A Time to Thaw

Fifteen hundred years ago, at the close of the era of the Amoraim, when the exile deepened and the people of Israel were scattered and fragmented, Rav Ashi and Ravina worked to seal the Babylonian Talmud. They gathered hundreds of years of learning, arranged the discussions, decided among the versions, and established one framework that could hold the Torah at a time when the inner tools of the nation had weakened. This necessary move preserved the spiritual life through generations of destruction, dispersion, and weakness. It was a freezing of a process that had ripened over generations, a freezing born out of distress, not out of choice. Today, thank God, we are at the beginning of the flowering of our redemption. Most of the Jewish people live in the Land of Israel, and for every Jew in the world who so desires, there is a state of which he can be a part. This freeze must be thawed. The process that halted must be renewed. The Torah of the Land of Israel is a whole conception, one that upholds the need to study a living Torah, one that grows upon its own soil and advances the word of God in the world.

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