Q&A: A Law Given to Moses at Sinai
A Law Given to Moses at Sinai
Question
Hello Rabbi Michael, I wanted to ask you about a law given to Moses at Sinai. The Vilna Gaon, regarding the authority of a law given to Moses at Sinai, writes the following: “According to the plain meaning of the verse, the mezuzah too is valid, but the halakha uproots the Scripture, and so with most of this passage and with several passages in the Torah; and this is part of the greatness of our Oral Torah, which is a law given to Moses at Sinai, and it turns like the clay under a seal.” Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz uses these words of the Vilna Gaon in order to determine that the meaning of “a law given to Moses at Sinai” is not the content of the Oral Torah, but rather the very fact that there is an Oral Torah that is authorized by its own power to establish laws; that is what “a law given to Moses at Sinai” means.
1) Did the Vilna Gaon mean that the halakha contradicts Scripture in certain cases? Or did he mean that the halakha contradicts only a simplistic understanding of Scripture, whereas the correct understanding of Scripture is the one reflected in the halakha?
2) Did the Vilna Gaon mean that the halakha itself—for example, that “an eye for an eye” means monetary compensation—was literally given to Moses at Sinai? Or did he mean that only the authority of the methods of halakhic decision-making was given to Moses at Sinai, and only afterward did they rule that “an eye for an eye” means monetary compensation?
3) What did the Vilna Gaon mean when he said, “the halakha uproots Scripture”?
4) What did the Vilna Gaon mean when he said, “and it turns like the clay under a seal”?
5) There is an aggadah brought in the Talmud according to which, before Moses received the details of the Torah, he asked to see Rabbi Akiva, and God showed him as he was expounding halakhot before his students. The Talmud relates: “He said (God to Moses): There is a man who will arise at the end of many generations, and Akiva son of Joseph is his name, and he is destined to derive heaps and heaps of laws from every thorn of every letter. He said before Him (Moses to God): Master of the universe, show him to me! He said to him: Turn around. He went and sat at the end of eighteen rows (in Rabbi Akiva’s study hall), and he did not know what they were saying. His strength waned. Once they came to one particular matter, his students said to him: Rabbi, from where do you know this? He said to them: It is a law given to Moses at Sinai! His mind was put at ease (that is, Moses’). He returned before the Holy One, blessed be He, and said before Him: Master of the universe, You have such a man (as Rabbi Akiva), and yet You give the Torah through me?! He said to him: Be silent! Thus it arose in My thought.” From the aggadah above it would seem that Moses did not understand what was being said in Rabbi Akiva’s study hall. How can such a thing be?
6) Why was Moses’ mind put at ease after he heard Rabbi Akiva say, “It is a law given to Moses at Sinai”?
Answer
1) To the best of my understanding, the second answer is the correct one. The halakha really does stand against the Scripture, and when there is a contradiction, the meaning is that both are true. For example, “an eye for an eye” means monetary compensation. (This is apparently not itself a law given to Moses at Sinai, although I seem to recall that in Maimonides’ introductions he says that it is—but it is brought here only as an example.) The plain meaning of the Torah is actual removal of the eye, while the midrashic exposition is monetary payment. My claim is that both layers are true. That is, at root the law is actual removal of the damager’s eye, and there is an additional level, namely replacing the eye with money. From here emerges one opinion among the Sages that the money paid is the value of the damager’s eye, not the injured party’s eye.
2) I am not sure what the Vilna Gaon himself intended, but in my opinion the truth is that usually the halakha actually was given to Moses at Sinai. (Though sometimes they use the expression “a law given to Moses at Sinai” to express the authority of the law and not as a historical claim; the medieval authorities already noted this.) However, the original halakha was not necessarily given in the form familiar to us today. It undergoes processing and refinement through the generations, and all of it is interpretation and shaping of the halakha originally given. In this way one can reconcile the traditional view that all the hermeneutical principles are laws given to Moses at Sinai with the claims of academic research that this is a later development. What was given at Sinai were the fundamental understandings—the forms of interpretation—but over the generations this underwent conceptualization and formulation and was put into a more fixed and formal mold. Think of Aristotle’s Organon, which conceptualized and formalized logic. Obviously people used logical arguments before him too, but the formulation and shaping of logic was done by Aristotle. And yet it is the very same thing itself, except that it underwent conceptualization and consolidation. I discussed this at length in my second book in the Talmudic Logic series (on the rule of general-particular-general).
3) The expression “the halakha uproots Scripture” originates in the Talmud. See Sotah 16a (it follows and uproots).
4) He means that Scripture is interpreted in both ways at once—the plain sense and the midrashic sense. See a nice example in the introduction of Rabbi Menashe of Ilya (a student of the Vilna Gaon) to his book Binat Mikra, in the name of the Vilna Gaon: “When I heard some who stubbornly argued against me in this matter, because I strive in such a lofty hidden subject to seek the path of the plain sense, and the Talmud in tractate Shabbat 63a is well known: ‘Rav Kahana said: When I was eighteen years old and had studied the entire Talmud, I still did not know that a verse never departs from its plain meaning’—this opened the door to strive to explain every verse according to the depth of its plain meaning, and then the exposition may be expounded. And I heard from the holy mouth of the saintly gaon, may his soul rest in Eden, our teacher Rabbi Elijah of Vilna, of blessed saintly memory, who greatly explained the error of those who think that the exposition interprets the plain meaning of the verse. And he brought as an example what they expounded in the Talmud on the verse: ‘If there is anxiety in a man’s heart, let him yashchena’: one said he should dismiss it from his mind, and one said he should speak of it to others. Now they said about the right that it is the left, for the shin of yashchena is a right-sided shin; but the plain meaning is: yashchena—that the anxiety will bow down the heart, from the language of bowing, and the end of the verse proves it: ‘but a good word makes it glad,’ which also refers to the heart, that it makes the heart glad. Rather, the difficulty for our Sages was that it should have said tishchena, since anxiety is grammatically feminine, as its very name indicates. And although the language of Ibn Ezra is known: ‘Anything without life may be referred to as masculine or feminine,’ nevertheless they expounded every thorn for a good reason.” Notice his claims there carefully: the language of Scripture intentionally does not fit perfectly either the plain meaning or the exposition, so that we are forced to read it in both ways together.
5) Because the matters underwent processing into a modern language. (See what I wrote above in section 2.) Just as Maimonides would not have understood Rabbi Chaim of Brisk’s interpretations of his own words. The formulation and mode of analysis are modern, even though we are dealing with interpretation and shaping of Maimonides’ own words. And many who do not understand this mock Rabbi Chaim, as if he interpreted Maimonides against Maimonides’ own intent. That is a fundamental misunderstanding.
6) Because he understood that this was a modern processing of his own words. See what I wrote in section 2.