The Babylonian Talmud: A Translation and Commentary (22 vols.)

Top Highlights

“Of the two Talmuds, the Talmud of the Land of Israel of ca. 400 c.e. and the Talmud of Babylonia of 600 c.e., the latter is by far the more important, and when people speak of the Talmud, they mean only the Talmud of Babylonia.” (Volume 1, Page xxviii)

“The Talmud defines the model of what it means to be a human being, made in God’s likeness, after God’s model. That model embodies all that is rational and refined.” (Volume 1, Page xxxiii)

“The Mishnah assembles masses of conflicting opinion, and the Gemara (Bavli) is laden with disputes. Contention and debate serve a principal purpose in expounding the Torah.” (Volume 1, Page xxx)

“Second, through the life of prayer and fulfillment of commandments, Israel wraps itself before God in a cloak made up of the fabric of actions that sanctify-thread by thread. From Israel’s perspective, all Israel and individual Israelites conduct life under the perpetual rule of that just and merciful God who made the world, and that his rule is personal, immediate, and penetrating. In the morning the Israelite accepts God’s dominion in an act of personal submission, and then explicitly undertakes to carry out God’s commandments, in all their concrete specificity.” (Volume 1, Page xxxvi)

“The Mishnah is read by the Talmud as a composite of discrete and essentially autonomous rules, a set of atoms, not an integrated molecule, so to speak. In so doing, the Bavli obliterates the most striking formal traits of the Mishnah. The Mishnah as a whole and its complete statement of an earlier viewpoint no longer exists in the Talmud.” (Volume 1, Page xxix)