Can you study Talmud without the commentaries? Imagine Talmud without Rashi. How far would you get?” I agreed with him that I wouldn’t get very far at all. He had been going at it all wrong, he said, his eyes bright with excitement. He had wanted to read Freud. That had been his mistake. Freud had to be studied, not read. He had to be studied like a page of Talmud. And he had to be studied with a commentary.
