Short thread on communication, teaching and selling ideas:
When I finished school I went to study in Israel in a "Yeshiva" - these are like HE academies where you just study Jew stuff: philosophy, bible, history, law. And, lots of talmud. 1/
The Talmud is really hard at the best of times. It's very confusing, varies in style from page to page, the content itself is very demanding and it's in a weird Aramaic-Hebrew hybrid. 2/
Everyone in the Yeshiva studied the same tractate (like a book of the talmud) but there were lots of different classes, with each rabbi having a very different style and approach. 3/
One rabbi took a highly abstract and conceptual approach. He used very complicated ideas and words and did a lot of monologuing. Everybody used to rave about how amazing his classes were. So, one day, I decided to go. 4/
I confess that I didn't understand a damn thing. It all just felt very...like...nothingness. Like things were being overcomplicated and overdramatised and ideas and lenses were being added that didn't really add much at all. It was just confusing. 5/