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Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Coming back to Talmud

ONE MAN'S ODYSSEY: Reading David Foster Wallace Led Me Back to Studying the Talmud. The late author’s work was Talmudic in nature. That’s why his books made me miss the Jewish texts I’d left behind (Joseph Winkler in Tablet).
After a torrid and heady five-year relationship with Talmud, first in yeshiva in Israel then at Yeshiva University, I had given up the Talmud and left Orthodoxy about three years before the event. But speaking about Wallace, I suddenly realized that I couldn’t really ever leave the rigors, pains, and joys of a Talmudic mindset. It marked me for life.
(HT reader Yehoshua Rabinowitz.)