Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Fun Reading

Yesterday I had some homework to do for my Jewish class, and since I tend to push homework off till the last minute, I was sitting in the class before it doing my Jewish Homework. I had a תנ״ך that was divided in 3 sections, Torah, נבאים, and כתובים. For the Homework I needed to compare 2 passages, one from Torah and one from נבאים, so I had both on my desk.

Then a Jewish guy sitting next to me, sees the ספרים on my desk, so he asks me what it’s for. I showed him the syllabus, saying that it’s a upper core I’m taking. He then decided to take the חמישה חומשי תורה from my desk and starts reading it. He starts off with the beginning, he then asks me what וישלט means. I tell him it means to rule or a ruler, he then shows me the English translation says it’s a viceroy, so I tell him that it’s another name for a ruler. He then flips through to creation, he asks me what luminaries mean. I answer that it means the stars and moon in the sky. He asked me what וישרצו means, I didn’t have a good word to translate it too, I said it means to swarm, like many bugs swarming around.

After having some fun reading the חמישה חומשי תורה he then notices the נביא on my desk, so he takes that and starts going through that too. Knowing which High School he went to, I knew it was a modern one, but I was surprised that he didn’t know some stuff which I remember learning in elementary school and thinking that everyone knew. So it woke me up that it could be that people aren’t as familiar with the Torah as I would expect them to be.

He flips through some more and continues reading. Meanwhile the whole time I thought he was just going to look at it for a second, I didn’t realize he was going to be reading it the whole class. After all, I was waiting to get it back so I can finish doing my Homework. I finished one homework and didn’t end up getting to do my second homework that class. But it felt good knowing that someone was able to keep the mitzvah of learning Torah through me.

10 comments:

Jacob Da Jew said...

"Knowing which High School he went to, I knew it was a modern one, but I was surprised that he didn’t know some stuff which I remember learning in elementary school and thinking that everyone knew. So it woke me up that it could be that people aren’t as familiar with the Torah as I would expect them to be."


Have you considered or maybe entertained the thought that he might not have been taught the same dogma as you?

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

dogma is example?
it's basic translation of the text.
Perhaps boys learn different stuff, but I thought chumash is what you learn when your young and you learn the parsha every year after that.

Jacob Da Jew said...

"An authoritative principle, belief, or statement of ideas or opinion, especially one considered to be absolutely true."

The way you learn Chumash etc might not be the most authoriztative way. 70 faces to the torah.

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

Jacob Da Jew: o, interesting, I didn't think of that.
I wonder what way he was taught then.

That is such an interesting concept though, thanx so much for pointing that out.

Anonymous said...

"But it felt good knowing that someone was able to keep the mitzvah of learning Torah through me."

that was what i was thinking as i read the post.

aside from that, this should teach you to leave your homework for the last minute.

Anonymous said...

i meant not to leave your homework for the last minute

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

Lion of Zion: glad that you were thinking that as you read the post, cause that was my main point!

but yea, that's true it does teach you not to leave homework till the last minute.

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

Update: today before class the same guy says to me, do you have those seforim again? I said yea. SO then he said this week, Parshas Noach is his Bar Mitzvah parsha so he wanted to read it over. So I gave him the Chummash, then asks me if he's being graded, I laughed and said no (although did I grade him in the post?). He said he hasn't opened these seforim up since he left school awhile ago, so he was happy to be able to read it again. He only looked at the Chumash for a short while because the material my prof was teaching is important for our upcoming test. But he did look at the back at some pages with names, and he asks me, "who's Seth?" and I didn't know who it was. It sounds familiar, but I couldn't remember? Then at the end of class he said he was sorry for having taken it away from me the whole class. I told him not to worry.

Rachel Natik said...

Nice post!

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

Rachel Natik: Thanx!

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