Q&A: The Parameters of Torah Study
The Parameters of Torah Study
Question
Hello,
I read your article “Between My Territory and the Territory of the Other, etc.” here. Among other things, you explained there what, in your view, is defined as “Torah study” in the legal sense of Choshen Mishpat:
“What's eternal and universal about the topic of ‘a person does not pay before the due date’? What is eternal there is the normative determination that when there is a clear presumption, that alone is enough to extract money. The specific content of the presumption in itself is not Torah, and has no holiness. It can change according to different cultures and customs. What does not change is the normative determination, not the factual one, and therefore that is the ‘Torah’ in that passage… That is the divine truth, and it is eternal.”
But it’s still not clear to me. After all, this normative determination too (and many others like it in the Talmud) ultimately rests on the human reasoning of the Tannaim and Amoraim (who were human beings like you and me, as you often say..). So the question comes back: why is their determination considered Torah any more than an ordinary discussion in court, where “secular” judges are also trying to determine who is right between two parties, and in essence to establish normative rulings regarding financial relations between one person and another?
That is, I can understand your reasoning regarding normative determinations explicitly written in the Torah, as in the example you brought there of the laws of bailees that appear in the Torah—a borrower is liable even for unavoidable accident, a paid bailee for theft and loss, and so on—because these are norms that the Torah itself stated, and studying them, as well as issuing halakhic rulings in similar cases according to those principles, is considered Torah. But how many such laws are there in the Talmud compared to the sea of laws and cases dealing with monetary law and normative determinations that are not written in the Torah at all, and are the product of the reasoning and logic of the sages of that time (which in my eyes truly carry great weight)? If so, why should one recite the blessings over Torah study for them, or alternatively, why does someone who studies them receive reward for Torah study more than someone simply reading court rulings?
Answer
This takes us into a discussion about the meaning of authority. Assuming that the Talmud has formal authority, what is determined there is binding and is part of the Torah. When the Torah says to judge justly, the Talmudic interpretation, which is the authoritative one, determines that this means not taking money away from someone in possession of it—but when there is a presumption, then one may. The Talmud’s laws of evidence are an interpretation of the Torah’s command to judge justly, and therefore this is Torah. Not because it is necessarily true, but because it is authoritative. One can disagree with that determination (at least when there is a Sanhedrin), and then it will change. For now, that is the Torah. The eternity I spoke about was only in the sense that changing circumstances do not affect it, not in the sense that it is necessarily correct or that one cannot disagree with it. People disagree about everything, Torah or not.