About

The Jewish Talmud was really the original blog: a multi-sided, ongoing discussion of Everything. Comments weren’t just encouraged: they were the main point.  Argument wasn’t just encouraged: it was expected.  It was the world’s first truly interactive media. 

Oral discussions of life, the universe, and everything, between the greatest thinkers of the Jewish world, was an ongoing process as long as there were Jews.  This wisdom was initally held orally, by memory, as a complement to the other great innovation of the Hebrew civilization, the bible.  In the wake of the Roman destruction of the Jewish temple and Jewish life in Israel, these oral discussions were gradually written down to preserve them, and then over the next several hundred years they were debated, commented on, they inspired stories and tangents and new ideas, and eventually collected and reproduced.  These discussions, eventually bound together as the Talmud, comprised the greatest compendium of wisdom the world has ever seen.

We at the New Jerusalem Talmud aspire to bring this process, this approach to knowledge, to wisdom, and to life, into discussions of today.  We firmly believe that in the meetings of great minds, in a discussion where disagreement leads to the discovery of deeper truths, is a path towards the real potential of human interaction.

We aspire towards a form of blogging where all sides of an issue are presented on a single page.  For the first time, with modern technology, such a process can happen instantaneously, not over several hundred years as the original Talmud did.  We invite you to join and have your say!