“Mishnah,” deriving from Heb. šānâ, “repeat, learn,” means (1) a single item of learning (pl. Mishnayot); (2) the teachings of an individual Tanna; and especially (3) the collection of traditional material, mainly Halakic, of Tannaitic Judaism, which attained quasi-canonical authority soon after its final redaction about a.d. 200, on which all the later decisions of religious and civil law are founded, and which forms the basis of the Talmud. Originally given orally, the Mishnah as oral teaching stands equally beside the written Torah, or Miqra (from qārāʾ, “read”), which…