I love studying Talmud. As long as it’s in English, that is, because I came to the rabbinate in my 50s and had never learned much Hebrew, never went to an ulpan (an intensive Hebrew study program), never lived in Israel.

As I grow older, I’ve come to realize that there are many things I won’t accomplish in this lifetime. Mastering Hebrew is just one on a long list.

I used to fret about this. How can I be a rabbi and not speak Hebrew? Eventually I came to understand that I can serve my community and do it well, even without speaking Hebrew.

Like many other rabbis and lay people, I am fortunate that excellent and trustworthy translations are available. For which I am eternally grateful, because without them, I would not have learned some of my favorite stories.

This week I learned a Talmudic insult. I am not certain when I might use it, but I am happy that I can call someone a demented ostrich if the moment ever arises.

But the Talmud has given us so much more than endearing insults, stories of the sages, and explication of Torah laws. After the destruction of the second Temple in 70 CE, it would not have been unreasonable to think that Judaism would disappear.

In the Hebrew Bible, you’ll see that of the 613 commandments, approximately 100 instruct us to bring sacrifices to the Levitical priests of the Temple. No Temple, no sacrifices. No sacrifices, no way to fulfill Jewish law.

Like a group of ancient magicians, the sages of the Talmud snapped their fingers and made Judaism reappear. They reimagined how to practice Judaism, thus renewing, reconstructing, reforming, and conserving the tradition.

Why was this important? Why would it matter? So many religions have appeared, flared brightly, and then burned out. Disappeared. Melted into the annals of time.

But not this one. The sages of the Talmud relied on basic Jewish insights to open new windows, create long, convoluted hallways that seemed to go nowhere and then opened into brightly lit rooms. They achieved the impossible.

The Judaism we practice today is based on the Talmud, not the Torah. This is because Judaism is a religion that relies on practice, rather than belief. Most of the basic tenets of the religion are in the Torah, but most of the ways that we do Judaism are from the Talmud.

One of the most striking examples of this is on the very first page of the Talmud, which details a discussion about the prayer Shema. The sages did not debate why a person should say the Shema several times a day; they talked about exactly when one should say it.

The amount that I don’t know about the Talmud (and Judaism in general) could fill a library. But every day I learn a little more.

And on days like last Wednesday, when I learned that during a heated debate one sage called another a demented ostrich, I can go to bed happy, knowing that my tradition would continue to delight me for many years to come.