I knew this would interest you, so I sent it. And I definitely thought of Kant in this context. In the discussion that came up around my Facebook post, someone said that he once worked in India with a woman of that religion, and there was a problem about where to eat lunch. She wouldn’t agree to go with him to a kosher meat restaurant and eat chicken or fish there, because they use the same utensils for meat. Very interesting.
And now I remembered something I didn’t add to the post, and maybe I’ll still add it there—in my farewell class the day before yesterday for Elul, I taught the Jerusalem Talmud’s version of the story of Elisha ben Avuyah and Rabbi Meir, which uses a verse from the Scroll of Ruth—“Stay here tonight, and if he will redeem you, good, let him redeem…” etc. At the beginning of the aggadah, Acher stops Rabbi Meir: “Up to here is the Sabbath boundary,” and he asks, “How did you know?” and he says, “From my horse’s hoofsteps.” But that is exactly this idea of caring for the other person according to his own view. For Acher, the Sabbath boundary no longer matters, but he cares about his student, and he looks out for him, according to the student’s view. It’s a very similar principle.
And not a word about Yitzhak Shalev’s wonderful poem? (“The great Hebrew Bible rested…”)
It’s a poem that radiates tranquility.

Happy holiday.

Yes, a very beautiful poem. But you know that a Litvak-Asperger type focuses on what matters (Jewish law-philosophy-morality).

Ah, here the Litvak who ignores aggadah is mistaken, even on his own terms. Because hidden here is an interesting halakhic story. This aggadah, which uses a verse from Ruth, does so not for nothing, as every expert in aggadah knows. As is well known, in the Scroll of Ruth everyone—all the righteous people and all the stringency-minded types—twist themselves into knots and do not want to marry the Moabite convert because of “An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter the congregation of the Lord.” If so, then apparently Ruth and Naomi were doomed to make a living from charity (and gleanings and forgotten sheaves) all their lives, because who wants to marry someone like that. Naomi sends Ruth to the threshing floor precisely to prevent this and advance another possibility, and there at the threshing floor Ruth asks Boaz: “Spread your wing over your maidservant.” By this she gives a literary answer (not on your account) to what Boaz had once said to her in the field: “May the Lord reward your deeds… under whose wings you have come to seek refuge.” No, she says through this quotation, the way to seek refuge under the wings of God is for someone—you, Boaz—to spread your wing over me. That is how it works in the world. And for Boaz to do this, he has to read the verse and derive a halakhic ruling from it (according to Rabbi Yoel’s approach? or according to yours, that there has to be first-order ruling, meaning, it must fit the intention of the text, which forbade marrying an Ammonite and Moabite because “they did not meet you with bread and water,” whereas Ruth behaves in the exact opposite way, feeding her mother-in-law and doing kindness with her. Therefore it is not that “a law was newly revealed to him,” that suddenly some passage popped into his head and he ruled “an Ammonite, but not an Ammonite woman,” etc.; rather he himself, Boaz, ruled and innovated, acted, and from that—from this bold act that he did, marrying Ruth—the law was renewed: a Moabite male, but not a Moabite female.
How this connects to what Rabbi Meir does, spreading his cloak over the grave of his burning teacher, is already too literary a discussion for you, but it is quite similar. Rabbi Meir fights so that his teacher will not burn in his grave even against the Holy One, blessed be He. That is, he acts, does what seems right to him (“The Lord is good to all,” as quoted there in reference to “if he will redeem you, good, let him redeem,” and I won’t elaborate further).

Three comments from a Litvak:
1. I could suggest another hundred similar interpretations of this midrash (or simply argue that the source of the verse is accidental).
2. You could derive the same lesson from a million other texts in which you would see no connection at all to Torah.
3. The lesson (that one should do what is right and not suffice with self-righteous declarations about God’s help) is of course trivial, and you would not have accepted it if you had not already thought so yourself even before the midrash. In short, it taught you nothing.

And just one final comment in a hoarse voice. I have nothing against literature. It seems to me we correspond quite a bit about literature, and you know very well that I consume quite a lot of that commodity. My claim concerns not the importance of literature, but the reliability of our interpretation of it, and the treating of it as Torah study (really, the non-existent difference between it and aggadah or the Hebrew Bible).

First of all, I really wasn’t attacking, only lightly needling, because that’s already a tradition, but there’s no need to reopen that argument again. As I told you, after I read the book on Jewish law, I understand your arguments about aggadah better.
And now to the matter itself.
A. True, one can always say other things. But if a certain interpretation fits here perfectly, like a glove? If the points sit well with reason? Are well grounded in the text? To say “it could be otherwise” without arguments and explanations is a bit like the theists’ Church of Science. I expect agreement when something works well, even if it contradicts the initial thought (= that anything goes).
B. Here I am truly puzzled. After all, there is here a completely internal Jewish-halakhic statement; on that basis comes the hinted boldness, and the moral/practical/halakhic lesson. What use would Peterson and Dostoevsky, our old acquaintances, be here?
C. No, this is not a trivial lesson at all! As I said in the previous section, it fits very well with your approach about first-order ruling, about the courage you demand of halakhic decisors—not to quote but to rule, anew. That is what Boaz did according to the above midrash. And as stated, the novelty lies in the bold internal Jewish halakhic statement.
I definitely understand and see that you are no small lover of literature, and after all I already claimed that a pure Asperger type could never have written the literary and cinematic works you like, not even The Rosie Project itself. (By the way, there is a term in literature for this kind of writing—they call it an unreliable narrator. The author speaks to his readers over the head of his narrator, and as it were winks at them: you and I know he is unreliable, and that’s part of the game. There are many beautiful examples of this technique. The Asperger type cannot write “from above” like that, because he really is not reliable!)
As noted, I understood the distinction you pointed out between Jewish law and aggadah. Lately—following an article commissioned from me that will soon be published in Makor Rishon, about Hebrew poetry dealing with King Saul—my intuition about the importance of studying aggadah, even though it is not Jewish law, has become better formulated. I compared it to jewelry that a woman inherits from her grandmother. (My article dealt with the possibility of “playing” with such jewelry, or the clothes, adapting them to a new body, a new fashion, and so on. This game is a completely legitimate game in comparison to the Orthodox trend of that book I wrote a review of—according to which only “close reading that bends itself to the text is legitimate,” or at least more legitimate. That is true from the interpretive standpoint, but there are other standpoints. There is the standpoint of “Your Torah is my delight,” that one may delight in it. The Sages really do often play with sound, hints, key words, and everything one studies in literary theory, and use it—and here you are completely right—to say their own ideas.
So fine, this isn’t Torah. It isn’t Jewish law, but it is delighting in words of Torah. What do you think of that formulation?
True, you examine things as they are, independent of who said them, and that is worthy of appreciation. But what about delight? Well, presumably you’ll say, “To each his own amusements. I’m amused by exercises in mathematics.” Fine, amuse yourself with formulas to your heart’s content. I like amusing myself with words. Theoretically I could say that my advantage is that the Torah, in all its branches, was given in words, and therefore hermeneutics, interpretation, and literary theory have special value there and are a “tool” of study, as you call it. Indeed, modern textual scholarship uses these tools in the Bible, the Talmud, and aggadah as well. So here I would argue that there is a value that goes beyond simple nostalgia (Grandma’s jewelry), but you, in contrast, could argue that you amuse yourself with physics and mathematics that teach us about the nature of the world God created.
So be it. I can even understand that.

I have no problem with amusements. I watch basketball games, so who am I to object to someone who amuses herself with the midrashim of the Sages. You already wrote yourself everything I would have answered you. I’m even willing to call it Torah in the subjective sense if you want. So long as the difference between that and Torah in the objective sense (Jewish law) is clear.

Recently I was reminded of this responsum and wanted to ask about the obligation to respect another person’s autonomy if it is not conditioned on his having seriously examined his beliefs and opinions. That is, regarding Hindus’ refraining from eating beef: it stems from attributing holiness to the cow, and that is something Judaism completely rejects. Meaning, the view of that Nepali man lies outside the sphere of legitimacy that requires respect for autonomy. And if that view is legitimate, I think it requires serious examination to see whether there is truth in it. The very fact that you do not seriously examine Hinduism shows that you think it lies outside the sphere of legitimacy that requires autonomous consideration.

There is a difference between intellectually respecting the conceptual possibility that another person raises and respecting his way of life. As long as he truly thinks this way and acts in good faith and harms no one, why not respect it? But that does not mean I have to seriously examine those options if they do not seem plausible to me a priori.