JACOB NEUSNER
JACOB NEUSNER Rabbi Steinsaltz: You tell people things about the Talmud that are broadly known to be untrue. And stop acting like a clown. Dear Rabbi Steinsaltz, In secular, rabbinical and...
...not one sentence sustains the view of a document that is an agglutinative compilation...
...You are good at explaining words and phrases...
...The best is Soncino, the model for everyone else...
...Two authentic geniuses with whom you compete are Rashi (1040-1105) and Maimonides (1135-1204...
...You are a serious scholar, but you are acting like a clown and a publicity-hound...
...His most recent book is Studying Classical Judaism (Westminster/John Knox, 1991...
...By telling you to cut the nonsense, I cannot be accused of that Steinsaltz-bashing that is an open secret in the yeshivah and academic worlds...
...The Bavli reveals a coherent and harmonious document, one that has moved from beginning to what was a well-planned and predetermined end...
...You ignore the great masters of the Torah in the yeshivah and you ignore the important works of Talmud-study read in the yeshivah and the academic worlds...
...Had you studied not merely words, phrases and sentences but the composition and construction of entire paragraphs and chapters, you would have seen that...
...what you see as essentially pointless—the document as a whole—proves purposeful and well crafted...
...Let me give you one example of your abysmal misrepresentations...
...Its one voice, personified in the classical academies of Talmud-study as "the Talmud," speaks throughout—not the diverse voices of people engaged in a chaotic argument...
...This is how the Talmud analyzes any Mishnah-passage: It begins by clarifying the Mishnah-paragraph, then turns to examine the principles of law implicit in the Mishnah-paragraph and finally broadens the discussion with analogies from case to law and law to case...
...For my part, where you find chaos, I find order...
...Propositions are systematically tested and examined...
...Cut the nonsense...
...We know you only as a pretentious popularizes Your introduction to the Talmud tells people things that are broadly known to be untrue...
...Dear Rabbi Steinsaltz, In secular, rabbinical and academic media, I have given appreciative reviews to your translation and commentary to Bavli Bava Metzia [a tractate of the Babylonian Talmud, part of an edition of the so-called "Steinsaltz Talmud...
...This letter comes from a constructive critic, someone who has devoted his life, as you have, to studying the same holy books and who values not only those books but also everyone who studies them in the service1 of the unique God who gave us the Torah...
...As in Plato's dialogues, question and answer constitutes conventions through which logic is exposed and tested, not the reports of things people said spontaneously or even after the fact...
...And I do tell you: Cut the nonsense...
...What you are popularizing are your impressions, not authentic learning...
...It has no formal external order [my italics], but is bound by a strong inner connection between its many diverse subjects....The authority of the Talmud lies in its use of this rigorous method in its search for truth with regard to the entire Torah—in other words, with regard to all possible subjects in the world, both physical and spiritual...
...Scarcely a line is out of place...
...The Talmud is carefully crafted, a sustained and cogent inquiry...
...What I suggest is that you rejoin the scholarly world, so that, in your magnificent venture popularizing the Talmud of Babylonia, you tell people things that are so...
...You paraphrase out-of-date books, representing them as how things are...
...The literary traits of the document presuppose a uniform code of communication: a single voice...
...When you perpetuate the nonsense that the Talmud is formless and disorderly, that it is about everything and its opposite, you misrepresent a document you know only in its parts...
...It is easy to outline the discussion and to produce a reasoned account of the position and order of every completed composition and to order the compositions into a composite that provides a beginning and an end...
...Do you honesdy compare yourself to those giants, let alone claim to excel over them...
...In fact, the Bavli is about some few things—in all their rich particulars...
...Do that, Rabbi Steinsaltz, and see whether you still think the Bavli "has no formal external order...
...The document seems to intend to provide notes, an abbreviated script that anyone may use to reconstruct and reenact formal discussions of problems: About this, one says that...
...Rabbi Steinsaltz, the Talmud speaks in a single voice, uniformly, consistently and predictably...
...What you allege is all-encompassing is a selective piece of writing...
...Jacob Neusner is Graduate Research Professor of Humanities and Religious Studies at the University of South Florida...
...We must assume people took for granted that it would be possible for anyone to reconstruct speech, doing so in accurate and conventional ways...
...You ignore 200 years of scholarship, mostly Orthodox, in telling people what you do about the Bavli [Babylonian Talmud...
...You ignore up-to-date books...
...Within the protracted discussion are cross-references...
...Readers of The World and I, Conservative Judaism, Journal for the Study of Judaism and Religious Studies Review will attest to my generous evaluation of your work...
...Tell your flacks to stop advertising you as the greatest genius in talmudic studies in 1,000 years...
...You play the fool in announcing on television that you have come to reveal an inaccessible document You are the fifth to present the Bavli in English, after Michael Levi Rodkinson (1896), the Soncino Press (1936), the El Am Talmud (1965) and me (1984...
...That statement pertains to the Bavli's substantive propositions, the things that, through an infinity of details, the framers wish to show time and again...
...it is both orderly and wonderfully repetitious...
...Am I suggesting you are just an itinerant charlatan come to America to raise a few bucks...
...The voice is the voice of a book...
...The Bavli is not disorderly...
...Your allegation that the Talmud follows no "formal external order" is false...
...But all of this script is public, not individual...
...You lecture at Yale and at the Institute for Advanced Study, where Jewish learning is mediocre, but not at Yeshiva University or Ner Israel, where the authentic tradition of Talmud-study flourishes...
...The Talmud is not a mere compilation of this and that, the result of centuries of haphazard accumulation of the detritus of various schools or opinions...
...Therefore its contours are a reflection of life itself...
...If you succeed, as I hope you will, people will regain access to the Bavli...
...Your introduction to the Bavli states: The Talmud...deals with an overwhelmingly broad subject—the nature of all things according to the Torah...
...Tell your claque, when you come to this country, you really do want to pay your respects to the giants of Torah in the American yeshivah world, whom up to now you have mostly ignored...
...It is a public joke that you lead sessions of "Torah-study" for such masters of talmudic studies as Daniel Schorr and Woody Allen, but you do not parade your wares in front of the acknowledged masters of the Talmud...
...It follows rules that govern language-choice, the order of topics, the cogency of paragraphs set forth in sequence...
...Curt and often arcane, these notes can be translated only with immense bodies of explanation...
...But watch out—when they do, they will find that your allegations about the character of that writing are way off base...
...These are external traits of order...
...If you were right, people should imagine that the Talmud is about nothing in particular...
...You are wrong not merely because the Talmud's character contradicts your airy characterization of it but because you massively miss the mark in your misunderstanding of the document...
...Address an audience that knows as much as you do, perhaps more...
...I have said the opposite—against the judgments of many others, who have dismissed your work as not merely trivial but inauthentic...
Vol. 16 • October 1991 • No. 5
