Q&A: On Tefillin and Tradition
On Tefillin and Tradition
Question
Good evening, Rabbi Michi,
A question that has been bothering me for quite a long time.
Which tefillin did people wear before Rashi and Rabbenu Tam?
It seems that already in earlier periods tefillin were not uniform; different tefillin were found with different orders of the passages already among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Tefillin are one of the only commandments that involve a physical object that exists and that almost every commandment-observant person has had. I assume Moses prepared the first pair, and after him the entire Jewish people copied them, generation after generation. So how did such confusion arise? If a scribe forgot the order, he should simply have checked the order of the passages in any pair of tefillin. And if someone changed it, surely others should have corrected him.
The assumption seems unavoidable that there was some kind of break in the tradition, perhaps a long period in which tefillin were not available and the commandments were not being observed.
If so, what does that indicate about the rest of the tradition, about the Torah, which certainly was not written in the same quantity as tefillin, and in general about oral traditions, and perhaps even about the validity of the argument from national testimony?
If confusion arose regarding tefillin, what could save traditions that by their nature are even more open to inaccuracy and forgetfulness?
With deep appreciation,
Lavi
Answer
I don’t know. First, it is possible that already from Sinai there were disagreements and several kinds of tefillin. We received a general command, and it was open to several interpretations. Think of the disputes about lighting Hanukkah candles.
But even if we assume these are disputes that arose later—so what? There are distortions in tradition; there are people who disagree with what had been done until now and are willing to change it (I even know someone like that personally), despite the fact that this was the accepted practice. It is possible that there was some break in the continuity of the commandment of tefillin, or a split between different places and groups.
And finally, even if there was a distortion here, can you really imagine that there is a tradition without distortions? I am sure that a significant part of the Jewish law we have today is distorted, or at least a later creation. We do not have concrete information about what is actually correct to do, and so we act in accordance with what has reached us. That does not mean that the entire tradition is baseless. On the contrary: if there were no distortions, that would surprise me. There are good arguments in favor of faith and tradition regarding the giving of the Torah, and they remain valid. And even if distortions did creep in—and they probably did—that does not mean that the whole thing never happened and was never real. It should, however, arouse a healthy skepticism and a willingness to examine things and challenge them.
Discussion on Answer
1. It is certainly possible. There is no necessity that fully defined laws were given at Sinai. At Sinai a general command was given to make frontlets, and from that point on it is a matter of interpretation—like many disputes regarding laws given to Moses at Sinai.
2. I don’t need proof of that. I would be very surprised if there were not very many distortions.
You don’t need to stretch anything. There is testimony in the Hebrew Bible to Torah-level laws being forgotten (such as Sukkot in the days of Ezra, or the scroll that was found in the Temple in the time of Hezekiah).
I’ll repeat: I do not have the slightest doubt that a large part of what reached us is distorted. So what? There are no absolute truths in anything, and certainly not in the interpretive principles. I wrote about this at length and showed that the interpretive principles are a dynamic law given to Moses at Sinai that underwent changes, interpretations, and disputes. And still, the starting point is that what has reached us is what is binding, unless it is proven to be an error. There is a difference between a general claim that it is very likely that many distortions crept in, and a specific claim about a concrete law.
I understand. Thank you very much.
A follow-up question, if I may: if we assume there are almost certainly distortions, but we are still bound by the laws as they are known to us today, unless it is proven that they are distorted—what is the basis of that assumption? Is it based on the authority of the Talmud?
I ask this according to the Rabbi’s view that once the Talmud was sealed, there is no more formal authority. So if we take the commandment of tefillin as an example, where we do not know the order of the passages clearly from the Talmud, why is the practical ruling to put on tefillin according to Rashi’s view? After all, he had no more formal authority than Rabbenu Tam, and in general.
In other words, can any person today decide that he puts on tefillin only according to Rabbenu Tam’s view, or any view he likes, and thereby fulfill his obligation? Or perhaps the exact opposite: since we have a doubt after authority has lapsed, strictly speaking one should have to put on both Rashi and Rabbenu Tam tefillin—and there are other views too—because none of the medieval authorities had the authority to decide, and we therefore need to fulfill the commandment in all the available possibilities, only one of which is correct, if any, and we do not know which.
This is a general question and does not pertain specifically to tefillin, but to any law in which there are two opinions, or more, after the period of the Talmud. What is the authority for deciding after that? I assume the Rabbi has written about this, and I would be happy for a reference if there is one.
Best regards
It is not connected to the authority of the Talmud. The tradition that reached us is the best available version of what originally was at Sinai. Anyone who claims that something else was given there bears the burden of proof.
That was said about the Talmud, not about the medieval authorities. The medieval authorities have no formal authority. If you think the order of the passages in tefillin is different—do as you understand it. Indeed, each person can decide what he does, but of course not arbitrarily. Only if he has an approach that he באמת believes in.
Thank you very much
Thank you very much for the illuminating answer.
1. Regarding the claim that there may have been disagreements already from Sinai: are there other areas of Jewish law where the disagreements may also go back to Sinai? I assume this is not similar to a rabbinic commandment, where they disputed the enactment itself—whether the number should decrease each day or increase each day. There it makes more sense that the dispute was about how they saw fit to institute it from the outset, whereas at Sinai I would assume that clear laws were given to Moses and only became distorted later.
2. Assuming the distortion did in fact happen at a later stage, as also seems to be what the Rabbi considers more likely, then we have proof of a substantive distortion in the tradition. Since tefillin is not a law passed only from rabbi to student, but involves many physical objects that are passed down through the generations, I assume that something substantial caused the distortion—such as a long period in which the commandment of tefillin existed only as law, but actual tefillin were unavailable, and when people resumed observing it confusion arose regarding the order of the passages, and the rest is history.
If this assumption is correct, then there was a period—probably long enough—in which things from the tradition were forgotten. I don’t know whether to push this argument so far as to undermine the argument from national testimony—that perhaps someone at a certain point invented the Torah and the Sinai revelation and managed to implant a Torah the way happened in other religions. Or at the very least, as the Rabbi said (and he seems to know himself better than anyone else…), there are many confusions in the tradition, to the point that it seems likely that much of the tradition is badly distorted. That is no longer just a claim about a lack of understanding in later generations that created disputes, but a factual claim that not all the tradition is authentic. This undermines the absolute truth of the interpretive principles by which the Torah is expounded, laws given to Moses at Sinai, and so on.
More power to you.