The Talmud was written by men…

Sometimes about women and sometimes about their vagina’s too. I figure I will write about this now since V-Day is fast approaching and I don’t think there is a show here in Jerusalem so I feel I should do my part to give props to the ladies…and their vaginas.

(I thought I would catch you off guard with that first bit so you might not notice that I haven’t written in a month. Sorry. I suck.)

So. With the change of semesters my class in mishna has now switched to gemara. What that means is that we were studying a compilation of oral law which was codified between 200BCE and 200CE and is the first building block, essentially, of the oral law in the larger sense. The Talmud (oral law) is made up of two main parts: the mishna which I just explained and the gemara which is discussion around the mishna. I hope that was clear.

Now my class, instead of studying mishna, is working on applying the mishnayot (plural of mishna) that we learned in the first part of the year and learning gemara on a selected few of them. We have had four classes so far in the new semester and it was a big change for the class. This brings me to the topic we discussed at the end of last class that I’m sure would weigh on anyone’s mind once they figure out what the *&%%^$ Talmud is. Why the HELL would we want to study it today?

Some reasons provided by the class:

Historical – it is a very detailed document that gives a lot of insight into the world of Jews throughout the centuries first with the mishna, then the gemara and then later and later commentaries on the gemara.

Social – it sheds light on society’s challenges and realities both within the Jewish community and between Jews and non-Jews, and how we reacted and dealt with these.

Talmud teaches the method of how we learn as Jews – in large part the Talmud is a recording of conversations between students and teachers and between one generation and another. Studying Talmud shows the way of Jewish learning that has been so vital to our survival and thriving over the centuries. (One of my classmates mentioned that for periods in time when Jewish books were burned in anti-Jewish events it was the Talmud which most targeted because it is so vital to our lives as Jews.)

Understand how Jewish law came to be – it is from Talmud that our law codes are developed, codified, commented on and codified again. The process does not exist without the Talmud

Understand the tools used so we can use them ourselves – empowerment, which I will get into in my own answer as to why study talmud

Now, my answer is:
For most of rabbinic Judaism – which was established, or at least developed, after the fall of the second temple in 70 CE – this was a text only available for the most part to men. It was also a text written by men. Female characters occasionally appear but this is rare. Women learning was an exception to the rule although this, as with most norms in Jewish society, moved along a pendulum throughout the centuries. Some even said to teach a women was to teach her tiflut – or light headedness. Therefore this was a document created by men – but for men and women. Now women were surely of some impact – women and men tend to impact one another – but their voices are absent and their wisdom leaves a pitifully large, cavernous, starkly barren gap – next to the wisdom of our [male] sages. I hate to say it is about power – but it sort of is. Empowerment is one of those words that I used in development classes in university. That is what I feel like I am striving towards when I engage the text with my chevruta (study partner) and partner in crime. I am inserting my voice, my needs, my understandings of the world as me, mincha chava. I know that it seems like a text that isn’t applicable. It was written by about 500CE and has men talking at length about many things that are out of place in our own time contextually or are about organs that the male authors don’t have – for example the ever confounding vagina. I don’t always understand my own body – how did they expect to?!

It’s not that I expect them to have perfect and ever-applicable and meaningful answers and discussions. I don’t. And I don’t expect to find all the answers to my questions in it either. But I do hope to find inspiration and guidance in its mish mash of Aramaic and Hebrew complete with never ending abbreviations and Talmudic personalities fighting it out on a page studied by countless before me. I guess that is my reason for why I came to Israel to study – I want to be part of the tradition. I don’t want it to be kept out of my hands either by ultra-orthodox or by the Reform movement which while it gave me many things, did not give me the skills to learn about my people’s books before I decide whether or not they apply to me. Or by any other party. It has sustained my people. It has provided us a way to remain honest and dedicated to our pursuit of being better people and to struggle towards davekut (cleaving) to God. It belonged to every generation of Jews before me and it belongs to me too. I just want to own it, is all.

Wish me luck. I wish for myself that the question of why study gemara at all, is a question which is always changing and growing in its dynamic answer flowing out of me into….