Q&A: An Interesting Proof from the Rashba That the Foundation of the Torah Was Stated in a Moral Mode
An Interesting Proof from the Rashba That the Foundation of the Torah Was Stated in a Moral Mode
Question
The sons of Rav Ilish had a certain document brought against them, which stated: half for profit and half for loss. Rava said: It is written in it that Rav Ilish was a great man, and he would not feed prohibition to people. And from the fact that it does not say, "and he himself would not do something prohibited," it implies that a borrower is not prohibited from giving rabbinically prohibited interest.
And the Rashba explained:
From the fact that we say, "Rav Ilish was a great man, and he would not feed prohibition to people," and we do not say, "and he would not do something prohibited," learn from this that the prohibition of rabbinically prohibited interest does not apply to the borrower but only to the lender. For the prohibition on the borrower is an innovation, and it is enough with what the Torah innovated and prohibited for him.
And at first glance this requires clarification, because the entire prohibition of interest was innovated by the Torah.
And if we say that the novelty of interest applies both to the borrower and to the lender,
for at the beginning of this chapter ("What is Neshekh?") it derives lender-from-lender regarding neshekh and tarbit in money and in food.
And perhaps it is possible to infer from the Rashba's words that he holds that the prohibition of interest for the lender is a moral prohibition, and not an innovation.
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And the Torah prohibited it in order to give Torah force to the moral prohibition.
Which is not the case for the borrower; here there is no moral prohibition,
so it is considered an innovation that the Torah prohibited, and the rabbis did not make a decree about it.
And this is what appeared correct to me.
Answer
A very nice observation. At first glance, you seem to be right about the Rashba's view. However, see Professor Haym Soloveitchik's book on interest, where he notes that among the commentators on the Torah (and I think he writes that this is also true among the medieval authorities and halakhic decisors), no one sees interesteven on the part of the lenderas a moral prohibition.
Right now I'm also thinking about the need for the distinction at the beginning of "What is Neshekh?" between interest and theft; it should be discussed from the borrower's side. After all, the prohibition of interest also applies to the borrower, and there there is certainly no prohibition of theft. Perhaps the prohibition that parallels theft is the moral prohibition, and it applies only to the lender. But this still requires further examination, because the source of the prohibition is one (there are not two prohibitions, one on the lender and one on the borrower). And that whole distinction indeed requires clarification, as is known.
I will only comment on the title: there is no proof from here about the foundation of the Torah in general, only about the prohibition of interest. In fact, according to the Rashba it seems the opposite: Jewish law is mainly a matter of the borrower, because regarding the lender there is a moral prohibition.
Every place in the Talmud where it says "an innovation," the intention is not an innovation from reason or something we did not know beforehand, but rather that it does not work according to the usual rules. For example, conspiring witnesses are an innovation, because "what makes you think" etc. Even if all testimony is an innovation (of course it isn't, but some say so), still, after the Torah believed witnesses, there is no reason to prefer one set over another.
So too regarding interest: the fact that the Torah prohibits the lender makes sense, just like the prohibition of overcharging, and there is no reason to restrict it. But the prohibition on the borrower does not fit the ordinary rules of monetary law, since a person can do whatever he wants with his own money; so why should I care whether he declares it ownerless or gives it to someone else with interest? Therefore there is reason to "restrict the innovation."