a little talmud
At the end of this morning's service the rabbi did some teaching of
his own. (This isn't usual, but through logic that I'll explain if
asked and punt otherwise, doing so was useful today specifically.)
He brought the mishna about our obligation to remember the exodus
from Egypt both during the day and at night. Some of this is in
the haggadah; since my family skips that part I was glad to have it
here. In short, the torah passage says "all the days", but if it
just meant "the days" it could have said so, so "all the days" means
day and night. (The torah, like a good technical spec, is not supposed
to contain unnecessary words.)
This obligation is fulfilled in the liturgy in the paragraphs after
the sh'ma ("I am the lord your god who brought you out of Egypt...").
This passage ends the paragraph about tzitzit (fringes), which (the torah
says) we are to wear so that we will see them and remember the mitzvot.
We don't wear tzitzit at night (because it says you have to see them;
the mishna predates good lighting). So, the rabbi asked, why do
we read about tzitzit at night and not just in the morning? He gave
Rashi's answer, that we say that paragraph because of the exodus part
(and I guess the rest just gets brought along).
I offered a different answer: if we need the fringes to remember the
mitzvot, and we need to read about that in the morning even though
we're already doing it, then how much the moreso would we need to read
that passage at night when we aren't wearing them? To this the
rabbi said that I grok talmudic reasoning. :-)