Celia Gurevitch Jewish Community Library

Maggie Anton explained on Wednesday why it is important to study Talmud, particularly for women. The way I understood her message is that those make the law, who know the texts. When women, who finally have a chance to learn Talmud, reach similar level of scholarship and expertise as men, they will be included in that circle. There are signs, even within the orthodox community that this is happening. Besides, studying itself is a rewarding process.

First of all I would like to recommend to join Rabbi Schlesinger’s Talmud class, that alternates with his Torah class every second Thursday evening. Second, we have several copies of the Talmud, including all three of the best editions: Steinsaltz, Soncino and Schottenstein. Furthermore we have books that can guide you in the process. Here are some of them:

I already blogged about Marc-Alain Ouaknin’s “The burnt book; Reading the Talmud,” a postmodern work discussing spirituality and religious practice with such concepts as deconstruction, intertextuality, undecidability, multiple voicing, and eroticism in the Talmud.

I also wrote a review of Jacob Neusner’s “Learn Talmud,” a teach yourself textbook written for 7th-8th graders

I wrote about Jacob Neusner’s “Invitation to the Talmud” as well. I did not mention though, that we have the book’s second and revised edition that includes the Hebrew texts.

As mentioned above we have all available volume of the wonderful Steinsaltz Talmud. To help you studying it we also have Juditch Z. Abram’s “Learn Talmud“. I believe this is the most important segment from the introduction.

This book is designed to help you over the initial hurdles of Talmud study. In it, selected passages, which are among the most accessible in the two tractates presently translated by Rabbi Steinsaltz, are presented with aids for study. You might be able to enter the world of the Talmud with just the Steinsaltz translation and the aid of this book alone. However, I urge you to study with a teacher.
Alternatively you can turn to the source himself. The very first book I read on the topic (in 1991) was Adin Steinsaltz: The essential Talmud. Its three main sections (history, content/ structure and method) helped me to familiarize myself with the basics of this vast work. I am certain it can do that for you too.

Or you can opt to use Cohen’s “Everyman’s Talmud” as an introduction. It was published in 1949 and the language feels a bit outdated to me. But the structure of the book actually allows you to get a beginning grasps of the Talmud itself. The major sections are:

• The doctrine of G-d
• G-d and the universe
• The doctrine of man
• Revelations
• Domestic life
• Social life
• The moral life
• The physical life
• Folk-lore
• Jurisprudence
• The hereafter

Finally those of you who like literary analysis will find David Kraemer’s “The mind of the Talmud: an intellectual history of the Bavli” fascinating.

This critical study traces the development of the literary forms and conventions of the Babylonian Talmud, or Bavli, analyzing those forms as expressions of emergent rabbinic ideology. The Bavli, which evolved between the third and sixth centuries in Sasanian Iran (Babylonia), is the most comprehensive of all documents produced by rabbinic Jews in late antiquity. It became the authoritative legal source for medieval Judaism, and for some its opinions remain definitive today. Kraemer here examines the characteristic preference for argumentation and process over settled conclusions of the Bavli. By tracing the evolution of the argumentational style, he describes the distinct eras in the development of rabbinic Judaism in Babylonia. He then analyzes the meaning of the disputational form and concludes that the Talmudic form implies the inaccessibility of perfect truth and that on account of this opinion, the pursuit of truth, in the characteristic Talmudic concern for rabbinic process, becomes the ultimate act of rabbinic piety.

I hope you will use these resources in your study.