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Torah study boundaries

שו”תCategory: philosophyTorah study boundaries
asked 6 years ago

Hello,
I read your article ‘Between My Territory, etc.’ here , where you explained, among other things, what you think is defined as ‘Torah study’ in the laws of Choshen Mishpat:
“What is eternal and universal about the issue of no one breaking the law within his time? What is eternal there is the normative determination that when there is a clear presumption, it is sufficient to spend money. The contents of the presumption in themselves are not Torah, and there is no holiness in them. They can change according to different cultures and customs. What does not change is the normative determination, not the factual one, and therefore this is the ‘Torah’ in that issue… This is the divine truth, and it is eternal.”
And it’s still not clear to me, after all, this normative determination (and many others like it in the Talmud) ultimately rests on the human logic of the Tannaim and the Amoraim (who were people like you and me, as you often say…), and so the question arises again why their determination is considered Torah more than just a court hearing in which the “secular” judges also try to determine who is right between the two and, in effect, establish normative determinations in the financial relations between one person and another?
That is, I can understand your explanation of the normative determinations that are written in the Torah commentary, and as you gave the example of the laws of the guards that appear in the Torah – a beggar is liable for rape, a guard is liable for theft and loss, etc., because these are norms that the Torah itself stated, and their study, as well as the rulings in similar cases according to these principles, are considered part of the Torah. However, how many such laws exist in the Talmud compared to the sea of ​​laws and cases that deal with property laws and normative determinations that are not written in the Torah at all and are the fruit of the logic and interpretation of the sages of that period (which, in my opinion, have great weight)? So why should the blessings of the Torah be recited over them, or alternatively, why is there more reward for studying Torah than simply reading court rulings?


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מיכי Staff answered 6 years ago
This brings us into a discussion about the meaning of authority. Assuming that the Talmud has formal authority, what is stipulated there is binding and is part of the Torah. When it is written in the Torah to judge justly, the Talmudic interpretation, which is authoritative, states that it is not to exclude from the established, but when there is a presumption then yes. The Talmud’s evidentiary law is an interpretation of the Torah’s command to judge justly and therefore it is Torah. Not because it is necessarily true but because it is authoritative. This determination can be disputed (at least when there is a Sanhedrin), and then it will change. In the meantime, this is the Torah. The eternity I spoke of is only in the sense that changing circumstances do not affect it, and not in the sense that it is necessarily true or cannot be disputed. We disagree about everything, Torah or not.

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