The Relationship Between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah – Lesson 5
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
- The Oral Torah as the “blank spaces between the lines”
- Yavneh, dispute, and Rabbi Akiva as an integrated model
- “Everything is from Sinai,” the hollow pipe, and Tosafot Yom Tov
- Maimonides, Torah-level and rabbinic law, and developments across the generations
- Error, truth, and authority that does not depend on authenticity
- Aggadic stories of ruling against Heaven and their normative meaning
- Three modes of inference: induction, deduction, analogy
- Certainty, innovation, and the logical uncertainty principle
- Tradition, midrashic derivations, and reasoning versus the demand for deduction
Summary
General Overview
The Oral Torah is understood as filling in the gaps in the Written Torah, and as a human creation that develops through interpretation and dispute, rather than as a hollow pipe conveying fixed content from Sinai until today. The tension between a traditionalist conception and an autonomous conception is described through Yavneh, and the preferred position is a synthesis in the style of Rabbi Akiva, in which one receives from earlier generations but also processes and reformulates before passing things on. The apologetic claims that “everything is from Sinai” are presented as an attempt to defend commitment to Jewish law by means of authenticity, while the alternative proposed here says that commitment does not depend on whether Jewish law is exactly what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended, but on the fact that the Torah itself established a mechanism of authority and human interpretation. The logical discussion explains why halakhic inferences are not mathematical-deductive, and therefore necessarily add uncertain information, and from that point arises the push toward theories that try to make everything certain and from Sinai.
The Oral Torah as the “blank spaces between the lines”
The Oral Torah is defined as filling in gaps in the Written Torah, as “the blank pages between the lines,” and is compared to the relation between the text of poetry and its interpretation. Tradition is not merely the technical transfer of content, but an act that inserts into the content the processing and added value of the transmitter himself. The model presented is that the one who transmits is not a “hollow pipe,” but someone who interprets, shapes, and then passes the material on after processing it.
Yavneh, dispute, and Rabbi Akiva as an integrated model
In the dispute at Yavneh in its first generation, the tension explodes between the traditional or traditionalist conception of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabban Gamliel, and the more autonomous conception of Rabbi Yehoshua and his younger colleagues. The tradition that reached us is described as expressed through Rabbi Akiva’s conception: he studies with Rabbi Eliezer and does not understand, then goes to Rabbi Yehoshua who explains it to him, and thus a synthesis is formed between receiving from earlier generations and human interpretation and processing. This model presents a tradition in which innovation is part of the process and not a deviation from it.
“Everything is from Sinai,” the hollow pipe, and Tosafot Yom Tov
The statement that “every small thing,” and everything a student will one day innovate, was given to Moses at Sinai, is presented as an apologetic statement whose purpose is to ease the question of the connection between the halakhic corpus we have and Sinai. The literal conception of this statement is described as a conception of tradition as a hollow pipe in which one merely passes the baton from generation to generation, to the point of concluding that even disputes were given to Moses at Sinai, on the basis of “these and those are both the words of the living God.” Tosafot Yom Tov, in the introduction to his commentary on the Mishnah, notes precisely that God “showed” and did not “gave,” and proposes that the Holy One, blessed be He, showed Moses in prophecy the innovations of the sages of future generations without those things actually being transmitted from generation to generation, while distinguishing between laws given to Moses at Sinai and a kind of prophetic “bonus” of knowledge about the future. The Sefat Emet is cited with the phrase “and you received in order to innovate” to argue that there is an active element in innovation and not merely opening an envelope, and Tosafot Yom Tov is presented as trying to soften the tension without theologically surrendering the claim that everything remains within the framework of what God intended in advance.
Maimonides, Torah-level and rabbinic law, and developments across the generations
Maimonides is presented as holding that very few things are actually part of the tradition, and the claim made is that this expresses the acceptance of a view close to Rabban Gamliel’s position, even if it is not claimed that Maimonides explicitly tied it to him. The distinction between Torah-level and rabbinic law is established as non-chronological, with the assertion that there are rabbinic enactments created by Moses and Torah-level laws that come into being over the generations. It is argued that the overwhelming majority of Torah-level halakhot are created through a process of interpretation, derivational methods, and applications, and examples are brought such as opening bottles on the Sabbath and disputes over electricity as possible applications of categories of labor such as building, the final hammer blow, or demolishing. There is also an example of an innovation that is not merely an application but a Torah-level interpretive change through Rabbi Akiva’s derivation in tractate Shabbat 64, which overturned an earlier norm regarding a woman’s adornment during menstruation through a different derivation of “and she shall remain in her menstruation.” At the beginning of Laws of Rebels, chapter 2, Maimonides is cited as writing that in Torah law any court in any generation can innovate according to what seems correct to it, without needing to be greater in wisdom and number than the earlier court, whereas in rabbinic law it must be greater in wisdom and number.
Error, truth, and authority that does not depend on authenticity
The central position holds that commitment to Jewish law does not depend on authenticity in the sense of “this is what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended,” and therefore there is no need for theories that defend commitment through claims of transmission from Sinai or of “showing” in prophecy. It is argued that human beings can err, and proof of this is taken from the Talmud regarding factual mistakes and from halakhic concepts such as a court that erred, like the communal bull offering for an erroneous ruling, as well as from the possibility that Amoraim retracted because they had made a mistake. The Talmud at the beginning of Horayot is cited as assuming that if a person concludes that the sages are mistaken, there is room for the question whether he is obligated to obey them, and this tension is presented as part of the system. “It is not in heaven” is presented as the idea that there is truth in heaven, but the binding ruling on earth follows the decision of the sages even without any guarantee that it matches God’s intention, and it is said that the reasonable likelihood is that a large part of Jewish law is not what God “dreamed of,” yet this does not cancel obligation because the Torah itself commands a mechanism of decision-making such as “do not turn aside” and “if a matter is beyond you… then you shall arise and go up.” The claim that in a dispute “one side is mistaken” is not nullified by “these and those are both the words of the living God,” but becomes non-decisive in terms of obligation because authority is not the result of authenticity.
Aggadic stories of ruling against Heaven and their normative meaning
The story of the heavenly academy and the question “if the white hair preceded the bright spot” is presented as an illustration that binding Jewish law is determined according to the sage who decides and not according to what is attributed to the Holy One, blessed be He, while emphasizing that the story is not read as a historical report but as a message. It is argued that stories like the Oven of Akhnai are likewise not testimony to actual prophecy, but an aggadic formulation that sharpens the dispute between one who claims an absolute transmitted truth in the style of Rabbi Eliezer and one who employs human judgment. The conclusion is that when the sages say “its general principles and particulars are from Sinai,” this is a normative statement of binding force and not a historical statement about the process of transmission, because in the Talmud itself the mechanism is derivations, reasons, and disputes that show creation and decision, not technical transmission.
Three modes of inference: induction, deduction, analogy
A distinction is presented between induction as inference from the particular to the general, deduction as inference from the general to the particular, and analogy as inference on the same level, from particular to particular or from general to general. It is argued that there is no simple hierarchy between induction and analogy, because induction appears to be a collection of analogies, but analogy too rests on hidden induction when the similarity between particulars assumes a general rule about the group. Following John Stuart Mill, it is argued that the certainty of deduction lies in the certainty of the transition from premises to conclusion, but the certainty of the conclusion depends on the certainty of the premises, and the premises themselves often rest on induction. The conclusion is that in practice there are not three separate modes of inference, but one process in which analogy breaks down into two stages of induction and then deduction.
Certainty, innovation, and the logical uncertainty principle
It is argued that a deductive argument is certain דווקא because it does not add information but only extracts from the premises what is already contained in them, and therefore it is precise but “doesn’t help us at all,” like in the story of the hot-air balloon where the answer “above my field” is certain but useless. Analogy and induction add information beyond the premises and therefore are not necessary and always involve the risk of error, and this gap creates the suspicion that they are “salesmanship” rather than rationality. A “logical or philosophical uncertainty principle” is proposed according to which the certainty of an argument multiplied by the amount of information it adds is constant, so that as certainty increases, information decreases, and as information increases, certainty decreases. It is argued that someone who demands only absolute certainty will be left without information, because even deduction rests on premises whose source is induction, and from here arises the question of how to draw the line regarding “soft arguments.”
Tradition, derivations, and reasoning versus the demand for deduction
The conception of the “hollow pipe” is presented as demanding only deductive arguments, because only in that way does the sage not add anything of his own but merely “uncover” what was already given, and extension by analogy, such as moving from an ox to a dog, is seen as illegitimate without explicit tradition. Against this, it is argued that Jewish law in practice operates through reasoning that guides the derivation, and that there is no derivation without logic directing what to include and what to exclude, as in the example “You shall fear the Lord your God”—to include Torah scholars, where the decision of what to include is determined by what seems reasonable. The discussion of a pit and the exclusion of vessels is presented as reflecting judgments and considerations rather than technical transmission, and the claim is that disputes such as Rabbi Yehuda’s view obligating liability for vessels in a pit show that the system is not merely “this is what I received from my rabbi.” Nachmanides, in the introduction to Milhamot Hashem, is cited as saying that “the wisdom of our Torah is not like the wisdom of astronomy and mathematics, whose proofs are conclusive,” and the position here is that Jewish law is not mathematics, and therefore the attempt to defend it by turning it into something deductive and Sinaitic gives rise to the theories of “everything is from Sinai,” whereas the alternative is to accept obligation even when authenticity is not certain.
Full Transcript
[Speaker A] We are dealing
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] right now with the topic of tradition, mainly the Oral Torah, and I began by saying that in essence the Oral Torah is a kind of filling in of the gaps in the Written Torah, yes, the blank pages between the lines. We spoke about this in terms of poetry, the relationship between interpretation and the text of the poem. After that I tried to describe the way disputes come into being, or the way a Torah that relates to human beings comes into being, through the dispute that took place in Yavneh in the first generation of Yavneh, where this tension basically exploded between the traditional or traditionalist conception, you could say, of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabban Gamliel, and the more autonomous conception of Rabbi Yehoshua and his younger colleagues. And in the end, the conclusion was that the tradition that came down to us can be expressed through Rabbi Akiva’s conception, who on the one hand learns from Rabbi Eliezer and doesn’t understand, and then goes to Rabbi Yehoshua who explains it to him, and so you basically get some kind of combination here between receiving what the previous generations pass on to you and the question of what you do with it, or how you interpret it, and after the processing that you give it, you pass the material on. Meaning, the transmitter is no longer a hollow pipe; he has some kind of added value for the things that pass through him. And it seems to me that this basically means that the things that have reached us today—I’ll already put the conclusion here before I go back to the end of the previous lecture—what this actually means is that when we today have some halakhic corpus, the tradition that came down to us, quite a few people struggle with the question of what the connection is between that and what was given to Moses at Sinai. And all kinds of statements develop—apologetic ones, in my view—that say yes, every tiny thing, everything that an experienced student will one day innovate, or that a young student will one day innovate, the Holy One, blessed be He, already conveyed to Moses at Sinai. Basically, everything, in its general principles and particulars, is from Sinai. Since that’s the easiest way to explain to people that of course they’re obligated to do it, everything was already there for Moses at Sinai. What stands behind a statement like that, if you take it in the simple, literal sense, is that tradition is a hollow pipe. Right? Because basically everything that reached us was given to Moses at Sinai, and all that happened from then until today is that they just passed it along, like a baton in a relay race, just passing it from generation to generation.
[Speaker C] That’s only the solution to what they’re saying in order to come and say that it passes through tradition. It can’t be that things—so in order to accept it, they say that this is the solution.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When they say that—I don’t agree with it—but it’s a nice way to explain what these things are aiming at.
[Speaker D] Even the disputes were given to Moses at Sinai.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Everything. But what does that mean? Moses, my son Yonatan says this, my son Yosi says that. The Talmud after all says, “These and those are both the words of the living God.” Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, already said what Rabbi Yosi would say, what Rabbi Yonatan would say. In any case, these statements hide behind them that same conception of Rabbi Eliezer and Rabban Gamliel, because basically these statements say that the tradition that came from Mount Sinai down to us is a hollow pipe. They passed on to us only some specific corpus that was already given there. Meaning, everything was already given there. There is a statement by Tosafot Yom Tov in the introduction to his commentary on the Mishnah. He writes there that he is precise in the wording: he says, everything that an experienced student will one day innovate, the Holy One, blessed be He, showed to Moses at Sinai—not gave to Moses at Sinai. And then he basically says that the Holy One, blessed be He, showed Moses in prophecy what the sages of all generations would say. But that doesn’t mean they are a hollow pipe and that the whole business passes through them in the most simplistic and really foolish way. I don’t know—Shimon HaTzaddik passes down to us three sayings that were transmitted to him in tradition in the form “Shimon HaTzaddik used to say three things.” Meaning, that’s how Shimon HaTzaddik received the tradition, and now he says “Shimon HaTzaddik says” these three things because he got an instruction from Sinai to say them. So at Sinai they also said that Shimon HaTzaddik would say them, and there they said it.
[Speaker E] It’s again the issue of free choice and foreknowledge, as if from God’s perspective the whole present and future—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying, that’s Tosafot Yom Tov.
[Speaker E] Tosafot Yom Tov justifies it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And the Sefat Emet always says, “and you received”—
[Speaker E] —to innovate. Meaning, it’s not that he received it and just opened the envelope. There’s some element here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, so I’m saying: Tosafot Yom Tov comes precisely to solve that tension. And he basically says something softer. He says: yes, foreknowledge, or knowledge and choice. But as if the Holy One, blessed be He, basically showed everything to Moses at Sinai—these are the innovations of the sages of the generations. But the Holy One, blessed be He, showed it to Moses at Sinai in prophecy, that this and that would be innovated in various places. He only showed it to him; it’s not that Moses then took it and passed it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets. No, it didn’t pass that way. There are things that the Holy One, blessed be He, transmitted, and then they pass through tradition. Those are laws given to Moses at Sinai. And there are things that the Holy One, blessed be He, showed as a kind of bonus—He showed him what would happen in the future. And he didn’t pass that on. He received this prophecy as a gift. And then in the end the sages really did innovate it over the generations.
[Speaker A] Wait, how does that fit with Maimonides’ conception, where he says there are very few things that are actually part of the tradition? How does it fit with that? Meaning, are you saying that in your view he says this because in the end Rabban Gamliel wins?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not sure he ties it specifically to Rabban Gamliel, but yes, it expresses the fact that Rabban Gamliel’s opinion was accepted. I don’t know whether he learned these passages the way I presented them and drew his conclusion from there, I have no idea. But it seems to me that that’s what he says. Yes, I’m already getting to that. So the thesis of Tosafot Yom Tov is basically a softer formulation that says yes, everything is essentially the intention of the Holy One, blessed be He, and this is basically what He intended. Except what happened? He gave us the keys, and people over the generations opened more and more doors, brought out more and more information from what we received. And the Holy One, blessed be He, knew it all in advance. So He already showed it to Moses our teacher, and that was probably planned too. Meaning, in the end, the formulation of Tosafot Yom Tov comes to say—not important right now, again, whether God really showed this to Moses or whether this is an aggadah that comes to say something—but what he is really coming to say is that those who say this are still right: true, it’s not a hollow pipe, but everything we have in our hands is what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended from the outset. Meaning, in the first formulation he says not only that He intended it, but that this is what He transmitted. It just passes from generation to generation and reaches us. Everything in the Mishnah Berurah was given to Moses at Sinai and passed down to us, and the Chafetz Chaim is the one who eventually wrote it down in a book. That’s the formulation, yes, again.
[Speaker F] But you need to distinguish between Torah-level law and rabbinic law.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m speaking right now about Torah-level law for present purposes. Rabbinic law is something else. I’m talking now about Torah-level law. There are those who go overboard and want to project this onto rabbinic enactments too. But that already really sounds strange to me.
[Speaker G] If He gave it to Moses in prophecy, then how was Moses surprised when he came to Rabbi Akiva’s classroom?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, so I once spoke about that. I said that I think he heard it in a different formulation, in a formulation appropriate to Rabbi Akiva’s generation. And when in the end they said that this is a law given to Moses at Sinai, then he understood that these were basically the things he had transmitted, only in the formulation or terminology, in the mode of thought, of the more modern study hall. Like the example I brought, yes—if Maimonides entered a class in the writings of Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin. Rabbi Chaim of Brisk? Yes.
[Speaker D] Maimonides spoke Egyptian Arabic. And Rabbi Akiva spoke Polish.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So if Maimonides entered a study hall today where they were learning Maimonides, he wouldn’t understand a thing, that’s obvious. He wouldn’t understand a thing. And as I say, actually in a more optimistic or generous way, he wouldn’t understand a thing not because we’re mistaken, but because we really formulate what he thought in our language and in our modes of thought today. And he isn’t part of our period today, so he wouldn’t formulate it that way. But my optimistic hope is that when we do this, it’s really true that this is Maimonides’ opinion. In that sense I actually do tend toward this view, which says that we’re not just making things up, but that we really do understand him that way. We can miss it, but broadly speaking I think it is an attempt to understand Maimonides correctly. All right? So here too, same thing.
[Speaker F] But where are there more innovations in Torah-level law?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?
[Speaker F] What innovations are there in Torah-level law that we don’t know today?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are every day.
[Speaker F] No way. That’s rabbinic, isn’t it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not at all. After all, in one of the series where I spoke about Torah-level and rabbinic law, I pointed out there that the distinction between Torah-level and rabbinic is not chronological.
[Speaker E] Meaning, it’s—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not that what existed in the days of Moses is Torah-level and what exists today is rabbinic. There are rabbinic enactments created by Moses our teacher—Moses’ ordinances, Torah reading, and so on. And there is Torah-level law that is created today, plenty of it. Torah-level law—the overwhelming majority of Torah-level halakhot were created over the generations; they didn’t exist from the days of Moses our teacher. They are created through a process of interpretation, through derivational methods, through applications. Sometimes it’s application. Take opening bottles—there are those who say that on the Sabbath it’s a Torah prohibition. It’s just on my mind, because then I suddenly started thinking about these issues, that after all these new caps on bottles—in the first years when they existed, no one thought about it at all, they just opened them and that was it. Suddenly a few halakhic decisors raised it. I remember the rebbe of Zutshka—an elderly Jew, long since deceased, in Bnei Brak—published a pamphlet on opening bottles, and of course, in the way of Hasidim, explained that we are destroying the whole Torah when we open such a bottle, that it’s a Torah prohibition and all kinds of things of that sort. But there are decisors who really say it’s a Torah prohibition. So did they invent it? No—they are applying the category of building, or the final hammer blow, or demolishing.
[Speaker A] The argument about electricity—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, electricity, yes, many things. Now, these things that are born now are Torah-level matters, not rabbinic. But that, of course, is only application. But there is also a development of Torah-level law that is not only application, but actual innovation. For example, I brought the example of the derivation in tractate Shabbat on page 64, where Rabbi Akiva writes there—the Talmud says there—that what the earlier generations used to say, that a woman should not paint herself and should not adorn herself during her days of menstruation, should not beautify herself and should not style her hair during her days of menstruation, until Rabbi Akiva came and said: she would thereby become repulsive to her husband. It can’t be that women are forbidden to do such a thing, and therefore he derived something else entirely from that verse: “and she shall remain in her menstruation” until she comes in water, meaning the mikveh—a completely different derivation that canceled the law of all the previous generations, and he derived it from a verse. Meaning, Torah-level law. And that’s it—he changed it because he thought the interpretation was incorrect. Maimonides writes at the beginning of Laws of Rebels, at the beginning of chapter 2 of Laws of Rebels, that any court in any generation can innovate Torah-level laws according to what seems correct to it, and it does not need to be greater in wisdom and number than the previous court. It has to be a court. In rabbinic law, yes, it does need to be greater in wisdom and number, but in Torah law any court, if—
[Speaker H] If today there were a Sanhedrin—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —and they decided that there are only three primary categories of labor on the Sabbath, then there would be three primary categories of labor on the Sabbath, not thirty-nine. I’m saying this with a qualification: I assume the Sanhedrin is supposed to decide according to what truly seems right to them, not because they feel like it, but because that’s how they think—it’s a different interpretation. So any Sanhedrin that interprets differently—there have already been such things, it’s documented—there were changes in Jewish law, and changes in Torah-level law, not in rabbinic law. And when there are disputes among Tannaim, or even disputes among Amoraim, in Torah-level law—then what is that? One of the two is apparently not what existed before. Again, there are those who want to say that the disputes too were ancient and always existed. People were terribly happy when they found Rabbenu Tam tefillin in the excavations at Masada. So they showed that the dispute between Rashi and Rabbenu Tam about tefillin is actually something ancient—it was already there at Masada. In that case, apparently, it really is true; that was an ancient dispute, and it also somewhat explains how Rabbenu Tam, who was Rashi’s grandson—what, did he answer back to his grandfather? Did he suddenly reinvent the wheel? So apparently he became convinced that the tradition was more correct. So true, there are things that are ancient. But to say that everything is like that seems to me very problematic. In any case, for our purposes, Tosafot Yom Tov is apparently more clear-eyed, because he understands that not everything was given to Moses at Sinai and that things are indeed innovated throughout history. But on the other hand, he does not give up the essence. Meaning, he still says that everything we have is basically what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended. It just didn’t pass to us that way, and the sages in fact created it over the generations. Historically he is more clear-eyed, but theologically he remains in exactly the same place. Theologically, from his point of view, it is binding because that is what the Holy One, blessed be He, said; therefore it is binding. It just didn’t pass historically through tradition from one person to another. We innovated it, but basically we are uncovering more and more things that the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted from the outset.
[Speaker A] Doesn’t that raise the question of free choice? What? Doesn’t that raise the problem of knowledge and choice?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He mentioned earlier too the issue of knowledge and choice, yes. Meaning, I don’t agree with this, so I don’t know how to defend these things. I think these conceptions are unnecessary, and in my opinion also not plausible. I think there’s no need to go there. It’s pretty clear why these conceptions arise: they arise in order to defend obligation, to show that this whole business is binding. You see that it says in the Torah, “Do not do any labor”—there’s a verse, “Do not do any labor”—and then Shemirat Shabbat Kehilchatah, it’s unbelievable what’s there: put a secondary vessel here, put a pot on top of it, remove it, set it with a Sabbath timer, do this, do that—
[Speaker A] Where is that—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —written in the verse “Do not do any labor”? “Do not do any labor”—my son—
[Speaker A] mine always—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —always says to me, “Do not do any labor,” that’s all. What are all these little details? Where did you get all these little details from?
[Speaker F] So the answer being proposed—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] According to the two approaches I described until now, yes, yes, it’s all inside, all written there. Meaning, everything is folded between the pages surrounding the words “do not do any labor.” Basically, all of Shemirat Shabbat Kehilkhatah is written there; it just took time to bring it out. But in the end, it’s there. I think the more reasonable alternative—and it can still ground obligation, though it takes a bit more complex thinking—is what I spoke about regarding obligation. Obligation does not depend on authenticity. Meaning, the fact that I am bound by some particular Jewish law that was created by interpreters and halakhic decisors over the generations is not because that is what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended. Not necessarily. He may have intended it, but that is not the condition. My obligation does not depend on that. So there is no need to arrive either at the first approach, that everything was transmitted, or even at Tosafot Yom Tov, because that too is really what Tosafot Yom Tov wanted to gain. He wanted to gain the claim that really, don’t worry, everything is authentic. Even if it wasn’t really passed through a hollow pipe, still everything is authentic. And I say no. That’s not true, not everything is authentic. I’ll say more than that: there’s a good chance that the vast majority is not at all what the Holy One, blessed be He, had in mind. He didn’t intend it at all. That’s obvious. People create things in all kinds of directions. How would you know what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended if He didn’t say anything? How do you know? Human beings can’t make mistakes? We know there are things in the Talmud that are mistakes—mistakes about facts. Meaning, here it’s not a question of laws. In laws I don’t know what’s a mistake and what’s not a mistake, but in facts I do know. Is that how you started the class? What? Yes, maybe. That’s the heresy you started with in the Talmud. Yes, exactly. Since then I’ve just been bringing it out more and more; it just keeps getting stronger. Yes. That’s why we’re underground, on minus-2. In any case, the fact that sages can make mistakes is proven from the pages of the Talmud themselves. So if that’s true, and it’s not all divine inspiration and prophecy and things of that sort, then I have no reason to assume they couldn’t make mistakes. And in Jewish law, in my opinion, it’s easier to make mistakes in halakhic interpretation than in facts. So I say: if I had to guess—we have no way to know. We have no way to know, because how do I know what the correct law is? This is what it says in the Talmud, this is what it says in Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. How do I know whether he’s right or not? I can say what I think, but I have no independent feedback telling me he was right or wrong. But I say, a common-sense guess is that if they can make mistakes and if they’re human beings, then they can make mistakes in halakhic interpretation too. And the next step is: so what? So they can make mistakes—so what? Why should obligation depend on authenticity? The Holy One, blessed be He, did not give us all the details of the Torah. He did not give us everything that appears in Jewish law. If He had wanted to, He would have given it; He didn’t. And if He didn’t give it, what did He expect would happen? I assume this is what He did expect in advance to happen. What? That people would make interpretations. He also says, “do not deviate,” meaning He established a Sanhedrin, He established authorized institutions. He apparently understood that “if a matter be too difficult for you… between blood and blood, between law and law, between lesion and lesion… then you shall arise and go up to the elders in your gates.” Meaning, the Torah itself tells us what to do if we don’t know. Meaning, the Torah itself assumes interpretation by sages throughout history, and it tells us “do not deviate”—that it does say. Exactly, exactly. Meaning, the product may be wrong. I have no guarantee that what the sages produced over the generations hits what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended—on the contrary. There’s a good chance that most of it does not. I’ll tell you what the problem is. A physicist makes mistakes, a mathematician makes mistakes, a judge makes mistakes, a police officer makes mistakes—everyone makes mistakes. But you can’t bring yourself to understand that if this is religion, which is supposedly divine, how can there be mistakes in it? Unless someone created a framework for life and tells you: sir, this is the framework I want you to live in and conduct yourself within, with all the mistakes. Just as a state arises and the property law determines things, so the Torah determines things. Exactly—that’s exactly what I’m claiming. Otherwise there would be anarchy. Not only would there be anarchy; in truth the Holy One, blessed be He, wants this process, beyond the question of whether it’s only to prevent anarchy. He wants the process. But then the different streams in Judaism, each one thinks it’s interpreting differently. If he convinces me, great. Perfectly fine. It’s only a matter of persuasion. Nothing is outside the bounds. Nothing is outside the bounds. Convince me that this really is the right continuation of the tradition, and I’ll join you. True, that’s what comes out of this—I completely agree. But I think that’s the only reasonable alternative. Otherwise it’s an illusion. I’m saying, this feeling that because it’s religion—as Tzvika said earlier—because it’s religion, there can’t be any mistakes because the Holy One, blessed be He, doesn’t make mistakes: that is exactly what I want to argue against. It’s not the Holy One, blessed be He. The Holy One, blessed be He, doesn’t make mistakes. But human beings created this thing, not the Holy One, blessed be He. And human beings can make mistakes. Human beings who are righteous, everything’s fine—they can all make mistakes. Why should it be impossible here? Of course it’s possible. They tell us stories about divine inspiration: everyone mentioned in the Talmud could revive the dead and had divine inspiration—I heard all these legends. I don’t know—when did divine inspiration stop? When the Talmud was sealed in the sixth century? When did it end? Until the fourth century everyone could revive the dead, and from the sixth century onward that ability vanished? Fine, here and there there was such a thing—Elisha knew how to revive the dead, I understand. But it’s so strange. From when did the sages begin to be able to make mistakes? Today sages can make mistakes, right? We know them. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. They can be great sages but still make mistakes, right? In the nineteenth century could they make mistakes? The sages of the nineteenth century—I assume yes. What changed from the nineteenth century until today? Maybe they were a bit wiser, if we want to be optimistic. Fine. But they were still human beings, like me and like you. And in the sixteenth century? And in the thirteenth? What does it mean to make a mistake? What does it mean to make an incorrect interpretation, one that doesn’t fit what the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted? After all, interpretation is the determination of a norm. Right, that’s basically legislating laws. No—you just jumped. Determining a norm and legislating laws are not the same thing. Meaning, it could be that this norm is an interpretation of what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants. The question is whether this interpretation is correct—whether that is what He intended. Then it may be not. It may not be; it may be; right, I don’t know. And therefore power was given to some person or some group to decide that this is it. Therefore the authority is not a result of authenticity. I want to protest the expression “to make a mistake.” It’s not making a mistake, it’s disagreeing. No, it is making a mistake. No, certainly—I insist. Is one of them mistaken? Yes. I claim one of them is mistaken, and it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because the authority or the obligation does not depend on authenticity. Only in heaven for Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel—”these and those are the words of the living God.” Lice on the Sabbath—not only lice on the Sabbath. Fine, that’s in the area of factual errors, a mistake about a fact and a legal ruling. The filter of authority means that until today, whatever didn’t pass the filter fell away, and what remained with us is the mainstream. But even today we accept… Whatever isn’t accepted over two hundred years moves aside. No problem, but the question is whether what the mainstream ultimately leaves us is also necessarily the original intention of the Holy One, blessed be He. That’s the question. I understand that the halakhic process is mechanical. But you said maybe in the nineteenth century they were wiser; I claim not in that sense. Even if I accept the notion that in the nineteenth century they were wiser than today, and in the eighteenth more than the nineteenth—even if I accept that. But when did the ability to revive the dead end? Meaning, from when did they start being able to make mistakes? A Torah scholar today—even a great Torah scholar—we understand that he can make mistakes; he himself can say sometimes, I was wrong, I retract. And the Talmud says that Amoraim retracted because they were mistaken. How can anyone sell this line? I simply can’t understand it. Really—it just doesn’t work; it goes against what is written. What is the bull brought for a communal error? The Sanhedrin, the Great Court, made a mistake and brings the communal error-offering. The seventy greatest sages of the Jewish people sat and deliberated, voted, the mainstream accepted it, and then it turned out they were mistaken. Who determined that they were mistaken? They themselves. The Talmud at the beginning of Horayot, for example—the Talmud there that discusses authority—speaks there about someone who errs regarding the commandment to listen to the words of the sages. This is less known: “right that is left and left that is right,” I once mentioned this. The simple meaning there in the Talmud—and later there are all kinds of reinterpretations because it’s problematic—but the simple meaning is that when you reach the conclusion that they are mistaken, you also don’t need to listen to them. If you’re already saying that the Torah is in our hands, then I thought, as much as I could understand from what you said before, that there is no absolute truth, but rather the sages have the ability to define it. No—so I say two things. I tend to think there is a personal halakhic truth; that’s my personal opinion. I even have a few arguments for this, maybe we’ll talk about it sometime: that there is halakhic truth in the sense of what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended. On the other hand, the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself—this is what “it is not in heaven” means; “My children have defeated Me.” In the story of “My children have defeated Me,” there is no one to defeat if there is no truth above. “Do whatever you want—that’s the truth.” What does “My children have defeated Me” mean? “My children have defeated Me”—a heavenly voice comes out; again, of course it’s aggadic literature—but what is it trying to say? It’s trying to say: there is My position; I am telling you what heaven really wants, but “it is not in heaven.” Meaning, if you reach a different conclusion, I want you to do what you think. And that is what is halakhically binding. Pure theoretical truth is what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended. If the Holy One, blessed be He, says something, then that’s probably true. But at the same time, that is the central idea of “it is not in heaven.” The central idea of “it is not in heaven” is not that there is no truth—quite the opposite: there is truth, only it is in heaven, and on earth we have to go by what we decide. We try to discover it, of course, but we have no guarantee that we actually succeeded. And Rabbi Eliezer—this is what he fights about with his colleagues all the time—he says, friends, I am telling you what the Holy One, blessed be He, said. You are engaging in speculation about what He intended; ask me and I’ll tell you what He said, there is no need to speculate. And they did not accept it. This is the Holy One, blessed be He; this is even if they err and even if they act intentionally, and He delegated this authority. Right, so “even if they err and even if they act intentionally” is said explicitly about sanctifying the new month. But I am saying that in this story and in the entire corpus around it, I think you can see that this is really a broader conception than just the new month. But if we understand the system from everything the old system says, and everything the system today says, that wasn’t inside the Torah. Yes. That’s the absolute truth; that’s the mistake. Where did it come from? What is this? These additions? No, that’s not the absolute truth, because it isn’t what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended. No, but it is what obligates us, even though it’s not the truth. Even though part of it may not be the truth. Yes, I don’t know—I can guess that a large part of it is not true, a guess; I have no way to know. But even if that’s true, it doesn’t matter. So let’s take the bottles you spoke about earlier. Yes, I—it’s not connected to beers; beer is permitted. No, because a positive commandment overrides a prohibition, like slander. What? Slander is permitted on the Sabbath? Yes—so a positive commandment overrides a prohibition; delight in the Sabbath overrides the prohibition of slander. And it’s like opening bottles. There you go—with beer, a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. Okay, okay. You can think everything is fine and that he didn’t know this was forbidden, and then they’ll discover that in fact it is. According to the true Jewish law, it really is forbidden. Right. Yes. Or the opposite. Or the opposite, right. But that’s what Maimonides writes there: every court in every generation can change a Torah-level law and you have to listen to them. Now, one of them presumably was right. Ah, actually that’s not certain. My claim is that one was right and the other was wrong. You could say there is no truth and therefore we do this, but there are a few indications that there is truth. It could be that errors are a minority of cases. It could be—I have no idea, no idea. That’s why I say the question doesn’t bother me. That’s my claim: I don’t know how many mistakes there are; I have no idea. But I thought the process is supposed to refine it, or try to get to… Of course we try to know what really should be done. We don’t just do whatever we want. The whole concept of what is a sage who fears ruling? A rabbi who fears issuing a ruling. The Pahad speaks about this, and all the halakhic decisors too; in all the introductions to responsa you can always read about this—people who are afraid to issue legal rulings. What are you afraid of? After all, if what you’re saying is the truth, then what are you afraid of? You’re afraid that despite this being your conclusion, maybe it isn’t correct. Meaning, the assumption is that there is a right and a wrong. And you can make a mistake. Fine? It’s just that you shouldn’t fear ruling because… not because there is no such thing as error, but because even if it is an error, it’s… you did your best, and that is what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants from you. That makes ruling joyful. Yes. It’s very interesting, really. Because for me at least, this reality in which there is the system you said has the authority and we are obligated to it, and in the end I think what I’m hearing is that some rabbis are basically dealing with okay, how conservative to be. As if there is truth, right? But the truth… the system is broader than the Torah’s capacity of truth, and then it’s a question of okay, how conservative do I want to be about changing something that may be an error but is accepted in the system, as against what you said—that there is subjectivity in Jewish law that can also be applied. Yes, but conservatism is not the same question. Because suppose that until my generation they behaved a certain way and I think differently. Then I ask myself whether to be conservative or not—that’s an entirely different question. Because on the question of who is right, it may be that I am right and not they. You are assuming that they are right, the only question being whether I am obligated to go with them or allowed to deviate. Conservatism and that are two different things. And I know this is sort of a different test. And it seems to me that many of the discussions now, about where Jewish law is going, are more systemic. Fine, but that’s a different question. I’m not dealing with that right now. That’s a different question. Since you asked about truth, you didn’t ask about conservatism. Yes, yes, I’m just kind of going… yes. But if they say that 90 percent is this kind of invention of the system, of the process, that means that in heaven… that it wasn’t in heaven at all. Okay. Correct. Now it’s in heaven. After we made it, after we created it. Of course. I think the Talmud says this in the clearest possible way. What does it mean, “if the white hair preceded the lesion”? There is a dispute in the heavenly academy; they say, let’s ask Rabbah bar Nachmani. The Holy One, blessed be He, disagrees with the heavenly academy about whether the white hair preceded the lesion. Fine, let’s ask Rabbah bar Nachmani—he is the master of all laws of lesions and tents. Meaning, let’s ask him what he says. Then they ask him; his soul departed in purity—they heard he had died, and they bring him up there, yes, and he tells them that it is pure. And that’s it—that is the Jewish law. So again, I don’t care right now about the historicity of the story. What is the story trying to say? The story is trying to say that ultimately the Holy One, blessed be He, can say one thing, but the law that binds us is what Rabbah bar Nachmani says. And not because Rabbah bar Nachmani is necessarily right, not because that is what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended. The Holy One, blessed be He, knows what He intended, and He said the opposite. By the way, Maimonides rules against the Holy One, blessed be He—you know that—in that dispute of the heavenly academy regarding the three days before the giving of the Torah. There is a dispute there regarding a menstruant woman, those kinds of distancing laws. The Holy One, blessed be He, says one thing, and someone else says another, and Moses our teacher decides, or something like that. And Maimonides rules—and maybe Rabbah bar Nachmani too, I don’t remember—that Maimonides rules against the Holy One, blessed be He. The Talmud says what the Holy One, blessed be He, said and what the heavenly academy said. Why? Because “it is not in heaven.” Again, I am not taking this description as a historical description—how would they know what the Holy One, blessed be He, said and what happened in the heavenly academy? It’s coming to say this: that even though the Holy One, blessed be He, says one thing and we reach a different conclusion, that’s okay, that can happen, and one need not be alarmed by it. So what happened? The Torah was not given to ministering angels. The Holy One, blessed be He, says this—these are human beings. Or they invented this aggadic story just in order to tell the story. It’s a dispute between human beings. One says the Holy One, blessed be He, says this, and the other says but the Holy One, blessed be He, says something else. No, but the Talmud doesn’t describe it that way. The Talmud describes a dispute between the Holy One, blessed be He, and the heavenly academy, and the sage below decides against the Holy One, blessed be He, and like the heavenly academy. Not that he says the Holy One, blessed be He, agrees with me. He decides against the Holy One, blessed be He. Now again, he didn’t know that the Holy One, blessed be He, said that, and the Talmud that wrote it didn’t know either. I don’t think there is room to read it as a historical story. It’s a story meant to convey this point. This point: when the Holy One, blessed be He, says one thing and the sages say something else, fine, that can happen, and it is still binding. Obligation does not depend on authenticity. That’s exactly the point. Therefore I do not go searching for these theories that anchor everything we have in hand by saying that it was all originally intended by the Holy One, blessed be He, or that it was all handed down from Sinai. What do we know for sure that the Holy One, blessed be He, said? What? Give an example—what did the Holy One, blessed be He, definitely say and people… You’re asking hard questions. Well, let’s say the Written Torah. The Written Torah—that is exactly what you said. The Written Torah: the Holy One, blessed be He, says that, and people say no, I think the Holy One, blessed be He, means this. Clearly, in disputes between sages no one says, the Holy One, blessed be He, said this and I disagree with Him. I don’t think any sage ever said that; that’s obvious. Everyone tries to understand what the Holy One, blessed be He, intends, and of course that is our motivation. The Talmud now comes in retrospect and says okay, each one thinks the Holy One, blessed be He, agrees with him. But obviously the truth is that the Holy One, blessed be He, agreed with only one of them, not both. So what do I do now? Maybe I am not doing what the Holy One, blessed be He, says. Don’t worry. Even though the Holy One, blessed be He, says one thing and the sages ruled another, go with them. It’s fine. Does it do such a thing? Of course we are trying to discover what the Holy One, blessed be He, said. But it’s like when Hazal… same thing. No, but there the Holy One, blessed be He, expressed Himself. No, I don’t think He expressed Himself there either. The Oven of Akhnai—they were not prophets. It’s a story meant to convey a message. I don’t think they actually heard the Holy One, blessed be He, saying anything there. They are trying to convey this message, because I also explained the background. That was the argument. Rabbi Eliezer says to them: friends, there is truth. I am telling you, I have a chain from my teachers from their teachers from their teachers all the way back to Moses our teacher, of what the Holy One, blessed be He, said. And they said: that doesn’t sound reasonable to us. We have considerations against it. You don’t study these things? What? You don’t study these things? Okay, that’s why you’re here. There were prophets—Isaiah, Jeremiah. I’m here with Abaye and Rava. But he says, there is no more prophecy; study the Torah and that’s all—that’s what it says there. Prophecy ended with Malachi. So I knew that without studying Malachi. That’s why I’m here. Okay. Basically Jewish law has two components. One is knowledge, what we study, and also… who’s the best salesman. The salesman can sell what he thinks. That’s a somewhat pessimistic way of looking at it. To me, salesman in the sense that he really persuades better. Why call him a salesman? By the way, this is the point I am getting to now. Okay? This is the point I am getting to now; all this took me too long. I really jumped to the end. This is the picture of tradition I intended to convey. In the end, this is the conclusion. The pages between the lines—we are not uncovering things that are really there and merely exposing them by deductive tools. Rather, we are giving some interpretation. That interpretation may be there, may not be there between the lines, in the margins. But in the end, if this is the conclusion we reached, then this is what is expected of us to do. To my mind, this is a more realistic, more reasonable approach to tradition, without arriving at all kinds of theses like “its general principles and details were all from Sinai” and “everything was transmitted from Sinai.” To my mind those are normative statements, not historical statements. When Hazal say that what was revealed, its general principles and details were from Sinai, that is a normative statement, not a historical statement that it was actually given at Sinai; rather, for our purposes it is as if it was given at Sinai. That is normative guidance, not a historical claim. It’s obvious that it is not a historical claim. Anyone who sees a page of Talmud sees that it’s not true. People do not transmit it by saying, “that’s what I received from my teacher.” They bring a derivation here and a reason there and arguments; people debate there. It’s not that each one transmits what he heard from his teachers and then they go home. It doesn’t work that way. They reach conclusions using judgment. And one medieval authority says no, I have a different answer. So what—he received that answer from his teacher and the other one received the other answer from his teacher? Neither of them received it from his teacher. It’s the answer that seemed right to them when they encountered a difficulty. That is how Torah is created. This is a Torah of human beings. We spoke about Shimon the Righteous, about Pirkei Avot, that at a certain stage Torah is produced by human beings. That’s the process taking place there. Okay, all this was an introduction—not an introduction, this was the summary. Right. This is the summary; this is really the picture of tradition I meant to arrive at in the end, and now I want to see what logic stands behind it. And there are interesting logical aspects here, and they have implications not only regarding tradition, and this brings us back to the question of asmachta. By the way, sorry, it’s not the last verse in Malachi, it’s the one before it. The very last verse of Malachi says, “Behold, I send you Elijah the prophet.” Meaning, I don’t know the verse, I don’t know. You can tell me the last verse, or two before the last. You can repent until the very last moment. Fine, can I continue? What you didn’t manage to do in my childhood, you’re trying to educate me about now? Fine. There is a certain logical background to this matter and I want to touch on it a bit. I began at the end of last time by distinguishing between three modes of inference: induction, deduction, and analogy. And I said that when the inference goes from the particular to the general, that is induction, that is generalization. When the inference goes from the general to the particular, that is deduction. And when it remains at the same level, from particular to particular or from general to general, then that is analogy. When you look at it—once, in the first year that I taught in Yeruham, in Elul I was still driving from home to Yeruham; we weren’t living there yet. On the way I picked up two soldiers, a male soldier and a female soldier, hitchhikers, and I drove them crazy with this point. I told them, you have to hear this, I just came up with something nice. The poor people suffered the whole way. From Be’er Sheva to Yeruham? That’s not far. They never let me forget that silly thing I did there. In any case, I told them—the question is really which of these three ways of inference is stronger. Deduction, yes: if all human beings are mortal and Socrates is a human being, then Socrates is mortal. That’s necessary, that’s certain. You can’t say otherwise. What about analogy and induction? What is the relation between analogy and induction? Which is stronger? Induction? Why? Because it’s based on data and you want to make a rule out of all those particulars. And analogy too. In analogy you compare two things. Okay, many people have that intuition, that induction is stronger. Right, seemingly in one sense analogy is stronger because it’s weaker. After all, induction is really just a collection of many analogies. Meaning, I see one donkey with four legs, so I say probably all the donkeys in the world have four legs. So what did I really do? I made a collection of many inductions from this donkey to each of the other donkeys. Many analogies, yes. But that’s based on probability, and every time you see another one it strengthens it. It doesn’t mean… No, no—you are already bringing in the degree of empirical testing. I am talking about having one, two, three examples—it doesn’t matter how many examples I collected—and now I extract a general rule from them. That’s it. I stop there before testing it empirically on the next case. Okay? What is the status of such a procedure? Is it better than analogy? Worse than analogy? Seemingly, the more risks a claim takes, the less grounded it is. Now, for induction it is enough for there to be one donkey that does not have four legs for the induction to be false. In analogy I am only making a claim about one donkey, nothing more. So my chance of error, the risk I am taking, is smaller. Meaning, seemingly analogy is more grounded than induction. Now when you say induction turns into deduction—it’s not clear. Mathematical induction is not part of the game; that’s deduction. It’s called induction. But scientific induction—you see examples and create a rule from them. Why is it nevertheless not so simple to say this? Because if you think about how… So that one also has four legs. No, but analogy doesn’t have to be that way. I can say, okay, a donkey has four legs, so any creature over there—maybe a fish—that fish also has four legs. Right. That’s not based on anything. In induction too I can say if a donkey has four legs then all living creatures have four legs. Including fish? But I am not presenting that as stronger; I only want to claim that induction too can be mistaken. Of course both can be mistaken. The question is only which of the two is stronger. Neither is absolute. Only deduction is certain. But still, between the two, which is stronger? So seemingly, the more risks you take in an argument, the greater the chance of error. You define analogy as induction of one case. What? You define analogy as induction, or induction as many analogies. Yes. Or induction is really—seemingly. Now why isn’t this completely simple? It isn’t completely simple because why do I make the comparison between one donkey and another donkey? Because of some kind of similarity. Because I assume—for I know nothing about the second thing except that it is a donkey. Right. So it isn’t really many analogies; induction is one analogy. When I take one donkey and see that it has four legs and infer a conclusion about that other donkey, I infer it only because it is a donkey; I know nothing else about it beyond that it is a donkey. So implicitly I made an induction here. I said that if this donkey has four legs, then all donkeys have four legs, and in particular that donkey. Because if another donkey came along I would say the same thing. It just happens that I am dealing with one donkey. Therefore at bottom—meaning, seemingly I presented it as though induction is built from a collection of analogies. You think it’s really the same thing. Right. Seemingly induction is built from a collection of analogies, but in fact when you look at it, analogy too at its foundation rests on hidden induction. When I make an analogy between two things, I am basically saying what is similar between them? That both are donkeys. So really I am making this claim about all donkeys; I am not making it only about a particular donkey. I say it about one donkey, but really in the background I made some hidden induction. Right? So it comes out… Like when we were on the way to Yeruham. Yes. What, did I catch you? You’re not here? What? Okay. Between analogy and induction there is no simple hierarchy. In fact they are probably more or less the same type of inference. They are not really two different kinds of inference. Fine, now let’s continue. Deduction is fine—that’s definitely fine, right? Deduction is certain, that’s clear. What exactly is certain there? Here you have John Stuart Mill’s challenge to deduction. He says: suppose you take “all human beings are mortal, Socrates is a human being, therefore Socrates is mortal.” How certain can you be that Socrates is mortal? Exactly as certain as you are that all human beings are mortal. Right? The conclusion depends on the premises. So the certainty you have is not certainty in the conclusion, but in the derivation of the conclusion from the premises. But the certainty in the conclusion itself is a function of the certainty you have in the premises. Okay? Now how do you know that all human beings are mortal? Because you have never seen anyone who didn’t die. You made an induction. You saw several human beings die and made from that the induction that apparently all human beings are mortal. Right? Meaning that in the end, even a conclusion you reach by deduction rests at bottom on induction. Right? So this absoluteness of deduction is an illusion. It is the absoluteness of the transition, not of the conclusion—the transition from the premises to the conclusion. But if you ask me about the conclusion, the conclusion can never be better than induction. That’s not true, because it’s not always true, because sometimes the premises don’t come from induction but from a very strong intuition. Doesn’t matter, that’s still induction. No, no matter—even induction is a very strong intuition. What is induction? My induction that all donkeys characteristically have four legs. It may be that this is an accidental donkey that has four legs, but my intuition says that four-leggedness is probably characteristic of donkeys; it’s not accidental. In the background there are always intuitions; this ability to generalize. No, but deduction is absolute on the assumption that the premises are absolute to the same degree. Yes, the transition from the premises to the conclusion is absolute, but the conclusion in itself will never have absolutely certain force, right? It is only based on premises. Based on premises. So what this really means is that deduction too rests on induction. Meaning induction rests on analogies, analogy rests on induction, and deduction itself rests on analogies and inductions. Right? There are not three ways of inference; there is only one. There is only one—just analogy. Except that how do we make analogies? We begin with induction and finish with deduction. That’s it. What we just did is analogy. Meaning, suppose we take one donkey that has four legs—look how many donkeys I’ve seen with four legs. I make an induction that all donkeys have four legs. Now I want to know about the donkey sitting there. So I say: that donkey also has four legs. Why? That’s deduction: if all donkeys have four legs, then in particular that donkey does. So really I break the analogy into two stages. The first stage is induction and the second is deduction. But really there aren’t three ways of inference here at all; it’s just a circle. I build the analogy between these two by means of induction that then becomes deduction. That’s all. It isn’t really three ways that compete with one another; we are always using the same thing. The only question is what stage of the process we are in. In the transition from premises to the conclusion of deduction, we are at a certain stage. Are you saying the first stage is analogy? No, the result is analogy. I break the analogy into two stages. One of them is induction and the second is deduction. Suppose you take—I make an analogy between two particulars. How do I do it? By assuming that both belong to a group with regard to which this property is true. So how does it work? I take this particular and say: I rise from it to the group. That’s induction. All donkeys have four legs. Now I say: if all donkeys have four legs and this is a donkey, then it too has four legs. That’s deduction. What did I do overall? From this donkey to that donkey I made an analogy. Meaning, analogy really rests on induction plus deduction. Is there anyone else who says this besides you? No, come on, I was the kid in reserves. No, this is an accepted theory. It’s a fact—what do you mean, an accepted theory? How can anyone argue with it? Is it those two female soldiers you met while hitchhiking? It was obvious to me—the wheel was over there, one system here and one system there, and I was driving in one system. I wasn’t looking where the road was. Okay, so why am I saying this? Because these things generate a great deal of argument. Because people give credit to arguments that are deductive arguments. If you have a proof, then I accept your conclusion. If you don’t have a proof, then it’s subjective, it’s a salesman—meaning, then it depends on whether you know how to sell or not. It isn’t really something I am supposed to accept on rational grounds, but just a question of whether you know how to sell your wares. And that assumption really rests implicitly on the conception that only something deductive, only something that has a proof, is admissible. Okay? If I translate this into the problem—why did I get into this whole thing? To translate it into the problem of tradition. Meaning, if you have a proof that something is derived from a verse or from a law given to Moses at Sinai or something like that, then of course you are basically a hollow pipe. Because in practice what you are telling me is already written there; you only extracted it from there. Okay? You did not create anything new. Therefore the tradition of the hollow pipe is prepared to accept only deductions. Meaning, there are things that the Holy One, blessed be He, said, and whatever you derive by valid logical inference from what He said is fine, because it’s there. But beyond that you cannot do anything, because every analogy or induction adds something of your own. You are not exposing the things inside the Torah. Maybe I’ll bring the story that works well for this situation—it’s in the book, yes, with the hot-air balloon: two people lost their way in a balloon, and after a while they see someone plowing a field below. They ask him, tell us, where are we? So he says to them, above my field. So the one sitting above is so impressed by the wisdom of the one below that he says to his friend: listen, that fellow down there is definitely a mathematician. Why? Because what he says is precise and absolutely certain, and A and B—it is of no help to us whatsoever. The claim is that these two characteristics are connected. It is indeed true that mathematics is absolutely certain and precise—and of no help to us whatsoever. What in philosophy is called the emptiness of the analytic. What does that mean? When I say all humans are mortal, and Socrates is a human being, the conclusion is that Socrates is mortal. Why must someone who accepts the premises accept the conclusion? Why is it necessary? It’s necessary because the conclusion is inside the premises. When you say that all human beings are mortal, you have also said within that that Socrates in particular is mortal. Right? So if you accepted the premise about all human beings, then when I tell you about Socrates you certainly accept it, because really it is already contained in the premises. It doesn’t add anything beyond what was already in the premises. Meaning, the certainty of a deductive argument, or a logical argument, comes from the fact that it adds nothing. Right? And the problem with analogy and induction is that they do involve novelty; they add information beyond what is in the premises. And therefore they are not necessary, because you are adding something. And once you add something, maybe you are right and maybe you are not—again, with the tradition in which sages innovate something and have an interpretation, maybe they are right and maybe they are not; I don’t know. I am only trying to show why I am discussing this matter. So in practice, when we speak about the conception of the hollow pipe—tradition as a hollow pipe as against the conception of a more autonomous tradition—what lies behind it is the question of our attitude to analogy and induction. What is our attitude toward forms of inference that are not deductive, that are not certain, that not only expose what is inside what we received but add information beyond what we received. For example, if we received that “if one man’s ox gores his fellow’s ox,” then he must make payment—never mind whether under the ox and so on and so forth, or four and five under the sheep, or no, that’s for theft actually, doesn’t matter—but the Torah says something: “if one man’s ox gores his fellow’s ox,” you have to pay. What about a dog that bites? Do you also have to pay? But the Torah says ox. So the hollow-pipe conception is not prepared to tolerate the move from ox to dog unless there is a law given to Moses at Sinai or a rule that we received, never mind what, telling you that you may generalize from examples. But if not, then there is no such thing. In contrast, someone who says I use my common sense says: there is no reason to assume that an ox is something exceptional. Rather what is going on is that when a person’s property causes damage, the owner has to pay. That’s an analogy, or an induction. They didn’t tell me it was reasoning; they told me that “his ox on the Sabbath proves it.” Whose ox? Ah, the Talmud in Bava Kamma, chapter two, brings a verse for this. You have to look there in the medieval authorities. “Ox and not a person, donkey and not vessels”—exempt in the case of a pit—what is that? Why? Why doesn’t he pay? Meaning why? He ought to pay—he dug a pit, something fell in, so let him pay even for vessels. Who said you make induction everywhere? They also limit the reasoning, up to where the induction goes. The Torah often limits induction. Why do we distinguish between horn and tooth and foot, fire, pit? Each of them has different laws. This one has exemption for hidden damage, that one has exemption… Yes, but pit and not a person, ox and not a person, donkey and not vessels. No, that isn’t arbitrary; there is an explanation. The commentators give explanations for this. Don’t make the mistake—there are no scriptural decrees without explanations. There is no such thing; it’s a myth. Because how do they know “ox and not a person, donkey and not vessels”? It says, “if an ox or a donkey falls there.” From where did Hazal derive it? If of course everything is just supported by derivations and really everything was handed down from Sinai, then no problem—but that’s not how it is. There are disputes here. Rabbi Yehuda does obligate payment for vessels in a pit. Right? This isn’t a transmitted tradition; it’s a decision of the sages. How did they decide to exclude vessels and not, I don’t know, birds? Because they decided it was reasonable to exclude vessels. Behind every derivation there sits some logic. There is no derivation without logic. “The Lord your God shall you fear”—we spoke about this. This is what we spoke about just now. “The Lord your God shall you fear”—to include Torah scholars. How did they decide on Torah scholars? Why not chairs? Fine, “et” comes to include something, I understand. So include something—how do you decide what to include? Whatever your reasoning says is most reasonable to include. There is nothing without reasoning. Sometimes the reasoning alone is not enough, so you need support from the structure of the verse, but there is always some reasoning involved, some rationale. I think there is a change here: the form of Jewish law before, when there was a Sanhedrin, was a form in which someone had to bring additional premises. There was always a Sanhedrin, even before Moses our teacher. Yes, but afterward, after the destruction, there was no such authority, and then everyone had to reach conclusions logically. New things come along, so you need to ask what to do when something new is recognized. But why were there no new things before? They went to the Sanhedrin and asked. They went to the Urim and Tummim and got an answer. Yavneh also had a Sanhedrin. What? Yavneh also had a Sanhedrin. Afterward. This dispute was in Yavneh. It was between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabban Gamliel, and Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Akiva. These things were earlier. I agree it may become stronger when there is no Sanhedrin, but these issues arose even when there was a Sanhedrin. The first dispute—the Talmud in Chagigah brings it—the first dispute was in the period of the Zugot, and there too I am sure it was not the first dispute; it was the first dispute that remained unresolved, meaning not decided, between the two Yoseis regarding laying hands on a sacrifice on a Jewish holiday. So the point is really: how do I relate to arguments? The deductive argument is necessary because it does not add information beyond what is in the premises. And therefore it is necessary. The problem with analogy and induction—why are they not necessary? Because they add information. I have the premise that one donkey has four legs; that I saw. Now induction comes and says all donkeys have four legs, or analogy says that donkey also has four legs. I added information. That is not contained in the information that this donkey has four legs, right? I added information. So for that reason there is some hesitation: who says so? Maybe it’s salesmanship? Meaning, you are adding information—who says you’re right? That’s your wishful thinking. Maybe yes, maybe no. And that, I think, is the root of the problem around the two conceptions of tradition—how to relate to soft arguments. I’ll just finish: there is what I call in this context the logical or philosophical uncertainty principle. The uncertainty principle in physics is that if you know the velocity precisely, you don’t know the position; if you know the position precisely, you don’t know the velocity; their product has a certain bound. In our context, the certainty you have in a certain argument times the amount of information that argument adds is constant. The greater the certainty, the less information; the less information, the greater the certainty. The more information it adds—say, induction adds a lot of information; we said earlier that analogy adds a little information—so the more information you add, the certainty goes down. Meaning it is always a trade-off. You pay a price for information by paying in certainty. Someone who wants to remain with absolute certainty will accept only deductions. But if he accepts only deductions, he has no information at all, because he doesn’t know the premises. So what will he perform his deductions on? The premises themselves you get by induction, as Mill said. Therefore if you want absolute certainty, you will have no information. If you want maximum information, you have to give up certainty entirely, and then the information is worth nothing. Information about which you know nothing, with not the slightest idea how valid it is—what good does that do? The whole question is where you draw the line: how much non-certain information am I willing to accept, and do I really see it as salesmanship—that is, some sort of subjective persuasion but not really a tool for discovering truth—or are there in fact softer tools here that deal with truth? Just one second, let me finish with one sentence: what Nachmanides says in the introduction to Milchamot—that the wisdom of our Torah is not like astronomy and mathematics, whose demonstrations are decisive. Nachmanides said that in Jewish law, when you speak about halakhic inference, the inferences are not deductive. And that is where the whole problem arises, the whole problem of tradition—because halakhic inferences are not mathematics, and so they are not deductions. And if they are not deductions, then the question immediately arises: wait, so is this an invention of people? They added this information—so who says it’s correct? Where is the authenticity? Then people say: no, no, everything is from Moses at Sinai, therefore they are really only a hollow pipe, they pass everything down to us, and it’s only deductions at most, because everything is from Moses at Sinai—because you are unwilling to accept something that is not deduction. Something that is not deduction is speculation; I am not willing. In contrast, what I tried to say earlier is: no, I am willing to accept obligation even when there is no authenticity. It doesn’t have to be authentic for me to be obligated by it. And then the question arises: what does it mean to be obligated? Because there is no truth? Or obligated…