This is pretty accurate, even though the AI commits total innumeracy by blithely converting 50% into 49.7% and 50.3%. My feel however is that the secular faction is underrepresented here and we should stick to about 10 Orthodox 10 Conservative 20 Reform. Those who "engage" the Talmud would then be maybe 15%, but those who have read every page are still in the vanishing fraction of maybe thousands out of 15 million.
Christians also regard the Hebrew-Greek Bible as so inspired and inerrant that they get the wrong idea that Jews regard the Talmud that way. Rather, Jews mostly regard the Talmud like Christians regard the patristics (church fathers): convenient and cultural but eminently forgettable. Jews should regard the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) as inspired and inerrant, but those fundamentalists that do so still have a lower view of it, on average, than fundamentalist Christians.
So the key is not to monolith the Jews into being hidebound observers of the thousands of dense pages of the Talmud. Jews are largely anti-creedal: the one-verse Shema is the only creed for many, and for those who insist on more we have the 13-point Yalkut, which is much less binding than even the apostles' creed. Nobody makes the Talmud an article of faith; it is to be understood primarily for its place in culture. If there is any article of faith in its halakhah, it by rule is always taken from somewhere in the Tanakh, which makes it just as easily nitpicked by Christians as by Jews. We should read the church's magisterium and understand its many ways to "get around" hard Scripture (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, etc.) before we go around criticizing the Talmud for the same.
This is pretty accurate, even though the AI commits total innumeracy by blithely converting 50% into 49.7% and 50.3%. My feel however is that the secular faction is underrepresented here and we should stick to about 10 Orthodox 10 Conservative 20 Reform. Those who "engage" the Talmud would then be maybe 15%, but those who have read every page are still in the vanishing fraction of maybe thousands out of 15 million.
Christians also regard the Hebrew-Greek Bible as so inspired and inerrant that they get the wrong idea that Jews regard the Talmud that way. Rather, Jews mostly regard the Talmud like Christians regard the patristics (church fathers): convenient and cultural but eminently forgettable. Jews should regard the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) as inspired and inerrant, but those fundamentalists that do so still have a lower view of it, on average, than fundamentalist Christians.
So the key is not to monolith the Jews into being hidebound observers of the thousands of dense pages of the Talmud. Jews are largely anti-creedal: the one-verse Shema is the only creed for many, and for those who insist on more we have the 13-point Yalkut, which is much less binding than even the apostles' creed. Nobody makes the Talmud an article of faith; it is to be understood primarily for its place in culture. If there is any article of faith in its halakhah, it by rule is always taken from somewhere in the Tanakh, which makes it just as easily nitpicked by Christians as by Jews. We should read the church's magisterium and understand its many ways to "get around" hard Scripture (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, etc.) before we go around criticizing the Talmud for the same.