So that means that in general we do not know exactly what the principles are that we received at Sinai????

In my book on general and particular principles (the second in the Talmudic Logic series), I laid out the process by which the hermeneutical principles developed, and I explained that this is a dynamic halakha given to Moses at Sinai. Moses our Teacher was not familiar with any of the hermeneutical principles, since they were conceptualized long after him. See also the beginning of my book The Spirit of the Law.

So maybe one could explain that Moses our Teacher received at Sinai the basic insight that the Torah can and should be interpreted, and the methods of interpretation developed afterward……

I explained there that in my opinion that is not the case. He received interpretation as a language, but the rules that conceptualize it developed over time.

Interpretation as a language… what does that mean? I can understand that an a fortiori inference is an intuitive principle, but did he know that from two identical words one can derive a similar law (a verbal analogy), or that there is no multiple inclusion after multiple inclusion except to exclude, and so on????
I’d be glad if you could expand a bit.

Interpretation as a language means without rules.
I disagree, because if Moses didn’t know the rules, he couldn’t have interpreted the Torah or taught the children of Israel anything, because without tools how could he explain a cryptic Torah? Not to mention that he was judging and issuing halakhic rulings for all of Israel….

What does the Rabbi mean by “interpretation”?

On the contrary, an a fortiori inference is a logical principle and therefore is not connected to language. A language has rules, and there is no need for them to make logical sense. It is a convention. And still, children learn to speak a language without being taught its rules. By contrast, adults who come to another country learn in an ulpan by way of rules, and only that way do they internalize the ability to use the language. Interpretation too is a kind of language through which one approaches Scripture. Moses learned it from the Holy One, blessed be He, the way a child learns language from his parents and surroundings. Little by little, forgetting and loss of fluency began, and then rules started to emerge. The rules are an approximation of the language and enable someone who lacks intuition for it to use it. Exactly like in an ulpan. For details, see the books I mentioned above.

But that’s just it—the mechanism isn’t good if little by little they forgot. And anyway, what exactly was forbidden to write down in the Oral Torah? Rules? Language? Or what?
Wait, if he received the Oral Torah as a language, could the Rabbi demonstrate how Moses received the laws of sukkah from the Creator, in your view?

It seems to me the Rabbi is combining grammatical rules with the rules of hermeneutical interpretation. Could you explain and distinguish between them?

From what I understand from the honorable Rabbi, the rules (?) are more important than the language in which Moses received the Oral Torah at Sinai, because from the rules one arrives at every commandment with certainty. So why didn’t we receive the rules from the outset? Moses the prophet was not a little child learning language from his parents; he was fluent in Hebrew when he received the Torah.
From Moses to Moses there arose none like Moses! Except for Rabbi Akiva, of course.

Rules of grammar are only an example of language rules. Some of the laws of sukkah are a halakha given to Moses at Sinai, and what is learned from interpretations (such as the number of walls) is read from the verse in the language of interpretation (that is, one counts how many times the word “sukkot” appears).
The rules are neither more important than the language nor less important. The rules are another description of the language. Just as in spoken language the rules describe how people speak, so too in interpretation Moses learned it as a language, not by means of rules. For more detail, see the books I referred you to.

When there was only a language (in Moses’ time), was there still room for different interpretations and different possible derivations… or did that only begin once the rules were formulated?

I assume there always was, but in a natural language everything seems self-evident and there is less ambiguity. Once you need rules, the disputes begin.

Could it be that the transition from language to rules was intentional on the part of the Holy One, blessed be He, so that there would be more possibilities of understanding and consequently more halakhic possibilities, and thus the essence of the Oral Torah is fulfilled—namely, applying the Torah’s ideas in a changing reality……
And maybe that could also explain relatively new methods of learning (Brisk, perhaps), which really do “interpret” the words of the earlier sages (for example, Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik’s novellae on Maimonides).

I understood everything, only I still need your response, honorable Rabbi, regarding the principles themselves, since that is the topic of this responsum here.
You confused me when you spoke about the “interpretations,” because if I remember correctly you said that maybe the interpretations and the aggadot are not really from Sinai… and as far as I know there really are flawed interpretations; Rashi sometimes says so.
So let’s sum up: from what you said, precisely speaking, what can I conclude—were the grammatical rules transmitted to Moses at Sinai or not?

Without a good example I’m really having a hard time, forgive me that I always like examples. Let’s leave sukkah and use tefillin instead: it was transmitted to Moses at Sinai that their color is black, period. Now, how was it transmitted to him how to make the dye and all the minute details? Also at Sinai?
(Could the Rabbi remind me)—what was the problem that it was forbidden to write this down? There are so many details and laws.

How did Moses transmit the vowelization of the Torah, its cantillation marks, and its crowns to Joshua? Wait—did he receive that too at Sinai, or only the writing as its language (as you defined it)? [That is, without the cantillation and without anything else, just the script as its language.]

Avi,
I don’t know. The explanation for why it happened is simple, as I described. Was it planned in advance? Maybe. The same applies to Brisk. But I don’t understand why it is important to you to check whether this was planned or not. It seems to me completely insignificant.

Musha,
“Interpretations” here means halakhic interpretations, not aggadic midrashim. Interpretation is a language, and Moses learned it at Sinai the way a child learns language from his parents. Without rules. The rules are a later product of those who lost the intuition and built rules in order to use them as an aid in speaking the language.
I don’t know what example you want. I have no example because I wasn’t with Moses at Mount Sinai. I explained as best I could the process as I understand it.
The color and details of tefillin are a halakha given to Moses at Sinai, and perhaps that was transmitted as is. I am speaking here about interpretations (= halakhic midrashim) and not about halakhot given to Moses at Sinai.
I have no idea how Moses transmitted vowelization and crowns, if they were there at all. As is known, the script changed and went through various stages.
If there were details that required writing, they wrote them down. Those are the “hidden scrolls” mentioned in the Talmud.

Rabbi, you brought wonderful and mind-expanding things, and that only tempts one even more to dig deeper into the questions, and unfortunately I don’t see the end of it.

My main question right now is: Moses received it as a language—why didn’t he transmit it as a language? And perhaps in his day there was no need for rules, just as he didn’t need them in order to understand God’s words.
Because of the holiness of the Torah, I have to ask: how did those who changed the script in the Torah change it, and why does today’s script have holiness? Can one say that a Torah in a foreign language also has holiness? In the case of erasing God’s name in the water of the sotah, was that in another script? Why is it forbidden to erase in the Hebrew script (the Assyrian script) that we have today?
And where are the hidden scrolls now? How many were there, and how were they preserved? What was the problem that it was forbidden to write this down freely? There are so many details and laws. Why hide it, and from whom?

Avi, could it be that the transition from language to rules was intentional on the part of the Holy One, blessed be He, so that there would be more possibilities of understanding and therefore more halakhic possibilities, and thus the essence of the Oral Torah is fulfilled—namely, applying the Torah’s ideas in a changing reality.
My answer: in my opinion, first let’s understand why we didn’t receive the Torah as its language, like Moses, and afterward come up with ideas for why that happened…
In any case, your words do not seem right to me, because the Creator wants commandment observance, and it doesn’t matter who the teachers of Jewish law are. And the Oral Torah anyway has authority to apply ideas according to the developing and required innovations… agree?

Moses did transmit the language as a language onward (exactly like all parents to their children). But over the generations our intuition weakened, and so we created rules.
Your question about the change of script has already been asked by many. It is commonly said that the Torah was given in Assyrian script, then changed, and later returned to its original form. I have my doubts about that, but someone who sees holiness in every little crown will presumably need an explanation of that sort.
After the Oral Torah was written down by Rabbi Judah the Prince, I assume the hidden scrolls ceased to exist. They were already unnecessary. There was a prohibition against writing, and I assume that was so things would not become fixed but would remain flexible and open to the decisions of the sages of each generation and each place. That is the usual explanation of the prohibition against writing down the Oral Torah. The scrolls were hidden so that what was written would serve only the writer as a memory aid and would not become a sacred book (like the Talmud and Mishnah today).

Who exactly came up with the rules? How can we be sure the rules are reliable—and how are we supposed to know when not to use the rules? (There ought to be rules for all the rules that explain how to use them.)
Who sealed the rules at the end of the process!
Was their sealing before the sealing of the Mishnah and the Talmud?
The second problem with the rules is that they only help move understanding from X to Y, but they do not have the ability to “translate” difficult words in the Torah. What does one do in such a case?
So their deficiency is great compared to the deficiency of intuition.
And how did the Holy One, blessed be He, not foresee this whole transition from the Oral Torah as a language to a transition to rules? “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have voided Your Torah”—and what would we say here? Where is the permission to move over to rules? There is no hint of that, anything?

One last thing: the Oral Torah as its language (Moses’) was in practice only on the Five Books, right?

To Avi and Musha,

I would just note that the discussion itself regarding the question whether the Holy One, blessed be He, directed this process of transition from a child’s language to a language with rules is itself undergoing such a process. That is, the process of developing rules from natural language is certainly not accidental; rather, it is part of a process of mental maturation of the Jewish people in particular and the rest of the world in general, and it is a process of moving from dogmatic thinking to analytic thinking (in the Rabbi’s language in the book Two Carts—a transition from the stage of childhood to the stage of adolescence, and in the language of Kabbalah this is a transition from right to left—from the pillar of lovingkindness to the pillar of judgment). This state of rules is not the final state (which is the mature state—synthetic thinking, the pillar of mercy, the middle), but only the adolescent stage. In the final stage we too will be able, intuitively, both to derive interpretations and to understand which rules are involved in the matter. We will know what to do and also why it should be done (why it works or is correct).

Now one has to ask whether the maturation process—which is a universal process in all areas of matter (for example, the physiological maturation of living creatures) and spirit—is itself intentional on the part of the Holy One, blessed be He. That is really the question of creation by design versus evolution. The view that the Holy One, blessed be He, does things consciously like a craftsman is the childish view. The view that things happen on their own (but not by chance) without intentional design (or even without God’s awareness) is more mature, but still not all the way there—a teenage view. You can already guess on your own what the final mature answer will be…….

Between us, I’m one of those who don’t guess and don’t practice divination, and you can understand what else I’m not..

You showed up at exactly the right time. I’m one of those who don’t try to understand who God is—it is enough for me to understand that if He were not, I would not be.

Nothing is by chance, and for that very reason there must be some hint of it in a verse, and our wisdom is to find it.

For I the Lord have not changed; and you, sons of Jacob, have not been consumed.

What profit has the worker in that wherein he labors? I have seen the task which God has given to the sons of man to be exercised with. He has made everything beautiful in its time; also He has put the world in their heart, yet so that man cannot find out the work that God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing good for them except to rejoice and to do good in his life. And also that every man should eat and drink and see good in all his labor—it is the gift of God. I know that whatever God does…

There is no guarantee that the rules are precise, but that is what we have. There is no guarantee that we are right even without rules or with them. Interpretation is human and therefore prone to error.
The rules were not sealed, and the process continues all the time. The term “rules” can also express interpretations of words. In any case, it is clear that interpretations of words were accepted there as well.

It seems to me that the discussion here has drifted a bit from the issue……. Rabbi Michi’s remarks about language are certainly interesting, but I can’t manage to reconstruct in practice how this actually happened…… The theory is interesting, but I wasn’t really convinced…… I am more inclined to think that the idea of a dynamic Jewish law was given from the outset, and its framework was defined and shaped over the generations……