[Music] This is the Talmud, 63 tractates, 523 chapters, 2 million words. After the Bible, the Talmud is the most important work of Jewish literature and has defined Jewish learning for centuries. From the outside, the Talmud looks like a book, albeit a rather formidable book, but from the inside, it looks more like this. Why is it so complicated to decipher the Talmudic daf or folio page? We first need to understand what the Talmud is, how it came to be created, and what a volume of Talmud contains. A volume of Talmud is not a book; it's a library of books. A typical volume of Talmud might include more than 100 works composed by hundreds of authors over a period of more than 1800 years. Let's deconstruct the daf and then rebuild it layer by layer. The oldest part of the Talmud is the Mishnah, compiled by Rabbi in the Holy Land more than 1800 years ago. The Mishnah was the

first officially transcribed record of Torah law, which up until that point had been handed down to the generations as an exclusively oral tradition. The Mishnah, however, is very concise, almost shorthand. Over the next 300 years, many hundreds of Torah sages analyzed, discussed, and debated the teachings contained within the Mishnah, and these discussions became the Gemara, which together with the Mishnah constitute the Talmud. There are many pages of Gemara for each Mishnah, as these discussions often range far afield to include many additional teachings covering virtually every topic under the sun. The Gemara was completed in the beginning of the 6th Century in Babylonia, written mostly in the Aramaic dialect that was the spoken language of the Jewish people at the time. Studying the Talmud is a challenging task; it requires knowledge of its often obscure terminology, being familiar with the many references to parallel Talmudic teachings, and an ability to follow the complex multi-tiered arguments presented in its

discussions. In fact, the Talmud presented on its own would be a closed book to all but the most advanced Talmud scholar. So, over the centuries, hundreds of commentaries were written to decipher, explain, and discuss the Talmudic text. Some of these were published alongside the Talmud itself in recognition that they are indispensable to any attempt to properly understand the text. Rashi, the most basic and comprehensive of all Talmudic commentaries, was placed alongside the Talmudic text in some of the earliest manuscripts and published editions of the Talmud. But when one Talmud scholar writes a commentary, other scholars will offer alternative explanations or have additional questions and issues they feel the need to address. Flanking Rashi on the daf is Tosafot, which is actually an anthology of commentaries by dozens of sages, including a number of Rashi's disciples and descendants. The analytic and dialectic style of the Tosafot commentaries strongly influenced the manner in which Talmud

has been studied over the centuries throughout Europe and beyond. Over the years, more elements were added to the doff to aid the student's navigation of the text, but there's a limit to how many commentaries a page can hold, even an oversized folio page of Talmud. So, other major commentaries were added to the back pages of each tractate for ready reference, and many, many more. In addition, many more commentaries on the Talmud were published and continue to be published each year in separate volumes. Today, if you wish to research a complex issue, compare and contrast different opinions on a topic, trace back their sources, examine the issues, applications in multiple fields, you can open multiple windows on your screen and even hook up more screens to your computer. But centuries before Windows 1.0, centuries before electronic information technologies, Jews committed to exploring the multi-chambered laboratory of wisdom called the Talmud had already invented the original hypertext, the Duff. [Music] [Applause] [Music]

What is the Talmud & How Was It Created?

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