A ceremonial event at Israel’s Presidential Residence in Jerusalem marked the completion of the full French translation of the Babylonian Talmud, known as the Shas, on Wednesday. The project is based on the celebrated commentary of Israel Prize laureate Rabbi Adin Even-Israel, also known as Steinsaltz, and was completed with support from the Patrick and Lina Drahi Foundation.
The timing was deliberately symbolic. The event fell on 9 Tammuz, exactly 782 years after the burning of the Talmud in Paris in 1242, during the infamous Paris disputation. In that episode, leading rabbis including Rabbi Yechiel of Paris and Rabbi Moshe of Coucy were forced to defend the Talmud against the convert Nicholas Donin. After the trial, King Louis IX ordered the destruction of Jewish sacred books.
According to the article, about 24 cartloads of manuscripts, roughly 1,200 volumes of Talmud and aggadah, were brought to the city square and burned before a cheering crowd on the eve of Shabbat, Parashat Chukat. The tragedy is remembered in the kinah “Sha’ali Serufah Ba’esh,” written by Rabbi Yechiel’s disciple, the Maharam of Rothenburg, and recited on Tisha B’Av.
The new edition is presented as the direct continuation of Rabbi Steinsaltz’s life work to make the Talmud accessible to every Jew. His approach, under the motto “Tenu le’ami ladaat,” introduced punctuation, vowels, and explanations that opened the Aramaic text to wider readership in Hebrew and other languages. President Isaac Herzog said the French edition opens the Talmud to many people, “in the Jewish world and to the world at large.” Rabbi Meni Even-Israel, head of the Steinsaltz Center and the rabbi’s son, said the event shows “the continuity and eternity of the Torah,” adding that the embers left in Paris have become “a great torch of Torah” now illuminating French speakers.
