[Avodah] yishuv EY

[mkopinsky at gmail.com]

On 5/31/07, Zev Sero <zev at sero.name> wrote:
> Shoshana L. Boublil wrote:
> 
> > He later fasted to forget Torah Chutz La'aretz...
> 
> Did he?  Or did he fast in penance for his sin of leaving Bavel, and
> forgot Torat Chu"l as a result of his fasting?

The Gemara is BM 85a on the bottom: "R' Zeira ki salik l'ar'a d'yisrael 
yasiv meiah taanisa d'lishtakach gemara bavla'ah minei ki heichi d'lo 
litardei."

Rashi explains, "When he went up to EY to learn from R'Yochanan and the
Amoraim in EY who were not bnei machlokes v'nochin zeh lazeh kishman (?)  
kid'amranin b'sanhedrin (24a) umeyashvim es hate'amim blo kushyos
upirukin."

There are a few things you can see from this Gemara:  (Some of them 
relevant to this discussion, and some not.)

1) It was actually so he could forget, and not just as penance.

2) It was not to forget Toras Chu"l, but rather Gemara Bavlaah.  The 
word Gemara all over refers to analytical process/derech halimud more than 
information.  He did not, chas v'shalom, want to forget all the Torah he 
had learned.  He wanted to unlearn a particularly aggressive learning 
style.

3) Even then, the only reason he wanted to change his method was "ki
heichi d'lo litardei" - so it wouldn't interfere with his future learning
in EY.  Even the aggressive Babylonian learning style (about which the
Gemara says somewhere that there are three exceedingly territorial
creatures - dogs, zonos, and talmidei chachamim sheb'bavel) he would have
kept, if not for practical considerations.  (Otherwise, shouldn't he have
done these 100 fasts long ago?)  Every derech halimud has its unique
advantages.  (My rebbe, Rav Mendel Blachman, claims that this
aggressiveness, which caused them to fight out sevaras to the end, is why
we pasken Bavli, not Yerushalmi.)

KT,
Michael