Question

A—I’m very interested in your approach: why are we bound by the Talmud, and why is it impossible to dispute the Tannaim and Amoraim the way one can dispute the medieval authorities (Rishonim)? I’m not talking about what is a law given to Moses at Sinai. Truthfully, even about that one could say “the loaf fell into the pit” [i.e., the tradition was lost]. By the way, one can say the same about all the aggadot in the Talmud, since it is impossible to know what is literal and what is allegory, because in almost every aggadah you can find some medieval authority or Gaon who took it non-literally—so much so that the Chazon Ish erred and called a person a heretic for taking the aggadah about Og non-literally, even though Rashba, one of the great opponents of Maimonides’ allegorical approach, took it non-literally in his novellae on aggadah. In any case, I have a collection of all the aggadot where some medieval authority says that a given aggadah is allegorical. But in fact it is clear from the Talmud that they had no firm tradition as to what is a law given to Moses at Sinai and what is not, since many times something is simply suggested as an answer and then rejected, and many times it is subject to dispute. And in general, among the medieval authorities there is a huge mess about this—Maimonides and the Havot Yair? So what exactly gives the Talmud its authority? And to add to that: regarding aggadah, the position of the medieval authorities and the Geonim is that one is not obligated to believe it and may disagree with it (and not like some later authorities such as the Chazon Ish; actually I saw some Derashot HaRan that sound like the Chazon Ish, and I’d be glad if you would address that). I attached you a page (actually I couldn’t figure out how to attach a page?) in which I collected a bit on the subject, especially from Maimonides, and I’d be glad if you would address it. I’ll just note something that I think I didn’t write there: in the end it seems that Maimonides took the concept of authority from the ijma of Islam, as was his way—to import from the Greeks and the Arabs. But what does that kind of authority have to do with us? It should be noted that while studying the laws of vows and oaths, I got into the topic of what authority and power my father has if he practiced a custom—does that obligate me too? The thing is that for Maimonides, unlike the other medieval authorities, there aren’t all these mechanisms by which someone can obligate you—not even the community rabbi or the agreement of the whole town—but only the Great Court, or apparently the agreement of all Israel. Because apparently if even that doesn’t work, then even my ancestors’ acceptance of the Torah should not obligate me. Though the truth there is that they actually regretted it; it was only that “He held the mountain over them like a barrel.”
B—And another question about the Talmud: what is your opinion about the strangeness of the Talmud’s derashot? They are really very loose and can easily be rejected, so how did they derive Jewish laws from them that all of us are obligated by? I’m not talking about the worldview of extremists, that everything was through divine inspiration and we simply do not understand or grasp them at all—which itself is contradicted by the way the medieval authorities and Geonim related to the aggadot of the Sages. For it is known to every student of the Talmud how endless the scientific errors in the Talmud are, and the odd beliefs, etc. Of course one should judge them favorably and say that this is how the world thought back then, including science—but all this shows that it was not through divine inspiration. And certainly one cannot say that the derashot are merely mnemonic supports, because of how seriously they are treated there; and if so, then where is the source for the laws they innovated?