T A L M U D. An Introduction

Transcription

1 בס"ד T A L M U D David Derovan Jerusalem An Introduction The Talmud is the largest anthology of Oral Law. According to Jewish tradition, God gave the Jews a Written Law and an Oral Law. The Written Law began as the Pentateuch, only to be expanded over the years into the twenty-four books of the Hebrew Bible. The Oral Law began as a corpus of explanations and details of Biblical law. Maimonides explains, in his "Introduction to the Commentary on the Mishnah," that some of this additional material was linked to specific phrases and words in the Biblical text, while some was not. In addition to specific laws, the Oral Law contained the possibility and means for expansion through logic and exegesis of the Biblical text. Yet, throughout the Biblical period, the corpus of Oral Law remained essentially the same. With the canonization of the Hebrew Bible by the Men of the Great Assembly, a new period began in Jewish intellectual history, the period of the Rabbis, the teachers. Beginning in the 4th century B.C.E. and continuing until approximately 500 C.E., the Rabbis expanded the Oral Law. They extended Biblical Law to cover every aspect of daily life. They offered literary, philosophical, psychological and folk interpretations of every aspect of the Bible. They also created a complementary body of Rabbinic law which adds to and extends Biblical law even further. Throughout this almost 900 year period, the words of the Rabbi were anthologized in various literary genre. The largest, most complete and complex of these anthologies is what we call the Talmud, a Hebrew word meaning study or learning. This period in history is variously referred to as the Talmudic or Rabbinic period. The Talmud is in reality two works. The first is the Mishnah and the second is the Gemara. The Talmudic period is consequently divided into two periods of time, that of the Mishnah and that of the Gemara. The reason for this division is more than simply literary. Halacha, which is the totality of Jewish Law beginning with the Bible and continuing to our day, is based on a hierarchy of authoritative sources. The older the source of the law, the greater weight it carries in determining the final outcome of the law. Thus, laws mentioned explicitly in the Bible have more authority than those mentioned in the Mishnah. Laws found in the Mishnah carry more weight than those found in the Gemara. Laws quoted in the Gemara are more authoritative than later Halachic decisions and so on. In keeping with this division of authority, the Rabbis of the different periods were giving different titles. the Rabbis of the Mishnah are called Tana'im (plural for Tana), while those of the Gemara are called Amora'im (plural or Amora). The Oral Law was meant to remain just that, a body of law and interpretation which would be studied orally, by memory. By not writing down the laws, the law would be more flexible and responsive. Thus, generations of students memorized the existing rules, discussed then and added their own. At three junctures during the Talmudic period, the social, political and religious environment deteriorated to the point that the Rabbis were forced to collect the existing Oral Law and to produce a written anthology. The first of 2011 David Jay Derovan Please feel free to share this essay with your friends and/or students Your comments, criticisms and suggestions are always welcome

2 these was the Mishnah. M i s h n a h Shimon HaTzaddik was the first Tana. A contemporary of Alexander the Great, he was the Jewish leader who greeted the Greek conqueror upon his arrival in Israel, in 332 B.C.E. Shimon HaTzaddik was also the last living member of the Men of the Great Assembly. Thus he was the living bridge between one period in history and the next. As the high priest in the Temple and the greatest sage of his times, Shimon personified the totality of Jewish tradition. His meeting Alexander the Great, the model of Greek culture, begins a new era in Jewish history, which is marked by the continued interaction and occasional clash with western culture. Over the next 300 years, the Oral Law developed slowly. Shimon HaTzaddik was succeeded by five generations of scholars who continued to study the Oral Law in the traditional fashion, i.e. by reading the Written Law (primarily the Pentateuch) and reciting the relevant Oral Law passages. As the first century B.C.E. drew to a close, the great scholar Hillel changed the way the Oral Law was studied. Apparently, the corpus of law had grown so in size and in complexity that it was cumbersome to recite it along with the Written Law. As a result, Hillel organized the known Oral Law by subject matter. Each small, self-contained unit was known as a Mishnah. These Mishnayot (plural for Mishnah) were gathered into larger groups which became part of even larger divisions. The whole became known by the same name as the smallest unit, Mishnah. Hillel devised the six different Sedarim (divisions) of the Mishnah: 1. Zera'im (literally seeds) deals with agricultural law; 2. Mo'ed (literally appointed time) is concerned with Shabbat and all the festivals; 3. Nashim (literally women) is about the laws of marriage and divorce; 4. Nezikin (literally damages) contains the whole range of civil law, e.g. courts, buying and selling; 5. Kodashim (literally holy things) deals with the laws of sacriices and the Temple; 6. Taharot (literally pure things) details the laws regarding ritual purity and impurity. For the next two hundred years, the Tana'im discussed, debated and expanded the Oral Law along the lines which Hillel had delineated. In and around the year 200 C.E., Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi edited an anthology of Rabbinic law statements. His anthology followed the divisions established by Hillel. Each of the divisions was divided into separate books, tractates (known as Masekhtot) containing chapters of Mishnayot. Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi's anthology of Rabbinic law statements is known to this day as the Mishnah. It is written in a pure Hebrew style with a smattering of Aramaic, Greek and Latin words and phrases. To this day, scholars are undecided whether or not Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi actually published the Mishnah in written form. In any event, the Mishnah was immediately accepted as an authoritative anthology of law. The literary style of the Mishnah reflects the nature of its origins. Since the law was memorized by succeeding generations of students, the Rabbis strived to express themselves as simply and lucidly as possible. Thus their statements of law took on the guise of aphorisms. In keeping with its anthological scheme, the Mishnah includes all the sides of the debate on any single point of law, to the extent that each statement is accompanied by the name of the Rabbi who formulated it. At times, the majority opinion is preceded by the phrase "the Rabbis said;" at other times the majority opinion appears 2

3 anonymously at the beginning of the individual Mishnah. The Mishnah is unique also for what it does not contain. There are very few references to the Biblical text in the Mishnah, despite the fact that the Rabbis leaned heavily on the Biblical text as a source and support for the law. There are also very few stories in the Mishnah. If a story does appear, it is invariably told to elucidate a point of law or to give an example of its application. The Mishnah is devoted almost exclusively to Halacha. The Book of Avot (known popularly as Chapters of the Fathers or Ethics of the Fathers) is the only book of Mishnah devoted to something other than law, i.e. ethics and moral conduct. The Mishnah contains only the end result of Rabbinic debate and discussion. The arguments, the proofs, the lengthy discussion of supporting Biblical texts are on the whole absent from the Mishnah. Finally, the Mishnah is not a code of law including only those opinions which were accepted as normative. Rather it is an anthology of opinions, almost encyclopedic in nature, including all sides of an argument, covering the total range of Jewish law, including those topics, such as the laws of sacrifices, which have ceased to have practical application in daily life. One should not think that what was not included in the Mishnah was lost to posterity. The Mishnah is the pre-eminent collection of Rabbinic statements from this period but not the only one. The old method of studying the Oral Law was preserved in four volumes of Midrash Halacha. Midrash is the term which describes any Rabbinic comment or interpretation of a Biblical text. The anthologies of Midrash statements are also called by the title Midrash. Midrash Halacha refers to the Rabbinic interpretations of the Biblical law texts. The four collections of Midrash Halacha correspond to the last four books of the Pentateuch (Mekhilta on Exodus, Sifra on Leviticus, Sifre on Numbers and Sifre on Deuteronomy). There is no Midrash Halacha on the Book of Genesis for it contains very little law. In the books of Midrash Halacha, the statements, comments and interpretations are arranged according the order of the Biblical text. While the main focus of these works is legal, they also contain a great deal of Rabbinic lore which is not strictly legal in nature, including literary and philosophical comments on the Biblical text. Many of the Rabbinic statements of law and Biblical exegesis were not included either the Mishnah or the Midrash Halacha. These statements are called Beraitot (plural for Beraita). A collection of these Beraitot called the Tosefta was edited a number of generations after Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi. It parallels the structure and format of the Mishnah. Yet, even the Tosefta is not a complete compilation of all the Rabbinic statements which were not included in the Mishnah. Innumerable Beraitot were preserved in the second, larger section of the Talmud called the Gemara. G e m a r a The second, larger part of the Talmud is the Gemara. Despite the tendency of historians to divide history into neatly delineated periods of time, the line separating the two stages of Tamudic history is in reality a fuzzy one. Indeed, the publication and subsequent wide circulation of the Mishnah changed the way the Oral Law was studied. Instead of formulating new Mishnayot, the Rabbis, beginning with the colleagues and students of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, began to analyze the Mishnah. As a sign of the changing times, the Rabbis of this period were given the title Amora, an Aramaic word meaning he who explains, an apt description for those whose primary preoccupation was to explain the Mishnah. While Israel was the pre-eminent center of world Jewry in the Mishnaic period, a second center was rapidly gaining prominence. Jews had lived in Babylonia, the ancient kingdom located between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers (roughly corresponding to 3

4 present day Iraq), since the exile following the destruction of the first Temple. By the time Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi published the Mishnah, the Rabbinic academies of Babylonian Jewish communities were gaining rapidly in reputation and influence. As a result, the Gemara developed separately in two different centers, Israel and Babylonia. Talmudic Methodology. Wherever the Rabbis gathered to study, be it Israel or Babylonia, their basic methods and purposes were the same. Unlike the Mishnah, which resembles an encyclopedic anthology of law aphorisms, the Gemara texts preserve the proceedings of the Rabbinic academies. The most outstanding aspect of the Gemara is the record of the give and take, the debate, the discussion which took place concerning a Mishnah, a Biblical text or a point of law. This style is maintained to the extent that the editors expanded the discussions by combining material which originated in different academies or in different centuries. The primary purpose of the discussions in the Gemara is to elucidate the Mishnah text. A typical chapter of Talmud opens with a single Mishnah, usually not longer than a paragraph. This is followed by the Gemara. On rare occasions, the Gemara text is only a few lines long as well. Most of the time, the Gemara discussions cover numerous pages. Then another Mishnah is quoted only to be followed by the relevant Gemara discussions. The Gemara text is broken up into units, each of which is called a Sugya. The Sugya immediately following the Mishnah usually begins by analyzing the language of the Mishnah text. This analysis and the subsequent discussions take the form of questions and answers. Sometimes, the questions and answers appear anonymously, more often the author's name is mentioned. Typically, the discussion then proceeds to discovery of the Biblical verse or verses which are the source for the law under review. The next step is to compare and contrast the Mishnah with similar texts from other Mishnayot or from a Beraita. In harmonizing the Mishnah with a Beraita, the Gemara will sometimes claim that the Mishnah is missing a detail, the insertion of which changes the meaning of the Mishnah, thus removing the conflict between the two texts. Since the Amora'im were not allowed to disagree with an accepted law from the Mishnah, at times, the Mishnah is used as the basis for attacking a position held be an Amora. If the Mishnah statement is an anonymous one, the Amora can defend himself by attributing the Mishnah statement to a particular Tana, while he, the Amora, sides with a different Tana on this point of law. The discussions in the Gemara are not limited to the contents and style of the Mishnah. Since the Rabbis employed associational logic in addition to linear logic, they frequently extended the discussion to other laws, verses or topics, sometimes only vaguely related to the origin subject. The Rabbis did not limit themselves to those laws which had daily application. There are extensive debates in the Gemara about purely theoretical Halacha, such as the sacrifices or the Temple. Sometimes, the Gemara will discuss at great length the opinion which is not accepted as law. Unlike the Mishnah, the Gemara is not strictly limited to matters of law. Intermixed with the law debates are large doses of Midrash (discussion of the Biblical text), Aggada (Rabbinic stories about the characters and events in the Bible), stories about the Rabbis, medical advice, science, philosophical debates and demonology. The Gemara is different from the Mishnah in another way. While the starting point of the Gemara discussions is the analysis of the Mishnah, the end point is the decision as to what is to be accepted as law. Very often, a new principle of law is established along with the final law decision. On occasion there is even debate as to which opinion is to accepted as normative practice. Not every Sugya comes to a conclusive law decision. At times, the reconciliation of different views or the solution to the problem is so elusive that the Sugya ends with the word "Teiku," an acronym meaning that Elijah the Prophet will resolve the 4

5 problem when he returns to earth to announce the coming of the Messiah. Over the years, the political, social and economic milieu in Israel deteriorated faster than in Babylonia. Thus, the Rabbis were forced once again to commit the Oral Law to writing. By 425 C.E., the first edition of Talmud, Mishnah and Gemara, began to circulate. Since it was the product of the Israeli academies, it was called the Talmud debnei Ma'arava (Talmud of the Western People, Israel being west of Babylonia). In later generations, it was given a different name, the Talmud Yerushalmi (the Jerusalem Talmud). Ta l m u d Y e r u s h a l m i Despite its name, the Talmud Yerushalmi was not the product of Jerusalem. During this period of time, the Jewish population of Israel was concentrated in the northern half of the country. Thus, the Talmud Yerushalmi was edited in the Rabbinic academies of Ceasaria, Sephorris and Tiberias. The Talmud Yerushalmi does not include Gemara on the entire Mishnah. There is no Gemara on the last two Sedarim (divisions) of Mishnah, Kodashim (laws of the Temple and the sacrifices) and Taharot (laws of ritual impurity). Despite valient efforts, scholars have yet to offer a satisfactory explanation of this anomaly. Some modern scholars have tried to prove the existence of Talmud Yerushalmi text on these two Sedarim, but their arguments are considered inconclusive. On the other hand, the Talmud Yerushalmi does include Gemara on the entire first division of the Mishnah, Zera'im. Despite destruction of the Second Temple and its connection to the land through the agricultural laws and sacrifices, the Jews in Israel still observed the agricultural laws. Thus, the laws contained in Seder Zeraim were studied in the Israeli academies for their practical relevance. The Talmud Yerushalmi is written in a Gallilean dialect of Western Aramaic. A small amount of Hebrew is mixed in along with some Latin and Greek, much of which appears in corrupt form. On the whole, the discussions are short, incisive and to the point. Approximately one sixth of the Talmud Yerushalmi deals with non-halachic matters. The reason for this is development in the Israeli academies of separate anthologies of Midrash (the Midrash Rabbah on the Pentateuch and the five Megillot, for instance) and Aggada (the Pirkei de Rabbi Elazar, for instance). The Rabbis studying in the Israeli academies did not work in a vacuum. There was constant movement of teachers and students between the Israeli academies and those in Babylonia. Despite the constant crosspollination of ideas and opinions of law, the Talmud Yerushalmi was an attempt to preserve the proceedings of the Israeli academies before they were lost to posterity because of the rapidly deteriorating political situation in Israel. While the Rabbis labored in Tiberius to produce the first complete Talmud, the Rabbis in Babylonia were still debating the law. This situation changed drastically in a scant 75 years. By 500 C.E., the Rabbis of Babylonia were putting the finishing touches on their own, second version of Talmud, the Talmud Bavli, the Babylonian Talmud. T a l m u d B a v l i This second version of the Talmud is very different from the first. The Gemara in the Talmud Bavli is about 50% Hebrew and 50% Eastern Aramaic. Greek and Latin terms are used as well, but not in the mutated form found in the Talmud Yerushalmi. The discussions in the Talmud Bavli are more expansive than those in the Yerushalmi. More tangental material is 5

6 included. Only about one third of the Gemara in the Talmud Bavli relates to Halacha, almost two-thirds are Midrash and Aggada. The Rabbis of the Babylonian academies did not create separate anthologies of Midrash and Aggada. The Talmud Bavli contains Gemara on the first book in the Mishnah division of Zera'im, for it deals with the laws of prayer. Since there is no obligation to observe the agricultural laws outside of the land of Israel, the Talmud Bavli contains no Gemara on the rest of Seder Zeraim which is devoted to those laws. At the same time, the Talmud Bavli contains Gemara on each of the books in the division of Kodashim (laws pertaining to sacrifices), despite the theoretical nature of the material. The Talmud Bavli includes Gemara on only one book in the last Mishnah division, Taharot (laws of ritual impurity), because the book of Niddah deals with the laws relating to menstruating women, which are still applicable. All in all, the Talmud Bavli contains about two and a half million words, on almost 5,900 folio pages (two sides of a single sheet of paper), in 36 separate books. Strangely, even the Mishnah text which appears in the Talmud Bavli includes many variants from that included in the Talmud Yerushalmi. Scholars disagree about the sources of these variant readings. Some say that they stem from earlier and later editions of the Mishnah, with the Talmud Yerushalmi using a later, updated version. Others say that the version in the Talmud Bavli relects the different way the Mishnah was studied in the Babylonian academies. The Rabbis in Babylonia were more critical of the Mishnah text and had no compunctions about emending that text. Only rarely are the variants so different that the resulting law is at variance as well. Thus the Talmud is indeed two Talmuds. The first part, the core, the Mishnah, is basically one and the same. Yet the Gemara is not the same in the two versions. The Bavli and Yerushalmi differ significantly in language, style, content, scope and range of subject matter, date of redaction, and ultimately in the authority each has in Halacha, matters of law. When the Talmud Bavli was finally edited, there was no public decision made to accept it and its rulings as definitive Halacha. Yet, over the years and centuries, that is indeed what happened. A number of factors contributed to this ad hoc decision. The Talmud Bavli includes a great deal of material which originated in the Israeli academies. So much so, that later halachic authorities claimed that the Talmud Bavli includes all of the accepted halachic rulings made in the Israeli academies. After the crisis which precipitated the creation of the Babylonian version, the situation there actually improved. The Babylonian academies grew in size and prominence. The Babylonian communities became the center of world Jewry. As a result, less than two centuries after its completion, the Geonim (as the Rabbis of the time were called) used the Talmud Bavli as the basis for their halachic rulings. As time went on, the great codifiers of Jewish Law, Rabbi Yitzhak Alfasi, Moses Maimonides, Rabbeinu Asher and Rabbi Joseph Caro, sealed the fate of the Talmud Bavli as the pre-eminent and halachically accepted version of Talmud. Editions. Only a small number of handwritten maunscipts of the Talmud which predate the 16th century are extant today. This is probably the result of the long battle waged by the Roman Catholic Church against the Talmud. These attacks resulted in numerous burnings of the Talmud, the most famous of which took place in Paris in The Church continued with periodic attacks and burnings well into the 16th century. the first complete edition of the Talmud Bavli was printed in Venice by the Christian publisher Daniel Bomberg, in the 1520's. He also printed the Talmud Yerushalmi shortly thereafter. Since then the Talmud has been published numerous times. The authoritative edition used today was published in Vilna before the turn of the century. Modern printings are usually offset from the Vilna edition. 6

7 Commentaries. Since the Talmud Yerushalmi did not gain the wide acceptance accorded the Bavli, it was not studied as often. Thus, relatively few commentaries were written on the text. Today's editions of the Talmud Yerushalmi usually include two eighteenth century commentaries, the Korban ha'eidah by Rabbi David Frankel of Berlin and the Penei Moshe by Rabbi Moses Margolis. On the other hand, the study of the Talmud Bavli has produced a veritable library of commentary. Beginning with the North African Rabbis of the 10th century and continuing to our time, the Rabbis of each generation and of each community have published commentaries on the Talmud Bavli. The pre-eminent commentary was produced by Rashi, an acronym for Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki. Rashi lived in Provence, France, during the 11th century. His commentary covers almost the entire Talmud Bavli and is written in a short, incisive style. It covers practically every line of text, translating the strange terms, emending the text with variant readings, elucidating the points of law, providing the necessary background material for proper understanding of the text, and explaining in succinct, easily understood terms the statements, questions and answers of the Mishnah and Gemara. Rashi's own sons-in-law, his grandchildren and their colleagues formed the core of the second most important commentary. The anthology of their comments was called Tosafot (literally additions). These comments are presented in a question and answer format, a short question followed by a long, involved answer. While covering almost the entire Talmud Bavli, the Tosafot commentary does not deal with every aspect of the text. Rather, major issues are the primary concern. In another departure from Rashi's commentary, the Tosafot often go to great lengths to harmonize apparent contradictions in various Talmud texts or within Rashis commentary. In Bomberg's edition of Talmud, the Mishnah and Gemara occupy a central column on each page. This column of text is framed on one side by Rashi's commentary and one the other by the Tosafot. This style of page layout as well as the decision to include these two commentaries with the Talmud text set a pattern which continues to this day. It would be unfair to say that all subsequent Talmudic commentary is based on Rashi and Tosafot, but practically every commentary written since the 11th century has made reference to, disagreed with or tried to elucidate the classic commentaries of Rashi and Tosafot. Translations. The first translation of the Talmud into a European language (German) is that of Lazarus Goldschmidt ( ). The Soncino Press in London published the first complete English translation which was edited by Isidore Epstein ( ). A translation into modern Hebrew has been undertaken by Jerusalem scholar, Adin Steinsaltz. To date, he has published 24 volumes which include the Talmud text, Rashi, Tosafot, his translation and numerous additional notes explaining the foreign words, variant readings, realia, important concepts and the practical Halacha. Influence of the Talmud on Jewish Life. The Talmud is a written edition of the Oral Law as it developed over a 900 year period. That fact alone is sufficient to guarantee its overriding influence on Jewish religious observance throughout the ages. More significantly, the study of Talmud achieved such importance that the Mitzvah of Torah study (see Deut. 6:7 and 11:19) was interpreted to apply primarily to Talmud study (see Maimonides, Yad HaChazaka, Hilchot Talmud Torah 1,11 & 12). To this day, Talmud study remains the primary occupation in Rabbinic academies throughout the world. 7

8 Finally, when the influence of the Talmud is assessed, special mention must be made of the Talmud Bavli. As described above, the Talmud Bavli is more than a law book. It is a treasure trove of Jewish philosophy, common sense, Jewish history, Biblical exegesis, folk medicine and much more. To study Talmud is to learn how to think. It is to witness the lives and times of men of enormous intellect and outstanding piety. Ultimately, the Talmud shaped the very nature of Judaism and being Jewish. The laws of the Talmud insured that Judaism would be more than a religion of rituals and Temples. The laws of the Talmud transformed Judaism into a all-encompassing way of life. The Rabbis of the Talmud are concrete examples of how to live this way of life. By studying the Talmud, the Jew comprehends how to make this way of life his own. 8