Shamma Friedman (born March 8, 1937) is a scholar of

rabbinic literature Rabbinic literature, in its broadest sense, is the entire corpus of works authored by rabbis throughout Jewish history. The term typically refers to literature from the Talmudic era (70–640 CE), as opposed to medieval and modern rabbinic ...

and is Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at The Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS).

Biography

Shamma Friedman was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He began to study Hebrew at the age of ten. In the summers he went to

Camp Ramah Camp Ramah () is a network of Jewish summer camps affiliated with the Conservative Movement. The camps operate in the United States, Canada, and Israel. All Ramah camps serve kosher food and are Shabbat-observant. History During the 1940s, th ...

. He was first exposed to

Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of Haskalah#Effects, modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the cen ...

study by Professor Nahum Sarna, who taught a group of students tractate Beitza one summer. After high school, Friedman attended the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (Penn or UPenn) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. One of nine colonial colleges, it was chartered in 1755 through the efforts of f ...

(BA and Phi Beta Kappa, 1958) and

Gratz College Gratz College is a private Jewish college in Melrose Park, Pennsylvania, United States. The college traces its origins to 1856 when banker, philanthropist, and communal leader Hyman Gratz and the Hebrew Education Society of Philadelphia (es ...

(BHL, 1958). He continued his studies at JTS where he was ordained as a

rabbi A rabbi (; ) is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi—known as ''semikha''—following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of t ...

(1964) and received the first PhD in Talmud (1966) granted by the institution with his thesis, “The Commentary of R. Jonatan haKohen of Lunel on

Bava Kamma Bava Kamma () is the first of a series of three Talmudic tractates in the order Nezikin ("Damages") that deal with civil matters such as damages and torts. The other two of these tractates are Bava Metzia ('The Middle Gate') and Bava Batra ('Th ...

,” under the supervision of Prof. Haim Zalman Dimitrovsky. Among his teachers at The Jewish Theological Seminary, it was Prof.

Saul Lieberman Saul Lieberman (; May 28, 1898 – March 23, 1983), also known as Rabbi Shaul Lieberman or, among some of his students, the ''Gra״sh'' (''Gaon Rabbeinu Shaul''), was a rabbi and a Talmudic scholar. He served as Professor of Talmud at the Jewish T ...

, doyen of academic talmudists of the twentieth century, who influenced Friedman most.

Academic career

Friedman taught at JTS from 1964 and became an official faculty member in 1967. He retired in 2020. In 1973, Friedman and his wife Rachel (née Swergold) moved to Israel with their four children, where Friedman served as the dean of JTS’s campus in Jerusalem (currently the Schechter Institute ). Friedman also served as the Director of JTS’
Schocken Institute
In 1985, he founded th
Saul Lieberman Institute of Talmudic Research
of JTS in memory of his teacher. The Institute is dedicated to the computerization of

manuscripts A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has c ...

and the collection of scholarly bibliography on talmudic passages. In 1993 Friedman founded th
Society for the Interpretation of the Talmud
which publishes scholarly commentaries to individual chapters of the

Babylonian Talmud The Talmud (; ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law (''halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the centerpiece of Jewi ...

, written in a style for academic and non-academic audiences. At

Bar Ilan University Bar-Ilan University (BIU, , ''Universitat Bar-Ilan'') is a public research university in the Tel Aviv District city of Ramat Gan, Israel. Established in 1955, Bar Ilan is Israel's second-largest academic university institution. It has 20,000 ...

, where he taught in the Talmud Department, Friedman founded the site
Primary Textual Witnesses to Tannaitic Literature
He also founded the online journal in

rabbinics Rabbinic Judaism (), also called Rabbinism, Rabbinicism, Rabbanite Judaism, or Talmudic Judaism, is rooted in the many forms of Judaism that coexisted and together formed Second Temple Judaism in the land of Israel, giving birth to classical rabb ...

Oqimta

Research

Friedman has published over one hundred and fifty articles in the field of Talmudic philology and source criticism, and Hebrew and Aramaic Linguistics, as well as seven books. In his research, Friedman has been a pioneer in the writing of critical commentaries, from the analysis of an individual

sugya A sugya is a self-contained passage of the Talmud that typically discusses a mishnah or other rabbinic statement, or offers an aggada, aggadic narrative.; see for overview. While the sugya is a literary unit in the Jerusalem Talmud, the term is m ...

(passage) to complete chapters of Talmud. Friedman’s scholarship is primarily a study of the talmudic material through an internal comparative approach contrasting literary forms, language and concepts found throughout talmudic literature. In 1977, in his now classic study, “Al Derekh Heker Hasugya,” and following studies he emphasized the almost universal relative lateness of the Aramaic ‘give and take’ stated anonymously in the talmudic sugya. In his scholarship, Friedman has highlighted the creative literary intervention of the transmitters of talmudic texts which is represented in all the historical layers of the

and reaches its greatest expression in the

. For example, in his detailed analyses of

Mishnah The Mishnah or the Mishna (; , from the verb ''šānā'', "to study and review", also "secondary") is the first written collection of the Jewish oral traditions that are known as the Oral Torah. Having been collected in the 3rd century CE, it is ...

and

Tosefta The Tosefta ( "supplement, addition") is a compilation of Jewish Oral Law from the late second century, the period of the Mishnah and the Jewish sages known as the '' Tannaim''. Background Jewish teachings of the Tannaitic period were cha ...

parallels, in a series of articles and in his book, Tosefta Atiqta, Friedman has argued that for specific examples the Tosefta version of a tradition is earlier than its later reworked Mishnah parallel. According to this thesis, select Tosefta traditions may preserve the ‘raw’ material from which later Mishnah traditions were fashioned. Regarding

baraitot ''Baraita'' ( "external" or "outside"; pl. ''bārayāṯā'' or in Hebrew ''baraitot''; also baraitha, beraita; Ashkenazi pronunciation: berayse) designates a tradition in the Oral Torah of Rabbinical Judaism that is not incorporated in the Mi ...

found both in tannaitic collections and in the Talmuds, Friedman has argued that the parallel baraitot show the degree to which Tosefta baraitot were transformed in the Babylonian

and to a lesser extent the

Palestinian Palestinians () are an Arab ethnonational group native to the Levantine region of Palestine. *: "Palestine was part of the first wave of conquest following Muhammad's death in 632 CE; Jerusalem fell to the Caliph Umar in 638. The indigenous p ...

during the process of transmission from their original tannaitic literary contexts to their later amoraic and post-amoraic contexts. Friedman has also authored numerous studies on the literature of the

Rishonim ''Rishonim'' (; ; sing. , ''Rishon'') were the leading rabbis and ''posek, poskim'' who lived approximately during the 11th to 15th centuries, in the era before the writing of the ''Shulchan Aruch'' (, "Set Table", a common printed code of Jewis ...

, especially on the contributions of

Rashi Shlomo Yitzchaki (; ; ; 13 July 1105) was a French rabbi who authored comprehensive commentaries on the Talmud and Hebrew Bible. He is commonly known by the List of rabbis known by acronyms, Rabbinic acronym Rashi (). Born in Troyes, Rashi stud ...

and Rambam. Furthermore, Friedman consistently provides a framework for highlighting how critical understandings of the Talmud provide important insights into the interpretive contributions of the Rishonim. In 2010, Friedman received the Mifal Hapayis Prize in the field of Rabbinic Literature and in 2014 the

Israel Prize The Israel Prize (; ''pras israél'') is an award bestowed by the State of Israel, and regarded as the state's highest cultural honor. History Prior to the Israel Prize, the most significant award in the arts was the Dizengoff Prize and in Israel ...

in Talmud. The Friedmans have four children, ten grandchildren and a great-grandson. His brother is the

Cairo Geniza The Cairo Geniza, alternatively spelled the Cairo Genizah, is a collection of some 400,000 Judaism, Jewish manuscript fragments and Fatimid Caliphate, Fatimid administrative documents that were kept in the ''genizah'' or storeroom of the Ben Ezra ...

scholar, Mordechai Akiva Friedman.

Selected works

Commentary of R. Jonathan of Lunel on Bava Kamma with introduction and notes (Hebrew), Jewish Theological Seminary and Feldheim, New York and Jerusalem, 1969, lxxii & 400 pp Tosefta Atiqta: Synoptic Parallels of Mishna and Tosefta Analyzed with a Methdological Introduction (Pesah Rishon), Bar-Ilan University Press: Ramat Gan, 2002 Talmud Arukh, BT Bava Metzi’a VI: Critical Edition with Comprehensive Commentary, Text Volume and Introduction, Jerusalem, 1996. Talmud Arukh, BT Bava Metzi’a VI: Critical Edition with Comprehensive Commentary, Commentary Volume (Hebrew), Jerusalem, 1990 Talmud Ha-Igud, BT Gittin Chapter IX, The Society for the Interpretation of the Talmud, Jerusalem 2020. Talmudic Studies, Investigating the Sugya, Variant Readings, and Aggada, New York and Jerusalem: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America 2010 Studies in Tannaitic Literature, Methodology, Terminology, and Content (Asuppot VII), Jerusalem: The Bialik Institute 2013 Studies in the Language and Terminology of Talmudic Literature, Jerusalem: The Academy of the Hebrew Language, 2014 “Rashi’s Talmudic Commentaries: Revisions and Recensions” (Hebrew, English Summary), Rashi Studies, ed. Z. A. Steinfeld, Ramat Gan, 1993, pp. 147-175 “The Holy Scriptures Defile the Hands – The Transformation of a Biblical Concept in Rabbinic Theology”, Minhah le-Nahum – Biblical and Other Studies Presented to Nahum M. Sarna in Honour of his 70th Birthday, ed. M. Brettler, M. Fishbane, London, (1993), pp. 117-132. “Were Rashi’s Talmud Commentaries Indeed Unknown to Maimonides?”, Rashi, the Man and his Works (Heb.), ed. A. Grossman et. al., The Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, Jerusalem 2008, pp. 403-464.

References

External links

* JTS Faculty Pag
Shamma Friedman - Jewish Theological Seminary
* JTS Academia Pag
Shamma Friedman , Jewish Theological Seminary of America - Academia.edu
* Shamma Friedman Personal Pag
Prof. Shamma Friedman
{{DEFAULTSORT:Friedman, Shamma Talmudists Jewish Theological Seminary of America faculty Rabbinic literature 1937 births Living people