At the age of twenty, after having spent two years of intensive Talmud studies at Hevron Yeshiva, an elite Ultra-Orthodox yeshiva in Jerusalem, I moved to a modern orthodox yeshiva in Otniel. As luck would have it, I studied the same tractate, Baba Mezia, for two consecutive years. The second time around I encountered the mind-blowing commentary of Saul Lieberman to the Tosefta. The combination of my classical background and the new horizons that Lieberman’s commentary opened for me, led me to develop an original interpretive approach (based on which I published in 2018 a paper on the beginning of tractate Baba Mezia from the perspectives of Academic and Yeshiva learning).
In 2013, when I was in the middle of my Ph.D. studies, I took a short break and wrote a Hebrew draft that articulated my interpretive approach. Although it did not conform to academic writing conventions, Professor Moshe Halbertal warmly encouraged me to continue in my endeavor. In 2015–2016 The Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture supported the publication of this book and the foundation was so generous that I got a second grant in 2018–2019. In 2016–2017 I was invited by professors Joseph Weiler and Moshe Halbertal to serve as a Berkowitz fellow at NYU Law School. That year was decisive for my project. It was the first time I had the opportunity to dedicate myself to writing this book and to discussing my ideas with excellent scholars outside Israel. I abandoned the previous Hebrew draft and wrote the entire book anew. My fellowship could not have materialized without Dr. Claudia Golden, who took care of the fellowship arrangement, and the donor Dr. Ivan Berkowitz, whom I thank for his warm encouragement and inspiration. When I came back to Israel, I needed only a few more months to complete this project. I was able to do so, thanks to the wonderful support of my close family. In the following academic year, 2018–2019, I was able to polish the final version of this book as a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. I thank Professor Benjamin Brown for having obtained this fellowship for me.
I was fortunate to be able to discuss this book with many people, each of whom contributed to the final result. Some of them are good friends, some are excellent scholars, and some are both. I would like to thank: Admiel Kosman, Aharon Shemesh z”l, Alex Bekker, Benjamin Brown, Benjamin Gampel, Beth Berkowitz, Chaim Saiman, Christine Hayes, Daniel Hirshowits, David Henshke, Elazar Herling, Hillel Mali, Jeffrey Rubenstein, Jonathan Garb, Joseph Weiler,Menachem Fisch, Menachem Kahana, Menachem Lorberbaum, Moshe Halbertal, Natalie Dohrmann, Refael Kroizer, Richard Kalmin, Suzanne Last Stone, Tal Ilan, Tamara Morsel-Eisenberg, Vered Noam, Yacov Fuchs and Yair Lorberbaum. A very special thank you goes to Dr. Gillian Steinberg, who improved the language of this work and to Michael Guggenheimer who edited the book in its final stage; both contributed significantly to the final result. My heartfelt thanks to Professor Alan Avery-Peck and the entire team at Brill Publishing, who did their utmost to publish this book in the best possible way. I hope that this book will fulfil its aim, to open the doors of Talmudic literature for its readers, especially the hidden doors that lead to some of the least discussed aspects of Talmudic literature.