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Rabbi Eisenstock, 72, a graduate of New York’s Yeshiva University, is a veteran educator of nearly five decades; experience, that including leading summer camps to prepeare young Americans for aliyah after moving to Israel himself from the States more than 40 years ago. And like all good educators, he has sought to make a text come alive.
In Israel, teaching of Tanach at school developed to incorporate history and archaeology, he notes. “There was a whole backdrop of what was going on at the time that [it was felt] students should know and have a greater grasp of,” he says.
The second century is one of the most formative periods of Judaism when its future hung in the balance. Rome’s destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in the latter part of the previous century could have proved a terminal catastrophe but patiently the rabbis were rebuilding the religion around houses of study and prayer. In one feature in the book, inspired by the Zikaron Basalon events to remember the Holocaust in Israel today, survivors of the sacking of Jerusalem recall what they lived through.
The second century contained its own traumas: Hadrian’s decision to rebuild Jerusalem as a Roman city, the eruption and crushing defeat of the Bar Kochba revolt, the cruel martyrdom of Rabbi Akiva and other teachers of Torah. But if Jerusalem was effectively put out of bounds, the rabbis shifted the centre for gravity to the Galilee. The century ends in creative triumph with the completion of the Mishnah, the erection of a spiritual citadel that was able to withstand the oppressive hand of invaders.
Since the Talmud is not chronologically organised, he had painstakingly to pull together material scattered across its 63 tractates – as well as checking other sources. “It took a lot of research to make sure my facts were right. It had to be historically true – that was important,” he says.
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As well as reports of momentous events, he conveys something of everyday society in ancient Judea, reflected in some of the halachic queries that the rabbis had to tackle.
In one advice column, an elderly pagan has written in to ask whether it is too late to convert. That, Rabbi Eisenstock explains, was not an actual incident recorded in the Talmud but a plausible scenario.
“It could have happened. I’m sure it happened, because there were a lot of converts. So it fits into the historical time. Onkelos Hager [Onkelos the Convert, a translator of the Torah], he was a convert and there were many, so the historical background is true.”
Meanwhile, in another edition, the rabbis respond to what they see as a growing threat from the followers of Jesus by adding an extra blessing to the daily Amidah to deprecate minim, “sectarians” (now “informers” in the version used in the traditional siddur today). If you asked regular daveners the origin of the blessing, he believes, most would probably be unaware of it.
Stories introduce us to the life of the sages, such as the excommunicated heretic Elisha ben Abuyah or the mystic Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai emerging from the cave that provided refuge from the Romans. Struggles over leadership that broke out from time to time among the rabbis remind us they were flesh and blood with human passions.
A feature of the Chronicles is that it sets events in Judea against a backdrop of what was going on elsewhere in the ancient world at the time, in Greece, Egypt or Rome.
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His inspiration came from a similar enterprise published nearly 60 years ago, the three-volume Chronicles: News of the Past, which reported events in Jewish history from Abraham to Herzl in the style of a newspaper. One of his editorial advisers was Rabbi David Sedley, a former community rabbi in Edinburgh and Leeds before his return to Israel.
Today Rabbi Eisenstock teaches Talmud to new olim in the Etzion bloc, where he lives. But he does not confine lessons to the page. “I’ll take them to Jerusalem and show them exactly where everything took place,” he says. “That has been my life and my motivation – to do more with the students, to expand the horizions.”
Talmud Chronicles – Bringing Talmud Events to Life, Urim Publications, is out now
