Machshava:

Teshuva 

Personalities:

Rebbi Shimon bar Yochai 

Collections: R' Wolfson Talmudic Tales Of Teshuva

Description

In this course we study some of the many wonderful stories of teshuva that appear in the Gemara with the hope that they will shed light on this most mysterious and important topic. Today we consider Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai and his cave and contrast it to the story of the cave in Plato's 'Republic'. What is to be learnt from the fact that the most famous stories in both Greek and Torah traditions about knowledge and ignorance, truth and falsehood, focus on the tension between a cave and the world outside? What should be taken from the very sharp differences between the two stories? And what is the nature of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai’s teshuva when he discovers that truth might lie both outside the cave as well as inside it?