Rabbi Gedaliah Nadel’s Thought: Midrash in Halakha – Lesson 1

Table of Contents

• General overview.
• Peshat and derash as parallel planes
• Aggadic derash versus halakhic derash
• Henshke, the Vilna Gaon, and combining peshat and derash in halakhic decision-making
• What is derash, and what is non-literal peshat
• The strangeness of midrashic tools and the example of “et”
• Two rejected solutions to the strangeness: derash as mere support, and arbitrary code
• The development of the interpretive rules: the dispute over “a law given to Moses at Sinai” versus academic research
• The “natural language” model and formalization after forgetting
• Analogies to violins, science without feedback, and the multiplication of rules
• Authority versus ability in derash
• Wittgenstein, “there is no what without a why,” and the need for logic in rules
• The rules of derash as a general interpretive tool, and Rabbi HaNazir
• Beyond Rav Dalia’s reading: derash as the source of Jewish law based on nuances of language

Summary

General overview.

The text argues that derash is not the “deeper layer of peshat,” but rather a plane parallel to peshat, and that both can be correct interpretations that coexist, though the relationship between them changes between aggadic derash and halakhic derash. It emphasizes that the midrashic tools sometimes seem strange, and therefore solutions were proposed such as seeing derash as mere support, or as a formal code lacking logic, and both are rejected. It proposes an understanding according to which the world of derash was given at Sinai, but the rules of derash and the interpretive toolbox were historically formulated and developed in order to reconstruct patterns of interpretation that had been forgotten, similar to grammar distilling a natural language. It adds that applying rules requires logic and a foundation of understanding, and cannot be blind mathematics. Later, it brings a passage from Rav Dalia arguing that derash is the source of Jewish law and is based on nuances of wording and the rules of language, rejecting mnemonic signs and secret codes, and attributing the difficulty of understanding to the gap in our knowledge of biblical language.

Peshat and derash as parallel planes

The text argues that the view which sees derash as the “deeper layer of peshat” leads to the conclusion that peshat is not really a correct interpretation, but only a superficial stage replaced by derash, and therefore that view is mistaken. It attributes to the Vilna Gaon and his students the position that derash is a plane parallel to peshat, and that both are valid interpretations produced through different toolboxes. It uses the example of “an eye for an eye” to show that understanding derash as the depth of peshat turns peshat into an error, whereas understanding them as parallel allows both planes to exist together.

Aggadic derash versus halakhic derash

The text explains that in aggadic derash one tends to see peshat as the historical description, while derash is the conceptual meaning that does not necessarily compete over the facts themselves. It raises a question such as whether our forefather Abraham was thrown into the fiery furnace in order to illustrate that even in aggadah the question of historical truth arises, but in practice derash is understood as a lesson beyond the history. It argues that in Jewish law the situation is often perceived as the reverse, because derash determines practical law while peshat is pushed aside into merely value-oriented meaning. Against this, it presents an approach claiming that both peshat and derash operate within the halakhic arena.

Henshke, the Vilna Gaon, and combining peshat and derash in halakhic decision-making

The text mentions an article by Henshke that cites, in the name of the Vilna Gaon, examples showing that peshat and derash are parallel interpretations, not depth versus surface. It argues that the common halakhic approach, according to which only derash is binding while peshat remains conceptual, is not correct according to Henshke, because both interpretations have halakhic significance. It brings a view in the Talmud according to which “an eye for an eye” requires payment based on the value of the damager’s eye rather than the injured party’s eye, and explains this as a combination in which peshat establishes that the punishment is directed at the damager’s eye, while derash replaces the removal of the eye with monetary compensation. It adds the verse “You shall take no ransom for the life of a murderer” as a complement showing that there are areas where ransom is forbidden and areas where ransom does exist, framing the damager as a possible case of ransom.

What is derash, and what is non-literal peshat

The text defines derash as an interpretation that does not emerge from the initial reading of the verse, and emphasizes that peshat is not necessarily identical with a literal interpretation. It brings “the hand of God” as an example showing that the simple reading is not an understanding of a physical hand, and yet it is still considered peshat rather than derash. It notes that Rabbi Weitman responds to Henshke’s articles and presents examples showing that peshat is an ordinary reading grounded in background assumptions, and not just in literal components.

The strangeness of midrashic tools and the example of “et”

The text illustrates the strangeness of some of the tools of derash through the exposition of “The Lord your God shall you fear” as including Torah scholars, and through the question of why the word “et” is considered superfluous and therefore inclusive. It presents Shimon HaAmsuni as one who expounded “all the ets in the Torah,” and raises the possibility that there are criteria for when “et” calls for exposition, rather than every instance of “et” doing so in practice. It demonstrates a comparison between verses with “et” and verses without “et,” and suggests that sensitivity to biblical language may explain when the exposition is triggered.

Two rejected solutions to the strangeness: derash as mere support, and arbitrary code

The text presents one solution that attributes all the Jewish laws to a tradition from Sinai and sees the derashot as mere support, attributing this position to Gersonides, while arguing that this turns the derashot into an implausible game and does not even solve the problem of persuasion. It brings an example from Rabbi Akiva on the Sabbath that is presented as a creative derash, changing an early practice and generating a halakhic consequence, in order to show that there are derashot that create law. It presents a second solution according to which derash is an arbitrary formal code like At-Bash, and rejects it on the grounds that there are disputes among the Sages in matters of derash, and there is no mechanical algorithm that determines what to include and what to count as inclusive.

The development of the interpretive rules: the dispute over “a law given to Moses at Sinai” versus academic research

The text describes a sharp gap between the traditional world, in which the medieval authorities (Rishonim) agree that the rules of derash are a law given to Moses at Sinai, and academic research, which sees them as a historical development with possible influences from the ancient Near East, including mention of Lieberman and “Greeks and Greekness in the Land of Israel.” It presents a historical sequence of the seven rules of Hillel the Elder, the thirteen rules of Rabbi Ishmael, a parallel set in Rabbi Akiva’s style of inclusion and exclusion, and thirty-two or thirty-four rules in Rabbi Eliezer son of Rabbi Yose HaGelili. It adds that there are derashot in the Talmud that do not fit into the known rules, and therefore in practice there are many dozens of rules.

The “natural language” model and formalization after forgetting

The text proposes that both sides are right in the sense that derash was given at Sinai, but the formulation of the rules is a process of formalization that arose because of forgetting and growing distance from the source. It describes a model in which the Holy One, blessed be He, “learns with Moses our teacher as study partners” and transmits to him the interpretations of the verses, including derash and peshat, without transmitting names of rules such as a fortiori reasoning or verbal analogy. It brings the aggadah about the forgetting of “three thousand laws and one thousand seven hundred a fortiori arguments and verbal analogies” during the days of mourning for Moses, and their restoration through the “dialectical analysis” of Othniel son of Kenaz, as a description of extracting patterns and rules from what remained. It compares this to language acquisition, in which a child speaks a language without knowing grammar, whereas a foreign learner needs rules distilled from natural usage.

Analogies to violins, science without feedback, and the multiplication of rules

The text uses the example of Stradivarius to distinguish between a living craft and reconstruction by means of measurable rules, and argues that rules are only an approximation of the thing itself. It says that in Torah there is no experimental feedback, and therefore the reconstruction is “speculative scientific work” without feedback, except perhaps for the possibility of comparing with sources that were not used when deriving the rules. It explains that the farther one gets from Mount Sinai, the more “crutches” of rules are needed, and therefore the system of interpretive rules branches out. It adds that already in the Talmud there is almost no creative derash in the hands of the Amoraim, and after the Talmud almost no new derashot are produced.

Authority versus ability in derash

The text argues that there is no indication that one needs ordination in order to use the tools of derash, and sharpens the point that the real question is authority to bind others, not the basic ability to expound. It notes that Maimonides seems to view derash as a tool that every Torah scholar is supposed to use, even if his halakhic ruling does not bind others without the authority of a great religious court.

Wittgenstein, “there is no what without a why,” and the need for logic in rules

The text brings Wittgenstein’s problem of following a rule in order to show that one cannot continue an “and so on” from examples without understanding the principle, and therefore one cannot derive a midrashic rule system if it is arbitrary and devoid of logic. It argues that the “Brisker” illusion of dealing only with the “what” and not the “why” is mistaken, because defining the “what” depends on understanding the “why.” It concludes that the rules of derash must reflect forms of inference and logic that can be understood and extended even outside Torah.

The rules of derash as a general interpretive tool, and Rabbi HaNazir

The text argues that structures such as generalization and specification and then generalization can be applied even to non-biblical texts, and brings examples from later authorities (Acharonim) who expounded the responsa of Maharam of Rothenburg in that way. It presents this as proof that we are dealing with a natural interpretive logic of examples and expansion around them, and not with some accidental code. It mentions Rabbi HaNazir in “The Voice of Prophecy,” who argues that the rules of derash are “the toolbox of Jewish logic,” and distinguishes between deductive Greek logic and a Semitic logic that is non-necessary and based on analogy and rhetorical tools.

Beyond Rav Dalia’s reading: derash as the source of Jewish law based on nuances of language

The text opens with a reading from Rav Dalia, who formulates that the Talmud is full of derashot as sources for Jewish laws, and that derash is a binding source similar to an explicit verse. It raises the question whether the derashot are mnemonic signs, and rejects that by arguing that derash is the source of the law, not an external sign, and not a “hidden secret” or secret code either. It states that derash emerges from logical reflection on the text and its style, and from precision in language according to the rules and patterns of the language, and attributes the difficulty of understanding to the fact that we do not know the ways of the language well enough. It cites, in the name of Ramchal in “The Way of Understanding,” the proposal that there were hidden methods that disappeared, and rejects it by arguing that the Torah is written in beautiful and clear language, and that a person with logic and knowledge of language can understand the methods of the Sages, even though one should not argue with them because our knowledge is meager compared to theirs.

Now we’re starting to talk about derashot. Last time I already began giving an introduction, and I talked about the concept of derash in general, about the relationship between peshat and derash, that there are those who see derash as the depth of the peshat, and it seems to me that the Netziv, by the way, is among them. And I think they’re wrong. Meaning, in my view—again, I didn’t invent this, the Vilna Gaon already writes this and his students quote it in his name—that derash is a plane parallel to peshat. Meaning, when you interpret the Torah on the level of peshat and when you interpret it on the level of derash, these are two interpretations that exist side by side. Because if you treat derash as the depth of peshat, then that means that peshat is an incorrect interpretation—that’s really the implication. That peshat is an incorrect interpretation, and the true interpretation is derash; it’s just that in order to understand that this is the true interpretation you have to look elsewhere, make comparisons, get to the depth of the peshat, right? But in the final accounting, what comes out is that derash is the correct interpretation and peshat is not really an interpretation at all, it only seems like one—it’s a mistake. And it seems to me that that’s not so; that’s generally not the right way to look at it. What does “depth” mean? What’s the intention? “The depth of the peshat” means that when you—it’s like, say, life and the depth of life. No, no, this isn’t just words. There’s something here. Take, for example, “an eye for an eye” means monetary payment. Fine? So when you read the verse “an eye for an eye,” it means to gouge out an eye, right? That’s the simple meaning. Okay? But there’s the depth of the peshat. What does that mean, the depth of the peshat? That if you look at all kinds of other places where it says something in place of something else, or at the context of the verses, what’s called “a matter learned from its context,” or things like that, then suddenly you see that really this “for” means payment. Let’s say—I’m just saying this as an example—there are such suggestions. Okay? So that means that the interpretation that speaks about payment comes to replace the interpretation of the eye; it doesn’t come alongside it. Meaning, it’s not that there’s another plane: there’s a peshat plane and a derash plane. Rather, peshat is a superficial interpretation, and the true interpretation, once you examine the matter in depth, is derash. But only one is correct. Exactly—that’s the conception behind that. Meaning, there is only one correct interpretation, at least let’s say between peshat and derash. I don’t know, maybe they don’t necessarily commit themselves to saying there’s always only one interpretation, but when there’s a clash between peshat and derash, the true interpretation is derash and not peshat. Fine?

Now, that’s one approach. And I mentioned Henshke’s article, where he talks about this—he wrote it as a young man—and he shows, quoting the Vilna Gaon, and as is known the students of the Vilna Gaon bring this in his name, and he shows several nice examples, I think, for this point: that this is not correct. Meaning, there is an interpretation in the way of peshat, and there is an interpretation in the way of derash, and they are two interpretations living side by side. Therefore derash is not the depth of peshat, but rather an interpretation made with different tools than peshat interpretation. There is one system of tools, the tools of derash, which are interpretive tools different from the tools of peshat, and each tool system yields an interpretation. There is an interpretation given by the system of peshat tools, and that is called peshat, and there is an interpretation offered by the methods of derash, and that is called derash. And each such tool system is a different toolbox, and each gives a different interpretation. Which one is the correct interpretation? Both are correct. What is the relationship between them? They do something different in practical Jewish law. That’s it—now the question is what the relation between them is. Do we gouge out his eye or not? Exactly.

Now as for derash—more than that, there’s PaRDeS—no, that’s four. Yes, I’m talking right now only about peshat and derash; let’s leave the others aside for now. There’s more. Even in peshat and derash there may be more than one. Those are just headings. But let’s say for our discussion right now it’s peshat versus derash. Now with regard to aggadic derash, fine. I say okay, there’s a plain interpretation and I also make a midrashic interpretation. Although even there you have to ask: so what actually happened? Was Abraham our forefather really thrown into the fiery furnace or not? Meaning, the historical fact either happened or didn’t happen. So even in a non-halakhic context there is room to ask whether both interpretations are correct. But there, usually, it seems to me that we tend to think that the plain interpretation is the historical description, and the midrashic interpretation is something that comes to teach us something beyond the history. It doesn’t come to compete on the factual field, but to teach us other lessons, even when that is done in a seemingly interpretive form. But the intention is not necessarily that this is what actually happened there; it may be that it happened too, but that isn’t necessary.

But on the plane of practical Jewish law—there too, usually people are accustomed to thinking the opposite of what they think on the plane of aggadic derash. Usually people are accustomed to think, for example, that “an eye for an eye” means monetary payment—usually they think that derash is the law. And that’s obvious: whenever they make a derash, the derash is what is ruled in practice. Meaning, when the Sages say “an eye for an eye” means money, then in practice, in religious court, they obligate monetary payment; they don’t gouge out an eye, because the derash is the law. So what is peshat? Is peshat also a correct interpretation? Peshat is something conceptual—really the exact opposite of what I said before about aggadic midrash. In aggadic midrash, the historical fact is the peshat and the derash is something conceptual. Okay? In halakhic derash, people see the whole thing as the reverse. So in derash, at least in the common conception, unlike peshat—what? They see it as the reverse, unlike peshat. Yes. The relation between peshat and derash is not in the way of peshat. Yes, meaning in the context of halakhic midrash, then the midrash is the practical law and the peshat is something conceptual: that really he ought to have had his eye gouged out, but in practice the derash is what determines it and he has to pay money. That’s how it is usually understood.

So Henshke brings that approach there and claims it’s not correct. As I mentioned, he claims it’s not correct, but rather both interpretations play on the halakhic field. Both the peshat interpretation and—and it’s still two, meaning not that one is correct and the other gets thrown out. Both interpretations are correct, but neither of them is merely conceptual. It may be conceptual too, but not only. Meaning, both have halakhic significance. I brought a very simple example, even though it was not ruled that way in Jewish law, but there is such an opinion in the Talmud: “an eye for an eye” means money, but the payment is according to the value of the injurer’s eye and not the victim’s eye. And I said that the natural way—this is Henshke’s example—the natural explanation of that is really some kind of combination of peshat and derash. Peshat says that really your eye should be gouged out, and derash says that instead of an eye one pays money. But now it turns out to be in place of my eye, not in place of the victim’s eye. If you read the verse plainly, it means to gouge out my eye. Its derash is to pay him the value of his eye. He says no: since both of them play on the halakhic field, they have to be combined in order to reach a halakhic bottom line. And then he says that really you need to gouge out my eye—that’s peshat. And derash says that instead of gouging out my eye, they take money from me. Money for what? In place of my eye. That has halakhic significance, because maybe he sees well and the other one is blind. Right, obviously. Or he has only one eye. Otherwise what’s the argument about? The argument is where there’s a difference in valuation between the injurer’s eye and the victim’s eye, obviously. And therefore that’s really the claim.

Now again, this wasn’t ruled that way in practice, I’m saying—it’s a very nice example, I think—but in practice we rule that it’s according to the victim’s eye. And what I mentioned is also written: “You shall take no ransom for the life of a murderer.” So from here you can indeed see the completion of that interpretation. With respect to a murderer, the Torah forbids taking ransom; you have to punish him with the punishment he deserves and not take money instead. But “you shall take no ransom for the life of a murderer” implies that on the conceptual level there are places where we can take ransom, and the Torah defines them. There are places where ransom is paid: an ox that gored a person and killed someone, and so on—there is ransom. Fine? So there are places where ransom is taken. The claim of the tanna who says this means the value of the injurer’s eye is that here too, really, this is a case where ransom is taken. So instead of taking your eye, they take monetary ransom from you. What is forbidden in the case of a murderer—you can’t take money from him instead of killing him, but have to give him the punishment written in the Torah—in the case of someone who injures another, yes. Fine?

In any event, for our purposes I’m only saying this is an example of how both interpretations play on the halakhic field, and the halakhic bottom line is some kind of combination of the two. And he has another two or three examples there, which I think really are nice examples. By the way, even on “an eye for an eye,” he explains there that even according to the view that it is the value of the victim’s eye, there is still significance to the claim that both peshat and derash are on the halakhic field; he explains it there, but I won’t go into it here. So that’s what I spoke about last time.

Now I want to go a little more into the meaning of what derash is in general. What I talked about until now was only the relation between derash and peshat in general—what the relation is between these two planes. But what is derash? Derash, as emerges from what I said before, is some kind of interpretation—let’s call it that—of the verse, which is not what we would interpret when we read the verse in its simple sense. I said not from a first glance, right. Not more than that. I think not even on a second glance, but that already depends on the dispute we discussed earlier—whether this is the depth of peshat or not. Because I referred you there, and also mentioned Rabbi Weitman’s article—today he’s the rabbi of Tnuva—he responded, back in 1977, to Henshke’s articles, and I think he has several beautiful examples there showing that what we call peshat does not mean a literal interpretation. However much people say peshat means reading something literally—ah, I actually spoke about this. I said I brought Uman there, if you remember correctly? I spoke about Uman, who says that Maimonides’ ban on anthropomorphism is Maimonides’ own invention; meaning that before him people didn’t read the Torah that way. I don’t think he’s right, but—but that’s a good example of what Rabbi Weitman talks about in his article. Because when you read in the Torah “the hand of God,” at least we—and again, maybe we are already captives of Maimonides—but when I read the Torah it’s self-evident, nobody has to tell me at all, that it does not mean that the Holy One, blessed be He, has a hand and raised His hand. Fine? Rather—and this is peshat. I don’t call that derash, I call it peshat.

Now, that isn’t the literal meaning. Literally it says He raised His strong hand. That isn’t literal in the plainest sense of the term, but it is still, I think, what we call peshat. Why? Because the initial reading is what is called peshat. The literal reading is, in my opinion, not a very good definition. It gives weight to the verbal components, but it isn’t only verbal. What we read in the ordinary way—of course if it isn’t only verbal then it includes a whole system of assumptions, conceptions. Okay, all that is true. But what we call the straightforward reading is what is called peshat. And derash is what does not emerge from such a reading, but either something more complex or an entirely different rule system—and I spoke before about the dispute.

Now, drawing midrashic conclusions uses all kinds of tools that seem very strange, at least some of them. Right: “You shall fear the Lord your God”—to include Torah scholars. Why does the word “et” come to include? What would they have written if they didn’t want to include? “You shall fear the Lord your God”—that’s a sentence constructed no less well; meaning, that’s the regular language. Is there anywhere, say, in the Bible, where we find this kind of Ben-Gurion language? After all, Ben-Gurion spoke without “et.” Right. So do we find in the Bible a place where we would expect “et” and it doesn’t appear? I don’t remember; maybe you’ll find one or two places. “Give me the persons and take the possessions for yourself,” I don’t know, I’m not a language expert, but maybe that’s without “et” as I’m used to—possible, possible. Fine, but I’m saying again, there are very few places like that even if there are. Ben-Gurion took the whole idea—no, fine, never mind, the question is how many examples there are like that. What? That in general he doesn’t use “et”? In the Torah there are many. No, but “et” comes to include. According to the midrashic conception, “et” comes to include, which implies that the peshat itself doesn’t need the “et”; peshat ought to be said without the “et.” And on the contrary, precisely because of that, if the Torah inserts “et,” then you need to include. Does every “et” include? Every “et” includes, and therefore I’m saying, Shimon HaAmsuni didn’t have a midrash in the world that he didn’t have. What do you mean he didn’t have? In the library. Ah, in the library, okay. That’s the next job, okay, prepare there in the library in the morning, everything of every kind.

Well, in any case, the claim—I’m saying—sounds a little odd to me, because I don’t know, let’s say, of many verses where I miss the “et.” And I would expect there to be many of them: in every place where the Torah doesn’t want to include, a verse should have been written without “et.” I hardly know any such cases. By the way, on the other hand, there are also few “ets” that include. How many inclusion-derashot from “et” do we know altogether? There’s “You shall fear the Lord your God”—to include Torah scholars; “Honor your father and your mother”—that includes your older brother and your father’s wife; and maybe here another one or two, that’s all. There aren’t more inclusion-derashot from “et.” What was the name of the one before Rabbi Akiva who expounded all the “ets”? Shimon HaAmsuni would expound every “et” in the Torah. But I’m saying, we—he included, but I don’t know—where? Fine, but think how many remain? Three or four? Out of how many “ets” there are in the Torah? Look how much we’ve lost. The question is whether he really expounded every “et”—I’m not sure. It may be that there are criteria for when “et” is really superfluous. To recognize the sensitivity of the language I’m not sufficiently versed, but maybe there are people more versed in biblical Hebrew who know how to characterize it. It could be that only in those verses where you feel that the “et” didn’t need to be there, or there was another equally good substitute without “et,” there they expound the “et.” And when they say that Shimon HaAmsuni expounded all the “ets” in the Torah, the intention is every place where there was an “et” that called for derash, not every single “et” that appears in the Torah. But then that’s not derash. I’m saying no, but then I say that’s not derash—it’s peshat, even if it isn’t literal. And that’s exactly the whole point. But that’s quite a simple thing. Meaning, if you really understand that the “ets” they expound are only special “ets,” then when they say that he expounded all the “ets” in the Torah, it means all the “ets” that needed it. All the “ets.” Who said? “You shall not let a sorceress live”—not “You shall not let the sorceresses live,” and “You shall fear the Lord your God.” These are two verses of the same type; both want to say—and here it’s without “et,” and here it’s with “et.” No, in the case of sorceress, no—it’s not the same thing. Because “sorceress” is a general noun, and “the Lord your God” is a specific object. “You shall not let a sorceress live.” It could even have been said in the plural—“sorceresses you shall not let live,” “the sorceress.” No, but here “et,” in my opinion—again, we’d have to look, I’m not an expert in language, I don’t know. My feeling is that when it’s a general noun, it needs “et” less. And when it’s a specific person I’m referring to—“You shall fear the Lord your God”—there the “et” seems more fitting to me. But again, I don’t know. You’d have to ask. Maybe there was a place where he did say “et”? I don’t think so; I don’t know exactly. I’m not so versed in Ben-Gurion either. I don’t know.

In any event, I only bring this as an example that some of the midrashic tools seem to us—and I think not only to us, but already in earlier generations—very strange. Hard to understand. And because of that, a dispute arose—I’m still in the introduction before we start reading him—because of that, a dispute arose over how to relate to this matter. So there are those—two kinds of solutions were proposed for this issue, two kinds of solutions that I do not agree with. Two different kinds from what I’m about to say.

One solution is that all the laws are really traditions from Sinai. This connects to what you said before. And the derashot came afterward. What is called a supporting derash and not a productive derash. A supporting derash means that the law was already known, and we attach that law to the verse by means of a derash. But the derash does not produce a new law; it only comes to support an existing law. By contrast, a productive derash is a derash that creates a new law, where we did not know that law beforehand. Now there are conceptions—for example, Gersonides argues this—that all derashot are supportive. There is no productive derash. Why? Because of the strangeness. This is a solution to the problem of the strangeness. Meaning, it cannot be that we really take this so seriously that we are willing to innovate a Torah-level law on the basis of some consideration that is so strange or not understood. Meaning, so apparently they really didn’t innovate laws by the force of those considerations; rather, the laws were given and then they made supporting derashot there.

This is completely implausible, because then we’re just playing games. What for? You already know the law. Why do you care whether you expound it or not? If that’s the law, that’s the law. What does it help to expound? Are we just playing around? “To make Torah great and glorious”? It sounds very, very odd to me. No, but then you already make halakhic implications from it. He wanted to claim that we don’t use derashot for halakhic implications. It’s supportive, because otherwise you are taking the derash seriously; you draw conclusions from it. It’s very strange.

It seems to me I mentioned Rabbi Akiva in the Talmud in Shabbat. The Talmud there brings—this is the derash they always quote as an example. In some places it’s less clear, but it still exists. Earlier generations would forbid a woman to adorn herself and apply cosmetics during the days of her menstruation. To beautify herself, yes, during the days of menstruation. Until Rabbi Akiva came and said: could she then become repulsive to her husband? Such a thing can’t be. Therefore he said, “she shall remain in her impurity until she comes into water.” From there came the derash that she must purify herself in a mikveh, by the way. It isn’t written in the Torah. From there comes the derash that she has to purify herself in a mikveh, and consequently—not that a woman should adorn herself and apply cosmetics. Meaning, he permitted adorning and applying cosmetics during the days of menstruation. Now there in the Talmud it says explicitly that the earlier generations—that’s what they did. As I said before. Rabbi Akiva came by reasoning, said this cannot be, she will become repulsive to her husband, changed the law that had been accepted from earlier generations, made a new derash, and created a new law. Now there it seems to me this is presented quite clearly as a productive derash and not a supportive derash. It is a new derash that Rabbi Akiva innovated.

Now one could say with some difficulty that the law requiring immersion in a mikveh had existed before too. Rabbi Akiva attached it to this derash because a verse became available to him. This verse no longer prohibits a woman to adorn herself and apply cosmetics; the verse became available, so he did something else with it, but he didn’t create that as a new law. But the expression concerning adornment and cosmetics he certainly abolished. Exactly. The expression of immersion is by way of interpretation, but the expression of adornment and cosmetics he certainly abolished. That’s written in the Talmud. So certainly this derash had halakhic implications. Okay. So that’s an explicit example. There are places where, by the way, it is implied—he’ll bring this later—and this really is also an example that has always sat in my mind as a classic example of this issue: the Talmud regarding “the fruit of a beautiful tree,” meaning the etrog. How do we know that among the four species one must take an etrog? So the Talmud gives, I think, four or five suggestions for where this is learned from. “A beautiful fruit”—that dwells by all waters, doesn’t matter. “Dwells on its tree from year to year.” A collection of all kinds of derashot. Now all these derashot in the end come out to etrog. Now if this derash is the source for the fact that this means etrog, that’s possible—but it’s strange. Meaning, five different derashot all arrive exactly at etrog. Not a clementine, not an orange—specifically an etrog. It seems that the fact it was an etrog was already a tradition. There is sometimes a supporting derash, but it cannot be that all derash is supportive. That’s the claim. There is also productive derash.

You’ll ask: so then why do we need a supporting derash? Fine. So if derash—but there are places where derash really is supportive. And again the question returns: why did they do that? Are we playing games? It’s not like that. Because if there really is productive derash, then supportive derash is very important. Because if you make a supporting derash—say you expound a certain verse for a certain matter—then that verse is already occupied; you can’t make another derash from it and create a new law. Now if I never make productive derashot at all, then that has no point. Because in any case, why should I care which verse is available and which isn’t? I’m not generating new laws. But if in principle it is possible to make new laws, there is still room for certain derashot to be supportive. And there is importance in making the supportive derash, because that has indirect implications for which derashot I cannot make. And that really will be halakhically significant. So what I need, in order just to escape my earlier difficulty, is to say that there are productive derashot. You don’t have to say they are all productive. Nobody argues that they are all productive. The dispute is whether there are any productive ones, or none at all and they are all supportive. Nobody argues they are all productive. Fine?

So that’s one solution to the strangeness of derashot. Gersonides’ solution, which basically says this is all a law given to Moses at Sinai, it’s all tradition, no law was ever innovated this way. A solution very beloved by apologists, because derash is always under attack—it looks terribly strange. So lots of people mock it. It’s all just made up, they say. You’re doing whatever you want. Nonsense. And then the easiest, most comfortable way to defend the halakhic tradition is to say: what are you talking about? No such law was ever created by derash. These are all laws given to Moses at Sinai; it’s all tradition. The derashot only support, they don’t create. And then it also doesn’t matter so much that it seems strange and bizarre, because it only supports. So I’m saying, in short, this solution is just batting straw targets away and saying to us, what are you saying? That’s what I would say to someone who says this. Meaning okay, you like defending yourself against outside critics—very nice. I don’t think that this defense is all that great. But among ourselves, it simply isn’t true. Clearly it isn’t true. It isn’t true because if these derashot are strange derashot—in fact more than that, I’m saying—it also doesn’t solve the problem it came to solve. If these derashot are strange, then even as support it isn’t convincing that you attach the law to the verse in such a way. Do you really want to tell me that this is how the law is anchored in the verse, when you’re resting it there on chicken legs? The whole thing is really not convincing. So even supportive derash—if you decide to make a supportive derash, I have no idea why. But if you already decide to make a supportive derash, if it isn’t serious then you’ve done nothing. So what for? So I think that’s a problematic solution.

Doesn’t it basically create the mechanism here? Hm? You’re grasping the principle here. Meaning, you see that in a certain place, when you make some sort of—you take, for example, the word “et.” Fine? This pattern repeats several times, and every time that pattern repeats, there’s the same idea. What’s called the idea. What idea? For example, that one must include Torah scholars. Who said that the word “et” must include? I’m not saying that—I’m only saying: suppose there was such a law, that one must honor Torah scholars, okay? That this had been handed down in tradition. Now they really found no place for it in the text, so they decided to include it from “et.” Exactly. So they said, listen, in this verse, this now probably caught that same idea in “Honor your father and your mother,” and there too one had to honor one’s older brother, and so it was in the tradition. And now it fits exactly the same template in the text. Okay. And when you see that it works once and again, then maybe from there—yes, maybe it’s a bit strange, you wouldn’t build it on your own the way you would with various other things—but you can definitely dress the idea onto it. With that I agree, and that’s what I’ll talk about in a moment. I agree. But let me come back to it in a minute.

So that’s one solution to the strangeness of derashot. Another solution is to claim that what we have here is some entirely formal code. Meaning, it has no logic at all. Don’t look for logic. It’s strange. But we received a toolbox from Sinai and it’s like atbash. And is there logic in atbash? We synchronize—the encryptor and decryptor synchronize on the same key. And once we agree on the key, why should I care how the key is built? Whether it’s built through atbash or in some other way, the key itself isn’t supposed to have any meaning. So that also solves the problem of strangeness, because it basically says: leave the logic alone, don’t look for logic. The Holy One, blessed be He, gave us a set of keys to the biblical code, and we use them and decipher it, that’s all. So this too is a way of defending against the criticism, because it basically says again that there doesn’t need to be any logic in this set of keys. It’s something entirely arbitrary. A code is something arbitrary; on the contrary, if there were logic in it, it would be a poor code. Meaning, in codes meant to encrypt something, yes? So therefore there’s no need to look for logic, because this can produce new laws. In that sense it’s not like the previous solution. The derashot can be productive, and still the fact that it’s strange doesn’t bother me, because the Holy One, blessed be He, told us: use this strange thing—this is how I encoded the Torah. And if you use it, then fine, you’ll get correct results. That too is a possible solution to the strangeness of derashot.

I don’t have much to say against that except that it sounds implausible to me. It sounds implausible, but I can say something about it. If this code were a mathematical method that you could apply without understanding anything, fine, then I would understand it. But it doesn’t look that way. It really does not look that way. Meaning, when they expound “You shall fear the Lord your God” to include Torah scholars, what algorithm exactly tells you what to include? Or “general statement, specific statement, general statement”—“for cattle, for sheep, for wine, for strong drink,” in the redemption of second tithe, for example—so they expound it as general statement, specific statement, general statement. “For anything your soul desires” is the general statement, “for cattle and sheep, for wine and strong drink,” etc. is the specification, and then I include all sorts of other things—doesn’t matter—something that grows from the ground, and I don’t know what, fruit from fruit and produce of the soil. So what—how—what mathematics produces that? It doesn’t seem so. And there are also disputes among the Sages. If it’s mathematics, what is there to argue about? Do the calculation, and whatever comes out, comes out. There are disputes among the Sages about derashot. Clearly, in every derash the reasoned judgment of the interpreter is also involved. But if the reasoned judgment of the interpreter is involved, then this isn’t mathematics. Therefore I think that the solution that sees this as some kind of mathematics that has been lost to us is also unconvincing.

But then we are really left with the problem. We are left with the problem: how should we relate to this strange thing? Meaning, where does it come from, what justifies using it, is it reliable, can I generate new laws from it? And Torah-level laws—meaning laws that obligate, that punish on their basis. Meaning, this is something we take quite far. So the question is whether a tool system that is so murky is really reliable enough for us to give it the ability to generate Torah-level laws.

It seems to me that the possible way out here—since I don’t yet have a complete solution, I haven’t understood it to the end—I can only point to what could constitute a solution. So I’ll tell you, broadly speaking, how it seems to me one could see the solution. First of all, there is a dispute between the world of academic Talmudic research and the traditional Talmudic-halakhic tradition. A pretty extreme dispute. Meaning, everyone there thinks one way and everyone here thinks the other way. This isn’t even an overgeneralization; it really is so. And the question is whether the hermeneutic rules are a law given to Moses at Sinai. In the traditional world it is agreed by all the medieval authorities (Rishonim), without exception, that the hermeneutic rules—halakhic derash, I mean—are a law given to Moses at Sinai. In the academic world it is agreed by all scholars too, without exception, that they are not. They developed over the generations. Lieberman even argues that they borrowed this from the ancient Near East; he finds all sorts of comparisons in his book Greeks and Greekness in the Land of Israel, meaning there were various influences and it underwent development.

There are actually not bad proofs of this from rabbinic literature, because you see that Hillel the Elder had seven hermeneutic rules. Right? When he came up from Babylonia and they spoke there about Passover eve falling on the Sabbath, he brought seven rules, or expounded what to do with the Passover sacrifice in several ways, and used several hermeneutic rules. The sons of Beteira had forgotten the law. And in the end, at the close of the Baraita of Rabbi Ishmael at the beginning of Sifra, it appears that there are seven hermeneutic rules of Hillel the Elder. That Hillel the Elder brought from Babylonia; he learned them from Shemaya and Avtalyon, whom he served, and he brought with him these rules—seven rules. A few generations later, Rabbi Ishmael already tells us there are thirteen rules. A few more were born. Rabbi Akiva, parallel to Rabbi Ishmael, also has more or less the same number, although they disagree: he doesn’t expound by general and specific statement but by inclusion and exclusion. Rabbi Akiva does that. But on the conceptual level the number of his rules is similar to that of Rabbi Ishmael. Every place where one says general and specific statement, he calls inclusion and exclusion, or general and specific and general becomes inclusion and exclusion and inclusion. But that’s only another way of making the derash, while the number of rules is the same number—it’s thirteen.

Now with Rabbi Eliezer the son of Rabbi Yose HaGelili there are already thirty-two rules, or thirty-four depending on how you count them. This is already a Baraita not extant before us in its original source, but from secondary sources we know it, and there there are already thirty-two or thirty-four rules. Others collect still more. If you look in the Talmud, there are derashot not based on one of Rabbi Ishmael’s rules—or not even one of Rabbi Eliezer the son of Rabbi Yose HaGelili’s—but something else, another kind of derash. So in fact there are many dozens of rules. And the question is whether this isn’t clear proof of the academic conception, which says that this is really a system that developed over history. We see that with Hillel there were seven; with Rabbi Ishmael thirteen; with Rabbi Eliezer the son of Rabbi Yose HaGelili already thirty-two; there were more. Among the Amoraim there were already many more.

So I think that really one master said one thing and another master said another thing, and they do not disagree. Meaning, I don’t think this is really a dispute. These are two ways of looking at the process. How do we understand what it means to be a law given to Moses at Sinai? The model as I understand it goes like this: basically, when Moses our teacher received the Torah from the Holy One, blessed be He, the Holy One, blessed be He, studied Torah with him as a study partner. Just an image to illustrate the point. So they sit opposite each other at the lecterns and study Torah. The Holy One, blessed be He, reads a verse and explains the verse to him. And that explanation includes both derash and peshat. “An eye for an eye”—He tells him, that means money. “You shall fear the Lord your God”—to include Torah scholars; your older brother; everything we derive. That’s how He studied Torah with him and explained the verses. Not even the names of the hermeneutic rules are mentioned there by hint: a fortiori, verbal analogy, constructing a principle from one verse, general and specific and general. None of those terms are mentioned. Rather, He read the verses and explained to him, and the explanation included both peshat and derash.

At some stage, the Talmud in Temurah, at the end of Temurah, says that in the days of Moses’ mourning, three thousand laws and seventeen hundred a fortiori inferences and verbal analogies were forgotten. Then it says there they didn’t know what to do. As for laws given to Moses at Sinai, there was nothing to do—they were lost to us. And by the way this is very interesting, because in the Jerusalem Talmud—what? Didn’t he pass them on to Joshua? He did pass them on, and they were forgotten. Nothing is written down; this is the Oral Torah. They were forgotten. Why, what was going on there? In the days of Moses’ mourning there was mourning; the great leader of the generation had died. The entire public was in mourning; one does not study Torah in mourning—it is forbidden. For forty days the entire public did not study Torah. Torah that is not written—Oral Torah—passes orally, and for forty days no one studies. No wonder a lot was forgotten. A great deal was forgotten. That’s what the Talmud says there. And again, it’s aggadic midrash, but I’m trying to explain what it wants to say.

So the three thousand laws given to Moses at Sinai were lost. And by the way, very interestingly, in the Jerusalem Talmud one of the laws given to Moses at Sinai that we lost is a sin-offering whose owner died. What do you do with a sin-offering whose owner has died? It’s now consecrated—you can’t eat it, it’s not just an animal; you can’t offer it, because there is no one left to be atoned for—the owner is dead. So there’s a question whether it should graze until it develops a blemish or not; the question is what you do with a sin-offering whose owner has died. That was a law given to Moses at Sinai that was lost to them. Fine?

Now there, one of the commentators on the Jerusalem Talmud—the Penei Moshe or Korban HaEdah, I don’t remember—says there that in fact today the law of a sin-offering whose owner died is rabbinic. Because originally it was a law given to Moses at Sinai, but we lost the source. What we do today is what the Sages thought by their own reasoning should be done, so now it’s rabbinic. And therefore in a case of doubt, one is lenient—doesn’t matter; he makes an actual halakhic claim on the basis of that Talmud in Temurah. I don’t agree with him at all, but it’s an interesting anecdote. I don’t agree with him because I think that what the Sages reconstruct is also Torah-level. It doesn’t matter that they reconstructed it. As long as they reconstruct a law that in essence was given at Sinai, then this is the best approximation we have to that law, but that law is a Torah-level law and not rabbinic. That’s another discussion.

What happens with the seventeen hundred a fortiori inferences and verbal analogies? First of all, “a fortiori inferences and verbal analogies” doesn’t mean specifically those two; it means midrashic methods in general. In several places in rabbinic literature we see that instead of speaking about hermeneutic rules in general, they speak of a fortiori inference and verbal analogy. Somehow that pair represents all hermeneutic rules. Why is that? I can only guess that a fortiori inference is a logical rule and verbal analogy is a textual rule that is given, so they take one example from here and one from there and that represents the whole set of rules. Fine? So seventeen hundred derashot were forgotten—let’s now call it that in a general way. And the Talmud says that Otniel ben Kenaz restored them through his dialectical reasoning. What does it mean that he restored them through his dialectical reasoning? It seems to me that this is exactly what you said before. Meaning, he took what they still remembered—either laws they still remembered or derashot they still remembered—and tried to connect the laws with the derashot, or understand from where those laws emerged. So suppose there was a law that one must fear Torah scholars, and he asks himself where it comes from. There’s no source for it. Maybe the word “et” really comes to include? Then he checked it in another place and indeed it worked out. Exactly what you described before. Then he said, okay, so apparently there is such a rule, that “et” comes to include. Likewise he found general and specific statement. And verbal analogy, and a fortiori; a fortiori maybe is simpler, but that’s how he found all the hermeneutic rules—or not all of them, but some of them. Not all the hermeneutic rules, and then he conceptualized and defined a set of hermeneutic rules. And that was really the first time there actually were hermeneutic rules.

With Moses our teacher there was derash, but there were no hermeneutic rules. With Moses our teacher, he learned the verses and their explanations from the Holy One, blessed be He; he didn’t understand that now he was doing a verbal analogy, or general and specific and general. Rather, this is the verse and this is its interpretation, that’s all. But after we forget, we already have to work in a more systematic way. How do we reconstruct this? There is no choice but to try and create fixed patterns, to produce a toolbox of ways of derash, which we formalize—that is, we define: there is now interpretive rule A, interpretive rule B, and so on.

An example of this—we spoke about it once—is when one learns a language. A child learning a language learns it from his parents because they speak with him, and he learns it. No one explains to him that the letters bet, gimel, dalet, kaf, peh, tav get a dagesh at the beginning of a word, and subject, predicate, direct object, indirect object—none of that interests anyone. The parents don’t know and the child doesn’t know. Rather, they speak, and that’s all, and in the end he learns to speak. But he speaks according to the rules, more or less. Okay? Without knowing the rules. That’s how Moses our teacher knew derash. He knew how to take a verse and derive from it the midrashic result, but he didn’t know that he was making use of the rule of verbal analogy, or of general and specific and general. When did they start defining, conceptualizing, formalizing that system of rules? When it started being forgotten. Once you start forgetting that language, how do you learn it anew? How do you reconstruct it? You need to formulate rules. Let’s see how those who knew spoke the language; from that we’ll understand what the rules are, and that will teach me how to speak even in places I didn’t hear from them. Right? That’s exactly what happened there.

Let’s see what Moses our teacher said. He knew, after all—he spoke this language; he didn’t need to know that now he was teaching, making a derash by verbal analogy, or by general and specific and general. He simply spoke the language, the way we speak language. But someone learning a language in an ulpan has to be taught about dagesh, subject, direct object, indirect object, subject and predicate, and so on, because he doesn’t know the language, so you work with him according to rules. The rules were distilled from the natural speech of the language. But once you distill the rules, you can use them to say things that I didn’t hear. Things I heard, I also know how to say. But for what I didn’t hear, I use the rules and they help me know how to say other things. In Torah too it is like that. They tried to understand how Moses our teacher spoke—“spoke” meaning the language of derash—and from that they distilled a system of interpretive rules, which is the grammar of the language of derash, yes? And now I can use that to generate new laws or to support existing laws; meaning, one can continue to use it. And that, in my opinion, was the process throughout history. That midrash at the end of tractate Temurah tells us about one point on the historical axis where this happened, and even that I’m not sure was historical. But it comes to tell this story. And to say that this is really how the whole thing develops.

Then what happens? Otniel ben Kenaz—we continue moving forward in history. We get farther and farther from the source. We lose more and more the natural sense of how one rightly expounds verses and how not. We need a system of rules more and more. So the rule system branches and becomes more detailed and generalized, and each rule gets broken down into several sub-rules, and so on. The less natural sensitivity we have, the less natural intuition for how to do this, the more we need to lean on a system of rules. And the example of this—and I said this before—is violin making. Stradivarius, after all, built violins here centuries ago, and apparently he built violins of wonderful quality. Again, I don’t understand anything about it, but so say the people who do. Okay? Now today they can’t produce violins of his quality. With all the micrometric instruments and the computers and our ability to measure everything and calculate the physics of sound and whatever you want. They can’t produce violins like his. Why not? Because Stradivarius didn’t leave us a formal system of rules for how to make a violin. Did he know rules? He didn’t know either, obviously not. But Stradivarius’ apprentice probably still did it not badly, learning from him how to build a violin. Fine? His apprentice already did it less well, if he even had one, and in the end it was lost. And once it was lost, we try to reconstruct it with some formal knowledge in physics and technology that is needed there, and we try somehow to imitate it by using rules. But that probably doesn’t really capture the thing itself. The rules are an approximation. The thing itself is more an art than a set of rules.

How do you know that? That only solves half the problem. How do you know what came out—what do you do? You don’t know. There’s no way to know. So maybe—maybe the sounds were even better than Stradivarius’? No, no—we still have Stradivarius violins to this day. You can hear them. You can measure them. And that’s the problem. But in Jewish law it’s more complicated. In Jewish law it only solves half. There’s no feedback. No, exactly—there’s no feedback, we don’t know the solution. Obviously. And even if a heavenly voice came down from heaven and said you’re right, it wouldn’t help, because “it is not in heaven.” Right, so that would help nothing, because we don’t pay attention to a heavenly voice. So it would help nothing. We have no feedback. Fine, we don’t, but that’s scientific work—we’re doing completely scientific work but without feedback. You do only the speculative scientific side, without getting feedback from observation. What happens in science? We take a set of facts, try to understand from them what the theory is, and then give a prediction—meaning, what should come out in a future experiment. But in science afterward they go and do the experiment, and check whether it works or not. In Torah we have no way to do that. We can only give predictions and assume that this is probably the correct thing. We don’t have feedback, we don’t have the ability to get back a response telling us whether we are right or not. Unless someone made some derash and suddenly found some historical source saying—yes, you can get, if we have a source that—right, one way to overcome this is to say: look, we have a set of sources, and I’ll deliberately ignore one of them. I don’t want to see what it says. I’ll use the others, distill from them rules, make derashot, and see whether it fits that source that I didn’t look at. That will give me some feedback. That’s a proper way to do it. You can do a little of that, to the extent that we have sources.

So what happens here is that the farther we get from the source, from Sinai, the more rules we need in order to work, because we have less and less intuition for how the whole thing works. It’s no longer a mother tongue for us; it’s something foreign to us, external to us, and we have to use rules. And therefore indeed we see that in the days of Hillel the Elder there were seven rules. He was still relatively close. In the days of Rabbi Ishmael there were already thirteen. Rabbi Eliezer the son of Rabbi Yose HaGelili already had thirty-two. Those are tannaitic times. By the time of the Talmud there were already more, dozens more. Why? Because as history moves on, the system of rules grows and branches out. But this system of rules is not an invention, as the academic scholars say; rather, it is an attempt to grasp what reached us from Sinai. It is an attempt to understand what the generations before us did. We are not arguing with them, we are not importing different rules and producing this in a way not bound by what we received. On the contrary, we are trying to understand, from what we received, what was the system of rules that governed it, how they worked then—those who did know the language. We don’t know the language. Each generation less than the one before it, yes? So that means both sides are right: it is both a law given to Moses at Sinai and something that develops over history.

It is a law given to Moses at Sinai in the sense that the world of derash was given to Moses our teacher by the Holy One, blessed be He. The Holy One, blessed be He, read verses with him and also expounded them, not only explained them. But the hermeneutic rules and the toolbox that developed over history are certainly a historical development. They are a historical development, but not one that is an invention. Rather, it is a development that tries to understand how Moses our teacher spoke, what the grammar rules of the language are that we received from Moses our teacher. Therefore it is in essence a law given to Moses at Sinai. The fact that it receives a form, that we give it some formal shape, is only giving it shape, not inventing something.

Now it is certainly possible that we are mistaken; it is even likely that we are mistaken to a considerable degree. Who says we are right? What are the chances that we hit exactly on the original intent? Every grammar is only an approximation of the real language. That’s a historical question. That’s another question, but I’m saying: at least they try, I assume, to hit the simple conception. But even in grammar, someone who speaks exactly according to grammar speaks incorrectly. Language has lots of exceptions and lots of—there are things where someone who feels the natural rhythm of the language knows how this ought to be said, and someone coming from the ulpan can correct him but he’ll be the one who is mistaken, because the natural speaker knows better how the language works. Why? Because the rules are an approximation. The real thing is the language, not the rules. The rules are an approximation of natural speech, as close as we can get. In Torah too, that’s how it is. The natural speaker, the one who does it because he feels it, he hears the sound—absolute pitch for derash, yes?—he knows what is a correct derash and what is not. We can only try to imitate it, reconstruct it, approximate it by means of a system of rules, but in the end these are all approximations.

Therefore our approximation system becomes more and more branched over the years because we are moving away from the source. We need more and more rules to help us, a kind of crutches. Someone who has the natural ear doesn’t need rules, just as someone who knows how to speak the language doesn’t need grammar rules. Someone who doesn’t know has no choice and uses rules. These rules are a kind of crutch for the disabled. But what can you do—we are disabled. And these rules keep developing over the generations, and at a certain point we lost the understanding completely of how to use them. Already in the Talmud itself they no longer make new derashot. In the Mishnah they did; in the Talmud they no longer do. In the Talmud they mainly make preserving derash, supportive derash, and not productive derash. There is almost no productive derash in the Talmud by the Amoraim. And after the Talmud, certainly not. What does “certainly not” mean? No rule is really “none at all.” Here and there there are some, but very few. Some later authorities here and there do make derashot. But very few. Sometimes—so in any case there are some here and there—but broadly speaking it is accepted that we do not make derashot. This is not a question of authority. It’s not that we lack authority to make derashot, or that one has to be ordained to make derashot. There is no hint anywhere that in order to make derashot you have to be ordained. It is written nowhere. On the contrary, in Maimonides it seems this is one of the tools every Torah scholar should use. One of the tools is the tool of derash. It has nothing to do with ordination or not. It could be that if you are not in the Great Court and are not ordained, then the derash you make will not bind others, because you have no authority. Fine—but if you arrive at something by means of some derash, then as far as you are concerned that is the law. If I disagree with you, I’m not obligated to listen to you, because you aren’t ordained and you aren’t in the Great Court. So that is merely a question of authority, but there is no principled problem with using the tools of derash. You don’t have to be ordained in order to use the tools of derash.

Okay, so therefore it seems to me that the system—now I return to the point where I began. I said there are two solutions, and I didn’t like either of them, to the strangeness of these tools. One was to say that it is all supportive—that’s not true. One was to say that it is some formal code with no logic behind it—that also isn’t true. So what is it? It is something given from Sinai. This style, this language, was given from Sinai. It was implanted in us that there is derash and not only peshat. But the grammatical system, the system of rules underlying that language, is something that we really develop on our own. And you can’t develop something on your own without understanding. Therefore, necessarily, there is some logic in it. If there were no logic in it, it would be impossible to arrive at it. It is impossible to develop such a thing if you understand nothing. This is the Brisker illusion. The Briskers are accustomed to say that we do not ask why, only what. We only want to define what is written, not understand it. Because “we do not expound the reason of the verse,” and also for the Talmud we do not seek the reason of the text. We try to understand what the Talmud says, not why it said it. Now this is nonsense, of course. It’s nonsense because even the Briskers themselves don’t do this. They only live under the illusion that they do. There is no what without why. If you don’t understand the why, how will you define the what? You can’t just—the definition of the what is not a simple definition of what is written, the plain meaning of the Talmud. No. You are trying to build a conceptual theory of what lies behind certain rulings in the Talmud. You cannot make a theory without understanding. There is no what without why. It’s nonsense, there is no such thing. If you understand nothing, and they tell you a system of rules, you won’t be able to do anything with it.

Wittgenstein already wrote this, right—I spoke about this some years ago. I spoke about hermeneutic rules, about the formal formulation of hermeneutic rules. There we saw the problem of following a rule in Wittgenstein—one of the famous issues. Wittgenstein was one of the philosophers, perhaps the most important philosopher of the twentieth century in the view of many. And one of his issues, “following a rule,” goes like this. Suppose I want to convey some rule to you. Teach you how to operate. Say, for example, how to add numbers. Fine? To teach a child or any student how to add numbers. How do I do it? I give examples, right? One plus three is four, two plus five is seven, something like that. And it always ends with three dots, with “etc.” Suppose I’m not teaching him addition, I’m teaching him counting. The numbers themselves I want to teach him. So look, there’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 12, 21, 22, and so on. Right? 100, 121, 122, 1000, 1200—how long can I go on? To 5000? 10000? That’s it, right? At some point there will be an “etc.” Now a student will come and say—now I’ll tell him: tell me what is the number that comes after 10000? And he’ll say 158,471. Why? How did you get that? What—shouldn’t it be 10001? No, not at all. I understood that it’s 1, 2, 3, 4 like that up to 10000, and from 10000 onward we jump in increments of 90,471. Fine? You can always continue the “etc.” however you understand it. There are no rules for how to continue the “etc.” When do you know how to continue the “etc.”? When you have understood the idea behind the examples you were given. If you understand only the examples without the idea behind them, you will never in your life succeed in continuing them; the “etc.” is worthless. Learning through examples appeals only to someone who already has within him the infrastructure that allows him to understand what stands behind the examples.

But if some alien came to you, one not built at all like you, you would never be able to teach him to count. It’s impossible to teach him to count—not because he’s stupid, but because I would have no way to teach him. I have no way of conveying it to him. His “etc.” is not like my “etc.” I say one, two, three, four, and after that he says seventeen. Because that’s what he understands. What’s the problem? If you know nothing beyond the examples one, two, three, four, how do you know what comes next? You have to understand the mindset behind the examples in order to understand what comes next.

In logic they distinguish between two ways of defining sets. You can define them through extension and through intension. To define a democratic state, you can simply enumerate all democratic states, or define what a democratic state is, meaning what conditions it must satisfy, what properties it has. Those are two ways of defining the set. A definition by extension is supposedly an alternative definition, but that’s obviously nonsense. Because clearly—how do you know whom to put into this set and whom not? How do you know to count all the democratic states? To tell me Israel and the United States and England and France and so on. How do you know that it’s those specifically and not Sudan? Because you understand what a democratic state is. Meaning that behind a definition by extension there always stands an intension. You cannot ask the what without the why. There is no what without why. If you do not understand the why behind the what, then the what tells you nothing either. These things cannot be separated.

So in the world of derash too, when we take the examples from Moses our teacher—Otniel ben Kenaz took the examples from Moses our teacher and distilled from them a system of rules—you cannot distill a system of rules if there is no logic in those rules. If the Holy One, blessed be He, had told you the rule directly, had said: look, it’s atbash, that’s how it works—fine, no problem, He told me the rule directly. But if I have to derive it from examples, understand: this is exactly Wittgenstein’s problem of the “etc.” How can I understand from the examples the general principle—how it works—and then apply it elsewhere? Only if I understand what stands behind the examples; only if there is some logic in the rule itself. It isn’t just a formal rule devoid of logic. There is some logic in it. Otherwise it cannot be; I would not be able to distill the rule from the examples. Therefore those who think there is here a formal mathematical system with no logic are mistaken. There is here a system of rules with some logic in them. One could also use another system of rules, but this is a system that does have some logic.

And in fact I’ll say more than that: this system of rules expresses forms of interpretation or forms of inference that are valid in non-Torah contexts as well. One can apply this system elsewhere. For example, a famous example is the derash of general and specific statement. People usually think that general and specific statement is some accidental sort of code and can’t be applied elsewhere. General and specific statement means that a verse is written in broad language, then gives some examples, and then another broad expression. “For anything your soul desires—for cattle, for sheep, for wine, for strong drink, and for whatever…” I don’t remember the whole verse exactly. Okay, so that’s general, then specifics, then general. The midrashic principle says that if such a structure appears, then you generalize around the specifics. Meaning, you take the specifics and generalize them, and there are even precise definitions of how far to go, how much to generalize. It depends on the structure. I won’t discuss that in detail now, only in general.

Can one do such a thing also in texts that are not biblical? Or is this Oral Torah: only Scripture is written that way, another text—not at all? I think it’s quite clear that one can do this in other texts too. For example, I once collected several examples. There are quite a few cases of people expounding general and specific and general on responsa. In the responsa of Maharam of Rothenburg, for instance, there is a broad expression, specifics, and a broad expression, and one of the later authorities interprets it there as general and specific and general. Since Maharam of Rothenburg used a broad term, specifics, and a broad term, then clearly he meant that the specifics were only examples, but that these examples had to be extended. And that’s how he derived a halakhic conclusion from what Maharam of Rothenburg wrote. Now I collected examples like this—there is more than one. Elon brings this example in his book, the example of general and specific applied to a responsum of Maharam of Rothenburg. But I looked around a little, and found at least ten such examples. But that’s because he adopted the method. The idea behind it is that there is a logic of interpretation like this in general, not only in the Torah. When a person tells you: look, I’m telling you that you may eat whatever you want—cattle, wine, sheep, strong drink, whatever your soul desires—what is he really saying? Cattle, sheep, wine, and strong drink are examples that you should extend further, to the extent they are similar. Right? It makes sense.

Again, obviously one could also have done this in other ways. But once it has already been done this way, it is not foreign to our logic. We can understand how this works. We can even understand where to apply it and where not. And in what place it really comes to include, and in what place it does not come to include. And therefore, if we go through all of Scripture, not every place where there is a general statement followed by a specific statement followed by a general statement is expounded by the Sages. Sometimes maybe we have lost the derashot, but sometimes it is simply because the feeling is that here it doesn’t come to give examples that I’m supposed to extend. There is such a feeling. If this were just a formal thing, there are no feelings. Formal means you operate like a computer. Clearly we have some understanding, some intuition, of how to apply it correctly and how not. And that is the meaning of the hermeneutic rules.

Indeed, Rabbi HaNazir in The Voice of Prophecy argues that the hermeneutic rules are basically the toolbox of Jewish logic. Logic. He calls it the Hebrew-Semitic logic, as distinct from Greek logic, which in his view is visual. Meaning, classical logic, necessary deduction—that is Greek logic. And his claim is that the logic of the hermeneutic rules is the logic of non-deductive thinking. Thinking that is not necessary, that is not built on arguments whose conclusion follows necessarily from the premises, but arguments like analogy, more rhetorical arguments. There too there is a system of basic logical tools governing that domain. And he claims that these are the hermeneutic rules. And I think he is right, by the way. I put in a lot of work, spent many years trying to see and show this matter, and it really seems to me that he is right.

Okay, so that’s the introduction regarding derash. Let’s at least start reading the introduction—it took me a long time. Let’s begin looking at chapter 4, page 19. “As is known, the Talmud is full of derivations from verses from which laws are learned. The Talmud asks concerning the law, ‘From where do we know this?’ or ‘From where are these words derived?’ and it brings a derash from a verse from which the law is learned.” The Talmud asks what the source is for a certain law; a derash is considered a source. Fine? What does it mean that a derash is a source? Simply put, if a certain law is written explicitly in a verse then it is binding, but even if it is not written explicitly in a verse, if one can derive it from the verse by means of a derash, that too is binding. Meaning, derash is another means of exposing laws from the verses, of quarrying laws out of the verses.

By the way, here too I’ll perhaps add one more sentence that I don’t think I said before, but briefly. The truth is that in my opinion this is a dispute between Maimonides and Nachmanides in the second root. Nachmanides sees derashot as truly a tool of exposure. When I use derashot, I expose further contents hidden inside the verse. Not only peshat, but derash too exposes contents from within the verse. Maimonides sees derash as a toolbox that expands what is in the verse, not exposes what is in it. Meaning, the result of derash is not something that was latent within the verse. It is something that was not written in the verse, but I can expand the idea of the verse and understand that this too is required by it. Doesn’t that make it look as if it wasn’t there? What? Since it isn’t written, then it’s as if the two interpretations are the same thing. No, because Maimonides, for example, wants to argue that if there is a law that emerges from a derash, then it will not be a Torah-level law; it will be a rabbinic law. Because the literal meaning of “Torah-level” is “from the Torah,” but a law that emerged from a derash—the derash did not expose something hidden in the depths of the Torah, inside the Torah. The derash expanded what is in the Torah. Meaning that I have now created a law that is not written in the Torah, only I have permission to add further laws because I received the tools of derash as a law given to Moses at Sinai. These tools are tools by means of which I am permitted—or perhaps even obligated—to expand beyond what is written in the Torah. They are not tools that open before me further layers hidden within the Torah. Therefore Nachmanides, who sees it as a revealing tool, sees derash as Torah-level law. Maimonides, who sees it as an expanding tool, sees derash as rabbinic law.

And how can it be a source? What? How can derash be a source? A source—because the law is rabbinic at base. A rabbinic law whose source is a derash. There are two kinds of laws, and more. It itself was the source. What do you mean it itself was the source? The rabbi said before that derash is the source for—right, they derive a law and bring a derash as the source for it. Right. But rabbinic—how can it be a source? Why? It’s the source. There are rabbinic laws that have a source in a derash. That’s Maimonides’ novelty. And some medieval authorities don’t agree with him. But Maimonides says there are laws that are words of the Scribes, rabbinic, but they have a source. When the source is a derash and not an explicit verse, then the resulting law is rabbinic in status. Fine, more or less. But it isn’t an enactment of the Sages, not a decree that came from their own reasoning or some practical need, but something derived from a verse through derash. And since derash is expansive rather than plain reading, Maimonides sees it as rabbinic law. So here there are rabbinic laws that have a source. That really is something unusual.

So in the end, what’s the law? What? Is it rabbinic or Torah-level? Okay, Maimonides says it is words of the Scribes; most medieval and later authorities do not agree and say it is Torah-level. But if you ask me what the practical ruling is—how should I know? Should one treat rabbinic law with the criteria of Torah-level law more? In Maimonides there are disputes about this. There are those who want to claim that Maimonides too really meant that it is Torah-level in the halakhic sense, and he calls it words of the Scribes only because its source is the Sages. I don’t think they are right; I even have proofs that they are not right. But true, this is not ordinary rabbinic law. There are different shades of rabbinic law. If you ask what most decisors think—not like Maimonides. It is commonly accepted that what has a derash is Torah-level. I’m not entirely sure that this is a clear ruling against Maimonides, because Maimonides too says of most laws that emerge from derash that they are Torah-level, and one has to understand what exactly he is talking about. I wrote a book about this; one could expand on it a great deal.

In any case, that was just a parenthetical remark to show that Maimonides and Nachmanides disagree over whether the role of derashot is to reveal further laws that are present within the Torah, or to expand the Torah and create new laws. Fine, now I return here. “What is the derash from the verse? Can one say that the derash is an external sign given to us by the Sages so that we remember the law, the way a person ties a knot in his handkerchief in order to remember something?” There were those who wanted to say this. That is, for example, Gersonides, whom I mentioned before—that’s really what he says. What is he basically saying? The law was already given. We do not make the derash in order to create a new law. The law was transmitted to us by tradition. The derash is supportive derash. It takes a known law and attaches it to the text through a derash. What for? Are we just playing games? In any case, that law is true. Rather, it is a sign so that we remember the law. If we anchor it in a verse—the verse is written down. The laws of the Oral Torah pass orally. We want to somehow stick them into what is written, because that will help us remember them. Fine, a very dubious explanation of course, especially because it comes to solve the problem of the strangeness of the derashot. The stranger the derash, the worse it is as a memory aid, because the verse won’t really remind you of the law if it really isn’t obvious that it follows from the verse. Okay, but that’s what he says.

So Rav Dalia asks: what is this? Is it a memory aid? And he says, “There is no sense in saying this, and no sage says this.” Apparently if someone says this, he isn’t a sage, because there are those who say it. But he says no sage says this—not Maimonides and no one else. “The derash is the source of the law.” Again, all the time he is against Gersonides. Yes—what is he saying? And against many later apologetic authors, of course. What does he say? “The derash is the source of the law.” Meaning, the derash is not supportive but productive. And if a law came out of a derash, then that is a new law, and we will observe it even though it came out of a derash. The derash does not merely help us remember existing laws; it is a means of generating new laws. “Not merely a sign, nor some hidden secret in the text.” What is he excluding here? The second option I mentioned, right? The first option I mentioned was Gersonides, who says all the laws are transmitted to us by tradition and the derash anchors them in the text. He excludes that at the beginning. And what was the second option I mentioned? That the derashot are some kind of mathematical code that has been lost to us, some sort of encryption, some sort of formality—basically something a computer could do too if it had the proper algorithm, only unfortunately we lost the algorithm. Right, so that’s what he says: “nor some hidden secret in the text.” That too is not true. Exactly what I said by way of introduction. He is basically excluding these two possibilities.

So what is it? “The derash is the result of logical reflection on the text, on its content and style, and the finding of the details of the law through precision in language according to the rules of language and its ways.” Here this is already not exactly what I said. It seems to me—and I mentioned this earlier—that Rav Dalia does belong to the camp of those who think that derash is the depth of peshat. It’s not that peshat is one interpretation and derash another, and both exist in parallel. No. Peshat is the superficial interpretation. And after you understand the derash, you understand that the plain interpretation is not correct. If you go check the ways of language and the language of comparisons and examine carefully, you’ll see that derash is actually the true peshat. It seems to me that that is the conclusion he reaches, and as I said before, I don’t agree with that. Meaning, I agree with his rejection of the two previous approaches, but the path he proposes—I don’t agree. Meaning, I think that’s what I said before.

“True, sometimes we do not know enough of the ways of language, and therefore it is hard for us to find the derashot of the Sages in the text.” This is the strangeness we talked about earlier. But he attributes the fact that it looks strange to us simply to the fact that we don’t know the ways of language, that’s all. We do not fully know biblical language, and by the way that is true. There are rules in biblical language that we do not know, and especially for us as Hebrew speakers this is harder. As Hebrew speakers we think that the language we use is also the language in which Scripture is written, and that isn’t always so. There is, for example, a classic example I saw someone bring: “To behold the pleasantness of the Lord and to visit His sanctuary.” “One thing I ask of the Lord, that I seek: that I dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the pleasantness of the Lord and to visit His sanctuary.” What does “visit” mean? For us, speakers of the language of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, “to visit” means to drop in, see what’s up, and leave—that’s a visitor. But there is also “inspect” in the sense of a state comptroller. The state comptroller, or to review critically, means the opposite: to do something intensively and precisely, to be part of the thing. Meaning “to visit His sanctuary” means to live there; it doesn’t mean to come as a tourist. That is biblical language. In our language “to visit” means to come every so often. Now we are convinced that this is what the verse says. By the way, there are quite a few examples I know where we are captive to our language and therefore have difficulty with what the Sages said. Because the Sages probably really were closer—even they didn’t speak biblical language; rabbinic Hebrew is one thing and biblical Hebrew another, and the Talmud itself says that the language of the Sages is one thing and the language of Scripture another—but still, they were closer to biblical language than we are. And precisely the fact that we speak Hebrew makes it harder for us, because those who don’t know Hebrew know only the biblical language; they don’t have other intuitions besides Scripture itself.

But “to inspect” something—that too in our Hebrew, but that’s the second meaning. Not clear. But there too—why is the state comptroller called the state comptroller? Because he comes to visit all kinds of places and see whether everything is okay. Fine, he does it with a magnifying glass, but still he visits there; he isn’t part of the place. I don’t think that in our language there is, in my opinion, a second meaning. The meaning is that meaning. I’m not entirely sure, by the way, that in biblical language it is different, but I once heard Rabbi Moshe Shapira say that he thought this was certainly the correct biblical language and not the language of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda.

“True, sometimes we do not know enough of the ways of language, and therefore it is hard for us to find the derashot of the Sages in the text. Because of this, the Ramchal thought in The Ways of Understanding that the Sages had special secret methods for expounding the text, methods that have been lost to us.” We spoke earlier about codes. “But this does not seem correct at all. The Torah does not speak in coded language. It is written in beautiful and clear language, and a person of sound reason who knows the rules of language and the ways of language, and studies the text carefully, will find in it what the Sages found. One must accustom oneself to toil in the interpretation of verses and see this as an essential part of study. True, we can only follow the words of the Sages, who knew the ways of language better than we do”—because we don’t know them as well. It isn’t a question of authority, that the Sages have authority and we can’t disagree with them; they simply knew and we do not know. “But when we follow the words of the Sages and examine the verses carefully, we too can understand their way of learning. Of course we would not dare argue with the Sages about the understanding of a verse, not because in principle this is impossible, but because our knowledge of the wisdom of the text is poor and weak compared to theirs, and even if it seems to us in some matter differently from what they interpreted, we will not rely on ourselves in this.”

Fine. So basically he wants to say this is the ways of language. I agree with the first part of what he says, but not with his conclusion that this is part of the ways of language and not an alternative toolbox. That I don’t agree with. But let’s continue.