The Best and Most Popular of Talmud & Tech: Where to Start in 900+ Posts

Talmud & Tech now has more than 900 published posts.¹ Most of them are close readings of a single sugya, but there are also long-running threads on Jewish names, word counts and text statistics, and digital tools for studying rabbinic literature. New readers might ask where to start; this post is my answer.

To pick, I used two signals. The first is Google Search traffic for the last six months (May-October 2026): about 7,400 clicks from 1.36 million search impressions across 540 posts; that tells me which posts people outside the newsletter actually look for.² The second is my own judgment of which posts best show the method. Search traffic is a biased signal: It rewards posts about sex (!), surnames, and biblical place names, and it undercounts recent posts, which have not yet had time to rank. So each section below mixes “most-found” with “most-representative.”

Outline

1. The most-found posts

2. Talmud and Bible: the core of the blog

3. History, law, and the less comfortable passages

4. Cosmology, science, and the natural world

5. Names and onomastics

6. Counting the texts

7. Tools, AI, and Bekiut

8. Beyond the Talmud

9. Finding everything else

The most-found posts

These are the posts that Google sends readers to most often.

1. Passions and Prohibitions: Some Notes on Sex in the Talmud - the single most-visited post on the site. A survey of the Talmud’s frank and varied statements about sexuality.

2. “Adultery with the hand”: The Talmud on Masturbation… (Niddah 13a-b) - a full reading of the sugya, which is often quoted out of context.

3. The Colorful World of Ashkenazi Jewish Surnames: A Journey Through Colors and Minerals - the site’s top post by impressions (96,000). It answers questions like “is Green a Jewish surname?” and “why do Jewish names end in -stein?”

4. The List of Ingredients in the Temple Incense: The ‘Ketoret’ Formula in Detail (Keritot 6a) - the eleven spices, with identifications.

5. Divine Symbols and Historical Shifts: The Tav Mark in Ezekiel… (Shabbat 55a) - ranks #1 on Google for its main queries.

6. Towns in the United States with Names from the Hebrew Bible - Bethlehem, PA; Salem, MA; and many less obvious ones.

7. Roasted in Nebuchadnezzar’s Furnace: The Fall of Two Minor False Prophets and Joshua the High Priest (Sanhedrin 93a) - Ahab son of Kolaiah and Zedekiah son of Maaseiah, from Jeremiah 29.

Talmud and Bible: the core of the blog

If you want to see what a typical post here does - the passage, a clear outline, translation, and notes that bring in the Bible, the parallels, and modern scholarship - start with these.

• The Evolution of Hebrew Script and Ezra’s Role in Torah Transmission (Sanhedrin 21b-22a) - the switch from paleo-Hebrew to the Assyrian script.

• 72 Translators, 15 Alterations: the Greek Translation of the Torah Commissioned by King Ptolemy (Megillah 9a-b) - the Talmud’s version of the Septuagint legend, and the list of its changes.

• From Azubah to Zohar: Reading Miriam and Caleb in the Genealogies of Chronicles (Sotah 12a) - how the Rabbis turned a list of names into a story.

• Actual Resurrection or Allegory? The Valley of Dry Bones in Ezekiel 37 (Sanhedrin 92b)

• When and Who Was Job? Talmudic Views on His Time Period and Identity (Bava Batra 15a-b)

• ‘That Wicked One’: A Grotesque Talmudic Portrait of Nebuchadnezzar (Shabbat 149b-150a)

• Moses’ Wilderness Lotteries and the Prophecy of Eldad and Medad (Sanhedrin 17a)

• Reconstructing Jacob’s Chronology in Genesis 25-47 (Megillah 16b-17a) - the most-found post of 2026 so far.

• The Talmudic Identifications of Some Nations and Cities in the Table of Nations (Yoma 10a)

History, law, and the less comfortable passages

• The ‘Drawn Foreskin’ (Moshekh Orlah): Undoing Circumcision and Foreskin Restoration in Classical History and the Talmudic Sources

• ‘A Non-Jew Has No Father’: Convert Brothers and Levirate Marriage (Yevamot 97b-98a)

• “Destined for the World-to-Come”: The Trial and Martyrdom of R’ Ḥanina ben Teradyon (Avodah Zarah 18a)

• “Unusual In His Skin”: The Cushi and Other People With Notable Physical Appearances (Berakhot 58b; Moed Katan 16b)

• From Idlers to Judges: The Essential 120 Men and Infrastructure in the Ideal City (Sanhedrin 17b-18a)

• “Preparing Her Mouth” and “Turning Her Back”: The Talmud on “The Bad Wife” (Yevamot 63b)

Cosmology, science, and the natural world

• Pt1 Talmudic Cosmology (Ma’aseh Bereshit): Earth’s Foundations, the Seven Heavens, and Cosmic Dimensions (Chagigah 12b-13a)

• Pt1 The Celestial Spheres According to Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah (Foundations of the Torah 3)

• Pt2 Celestial Phenomena: Comets and Constellations in the Talmud (Berakhot 58b-59a)

• Pt1 Astrological Destinies in the Talmud: Birth Timings and Character (Shabbat 156a)

• Pt1 From Conception to Birth: Talmudic Perspectives on Fetal Development (Niddah 31a-b)

• Pt1 King David, the Altar Drainpipes, and the Tehom (Sukkah 49a; 53a-b)

Names and onomastics

Names were the blog’s first subject, and these posts still bring in a large share of its search traffic.

• Happy and Lucky: ‘Asher’, ‘Gad’, ‘Mazal’ and Related Names in Jewish Historical Name Usage

• Godly Nomenclature: Theophoric Names in the Hebrew Bible - the top non-brand search query on the site is “theophoric names.”

• The Many Names of God: Divine Epithets in the Talmud

• Further on the Transliteration of Greek Loan Words in Talmudic Literature and Modern Hebrew: Quf, Kaf, K, C, and Q

• Pt1 What’s in a Talmudic Name? Unpacking the World of Personal Names in Talmudic Literature

• “What Is Your Name?”: Named Women in the Babylonian Talmud - new this month.

Counting the texts

• Word Counts of Classical Jewish Works: A Deep Dive

• Word Counts of All Chapters in Talmud Bavli

• Counting Words and Rolling Scrolls: Word Counts of the Books of the Hebrew Bible

• The Densest Daf: Which Page of the Talmud Contains the Most Text?

• A Computational Approach to Identifying and Mapping Aggadic Content in the Talmud

• Biblical Citations in the Talmud: A New Digital Index and Concordance and Which Bible Verses Does the Talmud Quote Most?

• Biblical Figures in the Talmud: Counts, Contexts, and Index

Tools, AI, and Bekiut

This is the “Tech” half of the title. Search traffic undercounts these posts, but among newsletter readers they are now the most-opened posts I publish.

• How To Download Sefaria’s Entire Talmud At Once - the most-found technical post.

• Working with Sefaria’s API: Practical Tips for Non-Specialists and Independent Researchers

• Contemporary Methods of Studying Talmud: Brisk vs. Academia; and the Artificially Intelligent Lamdan - an early (2023) statement of what this blog is trying to do.

• Seven Riddles of Complex Family Relationships: A Case Study in AI-Generated Diagrams (Yevamot)

• AI Coding Agents for Research in Rabbinic Literature: Recent Developments and Case Studies

• Reading ‘The Great Parchment’ (Yeriah Gedolah) With AI - a medieval Hebrew manuscript, an AI orchestrator, and a new digital edition. The most-opened post in the newsletter’s history.

• Impressions from the Hemdat Workshop on AI and Rabbinic Literature

• Bekiut features: Jastrow and BDB, places on a map, footnotes and the most complex sugyot.

Beyond the Talmud

• Releasing the Pressure: A Dive into Freud’s Hydraulic Model of the Mind - one of my first posts; ranks #1 on Google for “Freud hydraulic model.”

• Letter Permutations (Tzerufim) in Medieval Hebrew Literature: Origins and Development

• Between Tradition and Critique: R’ Yaakov Emden’s Examination of the Zohar in ‘Mitpachat Sefarim‘

• Talmudic Sayings: Exploring The Wisdom of the Talmud

Finding everything else

For the complete list, see the Index of Talmud Posts, by Tractate and the Index of Non-Talmud Posts

1. For the full list (by year), see the sitemap.

2. Compare this previous where I - as here - discuss the blog’s analytics: “Pt1 Trending Talmud: Top Queries, Popular Posts, and Plain Readings of Controversial Talmudic Passages“.