[The concept of madness in Talmudic literature and its commentaries]

In spite of their spatial and temporal dispersion, the talmudic literature and its commentaries proceed from a fundamental unity. On one hand, the definition of madness are, a priori, extremely rigid; originally, they were exemplaries, quoted to resolve practical problems. On the other hand, the handling of these definitions requires a very important suppleness in the jurisprudence of legal implications of madness. Obviously, the dialectics of the rabbis show the care to respect the personal life of the individual and the spiritual life of the community. And if these conceptions have still an application nowadays, that is because the Talmud speaks of the mad and not of the mental ill without any cross-checking between the socio-legal model of madness and the medical model.