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Could you help me out? The Torah is the written word of God,

Well, so far so good... ;o)

and the Talmud is a book of (oxymoron)oral traditions

Its not oxymoronic; they were oral traditions that were written down to avoid losing them at a time when the destruction of the temple and the dispersal of established Jewish communities threatened the continuity of the oral tradition. The traditional Jewish belief is that there is an Written Torah and an Oral Torah, both of which were passed down from the time of Moses.

Let me take a moment to define what the Talmud is. There really is no other written work like it. The organizational structure is not linear. The writing style is very abbreviated, almost a shorthand. So Talmud study is very difficult without being taught by someone who is already trained in the Talmud. If the Torah is the "constitution" of the Jewish people, then the Talmud is our "common law". At its core it is an extensive interpretation of the Torah. When there was a question of some matter of the Torah in its application to a given situation, a sage would be asked to render an opinion. Sometimes different sages would disagree. The Talmud records all sides of these arguments. Because it records dissenting opinions as part of the debate, the Talmud is open to being misrepresented by those who don't understand how it works, or who have an agenda. (Consider if someone in the future looked at these threads, and picked out the Catholic posts and declared them representative of all Christianity. Doing so would leave out the non-Catholic voice, and thus would portray the significance of the debate in a false light). The Talmud also contains stories, parables, moral teachings, sermons, and commentary on all variety of matters.

I also understand that the law the Pharisees accused Christ of breaking, "washing hands, picking corn and etc." was from the Talmud, which at the time could not be used to enforce the law, but inforcement could come only from the Torah..

Let me give a modern example. The Torah prohibits the lighting of a fire on the sabbath. Now, how does this apply to modern life? When question about a new technology arises, as to how it fits into the Law of the sabbath, someone will ask a rabbi for an opinion. These opinions are not binding on all Jews; the weight given to any one rabbi's opinion depends on his reputation for scholarship and holiness. As different rabbis weigh in, a consensus is eventually reached. In Orthodox Judaism, the consensus was that the internal combustion engine operates by burning gasoline, and therefore that the operation of an automobile was prohibited based on the Torah law against fire on the sabbath. Thus is the Law interpreted to account for new situations that were not, and could not have been, explicitly covered in the Torah.

Jesus thought that the Pharisees interpreted the law too strictly. But he never questioned their authority to do so. What he did criticize them for was hypocrisy--telling people to follow an interpretation of the law that they themselves did not observe. Or those who obsessed over the details of observance, but who did not have God in their hearts.

One general rule of Talmudic interpretation is the concept of "building a fence around the Torah". The sages taught that not only should one not violate the Law, but that one should avoid a situation in which one could inadvertently violate the Law (or perhaps be put in a situation of the "near occasion of sin"--deliberately pushing the edge, where temptation might draw you over into sin). Jesus made use of this same principle in his sermon on the mount. For example, not only should you not commit adultery, you should avoid looking at a woman lustfully. Not only should you not kill, but you should avoid harboring anger, which could lead to murder.