[Avodah] Easy Tractate for Beginners

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2026 at 10:26:27AM -0500, Sholom Simon via Avodah wrote:
> I have a near 70-yr old friend at shul -- he's a senior (he's "on the path"
> and while he's extremely smart (Ph.D. in Math) he doesn't have any
> classical Jewish education...

1- I would recommend Sukkah ch. 3, "Lulav haGazul". It touches on a number
of topics that recur elsewhere, deals both in ritual and civil kinds of
halakhos, the Aramaic isn't that difficult.*

For someone who is bright but simply uninformed, it could be a fun choice.

2- Not a full topic to learn, but for a fun (for a mathematician)
half-hour:

R Eliezer / Dr Leon Ehrenpreis was a famous enough mathematician
that I would be surprised if your friend hadn't heard of him.
He took a sabbatical (Temple U) and taught some fun courses as well
as calculus in YU. Aside from making heavy use of our beis medrash
in addition to MTJ. (REE got private semichah from RMF.)

Anyway, REE started calculus with Sukkah 8a, the minimum size for
a circular Sukkah, and the use of something fairly close to limits
and an integral to justify the formula for the area of a circle.
More on that story in my hesped
https://aspaqlaria.aishdas.org/2010/08/17/r-dr-eliezer-ehrenpreis-zl

--

* To give this besheim omero: I was in a Cheder for Middle School.
"Cheder", in that sense that even though the student body was about
as yeshivish as Queens got in the 1970s, the Rabbeim came in from
WIlliamburg.

The school was run by R Eliyahu Yehoshua Geldzahler. He had us learning
Berakhos in 5th grade, just around where RMYG recommended in his
reply. (Although there was no Schottenstein Berakhos vol II yet. ArtScroll
was an invitation company that first came out with their first sefer,
Megillas Esther, during this story.)

REYG's somewhat novel choice for 6th grade was Lulav haGazul. My
father was suprised, and got the answer I gave in my first paragraph,
with an emphasis on exposure to topics that recur.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 You want to know how to paint a perfect
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   painting?  It's easy.
Author: Widen Your Tent      Make yourself perfect and then just paint
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF    naturally.              -Robert Pirsig