Q&A: A Question About the Attitude Toward the Words of the Sages
A Question About the Attitude Toward the Words of the Sages
Question
With God’s help,
Hello Rabbi, I read the Rabbi’s article about labels and so on. I understood the Rabbi’s approach that everything needs to be examined rationally and we cannot act like robots. That is, if I believe something is not true, nothing will help and I will continue to believe it is not true, and therefore everything has to remain open for discussion. I definitely agree with this, and I think our religious world today is becoming extreme in the direction of acceptance because it is “the Torah view” without any reasoning, and that needs to change.
However, I wanted to ask: what weight does the Rabbi give to the words of the Sages? At first glance, it seems from the Rabbi’s words that there is no significance at all to the fact that the Sages said something, but only to the content of what was said. After all, there are all kinds of cases: sometimes I think something is a mistake one hundred percent, and sometimes I don’t. In all the cases where I don’t, is there any weight to the fact that the Sages said it, or is it just a statement that I need to examine, and if my inclination is that it is not correct, I reject it? And if so, then what value does our tradition have? True, there can be mistakes, but this is basically the only way for us to receive the word of God, since through the Hebrew Bible alone we have no way to receive practical Jewish law. In other words, according to the Rabbi’s words, all the words of the Sages are a sequence of recommendations that I can choose whether to accept or not accept, and I do not mean this in the formal sense. In my opinion, important weight should also be given to tradition, to the fact that these things were transmitted through tradition. True, mistakes can creep in, and indeed if mistakes are found then they are mistakes, but the starting point should be that the words are correct because of the tradition. After all, if we give no weight at all to tradition, then there is no meaning to the Oral Torah, and from my perspective this is almost the only way God gave me to understand His words, and without it we are left without Torah. (And this is not a threat; it is simply an attempt to understand whether God in fact created a world without Torah, and whether that makes sense.) Thank you very much.
Answer
Hello Elisha.
As I understand it, the Sages were human beings, like me and like you. Their advantage is twofold: 1. The tradition from Sinai reached them, unlike us. 2. They have authority in the realm of Jewish law, even if they were mistaken. Formal authority.
Therefore, the mere fact that the Sages said something in the factual realm does not seem to me to carry very much weight. Wise and good people said things, and I treat that with respect, but the possibility of error certainly exists for them too.
Accordingly, tradition also has a double weight: what came from Sinai is presumably correct. What did not come from Sinai should be adopted only if it falls within the realm of authority. But regarding facts, there is no authority.
Discussion on Answer
P.S. Does this mean there is no Oral Torah?
To Elisha: the meaning is that we do not know exactly what within the Oral Torah originated in the Oral Torah that reached Moses our Teacher from the mouth of the Almighty at Sinai, and what was added through reasoning and the like over the generations..
There is an Oral Torah, but what came from Sinai is fairly limited. The hermeneutical principles, in some sense, explained in the second book in the Talmudic Logic series, interpretations of words, a few laws given to Moses at Sinai, and more or less that’s it. The rest developed over the generations, and if it is an authorized institution, then it has halakhic authority by virtue of “do not turn aside,” and one should obey it.
And what about laws and lines of reasoning in which we know mistakes occurred, scientific ones, or ones we know did not exist in the Second Temple period?
Do they have authority? Is the authority here only formal, meaning that the Sages received their authority from the people?
And how should a person who thinks a certain law contains an error relate to it while observing it? After all, he does not believe in its correctness.
Hello David.
If there is a law that is based on a scientific error, then in my opinion it is null and void. I am talking about a situation in which it was a mistake from the outset, not one in which the situation changed. In such a case, they did not enact it with that in mind.
Thank you for the quick answer.
Let me just clarify that I do not mean a situation that changed, but rather a certain law that in the Second Temple period was practiced differently, according to historical and archaeological sources. That apparently points to a mistake in the tradition.
Do you also think that here the situation is similar to a scientific error?
And if not, how should a person who thinks a mistake occurred relate to it when observing the commandment?
I am not sure I understood the question. Do you mean what to do if it becomes clear to us through some means that in the Second Temple period they did something differently from what we do today? Mistakes in the tradition are not important if the final version received authorized validation, by the Sanhedrin or the Talmud.
And how do I know what came from Sinai?