Experiencing the text

Moliere has a character responding to being explained the difference between prose and poetry, "You mean I have been speaking prose all my life and didn't know it."

What, in fact, is the justification for condensing language tersely, hinting subtly poetically rather than simply saying what one has in mind?

If the poet succeeds he has invited the reader to join him in a moment of reconstructing the idea from within. Poetry requires partnership, i.e. chavrusah. Without a proactive reader the poem cannot come to life. As the poet critic Archibald MacLeish said, "A poem should not mean, but be."

Educational psychologists speak of the ideal learning --- where there is less teaching there is more learning, heuristic learning. When the instructor holds forth from Olympus the student is passive not engaged. Hands on / minds on grappling with ideas becoming internalized is the ideal learning environment: A Beis Midrash (Talmudic study hall).

As W.B. Yeats had it, "Rooted in the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart."

Talmudic text eminently qualifies as poetry: terse, rhythmic, allusive, demanding to be expressed, expanded upon, extended, ever being internalized. A legal cum spiritual cum practical moment of connecting the concrete to the abstract." Though engaged with pots and pans, pits and ploughs yet threading celestial formulae for the ethical and the sublime connecting one with the other. Ultimately bringing mind and heart to a oneness of caring to doing. (See the Idiom and the Oddity by Sam Benito, Amazon books.)

In testimony to close to half a century of teaching the uninitiated, I and my colleagues at Ohr Someach Jerusalem have watched sophomores and doctoral students becoming electrified in the pursuit and articulation of resolving the essential paradoxes of being human, Talmudically.

University of London published a study of learning that took place in a quiet environment versus learning that took place in a noisy environment. That which was studied in a quiet environment was more quickly absorbed. That which was learned in a noisy environment had greater retention. Invariably newcomers to Ohr Somach accustomed to the silence of a university library ask, "How can one study in such a noisy environment?" It doesn't take too long until the all pervasive energy of the throbbing debate of the Beis Medrash amplifies and aides the intensity of concentration.

WHY DAF YOMI?

Because by now the Talmud is in my bones. Its
elegant and arcane ethical algebra, its soaked-in
quintessential Jewishness, its fun, its difficulty, its
accumulative virtue ("I learned a 'blatt' today, I've
learned forty 'blatt' this year") all balance against
the cost in time and the so-called "remoteness from
reality." Is 'Lear' closer to reality? I think they are
about as close ('l'havdil,' as my rabbi would
interject) in different ways, and that the Talmud is
holy besides.

Anyway, I love it. That's reason enough. My
father once said to me, "If I had enough breath left
in me for only one last word, I'd say to you, 'Study
the Talmud.' " I'm just beginning to understand
him. I would say the same thing to my own sons.

Above and beyond all its other intellectual and
cultural values, the Talmud is, for people like us,
'identity,' pure and ever-springing.

--- Herman Wouk, unpublished diary,
16 January 1972

Submitted by Herman Wouk O.B.M. to Ohr Somayach's Shma Yisrael Magazine 1974

That urgency that has man searching to resolve the apparent contradictions of being created with a soul and a body as they pull in opposite directions is what the Torah, the Oral Law, are all about — resolving those contradictions.

When going unresolved leaving us with the festering angst of that divisive duality. Apparently that's what Mr. Wouk had in mind when he visited OS, spoke with staff and students and said, "Ohr Someach seems to be a hospital with a medical school attached" . . .. hands on, minds on, caring engagement with the nature, substance of our reality bringing to doing and sharing.

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Rabbi Nota Schiller is dean of Yeshiva Ohr Somayach, Jerusalem and the driving force behind the development of Ohr Somayach International, which has opened yeshivas and learning branches in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, South Africa, and Australia. He is an influential figure in the baal teshuva movement,having guided generations of students with little or no Jewish background to master the classical rabbinical texts and embrace an Orthodox lifestyle. He is widely regarded as an erudite Torah scholar in his own right.