Ein Aya – Berakhot 125a

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

🔗 Link to the original lecture

🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So apparently, just as he said it, he also wrote it. Therefore this shouldn’t be compared to the discussion about events that occur, and the question whether they occur in historical order or not. So maybe you can reconcile it in various ways, but I suspect that’s not really the heart of the matter. I’ll explain to you why I think otherwise. In fact, the exposition itself—I’ll maybe bring you a parallel Talmudic passage, in tractate Yevamot. The Talmud in tractate Yevamot also brings this exposition about juxtaposed passages, where we derive the idea of juxtaposition from. “And Rabbi Elazar said: From where in the Torah do we know juxtaposed passages? As it says: ‘They are established forever and ever, performed in truth and uprightness.’” And that’s it. What about this example of Absalom, or I don’t know, some example that points to it? No, it’s not brought there. Meaning, our Talmud continues this exposition and also brings the example of Absalom together with Gog and Magog in order to show the application. Again, I can come up with explanations for that. Maybe they wanted to give that Sadducee an answer on the substance as well, and not just settle for the general statement. But somehow all these difficulties—and there are more difficulties—lead me to think that maybe this is not about the exposition of juxtaposed passages at all. Again, like I said yesterday in the previous segment.

Look, the version we have in the printed editions—I went back to the Talmud in Berakhot, which is our topic—the version in the printed editions says “Sadducee,” not “heretic.” Here it says “Christian heretic”; we already explained that in the previous class, that this means a Christian. Now here, what does it mean to say to a Christian or a Sadducee, “You don’t expound juxtaposed passages, so that’s why it’s difficult for you; we do expound juxtaposed passages, so it isn’t”? First of all, the Sadducees don’t expound anything, not just juxtaposed passages. They don’t accept the Oral Torah; they only accept what is written in the Written Torah. As for Christians, there’s nothing to talk about at all—what do you mean, expositions? They’re not even in the game. So what does it mean: “You don’t expound juxtaposed passages and therefore it’s difficult for you”? There’s something here that looks, again, like I said about Beruriah in the previous case—in my opinion this is some kind of polemic. Meaning, that Christian is really asking and taunting Rabbi Abbahu, saying to him: look, you people have no logic, your psalms aren’t written in chronological order, okay?

Now what is he talking about? He’s talking about “A psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son.” Absalom is a son who rebelled against the king. Does that remind you of anything in connection with Christianity? Okay, there’s some kind of hidden struggle here. Earlier we talked about Christians who believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, and that was the story with Beruriah in the previous class. Here my feeling is that once again this is really an allusion to the Christians, who are basically a son rebelling against his father. Because you say that Jesus is the son of the Holy One, blessed be He—of God. Now he rebels against Him; from your perspective, of course, from the Jewish perspective, he changes His Torah. So he rebels against Him, he changes the Torah, says that the Torah has been replaced, that there is a New Covenant. So basically this is a son rebelling against his father.

And then what does Rabbi Abbahu say to him? He brings him an example for this idea of expounding juxtaposed passages that does not appear in the Talmud in Yevamot; here it was added. Why? Because this is not about expounding juxtaposed passages at all—that’s not the story. He’s coming to strike him in the teeth, exactly like Beruriah did. He says to him: why was Absalom placed next to that passage? You ask me about Absalom in Psalm 3, in Psalms—they placed it next to Psalm 2, “Why do the nations rage,” yes, the section about Gog and Magog—why? Because you would ask: how can a servant rebel against his master? So I show you that a son can rebel against his father. If a son rebels against his father, then a servant can also rebel against his master. Of course, who is he talking to? He’s talking to Christians. He says to him: you are sons rebelling against your father. So you ask me questions about chronological order? So really, yes—“you too, blunt his teeth.” That’s what he’s saying here. This is not a question of juxtaposed passages or not, he didn’t ask him about juxtaposed passages, and there’s no argument here about whether we expound juxtaposed passages. Therefore the addition found here doesn’t appear in the Talmud in Yevamot. The Talmud in Yevamot really is dealing with the question of where we learn the exposition of juxtaposed passages from. The Talmud here uses that only as a tool to spar with the Christian; they’re not at all clarifying here the question of whether we expound juxtaposed passages or not. This whole matter is just some sort of polemic with the Christian.

And that also explains all the other difficulties—what I said about the Talmud in Pesachim, which seems to contradict the Talmud here, because there it appears that the thematic order is supposed to reflect the chronological order, and they don’t change it just so I can expound something. Here suddenly they do change it—because that isn’t really true; they’re not really talking here about juxtaposed passages. It has nothing to do with that issue. This whole story is really just a polemical device, that’s all. Therefore I don’t know whether it really makes sense to start trying to examine here the expositions of juxtaposed passages and understand whether it says this or that, and compare it to the Talmud in Pesachim and raise contradictions. It seems to me that this whole story has to be read in some kind of polemical way. Basically I’m using seemingly midrashic, halakhic tools and so on, when in fact my goal is to strike the Christian. So if earlier Beruriah was sparring with that Christian on the plane of the virgin birth, here Rabbi Abbahu is sparring with that Christian on the plane of a son rebelling against his father. Why are you abandoning the Torah that our father gave us? You are his son, you claim you were born from him—so how can you leave him? That’s really the argument. So it seems to me that this is a continuation of the previous passage.

Actually, there’s another remark here in this section that I was thinking about. For example, the question whether this derivation from “They are established forever and ever, performed in truth and uprightness”—that from here we expound juxtaposed passages—is this an exposition from the verse? It could be the plain meaning of the verse. “They are established forever and ever, performed in truth and uprightness.” Things that are placed next to one another are so because they are made in truth and uprightness. Meaning, it’s not at all certain that we’re dealing here with an exposition. It could be that we really do learn it from this verse—that when the Holy One, blessed be He, places one thing next to another, it’s presumably in order to teach me something true and upright. It’s not some departure from the plain meaning and then using it as a homiletic reading. So “They are established forever and ever, performed in truth and uprightness” seemingly should, if this is correct, have been accepted even by the Sadducees. It’s not an exposition. Which strengthens even more the claim that this is not a confrontation with Sadducees; it’s a confrontation with Christians. And Christians don’t deal with this issue at all.

So that’s regarding the Talmud. But let’s move on to Rav Kook. Rav Kook, like in the previous section, here too used the printed editions that were before him, and he understands this as referring to a Sadducee. Meaning, he talks about an argument with Sadducees. And you understand that this changes the whole context, because Rav Kook does talk about the content of the matter. He really discusses why juxtaposed passages, and what their significance is—whereas I’m claiming that this is not the subject of the passage at all. The passage is not dealing with expositions of juxtaposed passages, and that’s not the point. They use that expression, but really nothing can be learned from this, no conclusion at all regarding expositions of juxtaposed passages and their meaning. But for Rav Kook, the version before him was that the questioner was a Sadducee and not a heretic—not a Christian—and then the discussion is really whether to make expositions. The Sadducee accepts only the plain meaning, not homiletic exposition—that’s the Sadducean position—and so he doesn’t expound juxtaposed passages. And that’s what Rabbi Abbahu answers him. He says to him: you don’t expound juxtaposed passages? Well then you have difficulties. This proves you are mistaken; one has to expound juxtaposed passages. Otherwise you explain to me why King David wrote this first and that afterward.

By the way, more than that: when the Sadducee argues with Rabbi Abbahu, what is he trying to attack? He asks him a question about the order in Psalms—but you, Sadducee, how do you explain it? How do you explain the order? After all, Psalms is something you too have to explain. We have an argument about the Oral Torah, but the Written Torah—you too accept the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), I think. I don’t know the exact details of Sadducean theology, but it seems to me they accepted the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). So explain it yourself. If King David doesn’t make sense, is that an attack on me? It’s not an attack on me. With the Christian—although they also accept the Old Covenant in some fashion—you can understand better that the Christian is really coming to attack the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). He says: forget it, there’s a New Covenant. The son Absalom rebelled against his father—do you ask me why he rebelled against his father? Because his father spoke nonsense. Who is his father? King David, of course, who wrote Psalms. That’s Absalom’s father. And he’s speaking nonsense: he puts the psalm that happened later earlier. So you ask me why I rebel against the father? If the father speaks nonsense, of course I rebel against him. Okay, so the whole discussion takes on a completely different meaning depending on whether our version here reads Christian or Sadducee.

Fine. But as I said, Rav Kook speaks about Sadducees, so let’s read him now. I’m reading Rav Kook’s words: “He sought by this to reveal an approach that there is no order and no intentional purpose in the arrangement of the passages, but rather only according to happenstance.” Okay? Rav Kook, first of all, clearly is not talking about Christians, he’s talking about Sadducees. Beyond the version that appears above, the opening sentence already says that. Because clearly Rav Kook understood the argument here as a question about whether the order of the passages is accidental or not. Why? I asked earlier: if it’s the Sadducee who is asking, then why is the Sadducee attacking Psalms, which he too accepts, right? So that’s why I said it must be the Christian attacking. Rav Kook says no, it’s the Sadducee attacking. What does that mean? Apparently he didn’t know that alternate version, but he understands that it’s the Sadducee—why? He has an explanation. Because the Sadducee accepts Psalms, but the order of the psalms is not fundamental for him. Because if he accepted the order of the psalms as substantive, then he too would make expositions—for example, the exposition of juxtaposed passages—and the Sadducees do not make expositions; they only accept the plain meaning, the biblical text itself. Therefore, for him there is no significance to the order of the passages, and if there is no significance to the order of the passages, then he says: leave it, it’s an accidental order, it has nothing to do with the issue.

But still of course that’s a problem. Because then what I asked earlier still remains: so how does the Sadducee explain this order? Fine, the order is not intended so that we derive expositions from it. The placing of passages next to one another is not in order to make expositions, because he doesn’t accept that whole world of exposition. But then what yes? Why did David arrange Psalm 3 here—Absalom in Psalm 3—and Saul in Psalm 57? You tell me. You say—according to your approach it’s even harder. According to your method, it should have been arranged chronologically. Therefore the answer Rabbi Abbahu gives him is indeed the expected answer. It’s not clear what the Sadducee is attacking Rabbi Abbahu about at all—what exactly is he attacking him over? In any case, in my opinion, even after Rav Kook’s explanation it’s hard to read this as an argument with a Sadducee. Because also on the level of content, it looks like an argument with a Christian, not with a Sadducee. And then, as I said before, the whole issue of juxtaposed passages and the fine points and all that is irrelevant—that’s not the subject here at all.

But Rav Kook understands it as an argument with Sadducees about the exposition of juxtaposed passages—whether we expound juxtaposed passages or not. So on that—and from this there would come, I continue reading—“he sought by this to reveal an approach that there is no order and no intentional purpose in the arrangement of the passages, but rather only according to happenstance,” that’s the Sadducee’s claim. “And from this there would come an even greater corruption: to say that also the fine details of the Torah, from which we learn the very bodies of Jewish law”—here it’s only Absalom and so on, stories from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)—“but also in the Torah itself, if you say that there is no intentional purpose in the arrangement of the passages, then we won’t be able to learn many laws that are learned there by means of the tools of exposition,” which of course the Sadducee doesn’t accept. So that’s what he says: “from which we learn the very bodies of Jewish law, they too are according to happenstance, according to the expansion of language, Heaven forbid,” as though just for linguistic considerations. Although there are tannaim who say that, by the way—that “the Torah spoke in human language,” Rabbi Ishmael, or scribal embellishments. Sometimes the biblical language is made more elegant not in order to expound something from it, but simply because it is more elegant language. There are tannaim who say that. But for Rav Kook it’s “Heaven forbid”—such a thing cannot be; everything has to be precise.

“However, he answered him with an intelligent answer that explains the majesty of the foundation of faith.” Rabbi Abbahu answered the Sadducee that we should not attribute to happenstance anything from which we can draw moral benefit that completes our deficiencies. This is the central principle he’s discussing in this section. Meaning, if there is a certain structure from which we can learn something, but there is also the possibility of saying that this structure is accidental and then it teaches nothing, then we say: choose the first option. Meaning, if there is something from which one can learn something, then one should learn it. That doesn’t mean it’s always so. Sometimes there is some structure that is accidental, like I said before—scribal embellishments, or “the Torah spoke in human language.” But if there is something from which one really can learn something, then learn it; don’t attribute it to chance, but assume that the arrangement was deliberate in order to teach us what it is meant to teach. And to this, how does he say it? “He said to him: for you, who do not expound juxtaposed passages, it is difficult; for us, who do expound juxtaposed passages, it is not difficult. As Rabbi Yohanan said: from where in the Torah do we know juxtaposed passages? As it is written: ‘They are established forever and ever, performed in truth and uprightness.’”

So that’s how he answered the Sadducee. That yes, it could also be accidental—it could be, I have no proof that it isn’t accidental. But on the other hand it could also be that Psalm 3 was placed next to Psalm 2 in order to teach me some sort of lesson, as appears later in the Talmud. Now how do we decide between the two possibilities? In principle both are possible. So Rav Kook says—and this is an interesting point—Rav Kook is basically claiming that in principle there could be a situation in which the order is accidental and you can’t learn anything from it. But then I would have expected it to be chronological order, for example. If there is no other consideration, then why not chronological order? In any case, if there is something I really can learn from the change in order, then I do not attribute it to chance; rather I prefer the option that this was written this way in order to teach us. That’s basically what he claims. Even though in principle the option that it’s accidental could also exist, we prefer—something like a kind of Ockham’s razor—when there are two possible interpretations, we choose the interpretation that says this thing is also intentional, that it comes to teach. That is Rabbi Abbahu’s answer to the Sadducee.

So he doesn’t reject him out of hand. He doesn’t say to him: nonsense, there’s no such thing as chance in the Torah. No—there are chance elements in the Torah. But in a place where I can explain that it isn’t chance, I’ll prefer that explanation. Okay? It’s not an extreme statement. Meaning, he is willing to accept the Sadducee’s conception as possible. You don’t have to build mountains on every little thing you see. Sometimes it’s just written that way for utility, for elegance of language. That’s all. But in a place where you do manage to see something from which one can learn, it is preferable to choose that option. “As Rabbi Yohanan said”—yes, so he brings the saying of Rabbi Yohanan.

And now Rav Kook starts speaking. “For when we contemplate all the needs of created beings, we see that they are all arranged with wisdom and there is no chance in them. Even the slight, physical needs of lowly animals, and all the more so higher beings who have more needs, such as human beings. And all the more so man, from whom the Holy One, blessed be He, withheld not the slightest thing useful for his perfection and the expansion of his mind. And there is no person who has human intellect who can attribute all these things to chance, except to the course of supreme wisdom that looks toward species-wide and individual completion.” Yes—the Holy One, blessed be He, wants to care for our completion, both of the species and of the individual person, so He gives us all our needs. And it is not by chance that we have all our needs here—air to breathe, water to drink, food, land, sun, the possibility to grow things and produce things. All these things the Holy One, blessed be He, gave us; it cannot be accidental. It fits exactly the needs we require. This is the argument of Duties of the Heart, in the Gate of Divine Unity, and therefore no human intellect can attribute such a thing to chance. Such a thing is not chance.

By the way, this is what is called the anthropic argument. The anthropic argument basically says that the world is built in such a way that it is perfectly suited to the needs of man. Everything a person needs is found in it. A sign that someone created this world, because otherwise how could it be that exactly what I need is here? And what, of course, do the atheists answer? What they call the anthropic argument—and it’s very confusing, because in most texts today what is called the anthropic argument is the opposite argument—the argument that says that if the things that enable us to live were not here, we wouldn’t be here. So what is so surprising? If we are here, then clearly all our needs are here around us. For if they weren’t here, there would be no one to ask why our needs aren’t here—we couldn’t exist. So by definition, if we are here, it is only because the circumstances that enable us to exist are here. That’s the atheists’ dual anthropic argument. But in any event, Rav Kook apparently belongs to the camp of believers, not atheists, so he brings here the believers’ anthropic argument. He says: this cannot be chance; all our needs are here in abundance. Duties of the Heart expands on this more. He says: the air that we need every single moment is found here in the greatest quantity. Water, which we need as a very basic necessity, is found in a smaller quantity but still very abundantly. Food—we need less of it, so it is found in less quantity, but still enough. Meaning, even the hierarchy of quantities reflects the hierarchy of needs—not Maslow’s hierarchy, but the hierarchy of food needs. So the claim is that the Holy One, blessed be He, did all this, and it is not accidental.

And this too every thoughtful person will recognize—we continue reading—“for the importance of moral completion rises immeasurably above natural completion.” Meaning, if the Holy One, blessed be He, cares for our bodily completion, for our physical existence, then there is no doubt it is far more important that He care for our spiritual completion. “If so, how can it enter the heart of an intelligent person to say that there is something from which we can draw moral completion, and yet it was not done intentionally by the supreme wisdom in order to benefit us in our life, in our true human completion?” So if there is something from which we can draw a moral, human lesson and so on, it cannot be attributed to chance. If our physical needs are supplied by the Holy One, blessed be He, and that cannot be accidental but rather shows that He cares for us, then all the more so He cares for our spirit. And if He cares for our spirit, then where do we draw the ideas of spirit and morality from? From the Torah. So if we see some structure in the Torah, there is no doubt it was not made by chance if something can be learned from it. Don’t hold back—learn. Don’t worry that maybe it’s accidental and nothing can be learned from it. Because the Holy One, blessed be He, does not act that way; He cares for our spiritual completion all the more so from His care for our material completion.

“And behold, the chief thing that completes all human beings is the light of Torah and the appearance of the holy spirit upon the prophets and the writers of the holy writings, who stood and stand as a banner for the nations, to benefit them in the knowledge of fear of God and the foundations of morality, the laws of justice and uprightness.” There’s obviously an allusion here to the verse. He says yes: “the light of Torah and the appearance of the holy spirit,” etc., “who stood and stand as a banner for the nations to benefit them,” and so on. What is this? Those things that are juxtaposed within the Torah, which stands forever—they are “performed in truth and uprightness,” and there is an idea behind them. They weren’t just placed there and left that way eternally side by side. It comes to teach us something. Okay.

“How could these exalted benefits be left to chance? Even in a small portion of them, which benefits our completion. Therefore, from every one of them from which we can draw upright, completing knowledge to guide us in the paths of life”—I’m reading here—“everything is done according to divine wisdom, by whose power these luminaries remained for us.” “Luminaries” here means the verses, the Torah. “And he related this by saying: ‘The works of His hands are truth and justice; all His precepts are faithful; they are established forever and ever, performed in truth and uprightness.’” Those are the verses. So now he begins to interpret them in order. “By saying ‘The works of His hands are truth and justice’”—that’s how the verse begins—meaning that there is no chance or abandonment in creation at all. “The works of His hands,” in creation itself, in physical creation, there is no chance. All our needs are fashioned by the Holy One, blessed be He, intentionally. It is not accidental that we have all these needs; rather everything is for benefit and perfection. “So too all His precepts are faithful.” What are “His precepts”? His commands, His verses, the Torah. Meaning: if “the works of His hands,” which is creation itself, physical creation, are truth and justice, everything intentionally directed by Him, then “all His precepts are faithful”—that is, His precepts are certainly faithful. “The precepts of the Lord are upright, gladdening the heart”—that means the Torah. “All His precepts are faithful” means that His precepts are certainly reliable. They are certainly arranged by the Holy One, blessed be He. This is all the more so for the sake of the perfection of the moral, spiritual part of reality, which is its superior and ultimate part.

“Established forever and ever”—which he interprets not as adjacent to one another, but as resting upon. Yes, that’s how he interprets it. “That they rest forever upon the foundations of divine wisdom, to be an eternal light.” And how could the guidance and the continuous existence of an exalted law in reality, which crowns all humanity to reach its destiny, be without providence and precision of the sort found even in the smallest creatures? The Torah that the Holy One, blessed be He, created with His own hands—there you think there is chance, when every tiny creature created here in evolution or in a world made by natural law—there you say there is no chance? In the Torah there is chance? In the Torah, if something is placed next to something else, then apparently that is intentional. “Therefore they are performed in truth and uprightness. And it is faithful wisdom on our part that even from the juxtaposition of the passages we draw beneficial elements and pleasant sayings that are helpful for general and personal moral perfection. And from this we learn that things even more fit to be said to be intentional—such as the fine details of the Torah in its words and its expressions—are all wells of living water of true wisdom, to instruct us in the ways of life for our good all our days. For this is the quality of divine wisdom: there is no chance in its ways, and the benefit drawn from these things is forever a faithful testimony to the original intention on the part of divine providence.”

By the end, he’s already beginning to get carried away a little beyond the modest formulation he used at the beginning. At first he accepted the Sadducee’s position to some extent. He said: maybe there are things written accidentally. But if there’s something I do manage to learn from, then there’s no reason to assume it’s accidental, and from that I will learn. But there is indeed still the possibility of saying that some things are accidental, not intended to teach. At the end, he says: it cannot enter the mind, after all every tiny thing must be arranged according to divine wisdom. Meaning, in the end he arrives at the view that there can’t be anything else. Everything has to teach us something. And if we don’t understand what it teaches us, then apparently the problem is with us—we didn’t understand. But everything is supposed, in one way or another, to convey some lesson to us.

Now here this is an interesting point in his claim, because one has to distinguish between the two formulations. The formulation with which he opens the article is one that is basically willing to accept the Sadducee in principle. There is a situation in which it was written for elegance of expression, just chronological order or whatever. And there is another possibility, namely that it was placed here in order to teach us some lesson—for example Psalm 3. One could say it’s there just incidentally, and one could say it’s there because it was placed next to Psalm 2 to teach me the lesson the Talmud states: just as a son rebels against his father, so a servant can rebel against his master. So if I have these two possibilities, why do I choose one? He says: because the assumption is that if I can learn from it, why assume it’s accidental? So presumably the Holy One, blessed be He, came to teach me this point.

At the end, the formulation is completely different, and that’s a different logic. We need to understand that, and I’ll explain in a moment why. His conclusion is different: everything comes to teach us something, there is no option of chance. No option. Everything that was written—if you don’t understand, you don’t understand, but if you do understand, then you have no reason for concern; clearly it was intended to teach this. The first formulation says no—it’s only preferable. Meaning, there is a possibility that it’s accidental, but why not prefer the possibility that something can be learned from it, because that’s a better possibility. Why is that difference important? I’ll tell you why. Because according to his first formulation, I don’t accept that claim at all. Think about it—and this leads me to much broader claims.

Suppose I see the juxtaposition of Psalm 2 and Psalm 3 in Psalms. Now this is a logical argument. I see the juxtaposition of Psalm 2 and Psalm 3 in Psalms. According to the first formulation, I have two possible ways to understand it. One possibility: it’s accidental. It had to be placed somewhere; so it was placed somewhere. What can you do? If you have no consideration where to place it, you place it where you place it. What difference does it make? Of course chronology is always in the background, but let’s leave that aside for now. That’s one possibility. A second possibility is that it was placed next to Psalm 2 in order to teach me some lesson: that just as a son can rebel against his father, so a servant can rebel against his master. How do I choose between the two possibilities?

Now look: suppose I didn’t think it was true that a son can rebel against his father, or that a servant can, or that one can infer one from the other. Then only the verses would force me to learn it. But who says they are teaching me that? Maybe it’s accidental? After all, I have no proof that this is really so. If I don’t know whether the lesson itself is true, it emerges only from the verses—but it doesn’t emerge from the verses, because there is always the option that the verses are placed here by chance and did not come to teach a lesson. When can I conclude that it came to teach a lesson? Only if I already know that the lesson is true. Meaning, only if I understand that this lesson is true, then when I see the juxtaposition of Psalm 2 and Psalm 3 I say: ah, this comes to teach that lesson, because I already know that lesson is true. And if I have the option that it’s accidental or the option that it came to teach that lesson, then I prefer this latter option.

But suppose I found no lesson at all, or nothing that seemed reasonable to me. Then I’d ask: why was Psalm 2 placed next to Psalm 3? I could have imagined a million possibilities. I don’t know—maybe the nations, maybe Absalom was a gentile. Because it says “Why do the nations rage” in Psalm 2, and Psalm 3 deals with Absalom. So apparently Absalom was a gentile. By the way, he was the son of a gentile woman—his mother had at least originally been a gentile. Anyway, I’m just saying I could have learned that too, right? Why don’t I learn that? Why do I learn specifically the lesson that just as a son rebels against his father, so a servant rebels against his master?

Now if my interpretation is right, that this is about Christians, then fine—I didn’t really learn it from there, I’m simply sparring with the Christians. I didn’t really learn it from the verse here. I learned how to hit him in the teeth. But Rav Kook reads it seriously. Rav Kook says that this is the lesson learned from the juxtaposition of Psalm 2 and Psalm 3. And how do you know this is the lesson? How do you know? Maybe the lesson is that Absalom is a gentile. Maybe the lesson is—there are a million possibilities I could derive from the juxtaposition of Psalm 2 and Psalm 3. The only way to ground this derivation is to say that it seems reasonable to me. Because it makes sense. But if it makes sense, then why do you need the juxtaposition of the psalms? You already know it makes sense. Or in other words, you’re not learning it from here—you knew it beforehand too. Because if you didn’t know it beforehand, you wouldn’t learn it from here either. I have another million options I could learn from here. I learn this from here because I already knew it in advance.

And if so, what this really means—and here we come to a much broader thesis of mine—I claim that in principle you can’t learn anything from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). Because whatever we learn from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is really something we understood beforehand too. Except what? We suddenly found it in this passage or in the juxtaposition of those passages, and we jumped on it as if finding great spoil. But really, if the lesson in itself didn’t sound reasonable to us, we wouldn’t extract it from there. I wrote several columns about this on the website, and also in the trilogy I wrote about it. Haya is already tired of hearing this too. But my point is this: I don’t know a single example—really not one. And I challenged people on the website to bring me an example. I know of no example where someone learned from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) something that he had not accepted beforehand. I don’t know of one. There is no such thing. Why? Because if I didn’t already think it, I wouldn’t learn that from there—I’d learn something else. I can always learn various things from there. There are no things to which the verses force me. If there were, then it might have been possible to learn something even if it didn’t seem right to me. In practice that does not happen.

Now, if I return—but that’s just a remark in parentheses, we won’t get into that minefield here—if I return to our issue, there really is a kind of logical tangle in Rav Kook’s words. Because what he’s basically saying is: if you understand that something can be learned from it, then learn. But how can I understand that something can be learned from it? Only if the lesson I manage to extract sounds reasonable to me. But if it sounds reasonable to me, then I already knew it before, so I didn’t learn it from here. So in practice I’m not really learning it from here.

I’ll give you an example. Just today I posted on my site a fairly sharp column, as usual, about things Rabbi Gershon Edelstein, head of the Ponevezh yeshiva, said. He began his remarks with a tremendous difficulty. He had a difficulty: why did Haredim die more, or get hurt more, than other populations? A marvelous question. Really, I’m sure no listener could think of any possible answer—except that they lived densely, didn’t follow the instructions, don’t have media communication tools, and all kinds of things of that sort, and they had leadership that was not especially intelligent—but aside from all that, truly one cannot think of any explanation. And then he had a bombshell answer to that question. What was the answer? That when Haredim sin, it is deliberate, because after all they are all Torah scholars; whereas the others, who are all ignoramuses, if they sin it is presumably unintentional. Therefore the Haredim deserve greater punishment, and that is why they were hit harder by the coronavirus. Which is what had to be proved.

Meaning, what is this claim really doing? He’s saying: I pose a question in order to tell you the answer. And the answer, after all, I knew beforehand too. I want to rebuke you so that you continue to adhere to the commandments properly. Don’t permit yourselves to sin. How do I do it? I pose a nonsense question that has a million answers a thousand times more sensible than this one, and then I find the answer that we already knew beforehand, because that’s where I wanted to get. Okay, I once spoke about this—I said: what is the difference between a homily and pilpul? Pilpul is an argument that looks valid, that holds water, but whose conclusion is false. Then it becomes an interesting puzzle—where exactly is the flaw in the argument? After all, the conclusion cannot be true, so you have to look for where exactly in the argument the problem lies. That’s an interesting puzzle. What is a homily? A homily is the opposite. A homily is a foolish argument that yields a true conclusion. Someone gives homilies, weaves together midrashim and everything, and concludes that one must be humble and keep commandments and study Torah and various things like that. So who will argue with him? Of course the conclusions are true, even though the homily is stupid. The homily is stupid, and the arguments do not prove what he said—but they don’t need to prove it, because it’s true.

Okay, so why do we need the proof? Basically what he did there was a homily. He used a question that doesn’t even get off the ground, that has plenty of answers; the question doesn’t arise in the first place. I brought there an example—actually Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, the mythic leader of that Lithuanian faction. I once heard a story about him: some kollel fellow came to him because his car had been stolen. He said to Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, tell me, what do I need to fix? They stole my car, so apparently something is wrong with me. So he told him: you need to fix the issue of locking your cars, locking your car doors. Meaning, that’s roughly the answer that should also have been given to Rabbi Gershon Edelstein’s question. Why did Haredim die, or get hurt, more than others? Because they were less careful than others, they were more crowded, whatever—there are various explanations from the circumstances too, not just blame, but there is no shortage of explanations. There are excellent explanations why they were harmed more. What kind of question is that? What kind of silly question is this? Rather, he asks that question in order to get to the answer, in order to give moral rebuke to his listeners: you are Haredim, and you need to make sure not to sin; if you sin, it counts as deliberate sin, and you are punished for it, and things of that sort—which we all knew already before. There was no need for the question for that, and that question also doesn’t prove it and says nothing about it. What does it have to do with anything? The whole business is completely absurd. This piece was published both abroad and בארץ in newspapers, as though this were some main lesson from the coronavirus that had been newly discovered by the coronavirus. It’s unbelievable, this foolishness.

In any case, I think that what happens here—at least in Rav Kook’s first formulation—is something very similar. You’re basically telling me: look, I have a juxtaposition of Psalm 3 and Psalm 2. Fine? Now I have two possibilities. Either it’s accidental—Psalm 3 had to be placed somewhere, so it was placed here—or maybe it comes to teach, through the juxtaposition of 2 and 3. How do I know it’s not accidental, that it comes to teach? After all, maybe this and maybe that. How do I know it’s not accidental, that it comes to teach? If I find a correct lesson. But how do I know it’s correct? I found some lesson—there are a million lessons. How do I know this one is correct? Because I already know in advance that it’s correct. That’s how I measure whether there is a legitimate or possible lesson here, or whether there is no possible lesson here, right? But if I know in advance that it’s correct, then I didn’t learn it from the juxtaposition, I knew it before. So why do I need the juxtaposition? Okay, so this whole story is really a kind of rigged game. This logic is problematic. The Sadducee is right. The Sadducee is right because he says to him: listen, if you agree with me that there is a possibility that it’s accidental, then all the lessons you produce from the exposition of juxtaposed passages are inventions of yours. You may be right, but you’re right not because of the juxtaposition, but because we all know it’s right even without the juxtaposition. So juxtaposition is not really an exposition—you’re selling me nonsense. That’s in Rav Kook’s first formulation.

But at the end of his words, Rav Kook shifts formulation. And Rav Kook says: what are you talking about? There is no possibility of chance. Every tiny thing in Scripture comes to teach something. Now this is already a somewhat different story—again, not entirely in my view, but somewhat different. Why? Because there is no option of chance. Meaning, clearly it comes to teach something. Therefore you can’t ask me why I expounded it. I expounded it because one has to expound—everything has to be expounded; there is no option of chance. Still, my previous remark remains in place. I still ask: why did you expound this and not that Absalom was a gentile? Why did you expound that just as a son rebels against his father, so a servant rebels against his master? I can derive a million other homilies. Why did you expound this one? Because it seems true to you. Fine, so you didn’t learn it from here—leave the exposition of juxtaposed passages; you knew it beforehand too. So that claim still remains—but not the claim of why expound at all. The claim of why expound at all—maybe it’s accidental—that falls away in Rav Kook’s final formulation. Because in the end he says: no, no, everything has to be ordered down to the last detail. And therefore, because there is some difference—I don’t know whether it’s intentional—but in his wording it seems that he somehow slides, without even noticing, innocently, from the formulation that there is a possibility of chance and a possibility that not, and if possible we choose the non-accidental option, to the formulation that there is no possibility that it’s accidental. Everything is intentional, “performed in truth and uprightness,” and therefore everything must be learned from.

And now the question is only how one learns things, and whether one can learn things—and on that I’ve already said my piece. Fine, I think I’ll stop here, and we’ll open the microphones. Okay, I’ve given you the microphone, if anyone wants to comment or ask. This question—how do we know to expound juxtaposed passages?—it’s not only in aggadah, it’s also in Jewish law. How do we know to expound the juxtaposition of tzitzit and kilayim? And how do we know maybe there are other expositions? How do we know this is the correct exposition? How did the Sages know? With tzitzit and kilayim it’s even worse, because that juxtaposition is brought in Yevamot, it appears there in that context. And the Talmud there in fact—they placed tzitzit next to kilayim. Now from this you can learn that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition, or learn that a positive commandment does not override a prohibition. Because this juxtaposition can take you in any direction. It can take you to: if you make tzitzit out of a kilayim mixture, then that means a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. Or they placed them together in order to tell you: do not make tzitzit from kilayim. Then that means a positive commandment does not override a prohibition. Why did you decide in that direction? Because that direction seems more reasonable to me. Sure, I’ll say that there too.

There are several separate questions here, I think. Oy, I can’t hear myself. Can you hear me? Yes, yes. I have headphones on so I’m not… First of all, when we expound juxtaposed passages, what are we really expounding? Are we expounding the holy spirit? Meaning, who put them together? Who placed chapter 3 next to chapter 2? I mean, clearly Rav Kook has some kind of innocent position here. I can’t—one second. I just can’t hear myself. Rav Kook has here some kind of innocent position: everything is by holy spirit, everything came down already arranged, even Psalms has no editor. After all, there isn’t even agreement that King David wrote… There is an editor—an editor through holy spirit. What, does the holy spirit edit? Yes. What is holy spirit? The Holy One, blessed be He, who edited it through holy spirit. The editor, whoever it was, in the period of—I don’t know. But that could be. I have no idea whether Rav Kook agreed to that. I’m only saying it’s not proof. There might be an editor; the claim is just that it was edited through holy spirit. My feeling is that what Rav Kook thinks is that the things came down as they were given. That, say, he believed—I assume he thought—that King David said the entire book of Psalms. And the book of Psalms came down through holy spirit in some kind of sub-prophetic mode, and it came down as given. Since that’s how it is through holy spirit, then obviously it’s serious and there is something to learn and it is intended to teach us, advance us, and so on. That seems to me the accepted traditional conception. No, I’m trying to say that I think that’s what Rav Kook thought. Reasonable. That all of this is of course also true for the Torah, right? After all, the Sages constantly learn from juxtaposed passages. Okay. Now this juxtaposition of passages—I don’t know if it’s Rabbi Yohanan’s innovation, but first of all this exposition of juxtaposition is very interesting. I want to say something about this exposition of juxtaposition. Looking at the verse itself, this is a complete homiletic reading. No one there was talking about juxtaposition, certainly not juxtaposition of passages in the sense intended here. “Established” there means that one can rely on them—they are firm; the whole verse is like that. Let me read it for a second, I don’t know where I put it, one second—I went to look for the verse, and usually the context of the whole verse matters too. Here, yes, I copied it: “He declared to His people the power of His works, to give them the inheritance of the nations. The works of His hands are truth and justice”—Rav Kook himself quotes this, right?—“all His precepts are faithful. They are established forever and ever, performed in truth and uprightness.” Meaning they are faithful—you can rely on them, you can lean on them. “Established forever and ever, performed in truth and uprightness”—you can lean on them. Maybe the point about a Christian polemic is interesting: “He sent redemption to His people; He commanded His covenant forever,” so there is wordplay here with “covenant,” and they say the covenant changes. That’s interesting, that it really is with mem and not with… But clearly Rabbi Yohanan takes the verse entirely away from its plain meaning; this is a complete homiletic exposition. I’m not sure about that, but suppose so—so what? I really… how can one derive this? “Established” here means established in the sense of leaning on, like something to lean on, something stable. Rav Kook also explains it that way—Rav Kook explains “established” in the sense of leaning on. What does he mean? No, but Rabbi Yohanan is talking about juxtaposition of passages, he is talking about juxtaposition of passages: why is the section of Korah placed next to the section of tzitzit? Rav Kook explains that the juxtaposition of the passages is called that because we rely on the Holy One, blessed be He, on the holy spirit that arranged them. So that is an innocent homiletic reading—that’s what I’m saying. It’s a homily built on top of a homily. Maybe yes, maybe no. I think there is a kind of innocence in it, because it removes from the story the editor and understanding the editor. But that’s already in the Talmud, not Rav Kook. The Talmud derives it from there; we learn juxtaposed passages from this verse. This verse is the source for expositions of juxtaposed passages. נכון, but Rabbi Yohanan is aware of this homiletic reading, aware of what? This is the first such reading in the world, after all. Certainly it is a homily, it’s not the plain meaning of the verse, it’s only a homily. It’s the new plain meaning, fine, but if it’s a homily, does that make it untrue? What’s the problem? People make homilies too—what’s the problem? It’s not the plain meaning. I’m just saying that isn’t what King David meant by it. Maybe not, but people make homilies. The question is what the relation is between homilies and plain meaning—do homilies reveal what the author intended? That’s another question. But homiletic exposition is a basic method in the Talmud, and the Talmud reads these verses and derives from them. I think the fact that Rabbi Yohanan makes a homily on this point—it’s a kind of wordplay. He wants to say there is significance to juxtaposed passages and hangs it on the verse, but the connection is totally incidental. It’s cute: “established,” “juxtaposed,” same word. But although it’s the same root, there is no connection between what is written in the chapter and juxtaposition of passages. That doesn’t bother me, and Rav Kook also doesn’t say anything else. Maybe Rav Kook would agree with that too. So what? In any event it’s interesting that this homily appears only in the Babylonian Talmud. I checked—it doesn’t appear in the Land of Israel midrashim. It’s Rabbi Yohanan and Rabbi Abbahu; you’d expect to find the source of it in the Land of Israel midrashim, and it isn’t there. Fine, it would be interesting to trace that.

Okay. Here? Yes, yes. Basically the assumption behind what the Rabbi is asking—the question is also on the broader level of all Torah learning, that in fact there is no learning here because really you are teaching the text what you want to extract from it. The question is whether perhaps this is actually the way the Torah expects us to learn it, and maybe that’s why one can understand “these and those are the words of the living God.” Meaning, maybe there’s no problem even if it’s something contradictory, or totally opposed, so long as it emerges for you in a way that does not contradict somewhere else according to the accepted methods of Torah learning, then that defines it as truth. Meaning there’s no problem—you need to distinguish here between two things. Two things. I have no problem with your making such a supported homily. Meaning, you’re basically making a homily whose conclusion is what you already know beforehand. I have no problem with such a homily; I’m just making the point that there is no need to do it. If I know it beforehand, then why do I need the homily? It’s not because it isn’t true—I’m not claiming the conclusion is false. On the contrary, it’s so true that I knew it even without the homily. So why do I need the homily? It’s just unnecessary.

By contrast, with halakhic exposition, which is what I began with, it works somewhat differently. The logic of halakhic exposition needs discussion; I’ve dealt with this quite a bit. But first of all, as a matter of fact, in Jewish law we derive from expositions all sorts of things that we would not derive without them. Okay? In ordinary interpretation, as I know it, that does not happen—in non-halakhic interpretation. Also in laws there is some place where it’s not forced from that, it already stems from personal understanding. In the end, if we trace the root of the dispute of Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, for example, in the end we get to some point of why you decided to learn it this way. That’s another issue. In every exposition—and this is just a rule, keep it in hand—there is no exposition without a rationale behind it. Not one. Rather, the exposition is built on two levels. First level: the textual trigger. Say there is a verbal analogy, a general-and-particular structure. The hermeneutical principles tell you that if you have such-and-such a structure in the text, you need to expound it. For example, “et” comes to include, according to Rabbi Akiva. Okay? So “You shall fear the Lord your God”—the word “et” comes to include. Now I ask myself: okay, what does it include? Fine, let’s think. I don’t know. Shimon HaAmsuni got stuck on that, right? He didn’t know what to include. Then Rabbi Akiva comes and says: Torah scholars—to include Torah scholars. How did he get to Torah scholars? Why not clouds or chairs? Because that seemed most reasonable to him. But that reasoning comes only after the word “et” tells you to include something. After the word “et” tells you to include—and it’s a given that “et” comes to include; they had that from somewhere—but “et” comes to include. After that datum, I always use my reason to say what is the most plausible thing to derive from it. But that doesn’t mean the exposition is unnecessary. If there were no word “et,” I wouldn’t say that one must fear Torah scholars. The reasoning by itself would not create that law. That law is created only because the word “et” comes to include.

And specifically about that exposition, the Talmud even says it explicitly, because when Shimon HaAmsuni used to expound every “et” in the Torah until he reached “You shall fear the Lord your God,” and then he withdrew. He said: just as I received reward for the exposition, so I will receive reward for the withdrawal. He basically said to himself: it cannot be that one has to include here someone else whom one must fear also, parallel to the Holy One, blessed be He—that’s practically idolatry. Right? Therefore he says that cannot be, meaning there’s no such thing, and therefore he says I give up this whole rule that “et” serves to include. Rabbi Akiva comes and says to him: listen, in principle you’re right—it doesn’t make sense that one should fear Torah scholars; that’s almost idolatry—one should fear the Holy One, blessed be He. But what can I do? There is the word “et”; one has to include. So the word “et” forces us to make the exposition even though on rational grounds we would have said it’s not true. Meaning, on rational grounds Rabbi Akiva says it’s not true? On rational grounds Rabbi Akiva says it is not correct to include Torah scholars. Why not? Because it’s idolatry. So what’s the difference? Only because I have the word “et” that comes to include, I have no choice—I have to find something. The least implausible is Torah scholars. That’s more plausible than birds or chairs. Is it like parents? What? I didn’t hear. Like how there is a law of fear toward parents—why is that different? There too there is fear, there’s a commandment to fear father and mother. But it’s not fear like fear of the Holy One, blessed be He. And indeed there too the Talmud says that the Holy One, blessed be He, equated their fear with the fear of the Omnipresent. So then a Torah scholar could also be included—why not? The fact is Shimon HaAmsuni was not willing to accept it. Was it because it was idolatry, or because it just didn’t seem right to him? Both—what do you mean? And all the other “ets” he expounded, so why did he get stuck on this “et”? Because this one belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He; he didn’t understand it—how is that connected to fear of Heaven? Exactly. And Rabbi Akiva too was basically willing to accept that—it can’t be, it can’t be that I include something else alongside the Holy One, blessed be He—but there is no choice, the “et” compels me to include anyway. So if Rabbi Akiva didn’t have the option of including Torah scholars, would he have included Zeus? Because there’s no choice? Yes, yes. Is the force of the derivation really that strong? And I also don’t think that this “et” is not… an agreed-upon derivation, so absolute that… Of course it’s agreed upon. Look, Shimon HaAmsuni really did think of leaving it. And for Rabbi Akiva it was agreed in his view. I’m saying this precisely as an example to show you: it’s not that I had some rationale and basically wanted to invent a law that one must fear Torah scholars, okay? And then I came and looked for a source and found the source “et.” The Talmud shows you: no, it’s the opposite. In principle I didn’t want to learn this at all. The “et” compelled me to do it, but it’s the opposite of what happens in our case. Because what happens in our case, in aggadic exposition, usually works the opposite way. I take something I already know and dress it up on some exposition or another. There too, the fact that it was so obvious to Rabbi Akiva that he had to learn from the “et”—that was his personal reasoning. It wasn’t such an absolute necessity, because we see in the Talmud that Shimon HaAmsuni did in fact choose to withdraw from it. That’s a more complicated question, because in principle it is accepted among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) that the hermeneutical principles are a law to Moses from Sinai. Now Rabbi Ishmael expounds by general-and-particular, and Rabbi Akiva expounds by inclusion-and-exclusion. Now inclusion from the word “et” belongs to the school of Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Ishmael’s school does not include from “et.” So the question is: where did the dispute arise between these two schools? On the face of it, there was some tradition that developed, and at some stage it split. But there was some traditional source, perhaps even from Sinai. But from Rabbi Akiva’s perspective, this is a Sinaitic tradition. The fact that Rabbi Ishmael disagrees with him means they have a dispute about what the tradition says, and Rabbi Akiva thinks this is a Sinaitic tradition, and therefore for him it is absolute truth. You have to do it. I understand. So what I’m really asking is, on the substance of the matter: is there really any obstacle to saying that perhaps the Torah actually gives us a way to define it itself by our inserting our own reflections into it, so long as they do not stand in contradiction to something else? That exists everywhere. The question is why insert it into the Torah. If you have such reflections, then you already know. Because that is the Torah; we have no Torah without that. We need it. If I know that a son rebels against his father just as a servant rebels against his master, or the reverse, okay, then I know that. So what did it help that I extracted it from the juxtaposition of Psalm 2 and Psalm 3? So that helps in the sense that in aggadic homily indeed there isn’t much practical difference. But I’m talking about that, not halakhic exposition. Okay. The question is really about verbal analogy, say, or analogy by juxtaposition—how does that work there? Meaning, there too does the Sage insert his own reasoning, or is it really based only on tradition? Always. Always the Sage’s reasoning takes part, because verbal analogy means there is the same word in two passages. But from that you can derive many conclusions. You have to decide in what respect to compare the two passages. There is a comparison between slave and woman, “lah,” “lah.” Here it says “lah” and there it says “lah.” So maybe let’s write woman with an ayin, because slave is written with an ayin. No—rather I use my reasoning and ask myself: okay, in what respect is it relevant to compare them, and in what respect not? The question is whether it’s reasoning or tradition. Isn’t there something transmitted by tradition about what to derive? It’s reasoning, because otherwise you turn all expositions into supported homilies. Maimonides, for example, says that there are almost no merely supportive expositions—just a few; almost all expositions are generative. Okay. And this is also clear from the Talmud, that expositions are generally generative.

As for verbal analogy specifically, the Talmud says that a person may not derive a verbal analogy on his own unless he received it from his teacher. So they had a set number of verbal analogies, and therefore they divided up what to put in. So the Talmud says that one may not derive it on his own unless he received it from his teacher. And the assumption is that this ultimately comes from Sinai. How did his teacher derive it? He too received it from his teacher. So in the end it all comes from Sinai. But Nachmanides and all his students, the Spanish sages among Nachmanides’ students, all say not so. Look in the Talmudic Encyclopedia under the entry “verbal analogy”—they all say there are many disputes about verbal analogy. Therefore it is clear that even verbal analogy is not all from Sinai. Rather, there was perhaps some partial tradition that between these two words one derives something—or perhaps there was a tradition of the answer, but they didn’t know where it came from. Meaning, it’s like in aggadic exposition: they had some reasoning. Only there, in aggadah, the reasoning alone is enough. Here the reasoning alone would not have been enough, because if you can’t derive it from the Torah, the reasoning would not have generated this law. That’s basically the point. And that’s not only in verbal analogy. In aggadic exposition, the reasoning would have sufficed by itself; no exposition was needed. “Why do I need a verse? It follows from reasoning.” Meaning the reasoning by itself would not have sufficed? Never. If it suffices by itself, then the exposition is unnecessary. “Why do I need a verse? It follows from reasoning.” So they work together? Meaning, he had an intelligent rationale. The rationale says what is most sensible after the exposition tells you to make an exposition. You want to include something—now the reasoning tells you what to include. Trigger: all the hermeneutical principles, if you pay attention, are textual triggers to perform an exposition. What to derive? How to make the exposition? In what respect? That is always the interpreter’s decision. And is this something one can understand—when do we derive a verbal analogy? How do we derive? Is this something the Rabbi, in what the Rabbi dealt with regarding expositions—also? When do you derive a verbal analogy? For what? Which passages do you derive? In principle you always have to derive. But you wouldn’t say, as in aggadic exposition? What? You say the interpreter basically derives whatever seems right to him; he uses the technique. Correct. But about aggadah you won’t say that. What seems least wrong to him. He is compelled by the exposition to do it. You’ll say that about aggadah you won’t say it, even though there too there are literary rules, key words, all kinds of things. I’m saying: once you show me enough aggadic expositions… No, fine. Suppose that’s fine—aggadah is okay. Why don’t you say the same about Jewish law: whatever seems right to him? Because again, for the same reason but in reverse: because in Jewish law, outcomes are generated that do not seem right on rational grounds. So how did they arise? Presumably from the exposition. I’m saying this first as a matter of fact, before all the conceptual arguments. There are facts. The facts are that in Jewish law, new conclusions are produced by exposition, and in aggadah, in my view at least, they are not—or almost not. Okay. Rabbi, don’t you see significance in the fact that something already known beforehand is then stated by the Torah? I didn’t understand. You’re asking: there are expositions where the message was already known before, but then what is the significance of the psalm’s saying it? Rarely. On rare occasions, and then it really is some kind of supportive derivation or something like that—fine. Isn’t there significance in the fact that the Torah says it? Depends. In Maimonides’ approach there is significance. Maimonides argues that a law to Moses from Sinai is of rabbinic status, even that a doubt is treated leniently. And a law that emerges from exposition is also of rabbinic status. But a law to Moses from Sinai for which I found an anchor in exposition—that is Torah-level. I’m also talking about aggadot, messages of aggadot. One second, one at a time. I wanted to explain something he asked. I think he was asking about aggadot. If there is value in the Torah saying what you thought beforehand—extracting it from the Torah. I understand. Also “You shall not steal” and all these things? No, because it doesn’t say it. That’s my claim—it doesn’t say it. I decided that it says it because it seems reasonable to me. So everything I know the Torah says is only because that seems reasonable to me. So what did it add that the Torah says it? On the assumption that it’s okay. Maybe it’s the same in Jewish law too? But in Jewish law too the Rabbi says this—so what’s the difference? No, in Jewish law it’s not like that. Maybe in aggadah too it begins from the fact that there is some pressure in the exposition because there’s some textual irregularity? I’m asking the empirical question. Please show me interpretations of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), or aggadic midrash, or something like that, that bring you principles that would not have seemed right to you without that exposition. In the Sages, by the way, you can sometimes find such things, though I assume that to them it did seem right; I just don’t understand why. Fine? But look at what people do today—interpretations done today. I think you will not find such examples, certainly not many. Meaning, in Jewish law too in the end it comes down to the fact that it did seem right to him? No, no. Meaning, it seemed least wrong to him? Something completely different. Without the exposition he would not have said it. Yes. The least implausible? Yes. But sometimes after I say that the verse says this message, then I’m basically saying that Jeremiah said this, or that the prophet—meaning I’m inserting messages into certain periods or statements of certain people, so doesn’t that have additional significance? I didn’t understand. If I interpret some prophecy of a specific prophet and insert messages into it? Yes. Then I’m basically—there is significance with respect to that period or with respect to some whole… I don’t know. Give me an example and let’s see what we can learn from it. These are very general statements.

Anyone else? Rabbi, can I—if a person comes from an objective place, can he find… Again? If a person comes from an objective place—there are many times when the verses, I’m not talking now about aggadic midrashim or Jewish law, but… I don’t know. These are general statements. I don’t know what to do with general statements; give me an example. We don’t quite understand what this means—the claim that we are not tabula rasa, which is like what Chomsky said about linguistics, that we supposedly have the universal—I don’t remember what he called it—but is that basically the claim? Yes. Okay, so we are rationalists, and whatever we read, we already have some disposition, we had a disposition to understand it before we encountered it. That’s what usually happens in interpretation of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and in aggadic midrashim. That’s what happens in practice; I simply see that’s what happens. I have another question or comment, if possible, about this thing of—I think you spoke about Maslow, about the fact that in nature, or that Rav Kook said, since in nature there is everything we need, then apparently in the spiritual world too there are things, and we tried to understand that there too there is order. But in nature there is objectification—we supposedly can test things there, without getting now into philosophy of science. But a certain order—someone can decide there was a certain order in the text, and someone else can come and say there is no order at all. You’re repeating my objection exactly. That’s exactly what I’m claiming. In the textual context, you have no way to test whether you were right. In the end, how will you test whether you were right? By whether it seems reasonable to you. But if it seems reasonable to you, why do you need the exposition? You already know it’s reasonable. Yes, but it may seem reasonable to me and not to someone else. Exactly—and that’s the other side of the same coin. Because there is no objective criterion, all each person does is simply extract from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) what he wants, or what he thinks. Fine—so the feminists will extract feminism, the anti-feminists will extract anti-feminism, and everyone will get out what he wants. Fine—so let them remain with their positions even without the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh); what difference does it make? Capitalism, socialism, it doesn’t matter, all the isms you want. Everyone extracts from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) what he wants in these areas. Is that the weakness of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) or the greatness of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)? In my view, its weakness. But you can—I don’t know—that’s already a value judgment, decide as you like. You know, I’ll tell you, this is an epistemological discussion, not an ontological one. What? I didn’t understand. We’re talking here about something on the level of being, but it’s not really on the level of being—it’s on the level… he wants to claim that the greatness of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) is precisely that different epistemologies can recognize different things in it. So that’s a greatness of the thing itself, that it manages to allow different interpretations. But in my eyes that’s its smallness, not its greatness.

Like the Rabbi says that about the Talmud, that actually the Talmud doesn’t let you extract any concrete meaningful thing, but we can—yet there the boundaries are set, the framework boundaries. I didn’t say you can’t extract anything from it. There the boundaries—it doesn’t decide anything, but it is everybody’s boundaries. It creates a certain discourse, a certain mode of thinking. The discourse of the Talmud. Maybe one could also say in some sense about the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), that the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) gives expression to all kinds of lofty values. You can say whatever you want. I’m asking whether it happens on the ground. From the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) you can derive Christianity; from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) you can derive Judaism; from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) you can derive Reform; from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) you can derive capitalism, socialism, feminism, chauvinism, and every ism you want. So what framework does it give? No framework. Whatever you want, you can get from there.

That’s why I say it’s a human framework. Once, I was at a shiva call and Professor Steinfeld, of blessed memory, was there—he was head of the Talmud department at Bar-Ilan—and he said how wonderful, look how great Rashi is, that everyone can understand this Rashi differently. What greatness there is in this Rashi. I told him that in my view he had just slandered Rashi terribly. And at that very time I was studying the third chapter of Bava Batra, where, as is known, after a page or two Rashbam begins, in place of Rashi—Rashbam replaces Rashi. And I told him that suddenly, when I study the chapter with Rashbam, I understand what greatness there is in Rashi: that Rashi writes so briefly, in two lines, and everyone understands exactly what he means. No room for different interpretations—you understand exactly what Rashi means. And Rashbam goes on for football fields of interpretation, and in the end no one understands what he means. You can interpret that differently. The greatness of a text is not that everyone can do whatever he wants with it. If everyone can do whatever he wants with it, then it doesn’t matter what you write. That reminds me of the claim about Rav Kook’s texts with Nadav Shenarav’s generator. Quite so. The man was great. His texts—I think somewhat less great. But fine, I don’t know, maybe there are people who understand more than I do—certainly there are—and maybe they can extract more unambiguous things from there, I don’t know. I really don’t understand enough there to determine. The man was certainly great. I just dragged it there now without connection. What? No, I just dragged it into that corner without connection, that’s okay. Anyone else? Fine, so we’ll stop here. Good night. Thank you very, very much.