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difficult for a native speaker of mod-
ern Hebrew, the Talmud is written in
an arcane Aramaic-Hebrew jargon and
is notoriously difficult to navigate,
daunting for those not trained in its
way of dialectical argument.
"The language is a barrier for people
looking to master the Talmud," Blau
said. "By translating it into Hebrew,
Rabbi Steinsaltz made the Talmud
available to be studied by people sty-
mied by that language barrier. That is
a massive accomplishment."
For Steinsaltz, the Talmud is not a
rarefied tome that should remain in
the hands of experts, but the founda-
tional text of Judaism itself.
In addition to his straight trans-
lation of the original Talmud text,
Steinsaltz added his own commentary,
in Hebrew, alongside the text, as his

1

contemporary take on the ancient
debates.
Steinsaltz spurred criticism in some
Orthodox circles for altering conven-
tions because he placed his commen-
tary in the space traditionally reserved
for Rashi, the pre-eminent Talmud
commentator; added new notes in
place of certain tosafot, or additional
commentaries; and changed the tra-
ditional layout and pagination in his
translation.
"That may seem a mere format
quibble, but it may have struck some
as misguided:' said Rabbi Avi Shafran,
spokesman for the haredi Orthodox
Agudath Israel of America.
David Kraemer, a professor of
Talmud at the Jewish Theological
Seminary in New York, doesn't con-
sider it a problem. He notes that the
Talmud's page format was set only
when printing was invented and did
not exist in earlier, handwritten manu-

scripts.
"Any translation is an interpreta-
tion:' Kraemer said. "To translate
[Talmud] in both the literal and
nonliteral sense, you have to add to
it, which means making judgments. I
don't criticize that at all — that's what
all reading is, what all commentary is."
Steinsaltz's Hebrew Talmud is not
the only modern translation.
Soon after he launched his project, a
team of Orthodox scholars began work
on an English translation. Published by
ArtScroll, the Schottenstein Babylonian
Talmud is used now by students
around the world, and is available in
English, Hebrew and French.
In the late 1980s, Steinsaltz began
publishing his own English editions of
the Talmud, working from his Hebrew
translation. Steinsaltz's English Talmud
is not as widely praised as his Hebrew
translation; the ArtScroll English ver-
sion is more widely used. ❑

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20 November 4 • 2010