Between Legislation and Interpretation: The Synthetic A Priori in Law (Column 652)

With God’s help

Disclaimer: This post was translated from Hebrew using AI (ChatGPT 5 Thinking), so there may be inaccuracies or nuances lost. If something seems unclear, please refer to the Hebrew original or contact us for clarification.

In this column I will try to sharpen the meaning of legislation versus interpretation, and clarify that the relationship between them is not dichotomous as it may appear at first glance.

What is the difference between Torah law (de’oraita) and rabbinic law (derabbanan)

People mistakenly think that de’oraita laws are what we received at Sinai and derabbanan laws are those that were created in the generations thereafter—in other words, that the difference is chronological. But that is a mistake. There are de’oraita rulings that were created in later generations (even in our own day), and there are derabbanan laws that already existed in the time of Moses our teacher and at the revelation at Sinai. Thus, for example, the halakhic authorities who hold that opening bottle caps on Shabbat is a Torah prohibition (makeh be-fatish, boneh, soter) thereby created a de’oraita ruling in our time. By contrast, the enactment of Torah reading on Shabbatot is an enactment instituted by Moses, and yet plainly this is still a derabbanan law. True, in Maimonides’ (Rambam’s) First Root he refers only to the enactments of the prophets after Moses, and one could infer that Moses’ own enactments are de’oraita; but that is not plausible (see at length R. Tzipansky, Ha-Takkanot be-Yisrael, vol. I).

What, then, distinguishes a de’oraita law from a derabbanan law? In column 582 I addressed this briefly (and at greater length in my article on the First Root and in the first gate of my book Ruach HaMishpat). In brief, I showed there—as we have also seen here—that the question is not chronological (when the law arose) but methodological (how it arose). Laws that are produced by a process of interpretation are de’oraita laws, whereas laws produced by a process of legislation are derabbanan laws. When the Sages interpret a verse in the Torah and conclude that it forbids a certain act, then although the interpretation was done by the Sages, at that point the Torah, for our purposes, is what forbids that act. Therefore it is a de’oraita prohibition. Thus, for example, regarding opening bottle caps: one who interprets the prohibition of makeh be-fatish or soter such that this act falls under them is engaging in interpretation; hence the product is a de’oraita ruling. Of course, someone else may disagree and interpret differently, and then, according to that view, there will be no Torah prohibition here—or no prohibition at all. But for the one who prohibits, this is a de’oraita prohibition because, according to him, it emerged through interpretation. By contrast, when the Sages prohibit poultry with milk out of fear that one may come to eat meat with milk, they are instituting a new law. They do not derive it from any verse, and therefore this is an act of legislation rather than interpretation; consequently, the product is a derabbanan law.

This is a derabbanan law of the “decree” (gezeirah) type, but there are also derabbanan “enactments” (takkanot), such as lighting Chanukah candles, reading the Megillah, or washing hands. All of these are enactments, not decrees, since they were not instituted out of fear of transgressing a Torah prohibition. Yet they share a common feature with decrees: in both cases the law in question has no basis in the Torah text itself. The creation of such laws is a legislative, not interpretive, process, and therefore these are derabbanan laws.

The dispute between Rambam and Ramban

The conclusion that follows from what I have said is that the Sages (I will not enter here into the question of who exactly counts as “the Sages.” Plainly we are speaking of the Sanhedrin) were given two distinct authorities: to legislate and to interpret. When they legislate—the result is a derabbanan law; when they interpret—the result is a de’oraita law. In column 443 I discussed the dispute between Maimonides (Rambam) and Nahmanides (Ramban) concerning the source of these two authorities. In several places, Rambam grounds both in the verses “You shall not deviate” (lo tasur) and “According to the teaching that they will instruct you.” For example, at the beginning of the Laws of Rebels (Hilchot Mamrim 1:1–2), Rambam writes:

A. The Great Court in Jerusalem are the essence of the Oral Torah; they are the pillars of instruction, and from them law and judgment go forth to all Israel. Concerning them the Torah promised, as it is said, “According to the teaching that they will instruct you”—this is a positive commandment. Everyone who believes in Moses our teacher and in his Torah must rely upon them for the practices of the religion and lean upon them.

B. Whoever does not act according to their ruling transgresses a negative commandment, as it is said, “You shall not deviate from the word that they tell you, right or left.” One does not receive lashes for this negative commandment because it was given as a warning for one liable to death by the court, for any sage who rules against their words is executed by strangulation, as it is said, “And the man who acts presumptuously…” Whether matters that they learned by tradition (which are the Oral Torah), or matters that they learned by their own reason by one of the rules by which the Torah is expounded and it appears to them that the matter is so, or matters that they made as a fence to the Torah and according to the needs of the time—namely, decrees, enactments, and customs—each and every one of these three categories there is a positive commandment to obey them, and one who transgresses any of them transgresses a negative commandment. As it says, “According to the teaching that they will instruct you”—these are the enactments, decrees, and customs that they will instruct the public in, to strengthen the religion and to set the world aright; “and according to the judgment that they will say”—these are matters they will learn from the law by one of the rules by which the Torah is expounded; “from all that they tell you”—this is the received tradition, person from person.

According to him, both the authority to legislate (enactments, decrees, and customs) and the authority to interpret or transmit tradition (de’oraita laws, laws derived through derashot, or halacha le-Moshe mi-Sinai) flow from a positive and a negative commandment in the Torah. So it appears also from his words in the First Root.

But Ramban, in his glosses to the First Root, disputes Rambam on this. First, he objects:

Behold, the Master builds a high wall around the words of the Sages, but it is like a breached, tottering wall—a crack in an exalted wall that suddenly, in an instant, will collapse—for this is an unsound reasoning in most places in the Talmud. For according to his view, one who uses what is attached [to the ground], such as leaning on a tree, or who moves a needle from sun to shade on Shabbat, or who tells a gentile and he does [the work], or even who takes a large stride—such a person transgresses a positive and a negative commandment from the Torah, and would be liable to forty lashes, were it not that the Master there (in Judges, 1:2) exempted him because [this negative commandment] was given as a warning for one liable to death by the court—for any sage who rebels against their words is executed by strangulation. And according to his words, he would receive lashes according to the opinion in the Talmud that “a negative commandment given as a warning for one liable to death by the court still incurs lashes,” as mentioned in “He Who Nightfall Overtook” (Shabbat 154b). And according to this opinion, one ought to be exceedingly stringent regarding rabbinic matters, for they are all Torah, and there is no distinction between them; there is nothing in the Torah more severe than these “rests” (shevut) of theirs, except for those liable to excision or capital punishment, not for those liable to negative commandments, for all their words are a positive and a negative commandment. Yet our Rabbis throughout the Talmud say the opposite, for they judge all rabbinic matters leniently…

He argues that according to Rambam, anyone who violates a rabbinic prohibition thereby transgresses both a negative and a positive commandment from the Torah; therefore, in cases of doubt one should rule stringently.

And from here he concludes:

It is explicitly stated in “He Who Whose Relatives Died” (Mo’ed Katan 19b): “Great is human dignity, for it overrides a negative commandment in the Torah.” Rav bar Sheva interpreted this before Rav Kahana as referring to the negative commandment of “You shall not deviate.” They laughed at him. [He said to them:] “Do not laugh at him, for a great man has said a word.” All rabbinic matters are supported (asmakhta) upon “You shall not deviate,” and because of human dignity the Sages did not enact [their decree] in that case. Here it is made clear that this ‘You shall not deviate’ is like other Torah negative commandments, but their [i.e., the Sages’] words are supported upon this negative commandment merely as a reinforcement, not that there is any Torah-level warning concerning them in that negative commandment…

In other words, according to him, the authority to interpret is indeed rooted in the positive and negative commandments Rambam cited, but the authority to legislate is only supported by “Lo Tasur,” not truly derived from it. In the columns cited above I discussed this dispute (if there even is one; I am not certain), and whence Ramban nonetheless learns the Sages’ authority to legislate. I showed there that the only way to understand Ramban (and likely Rambam would agree) is that derabbanan laws branch out from “Lo Tasur” but are not a specific instance of that verse. Therefore not everyone who violates a rabbinic law has violated “Lo Tasur,” even though that verse is the foundation on which their force rests. I will not enter into detail here, but I will note this again below.

Midrashic laws

Let us now turn to intermediate cases. In my article on the Second Root and in the second gate of Ruach HaMishpat, I discussed Rambam’s view regarding laws derived through derashot. Rambam, in the Second Root, rules that these are rabbinic laws. I explained there that, according to him, derashot are not interpretive tools that uncover additional content embedded in the verses, but expansive tools. A derashah extends the spirit of the verse and creates laws that do not exist within it but are learned from it by way of expansion. Rambam’s hermeneutic approach, as implied by the Second Root, is that only the plain sense (peshat) is a perush (interpretation) of the verse. Anything beyond that (such as derashot) is expansion, not interpretation. This is Rambam’s interpretive innovation. Upon it he builds a second innovation, this time in the halakhic plane: whatever is not found in the verse itself is not a de’oraita law. Hence, laws learned by derashot—since they are not embedded in the verse itself but constitute an expansion of it—are not de’oraita laws.

What distinguishes them from ordinary derabbanan laws (enactments or decrees)? Enactments and decrees have no connection to a verse at all. There is no interpretive component in their creation; they emerge entirely from the legislator’s (the Sages’) own world and understanding. This is pure legislation, and its products are derabbanan laws. By contrast, peshat-interpretation is free of elements that pertain to the interpreter (see a caveat below). It extracts content embedded within the verse; therefore its products are de’oraita laws. Derashot lie in between these two. They begin with a verse, just like peshat, but the process of derashah contains, beyond interpretation, a legislative component. There is something the darshan brings from his own world beyond what is in the verse. This is an intermediate state between legislation and interpretation, where the product (the law derived) is connected to the verse but not actually found within it. The product is not merely content extracted from the verse, but the verse’s content combined with the darshan’s own conceptions.

We can describe this in terms of connection to the verse: if enactments and decrees have no connection to a verse, and interpretation has a full and exclusive connection to the verse, then midrashic laws have only a partial connection to the verse. There is a linkage, but it is not pure interpretation; there are also components from the darshan’s own world. Hence there is a blend of legislation and interpretation. Thus, for example, when we expound “ ‘You shall fear the Lord your God’—to include Torah scholars” (see column 647), the obligation to fear Torah scholars is not part of fear of God; it is not a particular instance derived from fear of God. It is an expansion of fear of God toward Torah scholars (see that column for consequences from another angle). Therefore one cannot say that reverence for Torah scholars is a content embedded in the verse itself. Elements from the darshan’s own world are present. Indeed, if reverence for Torah scholars were merely an application of fear of God and nothing more, even R. Akiva would not have disagreed with Shimon ha-Amsuni and would not have given that derashah (see the explanation in the column cited).

It is important to note that, for the sake of discussion, I am ignoring here the (correct) claim that every interpretation contains something of the interpreter. There is no “pure” interpretation that only reveals what is in the text. Rambam’s assumption is that peshat-interpretation, for our purposes, is considered “clean” interpretation. This does not mean there is no disagreement over peshat interpretations, but for the purpose of determining the halakhic status of the product, it is treated as pure interpretation without a legislative dimension. I will clarify this further below.

The Sorites Paradox: the fallacy of dichotomy

We can sharpen this point via the Sorites paradox (see column 110 and elsewhere). Consider the following three claims: 1) A single pebble is not a heap. 2) If there is a pile of pebbles that is not a heap, adding one pebble will not change its status. 3) A thousand pebbles are a heap. Each sounds very reasonable, yet the three cannot all stand together. Which should we abandon? As I explained there, it is reasonable to abandon the second and replace it with: 2) Adding one pebble changes the status slightly.

What underlies this change is that the term “heap” is not binary. It is not the case that every pile of pebbles is either a heap or not a heap. It is more accurate to say that there is a continuum of degrees of “heap-ness,” and as pebbles are added, the degree of heap-ness of the pile increases. I have noted elsewhere that this applies to every everyday concept (as distinct from mathematical concepts, which are essentially pure ideas). Note that dilemma-style arguments suffer from the same problem. Think of the following argument: “There is no need to give tests, because the lazy will not study even if there is a test, and the diligent will study even without a test.” Where is the problem? Simply, the world is not divided into pathologically diligent and pathologically lazy. There are students with levels of diligence lying between these, for whom a test can improve the likelihood they will study (or the effort they will invest).

If so, the assumption that concepts are judged in a binary-dichotomous framework leads to many fallacies. So too in our case. What entangles interpreters of Rambam is the assumption that the halakhic world is divided into two dichotomous categories: de’oraita laws and derabbanan laws. And that division itself rests on a dichotomous division regarding the laws’ connection to verses: either the law is quarried from the verse and was embedded in it (in which case it is interpretation, and the law is de’oraita), or it has no connection to it (in which case it is legislation, and thus derabbanan). But we have seen that this is not correct. There are intermediate cases in which the connection to the verse is not absolute yet still exists. In such a case, the process that produces the law is something between legislation and interpretation—indeed, it contains legislative and interpretive components—and the product of such a process is a law with an intermediate status. Rambam draws the line between de’oraita and derabbanan such that these laws are given the status of derabbanan; but that is merely his position. In any case, it is fairly clear that in midrashic laws the connection to the verse is indeed of intermediate strength.

To sharpen this, recall that in the article on the Second Root I cited the Ran (Nedarim 8a) and showed that he accepts Rambam’s interpretive innovation even though he disagrees with his halakhic innovation. According to the Ran, a law derived from a derashah is indeed an expansion rather than an exposure of the verse’s content (hence he writes there that an oath takes effect upon it), yet at the same time he explicitly writes that its halakhic status is as a de’oraita law. Thus, he too accepts that a derashah creates a law whose connection to the verse exists but is not complete—independently of his view of the law’s halakhic status, which differs from Rambam’s.

Judicial activism and judicial legislation

Since the halcyon days of Aharon Barak, the debate over judicial activism has raged in Israel at full force. Many claims are raised against the courts (especially the Supreme Court) that they adopt far-reaching interpretations of statutes and ignore their original meaning (the legislator’s intent or the language of the statute—two different approaches in legal interpretation, but the claim is that in many cases neither is maintained).

We must remember that in a democratic regime with separation of powers there is a division of labor, in which the parliament is entrusted with legislation and the courts with interpretation. The claim, therefore, is essentially that of acting without authority: the court in effect legislates when it has been given a mandate only to interpret. Unlike halakha, where we have seen that the Sages have authority both to legislate and to interpret, in a democratic regime the court has only the authority to interpret; that is, it may create only “de’oraita laws,” not “derabbanan laws.” Critics claim that the court legislates and not merely interprets, and thereby acts ultra vires. In the background we should recall the principle of legality, which states that citizens are permitted anything not prohibited to them, whereas governmental authorities are prohibited anything not expressly permitted to them. For the citizen, a competent source is required to forbid something; for a governmental authority, a competent source is required to permit it to act. The court is a governmental authority and, as such, is subject to the principle of legality. Therefore, if the mandate granted to it by law is to interpret, it must not engage in legislation.

This brings us to the discussion of what is called “judicial legislation.” This did not begin with Aharon Barak; it is a phenomenon found in every legal system in the world. The common justification for “judicial legislation” is the existence of lacunae left by the legislature, which no one can fill but the court. The judge has no choice but to fill the lacuna in order to adjudicate the case before him. But the claims about judicial activism go further: they assert that the court enters even where there are no lacunae. The law speaks, and the court “interprets” the law, thereby effectively changing it, not merely filling lacunae. The claim is that this is no longer “judicial legislation” in its accepted sense, but judicial activism.

However, in light of what we have seen above, note that there is no escaping activism in this sense as well. Even in the absence of a lacuna, in cases that come before the court it must interpret the statute and determine what it says. Almost all interpretations that can be given to a statute necessarily include components from the interpreter’s own world. There is almost no way to avoid this. Hence there are disagreements among interpreters and judges about the interpretation of laws and their application to different cases, since each brings his own world to the interpretation. In other words, every interpretive act—even absent a lacuna—contains legislative elements. This means that the judge is compelled to resort to legislation even when there are no lacunae in the law, if only because he cannot avoid it. Therefore there is justification for incorporating legislation into the interpretive act even when there is no lacuna, beyond the conventional justifications for judicial legislation.

It would seem, then, that the debate over judicial activism is not about whether judges engage in legislation, for that is unavoidable, but about degrees. To what extent is it proper for the judge to introduce his own world into the interpretive enterprise? Yet I think the matter can be defined more sharply: where the language of the law or the legislator’s intent clearly differ from the judge’s conclusion, there it is not appropriate for him to introduce his own world and perform judicial legislation. If he does so, this is improper activism, because of the principle of legality. Only where the language of the law tolerates multiple interpretations is there, as stated, no escape but to employ the judge’s assumptions and insights in interpreting the law. He has no clean, objective way to interpret the law, and cannot avoid employing his values and insights even if he wished to.

Back to de’oraita and derabbanan: the principle of legality in halakha

We can parallel this to the distinction we drew between peshat and derash. I noted above that even in peshat-interpretation, the interpreter’s assumptions and insights are involved (and indeed we have disputes even over peshat). Yet the law that arises there is a de’oraita law. Why? Because in peshat-interpretation we are dealing with interpretations that all fit within the language of the text; therefore, the interpreter’s involvement does not contradict the verse’s plain language (i.e., the “statute”). In such a case we ignore the legislative elements within the interpretation and treat it as if it were pure interpretation. By contrast, where the interpreter’s involvement yields a result that stands in opposition to the verse’s plain language, that is judicial legislation or activism. When the judge engages in derash and not merely peshat, he is, in effect, acting in an activist manner. True, halakha permits the Sages to do so, for they were authorized under “Lo Tasur”; but even there, Rambam maintains that only peshat-interpretation yields de’oraita laws, whereas with derash, the product of the midrashic process will be a derabbanan law, not de’oraita.

This parallels judicial activism—except that in civil law there is no authorization analogous to “Lo Tasur.” Hence the claim there is that the judge has no authority to legislate, only to interpret. He may fill lacunae, and he may also interpret the law where it tolerates multiple interpretations; but he may not interpret the law in a manner that contradicts the plain meaning of its language and the legislator’s intent. That is activism, and that is chiefly what the critique targets. Recall: the judge may create only “de’oraita laws,” not “derabbanan laws” (because of the principle of legality), whereas in halakha the Sages may create both types, since there is explicit authorization in the Torah for this—and thus it does not violate the principle of legality.

Parenthetically, I add that in the halakhic world some err in thinking that every ruling by a central halakhic sage (at least a “gadol ha-dor,” or one of the greats of the generations more broadly, or central halakhic works) has binding force. But this is a mistake, precisely because of the principle of legality. The Sages have authority to interpret and to legislate, and they act only by virtue of that authority. When a sage who is not the Sanhedrin and is not ordained interprets or legislates, he has no authority by virtue of “Lo Tasur,” and therefore his words have no binding force. If I believe that he is correct in his interpretation, I will act accordingly because he is correct and the interpreted source indeed obligates me—but he has no formal authority. And if he legislates rather than interprets, then his words have no force at all beyond that of a mere recommendation (see on this in column 275).

The conclusion is that halakha too has its own principle of legality: for the ordinary citizen, anything not prohibited is permitted (contrary to what many think, in halakha one needs evidence to prohibit something; without evidence it is permitted). For the legislator and decisor, anything he has not been authorized to do—if he does it, it has no force (contrary to what many think—that if they show that something is written in the Rashba, Rambam, or Mishnah Berurah, that means this is how one must act).

The connection to Kant’s synthetic a priori

In the third gate of my book Ruach HaMishpat I discussed the connection between judicial legislation and Kant’s problem of the synthetic a priori. In columns 494–496 (see also column 502) I explained that Kant confronted a dead end in epistemology. On the one hand, scientific laws are synthetic claims; that is, they add and contain information beyond what is embedded in the definitions of the concepts they employ. On the other hand, they are not the product of observation alone. Observations are the basis from which we advance by processes of thought until we reach generalizations—that is, the laws of nature. In short, there is here a claim about the world whose foundation is not (only) in cognition but (also) in thinking, which appears impossible. Thinking can process and analyze information that reaches us via our cognitive faculties, but it cannot add information about the world for us. As Mark Twain quipped: “The world owes you nothing; it was here first.” The world is not obligated to conform to your thoughts. This is the assumption underlying empiricism: information about the world is accumulated only through observation. Yet it turns out that in the laws of nature there is information beyond what is embedded in the bundle of observations on which they are based, and this addition is seemingly the product of thinking rather than cognition. These are the synthetic a priori judgments in Kant’s system: synthetic (they contain information about the world) yet a priori (products of thought, not merely cognition). How can we accept such claims? Recall the assumption that the way to know the world is only through observation.

I argued there that the root of the problem lies in the dichotomy we all assume between cognition and thinking. In my understanding, we reach synthetic a priori claims by means of our intuition, which is a faculty of thinking-cognition—that is, knowledge attained by the intellect rather than by the senses. Beyond the capacity for thought that our intellect possesses, it also has the capacity to connect with the world and understand it beyond what the senses provide. There is evidence for this as well, which I will not enter into here.

I bring this because there is a strong analogy between the Kantian move of thinking-cognition and what we have seen here regarding judicial-legislative activity. To see this, note that in the legal plane, interpretation corresponds to cognition. Cognition is grounded in interaction with the world and the attempt to understand what I see. So too I look into the statute book, interpret it, and extract what is within it. Legislation, by contrast, corresponds to thinking: thinking does not observe the world but occurs within the person himself. Legislation likewise does not observe the statute book (there is no “observation” there) but creates new laws by virtue of the legislator’s insights (a product of thought rather than cognition).

You can now see that the problem of judicial-legislative activity perfectly parallels the problem of thinking-cognition. The question there was how an institution authorized only to interpret (an act corresponding to cognition) can create laws (an act corresponding to thinking). The solution I proposed was that the dichotomy misleads us. There is no cognition without elements of thought (what I called “thinking-cognition”), and likewise there is no interpretation without legislative elements (what I called “judicial-legislative”). From this analogy one may argue that when the judge looks into the statute book and interprets it—even if the result goes beyond what is written there (but not in contradiction to it)—this is still a kind of “looking.” Not sensory observation, but cognitive thinking. He looks into the statute book with his intellect, not with his eyes. In both cases the faculty responsible is intuition, which, I argue, is a knowing faculty and not part of ordinary thinking. It is the instrument by which the intellect looks at the world (a sixth sense). In my books Shtay Agalot and Emet Ve-Lo Yatziv I explained that whoever does not accept this and thinks that intuition is merely accumulated experience must arrive at thoroughgoing skepticism. Pure experience without a thinking dimension yields us nothing (perhaps aside from the specific facts we directly observed).

The question of intuition has been discussed on the site more than once (you can search), but I hope to devote the next column to it. Before concluding, let us return to “Lo Tasur.”

Back to “Lo Tasur”

Ramban claims that “Lo Tasur” serves as a basis for the Sages’ authority to interpret but not to legislate. Rambam, by contrast, bases their authority to legislate as well upon it. Ramban objected that if so, every rabbinic transgression would be a de’oraita prohibition; therefore one cannot derive authority to legislate from it. We can now perhaps understand Rambam’s approach.

We saw that according to Rambam, the distinction between legislation and interpretation is not dichotomous. There is a continuum of degrees of a law’s connection to the text, and each degree defines its halakhic status somewhere between de’oraita and various kinds of derabbanan. The stronger the connection to the text, the closer we are to de’oraita. But if this is Rambam’s view, then the verse that grants the Sages authority to interpret necessarily recognizes their authority to legislate as well, for there is no interpretation without certain dimensions of legislation. We saw that there is no cognition without thinking; equally, there is no interpretation without legislation. If so, Rambam, consistently, understands that one cannot separate the authority to interpret from the authority to legislate. The authority to interpret contains within it the authority to legislate. If so, it is natural for Rambam to go one step further and say that, if so, there is no reason to distinguish, and that same verse teaches the Sages’ authority to legislate at every level (even “pure” derabbanan), in the spirit of “It is reasoning: what difference is there between killing him entirely and killing him halfway?!” (see Bava Metzia 95a and parallels).

Ramban counters that legislative authority can apply only to legislation done within the framework of peshat-interpretation. There, the interpreter’s own elements are involved in the interpretive act, and all this ultimately yields the peshat (because the verse tolerates multiple interpretations). But in a midrashic process we are dealing with judicial activism, since the product does not fit the plain language and does not arise from it; such authority cannot be derived from “Lo Tasur.” Hence, authority to legislate derabbanan laws is not learned from “Lo Tasur.” I note that the authority to engage in derash—even according to Ramban—is learned from “Lo Tasur,” as Rambam holds, since for Ramban derashot are interpretive tools and their products are de’oraita laws (unlike Rambam). The Sages’ authority regarding de’oraita laws, even according to him, is learned from “Lo Tasur.”

A note on derabbanan laws and the First Root

Finally, I note that in the article on the First Root and in column 443, I showed that a similar dynamic exists with respect to ordinary derabbanan laws as well. There too, they are connected to “Lo Tasur”—they branch from the verse but are not specified by it. This linkage is not the same as the linkage between a de’oraita law and the verse from which it is learned, but it is not correct that there is no linkage at all. It is a partial linkage; in this sense, the path from the verse “Lo Tasur” to the conclusion about the force of derabbanan laws (the argument is presented there via Pooh Bear’s “the wrongdoers will be punished”) is something between cognition (observation) and thinking. That is, the prohibition of eating poultry with milk is not written in the verse “Lo Tasur” itself, and therefore direct observation will not yield it (this is what entangles all the commentators, as I explained there). But a cognitive-thinking act can show us that it nonetheless branches from “Lo Tasur.” This is another example of an intermediate linkage between the verse and a halakhic conclusion that flows from it.