The goal of this blog is to bring something new (or some nu?) to your Shabbat Table. Please share / like / tweet / etc.
If you ask the man-on-the street, "Who's buried in Grant's tomb?" what do they say?What about this one: "Where's the Great Pacific Garbage Patch located?"
OK, those are warm-up questions for your table. Let's try this one out on your average Jewish school graduate:
1. How many books of Tanach are there?
Many literate Jews will accurately say 24.
But then ask:
Can you name them?
I'm guessing that 1 in 10 you ask - regardless of their Jewish affiliation or background, can name all 24 (even out of order).
Of those 1 in 10, I'm guessing it's another 90 percent reduction to those who can answer this:
Who wrote each one?
The reason this is such a tricky question is not because modern scholarship has thrown its shadow of doubt over everything traditional.
The problem is that even according to tradition, many of the authors are counter-intuitive.
For example, according to the Talmud, the prophet Isaiah didn't write Isaiah and Queen Esther did not write Esther.
So nu? Who?
If you really want to know, shoot me an email and I'll send you the complete list.
But on a slightly related topic, I created a second interesting document that you might enjoy - it's a list of so-called secular subjects that are discussed in the Talmud, and where - including:
- General Science
- Astronomy
- Environmental Science
- Biology
- Chemistry
- Medicine
- Physics
- Paleontology
- Language Arts
- Statistics
- Mathematics
- Geography
- History
- Economics
- Real Estate
But for your table, I'll leave you with this question:
Is knowledge of these things (the books of Tanach, who wrote them, the range of wisdom of the Talmud), an important part of being a literate Jew?
Shabbat Shalom
PS - If you haven't already, please visit barmitzvahalbum.com . . . And kindly "like" and "tweet" and all that stuff.
No comments:
Post a Comment