The Talmud (27 page)

Born in Jerusalem in 1937, Steinsaltz was brought up in a secular home. He studied science at university before embarking on a rabbinic career. His website refers to him as a ‘teacher, philosopher, social critic and prolific author.’
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He’s
certainly prolific, he has written over sixty books. But his most significant achievement is his new edition of the Talmud, which he began working on when he was just twenty seven.

The problem that Steinsaltz was trying to solve when he decided on a new edition of the Talmud was that the traditional volumes are all based on the late-nineteenth-century edition printed in Vilna by the wonderfully named Widow and Brothers Romm. This, in turn, was based on Bomberg’s edition. The text is unpointed, meaning it has no punctuation or vowels; in Hebrew and Aramaic vowels are not part of the alphabet; they can be added as marks above or below the letters but texts for native readers are generally printed without any indication of what the vowels should be. In addition, as befits a nineteenth-century text, the typography, although perfectly legible, is not as easy on the eye as a modern reader is used to. And the commentaries that surround the main text, are those of Rashi and the
tosafot
, which, although integral to traditional study, are centuries old and difficult for many people to comprehend.

Steinsaltz’s edition addressed all these problems. He reset the type in a modern format and translated the text into either modern Hebrew or English, depending on the edition, weaving his own running commentary into the translation. In addition to the traditional commentaries of Rashi and
tosafot
, he explained unusual or difficult words and provided illustrations and scientific explanations where these would be helpful. His printers used twelve different typefaces to help the reader distinguish between the different types of material.

A 1988 article in
Time
magazine described Adin Steinsaltz as a modern Maimonides or Rashi.
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Over a million copies of his Hebrew edition have been sold. A new format of his English edition has recently been produced by Koren publishers to which they have appended the traditional Vilna page.

In Steinsaltz’s view the Talmud is the central pillar of Jewish life, more so than the Bible. If he had his way, rather than teaching the Bible as the key text in Israeli schools, they would teach the Talmud. His opinion carries credibility; he was the youngest ever principal of an Israeli high school, at the age of twenty three.

Steinsaltz pioneered the popularization of the Talmud. Some felt he had been too radical; that he had produced an edition of the Talmud for reading, rather than for learning. That was certainly the view of the editors of the next major project to
make
the Talmud accessible to a wider audience. The ArtScroll Talmud reverted to the traditional Hebrew layout but the facing page included a clear, comprehensible English translation, interwoven with a running commentary, and detailed notes.

When they began to produce their edition of the Talmud, ArtScroll was already a well-established publishing house, specializing in elegantly produced, ideologically certain, religious texts. The success of their Talmud edition is due in part to its visual appeal but mainly to the clarity with which it communicates and explains the discussion. Apocryphal stories circulate of ArtScroll readers who cannot understand Hebrew but can study the Talmud perfectly well using only the English translation.

Artscroll is much more traditional in its outlook than the Steinsaltz edition, belonging more to the
yeshiva
than to the university. Consequently it is far more welcome in strictly religious circles. Its use of English is less dense than that of the Soncino translators and it is far more dogmatic in its conclusions; it both confuses and challenges its readers less. It excels as a study aid. Its translations are now available in modern Hebrew, English and French.

The secular Talmud

Printed books are only one of the reasons for the growth in the Talmud’s popularity. A revival of religious interest, coupled with the worldwide, gap-year phenomenon has led to a remarkable increase in the number of people studying the Talmud at Israel
yeshivot
and seminaries. Many school leavers now spend one, two or even three years studying, before going to university, or embarking on a career.

Even a casual search on the internet shows just how widespread
yeshiva
study has become. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of sites offer resources for Talmud study. Some contain online lectures, or pages of study notes. Others are dedicated to intense Talmudic conversation between students, conducted in a patois virtually unintelligible to outsiders. Known as
yeshivish,
it even has its own dictionary. Chaim Weiser, who compiled the dictionary, describes it as an infusion into English of a lexicon of words from different languages, which are then subjected to the rules of English grammar.
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Yeshivish
is the Creole of the modern Talmud student.

But the Talmud is no longer the exclusive property of the religious. Nor does it just belong to men. The old cultural assumption that education is only for men was set aside generations ago, and even though it is still felt in some circles that the Talmud is a closed book for women, that view is changing fast. There are now many women Talmudic scholars.

One of the most striking things about the Talmud, which sets it apart from almost every other religious text, is that one does not have to be a believer in order to study it. It helps of course to be familiar with the Bible and religious concepts, but the Talmud is fundamentally an exercise in interpretation and logic. It assumes, but doesn’t demand, belief.

Academics have long recognized this. Dozens of universities around the world now have departments devoted to Jewish Studies. Talmud is high on the list of subjects they research and teach. Directly descended from the nineteenth-century
Wissenschaft
movement, the field has broadened considerably. Academic Talmud study today explores the structure, style and content of the literary units that make up the text; researches parallel sources both within the Talmud and beyond, seeks to clarify the discussions and sets them within their historical and cultural context. It is no different in form from academic study of any other ancient text.
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Secular Talmud study isn’t just happening in universities. It makes perfect sense to us that someone, irrespective of their religious commitment would want to study the texts that make up their cultural heritage. But it’s hard to know what the old, narrowly focused Talmud scholars of the Middle Ages would have made of the most recent development in the Talmudic world.

In the mid-1990s small groups of irreligious Jews, primarily in Israel but also in the USA, began to gather together to study Talmud from a cultural perspective. In part this was a quest for identity in a pluralistic world, but for many it was simply for the enjoyment of coming to grips with a complex, challenging text that they had heard so much about. Since they are not studying in a traditional institution they are able to be far more creative about the way they engage with the text. Elul, an Israeli organization dedicated to secular
study of the Talmud and other ancient texts, uses storytelling, music, art and creative literature as part of its instructional method.
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In 2013 Ruth Caldron, the head of a secular Talmud study centre, was elected to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. In her maiden speech she delivered a lecture from the Talmud. She took a moving passage about a woman waiting for her husband to come home, gradually coming to terms with the fact of his death. She turned it into a plea for diversity and mutual respect. Her fellow Knesset members included ultra-religious men who had never heard Talmud taught from a secular perspective, and certainly not from a woman. Her speech became an internet phenomenon.

Today tens of thousands of people attend secular Talmud study groups. In fact, secular Talmud study programmes engage more people worldwide than almost any other structured programme. The exception is
daf yomi
, the page-a-day programme that Meir Shapiro set up in 1924.

The thirteenth cycle

On 1 August 2012, ninety three thousand men packed into the Metlife stadium in New Jersey. They had come to mark the conclusion of the twelfth cycle of
daf yomi.
It had run continuously since its inauguration. Tens of thousands of men and women attended similar events across the world. The following day the thirteenth cycle began. There is no let up in the
daf yomi
schedule.

Typically, participants in the
daf yomi
programme study together in small groups, making time outside of their working day to meet. There are even groups who meet daily on trains, as they commute to work. Some sessions take the form of a lecture, others are made up of people with a similar level of knowledge, who work through the text together, often using printed or internet resources to help them. Its popularity belies its gruelling schedule.

The scale of
daf yomi’s
reception is intriguing. For its first half century it was a fringe activity, only the most committed took part. In 1975 the conclusion ceremony in New York attracted around five thousand participants, by 1990 it was twenty thousand and in 2013 ninety three thousand. Haym Soloveitchik sees this as emblematic of a contemporary quest for identity; in today’s world
our religious or cultural identity is no longer inevitable, we all make cultural choices.
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Turning to the Talmud as part of an identity quest is one such choice.

But it’s not just a matter of identity. There’s little doubt that technology has helped fuel the popularity of the
daf yomi
programme. In the days before the internet,
daf yomi
lectures were recorded on cassette or delivered through telephone help lines. When the internet came along its programmes were amongst the first experiments in e-learning. Today, when the
daf yomi
participant goes online, she can choose from hundreds of websites containing texts and study guides; listen to, or watch, any one of dozens of experts delivering a lecture and download apps providing every conceivable form of assistance. And when she picks up a volume of her tastefully formatted ArtScroll or Koren edition, the traditional burden of ‘labouring in the Talmud’ is made so much easier.

The future

The diversity of those interacting with the Talmud today reflects the pluralist, multi-cultural world in which we live. What is counter-intuitive however is that, although the content of the Talmud is ancient, it can be construed as anticipating modernity, intrinsically suited to the twenty-first century.

Like the internet, the Talmud is a multi-dimensional, non-linear text in which nearly every line links to content on other pages, creating a web of connections and multiple paths for the reader to
explore.
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The core text, which equates to the home page of a website, links to a hierarchy of on-the-page commentaries, these connect to a second tier at the back of each volume exploring the commentaries themselves, and infinitely expanding tertiary and subsequent levels are contained in separate publications on the Talmudist’s bookshelves. Unlike the internet, however, the links are not highlighted or underlined on the page. The Talmud’s hyperlinks are fluid, responsive to the reader’s imagination, analytical skills and subject of interest, not to the page designer’s commercial or creative agenda.

It’s not just the internet. Some Talmudic calculations caused headaches for medieval commentators, who struggled to explain the thinking behind them.
Mathematicians are now discovering that at least some of the solutions lie in game theory.
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There’s also an aspect of Talmudic decision making which is reminiscent of quantum theory. Science knows that sub-atomic particles do not occupy a definite state, until they are observed. It is the fact of observation which fixes them. There is a category of problem in the Talmud which draws on a similar concept. Its solution is known to be one of two possibilities, but each is equally probable. In most cases the problem can be resolved by reference to an actual case; if the editors of the Talmud have a record of an earlier authority deciding in a particular way, then this becomes the solution to the problem. But sometimes there is no authority who has already ruled on the problem. In this case the Talmud remains undecided, the solution exists in two states simultaneously until the end time when, traditionally, the prophet Elijah will solve it. The Talmud calls this suspended solution
teyku,
which means let it stand.

A well-known, somewhat extreme illustration of this is the case of a house from which all bread has been removed, as required for the Passover festival. The house is in a state of ‘no longer needing to be cleaned’. Then a mouse is seen running in to the house with a piece of bread in its mouth. A few moments later a mouse is seen running out of the house with a piece of bread in its mouth. What is the state of the house now? Do we assume that the same mouse ran in and ran out, with the same piece of bread in its mouth and the house remains in its state of ‘no longer needing to be cleaned’? Or do we assume that a different mouse ran out with a different piece of bread, the original mouse and its bread still being in the house, so that it is now in a state of ‘needing to be cleaned’?
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Each case is equally probable. (The problem was posed long before there was any forensic way of testing whether two different mice had been in the house.) The Talmud declares
teyku
; let the problem remain undecided. Technically the house now exists in two different states simultaneously; it will only assume a final state of ‘needing to be cleaned’ or ‘not needing to be cleaned’ when Elijah observes it. Just as an unobserved sub-atomic particle will only have its state fixed when someone observes it.
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