The Oral Torah and Purim 5774

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, so they didn’t understand it. They thought that was the Torah. Now, I don’t know—it could be that even Moses our teacher didn’t understand it, and he answered them: what do you want? What do you want from the Torah? Do you even have a father and mother? It’s not relevant to you. But the truth is that it is relevant to them too, and also not, and the meaning of bringing the Torah down below is, first, to clothe the Torah in this garment as well, and not only in the garment of the angels. It receives some new translation—not necessarily a descent, by the way. In the texts it’s always described as a descent. Not a descent; it’s a new garment suited to this world. And second, maybe also to transfer the mandate to decide down here, so that if there is a dispute, there are several possible interpretations, then the religious court below—yes, like all those rabbinic aggadic stories—the earthly court is the one that decides, the one that determines. And when the heavenly court is uncertain about a bright spot that preceded white hair, they come down below to ask Rabbah bar Nachmani what the Jewish law is. Because not only did the garment come down below—or this clothing is not the only novelty in the Torah’s coming down below—but apparently the mandate did too. In other words, we received some kind of ownership of the matter, or some ability to decide. All of this, of course, is in the world of aggadah.

Anyway, the author of the Tanya, in chapter 4, writes as follows: “And every divine soul also has three garments, which are thought, speech, and action, in the 613 commandments of the Torah. For when a person fulfills in action all the practical commandments, and in speech he occupies himself with the explanation of all the 613 commandments and their laws, and in thought he grasps all that he is able to grasp in the orchard of Torah, then all the 613 limbs of his soul are clothed in the 613 commandments of the Torah, and specifically the faculties of wisdom, understanding, and knowledge in his soul are clothed in the grasp of Torah that he grasps in the orchard, according to the capacity of his understanding and the root of his soul above.” In other words, his claim is that the Torah has three garments: thought, speech, and action. And the purpose of this whole thing is that a person should essentially grasp the Torah; he should, as it were, become clothed in it. The corresponding parts within the human being—the power to act, the power to speak, and the power to think—should each grasp the Torah at its own level. And these garments are meant to enable us to create that connection at each of those levels. And that is exactly the same point we discussed earlier: you need the garment for it to be grasped within you. In order for Torah to connect in some way to our body, there has to be a practical aspect—that’s the commandments. Right? In order for it to connect to our speech, we need Torah study. In order for it to connect to thought, we need, yes, the ideas of Torah.

But it’s worth noticing that he speaks about all three of these as garments. It’s not that thought is the thing itself and speech and action are garments; thought too is a garment. Because when I think about ideas—say I’m doing analytical study—then I formulate some abstract idea that explains various laws, whatever. That abstract idea too is actually formulated in my language or in my conceptual framework. That is still not the thing itself. It’s just that the highest garment of the three is thought—but it too is a garment. The Torah itself is not even that. Rather, it is something more abstract, of which thought is the most basic garment. And that’s also what he says later on: “Therefore the Torah is compared to water. The Holy One, blessed be He, contracted His will and His wisdom into the 613 commandments of the Torah, and their laws and expositions, so that every soul, spirit, and life-force in the human body”—soul, spirit, and life-force are these three garments—“would be able to grasp them with its understanding and fulfill them, as much as can be fulfilled, in action, speech, and thought, and through this it will be clothed in all its ten faculties through these three garments. Why is Torah compared to water? Just as water descends from a high place to a low place, so too Torah descended from its place of honor, which is His blessed will and wisdom, and ‘the Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are entirely one,’ and ‘no thought can grasp Him at all’; and from there it traveled and descended through hidden gradations, from level to level, through the chain of the worlds, until it clothed itself in material things and matters of this world, which are most, indeed nearly all, of the commandments of the Torah and their laws,” and so on. “But the Holy One, blessed be He, in His own glory and essence, no thought can grasp Him at all, except when thought grasps and clothes itself in Torah and its commandments. And in this way one grasps the Holy One, blessed be He, and thought is grasped in them and clothed in the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself, for ‘the Torah and the Holy One, blessed be He, are entirely one.’ And although the Torah has clothed itself in lower, material things, this is like embracing the king, by way of analogy: there is no difference in the degree of one’s closeness and attachment to the king whether one embraces him when he is wearing one garment or when he is wearing several garments, since the king’s body is within them.”

What do those last lines mean? It’s exactly parallel to what I said earlier about Kant: people think that if I am occupied with garments, that means I’m not occupied with the thing itself; or that if I think this table is white, that is a limitation—I’m not really grasping the real table. That’s not true. It’s not a limitation. That is how one grasps the real table. In other words, when I embrace the king in his garments, that is called embracing the king. It doesn’t matter that I do it through the garments. Without the garments, I couldn’t have done it at all. So there is no limitation here. This is called embracing the king; it doesn’t matter that it happens through garments. On the contrary: without the garments it would have been impossible, because it would have been elusive; we would have had no ability to create any connection with that thing.

So basically what this says is that we have some abstract Torah, and it clothes itself in at least three garments, which he describes there: thought, speech, and action. Each one is a different garment. We have thought, which is something abstract; that clothes itself in words that pass into speech, and then it also clothes itself in the practical world.

In this context there is a very interesting dispute among the medieval authorities that touches somewhat on the question of what thought is. The Mishnah in Berakhot, page 15, says as follows: “One who recited the Shema but did not make it audible to his own ear has fulfilled his obligation. Rabbi Yose says he has not fulfilled it”—he must make it audible to his own ear. “If he recited it but did not articulate the letters precisely, Rabbi Yose says he has fulfilled it; Rabbi Yehuda says he has not fulfilled it,” and so on. The Talmud says: what is Rabbi Yose’s reason? Why does one have to make it audible to his own ear? The Talmud says: because it is written, “Hear, O Israel”—make your ear hear what comes out of your mouth. You have to hear it. And the first anonymous opinion holds: “hear” means in any language that you hear. In other words, they don’t derive from it that you have to hear with your ears, but rather that you may say it in any language. And Rabbi Yose? From where does Rabbi Yose derive that it may be said in any language? “Two things may be derived from it.” From that same word, “hear,” he derives both laws: both the law that you have to make it audible to your ears, and that it may be in any language.

Now usually that’s not how the Talmud works. In the Talmud every law needs its own source. If one word taught one law, then if there is another law, it needs another word for it. So usually the Talmud asks exactly that: if from this word you learned this, then from where do you learn that other law? So what does “two things may be derived from it” mean—how do you derive two things from the same source?

So the Rashba raises this difficulty there, and he says as follows: “Rabbi Yose would say to you: from it you also derive ‘in any language that you hear’”—that “from it you also derive” is Rashi’s explanation. “Rashi of blessed memory explained: ‘two things may be derived from it,’ because when you also expound ‘hear’ as meaning ‘in any language,’ hearing too is derived from it—that he must make it audible to his own ear.” If you say that it can be in any language, then clearly it also has to be audible to his own ear. Why is that clear? “And this does not sit well with me, for from where do we know that hearing is also derived from it?” In other words, why does it imply both things? “And furthermore, that is not what it means by ‘from it you also derive’”—why should one teach the other?

And then he says: “It seems to explain it as follows. Since you expounded from it ‘in any language that you hear,’ from that you also derive that he must make it audible to his own ear. For otherwise, why would the Merciful One need to permit any language that he hears? It is obvious. For if he does not need to make it audible to his ear, then even mere meditation of the heart would be permitted. And as is implied later regarding one who has had a seminal emission, and in the meditation of the heart language is not relevant. And from this we also derive that there is no insistence on the holy tongue as opposed to all other languages.”

[Speaker C] Why is language not relevant to meditation of the heart?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what he says. One second, one second. “Rather, certainly, the Merciful One had to permit any language, and from that we derive that he must make it audible to his own ear.” What is he saying, essentially? He’s saying this: we see that we need a verse to teach us that it can be in any language. According to Rabbi Yose, where does that come from? From the very same verse that also teaches that one must make it audible to his own ears. Why? Says the Rashba: if it were not necessary to make it audible to his own ears, then there would be no need for a verse to teach me that it can be in any language. Because if I don’t have to make it audible to my own ears, then it’s really just a law of thinking it; you don’t have to say it. And when we think, we don’t think in words, so what difference does it make—this language or that language? There are no languages there. You don’t need a verse to teach you that you can do it in any language. Languages are relevant to speech, not to thought. That is basically what the Rashba is saying.

I’ll come back to the Rashba in a second—that is a valid point. However, the Shaagat Aryeh already asks this question. In responsum 7 he says: “Moreover, the core of the Rashba’s words are puzzling. Why? Surely language is relevant even in thought. If one needed to think specifically in the holy tongue, or whether any language would suffice in thought—and there is no reason at all to distinguish between thought and speech with regard to this.” And then he brings various proofs, not important right now. He simply says: we all know this too. A person can think verbally. What, don’t we have verbal thoughts? Why does the Rashba assume that thought does not occur in language?

There is a Tosafot in tractate Shabbat, page 40. Tosafot says, regarding one who has had a seminal emission—whether he is allowed to think words of Torah or forbidden to do so—Tosafot says as follows: “And although thought is forbidden, perhaps we should say that thought is forbidden only in the holy tongue, while he thought in the vernacular.” It’s a story in the Talmud, not important. In any case, what is forbidden in thought is only in the holy tongue, and that person there in the Talmud thought in another language. The Rashash comments on this: “From here is proof for the Shaagat Aryeh in responsum 7, where he wondered about the Rashba, who wrote that language is not relevant to thought.” Tosafot here says explicitly that language is relevant to thought—the holy tongue or another language. In other words, language applies in thought too, unlike what the Rashba wrote in Berakhot.

So basically there is a dispute here—this is what some of the later authorities say, or at least how they understood it—between Tosafot and the Rashba: does thought occur verbally, or is thought something abstract, while the translation or clothing in language—let’s use my earlier terminology now—the clothing in words happens in the process of speech and writing, but not in thought?

Now it’s quite clear that the Rashba is not disputing the simple fact that one can think verbally. That is obvious; I don’t think he disputes that. And there are also proofs from the Talmudic passages and so on—the Shaagat Aryeh brings them. That’s not what he’s arguing about. What he wants to say is only that our thought has two levels in it, at least two levels. There is the content of the thoughts themselves, and there is the verbal formulation of that content—the clothing of that content in words. Yes, these are all forms of clothing, really. So what earlier we called thought, speech, and action—in the Tanya—actually, even within thought itself there is abstract thought and verbal thought. Then that becomes speech and then action, and so on. In other words, this is a higher-resolution view of the process of clothing.

Now the Rashba argues that if there are laws in the Torah that deal with thought and not with speech, then of course it should make no difference what the language is. Because if the Torah is referring to thought, then certainly—it seems to him—it is referring to the higher part of thought, not to the verbal expression within thought. That’s what he wants to claim. It’s not that he wants to claim there is no such thing as verbal thought—of course there is. His argument with Tosafot is over the question whether, when I think, the Torah cares whether I think in this language or that language. As long as we are dealing with thought and not speech, then the verbal expression is irrelevant anyway. What matters in thought is the abstract content of the thought, not its verbal expression.

And when I speak of the abstract content of thought, I do not mean the abstract content of the Talmud in Shabbat—we are already one level below that. By abstract content I mean, for example, “Honor your father and your mother.” There is some content to that verse, right? The obligation to honor parents. The obligation to honor parents as such—that is the abstract thought. It is expressed in the words of the verse, “Honor your father and your mother.” Fine? The abstract Torah that I spoke about on Shabbat 88 has nothing to do specifically with honoring parents. Honoring parents is already a garment. Okay? That’s why I say: we’ve gone down a level here. I’m now making a distinction on the second level, or level minus one—since things are descending, yes? So this is a distinction within that level of thought.

So what we learn from here, in any case—at least according to the Rashba—is that our thought really is structured this way. True, it also contains verbal expressions, but that is not the root. In thought there is some higher level in which thoughts still exist before being clothed in words, while verbal formulation is again a kind of clothing of abstract thoughts in words. If I want to continue this process of clothing to the next stage, then the verbal expression of the thoughts now comes out through the mouth, and that becomes speech. Fine?

Now speech is very problematic, because speech is of course usually directed at someone else. The moment speech is directed at someone else, there is some problem here, because he never understands exactly what I meant to say. Almost never. It just can’t be—I think—that thoughts can be fully represented in words. So perhaps when the verbal representation takes place in my own head, since I also possess the abstract, raw thought itself, then I have both sides of the equation, and maybe there I don’t lose anything, because I supply the necessary completions even if I think verbally. Maybe. But when I speak, it’s already the transfer of words to someone else.

[Speaker B] To mediate the thought. Exactly. The thought is basically broader. Exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I won’t manage to empty the thought fully into the vessels of speech. So it’s not only a limitation of words—I say them, because there are also words in my own head, and there I don’t know whether that limits things, or at least I understand what lies beyond, because after all I contain the whole thing. But when I pass it on to someone else, and he doesn’t have that underlying thing, he only has the words, then suddenly you see that the words don’t manage to capture the thing itself.

[Speaker F] So now when I speak, is that why sometimes people can’t explain something—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly, because of that limitation. It’s hard for them. Right.

[Speaker B] Rabbi Chaim says that someone who can’t explain something well, then they don’t understand—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Well, that’s Rabbi Chaim.

[Speaker B] Rabbi Chaim says that whoever lacks explanatory ability lacks understanding, and in classes I really see that it’s true.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is true, but even someone with very good explanatory ability usually won’t succeed in fitting in everything he wants to say. You know, there’s a very beautiful article by Rabbi Kook, eulogizing the Sochatchover, and he sends it to his grandchildren, I think, and there he tells—he brings the contradiction about Rabbi Eliezer, this is well known. Rabbi Eliezer “never said anything he had not heard from the mouth of his teacher,” as the Talmud says, and also he was “a plastered cistern that does not lose a drop”—he was like that, a vessel that preserves the Torah of his teachers.

[Speaker B] There’s some story in Avot de-Rabbi Natan, what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s a passage there—

[Speaker B] —that his father came, and he said that he spoke and uttered things that no ear had ever heard before, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think that’s when he died. I think that’s the story—don’t remember where. In any case, there is some place there where it says that he said things no ear had ever heard before. So Rabbi Kook asks: what do you mean? He never said anything he had not heard from the mouth of his teacher—so how could he say things no ear had ever heard before? So Rabbi Kook says: he heard from the mouth of his teacher things that no other ear had heard. And that’s not a homiletic flourish—it’s simple, it’s just true. Anyone who has had the chance to study knows that this is obviously so. You never come away the same; there are no two students who come away the same from what they heard from the rabbi. Each one somehow understood it a little differently.

[Speaker B] The longer you study with a person and the better you know him—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then more, yes, but it never empties out completely. It never empties out completely. If it reached one hundred percent, that would mean there is some kind of limitation. This contraction, or this clothing, always somehow constricts the matter and does not allow me to contain it in full.

Now speech is even richer than writing. But when we now write it down—because in speech there is intonation, body language, context. In writing it’s just the words. You have the words, and that’s it. So that is an even more constricted, even more limiting clothing. In other words, there is some process in which things move from the abstract level through garment after garment.

I once read an article—I think it was in Nature or Science, I don’t remember anymore—about a tribe in Brazil called the Pirahã. And this tribe’s counting system contains one, two, and many. That’s it. That’s what they know. So there’s a term for it: a one-two-many system. There are other tribes like that too; later I saw something like that in Indonesia, I think.

[Speaker D] There was something where people slaughtered them because they wanted to develop the area in Brazil, right? They literally killed them, and they sent a delegation from the capital to ask: how many did they kill? Okay—many! That’s what they answered. They didn’t know—many. So the committee members went and counted the piles of ashes, because according to their custom they burn the person on the spot where he died. But they didn’t know how many.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So anyway, researchers got there, and it was very interesting, because there were simple tasks they couldn’t perform. For example, they couldn’t tell—if they put before them five batteries and eight batteries, I don’t know, something like that—they couldn’t say which was more. That means that the conceptual system you use may, on the one hand, limit thought, but on the other hand there are things you simply won’t be able to do without a conceptual system. In other words, unless you conceptualize things, you won’t be able to perform that. So the ideas are not accessible to you—or I don’t know, maybe they don’t even exist for you—but at least they are not accessible to you until you coin some term for them, until you know how to use them within a language framework.

So there is a very interesting interplay here between the garments and the thing being clothed. Sometimes the garments also shape the thing being clothed, not only limit or constrict it. Maybe for others they won’t succeed in containing the whole thing, but for the person himself, very often this helps sharpen and better understand what he had thought before. On this matter, Bialik has an essay on “Revelation and Concealment in Language,” and there he says: “What is there to marvel at? At that feeling of confidence and that peace of mind that accompany a person in his speech, as though he truly conveys his thought or feeling smoothly and over an iron bridge, while he does not suspect at all how fluttering that bridge of words is, how deep and dark the abyss open beneath it, and how much of a miracle there is in every safe step. For it is clear that language, in all its combinations, does not bring us at all into the inner domain, into the full essence of things; on the contrary, it itself interposes before them. For outside the domain of language, behind its curtain, the person senses the thing stripped of its verbal shell, its garment. For speech itself is always only chaotic and bewildered; there is no utterance and no speech, only an eternal wondering, some everlasting what pressed upon the lips,” and so on. In other words, the whole essay really deals with this issue. There is a tremendous gap between thought and its verbal expression, between the thought and the verbal garment it wears.

Now I’m getting a little closer to the point. There is a claim—Rabbi Nazir in Kol HaNevo’ah says—that there is a dispute among the medieval authorities about the question of what is unique about the holy tongue, in what way it differs from other languages. Maimonides, in The Guide for the Perplexed, says that the holy tongue is unique in that it has no coarse words, in our language—there are no names for the sexual and reproductive organs. Fine, that is basically Maimonides’ description. So that means it is simply a clean language; there is no essential difference between this language and other languages.

But he brings there that the kabbalists—and Nachmanides touches on this a bit, though not fully, and the Kuzari and the Raavad in his commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, and the Ramak states it most explicitly, I think—the Ramak wants to argue that there is a fundamental difference between the holy tongue and the other languages. The other languages are conventional, while the holy tongue contains something essential. In other words, the word that describes a concept has some connection to the concept; it was not attached to it merely by convention, but there is some connection between the two things. Or in other words, in the terminology I used before, when the Holy One, blessed be He, writes the Torah in the holy tongue, there is no gap between what is written and what He wanted to express, because there is some connection there—the gap we kept talking about all along does not exist. In other languages, by contrast, you can describe the content this way or that way, but there will always be some limitation in the formulation. The formulation is not essential; it is accidental. And therefore it will always miss something; there will always be some gap between the content you want to express and the written words that express it.

This has two halakhic implications, as he brings—Rabbi Nazir himself brings them. In one place he cites Maimonides in the laws of reciting the Shema, where Maimonides writes: “A person may recite the Shema in any language that he understands, and one who recites it in any language must be careful about distortions in that language and articulate carefully in that language just as one articulates carefully in the holy tongue.” The Raavad objects to this and says: “Said Abraham: this is not acceptable to reason, because all languages are interpretations, and who can be exacting about an interpretation?” To say “Hear, O Israel” in another language is like giving some interpretation in my own language of “Hear, O Israel.” So what is there to be precise about in the words? Say the right content—that’s what matters. To pronounce the A not as U but as A—why should that matter?

[Speaker B] Translation is—

[Speaker E] Interpretation, exactly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Raavad says the same thing: translation is interpretation, there’s no either-or here. In the Old Testament—in English—how do they explain why he was called Isaac, because Sarah laughed?

[Speaker E] They don’t call him “Laugh” in English. Isaac is a name, not an idea.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There are you translating?

[Speaker E] But in the Torah it says word for word—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “And she called his name Isaac, because Sarah laughed.”

[Speaker E] No, that—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s no problem. You can explain that “laughing” in Hebrew is called Isaac.

[Speaker E] They don’t call him Laugh-Laugh.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you want to preserve the translation of the name, then call him Laugh-Laugh in English. That’s really what you’d have to call him if you want to preserve—

[Speaker E] Preserve—we once talked—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] About the difference between names and descriptions. Not all names. Right—no, because names are not that. Names don’t need translation. Isaac is Isaac. You don’t need to translate it, because it’s a name. Yes, but the reason they called him that? That’s something else entirely. The reason I will explain—I’ll explain that Isaac means laughter. I have a question for you. Moses.

[Speaker E] So? Did she know Hebrew?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “For I drew him out of the water,” yes? “For I drew him out of the water.”

[Speaker B] She said, “For I drew him out of the water.” Hebrew? But she spoke ancient Egyptian. She didn’t know—so Rashi says. Yes, she knew Hebrew, come on, everyone knows that. Fine, anyway, let’s move on. I—our time—the clock is running.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the Nazir Rabbi basically says that Maimonides and the Raavad here are following their own consistent approaches. Maimonides holds that the holy tongue is also conventional, exactly like any other language; there’s nothing essential about it. So what does it mean to be precise with its letters? It just means giving honor to something sacred. If you’re giving honor to something sacred, then do that in English too. But the Raavad says that “to be precise with its letters” means that the wording has some significance not only in the sense of what content it expresses, but that the wording itself has meaning. And therefore a Torah scroll is invalid if you change letters or things like that. The wording itself has significance. Now, that applies only in the holy tongue; you can’t speak about the sanctity of wording in another language. In another language you can convey the contents, but the formulation itself won’t be exacting. It won’t matter—translate it this way, translate it that way, as long as you preserve the idea. The same thing exists in the laws of the Megillah too, and that already brings us right to the Megillah. There too there’s a difference between a Megillah in the holy tongue and in a foreign language. The Megillah may be read in any language, but the Maggid Mishneh, for example, claims that if you heard it in the holy tongue, then even if you don’t understand, you’ve fulfilled your obligation; but in a foreign language, if you don’t understand, then you have not fulfilled your obligation—it only works in a language you understand. You see that in the holy tongue there is some significance beyond the content it expresses—namely, in the wording itself. And that brings me to the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. In a moment we’ll even get to the Scroll of Esther. The Written Torah and the Oral Torah are basically distinguished from one another precisely at this point. The Oral Torah is a collection of ideas; the wording is irrelevant. Meaning, I can formulate it this way, formulate it another way, and it remains on the level of ideas. The Written Torah underwent one further embodiment. The Oral Torah is just a collection of ideas; the wording isn’t relevant. The Written Torah underwent another embodiment—it became fixed wording. Meaning, now the wording is binding wording, there is sanctity to the wording, and you can’t move right or left from it. In other words, it underwent an additional embodiment beyond the Oral Torah. Therefore, in the Written Torah there is sanctity of the wording and of the book. The Oral Torah has sanctity neither of the wording nor of the book. Translate the Talmudic text into English, and it will be just as sacred as the Talmudic text in Aramaic, so long as the translation is good—that is, it conveys the contents correctly. But the sanctity that exists in the Oral Torah is sanctity of the content, not sanctity of the wording. And therefore in that sense, this is what they say—also the kabbalists say—that the Oral Torah is higher than the Written Torah. It is higher on this scale of embodiment, since the Written Torah already descended one further layer of embodiment. On the level of ideas, the Written Torah also has higher levels, but the Written Torah as we know it is already clothed in extremely, extremely precise words, and you can’t move from that right or left. It’s already completely hermetic, yes? Very constricted. And the Oral Torah still remains more open; it is basically the sanctity of ideas. This is what the Talmudic text in Gittin says, after all: the Written Torah—you are not permitted to recite it orally; and the Oral Torah—you are not permitted to write it down. Why? So regarding the Written Torah, “you are not permitted to recite it orally,” you can see this in the Tur. The Tur has a discussion about the sacrifices in Section 44 in Orach Chayim; he asks there how we say the sacrifices in the morning when they are verses. It’s forbidden to say them orally. And many people say them orally, or the Shema, which is verses and many people say it orally. So he says that because these are things people know by heart due to habit, they won’t get mixed up. You see that the problem with reciting the Written Torah orally is the concern lest one get confused. Yes—that one won’t… why? Because in the Written Torah the wording is very important. In the Oral Torah there is no problem at all; say it in whatever language you want, so long as you say the correct idea, because the sanctity is the sanctity of the content or of the idea, not of the formulation. And more than that: the Oral Torah—you are not permitted to write it down, until Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi came along and “it is a time to act for the Lord,” and so on—but you are not permitted to write it down. Why are you not permitted to write it down? So that it will not become fixed with the sanctity of wording, because it needs to remain sanctity of ideas and not sanctity of wording. Now Purim stands, both historically—and in a moment we’ll see also essentially—at the seam between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. The Written Torah is of course the entire Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), if we now speak of all the books that are Written Torah, and the Oral Torah, which begins in the Second Temple period. Purim is the beginning of the Second Temple period, and therefore even historically it stands at the seam, or in the transition between prophecy and wisdom, between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah, between the sanctity of wording and the sanctity of content. Right? Now more than that: the Oral Torah is altogether a new concept that was born only after the story of the Scroll of Esther. That concept did not exist earlier; that’s clear. So what existed earlier—we said this about the information, and we’ve discussed this more than once—was that most of the information was not given to Moses at Sinai, only very little. The rest was created over the years. But the way people related to Torah, I don’t think it was as two Torahs. There was Torah, together with explanations of the words and a few notes, clarifications—in other words, you need to explain the text you’re giving—but the Torah was given at Mount Sinai. Who was talking about two Torahs? What suddenly two Torahs? When the Oral Torah begins in the Second Temple period, suddenly a Torah begins to emerge whose source is human beings, not the Holy One, blessed be He. Now all of a sudden people stop and say: wait a second, is this Torah? This is human beings, it’s a product of human beings. And then all the—call it apologetics, even—begins, saying there are two Torahs: the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. Now suddenly it is perceived as two Torahs, and then of course they tell us that everything an experienced student will one day innovate was already given to Moses at Sinai, and so on. That is all in order to instill in the public this astonishing innovation, that there can be Torah whose foundation is in human beings. We once spoke about Pirkei Avot: “Moses received Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets transmitted it to the Men of the Great Assembly. Shimon the Righteous was among the last survivors of the Great Assembly; he would say…” Not human beings in the Written Torah. No, wait. Shimon the Righteous—one second, I’ll come back. “Shimon the Righteous was among the last survivors of the Great Assembly; he would say.” So once I heard some Jew ask: and all the others before him, they didn’t say anything? Only he “would say”? What, they were silent until him? What do you mean, “he would say”? He was the first who said. So until him the consciousness was still—again, this is the ethos. Obviously they spoke, but the perspective, the attitude, was: there is a Torah that we received at Sinai and we pass it on. I received from this one, passed it to that one, that one received from me and passed it to the next. I am a hollow pipe. I transmit the Torah from Mount Sinai onward. Shimon the Righteous was among the last survivors of the Great Assembly, and in the Great Assembly there were the last prophets; he began the Oral Torah, Shimon the Righteous. Therefore the whole story with Alexander the Great who met him and so on—that belongs more to Hanukkah. He began the Oral Torah, and therefore he is basically the first person who has words of Torah attributed to his name. Meaning, he said them; he is the source of the words. This was a terrifying innovation in the eyes of that period. It was actual idolatry. What do you mean, something created by a human being and I relate to it as Torah with the same level of sanctity as the Written Torah? And for that all these justifications and explanations were needed—not explanations, rather a kind of midrashic glorification of the Oral Torah, and “two Torahs were given,” and so on. And the whole dispute over the oven of Akhnai, and then in the end in Yavneh, when those disputes reached the point of the removal of Rabban Gamliel there—all of it revolves around this issue. In other words, the question is whether our role is to pass on what we received, or whether we can also create things whose source is within us. Now this creativity—for example midrashim, and I’m returning now to your comment—in the midrashim one could understand them, and in fact most of the medieval authorities do understand them this way to this day—most of them understand it this way—that the midrashim basically expose additional dimensions that exist in the verse beyond its plain meaning. But Maimonides, for example, in the second root says that midrash reveals nothing that was already in the verse; it expands what was in the verse. Meaning that midrash is basically a joint creation of the verse and the interpreter. That means the Oral Torah, including laws that are usually treated as Torah-level laws—according to Maimonides it’s more complicated, but usually they are treated as Torah-level laws—these are laws created by human beings. And when disputes arose, that was the strongest expression of it. Because the moment there is a dispute, what does that mean? If Hillel says one way and Shammai says another way, then that means it’s not the Holy One, blessed be He—it’s Hillel and Shammai. Where is the Holy One, blessed be He, in this whole matter? This is precisely the expression of the fact that Torah is created by human beings when disputes begin. The Torah that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave—fine, there is Torah, what He said He said. But the moment there begin to be schools now, Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, then two Torahs are created and suddenly Torah becomes a human phenomenon. And then a rather difficult confrontation begins among the sages; some of the sages were not prepared to accept this. It is told in the Jerusalem Talmud that Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel killed one another because they were not prepared to accept such a thing. And therefore all this great effort was needed in order to understand that there is such a thing as the Oral Torah. It is another Torah. And its basis is in human beings, in combination perhaps with the verses of the Torah; sometimes it is human reasoning and that’s it—“why do I need a verse? It is reasoning”—that too is written in the Talmudic text. But still, this is a Torah that was not transmitted as-is from Mount Sinai to Moses and merely passed on through tradition; rather, human beings have a share in its creation. This is what characterizes the period of the Oral Torah in the Second Temple period. The Scroll of Esther opens that period. It constitutes a kind of preparation toward that period. Yes—“they established and accepted,” for example. So there is a midrash in Tanchuma that says this refers to the Oral Torah. This is the beginning of the… basically that is when the Oral Torah was created, when they established and accepted the Oral Torah. That is an aggadic expression. Basically the Oral Torah came into being from that period onward—I mean the very concept of the Oral Torah is a concept from that period onward. Now look at something interesting: the Talmudic text in tractate Megillah 7a brings: “Rav Shmuel bar Yehuda said: Esther sent to the sages, ‘Establish me for future generations.’” What does “Establish me for future generations” mean? I said: establish Purim and the laws of Purim as one of the festivals on the Jewish calendar—which is a revolutionary request. Until that time there was what is written in the Torah: there are festivals written in the Torah, and that’s all. Esther wants to add this thing too to the Torah? That is really “do not add.” The sages were not prepared to accept such a thing. What do you mean? A Torah of human beings? Because you see here the opening of the Oral Torah. And on this the Maharal says that “the Jews established and accepted upon themselves”—where did they accept the Oral Torah? When they accepted Purim and the laws of Purim, because that is the essence of the Oral Torah, since it is something created by human beings. That is how they accepted the Oral Torah. That is the meaning of “the Jews established and accepted upon themselves,” which they expound, among other things—there are many expositions on this—but they also interpret it as referring to the Oral Torah that they accepted. The next stage, after she says “Establish me for future generations,” meaning, insert me into the system of the Torah’s festivals—what is the next stage? “Esther sent to the sages, ‘Write me for future generations.’” Meaning, let the Scroll of Esther enter the corpus of the Written Torah, because I want it to be Torah. Torah means only Written Torah; there is no other Torah. So “write me”—put me into the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). What does “write me” mean? She had already written it. The Talmudic text says: recognize this as a book, as one of the books; insert it into the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). The sages do not agree. They say no. And then they make some somewhat intricate exposition on it, not so important, they find some exposition and somehow agree halfheartedly. Now what does it mean that they agree halfheartedly? Before I get to the meaning of that halfheartedness, immediately after that the Talmudic text continues—you know that the sages established that sacred writings render the hands impure, so that people would not place them where there are mice, doesn’t matter, together with the terumah, yes, and then the mice would come and so on. So in the language of the sages, when they discuss whether something renders the hands impure, they mean to ask whether this thing is a sacred book. “Renders the hands impure” is only the expression; it is the halakhic dress of the question whether this is a sacred book. “Rav Yehuda said in the name of Shmuel”—really the continuation of that very same passage after “write me for future generations”—“Esther does not render the hands impure.” It is not a book. They wrote it, but it is not a sacred book. But all the prophets before that were also books that… But that was prophecy; it was given by the Holy One, blessed be He. Then the Talmudic text says: “Is this to say that Shmuel holds that Esther was not said through divine inspiration?” Who said it wasn’t? It was said through divine inspiration; it’s just not a sacred book. There’s no such thing. Something said through divine inspiration is a sacred book—that’s the criterion. The criterion is whether the Holy One, blessed be He, said it; if so, it’s a sacred book. But if it is the result of human beings, then no. Later on in the passage: “It was taught: Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya says, Ecclesiastes does not render the hands impure, because it is the wisdom of Solomon.” It was not given by the Holy One, blessed be He; it is a book of wisdom. If it is a book of wisdom, then it does not render the hands impure, it is not a sacred book. This is in tractate Megillah 7a. So the criterion is the question whether it was said through divine inspiration, or whether it is human wisdom. Here you see the criterion explicitly. What does Maimonides rule? Maimonides says: “Words of Torah render the hands impure, and not only words of Torah, but all sacred writings—even Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, which are words of wisdom, render the hands impure.” First of all, he doesn’t mention the Scroll of Esther. And regarding Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, he’s dancing at two weddings. On the one hand he says these are words of wisdom, they were not said through divine inspiration, but they render the hands impure. The Talmudic text says that if it is wisdom, that is the reason it does not render the hands impure. If you say it does render the hands impure, then apparently that is because it was said through divine inspiration. He says no: these are words of wisdom, and they render the hands impure. Oral Torah! What exactly does that mean? Now Ecclesiastes is by King Solomon, long before Esther. But until Esther, words of wisdom were not… they were not words of Torah, they were words of wisdom. Now Esther founded this idea that there is such a thing as Torah created by human beings. And therefore from that point onward Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs also render the hands impure. But only from then, not from the time they were written. Because at that point this matter was innovated—that there is such a thing as Torah created by human beings. Now look at the continuation, or maybe one more example regarding rescue from fire, yes. There too a discussion arises about what one rescues. Regarding the Scroll of Esther too there is a discussion, not entirely clear, whether one rescues it or not rescues it, but in the end the Magen Avraham also writes—and this appears in the Mishnah Berurah—that nowadays there’s no question at all: we rescue everything, including Talmudic texts, including all the books we have. Why? Because they permitted writing them. So what if they permitted writing them? What does that have to do with anything? Does it have the sanctity of a book? It’s not a sacred book; human beings wrote this thing, it has no sanctity whatsoever. So why—why is it permitted? Why do we rescue it? Now there are different levels, of course, but yes: once the content was written down—which happened much later, already with Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi—that is a continuation of the process. Meaning, with Esther only this idea was innovated, that Torah whose basis is in human beings can be sacred. With Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi it already becomes a sacred book. Meaning, now it can already be written, and now it is also rescued from fire. It is not a sacred book in the full sense like a Torah scroll, but it does receive some dimension of sacred books, and throughout the whole topic you can see that the criterion for whether one rescues or does not rescue is the criterion of whether it has sanctity. In other words, it is not a criterion of “because people study from it” or something like that. So here too there is some parallel process. I’m doing this quickly because we need to finish, so there is one law that most clearly reflects this partial acceptance of Esther’s request. The Shulchan Arukh brings it this way; the source is in tractate Megillah 18a, but the Shulchan Arukh writes as follows: “One must read all of it”—the Scroll of Esther—“and from a written text. And if one read it orally, one has not fulfilled the obligation.” Most halakhic decisors say even one word—meaning if you missed one word, you have not fulfilled your obligation. “And it must all be written before him”; ideally you need to read it from the book. “But after the fact, if the scribe omitted words in the middle of it, even up to half of it, and the reader read them orally, he has fulfilled the obligation.” Meaning, I take a book, the Scroll of Esther, half the words are missing—gone, there are only half the words, half plus epsilon, okay, of the words—that’s what’s in the book. I read from the book; you must read from the book and you’re not allowed to miss even one word, okay? But no problem, I can read orally from the book in which the words are not written. Are you kidding? Among the medieval authorities there are some who try to explain that any Megillah may be incomplete, but every verse that I read I read from another Megillah, yet one must always read from a Megillah. But in the Shulchan Arukh it does not say that; it says he can read orally even the missing part. Not missing—it’s more than half?

[Speaker B] Half here, whether whole verses or things like that,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A whole section—yes, that’s another dispute, never mind—but half the words, the Shulchan Arukh does not distinguish: half the words, word opposite word? Yes, yes, all fine. So what does that mean? You’re not allowed to miss even one word; the wording is sacred wording, precise. But the book is not a book. You don’t need to go around that. Meaning, the book needs to… it’s a half-book. Now the Talmudic text itself says: “The Scroll of Esther is called a book and is called a letter.” What practical difference does that make? It requires parchment and ink and so on like a book, but if it was sewn with three sinews, it is valid. That, for example, is a form of sewing that is invalid in a Torah scroll. What is the idea here? If you’re already saying it is completely like a book, then with the sinews too make it the same—what difference does it make? Because the sages intentionally want to emphasize: in at least one law, let’s leave it not quite like a book; it’s like a letter. What is a letter? A letter is paper that carries content on its back; I read the content and then it goes in the trash. A letter is written—the wording is unimportant, what matters is the content transmitted through it. A book has some more permanent meaning; it sits on the shelf, it has some importance, it has some significance. That is what is called a book. The Scroll of Esther is called a letter and is called a book; it has an aspect like this and an aspect like that; it is not completely a book. When Esther asks, “Write me for future generations,” the sages accept it partially, but they do not want to accept it fully, because here the Oral Torah begins. So it’s impossible to make a midrash, for example, on the Scroll of Esther? Ah—now, the Jerusalem Talmud brings a dispute over whether it is possible to expound the Scroll of Esther. The conclusion is that one may expound the Scroll of Esther, and the reason is that the wording of the Scroll of Esther was said through divine inspiration—the Talmudic text says so. The wording. But the Talmudic text itself—I didn’t read this earlier—the Talmudic text itself says: this was said through divine inspiration, but it was said to be recited and not to be written. That is what the Talmudic text says there on 7a, yes. So what does that mean? That the wording was said from above; it is precise, and therefore one can make expositions from it. But to write it down, to turn it into a book—that, no. Meaning, it is considered a book, a kind of half-book, a few letters floating in the air, meaning it is still not fully a book. Esther is still trying to cling to the horns of the altar in order to be considered Written Torah; the sages do not agree, because here already begins the era of the Oral Torah. They say: it does not have to be written; there is Torah also outside the Written Torah that was given to Moses at Sinai—this is the Oral Torah. Meaning, in a certain sense we think that the transition to the Oral Torah is a decline, but the transition to the Oral Torah contains an element of ascent. We…

[Speaker B] We don’t want to attach things to a fixed, constricted written wording.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fixed, constricted—to clothe it too much. They left it freer, as the sanctity of ideas. And in some place, it seems to me, this process ends—I can’t get into it now, there are other expressions too, both halakhic and otherwise—but ultimately it ends with the statement that in the future all the sacred writings will be nullified except for the Five Books of the Torah and the Scroll of Esther. And the oral laws of the Oral Torah—

[Speaker B] That’s what it says.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maimonides brings this too in the laws of Megillah. Why? Because the Written Torah is precise wording, and that’s perfectly fine; there is no constriction in the fact that it is written. But the Scroll of Esther is written content; it is not the writing itself. Therefore it will remain—no problem; in the future only the constrictions are nullified. And the Oral Torah will certainly remain, because the ideas remain; only the garment disappears. That is why I said earlier too that the commandments will be nullified in the future—if the commandments too are the garment, as the author of Tanya says, the practical garment. All the garments gradually disappear; the world is repaired and rises. We spoke about the fact that the divine name does not appear in the Scroll of Esther, because it is a Torah of human beings; it is not the Torah of the Holy One, blessed be He. The appearance of the Holy One, blessed be He, also in terms of His providence in the Megillah—yes, hiddenness. Why is it called Esther? The Holy One, blessed be He, hides behind the matter; human beings manage this matter, not the Holy One, blessed be He. And it is Torah, and the fact that human beings do it does not interfere with its being Torah. So there is all the… we once spoke about this: whether the disappearance of miracles—we spoke about miracles—the disappearance of miracles is an ascent or a decline. And I wanted to say that it is an ascent, not a decline. I don’t need miracles in order to see the Holy One, blessed be He. The simple, everyday prose shows the Holy One, blessed be He, better.

[Speaker B] And in that sense too, I don’t

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] need an appearance of the Holy One, blessed be He, in order for this thing to be called Torah.

[Speaker B] Human actions now too are called Torah.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And the more we recognize that, the more we can strip off more and more of these garments and return upward. Return to a state in which the ideas are Torah, and not the specific garment—not even commandments, not even this formulation or that formulation; rather, the ideas remain. Zen itself remains, and it doesn’t need flower arranging. After I understood Zen, I no longer need the flower arranging. It’s a ladder I use, and afterward I can throw it away. Okay? So in that sense this is a process of repair, not a process of corruption. True, right now we keep writing more and more—also Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, writing, “it is a time to act for the Lord; they have voided Your Torah,” and so on—but why do we write? Because we want a grasp on something higher. The higher a thing is, the harder it is to grasp. So we are forced to write it down; in that sense, this is a concession—we clothe it, we constrict it, because without clothing the abstract thing we won’t grasp it. But why do we need to write more? Because we are trying to grasp more. We are grasping something higher, and therefore more things need a garment. This is a process of ascent, not a process of decline. And the fact that we write—and of course this writing is not binding wording—so it really doesn’t matter, it’s not a real constriction, it is only writing so that we not forget, that it give us an aid to memory, and so on, to hold this whole thing together. But ultimately the goal is to grasp as much as possible, as high as possible. I think once I spoke about the Maharal—seems to me it’s also in one of the introductions to Gevurot Hashem, there are three introductions there, I think it’s one of them. The Maharal speaks there about “a sage is preferable to a prophet.” So he says there that a prophet has some ability to encounter certain spiritual realities, to see, in a certain sense, spiritual realities. So his perception reaches only as far as the… these are not eyes, of course, but as far as his ability to encounter that spiritual reality reaches. Every prophet—even the Ari, of blessed memory, speaks about how far each prophet could reach, to what sefirah or what world; there are differences among them. But a sage has no limit; he grasps all the way up. Two plus two equals four—that is always true. It is not clothed; it is an abstract thing. It has no… when you translate it into oranges, that is already in this world; there are no oranges up there. But the principle that two plus two equals four is somewhat parallel to these Zen principles that are not… not by way of flower arranging, but the principles themselves. The principles themselves are true everywhere. Even in a place where there are no flowers and no branching and no bow and arrow—it doesn’t matter. The principles themselves are true to the very end. Meaning, that is why a sage is preferable to a prophet: because a sage, when he understands the abstract meaning of things—not someone who sees them, because someone who sees them sees something clothed—but the sage grasps the abstract thing, strips away the garments and remains with the thing itself. That abstract thing is always true. The Torah—once you have grasped the Torah through the garment of Moses our teacher, you also know the Torah of the angels; it is the same Torah. It doesn’t matter whether you enter from here or from there. And then you can also strip away the garments, and then in the future the commandments will be nullified and everything will be nullified. Purim remains because Purim teaches us this. That is why all the costumes on Purim, and disguises, and bringing out—when wine goes in, the secret comes out—the inside comes outward, it’s all games around the garment, putting a garment on the garment, and the horse too—yes, in the Megillah as well, many things revolve around clothing. They revolve around clothing because Purim is basically, on the one hand, the beginning of clothing, and on the other hand, of stripping away. Meaning, we clothe the Oral Torah and insert it into some kind of formulation—Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi already actually permits writing down the Oral Torah. But all this is of course with the goal of remaining with those abstract things that are higher than what was grasped before they began writing the Oral Torah. Therefore the Oral Torah began to develop in stages only when they actually wrote it down. Before they wrote it down, there wasn’t really a developed Oral Torah like the one we have today. Not like the accepted myths. Okay, have a happy Purim.