The Talmud

 

THE TALMUD

This page will serve as a rebuttal, explanation for so-called “satanic” Talmud verses. Before I begin, I’ll explain what the Talmud is.

The Talmud is a collection of books. Lots of them. To read the entire thing, which isn’t necessary by any standard and it isn’t even done by most Rabbis let alone regular Jews, would take years. Nobody does it because it’s not necessary. There’s a whole bunch of nonsense, boring debates in the Talmud. Most of it is commentary on the Torah/Tanakh and debating about it.

A lot of anti-Talmud fabulists like to say that it’s the guiding instructions for all Jews everywhere. This is not true. If we believed every verse of the Talmud, our theology would be very contradictory. It takes the effort of reading one Talmud page to realize this. 

P.S. a verse of the Talmud would be e.g Megillah 1a:1, simply saying Megillah 1a is saying the page, not the verse. If you have an accusation please note the verse, makes the job of refuting a lot easier. 

Also, contrary to popular belief, "Goy" does not mean cattle. It will help to read this article

You can read the Talmud in it's entirety at sefaria.com. Antisemites love saying "Jews lie and hide the Talmud and don't like when you expose them" even though you can just read it for free online. Interesting.

I will mostly be going off of the following image, some quotes being discussed on here may not be apart of the image.

Now, let’s begin. I'm working on making an organizing system soon to quickly link to the verses, but I don't know when I will be done. You can use Ctrl+F to search up the verse you want to look at and it will track it for you.

1. Gad Shas 2:2 and Libbre David 37

Accusations:

Gad Shas 2:2 "A Jew may violate but not marry a non Jew girl"
Libbre David 37 "If a Jew be called upon to explain any part of the rabbinic books, he ought to give only a false explanation. Who ever will violate this order shall be put to death."

Easiest one to start with since no such pages exist in the Talmud. “2:2” and “37” isn’t even the correct formatting for citing pages. Libbre isn’t even a word in Hebrew to my knowledge, I would assume they tried to make it sound like book, but the word for book is sefer.

Not much else to say here.

2. Soferim 15 (Soferim 15:10)

Accusation: "Even the best of goyim should be killed"

Soferim is not apart of the Talmudic canon. This can be disregarded, but it still exists in Jewish literature so why not.

The relevant quote (extracted from Sefaria)

P.S. It seems Sefaria has updated the verse to be more appropriate to what Shimon b. Yohai said:

 The original quote in earlier states of Sefaria:

"R. Shimon ben Yochai taught: Kill [even] the good among the gentiles." 

Gil Student's statement: (talmud.faithweb.com)

"While this passage seems to advocate the genocide of all non-Jews, it must be remembered that this is a single passage extracted from a thorough study. Without seeing it in its original context, a simple reading is both incorrect and unsound scholarship. Let us look at the full original passage as recorded in a number of places.

The original teaching is as part of a study of the book of Exodus. At this point, the Jews have left Egypt but have not yet crossed the Sea of Reeds. The Egyptian people, after suffering through ten long and difficult plagues, have decided to pursue the Jewish people rather than let them go." (source: http://talmud.faithweb.com/articles/kill.html)

To add to Gil Student's statement, it is entirely understandable why someone would interpret Shimon ben Yochai's statement as such, but "gentiles" simply refers to the Egyptian pursuers.

Commentary on Exodus which brings up Shimon b. Yochai's relevant quote:

Mechilta, Beshalach 2 (on Exodus 14:7)

[Exodus 14:5-7 "It was told to the king of Egypt that the people had fled; and the heart of Pharoah and his servants became transformed regarding the people, and they said, 'What is this that we have done that we have sent away Israel from serving us?' He harnessed his chariot and attracted his people with him.] He took six hundred elite chariots [and all the chariots of Egypt, with officers on them all."]

From whom were the animals that drove the chariots? If you say they were from Egypt, doesn't it say (Exodus 9:6) "and all the livestock of Egypt died [from the fifth plague]"? If you say they were from Pharoah, doesn't it say (Exodus 9:3) "[Moses said to Pharoah]: Behold, the hand of G-d is on your livestock that are in the field"? If you say they were from the Jews, doesn't it say (Exodus 10:26) "And our livestock, as well, will go with us- not a hoof will be left"? Rather from whom were they, from the Egyptians who feared G-d [and were not affected by the plagues]. We now see that the livestock of the G-d-fearers that escaped the plague caused great hardship for the Jews [by being used for chariots to pursue them]. From here R. Shimon [ben Yochai] said: Kill [even] the good among the gentiles.

3. Sanhendrin 54b

The accusation: "A Jew may have sex with a child as long as the child is less than nine years old"

No such quote exists on this page. But a topic that seems to cover something similar is brought up in Sanhendrin 54b:20

This was the similar quote I was capable of finding:

As we can see, nowhere does it say Jews may have sex with minors. Regarding the discussion, I will paste Zev Steinhardt's explanation (over at antisemiticlies.com)

"The Talmud says no such thing.  The “quote” is based on a purposeful misconstruing of the discussion in the Talmud.

The Talmud on Sanhedrin 54b discusses the prohibitions regarding homosexual sex and bestiality.   On the page, it discusses the number of prohibitions one violates if one engages in these types of sexual relations, both as the active participant and as the passive participant.  

At one point, the Talmud presents an argument between two different opinions (Rav and Shmuel) regarding whether or not a man who allows a minor (under nine) to sodomize him violates one of the prohibitions since a child’s sexual acts are not considered full-fledged sexual acts.   

But at the end of the day, all parties agree that such an activity is prohibited.   There is no one on this page of the Talmud, or anywhere else, who permits having sexual relations with a child under nine.  All that is being discussed here is whether or not someone who does this unwittingly must bring a sacrifice as an atonement.     Saying that the Talmud says that it is permitted is completely wrong and not supported in the text at all." (source: https://antisemiticlies.com/sanhedrin-54b-no-the-talmud-doesnt-say-you-can-have-sex-with-nine-year-olds/)

4. Avodah Zarah 36b

The accusation: "Gentile girls are in a state of niddah (filth) from birth"

No such quote exists on the page. However, if it did, "niddah" does not mean filth. It refers to ritual impurity. However, the following quote does exist:

What can we learn from this? Absolutely nothing. In fact, in a Twitter thread from August, @shevereshtus brought up a good point that it's likely this statement was made to further disavow Jews from having sexual relations with non-Jews. I say "likely" because I don't know how true this is, but it sure does make sense.

5. Kiddushin 4:11

The accusation: "Rabbi Simeon ben Iohai said: Kill the best of gentiles" 

This isn't in the list I'm using, but since it's been floating around I'd figured to take a crack at it.

First, the Jerusalem Talmud is not necessarily authoritative as much as the Babylonian and it's by far not studied as much. That alone could dismiss this, but just for fun, let's go further.

(P.S. Fun little nugget of entertainment, the Babylonian version of Kiddushin which is regarded as more reliable doesn't have that quote. Wonder why that could be? Possibly because Iohai's statement was considered to be shitty and the people authorizing the printing didn't want it in there?)

The footnote, which anti-talmud fabulists seem to love ignoring, says the following: 

So, based on the first sentence, we can see Simeon was probably rightfully pissed off, I can only imagine what 14 years in a cave would do to you. Second, we see Exodus 14:7 be brought up. If you've read the whole thing up to here, that verse sounds familiar.

Would you look at that, it's the exact same discussion as Soferim 15, discussed earlier in the article. And what else is new? Simeon ben Iohai and Simeon ben Yochai, as you can tell by the names, are the exact same person. Therefore, this has already been proven bunk in Soferim 15.

I didn't know this before writing the article, and that sure makes it a lot easier to debunk. Interesting how none of Iohai's "kill the best of gentiles" statements are included in the Talmud, only in non-authoritative, incomplete, unreliable versions and non-canon Talmudic literature.

6. Tospoth Jebamoth 84b

No such book exists. You can look up the name of this book and you'll find squat.

However, I did end up coming across a Reddit post which theorized that the list of Talmud verses had been translated from German due to it saying "Jebamoth" which sounded like translation of "Yevamot". Being curious, I decided to look up Yevamot 84b, and this is what I found:

Nothing. I Ctrl+F searched the words "eat" and "dog" and found nothing that could suggest the content in the accusation. Just a brazen lie, similar to that of Gad Shas and Libbre David.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION