[Avodah] 60-Year Gaps

[Jay F. Shachter]

>
> ... Also any gap greater than 60 years would seem to be a problem.
> How many people have major talmidim after that time frame.
> 

When I was the last graduate student who worked with Ernest
R. ("Jack") Hilgard, he was 75 years old and I was 19.  That is a gap
of 56 years.  Moreover, that was during an era of forced retirement at
65; past that age, the university would not pay your salary and you
had to fund yourself thru grants.  Yeshivoth, in contrast, never had
that policy.  Moreover, in Torah learning, 19 is a late age at which to
begin an apprenticeship; normally an apprenticeship would start years
earlier than that.  So a 60-year gap in the chain of Torah is not
implausible, although many such gaps would be statistically unlikely.


                        Jay F. ("Yaakov") Shachter
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