Review of Hauptman, The Stories They Tell

TALMUD WATCH: Hidden messages: a novel way of reading Talmudic stories. The Talmud, edited around 1,500 years ago, contains rabbinic statements, discussions, and anecdotes from over three centuries (MARTIN LOCKSHIN).

But curiously, this example of the relationship between legal statements and anecdotes about Halacha (Jewish law) is not the standard one in the Babylonian Talmud. In The Stories They Tell: Halakhic Anecdotes in the Babylonian Talmud, Prof. (emerita) Judith Hauptman of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, a leading scholar of rabbinic literature, explains, “Since halachic anecdotes, the subject of this volume, appear only sporadically in the Talmud... a traditional commentary fails to note their cumulative message.”

I noted the publication of the book here.

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