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Category Archives: Talmud
Rabbi Eliezer and the Governance of Reproduction: Sexual Discipline, Porous Anthropology, and Covenantal Survival in Late Antique Rabbinic Judaism
A review essay on Yitzchak Roness and Aviad Yehiel Hollander, “How Shall the Children Be Beautiful: Rabbi Eliezer and Eugenics in the Eyes of the Sages,” Jewish Studies, an Internet Journal 10 (2012): 25–44. The testimony of Imma Shalom (fl. … Continue reading
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The Arena and the Oven: Coalition Warfare and Divine Process in the Dispute of Akhnai
In the generation after the destruction of the Second Temple, the rabbis who gathered at Yavneh faced a problem more fundamental than any individual legal question. The Temple was gone. The priesthood was scattered. The geographic center of Jewish life … Continue reading
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Decoding The Brisker Method
Written with AI: You can think of any intellectual movement as a set of commitments, techniques, relationships, legacy effects, and contestations. Alliance Theory helps decode how a method holds social and cognitive power, not just what it says. The Brisker … Continue reading
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Decoding The Talmud
ChatGPT says: Alliance Theory explains the evolution of the Talmud as a long solution to elite coordination without sovereignty. From roughly 200 BCE to 600 CE, Jews repeatedly lost the normal tools alliances use to survive. Territory, state power, armies, … Continue reading
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Talmud Study In The Modern Era
Marc B. Shapiro published this essay about a decade ago.
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Talmudic Secrets To Wealth
Billionaire Hershey H. Friedman writes about how to get rich according to the Talmud: Unlike the Christian Bible, which largely is dismissive of wealth and the wealthy, the attitude of the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud towards wealth is quite … Continue reading
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Sexual Consent In Talmud
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The Analytic Movement: Hayyim Soloveitchik and his Circle by Norman Solomon
Marc B. Shapiro writes: The history of Torah study is marked by various trends, such as Tosafistic analysis, the combination of philosophy and Talmud study, and pilpul. In this century, it is the “Brisker” method of Talmud study which stands … Continue reading
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The Talmud of the Land of Israel: A Preliminary Translation and Explanation by Jacob Neusner
Saul Lieberman writes in 1984, shortly before his death: I HAVE BEFORE MY EYES A Preliminary Translation and Explanation of three tractates of the Palestinian Talmud (hereafter TP), vid. Horayot, Niddah and Abodah Zarah (hereafter AZ). In his Forward to … Continue reading
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A Brief History Of The Talmud
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