Reviews of Fishman, "Becoming the People of the Talmud"

BOOK REVIEWS:

Talya Fishman. Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. 413 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8122-4313-0.

Reviewed by Joseph Shatzmiller (Duke University)
Published on H-Judaic (October, 2011)
Commissioned by Jason Kalman

The Transformation of Oral Law into Written Law

“Oral matters may not be inscribed,” decrees a Jewish principle formulated in late antiquity. The subject of this prohibition was “the oral Torah” (the Mishnah and the Gemarah, i.e., the Talmud that tradition maintained was handed to Moses on the Sinai together with the Holy Scriptures, the only ones to be kept inscribed). This prohibition notwithstanding, Jews have possessed since the High Middle Ages innumerable copies of the Talmud, either handwritten or, mostly, printed, which continue to be “oral law.” How did this happen? When and where did the transition take place?

While anthropologists and literary scholars assure us that some persons have the ability to memorize very long and complicated scriptures, the abandonment of this way of learning in favor of the use of the written word met at times with discontent by members of their societies. But our forefathers, who were not strangers to controversy and confrontation, did not leave us any trace of any strife that may have surrounded this transition to the written, as noticed by Jacob Sussman, the illustrious Talmudic scholar of Jerusalem. This prevents us from formulating exact answers to the questions of when and where.

Talya Fishman, who obviously spent many years and much effort trying to untangle these complexities, does not suggest solutions to these problems, but strives to point rather to documents and situations which may help to alleviate the difficulties. ...


How Jews Became the People of the Talmud
Thinkers Have Long Puzzled Over Oral and Written Traditions
By Lawrence Grossman
Published October 28, 2011, issue of November 04, 2011. (The Forward)

Becoming the People of the Talmud: Oral Torah as Written Tradition in Medieval Jewish Cultures
By Talya Fishman
University of Pennsylvania Press, 424 pages, $65

[...]

Fishman, an associate professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, seeks to pinpoint when and how the Babylonian Talmud as a physical book turned into the very essence of Jewish learning, or, put conversely, how the People of the Book — the Jews who brought the Bible to the world — became, as her title puts it, the “People of the Talmud.” She also addresses the social and religious impact of the change.

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