An Interview with Rabbi Richard Hidary
On behalf of The Commentator, I interviewed Rabbi Richard Hidary, a Judaic studies professor at Yeshiva University, about his background and his new book, “Discovering the Jewish Holidays: Eight Talmudic Readings.”
Our conversation began with Rabbi Hidary’s time as an undergraduate at YU, where he started as a computer science major. He eventually pivoted to Talmud because he felt he would be one in a billion programmers, while the Torah world allowed him to make a larger impact. The transition came easily; both subjects share a structured way of thinking and a reliance on logical patterns. He also emphasized a responsibility to perpetuate the Torah of his teachers and a desire to pass down their unique insights. “The Torah is so deep and so profound that anyone who cares and spends some time can come up with new and important insights,” he said.
Rabbi Hidary furthered his Torah education by taking classes at Revel as an undergraduate, where he encountered a method of studying Talmud he had not seen before: an approach grounded in the history of the Talmud and the backgrounds of the rabbis themselves. He later received semikha from Midrash Sephardi in Jerusalem and a Ph.D. in Judaic studies from NYU, where he studied Talmud through this lens. Working with manuscripts, keywords and literary structures, he found that it unlocked a new layer of depth in the text.
Rejecting my label of “academic Talmud,” Rabbi Hidary insisted that this method of study is not separable from the normative approach but part of a larger, holistic one. He traced it back to the Geonim and Rishonim, and said that this systemic method is becoming increasingly common within our own communities. He pointed to a growing appreciation for midrash and the Talmud Yerushalmi, both outside sources that contribute to a deeper understanding of the Bavli, that is becoming prevalent in yeshivot. He also drew an interesting distinction between Sephardic and Ashkenazi approaches to Talmud, claiming that Sephardim are more textual, while Ashkenazim take a more conceptual, Brisker approach.
I then asked about each of the books Rabbi Hidary has written and how they build on one another. His first book, “Dispute for the Sake of Heaven: Legal Pluralism in the Talmud,” grew out of his dissertation, a study of the nature of machloket. He emphasized the uniqueness of the Talmud as a legal code that preserves the back-and-forth discussion of the sages rather than simply stating the law, arguing that this structure allows for a fuller understanding and a better arrival at truth. The book examines the interplay between machloket and practical halacha, whether the disputes were purely theoretical or whether the rabbis genuinely practiced differently. He concluded that the Yerushalmi pushed for uniformity while the Bavli allowed for legal pluralism, a split he attributes to geography and outside influence. The communities of the Yerushalmi lived closer together and under Roman rule, which favored a uniform law, while the Jews of Bavel were more dispersed and under Persian rule, which encouraged pluralism.
His second book, “Rabbis and Classic Rhetoric: Sophistic Education and Oratory in the Talmud and the Midrash,” expands on machloket, connecting it to the Greco-Roman tradition of debate.
Rabbi Hidary’s newest book, “Discovering the Jewish Holidays: Eight Talmudic Readings,” uses the Jewish holidays as a medium to uncover a novel literary approach. It combines his Sephardic and Ashkenazi training: grounded in the text to remain historically accurate, but conceptual in nature. By dissecting the pieces of the Gemara and the questions of the Amoraim he argues, we can reveal a larger goal behind each halacha. He views the Gemara as a persuasive essay whose thesis emerges when the text is approached step by step.
The book begins by demonstrating this method through a Mishnah in Rosh Hashana, which presents as the majority view that we are judged four times a year. While the Mishnah seems to assume that this statement is agreed upon by all, the Gemara asks who voiced said opinion. This line of questioning diminishes the authority of the Mishnaic statement, reopening the matter for debate by attributing it to an individual rather than as a collective fact. The Gemara ultimately concludes that we are judged every single day, a significant increase from the original assumption of four times per year. Rabbi Hidary reads the discussion as a deliberate move: by reopening a seemingly settled assumption, the rabbis push us to think about teshuva daily rather than a few times a year. Each chapter in Rabbi Hidary’s book follows a similar pattern, drawing one example from each holiday to show how the rabbis used the Gemara to advance a message.
He wrote the book as a demonstration and a model, “a way of bringing together the yeshiva world and the so-called ‘academic’ world so that we can gain a deeper appreciation of how profound the Talmud is.” He published it through Yeshiva University Press and Maggid Books, rather than the scholarly presses behind his earlier works, to make it accessible to his students and to the wider Jewish community.
For Rabbi Hidary, accessibility is not limited to his newest book; it defines how he approaches learning in general. When studying Gemara, he encourages the one learning to ask why the rabbis are posing a question in the first place; anything surprising is usually a clue that something deeper lies beneath. The Gemara, he argues, is intentionally set up as an invitation into the workshop of the rabbis as they legislate and codify the Torah, continuing tradition while accommodating the needs of their time, a model for us to do the same in ours. He wants the book to represent that invitation, and hopes readers will accept it and study the Talmud as active participants. He hopes, too, that it serves as a “small contribution that others can build on as they study Talmud together, drawing from the inexhaustible wellspring of meaning in the gemara.”
For me, this interview provided an interesting lens into how educators bring their past educational experiences into their present classroom. I appreciated Rabbi Hidary’s thoughtfulness in his approach towards learning gemara, the distinct method that he carefully crafted and his eagerness to share it with his students. What resonated with me most was his textually based understanding of the Gemara as an invitation to participate, alongside his personal encouragement and belief that his students can contribute meaningfully to the mesorah.
Photo Caption: Rabbi Richard Hidary
Photo Credit: YU Torah
