Halakha and Reality – Lesson 7

Table of Contents

• Continuation of the article by Rabbi Avraham ben Maimonides and accepting the truth from whoever says it
• The yeshiva-world myth that there are no disputes about reality, and the premise of “these and these”
• The Minchat Chinukh’s example: Rashi and Maimonides on the labor of threshing and milk in the breasts of a woman and an animal
• Factual disputes in the Talmud and the difficulty of saying “they’re both right”
• A dispute over what Rav said: Shevuot 26 and Rabbi Ami and Rabbi Asi
• Expanding the claim that every halakhic dispute is really a dispute about reality
• The stubborn and rebellious son, and Rabbi Yisrael Salanter’s reading
• Pachad Yitzchak: Letters and Writings, and the concealment of knowledge as a kind of “genizah through the power of knowledge”
• The distinction between historical truth and halakhic truth, and the possibility that Elijah’s revelation would change nothing
• The concealment of knowledge as a source of “Torah innovation,” and the example of a scribal error in Maimonides
• The context of discovery and the context of justification from the philosophy of science
• Comparing “concealment” to conceptions of truth-contexts: is glass a liquid or a solid?
• A qualification to Hutner’s thesis and a distinction between biblical interpretation and empirical reality
• The example from Bava Batra: a diagonal of six by four, and Tosafot versus Rashbam
• Errors in describing reality in the sources: tipping scales by a handbreadth
• Incorrect scientific statements in the Sages: astronomy, lice, and menstruation
• The question of the halakhic attitude toward factual errors, and the prevalent position among halakhic decisors
• Pachad Yitzchak of Lampronti versus his teacher: lice, natural scientists, and “the sphere stands still”
• The Chazon Ish: the science of the “two thousand years of Torah” as defining Jewish law
• Evidence that the Sages drew knowledge from experts and experimentation: quotations from Rabbi Professor Steinberg
• Rejecting the “search for excuses” based on the assumption that the Sages knew beyond their own time
• The continuity of the generations and consultation with experts
• Concluding discussion with audience questions: punishments cannot be derived logically, medicines, absorption, and historical disputes
• Allegory, educational myth, and Rashba against Yedaya HaPenini
• Postmodernism, the New Historians, and Trumpeldor
• Temporary conclusion and possible continuation

Summary

General overview

The text argues that there are real disputes about reality among the Sages, among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), and among the later authorities (Acharonim), and that it is impossible to rescue all of them by means of the yeshiva-world assumption that “there is no dispute about reality,” or by reading “these and these are the words of the living God” in some sweeping way as though all views are factually correct. The text presents examples of historical, astronomical, mathematical, and reality-descriptive disputes, and explains that apologetic motivation sometimes leads to forced interpretations whose purpose is to avoid admitting error. The text presents Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner’s proposal to explain certain factual disputes as a “concealment of knowledge” that turns them into disputes about the Torah’s picture of things rather than about the historical fact itself, but it qualifies that this explanation does not solve every case, and certainly not clear-cut erroneous scientific claims. The text states that most halakhic decisors refuse to admit factual error in the Sages, and certainly not to change a law based on it, but it brings some partial exceptions and emphasizes that the Sages’ scientific knowledge was acquired through observation, experimentation, and consultation with the experts of their time, so there is no reason to assume they possessed supernatural knowledge that obligates us to keep searching for excuses.

Continuation of the article by Rabbi Avraham ben Maimonides and accepting the truth from whoever says it

The text continues the line learned from Rabbi Avraham ben Maimonides’ article, that one must accept the truth from whoever says it. The text mentions the Talmud in Pesachim about “the sphere stands still and the constellations revolve,” where the sages of Israel conceded to the sages of the nations of the world, and presents this as a factual dispute about reality that one can acknowledge.

The yeshiva-world myth that there are no disputes about reality, and the premise of “these and these”

The text describes a common example in the yeshiva world according to which there are no disputes about reality among sages, and sometimes this is extended to the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) as well. The text connects this to a broad understanding of “these and these are the words of the living God,” as if all halakhic views are correct, and declares that it does not accept this interpretation.

The Minchat Chinukh’s example: Rashi and Maimonides on the labor of threshing and milk in the breasts of a woman and an animal

The text cites the Minchat Chinukh in Musaf HaShabbat, commandment 32, on the labor of threshing, where he presents a dispute between Rashi and Maimonides that appears to depend on a factual question: whether the milk in the breast is “deposited and distinct” or attached. The text explains that the Minchat Chinukh determines that a dispute about reality cannot exist, and therefore proposes a forced explanation so that Maimonides will not actually be disagreeing with Rashi.

Factual disputes in the Talmud and the difficulty of saying “they’re both right”

The text cites the Talmudic dispute in Gittin about the concubine in Gibeah—whether he found a fly on her or a hair—as a historical-factual dispute, and shows the Talmud’s solution: he found a fly and did not mind, he found a hair and did mind. The text describes this as a harmonizing solution in which each side grasps one aspect of the truth, but emphasizes that there are disputes that have no such cumulative solution—for example, how they loaded the Tabernacle’s beams onto the wagons, where historically one view is right and the other is wrong.

A dispute over what Rav said: Shevuot 26 and Rabbi Ami and Rabbi Asi

The text cites the Talmud in Shevuot 26 about Rabbi Ami and Rabbi Asi, who swore over what they had heard from Rav’s mouth and then went to check with Rav, and Rav confirmed that one of them was right. The text emphasizes that this is a factual dispute about the content of a statement, and that the Talmud avoids specifying who was right in order not to cast aspersions, and resolves the mistaken oath through the principle “a person in an oath—to the exclusion of one under compulsion.”

Expanding the claim that every halakhic dispute is really a dispute about reality

The text suggests that one could theoretically argue that every halakhic dispute is a factual dispute about what God said to Moses at Sinai or what He meant, and therefore it is difficult to completely neutralize the line between a dispute in Jewish law and a dispute about reality. Even so, the text emphasizes that there are simple and clear examples of factual disputes that cannot be denied.

The stubborn and rebellious son, and Rabbi Yisrael Salanter’s reading

The text presents a dispute about reality over whether the stubborn and rebellious son ever actually existed, and cites the Talmudic statement: “It never was and never will be… study it and receive reward.” The text brings Rabbi Yisrael Salanter’s interpretation that the point is not to add more verses to study, but to teach the principle of “study it and receive reward”—that is, that Torah study is not merely a means of knowing what to do, but has intrinsic value.

Pachad Yitzchak: Letters and Writings, and the concealment of knowledge as a kind of “genizah through the power of knowledge”

The text cites a passage from Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, Pachad Yitzchak: Letters and Writings, printed in the introduction to the book Binu Shnot Dor VaDor by Rabinovitch. The text quotes Hutner, who recognizes that there are many Talmudic passages involving disputes of this kind and proposes a general answer: just as objects were hidden away—such as the tablets, the Tabernacle, and the Ark—so too knowledge can be hidden away. Thus, a sage’s error in certain historical matters is not really an “error,” but a revelation-and-concealment of the divine will. The text describes the move according to which the dispute is not about history itself but about “how the picture” of the Tabernacle “has now been revealed before us” through the Torah, and therefore the Jewish law that emerges from the reasoning is halakhic truth even if it does not match the historical fact.

The distinction between historical truth and halakhic truth, and the possibility that Elijah’s revelation would change nothing

The text explains that according to Hutner, the halakhic question is determined by the way things are revealed in the verses of the Torah, not by what actually happened historically. Therefore, even if Elijah were to come and inform us of the history, that would not necessarily overturn the halakhic truth of the exposition. The text presents this as a distinction between one “historical fact” and a “halakhic fact” established through Torah interpretation.

The concealment of knowledge as a source of “Torah innovation,” and the example of a scribal error in Maimonides

The text gives an example from Maimonides in the Laws of Hiring, about a deposited object that caused damage, where Maimonides is printed as though the owner is liable, contrary to the Talmud, and the Kesef Mishneh brings a letter of Rabbi Avraham ben Maimonides saying this is a scribal error. The text argues that the explanations of the Maggid Mishneh and Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, written in order to reconcile Maimonides, can become independent Torah innovations even if they were born from a textual error, because the real question is whether the reading can stand against the Talmud, not how it came to be revealed.

The context of discovery and the context of justification from the philosophy of science

The text uses the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification to argue that the origin of an idea does not determine its validity; what determines it is whether it survives substantive testing. The text applies this to Torah innovations born from an error, and argues that the way they were arrived at does not invalidate them if they withstand textual scrutiny.

Comparing “concealment” to conceptions of truth-contexts: is glass a liquid or a solid?

The text compares halakhic truth to scientific truth through the example of glass: in the physics of materials one can argue different sides depending on the definitions, while in Jewish law glass is considered a solid. The text explains that in Hutner’s approach there is not merely a change of definition, but a possibility that halakhic truth is not identical to historical truth.

A qualification to Hutner’s thesis and a distinction between biblical interpretation and empirical reality

The text qualifies Hutner’s “concealment of knowledge” thesis and says it may work in biblical interpretation and sometimes in “assessment of reality,” but it does not solve straightforward empirical disputes that are not dependent on verses. The text suggests that in the dispute between Maimonides and Rashi over milk in the breast, one might understand it as an assessment of reality—what counts as attached—rather than a disagreement about the physiological fact itself.

The example from Bava Batra: a diagonal of six by four, and Tosafot versus Rashbam

The text cites Bava Batra 102a, where Rashbam equates the diagonal of a 6×4 rectangle with the diagonal of a 5×5 square, and Tosafot objects on the grounds that the area of 5×5 is greater and therefore its diagonal is greater. The text states that both are mistaken: the diagonal of 6×4 is √52 and that of 5×5 is √50, so 6×4 is larger. It presents this as a case in which one cannot say “these and these” in the factual sense.

Errors in describing reality in the sources: tipping scales by a handbreadth

The text gives an example from the Talmud about tipping the scales by a “handbreadth” in favor of the buyer, and argues that in ordinary scales such a thing is meaningless because the pan either drops all the way or the scale is balanced. The text notes that there are possible technical explanations involving a certain type of scale, but argues that some medieval authorities (Rishonim) speak about a straight beam, and therefore this is a demonstrable error.

Incorrect scientific statements in the Sages: astronomy, lice, and menstruation

The text points to scientific errors in the Sages, such as the astronomical description of the sun’s motion, the flat earth, and “a louse generated from decay,” on the basis of which they permitted killing it on the Sabbath. The text concludes that if there are factual errors, then there is no principled obstacle to recognizing disputes about reality in which one side is mistaken.

The question of the halakhic attitude toward factual errors, and the prevalent position among halakhic decisors

The text argues that there is almost no halakhic decisor willing to say that there are factual errors in the Talmud, certainly not in matters touching Jewish law, and many attribute this to divine inspiration or special knowledge. The text presents Maimonides as an exception who rejects assumptions such as the evil eye and omits certain laws, and it presents Rabbi Yitzchak Lampronti as someone who raised the possibility of being stringent regarding lice because of science, but recoiled from it.

Pachad Yitzchak of Lampronti versus his teacher: lice, natural scientists, and “the sphere stands still”

The text quotes Rabbi Yitzchak Lampronti, who writes, “Were I not afraid, I would say,” that since the natural scientists have proven that all living creatures come from eggs, “one who guards his soul should keep away from them and kill neither flea nor louse.” The text quotes his teacher’s response that one should not alter laws received from the earlier authorities on the basis of the investigations of the nations of the world, and brings the example of the evil eye and the claim that the scholars of the nations ultimately came back around to the earlier sages’ position. The text criticizes this claim, arguing that if the sages of Israel once conceded and it later turned out otherwise, there is still an error here—either in the concession or in the ruling.

The Chazon Ish: the science of the “two thousand years of Torah” as defining Jewish law

The text mentions the Chazon Ish as an exception who admits that the scientific basis changed or is incorrect, but argues that for purposes of Jewish law the determining science is the science that existed in the Talmudic period, by force of the division into “two thousand years of chaos, two thousand years of Torah, two thousand years of Messiah.” The text rejects this view as untenable and argues that if a law is based on a clear mistake, there is room to say it is void as a “mistaken transaction.”

Evidence that the Sages drew knowledge from experts and experimentation: quotations from Rabbi Professor Steinberg

The text brings evidence from Rabbi Professor Steinberg’s doctoral dissertation that the sages of the Talmud actually studied anatomy and pathology, that Rav testified, “For eighteen months I lived with a shepherd in order to know which blemish is which,” and that Rabbi Yochanan said, “I am neither a butcher nor the son of a butcher.” The text notes that the Sages even performed experiments and post-mortem dissections in the Tosefta Niddah and elsewhere, as well as embryological and gynecological examinations, in order to infer that their scientific knowledge was human and historical, not prophetic.

Rejecting the “search for excuses” based on the assumption that the Sages knew beyond their own time

The text states that even if one can find explanations that rescue statements of the Sages, there is no desire to rely on them, because they assume trans-historical knowledge that is implausible in light of the sources. The text suggests that the correct approach is to understand that the Sages operated according to the knowledge available in their environment, and therefore errors are to be expected. The validity of an explanation is not tested by its source but by its plausibility—but there is no need to force such explanations merely to defend the Sages.

The continuity of the generations and consultation with experts

The text argues that halakhic decisors in our time and in earlier generations consult doctors, engineers, and other experts, and there is no clear line at which we somehow “lost” exalted knowledge that once existed. Therefore there is no basis for assuming that in the period of the Sages the situation was fundamentally different. The text uses this to reject the notion that there are no factual errors among the Sages.

Concluding discussion with audience questions: punishments cannot be derived logically, medicines, absorption, and historical disputes

The text includes audience questions that raise comparisons to the rule that punishments cannot be derived logically, the possibility of hidden reasons behind rabbinic decrees, and cases of historical dispute with practical consequences. The text answers that if one can plausibly interpret matters in a way that avoids factual error, that is acceptable, but there is no obligation to assume the Sages are always right and no point in building explanations merely to preserve authority. As an example, the text cites absorption tests in vessels carried out by Dov Pixler and his student, and says that Rabbi Lior said he would permit reliance on them if more halakhic decisors joined him, and it goes on to argue that in a case of clear error, the law based on it should be nullified.

Allegory, educational myth, and Rashba against Yedaya HaPenini

The text brings Philo of Alexandria and Yedaya HaPenini as allegorists who argued, among other things, that “Abraham and Sarah never existed at all,” but rather represent ideas such as matter and form, and it describes Rashba’s ban on the study of philosophy before age twenty-five out of fear of this kind of interpretation. The text asks why Rashba issued a ban instead of seeing this as a legitimate dispute, and compares it to modern arguments about national myths and the perceived need for a historical anchor for values.

Postmodernism, the New Historians, and Trumpeldor

The text describes a postmodern view of narratives without historical truth, and presents a critique of the contradiction in those who deny historical truth yet work hard to slaughter myths such as “It is good to die for our country” in connection with Trumpeldor. The text argues that values can stand without a historical anchor, and that both sides behave as though facts determine norms, and asks why the historical dispute is perceived as critical if the main thing is really the values.

Temporary conclusion and possible continuation

The text concludes by saying that the speaker is considering continuing with another lecture in the series, since there are still additional kinds of discussions that need to be addressed.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, we’re dealing with matters of Jewish law and reality, and last time we talked about the article by Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides, about the idea that one should accept the truth from whoever says it. And he brought the Talmud in Pesachim about the sphere standing still and the constellations revolving, where the sages of Israel conceded to the sages of the nations of the world. What? And now I want to continue. I want to talk, first, about disputes about reality, and second, about how to relate to statements that seem, at least, mistaken among the sages, among the medieval authorities (Rishonim)—what are we supposed to do with that issue, which of course is only an implication of what we’ve seen until now. So I’ll start, maybe, with disputes about reality.

There’s a common example in the yeshiva world that there’s no such thing as a dispute about reality. Right? There are no disputes about reality among sages. And very often the application of that assumption is not only to the sages of the Talmud, Amoraim and Tannaim, but also to medieval authorities (Rishonim), and maybe even later authorities (Acharonim)—depending on how far people want to take it. There’s a Minchat Chinukh, for example—this is one example I wrote down for myself, but there are others. He writes in the section on the Sabbath, commandment 32. He counts there—he deals there with all the categories of labor, one after the next. And in the labor of threshing he brings some dispute there between Rashi and Maimonides, and then asks various questions on Maimonides. And in principle it touches on the question whether the milk in a woman’s or an animal’s breast is attached to the breast or merely deposited in it. Right? Stored and uprootable. And that has practical implications for the labor of threshing—whether extracting it counts as threshing or not threshing, and how threshing is defined, and so on.

Now, it’s natural, in light of various implications in the dispute between Maimonides and Rashi, to understand that they disagree on this issue: whether the milk is merely deposited and uprootable, or whether the milk is attached. But the Minchat Chinukh says that can’t be, because there are no disputes about reality. Therefore he finds some strained way to explain Maimonides in such a way that he won’t disagree with Rashi. That’s based on an assumption that it’s impossible for there to be a dispute about reality between Maimonides and Rashi. We’re not talking here about Amoraim, not about Tannaim. And likewise people say this also about later authorities (Acharonim), depending on how far they want to run with this idea.

And what apparently stands behind this claim is—we did talk about the Talmud that says, “These and those are the words of the living God.” The assumption is that the halakhic opinions brought by the sages of Jewish law are all correct. And again, one can take that narrowly or broadly. The Talmud brings the rule “These and those are the words of the living God” only regarding Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel. And say, in Gittin it also appears regarding Rabbi Yonatan and Rabbi Evyatar—we saw that, I think, I don’t remember anymore. But the common assumption is that “these and those” applies to all disputes in the Talmud, among Tannaim and Amoraim. But there’s also a very common assumption in the halakhic-yeshiva world that this is true of disputes among medieval authorities (Rishonim) as well, and among later authorities (Acharonim) and halakhic decisors too—that these and those are the words of the living God.

And therefore, since the assumption is that there is no mistaken opinion—no mistaken halakhic opinion, because they’re all correct—and we talked about how I don’t think that’s the meaning of “these and those are the words of the living God,” so then the question that comes up here is: what do we do with disputes that deal with reality, disputes about facts? Because with disputes about facts, it’s very hard to accept the claim that both are right. A fact is either this way or that way. We talked about the Talmud in Gittin regarding the concubine in Gibeah. So the Talmud said there—as we discussed in the last class—that the dispute is whether he found a fly in her or found a hair in her. Right? What was it that made the husband of that concubine angry? Now that is a dispute about reality—what happened there historically, what he found. So it seems pretty clear that this is an actual dispute about reality.

Now here, how can you say both are right? If he found a fly, he found a fly; if he found a hair, he found a hair—but it’s either this or that. Now there of course the Talmud finds a solution, and we talked about it: he found a fly and did not get upset; he found a hair, and that was what caused him to get upset. So somehow the approach is that each one grasped a certain aspect of the truth. I spoke about harmonism—each one grasped a certain aspect of the truth. So they found some way to say “these and those” regarding a dispute about reality, because the other sugya that says “these and those” is about halakhic disputes between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel. The sugya in Gittin is about a dispute about reality, and therefore they had to somehow create a construction in which neither one was talking nonsense, and both said something that is true—or at least partially true, or one aspect of the truth. Right, I spoke about that last time.

There are other places where it’s hard to say such a thing. It’s not a question of what angered a person, as in that case, where you can say both things angered him. There are disputes in the Talmud over how they loaded the beams of the Tabernacle, for the purposes of the labor of carrying out and carrying in—was it along the wagons, across the wagons, exactly how was it done? Now historically it was either one way or the other. Meaning if this one is right, the other is wrong; and if the other is right, this one is wrong. So here both can’t be right. There isn’t even that cumulative option that the Talmud in Gittin suggests—that he found a fly and didn’t get upset, found a hair and did get upset. If the loading was done this way, then the labor of carrying in on the Sabbath is defined this way; and if it was done differently, then the labor of carrying in on the Sabbath is defined differently. So there are disputes about reality.

I’m not even talking yet about the dispute in the Talmud in Pesachim that we saw in the previous class in Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides—that’s an actual astronomical dispute between the sages of the nations of the world and the sages of Israel, and there it turned out that the sages of Israel conceded to the sages of the nations of the world. Meaning there too, the dispute was over facts. That’s a dispute about reality. So this claim that there are no disputes about reality is a very problematic claim. But precisely because it’s problematic, it requires some explanation: so why do people say it, if it’s so problematic?

And I’m saying that what probably stands behind it is that same assumption that the sages could not have erred. And then if the dispute is about reality, as I said, there has to be one truth. If one was right, the other was wrong. Therefore it’s a sign that the disputes are not about reality. Okay? But as I said before, there are disputes where you simply can’t escape that—it’s a dispute about reality. So regarding the concubine in Gibeah, we talked about it, and maybe it can be explained through the Talmud: each one grasped one aspect of the truth. Still, not that both were entirely right—each one grasped a certain aspect of the truth, perhaps a partial truth. But still, maybe that gives some sort of solution.

There are other disputes where, as I said before, the loading of the beams into the wagons in the Tabernacle—in that case you can’t say such a thing. Even a dispute like the Talmud in tractate Shevuot, page 26—the Talmud says there that Rabbi Ami and Rabbi Asi heard something from Rav and they argued about what they heard. Rabbi Ami swore that he heard it one way, and Rav Asi swore that he heard the opposite. So they went to Rav. The discussion there in the Talmud is about an oath under coercion—a person regarding an oath, excluding one under compulsion. So they swore, and afterward they went to Rav to ask who was right. So the Talmud says that Rav told one of them that he was right. By the way, the Talmud doesn’t say which one, because that would be slander. Meaning, if it said Rabbi Ami was right, then that would be slander against Rabbi Asi, who swore falsely and rashly.

But it says that one of them was right. Then the second one asks Rav: so what, does that mean I violated a false oath? And he says no, no—a person regarding an oath, excluding one under compulsion. Here, for example, you have a dispute between Rabbi Ami and Rabbi Asi which, while it is a halakhic dispute, is not a dispute over facts—but really the dispute was not about Jewish law. The dispute was over what Rav said. Now the question of what Rav said is a factual question, not a halakhic one. It of course has halakhic consequences—Rav said a certain halakhic ruling—but their argument was not over whether the ruling was right or not right, or what the correct Jewish law should be. Their argument was a factual question: what did Rav say? In that sense it really appears to be a dispute about reality, and it’s obvious that one was right and the other wrong, just as indeed became clear there. And one of them even swore—that’s much worse.

By the way, one could broaden this even more and claim that really every halakhic dispute is a dispute about reality, in the sense of what the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses at Sinai. After all, when all is said and done, when we clarify Jewish law, our goal is to determine what the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses our teacher—say, in Torah-level laws. So by the logic I just mentioned with Rabbi Ami and Rabbi Asi, one could say that every halakhic dispute is really a dispute about reality, because the argument is over what the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses. And you know what? Even the question of what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended—even without His having said it. Okay? The question is what He intends, what the correct law is. Seemingly that too is a dispute about reality, and if this one is right, the other is wrong.

So in a certain sense one could broaden this and completely neutralize the possibility of distinguishing between halakhic disputes and disputes about reality. But as I said before, at least in the simple cases, there are quite a few examples of disputes about reality where it’s very hard to deny the fact: there is a dispute about reality. The question is how to relate to such a dispute. So maybe another example: the dispute whether the stubborn and rebellious son ever was or never was. One says he was, and one says he was not and never will be. That is a dispute about reality. Was or wasn’t. Okay? It even has implications—we once talked about this. Rabbi Israel Salanter brings this up—parenthetically I’m saying this.

The Talmud says there that the stubborn and rebellious son never was and never was created, so why then was that section written? “Study it and receive reward.” So Rabbi Israel Salanter asks: what does that mean, “study it and receive reward”? They added three more verses so that if we finish the rest of the Torah we’ll still have another three verses to study? That’s a somewhat odd reading of the Talmud. What does it mean, “study it and receive reward”? Therefore Rabbi Israel Salanter says: no, you’re not understanding the Talmud correctly. What the Talmud is saying is that the section of the stubborn and rebellious son was written in order to teach me the principle of “study it and receive reward.” To teach me that when I study Torah, I’m not studying it only in order to know what to do. Here—you have the section of the stubborn and rebellious son, which will never be fulfilled; it never was and never will be, and still it was written. What do you see? That Torah study is not intended only to know what to do. Rather, Torah study has value in itself—cleaving to the Holy One, blessed be He, however you want to explain it, it doesn’t matter.

And then it comes out that according to the side that says the stubborn and rebellious son never existed, a certain lesson follows from that factual determination. The lesson is that Torah has value not only as a means of knowing what to do. By contrast, one who holds that the stubborn and rebellious son did exist may remain with the simple conception that learning is in order to know what to do. So this dispute about reality has some conceptual implication, or even perhaps a halakhic one if you want; there are halakhic implications to this conceptual dispute as well. And again, one of them is right and the other is wrong. Meaning, either the stubborn and rebellious son existed or he did not. Or whether he will exist or not—doesn’t matter, that’s a fact. So of course that is a dispute about reality.

Therefore the claim that there are no disputes about reality is completely unreasonable. I want to bring you an interesting passage from Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, Pachad Yitzchak, Letters and Writings. I actually ran into this the first time in a book written by some Brisk yeshiva head in Jerusalem—I don’t remember his name anymore, Rabinowitz I think, Rabbi Rabinowitz. The book is called Between the Years of Each Generation. He analyzes historical topics and confronts historians, trying to defend traditional views in general. A very interesting book, by the way. The man really knows his material, he read things, a very interesting book.

In any event, in the introduction to the book he brings a passage from this letter of Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, because he too is really dealing with historical questions. And if he comes to defend the sages, then he’s really coming to show that the sages were right in these historical statements. Now what do you do when there’s a dispute? When there’s a dispute, in historical questions that is a dispute about facts, so one was right and the other wrong. So how can you say that the sages don’t err historically, or can’t err historically? The whole motivation for writing the book was to defend the historical assertions of the sages. But if there are disputes in historical questions, and such a dispute is a dispute about reality, one is right and the other is wrong, then what’s the issue? It could be that the sages were wrong, that’s all.

So in this connection he brings this letter from Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, and Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner writes as follows. Let’s read. Regarding the question of the beams of the Tabernacle—the Talmud in Sabbath there, concerning the beams of the Tabernacle—so the question is what their thickness was, or how they were loaded; one can discuss exactly what’s being referred to there. “Surely you know that such sugyot are found in the Talmud in a number of places. And therefore it is understood that the answer will be general, encompassing all similar sugyot.” In other words, Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner is basically saying: yes, I know the yeshiva myth that there are no disputes about reality. And I understand that you’re asking from this dispute only as an example, because there are other such disputes in the Talmud that are clearly disputes about reality. And then the question arises: if we don’t accept this yeshiva myth, that there are disputes about reality, how can we still retain the conception of “these and those are the words of the living God”? That was the motivation for creating this myth.

So Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner offers a suggestion here along those lines. He says as follows: “You know that there were several hidden-away things in Israel. The Tablets were hidden away, the Tabernacle was hidden away, the Ark was hidden away, and so on. And certainly each such concealment had consequences in the ways of Torah and divine service.” Meaning, when the Tablets were hidden away, the conduct of Israel changed. The Tabernacle was hidden away—again, they either did not bring offerings, or they brought offerings on private altars. These concealments are not just some fact; they have consequences in the ways of Torah and divine service, and perhaps halakhah too, and in all kinds of aspects of our conduct. Meaning, these concealments are significant things.

Then he says: “And just as one can hide away an object, so too one can conceal knowledge.” Right, you can hide information, not just an object. “And you should know that when so-and-so thinks that the beams of the Tabernacle were made in a known manner different from what reality really was, then he is simply mistaken.” Right, if someone says the beams of the Tabernacle were made this way, and in reality it was otherwise, then he is mistaken. That’s clear. “But all this is only when it’s so-and-so. But when a sage from among the sages of the transmission of the Oral Torah, through whom the Torah was given”—that’s Maimonides’ language—“who are the counselors of the Creator of the world, when he thinks that the beams of the Tabernacle were made in a manner different from what reality really was, this is nothing but concealment within the power of knowledge. Just as the Tabernacle itself was hidden away according to the will of Heaven, so too there is a process whereby the knowledge about its matter and structure is also consigned to concealment. Except that while the place of concealment of the body of the Tabernacle is in the physical world somewhere, the concealment of the knowledge about the Tabernacle is within the power of knowledge of the sages of the transmission.”

So what he is basically saying is this: just as they hid away the Tabernacle, hid away the Tablets, hid away the Ark, so too one can hide away information about the Tabernacle, about the Tablets, about the Ark, or about anything else. Information too can be hidden away—hidden away meaning intentionally concealed. Right, to hide away means to intentionally conceal; that’s what it means. What does that mean—concealing knowledge? Of course, when we hide an object, we hide it somewhere in the world. When we hide information, we hide it in some sort of—I don’t know—warehouse of information; he calls it “within the power of knowledge of the sages of the transmission.”

And then he says this: “Therefore, where knowledge about one detail in the structure of the Tabernacle matters to us today for halakhah”—right, we want to know how to define the labor of carrying in, and that depends on what happened in the Tabernacle, but the information about what happened in the Tabernacle has been hidden away—“then if a sage from among the sages of the transmission of the Oral Torah did not align with the reality of the actual structure”—meaning he said something that does not really fit what happened in the historical building—“precisely through that he aligned with the will of Heaven, because in this way it is the will of Heaven to join the concealment of knowledge to the concealment of the object.”

He says: when a person says that the beams were loaded into the wagon lengthwise and not widthwise, and suppose that in reality they were loaded widthwise and not lengthwise—okay? He says that makes no difference at all. The fact that the sages disputed it means that apparently the historical information is concealed. We don’t have access to it, we don’t know how to reconstruct it, no one can decide or determine which of the two sages is right. So what do we do? The sages interpret the Torah; they try to understand from the Torah, from logic, how it was. But this is of course an attempt at reconstruction, not an observational claim. They did not see that fact; they are trying to reconstruct what was there.

Okay, so what happens? One arrives by his reasoning at one possibility, and another arrives by his reasoning at another possibility. But now this is already a halakhic dispute, and regarding that we already know that “these and those are the words of the living God.” The knowledge has been hidden away. On the factual plane, clearly one is right and the other is wrong. But their claim is not really dealing with history, with historical facts. Their claim deals with interpretation of Scripture. I read the verse and ask myself: what emerges from this verse—how did they load the beams into the wagon? Lengthwise or widthwise? One understands lengthwise, the other understands widthwise. They interpret the verses differently. This is not the question of what happened historically.

Even if Elijah were to come and tell us that historically the beams were loaded into the wagon in a certain way, that would not change the view of that sage. Why not? Because the fact that the Torah is written in such a way that it can be understood according to two interpretations itself means that the Holy One, blessed be He, decided to conceal the historical information here, intentionally, in order to allow the two sages to offer these two conceptions. And as far as we are concerned, just as in the legal world they speak about legal facts, in our context we speak about halakhic facts. And their dispute is over what the halakhic fact is. Meaning, on the halakhic plane, how were the beams loaded into the wagon—not historically how were they loaded.

Historically, there is one correct answer. We don’t know what it is, but there is one correct answer. Halakhically, however, the question is how we see the historical reality through the prism of the verses, or logic, or whatever interpretive considerations we use. And the sages’ dispute is not at all over what happened in the Tabernacle. Their dispute is over what emerges from the verses of the Torah regarding what happened in the Tabernacle. What’s the difference? Because what emerges from the verses of the Torah does not necessarily reflect what happened in the Tabernacle. The Torah’s purpose is not to describe to me what happened in the Tabernacle; the Torah’s purpose is to teach me the laws of the Sabbath. That is his conception.

And since that is so, then the information is hidden away, and the way the information is written basically tells us that what we have here is halakhic information, not historical information—or let’s call it a halakhic fact, not a historical fact. Therefore—and I continue reading—“the halakhah that emerges from the reasoning of this sage is the true halakhah,” even though historically he may be wrong. Every reality has, in quotation marks, its own truth—because this is halakhic truth, not historical truth. “And the reality of Torah also has its own truth.” By the way, that somewhat resembles what I talked about in the first classes, when I spoke a bit about questions like: is glass a liquid or a solid? Some kollel fellow once came and asked me, as a physicist, whether glass is a liquid or a solid. So the physical truth, at least in some respects, is that it is a liquid, because the crystal structure is not ordered. The halakhic truth is that it is a solid.

But that’s a factual question: is it a liquid or a solid? Correct—but facts depend on context. In the halakhic context, the fact is that glass is solid. In the context of materials science, the claim is that glass is a liquid and not a solid. So basically, similarly—though it’s not exactly the same, because there it really is that way, and there there is no concealment of knowledge, but rather it really depends on how you define solid or liquid. In Jewish law those concepts are defined one way; in physics they are defined another way. Therefore the concepts of solid and liquid are given different definitions depending on the context.

Here it is not like that. Loading beams into a wagon is defined the same way historically and halakhically. Here the truth changes, not the definition. The historical truth is one thing, and the halakhic truth may be different. How we, as readers of Torah, view the loading of the beams into the wagon—that is what matters. That is the halakhic truth, not the historical one. And that is what he means by saying that every reality—that is, every domain of reality—has its own “truth” in quotation marks. And the reality of Torah also has its own truth. “And the truth of the reality of Torah is alignment with the will of God.” Meaning, when we read the verses in a way that tells us what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants in terms of the laws of the Sabbath, that is the halakhic truth, even if it is not the historical truth.

“And when the two Amoraim dispute the manner in which the beams of the Tabernacle were made, the meaning of their dispute is how the picture of the beams of the Tabernacle is revealed to us now.” They are not arguing over what was there; they are arguing over what picture emerges from the verses of the Torah. And on this matter there is room for two opinions, because the knowledge has been hidden away. There is no unequivocal statement in the Torah here. It allows for two interpretations, and therefore both are correct. “For the halakhah that emerges from this dispute does not depend entirely on the reality of the beams of the Tabernacle,” their historical reality, “but on the manner of their revelation,” on how it is written in the Torah. “The concealment of the holy things of the congregation of Israel is itself the very body of Torah.” Sometimes the concealment of information creates Torah, because every concealment affects the course of holy life in Israel.

By the way, that’s an interesting comment. There’s a Maimonides in the laws of hiring, I think. Maimonides discusses there what happens when an object is deposited with a guardian, and the object causes damage. I think he’s talking there about a situation in which the guardian was not negligent. So according to the Talmudic rule, the guardian is exempt. But Maimonides writes: yes, but the owner of the object is liable. The guardian is exempt but the owner is liable. Now that goes against the Talmud. The Talmud says no. Responsibility passes to the guardian, and if the guardian kept it properly then he is exempt. The owner is no longer connected to the object once he deposited it—he fulfilled his duty, he guarded the object properly. From that point on responsibility passes to the guardian.

Now the Maggid Mishneh and all the commentators, Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, the commentators there, try to reconcile Maimonides with the Talmud. Except that the Kesef Mishneh there on the side brings a letter, I think, from Rabbi Abraham son of Maimonides, saying—just one second—a letter saying that this is a copyist’s error. Maimonides didn’t write that; it’s simply a printing error. The typesetter made a mistake. Maimonides really wrote what is in the Talmud, that both the owner and the guardian are exempt, but the printer or whoever published it made a mistake and wrote that the owner is liable. Simply an error.

Now the question arises: how do I relate to the explanations of the Maggid Mishneh and Rabbi Chaim of Brisk that reconcile Maimonides? The Maggid Mishneh apparently did not see this letter—it appears in the Kesef Mishneh. The Maggid Mishneh is a medieval authority (Rishon). The Kesef Mishneh is from the period of the Shulchan Arukh, the sixteenth century, the beginning of the later authorities (Acharonim). So it may be that the Maggid Mishneh did not see this letter; probably he didn’t. The Maggid Mishneh was Sephardi—he didn’t play games; if he had seen that it was an error, he wouldn’t have done pilpul to reconcile it. But the Ashkenazim do use pilpul to reconcile it. And then what comes out is that the whole business is a mistake. You are reconciling a Maimonides that was never written. You are really reconciling that typesetter fellow—he just doesn’t know anything.

But on the other hand, if Rabbi Chaim offers a reconciliation, that means there is in fact a line of thought that can reconcile this with the Talmud; after all, he found an answer. Maybe he wouldn’t have said it if Maimonides hadn’t “erred” there, or the printer hadn’t erred there—but after the printer made a mistake, suddenly we discovered another way to explain the Talmud, because at the end of the day he did manage to reconcile Maimonides with the Talmud. So if that’s the case, it turns out that concealment of knowledge—exactly what he writes here—that concealment of knowledge, the fact that the information about what Maimonides wrote there was hidden away and we have before us historically incorrect information, produced a new Torah insight. Without that, this insight would not have emerged. That Torah insight in itself has to be checked against the Talmud. If it offers a reasonable reading of the Talmud, then we have another way to read the Talmud. True, that is not Maimonides’ view—it is Rabbi Chaim of Brisk’s view. So what? He’s Jewish too. Maimonides didn’t think that way. Fine, doesn’t matter.

In the end, the whole question is just how the person arrived at his insight. That’s an interesting question. I don’t remember whether we discussed this—in philosophy of science they distinguish between the context of discovery and the context of justification. The context of discovery is the question of how I come up with the scientific theory. The context of justification is the question whether it stands the factual, empirical test. Okay? So in philosophy of science they say: the context of discovery doesn’t interest me. For all I care, the scientist’s grandmother appeared to him at night and told him the theory, and he believes his grandmother. So then—just a second—he thinks the theory is correct. But when we test the theory, we don’t care that it came from his grandmother. We want to test it in the laboratory and see if it works. What matters is the context of justification, not the context of discovery. Let it come from wherever it wants. If it stands the test of facts—excellent. If it does not stand the test of facts, then even if it came from Einstein, it is not correct. It doesn’t matter—no ad hominem here—the source that says it is not what matters. What matters is the thing itself.

Therefore in our context, Maimonides’ mistake only gives the context of discovery for Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, for Rabbi Chaim of Brisk’s understanding. That’s how Rabbi Chaim came upon the possibility of reading the Talmud that way. But that doesn’t change anything for me. When I want to check whether he is reading the Talmud correctly, I will examine the reading itself and see whether it fits the Talmud or not. If it fits the Talmud, that is an excellent reading. Why should I care that the way he began thinking of it was only because he stumbled upon some error? So what? If in the end he discovered, by way of error—if I went down a road I had no intention of taking, met someone, and he told me a wonderful insight on the Talmud, and I came back to the yeshiva and told the students this wonderful insight on the Talmud—do I now have to give it up? Because I had no intention of going in that direction and meeting him, and I only met him by accident? What does that have to do with anything? If the insight is correct, then it is correct. If it is not correct, then it is not correct. Why should I care how I discovered it?

That is basically somewhat like what Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner is saying here. Once knowledge is hidden away, that can become a way that reveals to us additional possibilities in Torah. And that is exactly how a dispute is created regarding the beams of the Tabernacle: precisely because the Torah does not write exactly or explicitly how the beams of the Tabernacle were structured. Therefore a dispute arose, but the dispute represents two conceptions that hold water, two halakhic conceptions that are valid, correct, legitimate—however you want to call it. So if that’s the case, these are two legitimate conceptions, and I can say even about that: these and those are the words of the living God, even though they deal with a fact.

Now let’s just finish the passage. “And when a court greater in wisdom and number than the previous court arises, which according to law has the power to revoke the words of the previous court, and interprets the verses differently, reversing the picture of the matter from one extreme to the other, then we shall say that it is the will of Heaven now to reveal what had previously been concealed, and these and those are the words of the living God.” Meaning, if another court now arises and rules differently, learning that the beams were structured differently, then he says we were shown information that had been concealed, and now that is the information relevant to us. A later court can then change it again, and it will again be concealed. So the historical information here is not important; it is concealed. What matters is the halakhic “truth,” in quotation marks.

By the way, parenthetically, I suddenly notice he has an error here. Because in order to derive interpretations, you do not need a court greater in wisdom and number. Any later court can disagree with an earlier court in interpretations. In rabbinic laws you need it to be greater in wisdom and number. That’s just a side note—I suddenly see that this is simply an error. At least according to Maimonides. Not everyone agrees, actually, but at least according to Maimonides that’s how it is.

Then he says, and now he concludes: “Any other opinion found in the world is excluded from this whole process of revelation and concealment, and therefore regarding it we say only one of two things: either it is mistaken or it is correct.” About historians, I won’t say “these and those are the words of the living God.” If Elijah came and revealed to me what the correct history was, then he would decide that this historian was right and that historian was wrong, assuming we believe him. Historians deal with the facts themselves—not with historical facts as opposed to real facts, but with the facts themselves, what really happened. There aren’t “facts for the purpose of history.” That’s not relevant. They deal with the facts themselves. And so too all fields of science basically deal—or are supposed to deal at least—with facts. Real science, I don’t mean the humanities. What is really called science, not what is merely called science. They all get called science; I mean what is actually science, not what is called science.

There we deal with facts, and in facts one is right and the other wrong. There is no revelation and concealment there. There may in fact be concealment of knowledge, but it is not essential concealment. A certain historical fact may be unknown to us—it is hidden away—but it was not intentionally hidden away in this sense in order to allow two interpretations that would both be correct for historians. For historians, what is supposed to determine things is the truth. Leave aside the new historians and all their bizarre statements. So the claim is basically that only in the context of Torah does concealment of knowledge have this kind of significance.

That’s what he says: “But all the reasoning, opinions, and expositions of the sages of the transmission of the Oral Torah are removed from the very distinction between correct and incorrect. And in this we distinguish only a manifestation of revelation or a manifestation of concealment. Both this and that are the will of Heaven; these and those are the words of the living God.” And therefore one can say “these and those are the words of the living God” even about a dispute about reality. So this is a very interesting suggestion.

By the way, in that same context, I once wrote an article that deals with the attitude toward myth. Many times—I began there with the ban of the Rashba. You know there were allegorical approaches to Scripture. Philo of Alexandria was an allegorist. He interpreted various events and figures in Scripture as though they were not real events and not real figures, but rather expressions of ideas. The story conveys ideas to us through events—myths, basically. Yedaya ha-Penini, a student of the author of Hashlamah, in the period of the Rashba, also belonged to such a group of allegorists and allegorical interpreters. And they got to the point where they said that Abraham and Sarah never existed and were never created. Rather, Abraham is form and Sarah is matter, or something like that; these are only abstract ideas, not real human beings.

Now the Rashba was very upset about this, and there are several very long responsa, part 1 in Rashba, 417 I think, something like that, and so on, where he issues a writ of excommunication against the study of philosophy until age twenty-five. Until age twenty-five one may not study philosophy, because philosophers arrive at allegorical interpretations, and Heaven forbid. So there in the article I asked: why did it trouble the Rashba so much that someone gave an allegorical interpretation? Maybe the Rashba feared that it was not correct and that Abraham and Sarah really did exist. Fine—but then why don’t you just see this as a dispute like any other dispute? Why here do you excommunicate? Meaning, why do you think the view is not merely incorrect but illegitimate? There are many disputes in which the Rashba is involved and he does not excommunicate those who disagree with him, but here he found it appropriate to excommunicate. Why? Truthfully I don’t really know. Good question.

There is a book by Rabbi Amit Kula called Was It or Was It Not, where he tries to present an approach that empties Jewish tradition of all facts, down to the very last one—that you do not need to accept any fact, not creation of the world, not the giving of the Torah, nothing, and still be a fully kosher Jew. That’s what he wants to argue. I argued with him somewhat about the revelation at Sinai, but I do agree with the basic emptying-out that he does—that one can be a fully kosher Jew even if one gives up the historical truth of various parts of Scripture or whatever. Maimonides himself, as is well known, also did this. The angels who visited Abraham—Maimonides interpreted that as a dream of the night; it was not really an event that actually happened. And the allegorists, by the way—Yedaya ha-Penini and the other allegorists—relied on Maimonides. They brought this Maimonides as a source granting legitimacy to allegorical interpretation. So there is not necessarily anything problematic in this. But the Rashba saw in it something very, very problematic.

And there in the article I compared this to contemporary arguments with the post-Zionists, who at the time were really at their peak—today they’ve faded somewhat, or quite a lot—but then they were really at their height. I’d even say post-historians, not post-Zionists, because this is a global phenomenon, not only in Israel. This is a historical conception that basically says there are different narratives—postmodernism—there are different narratives, and there is really no such thing as historical truth, and what we are supposed to do is only discuss the various narratives. With the Palestinians this is very popular: they have a narrative and we have a narrative, and what difference does it make who’s right? There’s no right and wrong. We’re talking about historical facts from a few decades ago, no matter—the mouth can say anything, and paper can too. You can say whatever you want.

In any event, there is an interesting point here, because those new historians often didn’t really do what I just described. They did almost the opposite. For example, they liked slaughtering sacred cows. One case even reached court: someone who did a master’s degree at the University of Haifa claimed that some Palmach unit had massacred Arabs on the Dor beach, I think, something like that. He wrote his thesis about this and got a master’s degree for it, and it was approved by the referees, by the examiners. Then, I think, Palmach veterans sued him or something like that, because it never happened. And the court ruled that he was mistaken—or maybe lied, or erred, or interpreted incorrectly, doesn’t matter, didn’t check properly—he lost in court.

Likewise, as part of myth-breaking or slaughtering these sacred cows, as they say, Mark Twain says sacred cows make the best steaks. So he says, for example, those who claim that Trumpeldor never said, “It is good to die for our country”—he cursed in Russian. Okay, so that’s one of the claims of various post-Zionists and so on. They like to slaughter sacred cows, to point to all sorts of events that never happened, to debunk Zionist myths and things like that. And the interesting question here is that apparently there is an internal contradiction in their position—actually perhaps in both sides’ positions, in a certain light.

Because suppose—I mean, let’s talk about Trumpeldor—suppose I am an enthusiastic Zionist educating in the light of Trumpeldor: “It is good to die for our country.” Fine? And the post-Zionist opposes this and says one must not die for our country and one should give our country to the Palestinians. Okay, say that’s what he thinks. What does that have to do with the question of what Trumpeldor said? Suppose Trumpeldor really did say, “It is good to die for our country.” So can’t I still be a post-Zionist? Can’t I say Zionism is not right and the land should be given to the Palestinians? What—what does that have to do with historical facts? What’s the connection? On the contrary, if you are a post-historian, and if you don’t believe in historical truth, then why do you need to debunk this myth at all? Even if it happened, so what? You are interested in values. Post-Zionist values say what should be done regarding Palestinians, our relationship to the land, things like that. Value questions, normative questions. What does that have to do with history? Is Trumpeldor Moses our teacher? If Trumpeldor said “It is good to die for our country,” does that mean all of us must die for our country? Can’t you say that Trumpeldor really said it and I strongly oppose it?

By the way, the reverse is also true. I can say that Trumpeldor really never existed in that sense, that the sacred-cow slaughterers are right. But I think it is good to die for our country, and I want to educate the youth on that basis. Even though Trumpeldor didn’t say it—he cursed in Russian. Why do the Zionists have to defend the myth of Trumpeldor and the post-Zionists have to debunk it? What’s the problem? Somehow it seems that both sides see some connection between historical facts and the values according to which we educate. That’s a very interesting question. Why? Why can’t I educate toward values that have no anchor in historical facts? Values are values. They can be morally and evaluatively correct and valid regardless of whether anyone ever said “It is good to die for our country.” Here—I’m saying it now. What, am I less holy than Trumpeldor? What’s the problem? Why can’t I say it even if Trumpeldor didn’t? If it’s a value I believe is correct, then I don’t need history for that.

So why does everyone fight so bitterly over the historical truth? After all, today we know that myths can be produced—a myth can educate. And if you understand something as an educational myth, you do not examine it through the historical prism of whether it is really true or not. Does anyone today check Greek mythology to see whether there really once was, I don’t know what—Zeus and whatever, all the Greek gods, Hermes and Hercules—is that the same thing? Doesn’t matter—right, all the Greek or Roman gods? No, obviously not. These are mythical stories from which one can derive insights, values, whatever, not our issue at the moment—but what does that have to do with their historical truth?

So if I come back to our issue, same thing. Why did it bother the Rashba so much that Yedaya ha-Penini thought Abraham and Sarah did not exist, but rather were symbols for matter and form? Educate toward the values you want to educate toward, regardless of what happened historically. Why is it important? Okay? One could say maybe that our being Jewish—there is of course an ethnic criterion: one needs a Jewish mother. And then somehow that begins with Abraham and Sarah. But that’s not correct. Because not all of Abraham and Sarah’s descendants are Jews. Who determined who is a Jew? The Holy One, blessed be He, at Mount Sinai determined who is a Jew. All the laws of conversion are learned from Sinai. Therefore we became Jews at Sinai, not by being born from Abraham our father. So it really doesn’t matter whether Abraham our father never existed at all. Some people came to Sinai, received Torah, underwent conversion, and that’s what is called a Jew. Why should I care whether there was Abraham our father?

By the way, that is why I disagree with what Rabbi Amit Kula argues regarding the revelation at Sinai. I think that one you can’t empty of factual content, because if that didn’t happen, I don’t see what remains. But truly all the other historical descriptions in the Torah—whether I think he is right or not, why does it bother you so much if he thinks it is an educational myth rather than historical truth? So here we have an example. I won’t go into that question now; it is an interesting question in itself.

That is basically what Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner is saying here. He is basically saying that the Torah’s story about the Tabernacle is an educational myth. It should not be read through glasses of factual description at all. Maybe—you know what, I’ll go farther than Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner—maybe there was no Tabernacle at all, no wagons, nothing. The Torah wrote that section because from the biblical description of the Tabernacle we derive the primary categories of labor and their subcategories. That’s all. So from our standpoint this is an educational myth. What does it have to do with what really happened there? You see the analogy? Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner is essentially saying that what we have here is myth, and myth is not evaluated through the prism of its historical truth. That just isn’t a relevant question at all. Okay?

So to summarize, that is the claim. The claim is that one can say “these and those are the words of the living God” even regarding factual disputes, if I accept this thesis of concealment of knowledge, which basically says that factual disputes are not really about facts, but about interpretation of the verses that describe the fact. That’s what matters for our purposes, and therefore I don’t even care if Elijah comes and tells me what really happened there in the wilderness—it changes nothing, because for me what determines things is what is written in the Torah.

Now I still want to qualify this claim. Nice claim, I think—but I want to qualify it. Meaning, it won’t always work. In interpretation of Scripture, it usually will work. Because in interpretation of Scripture you can always say: fine, this passage is an educational myth. People often say that about the verses of creation of the world—that they are not really describing what happened there. They are giving you some myth about creation from which, for example, you can derive the hierarchy from inanimate to plant to animal to speaking being, and so on. So perhaps it is only meant to convey value messages or educational messages, not necessarily to describe exactly what happened there historically. Right? There are even difficulties in seeing this as a historical description. I’m not talking about evolution—difficulties within the text itself. Nachmanides writes there that these things are metaphor and should not be taken literally. And Nachmanides was not trying to deal with evolution.

But I’m saying that in disputes about Scripture, I can understand. What about disputes among the sages? When Maimonides and—say Maimonides and Rashi, the Minchat Chinukh I mentioned—Maimonides and Rashi disagree about how the milk is found in the breast. Is it deposited and uprootable, or is it attached? Now, that is not a question of educational myth—they disagree about what reality is. But the truth is that even here I can explain it. This Minchat Chinukh I don’t understand at all. That is not a dispute about reality. The milk is in the breast in some way. The question is whether that form is considered attached to the breast or considered separate from the breast. That is a question of evaluating reality, not of reality itself. We can all agree that the reality is such-and-such and still disagree over what the significance of that reality is. In such a reality, is it called attached, or in such a reality is it called detached?

This is somewhat similar to what I talked about when I discussed drawing the line, like the sorites paradox, where I ask: from what point is something considered dangerous? Okay? I asked: at 100 kilometers per hour you have one percent risk; at 120 kilometers per hour you have one and a half percent risk. An expert from the Technion can tell you that. But the question of what counts as dangerous—is it one percent or one and a half percent? Here too I can ask the same question. How much connection is needed for something to be called attached for the purpose of the labor of threshing? That is the dispute between Maimonides and Rashi. It is not a dispute about reality. It could be that we know exactly, in principle, how it is attached to the breast, but the question is whether a connection at that level is sufficient to be considered a connection or not. That is a normative question, not a factual one. So there I really don’t understand what the Minchat Chinukh wants. That simply is not a dispute about reality. I mean, no excuses are needed there.

But there are other things, no less amusing. Let me say this perhaps orally so it won’t take us too much longer. There is a Talmud in Bava Batra, page 102a. The Talmud deals there with measuring distances between graves. Right? How people are buried, and priests, and various such matters. One has to measure distances between graves; it makes various calculations there. Fine. Now there is a discussion there about the length of the diagonal of a rectangle—wait—what is the length of the diagonal of a six-by-four rectangle? Okay? So Rashbam says there that the diagonal of a six-by-four rectangle is like the diagonal of a five-by-five square, and therefore it is five and two-fifths—right? Seven. 1.4—we take the square root of two as 1.4 in the Talmud. Okay? So if the diagonal of a five-by-five square is basically seven, then six by four is also seven. That is what Rashbam claims.

Tosafot there asks on him: what do you mean? The five-by-five square has area twenty-five. The six-by-four rectangle has area twenty-four. The area is smaller, therefore the diagonal of the six-by-four must clearly be smaller than the diagonal of the five-by-five. What is the truth? Of course both are wrong. The diagonal of six by four is the square root of fifty-two, right? Square root of six squared plus four squared—Pythagoras—so that’s the square root of fifty-two. The diagonal of five by five is the square root of fifty. So obviously the diagonal of the rectangle is larger, longer, than the diagonal of the square.

Now with regard to Rashbam, it’s not necessarily difficult, because Rashbam could say: I wasn’t being exact. It’s approximately the same thing. So Rashbam says: this too is seven. More or less it’s correct. It’s about seven; square root of fifty-two and square root of fifty are about the same, so maybe that can still be explained. But Tosafot is questioning him on that point. He says: wait, that can’t be, because the five-by-five is larger than the six-by-four. That is clearly a mistake. About Rashbam you can say it’s approximately the same, it doesn’t matter to him. But Tosafot is precise with him on that point and says: it’s not exactly the same. Fine—but if you want to be precise, then be precise correctly and say the rectangle is more than the square. He says the rectangle is less than the square. That is an unambiguous mistake. Okay?

Now what do we do with that dispute? It’s not a dispute about reality—it’s a dispute about mathematics, not only about reality. A dispute over the Pythagorean theorem. Not only that, it’s a dispute over mathematics that was already well known in their time. The gentiles already knew it; the Pythagorean theorem is from Pythagoras—that’s long before Rashbam and Tosafot in the twelfth or thirteenth century, depending on which Tosafot this is. Okay, so what is going on here? Which of them is right? Neither is right. Rashbam, perhaps, you can say knows the truth but means it’s approximately the same, so fine. I’m not sure you can say Rashbam is mistaken. Tosafot is definitely mistaken. Definitely. Okay? So is that not a dispute about reality? Of course it is. Can you say both are mistaken? Can you say both are right—these and those? Certainly not. Tosafot is definitely wrong. Rashbam is wrong too, but perhaps you can say he wasn’t being exact and that’s not so bad.

So what shall we say here? Or in the Talmud there are all sorts of mistakes in general. There are various mistakes in the Talmud. For example, the Talmud speaks about—well, I don’t know if it’s in the Talmud itself actually; it depends on which interpretation of the medieval authorities you follow. But the Talmud says that when you sell merchandise to someone who comes to buy, you need to tip the scales a handbreadth in favor of the buyer, so there won’t be overcharging or any problem. So give him some bonus—tilt the balance so that the weight of the merchandise is a handbreadth lower than the weights that balance it. Okay? Now, obviously there is no such thing. Think about the force balance of scales. In the force balance of scales, if this side is heavier than that side, it goes all the way down. It doesn’t stop in the middle. It goes all the way down. And if it is balanced, then it will stand wherever you place it—like this, or like this, or like this—it will stand wherever. To “tip it a handbreadth” means nothing.

Now one could explain this. There are explanations. I think Nadav Shnerb writes about this in his book Keren Zavit. I think maybe we even talked about it once, many, many years ago when we were study partners. But the claim is this: there are situations where I can explain it. For example, if the balance beam is a rod that has two downward extensions at the ends, then when you tilt the beam, the torque is no longer equal. One side gets closer and the other farther away, so it really can stop at a certain height. Okay? Only if the beam is a straight line, without downward extensions at the sides—only then can’t you tip it a handbreadth. But there are medieval authorities who explicitly say that this is the beam—a straight line. They definitely erred. Not only did they err—if they go to the market and try it, they’ll see it can’t be done. You don’t need a particle accelerator to perform that experiment. Any merchant in the market can see it. So that’s an obvious error.

And there are more such cases. We already talked last class about the flat-earth world of Pesachim. And regarding menstruation there are various things—there are many scientific errors in the sages. There are many scientific errors in the sages. So even when there is a dispute and one side is wrong, one still cannot say there are no factual errors among the sages. Therefore there is no obstacle to saying that there are disputes about facts among the sages, and certainly among medieval authorities and later authorities. Because if one can be mistaken, then what’s the problem with there being a dispute? One is wrong and one is right. What’s the issue? This sacred “these and those are the words of the living God” simply does not exist regarding facts. What are you going to say, “these and those” about measuring the diagonal of six by four? Measure it and see what the truth is—what “these and those”?

So this claim that there cannot be a dispute about reality, which basically assumes that the rule “these and those are the words of the living God” also applies to facts, does not hold water. So with regard to interpretation of the Torah, it may be that Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner’s way out is available. Regarding disputes like Maimonides and Rashi, one can say that this is really a dispute in evaluating reality, not reality itself, with the milk and the breast. But there are disputes where this is a straightforward factual dispute. When you tell me that the earth is flat, you are wrong. When you tell me that the sun passes above the firmament at night, you are wrong. Today we know that is a mistake. It does not pass above the firmament. There is no such thing as above the firmament. So what—what does “these and those are the words of the living God” even mean? How am I supposed to relate to such a thing?

And here we move from the plane of disputes about reality to the plane of error about reality, which is the same question. Because the motivation to say there are no disputes about reality is based on wanting to claim that there is no factual error among the sages. So I said: first of all, there are disputes about reality, and that proves that clearly there is error, because in disputes about reality one is right and the other is wrong. And besides, even apart from disputes, there are Talmudic assertions that are simply mistakes. Obviously. Even the louse that is generated from putrefaction, and therefore may be killed on the Sabbath—that’s a mistake. Today we know that’s a mistake. So what do we do with such a thing? How should one relate to these things?

Now here there really are questions that the halakhic decisors discuss. And quite astonishingly, in my opinion, there is almost no decisor willing to say that there are factual errors in the Talmud. Certainly not in matters that relate to halakhah. Most of them will also tell you there are no factual errors in the Talmud at all—they knew everything. What they said was by divine inspiration, certainly correct. That is simply nonsense. But almost all decisors insist that regarding halakhic determinations based on a conception of reality, there was no mistake there. Either because of divine inspiration, because they knew—who knows exactly what—but no mistake occurred there. There are extremely rare exceptions, very few, almost no one who dares say that there was a factual mistake there. Maimonides, of course, is one of them. Maimonides does it on a large scale. Regarding the evil eye, for example, Maimonides says there is no such thing. He nullifies laws about the evil eye; various Talmudic laws simply do not appear in his work at all. A person may not stand over his fellow’s field when the grain is standing—Talmud in the first chapter of Bava Batra, and elsewhere—hand washing, things like that.

But among the later sages—not really later, actually—there is Pachad Yitzchak. Pachad Yitzchak by Rabbi Yitzchak Lampronti, a sort of halakhic or Talmudic encyclopedia. There he discusses the louse. He discusses the louse—I’ll maybe show you his responsum; I copied it here. Here is the responsum. There is a disagreement between him and his teacher, Rabbi Yehudah son of Rabbi Eliezer Brill. So let’s read the response of Rabbi Lampronti. He says: “Were I not afraid, I would say that in our times, when natural scientists have looked, seen, known, and written that every living creature, whatever it may be, comes from eggs, not from putrefaction, and all this they proved with clear proofs—then one who guards his soul should keep away from them and should kill neither flea nor louse.” It is forbidden to kill a louse on the Sabbath, even though the Talmud explicitly says it is permitted. “And let him not enter into a possible liability for a sin-offering.” Interesting that he calls it a possible liability for a sin-offering and not a definite liability for a sin-offering. Even he doesn’t go all the way. He too is not willing to draw the conclusion that it is certainly a liability for a sin-offering. But he says one should still be stringent.

“And about this I say: if the sages of Israel were to hear the proofs of the nations of the world, they would return and concede to them,” as in the case of the revolving sphere and fixed constellations that we discussed last class. “See Alfasi and Ran and Shiltei Giborim,” and so on. “But I asked my teacher,” and so on, “from Mantua, and he upheld the permission in this response.” He upholds the permission to kill the louse. So this is the response of his teacher: “I was asked whether in this age, when the earth is full of the knowledge of researchers who say that every living creature is born and comes from an egg, it is permissible to kill a louse on the Sabbath. And I answered that one should not change rulings founded on the tradition of our predecessors because of the investigations of the sages of the nations of the world. After all, you see that many researchers deny with proofs the matter of the evil eye, while Nachmanides wrote that it is enough to refute their words with what is written in the Talmud for practical law: it is forbidden to stand over one’s fellow’s field when it is standing in its grain.” Funny—I didn’t even remember that he brings this example. Maimonides himself omits that law because he did not believe in the evil eye. Against them. Once it is written in the Talmud, that proves they are wrong. That is what Rabbi Yitzchak Lampronti’s teacher says.

Okay, and he continues afterward on the issue of the fixed sphere and revolving constellations, where the sages of Israel at that time retracted and conceded to the sages of the nations of the world: “But in the end, after many hundreds of years, all the astronomers among the nations of the world, through their investigations based on experience and proof, returned to the words of our sages and our ancient tradition.” That too is nonsense. Rabbenu Tam also says this. Why? Even suppose he were right—he is not right—but suppose he were right, that the astronomers, after hundreds of years, discovered that despite the fact that the sages of Israel conceded to the sages of the nations of the world, in fact the sages of Israel were right. Then they erred in conceding to the sages of the nations of the world. So in that they erred. How can you prove from that that they do not err? On the contrary—you have proven that they err even more. After they were convinced by proofs and reached a certain conclusion, you say that conclusion was mistaken. What they said originally was right. So what? In any case, they made a mistake.

Therefore all this apologetic discussion that tries to explain that the sages do not err in any factual matter is absurd. But despite this absurdity, there is no decisor—I know of no decisor—who says otherwise. I know of no decisor who says: this is a factual error in the Talmud, and therefore the law changes. By the way, one of the exceptions—and interestingly, one of the great conservatives—is the Chazon Ish. The Chazon Ish also claims one should not change any law from what is written in the Talmud, but he invented, as was his way—he has strange inventions, I doubt whether he himself believed them—he invented this idea that what determines halakhah is the science that existed, or the facts known, during the two thousand years of Torah.

There is a division in the Midrash that the six thousand years of the world are divided into three: two thousand years of chaos, two thousand years of Torah, and two thousand years of Messiah. Okay? About 1,700 years ago, roughly, was the Talmudic period, and there the two thousand years of Torah ended. Therefore, says the Chazon Ish, the science that existed in the time of the Talmud is what determines things. But notice the subtext. The Chazon Ish accepts the claim that the science was not correct, which is very unusual—people don’t notice this. It is almost nonexistent among decisors down to our own day. Even modern Religious Zionist decisors, almost all of them—very few allow themselves to say: this is simply a mistake, that’s all. And the Chazon Ish just says—he wants still to keep the halakhah in force, so he invented this construction of the two thousand years of Torah. But he admits that the scientific basis of the halakhah, the scientific basis underlying the law, is actually not correct. Today it turns out not to be correct.

He says that as far as halakhah is concerned, one must not touch it. Fine. I think that’s totally absurd, absolutely absurd in my opinion—even though, I repeat, this is the consensus of all the decisors. It just doesn’t make sense. Clearly, once the thing is based on an error—if it is clear to us that this is an error, maybe not; if it is clear to us that this is an error—then the law is nullified. The sages who established it, if they understood that this was an error, would cancel it. It’s like a mistaken transaction. Something established on the basis of an error is void. Why do I need to make such efforts to defend it?

I’ll tell you even more than that. This whole great effort to defend the words of the sages is strange for another reason. Just a second. I bring here a passage from the dissertation of Rabbi Professor Steinberg—the man of medical ethics, who is also a Torah scholar and an experienced physician, and deals a lot with ethics. He writes there as follows. Here is a passage from his dissertation: “Several of the Talmudic sages spent much time observing and practically studying anatomy and pathology in animals and human beings. Thus Rav testified about himself”—that’s in the Talmud in Sanhedrin—“‘I spent eighteen months with a shepherd in order to know what constitutes a blemish.’” From him he learned animal physiology. “And on the other hand, when Rabbi Yohanan was asked to show the location of the fat on the loins”—on the kidneys and loins—“he answered: ‘I am not a butcher and not the son of a butcher.’” Meaning, it does not come from the Torah; it comes from the experts who work in that field.

He continues: “Moreover, the sages did not engage only in passive observation, but also in active experiments on human and animal bodies in order to ascertain anatomical, physiological, pathological data, and so on. Here are several examples. The Talmudic sages were the first to perform postmortems on human beings, as written in the Tosefta Niddah, in tractate Bekhorot, tractate Niddah; they performed embryological examinations,” as written in Niddah, “gynecological examinations, gastrointestinal examination”—I don’t even know what that is—“and used an instrument,” written in Nedarim there, and so on. “And you see that the sages engaged in practical medical research.”

What does that mean, basically? It means that the scientific and factual information of the sages did not come from divine inspiration. It came from studying reality, consulting experts, doing research themselves—and that’s how they reached their conclusions. And therefore I see no reason in the world to attribute to them some kind of exalted, transcendent knowledge that we do not have today. They learned from the experts of their day, and I think the experts of today know more than the experts of those days.

So now I say this: even if I had an explanation showing that the sages were nevertheless right, are nevertheless right—I’m not looking for explanations. I would not accept it even if it could be made to work. Because my assumption from the outset is that one should not be looking for explanations. The sages knew what was known in their time, no more and no less. And if it seems incorrect, then they probably erred. And if you have an explanation, I’m not interested in your explanations, because your explanation is basically claiming that the sages had some exalted knowledge beyond their sources—but I know that’s not true. I see that there is testimony in the Talmud that it’s not true, that they draw information from their surroundings just like any intelligent person. Therefore their mistakes are exactly what one would expect given the information available in their day. That is what they knew.

And so even if there is an explanation, I won’t accept it. It’s not because I insist on being a heretic, but because that explanation assumes that the sages knew something beyond what the scientists of their time knew. I don’t think that’s true. Maybe here and there they knew a bit more—any scholar knows a bit more if he researches and studies, especially back then when there was not yet sophisticated information exchange like today, with no internet, no scientific journals. So perhaps someone specialized in something and had some information beyond others. But that information is still just information that is the result of factual scientific research or consultation with experts, that’s all. It does not come from elevated sources, from divine inspiration or prophecy. So I have no reason to assume at all that they were right. I do not need explanations.

Very often people find explanations that show me how the sages maybe are right after all. Why do I need to get there? The sages probably erred if it fits the science of their day and does not fit the science of our day. And even if you find an explanation, I don’t accept it. It’s not relevant. I’m not looking for explanations. It’s not a question of accepting or not accepting. On the contrary, the explanation itself is forced simply by virtue of being an explanation. Because that explanation basically says the sages knew more than their time knew, and to me that itself is forced. That in itself pushes the explanation away. Because it is not reasonable that they knew more than what was known in their time.

I’ll give you one more consideration, and maybe with this I’ll finish—and with this we’ll finish the series altogether. After all, we know how sages in our time learn scientific facts, right? How does a halakhic decisor—at least a serious decisor—learn scientific facts? There are those who learn it from equidistant letter sequences in the Torah, but serious people go to experts and ask them. Right? They consult experts—a doctor, engineer, scientist, technician, technologist, whatever it may be—and that’s how they learn the information they have about the world. Okay? What did the sages of the nineteenth century do, the decisors of the nineteenth century? They also consulted experts? Obviously yes; you see it in responsa, you see it in all sorts of places. They consulted experts. And in the fifteenth century? Presumably also. And in the tenth century too. So why not in the fifth century? Where does it stop?

Meaning, until what point did there exist knowledge by divine inspiration, exalted knowledge that would not allow a sage to err even in scientific determinations, and from what point did we lose that knowledge and begin behaving like ordinary human beings, nourished by experts and scientific information of one kind or another? I don’t know—I don’t feel there was ever such a line. When there were actual prophets, maybe you can tell me that the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed things to them through prophecy. Fine. People of Torah knowledge—wonderful. So what? But their scientific knowledge was a product of their environment, the knowledge in their surroundings. Exactly as the knowledge of sages in our own time is a product of the scientific knowledge accumulated in our time. That’s how it is today, that’s how it was in the eighteenth century, that’s how it was in the fifteenth. Therefore I see no reason to assume that if today it is so, then in the third century it was not so. It was always so.

And therefore this whole thesis—and again I say, this is shared by all the decisors, all the decisors—it’s not some claim that there are some who say this because they are Haredi, conservative, outdated, anachronistic, and others are more sophisticated. No, no. All the decisors. They do not change halakhah even though the factual reality on which it was based is now known to be incorrect. They do not change it. I’ll perhaps bring—actually maybe I’ll do one more class in this series, I’ll let you know, because there is another certain kind of discussion that we still need to address.

Okay, so I think I’ll stop here. And I think you have control over the microphones. They didn’t take it away? Yes, you do. So whoever wants to ask, comment, whatever you want—gladly.