The Relationship Between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah – Lesson 1
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- General Overview
- Continuation of the discussion on Torah from Heaven and the relationship between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah
- Commitment that does not depend on authenticity
- Midrashim of “He showed him” at Sinai and the distinction between “transmitted” and “showed”
- Logical inference versus derashot: analytic versus synthetic and the expansion of the verse
- Maimonides’ approach, disputes in Torah-level law, and Havot Yair
- Logical positivism as an analogy for the feeling that “it’s obvious this is written here”
- Authority, “do not deviate,” and the difference between enactments and interpretation
- The commandment of writing the Torah, “this song,” and Sha’agat Aryeh
- The process of the Torah’s formation over forty years and the Vilna Gaon
- “Song” as a description of the Torah and the question of its meaning
- The prohibition on reciting the Written Torah orally and the prohibition on writing down the Oral Torah
- An explanation of the prohibition on writing the Oral Torah according to Pahad Yitzhak and the caution against fixing it in place
- The claim that even the Written Torah is not “fixed” in its meaning, with halakhic examples
- The covenant of the Oral Torah and the majority of the Torah according to Gittin and Rashi
- The holiness of the margins on the Sabbath as a metaphor for “between the lines”
- The Torah as song, meaning created in the reader, and a human Torah that still obligates
Summary
General Overview
The speaker continues from the series on Torah study to the question of what “Torah from Heaven” means and what the status of the Oral Torah is in relation to the Written Torah, while rejecting the simplistic notion that all the details of Jewish law “came down to Moses at Sinai.” He argues that halakhic commitment does not necessarily depend on the historical authenticity of transmission from Sinai, and tries to explain how one can still be committed to the Oral Torah even if it develops through human beings. Along the way he presents the difference between logical inferences and the derashot of the Sages as synthetic expansions, clarifies the question of authority through “do not deviate” and the dispute between Maimonides and Nachmanides, and develops a metaphor from the verses about writing the Torah, from the prohibition on writing the Oral Torah, and from the idea that the Torah is called “song,” in order to suggest that meaning is found “between the lines.”
Continuation of the discussion on Torah from Heaven and the relationship between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah
The speaker defines the series as dealing with the question of what “Torah from Heaven” is and what the distinction is between the Written Torah, the Oral Torah, Torah-level law, and rabbinic law, and contrasts the accepted view with Maimonides’ position, which identifies the Written Torah with Torah-level law and the Oral Torah with rabbinic law. He describes the widespread claim that two Torahs were given at Sinai as though every detail descended to Moses at Sinai, and states that this cannot be true because many laws are in fact created through a human process and in a specific historical context. He formulates the practical question as a religious difficulty: if the commandment is to do what the Holy One, blessed be He, commands, why is the Oral Torah binding if it is not a direct transmission from Sinai.
Commitment that does not depend on authenticity
The speaker presents as his “bottom line” the claim that commitment is not necessarily connected to authenticity, and that one can be committed to Jewish law even without claiming that it was given to Moses at Sinai. He describes the tension between two accepted assumptions: that one should do only what the Holy One, blessed be He, said, and on the other hand that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not in fact say the details of Jewish law as they appear in the Oral Torah. He wants to show how commitment can be detached from the simplistic claim that “everything came down to Moses at Sinai,” and still justify commitment to the whole halakhic system.
Midrashim of “He showed him” at Sinai and the distinction between “transmitted” and “showed”
The speaker cites Tosafot Yom Tov, who quotes rabbinic midrashim saying that everything a veteran student would one day innovate, the Holy One, blessed be He, showed Moses at Sinai, and he notes carefully that “showed him” is not the same as “transmitted to him.” He presents a picture of a more limited transmission: Moses transmits the Written Torah together with basic interpretive rules, word meanings, a few traditions, and the principles of interpretation or the way of looking that those principles reflect. He suggests that historical innovation does not pass through a pipeline of transmission, but is created out of rules and principles, in such a way that the conclusions are “derived” but are not already present in advance as details within the tradition.
Logical inference versus derashot: analytic versus synthetic and the expansion of the verse
The speaker distinguishes between logical inferences, which uncover a conclusion already contained in the premises and are therefore necessary and non-innovative, and the derashot of the Sages, which resemble analogy and induction and go beyond what is written. He illustrates this with the expansion of “You shall fear the Lord your God” to include Torah scholars, and defines this as an addition not latent in the verse but rather an expansion of it, which is why Maimonides calls it rabbinic. He explains that most medieval authorities (Rishonim), unlike Maimonides, still classify such expansions as Torah-level law, but factually agree that this is expansion rather than logical analysis, and therefore it is harder to claim that this is merely a “disclosure” of God’s will.
Maimonides’ approach, disputes in Torah-level law, and Havot Yair
The speaker argues that Maimonides treats a certain kind of interpretation as logical clarification even when it is actually expansion, and brings the example of monetary betrothal, about which Maimonides writes “rabbinic” at the beginning of the laws of marriage, and despite that also writes that one is liable to death for violating it. He describes Maimonides’ position that Torah-level laws are laws over which no dispute ever arose, and sets this against the difficulty that the entire Talmud is full of disputes even about laws given to Moses at Sinai. He cites Havot Yair, siman 191 or 192, who lists laws given to Moses at Sinai and shows that in very many of them disputes did arise, and notes that there are various explanations for Maimonides’ position, some more convincing and some less so.
Logical positivism as an analogy for the feeling that “it’s obvious this is written here”
The speaker compares the feeling of certainty in interpretation to the philosophical phenomenon of logical positivism at the beginning of the twentieth century, which accepted only direct observation or logical inference from it. He describes how this approach also accepted scientific laws as statements about the world without noticing that they are the result of generalization rather than deduction. He uses this to illustrate how people—and, he says, Maimonides too at times—experience interpretation as necessary and “revealing,” even though there is a leap involved that one could argue about.
Authority, “do not deviate,” and the difference between enactments and interpretation
The speaker compares the development of Jewish law to a legal system of precedents, in which the legislator determines that precedents are binding and therefore they become de facto law. He sharpens the point that in the case of enactments this resembles delegated authority for secondary legislation, but in interpretation and midrash the Sages claim that they are saying what the Torah says, not what they themselves are legislating, and therefore the question arises: “who authorized them?” when someone thinks otherwise. He presents this as the core of the dispute between Maimonides and Nachmanides: Maimonides is willing to apply “do not deviate” both to enactments and to things derived through interpretation, while Nachmanides limits “do not deviate” to Torah-level laws and not rabbinic laws, and raises the question of why in rabbinic doubt one rules leniently if “do not deviate” would turn everything into Torah-level law.
The commandment of writing the Torah, “this song,” and Sha’agat Aryeh
The speaker opens a metaphor from the verses “And now, write for yourselves this song,” and cites Sha’agat Aryeh, who suggests two possibilities: either the Torah is called a song and therefore the verse commands writing a Torah scroll, or the commandment is to write only the Song of Ha’azinu, but because of the prohibition on writing separate sections separately one is forced to write the entire Torah. He shows from the verses that after “Moses wrote this song” there appears “And it came to pass, when Moses finished writing the words of this Torah in a book, to the end,” and they are commanded “Take this book of the Torah and place it beside the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord,” so “the song” merges in the plain sense with “the book of the Torah” as a witness. From here he raises the puzzling question of how the Torah scroll is placed in the Ark when within the Torah itself there are events described that happened after Sinai, and how the Torah describes itself within itself.
The process of the Torah’s formation over forty years and the Vilna Gaon
The speaker notes the dispute about whether the Torah was given “scroll by scroll,” and the dispute between Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva over whether its general principles and details were given at Sinai or whether some details were given later in the Tent of Meeting. He cites the Vilna Gaon on the last eight verses, which Moses wrote “with tears,” and presents the possibility that this means a blurred or mixed writing of letters or words that become clarified and formulated as the events unfold. He rejects the simplistic reading of a “box of letters” and instead formulates it as an idea and principles given at Sinai, after which the Holy One, blessed be He, dictates to Moses how to formulate the sections in line with the events, so that the giving of the Torah appears as an ongoing process.
“Song” as a description of the Torah and the question of its meaning
The speaker emphasizes that the movement in the verses from song to Torah and back to song is not accidental, but meant to show that the song being discussed is the Torah itself. He raises two questions: why is the Torah called “song,” and why is this identification made specifically in the context of the commandment to write a Torah scroll. He mentions possibilities such as “place it in their mouths” and the cantillation marks, and also Tiferet Yisrael, who argues that the Mishnah was structured for memorization in chant, but concludes that the question remains open and requires explanation.
The prohibition on reciting the Written Torah orally and the prohibition on writing down the Oral Torah
The speaker cites Gittin and the derashah on “Write these words for yourself” as against “for according to these words,” and formulates two principled prohibitions: matters that are written you are not permitted to recite by heart, and matters that are oral you are not permitted to write down, together with the further teaching “these you may write, but you may not write halakhot.” He notes that this was the established law, and only later did Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi write the Mishnah under the principle of “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah.” He explains the prohibition on reciting verses by heart as a concern for mistakes, and cites the Tur, Orah Hayyim siman 49, in the name of Rabbi Hayyim that anything familiar to everyone is permitted, and the view of the Rosh that the prohibition mainly applies when one is discharging others’ obligation.
An explanation of the prohibition on writing the Oral Torah according to Pahad Yitzhak and the caution against fixing it in place
The speaker presents as a plausible explanation that the prohibition on writing the Oral Torah was intended to prevent fixing in place something whose very essence is change. He cites Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner in Pahad Yitzhak on Hanukkah, who argues that writing fixes the Oral Torah and turns it into something like the Written Torah, and that there is a prohibition on treating it that way. He argues that in practice, after the writing of the Mishnah, the Gemara, and halakhic literature, people actually came to relate to them as “writings” fixed in place, and he defines that as a mistake, because the permission to write was meant to prevent forgetting, not to change the dynamic and context-dependent character of the Oral Torah.
The claim that even the Written Torah is not “fixed” in its meaning, with halakhic examples
The speaker argues that the fixation of the Written Torah is lip service, because the words are fixed but the meaning is not fixed, and it is the Oral Torah that gives meaning to the verses. He cites Yeshayahu Leibowitz to the effect that the Sages determined the canon of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) through debate over books like Ecclesiastes and Esther, and from that infers that the Oral Torah also determines the meaning of the Torah. He illustrates how explicit verses are not halakhically “interesting” without explicit grounding in the Oral Torah, such as the discussion in Minhat Hinukh on “do not place a stumbling block before the blind” whether there is a physical prohibition against causing someone to stumble, and “so that your son and your daughter may rest,” which according to Rashba should have taught the cessation of one’s child on the Sabbath but hardly appears as a halakhic ruling among most decisors, whereas the cessation of one’s animal is in fact ruled. He presents the rabbinic silence surrounding “the cessation of one’s child” as a difficulty that he himself cannot explain.
The covenant of the Oral Torah and the majority of the Torah according to Gittin and Rashi
The speaker cites Gittin and Rabbi Yohanan’s statement that the Holy One, blessed be He, made a covenant with Israel only for the sake of matters that are oral, and the dispute over whether most of the Torah is written or oral. He quotes Rashi, who explains that “mostly written” means that most of the Torah depends on interpretation of what is written through principles such as general and particular and verbal analogy, while “a minority oral” refers to laws given to Moses at Sinai that have no hint in the verses. He concludes that in practice halakhic life rests mainly on the Oral Torah, while the Written Torah is something like a skeleton that needs flesh in order to take shape.
The holiness of the margins on the Sabbath as a metaphor for “between the lines”
The speaker cites Shabbat 116 and the question whether blank margins are saved from a fire, and the rule that a Torah scroll that has been erased is saved if eighty-five letters remain, like the section “And it came to pass when the Ark set forward.” He describes the Talmud’s distinction between the place of writing, which became holy incidentally through the writing and whose holiness departs when the writing departs, and the margins above and below and between sections and pages, which raise an independent question. He sees in this a hint that holiness is not confined to the written text, and that there is sacred meaning in what lies “between the lines,” in a way parallel to the Oral Torah as a space filled in by human beings yet still belonging to the Torah scroll itself.
The Torah as song, meaning created in the reader, and a human Torah that still obligates
The speaker returns to connect “song” with the idea that meaning is not only in what is written but also in the spaces and the between-the-lines, and tells how he tried to define “poetry” and could not even find an entry for it in the Hebrew Encyclopedia, which in his view illustrates how hard the concept is to define. He uses a joke about Agnon and Kurzweil to illustrate the claim that the author does not have full ownership over meaning, and connects this to late twentieth-century theories of interpretation such as deconstruction and reader response. He concludes that the metaphor of the Torah as song teaches that the Oral Torah is not a transmission pipeline of details from Sinai but a Torah that develops through human beings, and nevertheless it is “the Torah” and is binding, while the question of authority—who is authorized to interpret—is a separate question, even if in the end the authoritative institution too consists of human beings.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We more or less finished the previous series on Torah study—on Torah, the purpose of study, the character of study, what Torah actually is. I want to continue with that same topic, really, although I defined it as a new series, even though I think it’s a pretty direct continuation of the previous part. I want to talk about the question of what “Torah from Heaven” means. What is Torah from Heaven? A Torah of human beings? Written Torah and Oral Torah? I touched on this a bit in the previous series, about the relationship between the distinction between Torah-level law and rabbinic law—that’s one distinction—as opposed to the distinction between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. Usually the accepted view is that there is no parallel between those two distinctions. Written Torah and Oral Torah is a division within Torah-level law—within, sorry, within Torah-level law. Torah-level law is divided into Written Torah and Oral Torah. Things that we derive through interpretive derashot, for example—that’s Oral Torah, but the result is a Torah-level law, not a rabbinic law. Besides that there are also rabbinic laws; that’s a separate issue. It’s not even clear to what extent rabbinic laws are Torah at all. The Sages received authority, and also an obligation, to establish various additional laws beyond what is written in the Torah, but that’s kind of an appendix. Essentially Torah, in principle, is the Written Torah—sorry, Torah-level law—which is divided into Written Torah and Oral Torah. Okay? And we saw that according to Maimonides those two divisions are identical; that is, there is overlap between them. Maimonides identifies the Written Torah with Torah-level law and the Oral Torah with rabbinic law. Maimonides in the second root, and elsewhere too, does this very clearly. But right now I’m returning to the accepted view without getting into the question of the force of the laws that belong to the Oral Torah. Rather, I want to talk about the distinction itself between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. We know that the Sages tell us that two Torahs—“My statutes, My laws, and My Torahs”—two Torahs were given at Sinai: the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. Which leads many people to think and say that basically the entire Torah that reached us, in all its details, came down to Moses at Sinai. That’s actually this week’s Torah portion, right—“Just as the Sabbatical year, its general principles and details, were from Sinai, so too all of them, their general principles and their details, were from Sinai.” That’s a statement that of course cannot be true. Anyone who knows how this works, and has learned a bit of Talmud, sees that these laws are created by human beings at a very specific point in history and were not transmitted in a tradition back to Moses from Sinai. There’s no doubt about that. Meaning, that definitely cannot be true. So the question is: still, what status does the Oral Torah have, and why? What is its connection to the Written Torah? Why, despite everything, remain attached to the Oral Torah? This is a question that troubles a great many people, many of whom I’ve met. Why should the Oral Torah be binding at all? Are we serving human beings? Are we worshipping the Shulhan Arukh? In the end we’re supposed to do what the Holy One, blessed be He, commands. And if the Oral Torah did not come down from Sinai, then what do we need this whole trouble for? So that’s what I want to talk about a bit in this series. And it seems to me that maybe I’ve already mentioned this, but I’ll jump straight to the bottom line—though on the way we’ll go through a long process. The bottom line, the claim I want to make, is that commitment is not connected to authenticity, at least not necessarily. In other words, the fact that I am obligated by a certain halakhah does not depend on whether that halakhah is authentic, whether it was given to Moses at Sinai. That is basically the claim. People assume that commitment must be connected to authenticity, and seemingly with good reason, because if the Holy One, blessed be He, didn’t say it, then why should I do it? So if there are things we need to do, apparently those are the things the Holy One, blessed be He, said. So on the one hand it’s true that we need to do them—or at least that’s the accepted view—but on the other hand it’s no less true that the Holy One, blessed be He, didn’t say that. So now the question is how to manage these two claims, or how to detach commitment from authenticity. How can we establish, or demand, commitment from people to the whole halakhic system without accepting this simplistic claim that everything came down to Moses at Sinai? I’ll just remind you that Tosafot Yom Tov, in the introduction to his commentary on the Mishnah, brings rabbinic midrashim that say that everything a veteran student will one day innovate, the Holy One, blessed be He, showed Moses at Sinai. There are parallel midrashim that speak even about a young student, not a veteran one—meaning that supposedly everything was there with Moses at Sinai. And he is precise there and says that the Holy One, blessed be He, showed it to Moses at Sinai—not transmitted it to him.
[Speaker B] It to Moses at Sinai, not transmitted it to him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning there is a Torah that was transmitted to Moses, and Moses passed it on to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, the elders to the prophets. And what is that Torah? So I would say: the things that were newly developed throughout history—maybe, and this is also quite clearly metaphorical, but at least this is what the Sages say—the Holy One, blessed be He, showed them to Moses at Sinai. But Moses did not take that and pass it on to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets. What he transmitted was the Written Torah together with a few foundational rules by which we interpret it, word meanings, a few traditions of the Oral Torah, the principles of interpretation, let’s say. Or even the principles of interpretation—we once talked about how that isn’t really a list of formal principles but a mode of looking that those principles reflect—and that’s it. Maimonides writes this, and it’s also pretty clear from plain logic.
[Speaker C] That’s the foundation. If you have rules and laws, then the conclusions are as if from the Torah, as if engraved there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] נכון, although the conclusions you can’t—
[Speaker C] You can’t give all the cases and everything that happens over time. You give the rules, and if you work with those rules and laws, then the conclusions are called-for conclusions, so they are basically derived from it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re absolutely right, I agree with what you’re saying, but that needs explanation, because the rules of inference we’re talking about here are not logical rules of inference. In other words, the difference between rules of inference—Maimonides, in his Treatise on Logic, which is an introductory book to logic that he wrote in his youth, says: and we have other rules in this regard, but this is not the place for them. That’s his remark there. He means the midrashic rules of inference. Why is that not part of an introduction to logic? Because Maimonides understands that these are a different kind of rules. Why? What’s the difference? Logical rules are basically rules that uncover things that—maybe we discussed this once—they uncover things that are already contained in the premises. When I say: all human beings are mortal, Socrates is a human being, therefore Socrates is mortal—then obviously the conclusion, that Socrates is mortal, is already included in the premise that all human beings are mortal. The logical inference merely exposed to me something that was hidden within the premises. Okay? That is the nature of a logical inference. That’s also why a logical inference is necessary—it’s necessary precisely because it doesn’t innovate anything. It is necessary because it adds nothing new beyond what is in the premises. Therefore, anyone who accepts the premises must accept the conclusion, because it is included in them. Now, with the kinds of inferences we are talking about here, that is not the case. The inferences we’re talking about here are more parallel to analogies, to inductions—that is, to things that expand the premises beyond what is in them. When I say, “You shall fear the Lord your God”—to include Torah scholars—the word “et” comes to include. But “to include” means that reverence for Torah scholars is not inside the verse. It’s not that the inference exposed the fact that inside the verse there is also an obligation to fear Torah scholars. The inference expanded the verse. We talked about this in relation to Maimonides—that Maimonides calls this rabbinic precisely for that reason, because it is not exposing what is in the verse but expanding it. Most of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), unlike Maimonides, regard even this as Torah-level law, even though they too would probably agree—because this is just a simple factual matter—that what is going on here is expansion rather than analysis. Logical rules are analytical rules. The rules we are talking about here are synthetic rules, they are expanding rules. Now with expanding rules it’s harder to say what you said.
[Speaker C] Do they always expand? Couldn’t they also narrow?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are rules that qualify or limit, but I’m talking about inferences. Inferences generally expand. In other words, the inference says this law too is prohibited on the basis of that law—verbal analogy, slave from woman; or “et” comes to include; or general and particular comes to include various particulars, like ox and sheep, wine and strong drink in redeeming second tithe. The Gemara in Nazir expands beyond that—even water and salt. In other words, it expands beyond the details that are in the Torah. Expansion is always a synthetic inference and not an analytic inference. That is, it doesn’t analyze the premises and look for what is already inside them, but expands beyond them. Now in that case it is harder to say what you said, because when I expand, then ostensibly that addition was not really there in the verse I am interpreting. So that is basically something I decided on, or inferred on my own reasoning, and it is newly generated. And the fact that there are disputes about it too, and different interpreters who expand differently—saying even about that that what is happening here is merely exposure of God’s will—that is a less self-evident claim. Fine—but I agree that in the end that is what emerges.
[Speaker B] Just to clarify something: when you said about Maimonides, “rabbinic” and so on—even what we said, that according to Maimonides it’s Torah-level, it’s still expansion, not logical exposure. When he determines betrothal and so on, it’s not entirely clear.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because at least as Maimonides understood it, he sees it this way: when I use the plain interpretive rules, not the midrashic ones, those rules are simply explaining to me what is written. Meaning, it’s not—
[Speaker B] He determines betrothal of a woman with money and so on—that’s expansion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] With money, Maimonides says that this is rabbinic. Also rabbinic. At the beginning of the laws of marriage.
[Speaker B] But we said that there Maimonides says that whether from their words or from the law itself, it’s Torah-level law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the claim. Maimonides at the beginning of the laws of marriage writes that it is rabbinic. Except that afterward he writes that one is liable to death for it. So how can that be? There I wanted to make this claim—that really there too it is only an explanation of what is written in the Torah at root.
[Speaker B] But there it’s expansion, not logical clarification.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maimonides perceives it as logical clarification. You can argue with him. Maimonides perceives it as logical clarification. Maimonides says even more than that. One of the proofs is that Maimonides identifies Torah-level laws with laws about which no dispute arose. According to Maimonides, there is no dispute in Torah-level law. Now that is very difficult—the whole Talmud is full of disputes about laws given to Moses at Sinai, about Torah-level laws. Maimonides also says: a law given to Moses at Sinai over which no dispute ever arose. There is a Havot Yair—I think I mentioned this—a long siman in Havot Yair, 191 or 192, where he goes through all the laws given to Moses at Sinai in the Talmud and shows that in many dozens of them, maybe even more than dozens, disputes did arise. So how can Maimonides say that? There are all kinds of answers; some are more convincing and some less so. But Maimonides at least sees it that way. There is—just as an aside—a philosophical approach called logical positivism. Logical positivism was common at the beginning of the twentieth century, the first third of the century, and it was basically willing to accept only things that are the result of direct observation, or things that we can infer by logical inference from direct observation. That’s all. Beyond that they were not willing to accept anything. Now this didn’t stop them from accepting the laws of science as claims about the world, without noticing that scientific laws are not like that. Scientific laws are the result of generalization on the basis of observations, not deduction, not logical inference. Often people have a feeling—and I think this is also what I said earlier about Maimonides, it’s the same approach—sometimes people feel that when I made this interpretation, it is a revealing interpretation, even though it is not logical deduction, but it’s obvious that this is what’s written here. They don’t notice that there is a logical jump here that one could actually argue about. And I agree with you specifically on this point: even the things that Maimonides thinks are inside the verse are not actually there.
[Speaker B] If we return for a moment to the topic—what is the question you are asking about the development of Jewish law? How is it different from a legal system built on precedents? Seemingly one could ask exactly the same thing there too.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The point is just that in a legal system, once the legislator determines that precedents are binding, then de facto the precedent has become the law of the legislator. What difference does it make if he delegates the authority to someone else to determine the law? The legislator also determines that the director-general of some ministry can issue regulations in his area, and that will be binding. Why is it binding? It is binding because the legislator said it is binding.
[Speaker D] Not because the Sages determine all the laws.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the big question is: first of all, where did she say that from? Nachmanides, for example, does not accept that the Torah said this. Nachmanides says that “do not deviate” applies only to Torah-level laws and not to rabbinic laws. According to Maimonides, interpretive derashot are rabbinic laws, so then that needs discussion. But even if the Torah did say it, one still has to understand how this actually works, because I’ll formulate it maybe a bit better: even according to Maimonides, for whom “do not deviate” speaks both about enactments and about things derived through interpretation, there is still some difference. Because when the Sages make an enactment, that parallels what I said before, like a ministry director-general. The primary legislator—the Torah or the Holy One, blessed be He—basically says there is room for secondary legislation. And once someone makes secondary legislation, if he has authority from the primary legislator, then for us de facto that is like what the primary legislator said, because he delegated authority to him. But interpretation and midrash tell me what the Torah says, not what they say. It’s not that the Torah says: obey the Sages. I’m not obeying the Sages, I’m obeying the Torah. The Sages are saying that this is what is written in the Torah. So then the question is: who authorized them? I think the Torah says something else. Why? You can say again that it’s a matter of formal authority. True, maybe that is not really what is written in the Torah, but the Sages have the authority to determine that if they say this is what the Torah says, then that is what binds. I think that is the substance of the dispute between Maimonides and Nachmanides. That is why Maimonides is willing to accept that “do not deviate” applies to such a thing, because Maimonides says even here there is “do not deviate,” whereas Nachmanides says no. Okay. Anyway, I want to begin—this is the motivation for the discussion, the framework for the discussion—I want to begin with an attempt to explain this through a kind of metaphor. In the book of Deuteronomy we are commanded—
[Speaker E] From the verse “which they instruct you,” right? Doesn’t that basically turn everything they instruct you into Torah-level law?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that is what Nachmanides asks against Maimonides. Why is a rabbinic doubt ruled leniently, if there is “do not deviate” regarding every rabbinic law? Then every rabbinic doubt should have been ruled stringently, because it becomes Torah-level law. About that—I think we talked about it. So the verses say this: we are commanded to write a Torah scroll. “And now, write for yourselves this song, and teach it to the children of Israel, place it in their mouths, so that this song may be for Me a witness among the children of Israel.” Basically there is here a command to write the song, which in context seems to be referring to the Song of Ha’azinu. But the Sages derive from here that this is the commandment to write a Torah scroll. Why really? So Sha’agat Aryeh brings two possibilities here. One possibility—which he says is a dispute among the medieval authorities, if I remember correctly—is to say that the Torah itself is called a song, and in a moment we’ll see that there are indeed clear proofs for this from the verses here. The second possibility is very interesting—I’ll just mention it in passing for completeness, it isn’t important for our purposes here. He wants to argue, I think according to Maimonides’ approach, that Maimonides brings a prohibition that one may not write the Torah section by section. In other words, you cannot write one passage out of the Torah; you must write the whole Torah. You may not write just part of it separately. So Sha’agat Aryeh says that in practice the commandment really is to write only the Song of Ha’azinu, not the whole Torah. Except there is a prohibition on writing the Torah section by section, so because of that we cannot write just the Song of Ha’azinu, and therefore we write the whole Torah. It sounds a bit odd, but that’s how he learns it. I’ll just say parenthetically: I think what he means is not that the point of the Torah is really that we write only the section of Ha’azinu, only the Song of Ha’azinu, and we just have some technical problem. I think he means that this is how the Torah effectively caused us to write the whole Torah. The idea that we should write the Torah—how is that told to us, how is it commanded to us? They tell us: write the song, and from there the Torah knows that there is a prohibition on writing the Torah section by section, so we will write the entire Torah. There is often a difference between how we derive something and the question of what it is meant to achieve and what it wants to achieve. It’s not always the same thing. But this is a bit of a Sha’agat Aryeh pilpul. The simple view is really that when the verse says “song,” it means not the Song of Ha’azinu but the Torah, even though in context it is immediately adjacent to the Song of Ha’azinu. Let me show it to you in the verses. “For I will bring them to the land that I swore to their fathers, flowing with milk and honey, and they will eat and be satisfied and grow fat, and they will turn to other gods and worship them and provoke Me and break My covenant. And it shall be, when many evils and troubles come upon them, this song shall testify before them as a witness, for it will not be forgotten from the mouths of their offspring, because I know their inclination which they are acting upon today, before I bring them to the land that I swore.” Therefore the song needs to be written, so that when they go after other gods and so on, this song will be for us as a witness. And then it says: “And Moses wrote this song on that day, and taught it to the children of Israel. And He commanded Joshua son of Nun and said: Be strong and courageous, for you shall bring the children of Israel to the land that I swore to them, and I will be with you.” And immediately after that: “And it came to pass, when Moses finished writing the words of this Torah in a book, to the end, Moses commanded the Levites who carried the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, saying: Take this book of the Torah and place it beside the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord your God, and it shall be there as a witness against you.” Which is the witness that had been mentioned before: “this song will be for us as a witness.” Now here we are speaking about the Torah scroll. Then it says: “when Moses finished writing the words of the Torah,” not “the words of the song,” “to the end.” And this Torah that they place in the Ark will be for us as a witness. Before, it was talking about the song—how did it suddenly switch here to the Torah? I think from the verses themselves it is pretty clear that when we are commanded to write the song, what is actually meant is to write the—
[Speaker E] Not entirely… no… the Torah still wasn’t finished, wasn’t completed. “To the end”—but not really to the end. Here if it’s talking about the song, then that already… was completed.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but what was in the Ark—we know what was in the Ark. In the Ark there wasn’t the Song of Ha’azinu; in the Ark there was the Torah scroll. So it says, “Take this Torah scroll, put it in…” put it in the Ark, and it will be for you as a witness. Now what you’re asking is indeed a question people ask. The Vilna Gaon talks about it, but people asked it even before him. After all, in the Torah itself there are events that took place after Mount Sinai. So how can it be that we received the whole Torah at Sinai? It can’t be that it was written before that. What, the Israelites read in the Torah that after—at the end of the forty years—they would have all kinds of plagues and spies and decrees against them? So they read that in order not to do all those foolish things?
[Speaker E] There’s the dispute whether it was given scroll by scroll.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, scroll by scroll it was given, and also—its general principles and details, if we return to our Torah portion. Its general principles and details—that’s a dispute between Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva. Were its general principles given at Sinai and its details in the Tent of Meeting, or were both its general principles and details given at Sinai? Meaning, the Torah apparently did indeed undergo some process of formation until the end of the journey in the wilderness.
[Speaker E] The Vilna Gaon writes that the last eight verses—after all it says—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There, what—
[Speaker E] No, but it says explicitly, “to the end.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This Vilna Gaon on the last eight verses also explains that, because what he says is that Moses wrote “with tears,” right, what the Gemara says there, and what it means by “with tears” is in a blurred or mixed way. Then he wants to argue, basically—I think it may actually be in the original source, or maybe I saw someone building on it, I no longer remember; maybe it isn’t the Vilna Gaon himself, I no longer remember—that someone wants to argue that this is the explanation for everything. So in the end we received some kind of—I don’t know what the meaning of this is—a collection of letters, or words, or I don’t know exactly what, and then each time after a certain event happened, it got arranged. That’s what happened after Moses’ death; he argues that it’s not only there, not only the last eight verses, but that the whole thing really functioned this way. Now I don’t assume that Moses received a box of letters and then arranged them like Scrabble after each—probably what happened there is that he received an idea, and after it was realized through some event, then the Holy One, blessed be He, told him: okay, now write it like this and this. In other words, describe the event, and now the event expresses that idea. So maybe that is one meaning of what the Vilna Gaon says; I don’t think it means a literal collection of letters. But still, the basic idea is that the Torah was given at Sinai. That is the accepted view. That afterward, obviously, it underwent some reformulation or processing or—correct, it went through that over the whole forty years. Okay. But there was still a complete Torah there even before that. What came down with the Torah at Sinai—they put that in the Ark, with Torah, everything is documented here, the Torah scroll. What did they do there? What was inside the Ark? After all, part of it wasn’t written yet; this still isn’t the end of the Torah here. It is written inside the Torah scroll. What, were these verses there? These verses—“Take the Torah scroll and put it in the Ark”—was that already inside the Torah they took and put into the Ark?
[Speaker D] Was that verse itself there? Was this Torah there beforehand? So first he wrote that verse and then put it in the Ark.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay.
[Speaker F] The continuation is even more problematic. Did he receive from Sinai a parchment with letters?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s why I said: I would not interpret the Vilna Gaon literally, as if he received a collection of letters and arranged them like Scrabble, a kind of puzzle each time. I assume what he means is that at Sinai the ideas were given, the principles, roughly speaking. Then each time something happened, the Holy One, blessed be He, dictated to him: okay, now write the section of the complainers, now write the section of this, and in the end that puts the ideas into the form we know today.
[Speaker E] And there were the daughters of Tzelofhad and other cases where he didn’t know the law. Even the law itself wasn’t there from Sinai at the outset.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly—that only strengthens what I’m saying. Right. So the claim is that in the end what was given there were principles, ideas. It went through some process over forty years—there is no escaping that unless one wants to produce some very, very elaborate and unconvincing pilpul, that the Torah was given but they didn’t read it and didn’t know—no.
[Speaker D] There is a law that explicitly says all the laws were given at Sinai, and these—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Just as an example of laws that weren’t given—the daughters of Tzelofhad.
[Speaker D] Fine, so they added it later,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But broadly speaking, when it says “the women are included within it,” that means laws and nuances. I agree, but you can see that even in the laws it’s not entirely complete. How much of this was given at Sinai and how much wasn’t? You can argue about that; it could be that only these were exceptions, that’s not important. I just want to say that in principle it’s clear there was some sort of ongoing giving of the Torah.
[Speaker F] I just wanted to ask what the difference is between “this” in masculine language—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —and “this” in feminine language?
[Speaker F] Sometimes it refers to the book and sometimes it refers to the Torah, but is there some reason why here it’s in the masculine and here in the feminine?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. Maybe “this” refers to the book and “this” refers to the Torah, I don’t know. Interesting question, needs thought. In any case, from this… allow me a bit of cynicism. I’ll tell Tamarot.
[Speaker F] Okay. Fine.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And then after all these things are over, after at the end of the whole story, “and evil will befall you at the end of days, because you will do evil in the eyes of the Lord, provoking Him by the work of your hands,” and “Moses spoke in the ears of the entire assembly of Israel the words of this song until they were finished.” Suddenly they go back again to the song. I think that’s not accidental. They go back to mention the song in order to say that the next section, where they speak about Torah, is a continuation of the previous section, where the topic was the song. So they insert one verse at the end just to tell you to close the matter, to show you that this whole business is really one single passage. Don’t think that here they’re talking about a song and afterward they move on to talk about Torah as though these are two different things. It’s coming to tell you that the song discussed above is Torah. Now, two comments: one comment is this identification itself—it’s an interesting identification. Why is the Torah called a song? Why? Fine, I’m convinced that the word “song” that appears in these verses here means the Torah scroll, but why? Why really is that the expression?
[Speaker D] Maybe because it says “place it in their mouths,” so that it should be like a song; “place” means the cantillation marks, that it was customary to read it in song.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are all kinds of suggestions like that. There are interesting suggestions. The author of Tiferet Yisrael on the Mishnah wants to argue that the Mishnayot are written in a poor way—there are always missing qualifications and so on—because once they used to chant them with melodies.
[Speaker D] Certainly, certainly. There are even those who say you’re allowed to read without the cantillation. The cantillation—maybe because there’s an obligation to read with the cantillation, that’s why it’s called a song.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but then you can go back and ask the same thing about that too: why indeed? Why indeed should the Torah be written with cantillation? That still requires the same explanation, because it’s a song. Okay, so we need to understand why it’s a song. That’s one comment. And the second comment is that this identification between Torah and song is made precisely in these verses where we are commanded to write the Torah. Specifically here. In another context I don’t remember such an identification, and the question is why specifically here?
[Speaker F] Could this interpretation—that the song is the entire Torah—be connected to the fact that this was before printing, and people didn’t have chumashim—
[Speaker E] —inside the ark in every Jewish home? So in the time of Maimonides they said: let’s interpret the song of Ha’azinu as meaning the whole Torah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but as I said, first of all this is already in the Talmud, of course—they interpreted it that way, not Maimonides. But beyond that, I’m showing that this is how it is in the Torah itself. Here, we’ve just seen it: in the Torah itself, the term “song” apparently means Torah. It’s not a late interpretation. It’s there in the plain meaning of the verses. And still, fine, still we need to explain why indeed. Why indeed is there this…
[Speaker F] I thought Ha’azinu is the essence. Ha’azinu—that’s what’s written, that it’s the essence for those who don’t have—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —the ability—
[Speaker F] —the strength to acquire all of it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are Torah commentators who want to say that: that the song is called Torah because in fact the song of Ha’azinu is the essence, like the Ten Commandments, that all the warnings—the whole 613 commandments—are built on the Ten Commandments. Fine, maybe. I don’t know. I can’t manage to extract anything else from this song.
[Speaker F] But what is the meaning of the word “book”? Today we call a printed thing a book, but back then it was a scroll.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A Torah scroll—what’s here.
[Speaker F] Yes, but—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not printed—
[Speaker F] A written book, I understand that. But what is the beginning of it, and what is this unit called a book? What is this thing, a book? You simply copy it or write it—so it’s called a book? Or is there something embedded in it that makes it a book?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can ask the same thing today, after printing: what makes this a book? The binding? The binding comes after you’ve decided it’s a book. But why is it a book? Because the author decided this is his book.
[Speaker F] With Moses, from the start there were the tablets, the Ten Commandments, right? Those were the tablets. Right, but after that he wrote the book; the tablets are something else, not the book. Maybe the tablets were what was placed inside the ark. He wrote thirteen books.
[Speaker C] No.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t matter to me. Still, this Torah is called a song. Suppose it was only the tablets—I said that something basic was given and it developed over forty years. So maybe for the sake of discussion it was only the tablets. I’m not sure, but maybe. Fine. Still, why is that thing called a song? That’s one comment. And I said, the second comment is that this is said specifically at the stage where we are commanded to write the Torah. So maybe I’ll use that to open the issue of the Oral Torah and the Written Torah, and the relationship between them. The Talmud in tractate Gittin brings the following: Rabbi Yehuda bar Nahmani, the interpreter of Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish, expounded: it is written, “Write these words for yourself,” and it is written, “For according to these words.” How can that be? “Write these words for yourself” means in writing; “according to these words” means orally. How does that fit together? Matters that are written, you are not permitted to say by heart; matters that are oral, you are not permitted to write down. The school of Rabbi Ishmael taught: “These”—these you may write, but you may not write laws. Meaning, you can’t write them down; they learn from elsewhere that it is impossible to write the Oral Torah. Now this Jewish law was ruled as normative, yes, all the halakhic decisors agree: it is forbidden to write the Oral Torah, and it is forbidden to say the Written Torah orally. What does that mean? It is forbidden to write the Oral Torah. There is a prohibition. In a moment—we’ll get to Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, who said, “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah.” But at the principled level, there is a prohibition against saying the Written Torah by heart, and there is a prohibition against writing the Oral Torah. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, because of “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah,” decided to write the Oral Torah so it would not be forgotten, but that is really a later enactment. Okay.
[Speaker D] And what’s the meaning of the first part, that it’s forbidden to say the Written Torah by heart?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, it’s forbidden to recite verses by heart. Only from a book.
[Speaker D] Does that mean the entire prayer service, Father—
[Speaker B] Didn’t we say if it’s fluent on the tongue? What? Didn’t we say if it’s fluent on the tongue—fluent on the tongue? The author of the statement is an interpreter, whatever he wants.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In any case, these two prohibitions require explanation. Fine—don’t say orally things that are written—that one you can understand. The concern is lest you make a mistake. If you recite the verses by heart, you might make a mistake. Say them from a book so it will be exact. That one can be understood. This really appears in the Tur, Orach Chayim, siman 49. He writes as follows: As for the fact that they recite the section of the daily offering by heart, and the verses of praise, even though we hold that matters that are written you may not say by heart—just as we say the verses in the morning by heart and not from writing—my uncle, my teacher Rabbi Chaim of blessed memory, wrote: anything that is commonly known and fluent in everyone’s mouth does not fall under the rule that matters written may not be recited by heart. Why? Because the whole problem—exactly—because the whole problem with reciting written matters by heart is lest you make a mistake. If it’s something fluent in everyone’s mouth, then fine, you can do it; there’s no concern lest you make a mistake, like the Shema and things we do regularly.
[Speaker E] Maybe it has to be fluent in everyone’s mouth; maybe it has to be fluent in your mouth.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It could be specifically in everyone’s mouth, because an individual view is disregarded. Meaning, not only that—more than that—there are things where even if you personally happen to know it well, they still don’t allow you to say it by heart, so that others won’t come to say it by heart and say it’s permitted. But if it’s already fluent in everyone’s mouth, then it exits the prohibition. Because if you make a mistake, others will correct you, if everyone knows it. Yes, that’s what he suggests here, right? In any case: And my father and master, the Rosh, of blessed memory, would say that we only say “matters written may not be said by heart” when one is discharging others of their obligation, but for each person individually it is permitted. When you are discharging others of their obligation, say it from writing. If you are saying it alone, then you can. There is a greater duty of caution when you come to discharge others of their obligation. That’s interesting. People often really are more careful when they say things in front of a public, or a large public, and often it gives me a certain feeling—what’s the difference? If you’re prepared to say it, then say it. If you’re not prepared to say it, then don’t say it. What difference does it make how large the audience is? Here we see that the Rosh also joins this idea, and still I think the conception is the concern over error. If you are discharging the public of their obligation, then be more careful not to make a mistake. Here at worst you yourself did not fulfill the obligation; there you are responsible for the public not fulfilling it either. So they aren’t to blame for your negligence. And that leaves us with the question: then why are oral matters not permitted to be written? That seems the opposite of the logic. If the whole concern is concern over error, then all the more so—write the oral matters down so we won’t forget, so we won’t make mistakes. Logic says: let’s write it. So why the second prohibition? How do we explain the second prohibition?
[Speaker F] Because it fixes in place things whose very essence is change. Yes, right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think that’s the more reasonable explanation. Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, in Pachad Yitzchak on Hanukkah, indeed wants to argue that the moment you write the Oral Torah down, it becomes fixed. Once it becomes fixed, it turns into a kind of Written Torah. Now, there is a prohibition against relating to the Oral Torah as some sort of Written Torah. And that’s very interesting, because that is exactly what really happens. We know it. After Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi established “It is a time to act for the Lord; they have violated Your Torah” and permitted writing the Mishnah, and afterward they wrote the Talmud too, and until today here we write everything—the Maimonides, the Shulchan Arukh, everything is written down—indeed, the attitude toward these compositions has now become an attitude like the Written Torah. When the whole idea is that in fact, even though they are written, one must be careful not to relate to them that way. That, after all, is why originally it was written that it was forbidden to write them. It was forbidden to write them so this wouldn’t happen. So not only did we permit writing them, but we also canceled the reason why it was forbidden to write them. We really do treat them that way. I think that is a great mistake. In other words, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi’s permission to write is not permission to relate to it that way; it is permission to write so we won’t forget. But we still need to see it as Oral Torah and not as Written Torah—something that is really a function of circumstances, of place and time, and it must not be fixed in the way we fix the Written Torah. By the way, in passing, even when we “fix” the Written Torah, that too is only… What exactly is fixed in the Written Torah? Nothing. The Written Torah doesn’t say anything at all, really. Meaning, you take a verse from the Written Torah—it says nothing until you come with the Oral Torah and explain what it says. Every verse can be explained in a hundred thousand ways, and even the simple way you read it literally, the Oral Torah comes and overturns it. Which means that fixing the Written Torah is lip service. We are not really fixing the Written Torah. True, the Written Torah is not to be touched; you may not change a letter, you may not change a word. But none of the meanings there are fixed. Because in the end, what gives the Written Torah its meaning is the Oral Torah. Yeshayahu Leibowitz used to say: the ones who determined which books enter the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) were the Sages. The Talmud says the Sages wanted to hide away the book of Ecclesiastes; Esther sends to the Sages, “Write me for the generations.” Meaning, the negotiation over what enters the corpus that we call the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is a negotiation conducted in the study hall among the Sages of the Oral Torah. And the Oral Torah determines what the Written Torah is, essentially. So to say that the Written Torah is fixed, but the Oral Torah should be treated in a somewhat more open way—that’s a bit of lip service, because the Written Torah too is not fixed.
[Speaker E] That story is about the Prophets and Writings… what? That story is about the Hebrew Bible outside the Torah, the Writings, not the Torah itself.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously. But the Torah too. No, there’s no need to separate them, because in this context it’s also clear that regarding the Torah we don’t decide what enters the Torah and what doesn’t. But in the Torah too, nothing is fixed. That’s true of the Torah as well, not only the Hebrew Bible. When you take a verse, the verse says “an eye for an eye”—fixed, you may not touch anything written in the Torah, right? And the Sages came and said: money.
[Speaker F] But the Sages’ discussion wasn’t about the Five Books of Moses.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The discussion there was about Esther and Ecclesiastes, obviously. But I brought it as an analogical example. What I want to say is that the Oral Torah determines what the Written Torah is. So in the Hebrew Bible it determines which books enter, and in the Written Torah it determines the meaning of the words. Now, to fix the Written Torah without fixing what it means—that’s not called fixing it.
[Speaker E] But there were Torah commentators who explain the plain meaning of the Torah, and our rabbis said… and there is value in studying the Written Torah to understand it on its own, before the interpretation of the Oral Torah? Yes—you see that now you’re saying that מתוך a conception of the Oral Torah about the plain meaning, and that determines what is written in the Torah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that’s true, because as soon as you formulate it as “there is value” or “there isn’t value,” you already see that you are really in a defensive posture. You’re really saying: as a matter of Jewish law we certainly don’t use such an interpretation, right? We don’t use the plain meaning of the Torah in Jewish law. You can study the Torah and derive one meaning or another, okay, and that too, of course, is far from fixed, because every commentator does with it what he does with it, so that too is not fixed. But even if I grant that such a thing could be called fixed, for practical Jewish law we don’t use it. I’ll give two interesting examples. I just remembered them because you asked. I think I mentioned this: “Do not place a stumbling block before the blind.” What does that mean? Not to trip a blind person. Right? On the road—meaning, not to put a pit in front of him or something like that. And the Sages also expound it as not causing him to sin. Right? Now the Minchat Chinukh discusses whether there is a prohibition against causing a blind person to stumble on the road, physically tripping him. There is a prohibition against giving unfair advice—that’s one rabbinic expansion—or causing someone to violate a prohibition. From where do we know there is a prohibition to trip a blind person on the road physically? Where do we know it from? It’s the verse. There are rabbinic expansions—those are expansions—but that is the verse. And no one is interested in the verse. And indeed the question is what the Sages said. Now, this I don’t know—meaning, if the Sages had said no, then no, like “an eye for an eye” meaning money. But the Sages didn’t say no; the Sages expanded it. Clearly what is written in the verse is also binding. There’s another example too: the resting of one’s son. In the Talmud at the beginning of the chapter Kol Kitvei HaKodesh: if a minor comes to extinguish, we tell him, “Don’t extinguish.” If a gentile comes to extinguish, we do not tell him “extinguish,” nor do we tell him “don’t extinguish.” The Mishnah there says this. So why, if a minor comes to extinguish—a fire on the Sabbath, that is—do we tell him, “Don’t extinguish”? Because his resting is incumbent upon you. You are forbidden to have the minor perform a prohibition, unlike the gentile, who acts on his own behalf. What does it mean that his resting is incumbent upon me? The Talmud starts discussing there what it means that his resting is incumbent upon me. A minor is not obligated. So the Talmud brings there that this is like the rule that if a minor is eating forbidden carcasses, the court is commanded to separate him from it. As a matter of practical Jewish law, we rule that they are not commanded to separate him.
[Speaker C] And that’s not education? What? No, education is rabbinic.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Education is rabbinic. The assumption here, at least the Talmud’s assumption, is that we are talking about a Torah prohibition—that allowing a minor to extinguish the fire is Torah-forbidden. The law of education is rabbinic. So the medieval authorities (Rishonim) begin discussing “do not eat them” as “do not feed them”—that it is forbidden to feed a minor prohibited food directly. When we give a minor a prohibition with our own hands, that is forbidden on the Torah level; for most medieval authorities (Rishonim), it is a Torah prohibition. Say I give a minor pork to eat—not just put it on his plate, but actually feed him the pork—then I’ve violated a Torah prohibition. But the Rashba at the beginning of the chapter Mi Shehechshikh says: what do you mean? There is an explicit verse in the Torah—your son’s resting. “So that your son and your daughter may rest, and your maidservant and your ox and all that is yours.” Meaning, it says so explicitly in the Torah. So all the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and the Talmud begin searching for why—what about your son’s resting… why do I need to worry that my son not desecrate the Sabbath? What do you mean why? There is an explicit verse. From that very verse they speak about the resting of vessels, right? And the resting of one’s animal. The resting of one’s animal is mentioned; the resting of vessels is a dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, but the verse itself is expounded in Jewish law for all these things. And his son and his daughter, which appear there in the verse—those are not. Why not? Because nowhere in the entire Talmud, and I think nowhere in rabbinic literature at all, is there any halakhic discussion of the words “his son and his daughter” in that verse. There is resting of vessels, Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, and there is resting of one’s animal, which is ruled as Jewish law. But your son’s and daughter’s resting—there’s nothing. There is no such prohibition anywhere; you won’t find it. There is no obligation that my son rest on the Sabbath, aside from this Rashba at the beginning of Mi Shehechshikh and the Magen Avraham who brings him in two or three places. That’s it. For most medieval authorities (Rishonim) and halakhic decisors, there is no such thing as your son’s resting. The Torah says explicitly, “so that your son and your daughter may rest.” Why? Because the Oral Torah did not say there is such a prohibition. So when the Written Torah says explicit things, nobody cares.
[Speaker E] The struggle between the Sadducees and the Pharisees is about exactly this point.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but it’s a little different. Their disputes are usually where the Oral Torah departs from the plain meaning of the Written Torah, and then the question is whether I am bound by the plain meaning of the Written Torah or by the Oral Torah. That’s not what I’m talking about here. The Oral Torah didn’t do anything here. There is a verse; the Oral Torah didn’t say this verse is invalid—it simply said nothing, it was silent. So here even the Pharisees ought to agree with the Sadducees. The verse is written; the Oral Torah doesn’t say this verse is not binding—at least it’s not written anywhere. It says nothing. Okay, so if there is a verse about which the Oral Torah says nothing, then surely it is binding, no? But even that—no. And that is very interesting. I don’t understand it, by the way. I have no explanation for it. It has to be infuriating. How is that possible? Like if you educate regarding “do not place a stumbling block before the blind,” same thing. I don’t understand this. How can there be an explicit verse in the Torah, and there is no exposition or Oral Torah saying it departs from its plain meaning, saying that it is not binding, or fine, I understood—but nothing at all is said about it. If nothing is said about it, you won’t find it—no Mishnah Berurah, no Shulchan Arukh, nothing.
[Speaker D] “Your son’s resting”—who even mentioned it? There’s nothing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But clear laws are written too. The Shulchan Arukh also writes obvious laws. It doesn’t write only innovative laws; it also writes obvious laws.
[Speaker D] I may have a solution. My son is either an adult or a minor. If he is an adult, then he is obligated by virtue of being an adult, not by virtue of being my son. Right. So the verse that refers to an adult refers to the experience that all of us rest. It’s not a prohibition on the son, because he is anyway forbidden irrespective of being my son. And regarding the minor, maybe indeed that is not what the verse means.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If it’s not talking about the adult—but the adult doesn’t—
[Speaker D] —need to say that the adult is commanded on his own, so—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —Jewish law wouldn’t speak about that. “The stranger within your gates”? But why does the verse speak about it? The verse is describing the experience of the whole family unit resting, not a prohibition.
[Speaker E] This verse speaks about prohibitions, not—
[Speaker D] —about experiences.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, there’s the resting of one’s animal. This verse says—it’s not about experience, it’s about prohibitions. The resting of one’s animal is a prohibition ruled in all the halakhic decisors. What about “the stranger within your gates”? There are those who connect that to telling a gentile to do work, which is an idea. But in that very same verse it also says the resting of one’s animal. So again, whichever way you take it. Either you decide this verse is talking about experiences—then experiences. Or you say this verse is talking about—
[Speaker D] —laws. About the son and the stranger, I’m silent.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] About the small son, you do have control.
[Speaker D] That’s why I’m saying it’s not talking about the minor.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But why isn’t it talking about the minor? It says “his son.” On the contrary, the simple meaning is that it means his minor son. His adult son is obligated on his own account. Why assume otherwise? Even at the level of atmosphere, I think the small son is no less important than the adult son. At the level of atmosphere—okay, let there be Sabbath here. Isn’t it better that my small son not desecrate the Sabbath than that the animal not do so? But regarding the animal there is a prohibition. I’m saying son and animal are in the same place in the verse.
[Speaker D] I don’t know, it’s difficult. In any case, fine—this was just a side point.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] As for when I say that the Written Torah is fixed—as I said before, nothing is fixed. The words are fixed; meaning, you may not add a word, you may not remove a letter, all true. But the meaning—we do with that almost whatever we want. Or not whatever we want—whatever we think is right, let’s be a bit more careful. In any case, so that’s the prohibition against writing the Oral Torah, so that this thing won’t become fixed. Wait, I still need to come back to this. Now in the Talmud it says as follows, there in Gittin: Rabbi Yochanan said, the Holy One, blessed be He, made a covenant with Israel only for the sake of the oral matters, as it says: “For according to these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” Meaning, there is something in God’s covenant that relates specifically to the Oral Torah. And before this discussion, the Talmud also discusses the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. Rabbi Elazar said: the Torah is mostly in writing and only a minority oral, as it says: “Were I to write for him the multitude of My Torah, they would be considered alien.” And Rabbi Yochanan said: mostly oral and a minority in writing, as it says: “For according to these words.” Rashi says: “Mostly in writing”—most of the Torah depends on exposition, because it is written for exposition by means of general and specific rules, verbal analogies, and the other principles by which the Torah is expounded; “and a minority orally” means that there is no hint in the Torah from which to learn it, but rather it was said orally to Moses. So what he is saying, in effect, is that there are two types, apparently two types, of Oral Torah: laws given to Moses at Sinai and expositions. Rashi says that what is written here as Written Torah versus Oral Torah—this is all talking about Oral Torah. So what is called here Written Torah is exposition, and what is called here Oral Torah is laws given to Moses at Sinai, which have no anchoring in verses. And on that there is a dispute over which is the majority and which the minority. But obviously, if I relate to all the Oral Torah, then it is certainly the majority. Meaning, the Written Torah is almost nothing. We talked about Maimonides, yes, that there are maybe three or four expositions that were given to Moses at Sinai, or laws that we observe which are clear laws and emerge from laws that even the Sadducees admit to, as the language of the Sages puts it. Laws that even the Sadducees admit to are very few; there are very few of them. Meaning, almost all the Jewish law we know is really law transmitted in the Oral Torah. Everything is really around it. So it turns out that the relation between Written Torah and Oral Torah is some relation of skeleton and body, you could say. The Written Torah is some kind of skeleton, but unless I put flesh on it, it doesn’t say much. It has no form. And most of the corpus we know is really the flesh—the flesh, not the skeleton. And maybe I’ll demonstrate this through a passage in tractate Shabbat 116. It says there: they raised a dilemma: the blank spaces of a Torah scroll—do we save them from a fire or do we not save them from a fire? “Blank spaces” means parts of the parchment, yes? What isn’t written on. So the Talmud says: come and hear: a Torah scroll that was erased—if it still contains enough to gather eighty-five letters, such as the section “And when the ark traveled,” we save it. If not, we do not save it. Meaning, if there is a Torah scroll that was erased, then if eighty-five letters remain in it, like the section “And when the ark traveled”—that is the shortest section; according to one opinion in the Talmud it counts as a book in itself—then if eighty-five letters remain, it has sanctity and we save it. “Save it from a fire” means it has sanctity. A scroll that has sanctity, we save it from a fire on the Sabbath. Other things one may not save from a fire on the Sabbath lest one come to extinguish it. The Sages generally use indirect language to explain whether some book has sanctity or not. They either use the question whether one saves it from a fire, which is itself only a rabbinic prohibition to save it from a fire, or the question whether it renders the hands impure. Yes? The question whether the Scroll of Esther renders the hands impure. These are all kinds of indirect rabbinic halakhic implications, but what is hidden behind them is really the question whether there is sanctity or there is no sanctity. That is really the question; they use that sort of language to indicate the issue. So what then? The Talmud says: But why? Let this follow simply from its blank space. What does that mean? If you say the blank space also has sanctity, then what difference does it make if only fifty letters remain, fewer than eighty-five? But the blank parchment also itself is holy. Why do you need a certain number of letters to preserve the sanctity? The blank parchment too is itself holy. So the Talmud says: the place of the writing is not my question, because when it is holy, it is holy only on account of the writing. Once the writing is gone, its sanctity is gone. My question concerns the upper and lower margins, the space between one section and another, between one column and another, at the beginning of the scroll and at the end of the scroll. Meaning, the Talmud makes a really strange distinction. You’re talking to me about a Torah scroll that was erased, meaning it was written and then erased. It’s obvious that that is not holy. It’s not holy, because it may be that whatever was sanctified was sanctified only for the sake of the writing. So once the writing is gone, the sanctity is gone. I’m talking about the blank spaces that from the outset were never meant to be written on. Between the lines. Exactly. Between the lines. And their sanctity remains even if the writing disappears. Very strange. I would have said that should be lighter, weaker, right? Never mind.
[Speaker C] What? There’s a difference—it didn’t change, it’s the same thing, so the sanctity remains.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously. But from the outset, why was it holy? Obviously it didn’t change. Why is it holy at all? Seemingly a holy scroll is holy only because of what is written in it. So if there is parchment not intended for writing at all, why was it holy from the start? Not why it didn’t change, but why—
[Speaker C] —from the outset it was like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s part of it. Meaning, how can the part of it be more severe than the thing itself?
[Speaker C] The thing that was erased is no longer that thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then the thing that came because of it should also—so what if it stayed the same? If its sanctity derives from serving the writing, then it cannot be better than the writing itself. The writing itself, after it disappeared, lost its sanctity. So the thing that came to serve the writing will remain holy even when the writing is gone? That’s not reasonable.
[Speaker D] Like a base for something prohibited on the Sabbath.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but a base for something prohibited can remain, but the prohibited item itself also—
[Speaker D] Even if it’s gone, there is still a problem with the base.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But the prohibited item itself remains prohibited even if it’s gone; never mind. So the question is only about the base, but it’s parallel. If you take the category of muktzeh, it’s parallel to a situation where the muktzeh item itself would stop being muktzeh but the base would remain a base. By the way, now that you ask, there is such a case. For example, say laundry that was wet at twilight, you put it on something, and then it dried. Fine? So perhaps—though there too the laundry itself, since it was set aside at twilight, remains muktzeh. Fine. In any case, maybe even without that the base too would not have been holy, would not have been muktzeh. Okay. So there is here something strange; the Talmud is basically saying that the margins have sanctity in their own right, not because they serve the writing. The parchment that serves the writing—its sanctity is as a servant of the writing. Meaning, if the writing is gone, its sanctity is gone. But the margins have sanctity of themselves, in their own right, meaning not dependent on the writing itself. And if that is so, then I think what this is really saying is that when one writes a Torah scroll, we might have the illusion—contrary to the Talmud in Gittin—that the Torah scroll is fixed. And the Oral Torah must not be written, because it must not become fixed. When we write a Torah scroll we need to remember that it too is not fixed. Meaning, there is between the lines no less than there is in the lines themselves. The “between the lines” is the Oral Torah; that even has the everyday expression for it—what is written between the lines is basically the Oral Torah, right? So the lines themselves are what is written in the Torah—that is fixed. But the blank spaces, their sanctity is the sanctity of the Oral Torah, of what is found between the lines. And that does not depend on the Written Torah; that remains even if the Written Torah is gone. And therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, made a covenant with the people of Israel specifically over the Oral Torah, and that is the majority of the Torah, as we said: most of the Torah is oral and only a minority in writing. And basically what this means is that the Torah—when we talk about there being two Torahs given at Sinai—we can see this, at least metaphorically, in the scroll as it is written. The scroll itself that is here is the two Torahs, symbolically at least. The lines themselves are the text of the Written Torah, and what is between the lines is really the Oral Torah, which we fill in, because in truth that was not given at Sinai—it’s empty, nothing is written there, it was not given at Sinai, we fill it in. But even though we fill it in, it is part of the Torah scroll. Even though it does not depend on the writing itself, it has sanctity. Which is exactly that tension between commitment and authenticity. Meaning, I fill in between the lines things that were not originally written there, and this filling-in is the result of reasoning, or decisions of Sages, or something like that, and it receives the sanctity of Torah—and it is not even conditional upon the sanctity of the Written Torah. It seems to have an independent sanctity. I just want to finish this unit: I want to come back to this matter of Torah and song. It seems to me that in fact— I think you said something like this—that maybe this is the meaning of the identification of Torah with song. Usually—maybe I’ll talk about this more at length next time, because it’s an interesting topic: what is the definition of song, what is song at all? Once I had to speak at some conference on the portion of Beshalach, on Shabbat Shirah. So I wanted to try defining what song is. So first I went to the Hebrew Encyclopedia to see what they write about it. And what did I find? There is no such entry. In the Hebrew Encyclopedia there is no entry for “song” or “poetry.”
[Speaker F] So that’s interesting.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then I started looking around—how do they define it, what—and it was a total vacuum. A total vacuum. Until afterward I came across a little Hebrew booklet by Shimon Sandbank that I found, where he talks a bit about the matter, but in my opinion it also doesn’t really come close to the point. And I think the root of the issue is that it really is hard to define this concept, song or poetry. And why is it hard to define? I think it’s hard to define because it’s obvious that poetry is not what is written. As opposed to prose. Poetry is what is in the spaces between what is written, between the lines. And that I’ll try to define a bit more precisely next time, I hope. But here I just want to close the circle and say that perhaps the Torah is called a song in order to tell you that when you approach the text of the Torah, you have to relate to it as a song. Meaning, not to be fixed on what is written; what is written does not really carry within it the content, as in poetry. Rather, between the lines, the margins, what you extract through the Oral Torah—that is really the meaning of the Torah. Even though, again, there’s no authenticity claim here. I’m not claiming that what I extract from the Torah is what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended and transmitted to Moses, or things like that. But still, even so. As people say about poetry—that famous Kurzweil line. There’s a well-known joke about Agnon: they asked him, “What did you mean by writing this?” and he said, “Ask Kurzweil.” What that really means is that the writer has no ownership over what he wrote. In the end, the meaning of the thing is what you do with it. Now, that’s a very anarchic statement. It’s a statement that basically says there is no meaning; everyone does whatever he wants.
[Speaker E] There’s a theory from the end of the twentieth century called reader-response. Right, but also deconstruction. Deconstruction, New Criticism.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What’s the difference? That I don’t know.
[Speaker E] Basically the text is—the critic is the artist, in a certain sense.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, so that’s deconstruction, I think. That’s the basis of deconstruction.
[Speaker E] Deconstruction is much more postmodern.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. In any case, “post”—you mean that after he decides the text is located in me, then it follows that I can also destroy it; that’s the consequence. So the claim is basically that when we see the Torah as song, this metaphor that the Torah itself chooses in describing itself as song, is really telling us something about the relationship between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. It tells us exactly the point I made at the beginning: that the Oral Torah is not a collection of laws or a collection of principles given to Moses at Sinai and then passed along like a hollow pipe from generation to generation. It develops through human beings. It is a human Torah. It is a Torah that did not come down from Sinai. It is a human Torah. And although it is a human Torah, it is the Torah—it is binding. And just as the meaning of a poem is not necessarily what is written in the words, or maybe not even what the poet intended, but rather what you understand from the poem, what the poem does to you—so too. And because of that, the Torah is called a song. I’ll expand on this also when I talk about song next time, and afterward we’ll return to Torah and see how it works.
[Speaker C] Can everyone explain it as he likes, or does some body have authority to explain it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Authority is a topic we already dealt with. Who has the authority to do this? It may be that only one institution has the authority to do this, but in practice that institution too consists of human beings. Meaning, in the end, this is something that someone said. It may be. Maybe. That’s a question, but it’s an independent question. It’s the question of authority.