The Relationship Between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah – Lesson 3

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Last time we began describing the unfolding of the tradition through a few aggadic passages in the Talmud. Which is also something you have to do—the Talmud’s aggadot are kind of like… And I tried, through those aggadot, to show a certain crisis that took place in the process of transmitting the Oral Torah, one that I think reflects on the meaning of the Oral Torah in general, on the meaning of tradition in general. And our topic is tradition. Maybe I’ll put it in a broader context. Before that I had also started talking about Torah as song, about the holiness of the margins, about what surrounds what is written—in essence that is the Oral Torah, I spoke about that—and about the relationship between the margins and the lines, or between what is written and what we derive from what is written. That, basically, is the essence of tradition. Is tradition a simple transfer—I get it from this one and pass it to that one, like a relay race, as one might often think—or is tradition something more active? Does the transmitter himself have some input, some added value, between what he receives and what he passes on? That’s really the question.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Last time this began from the description in Pirkei Avot that I brought, throughout the first chapter. The Mishnah says: “Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets.” Meaning: this one got it from that one and passed it to the next; got it from that one and passed it to the next. A description that very much sounds like transmission in which the transmitter is a hollow conduit, passing on exactly what he received. And that’s why, in Pirkei Avot, with all the early transmitters, no sayings of theirs are cited. No one there said anything. “Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua.” This one got it from that one and gave it to the next, this one got it from that one and gave it to the next. At a certain stage that description of receiving and transmitting stops, and parallel to that there begins a description of what he would say. In other words, it seems there is some transition here: the transmitter is no longer just a hollow conduit who passes things from the previous generation to the next, but contributes something of his own. That is, some Torah is created within him. And I said that around this issue, around the transition from Jerusalem to Yavneh—Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai and his students—in the first generation of Yavneh a major crisis takes place, and my claim was that it revolved around exactly this point.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That crisis is described in several Talmudic passages which, on the surface, don’t all appear directly connected, but it seems to me that underneath it’s very clear that they’re talking about the same event, or the same set of events. One case is the Oven of Akhnai. The second is the removal of Rabban Gamliel from his position as Nasi, when he abuses Rabbi Yehoshua and then they remove him and later restore him. There are several aggadic passages like that with very strong narrative force, and it seems they all belong to the same cluster. They involve the same people: Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Akiva—it’s all the first generation of Yavneh, the students of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And the basic claim I made was that the first dispute—as the Talmud in Tractate Hagigah says, the first dispute appeared in the period of the zugot, Yose ben Yochanan and Yose ben Yoezer, Yose ben Yochanan of Jerusalem. So that pair, according to Rashi in Tractate Hagigah, had the first dispute in the history of the Oral Torah, about laying hands on a sacrifice on a Jewish holiday. That dispute was somehow resolved, but a few generations later, Hillel and Shammai were the last generation, and the students of Hillel and Shammai basically formed two houses, the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai, who didn’t really succeed in settling their dispute—in other words, in sitting together and making decisions together—to the point that the Jerusalem Talmud describes the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel as killing one another. “Killing one another,” I think, because again—I’m not sure it’s a historical description—but it comes to describe an extremely severe dispute. And the reason for that was probably that two houses developed there, two traditions, each of which had already developed separately, and there was some feeling that there was no longer any dialogue—that these were two different Torahs. They couldn’t speak to one another, and so what remained, because of the fear of this split—the fracture, the fracture of the tradition—was an attempt to use force. Once we stop being able to speak, force appears. That’s usually how it works.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And against that background you can also understand the Talmud in Tractate Eruvin, where it says that for three years the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel disputed and couldn’t reach a decision, and then a heavenly voice came out and said: “These and these are the words of the living God, but the Jewish law follows the House of Hillel.” I spoke once before about that passage, but in the background there again sits the inability to decide. In other words, there’s House of Shammai, there’s House of Hillel, they try to talk to each other, but there’s no one to talk to. At the time I described it through what Tosafot says: that the House of Shammai were sharper, and the House of Hillel were more numerous—they had more heads and more feet. And the argument was over which majority you follow: the majority of heads or the majority of feet. But in the end, however you explain it, it’s clear that there is some dispute here that cannot reach resolution. And it’s pretty clear there had been disputes earlier in the history of the Oral Torah, in the history of our tradition. But this was the first dispute—as Maimonides says and as the Talmud says—because they had not served their teachers adequately, and basically two lines of dispute emerged that lost the ability to sit together.

[Speaker B] On lots of issues were the disputes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Talmud brings lots of disputes between them—halakhic topics, all kinds of different issues. That’s why I’m saying that since we’re dealing with completely different topics, it’s pretty clear that something more fundamental lies in the background. There are two modes of relating, two modes of thinking, that are coming apart—they stop being able to talk to each other. So it expresses itself in many halakhic disputes, but that’s not the main point, the halakhic dispute itself. The question is whether there is any shared discourse at all. Are we basically disagreeing within the framework of one Torah, or are two different Torahs being formed here? And around that came the violence and the problem and the fear that the whole thing was about to fall apart. There was real fear there. It’s obvious—that’s why it led to such extreme actions. And then comes the dispute of the Oven of Akhnai.

[Speaker C] Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Eliezer—that also shows up in a lot of Hasidic circles, there are beatings, there are…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, only there I think it was never anything else. It’s not a crisis that appears in the middle; it just never was otherwise, it seems to me, at least in most cases. In any event: who gets father’s kapoteh? The argument is who gets father’s kapoteh. Anyway, yes, so then comes the Oven of Akhnai, and there too things happen—with that same narrative intensity. It’s hard to ignore that background. The protagonists of that story are Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Eliezer, the elders there, basically students of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai. They were brothers-in-law. And Rabbi Yehoshua was their contemporary as well, their disputing counterpart. And the younger ones—Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah—that’s already the second or third generation of Yavneh. In other words, the first-generation tannaim are really the students of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai. In the standard classification that’s the first generation of tannaim. Even though those of us who study Talmud are used to also calling the zugot tannaim—Hillel and Shammai and the houses—but in the standard classification tannaim means the first generation of Yavneh and onward, the students of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now that first generation was headed by Rabban Gamliel, who was the Nasi of the Sanhedrin, and Rabbi Eliezer, who was also his brother-in-law but held a very central status there. And these two are engaged in a struggle, mainly against students. Rabbi Yehoshua was their contemporary, as I said, but mainly against their students, especially the younger generations after them. What was the struggle about? Rabbi Eliezer… it starts with the oven, the ritual purity or impurity of an oven. Rabbi Eliezer makes a halakhic claim and brings all the proofs—brings all the proofs—and they don’t accept them from him. Then he starts doing miracles. I mean, he lowers the roof, “let the water channel prove it,” “let the walls of the study hall prove it,” the tree… in short, all kinds of signs and wonders. And then they say… and in the end even a heavenly voice comes out. And then they say: “We pay no attention to a heavenly voice.” His colleagues don’t accept it, they rule against him, with Rabbi Yehoshua at their head, and they excommunicate him. They send him to sit in Lod until the end of his life. The Talmud describes it as not being lifted—until the very last day, until the day of his death he was under excommunication. In the end there are parallel traditions; some say the vow was lifted, some say it wasn’t, but he was under excommunication until the day of his death.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What was the excommunication for? Fine, there’s a halakhic argument—big deal. The whole Talmud is full of halakhic arguments. What’s all this great anger? Why excommunicate him like that? And not just anyone—the greatest sage of the generation, one of the people who held the Torah of that generation. Because he was unwilling to accept the decision reached in the study hall. The study hall there is of course the Sanhedrin. But he was unwilling to accept the ruling. Why not? Because, as I’ve mentioned more than once, it’s like the story of Rabbi Yonatan Eybeschutz. The priest comes to him and says: why don’t you follow us? We’re the majority. And he answers: when I’m in doubt, I go after the majority. But if I know what the truth is, why should I care what the majority says? And that’s a rebellious elder.

[Speaker D] What? A rebellious elder.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In a certain sense, yes, that’s a rebellious elder. And what happened there was that by that time they no longer had capital jurisdiction, so they couldn’t apply the law of a rebellious elder to him. And maybe if this had happened in Temple times—when they sat in the Chamber of Hewn Stone—maybe they really would have applied the law of a rebellious elder to him. I don’t know. In any case, he did not accept the ruling of his colleagues because he knew the truth. So he simply said: friends, I know; I received it from my teachers. Rabbi Eliezer, after all, was the one who never said anything he had not heard from his teacher, “a plastered cistern that does not lose a drop,” who held three thousand laws about cucumber magic and all sorts of—I don’t know—various mystical things, all kinds of things of that sort. In other words, he knew the entire Torah. He knew everything. He held all that his teachers had transmitted to him and passed it on. That is, he was the person who championed a Torah of tradition, of a hollow conduit, where your job is to pass the Torah from the previous generation to the next. You have nothing to say about it. You need to be a reliable transmitter, that’s all—nothing besides that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And then these others start analyzing and arguing and raising arguments this way and that. He says to them: children, what are you doing here? I’ll tell you what the Jewish law is—what are you arguing about? As if you don’t know, you’re starting to discuss as if information is created here. I’m telling you: my teachers told me that such an oven is pure, that’s it. So what do you want now? In other words, he was unwilling to accept the fact that his colleagues were raising reasons and were prepared to argue even though he was bringing tradition. He says to them: that’s what my teachers said—what do you mean? What is there to discuss here at all? He was unwilling to accept this, and for that they excommunicated him. And that’s why, after he had brought the ordinary proofs of reasoning—which were probably just the sources, this rabbi said this and that rabbi said that, and therefore clearly this is the Jewish law—they didn’t accept that from him. Then he started bringing mystical proofs. What are mystical proofs? What characterizes them? They are proofs about the person, not about the issue. In other words, they come to show that I’m righteous, that heaven agrees with me, that I can make the walls of the study hall fall—how can you even argue with someone like me? And what does the heavenly voice say? “Why are you arguing with My son Eliezer, seeing that the Jewish law follows him everywhere?” It testifies about Rabbi Eliezer, not about the oven. The heavenly voice doesn’t say the oven is this way or that way. It says: don’t argue with him, the Jewish law follows him everywhere. It’s about the person.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that was the dispute. Rabbi Yehoshua and his colleagues say: I don’t care how righteous you are; bring me reasons about the matter itself and let’s discuss them. But he said: I’m not willing to bring you reasons about the matter itself—that’s not the point. Even if you bring a thousand reasons about the matter, I’m telling you what the Jewish law is. I know the truth. That’s the reality—when there’s truth, there’s no majority; there is no majority against the truth. So he was not willing at all to accept this business of following the majority—not necessarily because in principle he rejected “follow the majority,” but simply because where I know what the truth is, I do not follow the majority. I know the answer. If we don’t know the answer and we have a dispute, fine, we’ll vote and follow the majority. But if I know the answer, why go by the majority?

[Speaker F] How does that mechanism work if in that same place there were another sage who also knew the answer, but differently?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then he’d say they need to vote, or I don’t know what.

[Speaker F] So would he accept the vote? Or was there no one there saying he also knew? I don’t know. Didn’t they also say they knew?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no. They brought proofs; they discussed the matter itself. And so there was some argument there not about the oven. The argument was about the question: what is Torah? Rabbi Eliezer says Torah is what we received from Sinai. I’m passing on to you what I received from my teachers—a plastered cistern that does not lose a drop. That’s what they say about Rabbi Eliezer: he never said anything he didn’t hear from his teacher. Rabbi Eliezer passes on the Torah as he received it.

[Speaker G] But did he innovate too?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? No—that’s how the Talmud describes him. That’s how it seems. But I’ll qualify that a bit later. Still, that’s how it’s presented, because the point here is to illustrate an idea. It’s not a question of what Rabbi Eliezer was really like in historical fact. The idea is that there is a clash here between a Torah of tradition and a Torah of give-and-take. We conduct discussion and debate, and in the end we vote if we disagree. He didn’t accept that. I have a tradition, so leave me alone—I’m not interested in what you say. And for that they excommunicated him. Not because he argued with them halakhically about the oven. They excommunicated him because Rabbi Eliezer was called shamuti. There’s a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) what shamuti means. Some say it means he was excommunicated, because shamta means excommunication. And some say—that is, after this story? No, after this story he was excommunicated and because of that they called him shamuti, on account of this very story. But some say shamuti means from the House of Shammai. That’s called shamuti. And that again means someone who is unwilling to accept the authority of the majority—exactly like the dispute between the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re talking about the students of Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, who received from Hillel and Shammai. We’re talking about two generations after Hillel and Shammai—two generations in the sense that they may still have seen Hillel and Shammai, but… yes, two stages later. And there a dispute begins to emerge that already enters the question of methods of decision-making, not just halakhic questions. The whole thing is falling apart completely; we’re losing the ability to talk to each other. That’s why they excommunicate Rabbi Eliezer. Here it broke out in the strongest way. I assume this is connected to historical processes that take time, but I’m pointing to the moment where it bursts out powerfully.

[Speaker H] And I assume it had already taken shape earlier, maybe much earlier, or maybe a bit later. But that formative story with Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, who also says: I heard it, and therefore I don’t care what his son has to say.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, right, but he says that he understood that no.

[Speaker H] Fine. Rabbi Eliezer had a tradition from a certain study hall, so why didn’t he accept what was their tradition—if it was their tradition—that they would accept?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, tradition, yes, but not necessarily from Sinai. He says: my teachers said so. They tell him: very nice, with all due respect to your teachers, but we have…

[Speaker H] Reasons against them, because those are his rabbis and not their rabbis.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe their rabbis too, but…

[Speaker H] What difference does it make?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If my rabbi…

[Speaker H] If my rabbi says something, am I obligated to accept it? No. The discussions are about things they didn’t know. Fine—what didn’t they know?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They didn’t know, so they raise…

[Speaker H] The considerations—and they didn’t know.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. That’s a question we’ll discuss later.

[Speaker H] Wait—so if they didn’t know, and I have a source that is an authoritative bearer of tradition, which I accept…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But who says he himself didn’t derive it through reasoning? How do I know it came from Sinai?

[Speaker H] I said he received it from his teachers.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He received it from his teachers, but his teachers aren’t Moses our teacher. Maybe they arrived at it through reasoning. But how did his teachers create that Jewish law?

[Speaker H] But it’s a tradition they receive.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How do you know that? You said it. No—I didn’t say that.

[Speaker H] I said Rabbi Eliezer…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Received it from his teachers, so he…

[Speaker H] Is convinced that his teachers—that his tradition—is their tradition.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know, I don’t know. But what I’m saying is that it doesn’t matter, because even if it was their tradition, they are saying: tradition—and we don’t accept it.

[Speaker H] There’s no such thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course there is such a thing.

[Speaker H] What did he suddenly do here? If you were right, he wouldn’t be standing here…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here—at least according to my view.

[Speaker H] The discussions are about things that were forgotten…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—you’re misunderstanding tradition, and that’s my whole topic. You’re misunderstanding tradition.

[Speaker H] The Talmud explicitly says there was a tradition—did they suddenly uproot the tradition?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course there was. Of course there was. For example, I already brought this example with Rabbi Akiva: that the earlier generations would rule that a woman should not adorn herself, put on eye makeup, or rouge herself during her days of menstruation—in Tractate Shabbat 64. And Rabbi Akiva said: until Rabbi Akiva came and said, if so she becomes repulsive to her husband—it can’t be. He expounded a verse, overturned the Jewish law, and that was that. And now it’s permitted, and to this day we rule that it is permitted. What do you mean? Of course there is such a thing. There are many things like that. The sages decide that something doesn’t make sense to them and they overturn it. Maimonides, at the beginning of chapter 2 of the Laws of Rebels—we also spoke about this once—says that every court in every generation can disagree with all the great courts before it, with all the previous Sanhedrins. So what about tradition? If it seems to me that there are three primary categories of prohibited labor on the Sabbath and not thirty-nine, and I am the Sanhedrin…

[Speaker H] Those are things forgotten from tradition.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If they are things from Sinai, no one argues with the Holy One, blessed be He, from Sinai. But they do argue over tradition, because what they are claiming is that tradition is not a hollow conduit. What they are telling me is that what was received from Mount Sinai was not simply passed on as-is. Tradition always contains some input from the transmitter. So he says: wait a second—if that’s the case, I want to examine whether it makes sense or not. That is exactly the difference. That’s what the argument here is about. That’s what we’re talking about.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now the ally of Rabbi Eliezer was Rabban Gamliel, his brother-in-law. And Rabban Gamliel was the Nasi of the Sanhedrin. And there are those same stories in two or three other places in the Talmud as well, where he abuses Rabbi Yehoshua, making him come to him with his staff and his money on Yom Kippur that falls on the Sabbath according to his own calculation. What is the dispute there about? There too the dispute is the same thing. Rabban Gamliel argues in the name of authority—

[Speaker D] I am the Nasi of the Sanhedrin.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, on the basis of what he received by inheritance, yes, various… there are several versions. Rabban Gamliel says: I speak in the name of authority, that’s all. And Rabbi Yehoshua comes in the name of reasons, saying: I think differently than you do. So what if you are the Nasi of the Sanhedrin? I think differently than you. Rabbi Yehoshua was a kind of rebel. And Rabban Gamliel imposes his authority on him and decrees that he come on Yom Kippur that falls on the Sabbath.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] By the way, that specific case of Yom Kippur that falls on the Sabbath is actually less representative. Because regarding the calendar, we hold that “you—even if you err, you—even if you act deliberately”; on this specific matter the Nasi of the Sanhedrin has mandatory authority. Meaning, even if he makes a mistake, there you really do not have to go by reasons. Fine—but that is what crystallized there in the dispute between them. But in principle there is some general dispute there about the whole Torah, not just fixing the calendar. And once again Rabban Gamliel harasses Rabbi Yehoshua, and the group there—the students—decide they have had enough, and they depose Rabban Gamliel. The Nasi of the Sanhedrin, the one who embodies authority and tradition—they depose him. They excommunicate his brother-in-law and push them both aside. Later Rabban Gamliel retracts; the Talmud in Berakhot describes him as changing his mind, accepting the principle of movement—of give-and-take and majority decision—and he returns to serve in rotation with Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah in Yavneh.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And the Talmud says there that every place it says “on that day,” it means that very day—the day they deposed Rabban Gamliel from the leadership. And on that day all of Tractate Eduyot was taught. That’s what the Talmud says there. Tractate Eduyot is a tractate with no subject, unlike all the other tractates, each of which deals with a specific topic. Tractate Eduyot has no single topic. What was happening there? What happened was that during the period of Rabban Gamliel’s leadership there were open disputes and no one could resolve them, exactly because of this problem that they didn’t recognize one another’s legitimacy. And everything remained open. There was a feeling that the Torah was falling apart. They deposed Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah came in his place. Benches were added—three thousand benches in the study hall. Why? Because Rabban Gamliel had said: whoever’s inside is not like his outside should not come in here. Why? Because that’s the same conception as Rabbi Eliezer. In other words, he is looking at the person. If you are a trustworthy person, come in, I’ll tell you the truth, and you will pass it on to your students. If you are not a trustworthy person, I don’t want you here.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why does Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah add students to the study hall? He says: what do I care who you are? If you give good reasons—excellent. If you give bad reasons—go away. I don’t care at all who the person is. Therefore he added benches in the study hall, because from his perspective we discuss and debate, and whoever persuades, persuades. I’m not checking who the person is, who the speaker is. I’m discussing the matter itself, not the person. That’s why benches were added to the study hall after they deposed Rabban Gamliel.

[Speaker I] So then it’s no longer tradition? According to…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, I’ll get to that in a moment. On the face of it, yes. Then Rabban Gamliel comes and accepts it. There was some halakhic issue there involving an Ammonite convert, and he accepted Rabbi Yehoshua’s ruling. They brought him back, and he served in rotation with Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah. In other words, the dispute there revolved around this point: does Torah—does tradition—mean a hollow conduit, where each person has to pass the information onward, or is tradition something active, where the transmitters also have something to say about it, to dispute it, to change it, interpret it, develop it, and expand it? That was the argument.

[Speaker D] And still there is law given to Moses at Sinai.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is. In places where the tradition is clearly a law given to Moses at Sinai, no one disputes that. No one disputes that. But there are those who claim that the whole Torah—the Holy One, blessed be He, taught Moses at Sinai everything that an accomplished student would one day innovate, not just laws. Everything. Everything in our hands. Every section in the Mishnah Berurah was received by Moses at Sinai. That is of course nonsense even historically, but that was Rabbi Eliezer’s conception, as a matter of principle. And they disagreed with that. Bring me a law given to Moses at Sinai—we’ll discuss it. But what your fathers said—with all due respect—there are arguments against it, and I don’t agree.

[Speaker J] And maybe…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe I also received it from my teachers, because they were also my teachers—that doesn’t matter—and I still don’t agree.

[Speaker J] And what does a heavenly voice mean? What weight does it have? What is its significance?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said: usually people understand “we pay no attention to a heavenly voice” to mean that the Torah was given at Sinai, and whatever the Holy One, blessed be He, says after that has no legal force. We need to make decisions in the study hall. But it seems to me that in this story something stronger is being said, not just that. That’s the usual way this is understood. What is being said here is that we discuss the matter itself, not the person. I don’t care how righteous you are or how much of a Torah scholar you are. I want to hear your reasons. Don’t prove to me how righteous you are—that doesn’t interest me.

[Speaker D] At the end of the Book of Malachi, if you hold tradition…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ll see whether I hold it or not.

[Speaker D] The last verse—that there is no more prophecy, because the Torah of God, that’s it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, but still, the fact that there is no prophecy does not mean there is no tradition. There is tradition.

[Speaker D] Meaning it’s not from heaven. No heavenly voice and nothing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s no prophecy, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t… Even in the time of prophets, a prophet cannot dispute a legal ruling. A prophet can only issue a temporary emergency directive. Rabbi Margaliot has a book, From Heaven, by Rabbi Yaakov of Marvege—one of the Tosafists—who would ask dream-questions about various halakhic issues and they would answer him there. It was a kind of Oracle of Delphi thing—very ambiguous statements, and now the question is what exactly they meant. So Rabbi Margaliot at the beginning discusses to what extent these are things that should be taken into account at all—after all, “It is not in heaven.” There’s a very interesting essay there of his. In any case.

[Speaker K] Discussing the matter itself—that’s the essence of the person. Why? Because you need both.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You don’t need both. You’ve moved away from the first one.

[Speaker K] Because if someone comes who doesn’t believe and…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do I care? If he raises good arguments, let’s hear them. If he has good arguments, excellent. I’m not interested in who the person is. That is exactly the point. What difference does the person make? If I’m examining the arguments on their own merits, then let’s examine them. Say your arguments and we’ll hear. Maybe he won’t persuade us, but what difference does it make who he is? Are his arguments bad arguments? Fine, then I don’t accept them. That is exactly the transition from Rabban Gamliel to Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah.

[Speaker H] Was there a Sanhedrin at that time?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There was a Sanhedrin that had gone into exile from the Chamber of Hewn Stone. You know, it was already a Sanhedrin that no longer imposed capital law.

[Speaker H] Yes, but were they functioning? Yes. And at that time?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think so, but this was an argument within the Sanhedrin.

[Speaker H] It was within the Sanhedrin itself.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. The study hall mentioned there is the Sanhedrin. There was no difference then between those two things. The legislative house and the study hall—it was the same thing. A religious court and a study hall in that period were the same institution, not two different institutions.

[Speaker E] Also in the story of the shofar on the Sabbath, it was in the study hall.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, many things there were. The Sanhedrin continued on.

[Speaker E] If we go back to the sugya for a moment, how do you explain “My children have defeated Me”?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?

[Speaker E] I mean, where is the Holy One, blessed be He, in this dispute, seemingly?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On the contrary, he says: they’re right. I gave them the Torah, and I have to leave it with them.

[Speaker E] “My children have defeated Me.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because I wanted to tell them that this is the Jewish law. And they say to me: Sir, You spoke to us at Mount Sinai, up to that point. From here on, it’s ours.

[Speaker E] The Holy One, blessed be He, is on Rabbi Eliezer’s side. Clearly, at first. But “My children have defeated Me” is at the end of the passage.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, “My children have defeated Me” means He admits that they’re right. “My children have defeated Me” is said joyfully. It’s not that He’s shedding tears and sitting shiva because they defeated Him. He means the opposite: I understood—or not “understood,” because this is only an aggadic description—but He says: I acknowledge that they were right. Even though I thought that, halakhically, Rabbi Eliezer was right, what they were supposed to do is what they did. And that’s what is called “My children have defeated Me.”

[Speaker I] The story of the knife that they put inside the plaster, if you remember. Ah, at the wall, where they forgot the Jewish law about the knife.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Leave Israel alone; if they are not prophets, they are the children of prophets.” Okay, that’s something else when you don’t know. If you don’t know… the Jerusalem Talmud says: if the Jewish law is shaky in your hand, follow the custom. So everyone thinks you always have to follow customs. That’s not what it says in the Jerusalem Talmud. What it says there is that if the Jewish law is shaky in your hand, follow the custom. But if you know what the Jewish law is, what do I care about the custom? There are people who think that Ashkenazim always have to follow the Rema and Sephardim always have to follow the Shulchan Arukh. I don’t understand where that comes from. If I have a position, then that’s what I’m supposed to do. If the Jewish law is shaky in my hand, then I follow the custom. Since when did custom become some kind of thing that always obligates? Why exactly?

[Speaker E] There they forgot the Jewish law. Yes, yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The point is that they actually removed Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Eliezer because there was a methodological revolution there. There was a debate there about what Torah is. And in the end, what was decided there was to move from a Torah of tradition to a Torah of give-and-take. And that’s why they removed them.

[Speaker H] Personal behavior wasn’t part of the calculation?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That personal behavior expressed—again, maybe yes, maybe no, I’m not judging Rabban Gamliel within the story—but I don’t think that’s the whole story. Rather, it stems from a conception. It stems from a conception. I don’t assume that Rabban Gamliel was just a power-hungry man. Rather, what? He had a conception that said: if I say this and this is the truth, I’m not interested in your arguments. That was his conception. And the argument was against that conception.

[Speaker E] He also says—Rabban Gamliel also says—that I acted not for my own honor and not for the honor of my father’s house. Yes, right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Exactly. That’s what he thought: he wanted authority. And they said to him: listen, your way may seem as though it will bring unity, as though it will keep the Torah from falling apart. You’re mistaken. That’s how the Torah will fall apart. Precisely if you accept some give-and-take, and we take a vote if there’s an unresolved dispute—that is exactly what can keep us as one study hall. But if you try to impose your authority, then in the next generation we’ll be stronger and we’ll impose our authority. Force doesn’t solve problems. At least, in many cases. And so, yes, in the armored corps they say that what doesn’t work with force works with even more force. Fine. But that doesn’t always work. And sometimes flexibility, and willingness to listen, and deciding according to the majority—that leaves the study hall more whole. Letting all the opinions be heard keeps the study hall more whole than imposing authority on it from above. And in that sense there was also an argument here about how to keep the Torah one.

[Speaker H] But in the end they said he would prevail; in the end they understood that he was broadly right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, they did not understand that he was right—just the opposite. He understood that they were right. No, because he understood that they were right. He repented. What do you mean? Yes, the Talmud says that once he accepted the Jewish law as ruled by Rabbi Yehoshua, they saw that he had repented, and they reinstated him. Rabbi Eliezer did not accept what they said; he remained under ban in Lod. Meaning that even if they were right… why did they reinstate him? Because he was head of the Sanhedrin, and he was a great Torah scholar, so if he accepts the rules of discussion, why shouldn’t he be head of the Sanhedrin? He was a descendant of Hillel, he was Rabban, he was nasi. What do you mean? He should be head of the Sanhedrin. They removed him because he did not accept the rules of discussion. That’s why they removed him. But when he came back and accepted the rules of discussion, he returned. And his brother-in-law did not accept the rules of discussion, so he remained in Lod under ban until the day of his death. They did not reinstate him. Why? Because he did not take upon himself the rules of discussion. And there was some revolution there standing behind a dispute that stood behind… some argument about what tradition is, or what Torah is. I’ll bring a Talmudic passage where you can see this very nicely, I think. A passage in Moed Katan… in Chagigah, sorry, page 3. There was an incident involving Rabbi Yohanan ben Beroka and Rabbi Elazar Chasma, who went to greet Rabbi Yehoshua in Peki’in. Rabbi Yehoshua was sitting in Peki’in; Rabbi Eliezer was under ban in Lod—yes, these are the two opposing figures. They came from Yavneh. In Yavneh, by that period, there was already rotation between Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah. Yes, and that’s why they always asked: whose week was it? Right? They did week by week, like a schedule, week by week—or really every two weeks. And so they asked them: so, what happened in the study hall? Whose week was it? Who gave the lectures? Who taught? They wanted to hear what had happened in Yavneh. What new thing was there in the study hall today? Again, the study hall and the Sanhedrin are the same thing. They said to him: we are your students, and we drink from your waters. You want innovations from us? We want innovations from you—you are our rabbi. He said to them: even so, there is no study hall without innovation. Why did he want innovations from them? Because with him every word was an innovation. With Rabbi Yehoshua, unlike Rabbi Eliezer, for whom it was tradition—he did not want to innovate, he wanted to transmit—Rabbi Yehoshua was all innovation. So they said to him: you want innovations from us? He said yes—why did I carry out the revolution in Yavneh? If there are no innovations, then why did I wage this whole struggle? Did I wage this whole struggle so that I would tell you innovations in Peki’in? Or did I wage this whole struggle so that in Yavneh there would be people sitting there who understand that Torah is innovation and not only tradition? So tell me what happened there in Yavneh. And then he says to them—they say to him, sorry—there is no study hall without innovation. Whose Sabbath was it? It was Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah’s Sabbath. And what was the aggadah about today? So what did he say today in aggadah, not in Jewish law? So he brings—I didn’t bring everything here—that if men and women come, why do children come? To give reward to those who bring them, concerning the assembly at Hakhel, and all sorts of other things. And then he says: you had a precious pearl in your hands and you wanted to keep it from me? A generation is not orphaned when Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah dwells within it. He got so excited, and all in all these were, let’s say, homiletic teachings—I’ve seen smarter and deeper things than what they told him there.

[Speaker E] It’s aggadah, yes, right, that’s also true.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I think the point is that what they told him was exactly this: he wanted to hear innovations. And what they told him was: Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah opened the study hall; everyone enters—men, women, children, everyone. They don’t inspect anyone’s fringes. So he says: that is a wonderful pearl—that’s what we made the revolution for. That’s what they told him. They told him: now there are innovations in the study hall. It stopped being a Torah of tradition. They told him there was innovation; they didn’t tell him the innovation. Rather, the very fact that innovations were entering—that was the innovation. Yes, it wasn’t the lecture itself but what the lecture expressed. And then he continues and says: “He too opened and expounded: ‘The words of the wise are like goads, and like firmly planted nails, masters of assemblies, given by one shepherd.’ Just as this planting bears fruit and multiplies, so too the words of Torah bear fruit and multiply.” And then he says: “Masters of assemblies”—these are Torah scholars who sit in many groups and engage in Torah: these declare impure and those declare pure, these forbid and those permit, these disqualify and those validate. Lest a person say: how then am I to learn Torah from now on?” Who is this “person”? Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Eliezer. You say this, I say—what do you mean? I’m telling you what the truth is; what do I care that you say this and he says that? He says no: lest you say, how can I learn anything from now on? What is the answer? Scripture says: all of them were given by one shepherd. One God gave them, one leader stated them, from the mouth of the Master of all deeds, blessed be He, as it is written: “And God spoke all these words.” Therefore, make your ear like a funnel and acquire for yourself an understanding heart, to hear the words of those who declare impure and the words of those who declare pure, the words of those who forbid and the words of those who permit, the words of those who disqualify and those who validate. And make a decision. And make a decision; if they don’t agree, take a vote, follow the majority. But that’s what he said. He says it because this whole discussion here is not just some exposition of a verse; this was the revolution in Yavneh. He wanted to see that this thing had really changed. And for that he gives the blessing when he says that a generation is not orphaned when Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah is in it. And immediately after that the Talmud brings another incident—and of course its hero is Rabbi Eliezer. That was Rabbi Yehoshua in Peki’in. The second incident was with Rabbi Eliezer sitting under ban in Lod. The Talmud says as follows: there was an incident involving Rabbi Yose ben Durmaskit, who went to greet Rabbi Eliezer in Lod. He said to him: what new thing was there in the study hall today? When Rabbi Eliezer asks what new thing was there in the study hall today, he asks sarcastically, of course. Well, well—what did you innovators come up with this time? And you can see later that that is clearly the intent. So he says to him: they counted and concluded—there was a vote, and they reached the conclusion that Ammon and Moab separate the poor man’s tithe in the Sabbatical year. Yes, there was an innovation. Rabbi Eliezer almost had a stroke. He said to him—Rabbi Eliezer said to him—Yose, stretch out your hands and receive your eyes. He stretched out his hands and received his eyes. He blinded him in his rage. Why? Rabbi Eliezer cried and said: “The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him, and His covenant, to make them know it.” He said to him—Rabbi Eliezer said to Rabbi Yose, his student: go and tell them, don’t worry about your count. You were right; don’t worry that your vote was incorrect. But why?

[Speaker E] Because—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “We have a tradition from Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, who heard from his teacher, and his teacher from his teacher, a law given to Moses at Sinai: Ammon and Moab separate the poor man’s tithe in the Sabbatical year.” That’s what you innovated?

[Speaker M] Yes, that’s what you innovated, those dialectical pilpulim of yours that in the end arrived there. I received this tradition. If you had come and asked me, I would have told you—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai told me this, and he received it from his teacher and his teacher from his teacher. And you innovate from your pilpulim things that you could simply have asked me and I would have told you. That’s why he got angry and blinded him. So it’s clear that the question “what new thing was there in the study hall,” when Rabbi Eliezer asks it, is a taunting question. It’s not like Rabbi Yehoshua, who wants to make sure—what innovation was there in the study hall?—he wants to see that it really succeeded. Rabbi Eliezer wants to show him what nonsense they did. What’s going on there? What are you people doing? He did not accept this whole thing. He says to them: look, with your nonsense you are now even innovating laws given to Moses at Sinai on your own. What was not a law given to Moses at Sinai—that was what he told them in the oven story, and they said, that we do not accept. He says to them: look where your refusal leads. If you don’t accept that, you start innovating on your own even laws given to Moses at Sinai. Now by the way, with laws given to Moses at Sinai, one of the reasons why perhaps the Sages there really did not accept the law given to Moses at Sinai—I once mentioned this Talmudic passage—the Talmud at the end of Temurah, at the end of the first chapter of Temurah, says that three thousand laws—or seventeen hundred… yes, three thousand laws—were forgotten during the mourning period for Moses, and Otniel ben Kenaz restored them through pilpul. One of the commentators on the Jerusalem Talmud—I think it’s the Pnei Moshe—writes there that the case of a sin-offering whose owners died is a law given to Moses at Sinai. What do you do with a sin-offering whose owners died? So the Pnei Moshe says: since this is one of the laws that were forgotten, as it says in the Talmud, then in practice the law we observe today is not Torah-level law at all; it is rabbinic law, and we did not receive it in a tradition from Sinai. Rather, the Sages there, Otniel ben Kenaz, re-created it. What you reconstruct is very nice—

[Speaker G] Very—but it didn’t come from Sinai.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But how did he reconstruct it? On what basis did he reconstruct it? I don’t know—reasoning, understanding, maybe… I don’t know. No, hermeneutical principles are something else. It says there: seventeen hundred a fortiori arguments and verbal analogies, and three thousand laws. That’s two separate categories. And he restored both. Meaning, he says to him: listen, maybe what the Sages did not accept as a law given to Moses at Sinai—it’s obvious that they accepted laws given to Moses at Sinai. Rather, maybe there were laws given to Moses at Sinai that they claimed could not be right, that they were corrupted; they did not accept them, and then they began discussing the matter on their own judgment. And then Rabbi Eliezer says to him: what do you mean? There is a law given to Moses at Sinai—why are you engaging in pilpul here and bringing arguments on the issue itself? Ask me, and I’ll tell you what the truth is. So this story is essentially a story that comes to tell us what happened after Rabbi Eliezer is already sitting under ban in Lod, Rabbi Yehoshua has already returned to Peki’in, the revolution is over, there is rotation in Yavneh, and now the two of them are each in his own place—one rejoicing in what happened, and the other continuing to grumble because he says: what in the world is this? What are you people doing here?

[Speaker E] So does the Talmud end there? Yes, that’s it. So from the point of view of the editors of the Talmud, what is the conclusion?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. The Talmud is not structured around this issue at all. I connect it because the context says it.

[Speaker E] No, but seemingly Rabbi Eliezer’s argument is very strong.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. But on the other hand, what do we do now? If we ignore that reasoning, then this revolution—

[Speaker E] —is unnecessary.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it isn’t unnecessary. Rather, this revolution—this is what Yehoshua asked earlier—with laws given to Moses at Sinai they too would accept, okay? So he says to them: look how far your nonsense goes—even laws given to Moses at Sinai you don’t accept, and you engage in pilpul about them. But the other side is no less problematic: the side that says everything is a law given to Moses at Sinai leads to the opposite problem, to a situation where nothing is open to discussion and everything is simply laid down from above—and that too is a problem. So you have to arrive somewhere at some kind of compromise. Things that are clearly from Sinai, we will accept. But anything else that you tell me in the name of your teachers—with all due respect—we will discuss it and see whether we accept it or not. In a moment I’ll get to that compromise, and then I’ll complete the move. On the day of Rabbi Eliezer’s death, there are two passages in Sanhedrin that describe the Sages coming to visit him on the day of his death. And there it says: they entered and sat before him at a distance of four cubits. He said to them: why have you come? Right—suddenly you’ve arrived on the day of my death? For decades I’ve been sitting there in Lod. They said to him: we came to learn Torah, the students—we came to learn Torah. He said to them: and until now, why didn’t you come? They said to him: we did not have time. It didn’t work out. Everyone knew what lay behind those words. He said to them: I would be surprised if they die a natural death. He was very angry. Rabbi Akiva said to him: what about me? Me too? We know what happened to Rabbi Akiva in the end, right? He says to him: what about me—what will be my fate? Me too? He said to him: yours will be worse than theirs. And that’s what happened in the end, as we know. Rabbi Eliezer took his two arms and placed them on his heart—that was on the day of his death—and said: Woe to you, my two arms, which are like two Torah scrolls being rolled up. I learned much Torah and taught much Torah. I learned much Torah and did not diminish what I received from my teachers even as much as a dog lapping from the sea. I taught much Torah, and my students diminished me no more than a paintbrush in a tube. And not only that, but I teach three hundred laws regarding an intense white patch. And no one ever asked me about them. You probably kept engaging in pilpul about this until the day you died. I have three hundred laws that I know; I can give you the conclusion—what the truth is—three hundred laws about an intense white patch, which is one specific question. And not only that, but I teach three hundred laws—and some say three thousand laws—about cucumber planting. That too is a kind of magic, as in the Mishnah in Sanhedrin there that speaks about sorcery by means of cucumbers. And no one ever asked me about them, except Akiva ben Yosef. Rabbi Akiva was a little loose on the matter of the ban; he did come to Rabbi Eliezer and ask him questions from time to time, because he still wanted to hear what he had to say. I don’t know how that was halakhically permitted, but the fact is that the Talmud describes it that way…

[Speaker G] Why not, if they’re each in their own camp? Why not?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because he probably should have come—if you already understand that this isn’t right, then you should have come. The others, at least, are consistent—they think not. But you know this isn’t right; why didn’t you come? Why did you come only now and then? What do you mean, right and not right? What? Regarding the ban. Rabbi—

[Speaker G] Akiva didn’t come to learn?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He’s holding the whole Torah. Understand the feeling of a person like that. A person who holds the whole Torah, and he sees all these people who studied with him in kindergarten, so to speak, beginning to engage in pilpul, reaching conclusions, this way and that—and he says to them: friends, I’m here, I’m still alive. Come ask me. In the end they even arrive at the right answer—that’s the greatest irony. Even if you arrive at the right answer, it turns out that it was unnecessary. Completely unnecessary. What are you people doing? It’s an enormous frustration—you have to understand, it’s not simple. And how important this was to his students—that they were willing to go that far against him. He was their rabbi. To go that far against him, to depose the head of the Sanhedrin—do you understand? Because they understood that the whole thing was falling apart if they didn’t do it. If they didn’t do it, the whole thing would fall apart. So there was a very powerful revolution there. You have to understand—I don’t think there’s a story anywhere in the Talmud as powerful as these stories.

[Speaker N] So then why doesn’t it appear explicitly? What? Why doesn’t it say explicitly that this was their dispute?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think it does appear—you have to read. Aggadot—we talked about the fact that we study aggadot. Aggadot have their own way of conveying messages. They don’t put things simply on the table. From the things themselves you can quite clearly see it. In the end the Mishnah there brings that in the laws of cucumber planting, Rabbi Akiva had in fact learned it from Rabbi Eliezer. So the Talmud asks: but wait, doesn’t it say that Rabbi Yehoshua explained these laws to him? Interesting—the same Talmudic passage. And then the Talmud says: he received it from Rabbi Eliezer, but he did not hear and did not understand. He went to Rabbi Yehoshua, and he explained it to him, and then he understood. Which is very beautiful—very beautiful. Because Rabbi Akiva, who is the student of both of them, goes to Rabbi Eliezer in order to receive the information. That’s what we saw, that he went to ask him about the laws of cucumber planting. But afterward he didn’t understand. Because Rabbi Eliezer doesn’t explain. Rabbi Eliezer doesn’t tell him why it is right. Rabbi Eliezer tells him: this is the Jewish law—what do you care why it is right? That’s not your business. This is the Jewish law. And then he goes to Rabbi Yehoshua and says: explain it to me. He’s a student of both of them. He says: tell me why. And Rabbi Yehoshua explained the reasoning to him. Now Rabbi Akiva was really the one who received from both Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua. And in the end the Talmud says in Sanhedrin 86: an anonymous Mishnah is Rabbi Meir, an anonymous Tosefta is Rabbi Nehemiah, an anonymous Sifra is Rabbi Yehuda, an anonymous Sifrei is Rabbi Shimon—and all of them are according to Rabbi Akiva. So in the end—and this is the synthesis I’m talking about—the Torah that reaches us is a combination of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua together. Meaning, Rabbi Eliezer’s tradition comes from Rabbi Eliezer, and the explanation comes from Rabbi Yehoshua. And the explanation is not a neutral thing; it is not a passive thing. Explanation means that there are cases where we will not apply it as Rabbi Eliezer thinks, because we understand the logic behind it, and we apply the logic within it. Meaning, this is the synthesis that Rabbi Akiva makes. It says to me: tradition definitely has significance; you do not throw tradition away. I assume they didn’t throw tradition away either. This is just the Talmud’s way of describing the matter, that Rabbi Akiva represents the synthesis between the two opposing positions that clashed there. Because in the end, of course, you need both of them. Everyone needs “Mr. Wheat” too, right? Everyone needs Rabbi Eliezer—he gives the information. And Rabbi Yehoshua comes and explains why, and discretion, and so on—he teaches them how to think about the matter. And when someone knows both of those things, that is ultimately the person from whom the Oral Torah emerged. The Oral Torah is a combination of those two. There is no such thing—apparently, I’m saying again, this is an extreme description, but on the principled level, in the pure conception of tradition—there is no such thing. There is no new situation. If there is a new situation, then simply do nothing, because the Jewish law did not say anything about it. What is there to think about?

[Speaker B] The Jewish law doesn’t know what to do. It gave you tools to get there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rabbi Yehoshua—he comes and reaches it, while Rabbi Eliezer’s tradition remains. What does the conception of tradition say about a case like that? I assume the conception of tradition says that in such a case, if the Jewish law has nothing to say about such a case, then it has nothing to say—do whatever you want.

[Speaker K] Because it could be that when they transmitted the first Mishnah in Pirkei Avot—transmitted, transmitted, transmitted—then maybe historically things were more or less the same, the same, the same, and suddenly there was innovation, or developments, or technology, or politics, or something, and it became like a bottleneck and suddenly burst out somehow.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think that even without developments or substantial changes like technology and so on, new questions always arise. What do you mean, new questions without technological developments? For two thousand years there weren’t new questions? Not two thousand—one thousand-something.

[Speaker E] The truth is that I asked myself here in this question, and there really is a very obvious point here, which is the destruction of the Temple.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Everything changed. Obviously there was a huge upheaval there, and therefore this gap burst out there—obviously. But still, obviously there were disputes before too, and there were new questions before too. The question was how we conceive of tradition, not what it actually was. What it actually was, I don’t know. Because if you ask—I once told you that my uncle claims that Abaye and Rava studied in Yiddish. Abaye and Rava—studied in Yiddish. They knew how to learn, right? And they weren’t all that smart, so obviously they studied in Yiddish. Now, he knows he’s joking, of course—but on the other hand he’s not joking either. The Haredi ethos—he is Haredi—the Haredi ethos is that Moses looked like me. Now that isn’t really true, but that doesn’t matter—that’s the ethos you grow up on, genuinely. The ethos of tradition that Rabbi Eliezer transmitted, I think, if that were the truth, would be that until Rabbi Eliezer tradition really was a hollow pipe. But Rabbi Eliezer conceived of tradition that way, as though our role is to be a hollow pipe. And Rabbi Yehoshua argues that that is not correct, and perhaps it was never correct. In a moment I’ll speak about that further. So what comes out of this is that the conception represented, say, by Rabbi Akiva is a conception of dynamic tradition. There is tradition, but tradition is dynamic tradition—we are not a hollow pipe. Everyone who forms a link in that chain of transmission puts his own input into the system. And it’s very interesting what Rav Kook writes in Ma’amarei HaRa’ayah. He wrote an appreciation article about the Rebbe of Sochatchov after he died; he sent it to his descendants. He says there: it is written that Rabbi Eliezer said things that no ear had ever heard before. Meaning, somewhere it says that Rabbi Eliezer at a certain time said things no ear had ever heard before. So Rav Kook says: seemingly this contradicts the principle that Rabbi Eliezer never said anything he had not heard from the mouth of his teacher. That is Rav Kook’s question. And we must say that if it had said he said things that had never been said by any mouth in the world, that really would contradict the principle that he never said anything he had not heard from the mouth of his teacher. But since it says things that no ear had ever heard before, we understand that the mouth of the rabbi, the father of Torah, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, said them—but of all those who heard him, Rabbi Eliezer the Great excelled in his deep listening, so that his ear heard in his teacher’s Torah what others did not hear. Thus, he truly did not say anything that he had not heard from the mouth of his teacher, and his Torah was a complete Torah with an ancestral home, yet at the same time it was all Torah newly brought forth through the strength of his holy intellect. What does he mean? Seemingly this goes against what I’m saying now—that Rabbi Eliezer was constantly innovating, because he heard things from his teacher that others did not hear; he understood one thing from another, and so in the end there was some input of his own here. But that’s not true, because in the ethos—why—

[Speaker N] can’t he present it that way?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s what I’m saying. Because in Rabbi Eliezer’s ethos, he himself does not understand that that is what is happening. He is sure that what he heard from his teacher is a law given to Moses at Sinai. He does not understand that when you hear something from your teacher, it always passes through your own interpretation. And that is what his colleagues tell him. That is why they do not accept his tradition. If it were from Sinai, they would accept it. They only argue that there is no such thing as a hollow tradition. There is no such thing as a student who hears from his teacher and does not add some input of his own. And if that is so, then who knows—maybe we disagree. We want to discuss whether it is correct or not. This is an argument between two ethoses.

[Speaker G] Isn’t it a dispute between reality—that he wasn’t aware of the fact that he was…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. And that’s often how it is, when someone comes and says: this is how I saw it, this is what I was told. What do you mean? Then you investigate him—even in court—you investigate him carefully: wait a second, there was some interpretation here. And certainly in the world of ideas. In the world of ideas, when someone tells you something, it always passes through some interpretation, some processing by you, and therefore… and therefore it is an illusion to think that… many times you hear a scientist say: what do you mean? These are the findings of science, this is what science says. But when you get into it, you see—not at all. He inserted a great many interpretations and a lot of processing of his own. Positivists in general, people who supposedly cling to logical proofs and direct observations—these are people who are living in an illusion in most cases. They think they’re positivists, but they’re mistaken. Because the positivists who say—and this connects to what we’ll discuss later—that they accept only something proven: every proven thing has assumptions at its base, and those assumptions were not proven. So how can one hold a view that says I accept only proven things? If you agree to accept only proven things, you can’t accept anything, because every proof is based on foundational assumptions. The foundational assumptions are not proven, so how did you accept them? Ask a positivist and he won’t even understand the question. Because what? There are things that are just… obvious. He doesn’t see that there are assumptions here. There are things that are definitely true, and from them he draws conclusions. So for him everything is objective. He doesn’t notice that he too assumes assumptions. That he too is really inserting something of his own into the system. He is sure that this is something completely objective, and that he is merely passing the information on to you. And that was the dispute. The dispute was a dispute between two ethoses. In reality itself, it may be that tradition had always been dynamic. The fact that tradition is dynamic was not created in Yavneh. Tradition had always been dynamic. The question was how to conceive it. What is the ethos of tradition, not what tradition itself actually was.

[Speaker G] An educational message? What? Could it be that there is an educational message here?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course there is an educational message here.

[Speaker G] The intention being that even, say, Rabbi Eliezer knows there is no such thing as a hollow pipe.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, you’re saying he said it on the educational plane.

[Speaker G] Yes—that teaching this way opens the door to all kinds of…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. They disagreed with him about that in any case. Maybe—I don’t know. And then, if that really is so, why did the disputes actually arise only in the period of the pairs and afterward in the period of Yavneh? Was it really always like this? The point is that until that period, the dynamism of tradition was within some agreed-upon framework. People understood the rules of give-and-take, sat in the same study hall, discussed, reached a conclusion, and from our point of view that is what the tradition said. We know that it is the result of our interpretation, and that is what the tradition said. Once the schools of Shammai and Hillel emerge, we lost the ability to do that. We don’t have give-and-take, we don’t have a shared framework of interpretation and so on. What do we do? We just fight. There’s nothing else to do—it’s not… disputes multiplied. There were disputes before; the earlier disputes were resolved. They were resolved through give-and-take, and afterward through voting. They lost the ability to decide, and then what happened was that someone wanted to impose authority—Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Eliezer. And Rabbi Yehoshua says: there is no agreement, so let’s try to create it anew. Authority won’t help here; authority will break it. So let’s recreate it and try to build a broader Torah, a more flexible Torah. And in the end, that is what Rabbi Akiva represents. And in fact, ironically, in the end they said to Rabbi Eliezer: really, you yourself worked that way too, without being aware of it. That is what they are saying to him. That he said something no ear had ever heard before, and at the same time he says that he never said anything he had not heard from the mouth of his teacher—what does that mean? That Rabbi Eliezer too actually worked that way; he just was not aware of it. There is no such thing as a hollow tradition. It is only an ethos that you can market externally, but that is not really how it works. And at the end of the Talmudic passage—here, I brought the passage from Sanhedrin 68—they all gathered in one place and said to him: what is the law regarding a ball of cloth, and an amulet, and a bundle of pearls, and a small weight? They asked him all sorts of laws they didn’t know, Rabbi Eliezer, on the day of his death. He said to them: they are susceptible to impurity, and their purification is as they are. What about a shoe on top of the mold? He said to them: it is pure. His soul departed in purity. And then he died. Rabbi Yehoshua stood on his feet and said: the vow is released, the vow is released. On Saturday night Rabbi Akiva met him from Caesarea to Lod; he was beating his flesh until his blood flowed to the ground. He began a lament over him and said: My father, my father, chariot of Israel and its horsemen. I have many coins and no money-changer to lay them out before. About what? The Talmudic tradition from Rabbi Eliezer. That’s what I said before—that he learned these magical laws from Rabbi Eliezer. The Talmud says: the plain tradition from Rabbi Eliezer, but not the reasoning. He didn’t understand, he didn’t receive it in terms of reasoning. Then he returned and learned from Rabbi Yehoshua, and he explained it to him. Meaning, that is how the matter ends. After Rabbi Eliezer dies, they all understand that you need him too. You need him too, and you need Rabbi Yehoshua, and that combination is found in Rabbi Akiva, and in the end the Torah is Rabbi Akiva’s Torah—the one that was passed down to us. What I want now is just to open the next stage in order to make the connection. Basically, what is the meaning of these things? These things have a logical, philosophical significance when we relate to arguments, when we relate to a student learning from his teacher—how are we to conceive it? When Rav Kook brings that Rabbi Eliezer said things no ear had ever heard before, and did not say anything he had not heard from the mouth of his teacher, I would add: it’s not only that his colleagues did not hear this thing in what their teacher said, but even the teacher himself did not hear it. Meaning, he heard from his teacher’s mouth things that even his teacher himself did not understand were hidden there. And it seems to me that anyone who has had even a little opportunity—I had the opportunity, at least, to study for several years with one Jew—and I have no doubt that a great deal of what I say I heard from him, and to that same degree I have no doubt that on almost all these things he disagrees with me. And this is an experience everyone has. Meaning, there are things that you grasp in that way, and that really is what was said there. He has a different mind; he doesn’t think that is what was said there—but it really is there. Meaning, if you listen with my ear, it is there. I heard it there. Now what does that actually mean? It means that attainment or learning are not things unaffected by the learner. And here I want to open up—this will be next time—I want to open up the… it isn’t subjective, that’s exactly the point. I want to explain—no, no—I want to explain why there is truth—no, come on, my goal is to say the opposite. My goal is to say that even when we are not dealing with rigid logic, there is truth. And it is not subjective. And that is Rabbi Akiva’s point. Rabbi Akiva’s point is not that there is no truth, but that truth is found even in considerations that are not formally valid logical considerations. Now this—and in this lies the essence of tradition, the conception of it. Say, analogy as opposed to deduction—that is, softer considerations, not logical ones; what Nachmanides says in the introduction to Milhamot Hashem, that the wisdom of our Torah is not like the wisdom of astronomy and mathematics, whose demonstrations are sharp-cut. We do not work with formal logic. Meaning, we have proofs. In Torah it does not work that way. Does that mean that what I say is just some subjective matter? No. With my ear I can draw things out of what my rabbi said even not by deduction, because if it were deduction I could prove to anyone that this is what my rabbi said.