A Series of Class-Prompted Thoughts

Just got back from my last day of class for Studying Sacred Texts, and I was just struck by how the class didn't make a point, or cover a set of contiguous bunches of information, or even focus on learning facts at all, and yet I learned a huge amount- without quite knowing how it happened or what I learned. I mean, our discussions rarely focused for too long on the readings or their topics alone: they got related to everything under the sun, in many, many different lights, so that the analogies rather than the original materials became the focus. The majority of the work for the class was ungraded, and often doing extensive preparation for many of the assignments ("come into class with information about topic or item x") was discouraged ("don't spend more than 15 minutes on this"). And yet I had a fabulous time, and it felt entirely useful, even though there was rarely much to take notes on- it was rare that I filled one sheet in a full 3 hours. I had class with a bunch of people many of whom (if I can say many, considering that htere were 8 people total in the class) were people I didn't really know how to relate to at the beginning of the class, and somehow it worked fabulously well.

As the last part of class today, we did some text study relating to U'netaneh toqef, a prayer (more accurately a piyyut, a liturgical poem) from the High Holy Day liturgy, and looked at both the traditional story about its origins and at some sources for where a particularly difficult set of words (kivnei maron) could come from, and what they likely mean and why. It was interesting, and highlighted two very different, maybe nearly opposite views of text- that the more you know the more options you have, and therefore the more chances it has to be meaningful at different times and in different personal circumstances, and that the more you know about a text, the more limitted your understanding is of the text.

It seems to reflect this difference in attitudes towards reality/truth that I've been running into a lot lately: the question of whether or not more information limits your knowledge to the confluence of where all the information pieces can all agree/apply, or where only one set of them is Right, or a scenario where more than one set of interpretations/ideas can be right, and they don't have to all agree in order to all be right. It seems like perhaps a distinction between an interpretative view and a factual view: is our perception of reality a filter of a larger, greater thing, or is it a cut and dry, one right answer set up where we do have the ability to see the whole in a clear light. Except that I don't think that our ability to see the whole should prevent us from understanding that same whole in many different ways. I don't see why truth has to be so monolithic in our perceptions, when as far as I can tell, there's always more to it, and there are always more nuances. I dislike limitting truth to a single viewpoint. In our reading for class today, we read about a view of scripture that regards the importance of scripture not beign the text itself but the relationship between humanity and the transcendent/divine, as mediated by the text- a triangular relationship rather than a two-way one between the text and humanity. When you make the text a mediator and a tool through which to relate to something larger, it gives the text the ability to be many different things at once, something that a text just as text doesn't quite have the authority to maintain. It seems like a remarkably powerful reading to me.

With all that, class left me with snippets of the U'netaneh toqef tune that I grew up with in my head. It's funny- I usually wasn't too fond of the organ stuff, or the choir at my family's shul- but that one prayer I do occasionally miss the power of the organ, and the drama of the whole production. I miss almost none of the other music that can't exist outside of settings that allow musical instruments- and most of the tunes I miss I can sing with my mom at home or something. And really, that one tune isn't enough to make me want to deal with that style of service, which really doesn't do so much for me spiritually- but I do sort of miss that one piece.

A Series of Class-Prompted Thoughts

Just got back from my last day of class for Studying Sacred Texts, and I was just struck by how the class didn't make a point, or cover a set of contiguous bunches of information, or even focus on learning facts at all, and yet I learned a huge amount- without quite knowing how it happened or what I learned. I mean, our discussions rarely focused for too long on the readings or their topics alone: they got related to everything under the sun, in many, many different lights, so that the analogies rather than the original materials became the focus. The majority of the work for the class was ungraded, and often doing extensive preparation for many of the assignments ("come into class with information about topic or item x") was discouraged ("don't spend more than 15 minutes on this"). And yet I had a fabulous time, and it felt entirely useful, even though there was rarely much to take notes on- it was rare that I filled one sheet in a full 3 hours. I had class with a bunch of people many of whom (if I can say many, considering that htere were 8 people total in the class) were people I didn't really know how to relate to at the beginning of the class, and somehow it worked fabulously well.

As the last part of class today, we did some text study relating to U'netaneh toqef, a prayer (more accurately a piyyut, a liturgical poem) from the High Holy Day liturgy, and looked at both the traditional story about its origins and at some sources for where a particularly difficult set of words (kivnei maron) could come from, and what they likely mean and why. It was interesting, and highlighted two very different, maybe nearly opposite views of text- that the more you know the more options you have, and therefore the more chances it has to be meaningful at different times and in different personal circumstances, and that the more you know about a text, the more limitted your understanding is of the text.

It seems to reflect this difference in attitudes towards reality/truth that I've been running into a lot lately: the question of whether or not more information limits your knowledge to the confluence of where all the information pieces can all agree/apply, or where only one set of them is Right, or a scenario where more than one set of interpretations/ideas can be right, and they don't have to all agree in order to all be right. It seems like perhaps a distinction between an interpretative view and a factual view: is our perception of reality a filter of a larger, greater thing, or is it a cut and dry, one right answer set up where we do have the ability to see the whole in a clear light. Except that I don't think that our ability to see the whole should prevent us from understanding that same whole in many different ways. I don't see why truth has to be so monolithic in our perceptions, when as far as I can tell, there's always more to it, and there are always more nuances. I dislike limitting truth to a single viewpoint. In our reading for class today, we read about a view of scripture that regards the importance of scripture not beign the text itself but the relationship between humanity and the transcendent/divine, as mediated by the text- a triangular relationship rather than a two-way one between the text and humanity. When you make the text a mediator and a tool through which to relate to something larger, it gives the text the ability to be many different things at once, something that a text just as text doesn't quite have the authority to maintain. It seems like a remarkably powerful reading to me.

With all that, class left me with snippets of the U'netaneh toqef tune that I grew up with in my head. It's funny- I usually wasn't too fond of the organ stuff, or the choir at my family's shul- but that one prayer I do occasionally miss the power of the organ, and the drama of the whole production. I miss almost none of the other music that can't exist outside of settings that allow musical instruments- and most of the tunes I miss I can sing with my mom at home or something. And really, that one tune isn't enough to make me want to deal with that style of service, which really doesn't do so much for me spiritually- but I do sort of miss that one piece.