Gemara Berura Learning Environment

Masechet Hagigah

This is a four hour a week course that introduces students to the various genres of rabbinic texts and, through this, to what the rabbis care about.

"...by the give and take of argument, we ourselves are enabled to go through the thought processes set forth in the subtle markings that yield our reconstruction of the argument. We not only review what people say, but how they think: the processes of reasoning that have yielded a given conclusion. Sages and disciples become party to the modes of thought; in the dialectical argument, they are required to replicate the thought-processes themselves." - Jacob Neusner, The Four Stages of Rabbinic Judaism (London ; New York: Routledge, 1999), p. 176. This course is an introduction to the thinking of the rabbis through a sampling of talmudic sugyot from the different sedarim. Through that sampling, we experience and replicate the thought processes of the rabbinic brain.