Jerusalem Talmud


The Jerusalem Talmud, also known as the Palestinian Talmud or Talmuda de-Eretz Yisrael, is a collection of Rabbinic notes on the second-century Jewish oral tradition known as the Mishnah. Naming this version of the Talmud after the Land of Israel rather than Jerusalem is considered more accurate by some, as while the work was certainly composed in "the West", i.e. in the Holy Land, it mainly originates from the Galilee rather than from Jerusalem in Judea, as no Jews lived in Jerusalem at this time. The Jerusalem Talmud was compiled in the Land of Israel, then divided between the Byzantine provinces of Palaestina Prima and Palaestina Secunda, and was brought to an end sometime around 400. The Jerusalem Talmud predates its counterpart, the Babylonian Talmud, by about 200 years, and is written in both Hebrew and Jewish Palestinian Aramaic.
The word Talmud itself is often defined as "instruction". Both versions of the Talmud comprise two parts, the Mishnah, which was finalized by Judah the Prince around the year 200 CE, and either the Babylonian or the Jerusalem Gemara. The Gemara is what differentiates the Jerusalem Talmud from its Babylonian counterpart.
The Jerusalem Gemara contains the written discussions of generations of rabbis in the Land of Israel, compiled c. 350-400 CE into a series of books.
The Babylonian Gemara, which is the second recension of the Mishnah, was compiled by the scholars of Babylonia, and was completed c. 500. The Babylonian Talmud is often seen as more authoritative and is studied much more than the Jerusalem Talmud. In general, the terms "Gemara" or "Talmud," without further qualification, refer to the Babylonian recension. Additionally, the Babylonian manuscripts were copied and distributed nearly complete through the Middle Ages, while the "Jerusalem" version was rare, and several portions were lost.

Historical context

Following the redaction of the Mishnah, many Jewish scholars living in Roman-controlled Syria Palaestina moved to the Sasanian Empire to escape the harsh decrees against Jews enacted by the emperor Hadrian after the Bar Kokhba revolt. The remaining scholars who lived in the Galilee area decided to continue their teaching activity in the learning centers that had existed since Mishnaic times.

Place and date of composition

The Jerusalem Talmud probably originated in Tiberias in the School of Johanan bar Nappaha. It is a compilation of teachings of the schools of Tiberias, Sepphoris and Caesarea. It is written largely in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, a Western Aramaic variety that differs from its Babylonian counterpart.
This Talmud is a synopsis of the analysis of the Mishnah that was developed over the course of nearly 200 years by the Talmudic Academies in Syria Palaestina. Because of their location, the sages of these Academies devoted considerable attention to analysis of the agricultural laws of the Land of Israel. Traditionally, the redaction of this Talmud was thought to have been brought to an abrupt end around 425, when Theodosius II suppressed the Nasi and put an end to the practice of semikhah. It was thought that the compilers of the Jerusalem Talmud lacked the time to produce a work of the quality they had intended and that this is the reason why the Gemara do not comment upon the whole Mishnah.
In recent years scholars have come to doubt the causal link between the abolition of the Nasi and the seeming incompletion of the final redaction. It was once thought that no evidence exists of Amoraim activity in Syria Palaestina after the 370s, indicating that the final redaction of the Jerusalem Talmud likely took place in the late fourth or early fifth century. Professor Hillel Nemwan though points to evidence of Amoraic activity in the 380s. The Jerusalem Talmud records that Rabbi Mana II instructed the bakers of Sepphoris to bake bread when a certain Proqla arrived. This individual should be identified with Proculus, who was governor of Palestine in c. 380.

Contents and pagination

In the initial Venice edition, the Jerusalem Talmud was published in four volumes, corresponding to separate sedarim of the Mishna. Page numbers are by volume as follows:
  1. Zeraim: Berakhot ; Pe'ah ; Demai ; Kilayim ; Sheviit ; Terumot ; Maasrot ; Maaser Sheni ; Hallah ; Orlah ; Bikkurim.
  2. Moed: Shabbat ; Eruvin ; Pesachim ; Yoma ; Shekalim ; Sukkah ; Rosh ha-Shanah ; Beẓah, Ta'anit ; Megillah ; Ḥagigah ; Mo'ed Ḳaṭan.
  3. Nashim: Yebamot ; Sotah ; Ketuvot ; Nedarim ; Gittin ; Nazir ; Kiddushin.
  4. Nezikin : Bava Kamma ; Bava Metziah ; Bava Batra ; Sanhedrin ; Makkot ; Shevuot ; Avodah Zarah ; Horayot ; Niddah.
Each page was printed as a folio, thus it contains four sub-pages, in contrast to the Babylonian Talmud which only has two sub-pages.
In addition, each chapter of the Jerusalem Talmud is divided into "halachot"; each "halacha" is the commentary on a single short passage of Mishna. Passages in the Jerusalem Talmud are generally references by a combination of chapter and halacha, by a page in the Venice edition, or both.

Missing sections

In addition to the sedarim of Tohorot and Kodashim, several tractates and parts of tractates are missing from the Jerusalem Talmud. The last four chapters of Shabbat, and the last chapter of Makkot, are missing. Niddah ends abruptly after the first lines of chapter 4. Tractates Avot and Eduyot are missing. Tractate Shekalim to the Jerusalem Talmud appears not only in the Jerusalem Talmud, but also in printings of the Babylonian Talmud.

Text editions

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia,
The Leiden Jerusalem Talmud is today the only extant complete manuscript of the Jerusalem Talmud. It was copied in 1289 by Rabbi Yechiel ben Yekutiel the Physician of Rome and shows elements of a later recension. The additions which are added in the biblical glosses of the Leiden manuscript do not appear in extant fragments of the same Talmudic tractates found in Yemen, additions which are now incorporated in every printed edition of the Jerusalem Talmud. These Yemenite fragments are important as source material, a consequence of isolation the Yemenite community.
The Leiden manuscript is important in that it preserves some earlier variants to textual readings, such as in Tractate Pesachim 10:3, which brings down the old Hebrew word for charoseth, viz. dūkeh, instead of rūbeh/rabah, saying with a play on words: “The members of Isse's household would say in the name of Isse: Why is it called dūkeh? It is because she pounds with him.” The Hebrew word for "pound" is dakh, which rules out the spelling of rabah, as found in the printed editions. Yemenite Jews still call it dūkeh.
Among the Hebrew manuscripts held in the Vatican Library is a late 13th-century – early 14th-century copy of Tractate Sotah and the complete Seder Zera'im for the Jerusalem Talmud : Berakhot, Peah, Demai, Kilayim, Sheviit, Terumot, Maaserot, Maaser Sheni, Ḥallah and Orlah. L. Ginzberg printed variant readings from this manuscript on pp. 347–372 at the end of his Fragments of the Yerushalmi. S. Lieberman printed variants at the end of his essay, ʿAl ha-Yerushalmi, Jerusalem 1929. Both editors noted that this manuscript is full of gross errors but also retains some valuable readings.

Comparison to Babylonian Talmud

There are significant differences between the two Talmud compilations. The language of the Jerusalem Talmud is Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, a Western Aramaic dialect which differs from that of the Babylonian. The Jerusalem Talmud is often fragmentary and difficult to read, even for experienced Talmudists. The redaction of the Babylonian Talmud, on the other hand, is more careful and precise. The traditional explanation for this difference was the idea that the redactors of the Jerusalem Talmud had to finish their work abruptly. A more probable explanation is the fact that the Babylonian Talmud wasn't redacted for at least another 200 years, in which a broad discursive framework was created. The law as laid down in the two compilations is basically similar, except in emphasis and in minor details. In a novel view, David Weiss Halivni describes the longer discursive passages in the Babylonian Talmud as the "Stammaitic" layer of redaction, and believe that it was added later than the rest: if one were to remove the "Stammaitic" passages, the remaining text would be quite similar in character to the Jerusalem Talmud.
Neither the Jerusalem nor the Babylonian Talmud covers the entire Mishnah: for example, a Babylonian Gemara exists only for 37 out of the 63 tractates of the Mishnah. In particular:
The Babylonian Talmud records the opinions of the rabbis of Israel as well as of those of Babylonia, while the Jerusalem Talmud seldom cites the Babylonian rabbis. The Babylonian version contains the opinions of more generations because of its later date of completion. For both these reasons, it is regarded as a more comprehensive collection of the opinions available. On the other hand, because of the centuries of redaction between the composition of the Jerusalem and the Babylonian Talmud, the opinions of early amoraim might be closer to their original form in the Jerusalem Talmud.

Daf Yomi Yerushalmi

At the sixth World Congress of the World Agudath Israel which took place in Jerusalem in 1980, a proclamation was made by Rabbi Simcha Bunim Alter, the sixth Gerrer Rebbe, to start a daily study of the Jerusalem Talmud. The Yerushalmi Daf Yomi program takes approx. 4.5 years or 51 months. Unlike the Daf Yomi Bavli cycle, the Yerushalmi cycle skips both Yom Kippur and Tisha B'Av. The page numbers are according to the Vilna Edition which is used since 1900. In the year 2012 Oz Vehadar and Artscroll publications created a new page layout of the Talmud Yerushalmi.

Influence

The influence of the Babylonian Talmud has been far greater than that of the Jerusalem Talmud. In the main, this is because the influence and prestige of the Jewish community of Israel steadily declined in contrast with the Babylonian community in the years after the redaction of the Talmud and continuing until the Gaonic era. Furthermore, the editing of the Babylonian Talmud was superior to that of the Jerusalem version, making it more accessible and readily usable. Hai Gaon, on the preeminence of the Babylonian Talmud, has written:
However, on the Jerusalem Talmud’s continued importance for the understanding of arcane matters, Rabbi Hai Gaon has also written:
In addition, the Jerusalem Talmud remains an indispensable source of knowledge of the development of the Jewish Law in the Holy Land. It was also an important resource in the study of the Babylonian Talmud by the Kairouan school of Chananel ben Chushiel and Nissim ben Jacob, with the result that opinions ultimately based on the Jerusalem Talmud found their way into both the Tosafot and the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides.
The Babylonian Talmud has traditionally been studied more widely and has had greater influence on the halakhic tradition than the Jerusalem Talmud. However, some traditions associated with the Jerusalem Talmud are reflected in certain forms of the liturgy, particularly those of the Italian Jews and Romaniotes.
Following the formation of the modern state of Israel, there was some interest in restoring the Jerusalem Talmud's traditions. For example, David Bar-Hayim of the Makhon Shilo institute has issued a siddur reflecting the practices found in the Jerusalem Talmud and other sources.

Translations into English

There is no comprehensive commentary to the Jerusalem Talmud by any of the Rishonim but explanations of many individual passages can be found in the literature of the Rishonim. Most significantly, Rabbi Samson ben Abraham of Sens, known as the Rash, excerpts and explains many sections of the Jerusalem Talmud in his commentary to the Mishna of Seder Zeraim. His work however, is focused on the Mishna and is not a comprehensive commentary on the entire Jerusalem Talmud.
Kaftor VaFerach, by Rabbi Ishtori Haparchi, a disciple of Rabbi Asher ben Jehiel, the Rosh, is one of the few surviving compositions of the Rishonim about all of Seder Zeraim.
Many Acharonim, however, wrote commentaries on all or major portions of the Jerusalem Talmud, and as with the Babylonian Talmud, many also wrote on individual tractates of the Jerusalem Talmud.
One of the first of the Acharonim to write a commentary on the Jerusalem Talmud was Solomon Sirilio, also known as Rash Sirilio, whose commentaries cover only the Seder Zeraim and the tractate Shekalim of Seder Moed. Sirilio's commentary remained in manuscript form until 1875, when it was first printed in Mainz by Meir Lehmann. In the Vilna edition of the Jerusalem Talmud, Rash Sirilio appears only for tractates Berakhot and Pe'ah but the commentary for the entire Seder Zeraim appears in the Mutzal Mi’Eish edition of the Jerusalem Talmud. In addition to his commentary, Sirilio worked to remove mistakes made by manuscript copyists that over time had slipped into the text of the Jerusalem Talmud and his amended text of the Gemara is reproduced alongside his commentary in the Vilna and Mutzal Mi’Eish editions of the Jerusalem Talmud.
Today's modern printed editions almost all carry the commentaries, Korban ha-Eida, by David ben Naphtali Fränkel of Berlin, and Pnei Moshe, by Moses Margolies of Amsterdam.
A modern edition and commentary, known as Or Simchah, is currently being prepared in Beersheba; another edition in preparation, including paraphrases and explanatory notes in modern Hebrew, is Yedid Nefesh. The Jerusalem Talmud has also received some attention from Adin Steinsaltz, who plans a translation into modern Hebrew and accompanying explanation similar to his work on the Babylonian Talmud. So far only Tractates Pe'ah and Shekalim have appeared.