>>22366972“It’s a central pillar for understanding anything about Judaism, more than the Bible,” says Steinsaltz, one of the world’s best known Talmudical scholars. “The Talmud is not a divine gift given to people. The Jewish people created it. But on the other hand, it created the Jewish people. In so many ways, we’re Talmudic Jews, whether we believe in it or not.”
No other book has shaped the Jewish people as much as the Babylonian Talmud, asserts Steinsaltz, 75. He should know. He spent nearly five decades writing a comprehensive commentary on all of the Gemara’s 63 tractates, which deal with everything from civil, criminal and ritual law to Jewish history, ethics and mythology.
“Dealing with Talmud is like doing psychoanalysis. At least you’re beginning to understand what you are,” he said. “No part of Jewish culture, on any level, is without some sort of connection to the Talmud.”
“The Talmud is the book of sanity. And when you study it, it confers a certain amount of sanity,” posits Steinsaltz, suggesting that the most fanatical rabbis are rarely great Talmudists. After all, the Gemara consists mainly of logical and rational back-and-forth discussions about legal issues, aimed at arriving at a factual truth, he points out. What could be more sane than that?
“It was a big mistake to make the education in Israel based so much on the Bible,” Steinsaltz says, in between puffs of his pipe. “Because the Bible was written by prophets. If you read the Bible, you somehow become in your mind a little prophet. That’s the way in which Israelis speak to each other — they don’t have conversations, they all have complete and unlimited knowledge. Learning Talmud would bring a big change to the Israeli mind, because it deals with and is connected to dialectic
https://www.timesofisrael.com/never-mind-the-bible-its-the-sanity-of-the-talmud-you-need-to-understand-the-world-and-yourself-adin-steinsaltz/ 