Q&A: The Written Torah and More
The Written Torah and More.
Question
Hello Rabbi. More power to you for these enlightening and also challenging ideas.
As I have studied your teachings in several places, I’ve had some questions about your view, and I’d like clarification and a deeper understanding.
A. Maimonides wrote that one must: “believe that the entire Torah in our possession today is the one given to Moses from the mouth of the Almighty… and that he was like a scribe to whom one dictates and he writes it all down—its chronicles, its narratives, and its commandments; therefore he is called ‘lawgiver.’ Every word in the Torah was given to Moses.”
Does the Rabbi disagree with these words? Are there sources in the words of our Sages that disagree with Maimonides on this? Also, according to Maimonides, plainly every view requires rational and scholarly grounding—what is the rational method by which Maimonides expects a person to arrive at this belief?
B. This belief—in the revelation at Mount Sinai, in Torah from Heaven, in the encounter between the Holy One, blessed be He, and man, no matter in what form—its core is only tradition. In the tradition we received from our forefathers, and as Rabbi Yehuda Halevi says in the Kuzari, that this is a sign and proof performed before the masses and cannot be denied. In your opinion, is tradition by itself a sufficient tool for arriving at belief in Torah from Heaven, or do we also need an innate capacity for faith? Can a gentile arrive at the same recognition and belief in Torah from Heaven on the basis of Jewish tradition as a Jew who received it from his forefathers? (And if not, is that because of an innate capacity for faith or because of an educational default?)
C. Regarding the authority of the Sages in the Oral Torah. It is obvious that the Oral Torah is a human creation, one produced by our Sages. My question concerns the acceptance of their creation. From your words I understand that the Sages have “authoritative” validity, not intellectual validity. That is, one cannot determine that this is in fact the meaning of the Written Torah, that this is the correct way to derive an analogy between equal expressions or to reason a fortiori; rather, the Sages can determine that we are obligated to follow one interpretation and not another, because that is what the Jewish people accepted. Am I understanding correctly? If so, what are the limits of this authoritative acceptance, and what is its status nowadays? Could a person today issue a halakhic ruling or establish a religious court contrary to the halakhic outlook prevalent in Judaism that is faithful to Jewish law? And what is the force of this acceptance? I seem to recall from Rabbi Kook of blessed memory that this acceptance has Torah-level force.
Thank you very much!
Answer
A. There definitely are medieval authorities who disagree with him on this. Ibn Ezra and the author of Sefer Hasidim, among others, wrote that there are later verses; the Sages too said this regarding the last eight verses. This has already been pointed out more than once. Beyond that, even regarding Maimonides himself, I am not sure whether he meant a historical claim or rather a normative one (that the entire Torah has the same status as what was given at Sinai). I assume Maimonides can base his approach on trust in the tradition—especially given his optimistic view in several places that no dispute arose concerning what was given at Sinai, although it is quite clear that quite a few disputes did arise about what was given there, and I assume that Maimonides would agree to that as well).
B. In my opinion, tradition by itself is not enough. It is one argument among several components that together form a whole. See my fifth notebook on the site, where I discussed this at length. In my trilogy, which should be coming out soon, this will be discussed in detail.
C. You don’t need Rabbi Kook for that. All of our Torah-level laws are based on accepting the Sages. The Torah itself tells us almost nothing without interpretations. Even so, a person can and should issue halakhic rulings for himself, so long as he is competent to do so (see my article here on autonomy in halakhic ruling). But he cannot dispute authoritative sources (the Sanhedrin and the Talmud), and he must take into account important sources that do not have formal authority (the medieval authorities and the great halakhic decisors) as well as customs. All of these carry weight, even if not absolute weight.
There is even a discussion at the beginning of tractate Horayot about one who errs regarding the commandment to obey the words of the Sages, which deals with the duty to obey a Sanhedrin that erred. The commentators have offered many different views on this.
Discussion on Answer
I don’t know what “the public plane” is. From the standpoint of Jewish law, everyone agrees that there is no authority after the Talmud. That is the view in the medieval authorities and the later authorities, and even in the Rema in the Shulchan Arukh (who copies the Rosh, Sanhedrin ch. 4, sec. 6).
The way we relate to the medieval authorities is substantive authority, not formal authority (search here on the site for those definitions).
We did not accept the medieval authorities, and not even the Shulchan Arukh, the way we accepted the Talmud. The Talmud is not disputed; they are. What we did accept is that they carry weight, and indeed one should and ought to give them weight.
By “the public plane” I mean, for example, conversion. Its Torah-level validity nowadays is because “we act as their agents.” It is hard to say that any person who has studied and thinks he understands can perform a conversion and that his conversion has validity for that reason. On the face of it, there is a public convention—formal authority even nowadays—that only a religious court accepted by the public performs conversions, and only it has that validity.
According to this, it emerges that there is a convention regarding formal authority even nowadays—in matters connected to the community as a whole and not to a person in his own home.
More generally, I think this convention also exists in matters of bills of divorce and divorce. Although in the days of the Sages the whole business was certainly simpler, that was because of the clear familiarity among people and the limited possibilities for forgery, which could be fenced in. But nowadays, with all the various developments—if there were no institution managing this, anyone sensible understands that a completely chaotic situation could arise in these areas. Certainly there are disputes about the institution itself and its boundaries, but aside from occasional Feiglinists who claim that for matters of marriage “we’ll search Google,” or other such irresponsible statements, it seems there is a broad convention that this has to be managed somehow. If what I’m saying is correct, then even nowadays one should say that there are formal authorities in areas that can affect the entire public. And just as the public’s acceptance of the Talmud and the words of the Sages creates formal authority on the interpretive plane of the Torah, even for a person’s private halakhic life, so too that acceptance creates formal authority in halakhic ruling in certain fields connected to the broader public, as above.
There is no way to determine to whom the rule of “we act as their agents” applies. It is a matter of reasoning, so I don’t tie this specifically to a religious establishment. Just as any religious court in any area is three people who sit and judge, I don’t see what is different about conversion. There is a difference as a matter of reasoning, but not in the law itself. And of course, also in bills of divorce and marriage there is no agreement on an authorized institution. Maybe you’re talking about what is desirable, not about what exists. No one casts doubt on the conversion or marriage performed by a private, benighted religious court in Mea Shearim that does not recognize the State or the Rabbinate, and they do not recognize it either.
As I understand it, it is hard to determine when the rule of “we act as their agents” applies because it is hard to determine to whom public consent applies—but do you agree with linking the two? That the reasoning that allows conversion nowadays depends on the public’s acceptance of the religious court—and only that is what gives this conversion Torah-level validity (for conversion depended specifically on ordination, unlike a religious court for monetary law, which can rule on certain matters by Torah authorization). If so, then there really is a source for formal authority even at the present time. This acceptance as formal authority certainly does not exist only with the Rabbinate as an institution; the religious courts of the Haredi communities are also accepted by it, and so even a “benighted” religious court in Mea Shearim falls under it—that is the prevalent conception among the majority who are faithful to Jewish law.
The practical difference would be regarding figures who do not operate with the consent of any significant religious community, even if they are within Orthodox Judaism. Of course this cannot be proven, but at least there is room for concern regarding such conversions.
Besides, if we say there is no formal authority at all, what would lead us to invalidate, for example, a conversion by a Reform religious court if it was done in a way that is halakhically effective? To me it is far-fetched to say that such a conversion has validity.
You’re trying to square the circle. There are no sharp criteria, but that does not mean there is no right and wrong. If, in my opinion, the Reform are not fit to serve as judges, then there is no religious court there and no conversion. If someone thinks that about me—then in his eyes my conversion also would not be a conversion. A mess? True. But there is no other way out. Even according to your approach there are no criteria. So what exactly is the discussion about?
My understanding is that if the validity of a conversion is due to public agreement and acceptance, then if some religious court does not have that kind of acceptance, its conversion is invalid even if I personally think it is very worthy. That is because there is no objective truth here, only the public’s subjective acceptance. It’s true that there is no clear criterion for defining public acceptance, but there are still extreme cases where it is obvious that they have the agreement of a minority and not of the broader public.
But it is also true that even if one does not think this way, there is no question about a Reform religious court, which is disqualified in itself, as you wrote.
Thank you.
As for C: what about a religious court? On the public plane, it is hard to say that no authority remains today, and that the last authority is the Talmudic Sages. Aside from that, why are only the Talmudic Sages an authoritative source? Why hasn’t the way people today relate to the medieval authorities, to customs, and the like as an authoritative source—and thus the prevailing halakhic approach—also turned those into an authoritative source by virtue of our present acceptance?
Sorry that I’m responding before reading the article you mentioned; unfortunately I don’t have time for it right now.