A FIRST COURSE IN JEWISH TRADITION
A First Course in Jewish Tradition begins with Black Fire on White Fire, which introduces Jewish tradition – halakha, agada, midrash – and the personalities who wrote it, so to say.
Black Fire on White Fire opens with Universe on Fire, an allegory which describes “Judaica”, the entire spectrum of Jewish tradition as a universe with its own geography. This section has its own logic.
A First Course in Jewish Tradition formally begins with the “Fire Chapters” – descriptions of both the ancient and contemporary authors of our first course in Jewish tradition. We will concentrate mostly on the authors of halakha, but the mystics are also fascinating and will be introduced.
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Our universe is called Judaica.
Learning about Judaism requires a collection of universes, actually; a collection of universes is called a multiverse by publishers of comic books, especially superhero comics. Don’t scoff: these comic books are simply ancient myths rewritten for modern conditions. Superhero comics occur in four generations: the Golden Age (1940s), the Silver Age (1960s), the Bronze Age (1970s) and the Modern Age (1990s+).
Jewish myths (“Judaica”) span a much longer time than comic books; if dividing some 80 or 90 years of comic book publishing into a multiverse is useful, how much moreso is it useful to help us understand more than 3000 years of Jewish yearning and learning? Judaica’s mutliverse cannot neatly contain 3000 years, for history repeats itself. Judaica relies on a history of ideas, and Jewish traditional ideas are always being analyzed. A First Course in Jewish Tradition conceives a mutliverse with six epochs to explain how Judaisms has evolved:
- Roads on Fire
- Tongues on Fire
- Minds on Fire
- Hearts on Fire
- Times on Fire
- Ashes on Fire
A First Course in Jewish Tradition is primarily founded on these six epochs, but there is another way to approach our study: allegory, or our Universe of Judaica. This approach introduces you to the astounding depth and breadth of the Jewish wisdom traditions. Allegories are not universally popular, and those who prefer unembellished facts should go directly to Roads on Fire. Allegory remains a gentle way to provoke interest and relevance in the history of Jewish intellectual pursuit, which has always been connected to halakhic development – whether to advance halakha or in reaction to halakha.
Crisis On Limitless Earths
Judaica? A universe with three continents and two seas, connected to each other by both natural and artificial means. The continents, the seas, and all they contain have been visited by many expeditions; the expeditions are named for various are historical figures in halakhic development, such as Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki (Rashi). A First Course in Jewish Tradition introduces these historical figures throughout the “Fire Chapters.”
The Halakha Sea
Every voyage on the Halakha Sea is a voyage of discovery.
This deep sea defines three continents, countless settlements, and other geographic features. The Halakha Sea’s shoreline is Mitzva, a land of high cliffs and mountains overlooking the Sea. Let us leave the shore now and explore the sea’s charted regions. These islands and continents formed over time. Like any physical island, they are descendants of the sea itself. The charted islands are each distinct. Only over time did commerce and intercourse occur among them. There remain many uncharted islands. We’ll explore them in the next section.
