At age 10, a student will be in 5th grade. In math class, they will start using long division with two-digit divisors, and in language arts, they will write multi-paragraph essays and reports. According to Judah ben Tema in Avot 5:21, the time to commence the study of Mishnah is also at 10.

This might make Mishnah seem elementary. However, in How to Read the Mishnah and Midrash: An Introduction to Early Rabbinic Literature (University of California Press), Dr. Ishay Rosen-Zvi of the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Talmud at Tel Aviv University articulately shows that the Mishnah is a meticulously edited text of great depth and meaning.

The Mishnah is one of the foundational texts of rabbinic Judaism. Here, Rosen-Zvi lays out his brilliance and has written an engaging, engrossing work.

Rosen-Zvi may have based the title and approach on How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer Adler and Charles Van Doren. There, they detail how to become a more active, thoughtful, and critical reader. Rather than focusing on what to read, the book shows how to read in a way that leads to genuine understanding. What Adler and Van Doren did for books, Rosen-Zvi does for Mishnah and Midrash.

The Mishnah was not written by a single author. Rather, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi edited and organized earlier oral traditions into the structured text we now call the Mishnah. One might mistakenly think that Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi simply........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)