The Poetics of Mishnah: A Methodological Study

Rabbi Avraham Walfish

3 Lectures

A retired teacher of Talmudic Literature and Rabbinic Thought, Avraham (Avie) Walfish was recently appointed as head of the Halakhic Beit Midrash of the Beit Hillel Rabbinical Organization. At Yeshiva University he completed his B.A. in philosophy, while studying Talmud with Rav Aharon Lichtenstein and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveichik. After making aliyah, he received his rabbinic ordination from R. Zalman Nehemiah Goldberg and completed his M.A. and Ph.D. at Hebrew University, writing his dissertation on literary features of Mishnah. He has taught and lectured in many frameworks in Israel and abroad, including Herzog College, Michlala, Pardes Institute, Bar Ilan University, and Drisha. His extensive publications in different areas of Jewish studies include the Iyun Mishnah website and a commentary on Mishnah Berakhot, Mishnaic Tapestries. In 2005 he was awarded the Prize of the Israeli Minister of Education for creative work in Jewish culture.

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Mishnah is a notoriously difficult work to study as a coherent text. The apparent lack of clear logical arrangement, the abrupt shifts of topic, and the frequent insertions of associatively-arranged sections which interrupt the topical flow have challenged students of Mishnah from Talmudic times until the present. In this course we will explore the nature and purpose of Mishnah redaction. Employing close reading techniques, we will see how the Mishnah redactor employs keywords and literary structures such as inclusion and parallelism in order to weave together units and themes in surprising and suggestive ways. Intertextual reading of Mishnaic passages in comparison with biblical texts or with parallel rabbinic compilations will afford further insight into the larger questions upon which Mishnah summons us to reflect.

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