The Art of Shoehorning and Its Sources (for Rabbi Miki)

The Rabbi’s Opening Message

The Art of Shoehorning and Its Sources (for Rabbi Miki)

Sent on 23/9/2004

In view of the importance of the subject, especially since one of our senior writers has adopted the approach of Bugi and Veto, it deserves a thread of its own.

So here goes:

Miki wrote in the thread about Leibowitz:

I am admittedly not a rabbi, but to the best of my understanding I am Orthodox, and the yeshiva where I teach falls into the categories you listed above.

If someone were to come into my yeshiva and ask me (no need—I am here) whether ‘an eye for an eye’ is a late innovation or was given at Sinai, I would tell him that this is an interesting historical question, and it has interesting Torah implications, but it is not really important from a religious standpoint, and it is certainly unrelated to any kind of heresy.

It is entirely possible that this refreshing innovation—that ‘an eye for an eye’ means monetary compensation—arose over the course of history and was not given at Sinai. It is even possible that this was not the practice at one point or another in history (for example, the atmosphere of the Bible, for some reason, does not strike me as suited to such an enlightened conception).

This is an interpretive exposition, and Rambam writes clearly about such expositions at the beginning of Hilkhot Mamrim (chs. 1–2), in the introductions, and in the Second Principle. Any court in any generation, with no requirement that it surpass its predecessors in wisdom or in number, may interpret the Torah through the thirteen hermeneutical principles and expound it as it understands it, even in disagreement with all its predecessors combined. In principle, a court could decide that there are 3 primary categories of labor on the Sabbath, not 39.

All this is apart from matters that were given at Sinai and transmitted by tradition, over which no one ever disputed (see Havvot Ya’ir, sec. 190?, and this is an old point). In fact, matters transmitted by tradition do not belong to the Oral Torah, except in the formal sense that they do not belong to the Written Torah. But creative expositions (those that preceded the laws derived from them, as opposed to expositions that merely support already-known laws) were not given at Sinai, and they can be renewed in every generation.

Therefore I, in my humble opinion, have no problem at all with the claim that ‘an eye for an eye’ is a late innovation; and whoever does have a problem with this has a problem with Rambam and with the Sages as well. He is a genuine Reform Jew (and that is his right!).

Even so, the innovation must still be made with the awareness that the sage who is expounding is an interpreter, not a revolutionary. He himself must be in a position to see his interpretation/exposition in the text itself (and I do not mean that the interpretive exposition is the plain meaning, but this is not the place to elaborate).

There are rules of exposition by means of which (together with personal reasoning, which certainly depends on the context and worldview of the interpreter) laws are extracted from the Torah. In the Second Principle, Rambam disagrees with Ramban over whether these laws are contained within the text or are an extension of it (like branches that grow out of roots). But it is clear that they cannot simply overturn it on moral grounds, for otherwise the Torah has no meaning at all. We could have made do with the command: Do what you believe in. The intellectual integrity of the sage is a condition for the validity of the exposition. The law thus derived, even if the motivation for formulating it is moral (and that certainly can be so), must be found in the text, or express an extension of it (and not simply its rejection), in accordance with the rules of exposition (a large part of which is not really known to us, and therefore it seems to us that there is free choice among rulings, and a de facto, rather dubious, ‘shoehorning’ of them into the text).

Well, once I learned the term ‘shoehorning’ (soon I will move on to ‘intellectual fraud’), then there truly reigns in our world ‘peace among opinions’ in the loftiest and most sparkling sense. Veto and Bugi, this paragraph is dedicated to you and to all the house of Israel.

With blessings for a favorable final sealing, to Rabatz, and also to his elderly flock.

Miki

***

And to this I raised the following difficulty:

Is Miki too among the shoehorners?

More seriously, because this is a serious subject

very

.

Miki, you are invited to answer the following short questionnaire:

What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for an interpreter to propose a reading that changes or uproots a Torah statement from its plain meaning, such as turning ‘an eye for an eye’ into monetary compensation? And if I add an example from Mistabra’s thread: to say that an unintentional offender is liable to bring a sin-offering, but not someone acting inadvertently while occupied with something else?

Points requiring clarification:

A. Is the interpreter aware that he is creating a change?

B. How does he explain this to himself? (The Socratic method: ask him what answer he gives to himself and to us.)

C. Is there absolute freedom of exposition? That is, can one say that phylacteries are only a metaphor? (That could certainly be the plain meaning of the Pentateuch…

).

And ultimately, how do you ground these meta-rules of yours in the Talmudic tradition? By shoehorning or by plain meaning?

. This too is a serious question, despite the smile. What I mean is: how do we anchor such a far-reaching interpretation in the Talmud—not that it is impossible; perhaps that really is the plain meaning, but what is our source for it?

He who guards his mouth and his tongue

guards his soul from troubles

Source (the “Stop Here, Think” forum): https://forums.bhol.co.il/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=1120818