Thursday, May 19, 2011

Future Posts on Learning and Teaching

For the sake of simplicity, I'm going to post future thoughts about learning and teaching on my Midrash, etc. blog. They fit nicely in the "etc." category. Here's one on The Shortest Way as the best way.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Midrash and Torah Technology

These photos show a fragment from the Dead Sea scrolls photographed with two very different processes. The photo on the left was taken with standard equipment. Many words and letters were obscured (and even thought to be lost) to the effects of age.

The photo on the right was taken with a process called multispectral imagining technology developed by NASA. It uses ultraviolet and infrared light to increase image resolution. Previously obscured or apparently invisible text appears. Now, every letter of every word on the fragment could be understood.  

My point is this: It is possible for a new technology to reveal what was always there, but obscured. 

Monday, May 9, 2011

Turn It Over

This well-known saying of Ben Bag Bag says a lot about Torah on the one hand and the practice of learning on the other.
Ben Bag Bag says: Turn it over and turn it over, for everything is in it. Look deeply into it, and grow old with it, and spend time over it, and do not stir from it, because there is no greater portion. (Pirkei Avot 5:22)
The statements that "everything is in it" and "there is no greater portion" relate to the Torah. Torah is established at Sinai, confirmed in Yeshua, and worked out in tradition. Everything is in it. Especially understood in its Brit Hadashah renewal. 
The rest of Ben Bag Bag's saying is about close reading as a lifelong practice:
1. Turn it over
2. Turn it over again
3. Look deeply into it
4. Grow old with it
5. Spend (lots of) time with it
6. Do not stir from it
There's no room here for superficial or episodic study. Ben Bag Bag urges us to be all in for a lifetime. He envisions a loving, repetitious, lifelong engagement with the words of Torah which are deep enough, rich enough, to reward a life study. Old age may be a time of physical decline, but it also offers the potential to be an especially rewarding time, culminating a life of study.