Editor's Note: This post was found in 'Draft' mode in the original blog and may be incomplete. It is published here in its original state. It was last updated on 20/11/2015.
This is a variation-on-a-theme. Where I previously wrote on reading Talmud with Levinas, here I revisit the issue, simplifying some aspects, and expanding on the concept and role of will. There is one idea I wish to take for granted here, and that is a peculiar or (at least) particular presentation and perception of will.
Let it be said that if you wanted to know my essence it would not be enough that you knew the contents of my actions nor the contents of my thoughts. Let it be said that if you wanted to know my essence you would have to experience the algorithm (matrix) that produces my actions in each situation, and produces my thoughts in each context. Let it be said that this algorithm (matrix) is my will, and that it is separate from any situation.
Reading vs Engaging
There are many layers that form the study of Talmud. The range strains expectations: At one corner of the manifold is the chaveruta (friendship-connection-studyship) – the relationship of those that study Talmud together – which is a necessary aspect of the experience, generating a dialogue that is living and not merely phenomenological or theoretical. Other corners may label perceptions; divine or inspired authorship; legalistic and rhetorical implications; or, narratives of ritual or hagiography or ethos.
These layers may be obscurely (and necessarily: arbitrarily) summarized into a single premise: This Talmud has been read and studied and engaged by myriad minds, each idiosyncratic, each greater or lesser in every trait I perceive and in others too, and each has discovered the Talmud to be sufficient and necessary for its cause. This cause is a prism of a will.
To read the Talmud should mean to experience the Talmud, and to experience the Talmud is to engage it.
Let me step back and review the superficial construct of the Talmudic chaveruta: I read out the sentence in the main body of the Talmud, annotating it with emotive expression (common motifs include curiosity and bewilderment or satisfaction) or elaborating (e.g. questions that are abbreviated into rhetorical devices), or otherwise forming the bridges necessary to create flow in an elliptical text. My partner interrupts, “No, I would not say that” or “Couldn’t that imply that”. In the pages’ margins the commentators are adding their own voices and challenges and considerations, and in the appendices promises of knowledge that can ever grow, and on the shelves the unopened books sing a silent chorus of possibility and truth.
between the staccato lacunae.
The significance of a living tradition is perennial, described by the Socratic Academics and the Hindu Yogis and more. Thus, the necessity of a responsive will
