Thursday 3 May 2007

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

2 comments:

DrMike said...

Having read the Kehati mishnayos cover to cover, I can confidently state: one doesn't need to read the Bartenura at all. That's why never editions have that commentary in them. In the originals, there was no commentary other than Kehati's and people quick figured out they didn't need any.
There are two types of people who learn - those who learn in groups or chavrusos, and those who learn on their own (for example, because of time constraints). For those who learn in groups, the classic commentaries are certainly the best because they allow you to get the flavour of what Chazal were trying to get across.
For those with time constraints, it's quite different. If I'm reading the Kehati commentary, it's because I don't have time for anything more complex. Certainly doing two commentaries, when I already have a basic understanding from the first, would take too long in such a scenario. Besides, most of the time when Kehati quotes Bartenura, he tells you so you don't have to look up.

Rabbi Richard Wolpoe said...

Generally speaking I concur with drmike.

Nevertheless, there are several advantages to adding Bartenura; which ch may or may not be worth the extra investment of time:

1) If you are planning to eventually proceed to the Talmud, Bartenura can familiarize you with the Talmudic jargon. Kehatti makes it TOO modern. Bartenura is like a half-way house. And since Kehatti has pre-translated the tmers this is a piece-of-cake to do.

2) Bartenura on several rare occasions does a Halachic overview of a topic. Those case are worth a read.

3) Sometimes beginning students want to work on "Ktav Rashi" Bartenura - in the hardcover edition - is in Rashi font and can be a helpful learning tool.

As a teacher, I try to use these as stepping stones.

First get Peshat -via Kehatti-
Then add Aramaic and Rashi script via Bartenura on an already understood text.