Talmudically Speaking

       We were studying with our former senior rabbi, returned from Israel to be with us during the High Holidays.   The rabbi noted in a Talmudic passage the three books that are opened on Rosh Hashanah, "one for the thoroughly wicked, one for the thoroughly righteous, and one for the intermediate."

       The rabbi asked us which category we thought we were in.  All of us said "intermediate."   But after we read,  discussed, and parsed the whole passage almost word for word for some time, I offered up that I now felt "thoroughly intermediate."