What is the Talmud?

Mishnah and Gemara

Jewish tradition holds that alongside the written Torah, Moses received an oral explanation. After the destruction of the Second Temple, fearing it would be forgotten, Rabbi Judah the Prince edited the Mishnah: six orders covering agriculture, Shabbat and festivals, marriage, civil law, Temple service and purity. Over the following three centuries scholars in the academies of the Land of Israel and Babylonia analysed the Mishnah, and their discussions became the Gemara. Mishnah plus Gemara is the Talmud.

Two Talmuds

The Jerusalem Talmud was completed in the Land of Israel around 400 CE; the Babylonian Talmud (Bavli) about a century later. When people say “the Talmud”, they usually mean the Bavli, which became authoritative for Jewish law.

What it contains

A page of Talmud records arguments – often several opinions, with questions and answers – rather than bare rulings. Alongside law (halacha) it contains stories, ethics, medicine of its time, and interpretation of verses (aggadah). Printed editions put Rashi’s commentary and the Tosafot around the text; pages are cited by folio and side, such as Berachot 2a.

How it is used today

Later codes – Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah and the Shulchan Aruch – organise the Talmud’s conclusions into practical law. Many Jews study one page a day in the Daf Yomi cycle, finishing the whole Talmud in about seven and a half years.