Berakhot 64

“The Torah was not given to ministering angels.”

It’s hard to believe that the reading of tractate Berakhot concludes today. The past 63 days have taken me on a journey I had not anticipated. I approached the reading of the Talmud as a personal challenge to myself with the intention of just skimming gently through the pages for a short while. But here I am sinking deeply into this winding, bewildering and yes, at times illuminating text.

I feel as though I have been involved in an unsettling dialog with the great Rabbis from 1,500 years ago since I started this journey. I say unsettling because when I think I have found something in the text that I can hang onto – some nugget of wisdom from one Sage – another one quickly offers a different opinion. A good example is yesterday’s reading where we are offered a lesson in the importance of stepping up into a leadership role when an opportunity presents itself, but yet, we are told to step aside if someone of equal merit is qualified for the job.

The relationship between Rav and Shmuel represents the tradition of discourse and respecting each other’s opinions even when they are different from one’s own. Their differing perspectives appear often in the Talmud and I envision them walking side-by-side, always arguing over some fine point of Talmudic law. And yet, they were great friends and Rav is said to have mourned profoundly the death of Shmuel because there was no one else who could have verbally sparred with him in quite the same way. If it is possible to have a favorite Rabbi, Rabbi Akiva is mine. He was a poor shepherd who married well; his wife encouraged him at 40 years old to enter the Yeshiva and start his course of study. He never forgot his humble roots and his perspective was always measured and down-to-earth. He died a martyr protecting the freedom to study Torah that he worked so hard for in his middle age, and he died reciting the Shema word-by-word and left this earth with the simple word “one” uttered under his breath.

We were introduced to two strong, but very different women in this tractate. Hannah is silent, long-suffering, and steadfast in her faith when she is falsely accused of being a drunk. She uses her strong faith and righteousness to defend herself against a husband and Rabbi who did not understand her. And then there is Yalta, who is strong, daring, and not afraid to speak up and challenge authority. She retaliates when she is dissed by a small-minded Ulla who refuses her a cup of wine, by destroying an entire wine cellar of bottles. I see myself more in Hannah, who doesn’t always speak up, but I want to be more like Yalta.

There are lots of just plain funky stuff in this tractate, like the reference to the afterbirth of a first born female black cat and the protracted discussion of seminal fluids and bathroom habits. There is a scholar who hides under a Rabbi’s bed during the most intimate moments, embodied dead who request a comb and eye-shadow from the grave, the reference to minor girls who are mature at three years old and the interpretation of dreams that involve intercourse with one’s mother and sister. There are spirits and demons everywhere, including in the bathroom, and wild animals, such as lions, snakes, scorpions and ox who roam the earth. To be honest, I can’t say I gleaned much out of most of this outside of curiosity for what life was life 1,500 years ago.

But I have learned a lot, or I would have not kept ploughing through the text. I learned the importance of the Shema, which is the first thing I learned in Hebrew School and continues to reverberate through my Jewish soul. The rhythm of the Shema is always with me. But mostly, I learned the importance of intention and attention. The intention behind our actions is important and the Rabbis spend a lot of time dissecting the difference between actions done with intention and those that are not. The instruction on the blessings we are to say for every aspect of our lives, is so that we can live with attention and gratitude for everything we are given. We are not to simply walk half-awake through our lives with little appreciation for the miracles all around us. We are told to “add a little extra” to our prayers so that we say them with intention and attention, and not as part of some repetitive ritual.

We are provided insight into our dreams, which should “follow the mouth.” Their interpretations can impact the course of our lives. We are also provided with insight into Talmudic astronomy, and Shmuel’s miraculous ability to read the sky somewhat accurately with his naked eye. I have gained an appreciation for the significance of the new moon, in all its promise for the month ahead. It is a blank, dark vessel waiting for us to write upon it the story of the next 30 days of our lives.

We are reminded through all the protracted text on seminal emissions and the most private of personal activities, that we are human with all our fallacies and flaws; most of us reside in the “middle” between our dual inclinations of good and evil.

And finally, there is the importance of community that permeates the text. It is important to pray, eat and study in a community. We are more than two months into this Daf Yomi cycle and I have come to love this community, the support it provides and how it has assisted with democratizing the Talmud.

I have been thinking of my grandfather Joseph Cagan. He came from a family of traveling rabbis who went from village to village in Lithuania conducting services. Sadly, his entire family perished on the same day in 1941 in Lithuania. The presumption is that they were rounded up with other Jews on that day and shot in massive sand pits. 96% of Jews were killed in Lithuania by the end of the war. It was a very profound moment when I first understood deeply what it meant for my grandfather who had lost his parents and sisters and came to this country with nothing but grief. It explained why he was always so reserved, and I regretted never having the inquisitiveness to talk to him about his life in Lithuania and the family he lost. He was a deeply religious man who spent his life studying Torah. He was always buried in a Hebrew book and I wonder now if he was actually doing the Daf and reading a page from the Talmud each day. I wish I could bridge the boundaries of time and mortality and discuss my daily readings with him.

It is probably worth taking a moment to honor Rabbi Meir Shapiro who first introduced the concept of Daf Yomi. I am sure he never anticipated that a single secular woman like me would be reading the text with a Siamese cat on her lap each morning before work, along with all of you who come from so many diverse backgrounds and sensibilities. I just hope there are fewer discussions of spitting and seminal fluids in the next tractate.