Lecture from Sivan 14, 5777

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

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[Speaker A] …and it gets tangled up. This analogy to someone studying in an ulpan, to someone learning their native language, is a bit problematic. Because if someone who learned in an ulpan comes and corrects someone who has spoken the language from birth, it’s quite reasonable to assume he’s the one making the mistake. But here I come along with categorical thinking, and I come and formulate a new Jewish law. Now, until now this Jewish law didn’t exist. So now I have to think, wait a second, if there was no reason to forbid this thing…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—not that there was no reason to forbid it. If you know that it’s permitted, then yes, that really would be difficult. But it could be that no one had yet thought about this issue. The fact that a Jewish law doesn’t exist doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily permitted. Until now, no one had paid attention to it; now we have to decide whether it’s forbidden or permitted. This is a new problem that has arisen now—not necessarily because reality changed, but simply because only now people started thinking about it. Fine. In Gilat’s book, where he talks about the development of Jewish law, one of his examples there is the Sabbatical year in our time. The Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic. So he says that this idea, of course, was born only in our time. This rule—that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic—it isn’t that they knew from Sinai that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic; meaning, that the Sabbatical year depends on the Temple being built, or on most of its inhabitants being in the Land, or whatever it may be, and in our time it became rabbinic. Rather, after the Temple was destroyed and a certain pressure situation arose, they sat down and worked on it; they needed to be lenient in the laws of the Sabbatical year—that’s how he explains it there. He also shows it chronologically from the sources. Meaning, in early sources you don’t find this idea that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic. But what does that mean? That the later authorities invented something new that earlier authorities didn’t have, against the earlier authorities? No. The earlier authorities didn’t think to investigate this topic—whether the Sabbatical year depends on the Temple existing or not existing—because the Temple existed; it seemed obvious to them. What was there to check? There’s the Sabbatical year, it’s written in the Torah, that’s it. Now there is no Temple. So we have to do a home inspection, right? When there is no Temple, you have to do a home inspection of Jewish law all over again. You have to see—maybe there are things that are supposed to change. So this issue was suddenly put on the table. Now people have to start discussing it. So they discuss it, derive it, examine it, ask questions, interpret, and reach the conclusion that the Sabbatical year in our time is rabbinic. That doesn’t mean that previous generations would not have agreed with this.

[Speaker A] They just hadn’t thought about it. But if we’re talking about something that isn’t just now—if we’re talking about generations that practiced leniency, and then people come along…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s really something that’s very, very hard to do in Jewish law. If many generations practiced leniency—if this was in a broad, observant public—it will be very difficult to forbid it in Jewish law. Today, with all kinds of artifacts, you can forbid anything, but generally, in the normal conduct of Jewish law, it’s very hard to forbid something that was permitted. You’re even casting aspersions on the earlier generations, and what authority does a religious court have? There’s all kinds of concern that you not change things that were previously permitted, because otherwise maybe it’s even forbidden to do so, even if you truly think it’s forbidden. But you’re not allowed to change an established halakhic ruling. I know—I heard a story. Rabbi Yehuda Amichai, I think, from the Rabbinate—he was responsible, or had been responsible, I don’t know if he still is, for the sale permit, for the Sabbatical year, for organizing things for the Sabbatical year. So he once was in the yeshiva in Yeruham—I wasn’t there, they told me afterward—and he related that when he was appointed by the Rabbinate to be in charge of the Sabbatical year, he went to Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach. And he said to him: Listen, Rabbi, I’ve heard that you have reservations about the wording of the sale permit. You say the wording isn’t precise; it needs some improvement at various points. Tell me your reservations, and we’ll rewrite it according to your instructions. Whatever you say, we’ll do. Shlomo Zalman said: Under no circumstances am I willing to tell you a single word. Because if I change it, then you’ll think that the texts formulated by previous great authorities—Rabbi Kook or someone like that, or even before Rabbi Kook, right?—that those wordings were somehow inadequate, as though the sale wasn’t valid in that formulation. I have my own opinion; I can disagree with Rabbi Kook; that doesn’t mean I’ll change the Jewish law. Those are two different things. On the contrary—precisely in a place where something was already established as permitted, it will be hard to forbid it. But in a place where no one has thought about it yet, where it’s a new problem—fine, there we’ll sit down and work through it and decide what we think.

[Speaker A] And what about a place where it was established as forbidden, and now I come and derive a permission?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s actually easier, by the way. Easier. Because then you’re not casting aspersions on the earlier generations. They were stringent; they didn’t desecrate the Sabbath. They were stringent in a place where they didn’t need to be.

[Speaker A] But they intuitively understood that there was room here for prohibition, and I come along with my categories and say that here there is…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So yes, indeed—then maybe for that reason I also wouldn’t do it. But I’m saying that from the standpoint of casting aspersions on earlier generations, it would actually be easier. From that consideration—yes indeed—so maybe really I would hesitate before doing it. This isn’t a question of one or zero. Meaning, I give credit to earlier generations that they had a better intuition, but on the other hand, if I have a position that I’m extremely, extremely convinced about—”the judge has only what his own eyes can see.” Jephthah in his generation is like Samuel in his generation. Maimonides writes in chapter 2 of the Laws of Rebels that every religious court in every generation can interpret the Torah and derive it by the hermeneutic principles by which the Torah is interpreted, as it sees fit, and it can change everything that previous generations did—there’s no limitation at all. It doesn’t need to be greater in wisdom, nor in number, nor in anything. Only regarding rabbinic laws does it need to be greater. And is that an established halakhic ruling? What? Is that an established halakhic ruling? No, absolutely not. Absolutely not.

[Speaker A] As though every generation finds the truth. Jewish law isn’t trying to hit on some truth.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No—the opposite. Jewish law, precisely because it is trying to—

[Speaker A] And every generation has its… In the previous generation they would have stoned me for this, and today…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because they thought differently, and I think this way. And since there is truth—not because there is no truth, but because there is truth—because there is truth, and in my opinion this is the truth, then I’m not willing to act like them, because that’s not correct. The postmodernist will continue to act like them even though he doesn’t think like them—because what does he care? There is no truth. Do whatever you want, so why change? Just do what people are used to. On the contrary, this comes specifically from the view that there is a truth, and I’m trying to hit it. That’s not the only thing—I spoke about this once, I don’t remember anymore. There is also value in autonomy, in doing what I think—not only in doing the truth.

[Speaker D] But in our generation, a religious court is every person who studies…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, a religious court that has… an authorized religious court. Meaning, there is…

[Speaker A] And what—

[Speaker D] Is there an authorized religious court nowadays? There isn’t. So every person… what do you mean, there isn’t anyone?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean every person?

[Speaker D] You study, and you…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You study, and you see that this is the truth. I don’t know. Because if I come to change a Jewish law established, say, by the Sanhedrin or by the Talmud or the Mishnah—at least we accepted upon ourselves, that’s at least what the Kesef Mishneh says, not to change that. But even he says: we accepted it upon ourselves. There is no essential problem with it. We accepted upon ourselves not to change that. And why? Because truly, in order to derive the Torah, one need not be ordained. But in order to derive the Torah in a way that will obligate the public, one does need to be ordained. And the Great Court has the authority that after it interprets the Torah, it obligates everyone, even those who disagree. Fine? But if I personally am not obligating anyone, and you think one way and I think another, I derive the Torah as seems right to me, and that’s what I do. There’s no problem with that on the principled level. One may derive; there is no requirement, no criterion, no threshold condition for someone who interprets the Torah through the hermeneutic principles by which the Torah is interpreted. There isn’t. I’m not aware of anything. Maimonides writes this explicitly—that in rabbinic laws there is a requirement that a religious court be greater in wisdom and number in order to change them, because the Sages reinforced their words more than those of the Torah. And we find this in several places.

[Speaker B] Nothing at all.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He writes it explicitly at the beginning of the Laws of Rebels; I’ll read it there.

[Speaker B] Fine, no problem with being greater in number. What? What’s the problem with being greater?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No—the question is what is called number at all? Number is always seventy-one, so the question is: what does it mean to be greater in number? They already ask that there—maybe they add additional sages or something; for now… Anyway, these are Hillel the Elder’s two principles. After that comes Rabbi Ishmael’s list, and Rabbi Ishmael’s list is more detailed, right? Here we already find—look—Rabbi Ishmael says: “By thirteen principles the Torah is interpreted: by an a fortiori inference, by verbal analogy, by a general rule constructed from one verse, and by a general rule constructed from two verses.” According to my claim, that’s a specification of the principle of constructing a general rule. “From a general and a particular, and from a particular and a general, and from a general and a particular and a general—you infer only what is like the particular.” The general-and-particular principle here has been broken down into three principles, all right? Constructing a general rule was broken down into two. “From a general statement that requires a particular, and from a particular that requires a general”—that too is probably included within Hillel’s principles of general and particular; that was broken down into five principles, not three. I’ll maybe comment on that later. “A matter that was included in a general category and then went out from the general category in order to teach”—that too, more than five principles even, if you want. And then: “Anything that was included in a general category and then went out from the general category to argue a different argument not like its original case, went out to be lenient and to be stringent; anything that was included in a general category and then went out from the general category to be judged by a new matter”—these are two principles that it isn’t clear whether they are found in Hillel or not; on the face of it, it seems not, though one has to check what ‘something similar from another place’ means. And finally: “A matter learned from its context, and a matter learned from its end, and two verses that contradict one another.” So all in all we see that most—maybe not all, but most—of Rabbi Ishmael’s principles appear in one form or another also in Hillel the Elder. If anything, there are just a few principles that do not appear there, if any. It could be that all of them somehow fit in there, but certainly some of the principles are there as specifications of the principles that Hillel the Elder had.

[Speaker A] How many are you counting here?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here—now let’s count again. What you count here is sixteen, right? Let’s see: a fortiori inference, verbal analogy, a general rule from one verse, a general rule from two verses, general and particular, particular and general, general and particular and general, a general that requires a particular, a particular that requires a general, a matter that was included in a general category and went out from the general category in order to teach—that’s ten; anything that was included in a general category and went out from the general category to be judged by another argument that is not like its original case—that’s eleven; anything that was included in a general category and went out to argue another argument not like its original case—that’s twelve; anything that was included in a general category and went out from the general category to be judged—that’s thirteen; a matter learned from its context—fourteen; a matter learned from its end—fifteen; and two verses that contradict one another—sixteen. All right? There are sixteen principles here, and here too there is a dispute about how exactly this comes to be thirteen principles. The question is—of course everyone agrees on the method of doing it. The way to do it is to group several principles together so that they count as one principle, which reminds us exactly of the process we already saw in the transition from Hillel to Rabbi Ishmael, so overall this process just continues. And apparently they called it thirteen principles at a stage when, in the list, there really were only thirteen. Here the list that comes after the numbering is already a list after another stage, in which it was broken down still further, and that already became sixteen. But this breakdown, as we said, isn’t really essential. It is entirely possible that a matter going out in a case unlike its original one and in a case like its original one counts as one principle; it doesn’t have to count as two principles. These are two modes of one principle. No matter—there are disputes among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) about exactly how to arrange these sixteen in order to make them thirteen. Now, immediately after this baraita there appears the principle—there appears the baraita of the examples. Some call it the Baraita of Examples, or the scholion; among scholars it’s called the scholion. In the Sifra it appears as some kind of continuation of this baraita, and in that continuation baraita—the Baraita of Examples—there is an example for each interpretive principle. It says: this interpretive principle—how so? And then it brings some example showing how to derive by means of that interpretive principle. Almost all scholars agree—Finkelstein was really the first to write this—that this is a later text. Meaning, it is not from the school of Rabbi Ishmael themselves, at least not from the period when the thirteen principles were formulated. There are also some problems with these examples; some of them are very problematic, not all that well-grounded. The early commentators on the baraita—Saadia Gaon, Rashi, the commentators on the baraita itself—when they try to explain the examples, they bring examples that are not from the Baraita of Examples. They bring other examples—sometimes, by the way, examples they made up. Saadia Gaon brings examples he made up. At least they don’t appear anywhere else that we know. Meaning, he invented an example; all in all he just applied these interpretive principles to some other verse. Why didn’t they bring the examples from the Baraita of Examples? Because it wasn’t treated as all that reliable. But still, it seems to me that in the Baraita of Examples there is something additional—if I’m speaking now about the process of the breaking-down of the principles, there is something else added in the Baraita of Examples. In Rabbi Ishmael’s baraita there appear—let’s go back now and get a bit more into general and particular, because that’s where I want to get. One moment—the framework. So with general and particular, look how it appears here in Rabbi Ishmael. You have here: from a general and a particular, from a particular and a general, from a general and a particular and a general—you infer only what is like the particular. So of course it’s very hard to understand this matter. There are three principles here, and only one instruction for what to do. There are three. We’ll see in a moment. Seemingly. We’ll see in a moment. Seemingly there is here general and particular—but what do you do with it? General and particular is only a scriptural form. There is general language and after it specific examples. Okay—and what do you do in such a case? I don’t know—it doesn’t say. Particular and general is the opposite scriptural form. It starts with specific language and continues with general language—what do you do with that? It doesn’t say. And after that there is a three-part scriptural form: general, followed by particular, followed by general. And here it already says what to do. Fine? “You infer only what is like the particular.”

[Speaker D] Is that the only rule that has a name?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Apparently. Now, in a moment I’ll explain. So here there is only one practical instruction. Let’s call them principles and practical instructions, or implementation instructions, let’s say. Fine? So there are three principles and one implementation instruction. In the Baraita of Examples, when they bring these three principles, there are already three implementation instructions. Meaning, general and particular appears with an instruction that says: “You have only what is in the particular”—only what is in the particular. Particular and general—”this becomes a general category adding to the particular.” And general and particular—I will still explain all this; for now it’s just an introduction. General and particular and general—”you infer only what is like the particular,” which is what appears here.

[Speaker A] Is that the only rule?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. In a moment we’ll see what exactly this means. It’s not so simple. We’ll soon see what it is. But there are three principles here. Already in Rabbi Ishmael’s baraita there are three principles, but the implementation instructions—only one appears, after the third one. And that really raises a certain difficulty. In the Baraita of Examples there appear three different instructions, one of which is this one. Meaning, one could have said that this instruction is the instruction for what to do with all three scriptural forms. But then that’s really problematic, because then why are there three different scriptural forms? The Holy One, blessed be He, presumably doesn’t do things for no reason. So there are places where He wrote general and particular, places where He wrote particular and general, and places where He wrote general and particular and general. In all three of these types of scriptural form, does He want us to make the same midrashic derivation? Then why didn’t He suffice with writing general and particular—or whatever, one of them? Why do we need three different scriptural forms if the midrashic result is the same result? That seems to me a bit problematic.

[Speaker D] And also in the explanation you gave, there are three instructions, and it’s not the same thing. In the plain meaning from the Torah? No, no.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is “only what is in the particular” and “only what is like the particular.” That’s not the same thing. Two different things. Now besides that, this is the Baraita of Examples, which seems to me to be the next stage in the process of splitting, or conceptualizing and categorizing, which really shows that the instruction appearing in the first baraita is only one of the three. The other two have instructions that are different instructions. Okay? So scholars such as Kahana—for example Menachem Kahana of the Hebrew University, who I think is perhaps today’s most prominent scholar of halakhic midrash and of the interpretive principles in particular, and halakhic midrash in general—he wants to argue that this is the solution to why there are really only thirteen principles here and not sixteen. Because the three principles of general and particular are really one. There is only one principle here, and in fact—here is the proof—there is only one implementation instruction.

[Speaker D] Then that also makes it fourteen?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then it makes it fourteen—he removes one more, never mind, I’m not going into that now because for me only the general and particular is interesting. He removes one more in a similar way. But he compresses these three into one. Fine? His proof is that there is only one interpretive principle. And based on this he goes out and explains various derivations in rabbinic literature that also interpret a case of general and particular in the form of “only what is like the particular,” which doesn’t fit what we are used to. And he says that these are probably early derivations from the period of Rabbi Ishmael’s baraita, when in fact they interpreted all three forms in the same way. It’s only a later development that each such form came to be interpreted differently. Once again we see here an academic perspective that says that the later generation disagrees with the earlier one—it doesn’t explain it, it doesn’t uncover what is in the earlier generation, but rather disagrees with it. It broadens what we saw, if you remember, in Weinberg, in Seridei Esh, in the letter he wrote to Rabbi Hutner that I read last time. There he says that it’s true that the later generations do not uncover what is found in the words of the earlier generations—but that’s also legitimate. As he spoke there about Rabbi Chaim—it’s a marvelous Maimonides, but it has nothing to do with the original Maimonides; he created a Maimonides. A marvelous Maimonides, and legitimate. That was basically his claim. And what I wanted to argue there was: that’s not true. Rabbi Chaim in fact taught us—at least in certain cases, in some of the cases—something about the original Maimonides. He did not create a new Maimonides. And here too I want to claim the same thing. Meaning, Kahana is basically the person who wrote a detailed article on general and particular, so I always use him for comparison. It appears in the memorial volume for Tirzah Lifshitz, the wife of Berekhyahu Lifshitz. There there is a fairly long and detailed article by Kahana, which is the most foundational article on general and particular. There is another scholar of the principles who dealt with this—a philosopher-scholar who wrote a detailed article on general and particular whose name I’ve forgotten. In Lodz; there was some seminary there in Lodz. But it seems to me that Kahana does it in a more convincing way. Anyway—so here is an example of an academic perspective that basically says that each generation splits up the previous generation, but does not uncover things that the previous generation also did, or does not conceptualize or define more sharply what the previous generation itself did. No—it adds. It is essentially disagreeing with the previous generation, let’s put it that way. It adds more interpretive principles, it disagrees, it thinks this should be interpreted differently, and that is basically a new development. And I claim: not true—and I will try to show this. Not true. This is not a new development. It is simply giving names to what had also been done previously. And my argument against his claim is that in Rabbi Ishmael’s baraita there are three principles with one practical instruction, one implementation instruction. In my view, this one implementation instruction is itself a general heading for three implementation instructions. And what does that mean? In all the forms of general and particular, particular and general, general and particular and general, what one has to do is make some kind of expansion to a group that resembles the particular. And that is called “only what is like the particular.” What kind of expansion should be made? A broad expansion, a narrow one, within what radius around the particular should one expand? That will vary between the different forms. But in my view, the early derivations also did this and distinguished between the forms. Only they called all these applications “only what is like the particular,” because in truth all of them are indeed like the particular. The question is: how like it? Is it very close to the particular—only what is really similar to it? Or what is somewhat less similar? Or even what is still less similar? That already will vary between the forms, and we will detail this carefully later. For now I’m only laying out the framework. So my claim is that there are really no early derivations that disagree with the later derivations. The later derivations conceptualize, formulate, and categorize what the earlier generations had done.

[Speaker A] So how many principles are there? Thirteen.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I agree exactly with his whole claim, but for a different reason. I also think those three are one principle. But they are one principle not because all three were really interpreted the same way, but because they didn’t distinguish between these three different modes of interpretation, and for us all of them are some kind of generalization. Fine? Just as with constructing a general rule, where a general rule from one verse and a general rule from two verses are all in all two forms of comparison, of expansion by way of comparison. Fine—there are many ways to make comparisons. Not every one counts as a separate principle. But that doesn’t mean we did all of them in the same way. It only means that we call all of these comparison, and therefore it is one principle. Then someone else came along and suddenly noticed: wait, there are two kinds of comparison. So let’s give them names; it’s more convenient to handle that way. This is comparison A and this is comparison B. And now we will know better how to decipher each early derivation. We will see whether they did comparison A or comparison B. In the early derivations they related to this in some intuitive way, so somehow it was clear to them that here you do this and there you do that, and they didn’t see any need to spell it out or give different names to the process. The later generations, which needed something more systematic, gave it two names. The same with general and particular. The point is not that in all instances of general and particular they interpreted in the same way, but that all these derivations belong to the same family. This is a family of expansion to some general category surrounding a particular. Only this category, as we’ll see later, can be at different radii. It can be a category with a very small radius, a category with a larger radius, or a category with a very, very large radius. The radius is determined by whether this is general and particular, particular and general, or general and particular and general. And therefore all the… one second—therefore all the implementation instructions are called “like the particular,” because they all really do something similar to the particular. But that doesn’t mean that in all of them we make the same derivation or do it in the same way. There is a difference when the Holy One, blessed be He, writes in the form of general and particular, as opposed to writing in the form of particular and general. He intends to tell us different things.

[Speaker A] Sorry—when the Talmud uses the term “like the particular,” does it mean all… all of them?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That depends on what period you’re in. And that’s part of the problems, because Kahana finds many contradictions in the terminology—he finds contradictions in the terminology. And my claim is that this is a matter of period and place. Because this process of conceptualization doesn’t happen on a uniform front in all places. It’s some process that unfolds over time, but at different rates in different places. And disputes arise around it as well, and so on. But my claim is that there is a derivation that in one place will be called “like the particular,” and in another place will be called “only what is in the particular,” and that’s not a contradiction. It’s the same derivation, because the concepts had not yet been used uniformly, but they mean the same thing. All right?

[Speaker A] There are concepts of amplification, limitation, and amplification—is that something completely different?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s Rabbi Akiva’s track; I’ll get to that in a bit. We won’t deal with it all that much, but I will place that too in context.

[Speaker A] Can one find examples of each such principle?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, of course. We’ll see examples. For now I’m just giving the conceptual framework. What? Even in the thirty-two there is an example?

[Speaker B] What? Even in the thirty-two there is an example.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the baraita they don’t bring examples; Sefer Keritut, for example, does bring examples. Okay, now after that I already brought you the baraita of the thirty-two principles. We won’t go into that. The only question is—maybe I’ll say a few…

[Speaker A] words.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] About these thirty-two principles, it’s somehow accepted in the world to think that they are principles of aggadic interpretation, when in fact they are not on the track I am describing here, which is the track of halakhic interpretation. And regarding aggadic interpretation, it’s not at all clear what the source of the principles is. As we’ll see shortly, with halakhic interpretive principles all the medieval authorities (Rishonim) agree that they are a law given to Moses at Sinai. As for the principles of aggadic interpretation—I don’t know; I haven’t found explicit discussions, and I’m not sure everyone would agree that they are a law given to Moses at Sinai. Not at all sure. So I don’t know whether it’s even correct to put them in the same pile. Except that this story, let’s call it that—that these principles are aggadic principles—is itself not all that well-founded. Several commentators have already noted this. Some claim that all these principles are halakhic principles and not aggadic ones. These are not principles of aggadic interpretation. Others—for example Sefer Keritut—ask: why were these thirty-two principles not brought by Rabbi Ishmael? Some of them also cannot be fitted in the same way that I fitted Hillel the Elder—that is, as subcategories of one of Rabbi Ishmael’s principles. So why didn’t Rabbi Ishmael bring them? He gives three possible explanations for why a certain principle appears in the baraita of the thirty-two principles and does not appear in Rabbi Ishmael. One explanation: that this is indeed an aggadic principle, and therefore Rabbi Ishmael deals only with halakhic interpretation. A second explanation: perhaps this principle is not universally agreed upon, and therefore it does not appear in Rabbi Ishmael. And if I translate that into simpler language, the principles of the thirty-two are generally taken to be what is called Akivan midrash—that is, from the school of Rabbi Akiva. It begins with amplification and limitation, and it’s from the school of Rabbi Akiva. And of course Rabbi Ishmael did not bring Akivan principles, because he had his own method of derivation. Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva—we’ll get to this in a moment in the historical process—they split in their method of interpretation, and therefore when Rabbi Ishmael counts the principles, he counts his principles and not Rabbi Akiva’s principles. So that’s what he calls principles that are not agreed upon. And the third explanation is that there are things that are, as it were, explicitly written in the Torah, and therefore Rabbi Ishmael does not relate to them as an interpretive principle. Meaning, there are cases where I use an interpretive principle to derive a halakhic conclusion, but that conclusion is so close to what is written that for me it’s as though it were written explicitly; this isn’t called a derivation, it’s called straightforward interpretation. Even though I use a principle that looks like a hermeneutic principle, in fact it’s straightforward interpretation. Therefore Rabbi Ishmael doesn’t bring it, because it isn’t really called a principle of derivation; it’s straightforward interpretation. This works especially well if we follow Maimonides, who says that laws learned from derivations are laws of rabbinic origin. Then it means that there is important significance to this categorical definition: is this a law that emerged from a derivation, or is this a law learned from the plain straightforward meaning of the verse? Because that will determine whether it is a law of rabbinic origin or a Torah-level law. And regarding this, the author of Sefer Keritut, Rabbi Samson of Chinon, says that if there is a principle such that when I use it, the result is not a law derived by midrashic interpretation, but rather I have uncovered a law that is written in the verse itself—then in Maimonides’ language we will call that a Torah-level law; it’s written in the verse. So Rabbi Ishmael does not bring that principle in his list of principles, because it is not really a principle of derivation.

[Speaker B] And that is how, for example, he explained a familiar example—analogy, which doesn’t appear אצל anyone—

[Speaker A] Analogy—

[Speaker B] it appears in some wording in Rabbi Eliezer, but not in Rabbi Ishmael and not in Hillel. Analogy doesn’t appear. Analogy is a principle the Torah relies on all the time; it appears constantly. It’s a very strong principle. And one of Rabbi Steinsaltz’s brilliant ideas was that he wrote in Sinai, when he was I think eighteen or nineteen, about the principle of “if it is not needed for this matter.”

[Speaker A] And he—

[Speaker B] showed why in every case it is used in the Babylonian Talmud, in every case it is the closest case not mentioned elsewhere. It answers an obvious question. The reality closest to the plain straightforward meaning of the verse. Okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, we’d have to see that; I’m not familiar with it.

[Speaker B] Sixteen, seventeen times, something like that.

[Speaker D] It says thirty-two, it says thirty-three, it says thirty-two, and because of this letter substitution, it says thirty-three.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? It says thirty-three. Ah—because this version is thirty-three. There are versions where it says thirty-two; there are versions of thirty-four.

[Speaker D] And you checked in the parentheses? No, no, no.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The parentheses are from what I took in the quotation; I think I took it from the responsa project.

[Speaker B] Don’t remember. What’s the question? That Eliezer there is not Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus. Okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s Rabbi Yosei HaGelili’s.

[Speaker B] Yes, it’s Rabbi Yosei HaGelili’s. Meaning, Rabbi Yosei HaGelili was a colleague who later became something like a senior disciple of Rabbi Akiva. Certainly. A later disciple of Rabbi Yosei HaGelili.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you look in the literature, you see that these are Akivan principles. These are those principles. Okay. Now let us really try to see what the status of the interpretive principles is, and how this fits with the picture I’m trying to draw here. As I mentioned earlier, all the medieval authorities (Rishonim) I know—and those greater than me know—agree that the principles of halakhic interpretation, at least, are a law given to Moses at Sinai. There is one Meiri that I found—I even attached it—Meiri on Kiddushin 24, no, it doesn’t appear in what you have, where incidentally he says: every general and particular is merely a support-text. A strange Meiri, that. Yes—just in passing he says something like that and then goes on his way. I don’t know exactly what he means. But aside from that, aside from that, all the medieval authorities (Rishonim) agree that the interpretive principles are a law given to Moses at Sinai.

[Speaker B] That’s on the one hand. According to the view of the greatest of the authors? I don’t know.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He doesn’t bring it in the name of anyone—

[Speaker B] at all.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. In any case, that’s on the one hand. On the other hand, when we look at the development I have described until now, it really doesn’t look that way. It looks like suddenly Hillel the Elder comes up from Babylonia, expounds seven principles before the sons of Beteira, who were sitting in the Land, right? And then they made him Nasi and so on. Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva—Rabbi Ishmael arrives at thirteen principles, Rabbi Akiva at something similar but with amplification and limitation instead of general and particular. They too arrive at something like eighteen principles. Then thirty-two principles, and in the Talmud there appear even more principles, beyond those thirty-two. So it looks like there is some process here developing over time, not a law given to Moses at Sinai. A law given to Moses at Sinai sounds like something fixed, something one does not tamper with—meaning, that it is transmitted from Moses down to us, and no one touches it. And this process—you cannot imagine a more living, vibrant, expanding process than the process of the interpretive principles. How does that fit with the statements that this is a law given to Moses at Sinai? So here Finkelstein, in that book I mentioned, his book on the Baraita of the Principles, is puzzled by the Tashbetz. The Tashbetz is among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) who say that all the principles are a law given to Moses at Sinai. And he is puzzled by him; he wants to show that this is not true, that it is not a law given to Moses at Sinai, as all the scholars think it is not a law given to Moses at Sinai.

[Speaker B] It’s one thing for others, but how can Maimonides say it’s a law given to Moses at Sinai? Why not? Because he says there is no dispute about a law given to Moses at Sinai. What? But according to what you said, these are not new things, but rather they are…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly—that’s where I’m heading, and that’s why I’m bringing this.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So Finkelstein there goes through the medieval authorities (Rishonim), trying to show proofs that it is not a law given to Moses at Sinai. He claims that even Maimonides changed his mind, with root-and-branch for that claim. And one of his difficulties, for example, is with the Tashbetz. On the one hand the Tashbetz says this is a law given to Moses at Sinai; on the other hand—I brought this for you—at the beginning of his commentary to Rabbi Ishmael’s baraita, the Tashbetz writes as follows: “Rabbi Ishmael says: by thirteen principles the Torah is interpreted, and this baraita was taught according to the opinion of Rabbi Ishmael, and there are tannaim who disagree with him regarding some of these principles, which are not unanimously accepted.” Rabbi Akiva, of course. So how can that be a law given to Moses at Sinai? Yet on the other hand the Tashbetz himself says that it is a law given to Moses at Sinai. The Tashbetz says this. So he only asks: how can that be? Then how does the Tashbetz say it? Go and learn from this that apparently there is no contradiction between the claim that there was dispute on these matters and the general claim that the principles are a law given to Moses at Sinai. Why not? So of course there is the well-known Maimonides who says that there was never any dispute about a law given to Moses at Sinai, and many have already struck him on the head over this matter. The Netziv also discusses this a bit, but more extensively there is the well-known Havot Yair, who has a long responsum, number 192. There he goes through all the laws given to Moses at Sinai and discusses them: how can there be dispute in them according to Maimonides? He tries to explain; in some places he doesn’t entirely succeed, in others… in some places yes. But it’s a very difficult Maimonides. Still, that’s what Maimonides claims. So let’s leave Maimonides aside for the moment—how to reconcile Maimonides—and simply say that the straightforward conception really is that there was no dispute about a law given to Moses at Sinai. It is supposed to be something accepted, transmitted as is. So how can all this whole mess be a law given to Moses at Sinai?

[Speaker B] There is an opinion that says it isn’t a law at all.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, this is indeed Jewish law—how to derive laws. It’s interpretive Jewish law; it has to be interpretive. Yes, right. After that he—I said—he also brings proof from Maimonides’ view, that Maimonides supposedly retracted what he wrote about a law given to Moses at Sinai, and then later changed his mind. What are his proofs? I didn’t bring them for you, but I think it’s worth reading the whole thing inside, in Maimonides’ second root. So he says: “We already explained in the introduction to our commentary on the Mishnah that most of the laws of the Torah are derived through the thirteen principles by which the Torah is expounded, and that a law derived through one of those principles may sometimes be subject to dispute.” From here he wants to prove that Maimonides retracted, in the sense that this is not a law given to Moses at Sinai. But I think this is simply a mistake, because the fact that a dispute arises regarding a law derived through the principles does not mean there is a dispute about the principles themselves. True, there are also disputes about the principles themselves—we saw that with Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva—but what Maimonides writes here has nothing to do with that issue at all. Because Maimonides claims that the principles are a law given to Moses at Sinai, but when I use the principles and another sage uses the principles, it is certainly possible that we will reach different results. The reasoning of the interpreter also enters into the picture. So the fact that a dispute arose in a law derived through these hermeneutic principles does not mean the dispute is about the principles themselves. And maybe we’ll see examples of that later as well. In every exposition there is use of a principle, some principle. By the way, only a minority of expositions are expositions using a formal interpretive principle; most expositions do not use a specific formal principle. But an exposition, say, that does use a principle—then it uses some principle, but after that reasoning comes in. For example: “lah lah,” we draw an analogy between a slave and a woman. Right? “Lah lah.” Fine. So now what do we do with that analogy? It’s a verbal analogy, not just a comparison. What do we do with that verbal analogy? Which laws are we going to transfer from slave to woman or from woman to slave? At that point reasoning already has to come in; the Torah says nothing about that. So one interpreter will say that he transfers one law, another interpreter says no, it doesn’t seem to me that this law should be transferred; I think a different law should be transferred. So what does that mean—that they disagree about the verbal analogy? Both are making the same verbal analogy from the same two words. But the question of what to do with the verbal analogy is already a result of reasoning, and in reasoning there can be disputes among sages. That does not mean the exposition itself is not a law given to Moses at Sinai. Nachmanides himself, in his glosses to the second root, asks Maimonides a very similar question. Because Maimonides, as I just read, says that laws derived from expositions are called laws from the words of the Sages. That’s on the one hand. On the other hand, he says that the hermeneutic principles themselves are a law given to Moses at Sinai. So Nachmanides asks: the Torah came down to us from Sinai, the hermeneutic principles also came down from Sinai—Maimonides agrees with that too—so we apply tools that came down from Sinai to a text that came down from Sinai, and the result is a rabbinic law? That’s Nachmanides’ question to Maimonides. And Maimonides’ answer is of course: indeed, yes. Yes, this is a law from the words of the Sages. We received the tools through which the Sages can expound the Torah, but the result is a law from the words of the Sages. By the way, in parentheses, according to Maimonides even a law given to Moses at Sinai is “from the words of the Sages,” so this is not really a difficulty that Nachmanides is asking against Maimonides, and he himself notes this. Maimonides writes in several places that laws which are a law given to Moses at Sinai are also called “the words of the Sages.” But that is not our topic here. Anyway, in short, the rest of his proofs are proofs of the same sort; there’s not a shred of proof there. Meaning, Maimonides did not retract, and Maimonides says that this is a law given to Moses at Sinai, and that is what all the medieval authorities say. And then the question that really arises is how this fits with the picture I drew for you earlier. What? After all, we see that it develops, that it multiplies over the years—so how can that be? So here I’ll say the basic principle, which I already said, so this is really just repetition. What I’m claiming is that a law given to Moses at Sinai that was given to Moses is basically the Holy One, blessed be He, as it were sitting with Moses at the lectern and learning Torah with him. And He reads the verse, “You shall fear the Lord your God,” and says to him: this comes to include Torah scholars. And afterward He reads the verse “lah,” or the “lah lah” of “slave and woman,” and says: this—know that a woman is like a slave; one must do such-and-such, the law is such-and-such. And that’s how they go through all the verses of the Torah and learn. Moses comes, goes down below, teaches Joshua. And then that’s how it starts, and all the rest, and that’s how they begin passing it one to another. Moses, in my opinion, never heard the term a fortiori argument in his life. That’s speculation, but that’s what I think. Or the term verbal analogy, or the term paradigm construction, certainly not from one verse or from two verses. Huh?

[Speaker A] The Holy One, blessed be He, told him, “And if her father had but spit in her face…” Right? So he heard an a fortiori argument from Sinai? He heard the—the Holy One—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He made an a fortiori argument, but He didn’t tell him, “Look, there’s a principle called a fortiori, and here I’m using it,” and that difference is very important. Because as long as this is like language—and I already spoke about this—a person learns a language. At home, from his parents, from the moment he is born, he doesn’t need all the rules they teach in language school in order to know how to speak, right? He simply learns it naturally and he knows how to speak. And someone else who comes to the country at an older age can’t learn it that way, so he goes to language school and there he learns all kinds of rules, grammar points of one kind or another, and somehow that succeeds in teaching him the language. So why does the baby manage to learn it without the rules? How can he? It’s learning based on examples.

[Speaker B] The baby takes much longer.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, maybe, but it’s learning based on examples, and Chomsky builds his whole theory on exactly that point—that essentially we have some kind of innate linguistic structures or linguistic abilities. Because otherwise how can it be that they give me one example sentence and I know how to build sentences I’ve never heard before, and everyone understands that this is the correct way to build the sentence, and they too would build it that way. In other words, we generalize from examples in some natural way without anyone ever really telling us the rule. They just spoke to us, that’s all.

[Speaker A] So what is the rule that’s a law given to Moses at Sinai? What do you mean? We say that the principles by which the Torah—wait, wait, one second, I’ll get there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So if that’s so, then the baby’s learning is basically some sort of intuitive learning. He uses the language more or less according to the rules, but he’s never heard of those rules, he doesn’t know them; tell him “beged kefet,” tell him subject and predicate—he has no idea what you’re talking about, but he knows how to speak, no problem, right? The same thing is happening here. Moses learns the Torah from the Holy One, blessed be He, the way a baby learns language from his parents. And the Holy One reads the Torah with him and expounds the Torah, and everything is fine—He reads it with him that way, and that’s how he learns to feel it, how it’s done. So what about the woman and the slave—what does that mean?

[Speaker D] What does the Holy One say to Moses?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is a woman like a slave, and therefore something? And therefore what? And therefore the law of the woman is similar—and He says what? And it could be that He also says it—

[Speaker D] Because if the Holy One tells him the result, He doesn’t tell him the verbal analogy—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not just the result. There’s a question here of what He said and what He didn’t say; the medieval authorities already discuss this—what He said and what He didn’t say, nobody knows. But Nachmanides already talks about the fact that one may not derive a verbal analogy on his own unless he received it from his teacher; that’s what is written in the Talmud. On the other hand, we find many disputes about verbal analogies. Nachmanides asks this, and many medieval authorities ask it after him. And Nachmanides says there that the tradition reached us in fragments. In other words, sometimes we received the law but we do not know its source, and we find a verbal analogy. Sometimes we received that a verbal analogy is made between these two places, and we do not know what the law is, so we complete it—it’s like a kind of crossword puzzle. Now the question is: what, is the Holy One giving us riddles? Why didn’t He provide all the information? I assume that at least possibly He did provide all the information, only part of it was not transmitted—the laws—

[Speaker A] Got lost here and there.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, and I’ll get to that in a moment—on the day of Moses’ mourning, those laws that were lost. What? Were forgotten.

[Speaker A] Wait, on the day of—

[Speaker B] Of Moses’ mourning, three hundred—were forgotten…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s the Talmudic passage that appears later in your source sheet.

[Speaker A] If the entire Torah was locked up and complete, then what was left to learn?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t think it was like that. I assume we still had things to learn. No, I don’t think it was like that. It’s simply either that the Holy One did not say everything because it’s impossible to say everything. As the Talmud says in Eruvin, page 21, why didn’t they write all the rabbinic laws? Because “of making many books there is no end.” It’s impossible—there’s no room to write all of it. How can you write all of it? Rabbinic laws are not— even until today we still don’t know all the rabbinic laws; they keep being added over time.

[Speaker B] Couldn’t they make a Mishnah Berurah in twenty-something volumes? What? Couldn’t they make a Mishnah Berurah in twenty-something volumes?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even if you could make it in a hundred volumes—

[Speaker B] How many volumes are there already? You’d never cover it all.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Huh? You’d never cover everything.

[Speaker B] Today it comes to 4,000 pages of Talmud, no?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In Abraham’s time there were 400 tractates—400 pages of Avodah Zarah, whatever there was there—400 tractates in Avodah Zarah. Anyway, so—

[Speaker B] But seven thousand pages of the Babylonian Talmud—we know what that is. What? Seven thousand pages of the Babylonian Talmud—we know what that is. What is it? I don’t know. That’s the Talmud, that’s Steinsaltz.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. In any case, then, my claim is basically the following: the expositions are a law given to Moses at Sinai. The hermeneutic principles are a law given to Moses at Sinai. What does “a law given to Moses at Sinai” mean? The Holy One, blessed be He, gave Moses the language of exposition; He taught him to speak that language. Moses passed it on to his students, but he did not have the concepts a fortiori, verbal analogy, paradigm construction, general and particular. It’s not that—he didn’t speak in those terms. The rules that guide the use of the language had not yet been formed; they simply used it naturally. At some stage—not at some stage, really throughout history—we begin to forget a little. It doesn’t get transmitted properly, and we lose our linguistic intuition or our midrashic intuition. We no longer know how to do the expositions. What do you do in such a situation? There’s no choice: you stop for a moment, gather all the expositions we still have in hand, try to distill rules from them, give them names—general and particular, a fortiori, verbal analogy, paradigm construction—and now try to apply that to additional verses about which we don’t know what to do. All right? And that’s how the conceptualization of the rules is created. It’s not an invention. Previous generations did the same thing. We are just the ones giving it names and defining distinct lists of rules here. But this is not an invention beyond what previous generations did; rather, it is an attempt to put what previous generations did into somewhat more systematic and distinct tools.

[Speaker A] So is that under Greek influence—the conceptualization? Also in what the Oral Torah did?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think to some extent, at least, yes. We were helped by Greek thought.

[Speaker A] And then we encounter that Semitic reasoning is an alternative reasoning—it’s in addition to actual reasoning.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is in addition to logic.

[Speaker A] It is not—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In addition to reason—that’s two different things.

[Speaker A] Also—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Greeks also did not think only in deduction. It’s convenient to draw it very dichotomously: the Greeks are only deduction and the Jews are of course only divine inspiration. We also use deduction, and they also use analogies. What people call Greek reasoning—the Organon of Aristotle—is deductive logic. But we’re talking about—there are other Greek tools as well. So it isn’t only that. Anyway, this is basically the process, and therefore I say that the principles are a law given to Moses at Sinai, because they were given to Moses at Sinai and Moses passed them to later generations, and over the generations this whole business goes through more and more conceptualization all the time. Because the more we process it—like language—in language too, the more time advances, the more rules there are. Why? Are they born? Is it because the language expands? No. Rather, people succeed in distilling more and more fixed structures out of our intuitive use of language.

[Speaker B] There are more words, but not necessarily more rules.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I think people also discover additional rules that earlier people did not identify. More rules are discovered? More rules are discovered. That’s because the language changes. That’s because the language changes. Let’s assume that in the very same language—say it did not change at all—still the number of rules would grow over time. Why?

[Speaker D] Why? Right now we have an example from today, that masculine and feminine with numbers—suddenly the Academy said you don’t need it anymore. No, that’s not related to—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —the language changing, to what I’m trying—

[Speaker D] The language shifts because people already speak that way.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously, and that means the language changes. I’m not talking about that. I’m saying let’s assume the language did not change at all and everyone always spoke exactly the same way. All right? Still, in my opinion, as time passed, more and more rules would be formed in relation to that same language we speak. Because people would identify more and more structures and suddenly see that there is similarity between these uses and those uses, and create another rule. After all, all our grammar didn’t suddenly come into being in one big burst out of nothing—some researcher sat down and found all the rules of the language, not specifically Hebrew, any language, found all the rules of the language, and from then on we had grammar. Obviously there too there was a process of conceptualization that took time. Okay?

[Speaker B] And what about Latin grammar? The concept.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] My father always bragged to me that he knew Latin.

[Speaker B] That language, for a thousand years or more, right? Until quite recently, my uncle still learned Latin in elementary school in order to be an educated person. In Europe it was still customary. Among the intelligentsia it was a language for at least about a thousand years or more, alive, used by people. Did it continue to develop over those thousand years?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I have no idea, but I don’t think it was a living language. What was written? It wasn’t a living language. It was a language people learned, the way my father learned it in school, much like Aramaic in many respects. He didn’t speak Latin. It wasn’t really a living language.

[Speaker A] They wrote in Latin but didn’t speak it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When I was at my uncle’s—

[Speaker B] And he—

[Speaker A] —he spoke Latin with his friends.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They studied it. Fine, let’s finish for a moment—let me finish the process. Let’s leave Latin and Begin aside for a moment.

[Speaker B] He spoke with Begin.

[Speaker A] What—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I just want to finish this section. So look at the Talmud in tractate Temurah. In my view, the Talmud in tractate Temurah is a typical description of the process I’m describing now. Because the Talmud in tractate Temurah—it’s obvious that this is a kind of anachronism. I don’t think the Sages had some exact information about how many laws were forgotten and who restored them and who didn’t restore them. There is a kind of anachronism here through which the Sages want to describe for us the process that keeps happening all the time, which I spoke about earlier.

[Speaker A] To somehow place it in their hands. In the end they reached a period when they had to say how much there had been before and also to map it—for example, to arrange the laws in order.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s why I say I don’t think this is really trying to document historical truth. “Returning to the text: Rav Yehudah said in the name of Shmuel: three thousand laws were forgotten during the days of mourning for Moses. They said to Joshua: ask. Yes, ask in heaven—what’s the law? We don’t know. He said to them: ‘It is not in heaven.’ They said to Samuel: ask. He said to them: ‘These are the commandments’—a prophet is not permitted from now on to introduce anything new. Rabbi Yitzhak Nappacha said: even the law of a sin-offering whose owners died was forgotten during the days of mourning for Moses.” The law of what to do with a sin-offering whose owners died. “They said to Pinchas: ask. He said to them: ‘It is not in heaven.’ They said to Elazar: ask. He said to them: ‘These are the commandments’—a prophet is not permitted from now on to introduce anything new.” In short, the people of Israel were stuck. What happened there? After all, a mourner is forbidden to study Torah, right? When Moses our teacher, the greatest of the generation, died—

[Speaker A] So—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The whole generation was in mourning, studying Torah was forbidden, nobody studies Torah. Now when they wept for Moses forty days—when for forty days nobody studies Torah and nothing is written down, everything is oral except for the Written Torah, but the Oral Torah—nothing is written, there is no Shulchan Arukh, no notebooks of summaries, nothing. All right? So that means that laws were forgotten there. That seems like a reasonable assumption to me. I don’t know whether three thousand or not three thousand, but it is certainly reasonable that laws were forgotten then. Laws that we had just learned from Moses, and for forty days nobody touched them. So what? They were forgotten. All right? And it was impossible to reconstruct it. Why? Because we have a rule that “it is not in heaven” and a prophet cannot introduce laws, so we’re stuck. We forgot, and it can’t be retrieved from heaven. What do we do? Stuck. Again: Rav Yehudah said in the name of Rav, at the time when Moses our teacher departed for the Garden of Eden he said to Joshua: ask me all the doubts you have. He said to him: my master, did I ever leave you for even one hour and go elsewhere? Didn’t you write about me, ‘And his attendant Joshua son of Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent’? Immediately Joshua’s strength weakened—yes, he became proud—so immediately Joshua’s strength weakened and three hundred laws were forgotten and seven hundred doubts arose for him. And all Israel rose up to kill him. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: to tell you is impossible; go and occupy them with war.” “Go and trouble them with war,” as it says, “And it was after the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, and He said…” and so on. In short, once again a mess—there is no way to recover it. Now look at the third tradition that appears in that same Talmudic passage. “A teaching was taught: one thousand seven hundred a fortiori arguments, verbal analogies, and scribal fine points were forgotten during the days of mourning for Moses. Rabbi Abbahu said:” and suddenly here there is a change compared to the previous two—“even so, Otniel son of Kenaz restored them through his dialectical reasoning, as it is said, ‘And Otniel son of Kenaz, the brother of Caleb, captured it…’” and so on.

[Speaker A] That’s legitimate.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? Because the laws—what does it mean, laws that were forgotten? “A sin-offering whose owners died”—what is that? So according to the Talmud, a sin-offering whose owners died is a law given to Moses at Sinai. Maimonides explains what the professional term “law given to Moses at Sinai” means. Not everything that was transmitted to Moses at Sinai is called, in halakhic jargon, a law given to Moses at Sinai. A law given to Moses at Sinai is a law that is transmitted orally and has no anchor in the written text—not exposition, not interpretation, nothing—it is transmitted only orally. That is called a law given to Moses at Sinai. When such a law is forgotten, there is no way to reconstruct it. None. Other than asking in heaven, which cannot be done—“it is not in heaven.” It’s lost. Those laws were forgotten. There are later authorities who claim that a sin-offering whose owners died, although it is a law given to Moses at Sinai, no longer has the status of a law given to Moses at Sinai because here it says that it was forgotten. And even if someone restored that law, he restored it from his own reasoning, so it is no longer a law given to Moses at Sinai. And that has various implications—whether one may dispute it or not. In other words, there are later authorities who write that this is basically no longer a law given to Moses at Sinai. In contrast, in the third tradition, what is written? Verbal analogy and a fortiori argument—what are those? Those are hermeneutic principles. A fortiori and verbal analogy, by the way, in the language of the Sages means all the hermeneutic principles. When they say a fortiori arguments and verbal analogies, they mean expositions through the principles. Why? Because a fortiori and verbal analogy are the two extreme types of hermeneutic principles. A fortiori is what a person derives on his own—it is logical, any person can derive it on his own. Verbal analogy is supposedly not logical—it is only what he received from his teacher. And all the other principles are in between; that’s a dispute between Rashi and Tosafot, where to classify them. “Scribal fine points” probably means all the expositions—expositions by means of the principles. That is exactly what it means; that’s all of it. And what happened here? Suddenly something does happen, unlike in the previous two teachings. Here Otniel suddenly comes and restores it through his reasoning. Why? Because this can be restored through reasoning; it is not like a law given to Moses at Sinai. How? We do exactly the process I described earlier. Let’s take the laws that were not forgotten. Let’s take them and try to understand what they have in common, how we got to them. So it says, “You shall fear the Lord your God”—to include Torah scholars; “Honor your father and your mother”—to include an older brother or one’s mother’s husband, and so on. Right? So what is that? It basically means that apparently every occurrence of “et” comes to include something. Ah, so they’ve already given us a rule. Now we have more verses with “et.” So maybe we can already derive from them various laws that are orphans, whose source we don’t know. And that is what they did with all the hermeneutic principles. And basically, what did Otniel son of Kenaz restore through his reasoning? The hermeneutic principles. He went through a process of conceptualization—this is where the principles were born. After all, Moses did not know what a fortiori and verbal analogy were; he knew the laws and how it worked. But Otniel son of Kenaz had lost it—we forgot it. So what do we do? We look at what we received from Moses, distill from it the rules, the logical structures of how it works, create from that a list of hermeneutic principles already conceptualized and categorized, and now we can use that to derive various laws or to ground existing laws, and then we use them. That’s how the hermeneutic principles were born. And this is a law given to Moses at Sinai even though it was born later, because in the end what did he do? He merely distilled the modes of reasoning that the Holy One, blessed be He, taught Moses. He just already gave them names, distinguished them, defined them—but it is a law given to Moses at Sinai. We only sharpened and defined it. Good, we’ll continue next time.

[Speaker A] Let’s move to the second part. There was someone here who wanted to present. All right.

[Speaker B] Thus far the lesson of Rabbi Michal Abrman,

[Speaker A] Thursday, the fourteenth of

[Speaker B] Sivan 5765, the eve of

[Speaker A] the fifteenth of

[Speaker B] Sivan, May twenty-second, two thousand five.