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INSIGHT 4(46 Uptown Southfield Rd. at 111/2 Mile • 559-3900 M.-F. 11-7 Coolidge at Catalpa, SAT. 10-5 Berkley 541-0750 SUN. 12-4 • ., .„ The Gate Continued from Page 30 was beginning to ask me ques- understand the Scripture as do tions, and I found myself prepar- all other nations; you will be ing for them in advance. I too like them." It was time to get a had questions to ask. More and new set of books. To my surprise, the Mintzers more I was entering the lernen. One evening, as the ray was remembered me. I asked to go to reviewing the closing lines of the storeroom. I walked down the narrow the volume we had been study- ing during all the time I had stairwell and into the cellar. At been in the circle, something the bottom, I opened the door happened that was to help me , and turned on the light. The gain some of the assurance I smell of fresh bindings and had been awaiting. The siyum, musty pages filled my nostrils. the celebration of the end of a My eyes fell at once upon the portion of our study, was at wall of Talmuds before me. hand, and a kind of electricity Ready to scale it, I walked over fingers was in the air. We were com- to the shelf and ran my slid my pleting more than a book; we over the bindings. I were turning a corner of our lives. Rabbi Rotenbush read aloud the wisdom of the great sage Rabbi Yochanan: "Anyone who grasps the Torah without its mantle will be buried without his mantle." I had long since ceased dis- missing opaque Talmudic dicta as beyond my comprehension. Words, phrases and ideas that seemed unintelligible could be penetrated. And when we man- aged to interpret our way through such a text, those were the moments of highest intellec- tual and emotional drama. They were times during which all of us seemed held close to the an- cients. "One cannot There was a time I would have had nothing to say, when I refresh the spirit could not have brought myself to speak for the Talmud. But with Talmud that time was over, and now I without sustaining knew it. I plunged into the commentary and excerpted it for the body." all of us: "The commentaries of the Tosphot explain that he who does not learn the Oral Tradi- hand from one shelf to another tion will be buried by the dense until it stopped at the Steinsaltz weight of Scripture." I thought editions. Adin Steinsaltz was a young for a moment of my attachment to Scripture and how I was now Israeli who, like me, had once ready to move beyond it. And confronted the world of lernen as then I continued: "If we listen an outsider. Now he had mas- only to the condensed words of tered it. Halfway between the the written Torah, if we do not bes medresh and the university, surround it with the mantle of he was capable of reviewing any the Oral Tradition, if we do not volume of Talmud with all the lern the Gemara, here shall we attachment of a pious Jew. Yet be buried. We cannot com- he could also be asked, as he prehend the full meanings of had been, to give the prestigious each verse of the Bible, we can- Terry Lectures at Yale. With a not fathom its depths without new edition of the text, he had the light of the Talmud. With- found a way to enable modern out it we are like the dead; you students to enter the immemo- are as good as buried. That, rial, complex world of the Tal- gentlemen, is what is meant mud. I piled the books into my when Rabbi Yochanan says that arms and went uPstairs. if we try to grasp the Torah "I see you're getting set to do without its mantle we shall be some serious studying," Mrs. buried without our mantle." Mintzer said as I paid her for The room was silent. I turned the set of books. "That man has red. opened up the Talmud for a "Terrific!" Ian whispered to whole new generation of schol- me in English. ars. Now you will join them." "A scholar," Shlomo said As I left Mintzer's with my chuckling, "he can tern." books in a brown wrapper, I • made my way to Mea Shearim On Thursday morning, I went and the Reicher's [religious ad- back to Mintzer's [a scholar who visers to Heilman]. I hadn't seen sold religious books from his them in a while and somehow a home]. All the books I had visit now felt appropriate. Mrs. selected there on my first visit Reichler greeted me warmly. "Tea?" she asked. "I'm making sat on my shelf, new and hardly ever touched. They had made some anyway." "Na?" Reb Yosef Moshe my library grow. They were all commentaries on the Bible and crinkled his eyes at me. It was its contents. But I knew now his way of asking me to talk that "if you have put on the about myself. mantle of the Talmud, you will "I've been to Mintzer's again."