KS 3 Talmud Page Layout Copy

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

KS 3 Talmud Page Layout Copy Page Chapter name Tractate name Chapter number Ein mishpat, Ner mitzvah Rashi’s commentary –Rashi (an acronym for Rabbi (Hebrew: Well of justice, Lamp of Shlomo Yitchaki) was a major Jewish scholar active in the commandment) Compiled in 11th century France. Rashi compiled the first the 16th century this provides the complete commentary on the Talmud. The Mishnah source references to the laws are written in in a brief, terse style without being discussed on the page. punctuation and Rashi’s commentary is directed towards helping readers work through the text and understand its basic form and content. Tosafot (Hebrew: additions) These Mishnah and Gemara The central column of the page contains medieval commentaries were written in verses of the Mishnah followed by verses from the Gemara. the 12th and 13th centuries. They are the The Mishnah is the primary record of the teaching, decisions work of various Talmudic scholars and disputes of a group of Jewish religious and judicial scholars primarily living in France and Germany. known as Tannaim, active from about 10 to 220 CE. Originally transmitted orally, it was edited into its current form and written down in 200 CE by Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi. Written primarily in Hebrew, it is divided into 63 tractates and organized into six sections or ‘orders’. The Gemara is an analysis and expansion on the Mishnah. There are two versions - the Other commentaries Various other Babylonian Talmud (the most commonly studied) and the commentaries appear in the margins Jerusalem Talmud. The Gemara is written primarily in Aramaic of a printed Talmud page. and is a complex combination of legal debate, legend, textual analysis and philosophical enquiry. Together, the Mishnah and Gemara are often referred to as the Talmud. Glosses Many modern printed Talmud editions include short definitions, comments and cross references from a variety of scholars active between the 17th and 19th centuries.
Recommended publications
  • TALMUDIC STUDIES Ephraim Kanarfogel
    chapter 22 TALMUDIC STUDIES ephraim kanarfogel TRANSITIONS FROM THE EAST, AND THE NASCENT CENTERS IN NORTH AFRICA, SPAIN, AND ITALY The history and development of the study of the Oral Law following the completion of the Babylonian Talmud remain shrouded in mystery. Although significant Geonim from Babylonia and Palestine during the eighth and ninth centuries have been identified, the extent to which their writings reached Europe, and the channels through which they passed, remain somewhat unclear. A fragile consensus suggests that, at least initi- ally, rabbinic teachings and rulings from Eretz Israel traveled most directly to centers in Italy and later to Germany (Ashkenaz), while those of Babylonia emerged predominantly in the western Sephardic milieu of Spain and North Africa.1 To be sure, leading Sephardic talmudists prior to, and even during, the eleventh century were not yet to be found primarily within Europe. Hai ben Sherira Gaon (d. 1038), who penned an array of talmudic commen- taries in addition to his protean output of responsa and halakhic mono- graphs, was the last of the Geonim who flourished in Baghdad.2 The family 1 See Avraham Grossman, “Zik˙atah shel Yahadut Ashkenaz ‘el Erets Yisra’el,” Shalem 3 (1981), 57–92; Grossman, “When Did the Hegemony of Eretz Yisra’el Cease in Italy?” in E. Fleischer, M. A. Friedman, and Joel Kraemer, eds., Mas’at Mosheh: Studies in Jewish and Moslem Culture Presented to Moshe Gil [Hebrew] (Jerusalem, 1998), 143–57; Israel Ta- Shma’s review essays in K˙ ryat Sefer 56 (1981), 344–52, and Zion 61 (1996), 231–7; Ta-Shma, Kneset Mehkarim, vol.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Jews, Gentiles, and the Modern Egalitarian Ethos
    Jews, Gentiles, and the Modern Egalitarian Ethos: Some Tentative Thoughts David Berger The deep and systemic tension between contemporary egalitarianism and many authoritative Jewish texts about gentiles takes varying forms. Most Orthodox Jews remain untroubled by some aspects of this tension, understanding that Judaism’s affirmation of chosenness and hierarchy can inspire and ennoble without denigrating others. In other instances, affirmations of metaphysical differences between Jews and gentiles can take a form that makes many of us uncomfortable, but we have the legitimate option of regarding them as non-authoritative. Finally and most disturbing, there are positions affirmed by standard halakhic sources from the Talmud to the Shulhan Arukh that apparently stand in stark contrast to values taken for granted in the modern West and taught in other sections of the Torah itself. Let me begin with a few brief observations about the first two categories and proceed to somewhat more extended ruminations about the third. Critics ranging from medieval Christians to Mordecai Kaplan have directed withering fire at the doctrine of the chosenness of Israel. Nonetheless, if we examine an overarching pattern in the earliest chapters of the Torah, we discover, I believe, that this choice emerges in a universalist context. The famous statement in the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 4:5) that Adam was created singly so that no one would be able to say, “My father is greater than yours” underscores the universality of the original divine intent. While we can never know the purpose of creation, one plausible objective in light of the narrative in Genesis is the opportunity to actualize the values of justice and lovingkindness through the behavior of creatures who subordinate themselves to the will 1 of God.
    [Show full text]
  • The Seder Olam
    January 1997 Frank W. Nelte THE SEDER OLAM PART 1 GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE SEDER OLAM In an attempt to support the use of the Jewish calendar, appeals have been made to the Jewish historic document known as "The Seder Olam". The Hebrew word "seder" means "order, arrangement". It is used only once in the Bible, in the plural, in Job 10:22 where it is translated as "order". The Hebrew word "olam" is used 439 times in the O.T. and translated in the KJV as "ever" 272 times, as "everlasting" 63 times, as "old" 22 times, as "evermore" 15 times, as "world" 4 times, etc.. In Gesenius' Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament "olam" is defined as: "what is hidden, specially hidden in time, long, the beginning or end of which is either uncertain or else not defined, eternity, perpetuity", etc.. Gesenius continues to point out that "olam" is used to refer to ... "the world, from the Chaldee and RABBINIC usage, like the Greek word 'aion'". So the rabbinic expression "Seder Olam" basically means "THE ORDER OF THE WORLD". There are TWO midrashic chronological works known as "Seder Olam". They are known as "Seder Olam Rabbah" ("The Great Seder Olam") and as "Seder Olam Zuta" ("The Small Seder Olam"). The Seder Olam Rabbah is the earlier one (2nd century A.D.) and the one on which the later Seder Olam Zuta (6th to 8th century A.D.) is based. One more word we need to clarify is the word "Midrash", so we know what is meant by a "midrashic work".
    [Show full text]
  • The Humanity of the Talmud: Reading for Ethics in Bavli ʿavoda Zara By
    The Humanity of the Talmud: Reading for Ethics in Bavli ʿAvoda Zara By Mira Beth Wasserman A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Joint Doctor of Philosophy with Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley in Jewish Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Daniel Boyarin, chair Professor Chana Kronfeld Professor Naomi Seidman Professor Kenneth Bamberger Spring 2014 Abstract The Humanity of the Talmud: Reading for Ethics in Bavli ʿAvoda Zara by Mira Beth Wasserman Joint Doctor of Philosophy with Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley University of California, Berkeley Professor Daniel Boyarin, chair In this dissertation, I argue that there is an ethical dimension to the Babylonian Talmud, and that literary analysis is the approach best suited to uncover it. Paying special attention to the discursive forms of the Talmud, I show how juxtapositions of narrative and legal dialectics cooperate in generating the Talmud's distinctive ethics, which I characterize as an attentiveness to the “exceptional particulars” of life. To demonstrate the features and rewards of a literary approach, I offer a sustained reading of a single tractate from the Babylonian Talmud, ʿAvoda Zara (AZ). AZ and other talmudic discussions about non-Jews offer a rich resource for considerations of ethics because they are centrally concerned with constituting social relationships and with examining aspects of human experience that exceed the domain of Jewish law. AZ investigates what distinguishes Jews from non-Jews, what Jews and non- Jews share in common, and what it means to be a human being. I read AZ as a cohesive literary work unified by the overarching project of examining the place of humanity in the cosmos.
    [Show full text]
  • Designing the Talmud: the Origins of the Printed Talmudic Page
    Marvin J. Heller The author has published Printing the Talmud: A History of the Earliest Printed Editions of the Talmud. DESIGNING THE TALMUD: THE ORIGINS OF THE PRINTED TALMUDIC PAGE non-biblical Jewish work,i Its redaction was completed at the The Talmudbeginning is indisputablyof the fifth century the most and the important most important and influential commen- taries were written in the middle ages. Studied without interruption for a milennium and a half, it is surprising just how significant an eftèct the invention of printing, a relatively late occurrence, had upon the Talmud. The ramifications of Gutenberg's invention are well known. One of the consequences not foreseen by the early practitioners of the "Holy Work" and commonly associated with the Industrial Revolution, was the introduction of standardization. The spread of printing meant that distinct scribal styles became generic fonts, erratic spellngs became uni- form and sequential numbering of pages became standard. The first printed books (incunabula) were typeset copies of manu- scripts, lacking pagination and often not uniform. As a result, incunabu- la share many characteristics with manuscripts, such as leaving a blank space for the first letter or word to be embellshed with an ornamental woodcut, a colophon at the end of the work rather than a title page, and the use of signatures but no pagination.2 The Gutenberg Bibles, for example, were printed with blank spaces to be completed by calligra- phers, accounting for the varying appearance of the surviving Bibles. Hebrew books, too, shared many features with manuscripts; A. M. Habermann writes that "Conats type-faces were cast after his own handwriting, .
    [Show full text]
  • “Cliff Notes” 2021-2022 5781-5782
    Jewish Day School “Cliff Notes” 2021-2022 5781-5782 A quick run-down with need-to-know info on: • Jewish holidays • Jewish language • Jewish terms related to prayer service SOURCES WE ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THE INFORMATION FOR THIS BOOKLET WAS TAKEN FROM: • www.interfaithfamily.com • Living a Jewish Life by Anita Diamant with Howard Cooper FOR MORE LEARNING, YOU MAY BE INTERESTED IN THE FOLLOWING RESOURCES: • www.reformjudaism.org • www.myjewishlearning.com • Jewish Literacy by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin • The Jewish Book of Why by Alfred J. Kolatch • The Jewish Home by Daniel B. Syme • Judaism for Dummies by Rabbi Ted Falcon and David Blatner Table of Contents ABOUT THE CALENDAR 5 JEWISH HOLIDAYS Rosh haShanah 6 Yom Kippur 7 Sukkot 8 Simchat Torah 9 Chanukah 10 Tu B’Shevat 11 Purim 12 Pesach (Passover) 13 Yom haShoah 14 Yom haAtzmaut 15 Shavuot 16 Tisha B’Av 17 Shabbat 18 TERMS TO KNOW A TO Z 20 About the calendar... JEWISH TIME- For over 2,000 years, Jews have juggled two calendars. According to the secular calendar, the date changes at midnight, the week begins on Sunday, and the year starts in the winter. According to the Hebrew calendar, the day begins at sunset, the week begins on Saturday night, and the new year is celebrated in the fall. The secular, or Gregorian calendar is a solar calendar, based on the fact that it takes 365.25 days for the earth to circle the sun. With only 365 days in a year, after four years an extra day is added to February and there is a leap year.
    [Show full text]
  • Counterfactual Truth in Science and the Talmud
    Article Gulliver and the Rabbis: Counterfactual Truth in Science and the Talmud Menachem Fisch The Cohn Institute for History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 6997801, Israel; [email protected] Received: 3 March 2019; Accepted: 23 March 2019; Published: 26 March 2019 Abstract: The paper presents Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels as the first systematic attempt to claim that the normal methods of testing belief and opinion for clarity, consistence, coherence, and how they stand to the facts are powerless when applied to deep-seated normative commitments, or what Wittgenstein dubbed “framework truths.” To subject our norms to normative critique requires a measure of self-alienation that cannot be achieved merely by looking hard at or thinking hard about our world and ourselves. However, by closely examining the contrived counterfactual scenarios (or, as I have shown in former work, by exposure to the normative critique of significant others), that Swift is shown to claim, such normative framework assumptions can be challenged to great effect! The standard epistemologies of his day—Baconian empiricism and Cartesian rationalism—fiercely ridiculed in the course of Gulliver’s third voyage are cruelly dismissed as powerless to change the course of science and keep it in normative check. The transformative effect of the clever thought experiments presented in the three other voyages (of imagining London shrunk to a twelfth of its size and enlarged to giant proportions, and a more responsible and intelligent race of beings inserted above (normally sized) humans) enable Swift to obtain critical normative distance from several major assumptions about politics, religion, aesthetics, ethics, and much more, including the limits of the thought experiment itself.
    [Show full text]
  • The Religious Implications of an Historical Approach to Jewish Studies
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 482 214 SO 035 468 AUTHOR Furst, Rachel TITLE The Religious Implications of an Historical Approach to Jewish Studies. PUB DATE 2001-00-00 NOTE 59p.; Prepared by the Academy for Torah Initiatives and Directions (Jerusalem, Israel). AVAILABLE FROM Academy for Torah Initiatives and Directions,9 HaNassi Street, Jerusalem 92188, Israel. Tel: 972-2-567-1719; Fax: 972-2-567-1723; e-mail: [email protected]; Web site: http://www.atid.org/ . PUB TYPE Reports Descriptive (141) EDRS PRICE EDRS Price MF01/PC03 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Curriculum Development; Discourse Communities; *Jews; *Judaism; *Religion Studies; *Religious Factors; Research Methodology; Scholarship IDENTIFIERS Historical Methods; *Jewish Studies; *Torah ABSTRACT This project examines the religious implications of an approach to "limmudei kodesh" (primarily the study of Talmud) and "halakhah" (an integration of academic scholarship with traditional Torah study and the evaluation of the educational pros and cons of a curriculum built on such a synthesis) .In the concerted effort over the past century to develop a program of "Torah U-Madda" that synthesizes Torah and worldly pursuits, Torah scholars have endorsed the value of secular knowledge as a complimentary accoutrement to the "Talmud Torah" endeavor, but few have validated the application of secular academic tools and methodologies to Torah study or developed a model for such integrated Torah learning. The Torah scholar committed to synthesis seeks to employ historical knowledge and methodological tools in the decoding of halakhic texts as a means of contributing to the halakhic discourse. Traditional "Talmud Torah" does not address the realm of pesak halakhah, but it is nonetheless considered the highest form of religious expression.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    INTRODUCTION Hanne Trautner-Kromann n this introduction I want to give the necessary background information for understanding the nine articles in this volume. II start with some comments on the Hebrew or Jewish Bible and the literature of the rabbis, based on the Bible, and then present the articles and the background information for these articles. In Jewish tradition the Bible consists of three main parts: 1. Torah – Teaching: The Five Books of Moses: Genesis (Bereshit in Hebrew), Exodus (Shemot), Leviticus (Vajikra), Numbers (Bemidbar), Deuteronomy (Devarim); 2. Nevi’im – Prophets: (The Former Prophets:) Joshua, Judges, Samuel I–II, Kings I–II; (The Latter Prophets:) Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezek- iel; (The Twelve Small Prophets:) Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephania, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi; 3. Khetuvim – Writings: Psalms, Proverbs, Job, The Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Chronicles I–II1. The Hebrew Bible is often called Tanakh after these three main parts: Torah, Nevi’im and Khetuvim. The Hebrew Bible has been interpreted and reinterpreted by rab- bis and scholars up through the ages – and still is2. Already in the Bible itself there are examples of interpretation (midrash). The books of Chronicles, for example, can be seen as a kind of midrash on the 10 | From Bible to Midrash books of Samuel and Kings, repeating but also changing many tradi- tions found in these books. In talmudic times,3 dating from the 1st to the 6th century C.E.(Common Era), the rabbis developed and refined the systems of interpretation which can be found in their literature, often referred to as The Writings of the Sages.
    [Show full text]
  • Nomos and Narrative Before Nomos and Narrative
    Nomos and Narrative Before Nomos and Narrative Steven D. Fraade* I imagine that when Robert Cover's Nomos and Narrative essay' first reached the editors of the Harvard Law Review, their befuddlement derived not so much from Cover's framing of his review of the 1982 Supreme Court term with a philosophically opaque discussion of the interdependence of law and narrative, but from the illustrations that he drew from biblical and rabbinic texts of ancient and medieval times. For Cover, both intellectually and as a matter of personal commitment, these ancient texts evoke a "nomian world," rooted more in communally shared stories of legal origins and utopian ends than in the brutalities of institutional enforcement, one from which modem legal theory and practice have much to learn and to emulate. Since my own head is buried most often in such ancient texts, rather than in modem courts, I thought it appropriate to reflect, by way of offering more such texts for our consideration, on the long-standing preoccupation with the intersection and interdependency of the discursive modes of law and narrative in Hebrew biblical and rabbinic literature, without, I hope, romanticizing them. Indeed, I wish to demonstrate that what we might think of as a particularly modem tendency to separate law from narrative, has itself an ancient history, and to show how that tendency, while recurrent, was as recurrently resisted from within Jewish tradition. In particular, at those cultural turning points in which laws are extracted or codified from previous narrative settings, I hope to show that they are also renarrativized (or remythologized) so as to address, both ideologically and rhetorically, changed socio-historical settings.2 I will do so through admittedly * Steven D.
    [Show full text]
  • Jewish Foundations I Hebrew Literacy I Jewish Foundations II Hebrew
    Grade JUDAIC STUDIES HEBREW K Jewish Foundations I Hebrew Literacy I Prayer, Shabbat & Holidays, and the Introduction to Conversational Weekly Torah Portion Hebrew ● Students utilize Hebrew conversation, ● Students begin to speak in music, art, visuals, and manipulatives to conversational Hebrew learn prayers, explore Shabbat and the through immersion; Jewish holidays, and begin to learn ● acquire a working vocabulary about the weekly Torah portion. of everyday Hebrew words; ● These create experiential learning and opportunities that foster deep emotional ● learn the letters of the Hebrew connections between children and their alphabet. Jewish heritage and practices. ● Students draw connections between each subject area and the Land of Israel. 1 Jewish Foundations II Hebrew Literacy II Prayer, Shabbat & Holidays, and the Conversational Hebrew, Reading, Weekly Torah Portion and Writing ● In addition to extending their knowledge ● Students learn to read and of prayer, Shabbat and holidays, and write fluently in Hebrew, and weekly Torah portion, students: ● significantly expand their ● contextualize the holidays against the working Hebrew vocabularies backdrop of the Jewish calendar, and and level of conversational ● become familiar with the wider narrative fluency. arc of the Torah portions. 2 Jewish Foundations III Hebrew Literacy III Prayer, Shabbat & Holidays, and the Advanced Hebrew Literacy; Weekly Torah Portion Fundamentals of Hebrew Grammar ● Students continue to deepen their ● Students achieve increased knowledge of the prayers, holidays, and mastery of reading, writing, weekly Torah portion; and speaking Hebrew; ● learn about key stories from the rabbinic ● further extend their Midrash; and vocabularies; and ● memorize key concepts, including the ● gain their first exposure to the dates of the Jewish holidays and names fundamentals of Hebrew of the Torah portions.
    [Show full text]
  • Jewish Mysticism, Ritual Murder, and the Trial of Mendel Beilis
    Swarthmore College Works History Faculty Works History 2015 Connecting The Dots: Jewish Mysticism, Ritual Murder, And The Trial Of Mendel Beilis Robert Weinberg Swarthmore College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-history Part of the History Commons Let us know how access to these works benefits ouy Recommended Citation Robert Weinberg. (2015). "Connecting The Dots: Jewish Mysticism, Ritual Murder, And The Trial Of Mendel Beilis". Word And Image In Russian History: Essays In Honor Of Gary Marker. 238-252. https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-history/464 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License This work is brought to you for free by Swarthmore College Libraries' Works. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Connecting the Dots: Jewish Mysticism, Ritual Murder, and the Trial of Mendel Beilis Robert Weinberg (Swarthmore College) he prosecution of Mendel Beilis for the murder of thirteen-year-old TAndrei Iushchinskii in Kiev a century ago is perhaps the most publi- cized instance of blood libel since the torture and execution of Jews accused of ritually murdering the infant Simon of Trent in 1475. By the time of the trial in the fall of 1913, the Beilis case had become an inter- national cause célèbre. Like the trials of Alfred Dreyfus in the 1890s and the outcry that accompanied the Damascus Affair in the 1840s, the arrest, incarceration, and trial of Beilis aroused public criticism of Russia’s treatment of Jews and inspired opponents of the autocracy at home and abroad to launch a campaign to condemn the trial.
    [Show full text]