The People's Talmud: Online Jewish law study and the pursuit of wisdom

The body and the soul of the Jewish nation are in pain.

While the urgency of taking care of our physical security is the number one priority, feeding our soul also has an immediate impact on raising morale, fighting depression, and keeping in mind a sense of our national destiny.

Enter the People’s Talmud website, offering free access to a national treasure that belongs to every Jew, regardless of religious identity. Its aim is to be marbetz Torah – meaning sharing the Talmud with all those who want to become wiser and get their soul into shape.

The Talmud itself is the unique operating system behind every aspect of Jewish life and experience. It has been time-tested and proven for over 2,000 years through both war and peace. The Talmud is packed with timeless wisdom addressing every facet of life on our planet and even on other planets. 

The People’s Talmud shares insights from both the Babylonian and the Jerusalem Talmud in 8,500 easy-to-read, ADHD-sensitive, golden nuggets of wisdom embedded in original artwork. The 1.0 version of the People’s Talmud was launched in Dubai three years ago on Hanukkah. The first alpha version was unveiled at the Jewish Federation’s General Assembly in Tel Aviv in 2018. The idea began to form in 1986 in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, while in a year’s study course, learning seven pages of Talmud a day with Reb Yonason Berger. It is self-funded by the Gurfein family and dedicated to my late mother, Beverley Gurfein, who had been the major donor. Volunteers have dedicated $100,000 worth of their professional time and expertise to make the dream a reality.

Making the Talmud understandable in contemporary language

The People’s Talmud entries are not cumbersome translations of the Talmud but narratives that express the Talmud’s point in the language of today. Should users want to see the actual text of the Talmud, there is a link on each results page called Show Me that takes them to our partner website, Sefaria, where they can find the original Aramaic text, as well as the Steinsaltz English translation.

SEARCH “WAR,” and the Talmud has 174 entries. One of them is the Talmud in Berachot 58a. “Offense is the best defense,” it reads. The Talmud teaches it is not God’s will for a person to be a fool. Self-preservation is very important. A person who neglects that point will be taken to task in the world to come, it says. 

On this point, the Talmud makes it crystal clear that if you know that someone is coming to kill you, wake up early in the morning and kill them! There is no better defense than offense. 

This is a lesson that applies to a person, as well as a nation. If another nation announced their plans to attack, then attack them first before they even wake up. There is no such thing as second-guessing if they meant the threat or not. They are responsible for their own death for having issued the threat. On the streets of New York we would say, “Don’t pull out a knife if you are not prepared to use it.” Any person or nation who ignores such a threat has their own blood on their hands. 

Another entry under “war” refers to Eruvin 45a, the Domino War Theory. The Talmud says that the decision as to whether or not a Jewish military response will commence on Shabbat depends on if the enemy’s invasion is purely for financial reasons or is actually life-threatening. In general, although the enemy must be repelled, if it is only for financial reasons the war can wait a day. If it is for the spilling of blood, then the war begins immediately. However, even this is qualified by the Talmud as follows. If the enemy seized a border town, regardless of the invaders’ intent, then they are wiped out immediately, even on Shabbat because not doing so will lead to escalation. A case in point was the battle led by King David against the Philistines in Keilah. Clearly, the Talmud subscribes to the Domino War Theory and accepts zero tolerance of an attack on the soil of the Land of Israel.

THERE ARE 450 other threads available to users, such as “Collective Responsibility” and “Responding to Times of Danger”; “Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?”; “Karma”; and “World Peace and Tikkun Olam.” Others refer to everyday life issues ranging from “How to Build Meaningful Relationships”; “How to Deal with Anger Issues”; or even “How to Prepare Talmudic Mustard.” It is all there and more.

Users of People’s Talmud are always in charge of the information they get, and they decide which content they want to interact with. The Content Providers feature contains embedded videos of over 40 Jewish educators and institutions such as the Jonathan Sacks Legacy, the Steinsaltz Center, Hadar, Rabbi Natan Lopes Cardozo, Rabbi Shlomo Katz, and Torah scholar Yehudit Shneider, with more than 1,000 videos, PDFs, podcasts, and music clips. 

For example, a user who wants to explore insights into the mystery of dreams and their meanings will not only be shown what the Talmud has to say but can also find a link to Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz speaking about dreams. 

Paul, a renowned sculptor from London, explains that he was brought up in England’s boarding school system, “which means I had very little knowledge of Judaism.” He considers the study of the Talmud to be “a very serious scholarly activity” but had found it to be “fairly closed to the world” and was looking for  “a key to unlocking it [because] it could be an extraordinary source of human thought, human activity, righteous living, and artistic expression. The People’s Talmud seems to be the key I’m looking for.  It is dynamic,” he says.

Students from the University of Southern California, Amherst College, and the University of Pennsylvania, say they have found “so much cool stuff there, and it isn’t in complicated Gemarra language. It’s really easy to understand! I love it”; “it is fun, interesting and, most importantly, relevant to my life. It speaks to who I am as a person and as a Jew“; “when it’s simply put, you often find you can understand a lot deeper than just a ton of ambiguous, confusing language.”

Jewish educators, such as Rabbi Shlomie Gestetner of the Mayanot Institute of Jewish Studies, have chimed in: “Every teacher who is trying to reach today’s young college students and millennials with the wisdom of the Torah – and in particular of the Talmud – are challenged by the sheer difficulty of translating the difficult, complex, and often abstruse concepts into contemporary language. It seems that the People’s Talmud has achieved this by creating a tool to make thousands of Talmudic concepts accessible and relevant to any Jew, regardless of background and education.”

For educator Rabbi David Aaron, founder and director of the Old City of Jerusalem educational institute Isralight, the People’s Talmud “has the potential to revolutionize the way teachers will discover source material and, at the same time, truly open the gates of Talmudic wisdom for Jews of every commitment  – and even for spiritually enlightened people from around the world.”

One of the many features in the People’s Talmud is a section titled “Brain Teasers.” The approximately 4,000 eye-catching teasers such as “Jewish Feng Shui,” “A Simple Formula for Peace,” and “Where Does God Live in Today’s World?” run the gamut of Talmudic wisdom and link to the relevant text in the People’s Talmud. 

BUT YOU don’t have to be new to the Talmud to benefit from People’s Talmud. Brain Teasers is also a fast-track self-testing resource for those involved in the famous Daf Yomi project, in which people all over the world study a page a day of Talmud. 

Hundreds of people, upon the completion of one book of the Talmud during their seven-plus-year trek through “Shas” (as it is known), come to the People’s Talmud and go through the relevant Brain Teasers to see just how much information they actually retained. And what they haven’t, they can quickly source.

Use of the People’s Talmud has also helped reinforce interest and connection with Talmudic learning for young people in observant communities. A rabbi wrote, “Our students were excited and fascinated to see that the very ideas and subjects they had previously learned and considered so antiquated were, in fact, very relevant to their world. We noticed the excitement in discovering just how fascinating Talmud can be.”

Since the People’s Talmud website first went live, it has had tens of thousands of visitors from around the world; from major Jewish hubs to remote corners of a Jewish kibbutz outside Mexico City to an Igbo kibbutz outside Enugu, Nigeria. Another aspect of the website are Zoom classes, hosted by numerous American and Israeli-based teachers. It includes students in Beijing, in various parts of Africa, Mexico City, Amsterdam (Netherlands), and locations in the US such as Kansas and Colorado. We have received hundreds of messages about how the People’s Talmud has elevated people’s lives of all ages, nationalities, and walks of life. Stephen, a user in the United Arab Emirates, has carried out more than 3,000 searches in the People’s Talmud database. Da’at, as in Da’at Torah, from China, has used the People’s Talmud more than 5,000 times. 

The People’s Talmud has created two textbooks this year, both being used in Torah Tech Yeshiva, Tel Aviv. It is being implemented among students at year-abroad learning programs at yeshivot in Israel. The wisdom of the People’s Talmud can provide the needed insights and perspectives to get us through even the worst of times. And all the more so enrich our lives in times of peace.

The aim of the People’s Talmud is not to teach you how to study the Talmud but to inspire you to want to learn how to study the Talmud. Registered users can save entries of interest, take notes that can be edited and printed, share texts through social media, and many more options. Registration is free. 

The People’s Talmud has been developed by a core team of professionals and volunteers under the guidance of founder Rabbi Gedaliah Gurfein. thepeoplestalmud.com