The Talmud is one of the central texts of Rabbinic Judaism. It is not a fringe document, nor an obscure historical curiosity. It has shaped Jewish religious law, rabbinic interpretation and communal identity for centuries.
That is why its content matters.
For anyone trying to understand the ideological roots of religious supremacy in Palestine, the Talmud cannot be ignored. Modern Zionism is a political movement, but religious Zionism and settler ideology often draw from older religious categories: chosenness, inheritance, separation, land entitlement and the status of non-Jews.
This article examines selected Talmudic passages that speak about non-Jews, divine hierarchy and access to sacred knowledge. The purpose is not to rely on slogans, but to look at the texts themselves and ask what kind of worldview they can produce when read through a supremacist political lens.
A Text at the Centre of Rabbinic Judaism
The Talmud is made up of the Mishnah and the Gemara. The Mishnah is an early compilation of Jewish legal teachings, while the Gemara contains rabbinic discussions and commentary on those teachings.
Together, they form the foundation of Rabbinic Jewish law and religious reasoning.
The Talmud is not a single simple book. It contains debates, narratives, legal arguments and theological statements. But its authority within Rabbinic Judaism makes it impossible to dismiss as irrelevant when examining how Jewish religious thought has historically classified Jews and non-Jews.
“You Are Called Man, But Gentiles Are Not Called Man”
One of the most controversial Talmudic passages appears in Yevamot 61a.
The passage discusses ritual impurity connected to graves. Citing Ezekiel 34:31, it states that “you, the Jewish people, are called men [adam]”, while “gentiles are not called men [adam]”. The ruling is used to argue that gentile graves do not transmit impurity in the same way Jewish graves do.
The same idea appears in Bava Metzia 114b, where the Talmud again says that the graves of gentiles do not render one impure through a tent because “you, i.e., the Jewish people, are called man, but gentiles are not called man.”
This language is not incidental.
Even where later defenders argue that the passage is limited to a technical legal discussion about ritual impurity, the wording itself establishes a hierarchy of human classification. One group is treated as the legal subject of “adam”; the other is excluded from that category within the argument.
For Palestinians living under a state that privileges Jewish identity by law and practice, such categories are not merely theological history. They echo in a modern political reality where one population is granted superior rights while another is occupied, besieged, displaced and dehumanised.
Torah as Exclusive Inheritance
Another striking passage appears in Sanhedrin 59a.
There, Rabbi Yohanan is quoted as saying that a gentile who studies Torah is liable to receive the death penalty. The reasoning given is that the Torah is “an inheritance of the congregation of Jacob”, meaning it belongs to Israel and “not to them.” The passage then compares such study to violating a betrothed woman, with the punishment described as execution by stoning.
This is a severe religious boundary.
The text presents sacred knowledge not as a universal invitation, but as the guarded possession of one community. A non-Jew entering that space is framed not as a seeker of truth, but as a trespasser.
That worldview matters because political supremacy does not emerge from military power alone. It also emerges from religious categories that define who belongs, who has access, who has dignity and who is outside the circle of sanctity.
God, Israel and the Talmudic Imagination
The Talmud also contains passages that portray God in deeply anthropomorphic and Israel-centred terms.
In Avodah Zarah 3b, the Talmud describes God’s daily schedule, including a period in which He “makes sport with the leviathan.” It then discusses what God does at night, including listening to songs from angelic creatures.
In Berakhot 3a, God is depicted as roaring like a lion during the watches of the night, grieving over the destruction of His house, the burning of His Temple and the exile of His children. The passage presents divine grief through imagery tied specifically to Israel and the Temple.
The political relevance is not simply theological. It is the way divine concern is imagined through a narrow national frame. When God, land, law and peoplehood are fused into one exclusive identity, outsiders can easily become obstacles rather than equals.
In Palestine, this fusion has consequences. Settlers do not merely say they want land. Many say the land is theirs by divine right. Palestinians are not just political opponents; they are framed as intruders on a sacred inheritance.
From Religious Category to Political Reality
The central issue is not whether every Jew reads these passages literally or applies them politically. The central issue is that the texts exist, carry authority, and contain categories that can be used to support religious hierarchy.
When these ideas remain in books, they are theological problems.
When they are fused with state power, settlement movements, military occupation and Western protection, they become political problems.
In Palestine, Palestinians are not treated as equal human beings under the system that governs their lives. Israeli law, settlement expansion, military rule, checkpoints, home demolitions, siege and displacement all operate within a structure that privileges Jewish identity and devalues Palestinian existence.
This is why examining the religious language behind supremacy matters.
Occupation needs soldiers.
Apartheid needs laws.
But dehumanisation needs ideas.
The Talmud and the Making of Separation
The Talmudic passages above do not speak the language of universal humanity. They speak the language of separation: Israel and the nations, inheritance and outsiders, sacred access and exclusion, purity and impurity.
That separation becomes dangerous when projected onto land and power.
A religious community may define itself separately from others. But when separation becomes supremacy, and supremacy becomes state policy, the result is predictable: the outsider is denied equal dignity.
That is the Palestinian reality.
Palestinians are native to the land, yet they are treated as demographic threats. Their homes can be demolished. Their movement can be controlled. Their cities can be besieged. Their mosques can be raided. Their dead can be reduced to statistics. Their resistance can be criminalised while the occupation is described as self-defence.
The ideology behind this system cannot be understood without examining the religious and historical categories that help sustain it.
Why These Texts Matter Now
Some will argue that quoting the Talmud is inflammatory. But ignoring the texts is not serious journalism.
Religious texts are studied, quoted and criticised in every other tradition. Islamic texts are constantly scrutinised in Western media, often by people with no knowledge, no context and open hostility. Christianity is analysed politically. Hindu nationalism is examined through its religious references. Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar has been studied through its monastic rhetoric.
Jewish religious texts cannot be placed beyond critique, especially when religious Zionists themselves invoke scripture, chosenness and divine promise in the context of land, settlement and Palestinian dispossession.
The question is not whether these texts should be examined.
The question is why so many institutions become nervous when they are.
The Link to Zionist Supremacy
Zionism is not identical to the Talmud. It is a modern nationalist project. But religious Zionism has repeatedly drawn on older Jewish religious ideas to justify modern political domination.
The language of chosen people, promised land, sacred inheritance and separation from the nations feeds a worldview in which Palestinians are treated as temporary, lesser or removable.
This is not abstract.
It appears in the settler movement.
It appears in Israeli political rhetoric.
It appears in attempts to seize more Palestinian land.
It appears in the refusal to recognise Palestinians as a people with equal rights.
It appears in the idea that Jewish safety or destiny requires Palestinian dispossession.
The Talmudic passages about non-Jews do not alone create Zionism. But they provide ideological material that supremacist politics can use.
Conclusion
The Talmud contains passages that classify non-Jews in ways that are impossible to ignore.
Yevamot 61a and Bava Metzia 114b state that Jews are called “adam” while gentiles are not called “adam” in the legal argument about impurity. Sanhedrin 59a presents Torah study by a gentile as a capital offence. Avodah Zarah 3b and Berakhot 3a portray divine activity and grief through imagery that centres Israel and the Temple.
These are not inventions. They are not internet rumours. They are found in recognised editions and databases of the Talmud.
The issue is what such texts can produce when combined with political power.
In Palestine, the result is visible: a system that privileges one people, degrades another, and then wraps the arrangement in the language of divine promise, security and civilisation.
That is why these passages must be studied.
Not to distract from occupation, but to understand one of its ideological roots.
Not to reduce the Palestinian struggle to theology, but to expose how theology can be weaponised.
And not to soften the reality, but to name it clearly: religious supremacy, once armed with state power, becomes a machine of dispossession.
