Rather than attempt to expound upon the Talmud, I am outlining suggestions on how to begin learning about the Talmud, sharing books, links, quotes, and maybe a few anecdotes from my Jewish upbringing.They say that when you have three Jewish people in a room, you have four opinions. So imagine how many opinions you'd find in a great, big extended family!

Where can we begin to tell this love story? If you are approaching from a general, secular point of view, I feel Wikipedia is a pretty good place to begin to get acquainted with an overview of the Talmud, it's history, background and concepts, pointing to diverse sources.

For the somewhat more initiated, and most definitely a Jewish point of view, you might go to What is the Talmud? on Faithweb.

I understand the Talmud to be the writings that anote the oral interpretation of the tracts of the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, organizing the chronology of Biblical interpretation and legal arguments, both concerning religious matters as well as community and family concerns.

Could this be the $64,000 question? Well, let's see. If you divide 64 in half, you get 32, which is 4 short of 36, which is the number of double life. Thirty six plus four is 40, which is the age at which in Orthodox Judaism, one is allowed to start studying Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism. So why are so many others able to study this guarded knowledge? Well, if you compare 40 to the legs of a table, that is, 4 legs and an area in the middle, you can see that different people can sit at a table and learn different things. If you take the number 4 and add 6, the number of people who can squish around a kitchen table, you will have 10, the number of people who constitute one...

What does this have to do with Judaism? Some may say a lot, some may say I'm pulling their legs. And so it is approaching a body of knowledge like the Talmud. The more one learns, the more one can learn.

To put it more Biblically, Judaism is the religion that grew out of G-d's revelations to Moses, leading to the Ten Commandments, the writings that became the Torah, practiced by the Semitic Tribes known as Israelites that followed Moses out of Egypt in the time of the Pharoah Ramses II, leading to great eating holidays such as Passover in which Jews commemorate the exodus from slavery into freedom, happy festivals like Purim and Channukha, solemn fasts such as Yom Kippur, and the New Year known as Rosh Hashana. The Jewish religion considers important the Oneness of G-d, the celebration of the Sabbath, the Kosher dietary laws, and 613 "Mitzvot", meaning positive actions.

You may have noticed by now that I have put things very simply. I'm not talking down to anyone, just trying to speak in general terms about something that is extremely detailed. The Talmud is a body of literature that encompasses centuries of rabinnical commentary. The reason I have featured a book about the RAMBAM, Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon, or Maimonides, is that it required one of the greatest scholars of all time to both discipher and codify the contents of the Talmud. He also wrote an accompanying text, a renowed work of religious liturature, "The Guide to the Perplexed" which acts as an explanation of his detailed index of the Talmud. Alas, unless one has engaged in rabbinical studies or doctoral studies in theology, the content of "The Guide to the Perplexed" is actually quite so very, very, very difficult to comprehend. But it's worth trying! It helps to read about the life of Maimonides to understand the context and the intellectual approach to the Talmud.

Talmud.faithweb.com provides extensive information on the Talmud, sources, bibliographies and explanations as well as discussions.

Aish. com features a very interesting essay on Talmudic lessons (mostly on how not to be) taught on nearly every episode of the "Jerry Sienfeld Show". It's always nice to know that the Talmud has provided redeeming qualities to television entertainment.

The Talmud is like the Bible's escort on and off the red carpet.

A generation or so after the story of Channukha, the Torah was "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" and Blessed. This included the Pentateuch or Five Books of Moses, all the way to the last book before the New Testament commences. This is what is known as the Bible to the Jewish people whereas Christian religions include both the Old and New Testaments in their Holy Bible.

While the Bible itself was set in parchment, the accompanying Talmud was mainly an oral tradition passed through the generations, as well as collections of Rabinical opinions, with the latest ones held as the correct ones. In other words, with the Bible looking back, the Talmud has looked forward, to answering the questions as to why we are studying the Bible in the first place. It is an interesting fact that in Talmudic interpretation, it is the most recent rabbinical verdict that is considered the correct one. The reason for this is that it is the cummulative knowledge contributing to the decision.

Additionally, the Talmud became a way of maintaining a sense of unity among far-flung Jewish communities (remember it took a really, really long time to traverse the desert before dune buggies existed). I like to imagine caravans of Semitic tribes drunk on the spiritual rapture of Moses coming down the mountain with all the signs of Divine Light in his face, throwing fire through his halo, catching little chips of the Tablets of the Law, the Ten Commandments, dancing through the desert enthralled by the miracles that had taken place. I can see them arriving in oasises, settling in for the Sabbath and discussing all the events of the past years...all the years past, actually. I can imagine threads forming of varying points of view, clashes, much like on the Internet, but much more up close and personal. In the meantime, scholars with amazing memories chanted the oral interpretations again and again all the way up until there were the resources to write it all down.

Way before it was known as hip hop, the words of great thinkers have been repeated in a way as to be remembered. And so it was with the Talmud that a community in Jerusalem, Babyonia or Persia could discuss the same tracts way before they were available in paperback.

Here is a link to my Hubpage on Jewish Mysticism. Kabbalah is the tradition of Jewish Mysticism. The Talmud is not the same thing, although much of what is in the Kabbalah is the knowledge of Talmudic scholars.

Ummm, have you heard of Broadway musicals?