Thank you. Has the Rabbi addressed in his writings the Sages’ orientation in their halakhic interpretation?

I didn’t understand the question. Did they have some agenda at the foundation of their interpretation? I tend to think not. Interpretation involves value judgments, but that is not an agenda in the sense of subordinating the text to your wishes and goals. The values are part of the principles that God wants, and therefore I take them into account in the interpretive process. The “agenda” is to know what is right and wrong to do in the existing circumstances.

Sorry. By “agenda” I meant the Sages’ self-understanding that they were coming to uncover the will of God, not to grant an innovative interpretation.
Have you expanded on this anywhere, or is it self-evident?
Maybe I’m just influenced by today’s radical jurists who knowingly ignore the legislator’s intent…

I don’t remember writing about that. My assessment is that they intended to uncover the truth (= the will of God), as I described it. And indeed, one should be careful about influences from today’s legal world. In Jewish law, the goal is to fulfill the will of God, whereas a judge’s goal is not to uncover the legislator’s intent but the instruction of the law. But in a certain sense it is still similar, because as I explained, the halakhic interpreter also uncovers the will of the current legislator and not His original intention. Therefore, ignoring the original intention does not contradict this.

You said that the halakhic interpreter also uncovers the will of the current legislator and not His original intention. How, then, do we explain Rabbi Joshua, who said, “It is not in heaven”? It seems he did not care either about the original intention or about the current will.

Someone could come along and say that from the standpoint of the legislator’s intent, the details of the commandments are not important at all, and what is important is simply that there be commandments, whatever they may be.
And even then you could make it fit with all the halakhot in Jewish law, even if they completely contradict the Torah.

Decisor, but if all that is needed is that there be some commandments or other, then why didn’t the Holy One make do with a smaller and less demanding set? Why not give up first-fruits, for example, or shorten the Sabbath to one hour once every two months? If you can reach the same goal (that there be some commandments or other) while burdening people less, then that is what should have been done.

Before the sin of the golden calf, apparently there were only the Ten Commandments. Afterward more were added, so along those lines the Sages added more too.
The problem is that the Torah explicitly says it is forbidden to add. So the questioner is forced to assume that the Sages are explaining the Torah. But surely that is not the case.

The Torah says that many things were told to Moses even before he was given the Tablets of the Covenant with the Ten Commandments, and he came down and encountered the sin of the golden calf. But even if things were added after the sin of the golden calf, what is the explanation according to the thesis you proposed—that the commandments themselves lack sufficient rationale? Why did they add what they added and not less? No point burdening people. And why before the sin of the golden calf were there ten commandments—why wouldn’t one have been enough, for example? It is more reasonable that the giver of the commandments thought (for whatever reason) that each one of His commandments—and specifically that one—is required, necessary, and fitting.

Friend, there is no connection. The interpreter seeks the will of God as written in the Torah. We have no direct revelation of what His current will is, and that is the meaning of “It is not in heaven.”

Why add? Because one who worships idolatry is drawn to rituals and to the details of rituals. It fills him with content. And that is what had to be done. At least that was the attempt. An attempt that failed—the children of Israel continued to worship idolatry.
So the Sages came with a different approach. But one could say that the intent is the same intent. That is for whoever wants to interpret things that way, and not my own thesis.

Thank you very much, one last question:
Isn’t the heavenly voice that came out in that case a direct revelation of His current will?

I don’t think a heavenly voice actually came out then. It is an aggadic passage whose purpose is to teach us that we should not resort to anything beyond our own understanding in Torah.