Talmud and Totes

I love an organizing project. There is nothing quite like going through a collection of neglected tote bags, separating their contents into little piles and taking the time and intention to find homes for everything. Perhaps more than anything, I love the emotional journey of it all. The sorting offers an embodied integration process that brings me down memory lane as I come into contact with my life’s rogue scraps—figuring out what to keep and what to let go of. And in the end, I’m (usually…hopefully) left with spaciousness. Honestly, I got goosebumps just describing the process. 

Right beside my love for organizing, however, lives a skepticism that makes me wary of categories and labels. It is one thing to organize pens, meds, and old papers, but it’s something else entirely to try to organize beings. It feels dissonant to attempt to fit anything that grows into a diagnostic system that says,  “you are this and, therefore, you go here.” Even when I’m organizing “things,” I feel the restriction of categories. For example, deciding that a pen should go in a cup on my desk instead of with “the art supplies” is to overlook part of its role in the world. Life’s way of being so much greater than the sum of its parts conflicts with categorization as an essentialization effort. And as many of us know here in late-stage capitalism, attempts to essentialize human beings for the sake of categorization and labels are violent exercises in dehumanization that have concrete impacts on people’s bodies and lives. 

These mixed impacts of categorization that bring us both organization and (violent) oversimplification show up on the daf and in the bet midrash, which present opportunities to notice how/when categories can be a tool for liberation or for oppression. The Talmud itself is an organizing project—it is the organization of divine teachings that have been scattered through time. Yehuda HaNasi organized earlier teachings into the Mishna (and in doing so, created six seders/orders: seeds, holidays, women, damages, holy things, purity), and the Stammaim arranged later teachings, creating the Gemara that fits into those six orders of the Mishna. And learning Talmud involves breaking our sugya into categories by determining a text’s historical layer and its agenda, determining who authored it and what that says about the argument we’re seeking to understand. In this way, categorizing (parts of) a sugya is critical to understanding it.

Despite this, I wouldn’t say the Talmud is well organized. In fact, the part of me that organizes gets taken aback by the Talmud’s lack of categorical clarity. The Talmud is winding, non-linear, and associative; it doesn’t systematically ask and answer questions in order (or in full). But even when I accept that the Talmud’s organizing principles are not about systematically answering questions, I often find myself in chevruta grasping at straws to find connections between a piece of gemara and the mishna it’s nested under. The Gemara’s tendency towards free association creates a mysterious dynamic with the structure of the Mishna, one that is (or at least seems) contrary to what I have been conditioned to understand as “well organized.” 

I had the pleasure of exploring these (and other) questions about the Talmud’s organization in Shiur Klali last zman. We started by unpacking Berakhot’s first mishna, which  questions the appropriate time frame for reciting the Sh’ma, and then we jumped in the Gemara to this story on the following page:

תניא אמר רבי יוסי פעם אחת הייתי מהלך בדרך ונכנסתי לחורבה אחת מחורבות ירושלים להתפלל בא אליהו זכור לטוב ושמר לי על הפתח (והמתין לי) עד שסיימתי תפלתי לאחר שסיימתי תפלתי אמר לי שלום עליך רבי ואמרתי לו שלום עליך רבי ומורי ואמר לי בני מפני מה נכנסת לחורבה זו אמרתי לו להתפלל ואמר לי היה לך להתפלל בדרך ואמרתי לו מתירא הייתי שמא יפסיקו בי עוברי דרכים ואמר לי היה לך להתפלל תפלה קצרה באותה שעה למדתי ממנו שלשה דברים למדתי שאין נכנסין לחורבה ולמדתי שמתפללין בדרך ולמדתי שהמתפלל בדרך מתפלל תפלה קצרה 

It is taught (in a baraita) – Rabbi Yosei said: One time I was walking on a path and I entered into one of the ruins of Jerusalem to pray. Eliyahu (remembered for good) came and guarded me at the opening and waited for me until I finished my prayer. After I finished my prayer, he said to me, ‘Peace upon you, my muchness/teacher (רבי/rabbi)).’ I said to him, ‘Peace upon you, my muchness/teacher (רבי/rabbi) and my permeator/teacher (מורי/mori).’ And he said to me, ‘My son, because of what have you entered into this ruin?’ I said to him, ‘To pray.’ And he said to me, ‘It was for/to you to pray on the path.’ And I said to him, ‘I was afraid lest path crossers interrupt me.’ And he said to me, ‘It was for/to you to pray a short prayer.’ At that time I learned from him three things: I learned that we do not enter into a ruin and I learned that we pray on a path and I learned that one who prays on a path prays a short prayer.

Throughout our zman I kept asking myself how this story ended up at the beginning of Berakhot. “Prayer” in this case (תפלה) refers specifically to the Amidah, which the Rabbis treat differently than the shema, so the relationship between this story and the mishna it’s nested under is not especially clear. It follows that this story likely ended up at the beginning of the Talmud because there was something about it that the Stammaim thought would be key to setting future learners up to understand what they/the Talmud were trying to do.

Through its looseness, its free associative-ness, and its way of getting so far from the Mishna while maintaining a line of breadcrumbs back to it, the Gemara models a softer relationship to categories than the one I have. The Gemara seems to be upheld by organizational principles that allow teachings and stories to maintain a relationship to their mishna (even if you have to search for it) without their interpretive value being confined to that relationship. Our sugya’s story gets to hold infinite meanings across time and diaspora because it has not been essentialized into “fitting in” with its textual surroundings. Seeking its relationship to the mishna might be an important avenue of inquiry (depending on your learning goals)—and this story has a lot to offer beyond that relationship. I think the ideas/implications that made this story an attractive candidate for the opening pages of Berakhot, at least in part, live in what the story proposes on its own.

This story describes Rabbi Yose making his way through a post-Temple reality as he prays amidst the ruins of Jerusalem/maybe even the Temple ruins themselves. While praying the Amidah (which, let us note, was a rabbinic innovation), Elijahu HaNavi shows up! In (what for me was) a surprising twist, Eliyahu seems to be in favor of Rabbi Yose distancing himself from the destruction in place and practice—“Why have you entered the ruins to pray?” he questions. “When you’re going on your way, it’s important to keep going. Pray a short prayer.” This encounter leads Rabbi Yose to establish some halakhic principles because, clearly, Eliyahu, in all his biblical glory, would be not only a halakhic authority in general, but specifically a halakhic authority on the practices of the rabbinically-innovated Amidah (*wink*). 

Underneath this story is that classic, rabbinic, Option 3 longing to remain connected to the tradition while moving towards something new. Eliyahu’s appearance to Rabbi Yose invokes a direct encounter with Torah, therefore establishing a live, dynamic relationship between the Torah the Rabbis inherited (Written Torah) and the Torah they create (Oral Torah). Torah (via Eliyahu) is cast as a protective and authoritative presence that encourages Rabbi Yose to create distance between himself and the ruins. And in response to that encounter, Rabbi Yose learns what to do: he figures out a way forward that honors his life circumstances as well as those of his ancestors. This is the nugget that I think brought Rabbi Yose and Eliyahu’s story to the opening pages of the Bavli —communicating to us that this project is as committed to remembering Eliyahu and the ruins for good as it is to us continuing on our path, continuing to change our tradition for the better. The weaving of Oral and Written Torah in ways that defy categories without abandoning organization creates new pathways for how we can bring our tradition forward, an inherently messy task that must resist the urge to essentialize if we want it to grow.