A Look at the Meaning of the Destruction: Conduct According to Rules (Column 83)
With God’s help
On Tisha B’Av the Temple was destroyed, and the Tablets were also broken [as people noted in the comments, I made a mistake here. That was on the Seventeenth of Tammuz. Please ignore]. In both cases holiness was destroyed and we were left in a mundane world. As I will argue here, in the realm of sacred worship, that is, in the Temple, there prevails something primordial that lies beyond rules. And when it was shattered, we returned to a world of rules. I thought I would take the opportunity to say a bit about the limitations of acting according to rules.
"We require that Scripture repeat it to indicate that it is indispensable"[1]
There is an unusual and puzzling interpretive-halakhic rule that distinguishes between verses in the Torah that deal with sacrificial matters and the rest of the commandments of Jewish law. Usually, when the Torah commands something, the assumption is that it is essential to validity, meaning that if we did not do it, we have not fulfilled our obligation. Thus, when the Torah commands taking the four species on Sukkot, one who took only three has not fulfilled his obligation. By contrast, in sacrificial matters the rule is We require that Scripture repeat it to indicate that it is indispensable (see Zevahim 23b and parallels), meaning that the assumption is that the command is not essential to validity unless Scripture hints that it is so (or repeats the command, states it a second time, or includes the word statute, and the like).
In my article I explained this as follows. Even before the giving of the Torah, the Patriarchs also offered sacrifices to God. True, they did not do so according to the rules of Jewish law, for those had not yet been given. When the Torah commanded the laws of sacrifices and their rules, it did not mean to negate the religious value of the service performed by the Patriarchs, but to add another layer. That is to say: if a person offers a sacrifice not according to the rules, he is doing exactly what Abraham our Patriarch did. So why should that count as valuable service of God in Abraham’s case, whereas for us it would be a transgression, or at least an act devoid of value? That is implausible. It is more plausible that the Torah meant to say that if we offer a sacrifice as Abraham our Patriarch did, our act too will have value, just as his did. The additional command at Sinai came only to teach us how to do it better. In other words, after the revelation at Mount Sinai it is preferable to do it as the Torah commands, but even someone who does it as our Patriarchs did before Sinai has served God in a way that has value. Therefore the sacrificial commands are rules of ideal practice that do not affect the basic validity of the service. In places where the Torah nevertheless wishes to disqualify what the Patriarchs did, it hints to us that the law given at Sinai is essential to validity, meaning that worship in its primordial form has lost its value (if Abraham had done it, it would have had value, but now that the Torah has been given it is valueless and perhaps even detrimental). The meaning of this is that the world of holiness, at its root, does not operate according to rules but according to intuition. The rules were added to it at the revelation at Sinai, and they are not indispensable. This is an additional halakhic layer laid on top of the layer of natural and intuitive service of God.
A Note on Nadav and Avihu
When Nadav and Avihu brought strange fire (alien fire), they were immediately killed. It is commonly thought that this was because access to holiness must be approached carefully and according to the rules, and whoever deviates from them, even slightly, is struck at once and with great force. We are told that the ecstasy of holiness was their undoing, and that they should have acted according to the rules and not naturally. But according to my proposal, one might say that this is not what happened there. On the contrary, had they approached holiness properly, they would have lived even if their act had been contrary to Jewish law. Apparently God saw something problematic in their motivations, and therefore punished them.
The Meaning of the Destruction
After the destruction of the First Temple and the end of prophecy, the Oral Torah began to develop, and after the second destruction it reached its peak with the redaction of the Mishnah and the two Talmuds. The Oral Torah teaches us to act according to rules. Once we lost direct contact with holiness (the Temple and prophecy), we entered a different, more formal world, in which we must conduct ourselves according to relatively rigid rules. The breaking of the Tablets is the loss of the Written Torah, and perhaps it too expresses the dominance of the Oral Torah. Rabbi HaNazir, in his book Kol HaNevuah, noted that the loss of prophecy is accompanied by the loss of intuition in the realm of study and halakhic thought as well. Thus we lost the intuitive, auditory mode of reasoning, and were left mainly with the visual Greek mode, which operates according to rigid rules.
On Rules
What is wrong with that? Seemingly, conduct according to rules is better and more correct. Intuition is prone to mistakes, and rules prevent them.
A few days ago I saw an amusing column about the relationship between law and common sense. The author is a motorcyclist who rode on the shoulder in Rome and got a ticket from a policeman. He did so because traffic on the road was slow-moving, which is very dangerous for motorcyclists. He claimed that in such a case the accepted practice is to allow motorcyclists to ride on the shoulder even though this is against the law. When the policeman wrote him the ticket, he told him that if he followed him he could write him additional tickets every hundred meters, since he intended to continue riding on the shoulder. Quite simply, because he prefers his life to compliance with formal law and another bit of money.
Later in the article he describes Rome’s wild driving culture. Among other things, he writes:
A few months ago I happened to spend four hours riding a scooter in Rome. Anyone who has ridden a scooter in the city knows that this is not much fun at all, and anyone who has driven in Rome is likewise familiar with the total transportation madness raging there – and yet, after an initial hour of sensory overload bordering on mild panic – suddenly everything fell into place.
Like the moment when Neo succeeds in seeing into the world of the Matrix in the film, like the moment when the last pages of a detective novel tie together all the loose ends, so I understood what was really happening around me. Suddenly, within all this absolute madness, several insights were revealed in the interface between two-wheeled vehicles and cars, and among the two-wheelers themselves, and they simply turned the chaos around me into something with a marvelous inner logic.
And later:
And make no mistake for a moment: two-wheeled riders in Rome would make even the wildest Tel Aviv courier look like a learner driver on his driving test. The signs are a recommendation, the traffic lights are decoration, and the lanes have no real meaning. And yet, it works. I can speak only from my meager experience, but in four hours of riding in Rome not a single door was opened on me, not a single car cut me off, and not a single van pushed me to the side.
It turns out that Rome’s drivers manage even without the law. Sometimes the rules only interfere, and specifically intuitive and natural conduct yields better results. In such a situation it is better to act without rules. Anyone who wants a more visual impression of a situation in which people operate without rules and without traffic lights, and things are quite all right, is invited to watch this video about a fascinating intersection in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.
This video is, of course, frightening. To an eye accustomed to the regulation of life by rules, it immediately raises the question why not place traffic lights there and put things in order. But it may be that everything is fine there, and it only frightens us because we are not used to it and because we do not know how to conduct ourselves in such a situation. But from the article there it emerges that when people know how to manage, rules can sometimes worsen the situation rather than improve it. See, for example, what traffic lights did to this intersection in England, which apparently operated peacefully with a roundabout until people came to regulate it by means of traffic lights.[2]
A Look at the Legal System
I once thought that it could be very useful to abolish the law in the State of Israel. Yes, you read that correctly: abolish the law. I do not mean a specific law, but the legal system in general. Burn the statute book.
Why does a society or a state create a statute book and a legal system? The legal system is created primarily for legal certainty. Were it not for this need, we could let life conduct itself naturally, and in cases of dispute come before an arbitrator who would decide according to principles of natural justice. So why did we build a legal system and a body of law? So that we could know how to conduct ourselves and what the outcome will be, who is right and who is not, and so that legal certainty would be achieved. When there is an orderly and detailed legal system, a person can plan his steps within the organized framework of the law. When he wants to enter into a contract with someone, he knows what the law says, what it permits and what it does not, and he knows how to formulate the contract in order to achieve his aims, and how to ensure that the other side does what he is required to do.
Our legal system is indeed complicated, but the complication stems from the fact that the legislator wants to prevent mistakes and create legal certainty by covering all cases. So he adds more and more laws, limitations, and reservations to the existing laws, all in order that matters work out in the best possible way and that there be no problems even in edge cases (to plug loopholes). Now someone who knows the system can know what it requires, and when he comes to court he can know whether he acted correctly or not, and whether he will win or not. Thus someone who drafts a contract can know what to write and how to write it in order to achieve his aims. Because of the complication that has been created, the ordinary citizen can no longer do this on his own. He must, of course, consult lawyers, because the system is complicated, but thank God we have plenty of those.
But here is the catch. What happens today is that the legal regulation of our lives has made them far more complicated than we thought, and through overregulation we have entirely lost legal certainty. Ask any experienced lawyer and he will tell you that there is no way to know what the outcome of the trial will be (whether you will win or lose). True, we have grown used to this, but in fact it is absurd. After all, we have an orderly and detailed law and legal experts who are meant to give us certainty, and we would expect that in a given situation the legal answer would be defined and clear, meaning that if we ask the expert he can tell us that Reuven is right and Shimon will lose in court. But that does not happen. No expert in any situation will tell you such a thing, because he himself cannot know what will happen there. Excessive regulation has made the system completely uncertain. The result depends on the judge before whom you appear, his mood, the quality of the lawyer you hired, and a thousand other parameters of which the law is only one.
Every case takes years, costs a great deal of money, and supports an entire system that desperately tries to manage it but does not really know how. Each side files thick dossiers, drags the system this way and that, pays millions to lawyers, and in the end perhaps achieves a reasonable result, but he can never be certain. Moreover, procedure takes over the substance. The judgment does not necessarily reflect justice and fairness, for it is controlled by procedures and a complex procedural order.
If all this at least helped us achieve certainty, order, and stability – fine. But if it does not help, then why did we bring this legal monster upon ourselves? The legal golem has risen against its maker. Because the legal system does not function, and because of the delays and expense, people have no real possibility of achieving their goals through it. People prefer to compromise (and the judges, of course, also pressure them to do so in order to ease the burden placed on them a little). A person knows that he is right and that his fellow has harmed him and his rights unlawfully, but he also knows that there is not really much he can do about it. To take a lawyer, pay him a great deal of money, and wait years until perhaps judgment will be rendered in his favor (and perhaps not). In most cases that is not a realistic option, and therefore people give up, or at best compromise. Commercial life is largely crippled, and you depend on the good will of the tradesman or supplier, since suing them in court is not a real option. So why did we create a legal system?
In short, the legal system gives us neither certainty nor justice and fairness. It costs a great deal of money, suffers from delay and over-legalization, and in the end is ineffective. The market and commercial relations are largely paralyzed. Someone endowed with sufficient boldness and brazenness can do almost whatever he wants without fear of the law. Not only does it fail to solve the problems and plug the loopholes that would have arisen in the primitive system, it creates many more problems and loopholes than existed there.
All Right, But What Is the Alternative?
Actually, there is one. We can abolish the law and the legal system. Would there not be anarchy? It seems to me that there would be much less of it than there is now. What is needed is to choose people of integrity (to hold elections) with no legal knowledge whatsoever (because there is no legal system), and let them decide disputes. True, there would be no certainty about the outcome, but there is no certainty today either. At least this way we would be spared the ordeal of lawyers and cumbersome systems, and in particular we would be spared the punishment of legal formalism. Judgment would be decided on the basis of the natural sense of justice of the judge sitting in judgment. True, the result would not be uniform and in fact we would not be able to know what it will be, but that too is the situation today. It would be faster and more just than what happens today (because there would be no formal procedures, only considerations of justice), and it would also cost far less money. True, there would be no certainty and no clear rules, but neither do we have those today. There are rules, but they are neither clear nor effective, and certainly not legal certainty. True, sometimes we would miss and choose an unworthy judge. Sometimes even a worthy judge would make a foolish, immoral, or illogical decision. But does that not happen today? It is precisely the desire to cover edge cases and plug loopholes in marginal cases that brings down upon us the colossal disaster across the entire front. As our rabbis said (ibid., ibid.): the excellent is the enemy of the very good.
The legal system was created as an alternative to that primitive state that once prevailed in human society. The reason for this was that there were some problems with intuitive judging, and the feeling was that if we created clear rules everything would proceed more orderly and better and the loopholes would be sealed. And what happened? A legal catastrophe. They came to prevent a few marginal problems and ended up with a colossal mess. In effect, they replaced the invisible hand that manages life intuitively and without rules of top-down regulation with a complicated system of rules. What we got was a disaster. See how remarkable it is: we have returned here once again to the discussion in the previous column about capitalism, which advocates freedom, versus socialism, which advocates top-down regulation and throws out the baby with the bathwater. Top-down regulation usually does not work.[3]
In fact our legal system is exactly what happened to that intersection in England (see note 2 above). They began there with a simple intersection and an innocent roundabout that functioned properly (according to the testimony of the people in the video), and they tried to regulate it by means of traffic lights. I assume this was done in order to prevent a few marginal cases of problems that occurred there. But the first traffic light did not set matters right, so they added another one, until in the end they arrived at 28 traffic lights at one intersection (!) at a cost of tens of millions of pounds, all this in order to prevent a few marginal problems. As a result they got a traffic catastrophe in which nobody knows what to do and the intersection is paralyzed.
What needs to be done is simply to destroy everything and restore the roundabout. Yes, there will be a few marginal problems that are not solved, but not a catastrophe. By the same token, I propose returning the legal system to the state of the roundabout: remove all the traffic lights and start over. There will be a few marginal problems, but overall our condition will probably be significantly better.
I do not think it is possible, or that it should be done, to erase the entire statute book. We certainly need to go through the statute book and see what cannot be erased (I have not done this). But prima facie it seems that the rules of procedure can be erased, as can most of the complications in the other parts of the law. At best, one should leave a few fundamental principles, and a few laws that need to be fixed from above (such as compulsory enlistment, tax rates, and the like. And even that without all the complications)[4]. Even the determination that driving on the road is on the right side and not the left, which ostensibly needs to be done from above, is not necessarily required either. People will understand this on their own from the accepted custom.
It is interesting to note that our traffic law contains the clause of the "general duty of care" (Regulation 21), which is meant to cover all the cases the law does not cover. This clause says that a person can be charged for driving carelessly under the circumstances, even if there is no specific law that forbids it. So, for example, a person is driving on a road where the permitted speed is up to 100 kph, and a policeman catches him at a speed of 80 kph and gives him a ticket. Why? Because it was raining or visibility was poor, and he should have been driving at a lower speed. There is no such specific law, but this is the general caution that is required of each of us. So why do we need traffic laws at all? The general duty of care could replace all of them. In fact, even that does not really need to be legislated, because it is self-evident. The need to legislate this regulation stems from the formalist conception that only enacted law is binding, and therefore the return to common sense – something that had previously been entirely obvious – requires special legislation.
Wittgenstein on following a rule
Ludwig Wittgenstein was one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. One of his best-known arguments deals with following a rule. His claim is that a rule cannot be understood except through a generalization from examples, and therefore anyone who does not already understand the rule in some primitive way can never really have it explained to him.
I will not enter here into demonstrations and proofs. What matters for our purposes is that his words imply that the illusion that rules solve problems that intuitive thinking would not have solved ignores the fact that the rules themselves are formed on the basis of intuitive thinking, and in fact cannot operate without it. When we adopted a rule, we did not rid ourselves of the need for intuition, since only through intuition can the rule be understood and acted upon (that is, followed).
Back to Jewish Law
We saw above that the revelation at Sinai added rules on top of the natural and intuitive conduct that preceded it. True, in the realm of holiness we still remained with the initial intuitive layer, and only on top of it was the formal halakhic layer added. From the moment the Temple was destroyed, this intuitive oasis was also destroyed, and we were left with a formal and rigid system of Jewish law that governs our lives. That is why we are so alarmed when we see the traffic at the intersection in Addis Ababa, just as many are alarmed when they see an unusual statement by a halakhic decisor that seems to go against the rules.[5]
Conduct without rules seems to us impossible and unacceptable. So too the traffic in Rome. But after looking at it for some time and getting used to it, one discovers that in fact it is possible to manage even without rules, provided only that we are not embarrassed to use intuition and common sense. It may be that in Jewish law too we need such a shock, and perhaps it would contribute to rebuilding the Temple and restoring more intuitive and natural thought.
[1] On this see my article here.
[2] See from 1:20 onward.
[3] On this matter see columns 48–49.
[4] Professor Ezra Zohar ran for the Knesset several times, with the abolition of income tax (and leaving only VAT) as a central plank of his platform. In my opinion this is an excellent idea, for the same reasons as abolishing the legal system.
[5] For an interesting example of such an alarmed response, see my article here (see at the end of section A there, where I mentioned a response that was published to those remarks, and also at the end of the article).
Discussion
So, then, the messianic commenters were right after all: the Oral Torah is an invention of the sages.
P.S. You don’t really think the video in Addis Ababa is shown at its original speed, do you?
The breaking of the tablets – 17 Tammuz
There are two different questions here: once there is already a law, I am among those who think there is an obligation to obey it. I only wonder whether it is right to enact laws in the formal sense of rigid rules, or whether it is better to leave them open and flexible. I do indeed have an anarchistic tendency, but as I’ve written here several times, it is only a tendency. In practice I am not an anarchist, because it is impossible to run a society that way.
No, they were not right. I did not write that the Oral Torah is an invention, but rather that it developed mainly after the destructions. I wrote that in my reply to them as well. My claim is that although its details were not given at Sinai, it is still binding, because authenticity is not a condition for obligation.
No, I don’t think so.
Oops, I was indeed mistaken.
It is interesting to compare these things with what Hazal said: "When there is דין below, there is no דין above; and when there is no דין below, there is דין above."
"Judgment above," seemingly, is what you call the "invisible hand."
It follows that Hazal saw establishing judgment below as preferable to leaving judgment in the hands of above.
(Apparently it is a harsher kind of judgment, that is, the invisible hand takes more extreme measures to carry out regulation than the earthly court does.)
I like the somewhat subversive interpretation that says there is no such thing as holy: certainly not the Western Wall, a Torah scroll, a place, or a holy grave and the like – that is idolatry and fetishism and fascism that admired the extravagance of massive structures (see Mussolini), dwarfing the human being.
In the Talmud (Shabbat 87a; Bava Batra 14b), where it is told that the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses about the breaking of the tablets: "More power to you for breaking them." This teaches that even the tablets are not holy. One must not turn them into objects or anthropomorphize God (see Maimonides).
See the interpretation of Rabbi Meir Simcha HaKohen of Dvinsk, Meshekh Chokhmah, Exodus chapter 32: "And even more than this, the tablets – the ‘writing of God’ – they too are not intrinsically holy, only for your sake; and when a bride has played the harlot within her bridal canopy, they are considered mere earthenware shards and possess no holiness in themselves, but only for your sake, when you keep them. The upshot is: there is nothing holy in the world to which service and submission are due, only the blessed God, whose name alone is holy in His necessary existence, and to Him praise and worship are fitting."
,
The Temple too, despite its name, was not really such a thing. It was, all in all – if such a thing ever existed – a (pagan) structure, and it has still not been discovered which contractor and architect won (a rigged tender) the housing project (in undergarments) for the resident ("that I may dwell among them").
And if Rashi prophesies that a Third Temple will descend from heaven – then indeed, it is not in heaven.
And whoever in the right hand does not build the Temple….
Perhaps the day after tomorrow – that day will come; let us rejoice and be glad in it.
It seems that you, Michi shlita (not from Lithuania), do not censor these words that were spoken…
I don’t see what there is here to censor. I just don’t understand what this has to do with our topic. What is this message doing here?
With God's help, Monday of the portion "For you are a holy people to the Lord your God," 5777
On the contrary, holiness, as the Torah sees it, finds expression in an extra degree of commitment to rules.
For all the inhabitants of the world, the seven commandments, which constitute humanity’s moral foundation, are enough. The holy nation is obligated in 613 detailed commandments, between man and God and between man and his fellow. Even in the rational commandments there is a significant difference. Whereas for the Noahides the commandment of "laws" suffices, requiring in a general way the maintenance of a legal system, the children of Israel receive directly from God a detailed system of ordinances.
The system of holiness includes sanctified times, in which a person is not permitted to do as he wishes as on weekdays. The holiness of these times requires an entire system of unique prohibitions – refraining from labor on Shabbat; refraining from servile labor on festivals; refraining from eating and drinking on Yom Kippur; refraining from eating leaven on the Festival of Matzot; refraining from dwelling permanently in one’s home on Sukkot; and refraining from working the land and claiming ownership over its produce in the seventh year. The peak is the Jubilee year, in which a person’s private ownership is reset, "for the whole land is Mine."
The system of holiness includes sanctified places, where the greater the holiness of the place, the more additional commandments apply there. Beginning with the Holy Land, where many commandments apply only there, continuing with the holiness of Jerusalem, and culminating in the Temple, where one walks with extreme care, "heel beside toe," as in the palace of a king. There is no "spontaneity" in the Temple service, only fixed laws governing what may be done, when, in what manner, and by whom; and even the slightest deviation may bring grave consequences. Even the intention to eat a sacrifice after its proper time renders it "piggul," unacceptable. Already on the day of the dedication of the Tabernacle, Israel learned what happens when one offers "strange fire, which He had not commanded them."
But holiness does not end with sanctified places and times. Every aspect of the life of a Jew demands from him moral standards above and beyond what is required of the rest of humanity. Thus the portion Kedoshim is full of commandments that demand from the holy people a life on a higher and higher plane. The prohibition against profiting from a loan; the prohibition against vengeance and bearing a grudge; and the obligation to love one’s fellow and to practice charity and kindness. All these are demands that go beyond the natural moral behavior required of all human beings.
Holiness comes from a person’s awareness that he is an emissary of the King who stands constantly before the King, and his role obligates him to unique standards of nobility appropriate to one dedicated to the service of the King.
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
Rabbi, thank you for the sharp, piercing, honest, and precise writing. Quite literally life-giving.
In this world of falsehood, I sometimes grow weary of life because of the stupidity and human wretchedness, and reading you gives strength and the feeling that I am not alone..
Please keep going and don’t change a thing (including the blessed sharpness) because of petty criticism about the style or trolling. I want to believe that the silent and high-quality majority is with you..
With God's help, 8 Av 5777
And now that we have arrived at this point, that it is impossible to maintain a society without clear rules – it is understandable that the Torah, which aspires to create a "holy nation" and not merely individual holy men as in the days of the Patriarchs, must provide a detailed system of beliefs, values, laws, and commandments.
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
Dear Levi, don’t worry. The silent majority is with you. I promise you that fifty percent of those around you are weary of life because of the stupidity and human wretchedness around them, and then they go to Michi Abraham’s site to receive spiritual strength, to feel like a high-quality and silent majority, and to feel they are not alone. Long live magnificent wisdom. Let the noisy minority of human wretchedness die, those who were not privileged to receive abundant goodness.
In short, even the most rational doctor is destined in the end to turn into a baba for the troubled..
I hope they won’t turn this discussion too into the exhausting brawl about the rabbi’s approach; for a change, try to focus on the substance of the matter, and not on Michi’s somewhat skinny body.
On the substance of the matters
And on current matters, a similar line of thought by Yehuda Yifrach
http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART2/888/773.html
I’m not sure these are similar things. The debate is about the rules, not about going beyond the rules. Precisely in that realm I would join the approach that does go by rules (because of the disputes within the public, rules have to be set). It is true that in my opinion too the rule should be that a terrorist does not come out alive from an attack.
The demand that a discussion focus on the substance of the matter, and not on a person’s body, is an excellent example of the necessity of rules, which make substantive discussion possible. And the more existential the topic – the more vital the need for substantive discussion.
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
With God's help, after Tisha B’Av 5777
In light of the many examples (which I noted above) showing that holiness in the Torah is bound up with a multiplicity of halakhic requirements – it seems to me that the leniency after the fact regarding some of the Torah’s requirements in sacred matters stems from the Torah’s taking into account the difficulty a person has in meeting all the many requirements of the Temple, requirements to which a person is unaccustomed in ordinary life, and therefore the Torah takes this difficulty into account and determines that some of its requirements are not indispensable after the fact.
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
One can bring an additional example of numerous requirements lechatchila accompanied by leniency bediavad:
The Noahides are obligated only in seven commandments, but after the fact, one who transgresses is liable to death. By contrast, the children of Israel, whose holiness is greater and who are obligated in 613 commandments – with regard to the vast majority of the commandments there is leniency in the punishment of one who transgresses. And even in commandments for which Noahides are liable to death – for Israelites there is leniency in punishment: for theft there is only monetary liability, and for eating a limb from a living animal only lashes; and even in matters carrying the death penalty, in Israel witnesses and prior warning are required.
It seems that great stringency lechatchila leads to leniency bediavad, out of consideration for the difficulty of a person who is required to meet so many demands.
With God's help, Wednesday of the portion "statutes and ordinances to do them in the land," 5777
The Oral Torah includes a broad component that was transmitted as tradition to Moses at Sinai:
(a) For every commandment, a concise detailed explanation was given by Moses, as Maimonides explained in his introduction to the Mishnah. (b) The principles of interpretation by which the Torah is expounded were given, through which one can "learn the unspecified from the specified" and provide an answer to situations that were not spelled out.
Already in Moses’ time there arose a need to interpret what had been transmitted. Questions arose that required clarification, and there were differing understandings. Moses understood that the command to Aaron’s sons to eat from the inaugural offerings despite their state of mourning also included the New Moon goat-offering, whereas Aaron understood that reason dictates that one should not compare what was said about one-time sacred offerings to permanent sacred offerings, and in the end Moses conceded to him.
When Moses teaches the laws of inheritance, according to which only sons inherit, the daughters of Zelophehad argue to him, with sound reasoning, that where there is no son, the daughter should inherit. Moses turns to God and receives confirmation of the daughters of Zelophehad’s claim, and God further adds instructions regarding cases that even the wise daughters of Zelophehad had not thought of.
With the death of Moses, the path to receiving additional laws through prophecy was closed. For clarifying new doubts in the interpretation of the Torah’s laws, the Torah directs us to "the place that the Lord shall choose," the seat of the priests and judges of each and every generation, to whom all questions and doubts are to be referred, and one must act "according to what they instruct you."
Can it enter one’s mind that during the 480 years from the Exodus until the building of the First Temple, and during the 410 years of the First Temple’s existence – periods in which the people of Israel lived as a nation in its land, requiring halakhic responses both to individual questions and to matters of state, a legal system, and a Temple – were there not in those hundreds of years many rulings by judges and priests that were transmitted in tradition through the generations, creating a broad infrastructure passed down from generation to generation?
What was strengthened following the destructions was the need to make the Torah accessible to a broader public, out of internalizing the rebuke of the prophet Jeremiah: "Why has the land perished? Because they have forsaken My Torah." Therefore, every period of striving for national revival, for the restoration of the nation and the building of the land, was bound up with efforts to increase the Torah’s accessibility to the people.
In the generation of the return to Zion, the pioneers returning to the land call upon the Men of the Great Assembly to broaden the circle of learners: "Raise up many disciples," and to expand the domain of Torah through enactments and safeguards: "Make a fence for the Torah."
Rabbi Akiva, his students, and his colleagues, fighters for national restoration against the Roman Empire – they are the ones who broaden the domain of Torah through their interpretations, and they make it accessible to the many through the formulation of the Mishnah, the great majority of which deals with situations of national restoration, freedom, and redemption: the laws of the Sanhedrin and the Temple, Seeds and Purities, so as to instill in the learner that the state of exile and destruction is temporary and passing.
The Oral Torah is a Torah of building and not of destruction. It transmits the Torah of Moses and his successors – the elders, the prophets, and the sages – who stood by Israel in times of national revival and in times of exile. And in light of the firm foundations that were transmitted and inferred by the sages of the generations, the paths of future redemption too will be charted.
With blessing, S.Z. Levinger
The great codifications too, Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah and Rabbi Yosef Karo’s Beit Yosef and Shulchan Arukh, were compiled in periods when redemption in the near future was anticipated. Maimonides conceived the idea of renewing the Sanhedrin by convening the majority of the sages of Israel who are in the Land of Israel, and the teacher of Maran, Rabbi Yaakov Beirav, tried to realize the idea in actual halakhic practice.
Even though a Sanhedrin was not established – the codifications served as an infrastructure for renewing the unity of halakhah in Israel, without which it is impossible to build a "kingdom of priests" whose constitution is the Torah. Maimonides created in his work a basis for rulings even in matters that are "law for the messianic era." The Beit Yosef, which gathered the teachings of the Rishonim from all schools – sages of Spain and the lands of the East, and sages of Ashkenaz and France – created a kind of virtual "Sanhedrin" that aspired to an all-Israel halakhic decision according to the majority of opinions.
It is clear that the questions and opinions that arose in the hundreds of years of the Acharonim period await the future codifier, who will gather, summarize, and propose a decision that, being founded on broad consensus, will be accepted by the majority of the sages of Israel.
A very tempting proposal to abolish the laws, but it is clear that in practice this would be a very bad move. How would you appoint those upright people who are to judge? Elections? How can one expect dishonest people to choose honest people? Moreover, suppose a few people were chosen about whose intuitive integrity there is consensus. Since we are talking about people and not a system (system = organization = rules), problems of bribery ("blinds the eyes of the wise") and conflicts of interest would be common and there would be no answer to them. What I am trying to say, generalizing from the above examples, is that the rules and organizations that arrange our lives subject us to something that is not interpersonal, regulate matters between nations (the laws of war; after all, the integrity of upright Zionist people is presumably not the same as that of upright guys from Gaza), and deal with problems involving several parties with different and complex interests (as opposed to an intersection, where the situation is much simpler – people’s interest is to get through the intersection as quickly as possible provided that they are not harmed, as first priority, and that they do not harm others, as second priority).
Hello Someone. I don’t think the problems would be harder than they are today. It may be harder to implement when the population is not homogeneous, but for the initial example I am speaking about a homogeneous society, and certainly not about international law.
You assume that the people in society are dishonest (and therefore will not appoint honest people), and I don’t know why you think that. But in any case, this is only a proposal meant to illustrate a principled point, and of course before implementing it much more examination and development would be required, if at all.
Hello, a few comments:
1. I have not seen any grounding or proof that a world without rules would function better, and certainly the intersection video is not enough to prove it. This is a far-reaching conclusion that runs contrary to common sense. It is more reasonable to assume that at a traffic-light intersection the chance of an accident is lower and that it is also more efficient in terms of saving time. Likewise, the assumption that a person who specialized in planning and regulating this matter (an engineer) would be preferable to a random collection of people who gave it no thought is more reasonable. In my opinion, whoever claims otherwise bears the burden of proof, and in cases like this the matter is open to empirical testing and proof for anyone who wishes to argue otherwise. In any event, reality shows that the countries where the rules are clearer and more respected are also the more developed ones.
2. In a democratic state, the law is an expression of the will of the majority. This fact gives legitimacy to the regulation established by law and creates a willingness to obey it. That is important. Abolishing the laws and leaving matters to the regulation of each individual would endanger the very willingness to obey whatever regulation would in any case emerge (and in the end some rule would be created, though probably a different one).
3. The example of the traffic-light intersection is an easy one because it describes a kind of regulation devoid of value-laden aspects. But do you also think there is room to abolish criminal law, which in effect expresses the society’s credo of what is permitted and forbidden? Here too, the law expresses a social agreement adopted by the legislative body that is supposed to express the will of the majority, and it still creates a certainty that should not be dismissed lightly. The prohibition on murder, for example, is clear. If we were to leave this to the intuition of whoever was supposed to judge the matter (without a prior rule), we would be exposed to different approaches which, in my opinion, the majority here would not want (for example, legitimizing murder for reasons of family honor, which is accepted by parts of the population). No one would want that kind of uncertainty.
4. You spoke in praise of the intuition that was supposed to solve problems which, in your view, the law had unnecessarily complicated. You have written a great deal in your books about the subject of "eidetic seeing," and I never imagined that this referred to issues like these (I mean the intersection example), which in the end are technical matters for which one must find the optimal solution. I thought it referred to a kind of unmediated "knowledge" concerning our informational world about the world.
5. From the beginning of your remarks about the halakhic value of serving God before the giving of the Torah, I have had difficulty accepting your conclusion about the need to abolish the rules. The fact is that the Torah, with its rules, was given, and you too see this as a further level and do not call for its abolition, heaven forbid.
6. Your criticism of the over-complication of the law is justified. This complication is an expression of the over-juridification from which our society suffers. But the conclusion is far too sweeping. Perhaps we need to use more "open-ended standards" in legislation, such as "good faith," etc., and give the court discretion, encourage agreed-upon alternative mechanisms for dispute resolution, and so on. More than anything, to my mind this reflects the violence from which our society suffers, which does not allow respect and compromise and causes people to run to court over every little thing, as well as to legislate ourselves to death at every turn, in the absence of the ability to resolve conflicts in other ways. The solution to this is education, not abolishing the concept of rules.
You haven’t seen proof because there is no proof. But it turns out that this happens in quite a few contexts. For example, capitalism usually works better than socialism, which advocates top-down regulation.
The Torah was not "given with its rules," as you put it. I can hardly think of any rule that was given to us. That is precisely the illusion I was arguing against. Almost all the rules are the result of the conceptualization and interpretation of the sages over the generations. What was given to us in the overwhelming majority of cases was particulars and examples.
I brought the Talmud as an example of something conducted without rules, and even disdainful of them. And indeed you are right that I am not calling for the abolition of rules, but I am calling for careful use of them and not to exaggerate their importance as against common sense.
Your other arguments were answered in the post itself. And indeed I will repeat and emphasize what I wrote: I am not making positive claims here, but mainly drawing attention to possibilities that are perceived as absurd and usually do not even come up for consideration.
Are you an antinomian? Don't you believe in the rule of law?