Disagreement and Truth — Lesson 11
This transcription was produced automatically באמצעות artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- The goals of the semester and the shift from truth to dispute
- Formal and substantive authority, and a methodology for minimizing dispute
- The existence of dispute as a source of information: inevitable result and the ordination controversy
- Dispute and truth: rejecting relativism and the myth that “there is no dispute about facts”
- Restrictive interpretation as an opening to the discussion: interpretation versus contradiction, and the psychological difficulty
- The position of academic research, historical circumstances, and the danger of determinism that erases dispute
- “Chapters in the development of Jewish law,” the Sabbatical year in our time as rabbinic, and the context of discovery versus the context of justification
- Marxist/progressive criticism: moving from arguments to motives and denying facts
- Lex specialis and restrictive interpretation: preferring the specific in order to preserve content
- Judging favorably, “crooked reasoning,” and the principle of charity in interpretation
- The value of argument and evaluating a source: the introduction to Sha’arei Yosher and the logic of learning
- “It is permitted to lie so that they will accept from him,” forgeries, and formal authority
- One benefits while the other loses nothing: Rabbah bar bar Chana, “he treats them as ownerless,” and the connection to use and esteem
- Authority as a motive for restrictive interpretation, and the distinction between authority and reason
- The predicament of restrictive interpretation: examples from Gittin and Beitzah, and the claim that it is a “polite way of disagreeing” with Tannaim
- Attempts to explain the wording of Mishnahs and setting a goal for the next lecture
Summary
General Overview
The lecturer continues from the previous semester, which focused on the question of truth, and shifts this semester’s focus to the question of dispute itself, including decision-making, conduct in the absence of a decision, and the meaning of the very existence of dispute. He connects the discussion to the question of authority, distinguishes between formal authority and substantive authority, and shows how methodological assumptions such as we do not multiply disputes unnecessarily and interpretive mechanisms like restrictive interpretation are meant to reduce contradictions and preserve authoritative sources. He argues that the existence of dispute does not prove there is no truth, criticizes approaches that replace examining arguments with examining motives, as in a Marxist/progressive stance, and develops a principled justification for why restrictive interpretations are an attempt to interpret in a reasonable and justified way, not a “polite” trick for disagreeing with Tannaim, while also presenting the difficulty of restrictive interpretation when it inserts conditions not written in the source.
The goals of the semester and the shift from truth to dispute
The lecturer explains that this semester will focus on disputes themselves and not only on the question of truth, after having already discussed these and those, different conceptions of the relationship between the sides, pluralism versus monism and harmonism, and tolerance. He raises questions of decision, how to relate to two opinions when there is no ruling, and how to make decisions on halakhic and methodological levels. He opens with a broader discussion that touches indirectly on dispute through the question of authority and the interpretation of authoritative texts in the Talmud.
Formal and substantive authority, and a methodology for minimizing dispute
The lecturer returns to the distinction between formal authority and substantive authority, and situates the work of the Talmud as interpretation of Mishnah, baraita, and rabbinic expositions based on interpretive and methodological assumptions. He states a methodological rule of we do not multiply disputes unnecessarily and presents it as the assumption that one does not expand a dispute beyond the point that is absolutely necessary. He describes situations in which the very existence of a dispute reveals substantive information that affects the conclusion even without deciding who is right.
The existence of dispute as a source of information: inevitable result and the ordination controversy
The lecturer cites Rabbi Shimon Shkop on an inevitable result in a dispute among Tannaim in tractate Sabbath regarding a broom made of palm branches, and concludes that the very appearance of a disputing counterpart shows that the criterion of “what all people perceive” cannot serve as an absolute definition. He also cites the ordination controversy in Safed in the sixteenth century, with Maharlbach opposing the ordination attempt of Mahari Beirav, and argues that Maharlbach infers from the very opposition that there is no “agreement of all the sages of Israel,” and therefore the move cannot be carried out even if the other side thinks it is right.
Dispute and truth: rejecting relativism and the myth that “there is no dispute about facts”
The lecturer argues that the existence of different opinions does not prove there is no single truth, and presents the relativist claim as an invalid conclusion, since it is possible that some are mistaken and some are correct. He emphasizes that there are disputes even about facts, and defines as a “common myth in the yeshiva world” the statement that there is no dispute about facts. He notes that he will also discuss disputes about facts and the distinction concerning what we even identify as a dispute.
Restrictive interpretation as an opening to the discussion: interpretation versus contradiction, and the psychological difficulty
The lecturer defines the question of restrictive interpretations as a topic that does not directly concern dispute but mainly concerns interpretation of an authoritative source when there is a difficulty or contradiction. He describes restrictive interpretation as narrowing the scope of a source to a particular case in order to resolve a contradiction, and points to the sense of strain people feel when faced with such interpretations, including the example of Maimonides in his commentary on the Mishnah, where he interprets “a priest takes precedence over a Levite, and a Levite over an Israelite” as applying only when they are equal in wisdom, whereas “an Israelite who is a Torah scholar takes precedence over an ignorant priest.” He explains that restrictive interpretation can neutralize a dispute by presenting the sources as speaking about different cases, thereby allowing both to be ruled as law.
The position of academic research, historical circumstances, and the danger of determinism that erases dispute
The lecturer describes a scholarly claim that sees differences between the sages of Ashkenaz and the sages of Spain in the laws of self-sacrifice as deriving from the circumstances of the Crusades as opposed to a more tranquil period, and presents an extreme possibility in which “place determines” and the sages are merely carriers of the zeitgeist. He argues that if one takes this all the way, the result is that “there are no disputes,” because each position is true only relative to the reality that produced it, and then one should rule according to the reality rather than according to the person. He compares this to restrictive interpretation, which divides between cases and arrives at “one master said one thing and the other master said another, and they do not disagree.” He rejects this erasure of dispute and argues that the circumstances explain the context of discovery but do not eliminate dispute, because the sage justifies his position as the correct Jewish law “for all places and all times,” even if it was psychologically shaped within a particular reality.
“Chapters in the development of Jewish law,” the Sabbatical year in our time as rabbinic, and the context of discovery versus the context of justification
The lecturer mentions the book Chapters in the Development of Jewish Law by Yitzhak Gilat and the uproar surrounding the idea of the “development of Jewish law,” and interprets the example of the Sabbatical year in our time being rabbinic. He distinguishes between a cynical reading, according to which the sages “pulled a trick” in order to be lenient because of distress, and a reading according to which the distress provided motivation to sit and analyze the matter and find a genuine halakhic justification, similar to the permission granted to agunot, where the plight is a trigger and not the permission itself. He parallels this to philosophy of science in the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification, and argues that the source of inspiration for a claim is not important compared to the question whether the claim can be justified.
Marxist/progressive criticism: moving from arguments to motives and denying facts
The lecturer describes the Marxist outlook as one that, instead of examining arguments, examines motives and interests, and identifies in this the basis for progressive discourse in which “there are no facts and no truth and no arguments,” only agendas. He argues that a historical explanation that cancels dispute by treating a position as merely the product of circumstances is an application of that same pattern, and insists that one must engage the interpretive arguments themselves of Maimonides and Tosafot, and not their motives. He explains that the question of what caused a person to adopt a position belongs to discovery, while the question of who is right belongs to justification.
Lex specialis and restrictive interpretation: preferring the specific in order to preserve content
The lecturer presents a legal principle of lex specialis, according to which in a case of contradiction the specific source has priority when it is contained within the general one, so that the specific source will not be emptied of content. He illustrates this through the apparent contradiction between “You shall not murder” and the death penalty for Sabbath violators, and shows how the solution of preferring the specific effectively creates a restrictive interpretation: “You shall not murder” applies to other people, not to someone liable to death at the hands of a religious court. He illustrates a similar mechanism in the philosophical clash between the principle of causality and free choice, and suggests limiting the principle of causality to cases where there is no choice, in order to preserve both principles.
Judging favorably, “crooked reasoning,” and the principle of charity in interpretation
The lecturer cites in the name of Rabbi Chaim of Brisk the statement that the Holy One, blessed be He, created “crooked reasoning” in order to judge favorably, but argues in contrast that commentators on “judge every person favorably” are speaking about straight reasoning, not deliberate distortion. He presents an extreme example of a rational, plausible interpretation in favor of a “leading sage of the generation” in order to illustrate that one judges favorably when that is the more reasonable explanation than the alternative. He defines the principle of charity as an interpretation that presents the other person’s position in the best possible form, in order to confront the strongest argument rather than a “straw man,” and clarifies that this serves the clarification of truth, not victory.
The value of argument and evaluating a source: the introduction to Sha’arei Yosher and the logic of learning
The lecturer argues that a valuable argument is one in which a person loses and learns something new, whereas victory merely leaves him with what he already thought. He cites from the introduction to Sha’arei Yosher a demand that the reader not open the book if he does not appreciate the author, because otherwise he will adopt only what seems right at first glance and throw away every novel point that seems strange, and in that way he will learn nothing. He links this to the idea that one needs esteem or authority in order to invest interpretive effort in places that initially seem puzzling.
“It is permitted to lie so that they will accept from him,” forgeries, and formal authority
The lecturer cites the Magen Avraham on the permission to lie and attribute halakhic statements to a “great person” so that they will accept from him, and raises the question of how this can be possible without causing people to stumble in prohibitions. He suggests that the permission assumes people will not accept it automatically, but will only reconsider seriously, whereas if it is expected that they will accept it solely because of the name, then it is forbidden to do so. He distinguishes between attribution to a sage, which can awaken reconsideration, and forging a source with formal authority, such as the Talmud, and explains through this the severity of forging a “Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim” and the difference between that and attributing something to the Chafetz Chaim.
One benefits while the other loses nothing: Rabbah bar bar Chana, “he treats them as ownerless,” and the connection to use and esteem
The lecturer cites the story in Bava Kamma about Rabbah bar bar Chana, who passes on to Rav Chisda an apparent Mishnah as proof for the topic of one benefits while the other loses nothing, but only after Rav Chisda had “served” him, and emphasizes the difficulty that the proof seems mistaken because the owner of the fruit does lose. He quotes the Talmud’s answer, “ordinary fruit in the public domain, he treats them as ownerless,” and interprets this as meaning “as if ownerless” due to contributory fault, while still obligating payment for “what you benefited.” He explains that Rav Chisda, because of esteem and service, did not immediately jump to the contradiction, but invested effort in judging favorably and finding a sophisticated interpretation, whereas Rava, who had not “served,” objected right away.
Authority as a motive for restrictive interpretation, and the distinction between authority and reason
The lecturer explains that willingness to do “intellectual gymnastics” through restrictive interpretations depends on the source having formal authority or the speaker having substantive authority as a Torah scholar. He illustrates formal authority through the case in which Rav Nachman summons someone to a legal proceeding and they ask Rav Huna to come because of the honor due the son-in-law of the Exilarch, and compares this to the difference between a district psychiatrist and an ordinary psychiatrist, and between a judge and a law professor. He states that when there is an obligation toward an authoritative source, one must interpret it so that it accords with other sources and with reason.
The predicament of restrictive interpretation: examples from Gittin and Beitzah, and the claim that it is a “polite way of disagreeing” with Tannaim
The lecturer presents the restrictive interpretation in Gittin regarding “he wrote her a bill of divorce and placed it in the hand of her slave, who was asleep and guarding it,” where the law is established “when he is bound,” and emphasizes that the word “bound” does not appear in the original statement, and so there is an interpretive difficulty in introducing a condition that was never stated. He also cites the restrictive interpretation in Beitzah, where “an egg laid on a Jewish holiday” is narrowed to “a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath” because of preparation, and argues that this is an example in which “the essence is missing from the text” and the Mishnah did not formulate the limitation. He presents the claim that restrictive interpretation is a polite way of disagreeing with Tannaim and rejects it as intellectually dishonest, because it would allow every Amora to “escape” every difficulty in the Mishnah, and therefore he insists that restrictive interpretation claims to reflect the source’s intent rather than bypass it.
Attempts to explain the wording of Mishnahs and setting a goal for the next lecture
The lecturer presents different explanations for the non-explicit wording of Mishnahs, including a claim about wording for the sake of melody and a claim by Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner that Rabbi deliberately formulated things in a way that requires a rabbi in order to understand the Oral Torah. He rejects the latter explanation as implausible because it could cause actual halakhic failure in practice, and concludes that the difficulty remains and that an explanation is needed that will persuade us that restrictive interpretation is indeed a reasonable and correct interpretation of the Mishnah’s intent. He says he will try to arrive at that explanation in the next lecture after this long introduction.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, in this series we’re dealing with dispute and truth, or truth and dispute. In the first semester I dealt a bit with the formation of disputes, but in terms of the content I mainly dealt with the question of truth. And this semester I want to focus more on the question of dispute. So we spoke a bit about the Talmudic passage of “these and those,” different conceptions of dispute, what the relationship is between the sides, whether there is someone who is right, no one who is right, a conception of pluralism versus monism and harmonism, and so on, tolerance. Now I want to deal with disputes themselves and ask various questions about them, meaning how we decide, how to relate to the two opinions when there is no decision, how we make decisions on these planes. But maybe I’ll begin with something that is only indirectly connected to the question of dispute, and it continues to some extent the discussion of authority. I spoke about two kinds of authority, formal authority and substantive authority. In the end, the Talmud deals with interpreting authoritative texts: Mishnah, baraita, rabbinic expositions, and the like, and trying to see whether there are contradictions, whether there aren’t contradictions, how to understand them, how to interpret them, and so on. There are various assumptions there that come up in the Talmud, and afterward in the commentators too, regarding how to relate to disputes. For example, the question—the rule is that we do not multiply disputes unnecessarily. We don’t expand a dispute beyond the minimum that is necessary. If we have a dispute at a certain point, the assumption is that if there’s no specific reason, we won’t assume there’s a dispute on additional issues beyond that point. For example, that’s one methodological principle that deals with approaches to disputes independently, for now, of the question of who is right, but rather the question of what we do with the fact that we have a dispute. Okay? There are situations—we’ll deal with this later—there are situations in which the very existence of a dispute proves something about the essence of the matter. The very fact that someone disagrees with me reveals something to me. Let me just give one example, and these too are things we’ll get to later. Rabbi Shimon Shkop raises an argument regarding an inevitable result. He says there is a dispute among Tannaim in tractate Sabbath regarding brooms made of palm branches. If someone sweeps the floor with palm branches, the question is whether this can cause leaves to fall off the branch, and then there is a prohibition here of plucking, but it is an unintended act. Right? It’s unintended, because I intend to sweep, and if something gets detached, it gets detached. Like digging a hole or dragging a bench and making a furrow, so that is unintended. But what? Maybe it’s an inevitable result, that if I sweep then leaves will certainly fall, and then in a case of an inevitable result, even if it’s unintended, I’m liable. There is a dispute among Tannaim whether such a thing is an inevitable result. Okay. Now he says this: if there is a Tanna who disputes that this is an inevitable result, that means that even the Tanna who says it is an inevitable result understands that not all people think that way, because there is in fact a disputing counterpart. Meaning, there is someone who disagrees with him. Now, if the assumption is that the definition of an inevitable result is what all people perceive, then that itself shows you that you’re not right. The very existence of the dissenter—not because the dissenter is right, but from the very fact that he exists—yields a conclusion that is relevant to you as well. That’s one example. A second example: in the ordination controversy. Maharlbach in Safed in the sixteenth century, when they wanted to ordain Mahari Beirav, and then afterward ordain five of his students, the sages of Safed were in favor, and the sages of Jerusalem, led by Maharlbach, were against it. And Maharlbach, in his pamphlet on ordination, raises the claim that from the very fact that we are opposed, it follows that there is no agreement of all the sages of Israel, so you cannot ordain. Independently of the question now—it may be that you remain in your position that you are right and we are mistaken—
[Speaker B] Because of the claim that everyone, yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even if you think you’re right and we’re mistaken, the very fact that we exist projects something onto the steps that you are supposed to take according to your own view. That’s another example. So there are all kinds of examples. I’m trying to illustrate for you questions that arise from the existence of dispute, independently for now of the question of who is right and whether there is one truth or there isn’t one truth, but rather what we do in a situation where there is dispute. But the very fact that we exist projects something onto the steps that you are supposed to take according to your own view. So that’s another example. There really are a few examples. I’m trying to illustrate for you questions that arise from the existence of dispute independently for now of the question of who is right and whether there is one truth or there isn’t one truth, but rather what we do in a situation where there is dispute, and what it means that there is dispute. One thing it does not mean—and about this I spoke last semester—it does not mean that there is no single truth. The fact that people disagree is often brought as support for the claim that there is no single truth. Here, one says this and another says that. And in morality this is brought as support for moral relativism, yes, relative morality, because they think this is moral and they think this is not moral, so you see that there is no moral truth. Not true. These are right and those are mistaken. What, the fact that some people are mistaken means there is no truth? If I assume there is truth and people disagree, that doesn’t mean I’m wrong in my assumption that there is truth. It could be that one side is right and the other is wrong. What, are there no mistaken people in the world? The fact that there are different opinions doesn’t mean all those opinions are correct. And sometimes there are arguments about facts too. Scientific theories are also a kind of facts—aren’t there disputes about scientific theories? There are disputes about facts too. By the way, we’ll also talk about that—dispute regarding facts is also an interesting question. There is a common myth in the yeshiva world that there is no dispute about facts. Of course that’s not true. But I’ll talk about that too, and also about the question of how to understand disputes and what we identify as a dispute. I’m just trying to illustrate what kinds of questions I want to deal with this semester. I want to begin with something that doesn’t directly concern the question of dispute, although it touches on it, and that is the question of restrictive interpretations. Meaning, I want to talk about the question of when we have before us an authoritative text, a Mishnah, a baraita, or something like that, and we have some difficulty with it—it contradicts another source. Of course, one could say there is a dispute among Tannaim, or whatever it may be. Sometimes the problem is a logical problem and not a contradiction, and then it is more problematic; sometimes the problem is a contradiction between opinions. So it touches on the question of dispute, but not directly. It really concerns the question of interpretation more than the question of dispute. In any case, when a difficulty of that sort arises, sometimes the Talmud gives a restrictive interpretation. Meaning, here it is speaking only about a certain specific case, but it is not a general principle. Fine? It was talking about a certain case. This topic of restrictive interpretations creates distress, creates difficulty. It’s hard to swallow these things. Just yesterday or the day before, I heard someone—on Sabbath, on Sabbath—someone talked about the fact that Maimonides in his commentary on the Mishnah, I think, writes that a priest takes precedence over a Levite, and a Levite over an Israelite. Maimonides says: only where they are equal in wisdom, but an Israelite who is a Torah scholar takes precedence over an ignorant priest. Okay? So he gives a restrictive interpretation of the Mishnah. The Mishnah says a priest takes precedence over a Levite, a Levite over an Israelite. There are no qualifications in the Mishnah. He gives a restrictive interpretation. Okay? So someone said, yes, he forces it because he had some view or another, I don’t know exactly what, so he forces the Mishnah. Because his assumption was that if you give a restrictive interpretation to the Mishnah, that is forced. And in my view it’s not forced at all, but I’ll talk about that later. Okay, and so on. We know the phenomenon of restrictive interpretations; I don’t need to introduce it to you.
[Speaker D] Ashkenazic rulings are stringent when they don’t give a restrictive interpretation between a Mishnah and a baraita.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand. Where there is—
[Speaker D] A dispute and contradictions between, say, two baraitot, Ashkenazic rulings always choose stringency.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what? Why is that connected to restrictive interpretations? Because if you don’t—
[Speaker D] Give a restrictive interpretation, you try to go stringently.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you go stringently, that means you didn’t give a restrictive interpretation, and you’re claiming there is a dispute here and you rule like that opinion. But restrictive interpretation means there is no dispute here at all; they’re not talking about the same thing. So I rule like both sides. In this specific case I rule this way, and in the other cases I rule that way. On the contrary, when I give a restrictive interpretation, I neutralize the dispute. There is no dispute. I may have spoken about this in other contexts—it reminds me, there was once some panel with someone here from the Talmud department about the relationship between traditional learning and academic Talmud study. And I said there that if you take the assumptions of academic research to their conclusion, then actually it turns out there are no disputes. Why? Let’s take an example. Say that with regard to the Crusades it is known that there are different approaches among the sages of Spain and the sages of Ashkenaz. The sages of Ashkenaz were very stringent, Tosafot were very stringent: one must sacrifice one’s life, and one may even sacrifice one’s life where one is not required to—meaning, they went more in the direction of self-sacrifice and sanctification of the Name. And Maimonides… and some of the sages of Spain were lenient. They said, what are you talking about? It is forbidden to sacrifice one’s life anywhere that you are not obligated to; so if you’re not obligated, it is forbidden. And whoever did that is liable for his life, yes—after you’re killed, you’re liable for your own life, Maimonides writes, and so on. Maimonides and the sages of Spain were lenient on this matter. Now, quite a few scholars have already pointed out that this is a result of the historical circumstances in which those sages operated. Meaning, the sages of Ashkenaz, Tosafot, operated against the background of the Crusades. And in the Crusades it was necessary to raise walls high, otherwise we would have completely fallen apart. And therefore Tosafot, or the sages of that time and place, decided that one had to adopt a stringent, uncompromising position. Yes, one has to sacrifice one’s life over everything, not give up anything. Whereas the sages of Spain lived in a relatively calmer period, and therefore they adopted a more lenient position. Now, if the outlook—say, the traditional outlook—hears something like that, it immediately bristles. What are you talking about? They were fiery angels on high, they were not influenced at all by their surroundings, they dealt only in upper worlds, they were not at all influenced by their surroundings. The whole scholarly assumption is absurd. That’s nonsense, of course. But the question is: let’s say the scholars are right. They were not fiery angels on high; they were influenced. The question is what that means. Because you could take it too far and say this: you could say, then it turns out that if we are complete determinists, then if Maimonides had lived in France in that period, he would have ruled stringently. And if Tosafot had lived in Spain in that period, they would have ruled leniently. So really the place determines, not the person. The person just happens to be the one living in that environment, but he’s basically only a conduit. The circumstances dictate the ruling in practice. Yes, it’s the zeitgeist, what people call the spirit of the time or place, that really dictates the ruling; the people are merely carriers. There are such claims, these meta-historical claims. Take Einstein’s theory of relativity—books have been written claiming that it too is basically the product of the spirit of the age. If it hadn’t been Einstein, it would have been his cousin, who also wasn’t called Einstein, and he would have invented it. Meaning, it’s a product of the surrounding spirit. Now, if you understand it that way, then you understand what that means for me in Jewish law: that if I live in a reality similar to what prevailed in Spain at that time, then I should rule like Maimonides. And if I live in a reality in which something like France at that time or Ashkenaz at that time prevails, then I should rule like Tosafot. So really there is no dispute; they are talking about different realities, and both should be ruled as law. In this reality one should act this way, and in that reality one should act that way. That’s what should be written in the Shulchan Arukh—that’s what was there before the restrictive interpretation. That’s what really ought to be written in the Shulchan Arukh. So in practice it turns out there is no dispute between Maimonides and Tosafot. There is no dispute at all. It’s simply that in each set of circumstances one should adopt what those circumstances require. That of course takes the academic world too far, but basically it’s a natural consequence. And then it means there is no dispute, and everything is fine. Now restrictive interpretation basically does something quite similar. Restrictive interpretation says that when you have a contradiction, then really this thing, this source, is speaking about some exceptional, special case or whatever—yes, a bent, old, lame, crippled case—and that other source states the sweeping rule, the general law. And therefore one master said one thing and the other master said another, and they do not disagree. There is no dispute; you can rule both these sources as law and everything is fine. The difference is that when I speak about a dispute like the dispute regarding self-sacrifice, there you can also look at it differently. You can also look at it in the sense that the circumstances are what caused the sages who lived there in that place to see things in that way. But that is only on the psychological plane, let’s call it that. In the end, when they see things that way, they have a halakhic position. And that halakhic position they stand behind, and for them it is correct for all places and all times. The fact that a person is the landscape of his birthplace, yes, that a person is influenced by the circumstances in which he lives and acts—that’s true, we’re all like that. But in the end, it’s still me. And when I study the topic and state my position about it and issue a halakhic ruling by virtue of that position, that is a halakhic ruling, and from my perspective it is correct for every other place and every other time as well. The fact that I arrived at that position under the influence of all kinds of circumstances in which I live—that’s true. We are all influenced by many things. But that doesn’t mean there is no dispute. It only means that this caused me to see things in that way, but there is such an aspect in every situation. And someone who lived in Spain sees the topics differently, and therefore comes to a different conclusion, and he disagrees with the French sage, because both claim that this is how one should act in every situation. What brought them to that perspective is the circumstances, but not that they are saying this ruling applies only to such-and-such circumstances. Maybe that’s a parable for another point—maybe I also mentioned this, I don’t remember, last semester. There was, and still is, a book called Chapters in the Development of Jewish Law by Yitzhak Gilat. He was also, I think, a rector here, he was a Talmud lecturer here. And he had been a yeshiva student in Hebron, yes, and then, God forbid, went off the path and became an academic researcher. And he published a book, Chapters in the Development of Jewish Law. When that book came out, yes, there was a huge uproar in heaven—in the earthly heavens—and there was a big noise: this is heresy and what do you mean development and evolution of Jewish law? Look at that, the development of Jewish law? What, Jewish law develops? Jewish law is from Sinai, it’s always been this way, it’s preserved, no human hand has ever applied itself to Jewish law or touched it, Heaven forbid.
[Speaker E] Where is the complexity here?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, right. And fine, so of course: heresy, and so on. So immediately, immediately, I bought the book, because it was obvious to me that there must be interesting things there. So when I looked at the book, I saw there was neither hide nor hair of that. Meaning, it simply isn’t there. What he says there is this. For example, on the chapter about the Sabbatical year in our time being rabbinic. He says that in the period of the destruction, people entered into economic distress. There was severe economic distress. To leave the fields ownerless for a whole year was very hard. Not simple. So the sages sat over the matter and found a solution: the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic. So you can be lenient in various things because it’s rabbinic. Now, this statement can be understood in two ways. It can be understood one way as: the sages basically pulled a trick. Meaning, they really wanted to be lenient, so they spread some principle that isn’t true—that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic—that’s certainly not true, it has no source, nothing. But that covers over, in effect, the reform they made. They’re really saying not to observe the Sabbatical year because there is distress, but they can’t say that because it looks reformist, so they wrapped it in some package of no, no, the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic. But there’s no real justification for it. The distress itself supplied the… it was the rationale. The distress is the rationale. Not the halakhic rationale—it’s only a façade, yes, just a cover that it hides behind. But it could be understood differently. It could be understood that because there was distress, the sages needed to sit over the matter in order to find a solution. That was the motivation for why they sat over the matter. Now, when they sat over it, they genuinely found, for one reason or another, that there is indeed justification for claiming that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic. If there had been no distress, they wouldn’t have had the motivation to look for such a solution. So it could be that this idea—that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic—would never have been renewed, they wouldn’t have discovered it. Fine? But it would have been true then too; it’s just that people had no motivation, so they wouldn’t have found it. Now once they do have motivation, like in permitting an agunah, then the halakhic decisor sits there at the table and looks for all kinds of ways to permit the agunah—he has an agenda, obviously. Okay? But on the other hand, the agenda alone is not enough. He can’t say to the woman: look, since you’re miserable, therefore you’re permitted. Her misery is only the motivation to search for a halakhic permission that holds water. The misery is not itself the permission. Therefore they really do all sorts of interpretive and ruling maneuvers in order ultimately to permit the woman. But you need to do those maneuvers; you can’t just say, well, she’s miserable, therefore she’s permitted. So the woman’s misery is only the trigger, or the reason, or the motivation for why a person invests so much time to search for a halakhic permission, and why to adopt even a permission that sometimes seems strained. But it cannot be that the distress itself was the permission. That’s just… one second. I want to claim the same thing here too in the context of the Sabbatical year in our time being rabbinic. Exactly what he said there is clear—whoever reads it sees it. He meant the second interpretation, not the first. He didn’t say that the sages deceived us. He didn’t say that they call the Sabbatical year in our time rabbinic just because they decided they needed to ease the situation for people in distress. Rather, he says: since… or not that they say it, but since there was distress, they sat over the matter. They sat over it and searched in different directions and found—you know what, there actually is justification to claim that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic, and that will allow us to be lenient—exactly like in permitting agunot. This is a completely legitimate move; people do it all the time. There’s no problem with it. Therefore—and here Jewish law does not really change, that’s the point. Rather, something is exposed that if we hadn’t searched in that direction, we wouldn’t have exposed it, but it was there. It was always there. The same here—that’s what I’m claiming. But what does it mean that one is influenced by the situation? I am influenced by the situation, and therefore I see things in this way and not in another way. But now this is what I see, and this is my genuine position. As for what influences me, that’s interesting. It’s like in philosophy of science, where they distinguish between the context of discovery and the context of justification. Suppose someone comes with a new scientific theory and explains that his grandmother appeared to him in a dream and told him to say Ali Baba and Baba Sali three times in a row, and then she said, I will reveal the general theory of relativity to you. Fine, and that’s it. He says to everyone, listen, I found it, I have the general theory of relativity. How do you know? My grandmother, Ali Baba, Baba Sali, and Ali Baba Sali, whatever, all this crazy mixture. So what do we do with that? Ostensibly, either hospitalize him or bring him holy water. Same idea. But the correct and rational response is not like that. Why do I care why you think it’s true? Let’s check. If you’re right, everything is fine. Why do I care whether it came from your grandmother or from fantasies about your grandmother? Why do I care? That’s the context of discovery. How did you discover the theory? What are your sources of inspiration for the theory? But what interests me is whether the theory is correct, not what your sources of inspiration are. Everyone has sources of inspiration. Someone else can look at the sunset and come up with the general theory of relativity. Someone else can read a beautiful poem and get the general theory of relativity from that. A third person has some unusual mystical experience and his grandmother appears to him in a dream, and that’s how he discovered the general theory of relativity. Why do I care? I need to check whether it’s true, not where it came from for you. The context of discovery is a largely irrelevant discussion. How you discovered the theory. The relevant discussion is the context of justification. Meaning, whether you can justify it. Let’s test it in the lab and see whether it works or doesn’t work. And the same thing here. You tell me why Tosafot thought one had to be stringent in the laws of preserving life? Obviously the circumstances in which they lived led them to look at the topic in such a way that they emphasized more the aspects of stringency. But in the end, that is their position. They rule stringently as law. They really think that way. They can justify it in the Talmudic passages and also through reason. You ask why they chose those justifications and not Maimonides’ justifications, which also have justifications? Because the circumstances probably caused their perspective, their outlook, to be like that. Fine. A person is the sum of all the influences upon him. That is the person. But in the end, when I look at reality, this is how I see it. And someone else sees it differently, and there really are two such perspectives. And therefore this is a dispute. Why do I decide one way and you decide another way? It could be that we have psychological reasons, but that belongs to the context of discovery. I’m not talking about the context of discovery, I’m talking about the context of justification. The question is who is right. And here I need to decide who is right, because this is a real dispute. I don’t care what circumstances caused you to discover or adopt this position. After all, both sides have justification. Neither side is stupid. Both sides have justification. So why did you choose this justification rather than that one? Because the circumstances probably caused me to, or I don’t know, something else. The study hall in which I grew up. It doesn’t matter. All kinds of influences.
[Speaker B] Does discovery solve—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The problem?
[Speaker B] Does it justify or not justify a certain situation?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the opposite. I want to claim that according to Tosafot’s perspective, one should be stringent in preserving life even if you live in Spain. After all, you’re asking why they adopted that halakhic position and not Maimonides’ halakhic position, which also has justification. The answer is: because of the context of discovery. Because they lived in France, with all the distress and the Crusades and all those things. Very good. That’s what caused them to look at the topic in that way. But in practice they really do see it that way, and that is their genuine position. Now if you ask them, then they… it’s like, I don’t know, some book of later authorities that no one found happened to come into my hands, just for the sake of discussion. I found there a brilliant argument. Now I issue a new halakhic ruling against what is accepted in the world. Fine? Does it matter that it happened only because I discovered that book? No. It merely revealed to me an argument I had never thought of. If I had thought of it myself, I would have said it even without the book. The book merely caused me to be exposed to that argument, or to look at the topic from that perspective. That’s all. But now, now, this is how I look at it, and this is my perspective and my position. What difference does it make what caused me to arrive at that perspective and outlook? That’s an entirely different question. In the Marxist outlook, yes, a person is the landscape of his influences. Meaning, there are no positions. This is the basis for what is called today the progressive conception—I know why it’s called progressive. Today’s approach, yes, that there are no facts and no truth and no arguments. We see this today all over the world. What caused this is basically Marxism, which announced this outlook, because Marxism basically, instead of examining arguments, examined motives. If you make a certain argument, immediately: what are you trying to achieve? Where is your interest here? Yes, very familiar today. Every political commentator, when he hears a political statement—none of the commentators ever imagines that maybe the person actually thinks that way. No, what was he trying to achieve? Who will go with him and who will go against him, and what kind of conjuncture is he trying to create—why is he saying this? Maybe he’s saying it because he thinks so. That too is an option. Exactly. And that is the Marxist, progressive outlook, call it what you want. By the way, progressivism really is taken from the Marxist world. The progressives of the past were the Communists; they called themselves progressives.
[Speaker D] A costume change of the left.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but no—progress in literal translation means advancement. They understand it as advancement. Now Communism saw itself as advanced. The term progressive is a Communist term. I have a Communist brother-in-law, and he’s an old-style Communist, immediately from the old camp. And at first, when I heard him talking about “we the progressives” and those—what did he call them, I don’t remember anymore—counterrevolutionaries maybe, that really is already an anachronistic term, the terms—it was bizarre. Meaning, it’s a term taken from a hundred years ago. It exists; my brother-in-law is not—he’s older than me by a few years. Yes, obviously, that changes nothing.
[Speaker B] The facts don’t influence—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This is true of every one of us, not just the communists. Facts don’t affect any of us, not just the communists. In that they’re not unique. So that terminology has suddenly moved to center stage today. Progressivism—twenty years ago I heard him using that term, and I thought, what is he talking about? He’s speaking in a language we’d forgotten, the language of the old communists, it was bizarre. The children of light and the children of darkness, the progressives and the regressives, and so on. And it came back to the forefront in a big way, and not for no reason, because communism came back to the forefront. Not communism in the sense of a left-wing economic view, but communism in the sense of Marxist discourse. Marxist discourse basically says: I’m not examining your arguments at all, I’m examining your motives. Those are what are speaking through your throat. So there’s no question of justifications and arguments and reasoning and facts—it’s irrelevant. There are no facts, no justifications, no arguments. We hear this today in every interview at a typical pro-Palestinian demonstration; that’s what you hear there. No facts, nothing—just agendas on the table. There are agendas, so leave me alone, don’t confuse me with facts. It’s become an ideology: don’t confuse me with facts. It’s not “I caught you with your pants down.” He says: don’t confuse me with facts. This perspective—you understand that this pseudo-research perspective I mentioned earlier is really a Marxist perspective. Because what does it actually say? The sages of France aren’t really making substantive arguments about why to be stringent regarding saving life or sanctifying God’s name. They have interests, motivations—interests not necessarily in the crude sense that they wanted to make money, but interests in the sense of strengthening Judaism, whatever—but that still isn’t substantive from the standpoint of the passage. It’s not that they studied the passage in a certain way and therefore reached these conclusions. That’s a Marxist way of looking. Now no—Marxism is a label; I mean it as an accusation here, not just a description. In other words, I’m saying: you ignore the arguments and focus on the arguers. But they do make arguments; they have interpretive arguments in the passage. They claim the passage should be learned this way. And Maimonides also has arguments, and he says: I think the passage should be learned that way. So examine the arguments, leave the arguers alone, and say whom you think was right in interpreting the passage. Okay? That’s really the claim. Fine. Let’s close all those parentheses—I have no idea where they even started. I’m going back to restrictive interpretations.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So with restrictive interpretations, what happens? With restrictive interpretations, basically we take such a contradiction or such a dispute and resolve it through an argument, a distinction, or some kind of answer. And that answer, on the face of it, usually looks very forced, but it’s not the mechanism I talked about earlier. We’re not putting things in context; that’s not the academic solution. Not: he said this because he belonged to that study hall, because he lived and operated in such-and-such an environment. Rather the claim is that he is speaking about a certain case. Now you have to understand that in the background there’s a principle lawyers call lex specialis. What is lex specialis? When there’s a contradiction between two sources, the more specific source always takes precedence. For example: there is a prohibition in the Torah, “Do not murder.” On the other hand, there is a death penalty for Sabbath desecrators. So if you kill a Sabbath desecrator, are you violating the prohibition “Do not murder”? Murder is forbidden. So what do you do? There’s a contradiction here between two principles of Jewish law. On the one hand, kill a Sabbath desecrator; on the other hand, there is a prohibition against murder. What do you do?
[Speaker F] What do you mean?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What, it’s not murder? To kill him in cold blood—that’s not murder? No, that’s not relevant. When you murder them, you’re not allowed to murder them—
[Speaker F] Fine, in a religious court there is—
[Speaker D] A death penalty. It’s not murder; his blood is ownerless.
[Speaker F] You know, it—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It reminds me of what Rabbi Dessler says: when Torah scholars alter their words—in the chapter “These Are Found Articles,” for the sake of peace—so he says it’s not a lie, because that is something one is allowed to say. It’s not a lie? Nonsense. Of course it’s a lie. It’s a lie because what you said doesn’t match reality; that’s called a lie. To say that in these cases it is permitted or proper to lie—fine. But you can’t play with the definitions.
[Speaker F] What? There’s no difference between this part—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —and that part? It doesn’t matter; for my purposes right now there’s no difference. Legally, of course there is.
[Speaker F] On the Sabbath itself, and someone who desecrated the Sabbath isn’t considered—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, I’ll murder him on Sunday, obviously. And murdering him on Sunday is also an offense. I’m not talking about the prohibition of taking a life on the Sabbath; I’m talking about the prohibition of murder, not taking a life on the Sabbath. Actually, that reminds me of the beautiful captive woman. The beautiful captive woman—the medieval authorities all say, and the Talmud already says, “The Torah spoke against the evil inclination.” It can’t be that the Torah permits such a thing, right? Why can’t it be? What was the problem in war? What problem did the Sages see when they saw that ruling? They said: wait, the Torah can’t possibly permit this; it’s “against the evil inclination,” it can’t be fully permitted. Why not? Do you know why not? Not because it’s forbidden to rape female captives—on the contrary, blessed be he who rapes female captives. Just kidding. What’s forbidden is relations with a non-Jewish woman. It is forbidden to have sexual relations with a non-Jewish woman. That’s all; that’s what bothered them. Where is the moral problem that everyone always waves around? People say: what do you mean, taking female captives and raping them? For what? It’s not a need of war, nothing—it’s a terrible moral wrong. People always say: well, the Sages were also troubled by that, and therefore it’s only “the Torah spoke against the evil inclination” in wartime. No. The Sages were not troubled by that. As far as I’ve seen, none of them, neither they nor the commentators, even raises the moral issue at all in this passage of the beautiful captive woman. The only thing that bothers them is: how can it be permitted to have relations with a non-Jewish woman before she converts? Afterward she also has to convert. But in the first act, you’re having relations with a non-Jewish woman—how can that be? Fine: “the Torah spoke against the evil inclination.”
[Speaker B] And is that an enactment at the end of the whole matter?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not an enactment; it’s Torah-level. Relations with a non-Jewish woman—it’s a more complicated story, but simply speaking it’s not an enactment. Yes, simply it’s not an enactment. Fine, I’m just saying—very often we are captive to the conceptions within which we live, apropos the conceptions within which we live. Fine, so let’s get back to our topic.
[Speaker B] Capitalism also basically has its own approach. For it, every position is money.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t say people don’t have positions—of course they do. And I also didn’t say people don’t have flaws—of course they do. I gave an example from communism; I could have given other examples too. It’s not that I’m claiming communism is bad and capitalism is good because of that; I claim that for other reasons, but not because of this. In any case, the point in the end is that lex specialis basically says the specific has priority. What does that mean? The Torah said to kill Sabbath desecrators, right? And the Torah said not to murder. Now if I prefer the principle of “do not murder,” then the instruction to kill Sabbath desecrators is completely emptied of content. Whenever you kill a Sabbath desecrator, it’s murder—so that verse should basically be erased from the Torah. Why was it written? What did it mean? But if I prefer the specific verse and say: no, no, it is permitted to murder Sabbath desecrators, and what the Torah said about not murdering refers to ordinary people, not someone liable to death because he desecrated the Sabbath—then both verses retain content. There is both an obligation to kill a Sabbath desecrator and a prohibition to murder someone else. You see? I made a restrictive interpretation: not Sabbath desecrators, but someone else. That’s what’s called priority of the specific. Whenever there is a general principle and a specific principle, the specific principle takes precedence. By the way, that’s only when the entire specific principle is contained within the general principle. If it’s specific but only partially overlaps—just a partial Venn diagram overlap—then that’s not true. But if it is wholly contained in the general principle, then the specific always takes precedence. Otherwise the general swallows the specific and nothing remains. The specific will have no content. Okay?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now this is true in every legal dilemma and every philosophical dilemma, in all sorts of contexts; it’s always correct to prefer the specific. For example, in another context, there is a principle—the principle of causality. I, for example, think the principle of causality is true. I assume most of you agree too: things have causes; everything has a cause. On the other hand, I also think human beings have free choice. Those two principles do not fit together. If a person has choice, that means what he does is not the product of causes, right? He could have done this, he could have done otherwise, even though the circumstances are exactly the same. The principle of causality says: if you give me the circumstances, I’ll tell you what the next stage will be. If you have free choice, that means the circumstances do not determine the next stage. So that contradicts the principle of causality. Okay? So what do we do? Many people say: fine, then we have to give up free choice, because it contradicts the principle of causality, which is the foundation of science. So apparently we have no free choice. That’s one of the strongest arguments in favor of determinism. Okay? And I say no. I think the opposite. You take two principles that both seem true to me, and you prefer the general one? The reverse—you should prefer the specific. And therefore it means: we do have free choice; the principle of causality applies everywhere that human choice is not involved. It still remains in force; I accept it—except for cases in which human choice is involved. You understand? Very often people don’t understand how to deal with contradictions. Because once you see a contradiction, you say: fine, so you have to choose a side. Fine, yes, you do have to choose a side. The question is which side. And here, in this case, I choose the side that keeps both principles I believe in alive. If I chose the other option—if I chose the principle of causality as the one that prevails—then free choice would go into the trash, and I would have to give it up. But I have a very strong intuition that this is true and that is true. So what do I do? The most logical way is to prefer the specific. To say: I have free choice; what about the principle of causality? Apparently it does not apply to events of free choice. I made a restrictive interpretation. Okay? And very often what we’re really doing in a restrictive interpretation is taking a principle that appears to be a general principle and narrowing it to certain cases, because otherwise it would contradict something else. All right? That is basically what it means to make a restrictive interpretation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, sometimes in a restrictive interpretation I don’t prefer the specific—I invent a specific. No, so I’m saying: that’s one type of restrictive interpretation. Sometimes it’s like that, sometimes not. But it’s one type of restrictive interpretation, because what I’m really saying is: I’m narrowing the statement here to only some of the cases, even though it is presented as a general statement, because of some difficulty. All right? A conceptual difficulty, or a difficulty from a contradictory source, or whatever it may be. In a certain sense, that is really the mechanism that makes a restrictive interpretation. The restrictive interpretation says: look, what’s written here contradicts that principle. Fine, so I’ll apply this only to a very specific case. What did I do? I narrowed this principle to only part of the set of cases, and that preserved the other insight. You’re right that here the narrowing is dramatic—not that I excluded one case, but the opposite: I excluded all the cases and left only the specific one. But the logic is the same logic. So the whole question is just how much you narrow. Fine, that’s a quantitative question.
[Speaker H] How do I interpret Jewish law as that kind of restrictive interpretation and not as some kind of change in its direction?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I interpret it that way because I really think that’s what it says. I’ll give one more introduction before we get into the issue—I’m still in the introduction stage. They once asked Rabbi Chaim of Brisk—plain “Rabbi Chaim” means Rabbi Chaim of Brisk. So they asked him: why did the Holy One, blessed be He, create crooked intellect? Crooked intellect? Everything in the world has a reason why it was created. Why did the Holy One, blessed be He, create crooked intellect in people? So he said: so that they would judge favorably. To judge favorably, you need a crooked intellect. If you see something whose meaning is obvious, and you say no, no, really—then you’re judging him favorably. Yes, like that story in tractate Sabbath about Rabbi Akiva, who worked as a laborer for someone and the man didn’t pay him, and said no—and your sheep went here, yes, he didn’t pay from the sheep because they had gone. And why not from the land? Because the land was mortgaged. He judged him favorably through all sorts of restrictive interpretations, and in the end it turned out that apparently it was even true. In any case, Rabbi Chaim’s claim was that you need a crooked intellect in order to judge favorably.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But when you look at “Judge every person favorably,” the Mishnah in Avot, the commentators there don’t say that. To judge favorably is not to use crooked intellect; it is to use straight intellect. If it’s crooked intellect, don’t judge favorably. You have to use straight intellect. The obligation to judge favorably is a statement against the evil inclination. Suppose you see the greatest rabbi of the generation chasing an engaged young woman down the street with a knife in his hand, okay? And you say: well, apparently she worked in his kitchen, forgot the knife at his house, and he ran after her to return the knife. And you laugh, but that’s the logical interpretation. Do you understand? It’s the logical interpretation. What’s the alternative? That the greatest rabbi of the generation is running in the middle of the street chasing an engaged young woman in order to rape her at knifepoint? That’s not likely. I don’t know, it could be—there is no guardian regarding sexual impropriety—but it’s not likely. It is far more likely to say that supposedly strange interpretation, right? So you have to judge favorably, but with straight intellect, not crooked intellect. To judge favorably means: don’t follow your evil inclination and interpret things in a problematic way if that’s not logical. If it is logical, then it’s logical. And if it’s not logical, then leave it alone—that’s the evil inclination pushing you to interpret it that way. Think of other options, and you’ll see that if he is a good person, he doesn’t do things like that. Think—try to understand how there could be such a situation that does not make him look bad but makes him look good, because it is more likely that such a person is good, assuming that is in fact more likely. I’m saying: it depends on the person, it depends on the situation, but that’s what’s called judging favorably. Look in Rabbenu Yonah, in Maimonides, everywhere.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But very often we make restrictive interpretations, right? I mean, this is a restrictive interpretation, right? I see someone chasing a woman—law of a pursuer—wait, wait, wait, I make a restrictive interpretation: maybe she worked in his kitchen earlier, forgot the knife there, and he’s running after her with the knife to return it. You understand that this is a kind of restrictive interpretation. Now here I’m making the restrictive interpretation in order to judge him favorably. Why? Because I have another principle that says this man is righteous. It’s not likely that he’s chasing an engaged young woman, certainly not in public, in order to rape her. Okay? So since that’s the case, this is once again a kind of contradiction. How can it be? I see that he’s chasing, but on the other hand he can’t be chasing. Ah, apparently he isn’t chasing; rather this is some special case in which it isn’t pursuit. Okay? The same mechanism I mentioned earlier. So judging favorably too—what a restrictive interpretation does is judge a source favorably. I have a source that contradicts another source, okay? Now I can leave it as a contradiction. What is written here is foolish, impossible, or contradictory, right? But that is less likely—or less likely than the option that perhaps there is some interpretation here that we missed. So what is it? When I make a restrictive interpretation, I am really saying: I want to judge this source favorably. But it makes sense to judge it favorably only if the one who said it isn’t an idiot, if I have some respect for him. So I won’t make a restrictive interpretation for the source of an idiot, because he probably just made a mistake. Why do I need to make restrictive interpretations in order to reconcile him with contradictions? He didn’t think about the contradictions at all. But if I respect the person who said this source—he’s not an idiot. Even a non-idiot can miss things. But if I have an option to reconcile it, then that is obviously the preferable interpretation, a reasonable interpretation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And by the way, this is what in other contexts is called the principle of charity. What does that mean? The principle of charity means that when someone argues with me and presents some position, I will always interpret it in the most favorable way possible for him, and only then begin to argue with him. Because very often we have a tendency to seize on one word and immediately hit him with the counterargument, and I’ve knocked him out. But if you stop and think, maybe he meant something else that is more reasonable, then you won’t be able to catch him so easily. Therefore I have no interest in doing that, okay? But an honest person should do it. You need to present the other person’s argument in the best possible way for him and then confront it—not interpret it in the dumbest possible way and then make fun of him. That’s arguing with a straw man. It’s easy to ridicule the position opposite you and then say, fine, so the guy’s an idiot. No—try to think: maybe there is something in what he says. And if so, then come and see: maybe he’s right, maybe he’s not, but raise arguments to show that he isn’t right. In other words, that’s what’s called the principle of charity in interpretation. By the way, the principle of charity does not necessarily—it’s a bit different from what I said earlier, because the principle of charity does not necessarily assume that the person really meant what I put in his mouth. But that’s not important, because I want to clarify the truth. I don’t care; this isn’t a gladiator fight about who wins, me or him. I want to clarify the truth. Now if there is another claim—he didn’t mean it, but another claim that is in fact a good claim—then I need to deal with it. What do I care whether he meant it or not? So I’ll interpret him according to the principle of charity, I’ll present a better argument, and then I’ll have to deal with it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It reminds me—when I was in yeshiva in Bnei Brak, we came across some Pnei Yehoshua in… never mind. Yes, I could tell it, but it would take me too long. Anyway, I had an argument with my lecture teacher, and we went to some other lecture teacher for a kind of rabbinic arbitration. Now he presented the question, and when he presented my position, he presented it much better than I did, even though he disagreed with me. He presented it much better than I did; in any case, he convinced me that I was right. And it was really a wonderful example of the principle of charity. But this isn’t a question of character and ethics, and I’m not telling saintly tales about him—that’s not the point. “Saintly tales” is what comes after the blessing “Who formed man.” I mean, I’m talking about something else; I’m talking about logic. If you really want to clarify the passage, not to win, then examine it: if someone raises a good argument against you, even if he didn’t intend it and didn’t think of it, you still have to deal with it. So you need to present the opposing argument as well as you can, and afterward decide whether he is right or not right. Bring arguments—fine. That is the meaning of the principle of charity. Therefore in that sense the principle of charity is different from the restrictive interpretations I was talking about before, because with those restrictive interpretations my aim really is to clarify what the source meant, and if I make a restrictive interpretation, then I really want to claim that this is what the source intended. With the principle of charity, I interpret the source or the position in the best possible way, but not in order to make the speaker look as good as possible—or at least not only for that—but in order to engage with it genuinely and truly clarify the issue. Okay? Therefore here I am not doing kindness with the source; rather I want to test whether that is in fact what it says. And then one has to examine the restrictive interpretation not in the sense of whether I’m a good person because I made a restrictive interpretation and showed that the Mishnah is not stupid. I made a restrictive interpretation and now it’s fine. Looking at it through the lens of the principle of charity, one could say we’re checking whether I’m a good person. Don’t check whether I’m a good person; I want to check whether I’m right—whether this is really the correct interpretation of the Mishnah. Therefore our question here is not a question of discussion culture; it is a real substantive question in the theory of interpretation. Is such an interpretation a reasonable interpretation or not? Okay? That is really the question regarding restrictive interpretations. Yes—someone wanted earlier, you wanted? Someone earlier wanted to comment.
[Speaker I] What you said about the principle of charity is basically that you’re arguing with yourself.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. I’m basically using the other person to raise arguments that I might not have thought of on my own. So if he raises an argument and I suddenly see that actually it can be presented in a way I hadn’t thought of, and there’s an interesting side here—absolutely, that is exactly what I want to do. I have no interest in anything else. For me, he is only a means of clarifying the passage. I don’t care whether I’m right—I mean whether he’s right or I’m right. If it turns out that he’s right, I want to know that he’s right, because my goal is to know what the truth is, not to defeat him. I’ve also said more than once that the only argument worth having is one in which you lose in the end. Right? Because in an argument in which you won, it turns out that you were right all along and you didn’t learn anything new. The position with which you arrived is the correct one. Okay, so why did I waste my time? Maybe in order to teach him; after all, one should be charitable—that too, to teach him. But I wasted my time. But an argument in which I was wrong, I lost—that’s an argument in which I discovered that something I previously thought was true has now turned out not to be true; I learned something new. Such an argument has value. Also, one learns from the mistakes—
[Speaker H] —of others?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Everyone’s, not just those, right. So here this is really an interesting point, because maybe I’m drifting a bit in the introduction, but it’s an important introduction. In the introduction to Shaarei Yosher—not my introduction; now I’m talking about the introduction to Shaarei Yosher—in the introduction there he asks the reader: if you do not respect me, don’t open the book. Why? Because, he says, I invested a lot of thought in this book. And some of the things will seem strange to you at first glance, I’m sure. There are difficulties—anyone familiar with Shaarei Yosher knows there are difficulties—and it’s very winding, and sometimes it seems too winding. So he says: if you respect me, then you’ll read it even though it seems strange at first glance, and you won’t just throw it away because it seems strange. You’ll think again; maybe there is something here after all. If you don’t respect me, then what will happen? If at first glance it doesn’t appeal to you, you’ll throw it away; if at first glance it does appeal to you, you’ll adopt it. In the end you’ll remain with whatever seemed right to you at first glance anyway. So why did you open the book? Just stay with what you thought in advance. You’ll never change your mind, because you’ll never seriously consider anything. Even if it seems strange or wrong at first glance, you stop and think: wait, wait, but the person who said this is not an idiot. Let’s try to think—maybe there is something here. And then suddenly you’ll discover things you had never thought of before. You’ll learn new things.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And that connects to the well-known Magen Avraham in section 156, I think, where he says, “and afterward he should go out to his work,” at the end of the laws of the morning prayer in the Shulchan Arukh: “and afterward he should go out to his work.” Okay? That’s a Jewish law not everyone is careful about. In any case, the Magen Avraham there gathers all the laws for which he didn’t find a place. And one of them is a passage in the Talmud—in two places, actually—that a person is permitted to lie and say things in the name of a great man in order that people accept them from him. In order that people accept them from him. I see that people aren’t accepting something from me that I think—ah, this is explicit in Maimonides! Or Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said this. Fine, if Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said it, then they’ll accept it. So I’m allowed to lie and hang it on a tall tree—if you want to be hanged, hang yourself on a tall tree. Yes, if I want them to accept something from me, I hang it on a tall tree. I lie, I say he said it, and then people accept it, and that is permitted. That is what the Magen Avraham writes, and it’s in the Talmud. He brings it there as Jewish law. This is an interesting question because at the beginning of the twentieth century there was, as is well known, a forgery of the Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim. Someone forged a Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim. There is no Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim.
[Speaker E] Yes, so—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He wrote his novellae in Land-of-Israel Aramaic—the guy was talented—in Land-of-Israel Aramaic, and wrote a Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim that was basically his own ideas, his own novellae. And again there was a huge uproar in the worlds, in heaven and earth—what is this? What do you mean? A forger or not a forger? And articles and debates were written about whether it was forged or not. There is some myth that the Rogatchover ruled that it was forged because he had a rule that in every chapter of the Jerusalem Talmud there appears a sage who had not been mentioned until that chapter, and there it didn’t happen. So he said it was forged. I don’t know; I haven’t checked it. There’s a myth like that about the Rogatchover. In any case, in the end it was clear to everyone that it was forged, and it was determined to be forged. But the question I ask is: so what? It’s permitted, no? That’s what it says in the Magen Avraham. You’re allowed to say things in the name of a great person so that they’ll accept them from you. So what’s the problem? What did they want from him? What was wrong with what he did? Maybe because of the money? I don’t know whether he made a lot of money or not. I don’t know how much money you make from a forged Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim. So what did they want from him? It’s permitted. What’s the problem? I too—if people won’t read my novellae—I’ll forge, I don’t know, a baraita on tractate Eucalyptus, and I’ll publish it, and there, my novellae will be spread through the world and the study halls.
[Speaker B] Why is that permitted?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what it says in the Talmud. You are basically—
[Speaker B] trying—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] to lie in order to convince a person—
[Speaker B] of something that isn’t true.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right? Not that it isn’t true—that he didn’t say it. I’m claiming that it is true.
[Speaker B] The fact that he didn’t say it is your opinion.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right? I’m responsible only for my opinion. Not necessarily true, but in my opinion it’s true. I’m getting there in a second. So look—what bothered people about that forgery of the Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim? And here we first have to go back to the Magen Avraham or the Talmud. Why is it really permitted to do such a thing? Any ignoramus can say some nonsense about the Sabbath, involving capital prohibitions, say it in the name of one of the greatest decisors, everyone will accept it because one of the greatest decisors said it, and you are causing them to stumble in very severe prohibitions. How can such a thing be permitted? So I claim that the permission to do such a thing exists only because the Talmud assumes that even if you say things in the name of a great man, they still won’t accept them. People are autonomous. Even if you say things in the name of a great man, they won’t accept them. Therefore it is permitted. The only thing is, you ask: fine, then if that’s so, what’s the point of doing it? You’re doing it so that they’ll accept it, and if they won’t accept it, what have you gained? The answer is simple—exactly what I said earlier. If I feel that people are not seriously weighing my arguments and my position, and they’re dismissing me, whatever, they’re not seriously weighing my arguments—okay? “What, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said that?” Now the person standing opposite me, if I tell him Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said it—Rabbi Moshe Feinstein was no reed-cutter in a swamp—and then obviously I’ll reconsider the issue. I won’t necessarily accept it. If I’m convinced, fine; if not, not. But I will reconsider it, and afterward I’ll decide yes or no. So what did we lose? Excellent! I brought him to seriously consider my reasoning, because until then he wasn’t considering it seriously. I didn’t mislead him in the sense that he will act on it. He doesn’t have to act on it and isn’t expected to act on it. He is only expected to seriously consider this side too, something he didn’t do when I was the speaker. Now I say: this is Rabbi Moshe Feinstein—so then he does consider it seriously. Excellent. So what’s wrong with that? That’s the best thing possible, because then I cause a person to seriously weigh the arguments in all directions, and only then form a position.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The conclusion is that if there is a situation in which, in my assessment, the person standing opposite me will accept the things because Rabbi Moshe Feinstein says so, then I am forbidden to do it. It is permitted to do it only if I know that in these circumstances he will not accept it, but only consider it twice. And that’s the Jerusalem Talmud on Kodashim. Because when you bring me a Jerusalem Talmud, a Jerusalem Talmud is Talmud. If you tell me it’s written in the Talmud, I don’t weigh whether yes or no—if it’s written in the Talmud, the Talmud has authority. Therefore it is forbidden to attribute things to the Jerusalem Talmud falsely. If you were to say it in the name of the Chafetz Chaim, no problem. The Chafetz Chaim says so—I’ll reconsider, but in the end I’ll decide yes or no. But the Talmud has formal authority. That you may not forge. For example, Besamim Rosh also—a forged book attributed to the Rosh. Someone forged it, some maskil, semi-maskil, whatever, but a Torah scholar. And the responsa there were cited by all the leading decisors and used and so on. There was a huge debate whether it was forged or not; they even wrote a book about whether it was forged or not. Look in the index of the books in the library—what do they call it? Once it was cards, now it’s on the computer, whatever. In the system it says: recognized as a forgery—on that book. Huh? The owner of a necromancer? No, no, not yellow—I’m telling you there’s a drawer like that with book cards.
[Speaker F] Wait, even in a case where they’ll accept it only because of the name—like if they—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, then it’s forbidden.
[Speaker F] In such a case it’s forbidden, right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the claim. If you’re causing people to stumble, you may not cause people to stumble. But if you’re only bringing them to seriously consider a position that otherwise they wouldn’t have considered, then what’s wrong? They only gained from it. And understand—it’s the same idea. You really have to seriously consider the other position. It’s the same thing as the principle of charity. In other words, you really present the other side in the best possible way—but not because that way they’ll accept it, rather because they’ll consider it more seriously and reach a more thoughtful decision. That’s all. He brings proof for this from a Talmudic passage—or evidence, I don’t know—from tractate Bava Kamma, in the topic of “this one benefits and that one does not lose.” The Talmud there says—let’s see here in the wondrous booklet—I see, 172, Rabbah bar bar Chana. Fine, in any case what is written there in the Talmud is that Rabbah bar bar Chana arrived there—who was it, Rav Chisda I think—and he says to him, too bad you weren’t here in the evening; there were excellent things in the study hall. There was some fascinating discussion in the study hall; too bad you missed it. So he asked, what did they discuss? He told him: they discussed someone who lives in another’s courtyard without his knowledge—must he pay rent or not? Basically the topic of “this one benefits and that one does not lose.” So he asked: and what did they say there? So they discussed whether the courtyard is normally for rent or not, and whether the person needs lodging or doesn’t need lodging. If the courtyard is for rent and someone enters my courtyard, then I lost money, so I incur a loss. If it isn’t for rent, then I lost nothing; he lived there but I lost nothing. If he needs lodging, then he benefited, because he got free lodging. If he doesn’t need lodging, then he didn’t benefit. So that combination determines whether it’s “this one benefits and that one loses,” “this one doesn’t benefit and that one loses,” “this one benefits and that one does not lose,” all the combinations. Okay?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So he says to him: you’re looking for the topic of “this one benefits and that one does not lose”? What, it’s explicit in a Mishnah. Why are you all splitting hairs over there? There’s an explicit Mishnah. So he says to him: what? Which Mishnah? Interesting—in the study hall nobody thought of that. So he says to him: go serve me, and if you serve me I’ll tell you the Mishnah. Fine. So he took his cloak to the bathhouse after him, served him, yes, carried his clothes after him to the bathhouse. So after he carried his clothes to the bathhouse, he said to him: it is written that if a cow ate fruits in the public domain, it is exempt, but it pays for what it benefited. So there, we see that “this one benefits and that one does not lose” is liable—it pays for what it benefited. He says to him: what do you mean? But this is—no, sorry, Rav Chisda is silent. Fine, I understand, interesting. But Rava, I think, the Talmud there says: how did they not feel that this was nonsense? That Mishnah has nothing to do with the matter; this is “this one benefits and that one loses.” The owner of the fruit loses—the fruit was eaten. What do you mean “this one benefits and that one does not lose”? The animal benefited because it ate the fruits; the fruit owner suffered a loss—his fruits were eaten. That’s not “this one benefits and that one does not lose.” He said to him: it’s ownerless. No, it’s not ownerless—someone’s fruits. It’s ownerless? Then whom do they pay? It isn’t ownerless; someone’s fruits were eaten. So this is “this one benefits and that one loses,” and therefore there is liability. But perhaps in “this one benefits and that one does not lose” he would be exempt? You’re bringing proof from a Mishnah to the topic of “this one benefits and that one does not lose”? So he said: produce left in the public domain is ordinarily regarded as abandoned. But that cannot be correct. If ordinarily it is abandoned, then what is there to discuss as to whether he pays or doesn’t pay? What does it matter whom he pays? If I abandoned them, then the fruits aren’t mine. Why are you paying for eating my fruits if they aren’t mine? That can’t be right. So clearly the meaning is: as if he abandoned them. Not that he actually abandoned them, but as if he abandoned them. In other words, you bear contributory blame for the damage. You say my cow ate the fruits, but you left fruits in the public domain; you know cows pass there. You bear contributory blame. Therefore it is considered as if you don’t lose. Don’t tell me you lose; you’re to blame for your own loss. True, but pay me for the benefit. I’m to blame, fine; but did you benefit? Pay for the benefit you got. And that is what is written there, and therefore it is similar to “this one benefits and that one does not lose.” That is what the Talmud says. It’s tricky.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now Rav Chisda didn’t ask that question at all, and Rava did say: that sounds like a bizarre question. How did Rav Chisda not think of that question? It’s an obvious question; every child learning the Talmud sees that question. Do you know why? Because Rav Chisda served Rabbah bar bar Chana before Rabbah bar bar Chana answered him. What does it mean that he served him? It means he respected him as a Torah scholar. And since that’s so, once Rabbah bar bar Chana said something, it sounded stupid at first glance, but he’s a Torah scholar, this is Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, not just anybody. Let’s think one more time. He understood on his own that the meaning of “produce left in the public domain is ordinarily regarded as abandoned” was not actually abandoned but as if abandoned. But Rava, who was just sitting in the study hall and hadn’t served him, didn’t respect him enough for that. So he did ask the question; he immediately jumped with that question. And then they answered him, and indeed the answer is a sophisticated one: as if abandoned, not truly abandoned. You are considered not to have lost, but it is still yours in the sense that they must pay you. Not a trivial answer at all, even after it was said. But Rav Chisda, who respected Rabbah bar bar Chana, made that calculation, judged him favorably, made a restrictive interpretation of his words—or however you want to call it—and in the end he understood, and didn’t even ask the question because he respected him. And Rava, who didn’t respect him, immediately asked that question, and clearly saw the thing and moved on. He didn’t even bother thinking. What is he saying? He made a mistake? “Produce left in the public domain is ordinarily regarded as abandoned.” But because he dismissed the speaker, he didn’t bother thinking again about what the speaker meant. If you respect him, then you think again about what he means, and you can discover all kinds of gems you wouldn’t have come up with on your own. That’s why Rabbi Shimon Shkop brings that Talmudic passage as an example of his request to the readers of his book.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But for our purposes, this means that once we have a source where we respect the speaker, or alternatively a source that has authority, we are willing to engage in complicated intellectual gymnastics in order to explain why what is written here is not nonsense and not a contradiction. We judge it favorably, if you like; we judge it by the principle of charity, all that I’ve said until now. But all this depends on the fact that this source is one where either we respect the speaker—in other words, he has substantive authority, in the language I defined last semester, meaning he is a Torah scholar—or it has formal authority. It is a text that was ruled as Jewish law; we are bound by it. It doesn’t matter right now whether it’s right or wrong, whether he is wise or not wise; we are bound by it. And once we are bound by it, we need to understand how it fits with other things and try to explain it. Authority and authority, authority and things—so that—
[Speaker B] I talked about that last semester.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Authority—there is authority from above, there is authority from below: substantive, formal, over facts, over norms. All that can be heard in the recordings.
[Speaker B] Here’s an example of it in divorce law, in the story where Rabbi Yehuda ben Beteira ruled, and Rav Nachman summoned him to a rabbinic court proceeding, and he asked Rav Huna whether to come. And you’re a greater Torah scholar than he is, but because he is the son-in-law of the Exilarch—out of honor—you should come to him. Here, the authority in practice is not that he is the greater Torah scholar.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, the authority is formal and not substantive. In other words, substantively I’m the greater Torah scholar, but formally he holds the office. He was the leading authority of the generation—the leading authority by office. It’s like the difference between a psychiatrist and a district psychiatrist. Why can a district psychiatrist commit someone involuntarily and an ordinary psychiatrist can’t? Is he a greater expert? No, not necessarily. There may be psychiatrists who are greater experts than he is. Yes, he simply has authority, that’s all. In other words, you need authority. Same thing with a judge and a law professor. The law professor may be a better jurist than the judge, but the judge is the judge. In other words, he has a role and formal authority—not because he is right, but because he is the judge. Right, yes. So I’m going back to us. Basically, the idea of a restrictive interpretation is that when I have before me a source that has formal authority, say in this case, and it says something that seems contradictory, puzzling, against another source or against logic or whatever it may be, then I am willing—in fact I must—perform all kinds of intellectual maneuvers in order to judge it favorably. Not as an assessment that this is what the baraita says, but as: what am I supposed to do with this baraita?
[Speaker G] And that is the logical thing to do.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, right, absolutely. That’s why I gave the previous introduction. Right. And judging favorably is because I really think that’s the truth. And the principle of charity is because I want to clarify things; it’s not connected to the question of what you mean. But regarding these interpretive reinterpretations, I want to make a more far-reaching claim. Meaning, the difficulty with them—let’s take a few examples of reinterpretations so we have something concrete to apply this to. There’s a passage in tractate Gittin that discusses this, yes, well-known stuff; lots of jokes have been made about this reinterpretation. Rava said: if he wrote her a bill of divorce and placed it in the hand of her slave while the slave was asleep and she was guarding him—oh right, I’ll enlarge it a bit. Rava said: if he wrote her a bill of divorce and placed it in the hand of her slave while asleep and she was guarding him. You can close it if you want; if you want to close it, that’s possible. Rava said: if he wrote her a bill of divorce and placed it in the hand of her slave while asleep and she was guarding him, it is a valid divorce. If he was awake, it is not a valid divorce, because then it is a guarded courtyard not with her knowledge. “Asleep and she is guarding him, it is a valid divorce”? Meaning, if someone writes a bill of divorce and puts it into the hand of the woman’s slave, and the slave is asleep, and she is guarding the slave, okay? Then it counts as a divorce. But if he is awake, then not. Why? Because then it’s a guarded courtyard not with her knowledge—he has his own independent mind, because when he’s awake he decides what he’s doing. “Asleep and she is guarding him, it is a valid divorce”? The Talmud asks: why? It is a moving courtyard, and a moving courtyard does not acquire. Meaning, even though he’s asleep, in principle he’s a human being, and a human being is something that moves. Okay? So with respect to “with another’s knowledge” and “not with another’s knowledge,” if he’s asleep that counts as with her knowledge, but with respect to a moving courtyard, he’s considered a moving courtyard even if he’s asleep. And if you say that being asleep is different—didn’t Rava say that anything which, if it were walking, would not acquire, even when standing or sitting would not acquire? In short, even if he merely has the capacity to walk, he’s considered a moving courtyard. The Talmud says: and the Jewish law is that we’re talking about a bound slave. And not only is it her slave, not only is he asleep, not only is she guarding him while he sleeps—he’s also bound.
[Speaker B] Yes, what are you trying to say?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There isn’t any hint in Rava’s statement itself. He didn’t say “bound.” He does say “asleep”—so why doesn’t he say “bound”? Meaning, do you really want to claim that Rava meant what you’re saying, or are you basically playing games? The reasoning is clear to me as to why there’s a difference between bound and unbound. I’m only asking: what is the interpretive justification for this reinterpretation? You claim that Rava is talking about a bound slave—so why didn’t he say so? It doesn’t say the slave was bound.
[Speaker E] So on what basis are you…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This is a reinterpretation, right? You’re asking what the justification for this reinterpretation is? Where do people get the nerve to do this? Do you really want to claim that that’s what Rava meant? Now here it’s a reinterpretation of an Amoraic statement. Usually reinterpretations are done to a Tannaitic source, a Mishnah or a baraita. And there it’s even worse, because there it’s not only a question of whether you disagree with the Tannaim or not, whether they meant this or not; you’re actually disagreeing with the Tannaim. Because if they didn’t mean this, then the Mishnah says something else. When you reinterpret it, you’re basically pulling the wool over our eyes—you disagree with them. But Amoraim aren’t supposed to disagree with Tannaim. What, if you hide it then it’s permitted to disagree with Tannaim? There are those who want to claim—many who want to claim—that reinterpretation is a polite way of disagreeing with the Tannaim. Because clearly they didn’t mean this. So what? Then why are you doing the reinterpretation? Because it’s a polite way—you don’t want to say, “I disagree with the Tanna.” So I reinterpret the Mishnah. He didn’t mean that; he was talking about… But he wasn’t talking about that. Fine, but it makes me look better. It sounds so unconvincing to me, because if that were the case, then every time a Mishnah is brought against me I’d just reinterpret it, because really I’m allowed to disagree with the Mishnah. An ordinary reinterpretation doesn’t really have to hold water; I just throw out some move like that—I disagree with the Mishnah, that’s all I’m doing. Okay? So that’s why my feeling is that this cannot be the correct explanation. It’s just plain dishonesty too. Make up your mind: is it permitted to disagree with Tannaim or is it forbidden? If it’s permitted, then disagree. If it’s forbidden, then how does it help me that you do it this way? Bottom line, you’re disagreeing with them. Therefore it’s clear to me that when the Talmud reinterprets a Mishnah, it means to claim that this was the Mishnah’s intent. It is not disagreeing with the Tannaim. This really was—and notice, this is not the principle of charity; it’s closer to judging favorably. I judge the Tanna favorably, that this really is what he meant. But genuinely, with straight common sense—not judging favorably with crooked logic. I judge him favorably with straight common sense. I claim that Rava meant a bound slave. That’s my claim. Now the question is how that can be, since he didn’t say we’re talking about a bound slave. Why are you putting words in his mouth? You know, that’s how it is—this way you can always save anyone. He said something foolish, and you say, no, no, he meant something else, and there it becomes some exalted wisdom, and that’s why this person is a genius. He just said nonsense, but you replaced it with something else. Oh no, no, he meant this, he was talking about…
[Speaker F] But he wasn’t talking about that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but it makes me look better.
[Speaker F] It sounds so unconvincing to me. It’s hard to say that the Tannaim thought of every single thing the Amoraim later challenged, every little difficulty they raised—it was all obvious to them.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have no problem with that, so say they didn’t think of it—so what?
[Speaker F] Why should we
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] say that the Tanna didn’t know it? So I’m saying: then say the Tanna didn’t think of it, I have no problem with that. He didn’t think of it. But don’t make reinterpretations—say that you disagree with him.
[Speaker F] No, you can say about the Tannaim—I mean, I haven’t seen in the Talmud that they disagree with them directly, maybe there is, but I’m asking why.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] After all, if reinterpretation basically means disagreeing with the Tanna, because he didn’t think about the difficulty that’s bothering me, then you are in fact disagreeing with him. So be honest and say that you disagree with him. Fine, but the question is what we do with that. Is this just some kind of dishonesty—that you disagree with the Tanna? And don’t tell me stories that you’re not disagreeing with Tannaim. You are disagreeing with the Tanna. I have no problem with that. I’m not claiming it’s forbidden to disagree with Tannaim because they were heavenly seraphs and thought of every question that we later thought of—I don’t believe that. But if you really think they were wrong, then say so. Don’t tell me stories—no, no, it’s a reinterpretation, and you don’t really mean that—but then you reinterpret it and get away alive. No, that’s not straightforward. Okay, so that’s one example of reinterpretation, or a second reinterpretation… that goes back to the question… yes, of course, I haven’t answered that. That’s the question. Right now I’m presenting the problem of reinterpretation; I haven’t yet presented the explanation. If the feeling is
[Speaker G] that this is a polite way of disagreeing, then why do it to Rava? He’s an Amora, not a Tanna.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, that’s an even better question. Or alternatively, exactly—that’s why I don’t accept that it’s a polite way of disagreeing. So therefore… In the Mishnah at the beginning of Beitzah it says: an egg laid on a Jewish holiday—Beit Shammai say it may be eaten, and Beit Hillel say it may not be eaten. Yes, one of the examples where Beit Shammai are lenient compared to Beit Hillel. And then they discuss there what the case is, reject various possibilities, and the Talmud’s conclusion is: rather, Rava said, actually we are dealing with a hen designated for eating, and with a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath, and the issue is preparation, and Rava holds that every egg laid today was completed yesterday. Why do Beit Hillel say it may not be eaten? We’re talking about a hen designated for eating, so the problem is not a set-aside problem, because if it is designated for eating then it has essentially been food all along. Okay? So the egg inside it is also basically ready for eating, and therefore the newly laid egg is not set aside. We are speaking only about an egg laid on a Jewish holiday that falls after the Sabbath, a Jewish holiday that falls on Sunday. That’s the only case. And then what? And Rava holds: every egg laid today was completed yesterday. If the egg was laid today, on Sunday, on the holiday, then it was actually completed—or yes, formed—on the Sabbath, the day before. And then it turns out that the Sabbath prepared the food for the holiday, and that is forbidden. That’s the prohibition of preparation. Okay? A weekday is supposed to prepare for a holiday. The Sabbath may not prepare for a holiday. Okay? So that is why Beit Hillel say it may not be eaten. The egg laid on the holiday may not be eaten. Basically, what we’re doing here is a reinterpretation. The Mishnah says: an egg laid on a Jewish holiday may not be eaten. No, no—this is only a Jewish holiday that falls on Sunday, after the Sabbath. Only there. An egg laid on a Jewish holiday that falls on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday—there’s no problem at all, eat it with a hearty appetite. So the main point is missing from the text. You tell me a law that sounds true for every holiday, and then the Talmud reinterprets it: no, no, this is only a holiday that falls on Sunday. Why doesn’t the Mishnah say that? Again, reinterpretation. What do we do with this? Is the Talmud politely disagreeing with the Mishnah? How are we supposed to understand such a thing? The Mishnah apparently didn’t mean that. If it had meant that, it would have said: an egg laid on a Jewish holiday that follows the Sabbath—Beit Shammai say it may be eaten and Beit Hillel say it may not be eaten. What’s the problem with saying that? But the Talmud says the Mishnah says: no, an egg laid on a Jewish holiday, period. You insert “a holiday that follows the Sabbath”—that’s a reinterpretation. And don’t tell me that the Mishnah really meant that, because then why didn’t it write it? Okay? That, essentially, is the problem of reinterpretation. There are all kinds of odd and varied answers whose purpose is to explain this matter of reinterpretation. All kinds of strange things. Some claim that the wording of the Mishnah was crafted for chanting, and therefore the wording is not always precise, so that it would fit the tune. I think in Tiferet Yisrael there’s a suggestion of that sort—very strange. Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner claims that the wording of the Mishnah is imprecise, but intentionally so. Because after Rabbi permitted the Oral Torah to be written down, he still did not want everyone to be able to approach the Oral Torah and read and understand everything on their own. There still needed to be a rabbi who would transmit the Oral Torah to you together with the written Mishnah. So the Mishnayot were written in a confusing way so that you would always need a rabbi in order to learn them. Well, to my mind that’s a lame explanation. You don’t confuse people like that, with all due respect. A person won’t go to a rabbi, and then an egg laid on an ordinary holiday may not be eaten? What is this—are you just causing people to stumble? That’s a colossal case of “do not place a stumbling block.” Okay? It’s a very unlikely explanation. But the difficulty remains. There’s a real problem here. How are we to understand that if the Sages really meant—if the Amoraim are really claiming that this is what the Mishnah meant—then the question is: why didn’t it write that? And if that’s not what it meant, then are you disagreeing with the Tannaim? Why are you telling me stories? Okay? In other words, this requires some explanation. We need to judge the Mishnah favorably in some sense, but to judge it in a way that will genuinely convince us that this really was the Mishnah’s intent. Okay? That is basically what we are looking for. All right, I hope we’ll find it in the next class, what we’re looking for. The introductions took me a long time today, so be strong and courageous.