Hey there and welcome back to Take One, the podcast that brings you just one scholarly page of Talmud each day.

And on today's pages,

Chulin 8 and 9, we have a conversation that touched me personally. Behold. And Rav Yehuda says that Rav says, a Torah scholar is required to learn the requisite skills to perform three matters,

writing so that he will be able to write texts

on various occasions, ritual slaughter, and circumcision. And Rav Hananiabar Shalamaya says, in the name

of Rav, he must also learn to tie the knot of the philactaries, and to recite the blessing

of the grooms by heart, and with the traditional intonation,

and to tie ritual fringes to the corners of a garment.

The Gamara notes, and the other Amorah of Yehuda holds that those skills are commonplace

and do not require special training.

The question the rabbis are asking is when every single one of us who ever

contemplated grad school entertained at one point or another. Put bluntly, it's this. What should a

Talmud Khacham or a scholar know? To hear our current crop of academics tell it, the answer is as simple as it is dispiriting.

A scholar, they argue, should know very much about very little, specializing in his or her

field of study and proving his or her commitment to this field by writing and language

no one outside of it could ever understand. I still recall when,

once upon a time when I was a professor at NYU, I was chided by a colleague who informed me

she did not like my latest book. I asked her if she found my conclusions wrong or my research

shoddy, nothing of the sort, she said.

Both were wonderful.

Then what I pressed on?

What didn't you like?

...