Education

The Completion of the Babylonian Talmud, Daf Yomi

 Last week, hundreds of thousand of Jews throughout the world participated in the celebrations of Siyum Hashas, the completion of the Babylonian Talmud in a seven year cycle which was initiated by the great Torah scholar and tzaddik Rabbi Meir Shapiro z.l. of Lublin (1887-1934 ) Both in the past and  at the present time,  Jews from all religious and not so religious backgrounds have managed to study one daf, talmudic page, a day and so completed the Talmud, existing of about 40 volumes, once more. This is indeed a major accomplishment, unparalleled in the entire world of secular and religious scholarship. This is even more astonishing taking into account the fact that the Talmudic text exists (most of the time) of a cryptic Aramaic language, which is hard to decipher, even for scholars.

And the Lord spoke to Moshe:" Tell the cohanim (priests), the children of Aaron and say to them: "For a corpse among his people, he shall not defile himself." (Vayikra 21:1) With these words the Torah introduces a complex set of laws which apply to those who are instructed to serve in the Temple as priests. The most notable law is the one which tells the cohanim not to defile themselves (with some exceptions) by coming into contact with the dead. This means that they are not allowed to touch a dead corpse, to come too close to it or be involved in its burial.

 The Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem was a place where only the High Priest was allowed to enter once a year: On Yom Kippur.  Now even the Holy of Holies was occasionally in need of repair. To provide for such an eventuality there were openings in the upper chamber leading down through the ceiling of the Holy of Holies. These holes were close to the walls and through them the workmen were lowered in "tevoth" (boxes) into this most holy place. These boxes were only open to the side of the walls, so that the workmen "could not feast their eyes on the Holy of Holies."  (Pesachim 26a) 

Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk, author of Meshech Chochma draws our attention to one of the most powerful messages Jewish education has to offer. When discussing the failure of Adam and Chava to abstain from the tree of knowledge, this commentary points out one of the most common mistakes made in Jewish education.

As has been constantly stressed by our sages, the contents of the Torah are not open to innovations through which people try to update the Torah to sound more progressive. While progress is no doubt a matter of great value without which society can not function, one is reminded of G.K. Chesterton's famous observation that many people believe that progress is "leaving things behind us, which has utterly obscured the real idea of growth which means leaving things inside us." (The Romance of Rhyme, Fancies versus Fads, 1923)

Lately, the State of Israel is experiencing a new phenomenon. As is well known, the Ba'al Teshuva movement, which includes thousands of secular Jews who have turned to Judaism, has made a major impact on Israeli society. Many young people who were once involved in extreme secularity felt that they had to re-connect with their own heritage and found their way back to Torah and Tradition. This gave rise to a great amount of highly successful institutions such as Aish haTorah, Ohr Somayach, Machon Meir and Neve Yerushalaim.

In a previous essay on Tolerance,  attention was drawn to the fact that personal conscience is of prime value and that one should not confuse tolerance with apathy. For this reason, Orthodoxy's refusal to compromise on its own principles so as to appease the Reform and Conservative movements should only be honored and respected. Even unity cannot always be the final arbiter.

One of the most unique talents which human beings are blessed with is the faculty of imagination. Unlike any other creature in the world, human beings have a nearly unlimited potential for constructive fantasy.