Rabbi Aryeh Cohen: Interpretation of the Talmud

Rabbi Aryeh Cohen, who serves as a Professor of Rabbinic Literature at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies of the American Jewish University indicates that the Talmud, being one of the most influential documents in Judaism, is only one piece of its entire legal structure. The Jewish legal system is based on the exegetical and argumentative development of a basic corpus, endowed with intrinsic authority, known as Tanakh (תנך), composed of two inseparable elements, the Written Law - formed by the Torah (תורה), the Pentateuch; the Neviim (נביאם), the prophets; and the Ketuvím (כתובים), the Scriptures as the poetic and wisdom books - and the Oral Law, that is, the interpretive tradition gathered in the Gemara; the word Tanach itself is the acronym for its components. From the Tanach, an endless chain of arguments and compilations of the same is erected that actualize the general and abstract assumptions of the Tanach, into practical resolutions. Rabbi Aryeh Cohen, explains that the first level of interpretation of the Tanach is the Talmud. Over the centuries, various rabbis made codifications of the scattered norms. Rabbi Aryeh Cohen indicates that each of these codifications is made up of the Talmudic arguments and the provisions of the Tanakh. The encodings are not sacred texts and take their authority from the fame and wisdom of their authors, so they are not mandatory and are usually used according to the geographical region and the religious legal tradition of the different communities. Rabbi Aryeh Cohen shares in his scholar articles that among the most important compilations is, like the main one, the Mishnéh Torah (מישנה תורה) and its complement, the Yad Hajazakah (יד החזקה), by Moshe Ben Maimon, also known as Maimonides or Rambam (רמבם) - according to tradition to name by acronyms the commentators of the Jewish law -; written around 1180. The Mishneh Torah is, moreover, the first attempt at a rational classification of the legal arguments scattered in Jewish thought. According to Rabbi Aryeh Cohen, other important compilations are the Shulján Aruj (ארוך שולחן) by Josef Caro, written around 1570 and later corrected for use by the Eastern European communities by Shneur Zalman under the name Suljan Aruj Admur Hazaken (הזקן ארוך שולחן) and, among the Later the Tzemaj Tzedek (צדק צמך), by Menahem Mendel, written in the 1860s, as part of the late Hasidic movement, Eastern Europe