Rabbi Lewis John Eron, Ph.D.

One does not walk the Jewish spiritual path quietly and alone. One walks in community and discusses all one sees and does. One observes, comments, listens, and responds; occasionally in prayer, sometimes with laughter, often with tears, but always with others. The skill is finding one’s way through this cacophony of voices and crowd of people. By walking this path, one learns to be alert, to be present, and to work with others.

 

The Jewish tradition is not a quiet one. Of course, we have our moments of silence – times during which we slow down, retreat within ourselves, and connect to our souls and to our world and to all that is beyond. But Jews like to talk and argue; debate and joke; probe and challenge; react, reflect, and respond. We can't even let the quiet moments be. They just provide something else to talk about.

 

Jews are prone and primed to talk with each other. We see talking as a good but believe that conversation is even better. We need others with whom to talk since it gets dull just talking to oneself about oneself – one’s ideas, one’s own experiences, feelings, and insights – and life, especially Jewish life, is not designed to be boring.

 

But good conversation is hard. One has to learn to listen to others and to respond in such a way as to push the dialogue ahead. One must open one’s self to the possibility that a new idea, a deeper meaning, or an innovative insight might appear and that all participants have something valuable to contribute even if their comments went in a false direction. It is all about the conversation. Good questions generate good answers and good answers give birth to new questions and something said generations ago might still be interesting tomorrow.

 

We journey through time. We change, our companions change, and our world changes. We need to be awake to all that is around us, aware of where we have been, and alert to see what might yet be. We have to learn to think, evaluate, judge, and consider what is being said, seeking out new ideas, finding new dimensions, and exploring different paths. However, this skill is not inherent. It needs to be cultivated and practiced. The study of the Talmud, particularly, in conversation with a partner or in a small group, nurtures this skill.

 

Our Jewish spiritual/religious tradition conversation began thousands of years ago as our biblical ancestors searched for meaning and direction in life through their collective memory, shared rituals and traditions, and daily struggles. Our Bible, the TaNaK, preserves this early part of the Jewish dialogue.

 

The TaNaK, the Hebrew Bible, which Christians call “The Old Testament”, is not a unitary document but an anthology – a wide-ranging collection of spiritual writings, ancient legends historical memories, poetry, prayers, ancient wisdom, and ethical insights. Even within the books in this anthology, one can hear different voices reflecting on the common themes in the lives of our Israelite ancestors – their shared history, their relationship with their God, their life at home, at work, and in the marketplace, their relationships with their neighbors and so forth,  Our ancestors addressed such basic questions as how to understand the epic history of Israel, how to apply its laws and directives, how to follow its ethical guidelines, and how to understand our individual and communal relationship with the Divine.

 

This conversation did not stop when the last books of the Bible were written. The challenges our people faced in late antiquity – foreign domination, social and political disruption, exile and dispersion, and loss of the Temple, the spiritual center of the Jewish people – necessitated continual dialogue through time by engaging with Biblical texts and through space by interacting with fellow Jews in the Land of Israel and the lands of dispersion.

 

While this discussion took place in different places with different foci, the one that best captured the spiritual longing of the Jewish people is the one preserved for us in the Talmud and related literature. Unlike other streams of thought preserved in other Jewish writings from late antiquity which often looked back to an idealized past or forward to a utopian redemption or cast Jewish ideas in abstract philosophic forms, the sages of the Talmud grappled with the challenges of the here and now. They expressed the dynamic nature of the Jewish conversation through their understanding of the double law – the written law preserved in the Torah and the rest of Scripture and the oral law, the continuing unfolding of meaning that connects our written heritage with the life experience of the Jewish people.

 

The Talmud and the entire literature of the rabbis, teachers, and sages whose voices are heard in the Talmud capture this part of our conversation. One can understand the Talmud as the edited notes of a 500-year-long discussion on the TaNaK’s great themes. The Talmud, itself, particularly the Babylonian Talmud, the Bavli, became the central text of Jewish life. Studying it is not only an introduction to the social and cultural world of our ancestors, but also a way in which we can participate in an engaging spiritual interchange that asks us to consider how we understand ourselves, interact with our neighbors, build communities, express our values, and connect to the Divine. What this means for Jews is that we see our religious heritage dynamically. When we study our sacred texts, we listen not only to the text but engage in dialogue with all those who have read it before us and with those who are reading it with us today.

 

One should not expect to master the Talmud. It is too vast. Traditionally it is described as a “sea”. With practice, over time, one learns to navigate this sea. The great sages of every generation are skilled sailors and can find their way through this immense literature. However, even beginners can enjoy sailing the sea of the Talmud. 

 

Adult Jewish learners, even if they have never formally opened a page of the Talmud, already come well-prepared. They bring to their study a lifetime of Jewish experiences informed by the teachings of the Talmud. Since so much of the Talmud deals with real life, adult learners come with the basic life experience; they have already dealt with many of the issues on which the Talmud focuses. Beyond that, just participating, even occasionally in Jewish life, is good preparation. Our beloved home rituals, our life-cycle celebrations, our patterns of worship, our prayer vocabulary, and our received wisdom are grounded in the deliberations of the teachers and sages of the Talmud.  There is much about the Talmud that we already know intuitively.

 

This is not to say that the Talmud is easy.  It is not. It is written in a shorthand. It is designed to train people to think critically about issues. Since a large part of the Torah focuses on rules, regulations, laws, and directives, much of the Talmud deals with this material. Talmudic arguments, particularly those dealing with laws and regulations, are often granular requiring a great deal of detailed analysis. Yet other parts look at the Biblical stories and the history of the Jewish people and the Talmud teaches us how to find new meanings in well-known material. The Talmud wants us to be creative readers, adding our wisdom to the wisdom of the past.

 

As we begin to study the Talmud, we begin to engage with the central text in the post-Biblical Jewish experience. It contains an immense amount of legal, ethical, spiritual, and philosophical teachings. In it, one hears many voices. While it reflects the views of the sages, the men who studied and taught in the academies (yeshivot) in the Land of Israel and in Babylon (present-day Iraq). It is not the product of an ivory tower academic culture. The sages worked and lived in the general population and everyday concerns were part of their lives.

 

As we begin our study we need to remember that what we call the Talmud is part of larger literature that in part parallels the material in the Talmud and in part supplements and expands on it. Yet, despite the large amount of material we have inherited, there is much that has been lost. Much of our ancestor's material culture no longer remains. The literature we have reflects the voices of only a select group of learned men. It is only through them that we hear the voices of Jewish women and of other Jewish men who engaged in all aspects of the cultural, political, and economic life of their times.

 

When we look at the Talmud itself, we see that it consists of two parts – the Mishnah, “The Teaching” and the Gemara, “The Completion.” The Mishnah is a compilation of Jewish oral traditions from approximately the 1st century BCE through the beginning of the 3rd century CE. The Gemara is an expanded discussion of the Mishnah and its directives and ideas. Mishnah and Gemara together form the Talmud which comes to us in two recensions – the early and shorter Yerushalmi (or Palestinian) Talmud and the later Bavli (or Babylonian) Talmud. While the Yerushalmi contains valuable information, the later and larger Bavli is the text we commonly call the Talmud and is the one most studied.

 

The Talmud is unlike any piece of literature one has read. One does not read the Talmud; one studies it, often with a partner or in a group. The Talmud follows the structure of the Mishnah, its base document. The Mishnah is divided into six orders. Each order consists of a number of Tractates. Each tractate consists of a number of chapters. Each chapter contains a number of paragraphs, each of which is also called a Mishnah, a teaching. The discussion of each Mishnah in the Gemara follows a standard pattern that becomes familiar as one spends more time studying the Talmud. The discussions often involve dialectical reasoning with rabbis, sometimes from different times and places, offering arguments and counterarguments. Through the use of logic, established interpretive rules, biblical citations, illustrative stories, and probing questions, the Gemara analyses, interprets, and explains what each teaching in the Mishnah presents.

 

While one can hear various voices in the Talmud, there is a hierarchy of authority. The Written Law – Scripture in General, and the Torah, the First Five Books of the Bible, in particular – takes precedence. Then come the teachings in the Mishnah followed by other teachings from Tanaaim, the sages of the Mishnah that are not included in that compilation. The rabbis of the Gemara, the Amoraim, will not contradict the teachings of their predecessors, the Tanaaim, but will seek to understand, explain, and apply their words.

 

As one studies the Talmud, one sees that the Talmud contains two different types of material, Halakhah and Aggadah. Halakhah deals with the exposition, explanation, and application of legal traditions drawn from biblical sources. Aggadah, on the other hand, is the catchword for the non-legal aspects of the Talmud. Aggadah includes stories, ethical teachings, proverbs, and philosophic and theological statements.

 

It is a mistake, however, to see these two types of material as separate. They often complement each other. The same interpretive techniques are used. Since the ultimate source of the Torah is God, both halakhic and aggadic discussions express the theological understandings and spiritual experiences of the sages. One can understand halakhah as theology in activity and aggadah as theology through narrative.

 

One does not find in the Talmud or Talmudic literature extended theological and philosophical discussions that characterize the writings of Church Fathers. However, theological and spiritual understandings provide the background for each singular discussion as well as for the structure of the larger units including the Talmud itself and its tractates. Part of the challenge in studying the Talmud is discovering these underlying spiritual concerns,

 

One does not learn Talmud even though one might hear that expression, one studies Talmud, or better yet, one engages with the Torah tradition through the Talmud. Naturally, one can learn things about the Talmud, its history, its structure, its characters, its language, etc., but the time we spend with the Talmud is essentially not about learning anything particular.

 

The Talmud’s goal is not so much to give answers to specific questions of Jewish law, practice, and belief, but rather to train people with the intellectual and spiritual skills to address the question of how one lives one's life as to express God's will as it is known to us through the Torah tradition. Put simply, the Talmud does not teach the law, the Talmud trains lawyers. The Talmud does not tell us what to think, but it trains thinkers. By studying Talmud we can acquire the basic analytical tools to make the judgments we need to make in a complicated world.

 

By studying Talmud we learn that there is always a diversity of opinion within any community. At times certain opinions are better than others, but all opinions and those who hold them are worthy of analysis and respect. Sometimes it is obvious which opinion is better. Sometimes decisions need to be made to preserve and promote individual welfare and community harmony. Sometimes decisions need to be held in abeyance, perhaps forever or, at least, until that future time comes when all is made clear.

 

The study of the Talmud teaches a respect for tradition and inherited wisdom. It shows us how to step beyond our moment and to listen to a diversity of voices from our past. We learn how to use received wisdom creatively in light of the ever-changing circumstances of human life. We learn how we can be innovative and, yet, remain deeply rooted.

 

The study of the Talmud reveals to us the deeper meaning of Jewish practice. What Jews do, the practices we follow, the stories we tell, the symbols we use, and the metaphors we cherish reflect deep spiritual and theological understandings grounded in human experience. We see them as the sancta of the Jewish people, that is, those points that allow us to experience holiness and blessing in our world.

 

In the Talmud, we see that serious spiritual seeking has to have practical applications. But serious does not mean dry. Humor, fantasy, and playfulness are also part of serious engagement with the world and with God. One’s imagination is as important as one’s critical intellect. In the Talmud we see that some things are rational, some things are reasonable, and some things are designed to open our minds beyond the limits of reason.

 

However, none of these lessons come easy. One could get caught up in the technical aspects of the Talmud and lost in its vastness. But we need to remember that for the sages whose voices are preserved in the Talmud, for the scholars who compiled the Talmud, and for those teachers who passed it down to us, their goal was more than teaching us facts. Theirs was a spiritual journey, a sacred task to make the living words of the living God an ever-flowing source of life for God’s living people.

 

When we engage in the study of Talmud, we join them in that journey. Their conversation becomes ours and we start talking with them and they have us talking with each other. In some strange and wonderful way, we see things they could never imagine and they point out things that we may have missed. The conversation continues, and we find ourselves right in the middle of it.