Disputes: History and Essence – Rabbi Michael Abraham – Lesson 1

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, let’s begin. So, what I sent around—we’re going to talk a bit about disputes. About their meaning, their history, how they’re dealt with, what stands behind them. I’ll start maybe, I’ll start maybe with a certain reference to the history, to the development of dispute. There’s a Mishnah in Chagigah. The Mishnah says: Yose ben Yo’ezer says not to lay hands, or Yosef ben Yo’ezer says not to lay hands. Yosef ben Yohanan says to lay hands. Yehoshua ben Perachyah says not to lay hands, Nittai the Arbelite says to lay hands. Yehudah ben Tabbai says not to lay hands, Shimon ben Shetah says to lay hands. Shemaya says to lay hands, Avtalyon says not to lay hands. Hillel and Menahem did not disagree. Menahem left, Shammai entered. Shammai says not to lay hands, Hillel says to lay hands. The first ones were Nesi’im and the second ones were their heads of the religious court. Meaning, this is basically the period of the pairs; all the pairs are mentioned here. And the pairs are a duo of the Nasi and the head of the religious court, who in that period stood at the head of the hierarchy. This is a period without a king, at least not a king in the full sense—maybe for a certain period there were kings from the Hasmonean house there, but not a king in the full sense. And here there’s some ongoing dispute about laying hands on a sacrifice on a Jewish holiday, laying hands on sacrifices on a Jewish holiday. So Rashi here writes: Yose ben Yo’ezer says not to lay hands on a Jewish holiday, and this is the first dispute that existed among the sages of Israel. Meaning, Rashi says this was the first dispute in the era of the Oral Torah. And afterward Yehoshua ben Perachyah—he says they all, generation after generation, meaning all the generations of the pairs basically disagreed about that same dispute. Meaning this is a dispute that didn’t end. Now, honestly, it doesn’t make sense that there were no other disputes besides this up to that point. We know the people involved; it’s even harder to believe. Even with Moses our teacher and Korach there was a dispute, so… Anyway, I think part of the issue is the continuation of the dispute, and that’s why the Mishnah here also describes that it passed through all the pairs, meaning it wasn’t decided. Now, “pairs” means this was a period in which there was a Sanhedrin. Pairs means head of the religious court, meaning Nasi and head of the religious court of the Sanhedrin. So that means there was a Sanhedrin. So this dispute could in fact have been brought to the Sanhedrin, they could vote and decide. They didn’t do that. It’s not clear to me why; I haven’t looked enough, but I don’t know of a clear treatment of the issue of why it really wasn’t decided. But I think maybe what Rashi means here is that this was the first dispute that continued, meaning that was not decided—not the first time that differences of opinion were discovered between two people. That doesn’t seem plausible. Rather, there’s some dispute here that apparently went on and on and they couldn’t decide it despite the halakhic institutions that existed at the time, meaning the Sanhedrin and following the majority.

[Speaker E] But I don’t understand what it means that it wasn’t decided. It was decided! A holiday sacrifice would come. So in the generation of Yose ben Yo’ezer of Tzeredah, did they lay hands or not? I don’t know.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They decided! No—who says they decided?

[Speaker E] Wait, that means yes—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And this one says no.

[Speaker E] Wait, but they did something in that generation. Either they laid hands—it’s yes or no.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does “in that generation” mean? Whoever was his disciple laid hands; whoever was his disciple didn’t lay hands. How do you know they did one uniform thing? In the place of Rabbi Yose they ate chicken with milk, so what? Even though there was already a decree against chicken with milk.

[Speaker E] Fine, but here are we talking about an individual offering or a communal offering? What? Are we talking about an individual offering or a communal offering?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think also an individual offering, no? Ah—an individual offering actually isn’t brought on a Jewish holiday, right.

[Speaker E] Right, it’s a communal offering, so obviously they decided. What do you mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The fact is, it’s not stated here. It’s not stated.

[Speaker E] What do you mean? Even if they decide that in that generation one should lay hands—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Or not lay hands. Once they decide, then the dispute doesn’t come up again—so they decide it!

[Speaker E] It wasn’t decided! That’s not true.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What, did every pair start raising the dispute all over again, and then they decided it again?

[Speaker E] This one’s a disciple of that one, and this one’s a disciple of that one.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but what does that mean, this one’s a disciple of that one and this one’s a disciple of that one? But the Sanhedrin decided.

[Speaker E] Suppose now it was the period of the pairs and they decided, okay? So what? Is someone who held differently forbidden to remain of his opinion? Let him remain of his opinion. But he remains of his opinion—wait, wait—so he remains of his opinion and passes it on to his disciple. Okay, and then what? Then the next generation comes and his disciple raises the question in court, says wait, true, true, ten years ago we ruled this way, but wait, I want to raise it for discussion, because I think, let’s say, that you don’t need to lay hands.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Still, still, that means that in essence it really wasn’t decided.

[Speaker E] Yes, but in every generation it was decided.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so maybe. I don’t know. I have no way of knowing. They did something.

[Speaker E] But it continued. Every time it came up again, even if it was decided. They did something—not that they did nothing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What did they do? So it doesn’t say. What does “they did” mean? Once they asked that one and acted accordingly, once they asked this one and acted accordingly—I don’t know. I don’t know what they did.

[Speaker E] If it’s a communal offering, then a communal offering too—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what? A communal offering too. Every Jewish holiday there are the additional holiday offerings and all kinds of things, so what? What do they do? By the way, there’s also the Chagigah offering, which is an individual one on a Jewish holiday, and there are also individual offerings. In any case, what Rashi writes here—that this was the first dispute—it could be that he means this was the first dispute that was not decided. In a later period, after all, the last pair—it was exactly when Menahem left and Shammai entered—the last pair, Hillel and Shammai, the phenomenon of dispute had already expanded and many, many disputes arose between Hillel and Shammai and the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai, and there too these were disputes that were not decided. So basically the House of Hillel and the House of Shammai are perceived as the source of disputes.

[Speaker C] I can’t picture “not decided.” Either if it was brought to the Sanhedrin, then what—it ended. Was there no discussion and no one raised their hand for or against?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First, regarding the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel, it’s easier to understand. Here too there are even some references—I think I mentioned this once, we’ll come back to it—that there the argument was also about what to do in the Sanhedrin, so they couldn’t decide it in the Sanhedrin. But before… The question was whether one follows the majority of wisdom or the majority of numbers, and then they argued about that too. What? About that too, right, but that can’t be decided.

[Speaker C] And then there’s no problem that it spreads out.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] After all, if by voting, then the majority of wisdom will say majority of wisdom, and the majority of numbers will say majority of numbers—how will you decide? Once the question concerns the methods of decision themselves, then it’s a deadlock with no way out. So with the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel you can at least understand, but here these aren’t factions.

[Speaker C] I mean the earlier pairs. I can’t picture it in my head—what happened? Factually, yes. No, I agree with the fact; I’m just trying to imagine it. Either it was brought to the Sanhedrin or it wasn’t brought to the Sanhedrin. There aren’t other possibilities, right? Right. Because someone who didn’t do what they said was already in trouble.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It could also be that there are situations in which—this may be another point we’ll deal with later—the value of deciding disputes. Meaning, the assumption is that every dispute has to be decided, and therefore when there’s a Sanhedrin everything is fine; only now we have a problem because there’s no Sanhedrin. There may be things that the Sanhedrin decides not to decide, not to discuss. It could be, I don’t know. Now here of course, and especially if it’s a communal offering, in the end a decision still has to be made about what to do. But it could be that once you see that the dispute is really a fundamental dispute and there’s no clear majority on either side—the fact is it can sway and reawaken in the next generation, meaning they saw there was no clear-cut ruling there—it could be that they left it open and didn’t decide.

[Speaker E] But they did something.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. So each time they did whatever they did—asked whoever they asked and followed what he told them—without setting a fixed standard for what should always be done. I don’t know. A lot of things are possible. So here we basically have documentation of some ongoing dispute, and Rashi says this was the first dispute. Maimonides, following several rabbinic sources, already says that when the disciples of Hillel and Shammai increased, who had not served their teachers sufficiently, dispute increased in Israel. Meaning, many disputes were created. And again, he is describing some stage here, or some historical date, or historical stage in which a more significant dispute begins to emerge, and we need to remember the connection of that to what’s here. Hillel and Shammai are the last pair. We’re basically talking here about a dispute that broke out with the first pair, passed through all the pairs, and with Hillel and Shammai it already starts expanding and becomes, in fact, many disputes in many fields between two schools, which is a new phenomenon. Because usually disputes, even if they existed—I assume they did—were independent. Meaning, maybe on this question you form a coalition with him, and on another question you actually think like someone else. Meaning, it doesn’t have to be that schools are formed here that have one package of halakhic worldviews, that all of these go in one direction on all questions and those go in another direction on all questions. That’s already the meaning of schools—that there’s a broader dispute here. And that happens at the end of the period of the pairs, in the last pair. From the second pair onward. So here there’s basically—maybe that’s also what somewhat ended the period of the pairs, because once there is a House of Hillel and a House of Shammai, it was probably no longer possible to establish agreed-upon authorities. I don’t know—really historical questions I’m not sure about. But this is in essence some milestone in the development of the concept of dispute. And the question that arises here is, first, historically, how did this happen, what was there before that; second, how should we relate to this phenomenon, what do we do with it. Because in Maimonides’ language it sounds like this is a problem, a pathology that developed: when the disciples of Hillel and Shammai who had not served sufficiently increased, a problem was created. Meaning, there’s some problem here that has to be addressed. In other places it actually seems—and in Chagigah too—that the concept of dispute is treated very positively.

[Speaker E] The Talmud—in Maimonides’ language, I think Rashi sounds literal, that there really were no other disputes, that this was the only dispute.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but I don’t assume dispute—again—that there were no differences of opinion between people. There was no dispute in the sense that it was preserved, it remained over time, it wasn’t decided. I assume that’s the intention. It’s hard for me to believe that people sat there over halakhic topics and didn’t argue—that everything was agreed on by everyone, and then suddenly some new phenomenon began to appear. In physics, you know, or in science in general, phenomena are always continuous; there are no phase transitions. A phase transition is a fiction. Only in an infinite system is there a real phase transition, and in a regular, normal system, it’s always continuous in some way. Things don’t happen from nothing. The Talmud here in Chagigah on page 3—we’ll come back to it—but the Talmud says, it expounds the verses: “The words of the wise are like goads, and like well-planted nails, masters of assemblies, given from one shepherd.” Why were words of Torah compared to a goad? To tell you that just as a goad directs the cow to its furrows to bring life into the world, so too words of Torah direct their learners from paths of death to paths of life. Doesn’t matter, I’ll skip a little. The text says “planted.” Just as a planting is fruitful and multiplies, so too words of Torah—actually no, it’s worth also reading what I skipped for a second. If the goad is movable, then maybe words of Torah are movable? The text says “nails.” Planted like nails—not moving. The Talmud says: if like a nail, which decreases and does not increase, then maybe words of Torah decrease and do not increase? The text says “planted.” Just as a planting is fruitful and multiplies, so too words of Torah are fruitful and multiply. Meaning, Torah develops. “Masters of assemblies,” right? That’s the continuation of the verse: “The words of the wise are like goads, and like well-planted nails, masters of assemblies, given from one shepherd.” So what are “masters of assemblies”? These are Torah scholars who sit in group after group and engage in Torah. These declare impure and these declare pure; these forbid and these permit; these disqualify and these validate. Lest a person say: How then can I learn Torah from now on? The text says: all were given from one shepherd. One God gave them, one leader spoke them, from the mouth of the Master of all deeds, blessed be He, as it is written, “And God spoke all these words.” You too, make your ear like a funnel, and acquire for yourself an understanding heart, to hear the words of those who declare impure and the words of those who declare pure, the words of those who forbid and the words of those who permit, the words of those who disqualify and the words of those who validate. So in short, there is here some attitude that idealizes dispute. On the contrary, dispute is something positive. Yes. This is what you said earlier—that Maimonides is more or less quoting the Jerusalem Talmud. Yes, right. I said it’s based on the Talmud.

[Speaker E] Yes, it’s almost a word-for-word quote.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay. And still, here we do see a positive attitude. Meaning there’s dispute and each one says his opinion, and listen to all of them, and words of Torah are fruitful and multiply. It’s hard to miss the positive connotation in this Talmudic passage. Now here again I want to place it—first, where in history is this located? This thing happens in the time of Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Eliezer, meaning the second generation of Yavneh, let’s say. Hillel and Shammai are the end of the pairs, meaning two generations earlier. Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai was a disciple of Hillel and Shammai, and the generation after him is Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua. And Rabban Gamliel. So basically we’re talking about Hillel and Shammai—the formation of dispute, and that their disciples did not serve sufficiently and dispute arose. Two generations after the beginning of that formation—because the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel is a long period—two generations after the beginning of the formation, suddenly there are new tunes here. Meaning there’s some attitude here that idealizes dispute. Dispute is positive, and things are fruitful and multiply, and hear all the opinions, and listen, and that’s how Torah is fruitful and multiplies, and all kinds of things, presumably, words of those who declare impure and words of those who declare pure, and nobody gets worked up about it and everything is wonderful. What happened at… It’s already pretty well located. What happened between the end of the period of the pairs and the beginning of the period of Yavneh? Meaning, there was something there that caused perhaps—again, maybe this is just a dispute between subjective viewpoints, maybe these are different approaches of sages—but it seems to me I can show that something happened there in that period, in that historical period, that changed the attitude toward disputes. And maybe in fact we’re not used to this kind of attitude in the rabbinic sources. The sages generally act anachronistically. Meaning, as far as they’re concerned, whatever existed in their time always existed. So when it says “incline after the majority,” then obviously you have to hold a vote and go after the majority and all that. I’m not at all sure that was always the case. It’s not clear to me. But it’s certainly possible that something like that came into being somewhere along the course of history, and maybe—or at least some part of it, it seems to me—was created in that period. So I want to focus the lens a bit on that period. There is… I’ll take the book. In Pirkei Avot there is a description of the transmission of Torah, and it says there as follows: Moses received Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, the elders to the prophets, and the prophets transmitted it to the Men of the Great Assembly. They said three things: be deliberate in judgment, raise up many disciples, and make a fence for the Torah. Shimon the Righteous was one of the last survivors of the Men of the Great Assembly. He would say: the world stands on three things—on Torah, on the service, and on acts of kindness. Antigonus of Sokho received from Shimon the Righteous, and he too said various things. Yose ben Yo’ezer of Tzeredah and Yose ben Yohanan of Jerusalem received from them. That’s already the first pair we spoke about here. Here dispute already begins to form. After that the pairs continue. Yose ben Yohanan of Jerusalem says such-and-such. Yehoshua ben Perachyah and Nittai the Arbelite received from them; they too say various things. Yehudah ben Tabbai and Shimon ben Shetah received from them. Let’s skip a bit. Shemaya and Avtalyon received from them, right? That’s another pair. Hillel and Shammai received from them and also say various things. Rabban Gamliel would say—not received from them. Rabban Gamliel would say, after Hillel and Shammai. Okay? And from there on there’s no more “received from them.” His son Shimon says. After Rabban Gamliel, the next one is his son Shimon. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says: the world stands on three things. That’s probably Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel the second. They skipped one Rabban Gamliel. And that’s it—now everyone just says; not “received from them,” only says. In chapter 2, Rabbi says—this is already the end of the dynasty of Rabban Gamliel and Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel. Rabban Gamliel the son of Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi says. He would say other things too. Then it goes back to Hillel: do not separate yourself from the community. Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, Mishnah 9 in chapter 2: Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai received from Hillel and Shammai. Suddenly we went back. He would say: if you have learned much Torah, do not claim credit for yourself, for that is what you were created for. Now in terms of chronology, we need to remember: Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai—we jumped far back again. We already got to Rabbi and Rabbi’s son, which is much later. Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai is the first of the Tannaim. Meaning, what’s called the Tannaim is after the pairs, the period of Yavneh. So Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai was the first of the Tannaim; he received from Hillel and Shammai, he ended the period of the pairs. So that’s still “received.” But this Mishnah comes after eight mishnayot in chapter 2 and quite a few mishnayot in chapter 1, where Rabbi and Rabban Gamliel and Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel the second and so on also do not say “received,” and only then do we suddenly return to the fact that he received. It’s a kind of insertion. Then, Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai had five disciples, and these are they: Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananiah—Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua, right? those two—Rabbi Yose the priest, Rabbi Shimon ben Netanel, and Rabbi Elazar ben Arach. And it doesn’t say they received from him; they are his disciples, okay, they learned from him, they always learned from him. Meaning, this flash of “received” appears once, and even that is anachronism, because we say it appears, but it’s speaking about a much earlier period. So historically, reception probably ends with Hillel and Shammai to Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, and that’s it. From there on it is no longer described in the language of the Mishnah as receiving and transmitting, but as saying, having studied under him, being his disciple, being his son. Rabban Gamliel and Rabban Shimon are son and father, and that’s it. There’s no more “received and transmitted.” That ends with Hillel and Shammai, who transmitted to Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai. Again, I’m identifying the historical period—that’s the same period. Meaning Hillel and Shammai were the beginning of the formation of dispute, right? There there’s still something where Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai receives from both of them. But notice—from both of them he receives. Meaning he somehow belongs to both sides of this dispute. But there the dispute is already raging between these two schools, and from there on there’s no more “received.” They don’t receive anymore. More than that—and I heard this once from someone, I think I heard it from Moshe Shapira, of blessed memory, he’s already passed away—that in the description at the beginning of Pirkei Avot, it says “Moses received Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets transmitted it to the Men of the Great Assembly.” They said three things—the Men of the Great Assembly—but it’s still anonymous. It’s some kind of thing that came out of the Men of the Great Assembly, when we’re speaking about dozens and dozens of people. Who said it? Did they say it in chorus? What’s going on there? And afterward: Shimon the Righteous was one of the last survivors of the Men of the Great Assembly; he would say. Meaning this is basically the first time that words of Torah are associated with a person. That a person actually said words of Torah, and they are added to Torah. Meaning, even though it comes from a person, it’s attributed to him. His name is attached to it. So again, it seems there is some process here in which at first the Mishnah describes a process where the receiver and transmitter are a hollow pipe. Meaning, there is some receiving and transmitting, like a relay race: you receive from Sinai, pass it to your disciple, your disciple receives from you and passes it to his disciple, and so on. You add nothing of your own, you only pass it on. Again, this is a description that I’m almost sure was not actually the reality, but still the Mishnah is coming to give us guidelines, or how to look at it, even though again I don’t think this is an exact and sharp description. Meaning, not that there was no dispute and then there was dispute, or there were no human additions and then there were. For now we’re not talking about dispute but about human additions. Shimon the Righteous—or the Men of the Great Assembly—that’s something a bit collective, but Shimon the Righteous was the first person with a name who added things to Torah and it is attributed to him. From there on it continues—now others also say things and they’re attributed to them, and so on. It seems to me that the stage of Shimon the Righteous—he’s already one of the last survivors of the Men of the Great Assembly—we’re speaking, I don’t know, maybe a hundred years before Hillel and Shammai, something like that. Maybe even more, because there are five pairs, probably more. There some formation begins—not of dispute, but of Torah whose foundation is in human beings. You understand that the next step is dispute. In Torah that passes in give-and-take through a hollow pipe, dispute doesn’t arise. We simply pass on what we received. There’s nothing that is mine or yours. Where would dispute come from? At most maybe forgetfulness. But in principle there’s no dispute here; the issue is to clarify the correct Torah and pass it on. With Shimon the Righteous a phenomenon begins to form in which Torah is created by human beings, attributed to a person. Now obviously not much later disputes begin to arise. Shimon the Righteous was one of the last survivors of the Men of the Great Assembly; the first pair right after him—the two Yoses—that’s the first dispute. Why? Because once Torah is created by human beings, different human beings create different Torah, and so dispute arises. After four more pairs we get to Hillel and Shammai—that’s already two schools, that’s already becoming some phenomenon, two different study halls, maybe even two different Torahs. And therefore I think you can see here in the Mishnah in Avot and in these passages in Chagigah a phenomenon that is like a fingerprint of the formation of dispute, and it passes through the formation of Torah that is created by human beings—words of Torah are fruitful and multiply, I remind you of the Talmud in Chagigah. I assume that in that period there were certainly struggles. Meaning, this is something hard to digest. You’re talking about Torah that is received from the Holy One, blessed be He, divine Torah, we are obligated by it, He said it—and suddenly a person comes and says various things. Okay, another exaggeration—so he said it, so what? Why does it enter the Torah texts? What is it doing there? You have recommendations? Write a book of recommendations on the side, Shimon the Righteous’s recommendations, how to run your life, what’s good to do and what’s less good to do—some Dale Carnegie sort of thing. Give advice. What’s it doing in Torah? So this is not a simple revolution. Today we take it for granted, of course, but we’re sitting on the shoulders of those Jews. And I assume there was a serious struggle around it, even though I don’t know documentation of it. But the description, I think, in Pirkei Avot is aware of it. Meaning, the description is very collective, very vague, until Shimon the Righteous, and suddenly it shifts to concrete things that people said, and then he said, and then he said. There are centuries—centuries—Moses received Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets transmitted it to the Men of the Great Assembly. All of them said nothing? Only Shimon the Righteous “would say”? What did they say? I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t “say” in that sense. Often it’s a matter of consciousness. Because I assume they did say things, but the feeling toward them was that they were only commentators. Meaning, they only sort of explained what we received from Moses our teacher; they didn’t add anything of their own. Now, there is no study hall without innovation. There is always some addition. Every interpretation has some dimension that adds something. But the question is how you relate to it. If everyone sees it as a kind of interpretation, then naturally it’s seen as some sort of transmission from Moses our teacher and that’s it—I added nothing of my own, I only explained what Moses our teacher said, that’s all. At some stage an awareness develops—and again I say, this isn’t sharp, so I assume it existed earlier too—but at some stage an awareness develops: no, no, these are words of Torah that you created. Meaning, this is not words of Torah in the sense of some deep and natural interpretation of Moses our teacher. Sometimes it’s not even interpretation of anything. These things that Shimon the Righteous says—the world stands on three things, on Torah, on the service, and on acts of kindness—well, maybe for that you can bring some source, I don’t know. But after that: Do not be like servants who serve the master on condition of receiving a reward, and so on. Where do you get that from? Do you have a verse for it? How do you know that? You have a nice piece of reasoning, okay, so what? How do your arguments become Torah? Meaning, there are things here that are said that maybe you can identify with, maybe they’re ideas you can accept, but they’re ideas. They’re things human beings created, and that joins Torah. So it’s no wonder that within very few generations—immediately, not very few generations, immediately—a dispute arises between the two Yoses, immediately after Shimon the Righteous, very close by, and after a few more decades or a hundred years or something like that: Hillel and Shammai.

[Speaker G] What’s the meaning of this joining Torah? That it becomes a body of Torah?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, for example. Meaning, that it’s treated as binding, that it’s… I don’t know. Here it’s not exactly Jewish law, so it’s hard to understand whether it’s binding or not. But I assume this is some expression of something that also happened in the halakhic world. Pirkei Avot doesn’t deal with Jewish law, but I assume this process described here in Pirkei Avot—we started with “Moses received Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua”—the Torah he received includes Jewish law too. Afterwards, all the things they said are things not connected to Jewish law.

[Speaker F] But it usually does rest on—what do you mean?—on verses.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not always. Reasoning—we once talked, we already talked about reasoning. No, people can add laws of their own, halakhot too. I talked about Tzelach and Pnei Yehoshua, that whole argument about reasoning. Tzelach claims that reasoning can only interpret, and then indeed reasoning is only interpretive reasoning. But Pnei Yehoshua understands that even innovative reasoning has Torah-level status. And I said that I think Pnei Yehoshua is right at the principled level, that there is some Torah-level status even though you don’t punish on that basis. Meaning, true, it isn’t considered Torah-level in the sense that you have a warning from the Torah such that you can punish for it, but in terms of status, reasoning is Torah-level.

[Speaker E] And then afterward there’s that dispute where Shimon HaAmsuni expounded all the occurrences of “et,” until he reached “You shall fear the Lord your God,” and then Rabbi Akiva really innovated, with his own Torah, as it were—“et” comes to include Torah scholars. Because “for his delight is in the Torah of the Lord, and in his Torah he meditates day and night.” First it’s the Torah of the Lord, and afterward it’s his Torah, which is his own Torah. So that was supposedly Rabbi Akiva’s innovation, that Torah is renewed.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And Rabbi Yehoshua—he was their disciple, Rabbi Akiva. One generation later. Meaning, in that period it’s clear that a lot of things revolve around this issue—that human Torah begins, suddenly there’s dispute, and suddenly too “incline your ear to hear the words of those who forbid and the words of those who permit,” and suddenly there’s an idealization of dispute. Something is happening there over the course of the Second Temple period. Okay? That’s what I’m trying to show here.

[Speaker B] But in the end everything is interpretation. What? In the end all of it is interpretation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?

[Speaker B] It’s not the invention of another Torah.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know whether this is a different Torah, but I’m not sure it’s interpretation. What exactly is interpretation here? “Let your house be a meeting place for the sages, and sit in the dust of their feet.” Interpretation of which verse is that?

[Speaker B] Moses, when he came to Rabbi Akiva’s study hall, and they told him—he didn’t understand a thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, Rabbi Akiva’s study hall is talking about Jewish law.

[Speaker B] He came, he—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He didn’t understand what was written, what they were talking about.

[Speaker B] Right. Jewish law, not Jewish law.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but it was Jewish law. It was a halakhic discussion, and then they said, “This is a law given to Moses at Sinai.” That’s Jewish law. But here we’re not talking about a halakhic discussion. Here we’re talking about things people innovate on their own, through their own reasoning. These are modes of conduct, really—it’s not, the category isn’t halakhic. So I think that Pirkei Avot, although it doesn’t deal with Jewish law, still reflects a certain process that Jewish law also goes through. Meaning, a process of humanization—humanization with an aleph, yes—personification. In other words, the humanization of Torah. Torah becomes something human.

And this is a very important point, because many times people present things as though the Oral Torah came down together with the Written Torah from Mount Sinai, and really the Oral Torah too is just some closed corpus passed down from generation to generation through tradition: we received everything from Sinai, everything is from the Holy One, blessed be He, we’re just a conduit, everything is excellent, and we can be perfectly confident about all of this. And we still understand that there is Oral Torah and Written Torah, but the attitude is that the difference is only in medium. In other words, it’s not essentially different. Everything comes from the Holy One, blessed be He, so we’re just a hollow pipe.

But here suddenly the Oral Torah reveals itself as something that is not just a change in medium. It’s a change in essence. This is a Torah that is not passed on at all from Mount Sinai. It is a Torah created by sages over the generations. That’s something very hard to digest.

[Speaker E] How do you explain Rashi at the beginning of Behar, that the Torah in its general principles and details was given at Mount Sinai?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Fine, well. Obviously that’s like the dispute between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael over whether the Torah in its general principles was given at Mount Sinai and its details in the Tent of Meeting, or whether both its general principles and its details were given at Mount Sinai. Usually people connect that there to the Oral Torah, but that’s not correct. “Its general principles and its details” plainly means what is written in the Torah. Of what is written in the Torah, even the details that appear in the Torah, even things that seem as though they were conveyed later, everything came from Sinai—the Written Torah. It doesn’t necessarily mean all the details of the Oral Torah there. That’s true even on the interpretive level.

Beyond that, even if it is true—and many commentators do apply this also to the Oral Torah—it’s pretty clear that this is a normative statement, not a historical one. In other words, the meaning is: you have to relate to words of Torah that are generated over the generations by sages as though they were given at Sinai. Its general principles and details, from our standpoint, were all given at Sinai. Even though it’s clear that much of that was not given at Sinai—most of it was not given at Sinai. After all, people argue about it, so one of the two sides is certainly mistaken. Mistaken in the sense that this was not given at Sinai. But normatively, from our standpoint, we have to treat it as though it was given at Sinai. That’s a normative statement, not a historical one—if it even speaks about the Oral Torah at all. Because plainly, those debates—after all, that’s what they say there—the question is what was given. For example, with Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael it’s much more explicit. There the question is what was given at Mount Sinai and what was given in the Tent of Meeting. It’s all about the Written Torah. When the Holy One, blessed be He, reveals Himself to Moses our teacher in the Tent of Meeting and tells him various things, they debate whether that was actually given at Sinai and repeated in the Tent of Meeting, or detailed there—I don’t know exactly how. But either everything was given at Sinai, or it wasn’t; maybe the Torah was actually given in installments. The Torah was given through an ongoing process; not everything was given at Mount Sinai.

[Speaker H] But if someone explains that everything was given at Sinai, then why all these verses that were said afterward?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s what I just said, I noted in parentheses—I said I don’t know, it’s hard to understand. Either it was repeated, or elaborated, or I don’t know exactly what. It’s a little hard to understand, because in the Torah itself there are things that appear as having been said in the Tent of Meeting.

[Speaker C] Rabbi, what is the Oral Torah in the sense of… it’s just the headings, isn’t it? As if there was a commandment and he explained it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so I’m saying—here, you’re already living in a later period, so don’t be anachronistic. What I’m trying to do here is reconstruct how people related to this. So I’m saying that in the earlier period people understood—

[Speaker C] I’m trying to think what was passed down orally from Sinai. That if an ox gored a donkey, then Rabbi Yose says this?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, certainly not.

[Speaker C] Neither Rabbi Yose nor anything like that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, so not Rabbi Yose. That’s exactly why I’m saying, I—

[Speaker C] I understand, that’s why I’m asking. I want to understand what they received orally.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Like, if it was that there are horn, tooth, and foot; that tooth and foot are exempt in the public domain and horn is liable in the public domain; and that “the fruit of a beautiful tree” means an etrog; that “totafot” means tefillin.

[Speaker C] So if we filter out from the Mishnah only those quotations, then it’s really not that much. Meaning, all the rest is just oral—in other words, it’s just human input.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who says there even was all the rest back then?

[Speaker C] No, I’m trying—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In that period, when they thought that the Oral Torah was only things handed down at Sinai, then indeed the Oral Torah was very limited.

[Speaker C] Right, so that’s why I imagine it was all basically what people explained to one another. It’s not that they learned—my guess is that if we filter the Mishnah and remove all the names of people and who said all the options, and just keep “the fruit of a beautiful tree” means this, and an ox—things everyone agreed on, always. Yes, the things there’s no dispute about. Meaning, what passed through the hollow pipe is really not very much. Right. And that doesn’t seem likely, yes, but I imagine they explained things to each other. What do you mean—there was a Written Torah, and then they got up in the morning, like—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] As I said, I said that even when there were disputes, I assume there were disputes, like I described with Rashi in Chagigah. I assume there were disputes earlier too, but those disputes were decided. In the end they had to determine what had been handed down to Moses at Sinai. So people argued with each other: I heard it this way, he heard it that way. Maybe they also brought in some logic—it wasn’t just documenting what we heard. But in the end it got settled very quickly, because every matter—because there was someone to ask, right? They immediately checked what the previous generation had received, settled it, and moved on. So in principle it is a hollow pipe. There are always, on the side—even in a hollow pipe there are disputes. There’s always a manner, details exactly. Manner, details—that’s true.

But in principle there was—once I told you that my uncle, my uncle, yes, he’s a Hasid, said that the Patriarchs certainly studied in Yiddish. Because they knew how to learn, and anyone who knows how to learn, learns in Yiddish. In other words, obviously. A lot of times we grasp reality that way—not as a joke. We make anachronisms, and we’re sure that what is familiar to us is what always existed. But no. What we call the Oral Torah today is something much broader and more detailed than what was probably the Oral Torah in the period up through Shimon the Righteous, say. There was some Oral Torah then, but it was probably just things fairly close to the verses, and not human reasoning, but only interpretation of the verses. And again, interpretation always involves reasoning, but the consciousness was the consciousness of interpreters. In other words, as far as we saw it, we didn’t see ourselves as adding anything; rather, yes, this is what it says here.

Now, when someone looks from the outside—and if you have reflexivity, yes, this reflexivity is kind of a modern phenomenon—when you look at things, you basically say, wait a second, this isn’t a hollow pipe. When you interpret something, you inserted something that already depends on your own reasoning. Like the dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad regarding the Shema. Maimonides says that it can be read in any language, just—look, this is in Sotah, a Mishnah in Sotah—it can be read in any language, provided one enunciates its letters carefully. The Raavad asks: all languages are interpretation, so who is it that can be precise about his interpretation? In other words, translation into another language is not a hollow translation.

[Speaker C] It’s a translation that contains interpretation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Once there is interpretation here, what is the point of being precise about the letters? This is already a human matter. It’s no longer the Torah verse, the wording of the verse in the Torah that came from the mouth of the Almighty. What is there to be precise about in the letters, asks the Raavad? This is your wording. Say your wording, and that’s it—what is there to be precise about in the letters? And the claim is that no, there’s no such thing: even translation from one language to another is interpretation. So all the more so when we debate meaning and so on—interpretations enter here, and those interpretations are our interpretations. In other words, they depend on our reasoning, our makeup, our way of thinking.

[Speaker C] That’s how “between the times” was born—otherwise it would just be “meantime.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Meantime. Yes. “Between the times.” So the transition here is not only a real transition but also a transition in consciousness. We move here from a consciousness of a hollow pipe, of transmission with no influence from us—even though I assume there was influence—but the consciousness is that we didn’t touch it. As if I’m handing you what I heard. To a consciousness that emerges at the end of the Second Temple period or in—again, I’m saying, the things were always there, it’s not that. But the mode of relating is different.

It’s like anyone who says everything came down from Sinai also understands that things were generated over the generations—it’s not that he doesn’t. Torah scholars know how things happen in the Talmud, and they understand that the Talmud produced laws out of human reasoning, and that there are disputes about it; not everything was handed from sage to sage back to Moses our teacher. But the ethos is like that, and you cling to it at all costs because that’s the ethos, so you don’t sharpen it for yourself and say, wait a second, this doesn’t stand up—there is human creation here. No, because the ethos is that everything came down from Sinai, so you don’t sharpen that for yourself.

From what stage did this become sharpened? And the innovation, the sharpening of these things, is very significant. Because true, even though this existed earlier, if you weren’t aware of it, it creates certain problems that I’ll get into shortly. When you conceptualize it and define it and put it on the table, suddenly you know how to handle it, because as long as it wasn’t conscious, it led to a kind of tangle, to a kind of paralysis.

Now I want to go a little more into the details of what happened there at the end of that period, at the beginning of the Yavneh period—essentially among the students of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai. Because Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, at the time of the destruction, asks, “Give me Yavneh and its sages.” And now, I happened to read—this reminds me, I was just saying—a book by Lion Feuchtwanger, The Jewish War, about Josephus Flavius, a historical novelist in Feuchtwanger’s style. It was very interesting. I mean, I’m not sure how accurate it was—pretty clearly, not fully accurate—but a literary reconstruction of a period is always interesting because suddenly you live inside it. You meet the people. People speak, think, have goals, have motives, there are arguments. You’re not used to relating to things that way when you read about them in the Talmud or in non-literary texts. But these people were flesh-and-blood human beings. They lived, they acted, they argued, there were these opinions and those opinions, these worldviews and those worldviews. A lot of times you need to reconstruct that through the artistry of a writer—to make a story out of it, to create a slice of life out of it, not just positions or conceptions. You plant it in flesh-and-blood people. There’s something about a historical novel that is very eye-opening, even if it isn’t accurate, even if it isn’t correct, because it still suddenly makes you understand that we’re talking about people. And what exists among people probably existed there too. Then you have to understand how that connects to what you see when you encounter the material in the Talmud or in their writings and so on.

Okay. Now I want to make the following claim, which I’ll try to show now: that this period was basically a period in which the attitude toward transmitting the Oral Torah changed, and the emergence of disputes is both a result of this and also its cause. In other words, the emergence of dispute is a result of the fact that Torah begins to be created by human beings. But once dispute arises, we also can no longer ignore it, and then it’s suddenly lying there on the table. The elephant in the room suddenly stops being transparent. Suddenly you see that Torah is being created by human beings. It’s on the table, and you have to deal with it. What do we do with that? How can that be?

And from here come “His Torah he meditates upon day and night,” all these interpretations that were generated in order to anchor the status of words of Torah like these, so that they too count as Torah. Because it really isn’t easy to grasp. For us, reading it today, these sound like trivial statements: “His Torah he meditates upon day and night,” his own Torah, everything is nice, a cute little insight. It’s not a cute little insight. There’s a massive innovation here, a massive innovation, which to us already seems obvious because we come afterward. But in that period Rabbi Akiva had to do this. We’ll still see Rabbi Akiva’s role in this matter. Because without that, we wouldn’t know how to deal with the phenomenon of dispute, which only intensifies in these generations.

Now, there’s a whole series of stories in the Talmud that I think it’s very easy to see have some connection among them, even though on the face of it they do not—except that the people involved are from the same period, always the first and second generations of Yavneh, all of them. But it’s a collection of stories whose literary force in the Talmud is very powerful. I’m talking about the Oven of Akhnai. I’m talking about the removal of Rabban Gamliel from the Nasi’s office, “on that day.” The disputes between Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabban Gamliel, that he should come with his staff and his purse, all kinds of sugyot of this type, whose literary force is very rare. I don’t think there are other stories outside this period with such force. And I think there’s also some substantive connection between them, not only a historical one. I want to look at things a little through this prism.

So: the generation after Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, who asks, “Give me Yavneh and its sages,” and thus Yavneh was established—and this is basically the first generation of Yavneh. His students: Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua. That’s more or less the first generation. Then there’s Rabbi Akiva, who was their student, and in the following generations Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah. The five students of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai appear in Pirkei Avot. So these fellows, the first and second generations of Yavneh, are basically the players in all these stories.

The Oven of Akhnai describes some dispute about the impurity of a segmented oven. There was some dispute—you also have it in tractate Eduyot—about a segmented oven, and there was some dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua over what its law is, whether it is impure or not impure. The Talmud says: “It was taught: On that day Rabbi Eliezer answered with every answer in the world, but they did not accept it from him. He said to them: If the law is like me, let this carob tree prove it. Let the stream of water prove it. Let the walls of the study hall prove it.” I’m skipping a bit. “A heavenly voice went forth and said: Why are you disputing with my son Eliezer, seeing that the law accords with him everywhere? Rabbi Yehoshua stood on his feet and said to it: ‘It is not in heaven.’ We do not pay attention to a heavenly voice, for You already wrote at Mount Sinai in the Torah: ‘Incline after the majority.’”

In other words, there is here, ostensibly, an innocent halakhic dispute. But notice: this is a period in which halakhic disputes are starting to intensify—the first generation of Yavneh, Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua. And Rabbi Eliezer brings all sorts of irrelevant proofs, mystical proofs: let the walls of the study hall prove it, let the stream of water prove it. Talk to me about the issue itself. Why are you bringing me signs and wonders? Bring me proofs. If you have an argument, tell me why you think the oven is impure or not impure. And Rabbi Yehoshua stands on his feet and says, “It is not in heaven,” “incline after the majority,” and we go by what we think.

This account opens with the words, “It was taught: On that day Rabbi Eliezer answered with every answer in the world.” What does “on that day” mean? I once saw in a book by Menachem Fisch—he’s a professor at Tel Aviv University, the son of Professor Hillel Fish, of blessed memory, and brother of David Harel, the mathematician from the Weizmann Institute. He wrote a book called Da’at Chokhmah, and in that book he draws an analogy between philosophy of science—which is his field—and the book of Ecclesiastes. He tries to show that basic conceptions of modern philosophy of science appear in Ecclesiastes. There are some interesting points there; other parts I think are a bit more forced. But among other things, I got this idea from that book.

He argues that “on that day” appearing here in the Talmud—“on that day Rabbi Eliezer answered with every answer in the world”—means bo bayom, “on that very day.” What does “on that very day” mean? The Talmud in… well, I don’t see it here, but the Talmud says there that after they removed—removed Rabban Gamliel and then restored him, so they removed Rabban Gamliel and appointed Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah in his place. “All ‘on that very day’ refers to that day.” Every place where it says “on that day,” it means that same day when Rabban Gamliel was deposed. Tractate Eduyot too. The whole tractate Eduyot was taught on that day, right. The whole tractate Eduyot was taught on that day.

Now obviously it wasn’t one day. It means that period, that span of time in which all these struggles took place. Menachem Fisch’s claim is that “on that day Rabbi Eliezer answered with every answer in the world”—that too happened “on that day.” “On that day” meaning, again, within the framework of these disputes. And in fact it is a little hard to understand the intensity of the dispute around the Oven of Akhnai. What exactly happened there? Why did they excommunicate Rabbi Eliezer? Is it forbidden to think differently? Why did Rabbi Eliezer need all these mystical proofs? Why doesn’t he conduct a discussion the way one conducts a halakhic discussion?

I think the background is exactly what I described earlier. Because Rabbi Eliezer is essentially a figure who refuses to see human Torah as part of Torah. “Rabbi Eliezer is a cemented cistern that loses not a drop”—that’s one of the things Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai says about his students—and Rabbi Eliezer is a cemented cistern that loses not a drop. It says of him that he never said anything he hadn’t heard from his teacher, ever. So Rabbi Eliezer is basically such a figure—he upholds the hollow-pipe conception. The traditional conception of Torah, traditional in the sense that Torah has to be transmitted through tradition. He is unwilling to accept Torah generated by human beings.

Therefore Rabbi Eliezer, once they argue with him about the impurity of the oven, is unwilling to accept what they say. They raise substantive arguments, and he too initially offers some arguments, but it very quickly turns into mystical argumentation. Why? Because Rabbi Eliezer isn’t trying to show them that he is right on the substantive level. He’s trying to show them that he is right because he is the most authorized, because the Holy One, blessed be He, agrees with him. Because what he says is what our rabbis said. In other words, he is saying: leave all your reasoning aside; I’m telling you what the truth is. The truth is what I received from my rabbis. “Much Torah I learned from my rabbis,” yes, “and I did not diminish from them even as much as a dog lapping from the sea.” That’s what Rabbi Eliezer says in Sanhedrin on the day of his death; he talks there about this, we’ll still get to it.

In other words, Rabbi Eliezer basically had three hundred laws about planting cucumbers—yes, Rabbi Eliezer. Meaning, he held the entire Oral Torah that he had received from his rabbis. That’s one side of the coin. The other side is that he was unwilling to accept anything else. What he received from his rabbis is Torah; everything else is invention. So therefore, basically, I’m not going to argue with you at all on the plane of proofs, on the plane of who’s right—that’s irrelevant. I’m telling you what I heard. Why should I care what you think? In other words, Rabbi Eliezer represents the traditionalist conception, yes, the conception that says Torah is a hollow pipe, and we pass on what we heard from previous generations. Where his rabbis got those three hundred laws about planting cucumbers from—that’s an interesting question, because I don’t think that was given at Sinai. But again, the consciousness is a traditionalist one. In other words, it is a consciousness that we are supposed to receive Torah from our rabbis.

[Speaker D] Why didn’t he just go with—what? “The carob proved it”? “The stream of water”? Just go straight to the heavenly voice. I have authorization for my tradition, that’s it. Why does he need all these stages?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That ranking is a progression, you know—stronger and stronger.

[Speaker D] The carob and the water—that’s authorization that you’re qualified.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the stream of water is authorization too. The stream of water—I perform miracles for you. What does that mean? It means the Holy One, blessed be He, is testifying that I am the authorized transmitter. Understand: if you bring irrelevant proofs, what does that mean? It means you’re not bringing proofs about the issue itself; you’re bringing proofs about the person. You’re bringing proofs that you are the most authorized person, because for Rabbi Eliezer that’s what matters. For Rabbi Eliezer, we do not examine words of Torah by whether they are logical. We examine words of Torah by whether they are authentic. In other words: am I the authentic transmitter, or are you the authentic transmitter?

[Speaker D] So that’s why it’s a stamp of approval.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. That’s why in the end it concludes with a heavenly voice. But all the proofs—again, I don’t have an explanation for why exactly it unfolds in this way, but I don’t think that’s problematic. In other words, he tries mystical proofs like these, increasingly stronger, until in the end you get the actual stamp of the Holy One, blessed be He, on what he says.

And opposite this comes Rabbi Yehoshua with a statement we’re already so used to that we’ve become almost blasé about it—but it’s an astonishing statement. “It is not in heaven.” And even if the Holy One, blessed be He, says like you, we will rule against you. What does that mean? Rabbi Yehoshua is basically the leader of the opposite camp, the opposition that later became the coalition after the revolution. Torah is a human Torah after the revelation at Mount Sinai. After the revelation at Mount Sinai, the mandate—“and You cast them down to earth”—the mandate was handed downward. Torah is generated by human beings and not by tradition. And that is the dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua.

Now, Rabbi Eliezer refused to accept all the proofs they brought, not necessarily because he had answers to them—I don’t know, maybe—but that isn’t the point. The point is that he wasn’t willing to accept proofs at all; it’s irrelevant, it’s not up for discussion. I’m telling you what my rabbis said, and that is Torah, period. That’s what we received from Moses our teacher. What are you even saying—what are you looking for on this playing field?

[Speaker H] Yes, I—two strange things here. First, it doesn’t say that they answered him with every answer in the world; it says that he answered them with every answer in the world. So apparently it’s specifically he who—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. At first he began with substantive explanations—“he answered with every answer in the world.” They didn’t accept it from him because they didn’t agree with his logic. Then he abandoned logic and said: leave it, I tried to explain it to you in your way, but I’m not—this is irrelevant. Even if I’m not logically right, it doesn’t matter. I’m telling you what the truth is.

[Speaker H] Okay. I didn’t understand why the Rabbi ties this specifically to tradition. Where do we see that? On the face of it, we see that he is trying to bring divine intervention, not tradition. Where do we see—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I tie it to Rabbi Eliezer’s general characteristics. Rabbi Eliezer never says anything he didn’t hear from his teacher. So it’s only natural to say, okay, what does that actually mean? We’ll see it even more in a moment. He is basically saying that Rabbi Eliezer is talking about the speaker, about the person, about the conduit, and not about the content being transmitted. That’s his principle. That’s why they excommunicate him.

[Speaker D] Why doesn’t he tell them, “I have a tradition from so-and-so my teacher, that this is what I heard”?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what he does tell them. That’s exactly what he tells them. He tells them: this is what I received, leave me alone with all your proofs. Now they said: it doesn’t seem logical to us; they couldn’t have said that, it doesn’t make sense. He said: why do I care whether it seems logical to you? I’m telling you this is the fact. Here, let the stream of water prove it, and the carob prove it, and everything prove it—prove that I am certain I’m right. I’m the most authorized person here. They agree about me, about my personality, my greatness, and so on. And they refuse to accept it because they insist that it must pass through their filter, it must pass through their logic. They are not willing to accept it otherwise.

Now understand: these are the students of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai. This is the stage at which the dispute between Hillel and Shammai, the students of Hillel and Shammai, comes into being. And the ones at the top of the pyramid in that period—which isn’t exactly the “pairs,” but it’s almost like the pairs—are Rabbi Eliezer and Rabban Gamliel. What about Rabban Gamliel? All those stories. Rabban Gamliel keeps pushing Rabbi Yehoshua around and refuses to recognize his arguments—when is Yom Kippur, when do we pray Minchah, all sorts of things of that type. He sends him to come with his staff and his purse on Yom Kippur that falls on the Sabbath—so far that the sages are no longer willing to tolerate it. And they remove Rabban Gamliel from the Nasi’s office.

Completely parallel to the excommunication of Rabbi Eliezer. By the way, they were brothers-in-law. Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Eliezer were brothers-in-law. And both stood at the top of the pyramid, both with a very strong traditionalist conception, a very strong authoritarian conception, unwilling to conduct a discussion on the issue itself, because they determine things, they know what the truth will be, and that’s it; there’s no room for discussion. And now both of them get smacked in the face. In other words, the second generation is no longer willing to accept this.

And the reason it is no longer willing to accept this, it seems to me—and again, a lot of this is conjecture, but I think it is fairly grounded in the historical circumstances and in the Talmudic passages—is that the dispute between Hillel and Shammai really brought things to a point where you just could no longer continue this way. I mean, that’s what the Talmud says: for three years—or two and a half years—Hillel and Shammai disagreed and could not reach a decision until a heavenly voice emerged. The Talmud in Eruvin says that a heavenly voice emerged and said, “These and those are both the words of the living God, but the law follows the House of Hillel.” In other words, that dispute there could not reach a decision until they resorted to a heavenly voice.

And again they ask—Tosafot there asks—after all, “it is not in heaven,” so why did they need a heavenly voice? I think I spoke about this once. I said there wasn’t much choice, because once the dispute is about the very methods of decision, how will you decide that dispute? “It is not in heaven” means that you have to decide according to halakhic decision-rules. When you’re in dispute, when you’re in doubt, there are rules: follow the majority, or something like that. But if the dispute is over which majority determines things, or how decisions are reached, then how are you going to decide that dispute itself?

[Speaker E] Itself?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A heavenly voice has to come.

[Speaker E] If there really is a conception that the transmission of Torah is purely a conduit, then what significance can Torah study have? It’s basically just memorization. Right, you get to—first of all, there can’t really be study. Right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And not study in the sense we’re speaking about here. Memorization. Right. Now no, it’s not only memorization. That’s what I said: a lot of this is a matter of consciousness, not of facts. I assume there were innovations there too. I assume there were interpretations that came out of people’s worldviews there too. But the awareness was—they didn’t notice it. It was transparent to them. It was obvious that we are only interpreting what we received, meaning that this is in essence what we received. You’re not aware that you are actually adding something of your own. You have no reflexivity about it.

Now we can see this even today. In other words, in the conservative conceptions that exist today—ask conservative people, they live in that consciousness. Even though it is clear to them that there are innovations and disputes and that it depends on reasoning—they know all that. But the consciousness in which you live is that you are only passing on what we received from our rabbis. You hear this all the time: we only received this from our rabbis—as if it came down from Sinai. In other words, from Sinai they studied in Yiddish, from Sinai there is a Council of Torah Sages, from Sinai one must vote this way or that way, or be or not be in the government, and all kinds of things of that sort.

Now no one really means it literally, but I do believe they mean it seriously as an ethos. In other words, there is here a kind of lack of awareness. People less rooted in modern culture have less reflexivity. In other words, they are less aware of what they themselves are doing. They don’t look at what they’re doing; they don’t give themselves a kind of methodological accounting: what exactly are we doing here? What have we innovated, and what did we receive? That’s more the concern of researchers, of academic people who stop and examine you: wait, do you understand that you inserted something of your own here? This is not innocent, naive interpretation.

[Speaker I] In the introduction to the Ketzot, he addresses this himself, and he says that even though it’s a novelty, that itself is what Torah is.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, fine—but that you can say as a normative statement, and I’m willing to accept that. But if you see it as a historical statement, then it means you are basically living in a kind of denial or lack of awareness. And I think that’s what existed until that period.

[Speaker C] No, I think that—I don’t know. Ox, horn, tooth, and foot, okay? So that principle is from Sinai. And its application in reality is usually more complex, the analysis of that thing, and that’s what they dealt with. It seems to me that in this generation what got taken to a new level wasn’t the practical dispute over applying it in reality, but over the principles themselves. In other words, it’s like, I don’t know, women as witnesses today.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine?

[Speaker C] That’s something dramatic. It’s not application. It’s roughly the kind of wars we have today. It seems to me that that’s what it was.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The more you deal with foundations and less with applications, the less you can afford not to be aware that you have a role in it. You do have a role; you can’t ignore that. It’s not that you receive Torah and only have to apply it. Fine, correct.

[Speaker C] But that application seems to me to have bothered them less, and that’s what they didn’t call dispute. And “dispute” they reserved for what we deal with today.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the first period, people saw themselves as applying a given set of principles. And in the second period, they suddenly understood that they were also creating new principles here; it wasn’t only application.

[Speaker C] They added tools—it wasn’t that they added tools for understanding, it wasn’t using the tools they had. Right. The very fact that—

[Speaker J] The very fact that the heavenly voice answered Rabbi Eliezer—does that show that they agreed with Rabbi Eliezer’s fundamental approach?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A principled approach, not about this or that specific detail? Seemingly, again, you understand, I’m not assuming that this was a historical event where a heavenly voice actually came out, and I’m not sure that’s true. The Sages describe it this way in order to convey the message. To convey the message that the Raavad writes, “divine inspiration appeared in our study hall,” in several places. He writes that, and therefore it’s obvious to him that such-and-such is the case. What, was the Raavad really a prophet? Divine inspiration is one level below prophecy. What he meant to say was: it was clear to us that this is the truth. That’s the intention. Now there too, when a heavenly voice came out and said that the Jewish law follows Rabbi Eliezer, it’s as if there was some sense that Rabbi Eliezer was saying, listen, the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself agrees with me. Meaning, I have a very strong feeling that this is the truth. But they told him: maybe you’re right in your feeling, but you have to convince us on the merits. I’m not sure there really were some transcendent events there, that a heavenly voice came out and all that, but it’s a story whose role is to convey to us that there was an argument there around this issue. Around the issue of whether you go by the person or whether you go by the content of the matter.

Look what happened with Rabban Gamliel. After they removed him, because he treated Rabbi Yehoshua that way and wasn’t willing to accept other positions, benches multiplied in the study hall. Right? Benches multiplied in the study hall, and then Rabban Gamliel’s heart began to trouble him, as if to say: look, I prevented all these people from learning Torah. Three thousand benches? I don’t remember, there were even numbers there, doesn’t matter, 300 multiplied? What? 400? Yes, I don’t remember exactly, but it’s told there that many benches multiplied in the study hall. What does that mean? Rabban Gamliel had stationed a guard at the entrance to the study hall and said: whoever is not inwardly like outwardly, let him not enter here. Just like some kind of Platonic academy. Meaning… no, you can’t come in here. Why should someone who is not inwardly like outwardly not enter? Because from my perspective, what matters is your reliability, because you’re now coming to receive the Torah and pass it on further. So what determines things? What determines them is whether you are a reliable person, that your inside matches your outside, that we can trust what you say, that if you say you received something from someone, then apparently you did receive it, and you’re not inventing things for me here and hanging them on someone else.

What happened when benches multiplied in the study hall? When benches multiplied in the study hall, that means they moved to examining the issues on their own merits instead of examining the person saying them. So why should I care whether his inside matches his outside? Let him bring his arguments and I’ll check whether he’s right or not right. So I can also be willing to accept people whose inside does not match their outside, because they can participate in the discussion. They’re not sources of authority, these people. These people are expressing a position. They express a position, and I’ll examine whether I agree with it or don’t agree with it. Why should I care how righteous they are, how trustworthy they are, or whether Heaven agrees with them or doesn’t agree with them?

So you see that the argument between Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah is the same argument as Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua, these two brothers-in-law. Both of them are fighting for a certain kind of Torah elitism that basically says: I want to examine the people who transmit, because for me the reliability of the transmission is what determines whether this is Torah or not. In contrast, the younger generation that argues with them says: no, we examine it with our own reason, and therefore I don’t care whether his inside matches his outside. Let him come in, let him say what he thinks. If he doesn’t convince us, we won’t agree; if he does convince us, we will agree. Why should I care whether his inside matches his outside or not? That becomes much less relevant.

And again, there is weight to the fact that someone says, “I received this Jewish law from so-and-so”; that carries weight even in the later period. It’s not that everything is only reason and that’s it. It’s some kind of interplay between reason and tradition. But the weight of the reliability of the person certainly goes down, because overall we can also examine the reliability of the claims themselves. And therefore I’m saying that Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Eliezer are both basically defending—these two brothers-in-law, or the older generation among the students of Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai—they’re defending the traditional conception, and their students are rebelling.

Now what happens there? Why really were there such intense forces in the argument? Because when the students of Hillel and Shammai began to disagree, then, as I said, they couldn’t decide. The Talmud in Eruvin says, and in the Jerusalem Talmud it appears that the students of Hillel and Shammai killed one another. Why? They killed one another—again I’m saying, I’m not sure there really was actual killing there—but it was probably a very, very harsh dispute. Actual killing, I don’t know. But even if not, clearly it comes to tell us that there was a very, very severe dispute there. Why was it like that? Because the phenomenon of dispute between the schools—now this is no longer the two Yoseis we saw in Rashi on Chagigah, but now there are two schools here, each one developing its own Torah on a great many questions, and it’s some kind of package deal: all of these think this way, and all of those think that way. What developed here were really two Torahs. And some concern arose there that the Torah was reaching the end of its road.

The Torah was reaching the end of its road. Each one was basically developing his own Torah, no longer speaking with the other, having nothing to speak with him about, he thinks differently, the conceptual tools are already different, they’re already moving to deal with the tools and not only with applications. That’s it, finished. And then there was hysteria. There was hysteria because this whole business was falling apart, the whole tradition was falling apart, to the point that the Talmud describes them as even killing one another, because of all the frustration, because it was no longer possible to speak. When it’s impossible to speak, then the blows begin. You can’t persuade, you can’t, because I say I received this from my rabbis, Beit Hillel received from Hillel, Beit Shammai received from Shammai. There’s no way to talk, no way to hold votes, no way to decide. So we stopped belonging to the same tradition. Now each side—there are now different sects, and it will develop into many sects, each one basically doing whatever he wants, and that’s it. This whole episode of the Torah tradition from Sinai is over.

And because of that fear, a very, very great difficulty arose there, to the point that they killed one another—but of course that didn’t help. Because killing is not a solution. In the end, the two schools remain, and you have no way to decide. And then what happens is that Rabbi Eliezer, by the way, about Rabbi Eliezer it says that he is “of Shammai”—I don’t know whether that means Beit Shammai or that he was under a ban, in excommunication. That’s a dispute among the commentators there. But Rabbi Eliezer and Rabban Gamliel still represent the conception of tradition. The younger generation says: with this conception we are headed for final disintegration. It can’t continue.

And therefore the argument there was not about the oven or about a meal-offering or about Yom Kippur. The argument there was about what Torah is. Is Torah a Torah of tradition, in which case we are left at a dead end, because now we already have several traditions and no way to determine who was right? They did not serve their masters sufficiently, as Maimonides says, right—but what can we do? We have no way to determine it. So what do we do now? If we do not accept the possibility of discussing matters on their merits, through proofs, and reaching conclusions, we are facing complete collapse. And that’s why the intensity of these stories is so strong: Rabban Gamliel is deposed, and Rabbi Eliezer is put under a ban until the end of his life. He remained under a ban until the day he died. They did not revoke the ban. After his death, according to one version, they revoked the ban. But he remained under a ban until the end of his life. That wasn’t because regarding the oven, regarding the impurity of the oven, he thought differently from the other sages. It was because he was not willing to accept their arguments.

Whoever is unwilling to accept give-and-take brings destruction upon the Torah. Whoever thinks the truth is with him, and that he is the one who holds it because he received it from his rabbis, and therefore is unwilling to hear other opinions, brings destruction upon the Torah. That could work as long as there were no disputes. But once a dispute arises that can no longer be closed in a simple way, these disputes that persist—from the two Yoseis, and afterward Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai—that is a dead end. If we don’t make a revolution here, the revolution of Yavneh, right—where they deposed Rabban Gamliel, put Rabbi Eliezer under a ban, threw out these two elders who led that whole generation, and everyone was their students—you have to understand what a move that was. It’s crazy. And they put Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah in their place.

On that very day, tractate Eduyot was taught. That whole tractate Eduyot was taught when they appointed Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah. Why? Because the whole tractate Eduyot—what is common to tractate Eduyot? Every tractate has some specific subject. Tractate Eduyot is a tractate with no subject. It’s a collection of things: this one testified that the Jewish law is such-and-such, and that one testified that the Jewish law is such-and-such. What connection is there between these things? The connection is that these are all the matters that remained unresolved and could not be decided until that time. There were such testimonies and other testimonies. In the end, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah came and said: okay, these two Torahs that remained stuck—bring everything into the study hall. From now on we open discussion. We’re going to close all these disputes. We’ll close them through give-and-take and voting, not by clarifying who is more right. There are testimonies there too, and they testify in the name of this one, in the name of that one, but the discussion in the end was a discussion. Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah closed all the disputes that they had not managed to close until his time. Why had they not managed to close them? Because in a Torah of tradition you can’t close a dispute. I say this, you say that. Okay, so now what?

And therefore they made the revolution there and put Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah in their place, and he closed all the disputes. And the whole tractate Eduyot is documentation of what he did. All those details in tractate Eduyot had basically remained open in the previous period. And they close this era of rupture, of this split that they couldn’t deal with at all, where there was a fear that the Torah was ending. Okay, I’ll continue with this.