Introduction to the Talmud and Halakha, Part 1 – Rabbi Michael Abraham
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
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Table of Contents
- [0:00] Opening and presentation of the lecture’s purpose
- [1:15] The giving of the Torah: two kinds of Torah in the myth
- [3:34] Hermeneutical principles as interpretive tools
- [8:17] The plain-sense / midrash tension: “an eye for an eye”
- [27:06] The role of the gaon and the Geonim in Babylonia
- [29:38] Maimonides’ sensitivity to the period of the medieval authorities (Rishonim)
Summary
General Overview
The text presents the traditional picture of the development of Jewish law from the giving of the Torah until today, distinguishing between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah, and between plain sense and midrash as tools for deriving laws from verses. It argues that the Oral Torah develops across the generations, and describes the activity of the sages along two distinct tracks: interpretation, which produces Torah-level law, and legislation, which produces rabbinic law, with care not to mix categories so as not to violate “do not add.” It then sketches a historical timeline of the major periods and works, presents the arrangement of the six orders of the Mishnah and the transition to Maimonides’ codification and the four-part structure of the Tur and the Shulchan Arukh, and connects these distinctions to practical needs of a knowledge-graph project, especially around identifying links between the Talmud, law codes, and responsa literature.
The Purpose of the Presentation and the Traditional Position
The goal is to present the traditional picture in order to understand the point of view of a traditional person from within that world, without arguing about truth and falsehood and without dealing with historical questions about how the texts came into being. The description focuses on the legal part of the Torah rather than the narrative part, and is also meant to provide orientation for a project whose purpose is to reach a systematic construction of a knowledge infrastructure.
The Giving of the Torah, the Written Torah, and the Oral Torah
The story begins with the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai about 3,500 years ago, when the Holy One, blessed be He, reveals Himself and gives the Torah, which includes legal material and narrative material. According to the midrash, two Torahs were given: the Written Torah, the Five Books, and the Oral Torah, which was transmitted alongside the written text orally, with disputes over what exactly was included in it. He rejects the expansive claim that every later detail, such as the Mishnah Berurah, was given to Moses at Sinai, and argues that the material developed throughout history even if an ancient core is attributed to it.
The Core of the Oral Torah and the Hermeneutical Principles
The text says it is accepted that at least word meanings were given so that the text would not remain opaque, and perhaps also foundational interpretive principles such as the hermeneutical principles. These principles are defined as midrashic tools that make it possible to derive from a verse conclusions that are not its direct meaning but branch off from it, unlike ordinary interpretation. It describes a historical development of lists of hermeneutical principles across the generations, and presents an extreme view that sees them as an arbitrary formal code, but he disagrees and argues that they do contain a certain logic, though he does not go into the issue here.
Plain Sense and Midrash as Sources of Jewish Law, and the Conflicts Between Them
The text defines plain sense as the ordinary way of understanding a text using the accepted tools used for any text, and midrash as the use of unique formal tools not applied to other texts. It argues that both plain sense and midrash produce Jewish law conclusions, and in most cases they join together into Jewish law without controversy. It gives the central example of the conflict between “an eye for an eye” and the oral tradition that interprets it as monetary compensation, and notes that there is a special discussion of what to do when there is a clash, though it is not spelled out here. It also explains that disputes can arise in the realm of plain sense as well, not only in midrash.
Interpretation Versus Legislation: Torah-Level Law, Rabbinic Law, and “Do Not Add”
The text presents two activities of the sages, interpretation and legislation, and distinguishes between them categorically and normatively. Interpretation of verses by means of plain sense or midrash produces Torah-level law because the sages have authority to determine what the verse says, and once they determine it, that is the legal meaning of the verse. Legislation produces rabbinic law, with lower but still binding status, and it does not rest on verses but on authority given to the sages to add laws; Maimonides understands this from a certain verse, though there are disputes, but it is agreed that the sages have authority to legislate. The text stresses that the sages may not claim that a rabbinic law is written in the Torah, because that would be a violation of “do not add,” and notes that there is a gray area between interpretation and legislation, similar to “judicial legislation.”
The Example of Meat and Milk, and Poultry with Milk, and the Distinction Between the Categories
The text illustrates the three categories through “Do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk”: the plain sense as a prohibition on cooking, the sages’ midrash that expands it into a Torah-level prohibition on eating meat and milk, and the sages’ addition of a rabbinic prohibition on poultry with milk. It says poultry with milk was prohibited as a fence out of concern that people would come to eat meat with milk, and that in Rabbi Yosei’s place they ate poultry with milk. It stresses that the relationship of rabbinic law to Torah-level law is only a relationship of reason and motivation, not of validity or basis, because if they were to hang the prohibition on the verse it would become Torah-level law. Therefore, the rabbinic prohibition stands as an independent law newly instituted by the sages.
The Ongoing Development of the Oral Torah
The text presents the Oral Torah as an ongoing process that never ends, in which people continue to argue and add even today, despite accusations of conservatism and ossification, which he says he shares. He quotes the Talmud in tractate Chagigah: “Just as a planting bears fruit and multiplies, so too the words of Torah bear fruit and multiply,” and compares the Torah to something that grows, producing fruits and branches. He notes that in the current generation the development is, in some respects, mainly toward stringency, and stresses that the question whether later Jewish law can contradict or cancel earlier law is complex, and he will return to it.
The Order of the Generations: Mishnah, the Two Talmuds, and the Periods of the Sages
The Oral Torah was transmitted orally until the writing of the Mishnah in the first–second centuries CE. Before that, the period is not documented in writing and rests on traditions. He notes that the first documented dispute is from the Hasmonean period, about 200–300 years before the redaction of the Mishnah. He describes the beginning of formalization in the middle of the Second Temple period, around the Greek period, with Hillel and Shammai as the last pair out of five pairs, and the Yavneh period after the destruction of the Temple, when the Sanhedrin sat there. Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, one of the last Tannaim, writes the six orders of the Mishnah under special dispensation because of the danger of forgetting due to dispersion in exile, and with that the period of the Tannaim ends and the period of the Amoraim begins.
The Jerusalem Talmud, the Babylonian Talmud, and Their Redaction
The Amoraim operate in the Land of Israel and in Babylonia and produce Talmudic passages that interpret the Mishnah through broad give-and-take including contradictions and resolutions. The Amoraim in the Land of Israel produce the Jerusalem Talmud, redacted around 100–200 years after the Mishnah, and the Amoraim of Babylonia produce the Babylonian Talmud, redacted later through a process of centuries, with a tradition about Rav Ashi and Ravina that is not necessarily correct. The text describes links between the centers, expressions such as “in the West they say,” and a scholarly question about the extent to which the Babylonian Talmud knew the Jerusalem Talmud, while asserting that the Babylonian Talmud knew at least some parts of it.
Savoraim, Geonim, Medieval Authorities (Rishonim), and Later Authorities (Acharonim)
After the Amoraim comes the period of the Savoraim, an obscure period from which little has been preserved and part of which was absorbed into the Talmud itself, and which is not remembered as a distinct contribution to the development of Jewish law. After that comes the period of the Geonim in Babylonia, where “gaon” is defined as an office of Torah leadership and not a description of genius, and there are written Geonic materials even though traditional study halls deal with them relatively little compared to university scholars. After that comes the period of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), the sages of the Middle Ages from the 10th–11th century until the 15th–16th century, with the claim that there is no vacuum and the tradition is continuous; Maimonides is identified as a clear Rishon from the 12th century. The period of the later authorities (Acharonim) begins with the Shulchan Arukh in the 16th century as the accepted boundary line until today.
The Division of the Mishnah’s Contents: Six Orders
Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi divides the legal Oral Torah into six orders: Seeds, Festival, Women, Damages, Holy Things, and Purities, where each order is made up of tractates and each tractate deals with a particular topic within the larger topic. Seeds deals with commandments dependent on the Land and agricultural matters such as the Sabbatical year, priestly gifts, tithes, doubtfully tithed produce, and mixed species. Festival deals with the times of the year and tractates such as Sabbath, Beitzah, Moed Katan, Pesachim, and Megillah. Women deals with laws of personal status such as divorce documents, betrothal, and marriage contracts; Damages is essentially monetary law and civil law; and Holy Things and Purities deal with the Temple and with ritual impurity and purity, with the claim that this is an exhaustive division of the field.
The Talmuds as Commentary on the Mishnah and Material That Is Not Mishnaic
The Talmuds are arranged around the Mishnah as interpretive passages and give-and-take about the Mishnah, but there are tractates for which no Gemara has reached us, less so in the Jerusalem Talmud and more so in the Babylonian Talmud, though not for all of them. Later rabbinic laws that are not in the Mishnah appear in the Talmud and are placed under relevant orders even though they have no Mishnaic source.
The Shift from the Order of the Talmud to Jewish Law Books: Decisors and Maimonides
Until roughly the 12th century, halakhic decisors wrote in the order of the Talmud and tried to extract bottom-line rulings from passages that do not end with an explicit halakhic ruling, such as the Rif and the Rosh, while distinguishing between ruling in the order of the Gemara and a non-Talmudic reorganization. In the 12th century Maimonides writes the Mishneh Torah as a comprehensive enterprise that gathers, classifies, and decides every dispute and reorganizes Jewish law into 14 books, while emphasizing that he loved the number 14 and that the project is a codification of all areas of Jewish law on an unparalleled scale. The text explains that Maimonides does not indicate in each law its source in the Gemara, and so it is hard to track where he took things from, and there are even disputes among his commentators about this.
The Tur and the Shulchan Arukh: A Categorical Division into Four Parts
The Tur in the 14th century creates a new division, orthogonal to the six orders and to Maimonides’ division, and divides Jewish law into four parts: Orach Chayim, Choshen Mishpat, Even HaEzer, and Yoreh De’ah; the Shulchan Arukh follows the structure of the Tur. Orach Chayim is defined as Jewish daily conduct such as prayers, blessings, Sabbath, and festivals. Choshen Mishpat is defined as civil and criminal law, and Even HaEzer as personal status; together they are presented as halakhic law in the sense parallel to other legal systems. Yoreh De’ah is defined as laws that are not part of daily routine even though they concern the private individual, such as priestly gifts and tithes, interest, charity, vows, and oaths. The text argues that it is a categorical mistake to call all of Jewish law “Hebrew law,” because the two non-legal sections are ritual law, not law in the civil-legal sense.
Genres of Works: Commentary, Halakhic Ruling, Law Books, and Responsa
The text distinguishes between commentary on the Talmud in the Talmud’s order; halakhic decisors in the Talmud’s order who skip the give-and-take and write bottom-line rulings; and law books that reorganize Jewish law according to a non-Talmudic order, such as Maimonides, the Tur, and the Shulchan Arukh. It says that commentators on commentators are rare, that there are relatively few commentators on decisors, and that there are very many commentators on law books, to the point that a large part of the decisors’ literature is in fact commentary on Maimonides or on the Shulchan Arukh. It describes the Beit Yosef as a work that comments on the Tur, gathers opinions around it, and distills from them the Shulchan Arukh as bottom lines only.
Responsa Literature and the Challenge of Linking from the Talmud to Responsa
Responsa literature is described as answers to practical questions that are not commentary on an existing text but a clarification of Jewish law resembling the writing of a legal ruling from sources, and it sometimes includes long analytical and interpretive discussions. He argues that one can extract from responsa interpretations of the Talmud that do not appear in that author’s direct commentary, and gives the example of a responsum of the Rashba on a passage in Bava Kamma 60a in which the approach does not necessarily appear in Rashba’s commentary on the Talmud. He stresses that it is difficult to get from the Gemara to the relevant responsa, and proposes going through all responsa literature, extracting all references to the Gemara, and feeding them back into the Gemara as an index. In his words, that would create a knowledge repository that does not currently exist and would be of great value to learners and halakhic decisors.
Implications for a Knowledge-Graph Project and Ontology
The text argues that the structure of the sources affects the strategy for building a knowledge graph, because reaching a Talmudic passage immediately gives you its set of commentators, and reaching Maimonides or the Shulchan Arukh adds a large set of commentators on the law books. It describes how links between Maimonides and the Gemara are not natural and are sometimes disputed, but there are links created by people and one can use tools like the Beit Yosef and the commentaries called Nosei Kelim. It presents an idea for building an ontology of categories and entities that would serve as the basis for a pipeline of relationship extraction, while saying that the relationships are diverse and complex and require thought, and that responsa links can enrich not only links between sources but also links between concepts and topics.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All right, first of all, hello. This is a very broad topic. I’ll try to present it in a relatively telegraphic way, but still with an attempt to cover the main aspects, and even with some orientation toward our project, because in the end that’s where I want to get. It could turn out to be long; maybe we’ll need to continue. And in my opinion, after we see this, we should also study an actual topic / passage, and that’s definitely something we ought to do later, though I’m not going to do it here. Let me just say in advance what my goal is. My goal is to present the traditional picture, so that we can understand the point of view of the person from within that world. In other words, we’re basically dealing with certain people, and we need to understand them. So sure, researchers and believers can argue among themselves about all kinds of things, but that’s not our business here. We’re not dealing with the question of what is true and what is not true. I’m describing the picture more or less as a traditional person sees it, even though maybe I myself don’t exactly belong fully to that category, but I’ll try to be faithful to it, with maybe a few comments here and there. So the story begins with the giving of the Torah—here’s the first myth, which we won’t argue about. It starts with the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, I don’t know, 3,500 years ago, when the Holy One, blessed be He, reveals Himself there and gives us the Torah. This Torah contains two kinds of material. One kind is legal material—various commandments—and the second is narrative material of one kind or another. The book of Genesis, for example, almost entirely belongs to the narrative side. Leviticus almost entirely belongs to the legal side. The others are divided one way or another. I want to focus on the legal part, partly out of personal preference and partly because that’s our present task, and it’s also what we focus on more in the project. So I want to give some background. It’s also the more complex part. The other part—I’m not even sure it exists—but that’s a different discussion. So at Sinai, according to the accepted view, two Torahs were given, as the midrash says: the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. Meaning, the text we have today, the Five Books, is called the Written Torah. And again, there are huge arguments over when it was created and how it was created throughout history. I’m not entering at all into questions of truth and falsehood and history. Right now I’m describing the picture as it appears through a traditional lens. So the Torah scroll was given at Sinai, but according to our tradition—which is itself an oral tradition, something a bit circular—it tells us that together with the Torah, some sort of oral tradition was also given. There are major arguments about exactly what was included in it. The maximalists claim that every detail we know today, even what is written in books like the Mishnah Berurah, composed maybe a hundred years ago or something like that, was given to Moses our teacher at Sinai. There’s simply no basis for that. It’s definitely not true. There’s evidence for this from here to forever; you don’t have to be an academic scholar for that. Things developed over the course of history. So what exactly was originally given at Sinai? Excellent question. First of all, it’s fairly accepted that at least, say, the meanings of the words were given at Sinai, because otherwise the text is somewhat opaque. So more or less, let’s say, the meanings of the words, and maybe several basic interpretive principles—for example, what are called the hermeneutical principles. The hermeneutical principles are rules by which we expound verses—expound, as distinct from interpret. That is, to interpret verses means interpretation the way we do with any text: we try to understand what is written in the text. The hermeneutical principles are not interpretive tools; they are midrashic tools. These are tools that allow us to derive from a verse, beyond its meaning as any text would normally be understood, additional conclusions that are not really the verse’s meaning but branch off from it in some way. And the way they branch off is described by the hermeneutical principles. In other words, the hermeneutical principles are basically the ways in which things branch out from the verses. Again, in halakhic tradition it is accepted that the hermeneutical principles were given to Moses at Sinai. That is basically the core of the Oral Torah. It was transmitted orally; it wasn’t written, obviously. It clearly underwent conceptual formulation over the course of history. It’s clear that lists were created that kept getting longer over the generations—it started with two, then seven principles, then thirteen, then thirty-two, and in fact there are more—so even history itself says that this story developed over time. It wasn’t really given to Moses at Sinai in the form in which it is found in our hands today, but the claim is that what we have is the conceptualization of something that was given to him. That is, something you might compare to a language—I’ll come back to that. Maybe I’ll return to that analogy later. Let’s say he was given some additional language, beyond the language in which the text itself is written. He was given another language, and in that language we expound the text, not interpret it. We are basically working on two parallel tracks. There is interpretation of the text, which is called plain sense, and there is expounding the text, which is called midrash. Plain sense and midrash are two parallel interpretive channels, or two parallel channels of relating to the text. Each of them has a certain language. The language of plain sense is basically the language of the Bible, and the principles of how to understand it. And the language of midrash is a language unto itself, some sort of code. If you like, the really extreme people present it as a completely formal code. There are thirteen rules: if such-and-such a word appears, you derive this conclusion from it; if such-and-such a word appears, you derive that conclusion. That’s a very extreme formulation, but I’m saying there are people who want to see it as some kind of arbitrary code, a code whose defining feature is that the code itself has no importance so long as it is agreed upon by the writer and the reader. We just have to agree according to which code I encode and according to which code you decode. So according to that view, there shouldn’t really be any logic in the hermeneutical rules; they are just agreed rules I use to derive various midrashic conclusions. I disagree with that. I devoted several years to the study of the hermeneutical principles. I think they do have a certain kind of logic, but that’s really a topic I’m not going to get into here. So if that’s the case, it’s clear that the Oral Torah develops.
[Speaker D] I just have a question. So is it correct to say that basically the purpose of midrash is to tell us what we’re supposed to do, while interpretation is maybe why we need to do it, or is it the other way around? No, no.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When there’s a verse, for example, “You shall not murder,” the verse “You shall not murder” gives a legal instruction, and that’s the plain sense, that’s what’s written. I can expound that verse and derive from it the conclusion, say, that if I murder in such-and-such a way then I’m exempt—just some roundabout case or I don’t know exactly what—then I’m exempt. So that’s an addition to the legal instruction that appears in the plain sense, but these are legal instructions. Both plain sense and midrash are legal instructions. What happens when there’s a conflict between them—and sometimes there is—that’s a story in itself, but I won’t get into it here.
[Speaker D] What I meant to ask about was what you said before. I meant to ask whether interpretation—when you said interpretation, interpretation means plain sense? Interpretation, as I understand it, is plain sense?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. That is, when I speak about plain sense, I don’t mean the text itself as written, but how I understand the text—though I understand it using the regular tools, the way I understand any other text, just to understand what it says. If it says “You shall not murder,” then it’s clear that murder is forbidden. That’s called interpretation, but it’s plain-sense interpretation. Anyone who reads it is supposed to understand that. Midrash is the use of special tools, formal tools unique to this text; there’s no point trying to apply those tools to other texts. But both of these systems of tools basically give us a way to derive legal conclusions from the verses—I’m talking right now about the legal verses. You can derive them by way of plain sense, and you can derive them by way of midrash. Usually, by the way, there’s no argument. The plain sense gives me one conclusion, the midrash gives me another conclusion, and both enter into Jewish law. There are certain cases where the plain sense and the midrash are in conflict. One of the best-known cases is that it says, “an eye for an eye”: someone who takes out another person’s eye, his own eye should be taken out. And the Oral Torah says no—“an eye for an eye” means taking money from the person who took out the eye; we do not take out the eye of the damager, rather he pays money. Okay? So here, for example, there is a clash. You can’t carry out both this and that. Either you take out the eye or you pay money. So here there is already a separate discussion of what to do when there is a conflict, but usually plain sense and midrash are parallel planes, and each is equally valid. By the way, there can be disputes in plain sense as well as in midrash, just as we have disputes over how to interpret any text. Different people can interpret the text differently. So the fact that there is a dispute doesn’t mean we’re necessarily in the world of midrash. It can definitely be disputes in the world of plain sense too. So in the end we understand that the Written Torah is the set of verses before us; we don’t touch it. In the traditional outlook, that’s how it came down from Sinai, and no one has touched it until today—happy is the believer. But let’s say that’s the case. Okay? That’s the traditional outlook. The Oral Torah, by contrast, develops. Some kind of core was given at Sinai, and the sages over the generations develop the matter. When they develop it, they basically engage in two kinds of activity. One kind is legislation, and the second is interpretation. Legislation—and there are sources and disputes over exactly where they get the authority to legislate—but the basic legislator is the Holy One, blessed be He; it’s written in the Torah. But there is also legislation that is the work of flesh and blood; human beings can add laws, not only interpret the laws that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave, but also add laws. Where does that come from? Apparently… from some verse in the Torah. That’s at least how Maimonides understands it. There are disputes about that, but everyone agrees that they have the authority to legislate. You can argue about where it comes from, but it is agreed that they have the authority to legislate.
[Speaker E] Excuse me, Rabbi, I just want to ask. We talked about systems of interpretation and the system of midrash. Now when you speak about the system of legislation, where does the normative source come from? Is it necessarily from plain sense and midrash, or is it something new?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m getting to that. I’m getting to that. I’m just saying, first of all, empirically, the sages engage in two kinds of activity: interpretation and legislation. In a moment I’ll get to what each of these is based on. But interpretation and legislation—what’s the difference between them? First of all, on the categorical level: when the sages legislate something, create a new law, that’s called rabbinic law. It is a law of lower normative status, but it is still binding. That’s legislation of the sages, not legislation of the Holy One, blessed be He, in the Torah. That is rabbinic law. When the sages interpret verses in the Torah, then they are interpreters, not legislators. The result is Torah-level law. “Torah-level” literally means from the Torah. In other words, from my point of view—well, from the halakhic point of view—when the sages derive a certain law from the Torah, that is Torah-level law. Whether they derive it by means of midrashic tools or by means of plain-sense tools. About the midrashic tools there is a little bit of debate, but there is almost full consensus that the product is Torah-level law. And why? Because if the sages interpret a certain verse, then in the end their conclusion is what the verse says. You can disagree with them, but once they have authority, then they have the authority to determine what the verse says. Maybe I won’t agree with them; maybe I think the verse says something else. But halakhically, the sages have the authority to determine what the verse says. After they determine that, then as far as I’m concerned, that is what the verse says. That’s not legislation of the sages; that’s the verse. Therefore it’s Torah-level. By contrast, when the sages legislate, that is an activity that does not rest on verses in any way. They simply decide that something should be done even though it is not written in the Torah. The Torah gave them permission to add more laws, to legislate. In addition to the laws of the Holy One, blessed be He—the primary legislation—here there is secondary legislation. The sages legislate additional laws, and these are called rabbinic laws. As I said, they have lower normative status. Torah-level laws are laws that rest on plain-sense or midrashic interpretive tools. Either way, the result is Torah-level law. And why? Because both the plain-sense tools and the midrashic tools derive from the verse that which branches out from it. In other words, as far as I’m concerned, that is what the Holy One, blessed be He, said in the verse, and therefore the result is Torah-level law. By contrast, when the sages legislate, then it is rabbinic law, because they are not claiming that this is written in the Torah. More than that: they are forbidden to say that it is written in the Torah. If they say it is written in the Torah, that is called “do not add.” There is a very strong insistence in the halakhic world on not mixing categories. You are not allowed to add a word or subtract a word from what was given at Sinai. You can add laws, but you must state that this is a law you added. It is not something written in the Torah or something I derived through interpretation from the Torah.
[Speaker D] So when you add a law, what’s the justification for it? In other words, do you say that on the basis of some principle I understand from Torah-level laws, I legislate a new law here? Or can you just legislate some law like, I don’t know, people don’t eat Strauss popsicles anymore? Why? Pure disgust. I’m just saying. So basically this is a system in which the rabbis have mandatory power to impose laws on their population even without connection to the Torah. Right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes—just without connection to the Torah. If it has a connection to the Torah, then it’s an act of interpretation, not legislation, and therefore it’s Torah-level law. Now of course we know that even in today’s legal world there are things called judicial legislation. Judicial legislation is when a judge interprets a law, but it’s an expansive interpretation, not a simple deduction from the law. In that situation, disputes always arise—after all, you don’t have authority, you’re not a legislator, you’re a judge. The same thing exists here too. Here too it’s not clear-cut. It’s not as though it’s always completely clear when this is interpretation and when it is legislation. But the categories do exist distinctly. There are situations that are a gray area, where you can argue whether it belongs to this category or that category, but the two categories definitely exist as categories.
[Speaker E] But rabbinic laws are still, according to, let’s say, the most basic tradition, something that came down as— no, absolutely not, the opposite.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rabbinic laws are laws that did not come down from Sinai. No. No. The Oral Torah that came down from Sinai is Torah-level law. What came down there was mainly tools, not laws, though there is also a body of laws called laws given to Moses at Sinai. Those are laws transmitted to Moses at Mount Sinai alongside the Torah; they were transmitted orally. Those laws have the status of Torah-level law. Anything given by the Holy One, blessed be He, is Torah-level. Right now I’m presenting the straightforward conception. Okay? All rabbinic laws are laws that have no source at Sinai. The sages innovated them over the generations. On the contrary, they have no source in the Torah; if they had a source in the Torah, they would be Torah-level law. Now of course, theoretically, they can do arbitrary things and obligate me to stand on one foot every three hours. They’re not supposed to do that, and if they do, they’ll get smacked in the face. Since the system is not such a formal system, and the Jewish people know how to rebel against those who need rebelling against—or at least they used to—there generally isn’t, in my impression, abuse of this threatening authority. Apparently they can determine whatever they want. They established laws, and in many cases it’s also clear why they established them. For example, it’s forbidden to eat meat and milk. It says, “Do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk.” The sages expound this: it is forbidden to eat meat and milk. The sages said: not only meat, but also poultry with milk. Meat here means only mammal meat. Poultry with milk is also forbidden. That is rabbinic law. Why did they add that? Because we are concerned that if we permit you to eat poultry with milk, you will come to eat meat with milk. In other words, poultry with milk in itself is not problematic, but we forbid it because if we permit it, people will come to eat meat with milk, and that is already Torah-level, that’s really problematic.
[Speaker E] But the theory is that Moses our teacher himself, practically speaking, if he had poultry to eat with milk, there would have been no problem with that?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, he could have eaten it with a good appetite. Moses our teacher too—and long after him—up until the stage when they prohibited it rabbinically. Yes. “In Rabbi Yosei’s place they ate poultry with milk,” the Gemara says. Got it. Yes.
[Speaker D] So the example you just described is actually exactly the example that shows that rabbinic laws, in the end, at least partially, do have a purpose, and the purpose is, say, to make sure we don’t stumble with a law that is Torah-level. Yes, okay, so you just said there’s no connection—that rabbinic laws are disconnected—but then you gave an example where you say, no, I’m making an extension here. It’s clear to me that this wasn’t said like that; I’m making an extension because I want to serve the principle that guided me here, and I don’t want people to stumble. So that’s something important.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] At the end you made a kind of leap there. It’s a good question. At the end you made a kind of leap. It’s true that not eating poultry with milk is not completely disconnected from the prohibition of eating meat with milk. But even after the sages prohibited it because you might come to eat meat with milk, they are careful to say: this is not an extension of the prohibition of eating meat with milk. If it were an extension of that prohibition, it would be Torah-level law. This is an independent prohibition that we invented out of concern that you might come to eat meat with milk. But this prohibition is a prohibition that stands on its own. The moment you attach it to the verse that says not to eat meat with milk, it becomes Torah-level law. So I still insist and say: there is no connection between rabbinic law and Torah-level law in the sense of basis or validity. There is some connection in the sense that certain laws are fences meant to make sure you don’t violate Torah-level laws. But that is only in the sense of why they established them. It’s not that it actually came from there—it did not come from there. If the sages had decided not to prohibit it, then it wouldn’t have been prohibited. But that’s their decision. By the way, I need to plug this in, because my battery is about to die. Okay.
[Speaker C] So we talked about legislation and interpretation, and laws, and one more thing. The plain sense: “Do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk.” The midrash: do not eat meat with milk. Our sages said there should be six hours in between. Our sages also said no poultry. And this is rabbinic, and this is Torah-level, and that’s basically the game you played here. Excellent summary.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. That’s exactly it. In other words, you have the plain sense: “Do not cook a kid in its mother’s milk”—it is forbidden to cook. You have the midrash that says: also, do not eat meat with milk. That’s not written, but it is Torah-level. Why is it Torah-level? Because we used midrashic tools to derive it from the verse. And then there is the prohibition of eating poultry with milk, which indeed has some connection to eating meat with milk, but only a connection of reason. In other words, the meaning, the reason I decreed not to eat poultry with milk is lest you come to eat meat with milk. So that is only a question of what my motivation is for making the decree, but it’s not that I’m actually deriving it from the verse—not with plain-sense tools and not with midrashic tools—therefore it is rabbinic law. Okay, and that’s an excellent example for distinguishing between these three categories. Now, that is more or less the framework. So what happens within that framework? Within that framework there is a historical development that unfolds over thousands of years, from the revelation at Mount Sinai until today. There, that’s rabbinic law. Okay? And that’s an excellent example for distinguishing between these three categories. Now, that is more or less the framework. So what happens within that framework? Within that framework there is a historical development that unfolds over thousands of years, from the revelation at Mount Sinai until today—3,500 years. This story keeps going and rolling onward. And despite the myths, even today the Oral Torah continues to develop, despite the accusations of conservatism and ossification, which I fully share—I’m one of the chief accusers in these areas—and still, one has to understand that the Torah is still developing. In other words, this story never ended; it just keeps going all the time. We are sitting around the table with Moses our teacher, Rav Ashi, Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, Maimonides, Rabbi Akiva Eiger, and we argue and discuss and engage in pilpul and add things. In that sense, the Oral Torah really does continue to develop all the time. There are very beautiful midrashim about this. The Gemara in tractate Chagigah says: “Just as a planting bears fruit and multiplies, so too the words of Torah bear fruit and multiply.” Meaning, the Torah is something that grows. It’s not a rigid text, not a closed framework. It’s something that is constantly developing, producing fruit, branches, and leaves, and growing. In certain respects, in our generation, it mainly grows in the direction of stringency. It didn’t have to be that way. And in that sense, there is room—there is a basis—for the accusations of excessive conservatism. But the fact is that it develops; it still develops today. Okay? So that’s the development.
[Speaker C] Wise Ofer, sorry, I’m asking: can a later halakhah contradict or cancel an earlier halakhah? I’ll get to that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The answer is more complicated. I can’t just say yes or no. I’m getting to that in a moment. The order of the generations—how does this story develop? Now a certain historical chapter, short chapter—well, chapter means section, right? A historical section, the order of the generations. The Oral Torah was transmitted orally all the time. So what happened there in that undocumented period, when nothing was written down until, say, the first or second century CE? Then the Mishnah was written. What happened until then? Nobody knows. There are oral traditions. As I said, the maximalists say everything came down from Sinai and was merely transmitted orally, but everything was exactly as it is today, only transmitted orally. Well, honestly, I’m more skeptical about that. It’s clearly not true. But still, something was transmitted orally and developed. There are even early disputes that are documented. From the Hasmonean period—that’s the first documented dispute. You have to understand that this is 200 or 300 years before the redaction of the Mishnah. That isn’t going very far back. Okay, but it is still earlier. And then begins the period of writing down the Oral Torah, or the formation, the formalization of the Oral Torah, the consolidation of the Oral Torah. This begins in the middle of the Second Temple period. The middle of the Second Temple period is roughly the time of the wicked Greeks who conquered us. And then a period of sages is born, called Tannaim. For scholars they’re not exactly called Tannaim from the very beginning, but in standard Jewish jargon they’re called Tannaim. There are Hillel and Shammai, who were the last pair. There were five pairs. And after that the Tannaim begin; in the Yavneh period, that’s already after the destruction of the Temple. The destruction of the Temple is around year zero of the Common Era, more or less—not exactly, but more or less. And then after the destruction they move to Yavneh. The Sanhedrin sits there. The Tannaim continue there. At a certain point the period of the Tannaim ends. Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, one of the last Tannaim, writes the Mishnah. For the first time the Oral Torah is written down. Until then everything was oral. Not only was it not written—it was forbidden to write it. He made a special dispensation because he understood that the Jewish people were dispersing, the exile of the Romans, and the whole business could be forgotten. So he decided to write down the Oral Torah, and he wrote the Mishnah, the six orders of the Mishnah. With that, more or less, the period of the Tannaim ends—with very broad brushstrokes, of course. You can argue over every detail here. With that the period of the Tannaim ends and the period of the Amoraim begins. The Amoraim operate in the Land of Israel and in Babylonia. Okay? There are Amoraim here and Amoraim there. The Amoraim in the Land of Israel produce the Jerusalem Talmud, which is basically Talmudic passages that interpret the Mishnah. Around each Mishnah there is a Talmudic passage in which the Amoraim speak—sorry—and additional Tannaitic sources are brought, they discuss them among themselves, contradictions, resolutions. Here the give-and-take already begins. In the Mishnah these are more short, laconic statements of law or of a case. In the Gemara this is already give-and-take. The same thing happens in parallel in Babylonia: that is the Babylonian Talmud. And there the Babylonian Amoraim sit. And in the end they write the Babylonian Talmud. The Jerusalem Talmud was redacted, I don’t know, 100–200 years after the Mishnah. The Babylonian Talmud took another 200 years or so. And what does “redacted” mean? It was consolidated, let’s say, in the sixth, seventh, or eighth century CE. In the tradition, Rav Ashi and Ravina redacted it in the fifth century, I think, or something like that. That’s probably not correct. But it was consolidated over several hundred years, and you can say that by around the eighth or ninth century it was already redacted. Okay, that’s the upper limit for that redaction. After the Talmud was redacted, you have—wait,
[Speaker E] Is there any interaction between the people who basically made the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian one?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. There are sages who moved from the Land of Israel to Babylonia and vice versa; there definitely were connections. There are even sages who moved from place to place.
[Speaker E] And when, for the sake of discussion, some such Mishnah comes up there and they argue about it, is the Jerusalem Talmud aware of the discourse in Babylonia?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not always, but many times yes. Sometimes the Babylonian Talmud itself says, “In the West they say.” “The West” means the Land of Israel, because it was to the west. Right? “In the West they say” — meaning the sages of the Jerusalem Talmud, the sages of the Land of Israel, say such-and-such, and we say such-and-such. So sometimes there are even direct references. But beyond that, it was also clear that there was contact and that a lot of information circulated. Maybe not everything was known, but there are all kinds of investigations into whether the Babylonian Talmud knew the Jerusalem Talmud. There are various studies and so on, but that presents the question in a banal, overly simplistic way. Obviously it knew some parts of it; the question is how much it knew. That’s a good question. In any case, we were with the Amoraim, who produced the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud, and we’ve reached roughly the seventh to eighth century. In the Land of Israel, it was sealed much earlier. In Babylonia — in the Land of Israel there was already more or less no Torah scholarship active at that period, whereas in Babylonia that was the center of Torah activity at the time. By around the eighth century, let’s say, we’re already after the sealing of the Talmud; that’s already the middle of the period of the Savoraim. The Savoraim come after the Amoraim, a very obscure period; almost no written sources from it remain. Some Savoraic sources entered into the Talmud itself and were absorbed into it. There are even comments by traditional commentators on certain passages saying those are Savoraic passages. But it’s a period that more or less has almost no impact — it isn’t articulated. Maybe it had a lot of influence, but it isn’t remembered today as a Savoraic contribution to the development of Jewish law. After the Savoraim come the Geonim. Wait — doesn’t “gaon” mean genius? No. “Gaon” doesn’t mean genius; “gaon” is an office. Just like you have a rosh yeshiva, you have a rabbi — there it was called “the gaon.” The period of the Geonim is simply that that’s what they called the leading sages in Babylonia, the chief rabbi.
[Speaker C] He was called the gaon.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. So the gaon of Babylonia. Today every kollel fellow is “the great rabbinic genius,” but today that’s in the sense of “genius.” There, “gaon” was the title. Okay, so that’s the period of the Geonim, after the Savoraim. From the Geonim we already have written material — not all that much, but we do have some. There is definitely Geonic material. By the way, in traditional study halls they tend to spend very little time on Geonic material. Very little. University scholars deal with it much more. That’s just how the tradition developed; never mind the reasons right now — I’m not sure I know the reasons — but those are the facts. After the period of the Geonim — now I’m talking about the tenth and eleventh centuries — the period of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) begins. The period of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) is basically the sages of the Middle Ages. Okay? So again: we had the Tannaim, then the Amoraim in the Land of Israel and in Babylonia, then the Savoraim, then the Geonim — and by that point it’s all almost entirely in Babylonia. There is also a gaon in the Land of Israel, but that’s an esoteric phenomenon. Savoraim, Geonim, and after that the medieval authorities (Rishonim). The period of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) runs from the tenth-eleventh century until the fifteenth-sixteenth century — in short, the Middle Ages. The sages of the Middle Ages are the medieval authorities (Rishonim). Okay? Yes.
[Speaker G] Isn’t there a huge gap here between the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and the Geonim? It sounds like several hundred years.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, a huge gap? In what sense a gap?
[Speaker G] No, chronologically. You were talking about the Savoraim and all that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Time-wise? The Geonim are about two hundred years, roughly the ninth and tenth centuries, something like that. Order of magnitude.
[Speaker G] Okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And after that the period of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) begins.
[Speaker G] Okay, because, well, fine, so the Middle Ages is kind of…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not a substantive division. It’s not a substantive division. It’s not that there was some rule that the medieval authorities (Rishonim) were very careful, hesitant to disagree with the Geonim. But they did do it, meaning there’s nothing formal here. Okay? We’ll still talk about the status of generations, or respect for previous generations — where it’s grounded, where it isn’t grounded, and how far it goes.
[Speaker G] But you’re saying there wasn’t some gap period, some kind of vacuum where there was nothing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, there was no vacuum. The tradition is continuous; there’s no vacuum. Again, at least in retrospect — and I think that’s true in reality too.
[Speaker C] Where does Maimonides fit into this story?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maimonides is in the period of the medieval authorities (Rishonim). Maimonides is the twelfth century.
[Speaker C] Okay, but I’m asking whether you identify him as one of the medieval authorities (Rishonim)?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes, of course. Maimonides is clearly part of the period of the medieval authorities (Rishonim). He’s exceptional because he…
[Speaker C] Disagrees with everything that came before him?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. No, he doesn’t disagree with everything that came before him. Why? He summarizes… He doesn’t disagree with everything that came before him, no.
[Speaker C] I’ll comment on him too, but let’s continue.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no — Guide for the Perplexed — I’m talking about Jewish law. Not non-halakhic writings. I’m talking only about Jewish law. Okay. So we’re basically in the period of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), and we get up to the sixteenth century, let’s say. The Shulchan Arukh is considered more or less the boundary line, and from there the period of the later authorities (Acharonim) begins. And there there are already some subdivisions — contemporary later authorities versus earlier later authorities — but we’ll talk about the period of the later authorities (Acharonim). Okay? Up to our own day. Fine? People will come along in retrospect and surely draw some additional line. In another two or three hundred years, I don’t know. But as of today, we see the whole period from the sixteenth century until today as, broadly speaking, the period of the later authorities (Acharonim).
[Speaker E] So is the Shulchan Arukh part of the later authorities (Acharonim)?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Shulchan Arukh is the beginning of the period of the later authorities (Acharonim), yes. It’s more or less the boundary line. Now, that’s regarding the historical overview, a bird’s-eye view. This whole chain of development — and I’m speaking only about the halakhic part of the Oral Torah, not the non-halakhic parts, not thought, not commentary on the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), not ethics, nothing else — only Jewish law. Right? Now, in terms of content, up to here this was just a look at history. Now content. This is already a cross-sectional division. There are several kinds of content that come down within the Oral Torah. The basic content division was made by Rabbi Judah the Prince, who established the Mishnah. The Mishnah has six orders — an acronym: Zman Nakat — Zeraim, Moed, Nashim, Nezikin, Kodashim, Tohorot. Okay. Each such order is made up of tractates. Several tractates. Each tractate deals with a topic. The order is a broader topic. So, for example, Zeraim, Moed, Nashim — yes, Zeraim is the first order. Zeraim deals with commandments dependent on the Land, agricultural matters that generally apply only in the Land of Israel — not only, but mostly. That’s the order of Zeraim. Within the order of Zeraim there are various tractates, each of which deals with one halakhic chapter that belongs to this overall area of commandments dependent on the Land. So there’s one tractate that deals with the Sabbatical year — that’s Shevi’it. Another tractate deals with terumot, tithes, doubtful tithing, mixed species, things of that kind. Fine. So those are tractates within an order. That’s the arrangement established by Rabbi Judah the Prince, who wrote the Mishnah. I remind you: he is the one who wrote the Mishnah, so this arrangement is attributed to him. Maybe some of it existed earlier too, I don’t know, but he’s basically the one who…
[Speaker A] Edited. What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Edited. Edited and wrote, yes. And wrote. Okay. So that’s Zeraim. Likewise Moed, for example — the order of Moed basically deals with the festivals of the year. Now within the order of Moed there are various tractates. One tractate deals with the Sabbath, another tractate deals with Jewish holiday — Beitzah, right, tractate Yom Tov. Tractate Moed Katan, tractate on the intermediate festival days. Passover — yes, so there’s tractate Pesahim, and so on. Tractate Megillah deals with Purim. So again, these are tractates, and each tractate deals with a specific festival. All those festivals are the order of Moed. Right? Those are all the appointed times. After that there’s Nashim, again laws of personal status — Gittin, Kiddushin, Ketubot, and so on. Nashim. Nezikin is of course tort law, but the laws of Nezikin are more than just damages; they’re really monetary law. Exactly, civil law. It’s not just damages. It’s called Nezikin for historical reasons, but it’s not really only damages. After that there’s Kodashim, which is the laws of the Temple and everything connected to it, and Tohorot, which is ritual impurity and purity. Those are the six categories, and in principle, if we gather all the laws written in the Torah and everything that developed around them, you can classify every such law into one of these six categories. In that sense, Rabbi Judah the Prince aspired to make what in mathematics is called an exhaustive partition. Meaning, you create disjoint sets — they don’t overlap — but their union covers the entire field. Okay? So that’s basically the claim. You can ask all kinds of riddle-like questions about whether there’s some law that’s harder to place specifically here or there, but broadly speaking that’s the picture. That’s the division that continued throughout history. Meaning, even in the period of the Talmud — the Talmuds, both the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud — they’re basically arranged around the Mishnah. It’s essentially a give-and-take of clarifications and interpretations and halakhic rulings around the Mishnayot. Around each Mishnah there are Talmudic discussions. Then the next Mishnah, more Talmudic discussions. There are Mishnayot around which there is no Talmud. Written Talmud on some tractates of the Mishnah did not reach us. In the Jerusalem Talmud there’s even less. In the Babylonian Talmud there’s a bit more, but still not around every tractate. There are tractates for which only the Mishnah remains and we have no Gemara on them. Presumably there once was, but it did not reach us. That’s… but it still preserves Rabbi Judah the Prince’s division into six orders.
[Speaker E] Those laws we talked about earlier, rabbinic laws, right, that they didn’t manage to make until the period of the Mishnah —
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They’re also classified within this?
[Speaker E] No, the ones that didn’t enter the Mishnah because they were created only in a later period, so they’re already in the Talmud and have no Mishnaic source.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, and then they’ll enter under a certain order, and those are laws from the Talmud, not from the Mishnah — from the Gemara. Now, this division accompanied the Oral Torah until roughly the twelfth century. In that period, even when there were halakhic decisors, they wrote according to the order of the Talmud. The Rif and the Rosh — true, that’s later — but the decisors write in the order of the Talmud, and in each place they write what the halakhic ruling is, because the Talmud leaves things open. Most Talmudic discussions don’t end with a bottom line. There is no halakhic ruling. Then the halakhic decisors come and try to give us bottom lines for each such discussion, but they do it in the order of the Gemara. Stav, if you remember when we built the knowledge graph in the POC, we distinguished between law codes and halakhic decisors. Halakhic decisors are in the order of the Gemara. In the twelfth century there emerged — there were some before it, but basically there emerged — the central law code, central to this day, the most comprehensive, the biggest, and really unique in its scope, and that is Maimonides. Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah in the twelfth century. And what he innovated, beyond gathering all the material available until his time, classifying it, deciding every dispute, and determining what the bottom-line Jewish law is in his opinion — yes? We’ll soon talk about questions of authority, who decides — but for now, he wrote his opinion. Beyond that, he also reorganized everything. He has fourteen books. In general Maimonides liked the number fourteen. Yad, “hand,” has the numerical value of fourteen. Mishneh Torah — the Strong Hand. He has fourteen principles, fourteen books — he really liked the number fourteen. One of his descendants even writes about it, that he really loved the number fourteen, and also tried to explain why, but never mind. In any case, Maimonides divided it into fourteen books, and each such book is itself divided into collections of laws. So there too there’s the Book of Love, which deals with prayers and circumcision, service of God — in the sense connected perhaps more to ritual experience or something like that — so he calls it Love. Fine? There’s the Book of Zeraim, which has the same name as Rabbi Judah the Prince’s order, but it’s also one of Maimonides’ books. There’s Nezikin, Kinyan. So here, for example, Rabbi Judah the Prince has Nezikin; with Maimonides that already becomes several categories — Nezikin and Kinyan. Okay? And Nezikin and Kinyan themselves are further subdivided. All the laws of damages — injuring and causing damage, property damage, theft, all types of possible damage. Laws of acquisition — again, how things are acquired, so the laws of sale, all kinds of matters connected to acquisition law. So Maimonides elaborated Rabbi Judah the Prince’s division more fully, and therefore his division is a new division that he created himself. And he incorporated into his book all the material accumulated until his time — which is an astonishingly ambitious monumental undertaking, ambitious not in the negative sense; he succeeded. I mean, these are projects that legal experts know usually require dozens of people over dozens of years. When you codify some legal field — say, they made a civil code — experts worked on it for years and still didn’t finish the civil code. Maimonides made a code for all areas of the Torah, not just the civil part. It’s much broader than Israeli law in terms of the kinds of subjects involved, because there are subjects in Jewish law that secular law doesn’t deal with — they aren’t relevant — but there are no subjects in law that Jewish law doesn’t deal with. Therefore Jewish law is broader in its domain than the legal world, and Maimonides canonized and codified this entire corpus. It’s a project where it’s hard even to grasp what kind of intellectual power and talent is embedded in it.
[Speaker D] Along with — if he did it alone, he definitely used an LLM. Yes, exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So if I could train an LLM on his brain, I think we could profit from that quite a bit. He really was a man of extraordinary talents and abilities — not only talent in the sense of sharpness and analytical power, but also in scope and productivity — and everything was done with reflection. Meaning, he documents his… his method of work. No one else did that. But he couldn’t avoid doing it, because if you don’t do it systematically and define the method for yourself, you can’t do such a monumental project. So it’s no wonder that this is the only code in the history of Jewish law from Mount Sinai until today. That is the Mishneh Torah.
[Speaker D] So that’s something we need to take from him. That’s the key. I think: systematicity. That’s also what will help us. We have to have systematicity.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what we’re talking about here. But Maimonides is a topic — a topic for a separate conversation; I won’t go into it too much. So Maimonides’ division is a relatively new content division, but basically it’s Rabbi Judah the Prince’s division, just more detailed. Meaning, he took each order and broke it down a bit further. So it’s just higher resolution, but the idea is the same idea. Why am I saying this? Because after Maimonides, in the sixteenth century — in the… actually even before that, in the fourteenth century — came the Tur, which is the son of the Rosh, the Rosh, Rabbenu Asher. Asher ben Yehiel, right. Depending on what — Mishneh Torah he wrote in Hebrew. You remember he wrote in Arabic, the Commentary on the Mishnah in Arabic. Tafsir, Tafsir was written in Judeo-Arabic — that’s Maimonides. In any case, in the fourteenth century, I think, came the Tur. Now the Tur made a different division of Jewish law, and it’s already a completely new conceptual division. Traditional learners are not always aware of the enormous impact of the Tur’s division, because you need a somewhat reflective perspective on Jewish law in order to be aware of it. The Shulchan Arukh followed it. The Shulchan Arukh is attached to the structure of the Tur. The Tur basically created this structure, and he divided Jewish law into four major parts. So this is not at all Rabbi Judah the Prince’s division; it’s an orthogonal division, meaning completely different. And there are four categories there: Even HaEzer, Orah Hayyim, Hoshen Mishpat, Even HaEzer, and Yoreh De’ah. And as you can already see from the terminology, this doesn’t work by content at all. Meaning, Maimonides made a content-based division. With the Tur this isn’t a content-based division at all; it’s a categorical division. A categorical division means: Orah Hayyim is the laws that pertain to daily Jewish life. Prayers, but Moed is there too; everything is there because it’s all part of daily Jewish life. Okay? In what relates to times, to what we do in day-to-day life, blessings, things like that — that’s Orah Hayyim. Hoshen Mishpat is the legal system, more or less the civil and criminal legal system. Okay? The juridical part. That’s the actual juridical legal system, because the rest isn’t law. Everywhere they call the whole thing “Hebrew law,” but that’s a categorical mistake. I wrote an article about that once and it stirred up some controversies. But halakhic law is Hoshen Mishpat and Even HaEzer. Even HaEzer deals with personal status. Okay? Hoshen Mishpat deals with civil law and criminal law. Even HaEzer and Hoshen Mishpat together are halakhic law. Orah Hayyim has nothing to do with halakhic law in the juridical sense. There are laws about what one should do, how to make a blessing, and so on, but that’s not law. You’re not dealing with relations between people in society, but with what a person should do — the individual person. Okay? Yoreh De’ah also belongs, like Orah Hayyim, to that side. Yoreh De’ah basically deals with terumot and tithes — not day-to-day routine, but still laws that pertain to the individual person. Yes, terumot and tithes, lending with interest, charity, things like that, vows, oaths, things of that sort. That’s Yoreh De’ah. So to summarize, this is an important division to know — the Tur’s division — because it accompanies us to this day. The Tur’s division basically consists of four parts that divide Jewish law into four different categories, not topics. It’s not by topics at all; it’s by categories. Each category contains all kinds of different topics. These four are divided into two pairs. One pair is the legal pair: Hoshen Mishpat and Even HaEzer. Hoshen Mishpat is civil and criminal law; Even HaEzer is personal status. But that’s all the sort of thing that exists in any legal system, except that this is halakhic law. The other two parts are law — you could call it ritual law, if you like — not juridical law. Therefore it’s a mistake to call it “Hebrew law”; those other two parts are not Hebrew law. The first two parts are Hebrew law; the other two are not Hebrew law, they are Jewish law. And this is the categorical division that the Tur essentially sharpened. He didn’t invent it, but he sharpened it. Meaning, from his time on it became clear to everyone that we are dealing here with different categories, where two parts of Jewish law in the Tur and in the Shulchan Arukh are Yoreh De’ah and Orah Hayyim. Orah Hayyim is daily life — blessings, festivals, Sabbath, prayers, and the like. Yoreh De’ah is the laws that are not day-to-day. Okay? Laws that aren’t routine. They are part of life, yes — I separate terumot and tithes, give charity — but it’s not part of the ongoing procedure of how I live, the routine flow. Okay? So that’s called Yoreh De’ah, and those two together are what’s called Jewish law. The first two parts are Hebrew law. All four parts together are the Tur — “the four columns”; in slang people call it “the Tur” — and the Shulchan Arukh, which follows it. The Shulchan Arukh follows it and only adds further rulings from additional sources, but it really follows it closely. Now I’m talking about the types of compositions. The types of compositions in Jewish law — and again, this is a cross-sectional division. Meaning, in every period you can have all the types. So whereas the periods are a longitudinal historical division along the historical axis, the division by types of compositions is a cross-sectional one. So what kinds of compositions are there? There is commentary on the Talmud — again, from the medieval authorities (Rishonim), from the later authorities (Acharonim), and there is Geonic commentary as well. There is commentary on the Talmud that follows the order of the Talmud. There are halakhic decisors in the order of the Talmud — what I mentioned, the Rif and the Rosh. These are people who follow the order of the Talmud but don’t interpret the discussion; rather, they write the bottom lines. And this is too sharp a division — obviously the decisors also interpret a bit, and the commentators also rule a bit — but broadly speaking these are two categories, or two genres of writing, two genres of compositions. There are law codes. How are they different from halakhic decisors? They also rule the law. But they arrange it in an order that is not the Talmudic order — like Maimonides, the Shulchan Arukh, and the Tur, those are the outstanding examples. It’s not in the order of the Talmud; they rearranged everything and organized it according to a categorical or content-based order. Okay? But not according to the order of the Talmud. Why is this distinction important? Because for us, for example, in our project, it’s easy to get to commentators and halakhic decisors in the order of the Talmud. It appears in Sefaria. Each one appears on the section he comments on. But to get from Maimonides to the Gemara from which he took his ruling — that’s very far from simple, and there are even disputes about it among his commentators. Because he is not in the order of the Gemara. It’s not clear where he took it from. He also doesn’t write where he took it from; he simply writes the law. And he took a lot of criticism for that as well. But that’s why it’s a different category. More than that, and this—
[Speaker E] He simply didn’t document the process he went through,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He documented his way of thinking, but not for each law where it came from. Yes. Now why is this important — another point that became clear to me דווקא in the POC? I hadn’t noticed it. When you think reflectively about things, suddenly you organize these things for yourself. Commentators on the Gemara — what I was talking about now are commentators on the Gemara — the Gemara is a commentary on the Mishnah. There are also commentators on the Mishnah. Are there commentators on commentators? In principle yes, but it’s very rare. There are a few. Usually each commentator stands on his own; another commentator comments on the Gemara. There are almost no commentators on commentators. Here and there there are. There are somewhat more commentators on halakhic decisors — on the Rif, on the Rosh — commentators around decisors who follow the order of the Talmud. And there are many commentators on law codes. That, there are many. Meaning, what are often called halakhic decisors are in large part simply commentators on the Shulchan Arukh or on Maimonides. Meaning, they follow the order of the Shulchan Arukh and Maimonides. So, for example, for our purposes, when we want to build a tree — a knowledge graph, right? — when we want to build a knowledge graph, the technical part of it, that is, the part of the links between sources, then you need to know that if I reached the right Maimonides, I gained many, many other things too, because all the commentators on Maimonides are already there on that law. And similarly, on the Gemara there is a whole set of commentators, so if I reached the right Gemara, I already gained many commentators dealing with the discussion that interests me. It’s enough for me to reach the sugya in the Gemara, and I’ve already reached all the commentators as well. If from the sugya in the Gemara I manage to get to Maimonides — and you can, there are links to Maimonides and to the Shulchan Arukh, but those are links people made, they’re not natural links, right, and sometimes there are disputes about them — once I reach Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh, I gain another set of commentators on Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh. Once I have a law of Maimonides, with it comes an entire set of commentators on Maimonides; likewise for the Shulchan Arukh, a whole set of commentators on the Shulchan Arukh. And these are shortcuts for building the knowledge graph, basically.
[Speaker E] And do they also refer back to earlier sources like the Talmud? Certainly, certainly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Everyone refers to all the earlier sources. Everyone. There are no rules here. The question is what his subject is. His subject is Maimonides, but what are his sources? His sources are everything — meaning, everything written before him.
[Speaker H] What is the relationship between the Shulchan Arukh and Maimonides? Is it clear, from the standpoint of the Shulchan Arukh, where it draws everything from?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Where does it draw from? No, no, it’s not clear, because the division is different, as I said earlier. But the Shulchan Arukh generally follows Maimonides.
[Speaker H] Meaning usually, when it ruled the law, it was usually like Maimonides. But the challenge will be identifying the source. Right, it’s not simple, although, again, the commentaries on the Shulchan Arukh will already help you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Beit Yosef, which is a work by the author of the Shulchan Arukh and is itself a commentary on the Tur, prepared the ground for the Shulchan Arukh. He wrote a commentary on the Tur, gathered all the medieval and later authorities around the Tur, and said who agrees with the Tur and who doesn’t, and then distilled it and from that wrote the Shulchan Arukh in the same order, only the bottom lines. Okay? So through that you can reach the connections between the Shulchan Arukh and the Tur on the one hand and Maimonides on the other.
[Speaker D] On the level of entities, I just want to make sure I understood: you said that most commentators are really commentators on rulings and not on—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] On law codes, not on halakhic decisors; rather on law codes, and not on commentators either. Commentators on commentators are very rare. Commentators on halakhic decisors do exist, but not many. Commentators on law codes — there are a lot. And I remind you again, law codes as opposed to halakhic decisors: halakhic decisors are those who give bottom lines but in the order of the Gemara. Meaning, they basically copy the Gemara, omit all the give-and-take, and write only the bottom line. Those are the decisors.
[Speaker E] When we speak of law codes, can we basically say that the main ones are the Mishneh Torah, the Four Turim, and the Shulchan Arukh?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Those are the central ones, yes. Yes, those are the central ones. Okay.
[Speaker D] And on the law codes themselves there’s a huge amount of commentary,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Almost all the literature of the halakhic decisors — not all, but the great majority of it — is basically commentaries on those three books. Okay. So—
[Speaker D] Law codes — how did you define law codes?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] These are books that reorganize Jewish law according to their own order—
[Speaker D] Their own order, not according to the order of the Talmud. Meaning, they just create a kind of classification? They don’t add text, they just organize? Or do they also have a message? They also add — they distill, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And there can be disagreement about the distillation. I distill it this way, you distill it another way. Think, for example, about court rulings written in a legal system, and afterward someone comes and gathers everything that emerged from those rulings — say, in a casuistic system where precedent determines the rule, or something like that — and then he distills from all the rulings and simply writes a collection of definitive laws, without all the give-and-take, the reasoning, the proofs, and everything. Here the law is such-and-such, there the law is such-and-such. If this happened, the law is this. That is basically what distilling is, and you can then rearrange it according to some content-based or categorical order, however seems right to you. Those are law codes.
[Speaker E] Maybe the easiest and most intuitive way to look at it is like what was done in later periods — not exactly in the same way, but for example like the Romans or the British. Say the British took common law and then later created a code out of it, or the Romans took some kind of case-study material and made from it — meaning, the process itself is basically a process of taking all the material and codifying it, broadly speaking. That’s how I think one should look at it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now, one final type of halakhic literature is responsa literature. Responsa literature is not commentary on anything; rather, it is the result of questions posed to a halakhic decisor. He is asked: what is the law in such-and-such a case? Now he has to search for the relevant sources. This is very similar to what we want our system to do. He has to search for relevant sources, discuss them, see whether they are similar to the case before us or not similar — basically like writing a legal ruling. A case comes before the court; you have all the legal sources, and now from those sources you have to say what this whole body of material says about the case before me. But of course, from responsa literature — especially responsa of major authorities — we can also learn their interpretive approaches to Talmudic discussions, even though it wasn’t written as a commentary on the Talmud. It was written as part of clarifying the law. But the halakhic clarification itself — and with some responsa authors these are very long discussions with complex and brilliant analytic and interpretive moves — with others they go much more directly to the bottom line. So that depends on the author. But you can certainly extract from responsa literature a great many interpretations of the Gemara that sometimes won’t appear in the other literature. And that will be the method of the responsa author. In Rashba’s responsum we even saw, in the POC, right, we saw Rashba’s responsum on the passage in Bava Kamma on page 60. That approach, that method, did not appear in Rashba’s own commentary on the Gemara. The very same author can write commentary on the Gemara and also write responsa; these are not different people, they are different works. Okay? The same person can produce several kinds of works. Now, what interests us with regard to responsa literature is that it is harder to reach the responsa that deal with a given sugya. If I’m in a sugya and I want to know which responsa dealt with this sugya, there isn’t really a good way to get there. There are some works that tried to do this — Otzar HaPoskim and the like, modern works — which tried to gather responsa and arrange them according to the order of the Shulchan Arukh or according to the order of the sugyot. What I think we should do at some stage — and this itself is a product worth a great deal of money, in my opinion, even before it’s also a good tool for us — is to go through all the responsa literature and go backward. Meaning, in every responsum, extract every Gemara it cites — and usually it cites them and says where they are. Then go to that place in the Gemara and note there: this responsum refers to this Gemara. Once we go through all the responsa literature and send everything back to the Gemara, we’ll have a knowledge repository worth millions to halakhic decisors and learners, and it doesn’t exist today. There is nothing like it today. And these are tools we have today. What?
[Speaker I] I don’t understand. Why? When you look, you can just search for that Gemara in the responsa database or in Otzar HaHokhmah, and it will bring you to that responsum.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Or it will bring you there, or it won’t. You don’t have a simple way to get from the Gemara to the responsum. How will you get there? You can maybe search for a keyword or something like that, but many times you won’t reach the relevant responsum. I think that if we systematically go through the responsa and send everything back to the Gemara, we create a repository that in my opinion is worth a lot. A great deal, even. And it will also serve us, because it will be added to the knowledge graph. Then we can connect to the Gemara not only the commentators on the Gemara, and not only through the commentators on Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh, but also all the responsa that refer to the Gemara. Those are additional sources referring to the Gemara. So it enormously enriches the knowledge graph in a way that I don’t think there is any other simple way to do. There are ways to reach some of the material, as Rabbi David said, but I think that’s a relatively small part of the material.
[Speaker E] It also gives some associative point, because if a certain case — some implication — connects different laws, and that same responsa authority connected those things in a responsum, then you’re basically seeing, for example, normative and abstract connections. Right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You can also learn from this for the non-technical part of the knowledge graph, because we see that there is a substantive connection between the sugyot. And that will enrich the knowledge graph not only with links between sources, but also with links between concepts. Absolutely.
[Speaker D] How do we know how to say what the connection is between — how do we know how to identify the connection between a responsum and a Gemara?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Simply put, in principle we don’t know—
[Speaker D] Not automatically, but how do you approach it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When the responsum itself brings a sugya from the Gemara, it usually says, “It is written in the Gemara there on such-and-such a page,” or sometimes quotes a bit of it, or at least gives the opening words. So there are ways to get from the responsum to the Gemara much more easily. From the Gemara to the responsum — that’s the problem. And that is exactly classical work for computerized systems. Meaning: go through all the responsa, take the easy direction, and create a repository that gives you the difficult reverse direction.
[Speaker D] Meaning, it sounds elementary. The question is: why hasn’t anyone done this? Since there are these systems like the responsa project and so on.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] At least I don’t know anyone who has done this to date. Maybe Rabbi David will correct me, but I don’t know of anyone. Okay. In any case, good — I need to stop here. We still have work here, so Maor, you decide when it would be good — I think it would be good for me to continue another time. When does that work? When does that work? And in my opinion we should also study some sugya and show on it everything we learned here in the abstract, or in general.
[Speaker J] Absolutely. Absolutely. No, but now we have a deeper understanding of the history and the contents that are in the Talmud and in Jewish law. Nimrod, did you want to say something before—?
[Speaker D] Yes. If we don’t have — look, what you said here now is very important. We can create an ontology that basically describes all the different categories and the different entities. This thing is supposed to be the basis for our knowledge-graph extraction pipelines. Because in practice, if we have an ontology, and we now understand that we want to extract a certain connection of the type you just described, then we now have a framework. From within that ontology we want now to generate that connection, and we also know how to formulate it as a structure within the graph.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s true in principle, but the connections are very different kinds of connections — varied and complex — and the question of how to extract such connections and how to generate from them a knowledge graph is a question that requires a lot of thought. I don’t know how to say anything more focused at the moment. But yes, clearly, once you go through a lot of material and that material creates links between concepts and between sugyot, then in principle you can derive insights from that for the knowledge graph. That’s clear.
[Speaker F] Excellent, thank you very much. We’ll continue. Thank you very much. Thank you, Rabbi.