Bava Metzia (Aramaic: middle gate) - the first chapter: Rav Adin Even Israel - Shteinzaltz.
Translation into Russian and additions: Zeev Lezerson (Meshkov).
 Editing: Luba Lezerson (Meshkov).
 
 
What is the Talmud? From the moment the Torah was given on Mount Sinai, when the Almighty uttered the ten commandments and all the people heard His voice and words, the history of the approach of the Divine teaching to man began. The tablets given to Moshe for the first time, the second tablets… Then the voice of the Almighty sounded in the portable Temple in the desert and Moshe wrote everything down… And he remembered it. What he wrote down during forty years of wandering in the desert is the written Torah, and what he memorized is the verbal Torah.
Moses passed on everything he heard to his brother Aaron, his sons and elders, and then to all the people. It was forbidden to write down the verbal Torah. So the Torah was passed down from generation to generation - except for the scrolls - copies from the scroll of Moshe - an verbal explanation to it.
After the loss of Judea's independence in 60 BC, the sages began to think about how to pass on the verbal Torah to subsequent generations under the dominance of the Roman Empire. And in 220, it was decided to write down short sayings of the sages of previous generations. The collection of these sayings, overwhelmingly referring to the details of the laws of the Torah, was called "Mishnah" (from the word "meshanen" - repeats, cramms).
In the next generation, a problem arose: the written statements were not sufficiently clear to the sages.
Schools of analysis of the Mishna by the sages of the Torah arose. One of them settled in Tiberias, and the other two - in Naardei and in Pumbadita, in Babylon (as the sons of Israel from old memory called the Persian Empire).
The work of clarifying the intricacies of the law over several centuries led to the emergence of the Gemara (from the Aramaic word gmiri - to teach). The Mishnah and the Gemara together constituted the Talmud (a working definition to be clarified).
The Gemara discusses different approaches to understanding the Mishnah and the text of the Torah itself.
A distinction is made between the Jerusalem Talmud (compiled in Tiberias) and the Babylonian Talmud (compiled in Persia).
Part of the text of the Talmud is written in Aramaic.
 
Talmud for everyone: The Talmud, starting from the first edition in 1520 in Bomberg's printing house, is a sheet of a large format of continuous text, without commas and vowels. In order to read it, you need a lot of practice, and in order to understand it, you need years spent on its sheets.
About fifty years ago, Rav Adin Even Yisrael Steinsaltz decided, without changing anything in the Talmud, to create a readable text accessible to those who want to study on their own. In twenty-five years he did it.
The text is voiced, the text is divided into semantic pieces. Short explanations allow you to tie ends to ends. Illustrations, descriptions of the realities of that time, short biographies of sages - all this turned the Talmud into a readable book.
The work of Rav Adin Steinsaltz has been translated into English and French.
The basis of the text of the Talmud in Russian and explanations to it (we are talking about the first chapter of the treatise Bava Metzia) was a translation into English, in which there are a large number of additions and explanations, even more detailed than in the Hebrew version.
But in the Russian version, the explanations are even more detailed than in the English or French editions.  
The publication of the first chapter of the treatise Bava Metzia in Russian was used by hundreds of people to learn how to read and understand the pages of the Talmud.
It is used in schools where the Talmud is the main subject of study of religious subjects.
 
Rav Adin Even Yisrael Steinsaltz: Born in 1937 in Jerusalem. Studied mathematics, physics and chemistry in Hebrew University of Jerusalem in addition to Torah study. At 1961Steinsaltz created an experimental high school near Beersheba. While working at this school, he developed an innovative curriculum and methodology based on taking into account the cognitive interests of students, the development of their creativity and self-confidence.
At 23, he became the youngest headmaster in Israel.
In 1965, Steinsaltz founded the Israel Institute for Talmudic Publications and began his monumental work on translations and commentaries on Talmud, in particular translation into modern Hebrew, English, Russian and some other languages. Editions of the Steinsaltz Talmud include a translation from Aramaic, on which it is mostly written, and a comprehensive commentary. Steinsaltz completed his Hebrew edition of the Babylonian Talmud in November 2010. Steinsaltz's edition of the Talmud is popular all over the world. At the moment, the total circulation of publications in different languages has more than 2 million volumes.
These editions of the Talmud made it available for study by thousands of those who wish, while previously it was available only to a narrow circle of people who study the Torah at a serious level.
Steinsaltz's book "Kabbalah: Rose with thirteen petals" was first published in 1980 and has already been published in 8 languages. Overall, Steinsaltz is the author of over 60 books and hundreds of articles on a variety of topics, including the Talmud, Jewish mysticism, Jewish philosophy, sociology, and philosophy.
Steinsaltz is known as a teacher and spiritual mentor to many students. In Israel and in the CIS, he organized a network of schools and other educational institutions. Steinsaltz had a degree honorary doctorate a number of universities, among whichYeshiva University, Ben Gurion University, Bar-Ilan University, Brandeis University, Florida International University. In addition, he was the head of the yeshiva (rosh yeshiva) inYeshivat Hesder in Tkoa.