Nadene Goldfoot
Talmud means teaching. Rabbi means teacher. A Talmud is the compilation of a group's teaching results, sort of like a massive report of work that had gone on for centuries. Moses happened to had given us THE ORAL LAW and the WRITTEN LAW. Rabbis evidently wrote down the oral law for posterity and study both. The written is in our Jewish bible called a Tanakh. People call it the OLD TESTAMENT. The 1st 5 books of the Torah were by Moses according to Conservative and Orthodox teachers. Rabbis are teachers.
From early times in Israel there existed a tradition of interpretation and analysis of the Written Law, and this was handed down orally from generation to generation. The importance of this Oral Law was emphasized by the tradition that it was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai together with the Written Law. During the 2nd Temple period, the ancient oral tradition was upheld by the Pharisees and supported by the majority of the populace. It was not recognized by other sects-the Sadducees and the Essenes-who, however, possessed their own traditions regarding the interpretation of the Written Law.
The other groups disappeared and the Pharisaiac view won national acceptance.
It all started in Jerusalem with the rabbis. Jerusalem was in Judah and was the capital for Israel. Jews from all corners of Israel would go there for the main holidays. Then King Solomon died in 920 BCE and the kingdom of Israel was divided into the Northern and Southern states with Judah the main state in the south. By 722-721 BCE, the Assyrians attacked and took most all the Northern 10 tribes away to Assyria and parts unknown. By 597 BCE, the Babylonians did the same thing and took many of Judahs away. They, however, were allowed to return by 538 BCE in order to rebuild their temple under the good graces of King Cyrus of Persia and remain there.
In both Jerusalem and in Babylon, rabbis continued their work of teaching about the history of their people and the laws of Moses. This compilation of their work was labeled in both cases as the Talmud; The Jerusalem or Palestinian Talmud (became Palestinian possibly after 135 CE) and the Babylonian Talmud. This work became very important to their descendants as it was the brilliant conclusions of many rabbis. This was in both cases, the records of academic discussion and of the judicial administration of Jewish Law by generations of scholars and jurists in many academies and in more than one country during several centuries after 200 CE. The year of 200 is the approximate date of the completion of the Mishnah, another new word.
Each Talmud consists of the Mishnah (legal codification containing the core of the Oral Law arranged in 6 groupings called Orders, together with a gemara, which is both a commentary on and a supplement to the digressions. Digressions are (to digress) temporary shift of subject; the digression ends when the writer or speaker returns to the main topic. Digressions can be used intentionally as a stylistic or rhetorical device )
The authorities mentioned by name in the Jerusalem/Palestinian Talmud all lived before 400 CE. Those mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud lived before 500 CE.
In addition to material by named authors, each Talmud, and especially the Babylonian, contains material of unknown authorship that appears to be later in date than the latest of the named authorities.
The Babylonian Talmud has been estimated to contain about 2 1/2 million words and is rather more than 3 times as long as the Palestinian Talmud. The gemara in this Talmud is in Hebrew and eastern Aramaic.
The Jerusalem Talmud's gemara is in Hebrew and Western or Palestinian Aramaic.
Despite the mass of restrictions imposed on the Jews by the Christian Church in the political, social, and economic spheres, and the attacks on the Oral Law by Christian theologians, the campaign to proscribe Jewish literature was not launched until the 13th century.
In 1225, a French Jewish apostate, Donin, was excommunicated from the ghetto of Paris by Rabbi Yechiel of Paris for having Karaite leanings which was a Jewish sect that rejected the Oral Law in the presence of the whole community and with the usual ceremonies. The Karaites originated in the 8th century in and around Persia (Iran). He then participated in the persecution of French Jews in 1236 and then 3 years later going to the Pope Gregory IX who ordered an investigation. Having for ten years lived in the state of excommunication, though still clinging to Judaism, he was baptised into the Roman Catholic Church and joined the Franciscan Order. Some say, however, that he converted well before meeting Rabbi Yechiel of Paris.
“O (Talmud), that has been consumed by fire, seek the welfare of those who mourn for you…”
These searing words were written by Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg (1215-1293), a brilliant Jewish student who’d recently travelled from his home in northern Germany to Paris to study a renown yeshiva there, after he witnessed the mass burning of the Talmud in Paris in 1240 on the orders of King Louis IX. A peripatetic king, Louis IX was one of the few Medieval Christian thinkers to willingly engage in debate with Jews - but his legacy is one of pain and suffering for thousands of Jews in France.
The 1st official destruction of rabbinic literature by the Catholic Church took place in Paris on June 17,1242. 24 cartloads of Talmuds were burned as a sequel to the religious Disputation there 2 years earlier in 1240. Nicholas Donin , a Jewish convert to Christianity in early thirteenth-century Paris, is known for his role in the 1240 Disputation of Paris, which resulted in a decree for the public burning of all available manuscripts of the Talmud. In 1238 Donin went to Rome, presented himself before Pope Gregory IX, and denounced the Talmud. Thirty-five articles were drawn up, in which Donin stated his charges of virulent attacks on the Virginity of Mary and the divinity of Jesus. The Disputation of 1240 in Paris was between Donin and 4 rabbis including Ravvi Jehiel, ending against the Jews and the book burning followed.
The Pope was persuaded that the accusations were true and dispatched to the authorities of the Church transcripts of the charges formulated by Donin, accompanied by an order to seize all copies of the Talmud and deposit them with the Dominicans and Franciscans. If an examination corroborated the charges of Donin, the scrolls were to be burned.
This order was generally ignored, except in France, where the Jews were compelled under pain of death to surrender their Talmuds (March, 1240). Louis IX ordered four of the most distinguished rabbis of France—Yechiel of Paris, Moses of Coucy, Judah of Melun, and Samuel ben Solomon of Château-Thierry—to answer Donin in a public debate. The commission condemned the Talmud to be burned. In 1242, fire was set accordingly to twenty-four carriage loads (ten to twelve-thousand volumes) of written works.
Minor onslaughts of the same type recurred intermittently thereafter . for instance, in Italy in 1322. The full scale offensive was resumed in the 16th century when vast numbers of volumes comprising all types of Jewish literature was destroyed in Rome on September 9, 1553. This example was soon followed all over northern Italy, though deferred at Cremona until 1559. Rabbinic works found in raids on the Jewish quarters were thereafter burned sporadically. Thousands of volumes of the Talmud were burned in Poland by order of Bishop Dembowski after the disputation between the rabbis and the "Zoharists" led by Jacob Frank at Kamenetz-Podolsk in 1757.
During all this, rabbis not fighting for their lives along with their books continued with their studies.
A French rabbi, RASHI(Rabbi Solomon Yitzhak) (1040-1105 born in Troyes), has been the most accepted and influential of all Talmud commentators whose explanations have become an integral feature of Talmud study.
The rabbi, The Vilna Gaon (Elijah ben Solomon), influenced Talmud study in Lithuania as did more recently Hayyim Soloveichik. A fresh approach resulted from the rise of scientific study in the 19th century, but it produced no new commentary to the Babylonian Talmud. Moses Margalioth wrote a commentary on the entire Palestinian Talmud.
The writing of commentaries to the Palestinian Talmud as a distinctive work came late. Solomon Sirillo and Joshua Benveniste wrote commentaries to great parts of it in the 17th century. They were followed in the 18th century by Elijah Fulda. Later in the same century, David Frankel and Moses Margalioth wrote the commentaries which became part of the standard editions. Scientific commentaries on parts of the Palestinian Talmud have begun to appear, notably by Louis Ginszberg and Saul Lieberman.
Teaching the Oral Law differed from academy to academy. In some places it was taught as a commentary on the relevant section of the Written Law, and in others, in a systematic and topical arrangement. Each teacher gave his own interpretation and the Sanhedrin (like a Supreme Court) was occasionally called upon to decide between conflicting opinions. The majority view was accepted in practice, but those views rejected continued to be taught theoretically. In time, individuals recorded privately parts of the Oral Law which they feared might be forgotten. A complete outline, known as the MISHNAH, apparently incorporated earlier version, was compiled by Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi and became the basis for study.
The discussion of these laws remained oral and was only recorded several centuries later as the Talmud (Gemara). After the redaction of the Talmud, study centered around the written text, still known as the Oral Law because its roots lie in the oral tradition. Karaites rejected the oral Law and denied the validity of the Talmud.
To me, the value of the Talmud is great. It is the recording of rabbis and their opinions, and each had his own and was given much consideration. It was the development of debate and analyzing different situations. For King Solomon (961-920 BCE), all this seemed to come naturally from his genes, but for the rest of people, had to be developed. This developed great minds. The Talmud also shows us the value of keeping records of what people say. Today we have tape recorders and videos to make this easy. 1,000 years ago, they had to rely on writing which still lives on. After all, Moses was born in about 1391 BCE and died in 1271 BCE, with THE LAW given to his people 3,332 years ago in a period orally over 40 years in the Exodus.
Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Donin Disputation of 1240
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/When-King-Louis-IX-Burned-the-Talmud.html
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