The Talmud (28 page)

Of the many cultures with which the Talmud has come into contact in its fifteen-hundred-year history, perhaps the most unusual has been the experience in South Korea. There, the Talmud has been adopted as a primary school text.

When news first emerged that South Korean children were studying the Talmud, and that every Korean home has a copy, it was greeted with disbelief. It had to be a spoof, after all adults struggle to understand the Talmud, let alone children, and most Jewish homes don’t have a copy, so why should all Korean families possess one?

As befits a Talmudic narrative, the reports are both true, and false. It all depends on how you understand them. Korean children are studying the Talmud, and there are apparently copies in every home. But it’s not the multi-volume, two-million-word, densely argued version. It’s a highly abridged version, containing some of the stories and ethical teachings from the Talmud. Aspirational Koreans appreciate that Talmud study is an effective way of training the mind in problem solving. Combing its cut–and-thrust method of debate with the more rigid Confucian methods of teaching gives Korean students a multi-dimensional, educational experience that is unheard of anywhere else in the world.

It’s nearly two thousand years since the first discussions in the Babylonian academies. The Talmud’s history has been long and eventful. There’s no knowing what will come next. There’s no doubt that it will continue to be studied, and if the trends of the last half century are anything to go by, the number of people poring through its tomes will continue to increase for some while yet. And it will continue to reach new audiences, particularly if the South Korean experience is anything to go by.

We can’t know for certain where the Talmud can go, but, for now at least, it is no longer the exclusive property of the
yeshiva,
even though that is where it will continue to challenge minds and provoke discussion the most.

The people who created the Talmud conquered no empires, nor did they build fine palaces to display their grandeur. Those who nurtured it and preserved it from the flames were not honoured by kings and princes, nobody wrote ballads in their name,
28
they received neither estates nor wealth for their trouble. The students whose eyes grew dim through long hours, days and nights of study did not do so for the sake of personal gain; not in this world at any rate.
But between them all they created a pillar of world literature, a testament to the power of the human mind. Not everyone will consider it sacred literature. Most will find it too dense to spend much time with. But it stands amongst the great classics of scholarly endeavour. It has had its fill of suffering but its world view is optimistic. Its story still has a long way to run.

Notes

1
M. Avot 1.14.

2
Shapiro, 1999.

3
Leo Baeck survived Theresienstadt. His is one of many stories of inspirational courage and heroic survival. At the end of the war, he moved to London.

4
Oshry, 1983.

5
B. Sanhedrin 74a and elsewhere.

6
Levine, 2011. Of course there are situations when it is permissible to kill in order to save a life, most obviously when a murderer is trying to kill an innocent person.

7
Yad VaShem, 2013.

8
Danby, 1933.

9
Herford, 1903, p. 8.

10
Judaism in the First Three Centuries of the Christian Era: The Age of Tannaim
, 3 volumes, George Foot Moore (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1927).

11
Heller, 2013.

12
Rodkinson’s
New Edition of the Babylonian Talmud: Original Text Edited, Corrected, Formulated, and Translated into English
was published between 1896 and 1903 by Boston New Talmud Publishing Company in New York. Its title is reminiscent of the Yiddish version of Hamlet staged in New York in the 1890s by Boris Tomashevsky and billed as
Hamlet, Schauspeil Von Shakespeare, Verandert Undt Verbessert (Hamlet, a Play by Shakespeare, Changed and Improved)
. For criticisms of Rodkinson’s work see Mintz, 2006.

13
Quoted in Heller, 2013, pp. 214, 239.

14
Epstein, 1935–52.

15
The Times
, London, 8 July 1980.

16
The British Library, in private correspondence, have to date been unable to confirm the provenance of the Bomberg Talmud in their possession.

17
Samuel, 1978–80.

18
https://www.steinsaltz.org/Biography.php

19
Ostling, 1988.

20
Weiser, 1995.

21
The list of distinguished academics who have researched the Talmud is long and growing daily. Some, but by no means all, are noted in the Bibliography at the back of the book. The omission of a scholar’s writings from the Bibliography is not a reflection upon their work, but a consequence of the vastness of the subject.

22
http://www.elul.org.il

23
Soloveitchik, 1994.

24
See the section Talmud and Internet in (Alexenberg, 2006) and Jonathan Rosen’s personal memoir Rosen, 2001.

25
For a detailed treatment of the problem in Mishnah Ketubot 10.3 see Aumann, 2002.

26
Note that the question is not whether or not the bread is in the house; that can be discovered by a simple search. The question is whether or not the search is necessary.

27
B. Pesahim 10b. For a full discussion of this problem (of which only an abridged version has been given here) and for an analysis of the whole Teyku question see Jacobs, 1981.

28
Robert Browning did write
Rabbi Ben Ezra
, a poem in honour of Abraham Ibn Ezra, but he was a Bible commentator, astronomer and poet, not a Talmudist.

Glossary

aggada
The non-legal material in the Talmud, including commentaries on biblical verses, ethical and religious ideas or attempts to explain the workings of the natural or spiritual worlds. More or less synonymous with
Midrash
.

amora
pl.
amoraim
a) A Talmudic scholar who lived during the period of composition of the Talmud; b) The assistant to the head of the
yeshiva
, who would proclaim his words to the students in front of him.

baraita
pl.
baraitot
Material from the period of the Mishnah which was not included in the Mishnah and which may, but doesn’t necessarily, occur in another work from the Mishnaic period.

conversos
Jews who converted to Christianity as a result of the Spanish and Portuguese inquisition.

daf yomi
The programme of daily study of a page of Talmud inaugurated in 1923 by Rabbi Meir Shapiro.

dina malchuta dina
‘The law of the kingdom is the law,’ Subordination of all Talmudic monetary and contractual law to the law of the land in which people live.

gaon
pl.
geonim
Literally ‘Excellency’. Originally the head of the Academy in Babylon in the immediate post-Talmudic period, later a term applied to a rabbi of outstanding distinction.

gemara
‘Teaching’ synonymous and interchangeable with Talmud. Used in the Talmud text to indicate the end of passage from the Mishnah and the beginning of a passage from the Talmud.

genizah
A storeroom where worn out Hebrew and religious documents are kept. The best known was the Cairo
Genizah
.

golem
A robotic humanoid created using mystical techniques.

haberim
Zoroastrian priests. Not to be confused with the Hebrew
haverim
, literally friends, a term used to describe members of the rabbinic circle.

halacha
‘Pathway’ or ‘way to go’. a) The body of Jewish religious law; b) A single religious law.

Haskalah
The Jewish religious enlightenment, part of the European Enlightenment.

Hasid, pl. Hasidim
Followers of Hasidism.

Hasidism
The mystical-joyous religious sect founded by the Ba’al Shem Tov or
Besht.

kabbalah
Jewish mysticism.

kallah
Month-long public study sessions held twice yearly in the Babylonian academies.

Karaites
A Jewish sect who take the Bible literally and do not accept the Oral Law.

maggid
An itinerant preacher, also a supernatural guide or mentor.

Midrash
Literally ‘exposition’. a) Homilies drawn from biblical verses. Often interchangeable with
aggada;
b) Books containing these homilies.

misnegdim
Literally ’opponents’. Those who resisted and opposed Hasidism

Mishnah
The first codification of the Oral Law, completed 200–220
ce
.

musar
Ethical teachings, instruction in correct personal behaviour.

nasi
The leader of the Jewish community in Israel under Roman occupation.

Pharisees
Plebian, social-religious sect prior to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, forerunners of the rabbis.

pilpul
Literally ‘sharp’ or ‘peppery’. Casuistic, hair-splitting analysis of Talmudic texts or Talmudic problems.

Sadducees
Patrician social-religious sect during the period of the Roman occupation of Israel, opponents of the Pharisees.

Shema
Declaration of faith from the Torah, read twice daily by observant Jews.

tanna
a) Rabbi of the period of the Mishnah; b) Memory man who recited the Mishnah to students in the Babylonian academies.

Taska
A tax similar to ground rent, paid on agricultural land, to the Sassanian authorities.

teshuva,
pl.
teshuvot
A written rabbinic responsum to a legal question.

teyku
Literally ‘let it stand’. An unsolved Talmudic problem.

Torah
The Five Books of Moses, also known as the Pentateuch. The first and, to the Jews the most sacred, books of the Old Testament.

tosafist
Talmudic commentator of the twelfth–fourteenth-century French school.

Tosafot.
Compilation of commentaries by the
tosafists.

Tosefta
Collection of rabbinic material from the period of the Mishnah which was not included in the Mishnah.

Wissenschaft des Judentums
‘Science of Judaism.’ Academic analysis of Jewish thought, texts and history.

yeshiva,
pl.
yeshivot
A college for the study of the Talmud.

Zohar
The principal text of
kabbalah
.

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