Daf Yomi: Temple Archaeology Without Ruins
Literary critic Adam Kirsch is reading a page of Talmud a day, along with Jews around the world.
The Talmud is such a wide-ranging text that it demands a versatile reader. Depending on the subject matter, you have to have the mind of a lawyer, a mathematician, a historian, or a mystic. Perhaps that is why the Talmud could serve as the core of Jewish education for so many centuries: In studying it, your brain is put through as many different exercises as if you were carrying a full course load. This week, Daf Yomi readers were challenged to think like archaeologists, as the rabbis speculated about the exact architecture and arrangement of the Temple. But in this case we are archaeologists with no ruins or relics to guide us: All we have to go by are a few statements in the Bible and the oral tradition. (The Koren Talmud, which I am using in my Daf Yomi reading, helpfully translates the rabbis’ arguments into diagrams.)
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