Parashat Bechukotai in Judaism Reclaimed consists of a multi-chaptered analysis of the halachic process, with a particular focus on how its functioning and dynamics have been impacted upon by the lengthy exile and lack of supreme legal body (Sanhedrin). The first chapter is built upon an essay in Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk’s Meshech Chochmah. This essay proposes that the Tochachah passage of rebuke threatens the Jewish nation’s full autonomy not only over itself and its land, but also over the Torah, which was to become rigid and less nuanced in its ability to respond to new challenges due to a substantial loss of knowledge and expertise.
Of particular note is where the Meshech Chochmah’s draws upon Rambam’s introduction to Mishneh Torah to contrast between the levels of Torah scholarship and Divine inspiration before and after the onset of exile. In the closing stages of the Second Mikdash period, he writes, the persecution of Torah Sages and scholarship by the Romans resulted in the gradual cessation of the Sanhedrin’s operations, as many Sages went into hiding, causing much of their Torah to be lost. Rambam describes how this loss of Torah scholarship, which originated with the onset of the exile, continued to deteriorate as a result of ongoing persecution and the gradual absorption of ideas that were prevalent in the cultures and societies in which the Jews were exiled to. This led to lengthy disputes among Talmudic Sages as to the meaning of Tannaic statements, a downward spiral which continued through the era of the Geonim until his own era.
Rambam’s recognition of the decline of Torah scholarship and expertise caused by persecution and exile is of critical importance when evaluating his approach to the difficult concept of “yeridat hadorot” (decline of the generations). The idea that later generations are somehow inferior to their forebears emerges from several Talmudic sources, most strikingly:
If the earlier [Sages] were the sons of angels, then we are mortals; but if the earlier ones were mortals, then we are like donkeys.The hearts [understanding] of the earlier scholars were like the door of the Ulam [twenty cubits], that of more recent scholars like the door of the Heichal [ten cubits], while ours is like the eye of a fine needle.
The concept of generational decline is commonly understood to mean that, as generations became further removed from Sinai, their intellectual or spiritual faculties dimmed. In his short book on the topic, however, Menchaem Kellner demonstrates that such an approach is exceedingly difficult to reconcile with Rambam’s understanding of the consistency of nature and his relatively restrictive approach to miracles. Kellner, like Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm before him, proceeds to suggest that Rambam actually rejected the very notion of ‘generational decline’, believing instead that generations in fact advance as they progress.
“The hearts [understanding] of the earlier scholars were like the door of the Ulam [twenty cubits], that of more recent scholars like the door of the Heichal [ten cubits], while ours is like the eye of a fine needle…” And how much more so us, from whom wisdom has ceased and is absent, as the Holy One, blessed be He informed us: “The wisdom of their Sages will be lost, and the understanding of their wise ones will be hidden. [Isaiah 29:14]”
Rambam’s citation of this verse from Isaiah, I believe, is of critical importance. The context of the chapter in question sees the prophet warning the Jewish people that, as a result of them relating to God in a merely superficial way "…with their mouth and with their lips they honour Me, but their heart they draw far away from Me, and their fear of Me has become a command of people, which has been taught”. Therefore as a measure-for-measure punishment “the wisdom of their Sages will be lost, and the understanding of their wise ones will be hidden”. This attribution of gradual loss of Torah wisdom to divinely-provoked suffering and exile is highly consistent with Meshech Chochmah’s interpretation of Rambam cited above, and appears to me to represent Rambam’s understanding concerning ‘decline of the generations’.
First posted on Facebook 22 May 2022, here.
