Q&A: The Torah as a Constitution
The Torah as a Constitution
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the Rabbi sees the Torah like the kind of constitution found in the world today: in principle, it is built in a vague way, with decisive statements about certain topics, in order to create room for interpretation over the years and across the different eras that will come.
Assuming you agree, I have a big problem with the Talmud. When I study it and they bring textual support for their derashot, you look at the source and in a large number of cases the source has nothing at all to do with what they are learning from it. It’s a completely different topic, and I can’t understand how they force the verses so blatantly in order to enable their interpretation.
What are the boundaries? What are the rules for this?
Answer
I don’t know what exactly is meant by the comparison to constitutions in the world. There is certainly room for interpretation in Jewish law, and does anyone dispute that? Is the vagueness there in order to invite interpretation? I don’t know. It may simply be because it is impossible to define laws in a completely unambiguous way.
All this is in no way, as far as I can see, connected to your question at the end about derashot. Each derashah needs to be clarified on its own merits. In general, derashot are not supposed to meet the criteria of plain-sense interpretation, since this is a parallel interpretive plane to the plain meaning. Therefore objections from the plain meaning are irrelevant to derashot. To understand them, one needs to have command of the hermeneutical principles and methods of derash. It is true that there are supporting derashot (for existing laws), but there are also creative derashot (probably most of them are of that kind).
I saw that a series of books called “Your Commandments I Have Expounded” by Rabbi Itai Elitzur is about to come out, going systematically through all the derashot in the Talmud and explaining each one of them and how it is derived from the verses. In the first volume he also explains the methods of derash in general.
If this is important to you, you can purchase it. For now it’s on Headstart, and they are looking for purchasers to help bring it to publication. You can find it here: https://machon.oretzion.com/%D7%97%D7%99%D7%A4%D7%95%D7%A9?q=%D7%90%D7%99%D7%AA%D7%99+%D7%90%D7%9C%D7%99%D7%A6%D7%95%D7%A8
Discussion on Answer
That is how the Torah was written and transmitted, together with the hermeneutical principles and methods of derash, so that alongside the plain meaning there would also be derash and sod. This is a law given to Moses at Sinai (part of the Oral Torah that was transmitted at Sinai).
I discussed this in the article on the second root in the book He Shall Send Forth His Roots, and also in the second book in the Talmudic Logic series. There is a series of three articles by David Henshke in Hamaayan 5737–8 that is worth reading.
Thanks, so in practice is this the main part of the law given to Moses at Sinai? And without assuming that channel, does the Oral Torah have no validity?
If so, what is the Rabbi’s opinion of the accepted view that the Oral Torah developed in the Second Temple period and therefore did not exist before that at all?
Correct, aside from public acceptance, which also has validity.
My view is that this is a mistake. The Oral Torah develops throughout all generations down to our own time, but its source is at Sinai together with the Written Torah. According to that same “accepted” approach, the Written Torah also developed not much earlier.
Why think that there is a plane of derash?
And why shouldn’t derashot be required to meet the criteria of plain-sense interpretation?
Or at most come on top of them?
Where have you elaborated on the explanation of these foundations?