In the Babylonian Talmud, we find two statements of Rabbi Tarfon that are parallel to those of Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount as recorded in the book of Matthew. It is somewhat surprising, in general, that there’s a...
The Saul Lieberman Institute of Talmudic Research announced today that they have compiled full word-for-word comparisons of the textual witnesses on entire chapters of the Babylonian Talmud! These synopses are compiled and presented as an Excel spreadsheet, each file encompassing one full...
In this week’s issue of the Jewish Journal, there were not one, but two references to gender in rabbinic literature(!), which is certainly exciting that rabbinic literature is getting some attention in Jewish newspapers. However, I found the description of...
When it comes to lighting candles on Hanukah, the amount of candles lit is now commonly done in an ascending manner according to the night. The original source for this is the following text (bShabbat 21b): תנו רבנן: מצות חנוכה...
For its tenth episode, “The Joy of Text” went with its second ever mini-episode focussing on a Talmudic text. This month’s episode, which was published a week ago, focussed on the following Talmudic text on one of the ways that...
Having written earlier about one rabbi in the Talmud who was recorded as having stated nine religious aspirations, I wanted to briefly look at how the Talmud discusses one of them, in particular. One of them is that his portion is...
Last month’s episode of “The Joy of Text” switched up its format for what it’s calling a mini-episode. In this mini-episode, in lieu of its typical format of a main topic, a guest interview, and then Q & A all...
There is a fascinating text found in the Babylonian Talmud that I wanted to explore a little bit, share some thoughts, and, hopefully, at a later point in time, have researched it to provide a greater sense of it. Here...
Not infrequently in the Babylonian Talmud is the Hebrew Bible quoted. But how much of it is quoted? Recently, the numbers were crunched over at Sefaria and they came up with the results. While more than a quarter of the...
With discussions of consensuality regarding sex and rape being quite common in news media these days, last week’s story in the JTA by Julie Wiener about Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s a statement of hers that the Talmud condones not fully consensual...
