Gemara Keywords

Hello Everyone,

I am writing to welcome you to our sessions on “Key Words in the Gemara.” The Gemara is the treasure-house of the Jewish people. The ideas, customs and practices which make us unique are found in the Gemara. There are many fine translations of the Gemara but these translations do not convey, and cannot convey the beautiful language of the Gemara. The Gemara is written in a very terse style. The most profound ideas are expressed in the fewest possible number of words. Therefore, it is well worth the time necessary to become familiar with the original Aramaic text of the Gemara.

And that is the goal of this series of classes. We will be studying the first chapter of the tractate Pesachim. This chapter deals with the halacha of checking our homes before the Passover holiday to make sure that no  chametz is present. In these classes we will not discuss the halacha – we will discuss the text. We will learn how to navigate through the unpunctuated text of the Gemara in order to follow the discussion. And the Gemara is a synopsis of discussions which take place over centuries.

I have been studying Gemara for almost 60 years and, I am very grateful to Hashem for this privilege. The Gemara is continuously new and I hope that I will be able to share  the experience of studying Gemara with you.

Before each session I will post a scan of the “standard” Gemara ( which was published in Vilna in the late 19th century) and a Word doc of the page. During the class we will read the Word doc ( which is punctuated and broken up into sentences) and then find the “key words” in the Vilna page and learn how to find our way through the unbroken text in the “standard” page.

Hello Everyone,

Today we will continue with our study of the first two pages of the Gemara in masechet Pesachim as it determines if the word  “אור” means day or night. To anyone who has any familiarity at all with the Hebrew language this may seem like an odd discussion, since  “אור” means light in the spoken language. But the Gemara is discussing the first words in our Mishnah and the subject of the Mishnah is the search for  חמץ which is done on the night before the holiday of Pesach. And the Mishnah says that the search for חמץ is carried out “אור לארבעה עשר” In this context why does the Mishnah use the word  אור? This is the questioin that provokes the discussion in the Gemara.

Hello Everyone,
For the past two sessions we have seen how the Gemarah at the beginning of the tractate Pesachim examines the first word in the tractate, “or.” The Hebrew word or means “light.” But in the context of this section of the Gemarah it must mean “night” ( since the Gemarah is discussing the search for chametz which is done during the night).
In today’s session we will see how the Gemarah concludes the examination of what the word or means. It goes on to ask the question which we were waiting to hear, ”Why did the author of this Mishnah use this odd word or when he could have used one of several other words which clearly mean “night”? The answer to this question does much to explain how the Mishnah is composed and how the Gemarah finds meaning in the seeming quirks in the language of the Mishnah.