Schottenstein Edition of the Talmud

The Schottenstein Edition of the Talmud is the book Devorah secretly acquires and reads in defiance of the restrictions placed on girls’ religious learning and English-language books. Its parallel presentation of the Talmud’s original text, an English translation, and rabbinical discussion gives her access to material that her teachers have reduced to simpler lessons. Reading it becomes more than a private act of curiosity: it marks the beginning of her willingness to test religious authority against what she finds in the texts themselves.

An Object Kept Out of Reach

Devorah’s interest grows within a household where her grandfather, Zeidy, condemns English as spiritually dangerous and considers English books even more harmful. His Hebrew books are locked in a closet and reserved for men; he tells her that girls belong in the kitchen. The Schottenstein Edition therefore represents a specific barrier being crossed. It offers Devorah a way into the learning she sees Zeidy pursuing, while also violating the gendered boundary that keeps her from that learning.

Her teachers’ limited explanations only intensify her questions. She is particularly puzzled by the story of Rachel, who, according to the lessons she receives, endured poverty while her husband, Rabbi Akiva, studied Torah for twelve years. The account presents Rachel as a saint, but Devorah suspects the answer is more complicated and wants to understand why Rachel made that choice. The book promises access to discussion rather than another abbreviated lesson, and Devorah hopes it will let her investigate what no one around her is willing to explain.

Purchase and Concealment

Devorah buys the edition at a Judaica store in Borough Park after making repeated visits to observe the shop. She claims to the bookseller that the book is for a cousin. The purchase costs sixty dollars, much of it in singles she earned babysitting. The bookseller wraps the large volume in brown paper, and Devorah carries it home by bus to Williamsburg, aware that the parcel might draw attention from the women seated nearby.

At home, the book remains hidden beneath her mattress. During Shabbos, she does not take it out: too many people are around, and she expects both Zeidy and Bubby would be horrified if they discovered it. The concealment makes the volume part of the household’s private geography, accessible only when Devorah can secure time alone. When her grandparents leave for a cousin’s bar mitzvah, she retrieves it and sets it on her desk. The book’s presence is thus governed by ordinary domestic conditions—who is home, whether she is needed, and whether the door can be closed—as much as by her intellectual ambition.

A Page Opens an Argument

The edition’s format is central to what Devorah finds in it. Its pages place the original Talmudic words beside an English translation, with rabbinical discourse filling the lower portion. She is drawn especially to these records of rabbis arguing over the meaning of sacred phrases. Rather than receiving a single, settled explanation, she encounters interpretation as a conversation.

On page sixty-five, she reads a discussion of King David and Bathsheba. From the fragments she describes, Devorah understands that Bathsheba was already married when David desired her, and that David arranged for her husband, Uriah, to be sent to the front lines and killed. She reads the account as showing David later taking Bathsheba as his wife, then rejecting her after recognizing his own wrongdoing; in her understanding, Bathsheba is left neglected in the king’s harem. The article does not simply reproduce the schoolroom picture of a revered king. It gives Devorah a troubling narrative in which power, desire, and moral responsibility complicate that picture.

From Reading to Independent Judgment

The new account conflicts directly with what Devorah has been taught at school: that David committed no sins and that questioning his goodness is forbidden. Her response is not that every question has been settled. Instead, the discrepancy makes the authority of the lesson itself uncertain. She compares the small collection of English books she has hidden with the troubling material about David and wonders whether her own reading can truly be the greater offense.

In retrospect, Devorah identifies this reading as a moment when she stopped believing in authority simply because it claimed authority and began reaching conclusions of her own. At the time, she does not recognize that she has lost her innocence. What she does feel is the strain between her emerging thoughts and the teachings she continues to absorb. The book remains a physical secret, but its most consequential effect is intellectual: it makes room for the possibility that inherited explanations can be examined, disputed, and found incomplete.