Lesson from 26 Sivan 5777

Thursday, the 28th of Sivan 5770, June 10, 2010, the lecture of Rabbi Michael Abraham. Okay. So, where were we actually in the topic of general and particular? I began by saying that there are really two ways to look at the history of Jewish law, at the development of Jewish law. There’s the traditional approach — let’s call it the naive one — which says that everything came down from Sinai exactly as it stands before us, its details and its general principles and everything, all exactly the same, right? Moses our teacher walked around in a shtreimel. I mean that metaphorically, of course. And opposite that there’s the academic approach, which basically says that every generation creates additional things, and even if it hangs them on the material of previous generations, that’s just a technical dependence. It’s not really uncovering things out of the depth of the earlier generations. And what I presented is actually an intermediate approach, which says that every generation does create additional things, but it does so in order to understand what earlier generations did, and this innovation reveals things that were embedded in the foundations of what was done before. Not always even intuitively? Yes, exactly. It wasn’t always even conscious to the sages of the earlier generations. The sages of earlier generations weren’t necessarily aware of the rules by which they were operating, because they weren’t doing it explicitly; generally they weren’t aware of the rules, they simply spoke the language naturally. And the sages of later generations began to formulate rules, define things more sharply, and that’s how this whole area of the hermeneutic principles began to develop. We saw the passage in Temurah about Otniel ben Kenaz, about the dialectical reconstruction by Otniel ben Kenaz, who begins reconstructing a fortiori arguments and verbal analogies that had been forgotten. I assume that this reconstruction was done through defining these rules — general and particular, verbal analogy, and a fortiori reasoning. The rules help explain the specific cases. It’s basically a process of conceptualization and formalization of the principles that underlay the intuitive work of the earlier generations.

Then when we saw this more concretely regarding the hermeneutic principles, or even more concretely regarding the principles of general and particular, we saw that Hillel the Elder had seven principles, among which maybe one principle appeared — in one version two — of general and particular. Then comes Rabbi Yishmael with thirteen principles. General and particular — but in Rabbi Yishmael’s baraita there were three principles of general and particular with one practical instruction: general and particular, particular and general, general and particular and general — “you judge only according to what is like the particular.” “You judge only according to what is like the particular” is a practical instruction, but it’s one instruction. There are three principles with one instruction. And in the baraita of examples, the scholion, there already appear three practical instructions, one corresponding to each of the three principles of general and particular. And the instructions are: general and particular — “you judge only what is in the particular,” only what is in the particular, just the particular itself, that’s the narrowest. Particular and general — “it becomes a general category added to the particular and adds to the particular,” meaning that’s the broadest expansion. And general and particular and general — “you judge only according to what is like the particular.” “Like the particular” means not only the particular itself; it’s similar to the particular, but not a huge expansion — some middle-range expansion. So from there the treatment of the three different principles already begins to split more explicitly.

Now, I also argued that these instructions may very well have functioned in earlier generations too, only they were not yet sharply defined, and one could see the instruction “you judge only according to what is like the particular” even for a principle of general and particular or particular and general, not only for general and particular and general. Why? Because in the end that’s exactly like Rabbi Yishmael’s baraita. In Rabbi Yishmael’s baraita there is one practical instruction, and my claim was that this is one practical instruction that applies to all three principles — but not because the three principles are really the same thing. Because otherwise why distinguish general and particular, particular and general, general and particular and general? That means that already with Rabbi Yishmael there was a distinction among three principles. So how can it be that there’s only one practical instruction? The claim is that this practical instruction too is some kind of umbrella term for what you’re supposed to do with these principles. What you’re supposed to do with them is expand around the particular at different levels. Which level of expansion? That depends on whether it’s general and particular, particular and general, or general and particular and general, but they didn’t get into that because each principle still wasn’t defined sharply enough. What was known was that the role of the principles of general and particular was to make expansions of categories around the examples that appear in the Torah. That was known, and that’s what is marked in Rabbi Yishmael’s baraita by the words “you judge only according to what is like the particular.” Yes, “the particular” there means the expansion from the particular. How much do you expand? They didn’t get into that. It’s a general instruction for all the principles of general and particular. Even though they did it differently, they still weren’t aware of the general laws that tell us in each case exactly how to do it. They did it intuitively, according to the different biblical instances.

And then in the baraita of examples, there the terminology that had been used earlier already takes on a more stable meaning. From that point on, in general and particular they use only the wording “only what is in the particular,” and for general and particular and general it’s “you judge only according to what is like the particular,” because now these terms are being used in a well-defined sense. What does this actually mean? It means that when we find different sources in which sometimes we can find “you judge only according to what is like the particular” applied to particular and general, and not to general and particular and general, that doesn’t necessarily mean we have a source contradicting Rabbi Yishmael’s baraita or the baraita of examples. It means this is an earlier source, or a source in which the development — it could have happened in the same generation, that doesn’t matter — but in that source, where it was taught, they still hadn’t reached the stage of explicit conceptualization. So they used earlier terminology, saying “according to what is like the particular,” meaning basically: expand around the particular without getting into exactly how much to expand. So these aren’t contradictions but different stages in the process of conceptualization.

And this process of conceptualization also, of course, leads in parallel to branching disputes. We saw that too, and these disputes come at several junctions and in several directions. The most prominent dispute is perhaps the dispute between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yishmael. And we saw that both of them interpret basically the same biblical structures. They do it in a fairly similar way — not exactly, but fairly similar — which necessarily means that both are some branching-off from one common root. Meaning, there was some earlier tradition that said: look, all these things are really about expanding categories. That was known even before them. And it was also clear that there are three types: general and particular, particular and general, general and particular and general — but it wasn’t defined what exactly to do with each one. Once the pilpul begins — yes, the pilpul of Otniel ben Kenaz — and people try to define the rules rigidly, suddenly we discover that we have two general systems. Rabbi Akiva thinks it works this way and Rabbi Yishmael thinks it works that way, because once you formulate rules and things become sharper, it’s now possible that we arrive at different generalizations, and that produces a dispute. The disputes existed before too, but they were perceived as local disputes, not as systematic disagreements. And once the rules were defined, suddenly they understood that they were really working with two systems of rules, and two schools emerged. And I also explained why these schools are named after Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Akiva rather than after Nechunya ben HaKanah and Nachum Ish Gamzu. They weren’t named after them because they still didn’t distinguish that there were two methods here. Rabbi Akiva noticed it, Rabbi Yishmael noticed it. They learned a collection of details and really did work differently, but they still hadn’t noticed that there was a distinct method here. Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yishmael already defined the rules. There’s general and particular and general, inclusion and exclusion and inclusion, and once you define the rules you suddenly see that you’re actually following a different method.

Itzik said that Rabbi Akiva defined the rule? Rabbi Akiva — or anyway, even the stage after Rabbi Akiva — but in the school of Rabbi Akiva at some point another pattern was cast, and there’s such a baraita that says — no matter, but there is inclusion and exclusion just as there is a parallel to… There are tannaim from the school of Rabbi Akiva; there are uses of inclusion and exclusion. There are uses of the principles, right, but maybe I’m mistaken, I don’t remember an orderly list of rules like Rabbi Yishmael’s list for general and particular. Rabbi Eliezer son of Rabbi Yose the Galilean does list principles of inclusion and exclusion at the beginning of his thirty-two principles, and so people decide that this existed because it’s supposedly aggadah. No, right, it’s not aggadah — correct — it’s from the school of Rabbi Akiva. So at some stage that happened. I don’t care right now whether it was Rabbi Akiva himself or his students, that’s not important to me. But at that stage a fixed pattern had already been formed, and therefore there are really two disagreeing schools. From there people started to understand that there was a fundamental dispute here, and two schools emerged. We said that afterward things get mixed again. Suddenly there are those in Rabbi Yishmael’s school who use inclusion and exclusion, and vice versa. So things didn’t end there.

Beyond that there were other branchings. I think I mentioned this: there was a split over how to interpret triple structures. Should one interpret general and particular and general as a corrected general and particular, or as a corrected particular and general? In the language of the Talmud they call this: is the first general term the determining one, or is the last general term the determining one? Meaning, if we have a triple structure: general, particular, general — do we see it as general and particular, which then needs correction, and therefore this last thing is added? That’s called “the first general term is the determining one.” The first general term is the decisive one, yes? That’s the basic structure, and the second general term is only the correction. Or “the last general term is the determining one” means that the basic structure is particular and general, and the first general term is the correction. Okay? So that’s another branching created in exactly the same process. Once you interpret these triple structures and understand that this is an intermediate case between general and particular and particular and general — because general and particular is the most minimal expansion, and particular and general is the maximal expansion, and a triple structure is something in between — the question is: how in-between exactly? Is it closer to general and particular or closer to particular and general? Where exactly in the middle? And we’ll define that better later. That’s the difference between whether the first general term is the determining one or the last general term is the determining one.

So all of these are basically branchings that result from analysis of the earlier interpretations and an attempt to define the rules that emerge from them, to distill some rules out of them. The same thing with particular and general and particular in Nazir. The same particular and general and particular. That’s Nazir; it appears only in tractate Nazir, and it’s the same thing too, and we’ll talk about it. Yes. So all these branchings are really sitting on the same platform. There’s an ongoing historical process here of conceptualization and formalization. The more the formalization advances, the more branches emerge, because people suddenly understand that the disagreement they had over some particular interpretation or another is not a local disagreement. It’s not just that by chance we read it this way and thought this way and they thought otherwise. Rather, there is some different underlying principle with which we perform these interpretations. And once you formulate the principles, suddenly you see that there really is a difference. As long as we didn’t formulate the principles, every such dispute looked like a local dispute; we didn’t attribute it to the existence of two schools. Okay.

What I want to do now is stop talking about it abstractly and try to see the thing itself. I think this is a better introduction, because I’ll come back to the abstract discussion later. But I want there to be some substance to this, so that we can look at the issue in a better way. So what I want to do today is learn the passage in Eruvin. I gave you the sheet; anyone who doesn’t have it should take one. Why did I choose this passage? First of all, the baraita of examples, the scholion, brings this interpretation as the example of general and particular and general. Meaning, somehow it seems that in the eyes of the tanna of that baraita, this is the most representative interpretation, which is why he chose this one specifically. Beyond that, we went through the entire Babylonian Talmud, all the passages — and in the rest of rabbinic literature too, mostly. And I really think that for some reason this really does turn out to be the most representative interpretation, and you’ll soon see why. I haven’t found another one like it. So I don’t think it’s accidental that this interpretation appears specifically in the baraita of examples; and you’ll soon see why I think this is the purest, cleanest interpretation — there you can see the structure exactly, and that’s why I want to start with it.

Good. So in order to understand what we’re talking about, let’s begin with the verses. They appear for you at the top of the page. We’re talking about redeeming second tithe, okay? Second tithe is supposed to be brought to Jerusalem and eaten there. But if we don’t want to haul the produce with us — maybe we’re afraid it’ll rot, or it’s too heavy, or whatever — you can redeem it for money, take the money to Jerusalem, buy food in Jerusalem, and eat it there. Which is basically like eating the second tithe itself. This is what it says in the Torah: “You shall surely tithe all the produce of your seed that comes forth from the field year by year. And you shall eat before the Lord your God, in the place which He shall choose to make His name dwell there, the tithe of your grain, your wine, and your oil, and the firstborn of your cattle and your flocks, so that you may learn to fear the Lord your God all your days. And if the way is too long for you, so that you are not able to carry it, because the place is too far from you which the Lord your God shall choose to set His name there, when the Lord your God blesses you, then you shall convert it into money, and bind up the money in your hand, and go to the place which the Lord your God shall choose. And you shall spend the money for whatever your soul desires: for cattle, or for flocks, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatever your soul asks of you; and you shall eat there before the Lord your God, and rejoice, you and your household.” What interests us is mainly the last verse. The last verse basically says what to do with the money. Right? If someone didn’t want to take the produce to Jerusalem, he took money instead, and with that money he buys produce — or buys food, not necessarily produce — buys food and eats it in Jerusalem. Okay? What can you buy with this money? What does “food” mean? Any food? What’s the definition here? What are you allowed to buy?

So the verse. When you read the verse, what does it say? “For whatever your soul desires.” “You shall spend the money for whatever your soul desires” — that’s a general term, right? “For cattle, or for flocks, or for wine, or for strong drink” — those are specific examples, that’s a particular term. Okay? “Or for whatever your soul asks of you” — and again a general term. Particular, general and particular and general — and we interpret it with that principle. And now maybe this is the first time we’re actually seeing such a verse with our own eyes, but that’s how it works. Meaning, when you see a verse in the Torah that defines something — that wants to define for us some category of things — and it does so with some general expression and then examples, one example and another example, and then another general expression, then we should expect here an interpretation of general and particular and general. Sometimes the sages gave such an interpretation and didn’t even say explicitly that they were doing general and particular and general — I already mentioned this — and the medieval authorities (Rishonim), Tosafot in several places says this: the medieval authorities explain that there was really an interpretation here of general and particular and general. More than that: if we know how to interpret general and particular and general, then we can go to other verses for which we don’t know any interpretations at all, simply look for biblical instances of this type — is there something general, followed by examples, followed by something general — and see what it means, and try basically to reconstruct the Jewish law, to make interpretations ourselves. That’s obvious.

And since you mention it, the Talmud says — the Talmud says — that one does not interpret general and particular across distant passages. Why don’t you interpret general and particular across distant passages? Because there is no earlier and later in the Torah. After all, if I interpret general and particular and general in verses that are far from one another, or general and particular — let’s say for now just a pair, general and particular — maybe it’s really particular and general and not general and particular? The order matters here. Since there is no earlier and later in the Torah, you can’t interpret verses that are far apart. That’s a very interesting point. What does Rabbi Yishmael say about this? Because Rabbi Yishmael holds that there is earlier and later in the Torah. So they took from his parents, who named him Rabbi Yishmael — and why Yishmael, Isaac’s brother, since he became righteous at the end of his life, because it says: “And Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him.” So Ishmael acknowledged that Isaac was greater than he was; a sign that he repented at the end of his life, and therefore you can call an important Jew like Rabbi Yishmael by that name. And from here — this is a sort of mnemonic — Rabbi Yishmael holds that there is earlier and later in the Torah. But I don’t remember now, because this really is problematic: interpretations of general and particular are Rabbi Yishmael’s interpretations, so this needs checking, I don’t remember. The Talmud says you don’t interpret this because there is no earlier and later in the Torah. Fine, maybe again this is from the mixing stage after Rabbi Yishmael; I don’t know. It’s mentioned in the Talmud, not in a tannaitic source.

In any case, Nachmanides says there is earlier and later — yes, he’s among the medieval authorities, but it starts earlier than that. It starts earlier. You just reminded me of something, that’s why I’m talking about it. What does it actually mean that you don’t interpret general and particular in distant sections because there is no earlier and later in the Torah? On the face of it, that’s very strange. What does it mean that there is no earlier and later in the Torah? It means that a verse that appears later doesn’t necessarily describe an event that was historically later. But why is the historical order important? The principle of general and particular — or the principles of general and particular — are textual principles. It’s about how the text is arranged. If it’s arranged as general and particular and general, then you should interpret it as general and particular and general. What difference does it make what happened historically?

So you see here in the Talmud — you just reminded me of the issue — that the principles of general and particular are not textual principles; they are historical principles. Meaning, if I know that the event with the particular happened before the event described in the general formulation, then I’m supposed to interpret it as particular and general even though in the Torah it appeared in the opposite order. But I don’t know — so what suddenly? What does it have to do with the events and how they’re ordered? Now, I don’t know this case specifically, but when this appears in the context of, I don’t know, one section where they were at one station in the wilderness and the other was at another station in the wilderness — you can’t know what came before what. The command was given at some place and time. I would want to suggest saying it like this: if the Torah agreed to change the order of the verses and bypass the historical arrangement, then apparently it had a sufficiently good reason, and perhaps for that reason it was willing to present things in the form of general and particular and general even though in truth it isn’t general and particular and general, but the opposite. I would say that. But the Talmud doesn’t say that, and that is exactly the problem. Rabbi Yaakov, I’m saying what the Talmud says. I’m saying this: there was some historical order, and the Torah shifted it for some reason that I don’t know. So maybe because of that reason the Torah also shifted the general and particular and general here, creating a structure that seems to us like general and particular and general, but really should not be interpreted that way. Why? The alternative is that it’s particular and general instead of general and particular. Right, because the order is reversed. Right. But why? Why does history determine it and not the text? Not history — the text determines it. But the Torah made an override here over history, so it can also make an override over your rule. Why? What’s the connection? Couldn’t it reverse the historical order and still leave the text in the proper order? What’s the problem? There was a reason to put the lamb before the calf. You can formulate the first case as a particular and the second as a general, and not the reverse. What’s the problem? It can always preserve the textual order and play with the historical order. I don’t see the problem here.

Really, the Talmud here yields something very interesting, and maybe I’ll come back to it later when we return to the abstract discussion, because we have a certain conception. The simple conception is that the principles of general and particular are textual principles. When we see a certain linguistic pattern, that’s a hint that this is how it should be interpreted. That’s the language in which the Torah expresses itself. But it turns out there’s also some historical dimension here. And really, if things were said in that way, then this is also a reasonable interpretation of them. Not that it’s a convention, not some code that was given together with the verses and the verses are arranged so that we can extract things from them with a code, but that it really is interpreted that way. Meaning, if someone says something to you in such language, that’s the reasonable interpretation. And I’ll bring you several examples later — not today, but in the future — of interpretations using general and particular and general in contracts, on contracts, on things that are not verses. Because it’s a textual principle? No, not because it’s a textual principle — the opposite. Because that’s how people speak. Because that’s what a person means. When a person says this, and then this, and then this, that’s what he means. Right. So here we’re talking about how the Holy One, blessed be He, spoke, not what the Holy One, blessed be He, wrote. When the Holy One, blessed be He, spoke in a certain way, that’s how it is interpreted, regardless of how He wrote it. What matters is how He commanded us then; that’s why history determines it. Just as when a person speaks to us, we should interpret his words according to the principle of general and particular and general. I’ll come back to this later, but for now it’s just a side remark.

Did the Torah speak in human language? Yes, exactly. But that’s a big novelty, because usually when you see such an interpretation of general and particular and general applied to a non-biblical source, you say the exact opposite: that human beings spoke in the language of the Torah, not that the Torah spoke in human language. Then you ask yourself: why? Who says the writer intended to encode some category here in this strange mechanism of general and particular and general? The Torah decided on such a mechanism — why assume people also speak that way? The assumption is probably that this is also a reasonable interpretation of human speech; it isn’t only a formal technical code. And maybe that connects with Rabbi Yishmael elsewhere, who says that the Torah spoke in human language. When Rabbi Yishmael says the Torah spoke in human language and he interprets by general and particular, maybe that really fits the approach that says that when people speak in general and particular, you should understand them in that way too.

Okay, but with rather limited confidence, of course; one has to be careful not to over-interpret human speech too meticulously, with all the rules and principles of general and particular and general. But we will indeed see examples of this kind of treatment.

Good. And in that second general term, it looks because of the connecting “and” — “and for whatever your soul asks of you” — as if in the end it adds to the particular. Yes, but I don’t think the “and” is the source. “And for whatever” — not only flocks, not only cattle, not only wine, also “for whatever your soul asks of you.” But they don’t interpret the “and”; the structure is general and particular and general. The final general term always adds to the particular, but that’s because of the structure. Even if the “and” weren’t there it would be the same thing; it’s not because of the “and.” When there is a structure of general and particular and general, the final general term adds to the particular. Instead of a comma? What? Maybe before it there was a comma? Perhaps, yes. I don’t remember a place offhand where they interpreted such vavs. A contrastive “and” they do interpret, yes. Okay.

So now we’re supposed to decipher what we’re allowed to buy with the money once we get to Jerusalem. This is in the passage in Eruvin 27, and before we go into the passage, look at the chart at the bottom of the page. It’s a chart I made just to make it easier for us to follow. In general, when we went through these passages one by one, in each passage you need to draw a chart like this in order to see from it how the sages worked. That was the way we tried to reconstruct how they interpreted general and particular; otherwise it gets very confusing. So here I’m already writing what is really the conclusion of the passage. We’ll see it when we study the passage, but already now, look here: there is basically a kind of hierarchy, from one to seven, of products that are candidates to be bought with the money of second-tithe redemption. Okay? So cattle and flock, wine and strong drink — that’s explicitly written in the verse, meaning that’s the clearest case that you can buy them with the money. Birds are the next level, fish the level after that, fish brine that also contains actual fish parts, so there’s also real fish in it — that’s number four; number five is brine without the innards; then six is saltwater, meaning water and salt together; and seven is either water alone or salt alone. Okay? Now remember this hierarchy — have it in front of your eyes — because now we’re going to start reading the passage and you’ll see that what the passage does is cut this list each time with a different line. Okay?

I assume that under cattle and flock, wine and strong drink, that also includes all produce of the ground, of all kinds, in your number one, Rabbi? We’ll see in a minute, we’ll see. The passage does it. Slowly. We haven’t yet gotten to produce of the ground or anything. We’ll get there. Why isn’t there another row here? What do you mean another row? There is — with cattle and flock, wine and strong drink, that’s one, then next one — that’s the particular. Between five and six I’d want to add plants. Fruit, vegetables, bread. That’s produce of the ground. What do you mean produce of the ground? It’s here between six and five… Saltwater, right? We’re listing only individual items here. What’s written here is only particulars. We still haven’t entered the categories — that’s exactly the point, and it’s very important methodologically. Meaning, what’s written here is only particulars. We still don’t know anything about how they’re organized. I’ve already organized them by this order, but this order emerges from the Talmud. I wouldn’t know to arrange them myself in this order. Okay? So let’s see.

And in this Talmudic passage we also encounter the split between Rabbi Yishmael and Rabbi Akiva — inclusion and exclusion versus general and particular. There’s also the split between “the first general term is the determining one” and “the last general term is the determining one,” and also all four interpretations: general and particular, particular and general, general and particular and general, and particular and general and particular — that last one I’m adding; it doesn’t appear explicitly in the Talmud — so that this passage is the cleanest one. It sums up the whole business in an orderly and complete way. It’s really the only passage I found like this; there isn’t another one.

So the Mishnah says as follows: “With anything one may make an eruv and form a joint alleyway partnership, except water and salt.” Yes, because for an eruv too you need food, so the food required for the eruv or the partnership is any food except water or salt. “And everything may be purchased with second-tithe money” — here we’ve already moved to redemption of second tithe — “except water and salt.” Same thing. So for an eruv and for a partnership you need food; and for redeeming second tithe too, you need to buy food. What counts as food? Everything except water and salt. So says the Mishnah.

Then the Talmud says this: “Everything may be purchased with second-tithe money,” etc. Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Yose bar Chanina — there is a dispute between Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Yose bar Chanina. Rabbi Elazar — there’s a correction here. What? It should be Elazar here, and that correction is right. Okay, Elazar. Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Yose bar Chanina. “One taught this with regard to eruv, and one taught this with regard to second tithe.” Meaning, one of them said what he said regarding eruv, and the other said it regarding second tithe. But what did they say? “One taught it regarding eruv: They taught only water by itself and salt by itself, that one may not use them for an eruv; but with water and salt” — meaning saltwater — “one may make an eruv.” “And one taught it regarding second tithe: They taught only water by itself and salt by itself, that they may not be bought” — meaning bought with second-tithe money — “but water and salt may be bought with second-tithe money.” So really both of them are saying the same thing: that when we exclude water or salt from the category of foods, we are not excluding saltwater. Saltwater does count as food. Water by itself and salt by itself are not food — or not the sort of food relevant here — but saltwater is.

On what are they saying this? One said it regarding second tithe and one said it regarding eruv. Now the Talmud says: “The one who taught it regarding second tithe — all the more so regarding eruv. But the one who taught it regarding eruv — regarding second tithe, no. What is the reason? We require produce.” Meaning, the one who says this regarding eruv says it only regarding eruv, and for second tithe even saltwater won’t work. Not only water or salt, but even saltwater won’t work, because what is required is specifically produce, not just food but produce. Okay? But the one who says it regarding second tithe would certainly also say it regarding eruv.

So notice what comes out here. Go down to the chart. What does the Mishnah say? The Mishnah says “except water or salt,” right? That’s what the Mishnah says. We don’t know what that means regarding six; seven is definitely out, but six is unclear. Now the Talmud brings a dispute and says it depends. Meaning: regarding eruv, everyone agrees that saltwater is okay for eruv; regarding second tithe there is a dispute, right? The one who says second tithe, not eruv; the one who says… So regarding second tithe there’s a dispute. So what is the dispute really? Whether the line passes between seven and six or between six and five. Right? That’s really the dispute.

Yes. But in the Mishnah, both for eruv and for second tithe, the wording is exactly the same: “except water and salt.” The very same expression appears in both cases. So according to the one who says there is a difference, this doesn’t fit the Mishnah, because the Mishnah should have phrased the two laws differently. If… if saltwater is prohibited, then the Mishnah didn’t give us the maximal novelty. A tanna who wrote only water and only salt should have said, according to one of the amoraim, that even saltwater is prohibited. Because the tanna doesn’t agree with that. Who says the tanna agrees? No, but each of those amoraim cannot stand against a Mishnah. Not amoraim — tannaim. Tannaim in the Mishnah. These are tannaim from the Land of Israel, no? Why? Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Yose bar Chanina? Yes. Both of them are also… No. Rabbi Yose bar Chanina is later, from the generation after Rabbi Yochanan. And Rava says about him that people relied on Rabbi Yose bar Chanina as a judge who penetrates to the depth of the law. Ah, so you’re saying… And Rabbi Elazar is Rabbi Elazar the… That’s exactly what I don’t know. Rabbi Eliezer was certainly a tanna. When you look at it — maybe. Yes. In the continuation of the Talmud it’s really Rabbi Eliezer. Ah, here it’s Rabbi Elazar. Later on. Yes. Okay. Fine.

In any case, that’s what these tannaim — or tannaim or not tannaim, okay — are saying. What it means in terms of the chart is the question whether the line between food and non-food passes above seven or above six. Right? So we’re already starting to climb. Okay.

Now the Talmud — we don’t know who is who. It doesn’t say which one is which. Two views. Right afterward: “When Rav Yitzchak came, he taught it regarding second tithe.” Fine. So there’s a third view here that says it’s about second tithe. Then the Talmud says: an objection was raised. “Rabbi Yehudah ben Gadish testified before Rabbi Eliezer that the members of my father’s household would buy fish brine with second-tithe money.” So what is he saying? Notice what appears above saltwater in the chart: fish brine. Fish brine, right? So he’s already moving the line still higher, right? Meaning, they did take that, but they didn’t take saltwater. What? No, the novelty is that brine was the lowest-grade thing they still considered food for the purpose of second-tithe money. Yes, yes, exactly. Brine, yes, exactly. Saltwater, no. So he says: they would buy fish brine with second-tithe money. Rabbi Eliezer said to him: “Perhaps you heard this only when fish innards were mixed into it.” That’s between four and five. Okay? Meaning, it wasn’t pure brine. Between four and five.

Now: one says the line is between six and five, and the other says it’s between four and five. The line keeps climbing upward, right? “And even Rabbi Yehudah ben Gadish said this only of oily brine, which is considered produce, but water…” Water and salt, no. Okay, that’s another issue. Rav Yosef says: this was only necessary… let’s leave that for now. Move now to the next section.

The water here beside… At this point I’m really with Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Elazar — just a note. What does Rabbi Eliezer say here? Rabbi Yehudah ben Gadish said before Rabbi Eliezer, and Rabbi Eliezer answered him: maybe only brine with fish innards. What does brine with fish innards mean? That brine by itself they don’t buy, right? Brine by itself they don’t buy. And if above it’s also Rabbi Eliezer, then above we saw that neither of the views goes as far as allowing brine. Right? So that really strengthens your emendation that it’s Rabbi Elazar rather than Rabbi Eliezer. In any case…

Wait, if he says… What? There’s a dispute about saltwater. The one who says saltwater is permitted, then certainly brine… The one who says saltwater is not permitted can still perhaps have… can still have hesitation regarding brine. No, but Rabbi Eliezer says brine is not allowed, only brine mixed with fish. Rabbi Eliezer says that. If brine is not, then how can saltwater be? And even if he’s on the side that says saltwater is not allowed, that’s still too low down; he should already have said the bigger novelty, that even brine is not allowed. So in any case that perhaps strengthens the previous correction even more. Fine. In any case, the Talmud now continues and says: “What are they disagreeing about?” Yes, “What are Rabbi Yehudah ben Gadish and Rabbi Eliezer disagreeing about, and these tannaim that appear later?” What is the dispute? Who are “the tannaim that appear later”? We don’t know yet. Those who will come later. Okay, and that’s also a very strange structure for a sugya. You haven’t even brought the tannaim who come later, and yet you’re already asking what they disagree about with the two tannaim who spoke here. Present them first. Why don’t you…? Maybe the editor of the sugya added this later onto the sugya. Yes, but then why not add it here as an editor, like a normal person who added it at the end? No, he doesn’t want to confuse us, he just says there will be more later. You’d bring the tannaim and then tell me what they disagree about. What’s the problem? Why doesn’t he edit like a normal person? Fine, I don’t know.

Anyway, so — what are they disagreeing about? Rabbi Yehudah ben Gadish and Rabbi Eliezer — now we are entering the point. Rabbi Yehudah ben Gadish and Rabbi Eliezer interpret by inclusion and exclusion. And these tannaim interpret by general and particular. Meaning, Rabbi Yehudah ben Gadish and Rabbi Eliezer use inclusion and exclusion. How does that work? Rabbi Yehudah ben Gadish and Rabbi Eliezer interpret by inclusion and exclusion. How does it work? “And you shall spend the money for whatever your soul desires” — that is inclusive. That’s the first general term. But they interpret by inclusion and exclusion, not by general and particular. So for them the first term is not counted as a general term but as an inclusion. Okay? So that’s inclusive. “For cattle, or for flock, or for wine, or for strong drink” — that’s the particular, as it were, in Rabbi Yishmael’s system; here it is an exclusion. “And for whatever your soul asks of you” — it included again. Included, excluded, included — it includes everything. Seemingly everything. Now what did it include? It included all things. And what did it exclude? According to Rabbi Eliezer it excluded brine; according to Rabbi Yehudah ben Gadish it excluded water and salt. The question is whether the line passes above six or above seven. The question is whether we excluded only the very bottom item or the bottom two items. Okay? But still, the side that uses inclusion and exclusion is always — and this is a rule — broader than the side that uses general and particular. Meaning, there are more things in the permitted category according to the one who uses inclusion and exclusion. How broad exactly? There is an internal dispute within the inclusion-and-exclusion camp: do we exclude only the seventh, or also the sixth? Sixth and fifth — rather, he excluded brine, not saltwater. Brine is five. Sorry, either five or six. Five or six. I assume that the one who excludes only number seven also uses inclusion and exclusion and excludes only seven, because he isn’t being referred to here — only the last two are being discussed. But obviously he too interpreted by inclusion and exclusion, and this is a three-way dispute. There are three opinions here that interpret by inclusion and exclusion. Inclusion and exclusion always basically means include everything and exclude some small thing. The question is what that small thing is — just the bottom item, the bottom two, or the bottom three. Okay.

Now the Talmud continues: “And these tannaim interpret by general and particular, as it was taught: ‘And you shall spend the money for whatever your soul desires’ — a general term. ‘For cattle, or for flock, or for wine, or for strong drink’ — a particular term. ‘And for whatever your soul asks of you’ — he generalized again. General and particular and general: you judge only according to what is like the particular. Just as the particular is explicitly produce from produce and nourished from the ground, so too everything that is produce from produce and nourished from the ground.” So what is this saying? Who are these tannaim? These are the tannaim now being presented for the first time. They were not introduced earlier, just as I said before. These are the “tannaim that appear later,” and now they are finally brought. Okay? And they interpret by general and particular. What does that mean? That we include everything that is produce from produce and nourished from the ground. We still don’t know exactly what that is, how it relates to what came before, but it’s clear from the context — contrasting inclusion and exclusion with general and particular — that these move the threshold higher still. We’ll soon see how high and in what way.

“And it was taught in another baraita: Just as the particular is explicitly offspring and offspring of the earth, so too everything that is offspring and offspring of the earth.” So he claims that the category to be included is a different one — not produce from produce and nourished from the ground, but offspring and offspring of the earth. What is that? Rashi explains — not only here but also in parallel places — produce from produce is something that comes forth from something else. Living, yes, something born from something else, or produce that comes from other produce. That is called produce from produce. “Nourished from the ground” means something sustained by the ground — sustained by the ground. We’ll soon see that “nourished from the ground” is broader than what it usually sounds like. “Offspring and offspring of the earth” means what was created during the six days of creation. Yes, everything that is born — the animal, which is written here in the verse, okay? — and that is called produce from produce.

So what is the dispute here? Notice: here we meet for the first time the first problem of generalization. The first problem of generalization is that you have a list of particulars: cattle, flock, wine, and strong drink. Now I know I have a structure of general and particular and general, and I need to expand it. But the question is how to expand it. We talked about this in the first part too, right? How do you make generalizations? You can generalize in many ways, find common denominators among these four particulars in many ways. One person finds the common denominator that they are all produce from produce and nourished from the ground. The other claims the denominator is offspring and offspring of the earth. How do you determine that? Who is right? How do we know how to generalize? The Talmud explains it here in a moment, and that is why the subject of this sugya is so beautiful.

“What practical difference is there between them?” Abaye said: fish are the practical difference between them. According to the one who says produce from produce and nourished from the ground — these fish too are nourished from the ground. I remind you: “nourished from the ground” means sustained by the ground. Okay? Fish are sustained by the ground. According to the one who says offspring and offspring of the earth, fish are not included. Why? Because fish were created from the water. They were created from the water, not from the earth. So since the Talmud assumes here that they are nourished from the earth but created from the water — okay? — what does that mean? That “offspring and offspring of the earth” does not include fish. But “produce from produce and nourished from the ground” does include fish. If they were created from the water then they also aren’t produce from produce. Why? What is the first category? The six days of creation. Fish now are born from fish. What do you mean? That’s exactly the difference between whether you’re talking about fish now or about creation. “Offspring and offspring of the earth” refers to creation. “Produce from produce” refers to their current nature. And fish do reproduce from fish. Yes, that’s produce from produce. No, it’s not produce from produce. Why not? Produce from produce means from within the body. Why? Birds too come from eggs, don’t they? Chickens too. They too lay eggs and then it comes out. It doesn’t matter; perhaps in the Talmud that counts as produce from produce. Okay.

So there are three stages. An ordinary chicken lays an egg, and the egg produces a chick. According to the creation-world argument, fish were created from the water. Yes. Not from the ground. So they are not offspring of the earth or anything like that. And all the other animals were created by the Holy One, blessed be He, from the earth? Yes, from the earth. From the six days of creation. So we already discover here some relation between the different generalized categories of the two tannaim. The category of produce from produce and nourished from the ground also contains fish. The category of offspring and offspring of the earth does not contain fish. So that means it is a narrower category. “Offspring and offspring of the earth” means a narrower category, while “produce from produce and nourished from the ground” is the broader one. Is “produce from produce and nourished from the ground” the definition of one category or of two categories? We’ll see in a moment.

“And did Abaye really say that fish are nourished from the ground? But Abaye said: one who ate a putita” — that’s a kind of fish — “receives four lashes; an ant, five; a hornet, six. And if it were so, then regarding a putita too he should receive lashes because of ‘the creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’” Why do you say fish are nourished from the ground? If fish were nourished from the ground, then someone who eats them should violate the prohibition of “the creeping thing that creeps on the earth” and receive five lashes. If he does not receive lashes because of “the creeping thing that creeps on the earth,” then fish are not nourished from the ground. Meaning, the Talmud objects and says fish are not nourished from the ground. So then what? Then it comes out that fish are not the practical difference between the one who interprets “produce from produce and nourished from the ground” and the one who interprets “offspring and offspring of the earth,” because fish are included in neither. So what is the practical difference after all? Rather, Ravina said: birds are the practical difference between them. According to the one who says produce from produce and nourished from the ground, these too are nourished from the ground. According to the one who says offspring and offspring of the earth, these birds were created from the mud. The birds were not created from the earth. Okay? About fish we already concluded — it’s known — they were not created from the earth. Regarding birds, birds were not created from the earth, so although they are nourished from the ground, they are not offspring and offspring of the earth. The first one said the practical difference was fish; Ravina says the practical difference is birds. So we’ve gone up one more level in the chart — and now we already have a line between one and two. What is the line? There’s a contradiction between two passages. In one place it says a bird was created from the earth, and in another place it says a bird was created from the water, and therefore the sages say it was created from the mud. That’s all. Okay, so that’s why it’s not simply from the earth. This is what I said: you need to study midrashim, in short.

Anyway, here the line has already risen to the top, right? It can’t go any higher. Meaning, cattle and wine and so on appear explicitly in the verse; those can’t be excluded, right? That’s the minimum. So really we’ve seen how the sugya progressively narrows the generalized category. But if we remain only with what is written, then we haven’t added anything. Wait, we’ll get to that in a moment. But by now we already see the demonstration of the first claim I made: that these interpretations — of particular, and of inclusion and exclusion — are interpretations whose role is to define categories of generalization around the particulars written in the Torah. The Torah writes a particular, and the surrounding structure — general and particular and general, general and particular, particular and general, whatever the structure may be — that structure defines how much you generalize around that particular, what the radius of generalization is. Is it a wide radius, a narrow radius? And what does it depend on? First, on whether you interpret by inclusion and exclusion or by general and particular. And second, if you are already interpreting by general and particular, then it depends on what biblical pattern you have: general and particular and general — is it treated as general and particular, or as particular and general? Okay? Those are the parameters that determine the radius of generalization. Okay?

Now let’s see what that actually means. We have three categories. Now in the chart we have already found particulars — let’s call them items. Okay? These items are types of food, or non-food; that’s what we’re discussing, which of them counts as food and which does not. The generalization is based on trying to find a common denominator for the particulars written in the Torah. Once I find the common denominator, it includes other items beyond what is written in the Torah — that’s the way I generalize. The question is: what is this common denominator? Such a common denominator always works through general categories, through characteristics. In contrast to the chart I drew here, which is a chart of items, of specific objects, generalizations always work through principles, through categories. Is it the category of produce from produce, the category of nourished from the ground, the category of offspring and offspring of the earth? These are not names of specific products, but names of categories. And each such category contains various items, and that’s what determines where the line passes in the chart, right? So what matters for us in determining where the line passes — that line is the result of the interpretation. And how do I perform the interpretation? By looking at the particulars in the Torah and trying to understand which of their characteristics I am taking into account. Okay? That will define the category of generalization. Which characteristics of these items are relevant.

Now how are these characteristics structured? Here in the Talmud we found three characteristics: produce from produce, nourished from the ground, offspring and offspring of the earth. How is this structured? It’s structured as concentric circles, meaning with a common center, one inside the other. This is offspring and offspring of the earth, this is nourished from the ground, and this is produce from produce. Okay? How do I know produce from produce is broader than nourished from the ground? Fish. What about birds? We said birds were created from the mud, so they are not nourished from the ground — no, no, they can’t be there. Why? They were created from the mud, so they are not offspring and offspring of the earth, but they are nourished from the ground. That’s exactly the difference. So the birds are also nourished from the ground and also produce from produce, right? The birds do not define the relation between these two; the fish do. You said that before — the fish define it, not the birds. Okay? The fish — there’s one opinion saying they are not nourished from the ground, but they are produce from produce. So according to that opinion, clearly that is the broader category, because according to the other opinion these two categories might coincide, though there may be other items not mentioned here. This is not necessarily all the items that exist. So now we have: fish are either here or here. Fish are either here or here. Okay? Birds are here, right? Birds — wait, produce from produce; they’re from the mud, they didn’t come… no, they can’t be there. Why? They were created from the mud, so they are not offspring and offspring of the earth, but they are nourished from the ground. That’s exactly the difference. So birds are in these two, but not in this one. Who is in this one? The four items written in the Torah, right? Cattle, flock, wine, and strong drink. Cattle, flock, wine, and strong drink. I assume wild animals were included too. No, I’m talking now about the items that appear in this sugya. No, but there’s more there. It’s not only the particular. Obviously, but right now I’m mapping what appears in the sugya. Afterward we’ll see what else is included, and that will be the result of the expansion. Okay, so right now, in terms of what the Talmud discusses, that is the map.

Therefore it’s pretty clear that the picture is this. Regarding salt, for example, the Talmud in the passage about sheaves discusses whether salt is called nourished from the ground or not; there’s a dispute between Abaye and Rava. Or whether this is the dispute about the rule — whether he accepts the rule that only things from produce of the ground count, or not. Abaye says the rule is that only things from produce of the ground count. Rava doesn’t say that. No, but I think it comes out of a dispute about what salt is. That’s where it starts. In light of that, there’s also the question whether we accept that rule. That’s Abaye’s claim. In any case, regarding water and salt I don’t know exactly how to place them here, but general and particular and general in any event does not need water or salt. We are much higher up in the chart, so it’s not important for us right now. Water and salt are definitely outside the picture. Okay, so that’s the picture.

Now, the one who says the rule includes birds — what is he actually saying? That this whole category is included; maybe this too. I’m not certain about that one, but this one is definitely included. Right? The one who says birds are not included is saying only this category, only the inner one — he narrows more. Okay, now the Talmud says how this works. Meaning, how do we arrive at these levels of generalization?

And maybe one more note. There’s an even broader category here, I’d say: food. Right? Food contains everything — that’s the framework of the discussion. The whole business is taking place within the framework of food, right? Anything that is not food isn’t even in the game. But trivial factors the sages generally don’t count; they don’t… it’s obvious we’re talking about food. At this stage they don’t count it. In other sugyot we may see that this enters in a somewhat trickier way.

Now the Talmud continues, and see what it says: “The one who includes birds — what is his reason? And the one who excludes birds — what is his reason?” “The one who includes birds holds that the final general term is the determining one. Particular and general becomes a generalization added to the particular, and all things are included. And this first general term serves to exclude anything that does not resemble it in two respects.” Here we now meet the basic concept in this sugya: “respects” — or “sides.” Meaning, the first general term comes to exclude everything that is not similar in two respects; or in other words, what gets included is only that which resembles the particular in two respects. What does that mean, resembles in two respects? The particulars written in the Torah are in here. Every item that is in here has all three characteristics, of course, right? It is also offspring and offspring of the earth, and also nourished from the ground, and also produce from produce, right? This circle — what are called Venn diagrams — this circle is of course part of this circle, and also part of this one. Meaning, everyone here is also nourished from the ground and also produce from produce. Okay?

So really, whoever is here resembles the particulars in the Torah in two respects. Okay? Whoever is in this category — from here to here, in this outer circle — resembles what is written in the Torah in two respects, because it is also nourished from the ground and also offspring and offspring of the earth, so there are two parameters in which it resembles what is written in the Torah, but not in the third parameter; it is not produce from produce. Okay? Sorry, the opposite: it is produce from produce and nourished from the ground, but not offspring and offspring of the earth. Okay? Whoever is in the outer circle resembles what is written in the Torah in only one respect. And whoever is entirely outside resembles nothing at all. Not similar at all.

Now, when we go according to the principle that the final general term is the determining one, the Talmud tells us the result is two respects. Since there are two respects, we already know what that means. Two respects means up to here. Meaning — wait, sorry — up to here. Up to here, right? Everything in here is what resembles in two respects. Everything farther out is already too weak a similarity. That is similarity in one respect. In other words, the number of respects defines the radius of generalization. That is why it is drawn this way. The radius of generalization is basically the number of respects. If there is one respect, that means the radius of generalization is broad, because you require very little. Anything that resembles in only one parameter is, as far as I’m concerned, included. That means the radius of generalization is large. What resembles in two respects is a more limited radius. What resembles in three respects is even more limited. In other words, what the sages did here is introduce the parameter of “respects” in order to define the radius of generalization. And now the whole thing works in an orderly way.

What does that mean? We have four particulars written in the Torah. These particulars have three characteristics that are relevant in the eyes of the sages: offspring and offspring of the earth, nourished from the ground, and produce from produce. Why did they specifically choose these three? I don’t know. Interesting question — maybe I’ll say something about it in a moment — but I really don’t know. That depends on context, on the train of thought, I don’t know exactly. These are the three characteristics. But now, once you’ve decided what the three characteristics are, you draw a diagram of the relations among them. In this case we got a very simple diagram: concentric circles. But diagrams could also look like this. The relation among the characteristics could be such that there is partial overlap between each pair, but none contains the other. There could be many possibilities. It could be something like this, or this — yes? Like the Olympic symbol. So in this case we happened to get a very simple example, and therefore it’s a sugya through which it’s easy to decode the issue.

So now: the one who says birds are included is basically saying he interprets according to the final general term being the determining one. So particular and general includes everything, and the first general term narrows the radius of generalization to two respects. So what do you think particular and general alone does? You can learn it — the Talmud doesn’t say it explicitly, but it’s pretty clear what it does. One respect. Right? Clearly in a structure of particular and general, it’s the maximum inclusion. Everything that resembles — if the verse had only particular and general and not the triple structure — I would include the whole big circle, produce from produce. Right? But since there is also a general term at the beginning, you need to narrow the radius of generalization a bit, so you require two respects, meaning up to here.

By contrast, the one who says the first general term is the determining one, and “the one who says birds are not included” — then where is the boundary according to him? Here, right? Without birds. Only this. Okay? So how does he interpret? He holds the first general term is the determining one. General and particular — “the general includes only what is in the particular.” Meaning, if the first general term is the determining one, this is the basic structure. We begin with general and particular. And what remains from the particular? Basically nothing. Let’s see. Nothing. Meaning, if there were only general and particular here at all… and the second general term corrects or qualifies that exclusion, enlarges it a bit — and what is the result? “These other things, no; and this final general term serves to include only what resembles it in three respects.” Meaning, the result of general and particular and general, according to the one who says the first general term is the determining one, is only the innermost circle. What resembles in three respects. So now I ask you: what does general and particular alone do? Nothing. Just like the particular. Exactly like the particular — without any expansion. Right? Okay? Just the particulars, with no expansion.

So now Ido asks, quite rightly: then why write the general term before it at all? Just write the particulars and that’s it. But we already explained that. Why do you need the general term before it? To prevent a binyan av. A binyan av — if only the particulars were written, I would make an expansion by means of a binyan av, a “what do we find?” Just as these particulars, so too anything similar to them. The preceding general term comes to reveal to you: only what is in the particular, nothing beyond what is in the particular. Meaning, notice the practical instruction: “only what is in the particular.” That is…

There seems to be another kind of inclusion or generalization here that the sugya ignores. What does “flock” add beyond “cattle”? What does “strong drink” add beyond “wine”? The verse — why do I need all four particulars at all? Two would have sufficed. I’ll note that later; you’ll see, just so we don’t get confused.

Let’s summarize what we’ve got so far. We now more or less understand how this works. What the Talmud basically did is invent a new concept called “respects” or “sides.” What does it do with it? It tries to formalize — again, continuing the formalization process of these principles — how to define the radius of generalization of each biblical instance. And basically what it says is this: when we have general and particular, general and particular and general — general and particular, we said, is three respects, right? It’s everything that resembles in three respects. Sorry, “only what is in the particular” — we haven’t yet said that, in a moment. Particular and general is one respect. Particular and general is one respect; that’s the maximal expansion, right? The fewer the respecting similarities required, the larger the radius of expansion. That’s the maximal expansion.

Less than binyan av. What? Binyan av is the maximum. No, no, no. Binyan av is just the particulars. No, binyan av is much more restricted — I’ll note that now in a moment. General and particular and general, which is the intermediate case, depends. If we say the final general term is the determining one, or the first general term is the determining one. If we say the final general term is the determining one, then particular and general is the basic structure, and we know that’s already one respect, right? The first general term adds one respect, qualifies the expansion, and says: do it a little more narrowly — to two. Right? If we say the first general term is the determining one, then general and particular is zero expansion. Okay? But the final general term qualifies that and takes us to three. So formally I could write here four, right? Where four respects is just a symbol for the instruction not to expand at all. Four can’t really be. What? Beyond four. No, here there’s no difference. Here it doesn’t matter whether the first or the final general term is determining in the polarized structures. But in a triple structure the question is from which side you begin reading it.

Why did the lines disappear? The lines disappeared here. In what? In the first and third rows the line disappeared. Okay. Is the difference between “the first general term is determining” and “the last general term is determining” also related to the wording of the general term itself? Meaning, are they… No, no. That’s a general method. At least from what I saw in the medieval authorities. Is there a difference between “whatever your soul desires” and “whatever your soul asks of you”? No. The question whether the last general term resembles the first general term is a different issue in the Talmud, and the conclusion is that it doesn’t matter. There is an opinion in the Talmud that if the last general term differs from the first general term, then one does not interpret it as general and particular and general, but the conclusion is that one does. Then do we follow the final general term? No, it doesn’t matter — we’ll get to more complicated cases later.

So now look at what we have. What I’m calling four respects means no expansion at all — only the four particulars written in the verse. Why am I calling it four rather than three? First of all, because otherwise it won’t work out, right? Because general and particular and general wouldn’t come out as three if there weren’t something here… But what is the idea behind it? Rabbi HaNazir writes in Kol HaNevuah that even general and particular — which seems like a principle that doesn’t… just a minute. Why like that at all? Even general and particular and general of three respects — meaning with the first general term as the determining one — is still a generalization. What is the generalization there? Everything that resembles the particulars written in the Torah in all three respects. Okay? Everything that is offspring and offspring of the earth — there are other things that are offspring and offspring of the earth besides the four things written in the verse. So whatever is offspring and offspring of the earth and also produce from produce and also nourished from the ground is included. That is still inclusion; that means it’s still an inclusive principle. It just has a relatively small radius, but it is an inclusive principle. Okay? You could draw the circle we drew earlier — say the particulars written in the Torah are these. Okay? When we say that the whole inner circle is valid, that too is an expansion. It’s an expansion to whatever resembles the written particulars in all the principles. Therefore when I mark this as four respects, that means it’s only the point itself, with no expansion. So formally let’s call that four respects — it doesn’t matter.

Now, first question — or maybe first remark. According to the one who says the final general term is the determining one, how can the Torah give me an instruction to include things by three respects? Notice: according to that view there’s a possibility to instruct one respect, two respects, and four respects. What — the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot give me instructions to include by three respects? How can it be that according to the view that the final general term is the determining one, there is no biblical pattern that allows this? How can that be? The language is incomplete. A language ought to be able to express every instruction.

Second question — which is of course the answer to that question — what do we do with particular and general and particular? We’re missing something here, right? Particular and general and particular. You understand that these questions answer each other, right? I’ve given so many hints that you have to get it. Three — to include — is two. It has to be. And according to the one who says the first general term is determining, we have four, three, and one — we’re missing two. And according to the one who says the final general term is determining, we have one, two, and four — we’re missing three. So why does it have to be like that? Now let me show you that it really is like that.

Why is it really so? Let’s see. According to the one who says the final general term is determining, how does it work? What does general and particular do? Four, right? Four. And the first general term lowers one — there, you got three. Right? And according to the one who says the first general term is determining, what does particular and general do? One, right? Particular and general does one. And the second particular qualifies it — there, you got two. Okay? Meaning this is exactly what particular and general and particular does. Qualifies — so lowers? Lowers the one to zero? The qualification is always in the opposite direction from the direction in which you’re moving. Always. The qualifications — after all — are like the first general term and the last general term doing something in the same direction. Okay? So really this is obvious. That’s why I say again: the sugya itself doesn’t even hint at particular and general and particular. Particular and general and particular does not appear at all in rabbinic literature except in the passage in Nazir. But in my opinion there is no doubt — simply from looking at the chart — that this is the result of particular and general and that it will depend on whether the first or final term is determining.

And now what is still missing in order to complete the picture is: where is binyan av here? Binyan av is also a type of generalization. But look — we have already covered all the generalizations. What remains? What does binyan av do? Notice: we said that the purpose of general and particular is to prevent expansion by binyan av, right? That means binyan av is more than four. No — “more than four” meaning a larger radius than four, which means fewer respects of similarity. Fewer. Meaning the number of respects is smaller than four. In my opinion it is three and a half. Why? I’ll tell you simply. Because regarding binyan av we know that it can be refuted by even a slight refutation. What does that mean? I have the particulars written in the verse, right? And now I want to include something else that resembles them. That’s binyan av, right? Now I say: this other thing differs from them in some respect, admittedly one that seems not especially relevant, some very side technical difference, but that is enough to refute the binyan av. So what does that mean? It means that the radius of generalization of binyan av is very, very small. It’s like this. Binyan av sits here. Okay? These are the respects of produce from produce, nourished from the ground, and offspring of the earth — these are the relevant respects. That is not just any slight refutation. Because if I want to make a binyan av from what is written in the verse to something else resembling it, and then I say: wait, wait, but this isn’t produce from produce — that’s a relevant refutation, because produce from produce is one of the essential characteristics, right? Then certainly it won’t work. Therefore, notice: if the similarity is not in four respects — if the similarity is in fewer than four respects, meaning three or fewer — there will always be a refutation to the binyan av, because that is not even a minor refutation but a substantial one. There will always be one respect in which it is not similar, right? That’s the whole idea. There will always be one respect in which it is not similar.

So it’s clear that you need to place binyan av in a position where it is even more restricted than a problem in one respect of similarity. More than three, less than four? Exactly. And therefore it’s clear that binyan av must be located at a point that is even more restricted than failure in one major respect. Maybe it’s pi, actually? Pi is three, you know, in the Torah. And in the sages. Three point fourteen — okay, we can bring pi in here. So basically, you see that what we’ve obtained is a complete picture of the whole issue. This sugya is such a clean and beautiful sugya because basically — in other words — the language is complete, it can express every instruction. That’s a logical property, because a language should have full expressive power. So therefore, together with binyan av at least, we have here simply different radii of generalization. That’s all. The radius of generalization is what distinguishes these principles from one another, even though the technique of how the generalization is carried out is completely different.

In binyan av we generalize because it is similar. Here, for example, let me give you an example of why I said there is no refutation against general and particular. I just made an expansion by two respects for general and particular and general. What do two respects mean? Also birds. Fine — but birds are not offspring and offspring of the earth. “How are birds comparable, seeing that they are not offspring and offspring of the earth?” How can you learn them from the four particulars written in the Torah? I have a refutation — and not a slight refutation, but a serious one. This is one of the relevant respects. So why doesn’t it refute? Because there is no refutation against general and particular. Once the Torah told you that the pattern here is general and particular and general, it told you to make an inclusion of two respects. That is exactly what general and particular and general means. It told you: waive one respect of similarity.

So when I started this discussion of general and particular, I asked: how can the Torah instruct me to ignore refutations, to expand even to things that are not entirely similar? How can the Torah do such a thing? General and particular is the tool for doing it. That is why there can be no refutations against general and particular. There are no refutations against general and particular. Because general and particular — just a second — the biblical pattern defines the radius of expansion. Once you have defined the radius, what room is there for refutations? That radius always means that it isn’t identical to the particulars. The question is how dissimilar it may be, and that is dictated by how the Torah wrote it. And that’s all — it defines the radius of expansion; there is no room for refutations in such a case. Refutations exist only in binyan av, because in binyan av you have no indication of how much to expand. Whatever is similar, you expand to. So it has to be similar. If it isn’t similar, that’s a refutation. There the refutation does the work — it draws the circle. The refutation says: what is not similar won’t be included. But in general and particular there are no refutations. In general and particular, the circle is drawn by the way the Torah wrote it. And that’s all. Meaning, binyan av would be written here in the chart far, far away from all the structures.

Okay, anyone who still has questions — slowly, please.