Ukimtot 2

Table of Contents

• Three examples of an ukimta with no hint in the original wording
• Rejecting the explanation that an ukimta is a way of disagreeing with a Mishnah
• Reservation about the explanation based on external traditions, and a comparison to Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner
• Ukimta as a laboratory: comparison to laws of nature and a “Platonic” world
• The casuistic assumption: the Mishnah as cases that express rules
• A disagreement with an interlocutor over the meaning of “this is the rule”
• Implications for the present and for halakhic ruling: rules versus new technology
• A central rule: the ukimta is not the novelty of the Mishnah or the statement
• A detailed application to Pesachim: “he charred it before its proper time” as a freezing mechanism
• Conclusion and postponing the Beitzah topic

Summary

General overview

The speaker seeks to conclude the discussion of the problem of ukimta through three examples in which the Talmud sets up the Mishnah or the statement in situations not hinted at in the original wording, and he proposes a principled explanation according to which ukimta is not an “interpretation” that replaces the original novelty, but a tool that makes it possible to isolate a clean expression of an abstract rule within a complex reality. He rejects the view that ukimta is a polite way of disagreeing with a Mishnah, and he is also uneasy with the explanation that these are hidden external traditions known in advance, because in the Talmud itself it is evident that the ukimta is created out of a difficulty and through an interpretive process that includes disagreement. He argues that the Mishnah and the Talmud operate in a casuistic way, where the cases are a medium for rules, similar to the way science formulates a “pure” law and isolates it in a laboratory, and from this he concludes that an ukimta always solves a side problem and does not contain the novelty of the source.

Three examples of an ukimta with no hint in the original wording

The speaker presents, in Gittin, Rava’s statement: if he wrote her a bill of divorce and placed it in the hand of her slave while the slave was asleep and guarding it, this is a valid bill of divorce. The Talmud objects that a moving courtyard does not acquire, and establishes that it is speaking of a bound slave, even though Rava did not say that. The speaker presents, in Beitzah, the Mishnah about an egg laid on a Jewish holiday, and Rava’s ukimta: “Actually, we are dealing with a hen designated for eating, and with a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath, and the issue is preparation,” together with the assumption, “Any egg laid today was completed yesterday,” even though the Mishnah gives no hint of a holiday after the Sabbath or of preparation. The speaker presents, in Pesachim, the Mishnah: “Any time when it is permitted to eat … one may also derive benefit from it … once its time has passed, it is forbidden to derive benefit from it,” and the question, “And one may derive benefit from it? That is obvious,” and the Talmud’s ukimta, “Where he charred it before its proper time,” following Rava’s statement, “If he charred it before its proper time, one may derive benefit from it even after its proper time,” while emphasizing that the medieval authorities (Rishonim) clarify that this is not talking about burning it to ashes but about intense charring, and that there is a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) whether the permission is only for benefit or also for eating.

Rejecting the explanation that an ukimta is a way of disagreeing with a Mishnah

The speaker says that it is commonly thought, especially in the academic world but not only there, that ukimta is a polite form of disagreeing with a Mishnah or with an amoraic statement, and he argues that this is difficult, because the rule is that when a Mishnah is brought against an Amora, the Amora’s words are rejected. He points out that such an explanation creates a puzzle: if an Amora can disagree with tannaitic authorities, why is he rejected merely because he failed to “wrap” the disagreement politely. He adds that in the Pesachim example this is not really “disagreeing” at all, but at most qualifying, and therefore this explanation does not fit as a general basis for the phenomenon of ukimta.

Reservation about the explanation based on external traditions, and a comparison to Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner

The speaker describes a standard explanation according to which there were extra-Mishnaic traditions that enabled the Amora to establish the Mishnah in a way not apparent from the text, and he notes a parallel to Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner’s view that Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi was careful to formulate the Mishnah in such a way that it would remain dependent on oral transmission and require “the help of a rabbi.” He says that it is hard to accept this in relation to ukimta, because in the Beitzah topic there are several different ways of establishing the Mishnah, and the fact that there is disagreement shows that Rava arrives at the ukimta through analysis and not through an agreed-upon tradition that could have been stated explicitly. He emphasizes that in the Talmud the ukimta appears as an answer to a difficulty, not as a prior presentation of “this is what we have received,” and therefore he does not see here clear evidence of an external tradition that determines the interpretation.

Ukimta as a laboratory: comparison to laws of nature and a “Platonic” world

The speaker offers a “simple” explanation according to which ukimtot are unavoidable, because you cannot have Mishnayot without ukimta, and he illustrates this through physics, where laws of nature are formulated as though they operate in a reality free of disturbances, even though in real-world experiments friction and additional fields appear. He presents this as the scientific version of “what are we dealing with here”: a world with only two bodies, no friction, and no electromagnetic field, and no one bats an eye, because it is understood that the law describes one pure component out of several operating together. He says that a law of nature is not “incorrect” in our world, but correct as a force or component that acts together with others, and he explains that a laboratory is the creation of an approximation to a clean world in order to isolate the effect and observe it in its purity. He even illustrates this in the social sciences through a possible link between frustration and aggression as an influence that may be offset by other factors.

The casuistic assumption: the Mishnah as cases that express rules

The speaker assumes that when an Amora reads a Mishnah, he assumes that the case is not there to teach a point-specific law but a rule, and that presenting the case is a casuistic way of conveying a principle through an example. He says that in a science book the rule is formulated as a rule, so it is easy to understand why ukimtot are needed to connect it to the real world, but in the Mishnah the formulation appears as a “particular case,” and therefore this assumption is not self-evident, even though it is evident in the way the Talmud works. He brings proof from the phenomenon that when the Mishnah says, “This is the rule,” the Talmud asks, “What does ‘this is the rule’ come to include?” and from this he concludes that the Talmud does not expect the Mishnah to convey rules explicitly, but to express rules through examples, and therefore the very appearance of an explicit rule requires clarification.

A disagreement with an interlocutor over the meaning of “this is the rule”

The speaker argues against the opposite claim, according to which the Talmud sees every case as a case for discussion and is puzzled only when the Mishnah adds a rule, and he argues that the question is about the form: if the Mishnah’s way is to express rules through cases, then when an explicit rule is stated, the question arises why it changed its form of presentation. He says that even before Rabbi Chaim of Brisk it was clear that there were rules behind the examples, and Rabbi Chaim only sharpened them and conceptualized them in analytical language. He illustrates this with an internal conceptual process in the Talmud, such as “an inevitable result,” which moves from an example to a general concept. He notes that the disagreement concerns how one understands the structure of the topics, but he insists that the proof from “What does ‘this is the rule’ come to include?” strengthens the assumption that the Mishnah is perceived as a system of examples that embody rules.

Implications for the present and for halakhic ruling: rules versus new technology

The speaker argues that if the Mishnah is a medium for rules, then the continuing task is not to attach a phone to an egg or a car to an ox, but to extract principles and apply them to new circumstances. He says the Mishnah “did not come to tell” us what the law is about an egg as such, but to convey a general principle such as the need for preparation for a Jewish holiday meal, and the specific food can change. He agrees that if a new case appears that cannot be mapped onto the rules extracted from the Talmud, then further interpretive work is required, and he suggests that Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner’s idea may explain why the casuistic form was chosen in the first place.

A central rule: the ukimta is not the novelty of the Mishnah or the statement

The speaker concludes that if the ukimta itself were the novelty, it would be hard to explain why the source did not write it explicitly, and therefore the ukimta always comes to solve a side problem so as to make it possible to see a practical expression of a rule that already applies to the case as written. He applies this to Gittin and argues that Rava’s novelty is not a law about a bound slave in the laws of acquisition, but rather the principle that every slave is the courtyard or hand of his master, and only in order to see the acquisitive expression is binding needed, as a kind of “laboratory.” He adds the possibility that the phrase “asleep” may be a threshold condition or the result of textual transmission, and he notes that there is a parallel topic in which “asleep” is not mentioned, and Tosafot asks about this.

A detailed application to Pesachim: “he charred it before its proper time” as a freezing mechanism

The speaker interprets the Mishnah in Pesachim to mean that its novelty is that leaven “from before the forbidden time” is essentially permitted for benefit even if the act of eating takes place during Passover, and that this is not just the trivial point that it is permitted before the time of prohibition. He explains that the Talmud is looking for a scenario in which one can split between the time to which the object belongs and the time of the act of eating, and it proposes charring it before the time as a mechanism that freezes the “timeline” of the leaven, so that a person eats, on the fifteenth of Nisan, leaven of the fourteenth of Nisan. He emphasizes that this is the Talmud’s novelty as an applied mechanism, not the Mishnah’s novelty, and he brings a practical implication from the Ritva: if it was charred in the sixth hour, the status of “forbidden to eat but permitted for benefit” is preserved even during the holiday. He strengthens his argument from the continuation of the Mishnah, “once its time has passed, it is forbidden to derive benefit from it,” and argues that if the Mishnah were dealing with the charring itself, one would expect the Talmud to establish that clause as well with “he charred it after its proper time,” but the Talmud does not do that and instead turns to other discussions. That shows that the Mishnah was not thinking of the charring scenario at all, but was stating a rule, and the ukimta comes only to provide a case in which the rule becomes visible.

Conclusion and postponing the Beitzah topic

The speaker stops before giving a full treatment of the Beitzah topic and notes that more time will be needed to continue with it, after having established the principled framework of ukimta as a solution to a side problem meant to isolate an expression of a rule. He concludes with “Yashar koach, yashar koach.”

Today I want, hopefully, to finish this topic. Let me briefly review what I said—I don’t know exactly where I stopped—so a short recap, and then I’ll move on to the practical upshot. I presented the problem of the ukimta through three passages. One passage is: Rava said, if he wrote her a bill of divorce and placed it in the hand of her slave—if the slave is asleep and guarding it, then this is a valid bill of divorce. You can give a bill of divorce to a woman’s slave, meaning put it in the slave’s hand. If the slave is awake, it is not a valid bill of divorce, because then it is a courtyard that is guarded not with her knowledge. The Talmud asks: if he is asleep and guarding it, then it is a valid bill of divorce—why? It is a moving courtyard, and a moving courtyard does not acquire. Then the Talmud says: we’re dealing with a tied-up slave. Meaning, this slave is not only asleep, he is also tied up. Rava didn’t mention even a hint of that. Rava says he put the bill of divorce in the hand of her sleeping slave; he doesn’t mention that the slave was also tied up. We make an ukimta because of some difficulty. That’s the first example.

The second example is the Mishnah at the beginning of tractate Beitzah, which brings a dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel. One of several disputes there concerns an egg laid on a Jewish holiday. Beit Shammai say it may be eaten, and Beit Hillel say it may not be eaten. And when the Talmud looks for what exactly the case is, what egg this is, what kind of hen this was—whether it was designated for eating, designated for laying eggs—the conclusion, or not the conclusion, sorry, one of the suggestions there on page 2 is: Rava said, actually we are dealing with a hen designated for eating, and with a Jewish holiday that fell right after the Sabbath, and the issue is preparation; and Rava holds that any egg laid today was completed yesterday. Meaning, we are dealing with a holiday that comes after the Sabbath—again, an ukimta that is not mentioned in the Mishnah itself. The Mishnah says: an egg laid on a Jewish holiday. And here we make an ukimta that it’s a holiday after the Sabbath, and there’s another assumption, that any egg laid on a given day is actually completed the day before. And since the day before this holiday was the Sabbath, that egg is not considered prepared, and therefore it is forbidden to eat it on the holiday. What? Not that it isn’t considered completed—it was prepared on the Sabbath. So that’s an interesting comment; I’ll get to it later. That’s a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), and it’s important for our purposes; we’ll get to it in a moment. In any case, the Talmud is basically making an ukimta for the Mishnah. The Mishnah says: an egg laid on a Jewish holiday. It doesn’t say anything beyond that. And the Talmud decides that this means a holiday after the Sabbath, and preparation, and the whole business—which has no hint in the Mishnah. That’s the second example.

And the third example is the Mishnah at the beginning of the second chapter of tractate Pesachim. The Mishnah says there: for as long as it is permitted to eat—this is talking about leavened food—one may feed it to livestock, to wild animals, and to birds, and sell it to a non-Jew, and one may derive benefit from it. Once its time has passed, deriving benefit from it is forbidden. And the Talmud asks: and one may derive benefit from it—is that not obvious? Fine, obviously before the prohibition time for leavened food begins, it’s permitted to eat it. What novelty is there in saying that it is permitted to eat bread on Hanukkah? Meaning, obviously when there is no prohibition of leavened food, deriving benefit from it is permitted. So the Talmud says: no, it is needed in a case where he charred it before its time. We’re talking about a case where he charred the bread before the prohibition time, and then this toast, this charred bread, entered into the prohibition time—this charred bread entered into the prohibition time—it is permitted to eat it during the prohibition time on Passover. You can eat toast on Passover. Yes, that’s what the Talmud says. And it teaches us in accordance with Rava, for Rava said: if he charred it before its time, deriving benefit from it is permitted even after its time. Meaning, if you char it before the time, then deriving benefit from it is permitted even when you eat it during Passover, even after its time. There is a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) whether this only permits benefit or even permits eating, but it is permitted after the time. Meaning that I can prepare myself toast on Passover. Yes, that’s what the Talmud says. And this has to be well-charred. But notice—not burned up. Not burned up. Meaning, we’re not talking here about something that turned into ash, because that is obvious. Ash from leavened food that was created before Passover is certainly permitted on Passover according to all views, even according to the views that say ash of leavened food is forbidden—those are talking about leavened food burned during Passover itself. But leavened food burned before Passover—its ash, do whatever you want with it; that is completely agreed upon. So the medieval authorities (Rishonim) here say we are not talking about burning, we are talking about charring. Meaning basically this is toast—well done, yes, a well-made toast—and the Talmud says that well-made toast may be eaten on Passover.

And again, the question beyond the interesting halakhic novelty here is that the Talmud is making some kind of ukimta here that again has no hint in the Mishnah. The Mishnah says that leavened food before its time is permitted for benefit. Who would have thought this means leavened food that I charred thoroughly—not burned, but not lightly charred either, heavily charred—and then brought into Passover, and then I eat it on Passover? None of this is mentioned in the Mishnah. Again, there is some kind of ukimta here. The problem is self-evident; no need to repeat it. What is happening here? Do we really mean to say that this is the interpretation of the Mishnah? If this is the interpretation of the Mishnah, then Rabbi should have written it that way. Rabbi couldn’t have written: an egg laid on a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath, Beit Shammai say it may be eaten and Beit Hillel say it may not be eaten? Why didn’t he write that? What’s the problem? Or Rava, who says he handed it into the hand of a sleeping slave—and he meant, into the hand of a sleeping and tied-up slave—he could have said: he handed it into the hand of a sleeping and tied-up slave, and then it is a valid bill of divorce. Or in Passover, which is even more far-reaching, the Mishnah should have said: before its time, if he charred it, it is permitted for benefit after its time. But it said nothing of the sort. Before its time, leavened food is permitted for benefit—that’s what it says. A completely understandable statement. True, there is the obviousness question, but the statement itself is totally understandable. So where does this ukimta come from?

So we saw there—I mentioned several very strange suggestions for explaining the matter of ukimta, and their very strangeness only sharpens the force of the difficulty. I said that it is commonly thought, certainly in the academic world but not only there, that ukimta is basically a polite way of disagreeing with the Mishnah, or disagreeing with the statement for which we are making the ukimta. And I said that this conception seems difficult to me. In the third example, that explanation isn’t relevant. What do you mean—disagree with what? Disagree with the fact that leavened food in… Right, it’s a qualification, not a disagreement. Fine, it’s a qualification, but that still wasn’t the intention—to take it out of its plain meaning. You’re right that there it’s really not disagreement. So it doesn’t sound reasonable, because we know the rule is that when there is an amoraic opinion and a Mishnah is brought against it, that opinion is rejected. Meaning, a Mishnah is a knockout victory. And seemingly, if the solution is that an amora can in fact disagree with a Mishnah, as long as he does it politely, then fine, let him find some polite solution for explaining the Mishnah brought against him. And if he doesn’t find a polite solution—well, what can you do? Hannah of Babylon’s trap. Impossible. So he doesn’t find a polite solution, and because of that now his words are not the law? Just because he didn’t find a polite way out? That sounds a bit strange. If an amora can disagree with tannaim, then why reject his words just because there is a Mishnah against him? What difference does it make whether you manage to wrap it in some sort of disguise as though you are not disagreeing with the tannaim? If in substance you are disagreeing with them, then that means you can disagree with them.

The standard interpretation, let’s say, is that there were traditions aside from the Mishnah. It’s not that the amora is just inventing something and disagreeing with the Mishnah; there were traditions and so on, and he says, wait a second, I can’t explicitly disagree, but we have a tradition, say a Babylonian tradition, that’s not in the Mishnah, and therefore I interpret it… in a polite way, and so on. I know there are those who want to explain it that way. I don’t think that’s such a common interpretation. It parallels what I mentioned in the name of Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner. Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner says that because Rabbi permitted the Oral Torah to be written down, and wrote the Mishnah, he was careful to do so in a way that would still leave it oral. Meaning, someone learning the Mishnah would need the help of a rabbi and could not learn it alone. It doesn’t become written Torah, because written Torah, yes, can be learned alone—but never mind. You need some assistance from a rabbi in order to preserve for it a dimension of Oral Torah. And in that conception, it’s exactly what you’re saying. Because what he is really saying is that alongside the Mishnah, the rabbis know—they transmit the tradition of what is really written in the Mishnah. Even though the wording isn’t that, that is how it leads to what you’re saying, what Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner says. That there is in effect a true interpretation transmitted orally alongside the Mishnah.

I’m only saying that this is a bit difficult in the Talmud itself, because if there really were such a tradition, then Rava should say it. There are four views at the beginning of tractate Beitzah about how to interpret the Mishnah of an egg laid on a Jewish holiday. If you say, “This is what we have received from the house of so-and-so, I received it from my rabbi,” then say so. What’s the problem? This Mishnah is dealing with a holiday after the Sabbath. And who is arguing with him at all? It’s a fact. It seems quite clear from the Talmud that this is not “the text is lacking and this is what it means.” That too is a solution—say there’s another version. That “the text is lacking” is another question; I said last time that I wouldn’t deal with it. There too, some raise that possibility, and again, Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner discusses that too—not only ukimta, mainly “the text is lacking.” But I’m saying here, at least as far as I am dealing now with the question of ukimtot, it is hard for me to accept this solution, because in the Talmud we explicitly see that we arrive at an ukimta only because of a difficulty. We don’t immediately say: right away, “I heard from my rabbi that this Mishnah is about a holiday after the Sabbath.” So what difference does it make whether there is a difficulty or not? You’re saying it’s pedagogical. Pedagogically they present it that way in order to show you that otherwise there is a difficulty. Fine—but then what about the three other opinions there? Or even more, four, I don’t remember—there are four or five opinions altogether at the beginning of tractate Beitzah. If Rava has some tradition that this is really how the Mishnah should be read, then what is the problem with saying that he has a tradition and everyone will understand that he is right? But no, there are disputes there. That means Rava reaches this conclusion on his own. It’s not that he has a tradition and then they argue with him. Not everyone accepts Rava’s interpretation, and that is, I think, the straightforward reading of the passages. It doesn’t look like a tradition is being presented here. Usually when something is brought, they say in whose name it is brought, and “so-and-so said,” “and so-and-so said,” that the Mishnah is about a holiday falling after the Sabbath. Fine, then I understand there is some sort of tradition. In most places where an ukimta is made, it is not presented that way. It is presented as one of the plausible interpretations. We have a difficulty, we make an ukimta, and that is perfectly fine. As far as we are concerned, that is our interpretation of the Mishnah.

So at the end I began by saying that there is actually a way to explain this in a completely simple way. Meaning, not even as a defense, so I think I don’t even need to defend this thesis. On the contrary, as I said, I think that if they did not make ukimtot, that would be what surprised me very much. Meaning, there cannot be Mishnayot without ukimta. I brought an example of this from a scientific text, yes, from mechanics, for example. There we find something like this—yes, a “Mishnah.” The text says: every body with mass one that is under the influence of a body with mass two has an acceleration—let’s not get into whether to call it g or force now—the force of gravity. It has an acceleration determined by the force of gravity. You do an experiment—not remotely true. It’s just false. Fine. You do the experiment in a place where there are other bodies. “What are we dealing with here?” A world in which there are only two bodies. There are no more bodies in the world. Only two. That’s what I’m talking about. Fine. You do the experiment again. Still doesn’t work. Why? Because there is friction and disturbances and an electromagnetic field acting between the bodies. No. “What are we dealing with here?” A world in which there is no friction and no other bodies and no electric charges, and therefore there are no disturbances from the field, no electromagnetic field. There you will discover that this law is true. Now, this “what are we dealing with here?” is crazier by ten levels, I think, than the wildest ukimtot in the Talmud, and nobody even blinks. Nobody even asks the question, because it is just obvious to everyone from the context that this is what is meant. In other words, it’s not even a question that needs an answer. It’s obvious. Why? And there, it’s the same ukimta. Who ever saw a world in which there are only two bodies, no friction, and no electromagnetic field? Maybe even the Holy One, blessed be He, never saw such a world, I don’t know, but we certainly haven’t. So what does that mean? What kind of ukimta is this? Is that really what you are talking about? So then why don’t you, the author—Isaac Newton, who wrote his mechanics book—why doesn’t he write it? Let him write that he means only a world with two bodies, without friction and without electromagnetic fields. He doesn’t write that. He says that a body… But this physical rule is the neutral, pure rule, in the absence of other effects. What would be more similar, say, to the ukimta of a tied-up slave or that sort of thing, would be if they established a rule but it really applied only in a place where there are seventeen and not eighteen bodies. Let’s finish—I’ll finish and I’ll argue that there too it works that way. So I’m starting from science because there it is easier to see, but I’m coming back to Jewish law.

There we make ukimtot in a way that is completely understandable. No one contests that there is some kind of incorrect writing here, or unreliable interpretation. It is completely obvious from the context. Why is it completely obvious? As you rightly said, because it is clear that we are not trying to describe some direct observational event; we are trying to describe a law of nature. And this law of nature, by the very nature of nature, lives in some abstract world, an esoteric world, a different world. In our world, that law acts together with many other laws of nature—the law of friction, the law of the electromagnetic field—all of which are true laws, and it is very hard to isolate the effect of one law and neutralize the effects of the others. So it is obvious to us that we are dealing with only one law of nature out of several that are relevant to the situation. But that law is really true—it is just true in some Platonic world.

Maybe I’ll sharpen that a bit. Before I sharpen it, let me sharpen it again—but first I’ll finish the overall move so it will be clear where I’m heading. My claim is that the same thing happens in talmudic ukimta. But for this I need to assume two assumptions. The first assumption is that when an amora reads the Mishnah, he assumes that even if the Mishnah is written in, or presents, a particular case rather than a law, the assumption is that it actually means to state a law. A general law. What in legal language is called a casuistic form. Casuistic means going by cases, not stating the principles themselves, but giving examples or cases that illustrate principles. So the Talmud chooses a casuistic form—or the Mishnah, the Talmud too—but actually means to state a principle, not a rule for a particular case. The case is only an example of the principle. That is the first assumption. And that is the assumption that confuses things, because this is really the difference between a mechanics book and the Talmud. In a mechanics book, what is formulated appears as a law, not as a particular case. It says there that every body under the influence of a certain mass develops such-and-such an acceleration. That is a formulation that by its essence looks general. It is a general law. So there it is obvious to all of us that we are dealing with a general law, and therefore we also understand that we need to make ukimtot here in order to understand what it does in the real world.

In the formulation of the Sages, it says: an egg laid on a Jewish holiday—may it be eaten or may it not be eaten? That sounds like some particular law about an egg laid on a holiday. It does not appear as a law about preparation. The Mishnah does not say: every food eaten on a holiday must have undergone preparation. That is how it should have written if it were saying this as some theoretical law, a general law, rather than a particular case. But no: an egg laid on a holiday may not be eaten, according to Beit Hillel. According to Beit Shammai, it may. So that is a private case. But the Talmud’s assumption is that this case is only an expression, by way of example, of a general principle. And that general principle, Rava suggests, is the principle of preparation. And this example merely illustrates it.

Once I make that assumption—and it is an assumption, but it is quite clear that the Talmud makes it—then this is already completely analogous to what appears in a mechanics book. Because now I too see this as an expression of a general law that comes by way of example. Now I say: fine, but this example doesn’t work, so let’s make ukimtot the way I do in a mechanics book. So after I add the assumption that is not needed in a scientific book, because there it really appears as a general law, here I need to assume that when a case appears in the Mishnah, it is not coming to teach me a law that pertains only to that specific case.

So they gave you experimental results? Yes. And then you work backward and say: what was the experiment and what was the rule? Right, but this is an experiment that was not conducted in the real world. It is an experiment conducted in some world, because these results have to reflect specifically this law without interference from other laws. Now, in our world the laws always all operate together. But why is the Talmud like this, where they give you the results of an experiment of an egg laid on a Jewish holiday? It is not the result of an experiment. That is why I say it is an experiment conducted in a Platonic world, not an experiment in the real world. It is an experiment, but a thought experiment, let’s call it that. An egg was laid on a holiday and they ask what the law is. Fine, but that holiday after the Sabbath—the Talmud reaches that through the discussion. No, your assumption is that it came up because of an actual case; I’m not at all sure that this Mishnah was written in response to a case that came to the study hall. Maybe, but maybe not. The Mishnah is simply using a case to illustrate a principle, and that is the assumption.

By the way, I think I brought some evidence for this as well. You can see it in many places where the Talmud—the Mishnah—says, “this is the principle.” “Anything that caused damage…” This comes up there at the beginning and the end of tractate Bava Kamma, or in several places. No, no—how is it in Bava Kamma? What? “Anything whose safeguarding is upon you…” Yes: “Anything whose safeguarding is upon you and whose intent is to cause damage—if it causes damage, the damager is liable to pay damages from the best of his land.” In several places when the Mishnah says, “this is the principle,” the Talmud immediately asks: “this is the principle”—to include what? Which is very strange. “This is the principle”—to include what? Bring the principle—on the contrary, if you bring examples, then ask me why you bring examples; just state the principle directly. And you see, independently now of the logic of the matter—we may discuss that—but first I’m pointing out a fact. The fact is that when the Talmud sees a principle in the Mishnah, it is not obvious to it what the principle is doing there. Because it does not expect the Mishnah to state principles. It understands that the examples the Mishnah gives are examples that express principles. And therefore it expects the Mishnah not to bring principles explicitly. And if the Mishnah does bring principles, the Talmud immediately asks what that is coming to teach. Fine? Meaning there is some assumption here—and this is evidence for what I said earlier—that when the Talmud looks at the Mishnah, it sees the Mishnah as a collection of examples that express principles. It has to be that way, because if it did not see it that way, then beyond ukimta—which is itself evidence for the point—but beyond that, if it did not see it that way, then what would bother it when the Mishnah presents a principle? So here, in this instance, the Mishnah decided to tell you the principle. In other places it told you laws in particular cases. Why is that difficult? It is difficult because even when the Mishnah wants to teach me principles, it is supposed to do so through specific examples and not through explicit formulation of the principle. So I think that is pretty good evidence for the assumption I am making here.

I think a nice example of what the Rabbi is saying is in “These are found objects.” There is the Mishnah there that talks about a cow running among the vineyards or running on the road—what counts as a lost object and what does not. And then there are several cases, and after that a whole Talmudic discussion: what if it ran on the road, or among the vineyards? And there too both Rashi and Tosafot—in Tosafot it is explicit, not that—I just learned it yesterday, so excuse me. No, it sounds like it is basically coming to teach us the principle of when we say that this is a lost object whose owner doesn’t know he lost it, because there are several difficulties there. But you see that each time they keep bringing the cases to justify it—what the rule is for a lost object whose owner doesn’t know about it. Exactly. And you see that there are very, very many examples of this. But I’m saying, the Talmudic point I brought earlier is much stronger, because in a place where the Mishnah already brings a principle, the Talmud suddenly asks, “this is the principle—to include what?” Why are you bringing this? And that is much stronger than saying that the Mishnah brings a case and the Talmud sees it as a principle. Fine, maybe yes, maybe no, there are examples of that. But here I’m telling you not only that it is true, but that in the eyes of the Talmud it is necessary. That is what I am proving. Why? Because the Talmud says: when the Mishnah brings a principle, the Talmud has a problem with that. The Talmud says: why? You’re not supposed to bring a principle—it says to the Mishnah, yes, this can’t be, why aren’t you bringing a case? Meaning here we see more than that—not only that it is the Mishnah’s way to express principles through examples, but that it cannot be otherwise. Meaning, if the Mishnah states a principle, something here is problematic; we have to understand why the principle was brought.

Even then the example has to be pure, meaning it has to really convey the principle—and that is exactly the point. It can never be pure; that is exactly the problem. It is also the problem with casuistry in general. From the Talmud, you can infer all sorts of things. Right, right, right—everyone according to his own understanding. There are examples in the Mishnah where if I read the Mishnah, it is clear what principle comes out of it: there is an injured party, there is a damager, the damager is liable. Right. And the Talmud completely reverses it and says exactly the opposite of what you thought: you thought the Mishnah says the damager is liable? No—the injured party was the one who had to be careful. So I’m saying, for that you need to bring a case and discuss the specific case. If there are such examples, they need to be discussed. I’m saying the principle itself is not like that. The classic example is the first Mishnah in “One who places the jug”: someone walking in the public domain fills the public domain with barrels there—ah, when he fills the public domain with barrels. Yes, and the question is whether he is liable or not. So the Mishnah says that the one who put the barrels there is the liable one, and the Talmud after a few discussions says no, all that was only in certain cases, and generally it is in fact the one who is walking there who—that exactly supports what I’m saying, it does not contradict anything. When it says there that he filled the public domain with barrels, it means precisely to say that since he had no option to walk in another direction, therefore he is liable regarding the barrel. But the novelty is not in the situation of filling the public domain with barrels. The novelty is that when you collide with the barrel, the duty of responsibility is on you. True, in order to understand when that really happens, you need additional conditions to exist—that there was no other way to go, that they blocked the path, or things of that sort. But on the contrary, there you see exactly the same principle: the principle is written in the Mishnah. What is the rule—whether the one who steps on them is liable? That is the principle. The Talmud has to give conditions to explain why he is not liable. Exactly. Right—if he had another option to go, then no, then he would be liable. But if not, then yes, the one who placed the barrel there is at fault. Which is not a claim. Yes.

You learn from the fact that the Talmud asks about the very existence of a principle in the Mishnah that that is not the Mishnah’s way, and everything you said. One could look at it in exactly the opposite way. I would say that the Talmud looks at every case as a case for discussion, not as a hidden assumption of an unstated rule, and therefore it is very surprised by the very statement of a principle. Why, if the Mishnah in a certain case wants to bring a principle, what is wrong with that? Right, usually it brings laws concerning examples, but sometimes when it already has a principle, it brings the principle. Yes, but if when I bring a case that is a hidden way of bringing a principle, then what is so surprising when I bring a principle? On the contrary, you have a point that you always bring through a case—so why here did you formulate it as a principle? That is a question about the content, about the form, about the shape—that is the question. But if you say that the case is brought only for discussion of the case, then bringing the principle really is a major puzzle. No, why? According to that there is no question at all, because the method is not to bring principles. What do you mean? It depends—when there is a principle you bring a principle, and when not, you bring examples. What is the problem? It doesn’t contradict anything. That’s more severe—in my eyes it is much less severe; it isn’t a difficulty at all. Meaning, the Mishnah usually brings laws connected to examples. For example, take Maimonides or the Shulchan Arukh—they also in most cases bring laws that concern examples. But there are places where a certain principle appears, that in every such-and-such situation this is the rule. Why do they bring the principle? When there is a principle, they bring it. Usually they bring laws connected to the example. You are strengthening my point. Why? Because you say the examples were brought as examples, and the principle is brought as a principle, straightforwardly. But you are saying that the example in the Mishnah is not really an example—it is a principle. Right, it is a principle. So why be surprised that it also brings principles? These are two ways of saying the same thing. Sometimes I bring the principle… So why does the Talmud ask? Why two ways? The Talmud’s question is harder, harder—from the Mishnah’s usual practice it does not bring principles at all. No, I really do not agree, I really do not agree. In any case, the answer… Every book that brings laws brings laws concerning specific cases, and when there is some area where you have a principle, then bring the principle. What is difficult about that? If you understand that you do not always bring principles, that this is not the way you usually choose to express principles, then here suddenly you formulated some general law. The question is why. That is a question. But the second option, to say that the cases are really brought for the case itself—then what is the problem? If I have a principle, then yes, they bring a principle, and if not, then I bring laws concerning an example. I don’t see the difficulty here. Okay, that sounds like a method. You’re going with the Brisker method—how you understand the passages, how you understand the structure of the Talmud, and how the medieval authorities before that understood things as principles. I don’t think it necessarily has to do with Brisk. Brisk is perhaps a more explicit way of turning the examples into principles through concepts, through a more analytical system. But even before Rabbi Chaim, I think people understood that behind the examples there were principles. The formulations just weren’t as sharp. I don’t think what Rabbi Chaim innovated was that there are principles behind the examples. He just conceptualized those principles more sharply; he created a language or a conceptual system in which principles are expressed rather than examples.

You should understand that in order to formulate principles you always need a language. For example, when we speak about an inevitable consequence on the Sabbath—an unintended act is exempt according to Rabbi Shimon, but in the case of an inevitable consequence Rabbi Shimon agrees that one is liable, “cut off its head and will it not die?” “An inevitable consequence” originally is a phrase from an example. Meaning, when you cut off the chicken’s head, obviously the chicken will die, right? But in the Talmud’s usage, and as something self-evident, it became a concept. “An inevitable consequence” means a necessary result—that is “cut off its head.” Originally it was an example. This is a process of conceptualization. But in conceptualizing, the Talmud doesn’t invent another concept; it doesn’t say “necessary consequence” instead of saying “cut off its head.” It uses the term “cut off its head” itself as an expression of the general principle. Sometimes yes—you have an unintended act, a labor not needed for its own sake, right? “Unintended act” is from the same topic. Obviously. But I’m saying, in the Talmud this process of conceptualization sometimes hides behind the same term. Yet the term shifts from use—like “Frigidaire,” yes? Same thing. Frigidaire originally was a company that made refrigerators, and at some point it became the word for a refrigerator. So it is the same process, fine?

So what I basically want to claim is that if I make this assumption—that the examples in the Mishnah are casuistic examples meant to teach me some kind of general rule—then we move into exactly the same situation as when we read a science book. It is the same principle. Therefore, the ukimtot we make are exactly what we should expect.

The second assumption, which is also true in the scientific context, is that a law does not deal with our world directly. A law deals with some abstract Platonic world, a different one, a purer one, let’s say, than our world, and that does not undermine it. If I return now to science, then what am I claiming? In science, when I say that every body under the influence of a mass experiences or develops a certain acceleration, that does not actually happen. It is not a claim about our world. So what is it a claim about? It is a claim about some world in which there are only two masses, no friction, no electromagnetic field, no other disturbance. There is no such world; it is a Platonic world that I create in my imagination. And I am talking about that world. In that world this law is completely true.

What happens in our world? Does that mean that in our world the law is not true? That is a semantic matter. I would not call it an untrue law. This law is completely true in our world; it is just that together with it there are other completely true laws in our world, and what happens is that there is a combined effect of all those laws together. Therefore, you will not see the behavior expected from each law taken separately. You need to combine them. If we speak in the language of forces rather than accelerations, then we wouldn’t even need to make an ukimta, right? We say, for example, that… that when a body is under the influence of a certain mass, a certain force acts upon it. Now besides that there is also an electromagnetic field that exerts another force on it. Fine. But that does not contradict the fact that the mass exerts this force on it. Here you don’t even need an ukimta. Here it is completely true even in our world. We are not saying it is the only force. We are saying this is the force that comes from the influence of that mass. Alongside that there are other forces that also have laws of nature of their own. That is why I deliberately chose accelerations, because with accelerations you need an ukimta. With forces you don’t need an ukimta at all. The law is completely true. But you have to understand that in accelerations too one can say the same thing.

Unless you had a device that can measure force acting on a body. Then you would also need an ukimta, because it wouldn’t know how to distinguish among the different forces. Right. But then the claim would not be that there is a force; the claim would not be what the device would show, but that there is a force. Whether the device will show it or not is another question. You can test it separately, and therefore that is… No, you need to make an ukimta in order to test the law, but the law is still true. And I claim that is also true regarding acceleration. Even with acceleration, when there are two influences, two sources of force acting on the body, one gives it a certain acceleration, the other gives it another acceleration. Its total acceleration is the sum of the two accelerations. So even at the level of acceleration you can say the same thing and you do not really need an ukimta.

I also talked—just one more second—about the relationship between frustration and aggression. Say in social science too, there it is commonly thought that frustration leads to aggression. But that does not always happen. Sometimes aggression comes out not from frustration; sometimes frustration does not lead to aggression. So who says that this law is true? And my answer is not that I claim it is true; I claim that it can be true. The fact that it does not always work changes nothing. Because saying it is true means that frustration exerts a certain force in the direction of aggression. But there are other psychological influences that can offset it, that can balance it. And because of that, I am not claiming that this law is approximate or that it is true only for a Platonic case. No. This law is true for the real case. But to see it in its purity, I need to create a Platonic world. That Platonic world, in science, is often called a laboratory. A laboratory is basically creating some piece of space in our world that is clean of many effects that exist in the rest of space, except for that one effect that I want to observe. Clean as much as possible. Usually we do not manage to clean it completely, but as much as possible we neutralize the other things. To do the experiment inside a Faraday cage so that it will screen the electromagnetic field, evacuate the air so there will be no friction, lower the temperature to zero—that is basically to create a Platonic world on earth, in order to get as close as we can to that abstract Platonic world we are talking about in our imagination, and then try to see whether the law works. A laboratory is basically that approximation to the Platonic world that the general law is talking about. So the claim that a general law talks about a Platonic world is misleading. It’s not true. It talks about our world. It is not a law that is false in our world; it is completely true in our world. It is just that in our world you cannot see it. So in order to see it in its purity, I need to isolate the other components, and for that I need to create a Platonic world.

My claim is that exactly the same process happens in the case of ukimta. The claim that a slave is basically the hand or courtyard of his master is a claim that is true of every slave, not just a tied-up and sleeping slave. Every slave is the hand or courtyard of his master. But now I want to distinguish this. I want to see—the law is always true. So let’s see, let’s test it in the laws of acquisition. Let’s put a bill of divorce in his hand and see whether under Jewish law his mistress is divorced or not. So the Talmud says: she should be divorced, because he is her courtyard. And the Talmud says: fine, it is true that he is her courtyard, but there is a side problem here, because this is a mobile courtyard, not a stationary courtyard. Fine, so let’s tie up his legs. Let’s create a laboratory. Let’s create some Platonic situation in which we can see this phenomenon in its purity. But the phenomenon itself is true of every slave, not only of a tied-up slave. It is true of every slave. Meaning, every slave is his master’s hand. Except that also a hand does not acquire if it is not a protected hand, if it is a moving hand. Therefore you have to tie up his legs. But the question why Rava did not say explicitly that he is talking about a tied-up slave—the answer is that what he said does not pertain only to a tied-up slave, but to every slave. Every slave is his master’s hand. The casuistic expression, the legal example through which I want to illustrate this principle—that is, in the laws of acquisition—that I will not be able to see unless his legs are tied. So I tie his legs. But it won’t be directly from the final conclusion—rather, we didn’t go straight, we went from the side. We set up some ukimta, but we want to go straight, only first we go to the side, then we fix it, and then go straight. No—you want to see it, but a practical expression of a general law will always need ukimtot. No, that doesn’t help us. What do you mean it doesn’t help us? Of course it helps us. I now want to know whether if leavened food is in the hand of my slave, do I violate “it shall not be seen” on Passover. We understood, three minutes. So if the slave is my courtyard… No, a slave almost doesn’t… not a tied-up slave. A slave not tied up. No, but that is the difference, because here he acquires. Exactly, so I know… On the contrary, I want to say: he wants to show that the claim that the slave is his mistress’s courtyard is a general claim, not only for a tied-up slave, but for any slave. A practical implication, for example, for leavened food. It is just that this general claim was said in a casuistic form. They did not say, every slave is his mistress’s courtyard. Instead they said that through the hand of a slave one can acquire for the mistress, which is a casuistic expression through the laws of acquisition. But in order to see that casuistic expression, you really have to tie up the slave’s legs. So you tie up his legs.

So it turns out that reality, 99.99 percent of the time, doesn’t work. Right, just like in physics. Do you also think the physics book is unnecessary? No, but physics is an abstract world and Jewish law is a world… No, no, no—that’s an assumption you’re making, and I’m going to talk about it. Absolutely not. At the end of the story we have to come to tradition. Say we only had the Mishnah, we don’t have the Talmud, and now there is a study hall of Torah scholars and so on. The chance that they would reach the same conclusion as the Talmud, in my opinion, is almost zero. I’m not sure at all. They would ask questions and so on. And the music in their heads… I’m not sure at all. I’ll tell you why—why this actually happens—again I’ll make an ukimta. Meaning, if we had lived in the first generation after the Mishnah, or the early generations after the Mishnah, then the work would not yet have been done for us. So we would have done it ourselves. What is happening here… What? We would learn from what? But the Mishnah without Rashi? The Mishnah without the amoraim? But for example in the academic world they come to different conclusions. Fine. Now I’m claiming that they are wrong. I am trying to argue a certain claim, so if they come—fine, I am saying that from the Mishnah I can draw all sorts of conclusions. No, you can’t draw anything you want, and I’m explaining why. If you understand the assumption I mentioned earlier—and that was probably an assumption known to the amoraim, and not known to academic researchers today—that assumption says that when the Mishnah gives an example, it is a casuistic expression of a law. That’s all. Once you know that, you do what the Talmud does. Right, but there are questions and answers, and maybe there are different answers. I’m saying, choosing the law—there is always freedom there, obviously. Generalization is always problematic; in science too it is like that. In science too we measure certain cases and derive a law from them. But that law can be generated in many ways. There are many ways to generalize from the particular cases.

Why, if the Mishnah had formulated the law… That is another question—why the Mishnah chose not to formulate it, and then we would have saved all the confusion over which law it meant. I said, that is another question, which I said last time we would soon deal with as well. Meaning, why the Mishnah chooses such a formulation instead of just saying the law directly, full stop. But first of all I am proving that this is the fact. The fact is that when the amoraim look at the Mishnah, they understand that in the Mishnah the case illustrates a law. The question of why the Mishnah did that is an interesting one and needs to be examined. But first of all, factually, that is the Talmud’s assumption.

But from your own field, Rava—if this is the theory, why does he say that the case is a sleeping slave? Why does Rava formulate the example as a sleeping slave? Why add “sleeping”? So I already noted this this time, and I already noted it last time. You can say it in two ways. One way: when the slave is not asleep, he is not his master’s courtyard—not even for leavened food. It may be that this is a threshold condition. And the being tied up is only relevant for the laws of acquisition. But what really? Meaning, what really? A slave? I don’t know. What is the Jewish law? I don’t know. Here, I don’t know the law on that. It needs to be decided. That’s one possibility. A second possibility: there is a parallel passage about a slave where it does not say “sleeping.” It says in the Talmud—in tractate Gittin, “he placed the bill of divorce in his slave’s hand”; in Bava Kamma, I don’t remember where—there is a parallel passage, and there it says: “he placed the bill of divorce in his slave’s hand, and she is divorced.” Then the Talmud establishes that it is a tied-up slave and does not mention sleeping. Tosafot there asks: one second, here it says sleeping too. It may very well be—and here I will indeed borrow the craft of the academics—that originally this was some statement that did not include “sleeping.” And after they had already made the ukimtot, something of the “sleeping” got inserted inward, while you still needed the tied-up part, maybe.

By the way, you have good examples from the field of taxation. The state keeps trying to legislate tax laws in order to close loopholes. And then a week later you already have seminars on how to get around the law, because if you do this and that and structure it this way and he stands over here and this is BVI then you won’t pay tax. That’s an ukimta. No, there they are looking for an ukimta where the law doesn’t work, not where it does work. No, but they are looking for an ukimta where the law doesn’t… But it doesn’t matter how you come… that the government can’t manage to tie the citizens’ hands. Yes.

We started asking why we have all these ukimtot, but now according to the conclusion you’re saying, why don’t we have more ukimtot? There are lots of ukimtot. In almost every passage, almost every passage, you’ll find an ukimta. It isn’t always called “what are we dealing with here,” but in almost every passage. Here, Rava isn’t labeled as an ukimta. Rava says “because of preparation,” on a holiday that falls after the Sabbath, but it is clear that it is an ukimta. Once you look with these eyes, you will find it in almost every passage. Almost every passage contains an ukimta. Yes.

When they closed the Talmud, when Ravina and Rav Ashi finished that era—that too is not a clear assumption—what was the intent for the future? Meaning, how are we today, according to their approach, supposed to continue this whole method? Because today we don’t have an egg, we have a telephone, and we don’t have… That is another question. On the contrary. No, listen, so the question is this: when we have new examples because of technology and medicine, are we supposed to match today’s examples to the old examples and say that a telephone is like an egg, or like a cow, and a car is like an ox, or something like that? Or are we supposed to continue with the method? Meaning, take the examples and think about the principles? Exactly. What follows from what I am describing here is precisely the second option you described, because that is exactly the point. The Mishnah is not at all trying to tell me what the law is for an egg laid on a Jewish holiday. That is not the point at all. The Mishnah is trying to tell me a principle that is always true; it does not depend on the real-world setting in which I live: that a holiday meal requires preparation. That’s all. Now, what counts as preparation? What do people eat in that period? Maybe people no longer eat eggs at all and eat other things—that is irrelevant. That is exactly the point. This assumption you’re voicing, which says that the Mishnah is not supposed to tell me laws about specific cases—those specific cases may no longer be relevant in a few generations. Right? The Mishnah really is not dealing with cases. It uses cases as the medium through which it wants to convey the general law. And now we need to take the general law and apply it to the circumstances in which we operate. So that is the living thing—meaning, okay, the Talmud remains this text, but today we still continue. Right, but do we usually work with new examples? No, those new examples are supposed somehow to fit one of the rules extracted from the examples of the Talmud. Now if not—if we have a new example that cannot be mapped onto the talmudic examples—then we will need to do new work, right.

What you said about what you relied on from Rabbi Eisenpot? That doesn’t really contradict this. Meaning, it could be that that is the reason it is casuistic. Because that is why they chose the casuistic formulation—possible. Interesting idea. Interesting idea. Yes, right.

In any event, the conclusion that emerges from this is a very important one, and now I return to the passages—it took me a long time. I’ll go back to the passages. The conclusion that emerges from here is that an ukimta will never contain the novelty of the Mishnah—if my proposal is correct. Meaning, when we say that the slave is tied up, the conclusion we should draw from the fact that the Talmud made an ukimta is that Rava’s novelty concerned every slave. The novelty is not the law of a tied-up slave. The tying up of the slave is only because you cannot see the general conclusion except in a specific situation. Fine? But what I am saying is this: if Rava’s novelty had been a novelty concerning a tied-up slave, that a tied-up slave is his mistress’s courtyard, then the question would arise: why didn’t he say so? My claim is that if Rava said “slave” and not “tied-up slave,” then his novelty is true for every slave. And what the Talmud does with an ukimta of a tied-up slave is only to let us see the novelty that is true for every slave—to see this specific expression of it. That specific expression is seen only in a tied-up slave.

And that means—this is a very important lesson. Because it is a lesson that says that when we encounter an ukimta in one of the passages, know that this is not the novelty of the Mishnah. It cannot be. Because if it were, then it would be difficult—why didn’t the Mishnah state it? This always means that the novelty of the Mishnah concerns the case written in the Mishnah. The Mishnah does not need to be corrected at all. What is written in the Mishnah is the novelty. The ukimta always comes to solve a side problem. Fine? Now I’ll show you the principle.

So with regard to Rava’s words, I already said, right? Rava speaks about a slave and does not tie him up, and afterward the Talmud makes an ukimta of a tied-up slave. What does that mean? That Rava’s novelty was said about every slave, not about a tied-up slave. Every slave. And from this I learn that it is clear that Rava’s novelty is not a novelty in the laws of acquisition. Because the novelty in the laws of acquisition exists only with a tied-up slave, and it cannot be that Rava’s novelty concerns only a tied-up slave, because he did not say that he was dealing with a tied-up slave. Rava’s novelty concerns every slave. And that is what I formulated earlier: I said that Rava’s novelty is that a slave is his master’s courtyard. That is the novelty. It has implications for many things, including leavened food, but there are others. As for the laws of acquisition, in order to see that specific expression of the general law, you have to tie the slave’s legs. Fine? That is one example. But I’ll show you better examples.

Let’s begin with the example in Pesachim that I brought. The example in Pesachim says that leavened food before the festival, before its time, is permitted for benefit. The Talmud asks: obvious? The Talmud says: where he charred it before the time and eats it after the time. But the Mishnah does not say that it is speaking about leavened food charred before the time and eaten after the time. It doesn’t say that. It says that leavened food before the time is permitted for benefit. That’s all. True, there is the obviousness problem, because that is obvious—why should leavened food before the time be forbidden? But that is what the Mishnah says. This means that the novelty of the Mishnah is not about charred leavened food. It is about ordinary leavened food. And there is a novelty in it. What the Mishnah really wants to say—and this is the Talmud’s point of departure, later we’ll see how it solves it—what the Mishnah wants to say is that leavened food associated with the time before Passover will never be subject to a prohibition of benefit, even if you eat it during Passover. Since leavened food that in essence, the objecthood of the leavened food, belongs to the time before Passover, the prohibition will not take hold of it.

Except that we have a problem seeing the relevance of this strange law. Why? Because this law really needs to split the axes of time. When we take leavened food, bread baked before Passover—not very fresh, but still edible a day later, fine—and we eat it on Passover itself, in such a case I do not need to reach the Mishnah’s rule that leavened food from before Passover will never be forbidden, because it is also leavened food now. After all, it is also leavened food now when I eat it, so obviously it is forbidden to eat it. The Talmud asks itself: where will there be a practical expression of this law, that leavened food associated with before Passover will have no prohibition of benefit even during Passover? How can you split the two timelines? To say: there is one point on the timeline to which the leavened food belongs, and another point on the timeline when the act of eating takes place. And they are not the same point. And then it isn’t leavened food then. And then it isn’t leavened food then, and they aren’t the same point. It belongs only to that one point. Yes.

Now, on the face of it, this is impossible. If you are eating leavened food now, then that means it is also the leavened food of now and the act of eating is also taking place now. How can there be a situation in which the object of the leavened food belongs to the time before the festival, but the act of eating is done during the festival? So the Talmud says: let me draw you a picture. Suppose the leavened food was charred—not completely burned, because then it would be trivial—charred before the festival. The Talmud argues that once it was charred before the festival, its state is frozen. Ever hear that you can freeze by means of fire? Usually we think you can’t. But here you can. You char the leavened food—it gets charred—and now its state is frozen. Meaning, its status remains the same even as we enter the festival. The timeline of its “leavenedness” stops. Exactly. And now when I come to eat this toast, I am eating on the fifteenth of Nisan the leavened food of the fourteenth of Nisan. Because the charring froze the internal timeline of the leavened food. Not when I eat it. I eat it during the festival itself, because otherwise, as the Talmud said, it would be obvious. To say that you may eat it before the festival—the leavened food of before the festival—that is obvious. So what does the Talmud say? No, we are talking about a case where you ate the leavened food from before the festival but performed the act of eating during the festival. The Talmud says: how can that be? If you eat it during the festival, then it is leavened food of the festival, not leavened food of before the festival. The Talmud says no: when you charred it before the festival, you froze it. It is leavened food of before the festival.

But what is the novelty here? That you can eat it after it’s no longer leavened food. It isn’t really a matter of time; the novelty here is that the charring—No, it is not a novelty of charring at all. If that were the novelty—no, you’re mistaken, I’ll tell you why. The novelty that this is considered a state of… Of course there is a novelty here, but it is the novelty of the Talmud, not of the Mishnah. The novelty of the Mishnah is that when there is leavened food associated with a moment before the prohibited time, it will never be forbidden for benefit. And that is the novelty. Now you ask me, where do we see that? That is exactly the same question as with all laws of nature. Where do we see it? Every leavened food that I come to eat during the festival—obviously we are not talking about telling me that I can eat it on the eve of the festival; that is obvious, leavened food is allowed then. Rather what? You want to say that it can be eaten during the festival. But if you eat it during the festival, it won’t be leavened food from before the festival; it will be leavened food of the festival. So how can such a picture exist? Here the Talmud comes—and yes, this is a novelty—but it is the novelty of the Talmud. It is not the novelty the Mishnah wanted to say. The Mishnah wanted to say that, to see this, there has to be some mechanism that… But that isn’t important. The principle is a principle according to which leavened food associated with before the time is leavened food that by its essence is a permitted thing; it is not time-dependent. Even if you eat it during the prohibited time, it will be permitted. And that is what is written—just one second—that is what is written in the Mishnah. Not one word needs to be added. The Mishnah says: before its time, one may derive benefit from it. You just need to understand that “before its time” does not mean the time when I eat it is before the time of prohibition—that is trivial. Rather, it means the time to which the leavened food belongs. I eat it during the festival itself, when there is already a prohibition, and they tell me: no, this kind of leavened food—even if you eat it during the festival—there is no prohibition in it. What froze it? What? Charring. Why? Because now it is basically in a state that has no standing of its own. It isn’t ash, so you can’t say it is fully permitted. On the other hand, it is no longer leavened food; it no longer has the form of bread, so it basically no longer has independent status. And who says it needs the form of bread? The Talmud assumes that. What difference does it make? That is already a discussion in the laws of leavened food.

But according to that, would it then be permitted to drink whiskey on Passover? Maybe. If the thing loses its form—let’s not now discuss when that can and cannot happen. Again, I don’t want to get into the laws of leavened food here. That is another question. I want to show the Talmud’s logic. And understand: after making the ukimta, which looks pretty crazy, what do we end up with? What is written in the Mishnah is exactly what it means. Leavened food before its time is permitted for benefit. Not one word needs to be added. That is what it says. Leavened food associated with before the time is permitted for benefit. When is it permitted for benefit? Well, before the time even ordinary leavened food is permitted to eat, so what is the novelty? No—when it says permitted for benefit, it means that you can eat it even on Passover. That is obvious. Only now the question is: okay, factually, how can such a thing be done? That is a novelty, but of the Talmud. The Talmud’s novelty is that charring accomplishes this and freezes the timeline.

I’ll bring you a proof of this. Maybe an example is nullification. Say a little leavened food fell into milk. If it happens during Passover, it’s forbidden. If it fell in before Passover? There they explain it because it is no longer mine and I can’t nullify it, because during Passover it isn’t mine. No, the nullification already happened, so it is no longer leavened food. If it happened before the festival—but after the festival I can’t nullify it, simply because afterward I can’t nullify it; not that nullification doesn’t work, but you can’t nullify because it is no longer yours. Is that not the same example of the same thing? Why? Here we are not talking about “it shall not be seen”; we are talking about eating and benefit. Nullification comes to solve the problem of “it shall not be seen.” I’m talking now about eating and benefit. Can I sell the milk on Passover? I don’t understand—if you have leavened food and you nullified it? That can’t solve anything. The leavened food fell into the milk before Passover. Okay, and it got nullified? There is the law of nullification. In nullification—that isn’t related. That’s the laws of nullification. The question is whether it reawakens or does not reawaken. That is another discussion, the laws of nullification. I thought you meant nullification of leavened food, not nullification in a mixture. You mean nullification in a majority, not nullification of ownership. Yes, yes. Fine. Nullification in a majority is something else. The question there is whether leavened food on Passover is forbidden even in the tiniest amount, and whether it reawakens or not. I don’t think that is related here. That is a law from the laws of nullification.

There is a dispute in the Mishnah whether the dispute here is over the principle or over the example. So here there may be room to discuss it. I don’t know—you could understand it this way or that way. I’m not sure you have to say that it is always about the principle. Maybe—I’ll show this regarding the egg; I’ll even show the different possibilities for Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, though probably not today. But the basic question, when there is a dispute in the Mishnah, is whether it is possible that the principle given by one tanna does not apply to the other tanna. A principle that general, an underlying principle? He doesn’t mean an explicitly stated principle in the Talmud. Is there no dispute between Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Yehuda? There are many disputes over principles. Yes, and the question is whether all principles are planned out. What? Did they think through every possible principle? No, who said they thought through every possibility? But they came to state a certain principle. I want to know what principle the Mishnah stated. The question whether I can now disagree with that principle and invent another principle—that is another discussion. He already said that here this is… What do you mean another discussion? Not from the outset—later. No, no. I’m saying that whatever you say, that is a different discussion. The question I’m dealing with right now is an interpretive question, not a question of halakhic ruling. On the interpretive level, when we approach the Mishnah and make an ukimta for it, what justifies that? Before the question of what I do with the rule I discovered or uncovered by means of the ukimta—whether I am bound by it or may invent another rule—I’m asking, first of all, on the interpretive level, what am I doing here? What is the justification for what I am doing?

So there is a principle here. And now notice what it actually says. I was still at the stage of bringing you a proof. The Mishnah immediately afterward writes—first it says: for as long as one may eat, one may feed it to livestock, wild animals, and birds, and sell it to a non-Jew, and derive benefit from it. Immediately after that appears: once its time has passed, deriving benefit from it is forbidden. There too the Talmud asks: obvious. Once its time has passed, deriving benefit from it is forbidden. What would I have answered immediately? We’re talking about a case where he charred it after the time, right? Just as before, charred before the time and permitted for benefit, now we’re talking about charred after the time. And that would not be obvious, because charred leavened food in itself is not forbidden. The novelty would be that since you charred it after the time, the determining moment for the leavened food is the moment when it is forbidden. But the Talmud doesn’t bring that at all. Instead it starts discussing leavened food in the sixth hour, a rabbinic prohibition, whether one can betroth with prohibited benefit, and they start discussing all that there. Why don’t you bring the obvious thing? After all, the previous segment of the Mishnah was dealing with leavened food charred before the time. “Once its time has passed, deriving benefit from it is forbidden”—so this is charred after the time. The answer is that the previous segment was not dealing with leavened food charred before the time. The Mishnah did not dream of such a case. It is not dealing with that. The Mishnah said: leavened food before the time is permitted for benefit. The Talmud is only asking: what practical difference does that make? Where will we see it, where will it be expressed? Ah, it will be expressed if we char it before the time and come to eat it after the time. But the Mishnah was not dealing with charred leavened food. It did not even dream of that scenario. And the Talmud itself understands that the Mishnah was not dealing with it—and the Talmud that makes the ukimta itself understands that. Just a second. How do I know? Because that same Talmud, one line later, when it asks “obvious” about leavened food after the time being forbidden for benefit, does not say that this is a case where it was charred after the time. That would have been the most natural thing to say, since according to you that is what the Mishnah is about.

That too is obvious—if it was burned, all the more so if it was charred. Even if it was burned after the time, it is forbidden for benefit. No, that’s not right. There is a dispute among the medieval authorities whether the ash is permitted or forbidden. On the contrary, according to most of the medieval authorities, ash is permitted. Since its commandment has been fulfilled there—the commandment of destruction—Rabbi Akiva Eiger and the Chayei Adam discuss this in famous passages. What does what you said prove? What? What does what you said prove? I’m saying that the Talmud itself, which makes an ukimta on the Mishnah that this is talking about leavened food charred before the time and eaten after the time, itself understands that the Mishnah is not dealing with that. And the proof is that the next segment of the Mishnah is one line after the ukimta of charring. What is it dealing with then? One second. What does the next line say? “Once its time has passed, deriving benefit from it is forbidden.” The Talmud asks: obvious. I would expect: charred after the time—that’s the novelty. The Talmud does not even consider saying such a thing. Why? Because for leavened food after the time I have simpler practical implications through which to see what it means that this leavened food is forbidden. I don’t need to create this freezing of the timeline. That comes out right. Meaning, if you char it after the time, then yes, the law is that it is forbidden, but you don’t need to reach such ukimtot in order to see the law. The law there is simple. So you talk about prohibitions of benefit, or things of that kind.

Now again, what if it became unfit for human consumption or unfit even for a dog’s consumption after the time? Then it depends on how you treat something unfit for human consumption. According to the accepted approaches, that is the same as unfit for a dog’s consumption. It is only a rabbinic prohibition. Something unfit for human consumption is forbidden only rabbinically, so in essence it is like something unfit for a dog’s consumption—simply not fit. So the prohibition is rabbinic and less severe. What? It simply isn’t leavened food. Yes, by Torah law. The rabbis decreed a prohibition on it.

All right, okay, I’ll stop here. For the Beitzah passage I’ll probably need another time just for that passage. Strength to you, strength to you.