Two Years of Talmud & Tech: A Retrospective on My Approach and Methods, and an 'Interview' with an AI Academic Talmud Scholar

Intro

Intro to Part 1: Two Years of Talmud and Tech: A Retrospective on My Approach and Methods

For the past two years, I’ve used this blog to explore the Talmud and related classical Jewish texts through a mix of traditional learning and digital tools.¹

My goal has been to make the Talmud’s complexity more manageable—without oversimplifying it—by presenting legal discussions, aggadic stories, linguistic details, and textual structures in clear, accessible formats.

What began as an effort to clarify my own study evolved into a larger project: a public, methodical, and occasionally experimental attempt to rethink how we approach these texts.

Intro to Part 2: ‘Interview’ with an AI Academic Talmud Scholar

This “interview” was inspired by Reid Hoffman’s “Impromptu” (2023).²

I used Anthropic’s AI chatbot “Claude”, in a custom “project”, using the text of the following recent post of mine in the custom instructions: “Beyond the Mystique: Correcting Common Misconceptions About the Talmud, and Pathways to Accessibility” (Apr 25, 2025)

I reviewed and edited the final version in full, and I take full responsibility for its content.

Outline

Intro

1. Intro to Part 1: Two Years of Talmud and Tech: A Retrospective on My Approach and Methods

2. Intro to Part 2: ‘Interview’ with an AI Academic Talmud Scholar

Part 1 - Two Years of Talmud and Tech: A Retrospective on My Approach and Methods

1. The Sugya as Unit: Structure and Argument

2. Aggadah: Reading Beyond Law

3. Language: Etymology and Rabbinic Wordplay

4. Formatting: Making the Dense Legible

5. Computation: What Data Can (and Can’t) Show

6. Themes: Justice, Exile, and Divine Presence

7. People: Rabbis as Characters, Not Just Authorities

8. Tools: Appendices, Tables, and Comparisons

9. What Comes Next: Why I Keep Writing

Part 2 - ‘Interview’ with an AI Academic Talmud Scholar

1. Top Misunderstood Aspects of the Talmud

   1. 1. It's Not Actually That Hard Because of Its Size or Languages

   2. 2. The Famous Page Layout is Just a Printing Convention

   3. 3. "Talmud" Doesn't Mean "Mishnah Plus Gemara"

   4. 4. The Talmud Doesn't Reject Superstitions

   5. 5. What Actually Makes the Talmud Challenging

   6. 6. There's No Single "Correct" Way to Study Talmud

2. It's Fundamentally Legal Literature

3. It Has Clear Historical Layers

4. It Contains More Than Just Law

5. It Reflects Its Cultural Context

6. Digital Technology is Transforming Talmud Study

7. Fundamental Topics When Approaching Talmudic Literature

   1. The Two Talmuds: Bavli and Yerushalmi

   2. The Oral Torah Concept vs. Historical Reality

   3. Legal Discourse vs. Actual Practice

   4. The Problem of Attribution

   5. The Text's Instability

   6. The Stam's Creative Role

   7. Rabbis vs. Other Jews

   8. Reading Between the Lines

   9. The Impact of Surrounding Cultures

8. Concluding Thoughts

9. Further Fundamental Questions About the Talmud

   1. 1. Women in the Talmud

   2. 2. Talmudic Storytelling Techniques

   3. 3. The Transition from Orality to Literacy

   4. 4. The Talmud and Imperial Politics

   5. 5. "Talmudic Thinking" as a Cognitive System

   6. 6. The Rejected Alternative: Judaism of Eretz Yisrael

   7. 7. The Authority Crisis: Rabbi vs. Rabbi

   8. 8. The Missing Voices: Jews Outside the Rabbinic Movement

Part 1 - Two Years of Talmud and Tech: A Retrospective on My Approach and Methods

The Sugya as Unit: Structure and Argument

One recurring method I use is structural analysis. I typically break a sugya into discrete sections and map out its argumentative or narrative flow. This helps me—and hopefully my readers—see more clearly what each part of the text is doing. I look for recurring formulas, internal contradictions, editorial layering, and literary features.

All posts include at least an outline, and many also include a visual breakdown (especially: tables). I’m not trying to impose modern categories on ancient texts, but rather to highlight patterns that make the sugyot intelligible as discourse.

Aggadah: Reading Beyond Law

While I study halakhic material, much of my focus is on aggadah. I’ve written series on many aggadic sugyot, especially from tractates Berakhot, Shabbat, and Sanhedrin.³ I’m interested in how the rabbis reinterpret narrative material to express theological, ethical, or historical concerns.

These readings often expose underlying anxieties—about exile, power, divine justice—and reveal the rabbis’ creative strategies for interpreting Scripture. I also try to trace the literary and editorial techniques used in stitching these stories together.

Language: Etymology and Rabbinic Wordplay

Language matters. I regularly analyze Hebrew and Aramaic terms, borrowings from Greek and Latin, and how meaning shifts in different contexts. I’m especially interested in rabbinic wordplay—midrashic reinterpretation, acronyms, gematria, and punning. These are often dismissed as decorative, but they frequently serve as hermeneutic devices with legal, theological, or ethical weight.

My posts sometimes include appendices on unusual terms or linguistic puzzles, and I’ve also explored more arcane areas like mystical permutations and letter symbolism.

Formatting: Making the Dense Legible

One of the major obstacles to Talmud study is the layout. The traditional tzurat hadaf can be a significant barrier, even for learners with years of yeshiva experience. I’ve worked to reformat texts in a way that preserves their complexity but makes their structure more transparent.

This includes using outlines, bullet points, tables, and section headers. I typically provide one-after-the-other renderings of the original and an organized English version. My goal is to help readers follow the argument, not rely on summaries.

Computation: What Data Can (and Can’t) Show

I’ve experimented with using code and data analysis to track patterns across the Talmud. Some examples include identifying the densest pages of aggadah, counting word frequency, and extracting named entities like rabbis and locations.

My ChavrutAI project—a prototype for an AI study partner—grew out of this. I’ve written scripts to clean and restructure texts, visualize data, and format output from Sefaria’s API. These tools aren’t replacements for close reading, but they can reveal patterns hard to see otherwise.

Themes: Justice, Exile, and Divine Presence

Some themes keep resurfacing in my posts: divine justice, national fate, redemption, identity, and the boundaries of the sacred. In the rabbinic retellings of Esther or Exodus, I trace how the rabbis read history into Scripture, often through a lens of precarious survival.

I’ve looked at sugyot on lineage, punishment, loss of prophecy, and theodicy. These are not only theological issues but also expressions of the rabbis’ response to social and political uncertainty.

People: Rabbis as Characters, Not Just Authorities

I pay attention to the rabbis as people. Talmudic figures are often flattened into their legal opinions, but they also appear in stories, dialogues, and moral instruction. I write about their relationships, rivalries, ethical dilemmas, and social roles.

Examples include the tensions between Rav Yehuda and Rav Naḥman, R’ Meir’s conflicted respect for Aḥer, or the way public roles shaped rabbinic identity. These narratives offer insight into the human side of rabbinic authority.

Tools: Appendices, Tables, and Comparisons

Many posts include supplementary material: tables, lists, comparisons, charts, or visualizations. These are not decorative but functional. I use them to map rabbinic opinions, organize lists of laws or customs, or compare rabbinic views with other ancient sources.

I also use them to test my interpretations or raise new questions. These tools help track large-scale patterns and bring clarity to otherwise scattered or repetitive material.

What Comes Next: Why I Keep Writing

This blog is still evolving. I don’t pretend to have a unified theory of the Talmud or a fixed method. What I try to offer is sustained attention to detail, a willingness to experiment, and a desire to bring traditional texts into productive conversation with modern tools and questions.

If these posts make the Talmud more navigable for others—or prompt new kinds of inquiry—then they’ve done their job.

Part 2 - ‘Interview’ with an AI Academic Talmud Scholar

Ezra:

Tell me about yourself.

Claude:

I'm a professor who studies the Talmud using historical and critical methods. I've spent many years researching how this text developed over time and what it can tell us about Jewish life in ancient Babylonia and Eretz Yisrael.

My work focuses on understanding the Talmud as a document that evolved over centuries, with many different voices and editors shaping it. I'm particularly interested in the "layers" of the text - distinguishing between earlier teachings and later editorial additions.

Unlike traditional religious approaches that view the Talmud as a unified divine text, I examine it as a historical human document, using tools like source criticism, linguistics, and comparison with other ancient texts from surrounding cultures.

I try to make Talmud accessible to students from diverse backgrounds, not just those with traditional yeshiva training. I believe this complex text belongs to everyone interested in Jewish history and thought, not just religious insiders.

Ezra:

Tell me about some of the top misunderstood aspects of the Talmud.

Claude:

Top Misunderstood Aspects of the Talmud

1. It's Not Actually That Hard Because of Its Size or Languages

Many people think the Talmud is incredibly difficult because it's huge and written in a mix of Hebrew and Aramaic. But that's misleading.

The Talmud is about 1.8 million words - roughly the same length as the Hindu Mahabharata epic. The Aramaic used follows very regular patterns with formulaic phrases that repeat constantly. Once you learn a small set of common terms, the language barrier isn't that serious.

2. The Famous Page Layout is Just a Printing Convention

That famous "nested" Talmud page with text inside text inside text? It's just a printing format that started in the 1500s with a Christian printer named Bomberg in Venice. It's not an inherent feature of the Talmud itself.

Earlier manuscripts had just the main text without all those commentaries surrounding it. This format has unfortunately stuck for 500 years and makes the text seem more intimidating than it needs to be.

3. "Talmud" Doesn't Mean "Mishnah Plus Gemara"

People often say the Talmud consists of the Mishnah (compiled around 200 CE) plus the Gemara (completed around 600 CE). This is wrong.

The Talmud is only the commentary on the Mishnah, not the Mishnah plus commentary. "Gemara" is actually just another word for "Talmud" that became common when Christians censored the word "Talmud" in early modern Europe.

The Mishnah and Talmud are separate works - the Mishnah existed as a complete text for generations before the Talmud was finished.

4. The Talmud Doesn't Reject Superstitions

Some modern introductions claim the Talmud rejects things like astrology and dream interpretation to make it seem more aligned with modern thinking. This is cherry-picking.

The Talmud actually contains extensive discussions of dream interpretation with detailed explanations of what dream symbols mean. It generally accepts astrological influence as real, with only a few statements suggesting exceptions.

5. What Actually Makes the Talmud Challenging

The real difficulties of the Talmud include:

• Its hairsplitting dialectical style (especially from the anonymous editors)

• Its extremely condensed expression that leaves many assumptions unstated

• The traditional format lacking punctuation and paragraph breaks

• The accumulated weight of later interpretations that get confused with the text itself

About one-third of the Talmud is stories and non-legal material that's actually quite accessible. The legal portions are challenging in the same way modern legal writing is challenging - it uses specialized terminology and reasoning.

6. There's No Single "Correct" Way to Study Talmud

Despite what some traditionalists claim, the Brisker method (analytical conceptual approach common in Orthodox yeshivas) isn't the authentic or only legitimate way to understand the Talmud.

The Talmud benefits from multiple approaches - historical, linguistic, literary, and comparative studies with non-Jewish sources from the same periods. No single method captures all the text's meaning and richness.

The notion of an unbroken 2,000-year chain of interpretation is oversimplified. Contemporary yeshiva methods mainly come from 13th-century Franco-Germany and 18th-century Eastern Europe, not directly from the Talmudic period itself.

Ezra:

Tell me more about the Talmud.

Claude:

It's Fundamentally Legal Literature

At its core, the Talmud is legal literature - similar to modern legal casebooks or collections of court opinions. Like modern legal texts, it:

• Presents authoritative statements (like statutes or precedents)

• Analyzes these through close reading

• Tests them with hypothetical cases

• Reconciles contradictions

• Distinguishes between similar cases

This explains why it seems so technical.

It Has Clear Historical Layers

The Talmud wasn't written all at once. It has distinct layers:

• Teachings of early rabbis (Tannaim) from before 220 CE

• Opinions of later rabbis (Amoraim) from about 220-500 CE

• Extensive editing and additions by anonymous editors (the "Stam" - likely from roughly 500-600 CE)

These anonymous editors did much more than just compile earlier opinions. They created the distinctive back-and-forth arguments, raised hypothetical objections, and harmonized contradictory sources. Most of what people think of as "Talmudic reasoning" actually comes from these late editors.

It Contains More Than Just Law

While legal discussions make up most of the Talmud, about 1/4 - 1/3 consists of non-legal material often referred to as "aggadah", including:

• Stories about rabbis and biblical figures

• Theological discussions

• Ethical teachings

• Medical advice and scientific observations

These sections often use more accessible language and follow conventional storytelling patterns, making them easier to understand than the legal discussions.

It Reflects Its Cultural Context

The Talmud wasn't created in isolation. It reflects the broader cultures where it developed:

• Shows impact of Greco-Roman culture (and has parallels with early Christianity)

• In Babylonia (modern Iraq): Influenced by Persian Zoroastrian concepts and Sassanian legal thinking

Academic scholars compare Talmudic ideas with concepts from these surrounding cultures to better understand their origins and development.

Digital Technology is Transforming Talmud Study

Modern technology is finally freeing the Talmud from the constraints of that traditional printed format:

• Digital platforms add modern punctuation and paragraph breaks

• Translations appear alongside the original text

• Hyperlinks connect related discussions

• Search tools make finding topics easier

These innovations make Talmud study more accessible to people without years of specialized training. Some scholars are even starting to experiment with using artificial intelligence to create more interactive study experiences.

The Talmud remains a remarkable window into how an ancient community thought about law, ethics, God, and daily life - a conversation across generations that continues to influence Jewish thinking today.

Ezra:

Tell me some more fundamental topics and issues that are important to know when approaching the Talmudic literature.

Claude:

Fundamental Topics When Approaching Talmudic Literature

The Two Talmuds: Bavli and Yerushalmi

Many people don't realize there are actually two Talmuds:

• The Babylonian Talmud (Bavli): Completed around 600 CE in Babylonia (modern Iraq)

• The Jerusalem Talmud (Yerushalmi): Completed around 400 CE in Roman Eretz Yisrael

The Babylonian version is about three times longer, much more argumentative, and became far more influential in later Jewish practice. The Jerusalem Talmud is more concise, contains different legal opinions, and offers unique historical information about life in Roman Eretz Yisrael.

The Oral Torah Concept vs. Historical Reality

Traditional belief holds that the Talmud preserves an "Oral Torah" given to Moses alongside the written Torah.

Academic scholarship sees the Talmud differently - as a creative process of interpretation that developed over centuries as rabbis responded to changing historical circumstances. Understanding this tension helps explain both religious and academic approaches to these texts.

Legal Discourse vs. Actual Practice

Scenarios in the Talmud don't necessarily reflect how people actually lived. Many legal discussions explore theoretical edge cases that likely never actually happened in real life. This is similar to modern law school hypotheticals that test the limits of legal principles.

Scholars try to determine what Jewish life was really like beyond these theoretical discussions by using careful reading of incidental details, comparative sources, and archaeological evidence.

The Problem of Attribution

The Talmud attributes statements to specific rabbis ("Rabbi X says..."), but modern scholarship questions the reliability of these attributions. Many quotes were likely:

• Reformulated by later editors

• Put into famous rabbis' mouths to give them authority

• Shaped to fit into constructed debates that never actually happened

This makes it challenging to reconstruct what individual rabbis really taught.

The Text's Instability

For centuries, the Talmud existed only in manuscripts with significant variations between them. The text wasn't standardized until printing began in the 1500s.

Academic scholars compare different manuscript versions to understand how the text evolved and sometimes reconstruct earlier versions that might be closer to the original statements.

The Stam's Creative Role

The anonymous editors (Stammaim) didn't just organize existing material - they actively created much of what we now consider "the Talmud." Their interpretations often force earlier opinions into artificial debates or reconcile contradictions in ways that distort the original meanings.

Recognizing their hand helps distinguish between earlier authentic traditions and later editorial frameworks.

Rabbis vs. Other Jews

The Talmud presents the rabbis as the center of Jewish life and authority, but historians now believe that this was largely aspirational. During the Talmudic period (200-600 CE):

• Rabbis were just one of several competing Jewish leadership groups

• Most ordinary Jews probably knew little about rabbinic teachings

• Many Jewish communities followed different practices entirely

The Talmud reflects the rabbis' attempt to establish their authority rather than a description of how all Jews actually lived.

Reading Between the Lines

Some of the most valuable historical information in the Talmud comes from incidental details and assumptions rather than explicit statements.

For example:

• Economic conditions mentioned in passing

• Power dynamics within the rabbinic group

• Interactions with non-Jews

• Gender roles and family structures

Careful reading can reveal aspects of ancient Jewish life that the rabbis weren't intentionally trying to document.

The Impact of Surrounding Cultures

The Talmud didn't develop in isolation. Many of its concepts show clear influence from and parallels with:

• Roman legal concepts

• Greek and Latin terms

• Theological debates (including with Christian and other adjacent groups)

• Persian Zoroastrian religious ideas (in Babylonia)

Understanding these connections helps explain why certain ideas developed as they did.

Understanding these foundational issues provides a stronger framework for making sense of Talmudic literature from a critical perspective.

Ezra:

Give me concluding thoughts, to conclude this interview.

Claude:

Concluding Thoughts

The Talmud remains one of the more misunderstood texts in world literature. It's neither as impenetrable as its mystique suggests nor as simplistic as popular introductions sometimes make it seem.

Critical scholarship doesn't diminish the Talmud - it enriches our understanding by revealing the human creativity behind it. Recognizing that real people with historical contexts and cultural influences shaped this text makes their accomplishment even more impressive.

The traditional portrayal of the Talmud as impossibly difficult serves various interests - it enhances the prestige of those who master it and reinforces the special status of rabbis as interpreters. But this gatekeeping ultimately does a disservice to the text itself by discouraging wider engagement.

Today's digital tools and modern presentations are finally breaking down these barriers. When freed from its intimidating traditional format and approached with appropriate historical context, the Talmud becomes far more accessible.

The Talmud belongs to anyone interested in exploring it - not just religious insiders or academic specialists. It's a fundamental part of human cultural heritage that continues to influence how we think about law, ethics, and community today.

Ezra:

Suggest some fundamental questions and topics related to Talmud, that you didn't have a chance to discuss.

Claude:

10 Further Fundamental Questions About the Talmud

1. Women in the Talmud

How should we understand the Talmud's portrayal of women? It contains both misogynistic statements and passages that grant women significant standing. What do these contradictions tell us about gender in rabbinic culture?

2. Talmudic Storytelling Techniques

How do Talmudic stories function rhetorically? Many narratives appear to be carefully crafted literary works rather than historical accounts. What techniques do they use to persuade readers and reinforce values?

3. The Transition from Orality to Literacy

How did the shift from oral transmission to written text change rabbinic Judaism? The Talmud emerged during a pivotal transition period - what traces of oral culture remain in its written form?

4. The Talmud and Imperial Politics

How did Roman culture shape the Babylonian Talmud? How did rabbis negotiate their relationship with the Roman government and adapt Greco-Roman legal and cultural concepts?

5. ‘Talmudic Thinking’ as a Cognitive System

What distinguishes Talmudic reasoning as a unique way of thinking? How does its approach to categorization, precedent, and dialectic create a distinctive intellectual framework?

6. The Rejected Alternative: Judaism of Eretz Yisrael

What would Judaism look like if the Jerusalem Talmud had become dominant instead of the Babylonian? What distinctive legal positions and theological concepts found in the Yerushalmi were ultimately marginalized?

7. The Authority Crisis: Rabbi vs. Rabbi

How does the Talmud handle disagreement between equally authoritative figures? What strategies did the rabbis develop to maintain both individual authority and communal cohesion?

8. The Missing Voices: Jews Outside the Rabbinic Movement

What can we reconstruct about non-rabbinic Jews during the Talmudic period? How did various Jewish communities that didn't follow the rabbis understand their Judaism?

Ezra:

Thanks, great speaking with you.

Claude:

Thank you, Ezra. It's been a pleasure discussing these aspects of Talmudic literature with you.

These conversations are valuable because they help break down some of the mystique and misconceptions surrounding the Talmud while still honoring its complexity and importance. I appreciate your thoughtful questions that allowed us to explore both fundamental structures and literary dimensions of this remarkable text.

I hope this interview helps your readers approach the Talmud with both critical awareness and genuine curiosity. There's always more to discover in these texts, whether one approaches them as a scholar, a student, or simply someone interested in how an ancient community made sense of their world.

All the best with your blog and future explorations of Jewish texts.

1. As an aside, I’ve started going through my first posts analyzing Talmudic sugyas, to make the formatting more consistent with my current style (especially: retaining ed. Steinsaltz bolding, splitting into more readable lines, and using bullet points / numbered lists).

Older posts that I’ve recently worked on (pieces originally posted at the beginning of 2024):

• Four Philosophical Dialogues Between R’ Yehuda Hanasi and the Roman Antoninus (Sanhedrin 91a-b)

• A Sequence of Eleven Stories of Talmudic Rabbis as Empirical Linguists (Rosh Hashanah 26a-b)

• Monotheism Defended: The Story of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi Debating a Theistic Dualist (Chullin 87a)

• “Asking Anything in the Entire World”: A Talmudic Sugya of Zoological Questions and Intuitive Etymologies of Aramaic Words (Shabbat 77b)

• A Cycle of Five Elegeic Poems in the Talmud (Moed Katan 25b)

• “The likes of which were not said even in the days of Yehoshua bin Nun”: Talmudic Homiletics on the Hebrew Alphabet - Pt.1 - the Names and Shapes of Letters (Shabbat 104a)

• Talmudic Homiletics on the Hebrew Alphabet - Pt.2 - Homiletics on Letter Transformations (Shabbat 104a)

• "Even if all the seas would be ink": Further Poetry of the Talmud (Shabbat 11a; Berakhot 17a; Moed Katan 25b)

• "A man's feet take him to the place where he is needed": The Story of the Deaths of Elihoreph and Ahijah, sons of Shisha, scribes of Solomon (I Kings 4:3 and Sukkah 53a)

• Two Talmudic Stories of Cryptic Blessings and Their Interpretation (Moed Katan 9a-b)

2. See the description of the book there:

[Impromptu is] not just a book, it's a conversation.

In a first, Hoffman doesn’t just write about GPT-4; he interacts and writes with GPT-4 […]

3. For all full index, see here: “Cataloging My Blogposts: An Organized Breakdown by Category”, section “Index of Talmud Content”.