The rabbinic discussion of the danger of pairs begins with the Mishnah’s statement that a person should not have less than four cups of wine at the seder, even if he is so poor that he has to rely on communal funds. “Four cups of wine?” asks the anonymous voice of the Talmud. “How could the sages legislate something that is so dangerous? After all, we are taught that a person should never eat two of anything, or drink two of anything” (109b). The rabbinic discussion reflects a prevalent belief in destructive forces that we with our modern sensibilities would likely dismiss as superstitious. One such belief was the fear that doing things in pairs was hazardous. It was always safer to do something an odd number of times. But if so, how could we possibly be obligated to drink “two times two” cups of wine?
The sages offer various justifications. Rav Nahman suggests that since the Torah describes Pesach as “a night of vigil” (Exodus 12:42), we need not worry, because Pesach is guarded from demons and harmful spirits. Rava says that the third cup, used in the Grace after Meals, is a “cup of blessing” that serves as part of a mitzvah, and could never combine for evil purposes. And Ravina posits that since these cups are a symbol of freedom, they do not combine in pairs with one another, but each stands independently in its own right.
These explanations notwithstanding, the sages remain preoccupied with the danger of doing anything in pairs and go on to relate several stories about the lengths they would go to avoid such behavior. Whenever Abayey would drink a cup of wine, for instance, his mother would immediately hold out two more cups, one in each hand, lest he inadvertently drink just one cup more and become susceptible to demonic forces. If a person inadvertently stops after two cups and finds himself besieged by demons, the Talmud instructs that he should hold his right thumb in his left hand, and hold his left thumb in his right hand, and say: “You, my two thumbs, and I make three!” But even so, there is no guarantee that he will be protected.
The very same day that I learned about the Talmud’s fear of pairs, my friend Shira happened to forward me an article written by the parents of twins. The article, entitled “25 Tips about the Horrors of Raising Twins That You Will Never Learn from Movies and TV,” reminded me of the beginning of Anne of Green Gables, when orphan Anne is told that she will be sent to take care of Mrs. Blewett’s two sets of twins. “Twins seem to be my lot in life,” Anne miserably laments. The article warned that with twins, the pregnancy is harrowing, the early months of the babies’ lives are more than twice the amount of work, and the first year is so exhausting that the parents don’t even remember any of it.
As I wrote back to Shira, I must beg to differ. Yes, parenting twins is exhausting and all-consuming. But the rewards are not double, but exponential. Each night after the girls were born I watched them fall asleep in a single bassinet. I laid them down beside one another, each with her head facing away from her sister and toward one side of the crib. But invariably within the first few minutes of settling into sleep, they would each turn so that they were facing each other, their noses just centimeters apart. I thought about the cherubs in the Temple which would face each other whenever Israel was doing God’s will, but turn away from each other when Israel had sinned. My angelic twins wanted all to be well with the world.
And then there was the reward of knowing they had each other. The article Shira sent recounted horror stories about mothers who could not go to the bathroom when they were home alone with their babies or who went days without showering because they had no time alone. This never happened to me. When I needed time to myself, I laid the girls on their stomachs facing each other, with a few toys between them. Tagel amused herself by trying to catch Liav’s eye and cracking up any time Liav looked in her direction; Liav mostly ignored Tagel because she was intent on moving all the toys onto her section of the mat. Every so often I had to separate them because Liav did not realize that the “toy” she was yanking on with all her might was actually Tagel’s hair. But for the most part, they played together quite nicely, at least for long enough for me to run to the bathroom or jump in the shower.
As they got older, we were able to witness their increased interactions with each other. Tagel learned to crawl several months before Liav, so she scrambled around the house searching for books and toys to deliver to her sister. Once they learned to feed themselves, we sat them down in adjacent high chairs and they passed food to each other. Liav placed her sandwich on Tagel’s tray, and Tagel reciprocated with her cucumber slices. Yes, on one of those occasions when I took advantage of their camaraderie to transfer the wash, I returned to find the two of them painting each other’s hair with strawberry yogurt. For a moment I began to wonder whether the Talmud was on to something in its association between pairs and demonic forces, but then I could only laugh as I took a wet washcloth and wiped the pink streaks out of their hair.
Throughout those early months Daniel and I were often beside ourselves with exhaustion, with food to cook, kids to bathe, diapers to change, and no time to work or sleep—let alone to enjoy a glass of wine. But the joy of observing our own pair grow and develop and interact with each other has been indescribable, and even if our cup is overflowing, we never doubt for a moment that it is a cup of blessing.
* * *
Tractate Pesachim takes its name from notions of doubling and pairs: there is not one Pesach but rather two Pesachim. The first, known as Pesach Rishon, is the normal Passover celebration that takes place on the anniversary of the exodus from Egypt. The second, known as Pesach Sheni, is the make-up opportunity offered one month later to those who were ritually impure or too far from the Temple on the fourteenth of Nisan to bring the sacrifice then. And so Pesachim symbolizes the opportunity for second chances and a new lease on life. In that sense the holiday has something in common with Yom Kippur, which is also a chance to wipe the slate clean and begin anew.
When I look back on my own life, and on the span of time between the start of my daf yomi study when I lived alone in Jerusalem and its culmination as a mother of three, I think about how I, too, was blessed with a second chance. When I started learning Yoma, I was quite certain that I would never get married again. But there are multiple versions of every story, and ours, too, has a take two. One fall evening at the beginning of my study of Bava Kama I attended a Shabbat dinner where I met a guy named Andrew, who had baked the challah loaves for the meal. His challah was delicious, and I asked him if he baked every week. He told me that he had recently been injured in a bus accident, and he had to quit his job; he was baking and selling challah as a way of earning money. Poor guy, I thought, resolving to purchase his challah weekly. He delivered it to my house every Friday, and I enjoyed fresh home-baked loaves.
Reader, as you know, I did not marry him. But several months later, just a few weeks before Pesach in 2009, I ran into Andrew’s roommate. His name was Daniel and I recognized him from the weekly class taught by Avivah Zornberg that we attended together, though we had never spoken. Daniel said he had been meaning to get in touch because Andrew had returned to America for surgery, leaving his unsold merchandise behind. Before his departure, he’d instructed his roommate to distribute the remaining loaves to his most loyal customers. “Pesach is coming and I’m stuck with a freezer full of challah,” Daniel told me. “Can you help?”
The first chapter of Pesachim treats the commandment to rid one’s house of all leavened products before the start of Pesach. In a sense, then, I was merely helping Daniel perform a mitzvah. But as I’d learned in Yoma, “One cannot compare a person who has bread in his basket to a person who does not have bread in his basket.” A few days later Daniel stopped by and filled my freezer with six loaves of challah, which I, living alone, could never possibly finish in time for the holiday. I asked him if he wanted to come over for sandwiches, still unsuspecting that he was my match, my pair, my second chance. We have been breaking bread together ever since.
SHEKALIM
Weaving the Talmudic Tapestry
Tractate Shekalim deals
with the finances and organization of the Temple, and specifically with the half-shekel coin that must be donated each year by Jews the world over. With the conclusion of this tractate, I completed seven and a half years of daf yomi and came full circle, since the end of tractate Shekalim hearkens back to Yoma. The final chapter of Shekalim deals with items of uncertain purity status that are discovered in Jerusalem. What happens if one finds spittle lying on the sidewalk. Do we assume that it belongs to someone who is pure or impure (21a)? This leads to a discussion of what to do when various holy objects in the Temple become impure, including the parochet (21b), the woven tapestry that divided the sanctuary from the Holy of Holies.
The rabbis debate the nature of the weave of the parochet, which the Torah describes as “a curtain of blue, purple, and crimson strands, and fine twisted linen” (Exodus 26:31). The Talmud cites a source stating that in fact each strand was made of thirty-two threads, based on a more sophisticated understanding of the Bible’s use of the term moshzar, twisted linen. Adding a further twist to the debate, a third sage asserts that each strand was actually made of forty-eight threads—and thus the parochet is woven into an increasingly textured tapestry as the Talmudic text unfurls.
The Talmud, too, has proven increasingly textured the more I learn. If any page ever seems simple and straightforward upon first read, it is generally because I have not studied it carefully enough. Or, as one rabbi rebukes another at various points in Talmud, “If you have read it, you have not reviewed it. If you have reviewed it, you have not gone over it a third time. And if you’ve gone over it a third time, they’ve not explained it to you well.” Only as I look closer and begin to unravel the various strands of argumentation do I begin to appreciate the rich texture of the material. Where do the rabbis get twenty-four threads? Because had each strand been made of one thread, the Bible would simply have said chut, a thread; had it been made of two threads, the Bible would have said chut kaful, a double thread; had it been made of three threads, it would have said shazur, an entwined braid. But it said moshzar, which must be double the shazur, and so there were six threads. Moreover, the Bible lists four different strands—blue, purple, crimson, and linen—and so we must multiply six by four, yielding twenty-four. This is quite a thick weave. Indeed, the Mishnah states that the parochet was so heavy that it took three hundred priests to lift it and carry it to the ritual bath when it needed to be immersed for purification purposes. I, too, received much help with the heavy lifting, not from three hundred priests but from countless rabbis and teachers whose notes and podcasts guided me through my daf yomi study, revealing the text in its true colors.
The Mishnah goes on to relate that the parochet was the product of eighty-two thousand myriads. The Talmud’s term for “myriads” is ribo, which, according to Rashi, relates either to the cost of the veil’s production or to the number of threads from which it was made. But according to some scholars, ribo may also be short for ribot, meaning “young maidens,” referring to those who wove it. The Torah states explicitly that the parochet was women’s handiwork: “And all the women that were wise-hearted spun with their hands, and brought that which they had spun: the blue, the purple, the crimson, and the fine linen. And all the women whose heart raised them up in wisdom spun the goats’ hair” (Exodus 35:25–26). And so it was women who wove the textile, just as it is women, increasingly, who are beginning to weave their voices into the Talmudic conversation.
I feel fortunate that I have found my voice in the Talmud’s pages. Academic scholars of Talmud use the term makbilot, parallels, to refer to textual passages that appear in identical or similar form in various Talmudic contexts. Thus, for instance, the description of the parochet appears not just in Shekalim, but also in Hulin (90b), Tamid (29b), and throughout Yoma. And so I studied this passage not just at the start and end of my daf yomi cycle but also during my maternity leave after Matan was born, when the parochet reminded me of the various hand-woven blankets we’d received as baby gifts, and then again when we found out we were having twins, as we thought about how to partition our second bedroom to make room for an additional baby. Scholars of Talmud consider how the text is informed and often even changed by its contexts; the same is true, perhaps, of the personal contexts in which I have encountered these passages. The text seems to change with each encounter because it resonates in new ways, and I, in turn, am transformed by each encounter.
The Talmud explains that the weave of the parochet was double-sided, with a lion on one side and an eagle on the other, such that the high priest would see one image when he entered the Holy of Holies and another image when he exited. As a double-sided divider, the parochet was both a way in and a way out. I am reminded of the inscription on Dexter Gate, which I used to walk through countless times a day as a college freshman: “Enter here to gain in wisdom,” reads the side leading into Harvard Yard; “Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind,” reads the side leading into the busy traffic of Massachusetts Avenue. Every point of entry is also a point of exit, and every end is also a beginning. This is why graduation ceremonies are called “commencement,” and this is why as soon as one finishes reading the Torah or studying the Talmud, it is traditional to begin immediately again.
When completing a tractate of Talmud, it is customary to recite a prayer known as the hadran: hadran alach v’hadrach alan. Hadran comes from the word for return, though in modern Hebrew it is used to refer to an encore. This is one way the rabbis use the term, suggesting that the text continues to go on even after we have finished it, since there is always more to learn. According to this understanding, the prayer means “may we return to you, and may you return to us”: May we have the opportunity to study this tractate again (because inevitably we’ll forget some of what we learn), and may it come back to us (because we hope that some of what we learn will stay with us). The prayer gives voice to my fervent belief in the power of learning to make the world endlessly interesting—there is always more to learn, which means that there is always a reason to keep living. But in classic Talmudic wordplay, hadran, from the word hadar, also means “beauty” and “glory.” So the prayer can also mean, “Our beauty is from you, and your beauty is from us,” which conveys the notion that we, with our own individual life experiences and our own unique perspectives, can beautify the study of Talmud; and Talmud can beautify us.
At the end of tractate Shekalim (21b) the rabbis teach that after the parochet was woven by eighty-two thousand maidens and then immersed by three hundred priests, it was spread out to dry on the tallest place on the Temple Mount for the entire nation to admire the beauty of its craftsmanship. I have tried to do the same. These are the texts that I will come back to and the texts that have come back to me, woven together and spread out before you with trembling hands.
YOMA
Encore
In keeping with the tradition of returning to the text, I write these words as I am well into my second cycle of daf yomi, on the eve of the twins’ first birthday. Last week I completed Yoma for the second time. I would say that relearning Yoma was a positive experience were it not for the fact that I broke another bone. Seven and a half years ago, when I first learned Yoma, I broke my foot while jogging in the early morning. And then two months ago, during an uncharacteristically severe Jerusalem snowstorm that made international headlines, I broke my arm when I slipped on the ice on my way to dispose of a bag of dirty diapers.
Unlike seven and a half years ago, this time my injury wasn’t just inconvenient, but nearly impossible. Daniel and I joked that we had a one-working-arm-to-child ratio. I learned to carry the twins in the crook of my arm, to cut vegetables with one hand, and to fold laundry with my elbow. All the while I was following the high priest through the chambers and courtyards of the Temple, observing as he gathered up the incense to take into the Holy of Holies. He took a pan in his right hand and a ladle in his left, a task that I could not have completed without two working arms. Nor could I have performed kemitza, which invo
lves scooping up the incense underneath the middle three fingers of the hand while extending the thumb and pinky (47a). The rabbis describe kemitza as the most difficult part of Temple ritual—even without a cast extending from elbow to knuckles.
In order to heal, bones have to set, and so I think about what has set in my life in the time between my two encounters with tractate Yoma. The word Yoma is Aramaic for “the day,” and refers, of course, to Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. But in Hebrew the word for “the day,” hayom, is also the word for “today,” which points to a significant difference between my study of Yoma then and now. Seven and a half years ago, when I learned Yoma for the first time, I never had any doubts about how I was spending “today.” Each morning I learned Talmud with a study partner and then headed to my job at the literary agency. In the evenings I attended various classes throughout the city—a lecture on the weekly Torah portion one night, a discussion on Jewish philosophy the next. When I came home late in the evening, I leaned daf yomi and collapsed in bed so that I could wake up early to jog the next morning. Each day had its own schedule, mapped out like the order of the priest’s activities on Yom Kippur. And each day was full of activities I enjoyed—learning Torah, working with books, exercising, attending classes, spending time with friends.
If All the Seas Were Ink Page 26