Unit 8 · How a Page Is Read

Open any tractate of the Babylonian Talmud and look at the middle of the page. You will see a large block of Hebrew letters. This block holds two texts, one inside the other. The older one is the Mishnah, a law code that rabbinic tradition says Judah the Prince arranged around the year 200. The newer one is the Gemara, the record of how later rabbis discussed each Mishnah.

The two are not separated by color or by a different typeface. Instead, the word Mishnah, or a shortened form of it, marks where a Mishnah begins. The word Gemara marks where the discussion starts. A short paragraph of Mishnah can be followed by pages of Gemara. Sometimes a single Mishnah gets only a few lines.

Readers of the Talmud usually call the two layers together the Talmud. Scholars point out that the Mishnah is written mostly in Hebrew, while the Gemara is written mostly in Aramaic, the everyday language of Jews in Babylonia. So the center of the page is already a conversation between two centuries and two languages.

Next to the binding, in a narrow column, sits the commentary of Rashi. Rashi is a short name made from the letters of Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki. He lived in Troyes, in northern France, from 1040 to 1105. He earned his living, according to later accounts, from wine. He wrote a commentary on almost the whole Babylonian Talmud.

Rashi’s comments are short. He picks a word or phrase from the Gemara, repeats it, and then explains it in a few words. He tells you who is speaking, what a hard Aramaic word means, and what the question is really asking. Students for centuries have said that without Rashi the page would be locked.

The letters in Rashi’s column look different from the letters in the center. Printers used a rounder, semi-cursive typeface for commentaries, and it became known as Rashi script. Historians point out that Rashi himself never wrote in this script. It is named after him only because his commentary was the first famous text printed in it.

On the outer edge of the page sits a second column of commentary called the Tosafot. The word means additions. These notes were written in France and Germany during the 1100s and 1200s by a group of scholars, not by one person. Several of them were Rashi’s own grandsons, including Rabbeinu Tam and Rashbam.

The Tosafot do something different from Rashi. Rashi explains the page in front of you. The Tosafot compare that page with other pages. A note might begin by quoting Rashi, then ask how his reading fits a passage in another tractate, then offer a new answer. They treat the whole Talmud as one book that must agree with itself.

Because the Tosafot ask hard questions, reading them takes practice. A note often opens with a word from the Gemara in bold, then a question, then two or three possible answers. Students in a beit midrash, a study hall, often work through a Tosafot note with a partner, since one reader alone can miss a step.

A standard page carries more than three texts. Around the edges, in very small type, sit helpers added by later editors. One helper points from a line of Gemara to the biblical verse it quotes. Another lists where the same teaching appears elsewhere in the Talmud. A third points to the place in the great medieval law codes where the ruling was settled.

These helpers have names. The list of parallel passages is called Masoret HaShas, the tradition of the Talmud. The pointer to the law codes is called Ein Mishpat, the well of judgment. Editions since Vilna also carry short notes by later rabbis, such as the comments of Rabbi Akiva Eger, printed in the margin.

None of this small print is older than the printing press, and much of it was added in the 1800s. Scholars describe the page as a set of layers laid down over time. The Mishnah is the oldest layer. The Gemara is next. Then Rashi, then the Tosafot, then the printers’ helpers. Reading a page well means knowing which layer you are in.

The Talmud switches languages without warning. The Mishnah is in Hebrew, the language of the Bible, though a later and simpler Hebrew. The Gemara is mostly in Aramaic. Aramaic was the common language across much of the Middle East for centuries. Jews in Babylonia spoke it at home and in the market, so their study was recorded in it.

The two languages are cousins. They share an alphabet and many roots. A reader who knows Hebrew can often guess an Aramaic word, but not always. The Gemara also quotes earlier teachings in Hebrew, so a single line can begin in Aramaic, quote a Hebrew baraita, and return to Aramaic. Rashi often marks these shifts.

Scholars note that the Jerusalem Talmud, made in the Land of Israel, uses a different western dialect of Aramaic. The Babylonian Talmud uses an eastern dialect. Readers today learn a short list of common Aramaic words first, such as the words for ’he said,’ ’a difficulty,’ and ’come and hear.’ With those, the page starts to open.

The page was built to be argued over, not read silently. In a traditional beit midrash, students learn with a chavruta, a study partner. One reads a line aloud. The other stops and asks what it means. They check Rashi. They try the Tosafot. They disagree, and then they move on. The room is loud.

A saying in Pirkei Avot, a tractate of the Mishnah, advises a student to get a teacher and acquire a companion. Rabbinic readers have long taken this to mean that Torah is studied with others, not alone. The Gemara itself, in tractate Taanit, praises scholars who sharpen one another, like iron on iron, and warns against studying by oneself.

The page’s layout fits this way of learning. A pair can point to the center, then to Rashi’s column, then to a Tosafot note, without turning a page. Modern classrooms in Chicago and elsewhere that teach Talmud, whether in day schools or in university courses, often keep the pair method even when the students read in English.

Before printing, every Talmud was a handwritten manuscript. Copies were rare and costly. Scholars note that the Talmud was also attacked: in Paris in 1242, cartloads of manuscripts were burned after a public trial. Very few complete medieval manuscripts survive. The best known is the Munich manuscript, copied in 1342, the only complete handwritten Babylonian Talmud that still exists.

Printing changed everything. Daniel Bomberg, a Christian printer from Antwerp working in Venice, produced the first complete printed Babylonian Talmud between about 1520 and 1523. His editors set the Mishnah and Gemara in the center with Rashi inside and Tosafot outside. They gave each leaf a number, and each leaf has a front side, a, and a back side, b.

Later printers, Jewish and Christian, copied Bomberg’s layout and his numbering. That is why a citation like Berakhot 2a means the same page in a Venice edition, a Vilna edition and a modern one. Historians call this a rare case where one printer’s design became the standard for a whole literature for five centuries.

In the 1800s the city of Vilna, now Vilnius in Lithuania, was a center of Jewish learning and printing. The Romm family ran a large press there. Between 1880 and 1886 they printed a new edition of the whole Babylonian Talmud. It is known as the Vilna Shas. Shas is a short form of the Hebrew words for six orders, the six divisions of the Mishnah.

The Vilna edition kept Bomberg’s frame and numbering. It added more commentaries around the edges and at the back of each volume, cleaned up many printing errors, and used clear type. Scholars say its editors gathered readings from manuscripts and earlier printings. It was not the first Talmud, but it became the one that most later editions copied, even photographically.

When people today say ’the Talmud page,’ they usually mean the Vilna page. Its look is so fixed that a student who learns one page can find their way around any other. Yet the layout is a printer’s choice, not part of the text. Manuscripts before 1500 looked quite different, and digital editions today can look different again.

For most of history, reading the Talmud meant reading Hebrew and Aramaic. In the 1900s, translations began to change that. The Soncino Press in London published a complete English translation between 1935 and 1952. Earlier, Michael Rodkinson had printed a partial and abridged English version in the United States between 1896 and 1903; scholars treat it with care because it leaves out and reshapes much.

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz began a Hebrew edition in 1965 that added vowels, punctuation and a running commentary; an English version followed. The Schottenstein edition from ArtScroll, finished in 2005, gives an English translation phrase by phrase, with notes. Each edition makes choices about what to explain, and readers in different communities prefer different ones.

Online, the site Sefaria, founded in 2011, offers the Hebrew and Aramaic text with an English translation and links to Rashi, Tosafot and thousands of other texts. Many public schools, colleges and libraries use it because it is free. The Vilna page, the Steinsaltz page and a Sefaria screen all carry the same words. What changes is how much help surrounds them.

A citation is the short address of a passage. For the Babylonian Talmud it has three parts: the tractate, the leaf number and the side. Berakhot 2a means tractate Berakhot, leaf 2, front side. Bava Metzia 59b means tractate Bava Metzia, leaf 59, back side. Because every standard edition shares Bomberg’s numbering, this address works everywhere.

The Mishnah is cited differently, by chapter and paragraph. Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5 means tractate Sanhedrin, chapter 4, mishnah 5. Pirkei Avot is usually cited without the word Mishnah, as Avot 1:14. The Jerusalem Talmud is often cited by chapter and law, or by the page of its Venice printing, and scholars sometimes add the letter y. in front of the tractate name.

Learning to cite well matters in this course. When you write about a passage, give its address so a reader can find the very words. Give the translation you used and its year, since translations differ. A citation is a small act of honesty: it lets someone check you.

The Mishnah has 63 tractates, grouped into six orders. Rabbinic tradition names them by topic. Zeraim, Seeds, covers blessings and farming laws. Moed, Appointed Time, covers Shabbat and the festivals. Nashim, Women, covers marriage and vows. Nezikin, Damages, covers property, courts and injury. Kodashim, Holy Things, covers the Temple service. Tohorot, Purities, covers ritual purity.

The Babylonian Gemara does not cover every tractate. It discusses about 37 of the 63, mostly in Moed, Nashim, Nezikin and Kodashim, plus Berakhot from Zeraim and Niddah from Tohorot. Scholars suggest that the Babylonian academies focused on laws that still applied in daily life after the Temple was gone.

The names of tractates are often the first thing a student learns. Berakhot means Blessings. Shabbat is the Sabbath. Bava Metzia, the Middle Gate, is about lost objects, loans and wages. Sanhedrin is about courts. Avot, Fathers, is the tractate of sayings. Knowing the name tells you the subject before you read a word.

The page is a tool, not the point. The point is the questions the text keeps asking. Take the order Nezikin. Its tractate Bava Metzia opens with two people holding one cloak, each claiming it. The Mishnah rules that they divide it and each swears an oath. The Gemara then spends pages asking why an oath is needed and what happens if one of them is lying.

Further on, the same tractate turns to lost objects. Who must return them? What if the finder cannot tell whose it is? The Mishnah lists objects that a finder may keep and objects that must be announced. Rashi explains the terms. The Tosafot compare the rule with a passage in another tractate. Every layer of the page is working on one question: how do you treat what is not yours?

This course follows two threads through the Talmud, argument and mercy. Argument is how the page moves. Mercy is what many rulings protect: the day laborer waiting for wages, the stranger, the person who might be shamed in public. As you learn the layout, keep asking what each page is trying to protect. That question is the best guide through the frame.

Open the Babylonian Talmud to Berakhot 2a, the first page of the first tractate. The Mishnah asks a plain question: from what time may the evening Shema be said? Right after it, the Gemara begins its own discussion. That discussion, from its first question to its last answer, is called a sugya.

Scholars describe a sugya as a unit of argument. It often starts with a Mishnah. Then a rabbi asks about it. Someone brings a proof. Someone else raises an objection. The discussion ends with an answer, or sometimes with no answer at all. A single page can hold several sugyot, and one sugya can run for many pages.

The word sugya comes from Aramaic and is often explained as "a going" or "a path." Teachers like that meaning. A sugya is a path the reader walks, step by step. Learning Talmud, many teachers say, means learning to walk that path and see where each step leads.

Again and again the Gemara asks two Aramaic words: mai ta'ama, "what is the reason?" A Mishnah may state a rule in one short line. The Gemara wants to know what stands behind it. Is it a verse from the Torah? Is it a teaching from an earlier rabbi? Is it common sense?

Knowing the reason matters for new cases. Suppose a rule says a finder must announce a lost coat. If the reason is that the owner can prove the coat is theirs by a mark, then the rule might change for an object with no mark. The Gemara reasons this way in Bava Metzia, the tractate about lost objects and business.

So the question "what is the reason?" is not rude. In the Talmud it is a sign of respect for the rule. The rabbis treat a rule as something that can be understood. Once they understand it, they can apply it to cases the Mishnah never mentioned.

On Berakhot 2a the Gemara asks why the Mishnah speaks of the evening Shema before the morning one. Its first answer points to a verse. Deuteronomy 6:7 says to speak these words "when thou liest down, and when thou risest up." Lying down comes first in the verse, so evening comes first in the Mishnah.

Then the Gemara offers a second answer. Genesis 1:5 describes creation with the words "there was evening and there was morning." In the order of creation, too, evening comes before morning. The Gemara keeps both answers side by side. It does not erase the first when it finds the second.

A proof from a verse is a basic move in the Talmud. Rabbinic tradition holds that the Written Torah and the rabbis’ teaching fit together. So a rabbi who wants to support a rule often looks for words in the Bible that point to it. Other rabbis then test the proof to see if the verse really says what is claimed.

In the Gemara, a claim is never safe just because a great rabbi said it. Someone may point out a problem. The problem might be a verse that seems to say the opposite. It might be a Mishnah that disagrees. It might be a case where the claim gives a strange result. That problem is called a kushya, a difficulty or objection.

The Gemara has set phrases for objections. One is "meitivi," meaning "they raised an objection." Another is "ve-ha-tanya," "but was it not taught…?" These phrases tell the reader that a challenge is coming. Students learn to spot them, because they mark a turn in the path.

Teachers who run a chavruta, a study pair, often tell students to play the objector on purpose. One partner reads a claim. The other looks for the kushya. Many readers of the Talmud say this is not about winning. A claim that has faced hard objections and survived is a claim you can trust more.

After a kushya comes the search for a terutz, an answer. One of the most common kinds of answer is a split between cases. The Gemara says, in effect, "This source is talking about one situation, and that source is talking about another." Suddenly two texts that seemed to clash can both be true.

Here is how that looks. Suppose one teaching says a worker may eat from the crop he harvests. Another seems to say he may not. The Gemara might answer that one teaching speaks while he is working and the other speaks after he has finished. The Mishnah in Bava Metzia 7:2 does draw lines like these about when a worker may eat.

Some answers are strong. Others the Gemara itself calls weak or forced. Rabbinic readers and modern scholars both notice this. The Talmud does not pretend every answer is equally good. It often signals when an answer is only a way to keep a view alive.

Not every sugya ends with a neat answer. Sometimes the rabbis ask a question, try several answers, and none of them works. Then the Gemara writes one word: teyku. It means "let it stand." The question stays open.

Many teyku questions are detailed puzzles about unusual cases. The Gemara in Bava Metzia, for example, raises cases about lost objects and ownership that it cannot settle. A later popular tradition reads the letters of teyku as a short form of a Hebrew phrase: Elijah the prophet will one day answer the questions. Scholars note that this reading came later; the word itself simply means the question stands.

Teyku teaches something about the Talmud’s stance. The rabbis were willing to write down what they did not know. They did not hide an open question to look wise. For students, teyku is a model of honest study: say what the evidence shows, and admit where it runs out.

Kal va-chomer means "light and heavy." It is an argument from the smaller case to the bigger one. If a rule is true where it matters less, it must be true where it matters more. English speakers call this an argument a fortiori.

Rabbinic tradition finds examples in the Torah itself. In Numbers 12:14, after Miriam is struck with a skin disease, God tells Moses that if her father had spit in her face, she would hide in shame seven days. How much more, the verse implies, should she be shut out after this. The Gemara in Bava Kamma 25a points to this verse as a model of kal va-chomer.

Kal va-chomer appears among the seven rules of reasoning linked with Hillel, who taught around the turn of the Common Era. Later lists expanded them to thirteen, linked with Rabbi Ishmael. The rabbis also knew the tool’s limits. A kal va-chomer can be refuted if someone shows that the "light" case has a feature the "heavy" case lacks.

Gezerah shavah means "an equal decree." It connects two passages of the Torah that share a word or phrase. What is clear in one passage is then carried over to the other. It is another of the rules of reasoning linked with Hillel.

The Gemara in Pesachim 66a tells a famous story. One year the eve of Passover fell on the Sabbath. The leaders did not know if the Passover offering could be made that day. Hillel argued that the daily Temple offering is made on the Sabbath, and the Torah uses the phrase "in its appointed season" for both offerings. So the Passover offering, too, could be made on the Sabbath.

The rabbis were careful with this tool. The Gemara teaches that a person may not invent a gezerah shavah on their own; it must be received from a teacher. Rabbinic readers explain that this rule kept the tool from being used to prove anything at all. It shows the rabbis thinking about the limits of their own methods.

The rabbis of the Mishnah are called tannaim, "repeaters" or teachers. The rabbis of the Gemara are called amoraim, "speakers" or explainers. The Mishnah did not hold everything the tannaim taught. Teachings left outside it are called baraitot, from an Aramaic word for "outside."

In the Gemara a baraita is often introduced by "tanu rabbanan," "our rabbis taught," or "tanya," "it was taught." A baraita carries weight because it comes from the earlier generation. So when an amora makes a claim, another amora may quote a baraita against it. That is a strong objection.

The answer sometimes becomes one of the most common moves in the Talmud: the baraita and the claim speak about different cases. Readers learn to ask of every quotation, "Who is speaking here, a tanna or an amora?" The answer tells you how much authority the words carry in the argument.

In the early 200s CE, a rabbi called Rav came to Babylonia from the Land of Israel. Tradition says he founded an academy at Sura. His colleague Shmuel led the Jewish community’s learning at Nehardea. Both belong to the first generation of Babylonian amoraim.

The Gemara often sets their views side by side: "Rav said… and Shmuel said…" Rabbinic tradition sums up a pattern. In matters of ritual law the ruling usually follows Rav. In matters of civil law, such as money and damages, it usually follows Shmuel. Shmuel was also known for skill in astronomy and medicine.

Shmuel is also linked with a famous principle, found in several tractates: "the law of the kingdom is the law." It means Jews should follow the fair civil laws of the country where they live. Readers across the centuries have discussed how far that principle reaches.

About a hundred years after Rav and Shmuel, two more rabbis became famous as a pair. Abaye led the academy at Pumbedita. Rava taught at Mahoza. Both lived in the 300s CE. Their debates fill so many pages that "the discussions of Abaye and Rava" became a way to describe Talmud learning.

In most of their disputes the halakhah, Jewish law as the Talmud develops it, follows Rava. The Gemara in Bava Metzia 22b lists six exceptions where it follows Abaye. Students remember the six by a memory word, Ya’al Kegam, made from the first letters of the six cases.

The pair is a good example of how the Talmud treats the side that did not win. Abaye’s arguments are kept in full. Students study them as carefully as Rava’s. A learner cannot understand Rava’s answer without knowing what Abaye asked.

Mishnah Eduyot 1:5 asks a sharp question. If the law follows the majority, why write down the view of a single rabbi who was outvoted? Its answer: so that a later court, if it sees reason, may rely on that view. A minority opinion is saved for a future that may need it.

The Gemara in Eruvin 13b tells of a three-year dispute between the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai. A heavenly voice declares that both views are "the words of the living God," and that the law follows Hillel’s house. Why Hillel’s? The Gemara says they were kind and humble, and they taught Shammai’s view before their own.

Readers have taken this in different ways. Orthodox teachers often stress that both sides were seeking truth within the tradition. Reform and Conservative teachers often point to it as a model for respectful disagreement. Academic scholars study how the editors shaped the story. All of them notice that the Talmud keeps the losing side.