AlephBeta methodology cliff notes

The following points endeavor to summarize some salient tools used in Rabbi David Fohrman's teachings:

• Meta genre: "So if someone asks, what kind of book is the Bible? The Bible I think, if it is a book as to how it is that we are supposed to live our lives," a "guidebook."

• Local genre: Frequent citation of Mortimer Adler, "How to Read a Book." First step is you need to know what type of material you are reading.

• Compactness: "[I]t is a minimalist text, the Torah will use devices to be able to get at those meanings." Torah as "zip file." See also his binary theory of intertextuality.

• Intentional "difficulties": "And one of those devices I think are intentional problems or difficulties that are supposed to strike the reader and have a struggle in understanding how they fit in." There are supposed to be challenging/strange things in the text that are supposed to prod us to search, examine, meditate, pray, and consider.
  • Broken patterns: "X X X X X X Y" leads to to associate X with Y, even overlay Y on top of X in your mind. Example: עָר֔וּם means naked throughout Gen 2-3, but "cunning" for the serpent in 3:1, prompting us to ponder in what sense the serpent's "cunningness" corresponds to nakedness

• Intertextual parallels:
  • Probably the tool AlephBeta material is most known for.
  • "Web 2.0." The Torah is in fact more sophisticated than the internet. Instead of a link taking you somewhere else (and leaving the last page behind), you can view idea A from the perspective of B and C and D. Tool: ask yourself, "Where have I seen this (language or theme) before?"
  • "A gezeira shavah is basically this idea that occasionally when the Torah uses similar terminology from place to place, we connect these ideas."

• Binary theory of intertextuality: Every intertextual parallel can provide either a point of comparison or contrast (in addition to other fuzzy possibilities). Hence, for example, given a series of 10 parallels between two texts, there are 2^10 = 1,024 different possible configurations of how they are being joint compared and contrasted. This is part of what allows the Torah to function as a compact "zip file" encoding effectively limitless information with a finite number of words.

• "Stereovision": looking at the same thing from different angles gives richness and "depth" to it. Hence one reason for recapitulation of similar but distinct stories, or the internal parallels of a chiasm is that both enrichen each other and add depth greater than the sum of the parts!!!

• Chiasms:
  • They define an area of text that goes together; Form a unit/pericope.
  • They point to the center [and the center often "pairs" with the two extremes"]
  • They teach you something about the pairs
  • An seemingly "imperfect chiasm" is in fact often providing additional structure as an outline tool (A-B-C-D - D-B-C-A means "B-C" is a single unit)

• Law/story relationship: The laws interconnect with the stories. Frequently, the mitzvot are based on earlier stories. I.e. the stories show why the mitzvot are necessary!

• Types of questions:
  • Internal question (what is Jonah's running from God about?) vs. external questions (how could Jonah survive in the belly of the fish?)

• "Leading word": A repeated word in a text, perhaps in different forms, that the text is leading you to use to put the story together (e.g. "naked"/"cunning" in Gen 2:25-3:21)

• Multiple vayomers: Indicate multiple conversations, or breaks in the conversation where a response was expected but none given

• Lullaby effect: Heard it too many times to be jolted by what it actually says. Missed meaning from over-familiarity. Solutions:
  • Do NOT read with the end in mind. Try reading without knowing what happens next.
  • Though experiment: Replay the story but choose a different ending --- One way God trains His people is to go through an analogous situation to what they or their forebears went through and try to get a better outcome

• Which one of these things is not like the others? And then, how actually IS it like the others in a way you didn't realize; OR...(e.g. why/how is it complementary to the other(s)...)?

• Take it apart and put it back together

• Cast and characters --- What/who in this story matches to what/who in that story. Many variations can happen, e.g.:
  • One character in the first story can "split" and different aspects of it be played by different characters in the 2nd story
  • Likewise, multiple characters in the first can "fuse" into one character in the second
  • Sometimes with an "intertextual triangle" aspects of a character can split into the two different *stories* [e.g. the two angels with two swordsat the end of Gen 3 ---> (a) The burning bush, & (b) Jericho]
  • The mappings can evolve as the story goes along

• Two ingredients of stories: Intention and Obstacle

• Jigsaw methodology:
  • Corner pieces don't need anything else to know what they are and how they fit
  • Middle pieces only make sense and reveal their place/relevance in relation to the other pieces around them
  • Edge pieces are partly self-evident but partly need context around it

• Prism refraction: White light has all the colors inherent in it, but you only see those different colors when the light is refracted into different beams with distinct colors. [One story dividing into many; e.g. Yovel at Sinai --> Aspects of the Year of Jovel]

• Research methodology:
  • First see a pattern without understanding what it all means
  • Look for and extend more pieces of the pattern
  • Certain question jump into mind suggested by the pattern
    • You will tend to avoid even thinking about questions that go against your present paradigm (see Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions)
    • But now the patterns are disrupting your paradigm and you begin to ask questions you had overlooked/ignored before

• Reverse engineering: Chazal were using these techniques, but not telling you how they were doing it. They provide enough clues for the thoughtful and motivated student to back-trace their thought process through the Scripture.

• Psalms are retelling/recapitulation of Torah/Tanakh narrative/history events, told from the inner/emotional/spiritual/subjective personal-experience perspective rather than the external/objective/historical perspective.

• Biconsonantal root theory: "Rabbi Eisemann comes up with this theory that the biconsonantal root that all Hebrew letters, even though they look they have three letter roots, really have two letter roots. The first two letters of the root give a basic idea and the third letter, somehow, differentiates the idea and creates the distinction between them all. But there's a certain fundamental commonality between all words with the first two letters."

• Combination lock theory of signs: Lock combination is set and verified/authenticated as two separate steps. Likewise with God's confirming signs (though not necessarily in that order). When the key fits, despite the separation in time between the setting and verification stages, it provides strong assuring evidence that the Almighty Adonai Elohim is at work.

See also

• Midrashic literary tools
• Category:Schools of midrashic interpretation