Thought in Halakha – 5783 – Lesson 15

Table of Contents

• The chain of transmission in Pirkei Avot and the break after Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai
• The confrontation at Yavneh: authoritarianism, removal, and excommunication
• “One whose inside is not like his outside”: elitism versus opening the study hall
• Tractate Eduyot and deciding disputes by majority
• Chagigah 3a: the exposition on Hakhel as the seal of the revolutionary spirit
• “A planting” and “masters of assemblies”: dynamic tradition and “these and those are the words of the living God”
• The examples of Rabbi Kook, Rav Chaim, and Moses in Rabbi Akiva’s study hall
• The hermeneutic principles as proof of a dynamic law given to Moses at Sinai
• Chagigah: Rabbi Eliezer in Lod as an anti-thesis response to the innovations of Yavneh
• Sanhedrin: the day of Rabbi Eliezer’s death, the treasury of tradition, and the tragedy of the excommunication
• Rabbi Akiva as synthesizer: “Talmudic tradition” from Rabbi Eliezer and “reasoning” from Rabbi Yehoshua
• The idealization of dispute and the move to the next stage

Summary

General Overview

The text presents the Yavneh revolution as a turning point at which Torah moves from a conception of a “Torah of tradition,” requiring obedience to an authoritative traditional transmission, to a “Torah of give-and-take,” requiring discussion, persuasion, and decision by majority. It connects the dramatic events surrounding Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Eliezer, and Rabbi Yehoshua to that same “that very day” on which Rabban Gamliel was removed, Rabbi Eliezer was excommunicated, benches multiplied in the study hall, and unresolved laws were settled in Tractate Eduyot. Drawing on passages in Chagigah and Sanhedrin, it presents Rabbi Yehoshua as formulating a synthesis of dynamic tradition—”a planting” that is both fixed and yet “fruitful and multiplying”—and presents Rabbi Akiva as the one who joins Rabbi Eliezer’s reception of tradition with Rabbi Yehoshua’s understanding and reasoning. The conclusion is that dispute ceases to be a paralyzing defect and becomes an ideal value that enables growth, to the point of the ethos of “these and those are the words of the living God.”

The Chain of Transmission in Pirkei Avot and the Break After Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai

The text explains that in Pirkei Avot the chain of “received and transmitted” continues throughout the period of the Zugot, up to Hillel and Shammai, and after them Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai. It argues that from Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai onward, the description changes to five disciples, without the explicit continuation of “received and transmitted,” and this is taken as a hint of a change in the process of transmitting Torah. It locates that shift in the first generation at Yavneh, the disciples of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, centering on Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Eliezer, and Rabbi Yehoshua.

The Confrontation at Yavneh: Authoritarianism, Removal, and Excommunication

The text attributes to Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Eliezer a “traditionalist” or “authoritarian” position that does not recognize the legitimacy of other sages’ opinions and demands obedience. It describes Rabban Gamliel’s confrontation with Rabbi Yehoshua, the humiliation that led the sages to remove Rabban Gamliel from the patriarchate, and his return after accepting the “new rules of the game,” including accepting Rabbi Yehoshua’s view in the case of an Ammonite convert, and a rotating arrangement of leadership with Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah. It describes the dispute of the oven of Akhnai as a parallel confrontation in which Rabbi Eliezer brings mystical proofs such as the walls of the study hall, the water channel, and a heavenly voice, while the sages refuse to accept them and excommunicate him because he does not accept the legitimacy of his colleagues’ opinions or the rules of decision-making.

“One Whose Inside Is Not Like His Outside”: Elitism Versus Opening the Study Hall

The text states that Rabban Gamliel prevented entry into the study hall for anyone whose inside was not like his outside, based on the view that Torah is transmitted through tradition and therefore a person’s reliability as a channel of transmission must be examined. It describes how after the removal, “benches multiplied in the study hall” by the hundreds or thousands, and Rabban Gamliel became distressed when he realized he had kept people from entering. It sets up the difference between examining “the person himself” in a Torah of tradition and examining “the substance of the matter” in a Torah of give-and-take, where an argument is accepted on the strength of logic and evidence rather than on the status of the speaker.

Tractate Eduyot and Deciding Disputes by Majority

The text presents Tractate Eduyot as a collection of laws that “have no connection with one another,” intended to close unresolved legal questions that had not been decided during the period of disputes, especially around that same day on which “the entire Tractate Eduyot was taught.” It describes the historical split between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai as a crisis in which two contradictory traditions cannot be decided when tradition alone is determinative, to the point that in the Jerusalem Talmud “they began killing one another.” It argues that the solution at Yavneh was a move to decision through discussion and voting, following the majority, in order to prevent endless fragmentation that would collapse Torah and the study hall.

Chagigah 3a: The Exposition on Hakhel as the Seal of the Revolutionary Spirit

The text cites the story of Rabbi Yohanan ben Beroka and Rabbi Elazar Chasma, who went to greet Rabbi Yehoshua in Peki’in and heard from him that “there is no study hall without innovation,” identifying the period as the rotation between Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah. It highlights Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah’s exposition on “Assemble the people, the men, the women, and the children,” and the interpretation “in order to give reward to those who bring them,” and interprets Rabbi Yehoshua’s enthusiasm as a response to the fact that the exposition expresses opening the study hall to the general public, in contrast to the policy of “inside like outside.” It adds the exposition on “You have affirmed the Lord today, and the Lord has affirmed you today” as creating “one unit in the world” for Israel, and presents this as reinforcing the trend toward inclusion and allowing entry without elitist screening.

“A Planting” and “Masters of Assemblies”: Dynamic Tradition and “These and Those Are the Words of the Living God”

The text attributes to Rabbi Yehoshua an exposition that formulates a synthesis: words of Torah are both “like firmly planted nails” and also “fruitful and multiplying”—that is, a fixed tradition that develops and is renewed. It sets up two extremes against which this synthesis stands: a “hollow pipe” that innovates nothing at all, and on the other hand a detached innovation that is not committed to the intention of the transmitter or to the tradition. It interprets “masters of assemblies” as Torah scholars who sit in groups and produce opposite opinions—declaring impure and declaring pure, forbidding and permitting—and concludes that this does not contradict the idea of one Torah, because “all were given from one shepherd.” Therefore, a person must make his ear like a funnel to hear both sides.

The Examples of Rabbi Kook, Rav Chaim, and Moses in Rabbi Akiva’s Study Hall

The text cites Rabbi Kook’s solution to the tension between “Rabbi Eliezer never said anything he had not heard from his teacher” and “things that no ear had ever heard,” arguing that one can absorb from a teacher things of which even the teacher himself is unaware. It uses a joke about Maimonides and Rav Chaim to argue that later analysis can uncover intuitions embedded in a text even if the author would not have formulated them in those terms, and can even “understand” him better than he understood himself by means of a more developed conceptual world. It compares this to the aggadic story of Moses our teacher in Rabbi Akiva’s study hall, where he comes to understand that this is “a law given to Moses at Sinai” in new garments and tools, even if he does not understand the conceptual language itself.

The Hermeneutic Principles as Proof of a Dynamic Law Given to Moses at Sinai

The text presents a dispute between scholars who claim that the hermeneutic principles are a later invention and medieval authorities (Rishonim) who claim they are a law given to Moses at Sinai, and defines this as a false dispute if one understands dynamic tradition. It describes a development from the principles of Hillel the Elder to seven, then to Rabbi Ishmael’s thirteen, and then to the thirty-two of Rabbi Eliezer son of Rabbi Yosei the Galilean, interpreting this as an increasingly explicit conceptualization of existing principles rather than an invention. It compares this to the rules of grammar in a language, which formulate after the fact what speakers were already doing naturally even before the rules were stated.

Chagigah: Rabbi Eliezer in Lod as an Anti-Thesis Response to the Innovations of Yavneh

The text cites the story of Rabbi Yosei ben Durmaskit, who went to Rabbi Eliezer in Lod and was asked, “What innovation was there in the study hall today?” It interprets the question as contempt for the innovations of Yavneh. It recounts that when he reported that they had counted and decided that “Ammon and Moab separate the poor man’s tithe in the Sabbatical year,” Rabbi Eliezer became angry to the point that he punished the messenger with temporary blindness, and then told them, “Do not be concerned with your counting,” because that is his received tradition from Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai up to “a law given to Moses at Sinai.” It uses the story to illustrate that Rabbi Eliezer accepts a result only by force of tradition and not by force of discussion, and sees voting and innovation as dangerous even when the conclusion happens, in this case, to match the tradition.

Sanhedrin: The Day of Rabbi Eliezer’s Death, the Treasury of Tradition, and the Tragedy of the Excommunication

The text describes how on the day of Rabbi Eliezer’s death, the sages entered and sat before him at a distance of four cubits, and he demanded of them why they had not come earlier, to which they replied, “We did not have time.” It quotes his statement, “I learned much Torah, and I did not diminish from my teachers even like a dog licking from the sea,” and his remarks about three hundred or three thousand laws concerning a fierce leprous spot and cucumber planting, on which almost no one had asked him, in order to illustrate how much tradition remained isolated and cut off because of the excommunication. It describes how only Akiva ben Yosef asked him, and he also received from him demonstrations of “planting cucumbers” and uprooting them. It then goes on to describe how Rabbi Eliezer’s soul departed on the word “pure,” and how Rabbi Yehoshua declared, “The vow is annulled.”

Rabbi Akiva as Synthesizer: “Talmudic Tradition” from Rabbi Eliezer and “Reasoning” from Rabbi Yehoshua

The text brings the Talmud’s question about why Rabbi Akiva transmits a law of sorcery “in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua,” even though it appears that he learned it from Rabbi Eliezer, and quotes the answer: “The received Talmudic tradition was from Rabbi Eliezer, but not the reasoning; then he returned to Rabbi Yehoshua and he explained its reasoning to him.” It presents this as a foundational pattern of the period: Rabbi Eliezer transmits tradition without explanation, and Rabbi Yehoshua provides the explanation that allows Torah to endure under conditions of dispute. It concludes that Rabbi Akiva became the “father of the Oral Torah” because he combined the treasury of tradition with the tools of understanding and give-and-take, thereby creating a dynamic tradition.

The Idealization of Dispute and the Move to the Next Stage

The text attributes to Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner the claim that dispute began as a failure, because the disciples of Hillel and Shammai “did not sufficiently serve their teachers,” but that after the revolution a new model emerged in which dispute is seen as an ideal that reveals different facets of truth and allows it to be “fruitful and multiplying.” It describes the ethos of learning in which one invests more in clarifying methods and opinions than in reaching a final ruling, and even the Talmud itself usually does not decide but leaves the dispute standing. It concludes by saying that the next stage will be clarifying “the logic of dispute” and the question of “these and those are the words of the living God”—pluralism versus monism—and what one does with an opinion that is not accepted in Jewish law.

Okay, last time we dealt with the emergence of disputes. When I say “last time,” I mean before Passover. We talked about the fact that the first documented dispute is the dispute between the two Yoseis, in the period of the pairs. We read in Pirkei Avot about the process of transmitting the Torah, and from the wording there in Pirkei Avot it seems that something changes around the period after Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai. There were the five pairs, each one received from the previous one and passed it on, and after that Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai received from Hillel and Shammai, the last pair, and that’s it. From that point on he had five students; that too, by the way, is mentioned in chapter 2—Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai had five students—and from there this whole business is no longer described as “received the tradition, received the tradition.” In other words, the chain of transmission somehow came to an end. And I argued that this description actually reflects some difference in the process of transmitting the Torah that took place at that time, in the generation after Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai—namely Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Eliezer, the two brothers-in-law, who were students of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai—the first generation in Yavneh. Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, after all, was taken out of the besieged city in a coffin, and he asked for Yavneh and its sages, and the first generation of Yavneh was basically the students of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai: Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Eliezer, the elder students, Rabbi Yehoshua. And then in that period—yes, Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua—basically the disputes among them and Rabban Gamliel, their disputes, sustain several passages in Berakhot, in Hagigah, in Sanhedrin in two places, in Bava Metzia—the oven of Akhnai—various passages that have very powerful dramatic intensity. In other words, it’s very hard to ignore the feeling that there’s a connection among these passages, that something there is somehow connected; it’s also the same sages and it happens in the same period. And I said that there are also hints to this in the Talmudic text itself, which says that every place it says “on that day,” it was the same day. The day they removed Rabban Gamliel from the patriarchate. And the claim was—I’m summarizing now what we did, it was a while ago—the claim basically was that Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Eliezer, the two elder brothers-in-law in the group, were, let’s call them, traditionalists, or authoritarians. They basically would not agree to recognize the legitimacy of the opinions of other sages. They saw themselves as the transmitters of the Torah, and they demanded obedience from others. That’s why Rabban Gamliel got into conflicts with Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananiah—with Rabbi Yehoshua—and he basically humiliates him, until the other sages who are present in that situation decide to remove him from his position as nasi, Rabban Gamliel. And after that we saw that the Talmud says Rabban Gamliel accepted the judgment, understood that he had been wrong, and the Talmud brings a case where an Ammonite convert came before them at that time and they deliberated about him, and Rabbi Yehoshua said one thing and Rabban Gamliel said another, and he accepted Rabbi Yehoshua’s words. In other words, it’s clear that he accepted the new rules of the game, and then they restored him to office together with Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, who had replaced him, and they served two weeks each at the head of the Sanhedrin. That’s one track—Rabban Gamliel versus Rabbi Yehoshua and the sages who removed Rabban Gamliel because of this. The second track is Rabbi Eliezer versus Rabbi Yehoshua, which is the oven of Akhnai. Again, Rabbi Eliezer and Rabban Gamliel are two brothers-in-law, so Rabbi Eliezer versus Rabbi Yehoshua in the dispute over the oven of Akhnai. Again, he basically brings mystical proofs in his favor—the walls of the study hall will prove it, the water channel, a heavenly voice comes forth from heaven—and the sages are not willing to accept that from him, and therefore in the end they excommunicate Rabbi Eliezer. They excommunicate Rabbi Eliezer, and until the end of his days he remains excommunicated in Lod. Why did they excommunicate him? These are Jewish-law disputes; that’s no reason to excommunicate someone who disagrees with you. They excommunicated him because he was basically unwilling to accept the legitimacy of the opinions of his colleagues. He claimed that everyone had to accept what he said and he didn’t care about all the proofs, and once they were unwilling to hear his claims—he didn’t accept the new rules of the game, and he remained excommunicated in Lod until the end of his life. Until the day of his death, on the day of his death the sages came—we’ll see that later on. So what comes out is this: Rabban Gamliel demanded discipline. He took for himself the authority to decide; he was unwilling to hear a different opinion from Rabbi Yehoshua. And then after they restored—after they removed him and appointed Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, benches multiplied in the study hall, three hundred, three thousand benches in the study hall. And Rabban Gamliel was distressed, because he understood what he had done—he had not allowed people into the study hall. Why? Because he said that anyone whose inside is not like his outside should not enter the study hall. In other words, he had very, very high standards for who was fit to study with him. And the whole idea was basically a kind of elitism founded on a demand that relates to the person and not to the content of what is said—to the person himself and not to the matter itself. And therefore this was a Torah of tradition. That’s why, for example, Rabbi Eliezer, who never said a thing he had not heard from his teacher, says that even if all the seas were ink and so on, he did not leave out anything from his teachers; that is, he received everything his teachers said, and he never said anything he had not heard from his teacher. In other words, he was the greatest conduit of tradition there was; he held all the Torah of his teachers. And therefore he too was unwilling to hear the arguments of the sages who stood against him, because he said: I have a tradition, I’m telling you what our teachers said, what descended to Moses at Sinai; what do I care about all your arguments? I’m not entering into a discussion of whether it seems logical to you or not logical to you. This is the truth. This is what Moses our teacher received; this is what I received from my teachers; you must accept what I say. And the sages were unwilling to accept that from him unless he persuaded them with proofs. So there was a clash here between a Torah of tradition and a Torah of give-and-take. A Torah of tradition demands obedience to what I bring in the name of tradition; the Torah of give-and-take says no, we need to deliberate, and the conclusion we reach is what obligates us, or what will be ruled as Jewish law. That was the dispute with Rabbi Eliezer, and that was also the dispute with Rabban Gamliel. Rabban Gamliel says: I’m looking for the people who will transmit the tradition in the most reliable way, and therefore he said: I want anyone whose inside is not like his outside not to enter here. Now if we’re talking about a Torah of give-and-take, what do I care what kind of character the person has, whether his inside is like his outside or not? If he says an argument and it makes sense, we accept it; if it doesn’t make sense, we don’t accept it. You don’t need to check the quality of the person in order to decide whether I study with him or teach him or learn from him. Let him present his arguments; if I accept them, fine, and if I don’t accept them, that’s also fine. Clearly, Rabban Gamliel assumed that Torah is passed on by tradition, and I’ll accept things from someone I know is a reliable conduit, that he’s righteous, that he doesn’t falsify, that his inside is like his outside. So he examines the person himself, just like his brother-in-law Rabbi Eliezer. Both of them belonged to a Torah of tradition. And therefore until their days it really was “this one received from that one and passed to that one,” “this one received from that one and passed to that one,” because this was a Torah of tradition. In those passages, all of which revolve around that same day—the day on which the entire tractate of Eduyot was taught—we talked about the fact that this consists of all the disputes they were unable to decide. Why? Because if a dispute arises, what happens? Once they don’t pay attention to proofs—I’ve got a tradition that the law is this way, and he has a tradition that the law is the opposite way. Now only tradition determines it; there are no proofs; I’m not interested in arguments; I heard it from my teachers, so nothing else matters. There’s no way to decide. That’s why Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai began killing one another, as the Jerusalem Talmud says, because there was no way to deliberate and arrive at an agreed conclusion. And so the Torah of tradition reached a crisis in the period after Hillel and Shammai. Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai are precisely the generation after that, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai. Rabbi Eliezer was from the school of Shammai—“Shammuti,” either from Beit Shammai or excommunicated, those are the two interpretations, I brought that up—so this is the generation in which dispute emerges and cannot be resolved. They don’t find a way to deal with this dispute rationally. And then world wars begin, and the sages understand that here they need to make a revolution from the root, to change this entire pattern from a Torah of tradition to a Torah of give-and-take. That is basically the decision they make, and therefore they remove Rabban Gamliel, excommunicate Rabbi Eliezer—that’s the generation of the elders, those who hold the tradition—and from now on only our reason speaks. Okay, a Torah of give-and-take: what persuades me, what seems logical to me, what has proofs—that’s what will be ruled as Jewish law. The emphasis shifts from what I received by tradition to what sounds logical to me. And if there’s a dispute, then they vote; they follow the majority. How can you say there are two traditions? Well, because it got corrupted. But corruption—you don’t know where. And the Torah of tradition got stuck. Once two traditions were created, Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, this was the first time two houses were formed, each with a halakhic method in dozens of passages, and it differed from the method of the other house. The Torah basically split in two, and there was no way to communicate and arrive at a common conclusion. In the next stage it would split into four, ten, a hundred, two thousand. There’s no longer any Torah, no Jewish people, no study hall, no nothing. The feeling was that there was a terrible crisis here; that’s why Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai killed one another, because they understood: there’s no way out here—here will be our burial place. Meaning: if we don’t solve the problem now, it won’t be solved. And the way the sages ultimately found to do this was to make this revolution: to excommunicate Rabbi Eliezer, remove Rabban Gamliel, and put Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah in his place. Because otherwise this whole business—then what happens? They take all the Jewish laws that had remained open and could not be decided, discuss them, vote on them, and that is how the whole tractate Eduyot was written. That’s tractate Eduyot. Tractate Eduyot is a collection of Jewish laws that have no connection to each other. It’s an unusual tractate, one in which there is no connection among the laws in it; it’s simply a collection of laws that were closed by Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah when he was appointed nasi of the Sanhedrin, and which had not been settled before him—they remained open. Okay. By the way, one of them is the segmented oven, the oven of Akhnai. That is one of the laws that appears in tractate Eduyot as a law settled by Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, which is the story of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua. So again you see that it’s all the same story. These stories all describe the same process of transition from a Torah of tradition to a Torah of give-and-take, each time from another angle through somewhat different sages, but it’s still the same sages or their students or their colleagues. It all revolves around the same events. So that’s more or less where we got to the time before last. Yes. Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua are the generation after Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai and Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah. Now, unlike Rabban Gamliel, who repented and therefore was returned to be nasi of the Sanhedrin in rotation with Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, Rabbi Eliezer remained excommunicated in Lod until the end of his days, because he was not willing to accept the new rules of the game. He insisted on his own way. Rabban Gamliel accepted them; the Talmud itself says he accepted them. Now look at the Talmud, in tractate Hagigah. The Talmud says—we’ll find it here. Here. Maybe let’s read it. “An incident involving Rabbi Yohanan ben Beroka and Rabbi Elazar Hasma, who went to greet Rabbi Yehoshua in Peki’in. The passage is in Hagigah 3a. He said to them: What new thing was taught in the study hall today? What was renewed in the study hall? The study hall is the study hall of Yavneh. Rabbi Yehoshua was in Peki’in and Rabbi Eliezer was in Lod, okay? They were the two elders, basically. In Yavneh the younger ones were already going around: Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, Rabbi Akiva, and Rabban Gamliel was still there, having returned to office. What new thing was taught in the study hall today? They said to him: We are your students and we drink from your waters. What do you expect from us by way of new insights? We want to hear your new insights. He said to them: Even so, there is no study hall without some new insight. Right away we’ll see that every word here is significant. Whose Sabbath was it? What does “whose Sabbath was it” mean? Everywhere in the Talmud where it says “whose Sabbath was it,” it means whose week it was—Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah or Rabban Gamliel, right? So they answered him: It was Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah’s week. He asked them: And what aggadic teaching was there today? What was the topic? We see that we’re speaking about that period of rotation. The sages taught: An incident involving Rabbi Yohanan ben Beroka and Rabbi Elazar Hasma, who went to greet Rabbi Yehoshua in Peki’in; he said to them: What new thing was taught in the study hall today? They said to him: We are your students and we drink from your waters. He said to them: Even so, it is impossible for the study hall to be without some new insight. Whose Sabbath was it? It was Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah’s week. And what aggadic teaching was there today? What did Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah speak about in aggadah, not in Jewish law? They said to him: About the passage of Hakhel. And what did he expound there? “Gather the people together, the men and the women and the little ones”—if the men come to learn, and the women come to hear, why do the little ones come? In order to give reward to those who bring them. He said to them: A precious jewel was in your hands, and you sought to withhold it from me? What a wonderful exposition he gave there, and you tried to hide it from me? I think we’ve heard better sermons than that. I don’t quite see what the great excitement over this sermon is. What’s going on here? Why are they so excited? It seems to me that it’s not by accident that they’re excited; rather—Pleshtin, right? Yaakov? What does he say? He says: what’s the excitement over this special sermon? It seems to me that in order to understand that, you have to remember the whole background we discussed. We said that the revolution in Yavneh basically moved from a Torah of tradition to a Torah of give-and-take. Then the benches in the study hall were opened up, right? Opening the benches in the study hall means they stopped checking people to see whether their inside matched their outside, stopped scrutinizing the fringes of everyone who entered the study hall. And against that background comes Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah and says: “Gather the men, the women, and the little ones.” The men come, the women come, the little ones come, and everyone is brought in. And this of course, in my opinion, refers to that very dispute with Rabban Gamliel, who did not let people into the study hall unless they were Torah scholars whose inside matched their outside. He said: no, no, everyone enters the study hall—women, little ones, everyone. So this jewel that everyone is excited about, and that Rabbi Yehoshua in Peki’in is so excited about, is not because this sermon on the verse is so wondrous that no one could have thought of it, but because the sermon itself expresses the new spirit present in Yavneh. The spirit that is no longer Rabban Gamliel’s spirit, but the spirit of Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah. And that’s what he means. Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, after all, gave this exposition; he brings it in his name—it was his week. And that’s what he means by saying: “That jewel, you sought to withhold from me?” I’m so happy that the revolution succeeded. That is essentially the point. Now see how he continues. “And he further expounded: ‘You have affirmed the Lord today, and the Lord has affirmed you today.’” The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Israel: You have made Me one unit in the world, and I will make you one unit in the world. You have made Me one unit in the world, as it is written: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one,” and I will make you one unit in the world, as it is said: “And who is like Your people Israel, one nation in the land?” He too began and expounded”—I assume this means Rabbi Yehoshua. Up to here are the expositions of Rabbi Elazar, okay? “One unit in the world” means that all parts of the Jewish people enter the study hall, and therefore they make the Holy One, blessed be He, one unit in the world. Everyone enters; there’s no sorting here over who is worthy to enter and who is not. The entire exposition of Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah is going in the ideological direction of the Yavneh revolution. Now look at what Rabbi Yehoshua answers. Rabbi Yehoshua says: “The words of the sages are like goads and like well-planted nails; masters of assemblies were given from one shepherd. Why were words of Torah compared to a goad? To tell you that just as a goad directs the cow to train itself to bring life to the world, so too words of Torah direct their learners from the ways of death to the ways of life. If the goad moves, perhaps words of Torah move? Therefore the verse says: nails—they are planted, fixed. If the nail diminishes and does not increase, perhaps words of Torah diminish and do not increase? Therefore the verse says: planted. Just as a planting bears fruit and multiplies, so too words of Torah bear fruit and multiply.” What does that mean? He means to say: the Torah of give-and-take—he is responding to the exposition they brought him in the name of Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah—and what does he say? That words of Torah are compared to a planting which, on the one hand, is fixed in place—we continue what our teachers did—and on the other hand is constantly bearing fruit and multiplying. There really is renewal here that continues the tradition, not renewal as invention, but renewal as continuation. This comes out against two opposite conceptions. One conception is that of tradition, like Rabbi Eliezer and Rabban Gamliel: tradition must be a hollow conduit, as is; what I received I pass on, and therefore it does not bear fruit and multiply; it is planted. Right? It is planted; what I received I pass on. The opposite conception says: no, it bears fruit and multiplies; basically everything depends on me, what I do with it—deconstruction, basically. What I do with the words, what I interpret in them, that is the interpretation. I am not obligated at all to what the author of the text or the transmitter of the text meant, okay? And what Rabbi Yehoshua says is: it’s neither this nor that. There is a planting, which is fixed but also bears fruit and multiplies. What does that mean? When you continue what your teachers did, you continue it but not in the mode of a hollow conduit; rather in a mode of interpretation and expansion and interpretation, and in the end it bears fruit and multiplies and there are lots of new insights, but those new insights are the result or continuation of what you received. There is tradition here, but dynamic tradition. Not frozen tradition, and not detached dynamism, but dynamic tradition. Maybe let me give an example. There is a eulogy of Rabbi Kook that he sent to the descendants of the Ketav Sofer when the Ketav Sofer died. There is a letter in Rabbi Kook’s letters, and there he raises a difficulty: on the one hand it says that Rabbi Eliezer never said a thing he had not heard from his teacher, and on the other hand it says that he said things no ear had ever heard before. How do you reconcile that? Rabbi Kook says: he said things that no—meaning, he said only things he heard from his teacher, but no ear had ever heard them before, including his teacher’s ear. Meaning, there is sometimes a situation where you hear from your teacher things that even he himself is not aware of, but you truly did receive them from him; it’s not your invention. Rather, with your ear you pick up nuances or interpretations of which he himself is unaware. And it’s not that you invented it; it really is there. Now, I think almost anyone who studies with a rabbi has experienced this. It’s not just a nice remark. I studied with a Jew in Bnei Brak with whose whole way of thinking and with basically nothing I agree. But I got everything from him. He himself doesn’t think he said what I’m saying today. But he’s mistaken. He did say it. He wasn’t aware of it, because you need another ear for that, in order to hear the things that way. Another ear will hear something else. But it really is there. The Talmud says: “No two prophets prophesy in the same style,” right? Meaning, sometimes the listener gives a certain processing to the material he hears, which is of course also a function of him, not only of the speaker. But that’s not because we’re talking about invention. Let me give you maybe another example—we may have discussed this once, I don’t remember anymore. There is a very interesting dispute between the Seridei Esh, Rabbi Weinberg, and Rabbi Yehoshua Hutner, the one who founded the Talmudic Encyclopedia. They had an exchange of letters—I once saw it in HaMa’ayan—about the two well-known yeshiva jokes, that the Torah insights of Rabbi Chaim explaining Maimonides… So the joke says that Maimonides comes into the study hall, hears Rabbi Chaim’s explanation of what he himself wrote, and says: “I never meant what you’re saying at all.” They answer him: “And what does a Frank know about Maimonides?” Now, setting aside the question of Sephardim and Ashkenazim, the claim in the hermeneutic sense is that we do not relate to what Maimonides himself thinks he said. And on this point I completely agree with that joke. I think Rabbi Chaim understood Maimonides correctly, even though if Maimonides were here he would tell him, “You’re talking nonsense, I never meant that at all.” Because with Rabbi Chaim’s analytical tools, the analysis he does of Maimonides—Maimonides did not have those tools. The analysis he does of Maimonides reveals within Maimonides’ words all sorts of intuitions of which Maimonides himself was not aware, but they are there. Rabbi Chaim’s formulation, in principle, reveals—again, sometimes he is also wrong—but on the conceptual level, when he worked properly, he reveals things even if Maimonides himself would not admit he said them, or would not think he said them. So in Maimonides’ words there is basically a tool for developing the—no, it’s more than that. He understood what Maimonides himself says. Better than Maimonides. Because he had tools of analysis that Maimonides did not have. This analytic yeshiva-style analysis of object and subject and sign and cause and all those things—Maimonides did not think in those terms. And once you don’t think in those terms, many times you yourself won’t understand what you think. That’s obvious. People often have intuitions that they themselves cannot explain to themselves why it is so. That’s just how they think. Now a wise person will come, or someone equipped with tools you don’t have, and he’ll explain to you what you think better than you can. And if you enter his conceptual world and way of thinking, you too will admit that he is right. Maimonides does not belong to that conceptual and intellectual world, and therefore this is the famous aggadah about Moses our teacher in Rabbi Akiva’s study hall, where he sat in the eighth row and understood nothing, and he became distressed. He understood nothing, and they are saying what they are saying. Is this the Torah of Moses? I brought this Torah, what are they talking about there? Until they said, “This is a law given to Moses at Sinai,” and then he was comforted. I don’t understand: they said that all their inventions are a law given to Moses at Sinai, and then he was comforted? If all these are inventions unrelated to what he said, then what difference does it make if they say “this is a law given to Moses at Sinai”? He understood that their conceptual world and world of thought was different from his. When they said, “This is a law given to Moses at Sinai,” he understood that this was the Torah he had transmitted to them, though he still didn’t understand what they were saying. He understood that it was the Torah he had transmitted to them, clothed in their garments or their tools of thought and not his. And then he was comforted, because he understood that they were probably saying it correctly. And this isn’t something unique specifically to Judaism. Right, I think it’s true everywhere. Completely true. And that also follows from the theory of tradition. What? And that also follows from the theory of tradition. In the final analysis that is exactly the claim. The claim is that this is thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Meaning: at first we start with people thinking that tradition is something as is—what I received I pass on without touching it, and anyone who does otherwise is inventing things. Then this revolution basically said: no, this antithesis doesn’t really mean that we’re not there; rather, we’re in a synthesis. The antithesis came to say that tradition need not be frozen, but not that this is not tradition. It is tradition, but dynamic tradition. And that’s exactly the parable Rabbi Yehoshua gives here when he hears the exposition of Elazar ben Azaryah. He says: it is a planting fixed in its place. Does it not bear fruit and multiply? No—just as a planting bears fruit and multiplies, so too it bears fruit and multiplies. And it is fixed in place yet develops. How? This is tradition that receives definitions and formulations and analyses and expansions through the tools that are renewed over the generations. But it is the continuation of the same thing. I can give countless examples of this. It’s clear that that’s how it is. It’s not just a clever remark. That’s how things work. But when Moses brought it, were we then in a Torah of tradition like Rabbi Eliezer? The Torah there in Rabbi Akiva’s study hall—Rabbi Akiva was already among the students of Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, among the students of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai. This is already after the revolution, and that’s exactly the point. That too can be connected to the move here. After the revolution, people basically already allow themselves to interpret, but it’s not that they invent a new Torah. That is exactly the whole novelty of this revolution: that tradition doesn’t have to be frozen. Tradition can renew itself; there is such a thing as dynamic tradition. I think the best example of this is the tradition concerning the hermeneutical rules. There is a dispute between the scholars and the medieval authorities. All the scholars say that the hermeneutical rules are a later invention, and all the medieval authorities say this is a law given to Moses at Sinai. Seemingly a dispute from one extreme to the other. The hermeneutical rules? Yes, the thirteen principles of Rabbi Ishmael. We’re talking about legal interpretation, not aggadic interpretation. I claim that this is not a dispute. It is a dynamic law given to Moses at Sinai. If you track the hermeneutical rules—I won’t do it here, we’ll do it in the Tuesday class; what, this coming Tuesday? This coming Tuesday there won’t be one, but anyway—the claim is basically that when you track the hermeneutical rules: Hillel the Elder had seven rules. Rabbi Ishmael has thirteen rules. After that there is Rabbi Eliezer the son of Rabbi Yosei the Galilean, and that’s already thirty-two rules. The rules seem to keep developing. Seemingly, that’s clear evidence in favor of the scholars; the rules are obviously created over history. It’s not a law given to Moses at Sinai. That’s a mistake. Because a law given to Moses at Sinai is not necessarily a frozen law given to Moses at Sinai. A law given to Moses at Sinai can also be dynamic, and it passes through interpretations and conceptualizations, and therefore different study halls—Rabbi Ishmael interprets by general and specific, and Rabbi Akiva interprets by inclusive and exclusive. They conceptualize and develop, or interpret differently, the same tradition. And therefore, once one understands that tradition can also be dynamic, a great many of these disputes actually turn out not to be disputes at all. With Hillel the Elder, for example, there was one principle of general and specific, or two depending on the versions. With Rabbi Ishmael there are three: general and specific, specific and general, general and specific and general. In fact, in the Talmud a fourth also appears: specific and general and specific, in one place in tractate Nazir another principle appears—specific and general and specific. How can that be? So did they invent three more principles? No. I claim that there was a principle of general and specific. That was a general name for all these principles. And before Rabbi Ishmael—or really Rabbi Ishmael’s teachers, because he received it from them—the sages would call all this the principle of general and specific. But they too interpreted differently when the Torah had a general and specific, or a specific and general, or a general and specific and general. These are different biblical forms. So how could one know that? I can ask them. I showed that this is so. Look and you’ll see. There are all kinds of contradictions and difficulties. There’s an entire book by Kahana—Menachem Kahana, actually not a book, a long article by Menachem Kahana on general and specific. He says there are contradictions there over what they call general and specific, and they interpret it as specific and general. And I show—I wrote a book on this—I show that consistently, if you understand that the move really is a dynamic law given to Moses at Sinai, then you actually see that the fact that in the earlier generation they called it general and specific does not mean that it is the concept of general and specific after one already distinguishes between specific and general and general and specific and general and specific and general. They simply used the umbrella term. Suddenly you see that they interpret it as specific and general and not as general and specific. Then all the questions disappear. All the difficulties disappear. And therefore one can see that this perspective of a dynamic law given to Moses at Sinai, dynamic tradition, solves a great many difficulties that stem from the feeling that tradition must be frozen. No. If there is tradition, that does not mean it is not dynamic. Okay? Think, as we may have discussed, I don’t remember, about the rules of language. A language begins to develop, as we said, right? And then someone comes and formulates grammatical rules—how one speaks. But he didn’t invent those rules. The speakers were already using those rules; they just didn’t know there were rules, they simply spoke naturally, just as a child learns a language and then speaks correctly. He doesn’t know there’s a rule about letters at the beginning of a word, subject, predicate, direct object, indirect object. He uses it correctly. What does that mean? It means the rules are not an invention. The rules are a conceptualization that defines what people were doing before there were rules. But it’s not a new invention. It is a conceptualization of what they did before. That is exactly dynamic tradition. The hermeneutical rules or the whole world of interpretation are a law given to Moses at Sinai. But it passes through conceptualizations and rules and formulation and finer differentiation over the generations, and that increases the number of principles all the time. Each generation has more and more principles, but that does not really mean they are inventing them throughout history. Rather, it undergoes conceptualizations that now enter a higher resolution. Then there are more principles, and already two principles that were considered one principle are suddenly perceived as two different principles. But in the previous generation too they interpreted it in two ways; they just were not aware at all that there were actually two sub-principles here. Until the later generation came and put its finger on it: wait, wait, notice that under the heading of general and specific there are really three or four different principles hidden here. And all of them have the same basic idea, but it is formulated a bit differently in each context. The general appears before the specific, or the general appears after the specific, or there is a general and then a specific and then another general. Each such thing undergoes a different expansion. Okay? This can be shown very precisely with one example or another, but for our purposes here, what I just want to say is that this revolution ultimately did not smash tradition but turned it into a planting. It is fixed in place but bears fruit and multiplies. It taught us that tradition can be dynamic tradition and not frozen tradition. That is basically the lesson learned from this revolution. Then he says, “masters of assemblies”—he reads here—these are Torah scholars who sit in groups and engage in Torah. Some declare impure and some declare pure, some forbid and some permit, some disqualify and some validate. Lest a person say: how can I now learn Torah? And notice what this exposition is directed toward. Rabbi Yehoshua here is speaking to Rabbi Eliezer. He isn’t present, but he is speaking to Rabbi Eliezer. He says to him: wait, there are disputes here—these declare impure and these declare pure, these say this and these say that, these disqualify and these validate. So how can Torah be learned? Then there are two Torahs. That, after all, was Rabbi Eliezer’s claim. Rabbi Yehoshua says to him: what are you talking about? Look—this is what Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah taught us. “Incline your ear like a funnel to hear the words of those who declare impure and the words of…” The text says: “All of them were given by one shepherd; one God gave them; one leader spoke them;” and indeed “both these and those are the words of the living God,” from the mouth of the Master of all deeds, blessed be He, as it is written: “And God spoke all these words.” “You too, make your ear like a funnel and acquire for yourself an understanding heart to hear the words of those who declare pure and the words of those who declare impure, the words of those who forbid and the words of those who permit, the words of those who disqualify and the words of those who validate.” In this language he said to them: “A generation is not orphaned when Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah dwells within it.” What does that mean? How is this connected to Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah? He keeps speaking with Rabbi Eliezer and with Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah. Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah—the exposition they brought in his name was that he lets everyone into the study hall. There is room to hear all opinions. And in great excitement over that, the jewel they sought to hide from him, Rabbi Yehoshua now expounds—he is basically talking to Rabbi Eliezer. He says to him: look, Rabbi Eliezer, now we’ve won. This is the Torah of give-and-take instead of the Torah of tradition. “Incline your ear” to hear these opinions and those opinions; we’ll reach conclusions, fine, and if not, we’ll vote. A Torah of give-and-take. “And all were given by one shepherd.” Tradition need not be frozen; all of this is the words of Moses our teacher, only passing through interpretation, and there can be disputes over interpretation, and that is perfectly fine. As for the fact that it doesn’t match what Moses our teacher said—so what? Rabbi Eliezer says: if it’s not what I received from my teachers, if it’s not what the tradition says, then it’s nonsense. And they told him: not true. It simply passed through a different interpretation from your interpretation. There is no such thing as transmission without interpretation; you live in the illusion that you transmit without interpretation, and that’s not true of you either. There is no such thing as transmitting things without interpretation—none, none. When you pass something on from someone else, it is always colored by your own color. Always. There’s no way around it. You know, I have an uncle who is a Belzer Hasid in Monsey. And he—yes, nobody’s perfect—told me that Abaye and Rava studied in Yiddish. Obviously, because after all they knew how to study. Anyone who knows how to study studies in Yiddish, obviously. He doesn’t himself literally believe that, of course, but he does believe it. And that’s the ethos; he really believes it. He doesn’t think they historically studied in Yiddish, but he is sure they studied like him—that’s what he means. That they wore a gartel and a frock. Meaning, for him tradition is something frozen. By the way, in the Haredi world in general, tradition is perceived as something frozen. You have to do what your teachers did. Exactly. And in Brisk that’s most obvious, yes. If you move to—you interpret it or apply it differently to the circumstances, then you’ve already deviated from tradition. Of course they themselves constantly deviate from tradition, but they live within this ethos as though Moses our teacher studied like Rabbi Chaim. Okay? For them that’s obvious, and it’s a mistake, because they think tradition has to be something frozen, and if it isn’t frozen then it isn’t tradition—you’ve deviated from tradition. Not true. There is such a thing as dynamic tradition. By the way, it usually works in such a way that the more you deviate from tradition, the more you chant “tradition, tradition, tradition” and refuse to accept any change. There is no such thing—you can’t do without it. There is no possibility of not interpreting things if they reach you. They always pass through interpretation. There is no body—it simply passes through interpretation without a body. No body and no bodily form, but it passes through interpretation. That’s life. We’re human beings; the Torah was not given to ministering angels. Where did this click for me? First of all, Brisk is an excellent example. Briskers talk all day long about tradition, tradition, tradition. And there is no greater innovation than the Brisker way of learning—an invention from A to Z. In my view a positive invention; it helps reveal things that were previously latent there. It’s an invention. But it’s obvious that because they understand there is no anchor for what they are doing, they turned tradition into a principle of faith. Now anyone who does something different from Brisk is deviating from tradition, when they are the greatest deviation from tradition there ever was. Of course not—they are not aware. Of course. The more internally conflicted you are, the more you are fighting with yourself, you understand that you are deviating from tradition, so you reinforce it: no, no, this is the tradition, and Moses our teacher received Torah from Sinai and passed it to Rabbi Chaim. Yes, that’s the tradition, and anyone who does otherwise is simply deviating from tradition—you persuade yourself of this. Another example of this is students of Rabbi Kook—what today is called the Kav and so on. Same example. Obviously Rabbi Kook was a very great innovation relative to his previous generations. Now, for them, anyone who deviates even a little from the path as they understand it is deviating from tradition. Whom did he serve? He served Torah scholars, after all—what are these chatterboxes doing now? They live in a world with no legs, no root and branch. It’s all invention from A to Z. And by the way, that’s perfectly fine in my eyes—that’s not an accusation, it’s perfectly fine—but because they feel it, they accuse the whole world and his wife of deviating from tradition. The places where there are the greatest innovations are the places where tradition is carried in the strongest form. It had to develop as an antithesis to the secular crisis, which was perceived in the community of Israel as something that advanced as a total profanation. And what’s their claim? Their claim is that this is the tradition, and anyone who deviates—anyone who doesn’t—whatever, I remember they spoke about Rabbi Sherlo, doesn’t matter. Besides, it’s also foolish, but that’s my personal opinion. In any case, obviously this is an innovation. And now you speak in the name of tradition? It’s absurd. Clearly they are at war with themselves. It’s clear that they themselves understand—or unconsciously sense—that there is a very strong deviation there from the previous generations. Did Rabbi Kook continue the previous generations? Most of the rabbis of his generation disagreed with him, okay? And you’re speaking in the name of tradition? What are you talking about? It reminds me of a Yiddish writer and poet named Chaim Grade. You should know about him; he was considered for the Nobel Prize, and he had a conflict with Bashevis Singer—he claimed Bashevis Singer stole all the literature from him. We’ve heard of Grade. What? We’ve heard of Grade—at least I have. Grade was a poet. In any case, he was a Yiddish writer and poet, and he wrote two books, Tzemach Atlas and The Battle of the Inclination, published by Am Oved. Those books are basically a story, but based on his own biography, Chaim Grade’s. And the story describes a small child named Chaimke—that’s him of course—who studies in a suburb called Volotzinik, in the Novardok yeshiva. Do you know what the Novardok yeshiva was? The Alter of Novardok felt that the Enlightenment was devouring the youth of the area whole. So he sent all his students, eighteen and nineteen-year-olds, to open yeshivot and become heads of yeshivot in various villages. There were lots of Novardok yeshivot. Each one with ten or twenty students from the village; you gathered the students and became head of the yeshiva. Now we’re talking about eighteen and nineteen-year-old boys educated by a wild man; the Alter of Novardok was a wild man, and his whole method was to educate people not to care about any norm, about anything, to scorn everything, not to be ashamed of anything. That was his educational method. So he raised wild men of eighteen and nineteen and sent them to be heads of yeshivot. And you understand what these guys did to young students? Crazy. People probably left with terrible complexes. Now Chaimke there tells—he speaks about Chaimke, Chaim Grade—the rabbi Yaakov Ganis was mentioned, he’s a little Novardoker. He too is no small wild man. No, in a positive sense. There’s a lot positive in that wildness, by the way. What I said now is not an accusation. A wild man is a method, a method. It’s known—he sent his students to a pharmacy to ask for nails, so that people would laugh at them. “What are you looking for nails in a pharmacy?” Let people laugh at them, so they would get used to not caring about what anyone says about them and how they look at them, to develop a kind of indifference toward the environment, to be independent, autonomous. There’s something very beautiful in that, in my eyes. But when you give that to eighteen and nineteen-year-olds, who don’t yet have the maturity of adults, and you send them to be heads of yeshivot who also have to educate children, that’s madness. Absolute madness. And the descriptions there are horrific in this book. Now the book is a story, and it describes his head of yeshiva—he gave him the literary name Tzemach Atlas. That’s what he called him. By the way, there is an article by Shlomo Zalman Havlin, a professor here of Talmud, who tried to identify who this Tzemach Atlas was—who was the real head of yeshiva? He tried to find the real name, because this is a nickname, right? Anyway, this Tzemach Atlas is described there, of course in his literary portrayal, as consumed by doubts and desires—idolatry and heresy and sexual desire. He was consumed inside. And the more he was consumed inside, the more he fought in the yeshiva with even greater extremism against every boy who showed some signs of doubts or signs of those kinds of desires. Why? Because a person who is very extreme outwardly means that inwardly, in that area, something is unstable. A person is never fighting someone else; a person is always fighting himself. That’s my basic assumption. An extreme person is usually someone who has a problem at that point within himself, and therefore he is extreme. And this book describes, as against that Tzemach Atlas, who ultimately threw Chaimke out of the yeshiva, opposite him the antithesis was the author of Chazon Abraham—that’s obviously the Hazon Ish. The Hazon Ish used to come to vacation in Volotzinik every year for a few months. He was a sickly type, I don’t know, and he needed to be there on vacation. He lived there alone in a house, sat there and studied. Chaimke was thrown out of the yeshiva and somehow ended up in his house. He heard he had been thrown out. At first—no, at first he came to him with a question. And the author of Chazon Abraham, that is the Hazon Ish, answered his questions. Hasidism for us—not Hasidism for us—but he answered his questions. Then at some stage he was thrown out of the yeshiva, and he lived with the Hazon Ish in his house for several months, just the two of them. And biographically this is true, he really was there. And the whole book revolves around this dichotomy between Tzemach Atlas and the author of Chazon Abraham. Tzemach Atlas is consumed inside by desires and doubts, and he is an extreme zealot fighting the whole universe—obviously he is supposedly fighting himself. And the author of Chazon Abraham is harmonious, willing to hear every question. The Hazon Ish was not—he was extreme in his positions, but in behavior, in his attitude, he accepted every person, answered every question calmly. In his letters you can see it: you don’t agree with me? Do what you think, what’s the problem? You don’t have to agree with me. I also heard that from Rabbi Yogel. He would come to him once a week with Gedaliah Nadel; they learned together, and once a week they went to the Hazon Ish to ask him questions and hear his answers. And he told him: Gedaliah, you don’t agree with me, then do what you think, what’s the problem? Why are you distressed and fighting with me? That’s what the Hazon Ish told him. Meaning, everything is perfectly fine; what’s the issue? He also writes in his books that a person must act as he understands. So this is exactly the antithesis—and why? Because inside he was at peace with his way. So he wasn’t extreme outwardly. Now, no—he had very unequivocal positions and it was clear to him that he was right and others were wrong, but he understood: fine, this is my position, others think differently. There’s no reason to fight with them. I’m at peace with my own position, I have no inner conflicts, so I don’t fight with people outside. In my view even today, people who behave extremely are usually people who have some inner issue with themselves at that point. A person is always fighting with himself; he is never fighting someone else. By the way, a Haredi society, for example, when it reveals extreme phenomena that fight against the whole environment, this is always a fight with its own society inside. Always. To grasp it in a total way. I know why in the Haredi public, in the yeshivot, suddenly every faction, every Hasidic group hates all the others. No, not only that it hates all the others. Again, when it places extreme emphasis on a certain point, that means that with regard to that very point something is weak and unstable within itself. When the Haredim go to war against the cellphone, it’s because it is entering them from within. Always. When the Haredim go to war against, I don’t know, army enlistment, it’s not because the secular people want to draft them, but because the Haredim are beginning to enlist. Then the war begins. You are always fighting with yourself. And that is true not only of the Haredim; it is true of every person. And I say: someone who fights very extremely over something, it means that inwardly something is unstable for him in that area. That’s the rule. Maybe there are exceptions, but for me that is the default assumption. Unless proven otherwise, I think that is the correct explanation. And this point—that people, returning from the parentheses, returning to our line here—when people speak in the name of tradition, it is because they have a feeling, sometimes unconscious, that they have actually deviated from it. They deviate from tradition, so they accuse the whole world that one must cling to tradition, only tradition, and one may not deviate from tradition, because they understand that they themselves are not there. Is there something in the initial vision, when it comes out—for example from Rabbi Kook—is there already something at the beginning that causes these students to cling so much to tradition and this dogmatism? Meaning, is there something…? He was very charismatic, very smart, very impressive and righteous, I assume, I’m sure. And therefore it is always—how does it happen? Rabbi Chaim… Was he not part of the tradition? Heaven forbid. The rabbis disagreed with him; they saw an elephant and each one tried to grab hold of a different part of the elephant. Like Maimonides’ parable of the elephant. Yes. But maybe that charisma causes the students… After all, what happens? What happens is that Rabbi Chaim and Rabbi Kook were revolutionaries. Both of them. One in the method of learning, the other in the mode of thought. Now once you have a revolutionary, but one with power, a charismatic and impressive personality, all his students follow him and become not revolutionaries—on the contrary, they cling to him completely. So they become very traditional, but the tradition they hold is a tradition that is a revolution. It is not tradition; that is the absurdity of revolutions. Yes, the communists made a revolution, but the Russians can’t do without a czar, as is known. The communists made a revolution and got a communist czar. Stalin was a czar. So too in spiritual revolutions: you make a revolution against previous authorities. The revolutionary becomes the new authority. Now everyone has to cling to him. The revolutionary spirit does not get passed on from generation to generation. There is that well-known story—I once saw it in Buber’s Tales of the Hasidim—about Rabbi Nah of Lachovitz. There was a Hasidic rabbi, Rabbi Nah of Lachovitz, and another rabbi, I don’t remember the second one, father and son. The father died, and the son changed some of the father’s practices. The Hasidim came to him and said: how can you change your father’s holy practices? He said to them: why? I am continuing my father’s path exactly. Just as he changed the path of his fathers, so too I change the path of my fathers. Now this is not just a joke; it powerfully expresses something. Because the Hasidim basically expect that you must be conservative, even though what you are preserving is itself a revolution. So if you truly want to preserve the revolution, then you have to make one yourself—if necessary. You don’t have to make a revolution. But if you feel a revolution is necessary, don’t hesitate, do it. And that is the proper way to continue your fathers. Namely, by rebelling against them. By the way, the Hazon Ish—since we mentioned him—in my view there are two kinds of Hazon Ish people. There are Hazon Ish people who insist on doing exactly what is written in the Hazon Ish’s books, as written. That is most Hazon Ish people. And there are Hazon Ish people, like Rabbi Chaim Gedaliah Nadel, who do what they think, just as the Hazon Ish did what he thought. And that is really Hazon Ish; those are the true Hazon Ish people. Because the Hazon Ish himself also writes in his book that this is what must be done. In Yoreh De’ah, section 3 and section 159, he elaborates there on the principles of ruling and instruction. A person must do what he thinks. So if you want to stick to what the Hazon Ish said, you must do what you think, even if you disagree with the Hazon Ish. And that is called sticking to what the Hazon Ish said. Those are the true Hazon Ish people. By the way, the truly true Hazon Ish people do what they think not because the Hazon Ish said you have to do what you think, but because you understand that you have to do what you think. There is something about the second type of Hazon Ish-ism that is still actually conservative, because you allow yourself to be revolutionary because the rebbe said one must be revolutionary. I say no—I allow myself to be revolutionary because I think one must be revolutionary. Then I am a true Hazon Ish person. Because the Hazon Ish’s own rabbi didn’t tell him that. He did it without his rabbi telling him. So cling to what he says, and basically make a revolution on the basis of his having told you to overturn things. Right. So there are—you know—they often bring the letters of the Hazon Ish where he says that all the words of the Hafetz Hayyim are like words that came from the Chamber of Hewn Stone. The Mishnah Berurah—who gave the Mishnah Berurah its status today? The Hazon Ish. In Lithuania the basic halakhic book was Arukh HaShulchan. Only here in the land, following the Hazon Ish, did the Mishnah Berurah receive its great status in terms of halakhic authority. Now this is very strange, because there is—you know the edition of Mishnah Berurah with the Hazon Ish’s notes, all the places where he disagrees with the Mishnah Berurah. Now if all the words of the Mishnah Berurah are like those that came from the Chamber of Hewn Stone, then the Hazon Ish is a rebellious elder. You disagree with things that came from the Chamber of Hewn Stone. But people don’t understand this. The Hazon Ish means that you should relate to it as though it came from the Chamber of Hewn Stone in the sense that this is something very well-founded, something you must take seriously—but that does not mean you must obey it. Form your own position and do what you think. Fine, you don’t have to take the words literally. When he says this is the Chamber of Hewn Stone, it doesn’t mean everyone must do what is written in the Mishnah Berurah. That is the first type of Hazon Ish-ism I mentioned. The Hazon Ish said that the Hafetz Hayyim is the Chamber of Hewn Stone, so we do what the Mishnah Berurah said. No. The Hazon Ish said that the Hafetz Hayyim is the Chamber of Hewn Stone, and I too will decide who is the Chamber of Hewn Stone for me, just as he decided who was the Chamber of Hewn Stone for him. That is the true Hazon Ish-ism. Good, back to us. So these matters of tradition, dynamic tradition—that is basically the conclusion of this revolution that took place in Yavneh. Tradition need not be frozen; tradition must be dynamic. Now look. He says: “Why didn’t he tell him explicitly? Because of an incident that occurred. For it was taught: An incident involving Rabbi Yosei ben Dormaskit, who went to greet Rabbi Eliezer”—not Rabbi Elazar, but Rabbi Eliezer—in Lod. You understand that this is not accidental. The first story was about two students who came to Rabbi Yehoshua in Peki’in. And that is precisely after the revolution in Yavneh, because the whole story involves Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, and we’ve now shown the whole move. What is the next story? A student who goes to visit Rabbi Eliezer in Lod. Rabbi Eliezer is Rabbi Yehoshua’s disputant, right? The two of them are basically sitting on the two sides of this dispute. Rabbi Yehoshua from the rebels, and Rabbi Eliezer from the rulers who were deposed. Okay, now this is the antithesis. Now look what happens here. It says: “An incident involving Rabbi Yosei ben Dormaskit, who went to greet Rabbi Eliezer in Lod.” Here I’m reading. “He said to him,” exactly as Rabbi Yehoshua did, “What new thing was taught in the study hall today?” He too asks, “What new thing was taught in the study hall today?” But understand the significance. Once we connect this Talmud passage to the ones we saw earlier—this is basically the continuation of the same dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua around the revolution in Yavneh—then you understand that these two stories must be read in parallel. So when Rabbi Yehoshua asks, “What new thing was taught in the study hall today?” he is genuinely asking in the sense that there are new insights. Following the revolution there are interpretations; the Torah grows, bears fruit and multiplies. What does Rabbi Eliezer mean when he says, “What new thing was taught in the study hall?” Let’s hear the new nonsense you people in Yavneh came up with, your great innovations. Look what happens immediately. It’s written in the Talmud; it’s not my interpretation. He said to him: They voted and concluded that Ammon and Moab separate the poor man’s tithe in the Sabbatical year. The dispute was whether in the area of Ammon and Moab across the Jordan one separates tithes in the seventh year or not, whether the laws of the Sabbatical year apply there or not. If the laws of the Sabbatical year apply, then you don’t tithe, okay? So there was a halakhic dispute, and they voted and concluded that one does tithe. Rabbi Eliezer said—he says to Rabbi Yosei ben Dormaskit—stretch out your hands and receive your eyes. He stretched out his hands and received his eyes. He blinded him on the spot, out of rage. Why? Rabbi Eliezer wept and said: “The counsel of the Lord is with those who fear Him, and His covenant is to make them know it.” He said to him: go tell them—he said to Rabbi Yosei, go to Yavneh and tell them in my name—do not rely on your vote. Do not worry that perhaps you erred. Why? For this is what I received from Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, who heard from his teacher, and his teacher from his teacher: a law given to Moses at Sinai—that Ammon and Moab separate the poor man’s tithe in the Sabbatical year. What is he saying to him? Tell them that their conclusion is correct. Why? Not because they reached the logical conclusion and agreed that this is what makes sense, but because he received from his teacher, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, who received from his teacher, that this is a law given to Moses at Sinai—and by chance they happened upon the truth. They could just as easily have happened upon falsehood and then they would have erred in Jewish law. Out of rage—well, he was very angry at him, cursed him. I don’t know exactly what he did, or exactly what it means. But it’s the complete opposite of Rabbi Yehoshua’s enthusiasm. Notice—same thing. One brings him a new teaching from Yavneh, and one brings him a new teaching from Yavneh. Rabbi Yehoshua is delighted and rejoices and dances there, and Rabbi Eliezer gets angry to death. Why? He says to them: why don’t you come ask me? You have a question whether Ammon and Moab tithe in the Sabbatical year? I hold the whole Torah. After all, he never said anything he didn’t hear from his teacher; he omitted nothing from my teachers. Come ask me and I’ll tell you a law given to Moses at Sinai. By chance you got it right. By chance it’s correct. “Do not rely on your vote”—I would say that means two things. Don’t fear that you erred, and also don’t rely on your vote. There is a law given to Moses at Sinai, so although this was determined by ignoramuses like you, in this case it also happens to be right. Because with Rabbi Yehoshua they say to him, “We are your students and we drink from your waters,” and here he says it directly. Because he isn’t his student, and after all they excommunicated him. Obviously they didn’t come to him at all; no one came to him. We’ll see it later. No one came to him; until the day of his death he sat alone in Lod. He came—I don’t know. It also says there that Rabbi Akiva would come from time to time. But in principle they shunned him. Was it a religious matter? They made a decision. That’s exactly what I said earlier: why did they shun him? Because he disagreed with them in Jewish law? Is that a reason to shun someone? No, he didn’t accept the rules of the game. Someone who doesn’t accept the rules of the game is destructive. After all, they got to the point of killing one another because they did not agree to deliberate and vote and follow the majority. So they shunned him. Rabban Gamliel eventually accepted what the public decided, what the sages decided. Rabbi Eliezer did not; he remained excommunicated until the end of his days. There was such a thing also at the end of tractate Shevi’it. The Talmud says so, and also—what is the Torah, where does it remain? The Talmud describes it that way. Anyway, so you see the antithesis to the story with Rabbi Yehoshua. The story with Rabbi Eliezer is exactly the opposite, because the two of them sit on two opposite sides of this dispute, and both react oppositely to what is happening in Yavneh. And then he explains to him why this is so, and so on. “After his mind settled, he said: May it be God’s will that Yosei’s eyes return to their place, and they returned.” Fine, so he restored his sight, he didn’t leave him blind. But out of rage—what are you talking nonsense for? You’ve got your reasonings this way and that way? Come ask me and I’ll tell you the truth. You see that he did not retract. He remained in his position that he was unwilling to accept the Torah of give-and-take. There is a Torah of tradition: teacher from teacher and teacher from teacher all the way back to a law given to Moses at Sinai, nothing less. Everything comes from Moses; nothing is created along the way. What about his view? Now of course this is an illusion; there is no such thing. Rabbi Eliezer was mistaken. Here too he erred in interpretation. There is no such thing; there cannot be a hollow conduit. It cannot be. There is no transmission from teacher to student that does not involve some kind of interpretation. There is no such thing. It’s like in the laws of reciting the Shema, Maimonides writes that one has to recite the Shema, provided that he articulates its letters carefully. Can one articulate carefully in every language? It can be recited in any language—that’s one of the things that may be said in any language, in chapter 3 of Sotah. “Provided that he articulates its letters carefully.” The Ra’avad says about him: if it may be recited in any language, what does it mean to articulate carefully? After all, all languages are interpretations, and who is it that can be precise about his own interpretation? When you translate from one language to another, there is always an element of interpretation. It is not exactly the same thing. So what does it mean to be precise with that? You’re being precise with your interpretations. To be precise in the original language—that’s the language in which the Holy One, blessed be He, wrote it. There one must be precise. But when you transfer it from language to language, or in our case from teacher to student, it always goes through some kind of interpretation. You cannot pass things on as they are. Yes, the children’s game of broken telephone proves it. You pass one word from one person to another, and in the end you hear a completely different word. It is impossible to transfer things as is. Good. So that’s the Talmud in Hagigah 3b. “Accept my tradition, otherwise Sweden, Austria, Prussia and Russia will come and restore the old order.” Sweden—that means force. It reminds one of the revolution after 1789. Okay, it’s not Russia—he goes into exile, and from there he keeps broadcasting some order so it won’t fall apart. Rabbi Eliezer in 1789, the French Revolution—exactly. And it reminds one of how he goes into exile after— I didn’t understand what you were talking about. You mean Louis XIV? No, Louis XVI got his head chopped off. So the old nobles, the old crowd who were overthrown, go into exile and from there manage to return to their former rule. There is one little problem here, namely that Rabbi Eliezer didn’t return. Austria and Prussia didn’t yet exist, nor Russia. Now of course, as I said, in the end the description is not tradition versus give-and-take. Give-and-take is another way of grasping tradition. It doesn’t replace tradition; rather, it is dynamic tradition. Okay? You can see the Talmud in Sanhedrin 68a. So this is no longer a dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua, and not even whether one should stick to tradition or add something. What is tradition? Is tradition dynamic or is tradition frozen? That is really the point. Now look at the Talmud on Sanhedrin 68a. This was on the day of Rabbi Eliezer’s death. He sat alone, excommunicated in Lod, until his last day. They came and sat before him at a distance of four cubits. He said to them: why have you come? They said to him: we have come to learn Torah. He said to them: and until now, why did you not come? Yes, until the day of his death they did not come, and now suddenly they came to learn Torah. They said to him: we did not have time. Awkward. We didn’t have time, that’s why we didn’t come. And he was the teacher of them all—it’s a difficult scene. He said to them: I wonder if they will die a natural death. Again he cursed them, just as he blinded Rabbi Yosei ben Dormaskit. He was a fiery type, did not mince words. Rabbi Akiva said to him: what about me? What fate awaits me? He said to him: yours will be harsher than theirs. You’re the worst. Why? Because Rabbi Akiva was his student. And as for Rabbi Akiva, he did come to him, from time to time, but not enough. Therefore he tells him: you’re worse than they are; your fate will be the worst. He took his two arms and placed them on his heart and said: Woe to you, my two arms, for you are like two Torah scrolls being rolled up. I learned much Torah. And I taught much Torah, and I taught much Torah. I learned much Torah, and I omitted from my teachers no more than a dog lapping from the sea. You see? Torah of tradition, yes? I taught much Torah, and my students omitted from me no more than a paintbrush from its tube. And not only that, but I teach three hundred laws concerning a severe skin lesion. Yes, in one topic—three hundred laws I have on that topic, that I received from my teachers, not that I invented them. Everything I received from my teachers. In other words, he held an enormous treasure of Jewish law, of halakhic tradition. And not only that, but I teach—and no one ever asked me about them. Since I was under excommunication, none of you came. I’m sure you were all there in Yavneh debating and spinning theories about the severe skin lesion, many subtle discussions. Instead of coming and asking me—three hundred laws I have to transmit to you—and no one came. And not only that, but I teach three hundred laws—and some say three thousand laws—about planting cucumbers, and no one ever asked me about them except Akiva ben Yosef. Here you see that Rabbi Akiva did come and ask him these questions. And the Talmud says Rabbi Akiva learned from him magic involving planting cucumbers; this refers to a kind of sorcery. Rabbi Eliezer was expert in sorcery because it was part of the law; one must know what sorcery is and what one does with it and how, and so on. So he taught Rabbi Akiva both magical practices and the laws of magic. Okay? And that’s three hundred or three thousand laws about planting cucumbers. Fine? And only Rabbi Akiva learned that from him. Now, in the Mishnah in Sanhedrin 67a, Rabbi Akiva says in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua: “Two gather cucumbers; one who gathers is exempt and one who gathers is liable. One who performs an act is liable, and one who merely deceives the eyes is exempt.” Again, it’s all in the laws of sorcery. In the Mishnah they do it together; it’s some kind of sorcery, not important right now. Rabbi Akiva said that in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua. The Talmud there on 68a says: But did Rabbi Akiva learn it from Rabbi Yehoshua? What do you mean, Rabbi Akiva learned this from Rabbi Yehoshua? Nonsense. He learned it from Rabbi Eliezer. As it was taught: When Rabbi Eliezer fell ill, Rabbi Akiva and his colleagues entered to visit him. He sat in his canopied bed and they sat in his hall. He was essentially under excommunication. He fell ill and was about to die, and they sat in the sitting room while he sat in the bedroom. And that day was Sabbath eve, and his son Hurkanus entered to remove his tefillin. He rebuked him and he went out reprimanded. Hurkanus said to his colleagues there, to the scholars there: It seems to me that my father’s mind has become confused. He said to them: his mind and his mother’s mind have become confused. How can they leave a prohibition punishable by stoning and involve themselves with a prohibition of rabbinic rest? Yes, Sabbath prohibitions and the issue of tefillin and so on. Once the sages saw that his mind was settled, they entered and sat before him at a distance of four cubits. He said to them: why have you come? They said to him: we have come to learn Torah. He said to them: and until now why didn’t you come? They said to him: we didn’t have time. That’s what we saw before. You see the background. The background is that Rabbi Akiva learned it—the Mishnah says Rabbi Akiva says it in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua. The Talmud asks: but here in this story Rabbi Eliezer says that Rabbi Akiva learned it from him, not from Rabbi Yehoshua. Right? Then it says—that’s the whole Talmud we read earlier—yes, he says: and no one ever asked me about them except Akiva ben Yosef. Once, he and I were walking on the road, and he said to me: Rabbi, teach me about planting cucumbers. I said one thing, and the whole field filled with cucumbers. He performed sorcery. Interesting that in order to teach, it is permitted to do sorcery—it is normally forbidden. But apparently for teaching purposes it is permitted. He said to me: Rabbi, you taught me their planting, teach me their uprooting. I said one thing, and they all gathered into one place. He said to him: the ball and the mold and the amulet and the pouch of pearls and the small weight—what is their status? He said to them: they are susceptible to impurity, and how are they purified? What about a shoe on the mold? What is its status? He said to them: it is pure. And his soul departed in purity. What does that mean, his soul departed in purity? With the word “pure,” his soul departed in purity. When he said the word “pure,” his soul departed in purity. Rabbi Yehoshua stood on his feet—his disputant, yes, Rabbi Eliezer’s—and said: The vow is annulled, the vow is annulled. They released his excommunication on the day of his death. Until then he was under excommunication. On the conclusion of the Sabbath, Rabbi Akiva met him from Caesarea to Lod, and he was striking his flesh until his blood dripped to the ground. Rabbi Akiva mourned his teacher. He had two teachers: Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Eliezer. When Rabbi Eliezer died, Rabbi Akiva was in mourning. He opened over him in the row—the row of mourners—and said: “My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and its horsemen. I have much money and no moneychanger to sort it for me.” I would ask you laws; you knew everything. Now you are gone—what shall we do? What shall we do now? The Torah is not written. Now we can begin to speculate as we always did, and he was angry with us: what are you theorizing for? Come ask me. And now there is no one to ask. He is basically lamenting even what happened until now: why didn’t we go ask him? And from now on there is no one to ask. It’s as if repentance is no longer possible. So the Talmud says: therefore, did he learn it from Rabbi Eliezer? And you learned it from Rabbi Eliezer, not Rabbi Yehoshua? Why does the Mishnah say you said it in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua? The Talmud answers: he learned the tradition from Rabbi Eliezer but not the reasoning. Then he learned it again from Rabbi Yehoshua, who explained the reasoning to him. In other words, he learned from Rabbi Eliezer and did not understand—a scriptural decree. He went to Rabbi Yehoshua and got the reasoning. That’s classic, right? This is exactly the discussion. Rabbi Eliezer did not want to give him reasoning; he wasn’t interested in reasoning. This is the law, take it, I received it from my teachers, pass it on. That’s all. But Rabbi Akiva was not satisfied with that, because after all he was among the rebels of Yavneh. He wants to understand, so he went to the other elder, Rabbi Yehoshua, his disputant, and Rabbi Yehoshua explained the law to him. And therefore Rabbi Akiva was a student of both Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua together. And that is what the Talmud says at the end there in Sanhedrin, and in that baraita: An anonymous Mishnah follows Rabbi Meir, an anonymous Tosefta follows Rabbi Nehemiah, an anonymous Sifra follows Rabbi Yehudah, an anonymous Sifrei follows Rabbi Shimon—and all of them are according to Rabbi Akiva. In the final analysis, after this whole revolution, the one who held all the Oral Torah was Rabbi Akiva. Everything that came after him came from him. Why? Exactly. He joined Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua together. Rabbi Eliezer’s tradition and Rabbi Yehoshua’s reasoning. He learned from Rabbi Eliezer, and Rabbi Yehoshua explained it to him. And Rabbi Akiva was the one who turned Torah into dynamic tradition. True, his end was like the end of all of them, and also because of what he did regarding Rabbi Eliezer—he did not come enough to Rabbi Eliezer. And Rabbi Eliezer’s curse upon him had its effect. But still, in the end he is the father of the Oral Torah, Rabbi Akiva. Because after the Yavneh revolution the Oral Torah crystallized until Rabbi Akiva arrived, joining Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua, and he basically transformed the tradition into dynamic tradition. Not invention, and not frozen tradition. Dynamic tradition. That is basically what Rabbi Akiva did. And I brought here what Rabbi Kook writes in Sukkat Shalom. But there is Rabbi Eliezer, whom we said represents the law itself, the Torah, and here there is this entity that is limping between two opinions, so did he have some from Rabbi Eliezer and some from Rabbi Yehoshua? It may be, but I think in context it is quite clear that he was worse than all the others because he did not come enough. Rabbi Akiva did come to him occasionally—the walk with the cucumbers he did with him—and no one else came. But apparently from Rabbi Akiva he expected more, because he was his student. And he understands that there is something to learn from him—that’s what Rabbi Akiva cried out after Rabbi Eliezer died. In other words, you understand what you are losing by not coming to ask, and you still don’t come? What, you are respecting your excommunication? The Oral Torah is going to ruin. Put that excommunication aside. This really raises the question how Rabbi Akiva came at all if he thought the excommunication was valid, because then you can’t come. The Oral Torah was forbidden to be written. That is exactly the tragedy. “Matters transmitted orally you are not permitted to write.” Later Rabbi said, “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah,” and then Rabbi instituted writing down the Oral Torah. But until Rabbi—that is the last generation of tannaim—until Rabbi, they did not write it down. And didn’t he know “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah”? He saw that the damage here and Yavneh—this was something significant. Maybe it is one of the consequences of his outlook, that he was unwilling to change what the fathers did even if the circumstances required it. So he was not willing to change the law that the Oral Torah is not written down. After the new conception took over, now Rabbi can come and say: “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah.” Maybe, I don’t know. “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah”—did Rabbi say that sentence? Who said it? No, I think there is such a verse: “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah.” Rabbi uses that verse to… And it actually appears in the last chapter of Berakhot—“It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah”—I think in the Mishnah there, chapter 9 of Berakhot. In any event, the unfolding of dispute, in the end, from that point onward dispute basically becomes something that undergoes idealization. Yitzhak Hutner talks about this in his book on Hanukkah. He claims that Maimonides—the Talmud basically says that dispute arose because the students of Hillel and Shammai did not serve their teachers sufficiently. Since that was so, they began to miss things and to fail to understand the words of their predecessors, and disputes arose, and then there was no way to resolve them, and the whole crisis came into being. But in the end a new pattern was created for how to relate to disputes. Disputes became a kind of ideal thing: if you disagree, clearly each side grasps a certain facet of the truth, and therefore the existence of dispute causes the planting to bear fruit and multiply. And until today we grow up within an ethos that sees dispute as something positive, in principle. Because if there is dispute and a multiplicity of opinions, that only means—you study the methods of the medieval authorities, this dispute, that dispute—we are constantly occupied with clarifying disputes and much less with deciding them. We are much more occupied with the question: what did this one say, and understanding him fully, and what did that one say, understanding him fully, and in the Talmud itself it too usually remains like that. The Talmud does not decide in most cases. In most cases the opinions remain as they are. They clarify: what does he do with this difficulty? What does he do with that difficulty? In the end the two opinions remain as they are. The halakhic decisors later decide—or don’t decide—but the Talmud does not decide. As far as the Talmud is concerned, the main thing is the clarification. And therefore dispute is transformed from a necessary evil—students did not serve their teachers sufficiently and disputes arose—but through that process something positive was created, even though it arose as a result of failure, as the result of a problem. But out of that problem something positive emerged. And that is dispute, and seeing dispute as something ideal rather than as a flaw. Why? Because in a Torah of tradition, dispute is a flaw. That is why Rabban Gamliel looks for someone whose inside is like his outside, someone who transmits reliably. Because if disputes arise there and there is no way to deliberate and clarify, then it is a crisis; there is nothing to do with it. So in that period, the emergence of dispute is described as a failure, a flaw. After the Yavneh revolution—that itself was the revolution—to see dispute as a planting that bears fruit and multiplies, not as a flaw. As in the idea that just as their faces differ, so their opinions differ, and so on. Meaning, there is suddenly an idealization of dispute, and that too is basically a transition that took place around the Yavneh revolution. And today we were raised on this ethos that dispute is a positive thing, and “both these and those are the words of the living God,” and we’ll discuss that in the next stage. I want to talk about how to understand this concept, “both these and those are the words of the living God.” Is there a multiplicity of truths here, or not a multiplicity of truths? Pluralism? The question of halakhic pluralism. So up to now I’ve finished; here I finish with the emergence of dispute and the meaning disputes have, and seeing them as something positive. Now I’ll try next time to enter into the logic of dispute. The logic of dispute is to ask the question: who is right here? Is only one side right? Are both right? Pluralism, monism, tolerance. What do we do with an opinion that isn’t right, or with a different opinion? That’s what we’ll get into next. Let’s stop here for today.