The Talmud

The storyThe Longest Shelf in the Library — Sam looks for one book and finds a whole shelf with the same name.

The storyIs Coloring Work? — One short rule from the Torah starts a big argument in Room 12.

The storyThe Man Who Hopped — A man hops on one foot and asks for the whole Torah before he falls over.

The storyA Tree for Someone Else — An old man plants a tree he will never eat from, and a passerby cannot understand why.

The storyStuck on the Same Word — Two kids share one big page, and one word stops them both.

The storyThe Lost Mitten — One red mitten in the snow, and a whole class decides what to do about it.

The storyThe Chain of Remembering — One teacher tells one student, who tells the next, for hundreds of years.

The storyA Coffin and a Question — A rabbi leaves a city under siege the only way the guards will let him: as a dead man.

The storyA Question Crosses the Desert — A question asked by a lake in Tiberias finds its answer in Babylon, three generations later.

The storySame Page, Two Cities — A grandmother in Skokie and a grandson in Denver open the same page on the same morning, and call each other about it.

The storyThe Tree That Jumped — A carob tree jumps, a stream runs backward, and the rabbis still say no.

The storyA Better Way to Read a Verse — A woman corrects her husband's prayer with a better reading of a verse.

The storyOne Coat, Two Hands — Two students grab the same coat at the same moment, and a very old book has a plan for that.

The storyThe Radio on Shabbat — It is Saturday morning, a day of rest, and a radio crackles: someone needs help right now.

The storyThe Printer of Venice — A Christian printer in Venice decides where every commentary will sit, and the choice lasts five hundred years.

The storyFive Objections to One Rule — A seventh-grade class tries to write its own page of Talmud about phones.

The storyGive Me Yavneh — A rabbi leaves a city under siege inside a coffin, and asks a general for a town instead of a treasure.

The storyThe Partner Who Argued Back — A great teacher gains a student who questions everything, and then loses him.

The storyThe First Page Asks the Time — Two study partners open the very first page of the Talmud and find a question about the evening sky.

The storyA Pit in the Street — A study class in Chicago spends a whole evening on one open hole in the road.

The storyThe Voice That Was Overruled — A heavenly voice takes one side in a debate, and the rabbis politely say that it does not get a vote.

The storyA Saying on a Tuesday — One line from Avot meets a very ordinary school day.

The storyWhere Does the Teacher Stand? — The Talmud's very first question is not about the answer. It is about where the question came from.

The storyThe Bet of Four Hundred Zuz — Two men bet money on whether anyone could make Hillel lose his temper.

The storyHeaven Laughs — A rabbi meets the prophet Elijah and asks what God did on the day the sages outvoted a miracle.

The storyIf We Had Sat on the Court — Two famous rabbis say that under them, no one would ever have been executed.

The storyForty Generations in One Sentence — A tractate with almost no laws begins by naming who taught whom, then tells judges to slow down.

The storyThe Circle in the Dust — A dry land, a man in a circle and a prayer that some rabbis admired and others worried about.

The storyThirteen Rules Before Breakfast — Many Jews recite a list of reasoning rules every morning, and few stop to ask what the list is doing there.

The storyIs a Light Switch a Fire? — A short question about a lamp can bring back a long answer built from Talmud, codes and science.

The storyWagons in a Paris Square — In 1242, carts of handwritten Talmud volumes were burned in Paris, yet the text outlived the fire.

The storyA Stadium for a Book — On January 1, 2020, tens of thousands filled a football stadium to celebrate finishing the Talmud.

The storyThe Key Under the Pillow — A jeweler in Ashkelon turns down a fortune so his father can sleep, and the rabbis make him a lesson.

The storyTwo Sides of One Page — Two students take opposite sides of a Talmud passage and end up agreeing on what it is about.