The Talmud: A Biography

Description

The life and times of an enduring work of Jewish spirituality The Babylonian Talmud, a postbiblical Jewish text that is part scripture and part commentary, is an unlikely bestseller. Written in a hybrid of Hebrew and Aramaic, it is often ambiguous to the point of incomprehension, and its subject matter reflects a narrow scholasticism that should

Barry Scott Wimpfheimer is associate professor of religious studies and law at Northwestern University and the author of Narrating the Law: A Poetics of Talmudic Legal Stories.

"Winner of the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in Education and Jewish Identity, In Memory of Dorothy Kripke" "First, Wimpfheimer traces the details of both discussions, but especially the halachic discussion, in close and fine detail within the talmudic text. His deconstruction of the halachic text in particular is masterful."---David Reuben, Jewish Chronicle "Wimpfheimer takes the reader by the hand and walks through the many hair-splitting complexities of the Talmud, its evolution and its impact."---Patrick T. Reardon, Chicago Tribune "Excellent and highly recommended."---David Tesler, Association of Jewish Libraries "The question therefore becomes how exactly such literary and historical analysis is arriving to the 'essential' Talmud rather than to the new 'enhanced' understanding of it. The answer to this question is in the author's complex and carefully calibrated framing of the book as 'biography.'"---Sergey Dolgopolski, Reading Religion