Q&A: Are Derashot Generative or Supportive?
Are Derashot Generative or Supportive?
Question
Hello Rabbi. I have heard and read your comments regarding the way the Sages’ derashot are formed. You regularly cite Maimonides’ responsum to Rabbi Pinchas the Judge and his second principle in Sefer HaMitzvot.
I want to understand: in your view, can Maimonides’ words there be understood to mean that derashot are generative rather than merely supportive?
It seems to me that he is mainly trying to say that laws derived from the Sages’ derashot are rabbinic laws and not Torah-level laws. But there is no explicit reference to the historical question: did the Sages attach a derasha to a law that was already accepted, or did the derasha appear first and only afterward the law follow from it?
I am familiar with your distinction between different kinds of derashot (for example, that the derasha about the etrog was supportive). At the moment I am asking only for clarification: in your opinion, is there an answer in Maimonides’ words to my question?
I quote from his responsum to Rabbi Pinchas the Judge:
Maimonides’ Responsa, no. 355
And in those chapters I explained that not everything learned by an analogy, or an a fortiori inference, or a verbal analogy, or by one of the thirteen principles by which the Torah is expounded, is Torah law, unless the Sages state explicitly that it is from the Torah. And I brought proofs for this. And there I explained that even something that is a law given to Moses at Sinai we call “from the words of the Scribes,” and nothing is called “from the Torah” except something that is explicit in the Torah, such as shaatnez, mixed species, the Sabbath, and forbidden sexual relations, or something that the Sages said is from the Torah—and these are only about three or four things.
Thank you very much
Answer
There is an answer to this in Maimonides’ words.
Maimonides’ distinction between exegetically derived laws that are Torah-level and exegetically derived laws that are rabbinic is based on what he wrote in the introduction to the Mishnah and in the second principle. There he explains that a supportive law is Torah-level, whereas a generative law is rabbinic. The fact that the Sages say that a given law is Torah-level is a sign, not a cause. It is a sign that the derasha is supportive and not generative.
From this you can understand that the distinction between Torah-level and rabbinic parallels the distinction between a generative derasha and a supportive one.
Discussion on Answer
I didn’t understand the question. That is the definition of a supportive derasha: the law was received by tradition from Sinai, and the derasha anchors it in the text. In other words, the law is original. What is there to “accept” here? It follows from the definition.
The Netziv, in Kedmat HaEmek, innovates that there are laws that were created by the Sages through a derasha and then transmitted onward through tradition, so that it is a law that reaches us by tradition but is not from Sinai. He explains that this is the meaning of the expression “they learned it as Gemara,” which Rashi always explains as a law given to Moses at Sinai, but the Netziv argues there that Maimonides disagrees and explains it as he does, as distinct from a law given to Moses at Sinai.
Is a supportive derasha for a law given to Moses at Sinai Torah-level, or perhaps since it is a support for the Oral Torah it is rabbinic?
It is explicit in Maimonides (in the second principle and in the introductions to the Mishnah) that a derasha supporting a law given to Moses at Sinai is Torah-level.
And does the Rabbi accept that those supportive cases are indeed originally Torah-level?