Learn Gemara Keywords

Hello Everyone,

I am writing to welcome you to this series of classes on “Keywords in the Gemarah.”

Along with the Tanakh, the Gemarah forms the essence of Judaism. Every Jew ought to have at least a passing familiarity with the Gemarah. But the Gemarah is a challenging text. It is written in Aramaic and the text has no punctuation marks.

In my lifetime (which began in 1958) there have been two monumental projects whose purpose was to make the Gemarah more approachable. The first project was that of the late Rav Adin Even Yisrael-Steinsaltz zt”l. Rav Steinsaltz took it upon himself to publish a punctuated edition of the entire Babylonian Talmud accompanied by a translation of the text into spoken Hebrew. The second project was undertaken by the ArtScroll publishing company. Their project was to both translate  the text of the Talmud into English and to print an anthology of the major commentaries adjacent to each page of text. It follows that the translation of a single page of the Talmud may end up being six pages long in the ArtScroll edition. It is worth pointing out that Rav Steinsaltz’s Hebrew commentary has been translated into English and is published by the Koren publishing company. Similarly, the ArtScroll edition of the Talmud has been translated into Hebrew.

The Aramaic text of the Gemarah is remarkably terse. In any translation, be it the translation found in the Koren or ArtScroll edition of the Talmud,  a single line of Aramaic text may be three lines long in English. I truly believe that there is a beauty in the Aramaic text of the Talmud which does not appear in even the best translations. There is a musical rhythm in the Aramaic text.

The text of the Gemarah does lack punctuation marks. The text is very abrupt and the syntax is not at all like that of spoken English ( or Hebrew, or Spanish or any other language that I know of). But the Gemarah is remarkable in that it presents legal theories with such brevity.

My hope for this course is that by knowing how the Gemarah uses certain key words and phrases as punctuation marks. Some phrases indicate  that a question is being asked. Some phrases are prefaces to answers. These key words and phrases are the keys that unlock the discussions that take place on each page of the Talmud.

So please write to me whenever you have ideas or suggestions for these sessions. Since I do not know you personally, I do not know what level of skills each member of the class possesses.

My email address is sfischman@webyeshiva.org

I look forward to meeting with you tomorrow.

Stuart Fischman

Hello Everyone,

Today we will continue with our study of page 31a in the tractate Bava Kama. If you are new to these sessions you can find the pages that we will be studying posted on this web-page.

I look forward to meeting with you.

Stuart Fischman

Hello Everyone,

In our first two meetings we studied a  passage of the Talmud in which a legal theory is analyzed. Specifically it is the theory of liability regarding pedestrians who trip and fall in a public thoroughfare. The text relates competing theories of liability and how the proponents of the the two two theories explain several Mishnayot.

Today (and possibly next week as well) we will study a different sort of text. We will see how the sages of the Talmud derive halachot from the words of the Torah. In this page of the Gemarah we see two opinions as to how many walls must a sukkah have-either three or four. The vocabulary of this text, the language of the give-and-take , is different from the language of the “legalistic” text which have discussed over the previous two weeks.

Hello Everyone,

Today we will study a new passage from the Gemarah. In this passage/suggyah we will see how the Gemarah goes back and forth in its analysis of a Mishnah.

Hello Everyone,

We have learned over the past few weeks  how the Gemarah functions as a commentary to the Mishnah.

Today we will see a suggyah  in which the Gemarah interprets a Mishnah by inserting a word into the Mishnah.

Hello Everyone,

Today we  study a different type of confusing Gemarah. In today’s suggyah we will se how two different Amoraim interpret a Mishnah which presents the opinions of different Tannaim.

I would like to make a request. Several members of the shiur have asked me to post a list of the “key words” that I hope will be taught in the shiur. On the shiur’s webpage ( which you are looking at right now), towards the bottom, you will find a section titled “Handouts.” The handouts include three versions of each day’s text. They are a scan of the Gemarah from a printed “standard Vilnah Shas,” a copy of the page from the Sefaria site, and finally a Word doc of the page. ON the Word doc of the page you will see that while most of the text is in a black, 12 point Narkisim font, some words are 14 point and bold faced and some are in a colored font. These words ( bold faced or colored) are the new words that I hope to teach. They are the “key words.” And it is those words that I try to repeat over and over during each class.

So if you can, please print the Word doc before the class and as we go along you can write down the definitions of these “key words.”

Thanks for participating in the shiurim and keep on sending me your comments and suggestions.

Hello Everyone,

Today I hope to complete the suggyah that we began last week. We will see how the Amoraim reach their conclusions להלכה .

I ask again that you all print the pages of type-written text of the Gemarah. As we go through he Gemarah  you will be able to circle and otherwise highlight the “key words and phrases” of the Gemarah and so strengthen your vocabulary skills.

I look forward to meeting with you this evening.

Hello Everyone,

Today is our final session on “keywords in the Gemara.” We will study a suggyah in masechet Pesachim  which explores some of the fundamental ideas in kashrut.

I really enjoyed this course and I hope that all of you enjoyed it as well.

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.

Hello Everyone,

Welcome to the second session of Learning Key Words and Phrases of the Gemara. To those of you who are returning to the class, I say “Welcome back!” To new members of the class I say “Welcome!”

These sessions will be structured along the lines of the previous sessions. I will post on the webpage of the class two  versions of the Gemara. One version will be a scan of the Gemara’s traditional printing (which is the edition of the Gemara published by the Romm family printers in Vilna, at the end of the 19th century-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romm_publishing_house). The other version will be a Word document of the text. In the Word document you will see that I used different sized and colored fonts to point out the significant words in the text.

The goal of these classes is to introduce to you how the Gemara “works.” In other words we will learn how to identify what issue the Gemara wishes to analyze and how to follow the Gemara’s  analysis .

I look forward to meeting with you tomorrow.

Stuart Fischman

PS- If anyone has ideas or questions please feel free to contact me at <sfischman@webyeshiva.org>

Hello Everyone

Today I plan on continuing the Gemarah that we started last week.

Hello Everyone,

Hi

Today we will study a passage from masechet Gittin which addresses the question when may we assume that person is still alive.

Hello Everyone,

Until now we have studied passages from the Gemarah which dealt with Halachic issues. These passages are discussions which revolve around points of logic which are actually easy to follow once one understands the vocabulary and syntax of the Gemarah. And this is actually the point of this series of sessions; to teach the vocabulary and syntax of the Gemarah.

Today we will study a different sort of passage from the Gemarah. We will study one of the Gemarah’s stories about the giving of the Torah (since this week is Shavuot I thought that this would be appropriate). The stories that the Gemarah tells are just so strikingly different from the Halachic passages of the Gemarah that it is seems impossible that  they appear in the same text and are taught by the same scholars. But they are there and they challenge us. The stories are there, but what are they are teaching us?

So today we will read one short story and the interpretation given by the great Rav Kook zt”l in his commentary titled עין איה.

I hope that I will do justice  בעזרת השם  both to the  Gemarah and to Rav Kook.

Hello Everyone,

It is a sort of common idea that the Gemarah is a commentary to the Mishnah. This is true to the extent that the discussion in the Gemarah is more or less attached, or based upon, the Mishnah. But until now we have not studied a passage from the Gemarah which actually explains the Mishnah. This evening we will study such a passage.

The Mishnah is from masechet Shabbat and states two laws regarding the removal objects from one’s home to the street. Such an action would be a violation of one of the 39 forbidden labors on Shabbat.

For a beginning student this Mishnah and Gemarah are somewhat challenging. This is especially so for people living in Israel or other areas where there are “eruvs” which make the question of “removal” irrelevant.

So I hope that I will do a good job of explaining the concepts which underlie this Gemarah and that we will enjoy studying this passage.

In addition to the Gemarah printed as a Word doc I am including some illustrated Mishnayot. The explanation for the illustrations are in Hebrew but I think that the illustrations will help us during the class.

Hello Everyone,

Today I hope to complete the suggyah  that we began last week.

I am posting the pages from last week to make them easier to locate.

Hello Everyone,

Today we will study one of the fundamental concepts of the Halacha. This is the concept of “ברירה” which can be translated (awkwardly) as “retroactive clarification.”

I hope that by the end of today’s session some of you may have better translations than mine:-)

Hello Everyone,

Last week we began studying one of the most important keywords in the Gemarah, the word “ברירה” We studied it in the context of a suggyah in the second chapter of masechet Gittin. We will continue studying this passage today.

Hello Everyone,

Today we will study the very first Gemarah that I was taught (sincerely if not effectively) in sixth grade . It is the opening suggyah to the third chapter of Bava Metziah.

I hope that today’s class will be more entertaining than my lessons back when we were bombing Hanoi.

Hello Everyone,

Today we will study a suggyah from Bava Metziah. The suggyah  explores the  the enforceability of a particular clause in a contract. This clause is known as “asmachtah.”

The Halachic literature surrounding the “asmachtah clause” is very large and it is not our goal to study the many opinions  which surround this topic. Rather , we will limit ourselves to Rashi’s commentary on the suggyah and see how the Amoraim debate the validity of the clause.

Hello Everyone

In today’s class we will study one of the fundamental suggyaot of Hilchot Shabbat. Specifically we will study the suggyah which deals with setting devices on Friday afternoon which operate into Shabbat.

Hello Everyone,

Today we will study a very short suggyah which is based on a legal principle- “כל דאלים גבר”

I don’t want to be mysterious, but I would prefer to explain the concept during the class as opposed to translating it.

So I look forward to meeting with you this evening.

Hello Everyone,
For the Jewish people everywhere, this past week has been a horror. I have no doubt that everyone, whether they live here in Israel or they live abroad , has felt the horror of the attack by the terrorists of Hamas on our people .
For myself, the greatest source of consolation has been to study Torah, despite the difficulty that I find in concentrating on what I am trying to study. When I prepared today’s class I thought of this verse from Tehilim:
תהלים פרק קיט פסוק צב, צב
(צב) לוּלֵי תוֹרָתְךָ שַׁעֲשֻׁעָי אָז אָבַדְתִּי בְעָנְיִי:
For those of you who are new to this class here is the introduction that I wrote when the class began in January:

I am writing to welcome you to this series of classes on “Keywords in the Gemarah.”
Along with the Tanakh, the Gemarah forms the essence of Judaism. Every Jew ought to have at least a passing familiarity with the Gemarah. But the Gemarah is a challenging text. It is written in Aramaic and the text has no punctuation marks.
In my lifetime (which began in 1958) there have been two monumental projects whose purpose was to make the Gemarah more approachable. The first project was that of the late Rav Adin Even Yisrael-Steinsaltz zt”l. Rav Steinsaltz took it upon himself to publish a punctuated edition of the entire Babylonian Talmud accompanied by a translation of the text into spoken Hebrew. The second project was undertaken by the ArtScroll publishing company. Their project was to both translate the text of the Talmud into English and to print an anthology of the major commentaries adjacent to each page of text. It follows that the translation of a single page of the Talmud may end up being six pages long in the ArtScroll edition. It is worth pointing out that Rav Steinsaltz’s Hebrew commentary has been translated into English and is published by the Koren publishing company. Similarly, the ArtScroll edition of the Talmud has been translated into Hebrew.
The Aramaic text of the Gemarah is remarkably terse. In any translation, be it the translation found in the Koren or ArtScroll edition of the Talmud, a single line of Aramaic text may be three lines long in English. I truly believe that there is a beauty in the Aramaic text of the Talmud which does not appear in even the best translations. There is a musical rhythm in the Aramaic text.
The text of the Gemarah does lack punctuation marks. The text is very abrupt and the syntax is not at all like that of spoken English ( or Hebrew, or Spanish or any other language that I know of). But the Gemarah is remarkable in that it presents legal theories with such brevity.
My hope for this course is that by knowing how the Gemarah uses certain key words and phrases as punctuation marks. Some phrases indicate that a question is being asked. Some phrases are prefaces to answers. These key words and phrases are the keys that unlock the discussions that take place on each page of the Talmud.
So please write to me whenever you have ideas or suggestions for these sessions. Since I do not know you personally, I do not know what level of skills each member of the class possesses.
My email address is sfischman@webyeshiva.org
I look forward to meeting with you tomorrow.
Stuart Fischman

Hello Everyone
This evening we will continue in masechet Pesachim and study the suggyah about making kitchen utensils כשר לפסח

Hello Everyone,

Today we will study a suggyah from masechet Pesachim which discusses the permissibility of roasting kosher and non-kosher together in the same oven.

Hello Everyone,

Today we will begin studying the third chapter of the tractate Bava Kama, titled :Hameiniach.

This chapter deals with the responsibility of people for damages caused either  by the negligent disposal of their property or by their careless conveyance of their property.

Hello Everyone,

Last week we began to study the third chapter of masechet Bava Kama- המניח. This Gemarah deals with the responsibility of people for hazards that they create in public spaces.

Hello Everyone,

Over the past few weeks we have studied  passages from Bava Kama which deal with responsibility for objects left in the street.

Today we will begin the study responsibility  collisions  between people walking and running in the street.