Page "Talmud" Paragraph 69

According to the present-day Sephardi scholar José Faur, traditional Sephardic Talmud study could take place on any of three levels.

The most basic level consists of literary analysis of the text without the help of commentaries, designed to bring out the tzurata di-shema ' ta, i. e. the logical and narrative structure of the passage.

The intermediate level, iyyun ( concentration ), consists of study with the help of commentaries such as Rashi and the Tosafot, similar to that practised among the Ashkenazim ( historically Sephardim studied the Tosefot ha-Rosh and the commentaries of Nahmanides in preference to the printed Tosafot ).

The highest level, halachah ( law ), consists of collating the opinions set out in the Talmud with those of the halachic codes such as the Mishneh Torah and the Shulchan Aruch, so as to study the Talmud as a source of law.

( A project called Halacha Brura, founded by Abraham Isaac Kook, presents the Talmud and the halachic codes side by side in book form so as to enable this kind of collation.