Steinsaltz Brings Talmud to the Masses
But do we deserve it?
November 08, 2010
How was your weekend? Maybe you caught a movie—or finally finished that novel on your nightstand, that’d be nice. Look, let’s be honest though, whatever you did was embarrassing compared to Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, who this Sunday, after forty five years, completed his 45 volume translation and commentary of the Talmud.
Steinsaltz’s work is one of the great egalitarian projects of modern Judaism, which of course only rubs in the fact that he is so much better than you. Born of secular socialist parents in Jerusalem, he studied physics and mathematics along with his rabbinical studies. He designed a word processor for his work. He’s written over sixty books, hundreds of articles, been compared to Rashi and Maimonides and called “a mind of the millennia.” He’s funny. He has fifteen grandchildren. Much like Hillel, he once beat up Chuck Norris while standing on one leg.
And what now for the Rabbi? He says, “I have plans for the next 70-odd years.” So. What are you doing this weekend?
You can watch the Rabbi translate the final words here:
