When Samuel Heilman took a sabbatical from teaching sociology to spend time in Jerusalem, he did not know that it would become a personal pilgrimage. 'Not until I had been to Jerusalem and observed and joined in the act of lernen the Talmud would I be able to discover its centrality to my own Jewish existence.' Heilman writes. 'What had begun by engaging the social scientist in me would end by awakening the Jew.'.