Free Download of the Soncino Talmud in English Online at Halakhah.com: 25,000+ satisfied customers a month

The Soncino Babylonian Talmud English translation is online - at a site that is not anti-Semitic or polemical.

Download the Talmud in English free at http://www.halakhah.com/ - 25,000+ downloads each month! 300,000+ each year.

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH WITH NOTES, GLOSSARY AND INDICES UNDER THE EDITORSHIP OF RABBI DR. I. EPSTEIN B.A., Ph.D., D. Lit. FOREWORD BY THE VERY REV. THE LATE CHIEF RABBI DR. J. H. HERTZ. INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR. THE SONCINO PRESS, LONDON.

Contains the Sedarim (orders, or major divisions) and tractates (books) of the Babylonian Talmud, as translated and organized for publication by the Soncino Press in 1935 - 1948.

The site has the entire Soncino Talmud edition in PDF format and  about 8050 pages on line in browser compatible HTML format, comprising 1460 files — of the Soncino Talmud.

Please add a link to the site http://www.halakhah.com on your web site or blog.

Highlights:

• A newly formatted 2-column PDF version of the Soncino Talmud at Halakhah.com.
• A Kindle edition of the Soncino Talmud available from Amazon.com: The Kindle Soncino Talmud in English

Read More

Team One Family Triathlon Special: Free Kindle Book: God's Favorite Prayers

I swam in the Hudson on a rally team with Team One Family in the NYC Tri this Sunday. Yitz did the whole tri.

So here is my Triathlon Offer: God's Favorite Prayers
Free Kindle Book from now until Sunday Night July 14.

Make a contribution to Team One Family to sponsor Yitz to help victims of terror.

Purchase all of Our Talmudic Books
Buy the Kindle Talmud in English
Ponder the Questions of Whence and Wherefore
Experience the paperback of God's Favorite Prayers

Read More

Is Jonathan Krohn Jewish?

No and yes. According to the Times, the young (former) conservative is being brought up as a Christian. So no, definitely Jonathan Krohn is not Jewish by religion.

Update: At 17, Krohn was doing teshuvah - repenting his conservatism - i.e., he adopted liberal ideas and went to study philosophy at NYU. MSNBC reported in the video clip below, wherein Lawrence O'Donnell lauded him for converting to the "bright side".

Update 2: The Times reported on Krohn: "The Growing Pains of Jonathan Krohn" (4/28/2013)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As to his religion, according to the Times, Jonathan Krohn's mother was Jewish before she converted to Christianity. According to Jewish law, Jonathan is a Jew. Appropriately, the Times is silent on the issue of whether his Baptist parents gave him a bris. It seems the young Christian conservative did not have a bar mitzvah but he did get a present,

He received a computer from his maternal grandfather for his 13th birthday. “In the Jewish culture in which my mom was raised, 13 is a big deal,” he said. “But since I’m a Jewish Christian, I don’t do a bar mitzvah.” (Decades ago, his mother became a Baptist.)

Even in parentheses, the fact that the boy has a Jewish mother, makes him a (latent) member of the tribe. In 2009 we said: We do envy this young man who has concluded at such an early age that the world is precisely the way it should be, that progress is not needed, that government ought to be curtailed and that Rush Limbaugh is NOT a big fat idiot. We wish we had learned all that by the time we were 14. Even now we are struggling to rid ourselves of the desire for progress and the esteem with which we hold those who dedicate their lives to public service in the quest for better government and leadership in our country. //reposted from 3/8/09 because this little feller is finally talking a bit of sense//

Read More

Technology to the Rescue to Solve the Social Problem of Sock Puppets

The integrity and value of social networks and of commercial product and service reviews depends on the authenticity of the content.

Big companies like Amazon and big universities like Cornell and others are hard at work developing policies and algorithms to solve the problem of sock puppet posting of reviews and other content on the Internet.

Here are three examples:

1. Cornell software fingers fake online reviews: Cornell brainiacs have come up with software that spots fake reviews, something we humans aren't good at. Fictitious happy customers beware.

2. A sock puppet detection algorithm on virtual spaces. Knowledge-Based Systems (January 2013), 37, Complete, pg. 366-377.

"On virtual spaces, some individuals use multiple usernames or copycat/forge other users (usually called “sock puppet”) to communicate with others. Those sock puppets are fake identities through which members of Internet community praise or create the illusion of support for the product or one’s work, pretending to be a different person. A fundamental problem is how to identify these sock puppets.

"In this paper, we propose a sock puppet detection algorithm which combines authorship-identification techniques and link analysis. Firstly, we propose an interesting social network model in which links between two IDs are built if they have similar attitudes to most topics that both of them participate in; then, the edges are pruned according a hypothesis test, which consider the impact of their writing styles; finally, the link-based community detection for pruned network is performed. Compared to traditional methods, our approach has three advantages: (1) it conforms to the practical meanings of sock puppet community; (2) it can be applied in online situation; (3) it increases the efficiency of link analysis. In the experimental work, we evaluate our method using real datasets and compared our approach with several previous methods; the results have proved above advantages."

3. Amazon Tackles Review Problem, Deletes Wrong Reviews (Forbes): Amazon is quite strict about their policy. They take questionable reviews right down, and if questioned they explain it bluntly:

I’m sorry for any previous concerns regarding your reviews on our site. We do not allow reviews on behalf of a person or company with a financial interest in the product or a directly competing product. This includes authors, artists, publishers, manufacturers, or third-party merchants selling the product.

We have removed your reviews as they are in violation of our guidelines. We will not be able to go into further detail about our research.

I understand that you are upset, and I regret that we have not been able to address your concerns to your satisfaction. However, we will not be able to offer any additional insight or action on this matter.

As is often the case in the world of high-tech, social problems can be solved in part by developing even more high tech.

We recommend these books for you!

Read More

App Measures Your Brainwaves to Know When You're Busy

We like this, been waiting for it for decades.

Gizmodo reports, "Automatic Do-Not-Disturb Measures Your Brainwaves to Know When You’re Busy."

Italian-born neuroscientist Ruggero Scorcioni has developed a new technology that will help you get stuff done by deflecting phone calls or other notifications away when you're busy. Finally, technology to help keep your brainspace clear when you need it.

Ruggero showed us his tech implemented as an app on smartphone at an AT&T event in New York this morning. The technology works by measuring your brainwave activity using a commercially available headset which talks to your phone via Bluetooth. When your activity goes above a certain adjustable threshold, Ruggero's app automatically holds your calls using a publicly available AT&T API.

The key to Ruggero's app are the algorithms he uses to process the brainwave data. Beyond simply holding your calls, Ruggero says the technology could be used to hold your e-mail notifications and other interruptions until you've got the mental bandwidth to address them. He won an AT&T hack-a-thon back in January, and used the $30,000 prize to start his new company Brainyno. Here's hoping he finds a way to keep those pesky Facebook alerts from distracting you when you're trying to work.

Read More

Free at Last from Friday through Sunday: Six People You Meet in Synagogue

For the Passover holidays, the Talmudic Blog and Talmudic Books is giving away a new book:  Six People You Meet in Synagogue.

In this book, the author, Tzvee Zahavy, presents six ideal personalities of Jewish prayer and their respective prayers.

This is a condensed version of the author's previous work, God's Favorite Prayers (Talmudic Books, 2011) where he first developed the notion of the six distinct prayer archetypes: the performer, the mystic, the scribe, the priest, the meditator and the celebrity.

Six People You Meet in Synagogue
For Kindle from Amazon: FREE for Passover -- from Friday through Sunday, March 29-31.

Check Out all the Talmudic Books
See the Kindle Edition Talmud in English
ALSO FREE for Passover -- Ponder the Questions of Whence and Wherefore -- FREE 

Read More

Amazon.com: Incredible Free Album of Shabbat Music

Tzvee writes: 15 track album, mostly guitar, incredible quality music, and free today. Craig Taubman Presents Acoustic Shabbat Various artists | Format: MP3 Music Price: $0.00 Download or play now in Cloud Player.   1. Silent Prayer, Andrew Dennen 3:35 2. Angels Around Me, C Lanzbom 2:57 3. Eshet Chayil, C Lanzbom 5:37 4. Mi Shebeirach, Debbie Friedman 4:13 5. Swingin' on the Tree of Life, Eric Komar 4:11 6. Stairway to Shabbos, Larry Milder 2:39 7. Shalom Alechem, Laurence Juber 3:33 8. Nign Lshabes Vyontif, Pete Rushefsky 2:34 9. Kaddisch, Richard Locker 4:02 10. Hashkivenu, Sean Harkness 4:40 11. Lcha Dodi, Sean Harkness 3:55 12. Shabbat Prayer, Sheryl Braunstein 2:47 13. Shalom Aleichem, Salam Aleikum Sol Tevél 3:30 14. Elohai Naomi, Less 4:16 15. Hoshia Na, Hillel Tigay 2:42

For more albums of Craig Taubman music MP3 downloads on Amazon see these seventeen albums.

Read More

Was Rashi the Greatest Bible Exegete?

Indeed, many scholars believe that Rashi was the greatest Bible exegete.

The paradigmatic master of medieval rabbinic commentary was Rashi (Rabbi Solomon b. Isaac, 1040-1105) a scholar from the north of France. While he is often credited with the move to “literal commentary” in medieval times, even a cursory study of his commentaries reveals how indebted he was to the rabbinic exegesis of the earlier classical compilations. With Rashi we witness the mature development of a new paradigm of interpretation. He delicately balances his interpretations between gloss and exposition. He picks at and edits the earlier Midrash materials and weaves together with them into his commentary the results of new discoveries, such as philology and grammar. His main proposition is hardly radical within rabbinism. He accepts that there is one whole Torah of Moses consisting of the oral and written traditions and texts. In his commentaries he accomplished the nearly seamless integration of the basics of both bodies of tradition.

You can purchase this book at Amazon by Maurice Liber, Rashi: The Greatest Exegete and read about Rashi and his work. We added a Foreword. Price: $0.99

Check Out 44 Talmudic Books
See the 36 Volume Kindle Talmud in English
Ponder the Questions of Whence and Wherefore
Experience God's Favorite Prayers

Read More

Free For Daf Yomi: Tractate Shabbat in English

For daf yomi Tractate Shabbat in English:

Amazon - Kindle: Soncino Babylonian Talmud Shabbath

On www.Halakhah.com:

PDF FREE Classic or PDF FREE 2 column: 12a Shabbos 2a-31b | 12b Shabbos 35a-65b | 12c Shabbos 66a-100b | 12d Shabbos 101a-129b | 12e Shabbos 130a-157b

44 Talmudic Books for Kindle | The Amazing 36 Volume Kindle Talmud in English | Whence and Wherefore | God's Favorite Prayers

Read More

Free Sunday July 15 - Eleazar by Tzvee Zahavy

Free Sunday July 15. Eleazar: Rabbi, Priest, Patriarch. Amazon Kindle e-book edition.

Description: For anyone concerned with the formative period of rabbinic Judaism, the study of Rabbi Eleazar b. Azariah and his traditions is naturally important. He was prominent as a rabbi, a priest and a politician. According to rabbinic texts, Eleazar was a major figure among the rabbis at Yavneh in Israel in the second century C.E. Rabbinic literature speaks of Eleazar in more than two hundred places. One narrative describes that he was an important political figure at Yavneh and reports that he played a role in the events surrounding the deposition of Gamaliel II from the patriarchate. Many other traditions juxtapose his teachings with those of Aqiva, Eliezer, Joshua, and other major rabbis of the early era.

44 New Talmudic Books for Kindle | The Amazing 36 Volume Kindle Talmud in English | Whence and Wherefore | God's Favorite Prayers

Read More

Book Notice: Relics for the Present: Contemporary Reflections on the Talmud by Levi Cooper

Relics for the Present: Contemporary Reflections on the Talmud by Levi Cooper is a wonderful, learned book of comments and insights on the first five chapters of the Talmud Bavli Berakhot, the relic that the author brings into the present through his interpretations based on rabbinic authorities that he cites whose listing runs five plus pages.

The book is clearly written and deftly argued. The lessons that Rabbi Dr. Cooper extracts are sensitive and sensible.

We recommend this volume to anyone wanting to learn more about Jewish prayer through the prisms of great Talmudic and later rabbinic authorities.

By coincidence we have published an anthology of the texts of the first five chapters of Talmud Yerushalmi Berakhot in a Kindle ebook edition, Kosher Prayers: an Anthology from the Talmud Yerushalmi Berakhot. Like the Bavli, the Talmud of Land of Israel in Yerushalmi Tractate Berakhot presents many of the ancient rabbis’ discussions about Jewish prayers with particular attention to how to pray the major Jewish prayers, the Shema and the Amidah for the weekdays, Sabbaths and holidays.

Together the two volumes will enhance in different ways a person's understanding of the daily prayers of the Jewish liturgy.

44 New Talmudic Books for Kindle | The Amazing 36 Volume Kindle Talmud in English | Whence and Wherefore | God's Favorite Prayers

Read More

Get the Kindle Babylonian Talmud in English

Get the Amazing Kindle Babylonian Talmud in English:

1.      Kindle Babylonian Talmud Berakoth

2.      Kindle Mishnah Seder Zera‘im

3.      Kindle Babylonian Talmud Shabbath

4.      Kindle Babylonian Talmud ‘Erubin

5.      Kindle Babylonian Talmud Pesahim

6.      Kindle Babylonian Talmud Yoma

7.      Kindle Babylonian Talmud Sukkah

8.      Kindle Babylonian Talmud Bezah

9.      Kindle Babylonian Talmud Rosh Hashanah

10.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Taanith

11.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Megillah and Shekalim

12.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Moed Katan

13.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Hagigah

14.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Yebamoth

15.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Kethuboth

16.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Nedarim

17.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Nazir

18.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Sotah

19.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Gittin

20.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Kiddushin

21.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Baba Kamma

22.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Baba Mezia

23.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Baba Bathra

24.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin

25.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Abodah Zarah

26.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Horayoth and Shebuoth

27.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Makkoth, Eduyyoth and Aboth

28.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Zebahim

29.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Menahot

30.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Hullin

31.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Bekoroth and Arakin

32. Kindle Babylonian Talmud Temurah

33. Kindle Babylonian Talmud Kerithoth

34. Kindle Babylonian Talmud Meilah, Tamid, Middoth and Kinnim

35.  Kindle Babylonian Talmud Niddah

36.  Kindle Mishnah Seder Tohoroth

Read More

A Successful Kindle Direct Promotion for God's Favorite Prayers

I allowed the previously scheduled Kindle Direct Publishing promotion for my book "God's Favorite Prayers" to proceed on Sunday May 2, even though I was sitting shiva for my dad. I thought he would have had no objection to that.

I expected that when Amazon made the book free for a day it would result in the download by readers of a few hundred copies. That would be a good way to build momentum for the volume within the KDP publishing program.

At the end of the day on Sunday I looked to see the number of downloads for that one day.

The number was 1,852. The book rose to number 131 on the overall national Amazon free Kindle book list. I was surprised and pleased.

Now I will monitor how this benefits the future sales of the volume, since that is the primary motive for participating in the promotional program.

Talmudic Books for Kindle on the Talmud, Bible, Kabbalah and Prayer
The Kindle Edition of the Classic Soncino Talmud in English

Read More

Slate Magazine: How ex-Orthodox men Learn About Relating to Women (and it's not via Talmud)

The Talmud has seven whole Tractates in the division called "Women" and one of them is over 1000 pages in the English Translation. For starters check out tractates Yebamoth and Kethuboth (Soncino Babylonian Talmud Yebamoth, 1072 pages  and Soncino Babylonian Talmud Kethuboth, 877 pages in the Kindle editions).

And remember that about the contents of the Talmud, the saying goes, "Turn and turn it for you will find everything in it" -- presumably including some really good advice about relating to women.

That's why we cannot understand how come ex-Orthodox men need any dating advice at all.

(Hat tip to Rebecca...) On Facebook we found a link to this article in Slate, "Hey Baby, What’s Your Sinai? - Teaching ex-Orthodox Jews how to date in New York" by Diana Spechler.

As you can see from this quote below, in a heartwarming story, Diana thinks that some formerly Orthodox men are clueless about women and need coaching. All we can say is perhaps these guys skipped their Talmud classes at the Yeshiva.

...According to Irenstein, lack of self-confidence pervades the recently ex-Orthodox, who refer to themselves as OTD, or “Off the Derech” (derech is Hebrew for path). Once they’ve gone off the path, for a variety of reasons including loss of faith, distaste for the lifestyle, and longing to educate themselves beyond the Jewish texts, OTD’ers are like immigrants in the secular world, unsure of the language and customs of dating, battling the voices of their parents and rabbis, who warned them that touching the opposite sex before marriage would incur God’s wrath.

“There are three problems specific to the ex-religious when they first try to date,” Irenstein says. “Inexperience, having no identity, and having no understanding of the opposite sex.” That makes sense when you consider how insular the Orthodox communities are. Premarital sex, even premarital touching, is prohibited. And there is a rule for everything, including which shoelace to tie first and what to do with one’s facial hair. OTD’ers who come to Irenstein never had the awkward, albeit formative, experiences the rest of us had—slow-dancing with some height-inappropriate partner in seventh grade, locking braces with someone in the back of a movie theater, getting to “second base.” Their questions for Irenstein range from the peculiar such as, “Is it OK to pay a girl $80 to go out with me?” to the commonplace concerns of men on the New York dating scene: “How many dates before I should allow her to split the check?”

Irenstein doesn’t just answer their questions about the game; he shoves the men out onto the field. By the end of his session with Sam, he’ll have Sam approaching girls, trying to score a phone number, or at least to touch an elbow during some flirtatious banter.

At 29, Irenstein was married with two daughters, living in the Hasidic community he’d grown up in. He remembers his 6-year-old coming home from school and telling him that non-Jews existed solely to witness the good deeds of the Jews. He’d wanted out of Hasidism for a while, but that was the day he pulled his kids out of school and laid plans to move. “I would have done anything,” says Irenstein, “even given up my own life, to make sure my kids weren’t forced into cult living.”

Having grown up in Israel and Brooklyn, Irenstein landed in secular New York with a third-grade-level education and a mediocre grasp of English. When he and his wife divorced, he found himself on foreign ground. “I had no idea how to talk to women,” he says. “I’d never even looked one in the eye.” Irenstein’s former Hasidic community, Gur, is one of the strictest sects, as well as one of the most sexually squeamish. Even married couples aren’t supposed to kiss, and they’re allowed sex only for purposes of procreation....

Read More

English Translation of Bavli Meilah for Kindle

Daf Yomi Alert: Meilah Resource for Kindle



Soncino Babylonian Talmud Me'ilah Tamid Middoth and Kinnim

Talmudic Books for Kindle on the Talmud, Bible, Kabbalah and Prayer
The Kindle Edition of the Classic Soncino Talmud in English

Read More

Free Talmudic Book for Your Kindle: Kosher Talmud by Tzvee Zahavy

For April 9-10 Kosher Talmud is free for your Kindle or Kindle App. Here is the Product Description:

To know what food is kosher, that is, fit to eat according to rabbinic Judaism, you must study the principles set forth in this volume, the Babylonian Talmud Tractate Hullin.

This translation, (approx. 665 pages) adheres closely to the text so that the reader has a sense of the structure and balance of the original. Yet at the same time it conveys the flow of the legal arguments and debates, the dramatic unfolding of events in stories, and the sensitivities to words and language in the exegetical texts.

Its aim is to facilitate a smooth conversation between readers and the text so that, without consulting the original Hebrew and Aramaic version, they can appreciate the substantive meaning and recognize some major aspects of the style of the Talmudic text.

Talmudic Books for Kindle on the Talmud, Bible, Kabbalah and Prayer

The Kindle Edition of the Classic Soncino Talmud in English

Read More

Free Sunday April 1 from Talmudic Books: Tzvee Zahavy, "God Bless You: The Origins of Jewish Prayers and Blessings - Kindle Edition"

Free book of the day! April 1 - no fooling!

From Talmudic Books: Tzvee Zahavy, "God Bless You: The Origins of Jewish Prayers and Blessings - Kindle Edition"

It is a big book. 370 pages in print!

Description: This book covers the origins of Jewish prayer in the first five centuries of the Common Era, known also as the epoch of early rabbinic Judaism, the time of the Mishnah and the Talmud, the era of the Tannaim and Amoraim, and the time of Jesus and early Christianity.

This volume provides a detailed analysis of the textual evidence on the subject mainly from the books of the rabbis, the Mishnah, the Tosefta and the Talmud, that finds the seams of timelessness and recovers the outlines of the origins of the great prayers of the Jewish people.

A must have for every Kindle library.

Read More

Daf Yomi starts Kerisos or Kerithoth on Wednesday March 21

Daf Yomi starts a new tractate - Kerisos or Kerithoth on Wednesday March 21: Soncino Babylonian Talmud Kerithoth

Get the Kindle Soncino English Translation for $.99.

Talmudic Books for Kindle on the Talmud, Bible, Kabbalah and Prayer
The Kindle Edition of the Classic Soncino Talmud in English

Read More