Q&A: The Oral Torah
The Oral Torah
Question
A. Why, in your opinion, was there a prohibition against writing down the Oral Torah?
B. After it was decided to write it down, what did we lose as a result—what was the price? How would the Torah have been different had this move not been made?
Thank you
Answer
Many have already addressed this. The accepted explanation is that writing down the Oral Torah fixes it in place and turns it to stone. The whole essence of the Oral Torah is flexibility and adaptation to circumstances and to reasoning. We can clearly see that today people relate to books as if they were Torah from Sinai. That did not exist before they were written down. When things are transmitted orally, it is possible to convey connotations and nuances, and the whole enterprise remains more open and flexible. That is what we lost by writing it down. But on the other hand, there was the concern that important details would be forgotten. Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi decided that the second consideration outweighed the first.
Discussion on Answer
Who says that until Rav Ashi they did not write it down? Rav Ashi edited the Talmud, not necessarily wrote it.
Simply speaking, he canceled the prohibition, since anything liable to be forgotten ought to be written down for the same reason. We do not find that Rav Ashi had to establish an additional permission.
“Anything liable to be forgotten ought to be written down for the same reason.” True, but we see that before Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi they did not always write things down. If so, everyone should carefully weigh the harm against the benefit when writing his Torah novellae, and perhaps it is only permitted when there is great need.
That is, the prohibition was not really permitted outright; rather, they only revealed to us that in a case of great need, “they have violated Your Torah.”
Especially according to the author of Haredim, who holds that the prohibition is of Torah-level origin [that is how I remember it, though I do not remember where he writes this].
We do not find that anyone weighs it that way, and I do not see any reason to think so. The Oral Torah has already been written down and its writing has been permitted, so there is no point in limiting and qualifying this.
Did Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi cancel the prohibition, or did he only permit writing the Mishnah as an exceptional case?
[In the Talmud there is mention of a “hidden scroll” that Rav found with Rabbi Chiyya, and the Chatam Sofer testified about his teacher Rabbi Natan Adler that he did not write down his Torah novellae because he thought there would be no one who wanted them, and he himself knew he would not forget.]
And also, until Rav Ashi they did not write down the Talmud [because there was no need].