The Talmudic Micropedia
The Torah is longer and wider than the sea. And although there are seventy facets to the Torah – including Halachah, Aggadah, Pshat, Drash, Remez, Sod - the most important of all of them is Halachah, as Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan of Radin, the Chaftz Chayim, wrote in his introduction to Mishnah Berurah that although the Mitzvah of studying Torah is fulfilled through any way of Torah study including laws of the Temple and Taharot, nonetheless, most of what one should learn is that which is halacha.
The monumental project - Talmudic Encyclopedia – was founded by Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan and Rabbi Shlomo Yosef Zevin close to 75 years ago. This is a unique work that includes all Talmudic matters of halachah in a precise and reliable presentation, starting from the Bible and the Talmuds, through rabbinic literature from the Geonim to the current poskim.
To date, 47 volumes of the Talmudic Encyclopedia have been published, including over 1500 entries, which are about half the estimated entries.
At this point in time, we decided to submit to the public an abbreviated version of the Talmudic Encyclopedia – The Talmudic Micropedia - in order to widen the audience that can derive great benefit from this monumental work.
The goals of the Talmudic Micropedia are:
A) to define, explore and clarify all halachic issues.
B) to present a precise picture of the principles and rules of all halachic issues discussed in the Talmudic Encyclopedia in a more concise and friendly way.
C) To summarize and simplify the entries Talmudic Encyclopedia, so that on the one hand it preserves the great reliability of the information, and on the other hand the style and layout of the material will allow even a scholar who is not regularly engaged in Torah study to understand the concepts of halacha.
H) To add issues of modern, contemporary halachic literature that is relevant to the entries.
I) To write the different entries according to targeted audience, i.e., entries that have an interest to a wide audience or of significance in the yeshiva world are relative long, whereas entries that the majority of the public are not familiar with are relatively brief.
This work of the Talmudic Micropedia will become an important and most reliable source for comprehending halachic matters in an accessible and understandable way.
So far 9 volumes were published. They include 1305 entries ((א – לא תאכילום which are found in volumes 1-34 in great length