The requirement of a reading: B. Taam and Gader (Tor 715)

With God’s help

That's it. Back to the important stuff.

In the previous column, we saw the controversy over the Tan'im regarding the requirement of a ta'ma da'kra and its implications. Here, I would like to address a fundamental difficulty regarding the application of the rule that a ta'ma da'kra is not required, which will shed further light on this strange issue.

The difficulty

Anyone who has dealt with Talmudic issues knows that in many cases we do require the reasons for the commandments. This is done in the Talmud itself and also in the commentators. Halacha literature is full of conclusions drawn from interpretation of the Torah commandments, and it is not clear how this is done if one does not require a taema dekra. Such interpretive conclusions can arise from two types of sources: 1. Interpretive considerations from the text and its context. 2. Considerations that are explained. If the interpretation is based on considerations of type 1, then there is not necessarily a taema dekra. The text is interpreted according to its meaning and context, and there is no need for reasons and purposes here (although there is no interpretation that is purely textual). This is a literal interpretation, not a purposive one. But interpretations that are based on interpretation are almost always related to understanding the taema of the commandment. Can one seriously argue that one does not find interpretations related to explanations in the Talmud and its commentators, but only interpretive considerations regarding the biblical text? To be more concrete, we will take an example in which the commentators themselves have already commented on the matter.

The Rif at the beginning of the BK (Pa. A. B.) writes: "And a tooth and a foot in a public place are exempt, because it is his custom." He offers an explanation for the exemption for damage to a tooth and a foot in public place. It is the way of a person to walk there with his animal. This is what the Rah is intended for, and therefore it is not reasonable to require him to look after his animal. It is more reasonable to expect owners of fruit or various objects not to leave them there unattended.

The Rosh (ibid., 61) writes about this:

I wonder why it was necessary to interpret the meaning of the verse, because of his order, he did not read the text - and burn in another field, and preach - and not in the Rabbi. And perhaps he came to interpret the meaning of the verse, why did the Torah forgive him in the Rabbi, since his path was to follow the Rabbi and the owners should always follow them. But a kernel is obliged in the Rabbi, despite his path being to follow there, because he is a deity and knows that he has been taught by Mary to the naturia, and the most important thing is that he is a deity to the Torah.

And it was decided on this basis that if there was a long tree lying partly in the forest and partly in the forest, and she stepped on it in the forest and broke utensils in the forest, since her path was to walk and step on it - she is exempt. And Rabbi Yitzchak ben Shmuel did not interpret this way, saying that a bull's back proves that it is in possession.

The Rosh wonders why the Rif needed to provide a reason for this ruling, and explains that it has a halachic implication: If an animal walking on a leash moves a long plank that causes damage in the damaged yard, according to the Rif it will be exempt even though the damage was in the damaged yard. The animal walked as it should in the leash and there is no obligation to supervise it, and therefore its owner is also exempt from damages it causes in the damaged yard.Yesh There, C. D. cites a disagreement among the Rishonim on the matter.

Note that even the Rosh who comments on the need for the Rif to offer a reason for the law learned from the verse does not have a problem with this because of the principle that a taema dekra is not required. If his question was because of this, then his excuse does not amount to much. What about the fact that it has a halakhic implication? On the contrary, deriving a halakhic implication from the reason is exactly what we are not supposed to do if a taema dekra is not required. Why is the issue of a taema dekra not really troubling the Rif and the Rosh?

And here, inA bitter pill On the Rosh there, in the letter 9, he states that this is indeed the opinion of the Rif in light of the omission from the rest of the Gemara:

And a portion was removed for this reason, and if there was a long tree, etc. And the author of the Signs of Heroes added and wrote, "And the Z"l, and certainly this is the opinion of our Rabbi, the one who omitted the word "D"l" in the words of Dr. Jeremiah to Rabbi Zira, "From which the word "D"l" is pronounced, and the connection with the word "R" is pronounced, and our Rabbis omitted the meaning of "D"l" and said, "The word "D"l" is pronounced, but the word "D"l" is pronounced, and the connection with the word "R" is exempt from the rules, so it is not."

And makes it difficult:

And I am very surprised by all this, that he would have the Ri'af interpret a reason he read from his heart and issue a ruling based on that reason, which is not according to the conclusion of the Gemara. And I will also write in this regard the following four principles, and in the chapter How to follow the path of the Ri'af, here. And consider the words of our Rabbi in Tractate 77, at the end of the chapter of Rabbi Yishmael, who wrote in this regard that it is not according to the Ri'af:

He already raises the difficulty for the RIF because they do not demand a reason for reading. What is the answer to this? And even more, why are the RIF and the Rosh not bothered by this at all?

Fence and taste

In yeshivas, such questions are occasionally raised, and in response, it is customary to say that we are dealing here with the scope of the halakha and not its purpose. In the case of damages caused by a rabbi, the argument is that the Rif does not determine the purpose of the exemption from a rabbi, but only its scope. It claims that the exemption exists in any situation in which the animal follows its own path in the rabbi. But there is no proposed explanation or purpose for the basis of the exemption.

It is very difficult to include this in the RIF itself, since it does not even bother to bring up the halakhic implication. It merely states that the reason for the exemption is because, in principle, an animal has permission to go its own way. The word "sesame" in his words clearly seems like a suggestion of reason. But beyond that, even if it were included in the RIF's language, one gets the impression that this distinction is very thin, and it is doubtful whether it really exists. It seems more like apologetic babbling. Although categorically there is a difference between a boundary and a boundary: the boundary is the purpose of the thing and the boundary is the description of the halakhic result. But this raises the question of when exactly is the requirement of reason a reason that is not done and when is it just a boundary that can be done?

But the difficulty is much deeper. Even if there is such a categorical distinction, another question arises here: How do we determine the boundary of the law if we do not refer to its taste? Let us assume that we do not need the reason for the law but only its definition, how did we arrive at this definition? Consider, for example, the words of the Rif. If he really does not claim that this is the reason for the exemption, then how does he know that the boundary of the law is that the animal is exempt whenever it goes its own way in the law? Isn't it clear that the boundary was determined because of the reason underlying it? Even if we do not put the reason on the table but deal only with the boundary, the reason is certainly there at the basis of the discussion. Therefore, de facto, we do indeed require a reason for reading. Consider, for example, the dispute over the conditions that we saw in the first column regarding a widow's mortgage. R.S. could not have demanded a reason for reading, but only established the boundary: one does not take a pledge only from a poor widow. Does the fact that he does not mention the reason mean that he did not demand a reason for reading? The fact that he reached the halakhic boundary that it is only a poor widow is because the reason for the law is that she will not bring bad name to her neighbors. It is impossible to establish the boundary without establishing the reason. And if Rabbi Yehuda had said that a king is forbidden to have many wicked wives, without saying that the problem is that they will remove his heart, did he not demand a reason for reading? It is clear that he is focusing on wickedness because of the reason for removing the heart.

The conclusion is that although the boundary and the reason are two categorically different things, there is a necessary connection between them: the boundary is a result of the reason. It is impossible to deal with the former without assuming the latter. If one does not require a reason for reading, then it is also impossible to determine the boundary. On the other hand, here we can see that if that is the case, then it is impossible to meet the requirement not to require a reason for reading. This requirement actually prevents us from interpreting the halakha completely.

Implication for the Briskers

This reminds me of the Briskan ethos that advocates that when studying Talmudic topics, we do not ask "why?" but only "what?". We have failed to understand the words of the Talmudic sages and their early commentators. We can only ask what they said without trying to understand why. I have often explained that this is probably the reason why they are so fond of the Sederi Kodshim and Taharat. The assumption is that there we have no understanding of our own and therefore we can come to the study clean and only describe "what" we find there without mixing our own ideas (the "why?"). But of course this is a childish illusion. Without having ideas about the "why", you have no way of understanding the "what". After all, the Briskans themselves interpret the topics and make use of interpretations, even in Kodshim and Taharat. Over and over again they discuss what is more reasonable and what is less. How do they know what is reasonable and what is not, if they do not understand the reasons for the matter? It turns out that behind the "what?" there is always some "why?" The question of how we have an understanding of the "why" of issues of holiness and purity will be discussed later.

Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel's proposal

Rabbi Shilat, in his article "The Ways of Study of the Gaon Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel," describes the relationship between boundary and taste as follows:

The idea of the mitzvah does not belong to what is called the "tamei mitzvots," nor to the method of Rabbi Shimon Dedarish Tema Dekra. The idea of the mitzvah is essentially what is commonly called the halakhic "boundary" of the mitzvah, but this boundary is not a purely formal matter, which is deduced from the laws that appear in the Gemara without asking for their taste, but rather it is the idea that the mitzvah expresses, which is often the source of the laws that appear in the Gemara. The sages understand this idea from an informed observation of Scripture, and from this fundamental idea they derive laws, both from interpretation, from the precise language of Scripture, and through the 13 Virtues..

In other words, we have the possibility of arriving at the idea of the mitzvah even without understanding its meaning. This emerges from an informed reading of the biblical text, which involves speculation, considerations of textual interpretation, or sermonic standards.

Now he gives an example:

In the laws of the Sukkah, there is a rule, "You shall dwell as in a Sukkah" (Sukkah 27:1 and others), from which we learn several laws. What is the origin of this rule? He says: the idea of the mitzvah. The Torah commanded that we dwell in a Sukkah for seven days, not that we should visit it, but that it should be our home. This is the idea of the mitzvah, that is, the boundary of the mitzvah, when you grasp its meaning. The reason for the mitzvah is something entirely different, and in this case its essence is explained in the scripture: "That your generations may know that I have caused the children of Israel to dwell in Sukkahs," etc., and one can add more reasons, so and so..

This example is excellent because it offers us a sharp distinction between the fence and the meaning, and in truth it seems here that there is no connection between them. The fence of dwelling in the sukkah is to live in it as one lives in a house. It is not related to the meaning of the mitzvah, which is to remember the sukkahs that God built for our ancestors in the wilderness. So where did we really learn that this is the fence of dwelling in the sukkah? Probably from the meaning of the term "teshbu" (in the verse "in the sukkahs you shall dwell seven days"). The Sages understood that Shabbat means to live in a sukkah (instead of in a house).

However, this example will not really be able to explain to us cases like the one we saw above in the Rif. There it is not clear how one can reach the threshold of exemption without resorting to its taste. In contrast to the complicated example, it clearly seems that in most cases the halakhic definition is derived from understanding the taste of the law itself. In fact, every explanation and every assumption that we use in Talmudic study is ostensibly a taema dekra. Is it not possible to use our logic when studying halakhic law and halakhic issues in the Torah?

A topic read in sermons: Return to the RIF

To understand this, it is important to emphasize a significant caveat to the prohibition against demanding a reason for a reading. This rule concerns only a simple interpretation of the verse. In sermons, one can always demand the reason for the ruling, and this does not contradict the rule that one does not demand a reason for a reading. In the column 647 I discussed Shimon Ha-Amsoni's sermon, "'Fear the Lord your God' - including the scholars." I described in detail how he arrived at his sermon, and what Rabbi Akiva added there. The bottom line is that it is clear that the word "you" instructs us to include something, but it is still difficult to deduce from this what to include. Does it include chairs? Doves? Holy books? In short, how did the Tannaim decide to include specifically the scholars? It is clear that the decision about what to include is left to the preacher, and he decides on it from his own understanding. The same applies to all other textual qualities of the sermon. For example, when there is a gazash, the Torah tells us to compare two biblical contexts, but there is no hint as to what to compare and what not to compare. And the same goes for various general and particular measures. The conclusion is that a halakhic midrash is always constructed in two stages: activation of a darsh measure, which constitutes a textual trigger that tells us where in the verse to discuss and in what form (compare, include, exclude, etc.), such as "at" which comes to include. After that comes an explanation that tells us what content you poured into the sermon, and in our case: including the scholastics.

From this it is clear that when we come to interpret the halakhic product of the sermon, there is no reason to use an assumption and demand the reason. When I come to interpret the law of fearing the scholars of Torah, I can say that it is precisely the sages who are also righteous. Why? Because only they resemble God, the Almighty, and this is why we are supposed to fear them. The justification for relying on the reason in these cases is that the original preacher himself relied on the reason when he created this law. By demanding the reason, we are only reproducing his reason and extracting from it the boundary of the law. There is no reason to think that the preacher is allowed to demand the reason and we are not, and therefore there is no logic in prohibiting the demand for the reason in midrashic laws. The conclusion is that the negation of the demand for the reason of reading was stated only in relation to the interpretation of verses, as I explained in the previous column.

This resolves quite a few difficulties raised by commentators on various issues, when they wonder why the reasons are required there, and it seems that they did not notice that these are halachic midrash and not verse interpretations, where reasons are required. It is possible that the words of the Rif above are also explained in this way. He requires the reason for the verse because this is a sermon and not a simple interpretation. When we study the exemption of the Rabbi of Bar-Ra from the verse "and burn in another field," it does not seem that this is the written simple interpretation. The simple interpretation could have been interpreted in many other ways. So if one of the Talmudic sages interpreted the verse from the understanding that it came to negate the obligation of the Rabbi of Bar-Ra, he probably had a reason for choosing this interpretation. If so, there is no reason why a later sage like the Rif would explain the reasoning underlying this ruling and derive halachic implications from it.

But even this does not provide an answer to the fundamental difficulty. When we engage in a simplistic interpretation of the verses, in which case we are not supposed to demand a taema dekra, the question still arises as to how one can apply reasoning and logic without resorting to reason? For example, how does Rabbi Yehuda or T.K. formulate the law of taking a pledge from a widow? Does he adhere entirely to the language of the text and not apply reasoning? This is highly unlikely. We often interpret laws that arise from verses using reasoning. We qualify the laws and redefine them, and it does not seem that this is done solely on the basis of the text itself. So how can one interpret a mitzvah without resorting to its reason? How do we establish the boundary without resorting to reason?

To understand this, I must give a brief philosophical-psychological introduction.

Daniel Kahneman's two systems of thinking

In several columns in the past (see for example in columns 38, 653 And more) I mentioned Daniel Kahneman's thesis, which is described in his book Think fast, think slow., where he distinguishes between two modes of our thinking, which he calls: System 1 and System 2. System 2 is our recursive thinking, that is, slow, logical, calculated and conscious thinking. It analyzes concepts and principles and uses arguments to draw conclusions. Decisions made in this system are slow but logically based and take into account different and decisive options between them. In contrast, System 1 is an instinctive-intuitive system, which operates in immediate and automatic response, and uses fast and unconscious thinking. Our thinking in System 1 does not go through our recursive thinking systems. System 1 is a kind of autopilot, we react from the gut without thinking.

It is important to understand that "gut feeling" here is not necessarily a negative expression. There are situations in which a System 1 response is far superior to a System 2 response. When a quick and precise response is required, when the problem is complex and difficult to address with systematic and analytical tools, System 1 can bring us directly to a conclusion. For example, in tasks such as those in the following list (a client fromWikipedia), there is a built-in advantage for System 1: determining that an object is at a greater distance from another object. locating the source of the sound we hear. completing the phrase "war and ...", expressing disgust when seeing a disgusting sight, solving a simple exercise like 2+2, reading text on a billboard, driving a car on an empty road (and not empty. Autopilot), playing an excellent chess game for a very skilled player, expressing simple sentences, linking a description like "a quiet and introverted person with an eye for detail" to a specific occupation, and so on. All of these are included in the capabilities of System 1, and in some of them it even has an advantage over System 2. On the other hand, System 2 is better at solving complex problems for which we have no experience or intuition, such as examining a complex logical argument, solving a complex multiplication problem, and certainly complicated scientific or mathematical problems, locating someone at a noisy party, solving puzzles, and so on.

So far I have described a sharp separation between these two systems and their functions. However, as I understand it, the relationship between them is more complex. I will now try to show that they do not divide tasks among themselves but rather work together in a reciprocal manner.

Want and again

In a column 592 I have described the vicious circle of the relationship between a scientific theory and the facts on which it is based. In Francis Bacon's naive view, science first deals with collecting facts. It then analyzes them and tries to create a generalization from them (through induction) that will bring them all into one broad framework. This is a process of abduction (see the columns on 399, 537 and more), whose goal is to create a theory that will explain the known facts as well as additional facts that will be tested in future empirical tests.

In the first stage, as mentioned, we must collect the relevant facts. But this in itself is not a trivial step, since in the absence of a theory, it is impossible to know which facts are relevant. There are several clear examples of this in the philosophical literature, the most common being that of Ignaz Semmelweis And the childbed fever mentioned in the book of the philosopher of science Karl Hempel.

Semmelweis headed one of two maternity wards in a large hospital in Vienna. His ward had a much higher maternal mortality rate than the other ward. They searched for the cause, but they had no direction. They tried to gather the relevant facts, but as long as they did not understand what caused the maternal mortality, they could not know what the relevant facts were. As a starting point, there could be countless facts that distinguish between the wards: the height of the ceiling, the average age of the doctors, the median age of the nurses, the last name of the head nurse, the color of the walls, the area of the ward, how long it has existed, the size of the chief accountant's office, the length of the test tubes, the company that made the chandeliers in the ceiling, the name of the third intern's mother, and so on. As long as you do not know what causes the mortality, you cannot search for facts. It is worth reading Hempel's book for the instructive description of Semmelweis's search for the relevant facts. You won't believe where they ended up. They checked the direction the priest was moving in the ward, the orientation of the windows, the height of the ceiling, and other facts. They were in complete darkness and had no idea which facts were relevant and which were not.

Of course, if they knew that what caused the deaths were different organisms that caused the infections, then they could have looked for relevant facts that would explain why there were differences in hygiene between the wards. That is indeed what they eventually discovered, but that too happened by a miracle. What this means is that if you don't have an initial direction for a theory that explains your facts, you have no way of isolating the relevant facts. But at the same time, if you don't have facts, how do you know what the correct theory is that explains them? It's a vicious circle from which there is no way out (just like the chicken and the egg).

Another example is given in the book of the renowned British historian A.H. Carr, What is history?. He also rejects Bacon's thesis that the historian first collects the facts and then proposes the theory that explains the phenomenon. Think of Bleicher and Wellington's victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. A historian who wants to explain why they won will have to collect facts. But which facts are relevant? The height of the third of the Fourth Battalion? The name of the mother of the soldier in the last platoon of the Tenth Battalion? The average height of the soldier or mule? As long as we do not know what causes victory in wars, we have no way of collecting the facts, since we cannot know what the relevant facts are. But without the facts how will we know the theory? Again, the same vicious circle.

It is important to understand that I am currently talking about the stage where we begin to study victories in battles, that is, my assumption that at this stage we have no knowledge on this subject. After knowledge has been accumulated, we will be able to know which facts are relevant, but then it is no longer clear why we need to collect facts, since we already know the answer. Well, that is not entirely accurate. To understand why, it is important to distinguish between two different goals of the research: A. Creating a new theory (paradigm) – understanding in general what influences military victories. This goal is to accumulate general theoretical military knowledge. B. Given a body of theoretical military knowledge, examining the Battle of Waterloo in its light and seeing what factors influenced the victory in this particular battle. Task B is what Thomas Kuhn calls research within a given paradigm. Such a task is not particularly problematic. Here we know which facts are relevant, since the theory is known. What we are trying to do is apply it to a specific case, and we must collect the relevant facts in that case. But in task type A (the search for the paradigm itself) it seems that we have no way to begin the research at all. As long as we have no theoretical knowledge of what influences military victories, we have no way to locate the relevant facts that we need to gather. And without facts, how will we know the theory?!

Another example is Newton and the law of gravity. Before someone knows the law of gravity, there is no apparent reason to treat tides, the fall of objects to the Earth, and the orbits of stars as a collection of facts that belong to the same field and are governed by the same laws and the same theory. Why treat these facts and not the color of the bird that passed by this morning, or the frequency of its voice? Only after you know that there is gravity can you understand that perhaps all these facts could be relevant to the same theory. The question is, how did Newton decide to focus on this collection of facts before he had the theory?

There is no escape from the conclusion I reached in the above column. Each of the researchers in the above situations had an initial intuition about the theory in question. Of course, he did not know how to formulate its principles explicitly, and he was of course not yet the one who had achieved it, but he had some intuitive idea of what it could be, or more precisely, what it was not. Even before the research and formulation of the theory, I assume that the historian understood that the name of the third's mother was not a relevant data point, and the soldiers' morale perhaps was. Newton also probably felt intuitively that the color of the bird or the frequency of its voice did not belong to the family of facts of the orbits of the stars, the fall of objects into the sky, the tides, and the like. He did not know how to say this explicitly, and he may not have been aware of it, but he intuitively understood which facts could be relevant and which were not. The same applies to the examples of Semmelweis and Carr. In all these cases, the researcher had an unformulated intuition about which directions to consider, and which facts were irrelevant. From among the other facts, he had to sift out the relevant ones, and he does this through trial and error. He tries a certain set of facts, checks whether he has a theory based on them, and if not, he tries another set. I suppose we also have some intuition about their division into sets (otherwise there are 2ⁿ Possibilities of subgroups out of n facts. That's quite a few).

It should be understood that without this initial intuition, all those researchers would be going around in circles in an infinite number of facts without any ability to advance even a millimeter. Our science today would look like the science of the first man. In the above column, I tried to explain what this faculty is that I call intuition, and I will not go into it here. For our purposes, it is enough for me to say that there is essentially a parallel and joint operation of Kahneman's two systems. The unconscious System 1 essentially decides which facts can be relevant (that is, which facts can be eliminated because they are certainly irrelevant), and then System 2 comes along and formulates and derives a theory through a conscious, systematic, and orderly process. This is checked again against the facts, and to the extent that there are discrepancies, the theory is refined again and again (this is the articulation of scientific theory), and thus we progress using System 1, then 2, then 1 again, then 2 again, and so on.

Back to the topic of reading

From the description above, we can learn that even before we have a formulated and conceptualized theory, we have an intuitive understanding, in many cases unconscious, as to the nature of the desired theory. We can even draw conclusions as to the facts that are relevant and irrelevant to it. This brings me back to the requirement of the theme of reading.

I asked above how one can determine the boundary of a halakha without determining its reason? That is, how can one determine the boundary if we have not demanded the reason? I want to apply here the picture that emerges from the philosophy of science. When we approach any halakha written in a verse, such as the prohibition on mortgage of a widow, we can have an intuitive feeling as to where it will apply and where it will not. This feeling is not based on a conceptual and formulated reason, but is the result of System 1. In such a situation, even Rabbi Yehuda and the T.K. would agree that a taema dekra is required, meaning that one can determine the boundary of the halakha in light of this feeling. On the other hand, where we do not have an intuitive feeling but rather a formulated principle that arose from System 2, there a taema dekra is not required. If we return to mortgage of a widow, the reason offered by the R.S. (who give it a bad name among its neighbors) is not intuitive. It is a fact that the Rabbi himself does not offer the reservation that it is a poor widow, but rather from the reason. If it were not for the reason, he would not feel that it is talking about a poor woman (as stated in the column before the previous one, there is no fear of harming her, since the Torah requires returning the pledge to her at night). Therefore, the Torah and Rabbi Yehuda argue that in such a situation, there is no need to demand a reason for reading, since we should not rely on a conceptual reason, but only on the intuitions of System 1.

When we establish the boundary of a law written in the Torah without basing it on a formulated and explicit reason, there we can demand a taema dekra. We are allowed to rely on System 1 but not on System 2. Perhaps the Rosh's comment in that column, that where the reason is self-evident, there by all accounts a taema dekra is required, also expresses this matter. He means a reason that is self-evident to us and does not require formulation and conceptualization. It is possible that if it is intuitively clear, then even if we conceptualize and formulate it there will be no problem, since the conceptualization is only a formulation of the intuitive feeling. When is a taema dekra not required? When we do not have a clear feeling, and the conceptualization itself is the basis for the discussion. When our recursive mind (System 2) is the basis, that is, when it is not based on initial intuition, then we do not trust it.

Difficulty in the proposed thesis: Intuitions regarding the religious plane

It should be remembered that in that column I explained that the concern is that we interpret the reason on the moral plane, since our intuitions are usually focused on it. If the reasons for the commandments are not on the moral plane, then there is a very significant concern here of making a mistake because of the differences between the planes (which, as I explained there, also exist in moral laws). On the other hand, if the reason is on the religious plane, then it is really difficult to formulate it clearly, since we do not have known principles that belong to that plane. Do we have unformulated intuitions about that plane? Apparently, we also do not have an intuitive understanding of it, since it is a plane foreign to us that we do not encounter in any direct way.

Above I mentioned the Briske ethos according to which we only ask "what?" and not "why?". I showed there that although they turn to the study of holy things and purity for this reason, they constantly use interpretive reasoning, what is more reasonable and what is less. In other words, even in areas that clearly belong to the religious (and not moral) domain of Halacha, we have intuitions and reasoning. Anyone who has studied holy things and purity can see this. At every step, we choose reasoning and positions in these areas as well, even though we seemingly have no understanding of them. My argument is that even in relation to the religious realm, we have intuitions of right and wrong. We are unable to formulate and conceptualize them, but they exist somewhere within us.

In the above column, I argued that, contrary to popular belief, intuition is, in my opinion, a tool of cognition and not of thought (otherwise it could not say anything about the world. It would be synthetic-a priori). When we have an intuitive feeling about something, it is the result of an immediate encounter through intellectual recognition (idealistic vision, in Husserl's language) with the domain in question. In the moral domain, we know how to formulate and conceptualize these insights, while in the religious domain it remains unformulated and unconceptualized, and we still have intuitions about it. We encounter the religious world of ideas with the eyes of our intellect, even if we do not know how to formulate these insights in words.

This is the basis for interpreting laws written in the Torah and drawing halakhic conclusions about their boundaries, even if we do not understand their religious meaning. In many cases, we have an immediate perception of it, and it allows us to determine the boundaries of the law without formulating the meaning and relying on it. This is how we formulate a halakhic boundary without demanding the meaning. The meaning is somewhere in the background, but we have not formulated it and therefore have not demanded it.

Examples: Murder and despair at loss

In the first column, I mentioned that the sages set the boundaries of the prohibition of murder. They discuss and sometimes exempt a murderer in all sorts of different and strange cases, such as in a grave, a narrowing, the end of the heat of the day, bringing the thing near the fire, etc., all this even though morally all of these are strictly murder. I argue that their immediate feeling was that there is a religious exemption here, although I don't think any of them knew how to articulate why exactly. Furthermore, in this case we can also establish a general boundary of the law, that is, a phenomenological rule, according to which in order to commit murder, an act with the hands is required. This rule was established even though I have no way of formulating why it matters whether I did an act with the hands or not (morally it certainly doesn't matter).

Note that there is a boundary here for the law in a very similar way to what we saw regarding the Sukkah yeshiva, Tashbeh Ka'in Tadoro. We saw there that although I do not know how to attach this to the reason for the law, I can determine the boundary. Here too, there is no way to formulate the religious reason for the prohibition of murder, but I can still determine its halakhic boundaries. This is probably the same "informed reading of the text" that Rabbi Nadel speaks of in the quote from him cited above.

Another example of the same idea is the law of despair in a lost item. It is clear that from a moral perspective, this despair has no meaning. Even if the owner despaired because he thought they would not find his lost item, if it has now been found and there are signs indicating that it is his, it is clear that it is morally right to return it to him. However, the halakha does not require it to be returned (except in accordance with the law, i.e., morally and not halakhically). The Maharal explains this precisely because of the difference between the religious and moral levels (see the column on this in 541Here too, this restriction (i.e. exemption from returning after despair) was apparently stated from a sabbath without a source in a verse or midrash.[1] The sages felt that this was the correct definition of the law, without knowing how to formulate its religious meaning.

In these two examples, we can see definitions of laws that do not fit moral concepts, and yet they are based on interpretation and not on the study of verses or midrashim. Ostensibly, this is a literal requirement of a ta'ama dekra, but this is done without formulating the reason. My argument is that it is based on an intuitive perception of the reason for the law in question (in System 1), which does not go through the conceptualization and conscious analysis of System 2. In such a situation, by all accounts, a ta'ama dekra can be required, and this is the explanation for all cases in which we find a simple (non-midrashim) interpretation of a mitzvah from the Torah, even though the halakhic ruling is that a ta'ama dekra is not required.

Why is System 1 really more reliable than System 2 in interpreting the verses?

The question arises here as to why I claim that greater reliance should be placed on System 1 with respect to verse interpretation? Verse interpretations do not seem to belong to the type of tasks for which System 1 is preferable (see the list of examples above).

In my reply to Boaz B.Talkback For the first column I wrote the following:

I will note that this is related to the next column I will be posting soon, where I will explain that in many cases people have a correct intuitive understanding, but when they try to conceptualize and formulate it they run into problems and contradictions and weaknesses. Related to Kahneman's system 1 and 2. People understood the distinction between law and morality well, but when they tried to talk about it explicitly they got into thought loops because it seemed to them that every value is by definition part of morality..

My argument there was that commentators and poskim throughout the ages have understood that the mitzvot are based on religious, not moral values, and yet they have not explicitly formulated this. Often when we come to formulate our intuitive insight into words, we get entangled and run into difficulties, even though intuitively we understand it well and draw the correct conclusions. In the formulation that I presented in this column, I mean that in relation to the interpretation of verses, our System 1 usually works better than System 2.

But this is not true only in relation to the interpretations of verses. In the column 707 I have dealt with the desperate attempts of the commentators to define explicitly the giving of a get, and their continued failure to do so. This is an excellent example of how we can understand the Talmudic examples well and even apply them to other examples, but when we try to formulate things within the framework of a set of general principles we get confused and fail. So how can we make analogies between cases without understanding what the principles are that underlie them? Here again, System 1 comes into play, which manages to work without going through System 2. We have a direct intuitive perception that does not use analytical and conceptual concepts and definitions.

More generally, I explained in the above column that this is probably the reason why the Talmud prefers the casuist approach over the positivist approach. The positivist approach attempts to formulate the law through a list of general principles, in the hope that judges will be able to draw conclusions from them for individual cases by means of logical deduction. In contrast, the casuist approach prefers thinking through examples and analogies without general principles. In the above column and also in the column 482 I explained the advantages of casuistry, and the essence of the matter is the inability to formulate our insights through sweeping rules. Rules are too rigid a framework and therefore will not succeed in drawing the right conclusions. Our world is too complex for that.

This is nothing more than a generalization of the principle that no reason is required to recite, but this time in the form of a general approach to halakha. We have more confidence in System 1 than in System 2. Halakha, like other legal systems, is a complex and complicated matter, and the attempt to put things into rigid rules is doomed to failure. In the above column, I showed that even when we formulate a blanket rule, a multitude of exceptions immediately emerge. Blanket rules fail to do the job.[2] In such complicated cases, we prefer to develop intuitive insights through examples (using System 1) over general principles (using System 2).[3]

[1] I previously explained here that the source that is brought from the sea is not really a source.

[2] It is possible to discuss whether there are rules but it is difficult for us to conceptualize and formulate them, or whether in some cases there may be no rules at all. See on this inarticle Good measure 567 (lesson 51), for the Nitzavim-Vilach section.

[3] In columns 217, 410, 444 Furthermore, I have argued that a posk should not take into account meta-halakhic considerations. He should determine his position on a question and issue according to what he sees fit, without defining for himself whether he is conservative or innovative, original or not, strict or lenient, and so on. All of these are matters for the researcher of that posk and not for the posk himself. This is a similar principle, since here too the posk is required to close his eyes and not engage in the general principles that describe and guide his action. In system 1, he may realize that he is inclined toward conservatism or innovation, toward the strict or the strict, but in the conscious system (2) he makes only considerations on the merits of the matter. This is only some analogy to our case, of course.