THINK: The Omer & R' Akiva's Students Pt II - Akhnai & The Clash Of Two Different Understandings Of Torah

In our first class we contrasted the approach to Torah study of Rabbi Eliezer with that of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yehoshua - asking whether Torah story is an exercise of creative insight or a focus on tradition and that which has been said by our teachers before us. Today we see how these two different approaches collide in perhaps the most famous of all Talmudic stories, the oven of Akhnai - and the declaration of lo bashamayim he - that the Torah is not in heaven Source sheet here This class is generously sponsored by Yaacov & Monique Ginsburg ilui nishmat Yaacov ben Bessi - and celebrates too the release and return to his family of Edan Alexander