What Is the Talmud? Mishna, Gemara and the Bavli

People quote it often, but few really know it. The Talmud is the giant of the Jewish library: some twenty large volumes, pages where the central text is surrounded by commentaries, discussions that run across several centuries. But what exactly is it? A book of laws, a commentary on the Bible, a collection of wisdom? And what do Mishna and Gemara, Babylonian Talmud and Jerusalem Talmud mean? Here is a complete answer, with the sources, the history and the deeper meaning of this monument.

In short: the Talmud (a Hebrew word meaning “study” or “teaching”) is the written record of the Oral Torah, the teaching that, according to Jewish tradition, G-d gave to Moshe at Sinai together with the Written Torah, in order to explain it. It is made up of two layers: the Mishna, compiled in Hebrew around the year 200 by Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, which sums up the oral law in six “orders”; and the Gemara, written mostly in Aramaic, which records three centuries of the Sages’ discussions on the Mishna. It exists in two versions: the Jerusalem Talmud, completed in the Land of Israel toward the end of the 4th century, and the Babylonian Talmud, completed around the year 500, which is the most widely studied. The Talmud is not a code: it is a debate, in which even the opinions that were not adopted are preserved. All of Jewish practice rests on it, and to this day it is the heart of study in the Talmudic academies, the yeshivot.

The word “Talmud” and what it refers to

The word Talmud comes from the Hebrew root lamad, “to learn”, from which also come limud, “study”, and talmid, “student”. The Talmud, then, literally means “study”, or “what is taught”. The word Gemara comes from the root gamar, which in Aramaic means “to study”, “to learn”, and in Hebrew “to complete”: it is the teaching that has been received, learned and handed down.

In everyday usage, “the Talmud” refers to the whole formed by the Mishna and the Gemara. In a volume of the Talmud, each paragraph of Mishna is followed by the Gemara’s discussion of it; around them, on the same page, the great medieval commentaries are printed.

The Talmud has no single author. Hundreds of Sages are quoted in it, over a period of roughly five centuries. Two great generations of masters are distinguished:

the Tannaim (from the Aramaic tana, “to repeat”, “to teach”), the Sages of the Mishna, from the 1st century before the Common Era until around the year 220;
the Amoraim (from amar, “to say”, “to expound”), the Sages of the Gemara, from about 220 until around 500, in the Land of Israel and in Babylonia.

Why an Oral Torah? What the Written Torah says

To understand the Talmud, one must first understand a central idea of Judaism: the Torah was given in two forms. The Written Torah (Torah she-bikhtav), that is, the five books of Moshe, and the Oral Torah (Torah she-be’al peh), the explanation passed down from master to disciple. The second is the key to the first.

The Written Torah itself presupposes this explanation. It commands, for example, to bind “a sign upon your hand” and totafot “between your eyes” (Devarim [Deuteronomy] 6:8), without saying what these objects are or how to make them: it is the oral tradition that teaches that these are tefillin, black square boxes containing passages of the Torah. It permits slaughtering an animal for food “as I have commanded you” (Devarim 12:21), yet nowhere does the text describe how to slaughter: the Sages deduce from this that these laws had been given orally to Moshe (Talmud, Chullin 28a). It forbids all “work” on Shabbat without defining the word. Without the oral tradition, entire commandments would remain a dead letter.

The Talmud grounds this duality in a verse: “Write for yourself these words, for according to (literally: by the mouth of) these words I have made a covenant with you” (Shemot [Exodus] 34:27). The Sages read in this verse the two modes of transmission, and derive from it an ancient rule: words that were written must not be recited from memory, and words handed down orally must not be put into writing (Talmud, Gittin 60b; Temura 14b).

The Mishna opens the Ethics of the Fathers (Pirkei Avot) with the chain of this transmission: “Moshe received the Torah from Sinai and handed it to Yehoshua, Yehoshua to the Elders, the Elders to the prophets, and the prophets handed it to the men of the Great Assembly” (Pirkei Avot 1:1). The Talmud is the last written link in this chain.

The story of the convert and the alphabet

The Talmud tells a story that shows clearly why the Written Torah is not enough (Shabbat 31a). A non-Jew comes to Hillel the Elder: he wants to convert, but accepts only the Written Torah, not the Oral Torah. On the first day, Hillel teaches him the Hebrew alphabet: alef, bet, gimel, dalet. The next day, he presents the letters to him in reverse order. The man protests: “That is not what you told me yesterday!” Hillel answers him: “You rely on me to know which letters these are. Rely on me for the Oral Torah as well.”

The lesson is simple: even to read the Written Torah, you already need someone to pass it on. The text is never read on its own; it is received.

The Mishna: the oral law set down in writing

For centuries, the oral law was transmitted by word of mouth, learned by heart and discussed in the academies. Several schools formed; the most famous were those of Hillel and Shammai, in the 1st century before the Common Era. But history was about to upend this transmission.

In the year 70 of the Common Era, the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem. According to the Talmud, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai obtained from the Roman general permission to settle in Yavne with his Sages, in order to preserve study there (Gittin 56b). In 135, the Bar Kokhba revolt was crushed; Rabbi Akiva and other masters were put to death, and the teaching of Torah was banned. Communities scattered. The danger became real: that the oral tradition might be lost.

It was then that Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi (“the Prince”), known simply as Rabbi, leader of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, gathered all the traditions and arranged them into a brief, precise text that was easy to memorize: the Mishna, around the year 200. The word comes from shana, “to repeat”, because it was learned by repeating it. The Rambam (Maimonides) explains, in the introduction to his Mishneh Torah, that Rabbi acted in this way because he saw the number of students dwindling, persecution growing worse and the people dispersing, and he feared that the Torah would be forgotten in Israel.

To justify what seemed to contradict the prohibition on writing down the oral law, the Sages quote a verse from Psalms: “It is a time to act for Hashem; they have made void Your Torah” (Tehillim [Psalms] 119:126). They read it this way: when one must act to save the Torah, one may override one of its rules (Gittin 60a; Temura 14b).

The six orders of the Mishna

The Mishna is written in clear, concise Hebrew. It is divided into six orders (sedarim), which are themselves divided into 63 tractates (masekhtot), then into chapters and paragraphs, also called mishnayot. The six orders are:

Zeraim (“seeds”): blessings and prayers, then the agricultural laws of the Land of Israel;
Moed (“appointed times”): Shabbat and the festivals;
Nashim (“women”): marriage, divorce, vows;
Nezikin (“damages”): civil and criminal law, the courts, and the Ethics of the Fathers;
Kodashim (“holy things”): the Temple, the sacrifices, ritual slaughter;
Taharot (“purities”): the laws of ritual purity and impurity.

Their order is remembered thanks to a Hebrew mnemonic: Z’MaN NaKaT (Zeraim, Moed, Nashim, Nezikin, Kodashim, Taharot). The Mishna begins with a very concrete question: “From what time may one recite the Shema in the evening?” (Mishna Berakhot 1:1). All of Judaism is there: before speaking of great ideas, one asks how to live.

Alongside the Mishna, other teachings of the Tannaim were preserved without being included in it: they are called baraitot (“external” teachings); some of them are gathered in a parallel collection, the Tosefta (“supplement”). The Gemara quotes them constantly.

The Gemara: three centuries of discussion

The Mishna is a summary. It often gives the law without its reasons, mentions opinions without deciding between them, and assumes principles it does not state. As soon as it was compiled, the Sages began to study it line by line. For about three centuries, in the academies of Tiberias, Caesarea and Sepphoris in the Land of Israel, and in those of Sura, Pumbedita and Nehardea in Babylonia (present-day Iraq), they explained it, compared it with the baraitot and drew new laws from it. It is this immense undertaking that is called the Gemara.

The Gemara has a unique style. It proceeds by questions and answers: “How do we know this?”; “But was the opposite not taught?”; “This is not difficult: here it refers to one case, there to another”. An objection calls for an answer, which calls for a new objection. Verses are quoted, cases compared, distinctions proposed. Often the discussion ends with a conclusion; sometimes with the word teiku, “the question remains open”.

Halakha and aggada

The content of the Gemara falls into two broad areas:

halakha (from halakh, “to walk”): the law, the way to “walk” through life. This is the legal part, which discusses prayers, Shabbat, marriage, commerce, damages;
aggada (“narrative”): everything else. Stories of the Sages, parables, explanations of verses, reflections on death, prayer and justice, advice on medicine, ethics and good manners.

The two are interwoven on the same page. A legal discussion about Shabbat may open onto an episode from the life of Hillel; a page about damages may close with a meditation on suffering. The Talmud does not separate law from life.

The Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud

The Gemara was compiled twice, in two different centers. That is why there are two Talmuds.

The Jerusalem Talmud (Yerushalmi)

Despite its name, the Jerusalem Talmud was not composed in Jerusalem, which the Romans had barred to Jews since the Bar Kokhba revolt, but in the academies of Galilee, above all in Tiberias. It is also called the “Talmud of the Land of Israel”. The Rambam, in the introduction to his Mishneh Torah, attributes its composition to Rabbi Yochanan. It was closed toward the end of the 4th century, in a period of great hardship for the communities of Galilee under a Roman Empire that had become Christian. It is shorter and more elliptical, and its editing seems less finished. It covers the first four orders of the Mishna (with gaps) and part of tractate Niddah, and it is invaluable for the agricultural laws specific to the Land of Israel, on which the Babylonian Talmud hardly comments.

The Babylonian Talmud (Bavli)

The Babylonian Talmud was born in the great Jewish community of Mesopotamia, settled there since the Babylonian exile in the 6th century before the Common Era. Its academies flourished for centuries. According to tradition, Rav Ashi, head of the academy of Sura, organized its compilation, and the teaching was closed with Ravina: “Rav Ashi and Ravina are the end of instruction” (Bava Metzia 86a). This closing is dated to around the year 500. After them, Sages known as the Savoraim continued to polish the text.

The Bavli is far longer: its tractates total 2,711 folios (dapim) in the standard editions. It comments on 36 and a half tractates of the Mishna, and it was carefully completed. The Talmud itself alludes to this with humor: Rabbi Yirmeya applies to the Babylonian Talmud the verse “He has made me dwell in darkness” (Eikha [Lamentations] 3:6), because of its complex and sometimes obscure discussions (Sanhedrin 24a).

Which one is authoritative?

When the two Talmuds disagree, the law as a general rule follows the Babylonian Talmud, considered later and more complete; its editors were, moreover, familiar with the teachings of the Land of Israel. That is why, when people say “the Talmud” without further detail, they almost always mean the Bavli, and when a page is cited (“Shabbat 31a”), it refers to the Bavli’s pagination. The Yerushalmi, for its part, is cited by chapter and halakha.

Studying in chavruta, in pairs: you read, you question, you contradict each other. “These and those are the words of the living G-d” (Talmud, Eruvin 13b).

A page of Talmud: a dialogue across the centuries

A page of the printed Talmud looks like no other book. In the center, in square letters, is the text of the Mishna and the Gemara. In the inner margin is the commentary of Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, Troyes, 1040-1105), who explains every difficult word and makes the text accessible. In the outer margin are the Tosafot (“additions”), discussions by Rashi’s disciples and descendants, including his grandson Rabbeinu Tam, who compare passages and raise contradictions. All around are cross-references to verses and to the law codes, and further commentaries.

This layout was fixed by the printer Daniel Bomberg in Venice, who published the first complete edition of the Babylonian Talmud between 1520 and 1523. His numbering of the folios has remained the universal reference: each folio has two sides, a and b, hence references such as “Berakhot 2a”. The most widespread edition today is that of the Widow and Brothers Romm in Vilna, completed in the 1880s.

The result is striking: on a single page, a Sage of the Mishna from the 2nd century, Babylonian masters from the 4th, a commentator from 11th-century Champagne, the scholars of the 12th and 13th centuries, and today’s reader, invited to join the discussion, are all in dialogue.

Disagreement: “These and those are the words of the living G-d”

What is most striking about the Talmud is the room it makes for disagreement, the machloket. Minority opinions, those that were not adopted as law, are carefully preserved. The Mishna explains why: the individual view is recorded alongside that of the majority, so that a future court may, if necessary, rely on it (Mishna Eduyot 1:5).

The most famous account concerns the schools of Hillel and Shammai (Eruvin 13b). For three years they argued, each claiming that the law followed its view. A heavenly voice finally declared: “These and those are the words of the living G-d (elu va-elu divrei Elokim chayim), but the law follows the school of Hillel.” Why Hillel’s school? Because, the Talmud answers, its members were gentle and humble, they studied the words of the school of Shammai as well, and they even cited their opponents’ view before their own.

Another account shows how far this responsibility entrusted to the Sages extends: the story of the “oven of Akhnai” (Bava Metzia 59b). Rabbi Eliezer, alone against everyone, invokes miracles and even a voice from heaven to prove he is right. Rabbi Yehoshua stands up and quotes the Torah: “It is not in heaven” (Devarim 30:12). The Torah was given to human beings; it is up to them, according to the rules it lays down, to decide how it is applied. The Talmud adds that G-d “smiled” and said: “My children have defeated Me.”

Talmudic debate, then, is neither a flaw nor a sign of uncertainty. It is a way of seeking the truth together, while respecting the one who thinks differently.

What Rav Raphaël Benizri teaches

In his lectures, Rav Benizri often returns to the nature of the Oral Torah, of which the Talmud is the expression. Here are his main ideas, faithfully summarized.

The oral law came before the written law

In his introduction to Pirkei Avot, the Rav states that the oral law preceded the written law, and that it alone “is still on the move”. Avraham, he points out, had no written law: he already lived by what would later be called the Oral Torah, the one we have received from our fathers. The written law, by contrast, is fixed: people went so far as to count its letters. The Rav connects the word Torah to the root of hara, a woman carrying a child: the Torah is “in permanent gestation”, like a seed that must develop and give birth to other aspects. It is fixed only for someone who would want to freeze it at his own reading.

Moshe and Rabbi Akiva

In his lecture on Lag BaOmer, the Rav takes up the famous account in tractate Menachot (29b). Moshe goes up to heaven and finds G-d busy adorning the letters of the Torah with small crowns. He learns that a man, in the future, will derive mountains of laws from each of these crowns: Akiva ben Yosef. The Rav draws the lesson: Moshe holds the written law; Rabbi Akiva opens up the oral law, the one that is measured by each person’s perception.

The oral law takes over from prophecy

In his lecture on the 10th of Tevet, the Rav explains that with Ezra the Scribe, whom our Sages identify with the prophet Malachi, the last of the prophets, a new period begins: that of the interpretation of the oral law, which takes the place of prophecy. This interpretation, he acknowledges, lends itself to different meanings, sometimes opposite ones. But its genius is to give the Written Torah “a human, universal reach”, recognized as being animated by the holy spirit. The Oral Torah is the personal contribution of each one of us. That is why, the Rav reminds us, whoever is present at the passing of a sage must tear his garment as a sign of mourning: a Torah has been lost that was that man’s own share within the whole community of Israel.

A ball passed from hand to hand

In his lecture on the chain of transmission, devoted to the first mishna of Avot, the Rav points out that the text does not say that Moshe received the Torah “from G-d”, but “from Sinai”: one receives only what one is able to receive. He cites the image with which our Sages described transmission: a ball that young girls toss from one to another. A ball is passed on whole; one does not let it drop. He also notes that this mishna should logically have opened the first tractate of the Talmud, and that our Sages placed it at the head of Avot because that is where each person’s own share of revelation, in the way he grasps the Torah, is judged.

The Kaddish of study

Finally, in Pirkei Avot, part 2, the Rav recalls the custom of reciting Kaddish after studying a teaching of the oral law. He relates that a master of the Mishna, Rabbi Chananya ben Akashya, who left only a single saying in the entire Talmud and had no children, voiced his worry before G-d: who will recite Kaddish for me? The answer was that the whole people of Israel would, every time they concluded a session of study with his mishna. Indeed, it is his saying that is recited at the end of every chapter of Pirkei Avot before the Kaddish (Mishna Makkot 3:16).

The Talmud in history

After the closing of the Talmud, the heads of the Babylonian academies, the Geonim (7th-11th centuries), became the authority of the Jewish world. They answered by letter the questions sent by distant communities, and spread the Talmud as far as North Africa and Spain. Around 987, Rav Sherira Gaon wrote for the community of Kairouan a famous letter recounting how the Mishna and the Talmud were composed.

In the Middle Ages, two great works drew a clear body of law from the Talmud. The Rambam (1138-1204), in his Mishneh Torah, arranged the whole of the law in fourteen books. Rabbi Yosef Karo (1488-1575), in the Shulchan Aruch, wrote the code that communities still follow today, with the glosses of the Rema for Ashkenazim. But these codes always refer back to the Talmud: it is the source.

The Talmud was also persecuted. In 1240, in Paris, a disputation was held at the request of Nicholas Donin, an apostate; Rabbi Yechiel of Paris defended the Talmud. In 1242, entire cartloads of manuscripts were burned in public. Further burnings took place in Italy in 1553. For a long time, editions were censored. Despite all this, study never stopped.

In the 20th century, one initiative transformed ordinary people’s relationship with the Talmud: Daf Yomi, “the daily page”. Proposed in 1923 by Rabbi Meir Shapiro of Lublin, it consists of studying one folio of the Babylonian Talmud each day, the same one all over the world. The full cycle takes about seven and a half years. The end of the cycle, the Siyum HaShas, brings together tens of thousands of people; the current cycle, which began in January 2020, ends in 2027.

Studying the Talmud today

Torah study is a mitzvah, a commandment, for every Jew, at every age (Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De’ah 246:1). The Talmud recommends dividing one’s study time into three: one third for the Written Torah, one third for Mishna, one third for Talmud (Kiddushin 30a; Rambam, Hilkhot Talmud Torah 1:11). Pirkei Avot gives an order of progression: “At five, Scripture; at ten, Mishna; at fifteen, Talmud” (Pirkei Avot 5:21).

Traditionally, one studies in chavruta, in pairs: you read the text aloud, ask each other questions, contradict each other and search together. Study halls, the beit midrash, are often noisy, and that noise is part of the learning. The Talmud says that “the sword is upon those who study alone” (Berakhot 63b), because solitary study runs the risk of error.

You do not need to be a scholar to begin. There are English translations, notably the bilingual Steinsaltz edition, online classes and daily study programs. Ben Bag Bag said of the Torah: “Turn it over and turn it over again, for everything is in it” (Pirkei Avot 5:22). That is true of the Talmud more than of any other text.

Misconceptions about the Talmud

“The Talmud replaces the Bible”

No. The Talmud constantly comments on the Written Torah and quotes its verses on every page: it sees itself as its explanation. For Jewish tradition, the two are inseparable, like a text and its reading.

“The Talmud is a code of laws”

Not exactly. It is a debate, often without an explicit conclusion. To know what to do in practice, one turns to the codes drawn from it (the Rambam, the Shulchan Aruch) and to rabbis. Deriving a practical rule from a page of Talmud without knowing the whole discussion is a mistake the Sages themselves fought against.

“The Talmud contains passages hostile to non-Jews”

This old accusation rests, most of the time, on truncated quotations, taken out of context or simply invented, spread in antisemitic pamphlets. The Talmud, like any text from antiquity, also reflects the conflicts of its time, and tradition has always read those passages with the commentators. But it also teaches that the righteous of the nations have a share in the World to Come, and that peace and kindness extend to all. Anyone who wants to judge the Talmud must read it in context and with a teacher.

“Only rabbis can study it”

False. For centuries, craftsmen and merchants set aside a moment every evening for “their” page of Gemara. Today, men and women all over the world study it every day, each at their own level.

Frequently asked questions about the Talmud

What is the difference between the Mishna and the Gemara?

The Mishna is the base text, compiled in Hebrew around the year 200 by Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi: a concise summary of the oral law. The Gemara is the discussion of the Mishna by the Sages of the following three centuries, written mostly in Aramaic. Together, they form the Talmud.

How long does it take to read the whole Talmud?

Studying one page (a two-sided folio) a day, following the Daf Yomi program, it takes about seven and a half years to finish the 2,711 folios of the Babylonian Talmud. In-depth study, with the commentaries, takes a lifetime.

What language is the Talmud written in?

The Mishna is in Hebrew. The Gemara is written mostly in Aramaic, the language spoken by the Jews of Babylonia and Galilee at the time, interspersed with many quotations in Hebrew. The Jerusalem Talmud uses a Western Aramaic dialect, the Babylonian Talmud an Eastern Aramaic.

Has the Talmud been translated into English?

Yes. There is notably an annotated bilingual translation of the Babylonian Talmud based on the work of Rav Adin Steinsaltz, as well as several translations of the Mishna and of individual tractates. For beginners, it is often advised to start with Pirkei Avot or with a short tractate, together with a teacher.

What is a “siyum”?

It is the small celebration held when one completes the study of a tractate of the Talmud. A concluding text and a Kaddish are recited, and a meal is often shared. The Siyum HaShas celebrates the completion of the entire Talmud.

Sources and references

Devarim (Deuteronomy) 6:8; Devarim 12:21; Devarim 30:12
Shemot (Exodus) 34:27
Tehillim (Psalms) 119:126
Eikha (Lamentations) 3:6
Mishna Berakhot 1:1
Mishna Eduyot 1:5
Mishna Makkot 3:16
Pirkei Avot 1:1; 5:21; 5:22
Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31a
Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 56b; Gittin 60a-b
Babylonian Talmud, Temura 14b
Babylonian Talmud, Chullin 28a
Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 59b; Bava Metzia 86a
Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 13b
Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 24a
Babylonian Talmud, Menachot 29b
Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 30a
Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 63b
Rambam, introduction to the Mishneh Torah
Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Talmud Torah 1:11
Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De’ah 246:1
Rav Sherira Gaon, Iggeret (Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon), around 987
Bomberg edition of the Babylonian Talmud, Venice, 1520-1523; Romm edition, Vilna, 1880s
Rav Raphaël Benizri, Pirkei Avot, part 1: introduction
Rav Raphaël Benizri, Pirkei Avot, part 2: all Israel has a share in the World to Come
Rav Raphaël Benizri, Pirkei Avot: the chain of transmission
Rav Raphaël Benizri, Lag BaOmer: the bonfires and the light of the Zohar
Rav Raphaël Benizri, 10 Tevet: the fast that opens the destruction

Article by the Pensées Juives editorial team. Passages attributed to Rav Raphaël Benizri are taken from his lectures published on this site.

What Is the Talmud?