The Talmud is among the great books of wisdom--like the Bible, the Quran, and the Bhagavad Gita--whose citation gives a speaker instant credibility. Also like the Bible, the Quran, and the Bhagavad Gita, the Talmud is a powerful source of allusion in large part even though so few people have really read it. People don't read the Talmud because they think it's inaccessible--the sprawling collection of rabbinic writings is added to in each generation, and its significance is nothing less than the summary of Judaism. The best guide to the Talmud's labyrinthine form is Abraham Cohen's
Everyman's Talmud: The Major Teachings of the Rabbinic Sages--a monumental work of scholarly summary that describes all the basic doctrines of Judaism.
Everyman's Talmud includes concise chapters on everything from sin to superstitions to a Jew's duty to animals. You probably won't be able to read it straight through--doctrine, even elegantly distilled, is hard to take in big doses--but you'll be led back to it again and again, by questions that arise in daily life, at dinner parties, and from the pages of the daily newspaper.
--Michael Joseph Gross 
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