Q&A: A Heavenly Voice in the Story of 'the Oven of Akhnai'
A Heavenly Voice in the Story of 'the Oven of Akhnai'
Question
Hello,
I wanted to ask: I saw that in your article Wherever We Say “On That Day” you wrote about the great change that took place in the conception of how Torah is studied: between the conservative conception of transmitting the tradition by way of a "hollow pipe," and the revolution that later took place in the way Torah is studied—through reasoning, "in His Torah he meditates."
You mentioned in that article, and also in the article A Response to the igod Videos, the aggadic story of the Oven of Akhnai, whose role is to illustrate this idea—the revolution that took place in the way Torah is studied, between the sages of Israel and Rabbi Yehoshua on the one hand, and Rabbi Eliezer, who preserved the conservative flame, on the other. Therefore all the proofs Rabbi Eliezer brought were not relevant to the case itself—and even the heavenly voice, which said: "Why do you oppose Eliezer my son, for the Jewish law follows him everywhere?"
And as you wrote there:
"[3] It is interesting to note that the heavenly voice did not say that the Jewish law follows Rabbi Eliezer, but that he is great in Torah. It did not express a direct position regarding the problem of the oven. This joins all the other mystical proofs brought by Rabbi Eliezer."
1. But I don’t understand how you can read that into the heavenly voice??
After all, the heavenly voice explicitly said: "Why do you oppose Eliezer my son, for the Jewish law follows him everywhere." From this it clearly appears that the heavenly voice is claiming that in this case too the Jewish law was in accordance with him (as it is everywhere).
2. If we see and encounter all these proofs, from changes in the laws of nature to an explicit statement of God’s will through the heavenly voice, how can one claim that the correct path is the newer one? As it says, "Why do you oppose?!" etc. "Eliezer my son" "the Jewish law follows him everywhere."
So it is not at all clear how one can understand the opposite from the content of the aggadah. The story explicitly teaches that God’s will is with Rabbi Eliezer and not at all with Rabbi Yehoshua.
In those articles, it didn’t seem that you addressed these points, but only described the revolution that took place and why it is right for us on the long-term pragmatic level—but not why it is also right vis-à-vis God’s will.
Gilad.
Answer
1. The opposite. "The Jewish law follows him everywhere" is a statement about the person, not about the issue itself. Otherwise it should have said that the Jewish law follows him in this case (and preferably also explained why).
2. This aggadah is brought in the Talmud to say that although the Holy One, blessed be He, thinks that this is the Jewish law, He says that we should follow our own reasoning. "My children have defeated Me." I’m not explaining the words of the heavenly voice; I’m explaining the lesson of the aggadah as a whole. After all, the sages brought this aggadah not in order to beat their breasts in repentance and conclude that they erred when they ruled against Rabbi Eliezer. So the lesson of this aggadah is that even if the Holy One, blessed be He, thinks X, if Y seems right to us, then we should do Y—and that is also what He Himself expects of us.
Why is this relevant to us? Because of course we have no way to know what the Holy One, blessed be He, really wants. The aggadah comes to say that we should not be troubled by that. We should think that even if He Himself says otherwise, we are to follow our own reasoning and understanding. This is the value of autonomy. See also my article here:
And also here:
And this is also worthwhile:
Discussion on Answer
1. "The Jewish law follows him everywhere" means that he always hits upon the view of Heaven. The novelty is that even though he is indeed wise and his view is close to the divine view, the Jewish law does not follow him down here (in the practical sense), because the sages disagreed with him and we must rule according to our own understanding.
2. I’m not engaged in the archaeology of the text. I interpret the text as it comes down to us. Even if we assume, as you say, that the sages who created the aggadah intended a different message, the later sages who added this addition (if that is indeed so) and all the commentators on this aggadah throughout the generations intended the message I’m presenting.
You are contradicting yourself. Is "My children have defeated Me" a later addition that really says what I’m saying, or does even that not say what I’m saying?
In any case, I don’t really understand what the argument is about. In your view, is the lesson of this aggadah that the sages of that generation made a mistake, and it was included in order to beat their breasts in repentance? If so, then we have a major disagreement about that.
The aggadah says: "He smiled and said: My children have defeated Me, My children have defeated Me." Beit Shammai defeated Me, for the Torah is in heaven even though it was not given as a cut-and-dried text; Beit Hillel defeated Me, for the Torah is not in heaven, as it is said: "Follow the majority." That is, Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel—both these and those are the words of the living God.
At the end of the day, the heavenly voice is a clear marker of what God’s will is. And it teaches (together with the other miracles retroactively) that God’s will was with Rabbi Eliezer.
If so, you still haven’t answered how they disagreed with him. It is nothing other than proof for Rabbi Eliezer’s position.
Is the Rabbi sure he is doing his Creator’s will, or perhaps the will of the rest of the creatures….
I answered and explained. I’ll try one last time. The sages there understood that there is a principle of "It is not in heaven," meaning that Jewish law is not determined by what the Holy One, blessed be He, thinks (which indeed is expressed by the heavenly voice), but by what the sages think. That is why they disagreed with him, and that is what this aggadah is saying.
I’m not sure of anything, but that is what this aggadah says, and it is also what I, the little one, think. That’s all.
Thanks. I accept your interpretation on the assumption that you are right in your interpretation of the aggadah—that they added the heavenly voice only to sharpen the message conveyed by the aggadah.
But if a heavenly voice really did sound at that event, one cannot make that claim. So it is not clear to me how you can explain it even according to those who maintain (and in my opinion that is most commentators) that there really was a heavenly voice there.
I’d be happy to understand whether you can also explain it according to the accepted approach to the description of that event.
Gilad, Rav Nissim Gaon on Berakhot 19 and onward gives two answers: one—that the heavenly voice said that the Jewish law follows Rabbi Eliezer everywhere *except here*, as the Rabbi said earlier. Two—the heavenly voice came to test the sages, to see whether they would violate the Jewish law and listen to the heavenly voice instead of following the majority view (and see there, where he expands on this).
Thanks. How can one interpret it as "except here" when it explicitly says: "Why do you oppose Eliezer my son, for the Jewish law follows him everywhere"?
Notice: it says everywhere… that certainly includes the topic here.
B. The heavenly voice symbolizes God’s will. It is not a prophecy that comes to test people. So we are back to the question I raised.
I don’t see any dependence on the question of whether a heavenly voice really came out. I already explained.
If a heavenly voice really did come out, then the story is not a metaphorical description of a difference between the ruling above and the ruling below. In this case we truly do know whether God’s will is to go in the conservative path or the developing one.
When a heavenly voice sounds, that is an intervention showing what God’s will is. And the heavenly voice reveals that God’s will is study in Rabbi Eliezer’s way. "The Jewish law follows him everywhere"—everywhere means both in the upper world and in the lower world.
At this point you can’t just throw various reasonings into the air. We have knowledge of what God’s will is.
And absurdly, the Jewish law is not in accordance with it.
Gilad, no. God’s will was given to us at Mount Sinai, and it is "follow the majority." What do I care about some heavenly voice?
The heavenly voice is God’s will itself.
Incorrect. The heavenly voice shows what the Holy One, blessed be He, originally intended. He wanted us to declare the oven impure in terms of the correct interpretation of the laws of impurity that were given at Sinai. But His will as expressed in "It is not in heaven" is that we follow our interpretation and not His original intention. That’s it—I’ve explained what I had to explain. If we don’t agree, we’ll leave it at that.
Gilad, in your fine distinctions you’re definitely right, but look—the Jewish law can change; do you accept that?
It says: "It is not in heaven," because we go by the majority.
"Follow the majority" makes sense, according to the Rabbi, as reinforcement for "It is not in heaven"!
And why does it say "My children have defeated Me"? Because there was here a kind of war between the sages above and the sages below, and the Jewish law down here is according to the sages below. And apparently in this case the heavenly voice is right, but one doesn’t have to rule according to it just because it issued the ruling; rather, one rules according to the majority, and that’s what they did.
On the other hand, you can always ask why in other cases the heavenly voice is authoritative! Nowhere else did they say to it, "Go away, it says 'It is not in heaven'!" So why here do they throw it out? Apparently because God said, "My children have defeated Me," as if He accepted the Jewish law that changed because of the sages’ new exposition that the majority defeats a heavenly voice! Even if it has force because of Rabbi Eliezer, who was very, very wise!
But in that case you run into this kind of dilemma: how did the sages not agree with Rabbi Eliezer’s view, when according to him there are reasoned explanations in the older Jewish law for why he ruled the oven impure or pure… So maybe it isn’t that the Jewish law changed, but that the reason for declaring pure or impure changed—and that really is a huge question? But the answer is ultimately simple: because the sages have the power to uproot the Torah, which means they have the power to change the reasons for declaring pure and impure, and let’s leave it at that!
Moshe, God willing I’ll respond to your remarks on Saturday night.
Rabbi,
You wrote: "The heavenly voice shows what the Holy One, blessed be He, originally intended." But the whole idea of a heavenly voice is to rule what God’s will is—what God intended in practice as the Jewish law—not what the Torah’s intention was at the time it was given at Sinai.
An example of this is the heavenly voice that ruled that the Jewish law follows the words of Hillel, and so on. So your answer doesn’t work with the rest of the Talmud either. And even here specifically, judged on its own terms, it doesn’t seem right…
Gilad, the example from Hillel proves nothing, because there too the Talmud indeed says that according to Rabbi Yehoshua, who does not listen to a heavenly voice, we also do not listen to it in the case of Hillel and Shammai. How did you decide that "the whole idea of a heavenly voice is to rule what God’s will is," etc.? Do you know what God’s will is? A good example is the dispute involving Rabbah, whose soul departed while saying "pure," and he aligned with God’s view—and nevertheless the Jewish law does not follow him. Meaning, God so to speak agrees that He is only an interpreter of the halakhic law just like anyone else. If God and I disagree about the interpretation of a commandment, there is no necessity that the Jewish law follows Him. And that is exactly the idea of "follow the majority." Only at Mount Sinai did we receive the Torah from God. A heavenly voice is just a disclosure from heaven that obligates no one, and all it does is present God’s view in the halakhic dispute.
Rabbi Yannai said: Had the Torah been given cut-and-dried (in fixed rulings), it would have had no footing at all. What is the reason? "And the Lord spoke to Moses." He said before Him: Master of the Universe, let me know what the Jewish law is. He said to him: "Follow the majority"—if those who acquit are more numerous, acquit; if those who deem liable are more numerous, deem liable—in order that the Torah be expounded with forty-nine facets of impurity and forty-nine facets of purity (Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin, chapter 4).
Gilad, I thought this thread interested you…. and I thought you’d actually respond to my previous message… did something happen?
Mem80, something in what you brought doesn’t fit together for me. If the Torah can be expounded in both directions, and the sages of the Mishnah knew all the reasons to declare pure and impure in expounding the Torah—forty-nine facets of impurity and forty-nine facets of purity (Jerusalem Talmud, Sanhedrin, chapter 4)—then what’s the novelty? Meaning, they could pull out all the arguments in both directions and end up with a tie, so why be stringent? After all, stringency or a change in the Jewish law brings practical changes in its wake—for example, because of the change in Jewish law in accordance with their view, the sages disqualified all the validations that Rabbi Eliezer had validated, under this new change in Jewish law… that’s enormous damage…
Now let’s think outside the box. If power was given to the sages, when we know there is a decline of the generations, then the Jewish law will get completely out of proportion, because we move further away from the strong reasons that were in the hands of the earlier sages, who were wiser than the sages of today. So what is good about that? And on the other hand, we say we follow the majority, but sometimes we prevent that depending on a Sanhedrin greater in wisdom and number—so why, then, does the size of wisdom matter, if one can validate and declare impure through forty-nine different and good derivations? And also, what is the point of wisdom if a majority less wise than Rabbi Eliezer—who was equal to them all together, and even greater in wisdom, and who "never lost a drop"—would not be accepted against them? It looks like a kind of decline rolling downhill.
Moshe, who told you that the sages of the Mishnah knew the forty-nine facets in both directions? On the contrary: from their disputes you can see that they were indeed confident in the views they held, and usually each one brings only one or two derivations.
The Jerusalem Talmud that Mem80 cited is an aggadic midrash conveying a general message:
we follow the majority because that’s how God established it. The Jerusalem Talmud explains why (because in truth God knows that it can go either way, and therefore we can fulfill His will by following the majority, and that does not distort the truth).
Moshe,
when a Sanhedrin needs to be greater in wisdom and number, that applies only to repealing decrees and enactments of the sages—that is, there is no need to disagree with the earlier ones and say they were mistaken, and the wisdom is needed only so that not everyone can do whatever he feels like and abolish laws. specifically in a place where one needs to disagree with the earlier ones (for example, to derive interpretations on our own and change Torah-level laws), in fact one does not need to be greater in wisdom.
Gideon, I don’t see any necessity for your interpretation. In my opinion one must be greater in wisdom and number because he really is coming to disagree with his predecessors, as opposed to when he changes their interpretation of the Torah—then he is not coming to disagree with them, but rather to understand the Torah differently from them. In changing a rabbinic law, you instruct people to do the opposite of what your predecessor instructed. In changing a Torah-level law, neither you nor your predecessor instruct anything. The Torah is what instructs, and you merely disagree about what it instructs us to do. That seems to me the simpler interpretation.
1. If the Jewish law follows him everywhere, then not here too?!
2. "My children have defeated Me" is, as is known, a later addition, whereas the aggadah itself is written in Hebrew and the later addition comes in Aramaic. Apparently later they understood the problematic nature of the aggadah and tried to cover for it.
In any case, if so, why don’t you explain the words of the heavenly voice? After all, you know it is a clear symbol of God’s will in the observance of Jewish law among us.
And still, the sages went against it = they went against God’s will. If so, then they erred in the religious sense. No?
And that is why it says, "My children have defeated Me"—that they took over the way of Torah against God’s will. But it does not say, "My opinion and My will changed in accordance with theirs."