Talmud for Beginners : Text

Rabbi Abrams writes:

"When I teach Torah classes to my congregants, sometimes they become very uncomfortable with what they read in the Tanach. Jacob tricks his father. Moses kills a man. David commits adultery. They struggle to come to grips with the difficult passages in the text. They also work on finding meaning in worship services, even though they don't know Hebrew. They strive to define themselves proudly as Jews in a non-Jewish world.
They worry about assimilation. And I'm pretty sure that they think their problems are modern ones. Blessedly, the rabbis of the Talmud struggled with these questions, too, and they came up with some terrific answers.

"In this introduction to the tractate Megillah of the Babylonian Talmud, we will learn how the rabbis viewed the Torah, and how they teach us to relate to it. They don't shy away from the hard-to-deal with passages, but show us how to meet them head on without sacrificing respect for them. They show us how to make the text our own and how to honor it in our everyday lives. These are ancient answers to modern questions.

Judith Z. Abrams is a woman with a mission: She wants to bring the beauty of Talmud to as many people, and with as much depth as possible. To that end, she has published many books on the Talmud, including Talmud for Beginners, Volumes I and II and, with her husband, Steven, Jewish Parenting: Rabbinic Insights, Learn Talmud: How to Use the Talmud: The Steinsaltz Edition, and The Women of the Talmud. She earned her Ph.D. in Rabbinic literature from the Baltimore Hebrew University and teaches across the country. She is the founder and director of Maqom: A School for Adult Talmud Study, where anyone can learn, regardless of their background. She lives in Houston with her husband and three children: Michael, Ruth, and Hannah.