Jews: The Talmud in Paperback

The Talmud is almost as sacred to Jews as Scripture, but by no means does every Jew know what is in it. English editions of the 20-volume compilation of law and learning run to several hundred dollars in price; in general, only synagogues and big libraries can afford to have copies. To make it more accessible, Conservative Judaism’s United Synagogue of America this week published the first volume of a new paperback translation of the Talmud, edited by Rabbi Arnost Ehrman of Jerusalem’s Hebrew University.

The booklets will be issued at the rate of one a month, and the project may not be finished for 20 years. In addition to a literal translation of the text, the English Talmud includes a new commentary that frequently substitutes the opinions of modern scholars for ancient ones, in order to emphasize points most relevant for Judaism today, as well as explanatory notes identifying the authors of Talmudic sayings and defining difficult terms. Thus the translation may end up ten times as long as the formidable original.

Summary of Sages. Such careful elaboration is necessary because the Talmud is an impenetrable thicket to anyone who has not spent years mastering its peculiar logic and organization. In essence, it is a baffling, cryptic summary of 800 years of dialogue among Jewish rabbis, debating and interpreting the meaning of God’s word and law.

The oldest part is the Mish nah, or Teaching, a selection of the Oral Law as taught by synagogue sages and compiled by Rabbi Judah Hanasi at the end of the 2nd century. The rabbi divided this oral teaching into six main divisions called “orders,” covering agriculture, festivals, marriage, civil and criminal laws, sacrifices, and ritual purification. In the 4th century, another great editor, Rav Ashi, began to compile the Gemara (study), or commentaries on the Mishnah by later rabbis. His work was completed by Jewish scholars in Persia during the 5th century and is known as the Babylonian Talmud, in contrast to the Palestinian Talmud, a similar but less authoritative Gemara done a century earlier by rabbis in Palestine. Although Jews since the 10th century have followed the Babylonian Talmud, the United Synagogue’s translation will include passages from both versions.

Halakah & Aggadah. There is no easy entrance to the Talmud’s world. It begins with a question: “From which moment on may one recite the Shema [a prayer based on passages from Deuteronomy and Numbers] in the evening?” Then it plunges abruptly into page after crowded page of rabbinical answers, further questions, disputations. The comments themselves are of two kinds: halakah, or interpretation of the law, and aggadah, meaning sayings, parables, narratives or proverbs with a moral significance. The two kinds of commentary are hopelessly, sometimes humorously, interwoven. Argument is seldom pursued to a logical conclusion. In the midst of a passage on why divorce is necessary to preserve peace in society, for example, the sages will suddenly and bewilderingly leapfrog into a brief discussion of robbery and the right of the heathen poor to share in the harvest gleanings. Nineteenth Century Historian Isaac Jost compared the Talmud to a great mine, containing “the finest gold and the rarest gems, as well as the merest dross.”

Unlike the canon law of Christian churches, the Talmud reaches no final conclusions and does not try to reconcile contrary opinions. One authority will claim that a wife has nothing of her own while her husband lives; another will argue that she is entitled to personal property for her private use. In the view of one lenient rabbi, the Sabbath was made for man; another will demand the strict observance of so many Sabbath regulations that they seem, says a Talmudic sage, “like a chain of mountains hanging on a hair.” Only by years of study can Talmudic scholars learn how to make the subtle distinction between an authoritative opinion and an erroneous one, and how to correctly apply the wisdom of the past to the problems of the present.

Blasphemy & Burden. Medieval Christians considered the Talmud blasphemous, and copies of it were publicly burned by church authorities as late as 1599. Even Jews have revolted against the burden of its teaching. The 8th century Karaites rejected the authority of the Talmud for the simplicity of the Bible message alone. Today Reform Jews tend to regard it as a record of past wisdom rather than as an essential of their faith.

But to Orthodox and Conservative Jews, a Judaism without the Talmud is as unthinkable as the U.S. without the Constitution. The United Synagogue hopes that its translation will stimulate a new generation of Jews to rediscover the wonders and spiritual riches of historic Judaism’s attempt to comprehend the divine imperative. As the Talmud itself says: “In the hour of death, God shows to those who study the Law the reward they will receive.”