tractate

The stadium program featured a host of speeches, and singing and dancing by men, but its highlight was a reading of the last paragraphs of the final volume of Talmud, the tractate Niddah, concerned with menstruation and other aspects of feminine physiology, followed by a reading of the first sentences of the first volume of the Talmud — Berakhot, or Ritual Blessings — that many will start next week.

They mentioned the passage, and Danny nodded, immediately identified the tractate and the page, then coldly and mechanically repeated the passage word for word, giving his interpretation of it, and quoting at the same time the interpretations of a number of medieval commentators like the Me’iri, the Rashba, and the Maharsha.

Danny repeated a short passage from the tractate Sanhedrin, and then his father quoted another passage from Yoma which contradicted the passage in Sanhedrin, and Danny answered with a passage from Gittin which dissolved the contradiction.

Then they went on to another tractate, fought over another passage, and this time Reb Saunders agreed, his face glowing, that his son was correct.

I finished the explanation of the Mishnaic text and read the next thought unit, which consisted of another Mishnah found in a different tractate from the one we were now studying.