Hi! I’m Deah. Yes, my name does happen to be the same as the Hebrew word for “knowledge” — thank you for pointing that out. A huge coincidence, I assure you. Anyway, I’m here with Haskel….
…Which would be me. What’s that? My name is the Hebrew word for “enlightenment”? Yes, I suppose. You’d be surprised how often people feel the need to point that out. In any case, Deah and I are here to introduce a new feature on the just-as-new MyJewishLearning.com portal. It’s called Wise Fridays.
You know about the Talmud, right? It’s a massive compendium of all Torah knowledge, a dialogue across centuries. People keep comparing the Talmud to the Internet, since it’s a dialogue without borders of either space or time — although, if you ask me, people should be comparing the Internet to the Talmud instead.
Wise Fridays is our attempt to offer a playing field to knock around these sources. We want to treat them as living words instead of dusty old maxims. You’ll find both new thinkers and old, conventional sources as well as more unorthodox people who you might not expect to discover here.
Some address the nature of God. Some talk about the world around us, looking at it in a way that isn’t mundane at all. Their one common theme is that they’ve made us examine the things that matter to us–our God, our Judaism, and ourselves–in a new light.
So, show up here every Friday for a weekly wallop of wisdom. And feel free to share your own. Deah and I will be listening — drop us a line on that Talmud-like thing at wisefridays@myjewishlearning.com. Thanks for Sammy Harkham for creating us, and to MJL for giving us a forum. And, in the meantime, watch out — here comes our first Wise Friday.
Talmud
Pronounced: TALL-mud, Origin: Hebrew, the set of teachings and commentaries on the Torah that form the basis for Jewish law. Comprised of the Mishnah and the Gemara, it contains the opinions of thousands of rabbis from different periods in Jewish history.
Torah
Pronunced: TORE-uh, Origin: Hebrew, the Five Books of Moses.
