Hello Everyone,
So I am happy to be able to say that we squeezed one more session into this series of classes, “Learn Gemara Keywords.”
Until now we have been studying suggyaot that dealt with issues in Halacha. My goal in choosing the various suggyaot was to show how the dialogue within a given suggyah is constructed in such a fashion that a Halachic concept is clarified.
Today we will study a suggyah of Agad’tah- a suggyah that tells a story. Passages of Agad’tah are popularized in translations and anthologies with titles like “Legends of the Talmud.” Agad’tah presents the student with a challenges which are different from Halachic passages. In the Halachic passages of the Gemarah the vocabulary is usually not very difficult and , at least superficially, it is easy to follow the dialogue which is a debate about a particular concept.
In the Agad’tah the vocabulary is often more difficult and it can be very difficult to understand the story and the lesson which it is conveying.
Today we will study a relatively simple suggyah from masechet Megillah which deals with Haman’s dealings with Achashveirosh.