[Avodah] The takana of krias hatorah on Monday and Thursday

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Sun, Aug 21, 2016 at 10:54am +0300, R Marty Bluke wrote:
: Todays daf (Bava Kama 82a) discusses the takanos of Ezra and one of the
: takanas mentioned is that of reading the Torah on Mondays and Thursdays.
: The Gemara says that the takana was made so that people would not go 3 days
: without Torah based on the pasuk vayelchu shloshes yamim bamidbar vlo matzu
: mayim.

: I am having trouble understanding this takana. They didn't learn Torah in
: the midbar? Without this takana people would just sit and waste the day and
: not learn any Torah? ...

Well, not Torah sheBikhsav. Until Arvos Moreh Moshe at most had megillos
of what would someday be combined (appended together? redacted?) into
the Torah, and some tannaim hold we didn't get /any/ Torah until then. So
there wasn't a seifer Torah to read from yet.

But in any case, Ezra didn't make the taqanah then. The taqanah waiting
for Ezra implies that it was /his/ generation that had too many men
going three days without learning. Why would this imply anything about
previous generations and how much /they/ learned?

If anything, it raises questions about why the Sanhedrin didn't feel
a need during Menashe's rule. Maybe they thought it would be pointles.
Maybe in those days, enough people did indeed say Qeri'as Shema to not
need another enactment. Maybe the whole point of the taqanah was to
get peer pressure pushing people to open a seifer Torah for at least
3 pesuqim.

Or maybe AKhG simply felt that learning the same verses every day wasn't
broad enough exposure, and they wante to force more of a survey of the
text. Enough to get some conversations going.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             For those with faith there are no questions.
micha at aishdas.org        For those who lack faith there are no answers.
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