How the Talmud Can Change Your Life

Starred review from August 7, 2023
In this stellar outing, journalist Leibovitz (Stan Lee) elucidates how ancient rabbinic debates remain relevant to modern meaning-seekers. While the adjective “talmudic” is often synonymous with “abstruse” or “hair-splitting,” Leibovitz argues that the Talmud itself interrogates “larger questions of what, if anything, this life is about,” tackling such evergreen topics as “how to love, how to grieve, how to fight, how to be a better spouse, how to fix the government,” without moralizing or leaning on cut-and-dried answers. According to the author, this embrace of complexity helps to explain the text’s enduring relevance (and even its current cachet among some non-Jews): its inclusion of vigorous dissents and willingness to leave certain questions unresolved illustrates that no one has a monopoly on wisdom and that tolerance of different opinions is essential. Leibovitz adroitly brings in contemporary anecdotes to broach big-picture talmudic themes; a discussion of Weight Watchers founder Jean Slutsky, who struggled with overeating until she discovered the importance of “bring the body and mind into alignment,” for example, ties into fascinating rabbinic explorations of how to “live with and live in the human body.” Meticulously analyzed and surprisingly accessible, this is a worthy complement to Jonathan Rosen’s The Talmud and the Internet.

August 15, 2023
Excavating truths from an ancient tome. Descended from a long line of rabbis, Israeli-born journalist Leibovitz, co-host of the podcast Unorthodox, describes himself as a non-observant Jew. He had never read the Talmud--a huge work containing "a record of centuries of arguments"--but during a particularly traumatic time in his life, he turned to the book hoping to find wisdom and solace. Donald Trump was elected, his favorite artist, Leonard Cohen, died, and then the pandemic arrived: He needed to figure out how to make sense of the world. As Leibovitz sees it, the Talmud, the central text of Jewish theology, ethics, and laws, is the best self-help book ever written, "concerned with both divine will and with human desire," and intended to guide Jews "through uncertainty and violence"--both blighting his own life. Among many "thorny topics" the Talmud considers are how to be a grown-up, come to terms with your body, and be a good friend, as well as how conflict can bring you closer to others, how to find your voice, and how to prepare for death. Leibovitz juxtaposes the plight of some well-known individuals--scholar Erich Auerbach, author of Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature; singer Billie Holliday; C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, whose friendship was ruptured by Tolkien's rejection of Lewis' Narnia manuscript--with intricately detailed, often funny, sometimes bawdy Talmudic stories to tease out their lessons. We can understand reality, writes the author, as "a biblical account, maddening and inscrutable and demanding that we investigate and complicate every intricacy until it makes sense to us, allowing us to grow the more we understand." The Talmud, Leibovitz maintains, opens a path to self-knowledge and, most of all, stands as "a call to community." An erudite and accessible examination of a baffling work.

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