Word: talmudic
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...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...
...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...
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...