The Essential Talmud (13)

Title: The Essential Talmud
Author: Adin Steinsaltz
Genre: Judaism, Religious reference

Wikipedia’s definition for the Talmud is pretty good so I’m going to share it just in case Talmud is a brand new word for you:

“The Talmud (Hebrew: תַּלְמוּד talmūd “instruction, learning”, from a root lmd “teach, study”) is a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, customs, and history. It is a central text of mainstream Judaism.”

While that’s a pretty good really basic overview it doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface on how in-depth, detailed, large, complex and important the Talmud is. This book, The Essential Talmud, is an actual introduction to the Talmud. Yep, this entire book is about the Talmud. What it is, how it’s arranged, how it was written, etc. It’s in-depth, so in-depth in fact that I was in over my head several times. To recap: I was in over my head reading a book that explains the Talmud. Guess there goes my dreams of being a Talmudic scholar.

One of the things I love best about Judaism though is that you don’t have to be a Talmudic scholar. You can be as intellectually curious or not and study as much as you want to. If Talmud is over your head there are still plenty of options for Torah study and other routes of observance. But you’re always encouraged to study more, to increase your own personal knowledge and understand. And you’re encouraged to question and argue. It’s all very intellectually stimulating to me.

Once in a class my rabbi was talking about changes in traditional prayers (in Conservative Judaism anyway, I’m sure the Orthodox still say it the old way) and he was going to gloss over a change from a seemingly anti-woman prayer. In a very “gotcha!” kind of voice I was all “wait a minute Rabbi, did they make that change at the same time they changed the verse about being a woman?” He got a kind of sheepish grin on his face and was just like “yep, same time” and said something about me being clever. In this particular class no one else had any idea what I was talking about and that was fine. Everyone gets to choose their level of study, everyone gets to satisfy their own levels of intellectual curiosity. That’s so perfect for me. Though I think in Talmud study my reach may exceed my grasp. I want to study and learn more but I’m not sure I’m clever enough in this area.