Silence, speed and song: religious education in late antiquity

Marc Hirshman's essay, entitled "Silence, speed and song: religious education in late antiquity," advises us at the outset of the centrality of the oral medium in rabbinic culture and education. While Torah scrolls were written and read out for ritual purposes, all learning in the rabbinic Beit Midrash took place orally. For that reason great emphasis was placed on careful listening and exactness of memory, lest certain "textpeople" (as Heschel called them in a different context) pass away, and their legal and narrative traditions pass away them. At one point, there is a discussion of R. Akiva's dictum praising song as a fit accompaniment to oral recitation not only as a mnemonic device, but as engendering a certain state of soul. The essay ends by comparing certain rabbinic dicta with passages from Plutarch praising the virtue of careful listening and criticizing habits of premature speech and interruption. All this, of course, bears clear witness to the dominantly oral character of rabbinic culture.