► Tributes to a Talmudic sage of our time
V RABBI ADIN Even-Israel Steinsaltz — who spent over four decades working on the acclaimed modern Hebrew translation and commentary of the entire Babylonian Talmud and Bible — died on August 7 at the age of 83.
Losing his capacity to speak after suffering a stroke in 2018, the Jerusalemborn Chasidic rabbi continued to proofread and mark up earlier work, often with the help of family members, until his death.
In 2001, Time magazine lauded Rabbi Steinsaltz’s 45-year project to make the ancient Jewish texts accessible to new generations as a “once-in-a-millennium” intellectual undertaking.
His formidable efforts — which involved updating the 2.5 million unpunctuated Hebrew and Aramaic words in the 6,000 pages of the Babylonian Talmud — even earned him comparisons with the 11th-century French sage Rashi.
Upon hearing of Rabbi Steinsaltz’s passing, Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, said: “Rabbi Steinsaltz has left a great legacy within the
Jewish people, popularising the Talmud for the greater public and illuminating the Torah with a new light.
“One of the great intellectual giants of our generation, he embraced Soviet Jewry at the time of the opening of the Iron Curtain by creating a learning centre in Moscow. May his memory be a blessing.”
Beginning his work on the Talmud in 1965, Rabbi Steinsaltz told the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper in 2009: “I didn’t take into account the immense effort it requires, which includes not only the work of researching and writing, but also many logistical problems. But sometimes, when a person knows too much, it causes him to do nothing … it seems it’s better, sometimes, for man, as for humanity, not to know too much about the difficulties and believe more in the possibilities.”
His Steinsaltz edition of the Talmud was originally published in modern Hebrew, with a running commentary to facilitate learning, and has also been translated into English, French, Russian and Spanish. The first volume of a new English-Hebrew edition, the Koren Talmud Bavli, was released in May 2012.
His earlier classic work of Kabbalah, The Thirteen Petalled Rose, was first published in 1980 and now appears in eight languages.
A follower of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson of Chabad-Lubavitch, he went to help Jews in the former Soviet Union.
Born to secular parents, his father, Avraham Steinsaltz, was a devoted communist and member of Lehi who went to Spain in 1936 to fight with the International Brigades in the Civil War.
Studying maths, physics, and chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Rabbi Steinsaltz then attended several yeshivas and in 1965 founded the Israel Institute for Talmudic Publication.
He was renowned for his a cautious approach to interfaith dialogue and once called for “a theological dialogue that asks the tough questions, such as whether Catholicism allows for Jews to enter eternal paradise”.
He is survived by his wife, three children and more than ten grandchildren.
He was praised by Time for his ‘once in a millennium undertaking’