One of the coolest and perhaps most under-used Jewish resources at Swarthmore is our ‘Beit Midrash’. ‘Beit Midrash’ means ‘House of Learning’ and Batei Midrash around the world function as study halls expressly for the purpose of studying classical Jewish texts. Our Beit Midrash is a small room in a small quad in a relatively remote corner of the Swarthmore campus, where one can find a small collection of classical Jewish texts; lots of Hebrew Bibles, Chumashes, a few different Midrash, Halakha, and Talmud collections.
Aside from being an aesthetically interesting space, with lots of ancient and ‘holy’ books filling the shelves and pictures of important, wise-looking rabbis adorning the walls, the Beit Midrash is a place to study Jewish texts from a modern, critical perspective, something that I imagine isn’t very common in a liberal arts environment. It’s a shame to admit it, but at the present time I don’t think there are any students at Swat who are currently studying the Talmud tractates in the Beit Midrash. My class is slowly (really slowly) working its way through Genesis right now, trying to read the texts from a modern, critical perspective. It’s hard work when you’re Hebrew is as bad as mine, but also really exciting. Reading the Torah in the original and trying to come up with valid, text-based interpretations (interpretations that do not rely on assumptions and information from outside of the text) has been one of the most rewarding Jewish experiences of my time in college. My prof pointed out to me the other day that the beauty and power of our tradition comes directly a result of the beauty, wisdom, and power of our texts. Ok, she didn’t use those exact words, but she did talk about how valuable the texts are. I’m not exactly sure what exactly the value is or where it comes from, but I’m inclined to agree. She noted that as liberal American Jews become less literate in the language, style, logic, world-view, and approach of classical Jewish texts, we lose an integral part of Jewish civilization, to our detriment. One can only go so far with vague concepts of Jewish identity, as well as modern Jewish history, Israel politics and advocacy, holidays and other ritual matters, before one runs into the problem of the source of all this tradition, which is to be found in the vast collection of text we have at our disposal. These texts usually take the form of an elaboration on, or an analysis or interpretation of the Torah, the fundamental text of the religion, and by extension, Jewish civilization. These texts, though old and written from a religious perspective that often is very foreign to modern sensibilities (like my own) is definitely worth looking into.
One of the rabbis at the camp where I worked this summer told me that though I know nothing about it and might not be able to read it unaided at this point, the Babylonian Talmud has been the primary influence on all of Jewish life after its publication around the year 500 CE. Most of our modern interpretations of the Hebrew Bible, our traditions and rituals, and our spirituality and mysticism come from the (Babylonian) Talmud. I guess I won’t know if she’s correct until I read it myself. Man, that’s going to take a long time.
