Question

What is the Rabbi’s opinion of the attached article, "The Crisis of Studying Jewish Law in Our Generation," by Rabbi David Davidovitch?
In the remarks below I want to focus on a troubling point for many learners: why, in most places, the Torah has effectively become two Torahs, and why married yeshiva students who want to study a Talmudic topic analytically and continue all the way to practical Jewish law can hardly find kollels or Torah teachers for whom that is the method of study.
And in today’s kollels, either the learning is analytical study of the Talmud, or the learning is Shulchan Arukh with the commentaries and practical Jewish law.
This was the accepted path, as Rabbi Wosner writes in Shevet HaLevi, responsa, part 2, section 57:
"The first stage in the analysis of Torah is to clarify the form of the discussion from beginning to end through honest analysis, according to the approach of all the medieval authorities stated there, and to clarify the differences between their approaches, to analyze with understanding the foundation of each one of them, and after all that, then to study on each matter the words of the four sections of the Shulchan Arukh relevant to it, and to bring the discussion to a conclusion and arrive at the final practical outcome. This was the path of the early giants, Rabbi Akiva Eger, the Hatam Sofer, and all the great sages; therefore both this and that endured in their hands, and they labored over the practical halakhah just as over the Talmudic topic. Once the great sage of Israel, the Hazon Ish of blessed memory, told me in one of our conversations that in his youth he studied much Tur and Beit Yosef, and his friends mocked him and said he would become a schoolteacher of little children; and he concluded, Blessed be God, for I became what I became." See there at length.
In the following remarks I will address the root of the problem, and why it cannot really be solved. The root and reason for this separation comes from the complete change in style and method of learning in our generation.
To understand this, one has to elaborate a bit on the approach and method of the study halls and yeshivot in the period of the later authorities, when the method of distinctions was accepted. In that approach they studied both Talmudic passages and the Shulchan Arukh, making fine textual inferences, inventing answers, and in some places even interpreting extra words almost like a kind of midrash. In this method they attached very great importance to the technical and formal placement and order of things, and were exacting about position and sequence: why specifically here and not there; for example, why did the Mishnah write its laws specifically in this order and not another? Likewise they analyzed why Rashi says, "the reason is explained in the Gemara," specifically on this section of the Mishnah and not the other section, and so on. On this basis they built sharp novelties and ingenious constructions with no grounding in the text. And once a person makes such exacting inferences and questions, he is forced to invent novel ideas in order to resolve the questions, and must come up with new theories and moves in the sugya.
In their books on the Talmud this method is especially prominent, for example in the Tzelach or Doresh LeTziyon, where the style of questions and answers follows this method of distinctions. Just as one example, see the Tzelach on Beitzah 14b on the Gemara: "Rav Huna and Rav Hisda—one said: all pots require salt, but not all pots require spices. And one said: all spices lose their taste." He asks why the word "all" in "all spices" is superfluous, in his words: "What does it say here with the word ‘all,’ and what is included by using the word ‘all’?” And on this he builds a wonderful innovation.
And on the next page, under the heading "bemurika," he writes: "And what use is the word ‘the house’ here? It should have written simply ‘murika.’" See at length in the wonderful introduction of Rabbi Shmuel David Munk to the Tzelach on the book’s method of distinctions, where he writes among other things:
"We can see in this book before us our rabbi’s way of being exacting about the slightest variations in the passage… Likewise one can find in Tosafot close analysis of why the order of their questions in one tractate differs from that in another."
And the method of distinctions rests on two assumptions:
A. Rules of close textual inference in a Talmudic passage, such as what is stated in the Shelah, tractate Shevuot, chapter Ner Mitzvah:
"Only this is a commandment, and to it they should cling, and it should also involve sharpness—that is, to answer in true ways every ‘oysh brenger,’ every ‘niren berger,’ and every ‘regir shpurger’; and likewise in Tosafot to connect every ‘and if you say’ or ‘it is puzzling’ that without this remains unresolved. Such things are included in the Torah of truth, and they too are sharpness."
And see also Vavei HaAmudim, Amud HaTorah, chapter 5:
"But that is not my way. Certainly those who act as questioner and answerer and want to force an elephant through the eye of a needle, as in Bava Metzia 38b, and devise many thoughts about the questioner and answerer, saying: the answerer did not understand the questioner, and the questioner did not understand the answerer…"
B. The legitimacy and permission to offer sharp innovations that certainly are not true and never entered the minds of the Amoraim and the medieval authorities. In this mode of learning they did not attach special importance to whether this was in fact what the author of the statement intended, as the Shelah says:
"As for these distinctions—they should be null and void; would that they had never existed in the world. And even if someone says that he expounds close to the plain meaning and says many true things, nevertheless, when mixed with it is even one thing that is not true, it prohibits in even the slightest amount. And who can measure the grave sin of turning the words of the living God, the Torah of truth, upside down?"
And although ostensibly the method of distinctions was only for yeshiva study and not for practical Jewish law, in practice a person accustomed to thinking in this style in his youth in yeshiva is affected by it for the rest of his life, and always sees the text through that angle of vision. Since that way of learning dominated in those days, this approach and style penetrated, to a greater or lesser extent, into the study of Jewish law as well.
The Bach refers to this—that the method of distinctions, these linguistic exactitudes, influenced the answers and ideas stated in the sugya and in the Shulchan Arukh—in his criticism of the approach of Rabbi Yehoshua Katz, author of the Derishah, etc. In the Bach’s introduction he writes:
"Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed, and do not turn to the arrogant and to the bread of lies, whose foolishness and methods did them no good, neither in this world nor in the next. For they are verbal acrobatics, learned tricks, forms and embellishments. And the breath of their mouths is confusion; their strength is weakened like women… according to the ways of the officers at the edge of the camp, to display the craft of their dialectic like a tower floating in the air between heaven and earth, to declare the creeping thing pure… And now in our times the pious Rabbi Yehoshua Falk HaKohen of blessed memory arose and composed works on the Tur, and they were printed improperly, for the rabbi of blessed memory did not review and revise his compositions to have them printed in the state in which they were published after his death. For most of his Torah consists of dialectics to resolve questions and linguistic exactitudes, even where it is not true, but only on the model of ‘Rabbah said it merely to sharpen Abaye’ in Berakhot 33b and elsewhere. And this is not the path or the city that the great sages before us followed when composing books from which practical rulings for all Israel would emerge."
And he writes against the Sema in many places:
Section 72: "And not as Rabbi Yehoshua Falk, Sema, subsection 114, who wrote various laws here that were never imagined by the earlier authorities."
Section 154: "Later I saw that Rabbi Yehoshua Falk, Sema, subsection 34 on the Shulchan Arukh, elaborated on this with forced arguments like forcing an elephant through the eye of a needle, and he did not grasp at all everything we wrote here; see there."
Section 183: "And this is how we rule, not as Rabbi Yehoshua Falk, Sema, subsection 13, who wrote distinctions here that are not justified."
Section 385: "And may his Master forgive Rabbi Yehoshua Falk, Derishah subsection 1, for writing to distinguish between an animal and wine—a distinction the earlier authorities never conceived of."
And so too we find in the responsa of Maharam Katz, section 2, who writes to the father of the Shakh, Rabbi Meir Katz:
"As for what your honor elaborated in dialectics, both in replying on the matter of the bill of divorce and on the Talmudic topic in Eruvin: aside from the fact that time does not permit replying to every detail, even if time did permit, the Rivash already wrote that replying to such pilpul is a waste and loss of time, for the gates of answers are never locked. Needless to say regarding what your honor developed in the Gemara of Gittin, it is not the way of a responsum to build a foundation on dialectics and derive practical Jewish law from them. Nevertheless, lest strange thoughts arise in your mind that Heaven forbid I despise your words, I have said I will answer you in outline form."
And so writes Yad Yehudah in the introduction: "According to the path of pilpul study all the great sages conducted themselves, but they did not use this for halakhic rulings, nor did they make books out of it. But afterward, as one generation followed another and hearts became diminished and they no longer had the power to contain in their minds both modes of study together—and they were accustomed to the way of pilpul from childhood, and it was very dear to them—they began in the lands of Germany and Poland to compose books in the mode of pilpul. Because of this, the path of halakhah became weak in their hands. And even several great sages who composed books in the area of practical law, their style of study in the mode of pilpul interfered with their ability to derive clear halakhah from the words of our early sages, because that was their way: to explain even the words of the earlier sages according to the method of pilpul and to force an elephant through the eye of a needle, though our early sages never intended this at all… I was astonished at the Tevuot Shor, whose method of learning was to bend the words of the earlier sages to his own view and explain them in the way of pilpul… And now there are found several books of later authorities whose words are also said regarding practical Jewish law in the manner of pilpul, and many will err in ruling from them… And the Levushei Serad held that even from the method of pilpul one can derive clear halakhah." End quote.
But in our generation the mode of learning has already changed, and no one is to be found learning by the method of distinctions. Our teacher the Vilna Gaon already distanced this mode of study, and in a description of the learning style of the Volozhin yeshiva, the student Micha Yosef Berdyczewski writes: "A great principle in the rules of study in this yeshiva is that the main thing is qualitative study, not quantitative; that is, every learner is obligated to investigate deeply the method of each Tanna or Amora in every area, and to explain all the statements that appear to contradict those methods, and to search for the reasons why they are exceptional cases. But the quantitative study that surveys the surface of statements and erects heaps upon heaps over an omission or an extra word is not practiced there at all; therefore they do not study Maharshal, Maharam, or Maharam Schiff there. The usual questions and difficulties there are only contradictions from one statement to another."
And the goal in our time is to reach the depth of the plain meaning, whether in the Brisker method or among students of the Hazon Ish or the other decisors of our generation such as Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv and Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, and likewise Shevet HaLevi. For example, all their innovations are built on the path of plain meaning and intellectual depth, straightforward reasoning. And even in the previous generation, the Mishnah Berurah in Biur Halakhah also goes in the path of plain meaning. See the decisive words of the great sage of our generation, the Hazon Ish of blessed memory, in his letter printed at the end of Avi Ezri on Chagigah:
"Just as the redactors of the Talmud delved deeply into the principles of the halakhot, so too they delved into their language and the arrangement of the material for future generations, for such is the nature of wisdom and the nature of sages. It is impossible that they would state things obscurely in a way that cannot be understood, and all the more so that they would say something different from what they intended… If we come to burden their words with excessive hints beyond measure, nothing will remain in our hands."
And in our generation every trace of the method of distinctions in learning has already completely disappeared.
Therefore, graduates of the holy yeshivot, where the accepted method is learning the sugya together with the commentaries of the medieval authorities and analyzing their words, what the basis of each opinion is in the way of our rabbis of the Brisk school, and at any rate the goal is to understand simply the parameters of the sugya and the views of the medieval authorities—
when they come to study the Shulchan Arukh and the later authorities, they encounter a totally different world and approach.
The focus is on side issues, such as the wording of the Mechaber and the Rema, and the questions are of a different style, while the answers are newly invented theories and ideas, without any source, and while ignoring analysis of the sugya with the medieval authorities, in the style of the method of distinctions.
Therefore, one who studies the Gemara and the medieval authorities in their place often remains perplexed, because he sees a new world entirely different from what he studied earlier at the source of the sugya.
True, there are later authorities who do follow the accepted method of learning, such as the Vilna Gaon and the Pri Chadash, who stay close to the plain meaning and to the words of the medieval authorities. But most later authorities have a way of learning totally different from what is accepted in our generation.
And this is the reason that today there is a separation between analytical study and the study of Jewish law.
It is almost impossible to combine them, because someone who wants to learn from the root of the sugya analytically all the way to the commentators on the Shulchan Arukh runs into difficulty grasping and understanding the methods of the commentators on the Shulchan Arukh, and finds it hard to connect to their style and to the moves of the Beit Yosef, the Rema, the Taz, and the Shakh.
And even a person of inner intellectual honesty understands that it is impossible to explain the words of the later authorities by the mode of learning accepted in our time—for how can one explain the Taz through the Brisker method, and is it really possible to explain a dialectical Shakh through the path of plain meaning?