With God’s help

Tzohar, the eve of Sukkot 5762

To Rabbi Ariel, greetings.

Enclosed is an updated copy of my article for Tzohar. As we discussed, I made the main cuts in the section on disputes about reality, and also trimmed a bit from the continuation.

Respectfully,

Michael Abraham

Yitzhak Sadeh 652/1

Yeruham, 80500

Tel: 08-6583230

Myth and Historical Truth:

Yedaya ha-Penini, Postmodernism, and the New Historians

Introduction

The attitude toward the concept of myth underwent a significant change in the modern period. In the past, myth was treated as describing genuine historical reality, whereas today people often speak of a rupture between the two planes: the mythical and the historical. In this article I will begin with the problem of disputes that concern reality, and connect it to the question of the relation between myth and historical reality. I will try to show that the Torah’s and Jewish law’s approach to the relation between myth and reality points to an ambivalent attitude toward the modern approach, which severs the two from one another. At the end of my remarks I will argue that the modern approach to this issue does not in fact characterize contemporary debates either, even in groups from which we would have expected such an approach. The conclusion will be that the Torah’s approach, which is apparently—and indeed—more old-fashioned, is better suited to the prevalent human intuition, even today.

A. Disputes about Reality

In the yeshiva world it is commonly said that there are no disputes at all among the sages of the Oral Torah with respect to reality. According to this approach, a dispute in the Talmud or the Mishnah never turns on factual reality, but only on Torah or halakhic values. The motivation for saying this is quite clear. Since we have received from our teachers that “these and those are the words of the living God,” we are forced to construe their disputes in such a way that neither side is mistaken. Now, while there are various explanations of how both sides in a value-halakhic dispute can be right at once, in disputes about reality there seems to be no way out: only one of the sides can be right, while the other must necessarily be wrong. The approach described above, which holds that there are no disputes at all about reality, is a convenient theoretical escape that the yeshiva world has adopted in the face of this difficulty.

Some go further and say this even regarding disputes among the medieval authorities (Rishonim). The assumption is that even in the disputes of the medieval authorities we are meant to believe that there are no errors, and that regarding them too the rule that “these and those are the words of the living God” applies.

One example among many may be found in Minchat Chinukh, commandment 32, in the section Musakh ha-Shabbat (under the labor of threshing, subsec. 3, in the passage beginning “and Rashi wrote”). There Minchat Chinukh raises an objection to Maimonides on the assumption that he certainly does not dispute Rashi on a factual matter, since Rashi wrote that milk is considered already deposited and detached—that is, not connected to the teat. It should be noted that in several respects this is an extreme example of the conception that denies disputes about reality. First, the dispute is between medieval authorities, not among the Sages. Second, while regarding a point known to everyone it is indeed unlikely that disputes would arise, here the “reality” is not trivial at all (the determination whether milk is already detached or not). Third, the straightforward sense of Maimonides there is that he disagrees with Rashi, and Minchat Chinukh not only assumes that there is no dispute here, but even raises an objection to Maimonides on the basis of that assumption, and is ultimately forced into a strained explanation of his view, see there.

Precisely in light of these difficulties, the determination of Minchat Chinukh clearly shows that he assumed a priori—apparently for the theological reasons mentioned above—that disputes about reality cannot exist among the sages of the Oral Torah, and even among the medieval authorities.[1]

B. “These and those are the words of the living God” with Respect to Disputes about Reality: the Suppression of Reason

If with respect to the medieval authorities it is difficult to accept the position of the Minchat Chinukh just described, it seems that even with respect to the sages of the Mishnah and Talmud the matter is not so simple. When one examines various disputes among the Sages, in Jewish law and in aggadic literature, one quickly discovers that quite a few disputes are based on disagreements about reality. Clear examples are questions such as existence or non-existence—whether Job ever existed, or whether the wayward and rebellious son ever existed, and the like. So too regarding the reality in the Tabernacle, from which the laws of the Sabbath labors are derived. Another striking example is found in the dispute between Rabbi Ami and Rabbi Assi in Shevuot 26a, where the Talmud brings an illustration of an oath taken under duress—“a person”—excluding one under compulsion. Rav Kahana swore that Rav had said one thing, and Rabbi Ami swore that Rav had said the opposite. Afterwards they came to Rav, and he told them what he had actually said, and it turned out that one of them had erred and had even sworn on the basis of that error. So too regarding the concubine at Gibeah (Gittin 6a), and elsewhere.

This is not the place to survey all the solutions proposed for the problem of disputes among the Sages, about which much ink has already been spilled (see, for example, Avi Sagi’s book Eilu Va-Eilu, Hillel ben Haim Library, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1996). I will note only that with respect to reality one cannot adopt the rule “these and those are the words of the living God” in its literal sense, unless one adopts the position that there is no halakhic truth at all. If so, the existence of disputes about reality is a fact, even though it of course creates discomfort within the traditional approach.

Rabbi Nathan David Rabinovitch, in the introduction to his book Binu Shenot Dor va-Dor (Yeshivat Ahavat Torah, Jerusalem, 1986)[2], cites a letter of Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner dealing with the issue of factual disputes (see Pahad Yitzhak: Letters and Writings, p. 52).

Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner argues there that the rule of “these and those” was said even regarding disputes about reality. The explanation is that historical reality itself is not really the subject of the dispute. Clearly, the past no longer exists, and it interests us only because of its implications for the present. Therefore the past is no more than an instrument for shaping the Jewish law that binds us in the present. From the standpoint of Jewish law, what determines things is the way historical reality was disclosed to a sage of the tradition, not reality in itself. Hence the interpretation of the verses that leads to a certain factual understanding is itself the reality from a halakhic perspective. On this view there are no disputes about reality at all, in the accepted sense. All disputes are in fact disputes about how reality is seen.

The rule that follows is that a dispute touching the interpretation of the Torah—even if the question under discussion is historical and factual—is also governed by the rule “these and those are the words of the living God.” Up to this point we have dealt with disputes rooted in the interpretation of Scripture. As for factual questions that are not derived from the interpretation of verses, apparently one can say that one sage is right and the other is wrong.

For example, in the context of scientific facts, the problem of errors among the Sages arises. Here, however, there is no need even to reach disputes in order to bring the problem to the surface, for a determination that is not disputed but nonetheless stands in contradiction to scientific reality—at least as we understand it today—raises the same problem. Must we indeed necessarily understand that the Sages did not err with respect to reality?

Rabbi Neria Guttel, in his book Hishtannut ha-Teva’im ba-Halakhah (Machon Yachdav, Jerusalem, 1995), deals extensively with this issue, and there is no need to elaborate upon it here. I will note only that his conclusion (see especially chapter 20 and the sources cited there) is an approach that disconnects the halakhic position from the reality that ostensibly underlies it. Laws that apparently rest on factual determinations do not in fact rest on them. He argues that there are hidden reasons for every law, and they are what constitute it (see there for his sources). Therefore one may dispute the scientific facts cited by the Sages, yet that does not cancel the obligation to observe the laws derived from them.[3]

Here one may see an approach similar to that of Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner: a separation between the reality that seemingly stands at the base of Jewish law and the law itself. In Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner’s terms, one could perhaps say that Jewish law is determined not by reality but by the way it is disclosed to the sages of the Oral Torah.[4]

If so, the seemingly unavoidable conclusion from the first part of the discussion is that the historical truth of the biblical events—and of history in general—has no real importance, and that what matters to us from a Torah standpoint are only the conclusions that arise from them. In modern terminology, we would say that the reality described in Scripture receives the status of a “myth,” whose importance lies less in its truth than in the message conveyed through it. Is it possible that nevertheless there is importance to clarifying historical reality itself?

C. Myths and Truth

The approach we have seen separates the historical truth of any given “myth” from the significance of that myth for us. This is apparently the modern approach prevalent today with respect to myths in general.

The central claim of the researchers of myths themselves, and of those who study the concept of myth—that is, philosophers of myth—is that the significance and power of any mythic story do not depend on the degree of historical truth it contains. According to this approach, a mythic story that serves as a constitutive foundation of some culture should not be examined by historical parameters. Many myths that have no factual basis at all fulfill their important cultural and educational role even when it is clear that they never happened.

It is true that many times a community that acts under the inspiration of a given myth perceives it as an unshakable truth, yet recognizing this does not diminish its influence and importance in the slightest. According to this view, even one endowed with more critical thinking, who understands that the myth in question has no factual basis whatever, can still be inspired by the myth, be influenced by it, and even educate by its light.

I am not familiar with a systematic Hebrew book devoted to the subject of myth, but there is a very interesting collection of essays edited by David Ohana and Robert Wistrich, entitled Myth and Memory (Van Leer Institute and Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Jerusalem, 1997). Throughout this book the above approach is presented in a very emphatic and unmistakable way. In the introduction to the book, the editors write the following key sentences:

The historian examines a society along the vertical axis of time; the sociologist analyzes it along the horizontal axis, at a given moment in time; the mythologist, the student of myths, is responsible for the axis of depth: the axis of dreams, yearnings, and memories.

Beyond the separation between myth and historical reality that is implied here, another modern—and in fact postmodern—development in the study of myths is also expressed here. In the past, when some scholar refuted the truth of a given myth, this was enough to challenge the society that acted under that myth’s inspiration. For example, various biblical scholars, the people of the “Science of Judaism,” challenge the historical truth of what is described in Scripture, and to some extent also in the Talmud. The conclusion of most of them—and some would say this was also their initial motivation—is that what is said in Scripture lacks authority, since it contains no historical truth.

Today, in the postmodern age, there is tolerance, and at times even full legitimacy, for acting within a cultural framework of myth even when it is clear to us that it lacks any factual basis. After the modernist period undermined the myth’s truth, the postmodern period came and asked: so what? A myth need not be true. This is the second assumption hidden in the above quotation from Ohana and Wistrich. Not only is myth detached from historical reality, but such a detachment is legitimate.

In the Torah context we encounter disregard for historical reality in allegorical interpretations of Scripture. The first Jewish allegorical interpreter, known as the founder of Jewish allegorism, is Philo (Jedidiah) of Alexandria. Following him came Yedaya ha-Penini (the Bedersi),[5] and his circle, who leaned on Maimonides in adopting allegorical interpretations of Scripture. A well-known allegorical approach to Scripture—which of course has roots in Kabbalah and appears also in the responsa of Rashba, see below—is the treatment of Abraham our father and Sarah our mother as symbols representing the concepts of matter and form.

In fact, these positions may be seen as a foreshadowing of the postmodern attitude toward myth. Yedaya ha-Penini assumes that the factual data are of no importance, only the conclusions—philosophical in his case, and halakhic-theological in the cases above—derived from them. In the end, as we have already seen, the component relevant from a Torah standpoint is only the value-halakhic conclusions, not the factual plane.

Rashba, in his responsa (part I, nos. 416–418), addresses these views of Yedaya ha-Penini in the famous writ of ban. The ban was imposed on anyone who studied philosophy before the age of twenty-five. The reason is that one who engages these subjects too early—before filling his belly with Talmud and decisors—may reach the rash and grave conclusions reached by Yedaya ha-Penini and his companions.

The question that arises here is: what is the great problem and severity that Rashba saw in these positions? Why is there a flaw in the faith of one who observes every commandment, major and minor alike, yet doubts the factual basis underlying the historical events described in Scripture?

This becomes all the more compelling in light of what we saw above. Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner, and likewise the sources cited in Rabbi Guttel’s aforementioned book, treat the factual determinations that underlie disputes or halakhic determinations as non-binding in themselves.

D. Yedaya ha-Penini’s Approach and the Post-Zionists

In this chapter I would like to point to the relevance of the question with which we are dealing to issues that fill our world these days. In addition, I would like to point to the positions that underlie the prevalent responses to the matters under discussion.

As stated, Yedaya ha-Penini applies in his remarks a postmodern approach to the concept of myth. The claim is that the historical truth of the myth is of no importance at all; only the halakhic-Torah implications derived from it matter. We have seen that in Jewish thought this approach is apparently not foreign, and it has implications in several areas, halakhic and otherwise.

To our surprise, contemporary Israeli society is troubled by very similar questions. Those called the “New Historians” raise sharp questions regarding the truth of Zionist “myths.” In the course of these discussions, the conduct of IDF soldiers in the various wars and in the periods between them, the question of the existence of a Palestinian people, the question of our right to the land, and so forth all come up for debate. In the course of these discussions, myths that accompanied us throughout the early years of the state are shattered, though in fact we never related to them as myths. It seemed self-evident to us that they were simply factual determinations.

These historical critics claim, for example, that Trumpeldor in fact cursed in Russian and did not utter the immortal sentence on which we were all raised: “It is good to die for our country.” These same New Historians also reveal to us acts of massacre and expulsion perpetrated by Israeli fighters and politicians at various times, the murder of prisoners, and more.

This criticism naturally arouses harsh and painful counter-reactions. Part of the public revolts against these descriptions and claims that they are entirely incorrect, that they take the events out of context, and so forth.

I do not wish here to address the question of how much of this criticism, as well as of the objections to it, is factually grounded and how much is mere fabrication (and there are certainly such elements in the “new” history, as was recently proven even in court,[6] though also in the “old” history). Here I wish to point to a puzzling fact that underlies these debates.

One cannot deny that there is an almost perfect correlation between the political-ideological worldview of the sides in this debate and their position on the historical issues. I hardly know an ardent Zionist—certainly not a right-winger—who is a New Historian. Almost all of them are unmistakably people of the Left (there are, admittedly, a few such cases, but they are very few. Interestingly, they too are ascribed political motives, such as attacking the Mapai establishment that led the Yishuv in its early years).[7]

This fundamental observation raises two main puzzles:

1. The questions under discussion are historical-factual questions. Therefore there is no reason that an unbiased historical researcher should not adopt a “new” position even if he recognizes our right to the land and perhaps even advocates the expulsion of the Arabs from here. And likewise in the other direction. I see no obstacle to an anti-Zionist leftist recognizing the truth of the “old” history. On the factual plane he would argue that the description is correct, while on the value plane he would maintain left-wing positions, however extreme. Seemingly there should be no connection between factual questions and value-political questions.[8]

Admittedly, one should distinguish between two kinds of historical facts. If someone truly holds that Zionism was a pure and spotless movement with no moral deviations whatsoever, then clearly he cannot be a New Historian, at least in the sense of the moral criticism of the Zionist movement. That is an example of a factual position, not an ideological one, and therefore it certainly ought to be influenced by facts. By contrast, such a person can certainly still be an unmistakable and even extreme leftist with respect to questions of our right, or the Palestinians’ right, to the land. For this reason it is worth distinguishing between the debates over massacres and expulsion and the debates over the heroism of the Zionist act (such as Trumpeldor, the few against the many, and so forth). Here, apparently, according to everyone, there is no connection between the facts and the ideology, and therefore one might have expected them to be completely separable.

2. There is another problem, more important for our purposes, that arises when one looks at the character of the public debate about history. If we are already wise and understanding and know the postmodern doctrine, and understand that there is nothing at all between the truth of a myth and the values it represents, why should we argue about all these historical questions? On the one hand, the New Historians—most of whom, as noted, hold an anti-Zionist worldview—could have attacked the Zionist position even had they agreed with the “old” historical facts. There is no doubt that one can think that “it is bad to die for our country” even if Trumpeldor in fact said the opposite. Certainly there is no need to falsify history—and, as I noted, there are cases where this was clearly done—in order to argue with the ideas of Zionism. On the other hand, the converse is also true. The Zionist segment of the public could have accepted the challenges of the New Historians, and believed that Trumpeldor cursed in Russian, while at the same time educating generations on the myth of Trumpeldor that it is good to die for our country.

It should be emphasized that both of these claims are directed both at the “defenders,” who ostensibly need not insist at all on the historical truth of the “old” history, and even more so at the “attackers,” who certainly need not insist on undermining accepted Zionist historiography in order to undermine its value-ideological foundation.

The second problem concerns the very fact that ideological tendentiousness can lead people to certain conclusions regarding historical facts. Seemingly there is no point in a tendentious treatment of historical facts, since they have no connection to the different ideologies in dispute. Why, apparently, should we have to struggle over the facts in order to change values?

The conclusion that begins to emerge from the second problem is that, surprisingly, both sides in the debate think that the truth of the myth on which people are educated is very important. In the eyes of both sides it is not enough to educate by means of a myth; it also needs a factual basis. This is the tendentiousness that causes holders of opposing ideologies to adopt opposite historical-factual descriptions.

This is a very surprising phenomenon, for at least the post-Zionist camp in this debate—which is usually schooled in postmodern thought, and certainly aware of the prevailing theoretical separation between a myth’s truth and the possibility of educating by it and acting in accordance with it—does not behave as we would have expected, and as the theory it itself espouses would dictate. Astonishingly, we discover that even adherents of postmodern ideology behave as though the historical truth of the myth is important and meaningful.

Efraim Karsh, in his book Fabricating Israeli History, raises a question regarding the New Historians, and writes:

Even Morris [=Benny Morris, one of the most prominent, and somewhat more moderate, among the New Historians] never realized the model of the pure-minded and unbiased researcher that ostensibly serves as his guiding light… He repeatedly sang the praises of writing “objective history”: “The historian of the Israeli-Arab conflict must try to write about this conflict as about the war between Carthage and Rome, or as if he had just arrived from Mars and were observing what is happening without ties or commitments.”

If that is so, why did Morris find it necessary to distort and falsify almost every document on which he relied in his attempt to prove his argument that the idea of “transfer” had “a firm basis in the modes of thought of the Jewish mainstream in the late 1930s and the 1940s”?

Whence the need for “creative rewriting” of original documents and their tendentious cutting [=as Karsh shows in the aforementioned book] in a way that turns their original intention on its head? Is it not reasonable to assume that a correct and solid thesis can stand on its own feet without verbal acrobatics? After all, Morris himself defined a “less good historian” as one who “reveals only some of the facts (ignores the others or conceals them).”[9]

I do not wish here to defend Benny Morris, nor historical distortion in general. I want to try to answer Karsh’s question—or more precisely, the assumption hidden at its base: why indeed should a New Historian have to alter the history in order to “push” his ideology, even when he does not do so through deliberate distortions?

It is important to note, with respect to the comparison between Yedaya ha-Penini and the New Historians, that they travel together only part of the way. Yedaya ha-Penini fully accepted the authority of the Torah and Jewish law, but allowed himself to cast doubt on the historical basis on which they are founded. He was a genuine postmodernist, for he denied the facts—the historical truth of the myth—and embraced the values those facts expressed. By contrast, the proponents of the “new” history deny the historical basis of Zionism and infer from that—and call on others to infer from that—a lack of commitment to the Zionist ideology based on those myths. Despite the postmodern slogans about the lack of connection between historical truth and the meaningfulness of myth, they themselves still relate to myths in a very conservative way. In this sense, both sides of the modern-postmodern debate stand with Rashba, not with Yedaya ha-Penini.[10]

This conclusion leads us to ask with even greater force why indeed all of us, across our various camps, are unwilling to separate historical reality from the myth on which we educate. Why can we not teach Trumpeldor as a legend, and instead we fight over the truth of this mythical story? And in parallel, we return to our earlier question about Rashba: why must we accept the historical reality of Abraham and Sarah, rather than suffice with the obligations toward us that are derived from what is written in the Torah?

To sharpen the point, it should be noted—as I did regarding the two kinds of facts in the post-Zionist issue—that I do not mean to separate levels that are not in fact separable. One whose faith is indeed based on the historical existence of the revelation at Sinai cannot accept the obligations derived from Sinai without believing in its historical occurrence (although I know quite a few Jews, observant to one degree or another, who do hold such a view, and this requires further analysis). Here the historical position is completely clear to me. My difficulty concerns only those events or figures that are not a necessary condition for accepting the obligations themselves. For example, in Yedaya ha-Penini we saw that despite the separation between the myth of Abraham and Sarah and the historical truth of that myth, he was ready for full commitment. If so, why did Rashba think there was a flaw in his faith?

This applies all the more to one who interprets Scripture allegorically because of his confrontation with the findings of modern scholarship. Here, seemingly, there is a truly “heroic” attempt to hold onto the realm of faith even though the research seems to contradict it. In such a case, allegorical interpretation is not a device for evading commitment, but precisely a means for continuing one’s submission to it. If so, why are those who adopt allegorical interpretations of Scripture so often regarded among us as possessing deficient faith?

E. The Conception of Myth that Underlies Rashba’s Ban

In order to clarify the idea that, in my opinion, underlies Rashba’s conception of myth, I will preface it with a brief discussion of a well-known aggadic passage.

The story of the sanctification of the divine Name by the mother and her seven sons during the Greek persecutions appears in several sources among the Sages, as well as in Yoseippon, in different versions. In Tanna Devei Eliyahu Rabbah, chapter 30, the story concludes with the mother’s appeal to her sons, who have already been killed:

“My sons, go and tell our father Abraham: do not let your heart grow proud and say, ‘I built one altar and offered up on it my son Isaac,’ for I built seven altars and offered up on them my seven sons in a single day. And he was only in a trial without deed, whereas I was in deed.”

Of course the midrash does not record an answer to this piercing question of that mother, but the question continues to echo in the world to this very day. Many among Israel killed themselves and their family members for the sanctification of His great Name, so why was such a singular and special place reserved precisely for Abraham our father?[11]

There is a common answer to this matter, though I do not know its source. The claim is that Abraham our father “brought down” this quality of self-sacrifice for the sanctification of the Name into the world. After him it became easier to do so.

One might perhaps understand this explanation on a psychological plane, or some other “rational” plane. One could say that after we learned about Abraham and were influenced by him, we are able to do as he did more easily, and it is no longer so remarkable. My intention here is to argue something different: there is a metaphysical influence here. Abraham our father has a part in the deed of that mother and her seven sons beyond the fact that it was done under his influence. I mean to say that even one who has never heard of Abraham our father, or of the binding of Isaac, is influenced by it in an intrinsic metaphysical way. This is not an “educational myth” in the sense commonly accepted today, but an “operative myth” (see at the beginning of Orot ha-Kodesh a similar conception of the Torah in general).[12]

Similarly, when we say that Abraham our father is the pillar of kindness in the world, the intention is a metaphysical statement, that is, that the quality of kindness is literally present within him. He is a center of kindness that radiates to all his surroundings and to the generations that come after him. Here too the meaning is not moral, psychological, or any other kind of influence, but a metaphysical relation: Abraham our father is a causal factor for the kindness done in the world, even by one who has never heard of Abraham our father and his deeds.

I ask the forgiveness of the “rationalist” reader, who feels—like me—uneasy with explanations of this kind, or with such a position. Below I shall try to show that the greatest of the “rationalists” actually behave in a way that points to precisely such a conception.

In my humble opinion, this is the assumption that underlies Rashba’s conception of myth, and apparently ours as well. Myth is not merely a story by which we educate ourselves, our children, and our students. If it were only that, its historical truth really would be of no importance. Myth is a focal point of causal influence. The deeds of Abraham our father influence his descendants, and so too the deeds of all the Patriarchs. Without this influence they would be like other legendary myths, or semi-legendary ones, which have no real effect beyond their narrative-psychological power (those are indeed “educational myths”).

The revelation at Sinai is also not a myth. If the revelation at Sinai did not occur in historical reality, or if the Patriarchs and their deeds were not part of historical reality, one could not educate on their basis in any meaningful way. There is also a different conception here of the very concept of education. Education too is not only psychological influence, but causal influence (not deterministic, of course). One cannot educate a people, or any social group, to act and sacrifice itself throughout history merely on the basis of shared myths, in the modern sense of the term myth. This impossibility is not a psychological-educational problem, for if it were, myth and its historical truth would be no more than an educational means. It is a real problem, the indication of which is that one cannot educate on a falsehood or on a historical mirage.[13]

At precisely this point the postmodern conception stands in opposition to the conception presented here. According to postmodernism, reality and truth are of no importance in anything—not in myths, and not in scientific facts either. Everything is context-dependent and bound up with prior assumptions, which are in their essence unjustified, and indeed not capable of justification. Therefore the usual postmodern assumption (they too have assumptions!?) is that assumptions are adopted for interested reasons. Postmodernism views myths as interested means of advancing social, educational, and national goals. That is why a conspiratorial mentality so strongly characterizes the way postmodernists view the reality around them. Their own spectacles turn everyone around them into people of intrigue.

As noted, postmodernism also has a different conception of education.[14] According to the postmodernist, education is the use of various means whose historical truth, and even scientific truth, is of no importance; only their educational value matters. Yet this postmodern attitude is ambivalent: on the one hand, it grants legitimacy to this, since we have no possibility of access to truth as such. On the other hand, the mythic element in myth always remains in the background, and therefore there is no willingness to relate to it in a binding way. We use it as long as it is convenient. When it ceases to be convenient, we throw it away.

I emphasize again that I do not intend to argue here against the postmodern approach by means of an instrumental argument—namely, that on its own terms myth becomes an ineffective tool, or that it cannot “work” within such an approach (for example, because psychologically it is hard for us to educate by means of what is untrue). My intention is to make a claim about reality: this is simply not the true meaning of myth.

Above we saw that even those postmodernists—post-Zionists—often do not behave toward myths in accordance with their declared theoretical approach. We saw that they find it necessary to fight against the historical truth of the myth in order to shatter the values transmitted through it. This fact indicates that they too agree that there is a correlation between these two levels.

The post-Zionist can, admittedly, defend himself by arguing that this struggle takes place because we—the holders of the naive (primitive) approach to mythic stories—attribute importance to their historical truth. That is, the battle against the historical truth of myth may be interpreted as a battle conducted “on our own terms.” The postmodernist will argue that since his opponents hold a naive view that ties myth to historical truth, he has no choice but to shatter the historical truth that underlies their myth in order to persuade them to abandon it.

It seems to me that this defense does not reflect the truth (though, as noted, a genuine postmodernist will not be bothered by that either), and here I return to problem 1 above.

One of the clearest indications that the post-Zionist’s approach here is genuine and not merely instrumental is the seemingly strange correlation that exists between one’s conception of history and one’s value-ideological stance (problem 1 above). For some reason, most opponents of Zionist values not only trouble themselves to fight the “old” historical description, they also succeed in doing so. As a result of their research they come to deny, to one degree or another, the historical truth of Zionist myths on the factual plane (for otherwise they could not wage the battle, at least not in a straight and intellectually honest way).

It is important to understand the difference between the two planes. It is possible that there was motivation to fight over historical reality in order to shatter the ideology, a motivation grounded in the naive position itself. But motivation in itself is no guarantee that historical research will in fact support it factually. If there is indeed a break between reality and ideology, there is no reason that if I want to shatter a historical myth for reasons of ideological struggle I will actually find factual support for that struggle. If the “new historian” wishes to fight Zionism only on the naive Zionists’ own terms, then in principle we should expect situations in which he finds no “weapons.” It is possible that his research would point specifically to the reliability of the old historiography, in which case, despite his motivation to refute it, he would be forced to concede its truth.

If there is in fact no real correlation between the plane of historical facts and the value plane, how are we to explain the fact that such a correlation clearly exists in practice? That is, the very fact that the New Historian actually succeeds in seeing that the old history is incorrect, and that history as it really happened indeed fits his ideology, is itself proof that there is a real connection here, and not merely the use of a naive method “according to the naive Zionists’ approach.”

The meaning of this real connection is that one who sees history in a certain way is led to believe in the values it reflects. The two planes cannot be separated, as the postmodernists might wish to do.

It is true that one may accuse either side in the debate of dishonesty or tendentiousness, in which case the argument advanced here would not hold. But it seems to me that it would not be right to cast such a shadow on both sides (except for some who indeed are not honest; see my remarks above). To the best of my acquaintance, people truly believe in “their” history, and this is because such a correlation does in fact exist. The reason is the assumption shared by all of us, from all sides (even by those who declare a different theoretical position): there is a strong connection between one’s conception of historical reality and one’s faith in the values it reflects. Therefore one who does not believe in the Zionist myths cannot be a true Zionist, and similarly, one who does believe in them will find it very difficult to be a true post-Zionist. This is why we do not find post-Zionists who believe in the historical truth of Zionist myths, because if they did believe in them, they too would be Zionists. And likewise in the opposite direction.

The conclusion that emerges from everything said above is that all sides behave as though there is a strong connection between the historical truth within myth and the values it conveys and reflects. Positions that deny such a connection are theoretical only, and the behavior of those who hold them—at least most of them—reflects this more than anything else.

It is therefore no wonder that Rashba saw a grave problem in the post-historicism of the school of Philo and Yedaya ha-Penini. One who thinks that Abraham and Sarah were matter and form is not a true believer. He may indeed observe commandments, but even that is not a stable state rooted in the service of God. I want to stress again: I do not mean an instrumental claim, namely that Yedaya and his companions would not be able to educate on untrue myths over time, and that this therefore endangers their faith or the faith of their students. My claim is that the fact that they cannot do so is an indication of a real defect in their faith, not a merely technical one. Their faith is already flawed now. This is precisely the message that Rashba sends us through his writ of ban.[15]

F. “History as a Transcendent Need”: Three Concluding Remarks

I would like to conclude with three remarks.

1. Above we saw Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner’s explanation of the phenomenon of disputes about reality. The explanation proposed was based on the fact that the dispute is not about reality, but about the way we see it. This is a kind of Kantian approach, which treats facts as belonging to the phenomenon—the world as we see it—and not to the world in itself, the noumenon.

Seemingly there is a postmodern approach here. What interests me in the myth, so it would seem, is not its historical truth but only the values I wish to draw from it. It is precisely here that our discussion of the modern—or postmodern—conception of myth began. If so, in light of the position I presented at the end of my remarks, which grants importance to the historical truth within myth, the question of the place of disputes about reality returns once more.

It seems to me that there is no choice here but to adopt the words of Nachmanides (which were also cited in Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner’s aforementioned letter) and say that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave the sages the power to determine reality. Of course I do not mean to say that reality changes retroactively, but rather that the metaphysical educative—that is, operative—power possessed by historical reality, and absent from mythical stories without historical basis, also belongs to the (virtual) reality determined by the sages of the Oral Torah. If some sage of the Oral Torah determines that a hair was found in the dish in the story of the concubine at Gibeah, then that is the historical reality for us, and it has the power to operate like the real reality. There is no rewriting of history here, but there is a conferral of power retroactively.[16]

In this remark I wish to place what has been said here into a wider context of confrontations between Jewish law and reality. In my article that appeared in Tzohar 7, “The Expertise of the Halakhic Decisor as an Evaluator of Reality,” I argued that part of a decisor’s authority, and indeed part of his expertise, lies in determining reality. Not with respect to establishing the facts themselves, but with respect to determining the relation to them (on two planes; see there). In the present article as well we encounter a confrontation between halakhic ruling, or the determination of a Torah value, and reality. And here too this occurs on two planes:

A. When reality is tied to vague everyday concepts, the decisor decides from what point something is “dangerous,” or from what point someone is “ill,” and so on. This plane appeared also in the present article, with respect to disputes about reality of the kind found in the above-cited Minchat Chinukh (whether the milk in the udder is considered deposited and detached). There the question concerned a vague factual concept—detached or attached—and the decisor had to determine whether that degree of connection indeed counts as attachment for purposes of milking on the Sabbath.

B. A more frontal confrontation between halakhic ruling and reality, where the clash is seemingly unavoidable. Such a clash occurs when one Torah sage determines that a hair was found in the dish, while the reality is—as the second sage thinks—that a fly, rather than a hair, was found there.

Here too there is no need to enter unnecessary logical problems. The claim is that a Torah determination receives the power of actual reality, even if it does not correspond to the reality that in fact occurred. This power is the power of metaphysical influence, which enables us to educate and create a believing society on the basis of “myths.” Without the power of the wisdom of the Oral Torah, we would need actual reality in order to use this power of influence. But through the power of the Oral Torah, the Holy One gives even “virtual” reality that very same power.

Clearly, the experience of the sage who studies and of the decisor is fundamentally different from the experience of the postmodern man of myth. The sage himself tries to reach the reality as it truly was, and his description of reality is the correct description to the best of his understanding. From the standpoint of his own experience, there is no doubt that there is an aspiration to investigate reality as it was. It is only we, standing on the side and observing, who understand that there is a real aspect in each of the competing factual descriptions in dispute.

A further discussion of another aspect of the relation between Jewish law and reality may be found in my article in Akdamot 9, on halakhic hermeneutics. That article is devoted to the distinction between yeshiva-style Torah study and academic study, and among other things I point there to the disregard shown by yeshiva study and halakhic ruling for the influence of historical context. This phenomenon has recently been sharply criticized from the academic side, and there I offer a conceptual framework that may explain this puzzling phenomenon. There too, the main issue is the values that emerge from reality and not reality in itself. This topic is a lengthy one and is certainly related to the matter before us, and a reader interested in a broader treatment may turn to that article.

3.

The saying “History as a transcendent need” (apparently that of Professor Breuer) is well known. Many of the great Torah figures associate themselves with this statement, as is brought and cited at the beginning of the above-mentioned book Binu Shenot Dor va-Dor.

I would like to note here that nothing in my remarks here diminishes in the slightest the importance of engagement with history. In fact, one can say more than that. It is precisely a “naive” approach that believes in an absolute capacity to discover the truth that may weaken the hands of one who wishes to engage in history when he discovers that he is unable to do so, and that there are disputes among researchers and students regarding historical facts.

The natural response to such a situation is the adoption of a postmodern approach, according to which there is no truth at all, and therefore we should not develop expectations in this realm. This is indeed some small consolation, since where there are no expectations there is no disappointment, but it brings with it no less a weakening of the hands of those who wish to engage in this important field. If there is no truth, there is no point in investing effort to discover it.

It is precisely the perspective proposed in this article that can restore the lost dignity of historical research. According to this approach, we must discover the historical truth as we understand it. For us, that is the truth—not because there is no truth at all, as postmodernism claims, but because it really is the truth. It has the power of historical truth—if this is done with the intention of Torah study—to influence, to educate, and to provide a firm cultural basis for modern Jewish society.

In my aforementioned article in Akdamot I argued against positions that try to offer a postmodern solution to parallel problems in the realm of Jewish law, and I proposed a solution parallel to the one offered here; see there.

Epilogue[17]

As a concluding aside, I would like to cite the words of Rabbi ha-Nazir from his book Kol Ha-Nevuah. There one finds an anchor and a cornerstone, and there a trustworthy source, for everything said here. In his golden words (first essay, section 7):

Torah means speculative and practical at once. Regarding something that does not touch practice, the Talmudist asks: what practical difference does it make? The rule is that great is study, for it leads to action. The sage is one of whom it is said: whose deeds exceed his wisdom; everything depends on the abundance of deed; and also: deed is paramount.

Likewise, for Jedidiah the Alexandrian, the Patriarchs and the Giver of the Torah were in essence a living law of soul and intellect.

As emerges from examining the entire first essay, Rabbi ha-Nazir reverses the usual direction of the relation between study and practice. His claim is that practice influences study, and accordingly he interprets Philo’s allegorical approach to the Patriarchs—that Abraham and Sarah were matter and form—as an approach claiming that their reality causally generated ideas and values. He calls this a “living law of soul and intellect.” Abraham and Sarah were living people who not only symbolized the concepts of matter and form, but also effected them in the world. This is the power of reality that influences ideas and values. The matter is stated explicitly there as well in section 13, in his words (and see his notes there too):

The allegorical path of the Alexandrians does not arise, as some say, from the fact that the historical element of the Torah receded from them, but because it is a distinctive faculty of the sages of Israel as a whole, in the words of the great modern philosopher of Jewish religion, Rabbi Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, the Yashar of Candia.

Such is the way of midrash, of Pardes—plain sense, hint, homily, secret—especially in the midrash of the Zohar, on which Rabbi Isaac Arama also relied in his philosophical explanations of the Torah. Even so, he fought the masses of pseudo-philosophizers who went too far in the allegorical direction, relying on the author of the Guide.

These words of Rabbi ha-Nazir are the quintessence of the concept of myth as presented in this article.[18]

[1] A striking, and almost grotesque, case touching such a dispute appears in Bava Batra 102a, in the passage dealing with land measurements in relation to graves. The dispute concerns the length of the diagonal of a rectangle whose sides are 6 cubits and 4 cubits. Rashbam there writes that the diagonal is 7 cubits—one and two-fifths times the side—just like the diagonal of a square whose side is 5 cubits. This is admittedly not exact, but one may say that he was not precise, and it is approximately correct (as is well known, even regarding the square there is some rounding of the exact diagonal, and the matter is ancient). Now Tosafot there, in the passage beginning “ve-kegon,” raise two mathematical objections to him. The second claims that the diagonal of a 5-by-5 square must be longer than the diagonal of a 4-by-6 rectangle, since the area of the square, 25 square cubits, exceeds that of the rectangle, 24 square cubits, by one square cubit. That is, Rashbam relied on the assumption that the diagonal follows the perimeter, while Tosafot relied on the assumption that the diagonal follows the area. And to our embarrassment, with all due respect, it seems that both were mistaken in this matter (though with Rashbam one may perhaps still say only that he was imprecise, as explained above). According to the Pythagorean theorem, the square of the rectangle’s diagonal is 52, whereas the square of the square’s diagonal is 50. That is, the rectangle’s diagonal is longer than the square’s, contrary to both. I now invite the reader to consider whether there is a dispute among medieval authorities with respect to reality, and in particular whether it is correct to say regarding such disputes the rule “these and those are the words of the living God.” This clearly requires further examination. It seems that the matters discussed here also touch on the question of scientific errors among the Sages and among the medieval authorities, even when they are not in dispute, a subject that will be mentioned below.

[2] This book deals with halakhic-historical problems, mainly in the Second Temple period, and argues against scholarly positions on these issues. The book is exceptional—its author is a Haredi rosh yeshiva from the Brisk school—broad in scope and highly instructive.

[3] A similar determination is known in the name of the Chazon Ish, who held that Jewish law was fixed according to reality in the two thousand years of Torah—that is, in the period of the sages of the Mishnah and Talmud—and even if reality changes in the two thousand years of Messiah, this does not alter Jewish law.

[4] It should be noted that in light of Kant’s philosophical doctrine, every reality is like this. In fact there is no objective reality as such, and every human—or other—contemplation of reality shapes it in its own image. Accordingly, Rabbi Hutner’s position seems to contain no novelty, for whenever people speak about reality, they in fact mean the manner in which it is disclosed to the observer. I discuss this at length in a book to be published soon, with God’s help, and this is not the place to elaborate.

[5] A student of the Ba’al ha-Hashlama, author of Behinat Olam, late thirteenth to early fourteenth century.

[6] See also Efraim Karsh’s book Fabricating Israeli History, Hakibbutz Hameuchad, Tel Aviv, 1999.

[7] Uri Milstein is an exception, but this is not the place to elaborate.

[8] In Karsh’s aforementioned book, p. 162, the following quotation appears:

“Bad history is written by a historian who has an emotional interest in what ought to have happened, and who selects his sources and quotations with a single-minded vision of what he wants to see.” (Albert Hourani)

[9] This is what I meant when I said that Morris is among the more moderate of the New Historians. This is true both with regard to his attitude toward and description of Zionism, but mainly with regard to his attitude toward meta-historical theory. A genuine postmodernist denies the very possibility of an unbiased description of history. For him there is no truth at all, historical or otherwise. In this sense, Morris is not a postmodernist but a perfect modernist—at least in his theory, though not necessarily in his practice. He believes in historical truth, and he understands the historian’s principal role to be the uncovering of that truth.

[10] It is important to note that there is a thin layer of genuine postmodernists who insist on such a complete separation, but to the best of my knowledge they are negligible. To be a genuine postmodernist is an almost impossible task, except for one who is willing to draw from such a position all of its skeptical conclusions—assuming a skeptic can infer anything at all. See my aforementioned book.

[11] This question was also addressed by the Danish existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in his work Fear and Trembling, which is devoted entirely to the binding of Isaac and to the figure of Abraham our father, the “knight of faith.” Kierkegaard’s explanation rests on the fact that Abraham our father sacrificed his son despite the moral and intellectual paradox involved in it—this is the meaning of the title “knight of faith.” This answer is unsatisfactory, if only because in Christian thought life in paradox is a symbol and the summit of faith, whereas in the vineyard of the House of Israel it seems to be a foreign shoot, and I have elaborated on this elsewhere. See also the collection of essays for R.A.V., may God avenge his blood, who also addressed this issue.

[12] There is a similar common explanation for the question of how many scholars in our time independently arrive at the same solutions as the great medieval authorities, despite the decline of the generations. Here too the explanation is that after the medieval authority “brought down” the idea into the world, it becomes easier to articulate it. I am not sure that I identify either with the question or with the assumption of decline of the generations in this sense, but it is important for me to show from here that anyone who says such a thing certainly does not mean a metaphor, nor a psychological influence, for here we are speaking about a learner who had not previously known the idea that he himself later articulated.

[13] The concept of “education” in the context of the dedication of the altar, or of the Temple and its vessels in general, does not express educational action in the modern sense, but a practical act that does something to the Temple and to the altar, and through them to us as well.

[14] A large part—perhaps most—of the collections published on postmodernism, to the best of my acquaintance, deal with the concept of education, which is of course a highly problematic concept in postmodern thought. The solution usually proposed to this problem is some relinquishment of postmodernism itself—though the one relinquishing it generally does not feel that his solution does so—or else the goal of education becomes education toward postmodernism and nothing more. It is important to note that even such a solution is itself a certain retreat from postmodernism; see my aforementioned book.

[15] If the claim were only instrumental, it would involve a lack of fairness. Is Rashba really demanding of Yedaya and his companions that they say things they do not believe, merely so as not to harm the faith of others? It is not plausible that this is Rashba’s intention. Rashba demanded of them that they believe what he believed, and not merely say so—one thing with the mouth and another with the heart.

[16] This concept parallels the notion of “retroactively from here on” in the thought of Rabbi Shimon Shkop and his student Rabbi Shmuel Rozovsky (see, for example, Shiurei Rabbi Shmuel on tractate Makkot, no. 420, and the references there). We relate to reality in accordance with the determination of the sages of the Oral Torah only from this point onward—and we do not rewrite history—but this from-now-on relation is also retroactive. In our present contemplation, the relation is as though history itself had been changed.

[17] For the fundamental insight of this article, as for many other ideas, I owe thanks to Rabbi ha-Nazir of blessed memory. Studying his book Kol Ha-Nevuah revealed entire worlds to me, and the insight presented here arose during the classes I gave in the yeshiva in Yeruham in 1998–2000, where we studied this book.

[18] As for Rabbi ha-Nazir’s interpretation of the words of Philo, I am not so certain. It seems that according to his interpretation, Philo’s approach is that Abraham and Sarah were a “living law,” that is, real and living people who were also in the category of law. Usually it is accepted that Philo understood them only as “law,” which is not “living,” and this is probably also how Yedaya ha-Penini understood them, as explained above. It seems that this is what Rabbi ha-Nazir comments on there in section 13 and in the notes, where he insists on his view—see all his remarks there. In fact, one can see that the whole first essay in Kol Ha-Nevuah is devoted to this very matter, since it deals mainly with the parabolic element in the Torah. The concept of “parable” there undergoes a transformation similar to that undergone by the concept of myth in the present article. According to Rabbi ha-Nazir in that essay, a parable has a relation of causation and influence to its referent and from it, and not merely an accidental psychological relation of resemblance between them. But that already belongs to another article; let the wise hear and grow wiser.