TIMES OF ISRAEL
Online library sets Talmud ‘free’ with full, no-charge translations
by Ben Sales
February 8, 2017

For centuries, studying a page of the Talmud has come with a bevy of barriers to entry. Written mostly in Aramaic, the Talmud in its most commonly printed form also lacks punctuation or vowels, let alone translation. Its premier explanatory commentary, composed by the medieval sage Rashi, is usually printed in an obscure Hebrew typeface read almost exclusively by religious, learned Jews. Even then, scholars can still spend hours figuring out what the text means. And that’s not to mention the Talmud’s size and cost: 37 full volumes, called tractates, take up an entire shelf of a library and can cost several thousand dollars…Now, a website hopes to build on these earlier breakthroughs and break all the barriers at once. Sefaria, a website founded in 2013 that aims to put the seemingly infinite Jewish canon online for free, has published an acclaimed translation of the Talmud in English. READ MORE