“The difference between the single wicks of the Sabbath candles and the braided torch of the Havdalah candle”

Friday, July 30th, 2010

 

The difference between the single wicks of the Sabbath candles 

and the braided torch of the Havdalah candle 

is the distinction between a light of calmness, of repose, and of homeliness, 

and the stronger light of the torch, which, on the one hand, accompanies the departing queen, 

and on the other, lights the darkness that becomes more marked in her absence. 

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From "The Motif of Light in the Jewish Tradition," p.185, in On Being Free 

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“We can define the renewal of time as the emergence of a new heartbeat”

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

 

Time is a pulsation. 

It resembles heartbeats: Each heartbeat is a singular phenomenon. 

Just because my heart is beating now does not mean that it is going to beat again one second from now. 

Every second, life surges forth once again.

In the Kabbalah, this diastolic and systolic feature is called "Ratso-vaShov," outpouring and contraction. 

It is characteristic of all forms of psychological and biological life and thus, as the Alter Rebbe points out, is also a feature of the life of time.

It is as though the world has a heart whose continual beating enables the world to live. 

Because this beating is continuous, we are not aware of its real, dialectical structure, which is simply a chaining of discontinuities.

Thus, we can define the renewal of time as the emergence of a new heartbeat. 

In other words, life is reborn.

Let us note in passing that the word pa'am, which means "beat" in Hebrew, also designates a point in time.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Seven Lights, p. 9, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“The ongoing act of Creation”

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

 

God is one in the sense that there is nothing besides Him, both before and after the Creation. 

The universe does not make any difference as far as God is concerned. 

He remains forever the same without ever changing. 

Even though we may be conscious of a world apparently apart from God, this is only the ongoing act of Creation. 

The words that made the world are constantly being spoken anew, and nothing can exist unless it is sustained by them. 

If they were to cease being spoken, all would revert to emptiness and chaos.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Long Shorter Way, p. 134, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“The Talmud has not yet been completed”

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

 

During the two millennia of the Talmud's existence, many thousands of sages have occupied themselves with talmudic literature, and the finest intellectual forces of the Jewish people have dedicated their lives with great perseverance to talmudic scholarship. 

It is not surprising therefore that the student sometimes feels that he can add nothing new, since every subject, every issue, every sentence has been pored over by great scholars and sages and discussed from every possible viewpoint. 

Nevertheless, the Talmud has not yet been completed. 

Every day, every hour, scholars find new subjects of study and new points of view.

Not every student is capable of constructing his own systems, but the individual, from his own peculiar and personal point of view, is still capable of seeing some detail, however small, in a new light.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Essential Talmud, p. 274, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“Every time a subject is studied it takes on new dimensions for the student”

Monday, July 26th, 2010

 

When a man begins to study Talmud, he always finds himself right in the middle of things, no matter where he starts. 

Only through study and the combination of facts can he arrive at the ability to understand, and, in general, the more he studies the better he understands what he has already studied.

His comprehension grows constantly deeper as he peruses the material over and over again. 

A pair of scholars who studied a certain complicated tractate a generation ago perused it forty times and stated that only the forty-first time did they feel that they were beginning to understand it. 

This conviction is not a reflection of excessive humility, nor is it related to the complexity of the issue, but is based on the belief that every time a subject is studied it takes on new dimensions for the student. 

After the first few perusals of the material, the student will have solved most of the central problems, but new problems will always emerge. 

Generally speaking, talmudic study is not restricted to one aspect of a subject, nor is it a closed circle.

Rather, it should be seen as a spiral that continues to rise and develop from time to time. 

Each time the same point is passed and a slightly higher point is reached.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Essential Talmud, p. 273, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“The Kabbalah is the inner part of the Torah that explains the metaphysical significance of every single movement and thought”

Sunday, July 25th, 2010

 

According to the Kabbalah, God acts on the world and reveals himself through ten aspects, or emanations, called the Ten Sefirot. 

These sefirot are the instruments through which the Divine fullness is revealed, God Himself being infinite and devoid of all limits and attributes in the world. 

The mutual relationship between these sefirot and their various combinations determine the essential manner and working of the world, and especially of men. 

More particularly, the people of Israel react to the union or separation or constellation of the various sefirot, with all their power for good and for ill. 

The evil in the world is derived from a distortion of certain forces, and they can, in turn, have a bad effect on the rest of creation. 

The Torah, or Jewish Scriptures, is, on the whole, a revelation of the right way to behave so that the Divine plenty will flow into the reality of the world. 

The carrying out of the commandments (mitzvot) of the Torah acts in a concrete way to make the sefirot combine properly to cause this plenty to flow, while the transgression of the commandments is an act of absolute evil that adds strength to the forces of wickedness and pollution in the world. 

The esoteric teaching, the Kabbalah, is the inner part of the Torah that explains the metaphysical significance of every single movement and thought, and ultimately of the whole essence of the world. 

The man who attains genuine knowledge of the wisdom of the Kabbalah can, in certain respects, use the keys provided by this wisdom to reach a deeper and more complete closeness to God, and is able to change and "repair" the world in which he lives.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From "The Ari" in The Strife of the Spirit by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“The Imagery Concept in Jewish Thought”

Friday, July 23rd, 2010

 

When a scholar of halachah, who is discussing the activities forbidden on the Sabbath, wishes to specify those activities connected with the extraction of food from that within which it is held, he calls them "threshing." 

He selects one characteristic activity from the totality, a highly concrete and specific item, and makes it the key imagery word for the concept.

So that a person who milks a cow on the Sabbath can be said to have transgressed the law against "threshing."

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From "The Imagery Concept in Jewish Thought" in The Strife of the Spirit, p. 65, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“The essence of the Divine is beyond the spiritual precisely as it is beyond the physical”

Thursday, July 22nd, 2010

 

What is important to emphasize is the actuality of God in the world, that is to say, He is not beyond the world, and we have to relate to Him accordingly. 

To say that no one can grasp Him with the intelligence, no matter how superior, does not necessarily mean that human intelligence is limited, but rather that no one can grasp Him no matter with what means, intellectual or otherwise. 

In short, there are things that are not given to men to understand at all. In the same way, as stated elsewhere, it is not given to touch wisdom with the hands. 

It spills over into the absurd because there is no common denominator.

One can translate or transfer from one kind of being to another only when it is within the same realm of existence, whether material or spiritual. 

For instance, we measure heat with a thermometer that we read by the eye, or convert electric current into sound or light, by mechanical means. 

In the same way, we can translate various spiritual forms of expression in different ways—visual, audio, literary, and so on. What we cannot do is express anything that is beyond the spiritual. 

There is an essential barrier. 

Just as one cannot directly, materially, make contact with that which is spiritual. 

The essence of the Divine is, as was often explained, beyond the spiritual precisely as it is beyond the physical. 

That is, if one can say that God is spiritual because He is not material, then, in the same way, it can be said that He is material because He is not spiritual. 

Thus, no intelligence, no matter how great or spiritual, can grasp the essence of anything beyond the spiritual.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Sustaining Utterance, p. 88, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“There is something transmitted that is of the quality of light”

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

 

 

For many people the study of esoteric wisdom may be no more than the "salt," or that which gives flavor to life and knowledge. 

Whatever is grasped, even without mental understanding, goes much deeper than can be recognized.

It works on the soul. 

Like music or art, where the communication is chiefly emotional, there is something transmitted that is of the quality of light. 

One "knows" without being able to explain what it is that has been learned.


–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Candle of God, p. 104, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“The Jewish calendar designates days of contemplation, of mourning, and of joy”

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

 

The commandment to rejoice on Sukkot is just one of a number of such obligations that concern one's mood. 

The Jewish calendar designates days of contemplation, of mourning, and of joy. 

Though at first sight it may seem to be a paradox, it can be said that only he who has the strength to mourn on Tishah b'Av (the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple and of other disasters in Jewish history)is capable of rejoicing on Simchat Torah. 

In spite of the apparent polar differences between the two activities, there is a profound bond between them, for both draw upon the same inner strength.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Strife of the Spirit, p. 93, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“Even a tzaddik can reach an erroneous decision”

Monday, July 19th, 2010

 

Although the tzaddik is utterly free of the internal inclination to evil that plagues the ordinary man, he is not devoid of free will. 

As long as he is in the human realm, he is free to choose, and he is liable even to err and choose wrongly. 

Moreover, there are situations in which there is a fault to every available option. 

These are faults that do not arise from within the tzaddik but are inherent in the situation itself. 

Moses is recorded as having lost his temper on a number of occasions. 

Moses' anger was certainly a fault, yet the situation made it impossible for him to act otherwise.

Anger was the only educational means available to correct the problem. 

The prayer for rain recited on the festival of Shemini Atzeret is composed of verses mentioning the deeds of the leaders of Israel in connection with water. 

The verse in praise of Moses is that "He struck the rock and water emerged." 

But was not striking the rock the sin of Moses' life, for which his punishment was that he could not enter the land of Israel?

In his commentary on Torah, Rashi explains Moses' sin: if Moses had spoken to the rock rather than struck it, this, would have been a great lesson for the people of Israel. 

The people would have said, "If the rock, which is deaf and dumb and does not require sustenance, obeys Moses, then we certainly must obey him." 

Yet Moses did not want to speak to the rock; he knew that if the Jewish people continued to disobey him, even after witnessing the rock's obedience, this would have constituted a great accusation against them, against which there could be no defense. 

So, instead of speaking to the rock, he struck it. 

Moses, who was close to God more than anyone else before or since, also faced choices. 

He chose, mistakenly or not, to do something that was counted against him, on the one hand, as his great sin, and counted to his credit, on the other, as one of the great deeds of his life–that "He struck the rock and water emerged."

Situations arise in which perfection is not possible, in which the very structure of reality and the relation between a person, the world, and God are such that no perfect solution exists. 

In such a situation, even a tzaddik can reach an erroneous decision. 

King David's sin with Bathsheba was a tragedy for Uriah, for David, and for Bathsheba, but from the greater perspective of Jewish history, it gave rise to one of the greatest moments of teshuvah ("repentance"). 

Virtually every person sins, and when a sinner reads Psalm 51, "When Nathan came to him [David] after he went to Bathsheba," he has something to relate to.

Considering that David is the fourth leg of the "divine chariot," David's sin might be the only way in which certain people can relate to him. 

If the great ones of Israel had no faults, it would be impossible to establish any connection with them. 

In this sense, their falls are our path to elevation.

In our reality, we face problems with no clear, unambiguous solution.

The question of whether something is a mitzvah or a sin, or a mitzvah best neglected, or a sin that it is perhaps necessary to commit, does not always have an answer.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From Opening the Tanya, p. 251, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“In the Yerushalmi Talmud, whenever the word mitzvah is mentioned without qualification, it is a reference to charity”

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

 

Like the Shekhinah, the divine soul descends into exile–into the body–with the purpose of raising the elements of holiness in the body and the vital soul. 

Because the divine soul is pure, a portion of God above, it does not require purification and elevation. 

It descends into the lowly, impure body solely to carry out its mission: to bring forth the good and rectify the body and all that relates to it in this world, so as to gather and raise the elements of holiness.

And so the greater a portion of the world that a mitzvah affects, the more inclusive it is. 

The more it touches on the materiality of man and the world, the more fully it fulfills its role.

In the light of the above, one can understand why our Rabbis, of blessed memory, so strongly emphasized "the virtue or mitzvah of charity," declaring that "it balances all the other commandments."

Charity is not the only mitzvah described as being equal to all the other mitzvot. 

This statement must therefore be understood as coming out of a certain context.

In a sense, the totality of the mitzvot constitutes a complete whole in which each mitzvah has a role shared by no other. 

Yet there are some outstanding mitzvot in which the more generalized part of its relation to the whole complex of mitzvot is clear. 

Charity is one such mitzvah.
 
As our sages teach, it is one of the pillars on which the world stands (Pirkei Avot 1:2).

And throughout the Yerushalmi Talmud it is called simply "the Commandment." 

In the Yerushalmi Talmud, whenever the word mitzvah is mentioned without qualification, it is a reference to charity and its offshoots (Peah 8:9 and elsewhere).

Because it is the core of the precepts of action and surpasses them all. 

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From Understanding the Tanya, p. 271, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“The ultimate purpose of the exile”

Friday, July 16th, 2010

 

The ultimate purpose of the exile

is to collect and elevate the "sparks of holiness"

that are scattered throughout the world

and, in doing so,

to rectify the world itself.


–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From Learning from the Tanya, p. 304, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“Every sadness, every tragedy, has within it the exile of the Shekhinah”

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

 

When a person is meditating on the exile of the Shekhinah in regard to the Divine and in regard to the individual, it is also appropriate for him to think of his own private exile of the Shekhinah, his own troubles and distance from God. 

Every sadness, every tragedy, has within it the exile of the Shekhinah.

Every trouble that a human being suffers is part of the world's imperfection. 

During kiddush levanah (the sanctification of the new moon), we ask God to rectify the imperfection of the moon, because that imperfection corresponds to the world's innate incompleteness.

When a person feels his own private suffering, he should associate it with the greater context of the exile of the Shekhinah. 

At the moment that his private suffering becomes a part of the universal exile of the Shekhinah, he achieves rectification; this is an intellectual experience.

At the same time, when a person's suffering ceases to be his private affair and is transformed into a part of the universal suffering, an emotional change also takes place. 

A person can pray. 

As long as he remains focused on himself and his own needs, demanding, "Give! Give! I need such and such!", his every request is judged on the question: Does he deserve it or not? 

But when a person says, "Master of the Universe, something is missing in Your world and therefore suffering exists. The Shekhinah is in exile, and we need help!", that is no longer his private affair. 

And when his affairs are those of the Shekhinah, when his suffering is the suffering of the Shekhinah, then that is the proper time to weep over his private distress, as well. 

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From Learning from the Tanya, p. 275, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“The most grievous exile of all, is the exile of an individual Jew within himself”

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

 

"The exile of the Shekhinah" is not the Shekhinah's absence but its involvement in other, unsanctified matters. 

The sages state that "when [the Jews] were exiled to Babylonia, the Shekhinah went with them.

The Shekhinah is with them, even in exile, but then it is concealed,clothed in sackcloth–in nonholy matters.

When it wears this garb, it can turn against even holiness itself.

A Hasidic rebbe once said that there are three stages of the exile of the Shekhinah. 

The first is the exile of the Jews among the nations. 

The second, and harsher, is the exile of the Jews among themselves. 

And the third, and most grievous of all, is the exile of an individual Jew within himself.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From Learning from the Tanya, p. 131, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“The true function of the Jewish people”

Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

 

One of the cornerstones of Jewish mysticism, which is also found in many other forms of mysticism, is that creation in general and the presence, or descent, of the soul into the body in particular, all form a long process of exile. 

Thus, the exile of the Jewish people is more than a special case or even a symbol. 

In exile the Jewish people act as human seeds, which come from the body and which carry the highly concentrated message of the body as a whole. 

Each chromosome is a perfect replica of the whole organism. 

The true function of the Jewish people is to encode and constitute the genetic system of the world.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From The Seven Lights, p. 114, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“Instead of being an event, exile becomes an experience every individual must go through during the course of his or her life”

Monday, July 12th, 2010

 

The enslavement of the Israelites by the Egyptians and their exodus from the land of Egypt have a dual meaning, depending on whether we look at it from a macrocosmic or a microcosmic standpoint. 

If we view exile as a microcosmic feature–on this level, the concept of exile no longer bears a relationship to history. 

It is no longer in the realm of time, but rather within the individual himself. 

Instead of being an event, exile becomes an experience every individual must go through during the course of his or her life.

Exile is an experience we live through, and the cycle of the Jewish year is its model, its framework, and its locus. 

This cycle creates a parallel between external, or "objective," time and time as we experience it. 

It calls upon the individual to relive history within himself. 

This specific inner experience of time bears much in common with development on a biological level. 

According to biologists, every individual relives the course of development of homo-sapiens from its beginnings.

Similarly each of us individually relives the historical evolution of the Jewish people. 

Thus on a microcosmic level exile is an individual experience and a certain way of living one's life.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Seven Lights, p. 105, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“There is no other way to understand all of the blessings and prayers, except as a request for a transnatural occurrence”

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

 

Every prayer request contains within it the expectations of a miracle and the assumption that a miracle can, in fact, occur. 

When a man requests, "Master of the Universe, heal the sick of your people Israel," he requests something specific. 

That is, he asks that something happen, a certain change in the world, be it large or small. 

But, in essence, it is a request that something occur, and that something occur that would not have occurred had he not prayed. 

True, I am putting this in the simplest manner, in the form that is understood and felt even by the smallest children, but it is also the case for adults who would put it in more sophisticated, precise, and elegant form. 

There is no other way to understand all of the blessings and prayers, except as a request for a transnatural occurrence, within nature or above nature, but always involving a certain departure from ordinary laws. 

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From "Prayer Education" by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“Judaism has to be a living thing and a thing that is lived”

Friday, July 9th, 2010

 

The problem of rediscovering Jewish identity is a problem not only in the Diaspora, but also, with some differences, in the State of Israel. 

The State of Israel is of course a state of Jews. 

But what is the meaning of their Jewishness? 

If Jewishness is just a matter of being born to Jewish parents or a pejorative term used only by anti-Semites, then of course all of us are and will be Jews. 

But if Judaism, or being Jewish, has any specific inner meaning, if it is really a definite identity, then we are losing it, albeit quite slowly, in the State of Israel and all over the world. 

I am not saying that even the State of Israel is not Jewish enough.
 
When you don't know what this "being Jewish" is, when you don't feel it, don't have it in you, then you cut your communication with your past, with your present, and with other Jews, and finally you have nothing that is inherently Jewish except that undefinable something that one calls "being a Jew." 

Judaism has to be a living thing and a thing that is lived.

Otherwise it won't work.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From "The Question of Jewish Identity" by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“How did people commit suicide in ancient Rome?”

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

 

It seems that the Jewish people has chosen a method of self-destruction somewhat reminiscent of an ancient Roman custom. 

How did people commit suicide in ancient Rome? 

A person would get inside a warm bath and cut his own veins.

Then he would sit there and bleed quietly, peacefully, unto death. 

This is what is happening to the Jewish people nowadays.

There is a constant bleeding, not dramatic, but ongoing and unceasing.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

From On Being Free, p.6, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“The Talmud was never closed”

Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

 

The impact of the Talmud upon the Jewish people has been immeasurable. 

Throughout the generations, Jewish education demanded considerable knowledge of the Talmud, which functioned as the basic text of study for all. 

Indeed, much of post-talmudic Jewish literature consists of commentaries, reworkings, and new presentations of the Talmud. 

Even those areas that were not directly related to the Talmud drew upon it and were sustained by it, and there is hardly a work in any area of Judaism that does not relate to it.

Of even greater significance than this was the methodological influence of the study of the Talmud. 

In the opinion of virtually every modern scholar, "the Talmud was never closed"—not only in the historical-factual sense, but also with regard to the manner of its understanding and study. 

The method of Talmud study was an extension of the Talmud itself.

Its interpretation and analysis required the student continually to involve himself in the discussion, to evaluate its questions and argumentation. 

As a result, abstract reasoning and the dialectic method became an integral part of the Jewish culture.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From an essay, "Talmud" p. 83 in The Strife of the Spirit by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“The talmudic discussions are essentially theoretical”

Tuesday, July 6th, 2010

 

At first glance the Talmud appears to be an expanded commentary to the Mishnah.

The sages of the Talmud are referred to as amoraim, a term literally meaning "translators." 

Indeed, a considerable portion of the Talmud does consist of textual and other exegeses of the Mishnah. 

In reality, however, the Talmud is as old as the Mishnah itself, constituting the theoretical framework underlying the final rulings formulated in the Mishnah. 

Moreover, unlike the Mishnah, which is primarily a code of law whose primary purpose is to instruct the individual or the Jewish community how to act, the talmudic discussions are essentially theoretical and are directed toward clarifying the basic principles of the law and the different schools of thought therein.

Practical inferences are considered essentially derivative, secondary conclusions drawn, for the most part, from the abstract discussion.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Strife of the Spirit, p. 80, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“The Talmud is a human book”

Monday, July 5th, 2010

 

In "the sea of the Talmud" (as it is called by some) all can be found.

Farfetched and very abstract legal forms of thought, lively, fanciful fables, advice about commerce and agriculture, medical treatments, popular proverbs. 

There is, not even in the most legal or circumlocutionary pages, a dry or "nonhuman" paragraph in the Talmud. 

The personalities there are always human, people of whose lives we know the most intimate and prosaic details. 

We know about their quarrels and sins as we know about their great qualities.
 
And they are so close to us because they were fully men, because the Talmud is a human book.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Strife of the Spirit, p. 40, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“All of life is of interest to scholars and constitutes fit subject matter for the Talmud”

Sunday, July 4th, 2010

 

The purpose of the Talmud is talmud Torah (literally "study of Torah") in the widest sense of the word, that is, acquisition of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge, since Torah is regarded as encompassing everything contained in the world. 

An allegory in the Talmud and the commentaries depicts the Torah as a kind of blueprint for construction of the world. 

Elsewhere, the Talmud calculated that the scope of Torah was several times that of the world. 

Thus all of life is of interest to scholars and constitutes fit subject matter for the Talmud, to be discussed in brief or at length. 

The concept of Torah is immeasurably wider than the concept of religious law, and while Jewish religious jurisprudence encompasses all spheres of life and over-looks almost nothing, the scope of Torah is even wider.

Habits, customs, occupational hints, medical advice, examinations of human nature, linguistic questions, ethical problems–all these are Torah and as such are touched upon in the Talmud. 

And since all of life is permeated with Torah, the sages are not merely teachers, offering ex cathedra instruction.

Their very lives constitute Torah,and everything pertaining to them is worthy of perusal.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Essential Talmud, p. 95, by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“The Talmud is a work of art”

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

 

The formal definition of the Talmud is the summary of oral law that evolved after centuries of scholarly effort by sages who lived in Palestine and Babylonia until the beginning of the Middle Ages. 

It has two main components: the Mishnah, a book of halakhah (law) written in Hebrew; and the commentary on the Mishnah, known as the Talmud (or Gemarah), in the limited sense of the word, a summary of discussion and elucidations of the Mishnah written in Aramaic-Hebrew jargon.

This explanation, however, though formally correct, is misleading and imprecise. 

The Talmud is the repository of thousands of years of Jewish wisdom, and the oral law, which is as ancient and significant as the written law (the Torah), finds expression therein. 

It is a conglomerate of law, legend, and philosophy, a blend of unique logic and shrewd pragmatism, of history and science, anecdotes and humor.

It is a collection of paradoxes: its framework is orderly and logical, every word and term subjected to meticulous editing, completed centuries after the actual work of composition came to an end.

Yet it is still based on free association, on a harnessing together of diverse ideas reminiscent of the modern stream-of-consciousness novel. 

Although its main objective is to interpret and comment on a book of law, it is, simultaneously, a work of art that goes beyond legislation and its practical application. 

And although the Talmud is, to this day, the primary source of Jewish law, it cannot be cited as an authority for purposes of ruling.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Essential Talmud by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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“A Jewish society that ceased to study the Talmud had no real hope survival”

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

 

If the Bible is the cornerstone of Judaism, then the Talmud is the  central pillar, soaring up from the foundations and supporting the entire spiritual and intellectual edifice. 

In many ways Talmud is the most important book in Jewish culture, the backbone of creativity and of national life. 

No other work has had comparable influence on the theory and practice of Jewish life, shaping spiritual content and serving as a guide to conduct. 

The Jewish people have always been keenly aware that their continued survival and development depend on study of the Talmud, and those hostile to Judaism have also been cognizant of this fact.

The book was reviled, slandered, and consigned to the flames countless times in the Middle Ages and has been subjected to similar indignities in the recent past as well. 

At times, talmudic study has been prohibited because it was abundantly clear that a Jewish society that ceased to study this work had no real hope survival.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
 
From The Essential Talmud by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

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