Shana Tova to all my friends and fans. To get you in the holiday mood, here’s a choice between two videos, the first new and upbeat from the Fountainheads in Israel, and the second classic and spiritual from Barbra Streisand.
One big difference between the Talmud scenes in RASHI'S DAUGHTERS and those in RAV HISDA'S DAUGHTER is due to the different time periods in which these novels occur. The first takes place in 11th century France, when the Talmud text itself is pretty firmly established, and the only commentary I really needed to deal with was Rashi's.
My current novel, which takes place in 3rd-4th century Babylonia and Roman Palestina, presents a unique challenge since at that time there is no "Talmud" as we know it. What we have is Mishna, which was only compiled around two hundred years earlier, and various Baraita, numerous free-floating but authoritative teachings from the same Sages who appear in the Mishna, but which didn't make it into the Mishna.
Rabbis such as Rav Hisda had small schools in their home where they taught Mishna with the goal of explaining and clarifying the laws it contained. This was not an easy matter, as some Mishna contradicted others [or appeared to] and many Baraita also conflicted with these. The scholars' task was to elucidate all these in such a way that the contradictions were resolved or at least minimized and Jewish Law made clear. Discussions of these rabbis and their students were preserved and eventually compiled into what we know today as Talmud.
So Rav Hisda and his students are not studying "Talmud," they are studying Mishna. The Mishna text is fixed, but the Baraita and sayings of 3rd-century sages are only available from the vast memories of the scholars who heard them, learned them and shared them. Thus most 'talmud' scenes in my novel revolve around a certain Mishna and the Baraita that pertain to it. For the most part I restricted myself to those sugya that featured my main characters: Rav Hisda, Rami bar Chama, Rava and of course, my heroine, Rav Hisda's daughter. I may be wrong, but I've found over 17 sugya in which she appears, which is more often than any other woman is mentioned in the Talmud.
As always, my goal is to bring these scenes to life for the enjoyment and education of my readers. Shabbat Shalom.
I just realized that I wrote the Aramaic word sugya/sugia as if everyone reading this knew what it was [or how it was spelled]. So to clarify Talmud study a little bit, I’m providing a list of interesting, useful, or just plain cool websites about Talmud, in no particular order.
what is a sugya
wikipedia on gemara
virtual beit midrash
how to learn gemara
more Talmud links from about.com
critical Talmud study
Last, but not least, here is an article on whether women may/should study Talmud:
Next post I'll discuss how I'm trying to edit the Talmud scenes.
It took me just over two weeks to turn my first draft into the second draft, and send that off for editing. In the first draft, each chapter had its own Word file, which made them easier to handle. Only today did I put them all in order in one large rather unwieldy file [157,900 words and 699 pages: Courier 12, double-spaced]. Not that I'm anywhere near finished. While my editors are doing their job, now is my time to check if I overused certain words or phrases, described the various characters and locations sufficiently, or explained Jewish holidays and rituals adequately [among other things].
Also revisit each scene with Talmud to determine if the text I chose really belongs there or if there might be another sugya that works better. This in addition to checking my master list of interesting pieces of Talmud, just to make sure I didn't inadvertently leave out something important. Of course, there will be a second volume in the RAV HISDA'S DAUGHTER series, so I can [and should] leave some Talmud for the sequel.
When several of my readers generously offered to help edit my first draft, I realized that it was time to explain my professional editing process and how/when I use it. First of all, I have a free-lance editor, Beth Lieberman, who has worked with me since 2002 on all three RASHI'S DAUGHTERS novels.
Unlike the good old days when Random House publisher Bennett Cerf personally worked with Ayn Rand's to edit her novels, today's big publishers expect an author to deliver a final manuscript already edited, typically by someone who used to work for a big publisher. Of course, the author pays for this service. The editor at the big publisher then makes suggestions for improvement, but in my experience, these are minimal. They typically involve needing to explain something better to make sure that what I wrote actually means what I intended.
But Beth gets into the act much sooner, at the second draft [nobody sees my first draft except me]. She ensures that my character arch is strong, my theme is clear, and my prose understandable. I have two other non-professional readers [both who have helped me with RASHI'S DAUGHTERS] who also get the second draft. One is my daughter, an avid fiction fan who has no reluctance to tell me when my writing stinks, when a scene is boring, and when something I wrote makes no sense. The other is a non-Jewish friend, whose primary purpose is to tell me if I need to explain the Jewish content better, but who also lets me know [more gently than my daughter], when he doesn't quite understand what I've written.
None of these people copy-edit, although I don't mind if they notice my mistakes. That comes much later.
In my previous post, I wrote that I'd finished the first draft of RAV HISDA'S DAUGHTER and was looking forward to editing. I'm not sure how other authors edit their work, but I suspect my method is somewhat unique. In my first draft, my goal is just to get the story finished, the tale told. Dialogue is left floating in space, with only 'he said' and 'she said' as attributions. Scenes may have no specific location and characters no description.
I learned my lesson with my first novel's first draft, which weighed in a 600 pages, single-spaced. Obviously a lot had to be cut, and I kicked myself over all the carefully crafted scenes and dialogues that went missing. I was determined not to go that route again, so now, it is only in my second draft, when I know how the story works itself out, that these kinds of details go in.
So on my initial pass-through of my current novel, I read through quickly to delete anything that no longer fits or makes sense – perhaps a subplot or secondary character, and definitely any scenes that serve no obvious purpose. I also note where I give specific information, like how/why a certain Jewish holiday is observed, so I can eliminate it if it appears again.
Once that is gone, I read through again, more slowly. Now the character descriptions go in, with careful notes to ensure I'm consistent. Scenes that had no specific location get one, along with appropriate descriptions. And dialogue gets anchored to a particular time and place, with the characters' feelings and expressions described.