jews d

in
the

COURTESY OF SEFARIA/VIA JTA

spirituality

Learning together
at the secular Bina
Yeshiva in Tel Aviv,
Shavuot 2015

Internet
version of Oral
Law could
revolutionize
Torah study.

COURTESY BINA YESHIVA

BEN SALES
TIMES OF ISRAEL

Sefaria Executive Director Daniel Septimus,
left, with co-founders Brett Lockspeiser
and Joshua Foer.

Talmud &
Commentaries

F

or centuries, studying a page of the Talmud has
come with a bevy of barriers to entry.
Written mostly in Aramaic, the Talmud in its
most commonly printed form also lacks punctuation or
vowels, let alone translation. Its premier explanatory com-
mentary, composed by the medieval sage Rashi, is usually
printed in an obscure Hebrew typeface read almost exclu-
sively by religious, learned Jews. Even then, scholars can
still spend hours figuring out what the text means.
And that’s not to mention the Talmud’s size and cost: 37
full volumes, called tractates, take up an entire shelf of a
library and can cost several thousand dollars.
Helping students and readers crack these barriers and
access what amounts to a library of Jewish law, ritual,
folklore and moral guidance has been an ongoing endeav-
or. Milestones include the first (unfinished) attempt at an
English translation by American publisher Michael Levi
Rodkinson at the turn of the 20th century, an abridged
version by Rabbi Chaim Tchernowitz in the 1920s and
“The Soncino Talmud on CD-ROM” from 1995.
Now, a website hopes to build on these earlier break-
throughs and break all the barriers at once.
Sefaria, a website founded in 2013 that aims to put the
seemingly infinite Jewish canon online for free, has pub-
lished an acclaimed translation of the Talmud in English.
The translation, which includes explanatory notes in rela-
tively plain language, was started by scholar Rabbi Adin
Steinsaltz in 1965 and is considered by many to be the
best in its class.

The Steinsaltz edition of the Talmud has been in print
for decades in modern Hebrew, with an English transla-
tion coming out more recently, and parts of it already exist
on the internet. But this is the first time it is being put
online in its entirety for free.
The online edition also opens up the copyright license,
meaning that anyone is allowed to repurpose it for teach-
ing, literature or anything else.
“Ninety percent of the world’s Jews speak Hebrew and
English,” said Daniel Septimus, Sefaria’s executive direc-
tor. “The Talmud is in Aramaic. It will now be online in
Hebrew and English. From an accessibility point of view,
it’s a game changer.”
Sefaria rolled out 22 tractates of the Steinsaltz English
edition last week and will be publishing the entire Hebrew
translation over the course of 2017. The rest of the English
edition, which is not yet finished, will be published
online as it is completed. The translation’s publication
was made possible by a multimillion-dollar deal with the
Steinsaltz edition’s publishers, Milta and Koren Publishers
Jerusalem, and financed by the William Davidson
Foundation, a family charity based in Metro Detroit.
The edition will be known as the William Davidson
Talmud.
Besides its edition being free, Sefaria’s founders say
its version of the Steinsaltz Talmud is better than com-
petitors’ because it is untethered to the Talmud’s classic
printed form. Since the mid-15th century, the Talmud has
been published with unpunctuated text in a column in the

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February 16 • 2017

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