A review by punkrockingnerd
The Essential Talmud by Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, Chaya Galai

challenging informative slow-paced

3.0

I'm not quite sure that this was what I was really looking for in terms of reading. I wanted to read the Talmud, and since I have no prior knowledge of Jewish religious texts, I assumed this would be similar to Christian devotional (i.e., an accumulation of passages organized by themes), but this seemed to be more of a commentary. There was a lot of history and cultural contexts, but this felt more like a SparkNotes than a collage of quotations.
I could be wrong, and the Talmud very much could read like this, but I'll try to get a copy of the full Talmud from my local library, and then I may return back to this book again. Basically, it just wasn't what I was expecting/intending to read.