So, two things about this, but Iâm going to do them in separate reblogs because theyâre related but not at all the same.Â
First, letâs talk about reading Talmud.
Hereâs a good summary of how to do it, because itâs not as simple as âget an English translation and start reading.â
If you go look at a (translated) page of Talmud, youâre probably going to find it odd and hard to understand. Â
Letâs take a look at a paragraph of Shabbat 105, which is concerned with rules for how to observe Shabbat.Â
[A tanna taught: If one intended to write one letter on Shabbat]Â and managed to write two letters, he is liable. The Gemara asks: Didnât we learn in the mishna that one is exempt in that case? The Gemara answers: This is not difficult: That case where we learned that he is exempt is referring to a case where the letters require crowns. This is referring to a case where they do not require crowns, and he is liable. If the letters already had their requisite ornamentation and an individual separated them, it is as if he wrote two letters.
So, for starters, the bold words? Thatâs the literal translation of the text. The non-bold text is Rabbi Adin Steinsaltzâs commentary/attempt to make the text comprehensible in English. Rabbi Steinsaltz is the first person since Rashi (1040-1105 CE) to actually complete a translation of the entire Talmud.
So a literal translation (insofar as such a thing is even possible) is:
If one intended to write one letter and managed two, he is liable. Didnât we learn, heâs exempt? Itâs not difficult: That is where crowns are required. This is where they donât require crowns.
The thing about Hebrew and Aramaic is that theyâre incredibly compact languages. Theyâre also ambiguous languages.Â
Depending on who you ask, English has a lexicon of about 600,000 (according to the OED) to over 1 million words (if you include specialized vocabulary, such as jargon or technical terms, thatâs not in most dictionaries), and itâs growing every day (I work in quantum computing and AIML, and it feels like we add new terms every day just in that field).Â
The Tanakh (our main source for Classical Hebrew) has fewer than 9000 different words in it, and Rabbinic Hebrew has fewer than 20,000. Iâm not sure about Babylonian Aramaic, the language most of the Talmud is written in, but Iâd assume itâs probably around where Rabbinic Hebrew is.
So, in English we can be very, very precise about our meaning, most of the time, because we have a lot of different words that mean slightly different things to help us specify exactly what weâre trying to communicate.
Hebrew and Aramaic have only a fraction of those words, so one word often has to have a lot of different meanings.Â
And the Talmud (and Jewish text study in general) loves that. Sometimes the rabbis try to pin down whether a particular word in the Tanakh means one thing or another, but most of the time, instead, they play with the multiplicity of meanings. They engage in wordplay. They hyperlink different uses of the same word-root across the Tanakh and create connections and meaning by bringing those verses together. They pun. They make jokes. They fill the white space between letters with reams of meaning, with stories, with ideas about life and the universe.
(Which might be why itâs the most mundane legal discussions that somehow end up producing the most bonkers stories--the one where the rabbis tell G-d to butt out of their legal discussions because G-d gave Torah to humans so human interpretation of it is what matters? Thatâs in a discussion about how to clean a stove, basically.)
I mean, before you can even understand Talmud, you have to study Torah. (In addition to studying Torah in a group, I study privately with a rabbi and the two of us spent multiple 2-hour sessions on the first clause in Genesis.)
That image above is a page of Talmud, which is mostly commentary on the Mishna, which is a code of laws derived from the Torah.
Hereâs whatâs known as the Mikraot Gedolot, or the rabbinic bible.
That big Hebrew text up in the upper right (remember, Hebrew is read from right to left)? Thatâs the verse under discussion.
Hereâs a great thread by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg talking about it, and an annotated photo explaining whatâs going on.
Reading the Torah as a Jew, if youâre familiar with the commentaries, is like sitting around a table with a bunch of super-smart, GIANT nerds who love this text and need you to know everything about it and it is exhilarating and sometimes exhausting.
You: let's study some TorahÂ
You: Bereshit bara Elo--Â
The rabbis: Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down there, Lightning, back to the stable. Shouldn't this have a preface?... Why does it begin with a bet and not an aleph? Does anyone else think the grammar is weird? Moses was a prophet, so why doesn't this start with the normal formula for prophecy?Â
The rabbis: If this is a book of instruction, shouldn't it start with "This month is to you"? Why is God speaking in the third person?Â
You: ...if I could just finish the first--Â
The rabbis: Do you think the first word is actually in construct form, though? Where does the first sentence actually end, even? What happened BEFORE the beginning, though? Was there proto-matter? I bet there was some sort of proto-matter. Or maybe an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT REALITY? Whoa, what if weâre like the seventh version of reality to exist or something like that?
You: So maybe I could just read the first sen--Â
The rabbis: Okay, so we agree that it's silly to see this as a chronological account, right? Do we? If we could come back to why the first letter is what it is?
You: Bereshit bara Elo--Â
The rabbis: Do we know why it uses that particular divine name? So if this was originally written without spaces, what if the spacing is wrong and it means something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT?
Again, this is what youâre supposed to learn thoroughly before you even touch the Talmud. (All of that, by the way, is actual commentary, and itâs only touching on SOME of the commentary.)
But letâs say youâve done it. Youâve studied Torah thoroughly and youâre ready to dip your toe into the sea of Talmud. (Traditionally, before Steinsaltz and the Internet, this would also mean that youâre super-comfortable with Biblical Hebrew and at least literate in Aramaic.)
But nowadays, we have help! My Jewish Learning is doing daf yomi (a seven-year cycle of reading through the entire Talmud, a page per day), and provides helpful emails with explanations and commentary so you can understand the issues at stake.Â
So, back to our example, Shabbat 105.
Picasso allegedly said: "Every act of creation is first an act of destruction." On todayâs page, the Talmud probes this idea, beginning with the mishnah:
One who rends their garment (on Shabbat) in anger or anguish over a dead relative is exempt. And anyone else who performs labors destructively on Shabbat is exempt. But one who performs a labor destructively in order to repair is liable, and their measure for liability is equivalent to the measure for one who performs that labor constructively.
Standing with families before the funeral and burial of their loved ones, I often talk about kriah, the ceremonial tearing of clothing (or often, in our modern times, a ribbon) as an external manifestation of an internal process. In rending our clothes, we show the ways that our hearts â and our lives â feel torn apart. I also talk about the possibility of mending the rip; our lives will, as lives do, be sewn back together, but they will always look different. We will, at least metaphorically, always see that mended seam.
This mishnah holds that tearing our garments, in pain or in anger, is a destructive act. But one is left to wonder: can it not be mended? In this immediate moment of grief and destruction, is there not a seed of creation, of navigating mourning and grief, of rebuilding life without our loved one?
The Gemara also wonders this:
We learned in the mishna: âOne who rends their garment in anger or in anguish over their dead relative is exempt.â
But we also have a contradictory teaching in a different mishnah: âOne who rends their garment in anger or in mourning or in anguish over their dead relative is liable for performing a prohibited labor on Shabbat. But even though they desecrate Shabbat by tearing their garment, they nevertheless fulfilled their obligation of rending their garment in mourning.â
Our mishnah says the act of tearing the garment on Shabbat is exempt but, in a standard talmudic move, the Gemara points out how this teaching contradicts another mishnah, which says tearing garments on Shabbat incurs liability. The Gemara now solves the contradiction:
This is not difficult, as this mishnah, which states one is liable for rending his garment, is referring to their own dead relative for whom they are obligated to tear their garment. And that mishnah, which states one is exempt for rending their garment, is referring to any unrelated dead person.
Per the Gemara, when one is tearing oneâs garment out of obligation (for a close relative), it is a Shabbat violation. When one tears out of no obligation (for someone who is not a close relative) but merely in raw pain, then the act is exempt. The great medieval philosopher and Talmud commentator Maimonides, explains that obligatory tearing incurs liability because it has a positive, constructive effect â it puts the mournerâs mind at ease. (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Shabbat 10:10)
The act of kriah, of rending our clothes in anger and anguish when we first hear news of the death of a loved one, marks a moment of acceptance, or at least of acknowledgment. In completing this act, a person officially becomes a mourner. I think this is what Maimonides teaches: the act of kriah is, ultimately, a creative act, the first step of imagining what will be, of realizing a world without our loved one. And this is why it is not permitted on Shabbat.
Our original mishnah does not view kriah as constructive, merely destructive. But other rabbinic sources disagree. Robert Frost famously wrote: There is no way out but through. In some small way, the act of kriah is the very first step we take through to a new self, a new reality.
Rabbi Sari Laufer is the director of congregational engagement at Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles. A cum laude graduate of Northwestern University Rabbi Laufer was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles in May 2006. Prior to coming to Wise, Rabbi Laufer spent 11 years as the assistant and associate rabbi at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City.
Cool, right? Thereâs some neat commentary in there, and itâs a manageable length. A nice thing to read with a cup of tea as you eat breakfast.Â
Hahaha sorry, thatâs commentary on one paragraph/mishnah of the one page of the one tractate.Â
Page 105 of Shabbat has 27 paragraphs. Tractate Shabbat has 157 pages (except it actually has 314 because â105âł has both a front (105a) and a back (105b). The Talmud has 63 tractates.
Which is why the overwhelming majority of us havenât read the whole thing, and studying it is basically a lifelong endeavor.
Itâs why we call it the âseaâ of Talmud. Itâs vast and mysterious and youâll never know all of the treasures contained in the depths.
But even studying a single page--like taking the time to REALLY study the whole thing, to read the commentaries, to really wrestle with it--is an experience like no other.
Itâs why the blessing for study is to engage with words of Torah.Â
Engage like facing someone across the battlefield, engage like wrestling, engage like an embrace, engage like a wedding.Â
Every time you do it seriously, you wrestle with the angel.Â
