Research Associate Spotlight: Yehudah Cohn

The seminal text of rabbinic Judaism is the Mishnah, whose redaction as a fixed text is generally viewed as having taken place in Roman Galilee around 200 CE, although its written transmission may not have taken place until centuries later. Its contained traditions, on the other hand, seem to have arisen throughout the period between the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE and the Mishnah’s redaction (and on occasion pre-destruction rabbis are also cited). 

The work is primarily an edited anthology of brief and often elliptical pronouncements on matters of Jewish law and practice (including rituals associated with the time when the temple was in existence), and frequently provide conflicting views on the individual matters discussed. Some of these pronouncements are attributed to a named rabbi, or group of anonymous rabbis, while others are entirely anonymous.

This summer I completed an annotated English translation of one of the Mishnah’s longer tractates, as part of a team translation to be published by Oxford University Press. The tractate concerned deals with purity regulations, and is part of a larger section covering similar topics. Oxford has not put out a Mishnah translation since 1933, and the important version published at the time (the “Danby Mishnah”) was barely annotated.