#Torah Talmud

[no-context-daf-yomi]

The Talmud’s dichotomy of “here’s 10 pages of dense legal jargon about practical interpretations of monetary claims and this is how we treat witnesses in civil court” vs “We really need to discuss if other people hearing you fart is a big deal or not” and how the former is much more prevalent but the latter will jump out and punch you in the nose when you least expect it

[baroque-hashem]

Whenever I see Jews on my dash arguing about interpretations of the Talmud I just chuckle and I'm like...Nothing's changed. Nothing has changed in over 3,000 years. We're still the same Jews. Our clothes, hairstyles, slang may be a bit more modern, but we're still the same Jews. And I love us.

[docholligay]

My private livestream tonight gave me thoughts about how cultural Christian hegemony hurts fandom discussion and culture.

[girlactionfigure]

myjewishlearningcom

This is the Jewish version of the Golden Rule. Rather than telling people to do unto others what they wished done for themselves, the first century sage Hillel taught the inverse: Don’t do to others what you’d hate to have done to you. Hillel’s teachings are featured prominently in the Talmud and his wisdom inspires to this day.⁠

[kijew]

[yourhavruta]

Male sex - is being gay a sin?

I've already saw a couple of those videos on my fyp, and they annoy me a little, especially the comments.

A little preface:

As we know, the original texts of the Tanakh (old testament) were written in Hebrew.

When the Romans ruled over judea, Jesus started a new current in Judaism, which became Christianity after he died.

His followers spread their beliefs, and romans became Christiana as well.

So, one if the first thing they did was to translate the Tanakh to Latin, and then years later to other languages as they continued with the Crusades.

Now, what's bothers me the most about those posts is that they say the mistranslation caused the verse to be "a man shall not lay with another man" instead of "a man shall not lay with a boy" (meaning is was supposedly meant to be about pedophilia and not homosexuality).

The this, that in the original text there nothing about a boy.

"וְאֶ֨ת־זָכָ֔ר לֹ֥א תִשְׁכַּ֖ב מִשְׁכְּבֵ֣י אִשָּׁ֑ה תּוֹעֵבָ֖ה הִֽוא׃" {ויקרא, י"ח, כ"ב}

"And with a male you shall not lie the lyings of a woman; it is an abomination." {Translation - Sefaria, Rabbi Shraga Silvershtein}

Nothing about a boy, nothing about a teenager {נער - sometime interpret as a young male, even if he's 30}.

If we take the verse very literally, it means that a males aren't allowed to have Anal sex with eachother.

Tho, the interpretation that it's about pedophilia, didn't came first from Christians.

[יא] "ואיש" – להוציא את הקטן. "אשר ישכב את זכר" – אף הקטן במשמע.

In verse י"א, the text says "and a man" - meaning an adult male {13 and above}, then it keeps on telling all the laws of Incest. In verse כ"ב {"And with a male you shall not..."}, it. Says a male.

According to Sfara, Kdoshim, it means a male shall not lie with any other male - minor and adult as one.

So, in conclusion, there is definitely mistranslation from the original text to the old testament in the Christian's bible, but it's not explicit about Pedophilia.

Reblog or comment if you have anything to add, this is a very big topic.

Have an easy and meaningful fast.

גמר חתימה טובה🕊️

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Joshua Hoffman

The Torah isn’t a history book, a physics book, or a storybook.

It is torat chaim — literally “instructions for living” in Hebrew.

“The more Torah you know,” said the late, great Rabbi Noah Weinberg, “the more fulfilled you become. Every word, every phrase contains a message for how to maximize pleasure in life. Look for the deeper message — the wisdom within — and you will reap immense rewards.”1

In the Torah, the basics are laid out in writing, but the rest must be learned orally, know as the Mishnah.

“When an engineer has a problem, he looks up logarithm tables. A lawyer refers to case studies. A doctor has medical journals,” said Rabbi Weinberg. “A Jew has the Mishnah.”

The Mishnah refers to the later works of the rabbinic period — most prominently the Mishnah and the Gemara, jointly known as the Talmud — which explain and expound upon the statutes recorded in the Written Torah.

So, how much do you really know about the Torah?

Enjoy these five surprising facts:

1) Four Levels of Understanding

Rabbi Noah Weinberg once said that a single word in Torah can yield multi-layered understandings — “if you know how to apply the right tools.” This isn’t metaphor. It’s methodology.

The Torah is written in a code, not a secret one, but a multi-dimensional one. Jewish tradition teaches that the Torah operates on four primary interpretive levels:

P’shat (פשט): The simple, literal meaning of the text. What is the Torah saying at face value? This is the level explained by commentators like Rashi, who wrote in 12th-century France but saw his work as clarifying what the Torah meant all along.

Drush (דרש): The homiletic level, found in Midrash and Talmud. It explores how verses teach moral, ethical, or spiritual lessons — often reading between the lines to discover deeper patterns.

Remez (רמז): Literally “hint.” This level uncovers subtler meanings — using Hebrew wordplay, gematria (numerical values), or alternate pronunciations to surface ideas hidden in plain sight. One reason the Torah scroll has no vowels or punctuation is to make these alternate readings possible.

Sod (סוד): The secret, mystical level. This is the realm of Kabbalah, of the Zohar, of cosmic structures and divine energies encoded in the language of the Torah itself. It doesn’t contradict the other layers — it reveals what they were whispering all along.

Together, these four levels form the acronym PaRDeS (פרדס) — which means “orchard” in Hebrew.

It’s a stunning metaphor. The Torah is not a textbook. It’s an orchard, a place of sweetness, beauty, shade, and sustenance. But like any orchard, you don’t get the fruit unless you’re willing to walk through it, get your hands dirty, and reach.

“The Torah is filled with delicious spiritual fruits,” wrote Rabbi Weinberg, “just waiting to be plucked and savored.”

[hyperpotamianarch]

Next, I'm going to try and pour out information about Jewish religious literature. To be fair, there are probably way more extensive posts, websites and YouTube videos on this topic, but I chose to talk about it because I've seen some slight misinformation going around. Hope I won't come off as patronizing. Note, I'm writing it to be comprehensible for none-Jews as well as Jews, so I might say a lot of things you already know if you're Jewish.

So, Jewish religious literature can be divided to three main branches: Mikra, Mishnah and Talmud. This is not a completely precise division, nor can it be applied to every Jewish religious book, but it's helpful for the basic books, those considered obligating by Rabbinic Judaism.

Mikra (which, roughly translated from Hebrew, means "something that is read") is the one of those three that is pretty much closed: you can't really write a new Jewish book that'll be considered a part of it. It's also called the Written Torah, and includes the entirety of the Hebrew Bible, AKA Tanakh. In case you're wondering, that includes all books in what Christians call "the Old Testament", only sorted differently and into three categories: Torah - the Pentateuch, Nevi'im (Prophets) - which includes every book named after a person outside of Job, Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Neḥemiah, and in addition to those books includes the books of Judges and Kings, and the Ketuvim (Written texts) - which includes all the rest of the books. The order of the books in the Tanakh is as follows (using their English names for convenience, I don't necessarily stand behind those translations): Torah: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Nevi'im: Joshua, Judges, Samuel (1&2), Kings (1&2), Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Twelve Prophets (Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Naḥum, Ḥabakuk, Zephaniah, Ḥaggai, Zechariah, Malachi). Ketuvim: Psalms, Proverbs, Job (transliteration did a number on this one), the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra&Neḥemiah, Chronicles (1&2). Overall, there are 24 books in the Hebrew Bible. It is only later divisions, some of which are outright nonsensical, that made the number into 39.

Those books are ones that are considered to be written using some degree of Divine Inspiration or outright prophecy (which doesn't have to do with knowing the future). Common tradition considers the division of the Tanakh to be between three levels of prophecy, of which the Ketuvim were written in the lowest. As the Written Torah, the entirety of these scriptures is meant to be read (and not repeated by heart). There are occasions where there's a difference between the reading tradition and the writing one - but that's another story. The last books in the Tanakh were written around the 5th Century BCE according to tradition, and it was closed to new additions a couple of decades, perhaps a century or two, later.

The other two branches are both considered parts of the Oral Torah, to varying degrees. You see, according to Jewish tradition, Moshe (Moses) got the Torah in Mt. Sinai in two parts: the Written one (which at the time only included the Pentateuch) and the Oral one, which included explanations on how to actually act upon the commandments in the Written Torah, in addition to deduction laws to be used on the Written Torah (at least according to Rambam, AKA Maimonides). Both the Mishnah and the Talmud, at their core, are based on that. But much of the things said there are things clearly said by Sages and Rabbis from the 1st Century CE onward. How does that work, then?

The answer kind of depends who you ask. But the Orthodox way to look at that is usually that people either have old traditions that were passed down to them, or are using the deduction laws given to Moshe at Mt. Sinai. But I guess all that was a digression, so let's get back on topic.

The Mishnah is called that way after the Hebrew word for repetition. It's supposed to be sturdied this way to be memorized, though it mostly exists as written text nowadays. Back in the time it was codified - the Tana'ic era (10-220 CE, approx.), called that way after the Aramaic word for people who memorize through repetition - there were many versions of traditional laws memorized this way. This stemmed from many different people teaching the same laws, and it ended up being a game of Telephone. Also, it probably needs to be said that while I call those "laws" they weren't usually the bottomline Halachic rules, since it included disagreements and multiple opinions.

The end of the Tana'ic era came when one person, Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, composed an authoritative collection of those after studying all the different traditions he knew of. This is what we nowadays call the Mishnah. It's made of 60 tractates- (whisper, whisper Wait, really? Whisper, whisper Huh. All right, then.) I have been informed that the number is actually 63. Who knew? Anyway, those 63 tractates are sorted by topic into 6 orders. Those orders are: Zera'im (seeds, concerns itself with matters related to plants with the odd tractate about liturgy at the start), Mo'ed (occeasion/time, concerns itself with Jewish holidays), Nashim (women, concerns itself with marriage laws in addition to two tractates about oaths and vows), Nezikin (damages, concerns itself with court procedures. Has two miscellaneous tractates that don't make sense there but belong nowhere else), Kodashim (holy things, concerns itself with matters relating to the Temple procedures as well as one tractate about Kashrut and one about heavenly punishments), and Taharot (ritually clean things, I guess? Though this translation is less than accurate. Has to do with - you guessed it - ritual cleanliness). The tractates aren't divided evenly between the orders, and inside of them are sorted by length. The longest tractate is 30 chapters, the shortest is 3. And yes, all of that was supposed to be remembered by heart - possibly only by a number of specific people.

Now, I didn't mention it previously, but there were certain books written that didn't get into the Tanakh - Apocryphal books. Those are not only considered outside the religious canon, but are not to be studied as well - though this might be a little flexible, the bottom line is they can't really be used for anything religious. I'm saying this right now because the same isn't true for Oral traditions that weren't codified in the Mishnah. Some of those were codified in other ways, and can be used to help understand the Mishnah better - which leads us to the Talmud.

Talmud, translated literally from Hebrew, means "study", as in the study of the traditions from the Mishnah. It is a separate book from the Mishanh, but is structured around it. Due to that, there are occasions people will tell you a given quote is from the Talmud when it's actually from the Mishanh - since the Talmud quotes the Mishnah when talking about it. The Talmud usually tries to reason the origin of the opinions in the Mishnah and to delve into the intricacies of those laws: what happens in fringe cases? What about other situations that the Mishnah didn't mention? How does what this specific Tana (rabbi from the Mishnah) says here fits with what he himself said in another place? And such things. The Talmud is, in essence, a recording of centuries of debates and discussions about the Mishnah. Oh, and there are two Talmudim (the plural form of Talmud).

One could say that the Jerusalem Talmud (Yerushalmi) is the equivalent of the oral traditions that didn't get into the Mishnah: it's less studied and considered less obligating than the Babilonian Talmud (Gemara, or Bavli). It still is occasionally quoted and used to study things the Gemara doesn't talk about or doesn't elaborate on. The main difference between the two is where thy were codified - the Yerushalmi is a codification of the study as it was conducted in the land of Israel (mostly in the galillee; the name Yerushalmi is a little misleading), while the Bavli codifies and records the study of Babylon. There's also a different in the language - both are written in Aramaic interladed with Hebrew, but in different dialects. The Yerushalmi was also codified a couple of centuries earlier than the Bavli - the Yerushalmi was codified around 350CE, due to persecutions under the Bizantine empire, while the Bavli was compiled by the 5th century CE.

While those two Talmudim are separate from each other, there is some intersection. Travel between the land of Israel and Babylon wasn't too rare at the time (called Tekufat Ha'Amora'im in Hebrew, the era of the Amora'im. Amora means interpretor or translator in Aramaic), and so you can see rabbis from Babylon mentioned in the Yerushalmi and Rabbis from the land of Israel mentioned in the Bavli. The easiest way to tell the difference is by their title - in Babylon, a rabbi is called "Rav [name]", while in the land of Israel they are called Rabbi. There is a reason to that, but I'm not getting into it yet. In addition, the Bavli regularly talks about how things are done "in the west" - which is the land of Israel, since it's to Babylon's west. As mentioned, the Bavli is the more authoritative of the two, and is the one usually referred to when people say "the Talmud". The Bavli directly discusses 37 of the Mishnah tractates - it nearly doesn't talk at all about the first and last orders of Mishnah. The Yerushalmi, meanwhile, talks extensively about the first one - but has nothing about the next to last one. There are also other tractates missing in the middle for both.

Now, technically the Babylonian Talmud was codified at the end of the Amora'ic era. However, somewhat unlike the Mishnah (well, I'm not being accurate, the Mishnah also has a thing or two that was shoved later), there were still later additions from a time known as the Savora'ic era. Savora is a word that means "a reasoner" in Aramaic, and I probably could've explained how appropriate this name is for them if I'd have studied enough. From what I know, the characteristics of a Talmudic piece from the Savora'ic era is having no names mentioned/having names of known Savora'im mentioned (the latter is a little rare, to my understanding), and reasoning about the language and meaning of words from the Mishnah. the Savora'ic era probably ended at around the 6th-7th century CE.

From that point on, we'll need to more or less abandon the comfortable division I offered earlier, because it's kind of hard to say which book belongs where, besides many books that might technically fall under the same category but be different enough to require their own categories. In addition, from here on out, no book is considered as all-obligating: you can't go against the Talmud in a halachic ruling, but you can go against anything later.

But, since this thing is long enough as it is right now, I think I'll just write a couple of additions about important books I chose not to mention, and then finish it here for now - with the next couple of periods of history of Jewish religious literature left for a future date.

So, the most significant genre of books I've been ignoring are the Midrashim. I mean, sure, I could talk about Apocrypha, or about the Tosefta/Baraitot (oral traditions that didn't get into the Mishnah), but I mentioned those already. The Midrashim, however, are a genre of writing I completely ignored so far.

I think the best way to explain Midrash is that it's a loose interpretation of the Mikra, based on traditions. There are generally two sub-genres for Midrash - Midrash Halachah and Midrash Agadah. The former concerns itself with the law, the latter with the stories and ideas. The books of Midrashei Halachah we have that I can remember are Mechilta (lit. "Including", more or less. On Exodus), Sifra (lit. "Book", from Aramaic. On Leviticus) and Sifrei (lit. "Books", from Aramaic. On Numbers and Deuteronomy). Those are mostly from the Tana'ic era, I think. There are two major books of Midrashei Agadah, both encompassing all of the pentateuch, named Midrash Rabbah and Midrash Tanḥuma. Those are named after specific people, likely the ones who compiled them, and those names indicate they are from the Amora'ic era.

So, to sum it up: 24 books written during the vague time of the Biblical era, codified into the Tanakh at around 300 BCE, with lots of disagreement on the exact date. Oral traditions passed down between generations, including ones clashing with each other and rulings added through the generations, passed around throughout the Tana'ic era (10-220 CE), and codified into 60 tractates of Mishnah by the end of it. In addition, at the same time, some loose interpretations of the Tanakh that have led to the rulings of those oral traditions are written down in the Midrashim. Discussions and elaborations on those oral traditions of the Mishnah as recorded from places of learning in Babylon and the Land of Israel through the Amora'ic era - around 220-500 CE - are recorded in the Talmud, with some additions from around the 6th century CE.

Any inconsistency in spelling and terminology is to be blamed on my unwillingness to go back and edit this. Sorry.

Thank you for reading, have a good day, and I hope to see you for part 2! Once I get an idea about what I'm going to say in it...

[edenfenixblogs]

hey i saw the post about your cousin's bar mitzvah, and well first of all congrats to her. but also uh one thing you mentioned made me curious- what *am* i supposed to do should i find a dead body on the side of the road, if it's no problem for me to ask? not to worry you or anything like that but i guess it'd be useful to know if i pass a car crash on a road trip again.

Ah! What a good ask!!!! I see you committing to the act of learning more about Judaism as an act of allyship, and I appreciate you! Thanks so much for taking an interest.

Obligatory disclaimer: I’m not a biblical scholar or a Talmudic expert. I’m just a Jew who likes being a Jew.

So my Torah portion was in Leviticus. For those who don’t know, Leviticus and Numbers are often considered the doldrums of Torah books. It’s not where a lot of the well-known exciting parts happen. Those books generally contain a lot of lists of rules and mitzvot.

But this is actually why I like the way Judaism reads the whole Torah in order. It forces us to confront the “boring” stuff. And in so doing, we have to think harder about why that stuff is included in our books.

So that’s why my assigned portion was interesting to me.

The actual text basically says “don’t touch dead bodies.” But I remember reading the Talmudic scholarship which was especially interesting because its focus was to elaborate on all the exceptions and then talked about the importance of doing good deeds without a reward and not punishing those who need to do things like touch dead bodies.

The point of the text isn’t to condemn people who are doing the “forbidden” thing without any cause. The text outlines a lot of rules (many of which are not relevant anymore) and, frankly excessive punishments for breaking the rules.

But Judaism doesn’t end at the literal text. Talmud (rabbinical interpretation) is equally important.

My take on the material was this:

There are some things that, on the whole, we shouldn’t do. We shouldn’t touch dead bodies. We shouldn’t come to synagogue when we are sick. We shouldn’t cheat on our spouses. Etc.

But sometimes, you do need to break the rules. And for some things, someone must always break the rules. There must be someone in any community whose job it is to touch dead bodies. Someone must bury the dead. At the very least.

For people in that position, it is so vitally important that we do not throw the literal text in their face. It is important that we do not condemn them or shun them or otherwise exclude them from our community. Judaism is about community. And you cannot have a community that is based upon excluding people who do essential jobs. Rather, thank them. Because they are doing a good thing with no inherent reward. Quite the opposite. Those people should be celebrated. They take on the hard work knowing it carries risk of exclusion and judgment, but they do it anyway. Because it’s right.

Back in the day, if you saw a dead body on the side of the road and no one seemed available to bury it? Bury it. Give that fallen soul dignity. Then pray about it. Physically and emotionally wash the sin* away. (*sin in Judaism is not the same as the Christian idea of sin. Sin is more akin to an “oops” or “missing the mark.”) And take pleasure in doing something good for humanity and knowing that nobody else had to take on that sin for you.

So, nowadays, if you see a dead body on the side of the road? Call the person whose job it is to deal with that. And thank them for doing this very emotionally difficult work. Welcome that person into your community. Be kind to them. It matters. Because there is no community at all without them and people like them.

And in general? The more broad lesson to this is to of course be kind to people who do unglamorous but necessary work. And to take on that unglamorous work ourselves when necessary. That’s how we keep our community functional and healthy. Do good deeds without expecting a reward. Do what’s right even when you expect a bad outcome. Do good and right things for their own sake, because that’s what we exist to do. Create goodness in the world. The reward is the better world we create.

Thanks for asking @clawdia-houyhnhnm

[jewish-microwave-laser]

one must imagine the sages with butterfly clips in their hair

[no-context-daf-yomi]

Talmud Study Resources

This will hopefully be an ever growing list. If you have any Talmud study resources you like (online or in print), please send them to me and I’ll update accordingly!

The most important resource for study is community, so if you have a local synagogue, check if they have study group

Free Online Resources

Sefaria Mishnah — reading the Mishnah first can make the Gemara easier

Sefaria Talmud — the go-to free online translation. I believe it uses the Koren translation

Daf Yomi — daily image of the day’s daf with audio of it being read (not translated as far I can tell)

Hadran Courses — Absolutely top notch courses to give you the tools to study Talmud. Cannot recommend this enough.

New addition! Hebrewbooks.org — quality pdf scans of the Vilna Shas. Also advertises 64,962 classical Hebrew books available for free download

New addition! Mercava — tools for translation, marking up, and displaying pages of Talmud. Only displays the central column, Rashi, and the Tosafot, but Torah Or and Mesoret haShas can also be accessed and Rashi script can be changed to block

New addition! Jastrow — free, searchable version of Jastrow’s famous dictionary for Hebrew and Aramaic

Books

Your local Shul’s library probably has a copy of these or similar books! They are far from the only books on these topics

Reference Guide to the Talmud by Rabbi Steinsaltz

I love this book. It has the answers for almost every question a beginner could ask, from how a page of Talmud is laid out to the basics of Mishnaic Hebrew and Aramaic

The Practical Talmud Dictionary by Yitzhak Frank

Not a comprehensive dictionary of Mishnaic Hebrew and Aramaic in comparison to Jastrow’s work, but it has a lot and is simple to use

Grammar for Gemara & Targum Onkelos: An Introduction to Aramaic by Yitzhak Frank

Sister text to The Practical Talmud Dictionary. Good for beginners with at least some knowledge of Hebrew

Everyman’s Talmud by Abraham Cohen

Basic overview of topics covered in the Talmud. Very dense

The Essential Talmud by Rabbi Steinsaltz

More digestible than Cohen’s book, but not as comprehensive

[son-of-avraham]

To a guy like me, g-d isn't even a He/Him. g-d is a Bro/Bro (with the capitalization, obviously)

[yitzh0k-r3uven-hal3v1]

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When people misuse the Talmud, show them this video

[girlactionfigure]

myjewishlearningcom

Hillel (also known as Hillel the Elder) is one of the best-known sages of the Talmud. ⁠ ⁠ Hillel is known for a number of famous maxims in addition to this variant of the golden rule. Many of these are recorded in the early chapters of Pirkei Avot, the section of the Talmud concerned primarily with matters of ethics.⁠

[secular-jew]

Q: "Most of the Arab countries say that the 'Zionist project' is racist project"

A: "This is a mistake, brother, and here's why..."

[nonstandardrepertoire]

sometimes when the sages are like "this verse about leprosy proves that the sun is red despite appearing white because of a strained pun involving a ruling about buying wheat", i'm like "sure besties, whatever you say", but then sometimes they go on to explain that the sun is red in the morning because it is rising over all the roses in the Garden of Eden and taking on their reflected hue and i need to go lie down on the floor until i recover