Twenty-five female students from Touro University, a Jewish university based in New York, participated in a “summer course” in Rome organized in collaboration with the Talmud Translation Project. This is one outcome of an agreement signed in 2025 between the American institution and the consortium dedicated to translating the Babylonian Talmud into Italian. The consortium was founded in 2011 with support from the Presidency of the Council of Ministers and the National Research Council (CNR).
Project director Clelia Piperno told Pagine Ebraiche that the initiative is now expected to evolve “in the spirit of reciprocity,” emphasizing the intention to “establish guidelines so that Italian students, too, can be hosted there for a period of time.”
Piperno recently returned from New York, where she presented on the Talmud’s “successful venture” at various events, including a meeting at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York City. Fifteen years after the consortium’s founding, Piperno said that “the development of international activities” is one of the most tangible results of the initiative, which extends well beyond publishing. To date, 14 Talmudic treatises have been translated and published.
For the second year in a row, Touro students have come to Rome “to try to understand how a relatively small community like Italian Jewry has been able to launch an initiative without parallel in other countries.” The Talmud Project is often on the road as well.
“Over the years, we’ve spoken at the United Nations, brought the Talmud to the U.S. Congress, and presented it at the residence of the President of Israel,” said Piperno. “We have been to so many places. Even to Moscow, before the war, when it was still possible. We’re proud to represent something truly special and unique.”
(Photo: Rome’s Chief Rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, giving a lecture to students at Touro University on the topic “Antisemitism and the Talmud: History, Method, and Interpretation”)