A Look at Torah and Torah Study – Lesson 4 – Rabbi Michael Abraham

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[Speaker B] The thirteen hermeneutic principles by which the Torah is expounded, which Maimonides says were given to Moses, also…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They were not given to Moses at Sinai, of course. Obviously not. What—who decided? I did. The facts decide.

[Speaker B] No, who decided that it’s 13? Rabbi Yishmael. Right. But Rabbi Akiva has 32.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That—that has nothing to do with me. Meaning, there’s a development. After all, Hillel the Elder had seven. Hillel the Elder had seven. Rabbi Yishmael has 13. Rabbi Yishmael… Rabbi Akiva has 32. So what was given at Sinai? Nothing was given at Sinai. I wrote an entire book about this. What was given at Sinai was this language of interpretation. Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He—say, think of it this way—He’s sitting, maybe we’ll talk about this more, but the Holy One, blessed be He, is sitting with Moses and learning with him as study partners. I’m describing an aggadah—imagine this were written in the Talmud, and then people would already say that it happened too. But I’m saying it, so I’m describing it metaphorically, literarily. They’re sitting and learning together, and then He says to him: Look, Moses, it says, “You shall fear the Lord your God.” Okay? The word “et” comes to include… no, sorry, not “the word et comes to include”—know that in interpretation you need to include Torah scholars. Okay? Fine? Now there’s this interpretation, and “an eye for an eye” literally, and every verse—He teaches him the plain meaning and the interpretive meaning. Okay? Now Moses comes down and teaches the Jewish people the Torah, the plain meaning, the interpretive meaning, everything he learned. At some point, during the days of mourning for Moses, at the end of the first chapter of Temurah, it says there that 3,000 laws were forgotten, and 1,700 a fortiori inferences were forgotten. Okay? So what do we do now? Othniel ben Kenaz restores them through his dialectic. Not the laws given to Moses at Sinai—those were forgotten, and there’s no way to restore them. But the 1,700 a fortiori inferences, Othniel ben Kenaz restores through his dialectic. What does it mean that he restores them through his dialectic? It means he now tries to understand what the connection is between the plain meaning and the interpretive meaning. Because he did not receive the principles. He received the results. Meaning, you read the verse this way in its plain meaning, and you read it that way in its interpretive meaning. Now I ask: wait a second, but how did it turn out that Torah scholars need to be included? It says, “You shall fear the Lord your God.” The Lord—you need to fear Him, not Torah scholars. So I say, wait, apparently “et” comes to include. Ah, so an interpretive rule was created: “et” comes to include. Apparently from the word “et.” Let’s test that in other places. Maybe in that verse, “Honor your father and your mother,” and we know we have an interpretation from Moses that this includes your older brother and your mother’s husband and all those things. Okay? And then he became convinced that “et” really does come to include, and that’s how the interpretive principle that “et” comes to include was created. By the way, this is documented in the Talmud in Pesachim—Shimon HaAmsuni and Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Akiva, yes, “You shall fear the Lord your God”—it’s explicitly documented there that there was a discussion whether there is such an interpretive principle, whether “et” comes to include. And you see that this principle was not given at Sinai—but the world of interpretation was given at Sinai! We just gradually conceptualize it and create interpretive rules out of it. That’s what’s called the hermeneutic principles, and that’s why it keeps expanding over the years. About Othniel ben Kenaz it says there that what he restored was a fortiori inferences and verbal analogies—two. Hillel has seven. Rabbi Yishmael has thirteen. And Rabbi Yosei HaGelili has thirty-two. And the Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon says there are many more; from the standpoint of the Talmud there are more than thirty-two principles. Not everything appears in the lists. These principles are principles created by human beings as a way of conceptualizing this language called the language of interpretation, which was given at Mount Sinai. Think of it by analogy—a good analogy for the matter—I once heard this from Moshe Koppel. He says: think about a language, a spoken language. When I learn a language, we—how is a language created? When a language was created, nobody said: with the letters beged kefet at the beginning of a word, you need to put a dagesh. That rule didn’t exist when the language was created. Or subject, predicate, direct object, indirect object, all those tricks—that wasn’t there. Language is created naturally. We start speaking, and the community gradually synchronizes, and standards of how to speak are formed, and a language develops. If you ask a person whether there’s beged—where you put a dagesh and where you don’t—he won’t have the slightest idea how to answer you, but he knows that you say “beged” and not “veged.” He knows. It’s just obvious. Ask a child—the child says “beged,” he doesn’t say “veged.” Ask him, why do you say “beged” and not “veged”? Because that’s how I learned, that you say “beged” and not “veged.” He doesn’t say, with beged kefet at the beginning of a word you need to put a dagesh, right? Why not? Because when language is created, it’s created in a totally natural way. Later, people come along and try to extract formal rules out of that language, and then suddenly they say, ah, wait a second, I suddenly see that there’s a rule like this, that with beged kefet at the beginning of a word there’s always this dagesh. So now let’s establish a rule: every word with beged kefet at the beginning of a word gets a dagesh. Okay? “Et,” direct object, indirect object, all those things that I don’t even remember anymore. Fine? So I don’t remember them, and by the way that’s the indication—and I’m speaking fine even though I don’t remember them—because we don’t really use those rules. Those rules are created later. It’s not that the language was created from the rules; the rules were created from the language. The language was created naturally, and the same thing happened in the world of interpretation. The principles are the rules of language, the rules of grammar, of the language of interpretation. Those rules are created after the language already existed. What Moses received at Sinai was the language. Once we forgot, we lost the tradition, we no longer remember what Moses said, we try to reconstruct it.

[Speaker G] So we build hermeneutic principles, we say, ah, there’s a verbal analogy if it’s the same word, an idea—that explains various laws that Moses told me. Ah, if there’s such a rule, then now I can also generate new laws with it, real scientific work, and so on. And that’s how all the hermeneutic principles are created. And the hermeneutic principles are reconstruction. It’s not that the Holy One, blessed be He, says to Moses: by thirteen principles the Torah is expounded—an a fortiori inference, a verbal analogy, a principle derived from one verse, a principle derived from two verses—He gave him Rabbi Yishmael’s list? Never happened. So the hermeneutic principles are not Torah, basically? What? The hermeneutic principles, which we said are a human creation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course it’s Torah! It’s Torah because they describe for you, or conceptualize for you, what was in the Torah that Moses received. I’m just putting it into this—again, embodiment—I’m putting it into this pattern; this is my description of what Moses received. When I translate the Torah into English, is that Torah or not Torah? It’s Torah! It’s Torah written in English. But the contents are the same contents; it’s just described in another language. So it’s Torah. The thirteen hermeneutic principles are a language for describing interpretive inferences; it’s just a way of describing them. Here, I brought an example—maybe this is the time to bring it in—just take a look for a second. That’s why the midrash says that the Torah should have ended with the book of Leviticus. What? There’s some midrash that the Torah should have ended with the book of…

[Speaker B] Leviticus, without Numbers and Deuteronomy.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Torah was given in the book of Leviticus? What does it mean, given in the book of Leviticus?

[Speaker B] It should have ended at the end of the book… ah, okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One second. Ah, here. Computer, it’s not jumping for me. Ah, as long as I can see it.

[Speaker B] God willing they’ll put it on the projector for you, but you need to be able to see. Maybe that too. Second-hand computer.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A computer can allow itself to do things that we would also like to do. Fine? Okay, just to illustrate the point. There’s a Mishnah in Mikvaot. There was once a Jew who did a doctorate in mathematics at the Technion, he did it with Hershkowitz, the former minister, and he worked on Talmudic problems, mathematical problems in the Talmud. So he came to consult with me whether I had sample problems that could be dealt with. So I gave him a few problems; one of them was this problem in the Mishnah in tractate Mikvaot: “A pit full of drawn water, and a cubit-channel enters it and exits from it, remains forever invalid until one calculates that less than three log of the original water remain.” Right, there’s a water pit, forty se’ah, okay? But the water is drawn water, so the pit is invalid as a mikveh. Fine? Now a water channel of non-drawn water passes through the pit, enters and exits, yes? Like the Jordan through the Kinneret. Right? Meaning, the water channel enters and exits the pit at a given rate, a given flow rate. And now the question is, slowly the drawn water in the pit is diluted and replaced by non-drawn water. When can I assume that only three log of drawn water remain in the pit? After how much time? Okay, I can’t distinguish between drawn water and non-drawn water. So the question is: after how much time can I assume it? Now when you look at the commentators, yes, the Raavad in Mei Niddah and other commentators on the Mishnah, you see various calculations; they make approximations, of course—they didn’t have calculus. So they made all kinds of algebraic approximations and got various answers. So I told him, listen, this is a first-order differential equation, for example. It was very amusing. He came back to me afterward and said, listen, we don’t know how to solve this. These are mathematicians—you need physicists to solve this. Meaning, it’s a very simple thing, but you need to do things mathematicians don’t do; physicists do. You divide by the differential or something like that, and you immediately discover the correct equation. So it’s a first-order differential equation, and just so you can see it in front of your eyes, this is an example I’m showing in order to illustrate what I was talking about earlier. I have a page here where I worked this out, here. You can understand, when you look at the commentators there.

[Speaker H] The equation is simple: you check the rate per minute and then divide it by forty se’ah?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, that’s what the medieval authorities (Rishonim) did, but it’s not correct. That’s what you do when you don’t have calculus, fine. Here, I don’t know why this thing opened twice for me. Fine, so look: suppose the flow rate of the channel is P. Let’s enlarge this—how do you enlarge it? Fine. The flow rate of the water channel is P, se’ah per second. The amount of drawn water in the pit at time t is x of t. Okay. The amount of drawn water in the pit at time t equals zero, we know, is forty se’ah, because it started with forty se’ah. That’s it, those are the data, no more data are needed, right? That’s obvious. Now the question is, what do we need to ask? When do we reach three log—when is x of t equal to 3? Right? Three in log, not in se’ah. Fine? This—so here we obviously need to make assumptions; even in calculus you need assumptions, otherwise you get the Navier-Stokes equations. What? Is that fifty percent, three log? No, no, no, it’s a very small fraction of the amount. So you need to make assumptions; the assumption is uniform mixing. Meaning, every portion of water from the channel that enters the pit mixes uniformly throughout it. That’s of course not true, but for a slow flow rate, an adiabatic process, for a slow flow rate it’s okay. Okay? When the flow rate is fast, that’s a big error. When the flow rate is slow, it’s okay. Then I say: the amount of drawn water, the percentage of drawn water in the pit, is x divided by 40, right? That’s the percentage of drawn water in the pit. Now the amount of drawn water leaving the pit is x divided by 40 times P times dt. At this point the mathematicians are supposed to collapse on the floor—you’re not allowed to do this to mathematicians. What is P times dt? We—there are tags—this is Newton’s formulation, not Leibniz’s. So anyway, in short, I’m saying that if this is the percentage of the water leaving the pit, then basically what I’m saying is that dx—the differential equation, okay—and that can be solved. Now after I get to solve it, I have here—by the way I made a mistake here. This says three se’ah, and it should be three log, not three se’ah. You have to be careful with the units. Never mind, but the principle is that I’m basically looking for the time; the solution is this, look, the solution, why is this…

[Speaker J] How did ln of 40 over 3 come out?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here, so I’m saying, the solution to this—this is the differential equation, just for those who know, never mind. This is the differential equation, okay? Its solution is an exponential, right? Where the derivative equals the function. Derivative equals the function—that’s an exponential. Once you have the exponential, you ask yourself what is T for which X is 3? Right? You substitute X = 3, take ln on both sides, 3 over 40, and you get this. Okay? It doesn’t matter, the details of the calculation aren’t important, but it is important to me that you see this in front of your eyes, because now I remove all the text. I remove all the words and leave only the formulas, okay? I had a note like that; I showed it to my friend—a note where I worked out a differential equation and reached the conclusion that the answer is whatever, such-and-such. By the way, the medieval authorities (Rishonim) are wrong here by thousands of percent, and even my result is only an approximate model. Meaning, there’s no chance at all of really solving the problem. So this note, which has no words, only formulas—is that Torah? Apparently yes,

[Speaker K] Apparently yes, it’s the mathematical expression.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s just written mathematically instead of in Hebrew or English, right? So basically, if I now study differential equations in class, am I studying Torah? Or maybe I happen to study this equation, but even if I study another equation it describes another halakhic problem—what difference does it make?

[Speaker L] Wait, but concretely—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What’s the bottom line?

[Speaker L] How much time will pass?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying, it depends on the flow rate; you need to give me the P. Here it’s written—here, the formula is given. Plug in P and you’ll get the… By the way, this still needs to be translated; I suddenly see I made a mistake here. It’s not three se’ah, it’s three log; you need to multiply by how many log there are in a se’ah. How many log are there in a se’ah? Sixty. Log in a se’ah. Right. Instead of sixty log in a se’ah, so instead of three this should be one-twentieth. Meaning, this should be ln of eight thousand. Fine? Anyway, what I’m saying is: look at this page of paper where only the mathematical part is written, without the words, without the words. Apparently that too is Torah. I’m simply describing the Mishnah in Mikvaot in mathematical language, not in Hebrew and not in English—so what? Language is language, like any other language, okay? By the way, I think that’s one of the reasons young children can manage to do a doctorate in mathematics and less so in other fields. Mathematics is a language, but if you have a talent for that language, you don’t need great maturity for it. In other fields you need some maturity before you can really deal with them. Not that they don’t require talent—they do require talent—but it’s a talent that can also exist in a child. Anyway, here I’m a bit uncertain, legally speaking, I’m a bit uncertain. Why? Because in Hebrew or in English, someone who knows English and reads the Mishnah in English understands that the Mishnah in Mikvaot is written here. But someone who knows mathematics and reads this won’t have the slightest idea that this is about a Mishnah in Mikvaot. Meaning, it’s not true that this text is the Mishnah in Mikvaot translated into mathematics—that’s not true. Because the mathematics here does not describe the Mishnah in Mikvaot. It’s like saying, every X is Y, and A is X, therefore A is Y. Now there are arguments like that in the Talmud. Would a piece of paper on which I wrote such an argument be Torah? No. Why not? Because even someone who knows logic and reads it won’t understand that it’s speaking about Torah; it’s not really about Torah. It’s about lots and lots of things, and also about Torah. There are many equivalent problems in many fields, all of which can be solved in this way. As in logic, so too in mathematics: this very problem can be a problem for an engineer, a problem for a halakhic scholar, a problem for all kinds of people who can use the same page, the exact same formulas, to solve their problem. So in my opinion this is not really a translation of Torah into mathematics. In the sense that the page itself is not considered Torah. You can’t relate to that page as Torah. In contrast, a page on which this Mishnah is written in English would indeed be Torah. Because there, someone who knows English understands that he is reading the Mishnah. Fine? So that’s just a side note. What mattered to me was the stage before the side note. The stage where I say: look, basically what you see here—even when you see the formulas—what you see here is the Mishnah in mathematical language, that’s all. Okay.

[Speaker B] And it is not Torah.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? I’m claiming in parentheses that since the mathematical description does not have a one-to-one relation to the source, unlike the English description, which does have a one-to-one relation to the source, then this would not be Torah. So this would not be Torah. But on the conceptual level, this too is Torah—it’s exactly the same thing, just in another language. As far as I’m concerned, when I read this page I am studying Torah. Because for me, P is the flow rate in Mikvaot, and I’m doing a halakhic calculation here. So for me this is Torah. The page as such—and I’ll later talk about Torah in the person and Torah in the object—but the page as such is not Torah, because it doesn’t prove itself from within. Meaning, not everyone who reads the page understands that what is written here is actually a Mishnah, even if he’s a mathematician, even if he knows how to read mathematical formulas. Okay. But that’s just a legal side note. In terms of the idea, I want to claim that this is Torah. It is Torah because I’ve simply translated it into mathematical language. Now, you understand that this same mathematical idea could have been embedded somewhere else. Say that from God’s perspective, mathematics is actually the Torah He wants to teach. And the Mishnah in Mikvaot is the medium through which He wants to teach us differential equations. Fine? Just for the sake of the example. Okay. So you understand that He could also have taught us this through engineering problems of one kind or another—it doesn’t matter. If Torah is that same abstract idea which merely finds expression in this concrete medium, then it can find expression in other media too—media with a vav and kaf, yes? Others. Therefore I think this nicely demonstrates the idea of an abstract thing that finds expression through a concrete medium. And once it’s an abstract thing, that very same expression can appear in a completely different concrete medium. What? Ah, okay.

[Speaker I] Mathematics is…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wisdom, but it is not Torah.

[Speaker I] Right, that’s a different discussion.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] About that—we’ll get there too. Later on I’ll try to define Torah, and I said there’s Torah in the person and Torah in the object. That’s our topic: what is Torah? I’m building this step by step. Okay. So one more note on this translation. In short, what comes out is that we have a first embodiment of abstract things within a world of concepts and principles from our world—oxen, parents, thieves, and so on. And there is an embodiment of the ideas into a particular language. The second embodiment. Which is a certain formulation that we chose. God could have chosen another formulation. The question is about the relation between the ideas and their linguistic formulation. There, apparently, there is no one-to-one relation, right? You can write it in English, you can also write it in Hebrew in a different formulation. It’s a big question whether that’s true. Meaning, it may be that this formulation is not accidental. It’s not that you could have written “honor dad and mom too.” No—“Honor your father and your mother” is a very precise formulation, in which every letter is there for a good reason. That is a question about which, apparently, the medieval authorities (Rishonim) disagreed. Rabbi HaNazir writes in Kol HaNevuah, section 25 in the second essay, I think, that he discusses this matter there and brings a dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad and Nachmanides. Maimonides asks: why is the holy tongue called the holy tongue? So he says: because there are no words in it for the reproductive organs. Right? There are no words in the holy tongue that describe the sexual organs, the reproductive organs. It is a language that preserves holiness, modesty, something like that. Okay. And Nachmanides and the Raavad disagree with him, and they say: what do you mean? That’s just a technical point. This language is called the holy tongue because it has some property that other languages do not have. Other languages are conventional languages. Meaning, one could have chosen one word or another, one syntax or another. It’s a matter of convention. We agree on some accepted syntax, we agree that this thing is called a lectern. We could also have called it “yakum purkan,” it makes no difference. Meaning, once we decide that that’s what it’s called, then that’s what it’s called; it has no practical significance. Therefore all these things are really arbitrary, conventional matters. And their claim—obviously because of their closeness to Kabbalah—is that in the holy tongue it is not conventional; it is essential. Meaning, the fact that this thing is called a lectern, or that this thing is called a table, it could not have been called something else. Because shin-lamed-het-nun—shulchan, table… is connected in some way to this thing. Meaning, it’s not just that this combination of letters was chosen, because the letters are the things with which the world was created, like Sefer Yetzirah, and things like that. I’m not going into all that Pythagoreanism right now, but the claim is that the language is not a conventional language. Therefore it is called the holy tongue. The holy tongue in the sense that it is a precise and essential language, not a conventionalist language, meaning not a language that is the result of agreement. Okay? So that is the meaning of the holy tongue. And what does that actually mean? One second—it means for our purposes that according to Maimonides, in principle, you can write the Torah in English or in another Hebrew formulation, it makes no difference, as long as you say exactly what you mean. Okay? Therefore there is no more holiness in this than in that. He shows this, by the way, because according to Maimonides’ own view, the Shema may be recited in any language. Maimonides writes that one may recite the Shema in any language—yes, that’s the Mishnah in Sotah at the beginning of the last chapter, it may be recited in any language. So Maimonides says: provided that one articulates its letters precisely. The Raavad asks against him: all languages are merely translations, and who is the person who can be exacting about his translation? To be precise with the letters of English? Suppose you translate it into English, so make sure to pronounce every H or every, I don’t know, S, so none of it gets lost. What holiness is there in this formulation? You could have written it differently; the main thing is that people understand what you mean. The language has no essential significance. Now, if it expresses what it is meant to express, then everything is fine—speak in slang. Right? Substitute terms and abbreviated forms, like at the beginning of Nedarim. It makes no difference at all. So what does it mean to articulate its letters precisely? And the Raavad assumes that in the holy tongue one can articulate its letters precisely, and in other languages not—why? Because the holy tongue is essential. You have to articulate its letters precisely not in order to make the content unambiguous, but because the formulation itself has meaning; the formulation itself has holiness, not only the things expressed through it, not only the contents that this formulation conveys, but the formulation itself has some significance. And that does not exist in English. In English, holiness belongs to the contents you express, but the form of the formulation, the words you chose or the sentence structure you chose, really doesn’t matter at all—however you want. Therefore there is no point in articulating the letters precisely when you say the Shema in English. Okay? Maimonides holds that no, apparently according to Maimonides, articulating the letters precisely simply means respect for the text. It’s not really in order to sharpen the content, but to show that you are relating to it respectfully, that you’re not playing slang games here. Okay? You’re not swallowing letters, you’re really saying everything that needs to be said, and then you can do that in English and in Hebrew, because you need to show an attitude of respect toward this text. That’s all. And if that’s so, then there is no difference between Hebrew and English. Fine? So there are two different conceptions here regarding the difference between the holy tongue—and the holy tongue is not Hebrew, of course; the holy tongue is biblical Hebrew. Okay? The Hebrew of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda is something else. So there are two conceptions about the difference between the holy tongue and other languages: are they conventional and this one essential, or not, and everything is conventional—that’s how Maimonides understood it. And for our purposes this is very important for how we understand the second embodiment. Because after we’ve decided that the Torah tells us that we need to honor parents, or that it is forbidden to eat pork, or that we need to observe the Sabbath, or impurity and purity, all kinds of things like that, now the question is how to formulate it. From Maimonides’ perspective, you could formulate it however you want, as long as it expresses exactly—one second—as long as it accurately expresses what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to express. Fine? He can say, write it in English too. The Raavad and Nachmanides would argue: no, it cannot be written in any other language. It cannot. Meaning, only in the holy tongue, because the holy tongue is an essential expression and not merely a conventional one of the contents you are trying to express. And in another language it would be a conventional expression, and therefore there is nothing to be precise about in the letters, because there is no correct formulation and incorrect formulation as long as it is faithful to the content.

[Speaker B] The holy tongue—what was there before the giving of the Torah? What did the children of Israel speak?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have no idea. It could be that they spoke another language. The question is how they learned the holy tongue in one day. Fine, maybe Moses taught them that too together with the Torah—if the Torah itself was written in the holy tongue at all; even that is not simple.

[Speaker B] Even the script—it’s also not simple to say. Paleo-Hebrew script and Assyrian script, nothing is simple. According to the Raavad and Nachmanides, who say that “table” has significance, did that start with the Torah or before that?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It probably started with the Torah. I don’t know whether they knew it before; maybe from Adam, or someone received it from the Holy One, blessed be He. I have no idea. These are all things that I don’t think anyone really has a way of knowing historically what was there. I’m presenting conceptual positions here. What it means historically—I don’t know. So what I’m basically saying is that this dispute, what stands behind it, concerns the second embodiment. When the ideas are embodied in a particular formulation, does the formulation itself have to be regarded as holy, every letter there? That’s usually how people understand it. They talk that way because that’s how the formulation appears—but don’t press me on every letter and every little crown on a yod. Okay? And basically what lies behind it is that same dispute. Right? Because Rabbi Yishmael says the Torah is just a formulation of the ideas; you could also have formulated them in English. Rabbi Akiva says: what are you talking about? If they chose a yod here rather than a vav, and it has two little crowns or three little crowns, that means it says something. You have to infer something from it, interpret something from it. So again, he is more in the position of the Raavad and Nachmanides. Meaning, he understands that the formulation is precise rather than conventional. You know that in philosophy of language, in analytic philosophy, they often distinguish between names and descriptions. There is a 1905 article by Bertrand Russell, one of the most famous articles in the history of philosophy, and in a certain sense you can say it opened the era of analytic philosophy. That was Einstein’s miracle year too; he published three or four articles there, each one of which opened a new world in physics. So Bertrand Russell wrote an article called “On Denoting.” And he said that there are two possibilities for referring to things. For example, I want to describe Ben-Gurion. It is correct to say David Ben-Gurion, by his name. Everyone understands whom I’m talking about. Right? That’s one way of indicating this person, David Ben-Gurion. Another way is to say the first prime minister of the State of Israel. It’s the same person. Right? That too is David Ben-Gurion. What is the difference between these two forms? When you use a name, you are not saying anything about him. Right? You are only—among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) this is called a handle—it’s some sort of grip by which to seize him. He has a name, so that’s a way of referring to him. Therefore people are given names so they can be called, so one can refer to them; they have a name. Because otherwise you would have to point at him. Say this—I mean him. If you want to translate that into written text or spoken verbal text, you need to use a word. So instead of pointing, I define a word; this is a convention. Okay? So that’s how I point verbally. That’s a name. But when I give a description—the man sitting here wearing a blue jacket with a white stripe—that’s not a name, it’s a description. Why? Because a name cannot be evaluated in terms of true or false. There is no true name and false name. The name we chose is your name—it’s conventional. Right? A description is not conventional. If you are not wearing such a jacket and I say that you are, then I made a mistake or I lied. It’s not true. Meaning, reference by description can be correct or incorrect. Reference by name cannot be correct or incorrect. Either you refer or you don’t refer. The name is arbitrary; I could have chosen any other name. There’s an interesting discussion in the Ramak, an interesting discussion about Isaac. He discusses names there, and that names are conventional. Then he says: but Isaac is called that because Sarah laughed. So it comes out that even his name is really a description, not a name. It’s the man whose mother laughed when she was informed of his birth. Right? That’s really what I’m saying. But that is already reference by description and not reference by name. In analytic philosophy they bring an example for these things, for example the city name Dartmouth. Dartmouth is the city located at the mouth of the River Dart. There’s a river called Dart, Dart-mouth, the mouth or estuary of the river, so the city was located there. Now at some point the river was diverted; it’s no longer there. The city is still called Dartmouth. But now the name has lost its descriptive content. Meaning, it is still its name; when I say Dartmouth, you know which city I’m talking about, but now it is no longer a description, it’s a name. Meaning, this name was born out of a description of that city. Once it became a name, it is no longer dependent on whether the description is correct or not. The description is already incorrect, and I don’t care; the name remains. So Isaac too is a name, not a description. There’s an inspiration for why I chose that name, because it describes a certain situation that happened with his mother. Okay? But that is only the inspiration for choosing the name. Meaning, in the end, after I turned it into a name, Isaac is his name. And now it is no longer dependent—if it turns out to me that Sarah didn’t laugh, then she didn’t laugh, so what? He is still called Isaac. I was only mistaken about the inspiration I had when I chose the name Isaac. So what? It doesn’t matter. Meaning, the linguistic and logical function of a name is fundamentally different from the linguistic and logical function of a description. These are two types of reference. And that’s the subject of Bertrand Russell’s article there. Now for our purposes, when I speak, say, about the concept—when I describe something by means of description, I say the first prime minister of the State of Israel. That is reference by description to the person. To say David Ben-Gurion is reference by name. But even when I use reference by description, the words I use in the description are names. First, prime minister, of, state, Israel. Each such word is a word in the language. Instead of “of” I would say in English “of.” “Of the State of Israel,” okay? So the word I use is a name. Its linguistic function is the description. When I say “the first prime minister of the State of Israel,” I mean the meaning of the words, not the words themselves. The words themselves are names. You could have chosen another word to describe what we describe with the word “head.” You could have called it “chair.” Fine, so what we call “head” would have been called “chair.” It makes no difference. In that sense it functions like a name. When I speak about description, I’m speaking about description through the content of the things, okay? Now the claim of Nachmanides and the Raavad is that even the words—not only the content of the words—are also essential. When you say Isaac, when you call this man Isaac, if it is in the holy tongue, or when you call this concept “head” and not “chair,” if it is in the holy tongue, then it means that you could not have called it “chair.” It is not conventional, it is essential. A resh, aleph, shin had to appear there. It had to be there. Otherwise it would not describe the thing correctly. Meaning, names become descriptions in the holy tongue. That is basically the meaning of the matter, the logical or linguistic meaning of it. And therefore the second embodiment, the second embodiment I’m talking about, according to Nachmanides and the Raavad, is an embodiment that is not trivial, not arbitrary. According to Maimonides, the Torah could have been given in English, but they chose to give it in Hebrew, if indeed it was given in Hebrew at all. But according to the Raavad and Nachmanides, it cannot be given in any other language. And that means that the formulation we have before us now—and now I’m getting to what you said—the formulation we have before us, what we know as “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” “Honor your father and your mother,” and so on, has essential holiness. Meaning, if you change a letter there, then the whole thing is no longer this; it’s something else. Something else. Even though if you change the letter, I still read the same thing, I still understand what is written there, it changes nothing. It’s like using slang. Right, so I may understand the content, but the formulation has some independent status. And to this point we’ll return, because it is very important for what follows, when we try to define more generally what Torah is and understand its different parts and so on. This distinction I just made will be very important. But I’ll get to that later.

[Speaker M] It sounds mystical. What? It sounds mystical. Let’s call it that—it could be…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can call it mysticism if you want, but I’m not sure that’s the right use of the word mysticism.

[Speaker M] Like, the hermeneutics of it, the whole language and interpretations…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question is how you define mysticism. Look, I once gave a series of lectures on this—what is mysticism. Say, in the world of Kabbalah, you use a conceptual system like lovingkindness, eternity, glory, splendor, the world of emanation, all the sefirot, partzufim, and all sorts of things of that type, where the concepts as such are not drawn from our world; we don’t understand them. We know there is such a thing called the sefirah of Hod or the partzuf of Father and the partzuf of Mother, but these are not things drawn from our world, and therefore I call that mysticism. Now in this context, when Nachmanides and the Raavad explain to you why the word “head” is written resh-aleph-shin, they can explain it to you—it can be in the language of our world. Because resh is built in such-and-such a way and aleph is built in such-and-such a way, so they exactly—so they represent the word “head” in some way. I’m just throwing that out there.

[Speaker E] And then Nachmanides defines the Torah as black fire on white fire—you know, that’s already the Sages. Yes, but he uses it. But I—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying that you can call an explanation of that type mysticism if you want, but it’s not mysticism in the same sense as in Kabbalah. Because in Kabbalah you use concepts you don’t understand; Kabbalah tells you that those concepts exist. Here everything is understandable, there’s no problem. The shape of the letter—and I’ll show you why “head” really has to be described specifically with those letters. So I’m not sure you can call that mysticism, but decide for yourself.

[Speaker N] Even where there isn’t a letter, that too has meaning.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, whatever—again, that’s not important for our purposes. What matters for our purposes is the question whether—you asked whether this should be called mysticism. You can call it mysticism if you want, but I’m not sure I would call it mysticism. Kabbalah I would be more inclined to call mysticism, because it uses a conceptual world; here all the concepts are known, everything is fine. You just have to assume that the structure of the letter is supposed to be connected somehow to the object it describes. But once you make that assumption, then there’s no problem—the explanation is entirely rational. Rational at its core. There are some explanations here and there. No, there isn’t a whole dictionary for all the words. But yes, there are explanations here and there for why certain words are built from these letters specifically and not from those letters.

[Speaker F] Dog—faithful…

[Speaker O] To its owner, like “aleph,” not “dog” in English. What does koach, what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And all kinds of wordplay like that—many people relate to them not as games but as explanations, as descriptions. Fine. Fine, but that’s for later. What I want to do now—what does “ukimta” mean in English?

[Speaker F] What does it mean, with a root?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand—what root?

[Speaker F] The root of a word—it’s always three letters.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, they also rely on roots. In those explanations, of course, they also depend on roots. And I could generate explanations like that in principle in English too. You don’t have to have roots for explanations like that.

[Speaker P] English also has roots; its root is Latin, you can find the origin of the word.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know exactly. It could be, yes. But it doesn’t matter. I’m saying again—what difference does it make? It doesn’t matter, it’s… Well, no—again, it may be that the use of the root is done differently there, but that doesn’t mean there are no roots there. Maybe there are. I don’t know exactly.

[Speaker F] And what difference does it make, really?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying—therefore I’m saying—that it doesn’t really matter. From my perspective, what it matters for is understanding what Torah is. Meaning, the question is whether Torah is this particular formulation, or whether this formulation is incidental and what matters is the ideas that the formulation expresses, or whether even that is not Torah, but rather the abstract things that, once clothed, become these ideas. Okay? That’s really the question. Now I want to demonstrate this a little. He’s doing something to me here, this guy’s torturing me. Okay. Now I want to illustrate this principle of clothing. These are general introductions, but I’m already extending some arms here toward the topics we’ll clarify later on. I want to talk a little about the concept of ukimta. It looks like a jump to somewhere else, but you’ll see that behind it there’s really a fundamental conception of what Torah is, one that connects to what we’ve been discussing until now. Now, what actually is ukimta? So ukimta—yes, anyone who studies Talmud knows these things. We have a Mishnah, we raise some difficulty against it, and then we say: no, no, this Mishnah is not dealing with such a case, but with another case. Or not with the general case, but with a specific one. Okay? Now, in the Mishnah itself that’s not written. Meaning, we say that because of the difficulty. But it’s not really written in the Mishnah. And so this often bothers people: what justifies doing such a thing? Where does this come from? The Mishnah didn’t really mean that—if it had meant it, it would have said so. You say: if someone takes a bill of divorce and places it in the hand of the woman’s sleeping slave, then she is divorced. The Talmud asks: but what do you mean? That’s an unguarded domain. So it answers: yes, we’re talking about a slave who is bound, sleeping, and lame as well, okay? One they say has three angels over him. So when it says that the woman is divorced, it means a slave who is bound and sleeping. If it’s a bound and sleeping slave, then why didn’t you say it was a bound slave? You say “a slave,” you put it in the slave’s hand, in his hand. Why don’t you say he’s bound and sleeping? Clearly you’re… this interpretation doesn’t really mean that that was the intention of the author of the statement, or of the Mishnah, or in this case an amoraic statement. What? And this happens in the Talmud. And ukimta bothers a lot of people, because it looks like a lack of intellectual honesty. You run into some difficulty, and you say: okay, the Mishnah doesn’t mean that, it means this in general. And now everything is fine, everything is aligned. But the Mishnah doesn’t say that, it says something else. So how—“something is missing and the text is broken,” and there are all sorts of tricks we insert into Mishnayot. The Vilna Gaon addresses this in several places, and he says: just as we make derash on the Torah, we make derash on the Mishnayot. Mishnayot too have derash. Okay? Fine, but Mishnayot are not Torah. Meaning, it’s hard to accept that Rabbi intended to hide all sorts of layers of interpretation inside the wording of his Mishnah. Okay? So there really are all sorts of strange explanations for what justifies the concept of ukimta. I once saw an article by David Henshke here from the department—the department of Talmud—in which he wrote, basically in the name of the Vilna Gaon and the Vilna Gaon’s students, that ukimta is a polite way of disagreeing with the Tannaim. Disagreeing with them. Disagreeing with them—you don’t really mean that the Tanna said this, but we’re committed to the Mishnah, so the Mishnah is dealing with a bound and sleeping slave. Okay? I’m putting this a bit differently, but that’s basically what he said. And I think many people think that that really is what ukimta means. I found that very hard to accept—not because of the heresy in it, but because I don’t agree with it logically. I don’t agree with it logically because if you really can disagree with Tannaim, then forget the politeness. So why, when they bring a Mishnah against you, is that knockout if I’m an Amora? Right? “A refutation”—that’s it, because there’s a Mishnah against you. What’s the problem? I disagree with the Mishnah. Oh, I didn’t manage to find an elegant, polite way to do it with an ukimta? First, I can always find a way to do that, no problem. And second, even if not—if I have permission to disagree with Tannaim, then I have permission to disagree with Tannaim. What difference does politeness make? Because I didn’t find a polite way, my view is rejected? Etiquette and manners? Something here is not logical. After all, the assumption throughout the Talmud is that Amoraim do not disagree with Tannaim. Meaning, if there’s a tannaitic source against you, you’re finished—you lost the argument. Right? So it’s hard to accept. No, those are exceptions. Exceptions prove the rule, yes. But then if I say that this whole story is basically disagreeing with Tannaim in a polite way, it just doesn’t hold water. It’s not plausible.

[Speaker F] Maybe subconsciously? The subconscious doesn’t interest me; I’m asking what the conscious justification is.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The subconscious belongs on the psychologist’s couch.

[Speaker F] They tried, as it were, to justify the Jewish law.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying: on the psychologist’s couch, let him talk about his subcon—

[Speaker F] —scious. I’m asking—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] what the justification is, what his argument is—

[Speaker F] —for justifying it. But maybe—but there is a Mishnah against him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s in singular cases of…

[Speaker F] But does the Mishnah really speak about singular cases? That’s what he thinks.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You think he really thinks that? Okay, so I’m asking what the justification is. Then why didn’t the Mishnah say so? It just didn’t—

[Speaker F] —go down to that level of resolution.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so you’re suggesting an explanation. Fine, leave justification aside—you’re suggesting an explanation. Basically, ukimta claims that the Mishnah was terse and didn’t go into those resolutions. That’s very difficult. For example, I’ll give you the case of the bound and sleeping slave—that’s a good example. What did it abbreviate? It misleads me halakhically.

[Speaker F] It didn’t go through all the cases.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean it didn’t go through them? Now I’m going to place a bill of divorce in the hand of a slave who isn’t sleeping, and I’ll think the woman is divorced, when in fact she’s still a married woman—you’re causing me to stumble into a forbidden sexual prohibition. That’s why we came… the Talmud came to explain.

[Speaker F] The Talmud came, yes—but what about the Mishnah?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The author of the Mishnah—what, he didn’t want to make sure I wouldn’t make a mistake involving the prohibition of a married woman? Only the Talmud suddenly decided to straighten my life out? Or the Mishnah at the beginning of Beitzah, where it says “an egg laid on a Jewish holiday”—the Talmud says: no, this is an egg laid on a Jewish holiday that follows the Sabbath. Well then, why didn’t the Mishnah say “a Jewish holiday following the Sabbath”?

[Speaker F] The Mishnah came to explain the Torah, and it only came as, like… why did it need to?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not claiming that interpretation isn’t needed. I’m saying interpretation is needed—but give the right interpretation, don’t leave it in a form that confuses me. I didn’t say interpretations aren’t needed; of course they are. But give me… I’m not arguing with the Talmud’s interpretations of the Mishnah. I’m arguing with the Talmud’s illogical interpretations of the Mishnah. Okay? Ukimta seems, at first glance, to be an illogical interpretation. And there are various opinions. It could be that the Mishnah was written that way because in the old days they set the Mishnayot to melody—that’s what the author of Tiferet Yisrael says. In order to remember the Mishnayot, since they were transmitted orally, they were set to tune, and whatever fit the meter of the song, of the melody, that’s how they wrote it. That’s why they didn’t add words even though really they should have. Fine—whoever buys that line, good health to him. In short, what I’m saying is: the more strained the explanations are, the more you understand the size of the difficulty. Meaning, you need such strained explanations because there really is something here that looks very problematic. I had an argument with my son about this when he was a yeshiva student. We argued about this issue of ukimtot, and during the argument I showed him that he was making an ukimta. He made some claim, I asked him a question, and he said, no, no, I meant the claim this way and not that way—meaning, he made an ukimta. I said: ah, notice, you’re making an ukimta here. And then it turns out that ukimta is something much more reasonable than we think, and I want to try to explain this—why it really is like that.

[Speaker C] In a certain sense, is it a way of explaining a Mishnah in a particular aspect if it doesn’t fit for you with the text? That’s the difficulty.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now I’m going to suggest an explanation for why I think it does fit. Meaning, that it isn’t difficult. Okay? But that is basically the difficulty. Yes, a lot of times you know that in a chavruta someone says something, and the other says, “You’re making ukimtot on me”—meaning, you’re talking nonsense, basically. That’s really what he means to say: spare me the ukimtot, talk to me plainly, explain the Mishnah. But to understand this, I want to take… really, a few examples that will put this into a world of more concrete concepts. Does anyone want an example? Let’s go. Ashkenazi. An example that worries that usually your help comes from the electric company and not from above. And that’s true not only here. Anyway, so the Talmud in Gittin says as follows: Rava said, if he wrote her a bill of divorce and placed it in the hand of her sleeping slave, and the slave guards it, this is a valid bill of divorce. If the slave is awake, it is not a valid bill of divorce, because it is then like a guarded courtyard not with her knowledge. So the Talmud says: a sleeping slave that guards it—this is a valid bill of divorce? Why? I’m skipping part here, but it doesn’t matter, I’m only reading the relevant parts of the Talmud—this is from an article of mine, so… okay. A sleeping slave that guards it—this is a valid bill of divorce? Why? It is a moving courtyard, and a moving courtyard does not acquire. After all, this is a moving courtyard; the slave serves as a courtyard, but he is actually a being that moves. Okay? Even if he’s sleeping, it’s a moving courtyard, because he can wake up and walk. So it doesn’t matter that he’s sleeping. The Talmud knows he’s sleeping. Okay? By the way, there are parallel passages where it doesn’t even say he’s sleeping. But here it says he’s sleeping. Fine? And still it’s a moving courtyard. The Talmud says: and if you would say that sleeping is different—after all, we’re talking about a sleeping one. But didn’t Rava say: anything that if it were walking would not acquire, even when standing or sitting does not acquire? Meaning: if by its essence it is a moving creature, I don’t care whether right now it’s not moving, or even whether right now it’s asleep. The Talmud says: that doesn’t matter. A courtyard that is moving in its essence cannot acquire. And this slave is supposed to acquire the bill of divorce—when I place the bill in the slave’s hand, he is supposed to acquire it. Fine? So the Talmud says: and the Jewish law is in the case of a bound slave. The slave was tied up.

[Speaker B] Meaning, not moving.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And Rava apparently just forgot to tell us that. Fine? Maybe he wanted to save a word, I don’t know exactly. Why don’t you say it, right? Rava said: if he wrote her a bill of divorce and placed it in the hand of her sleeping, bound slave, and the slave guards it, this is a valid bill of divorce. Fine? Why don’t you add the word “bound”? Everything would be fine—you would have saved us half a page of Talmud. Why don’t you write that? Since you didn’t write it, apparently you didn’t mean a bound slave. So what does the Talmud mean by “bound”? By the way, here it really says “and the Jewish law is in the case of a bound slave”; it doesn’t say “what are we dealing with here? A bound slave.” “And the Jewish law is in the case of a bound slave” could actually mean disagreeing with Rava. Rava is not speaking about a bound slave. But that’s not right, because we know that as a matter of Jewish law a moving courtyard does not acquire. So I say: as a matter of Jewish law I rule like Rava only when the slave is bound. I’m not claiming that Rava himself spoke about a bound slave. Therefore here it’s not completely clear whether this is an ukimta. Fine?

[Speaker D] And when Rava is contradicted by Rava, because Rava says anything that is moving does not acquire, and he’s the one who said the first statement.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe you could say these are two Amoraim according to Rava; we have explanations of that sort too. But I’m saying—that’s why I’m not entirely sure that here we’re dealing with an ukimta. But this is one example. Let’s say we interpret it as really being about Rava himself. Okay? Second example: the Mishnah in Beitzah that I mentioned earlier—“An egg laid on a Jewish holiday: Beit Shammai say it may be eaten, and Beit Hillel say it may not be eaten.” So the Talmud says: yes, how is that? An egg for raising eggs? A hen intended for laying eggs? A hen intended for eating? There are discussions here about the laws of muktzeh; there are various questions about how to understand this dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel. One of the ukimtot that appears there on page 2b is this: rather, Rava said, actually it’s dealing with a hen intended for eating. Acquires? Yes. The hen is ready. And we are dealing with a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath. And the issue is preparation. And Rava holds that any egg laid today was fully formed yesterday.

[Speaker B] That—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] means that we’re really dealing with a Jewish holiday after Sabbath, on Sunday. Any holiday that falls on Sunday—say Passover falls on Sunday. Not both the first and last days, but the first day can. Fine? And the egg was laid on the holiday, on Sunday, on Passover. And since this is after Sabbath, it’s forbidden to eat it. Why? Because the assumption is—Rava holds, as a factual assumption—that any egg laid today was completed the day before. The egg developed, yes, was finished the previous day. So if it was laid on Sunday, it was completed on Sabbath. It turns out, then, that Sabbath prepared this egg in honor of Passover, and therefore it is forbidden. We make an ukimta that the Mishnah is not speaking about an ordinary holiday, but about a holiday after Sabbath. Meaning that on an ordinary holiday it is permitted. But it says that an egg laid on a holiday may not be eaten, right? That’s what we’re talking about. It doesn’t say this is a holiday after Sabbath. So the Mishnah is misleading us, basically. If I read the Mishnah without the Talmud, I say: fine, an egg laid on a holiday may not be eaten—it makes no difference whether it’s a holiday after Sabbath or not after Sabbath. Then the Talmud comes and says: no, no, no, what are we dealing with here? A holiday after Sabbath. They make an ukimta. On an ordinary holiday it’s permitted; on a holiday after Sabbath it’s forbidden. Later on, by the way, even on an ordinary holiday it’s some rabbinic decree, but that doesn’t matter right now. At least for now, we’re dealing with an ukimta. Third example: the Mishnah at the beginning of tractate Pesachim, at the beginning of chapter two of Pesachim: “Throughout the time that it is permitted to eat, one may feed it to domesticated animals, wild animals, and birds, and one may sell it to a gentile. Throughout the time that it is permitted to eat leavened food, one may feed it to domesticated animals, wild animals, and birds, sell it to a gentile, and one may derive benefit from it. Once its time has passed, it is forbidden to derive benefit from it.” The Talmud asks: “And one may derive benefit from it”? That’s obvious. Right—leavened food on Hanukkah is permitted for benefit. Okay, thank you very much. It’s not Passover—what’s the novelty? The Talmud says: no, it is necessary—for a case where he charred it before its prohibited time. Meaning, he charred the Passover—sorry, the leavened food—while it was still in the permitted time, and now you come to eat it afterward, during the prohibited time. The charring took place during the permitted time. When it says that within its time it is permitted for benefit, it means it was charred within its time, but you are coming to eat it after its time. Since it was charred within its time—that is, before the time of prohibition—then it is permitted to eat it after the time of prohibition. What does “charred” mean? Burned it. Yes, if you burn it after the time of prohibition, it’s forbidden to eat it after the time of prohibition. If you burn it before the time of prohibition, and you want to eat your toast afterward, after the time of prohibition, you can eat it. Meaning, it’s permitted to eat toast on Passover. Okay? So long as you prepared it on the eve of Passover before the prohibited time. That’s what it says here. As a matter of Jewish law, by the way, this is ruled as law. It just has to be significantly charred. But yes, it’s permitted to eat charred toast, well-done toast, on Passover—as long as the toast was made before the festival. But if the toast was made during the festival, that same well-done toast, which also isn’t leavened food, if it was made during the festival it is forbidden to eat. This is not a statement that charred toast is not leavened food—understand. It is not being said here that charred toast is not leavened food. Because if that were the point, then why should I care whether it was charred after the time? It’s still charred toast—it’s not leavened food. It was, but I’m eating it charred. I’m eating it charred. If charred means it’s not leavened food, then it’s not leavened food. But if I charred it… from the moment the time of prohibition began… we’ll still see this—maybe one could understand it that way. So here again an ukimta has been made. They tell you that it is permitted to eat before the prohibited time. What are you talking about? It’s not speaking at all about before the prohibited time; it’s speaking about after the prohibited time. The charring took place before the prohibited time. It’s really talking about something charred, and there isn’t even a hint that it’s speaking about something charred. Not only that, but the charring took place before the prohibited time. So this is really a key point missing from the text. Meaning, you’re telling me that “before the prohibited time” doesn’t refer to the eating, but to the charring. That’s already a bad ukimta, not just any ukimta. Because not only are you inserting another element here, but the element that appears in the text isn’t even what’s being discussed. The eating is actually after the time of prohibition. What was before the prohibited time is the charring, which doesn’t appear in the Mishnah at all. So something here is not logical. You’re playing with these Mishnayot like plasticine. Okay, so what did the Mishnah mean? Did the Mishnah really mean that? Or are you disagreeing politely with the Mishnah? How should we understand this? So at first glance it really seems that this is politely disagreeing with the Mishnah—you don’t really agree with the Mishnah. As we saw with Rava, “the Jewish law is in the case of a bound slave,” where maybe we’re really disagreeing with Rava, just as we make an ukimta in Rava. Again—unless both statements are Rava’s, and then it’s more problematic. But in principle—if we really can’t find an explanation for this difficulty, then it would have to be that in other places too we are disagreeing with the Mishnah rather than explaining the Mishnah. Now I want to explain something about this difficulty that will sharpen it further, and with that maybe I’ll stop; we’ll get to the solution next time. Let’s look for a moment at the Torah. In the Torah too we make these kinds of interpretations, right? “An eye for an eye” means monetary compensation. A kind of ukimta, right? They tell me: why does it mean money? There are various difficulties in the plain meaning. There’s a very popular game, especially in Gush and among Bible students, to say that there are serious difficulties in reading the plain meaning, and therefore you have to interpret it as referring to money and not literally taking out an eye. Now let’s say for the sake of discussion that the difficulties in the plain meaning are indeed difficult. If it’s speaking of a literal eye, all sorts of difficulties arise in the plain sense. Fine.

[Speaker B] A literal eye—one person’s eye is larger, another’s eye is smaller—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] how are you going to do that?

[Speaker B] The Talmud brings a verbal analogy.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a bit different. But let’s leave that aside for the moment—I don’t want to get into it; it’s only an example. So let’s say you showed me the difficulties in why one cannot interpret “eye” literally, and that one has to say it means money. Okay? And now I ask a different question. You convinced me that it can’t be interpreted literally. Now I ask about the author of the Torah. He really wanted to tell me that it means money in place of an eye, right? So why didn’t he write that? Meaning, that’s a different question. One question is: look, if you interpret “an eye for an eye” literally, it isn’t logical, there are difficulties, I’m forced to interpret it non-literally. So you solved the difficulties for me, the textual difficulties. But one difficulty remains, and you also have to answer that. If God really meant monetary compensation, then why didn’t He write “money for an eye”? “He shall surely pay, the one who puts out an eye, for the eye.” Fine?

[Speaker C] Maybe He meant an eye. In that period they used to gouge out eyes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I—

[Speaker C] I’m saying, according to the course of history, it changed.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If it changed, then I ask: what do the people of later generations say? Are they disagreeing with God? God wrote in the Torah “an eye for an eye.” So they say: fine, the Torah became outdated. Reform. The Torah became outdated; today there’s a new era, today we take money. Or are they proposing an explanation of the Torah itself? Usually that’s how we understand it. They claim that in the Torah itself you have to read “money” and not “eye.” So fine, you convinced me that there are difficulties when you read “eye” literally. But there is a certain difficulty that you still have to answer for me: if that’s what God meant, why didn’t He write it? Now you have to understand that this is a disease among all explainers of derash. Because all explainers of derash basically tell you—they explain why the plain meaning is difficult and why the verse can’t be read literally. That’s how derashot are explained. Right? You explain derashot by saying the plain meaning is not its literal meaning, because there are difficulties in the simple reading, therefore you need to read it in a midrashic way. But they usually do not explain: if this is the correct reading and this is what they wanted to tell me, why didn’t they write it? Why leave it in another plane of derash, which I’ll have to reach only because there are difficulties in the plain sense? You write a plain sense that is difficult, then it will be difficult for me, and I’ll understand that you mean the derash—instead of just writing the derash directly and everything would be fine. Write “money for an eye,” and that’s it. Almost no one answers this question. By the way, Henshke in an article does answer it. In another article Henshke tries to answer this question. Maybe we’ll get to that later.

[Speaker C] I was in Henshke’s class on this.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. So he wrote it when he was a nineteen-year-old student. It really is a very nice article. So maybe we’ll get to it at some distant stage, not here. But I’m saying: when I return to the Mishnayot, then you say, look, the Mishnah is speaking about the charring. You explained to me that you can’t read the Mishnah literally, because it’s obvious and it’s clear that it is permitted for benefit before the time. The question “that’s obvious” is a good question. Therefore, if you want to read the Mishnah literally, you have difficulties. Right? So you make a derash. You say ukimta. So you solved the difficulties for me, because now with the ukimta it’s no longer obvious. The result is that it’s not obvious; in fact, we need to understand why it’s true, but it certainly isn’t obvious. Okay? But the fundamental difficulty still remains: so why didn’t Rabbi write that in the Mishnah if that’s what he meant? Let him write: “Leavened food that was charred before the time may be eaten after the time.” Why doesn’t he write it that way? Why does he write it in a way that implies something else, so that because of the difficulties we’ll have to make interpretations? That difficulty is not explained by all the people who explain the difficulties in the plain meaning to me. And the Talmud, whenever it arrives at an ukimta, it is because of a difficulty. So in that sense the Talmud is always trying to resolve some difficulty and it proposes an ukimta. But I’m saying that another difficulty is always breathing down the Talmud’s neck, and that one it does not explain. If that is what the Mishnah means, why didn’t it write it? Okay? So I’m trying to suggest an explanation for that. Okay? All right, next time. I’m leaving you in suspense.

[Speaker J] I hope you’ll still have—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —some fingernails left, I hope, by next week.