Talmudic Stories
Author: Jeffrey L. Rubenstein
Publisher: JHU Press
Published: 1999-10-15
Total Pages: 468
ISBN-13: 9780801861468
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe book features an appendix including the original Hebrew/Aramaic texts for the reader's reference.
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Stories of the Babylonian Talmud
Author: Jeffrey L. Rubenstein
Publisher: JHU Press
Published: 2010-07-12
Total Pages: 338
ISBN-13: 0801897467
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJeffrey L. Rubenstein continues his grand exploration of the ancient rabbinic tradition of the Talmudic sages, offering deep and complex analysis of eight stories from the Babylonian Talmud to reconstruct the cultural and religious world of the Babylonian rabbinic academy. Rubenstein combines a close textual and literary examination of each story with a careful comparison to earlier versions from other rabbinic compilations. This unique approach provides insight not only into the meaning and content of the current forms of the stories but also into how redactors reworked those earlier versions to address contemporary moral and religious issues. Rubenstein's analysis uncovers the literary methods used to compose the Talmud and sheds light on the cultural and theological perspectives of the Stammaim—the anonymous editor-redactors of the Babylonian Talmud. Rubenstein also uses these stories as a window into understanding more broadly the culture of the late Babylonian rabbinic academy, a hierarchically organized and competitive institution where sages studied the Torah. Several of the stories Rubenstein studies here describe the dynamics of life in the academy: master-disciple relationships, collegiality and rivalry, and the struggle for leadership positions. Others elucidate the worldview of the Stammaim, including their perspectives on astrology, theodicy, and revelation. The third installment of Rubenstein’s trilogy of works on the subject, Stories of the Babylonian Talmud is essential reading for all students of the Talmud and rabbinic Judaism.
Narrating the Law
Author: Barry Wimpfheimer
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2011-07-19
Total Pages: 249
ISBN-13: 0812242998
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn Narrating the Law Barry Scott Wimpfheimer creates a new theoretical framework for considering the relationship between law and narrative and models a new method for studying talmudic law in particular. Works of law, including the Talmud, are animated by a desire to create clear usable precedent. This animating impulse toward clarity is generally absent in narratives, the form of which is better able to capture the subtleties of lived life. Wimpfheimer proposes to make these different forms compatible by constructing a narrative-based law that considers law as one of several "languages," along with politics, ethics, psychology, and others that together compose culture. A narrative-based law is capable of recognizing the limitations of theoretical statutes and the degree to which other cultural languages interact with legal discourse, complicating any attempts to actualize a hypothetical set of rules. This way of considering law strongly resists the divide in traditional Jewish learning between legal literature (Halakhah) and nonlegal literature (Aggadah) by suggesting the possibility of a discourse broad enough to capture both. Narrating the Law activates this mode of reading by looking at the Talmud's legal stories, a set of texts that sits uncomfortably on the divide between Halakhah and Aggadah. After noticing that such stories invite an expansive definition of law that includes other cultural voices, Narrating the Law also mines the stories for the rich descriptions of rabbinic culture that they encapsulate.
A Bride for One Night
Author: Ruth Calderon
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Published: 2014-03-01
Total Pages: 183
ISBN-13: 0827612095
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"Published by the University of Nebraska Press as a Jewish Publication Society book."
Rabbinic Stories
Author: Jeffrey L. Rubenstein
Publisher: Paulist Press
Published: 2002
Total Pages: 346
ISBN-13: 9780809140244
DOWNLOAD EBOOKStories from the main works of classical rabbinic literature, which were produced by Jewish sages in either Hebrew or Aramaic, between 200 and 600 CE.
The Land of Truth
Author: Jeffrey L. Rubenstein
Publisher: Jewish Publication Society
Published: 2018-12-11
Total Pages: 327
ISBN-13: 0827614373
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMaking the rich narrative world of Talmud tales fully accessible to modern readers, renowned Talmud scholar Jeffrey L. Rubenstein turns his spotlight on both famous and little-known stories, analyzing the tales in their original contexts, exploring their cultural meanings and literary artistry, and illuminating their relevance. Delving into both rabbinic life (the academy, master-disciple relationships) and Jewish life under Roman and Persian rule (persecution, taxation, marketplaces), Rubenstein explains how storytellers used irony, wordplay, figurative language, and other art forms to communicate their intended messages. Each close reading demonstrates the story’s continuing relevance through the generations into modernity. For example, the story “Showdown in Court,” a confrontation between King Yannai and the Rabbinic judges, provides insights into controversial struggles in U.S. history to balance governmental power; the story of Honi’s seventy-year sleep becomes a window into the indignities of aging. Through the prism of Talmud tales, Rubenstein also offers timeless insights into suffering, beauty, disgust, heroism, humor, love, sex, truth, and falsehood. By connecting twenty-first-century readers to past generations, The Land of Truth helps to bridge the divide between modern Jews and the traditional narrative worlds of their ancestors.
Sages of the Talmud
Author: Mordechai Judovits
Publisher: Urim Publications
Published: 2009
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9789655240351
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA collection of biographical information about the authors of the Talmud. It contains more than four hundred entries and hundreds of anecdotes about the sages, all as recorded in the Talmud itself. An indispensable book for the student of the Talmud.
Legends of the Talmud
Author: Leah Vincent
Publisher:
Published: 2014-12-01
Total Pages: 98
ISBN-13: 9780692282809
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLegends of the Talmud will introduce readers aged 6+ to one of the oldest and most influential texts of Judaism: the Talmud. Although often viewed as a collection of religious laws, the Talmud is also a cultural legacy filled with foundational Jewish ideas and magical tales. The five stories curated in Legends of the Talmud are presented without doctrinal overlay. They are recounted exactly as they are in the original text: cultural treasures that depict earthy and frank experiences of love, suffering, hope and persistence that all humans grapple with as we move through life. Written by Leah Vincent and Samuel Katz and illustrated by Aya Rosen, this revolutionary book will introduce children of all backgrounds to the Talmud and allow Jewish legends to proudly take their place in the global library of ancient magical stories.
The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud
Author: Jeffrey L. Rubenstein
Publisher: JHU Press
Published: 2005-08-17
Total Pages: 252
ISBN-13: 9780801882654
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this pathbreaking study Jeffrey L. Rubenstein reconstructs the cultural milieu of the rabbinic academy that produced the Babylonian Talmud, or Bavli, which quickly became the authoritative text of rabbinic Judaism and remains so to this day. Unlike the rabbis who had earlier produced the shorter Palestinian Talmud (the Yerushalmi) and who had passed on their teachings to students individually or in small and informal groups, the anonymous redactors of the Bavli were part of a large institution with a distinctive, isolated, and largely undocumented culture. The Culture of the Babylonian Talmud explores the cultural world of these Babylonian rabbis and their students through the prism of the stories they included in the Bavli, showing how their presentation of earlier rabbinic teachings was influenced by their own values and practices. Among the topics explored in this broad-ranging work are the hierarchical structure of the rabbinic academy, the use of dialectics in teaching, the functions of violence and shame within the academy, the role of lineage in rabbinic leadership, the marital and family lives of the rabbis, and the relationship between the rabbis and the rest of the Jewish population. This book provides a unique and new perspective on the formative years of rabbinic Judaism and will be essential reading for all students of the Talmud. -- Michael Satlow, Brown University
The Formation of the Babylonian Talmud
Author: David Weiss Halivni
Publisher:
Published: 2013-09-19
Total Pages: 349
ISBN-13: 0199739889
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJeffrey L. Rubenstein offers a translation from the Hebrew of The Formation of the Babylonian Talmud by David Weiss Halivni. Halivni's work is widely regarded as the most comprehensive scholarly examination of the processes of composition and editing of the Babylonian Talmud. Halivni presents the summation of a lifetime of scholarship and the conclusions of his multivolume Talmudic commentary, Sources and Traditions (Meqorot umesorot). Arguing against the traditional view that the Talmud was composed c. 450 CE by the last of the named sages in the Talmud, the Amoraim, Halivni proposes that its formation took place over a much longer period of time, not reaching its final form until about 750 CE. The Talmud consists of many literary strata or layers, with later layers constantly commenting upon and reinterpreting earlier layers. The later layers differ qualitatively from the earlier layers, and were composed by anonymous sages whom Halivni calls Stammaim. These sages were the true author-editors of the Talmud, who reconstructed the reasons underpinning earlier rulings, created the dialectical argumentation characteristic of the Talmud, and formulated the literary units that make up the Talmudic text. Halivni also discusses the history and development of rabbinic tradition from the Mishnah through the post-Talmud legal codes, the types of dialectical analysis found in the different rabbinic works, and the roles of reciters, transmitters, compilers, and editors in the composition of the Talmud. This volume contains an introduction and annotations by Jeffrey Rubenstein.
