Eli Tadmor, PhD, earned a doctorate in Assyriology from Yale University in 2024. He is currently under contract with Yale University Press to write Erra: An Ancient Myth in a New Translation. His work can be found on www.elitadmor.com.
Every Monday evening, I listen to the dead. I meet over Zoom with a Rabbi named Moishe Kaplan, and read through passages of the Babylonian Talmud: a 2,711-page collection of tales and debates, roughly 1500 years old and written in Aramaic and Hebrew. I do this as part of the 2448 project, which invites intellectually-curious people world-wide to commit to studying Torah for 18 minutes weekly over Zoom, and so connect with the riches of the Jewish tradition. I would like to explain why I do so.
I am a Jew, and an atheist—like my father before me and my grandfather before him. I also attend Shabtai, a global Jewish society based at Yale. There, in New Haven’s Anderson mansion, at the dinners hosted by Shabtai, I meet people young and old from within Yale and outside it. Many of the attendees are Jewish. Of these, many are secular, like me; many others are religious. Yet in one important way, I align more with the latter than the former. Despite the fact that they believe in the God of Israel and live by his commandments, while I myself do not believe in him and follow his commandments not at all, there is a central tenet that unites us: that what may seem old beyond relevance retains its vitality, that the dead are worth listening to, that the past matters and so do its texts. Put differently, we believe that though thousands of years have passed since the writing down of the Five Books of Moses, where it counts most, no time has passed, none at all.
A delusion lies in the heart of modernity: that the past has well and truly passed away, that the old problems are no longer with us, that ours is the power and glory and control. This delusion is old. Take 1913, and Europe on the brink of disaster. Then, the refined bourgeoisies of Vienna, of Berlin and of London and of Paris, thought themselves an evolved and civilized people, the blesséd denizens of an enlightened age. Yet though Europe fancied itself beyond history, history had other plans. The summer of 1914 came, and the war, and the torrents of blood. Europe awoke from its arrogant dream, and found out to its horror that no time had passed, none at all.
I am an Assyriologist: a scholar of the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). I specialize in ancient mythology, and in one myth in particular: the Erra Epic, a poem telling how Erra, a god of slaughter and plague, nearly killed all humans. And it is this myth that I was busy studying in March 2020, when history came knocking. At the end of that month, I flew home to live with my parents. As the specter of pestilence spread through the world, and I followed the news day to day—anxious, lonely, locked in and locked down—I felt helpless. With all the modern wonders that surrounded me, I was merely human—infectable, fragile—and it felt then to me like no time had passed, none at all. So I turned to the ancient world, where such fragility was taken as a given. And I read through the books of the three great prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel—and drew from their words consolation, and found in them beauty sublime.
These books are but three works in the grand library of Jewish tradition. It contains not only works of prophecy, but of legal analysis, of mystical insight, of wisdom worldly and out of this world. There is something for everyone. And as I go about my modern life—when I am on social media, for instance, engulfed by its torrent of meaningless images, its vapid, hateful, thought-deadening cascade—it does me good to put away my phone and turn to the words of the ancients, which are more wholesome fare.
Before concluding, I would like to tell you about a Talmudic story which particularly affected me, and which I learned thanks to 2448. It is about two mighty scholars: Rabbi Yochanan and Rish Lakish. Rish Lakish was a leader of bandits. Rabbi Yochanan taught Torah. The two had a chance meeting, and Rabbi Yochanan pointed out that Rish Lakish’s strength would be better employed studying Torah than robbing innocent travelers. Convinced, Rish Lakish became Rabbi Yochanan’s student. Yet the change was not easy. As Rabbi Yochanan taught Rish Lakish Torah, the two debated constantly. At the height of one dispute, no doubt feeling as though his arguments were insufficient to counter Rish Lakish’s point, Rabbi Yochanan insulted Rish Lakish (we would call this an ad hominem). The two men fell out with each other. Rish Lakish fell ill. Rish Lakish’s wife—who was also Rabbi Yochanan’s sister—begged Rabbi Yochanan to pray for his friend, yet Rabbi Yochanan, whose feelings were still sore, refused. Rish Lakish died shortly thereafter. Rabbi Yochanan fell into depression, and the rabbis, seeing his grief, sent him a new pupil. This pupil did not debate Rabbi Yochanan, but agreed with him on all matters. This did not console Rabbi Yochanan. On the contrary: in debating Rabbi Yochanan, Rish Lakish had shown him respect; yet the sycophantic student did nothing but reflect his new teacher’s thoughts back at him, leaving him even lonelier than before. And Rabbi Yochanan could not bear it: he went mad and died. This story demonstrates that however difficult it may be to truly meet the other—whose thoughts and worldviews may be so different from ours as to incense us—true relationships are always preferable to the alternative: the sterile wasteland of our own narcissism.
And in that spirit, every Monday evening I meet with Rabbi Moishe, and read the words of those whose logic and beliefs were wildly different from my own, who lived in lands I’ve never seen, in cities long abandoned. And whether you are a believer, an atheist, or any kind of Jew in between, you can also join 2448. And perhaps you will find, as I did, that it is still worthwhile to listen to our dead.
Eli Tadmor can be reached at eli@tadmor.us
Gutnick Academy is dedicated by Rabbi Mordechai Zev Hacohen and Naomi Gutnick to the Preservation and Dissemination of Jewish Values on University Campuses and the World at Large