Chana Zuckier: Reflections From My Speech at My GPATS Graduation

Chana Cooper Zuckier 


I studied with Rabbi Kahn for four years and find myself devastated - at a total loss for words to describe what he and his Torah meant to me. Since my words have failed me today, I will instead share the speech I delivered about Rabbi Kahn at my GPATS graduation in 2014:

"When I started in Stern 6 years ago, and I sat down in Rabbi Kahn’s undergraduate Talmud shi’ur, I was completely terrified and didn’t open my mouth for about two months. I am now graduating GPATS and am also completing my tenure as Rabbi Kahn’s TA for that very same undergraduate gemara class. Through my years in Rabbi Kahn’s shi’ur, I learned how to learn. I learned how to carefully take apart a sugya, how to analyze rishonim, (we all know Rabbi Kahn doesn’t do acharonim so I can’t speak to that). I learned what it meant to immerse myself in Torah and to commit myself to learning.

Rabbi Kahn has incredibly high expectations for his students, which means that we have grown to have incredibly high expectations for ourselves. We know that Rabbi Kahn assumes that we will come to shi’ur having fully prepared the material, thought through the implications and will be ready to hit the ground running as soon as shi’ur starts. This knowledge that are expected to be ready motivates us to push ourselves to master the sources to the best of our abilities and stretch the bounds of what we think we are capable of.

When shi’ur starts, we don’t expect to sit back and listen to a prepackaged lecture with all the loose ends neatly wrapped up in a nice bow. Learning gemara with Rabbi Kahn is an intensive, collaborative process which involves input from teacher and student – and the entire shi’ur works together to develop an approach to the sugya. As a class, we reproduce the shakla ve-tarya of the gemara, and question, challenge and debate each other in order to clarify the issues involved, thus further developing our thoughts and understanding. Rabbi Kahn certainly does not hesitate to tell us when we’re wrong, and we know we are welcome to challenge Rabbi Kahn, and bring our own questions to the table. In his shi’ur Torah has come alive for us. Rabbi Kahn has taught us that Torah is not just a tradition to be studied, but it is our inheritance, something that we own. We are not outsiders learning dry texts – but participants in perpetuating, building and creating Torah each day.

In this sacred process, Rabbi Kahn has also instilled in us a tremendous respect for and love of text. The message is clear: In order to truly learn Torah, one must carefully read each word, each line, each paragraph. Our first allegiance is to what the text is saying, not what we want it to be saying. Discussions in Rabbi Kahn’s shi’ur are rooted in the words on the page, and reflect this commitment to respecting the sources listening carefully to what they have to say.

Throughout the sedarim and shi’urim over the last two years, we have been privileged to witness Rabbi Kahn’s commitment to talmud Torah le-shemah, as well as his dedication to promoting Torah study for women at the highest level. We have been inspired by his willingness to stand up for Torah and determination to maintain the highest quality of limmud at all times.

Outside of shi’ur Rabbi Kahn is always willing to give of his time to support us, and does so with his characteristic warmth and kindness. If he was every annoyed at all of the questions I asked (and there were a lot of questions) he never showed it, and always answered thoroughly and patiently.

Rabbi Kahn, thank you for your Torah. Thank you for teaching me how to read – the suffixes and prefixes and everything in between. Thank you for your patience. Thank you for your dedication for talmud Torah and for teaching us what it means to be committed. Thank you for having faith – faith in the text, faith in Torah, and faith in us.

 

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