Q&A: A Question of Plain Meaning
A Question of Plain Meaning
Question
A. In Sukkah 2b, the Talmud raises the possibility that Rav Huna and Rav Hanan bar Abba may have disagreed only about the minimum valid width of a sukkah, but according to everyone, in a sukkah wider than the minimum width (each according to his own view), even the Sages agree that the sukkah is valid because the shade comes from the roofing.
And I did not understand: isn’t this a dispute about reality? According to Rav Huna, only in a sukkah larger than four by four does the shade come from the roofing, and according to Rav Hanan bar Abba, already with more than seven handbreadths by seven the shade comes from the roofing. So this is a dispute about facts, and we were taught that they cannot dispute facts?!
B. There on 5a, near the top. The Talmud proves that the minimum height of the human domain is ten handbreadths from the fact that, on the one hand, the Holy One, blessed be He, never descended below, and on the other hand He descended onto the Ark and the cover of the Ark, which together are ten handbreadths high.
But what is difficult for me is that from this one can prove only that from ten and up it is not considered “below.” But perhaps from nine or from eight it is also not “below.”
In other words, they want to know what counts as below, and they derive it from the fact that ten is above, and therefore less than that is below. But that does not follow: perhaps ten is indeed above, and perhaps nine is also still above.
Answer
- Who says they cannot disagree about facts? That is an unfounded yeshiva myth. Clearly there are disputes about facts. Of course, in many cases you can translate the dispute in a way that makes it not strictly factual. For example, here the dispute is how much shade from the roofing must fall on the ground in order for us to say that the shade comes from the roofing. Everyone agrees that in a sukkah of four by four there is 90% shade from the roofing, and in a sukkah of seven by seven there is 50%. The dispute is whether 50% is enough or whether you need 90%.
- I assume the measure of ten handbreadths came to them from a reasoned estimate. The rest is just a scriptural support. This does not look like a real exegetical derivation. But even if it is a real derivation, you can still say that after we proved that ten is not below, by reasoning we add that everything beneath that is below, because ten is a measure established by reason.
Discussion on Answer
In yesterday’s Daf Yomi (Sotah 18a): “Rava asked: If he gave her to drink through a reed, what is the law? Through a tube, what is the law? Is that considered a normal way of drinking, or is that not considered a normal way of drinking? Let it stand unresolved.” There you have a lack of clarity about reality.
I hope that this one thing, at least, you’ll learn from me and not from others: what they always teach you is not necessarily correct. My advantage is that what I say is not what they “always” teach you, but only what I teach you. That is already an advantage I have. 🙂
There are disputes about facts because the facts are not agreed upon. What is the problem with that? In yeshivot they are used to seeing a problem here because when it comes to facts, obviously only one is right and the other is wrong, and supposedly that contradicts “these and those are both the words of the living God.” But I disagree on both counts: 1. Even in value-based disputes there is one truth, and therefore only one is right and the other is wrong. 2. It is not true that all halakhic positions are correct. That is an incorrect understanding of “these and those.”
They always taught me that… and intuitively it does seem to make sense to say that there cannot be disputes about facts. After all, go and see what the fact is, and that’s it. What would the dispute even be about if it’s purely factual?