In most instruction manuals, you would expect to begin with an introduction, a table of contents, a definition of terms, some sort of systematic approach to whatever it is you’re about to learn. Yet, the Talmud begins seemingly in the middle of a discussion. It assumes a vast amount of background knowledge from the very first sentence. Without this background knowledge, the following discussion would be incomprehensible: … More »

“Give me wisdom and knowledge, that I may lead this people, for who is able to govern this great people of Yours?” (2 Chronicles 1:10) After witnessing the national revelation of the written Torah, Jews strived to preserve its timeless teachings under all circumstances. Throughout history, Jews continued to teach the values within our Scripture … More »

The temptation here is to play around with the word “practice.” To exploit its position in the phrase “practice makes perfect,” as if I have my eye on becoming the best Jew ever. Or to think aloud a bit about the way the term “practice” gets a lot of circulation these days in the phrase … More »