The most ambitious scholarly project in this century of Jewish life has been Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz's effort to unveil the complexities of the Talmud on behalf of English readers. Rabbi Steinsaltz, an Israeli scholar nonpareil, has implemented the machinery of twentieth century scholarship to uncover the legal, philosophical, and spiritual thoughts of our sages who began the enterprise we know as the Talmud twenty centuries ago.

The Talmud: The Steinsaltz Edition, exquisitely bound and eminently readable, was published in 1989 by the Israel Institute for Talmudic Publications. The first four volumes focus upon the Babylonian Talmudic tractate Bava Metzia, which means "Middle Gate." Interestingly, the central subject of this tractate is business dealings between people as defined, delimited, and formulated in the laws of the Torah. What makes the work religiously significant is that the Torah does not distinguish between "matters between a man and his Creator" and those "between man and his fellowman." Ritual matters are intermingled with civil disputes; moral instruction is integrated with laws of ritual purity.

Each page contains a translation of a specific Mishnah (the "Oral Law" - compiled by Judah the Prince in 200 C.E.) and the Gemara (literally, the "completion" of the Mishnah, written by the Amoraim, the "interpreters" of the Oral Law from 200-500 C.E.). The text is printed in Babylonian Aramaic, and is pointed. That in itself is a remarkable scholarly aid since the vocalization and punctuation of this ancient legalistic dialect can be remarkably abstruse. The diacritical additions, combined with the literal translation, the interpretive remarks of the medieval sages, as well as Rabbi Steinsaltz's extensive discourse on each page, suffuse the reader with the feeling that he is engaging in an actual discussion that could be taking place in any Jewish academy over the last two millenia.

Accompanying the four volumes is an essential fifth, Rabbi Steinsaltz's Reference Guide to the study of the Talmud. With historical pages, descriptions of the formation of the Talmud, the evolution of Talmudic scholarship throughout the ages, and an extensive dictionary of terms, it remains an indispensable jewel in this diadem of Jewish learning. According to publication sources, with these literary contributions, Rabbi Steinsaltz has made the Talmud more accessible to more Jewish homes than anyone since the medieval sage Rashi.