Introduction to the Talmud: Rav Adin Even Yisrael Steinsaltz
Translation into Russian and additions: Zeev Leyzerson (Meshkov)
Editing: Lyuba Leyzerson (Meshkova).
This book covers:
1) the history of the emergence of the main work of the Jewish tradition, which reflected the "Oral Torah".
2) concepts, principles of commenting on the Torah.
3) terms in Hebrew and Aramaic.
Recently, many people in different countries have shown interest in the study of the Talmud. Some government agencies, such as the Korean Ministry of Education, are trying to make extracts from the Talmud the subject of study in schools and universities. In Israel, the Talmud is studied not only in religious schools and yeshivas, but also in universities at the faculties of history and law. It seems that familiarity with the Talmud, as a work compiled over several centuries, will in the near future become indispensable for those who work in legal systems and for all thinking people.
Explanation: 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.
The supporting material contains a description of the weight and volume measures used in antiquity, as well as ancient coins and their equivalent in different periods of history.
