The Talmud “on one foot”:
The Talmud is a set of discussions by rabbis about how to live a Jewish life, particularly after the destruction of the Second Temple. It is comprised of the Mishnah, which was finalized in 200 CE, and the Gemara, which was finalized around 500 CE. There are actually two Talmuds; when people say “The Talmud” they refer to the Babylonian Talmud, but there is also the Jerusalem Talmud which was finalized around 400 CE.
What’s the Mishnah?
- The Torah tells us many things, but it’s a little fuzzy on details.
- For example, what does it mean to “keep Shabbat”? How do people become “husband and wife”? What exactly is a “sukkah”?
- A lot of things had to be figured out as the Jews settled in the land of Israel, and many discussions occurred.
- Additionally, in 70 CE, the Romans burnt the Second Temple, destroying Judaism as it had been practiced until then.
- There is a legend that Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai was smuggled out of besieged Jerusalem inside a coffin, and he convinced the Roman general to let him and his students set up in the town of Yavneh (Gittin 56a).
- These discussions continued in Yavneh, sometimes with rabbis teaching small groups of students (such as when the Romans were persecuting them), and sometimes with rabbis teaching and discussing with larger groups. Each rabbi would orally pass on what they remembered and what they had been taught by their teachers. Some of the time was also spent discussing the Torah and trying to derive meaning from it through making connections — this became Midrash. The rabbis of this time were known as “tanna’im”.
- Eventually, as Roman persecutions increased following the Bar-Kochba Rebellion (135 CE), Rabbi Akiba started recording some of these teachings (Mishnah Sanhedrin 3:4, Mishnah Eduyot 7:2, Mishnah Gittin 5:6, Mishnah Nasir 6:1). The concern was that the oral teachings would be lost if the Romans killed too many of the teachers.
- His student, Rabbi Meir, took over after Rabbi Akiba was murdered by the Romans. Rabbi Meir made sure to record the dissenting opinions also.
- The work was finished under Rabbi Meir’s student, Rabbi Judah HaNasi (the prince). He used anonymous opinions to indicate his teacher, Rabbi Meir’s, views, assuming that everybody agreed with him. If there were other opinions, Rabbi Meir’s got labeled.
- To illustrate the process of creating the Mishnah, imagine that Rabbi Judah HaNasi had a huge number of index cards in front of him (no, they didn’t exist then). Each card had a rabbi’s teaching about something on it.
- First he sorted the cards into 6 piles: Z’ra’im (agriculture, include blessings over food), Mo’ed (Sacred Times), Nashim (Women), N’zikin (Damages), Kodshim (Holy Things), and Tohorot (Purities). These 6 piles became the “Books of the Mishnah” (i.e. Seder Mo’ed). In the song “Who Knows One”, this is “Who knows Six?”
- Then, he sorted each pile into smaller piles. For example, the Mo’ed (Sacred Times) pile got sorted into smaller piles: Shabbat, Pesach, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Rosh Hashanah, Fast Days, Purim, and so on. These became tractates (i.e. Masechet Pesachim).
- Then, each pile got sorted into smaller piles. For example, Masechet Pesachim would get broken down into piles for eating leaven before the holiday, removing leaven, the Passover sacrifice in the Temple, the “modern” Seder, and so on. These become chapters.
- Finally, each chapter is broken down into smaller pieces. For example, Chapter 10 would have smaller pieces about the First Cup, Karpas, the Four Questions, and so on. These are each known as a “mishnah” (with a lower-case “m”).
- The format for indicating a text from the Mishnah is 1. “Mishnah” 2. Tractate 3. Chapter 4. : 5. mishnah. For example, if I wanted to find the Mishnah’s version of the Four Questions, I would look in “Mishnah Pesachim 10:4”.
- The Mishnah has 63 tractates, but they move quickly. Dr. Jacob Neusner’s 1988 translation is a single volume of 1187 pages with no Hebrew, but that’s with taking every phrase and putting it on a separate line (the first English translation was in 1933 by Reverend Herbert Danby of the Anglican Cathedral of St. George in Jerusalem - it was 880 pages with no Hebrew).
- Of the 63 tractates, 62 have legal material and one is solely ethical teachings. That one is Pirkei Avot, a collection of life-wisdom quotes from the rabbis.
- There were teachings that didn’t make it into the Mishnah. These were known as “baraitas”, and they can be found in the Tosefta, as well as texts of Midrash from that time. Here’s a way to think of baraitas: When you roll out hamantaschen dough, only some of it makes it into hamantaschen. The parts that are left are the baraitas. Many of them make an appearance in the Talmud.
So How Did We Get to The Talmud?
- After the Mishnah was finished, it became the text that the rabbis studied and discussed. These rabbis were now called “amora’im”.
- Because the Mishnah didn’t give reasons for the different opinions in it, the rabbis tried to find a Scriptural basis for the things in it. They also tried to reconcile it with the other teachings they had received, the baraitas.
- These discussions became the Talmud, both the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud.
- The term “Gemara” came into use when the medieval printers had to get around the Church’s censorship of the word “Talmud”.
- Jews had been in Babylonia (modern day Iraq) since 586 BCE, when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the First Temple and exiled most of the Jews. Some returned to Judea under the Persians, others remained. More Jews came in 135 CE after the Bar-Kochba Rebellion. By that point, Babylonia was part of the Parthian Empire, and the Jewish community was led by the Exilarch, who claimed descent from King David via the king exiled in 586 BCE.
- The Parthians were overthrown by the Sassenids in 226, and Zoroastrianism (a religion with co-equal gods of good and evil) became something for the Jews to deal with.
- There were two main academies in Babylonia - Nehardea and Sura.
- Both academies would start with discussing the Mishnah, but then their discussions would go off on tangents.
- The discussions later got edited when they were written down, so it looks like the transcript of a conversation, even though not all of the participants were alive at the same time.
- The reason that the discussions got written down was probably turmoil in the Sassanian Empire, leading to instability and a concern that the discussions of the previous 300 years should get written down. The editors (known as “stama’im”) stayed anonymous.
How Did the Talmud Spread from Babylonia?
- The Muslims spread from Medina starting in 622 CE and under the Umayyads they conquered the Sassanians around 635 CE.
- The Abbasids took over from the Umayyads in 750 CE, and their caliph, al-Mansur, built Baghdad to be his capital. They built a library called “the House of Wisdom” and set out to translate the major literature of all languages into Arabic. This led to Baghdad becoming the intellectual capital of the Muslim world.
- The heads of the academies, the “Ge’onim”, picked up and moved the Talmud to Baghdad. There, the intellectual ideas of the Talmud and of Islam mutually influenced each other.
- The communication networks of the Muslim world allowed the Babylonian Talmud and its ideas to spread.
- The far-flung Jewish communities in the Muslim world sent letters to the Geonim in Baghdad for advice. For instance, from Spain in the 800s came a question about the Talmudic rule that one should say 100 blessings a day. The question was what those 100 blessings ought to be. Amram Gaon sent back an answer that was effectively the first prayer book.
- Other questions came from other places, like North Africa and Egypt. Many of these were discovered in the Cairo Geniza in the 1800s. For example, there was a request in the 900s from Spain for a copy of “the Talmud”. It’s not exactly known what was sent, but something got to them.
- In the 800s the Karaites got started as a group that rejected the Talmud and Rabbinic Judaism. They only followed what it said in the Bible. For instance, the Bible said not to light a spark on Shabbat, so they sat in the dark rather than light a spark before Shabbat but not on Shabbat itself. In the 900s Saadia Gaon worked to counter the influence of the Karaites. Part of how he did this was by limiting the influence of the Jerusalem Talmud, because then the Karaites couldn’t say that the Rabbinites couldn’t even agree among themselves so they must not be right.
- One of the places the Talmud went was Kairouan, in modern Tunisia. This city was a new intellectual hub of the expanding Islamic Empire. Hananel and Nissim wrote commentaries on the Talmud there in the 1000s in order to make the Talmud more understandable to lay people who were beginning to study it. Among other things, their commentaries gave practical guidance in cases where the Talmud left things unresolved. One of their students was Isaac Alfasi, who went on to write his own commentary on the Talmud.
- Another place the Talmud went was Cordoba, in Spain. Hisdai ibn Shaprut was the one of the caliph’s senior ministers in 940 CE and he wanted Spain to have its own Jewish center, just like the caliph in Spain wanted to break free from the authority in Baghdad. Hisdai set up an academy in Cordoba where the Talmud was studied. One of the star pupils in Cordoba, Shmuel, went south when Cordoba was destroyed and he rose through the political ranks to also become a vizier, known as Shmuel haNagid. Shmuel was the patron for another academy in Spain.
- In 1135, Maimonides was born in Spain. Under religious persecution, his family left for Fez and then Fostat (now “Old Cairo”). Maimonides, known as Rambam, was the doctor to the sultan, but also wrote a commentary on the Mishnah and then wrote “The Mishneh Torah”, where he took all the laws of the Talmud, removed the back-and-forth, and reorganized them into new categories that made more sense to him.
The Talmud Moves to Christian Europe
- Around 1000, the Talmud moved from Islamic lands into Christian Europe via local Jewish merchants who would travel to other places to get the goods that they sold. These merchants learned about the Talmud and brought it back with them to the Rhineland. There Rabbeinu Gershom ben Yehudah started the engagement with the Talmud, writing his own commentary on it and reconciling it to the situation in Christian Europe. He also put a ban on polygamy and on reading other people’s mail.
- One of the students of Gershom’s students in Mainz was Rabbi Shimon ben Yitzchak, better known as Rashi. Rashi’s main job was growing grapes and making wine in Troyes, France, but he found time to write a running commentary on the Tanach and the Talmud. His goal was not to find the bottom line, but rather to make things more understandable, either in terms of vocabulary or how logical jumps were made. This commentary did much to make the Talmud more understandable to people. It was printed with a special font called “Rashi script”, even though Rashi never wrote in this script, and always is printed in the margin where it’s easy to find.
- In 1096 the First Crusade happened. On the way to kill “infidels” in the Holy Land, Christian crusaders stopped to kill Jews in the Rhineland as well. They also burnt the Talmud for good measure.
- Rashi’s grandsons, Rashbam and Rabbeinu Tam, were the first Tosafists who wrote their own commentary on the Talmud, working to resolve inconsistencies. Their commentary is printed on the other side of the Talmudic text away from Rashi. Their approach was mutually influenced by Christian scholars of the time.
- In 1240, a Jewish convert to Christianity accused the Talmud of being anti-Christian and so there was a debate in the Parisian court between said convert and his teacher. The situation was stacked against the Jews and as a result every copy of the Talmud in France, all hand-written, was collected and burnt.
- In 1263 there was another disputation in Barcelona between a Jewish convert to Christianity and Nachmanides. Although it ended in a draw, thereafter all copies of the Talmud had to be submitted to the Church for censorship.
- In 1483 the Soncino family printed the first volumes of the Talmud from a printing press. They borrowed the Christian approach of putting Biblical commentaries on the same page as the texts they were commenting on, and were the first to put Rashi and the Tosafot on the same page as the Talmud.
- In 1523, Daniel Bomberg (not Jewish) printed the first complete Talmud in Venice, using the Soncinos’ layout and with a few additional references on the page. He also added folio pagination (2a and 2b, 3a and 3b, etc, for front and back of the same page). This was in vogue then but went out of style a bit later, yet it stuck for the Talmud (page numbering itself only dates to 1470). Other printers saw how successful Bomberg was and printed their own versions with their own favorite commentaries.
- In the 1770s, the Vilna Gaon and his student Elijah of Volozhin worked to make the Talmud part of the educational system for Jewish boys.
The Talmud in Modernity
- In the 1800s the “Wissenschaft des Judentums”, the “Scientific Study of Judaism” endeavor, got underway, inspired by the Haskalah (the Enlightenment). It proposed to study the Talmud academically, as a piece of literature.
- In 1867, Marcus Jastrow produced a dictionary for the Talmud. Today this dictionary is known as “a Jastrow”. It is now available on Sefaria.org.
- In 1885, the Reform Movement in the United States issued the Pittsburgh Platform. It anchored the Reform Movement solely in the Bible, and implicitly rejected the Talmud as an authority (by the 1937 Columbus Platform, the Talmud was considered OK).
- This (plus the “treifa banquet” of the 1883 graduating class of Hebrew Union College) was too much for some American rabbis, and in 1887 the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary was founded with a constitution that dedicated itself to “historical Judaism” as found in “Biblical and Talmudic writings”.
- In the late 1800s, there was a printing press in Vilna, Lithuania, that took the Bomberg printing of the Talmud and standardized it. It became known as "the Vilna edition" and from then on the page was frozen.
- Across the Atlantic, Meir Shapiro was an Orthodox rabbi who sat in the Polish Parliament. He was also concerned that only the elites in the Jewish community were studying Talmud. In 1923 he proposed “Daf Yomi”, whereby ordinary people could gather in groups to study 1 page (front and back) each day, and it began in 1924.
- After WWII, there were no copies of the Talmud available for those who wanted to learn in the Displaced Persons camps. The American Army had 100 copies of “The Survivors’ Talmud” printed on German printing presses that made propaganda for the Nazis.
- The first serious translation of the Talmud into English was by Isidore Epstein in 1952. It was published by the Soncino press and is referred to as “the Soncino”.
- In 1984, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz published his version of the Talmud, where he put vowels and punctuation into the text. He also put his translation (in Hebrew and later English) and explanation next to the text, so if you weren't sure what was going on you could consult his explanation. There were also charts occasionally.
- In 1997, ArtScroll published the Schottenstein English edition. This had explanatory text linking the words that are actually in the Talmud, and also had commentary on each page. Unlike the Steinsaltz edition, it had the Vilna daf (page) opposite the English. It brought a religious viewpoint instead of an academic one (which was the Steinsaltz one).
- The next major translation was the 2012 Koren edition, which Steinsaltz contributed to greatly. The Aramaic (and Rashi!) is vowelized, and the English translation also has sidebars explaining terms and people. There are also many diagrams.
- Finally, Sefaria.org came online in 2012, with the William Davidson edition of the Talmud released in 2017. This made the Talmud more accessible than anything else, because now you could access the entire Talmud on your phone. Although it’s online it uses the pagination of the Bomberg edition to maintain consistency.
- The Talmud continues to affect us today. In 2022, a lawyer for the Chicago City Council decided to annotate the discussions about what the city ordinances meant so that future generations would know the thinking behind them. He did this after learning about the Talmud.
So What's Actually in the Talmud?
Let's look at an example of what you can find in the Talmud, starting with the first mishnah and first gemara.
First mishnah (13 lines):
- A question: When can you start saying the Shema in the evening?
- 1 answer
- Up to 3 answers about how late you can say the evening Shema
- A story to illustrate the final answer
First gemara (8 pages, double-sided):
- Why are we starting with the evening Shema and not the morning Shema?
- Explanation of the Mishnah's answer about when you can start saying the evening Shema
- Discussion of the verse supporting the explanation
- Other opinions about when you can start saying the Shema from other baraitas
- Unpacking of a term from the mishnah
- Lesson about praying in ruins
- Speculation about G-d's response to the Kaddish
- 2 opposing opinions, each one supported by a verse, and then each rabbi has to deal with the other one's evidence (a key takeaway for modern times)
- What one can say in front a dead body
- How King David knew to wake up at midnight to write psalms
- How Moses knew when it was midnight
- Who David's teacher was
- Whether transgressions cause miracles to not happen
- Back to discussing the different opinions about when the latest time to say the Shema is
- Is the evening service mandatory?
- Whether juxtaposing Mi Chamocha to the Amidah gets you into Heaven
- Hashkiveinu and how it's like "Adonai S'fatai Tiftach"
- Why saying Ashrei 3 times a day gets you into Heaven
- Why there's no nun line in Ashrei
- Non-stop flights of angels
- Whether you have to say Shema in bed if you said Ma'ariv (yes)
- How to subdue your evil inclination
- Whether Moses got the Oral Law on Mt. Sinai also
- Benefits of saying Shema in bed at night
- If G-d was happy to give the Torah to the Jews
- The suffering of the righteous
- The death of children
- Healing the sick, including doctors who need to visit other doctors
- The fleeting nature of beauty
- Why bad things happen to good people
- Which way your bed should face
- How to get male children
- How to avoid miscarriages
- Why it's bad to leave your friends to finish their prayers alone
- What problems demons cause
- How to detect a demon
- Why you should pray in a synagogue
- The importance of avoiding idle talk
- Does G-d wear tefillin?
- G-d misses you if you don't come to shul
- G-d is mad if there's no minyan
- You should have a regular seat in shul
- Run to shul but leave slowly
- The reward for learning Talmud is figuring out the logic, not the bottom lines
- Don't pray behind a synagogue (including a story about this)
- Why you should be vigilant with all of your prayers
- Explaining something from Elijah's showdown on Mt. Carmel (I Kings 18)
- If you go to a wedding, make the groom (and bride) happy
- Greet other people before they greet you
- What prayers does G-d say?
- Placate a person after they calm down
- How long is G-d's anger?
- G-d is merciful even to sinners
- Remorse is better than lashes
- What Moses wanted from G-d
- The prospering of the wicked and the suffering of the righteous
- Does G-d punish future generations for the sins of their ancestors?
- How much of G-d Moses saw
- The first person to say "thank you" to G-d
- Meanings of names
- The troubles of wayward children
- Whether you should provoke wicked people
- Why you should pray with a minyan
- Going to shul makes you live longer
- Your spouse can make your life good or bitter
- Different types of death
- It's good to find a bathroom when you need one
- Once the Temple was destroyed, G-d can be found in study
- Doing work is good for you
- Don't leave shul in the middle of an aliyah
- Eating and drinking before Yom Kippur is as important as fasting on Yom Kippur
- Details of kosher slaughter
- Respect your elders, even if they have dementia
- Don't cut meat on your hand
- Look before you sit down
- Cut meat on tables
- Get away from people if you don't want them to hear private conversations
- Be modest while eating, going to the bathroom, and having sex
- Back to the Mishnah - which answer is correct?
- If you say Shema right after dawn it can either be for the evening or the morning but not both
- Unpacking the story in the Mishnah
- Whether the Pascal Lamb must be eaten before dawn
- Why the Israelites asked for riches from the Egyptians before leaving
- Double-language at the Burning Bush and for Elijah
Color-Coded Talmud Page
A Recap in Video Format
“Unpacked” is an excellent source of videos on YouTube for learning about Jewish topics.
Historical information primarily comes from The Talmud: A Biography, by Harry Freedman. Other information is from Cantor Neil Schwartz and Barry Wimpfheimer.