Torah & Talmud · תּוֹרָה וְתַלְמוּד

The Light in
the Letters

Three thousand years of moral imagination: justice and mercy, the dignity of every life, the love of learning. A few of the lines that shaped a people, and the world.

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Selected Highlights

Lines worth living by

At Sinai · עֲשֶׂרֶת הַדִּבְּרוֹת

The Ten Words

Given at Sinai, the moral spine of the Torah and a foundation of Western law. Counted here as Jews count them: the first is a declaration, not a command, and the sixth forbids murder, not all killing, a distinction the Hebrew לֹא תִרְצָח makes plain.

1
אָנֹכִי יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָI am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
2
לֹא יִהְיֶה לְךָ אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִיםYou shall have no other gods before Me, nor make for yourself any idol.
3
לֹא תִשָּׂא אֶת שֵׁם יְהוָה לַשָּׁוְאYou shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.
4
זָכוֹר אֶת יוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת לְקַדְּשׁוֹRemember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.
5
כַּבֵּד אֶת אָבִיךָ וְאֶת אִמֶּךָHonor your father and your mother.
6
לֹא תִרְצָחYou shall not murder.
7
לֹא תִנְאָףYou shall not commit adultery.
8
לֹא תִגְנֹבYou shall not steal.
9
לֹא תַעֲנֶה בְרֵעֲךָ עֵד שָׁקֶרYou shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
10
לֹא תַחְמֹדYou shall not covet.
Text: Exodus 20:2–14 (Jewish enumeration), verified against the open Sefaria library. The same Ten Words appear again in Deuteronomy 5.
For All Humanity · שֶׁבַע מִצְווֹת בְּנֵי נֹחַ

The Seven Laws of Noah

Long before Sinai, Judaism teaches, God gave a short universal code to all of humanity, the children of Noah. Keep these seven, and a non-Jew is counted among the righteous of the nations, no conversion required. It is the quiet proof that Judaism never claimed a monopoly on a good life.

1
No idolatryWorship the one God; make no idols.
2
No blasphemyDo not curse or revile God's name.
3
No murderThe life of every person is sacred.
4
No theftRespect what belongs to another.
5
No sexual immoralityLimits on incest, adultery and the like.
6
No cruelty to animalsSpecifically, not to eat flesh torn from a living creature.
7
Courts of justiceEstablish the rule of law. The one positive command.
The contrast with the Ten Words is the whole point. Those are Israel's covenant (note the Shabbat and “who brought you out of Egypt”); these seven are the universal floor for everyone. Source: Talmud, Sanhedrin 56a; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Kings.
The Children of Noah · בְּנֵי נֹחַ

The Table of Nations

Genesis maps the whole human family onto Noah's three sons, the Bible's ancient atlas of the known world. Read it for what it is: a chart of nations and lands, not races.

Shem · the Near East

The Semitic peoples (the word is his name): Persia, Assyria and Aram, and through Arphaxad and Eber, the line that reaches Abraham. The Jewish people descend from Shem.

Elam · PersiaAsshur · AssyriaAram · Syria→ Abraham

Ham · Africa & Canaan

His sons map onto the south and the coast: Cush (Nubia, Sudan, Ethiopia), Mizraim (Egypt), Put (Libya), and Canaan, the odd one out, in the Levant.

Cush · Nubia/SudanMizraim · EgyptPut · LibyaCanaan · Levant

Japheth · North & West

The peoples of the north and west: Javan (Greece), Madai (the Medes), and the Scythians and Cimmerians of the steppe. His grandson Ashkenaz later lent his name to Jewish Germany.

Javan · GreeceMadai · MedesMagog · ScythiansAshkenaz
The Table is a map of nations and lands, not races. The later “curse of Ham,” twisted into a justification for slavery, is a distortion: Scripture curses Canaan (in the Levant), not a continent, and speaks of peoples, not skin color. Israel's own line runs through Shem to Abraham. Source: Genesis 10; see TheTorah.com.
The Tribes · שִׁבְטֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל

From Twelve, One People

Israel began as twelve tribes, the sons of Jacob. War and exile scattered ten of them into legend, and the people who endured took the name of the tribe that survived: Judah, the root of the word “Jew.”

The Twelve

The clans descended from Jacob's sons. Levi held no land, serving as priests; Joseph's share passed to his sons Ephraim and Manasseh.

ReubenSimeonLeviJudahDanNaphtaliGadAsherIssacharZebulunJosephBenjamin

The Split & the Lost

After Solomon, the kingdom broke in two. In 722 BCE Assyria exiled the northern ten, the Ten Lost Tribes, who vanished from history. In 586 BCE Babylon took the south, but Judah kept its name and returned.

The Tribes Today

Most Jews simply identify as Israel, their tribe forgotten across the exiles. The exception: the Levi'im and Kohanim (priests), whose line still passes father to son. A Cohen or a Levy carries a 3,000-year-old name.

Genetic studies found a shared “Cohen” Y-chromosome signature among priestly families worldwide, molecular evidence of a common ancestor, the continuity of the Unbroken Text written in DNA. Jewish tradition holds the lost tribes will be gathered back in the days of the Messiah.
The Collection

Explore the texts

Five ways in: the verses that built a conscience, our curated highlights, the forgeries we debunk, our own hard verses owned in full, and a live search of the entire Sefaria library.

The lines the Tanakh is actually built around, the image of God in every person, justice for the powerless, love of the stranger, honesty in the smallest things. Each became law, then conscience, echoing far beyond the Jewish world. Shown in full, with the Hebrew, verified through Sefaria.

“Tzedakah” as justice, the thirty-six repetitions of the stranger command, and the heavenly question on honest business (Shabbat 31a) are standard rabbinic readings.

A hand-picked set, filterable by theme. For the whole canon, use the Search all of Sefaria tab.

The “Talmud quotes” that circulate to prove Jews are commanded to hate, deceive, or murder gentiles. Run them down to the source and they fall into three piles, words simply invented, technical lines mistranslated, and real passages stripped of the sentence beside them. Each is checked against the actual text on Sefaria, including the one charge that is partly fair.

Fabricated, no such text Mistranslated Stripped of context Partly fair, owned
Sources checked against the open Sefaria library (Sanhedrin 37a, 59a; Bava Metzia 114b; Bava Kamma 113a; Kiddushin 12b; Chullin 94a). The forgery history traces to Eisenmenger, Rohling and Pranaitis (“The Talmud Unmasked,” discredited at the 1913 Beilis trial) and the 20th-century compilation by Elizabeth Dilling. Debunk scholarship: R. Ben Zion Bokser, Talmudic Forgeries (1939); Aish; GnasherJew.

No tradition gets to quote only its best lines. Here are the Tanakh's hard texts, including the ones aimed at outsiders, shown in full and verified through Sefaria. This isn't false balance. The honest difference is what a living tradition does with such texts: Judaism turned most of these into history or dead letters, and there is no present-day Jewish doctrine commanding violence against non-Jews. A page willing to own its own hard verses is the one you can trust on everyone else's.

In force (observed today) Historical (a past event, not a command) Not practiced (a dead letter in Jewish law) Defunct (the institution is gone)
Verse text via the open Sefaria library (JPS translation). The non-practice notes draw on the Talmud and Mishnah (Sanhedrin 71a “never happened and never will”; Makkot 1:10 on a court that executed once in 70 years; Berakhot 28a on the nations being “mixed up”). Presented for honest reckoning.

The full Tanakh, Mishnah and Talmud, and more, searched live through the open Sefaria library. Each result opens on Sefaria.

Live results from Sefaria, the open library of Jewish texts. A search across the canon, not a substitute for study with a teacher.