RMSG Tenth Anniversary

I think that most of the subscribers to the Rabin Mishnah Study Group know that it was born on the day of the burial of Prime Minister Yitzĥak Rabin z"l, which took place on Monday, 13th Marĥeshvan 5755 [November 6th 1995], exactly ten years ago today according to the Jewish calendar. But most RMSG subscribers surely do not know that it was conceived only on the previous day. During that Sunday a small group of committed Conservative Jews from several parts of the world, who had come together via an online Conservative discussion list, were trying to commiserate with each other. Despite the shocked despondency that had taken hold of us all there was also the question hanging in the air: "what can we do?" It was then that one of our number said: "We should do what Jews usually do in a house of mourning: we should learn Mishnah." The suggestion received general approbation and I was delegated to send out a mishnah shiur to the group on the following day, the day of the burial. The person who made that seminal suggestion was Ed Frankel. Ed comes from Philadelphia, USA - though at that time he was living in Calgary, Canada. Ed must be considered to be the progenitor of RMSG and for that we must all be truly grateful to him.

I had no idea what mishnah to choose for the occasion, so at random I just opened the copy of mishnayot which happened to be on my desk at the time. The page fell open at the beginning of Tractate Kiddushin, so the first shiur of what was to become the Rabin Mishnah Study Group was on the first mishnah of that tractate. (I just prefaced the shiur with a kavvanah in transliterated Hebrew and in English to the effect that "I am studying Mishnah in the sacred memory of Yitzĥak Rabin, son of Rosa and Neĥemya". That kavvanah continued throughout that first year and has re-appeared on the occasion of each Yahrzeit.) Those who received that shiur apparently liked what they read and asked me to continue for the shiv'ah period. However, when the shiv'ah came to an end people asked me to continue - and I have continued sending out the shiurim for a whole decade since then!

Those who received the shiurim, of course, told others about them and I began to receive email requests to be added to the list of recipients. I think that about ten people must have received that first shiur, but by the time we reached the sheloshim there must have been some seventy or more recipients! At that time I was a novice as far as emails were concerned, and each shiur went out with the full list of recipients at the top! We reached a stage where, as one participant wrote to me, "the list of recipients is almost as long as the shiur itself!" I was sending out these shiurim daily (!) and many participants were reading them at the start of their working day. This meant that those living in a country where there was a five-day working week were slipping behind and finding it difficult to catch up.

The next person to whom we must all be grateful is Professor Re'uven Boxman. Ray Boxman is not only a professor of Electrical Engineering at Tel-Aviv University (and a personal friend of mine), but he was (is) a prominent member of my congregation, Torat Hayyim in Herzliyya. (I think he may even have been president of the congregation at the time.) It was he who guided me and advised me on the next stage of the development of RMSG. He lay down a golden rule which I followed ever since: it should not take more than ten minutes to read each shiur! He also urged me to try and find some institution that might host the shiurim on its server and offer automated mailing.

At that time Re'uven Lerner from Modi'in (and now temporarily in USA) was a fantastic source of technical advice and support. He gave me the email address of a contact in the Computer Department of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and suggested that I ask if they would host RMSG on their listserv. We must all be truly grateful to JTS for hosting RMSG for several years, because it was the automation of the process of subscription and distribution that made the shiurim available to many more people. The few who received the first shiur had gradually developed into dozens and now developed into hundreds.

On the first anniversary of Rabin's death we completed our study of Tractate Kiddushin, and the majority of the participants chose Berakhot to be the next tractate of our study. (This was followed by Tractate Sanhedrin, and over the years we have completed the study of the following tractates: Rosh ha-Shanah, Tamid, Yadayyim, Pesachim, Sotah and Pe'ah. We are currently studying Tractate Avot.) In all cases it was the majority vote of the participants which decided the tractate to be studied.

RMSG was now becoming known as a potent vehicle for the dissemination of serious study "in the climate of Masorti (Conservative) Judaism." By now Rabbi Mauricio Balter was the president of the Rabbinical Assembly in Israel. It was he who urged the expansion of the study group into the Virtual Bet Midrash and worked for the Rabbinical Assembly and the Masorti Movement to adopt BMV, and his efforts were crowned with success. Rabbi Joel Meyers, the Executive Director of the international Rabbinical Assembly, readily agreed that the RA should transfer an annual subvention to the Masorti Movement in Israel for the support and development of the Virtual Bet Midrash, and his warm support, both material and spiritual, has continued to this day. Rabbi Ehud Bandel, until recently the President of the Masorti Movement, was tireless in his efforts to ensure that the Masorti Movement in Israel always made available any further funds that might be needed to ensure the continuation of BMV. Indeed, it is truly remarkable that despite all its financial vicissitudes the Masorti Movement has continued its support of BMV most staunchly. I think that apart from its very existence, one of the greatest gifts of the Masorti Movement to international Conservative Judaism has been the Virtual Bet Midrash. Subscribers from all over the world - from Honolulu in the west to Beijing in the east, from Cape Town in the south to Stockholm in the north, and all stations between - should be truly grateful for the staunch support that the Masorti Movement has given so that the shiurim of BMV can remain free of charge.

When some serious malfunctions of the JTS computer system caused delays in the receipt of the RMSG shiurim the Masorti Movement made available its own server, which housed BMV for a couple of years.

One recurrent - and justified - criticism of BMV over the years was that it was inappropriate that the shiurim should be only in English. However, the technical difficulties of sending emails in Hebrew which could be read by all and any computers were (and are) prodigious. It became increasingly clear that if BMV were ever to be able to offer shiurim in Hebrew it would have to be via HTML. (I had tried to experiment with PDF files, but it proved too cumbersome for our purposes.)

It was another member of my congregation (and another personal friend) who urged me and guided me towards a minimal mastery of HTML. Warren Green has been an enormous source of encouragement and advice. When BMV left the JTS server we lost our online archive, and Warren pushed me and cajoled me with infinite but determined patience to create a BMV Internet site which would also house the archives, so that people would be able to access previous shiurim. I am no great master of HTML, so our web site is simple and unattractive in the extreme, but it serves its purpose. Amazing the things one has to learn in order to study Mishnah!

Thanks to the "educational" efforts of Warren Green, the RMSG email shiurim are now available in an attractive HTML format and, as from the beginning of our study of Tractate Avot, they are available in Hebrew as well. The web site now houses most of the shiurim that have been sent out over the years: I have yet to find the time needed to make the remainder of Tractate Sanhedrin and all of Tractates Kiddushin and Berakhot available.

Recently yet another member of my congregation (and personal friend) has become a veritable tower of strength and support. Hayim Caspy not only has the enormous reserves of patience needed to answer and explain all my technical difficulties and to make sure that I have all the equipment that I need; but he has made available to the Virtual Bet Midrash the server of his company at no charge. This has enabled us to acquire our own domain name and to handle our own email system - truly an enormous step forward.

At the time of this tenth anniversary, I am able to send out each week two shiurim in mishnah and one in halakhah. (I would dearly love to send out more than just three shiurim, but the addition of the Hebrew version of Tractate Avot has taken up too much of my time.) The Halakhah Study Group began with a series of shiurim on the Torah Reading ceremony and now continues with a series of shiurim on "Shabbat Eve in the Home". The Internet site of BMV also offers a series of essays on Masorti/Conservative theology, to be found under the general rubric of the Hashkafah Study Group, where there are also several occasional pieces that have been offered over the years. (On the occasion of this anniversary people may care to read the shiur that I sent out on the first anniversary of the Rabin assassination, nine years ago.)

I have mentioned the latest development of the Virtual Bet Midrash - making the shiurim of RMSG available in Hebrew as well. In this connection I must gratefully acknowledge the great assistance of yet two more people. Michal Roth, makes the first draft of a translation into Hebrew of each mishnah shiur. And then, after the shiur has been sent out, Amnon Ron'el (a member of the Masorti congregation in Carmiel) sends me corrections of grammar and syntax, so that the Hebrew shiurim are made free from such errors and typos before they are archived on the web site. Amnon is blessed with a gentle manner, trenchant perception and a warm sense of humour! (Alas, no one averts me of all the typos in the English shiurim, which are thus preserved for posterity in the web archives!)

When Father Jacob was about to meet his brother Esau once again knowing that Esau felt that he had cause to do him harm we read [Genesis 33:2] that he arranged his family strategically, putting Rachel and Joseph at the end of the column. There is a midrash [Genesis Rabbah 78:8] which explains that "the most beloved comes last". And certainly, now that we draw near to the end of this special Tenth Anniversary account I come to those to whom I owe the greatest debt of gratitude.

In the Gemara [Ta'anit 7a] Rabbi Ĥanina says: