The Wit and Wisdom of the Talmud Proverbs, Sayings, and Parables for the Ages Edited by George J. Lankevich

ISBN: 0-7570-0021-5 Length: 160 Pages Size: 5.5 X 8.5-inch Format: Quality Paperback Category: Religion / Judaism Price: $13.95 Availability: In Print Click below for: Synopsis • Contents Introduction • Reviews

Synopsis

In Jewish tradition, the Talmud embodies the laws of Judaism, as well as a way of study and intellectual development. Composed of two works, the Mishnah and the Gemara, the Talmud is believed to provide serious students with one of the most sacred of experiences. It is, in fact, the Torah--the Old Testament--and the Talmud that offer the tenets of the Jewish religion.

Here, in this classic work, are those pearls of wisdom that we can all benefit from and enjoy time and time again. Some may be familiar to you; others may be new. All, however, can offer illuminating insights and direction throughout your life.

Representing almost two thousand years of learning, the Talmud contains a wealth of wisdom and advice.

George J. Lankevich received his PhD in American History from Columbia University. He taught for over thirty years in the City University of New York, and is now a professor emeritus. Dr. Lankevich is the author of over twenty volumes of history, including American Metropolis: A History of New York City.

Contents

Introduction

Index

Introduction

The history of the Jewish people is an unending adventure story, a chronicle which has inspired Western thought for millennia. It is a saga of wandering and enslavement, promise and persecution, achievement and tragedy. During the course of forty centuries, enormous cultural contributions have been made by individual Jewish men and women in every field of human activity. But most importantly, the Hebraic search for meaning has given mankind two of its most profound literary creations, the Old Testament of the Bible and those meditations on the responsibilities of men to their God which we call the Talmud. The wisdom and learning which can be obtained from the latter is the subject of the pages that fill this volume.

The Old Testament details the long spiritual quest of the Jewish nation, an unfolding of the covenant relationship between God and his “chosen people.” The Torah (Pentatauch), which comprises the first five books of the Bible, establishes the laws and teachings which men must follow in order to please and placate an all-knowing and all-powerful Creator. Indeed, the Torah existed before creation itself. The books of the Torah explain the special relationship between God and his people Israel, and contain the essence of Judaism. A Babylonian tradition affirms that God Himself spends the first three hours of each day perusing it. Although the Torah ( law) was given A.M. 2448 to Moses, its relevance is universal. “The Law was revealed publicly in the unclaimed desert. If it had been revealed in the land of Israel, the Israelites might have maintained that other nations had no part in it.” But the Talmud teaches men that because Torah “was published in the open desert, it is the property of the whole world; everyone is at liberty to assume the responsibilities it imposes.” For Jews these writings are sacred, the canon of their beliefs, the texts which mandate the will of God for men.

To study the Torah and the Talmud is to share in the Divine experience. Jews believe that adherence to the Law will insure the cultural and religious survival of their nation, but there has always been debate over the exact nature of God’s commands. To contemplate, to analyze, to discuss the meaning of the Law and define its requirements can become the work of a scholarly lifetime; it is a pursuit so serious and meaningful that it has elicited the greatest creative effort of each successive generation since Moses. The Talmud quoted so freely below is the product of thousands of minds and countless hours of study. Its primary concern is the manner in which people should live under God’s Law. Indeed, the word Talmud means study. People honor the will of God by abiding by His eternal laws, as best their poor brains can understand these timeless yet ever debated injunctions. Talmudic study is perhaps the greatest living heritage of Classical Judaism, a vocation still vital despite the erosions of modern secularism.

Judaism is fundamentally a religion of Law and obligation. Rabbi’s who study and define the requirements of the faith must consult not only the written Torah but also an ancient “Oral Tradition” which interprets the commandments given to Moses. Jews consider both the Torah and the commentaries which surround it to be of Divine origin, and they equally bind observant Jews. Although not every male Jew finds it possible to do so, all have an obligation to study the Law as best they can. Yeshivas provide the setting where this requirement is performed by dedicated students, and because any individual has the capability of adding an original thought the amount of Torah knowledge on Earth is constantly increasing. The Talmud message is crystal clear; “Every house a temple, every heart an altar, every human being a priest.” Yet the Talmud existed long before it was placed on parchment, because scholars from the time of Moses had passed on oral learning to their willing students. The Talmud in its oral form was thus an educational tool, a compendium of the wisdom gained by successive generations of scholars whose mental efforts built an ethical construct to inform and inspire an often fractious people. Containing the sum total of Jewish learning and traditions, the Talmud remains the focus of scholarly effort wherever Jewish life exists.

No one knows when the Talmud was first written down. Today’s twelve folio volumes preserve the labors of Jewish teachers from medieval days to our own, but earlier scholars on many occasions had committed parts of their nation’s accumulated lore into writing.. The written Law thus was thus reinforced by oral teaching and written directives, and all merged into a living reality that infused the daily life of the Jews in the centuries following Moses. During the First Temple Era (950-586 B.C.) many teachers instructed the people, though of them all the first to be named is Ezra. Ezra “prepared his heart to expound the Torah of God and to do and to teach among the people of Israel law and justice.” He first read the Torah before the nation, and explained it to an attentive people. Because of such efforts, a code of conduct, rules for proper Jewish life existed before the return of the Jews from their Babylonian Captivity in 586 B.C.

Not all these laws were inscribed on paper, but together they encompassed six great “orders” (sedarim) of instruction. The eleven treatises of rules concerning Agriculture/Seeds (zerain) covered tithes, first fruits, sacrifices, and gifts due from the produce of the land; the cessation of agricultural labor during the Sabbatical year; and prohibited mixtures in seeds and in grafting. Feasts/Observances (moed) dealt with the Sabbath and Sabbath rest; feasts such as Passover, Tabernacles, New Year, the Day of Atonement, and fasts. It details work forbidden, ceremonies to be observed, and sacrifices to be made on those days. Women (Nashia), the shortest of the sedarim, presents legislation concerning marriage, divorce, adultery and vows. Damages/Fines (Mezikin) are regulations dealing with civil legislation, commercial transactions, purchases, sales, mortgages, prescriptions, etc. Damages covers legal procedures, the organization of tribunals, witnesses, and oaths, contains a brief on idolatry, and a collection of the ethical sentences of the Rabbis. Sacred Things (kodashim) concerns sacrifices, the first-born, clean and unclean animals and even describes Herod's Temple. Lastly, Purification (tohorot) gives the Levitical regulations concerning clean and unclean persons and things, and objects capable of becoming unclean by contact. Consisting of twelve treatises, the Purification section is long and involved.

By the end of the Second Jewish Commonwealth (586 B.C. to 70 C.E.), examinations of the Torah had expanded into 63 long treatises primarily conveyed to future generations by rabbinical memory and repetition. The body of knowledge was called the Mishnah, the commentary on the Torah which provides the text for Talmudic study and interpretation. So great was Mishnah’s importance that very word and every phrase deserved to be analyzed and discussed in all possible permutations. Only when all possibilities have been covered does the rabbinical consideration move on to the next part. The commentary was often extensive; discussion became so complex that erudition seemed to replace the words of Mishnah. Inevitably there were lapses of memory, differences abounded, nuances were lost and after hundreds of years there were as many versions of the Mishnah as there were teachers (tannaim). But all were part of the “oral Torah,” a faith transmitted from Moses which awaited consolidation in better times. The Talmud is essentially an elaboration of the Mishnah’s discussion of the Torah, a compendium which included countless legal rulings as well as discursive asides on topics of interest to the ancient rabbi’s.

In the first century of the Christian Era, the most important Talmudic division was between followers of the influential rabbis Hillel (30 B.C.- 9 C.E.) and Shammai. It was the latter sage who established the validity of the an oral Torah not based solely on the Ten commandments. Both men devoutly pondered the law, custom and institutions of Judaism but gradually the school of Hillel attained more authority. Even today, Hillel’s advice to a non-Jew who wished to study Jewish law is widely quoted. “Do not unto others that which you would not have them do to you. That is the entire Torah. The rest is commentary. Now go and study.” But exactly what to study remained uncertain. It was the genius of Judah ha-Nasi, sometimes called The Prince or The Holy, which successfully brought all competing versions of the Mishnah into agreement. Out of the mass of oral traditions and written judgments he produced a single accepted format around 200 C.E.(A.M. 3980). Texts which the Prince excluded as insufficiently authoritative or repetitious were declared “external” parts of the Mishnah and were later collected by rabbi’s in Babylon into an “Addition” labeled the Tosefta.

Because of Judah ha-Nasi, an agreed upon Mishnah now existed which codified the oral teachings of a millennium. Its tractates (treatises) were divided into chapters and paragraphs and the many rules it set forth were binding on Jews. In the centuries that followed Judah’s achievement, two geographically separated coteries of Jewish scholars (anoraim), one in Palestine and a second in Babylon, labored to explain the text, to clarify and reconcile apparent areas of contradiction, and establish common approaches to language and law. Such procedures were vital because while the basic language of the Mishnah was Hebrew, the language of the scholars was Aramaic. Both groups understood that none of the oral tradition could be discarded, but rabbis gave advice according to the circumstances of their own age and so added a huge amount of material to the Mishnah. These new anoraim never disputed the rulings of previous tannaim, but refashioned the Law to fit changing circumstances. Their efforts produced a vast new store of commentary known as the Gemara, a maze of judgments rendered in Aramaic which had to be incorporated into the growing Talmud. Both Talmud (Hebrew) and Gemara (Aramaic) mean study, but the latter term normally denotes commentary alone while the former includes both Mishnah and analysis.

The Gemara commented on the Mishnah, just as the Mishnah had commented on the Torah. One Gemara, the work of Palestine scholars in Galilee and inaccurately called the Jerusalem Talmud, was edited in Tiberas about 380 C.E. Completed by the middle of the fifth century, the Jerusalem Talmud was brief and coherent but even today there is no scholarly agreement on its text. The second product of these centuries, a much larger and more authoritative Talmud, was created by Babylonian rabbis at Sura in approximately 500 C.E.. The Babylonian Talmud (Bavli) created by Ray Ashi and his colleagues assured Babylon’s primacy in world Jewry, because it was compiled with full knowledge of the earlier work. Literate, clear and logical, the Babylonian Talmud contains 2.5 million words and is three times the size of the Palestine Talmud. It offers a vast “ocean” of learning which attracts the modern Orthodox scholar as surely as a magnet does iron. The rulings of literally hundreds of amoraim are mentioned in a text which provides the basis for Jewish life in a harsh and often uncaring world. The Babylonian Talmud is considered to be the most significant effort at explaining the complexities of living under the Torah, a position it has held at least since the time of the Crusades. It is more complete and more studied, more copied and commented upon, and we have far more authoritative versions of its text than that of its earlier rival. Although modern libraries have handwritten parts of Talmud’s dating to the eighth century, our earliest complete manuscripts date from the thirteenth (Jerusalem) and fourteenth (Babylonian) centuries. No reasonable scholar believes that there was a single “original text” of either, and neither exists today in a version accepted by everyone.

Since the Torah is the word of God, His fundamental rules of living, it is hardly surprising that both versions of the Talmud deal largely with questions of law. More than 70% of the Jerusalem Talmud and fully half of the Babylonian Talmud focus on legal obligations, even though neither compilation completely examined all of the Mishnah. Living according to the will of God ought to be the highest aspiration of every Jew, and the goal of Talmudic study was to make clear the path towards goodness. After the sixth century, those rabbi’s who commented on the Talmud were called seburaim (opinionists) and their weighty judgments (halakhah) covered virtually every aspect of daily life. Imagine if you will centuries of debate, testimony, assertions and opinions regarding the Law. Americans who lament the paperwork of our own society can only stand in awe of the extraneous matter and incidental information such an effort will generate. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Talmud includes much that seems to have nothing to do with the case in point, but which may fascinate modern people. Historians, antiquarians, ethnologists, scientists, preachers, lawyers, artisans, housewives, humorists and philosophers all are drawn to its infinite variety. Each Talmud offered large sections of didactic instruction and advice (aggadah), anecdotal material citing the experience of sages and political leaders to make salient points. Folk sayings, commercial advisories, travel arrangements, personal challenges, etc. were all materials which could help Jews cope with ordinary living. Any subject of interest to the rabbi’s could make its way into texts which included tales regarding Alexander the Great, lessons in astronomy, advice about a trade (for every rabbi had a job) and rules for civil, criminal and dietary law.

Talmudic wisdom comes from centuries of following the Torah, but its concerns are not merely legal obligations but also personal advice. Ordinary folk constantly consulted scholars because their dedication to study made them the natural leaders of the community. Advice often consisted of quotations from past authorities, made relevant by the insight of an ingenious rabbi. But to maintain the internal consistency of Talmudic tradition, philosophical “hair-splitting” opinions often resulted. Complex layer was superimposed on complex layer as the centuries passed. Once again a search for order was inevitable, and in the Middle Ages a series of great commentators gave new coherence to the Talmud. Among the greatest of these scholars was Sholomo Yitzhaki of Troyes (Rashi), who during the eleventh century produced the first great exegesis of the Babylonian Talmud in pure Hebrew. Rashi attempted to anticipate the difficulties facing future students, and laid out rabbinical procedure in minute detail and nuance. The Spanish scholar Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) commented on the Mishnah in the late twelfth century, and his work was followed by Moses ben Nahman (1194-1270, Ramban), Solomon ben Adret (Rashba) and Nissim ben Reuben Gerondi (Ran). All these men worked from the Babylonian version of the Talmud and helped to assure its primacy. Each wrote Addadah (narratives) which added to the complexity of Talmud study. Yet the continuing relevance of such study was demonstrated as Jewish communities in divergent areas of Europe retained the essence of their faith under vastly different circumstances. A virtual library of wisdom was being created to offer reasonable answers to life’s myriad problems.

Throughout history enemies of the Jews have attempted to halt the study of the Talmud, whether it be accomplished by oral repetition or through the parsing of written documents. In 1242, for example, over twenty carts filled with Talmudic manuscripts were burnt in Paris by Catholic fanatics and many others were destroyed in Italy during the Counter-Reformation. Talmuds were burned in Poland in 1757 during a persecution of the Jews. The Nazi made the Talmud a target of opportunity before they attempted to annihilate the Jewish people. Yet at the same time Christian scholars have always turned to the Talmud to help them understand the Jewish origins of their own faith. The first mass printing of the Babylonian Talmud began in Spain in 1482--it was not the first Jewish book to be printed--and it was Pope Leo X who approved the first complete edition of the Palestinian Talmud in Venice (1520-1523). Only a generation later, however, Pope Julius XII ordered the destruction of all existing copies (1553). When the Basel edition of 1578-1681 appeared, the old term Gemara was applied to the commentary sections only and the word Talmud was used to denote the entire product. But whether called Mishnah, Gemara or Talmud, the text became widely circulated. Over 100 editions were published before the Vilnus edition of the Babylonian Talmud (1886) became the generally accepted standard version.

The published Talmud has been a vital force in Jewish life for over 1500 years. The Law is a gift from the Almighty, and the many pages which attempt to proclaim its meaning pages represent immense leaning, lofty pronouncements and folk wisdom. To study the Talmud is a calling, a mission, a lifetime of pleasure. Study itself a kind of religious rite, a vocation which brings personal joy and piety. It constantly returns Jews to their Biblical roots; they cling to the torah, learn from the Talmud and attempt to live in a manner pleasing to God. Yet it is vital to understand that the Talmud’s value is universal. An old Jewish axiom promises that the righteous of all nations will have a portion in the future world, so who can begrudge offering yet another selection of Talmudic aphorisms to a public which seems at times to have lost its moral foundations. Noble ideals and exalted ideas may be found in many places, but learning a bit from the Talmud may help unfocused modern people find a path towards happier lives.

The pages that follow are neither commentary nor scholarship, but merely a selection from the “ocean” of wisdom that emerged from Talmud study. The adages, proverbs and judgments cited can form the basis for a compassionate and focused life. Often seemingly commonplace, these words offer ideals which are not impossible to achieve, merely difficult because they demand so much of us all. Rabbi’s have long studied the Law of God and the duties of the Jews, but they assumed that all men were equal; all shared in the image of the Creator. All persons lived in the world He provided, and each has a responsibility towards other persons and that world. All persons live in society, abelong to families, fight evil inclinations, and repent of their certain failures. Meditating on mankind’s common heritage can help Everyman’s personal search for meaning and goodness. If these excepts from the Talmud inspire a single person, they will have accomplished the dream of millennia.

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