Shavuot tikkun
Jun. 9th, 2014 04:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidI went to the Cambridge-wide tikkun the first night of Shavuot, making it to a handful of sessions.
The first class was by R. Jonah Steinberg, comparing two pages in a German machzor printed in the 1930s (exact date unknown, likely after the previous printing of 1932) with the "Prayer for Our Fatherland" and the facing Hebrew prayer for the country. They're very different prayers, with the German including the idea of an upswing in greatness, while the Hebrew talks about there not being war anymore. It was interesting to think about how this would have read in the 1930s, ignoring what we know was the horrible story-to-come.
Next, I went to a class by Joshua Gensler about the book of Ruth. There wasn't a lot of time for other discussion; the session was really too short to include chevruta time on the whole book as well as group discussion. There was some talk of levirite marriage, and yibum/halitza.
As usual, I enjoyed rereading a book filled with feminine plurals, which don't get much play in Tanach, plus having all the women named (and most of the men, too, but that's not usually an issue).
I did find out that my assumption of how the first child of a levirite marriage is named may well be wrong: I realized I made the assumption, based on current naming practices, that if Y1 dies, and Y2 physically fathers the child, the kid would be named Y1 son/daugher of Y2 (or possibly Y1? not sure I'd thought about it), while in the discussion, there was talk that the kid would be called Z son/daughter of Y1.
This was a bunch of short (5 minute or less) divrei Torah, on whatever topic. They varied in interest of idea, as well as presentation skills. Some of the ideas were:
This session was taught by Nehama Libman, about the bit at the end of parshat Breishit (Chapter 6 verses 1-6) that talks about the sons of God, daughters of man, also Nephilim, whoever they were. She brought a number of meforshim's understandings of this, from the males being some form of divine beings to being of a high class to being sons of Seth, while the females might be of a lower social status, or daughters of Cain. And the issue may have been that the males took whichever females they wanted, without their permission, consent, or reference to whether they were in a relationship already. This breakdown of society makes it more understandable why the flood was brought, those in power not restraining themselves from such egregious abuse of status.
I didn't stay up all night, but it was good to do some learning.
The first class was by R. Jonah Steinberg, comparing two pages in a German machzor printed in the 1930s (exact date unknown, likely after the previous printing of 1932) with the "Prayer for Our Fatherland" and the facing Hebrew prayer for the country. They're very different prayers, with the German including the idea of an upswing in greatness, while the Hebrew talks about there not being war anymore. It was interesting to think about how this would have read in the 1930s, ignoring what we know was the horrible story-to-come.
Next, I went to a class by Joshua Gensler about the book of Ruth. There wasn't a lot of time for other discussion; the session was really too short to include chevruta time on the whole book as well as group discussion. There was some talk of levirite marriage, and yibum/halitza.
As usual, I enjoyed rereading a book filled with feminine plurals, which don't get much play in Tanach, plus having all the women named (and most of the men, too, but that's not usually an issue).
I did find out that my assumption of how the first child of a levirite marriage is named may well be wrong: I realized I made the assumption, based on current naming practices, that if Y1 dies, and Y2 physically fathers the child, the kid would be named Y1 son/daugher of Y2 (or possibly Y1? not sure I'd thought about it), while in the discussion, there was talk that the kid would be called Z son/daughter of Y1.
This was a bunch of short (5 minute or less) divrei Torah, on whatever topic. They varied in interest of idea, as well as presentation skills. Some of the ideas were:
- the laws of kings (how many sifrei Torah he had to write, how many wives or horses he could have, etc.)
- the idea that a beit din $whenever is equivalent to the beit din of Moses and Aaron, tying it to the idea that not only the souls of all future Jews were at Sinai
- not seeing the Divine face to face, but playing peekaboo (this was done almost in poetry slam style, which was super cool)
- multiple interpretations of a midrash should be seen as an overlapping understanding, rather than discrete understandings
This session was taught by Nehama Libman, about the bit at the end of parshat Breishit (Chapter 6 verses 1-6) that talks about the sons of God, daughters of man, also Nephilim, whoever they were. She brought a number of meforshim's understandings of this, from the males being some form of divine beings to being of a high class to being sons of Seth, while the females might be of a lower social status, or daughters of Cain. And the issue may have been that the males took whichever females they wanted, without their permission, consent, or reference to whether they were in a relationship already. This breakdown of society makes it more understandable why the flood was brought, those in power not restraining themselves from such egregious abuse of status.
I didn't stay up all night, but it was good to do some learning.