The Voice of Prophecy, Lesson 34
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Table of Contents
- [0:00] Forms of thought: analogy, induction, and deduction
- [2:02] The connection between analogy and induction
- [3:31] A critique of deduction
- [5:03] Deduction as dependent on induction
- [6:10] The three stages of thought: analogy, induction, deduction
- [8:47] The example of a fortiori reasoning
- [12:21] The problems of analogy and relevance
- [27:42] Defining first principle and auditory logic
- [29:05] Maimonides and Ralbag — an axiomatic system
- [30:19] The axiomatic code of the thirteen principles
- [33:20] The theory of Semitic logic — the letters dalet and heh
- [37:24] The second principle — verbal analogy
- [38:38] Verbal analogy — concept and definition
- [41:50] Hillel’s sources and the baraita of the thirteen principles
- [48:02] The principle of comparison — analogy in the Torah
- [50:57] Formal similarity — meaning in interpretation
- [53:50] The connection between verbal analogy and the original Hebrew language
Summary
General overview
The text defines three modes of thought: analogy as moving from one particular to another particular, induction as moving from the particular to the general, and deduction as moving from the general to the particular. It argues that deduction is indeed necessary and valid precisely because it adds no information, and therefore it does not provide a tool for thinking about anything new. It claims that induction and analogy do add information, but are not necessary, and that it is hard to establish a hierarchy between them because each depends on the other. It then presents a critique of deduction’s supposed superiority, since its general premises in practice rest on induction. From there it advances the thesis that analogy, induction, and deduction are not three alternatives but three stages in one chain of thought, illustrated through a fortiori reasoning. Later, section 15 opens on the principles by which the Torah is interpreted, arguing that their foundation is analogical comparison, and various approaches are brought regarding the meaning of the thirteen principles, culminating in a reading of verbal analogy as a principle that is not an arbitrary code but points to an essential similarity and to a relation between the holy tongue and content.
Forms of thought: analogy, induction, and deduction
Analogy is from one particular to another particular, induction is from the particular to the general, and deduction is from the general to the particular. Deduction is the only form of argument that is necessarily valid, because it adds no information, and therefore it gives us no tool for thinking about things we did not already know. Induction and analogy are methods that do add information and therefore are not necessarily correct, and they fit synthetic thought, as opposed to deduction, which is analytical thought.
The connection and mutual dependence of analogy and induction
The text argues that analogy and induction each sit at the base of the other, and therefore it is very hard to establish a hierarchy between them. An analogy between two particulars implicitly assumes a generalization about a wider group, so analogy presupposes induction. Induction over a whole population is built as a collection of many analogies between particulars, so induction presupposes analogy. From this it argues that the two are really two perspectives on non-deductive thought.
A critique of deduction and the inductive basis of its premises
The text brings the critique that the conclusion is already contained in the general premise, and therefore deduction says nothing beyond what is already found in the premises. It adds a more basic problem: the major premise in deduction, such as “every X is Y,” is not acquired through experience of all X’s, and therefore it itself rests on induction. From this it concludes that deduction is not a stronger instrument than induction, because the strength of a chain depends on its weakest link, and the real content of deduction sits in premises that are the result of induction.
Three stages in a standard thought process
The text argues that analogy, induction, and deduction are not three alternative forms of thought but three stages in one process of thought. It describes a sequence in which first analogies are made in order to classify the world into groups of similar things; then induction is used to ascribe a property to the whole group based on properties observed in some of its members; and finally deduction is used to infer something about a specific particular from the general statement. It argues that thought cannot be built without these three stages, and that the deductive stage is necessary but does not innovate beyond what was already assumed earlier.
A fortiori reasoning as an example of the analogy–induction–deduction chain
The text gives an example from the Mishnah at the beginning of tractate Bava Kamma and explains that a fortiori reasoning is not pure deduction, because its sting lies in the generalization. It describes a move from the given fact that in the public domain horn-damage is more severe than foot-damage, to the generalization that horn-damage is more severe than foot-damage “in every respect,” and calls that induction. After the generalization, it describes a deductive stage in which one infers that if horn-damage is more severe also in the injured party’s courtyard, then it will be liable for full damages. It argues that a fortiori reasoning can be refuted because it contains a component that advances a new claim, and adds that “there is no refutation of deductions” and that deduction cannot be refuted.
The problem of relevance in analogy and the need for intuition
The text argues that analogy is problematic because the similarity between two things is not its result but its assumption, and the question is how we know that the shared property is relevant to the conclusion. It illustrates that horseness may be relevant to having four legs but not relevant to color, so one must assume relevance between the property of similarity and the property being inferred. It suggests that this assumption of relevance is “the sting of analogy,” and that it is weaker than full knowledge, and therefore can turn out to be false, but it is necessary if we are to add information. It argues that science and learning about new phenomena rely on inductions and hypotheses grounded in an intuition of simplicity and convenience, even though experience alone cannot justify one unique general law out of infinitely many possible generalizations.
Section 15: the principles by which the Torah is interpreted as founded on comparison
The text opens section 15 with the statement that “the principles by which the Torah is interpreted are founded on comparison, likening one thing to another,” and distinguishes this from deductive rules of mathematical logic. It argues that general-and-particular-and-general is not a movement from the general to the particular in the deductive sense, but rather a form of writing from which conclusions are inferred. It presents binyan av and “what do we find” as analogy based on “plain common sense,” and presents verbal analogy and juxtaposition as principles in which the Torah provides signs of similarity through shared language or adjacent verses.
The dispute over the nature of the thirteen principles and the Nazir’s middle way
The text describes a common view that interprets “precise” as a claim for an alternative logic, and rejects that, since one cannot think or argue outside logic. It presents the opposite approach of Maimonides and Ralbag, according to which the thirteen principles are an arbitrary system of rules, a kind of axiomatic code through which the Holy One, blessed be He, encoded the Torah, and connects this to the claim that language itself is arbitrary. It notes that the common view is that the principles are a law given to Moses at Sinai, and mentions exceptions such as Rashi’s teachers, who present verbal analogy as rabbinic in certain contexts. It presents the Nazir as offering a middle way, according to which the principles are neither a substitute for logic nor arbitrary rules, but “rules that build a second tier” and have philosophical meaning.
Verbal analogy: language, form, and meaning
The text explains that the Nazir begins with the second principle, verbal analogy, in order to establish analogy as the defining feature of all the principles before returning to a fortiori reasoning as a test case. It brings a Talmudic discussion of a term being “available” and the need for the word to be free for interpretation, and presents this as connected to the question of validity and refutability. It quotes from Middot Aharon that “the mode of learning by which we can derive one matter from another is by the power of comparison,” and defines verbal analogy as a type in which “one word” appears in an available way and generates comparison. It brings an interpretation of the name “gezerah” as a word “cut from letters,” and concludes that this teaches a principle according to which formal similarity in language points to essential similarity, and that verbal analogy is not merely a formal mechanism but reveals a real similarity between matters such as Passover and the daily offering.
The holy tongue versus Maimonides’ view of arbitrariness
The text argues that the very rule of verbal analogy teaches that the holy tongue is not arbitrary, contrary to Maimonides, who argued that speech is conventional and that the language is called “holy” for other reasons. It presents this as a point of dispute already raised by Nachmanides and the Raavad as a critique of Maimonides, and formulates the idea that the form of the word and the way it sounds are connected to the content it signifies. It argues that in this way the Holy One, blessed be He, gains not only the transmission of a particular law but also the revelation of an essential similarity between domains that the Torah links through the same language.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Forms of thought, induction, analogy, and deduction: analogy is from one particular to another particular, induction is from the particular to the general, and deduction is from the general to the particular. Seemingly, the only kind of argument that is necessary, valid in a necessary way, is the deductive argument, from the general to the particular. And we said that this is precisely because it adds no information, and deduction is valid insofar as it adds no information. And that is exactly why it gives us no tool for thinking about things we did not already know. By contrast, induction and analogy are somewhat more sophisticated methods of thought. That’s it. And we said that, seemingly, even between those two there is some sort of hierarchy, where induction is closer to certainty, as we discussed earlier. Induction is really making a broader claim. That is, I saw one case, and this is true of a whole population of such particulars, such cases, such events. That is a broader claim, and therefore it is also a more doubtful claim. The more a claim says, the less reliable it is, at least a priori. Meaning, it needs to bring more evidence in its favor if we are to accept it. So it would seem that analogy comes after deduction, while induction is the most doubtful thing. So we began by saying that in fact analogy and induction have a common foundation, and it is very hard to establish a hierarchy between them, because each one presupposes the other. Meaning, how do you make an analogy? When you make an analogy between one particular and another particular, you are really saying: I’m looking for what these two particulars have in common. They’re both human beings. Fine? So in effect I have implicitly assumed that this property by which I am comparing them is true of all human beings. Right? You say the statement only about two specific people, or about one specific one, but in fact in that analogy I am assuming that the statement holds of a whole group. So in practice, analogy presupposes induction, and therefore it certainly cannot be better than induction. On the other hand, how do I actually arrive at inductions? How do I arrive at the truth of some property from one particular to a whole population? Seemingly it is simply a collection of many analogies. Every one of the particulars is analogous to that particular, and therefore I build the induction through many analogies. So each of them in practice sits at the base of the other, and it is not even clear that these are really two forms of thought. Altogether they are just two perspectives on non-deductive thought. Then we went on and said that, actually—maybe even before that—induction and analogy are the two forms of thought that can add information to what I knew beforehand, unlike deduction. Right? In deduction, if I know a certain piece of information about a whole class, then of course it is true also with regard to every particular within that class. That conclusion adds no information at all. It is necessarily true precisely because it adds no information. So with deduction, yes, it is necessarily true—but it doesn’t help me at all, like the hot-air balloon. But induction and analogy are two forms of thought—or one, it doesn’t matter—that are not necessarily true, and that also fits very well with the fact that they really do claim new things. Meaning, in light of this similarity I infer conclusions that I did not know at the start of the whole business. If you like, this is synthetic thought, while deduction is analytical thought.
Then we went on and said that in fact there is a problem with deduction itself. First, down below in footnote 40 he brings a critique: in the general premise the conclusion is already contained—last line of page 74, the last line in the note. The conclusion is already contained in the general premise. What he is really saying is that deduction says nothing, since that is what we just said now: the conclusion is already contained in the premise that we knew even before we started the whole business. But the more basic problem is that the entire deductive concept is in fact usually somewhat imaginary. How is deduction built? I assume some inclusive premise: every X is Y. That is the major premise. Then there is a minor premise: A is X, some particular object is a certain thing. And the conclusion is: A is Y. Right? Now how do I know the major premise, that every X is Y? It is a premise—but how do I know it? If I don’t know it, then I don’t know the conclusion either, right? So how do I know the premise? Because I have already experienced all the X’s? No—not the conclusion, the premise. What do you mean, from experience? No, I haven’t seen all the X’s in the world.
[Speaker B] In other words—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In other words, deduction rests on a premise that is itself built on the basis of induction. So how can you claim that deduction is a stronger instrument than induction? Deduction sits on a foundation that itself was built through induction. Every deduction assumes at least one major premise. So clearly, in order to reach that major premise, you need to use induction. And the strength of any chain is the strength of its weakest link. Right? So in fact deduction is not a stronger instrument than induction. True, the transition from premise to conclusion is stronger; the transition is necessary. But it of course says nothing, as we said before. Where does the actual content of deduction really sit? It sits in the premises. Once I already know the premises, I also know the conclusion. But the premises are the result of induction, not deduction. So in fact I have no alternative method of thought to the synthetic one, to analogy and induction. And really we said that these three forms of thought are not three forms of thought, but three stages in a standard process of thinking. In fact every process is made up of these three stages. The first stage is, say, making analogies, gathering together a group whose members are similar to one another in some respect by means of a collection of analogies between every two members. From that I can make an induction. Meaning, I say that if one member of the group has a certain property—or a few members do—then the whole group has that property. I make an induction. And now I have a general statement, right? That the whole group has property X. And now I can make a deduction and say: fine, if the whole group has property X, then a particular member included in that group also has property X. Understand? So in fact what is happening here is that deduction, induction, and analogy are not three forms of thought, but really three stages of one process of thought. They are three stages arranged in the order: first analogy, then induction, and finally deduction. All right? We’ll see some implications of this later on in what comes next.
[Speaker B] In what follows.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The process starts with analogy. Meaning, I create—how do I classify the world into groups in the first place? How do I sort the objects in the world, or events, into groups? By comparing things, right? Comparison is always one-to-one. This is similar to that, and that one is also similar to that, and this one too is similar to that. So then let’s build from them some sort of group with a shared property, right? So here I built a group through analogy. A group of things. Now I say like this: I have a group of things that are similar in some property, a group I built through analogy. Now I know that one of the members in the group has some other property, something else. Now I make an induction and say: fine, then apparently all the members of the group have that property. In other words, I make an induction, right? So after analogy comes induction. And now, if I want to infer whether another particular in that group also has that property, then I make a deduction. Because if all the members have that property, then one particular who is one of them also has that property. Therefore the order is analogy, from it induction, and after it deduction. This is basically a chain of three stages, one after the other, and not as it is usually presented, as three alternative forms of thought. There are no alternatives here—you can’t build thought without all three of these forms. I think we brought the example of a fortiori reasoning, right? We’ll come back to it when he talks about a fortiori reasoning, but just to give a feel for it—we spoke about it, right? The example of a fortiori reasoning. If I say an a fortiori argument, for example: foot-damage in the public domain is exempt, while horn-damage in the public domain is liable for half-damages. So it turns out that horn-damage is more severe than foot-damage, right? So if so, also in the injured party’s courtyard, since foot-damage is liable for full damages, and horn-damage is more severe than foot-damage, then horn-damage too should be liable for full damages in the injured party’s courtyard, right? The Mishnah at the beginning of tractate Bava Kamma. What did I really do here? Seemingly, people often say that a fortiori reasoning is deduction, that a fortiori reasoning is the logical inference. But that is not true, because the sting of a fortiori reasoning sits at the point where I generalize. I say: since in the public domain horn-damage is more severe than foot-damage—if horn-damage is liable for half-damages and foot-damage is completely exempt, that is a factual datum, the Torah says so—from here I can infer by induction that in every respect horn-damage is more severe than foot-damage. That is a wild induction. I know that. And now I really do make a deduction. I say: fine, if in every respect it is more severe, then also in the injured party’s courtyard it is more severe, right? That is the deduction. Then I say: fine, if in the injured party’s courtyard it is more severe, and tooth and foot are liable for full damages, then horn-damage too is liable for full damages. So the process of a fortiori reasoning is also built from these three stages. There are no shortcuts past these stages. And therefore the sting of a fortiori reasoning, or the innovative point in a fortiori reasoning, is not the deductive part that finishes it off, but the inductive part that begins it. Meaning, the sting of a fortiori reasoning lies in the permission the Torah gives me to infer, from the fact that horn-damage and tooth-and-foot stand in a certain relation, the fact that horn-damage is more severe than tooth-and-foot in every respect, even though I know this only from one example. After I have inferred that, then of course also in the injured party’s courtyard it is more severe and horn-damage will be liable for full damages. But the sting of a fortiori reasoning is: how am I allowed to infer the general principle from which I then make the deduction? All right? And therefore a fortiori reasoning, too, is really induction. Otherwise it would of course say nothing, and of course there could be no refutation of it. There is no refutation of deductions. No one in the world has ever managed to refute a deduction. There is no such thing. So clearly, if there are possible refutations, then there is something here making a claim. Something that makes no claim cannot be refuted. Refutation means: one of your claims, one of your premises, is not true.
[Speaker B] But if a fortiori reasoning were deduction, it would have no premises.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Deduction is something without premises. It is necessarily true. It assumes nothing. You can’t refute it. No one has ever refuted mathematics by some discussion about horn-damage because it is, I don’t know what. That refutes nothing in mathematics. Fine, so we’ll come back to that when we speak about a fortiori reasoning. Now we move on to section 15, and really we’re saying—right, we got up to 14 if I remember correctly—and basically that was the summary as we’ve done it up to now. And in section 15 he begins to discuss the principles by which the Torah is interpreted. And here I might mention, before we begin section 15, one more point that still belongs to the summary. I’ll just remind you that analogy is a very problematic thing, because in analogy the similarity between the two things is not the result of the analogy—it is its premise. The question is how I know that the property shared by the two things is indeed a similarity relevant to the conclusion I want to infer. I see two
[Speaker B] horses,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] so I say: their being horses helps me infer that if one has four legs, the other also has four legs. Right? So their similarity, in the sense that they are both horses, is relevant to the conclusion that if this one has four legs, the other one also has four legs. But for example, the matter of color will not be relevant. If this horse is white, I am not entitled to infer that if that one is also a horse, then apparently it too is white. That simply is not true. Why? Not because they are not similar, but because the property in which they are similar is not relevant to the property I want to learn. Right? Meaning, analogy presupposes some relation of relevance between the shared property and the inferred property, between the property that creates the similarity between the two things and what I do with that similarity—which property I want to learn as a result of that similarity. So there is something in analogy for which we have no real way to justify it. We almost need to know the result before we know it. Because in analogy what am I really saying? I’m saying that this thing’s being a horse is a similarity that is relevant to the issue of having four legs, but not to the issue of color. But if I already know that it is relevant to that, then in some sense I already know that all horses have four legs, right? So I don’t need this inference in order to learn that horses have four legs. So once again we come back to a problem similar to the problem of deduction: in fact induction adds nothing to what I already knew beforehand. Because otherwise, how do I really know that these two objects being horses is relevant to the issue of the number of their legs? I know it only because I really already know—maybe not consciously, but somehow implicitly—that a horse has four legs. So what is it? Is the result of the analogy the analogy’s conclusion, or its premise?
[Speaker B] Maybe it’s something synthetic.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s something synthetic, but the question is: what exactly? What is the point here? Meaning, if we want to claim that we have some ability to add information to the world, then we have to assume that nevertheless, in the analogical process, at least some chip of information is added beyond what we knew before. And then we have to say that this assumption of relevance can indeed sometimes turn out to be false. Deduction is never refuted, right? But induction is sometimes falsified. So this is weaker than actual knowledge of the property itself. The fact that I know that the property of being a horse is relevant to the property of having four legs is still not the knowledge that every horse has four legs. It is some assumption that this correlates with that—that it is relevant to that conclusion—but it is not yet knowing that a horse has four legs. So this relevance is really the sting of analogy: the relation that exists between properties before I know it for certain. But I do need some hypothesis about it in order to be able later even to refute it. Meaning, something I did not hypothesize in advance by means of analogy, I will never get to. I need to hypothesize something in advance, and what analogy does is infer a conclusion, turning the hypothesis into certainty. But again, not by way of proof. The pretension of analogy is to turn a hypothesis into a claim. All right? True, sometimes it may turn out that this is really not correct—that the hypothesis was not correct, and turning it into certainty was unjustified. That is the price you pay for the fact that analogy has no proof, unlike deduction. All right? But there’s no choice. If you want to add information, then you must use analogy and not only deduction.
[Speaker B] Then you can ask what the basis of induction is. You ask what the basis of induction is—you can’t explain that to me in terms of induction.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but it’s not some inborn idea that a horse has four legs and color, and then—
[Speaker B] In the end there are several properties, and one of them is more or less—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The chance of error is smaller, but there is still a chance of error. Certainly it is possible. You could take several horses and they would be white, and you would still be mistaken, right? It could happen that you take several horses and they are all white.
[Speaker B] Until I already have a basis of more varied and more varied and more varied—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s something you know after the fact. I’m talking now about someone who doesn’t know what horses are, all right? He wants to learn about horses now. This is the learning process. I’m now learning what the properties of a horse are. Okay? So I examine one horse, I examine two, three, four, five. Now I want to draw conclusions about horses in general. Fine? So what do I say? I say, okay, apparently horses in general have four legs. Why? Because somehow I feel—in some way, I don’t know exactly how to explain it or point to it—but somehow I feel that the fact that they all had legs is essential, whereas the fact that they all have the same color is for some reason not essential. Huh? Of course it is, otherwise if you can’t feel that, there is no science in the world. All of science is built on inductions like these. All our learning is built on inductions like these. Otherwise you can learn only something that we already know.
[Speaker B] You can’t add any knowledge. From experience in past situations, you see what really happens—if I observe this and this, then it could be that I assume that it’s relevant, and I’ll really say that all horses are white. So it really comes from experience, doesn’t it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, we chose the example of horses because horses are something we already know. But let’s move to something we don’t know—some scientific phenomenon that is not part of daily life. There too we make inductions. How do we know which properties are relevant and which are not relevant? It is built on some sort of sixth sense, there’s no way around it. Right, what do you mean? First of all, you propose the hypothesis. You see, you can propose a million hypotheses. Now from the set of data that existed before Einstein, one could have proposed infinitely many theories of relativity—infinitely many, not one less. Infinite. Fine? And still he proposed one that stands up very well to the tests that came afterward. Maybe not all of them; there are a few problems. But it stands up very well to the tests. There is certainly something very true in it. I don’t know if it is perfect, but there is something very true in it. Meaning, when he proposed his generalization, he had some sound intuition, even though once again, the set of facts before him could have fit infinitely many parallel theories. If we take an everyday case like horses, we already know what horses are, so we know what is relevant and what is not relevant—we know many horses. But try to think about how one approaches a new phenomenon. How do I learn something I do not know? That is the question troubling me right now.
[Speaker B] How do I add
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] knowledge that I don’t have?
[Speaker B] Like, how does a person decide, out of twenty hypotheses, to choose the simplest one?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who says that is the simplest one? What is a criterion of simplicity anyway?
[Speaker B] You can think of many kinds of simplicity.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who says the simplest one is really the correct one? What
[Speaker B] is the connection between simplicity and truth? Okay, common sense—that’s its name, intuition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who says simplicity corresponds to correctness?
[Speaker B] Okay, he says
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that it is correct.
[Speaker B] And it really did turn out to be correct.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that means this intuition—that the simplest theory is also the correct one—is a sound intuition. How do you know that? I don’t know, experience proves it. I have some intuition that says so. All right? Why do we choose the simpler ones and not specifically the more complicated ones? Or the ones in between, those between them. But this more convenient one also turns out to be correct.
[Speaker B] Right, where do we have both here?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is no such thing. It cannot be. Nothing on the basis of experience can yield a general law. Experience is always limited to some finite number of particulars.
[Speaker B] So when I see a finite number of particulars, but that set of
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] particulars can be generalized in a million ways. Why do you generalize it specifically in that way? They will all have a continuation… We once gave the example of a number series—I don’t remember in which forum, because they keep changing all the time—but take a series of numbers, one, two, never mind. A series of four numbers, fine? Now you can fit them with a straight line, or you can fit them with a sine curve, right?
[Speaker B] That too will pass through all of them, through the peaks of the sine wave, through all of them.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right? A straight line, right? Who says there is a straight line here? So you think we take the most convenient among the options, and I’m telling you that that’s not the point.
[Speaker B] You said the opposite—that it is the most convenient.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, clearly it is the most convenient. But the point is that we have an intuition that what is most convenient and simplest is also most correct. That is exactly the point. Clearly it is the most convenient. I’m
[Speaker B] not saying it isn’t the most convenient. No one’s fooling anyone.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not more correct in the mathematical sense, of course not. But the fact is that in mathematics… Mathematics is not science. Mathematics is not about the world. When I give you a series of numbers—in that context… if I remember correctly I was talking about a series of numbers. With a series of numbers there really is no such thing as one correct answer at the end. What does “correct” mean? Anything that forms a natural continuation of that number series is a correct answer. Right? But if we are talking about a natural phenomenon, then there is one correct answer. There aren’t infinitely many answers, there is only one. In the world there is one thing. A number series is a riddle I’m posing to you; it has no well-defined answer. Any answer that satisfies the logic is a good answer. But in nature there is only one correct natural law, not eighteen. So how can it be that the particular generalization we make is precisely the one that fits—or at least very often, much more than would be statistically expected—the actual correct natural law? It really works.
[Speaker B] And there’s another thing here that I can explain. I can explain that the reason all horses are white is not because—I don’t know what—not necessarily because of genes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s not talk about explanations now. I’m asking about the very fact that we infer this about horses—how is it true even before explanations? Got it? Fine. Now, regarding the principles by which the Torah is interpreted… maybe I’ll read the first line of section 15. “The principles by which the Torah is interpreted are founded on comparison, on likening one thing to another.” And that is the general thesis: that what is common to the thirteen principles by which the Torah is interpreted is that they are principles of comparison, as opposed to what? To deduction. Right. These are not rules of logic—I mean of mathematical logic—but rather some kind of analogical and non-deductive mode of thought. That is the central point. Or synthetic rather than analytical, as we discussed earlier. Now analogy, as we said before, yes?
[Speaker B] General and particular. Maybe I’m mistaken. Usually we apply the general to the particular?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not at all. We’ll leave that—we’ll get there. General and particular and general is something completely different, because if the particular were just one instance within the general,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] then you would not need one of the principles by which the Torah is interpreted.
[Speaker B] It would already be written within the general. General and particular and general is a form of writing in the Torah, from which you can infer all
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] sorts of conclusions. It is not a matter of deduction. General and particular and general is essentially a form of writing. It’s not that I have a general statement, “On all festivals it is forbidden to do labor,” and the particular is that on Passover too it is forbidden to do labor. That is not general and particular and general—that is just deduction. And that is not one of the principles by which the Torah is interpreted, right? General and particular and general does indeed contain the words general and particular, but it is not movement from the general to the particular. We’ll see soon. Not soon—tomorrow, God willing. In any case, the basis for analogy, as we said before, has to be some sort of intuition that in some way comes before the stage we are in. It doesn’t fit the stage in which we currently find ourselves. It is some sort of prophetic sense, let’s call it that—a sixth sense. All right? In the thirteen principles, the Torah actually builds analogy on several different foundations. The Torah can build the analogy on our ordinary analogy, the way we operate in life and in science. What is that principle called? Binyan av. Binyan av is simply likening one thing to another—or “what do we find,” really; that is more precise. Binyan av, in fact, the definition is not exactly “what do we find.” One can base analogy… similarity on all sorts of forms in which the Torah is written. Meaning, if the same word is used in two passages, then we can infer that there is a similarity between those two passages and derive laws from one passage to the other. There our own intuition is no longer doing the work. There the Torah reveals to us that there is a similarity by writing the same word in both passages, right? That is verbal analogy. Yes. And there is what is called juxtaposition, for example—when two verses are written next to one another, then I compare the work of the Tabernacle to the Sabbath because there are thirty-nine primary categories of labor. Why? Because the Sabbath is juxtaposed to the work of the Tabernacle. Since they are written one next to the other, I have to find some lines of similarity between them and can learn from one to the other. So binyan av is the general human rational principle. Again—not deduction, analogy. But analogy of plain common sense. The Torah does not add data there. Figure it out yourself. Use the reason you use everywhere else and understand on your own that there is a similarity between the two things, and infer the required conclusions. In the other principles, the Torah itself provides you with the mechanisms—or with those intuitions that are hard to understand how we ourselves develop, as we said earlier. The Torah gives them to you as data. It writes one word here and one word there, so understand that there is a similarity between this place and that place.
[Speaker B] The first principle we mentioned was “what do we find,” so what—how do we define it? Is it induction?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, that’s also an analogy. It’s just an analogy whose underlying intuition doesn’t come from me, but from the language of the Torah. Ah no, with a “bamah matzinu,” sorry. In a “bamah matzinu” that’s not it; that’s an ordinary analogy. “Bamah matzinu” is simply an analogy. A binyan av, in its simple logical definition, is induction; we’ll get to that later. This is an analogy, and we’ll see that exactly all the confusion between the hermeneutic principles and the terms in the Talmud mixes them up in a terrible way. Meaning that “bamah matzinu,” gezerah shavah, hekkesh, and binyan av get interchanged, and you can never know what they’re talking about there. And the reason is exactly this: analogy and induction are two things that are really the same thing when you think about the logical mechanism behind them, as we discussed earlier. That’s exactly the reason. We’ll see that in a moment. Now, we spoke in the introduction about the book. Open it up—do you have the introduction? Fine, okay, doesn’t matter, I’ll briefly say what we said there. In section A, “Opening Remarks,” that’s what it’s called at the beginning of the book—not the introduction, but “Opening Remarks,” after the table of contents. So it says here: Hebrew logic is auditory, not speculative-optical, not intuitive-visual. This great principle determines the character of Hebrew wisdom and gives the key to the spirit of Hebrew mysticism; it can be known, taught, and made known in a new, precise scientific discipline: the study of Hebrew auditory logic. What does “precise” mean? “Precise” sounds a bit like mathematics, right? So there really were those who wanted to interpret the Nazir—and this is very common—as proposing an alternative logic. Meaning that in the Torah there is an alternative logic, not the regular logic. That’s the “precise,” right? But that is certainly not correct. The Nazir does not mean to argue with logic. He himself also uses logic, and every human being uses logic; even someone who argues with logic will use logic in order to do so. Meaning, a person cannot function outside logic. What the Nazir means regarding the thirteen hermeneutic principles—that’s one direction. So he certainly does not mean to say that this is an alternative logic. On the other hand, in letter C there, he brings the other side of the coin: Jewish Spanish religious philosophy, which venerates logic, knows only the Western scholastic logic, in which the quality of Greek logic is found, given in Hebrew translations such as Maimonides’ Terms of Logic, as distinct from Hebrew logic, which is given in the principles by which the Torah is expounded, whose value in its eyes is lower, like the logic of stylistic formulations or the rhetorical syllogisms of philosophy. That is something else; what’s being discussed here is basically rhetoric. And those rhetorical syllogisms are rhetoric. But what is being presented here is the opposite claim. Gersonides writes this in an extreme way, but Maimonides says it too. Maimonides, and also Gersonides, understand that the thirteen principles are the exact opposite kind of thing—not connected to logic at all. It is simply an axiomatic system. Gersonides, Maimonides, in Terms of Logic, says that the thirteen principles are an axiomatic system, simply a collection of arbitrary rules that the Holy One, blessed be He, chose to encode the Torah according to those rules—but the rules themselves have no meaning. Do you understand? It’s like: what is the meaning of the Atbash rule when I use it to decipher a code? The rule itself has no meaning. I am simply revealing to you that when I wrote the text you are reading, I wrote it according to this key—but the key itself has no meaning; it is arbitrary, right? After all, I give you the key so that you can decode what I wrote, but the key is a completely arbitrary thing, just a set of rules I chose in order to encrypt the information; and whoever uses the rules needs them in order to rediscover the information. But the rules are rules with no meaning at all, arbitrary rules, a set of axioms that can be given to you so that afterwards you’ll know how to read what I wrote. The same thing with the attitude toward the thirteen principles. The Holy One, blessed be He, chose to write the Torah in a certain formulation; it’s arbitrary. That fits Maimonides very well, because Maimonides writes that language too is arbitrary—we explained that a year earlier—so the thirteen principles are also arbitrary. And essentially what was given to us is these thirteen principles as a law given to Moses at Sinai, as almost all the medieval authorities agree; it is a law given to Moses at Sinai. Aside from Rashi’s teachers at the beginning of Ketubot, in Bava Kamma and in Kiddushin, where it says that monetary betrothal is from the words of the Sages. Regarding monetary betrothal, they learn it there from “taking-taking” from the field of Ephron, right? If that is through a gezerah shavah, then their view is that gezerah shavah is rabbinic, from the words of the Sages—that’s what he says in passing. Maimonides also writes that it is from the words of the Sages, but for Maimonides “words of the Sages” means something else. For Rashi’s teachers, it really seems that gezerah shavah is only rabbinic, and they understood the thirteen principles as rabbinic. But the common view is that at least gezerah shavah—and really all the principles—the common view is that the principles are a law given to Moses at Sinai. And this is written by Rashi in several places, by Maimonides, and by a number of medieval authorities, and in all the various rule-books about the thirteen principles. So in essence there are two opposite approaches here. On the one hand, there are those who want to claim that what we have here is an alternative logic. Notice: logic is something meaningful, not arbitrary rules. “Alternative logic” means that I am now going to develop a philosophy on the basis of different rules of thought, instead of ordinary human Greek scholastic logic, so to speak. That is, of course, not correct; nobody means to ignore basic human logic. On the other hand, there is the exactly opposite approach of Maimonides and Gersonides, who say: fine, if that’s the case, then really there is no logic here at all, because as we said, logic cannot be replaced. If logic cannot be replaced, then what is the meaning of the thirteen principles? They certainly are not a substitute for logic, so what are they? A collection of arbitrary rules. A kind of code, where the Holy One, blessed be He, encoded the Torah in such a code, encrypted all sorts of rules within it, and gave us the code so we would know how to decipher it—but the code itself has no meaning. The Nazir himself means some kind of middle way, and that appears in letter D, in letter E. He says, in letter D: The doctrine of Semitic Hebrew logic in its religious and parabolic character, as given in the principles by which the Torah is expounded, and Hebrew mystical logic in comparison with Greek, Stoic, and modern logic, will serve as the foundation for building the new Jewish religious philosophy, in continuity with previous generations and as drawn from its first prophetic source. And in letter E, the same thing: The doctrine of Semitic Hebrew logic as given in the principles by which the Torah is expounded will serve as an introduction to the methods of halakhic midrash and the straightening of the paths of the Talmud, in whose depth and sharpness of study the Hebrew intellect has grown and will continue to grow, magnifying Torah and making it glorious, and the spirit of Israel will be renewed. Here you can see that there is some kind of intermediate conception. Meaning, on the one hand it certainly is not arbitrary, because according to Maimonides no spirit of Israel is going to grow from the thirteen principles; it’s a set of arbitrary rules that the Holy One, blessed be He, chose to encode with and gave to us, and we decode with them and understand what the Torah wants. Why does the Holy One, blessed be He, play these kinds of games with us? I don’t know. Why not just write explicitly what He means? That’s a different discussion.
[Speaker B] So why put it there in the Torah? Maybe so it’ll be good, maybe?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. It sounds very implausible to me, but okay, something like that would have to be proposed there. In any case, there is basically some conception there from which clearly no philosophy can emerge, right? A collection of arbitrary rules. The second extreme conception, of course, fits the idea that a new philosophy could emerge here—that this stands in place of Greek logic—but that of course cannot be. Every sentence that comes out of my mouth presupposes Greek philosophy, simple logic. And it’s not Greek; the Greeks formulated it, but this is human logic, not Greek. Right. Nobody can—when you say a sentence to me, how do I know that it’s this sentence and not its opposite if I do not accept the basic laws of logic? You can’t speak at that level about logic. So what the Nazir means to say is that this is not a substitute for logic, but on the other hand it is also not arbitrary rules. These are rules that build a second story. There is logic, which forms the infrastructure within which a person thinks at all, and nobody argues with that logic. But we received another set of rules, and those rules are keys with philosophical meaning, not arbitrary ones. This is not some accidental code chosen to encrypt the Torah; rather, it is a code that itself has meaning, and if we know how to use it—the second principle, gezerah shavah, says that two things that are equal to each other one-to-one in wording, equal words, are equal to each other in their laws.
[Speaker B] Two things that are equal, or described by the same word, or equal in some whatever sense—are equal to each other in their laws. First of all, the first thing we need to ask ourselves is: why does he begin with the second principle? After all, the first principle in the doctrine of the thirteen principles is kal va-chomer. Why didn’t he start with the first one, with kal va-chomer? And here, in the second principle, the Nazir uses the analogy of gezerah—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] shavah to point—
[Speaker B] to all the other principles. And this is to show that the Torah is indeed not under what we call logic, but on the other hand it’s not ownerless chaos either.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So here that analogy serves as a kind of conception. And then this whole business would be a bit more sophisticated than the Greek form. Here I don’t know how far the Nazir goes with this and how he means to explain all the other principles. Okay. In any case, here we have the second principle. He starts with the second principle and not with the first principle. The first principle is kal va-chomer. Kal va-chomer is a problematic principle, and many Jews thought that kal va-chomer is a logical inference, while he thinks it is not a logical inference—and in my opinion he is absolutely right. We’ll come back to that. And he says that it is an inference like the rest of the Torah, and it is at a higher level than kal va-chomer. But he intentionally starts with the second principle because first of all he wants to establish analogy as what characterizes the whole set of principles, as distinct from logic. And afterwards one can return to kal va-chomer and try to examine whether it resembles logic or whether it resembles the collection of analogical principles. Clear? So there is no point in beginning with kal va-chomer so long as you have not clearly set the two alternatives against each other. Kal va-chomer will be the touchstone, and there we will try to see whether indeed all the principles are analogical or not. And for that, you need to know very well—sorry—you need to know well what an analogical principle means as opposed to logic, inference, or syllogism, in the foreign term. And therefore he starts with the second principle. Gezerah shavah is a nominal, verbal comparison—mufneh, free of conceptual imagery. In the Mishnah and the Talmud, with gezerah shavah there is a discussion whether the words need to be mufneh. Mufneh means free. Meaning that the word is not serving the plain meaning or another exposition, so the word is free, and then it can be expounded for gezerah shavah. There are views that if the word is not free, then perhaps one cannot expound it. This is a tannaitic dispute. And the form of the inquiry is this concept, mufneh. He explains here, mufneh means what? Free.
[Speaker B] It may be that one has to accept his view. In any—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] case, the word has to be free on all sides. He explains mufneh as free of conceptual imagery. That is an enormous novelty. What is unique to the second Semitic auditory logic is that it hears the thing in the verbal name. Speech, the thing. Speech and thing come from the same root, and in the holy tongue speech indicates the thing. And he also does not agree with the interpretation of the principles in exactly the same way. Maimonides claims that speech is conventional and arbitrary among the letters. The holy tongue is an arbitrary language like any other language. The supreme Semitic auditory logic is unique to select individuals, not to every person. Therefore the restriction on the principle of gezerah shavah in general: a person may not derive a gezerah shavah on his own. Because this logic is not logic accessible to everyone; it is a logic that has to be developed, a logic that select individuals know how to use properly. Therefore, just as we actually see in life, we see that analogy is much harder than deduction. In all logic tests, they always examine someone with all sorts of tricks: if all ducks are frogs and some frogs are not black, then the question is whether the duck is green, or all sorts of claims of that kind. You know all these tests—they are all basically tests of deduction. They can be done formally; any computer can do that. That’s not it. The truly gifted person is tested on his analogies, not on his deductions. The question is whether he can make intelligent analogies. And the question is how to test that. A brilliant scientist is a scientist who knows how to make analogies, not a scientist who knows how to make deductions or inductions.
[Speaker B] Fine, we’ll see—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] how we’ll see. It’s not a rule—at least not for everything, not such a sweeping rule for everything. We’ll see.
[Speaker B] In any case, that’s the sign of it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now let’s try to go into a bit more detail. So let’s read the notes. Here the notes are a bit detailed; I’ll go over part of them, but it’s important for me to see a few points there. So the first note is 51. It says: Hillel instituted—Hillel, after all, was the first to formulate the principles. Hillel the Elder formulated seven principles, right? Rabbi Ishmael formulated thirteen principles, and Rabbi Yosei formulated thirty-two principles. The thirty-two principles are for studying aggadah, not for studying Jewish law. In halakhic study there are thirteen principles. We’ll still study this. So he says: it is said “at its appointed time” concerning the daily offering. Here he brings an example of how Hillel the Elder, after all, dealt with the question whether Passover overrides the Sabbath, when he came up from Babylonia and the sons of Beteira had forgotten the law. So Hillel derived it for them from hekkesh, from kal va-chomer, and from gezerah shavah. And there, essentially, he founded the matter—or institutionalized it,
[Speaker B] I don’t know if—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] whether he founded it, but he institutionalized this whole matter of the principles.
[Speaker B] Is it here, two lines lower? Isn’t it six lines lower? So here does he succeed, or is he in the next two lines and then he says—?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In any case, gezerah shavah: it says “at its appointed time” regarding the daily offering, and it says “at its appointed time” regarding the Passover offering. Just as the daily offering overrides the Sabbath, so too Passover. There is a shared word, “at its appointed time,” “at its appointed time”—apparently a gezerah shavah. Since there is a shared word in both, then one can compare Passover to the daily offering: both override the Sabbath. The truth is that this gezerah shavah is a bit doubtful. Because, simply speaking, you do not need the gezerah shavah here at all. The meaning of the words “at its appointed time” is that it should always be at its appointed time, even if that is on the Sabbath; you have to do it exactly at the proper time. That is just the literal meaning of the word. It is not some free word, where since it is superfluous and appears here too—like “to her” from “to her.” When we learn slave from woman, we derive a gezerah shavah of “to her” from “to her.” It says “to her” there and “to her” here. The word “to her” has nothing to do with what we are learning. But since there is a shared word in the two places, we learn from that that all the laws of a slave and of a woman are similar. That is a classic gezerah shavah. Here, there is room to argue whether this is a gezerah shavah at all. Because this is only a literal interpretation of the concept “at its appointed time,” that everywhere it says “at its appointed time,” it means it overrides the Sabbath. Is there, for example, a practical difference? Could I, for example, learn additional laws from the daily offering to Passover, not connected to this issue of overriding the Sabbath? Other laws regarding the way it is offered and things like that? Gezerah shavah is usually total. Meaning, if I compare two things—“to her” from “to her”—when we learn slave from woman, I learn it for all intents and purposes. That is a rule; the Talmud says this, if I remember correctly, that gezerah shavah is for everything—that is the character of gezerah shavah. Now here one would need to check the Talmudic text more carefully; I didn’t check it. But just at first glance, it seems that this is not really a classic gezerah shavah. It is simply an interpretation of the word “at its appointed time.” Okay? In a moment we’ll see that perhaps, at some deeper level, this is actually the meaning of gezerah shavah itself. But here at least, on the surface, it seems that this is not a classic gezerah shavah.
[Speaker B] Does anyone here challenge that this is a classic gezerah shavah? No.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This is a comment I’m making here about this gezerah shavah. We’ll see later discussions that can really touch on this question. What I’m commenting here on this gezerah shavah—we’ll see later discussions that can touch on this question of what the meaning of gezerah shavah is. Because notice, we gave an introduction: what are the principles according to the Nazir? The principles according to the Nazir are not arbitrary principles, right? Because otherwise you cannot develop an independent philosophy out of arbitrary principles. Right? Arbitrary principles are keys with which you unlock the text, but they have no meaning in themselves. If I want to develop a philosophy from these principles, that means the principles themselves have meaning. What meaning is there to the principle of gezerah shavah? It seems completely arbitrary. It really does look like some arbitrary rule, that the Holy One, blessed be He, chose to plant similar words in order to hint that the laws are similar. We need to explain, with every single principle we study in the Nazir, what philosophical foundation emerges from it, what it teaches us as a principle in itself—not merely as an arbitrary rule or as a way of encoding laws into the Torah. Okay?
[Speaker B] It’s independent. That doesn’t mean that maybe it’s something intrinsic—as distinct, as distinct from another philosophy? Yes, as distinct from philosophy, but not—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] as distinct from logic. Correct.
[Speaker B] So it says, let’s continue reading. In the baraita of the thirteen—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] principles of Rabbi Ishmael—you know the baraita of the thirteen principles that we recite in the morning? It appears at the beginning of the Sifra. It opens the Sifra, the tannaitic midrash on Leviticus, and therefore most commentaries on the baraita of the thirteen principles are actually all the commentators on the Sifra who relate to that baraita, because it opens the Sifra. There is, I think, the most well-known commentary on the principles, the most significant one, the deepest one—I think—there is a Sifra—I couldn’t get hold of this book; I don’t know whether it’s even possible. I once looked for it but didn’t manage. There is a book called Korban Aharon by Rabbi Aharon ben Chaim, I think. I brought it here, because it is the foundational book on all the principles by which the Torah is expounded. This is the Korban Aharon—no, no, a very deep book that ranges throughout the whole Talmud with every principle, and he discusses its foundations, what exactly the meaning of the principle is, and where it is said and where it is not said. It is quite a major undertaking. Korban Aharon is a commentary on the Sifra. But it has an introduction that is a book in its own right, called Middot Aharon. And Middot Aharon is the commentary on the section of the thirteen principles at the beginning of the Sifra. How nice that we heard that. What? Too bad it isn’t vocalized. Yes, yes. There he has a very long commentary, and okay, not on everything was something written there that I agree with, but there is a very deep and serious discussion there on this whole topic of the principles. It is a foundational building block for all those who later discuss the principles—that book—which are not so many. Fine, I’m skipping all the bibliographic details. Three lines before the end of the paragraph we started: the mode of learning by which we can learn one thing from another is by the power of comparison, that things equal in one respect will be equal in all their matters. Right? That is exactly analogy. Two things that are equal in some respect—I infer that they will also be equal in other respects. “In all their matters” is a bit exaggerated, but in all the matters relevant to that thing on the basis of which we established the similarity between them. And the first type of comparison is one word for two matters, where it was not needed in both matters, or in one of them, and it is free. Meaning, the first type of comparison—all the principles are comparative principles, that’s how he opened. The first type of comparison is gezerah shavah. It is a comparison that relies on—what is the similarity between the two things? We always said that comparison relies on some assumption of similarity between things and on an assumption of relevance. Meaning, why is that similarity relevant? If there is a similarity, I still won’t learn from it if the similarity is not relevant to them. For example, I will not learn that I now need to add a t to the beginning of the word Passover and read it as t-Passover because the daily offering also starts with a t. So I make a link, and therefore all things need to be similar in every way; they should also start with the same letter. That has no meaning, right? We infer only in matters relevant to the quality of similarity from the quality of similarity. Now here he brings the matter of mufneh, and we already mentioned that. The Talmud in Niddah 22b–23a discusses whether gezerah shavah requires mufneh. There are basically three views there—
[Speaker B] two that are three—that there are—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] because gezerah shavah is always built from two words. Either both words need to be superfluous, or one word—and then also which one? in the source text or the target text—needs to be free, or neither one needs to be free. And there may also be differences—not just may be; there are differences. Even according to one who accepts two types of gezerah shavah, in one case, for example, if both are free, then the law is such-and-such: we rule that there is no refutation. And if I find a refutation, that won’t help at all. If both are free, it is as if it were written explicitly in the Torah—this is how Rashi explains in Shabbat 64a—that if two things are free, then it is as if it were written explicitly in the Torah, so there is no refutation. Refutation applies to something I want to derive where my own reasoning is involved, but if the thing is written in the Torah, then there is no refutation. By contrast, if it is free on one side, there there is a tannaitic dispute whether one can refute it or not. If the matter is not free at all, then there is a dispute. But there is another amora who says that one does make a gezerah shavah, but certainly one may refute it according to all opinions, and then it goes back to the tannaitic dispute. The meaning of the term gezerah shavah is “equal word” or “equal decree.” And in Middot Aharon there: that is why it is called gezerah shavah, because the word gezerah is a term said of the word, as being cut from letters. And it means a gezerah that is a word equal in two subjects and produces equality between them. And likewise in the book Beginning of Wisdom by Rabbi Yaakov Hagiz, he adds: and you also find among grammarians that they speak of the pattern of complete verbs. There, he proves that this gezerah is a form. It is cut from the same letters; it has the same form, and therefore I can infer conclusions. Now notice what is being said here, essentially: if there is a formal similarity between the letters or between the manner of writing, that means there is also an essential similarity between the things. Right? That is the claim. And here lies the philosophical principle of gezerah shavah. The philosophical principle of gezerah shavah is not just as a formal rule. A formal rule doesn’t need this. No problem: wherever the same word appears, we compare. But if you try to understand what this means, you are basically saying the following: the similarity between two subjects is not only the sort of similarity that a binyan av or a bamah matzinu works with. The similarity between two things I infer through a kind of common sense that serves me even outside the Torah, that they are similar, and then I infer conclusions. Here the Torah gives you another tool. If they write it the same way, or say it the same way, hear it the same way, then there really is an essential similarity between the two things. It’s like what the Nazir keeps saying: this is not an arbitrary formal coding method. It points to a real similarity. Meaning, there is a real similarity between Passover and the daily offering. It is not by chance that they planted the word “at its appointed time” there and also planted the word “at its appointed time” here in order to hint various hints to me. No. By planting this word, it means that there are at least some characteristics—or all of them, depending on each case—that really are similar between these two things. There really is a similarity. So therefore the Holy One, blessed be He, could simply have written that Passover overrides the Sabbath explicitly in the passage of Passover, and that the daily offering overrides the Sabbath explicitly in the passage of the daily offering. Why does He choose to encode it through a similarity between Passover and the daily offering? Because in this He wants to teach me that Passover and the daily offering really are similar in something, apart from teaching me the law itself that both override the Sabbath. The Holy One, blessed be He, also wants to teach me that there is some similarity between them. So He gains two things by doing it through gezerah shavah. He not only teaches me the laws, He also teaches me that there is a similarity between the two things. Now that means two things. First, it means that every gezerah shavah really teaches me an underlying conceptual principle, and that it is not a formal rule. And that is very important. It is important also for learning, by the way. There are practical implications for learning, many practical implications, from this conception as opposed to Maimonides. The question whether there really is an essential similarity between Passover and the daily offering is very important for many halakhic questions that may arise, or all sorts of other things. If you understand this as just an arbitrary rule, then according to Maimonides there is no reason even to entertain the thought of a similarity between Passover and the daily offering. It is just a rule—or according to Gersonides, yes, all the arbitrarian approaches, yes. All those who understand this as merely a system of formal rules in which laws are encoded—there is no reason to derive similarities beyond what is encoded. He argues that the tool itself has meaning. Now notice: here we still have not yet found the meaning of the tool, but the tool helps me uncover meanings in the Torah. Yet the tool itself also has meaning—
[Speaker B] formal similarity is really essential similarity.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So in the tool itself—that is the second point that gezerah shavah teaches me. The first point it teaches me is that every individual gezerah shavah teaches me one point: a similarity between two things between which there is a gezerah shavah. The second point taught by the very rule of gezerah shavah itself is that the holy tongue is not arbitrary. Exactly the opposite of Maimonides. And of course everyone digs into his own approach. There is no proof here against Maimonides, because Maimonides will say no, that it doesn’t teach that. But the Nazir says yes, it does, and therefore it also teaches that.
[Speaker B] So here there’s another point for people close to that approach to connect to. Yes, obviously.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because this conception already begins among the medieval authorities: the Raavad and Nachmanides cry out against Maimonides, after all, about all these teachings that language is conventional, that the holy tongue is conventional. Maimonides explains why it is called the holy tongue: because it has no names for the reproductive organs, right? That’s what Maimonides writes in the Guide for the Perplexed. Why is it called the holy tongue? Because they did not give special names to the reproductive organs. Exactly. About that, Nachmanides and the Raavad cry out—in Sefer Yetzirah, Nachmanides on the Torah—what do you mean? The holy tongue is called that because it is a special language. Maimonides writes that it is a conventional language. And Nachmanides says this about Maimonides in many places. So here he says that this is exactly where that principle is learned in gezerah shavah: that when there is a word that describes something, the form of the word, its derivation—what is written here—has a connection to the content it signifies. The attachment of a word to what it signifies is not an arbitrary attachment. Okay? That is the general principle learned from the very rule of gezerah shavah—not from some particular gezerah shavah between Passover and the daily offering, but from the very rule of gezerah shavah itself. Does anyone want to give an example? Fine, let’s continue.