[Avodah] If M'gillah is Talmud Torah...

[Micha Berger]

On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 10:09:19PM -0500, Joshua Meisner wrote:
: On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 3:49 PM, <rabbirichwolpoe at gmail.com> wrote:
: > I've seen several articles praising Q'riat Me'gillah as a form of public
: > Talmud Torah. If so - im kein - how do we understand"M'vatlin Talmud
: > Torah liqriat hamgilah?"

: Don't recall if I've seen this somewhere, but perhaps there are different
: levels of Talmud Torah.  If someone is intellectually capable of engaging in
: gemara (with everything that it entails) but contents himself with mikra,
: perhaps he'd be, in a sense, m'vatel torah.

Shema is a qiyum of talmud Torah. Some examples:

A reason for saying Shema before Shemoneh Esrei is lehispallel mitokh
davar shel Torah.

If you didn't say birkhas haTorah (BhT) before Shema, birkhas Ahavah serves
as that day's BhT and you don't say BhT.

Of course, Berakhos 1:2 tells you that saying Shema after the zeman, "lo
hifsid -- ke'adam shehu qorei baTorah".


Y-mi Berakhos ad loc (8a) writes that stop learning for Shema but not
for Amidah. R' Acha explains that this is because of the 2, only Qeri'as
Shema is a devar Torah. Rabbi Ba answers that it is because Qeri'as Shema
has a fixed time, and [at least deOraisa], tefillah does not. R' Yosi,
after the gemara's discussion, is taken as saying that it's because
Shema only requires kavanah for three pesuqim, and therefore it more
doable in the middle of a shiur or seder limud.

On the next amud (8b) the gemara explains Rashbi in a manner along the
same lines as R' Acha fused with R' Abba, and it echos what RJM is saying
about megillah: In general, you don't interrupt learning for learning
one thing to learn another. During zeman Qeri'as Shema, though, it
outranks other learning.

Rabbi Yudan says that Rashbi himself, since he was tadir bedivrei Torah,
Shema bizmanah loses that preferability.

(BTW, WRT Rabbi Ba. I recently encountered a Y-mi that uses R' Ba and
R' Abba to refer to the same person. See the machloqes R' Abba and R'
Yehoshua ben Levi on 6:4 (47a), which R' Yosi then tells us "hada deR'
Ba peliga al deR' Yehoshua ben Levi..." Could be a shibush, the Y-mi
has quite a number; or it could be that "Ba" is simply a shortening of
"Abba". It fits the general Y-mi Aramaic pattern to drop minor leading
letters.)

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             I always give much away,
micha at aishdas.org        and so gather happiness instead of pleasure.
http://www.aishdas.org           -  Rachel Levin Varnhagen
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