First last…

This morning at 6:05 am I completed the first of my “lasts” for this week — my last Talmudic Personalities class with Leah Rosenthal. Since I returned to the US I have gotten up faithfully at 4:40 am on Sunday and Thursday for Talmudic Personalities and on Monday and Wednesday for Talmudic Heroines with Gila Fine. Gila’s class will meet twice this week, but Leah’s class ended today, as on Thursday there are no classes because of Shavuot, the third of the pilgrimage holidays or regalim (besides Pesach and Sukkot).

My heart is very full, and my mind is flooded with memories of this year. I know I’ll be wanting to say lots more about my time at Pardes, as well as my time in Israel, and hopefully I’ll be able to motivate myself to do that in the coming weeks. I have a lot of photos still to share, as well — of the remainder of the tiyyul in February, of my last trip to the Botanic Garden, of the Hebron tiyyul back in the fall that I was so conflicted about that I never wrote it up…

Leah Rosenthal also taught my wonderful Intermediate Talmud class, which I had to give up when I returned to the States. At the beginning of the year I think Leah wasn’t too sure about my skills, and I was a bit worried about her as a teacher — she seemed a little stern. But I’ve come to feel that my classes with her, especially the Talmud class, were the classes that I was looking for when I came to Pardes. Leah taught me that I can sit down with a passage of Talmud, with my trusty Jastrow and Frank dictionaries and my Tanakh at my elbow, and translate what I am reading. I may not get it all right, but I’ll be able to unpack a lot of it. I can read the Rashi commentary — in that pesky special “Rashi script” that it’s printed in, where some letters don’t remotely resemble their counterparts in normal Hebrew print — and to a large extent understand what Rashi is trying to tell me. If I am lucky enough to have a great chevruta, as I did for much of the year in my friend Yarden, I can go even further in understanding.

The study of Talmud is a curious way to spend one’s time in this modern day, I suppose. When we started at Pardes they told us that we were unusual in choosing to take a year out of our lives to do this, and that we could look forward to returning to our communities as “the most knowledgeable Jew in the room” in many settings. I hope that studying Talmud will be a part of my life forever, that I will be able to find chevruta partners here, and that this year of reflection and learning will do what I planned: shake me out of my habits and propel me into a new chapter of my life.

Right now it feels as if we are all suspended in amber. Time seems to have little meaning. Nonetheless, this week I am reaching the conclusion of a milestone experience in my life, and readying myself for whatever may come. Look for more thoughts about this — the nine months is ending soon, but the blog will continue for a bit as I process my experiences. Thanks for traveling with me!