traNSLatioN aND coNqueSt • 203the complexities of interreligious relations in the fin de siècle Middle
east, the instigator was not Faris nor Nasrallah nor any other Christian
anti- Jewish agitator. rather, it was Jurji Zaydan, the markedly philose-
mitic Christian editor of the arabic journal al- Hilāl, discussed in chapter
4.^69 Zaydan had fielded numerous letters from readers inquiring about
the Jews’ mysterious talmud, which Zaydan consistently defended as
nothing more than “a large book made up of a number of volumes
containing the Jews’ laws, rituals, traditions, history, morals, sciences,
and personal and civil rulings.”^70 protestations of the talmud’s decency
and harmlessness were clearly insufficient, however, as readers’ inqui-
ries about the perniciousness of the talmud continued to arrive at the
editor’s office. Finally, Zaydan suggested that Moyal, whom he met in
Cairo, translate the talmud into arabic to dispel the slanderous rumors
about the text once and for all.
Who has “a Share in the World to come”?even as it seeks often rather blandly to review post- pentateuchal Isra-
elite history so as to explain how the Oral Law received by Moses was
transmitted until it was recorded by rabbi Yehuda ha- Nasi, at- Talmūd
is, i contend, a deliberately apologetic (and at times subtly polemical)
work. Consider Moyal’s choice to begin his talmud translation project
not with the first tractate of the mishnah, Berakhot, but rather with
Pirkei avot. this choice highlights Moyal’s desire to trace the chain of
oral Law transmission (found at the very beginning of Pirkei avot) as
well as to show that the talmud is indeed an ethical work (evidenced
by the rabbis’ ethical exhortations recorded in Pirkei avot), not the sort
that would guide its adherents to kill innocents. this no doubt accounts
for the prominent place of ethics (al- ādāb) in the very title of Moyal’s
work.
Moyal immediately hits a snag, though, because the line tradition-
ally printed and read before the first mishnah of Pirkei avot— “all
Israel have a share in the World to Come”— does little to refute the
(^69) On the Beirut native Zaydan and his al- Hilāl, see ayalon, The Press in the Arab Mid-
dle East, 53– 54. on al- Hilāl’s palestinian readership, see ayalon, Reading Palestine, 50. On
Zaydan’s central role in the attempt to translate the talmud, see Sehayik, “Demut ha-
yehudi bi- reʾi ʿitonut ʿarvit beyn ha- shanim 1858– 1908,” 105– 7. Levy has also carefully
reconstructed the relevant exchanges in al- Hilāl and the course of events that led to the
Zaydan- Moyal translation project; see Levy, “Jewish Writers in the arab east,” 199– 204.
(^70) “at- talmūd wa- tarjamatuhu ilā al- ʿarabiyya,” al- Hilāl 13, 5 (February 1, 1905),
303– 5. i translate ādābuhum here as “moral and ethics,” though the term could also mean
“literature.” cf. Levy, “Jewish Writers in the arab east,” 203.