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Jordan Group Translates Babylonian Talmud to Arabic

(Jerusalem Post) Jeremy Sharon - A think tank on Middle East affairs in Jordan has for the first time published a translation of the Babylonian Talmud in Arabic. The Middle East Studies Center based in Amman produced the 20-volume work, which took six years to complete and is the labor of 95 translators, language experts and editors. The center's director, Jawad Ahmad, would not speak with the Israeli press about the project. Dr. Mordechai Kedar, director of the Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, said the Talmud is usually portrayed very negatively in the Muslim and Arab world. "I doubt this new translation was done out of the goodness of their heart." "Israel is a puzzle for the Muslim world," Kedar said. "They don't understand how this can work; it looks like some kind of satanic enterprise to them when most Arab states are more or less failures, so they want to understand the cultural and religious roots of their enemy, to maybe solve this puzzle one day and perhaps in the end defeat Israel."
2012-03-30 00:00:00
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