CENSORSHIP OF THE TALMUD
-- Part One

Before examining any of the other talmudic texts that Mr. Hoffman

(hoffman2nd@delphi.com) finds objectionable, I must deal with another

basic issue he raises in article <5U9YnUO.hoffman2nd@delphi.com>,

wherein he enlists the aid of Dr. Israel Shahak's latest work, _Jewish

History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years_ (London,

Pluto Press, 1994).



Unfortunately, Dr. Shahak's book is not available in any library in the

State of Colorado, so I cannot vouch for the completeness or accuracy

of Mr. Hoffman's citations.  The spin that Mr. Hoffman intends to put

on these citations are clear from the headline he composed for them:



	CONCEALMENT OF HATEFUL TALMUDIC TEXTS



	This is what was done: a few of the most offensive passages were

	bodily removed from all editions printed in Europe after the

	mid-16th century...  At the same time, lists of >Talmudic

	Omissions< were circulated in manuscript form...  once the

	rabbis felt secure, all the offensive passages and expressions

	were restored without hesitation in all new editions<<

	(pp.22-23).



	>>Modern scholars of Judaism have not only continued the

	deception, but have actually improved upon the old rabbinical

	methods, both in impudence and mendacity<<(p. 24).





With all due respect, Dr. Shahak is a neither a theologian nor a

historian, but a scientist, whose specialty is chemistry or physics.



Adin Steinsaltz is the world's acknowledged foremost authority on the

Talmud.  In "The Essential Talmud," (NY, Basic Books, Inc., 1976;

translated from the Hebrew by Chaya Galai) he writes:



	Attempts were made as early as the seventh and

	eighth centuries to prohibit study of the Talmud, but they

	failed...  when the Catholic Church adopted a more severe

	attitude toward enemies within its own ranks, it also began to

	examine Jewish literature and, to a large extent, the Talmud.



	...several European rulers and Church dignitaries were

	convinced that the Talmud contained anti-Christian material

	and, on the basis of informers' charges, they ordered that all

	anti-Christian statements and libel against Christ be erased

	from the books.  This anti-talmudic campaign and the various

	decrees of the popes reached their height when, as the result

	of internal disputes in the Jewish community and at the urging

	of certain converts, Pope Gregory IX ordered the burning of

	copies of the Talmud in Paris in 1240.  Similar decrees were

	issued several times in the course of the thirteenth century,

	on one occasion by Pope Clement IV in 1264, and thousands of

	copies were consigned to the flames...  The decrees did not

	encompass all of Europe; in the Iberian peninsula, for example,

	the Talmud was not burned but merely censored by statements

	considered derogatory to Christianity being removed.



	Church leaders were not unanimous in their views on the

	subject.  A Church synod in Basel in 1431 reaffirmed the

	stringent ban on the Talmud, but there were other opinions as

	well.  In 1509 a convert named Johannes Pfefferkorn tried to

	incite church leaders to burn the Talmud in all countries under

	the rule of Charles V.  A champion appeared, however, in the

	form of a Christian, Reuchlin, who pleaded the cause of the

	Talmud.  Although the controversy was not settled at once, and

	copies of the Talmud were burned in several towns by the

	bishops, Reuchlin's arguments appear to have had some effect.

	In 1520 Pope Leo X permitted the printing of the Talmud, and

	several editions appeared in the next few decades.  But this

	situation did not endure, and as the result of the

	intensification of the Counter-Reformation, and due to the

	efforts of several converts, Pope Julius III ordered the works

	burned again in 1553.  This decree, carried out in the various

	Italian states, apparently resulted in the destruction of tens

	of thousands of copies of the Talmud.  The harshness of the

	decree was alleviated by Pope Pius IV's announcement at the

	church synod at Trent in 1564 that the Talmud could be

	distributed on condition that those sections which affronted

	the Christian religion were erased.  As the direct result of

	this decision, an edition was printed in Basel under the

	supervision and censorship of Catholic monks.  It was cruelly

	truncated and censored, but still did not satisfy the Church

	and, in a papal bull issued in 1592, Clement II finally

	prohibited study of the Talmud in any version or edition.  The

	ban did not apply to the whole of the Christian world, since

	large parts of Europe (the Protestant countries and those under

	Russian and Turkish rule) did not accept the authority of the

	Catholic Church, but it was put into operation in most parts of

	Italy.  The Jews of Italy tried to evade the ban in various

	ways, the commonest being study of the book, _Ein Yaakov_

	(after it too was banned, they changed its name to _Ein

	Israel_), which contained the aggadic [i.e., folkloric -- HK]

	text of the Talmud, and study of R. Isaac Alfasi's _Sefer

	Halakhah,_ which contained much of the talmudic _halakah_

	[i.e., religious law --HK].  But the anti-Talmud decree had a

	decisive impact on the cultural life of Italian Jewry, which

	never regained its former splendor.  This was a vivid

	historical illustration of the fact that a Jewish community

	which did not study the Talmud was condemned to attrition.



	No similar decree was issued in any other European country, but

	there was a widespread tendency to censor the Talmud.  In later

	times printers gradually and clandestinely restored those

	sections which had been censored, but despite these efforts the

	best editions of the Talmud are mutilated because of the

	changes and “corrections” introduced by the censors.



	The censored Basel edition was the archetype of such editions,

	as the censor erased or amended all those parts of the text he

	regarded as insulting to Christianity or various peoples, or as

	reflections of superstitious views.  The Basel censor, Father

	Marco Marino, first erased the forbidden word _Talmud,_

	replacing it by other terms, such as _Gemarah_ or _Shas,_

	initials of Hebrew words for Six Orders.  Wherever the text

	used the word _min_ (heretic, originally applied to Gnostic

	sects and only rarely to Christians), he changed it to read

	Sadducee or Epicurean.  All mention of Rome, even where

	reference was undoubtedly to the pagan Roman Kingdom, was

	altered to read _Aram_ (Mesopotamia) or _Paras_ (Persia).  The

	words _meshumad_ or _mumar_ (convert) were also forbidden and

	amended.  A grave problem for the censors was the word _goy_

	(gentile), which they always changed (sometimes puzzling

	scholars, who were unaware the censor was responsible).  For a

	time the word _goy_ was changed to _akum_ (initials of

	“worshippers of stars”), but a convert informed the authorities

	that this term too constituted an affront to Christianity,

	since _akum_ also denoted the initials of "worshipper of Christ

	and Mary."  It was therefore necessary to find substitutes, and

	the most common was the insertion of the word _kuti_

	(Samaritan) for _goy._  In the Basel edition the censor ordered

	that the word kushi (African, Kushite) be inserted in place of

	_goy._



	Wherever the Talmud makes derogatory reference to Jesus or to

	Christianity in general, the comment was completely erased, and

	the name of Christ was systematically removed, even when the

	reference was not negative.  The Basel censor also decided to

	erase what he considered examples of personification of the

	Deity, as well as enigmatic legends.  In certain cases he added

	his own comments in the margin.  For example, where the text

	states that man comes into the world without sin, he added,

	"According to the Christian belief, all men are born tainted

	with the sin of the first man."  Sections which he regarded as

	offending modesty were also eradicated, and other changes were

	made as well, as in the Talmudic saying: “A man who has no wife

	cannot be called a man,” which offended his sensibilities as a

	celibate monk.  He changed it to read “A Jew who has no

	wife ...”  The _Avodah Zarah_ tractate was not printed at all,

	since it deals with the holy days of non-Jews and relations

	with them.



	Although the omissions and erasures were partially restored in

	other editions, there were always new censors in other

	countries who introduced new distortions and changes.  The

	Russian authorities, for example, decided that Greece could not

	be mentioned in the Talmud, since Russian culture was

	supposedly inspired by that of Greece, and the word was

	therefore altered wherever it appeared.  Some Russian censors

	declared that the phrase "Greek language" was offensive

	and changed it to read "language of _akum._"  The ignorance of

	many censors led to the misspelling of names, and many of the

	errors were perpetuated from edition to edition.  Some changes

	resulted from short-lived political calculations, such as the

	instruction of the Russian censor at the time of the

	Russo-Turkish War that the word _goy_ be replaced by Ishmael, a

	change which engendered a whole series of absurd errors.



	The Talmud was not the sole work affected by the heavy hand of

	the censor, but because of its scope and range and the thousands

	of changes introduced over the centuries, it was impossible to

	correct all the mutilations even in editions published in

	countries free of censorship.  Offset printing perpetuated many

	of the mistakes and ommisions, and only in the most recent

	editions have attempts been made to restore the original format

	of the text.

				-- pp. 81 - 85



In my next article I will revisit Mr. Hoffman's post of Dr. Shahak and

analyze it in light of the information above.



--

Harry Katz



When the thief has no opportunity to steal he considers himself an

honest man.

	-- The Wit and Wisdom of the Talmud, Madison C. Peters, ed.