Since its creation, the Babylonian Talmud has stood at the center of the Jewish intellectual canon and the heart of Torah study. Despite its wide circulation and enduring significance, it remains an elusive work to define. It is a religious text, yet contains little theology; it is deeply legal, yet it is hardly concerned with practical rulings; it is framed as a commentary on the Mishnah, yet frequently departs into independent expansive discussions. What, then, is this composition? How was it constructed? How did it come to occupy such a central place in Jewish tradition? And how has it been interpreted over the centuries? The first part of The Talmud: A History of Learning is devoted to analyzing the Talmud itself—dissecting its constituent parts and exploring their formation, purpose, and historical context. The second part turns to the reception of the Talmud: the ways in which it has been read, studied, and reinterpreted from its redaction through the present day. The title of the book reflects this dual focus: it addresses both the internal processes of learning that gave rise to the Talmudic text, and the external history of its study and the discourses it has generated from late antiquity to the present.

The articles in this volume Israel Knohl : The Linking of Holiness Concepts and the broadening of the Borders of Holiness in the Editorial Layer of the Pentateuch. Alexander Rofé : Divorce in the Hebrew Bible and the Meaning of Sefer Keritut. Ishay Rosen-Zvi : A Protocol of the Yavnean Academy? Rereading Tosefta Sanhedrin. Shlomo Toledano : The Talmudic Methodology of Rabbi Bezalel Ashkenazi. Judith Weiss: The Two Zoharic Versions of the Legend of The Tanna and the Deadman. Iris Brown (Hoizman) : ‘The Violation of the Torah is Its True Fulfillment’;Ultra-Orthodox Ruling against the Halakhah for The Emendation of the Sinners – R. Hayim of Sanz as a Case Study.

Tarbiz is the only Hebrew academic journal that is devoted to the entire range of Jewish studies. Appearing quarterly, this journal is the principal forum for the expression of the most important developments in Jewish studies in our generation, and its contributors include the leading scholars in the various fields of Jewish studies in Israel and the world, as well as young scholars who are beginning to make their mark. Tarbiz was first published in 1930 at the Institute of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, under the editorial pen of Prof. Jacob Nachum Epstein z"l.

This book examines the place of the Temple and its rituals in early Rabbinic (Tannaitic) discourse, through a specific case study: the reconstruction of the ritual of the suspected adulteress (Num 5:11-32) in Mishna Sotah. Numbers chapter five describes a ritual performed to test suspicions raised by a husband regarding his wife’s sexual fidelity. The jealous husband is required to bring his wife to the priest in the Temple, where she is subjected to an ordeal of a character unparalleled in Biblical law. The Mishnaic ritual differs significantly from the Biblical one, both in detail and overall character. The private priestly ritual becomes, in the Mishna, a grand public event (in which the Mishna invites “whoever wants to stare at her” to come and stare) directed by the Rabbis themselves. A new demand for objective evidence, to comply with standard Talmudic rules of evidence, is introduced. A number of procedures have been added at the beginning and during the course of the ritual. Even the conclusion of the ritual, the actual result of the test, has been radically altered. Why were these measures added to the Sotah ritual? Where were they taken from? How do they function in the context of Mishna Sotah as a whole? How do they relate to the Biblical ritual, on the one hand, and to the reality of the temple on the other? And, finally, what led the Rabbis to reinvent a ritual already described at length in the Bible? Through specific textual engagement with these questions the book suggests a new look at the Tannaitic discourse and the place of the temple in it.