Lectures on the Talmud – Yoma, Sukkah, Rosh Hashanah

Rabbi Shagar was known as an outstanding Torah scholar and as an original, groundbreaking thinker whose work touches every realm of Torah. This book, the second in the series “Lectures on the Talmud”, contains lectures he gave on the tractates dealing with the festivals of Tishrei – Yoma, Sukkah and Rosh Hashanah. In these lectures Rabbi Shagar carefully analyzes selected sugyot in these tractates, aiming to uncover their direction and the questions that occupy them. Through a literary study of the structure of the sugyot and the ways they were edited, insights emerge from between the lines of the Talmudic give-and-take about the nature of the festivals in general, and the unique nature of the Tishrei festivals in particular. Alongside this, his engagement with the verses of the Torah, the Mishnah and the halakhic Midrashim, the Talmudic sugyot and the words of the Rishonim and Acharonim leads him to discuss fundamental issues as well, such as the nature of observing the mitzvot after the destruction of the Temple, the influence of historical processes on halakha, the place of mysticism and magic in the halakhic world, the relationship between inner spiritual work and the observance of the mitzvot, and more.

For more than thirty years Rabbi Shagar devoted most of his time to studying and teaching Gemara. As in other fields, here too he brought his unique language and paved new paths in content and in ways of learning. His lectures combine classic yeshiva scholarship with insights and methods from academic Talmud research and cultural studies, and through their richness and sharpness beats a striving for existential meaning and a search for God.