On Poetry, Torah, and Hasidism: The Final Chord (Column 113)
Torah study is the decoding of God’s message, not the extraction of experiences from the text
The essay argues that talmud Torah is the transmission of information from the divine text to the learner, and therefore the Torah must be read as prose in the functional sense: a text that carries information and whose meaning and authorial intent we try to understand. One can of course be moved by the Torah, draw inspiration from it, or derive insights from it, but if those insights do not arise from the meaning of the text but from the associations it awakens in me, that is like contemplating a landscape or a phone book: something useful may come of it, but it is not Torah study. That is why the new existential-Hasidic mode of reading, which is the main target of the criticism here, is not rejected because it has no value at all, but because its free element is not learning.
Hasidic texts sometimes contain Torah — but precisely in what is non-Hasidic within them
From here the essay sharpens the source of the confusion: Hasidic texts, too, sometimes contain a genuinely informative component, and when one decodes that component one is indeed learning Torah. But that happens despite the Hasidic element, not because of it. In the example of Kedushat Levi on “hadlaka oseh mitzva,” the insights are unrelated to the meaning of the sugya or to the intention of its author, and therefore this is using the text as inspiration, not learning Gemara. By contrast, other Hasidic texts also contain a discursive, prose-like component, and engagement with that component is Torah just like any other engagement. The “Hasidic” part of the text, according to the essay, is precisely what is added beyond that component.
Free homiletics are not halakhic midrash: the hermeneutic tools are a language of decoding given at Sinai
One reason for the confusion is that Hazal’s interpretation of Scripture sometimes appears very far from a literal reading. The essay distinguishes between derashot of the type “bo’u ḥeshbon” — which may have moral and even Torah value, but are not the learning of the verse itself — and halakhic midrash. With respect to halakhic midrash, it rejects the idea that these are creative vorts: even if the hermeneutic rules are not ordinary “prosaic” interpretive tools, they are not arbitrary but rather rules of decoding transmitted together with the text, something like a code or an additional language in which Scripture was written. Rambam and Ralbag can therefore disagree about whether derashot generate halakha or merely support it, yet both agree that Torah study is in principle bound to the intention of the text and is not free play. In this sense, even derash is prose: its goal is the disclosure of information, not the creation of an experience.
Even when the interpretation is strained, Talmud commentators operate with an interpretive rather than a creative consciousness
The essay adds that interpretive disagreement in Talmud or Bible is fundamentally different from an aesthetic experience. When a commentator offers a strained reading, we criticize it, reject it, or accept it — but we always assume that he was trying to say what the text really means. Even if in practice he is mistaken or forcing the text, his consciousness is interpretive: to uncover meaning, resolve difficulties, and understand the sugya. That is different from reading poetry, or from a Hasidic reading of the Kedushat Levi type, in which the reader is not bound in the same way to the meaning of the text. Interpretation may contain creativity, and even a certain poetic element, but it remains subordinate to the text rather than to artistic freedom.
Deconstruction is valid for poetry and literature, not for Bible and Talmud
Here the essay gives postmodernism partial credit: with regard to poetry, narrative, and art in general, there is real force to the claim that meaning is generated in the reader and does not necessarily overlap with the author’s intention. Free derash, too, is understandable on that background, and that is why “one does not refute a derash.” But applying that model to a prose text, and certainly to Written and Oral Torah, is a mistake. There the goal is to hit the meaning of the text. That is why Hasidism in its new sense is described here as performing deconstruction on Bible and Talmud: it dismantles their commitment to meaning and treats them as raw material for producing insights. Accordingly, the maxim “everything that a veteran student will one day innovate was said to Moses at Sinai” can apply only to innovations produced מתוך a sincere and skilled attempt to decode the text, not to every association one can “insert” into it.
The Torah is called song specifically next to the command to write a Torah scroll because the writing is only the skeleton
From here the essay turns to the large question: if Torah study is prose, why is the Torah itself called “song”? From the verses at the end of Deuteronomy and from Hazal it emerges that not only Ha’azinu but the entire Torah bears that title, especially in the context of the commandment to write a Torah scroll. The answer begins with the distinction between Written Torah and Oral Torah: the original prohibition against writing Oral Torah teaches that writing can constrict, fossilize, and flatten something whose essence is broader and more dynamic. Following R. Yitzḥak Hutner, the essay stresses that most of the Torah exists orally, whether in hermeneutic modes of derash or in traditions not written down at all. Written Torah is an outline and a skeleton of a much wider whole.
The sanctity of the blank margins teaches that meaning is also found between and around the lines
The sugya of the sanctity of the blank margins in tractate Shabbat serves here as a principled image: the Gemara raises the possibility that the blank areas around the writing possess sanctity not dependent on the writing itself, and it is in fact ruled that they have sanctity when they are part of a Torah scroll. The essay proposes understanding this as an expression of the Torah’s surrounding field of meaning: not only the letters themselves are holy, but also the “space” in which they are set — that is, the Oral Torah, the derashot, the expansions, and what lies between the lines. This is the sense in which the Torah resembles poetry: the written words do not exhaust the content; they merely carry it.
The Torah is song in its tools of decoding, not in its essence and not in the learner’s freedom
The conclusion is that the Torah is called song not because it is “pure poetry” in the modern sense, but because the way to extract information from it is not limited to literal peshat. It includes pardes, derashot, structure, and form, and its interpretive tools are indeed broader than the ordinary prosaic toolbox. But all of these are meant to uncover the meaning embedded in the text or in its spirit, not to release the learner from commitment to the text. That is why even a literary study of Torah may count as learning if it is systematic, coherent, and committed to meaning; whereas free creation based on the text is not learning. The mistake of the new Hasidic mode of study is to identify the Torah with pure modern poetry, instead of with ancient poetry that is interwoven with a significant informational component.
Allegory too is judged by its commitment to the text
At the end, the essay notes that an allegorical reading of Scripture does not necessarily turn the Torah into pure literature. If the allegorist sees characters and events as a systematic code for ideas, and preserves coherence and commitment to the verses, this is an interpretive dispute one may reject and still regard as learning. Only when that commitment is abandoned and what remains is associative freedom does one move from interpretation to a vort — and from Torah study to free creation.
With God’s help
In the previous columns (107–112) I discussed at length the definition of poetry and literature as opposed to prose. The motivation for the discussion was the debate over the study of Hasidism[1] (in columns 104–106), where I argued that the new forms of Hasidic study are not worthy of being considered Torah study. At the end of Column 106 I said that the discussion of poetry would clarify the foundations of the previous debate, and here I would like to show how this is so, thereby closing (with God’s help) this long circle that has already gone on for ten columns. I hope there is still someone following the argument (the number of comments drops significantly as the discussion drags on). In any event, it is Torah (or perhaps not)[2] and we must study.
Torah study is only prose
I will begin with the end. The gist of my claim is that Torah study is essentially engagement with prose. Torah study is the study of the word of God as He conveys it to us in the Torah. The Torah is the text in which the information we are meant to learn is found, and the goal of study is to interpret and understand the meaning of its words and its intentions. If Torah study is the transfer of information from the author of the Torah to its students, then this means that the Torah must function as prose. A person can of course draw inspiration from the Torahic text just as from contemplating a page in a telephone directory, and can even derive correct and useful conclusions from it, but such a process is not Torah study, because it does not attempt to decipher the information that the Holy One, blessed be He, conveys to us through it.
We have seen that reading pure literature or pure poetry and deriving insights from them is not study, because it does not require the meaning of the text. It lets the text act upon us and arouse experiences within us. This is a process similar to what I described in those columns as being impressed by a telephone page or by some natural landscape and deriving insights from that. In such cases the insights are not passed from the author (in the case of a telephone page or a landscape there is no author) to the reader; rather, some insights are generated within the reader under the inspiration of the source (the landscape or the page). Reading the Torah as a kind of literature or poetry can indeed generate various insights in the reader, like contemplating telephone pages, but these are not insights transmitted to him from the author, and therefore this is not Torah study. One can call it therapy, but in no way study.
There are shades of engagement that also include an informative component (a prose component; p is different from 0), and in such cases that component certainly does count as Torah study. But everything around it (the q component) is not Torah study. If we read the text and extract from it insights and information by interpretive means, and alongside that also undergo various poetic experiences nourished by its formal structure, then the first component is Torah study and the second is not. In this terminology, contemporary Hasidic study, even when it has a prose component, is saturated with components of poetry and pure literature, and as such has no value as Torah study. In the example from Kedushat Levi (see Column 105), which took the topic of hadlakah oseh mitzvah (‘the lighting constitutes the commandment’) into realms that are undoubtedly unrelated in any way to its meaning and to the author’s intention, he was not engaged in Torah study but in producing (trivial) insights from the text by way of reading poetry or being impressed by a landscape. In fact he was occupied with himself and not with the Torah, since the insights he produced are not in the text in any way. To the same extent he could have produced them by contemplating a telephone page or by reading a poem. Therefore I argued that he did not study the Talmud and that this is not Torah study (just as someone who binds a volume of Talmud is not considered to be studying Torah. Not every engagement with the Talmud is Torah study). By contrast, there are of course many Hasidic texts that contain informative-study components, such as the example I brought there (in Column 105) from Shem MiShmuel. I argued there that this is not a Hasidic text in the essential sense, even though it was composed by a Hasidic rebbe. That same rebbe also wears glasses, and that does not turn wearing glasses into a Hasidic text. In texts composed by Hasidim there can certainly also be a prose component of information and learning, and engagement with that component is definitely Torah study. But that is despite the Hasidic character of the texts, and certainly not because of it. Moreover, the Hasidic component in them consists precisely of all the components that are not Torah. Everything else is standard Torah that exists in every other genre as well (see again the discussion there of Shem MiShmuel). Hence the confusion surrounding my remarks about studying Hasidism, when many pointed out that there are Hasidic texts that really are studied. Indeed there are, but thanks to the non-Hasidic component within them. This is essentially the same confusion that surrounds the definition of poetry and literature in their various forms as opposed to prose. As we saw, the main reason for this confusion is that they contain a p component (of information, prose) and not only q. They are mixed together, and that causes people not to understand what in fact defines them as poetry or as prose. Similarly, people do not manage to characterize what defines a text as Hasidic, and which part of it is Torah.
The interpretive toolbox of Scripture
It seems to me that what is very confusing in this context is the modes of interpretation used for the Torah. At times these modes seem far removed from the interpretive toolbox of ordinary prose. There are quite a few cases in which the interpretation of the Sages and the medieval authorities is not verbal-literal interpretation, as is customary with prose texts, and from there it is easy to conclude that this is a kind of reading of poetry (not for nothing is the Torah called poetry; see below).
There were several examples brought up in the comments to the earlier columns, such as “Therefore those who speak in parables say: Come to Heshbon” — about those who rule over their impulses, who calculate the accounting of the world (see the discussion in Column 105). I explained that this is indeed a homiletic exposition not meant to study the verse, but rather a wordplay intended to instill some value in the readers and nothing more. In essence, this is a rabbinic ‘Hasidic vort,’ and from my standpoint it is indeed not Torah study in the full sense. The conclusion is of course correct and important (that one should engage in self-examination and weigh one’s actions), and it seems that it even has Torah value, but we did not learn it from the verse. Here the verse did not function as prose (= a text that bears information), but rather played the role of the telephone page as a source of inspiration. Therefore we did not study the verse, even if we learned something (from our own reasoning) about the will of God. To the same extent, we could count the words in the first two verses of Genesis and infer from them the proposition 7+8=15. Did we learn Torah here? The conclusion is correct (even if in terms of content it is probably not exactly Torah), but it did not really emerge from the verses (here there is even a clear connection to the verses. But of course it could have emerged from a thousand other sources as well, and had we not known it in advance, we would not have learned it from here either).
And what shall we say about the accepted modes of halakhic interpretation (the thirteen hermeneutical principles, inclusion, and the like)? They too do not look like modes of interpretation used for ordinary prose. No one would expound an encyclopedia entry by means of generalization and specification. Is that too merely homiletic play and Hasidic quips? Admittedly, the logically based interpretive principles, such as an a fortiori inference, paradigm construction, two verses that contradict one another, and perhaps also verbal analogy,[3] do seem relevant to ordinary text as well. But even with regard to them, it is clear that various applications of them that you will find in rabbinic literature would not be made in relation to ordinary text. Seemingly, this is an argument in favor of the ‘Hasidic’ character of Torah study, and even of the Talmud itself.
Is halakhic midrash poetry?
These difficulties led several commentators (for example, Ralbag in the introduction to his commentary on the Torah) to argue that the purpose of the hermeneutical methods is only to support existing laws, not to create new ones. In his view, what we have here is some kind of game whose purpose is to anchor known laws in verses, even though this is done in rather bizarre ways (which raises a serious question about the value and point of this whole activity). And indeed for that reason I, the lesser one, disagree with him on this point,[4] and there is a great deal of evidence for it. I am happy to note that in this case I am actually in good company. Maimonides writes explicitly in his well-known responsum to Rabbi Pinchas the judge of Alexandria that an overwhelming majority of the derashot are creative rather than merely supportive. But either way, one should note that even Ralbag understands that if the hermeneutical principles are indeed unreliable (that is, they are not tools from the prose toolbox), then one cannot rely on them to create new laws. That is, he does not see this as real Torah study (but perhaps as something of very diminished value, if any). In other words, there is no dispute at all that the Sages are not really doing whatever they want, or merely whatever seems right to them, in interpreting Scripture. Ralbag and Maimonides both agree that a halakhic conclusion is supposed to try to hit the intention of the text. At most, Ralbag only claims that there is some value (probably not a very important one even in his own eyes) to the midrashic game even though it teaches us nothing. But as I said, in my view he is mistaken about this. So what, after all, is the explanation for the use of interpretive methods that are so strange when applied to prose?
Precisely because the modes of interpretation that lead to the intention and meanings of the verse are not only the ordinary prose-based ones, all the medieval authorities arrived at the conclusion (which is uncontested) that the methods of halakhic midrash were given to Moses at Sinai. The meaning of this is that without the tradition from Sinai one could not have used them, because they would not have exposed the intention of the Torah and its Author. Arbitrary tools that the interpreter uses in order to create whatever he wants or whatever seems good to him are not Torah, and using them is not Torah study. As I explained, Torah study is about understanding the intention of the text and the author, and therefore it is clear that the hermeneutical principles used by commentators and decisors are a kind of code given to them from Sinai.[5] They are simply additional forms in which the biblical text is deciphered.
It is worth mentioning here the remark that came up in previous columns (110–111) regarding code or cipher. One of the commenters argued that according to my definition these are genres of poetry, since the text there is not interpreted literally. I answered him that he was mistaken. An encoded text is pure prose, except that it is written in a different language (like a metaphor). Just as there is English and there is Hebrew, there is also the Atbash language. All these are ways of conveying entirely literal and prosaic information, except that this is done in different languages. The code does not require us to experience something or to create meanings out of the text. It is read and interpreted just as one reads ordinary prose, and therefore it is an interpretive tool that is prosaic through and through. The modes of midrash play exactly the logical role of a code. These are rules that were handed down together with the text[6] and serve to decipher it. Therefore the midrashic language is nothing but a language in which the text is to be read and its hidden contents exposed, alongside the language of the plain sense. The conclusion is that the world of derash is definitely prose and not poetry, and therefore engaging in it is Torah study.[7]
Needless to say, in the interpretation of the Oral Torah the matter is even clearer. There the interpretation is carried out by means of the ordinary prose-based tools of interpretation and not by means of derash techniques. That itself testifies that even with respect to Scripture, the use of derash techniques is only because our tradition transmitted those methods to us as additional tools of decipherment, and not because this or that person felt like using them in order to reach conclusions he happened to find appealing.
The interpretive consciousness versus the artistic experience
If we see a commentator on the Talmud, medieval or later, who offers a far-fetched and implausible interpretation of a passage, we would never say that we have no problem with it because it is free creation. We would criticize him and try to show why, in our view, he is mistaken. That is of course not relevant to experiences that arise from reading poetry, nor to Hasidic texts in the style of the Kedushat Levi that we saw. Moreover, I have no doubt that the commentators on the Talmud, medieval and later, even when they offered an interpretation far from the true plain sense, understood themselves to be presenting the actual meaning of the text under interpretation. In light of various difficulties they may force the text and pull it away from its plain sense, but the goal is to understand its true content and meaning, not merely to create a coherent structure that is not obligated to the text itself. Hence, even if I disagree with such an interpretation, what we have is simply an interpretive dispute and nothing more. Their consciousness was interpretive and not creative, and they were trying to understand what the text says, not to use it in order to create experiences or even insights that are not really included in it. In that sense, they certainly studied Torah.
There are disputes and various shades in the modes of interpretation, and certainly in their conclusions, and thus disputes arise among interpreters of Scripture and of the Talmud. And still, the consciousness of each of the interpreters is an interpretive consciousness and not a creative one. At least on the level of consciousness, the interpreter sees himself as interpreting and uncovering, not as creating, and those who disagree with him see him that way as well. When one speaks in these contexts about creative interpretation, the intention is the use of more complex tools whose purpose is to expose the intention and meaning of the text, resolve contradictions, and explain various textual phenomena. The creativity here is not free creation unbound by obligation in the artistic-poetic sense (though it may have certain poetic dimensions; q is not zero), and the creative interpretation is not creation in the same sense in which insights are generated from reading a poem or a story, or from contemplating a landscape. In all those cases one is certainly not dealing with an interpretive consciousness, but with free creation that is certainly not obligated to the meaning of the text.
The place of deconstruction
Readers who know my attitude toward postmodernism may be surprised, but in my opinion there is something to the proposals of deconstruction when it comes to literature and poetry, or art in general. The claim that the interpretation and sense of a text are created within the reader, and have no necessary connection to the (literal) meaning of the text itself and certainly not to the author’s intention, is true to a certain extent regarding a poem, or even a story (though probably to a lesser extent), but not regarding prose (such as an encyclopedia entry), and by the same token not regarding the text of the Written Torah (aside from homiletic readings that have no educational value, as above) or the Oral Torah. There the interpretation is supposed to hit the intention of the author and of the text.[8]
Incidentally, even with regard to poetry and literature there is room to distinguish between an ordered interpretation proposed for a poem or a story, and the free insights and experiences that arise in the reader as a result of reading. An ordered interpretation is indeed supposed to stand tests of logic and consistency, even when the interpreted text is a poem or a story. Of course, if it is a poem or a story, then it is not necessarily a matter of deciphering a message that comes from the author (structuralism speaks of the meanings of texts in themselves). But experiences that are awakened by reading are not supposed to stand such tests, and they are certainly not information transmitted to us from the author/creator. That is the reason for our accepted principle that One does not refute a homiletical exposition. (do not look for coherence and systematicity in a homiletic inference that does not pretend to decipher the meaning of the text but only to use it). It is certainly a mistake to apply this approach to prose texts. There, the sense formed in the reader is supposed to fit the meaning of the text and the intention of the author. That at least is what the reading of a prose text is supposed to aim at. In this terminology one can say that Hasidism is basically doing deconstruction to the Talmudic and biblical text, and therefore it cannot be considered the study of those texts, but perhaps only a mechanism for freely generating insights on their basis. It sees the text as poetry and not as prose, and that is the main error.
To sharpen the point, I will add that about this, and only about this, the saying was made (Jerusalem Talmud Peah 2:4) that Everything that a seasoned student is destined to innovate was said to Moses at Sinai.. In my view its meaning is not historical. Its intent is to say that all the interpretations that will be stated in later generations (perhaps even if they are mistaken) should be treated as though they were included in the text from the outset. But such a saying is justified only if it refers to interpretations of the sort discussed here, namely those that attempt to decipher the information and message that are in the text and the author’s intention. Even if we miss the mark, and even if there are disputes, everything is legitimate and counts as a deciphering of the text (= it was said at Sinai). But that is only on condition that they are made with the aim of understanding the text, and not merely of using it to create experiences. At the very least, the learner’s consciousness must be interpretive and not creative. Such a saying cannot refer to non-interpretive treatment of the text. There is no reason to assume that creations based on the biblical text, which do not try to hit its meaning and intention, were also said to Moses at Sinai (see Vayikra Rabbah, section Dibbura de-Chovah, parashah 7, chapter 9, section 3, which explains that the reference is to rendering a halakhic ruling by someone qualified to do so). Otherwise, in effect, everything was said at Sinai, because there is nothing that cannot be inserted into the Torah if one adopts the level of flexibility accepted in those Hasidic and homiletic texts. Any nonsense you can think of thus becomes Torah that was said at Sinai, and the saying that whatever an experienced student will one day innovate was said to Moses at Sinai loses its meaning. If everything was said to him, then such a statement has no meaning at all. Perhaps that is the meaning of the limitation of the statement specifically to what a a seasoned student says (see also Eruvin 13b, and Avot de-Rabbi Natan, version A, chapter 40, for the meaning of the expression). That is, someone who tries seriously and has the skill to decipher the text.
The Torah is called poetry
I opened the series of columns on poetry (see the beginning of Column 107) by recounting that many years ago, on the portion of Beshalach, I was asked to speak in the synagogue, and I decided to deal with the essence of poetry. This coming Sabbath we once again read that portion, and this is a good time to return to the things I said there.
The Song at the Sea is one of three songs that we find in the Torah: the Song at the Sea, the Song of the Well (Numbers 21), and the Song of Ha’azinu. Its haftarah is also the Song of Deborah. But in fact the whole Torah refers to itself as poetry (at least according to the Sages). In Deuteronomy 31:19-30, the Holy One, blessed be He, commands Moses to write the song:
And now, write for yourselves this song, and teach it to the children of Israel; place it in their mouths, so that this song may be for Me as a witness among the children of Israel.For I shall bring them to the land that I swore to their fathers, flowing with milk and honey, and they will eat and be satisfied and grow fat, and turn to other gods and serve them, and they will spurn Me and break My covenant. And when many evils and troubles come upon them, this song shall testify before them as a witness, for it shall not be forgotten from the mouth of their offspring; for I know their inclination, what they are doing today, even before I bring them to the land that I swore.And Moses wrote this song on that day, and taught it to the children of Israel.And He commanded Joshua son of Nun and said: Be strong and courageous, for you shall bring the children of Israel into the land that I swore to them, and I will be with you.
And it came to pass, when Moses finished writing the words of this Torah in a book, until they were completedAnd Moses commanded the Levites, bearers of the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, saying:Take this book of the Torah and place it at the side of the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God, and it shall be there as a witness against you.For I know your rebelliousness and your stiff neck; behold, while I am still alive with you today, you have been rebellious against the Lord; how much more so after my death. Assemble to me all the elders of your tribes and your officers, and I will speak these words in their ears, and I will call heaven and earth to witness against them. For I know that after my death you will surely act corruptly and turn aside from the way that I have commanded you, and evil will befall you in the end of days, because you will do what is evil in the eyes of the Lord, provoking Him by the work of your hands.And Moses spoke in the ears of the entire assembly of Israel the words of this song, until they were completed:
The portion opens with a command to write the song, and straightforwardly the intention is the Song of Ha’azinu. But later on it says that Moses finished writing the words of this Torah in full, which implies that he wrote the entire Torah. And indeed, the Sages learned from here that every Jew has a commandment to write a Torah scroll for himself, and the king is commanded to write two scrolls for himself. It seems that they understood the entire Torah to be described in these verses as poetry.
Two questions arise here:
- Why is the Torah identified with the term ‘poetry’?
- It should also be noted that this identification appears specifically in the context of the commandment to write a Torah scroll. Why is the Torah described as poetry specifically in that context?
We will try to answer this by taking a brief look at the character of the Torah and linking it to the meaning of poetry with which we have been dealing until now.
What is ‘Torah’?
It may be that this is related to the question of writing words of Torah in general. The Talmud in tractate Gittin 60b states:
Rabbi Yehuda bar Nahmani, the interpreter of Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish, expounded: It is written, “Write for yourself these words,” and it is written, “For according to these words.” How so? Matters committed to writing you are not permitted to recite orally; matters that are oral you are not permitted to write down. The school of Rabbi Ishmael taught: “These”—these you may write, but you may not write halakhot.
And Rashi explains:
“Words”—those that I told you in writing, you are not permitted to transmit to Israel orally.
And matters that are oral you are not permitted to write—from here you learn that the Talmud was not permitted to be written except because the Torah was being forgotten.
We learn from here that there is a prohibition against writing the Oral Torah, just as there is a prohibition against reciting orally verses from the Written Torah.
The prohibition against reciting the Written Torah orally is fairly clear. As Rashi explained, the reason is that we may become confused and recite the verses incorrectly. And indeed, the halakhic authorities wrote that verses that are very familiar to us may be recited orally. Thus writes the Tur, Orach Chaim, sec. 49:
And regarding what we recite orally—the section of the daily offering, and likewise the verses of praise—even though we maintain that matters committed to writing you are not permitted to recite orally, my uncle, Rabbi Chaim of blessed memory, wrote that anything familiar and fluent in everyone’s mouth is not subject to the rule that matters committed to writing may not be recited orally. And my father, the Rosh of blessed memory, would say that we apply the rule that matters committed to writing may not be recited orally only when discharging others’ obligation, but for each person himself it is permitted. Therefore, the custom in Ashkenaz is that when the prayer leader reaches verses in the prayer, such as “Who is like You among the mighty, O Lord” and “The Lord shall reign forever and ever,” he and the congregation each say it individually:
But the second prohibition, that of writing the Oral Torah, is really not understandable: why is it forbidden to write the Oral Torah? Seemingly that only improves the situation, since that way we would remember it better. And indeed, Rabbi Judah the Patriarch, who decided to revoke the prohibition and write down the Oral Torah (the Mishnah), did so because the Jewish people had begun to forget the Oral Torah. Why was there, ab initio, any prohibition against writing the Oral Torah at all? Writing it from the outset would seemingly have prevented the problem that arose in Rabbi’s day.
To answer this, let us consider the following saying in the passage there:
Rabbi Yohanan said: The Holy One, blessed be He, made a covenant with Israel only for the sake of the Oral Torah, as it is said: “For according to these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.”
We see that there is something special about God’s covenant with Israel that is distinguished specifically by the Oral Torah. Why specifically the oral teachings, and not the Written Torah, which was given to us by God Himself, and which He wrote and in which He fixed all the contents included in it? Seemingly, the Written Torah is holier and more important.
Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner, in his book Pachad Yitzchak on Hanukkah, explains that the Oral Torah cannot be written. Any presentation of the Oral Torah in written form in a book constricts it, and inevitably leads to mistakes and only a partial picture. Deep ideas cannot be fully expressed in writing.
Interestingly, the Talmud there describes a similar picture even regarding the Written Torah: immediately before this discussion, another saying appears in the Talmud:
Rabbi אלעזר said: The Torah is mostly in writing and only a minority orally, as it is said: “Were I to write for him the great multitude of My Torah, they would be regarded as strange.” And Rabbi Yohanan said: Mostly oral and only a minority in writing, as it is said: “For according to these words.”
And Rashi explains here:
Mostly in writing—the greater part of the Torah depends on exposition, for it is written so as to be expounded by general and particular rules, verbal analogy, and the other principles by which the Torah is interpreted.
And a minority orally—that there is no hint for learning it in the Torah; rather, it was said orally to Moses.
“For by the mouth of,” etc.—it is on account of the Oral Torah that a covenant was made; evidently, that was the majority.
We see that even in the Written Torah, most of it still exists orally. Even one who holds that most of it is in writing means that most of it can be expounded by means of the hermeneutical principles, but it is clearly not true that most of it is actually written in the Torah. In other words, according to all views, most of the Torah exists orally. More than that: the Written Torah is only partial, and what is written is only a small part. Most of the Torah lies ‘between the lines,’ and it is extracted either by means of derashot, or even from a tradition transmitted orally (= a law given to Moses at Sinai).
In fact, the picture that emerges from here is that the Written Torah consists of headings and principles for a totality that exists around it and within it orally. The Written and Oral Torah together create one single whole, and one cannot do without either of these parts. As stated, the oral part is both the broader part and the more important part. The ways of extracting this information from the biblical text are the methods of midrash and interpretation. This is in fact the meaning of conceiving of the Torah as poetry (see further below).
An example: the topic of the sanctity of the margins
The Talmud in tractate Sabbath 116a deals with the sanctity of the margins of a Torah scroll, and it says as follows:
They raised the question: Do the blank margins of a Torah scroll save it from a fire, or do they not save it from a fire?
The Talmud is uncertain whether the margins of the Torah scroll possess sanctity and therefore may be rescued from a fire on the Sabbath, or whether they do not possess sanctity.
It now brings a baraita to resolve the doubt:
Come and hear: A Torah scroll that has been erased—if there remain in it enough letters to make up eighty-five letters, such as the section “And it came to pass, when the Ark set out”—it is saved; but if not, it is not saved.
The baraita states that if one has a Torah scroll that has been erased and only a few words or isolated letters remain, it still possesses sanctity and may be rescued from a fire if eighty-five letters remain in it (legally, only when they are joined into complete words).
The Talmud now asks:
But why? Let this be derived from its margin!
The Talmud asks: why do we need the letters? If the margins are holy, then even if everything had been erased, we should have had to rescue it from the fire because of the sanctity of the margins. Seemingly, this proves that the margins have no sanctity.
The Talmud now rejects the proof, and says as follows:
The place of the writing is not my question, for when it is sanctified, it is sanctified only by virtue of the writing; once the writing is gone, its sanctity is gone. My question concerns what is above and below, between one section and another, between one page and another, at the beginning of the scroll and at the end of the scroll.
And Rashi explains it as follows:
I do not need to ask about that—for it is certainly inferior; for when it was originally sanctified, it was not sanctified as a blank margin, but with the writing in mind, and once the writing is gone, its sanctity departs.
Those above and below—for from the outset they were sanctified as blank space, and now too, when the writing of the scroll has been erased, they are still blank space.
Thus, regarding the place of the writing there was no question, because it is obviously holy only by virtue of the writing upon it, and therefore if the writing is erased its sanctity departs. The question concerned only the margins that are between the written lines, above and below, and between different sections and pages.
Finally, the Talmud concludes:
Come and hear: The margins above and below, between one section and another, between one page and another, at the beginning of the scroll and at the end of the scroll—render the hands impure.
And so too it is ruled in Maimonides, Laws of the Other Primary Categories of Impurity, chapter 9, halakhah 6.
We have thus learned that when these margins are attached to the scroll they are holy, and in the Talmud the possibility is raised that perhaps their sanctity does not depart even when the writing has been erased, since they are not holy because of the writing. Their sanctity is greater than that of the writing itself, and certainly than that of the margins in the place of the writing itself. Why is that really so? How can margins that are not connected to the writing be holier than the margins and the writing themselves? The answer is that the writing is only part of the Torah, and not necessarily even the important part. What lies between the lines and around them is more important both quantitatively and qualitatively, and therefore its sanctity does not depend on the sanctity of the writing and even surpasses it.
The Talmud says that the margins were sanctified from the outset in order to be blank, and not for the sake of the writing. What is the point of sanctifying the margins so that they remain blank? Seemingly, only the written part of the Torah is significant, and the rest is merely decoration or something secondary that serves to hold it. The explanation is that the margins express the sanctity of the Oral Torah, which remains even when the letters fly into the air, and even when the parchments themselves are burned. It does not depend on what is written.
This law expresses the character of the Torah as ‘poetry.’ Only in poetry can there be importance to the margins, beyond what is written. In the Torah, as in poetry, the writing is a skeleton around which is hidden a broad meaning that cannot be properly expressed in writing, and therefore we are obligated to leave it that way and transmit it orally from generation to generation. I now leave it to the reader to decide whether this interpretation of the Talmud is a Hasidic vort, a homily, or an actual interpretation (that is, a prosaic one).
Torah as poetry
We can now understand why the Torah refers to itself as poetry. Its modes of decipherment are not literal, and in that sense it does not resemble prose. The information is not embedded in the simple meaning of the words, but no less than that between the lines, in the derashot and expansions of the spirit of the matter; in the formal and literary structure, and not only in the descriptions and the literal meaning of the verses. In the Torah, as in poetry, the content is not expressed only in the direct plain sense, that is, in the words. The role of the derashot is to show what is hidden between the words and behind them, and perhaps even in the parchment on which they are written (or in the crowns on the letters that Rabbi Akiva expounded). It follows that the tools by which we uncover the meaning that accompanies the written words are not prose tools that require only the meaning of the words (= the plain sense), but tools that seem somewhat poetic. Therefore writing down the Oral Torah is problematic. Writing may turn it into a Written Torah and petrify it. That would transform the tools for deciphering the Torah from poetry into prose, thereby changing its whole essence and narrowing it dramatically.
This is also the reason that the Torah is called poetry specifically in the portion that commands the writing of a Torah scroll. The reason is that writing may give rise to petrification. When a person writes a Torah scroll, he must remember that what he is writing is not really the Torah itself, but a skeleton around which are all the contents and meanings that accompany it. He must know that the Torah is poetry, and therefore what is written is only a small part of the meanings that surround that skeleton and lie around it.
On the other hand, it is clear that the intention here is not that a person is supposed to be freely impressed by the Torah and let it act upon him and create experiences within him. He can do all that, but it is not study. The Torah is poetry in terms of its tools of decipherment, but not in terms of the creative freedom of the learner or the essence of the text. The learner is supposed to be committed to the text and to its meaning, even though the toolbox at his disposal is much broader and more varied than the ordinary prose toolbox. As I explained, even in derashot, despite the similarity to the deciphering of poetry, in the end one returns to the intention of the text.[9] The prior assumption is that it is written in the form of PaRDeS (the fourfold scheme of interpretation), and that everything is hidden within it. That is of course not true of Talmudic topics such as the question whether the lighting constitutes the commandment. There is no indication whatsoever that the Talmud too is written on the assumption of PaRDeS, as the Hasidic treatment of it sometimes seems to assume.
The reason for the confusion
This, in my view, is the reason people think that vorts and the study of Hasidism are Torah study. There too we are dealing with interpretation that is not attached to the literal meaning of the text. The problem I tried to point to here is that they are not attached to the meaning of the text at all, even to a nonliteral meaning. Complete interpretive freedom, freed from tools and rules altogether, is not interpretation and not study. It is reading poetry, and the Torah should not be understood as a text that is itself poetry. As I explained, interpretation by way of midrash, although one might perhaps see it as if it were done with interpretive tools that are quasi-poetic, is not free creation.
One more important remark in this connection. I mentioned above that even a poem or a story can undergo analysis that is disciplined, systematic, and consistent. So too, literary study of the Torah can indeed count as study, because it is committed to its meaning and to consistency and logic. But free creation on the basis of the text, when it is not committed to its meaning, is not study.
The meaning of the term poetry in the Torah
If so, the term poetry with respect to the Torah is interpreted in relation to the tools of decipherment, and not in relation to the essence of the text. It is now worthwhile to return to the songs that appear in the Torah (see above). According to the definitions of poetry proposed in this series, the songs in the Torah seem to be texts that bear quite a bit of information. The poetic structure is intermingled with a significant prose component that contains information (a significant p). Therefore, in the Torah’s context, the term poetry is actually closer to literature or prose. Poetry in the Torah is not a text that is not supposed to be interpreted literally at all, as in the modern meaning of poetry with which we dealt here (p=0). This sense of poetry is modern, but as I noted, it is not an invention. It reveals something about the original meaning of the concept. Modernity has advanced us in understanding it and has revealed to us what had long been latent within it and was harder to understand in earlier periods (once again, a salute to postmodernity. I am beginning to deteriorate).
If one remembers this, it is easier to understand why the Torah itself is called poetry. Indeed, this poetry is intermingled with information, and the poetic and formal structure is only a shell and a form of expression. The way to extract the information from it is not ordinary prose-based reading, but it is still a text whose purpose is the transmission of information, and study is supposed to extract that information from it. In ancient times, that was exactly what poetry was (recall the brief discussion of the Iliad and the Odyssey in Column 111). Modern poetry did not yet exist then. In modern terminology, the Torah is not pure poetry, and it seems to me that the new Hasidic study with which we have been dealing here errs in identifying it with pure poetry in the modern sense.
A note on allegorism
In my article on myth I dealt with allegorist approaches that see the events and figures in Scripture as a mythic expression of ideas. This was an approach found among several thinkers, beginning with Philo, continuing through Maimonides (to a small extent), and ending with the allegorists from the school of Yedaya HaPenini (Bedersi), the student of the author of HaHashlama. According to the latter, Abraham and Sarah are understood not as historical figures but as mythic expressions of concepts and ideas (matter and form). In my article I dealt with the dispute surrounding allegorism and the problematic aspects that the Sages saw in it. Here I want to point to another aspect of the discussion that seemingly touches on our matter.
Allegorism seemingly turns the Torah from pure prose into pure literature. Instead of verses that come to describe facts and teach lessons, the events become fictional facts that arouse within us the correct/desired feelings and insights. In this terminology one can say that the opponents of allegorism maintain that the narrative portions of the Torah are not pure literature (something like a historical novel). They are true facts that convey feelings and insights (q), and of course information (p).
But that description is not precise. Even the allegorist interpretations try to strive toward the meaning of the verses themselves. Their claim is that Scripture uses a kind of code (allegory) to convey its ideas. The important question is to what extent the interpreter preserves consistency and commitment to the text, at least according to his own method. If he does, then I may perhaps disagree with him and argue with his views, but that is merely an interpretive dispute. If not, then he is really engaged in Hasidic vorts and not in Torah study.
Blessed is the Merciful One who helped from the beginning until here…
We will return to you, topic of poetry, and you will return to us; the topic of poetry shall not be forgotten by us, and we shall not forget you, neither in this world nor in the world to come. Rami bar Pappa, Surhav bar Pappa, Pappa bar Abba, Abba bar Abba, Ali Baba and Baba Sali…
[1] The study of Hasidism with which I am dealing here is mainly the new study of Hasidism, the kind that is not committed to the meaning of the text but focuses on its existential meanings. I have already pointed out that this has roots in Hasidic writings themselves, which are saturated with this form of treatment, but as I have noted more than once, it is clear that there are disciplined Hasidic students as well. Below in this column I will use the term Hasidism in that sense.
[2] Even if the study of modern Hasidism is not Torah study, the discussion of the question whether it is Torah study certainly is Torah study. We are studying the parameters of the commandment of Torah study, and in fact the very essence of Torah study itself. On the difference between these, see here. But despite the differences in definition and in the obligated persons that are explained in that lecture, it is clear that the commandment of Torah study is a commandment to engage in ‘Torah study.’ It follows that the conceptual clarification of what Torah study is is the infrastructure for the halakhic clarification of the parameters of the commandment of Torah study. If we have not studied Torah, then of course we have not fulfilled the commandment of Torah study. Put differently: one can study Torah without fulfilling the commandment of Torah study, but one cannot fulfill the commandment of Torah study without studying Torah.
[3] See examples in the second volume in the series Talmudic Logic, which shows quite a few examples of general-and-specific derashot in non-biblical and even non-Torah texts. That is, even the principles of general and specific can be used in ordinary texts, and still their rabbinic applications certainly do not characterize the interpretation of ordinary prose.
[4] See this in the first Middah Tovah article for the year 5764.
[5] Of course this is not a code in the mathematical sense. The conclusions always depend on the reasoning of the expounder. Still, there are here different ways of striving toward what emerges from the text, and not of creating whatever I feel like, or merely whatever seems good to me.
[6] In the second volume of Talmudic Logic we explained that these principles were not transmitted from Sinai in the form familiar to us. They probably underwent processing, but that is an interpretive process and not a creative one.
[7] I will not expand here on the world of allusion, though it is clear that this is not Torah in the essential sense. The Sages themselves already say (Avot 3:18) that gematriot are mere garnishes to wisdom.
[8] The Talmudic instruction It is not in heaven. says that the main focus is the meaning of the text and not the intention of the author.
[9] In my book Ruach HaMishpat I pointed out that according to Maimonides the derashot are an extension of the text and not an exposure of what is hidden in it. Still, it is clear that the conclusion is connected to the text or its spirit and is not free creation. In my book I noted that there are different degrees of connection to the text. When there is no connection at all, this is a rabbinic law. When there is a tenuous connection (a mere textual support), this is a more serious rabbinic law. When there is a connection to the spirit of the matter, this is a derashah. When there is a full connection, that is, when it is embedded in the text itself (interpretation by way of the plain sense), this is Torah law. The status of enactments and decrees as Torah study requires discussion, and this is not the place to elaborate.
Discussion
Have a good week, Rabbi.
A. Thank you very much for the move.
B. I am now studying Bava Batra, a tractate known for its lack of verses. Seemingly, most of the tractate is the reasoning of Hazal and not interpretation of verses, and still it is Torah because it is Hazal and an attempt to understand their words. If so, study of the Kedushat Levi is also Torah study, even though it does not really interpret the Gemara, because it is study of the thoughts of a Torah scholar who understands his thoughts as thoughts that interpret the Torah (even if not the specific words on which he latched), just as study of rabbinic enactments would be study, even though it is not interpretation of verses but the thoughts of Torah scholars expressing ideas they understand as the intent of the Torah…
Excellent week.
A. Gladly.
B. I disagree with your definition. Tractate Bava Batra is Torah because it deals with halakhah, not because it deals with the words of the sages. You can study what Abaye said to his wife about breakfast, and that would not be Torah. You can even study astronomy or physiology in Abaye’s teachings, and that would not be Torah. It is not the person that determines this, but the subject matter.
Study of rabbinic enactments is conventionally accepted as Torah study, and for a long time I have wondered whether that is really fully so. But still, even if it is Torah study, that is not because it is a product of the sages, but because they established it as halakhah.
Thank you very much. What does the rabbi mean by “halakhah”? I always understood it as halakhah in the sense of legal principles and not דווקא practical law, but now the rabbi is saying that rabbinic enactments are Torah because they are halakhah established in practice… Could the rabbi clarify the meaning of the concept “halakhah” as constitutive of the concept “Torah study”?
And also, where in the scheme would the rabbi place kabbalistic interpretation? On the one hand one could say it is allegorical, on the other hand it has very clear rules and concepts, somewhat similar to the thirteen hermeneutical principles (the matching of specific concepts to specific sefirot, etc.).
And in the rabbi’s view, is the study of Kabbalah not Torah study? (Zohar, Etz Chaim, Leshem, etc.)
I also do not mean practical halakhah. Rabbinic enactments are principles annexed to halakhah, and they are binding, and therefore they can be seen as Torah study.
Kabbalah too can be Torah study for someone who believes in that conceptual framework and does it seriously and systematically, and does not just produce homiletic quips. By the way, so too with Hasidism (as I have mentioned more than once). And by the way, allegory is a completely legitimate interpretation.
A wonderful and thought-provoking column. As I understand it, you are playing here with several subtle concepts that really stand on one continuum, the continuum of interpretation.
Similar to what you did in column 110, is it correct to see the continuum of interpretation as a two-dimensional continuum, where the point whose coordinates are (0,0) describes pure structuralism, which is unconcerned with any intentions of the author and also not with the experiences the text causes the reader, but only with the fixed and accepted meaning of its words and expressions (what is called the literal interpretation, and is almost the translation of the text), and from there two axes spread out: one, the axis of the reader’s experience, measures the amount of readerly experience in the interpretation, and extends in the direction of postmodern deconstruction (and Hasidism), which turns entirely toward the reader’s inner experiences (and is characterized by almost total freedom from the text (creativity), although even in this move one cannot derive just any experience from just any text; there is a very “thin” connection between what is written and what is experienced); and the second axis, the axis of the author’s intention, measures the amount of the text author’s intention in the interpretation, and extends in the direction of the “real content,” which seeks to discover and grasp the author’s intention (an intention that lies outside the reader’s consciousness), including what he could not express through the words (the spirit of the matter). In this picture, all the various expansions (interpretations) of the text are composed of these two elements, and they differ from one another in their differing proportions of interiority and exteriority?
Thank you for a masterful and delightful column.
I admit I did not manage to follow the whole line of argument, but the concluding post is tremendous.
Incidentally, the Rambam’s view that Rabbi wrote the Oral Torah is considered mistaken today by scholars and Torah scholars..
And what is the opinion of the Torah scholars and the researchers? That the Mishnah was not written by Rabbi? That the Mishnah was written by Rabbi but it is not the Oral Torah? I did not understand.
In one of your earlier columns (before this series) you noted in passing that you intended to discuss the difference between wisdom and education, and it seems to me that the issue of the glosses is a good example of this gap, if I understood you correctly.
As for systematic interpretations, a few associations:
A. Rav Samet has a systematic literary interpretation of the reading of Scripture in general and of the book of Psalms in particular.
From hearing his lectures in the past, I came away with a sharpened sense that the thesis forces itself onto certain texts, while on others it cannot be sustained reasonably. Rav Samet, for his part, preserves commitment to the text, but I see something in it that is forced and forcing.
B. In one of Rav Blumentzweig’s lectures on migo as argumentative force / presumption, he explained that the treatment of migo relates to three stages: the stage of claims, evidence, and ruling.
He showed that the dispute among Amoraim, Rishonim, and Acharonim in defining migo depends on the stage of the legal discussion to which each of them is referring.
Afterward he qualified this (before the public) and said that this division (which he had previously developed in teaching another sugya in tractate Bava Batra) is something not worth repeating, because using those definitions loses its flavor and its precision. What he said then made an impression on me.
You can describe it that way.
According to the accepted tradition, Rabbi did not write the Oral Torah but edited the Mishnah. He decided on the writing down of the Oral Torah (“It is a time to act for the Lord”). However, see Temurah 14b, where this is not attributed to him.
I do not know who the scholars and Torah scholars are who disagree with this. Perhaps you mean those mentioned here in notes 26–7: http://www.daat.ac.il/mishpat-ivri/skirot/244-2.htm
Shlomi,
I did not really understand the remarks here (I mean their connection to what I wrote).
I was trying to argue that systematic interpretation is not a necessary recipe for being considered prose / Torah study.
Well said and blessed! This distinction makes sense. I’ll share a story: once my son showed me a booklet put out by some religious dancers, something that was apparently connected to the Elul Beit Midrash. There they explained that one must accept (presumably they used the word “contain”) every opinion and every person (which may indeed be true), because the Gemara—which is certainly holy and pure and wants us to be religious—allowed the Other (Elisha ben Avuyah) to express himself, and his very presence as a heretic comes to teach us that we should be infinitely inclusive. My son, who was bar mitzvah age, answered and said to me: “What nonsense—the whole sugya is about his friends trying to bring him back to repentance.” Now it could be that their opinion is correct, but why force the Gemara…
I did not claim that every systematic interpretation is correct. What I claimed is that only a systematic interpretation can be considered Torah study. And I explicitly wrote that I may disagree with its conclusions and not accept them, and still understand that the interpreter is engaged in interpretation and not in creation. If he is not doing that, then this is not systematic interpretation but perhaps systematic invention.
Still, it is worth noting that he was not erased from the Gemara. They try to bring him back to repentance, but he is still present there and expresses his positions.
“To contain” does not necessarily mean to agree. But I agree that the Gemara did not exactly contain Acher.
The Gemara ends with the point that they did not bring his body back to repentance, but his soul specifically they did… that is to say, the Gemara went in a very particular direction.
And if we are already learning a value from the story, then I would go with caring about the other person.
With God’s help, 6 Shevat 5778
If tractate Bava Batra is Torah because it deals with halakhah, then the aggadic parts of the tractate are not Torah? Are Duties of the Heart not worthy of study and deep analysis? Are the commandments to love God and fear Him, to walk in His ways and cleave to Him, and the ways of acquiring good character traits, not Torah?
With blessing, S. Tz. Levinger
S.Tz.L., only now you remember?!
Commandments, even those imposed on the heart, are Torah. So remove from here love of God and fear of Him. The ways to internalize these two are not Torah, but at most preparations for a commandment. And in general, what is not halakhah is at most Torah in the subject, so long as it is done in proper prose fashion. Without homiletic quips.
Do not neglect this either.
In your view, then, are the book of Genesis and most of the book of Deuteronomy, and all the books of the Prophets and the Writings, which contain no halakhot but rather matters that lead to the internalization of love of God and fear of Him—not “Torah study” but merely “preparations for a commandment”?
And perhaps the revelation at Mount Sinai, which was intended “that His fear may be before you, so that you not sin,” was also not “Torah study”? 🙂
In astonishment, S”Tz. Levinger
I had been debating for two days whether to respond and whether this is the place for it, and I decided that it is. The rabbi, regarding the aggadic expositions in the Gemara, is mistaken, and very mistaken. I understand why he thinks so, and these comments are not the place to clarify the issue, but I will only say that “Therefore those who speak in proverbs say…” does not come to say that one should engage in self-examination. That is quite trivial, and the sages did not need to show for that that it is written in the Torah (and no special wisdom is needed to say that). The rabbi is making the mistake of the Rambam’s second sect with respect to the aggadot of Hazal (though with considerable humility). In the expositions of Hazal there is depth, and they are like riddles that require deciphering and much deep thought (and there is an important reason why this is so). In a certain sense they are even harder to understand than the halakhot. The exposition on “those who speak in proverbs” does indeed interpret the verse, and what it says is indeed found there. Likewise, there is systematicity in the expositions of Hazal, though it is hard to characterize because it is a kind of art (but certainly also a science).
This is the same mistake of the rabbi with regard to Tanakh itself. The rabbi has said several times that everyone finds in it what he wants to find. A capitalist will find capitalism and a socialist will find socialism. (The rabbi has several times assumed that one studies Tanakh for values.) Well, that is a mistake. Tanakh is not socialism, nor capitalism, nor any such nonsense. Tanakh is Tanakh. It is content in itself, and it must be studied axiomatically, that is, understood in its own language and concepts. Tanakh must be understood from within itself. It does not serve external values; it is a value in itself. If one studies it seriously, the insights will be new and will surprise the student. He will not find what he came looking for, because he came to listen and to learn, not to hang his own opinions on lofty trees. This problem is characteristic of all fields of philosophy, science, Torah, etc., and is not related specifically to Tanakh. One who is not honest will cheat and learn nothing, and one who studies honestly will learn.
The same applies to the aggadot of Hazal and Jewish thought. From the standpoint of Torah, indeed there is a good argument that study of Tanakh and thought is not Talmud Torah (and I too hold this view—Torah in the sense of instruction and command, though in prophetic language such matters are also called Torah, and this is not the place to elaborate), but rather a preparation for the commandment for the commandments of knowing God, loving Him, fearing Him, etc., as the rabbi wrote. I think that in some respects they are even part of the fulfillment of those commandments (that is, the love is an existential result of engaging with these matters, and there is no separate act in it; rather it is a state of mind that afterward expresses itself in deeds, so I say that the fulfillment of these commandments is in the existence of that state of mind, but it may be that the act of the commandment in these commandments is in the study of these matters, as the Rambam says in the opening chapters of Hilkhot Yesodei HaTorah). But even fulfillment of a commandment is not Torah study (one does not fulfill the commandment of Torah study through them). Except of course for expositions and aggadot that explain verses in the narrative parts of the Five Books, which are an object of Torah even though they are not content of Torah), and therefore they too are Torah study, as I said.
The same applies to Hasidism (the kind the rabbi calls serious Hasidism). The rabbi claimed that the serious things in Hasidism are not essential to Hasidism, but are simply ordinary Torah ideas hidden behind a different language (see the rabbi’s remark on the Shem MiShmuel in the article on the Hanukkah lamp together with the words of R. Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev). Well, here this is only an assessment, because it is still difficult to distinguish between Hasidism and Kabbalah, but a different language creates different content to a slight degree that is actually a great degree. Different language, different consciousness. But This is another story.
True, the rabbi does not study Tanakh (or perhaps does not like studying it), but one can see that the word Torah (and also instruction, to instruct) in Tanakh is attached to words like way and walking (in the way) (Psalms 1, 119 at the beginning, Proverbs, and in a million other places), and the Torah of God in the Prophets is the way that God instructs the prophet or David (and every person) to walk in. It seems that plain “Torah” in Tanakh is basically the doctrine of recompense, the doctrine of reward and punishment (as in the psalm for Wednesday and also in Psalms in the other chapters I mentioned, and really in half of Psalms. See also 73), and not tractates Bekhorot and Gittin, for example, at least not on the surface (I believe inwardly yes, and not necessarily in the kabbalistic sense, but even in a Brisker sense, only it requires enormous work to see it). And the way of God is the manner in which God responds to the deeds of people—where sometimes it seems that the righteous suffer and the wicked prosper. That is, the ways in which God governs the world (which the rabbi thinks today He no longer governs but only observes in astonishment), as it is said, “My ways are not your ways, nor are My thoughts your thoughts…”
(“They did not understand the ways of the Lord…” I think I am inventing a verse right now, but there is something like that. “The counsel of the wicked is far from me…”; “He has not walked in the counsel of the wicked…”. “Counsel” is a word whose partner in Tanakh is “thought,” and the meaning of both in Tanakh is plan, not thought. The thought of the wicked is that nothing will happen to them if they do evil and they have nothing to lose.)
And here, rabbi, is an example for you (how arrogant I am, it is simply unbelievable) of how one studies Tanakh seriously.
So according to these things it comes out that certainly Tanakh, aggadah (if you wish to know the One who spoke and the world came into being..), Kabbalah, and Jewish thought—at least according to this language—are certainly Torah. In any case, it seems to me one should say that in any event one may not think about them in filthy alleyways or study them on Tisha B’Av, since these are sacred writings, and the prohibition depends on matters of sanctity and not on their being defined as Torah (though regarding the blessing over Torah one must consider this).
Of course there are occurrences in Tanakh of the word “thought” in the sense of thought, but they are a minority, and even then they are connected to the prevalent occurrence because both are derived from the raw underlying meaning of the concept. (As for example in the phrase “the thought of the wicked,” which is indeed thought, but even there it functions as the working assumption for their wicked plans.)
S.Tz.L.,
The book of Genesis is Torah, but its study as I know it is usually done is not of great value. I have already written here that I have not seen anyone change his thinking on any issue as a result of studying Torah or Tanakh. And already Rabbi Isaac in Rashi’s first comment wondered why indeed all this was written. And even in the answer brought there I did not find any real substance.
Ailon, I saw no argument in your words and no example (for example of studying Tanakh seriously. Where in your words did you show anything of the sort?). These are declarations, most of which I do not agree with.
The matter of the meaning of the word Torah in Tanakh and Tanakh’s perception of reality in light of that. If that was not understood (indeed I wrote with extreme brevity), I need to meet with the rabbi and show him what I mean.
And also regarding the meaning of the word “thought”—that was a hint. If the rabbi opens the sources, he will understand what I wanted to argue.
All right. Maybe I will expand on what seriousness I mean (I truly do not believe that the rabbi did not understand what I was talking about. Did the rabbi really not give me even a little credit for thinking somewhat deeply about my words?), but in somewhat abstract form. First of all, the understanding acquired through studying Tanakh is that the language of Tanakh is very different from our Hebrew. Almost like a foreign language. And even different from the language of Hazal. There are a million examples, and I gave three regarding the meaning of words (Torah, thought, and counsel, which usually does not mean in Tanakh what “advice” means in our Hebrew). A very substantial percentage of the words in Tanakh have meanings different from their meaning in Hebrew. But the problem is intensified by the fact that the language of Tanakh is not something entirely different, like a horse and an apple. Many of those words do have a few instances where their meaning in a given context is indeed like in our Hebrew. Which leads to the conclusion that the meaning of the words is neither one of the various occurrences, but something raw and undifferentiated, which in different contexts is expressed in different manifestations (like phases of matter). This also comes out in syntax, but I did not write about that. There is an evolutionary relation between the languages that stems from changes in the spiritual and conscious reality between then and now. This requires understanding how words changed their meanings due to changes in the reality of the human beings who used them, just as animals undergo evolution according to environmental change.
Another thing that follows from the previous phenomenon is that behind the different language there lies a consciousness very different from ours. Their perception (the people of Tanakh) of reality was at much lower resolution than ours, and they unified things that seem different to us and saw them as different shades of the same color. In addition, there is no escaping the fact that for them realities that to modern eyes (which are our eyes whether we like it or not) seem mythological were living realities: the profound seriousness of oaths and curses, for all peoples, not just Israelites; terrors and demons and angels and the host of heaven and eclipse, etc. One who refuses to see the world through their eyes will understand nothing of Tanakh. This part of understanding Tanakh is difficult, and even Da’at Mikra will not be enough for it. One must also understand why they saw reality this way. I believe it was a homogeneous mixture (a solution, a mixture without discernible parts) of truth and spiritual reality that is hidden from us today, together with a primitive mythological perception of reality. (That is, I believe demons exist, but they have no effect—at least no noticeable effect—on the lives of non-primitive people.)
The same is true regarding the concept of commandments and the Torah of God. Plain “Torah” in Tanakh is the Torah of God and not the Torah of Moses. The book of Isaiah is Isaiah’s Torah (God’s Torah to Isaiah, or the Torah that Isaiah instructed to Israel), and so on. I claim that every Torah in Tanakh was not religiosity (forgive the ugly term) and saintliness on the one hand, nor moralistic preaching on the other (as in the secular founders’ conception). It was a kind of description of reality (what will happen if we behave badly or well. And plain bad and good in Tanakh are murder, robbery, oppression, theft, and justice and righteousness—not getting up for prayer on time in the morning or putting on tefillin. Shabbat is exceptional in this regard, and even it not in a Haredi-religious fashion). Like physics—and that is how everyone in their time saw it. In the book of Proverbs the commandments are presented as counsels of wisdom. It is worthwhile to keep the commandments, and one who does not keep them will end up like Max and Moritz.
But I also spoke about the meaning of the concept “the ways of God” in Tanakh and its connection to Torah. Did that not move the rabbi at all? Really? Trying to understand what I said without opening the verses and studying them (thinking how the rabbi always understood them until now, how I understand them, whether this is convincing and explains David’s words in Psalms, whether the verses now make more sense and are not just a collection of trite statements, that David is really saying something here that was not trivial at least to his contemporaries)—that is like trying to convince someone there is something in physics by presenting the example A=F/M without his understanding what it means beyond the narrow sense. That is, unless he solves problems with it or thinks about its philosophical implications.
I therefore hesitated whether this was the place to present my words, but it seems important that readers know there is a counter-position (at least in my opinion) to the rabbi’s view on these matters. What is common in the yeshiva world (except in Gush, though there too they engage in a kind of midrash, but it seems serious to me) does indeed not look serious. And the overwhelming majority of Bible scholars do not have enough yeshiva background (perhaps Yehuda Kiel and most of the contributors to Da’at Mikra do) even to understand how from it grew the Mishnah, the Gemara, and even halakhic rulings (for example shaving with an electric razor: they discuss the prohibition “you shall not destroy the corner of your beard.” There should be some connection to “you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them.” But there one does not uproot from the root and cuts with an axe that resembles a razor. What exactly did the Torah not want us to do, in the language of Tanakh itself? And how does it connect to the word destruction in Tanakh generally? Destruction seems to me like lowering to the pit, to Sheol.)
My hand already hurts. We need to meet.
With God’s help, 7 Shevat 5778
Rav Kook (in his introduction to Ein Ayah) discusses the two proper approaches to the study of aggadah: interpretation and explanation.
“Interpretation” is “to understand correctly the basis of the statement in itself, what is placed in it in general and in detail.” Interpretation unfolds the folds of the statement and brings to “an expansion of the very things already present within the content of the statement, except that they are folded up within it” (p. 14).
By contrast, explanation is in the category of a “well” that generates from the statement new insights, stemming from the fact that “all those ideas contained in the statement have the power to act upon ideas that bear relation to them according to the laws of logical association. And every way that this statement and all the details in its expansion can act upon the nature of the intellect to bring forth and generate new things—this too is included in the statement, not on the side of the nature of the particular statement itself, but on the side of the divine power that prepared the intellectual world arranged on all its sides and ready for endless expansion” (ibid.).
The way of “interpretation” is built on inference from particulars, understanding one thing from another. By contrast, the way of “explanation” is “inquiry built according to the values of general principles,” in which “the particulars are not born and branch off from one another, but all of them together emerge from the primary general principles, the foundations and essentials of Torah and the profound secrets of its reasons” (p. 17).
One who explains words of aggadah must therefore know deeply the foundations of faith and the ways of serving God, “for they are bound up with one another”… Understanding aggadah by way of explanation must be accompanied by knowledge and proficiency in all the branches of aggadah. Just as the expansion and explanation of halakhah in its truth cannot come to full fruition except when accompanied by proper proficiency in the Talmud and decisors, in the ways of the various approaches, together with practice in analysis and straight reasoning—so too aggadic expansion must be founded on proper proficiency in all the books of ethics, character, and beliefs that we possess from all the great and pious figures of the generations” (p. 18).
When explanation is founded on firm foundations of faith, “we are confident that we labor and receive reward [even] if our mind did not sometimes align with the intention of the statement in its particularity. But so long as we walk on a straight path, and that statement acted upon our ideas to awaken us to understand and expand words of reason—we may, if not interpret it, at least explain it, and we draw with joy deep waters from the springs of salvation, and as its Aramaic translation has it… ‘fresh teaching from the choicest of the righteous’” (p. 15).
We thus learn that there is room also for explanation that yields new insights that may not be included in the explained statement in its particularity, but are well anchored in the general outlook of the foundations of faith and the ways of divine service explained in the literature of aggadah, ethics, and thought.
With blessing, S”Tz. Levinger
S.Tz.L., according to that logic one can make an explanation that fits the foundations of faith even from a telephone pole or a beautiful landscape. I look at the pole and a thought arises in me connected to the letter tet (the first letter in the word “telephone”), which has three sides like a sukkah. This certainly fits the foundations of faith (for we have received that a sukkah requires three walls. If you like, you can even see here the handbreadth, at least according to R. Shimon, Sukkah 6b, which is the fourth) as done by way of explanation.
Now I ask: did I study Torah? And again, I do not mean to ask whether by thinking that a sukkah needs two walls and a handbreadth (or three walls and a handbreadth according to R. Shimon) I studied Torah. Of course I did (though it is trivial, but here I ignore that aspect), but rather whether I learned something from the telephone pole. That is, is the telephone pole a text worthy of the name Torah, and did I study it? The author of Kedushat Levi would apparently say yes (because that is what he himself did with the sugya “lighting constitutes the mitzvah”). And I say that this is not explanation and not interpretation but cheap nonsense.
And indeed also in Ein Ayah, to which this is the introduction, and which certainly contains some very beautiful things (I am currently giving a Shabbat class on it), what constantly bothers me is that there is no study there but only homiletic quips. They indeed hit upon correct and important foundations (though in quite a few cases rather simple ones), but it is not interpretation or explanation of the sugyot on which it hangs itself. By the way, we who study it are indeed studying Torah, for we are trying to understand what he is actually saying, by way of interpretation and not by way of explanation, and certainly not by way of nonsense. But I very much doubt whether we are studying Gemara. I tend to think that in most cases—not.
I am sorry, Ailon, but it seems to me that you are not giving me credit and are not reading what I write (those who disqualify others do so with their own blemish).
Again, I saw nothing at all in your words. You explained to me the language of Tanakh and the mode of thought of its people. So what did I learn from that? What new idea or insight changed in me and taught me something? I learned history and biblical language. So what? You can also explain to me the word achashdarpanim, and that will be new to me (and also to Rashi). So what? What did I learn from that? By the same token I can teach you Old French, the meaning of the words, and the mode of thinking then prevalent in France. Does that mean you studied Torah?
So if you are speaking about some essential spiritual quality, fine. I have already written several times that on that I find it difficult to argue (to say that study of Tanakh and biblical narratives is not Torah study), and therefore I do not argue. I only claim that it does not teach me substantive things, and therefore there is here neglect of Torah in quality. And in my opinion this is what emerges from R. Isaac in Rashi’s first comment and from Nefesh HaChaim, Gate 4.
Well, if I indeed did not give the rabbi credit, I have sinned, and may my error rest upon me. But from a post that appeared here on the blog a long time ago, I did indeed understand that from the rabbi’s point of view Tanakh is not serious. (I thought he presumably would not dare say such a thing, not even to himself, and bringing it to his lips was unthinkable, and I would have understood why such a feeling arose in him, so I did not make an issue of it.) But the rabbi claims I did not understand correctly, so I will continue to answer his newer arguments (from my perspective). As a disclaimer: if in my words here I again disqualify by my own blemish, then I would be glad if the rabbi would correct my error.
No, no. I am not speaking about some essential spiritual quality. (And even such a quality is supposed to reveal itself at some stage.) I too indeed think that this study of history and language in itself is not Torah study. It depends on the learner’s intention (excluding Bible researchers); this study, even in itself, can at most constitute preparation for the commandment of Torah study (like learning the alphabet). But Tanakh is more than history and language (they are tools for understanding Tanakh). It also has content. Only one cannot approach it at all without the history and language. But indeed Bible researchers are not interested in it, because most do not believe in the contents, and most of the rest are not aiming at Torah study but at the study of wisdom (and some are very good at their craft. I can imagine even anti-Semitic Germans). But once one studies the simple plain meaning, the expositions of Torah (including halakhic ones and all the more aggadic ones) become much more understandable and stop being strange. One can really feel that there is depth in the words of Hazal and that they saw something in the depth of the verse. There is a two-story structure here—plain meaning and exposition—and they are inseparably connected.
I am not at all occupied with disputing the rabbi over whether something is defined as Torah or not. My view on the issue is divided. On the one hand, as I said, I hold by the reasoning of Rav Beck regarding the definition of Torah, because that seems reasonable to one who knows the style of the Gemara and its mode of thought and who grew up among students of Rabbi Soloveitchik. On the other hand, according to the language of Tanakh, the words of the prophets are called Torah. So perhaps we should distinguish between God’s Torah, which changes from prophet to prophet, and plain Torah, which is the Torah of Moses, distinguished by the fact that most of it consists of commandments and that they are also for all generations (through the clear lens). But my stronger claim is that even if Tanakh is not Torah (not included in the Torah of Moses), it is in the category of derekh eretz that preceded Torah. An essential derekh eretz. There is a strong case to say that one who does not study Tanakh (not just as wisdom, but who does not study the ways of God), when he studies Gemara and halakhah, will in practice not be studying Torah but wisdom (the wisdom of the Torah of Moses).
And let the rabbi think what exactly he is saying. From the rabbi’s perspective, Torah is what is substantive. And I had thought the definition of Torah was supposed
to encompass what the Torah is, not things that are substantive to the rabbi. Does some halakhic novelty at some remote edge of tractate Bekhorot teach anything substantive? The rabbi simply considers it substantive because it is the word of God, and so he will claim that it does. A kabbalist will find there some matter that teaches something about the sefirot, and a Brisker will find there some key to understanding something in tractate Berakhot. (That too is what both the rabbi and I will probably find there, because every detail is important, as in physics.) Well then, the words of Jeremiah too are the words of God and are not empty. And if the rabbi really thinks they are empty, then from him they are empty. (After all, prophecies written down for the generations were written down.) That is, the rabbi will not study them seriously and find the content in them so long as he sits back and waits for someone to prove to him with signs and wonders that there is meaningful content there beyond history and language. In order to study and see, the rabbi first has to believe that there is something serious there. Faith comes before knowledge. Why should he believe? Well, that is a good question, but it seems to me the rabbi is already there. After all, he believes in the seriousness of Torah (and at least of the prophets in their own time). So Tanakh stands right next to them.
And there is also a slightly bad taste in the wording “What does this say to me?” I do not suspect the rabbi of what I am about to claim, but he slipped somewhat in his expression. Would a mathematician or physicist say such a thing to a colleague who discovered something new? One can dismiss anything that way. He would say: I deal in topology and not catastrophe theory, so what you discovered says nothing to me and therefore it is not mathematics. That is the mentality of an engineer reacting to a physical discovery: so what do you do with it? What inventions does it lead to? And if the physicist cannot answer, he will say he discovered nothing. Or a businessman who asks: “Bottom line, how much money can I make from this?” And if the answer is “I don’t know,” then from the businessman’s point of view nothing was discovered; he just wasted his time. But the rabbi knows that in fact the opposite is true: physics and understanding nature are the goal, while practical benefit and technology are indications of its correctness and thereby serve it, not the other way around. (The opinion of householders is the opposite of the opinion of physicists.) Returning to our matter, perhaps the rabbi will agree that Tanakh is wisdom and has value that should not serve only his own personal needs, but the truth is that we study Tanakh because it is the word of God and the Torah of God (even if not the Torah of Moses), and not as wisdom like mathematics (which I love very much), for example.
So I claim that Tanakh also has content. In the later prophets this is obvious, and one needs some experience to see it, but so too in Joshua, Judges, Samuel, etc., and also in Chronicles. Those books had an intention other than teaching history, and that is really a claim on the level of plain meaning, not something from Kabbalah. It is amusing that the rabbi mentioned Rashi’s first comment on the Torah, because one of my theories is that the book of Genesis was not written merely as history. Do not forget that it was written by Moses our teacher, and from the perspective of an Israelite standing at the end of the fortieth year in the wilderness (and one can see this from several verses in Genesis). Gradually I came to understand that the book of Genesis (and I had entirely forgotten this midrash of R. Isaac, which I had never really understood because it was not connected for me to anything) was written for those Israelites with a purpose that serves the other four books. There are several proofs for this from Tanakh: that the Torah is meant to be kept in the Land of Israel (without Merkaz HaRav, Rav Kook, Kabbalah, or Ramban—just simple peshat). Genesis is a kind of proof to Israel (to themselves, it seems to me, not necessarily toward the other nations) that the land is theirs. That is somewhat strange, because it does not seem that in the ancient world one needed proof of a right over territory. Simply might made right, and no one would challenge it. The nations would not complain, because every nation behaved this way (therefore this is a midrash of Hazal; it is a deeper layer in the text relevant to the era of R. Isaac, when the world had progressed somewhat morally, and he expounded the verses and found in them his insight). But there are examples in Tanakh of claims of this sort (such as the king of Ammon’s claim against Jephthah. But Jephthah too answers him, among other things, that what his god gives him to inherit he will inherit, and what our God gives us to inherit we will inherit—which is also a kind of might makes right). Only for some reason Israel is different. It descends from Abraham the convert (who does righteousness and justice), who wanted to know by what right the land would be given to him when it currently belonged to the Canaanite—and this despite God’s promising it to him, and despite the fact that it belongs to God, Creator of the earth, and that according to the laws of the ancient world the creator of an object owns it and can give it to whomever he wishes (more precisely, God is king and therefore also has the power of expropriation). And the Holy One answers him: wait four generations until their sin is paid in full. The book recounts how their forefathers were strangers in the land and God promised it to them, but Abraham did not agree, etc., until they went down to Egypt (this also explains the creation narrative and what came before Abraham. And methodologically one has to go down to the level of how each little story in Genesis serves that purpose, but those are details not for here. Yet God is in those little details). It seems to me this is already a good example of how Genesis is more than a mere story, and how it serves the understanding of the entire Torah of Moses. The same must be done with Tanakh generally, and this is only the merest tip of the iceberg; there is much more. But again, that is a subject for a meeting (many meetings) face to face. The rabbi does not expect me to teach a course in the comments, right?
I myself began studying Tanakh after once learning a certain aggadah and not understanding at all what the verse was talking about (for one learns verses from the Gemara. Tanakh copied them from the Gemara. Tanakh is the Ein Yaakov of the verses in the Gemara. Just as the Gemara was copied from the Ketzot), so I went to Da’at Mikra and saw that they explained it in a completely different way, and the verse’s intent according to that explanation was really the opposite. And when I looked at the surrounding verses, I saw that this was indeed the plain meaning of the verse. But when I returned to the Gemara, suddenly I understood (saw) that the midrash has depth. It is quite clear that Hazal understood the language of Tanakh better than we do. It was almost like a mother tongue to them because of the historical proximity. And it is clear that they intended to say something else, deeper. I believe that if the rabbi himself begins to study the aggadot this way, the midrashim will begin to have depth and not just be clever formulations (after all, a substantial mass of the midrashim have that form, and Hazal did not distinguish among them).
With God’s help, 7 Shevat 5778
To R. M. A. — greetings,
Regarding an explanation of Rav Kook’s words in his introduction to Ein Ayah, I will later suggest what seems correct in my humble opinion. But regarding the discussion of Hasidism as Torah study—there is no practical difference, for matters that contain guidance in the ways of serving God, whether in duties of the limbs or duties of the heart, are Torah.
Whether I arrived at an idea by contemplating a telephone pole or whether I arrived at an idea through a witty deconstruction of some text whatsoever (“vort,” in the vernacular)—if at the end of the day the idea is grounded in straight reasoning, rests on solid foundations from the written and transmitted Torah, and follows the light of the interpretation of Hazal and the sages of the generations, then it falls under the category of “Torah,” and the flavor of the wit only helps its reception and internalization in the heart.
The fact that the ideas seem to us “trivial” does not diminish their value as true Torah. On the contrary: the nature of true values is that they are stamped upon the human heart, and nevertheless the Torah must say them—whether to internalize them in the heart, whether to give them a deeper dimension, or whether to create a balance between opposing values. And unfortunately, sometimes even the most trivial things are forgotten by many.
When Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev spoke of the importance of balancing enthusiastic emotional attachment to the Creator with practical halakhic precision—the matter was not trivial at all. For about 150 years, at the heels of suffering Judaism, Sabbateanism, Frankism, and their offshoots had been breathing down its neck, sanctifying “transgression for Heaven’s sake,” while from the West the lights of the Enlightenment were gleaming. Both offered release for the suffering Jewish soul, a release that threw off the yoke of the commandments. In between stood Hasidism, offering a middle path that included, on the one hand, moisture of enthusiasm in divine service—“the lighting constitutes the mitzvah”—and, on the other hand, complete rootedness in the world of halakhah and in the careful observance of its commandments.
Not for nothing is there renewed interest in Hasidism in our time, when there is a certain disappointment with enlightenment and scientific progress, which have not solved the existential distress of the individual and society, and when people are looking for taste and meaning in life, love, joy, and hope in an achievement-oriented and competitive world—it turns out there is something to take from the experiments of the generations that strove to kindle the light within the soul without losing one’s grounding in the reality of the earth.
With blessing, S”Tz. Levinger
Since your honor “learns between pillars,” and even the telephone pole stirs him to words of Torah and reminds him of the sukkah which is the “shade of faith”—I shall add my own embellishment: the letter tet also opens the word “trilogy,” hinting at the three foundations of faith: (a) God’s existence and unity; (b) Torah from Heaven; (c) God’s general and particular providence 🙂
If, when a genuine Torah idea is awakened in a person as the result of something that is not “Torah” in its essence, mention of the source of the awakening is merely a seasoning that enhances the “dish,” whose essence is the Torah message, the guidance in the service of God contained within it—
then from Rav Kook’s words, when the factor that arouses the new thought comes from “those ideas contained in the statement,” and the idea aroused because of “the ideas contained in the statement” is one of “the ideas that bear relation to them according to the laws of logical association” (p. 14)—
then one may view the result as an “explanation” that proceeds from the source itself,
The fact that a statement is explained “not only according to its own value and the matter fortified within it alone, but according to the value of all the influences it can exert, once it is explained as one places it as a spring, upon the world of ideas that proceed on a straight path,” derives from “the foundation of divine providence, which desired to benefit us by preparing causes to provide us with spiritual nourishment that heals our soul” (ibid.), and by the force of this providence the foundations were laid for the generation of renewed ideas out of logical connection to ideas already explicitly stated.
If I understand correctly, this is not speaking of an external connection of wordplay, but of a logical conceptual connection. For example, the exposition that compares conquering the city to the struggle to conquer one’s impulse is built not only on the linguistic parallel “rulers—rulers” and “account—account,” but on the idea that “better one who is slow to anger than the mighty, and one who rules his spirit than one who captures a city”: both victory in the war for conquering a city and victory in the war against the impulse depend on the ability to make an accounting that fairly assesses the chances and the risks.
With blessing, S”Tz. Levinger
It seems that also in the words of the Kedushat Levi there is a conceptual connection between the basis and the development, for even in the original discussion whether lighting constitutes the mitzvah or placing constitutes the mitzvah, the question is whether the center of gravity of the mitzvah is the practical result, in which case placing it in a spot where there is publicizing of the miracle is the main thing, or whether the personal connection of the doer is what matters, and therefore the act of lighting, in which he personally exerts himself to kindle the fire, is essential.
S.Tz.L. I too said that if the result is correct, even if it is trivial, that is Torah (and that is its reward). My question is whether we have here studied the text. That is, do the ideas of the Kedushat Levi constitute study of the sugya “lighting constitutes the mitzvah”? For if the idea in itself is correct, then it is certainly correct, and one can also learn it from a telephone pole. Then a telephone pole too is a Torah scroll, and engaging with it is engaging in Torah.
As for your last message, at that level of flexibility I can learn any idea from any source. We have completely lost the Torah value of the text. As stated, by this approach a telephone pole too is Torah, and one should recite the blessing over Torah upon contemplating it.
As for the triviality of the learning, it is built into the method you propose. It is not a side effect. For if the idea does not really come from the text and could just as well come from contemplation of a telephone pole, then it actually came from you yourself. That is, you already knew it beforehand and did not learn anything new.
But I am not of that view…
With God’s help, 8 Shevat 5778
Both by way of interpretation and by way of explanation there is often innovation. The difference between them is only in the method of inference. Interpretation focuses on the particular statement and from it infers conclusions and compares one matter to another, whereas explanation arrives from an intuitive grasp of the whole and on that basis offers an explanation of the particular statement.
With blessing, S”Tz. Levinger
And regarding your constant return to the question of the “telephone pole”: the telephone pole (or a witty deconstruction of a text) in itself is not Torah, but rather a factor that awakened contemplation. When the learner weighs the idea on the scales of his intellect and examines whether it fits with all the knowledge in the expanses and treasures of the written and transmitted Torah, and the idea proves acceptable and appears true after reflection—then this is Torah.
Mentioning the source that awakened the idea does not invalidate the Torah statement, since it has been examined and found true and grounded, and it can serve as a seasoning that adds flavor and eases the reception and internalization of the words of Torah. There is no commandment that words of Torah be dry. But it is clear that in such a case the connection between source and product is not essential.
From Rav Kook’s words in his introduction to Ein Ayah, it appears that there is a situation in which the connection between the “parent idea” and the innovation derived from it is considered an essential connection, namely when the “parent idea” is expressed in a Torah text, and there is a logical connection between the “parent idea” and its offspring—then the offspring is considered an “explanation” deriving from the original source, since it is the nature of words of Torah that they are fruitful and multiply.
Of course, the logical connection required is not a necessary inference, for in that case it would be full-fledged “interpretation.” However, when there is merely an analogy that has plausibility, or at least some sharing of certain aspects between the original source and the innovation—this may still be seen at any rate as “explanation.”
With blessing, S”Tz. Levinger.
As to the question whether the words of the Kedushat Levi are an explanation of the Gemara’s sugya: it does not bother me to say that his words derive from his broad underlying reasoning, and the use of the terms “lighting constitutes the mitzvah” or “placing constitutes the mitzvah” is in the category of a “seasoning” to the main message.
But in light of Rav Kook’s words—that the combination of flowing from a Torah source together with a logical connection between the parent idea and its offspring creates an essential connection—I also suggested a deeper explanation, namely that the conception of “lighting constitutes the mitzvah” arises from placing emphasis on the person’s personal connection to the act of the mitzvah, whereas the conception of “placing constitutes the mitzvah” places the emphasis on the result of the mitzvah-action and less on the personal act itself.
Since I have already explained my position and saw here no substantive answer to my arguments, I will allow myself to end here.
And I thank R. M. A. for bringing to my attention and to the public’s attention the words of the Kedushat Levi, which neatly summarize the path of Hasidism that combines the “lighting”—the vitality and enthusiasm in the service of God—with the “placing”—complete standing within the world of halakhah.
And by way of wordplay: Torah and worship are the “telephone pole” through which a person conducts discourse with his Creator, a two-way discourse that includes listening to the word of God, and in parallel expression for the person’s own thought and feelings.
With blessing, S”Tz. Levinger
When you go back to the sources, everything becomes clear.
The public did not so much like the rabbi’s definitions regarding poetry, assuming that the meaning of those definitions is that there is a prohibition on songs by Moshe Peretz being heard in the 2018 song parade (since his songs are prose and not really poems), and so on. That is of course unreasonable. The intuitive practical definition also includes things of this sort (prose and telephone books), because people do not study poems—they dance (or cry) because of them, and that is all.
Torah is studied (at least within the framework of “Torah study”), and in that context it makes a great deal of sense to distinguish between “prose” — cold and alienated Lithuanian analysis (or Sephardic rote repetition) — and “poetry” — Hasidic nonsense (or sense unrelated to interpretation of the text).
More power to you.