Essential Papers on the Talmud
Essential Papers on the Talmud

Author: Michael Chernick

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 1994-10

Total Pages: 495

ISBN-13: 0814715052

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No work has informed Jewish life and history more than the Talmud. This unique and vast collection of teachings and traditions contains within it the intellectual output of hundreds of Jewish sages who considered all aspects of an entire people’s life from the Hellenistic period in Palestine (c. 315 B.C.E.) until the end of the Sassanian era in Babylonia (615 C.E.). This volume adds the insights of modern talmudic scholarship and criticism to the growing number of more traditionally oriented works that seek to open the talmudic heritage and tradition to contemporary readers. These central essays provide a taste of the myriad ways in which talmudic study can intersect with such diverse disciplines as economics, history, ethics, law, literary criticism, and philosophy. Contributors: Baruch Micah Bokser, Boaz Cohen, Ari Elon, Meyer S. Feldblum, Louis Ginzberg, Abraham Goldberg, Robert Goldenberg, Heinrich Graetz, Louis Jacobs, David Kraemer, Geoffrey B. Levey, Aaron Levine, Saul Lieberman, Jacob Neusner, Nahum Rakover, and David Weiss-Halivni.

The Essential Talmud
The Essential Talmud

Author: Adin Steinsaltz

Publisher:

Published: 1976

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 9780465020638

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An Israeli rabbi and scholar conveys the spirit of the Talmud as he treats its composition, traditions, structure, and laws

Essential Torah
Essential Torah

Author: George Robinson

Publisher: Schocken

Published: 2006-10-31

Total Pages: 621

ISBN-13: 0805241868

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Whether you are studying the Bible for the first time or you're simply curious about its history and contents, you will find everything you need in this "accessible, well-written handbook to Jewish belief as set forth in the Torah" (The Jerusalem Post). George Robinson, author of the acclaimed Essential Judaism, begins by recounting the various theories of the origins of the Torah and goes on to explain its importance as the core element in Jewish belief and practice. He discusses the basics of Jewish theology and Jewish history as they are derived from the Torah, and he outlines how the Dead Sea Scrolls and other archaeological discoveries have enhanced our understanding of the Bible. He introduces us to the vast literature of biblical commentary, chronicles the evolution of the Torah’s place in the synagogue service, offers an illuminating discussion of women and the Bible, and provides a study guide as a companion for individual or group Bible study. In the book’s centerpiece, Robinson summarizes all fifty-four portions that make up the Torah and gives us a brilliant distillation of two thousand years of biblical commentaries—from the rabbis of the Mishnah and the Talmud to medieval commentators such as Rashi, Maimonides, and ibn Ezra to contemporary scholars such as Nahum Sarna, Nechama Leibowitz, Robert Alter, and Everett Fox. This extraordinary volume—which includes a listing of the Torah reading cycles, a Bible time line, glossaries of terms and biblical commentators, and a bibliography—will stand as the essential sourcebook on the Torah for years to come.

The Talmud
The Talmud

Author: Barry Scott Wimpfheimer

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-09

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 0691209227

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The Babylonian Talmud, a postbiblical Jewish text that is part scripture and part commentary, is an unlikely bestseller. Written in a hybrid of Hebrew and Aramaic, it is often ambiguous to the point of incomprehension, and its subject matter reflects a narrow scholasticism that should hardly have broad appeal. Yet the Talmud has remained in print for centuries and is more popular today than ever. Barry Scott Wimpfheimer tells the remarkable story of this ancient Jewish book and explains why it has endured for almost two millennia.0Providing a concise biography of this quintessential work of rabbinic Judaism, Wimpfheimer takes readers from the Talmud's prehistory in biblical and second-temple Judaism to its present-day use as a source of religious ideology, a model of different modes of rationality, and a totem of cultural identity. He describes the book's origins and structure, its centrality to Jewish law, its mixed reception history, and its golden renaissance in modernity. He explains why reading the Talmud can feel like being swept up in a river or lost in a maze, and why the Talmud has come to be venerated--but also excoriated and maligned-in the centuries since it first appeared.0An incomparable introduction to a work of literature that has lived a full and varied life, this accessible book shows why the Talmud is at once a received source of traditional teachings, a touchstone of cultural authority, and a powerful symbol of Jewishness for both supporters and critics.

Nine Talmudic Readings
Nine Talmudic Readings

Author: Emmanuel Levinas

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2019-05-16

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0253040507

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These nine masterful readings of the Talmud by the renowned French Jewish philosopher translate Jewish thought into the language of modern times. One of the major continental philosophers of the twentieth century, Emmanuel Levinas was also an important Talmudic commentator. Between 1963 and 1975, he delivered an enlightening and influential series of commentaries at the annual Talmudic colloquia of a group of French Jewish intellectuals in Paris. In this collection, Levinas applies a hermeneutic that simultaneously allows the classic Jewish texts to shed light on contemporary problems and lets modern problems illuminate the texts. Besides being quintessential illustrations of the art of reading, the essays express the deeply ethical vision of the human condition that makes Levinas one of the most important thinkers of our time.

Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud
Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud

Author: Moulie Vidas

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2016-05-31

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 069117086X

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Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud offers a new perspective on perhaps the most important religious text of the Jewish tradition. It is widely recognized that the creators of the Talmud innovatively interpreted and changed the older traditions on which they drew. Nevertheless, it has been assumed that the ancient rabbis were committed to maintaining continuity with the past. Moulie Vidas argues on the contrary that structural features of the Talmud were designed to produce a discontinuity with tradition, and that this discontinuity was part and parcel of the rabbis' self-conception. Both this self-conception and these structural features were part of a debate within and beyond the Jewish community about the transmission of tradition. Focusing on the Babylonian Talmud, produced in the rabbinic academies of late ancient Mesopotamia, Vidas analyzes key passages to show how the Talmud's creators contrasted their own voice with that of their predecessors. He also examines Zoroastrian, Christian, and mystical Jewish sources to reconstruct the debates and wide-ranging conversations that shaped the Talmud's literary and intellectual character.

Why Study Talmud in the Twenty-first Century?
Why Study Talmud in the Twenty-first Century?

Author: Paul Socken

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 9780739142004

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Since religion in general and Judaism in particular are relevant in the twenty-first century, this book serves as an assessment of the Talmud's role in our religious and educational experience. This collection of essays demonstrates that the two-thousand-year-old Talmud remain...

Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests
Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests

Author: Jason Sion Mokhtarian

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2015-09-01

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0520286200

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"Rabbis, Sorcerers, Kings, and Priests brings into mutual fruition the fields of Talmudic Studies and Ancient Iranology, two historically distinct disciplines. Mokhtarian offers a revisionist history of the rabbis of late antique Persia who produced the Babylonian Talmud, perhaps the most important corpus in the Jewish sacred canon. While most research on the Talmud assumes that the rabbis were an insular group isolated from the cultural horizon outside of the rabbinic academies, this book contextualizes the rabbis and Talmud within a broader socio-cultural orbit by drawing from a wide range of sources from Sasanian Iran, including Middle Persian Zoroastrian literature, archaeological evidence, and the Jewish Aramaic magical bowls"--Provided by publisher.

Deconstructing the Talmud
Deconstructing the Talmud

Author: Federico Dal Bo

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781138208223

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This monograph uses deconstruction¿a philosophical movement originated by Jacques Derrida¿to read the most authoritative book in Judaism: the Talmud. Examining deconstruction in comparison with Kant¿s and Hegel¿s philosophies, the volume argues that the movement opens an innovative debate on Jewish Law. ¿ First, the monograph interprets deconstruction within the major streams of continental philosophy, then, it criticizes many aspects of Foucault¿s and Agamben¿s philosophy, rejecting their notion of law. On these premises, the research delivers a close examination of many fundamental aspects of the Talmud. Consequently, it provides a short history of Rabbinic literature, an history of the dissemination of the Talmud from Babylon to Northern France, and an analysis of Talmudic vocabulary from a deconstructive perspective. Each key concept of the Talmud is analysed according to the deconstructive dialectics between orality and writing. Closing with a comparison between the Talmud and Derrida¿s most enigmatic text, Glas, the study argues that deconstruction dismantles the traditional notion of the Talmud to outline a new approach to Jewish Law. Reading the Talmud through deconstruction, this new angle makes the volume an essential resource for students and scholars interested in Jewish studies, continental philosophy and the Middle East.