Vayetze (5764)

From the book Mida Tova: Articles on the Hermeneutical Principles by Rabbi Michael Avraham. Translated from Hebrew using gpt-5.4 (reasoning_effort=high, batch API).

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With God’s help

Midah Tovah

Eve of the holy Sabbath, Parashat Vayetze, 5765

A. The Methods of the School of Rabbi Ishmael and the School of Rabbi Akiva: A Historical View

“And now, you have indeed gone because you longed so greatly for your father’s house…”
(Genesis 31:30)

“‘He shall surely be circumcised’ — from here we learn two circumcisions: one for the circumcision itself and one for uncovering the membrane… Up to this point, this accords with Rabbi Akiva, who says that repeated expressions are terms of amplification. According to Rabbi Ishmael, however, who says that these are doubled expressions, the Torah spoke — and expanded its wording — in its ordinary way: ‘gone, yes gone,’ ‘longed, yes longed,’ ‘stolen, yes stolen.'”
(Jerusalem Talmud, Shabbat 19:2; Yevamot 8:1; Nedarim 1:1)

Section 10: “And to the children of Israel you shall say”; “and to the children of Israel you shall speak”; “say to the children of Israel”; “speak to the children of Israel”; “command the children of Israel”; “and you shall command the children of Israel.” Rabbi Yose says: The Torah spoke in human language, in many expressions, and all of them require exposition: “Israel” — these are Israelites; “convert” — these are the converts; “the convert” — to include the wives of converts; “among the Israelites” — to include women and slaves.
(Sifra, Kedoshim, beginning of section 10)

The school of Rabbi Ishmael and the school of Rabbi Akiva

In last week’s essay on Parashat Toledot, we discussed an example that reflects a fundamental disagreement between the school of Rabbi Ishmael and the school of Rabbi Akiva with respect to the methods of drash (rabbinic interpretive exposition), and especially the thirteen hermeneutical principles. The Mishnah in Babylonian Talmud, Bava Kamma 54a concludes, “Scripture speaks of what is usual,” and we saw that it apparently belongs to the school of Rabbi Ishmael. By contrast, the Mishnah in Hullin, which does not treat the word “kid” as a mere example but requires expositions in order to extend it to all pure animals, apparently belongs to the school of Rabbi Akiva.

We saw there that Rabbi Ishmael’s school adopts an interpretive approach that allows for the possibility that Scripture speaks in human language, whereas Rabbi Akiva’s school rejects that possibility. We also mentioned a source among the medieval authorities that states this clearly and sharply: Tosafot Yeshanim to Babylonian Talmud, Keritot 11a, citing the Jerusalem Talmud quoted above, writes as follows:

And so too the Jerusalem Talmud says: these are doubled expressions, and the Torah spoke in them — “gone, yes gone,” “longed, yes longed,” “stolen, yes stolen” — and Rabbi Akiva disagrees. And everywhere it says, “This works well according to the one who says that the Torah spoke in human language, but according to the one who says…” — that refers to Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva.

We also proposed there that although the expression “the Torah spoke in human language” usually refers to doubled expressions in Scripture — in three different senses; see the Encyclopedia Talmudit, entry “The Torah Spoke in Human Language” — in fact its meaning is more programmatic and broader, and it may also include formulas such as “Scripture speaks of what is usual,” and more.

In the passage from the Sifra quoted here one can see another expression of this broader understanding of the disagreement between these two schools of study; see also Korban Ha-Edah on the Jerusalem Talmud passage cited above. Here, the expression “the Torah spoke in human language” does not refer to doubled expressions at all.

Our conclusion, then, is that Rabbi Akiva’s school understands the language of the Torah as exact, and every superfluous word — even the smallest stroke of a yod — must be expounded. Rabbi Ishmael’s school, by contrast, holds that the Torah speaks in human language, and therefore there are superfluous words that we ought not expound. According to our proposal, this is a principled disagreement about how we should relate to the language of the Torah, and its expressions in rabbinic literature may vary widely.

The occurrence of the expression in the various sources

If one examines all the appearances of the dictum “the Torah spoke in human language” in rabbinic literature, one finds it mainly in the Babylonian Talmud. In the Jerusalem Talmud, that exact formulation does not appear at all, and in the halakhic midrashim (legal rabbinic expositions) we found it only in two places: the Sifra on Kedoshim cited above, and the Sifrei on Numbers, section 112.

This is an interesting indication. The Sifra is a midrash attributed to the school of Rabbi Akiva, even though it opens with Rabbi Ishmael’s baraita of the thirteen hermeneutical principles. Malbim, in his commentary on the Mekhilta (Mishpatim, chapter 21, verse 17, section 66), also proves from several places that the anonymous Sifra follows Rabbi Judah, who expounds doubled expressions like Rabbi Akiva and does not hold that the Torah spoke in human language. By contrast, in the Babylonian Talmud we find such references many times, but, as Tosafot Yeshanim already noted, they are always associated with Rabbi Ishmael’s school.

It should also be noted that the author of Mishneh LaMelekh, in Laws of Character Traits 6:7 and Laws of Rebels 5:1, goes to great lengths to show that, for halakha (Jewish law), the Torah did not speak in human language, and he proves that this is the position of Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Judah.

Is this really a fundamental disagreement?

Rabbi Kasher, the author of Torah Sheleimah, discusses in our parashah (chapter 31, section 69) whether the principle that “the Torah spoke in human language” expresses a general view about the Torah, or whether it applies only when the Torah quotes human speech, and not when the speaker is the biblical narrator himself — that is, God.

Rabbi Kasher’s conclusion is that this rule was stated only with respect to quotations of human speech, and not with respect to the language of Scripture itself. He explains in this way the fact that the Jerusalem Talmud brings as proof for its claim a verse from our parashah, even though many doubled expressions had already appeared in earlier sections of Genesis. According to Rabbi Kasher, the Jerusalem Talmud was looking for a source that quotes human speech, and it adopted a doubled expression only for that reason, without any other motivation connected to meaning.

Rabbi Kasher then goes on to argue that a search through rabbinic sources concerning this expression shows that in fact all discussions of the phrase “the Torah spoke in human language” deal only with the language of Scripture itself, not with human speech quoted in Scripture. He therefore suggests that with respect to such quotations even Rabbi Akiva would agree that they are not to be expounded.¹ If this conclusion is indeed correct, then the principled significance of the disagreement between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael is greatly reduced.

However, the Jerusalem Talmud quoted above seems to prove otherwise — and Rabbi Kasher himself noticed this — for the expressions there are quotations of Laban the Aramean, and the Jerusalem Talmud assumes that the disagreement between Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva is relevant to them as well. The same conclusion emerges from the consistency that can be found in other disagreements between these two schools, which also appear in other formulations, such as “Scripture speaks of what is usual,” and which branch out from this same dispute.

It therefore seems clear that we are indeed dealing here with a fundamental and comprehensive disagreement. It appears that the reason most discussions of “human language” concern the language of Scripture itself rather than quotations of human speech is very simple: legal midrash derives from verses of command, and its results are halakhot. Verses of command are spoken to us by divine authority, not by any human being quoted in Scripture.

The historical development of the disagreement

Last week we already remarked that a study of the various Talmudic discussions suggests that in the generations after Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael, unified and unifying methods of exposition developed, which sought in different ways to connect their approaches and fuse them into a single system.²

If that is so, then the references in the Babylonian Talmud to the principle that “the Torah spoke in human language” do not necessarily express the original approach of Rabbi Ishmael’s school. They may instead reflect a later approach that had already combined the two methods into a single hermeneutical system.³

Both Mishneh LaMelekh there, and Tosafot in several places — for example, Sotah 24a-b, Menahot 17b, Ketubbot 67b, and Bava Metzia 31b — attempt to construct a coherent method for each of these tannaitic sages with respect to this issue, despite the many contradictions in their statements. To do so they are forced to introduce a number of distinctions.⁴ But it is possible that the appearances in the Talmud already reflect those later attempts, which involve various syntheses of the two great earlier methods, Rabbi Ishmael’s and Rabbi Akiva’s. Let us now bring a few examples of possible applications of this claim.

Examples of applying the historicist approach

1. Tosafot, in several of those places, explain that in fact Rabbi Ishmael too expounds doubled expressions, and only when no exposition is possible, or when there is evidence that the exposition is incorrect, does he resort to the principle that “the Torah spoke in human language.” It is very plausible that this already represents a certain stage in the process of unifying the methods of Rabbi Ishmael’s school and Rabbi Akiva’s school. By the amoraic period, interpreters were already trying to expound every doubled expression, in the manner of Rabbi Akiva’s school, and only when they failed did they resort to Rabbi Ishmael’s principle.

2. Another example appears in the remarks of Mishneh LaMelekh in his discussion in Laws of Character Traits. He argues that the principle that “the Torah spoke in human language” rules out the possibility of deriving a law from a doubled biblical expression, but it is obvious to him that for non-normative exposition one certainly does expound such expressions.

Here again we find a qualification of the scope of the principle that “the Torah spoke in human language.” According to Mishneh LaMelekh, no word in the Torah is really superfluous; rather, there is a rule that we should not create new laws from the exposition of doubled expressions. This is similar to the accepted principle that we do not derive law from the reason stated by Scripture. There too, this is not because the commandments have no reasons — many of our sages sought reasons for the mitzvot (commandments) — but because, for various reasons, the reason itself is not enough to create an interpretation with halakhic consequences.

3. On last week’s page as well, we saw the possibility that everyone tries to expound the language of Scripture, and only when no exposition can be found does one finally conclude that the Torah is speaking non-literally. There, however, we suggested that Rabbi Ishmael in particular is willing to reach such a conclusion, whereas Rabbi Akiva must always find some exposition for every apparently superfluous biblical expression. In light of what has been said here, even that claim is no longer so simple. Are we dealing with the methods of Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva themselves, or with methods from later generations that already include components from both of those schools?

The relevance of the historical discussion

This point leads us to the question of the relevance of the discussion about historical development. The question of what Rabbi Akiva’s own method was, or Rabbi Ishmael’s, is primarily a historical question. The important question for the student of Torah is this: what method did these two foundational schools create for us? In other words, how are the final methods of exposition, as they were transmitted to us, structured? Is there only one such method? Did an inclusive synthesis emerge, one that can be used consistently? Or are there several methods — even if each is composed of the two basic tones in different proportions and in different forms — and must we decide, for purposes of halakha, which of them is to guide us?

It is important to emphasize that historical research into the hermeneutical principles differs in essence from other halakhic topics. In an ordinary halakhic topic, there is much room to say that the historical question may not be relevant.⁵ What binds us from a halakhic point of view, and what constitutes “Torah” for us in general, is only the final form of Torah as it has been transmitted to us. In recent years a major struggle has been taking place over this ideological issue, and perhaps we shall return to it in the future. Here we will merely note that with respect to the system of drash, the situation seems fundamentally different. In this area we have not received an orderly and coherent tradition at all. The rules of exposition are unclear to us, and the relations among them are even less clear. Therefore it may be that specifically here a consensus can be formed between the opposing sides, because the reasonable way to clarify how the hermeneutical principles are used is to trace their appearances and development throughout rabbinic literature — a process in which historical analysis can certainly play an important role.

B. The Meaning and Root of the Disagreement

Introduction

Understanding the disagreement between these two schools is extremely important. If we indeed wish to understand the paths of synthesis adopted by the sages of later generations, then we must understand the principles that guided the founders of the two schools that serve as the parent frameworks for all those syntheses. In accordance with the conclusion we reached above, we shall assume that their disagreement is fundamental and comprehensive.⁶

Two ways of understanding the disagreement between Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva

In last week’s page we addressed the approach that grants autonomy to the different interpretive planes of the Torah. This position holds that peshat (the plain sense) and drash should each, independently, offer a full interpretation of the biblical text.

Following that discussion, one may infer that Rabbi Ishmael’s interpretive approach, which does not accept the autonomy of the interpretive planes, is based on two different claims:

1. The Torah does in fact speak in human language.
2. This peshat principle removes the need to expound doubled expressions and the like.

Accordingly, the basis of Rabbi Akiva’s method can also be understood in two different ways, because he may disagree with either of the claims that underlie Rabbi Ishmael’s approach:

1. The Torah does not speak in human language, and then there is no need to assume the autonomy of the interpretive planes.
2. The Torah does speak in human language, but according to Rabbi Akiva the Torah must still be fully and autonomously explained on the plane of drash alone.

According to this second proposal, the peshat principle that the Torah speaks in human language — especially when it quotes human beings, where the claim is even more plausible — is indeed true, but it does not help us fill a gap on the plane of drash. Each plane stands on its own.

Consequences

In last week’s page we suggested that Rabbi Akiva’s method is such that even if we have expositions that lead us to the conclusion that the Torah speaks imprecisely, we are still troubled by the question of why it does not write its meaning explicitly and clearly. For example, if we conclude that the word “kid” is not specific, and that the intent is all animals, why does the Torah not state explicitly that the law applies to all animals? According to Rabbi Akiva, the Torah does not write in human language, and therefore even expositions will not help prove that in a particular place it nevertheless chose to do so. This argument seems to support the first of the two interpretations above of Rabbi Akiva’s position.

By contrast, if we understand his method in the second way, then there is no principled obstacle to saying that the Torah speaks in human language. Therefore, when there are expositions that explain why the Torah chose to formulate matters by means of examples rather than spelling out its intent explicitly, there is nothing to prevent us from concluding that here the Torah speaks in human language — for after all, we are expounding the verses.

Mishneh LaMelekh and Tosafot suggest, in explaining Rabbi Ishmael’s method, a direction exactly opposite to what we proposed above. According to them, Rabbi Ishmael too tries to expound the verses, and only when he does not succeed does he claim that the Torah speaks in human language. If so, then Rabbi Ishmael specifically holds the second view that we suggested in Rabbi Akiva’s opinion. And on that basis it is clear that Rabbi Akiva maintains that the Torah does not speak in human language at all, and therefore even when that conclusion emerges from the expositions he refuses to accept it, in line with our earlier conclusion.

We have already noted that many scholars — see, for example, Abraham Joshua Heschel’s Torah from Heaven in the Mirror of the Generations — pointed out that in later generations a synthesis emerges between the two schools, and here we have suggested one example of that. We are proposing a method of exposition that tends to seek interpretations for doubled expressions, but when it fails to do so, it is willing to settle for the claim that the Torah spoke in human language. Such a direction fits the claim that the Torah indeed does speak in human language, but that on the plane of drash this cannot “fill holes” for us. We are supposed to try to find the drash interpretation of the text, and not simply settle for the peshat interpretation that this is ordinary human language.

Additional points of contact between peshat and drash

There are other ways in which peshat considerations penetrate the midrashic plane. For example, there are various types of hermeneutical principles that can be applied only when the verse is “available,” that is, when there is some superfluity in a word, or sometimes even in a letter, which allows us to perform an exposition. There are two different kinds of relevant superfluity on the basis of which the sages perform an act of midrash:

1. A word or letter that is superfluous from the standpoint of the peshat wording.
2. A word or letter that is not being used for some other exposition.

The first case is a peshat consideration that leads us to perform drash. This fits more naturally with Rabbi Ishmael’s approach, which uses peshat as the substrate for drash. The second case is an intra-midrashic consideration, one that expresses the view that the text as a whole must be fully expressed and explained autonomously on the plane of drash. This fits more naturally with Rabbi Akiva’s position, according to which the plane of drash is supposed to offer a full interpretation of the biblical text without any necessary connection to the plane of peshat.

This is yet another possible expression of the synthesis that took shape over the generations between Rabbi Ishmael’s method and Rabbi Akiva’s method.

C. Parallel Planes of Explanation

Can there be several explanations of the same text? Interpretive determinism

In the previous section, we presented the position that the planes of peshat and drash, each on its own, are supposed to provide a full and coherent interpretation of Scripture.

But can the very same text really be interpreted in several ways, with all of them being true? The question can be broadened to the concept of explanation in general. Can one offer several true explanations of the same occurrence, or several different causes of the same event?

De facto, it seems that one can. We do this all the time. For example, when Newton felt the apple fall on his head — the second most famous apple in history — he could have explained that event as a punishment for a sin he had committed, for example, that he had not turned the other cheek. But instead he chose to draw a scientific conclusion from it and to argue that objects fall toward the earth because of gravity. Which of the two is the true explanation, the theological or the physical? What is the true cause of the apple’s fall?

It would seem that both causes are true. Theologically, the apple falls because of the sin; physically, it falls because the earth’s gravitational force overcomes the strength of the connection between the apple and the branch that holds it. This is probably also the correct way to understand the Torah’s promises that rainfall depends on our mitzvot and sins, and not only on the meteorological conditions required for rain, and so forth.

However, the claim that there can in principle be a duality of explanations is far from simple. The statement “A is the cause of B” is usually interpreted to mean that B cannot fail to occur whenever A is present — that is, A is a sufficient condition for B.⁷ But what would happen if Newton failed to turn the other cheek, yet the branch that tied the apple to the tree were stronger than the force of gravity trying to pull it down? And what if the opposite happened? If the apple were to fall, many would say that this would be an event without a physical cause, or without a theological cause. In other words, there would be a contradiction here to the principle of causality, at least on one of those two planes. If so, then seemingly only one of those two explanations can be correct. There cannot be two explanations of the same thing, because an explanation — or a cause, on any plane of reference — is supposed to constitute a necessary and sufficient condition for what is being explained. This is the root of the claim of “interpretive determinism.”

Between explanation and interpretation

If this is true of causes or explanations, then it is highly plausible that, for that same reason, multiple interpretations of the same text — or of the same event — cannot all be true at the same time. Either the author intended one interpretation, or he intended the other.

But there is a difference between interpretations of a text and explanations of events, and therefore interpretive determinism does not appear to be necessary. In principle, it could be that someone composes a text and hides within it several layers of explanation. A text can be explained on several planes simultaneously, and all of the explanations may yield principles and conclusions that are true. To be sure, this is an almost impossible task, assuming that the text is long and detailed, and that the contents themselves are not overly elastic, such that they cannot easily be adjusted to the draconian constraints of this sort of “encoding.”

The meaning of what we saw above is that God implants in Scripture a peshat layer and a drash layer, each of which on its own constitutes a full explanation of the text. In fact, there are other layers of explanation as well, such as allusion or esoteric meaning. “The Torah has seventy faces.”

To conclude, let us cite a disagreement among the medieval authorities on this very point. Maimonides, in the second root, writes as follows:

Their confusion has gone even farther than this: when they found an exposition on a verse from which one would be obligated to perform some act or to exclude some matter, and all of these are certainly rabbinic, they counted them among the commandments, even though the plain sense of the verse does not indicate any of those matters — despite the principle our sages, of blessed memory, taught us, namely: “A verse never departs from its plain meaning.” And the Talmud asks everywhere: “What is the verse itself speaking about?” For when they found a verse, they derived many things from it by way of elucidation and proof…

Maimonides’ claim is that there can be only a single interpretation for any text. Therefore, peshat is the only true interpretation, and drash cannot be another true interpretation alongside it. On the basis of this very assumption, Maimonides derives his innovative position that the expositions are not biblical laws, but are rather “like branches that emerge from roots”; see the page on Parashat Hayyei Sarah. Nahmanides, by contrast, in his glosses there, forcefully argues the opposite. Here are two examples from his language:

And so it is everywhere: when a verse is expounded for them by way of parable and figure, they believe that both are true — the inner and the outer…

They did not say that a verse means only its plain sense. Rather, we have its exposition together with its plain sense, and it does not depart from either of them. Scripture can bear all of it, and both are true.

Summary

In this essay we saw that the rule “the Torah spoke in human language” is a principle with broad significance, one that is disputed between the school of Rabbi Ishmael and the school of Rabbi Akiva. We pointed out that this disagreement becomes increasingly narrowed over the generations, until it yields a synthesis that fuses those two schools into a single method of exposition. The historical discussion is certainly relevant and important for the systematic examination of that synthesis, especially in light of the fact that the tradition we possess regarding the methods of exposition and the relations among them is far from fully clear. At the end of our discussion, we addressed the question of interpretive determinism and saw that the disagreement over it goes back at least to the time of Maimonides and Nahmanides.

Footnotes

A similar doubt arises with respect to the Shulchan Aruch. Several commentators and scholars have already noted this — I recall an article by Professor Meir Benayahu on the matter — namely, that it is unclear whether it attempts a unified codification at all, or whether it rules in each discussion locally. If the second view is correct, then there is no reason to be troubled when we encounter inconsistency — at least when it is not blatant and obvious — in its rulings.

This is a thesis that requires clarification and justification in its own right, both with respect to the Shulchan Aruch and with respect to the hermeneutical principles, and this is not the place for it.