A few years ago in a series of meetings with members of the Sharia Boards and institutions related to Islamic finance I had the opportunity to meet the eminent Sheikh Dr. Nizam Mohammed Saleh Yaqubi, a pioneer of the Islamic banking system and one of the most distinguished scholars of the Councils judges in matters of Islamic Finance rules. It was an interesting and in-depth meeting (obviously without handshakes and bareheaded!), and I appreciated the transversal vision of the texts of the three monotheistic religions, however much critical and sublimating of one text over the others. Since then my studies in biblical exegesis had an extra boost and have never stopped.
So today, welcoming this publication of the Talmud, I am not at all surprised by the success and sold out, with which it was received, without distinction of creed and thought, given that two thirds of the buyers are not of the Jewish religion. But to understand the astonishing enthusiasm with which the first two editions have already sold out, let's take a step back.
Because, during the period in which the Western Roman Empire was inexorably declining, the Jews certainly did not have an easy life: in fact, in addition to the persecutions there was a very high tax burden and so many also emigrated to Babylon. There was a community there which also from the point of view of studies had developed greatly over the years and an intense exchange of knowledge had been created with Israel with wise men and academics who had intensified the exchange of opinions and debates on the most correct application of the precepts and the biblical message, always with the intention, then as now, of placing it in a reality undergoing great change and to give posterity useful tools for the continuation of a conscious and reasoned belief. Thus the writings of those 1800 sages who lived between the two countries were collected and formed the Gemara.
The Talmud unites the Gemara and the Mishna in a fundamental unicum. In fact, the Mishna, which had previously been written by Rabbi Yehuda Hannassi, saw for the first time the writing of the teaching of the oral Torah which until then had been handed down by the Tannaim, scholars of the Tanakh (Pentateuch, Prophets and Hagiographers ), to students from generation to generation. The Mishna is a real normative code and, together with its extensive and profound commentaries gathered in the Gemara, it has represented the starting point of debates and studies involving theologians, philosophers, jurists, exegetes and simple scholars who seek to enter in a historical and biblical journey with more references and food for thought.
The secret of the Talmud lies precisely in being a real manifesto of freedom of thought in religion, a testimony as a comparison, study and freedom of debate that can make us face the challenges of the changing centuries and generations and which are our future.
Within the Talmud some discussions remain open in many cases, allowing the reader not only to find a guide to putting it into practice but to question the meaning.
Faced with radicalizations and steps backwards that we often see in the name of fanaticism and extremism, the Talmud looks ahead and has welcomed the succession of excellent scholars with different points of view and different scholastic backgrounds who, from the time of the persecutions to today they continue and make the Talmud alive in an era of anti-Semitism and social disruption due to global economic and social crises far beyond resolution.
