Tell me the Talmud

"Tell me the Talmud" follows my comments;

If you are a Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Zoroastrian, Jain, Sikh, and Buddhist or belong to any faith, you may relate with the Jews in learning about their scriptures.

God willing, I have committed to translate Qur'aan from a perspective of its intent "a guidance book for all people and all ages", to be inclusive in every sense. I would add "one of the several guidance books for all times to come". I sincerely hope all the Holy Scriptures will one day be translated in a common way that every person, no matter what faith he or she practices, must feel in tune with and relate with every one of the books. Those books were written for the whole universe and we have to see them in that light.

When Prophet Muhammad practiced his faith, his environment was Pluralistic, people of different faiths existed during his life time and his sensitivities were geared for co-existence and harmony. Indeed, when he was the head of the state of Madinah, and the leader of Arabia (Hijaz) at that time, he initiated the Madinah Pact and signed it along with Jews, Christians and others; it is about the freedom to practice one's faith and live in harmony. However, the guidance he offered for humanity was later on re-interpreted in monopolistic societies, different than the pluralistic society he lived amidst, which led the scholars of those monopolistic societies to miss out the sensitivity towards other faiths.

Qur’aan has been deliberately mis-translated by the European Kings from the tenth century onwards to make the Muslims appear to be a cult, branding them as enemies and consolidating their land holdings from the stronger Arab armies. Indeed, they created an enemy for their subjects and the suckers fell for it, just as McCain, Bush and the Neocons have suckered a few Americans into believing in Islamophobia. Indeed the foundation of many a flaunting American Scholars on Islam is based on that falsity. Muslims Kings have also mistranslated the book to create Europhobia to consolidate loyalty from their Muslim subjects, the word Jihad is a prime example which the Muslim Kings highlighted as holy war and the Neocon fed on it and continue to do so. The holy books are beautiful, the leadership has been criminal on all sides, it is time for the general public to wake and not get duped by these Neocons on either side of the fence. The American Neocons are for their own pocket books as the Muslim Neocons are, they don’t care for America nor the others care for Islam. The good news is that all extremists form less than 1/10th of 1% in each group and no more than that.

The time has come to seek the truth and understand the beauty and wisdom of all our scriptures. Here is a good example of the Jewish people planning to learn the meaning of the Talmud in the Pluralistic tradition, just as Muslims and others are efforting. I hope, we do not fall into the trap of justifying the interpretations of legendary scholars out of reverence, we should justify if it stands for co-existence. Indeed, that is the purpose of religion, to bring peace and composure to an individual and create a balance between the individual and what surrounds him – life and environment.

Mike Ghouse
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Tell me the Talmud
Oct 9th 2008 JERUSALEM
From The Economist print edition

How the Jewish book is reaching a wider audience

THE Talmud is the bedrock of traditional Judaism: a repository of law and lore, chaotically interwoven with biblical explanation and legend. Compiled in fifth-century Babylon (today’s Iraq), it has since enticed, intrigued and exhausted generations of Jews.

For Orthodox Jews, lifelong study of the Talmud is the supreme religious precept. But for many earnest students through the ages, it has been a frustrating grind. Written in Aramaic (often described as the language of Jesus), it does not easily surrender its textual meaning or inner reasoning. In the 11th century, a French rabbi named Shlomo Yitzhaki, often known by the acronym Rashi, wrote a ground-breaking commentary to make the original text more accessible. But even he is often terse and replete with abbreviations and unelaborated allusions, as are the thousands of commentaries and books of scholarly correspondence that accrued over the ages.

Talmud students inevitably wasted time barking up wrong trees or beating paths that had been beaten before. Not any more. The traditional study is radically changing and broadening, thanks to a 20-year-old American-based project nearing completion. “The Art Scroll Talmud” has published all 72 volumes of its English-language Talmud and nearly 60 volumes of a Modern Hebrew version. A French edition is progressing more slowly, and there are plans for a Russian one.

Fifty-odd scholars in the United States and Israel, working alone but linked electronically, provide a colloquial translation of the text grounded in Rashi’s commentary, plus a digest of other, often conflicting commentaries. They use electronic archives of Talmudic literature that can be reached by key words and concepts but cannot produce the creative analogies and fine distinctions that are the stuff of Talmud study.

Sales have topped 50,000 for the more popular tracts in each language. “This isn’t something you can curl up and read,” says Nosson Scherman, one of the project’s editors. “It still needs effort.”

“The Art Scroll Talmud” accounts in part for a recent splurge in Talmud classes among Jews worldwide, not only in synagogues, but in city offices, on commuter trains, in community centres and on the internet. The learners are mainly but not only Orthodox. Many follow a universal page-a-day programme: all over the world, people are studying the same text on the same day. It takes them seven years to complete the whole opus.