On Tradition and Dynamism: A. Conceptual Analysis (Column 622)

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 column 620 I described the traditions of the British royal house and the tension between the conservatism that obligates preserving them and the need to update and adapt them to the spirit of the times. The assumption there was that commitment to tradition requires stagnation and therefore detachment from present reality—except that sometimes external considerations demand conceding and making updates. If we look again at that conception, it seems there is another assumption embedded in it: that the tradition itself did not undergo changes in the past; that is, that tradition has been transmitted through a chain of a “hollow conduit,” namely a pipe that does not affect the tradition passing through it but conveys it as is. In this way the authenticity of the tradition is preserved, and it becomes possible to demand commitment to it and its preservation in order to pass it on unchanged.

But whether we like it or not, the conduit of course always exerts influence. Water flowing through it encounters friction that it imposes on them. It also directs their flow in its direction. The water does not arrive at the other end identical to what entered the pipe, and so too with tradition. What we have is the result of many influences along the way, and certainly not the authentic source of that tradition (assuming there ever was such a thing). One can see this as a shortcoming of ours as human beings who cannot transmit tradition with perfect fidelity, or one can view it positively (a tradition that develops and is updated). But it is hard to ignore the fact that, as a matter of fact, this certainly happens.

In the halakhic world a similar conception prevails regarding our halakhic traditions. People feel that at least in halakhah, tradition is a hollow conduit that brings us the word of God from Sinai without touching it. Even if there are influences, they are at most rabbinic additions that accrued over the generations, or errors that could occur (though not all agree that this is possible). In this column I wish to bring the discussion back to the realm of our own tradition, halakhah, and examine that assumption: does tradition necessarily mean ossification? Is there not a measure of dynamism within traditionalism itself? This is the first column opening a planned series on tradition and its meaning.

Types of Students: Who Is a “Seasoned Student”?

We can examine our attitude to tradition through our attitude to different types of students. Tradition passes from teacher to student, and the question is what is demanded of the student to be part of the “transmitters of tradition,” that is, those who convey it. This reflects how we view the tradition itself and its passage across generations.

Indeed, in Pirkei Avot 5:15 we find a distinction among four types of students:

“There are four types among those who sit before the sages: a sponge, a funnel, a strainer, and a sieve. A sponge absorbs everything; a funnel takes in at one end and expels at the other; a strainer lets the wine through and retains the dregs; and a sieve lets the coarse flour through and retains the fine flour.”

This distinction is elaborated in Avot de-Rabbi Natan (Version A, ch. 40), where one can see a fine expression of the tension between different types of students representing different attitudes to tradition:

“Four types sit before the sages. One is like a sponge; one is like a sieve; one is like a funnel; and one is like a strainer. Like a sponge—how so? This is a seasoned student who sits before the sages and has learned Scripture, Mishnah, Midrash, laws, and legends; just as a sponge absorbs everything, so he absorbs everything. [Like] a sieve—how so? A clever student who sits before the sages and has heard Scripture, Mishnah, Midrash, laws, and legends; just as a sieve lets the flour through and retains the fine flour, so he discards what is poor and retains what is good. [Like] a funnel—how so? This is a foolish student who sits before the sages and has heard Scripture, Mishnah, [Midrash,] laws, and legends; just as a funnel pours in here and it goes out there, so everything that is poured into his ears enters one side and exits the other—what comes in first slips away first. [Like] a strainer—how so? This is a wicked student who sits before a sage and has heard Scripture, Mishnah, Midrash, laws, and legends; just as a strainer lets the wine out and retains the dregs, so he discards what is good and retains what is bad.”

Not for nothing, the same “seasoned student,” who is likened to a sponge, is also said (Jerusalem Talmud, Pe’ah 5, end):

“Rabbi Levi bar Laḥma said: ‘About them and about them—all, all the matters—Scripture, Mishnah, Talmud, and Aggadah—even what a seasoned student is destined to ask before his teacher was already told to Moses at Sinai.’ What is the basis? ‘There is something of which one says: See, this is new’ (Ecclesiastes 1:10); his fellow answers him: It has already been in ancient times.”

It seems that a “seasoned student” is one who functions as a sponge—that is, a student who passes on everything he heard as a hollow conduit. Seasoned students innovate nothing. Even when it seems to them that they are innovating, this is in fact a reproduction of what has always been—that is, of what was given to us at the source. The seasoned student is essentially a man of tradition.

Yet in Yalkut Shimoni (Psalms, sec. 658) we find an apparently different conception of the “seasoned student” (but see the parallel in Eruvin 13b):

“Rabbi Abbahu, in the name of Rabbi Yoḥanan, said: A seasoned student belonged to Rabbi Akiva—he could render a creeping thing pure in forty-nine ways and render it impure in forty-nine ways. And so taught Rabbi Ḥiyya: A seasoned student belonged to Rabbi Meir, and his name was Sumḥus—he would render a creeping thing impure in forty-nine ways. Behold, refined sevenfold.”

Here it appears that the seasoned student allows himself to invert the tradition he received and challenge it, which seemingly contradicts what we saw above. But upon further reflection, the meaning here is similar. We are dealing with a sharp dialectician who shows, by sophistic arguments, that it is possible to dispute the solid tradition in our hands. Ultimately even such a seasoned student does not challenge the fact that a creeping thing is impure, for that is explicit in the Torah. So even here this is not truly about novelties, changes, or additions to the tradition we received, but rather about justifying it from every direction and against every possible challenge. It therefore seems to be a continuation of the same ossified traditionalist conception.

Looking at the other three types of students in the mishnah, apart from the seasoned student who is a sponge, we find also the sieve, the strainer, and the funnel. The sieve—this is the student who sifts what he has received, separating the good from the bad; that is, he is aware that the tradition may have become corrupted and that he must sort food from chaff. Beyond these two there remain only two other types, and both are inferior: one is like a funnel—he immediately loses everything he learned (a vessel with a hole). And one is like a strainer (an inverted sieve), who deliberately retains the dregs and discards the food (apparently out of contrariness).

What I found missing from this list is another type I would have expected to see: the innovator—the one who adds his own innovations to the tradition. Alternatively, a student who interprets the tradition in ways different from what he received. We are used to regarding such students as good students, but it seems that for the Sages this is not necessarily the case. The source of all is the tradition, and all that is required in relation to it is to transmit it optimally as a hollow conduit. At most one must sort out and remove from it the foreign elements that crept in (the sieve) so as to preserve and pass it on optimally. This list of students is another expression of a conception that sees tradition as the be-all and end-all. Everything begins and ends with it, and our role is merely to guard it from every change, distortion, or addition. This is a conception of an ossified tradition that views the ideal as transmission by a hollow conduit. Yet as we saw above, factually it cannot be denied that distortions do occur in tradition (we are human); therefore it is nevertheless important to sift and sort it to ensure that it returns to being authentic and identical to the source. And that is all.

The Built-In Crisis of the Hollow-Conduit Tradition

Such an approach seems ideal with respect to a divine tradition. If the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us a Torah, it is very reasonable that we would wish to guard it zealously, to ensure that what is passed on is exactly what we received, with neither subtraction nor addition (hence the prohibitions of “do not add” and “do not subtract”). There is no reason to let human beings lay their hands on a divine tradition. Any such addition would necessarily be a human Torah and not a divine Torah, and we would view it as an error and deviation from the truth.

The problem begins with that unfortunate fact noted above. We are human, and human beings are never a hollow conduit. Whether we like it or not, everything that passes through us changes (some would say: is corrupted), and does not exit as it entered. Think of the children’s game “broken telephone.” Ten children sit side by side; the first says a word and whispers it into the ear of the second, the second to the third, and so on. The tenth says aloud what reached him, and in the vast majority of cases the result (what the tenth says) is very different from the original (what the first said). This is a fact known to anyone who has played the game. Now consider the implications. In light of this unfortunate fact, it is precisely clinging to tradition and the unwillingness to accept a human Torah or human additions—the hollow-conduit conception—that brings us to a built-in crisis. The moment a distortion occurs in the tradition, different groups will hold different traditions. Each will pass it on to its students (the next links in the chain), and they will of course hold to them tenaciously with no readiness to compromise, critique, or change what is in their hands. Within such a conceptual framework, multiple distinct schools will inevitably emerge, each holding a different tradition, with no way to speak to one another and certainly no way to decide between them. This is a tried-and-true recipe for the disintegration of tradition. The Torah thus becomes two Torahs that do not speak to one another.

It is important to understand that what causes this crisis is precisely the absolute loyalty and devotion to tradition. Were there a willingness for critique and the exercise of judgment, it might be possible to separate food from waste, discuss the different conceptions and decide by rational considerations, and then pass on a single agreed-upon tradition. Admittedly there is a risk that the conclusions we reach will not be correct (perhaps we erred in our reasoning), but if we fear such errors and cling to tradition in total ossification, we thereby doom it to disintegration. This crisis is built into the hollow-conduit approach.

An Instrumental Justification

In the next chapter of Avot de-Rabbi Natan appears the well-known story about R. Shimon ben Elazar:

“It once happened that Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar was returning from Migdal Eder, from his teacher’s house, riding on a donkey and strolling along the seashore. He saw a certain man who was exceedingly ugly. He said to him: ‘Empty one! How ugly you are! Are all the people of your town as ugly as you?’ He replied: ‘What can I do? Go to the Craftsman who made me and say to Him: How ugly is this vessel You have made!’ When Rabbi Shimon realized that he had sinned, he dismounted from the donkey and prostrated himself before him. He said to him: ‘I have answered you harshly; forgive me.’ He said to him: ‘I will not forgive you until you go to the Craftsman who made me and say to Him: How ugly is this vessel You have made!’ He ran after him for three miles. The townspeople came out to greet him. He said to them: ‘Peace to you, Rabbi.’ They said to him: ‘To whom do you call “Rabbi”?’ They said: ‘To the one who is walking after you.’ He said to them: ‘If this man is a Rabbi, may there not be many like him in Israel!’ They said to him: ‘Heaven forbid! What did he do to you?’ He told them what had happened. They said to him: ‘Even so, forgive him.’ He said to them: ‘Behold I forgive, on condition that he not make a habit of such behavior.’”

“That day Rabbi Shimon entered his great study hall and taught: A person should always be soft like a reed and not hard like a cedar. For all winds come and blow upon the reed, and it goes and comes with them; when the winds subside, the reed returns to its place. And what is the end of the reed? It merited that a quill is taken from it to write a Torah scroll. But a cedar does not remain in its place; once a southern wind blows, it uproots it and overturns it on its face. And what is the end of the cedar? Stonecutters come upon it, hew it, and roof houses with it, and the rest they throw into the fire. From here they said: A person should be soft like a reed and not hard like a cedar.”

The moral in the second passage is that while the hard cedar has an advantage over the soft, flexible reed—for the cedar does not bend and does not give in to any wind—winds strong enough will break it. The reed, by contrast, sways and bends in every ordinary wind, but in the end it returns to its place. In the end, with respect to weak winds the cedar is better suited; but when strong winds come—when a serious storm arises—the reed stands better in their face (see this presented as a children’s story here). Some have wittily cited the verse (Isaiah 58:5), “to bow his head like a bulrush” (see Shabbat 54b). The same applies to our attitude to tradition. A hard, ossified stance ostensibly ensures reliable immobility, not yielding to the winds of the times. But that is suitable when the winds are weak—that is, in the face of challenges that do not truly threaten the core of tradition. In a very strong wind, when a serious crisis comes, the cedar will break and the tradition will shatter. A flexible reed-like tradition may move with the wind and change with circumstances, but its center remains always in the same place. Assuming that over history strong winds will at times inevitably appear, we may hypothesize that in the end it is precisely a reed-like tradition that will prove most faithful to the source.

As an aside, I note that the connection to the story at the beginning of the passage is puzzling. R. Shimon indeed behaved toward that ugly man in a harsh, cedar-like manner. But the drawback of being like a cedar there was not that winds broke him, but that he broke others (he hurt the man). Moreover, the contrast required of him in that situation was not flexibility but human compassion (softness?). In that story he needed to be soft like a reed in order not to hurt another—not in order to avoid being hurt himself. That is a different lesson from the reed-cedar contrast in the second passage. Yet if you look at the story’s end, the cedar indeed stood its ground, but in the end he himself was harmed. R. Shimon thought that being a cedar protects him even at the cost of harming others. In his view one must defend the truth, defend the Holy One (who created the world and all within it), defend the ideal of perfect beauty—and he did not mind harming another person for the sake of pure truth. It turned out he was mistaken. It rebounds and harms him as well. He wanted to guard the tradition with cedar-like rigidity, and in the end he shattered it. Therefore, in the final accounting, the second passage does represent the lesson that emerges from the first. Not for nothing does this chapter appear in the midst of the AR”N sections dealing with transmission of tradition from teachers to students.

A Substantive Justification

Note that underlying this argument in favor of reed-like tradition and against cedar-like tradition is still the same ossified conception. The argument I presented (like that in AR”N) is an instrumental one: if we cling to tradition like a cedar, we will fail to preserve it. That is, the goal remains preservation and transmission of the tradition as accurately and reliably as possible. There is no value in being a reed per se; it is only useful for preserving the tradition better than the cedar policy. It would be better if we could be a cedar, but what can we do—there are strong winds as well! So far, it appears that a tradition that flexes, is interpreted, develops, and changes is only a necessary evil.

Is there room for a conception that sees a dynamic tradition as a value ab initio? Such a conception would view overly rigid preservation as a substantive defect, not merely a threat to the tradition’s survivability. An overly rigid tradition does not truly fulfill its task. The claim is that, from the outset, preserving tradition is precisely through changing it according to circumstances, like a reed. This is a substantive, not an instrumental, claim: fossilized adherence to tradition is itself a distortion (not merely something that leads to crises and distortions).

This of course brings me to my well-known swimsuit parable (see column 475 and the sources cited there). In brief: a group of people—along with their fathers and forefathers for generations—travel in the desert wearing swimsuits. At some point they reach the Promised Land, which is no longer desert and whose climate is colder. A debate arises whether to switch to warm clothing. The conservatives solemnly declare that they will not change their dress and will continue with swimsuits as their forefathers did. I explained there that these are one kind of conservative, whom I called “literalist conservatives.” In contrast there is another kind, “midrashic conservatives,” who declare that they will wear warm clothes. But they do not do so out of alienation from their commitment to tradition; on the contrary, it is precisely their commitment to tradition that obligates wearing warm clothes. Tradition, in their interpretation (this is the “conservative midrash” underlying their conservatism), obligates them to wear clothing appropriate to the weather. Their claim is that our forefathers lived in hot places and therefore wore swimsuits, not that there is value in wearing swimsuits per se. Therefore, to continue the tradition properly, we must wear warm clothes suited to our colder climate.

Note that on their view this is not merely permitted but required—deriving from the commitment to tradition. According to this view, literalist conservatism is delinquent. It tries to preserve tradition in an ossified way—a cedar-like tradition—but that very approach leads to delinquency, namely deviation from the very tradition it seeks to preserve. The claim is not that it harms others, but that it harms the tradition itself. Note that this is not an instrumental argument. I do not change into warm clothes in order to make halakhah flexible and palatable, or to endear the Torah to the public, or not to overburden them lest they abandon tradition (sometimes called “sanctification of the Name”…). I change into warm clothes because that is what the tradition itself demands. One who does not do so is a transgressor. This is a claim about substantive truth, not a means for preserving or popularizing tradition.

True, this is not really a novelty or addition to the tradition, for it is a claim about what the tradition itself says. And yet there is here a dynamic tradition that undergoes interpretation and changes with the generations. Preservation of tradition is not necessarily by the literalist route (like a cedar) but may differ from what was customary until now (like a reed). The claim is that this is a conservative-traditionalist approach—that is, an approach committed to preserving tradition. Tradition does not necessarily mandate a policy of a fossilized cedar. Moving with the winds of the times is sometimes what the tradition itself demands (and not merely a technical means for its preservation and survival). Therefore, this is a substantive, not an instrumental, argument.

As an aside, in my series on Modern Orthodoxy (475–480) I explained that there is also room for arguments that truly add to the tradition, not only those that interpret it “midrashically” (see there the discussion of the status and force of external values and of obligations deriving from reason). I will not enter that here.

The Connection Between the Instrumental and the Substantive

Thus far we have assumed two ways to ground the value of interpretive flexibility regarding tradition: an instrumental value and a substantive value. But this distinction is not necessarily dichotomous. Sometimes there is a connection between the instrumental and the substantive.

In several places we see that controversy is the product of a defect in the transmission of tradition—that is, some deterioration. Thus, for example, the Talmud (Sanhedrin 88b) describes the emergence of controversy as follows:

“It was taught: Rabbi Yose said: At first they did not multiply controversy in Israel. Rather, a court of seventy-one sat in the Chamber of Hewn Stone; and two courts of twenty-three—one sat at the entrance to the Temple Mount and one sat at the entrance to the courtyard; and the other courts of twenty-three sat in all the cities of Israel. If a matter required inquiry, they would ask the court of their town; if they had heard [a ruling], they would say it to them; and if not, they would come to the one near their town; if they had heard, they would say it to them; and if not, they would come to the one at the entrance to the Temple Mount; if they had heard, they would say it to them; and if not, they would come to the one at the entrance to the courtyard and would say: ‘Thus I expounded, and thus my colleagues expounded; thus I learned, and thus my colleagues learned.’ If they had heard, they would say it to them; and if not, both sides would come to the Chamber of Hewn Stone, where [the Sanhedrin] sat from the morning daily offering until the afternoon daily offering, and on Sabbaths and festivals they sat in the ḥeil. If a question was asked before them and they had heard, they would say it to them; and if not, they would stand for a count: if the majority declared it impure, they would declare it impure; if the majority declared it pure, they would declare it pure. From the time that the students of Shammai and Hillel increased, who did not serve [their teachers] sufficiently, controversy increased in Israel and the Torah became like two Torahs.”

The baraita describes that initially everything was decided higher up the halakhic hierarchy, by a vote in the Sanhedrin in the Chamber of Hewn Stone, and only when the students of Hillel and Shammai multiplied, who had not served their teachers sufficiently, did controversies increase in Israel and the Torah became like two Torahs. For our purposes the diagnosis is key: because the students did not attend properly upon their teachers, forgetfulness set in and more controversies arose. Apparently it is not the number of controversies but the failure to decide them, leaving “two Torahs.” If so, controversy emerges from a defect or failure in tradition—an unfortunate result, apparently due to the “broken telephone” described above. The less properly students served their masters, the more the links in the chain broke and the message was transmitted less reliably and accurately.

Yet it is unclear why they did not count and vote to reach an agreed decision in these later controversies as well. Let us grant that the students of Hillel and Shammai did not serve sufficiently and distortions and controversies arose. Why were these not decided by majority vote? Perhaps the baraita’s opening phrasing hints at this. The wording is surprising: it says that initially they did not “increase controversy” in Israel. Ostensibly it should have said that initially there were not many controversies, not that they did not increase them. Moreover, it is not true that there were no controversies; there were, except that they were decided by the Sanhedrin. From the phrasing it seems the baraita means that initially they did not see controversy as a value and therefore did not increase controversy—except where it arose unavoidably. In the days of Hillel and Shammai they began to see controversy as a value and would purposely multiply controversies. Therefore they also did not want to decide them, seeing value in the plurality of opinions.

All this occurs alongside the baraita’s description that they had not served sufficiently. Ostensibly that is not an ideological shift but a deterioration in people’s level. How does this picture fit with viewing controversy as resulting from a defect in students and in the transmission of Torah? Perhaps the root lies in the mishnah in Ḥagigah 16a describing the chain of dispute regarding leaning (semikhah) on the festival peace-offering:

“Yose ben Yo’ezer says not to lean; Yose ben Yoḥanan says to lean. Yehoshua ben Peraḥyah says not to lean; Nittai the Arbelite says to lean. Yehudah ben Tabbai says not to lean; Shimon ben Shetaḥ says to lean. Shemaiah says to lean; Avtalyon says not to lean. Hillel and Menaḥem did not disagree; Menaḥem left and Shammai entered. Shammai says not to lean; Hillel says to lean.”

Rashi there writes:

“‘Yose ben Yo’ezer says not to lean’—on a festival; and this was the first controversy among the sages of Israel.”

That is, this was the first controversy among the sages of Israel—an implausible claim, of course. Apparently he means it was the first controversy that endured over time—that is, that was not decided.

And in Tosafot (s.v. “Yosi”) they wrote:

“‘Yosi ben Yo’ezer…’—In the Yerushalmi it says that at first there was controversy only about semikhah; and Shammai and Hillel made it four. From the time the students of Shammai and Hillel, who did not serve sufficiently, multiplied, controversies increased in Israel and they split into two camps. One may wonder, for they had already disputed in the days of Saul over loan versus coin (Sanhedrin 19a). Perhaps since Saul and his court held one view and no one disputed him—only David by his reasoning—this is not called ‘controversy’…”

According to our approach, Tosafot’s question is not difficult. The Yerushalmi does not say this was the first controversy, but that it was the first in which the sages split into two camps—that is, a controversy that was not decided.

And in Temurah 15b we find:

“Rabbi Yehudah said in the name of Shmuel: All ‘clusters’ (great scholars) that arose for Israel from the days of Moses until the death of Yosef ben Yo’ezer studied Torah like Moses our teacher. From then on they did not study Torah like Moses our teacher. But did not Rabbi Yehudah say in the name of Shmuel that three thousand laws were forgotten during the mourning for Moses? Those that were forgotten were forgotten, but those that were learned were learned like Moses our teacher. And is it not taught: From the death of Moses, if the majority declared impure, it was impure; if the majority declared pure, it was pure? Their hearts were diminished [in capacity]; but what they learned, they learned like Moses our teacher. In a baraita it was taught: All ‘clusters’ that arose for Israel from the days of Moses until the death of Yosef ben Yo’ezer of Tzeredah had no defect in them; from then on there was some defect.”

The heart diminished and, although they knew all of Moses’s Torah, controversies arose. And in the time of Yosef ben Yo’ezer there was a “defect.” The Gemara (16a) explains:

“Rav Yosef said: The ‘defect’ of semikhah is meant. But did Yosef ben Yo’ezer himself not dispute semikhah? He disputed it at the end of the second [period], when the heart had diminished.”

The heart diminished and controversy arose.

Rashi there explains what the defect was:

“‘Defect of semikhah’—For until Yosef ben Yo’ezer they had not disputed semikhah nor anything else, for the heart had not yet diminished. Therefore it mentions semikhah, for that was the first controversy ever disputed by the sages. And from Yosef ben Yo’ezer onward there was the ‘defect of semikhah,’ for they disputed leaning on festival peace-offerings, as we say in Ḥagigah 16a—Shammai says to lean, and Hillel says not to lean.”

We see in the Gemara and Rashi that controversy is attributed to a diminishment of heart. Indeed, the Shitah Mekubetzet there writes that from then on controversies multiplied. The Gra (Vilna Gaon) on that passage explains, in light of the preceding sugya (“if the majority declared impure…”), that this was not the first controversy, but that earlier ones were decided, whereas this one remained undecided for generations. Therefore the Gemara calls this a “defect,” for the controversies endured over time without decision.

R. Yitzḥak Hutner, in Pahad Yitzḥak—Hanukkah, ch. 3, discusses the emergence of controversy from the forgetting of Torah in the days of the Greeks. He cites the Sages who said that Greece “darkened the eyes” of Israel, explaining that the controversies that arose in the days of the pair Yosef-s (Yose ben Yo’ezer and Yose ben Yoḥanan) were due to the Greek conquest and decrees. The darkening of Israel’s eyes created the controversy.

But he continues and brings the Gemara in Ḥagigah 3b:

“‘Masters of assemblies’—these are the sages who sit in assemblies and occupy themselves with Torah. These declare impure and those declare pure; these forbid and those permit; these disqualify and those validate. Lest a person say, ‘How can I learn Torah from now on?’ Scripture says: ‘All of them were given by one Shepherd’—one God gave them, one Provider said them, from the mouth of the Master of all deeds, blessed be He, as it is written, ‘And God spoke all these words.’ You too make your ears like a funnel and acquire a discerning heart to hear the words of those who declare impure and those who declare pure, those who forbid and those who permit, those who disqualify and those who validate.”

The Gemara is very enthusiastic about the situation of controversy and plurality of opinions. Moreover, it sees truth in each of the opinions; that is, controversies do not express corruption but refinement and expansion of the Torah. How does this reconcile with the claim that it is a defect born of the students’ shortcomings?

R. Hutner asks it thus:

“To a superficial glance, the diverse opinions and differences in approaches would seem a remnant of the Greek oppression: for with all the salvation and redemption of the Hasmonean victory, that trouble born of the Greek war still rolls with us. Yet from the words of the Sages we learn a deeper conception of the matter itself, as will be explained.”

Seemingly the controversies remained after the Greeks were defeated, and this is a remnant of the Greek era.

And in sections 3–4 there he explains:

“At times the ‘negation’ of Torah is its very preservation, as it is said of the breaking of the Tablets: ‘Which you shattered—yishar koḥakha (bravo) for shattering’ (Shabbat 87a). The act of shattering the Tablets was an act of preserving Torah through its negation. And the Sages said: had the Tablets not been broken, Torah would not have been forgotten from Israel (Eruvin 54a). Thus, the breaking of the Tablets also brought about a forgetting of Torah. From here we learn a wondrous novelty: Torah can be increased through the forgetting of Torah—to the point that one may be congratulated for causing the forgetting of Torah. Consider what the Sages said: three hundred laws were forgotten during the mourning for Moses, and Othniel ben Kenaz restored them through his dialectic. These words of Torah—this dialectic of restoring the laws—are words of Torah that increased only through the forgetting of Torah. Moreover, the entire matter of controversy in halakhah exists only due to forgetting of Torah—and yet the Sages said: even though these declare impure and those declare pure, these disqualify and those validate, these exempt and those obligate—both are the words of the living God. It follows that all differences of opinion are a magnification and glorification of Torah, born precisely through the power of forgetting Torah.”

“And a yet greater novelty emerges: the power of the Oral Torah is displayed more in controversy than in agreement. For in ‘both are the words of the living God’ lies the foundation that even the view rejected in practice is still a Torah view, provided it was stated within the bounds of the give-and-take of the Oral Torah. As the Ramban wrote: the Torah was given ‘in accordance with the minds of the sages of Torah.’ And if a later vote stands and decides like the previously rejected view, from then on the halakhah changes in truth (see Or Yisrael §30, note). It follows that the controversies of Torah sages reveal the power of the Oral Torah far more than their agreements. The ‘battle of Torah’ is not one form among many forms of Torah words; rather, the battle of Torah is a positive creation of new Torah values for which there is no analogue in mere Torah words.”

This is essentially the ideology of the students of Hillel and Shammai that we saw above—who would increase controversy ab initio and did not want to decide it. Thus, while controversy arose due to a failure in tradition caused by the students’ defects, the outcome is positive. There is no contradiction between these two claims.[1]

And in section 6 there, R. Hutner summarizes:

“We return thereby to the beginning: the existence of controversy in words of Torah, continuing to this very day, was indeed born in the darkness of Greece; nonetheless, this state is not a residual of the Greek oppression. On the contrary, the deliverance of Ḥanukkah through the court of the Hasmoneans is victory over the Greek darkness by bringing forth light from within the darkness itself—‘He magnifies and glorifies the Torah’—through the forgetting of Torah; its negation is its preservation.”

The conclusion is that controversy is a blessing, not a curse, and therefore the darkening of the eyes by Greece helped to bring forth great Torah light. This is not a remnant of the Greek oppression but part of the redemption from it. So too the defect of the students of Hillel and Shammai—apparently a product of that same darkening—was ultimately a means to create refinement and expansion of the Torah. Hence the baraita in Ḥagigah opens by saying that at first they did not increase controversy, for the conception was that controversy is a defect. It may be an unavoidable necessity derived from human (imperfect) nature; but in earlier periods, if controversy nevertheless arose, they would decide it—and they did not view it as a value but as a failure. Later, an ideology emerged that viewed controversy as a blessing, and therefore controversies were left undecided. In the mishnah in Ḥagigah we indeed see a depiction of the development of the dispute and its transmission across many generations without decision.

Incidentally, that Menaḥem mentioned in the mishnah in Ḥagigah was the only one who did not dispute Hillel; then he “departed,” and in his place came Shammai, who did dispute Hillel. The Gemara discusses what this “departure” was:

“‘Menaḥem departed and Shammai entered’—where did he go? Abbaye said: He departed to an evil culture. Rava said: He departed to royal service. A baraita likewise teaches: Menaḥem departed to royal service, and with him departed eighty pairs of students wearing silk.”

Perhaps it is no accident that this Menaḥem was not part of the chain of the Oral Torah. One who, in principle, does not dispute his colleague and is not prepared to examine a received tradition—one who advocates minimizing controversy—does not remain part of that chain.

And incidentally to the incidentally: in the end there is a halakhic ruling even regarding this perennial dispute. The Rambam (Hilkhot Ḥagigah 1:9) writes:

“When one offers his burnt-offering of appearance and his peace-offerings of festival and rejoicing on a festival day, he leans upon them with all his strength, as on other days. Although leaning is not indispensable, as we explained in the laws of sacrifices, they did not decree against it because of a rabbinic prohibition of labor on the festival.”

That is, in practice one leans on the festival peace-offering on Yom Tov; they did not enact a prohibition because of shvut. Despite the value in controversy and the reluctance to decide, in the end one must make practical decisions. Interestingly, in the Gemara itself this decision does not appear; presumably the Rambam’s source is the very fact that the disputants were Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai. In disputes between these two houses, the halakhah follows Beit Hillel (see Kesef Mishneh ad loc.). It is even more interesting that the law there was decided on the basis of a heavenly voice (see Eruvin 13b). That is, in the end the ideology of controversy neither succeeds nor perhaps even seeks to decide, and we require a bat qol to do so.

Back to the Connection Between the Instrumental and the Substantive

Our conclusion is that even if controversy arises via a distorted path—through defects and failures—it can bring about a positive result: refinement and expansion of the Torah. Such a perspective breaks down the dichotomy between the instrumental and the substantive with respect to flexibility and dynamism in tradition more generally.

The instrumental justification for interpretive flexibility that I presented above was based on the claim that an ossified approach will shatter the tradition when a distortion arises that breeds controversy. This, in fact, happened with the students of Hillel and Shammai. It created a crisis that prevented deciding the controversies. The substantive justification says that flexibility will reveal additional facets in the Torah that earlier generations did not recognize—leading to a different ideological view of controversy as a positive matter that need not be decided.

In light of what we have seen here, it is possible that the original justification for a reed-like tradition was instrumental—to solve the problem of controversies created by the cedar-like conception of tradition. But once that was accepted, a view took shape that sees flexibility, and the controversies it engenders, as a positive value. Controversies are an expression of the fact that there is room for multiple facets within the same tradition, and earlier generations did not always perceive all those facets. Sometimes new circumstances and modes of thought reveal aspects in the tradition that had not previously been recognized. The willingness to relate to tradition in a flexible way is what reveals them. The price of a flexible tradition is the emergence of controversies, but the mere existence of differing opinions is not necessarily problematic. The inability to live with them is what creates difficulty. Moreover, a flexible tradition also enables discussion, argumentation, and decision where necessary. I will address this in the coming columns.

[1] After this series, I plan to devote a column to the tension and contradictions between the origin of a given opinion and the product as such.