It ran into 63 volumes, and Rabbi Judah the rabbi most closely associated with the compilation of the Mishnah then divided it into the following six sections: Name of Section What matters does this section deal with?
However, the Babylonian Talmud is more extensively studied. Even today, the Talmud is the most important subject studied in Jewish academies. Click here to read about cross-references in the Mishnah. Click here to read about the Tosefot Yom Tov commentary to the Mishnah. Click here to read about the Rabbi Obadiah Bertinoro's commentary to the Mishnah. Click here to read about Mahariah's commentary to the Mishnah. Click here to read about Rabbi Akiva Eger's glosses to the Mishnah.
Click here to read about the M'lekhet Sh'lomo commentary to the Mishnah. In the Shema 's first paragraph, the Bible instructs: "And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart.
And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk on the road, when you lie down and when you rise up. And you shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes.
Bind what? The Torah doesn't say. Only in the Oral Law do we learn that what a Jewish male should bind upon his hand and between his eyes are tefillin phylacteries.
Finally, an Oral Law was needed to mitigate certain categorical Torah laws that would have caused grave problems if carried out literally. The Written Law, for example, demands an "eye for an eye" Exodus Did this imply that if one person accidentally blinded another, he should be blinded in return?
That seems to be the Torah's wish. But the Oral Law explains that the verse must be understood as requiring monetary compensation: the value of an eye is what must be paid. Well over a million Jews were killed in the two ill-fated uprisings, and the leading yeshivot, along with thousands of their rabbinical scholars and students, were devastated.
This decline in the number of knowledgeable Jews seems to have been a decisive factor in Rabbi Judah the Prince's decision around the year C. For centuries, Judaism's leading rabbis had resisted writing down the Oral Law. Teaching the law orally, the rabbis knew, compelled students to maintain close relationships with teachers, and they considered teachers, not books, to be the best conveyors of the Jewish tradition.
But with the deaths of so many teachers in the failed revolts, Rabbi Judah apparently feared that the Oral Law would be forgotten unless it were written down. In the Mishna, the name for the sixty-three tractates in which Rabbi Judah set down the Oral Law , Jewish law is systematically codified, unlike in the Torah. For example, if a person wanted to find every law in the Torah about the Sabbath , he would have to locate scattered references in Exodus , Leviticus , and Numbers.
Indeed, in order to know everything the Torah said on a given subject, one either had to read through all of it or know its contents by heart.
Rabbi Judah avoided this problem by arranging the Mishna topically. All laws pertaining to the Sabbath were put into one tractate called Shabbat Hebrew for "Sabbath". The laws contained in Shabbat's twenty-four chapters are far more extensive than those contained in the Torah, for the Mishna summarizes the Oral Law's extensive Sabbath legislation.
The tractate Shabbat is part of a larger "order" called Mo'ed Hebrew for "holiday" , which is one of six orders that comprise the Mishna. The first of the six orders is called Zera'im Seeds , and deals with the agricultural rules of ancient Palestine, particularly with the details of the produce that were to be presented as offerings at the Temple in Jerusalem.
The most famous tractate in Zera'im , however, Brakhot Blessings has little to do with agriculture. It records laws concerning different blessings and when they are to be recited. Another order, called Nezikin Damages , contains ten tractates summarizing Jewish civil and criminal law. Another order, Nashim Women , deals with issues between the sexes, including both laws of marriage , Kiddushin , and of divorce , Gittin. A fifth order, Kodashim , outlines the laws of sacrifices and ritual slaughter.
The sixth order, Taharot , contains the laws of purity and impurity. Although parts of the Mishna read as dry legal recitations, Rabbi Judah frequently enlivened the text by presenting minority views, which it was also hoped might serve to guide scholars in later generations Mishna Eduyot In one famous instance, the legal code turned almost poetic, as Rabbi Judah cited the lengthy warning the rabbinic judges delivered to witnesses testifying in capital cases:.
In monetary cases, a man can make monetary restitution and be forgiven, but in capital cases both the blood of the man put to death and the blood of his [potential] descendants are on the witness's head until the end of time.
Therefore was the first man, Adam, created alone, to teach us that whoever destroys a single life, the Bible considers it as if he destroyed an entire world.
And whoever saves a single life, the Bible considers it as if he saved an entire world. Furthermore, only one man, Adam, was created for the sake of peace among men, so that no one should say to his fellow, 'My father was greater than yours
0コメント