Q&A: The Wayward and Rebellious Son
The Wayward and Rebellious Son
Question
I saw what you wrote about this in the column on declarative commandments, but there’s one point you touched on that still isn’t sharp enough for me—
was Rabbi Yehuda, who derives some very strange interpretations, actually convinced that this was the Torah’s intent and that this was a legitimate interpretation? If this is not a matter of using the accepted “legal” methods of exposition, should we understand that we have—or perhaps that the Sages had—the authority to decide on our own, on moral-sociological grounds, that something in the Torah is improper, and then force some reading into the words in order to cancel it? If so, what are the limits, and who is authorized to use this tool?
Answer
Why aren’t you asking this in a comment on that column?
Even interpretations that seem strange to us still have to conform to the accepted methods of exposition. You can’t just play games. If the use is not legitimate, the interpretation has no validity. Sometimes it is just a textual support, but I suspect that in many cases we simply do not know the methods of exposition, and that is why it seems unreasonable to us.