, is meaningless.” Meaning she's not the betrothed at all.
Story repeats. Another woman, there's a man drinking wine in a bar. A woman comes in and says, “give me one cup.” And the man says, “here, if I give it to you, will you be betrothed? Then she says, “give it to me. Give it to me.” And then Rav Hama comes in and says, it's meaningless. I.E. she’s not betrothed.
And then there's another scene, a man's throwing dates from a palm tree. And a woman comes by and says, “throw me a date.” And he says, date as in a food. And he says, “if I throw it to you, will you be betrothed to me.” And she says, just “give me, give it to me.” Um, and we have the same ruling from the Talmud.
So in a kind of more academic mode, there are two ways I can go: Um, one reading is, look, there are women out in the public here. They're out in the public sphere. They're going into bars, they're walking near date trees, they're buying things. Um, and they are actively perhaps refusing the betrothal here, or we see them negotiating and isn't that wonderful? I've excavated these voices of women in Talmud.
Um, another mode of reading might say yes, but let me look at the whole contextualization of the sugya – ultimately we actually don't know what the woman wants here. She says, “give it, give it.” We don't have the voice. So there is a way in which we're seeing, um, her powerlessness and all we have is the voice of another amora, another sage, coming in and interpreting her voice. So you again see the powerlessness of her gender being constructed.
So those are both kind of more academic ways of reading Sugya. One where I've said, I've excavated a woman's voice, and the other where I say, oh, look, you know the way in which if you move through the flow of the sugya again and again and again, ultimately what the sugya does is, is silence her, her voice.
But if I'm reading in a more activist mode, um, I can actually have a lot of fun playing and I can say, Hey, you know what? I have three stories here. A woman's walking around trying to buy, um, trying to buy some glass beads. She's going to a bar, she's walking under date trees. We actually don't know the vocalization of this at all. So she could be flirting with him. Um, they could already be engaged. She could be saying, I just came into the bar to get a drink. Leave me alone. Just leave me alone. I just want a drink. She could be saying, uh, how do you know I like boys? We actually don't know anything like that.
So when I'm in a more activist mode, or what I'm trying to tell my students is, you gotta get reading A, reading B, but now take these stories and imagine that you're writing a three line play. What's the intonation you're going to use for each of them? How are you gonna fill in the background?
So in a sense, my activist voice is saying, okay, the Talmud has handed you these vignettes. You could choose to, um, reinforce her powerlessness. Right? You - And that is totally a legitimate thing to run into the story and say, shit, I thought I find shouldn't have used bad language, but I thought I finally found women voices and uhoh. They're silenced once again.
Or you can say, yeah, you know, the Bavli did that, but the stories are here. So what am I gonna do as someone living now? How am I gonna imagine them? And so that, that's the, the contrast that I, that I like to do.
BENAY LAPPE: Amazing. Amazing.
JANE KANAREK: And rabbis can do that.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah.
JANE KANAREK: Which is really nice.
BENAY LAPPE: Amazing. Okay, let's, let's get to pedagogy because as you know, I love Talmud as we all do. And it just breaks my heart to see the Talmud being taught in ways that disempower. And do nothing positive to help the learners actually in turn be transmitters. And, you know, I've visited rabbinical schools and it, it's so sad to see, and this is not true for your, for yours at Hebrew College, but in other places to see that actually rabbinical schools turn off quite a few students to Talmud, by the way it's taught or by perhaps a lack of, of framing or a take.
But, but it also, in, in many, in egalitarian yeshivot where people go to learn, they, you know, they're, they're. It makes me feel so bad when their takeaway is, oh, my teacher is so smart. I can never be like that.
JANE KANAREK: Right
BENAY LAPPE: And um, so it feels to me like we have a crisis in Talmud pedagogy, and, and if we don't figure this out, we're going to lose our ability to transmit Talmud as something transmissible. And so I, that's why, one of the reasons I'm so excited about your work in pedagogy. So first, if you'd like to say anything about that, and,
and I just wanna quote something you wrote, which really surprised me. This is from your book, Learning to Read Talmud, uh, that you co-edited with Marjorie Lehman, you say in the introduction, um, “We believe that thinking about the Talmud as scholars is fundamentally the same as thinking about teaching Talmud.” And that hasn't been my experience. Right? Or, or that the, those scholars who are thinking about teaching it about it or teaching it aren't doing a great job. So first of all, what do you think about that? And then I wanna ask you more about your pedagogy of slowing down because it so speaks to me.
JANE KANAREK: I would love to speak about the pedagogy of slowing down.
So Marjie and I really became really committed to trying to create this bridge between the worlds of the academic study of Talmud and the study of pedagogy. Um, because you're right, um, there aren't enough people out there there that are doing it, or certainly not. And I, I hate to say this, many of the people that taught us.
Um, but I do actually think that there are phenomenal UD teachers out there who are thinking about it. I mean, Sarra Lev, Mira Wasserman, Marjorie, you. Um, and um, I think that at Hebrew College we also just have an advantage because all of us who teach in the rabbinical school want to be teaching in the rabbinical school. We're not splitting our time between undergrads and graduate students and rabbinical students. So for me, it really gives me the time to just the head space to sit and really think about the distinctiveness about, of rabbinical school pedagogy.
And, um, I think there's a lot of baggage in the world of Talmud. Um, certainly I still struggle with feelings of authenticity. Um, do I know enough? insecurity as well? Um, and I think it's a problem not just in Talmud, but maybe it's just in the Jewish academic world. Maybe it's the academic world, but it's a particular model where the ultimate teacher, a comment, the ultimate compliment a teacher can get is “look how brilliant he was. Look how brilliant she was.” Not about whether the student felt like he actually can do some of that.
BENAY LAPPE: Exactly.
JANE KANAREK: So I very much feel like my role as a teacher is not, um, primarily about me and showing my intelligence, it's scaffolding my students so that they can learn to do this. And it might, it probably won't look like what I do, 'cause this is what I spend all of my most of my time doing. But to really help those students that did discover that they have a love for this, a love for Talmud, really build, what do they wanna do and, and how do they wanna do it? And then to really try and work with them to help them get there.
Um, and it's nice if my students think I'm brilliant, but it's by no means my pedagogical goal. And if they walk out of class saying only that I will have failed.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Thank you. Okay, so when I read your article, the, “The Pedagogy of Slowing Down,” and I know there's a colon and there's more, um, teaching Talmud in a Summer Kollel, something like that. And when I read it, I had this feeling of recognition like, oh yes, because, because I think that's what happens in the svara bet midrash, but I, I never had the language for it that you gave it.
I never thought explicitly about the slowing down being the driving force. You talk about the slowing down, facilitating rigor and precision and meaning making. And I always thought about it in the opposite way. I always thought my focus on rigor and precision and meeting making were the things driving the necessity to slow down.
And, and just one more piece that I'll throw in there is that in, in your article, you attribute a shift in culture in the room from power being about, um, knowing a lot, sharing lots of ideas real fast, that kind of Yeshivish taking over the space and, you know, grabbing the teacher's attention and to a, a different kind of meaning, make meaning making.
And, and I wonder if that's about the slowing down or is it something else that you're creating in the culture because you possibly, as a woman, possibly as a person who just holds different values, you are, you are shifting the culture. So the role of the slowing down and the, the causal relationship to all these things is just fascinating for me. I'd love to hear you talk about that.
JANE KANAREK: Such a, such a great question. Um, I am in, interestingly enough now working on a project with the Mandel Center at Brandeis - Katie Light Soloway, who's a sociologist, is my research assistant. It's really the wrong term for her. And, um, she interviewed 32 rabbinical students at, um, Hebrew College, YU, RRC, Maharat, and JTS, all about their experiences studying Talmud.
And the article that I'm writing right now out of those interviews is actually returning to this question of slowing down how these students talk about slowing down and how these students talk about learning quickly or covering material. We did not ask them to talk about this in any way, shape, or form. It just came out in almost all of the interviews. Um, students talked about their anxiety to cover material and get through material. Um, students talked about feeling some of them, oh wait, I was faking it. I was covering material, but I never really got it. And then I had to stop and I had to, I had to slow down and, and, and get it.
Um, so where does that leave me? Um, I think that, um, Talmud culture is a one that measures success by coverage of material and time spent learning in general and not necessarily, um, the quality. Of what one, what one does. Um, and I, I don't like that. Um, I am a believer in a culture where, um, success should be measured much more by the quality of what one says.
So this is, um, weaving around an answer to say. And on the other hand, I, from listening to the voices of these students, I'm also trying to figure out how do I honor their need, their sense of urgency that some of these students have to kind of get more Talmud under their belt. Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: I feel, I feel that same tension. I can't wait to hear where, where you go with that.
JANE KANAREK: Yeah. So I'm trying to work on those. I, I will confess, I did Daf Yomi most of it in English with the Koren thing, and I did not like it at all. I am not a fan of Daf Yomi, and so part of it is,
BENAY LAPPE: Don’t get me to get started!
JANE KANAREK: I know we only have three minutes left. How do we deal with this obsession with Daf Yomi? Um, because I don't actually think it necessarily, it really facilitates an ability to actually learn Bavli and enter into it.
So right now what I'm trying to think about is, um, are there ways in which that I can parallel to what I do in my classes, which is a much more deliberate pace? Are there ways in which I can support students in their desire to actually cover more material? And are there ways in which I can think about… What are ways to do it that are more constructive? um, where there is some attention to detail?
What does it mean as students get more advanced when they can actually cover more material, right? So they have the skills to do it. How do I still, um, acknowledge that and still encourage this slowing down? So I don't have a full answer yet to how I wanna balance those tensions, but it's something that I'm trying to think about, um, so that I can continually, culturally can pushing that value of slowing down and honor this very real desire that students have to learn more Talmud. And I'm, I'm trying to play with those ideas right now.
BENAY LAPPE: Yeah. Yeah. I, I have those exact, exact questions. Um,
JANE KANAREK: and, and some of it's teaching the value of patience, which is really hard when you're impatient to learn something. Um, I think it's a value of patience and maybe it's also shifting our language from away from things like, well, how long did you spend learning? Or How many dappim did you cover? But to try and think of what are the other kinds of questions that we wanna ask people about Talmud and, and their, their study, what they're, what they're learning. Mm-hmm.
BENAY LAPPE: And I think it also raises the question of how much Talmud you really need to know
JANE KANAREK: Right.
BENAY LAPPE: To it. In my mind, get the process that I think the rabbis are trying to convey in the Talmud. Like, how many tort cases do you really need to learn in? In a law school, you don't actually need to learn the 500 in the case book.
JANE KANAREK: Right. That's a great point.
BENAY LAPPE: So shifting the, the metric of what it means to know, what it means to have, I don't wanna use the word authority, but mastery or, you know, what's enough, how much gemara do you have to learn to be gemirna?
JANE KANAREK: Right. That's a great way, that's a great way to put it. That's a great way to put it. It's hard, it's, it's a cultural weight in the world of gamara learners. But I'd love to continue that conversation with you as I continue to think about this.
DAN LIBENSON: I hope we will. It strikes me that it's connected to what you said earlier about teaching and it's, you know, and like, whether it's about brilliance or whether it's about actually conveying the, the pedagogy and empowering, you know, a lot of these questions have to do with what is the coin of the realm, you know, what, what does the community say is the important thing?
If the community thinks that, you know, now knowing every page of Talmud, if that's what impresses them, then you know, then there's pressure on on that, that that should be, but what it makes it really interesting in a rabbinical school or any program that's fundamentally about training leaders is, is, is it, is is part of the task of those leaders to change the coin of the realm, you know, and to, and especially if, if there's a claim that it's actually gone wrong, it's, it's not, it doesn't make sense. You know, you think that, that, what's impressive is -
You know, I, I actually was talking to a friend of mine who's a law professor about the fact about doing Daf Yomi, the Daily Talmud page that we talked about, and we're, and I'll mention in a second, we'll talk about it next week, but, um, but he said to me like, I don't understand why you would wanna do that. Like, like I, I am a law professor. I don't read the, the case reports of all the, the courts, you know, like nobody does. That's not, that's not what, and all the more so in the age of, of the internet, where if you need to find out a very particular case that you could Google it or you know, Westlaw, whatever. So it, it's interesting whether.
It's all the pieces. There's so many pieces in motion, I think, to these questions, including our modern times and searchability and translation. And it'll be interesting to see where that all goes.
JANE KANAREK: Yes, it's really, it's really fascinating and what these students had to say about Daf Yomi and why they've done it or were thinking about doing it. Um, and especially for the students who, most of these, I shouldn't say, especially for the students who were at JTS or RRC or Hebrew College where Daf Yomi is not something that's necessary that will be expected in their communities. To hear them talk about why they wanted to or why they weren't, um, this particularly fascinating.
But yet it's a cultural question. And I think one of the challenges for Benay and I as well is also how do we make Talmud relevant in the worlds that we are part of? where it's not necessarily the cultural coin at the realm. But Benet, you're working on that.
BENAY LAPPE: Right.
DAN LIBENSON: I know from, I know from up close that Benay is doing a great job of it. And you're too. Um, Jane, I, I wanna thank you so much for being with us today. It, it was really great and I do hope, we'll, we'll talk again because this is so, so wonderful to have this conversation with you.
JANE KANAREK: It was really a treat. It was really a treat. Any chance to schmooze with Benay for an hour?
DAN LIBENSON: I agree, because I do this every week.
BENAY LAPPE: Thank you so, so much.
DAN LIBENSON: Um, and just one quick program note. We're gonna be interviewing, uh, Ilana Kurshan, who’s the author of the book called “If All the Seas Were Ink” which is about her experience doing the Daily Talmud page, the Daf Yomi that we're talking about. So we didn't plan it this way, but it's a really good lead in. So we're, we're excited to have that conversation.
So thanks so much again, Jane, for being with us, and we'll see you next next week, Benay.
BENAY LAPPE: Thank you. Thanks. Bye Bye.
DAN LIBENSON: Thanks so much for joining our chevruta today! We hope you’ve enjoyed learning with us… and with the Talmud. You can find links to the source sheets for all episodes in the show notes and on our website at oraltalmud.com. Your support helps keep Oral Talmud going. You can find a link on the website to contribute. We’d also love to hear from you! Email us with any questions, comments, or thoughts at hello@oraltalmud.com. Please, share your Oral Talmud with us – we’re so excited to learn from you. The Oral Talmud is a joint project of SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva and Judaism Unbound, two organizations that are dedicated to making Jewish texts and ideas more accessible for everyone. We are especially grateful to Sefaria for an incredible platform that makes the Talmud available to everyone. It’s free at sefaria.org. And we are grateful to SVARA-nik Ezra Furman for composing and performing The Oral Talmud’s musical theme. The Oral Talmud is produced by Joey Taylor, with help from Olivia Devorah Tucker, and with financial support from Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah. Thanks so much for listening–and with that, this has been the Oral Talmud. See ya next time.
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