Before and after you read Halakhah, by Chaim Saiman: what should you know? What will you learn?

I have written in glowing terms about the book  Halakhah: The Rabbinic Idea of Law, by Chaim Saiman. It's a novel explanation of an important topic, and the author writes well. But it is still not easy going.

If you plan to read it (and I hope you do!), think about acquainting yourself with these terms first:

1. Torah
2. Rabbi
3. Mishnah
4. Gemarah
5. Talmud
6. Midrash
7. Halakhah
8. Aggadah
9. Shulchan Aruch
10. Responsa

The Judaism 101 and My Jewish Learning websites would be good places to start.

And here's your reward: in addition to being able to follow Saiman's ingenious arguments and examples, you'll learn about topics like the following!

• The way that Jewish interpretation of text changed from Talmudic times through the early and late medieval periods and into the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.
• How Ashkenazi Jews thought and wrote about halakhah differently from Sephardi Jews.
• Quick sketches of major thinkers like Maimonides, Nahmanides, and the sages known as the Rif, the Ran, the Tur, and the Brisker.
• The difference between Talmud, codes of law, and responses to particular questions (and the way that all those differences can get blurred sometimes by creative interpretation).

Honestly, you could spend years of study just following up the introductions that Saiman gives you in this book. But if you only read this book, you'll get a road map that you never had before.