Abstract
The term "savar" in the Babylonian Talmud indicates an opinion that is ultimately rejected. According to some Rishonim, however, in certain places this term introduces an opinion that is not ...rejected. This article examines these instances and concludes that indeed in these places the term "savar" is references an opinion that is not ultimately rejected. In most of these places, the reading in most of the textual witnesses was emended, and the word "savar" was erased, apparently in accordance with the other approach. In those places where the text was not emended, some of the commentators interpreted the passage not in accordance with its plain meaning, and, according to their interpretation, the opinion that was introduced by the "savar" was indeed rejected.
The background of the Maʿlot article is the method of Talmud instruction at the Volozyhn Yeshiva and Yeshivat Maʿalot and investigating the claim of the management of Yeshivat Maʿalot, the head of ...the yeshiva, and the teaching staff that the yeshiva is a direct continuation of the famed Volozhyn Yeshiva that operated in 19th-century Europe. This claim can be examined from many angles, but the aim of the current article is to focus on one major angle common to the entire yeshiva world over the generations in Israel and abroad, that is, the method of Talmud instruction. The research setting is based on historical sources for teaching Talmud in yeshivot, physical attendance during lessons, interviews with teachers and students, and criticism brought by them and by the authors. The research methods include describing, comparing and criticising the method of instruction at Yeshivat Maʿalot. The research results led to a conclusion regarding the question of whether the above claim is justified. The article fits the scope of the journal because it reveals the teaching methods at Yeshivat Maʿalot. Contribution: The contribution of the article lies in its being the first to offer a critique of the Talmud instruction method employed at Yeshivat Maʿalot, with the aim of rethinking the current instruction method and creating a possible avenue for changing it and adapting it as much as possible to the students’ needs and abilities.
Literary sources of the classical era (first-fifth centuries), both Greco-Roman and Jewish, indicate that snakes were used for different purposes, such as for medicine, as raw materials for ...manufacturing objects, and as pets. This article discusses the use of snakes to deal with pests in the ancient homes as reflected in the Talmudic sources as well as in classical literature. The Jerusalem Talmud (Yerushalmi) brings a story of how a house snake helped a family locate a wild snake that entered the house and left its venom in the food. The impression is that the origin of the story is from a non-Jewish environment, and not necessarily from Eretz Israel. It is not impossible that the story is one version of stories about Aesculapian snakes that helped exterminate and drive away pests, as related by Pliny. This narrative variation was absorbed by the sages from their own non-Jewish environment, who adapted the story to the religious-educational messages that they sought to convey. It seems that the practice of using snakes to exterminate domestic pests was relatively limited and less common than that of small predators, such as cats, mongooses or weasels.
Holger M. Zellentin seeks to probe how far the classical rabbis took their literary playfulness in order to advance their religious and societal causes. Building on the literary approaches to ...rabbinic Judaism of the past decades, this work considers the rabbis' attitudes towards their Byzantine and Sassanian surroundings. The author examines how the Talmud and Midrash in Palestine and Persia repeat previous texts with comical difference, oscillating between reverence and satire. The result shows rabbinic society and its literature engaging in the great debates of their times, commenting on issues such as pedagogy, abstinence, dream interpretation, inheritance law, ritual purity, and Christian triumphalism and asceticism. In constant conversation with the Bible, the rabbis reveal themselves as capable of critically reinventing the Jewish tradition, as well as of playfully engaging a few Gospel passages favoured by their Christian interlocutors. Rabbinic parodies cast deviant insiders as tantamount to outsiders and explore the limits of acculturation within the Jewish tradition - in the Talmud, even parody itself comes under parodic scrutiny.
This work, in three volumes, consists of a translation and critical commentary to folios 10b-17a of the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Megillah. The material contained therein comprises the only full ...midrashic exposition of an entire biblical book to have been incorporated into the Babylonian Talmud, making it the only complete midrashic work that has come down to us from that prominent Jewish community and its rabbinic teachers.
This work, in three volumes, consists of a translation and critical commentary to folios 10b-17a of the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Megillah. The material contained therein comprises the only full ...midrashic exposition of an entire biblical book to have been incorporated into the Babylonian Talmud, making it the only complete midrashic work that has come down to us from that prominent Jewish community and its rabbinic teachers.
This book is a targetted study engaging the widely known phenomenon that many tractates in the Babylonian Talmud exhibit broad similarities to their counterparts in the Palestinian Talmud. Gray ...argues that this is the result of the production of an "early Talmud" in Palestine that made its way to Babylonia, where it formed later Babylonian editors used it in building the Babylonian Talmud.
This work, in three volumes, consists of a translation and critical commentary to folios 10b-17a of the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Megillah. The material contained therein comprises the only full ...midrashic exposition of an entire biblical book to have been incorporated into the Babylonian Talmud, making it the only complete midrashic work that has come down to us from that prominent Jewish community and its rabbinic teachers.
Learning to Read Talmud is the first book-length study of how teachers teach and how students learn to read Talmud. Through a series of studies conducted by scholars of Talmud in classrooms that ...range from seminaries to secular universities and with students from novice to advanced, this book elucidates a broad range of ideas about what it means to learn to read Talmud and tools for how to achieve that goal. Bridging the study of Talmud and the study of pedagogy, this book is an essential resource for scholars, curriculum writers, and classroom teachers of Talmud.
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