Religion: Giving The Talmud to the Jews

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Steinsaltz's audacity was such that at age 27 he decided to create a modern Talmud. "It was a kind of hubris," he admits. Standard editions are virtually unreadable for nonexperts partly because the Hebrew is printed without vowel notations or punctuation. And the work abounds with obscurities. Two commentaries are customarily printed alongside the text to assist understanding, but they raise further questions because they are centuries old.

Braving the ire of traditionalists, Steinsaltz inserted vowel marks and punctuation. He also translated Aramaic sections into modern Hebrew and explained the numerous words from other languages that crop up. Even more boldly, he wrote his own commentary to appear with the two classical ones and provided a wealth of explanatory notes. Twelve typefaces had to be used to help readers sort out the various categories of material.

Once the first Babylonian volume appeared in 1967, opposition among the ultra-Orthodox melted away. Today most Israelis agree with Hebrew University's Shmuel Shilo: "You can now read the Talmud the way any book is read. It is now a popular work." The director of the pluralistic World Union of Jewish Students, Daniel Yosef, says that "Steinsaltz has taken the study of the Talmud out from behind the closed doors of the yeshiva and given it to all of us."

In frail health (his spleen was removed in 1980), Steinsaltz nonetheless puts in days of 16 hours or more, much of them at the word processor, where he uses software he designed for handling Hebrew. Working in an old stone house near his Jerusalem apartment, where he lives with his psychologist wife and three children, he is helped by a devoted, low-paid group of 15 to 18 disciples. On the side, he has written everything from a detective novel to a celebrated work of mystical thought, The Thirteen Petalled Rose. Steinsaltz also presides over two synagogues and two yeshivas and is a popular lecturer and radio speaker. "He is good at everything but raising money," laments one New York City supporter of the Talmud project. "Every time I bring a potential donor, he goes for the man's soul, not his pocket."

The Steinsaltz Jerusalem Talmud, begun in 1976, is likely to prove even more important than the Babylonian, since the text has never before been available with a satisfactory commentary. To make the notorious Jerusalem passages readable, Steinsaltz is interpolating words into the text, marking additions in a lighter typeface so readers can discern the original. He has no idea how long it will take to finish the Jerusalem version. There are many sources of information on the Babylonian, he explains, but "with the Jerusalem I am almost alone." But then, Steinsaltz is almost unique as well.