Did the man tell you what business the Ari was in, at least as reflected in those letters?
No.
Re Jastrow, I must admit I never read the preface either. At my yeshivah the use of Jastrow was very mildly discouraged.
I got my copy of Jastrow not for learning Gemara, but because I find etymology interesting.
We were supposed first to try looking things up in the Aruch (an 11th-century Aramaic-to-Hebrew dictionary compiled by R Nathan ben Yechiel of Rome), and only if we couldn't find it there, or couldn't understand the definition, were we to have resort to the "easy" way of Jastrow. Hebrew words were also first to be looked up in Even-Shoshan (a Hebrew-to-Hebrew dictionary), and only afterwards in a Hebrew-to-English dictionary. (We were allowed to use Steinsaltz only to look up incidental references, not the main text we were supposed to be studying; the volume for that tractate was removed from the library. Otzar Meforshei Hatalmud ("Treasury of Talmud Commentaries") was banned, being described as "spoon-fed rishonim". Mei Menuchot (a very thorough commentary on the Tosefot) was allowed only for the beginners' class.)
Hah! I'm writing this immediately after finishing my morning's Talmud class, in which Steinsaltz was a must (for me, at any rate) and Jastrow and Hebrew-to-English dictionaries likewise.
no subject
No.
Re Jastrow, I must admit I never read the preface either. At my yeshivah the use of Jastrow was very mildly discouraged.
I got my copy of Jastrow not for learning Gemara, but because I find etymology interesting.
We were supposed first to try looking things up in the Aruch (an 11th-century Aramaic-to-Hebrew dictionary compiled by R Nathan ben Yechiel of Rome), and only if we couldn't find it there, or couldn't understand the definition, were we to have resort to the "easy" way of Jastrow. Hebrew words were also first to be looked up in Even-Shoshan (a Hebrew-to-Hebrew dictionary), and only afterwards in a Hebrew-to-English dictionary. (We were allowed to use Steinsaltz only to look up incidental references, not the main text we were supposed to be studying; the volume for that tractate was removed from the library. Otzar Meforshei Hatalmud ("Treasury of Talmud Commentaries") was banned, being described as "spoon-fed rishonim". Mei Menuchot (a very thorough commentary on the Tosefot) was allowed only for the beginners' class.)
Hah! I'm writing this immediately after finishing my morning's Talmud class, in which Steinsaltz was a must (for me, at any rate) and Jastrow and Hebrew-to-English dictionaries likewise.