This blog is an experiment. How can I make Daf Yomi (and intense Talmud study) relevant for the liberal minded Jew?
Let's see...
Friday, January 15, 2010
A new frontier
For a year now, I've been studying a page of Talmud a day (Daf Yomi). I love the resources that are available on the internet. The Daf Yomi Advancement Forum, the OU, Daf Digest are all wonderful sites. However, as a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College they don't always speak to me. Of course there are gems buried in the text, but what about the everyday legal arguments? Where does knowing that if I have coins in my mouth when I go into a mikvah (a ritual bath) they will make me impure the minute I leave the water fit into my life? What about knowing how far away from fecal matter one must stand in order to pray?
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Apropos of the coins in the mouth, see R. Martin Samuel Cohen's interpretation of that mishnah (M. Mikvaot 8:5) in his The Boy on the Door on the Ox (Aviv Press, 2008). While you're at it, read the whole book.
ReplyDeleteYour post here seems to imply that "gems in the text" are distinct from "everyday legal arguments." That isn't necessarily so, as you are developing in the later posts. Good work!
--Alyssa Gray