Bereshit (5764)

From the book Mida Tova: Articles on the Hermeneutical Principles by Rabbi Michael Avraham. Translated from Hebrew using gpt-5.4 (reasoning_effort=high, batch API).

---

With God’s help — Midah Tovah — Sabbath Eve of Parashat Bereshit, 5765

A. The “Naturalistic Fallacy” in Halakha (Jewish Law)

And God said: “Let the earth bring forth grass, seed-bearing plants, fruit trees yielding fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in it, upon the earth.” And it was so.

And the earth brought forth grass, seed-bearing plants according to their kinds, and trees yielding fruit, whose seed was in it, according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

— Genesis 1:11-12

Rabbi Hanina bar Pappa expounded: “May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in His works” (Psalms 104:31). This verse was spoken by the Prince of the World at the moment when the Holy One, blessed be He, said concerning the trees, “according to its kind” (the correct reading there should be singular, not plural). The grasses drew a kal va-homer (an a fortiori inference) on their own: if the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, were that things emerge in mixture, why did He say “according to its kind” concerning the trees? And furthermore, another kal va-homer: if with regard to trees, whose way is not to emerge in mixture, the Holy One, blessed be He, nevertheless said “according to its kind,” then with regard to us all the more so. Immediately each and every one emerged according to its own kind. The Prince of the World then opened and said: “May the glory of the Lord endure forever; may the Lord rejoice in His works.”

— Babylonian Talmud, Hullin 60a

Command versus execution

The two verses above describe God’s command regarding the creation of the trees and the grasses, and its actual execution. There are striking differences between the command and the execution, and between the wording addressed to the grasses and the wording addressed to the trees. This is the basis of the sages’ midrash (rabbinic exposition) in the Talmudic passage from Hullin cited above.

From the first verse it is not clear to whom God is speaking. From the second verse it appears that the command was addressed to the earth. By contrast, in the sages’ exposition it seems that those commanded are the grasses and the trees themselves, since they themselves decide how to emerge. But this is a paradoxical description: if they do not yet exist, how can they be commanded, and how can they make decisions about the manner of their own coming-into-being?

It therefore seems that the expositor assumes that the grasses and trees already existed potentially within the earth. In the language of the sages, their governing heavenly force or celestial influence was already there, and their emergence is the result of their own decision. The potential being decides how it is to pass from potentiality into actuality.

The relation between “potential” and “actual”

The midrash suggests another distinction between potential and actual realization. The potential was a single, undifferentiated force, whereas the grasses that emerged in actuality were many and varied. This phenomenon is not accidental. It is described explicitly in the Vilna Gaon’s commentary on the dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel concerning the blessing over fire in Havdalah:

Beit Shammai say: “Who created the light of fire,” and Beit Hillel say: “Who creates the lights of fire.”

— Mishnah, Berakhot 8:5

And the Gemara there says:

With regard to “created” and “creates,” all agree; “created” is an acceptable expression. Their disagreement concerns “light” and “lights”: Beit Shammai hold that there is one light in fire, and Beit Hillel hold that there are many lights in fire.

It was also taught in a baraita: Beit Hillel said to Beit Shammai, “There are many lights in fire” (Rashi: a red flame, a white flame, and a greenish flame).

— Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 52b

There, in Shenot Eliyahu, the Vilna Gaon raises two questions. First, the Mishnah explicitly indicates that Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel also disagree over the wording “creates” versus “created.” Second, could Beit Shammai really be disputing the empirical fact that fire contains several distinct shades?

The Vilna Gaon proposes, characteristically, an original interpretation that resolves both questions. He explains that Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel do not disagree that both expressions, “created” and “creates,” can describe the creation of fire. “Created” refers to the creation of the elemental principle of fire, which was done by God at creation and is therefore expressed in the past tense. “Creates,” by contrast, refers to the bringing forth of actual fire, which we ourselves do now. Beit Shammai hold that the blessing is thanksgiving for the creation of the elemental principle of fire, and is therefore formulated as “created.” Beit Hillel hold that the blessing concerns the actual production of fire, and is therefore formulated as “creates.”

This understanding of their dispute also clarifies the second point. The elemental principle of fire is one force, not yet divided into different shades—”there is one light in fire.” Actual fire, however, includes many shades—”there are many lights in fire.”¹ We thus see that the potential force is more unified and undifferentiated, whereas actual realization produces diversity and detail. This is precisely what we saw above in the midrash about the grasses.

The same emerges from Rashi’s commentary on these verses, where he explains the difference between “grass” and “plant.” Rashi explains that “plant” is the name of the individual sprout: from each root one plant emerges. “Grass,” by contrast, is the name of the entire covering—what he calls “the earth’s garment.” Grass, as a collective entity, is the potential force existing in the ground. Naturally it should have emerged in actuality as one single organism. But that potential inferred that God’s will was for its emergence to take the form of individual plants, that is, each root separately.

Although differentiation is an essential phenomenon bound up with the transition from potential to actual, in the case of the trees the situation is apparently different. They were instructed in advance to be created “according to their kind,” and they indeed emerged “according to their kinds.” A collection of trees does not form any real collective entity. Therefore, even at the potential stage, trees exist separately, each on its own, unlike the grasses. God’s command merely recognizes this de facto, and their actual emergence reflects it.

Summary: three stages

The picture that emerges so far has three stages. At the beginning there is a potential that already exists within the earth. Trees possess the character of separate individuals, while grass is a collective in potentia. Then comes the second stage, described in verse 11: God’s command. With respect to the trees, it determines that they are to emerge in accordance with their nature, each separately, whereas with respect to the grasses no instruction is given.² Then comes the third stage, the implementation, in verse 12. Here we would expect each to emerge according to its own nature and in accordance with the command: the trees separately, and the grasses as a collective. Yet the grasses draw a kal va-homer on their own and decide to emerge differently. This distinction now leads us to examine the considerations made by the grasses and to compare them with those relevant to the trees.

The grasses’ reasoning

The two considerations are described in the midrash as kal va-homer inferences. Kal va-homer is the first of Rabbi Ishmael’s thirteen hermeneutical principles, which appear at the beginning of the Sifra, the tannaitic midrash on Leviticus.

The first kal va-homer of the grasses is built on proof that God’s will is differentiation rather than mixture. They infer this from the fact that already in the command-verse God said “according to its kind” regarding the trees. That is, He wanted them distinguished from one another. The grasses therefore conclude that this is presumably His will regarding them as well.

This consideration is not clear. First, from the fact that God did not say this concerning them, it may follow that His will for them is different. Second, it is not clear what sort of kal va-homer this is. It is a rational consideration, built at most on comparative analogy, not on an inference from lesser to greater in the ordinary sense in which we usually understand kal va-homer. See the commentary of Rif in Ein Yaakov on the Hullin passage there.

The second kal va-homer does indeed appear closer to an ordinary kal va-homer, but it too is not free of difficulties. If trees, in their initial state, already possess a formed character and naturally emerge in a differentiated rather than mixed way, why must God command them at all to emerge in that fashion? On the other hand, the grasses are not built in advance in that way, since their way is to emerge intermixed. How, then, do they infer that the obligation of differentiation applies to them as well?

All this suggests that the midrash does not really describe two separate considerations, but one. The grasses make a two-stage kal va-homer. First: if God commands the trees to be “according to their kind,” then He evidently wants differentiation in the world rather than mixture. Second: the trees are by nature structured so that their natural emergence is already differentiated and not mixed, and if God nevertheless commands them to emerge in a differentiated manner, then this must be very important to Him. If so, in the case of grasses, whose way is not to emerge differentiated by their very essence, all the more so God expects them to separate and distinguish themselves from one another.

The need for a command—or, halakha and command

But the question still remains: why was there any need for God to command the trees to emerge “according to their kinds”? To understand this, we move to a halakhic point. The Babylonian Talmud there, on 60b, entertains a doubt as to whether the prohibition of kilayim (forbidden mixtures) applies to grasses. It ties the doubt to the question whether the fact that God did not command this concerning the grasses means that He does not forbid us to mix them. Or perhaps, since God approved what they did, it is as though He explicitly commanded it. At first glance this is puzzling: why should we not ourselves make the very kal va-homer that the grasses made?

Here we return to the three-stage picture described above. It was clear to the Gemara, on every side of the doubt, that the prohibition of kilayim is not determined by the “actual” state, the third stage, since at that stage there was clearly differentiation even among the grasses. Nor is it correct to say that the prohibition is determined by the “potential” stage, the first stage, for then there would be no room at all for doubt regarding grasses. The Gemara does not present its uncertainty as a hesitation over which of those two stages to consider, but rather as a question whether God’s retroactive approval constitutes a de facto command or not.

From the Gemara, then, it emerges that the prohibition of kilayim relates specifically to the intermediate stage: the preservation of the dimension of command within creation. This is also explained explicitly in the Jerusalem Talmud, Kilayim 1:7, which discusses the prohibition of kilayim for a gentile:

It was taught in the name of Rabbi Elazar: A gentile is permitted to wear and sow mixtures, but he may not crossbreed his animal or graft his tree with mixtures. Why? Because concerning them it is written, “according to their kinds.” But is it not also written concerning the grasses, “according to their kinds”? It is not written in the command, only in the account of their emergence.

— Jerusalem Talmud, Kilayim 1:7

This may explain why a command was needed for the trees. The command establishes God’s will, and from it derive the norms imposed upon us as human beings—in this case, the prohibition of kilayim. As the Scottish philosopher David Hume argued in his famous formulation of the “naturalistic fallacy,” factual reality as such is neutral, descriptive, and norms cannot be derived from it. Norms arise only from command, that is, from the prescriptive. True, there are obligations that God expects us to fulfill even without a command, but these are neither commandments nor prohibitions. Halakha, as an autonomous category of norms, though not necessarily the only one, is determined solely by divine command. Therefore, the difference between trees, which were commanded, and grasses, which were not, points to a divine will according to which only trees generate a prohibition of kilayim for a gentile.

B. On the Nature of the Thirteen Hermeneutical Principles: “Midrashic Platonism”

The reasoning of inanimate things

A basic question arises with respect to the midrash cited in the first part. How are we to understand a kal va-homer performed by grasses? What does it mean for inanimate things to engage in reasoning? To be sure, we find a number of such descriptions in midrash. For example, the frogs in Egypt drew a kal va-homer on their own and decided to enter the ovens. The Ginai River, in the Babylonian Talmud, Hullin 7a, also displays no small measure of intelligence. The Reed Sea even dares to argue with Moses our teacher—who there introduced the method of the stick, literally the staff, and the carrot—and to “refuse an order.”

In Tosafot, s.v. “Amar Lei,” on Hullin 7a, it is explained that the one doing the reasoning was the heavenly minister of the river, or of the sea. The Maharsha explains both passages similarly. The Maharal, however, in Gur Aryeh on the verses above, offers an explanation that at first glance seems different:

Even though, at the time when the Holy One, blessed be He, said “according to its kind” to the trees, the grasses had not yet been created, how did they hear? … Alternatively, “hearing” here means receiving the decree from the Holy One, blessed be He, for the language of hearing often denotes acceptance. Since the Holy One, blessed be He, decreed concerning the trees that they should emerge according to their kinds, the grasses received that very decree as well. Even though the decree was not issued regarding the grasses, by the force of the kal va-homer the decree applied to the grasses as well. It is as though the Holy One, blessed be He, decreed concerning the trees, and by kal va-homer concerning the grasses; it was one decree. Therefore the grasses “heard,” that is, they accepted the decree. All the acts of creation came about through the decree of the Holy One, blessed be He, even though the creature had not yet been created. This interpretation is correct for one who examines it carefully.

A deep point is embedded here in the Maharal’s words. The kal va-homer described in the midrash was not actually performed by anyone. God’s command to the trees included within it, by the logic of kal va-homer, the command to the grasses as well, and therefore the grasses emerged in actuality, at the third stage, in a differentiated and separated way. This description expresses a view according to which the logic of kal va-homer is embedded in creation itself. God does not state it to anyone; it is one of the foundation stones of nature. The world and its laws operate according to that logic.³

The Platonic approach to mathematics

For comparison: in the philosophy of mathematics there is the dilemma of Platonism. The Platonic approach to mathematics regards mathematical entities as something that exists in reality, in the Platonic world of ideas. By contrast, other approaches see mathematics and its products as entities that exist only in the human mind, not in the world itself. As with mathematical entities, so too one may ask about the laws of mathematics: are these scientific laws of nature, or laws of a different type, concerning the mind rather than the world as such?

Similar questions arise with respect to logic. There too one may ask whether basic logical laws describe the world as such, or ourselves—that is, our thinking. For example, is the principle that “two magnitudes equal to a third magnitude are equal to one another” a statement about the world’s own mode of existence—the noumenal, in Kantian terms—or about us, the phenomenal? Does the law of non-contradiction, according to which a proposition and its negation cannot both be true at the same time, make a claim about us or about the world itself?⁴

Applying a Platonic approach to hermeneutics

In light of all this, we can understand that the midrash above is making an interesting claim: the principle of kal va-homer describes the way the world itself operates. It is not merely a way of studying and expounding Torah. The world as such is conducted according to these rules. Even grasses grow according to this lawfulness, because God implanted it in the nature of creation.

We may note that in many cases one can observe kal va-homer reasoning in animals. For example, an animal may fear an unfamiliar counterpart simply because it is larger than a lion, and therefore, all the more so, dangerous to it, whereas it will not fear an unfamiliar smaller creature. It is highly likely that the animal is not consciously performing a kal va-homer, since it is not plausible that animals engage in explicit reasoning. Yet implicitly it behaves in accordance with a regularity whose basis is kal va-homer. There are, of course, other examples as well. It is interesting to ask whether there are similar examples from the plant world or from inanimate nature.

Is kal va-homer unique?

It is very easy to attribute this feature specifically to kal va-homer, because many believe it to be an exceptional principle in that it expresses transparent logic. The other principles, by contrast, appear to be some sort of esoteric system, and are therefore perceived as interpretive rules unique to the Written Torah. God willing, in future installments we shall see that this distinction is mistaken, and for two different reasons. On the one hand, kal va-homer is not essentially different from the other principles, and it is certainly not a deductive syllogism. On the other hand, principles that are not logical syllogisms can also describe something in the world itself. Our conclusion is that the hermeneutical principles are ways of contemplating the world itself, not merely arbitrary rules of interpretation. For obvious reasons, we shall call this position “midrashic Platonism.”

Three approaches to the nature of the hermeneutical principles

The hermeneutical principles as a whole raise difficulties for the contemporary reader. They are obscure, not unequivocal, and appear arbitrary. It is no wonder that their practical use ceased after the redaction of the Talmud. Yet within the Talmud itself they seem to have been a very important instrument of learning. Accordingly, there are three basic ways of approaching the system of hermeneutical principles:

1. The first approach sees them as a system of arbitrary, vague, and non-univocal interpretive rules. An example of such a view is found in Gersonides,⁵ who writes in the introduction to his commentary on the Torah as follows:

In our explanation of the commandments and the principles from which all their laws, as clarified in Talmudic learning, are derived, it will not be our practice everywhere to attach those principles to the passages to which the sages of the Talmud attached them by one of the thirteen principles, according to their way. For they attached these true matters, which they had received by tradition regarding the Torah’s commandments, to those verses as a kind of hint and support, not because they held that these laws actually originate from those passages. For a person can reverse all the laws of the Torah by means of such inferences, to the point that one could even declare a creeping thing pure, as the sages said. Rather, we shall attach them to the plain sense of the verses from which it is possible that these laws emerge, for this settles the mind more. There is in this no departure from the words of the sages, for they did not intend, as we have said, that those laws should necessarily originate from the passages to which they attached them. Rather, for them these laws were received from one person to another back to Moses our teacher, and they sought for them a hint in Scripture, as Maimonides mentioned in the Book of the Commandments and in the Commentary on the Mishnah.⁶

Gersonides understands these principles as arbitrary and non-univocal, such that using them could in fact lead to anything we wished. It is no surprise that he concludes that all the laws supported by them were received through tradition.

By contrast, Maimonides apparently understood the principles as a reliable and unambiguous code, one on which it was indeed possible to rely. For this reason he writes in the introduction to the Commentary on the Mishnah—and this is also mentioned in the second shoresh and at the beginning of Hilkhot Mamrim—that there are two kinds of laws generated through derashot (interpretive derivations): those already known, for which the derashot serve only as supports, and those that were generated by the derashot themselves. Maimonides’ view can be understood in two ways, leading us to two further conceptions of the nature of the hermeneutical principles.

2. The second approach is that the code is indeed entirely arbitrary, but unlike Gersonides, Maimonides understood it as univocal and therefore usable. Atbash, for example, is a code with no intrinsic meaning of its own, but once it has been agreed upon in advance by both parties it can be used reliably. For that reason God can give it as a kind of secret key, through which new laws hidden in the Torah may be generated.⁷ According to this approach, the obscurity of the principles, and our inability to understand them, stems only from forgetfulness. We have lost the ability to use this code.⁸

3. The third approach is to understand the system of hermeneutical principles in a different way, one championed by the Nazir of Jerusalem, Rabbi David Cohen of blessed memory: it is a code that is not arbitrary, and therefore has meaning in itself, not only as a key to decoding Scripture and generating new laws.

Some interpreters of Rabbi Nazir claim that he saw the principles as a Jewish alternative to Greek syllogistic logic, and this may perhaps appear from some of his own formulations as well. But that interpretation is mistaken. There is no, and there can be no, substitute for universal human logic, and the Jew too is not exempt from subordination to it. The system of principles is only a kind of second story. If classical logic describes thought and deductive inference, then the principles are a kind of school for analogy and induction. The system of principles constitutes a theoretical infrastructure—not truly formal—that allows us to map the ways of analogical-inductive inference, and thus to understand and develop our intuitive capacity, all on top of the logical-mathematical level already built into us.

It is clear that according to this interpretation there is no specifically Jewish logic here, and no arbitrary code, but rather a “Jewish” contribution to general thought. Even the “grasses” use these forms of inference. It therefore follows that we must understand the logic hidden within the system of principles itself. It is not merely a decoding tool or a code; it has a philosophical meaning of its own. This is the message of “midrashic Platonism” that we found above in the Maharal’s comments on midrashim dealing with the reasoning of inanimate entities.

Goals for what follows

There is very great halakhic and philosophical importance in engaging with the system of hermeneutical principles. From what we have said, such engagement has value on two levels:

1. Torah value: restoring a capacity for halakhic decision and interpretation that we have lost.
2. Philosophical value: the principles form a system of philosophical and logical tools with importance for general thought.

In the coming weeks we shall try to continue examining the methods of derash from different angles, halakhic and philosophical, as follows naturally from the approach presented here. Our main goal is to arouse public interest in this subject and to help form circles of interest that will engage in intensive and systematic study of the hermeneutical principles.

Note to the reader: God willing, there will be a certain continuity among the articles over the course of the year, and therefore it is recommended to collect and preserve the pages from previous weeks.

Footnotes