Learning Mishnah

Originally published 5/3/07, 11:36 PM, Eastern Daylight Time

Here is a conventional way to learn Mishnah, but with a very subtle twist…

Here are your steps:

1. Take the new edition of Kahatti Mishnayot with Bartenura.
2. Read the Hebrew text of the Mishna
3. Read the Kahatti commentary and understand both his commentary and the original Mishnah {nothing new so far}
4. NOW go read the Bartenura’s commentary.

You might ask yourself why read Kahatti BEFORE Bartenura, shoudn’t it be the other way around? Afterr all Bartenura came FIRST, much before Kahatti?

I’m glad you asked such an intelligent question!

You see Kahatti is written in a user-friendly dialect of Hebrew. He is relatively easy to understand. Bartenura is written in quasi-Aramaic Rabbinic dialect; this is much more difficult to understand.
Now you ask: “So, why bother even learning Bartenura at all!?”

Another excellent question! You see, the Bartenura preseves the terminology – or the jargon if you prefer – of the original Talmud. Having mastered the basic simple meaning – the Peshat - of your Mishna in steps 2 & 3 above – it is now a good time to find out how the Talmud itself might haae phrased the same concepts. Now you add Bartenura – and you have taken a step clsoer to Talmudic terminology without sacrificing learning understanding the Mishnah itself. So now tht you DO understand what is being sai,d you cn approach a more confusing way of saying it without losing track. At this point the Bartenura helps to bridge the gap between the Mishna and Talmud by using the relevant Talmudic phrases.

By a subtle twist, we have a pedagogical technique, going from simple to complex, from local to global.

Kol Tuv

Rabbi Rich Wolpoe