Shalom to those who keep the commandments of G-d and the testimony of His son, Yeshua (Revelation 12:17 reference so the remnant against whom the beast will make war)
Every once and a while some obscure reference to the Talmud pops up in the forums; usually the result of a hastily typed google search, and folks then proceed to use said obscure, biasedly and badly translated quote as evidence of some bad belief held by Jews since the beginning of time.
So ... I thought it was time to have a thread dedicated to discussing what the Talmud is and what it is not.
If you've ever wondered "what the heck is that Talmud thing?" then read on chaver "friend" and let's become chavrutas "study partners."
The Talmud is an encyclopedic compendium of majority and minority opinions by Jewish scholars.
Many think, erroneously, that all the scholars were Rabbis but there are also opinions of wives of rabbis, and men who were not ordained with this title. At it's core, the Talmud is a commentary on the Mishnah.
Ok so what is the Mishnah?
Mishnah is a Hebrew word meaning "copy" or "2nd", "repitition" among other things. The Mishnah is traditional Judaism's codification of an allegedly oral tradition in how to interpret the commandments in the Torah (referred to often as "the Written Torah" where as the Mishneh is referred to as the "oral Torah".)
So in theory, the written Torah says, zachor et yom hashabbat... "be cognizant/remember the Sabbath day..." and the oral Torah says, "hey light candles before shabbat starts to mark the day as holy."
As you can see this lays the foundation for a malestorm of descent among modern Torah keepers; it also caused conflict in centuries past as a then large group of Jews, the Karaites (meaning something like "readers") broke away from mainstream Judaism and rejected the Oral Torah as inauthentic.
While today they are an extremely small group, estimated at under 40k persons world wide, mostly from Egypt, a thousand years ago they were very prominent in Jerusalem being the majority Jewish sect willing to live there under Islamic rule. The Karaites were used by G-d along with the Orthodox Jews in preserving of the Hebrew bible as the two groups worked together to create a system of vowel pointing which we use today in the Masoretic text (Hebrew bible used in all Old Testament bible translations).
A page of Talmud consists of the Hebrew text of the Mishneh in the center, surrounded by commentary, opinions, arguments, stories, midrashim, folklore, etc. written in Aramaic. This semi-commentary soup of seemingly random material is affectionately called the Gemara. Anyone interested in this language, here's the grammar I used it's quite excellent and terse though it assumes knowledge of Hebrew.
The Talmud is such an enormous collection that many through the centuries have referred to its pages as the "sea of Talmud." Talmud comes from the Hebrew world Talmid (student) and reflects on the Jewish nation's ethos of continual education and Torah study throughout the ages.
It's my belief that study of the Talmud is what has led many Jews to pursue the profession of lawyers since Talmudic discussions often involve one's ability to locate opinions and the rationale for those opinions, even at times if they be a minority opinion. The proper way to study the Talmud is to sit with a study partner chavruta, read a single page daf then one person presents his understanding of the page. The chavruta then MUST disagree and present an argument against the 1st friend's opinion (even if he in actuality does agree). This continues for as long as is necessary to come to a resolution. Then they switch. The 2nd chavruta shares his understanding of the page and must be challenged by the 1st. This sharpens the mind and desensitizes the teacher to dissenting opinions as somehow being personal. I think this technique could be adopted from Talmudic study by believers of any sect and used well in bible study. It's quite common in many synagogue services for a member of the Qehal to challenge the Rabbi during his drash (sermon) without causing offense.
This is an outgrowth from the chavruta oppositional study method.
*** crazy opinions in the Talmud ***
There is no doubt all kinds of crazy stuff in the Talmud, sometimes superstition works its way in, like eating round things like eggs make your memory better, etc. to severe opinions like "anyone who pronounces the Y*** name of G-d as it is written in the text has no place in the world to come." (minority opinion)
For those freeing themselves from various Gentile church cultures and perfecting their graft into Israel, this concept of being able to disagree on theological positions as long as we are obeying Abba can be quite liberating. Sometimes, I see people are stuck in this old way of thinking and they explore the Talmud here and there finding interesting things but are turned off when they find a strange opinion like the one I mentioned above. Christian commentaries do not work this way (generally); the commentor works along a line of his group's theology and generally does not entertain opinions of outside groups. The Talmud, conversely, makes mention of opinions from groups such as the Saducces (righteous ones in Hebrew) who did not even believe in the Nakh (prophets and writings) as well as other detractors. Usually such opinions are visited in determining things such as how such and such is done in the Temple where the eye witness account of other groups is relevant.
There are literally thousands of Scholars mentioned in the Talmud; so many that even Talmudic scholars are often unsure to whom a certain comment/opinion belongs. Remember, much of this was originally memorized by students of various teachers and only later written down after the Romans destroyed Israel.
This initial group who had the entire Mishneh memorized as well as famous comments on it are called the Ta'anim and their opinion often carries more wait than later commentary.
Due to the extraordinary voluminous nature of this compendium of opinions, it is possible in the era of computerized text to search and find almost anything one wishes to quote. Taken out of the context of Jewish culture, this can be very damaging when one wishes to hold up minority opinions as an example of Jewish malice, or to support a deviant ideology. The Talmud is not carry equal weight to all its commentors. The Jewish way of reading Talmud is usually the more well known scholars carry enormous weight as their genius for solving halachik (legal) issues was profound and proven, whereas other commenters are often read and forgotten. 1 Halachik giant in the Gemara can unseat the opinions of 20 sages.
Sometimes I hear from people from other religious traditions who managed to unearth some bad sayings from the Talmud and these are tauted as "common Jewish opinion" on a subject.
This portrays an abject ignorance of how Jewish thought works and worked. Take the opinion I expressed above that anyone who pronounces the divine name will go to Gehinem. Someone with an axe to grind against Jews could fairly easily dig up 5 similar opinions from lesser known scholars in the sea of Talmud and shout "look see how crazy their theology is!" or conversely "look we have to enforce this teaching, there are 5 times it's quoted in the Talmud so it must be true!"
It just doesn't work like that. The study of the Talmud is about an inner journey and transformation; learning to see an argument / opinion from many sides as well as applying Jewish hermeneutical methods such as the famous Kal v'chomer "light and heavy" as used by Rav Shaul in numerous places. It can be fun to uncover Midrashim (stories or lore) about biblical figures in the Talmud which answer questions about biblical text like "How could David say in Psalm 51 that he only sinned against G-d if he truly committed adultery against Uriah?" Often the answers to the questions are fantastical or silly and portray a pre-enlightenment understanding of the world; sometimes they are profound and provide great answers to apparent holes in biblical histories or solutions to complex conflicts in Torah commands for given situations.
Personally, I am very weak in my Talmud study. Usually what happens is I ramp up and dig in but more pressing direct bible or biblical languages or cognate languages to biblical languages push off my deep Talmud study. Plus I do not have a chavruta so my method of study is incorrect. The Talmud is not intended to be studied alone and many Rabbis will decry such study as dangerous.
I know this was a long rambling spiel but it seems to me this is something the Torah keeping community should hash out. The Talmud is not a bible; someone can not come to you and say , "look I found this wretched thing in the Talmud" because even wretched opinions are permitted there, in fact they belong there juxtaposed with the opposing opinions. From reading the dialogue that occurs on its pages one can see the development of thought in Judaism including an everpresent awareness of what is a hedge invented by the sages and what is a biblical clear command (always given more weight in the Talmud). Many of my Hebrew roots friends don't seem to get this constant awareness in Jewish circles of if a mitzvah is from the rabinam or from the Torah directly. Such discussions are common place in the Talmud you will often see, "that is just a Rabbinic ordinance."
I am not suggesting anyone take up Talmud study especially at the cost of your regular direct bible study; I would however, heartily suggest Torah keepers consider giving up some of their "play time" doing video games or watching sports to engage in this kind of learning. If you are a teacher, at the very least, Talmudic material can be very useful in wedging in your sermon to help your flock remember a point you want to make. I have a Messianic friend who only uses Talmud in this way. He has his points he wants to make, he supports them from the bible and finds additional support from the Talmud. It makes the drash more interesting and relevant to his flock since Messianics often are standing in two worlds. Even in Hebrew roots I have found if you quote a sage from the Miqraot G'dilot (Rabbinical bible) or from Talmud or the midrash, they are usually very interested even though there is a prevailing wind against such things.
This is what the Talmud is: at times extremely interesting, and at other times excrutiatingly boring.
If you want to take it slow but like to be doing things with the greater Jewish community, there is a daf yomi 7 year cycliclal reading of the Talmud. It restarts fresh every Shmita year (year of release) cycle and there is no need to start from the beginning. Things are not so greatly organized in the Talmud anyway; you can jump in Tractate Ketuvot (marriage contracts) and immediately be reading about Sabbath violations or dangerous things to do on Sabbath that could result in sin. So it really doesn't matter where you start.
Just check out Hebcal.com 's daf yomi section if you want to find the page of the day. I highly recommend Sefaria.org as the excellent Steinsaltz Talmud translation is available for free there! You can also get wonderful color Talmud PDFs for cheap at Korenpub.com as well as color hardcover volumes of the Talmud with beautiful illustrations of concepts (for not cheap haha). A good translation / commentary goes a LONG way as some of the more dry translations can make it feel like you are waiting for paint to dry while reading.
Don't be embarrassed to ask questions or share our own experiences with the Talmud. I'm hoping all Torah Keepers will at least learn a bit more about this resource so the won't be duped when someone pulls up a handful of quotes from the Talmud to prove a point.
Every once and a while some obscure reference to the Talmud pops up in the forums; usually the result of a hastily typed google search, and folks then proceed to use said obscure, biasedly and badly translated quote as evidence of some bad belief held by Jews since the beginning of time.
So ... I thought it was time to have a thread dedicated to discussing what the Talmud is and what it is not.
If you've ever wondered "what the heck is that Talmud thing?" then read on chaver "friend" and let's become chavrutas "study partners."
The Talmud is an encyclopedic compendium of majority and minority opinions by Jewish scholars.
Many think, erroneously, that all the scholars were Rabbis but there are also opinions of wives of rabbis, and men who were not ordained with this title. At it's core, the Talmud is a commentary on the Mishnah.
Ok so what is the Mishnah?
Mishnah is a Hebrew word meaning "copy" or "2nd", "repitition" among other things. The Mishnah is traditional Judaism's codification of an allegedly oral tradition in how to interpret the commandments in the Torah (referred to often as "the Written Torah" where as the Mishneh is referred to as the "oral Torah".)
So in theory, the written Torah says, zachor et yom hashabbat... "be cognizant/remember the Sabbath day..." and the oral Torah says, "hey light candles before shabbat starts to mark the day as holy."
As you can see this lays the foundation for a malestorm of descent among modern Torah keepers; it also caused conflict in centuries past as a then large group of Jews, the Karaites (meaning something like "readers") broke away from mainstream Judaism and rejected the Oral Torah as inauthentic.
While today they are an extremely small group, estimated at under 40k persons world wide, mostly from Egypt, a thousand years ago they were very prominent in Jerusalem being the majority Jewish sect willing to live there under Islamic rule. The Karaites were used by G-d along with the Orthodox Jews in preserving of the Hebrew bible as the two groups worked together to create a system of vowel pointing which we use today in the Masoretic text (Hebrew bible used in all Old Testament bible translations).
A page of Talmud consists of the Hebrew text of the Mishneh in the center, surrounded by commentary, opinions, arguments, stories, midrashim, folklore, etc. written in Aramaic. This semi-commentary soup of seemingly random material is affectionately called the Gemara. Anyone interested in this language, here's the grammar I used it's quite excellent and terse though it assumes knowledge of Hebrew.
The Talmud is such an enormous collection that many through the centuries have referred to its pages as the "sea of Talmud." Talmud comes from the Hebrew world Talmid (student) and reflects on the Jewish nation's ethos of continual education and Torah study throughout the ages.
It's my belief that study of the Talmud is what has led many Jews to pursue the profession of lawyers since Talmudic discussions often involve one's ability to locate opinions and the rationale for those opinions, even at times if they be a minority opinion. The proper way to study the Talmud is to sit with a study partner chavruta, read a single page daf then one person presents his understanding of the page. The chavruta then MUST disagree and present an argument against the 1st friend's opinion (even if he in actuality does agree). This continues for as long as is necessary to come to a resolution. Then they switch. The 2nd chavruta shares his understanding of the page and must be challenged by the 1st. This sharpens the mind and desensitizes the teacher to dissenting opinions as somehow being personal. I think this technique could be adopted from Talmudic study by believers of any sect and used well in bible study. It's quite common in many synagogue services for a member of the Qehal to challenge the Rabbi during his drash (sermon) without causing offense.
This is an outgrowth from the chavruta oppositional study method.
*** crazy opinions in the Talmud ***
There is no doubt all kinds of crazy stuff in the Talmud, sometimes superstition works its way in, like eating round things like eggs make your memory better, etc. to severe opinions like "anyone who pronounces the Y*** name of G-d as it is written in the text has no place in the world to come." (minority opinion)
For those freeing themselves from various Gentile church cultures and perfecting their graft into Israel, this concept of being able to disagree on theological positions as long as we are obeying Abba can be quite liberating. Sometimes, I see people are stuck in this old way of thinking and they explore the Talmud here and there finding interesting things but are turned off when they find a strange opinion like the one I mentioned above. Christian commentaries do not work this way (generally); the commentor works along a line of his group's theology and generally does not entertain opinions of outside groups. The Talmud, conversely, makes mention of opinions from groups such as the Saducces (righteous ones in Hebrew) who did not even believe in the Nakh (prophets and writings) as well as other detractors. Usually such opinions are visited in determining things such as how such and such is done in the Temple where the eye witness account of other groups is relevant.
There are literally thousands of Scholars mentioned in the Talmud; so many that even Talmudic scholars are often unsure to whom a certain comment/opinion belongs. Remember, much of this was originally memorized by students of various teachers and only later written down after the Romans destroyed Israel.
This initial group who had the entire Mishneh memorized as well as famous comments on it are called the Ta'anim and their opinion often carries more wait than later commentary.
Due to the extraordinary voluminous nature of this compendium of opinions, it is possible in the era of computerized text to search and find almost anything one wishes to quote. Taken out of the context of Jewish culture, this can be very damaging when one wishes to hold up minority opinions as an example of Jewish malice, or to support a deviant ideology. The Talmud is not carry equal weight to all its commentors. The Jewish way of reading Talmud is usually the more well known scholars carry enormous weight as their genius for solving halachik (legal) issues was profound and proven, whereas other commenters are often read and forgotten. 1 Halachik giant in the Gemara can unseat the opinions of 20 sages.
Sometimes I hear from people from other religious traditions who managed to unearth some bad sayings from the Talmud and these are tauted as "common Jewish opinion" on a subject.
This portrays an abject ignorance of how Jewish thought works and worked. Take the opinion I expressed above that anyone who pronounces the divine name will go to Gehinem. Someone with an axe to grind against Jews could fairly easily dig up 5 similar opinions from lesser known scholars in the sea of Talmud and shout "look see how crazy their theology is!" or conversely "look we have to enforce this teaching, there are 5 times it's quoted in the Talmud so it must be true!"
It just doesn't work like that. The study of the Talmud is about an inner journey and transformation; learning to see an argument / opinion from many sides as well as applying Jewish hermeneutical methods such as the famous Kal v'chomer "light and heavy" as used by Rav Shaul in numerous places. It can be fun to uncover Midrashim (stories or lore) about biblical figures in the Talmud which answer questions about biblical text like "How could David say in Psalm 51 that he only sinned against G-d if he truly committed adultery against Uriah?" Often the answers to the questions are fantastical or silly and portray a pre-enlightenment understanding of the world; sometimes they are profound and provide great answers to apparent holes in biblical histories or solutions to complex conflicts in Torah commands for given situations.
Personally, I am very weak in my Talmud study. Usually what happens is I ramp up and dig in but more pressing direct bible or biblical languages or cognate languages to biblical languages push off my deep Talmud study. Plus I do not have a chavruta so my method of study is incorrect. The Talmud is not intended to be studied alone and many Rabbis will decry such study as dangerous.
I know this was a long rambling spiel but it seems to me this is something the Torah keeping community should hash out. The Talmud is not a bible; someone can not come to you and say , "look I found this wretched thing in the Talmud" because even wretched opinions are permitted there, in fact they belong there juxtaposed with the opposing opinions. From reading the dialogue that occurs on its pages one can see the development of thought in Judaism including an everpresent awareness of what is a hedge invented by the sages and what is a biblical clear command (always given more weight in the Talmud). Many of my Hebrew roots friends don't seem to get this constant awareness in Jewish circles of if a mitzvah is from the rabinam or from the Torah directly. Such discussions are common place in the Talmud you will often see, "that is just a Rabbinic ordinance."
I am not suggesting anyone take up Talmud study especially at the cost of your regular direct bible study; I would however, heartily suggest Torah keepers consider giving up some of their "play time" doing video games or watching sports to engage in this kind of learning. If you are a teacher, at the very least, Talmudic material can be very useful in wedging in your sermon to help your flock remember a point you want to make. I have a Messianic friend who only uses Talmud in this way. He has his points he wants to make, he supports them from the bible and finds additional support from the Talmud. It makes the drash more interesting and relevant to his flock since Messianics often are standing in two worlds. Even in Hebrew roots I have found if you quote a sage from the Miqraot G'dilot (Rabbinical bible) or from Talmud or the midrash, they are usually very interested even though there is a prevailing wind against such things.
This is what the Talmud is: at times extremely interesting, and at other times excrutiatingly boring.
If you want to take it slow but like to be doing things with the greater Jewish community, there is a daf yomi 7 year cycliclal reading of the Talmud. It restarts fresh every Shmita year (year of release) cycle and there is no need to start from the beginning. Things are not so greatly organized in the Talmud anyway; you can jump in Tractate Ketuvot (marriage contracts) and immediately be reading about Sabbath violations or dangerous things to do on Sabbath that could result in sin. So it really doesn't matter where you start.
Just check out Hebcal.com 's daf yomi section if you want to find the page of the day. I highly recommend Sefaria.org as the excellent Steinsaltz Talmud translation is available for free there! You can also get wonderful color Talmud PDFs for cheap at Korenpub.com as well as color hardcover volumes of the Talmud with beautiful illustrations of concepts (for not cheap haha). A good translation / commentary goes a LONG way as some of the more dry translations can make it feel like you are waiting for paint to dry while reading.
Don't be embarrassed to ask questions or share our own experiences with the Talmud. I'm hoping all Torah Keepers will at least learn a bit more about this resource so the won't be duped when someone pulls up a handful of quotes from the Talmud to prove a point.
