Because I take courses through many different institutions at once, my semesters don't always align. Right now, for instance, two of my fall classes are still going strong; meanwhile the first of my spring classes began last week while I was at Ohalah. So I'm working toward finishing the fall even as I'm already, frustratingly, behind on beginning the spring. (I figure this is excellent preparation for the work of being a rabbi. The work is never completed; it's up to us to figure out how to do it, accepting our own limitations while striving to do the work as best we can.)

The course that's already begun is Fourteen Sugyot Every Jew Should Know, an online class offered by the Conservative Yeshiva which aims to introduce students to fourteen foundational pieces of Talmud.

In the first week, we were asked to study a passage from tractate Rosh Hashanah which asks the question, "does the observance of commandments require kavanah (mindful intention)?" This is not, it turns out, a simple question to answer. Take, for instance, the mitzvah of hearing the shofar blown: must one hear it with conscious intent? What if one hears it, but isn't sure what one is hearing (e.g. an inept shofar-blower like me makes animal noises instead of pure tones)? What if the person blowing the shofar is merely amusing himself with the horn, rather than blowing with conscious intent? 

If I'm reading the passage right, it seems that both the hearer and the performer have to put their minds to the act before either of them "become yotzei" (before it "counts" as a fulfillment of the mitzvah.) I like that idea, because it suggests to me that what's critical here is (what Buber might call) the I-Thou relationship between the actors. One person alone can't fulfil the mitzvah of hearing the shofar, or blowing the shofar; there has to be a conscious actor and a conscious listener. Mitzvot only come alive when we engage with them together.

As a meta-note, I find it quite cool that we preserve these conversations in the first place. Because we have this circuitous reasoning set down in print, we have a kind of mental labyrinth to enter; as we walk the steps of the labyrinth (following each step on the page), we retrace the logical leaps of our forebears, and wrestle with the same questions in similar ways. And, as in walking a real meditation labyrinth, what matters isn't the endpoint of the walk, but what we may learn from tracing and retracing the steps.

In honor of my diving in to this formal Talmud study, let me point you to a short piece by my teacher Reb Laura: Tractate Laundry. It may not be funny if you've never studied Talmud, but it makes me laugh every time I read it. Pitch-perfect parody, and a delicious piece of writing, too.

Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Talmud.