Vika Krieger

And those big—I don't even know what they're called, but those, like, weird leather-bound books that have, like, all the legal theories in them, like—

That's probably the closest parallel where you basically, the Talmud is basically a transcription of esoteric debates and arguments between rabbis.

And one rabbi will put forward a position, another will argue it, and they're basically using the Torah as like a proof test.

Like, well, I think the Torah says this.

It's like, no, I'd interpret the Torah this way.

And so there's something kind of intellectually satisfying about like deconstructing an argument, following a debate.

and also doing it in ancient Aramaic in a book that has no punctuation.

And so, like, there's something cool almost about, like, decoding these texts.

That makes sense.

Absolutely.

Yeah, totally.

Yes, that's exactly right.

But I will say that, for me, and I don't want to judge other people, but, like, for me, there was exactly zero spiritual fulfillment in that task.

But, like...

this idea of spiritual fulfillment, that wasn't really part of my vocabulary growing up.

I mean, it's probably not part of most teenagers' vocabularies, but this idea that religion would be nourishing in some way, that wasn't why we did it.

And so going to college, leaving my world, all of a sudden being surrounded by other kinds of Judaism, more mystical versions of Judaism, more embodied forms of Judaism, I was just kind of like...

huh, okay, like that is interesting to me.

And like being able to pause and ask questions of like, why are we doing this?

And who are we doing this for?