MOMENT Interviews Talmud Scholar Adin Steinsaltz
MOMENT Interviews Talmud Scholar Adin Steinsaltz "People get most of their religion when they are very young. They grow but their God never grows."—Adin Steinsaltz Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz came to...
...Without this knowledge he is a kind of mummy, a kind of a body without a spirit...
...Nobody bothered me...
...But I told the doctor, "This is a question for the Boss...
...Their attitude is, "I am not going to be a Torah-observant Jew...
...If there is somebody else to do it, fine...
...Epstein: You've observed that unfortunately, within the observant community, there are those who observe the ritual laws but may not have personal integrity...
...Whatever you believed, if you had integrity, he didn't mind...
...A great part of the Jewish people are ignorant...
...I'm under no such limitations with myself...
...Anker: Is the required level of knowledge the same for men and women...
...I studied physics, mathematics...
...That is one of those points of faith that make a difference...
...so this is what I studied...
...You see, a person who hasn't been taught may yearn for learning...
...I also consider this a disaster...
...The Jewish manuscript collection in the Soviet Union is "of inestimable value," according to Steinsaltz...
...That is the basic difference between knowing about something and living it...
...There are certain other things that you cannot do by halves...
...But it doesn't make sense...
...Talmud wasn't a profession for me...
...Doesn't the religious person have something in addition to knowledge...
...Shanks: Does halacha have any application to how the Israelis are dealing with the uprising in the territories right now...
...People speak about intermarriage...
...An airplane works with gravity...
...Steinsaltz: I wanted very much to be a shepherd...
...there is something to be done...
...I think I have the talent and the will to make a good engineer...
...Steinsaltz, who lives in his native Jerusalem, is translating the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds into modern Hebrew and adding his own commentary...
...I like animals...
...Is that a fair inference from your answer...
...The 24-hour limitation, unluckily...
...I wrote about it in my book, but I just don't know by heart what I wrote...
...Today, in America, the individual has to make the decisions...
...I have the same feeling about most of the things that I am doing...
...Shanks: What about the person with the knowledge who isn't religious...
...There is no one else to take care of him...
...Shanks: That raises another issue: What is the authority of the Bible...
...What motivates you in this...
...We light Chanukah candles...
...These include the U.S...
...You are either in or out...
...A rabbi has much less power than a judge has...
...As in so many cases—a few million of them—there are disputes, some still unresolved...
...They also don't study it...
...In the morning—well, I am still alive...
...Can you imagine half a horse, half a chicken...
...A great part of them are assimilated, estranged...
...Steinsaltz: I am surely...
...You should have asked me, what value is it for the observant Jew...
...That is not written in the five books of Moses...
...I wonder if that [Rabbenu Gershom's act] is just a whole different category...
...Because I cannot clone myself, I want to raise up some people who will go on and, more or less, do the same kind of work I am doing...
...There are people who know very little of it and still believe in it...
...But I still went on with my work...
...It is the same thing in my writing...
...But if nobody wants to do it, then I am there...
...You see, if a woman is an observant woman, she lives a life that has emotional and practical ties with Judaism...
...If we speak about higher levels of knowledge, then you must make all kinds of distinctions...
...So he lies there, the mummified body, and people sit around the table, and he's always in the minutes of the society as present—but not voting...
...Nobody even consulted Jewish law...
...A beginner can learn anything that is attractive to him...
...Shanks: But why the Talmud...
...Epstein: Is there a level of Jewish knowledge that it takes to vote...
...Sometimes I may be in a terrible mood or I am over-tired, so I take the written page and I put it aside and I go to sleep...
...That is the whole idea...
...You see I am always quoting my father...
...Shanks: What is that difference...
...I am not taking anyone else's place...
...But in Israel there was a very strong, intellectually defined, secular religion, although the founding fathers of Israel were atheists...
...The only way to acquire some knowledge is to do some learning on your own...
...Once I was there for about two weeks for a check-up and I wrote a small book in the hospital, my book on the [Passover] haggadah...
...Steinsaltz: Almost everybody does it...
...When I was 10, my father hired a private tutor to teach me Talmud...
...The Babylonian Talmud translation will eventually be published in English by Random House...
...Steinsaltz: It means the difference in education doesn't matter, because there is a whole different lifestyle...
...The botanist Luther Burbank told of someone who described him as "Burbank against Nature...
...I didn't plan my life with this aim...
...But very rarely...
...So you do what you can...
...There are some mathematicians who think that anybody who doesn't know mathematics shouldn't be considered a decent human being...
...Steinsaltz: The way a person starts has no universal answer...
...As moment was going to press, Billett informed us that further agreements with the Soviets would soon be announced...
...All of these institutions have expressed interest in the project according to Samuel Norich, executive director of YIVO...
...Shanks: To qualify for what...
...A person doesn't have to eat the whole packet full of chocolates...
...When he saw a person he thought was deeply religious, he had great respect for it...
...So why should I worry...
...So this is how I planned my life...
...Take a living animal—a chicken or a horse...
...Being born Jewish means that you are a member of the Jewish people, but this is a kind of passive membership, a forced membership about which you have no choice...
...I would like to ask you, for the many Jews who are not Torah-observant, of what value is the Talmud for the secular Jew...
...It's someone who doesn't want to admit that he's ignorant...
...I think the Soviets are coming to the conclusion that a certain amount of indigenous Jewish culture would be in their best interest" he said...
...When the thing becomes so unimportant, then intermarriage follows...
...To quote from the Talmud, you can only learn what your heart desires...
...The question is usually "How do you instruct...
...Steinsaltz: What the Israeli government does has nothing to do with Jewish law...
...So you have knowledge and a kind of vicarious experience...
...It's the ultimate referent for you, but many Jews look at it as a cultural document, not as authoritative or binding on them...
...Jews who have no Jewish knowledge are in about the same position...
...But still, there is a certain leeway...
...I had an agreement with the doctors that I would use their room as a place to work...
...Shanks: But he knew the Talmud...
...And you don't give yourself an honorary degree...
...He has published 20 volumes of the Babylonian Talmud in Hebrew, reaching approximately the halfway mark, with 15 more years of work projected...
...Shanks: Can you be a partially religious Jew...
...Steinsaltz: It is an ignorant person...
...The judge deals with the human-made law and someSteinsaltz to Head New Soviet Yeshiva If the Soviet Union goes ahead with its promise to open the first yeshiva in that country in 50 years, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz will head it Steinsaltz outlined the two-pronged joint project between the Soviet Academy of Sciences and Western scholars that would provide a teaching facility "for educating a new generation of rabbis in Russia" and include collaboration on cataloging and arranging vast collections of Jewish books, manuscripts, ethnographic materials and other records, most of which only exist in the Soviet Union...
...in a way he is proud of his ignorance, he is happy about his ignorance...
...He cannot change laws of nature...
...But not just ignorant...
...But I don't think about myself in these ways, walking in the footsteps of Rashi...
...Later, I thought I would be a good engineer...
...Shanks: In translating the Talmud, and writing a commentary with explanatory notes, you are doing something that hasn't been done since Rashi...
...I work only with nature...
...I mean, you either swim or you walk...
...That makes a big difference...
...As "an ignorant person...
...I know that one person, as much as he tries (and lazy as I am, yet I work quite hard) has limitations...
...Intermarriage is a symptom that a person doesn't care anymore...
...When I write a book I am in almost complete control...
...At least I make a try...
...Shanks: Does compulsory education apply only to men, is that what you are saying...
...I just don't take to this opinion...
...My hobby turned out to be my job...
...The best way of quenching thirst is by drinking...
...Here and there I do things for my own satisfaction...
...With others I try to be not too impolite because people will be hurt, and I don't want to hurt people...
...Steinsaltz: No...
...Shanks: You had no fear...
...I meet them occasionally...
...It's in Isaiah, you know ["All who are thirsty, come for water," Isaiah 55:1...
...Sometimes I am successful, sometimes not...
...I wrote several papers on mathematics...
...It just doesn't make sense...
...there is no other way of making an airplane...
...That seemed so different from anything that I understood oral law to be, that is, a refinement and redefinition of what existed in the Tanach...
...You can eat a little bit of it and still have a taste...
...Shanks: You don't think that Rabbi Gershom was doing that...
...t Epstein: How old were you when you decided not to become an engineer...
...Being responsible for people is a very heavy burden...
...Steinsaltz: There is no better way of acquiring knowledge than to learn...
...For example, could someone make a ruling that women now have all the obligation of the mitzvot...
...A certain thing has to be done...
...Steinsaltz: Because to my mind, like any kind of organic unit, it cannot be had by parts...
...I didn't know what would be the outcome...
...I would put it this way: In a way a non-observant person needs to know much more in order to qualify than an observant person...
...What happened was that the children learned exactly that notion—that they wanted their own children to learn...
...Shanks: What is it that brought you to a religious life...
...There are several hundreds of thousands of documents and seven to ten thousand of them are unique...
...But the mere fact of making such a choice is breaking the integrity [of one's commitment...
...Shanks: Did your brush with death, when you had surgery, affect you...
...Jeremy] Bentham, an English philosopher, left a strange will—that his body should be preserved in a glass case, so he could always be at meetings of the philosophical society he founded...
...I am always working with nature...
...We celebrate Purim, which also is a new holiday...
...Other than education...
...That is my main concern and the main motive power for almost everything I do...
...He must have a personal, intellectual, conscious connection with his Jewishness that wasn't necessary, say, 200 years ago...
...In order to be a full member of the Jewish people, there are qualifications of knowledge and of ability...
...When I read the Bible, I don't see it make any such distinction...
...Steinsaltz: What does it take to qualify as a real participant [in a society...
...I am very concerned about the Jewish people...
...Or you could learn secular subjects—mathematics, history, sociology...
...Not that it is not helpful or that it is meaningless...
...Is there an answer to that...
...Put it in big letters in your magazine: "/ don't care if you are an atheist, but no member of our family, no son of mine will grow up to be an am ha'aretz...
...Shanks: Why doesn't it make sense...
...Steinsaltz: I have read the Bible one or two times...
...I'm not, but I try as best I can...
...Steinsaltz: I was born into a secular family...
...I don't read my books, I don't read anything written about me, and I don't listen to myself on the radio...
...It is a kind of contradiction in terms...
...Shanks: What's the best way for a Jew who doesn't have that knowledge, but would like to have it, to go about getting it...
...I was facing a great danger...
...Steinsaltz: A religious person has not only intellectual involvement or cultural involvement, he also has an involvement of self, of living it, not only of knowing about it...
...And you don't give yourself an honorary degree...
...I make all those things, new flowers, new plums and even a cactus without thorns, but it is still within nature...
...But even though Jewish law seems so expansive and seems to deal with almost everything in the world, there are always areas not covered...
...When you live in a closed society, you absorb culture almost by osmosis...
...I'm doing work that I think has to be done...
...Anker: One of the most fascinating things that I read in your book The Essential Talmud was that Rabbenu Gershom of Mainz [c...
...It's a kind of a private question...
...Shanks: I understand you yourself were born into a secular Jewish family in Jerusalem and that you are a ba'al t'shuva [one who returns to a deeper involvement with Judaism...
...I wish that I were a good speaker...
...Why not Tanach [the Hebrew Bible...
...Shanks: But the Tanach indicates that more than one wife is permitted and the takana of Rabbi Gershom . . . Steinsaltz: That's what I said, he made a ban against polygamy...
...I don't know now if women can really—let me put it in a strange way...
...But this person is wounded...
...I don't want to observe Shabbat but I want to observe kashrut...
...If you read them, you know about every town and when the railway station was built and how many inhabitants are in the town...
...Steinsaltz: Yes...
...Shanks: Also a man...
...You see, if you are an observant person it means that your lifestyle is Jewish...
...Shanks: I'd like to go back to a question that Charlotte asked, about the critical mass of knowledge required of women as well as men...
...I had very major surgery...
...Most of the time, I am doing what I think is important for the Jewish people...
...But that is in a different society...
...But when you are there you relate to the same phenomena in a very different way...
...There are also some voluntary things...
...Shanks: Even though he was secular...
...I tried to explain it to someone...
...Our national library tried for over 30 years to receive the material," said Steinsaltz "Nobody knows how vast the amount is...
...By definition, when I accept this authority, then it is a law...
...But I finished my work and went to the hospital bed and went to sleep just as any other time...
...Steinsaltz: There would be, but I'm not sure they would get a definite answer...
...The problem is usually what kind of a basic education does a Jewish person need in order to qualify...
...Steinsaltz was interviewed by MOMENT editoi Hershel Shanks, managing editor Charlotte Anker and David Epstein, a prominent Washington attorney and co-author of a recent book, Torah With Love (Prentice-Hall, 1986...
...It becomes an empty world...
...Rabbi of Tzemach Tzedek synagogue in the old Jewish quarter of Jerusalem, Steinsaltz is the head of two yeshivot, M'kor Charm Yeshiva and Teshivat Shamir...
...So I would say that for the non-observant to come back to the study of the Talmud—it is more important than for the observant...
...It turned out differently...
...I didn't know if I would have another night...
...Some people find the Bible has this attraction...
...Steinsaltz: What value is a baby...
...Steinsaltz: I would respect him for the knowledge, of course...
...Still, knowledge is such an important ingredient that without it, Jews cannot exist as Jews...
...Steinsaltz: He was secular...
...Though he is in frail health—his spleen was removed in 1980—Steinsaltz puts in up to 16 hours a day, lecturing, teaching, and writing on his word processor...
...For example, a person cannot be half swimming...
...When the doctors needed me to do something, they would call me and I would come...
...He's so ignorant that he doesn't even know he's ignorant...
...I also don't like my voice...
...It's like you are walking in the road and you see somebody hurt...
...Also the definition changes with the times...
...An organic unit needs to have all its parts...
...There was a very good chance of my not waking up...
...Shanks: Like what...
...Of course...
...This is one of those points of difference...
...Hypocrisy was something he couldn't take, nor cheating, lying or posing...
...Shanks: If I understand you correctly, you're saying that even though you were born into a secular family, it was a family of great Jewish knowledge...
...some people volunteer to do things they are not obliged to do...
...You see, I'm only doing my hobby...
...But I got involved in Talmud when I was about 27, when it became a real job...
...And in a Jewish school this makes a difference...
...you just do it...
...Now these areas can be positive or negative things...
...While attending a conference at Oxford University, England, Steinsaltz met with Evgeny Velikhov, chairman of the Commission on the Power Industry of the Soviet of Nationalities of the USSR Supreme Soviet and vice chairman of the Soviet Academy of Sciences...
...If you don't have that it's not just that you missed a piece of knowledge...
...Steinsaltz: In a way it is...
...I am, I don't know if the word is, lucky...
...If it is a law, then if I do something against the law, I am doing something wrong...
...Shanks: We all have only 24 hours a day, not a minute more...
...There are certain things I never do...
...If there is something good about it, go and do it...
...Steinsaltz: There are fields of knowledge, fields of experience, where you have a little bit, and it's enough...
...Knowledge is desirable, but it does not make a complete Jew...
...I see it much better than they...
...In Jerusalem I created a yeshiva that is an enormous burden on me from every point of view—from the monetary problems to the psychological problems...
...Shanks: I thought the more difficult question would be that regarding the secular Jew because the Talmud—the Mishna and Gemarah—is for most Jews, and especially American Jews who are not versed in it, an opaque, daunting set of books...
...If we speak about a critical mass, it is...
...But intermarriage is a symptom of something that happened years ago...
...Steinsaltz: (Smiling) I know, I have heard about such groups...
...At night, I went to sleep...
...But beyond that level there was a difference between men and women...
...So it's a burden...
...At home they know if I come in and I am on the radio, they have to turn it off...
...I thought that I was good at creating ideas in a certain way and then applying them...
...In such a case, you have a culture, but without knowledge...
...that is what I am saying, if you look at Torah in the same way: You work with nature, you don't work against nature...
...he knows what he lacks...
...So that is a part of it...
...Steinsaltz: Surely...
...times he has the opportunity to change it...
...There are cases exactly like this...
...The Soviet Academy of Sciences will collaborate on the project to research manuscripts under Steinsaltz's direction with Western scholars from various libraries...
...What the newspapers write is their business...
...State Department sources said that little or no information is known about the project, although efforts are being made to determine Soviet intentions...
...He has written The Thirteen Petaled Rose (Basic, 1985), a volume about Jewish mysticism, The Essential Talmud (Basic, 1982), a laypersons' one-volume introduction to Talmud, Teshuva: A Guide For the Newly Observant (The Free Press, 1987), an unpublished detective novel and essays on zoology...
...If a person wants to learn by himself, nobody is barred from learning...
...But when you take a person that is not involved, then there is a difference...
...Steinsaltz: Yes...
...And despite the extraordinary demands on your time, you've come to America to talk, not to scholars, but to laypeople, to people who are non-observant, who don't understand very much about halacha or Torah-observant Judaism...
...What do you want to accomplish...
...Accepting the authority of the Bible or of the Talmud is entering into what you may call an observant community...
...For years I had problems with my health...
...Adin Steinsaltz Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz came to the nation's capital last April for a series of lectures which had the Washington Jewish community buzzing about the rabbi described by Time magazine as a "once-in-a-millennium scholar...
...Steinsaltz: If I could put a slogan on what I'm doing, it is "Let my people know...
...And they are not so low...
...Steinsaltz reported that Secretary of State George Shultz has taken a personal interest in this project Steinsaltz said the yeshiva may be connected with the University of Moscow...
...I lived for years under the shadow of death...
...Steinsaltz: It is a fair inference...
...You cannot make a airplane against the law of gravity...
...Steinsaltz: To qualify as a Jew...
...So what you lack in your consciousness, your brain, you complete, so to say, by your body...
...An organic unit needs to have all its parts...
...You do what you can...
...For some people it's the Talmud, but that's not an easy way...
...But most of the time, I sat with the typewriter and I wrote...
...Steinsaltz: He told me something...
...For years I was also a teacher of mathematics...
...Active membership comes through knowledge...
...I never have been...
...But when I am responsible for people—I may not be in the right mood or I don't smile at somebody and he's hurt, then it's my fault...
...You must have at least some involvement with the classical sources of your culture...
...Shanks: Are you a ba'al t'shuva...
...Lots of people find a way to become Jewish through Jewish mysticism...
...Steinsaltz: Yes, also a man...
...So there is nobody who is a more severe critic of myself than I am...
...And I am doing it the best I can...
...Anker: Can this only be done to cut back or limit us or can it also be done to expand things...
...Living as a Jewish woman within an observant community, within an observant context, has a whole world of meanings and they have different ways of expression...
...Steinsaltz: When I speak of learning, I mean Jewish learning...
...Is that what you're saying...
...Shanks: I take it from the regard you have for your father, that, you would say that a person could be Jewishly knowledgeable and still be a secular Jew and that you would respect that person...
...Steinsaltz: No, there are quite a number of things like that...
...He was a man who for years never went to shut, not even on Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur...
...How does that happen, that people will have such fidelity to one set of rules and not to others...
...There was an old joke—300 years ago—that people wanted to teach their children to learn...
...Burbank was enraged: "What does this man mean, against nature...
...Shanks: You don't distinguish between ritual and ethical infractions...
...That is the real point...
...It was an inner growth...
...When a holiday comes, I always find I am about two months behind...
...Shanks: How does that make education less important for a woman...
...he's not an am ha'aretz...
...I have the same attitude...
...By the way, this is not my analogy...
...I became involved in my hobby until it took more and more and more of my time...
...I see myself as a person who has work to do that he cannot finish and who works like hell to do something, works and works and works, is preoccupied...
...I had to undergo surgery, I was sick, but I did my usual work, what I thought I could do that day...
...If only I could have more than 24 hours a day or if I could clone myself...
...These sources told moment that Steinsaltz may have been more hopeful than is justified regarding the opening of a yeshiva inside the Soviet Union and that Steinsaltz may have misunderstood the way in which the Soviets operate Permission has not yet been granted by any authoritative Soviet source, says the State Department But according to Chaim Billett, spokesperson for the Israel Institute for Talmudic Publications headed by Steinsaltz, negotiations between Steinsaltz and the Soviets are progressing satisfactorily...
...Questions still to be decided include who will study in the yeshiva and what timetable the yeshiva and manuscript projects will follow...
...Finally, they didn't want even that...
...You cannot be a Jew without learning...
...Steinsaltz: I don't believe that a Jew can exist without learning, without Jewish knowledge...
...I don't know if there are still Baedeker Guides...
...Shanks: What would you tell a person who says, "Well, for one reason or another, I can't be or I don't want to be a fully observant Jew...
...you just do it...
...If I have some kind of access to them, if I have a way of talking to them and — strangely enough, this is something that astonishes me—they are ready to listen to me, then I have a duty to do it...
...Velikhov has the friendship and respect of the highest echelons in the Soviet Union," said Billett Steinsaltz said that the Soviet interest in the manuscript project was triggered by a recent fire in the Leningrad library that destroyed many historical records and caused worry in official circles about the preservation of other archives...
...Anker: If they did, is there some part of halacha that would deal with it...
...When I see integrity of any kind, I see beauty...
...I think your answer was that at a certain level it was equal...
...Can you imagine half a horse, half a chicken...
...You know, some of my best friends are Reform rabbis...
...What motivates you to speak to these audiences...
...many things can be changed...
...To me, a person who says he is an observant Jew and eats pork is exactly on the same level as someone who says he's an observant Jew and cheats...
...He is a boor [Hebrew for an unschooled person...
...But principles do not change...
...Many of the great-greatgrandfathers of people living here had very little knowledge...
...Library of Congress, Israel National Library, British Library, Bodleian Library, Geneva University Library, New York Public Library, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, Bibliotheque de ('Alliance Israeli Universale, Belgium and the Royal Library of Copenhagen...
...But without Jewish knowledge, the definition of a Jew becomes an empty definition...
...Steinsaltz: For some years, I was a school principal...
...Steinsaltz: I would say, by all means go and do it...
...I don't want to define Jewishness now, but to be a real member means a fair amount of knowledge— which is lacking here...
...Steinsaltz: If you really and truly want an answer, I am so very busy and so very tired that I have little time to think about myself...
...960-1028] placed a ban against polygamy...
...I not only don't have the time, I don't have the inclination...
...But a rabbi tries to look at the laws of the Torah as a scientist looks at the laws of nature...
...Other people find Jewish history their gateway...
...A boor is like fallow land, but a boor is not an am ha'aretz because he is not actively ignorant...
...Part of it gives something, but there is a basic lack...
...You asked me about secular people, about non-observant people...
...You are not a doctor...
...Shanks: How would you define am ha'aretz for an American audience...
...Shanks: What did it do to your relationship with your father...
...Shanks: Thank you very much, Rabbi Steinsaltz...
...The Israeli government never thought about consulting, let alone obeying, any Jewish authority, what they call Torah authority...
...Steinsaltz: I doubt it...
...I mean, I went to sleep...
...If I had another two months before Pesach, another two months before Rosh Hashanah...
...How does it feel to be treading in the footsteps of Rashi after a thousand years...
...Steinsaltz: I wasn't afraid...
...I know several people who know almost the whole Bible by heart, but don't believe in it...
...Steinsaltz: My father was a remarkable person, a person most admired for his integrity...
...If there were a compulsory school system for Jewish studies, what would be the limits...
...If He wants me there, he will take me there...
...The most learned has not a minute more than the most ignorant...
...and I never saw any distinction like this in it...
...I found myself entangled with it...
...The Talmud is a compulsory subject only for men...
...His undertakings have earned him the 1988 Israel Prize, Israel's highest honor...
...They make their own choices as to what is meaningful and convenient for them...
...But when a person is not involved, not emotionally and not by deeds, then if there is not enough intellectual involvement, there is nothing at all...
...Shanks: In ways other than education...
...Shanks: Would you start with the Talmud or Tanach or Jewish history...
...An am ha'aretz is actively ignorant...
...You miss something that is essential to that culture...
...The collaborative venture began with a meeting in late April, shortly after the moment interview with Steinsaltz...
...My critics tell me about the shortcomings in my work and in my personality...
...Steinsaltz: It's the difference between reading a description of a country and being there...
...Many Jews are confirmed in their secularism...
...Steinsaltz: I had no fear...
...I was in the hospital quite a number of times...
...But if somebody is in trouble, I cannot put him aside and tell him to sit and wait there until I change my mood...
...To date, only one volume of his Jerusalem Talmud has appeared...
...so why should I learn Talmud...
...But basically, it is an intimate story...
...Obviously, if it is not a law, but it is a story of a past time, simply beautiful stories, then I am not transgressing...
...You cannot do it...
...If He wants me here, He will keep me here...
...Shanks: Rabbi Steinsaltz, according to a recent report in The New York Times, Random House, one of the leading American publishers, has committed itself to spend nearly a million dollars to publish your translation of the Babylonian Talmud together with your commentary and explanatory notes...
...A 50-year-old ba'al t'shuva (a Jew who has become observant) who grew up in a secular socialist home, Steinsaltz is comfortable with God, but understands people who aren't...
...Steinsaltz: I can tell you that it was not a catastrophe and not any kind of special event...
...I wanted to do all kinds of things in my childhood...
...I can never work against nature...
...I'm still interested in physics and mathematics and chemistry...
Vol. 13 • October 1988 • No. 7
