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In the early Middle Ages the Talmud emerged as the defining document of official Jewish religion and culture, and remained so until the dawn of the Modern Era. The problem was that the texts were not easily understandable, and the norms unclear. In premodern times, certain literary-approaches evolved which were taken by contemporaries as yielding significant meaning. Among the most interesting of these was the broad-sugya. In this course, students will follow the reasoning-process of a broad-sugya as they read a guided-series of passages and commentaries located throughout the Babylonian Talmud on the subject of the valence of human-life. All readings will be in the original Hebrew and Aramaic. Ability to read Hebrew and Aramaic required.