Reading Levinas/Reading Talmud: An Introduction

The First Reading

THE FIRST READING The purpose of the first reading is, simply put, to learn what's going on in the talmudic text, which is written in a stenographic language, a shorthand, perhaps even a code. The experienced reader learns to recognize a series of technical terms that have developed over time and that clue the reader into a wide range of information. These include terms that signal various types of questions or objections based either on textual controversies, logical disagreements, philosophic disagreements , or contradictions with other authoritative sources. The technical terms indicate the layers of the argumentation-that is, whether a challenge to a given statement is made on the basis of a contemporary source, an earlier source, or a later source. It is not always easy to ascertain what objection is being made to a statement, what its basis is, and whether it is sustained. The entire architecture of argument must be arranged in the reader's ear and mind before more substantive questions can be asked. Since it is almost impossible to explain this process, I propose to choose a very short sample sugya and work through it with you. I shall translate the passage into as literal an English as possible. Keep in mind that in its printed version the Talmud, like all ancient Hebrew and Aramaic texts, does not distinguish between what we call capital and lower-case letters. It contains no vocalization and no punctuation. In this first reading I will attempt to reproduce this effect in my translation. The lack of these sense-aids makes it all the more clear why reading the text aloud is essential. The inflection of the human voice brings the text into being. Every pause becomes a comma or period; questions and exclamations must be communicated by inflection. 40 TIm FIRST READING 41 The passage below is from the first chapter of Tractate Megillah in the Babylonian Talmud. It appears on pages 2b-3a, and is the second in a series of statements reported in the name of Rabbi Ymneyah, or some say, Rabbi l:Iiyya bar Abba. The statements themselves are, at first blush, unrelated, connected only by the names of the teachers. and said rabbi yirmeyah and/or if you say rabbi l.riyya bar abba mem nun tzadi peh kafseers said and ifyou will reason and its written these are the commandments that a prophetis not permitted to make new a thing/word from now and further ray l.risda said mem and samekh of the tablets were standing by a miracle yes they existed and/but they didn't know which were middle of a word letters and which were end of a word and the seers came and fixed open ones in the middle of a word and dosed at the end of a word finally these are the commandments that a future prophet will not make new a thing/word from now rather they forgot and returned and established How impenetrable! Thus, the first reading of this text in any language requires an act of translation. Simply to divide it into sentences, to tease out the implications of some of the technical words used to frame the dialectic, often by inflection, is an interpretive act. But the passage is not as chaotic as it might appear. There are, after all, conventions of language that make this passage much more immediately understood by the native reader, and other conventions of technical language become second nature to the practiced reader. Yet, even with these conventions, this fairly simple passage opens a variety of questions that become apparent in the act of sorting out its surface meaning. I call these questions anomalies. During each reading of any text, including the first, I and my study partners keep a pad of paper on which to note both questions about the simple sense of the text and also these anomalies. Since reading the text in such undifferentiated form as I have presented is never done in practice, let me mark up the passage so that it is at least readable at a basic level: Rabbi Yumeyah said, and some say it was Rabbi l:liyya bar Abba: the form of the Hebrew letters mem, nun, tzadi, peh, and kafwere instituted by the Prophets. Is this reasonable? But it is written in the Torah: "These are the commandments ," teaching that a prophet is not permitted to introduce anything new from now on. And further, Rabbi l:Iisda said that...