Libels about the Talmud are almost as old as the Talmud itself, and have been used as a justification for centuries of Jew-hate. Misquoting Talmudic texts or taking them out of context is an age-old method used to incite antisemitism.
In fact, most people do not even know what the Talmud is: the textual record of generations of rabbinic debate about law, philosophy, and biblical interpretation, compiled between the 3rd and 8th centuries and structured as commentary on the Mishnah with stories interwoven.
The libels continue to this very day and are being disseminated online by the worst of the worst.
The supposed quotes and meaning behind them that we are seeing these days come from a Third Reich book: Unmoral im Talmud (translation: Immorality In The Talmud) By Nazi Alfred Rosenberg.
I have decided to publish this new series as an online, easy-to-find record for fighting these libels. The responses are primarily based on those given by Rabbi Yisrael M. Eliashiv, who goes by the name Shevereshtus on Twtter/X, but in some cases also other sources. Each post will deal with one of the libels.
Sanhedrin 58b: If a Goy hits a Jew he must be killed
Surprise surprise, another inaccurate translation taken out of context.
The opinion of Rabbi Hanina is that if a non-Jew strikes a Jew, he is worthy of receiving the death penalty, as we saw when an Egyptian struck a Jew and Moses killed him. . This is Rabbi Hanina’s opinion, one which is not codified into Jewish law, which absolutely does not say a non-Jew is executed for this!
This is an opportune reminder that the Talmud is a compendium of arguments between the Rabbis over a period of three centuries over what Jewish law is and how it’s applied. As such, on almost any topic there are many different opinions as to what the law should be in any given case. The vast majority of these opinions are, in the end, rejected and not the basis of Jewish law as it exists today.
As Rabbi Yisrael M. Eliashiv writes:
This is why so many of these are infuriating. This is one opinion talking about how someone “ought to” get something for doing something, but somehow it becomes transformed as “This is what Judaism believes.”
