"mimics" traditional Talmudic texts. "This
is the Vilna shas [or Talmud] in drag."
Wieseltier was especially peeved at the
promotion surrounding the new Talmud.
Some good, he said, will emerge from all
this — "A new generation will get closer
to the Talmud." But in the process, he
said, the Talmud is "being vulgarized."
Yet Judith Hauptman, associate pro-
fessor of Talmud at Jewish Theological
Seminary in New York, expects only bene-
fits to emanate from Rabbi Steinsaltz's
Talmud, especially "for those Jews who
would never study the Talmud in the
original."
The Steinsaltz edition, she said, goes
beyond previous English translations of
the Talmud in two ways:
• By keying Rabbi Steinsaltz's corn-
mentary word-to-word to the original
Hebrew text of the Talmud to which it re-
fers, the rabbi has produced "the best
tool yet to master the Hebrew" for some-
one fresh to it.
• By summarizing all the traditional
commentaries in his own commentary,
Rabbi Steinsaltz "presents all the big
guns."
Yet, despite her praise, Prof. Haupt-
man will not use the Steinsaltz text in her
classes: The Conservative movement's
seminary tries to give its students the
skills to read the original Talmud, and no
substitutes will suffice.
Traditional yeshivot take a similar
stance, stressing that a student must be
committed to take the plunge into the
original Aramaic Talmud, difficult as it
may be.
Publishing the English translation of
the Steinsaltz edition of the Talmud was
intended to give American Jews access to
a text for which they either had to know
Aramaic or, until recently, to know
Hebrew. But as the bickering at Stein-
saltz's Random House "class" on Tal-
mud illustrated, there is a segment of A-
merican Jewry that cares less about
whatever wisdom may be in the Talmud
than in adrenalin-pumping debates about
modern Israel or about a Jew's place in
secular society.
This does not mean that the Steinsaltz
edition won't sell. Sales to date have been
remarkably brisk. But it probably does
mean that certain U.S. Jews will not buy
the Talmud no matter how stumbling
blocks —linguistic, historical, cultural —
have been taken out of their way. For
them, the Talmud is not a door into a tra-
dition of sustained logic, but a pallid
anachronism.
But to many other Jews, the Talmud is
a potent instrument, full of sagacity,
humor, ancient tradition and illuminating
debate. It is on this audience that Ran-
dom House is betting a fairly substantial
sum. And on which the rise or fall of the
Steinsaltz Talmud will depend. ❑

`A Strange Kind Of Sacred Book'

"One of the problems of learning Tal-
mud," Rabbi Steinsaltz advised his
"students" at the Random House Tal-
mud class last week, "is that it is not a
conventional way of thinking. We have to
think about several different subjects at
the same time. Try to imagine something
that is a combination of the dialogues of
Plato, a book by [Sir William]Blackstone
the 18th century English jurist and writ-
er on law], and possibly tales from the Bi-
ble. This is not completely what the Tal-
mud is. It is more complex. But this is the
style of the Talmud."
The extract from the Talmud chosen by
Rabbi Steinsaltz involved a communal
shepherd who was regularly given several
animals by villagers to oversee while
grazing. This was ordinarily done in the
presence of witnesses. The animals were
one day given to the shepherd in the
absence of witnesses. The shepherd later
denied receiving the animals. He was
subsequently charged with theft - and
with eating two of the animals.
The debate of the rabbis in the Talmud
about the case centered on whether the
shepherd or the plaintiffs should take an
oath.
Amid a flurry of rabbinic, opinions,
some of the "students" felt considerable
unease in relating to the travails of a
hassled shepherd in an ancient land.
When Rabbi Steinsaltz discussed
whether Jews should obey unjust secular
laws, writer Hugh Nissenson asked
whether it was better for a Jew to reside
in a secular nation, or in a society "where
God permeates all aspects."
"Being an Israeli, and possibly not
such an ardent Zionist," Rabbi Steinsaltz
said he preferred "a tolerant society"
rather than a theocracy. "Some people
have said," he added, "and with a fair
amount of truth, that monotheism is the
beginning of intolerance. No wonder that
the United States developed pragma-
tism," a philosophy that rejects ultimate
truths.
Rabbi Steinsaltz and author Hugh
Nissenson then considered the merits of
Jewish culture versus Jewish ethnicity.
Nissenson claimed there are now no
boundaries to human behavior "as exem-
plified by the Holocaust in the 20th cen-
tury," and Rabbi Steinsaltz championed
the Jewish culture that he considered to
be superior to the mere skeleton of Jew-
ish ethnicity.
But an obviously chagrined Alfred
Kazin contended that "Judaism is not
only a culture. It's a state. And it's a
theocratic state wherever it is at power.
It's exactly that which has given trouble

to people who are Jews, but who are also
aware that a great many things in the
Talmud, in terms of terms of astronomy
and geology, are simply not true...."
Referring to the claim of the Israeli
writer, Amos Oz, that the greatest dan-
ger to world peace stems from ultra-
Orthodox Jewish zealots in Israel trying
to destroy the Mosque of Omar in Jerusa-
lem, Kazin attacked a fundamental prem-
ise of Rabbi Steinsaltz's presentation of
the Talmud — the primacy of religious
authority. This, implied Kazin, can lead
to a reflexive disposition to observe the
dictates of authority, even perverse au-
thority.
Alluding to the Judenrat, the all-
Jewish councils the Nazis created to
govern European ghettoes during World
War Two, Kazin said, "One of the
greatest [war-time] scandals was Jewish
leaders obeying the Nazi laws and sen-
ding fellow Jews to their deaths. Not only
to rescue themselves, but to obey the law.
They were so full of obedience. I don't
think one can overlook these questions in
1989."
Rabbi Steinsaltz seemed perplexed at
the new direction of his class that had
originally focused on an obscure shepherd
in a far-away land.
"In a real Talmudic manner," he said,
"we are going into a different subject."
The rabbi noted that since the emanci-
pation of Jews in the mid-19th century,
Jews have been able to choose whether to
accept Jewish culture. But, he said, "I
don't usually get into these discussions. I
want to get back to the poor shepherd..."
The rabbi reminded his class that at the
outset of the session he had stated, "God
said, `If you discard me and study my
book, let it work on its own.' I am not try-
ing to make you sing, 'Hallelujah." First
of all, I don't know how to. And I'm not
sure I would like to. What I am trying to
say is that... there is an issue of wit-
nesses..."
But before Rabbi Steinsaltz could
determine whether or not the shepherd
had, indeed, stolen some animals, writer
Leonard Fein said, "The conflict here is
that you are hearing questions from Jews
who enter these pages feeling some bur-
den of having to make at least some con-
cessions to the text."
And that, responded Rabbi Steinsaltz,
"is why I wanted to confine the discus-
sion to a small subject. In a way, the
Talmud is one of the very few holy books
that do not demand being studied with-
out believing it. It is a very strange kind
of sacred book." 0
A.J.M.

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

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