Simply stated, the Talmud is the body of the Oral Torah, that was given to Moses together with the Written Torah on Mt. Sinai. Throughout the generations there have been movements both inside and outside of Judaism that have denied the very existence of the Oral Torah. But in fact, any proper understanding of the Written Torah has to have a tradition of how to understand what it says. This is illustrated by a story in the Talmud (Shabbat 31a):
“There was an incident involving one gentile who came before Shammai. The gentile said to Shammai: How many Torahs do you have? He said to him: Two, the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. The gentile said to him: With regard to the Written Torah, I believe you, but with regard to the Oral Torah, I do not believe you. Convert me on condition that you will teach me only the Written Torah. Shammai scolded him and cast him out with reprimand. The same gentile came before Hillel, who converted him and began teaching him Torah. On the first day, he showed him the letters of the alphabet and said to him: Alef, bet, gimmel, dalet. The next day he reversed the order of the letters and told him that an alef is a tav and so on. The convert said to him: But yesterday you did not tell me that. Hillel said to him: You see that it is impossible to learn what is written without relying on an oral tradition. Didn’t you rely on me? Therefore, you should also rely on me with regard to the matter of the Oral Torah, and accept the interpretations that it contains.”
The lesson here is that in order to simply understand how to read the words you have to have a tradition of how to read the letters, how to pronounce the words they form, how to interpret how the words connect with each other. This demonstrated to the convert that that in order to understand the text of the Torah, he had to rely on Hillel to teach him how to read the letters. This requires a belief in a tradition of how to read the book. In his wisdom, Hillel showed him that once he is relying on this handed down tradition, that he should rely on all of the handed down tradition, namely the tradition of the Oral Torah.
In the time of Hillel (first century BCE) the Oral Torah was still oral. Indeed, there was a prohibition to write it down. It was only something that you could learn by sitting with a teacher. All of the teaching had to be committed to memory. Indeed, in order to qualify to be an “Amora” – a Rabbi – it was necessary to have memorized the entire body of Mishna.
Today, when we speak about learning Talmud, also known as Gemara, it is a much different thing than it was in the time of Hillel. All of our texts are written down. And the amount of texts that there are to learn in the Oral Torah is overwhelming. It is so vast that there are few that can actually learn all the texts, and even fewer, if anyone, who can master them all.
In the coming weeks and months, we will explore the nature of the Talmud, how it came about, ways to approach learning it.