Teaching Ourselves Into Being

(The image above depicts a calico cat named Ripley sniffing at the printed pages of the Mishnah Collective’s Yoma Chapter 1 Commentary.)

This week in Mishnah Collective we celebrated our completion (for now) of the first chapter of Masechet Yoma with a siyum, a text party that makes space for sharing Torah revealed while studying a chapter or tractate of teachings. And make space we did: Mishnah Collective siyums have become a cherished part of our learning. They function not only to reflect on the material we’ve learned, but to also spend time creating Torah by commenting on various words and phrases in the Mishnah. SVARA’s Mishnah Collective Program Coordinator Ren then uses their technological maven-ry to assemble our notes into a daf of commentary, modeled after the image of a Talmudic folio. (You can find this resource here, which we hope you’ll use for your own learning!)

During this week’s siyum, Ren sent us into breakout rooms to hear each other’s insights about the teachings we’ve learned. As they catapulted into this sacred digital space, they offered, “let’s go make gemara!” To see ourselves as inheritors of the rabbinic tradition means that we don’t simply learn the texts the Rabbis bequeathed to us. It means that, like them, we must come to make texts, too. 

As I reflected on the Mishnah we’ve learned these last few months, I felt the subtle call of the Rabbis offering this invitation to us. 

If you’ve learned along with Mishnah Collective—either in real time or by reading our daily emails—you’ve witnessed how the first chapter of Yoma is all about setting the stage for Yom Kippur: preparing the Kohein Gadol (the highest priest) and his family, and then preparing the space. But Yom Kippur’s Temple service is clearly outlined in the Torah, and the Torah’s discussion includes almost nothing that this chapter mentions. Now, of course, we could make sense of that by understanding the mishnah as an elaboration on what the Torah is, which is how it is often described in most learning spaces. But for me, this chapter offers such an amazing example of a different story: we see here that the Rabbis create a reality in which they are present, useful, and needed.

One of my favorite examples is this chapter’s sixth mishnah, which discusses how the Kohein Gadol stayed awake ahead of the Temple service:

אִם הָיָה חָכָם, דּוֹרֵשׁ. וְאִם לָאו, תַּלְמִידֵי חֲכָמִים דּוֹרְשִׁין לְפָנָיו. וְאִם רָגִיל לִקְרוֹת, קוֹרֵא. וְאִם לָאו, קוֹרִין לְפָנָיו. וּבַמֶּה קוֹרִין לְפָנָיו, בְּאִיּוֹב וּבְעֶזְרָא וּבְדִבְרֵי הַיָּמִים. זְכַרְיָה בֶּן קְבוּטָל אוֹמֵר, פְּעָמִים הַרְבֵּה קָרִיתִי לְפָנָיו בְּדָנִיֵּאל:

If he was a chacham (sage), he would interpret Torah. If not, sages would interpret Torah before him. And if he was accustomed to read Torah, he would read; and if he was not, they would read Torah before him. (Mishnah Yoma 1:6)

The sages insert themselves into a deeply intimate moment in the Temple service preparations: in the moments before the day begins, they sit in a confined room teaching Torah to the Kohein Gadol. As they describe this fantasy version of Temple times, the Rabbis teach themselves into being. Of course, there were not rabbinic sages who functioned robustly within the Temple system, as the rabbinic project began far into the future of the Torah’s practiced Yom Kippur. But here they are in this mishnah, side-by-side with priests, playing their part in the Yom Kippur preparations of the Temple. By writing these words, the Rabbis create and then inhabit a world that never existed, but they nevertheless claim continuity and along with it their role in history as they write about it.

As we close this chapter, I’m grateful for this amazing example of what it looks like for the Rabbis to retroject themselves into processes and stories where they simply hadn’t existed, and to build new worlds through their learning. I’m even more grateful, though, for the ways y’all do that work, too, and the ways we do this work together in this space, in our yeshiva, and in the world.

Siyum, from the root samech vav mem means “to attach” and “to mark”. As we mark this learning, we recognize that we are of it. As we learn and create Torah, we’ve made our mark on the first perek of Mishnah Yoma, and it has made our mark on us.

You can check out our commentary here, and if you’ve been following along, please share your comments here today so they can be added! Mazal tov to all who learned a phrase, a word, or a letter of this chapter over these months, to everyone who captioned or tech’d the space, and to all of the commentators who joined our zoom room. May our Torah continue to flourish!