The Commandments and Their Enumeration — Lecture 11

Table of Contents

• Rabbinic commandments and “do not turn aside”
• The force of rabbinic law as “disclosure” and not as an additional prohibition
• Two kinds of rabbinic authority: interpretation versus legislation
• Critique of the Minchat Chinukh and “do not turn aside” in interpretive derivations
• Maimonides’ second root and the classification of derivations as rabbinic law
• The interpretive principles: halakhic tradition versus scholarship, and a proposal for synthesis
• The grammar-and-forgetting analogy: Othniel ben Kenaz and conceptualizing the rules
• The literature of rules and the need to avoid becoming enslaved to rules
• Plain meaning and derivation: the depth of the plain meaning versus a parallel language, and the Vilna Gaon
• A halakhic synthesis between plain meaning and derivation: the value of your eye
• Pesachim 22: Shimon HaAmsuni, Rabbi Akiva, and the word “et”
• The interpretive principles as quasi-scientific work: Popper, Thomas Kuhn, and articulation
• Reasoning within derivation: textual triggers and decision-making
• Textual interpretive principles versus logical ones, and refutations
• Returning to Maimonides: the second root and the parallel problem

Summary

General Overview

The text presents a fundamental tangle regarding the status of rabbinic commandments: if they have a source in the Torah, such as “do not turn aside,” then they seem to be Torah-level; and if they have no source, it is unclear why one must obey them. It proposes a distinction between specification and branching-out, according to which “do not turn aside” does not turn every rabbinic violation into a Torah prohibition, but rather reveals that the words of the Sages have binding force, and a violation of “do not turn aside” occurs only in a principled rebellion against their authority. From there it moves to a parallel structure regarding laws derived through interpretive exposition and to Maimonides’ second root, explaining how the interpretive principles can be both a law given to Moses at Sinai and also develop historically through conceptualization, and it sketches a relationship between plain meaning and derivation in which derivation does not have to reconcile with the plain meaning but operates as a parallel language from which Jewish law is generated.

Rabbinic Commandments and “Do Not Turn Aside”

The text states that there are two questions that undermine one another: the source of the force of rabbinic law versus the claim that “if it has a source, then it is Torah-level,” and so a tangle is created that cannot be solved within the dichotomy of “has a source / has no source.” It distinguishes between the specification of a general law into a particular case, such as a vow that branches directly from “he shall not profane his word,” and a situation in which rabbinic laws are not specified out of “do not turn aside” but branch out from it. It states that violating “do not turn aside” happens when a person does not accept, in principle, the authority of the Sages, similar to a rebellious elder; but someone who violates a rabbinic prohibition because his impulse overcame him violates the rabbinic prohibition itself, not “do not turn aside.”

The Force of Rabbinic Law as “Disclosure” and Not as an Additional Prohibition

The text argues that the distinction between principled rebellion and a violation due to impulse does not eliminate the question of why one is obligated to obey a rabbinic prohibition when “do not turn aside” is not present in the act itself, and so it formulates a model in which the verse “do not turn aside from all that they instruct you” is like the statement “criminals will be punished,” which reveals that there is a binding system of directives without spelling out each directive. It states that if one could violate every directive without any normative significance, the authority of the Sages would be emptied of content, and therefore the very existence of “do not turn aside” reveals that the words of the Sages have binding force even when there is no actual violation of “do not turn aside.” It concludes that rabbinic laws are binding by way of branching-out: “do not turn aside” reveals that the commands of the Sages have force, but it does not create an additional Torah prohibition on each and every detail of their enactments.

Two Kinds of Rabbinic Authority: Interpretation Versus Legislation

The text rejects a chronological view that identifies Torah-level law with “from Sinai” and rabbinic law with “later,” and states that a law is determined by the nature of the Sages’ activity, not by time. It presents a distinction according to which, when the Sages act as interpreters of the Torah, the result is a Torah-level law, and when they act as legislators, the result is a rabbinic law, even if the legislation was already done at Mount Sinai. It attributes to Maimonides and Nachmanides a dispute mainly over the question of the Sages’ authority to legislate, and presents a broader agreement according to which their authority to interpret is grounded in “do not turn aside,” because the result is Torah-level in any case.

Critique of the Minchat Chinukh and “Do Not Turn Aside” in Derivations

The text cites the Minchat Chinukh, who claims that something learned through derivation is more stringent, because one violates both the prohibition itself and also “do not turn aside.” It rejects this on the grounds that violating “do not turn aside” depends on principled rebellion and not on the act of violation as such, and on the additional claim that “do not turn aside” is not an extra prohibition but a disclosure of the force of the interpretation from which the prohibition is generated. It illustrates this with the prohibition of meat and milk: the prohibitions of eating and benefit are learned by derivation, but someone who violates the prohibition violates the learned prohibition, not an additional prohibition of “do not turn aside,” because “do not turn aside” only reveals that the derivation has binding force.

Maimonides’ Second Root and the Classification of Derivations as Rabbinic Law

The text presents Maimonides’ second root, according to which laws that emerge from interpretive derivations have the status of rabbinic statements and are therefore not counted in the enumeration of the commandments. It cites Nachmanides’ attack on this root in the phrase, “This whole book, its palate is sweetness, it is altogether lovely—if not for this root,” because this position turns a large portion of laws considered Torah-level into rabbinic laws. It states that most laws are not written explicitly in the Torah, but depend on interpretation and derivation, and therefore Maimonides’ position disrupts the accepted halakhic structure.

The Interpretive Principles: Halakhic Tradition Versus Scholarship, and a Proposal for Synthesis

The text presents a gap between the halakhic tradition, which states that the interpretive principles are a law given to Moses at Sinai, and academic scholarship, which claims that they developed over the generations, and it brings apparent evidence for development: the seven principles of Hillel, the thirteen of Rabbi Ishmael, the thirty-two of Rabbi Eliezer son of Rabbi Yosei HaGelili, and additional tools not included in the lists. It adds the distinction between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael in methods of derivation—amplification and restriction versus general and particular—as apparent proof that the system is not a static tradition. It argues that these facts do not contradict a law given to Moses at Sinai, because the tradition is dynamic: at Sinai, the “language of derivation” was given as a plane for reading verses, and the formulated rules of the interpretive principles are a later conceptualization meant to capture patterns that were transmitted and partially forgotten.

The Grammar-and-Forgetting Analogy: Othniel ben Kenaz and Conceptualizing the Rules

The text compares the interpretive principles to rules of grammar that are created after a language is already being spoken, and therefore the rules have exceptions because they are not the source of the language but a retrospective description of it. It interprets the Talmud in Temurah 15 about the forgetting of “three thousand laws and one thousand seven hundred a fortiori inferences and verbal analogies” as a situation in which the loss of the oral tradition created a need to distill rules out of the derivations that had been preserved. It argues that Othniel ben Kenaz “restored them through his dialectic” by identifying patterns in existing derivations, creating rules from them such as a fortiori inference and verbal analogy, and then using them to reconstruct laws that had been forgotten. It expands on this by saying that the rules multiply over the generations because the natural fluency in the “language of derivation” weakens, and a technical system of rules becomes necessary, similar to learning a language in an intensive language program.

The Literature of Rules and the Need to Avoid Becoming Enslaved to Rules

The text states that a similar phenomenon exists in the literature of Talmudic rules, which tries to conceptualize how the Talmud operates, and that these rules were not known to the Amoraim but were created by later commentators. It presents the rules as tools of orientation, not as a binding system that replaces direct interpretive intuition. It concludes that one must beware of turning the rules into a kind of mechanics that disconnects study from the natural rhythm of the language of Jewish law.

Plain Meaning and Derivation: The Depth of the Plain Meaning Versus a Parallel Language, and the Vilna Gaon

The text raises the question of how derivation can contradict the plain meaning, as in “an eye for an eye,” which the Sages interpret as monetary compensation, and asks why the Torah is written in a way that appears misleading if the intent is monetary. It describes an apologetic approach according to which the derivation is “the depth of the plain meaning” and the initial plain meaning is mistaken when seen from a broader perspective, but it states that this approach is unconvincing and attributes a different position to the Vilna Gaon. According to the Vilna Gaon, derivation does not come to replace the plain meaning but to add a parallel reading, and two different reading systems can yield contradictory results without any need to reconcile them linguistically.

A Halakhic Synthesis Between Plain Meaning and Derivation: The Value of Your Eye

The text acknowledges that in practice Jewish law follows the derivation, but proposes that the meaning of maintaining both readings is the creation of a synthesis influenced also by the plain meaning. It brings an opinion in the Talmud according to which the payment is “the value of your eye” and not “the value of the eye that you took out,” and attributes to Neshka the explanation that the payment is punitive compensation in place of gouging out the eye of the damager—meaning a ransom for his own eye. It thereby presents a model in which the plain meaning, “an eye for an eye,” remains in force as a punitive framework, while the derivation converts the implementation of the punishment into money, allowing for a different understanding of the amount of payment.

Pesachim 22: Shimon HaAmsuni, Rabbi Akiva, and “Et”

The text cites the Talmud in Pesachim 22b about Shimon HaAmsuni—or, some say, Nechemia HaAmsuni—who would interpret every occurrence of the word “et” in the Torah until he reached “You shall fear the Lord your God” and “withdrew.” It describes the students’ question, “Rabbi, what will become of all the occurrences of ‘et’ that you interpreted?” and his answer, “Just as I received reward for the interpretation, so I receive reward for the withdrawal,” and describes this as a difficult intellectual surrender, like erasing after writing. It states that Rabbi Akiva rescued the principle with the derivation “You shall fear the Lord your God”—to include Torah scholars, and in that way provided an outlet for a place that had seemed impossible for inclusion.

The Interpretive Principles as Quasi-Scientific Work: Popper, Thomas Kuhn, and Articulation

The text uses Popper to describe Shimon HaAmsuni as someone who throws out a theory בעקבות a single counterexample, and Thomas Kuhn to describe Rabbi Akiva as someone who does not give up a theory that succeeds in many cases but instead makes an ad hoc correction. It concludes from this that the conceptualization of the interpretive principles is not a law given to Moses at Sinai in the sense of a rigidly formulated rule, but an attempt to generalize interpretive patterns that is put to the test and receives corrections. It states that the fact that Shimon HaAmsuni withdrew teaches that this is an interpretive model under examination, not an absolute code that cannot be challenged.

Reasoning Within Derivation: Textual Triggers and Decision-Making

The text states that reasoning is always involved in derivation, but sometimes it is negative reasoning whose purpose is to choose the possibility that is “least implausible” after the textual trigger requires inclusion or comparison. It clarifies that Rabbi Akiva would not have legislated reverence for Torah scholars on the basis of pure reasoning alone, but rather responded to the compulsion created by the word “et” and then decided through reasoning what to include. It presents the interpretive principles as textual triggers that instruct one “to include / to exclude / to compare,” while the practical decision of what to derive is made by reasoning within the range of possibilities opened up by the trigger.

Textual Interpretive Principles Versus Logical Ones, and Refutations

The text divides the interpretive principles into textual ones, such as verbal analogy and general and particular, and logical ones, such as a fortiori inference and building from a paradigm as analogy. It states that in the logical principles the trigger is logic rather than a textual phenomenon, and therefore they are used even in everyday speech and not only in Torah interpretation. It argues that refutations in the Talmud appear only with respect to logical derivations, because they attack the logical assumption, whereas in textual derivations there is no room for refutation, because the comparison is imposed by the text and not by an assumed similarity.

Returning to Maimonides: The Second Root and the Parallel Problem

The text returns to Maimonides’ second root and states that he says “it is not proper to count everything learned through one of the thirteen principles by which the Torah is interpreted, or through amplification,” and presents this as the view that laws derived through exposition are not Torah-level but rabbinic statements. It formulates a difficulty: derivations are interpretation anchored in the verse, not legislation, and therefore they would seem to be Torah-level by virtue of “do not turn aside” and the authority of the Sages to interpret. It presents the solution as something that should resemble the model of branching-out versus specification that was presented regarding rabbinic law, and states that the further development of this will be postponed to future sessions.

Okay, we’re dealing with the commandments and how they’re counted. Last time I more or less summed things up, the framework we went through in the previous semester. We basically reached the end of the semester, and last time too I completed this—we talked about rabbinic commandments. And we dealt with Maimonides’ first principle, where Maimonides says that rabbinic commandments are not counted, against the Baal Halakhot Gedolot, who does count at least some of them. And that led us a bit into a discussion of the question: what exactly are rabbinic commandments? Meaning, how do we define them, what force do they have, why do we have to obey them, and so on. I’m not going back over that again. I’ll just briefly state the bottom line. There’s what I defined as a short blanket there—that is, it can’t cover both the head and the feet. There are two questions there such that if you answer one, you get stuck on the other, and if you answer the other, you get stuck on the first. One question is: what is the source of authority for rabbinic law? Meaning, why do the Sages have authority, why are we obligated to obey them? And the second question is that if it does have some source, then why is it not Torah law? Right? Meaning, if there’s no verse, then why obey? Nothing commands me. The fact that someone comes and tells me to do something doesn’t mean I need to obey him. A lot of people can come and tell me all kinds of things. So I need a source—a verse, an interpretation, I don’t know what—something, some source. But if I have a source, then the obligation to obey the Sages actually comes from that source, so it’s Torah law. For example, “do not deviate.” So if the obligation to obey the Sages comes by force of the verse “do not deviate,” then the moment I eat chicken with milk—which is a rabbinic prohibition—I’ve really violated a Torah-level “do not deviate.” Doubts should then have to be treated stringently, human dignity shouldn’t override it, all the distinctions people make between rabbinic law and Torah law shouldn’t exist. So there’s some knot here. These aren’t just questions where you can try to look for an answer. There’s an a priori knot here: if you answer the first, you get stuck on the second, and if you answer the second, you get stuck on the first. If there’s a source, then it should be Torah law. If there’s no source, then why obey? So is there a source or not? Meaning, you can’t get out of this. What I wanted to claim—and I’m putting this up front because we’ll see a similar structure regarding laws that emerge from interpretations, and that’s what I’ll deal with today—what in the end apparently has to be said, and it may be that both Maimonides and Nachmanides agree to this because I simply don’t see another way out of this dilemma, is that the obligations or rabbinic commandments, as I called it, branch off from “do not deviate”; they are not specified by “do not deviate.” What do I mean? When I talk, for example, about vows, okay? I have “he shall not profane his word.” And from the verse “he shall not profane his word,” it tells me that I have to do what I vow. So if, say, I vowed to refrain from benefiting from bread, then I’m forbidden to eat bread, and if I ate bread I violated “he shall not profane his word.” Right? Meaning, the vow concerning bread is just a particular case of the general law of the obligation to obey the vows I make. And every vow I make is a particular case of that. That’s what I call specification. The particular case is just a specification of the general law; there’s nothing beyond that. When I say all human beings are mortal, and I meet someone, I say okay, if he’s a human being, then apparently he’s mortal too. Okay? Why? Because that’s simply a particular example of the general law that all human beings are mortal, so he too is a human being, and therefore clearly he too is mortal. That’s what in logic is called deduction. But the relation of rabbinic commandments to “do not deviate,” to the command “do not deviate,” is not like that. If it were like that, then Nachmanides’ question would indeed arise—that every time one eats chicken with milk, it would really be a Torah prohibition, because the moment I ate chicken with milk I violated “do not deviate.” The claim is this: it is not specified by “do not deviate”; it branches off from “do not deviate.” What does that mean? Some later authorities write regarding Maimonides—and I think this makes a lot of sense—that Maimonides does not mean to say that every time I eat chicken with milk I have violated “do not deviate,” because then every time it would really be a Torah prohibition. What they mean to say… what Maimonides means to say is that if I do not in principle accept the authority of the Sages, then I have violated “do not deviate.” Meaning, if I eat chicken with milk because I do not accept the authority of the Sages to establish law, I’m unwilling to obey their instructions, then I have violated “do not deviate.” But if I eat chicken with milk because, I don’t know, my impulse overpowered me, then I have not violated “do not deviate”; I violated the rabbinic prohibition of eating chicken with milk, but I did not rebel against the authority of the Sages. Okay? Sorry, Rabbi, what’s this about “do not stray after”? “Do not stray after” all the time? No, no, I wasn’t talking about “do not stray after.” I wasn’t talking about “do not stray after”; I said “do not add”—not “do not add,” I didn’t understand—“do not deviate,” yes. Isn’t that what it says? “Do not deviate.” “Do not deviate from all that they instruct you.” Oh, “do not deviate”! Yes, not “do not stray after.” Right. Among Litvaks, for “do not stray after” they say “do not deviate.” Anyway, the claim is that I violate “do not deviate” only in a case where I rebel or do not in principle accept the authority of the Sages. Like the rebellious elder—the law of the rebellious elder also comes out of “do not deviate.” And with a rebellious elder, it is clear that the root of the matter is that he does not accept the authority of the Sanhedrin—that’s the meaning of a rebellious elder. So too with an ordinary person, who does not violate the law of a rebellious elder: if he does not obey the Sanhedrin because he does not recognize their authority, he has violated “do not deviate.” But if he eats chicken with milk because his impulse overcame him, he couldn’t restrain himself, then no. He’s acting intentionally, not accidentally, but he’s doing it not מתוך a principled denial of the authority of the Sages, but like people who sometimes commit sins. Now if that’s so, then on the face of it we need to go back and reformulate the question, the questions, the two questions, all over again. Because if that’s the case, then someone who violates in principle the authority—someone who does not recognize in principle the authority of the Sages—then I have a source: he violated “do not deviate,” but of course that will be a Torah prohibition because it has a source. But if I eat chicken with milk, but not because I don’t recognize in principle the authority of the Sages—I eat chicken with milk because my impulse overpowered me—then that’s only a rabbinic prohibition. Here there is no “do not deviate.” So the question comes back: then it has no source, because it does not emerge from “do not deviate”; it’s a rabbinic prohibition. So why obey? Whichever way you look at it. Meaning, I divided the violation of rabbinic prohibitions into two types, but I didn’t solve the problem. In the first type, there is a source and it is Torah law; in the second type there is no source and therefore it can be rabbinic, but then the question is why I should obey if there is no source. So the claim was this: I brought the example of Winnie-the-Pooh. On Piglet’s hut it was written: “Offenders will be punished.” What does “offenders will be punished” mean? It doesn’t say who is an offender, what you have to do to be an offender—“offenders will be punished.” What do you understand from that? You understand from it that apparently there are some instructions, or some instruction, that determine what needs to be done, right? And then whoever violates that instruction is an offender, and offenders will be punished. But it doesn’t simply say what the instructions are. You can’t say that the instructions come out of this sentence, “offenders will be punished.” That sentence only hints to me that there are probably some instructions. Okay? The claim is the same here. When the Torah says “do not deviate from all that they instruct you,” it is basically telling you that you have to accept the authority of the Sages, right? We said that whoever does not accept the authority of the Sages violates “do not deviate.” But if concerning every instruction they give me I can violate it—I accept their authority in principle, but I have an impulse, right?—then no problem, so there’s no “do not deviate,” and there’s no category of rabbinic law. Okay? Then there’s no problem because I didn’t violate “do not deviate.” So everything’s fine—I can eat chicken with milk, I can do whatever I want. Okay? So what is the force of their authority? What is the meaning of their authority? That empties their authority of content. I’m basically supposed to recognize their authority without that having any content, because whatever they say I can violate and there is no problem and I haven’t violated any prohibition. Something here can’t be right. So if I read the verse “do not deviate” without the rabbinic add-ons, if I read the verse “do not deviate,” that very calculation tells me that if the verse forbids me to deviate from the words of the Sages, then apparently the words of the Sages have some kind of force. This doesn’t mean that every time I ate chicken with milk I violated “do not deviate”; if I recognized in principle the authority of the Sages, then I didn’t violate it. But clearly… I am forbidden to do it, because otherwise the authority of the Sages has no content. So it comes out that the verse “do not deviate” simply reveals to me that the commands of the Sages do have force. It does not command them. If I violated by eating chicken with milk, I did not violate “do not deviate,” but the very existence of the verse “do not deviate” reveals to me that apparently it is forbidden to eat chicken with milk. Because if it were permitted to eat chicken with milk, and one only had to be careful about obedience to the authority of the Sages, then that obedience would be empty of content. It would not obligate me to do anything, because whatever they said I could violate. Therefore the verse reveals to me that there are probably some instructions—like “offenders will be punished”—there are some instructions that have force. What happens to someone who violates them? If I recognize their force, then I did not violate “do not deviate,” but I did violate the instruction itself. I violated the instruction itself, and therefore rabbinic law, rabbinic laws, have force that is not Torah-level force but rabbinic force—yet there is an obligation to obey them. Why, if there is no source? There is a source, but it is not a source from which they are specified; rather it is a source from which they branch off. It reveals their existence; it does not command them. It reveals their existence. Okay, that was basically the claim. I think I mentioned—I don’t remember whether I mentioned it or not—that the Sages actually have two kinds of authority. Do you know what the difference is between a rabbinic law and a Torah law? People often think the difference is chronological. A rabbinic law is a law that arose over the course of history, and a Torah law is what came down to us from Sinai. But that’s a big mistake. There are rabbinic laws that already existed at Mount Sinai, and there are Torah laws that are created today. And it has nothing to do with chronology. It has to do with the question of what the character was of the Sages’ act that created this law. If the Sages functioned as interpreters—if this is interpretation—then it is Torah law. They interpret the Torah, explain it, derive it—I’m not distinguishing right now. If the Sages function as legislators, they establish a new law, then it is rabbinic law. And it does not matter at all when they do it. If the Sages today interpret a verse in the Torah and some new law comes out, it will be Torah law, because here the Sages served as interpreters, not as legislators. In the end they are telling me: this is what is written in the Torah. So it is Torah law. If the Sages legislated—if Moses our Teacher legislated at Mount Sinai—then it would not be Torah law even though it existed at Mount Sinai. Why? Because that law was created through a legislative process, not through an interpretive process, and therefore it is rabbinic law. Okay? Where does the authority of the Sages come from, to legislate and to interpret? So I already mentioned that this is a dispute between Maimonides and Nachmanides regarding their authority to legislate. Maimonides says that it comes from “do not deviate,” and Nachmanides argues that it does not, because otherwise it would be Torah law, and I said it may be that both agree with what I described before, this branching. But what about their authority to interpret? There Nachmanides too agrees that it comes from “do not deviate.” Why? Because when the Sages interpret, the product is Torah law. So don’t threaten me with the claim that if there’s a source for it, then it comes out as Torah law. Right—it really is Torah law. With rabbinic laws you tell me that if there is some source, then it cannot be rabbinic law, it has to be Torah law. But in laws that the Sages interpret, they are in any event Torah laws. The Sages say: “You shall fear the Lord your God”—this includes Torah scholars. So they expounded the verse and included reverence for Torah scholars. Reverence for Torah scholars is a Torah law and it is learned from a verse; this is not legislation, it is interpretation. So now Nachmanides says: that doesn’t bother me, that you root it in “do not deviate,” because “do not deviate” is basically the source of the authority of the Sages to interpret. Why—because it comes from “do not deviate,” so it is Torah law? Correct, it is Torah law—what’s the problem? This difficulty exists only regarding rabbinic legislation, not regarding rabbinic interpretation, because in rabbinic legislation the product is rabbinic law. So you tell me: if it comes from “do not deviate,” then how can it be rabbinic? It has to be Torah law. But the product of interpretation is Torah law, not rabbinic law. There Nachmanides says: I agree, the source is “do not deviate.” There Maimonides and Nachmanides agree. The argument is about legislation, not about interpretation. On this the Minchat Chinukh writes: if there is a sick person on the Sabbath who needs to be fed because otherwise there is danger to life, but you have two options—either to give him something that is rabbinically prohibited… or to give him something explicitly forbidden in the Torah—what is preferable? Which prohibition is more severe? On the face of it, the Minchat Chinukh says no. He says it is more severe to give him something whose prohibition is learned by interpretation. Why? Because if you give him that, then he has violated two things: first, the prohibition itself; and second, “do not deviate.” Because when the Sages established that prohibition, there is the verse “do not deviate” that gives them the authority to do so. Therefore you violated two things. Well, that is of course incorrect. It is incorrect for several reasons. One reason is what I said before. When we violate this but in principle recognize the authority of the Sages, then we have not violated “do not deviate.” We violated only the content itself. When do we violate “do not deviate”? Only when we do not in principle recognize the authority of the Sages. Here, a sick person who eats forbidden food on doctors’ instructions—this is not a denial of the authority of the Sages. On the contrary, it is an act he is permitted to do. Therefore clearly there is no “do not deviate” here, only the prohibition itself, which is overridden because of danger to life. But even more than that, it seems to me that “do not deviate” is not an independent prohibition. “Do not deviate” simply tells me that there is a prohibition in what the Sages derived. Say, for example, there are three times in the Torah where it says, “You shall not cook a kid in its mother’s milk.” Okay? So the Sages learned from this that there is a prohibition on eating, a prohibition on deriving benefit, and a prohibition on cooking. So the prohibitions on eating and on benefit are actually an interpretation. They are not written explicitly in the Torah. Right? Now, when I cook meat with milk—sorry—this is written in the Torah, so that’s Torah law. What happens if I eat meat with milk? If I eat meat with milk, then I have violated a prohibition learned by interpretation. Right? Is that more severe than cooking meat with milk, because here there is also “do not deviate” as well as the prohibition on eating itself? No. “Do not deviate” tells me there is a prohibition on eating. Now when I eat, I violated the prohibition of eating meat with milk. “Do not deviate” only reveals that there is such a prohibition. Because “do not deviate” tells me: if the Sages said that from this verse one learns the prohibition on eating meat with milk, then you must obey, so there is such a prohibition. So “do not deviate” does not constitute another prohibition. In addition to the prohibition of eating meat with milk, there is also a prohibition of “do not deviate”? No. The verse “do not deviate” is a revelation that the Sages have authority to interpret the Torah. When they interpreted the Torah and said that it is forbidden to eat meat with milk—sorry, I said chicken with milk—that thing really is forbidden. So when I eat meat with milk—sorry, I keep saying chicken with milk—then I have violated the prohibition of meat with milk, not “do not deviate.” “Do not deviate” only reveals that there is a prohibition of meat with milk. That’s all. Something similar I want to say regarding rabbinic law as well: that “do not deviate,” regarding someone who violates not out of a principled denial of the authority of the Sages but someone who violates the actual rules themselves—“do not deviate” only reveals that there are rabbinic prohibitions. It is not their source. They branch from it; they are not specified by it. Okay, so that’s regarding rabbinic laws, and now I want to show you a parallel move regarding laws learned from interpretations. One second—I’ll add the people who came in. Or Solomon, okay. Chili, Debbie, Debbie what? Now, as I said, I want to make a parallel move regarding laws that emerge from interpretations. Before that, a few introductions. Basically the basis I want to deal with—regarding rabbinic laws, the basis was Maimonides’ first principle. Regarding laws that emerge from interpretations, the basis is Maimonides’ second principle. Maimonides’ second principle says that laws that emerge from interpretations have the status of rabbinic laws—words of the Sages—against what is accepted by all the medieval authorities (Rishonim). But that’s what Maimonides claims. Nachmanides attacks him on this point and says: the whole book is copied delicacies, entirely desirable, were it not for this principle, for then the whole book would not be worth anything, because this principle destroys the entire halakhic structure. It basically turns very many Torah laws—you could say the great majority of Torah laws—into rabbinic laws. Because how many laws are actually written explicitly in the Torah? These are what are called the laws that even the Sadducees agree with. There are only a few such laws. Most of the laws that we call Torah laws are laws whose basis is in interpretation or in the Sages’ exposition. If Maimonides calls all of these rabbinic laws, laws from the words of the Sages, then he is simply disrupting the whole halakhic structure here. But in order to get a bit more into this matter, I want to give a short introduction regarding interpretation. There is a very clear disagreement between the halakhic tradition—what the Sages write throughout the whole halakhic tradition—and the accepted position in the academic study of Jewish law. In the halakhic tradition, the hermeneutic principles are a law given to Moses at Sinai. They were received at Sinai and transmitted in tradition from Sinai onward. By contrast, in scholarship it is almost obvious to everyone that the hermeneutic principles developed over the course of history. Saul Lieberman even wrote that this was drawn from the ancient Near East, from various places; there were modes of thought like this, here and there one can see similar modes of thought—not very convincing in my eyes—but here and there you can still see something, and the claim is that it developed over the generations. Now the truth is that the facts, apparently, point like the position of the scholars. Why? Let’s try to look at the different lists of hermeneutic principles that we know. So what lists do you know? The best-known list, that everybody knows, is the thirteen principles of Rabbi Ishmael, right? A fortiori, verbal analogy, constructing a principle from one verse, constructing a principle from two verses, and so on. So that’s the baraita at the beginning of Sifra about the thirteen principles by which the Torah is interpreted. But there are other lists. There are the seven principles of Hillel the Elder, which appear also at the beginning of Sifra, a bit later, and in the Tosefta in Sanhedrin and elsewhere—seven principles which contain only some of the principles of Rabbi Ishmael. And there are the thirty-two principles of Rabbi Eliezer son of Rabbi Yose the Galilean—thirty-two principles. And in fact when you check the Talmud, you see that the interpretive tools the Talmud uses are even more than that. There are additional tools that do not appear in these canonical lists of hermeneutic principles. This apparently means that the whole system of hermeneutic principles developed over history. It is not a tradition received at Mount Sinai, but something that developed over the course of history. A fact—it started with seven and then went to thirteen and then to thirty-two, and really there are more. So you see that it develops over history. More than that, Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva—the Talmud says in tractate Shevuot 26 and elsewhere—that they interpreted the Torah differently. Rabbi Akiva would interpret the Torah through inclusion and exclusion, while Rabbi Ishmael would interpret the Torah through general and particular. Which is basically hermeneutic principles: general and particular, particular and general, general and particular and general—these are principles of Rabbi Ishmael, which we know from his thirteen principles. Rabbi Akiva has parallel principles: inclusion and exclusion, exclusion and inclusion, inclusion and exclusion and inclusion. And this does something a little different to the verses; the result is different, it is a different interpretive tool. So Rabbi Akiva had a different system of interpretive tools than Rabbi Ishmael. So once again you see that this is not some tradition that came to us from Sinai, because in fact there are disputes about the hermeneutic principles. That probably means that the Sages created them out of their own reasoning or whatever it may be. But I don’t think that’s true. I’ll say it a bit differently: I don’t think there is a real disagreement here. The fact that it was created over the course of history does not contradict the fact that it is a tradition from Sinai. Why? Because we generally tend to think of tradition as something static, frozen. Meaning: Moses our Teacher goes up Mount Sinai, and the Holy One, blessed be He, says to him: there are thirteen principles by which the Torah is interpreted—an a fortiori argument, verbal analogy, a principle built from one verse, a principle built from two verses, general and particular, particular and general, and so on. And he memorized the thirteen principles, passed them on to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, the elders to the prophets, and that is the meaning of saying that the thirteen principles are a law given to Moses at Sinai. It did not work like that. It’s clear to me that it did not work like that. Even one who says that it is a law given to Moses at Sinai means a dynamic law given to Moses at Sinai. What does that mean? I’ll formulate it this way: when Moses our Teacher ascends on high, the Holy One, blessed be He, sits and teaches him the Torah, studies with him like a study partner. So He reads a verse and says: “You shall fear the Lord your God.” On the plain meaning level, this is fear of God, a counted commandment, fear of God. On the interpretive level: “You shall fear the Lord your God”—this includes Torah scholars. And He reads it to Moses our Teacher on the level of plain meaning, and He reads it to him on the level of interpretation. And so with all the verses of the Torah—they can be read on several planes: reading on the level of plain meaning and reading on the level of interpretation. And this is how Moses our Teacher received the Torah, and then he passed it on to Joshua and so on, and that is how it went through tradition. At that stage there is not yet what we today call hermeneutic principles. The Holy One, blessed be He, did not tell Moses our Teacher: there is a fortiori, there is general and particular, there is building a principle from a verse, two verses that contradict one another—none of this. All those things are later concepts. Moses our Teacher had never heard of them. So what did he hear? They simply read the verses with him through the lens of interpretation. And what does that mean, basically? Think, for example—yes, this is an analogy I heard from Moshe Koppel, from computer science. Today people have already forgotten, but before the war he was the most vilified figure in Israel because he founded the Kohelet Forum. So he says this: think about a language. When a language starts developing, there is a community of speakers that somehow slowly creates a language for itself. Clearly, in that language there are no rules of grammar. None of them wrote himself a grammar book, and from that grammar book built the language. On the contrary, they started speaking. Just as when you teach a baby to speak, you don’t teach him the way people teach grammar—begad kefat letters, predicate, subject, direct object, indirect object. You speak to him until he understands the language. So how did the rules come into being? Scholars come at a later stage and examine the nature of that language. What rules actually describe the way we use the language, the words? And then they create grammar rules. The grammar rules were created by the scholars, not by the speakers. The speakers created the language. The grammar rules are something that arose later, after the fact, de facto. Meaning, we see that there are fixed patterns in this language, so apparently there is such-and-such a rule and such-and-such a rule and such-and-such a rule, and that’s how grammar rules are formed. No wonder we know this, and it’s very frustrating for anyone studying for matriculation exams, that in grammar rules every rule always has exceptions. If the language were created out of the rules, there’s no reason for there to be exceptions. There are rules, and we need to apply them every time to say what we want to say within the framework of the rules. Why are there exceptions? Because the rules came afterward. First of all we established how one speaks correctly and incorrectly, and then the rules came—but the rules don’t really manage to capture all forms of speech, because those forms of speech developed in a simple way, not according to rules. And when you want to fit them into rules, you won’t really succeed completely. You find rules that approximate correct speech, but there are exceptions. The same thing here: look at the world of interpretation as a kind of language. When the Holy One, blessed be He, sits and studies with Moses our Teacher, He is speaking with him the language of plain meaning and the language of interpretation, like a child learning a language at home or in preschool. Okay? He didn’t tell him general and particular, particular and general, a fortiori, building from a principle; rather, He reads the verse through the lens of interpretation. And what does that mean, basically? So Moses our Teacher passes that language on, the language of interpretation. The Talmud says in tractate Temurah 15 that during the mourning period for Moses, three thousand laws and one thousand seven hundred a fortiori arguments and verbal analogies were forgotten, until Othniel son of Kenaz came and restored them through his analysis—the a fortiori arguments and verbal analogies. Restored them through his analysis. What does that mean? So I reconstruct it this way: during the mourning period for Moses, Israel wept forty days in the plains of Moab. The whole Torah, the Oral Torah of course, was not written at that stage—everything was transmitted orally. Now for forty days nobody touches the matter, and everything is oral. You understand that after forty days we already begin to lose part of the material, right? It’s not written; we have no way to hold on to all the material. The question is what we remember. For forty days we didn’t deal with it, didn’t study it and didn’t teach it, so various laws and a fortiori arguments and verbal analogies were forgotten. What did Othniel son of Kenaz do? He restored them through his analysis. What does that mean? It means he took the interpretations that we did still remember. One thousand seven hundred had been forgotten, but there were thousands of others that were still remembered. Let’s try to see what characterizes them. And then he began to extract from them what we today call hermeneutic principles. Ah, apparently… Suddenly he found a pattern. He found, I don’t know, ten, a hundred interpretations whose relation to the verses looked very similar. Ah, this is probably such-and-such a structure of a verse that begins with a general statement and continues with a particular statement, and then the particular always limits the general. So there must be an interpretive rule saying that if there is a general and a particular in the Torah, then the particular limits the general. And then he created the principle of general and particular. Or the principle of verbal analogy—when there are two identical words, we compare between those scriptural contexts. That’s verbal analogy. Or a fortiori, or analogy from a model text, and so on. So he began to distill from the interpretations that remained with us, that we still remembered, the hermeneutic principles. Why was that useful? Because if I have a hermeneutic principle, and I already know that we interpret through general and particular, then now I can use it to interpret additional verses and in that way reconstruct those laws that I no longer remember. Meaning, to take laws that I do remember, derive from them the rules of interpretation, and then use those interpretive rules as tools to generate additional laws. And then I can reconstruct the laws I had lost. That’s why, for example, laws given to Moses at Sinai could not be reconstructed, because there there are no inferential tools behind them… laws given to Moses at Sinai were simply given at Sinai and passed on through tradition; they do not emerge from the Torah through some interpretive or exegetical inference. So there was no way there to reconstruct the inferential tools. But with hermeneutic principles there was. And that’s how hermeneutic principles were formed. And indeed, in the early sources, as in the Talmud in Temurah that I mentioned, you can see that they speak of a fortiori arguments and verbal analogies. Why only those? What about general and particular? What? Where is general and particular? No, that’s another principle. The claim is that he was probably beginning to conceptualize these interpretive rules. So at first he says there is a fortiori and there is verbal analogy. Othniel son of Kenaz didn’t do everything. The rest of the conceptualization continued over the generations. The further we move from Sinai and lose the skill of using the interpretive tools or this language of interpretation, we require more rules, right? When you want to teach someone who immigrated to Israel as an adult, and you want to teach him the language, he does not learn the way a child learns at home. A child who learns the language at home—you speak with him until he picks up the language and speaks it. Nobody tells him stories about rules. Begad kefat, subject-predicate—the child has never heard of that. But someone who learns in an ulpan is taught the language through rules, not through natural speech. Why? Because apparently, once we’re adults, we’re less able to absorb the natural way of speaking a language; we need to be taught it in a technical, mechanical way. So there is such-and-such a rule and such-and-such a rule, and they demonstrate and so on, until the person understands how people speak. But of course these rules are only an approximation. And therefore someone who speaks exactly according to the rules will speak badly. Because very often when an ulpan student goes out into the street, he discovers how the natives on the street speak, and he says, wait a second, what is this? You’re all speaking a completely corrupted language. And of course the one who is speaking incorrectly is him. People on the street generally speak correctly. The one who is incorrect is he, because he thinks the rules he learned are binding and correct for every kind of speech, every situation—but that is not true. Those rules are some kind of initial approximation that gives you orientation, but gradually you need to absorb the natural cadence of the language, the natural rhythm of the language. And you understand where yes and where no, and where people bend the rules and where they don’t bend the rules. The rules are only a tool by which you can enter that world, but in the end you have to swim naturally in that world, the way a child does. Whoever remains fixed, attached to the rules of the ulpan, will speak a very clumsy language, not really correct. Okay? But the rules of the ulpan are what will bring him into correct speech. Same thing here. When we no longer have the skill of using the language of interpretation, that language has been lost to us, we no longer have the ability to understand how to read verses in the interpretive mode, we have no choice but to resort to rules. And then the so-called scholars—or the Sages—come and conceptualize various rules of this language: general and particular, a fortiori, a principle from one verse, from two verses, general and particular and general, and so on. All of these are the grammar rules of the language of interpretation. But of course if they are created after the fact, then they will have exceptions. This is not mathematics. So it gives us some general direction, some principle, but it’s not right to use it in a sticky, overly literal way—exactly as with grammar rules for someone who learned in ulpan. And so the picture that emerges is this: Moses our Teacher brings down the Torah, he reads it to Joshua on the level of plain meaning and on the level of interpretation. There is not yet anything there from Rabbi Ishmael’s list of hermeneutic principles. Okay? But forgetfulness slowly starts eating away, and then people from the time of Moses and onward—again, I’m not sure it literally happened this way, but the Talmud’s description comes to convey this idea—and then, the more we forget, the more rules we need that will still help us speak, like ulpan students. They don’t know the language as a mother tongue; we have lost the rhythm of the language, the immediate familiarity with that language. There’s no choice—we need the help of rules, and for that purpose rules are created, rules of interpretation are created. And therefore the rules come into being over the course of history and multiply over the course of history. There’s a list of three, of seven, of thirteen, of thirty-two, and so on. Why? Not because those rules were invented. Those rules are a law given to Moses at Sinai. But it is a dynamic law given to Moses at Sinai. The law given to Moses at Sinai is the language of interpretation. The rules through which we conceptualize that language of interpretation are created by the Sages over the course of history. But what the Sages are doing here is trying to understand that very language that we spoke at Sinai and received at Sinai. Therefore they are not inventing these rules. These rules are like the scholars not inventing grammar rules. They look at how we speak, and from that try to understand what the rules of grammar are. Does this thing work, by the way? Yes? Do you see there that it’s on? What? The speaker monitor. So therefore, when traditional Sages say that the hermeneutic principles are a law given to Moses at Sinai, and scholars say that the hermeneutic principles developed over the course of history, that is not contradictory. A law given to Moses at Sinai was given in a raw, potential form, and what develops over history is the conceptualization of that language we received at Sinai. And those conceptualizations keep being developed over the generations. By the way, this is true not only in the context of hermeneutic principles, but also in what is called rule literature. When we speak in the Talmud, learn Talmud, then over time a literature developed that talks about the rules—how the Talmud works, how it should be interpreted, and so on. Those rules are of course rules that are the creation of those who created them—not rules that certainly came down from Sinai, and were not even known to the Amoraim who composed the Talmud, even though these are “the rules of the Talmud.” This is a conceptualization that commentators make of their method. And these conceptualizations keep adding more and more and more rules, and every time there’s an exception, of course they create another sub-rule to make it fit, and another sub-rule and another one, and that’s how a thick literature is formed containing thousands of Talmudic rules, none of which of course existed originally and none of which was known to the Amoraim. But this is a conceptualization, or an attempt to conceptualize, how the Amoraim worked. Whether it succeeded or not, that’s the basic idea. Therefore, with rule books, one has to be careful not to become enslaved to them, or to think that rule books are simply correct and one must work with them in order to interpret or to issue halakhic rulings—that is not true. Rule books give me some general direction, orientation, like grammar rules. But in the end there is no substitute for the direct, simple, natural intuition of how one should work in interpretation or in halakhic ruling. So that is regarding the development of the hermeneutic principles. Now I want to touch a bit on the question: what exactly are hermeneutic principles? Take, for example, “an eye for an eye.” The Sages interpret that as monetary compensation. If someone puts out his fellow’s eye, you do not put out his eye; rather, you impose payment on him—he has to pay the value of an eye. But the Torah says “an eye for an eye.” How can interpretation contradict what is written in the Torah? We are already so used to this that we don’t even ask the question. Meaning, it is obvious to us that when it says “an eye for an eye,” it means money, and the interpretation took the verse away from its plain meaning. Of course the question immediately arises: then why did the Holy One, blessed be He, write its plain meaning in such a confusing way? If His intention was to say that “an eye for an eye” means money, then let Him write: whoever puts out his fellow’s eye shall surely pay. Why does He write that one should put out his eye, and leave it to us to interpret that not eye but money is meant? Therefore it is hard to say that what is written explicitly in the Torah has no meaning at all. The interpretation showed that it has no meaning? No, it’s not like that. What is written in the Torah itself has some meaning, and we need to understand the relation between the plain meaning and the interpretive meaning of the verse. What is the relation between them? Does the interpretation replace the plain meaning? What does the interpretation do? How are both connected to the verse, and how are they connected to each other? Here you have the apologists, commentators on the Torah who, because interpretation seems so strange to us, try to show how interpretation nevertheless emerges from the plain meaning of the Torah, why it still fits. And the claim is that sometimes, in a broader view, you see that the linguistic, local, literal interpretation is not correct. You make comparisons to other places, you examine context, all sorts of things like that, and you understand that the interpretation is not correct. That when it says “an eye for an eye,” it does not mean putting out an eye but paying money, based on—I don’t know—context, broader perspective, whatever. And according to this view, interpretation is basically the depth of the plain meaning. The plain meaning is not what you think it is; that is just a narrow and local look. The real plain meaning, when you look at the whole picture, is basically what we call interpretation. Interpretation is the depth of the plain meaning. So that is the claim. In my opinion this is very unconvincing, and the Vilna Gaon was apparently not convinced by it either. The Vilna Gaon argues differently. He says that interpretation does not come to replace the plain meaning. Interpretation comes to add a parallel interpretation. There is an interpretation by way of plain meaning and an interpretation by way of exposition, and the interpretation by way of exposition can contradict the plain meaning, because we are using different tools to read the same verse. With these tools, the conclusion comes out this way, and with those tools, the conclusion comes out that way; these are simply two different systems of tools for reading the verses, and there is no wonder they yield different results. And then it turns out there is no point attacking the interpretation on the grounds that it does not fit the language of the verse—it is not trying to fit the language of the verse. Interpretation reads the verse not in the way one reads it according to its plain meaning; this is not the literal meaning of the words. Interpretation reads the verse with different eyes. If there is a key word in another context, then we compare one to the other; if there is the word “et,” it comes… And therefore one need not look for why the interpretation does not really contradict the plain meaning. It can contradict the plain meaning. The interpretation says one thing and the plain meaning says another, and they contradict each other. What does it mean that they contradict each other? What do we do with that in the end? In the end, we know—we do what the interpretation says. Right? “An eye for an eye”—we impose monetary payment; we do not gouge out an eye. We do what the interpretation says. Meaning the plain meaning is actually set aside. So the interpretation did replace it. So what is the meaning of saying that both the plain meaning and the interpretation are correct readings of the verse, each on its own plane? What does that mean? Specifically with “an eye for an eye” there is a good example, though it is an opinion not accepted in Jewish law. In the Talmud there is a dispute: “an eye for an eye”—when a person put out another’s eye, he has to pay. How much does he pay? The simple meaning is: the value of the eye he took out. How do we assess that? We assess the person as if he were a slave being sold in the market—with an eye, without an eye—and the difference is the damage you caused him. But there is an opinion in the Talmud that you pay the value of your own eye, not the value of the eye you put out. What is the idea behind that? Why should you pay the value of your own eye? The answer—an answer that Ishay Rosen-Zvi proposed, yes, today he is a professor of Talmud here—from an article he wrote when he was nineteen years old. The answer he proposed is that the Torah basically says “an eye for an eye.” If you put out someone’s eye, your eye should be put out. The interpretation comes and says yes—but we don’t actually put out an eye; we pay money. In place of your eye that we should have put out. Not compensation for the eye you took out, but punitive substitution. Meaning, instead of putting out your eye, you pay money equal to the value of your eye. You redeem your own eye when you pay, rather than compensating him for the eye you took out. Now that is an example of a conclusion that emerges from the fact that both the plain meaning and the interpretation of the verse remain in force. We read the verse by interpretation, we read it by plain meaning, and both readings are correct. And the law is basically some synthesis between those two readings. So what is the law? If it had written “whoever puts out his fellow’s eye shall pay,” what would we understand? Suppose the damaged party’s eye is worth one hundred and my eye is worth two hundred. Now I put out his eye. If it had written “whoever puts out his fellow’s eye shall surely pay,” how much would I pay? One hundred. Right? I would need to compensate him for his eye. If it had written “an eye for an eye” without interpretation, only plain meaning, then they would put out my own eye. But now that we have both plain meaning and interpretation—“an eye for an eye” on the plain level, and in interpretation it means money—the result is that I pay two hundred, the value of my own eye. Why? Because my eye should be put out in exchange for the eye I took out—that is what comes from the plain meaning—and the interpretation says yes, but do not put out his eye; let him pay whatever his eye is worth instead, a kind of ransom. Okay? And therefore you actually pay two hundred and not one hundred. So I think that is a very nice proposal for understanding the relation between plain meaning and interpretation. Now I want to—let’s look at another passage. In tractate Pesachim 22b there is a very interesting give-and-take about interpretation, which I think can teach us a lot about the matter of interpretive exposition. Well, the Talmud is basically dealing there with the question of prohibitions of benefit, prohibitions of eating—the context isn’t important right now—and it says as follows: “And the other one does not interpret ‘et.’” There is a tannaitic dispute there; one of the tannaim does not interpret the word “et.” What is “et”? “Et” always comes to include, as you know. The world of interpretation assumes Ben-Gurion-style Hebrew. Ben-Gurion would speak without “et”: “bring me the chair,” not “bring me et the chair,” he spoke without “et.” And indeed, when the Sages assume that every time the Torah writes “et” it comes to include, that implies that ordinary language is basically a language that should not have used “et.” In any case, there is a tannaitic dispute here whether one interprets the word “et” or not. Then the Talmud says: “And the other one does not interpret ‘et,’ as it was taught in a baraita: Shimon HaAmsuni, and some say Nechemiah HaAmsuni, used to interpret every ‘et’ in the Torah.” Every “et” that appears in the Torah he would interpret. “When he reached ‘You shall fear the Lord your God,’ he stopped.” What does that mean? He didn’t know what to derive. In that verse, he did not know what to do with the word “et.” Why? What is special about that “et” that specifically there he didn’t know what to derive? Because “et” comes to include, right? Like what is written in the verse—take some additional thing that you need to treat in the same way as what is written in the verse. “You shall fear the Lord your God” comes to include someone whom one should relate to the way one relates to the Holy One, blessed be He. How can that be? There is no such thing. Therefore Shimon HaAmsuni said: here I can find no relevant exposition at all. His students said to him: “Rabbi, what will become of all the ‘et’s that you interpreted?” So now you are retreating from the idea that “et” comes to include—what will happen to all the expositions of the other “et’s” in the Torah? Yes, this is a very Popperian move, right? Meaning, you have one example that refutes the theory, and you have to throw out the theory along with all the previous implications you drew from it. One case where it doesn’t work is enough to show that it isn’t correct. That is not true in science and not here either, but that’s Popper’s theory. Then he says: so what will happen to all the “et’s” you interpreted? He said to them: “Just as I received reward for the interpretation, so too I receive reward for the withdrawal.” What does that mean? Yes, he gives up all the interpretations of the “et’s.” Okay, that’s nice. You know, there’s a story about the Ketzot. The Ketzot wrote a book, and it became very popular in the yeshivot, they studied it—however many yeshivot there were, never mind where they learn it. Someone came to him once who had written a book too. He said to him: listen, I wrote a book that in my estimation is no less good than yours, but it didn’t catch on among the learners, wasn’t accepted, not popular. What’s your secret? he asks the Ketzot. So the Ketzot says to him: did you write the book? He said: in the morning, when I was fresh, I sat down and wrote the book. So the Ketzot says: I wrote in the morning—meaning, I wrote at night; in the morning I erased. I did the writing at night; I did the erasing in the morning. In other words, it’s much harder to erase than to write. Anyone who has written a book—and I can tell you from experience—it is completely true. It is very hard to give up a good idea you had. Meaning, even if in the end it becomes clear to you that it isn’t right. It is hard to give it up, so you save it this way, save it that way—it’s very hard. There’s also a story about Rabbi Shach once: someone in the middle of a general lecture in Ponevezh, one of the students asked him a question. He thought and thought, didn’t find an answer, and got down from the podium. He stopped the lecture. He understood that it was not correct, that the thesis of his lecture was wrong. There was a difficulty there that he didn’t know how to answer, so he stopped the lecture. The fact that people tell this story means that it isn’t a common occurrence. People don’t do that often. It’s hard for a person—you have made a beautiful intellectual move, it resolves difficulties, everything is excellent. It is very hard to give up your thesis. Okay? Plato called the ideas a person’s spiritual children. It’s giving up your own children. In any case, here too, Shimon HaAmsuni had intellectual honesty. He understood that his thesis—that one interprets “et’s”—had been refuted, and he gave it up. He gave up all the interpretations he had made until then. Until Rabbi Akiva came and interpreted: “‘You shall fear the Lord your God’—this includes Torah scholars.” What does that mean? Rabbi Akiva comes and says to Shimon HaAmsuni: no, I have a way out even for the “et” in this verse. “You shall fear the Lord your God”—that comes to include Torah scholars. Where is the disagreement between Shimon HaAmsuni and Rabbi Akiva? First of all, you see here that there is a dispute whether to derive from “et” or not. Now if this were a law given to Moses at Sinai, what is there to argue about? Shimon HaAmsuni should have said: this requires further study; I don’t know what to derive from “You shall fear the Lord your God,” but the rest of the derivations remain in place. After all, there is a law given to Moses at Sinai that “et” comes to include. What does it mean that he gives up and withdraws from all the expositions he had already made? Because this wasn’t a law given to Moses at Sinai. He proposed a conceptualization of interpretations that were known to him—apparently inclusion from the word “et” appearing in the Torah. Then they brought him a counterexample, and he said: here, you have an example from which you cannot include anything. Well then, you’re right, I retract. No—“et” does not come to include. This is not a law given to Moses at Sinai. He proposed an interpretive rule, a hermeneutic principle, that can—like the conceptualization of Othniel son of Kenaz, right?—help explain various interpretations, and if it is correct then one can of course derive additional interpretations through it. But it stands the test. If it isn’t correct, then apparently it isn’t correct, and one needs to give it up. That is clear evidence that it is not a law given to Moses at Sinai. Okay? If it were a law given to Moses at Sinai, he would still remain with a “requires further study” regarding what one includes from the word “et,” but he would not have given up all the expositions he had made until then. Then Rabbi Akiva comes and says: “‘You shall fear the Lord your God’—this includes Torah scholars.” What does that mean? Popper, whom I mentioned before—Popper said that a scientific theory cannot be proved, only refuted. What does that mean? Suppose you have a scientific theory: all ravens are black. How do you prove this theory? You can’t. There is no way. You can observe one raven and another raven and another raven, but you never know that you have seen them all; you don’t know that there isn’t some pink raven wandering around somewhere. There is no way to prove a scientific theory. But if you found one raven that is not black, then you have refuted the theory, right? And it is possible to refute a theory; it is impossible to prove it. Okay? That’s Popper’s thesis. Fine—people challenged this in various directions. Some said: okay, you can’t prove, but you can corroborate. If you’ve seen many black ravens, that corroborates the theory, strengthens the theory, that all ravens are black. It doesn’t prove it. You may have missed one. But the more ravens you’ve seen in more places and so on, the more the thesis that all ravens are black is strengthened. The debate relevant to us is a debate in the opposite direction, in the direction of refutation, not corroboration. Thomas Kuhn, a philosopher or sociologist of science—I don’t know what you want to call him—basically challenged Popper’s thesis. He says: listen, look at how science actually works and you’ll see that it doesn’t work this way. When you have a good theory that explains many facts, if you find one fact the theory does not explain, nobody gives up the theory. They leave it as something requiring further study, they think, I don’t know, they add some extra rule that will save that case, but they keep the theory. Yes, there’s a theory of gravitation: any two objects with mass attract one another, okay? But there are black holes and there is light, which has no mass and yet is attracted anyway, so one needs to revise the theory of gravitation—but nobody gives it up. They correct it. This is called articulation, or ad hoc corrections. So Thomas Kuhn’s claim is: when do we throw out a theory? Not when there is one counterexample. If it explains many facts, nobody will throw it out. It’s a good theory; it explains many facts. The fact that I couldn’t handle one example—maybe I wasn’t smart enough, I need to think more. But you don’t throw out so quickly a successful theory that explains many examples. When do you? When I have many examples that the theory cannot explain. There is some threshold that says okay, there are already too many unresolved issues here, too many difficulties left open for thought, to such an extent that the number of facts the theory explains is no longer especially impressive compared to the number of facts that challenge the theory—then one gives up the theory. But so long as the theory works in many cases, and it sounds to you sensible and successful, then the fact that you found one counterexample is no big deal. Fine, you found a counterexample. That’s what he calls a paradigmatic crisis—a crisis of the paradigm. Meaning, something here isn’t working because there is already a large number of challenges to the theory that it cannot handle. That is basically what Rabbi Akiva says to Shimon HaAmsuni. Shimon HaAmsuni was a Popperian. He basically says: there is a counterexample, the theory has to be abandoned. Here, there is an “et” from which I cannot include anything, so apparently “et’s” do not come to include. Rabbi Akiva says to him: listen, this is too strong. It’s not a law given to Moses at Sinai, like we said before, but still—it’s too strong to give up a theory so quickly. So I have a proposal for you. “You shall fear the Lord your God”—it’s true this is still problematic, because whom are we going to liken to the Holy One, blessed be He? But Torah scholars are the least unlike Him. So I’ll include Torah scholars, and that way I’ll save the theory. I’ll basically perform an articulation, right, that’s what I said before. That is basically what Rabbi Akiva is arguing. And if we can learn something from this, it works like this. First, you see from here that this is not a law given to Moses at Sinai. Second, you see from here that as I said before regarding Othniel son of Kenaz, the conceptualization of hermeneutic principles is basically a kind of scientific work. You take examples of interpretations and try to distill from them some general law—yes, like gravitation: I saw this fall to the earth and that fall to the earth and the Fender fall to the earth, so apparently all objects with mass fall to the earth. I make a scientific induction. Fine, I make a generalization. That is what I do here as well. I see many interpretations that can be explained by saying they are inclusions based on the word “et,” so I say: ah, there’s probably such a law that “et” comes to include. Or verbal analogy, or general and particular, or all those things. Okay, this is basically scientific work. And like all scientific work, it stands the test of possible refutation. Let’s see—will it work in every case, or is there a verse with “et” from which I won’t be able to include anything? Shimon HaAmsuni says: here, I have such a verse, so the theory falls. I have refuted the theory; I found a pink raven. I found a pink raven, so the theory that all ravens are black has collapsed. Okay. But then Rabbi Akiva comes and says: no, no, wait a second. All the ravens we have seen—thousands of ravens we have seen—were all black. You found one pink raven, so apparently it’s a sick raven. I’m not giving up the theory that all ravens are black—not because I’m dogmatic or dishonest, no, because I really think it’s true. The fact that there is one counterexample—fine, maybe this raven has a pigment problem. What, he didn’t think of that? Was he so quick and forceful in throwing away his theory? Yes—he says: what do you mean? You cannot a priori include anything alongside the Holy One, blessed be He; you won’t manage to save this interpretation. In a moment I’ll explain one more point about Rabbi Akiva and then it will be clearer. Look, when—how did Rabbi Akiva reach the idea that this means Torah scholars? Why not chairs? “You shall fear the Lord your God”—this includes chairs? Yes, chairs are also something, no? Right, he looked in his own reasoning for what is most sensible. True, it’s problematic to compare anything to the Holy One, blessed be He, but still, what is least implausible? Or what is most sensible among the options? Probably Torah scholars. So that is his proposal. Now look—this sharpens for us the difference between what Rabbi Akiva did here and, say, a case where the Sages would decide to establish a rabbinic law that one must revere Torah scholars—revere them. Reverence for Torah scholars. If they wanted to establish that one must revere Torah scholars, then presumably their reasoning would tell them that one should revere Torah scholars, and then they would establish it as a rabbinic law, right? But here Rabbi Akiva derives it from the verse; he does not establish it as a rabbinic law. Why not? Because his reasoning does not tell him that one should revere Torah scholars. If his reasoning told him that, then he would establish it as a law without needing the derivation from the word “et.” By reason alone, one should not fear anyone except the Holy One, blessed be He. But “et” comes to include, so he says that nevertheless there is something one must… So Rabbi Akiva says: okay, I don’t have independent reasoning here, but I do have reasoning about what is least implausible. And if something must be likened to the Holy One, blessed be He, then I think Torah scholars are the most plausible. That is what is most plausible to include or compare to the Holy One, blessed be He. Meaning, interpretation always involves reasoning, but that reasoning can often be negative reasoning. Reasoning that says: okay, if the verse already forces me to include something here, then let’s see which of the options is least implausible. It’s not reasoning that tells me why this is true. If there were reasoning that told me why it is true, I would establish it as a law because it is true; I wouldn’t need interpretation. The verse forces me to do something that by reason alone I would not do. But on the other hand, clearly the result I derive from the verse also involves reasoning. Why didn’t I include chairs, windows, doves, trees? Because the reasoning says that if something needs to be likened to the Holy One, blessed be He, then… the verse tells me to include something. Now reasoning tells me what to include. And that’s all the hermeneutic principles. All the hermeneutic principles are basically textual triggers. What does that mean? Say you have verbal analogy. You have a word here and a word there—say “an eye for an eye,” so “in place of” and “in place of.” That’s the verbal analogy made there. I have in two scriptural contexts the word “in place of,” and we make a verbal analogy between them. Okay? What do you learn from that verbal analogy? That “an eye for an eye” means money, I don’t know—you can learn all sorts of things from it. I don’t even remember what the second “in place of” is, the second context to which it is compared. But, say, a slave is compared to a woman. In both places it says “for her.” Fine? So there is an analogy between slave and woman. What does that mean? That now you write “woman” with an ayin like “slave”? No. Why not? Because there is no sense in that. So what do I say? Well, maybe a slave is obligated in commandments like a woman. Because that makes sense. A slave is on the way to becoming Jewish, he is half-Jewish—I’m speaking about a Canaanite slave. So he is on the way to becoming Jewish, and he is obligated in some of the commandments. So here is a verbal analogy to a woman. That probably hints to which commandments he should observe—the commandments women observe. Therefore slaves must observe the commandments women observe. So you see that reasoning enters in. First of all I have the trigger: it says “for her” here and it says “for her” there. So that means I need to compare them. That’s the principle of verbal analogy. But that’s where this stops. From that point onward, now the interpreter has to decide: in what respect do I compare the slave to the woman? Maybe I should say that women are not obligated in commandments at all, just as the slave, who is a gentile, is not obligated in commandments at all. Why compare in this direction and not that direction? There are many ways of making a verbal analogy between two contexts. Here we use our heads and ask: what is most reasonable to learn from this verbal analogy? So hermeneutic principles are basically textual triggers, yes? You see some textual phenomenon, and it tells you: here you need to include, here you need to compare, here you need to exclude—all sorts of things of that kind. What to include, compare, or exclude—that is your decision based on reasoning. Therefore all those who treat interpretations as some kind of scriptural decree are mistaken. At most, the scriptural decree is in the trigger—that is, the fact that “You shall fear the Lord your God,” that comes to include. What does it include? There reasoning is always involved. Interpretation always involves reasoning. Always. But usually it is not reasoning that stands on its own, because otherwise you wouldn’t need interpretation; by force of reasoning I would derive that law. Sorry. That is the difference between an interpretation and a rabbinic law. A rabbinic law is the Sages legislating, right? When the Sages legislate, it is enough that something seems correct to them in order to establish it as a binding law. When the Sages interpret or explain the Torah, it is not enough that the thing seems correct to them. It also has to fit into the verse, whether by exposition or by plain meaning, but it has to fit into the verse. And once it fits into the verse, then what I have here is Torah law. Because after the Sages interpret or explain the verse, then as far as I am concerned, that is what is written in the verse. It doesn’t matter that reasoning was involved. Now the verse “You shall fear the Lord your God” requires from me reverence for Torah scholars as well, not only fear of God. True, it was the Sages who revealed this to me, but since they have authority and what they say is binding, then after they have revealed it, as far as I am concerned this is what the verse means. Therefore expositions and interpretations in the simple sense are Torah laws, not rabbinic laws, because this is not legislation but interpretation. In the end I anchor it in the verse. I am not establishing that this is right because it seems to me that this is what should be done. That’s what happens in legislation. In interpretation, I interpret what appears in the Torah. This leads me onward. When we look at hermeneutic principles, we can divide them into two types. One type is the logical principles: a fortiori. The textual principles are principles whose basis is not some logic but a textual code. Say verbal analogy—what is that? It’s textual, right? Because the same word appears here and there, so the text hints to me that I need to compare the two contexts. The beginning of the work is the text. Okay? It’s not that I have some logic telling me there is a relation between these two things; the text reveals it to me. The same is true of general and particular. But a fortiori, for example, is a logical principle. Fine? “If the children of Israel did not listen to me, how then will Pharaoh listen to me?” If the children of Israel do not obey me, then Pharaoh will obey me—a fortiori. Right? That is logical. There is nothing in the text that hints that I should make an a fortiori derivation here. Say the text says that in tort law, an ox that gores in the public domain is liable for half damages. So in the injured party’s courtyard, all the more so it should be liable. If it entered the injured party’s courtyard, surely it should be liable. Right? Now the fact that the Torah writes that an ox in the public domain is liable for half damages—does that hint to me that I need to make some sort of derivation? Is there something in the text that triggers a derivation? No. It states the law that in the public domain one pays half damages. When I make an a fortiori inference, the trigger for the derivation is my logic, not anything in the text. My logic says that damage in the injured party’s courtyard is more severe than damage in the public domain. So if in the public domain one pays half, then in the injured party’s courtyard one must certainly pay at least half. This does not begin from some textual phenomenon; my logic says that this is more severe than that. By the way, the same is true of building a principle from a case. That is analogy. Suppose I said: in the public domain one pays half damages, then in the sea too one pays half damages, even though the sea is not the public domain. But in the sea too one pays half damages. Why? Because it seems similar to me. What difference is there between the public domain and the sea regarding damages? There is no difference. So I make an analogy; that is called building a principle. Building a principle is analogy. Here too, the fact that one pays half damages in the public domain—which is written in the Torah—contains no hint in the text saying make a derivation. There is no textual trigger there. My logic says that if this is similar to that, and here the law is thus, then here too the law will be thus. I make that derivation because of my reasoning, not because of something in the text that says “interpret me.” Yes? Those are called the logical hermeneutic principles. By the way, logical hermeneutic principles are also used with other texts and even in ordinary conversation, not only in interpreting the Torah. Nobody uses general and particular in ordinary speech or in an article or in textual interpretation. In fact you can bring examples where they do, but in principle no. Or verbal analogy. But a fortiori—yes, all the time in ordinary conversation and so on. What, if that’s what you say, then all the more so you’ll agree with me here, right? People say that all the time in everyday discussions on every subject, because it is logical. You don’t need something… if the derivation begins from something appearing in the text, then you need some given datum. If such-and-such a phenomenon appears in the text, then you need to include, exclude, compare—whatever, do something—that is a law given to Moses at Sinai. I need a law given to Moses at Sinai telling me that if there is such-and-such a textual phenomenon, this is what you are supposed to do with it. Okay? If there is no… it’s like encryption. If there is no agreement between the writer of the text and its interpreter about how one encodes and decodes, then there is no point in decoding codes; it’s irrelevant. But in the logical hermeneutic principles this is not an agreed code; there are no ciphers here. You are simply drawing conclusions from the text. Okay, if you say that, then all the more so you would say this—not because you encoded something in the text in a certain way. You encoded nothing. You said something, and from my own logic I understand that if you said that, then all the more so you would also say this. Or analogy—that if you said that, apparently you would also say this. Okay? So those are the logical hermeneutic principles. For example, one indication—I once found one exception to this, and that is what made the penny drop for me—in the entire Talmud, whenever you find objections to a derivation, it is only to derivations from the logical side. There are no objections to derivations from the textual side. For example, an objection to a verbal analogy. It says “for her” here and “for her” there, so slave and woman. What do you mean? What is true of a slave, who serves me, is not true of a woman, who does not serve me. Do I have an objection? No, there are no objections. There are no objections to verbal analogy. Why? Because verbal analogy does not begin from logic. You say: you make an a fortiori argument. When you make an a fortiori argument, you are basically saying that B is more severe than A. I have an objection: no, A is more severe than B—here, look. So I am undermining your logical premise. Okay? So the role of an objection is to attack your logical assumption. Okay? But in textual derivations there is no logical assumption. You have to compare slave to woman—that is a given, the text tells you so, not because you think they are similar. Now point out to me something in which slave and woman are not similar. So what? I am not comparing them because I thought they were similar. I am comparing them because the Torah told me to compare them. So if there is some other respect in which they are different, fine, then in that respect they are different, but in other respects the Torah tells me to compare them. Therefore there cannot be an objection to a derivation in a textual principle, only to a derivation in a logical principle. I said that I once saw one exception on general and particular, and in the end I explained that too in the manner of Rabbi Akiva. In the end I explained that this too is not really an objection to the textual derivation, because there cannot be an objection to a textual derivation. So that is a brief survey of hermeneutic principles. I return to Maimonides just to close the circle. Maimonides in his second principle writes that what emerges from hermeneutic principles has the status of the words of the Sages. Let’s glance at this for a second. In the second principle. In the second principle: that it is not proper to count everything learned by one of the thirteen principles by which the Torah is interpreted, or by inclusion. Meaning, anything learned from the thirteen principles or from inclusion—by the way, inclusion is Rabbi Akiva’s principle, the thirteen principles are Rabbi Ishmael’s—does not enter the count of the commandments. Why not? One could say, okay, it’s some technical principle—I don’t know, this is not considered a commandment in itself. But from the internal logic of his words—we’ll see them more later, so I’m only anticipating now—you can see that Maimonides means to say that it is not counted because it is not Torah law. And only Torah commandments are counted—that we saw in the previous lesson. It is not counted because it is not Torah law. Meaning, Maimonides understands that laws emerging from interpretations have the status of rabbinic laws, not Torah laws. Now this is a bit surprising, because as I said before, in the end these interpretations are interpretive tools. The Sages say: “et” comes to include, and therefore “You shall fear the Lord your God” comes to include Torah scholars. Once the Sages determined that—and after all “do not deviate” says they have authority to determine it—then as far as I’m concerned, why do I need to revere Torah scholars? Because the Torah says one must revere Torah scholars. “You shall fear the Lord your God”—the “et” tells me that one must revere Torah scholars. So why is this a rabbinic law? This is a law written in the Torah. This is a law created by interpretation, not by legislation. So why is it a rabbinic law? That is basically the question, and you can already see that it is very similar to the question I asked in the previous lesson about rabbinic laws. If it comes from the Torah, then why is it rabbinic? Here too, the same thing. If it comes from the Torah—and the solution will also be similar. We’re getting ahead of ourselves. As I said there, it does not come from the Torah in the sense of specification but in the sense of branching. And laws of the words of the Sages that are learned from interpretations also come from the Torah by way of branching and not by way of specification. That will solve the parallel problem here as well. But that is for future sessions. Okay, I’ll stop here.