Abbaye, Ravah, and Seinfeld
The Forward has a positive review of Norman Solomon’s The Talmud: A Selection
The reader ought to be told, even in summary form, how the centuries that Jews spent steeped in the Talmud laid the basis for the contributions that their secularized descendants would make to world culture. The penchant for studying godly law and lore, for example, engendered the interests and habits that sparked later Jewish intellectual achievement; the open-ended Talmudic debates set the stage for some Jews to think “outside the box” and chart new paths in science and mathematics; the stress on rationality and quantification sharpened Jewish business acumen, and the wordplay, irony and whimsicality encountered in the Talmud bred a distinctive Jewish humor — no Talmud, no Woody Allen and no Seinfeld.
Can anybody think of any serious study which could support such a claim?