There and Back Again; A Story of P'shat vs D'rash

There and Back Again; A Story of P'shat vs D'rash

Chanan Heisler

            When I was a little, the lines that separated פשט and דרש were blurred; they were both torah, so I considered them one and the same. In elementary school, I knew the facts of the bible: עשו bit  יעקב's neck when they embraced each other after years apart. אברהם smashed his father's idols in order to prove a point. He was consequently cast into a burning oven, but with the help of God, he emerged unscathed. יצחק became blind because of an angel's teardrop that inconveniently fell into his eyes during the עקידה. These stories weren't made up by rabbis later on in history, they were crucial facts in the stories of our forefathers. Facts that made these stories more interesting and more memorable.

            In high school, I started to learn about the dichotomy between what was actually written in the torah, and what was, in my mind, forced into the texts afterwards by later rabbis using the torah to promote their own agendas. The cynical Chanan had no room in his heart or head for דרש. I can remember my frustration when learning Gemara, how after every אוקימתא, I would cynically disregard what each commentator of the previous generation was trying to do. When the Gemara would bring a random פסוק, taken out of its intended context to learn a rule, I might have snidely remarked to my חברותה how that wasn't the real meaning of the פסוק. When a rabbi in the talmud would create an אוקימתא, specifying a given case to a single context, in order to bolster and affirm their understanding of the Gemara, I would think to myself how they clearly just missed the point. In my head, these rabbis weren't trying to learn torah, they were trying to shape the words of the torah to advocate their own opinions. Cynical Chanan cared first and foremost for intellectual honesty, and cared little for those who seemed to be inventing an understanding that wasn't previously there.

            The point where I started to open up to the concept of דרש was in a senior year english class. We started off the year reading Textual Power by Robert Scholes. We discussed the meaning of reading literature and what a reader is supposed to do. In class, we spoke of two flaws the normal reader has. One is that they try to find the author's intentions or the original meanings behind the book. A text has a life of it's own, and its meaning goes well beyond the original or intended significance. The second is that one shouldn't be a passive reader, waiting for the message to come forth on its own. There is no 'right way' of reading literature. Instead, one must analyze literature and search for meaning even one that seemingly isn't actually there. As long as one could use quotes and details to support a claim about a message or hidden meaning, it was fair game.

            It took me until this past year to begin to conceptualize the bigger picture of the reality that is פשט vs דרש. דרש, in its essence, is also a form of literary analysis. In english class, we use different lenses to understand a given text. Freudian, feminist, and historical analytical lenses all bring a different focus to the table when understanding Shakespeare. פשט and דרש are tools to understand the various religious texts we analyze. פשט focuses on what is really going on, what is simple or basic understanding. דרש, on the other hand, focuses on something much greater. A דרש oriented reading of biblical stories will care more for lessons and morals of a story, than on the actual meaning of a text. Even though the study of הלכה is more dynamic and complicated than a reading of a single text, talmudic study also has the d'rash style reading in it as well. A דרש oriented talmudist isn't necessarily looking to formalize law, rather to use the law and apply it in a way to better understand the situation. Someone who brings a random פסוק out of its context to prove a law is using their sources to prove a point or refocus a conversation. Even the אוקימתא that, once upon a time, frustrated me to no end, serves a bigger goal than intellectual honesty. Yes, it is important to understand the פשט, but the value in judaism and in jewish learning is in the דרש. Otherwise, we might as well be poking out each other's eyes and killing every rebellious teenager.

            As I continue my learning at Maale Gilboa, I have returned to the world of דרש once again. Maybe I didn't originally know the difference between פשט and דרש, and I would take them both as torah and apply both. Now, as I am able to understand a more nuanced view of Jewish texts, I can distinguish the differences between פשט and דרש, and afterward understand what there is to gain from both viewpoints.

Loving Math and Talmud

By Michael Zanger-Tishler

Recently, I was reading a book called “Love and Math” by Edward Frenkel, a famous professor of mathematics at the University of California Berkeley. In the book, Frenkel describes (almost as if describing why he loves his wife) the way in which he fell in love with mathematical theories and with the culture around doing math. Growing up in the Soviet Union, however, learning math was difficult for Jewish students. One of the more poignant scenes that Frenkel describes is climbing over a fence to sneak into Moscow State University’s famous Mekh-Mat, the department of Mechanics and Mathematics, in order to hear seminars by the revered mathematicians who taught there. This University, which Frenkel was forbidden from studying in because he was Jewish, was the center of pure mathematics in Russia.

When reading this story, I could not help but reflect on the behavior of Hillel Hazaken. We learn (יומא דף לה, עמוד ב) that Hillel used to work every day to earn money for his family. He would then use half of his money to support his family, and half of his money to pay the guard of the Beit Midrash so he could enter and learn. However, one day Hillel did not make any money and was not allowed by the guard to enter the Beit Midrash. Instead of sulking, Hillel was so committed to learning Torah that he went up on the roof of the Beit Midrash and listened through the sky light. So distracted was he by learning Torah, that three amot of snow fell on him without him noticing. The sages learning in the Beit Midrash needed to revive him the following morning.

These two characters share a similar love of learning, and the topics they enjoy learning are more similar than one might think (Rav Soloveitchik was a student of pure math and physics and would often compare the study of those subjects to the study of Halacha). Throughout my life, I have been full of Frenkel’s insatiable desire to learn math. As a child I would read through math textbooks on my own and participate in math competitions even when they weren’t offered through my school. For two years, I was even fortunate enough to take part in math research supervised by the professor who convinced Professor Frenkel to sneak into Moscow State University when they were college students. During these years, I was surrounded by brilliant mathematicians. These mentors and peers, however, were also people who, if given the option between doing math and something else, would almost certainly choose math. These people rubbed off on me and during the last two years of high school I would often stay up late scribbling down math equations in the cliché way people often imagine mathematicians working.

Now that I am at Yeshivat Maale Gilboa and find myself contemplating masechet Sanhedrin long after night seder has finished at 10 pm, I wonder why this type of dedication to Torah learning was not something I could have imagined in myself before yeshiva. I had access to all of the resources to do so and also access to a plethora of rabbis at school, camp, and in my community who would have loved to guide me in my Torah study. My answer ultimately comes from the different ways I was introduced to Torah and to math. Being around people who love math (fellow students and teachers), I have noticed that when they try to explain what they find magical about studying math, it is always through examples of problems or theorems that initially enamored them. Whether it involves showing a pattern in Fibonacci numbers or demonstrating the way a theory beautifully describes a certain phenomenon, individual examples, when explained by someone knowledgeable and invested in the topic, can give a lay person insight into why mathematics is an amazing endeavor. Sadly, it has often been my experience that in the Jewish institutions I have been part of, the education process is different. Instead of studying l’shem shamayim (for the sake of heaven), the emphasis is on making students study just so they can be literate Jews. Then, instead of giving examples of how fascinating a specific sugya of Talmud can be, students are relegated to sitting through classes on controversial topics in Judaism or modern “issues” in halacha. These classes are meant to pique student interest and, while provoking discussion, they often make those who already do not feel an obligation towards Jewish learning angrier at the tradition. Ultimately we are taught to learn not because it is fun, but because it is simply something we have to do if we are Jewish.

One of the experiences that Frenkel describes most glowingly in his book is that of sitting in on Israel Gelfand’s shiur while an undergraduate (I’m pretty sure that they called it a seminar but for my purposes it helps me imagine it as a shiur). Gelfand was, as Frenkel describes, “the patriarch of the Soviet mathematical school” and one of the most brilliant and charismatic mathematicians of the 20th century. However, Gelfand’s brilliance was not the only thing that made his seminar so attractive. Gelfand created a lively (if not slightly scary environment) where he would tell jokes, call up different speakers, and have different people participate (often without advance warning ) in his upbeat and engaging seminar. This famous seminar seems a lot like many of our shiurim at Maaleh Gilboa. If this were the type of environment that surrounded Torah learning for me before this year, I have no doubt I would have been inspired to learn Torah with a fervor I was not inspired to before this year. I do not know that I have a way to improve the atmosphere at American Jewish schools, but a place to start is by trying to emphasize learning about Judaism in an exciting way and not an apologetic way.