December Days: What do I enjoy about Talmud stories?

[jack]

Seekingferrett asked what I enjoyed about Liv's Talmud stories.

Several things, which I've noticed before I hadn't consciously thought through until I started making this list :)

I love the process of taking a story and considering possible interpretations, different messages, etc, etc. I'm naturally cautious of the idea that there's a "right" answer I'm supposed to agree with but might not, but with Talmud stories, Liv has always encouraged me to plunge in, and shared her interpretations, and many standard interpretations, but emphasised that they're supposed to be a starting point, not an ending point.

My background is vaguely CoE-y, and I am also interested in the ways Talmud stories differ in basic background assumptions to Christian stories I'm vaguely familiar with, at least as they were presented to me when I was young. Like in Liv's story about hiding in the furnace, there's an assumption that Mrs Ookba was given a miracle because of her good works. In a Christian story, the miracles would usually come to someone who had faith in God, in various ways. But in Talmud stories it can be completely different -- through scholarship, as essentially morally-neutral magic; through God's will or whim; through deserving it.

And I love that Liv is always interested when explaining them, that she is so eager to share things with me when I want.

And maybe, that's it's just impressive that there's a chain of scholarship from a very long time ago when these stories first started being studied, to me, now.

Comments

[seekingferret]

I like this post. I think the thing that scares me when I share Talmud stories with non-Jews is that there's certainly no right interpretation, but there are definitely wrong interpretations. Especially because the Talmud is so telegraphic in style, if you don't have a hard-earned understanding of its context, it is easy to misread things and especially to oversimplify things.

Have you looked at any of the more legalistic Talmudic writings? The fun stories exist in the interstices of the Talmud as legal codex, and often in addition to their value as sociological history or moral examplar, they serve to amplify or question a legal subject.

[jack]

Thank you.

I think the thing that scares me when I share Talmud stories with non-Jews is that ... there are definitely wrong interpretations.

Yeah. On the few occasions we've studied something, Liv has been helpfully open in telling me what commonly "expected" readings might be, which has definitely been helpful, in that they make sense when explained, but wouldn't have been obvious from the text. I'd get a lot less out of reading them cold.

Have you looked at any of the more legalistic Talmudic writings?

Liv showed me the beginning of one of the books (I can't remember the name), on marriage contracts that she said was a common introductory point, and implicitly a framework for contracts in general. And again, filled me in on a lot of the "why" that wouldn't have been evident by reading the rules (although I think at least some of that would have been in the commentaries, which I didn't really read myself?). I was interested to read more! (But I haven't yet.)