Q&A: A Difficulty with the Chatam Sofer
A Difficulty with the Chatam Sofer
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I saw what you wrote in the weekly page on Parashat Vayikra following the Chatam Sofer. Many thanks. (There is a mistake there: instead of “the young man Ze’ir,” it should say Sabbath 22a.)
For many years I’ve had a difficulty with the Chatam Sofer.
Seemingly, the a fortiori argument is that if for being saved from slavery to freedom they recited a song that tells the story of the miracle of the splitting of the sea, then all the more so one should recite a song for being saved from death to life, and the reading of the Megillah is the story of the rescue from death to life. But in any case, you do not derive from that a fortiori argument the establishment of a Jewish holiday!!!
The Netziv (She’iltot of Rav Achai, 26, Ha’amek She’elah 1) noted this difficulty with the Chatam Sofer from the angle that there is no obligation for future generations to recite the Song at the Sea on the seventh day of Passover, but he did not note that one does not derive from that a fortiori argument the establishment of a Jewish holiday.
What do you say?
With blessings,
Answer
It seems from this that only the song is said for the rescue from slavery to freedom, but not the holiday itself. The holiday is about the very fact of the Exodus/freedom, not about the rescue from slavery. According to this, the slavery in the story of the Exodus from Egypt is included only because of the rule of “begin with disgrace and end with praise,” but that is just the form used to tell the praise of freedom, not because the story is about moving from slavery to freedom.
And perhaps the point can be sharpened further. There is a well-known midrash of the Sages, brought by Rashi regarding the angels with Lot, that it was Passover. From here there is some support (to the extent that one relies on a midrash) for what several commentators wrote—from Nachmanides to Rabbi Kook and others—that Passover is connected to that time of year and was not established because of the historical events. The events occurred because of the time, not the other way around. They based this on the verse, “Because of this the Lord did for me when I went out of Egypt,” which in its plain meaning seems to say that what the Lord did was for the sake of the commandments, and not that the commandments were instituted because of what He did.
But all of these are aggadic statements or verses, and I do not deal in them. The proof from the a fortiori argument is strong.
One could have explained it differently, in light of Maimonides’ view in the second root, that anything derived from the hermeneutic principles is rabbinic law (and in my opinion it is literally rabbinic, not as is commonly understood), and therefore the song derived from the a fortiori argument is only rabbinic. According to this, one might have said that they could establish a festival fully in accordance with the laws, with prohibitions of labor and so on, except that its force would be rabbinic (like the second day of a Jewish holiday in the Diaspora). But as I said, what I wrote above seems more likely.
See you,
And regarding the seventh day of Passover, plainly at the sea the rescue was from death to life, not from slavery to freedom (even though Pharaoh went out in order to bring them back, still the plain sense is that the fear was that he would kill them), and therefore the song there is also about that. If so, this is not an a fortiori argument but at most an analogy from a paradigm case. And against that one can raise even a slight objection: that this was an open, manifest rescue, and perhaps from a hidden rescue like Purim one cannot derive an obligation to recite a song. And on Purim not all of the Jewish people were saved, unlike at the sea, and so on.