Author Archives: Shai Secunda

English, Reviews

Return of the Rabbis

In a thoughtful review of a recent translation of Benny Lau’s The Sages at Jewish Ideas Daily, Elli Fischer suggests that if we take Lau’s series for what it is – a “digest and interpretation of earlier histories, memories, and traditions in a manner that allows them to speak to the current moment” by “a 21st-century rabbi and leading figure in liberal Orthodox southern Jerusalem,” we will be rewarded.  At the very least, Lau

deserves to be treated as fairly as the rabbis of 5th-century Babylonia or 3rd-century Palestine.  That is to say, he should be read as a rabbi and not as a historian—an approach affirmed by the book’s origins as a Sabbath afternoon synagogue lecture series.

Indeed.

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Announcements, English

And We’re Off

I’m proud to announce the opening of a new collective Talmud Blog. Here scholars of rabbinic literature will find announcements (of articles, new publications, conferences, and more); a curated list of links (in the “tools” section) for aiding in talmudic research; original posts that present new research; discussions of critical methodologies, and of course the French import even more beloved than “freedom fries” – Critique.

Detail from Berakhot 2a

The Vilna edition of the Babylonian Talmud begins on page 2a. In Heder they told us that this was because there is always more to learn. Or we might retell the myth by saying that everything we encounter has a pre-history. This blog is a re-imagined version of my now defunct Talmud Blog. I do hope that you, reader, will join us in this exciting enterprise and that you will contribute to the dialogue by posting comments, and where appropriate, guest posting. In that spirit, The Talmud Blog will begin its operations with a series of guest posts by our friend Ari Lamm, who is currently attending the International SBL meeting in London.

We are all very excited about embarking on this journey together.

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