Hi friends, and welcome back to Talmud Daily, where just ten minutes a day, and we will give you a tour of the entire Talmud.
And today I am so excited, we are going to give you a tour of the actual page of the Talmud.
It’s very interesting when somebody tells you that they are studying Talmud, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re actually learning the words of the Talmud, what we call the Gemara. It could be so many different things happening on the page because there’s so much happening in any volume of the Talmud itself.
And just to give you a tour of the page of the Talmud, you really see why the Talmud is sometimes referred to as the Sea of Talmud. There is so much happening on every page, and every wave that splashes down on you invites you and takes you to another great mystery, another great idea, another great question, another great explanation. So let’s just go through the basics of what is on an actual page of Talmud. And I’m going to open up to the very first page of Talmud, and that is the first tractate that we are on. That is the tractate of Berakhot, which we will of course get to.
And the first page is page 2a. The Talmud always begins on page two, and the pagination in the Talmud actually goes according to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. So it always opens up on page Bet, which is the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
Where’s the first page? So the first page of the Talmud is really the introductory title page where it tells you what’s going on inside. But, and I’ve always found this incredibly moving and meaningful, page one, my teachers have always told me, is your character, is who you are as a person. You need to work on yourself constantly. You can’t wait till you finish all the Talmud to become a more decent person, a better person. The first page is who you are as a person and bringing that into the study of Talmud.
But what is on the actual first page? So on the first page of the Talmud, it opens up and you will always see the words that are kind of magnified. And over here are the opening words of the first Mishnah, which is the word “Me-aimasai,” which means “From when.” Now, we don’t have to get into all of the details of what’s happening, but this is the opening words of the Mishnah.
The Mishnah was written in about the year 200 CE by Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, one of the great scholars of the Mishnah, and this was most likely written in the land of Israel. Now right after the Mishnah you’ll see two letters, Gimmel and then Mem in Hebrew, and that is an abbreviation for the term Gemara. That is where the commentary of the Gemara—it’s not even fair to call it a commentary—the discourse of the Talmud begins over here, which is reacting to the words of the Mishnah.
So it starts with the Mishnah that’s written in 200 CE. Then right afterwards you’re going to have the discourses and the conversations of the Talmud. The Talmud is written in the year roughly, let’s call it 600, but there’s a huge period of time where we don’t have a very precise date. The Talmud really emerges organically in history.
And then you will notice on either side smaller lettering written in a little bit of a different font, in a script font. The one that is closer to the binding is the commentary of Rashi and the one farther apart from the binding is the commentary known as the Tosafists. Let’s talk about each one very quickly.
Rashi is the father of all commentaries on the Talmud. He also has a world-famous commentary on the Torah, on the five books of the Torah. And Rashi is a commentary that is being written in the 11th century.Rashi is born in 1040 and dies in 1105, and he’s writing really from France in Troyes.
And right across the side, on the other side bracketing the words of the Mishnah and the Talmud, is the commentary of Tosfot. Now Tosfot is not a person.Tosfot means “additions.” These were more commentaries and further analysis of the Talmud, and this is being written in France and in Germany in the 11th, 12th and even 13th century. And these were collections that were developed that really kind of brings questions, contradictions, and deeper explanations in the Talmud.
So we have the Mishnah, we have the Talmud, then on this side we have Rashi closer to the binding and away from the binding on the other side we have the works of Tosfot. So we started in the year 200, that was the year of the Mishnah in the land of Israel, and now we are going through time. We’re going through the words of the Talmud that’s being written in Iraq in the year, let’s call it roughly the seventh century. We have Rashi in the 11th century. We have the Tosfot in the 11th, 12th and even 13th century.
But you’ll notice all around the margins are even more commentaries, and these are all also absolutely crucial.
What are they? So if you look in the top corner, and you may not be able to read it if you’re not comfortable in Hebrew. But in the top corners both on the left and the right are two commentaries that I think are really important to understand how the actual study of Talmud works, and that is the commentaries of the Mesoras Hashas and the Ein Mishpat Ner Mitzvah. I want to explain what each of them are doing.
The Mesoras Hashas, this is being written in the sixteenth century in Italy. So we’ve just traveled, we’re no longer in France. We’re no longer in Germany. Now we are in Italy, and these are being written by Rav Yehoshua Boaz. And he does two things that really make the Talmud much more accessible. You’re probably familiar if you’ve actually gone online and read pages where they can cross-reference. These are the cross-references of the Talmud. The Mesoras Hashas, which is the Traditions of the Talmud, that’s the translation, collects all the other places in the Talmud where this discussion is being had.
So you may have a discussion that appears on the first page of Talmud, but they may reference in the Mesoras Hashas that this is also taking place in another tractate or another place. And they want to collect all of the cross-references of the Talmud.
In the other corner, and this is written by the same person, is Ein Mishpat Ner Mitzvah. So in the Ein Mishpat Ner Mitzvah there are cross-references to the works of Maimonides, and that’s being written in the 12th century. And then there are also references to another work called the Arba Turim and that is being written in the 14th, early 14th century, late 13th century in Toledo, Spain.
So what’s really remarkable is that we started in the land of Israel. We worked our way to Babylonia, modern-day Iraq—that’s where the Talmud is being written. We then traversed all the way into Europe, into France in Troyes for the commentary of Rashi, spreading out through France to Germany with the commentaries and collections of Tosfot.
We now have references to the works of Maimonides. Where does Maimonides discuss this passage of Talmud? That you would look at the Ein Mishpat Ner Mitzvah. And now you’re being sent back in time to the Rambam, once again in the 12th century, you’re being sent again to the works of the Tur in the 13thand 14th century.
Then finally, if you keep looking, there are some other commentaries around this page, and it really comes to show you how just global the Talmud was, and how you’re really working through time itself anytime you are opening up a page of Talmud. Two notable commentaries on the side that are worth discussing is the Hagahot of the Bach, the Bach, which was written by Rav Yoel Sirkis.
He makes certain emendations to the page. I think, and I don’t know this is true, you could check it out. I believe his great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter descendant is Gwyneth Paltrow. You could check me out on that, but I believe that is true. She found that on some genealogies. “Oh, I know who her great-grandfather is! He’s in the page of the Talmud.”
And then right underneath, again these are marginalia notes really in the corners, is the commentary known as the Gilyon Hashas. This appears on nearly every page all over the place.Gilyon Hashas, which means the “Emendations of the Shas.” That’s an abbreviation for the Shisha Sidrei Mishna, the six orders of the Mishnah, and that is being written by Rabbi Akiva Eger in the 17thand 18th century in Posen, which nowadays kind of is in Poland, I believe.
You may also find on some pages; there are emendations sometimes written by the Vilna Gaon. That’s in Vilna in the 18th century, and all of this is collected on a page that was basically laid out in the end of the 19th century with the Romm publishing of the Vilna Talmud. This goes through all of history. The very page setup we have from the 19th century based on earlier editions. We have the commentaries that take you through all of history on the page starting from the Mishnah in Israel and then going through the Talmud in Babylonia, Rashi in France, the Tosafists in France and Germany. We’re now already in the 12th century. We have cross-references to Maimonides and to the Arba Turim as well as to the rest of the Talmud. In the two corners, the Mesoras Hashas and the Ein Mishpat Ner Mitzvah. And then finally we have these little emendations on the side. Sometimes they’re questions, insights, and that we have from the Hagahot HaBach. That is I believe the 15th century also in Poland and of course Rabbi Akiva Eger in the 18th century. And then finally the actual layout of the page is in the late 19th century.
All of this really comes to show you how intergenerational the study of Talmud is, and it reminds me of a very famous lecture or reflection that was shared by one of the great Talmudists in Jewish history, Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik.
Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, who I have no doubt we will talk about more, was one of the great American roshei yeshiva, heads of the yeshiva. And Rabbi Soloveitchik lived from 1903 to 1993, and he has this really beautiful reflection that I would like to read to you now about the experience that he had as an older man of teaching Talmud itself. He shared this at a celebration, and I think it’s so beautiful and really captures the intergenerational and the inter-geographic layout of the page itself. This is what he said.
“Whenever I enter the classroom, which is crowded with boys, who could be as far as age is concerned my grandchildren, I enter the classroom as an old man. I am old with a wrinkled face and eyes reflecting fatigue and sadness of old age. You have to be old in order to experience that sadness. It’s a very strange sadness. It’s the melancholy of remembering things, things which disappear, they don’t exist. When I enter a classroom I sit down and opposite me are rows of boys, young boys, with beaming eyes, beaming faces, clear eyes radiating the joy of being young.”
“Always when I enter,” Rabbi Soloveitchik says, “you know I entered a very pessimistic mood. I always enter the class in despair, and I ask myself, I mean every time I enter the classroom, ‘Can there be a dialogue between an old teacher and young students? Between a rebbe in his Indian summer and boys enjoying the spring of their lives?
“I start the shiur,” meaning the class. “I don’t know what the conclusion will be. Whenever I start the class the door opens, another old man walks in and sits down. He’s older than I am. All of the talmidim,” meaning the students, “call me the Rav. He’s older than the Rav. He is great, the grandfather of the Rav. His name, “and he’s referring to his own grandfather, “is Reb Chaim Brisker, and without whom no shiur can be delivered nowadays. Then the door opens quietly again and another old man comes in.”
“He’s older than Reb Chaim. He lived in the 17th century. What’s his name? Shabsi Cohen, the famous Shach, who must be present when dinei mammonos,” meaning monetary law,” are being discussed, when we study Bava Metzia, Bava Kama. And then more visitors show up. Some of the visitors lived in the 11th century, some in the 12th century, some in the 13th century. Some lived in antiquity, Rabbi Akiva, Rashi, Rabbeinu Tam, the Ra’avad, the Rashba.”
“More and more come in, come in. Of course what do I do? I introduce them to my pupils and the dialogue commences. The Rambam says something, the Ra’avad disagrees, and sometimes he’s very nasty. Very sharp, harsh language he uses against the Rambam. A boy jumps up to defend the Rambam against the Ra’avad, and the boy is fresh. You know how young boys are fresh. So the language he uses is improper. He uses improper language. So I correct him. And another boy jumps up with a new idea. The Rashba smiles gently.”
“I try to analyze what the young boy meant. Another boy intervenes. We call upon Rabbeinu Tam to express his opinion, and suddenly a symposium of generations comes into existence.”
And that is what a page of Talmud is all about. A symposium of generations coming into existence. And the one who brings it into existence is you, is us, is the Jewish people. Anytime that we open up a page of Talmud, whether we’re studying a Mishnah, a passage of Talmud. Whether we’re cross-referencing to other passages of Talmud, whether we’re figuring out the words of Rashi, learning the questions of Tosfot, reading the questions and insights of Rabbi Akiva Eger. Wherever that may be, we are entering a symposium of generations that transcends geography, that transcends any specific time and place. We transcend it all and we enter the sea of Talmud.
So thank you so much for listening to Talmud Daily, and let’s keep making Torah sweet.