Q&A: What Is Considered Jewish Law?
What Is Considered Jewish Law?
Question
Hello and blessings.
How can one know which of the Talmud’s instructions are considered Jewish law, which are considered a recommendation or a good practice, and so on? For example: reading the weekly portion twice and the Aramaic translation once, drinking on Purim, and the like. Thank you.
Answer
There are cases where it is very hard to know. One can try to understand it from the context. You have to examine the question of the source: whether there is a verse or a halakhic midrash, or whether it is stated as an enactment. Without a source there is no binding Jewish law. But sometimes the statement in the Talmud itself—the one we do not know how to interpret—is considered an authoritative source for that law. In short, life is hard.
I once saw in the name of Rabbi Wolbe that he wrote that whatever appears in the Rif is Jewish law, and whatever does not is aggadah or a recommendation. But that is of course not correct. In one direction this is usually true (though not always): what appears there is Jewish law. But it is not true that what does not appear there is not Jewish law.
Discussion on Answer
Meaning, it seems Rabbi Wolbe is saying that whatever the halakhic decisors decided is Jewish law is Jewish law, and whatever they did not, is not.
And maybe to ordinary Torah scholars the secret of how to tell the difference was simply not handed down.
Why did Rabbi Wolbe go by the Rif and not by Maimonides or the other halakhic decisors who covered the topic? Just because with the Rif it is easier to compare to the Talmud?