Word: steinsaltz
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...self-described "commuter between heaven and earth," Steinsaltz did university work in physics and mathematics rather than rabbinics and had a rigidly secular upbringing in Jerusalem. His father Avraham, a far-left socialist, was an early Zionist and proudly Jewish, but he kept any religious sentiments carefully concealed. Little Adin read Lenin and Freud before his bar mitzvah. Later, however, the family saw to it that he was tutored in the Talmud and attended a religious high school. Explained Avraham: "I don't care if you are a heretic. I don't want you to be an ignoramus...
...Steinsaltz's audacity was such that at age 27 he decided to create a modern Talmud. "It was a kind of hubris," he admits. Standard editions are virtually unreadable for nonexperts partly because the Hebrew is printed without vowel notations or punctuation. And the work abounds with obscurities. Two commentaries are customarily printed alongside the text to assist understanding, but they raise further questions because they are centuries...
Braving the ire of traditionalists, Steinsaltz inserted vowel marks and punctuation. He also translated Aramaic sections into modern Hebrew and explained the numerous words from other languages that crop up. Even more boldly, he wrote his own commentary to appear with the two classical ones and provided a wealth of explanatory notes. Twelve typefaces had to be used to help readers sort out the various categories of material...
...opposition among the ultra-Orthodox melted away. Today most Israelis agree with Hebrew University's Shmuel Shilo: "You can now read the Talmud the way any book is read. It is now a popular work." The director of the pluralistic World Union of Jewish Students, Daniel Yosef, says that "Steinsaltz has taken the study of the Talmud out from behind the closed doors of the yeshiva and given...
...frail health (his spleen was removed in 1980), Steinsaltz nonetheless puts in days of 16 hours or more, much of them at the word processor, where he uses software he designed for handling Hebrew. Working in an old stone house near his Jerusalem apartment, where he lives with his psychologist wife and three children, he is helped by a devoted, low-paid group of 15 to 18 disciples. On the side, he has written everything from a detective novel to a celebrated work of mystical thought, The Thirteen Petalled Rose. Steinsaltz also presides over two synagogues and two yeshivas...