The Talmud: A Biography is not an introduction to the Talmud in the average sense, although it will no doubt be utilized as such. This work is really what it says it is: a biography of the Talmud. Unfamiliar with other volumes in the Princeton series Lives of Great Religious Books, I was in fact surprised to begin reading a biography of a book as if it were a person. Later, the author indeed has a section on the Talmud personified, but it is a separate matter from the layout, form, and content of the overall work. One might think the notion of a biography of a book whimsical if The Talmud: A Biography were not so masterfully conceived and executed.
Throughout his text, the author charts a path that weaves between elucidating examples of the Talmud's content and tracing the history of the Talmud as it interacts with its changing social, geographical, and religious context. In some chapters, the author prioritizes history over content and in others the reverse. It is readily apparent that every chapter, and indeed, every subsection, required possibly hundreds of minute decisions regarding what to include, exclude, and elucidate.
Before beginning the prologue, the author provides a succinct, yet thorough, timeline that traces the evolution of the Talmud from 400 BCE to 2000 CE with notable events and important characters. The prologue then encapsulates the main thesis of the work; there are three different registers of Talmudic meaning. Although he acknowledges that the term “original” is problematic, the first register is the “essential,” or original, meaning. The second register, what the author calls “enhanced,” pertains to the voluminous works included in the reception history of the Talmud. Today, indeed for the last thousand years, the Talmud cannot be read alone but should be read with its commentaries and interlocutors alongside it. As the author points out, it is not possible to find, much less purchase, the text of the Talmud apart from its partners in dialogue. The author provides a helpful history of the Talmud from its status as an oral work (even though it could have been written) to the scroll, to the folio, and finally to its complicated journey through the printing presses (chapter 5). The third register is the emblematic Talmud, which refers to its symbolic meaning.
Although the author does a superb job of taking one brief case law and following it through its many layers of reception history (chapters 2 and 3), the work is even better for its concise history of the Talmud's symbolic meaning as the quintessential work of the Jews. Indeed, expounding the life of the Talmud over and against its critics (both antisemitic and from within Jewish ranks) is, in my opinion, the greatest contribution of the work.
In the section on the rising popularity of Talmud in our own day, I would have liked to see mention of Ilana Kurshan's If All the Seas Were Ink. Otherwise, the author's description of the phenomenon of Daf Yomi (the study of one daf—both sides of a Talmudic page—per day) as a growing religious practice is helpful. The author's ability to analyze roughly two thousand years of history and teach textual minutia in one volume is extraordinary and should be commended.
Although the book can and should serve as an excellent brief introduction to the Talmud, at times (especially in chapter 3) it seems that more background knowledge is required to truly call this introductory. However, if The Talmud: A Biography is, in fact, primarily a biography rather than a traditional introduction, it more than meets its goals.
