The Talmud in Russian

TALMUD WATCH: Russian Jewish Publishing House Moving Forward With Russian Translation of Talmud (Menachem Rephun, JP Updates).

“We started with this current project three years ago, working out how we envisioned the layout and how we wanted to do it,” Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi and Knizhniki chief editor Boruch Gorin was quoted as saying by Chabad.org.

Gorin added that the publishing house hopes to release around four volumes a year.

“If all goes well, the entire Talmud will be published in Russian within 10 to 12 years,” Gorin said.

The printing of the Talmud, and all Jewish religious texts, was banned under the Bolsheviks. The repression of Jewish texts lasted until the 1980s, when the last Chumash (Five Books of Moses) printed was in 1918. Gorin and his team are undeterred by the skepticism voice by some who feel that interested Russian Jews should learn the text in the original Hebrew and Aramaic, rather than relying on a translation.

In recent years translations of the Talmud have been undertaken in Arabic, Dutch, and Italian. And the Steinsaltz translation of the Talmud into English was completed in 2010.