basically try and take a text that seems like it's one and
say, well, actually this, it's, this piece comes from this time.
And this was integrated at a later period.
And this is actually the result of a mistake that somehow got copied from
another text.
And it was all of those attempts to figure out why something that,
perhaps, looks like one, is actually lots of different shards,
different pieces, that are not necessarily coming into something together.
Whereas what has been done, again, this is just a generalization.
But the more American approach, we're like okay, but now we have a text,
now we want to say something about it without necessarily wanting to be held
accountable for all those different pieces and how they come together.
So it's always a balance to strike.
I think in addition to that scene, another thing I would say,
it's one thing to do some background research and
get context in order to make a movie about an interesting field.
You see this all the time with architecture seems to be a popular career
for movies.
So I'm sure they do research into architecture.
But what I found in watching the movie was that there are places
where the movie has the character go down a road.
And you can see the character's mind working and
correcting what would have been a mistake.
It was something too far.
So there's at one point, the son
is writing a description of his father's scholarship for the prize committee.
And he's typing it out, and he types out, and
I remember watching this the first time, and he writes something.
And I say, that's not exactly right.
And sure enough, he erases it and goes back and
rewrites it in a more conservative way.
So, that's a level of that appreciation.
And similarly, when the father's being prepped for an interview on TV,
which I won't ruin for you.
[LAUGH] But when the father's being prepped for a TV interview and
he sees the interviewer's teleprompter being prepared with text describing him.
He's bothered with one of the sentences, because it's too much,
it's too much about his contribution.
So to get that level of understanding of the field,
where you're actually creating characters who are living this tension.
Both the father and the son are caught trying to figure out where
they situate and position themselves vis a vis the other in such fascinating ways.
And that I think is one of the things that makes the movie so remarkable.
>> But I think there's a, this actually touches on, I think,
a bigger issue that pertains to Talmud and critical scholarship.
So as you all know at this point,
that one of the modes of being of the Talmud, which is divisive.
Is that It presents itself as incredibly indebted to previous generations.
And as the traditional mode Jewish learning is to say I am nothing.
My predecessors are the ones that created everything,
I am just a footnote, as it were.
I am just commenting on something that the great ones have done.
And in a sense, I revere previous generations.
Now of course, in American academia, the things we're being rewarded for is say,
I'm groundbreaking, nobody said that before me, I'm amazing.
I'm incredible, everyone is wrong, or no one's smart but me.
So when it comes to critical scholarship in Talmud there is a fundamental
tension especially if we grow up in this world.
Between that dimension of saying, well I am just building on the foundation.
>> Filial piety.
>> Okay.
[INAUDIBLE] I think an interesting dimension of that
is that the Talmud Park in Jerusalem, which I attended for
a while was very, very filial in this respect.
It was strongly committed to saying we have those amazing ancestors here,
the Footnote componant to that.
And we are, one of my teachers, they just said,
well, we basically are going through what this important scholar said, and
we're just checking, we're just intervening.
But if we were important,
our greater teachers would have said that, which is a very Talmudic way of thinking.
>> Right. >> Of course-
>> It's funny,
because the flip side of that is, in addition to there being this reverence for
the ancestral Talmud scholar past.
