Read an excerpt from the introductory “A Message from Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz” to the Koren Talmud Bavli

BOB ABERNETHY, correspondent: We have a profile today of one of the most respected rabbis in the world. He is a seventy-four-year-old Israeli, Adin Steinsaltz, the author of 60 books on ethics, theology, prayer, and mysticism, with a few mystery novels included. Rabbi Steinsaltz is most admired for a monumental project that took him 45 years, sometimes working 17 hour days. He translated the Babylonian Talmud from ancient Hebrew and Aramaic into Modern Hebrew. The Torah is Judaism’s holiest text, Genesis through Deuteronomy. The Talmud is commentary on the Torah. But in its original languages, the Talmud was studied primarily by students and scholars. Now, the Steinsaltz Talmud makes it available to everyone.

The holiest site in all Judaism is in Jerusalem, the Western Wall of the Second Temple, destroyed in the year 70. The devout come to the wall to pray, and so do many thirteen-year-old boys at the time of their Bar Mitzvahs, when they take on the full responsibilities of adults. One of those duties is studying the Torah, with its 613 laws about how to live. The Torah, for Rabbi Steinsaltz, is a divine guide, a map of the paths and the main road through a world of danger and blessings—in his words, lions and angels.

RABBI ADIN STEINSALTZ: We are living in a world we really don’t know what are the paths. We don’t know what are the ways. We don’t even know what the main road is. So we need some kinds of signs to tell us that here live lions, and here possibly live angels. That’s mostly what the Torah is, a book basically of instructions: go this way, go the other way, do it, don’t do it. So that’s as simple as that.

ABERNETHY: Holy as the Torah is, its laws are in some ways unclear. For instance, it requires keeping the Sabbath, but it never explains exactly how. So the Talmud emerged, first as an oral tradition, later written down—centuries of rabbinical commentaries interpreting the Torah’s laws and arguing over them. Rabbi Steinsaltz began his translation of the Talmud when he was 28. It took him 45 years and ran to 45 volumes.

RABBI STEINSALTZ: It was necessary because it is an important book. I once called it the center pillar of our culture.

ABERNETHY: Recently, Steinsaltz was in New York City teaching and explaining what is unique about the Steinsaltz Talmud—his own commentary and extensive background.

RABBI STEINSALTZ: You have here the original Hebrew, the translation in English, and then you have, you see, notes about the law.

ABERNETHY: With his many books as well as his Talmud translation, the rabbi personifies Judaism’s commitment to learning and to argument as a means of understanding.

RABBI STEINSALTZ: The idea of the Talmud is that you are allowed to ask questions about anything, everything that can be done, encouraging you to ask questions, trying to find answers.

Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical Students: And the rabbis let her then remarry. Even though there was only one witness.

ABERNETHY: Every day students and scholars around the world study and question and debate the meanings of the Torah and Talmud and the arguments of rabbis who have studied them. There is no single authority to decide how best to interpret the religious law, but argument over the centuries can lead to general agreement—until the next question and the next argument.

Steinsaltz was raised in a secular Jewish family, but his father insisted he study the sacred texts so he would not grow up ignorant. I asked him how he became religious.

RABBI STEINSALTZ: It was almost spontaneous. I don’t know where that came from. Believing in God is in a way is the most natural, perhaps even the most primitive notion that people have.

ABERNETHY: But belief, said Steinsaltz, is just the beginning.

RABBI STEINSALTZ: What is really difficult is not so much the belief but the relationship. I’m still striving to become better, to become faithful for serving Him, to become a human being as He possibly wants me to be.

ABERNETHY: Steinsaltz sees all human beings as God’s partners in what Jews call tikkun olam, repairing the world.

RABBI STEINSALTZ: The Lord says I made the world. It’s pretty good, but there are all kinds of holes in it. You people go, and you make the amendments—bigger ones, smaller ones. But you, that’s your duty.

ABERNETHY: The rabbi says even the smallest good deed can have a global result, the so-called butterfly effect.

RABBI STEINSALTZ: The movement of the wings of a butterfly can change the world, and the point is basically we live in one world. Any movement in this world somehow affects everything else. So when we do anything better, we change the world.

ABERNETHY: If Jews study the Torah, if they honor the Sabbath and the other holy days, if they do good deeds and partner with God, Steinsaltz says they will achieve holiness. He also says everyone possesses a divine spark.

RABBI STEINSALTZ: This spark is in a way trying to find its way to the main fire, and then it wants to sink into the main fire.

ABERNETHY: Steinsaltz said he saw no signs of any early peace in the Middle East, but he insisted that he had not despaired.

RABBI STEINSALTZ: I am an optimist, meaning that I see things as black as they are, but I still hope.

ABERNETHY: Talking with the rabbi, it was clear that his optimism rests on his absolute trust in God.

RABBI STEINSALTZ: When you believe that, you see, everything comes from the Lord.so whenever something happens if it’s a glad thing, I’m saying thank you for making me happy or healthy or satisfied. If something untoward happens to me, I’s saying the same thing. Please, thank you for letting me know that you exist.

God exists everywhere in every way in every form. We have so many prayers in our religion, so many prayers, but sometimes the prayer is just like I pick up the phone and say hello, I’m glad that you are there.

ABERNETHY: Steinsaltz said he would like to be remembered as a person who did something to make the world better. He also said he would like to live another hundred years—teaching, writing, doing what he can to repair the world and to become, as he put it, the human being God possibly wants him to be.

Next month the first four volumes of the Steinsaltz Talmud in English are due to come out.

Rabbi RON KRONISH (Interreligious Coordinating Council in Israel): Every step that the pope takes in every place he goes, including the Temple Mount or the Western Wall, is a gesture of reconciliation to both sides, and he’s tried during the week he’s here to play a balancing act, and it never quite works out perfect for everybody.

LAWTON: Pilgrims came from around the world to be part of the pope’s visit here, but his main focus was on the local Christians, Jews, and Muslims. The visit certainly encouraged the region’s shrinking Christian population. In 1948, Christians made up about 20 percent of the population here. Today, because of emigration and declining birth rates, they represent less than two percent.

Reverend IBRAHIM FALTAS (Latin Parish of Jerusalem): We are worried about the Christians here in Jerusalem and all the Holy Land. To be here is our mission, to be here, to continue to be here in this land.

LAWTON: Benedict urged the Christian population, predominantly Palestinian, to persevere. His support meant a lot to local Christians.

HANAN NASRALLAH: He is the big man, the holy — well, you consider the holy man and representing the Catholic Church over the world, so for him to come in an area where there is a conflict — a very small country, but it’s a big issue here, I think it’s very important for his visit.

KHALIL ANSARA: The talk is always about the relationship with the Muslims and the Jews, but it’s very important for the pope to come here too with the relations with the Christians.

LAWTON: Meanwhile, many Jewish leaders had high expectations that this visit would be a visual demonstration that their community still has strong relations with the Vatican, despite recent tensions after Benedict lifted the excommunication of a traditionalist bishop who denies the Holocaust.

Rabbi DAVID ROSEN (American Jewish Committee in Israel): Most people don’t know about statements and declarations. Most people don’t read properly, but nevertheless people do view the visual images.

LAWTON: Benedict met with Israel’s chief rabbis and visited the Western Wall, where he left a prayer for peace in the Middle East. He also visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial. But his speech there generated controversy. Some Israelis were upset that he did not acknowledge the role Christian anti-Semitism played in the Holocaust, and he did not refer to his own background as a German growing up in the Nazi era.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the pope had addressed those points before and didn’t feel the need to repeat them.

Reverend FEDERICO LOMBARDI (Vatican Spokesman): He had already spoken many times about these problems.

LAWTON: Rabbi Ron Kronish of the Interreligious Coordinating Council of Israel said he believes, overall, the visit was a positive thing for the Jewish community.

Rabbi KRONISH: It strengthens Israel’s place in the family of nations and in the world community. So I think that people are going to be happy about it when they look back. He went to Yad Vashem; he went to the Western Wall; he went to all the right places. He’s made all the right gestures that count for both peoples, and I think we ought to not focus on all the things he could have said or not said.

LAWTON: Benedict also did some fence-mending with the Muslim community, where tensions linger after his controversial speech in 2006 where he quoted a Byzantine emperor who linked the Prophet Muhammad and violence. Benedict was the first pope to visit the compound of Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, one of the holiest sites in Islam and a place of deep contention between Muslims and Jews.

Muslim leader Issa Jaber is an Israeli Arab who helps coordinate interfaith dialogue.

ISSA JABER (Association for Jewish-Arab Coexistence in the Judean Hills): We believe that His Holiness’ visit to the Mosque of Al Aqsa and the Dome Rock was very important and may open new dimensions of dialogue — a new dialogue between the different religions, especially Islam and Christianity.

LAWTON: But the complexities of interreligious dialogue here were also evident. At an interfaith gathering, Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi, an Islamic court judge in the Palestinian Authority, made an impromptu 10-minute-long diatribe against Israeli occupation, prompting some of the Jewish representatives to walk out of the meeting.

Mr. JABER: Maybe it was not exactly on the agenda of the program, but for Sheik Tamimi it was very important to show the pope and to let him understand the painful — the pains of the Palestinian people in Jerusalem and outside of Jerusalem.

ELANA ROZENMAN (Trust-Emun Group): It demonstrated our reality here, and if things were simple and the religions could easily get together and meet together without any problems we would already have peace.

LAWTON: Elana Rozenman is part of an interfaith movement called the Abrahamic Renunion, which seeks to build personal relationships and trust among people of the three major religions.

Ms. ROZENMAN: Yes, the reality of conflict and war and killing exists daily. Right now people are being victims of violent acts here. We know that, but also there is another level of reality that exists of peaceful, harmonious, loving relationships between Muslims, Christians, and Jews.

LAWTON: She works closely with her friends, Eliyahu McLean, a fellow Jew, and Ibrahim Ahmad Abu El-Hawa, a Muslim.

IBRAHIM AMAD ABU EL-WAWA: We are stubborn people. We are the children of Abraham. We are from the same seed. Okay?

ELIYAHU MCLEAN (Jerusalem Peacemakers): This is a point that Ibrahaim always makes, that God chose two of the most stubborn people in the world, the Arabs and the Jews, to live in this land, and it is actually God’s decision, and this is why it’s also so difficult to make peace, because we’re both very stubborn. But at the same time we need to be stubborn to be peacemakers.

LAWTON: The three say the pope’s visit encouraged them in their work.

Mr. MCLEAN: I really felt personally empowered when the pope gave a specific blessing to the peacemakers, to the Jews and Arabs, Israelis and the Palestinians who are working to make a better future for the children of Abraham in the land of the prophets, in the Holy Land.

LAWTON: The pope may have urged the religious community to be a force for peace, but many leaders in the movement for interfaith dialogue acknowledge that politics can’t be separated out.

Rabbi KRONISH: The road ahead is bumpy. It’s not a smooth road, because we are linked to the political processes. We try to keep a flicker of hope alive in a sometimes desperate situation, and we believe that when the peace process moves forward, we will be able to move, in cooperation with governments, in bigger and more systematic ways in the future.

LAWTON: Benedict prayed for peace at every stop in this week-long Holy Land pilgrimage, and in spite of everything else, Christians, Muslims, and Jews alike said they hope that message of peace is the ultimate legacy of this trip.

I’m Kim Lawton in Jerusalem.