Akdamot – 5760

The form of Talmud study customary in the yeshiva world, usually called 'iyyun' (analytic study), differs in several respects from the academic-research mode of engagement that is sometimes called 'the Science of Judaism.' In recent years a discussion has arisen regarding the place of one or another of these modern methods in the study of the yeshiva beit midrash.[1] This discussion has also been accompanied by criticism of the beit midrash's disregard for 'considerations of common sense' customary in academic-research study.

In this article I would like to try to expose the assumptions that underlie the yeshiva mode of engagement, strange as it may seem, and even to offer them a plausible rationale. Later on I will briefly discuss ways in which these two disciplines can nevertheless be combined.

A. Critique of 'Iyyun'

The differences between yeshiva study of the Talmud and Talmudic scholarship lie in the goals of study, in their underlying assumptions, and in the tools of understanding used in the two disciplines. The differences in the goals of study are obvious and do not concern us here.[2] The differences in modes of study and understanding are characterized primarily by the use of philological and historical research tools in the scholarly world, as against an almost total disregard for such tools in the yeshiva world of study. Usually people tend to explain the methodological differences in terms of differences in goals. In this article I will try to show, among other things, that this is not the significant explanation. The differences in method are rooted primarily in differences in underlying assumptions.

From these characterizations emerge various shades of criticism of yeshiva 'iyyun,' and they may be divided into two principal types.

A. The critique in Sperber's above-mentioned article points to the advantages of research tools mainly for clarifying Talmudic terms that arise from the sages' own world. Here, it seems to me, there is no principled dispute. As Sperber himself writes, the yeshiva student will usually say that the investment required in order to reach a reasonable level of competence in the use of these tools is disproportionate to the benefit they can yield. Whoever wishes to engage in this is welcome to do so, and there can certainly be no small benefit from the results of such research. The claim raised in Sperber's article that such studies fall under the rubric of Torah study is already more problematic. Mathematics as well as other 'external sciences' are required in order to understand various Talmudic passages and topics. Still, these are only preparations for the commandment (like compounding ointments and cooking).[3]

B. The second type of criticism, the more principled one, emerges more sharply in Kahana's article. There the claim is that in order to arrive at the truth in understanding the Talmud, we must make use of the tools of modern scholarship.[4] It seems to me that these claims assume a different meaning for 'truth' and for 'explanation' in the Talmudic context, and that the changes here are evaluative in their very essence and not merely methodological. Here, in my humble opinion, there is a real dispute, and not merely a different weighing of investment against return, as in the first type. I want to concentrate on this second type of criticism and through it examine the assumptions underlying the two disciplines. It is important to note here that the criticism refers to the classical beit midrash,[5] and therefore from this point onward I will refer mainly to it.

Examining this type of criticism shows that in the classical beit midrash there is a disregard for manuscripts and textual variants that could shed new light on the text, and at times even clarify it in such a way that the need for harmonizations and resolutions might (or perhaps, from that perspective, regrettably might) disappear.[6]

More than that: when an analytic rationale is offered in the Talmud, or in Maimonides, for a given law, it often appears to be drawn from the conceptual world of the present rather than constituting an attempt to understand the intentions of the authors themselves. Maimonides, according to a common criticism, neither thought nor expressed himself in terms such as the 'hefetza' and 'gavra' of R. Chaim of Brisk.

The most prominent of these differences is that 'iyyun' is often characterized by interpretation of the texts themselves, while completely disregarding the context, that is, the cultural and historical setting in which they were written. For example, an explanation that attributes the outlook of the Tosafists regarding sanctification of the Divine Name to the reality that surrounded them (the Crusades and the like) is irrelevant in the yeshiva world, even though it is highly likely that this reality indeed played an important role in shaping the worldview of those sages. The same is true regarding attitudes toward apostates, coerced converts, the definition of the category of a 'captured child,' and the like—issues all heavily laden with the weight of life and socio-cultural reality, as we see even today. The yeshiva world ignores all these layers and discusses the different halakhic and analytic approaches as though they had all been created in a single beit midrash, and the decision and comparison among them are made solely on the basis of essence. There is almost no halakhic decisor, or learner, who adopts a halakhic or analytic approach merely because present reality is more similar to some past reality, and therefore decides to follow sages who lived in that reality rather than others who lived in a different one. The discussion is always about essence, as if context exerts no influence whatever on halakhic decision-making. In the view of students of 'iyyun,' Rabbi Judah the Patriarch, Rav Ashi, Tosafot, Maimonides, and Rabbi Akiva Eiger all sat in one beit midrash (apparently that of R. Chaim of Brisk[7]).

To summarize: in the second type of criticism there are three main points: A. 'Iyyun' ignores manuscripts and textual variants. B. Its explanations are drawn from the cultural world of the present rather than from the world of the authors of the texts. C. It ignores the fact that the content of a text is context-dependent. The 'analytic' explanations are not contextual.

It seems to me that in all these points there emerges an approach that relates to the text as it stands before us while ignoring everything else. As a background for such an approach one may point to several phenomena that are well rooted in the tradition that preceded the contemporary yeshiva world.

Several omissions by Maimonides in his legal code on matters connected with mysticism—demons, the evil eye, evil spirits, and the like—are treated in a way that tries to understand them as though each arose locally from the relevant passage, and the proposed explanations attribute Maimonides' ruling to interpretive considerations pertaining to the particular sugya under discussion. It is well known that Maimonides opposed such notions categorically, and it is plainly evident that quite a few omissions of laws explicitly ruled in the Talmud can be explained through this understanding. Many later authorities tend to ignore this, and quite simply this is a move that tries to insert their own beliefs (which differ from Maimonides' on this point) into the rulings of the Mishneh Torah. Of course there is room to discuss whether it is legitimate thus to challenge the determinations of the Talmud regarding the existence of such entities (see the well-known Gra on Yoreh De'ah sec. 179, subsec. 13, and this is an old discussion), but it is difficult to ignore the fact that Maimonides himself thought this way.[8]

A more principled example of such an approach appears when there is a dispute between tannaim on two points, A and B, and an amora rules like one tanna on point A and like the second tanna on point B.

As is known, it is established for us that an amora has no authority to dispute a tanna.[9] Yet the book Yad Malachi, Kelalei ha-Alef, sec. 40, writes:[10]

An amora has the power to effect a compromise between tannaim, and this is not considered as though he came to rule neither like this master nor like that master. And so we find in several places, among them in the chapter 'They Saw Him in the Court' and at the beginning of the chapter 'A Deaf-Mute.' See Mayim Hayyim on the Peri Hadash, fol. 32a, and so too in the laws of Passover, sec. 442, subsec. 1.

At first glance these words are astonishing. If an amora is forbidden to depart from the words of the tannaim and is meant to proceed in the path they laid down, how can he rule like one on A and like the second on B? It is obvious that in such a case he is ruling like neither of them. Tanna A had a certain reasoning that led him to conclusions A and B, and the second tanna who disputed him had a rationale for rejecting both A and B; and the amora decides to split them. Here it is clear that at the level of rationale, of reasoning, he matches neither one of them. For if his rationale for A were that of tanna A, then that rationale would also entail conclusion B. It follows that even when he rules like tanna A on point A, it is not for tanna A's reason; and the same is true regarding point B. That amora therefore rules against both tannaim.[11]

It emerges from here that even in such cases there is a focus on the text (the tannaitic text, in this case) while ignoring the reasons hidden behind it. This is a more extreme example than the previous ones, because in this case the reasons are part of the text itself and not merely of its author. The text itself, by presenting the two disputes together, hints that both are based on a single assumption or line of reasoning. Here one does not need interpretive 'divine inspiration' to reach the conclusion that the interpretation does not fit the author's intention.

Another example, clearly related to the previous one, is found in the words of the Rema, who wrote as follows (Hoshen Mishpat sec. 25, para. 2):

And so, if there is one individual against the majority, we follow the majority everywhere (Rashba, sec. 203). And even if the majority do not agree for one single reason, but each has his own independent reason, since they agree as to the ruling they are called a majority and we follow them (Maharik, root 41).

This law is very reminiscent of the previous rule of decision. At the level of rationales, each individual rationale of each judge would seem to be in the minority, and one can even imagine a case in which precisely the rationale underlying the minority ruling is the one that would win the assent of most opinions. Despite all this, the Rema, following Maharik, determines that the majority is determined at the level of the ruling and not at the level of the reasons. Once again we encounter a phenomenon of adherence to the law rather than to the rationale (see the Shakh and other commentators there, who discuss this, but I cannot elaborate here).

Another example of a similar attitude is the rule that an enactment remains in force even after its reason has lapsed (see Maimonides, beginning of chapter 2 of Mamrim, and elsewhere).[12] Such discussions are common in the literature of halakhic rulings, and similarly one finds discussions of matters forbidden because of danger, where it appears that the dangers no longer exist.[13] In these examples too, the focus is on the enactment or the law, not on the rationale underlying them.[14] Let us note that a similar situation exists as well at the level of biblical interpretation, where we accept Rabbi Shimon's rule that we do not expound the reason of the verse.

Thus far we have seen several examples of the surprising way in which the yeshiva world relates to the central texts with which it is engaged. The analysis is conducted in the book itself, while almost completely ignoring various contexts, and even ignoring the author, his intentions, and his reasons. Navon, in his above-mentioned article, tries to ground the yeshiva approach to Talmud study in a conception according to which yeshiva study does not seek any truth at all, but rather creates truth for itself. From his words it appears that scholarship seeks truth, whereas yeshiva students amuse themselves for their own enjoyment (or for their commandment). It seems to me that this explanation is absurd and far from the truth, as well as far from the prevailing feeling in the yeshiva world, as I will try to show below.

In the next chapter we will try to examine these textual approaches in terms of hermeneutic theories. We will see that what appears here is an ultra-modern attitude toward texts, something that seems surprising in the context of the yeshiva world, which is usually regarded as 'fossilized.' The postmodern connects here, astonishingly, with the premodern.

B. Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics is the field of inquiry that deals with the understanding or interpretation of various texts, and in a broader sense with the understanding and interpretation of works of art, and indeed with interpretation and understanding in general.[15] The problem of understanding and general interpretation concerns the interrelationship among three factors involved in the interpretive act: the text, the author, and the reader (the interpreter). Corresponding to these three factors, one may divide the basic hermeneutic positions, very schematically, into three main directions:

1. The first direction, the oldest in modern hermeneutics, holds that the meaning of a text, or of a work of art, is the author's intention. The text is a means used by the author to convey various contents to the reader. The reader's purpose is to try to extract the author's intentions from the text, which is usually the only thing accessible to him. The uncertainty in a text's meaning, which arises for the reader from the fact that the author is not accessible except as represented through the text, is a necessary evil that one must try to overcome. The task imposed on the reader is to neutralize, as far as possible, whatever interferes with understanding the author's intentions; he must try to 'leap over the text' in order to reach the author who stands behind it. Schleiermacher tried to make possible for the interpreter to step into the author's shoes—that is, into his world and the contexts in which he lived, to create empathy with him—in order to try to understand his intentions accurately. This direction is the 'naive' one, believing that the author's intentions can indeed be extracted from the text.
2. A more modern hermeneutic approach claims that the attempt to understand a text is inherently circular. Heidegger argued that 'any interpretation which is to secure understanding must already have understood what is to be interpreted.' This is one formulation, among many, of the problem of the 'hermeneutic circle.' One may formulate it even more sharply and say that the reader's decision that he has reached an understanding of the text has no support apart from the text itself; therefore, if you do not understand it properly, even your decision that you have reached a correct understanding is meaningless. The criterion for understanding the text is likewise found within the text itself, since before the interpreter or reader there stands no other interpretive tool. Therefore this approach determines that the meaning of a text is found within the text itself, not in the author. It is the text itself that stands in need of interpretation, and the reader must seek what the text itself tells him, not the author's intentions—assuming there even are such intentions that are transmitted through the text. Such an approach is found in Heidegger and Gadamer, and also prevailed in the structuralism of the middle of the last century.
3. Beginning in the middle of the last century, this approach developed further and took an additional step in a direction that today may be called 'postmodern.' According to this approach, whose roots lie in the work of the French philosopher and critic Jacques Derrida, the reader's interpretation exclusively determines the meaning of the text. This approach is known as 'deconstruction.' One way of substantiating such a position is through attempts to show how, by reconstruction or deconstruction of the same text, one can extract several meanings utterly opposed to one another. From this, the proponents of deconstruction naturally conclude that no meaning lies hidden in the text itself, and everything depends on the reader or interpreter.

We thus see three main directions in hermeneutic theory, each of which locates meaning in a different component of the interpretive act: the first in the author, the second in the text, and the third in the reader (the interpreter).

It is clear that the disagreements here are more substantial than a discussion of the question of what the reader ought to do when reading a text, for every reader may choose his own goals without recourse to the instructions of hermeneutic theorists. The underlying question is: what can the reader actually do when reading that text? The advocates of the second approach claim that in practice it is impossible to reconstruct the author's intention from the text, and therefore one should not expect this from reading. The instruction, or task, imposed on the reader is the result of an assessment of what he may reasonably expect from the act of reading. According to the proponents of the second approach, for example, every attempt to reconstruct the author's intention from the text alone will yield, at most, an interpretation of the text itself, without any indication that this was also the author's intention.

The advocates of deconstruction, by contrast, will argue not only that one cannot extract the author's intentions from the text he wrote, but also that the text as such has no independent meaning of its own, since every reader interprets it differently. The only rational expectation a reader of any text may have is to try to be impressed in a wholly subjective way, or simply to receive inspiration, from the text. According to this approach, the reader must know that he will not be able to derive from the text anything beyond the subjective and non-binding impression that forms within him.

In light of the scheme presented here, it would seem that if a reader's intention is to get at the author's intentions, he should make use of analysis of the social, cultural, and psychological context that accompanied the composition of the text. Any means that helps the reader bridge the gap between himself and the author is desirable and welcome. True, the reader will not always be able to attain that meaning precisely, but he should aspire to it. In addition, as Schleiermacher argued, not all of the author's intentions were consciously present even to the author himself, and therefore analysis of the context in which he operated may make the interpreter a better understander of the text than the author himself.

It is precisely at this point that the second approach enters, claiming that the text has an independent status, not merely as a representative of the author's message or intentions. At first glance, the text—or the work—is an inanimate object, and it is not clear how one may attribute meaning to it unless someone put meaning into it. On the other hand, according to this approach, interpretation is not an attempt to understand the creator himself; and if so, the question arises: what is that meaning that one is seeking in the text?

Structuralism is an archetypal answer to this question. Put simplistically, it sees the world as composed of fundamental structures within which every person acts and within which every phenomenon occurs. Human beings and various phenomena bear meanings that they themselves did not insert or create. There is a cosmic process of transmission of structures (which may be time-dependent and change over the course of history) that uses human beings and occurrences in the world as 'carriers,' while these carriers are not always aware of fulfilling that role. Generally there is a disregard for the question of who is responsible for the operation of those a priori, meta-historical, meta-cultural structures. The structuralist usually concentrates on examining and describing those structures.

Let us note that even within the structuralist approach there is certainly an important place for analysis of the context in which the author of the text acted, in order to expose structures of meaning embedded in the text by virtue of the social and cultural contexts within which it was written. As noted above, some of these structures were unconscious even to the author himself.

It seems evident that the claim that a text has meaning beyond the intentions embedded in it by its author must assume such structures of one kind or another in the background, whatever their source may be. The desire to develop a hermeneutic approach without such 'mystical' structures in the background, while also excluding the author's intentions from the interpretive act (for the reasons enumerated above),[16] is what led to deconstructionist nihilism. This approach, as stated, altogether abandons the notion of 'meaning' in its classical sense. The text as such has no meaning, just as the author's intentions either cannot have meaning or perhaps simply have none. The meaning of a work is the insights or experience generated in the interpreter or the reader. The deconstructionist position reflects a despair of the very attempt to understand, stemming from an unwillingness to discuss the source of those structures and to arrive at speculative conclusions about them.

Clearly, according to this approach, there is no point in examining the context in which a work was written—unless, for some reason, specifically that aspect interests the reader or interpreter. This has no necessary implication for the 'meaning' of the text. Of course, if some reader wishes to derive experiences and impressions from examining the context in which the text was written, there is no principled impediment to doing so; but such activity reveals nothing about the text, simply because there is nothing there to reveal.

In the world of religious-Torah interpretation one must apparently distinguish among several levels of discussion. Biblical interpretation is the classical field with which hermeneutics deals. There, we have been taught that “It is not in heaven” and “we do not expound the reason of the verse”; that is, the intention of the 'author' in this case is too exalted for us, and perhaps for other reasons as well we are not supposed to 'take an interest' in it. It is no accident that a common expression in the Torah world is 'the Torah wants,' 'the Torah says,' 'the Torah writes,' and the like.[17] The interpretation of the Torah has received broad and comprehensive discussion, and that plane is not my concern here.

In the context of the Oral Torah, it seems quite clear that scholarship operates within a 'naive' hermeneutic framework, whereas the yeshiva world is clearly not of that sort.[18] Navon, in the article mentioned above, argued that the yeshiva world is deconstructionist, and I have already noted that I do not agree with this at all. In the next chapter I will try to show that the yeshiva mode of study is structuralist in its essence.

C. The Hermeneutic Meaning of 'Iyyun'

In chapter A we saw that halakhic interpretation in certain contexts focuses on the text and not on the writer; at first glance this is a relinquishing of the 'naive' hermeneutic approach that tries to probe the author's intention through the text he wrote. When we try to examine the attitudes toward these puzzling phenomena, as described above, we may expect that there will usually appear three main lines of argument:

1. We are uncovering unarticulated intuitions that lay behind the author's consciousness. The claim is that the modern formulation belongs to our own era, but the idea thus formulated is the original one. Let us stress that this is not structuralism. Here there is a belief that we are indeed uncovering the author's intention, except that the formulation we give it is drawn from our contemporary conceptual world and from modern methods of analysis.

This argument can sometimes explain (though not always) the modern formulations used in 'iyyun' ('hefetza' and 'gavra'), and perhaps also the modern forms of analysis and thought, but not the disregard for manuscripts and historical contexts. Beyond that, in quite a few cases the modern analysis does not at all look like the uncovering of intuitions that existed in the original author; rather, it looks like an entirely new statement, wholly rooted in the world of the present.

2. It is dangerous to try to understand what the author intended; we may come to dispute him and deviate from Jewish law. Alternatively, we are incapable of penetrating the depths of the intention of the author, or authors.

This claim arises in the context of attempts to understand the reasons for enactments and decrees (see R. Shatzipansky in the introduction mentioned above), but in our present case this too does not explain the phenomena under discussion, for in any event we are trying to understand the text; what difference does it make whether we do so with today's tools or with the tools of the period in which the text was composed?

3. One occasionally hears in study halls extreme statements of the sort: 'The writer's intention does not interest us.'[19] This is a statement claiming that even if we could grasp the author's intention, and even if there were no danger in doing so, the matter is simply unnecessary, and therefore also irrelevant. Anyone familiar with yeshivot knows that there is a clear sense that this indeed is a prevalent and accepted approach there, except that it seems so illogical that usually even those who operate this way do not dare formulate it explicitly.[20]

Even if the third approach is indeed widespread in the yeshiva world, as I claim here, it should be noted that it can still be interpreted in several ways and contains within it several different attitudes—indeed, two that become four:

3A. One may understand it as parallel to the third position of the previous chapter, namely deconstructionism. I seek what the text says to me, and not what it says in itself. The text in itself has no meaning whatsoever. This is the position that emerges from Navon's article.

It is important to note here that the question of the meaning of a text does not depend directly on the question whether it obligates me in practice, or as it is commonly phrased: whether it is a source of authority or a source of inspiration. I can be aware of the subjectivity of my reading of the Talmud or of Maimonides, and nevertheless claim that what emerges from that study obligates me to act accordingly. More than that: I will be punished if I do not do so. The reverse connection sounds more plausible, and it seems indeed to exist: if I do not accept the text as a source of authority but as a source of inspiration, it is highly likely that the meanings of the text are subjective and dependent on the interpreter or reader, for the text is intended only to awaken subjective inspiration in each reader. Accordingly, sub-position 3A lends itself to two principal interpretations:

A. The meaning of the text is subjective and dependent on the interpreter, yet the conclusion reached by this particular interpreter obligates him to act in accordance with it. The text is a source of authority.

B. The meaning of the text is subjective, and its whole function is to inspire the reader; the Torah has no commanding and binding content. The text is a source of inspiration.

3B. A second way of understanding the third argument above is to locate the meaning of the text within the text itself, detached from its author—an approach parallel to the second position in the previous chapter (structuralism). According to this approach the text has meaning beyond the insights and experiences of the interpreter. Let us note that this does not necessarily mean total objectivity of understanding, that is, that there is only one correct understanding of the whole text, but at least the weaker claim that there are some understandings that are not correct. Here too one may split the matter into two sub-approaches:

C. The text has a principled meaning in itself, but this mode of reading depends on the reader. This conception is very close to the subjectivism presented in position A. The difference is that the subjective insight is understood by the learner as emerging from the text rather than as a personal experience of his own. One may say that the question is how conscious the reader is of the subjectivity of his interpretation, and that is what distinguishes these two positions. This is a subtle difference, and it has extraordinarily important significance in the service of God; but in the present context it is less important, and therefore I will ignore it below.

D. The text has a correct meaning in itself, and interpretation or meaning is not entirely dependent on the reader. One might formulate here an approach claiming that a text has only one correct interpretation and no other—that is, complete objectivism. That is a very extreme and empirically implausible formulation of the yeshiva world, as I already noted above. My intention in approach D is to describe a position holding that there are at least certain such layers in the text, that is, that there are interpretations of the text that are not correct.

Let us now try to examine which of these positions underlies 'iyyun.' Clearly, no Orthodox Jewish position can adopt position B, namely viewing the Torah as a source of inspiration. Jewish law obligates the learner to act in accordance with its conclusions. We are thus left with two basic interpretive possibilities for the hermeneutic approach of 'iyyun': possibility A (which for our purposes here is like C), namely that the Torah has no objective meaning in itself, yet the conclusions of study obligate every Jew to act accordingly in practice; and possibility D, which determines that the text as such has an objective layer of meaning, that is, that the meaning of the text is not wholly subjective. Here we see the two hermeneutic possibilities, 2 and 3, from the previous chapter.

The dilemma in deciding between these two possibilities arises because, as we saw above, structuralism certainly also encourages contextual approaches. An important part of the attempt to understand the structures underlying a text is understanding the context within which it was written. If indeed the hermeneutic approach of the yeshiva world does not employ contextual examination, this would seemingly point to a proximity to deconstructionist hermeneutics, which indeed has no interest in the external contexts of a text's composition (that is, approach A or C above). On the other hand, the interpretation of the study of 'iyyun' as it takes place in the yeshiva world seems דווקא closer to structuralism. The whole culture of dispute, argument, the adducing of proofs and reasons, points to an attempt to shape some conception of the text that possesses an objective dimension, and not merely to draw private experiences from it.[21] If so, position A (or C) also cannot serve as an interpretation of the halakhic hermeneutic approach under discussion.

It follows, then, that the position underlying the classical yeshiva conception is close to position D, that is, to a certain shade of structuralism; but the disregard for context, as mentioned, still requires explanation. We thus find that the position described in the first chapter lies, in hermeneutic terms, somewhere between deconstructionism and structuralism. As noted above, the scholarly approach may be described as the naive hermeneutic approach that tries to descend into the author's mode of thought, and therefore investigates contexts and manuscripts that may testify to those intentions. Scholarship also contains structuralist shades, which understand that through the text there pass meanings and structures that stand 'above' the author, within which he functions. Even according to this conception, the scholarly world tries to trace those structures as interpretive aids and points out that they are dependent on environment, society, or culture.

The yeshiva world apparently holds that such structures, if they exist at all, are not the product of society or culture, or even of any concrete reality. The aim of the next chapter is to offer a grounding for this hermeneutic conception and to explain its seemingly deconstructionist features—namely, the puzzling disregard for context that characterizes it. In effect, we will try to point to another possible source for those super-structures that stand within the text itself, without the author's intention and without direct relation to the influences of the surrounding social-cultural reality.

D. Grounding the Thesis: Evolution and Canonization

There is a famous letter of the Chazon Ish (Letter 32) in which he addresses this hermeneutic phenomenon, and this is what he writes:

He wrote to explain a sugya… and to emend the Talmud on the basis of the Munich manuscript. Could it be that all the sages of the generations from the time of the medieval authorities until now failed to arrive at the truth because one copyist erred and inserted things into the Talmud from his own imagination, thereby causing all the sages to stumble? I am not one of them nor of their multitude; and the manuscripts that were in the hands of the early authorities of blessed memory—they gave their lives for them, and His blessed providence, that Torah not be forgotten from Israel, protected them; and when they began to print the Talmud, the sages of the generation devoted themselves to purifying and correcting it. True, at times one may benefit from manuscripts in order to clean up corruptions that arise over the course of time, but something that has come down from all our rabbis without any doubt—heaven forbid to destroy it. Consider: when three manuscripts lie before us and two agree, we take the two and set aside the one; but who can tell us that the Munich manuscript is not from the one that was nullified by the majority in its own time, and who can tell us that it was not known to be inaccurate? In any case it is like a broken potsherd, nullified before the accepted reading. And because a scribe erred and omitted a few words, as scribes often err over similar words… shall we build towers on that? Perhaps indeed the scribe omitted them and the error was not from the sages' own hand; but when we rely on the tradition, on the Torah of Rashi and Tosafot and all the sages, that certainly is the Torah. I have hardly ever seen any benefit in reaching the truth through readings searched out from genizot; rather, they all serve only to pervert judgment and twist the truth, and it would have been better to hide them away, for the loss outweighs the gain.

[22]

In this letter the Chazon Ish addresses an attempt to solve an analytic problem by scholarly means, on the basis of comparing textual versions and manuscripts, and he offers two kinds of consideration against such a mode of study. The first consideration is the possibility that the manuscript itself contains an error, and the problematic nature of following the majority of manuscripts now in our possession. The second consideration is the authority of manuscripts that have passed through the filter of the sages of all generations until they reached us. One could understand this formally as a claim about the existence of a dubious 'majority' (of manuscripts) against a presumption that the text in our possession is presumed authentic. It seems to me, however, that there is here a deeper conception beyond the formal argument. The essence of the Oral Torah is transmission from generation to generation. Transmission is not merely the vehicle through which the information is conveyed; it also constitutes a process of filtering. An 'invisible hand,' to use the terminology of the Jewish-American economist Milton Friedman, ensures that the correct approach or information will be transmitted and will survive throughout history.[23]

It should be stressed that here the Chazon Ish offers an explanation different from the usual one for the validity of early writings. Usually the rationale offered in this context is that a great man enjoys divine assistance and that no stumbling block emerges from beneath his hand, for 'even the beasts of the righteous are not caused by the Holy One to stumble.' This rationale depends on the greatness of the author.[24] In the following letter (Letter 33), the Chazon Ish indeed also speaks about that aspect, as a reason why we cannot dispute the words of the medieval authorities. I once heard a statement attributed to the Hatam Sofer, who told readers of his responsa that even if they were to find an error in the reasoning of a ruling, they could rely on it in practice, since as the leading sage of the generation he had divine assistance. This is an extreme expression of the same conception, according to which the greatness of the author guarantees the validity of the conclusions.[25]

It seems to me that in this letter the Chazon Ish proposes a different mechanism. A text that has passed the criticism of all the generations, and has survived and been accepted and sanctified, may be assumed not to lead astray. This is a rationale for the validity of the text even without recourse to the greatness of the author. Clearly, acceptance of such a text also depends on the personality and spiritual and Torah stature of its author, but that is only a secondary consideration in accounting for the validity of the text, which in the final analysis derives from its very acceptance in the Torah world. Similarly, one could say in theory that even a text written by an unworthy person, once it has been accepted as a binding text, may be assumed not to become the source of error for those who use it and rely on it for law. This is a rationale that stems from God's providence over Israel, something akin to “we do not say that Heaven sends one into stumbling.” Since Israel relies on texts sanctified by the community as a whole, providence ensures that error does not reach them thereby. This is divine assistance granted to the community and not to the author.

It appears that hidden in the words of the Chazon Ish is an evolutionary model of Jewish law. Every text is examined in itself and in light of its author: are they fit to be treated as halakhic authority or not? So too every ruling passes the rod of Torah-intellectual criticism: is it correct and does it fit the sources, or not? After a sufficient span of time, when it becomes clear that the text or the ruling has entered the beit midrash and taken up residence there as halakhic authority, it acquires independent standing. From then on, the guarantee for the use of the text is divine providence over Israel, that they not err.[26]

In my humble opinion, this is also the correct interpretation of the demarcation of the various periods in the development of Jewish law. The sealing of the period of the tannaim is accompanied by the determination that amoraim are not permitted to dispute their predecessors. In the transitional period there are exceptions lacking historical perspective, and they do dispute their predecessors. From a temporal distance, it becomes clear where the seam line between the periods lies; the texts of the earlier period are accepted, and their authority is fixed. The same is true regarding the sealing of the Talmudic period, the period of the medieval authorities, and so on.[27]

At several points in history there arose polemics known as 'controversies over codification.'[28] After the composition of the Mishneh Torah, and several centuries later after the composition of the Shulchan Arukh, similar controversies arose around these two works. The dispute centered around two related but distinct points, which it is important to distinguish: A. The problem of codification: is it proper to write laws in a decided form and without reasons, a form that can lead to various problematic consequences in analytic halakhic study?[29] B. The problem of canonization: is it proper to accept texts as authoritative simply by virtue of their existence and not because of their reasons? Here the problem is precisely the holiness of the text as such. It should be noted that there was no challenge to the very possibility of textual canonicity, but only to recognizing texts as binding before enough time had passed for them to be examined from a historical perspective. From a historical perspective, an evolutionary-historical seal of approval is given to both processes: the process of codification and the process of canonization.

We thus learn that the history of Jewish law is built in an evolutionary manner. In an evolutionary process there is spontaneous emergence of mutations, some of which disappear after a relatively short time (in evolutionary terms), while others survive. Evolutionary theory explains that those which survive possess greater survival value (a trivial tautology, of course, but still an illuminating one).

In the world of Jewish law, every text and every ruling are examined in the short term on their own merits, on the basis of their content and quality (mutations), and the public in all its particulars decides collectively whether to accept them and what authority to grant them. From a historical perspective, after the text has already been accepted, it becomes a canonical text and the considerations cease to be purely substantive. The question whether to accept the text is no longer on the table; the assumption is that what is written in it is true, and now one may only deliberate over how to interpret it. The evolutionary determination in the halakhic world would say that a text that survives becomes canonical and acquires authority. It has decisional value, or religious value, or some kind of truth-value residing within it (this is parallel to survival value in the terminology of evolutionary theory).

Such evolutionary considerations are raised regarding the acceptance of rabbinic decrees or enactments (see, for example, Maimonides at the beginning of chapter 2 of the laws of Mamrim). There it is accepted that a decree which the public cannot uphold, or which for whatever reason did not spread throughout Israel, has no force. There are pragmatic explanations for these laws, based on a lack of desire to burden the public beyond what it can bear, or on concern for the authority of the sages. Rav Kook explained that there is here also a deeper layer: the rooting of an enactment within the public is an evolutionary filter that helps separate wheat from chaff and determine whether the enactment or decree is indeed in its proper place.

In the evolutionary process described above, the Mishnah, the Talmud, the medieval authorities, the Shulchan Arukh, and even the Mishnah Berurah, have become canonical texts whose authority does not depend on whether their explanations of a sugya or their legal rulings seem persuasive to contemporary learners. The assumption is that the law clearly follows them, and all that remains is to clarify thoroughly their positions and the way they understood the sugyot.[30] In this way one may perhaps understand many of the examples brought in chapter A that showed an attitude toward the text while ignoring the author's intentions.

In many respects these texts, which of course belong to the Oral Torah, have become a kind of Written Torah. They are sacred writings with full authority, sometimes far more than the Written Torah itself. This is a phenomenon familiar to anyone immersed in yeshiva study and halakhic ruling, and in order to substantiate this strange claim I will briefly bring two examples that illustrate and sharpen it.[31]

At the beginning of the chapter 'Kol Kitvei ha-Kodesh' in tractate Sabbath, the prohibition is discussed against rescuing objects from a fire that broke out on the Sabbath, lest one come to extinguish it. Exceptions to this are food sufficient for the three meals that a person needs on that Sabbath, and sacred writings. From the discussion in the relevant sugyot about the permissibility of rescuing sacred writings, it clearly emerges that the permission applies only to those books that possess the sanctity of a book, and not merely holy contents. A Torah scroll in which eighty-five letters remain (and according to one view even if they are scattered) may be rescued. There is a comparison to sacred writings that do not impart impurity to the hands, such as the Scroll of Esther according to some opinions: may they be rescued? The sugyot make it clear that the criterion is the sanctity of the book, and not only its contents.

Tosafot there notes that nowadays one may also rescue our Pentateuchs and our sacred books. On its plain meaning, this refers to books in which the Written Torah is written in forms that in earlier times would have been forbidden; however, in Sefer Hasidim, and following it in the Mishnah Berurah (sec. 334, subsec. 30) and Be'er Heitev (ad loc.), it was ruled that the same applies to books of the Oral Torah. One should note that the issue here is not holy content but the significance of the book as a sacred object.

A second example is the well-known view of the Rosh (see Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De'ah sec. 270, para. 2 and its commentaries), who holds that the commandment for each person to write a Torah scroll for himself is fulfilled in our time also by writing books of the Oral Torah (Mishnah, Talmud, and their commentaries). Clearly, the Rosh is not making this claim about one who teaches Torah orally to students, but only about one who writes books of the Oral Torah.

With regard to the commandment of writing a Written Torah scroll (and likewise with regard to the books that may be rescued from fire on the Sabbath), there are various laws, and if one writes it improperly he does not fulfill his obligation and it may not be rescued from the fire. If so, it is clear that these are laws concerning the book as a sacred object and not the contents within it. In light of this, the matter is doubly surprising: why should a book of Scripture (Written Torah) written improperly, though its content is perfect, be inferior to a volume of Talmud, or Mishnah, or some commentary on them, with regard to which there are no rules at all for how it ought to be written? In these two examples we see a conception of books of the Oral Torah as sacred books, joining the Written Torah within the general canon of sacred books.[32] One could add here as well a discussion of the obligation to place books of the Oral Torah in genizah, and more, but this is not the place.

The process of canonization here takes on an almost mystical significance. Books of the Oral Torah, beyond acquiring halakhic authority, also become sanctified and turn into sacred books in the full sense. One should keep in the background the fact that, strictly speaking, there is no permission at all to write down the Oral Torah (there is, as it were, a prohibition on codification and canonization!), except on account of “It is a time to act for the Lord—they have violated Your Torah.”

We can now perhaps understand the puzzling approach presented above in chapters A and C. In the classical yeshiva world, a canonical text is treated as significant beyond the virtue and importance of its author. Any interpretation that a learner gives to a canonical text, provided it truly emerges from it, apparently has a place and lies hidden in the text even if the author did not intend it. The origin of the matter is the text and not the author; therefore even when it appears that the author did not intend it, so long as such an interpretation may reasonably be derived from the text itself, it is regarded as legitimate in the classical beit midrash.

It should be stressed that I do not mean to claim that the very acceptance of the text is the cause of its authority. That would be a claim with a deconstructionist tint, one that denies the existence of halakhic truth. In my view here, acceptance is an indication that providence has chosen this text as canonical. Evolutionary survival is an indication of canonicity, not its cause.

We saw above that the explanation based on canonization, as distinguished from the explanation based on divine assistance to great sages, is an explanation that grounds the authority and meaning of the text itself and not that of its authors. If so, one may sharpen the hermeneutic position mentioned above and say that the process of canonization, which underlies the authority of canonical texts, is a process that grounds the canonicity of the text itself and not of the author. As we saw, the criterion is the acceptance of the text and not of the author, and the providence accompanying the development of Torah, which ensures that no stumbling block emerges through the use of the canonical text, does so with regard to the text and not with regard to the author. If so, it is naturally clear that the authority and the source for interpretation, according to such an approach, should be the canonical text itself and not its author.

What we have here, in effect, is a certain kind of structuralist approach to the hermeneutics of halakhic texts. The structures that stand behind the texts were not embedded in them by the authors, nor by the environment and context in which the authors acted. These are structures whose presence in the texts is ensured by divine providence. Providence wants students in every generation and every beit midrash who interpret the text not to be dependent on acquaintance with the author or the context in which he acted. Interpretations of canonical texts are what is desired before God, and they count as Torah in the full sense even if they are not what the author intended to embed in the text. One may say that this is the very essence of a text's canonicity: it has already been detached from its author and passed into the public domain. It is Torah, and as such it already belongs to the community of Torah students as a whole. It seems to me that this explains the disregard for versions and manuscripts that characterizes learners in classical study halls (yeshiva 'iyyun' study), as described above. The text as it stands before us is what received the seal from Above.

For this reason as well, learners are not interested in whether a given halakhic approach developed in a certain concrete context that may have caused—indeed, likely did cause—the particular definitions and halakhic interpretations that developed in those places and circumstances. What survived the evolutionary history of Jewish law does not depend on the contexts in which it was created. There is no point in asking whether the ruling of Tosafot on sanctification of the Divine Name, or the obligation of self-sacrifice, arose against the background of the Crusades. It certainly did, but that has no directly relevant bearing on us. Research can be conducted into those circumstances, and such research has value in itself; perhaps we may also learn from it how to respond to changing circumstances in our own time. But in the context of halakhic interpretation, this research has no principled significance.[33] In the yeshiva, and in the world of halakhic decision-making, one must relate to all the texts only at the essential level, without contextual interpretation. This is indeed how the yeshiva and halakhic worlds operate.

For this reason, although the basic approach is structuralist, we nevertheless see that certain deconstructionist lines have entered yeshiva hermeneutics, such as disregard for the external contexts that accompany the composition. The reason lies in the fact that this is a special kind of structuralism, based on a transcendent conception and not on structures originating in society and in the cultural atmosphere surrounding the author. The structures are created 'from above' and not by society or by some other sociological-historical context, and therefore there is no point in investigating those contexts.

Clearly, this still requires explanation: why are certain modes of study—and only they—the tools for reaching the truth in the text (the Torah within it), and why can not every person develop his own methods of interpretation and inspiration? Very briefly, one may say that the modes of study themselves also undergo similar evolutionary processes; and one who lacks a healthy intuitive sense regarding the proper path of study will have to wait for the verdict of the historical-evolutionary process and see, over time, which path takes root in the world of Torah study and which does not.

Thus far we have tried to offer a grounding for the approach prevalent in the yeshiva world by starting from the empirical phenomenon and asking ourselves what assumptions might underlie such an approach. We saw that the evolutionary model explains the three points raised in the second type of criticism (see above, chapter A). I now wish to show that this is a reasonable approach in its own right, beyond the fact that it is internally consistent, as we have thus far seen.

The argument in favor of this hermeneutic is composed of two considerations. The first says that if a person assumes divine providence over every detail in creation, even over animals and inanimate objects, then all the more so the mode of Torah study—Torah being the very thing on which the world stands and for whose sake it was created—does not escape this detailed providence. If so, it is highly reasonable to adopt the modes of study and interpretation accepted in the world that tries to serve God to the best of its understanding. If these are the methods, then apparently providence desires them.

The consideration described thus far assumed a 'religious' premise, namely particular providence, and derived from it the yeshiva hermeneutic of 'iyyun.' The second consideration, by contrast, seems to assume a 'secular' premise. Let us begin its presentation with the question: do we really suppose that in the lessons given by Maimonides, or Rashba, or even amoraim and tannaim, it could not happen that one of the students would 'stop them in their tracks' in the middle of the lesson, that is, point out an error in what they were saying? Are all those great figures not human beings? Can no error be found in them? The assumption that in 'iyyun' study we are trying to uncover Maimonides' own intention leads us to a supernatural belief in his capacities. The most basic assumption of yeshiva 'iyyun' is that every contradiction discovered in a text is not the result of forgetfulness or error but requires reconciliation, and the assumption is that such reconciliation certainly exists. Was Maimonides a prophet, or only a human being—very wise, of enormous spiritual and intellectual stature, yet still flesh and blood like us? How is it possible, then, that no errors at all should occur in his teaching? Can present-day sages not also err? Where exactly does the line run between those who can err and those who cannot? Do we believe that the line always runs three generations before us—and thus, according to this absurd approach, every previous generation believed the same about itself? A given generation regards itself as fallible so long as not enough years have passed, until finally it turns out retrospectively that it never made a mistake; and so with each generation anew. Is that not a grotesque picture? In the Torah itself, and then in the Mishnah and the Talmud, there is discussion of the Great Court that erred (whether in judgment or even in an explicit mishnah), and we are still prepared to cling to the belief that the medieval authorities could not err.

It would seem that precisely in order to be rational, and not excessively 'religious' or 'fanatical,' one ought to adopt the seemingly 'mystical' theory set out above as the foundation of the yeshiva world's approach. This provides a more reasonable grounding for the assumption of harmonization of the Talmud and the medieval authorities, and of canonical texts in general. According to this approach, the guarantee that there is no error in a canonical composition is the fact of its canonicity itself—that is, the providence over it because it was accepted in Israel. If so, it is clear that what receives this seal is not the author's intention but the text itself. More sharply, one may say: the author could have erred, but the canonical text could not. As stated, one who does not accept this position and yet still tries to find the author's intention by means of the methods of yeshiva-analytic study is apparently assuming a highly implausible proposition about the capacities of tannaim, amoraim, and certainly the medieval authorities.[34] In a playful vein, one might apply here the saying of the Sages: “If the earlier authorities were like angels… we are like donkeys.”

In order to soften somewhat the revolutionary edge of the statements above, I find it proper to note that there is undoubtedly also a rationale behind providence and the process of canonization of texts. There is a clear process of 'decline of the generations,' and indeed 'the earlier authorities are like angels' in certain respects, whereas 'we are like human beings.' Every generation, insofar as it stands earlier in the process of transmission of the Torah (closer to Sinai), possesses a healthier intuition, which is expressed, among other things, in the fact that it needs fewer legal analyses in order to understand the meaning of texts. That is, statements or rulings of the medieval authorities certainly have much greater significance in terms of closeness to truth than ours do. What I wished to argue here is that the absolute authority, and the assumption that forgetfulness or error are impossible, apply to the text and not to the writer. Clearly, this authority is derived, among other things, from the rational basis that the writer was in fact closer to the truth.[35]

Let us conclude this chapter with an important note. There are approaches in Jewish law according to which halakhic discussion creates rather than uncovers. In an extreme formulation, one may say that there is no halakhic truth at all; rather, whatever the sage arrives at in his analysis is, by definition, the truth desired before God. According to this approach there is no promise that he always hits upon the truth; rather, what he says is itself the truth. There is nothing at which to aim.[36]

Clearly, to ground such an approach there is no need at all for the evolutionary-providential mechanism described above. Clearly as well, according to this approach there is no need whatsoever to discuss the context in which the composition was written. If so, this is seemingly a possible—perhaps even better—interpretation of the halakhic hermeneutic described above. This would be a kind of halakhic deconstructionism, presented in chapter C as approach A (or C), where the possibility of using it as an explanation of the conduct of the yeshiva world was rejected because it pulls the ground out from under the importance—and perhaps even the possibility—of the Talmudic-analytic give-and-take. Here our intention is explicitly to uphold a position that is not deconstructionist, although it appears to share several such features.

The upshot of all this is that the classical yeshiva world assumes a kind of structuralist model at the foundation of the hermeneutics of canonical halakhic texts. Its disregard for context does not stem from skepticism regarding our ability to penetrate the author's intention, as is usually the case in general hermeneutics, but from the conception that the guarantee of freedom from error and of full harmony is given to the text and not to the author; consequently, the commitment of study is to the text and not to the author. The structures underlying the text were not embedded in it by the author, certainly not consciously, and on the other hand this is also not a social-historical influence. Providence is what 'ensures' that a reasonable interpretation of the text, even if it does not coincide with the author's intention, will hit upon a proper halakhic truth. This description can explain the three points underlying the second type of criticism: disregard for variants, explanations in present-day terms, and the absence of contextual explanations. It seems to me that I have also presented rational grounds for such an evolutionary approach.

After writing all this, I saw in Teshuvot ha-Ri"d words like goads, and this is what is written there (responsum 1):

…And even if no great man had disagreed with him on this, I write what seems to me to prove from the book itself, and do not take me for arrogant, for I know myself well enough that the fingernails of those holy earlier rabbis are better than my whole belly, and I am not fit even to guard the entrance to their study hall. But this much is true: whatever does not seem right to me from the book itself—even if Joshua son of Nun said it, I would not obey him. I do not refrain from writing what seems right to me, for such is the way of the Talmud: the later amoraim did not refrain from speaking against the earlier ones, and even against the tannaim. How many mishnayot they overturned from the root, and how many majority opinions they annulled and ruled the law in accordance with an individual. All the more so here, where great rabbis disagree, and we must seek and investigate from the book itself clear proofs, and see to which side the law inclines. We have neither the strength nor the knowledge to weigh on the scales like mountains which sage is greater than his fellow; therefore let us leave those rabbis, peace be upon them, in their honor, and return to the understanding of the books to see where the law tends.

And in responsum 62 there, which deals with the same topic, he returns to these words at length, and at the end adds one further sentence to what was said above, a sentence that sheds even more light on our present issue:

Wisdom is greater than the wise man, and no wise man is free of error, for wisdom is perfect only in the Lord alone.

The attentive listener will appreciate it.

E. What, Nonetheless, Can Be Combined

It is the way of yeshiva-style 'conceptual inquiries,' as of philosophical ones, to present two sides as distinctly as possible from one another, for two main reasons: first, in order to try to decide between them; and second, in order to understand each of the two sides in itself and in contrast to the other. In the course of study it often becomes clear that the two sides come very close to one another, sometimes to the point of threatening the very existence of the inquiry, a phenomenon that makes it difficult to understand the different positions. In addition, even when the inquiry still retains meaning, we sometimes find that both sides are true, and it is hard to decide which is right. In light of all this, it seems that the true purpose of most of these inquiries is not merely one or the other of the two aims mentioned above, but rather to try to create an understanding that is a healthy synthesis composed of both sides. A genuine synthesis can be created only when the two sides are distinct from one another and both possess a reasonable and plausible logical-rational grounding in the eyes of those attempting to formulate the synthesis.

We are all familiar with the situation in which every rule of halakhic decision has exceptions. This is the same phenomenon of a natural process that one tries to force into the framework of a sharp and rigid theory. Here too, the approach of 'iyyun' in classical yeshivot is not defined in a sharp way. Clearly, sometimes the words of a medieval authority are rejected, just as sometimes textual variants are used (when the distress becomes severe enough). Even the fundamental assumption of the harmony of the Talmud, which underlies all yeshiva 'iyyun,' is sometimes breached, in places where medieval and later authorities themselves explain that there is a dispute among sugyot on a certain issue. Seemingly, if such a direction of conflicting sugyot indeed exists, and the editor did not ensure synchronization of the whole text, what should prevent us from resolving every contradiction in a similar way? Even with regard to the words of a single amora or tanna, the Talmud already says “two amoraim explaining the view of Rabbi So-and-so.” Nevertheless, it is clear that there is an assumption of the text's general harmony, expressed in attempts to reconcile contradictory passages rather than settling for scholarly solutions. The exceptions indicate that every rule is only an approximation to reality. Let us now discuss the points at which research and 'iyyun' can be combined.

The first point we can indicate is the criticism of the first type (above, chapter A). We saw that there can certainly be principled agreement to the use of research tools for clarifying Talmudic concepts (though a scholarly explanation of the development of halakhic approaches has no halakhic significance).

Even regarding the points raised by the second type of criticism, there is limited room for combination.

1. On the subject of manuscripts and clarifying textual variants. The assumption that the correct version and reliable manuscripts are unimportant cannot be adopted in a total way. When we are in real distress, and find ourselves forced to throw up our hands or resort to overly speculative and 'creative' solutions, there is room for a scholarly solution as well.

The Chazon Ish too, in his letter quoted above, argues only against an approach whereby something accepted by all our teachers would be rejected because of this or that manuscript. But when we have a statement or determination that is simply not understood at all, there is room to examine manuscripts in order to try to clarify it. From the standpoint of the present point, such a step should be taken only after we have despaired (to some degree or another) of an 'analytic' solution. For example, the case of Maimonides' ruling in the laws of damages mentioned above is a situation in which many people, even from within the yeshiva world, will not agree to continue reconciling Maimonides' words with what is stated in the Talmud (although the Maggid Mishneh there, for obvious reasons, did so). But it is important to sharpen the point: here the problem arose from study of Maimonides itself, and only the proposed solution relies on correcting the text. The Chazon Ish protests in his letter against the opposite situation, in which the problem itself is raised in light of a different version found in newly discovered manuscripts.[37]

It is worth mentioning here that the Chazon Ish is regarded in yeshivot as the father of the approach (whose source I once saw in the Beit Yosef on the Tur, Yoreh De'ah) that it is preferable to force the language rather than force the reasoning. That is, he is prepared even to strain the meaning of the wording in our possession in favor of the reasoning; and if so, all the more so, if support should be found in a manuscript that changes the version in a way that fits the reasoning, that does not detract at all—provided that the source of the reasoning is not the manuscript reading but common sense. The problem should be in the text; the solution may make use of manuscripts.

It is important to emphasize here that the explanation must always be essential, whereas support may come from manuscripts or from research tools. A contextual explanation cannot play a role in halakhic-analytic interpretation. The plane of contextual explanation is parallel to the plane of essential explanation.

2. On the subject of context. Understanding the setting, or the author's intention, by various means can illuminate the text from unexpected directions and certainly help in deciphering its meanings. It is highly plausible that the most reasonable meaning of a text is indeed the author's intention. One should note that this is a factual and not an ideological claim. That is, we do not aspire to understand the author's intention; rather, we use the attempt to penetrate his intentions in order to arrive at a reasonable meaning of the text itself. The ideology may remain structuralist, while the research tools are drawn from 'naive' hermeneutics. If we consult Maimonides' Commentary on the Mishnah, it is certainly plausible that we will be able to extract from there an acceptable interpretation for his words in the Mishneh Torah. This is not done in order to reach Maimonides' intention in writing the Mishneh Torah, but as an interpretive aid to understanding the book itself. The basic assumption is that even if the ideology is not a search for the author's intention but a search for the meaning of the text, the author's intention will generally constitute a plausible interpretation of the text. The final test will be how convincing this interpretation is in the reading of the text itself, and not how persuaded we are that this is what the author intended; but as an auxiliary tool it is certainly legitimate.

A practical implication of the difference between adopting the ideology of scholarship and using it merely as a tool in this context will arise when the author's intention is not the best interpretation of the text, but from various indications it appears to us that this is indeed his intention. Another practical implication, already discussed above, arises when a problem does not emerge from a difficulty in the text itself, but from manuscripts or external sources. As we noted in light of the Chazon Ish's letter, it may be that there is no room at all to trouble ourselves over a problem of this type. We may have a problem with the author's intention, but the text as such is clear. We thus arrive at the absurd, yet in the final analysis to my mind very logical, conclusion that understanding the author is a means to understanding the text, and not the reverse.

There is another qualification to the totality of the yeshiva canonical approach. We have already mentioned the fact that the canonical texts themselves disagree with one another, thereby forcing us, in halakhic ruling, to reject one in favor of another. True, because of canonicity there is indeed a tendency to be stringent in accordance with all the opinions and not to reject any method found in a canonical text, but clearly it is not always possible to do so, and in practice people do not always do so.

Canonicity is not a property of the collection of texts each taken separately, but of the whole corpus, including the methods of study, interpretation, and decision among the different sources. Just as in the Talmud, which is the father of canonical texts, several opinions are brought, and the amoraim—and following them we as well—decide among them, so too with the larger corpus that arose after it. The canonicity of the whole corpus means that there is a dimension of truth in each canonical text taken by itself. Therefore, in pressing circumstances one may sometimes act in accordance with a view not ruled as the law.

Let us now turn to a remark touching on the very nature of the desired synthesis between the two basic positions presented above. According to the yeshiva position, as presented here, there would seem to be no room at all for change in the methods of study. Whatever has become fixed over the generations becomes canonical and binding, and if so this picture contains no mechanism that allows renewal. It seems to me that one path toward renewal of the methods of study is, nonetheless, attention to what is happening in the world around us. Every new current (a mutation, in evolutionary terms) begins from a variety of local considerations, but from a broader perspective it would seem that what occurs in the surrounding world is also under providence through those same evolutionary processes. A mode of study that becomes established and takes root in a significant way, even if not within the yeshiva world itself, apparently carries a message to that world. It is possible that the historical dialectic—or, in our language, 'divine providence'—is signaling to us directions of change. Thus the very approach of 'iyyun' itself was renewed, and in its present form it is certainly a modern mode of thought. In a similar way one may relate to modern research methods on the points raised in this chapter. This too is a significant development in the world around us, and it cannot be ignored. The crucial point, in my humble opinion, is that one must be careful to draw from it tools and not ideology.[38]

F. Summary

In this article I tried to expose the assumptions that underlie yeshiva 'iyyun' study, in contrast to the scholarly approach. My main claim was that scholarship represents a 'naive' hermeneutic stance, whereas 'iyyun' represents a structuralist hermeneutic. This structuralism does not arise from an inability to reach the intentions of authors, but from the absence of any need to do so; and the explanation of this requires an evolutionary description of Jewish law. This meta-halakhic theory has sufficient explanatory power with respect to the three points raised as criticism of 'iyyun' from the standpoint of scholarship. I then tried to present reasons grounding such a hermeneutic approach to the Talmud and to Jewish law. In the final chapter I briefly discussed the points at which scholarly methods can be combined with yeshiva 'iyyun' study. We found several such points, under the basic assumption that one should not draw values from scholarship, but only methods.

Jewish law was presented as emerging from an evolutionary process of canonization of texts. Every halakhic determination,[39] or text, is examined in the short term on its own merits; and if in the long term it undergoes canonization, it is no longer subject to examination but only to interpretation. It is important to note that I do not mean to claim that there were no contextual influences on halakhic compositions, but only that this fact has no significance for study and for Jewish law.

On the other hand, it is important to stress that every interpretive act is context-dependent. There is no interpretation of a text as such without context. In this article I wished to claim that the interpretive context is not the one within which the authors acted, but the one within which the interpreters or learners act. This context is of course shaped also by the cumulative influence of all previous generations, and this is in fact the very essence of the process of transmission of Torah. This process is not exhausted by the transfer of information alone, but also concerns the transmission and formation of tools of interpretation and decipherment.

The truth sought by scholarship attempts to get at the reality of the past, and it seems that according to this approach the transmission of Torah from generation to generation has primarily the value of transmitting information. It has little utility with respect to our ability to get at the distant past examined in its own specific context. According to the deconstructionist approach, which lies at the opposite hermeneutic pole, the transmission of Torah has no meaning at all beyond the information itself (if even that), and there is no concept whatsoever of halakhic-Torah truth.

It seems to me that the most important point emerging from my discussion is that in order to understand—and defend—the yeshiva position, one need not resort to deconstructionist approaches. The goal of yeshiva study is most certainly to discover the truth, and the whole truth—not historical and time-bound truth, with which scholarship deals, but eternal truth as it comes to expression in the present.

[1] See, for example, Menachem Kahana, in Be-Havlei Masoret u-Temurah, Kivunim, Rehovot, 5750 (hereinafter: Kahana); Daniel Sperber, in Badad, no. 6, Bar-Ilan University, 5758 (hereinafter: Sperber); Hayyim Navon, in Akdamot 8, Beit Morasha, Jerusalem, 5760 (hereinafter: Navon).

[2] See Kahana, cited above.

[3] Here I refer only to the value of external sciences within the framework of Torah study. In my humble opinion, some of these sciences have value in themselves, beyond serving as tools for clarifying Talmudic passages and subjects, but this is not the place to discuss that.

[4] Kahana's proposals, in the second part of his article, concerning the need for a different kind of halakhic ruling in our time require a separate discussion, for which this is not the place. In my humble opinion, they do not follow from the discussion in the first part of the article, though they certainly expose some of the assumptions hidden within it—assumptions for which I see no room in a world that feels itself committed to Jewish law.

[5] The term 'classical' that I use here, and that will continue to accompany us below, refers to the Lithuanian East European yeshiva and its present-day continuations in Israel and abroad, influenced mainly by R. Chaim of Brisk, R. Shimon Shkop, and their colleagues and students, the roshei yeshiva of the last generations before the Holocaust. This designation excludes other yeshiva methods to which I am not referring here (even though for our purposes they have similar characteristics). I do not mean to claim that the Brisker mode of study and thought existed in this form throughout the entire history of Torah study, although on the ideological level presented here one can certainly show it to have deep and ancient roots in our history. As for the concrete tools and forms of thought used in study, that is another story entirely, and I cannot elaborate here.

[6] Rabbi Kapach, in his introductions to his translation of Maimonides' Commentary on the Mishnah and to his edition of the Mishneh Torah, writes about this at length and refers to the analytic moves made in yeshivot as castles in the air, since most of the problems they seek to solve can be understood by consulting a manuscript with an accurate reading, or an accurate translation.

Quite a number of great Torah scholars used the clarification of textual versions as an important tool in their learning. Indeed, these figures generally did not study according to the method of the classical yeshiva world (as defined above) as we know it today. The Gra, as is well known, often employed this method, and the Hatam Sofer also spoke of it and used it in his responsa and novellae (see Eliezer Katz, Ha-Hatam Sofer, Mossad Harav Kook, Jerusalem, 5720, especially at the beginning of the second chapter).

It should be emphasized that these sages use the scholarly method in a very limited way and only in certain contexts. In the present article I refer only to what is customary in the mainstream of the yeshiva world.

For a particularly extreme case of ignoring an obviously called-for textual correction, see Maimonides, Laws of Damages 4:4. Maimonides' words there directly contradict the Talmud in several places. The Kesef Mishneh there brings a letter of Maimonides in which Maimonides himself writes that a scribal error had crept into his words, and this does not prevent many later authorities from reconciling his words as they are printed in the version before us (see the Frankel edition there, which brings the corrected reading from Maimonides' responsa, Pe'er ha-Dor, and the references in the index to those later authorities).

Let us note that all those later authorities saw the words of the Kesef Mishneh, printed in all editions alongside Maimonides, and nevertheless chose to ignore them. This is an extreme example, not usually accepted even in the beit midrash, but the very existence of such an extreme approach indicates a principled attitude, as will be explained below.

There are, however, challenges to the reliability of Maimonides' replies to the sages of Lunel, from which the corrected reading is taken; see Rabbi Kapach's article in the memorial volume for R. Nissim, later reprinted in the collection of Rabbi Kapach's writings. See also Rabbi Yitzhak Shilat's response in that memorial volume, where he disputes Rabbi Kapach's conclusion. It is quite clear that this was not the consideration guiding the later authorities just mentioned.

[7] See Rabbi Soloveitchik's well-known description in Halakhic Man of the table in his home at which all of these figures sat together.

[8] See Rabbi Neria Gutel's book Hishtanut ha-Teva'im be-Halakhah, Makhon Yahdav, Jerusalem, 5755, which devotes an entire chapter to the issue of Maimonides' attitude to laws based on occult or hidden properties.

[9] See Kesef Mishneh on Mamrim 2:1, Tosafot Yoma 3b, and elsewhere.

[10] And see further Gufei Halakhot sec. 38, Halikhot Eli sec. 519, and there are additional places in the Talmud not mentioned there, but I cannot elaborate.

[11] One could argue that the amora in question understood that there were in fact two distinct disputes between the tannaim, even at the level of reasons and rationales, except that they were taught together in one setting (one mishnah or one baraita). If that were the case, there would indeed be no principled problem here. But it appears that in at least some places this is plainly not the case. Beyond that, the accepted rule in our hands is that we do not multiply disputes, which is in effect the halakhic version of Ockham's razor: one does not posit assumptions beyond what the text, or reality, requires. It is also clear that if that were the case, there would be nothing novel in the words of the Yad Malachi.

[12] On this subject see the introduction by Rabbi Yisrael Shatzipansky to his book Ha-Takkanot be-Yisrael, Mossad Harav Kook, Jerusalem, 5751. Admittedly, in this matter there are many who explain the rule that an enactment whose reason has lapsed nevertheless remains in force on the grounds that we fear we do not truly understand that the reason has not lapsed, or because of concern for the standing of rabbinic enactments. There is, however, the well-known view of the Gra (I did not find an explicit source; but see Aliyot Eliyahu, 'Aliyot ha-Sulam' 21a, and Ma'aseh Rav sec. 24, which are close to this) that this rule derives from hidden reasons that exist for every enactment, beyond the overt reasons. See also Mikhtav me-Eliyahu by R. Dessler, vol. 2, p. 75, which cites this from the Zohar. Here too one may ask whether these were reasons taken into account by the enactors themselves, or perhaps reasons of which even they were not aware (see our discussion below of a possible mechanism of this sort).

[13] Well known is the view of the Gra, and in contrast that of the Arukh ha-Shulchan in Yoreh De'ah. See all this in Hishtanut ha-Teva'im be-Halakhah, cited above.

[14] Rabbi Zalman Nehemiah Goldberg, in his article printed in Mevakshei Torah on the laws of Jewish festivals in memory of R. Shlomo Zalman Auerbach (vol. 1, sec. 11), discusses the question whether in enactments one follows the rationale or the wording, and proves that the way to analyze enactments is to follow the wording even where the result seems to contradict the rationale. This is an approach very similar to the rule that we do not expound the reason of the verse.

Similarly, the halakhic decisors wrote (see the introduction of Shatzipansky, cited above) that in the case of a rabbinic enactment whose reason is written alongside it, one may cancel it when the reason has lapsed, because writing the reason indicates that they wished to make the enactment dependent on the reason. Yet here too this is an interpretation of the wording of the enactment and not of its enactors. Incidentally, this law indicates an understanding that the hidden reasons for the enactment mentioned in the previous note were known to the enactors, for otherwise there is no significance to the fact that they revealed the reasons to us; and this requires further consideration.

[15] For greater detail one may consult Ze'ev Levy's book Hermeneutika, Sifriyat Po'alim and Ha-Kibbutz Ha-Me'uhad, 5746. In a Torah context, regarding Bible study, see also Abraham Wolfish's article in Megadim 28, Tevunot, Alon Shevut, Tishrei 5758.

[16] The disregard for the author's intentions usually stems from the assumption that they cannot be uncovered from the text, or by any other means. The assumption that he has no such intentions at all is usually implausible on its face. The refusal to introduce super-structures into interpretation generally does stem from unwillingness to acknowledge the existence of such structures, although sometimes it may also stem from inability to expose them in a persuasive way.

[17] Admittedly, in the Talmud there are expressions such as “The Merciful One said,” that is, reference to the Holy One, the writer of the Torah. But in a straightforward sense this means an attempt to understand what the Holy One wrote in the Torah—namely, what the Torah itself says to us—and not what God's 'intention' was when He wrote it, in the sense of what was in His 'mind' at the time of writing. Such a formulation is plainly absurd, even on the metaphorical level on which it is understood.

[18] From this perspective, the approach of Talmudic scholarship—or at least the proposal, as in Kahana's article, to see it as an acceptable interpretive mechanism in the halakhic realm—is fundamentalist, whereas the yeshiva world is modernist. The student of 'iyyun' does not seek to go back and live in the world of Rabbi Judah the Patriarch, Rav Ashi, or Maimonides; ironically, he is very much a proud product of his present age.

[19] These statements sometimes appear in the form of jokes, but one cannot ignore the fact that they conceal genuine attitudes. There are several variations on jokes about Maimonides trying to correct R. Chaim's understanding of his words, only to be told that 'there is a Maimonides against him.' There are also less politically correct variations, but I cannot elaborate.

[20] See Shalom Rosenberg's book Lo ba-Shamayim Hi, Tevunot, Alon Shevut, 5757, which discusses questions touching on this issue in the contexts of halakhic decision-making and the meaning of disputes. The approaches described in that book are also relevant to the explanation that will be proposed below, but I cannot elaborate here.

[21] This phenomenon may also be viewed in a deconstructionist context. The debate is then only a means of arousing subjective experiences and not a way of clarifying the 'true' content or meaning of the text. It seems that in modern study settings that regard Torah as a source of inspiration, one finds such approaches quite often. But according to this, deconstructionism itself advances no claim at all; it is merely nihilistic skepticism, for on that view a contextual search is also legitimate if it brings me insights and gives me inspiration. In that case deconstructionism has no positive content, no practical guidance for interpreting texts, and therefore it drops out of our present discussion of itself. This is clearly not a possible interpretation of what occurs in the yeshiva world, which, as noted above, is largely characterized by a culture of dispute, argument, adducing proofs, and attempts at decision and clarification; and it is doubtful whether this is an interpretation of anything at all.

[22] It is worth noting, however, the words of the Rema in Shulchan Arukh, Hoshen Mishpat sec. 25, para. 2, who wrote as follows:

Wherever the words of the early authorities are written in a book and are well known, and later decisors disagree with them—as later decisors sometimes disagree with the Geonim—we follow the later authorities, for the law follows the later authorities from Abaye and Rava onward (Maharik, root 84). But if one occasionally finds a responsum of a Gaon that was not made known in a book, and others are found to disagree with it, one need not rule like the later authorities, for it is possible that they did not know the words of the Gaon, and had they heard them they would have retracted (Maharik, root 96).

We see in the Rema that one may certainly rely in practice on responsa that did not pass through the 'filter of the generations,' and perhaps such a responsum may even have an advantage over texts that did pass through that filter. When later authorities dispute earlier rulings that are known and well publicized, the law follows the later authorities; not so when it is plausible that the responsum was unknown to them. One must distinguish between the words of the Rema and those of the Chazon Ish, but I cannot elaborate. I later noticed that Sperber too remarked on this in note 41 there.

[23] See below in the summary chapter for another reference to this point.

[24] See also Rosenberg's book cited above.

[25] These statements attributed to the Hatam Sofer are doubtful in my eyes, since in several places he writes that one should not rely on his words but examine matters on their own merits. See, for example, the book Ha-Hatam Sofer mentioned in the note at the beginning of this article, pp. 65-66. However, see a similar approach in the Chazon Ish with respect to the Rema in note 41 of Sperber's article mentioned above. This is all the more interesting against the background of the Chazon Ish's independent approach to later sources, with whom he often disagrees without hesitation (see his well-known words on this in Yoreh De'ah sec. 150 and elsewhere). In light of what we will say below, this contradiction in his words will be well explained.

[26] This explains his above-mentioned distinction (see the previous note) in the Chazon Ish's attitude toward the Rema as opposed to later texts.

[27] On this matter see the article by Sh. Z. Havlin in Mehkarim be-Sifrut ha-Talmudit, The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 5743. See also Menachem Elon, Ha-Mishpat ha-Ivri, Magnes, Jerusalem, 3rd edition, 5752, especially in vol. 2, chapters 32-38.

[28] See the discussions in the previous note.

[29] In this context it is interesting to cite the language of the Gra in his commentary to Tikkunei Zohar 169b (especially in light of our remarks at the beginning of chapter A about the Gra's 'scholarly' method that opposed pilpul):

Nowadays we do not rely on halakhic rulings without proofs and dialectical analysis, as is the case throughout the entire Talmud and among the decisors, and collections of rulings are only for the unlearned. But in the future, when people will learn directly from Moses a law given to Moses at Sinai, there will be no difficulty and no dialectic at all there.

[30] The presentation here is sharp, perhaps too sharp. Clearly the law does not follow all decisors, for they also dispute one another quite a bit. Beyond that, decisors sometimes instruct people not to act in accordance with the Shulchan Arukh or the Mishnah Berurah, despite their canonicity. Here I mean only to present the position under discussion in its pure form.

[31] Yeshayahu Leibowitz used to say that the Sages determined which of the books of Scripture would enter the biblical canon and become sanctified, and which would not (for example, they discussed the book of Ecclesiastes, which they sought to suppress, and the Scroll of Esther, and so on). It therefore seems quite clear that the canonicity of the writings of the sages (the Oral Torah) underlies in many respects the canonicity of Scripture. See his words in his book Yahadut, Am Yehudi u-Medinat Yisrael, 5th edition, Schocken, 5739, pp. 346-350, and many other places.

[32] I still need to consider whether those laws would apply to every book or notebook of Torah novellae by just anyone, or whether they apply only to books regarded as canonical. I am inclined to think that in these contexts we are speaking only of canonical books. The definition of which books are canonical is difficult and complex, and I have the sense that it is not entirely agreed upon either—absurdly enough.

[33] I am aware that the boundary between these two uses of scholarship is often problematic, but there is no doubt that there are two such contexts. There are cases that clearly belong to historical research, and cases that clearly belong to halakhic interpretation. There may certainly also be intermediate cases, and these must be decided on their own merits. Here we are discussing the 'thesis' in its pure form. For corrections necessitated by the complexities of reality, see briefly chapter E below, where I will discuss more realistic models.

[34] There are statements about the holy spirit of the authors of the compositions, or of all those mentioned in the Talmud, but it seems likely that this is precisely what those statements mean. That 'holy spirit' does not accompany the authors of the compositions throughout all their study, but only in the composition of the canonical text. Perhaps this is the meaning of the Talmud in Gittin 67a: “Issi ben Judah used to enumerate the praises of the sages… Rabbi Judah was wise whenever he wished.” Perhaps the intention is that Rabbi Judah spoke the truth whenever he wished, and not only when providence wished to place an unwitting truth in his mouth (for example, when he composed works or issued practical rulings). Unlike the other sages, all his words were always spoken with holy spirit. See a similar direction in the Maharatz Chayot's commentary there.

[35] See Moshe Koppel, in Higayon 2, Aluma, Jerusalem, 5753.

[36] See Avi Sagi's article in Higayon 1, Aluma, Jerusalem, 5749.

[37] It seems to me that Sperber, in his article, did not distinguish between these two situations, and therefore commented on the Chazon Ish on the basis of his own version in Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 35b (see his article, cited above, in the body of the text between notes 51 and 52).

After these words were written, I saw in the Chazon Ish himself, in a passing remark in sec. 7, subsec. 7, that he indeed takes it as obvious that the Kesef Mishneh's reading in Maimonides, Laws of Damages chapter 4, mentioned above in chapter A, is the authentic one.

[38] And not like Kahana's proposals in the second part of the article cited above.

[39] Here I added halakhic determinations in addition to texts. The evolutionary model presented here has implications also for explanations of laws and customs. The scholar will want to understand the custom and the enactment in light of the circumstances in which they were instituted, whereas the yeshiva learner will understand the custom and the enactment only from within themselves. The prohibition of legumes on Passover, for which today no evident reason seems visible, is perhaps a striking example of understanding deeper dimensions in an enactment or custom beyond the overt reasons for which it was instituted or adopted. The providence that caused this custom to take root (to become canonical) thereby hints to us that there are essential reasons for the prohibition of legumes on Passover, beyond the concerns about leaven that once existed for those who used legumes in earlier times. Compare also Rav Kook's interpretation in Musar Avikha of the essential prohibition embodied in protective fences.