There's still lots of specific content I want to write about from my week studying at Hebrew College, but first I'm going to post a general review before things start to fade too much.

Pico review: I'll definitely go back. :-) But you probably want to know more. Read more…

Friday night we gathered for services, dinner, and some singing. Some of the local students brought family members; others did not come. There were also some faculty members from the school there. There were probably about two dozen people total.

We started with kabbalat shabbat and ma'ariv. The Reform movement, at least in my experience, heavily abridges kabbalat shabbat; this is in part to make room for Friday-night torah reading and sermons without being butt-numbing, I'm sure, but I think the psalms in general and the ones in kabbalat shabbat specifically do not tend to resonate for most Reform Jews. I wish we would reconsider with singing. Reading psalms might be boring, but singing them can be quite uplifting. By the way, the one Conservative synagogue where I've attended several times on Friday night also abridges this part of the service, though not as heavily. So it's not just Reform.

Anyway, we sang all those psalms, and of course L'cha Dodi, all to tunes I didn't previously know but could figure out, and it was really nice. Ma'ariv was comparatively short and businesslike. We ended with kiddush, which was about the time I realized that we had not been given the chance to individually light candles, so I looked at the ones that were already lit and said the bracha over them before proceeding.

We prayed from Siddur Sim Shalom. I hadn't previously noticed that there's a small collection of z'mirot (songs) for Shabbat in there. After dinner we sang through some of those; again, I didn't know the melodies, but I was able to fake it. I also didn't previously know the texts, but singing is usually slower than reading (it was here) so I was able to mostly read along. I'm still a slower reader of Hebrew than I'd like to be, but I'm a lot better than I used to be.

--

We were on our own for Shabbat morning. Read more…

Again, summary now and more later (I hope): Read more…

I'm short on time right now, so I'll summarize what we covered now and fill in details later.

Wednesday morning:

• Study with a partner (and not just on your own) is essential, and it's a core value of this school.

• II Samuel chapter 21 is the rather disturbing story of how the Gibbeonites get revenge for a wrong done to them by Saul. (King David ends up handing over sons of Saul knowing they will be killed.) Yevamot 78b-79a discusses this in some detail. It's fascinating, and I'll come back to it later.

• We looked at a modern text on the obligations of Israel to its Arab citizens that hearkens back to the original situation the Gibbeonites were in.

• We looked at another modern text (by a rabbi who is an adviser of President Bush) applying this same talmudic passage to war and responses to terror. Looking at this and the previous in sharp contrast was interesting.

• Another theme: halacha is a centuries-long process of seeking ("halacha" from "walk"); it is not just a static handbook.

• We had some time so we started looking at the story of Serach bat Asher (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael on Beshelach)

Wednesday afternoon: guest lecture from Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, dean of the rabbinic school, titled "Leadership in Response to Diversity and Change".

• Two fundamental questions of leadership: "why me?" and "who knows?".

• Torah passage where Moshe asks God to appoint a leader after him (Pinchas): enumerates some criteria.

• Bamidbar Rabbah elaborates on "lord of the spirits".

• Midrash Tanchuma on Pinchas is about diversity in others (including those being led).

• Leadership is not inherited here; it's a meritocracy (unlike priesthood). Meritocracy can be better for supporting change; inheritance can be better for maintaining the status quo.

• Themes of connecting with individuals versus serving groups. (Oh boy do I see that tension in my congregational experiences!)

• Leader as midwife.

Continuing with the early history of Moshe and people influential in his life, we spent much of the afternoon looking at Exodus Rabbah 1:26 and its sources. The torah tells us that Paro's daughter retrieved Moshe from the river, that he was beautiful, that she knew he was a Hebrew, and that she raised him as her own anyway. The midrash says that he was a real magnet; people were overcome with his beauty, and even Paro had a soft spot for him. Paro's magicians warned him, when they saw him playing with Paro's crown and putting it on his own head, that this might be the one they'd warned him about, the one who would take away his kingdom. They proposed killing him, but Yitro (!) said no, he's a child and doesn't understand, so how about a test: bring out a gold coin and a glowing coal. If he goes for the coin then ok, you can kill him; if he goes for the coal then leave him alone. They do this, Moshe goes for the coin, and the angel Gavriel pushes his hand to the coal instead. Moshe puts it in his mouth, which is why he is later "slow of speech".

Ok, lots there. Some thoughts:

First, Paro's daughter. How did she pull this off? Was she the only one who knew Moshe's origin? How did she explain suddenly showing up with a child? (What'd she do, fake a pregnancy?) I'm willing to assuume that she could silence her hand-maidens. Or was she thumbing her nose at her father, but the child was oozing so much cuteness that he didn't care?

Paro's daughter paid the wet-nurse, who was a slave and presumably didn't need to be paid? Compassion, or something else?

I'd previously heard midrashim that Yitro was in Paro's court (also Job and Bila'am). I'm still puzzled by it. How much does Yitro know -- is he just proposing a test of an anonymous child, or does he see something of the future? While we're on personnel, I'm mildly curious about the significance of Gavriel in particular being the angel who shows up. I don't have a strong argument for anyone else, but I just wonder where else Gavi shows up.

This is the second time that Paro has heard "there there, it's just a child and can't mean anything by that". By the way, note that this argument is among Paro's advisors; Paro himself doesn't offer an opinion.

One effect of the coal is as stated -- to support the speech issue recorded by the torah for Moshe. Another might be to disfigure this beautiful child so people will stop paying so much attention to him. (The midrash says that Paro's daughter wouldn't let the child leave the palace, but later Moshe (age unknown but closer to adulthood for sure) goes out and kills the Egyptian. Did this incident help him to move more freely? (Is the killing of the Egyptian also a killing of Moshe's identity as an Egyptian?)

Moshe went for the gold (the wrong answer) initially.

Things pointed out by the rabbi: This is the only place in torah (in tanakh?) where an infant cries; the others are older. The introduction of Moshe is with a cry (speech); his undoing is also related to speech (hitting the rock instead of speaking to it, and yelling at the people). here are echos of B'reishit in Moshe's early story; the phrase translated as "handsome" is "ki tov", the same description applied to the days of creation, and he is placed in a "teva" (same word as the ark built by Noach).

"Moshe" doesn't mean "I drew him out of the water" like the torah tells us; it's an active participle. Moshe does the drawing out; he's not being drawn out. (I think I mentioned this yesterday.)

After we'd talked about this for a while we started to look at a text from the S'fas Emet, a 19th-century Chassidic writer. I might be reaching the conclusion that I'm not a fan of the S'fas Emet, but it's possible that we just didn't allow enough time for a difficult text. Maybe I'll write more later.

Another mishna we looked at Tuesday morning was Eduyot 5:6-7: Akabya ben Mehalalel made four rulings. (The two we could find were pickyune.) The rabbis told him to retract them and they'd put him in charge. He said "no can do; it'll look like I did it for the wrong reasons". So they ostracized him (the verb is "nidu"). As he was dying he told his son to retract those teachings; when the son asked "why didn't you do it?" Akabya gives a different answer: that he learned those teachings from a majority and was thus bound to follow them, but the son is not so bound. The son asks for an introduction (a reference?) to the rabbis and Akabya says no, you'll sink or swim on your own actions.

So, a few thoughts. First, the rabbis put him in an awful position; he couldn't accept that offer and got in trouble for declining. But there's got to be more to it; rabbis disagree with each other all the time in the talmud. (Even Rabbi Yehuda ha-Nasi, who compiled the mishna, is sometimes recorded as a minority opinion by it!) Shouldn't it have been sufficient for Akabya to stop teaching the things that had fallen out of favor? Why did he need to actively renounce them? I presume this is not the case of the elder who teaches falsely to inspire practice (which we talked about yesterday), because (1) they don't try him for a capital offense and (2) they're ready to make him their leader.

And why didn't Akabya make the same argument to them that he did to his son -- that he learned from a majority, and we follow the majority, and it's not his fault that a different majority is in charge now?

In sticking to his original teachings he seems to be saying that you've got to stand by what you see as truth -- but then he tells his son that he can do something different, that truth isn't absolute. I think it's not about truth; he's giving his son a legal out, perhaps making sure that his son never heard the teachings under the same conditions that he did.

--

We then turned to Yevamot 1:4, which resonates more strongly today. The jumping-off point is convoluted and I don't understand it (I'm not the only one), but we bypassed that to get to the meatier part. (Our professor described this tractate as kind of a "shell game"; it's about family relations and sometimes you have to diagram it to understand the issue of the second cousin's wife's half-sister's son, or whatever. Err, I made that example up.) Anyway...

Hillel and Shammai disagreed about almost everything, even in matters of who could marry whom, but yet there were still marriages between their houses. And they disagreed about kashrut, but they did not avoid handling each others' utensils. (For example, if a Hillel pot ended up mixed in with your Shammai pots and they touched, you didn't worry about whether your pot was at risk of being treif.)

The point seems to be that we treat people by the standards of their own traditions, not ours, if they are acting in good faith. If Hillel says his daughter is allowed to marry Shammai's son, Shammai has to consider her elligible. If Shammai eats in Hillel's house and Hillel says the food is kosher, that's good enough for Shammai. In both cases, this is true even if, in your house, the daughter wouldn't be elligible and the food wouldn't be kosher. This is a huge issue today, with people from one strain of Judaism saying that those from another aren't good enough (or their food isn't good enough or their prayer isn't good enough). We're used to judging others by our own standards, but what would happen if we all tried to judge each other by the others' standards? There might be a lot more harmony.

I asked if this was just about schools (or strains) of Judaism, or if the same argument applied to individuals. If someone of Beit Hillel says the food is kosher by Hillel standards, great. If Ploni says the food is kosher by his standards, do we similarly consider the food kosher? I asked the question but didn't get an answer. I know that some of my friends have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy and others use their own standards in that situation. I'm not sure what's right; Beit Hillel has the weight of Beit Hillel behind it, and the Satmar Chassidim have the weight of Satmar behind them, and the Reconstructionist movement has the weight of Reconstructionism behind it, but what has good old Ploni got? Is the difference in how well the standards are articulated? (That is, you can consult sources to understand what Hillel considers kosher, but not what Ploni does.)