Torah Study – Lesson 8

This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.

🔗 Link to the original lecture

🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI

[0:00] Presentation of the issue of ukimtot in the Talmud
[2:21] Newton’s first law and the parallel to the Talmud
[6:10] Rabbi Ovadia’s approach to halakhic ruling
[7:35] What the Mishnah means through ukimtot
[13:43] Critique of legal positivism
[16:23] Comparison of British and German legal tradition
[17:58] Differences between the Bnei Brak and Jerusalem traditions
[24:49] The examples in the Mishnah and the non-absolute rule
[27:04] Neural networks and learning from examples
[28:28] The casuistic development of Jewish law
[29:47] The debate over interpreting Maimonides between Hutner
[31:12] Understanding the principle behind the Mishnah
[33:14] The issue of an egg on a Jewish holiday – analysis of the Mishnah
[35:31] Rashba’s question about preparation for the Sabbath
[41:08] The Talmud’s ukimta – an egg that one may not eat
[49:57] Explanation of ukimta in the Mishnah according to Rashi
[51:33] Rashi and Rashba’s agreement about the theory of ukimta
[52:41] The question of ukimta in Rashba and its clarification
[54:28] The example about leaven and continuation of the study

Summary

General Overview

The text presents a conception according to which the Talmud uses particular cases and ukimtot as a kind of “laboratory setting” in order to refine general principles, rather than to deliver a point-by-point halakhic ruling about the case itself. This approach is examined against two different goals of study—practical halakhic ruling versus analytical understanding of principles—and is compared to the difference between a scientist and a technologist. From this, a broader claim is made: that the Mishnah and Talmud avoid formulating absolute rules, because they do not trust rules as a recipe for application, and instead prefer learning through examples that require the use of common sense. Finally, the text presents a detailed demonstration from the egg sugya, where the dispute between Rashi and Rashba is illuminated through an understanding of the role of ukimta and of what counts as the core law as opposed to a merely technical possibility.

The Issue of Ukimtot as a Fundamental Approach to the Talmud

The Talmud uses cases to illustrate principles, and the assumption is that a specific case in the Talmud is meant to express a principle and not to teach a point-specific Jewish law about that particular case. The picture is that when an esoteric case is brought, it functions as a kind of “laboratory setting” that clears away interfering factors and makes it possible to see the principle under discussion in a refined way. The ukimta is not arbitrary; it sharpens the principle the Mishnah wanted to express. So the Mishnah is not departing from its plain meaning, but speaking in terms of a principle that can only be seen in a particular setting. The dispute over whether to read a Mishnah literally or to establish it through a ukimta is viewed as a dispute over how to interpret the Mishnah, not as a necessity that ukimta is merely a polite way of disagreeing with it.

The Goal of Study: Halakhic Decisor versus Analytical Learning and Principles

A question is raised: what is the goal of study—knowing the laws for every situation, or using cases as a means to reach principles? A comparison is brought between a scientist, whose goal is to understand general laws through experiments, and a technologist, whose goal is to know what will happen in every situation and apply laws. This distinction is mapped onto “the halakhic decisor” versus “the analyst / learner,” and it is said that Rabbi Ovadia sees the goal of study as issuing halakhic rulings for every situation, whereas the yeshiva world tends to see principles as the end goal, with the specific laws serving only as test cases. The text presents the argument as a matter of taste and preference, and says that both approaches can make use of principles while placing different goals at the center.

The Scientific Analogy: Newton’s Laws and Platonic Abstraction

The text compares ukimtot to the way physics uses an abstract world to present a general law such as Newton’s first law, even though in reality there is no situation free of forces and friction. The abstraction is necessary because reality is made up of several laws acting together, and understanding requires theoretical decomposition into aspects controlled by one law at a time, followed by returning to application in reality. It is argued that Newton’s laws are exact with respect to an abstract Platonic reality, and that complexity in actual reality comes from the combination of many laws; therefore abstraction is a condition for understanding even if it is not the direct practical goal. The parallel is that Talmudic cases are not always practical, but they allow one to see the pure principle beneath the many factors.

Why the Mishnah and Talmud Do Not Write Direct Rules

It is argued that the editor of the Mishnah could have written direct rules such as “a slave is like a courtyard” instead of a case such as “if he placed the bill of divorce in the hand of his sleeping slave who is being guarded, this is a valid divorce,” but he did not do so because the Talmud does not trust working through rules. A parallel is brought from the world of law: legal positivism seeks an axiomatic system from which the judge deduces instructions, but it is argued that the legal world lost faith in this—especially after the Holocaust, when the claim “we were following orders” exposed the gap between formal logic and moral interpretation and contextual understanding. The difference is presented between German law as a kind of “science of law” and British law, which relies more on precedents and cases. Traditional society is described as one that is less willing to accept abstract legislation replacing living custom. Stories and examples are brought about the difference between Bnei Brak and Jerusalem regarding measurements and custom, and about a responsum of Rabbi Shlomo Zalman that relied on what his mother and grandmother did, against halakhic arguments.

The Cost of Rules versus the Cost of Cases, and Halakhic Approximation

It is said that both methods have a price: rules seem precise but do not work in every case, so one must know where and how to apply and interpret them; by contrast, working through examples creates uncertainty as to what rule is being expressed, and leads to disputes because common sense differs from person to person. It is argued that the amoraim do make generalizations, but these must be taken with limited confidence, and that the rule is an intentional approximation, not mathematics. The example brought is the Mishnah in Bava Kamma and the rule “the common side of them is that their way is to cause damage, they are your property, and their guarding is upon you,” and the Talmud’s question “what does the common side come to include?” to show that even a principled formulation does not capture every case. It is argued that the case of a guardian shows that the rule “your property” is not absolute, and that the examples teach that the rule is only an approximation that requires continued thought rather than stopping at the formulation itself.

Learning from Examples and Neural Networks

An analogy is presented from programming: there is literal rule-based programming, and there is a neural network that learns from examples and can solve new cases without formulating an explicit rule. It is argued that this is also what brain researchers believe about how the mind works, so it is not surprising that rules are not a good tool for conveying full understanding; they are only a framework and shortcut that must be used carefully while thinking. The text presents the Talmud’s way as having greater trust in learning from examples and in apprenticeship with Torah scholars in order to arrive at correct application.

History, Intuition, and Interpretation: Is the Talmud “Forcing” the Mishnah?

It is argued that one can build a theory out of rulings or formulations even if the one who issued the ruling did not think in these explicit models, similar to the debate over Rabbi Chaim’s interpretation of Maimonides between Seridei Esh and Rabbi Yehoshua Hutner. A position is presented according to which the formulated principles are a language that expresses a correct intuition that guided the halakhic decisor, and they can be tested across many places to confirm the model. The text rejects the description that the Talmud “forces” the Mishnah to say what it wants, and argues that the Talmud understood that behind the language of the case there stood a system of principles even if it was not formulated explicitly.

The Egg Sugya: Rabbah’s Preparation Principle, Rashi versus Rashba, and the Meaning of Ukimta

The Mishnah says, “An egg laid on a Jewish holiday: Beit Shammai say it may be eaten, and Beit Hillel say it may not be eaten,” and the Talmud establishes this as dealing with a hen kept for laying eggs, and with a Jewish holiday following the Sabbath because of Rabbah’s principle of preparation. Rashi explains that a Jewish holiday is called Sabbath and requires prior preparation, and that its preparation must be done on a weekday; therefore an egg laid on an ordinary Sunday is permitted, because an ordinary weekday meal is not significant and has no law of preparation. Rashba is puzzled by this wording and asks: if a Sabbath meal requires preparation on a weekday, it would come out that the Sabbath does not prepare for itself. He brings proofs such as “the beginning of the day acquires the eiruv” to show that the Sabbath does prepare for itself, and interprets the prohibition to mean that the Sabbath may not prepare for a Jewish holiday, and a Jewish holiday may not prepare for the Sabbath, even though each may prepare for itself.

The text defines the focal point of the dispute this way: according to Rashi, the problem lies in the day of eating, because on a Jewish holiday one may not eat something that did not undergo proper preparation; according to Rashba, the problem lies in the day that prepares, because the Sabbath does not “serve” the Jewish holiday, and the prohibition is to use one day as preparation for another. It is argued that Rashi is “right,” because if the prohibition is an injury to the Sabbath, then the ukimta of “a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath” makes the main point missing from the text, since the Mishnah never mentions the Sabbath at all. The text uses the continuation of the sugya—“Abaye said to him: if so, then on an ordinary Jewish holiday it should be permitted”—and the answer, “a decree because of a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath,” to show that understanding the role of the ukimta changes whether the Mishnah deals with a Torah-level law of Rabbah’s preparation principle or with a rabbinic decree because of a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath. It presents that according to Rashba, the Mishnah is read as dealing with an ordinary Jewish holiday and imposing a decree because of the case of a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath.

The text states that both medieval authorities (Rishonim) agree in principle that an ukimta does not come to invent the central principle of the Mishnah, but rather to solve a technical problem of possibility. Therefore Rashba is unwilling to accept an ukimta that replaces the subject of the Mishnah and leaves “the Sabbath” outside the wording. The text presents that understanding the mechanism of ukimta sheds light on many difficulties in the sugya and resolves them, and promises a second example from the issue of leaven to be discussed later.

Full Transcript

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The issue of ukimtot—and in the broader framework, what I’m trying to show through the issue of ukimtot is the basic approach to the Talmud: that in essence the Talmud uses cases in order to demonstrate principles. And when we see a case in the Talmud, then the assumption ought to be that this case comes to express a principle; it is not coming to tell us some specific Jewish law about that particular case. This reflects a discussion we had earlier: what is more important, or what is the goal of study? Is the goal of study to know the laws in each and every case, or are the cases a means for knowing the principles, with the real goal being to reach the principles? I compared this to a scientist versus a technologist: the scientist’s purpose is to perform experiments or examine specific cases in order to understand the general laws, whereas the technologist’s purpose is specifically to know what will happen in each concrete situation, or even to create situations that can be useful for applying the general laws. That’s the halakhic decisor versus the analyst, or the learner. So through ukimtot I’m trying to demonstrate this point.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The picture I described at the end of last time—I ran rather quickly through the egg sugya and said I’d come back to it, because my feeling was that it was too quick. So let me just explain where we stand, so that we can enter the sugya itself. What I’ll do today is try to demonstrate this principle of the attitude toward ukimtot on two sugyot, and show that not only does this explain why there is an ukimta, but it also sheds light on other difficulties that arise in the sugya when one isn’t aware of this meaning of ukimta.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the picture is this: when the Talmud brings some case, especially if it’s a very specific, very esoteric case, the assumption is that this is some kind of laboratory setting. Meaning: it’s some case that doesn’t necessarily have to be practical, but in that case we manage to clear the field of various other principles that could interfere with our seeing the principle under discussion—exactly like in science. Newton’s laws: Newton’s first law tells us that a body on which no force acts continues moving at constant speed in a straight line. Of course nobody ever saw such a body, and nobody ever will. There is no such body. That law deals with some abstract world. To really see that law, what I need to do is try to create in our world some laboratory situation as close as possible to that abstract one. So you can take a place with no friction, with zero temperature, no large masses nearby so they won’t affect the motion, and then if we send an object we’ll see more or less—it’ll never be exact, because there’s always some influence—but we’ll see more or less the body continuing at constant speed in a straight line.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So if someone simply states Newton’s first law and says a body moves at constant speed in a straight line, you could say: what do you mean? That can’t be—there are bodies, there’s friction, this and that. So what are we dealing with? A world without friction and without other bodies and without electromagnetic force and without temperature and without anything—a world that of course never was and never will be. But in that world you can see in a more refined, purer way how the general law operates. And Newton’s purpose is not to explain to me what will happen in one specific case or another. I’ll never see such a case. No case in which Newton’s laws really work in their pure form. He wants to explain the principles behind the cases. And that is exactly what I’m claiming is also done in the Talmud.

[Speaker B] We saw his proposal, but what’s his purpose if it’s something that really can’t exist in reality?

[Speaker C] Because through those abstractions—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We then return and understand reality. Reality is complex. Newton’s laws are not an approximation—Newton’s laws are, in principle, never mind their ultimate precision, totally exact laws. But exact laws of what? Of a reality that is not our reality, but another abstract Platonic reality. So where does the complexity in our reality come from? It comes from the fact that in the same situation several laws are mixed together, each of which is true in its own world, but in our world they all converge at the same point. The law of friction, Newton’s first law, gravity, electromagnetism—all of these things are playing on the field together. Now if we didn’t decompose that situation into a collection of laws, each of which we handle separately in a Platonic way, we wouldn’t understand the situation in front of us either, because the situation in front of us is complicated. So we need to break it down into certain aspects, each governed by one simple law, and then we can try to go back and see what happens in the complicated world.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now there’s already a difference here in terms of goals. There are those for whom the goal is to understand the specific situation, and these are more like technologists who want to understand the world; and scientists, on the contrary—their goal is specifically to understand the Platonic laws. It’s an intellectual goal. In other words, we want to understand how those Platonic laws work.

[Speaker C] It helps in understanding reality. What your goal is when you do that—that already depends on you—whether…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Whether you’re more interested in the general laws or more in reality itself. But it does both things. So with ukimtot it’s the same. Basically the cases come to sharpen for us, to illustrate for us, principles—general principles. And now you can start arguing, or everyone according to his taste, what the goal of study is for him. It’s true that Rabbi Ovadia thinks the goal of study is to issue halakhic rulings in every situation, and then the general principles are only a means so that we can issue halakhic rulings. And he really does deal less with general principles and with what in the yeshivot is called analytical learning. In contrast, in the yeshiva world, the common approach is usually that the goal of study is specifically the general principles, and the cases—or halakhic rulings, yes, the laws that apply to specific cases—are only test stones. In other words, we examine the general principles through them. But again, it’s a matter of taste. So that was one example I brought, that—yes.

[Speaker D] I’m coming back to the question we’ve had several times. If you read a physics book, they really do give you Newton’s laws. It wouldn’t bother me if the Mishnah gave something similar. But what happens is, there’s some Mishnah that says A happens, and the Talmud says wait a second, A is in a very particular case; what really happens here in Jewish law is exactly the opposite of what’s in the Mishnah—and in the Mishnah, that’s the point, I’ll say—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll tell you.

[Speaker D] The question is whether the Mishnah really intended what appears in the Talmud, or whether the Talmud is kind of putting it there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not the same question. Those are two different questions. On the second question—let me start with that—the second question is interesting: did the Mishnah really mean that? I tend to think yes. I do tend to think yes. I think specifically ukimta is something simple. There are other things, like “something is missing and this is what it means,” and things like that, where it’s more problematic. But specifically in the realm of ukimtot, it seems to me quite reasonable that the Mishnah itself intended it.

[Speaker D] But why is the Talmud’s conclusion exactly the opposite of the plain meaning of the Mishnah?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not the opposite. It’s just that it establishes the Mishnah in a special case. Not the opposite. That’s exactly what I just explained. Let me give an example: “He placed the bill of divorce in the hand of his sleeping slave who is being guarded—this is a valid divorce,” yes? So she is divorced. No—when the slave is bound and asleep. So what does that mean, a bound and sleeping slave? It’s not the opposite of the Mishnah.

[Speaker D] The Mishnah says that if I place the bill of divorce in the slave’s hand— I’m going back to the example in Bava Kamma—if someone stumbles on the road and someone—who is liable? Someone put barrels there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There too we’re speaking about a case—

[Speaker D] —where he filled the public domain with barrels. In the Mishnah it sounds like the one who stumbled or something is liable. The Talmud assumes no, no, the opposite—the other one is liable, the one who—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Filled the public domain with barrels. Fine. So it establishes it in a particular case—it’s the same thing. There too the Mishnah is stating a principle: if you completely block me, filling the public domain with barrels, then you’re at fault. True, in another case not. But the Mishnah—that’s the ukimta.

[Speaker D] The Mishnah says he is liable, and the Talmud says no, the other one is liable; what the Mishnah says is a very specific case.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So that’s not the opposite; it’s just saying that the Mishnah’s law applies in a specific case. It’s not reversing it. It’s only saying that this law exists in a certain case. But what I’m claiming is that that specific case is not arbitrary. That specific case comes to illustrate a principle. And therefore the Mishnah does not depart from its plain meaning. The Mishnah is coming to state the principle, only you can see that principle only where someone fills the public domain with barrels—only there do you see it, okay.

[Speaker D] And therefore there’s a dispute in the Talmud, and one amora says no, you don’t take the Mishnah at face value—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, doesn’t matter. So they’re arguing over what the Mishnah means. The fact that there’s an argument doesn’t prove anything; I’m discussing each view on its own terms. The view that makes an ukimta understands that the Mishnah is saying that someone who blocks the public domain with barrels is liable for payment, and not the person who stumbled on the barrel. Okay, so I need to explain how the Mishnah said that: it said it because it was speaking about someone who fills the public domain with barrels. Someone. To explain the Mishnah in a specific case—and if not, then not. But I’ll bring examples from the Talmud and then I think it’ll be clearer.

[Speaker C] The first question was—yes—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The first question I think I already answered last time, but I’ll repeat it briefly. The first question was: there’s a difference between the scientific example—and that’s why I brought it; otherwise what does it help, because it was simpler than the halakhic example. In the scientific example, when you open a mechanics book, the principle is written as a general principle. It says: every body on which no force acts moves at constant speed in a straight line. It doesn’t say that if you take a ball and roll it then it won’t go anywhere, which would be a specific example. Rather, it immediately gives the general formulation. So there it’s clear to us that we’re dealing with a general law; we don’t need to make assumptions or interpretations for that. Now, it doesn’t fit reality—fine, okay, we’re talking about empty space with no friction and no temperature and all kinds of things like that. But it’s easier to interpret there because from the outset the wording is the wording of a general law.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In Jewish law, the initial formulation is a specific case: “An egg laid on a Jewish holiday may be eaten,” and Beit Hillel say it may not be eaten.

[Speaker C] Or the other one is not—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait. So I’m saying first of all, the difficulty is that in the Talmud there is one more interpretive step that doesn’t appear in science books. That interpretive step is to take the case the Talmud gives, understand from it what general principle the Talmud wants to say, and from there onward I do what I do with ukimta in the same way as in a mechanics book. But that first step doesn’t exist in a mechanics book, because there the first formulation is a general law. It’s written as a general law. In the Talmud it appears as a case: “He placed the bill of divorce in the hand of his sleeping slave who is being guarded—this is a valid divorce.” It doesn’t say “slaves are like a courtyard.” If it had said that, I would understand there’s some general law here. But here I’m also making the first step. And then the question is whether that is really justified. Because in mechanics it’s all much more natural, much simpler—in science books generally, not only mechanics.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The point that I think has to be understood here is that the assumption—the basic assumption accompanying the Talmud—is that the Talmud does not mean the cases as such. The Talmud is not occupied with cases. From its perspective, the cases are only a means to clarify principles. That’s an assumption I bring with me to the sugya. So even when I see a case, automatically it is clear to me that it is nothing but an expression of a general law. In other words, that’s something I come in with. Now you might ask why. Fine. So the amoraim are right that when they see such a Mishnah, they immediately understand that there is some general law here and they make ukimtot and so on. But I ask: why did the editor of the Mishnah write it this way? Why write it in the form of cases and pass along orally some methodological tradition that when you see a case, know that behind it there is a principle? Write the principle directly, like Sears and Zemansky did in mechanics. What’s the problem? Couldn’t Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi write—or Rava in this case—couldn’t he write that a slave is like land, or a slave is like a courtyard? What’s the problem with writing that? Why do you have to write: “a bill of divorce in the hand of his sleeping slave who is being guarded—this is a valid divorce”? Write that a slave is like a courtyard and that’s it. No need for ukimtot, no need for anything.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here it seems to me—and I think we also talked about this in the past—that the Talmud has no faith in rules. The Talmud does not believe in operating through rules. And in their formulation—

[Speaker C] What? And in their formulation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Meaning, formulating the laws through rules—the Talmud does not believe in that. I brought several examples of this. There is also a debate about it in the legal world. Positivists do believe in some sort of axiomatic system: give me a system of rules, and the judge will derive from the rules the instruction for the specific case that comes before him. The judge is just some kind of computer or logical machine—he needs to perform a deduction from the rules. The legal world too has pretty much lost faith in that approach. And the reason is that—what?

[Speaker G] Because over time they got to know judges. What did I hear? They got to know the judges.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, no, it’s not just a problem with judges. It’s built in. Even if you and I were judges, I don’t think we could do it any better. There’s something problematic here. It’s very difficult to formulate what you really want through a rule. The rule is often a formulation that looks terribly precise, but it doesn’t work in many cases. And therefore the Talmud at least understands that it’s better to work through examples and show what you mean, because that shows it to you in life. And this general rule—if you apply it just as is, then you get to… that’s what happens today, after all. What happens today? We accumulate more and more rules, the halakhic world works with more and more rules, and in my humble opinion halakhic ruling becomes less and less correct. Because you cling to the rule instead of looking at the situation and seeing what is really right here, how to apply the—once you’re attached to the rule, you can’t depart from it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And by the way, that’s exactly the reason why the legal world abandoned positivism. The legal world abandoned positivism in the middle of the twentieth century, after the Holocaust. Why? It crystallized then, of course—it started a bit earlier; these are long processes—but broadly speaking after the Holocaust the positivist conception took a hard blow. Why? Because they judged the Nazis, and they said: we were following orders—what do you want from us? That was the law among us. A citizen has to obey the law, so that’s what I did. QED. That’s all. I derived exactly what I did from the legal rules. And then the judges had to say: look, correct, the logic says that’s what you were supposed to do—but impossible, we do not accept that. What do you mean you don’t accept it? But if I had to write legal theory, that’s exactly what I’d write: a law enacted properly in the Bundestag, that got a majority—if you’re a citizen of the state, you have to obey the law. So if they said do this, then you need to do this. QED. That’s all. What’s the problem? Perfect Polish logic. But people lost faith in logic, because logic takes some general thing and imposes it on reality, when in reality it doesn’t work—not always. There are cases where you need to understand on your own that the law has to be interpreted differently, or that one must not obey it, or things of that sort. So there is a whole body of thought about this in legal theory—Dworkin and others, for those who know it—principles and rules and all kinds of things that don’t appear in the legislation but that you have to understand on your own are part of interpreting the law. In other words, you can’t treat the law as-is like some logical machine.

[Speaker F] In the legal world there’s also the whole issue of precedents.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Now in British law, for example, that lack of trust is much more built in, because they work with cases. Meaning, for them precedents are much more important. Statutory law, as it’s called—the general law passed in parliament—is a small minority or small part of the British legal system. They believe more in cases and examples that have appeared in earlier courts, and you’re supposed to maintain consistency with the previous courts. I don’t know the details there, but the conception—as opposed, say, to the German conception, where it’s the science of law, yes? The Yekke thing—not for nothing was the Holocaust there. In Britain that wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t supposed to happen because the British don’t work with some formulated laws.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] By the way, this is part of it—it’s also a kind of tradition. The British are a very traditional society. There are lots of silly customs there, with the royal guard and all the nonsense they do. But it’s part of the point. Some kind of tradition that says: I live inside this; don’t tell me all kinds of rules. I know what one does, what’s right to do and when. We have our own practice and we go with it. Nobody is going to pass some general law and change the whole reality here—it won’t pass. In a traditional society, passing laws doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because—it’s like there was once an article, I once read an article by a certain Friedman, a sociologist of Haredim, who wrote about why the Chazon Ish’s measure took over in Bnei Brak in all the—yes? matzah and all that, so that we gulp down matzah and nearly choke to death in order to fulfill the commandment of eating matzah, while in Jerusalem not—there they follow Rabbi Chaim Naeh, more reasonable measures. So he said that Bnei Brak is a city of immigrants, founded by immigrants from various places, so there was no old local custom there. And what happened was that the Chazon Ish was a dominant Torah scholar in Bnei Brak, he took over, and from then on that became everything. Meaning, once you establish the law, the law—everyone clings to the law because they don’t have a simple tradition of what one is supposed to do.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But Jerusalem is an old settlement already, and they have their traditions, and no Chazon Ish is going to tell their grandmother what to do. My grandmother didn’t do that, so what do I care what the Chazon Ish writes? He can bring a thousand proofs. Really—it works that way. Because I know we have some tradition, this is how we live, and don’t tell me stories. What you say is very logical, and you have difficulties with the Noda B’Yehuda regarding measurements, that eggs got bigger and olives got smaller and all kinds of things like that—very nice. But my grandmother didn’t eat matzah like that. Yes, it’s like I once heard—

[Speaker H] That was the central thesis of Soloveitchik in his article, Chaim Soloveitchik, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The theory of the example—no, learning from example is something else. No, yes, I remember that.

[Speaker H] About halakhic ruling, about books replacing tradition.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Aha. In any case, there’s— I also heard from Rabbi Lichtenstein once, or read from Rabbi Lichtenstein once, that his daughter made some earring hole in her ear. What? That’s forbidden; it’s wounding. Right? So he went to ask Rabbi Shlomo Zalman. Rabbi Shlomo Zalman—he used to ask Rabbi Shlomo Zalman a lot—said: look, I don’t know. My mother did it, my grandmother did it. I don’t know what to do with your proofs, but it’s fine, everything is fine. And that’s a Jerusalem approach. That’s how Jerusalem people work, as opposed to Bnei Brak people. Because places where there is some old tradition—nobody is going to tell them stories with rules. Positivism won’t work in a place like that. Positivism works in places like Bnei Brak.

[Speaker I] What is positivism?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Positivism is a conception that sees the legal system—say, legal positivism; there’s also philosophical positivism in general—legal positivism is a conception that sees the legal system as an axiomatic system, with a collection of axioms, and the judge’s role is to deduce from the set of axioms the conclusion for the legal case.

[Speaker C] What you described as the difference between the scientific approach and the Talmudic approach is that the Mishnah or Talmud doesn’t really like rules, so it formulates them through examples. But there’s a second problem with that: I don’t know which rule is being formulated by the example, and that itself is open to nearly infinite interpretation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. That’s the price. Both approaches have a price. The price of positivism is obvious, because no rule really works. So you need to know where to apply it and where not to apply it and how to apply it.

[Speaker J] But the amoraim did make generalizations, didn’t they? What? The amoraim.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They made generalizations that have to be taken with limited confidence. I’ll get to that in a second. But the opposite price is of course that once you bring a case, who knows what rule that case expresses? You have to activate some kind of common sense, and one person’s common sense is not necessarily another person’s common sense, and then disputes arise. So it’s a dilemma. The Talmud chose the second option. The Talmud has more confidence in people’s common sense—that if you study in the study hall and apprentice yourself to Torah scholars, in the end you’ll work correctly.

[Speaker C] With all that you’re saying, it’s still not clear what place the rule has. If the rule—if the Talmud doesn’t like positivism—then what exactly is the meaning of the rule? You’re saying that every rule has very built-in limitations of use, and in any case it isn’t really true because you can’t copy it into reality. So just leave the rule altogether.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then I’ll ask you: in science too, what is the place of the rule? In science too it never works in reality.

[Speaker C] No, because science believes in the rule.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I too believe in the halakhic rule—but it doesn’t work. I believe in it in the Platonic world. In science too it’s like that. So why formulate laws of nature? That’s what I said before.

[Speaker C] But in science I know how to combine rules and derive the kinematics of the real missile, constantly. Here too I know—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here too I know. After I apply the rules in all the different contexts, I know that only if the slave is bound and asleep, and you place the bill of divorce in his hand, then the woman is divorced; otherwise not.

[Speaker C] So then you do believe in the rule, so you really do believe in the rule.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course, of course. But what—

[Speaker C] What you believe in is the rule.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. I believe in the rule in the sense that it is some kind of generalization that is an approximation. In the end the rule helps direct my common sense to the place, but the rule is not as-is—it’s not mathematics. That’s all. But of course rules are important. We think only through rules. We can’t think without rules. In that sense it’s exactly like science; I don’t think there’s a difference. It’s the same thing. The difference is only in formulation: science formulates the rules directly, while the Talmud or Mishnah brings examples and leaves it to us to formulate the rules. But still, the rules are some kind of approximation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I spoke about this once. Yes, the example—the Mishnah at the beginning of Bava Kamma. The Mishnah says there, after bringing the four primary categories of damages—the ox, the pit, the grazer, and the fire—the Talmud says: “their common side is that their way is to cause damage, they are your property, and their guarding is upon you, and when they damage, the damager is obligated to pay compensation from the best of his land.” Fine, stop. I’m very happy—for once the Mishnah finally gave me the principle, right? Instead of giving me four examples, or not just four examples—it gives four examples and then “their common side is that they are your property and their guarding is upon you.” That’s the halakhic theory of damages. Finally they gave me a theory. What does the Talmud do on page 6?

[Speaker E] “What does the common side come to include?”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Just when they finally gave me the rule, the principle, the Talmud says: why did you bring that? You already have four examples: the ox, the pit, the grazer, and the fire. I understood the principle. Why do I need the rule? Instead of asking the opposite—you already have the rule, why did you bring the examples? Because the rule doesn’t capture the examples. And I think I brought examples of this. “Their common side is that they are your property and their guarding is upon you, and when they damage, the damager is obligated to pay compensation from the best of his land.” What about a guardian? It’s not my property—the animal was deposited with me for guarding. Am I liable to pay or not? Yes, liable. One second—but it says “your property and their guarding is upon you”; to cause liability you need both conditions: “your property” and “their guarding is upon you.” “Their guarding is upon me,” say, that may be contractual; even that raises the question why the Torah imposes guarding on me—after all I have a contract with you, but in tort responsibility really lies with you. Okay, that’s another question. But still, it’s also not “your property.” So why am I liable to pay? Because the rule “your property and their guarding is upon you” is an approximation. It means anyone who has responsibility like an owner of property—also the guardian has responsibility like an owner of property.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And there are those who want to learn from here that a guardian has ownership. That’s the sugya of our topic in tractate Pesachim there on page 34, with the—yes—that if you’re a paid guardian, then you violate the prohibition regarding leaven deposited with you, because you have some sort of ownership over it for “it shall not be seen and it shall not be found.” Here too I don’t think you need to go that far; it’s not right. The point is that it’s not really about ownership. It’s about a responsibility like the one an owner has toward his property. And in that sense a guardian is the same. But if they had established the rule without the examples, they would immediately say: anyone for whom it is his property and its guarding is upon him is liable to pay. Then you would exempt the guardian, or the case of placing another person’s animal onto another person’s standing grain.

[Speaker C] But the examples don’t exempt the guardian either.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?

[Speaker C] Even in the examples you gave, you didn’t teach me that the guardian is also responsible.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I didn’t say that the examples in the Mishnah taught me that. I said that the examples in the Mishnah teach me that the rule is not absolute. That’s what they teach me. You still have to think, even though the rule is written. Why do they appear? That’s what I’m asking. There is the rule—why do they appear?

[Speaker C] To tell me there’s an exception? Yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not that there’s an exception. Rather, the examples give you a direction that points you more or less toward the right place. As for the case you mentioned, the guardian—

[Speaker C] And from the examples—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] For the guardian case, the examples teach nothing.

[Speaker C] So we’re left with the same problem.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because the examples show you that the rule that “it is your property and its guarding is upon you” is only an approximation. That’s all. Now true, I didn’t derive that from the examples, but once I understand that it’s an approximation, then when I think about a bailee I use my common sense; I don’t say, “It’s not your property, end of story.” Of course, by the way, there are other mishnayot too—from other mishnayot you can really learn about a bailee. But I’m only saying that here we see that one has to be careful with rules. Regarding rules, we talked about the principle that “we do not derive from general rules, even where it says ‘except.’” Right? The Talmud says that even in the most precise formulation of a rule that could be, we still do not treat it as an absolute rule.

[Speaker E] What? A major rule. What major rule? There’s a mishnah, “a major rule.” Ah, that Sabbath… you mean in Sabbath? Yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that too—the mishnah of “a major rule” also has to be discussed in this context. But that’s the rule: what does it come to include? The Talmud is basically conveying some message or some outlook that doesn’t place great trust in rules. And therefore, when the Talmud presents a law through a case, that doesn’t mean it is interested in that specific case; rather, through the case it is trying to show me the idea, the principle. Now learn more cases and more examples, and you’ll get the feel for what should be done and what should not be done. That is an alternative to another conception that says: I have a set of laws, and that determines what to do. The feeling is—you know, even in computers there are two basic techniques for programming. Right? You can program with an ordinary program, a literal one like people always did, and there are neural networks, for those who know. A neural network is learning from examples. Right? That is exactly what a neural network does. A neural network—again, for anyone who doesn’t know, it doesn’t matter—but there is such a technology in computers, and that’s also more or less what people there believe is how our brain works. It doesn’t work through rules, and therefore maybe for us too rules really aren’t a good tool for speaking through.

[Speaker G] It learns the examples, but it shapes for itself…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it—

[Speaker E] It doesn’t even go through the formulation of rules.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It organizes for itself the values of the network, and somehow it comes out that after it has seen enough examples, it can also tell you what the solution will be in the next case. But you won’t find inside that network what the rule is. It’s somehow hidden inside it in some way. Really a kind of mystery. In any case, our brain works that way too. A neural network, after all, originally comes from our brain—that idea was taken from there. In other words, the current belief among brain researchers is that our brain also works that way. That means our brain also doesn’t work according to rules. And therefore it is no wonder that rules are not a good way to convey a system or to convey understanding to people. Rules are an approximation. Sometimes I use rules to orient a person, to help a person, to give a person some kind of framework—but it’s a shortcut.

[Speaker C] Rules? Yes, a shortcut—but one that has to be used carefully.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, don’t go with it all the way. It gives you direction, but use your head. In other words, this isn’t mathematics. Yes, we talked about that actually, about Wittgenstein there, with rule-following.

[Speaker K] But if you say that the development of Jewish law was casuistic, then basically you have a problem saying what you’re saying historically. Meaning, you take the Mishnah—because the Mishnah said that a husband can divorce a woman by giving a bill of divorce to a slave—that was a case that happened. Right? And then who knows whether he was tied up or not tied up, whether he was asleep or not asleep. So maybe what one ought to say is that the ruling is kind of a temporary ruling historically, and that was fixed in the Mishnah. Then the Lithuanians, or the Babylonian amoraim, came and took what had in fact been ruled casuistically, and then they said what they wanted to say. But historically it’s hard to say that if they basically adopted a method of expressing legal principles through cases, that pushes away the historical story that it developed in a casuistic way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t agree. I’ll tell you why. On that too I brought the example of the argument between the Seridei Esh and Rabbi Yehoshua Hutner, the editor of the Talmudic Encyclopedia, where they discuss the question whether Rabbi Chaim was right in his interpretation of Maimonides. Did Maimonides mean that? So I don’t remember anymore—one of them says, what are you talking about, of course not; all the yeshiva jokes about that are well known. Right? “What does Frank understand in Maimonides,” as they say in the yeshivot. And the other wrote—I don’t remember who said what—and the other says, what are you talking about, that’s exactly what Maimonides meant. Now, what does it mean, “that’s what Maimonides meant”? Obviously Maimonides did not think in Rabbi Chaim’s categories. But in Rabbi Chaim’s language, if you really want to understand what lies behind what Maimonides says, then Rabbi Chaim is right, at the principled level. Now I’m saying the same thing. I can take Rabbi Ovadia—Rabbi Ovadia certainly did not think that way. But I can take his rulings and build from them some kind of theory. That doesn’t mean that this theory was in his head when he ruled, but it is a good model for what lay behind his way of thinking; he just did not formulate those principles explicitly for himself. But if I do this correctly—and again, that is the hope, it doesn’t always work and there is no guarantee that it works—the hope is that behind the statements there really sat this system of principles. That is what I’m claiming. That is what amoraim do to the Mishnah, and what medieval authorities (Rishonim) do to the amoraim, and later authorities (Acharonim) to the medieval authorities, and so on. And I think it is wrong to see this simply as a mistake or as coercion—as though, you understand, the Talmud is forcing the Mishnah to say what it wants. That is not correct. I think the Talmud understood that behind what the Mishnah wanted to say stood this principle. For example, you’ll have a case in British law, and you’ll see that the court ruled something. Now you ask yourself: why did it rule that? So you formulate some rule; there is some principle here. Now that principle was not necessarily in the head of the judge who issued the first ruling. But I do think it was the line of thought that led him there. Even if it wasn’t explicit to himself—in other words, even he himself was not aware of it—but if I formulate it explicitly, he had good intuition. Once he had good intuition, then he ruled correctly. But what did that intuition say? I now formulate it by means of rules, and I show that these rules are actually what stood behind his ruling. And if I test it against more of his rulings, then I can even confirm it. Say, with Maimonides or with Rabbi Ovadia, who wrote many rulings, I can try to see whether my rules really describe how Maimonides thought, because I’ll check it in other places. And if I check that and I have reason to assume that this is basically the model for what he did—that “the model for what he did” is not a derogatory phrase. The model for what he did is also something that he, if he were alive here and heard what I’m saying, would agree with. In other words, he would understand that this is what stood behind what he did. True, he lived in a different period and did not think in that way, so he operated intuitively. He said, “This seems so; here it seems permitted to me and here it seems forbidden,” and that was that. He did not give himself an explicit account of what rules led him to that. So I am doing that work in his place. I do not think this betrays the original intention of… let’s try…

[Speaker C] On the other hand, when you do that work, aren’t you actually betraying the intention of the one you’re interpreting? No? In the sense that he didn’t want to formulate it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no. I’m claiming that he didn’t formulate it because he worked intuitively, but that is the rule that stood behind what he said. So I’m not betraying him. That’s my claim.

[Speaker C] You’re sort of giving method to non-truth.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, “the method”? The method is only a language. But I think that behind what he did sat these rules. That’s what I’m claiming, even though he himself wasn’t aware of it. Okay, now I’ll finish this with two more topics. One topic is the passage in Beitzah that I went through quickly last time; I’ll try to do it a bit more systematically now. The Mishnah says: “An egg laid on a festival—Beit Shammai say it may be eaten, and Beit Hillel say it may not be eaten.” The Talmud there discusses a hen designated for eating, for laying eggs. In the end the Talmud says: this is a hen designated for laying eggs, and every egg laid on a festival was completed the day before, and we are speaking about a festival after the Sabbath. Rabbah’s preparation principle. Rabbah’s interpretive setup is that this is the law of preparation. So the egg is speaking about a festival that follows the Sabbath; on the Sabbath the egg was completed, on the festival it was laid, the day after—Sunday—the egg was laid, and therefore it is forbidden to eat it because it is not prepared. An egg that was prepared on the Sabbath is not called an egg that underwent preparation. It is not prepared. Now there is a dispute here between Rashi and Rashba throughout the whole passage. You can see it. I’ll bring two examples here. Rashi writes like this: “And a festival does not prepare for the Sabbath, and the Sabbath does not prepare for a festival, and a festival does not prepare for the Sabbath.” This could also be an egg laid on the Sabbath after a festival, or an egg laid on a festival after the Sabbath. Rashi says: “And a festival too is called ‘Sabbath,’ and its meal requires preparation.” Meaning, the meal of a festival requires preparation. “And its preparation must be on a weekday.” Meaning, preparation counts as preparation only if it is done on a weekday. “But an ordinary weekday meal is not considered important, and the notion of preparation does not apply to it. Therefore, on an ordinary Sunday we have no reason to forbid an egg laid then—”

[Speaker C] “—because it was prepared by Heaven, for the Torah did not require an ordinary weekday meal to be designated from the previous day, since the category of set-aside does not apply to it.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is he saying? Rashi is basically troubled by the question: why is it permitted to eat an egg laid on an ordinary Sunday? Yes, an ordinary Sunday. After all, that egg was prepared on the previous Sabbath, right? An egg laid today was prepared yesterday, so this egg was prepared on the Sabbath—so why is it permitted to eat it? Since it is not an important meal, the completion of the egg on the previous day is not considered preparation for that meal, because only important meals have preparation toward them. But the ordinary Sunday meal—what was done beforehand is not considered preparation, so it doesn’t bother me. That’s what Rashi says. Therefore, because of that, it is permitted to eat an egg laid on Sunday, because it does not require preparation. So Rashba there asks: “And I am astonished by this language, that the Sabbath meal requires preparation from the previous day, on a weekday. If so, then even the Sabbath does not prepare for itself? Yet in the case of Sabbath and Jewish holiday alone, by law an egg is permitted.” He says: suppose the physiological reality were that an egg was prepared on the same day it was laid. So an egg was laid on the Sabbath and prepared on that same Sabbath—or on a Jewish holiday, it doesn’t matter—and prepared on that same day. According to Rashi it would be forbidden to eat it. Right? Why? Because it did not undergo preparation on a weekday. The preparation was done on the Sabbath, and the Sabbath meal requires preparation, so you are basically eating something unprepared; it is forbidden to eat it. But he says, obviously if an egg laid on a Jewish holiday or on the Sabbath had been like that—then why do we need to say that it was prepared the day before? Let them establish it as referring to the Jewish holiday or Sabbath itself. Why do they make this interpretive setup of a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath? Let them speak about an egg laid on a Jewish holiday without any setup, on the Jewish holiday itself, and the egg was completed on that same day and it is forbidden to eat it. In reality, though, it was prepared the day before.

[Speaker C] The setup is not the reality.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m skipping a bit here. Since Rashba proves that it doesn’t matter—in terms of Jewish law, it is certainly permitted. Therefore Rashba objects to Rashi. “And in Eruvin we say: the beginning of the day acquires the eruv; the Sabbath prepares for itself.” Yes, that’s one of the proofs; he has other proofs also from the passage in Beitzah itself. “Rather, this is the explanation,” says Rashba. Therefore he disagrees with Rashi and says this: “The meal of a Jewish holiday and of the Sabbath is important enough to require preparation, and therefore whenever preparation is relevant, it is not proper that the Sabbath prepare for a Jewish holiday, nor a Jewish holiday for the Sabbath. But they prepare for themselves. And a weekday as well is not important, and the notion of preparation does not apply to it. Therefore an egg laid on the day after the Sabbath or after a Jewish holiday is permitted, because preparation is not relevant to an ordinary weekday meal.” This is very similar to Rashi’s formulation, but there is a difference in nuance, and that difference has practical consequences regarding an egg that is prepared on the same day it is laid. What is he saying? According to Rashi, the principle of preparation is a problem on the day when I eat. Suppose there is a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath, and the egg was prepared on the Sabbath and laid on the Jewish holiday. I want to eat it on the Jewish holiday. It is forbidden because of preparation. What is the problem here? Is the problem desecration of the Sabbath, or injury to the Jewish holiday? According to Rashi, the problem is injury to the Jewish holiday. Why? Because I am now eating something that did not undergo valid preparation, and on a Jewish holiday there is a law that one must eat things that were prepared. According to Rashba, the problem is injury to the Sabbath. Not desecration of the Sabbath, but injury to the Sabbath. Because according to Rashba, when the Sabbath prepares for the Jewish holiday, you have injured the Sabbath. What, is the Sabbath the servant of the Jewish holiday? So you have injured the Sabbath. Now true, if the Sabbath prepares toward Sunday, one might ask—then you have also injured the Sabbath, so it should be forbidden to eat it. He says no, that is not called injury because it is not called preparation at all. A Sunday meal is not a meal, so the preparations for it are not called preparation, and there is no problem with that. In that sense it is similar to Rashi, the explanation of why it is permitted to eat an egg laid on Sunday. But the sharp point of the preparation law is the opposite. According to Rashi, the problem is when I eat. When I eat, I am eating something unprepared, because whatever was prepared on the Sabbath or on a Jewish holiday is not called prepared. According to Rashba, the problem is the injury to the preparing day. Since the Sabbath prepared for the Jewish holiday, you injured the Sabbath. What, is the Sabbath the servant of the Jewish holiday?

[Speaker C] Who injured the Sabbath—the hen? What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When I eat it on the Jewish holiday, I have injured the Sabbath.

[Speaker C] If the problem is in the preparation, I didn’t prepare anything. The Holy One, blessed be He, did it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I hadn’t eaten it, then it wouldn’t have been preparation. The moment I use it as a meal on the Jewish holiday, that means that the preparation it underwent on the Sabbath was in fact preparation.

[Speaker C] But it isn’t by human hands.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what? But I ate something that was prepared on the Sabbath—that is the injury.

[Speaker C] What about the second day of Rosh Hashanah?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What about it? The Talmud says there that it is one long day; that’s something else. Those are two days that are one day.

[Speaker C] So there too there would be a dispute between Rashba and Rashi?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Seemingly, yes. Although there the Talmud already treats it as a dispute between Rav and Shmuel.

[Speaker I] But the assumption here is that there is a day on which the egg sort of forms, and the next day it is laid? That’s the assumption? Yes, yes. One day it forms, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is the Talmud’s physiological assumption, yes, and the next day it is laid, yes.

[Speaker I] Is there any resemblance there to reality?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. Could be. The question is what counts as preparation. I assume an egg takes time to form; the question is where you draw the line and say that now the egg has formed. I think that is a definitional question.

[Speaker I] Do we need some kibbutznik or something?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that won’t help. Even a kibbutznik won’t help. It’s—

[Speaker C] A definition, not—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A question of—

[Speaker G] Facts.

[Speaker C] It would have to lay every day.

[Speaker G] Depends. No, no, I don’t think they lay every day.

[Speaker C] If they do lay, that means the preparation is very early.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In any case, the question is—so Rashba and Rashi are basically arguing about the law of preparation: is the problem injury to the preparing day, or to the day for which we prepared? Who is right? Rashi is right. Clearly Rashi is right. Why? Understand what comes out according to Rashba. According to Rashba, when Rabbah established the Mishnah as speaking about a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath, he created a very strange interpretive setup. Because basically the Mishnah is coming to tell me a law in the laws of the Sabbath, not in the laws of the Jewish holiday. We are speaking about a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath, such that if there is a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath, then when you eat the egg on the Jewish holiday you have injured the preceding Sabbath. It is forbidden to do that, it is forbidden to injure the Sabbath—and none of this appears in the Mishnah at all. The Mishnah says: “An egg laid on a Jewish holiday may not be eaten.” Then Rabbah comes and sets it up: this is a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath. The main point is missing from the text. You came to teach me the problem of injuring the preceding Sabbath, so say: “An egg laid on a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath may not be eaten.” How can you omit the Sabbath that came before? That is a very strange interpretive setup. By contrast, according to Rashi it is very simple. Rashi says that the setup is as I explained earlier. It is not really a setup at all—it is a setup, but it is a sensible one. The Talmud says: “An egg laid on a Jewish holiday may not be eaten.” Why? What does the Talmud want to say? It is a case, right? But through this case the Talmud wants to tell me a principle. What principle? That Jewish holiday meals require preparation. This is not connected specifically to a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath; every Jewish holiday meal requires preparation. The example is with an egg that is laid: don’t eat it. The Talmud asks—think in terms of Abaye and Imaget, okay?—what do you mean, an egg laid on a Jewish holiday underwent preparation, so what is the problem with eating it? Fine, I mean an egg laid on a Jewish holiday that did not undergo preparation. That is the setup. How can that happen? It can happen in various ways—for example, when it comes after the Sabbath. But the Sabbath is not essential here; there is no need to write “the Sabbath” in tractate Beitzah’s Mishnah because it is not about the Sabbath. The Sabbath is only the way this can happen, to show you that when an egg is laid on a Jewish holiday and it is not prepared, don’t eat it, because there is a law not to eat it. So according to Rashi, where the problem is not eating the egg on the Jewish holiday, this is a very sensible setup. Overall, this law applies on every Jewish holiday, not only on a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath. The Mishnah speaks of an egg laid on a Jewish holiday—on every Jewish holiday. It’s just that on an ordinary Jewish holiday the problem usually doesn’t arise. The principle is correct, but the egg is a poor example. Why? Because an egg is prepared the day before, so it is prepared—why not eat it? Fine, then we find a case where it is not prepared. How can an egg be unprepared? If it is after the Sabbath. Like the tied-up and sleeping slave. A slave is like a courtyard. The Talmud says: if you were to tell me that, fine—but if you tell me that the bill of divorce is acquired if it is in the slave’s hand, that is not correct, because the slave is a moving courtyard. Fine—when he is tied up and asleep. But they are not coming to teach you a law specifically about a tied-up and sleeping slave; they are coming to teach you a law about every slave. And here too in the Mishnah, the law is a law for every Jewish holiday; there is no need to say “a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath.” You just have to understand on your own that it is speaking about an egg of that kind, one that is unprepared. How can that be? Fine—after the Sabbath, or I don’t know, or an egg that developed unusually fast and was prepared immediately. It doesn’t matter. Make up a thousand interpretive setups—it doesn’t interest me at all. I am coming to tell you that unprepared food may not be eaten on a Jewish holiday, and that is a general law for every Jewish holiday. It is a general rule. Therefore this is a simple setup according to Rashi. Therefore Rashi is clearly right. But still, don’t make Rashba into something so problematic. Let’s see the continuation of the Talmud. The Talmud continues: Abaye said to him, “If so, then on an ordinary Jewish holiday it should be permitted.” Right—on an ordinary Jewish holiday that is not after the Sabbath, it should be permitted. What kind of question is that? Fine, then it is permitted. Who said it wasn’t? What’s the difficulty? On an ordinary Jewish holiday, correct, it is permitted. Who told you it is forbidden? You assume it is forbidden—and wait, then what about an ordinary Jewish holiday? How is it forbidden there? It isn’t forbidden; it is permitted. What do you want? Maybe the simple meaning—

[Speaker C] —of the Mishnah contradicts that. What? Because the simple meaning of the Mishnah says the opposite. What, what? “An egg laid on a Jewish holiday.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. But according to Rashba it doesn’t work, right? Because again, if I understand that the Mishnah is coming to tell me a law for every Jewish holiday, not specifically a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath, then there is no law. It simply says “Jewish holiday.” Fine—I say, wait, but the Mishnah says that even on an ordinary Jewish holiday the egg is forbidden, while you establish it for me as a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath. Now if I make an interpretive setup here, I have already explained to you that this is speaking about a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath. So what do you want? On an ordinary Jewish holiday it really is permitted. I made an interpretive setup in the Mishnah, didn’t I? For the Talmud, though, it is clear that an ordinary Jewish holiday also has to be forbidden. Why? Because the Mishnah did not write “a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath.” I established it as after the Sabbath in order to explain to you why the egg is unprepared. But the plain meaning of the Mishnah does not depart from its plain meaning. In other words, when the Mishnah says something, that is what it means to say. And to that the Talmud says: it is a decree because of a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath. Fine—so they decreed because of a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath. The Talmud asks: then on an ordinary Sabbath it should be permitted? A decree because of a Sabbath after a Jewish holiday. So basically, according to Rashba, what comes out is that the Talmud made a problematic interpretive setup. The Talmud made a problematic setup because it established this as a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath. Therefore Rashba says that cannot be; such a setup cannot be. Obviously even the Jewish holiday itself has to be forbidden, because such a setup cannot exist. So the Talmud asks: but on an ordinary Jewish holiday, does that explanation work? “On an ordinary Jewish holiday it should be permitted?” But according to Rashi, that question is difficult. So I say that this question of the Talmud actually supports Rashba. According to Rashi, where did you get the idea that an ordinary Jewish holiday is forbidden? An ordinary Jewish holiday is permitted! I am explaining to you that only when the food is unprepared is it forbidden to eat it on a Jewish holiday. On an ordinary Jewish holiday, in the case of an egg, the food is prepared—so what is the problem? It really is permitted. Why does the Talmud assume it is forbidden and ask, “On an ordinary Jewish holiday it should be permitted”? According to Rashba this is obvious, because according to Rashba such a setup cannot exist. Rashba says: if the Mishnah says “An egg laid on a Jewish holiday may not be eaten,” it is speaking about an ordinary Jewish holiday, not a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath. Because according to my approach, says Rashba, a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath is an injury to the Sabbath; but it cannot be that the Mishnah is talking about that. If the Mishnah were talking about that, it would have had to say that this is a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath. It cannot omit that this is a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath—the main point is missing from the text. And the Mishnah says that on a Jewish holiday the egg may not be eaten. So the Talmud asks: wait, but what about the Jewish holiday itself? Right? According to Rashi this question is problematic, because according to Rashi the Mishnah says “Jewish holiday,” but it does not mean specifically a Jewish holiday; it means a Jewish holiday when the food is unprepared, after the Sabbath. Right—on an ordinary Jewish holiday it really is permitted, so what is the question? And then who explains Rashi? Rashi also says—a Jewish holiday when the food is unprepared? Rashi also says “after the Sabbath”—is that something prepared from the Sabbath?

[Speaker L] No—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is called not having undergone preparation; that is called unprepared. Unprepared in a halakhic sense, I mean. Prepared means it underwent preparation. Preparation on the Sabbath is not preparation, because you need to do acts in honor of the Jewish holiday to prepare the egg.

[Speaker L] In the wording Rashi uses, he says—

[Speaker C] —that…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, obviously, obviously that is what he means.

[Speaker L] If—

[Speaker C] If that is the Talmud’s explanation according to Rashba, then the Talmud should have asked a much stronger question: why doesn’t the Sabbath appear?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that’s what it asked! No, that is exactly what it asks. “On an ordinary Jewish holiday it should be permitted?”

[Speaker C] No, that’s what it asks.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “On an ordinary Jewish holiday it should be permitted” means that the Mishnah says that on a Jewish holiday an egg that is laid is forbidden, but on an ordinary Jewish holiday it is permitted. That is exactly what it asks. According to Rashba that is a natural question, and according to Rashi it is a difficult question. According to Rashi, one apparently has to say that the Talmud had some tradition that even on an ordinary Jewish holiday it is forbidden. Then it asks: but wait, according to your view this is only a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath; an ordinary Jewish holiday ought to be permitted, so why do we know that an egg laid on a Jewish holiday is also forbidden? So the Talmud says: it is a decree because of a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath. Now look at something interesting. So it is a decree because of a Jewish holiday that comes after the Sabbath… because of a Jewish holiday that comes after the Sabbath, so they also forbade an ordinary Jewish holiday. Now let’s go back to the Mishnah. Is this an interpretive setup or not? Is the Mishnah speaking about a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath? No, no, no. It is an ordinary Jewish holiday. The original law is about a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath. There is a rabbinic decree also about an ordinary Jewish holiday. Now when I read the Mishnah, there is no problem; it can be an ordinary Jewish holiday. That is what Rashba says. Rashba says that “An egg laid on a Jewish holiday may not be eaten”—according to the Talmud’s conclusion, this really is not an interpretive setup. It is not a setup. It is speaking about every ordinary Jewish holiday. And what the Mishnah is coming to say is not Rabbah’s preparation law; the Mishnah is coming to say the decree because of Rabbah’s preparation law. Not the prohibition of a Jewish holiday that is born—of a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath, but the prohibition of an ordinary Jewish holiday because of a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath. That is what the Mishnah… that is what they argue about… There is a very large practical consequence, because Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, who argue whether an egg laid on a Jewish holiday may be eaten or may not be eaten—are they arguing about Rabbah’s preparation law? Is Rabbah’s preparation law a dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel? I claim not. Rabbah’s preparation law is agreed upon by everyone. Their dispute is over whether we decree in the case of an ordinary Jewish holiday because of a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath, because the Mishnah deals only with the decree; it does not deal with the preparation law. Okay? Then there is no need to make any interpretive setup at all. That is the explanation according to Rashba. Therefore Rashba says: this is difficult, because it cannot be—this cannot be an interpretive setup. So the Talmud really answers: leave it alone, it is not a setup at all. It is simply an ordinary Jewish holiday. And see, Rashba himself asks this here: “Rather, Rabbah said: we are dealing with a hen designated for eating, and with a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath.” “It is difficult for me—how can he say, ‘we are dealing with a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath’? For even on a Jewish holiday alone, it is only because of a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath.” Why does Rabbah say “we are dealing with”? Rashba asks. Why “we are dealing with”? It is not a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath; it is a decree because of a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath, but “we are dealing with” an ordinary Jewish holiday. Why? Because Rashba understood here that the Mishnah really does not undergo an interpretive setup. The Mishnah speaks about an ordinary Jewish holiday, about the decree concerning a Jewish holiday because of a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath. He has to reach that conclusion, because according to his approach the setup is impossible. Such a setup for the Mishnah cannot be. But Rashi explains that it is a setup, and that makes a lot of sense; everything is fine. There was a tradition that on a Jewish holiday it is forbidden as a decree because of a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath, and Rashi apparently remains even in the conclusion with the view that the Mishnah’s dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel is about Rabbah’s preparation law. Because the Mishnah deals with Torah law, not rabbinic law. There is no problem, because the setup is sensible. True, this Torah law exists only also on a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath. Fine, but they told us: food that is not prepared. How is it unprepared? A Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath. So according to Rashi there is no problem remaining with the conception that the Mishnah really deals with the general principle that comes to expression on a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath. But Rashba cannot accept such a thing, so he reads the whole Talmud differently, and there is legal practical significance to that—whether Rabbah’s preparation law is in dispute between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel or not. That is a dispute between Rashi and Rashba. Now all these things can be seen also in other medieval authorities, and also in the Talmud there are many difficulties which, once we understand the principle of how an interpretive setup is supposed to work, all become immediately resolved. In other words, these are not just excuses. I manage to explain that there is logic to the interpretive setup. It is quite clear that the Talmud and also the medieval authorities—at least some of them—were aware of this. In other words, many of the difficulties disappear immediately once you understand that there is an interpretive setup, the mechanism of the setup, how an interpretive setup works.

[Speaker M] How would we understand this without the interpretive setup?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Which part?

[Speaker M] This whole move—how do you understand it without this whole theory of the interpretive setup?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying: without my theory, you would have to understand it like Rashba—that this is an interpretive setup, that it means a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath, and that an interpretive setup is basically a way to disagree with the Mishnah. As if the Mishnah says this about an ordinary Jewish holiday, but the amoraim say: no, this is only on a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath; on an ordinary Jewish holiday, no. That is how interpretive setups are generally understood too—that this is a polite way of disagreeing with the Mishnah. That is how I began, okay? That is how we would understand it in the usual way. But actually in this case… Meaning, after you understand the theory of the interpretive setup, first of all it explains Rashi very well. But more than that, it also explains Rashba. Because Rashba too agrees with the conception of the interpretive setup that I described, and precisely for that reason he is unwilling to accept that the Talmud is making an interpretive setup in the Mishnah. Because he too agrees that an interpretive setup has to work the way I say. There is no disagreement between Rashba and Rashi on that point. Their disagreement is about the law of preparation, how to understand that law—each one learns it his own way. But both agree that an interpretive setup cannot tell me the main principle that the Mishnah is coming to say—never. The Mishnah always says what it means, and there is no need to add a word. An interpretive setup comes to solve technical problems. The Mishnah says: it is forbidden to eat unprepared food on a Jewish holiday. The question is: how? How is such an egg unprepared food? If it came after the Sabbath, for example—it doesn’t matter, find yourself some egg that was laid quickly, or after the Sabbath, or I don’t know exactly what. It doesn’t matter. Or an egg synthesized somewhere by human beings. It doesn’t matter. I can bring you a thousand more interpretive setups. It makes no difference at all. Because the principle is not coming to teach you what the law is on a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath; it is coming to teach you the rule. The rule says that food for a Jewish holiday has to be prepared from the previous day. That’s the rule.

[Speaker C] But when the Talmud says “we establish it” in the body of the text, that means it really is an interpretive setup.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is why Rashba is puzzled. Rashba remains with “it requires further investigation.” He says: why does it say here “we establish it”? So Rashba apparently says that in the initial assumption they really thought this was an interpretive setup, but later in the continuation of the Talmud—this is only in the first stage—later they ask, “On an ordinary Jewish holiday it should be permitted,” and then they say, “a decree because of a Jewish holiday after the Sabbath.” At that stage it is already clear that this is not an interpretive setup.

[Speaker C] Rashba himself asks that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. I’m saying: this conception of the interpretive setup clarifies not only Rashi’s approach, where you clearly see it, but also Rashba’s approach. Because Rashba too, everything he gets into is only because he himself understands that on his approach, it cannot be that this is an interpretive setup, because such a setup is not done. Such a setup is not done. On the ordinary conception of an interpretive setup, according to Rashba there is no problem at all: it says “Jewish holiday” in the Mishnah, meaning a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath; they really are speaking about the law that pertains to a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath. Fine? If it were like that, then there would be no problem; one could keep saying this is an interpretive setup and everything would be fine. But that is what I said before: there are no such interpretive setups. There are no such interpretive setups. I… I once had some argument with Hanishke around an article he wrote in Yerucham in our journal, so we argued a bit. Then he brought some… it started from an article of his on some passage, and I wrote my explanation of interpretive setups, and then he brought two passages or something like that, to see whether I could explain them that way. Then I started, in an orderly way, to go through every single passage I learned that year, and afterward too I checked myself—there was not a single passage where it didn’t fit. Every question he proposed—it always works out. Now sometimes it is hard to identify the principle—what is the principle being discussed—but when you… when it is clear to you that this is actually the meaning of an interpretive setup, you discover gems. I mean, really, in every passage you suddenly see a completely different light on the passage. You suddenly see everything, everything that is going on behind the discourse. Once you understand that this is the interpretive setup. The second example I won’t have time to get to already—that is leavened food—so we’ll do that next time. It will also lead us a bit into issues of time in Jewish law and so on, an interesting example.

Torah Study – Lesson 8

Table of Contents

Summary

General Overview

The Issue of Ukimtot as a Fundamental Approach to the Talmud

The Goal of Study: Halakhic Decisor versus Analytical Learning and Principles

The Scientific Analogy: Newton’s Laws and Platonic Abstraction

Why the Mishnah and Talmud Do Not Write Direct Rules

The Cost of Rules versus the Cost of Cases, and Halakhic Approximation

Learning from Examples and Neural Networks

History, Intuition, and Interpretation: Is the Talmud “Forcing” the Mishnah?

The Egg Sugya: Rabbah’s Preparation Principle, Rashi versus Rashba, and the Meaning of Ukimta

Full Transcript

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Table of Contents

Summary

General Overview

The Issue of Ukimtot as a Fundamental Approach to the Talmud

The Goal of Study: Halakhic Decisor versus Analytical Learning and Principles

The Scientific Analogy: Newton’s Laws and Platonic Abstraction

Why the Mishnah and Talmud Do Not Write Direct Rules

The Cost of Rules versus the Cost of Cases, and Halakhic Approximation

Learning from Examples and Neural Networks

History, Intuition, and Interpretation: Is the Talmud “Forcing” the Mishnah?

The Egg Sugya: Rabbah’s Preparation Principle, Rashi versus Rashba, and the Meaning of Ukimta

Full Transcript

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