While the Steinsaltz Talmud can be guilty of placing too much information into its work, it's a great book for people with a minimal understanding of the Talmud. As of today June 5, 2000, the material covered in this volume has just been covered in Daf Yomi (page of the day) classes. I recommend it to anyone who has gone through these classes and feels like he (or she) has missed anything in the class.

Intended to stand on its own, the Steinsaltz Talmud not only gives the discussion, but also the Halacka and helpful background information about the various scholars represented. The only drawback to studying these volumes is that if you study them alone, you will get lost. A single page in the Talmud goes on for several pages in the Steinsaltz and you can spend so much time absorbing the background info that you lose thread of the discussion taking place. So make sure to study these books with someone who knows a little more than you (or a lot more than you) and you'll be fine.

Steinsaltz, here, tells us of some very unusual people. Not only were they committed to studying the Bible in great depth, they also tried to fill in parts that were seemingly left out. Thus came the Midrash and the Halacha, which rounded out the Bible stories and laws, respectively.

We say this song every Shabbos, but with Rabbi Even Israel's insights we can sing the words a little slower and with a little more love in our voices to our wives who make Shabbos brighter.

This book gave me a some interesting insights into the Jewish faith. There are some great explanations on the concept of angels(no they aren't cherubs with wings) and that the idea that words themselves are sacred. The book however lacks detail in other areas (example: why are there only good or bad angels, but not neutral angels?). At other points the book gives you a little bit on reincarnation, but after you read about it you want an additional chapter on the subject!

I would also have liked a comparison to other religions, as the book tends to focus more on what something is rather than why. For example there is information on the tradition of not mixing meat and dairy, but I found myself still wondering why this was important? But to be fair the book does pack quite a bit into less than 200 pages.

So this book is good for opening doors on the subject, but don't expect a Cliff Notes overview or definitive encyclopedia. I did find it an enjoyable read, and liked the fact that it touched on a broad range of subjects which include Jewish views on faith, food and sex. On the whole it's a good quick read on a deep subject.

Although short in length, this book packs quite a punch. The chapter on repentence alone is worth the price if the whole book. Steinsaltz does a magnificent job of peeling the layers back to get at the core of the meaning of concepts relating to life. This book is certainly Kabbalistic in nature, but that shouldn't prohibit anyone from picking this book up. It is written a very easy to understand manner that would make it acceptable to anyone interested in the "meaning of life." The author takes intimidating subjects like the sefirot or "tree of life," and explains their relevance to our lives in a manner suitable for even novices of scripture or anyone searching for some meaning for that matter. I can see coming back to this book time and time again for methods of approaching subjects of the Torah to those that reject its validity in our lives or those that like to portray it as irrelevant in today's society. This book could definitely be part of a class in a college or university and would even be suited for certain high schools. The depth of subject matter combined with the easy readability and the relatively short length make this a splendid book suitable for anyone remotely interested in the meaning of their life.

The unfolding of the heart of Jewish spirituality, like removing petals from a rose, until the stem remains, a nourishing channel from the powers of life's soil, to be discovered in the sefirot of Yahweh (or, the mystical science of the Kabbalah which lies under the surface of Judiasm like a great anchoring mass under the tip of an iceberg).

This is a beautifully written look at thirteen tenants of Jewish spirituality, and how those aspects apply not only on a metaphysical level, but in one's daily life. It is recommended reading for anyone who can appreciate the primal elements of any long-standing philosophy, Jewish or otherwise, or for those who can appreciate literary poeticism. In short, perhaps the rose is the heart, and we only need to remove the petals one by one, to know each, and then to let them go, until only the force of life, viz., God, remains.

Note: this review is not just for this one volume but for the entire series. This volume is a reference guide and is a good basis, but the meat of Talmud study takes place in the rest of the series.

The main problem with studying Talmud is that at any point in the Talmud, you are expected to know the rest of the Talmud. The way to circumvent this problem is to study Talmud with a group and make sure there is at least one rabbi presence (two or more is optimal since much of the learning comes from the divergent viewpoints and the tension in between.)

What Steinsaltz seems to be trying to do is to place almost every commentary into the his series. This is great for the commentaries, however if you are not familiar with the particular tractate (Ketubos and Bava Metziah are the tractates currently published but there are other ones.) or the argument you will lose the thread of the argument and something that relies on you remembering a statement made a page back is going to be difficult since most Talmud "pages" (long story but there is a popular class in which you study a Talmud page a day) are taking about 4-7 pages to play out.

This is an invaluable book in conjunction with a class. It is also a great series if you have already studied these tractates and would like to come back and see what you've missed (and in Talmud study you do tend to miss a few things, especially if you are starting out and you don't know all the context.)

However, I would recommend the Artscroll Talmud if you are a beginner.

It is said that there is a Talmud for every generation, and the one for now and the next fifty years or so is the Steinsaltz edition, first in Hebrew, and now appearing in English at the rate of a couple of volumes a year from Random House. The "Reference Guide" is a "how to use this tool" sort of book, but in Steinsaltz's unusual case such a specialised book turns out to have general application. For the Christian who wonders about the relevance of Scripture to life -- and what exegesis can mean for lay people of faith -- this Reference Guide can serve as an introduction to their own faith reading. For the youngster attracted to the classics of the East, as Rabbi Steinsaltz was for many years, the book can serve to teach just what books _are_, how to use them, how to be captivated and even captured without being enslaved. For the Jew whose Hebrew -- and Aramaic, and Greek, and history, and.. -- are not up to full-time Talmudic study, this guide can be just that, a guide, and one which will very likely lead to buying the rest of the English language volumes as they appear. A natural bar and bat mitzvah present for all, except those so frum the boys will already have read it in Hebrew. :-) -dlj

Rabbi Steinsaltz, one of the most respected Talmudists of his generation, has devoted significant effort to introducing the Talmud to a wider audience and encouraging people to actually read it rather than merely read about it. Starting to read the Talmud without some idea of what it is and what it is about would be a very frustrating project, however, and this book is intended to help bridge that gap.

"The Essential Talmud" is divided into three sections, covering history, content and method. The historical section gives a very traditional account of the origins of the Talmud in the oral Torah, and its compilation and editing in Palestine and Babylon. By "traditional" I mean that this is essentially the account that the Talmud gives of itself or that can be filled in from other rabbinic literature. Whether or not this history is completely accurate, it is a significant part of the Talmud's self-presentation and of its authority, and throws important light on both the Talmud's content (largely the teachings of prior masters) and its methods (the obsessive quest to identify the authors of and reconcile the various teachings). In short, it is very difficult to understand the Talmud if you do not understand where the Talmud believes it came from, and Rabbi Steinsaltz's chapters on history are very helpful in that regard. He then goes beyond the Talmud itself to offer a brief history of Talmudic exegesis, and some very interesting information on the printing and persecution of the Talmud.

The second section of the book covers the structure and content of the Talmud. Here Rabbi Steinsaltz offers a very concise summary of the topics touched on by the various tractates of the Talmud. These very brief chapters can do no more than give one a sense of the general subject matter covered, but they successfully provide a general overview. What I found lacking in this section was the complete absence of any citations to the Talmud itself, or any bibliography for further reading on the various subjects. It is easy enough to guess that most of the material on marriage will be found somewhere in Tractates Ketubot and Kiddushin, but it is less easy to determine the source for his comments on the status of women or on ethics and halakhah. Some citations here would have been nice, in case the reader is sufficiently intrigued to want to read more. For example, in the chapter on ethics, Rabbi Steinsaltz summarizes rabbinic thinking on the sometimes conflicting claims of justice ("truth") and compromise ("peace"). I would love to read more on this subject, but I don't know where in the Talmud (or in other commentaries) to look. (For a more detailed look at the subject matter of the Talmud, see Abraham Cohen's "Everyman's Talmud," which has chapters that cover most of the tractate subjects, and additionally pulls together material on other subjects (such as the nature of God, sin and repentance, and so on) that is scattered throughout the Talmud.)

The third section of the book is entitled "Method," and while it is in some ways the most intriguing part of the book, it is also in some ways the least successful. Here Rabbi Steinsaltz attempts to give the reader a sense of how the Talmud operates, what problems it studies, how it approaches those problems, and how it uses logic, midrash and aggadah to achieve its goals. There are many interesting insights here *if* you already have some experience with reading Talmud. The real difficulty is the almost complete lack of concrete examples or actual text from the Talmud to illustrate Rabbi Steinsaltz's points.

Overall, I found this to be a good summary of basic points that someone new to Talmud study needs to know. The book is well written and easy to read. The failure to include any extended passages of text is a major flaw, however, and makes it impossible for this book to really capture the "essence" of the Talmud.

I was the most impressed by the first section of the book which laid out the history of the Talmud -- how it was composed, how it was transmitted and copied and what is contained within. Most of Steinsaltz's helpful observations about the Talmud fall within this section -- for example, he talks about how the Talmud is probably the only holy book that encourages doubts to be voiced and Talmud and torah are studied not to memorize a bunch of rules but for the sake of knowledge itself. For me, that's what makes the Talmud so interesting (although since I can't read Hebrew or Aramaic, I have not read it). The second section provides quick capsule summaries of the Talmud's view on various topics but they seem too facile and canned considering the richness of the debate. The final section of method is interesting although more examples could have been used for each debate style and logical method since the author spent so much time in the first section talking about the various schools of Talmud and how the logic is almost the most important facet. Again, he must just scratch the surface. The book is very readable, but the last two sections could have gone into much more detail without losing that clarity. Still, an essential read to appreciate this incredible collection of scholarship.

I liked this book and found it very helpful. It is more about how the Talmud was actually put together, than a review or commentary on what the Talmud actually contains.

Hi amazon i'm pakistani i dont know english very well i read this book own my language.my national language is urdu.please suggest me that where did i bought this book in pakistan

Dont expect any meaningfull objections to Stiensaltz here. Neusner merely states that there is more of an order to the Talmud than is implied in Stiensaltz' work. Here is the table of contents:

1 "The Talmud has no Formal, External Order" vs. The Talmud is Carefully and Systematically Ordered

2"The Talmud Deals with all Possible Subjects In the World" vs. The Talmud Takes Up a Cogent Progam.

3. "The Talmud is not written in a Systematic Fashion" vs. The Talmud Adheres to an Orderly Rhetorical Repertoire.

4. "The Structure of the Talmud is Associative" vs. The Talmud is Carefully Structured According to a Coherent Plan.

Adin Stienstaltz did not present any of the above "false propostitions" in his works (to the best of my knowledge)- It seems as though Nuesner constructed an ignorant position, than claimed that position to be Stiensaltz- solely to make his work more noticed.

Still, the book is still definitely the product of extensive research by an intelligent person, continuing the tradition of order, progress, and self-questioning of Jewish thought.

Amazon should offer these types of books for download, as to avoid the high cost associated with out-of-print works.