Rebellious sons and a radical rabbinic tradition

Near the start of yesterday’s Torah reading we find the strange commandment of ben sorer umoreh (wayward and rebellious son), the rabbinic interpretation of which serves only to intensify its perplexity:

If one of his parents had a hand cut off, or was lame, mute, blind or deaf, he cannot become a “wayward and rebellious son”, because it says “his father and mother shall take hold of him”—not those with a hand cut off; “and bring him out”—not parents who are lame; “and they shall say”—and not parents who are mute; “this our son”—and not parents who are blind; “he will not obey our voice”—and not parents who are deaf.

Talmud Reclaimed explores this extremely narrow line of interpretation, contrasting it with commandments elsewhere in the parashah which are interpreted considerably more expansively. Consider this passage of the hungry vineyard worker (a law I was privileged to observe for the first time while volunteering last week!):

“How do we know it of all other things? We infer them from the vineyard: just as regarding the vineyard its produce grows from the earth, and once it is ripe the labourer may eat of it, so too everything which grows from the soil and is ripe, the labourer may eat from…”

It seems surprising that the same interpretative tradition that renders seemingly simple verbs such as holding, bringing and speaking to exclude certain categories of parent, can also read vineyard and grapes to include anything that grows from the ground. Other commandments in the parashah such as not muzzling an ox on the threshing floor and not ploughing with a combination of donkey and ox are similarly expanded to apply to all members of the animal kingdom (including fish!).

Are we to assume that, as the Malbim claims, the sages were fully engaged in an exercise of drawing delicate hints and linguistic inferences from the biblical text in order to construct midrashic meaning? Alternatively were they basing their midrash on received traditions (Rabbi D. Z. Hoffman) or was it merely a means through which the Sanhedrin legislated new details of biblical law (Rabbi J. Faur)? Talmud Reclaimed probes the relative strengths and weaknesses of all these approaches and attempts to plot a middle path of compromise between them.

In addition to such efforts to discover the interpretative methodology of our sages, the law of the ben sorer umoreh contains a further – particularly peculiar – interpretive idiosyncrasy which Judaism Reclaimed explores. Was this case of ben sorer umoreh a law that could ever have had practical application?

The Gemara in Sanhedrin (71a) presents a fascinating Tannaitic discussion regarding ben sorer umoreh and ir hanidachat (idolatrous city): Rabbi Yehudah derives from a close interpretation of the relevant verses (and his colleague R' Shimon from logic) that these laws can have no practical application. If so why do they feature in the Torah? The answer is “doresh umekabel s'char” (study and receive a reward). Rabbi Yonatan emphatically disagrees with his colleagues: not only do these laws have practical application but, he reports, he has personally sat upon the grave of an executed youth.

This apparent dispute is very strange. Rabbi Yonatan and the other Tannaim were contemporaries who all studied under Rabbi Akiva. On the assumption that the Sanhedrin's destruction of a whole city or the judicial execution of a child would have been remarkable and therefore well-known events, it is extremely unlikely that only Rabbi Yonatan would have known of them, even if the Tannaim in question lived some time after the Sanhedrin had ceased to rule in capital cases. Even more strangely, the Gemara and commentaries do not question the source of this Tannaitic argument. Does Rabbi Yonatan reject the textual interpretation and logical deduction made by his contemporaries in order to render these cases possible?

One solution is offered by Rabbeinu Bachaye, who suggests that Rabbi Yonatan may not be referring to a ben sorer umoreh or ir hanidachat that was actually tried by the Sanhedrin. Another Talmudic passage teaches a principle that, when the death penalty cannot be imposed, the Heavenly Court may arrange for it to be carried out in other ways. Rabbi Yonatan therefore may not be arguing with the teaching of his colleagues who maintained that the legal requirements for ben sorer umoreh rendered the case impossible for the Sanhedrin to implement. He is simply adding that, despite this impossibility, the ben sorer umoreh and ir hanidachat may still be subject to a Divine decree. It is such a Divine decree which Rabbi Yonatan claims to have caused the early death of the ‘ben sorer umoreh’ whose grave he sat upon.

If this understanding is correct, it would appear that we have an agreed upon transmitted tradition that ben sorer umoreh – in contrast to other commandments in the parashah which are interpreted expansively – must be read so narrowly so as to prevent it from ever occurring.

But what would really be the point of such an exercise? Are there not plenty of other biblical verses which could serve as a basis for more practical rabbinic midrash – why have a law on the biblical books which was never intended to be applied? Rabbi S. R. Hirsch, implicitly addressing this question, identifies a swathe of ethical lessons and pearls of parental guidance that can be gleaned from these verses and their midrash.

A more recent answer from a historical perspective was suggested by Professor Moshe Halbertal. Halbertal argues that the Torah’s primary function with this law (perhaps alongside others in the parashah) was to prevent the father and mother of the young delinquent from taking the law into their own hands and performing some form of “honour killing”. Instead of this apparently accepted ancient practice, the father and mother are instructed to “bring their son to the city elders and the gates” for the matter to be dealt with by a proper court. A court which, it would seem, has a longstanding tradition to interpret the verses sufficiently narrowly so as to avoid handing the wayward and rebellious youth a death sentence.

For more details visit www.TalmudReclaimed.com

First posted on Facebook yesterday, here.

Pursuing peshat: from boiling goats to cheeseburgers

Written together with Dr Moshe Sokolow, author of Pursuing Peshat: Tanakha Parshanut and Talmud Torah

Are Cheeseburgers Kosher?

Students will typically respond to this rhetorical question correctly – that cheeseburgers are not kosher. They are less comfortable, however, with the follow-up questions: If the Torah wanted to prohibit them, why is there no verse saying, “Thou shalt not eat cheeseburgers”? Why is the closest we can get to it, “Do not boil a kid in its mother’s milk”?

These questions are entrée to the consideration of the two most crucial issues in interpretation. First, why not assume that everything in Tanakh can be understood literally? Second, if we are persuaded that it cannot always be taken literally, what makes an interpretation acceptable?

The answers to both questions are straightforward. If the Torah were to legislate for every conceivable situation we might confront, it would have to be the length and complexity of the Mishneh Torah or the Shulhan Arukh, and even those two legal compendia are incomplete without the myriad commentaries and responsa that accompany them. To compensate for this shortcoming, the Torah is “polyvalent” (having many values), allowing for multiple interpretations and applications, that are judged by their fidelity to the linguistic traditions of the people who regard these works of literature as “sacred Scripture”.

The first part of Pursuing Peshat, on which we will focus here, traces these two issues through a millennium of biblical exegesis (parshanut hamika), from Se`adya Gaon in the 10th century through R. David Zvi Hoffman at the start of the twentieth. Some—including Se`adya and Ibn Ezra—addressed these questions explicitly in the introductions to their Torah commentaries. Others—like Rashi and Rashbam—whose literary style did not include introductory remarks, dealt with them in practice.

Here is how Rashi and Rashbam might handle our cheeseburger question.

Exodus 23:19, “do not boil a “gedi” in its mother’s milk.” Rashi, following in the footsteps of the Talmud and Midrash, interpreted gedi as any young animal, and deduced the additional prohibitions against eating and deriving pleasure, from the verse’s threefold repetition. In other words, working back from the given conclusion that cheeseburgers are prohibited, Rashi would justify that ruling exegetically.

Rashbam, however, found Rashi’s explanation problematic. If any young animal is intended, why specify a gedi, which is specifically a kid, and why does this clause always appear in the context of the three pilgrimage festivals?

His answer: “Scripture addresses reality” (lefi hahoveh dibeir hakatuv). Kids were indicated because they are usually born in pairs—with one designated for sacrificial purpose—and are rich in milk. The link to festivals, too, is a nod to reality since that is when people eat the most meat. And yet, citing Talmud Hulin, he concluded: “This is the rule regarding all meat and milk.” In other words, while Rashbam disagreed with Rashi in exegetical theory, he accepted his implementation in practice.

Talmud Reclaimed also draws upon this prohibition in order to contrast the approaches of two different Rishonim, Rambam and Ibn Ezra, as part of its exploration on which laws and interpretations are regarded as Sinaitic and which were developed subsequently by the sages and Sanhedrin.

In his discussion of this prohibition against boiling a goat in its mother’s milk, Ibn Ezra speculates as to its reason and suggests that, at its core, it is to be categorised alongside other “cruelty-mitigation” commandments such as not taking the eggs of a mother bird in her presence and not slaughtering a parent animal along with its offspring on the same day. Viewing the basic biblical prohibition as relating specifically to the boiling of a goat in the milk of its mother, Ibn Ezra (in a similar vein to Rashbam) writes that it was formerly common to eat goat meat – which typically has a dry texture – together with milk.

Crucially, he then suggests that the expansion of the original biblical prohibition against boiling goat meat in its mother’s milk so that it covers all forms of meat and milk is a rabbinic ruling based upon the principle of being stringent in matters of doubt over biblical law. Whether Ibn Ezra views the broader prohibition of cooking meat together with milk as purely rabbinic or as rabbinically legislated Torah law can be debated; what is clear, however, is that he does not regard the prohibition as belonging to the body of transmitted and immutable Oral Torah traditions. This would therefore potentially allow it to be revisited by a future Sanhedrin.

Rambam’s treatment of this law, by contrast, presents the oral tradition’s expansion of the prohibition against cooking goat meat in its mother’s milk so as to apply to the cooking together and eating of all types of meat and milk as an immutable transmitted Sinaitic teaching:

The Torah states: "Do not cook a kid goat in its mother's milk." The received Oral Tradition, teaches that the Torah forbade both the cooking and eating of milk and meat, whether the meat of a domesticated animal or the meat of a wild beast.

So integral and immutable is the oral tradition’s interpretation of this verse that “if a court will come and permit partaking of the meat of a wild animal cooked in milk, it is abrogating the prohibition not to detract from the Torah”. Rambam’s understanding that the expansive interpretation of the prohibition against cooking a goat in its mother’s milk is of Sinaitic origin is consistent with the approach taken in his Introduction to Commentary on the Mishnah, that Moshe clarified key definitions and components of the commandments when he taught the Torah’s text.

Nevertheless, we are left with the question of why the Torah presents the prohibition so narrowly in its verses, if an immutable Sinaitic tradition requires it to be construed so broadly. The answer to this may lie in the Moreh Nevuchim, where Rambam identifies a reason for the prohibition – distancing from pagan ritual – which relates most directly to the practice of seething goats in their mothers’ milk.

We therefore see a range of interpretive approaches by the Rishonim to this highly instructive prohibition. From Rashi, who appears to read the Oral Tradition’s conclusion back into the text to identify its peshat to Rashbam, who recognizes the inherent tension between the peshat and the transmitted tradition. And finally Ibn Ezra who appears to move in the other direction, reinterpreted the transmitted tradition in light of the simple meaning of the Torah’s text.

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Peshat literally means the simple, or literal, interpretation of the text. However, the definition and determination of peshat is anything but straightforward. The Sages of the Talmud and Midrash debated how to ascertain peshat. This debate continued among the Rishonim and Acharonim: how much weight should be given to peshat as opposed to allegorical and halakhic interpretations, what assumptions inform us in arriving at peshat, and how do we differentiate peshat from derash? These debates rage into the modern day, as leading rabbis, educators, and scholars seek to understand the place of peshat in the nexus of biblical interpretation.

First posted yesterday on Facebook, here.

Baba Batra: are derashot genuine sources of Biblical law?

The Daf Yomi cycle this weekend reached Chezkat HaBatim – a chapter of Talmud with a reputation for its complexity as well as its fundamental Talmudic principles. One passage with a particularly important implication appears right at the start of the chapter and is cited as part of the analysis of derashot (hermeneutical deductions) in an early chapter of Talmud Reclaimed.

What is the true nature of these textual derivations which are so ubiquitous throughout the Mishnah, Talmud and Midrash? Do they represent genuine attempts to decode and uncover divine intent woven into the Torah’s text or are they more accurately regarded as “asmachtot” – rhetorical devices used to consolidate and recall laws already known via the tradition or pre-decided by the Sanhedrin?

This question has already been debated fiercely by great rabbinic scholars.

At one end of the spectrum we have the Malbim, who maintained that all rabbinic interpretations were aimed at revealing a concealed and profound depth to the Torah’s text. To this end, Malbim compiled and elucidated an impressive list that includes literally hundreds of intricate nuances within the grammar, syntax and linguistics of biblical Hebrew which, he argued, have guided the sages’ extraction of legal details from the Torah. The Malbim’s position can draw support from the apparent meaning of Talmudic text which appears to legislate details of biblical law on the basis of such derashot.

A notable example from the beginning of the third chapter of Baba Batra seeks to identify a source for the law that three years’ possession of land creates a presumption in favour of ownership. Rabbi Yochanan reports in the name of those who belonged to the Sanhedrin in Usha that this law was derived from the case of a goring ox, whose legal status – and responsibility for its owners to guard it – is altered after three instances of goring.

If this derivation was simply intended to serve as a rhetorical device or memory aid, it would be sufficient that the source and derivative both possessed the same broad legal principle: that a series of three is deemed to represent or generate a change of legal status. Numerous highly detailed and technical objections are raised, however, to the comparison between the case of the ox and that of land possession.

Ultimately the Talmud’s presumptions are upheld: those who derive the three-year presumption from the goring ox would indeed be bound by such details. The other sages however, who relied on a different source, did not consider that the details of the three-year land possession presumption was influenced by details of the ox-goring derivation. Thus the proposed scriptural source for rabbinically-legislated details of Torah law can directly be seen to influence the nature and application of those details.

In opposition to the Malbim, other rabbinic scholars such as Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Hoffman, Rabbi Jose Faur and Rav Yitzchak Rabinowitz in his Dorot Rishonim have argued that derashot are not a genuine source of knowledge. Rather, they are seen as fulfilling a pedagogical purpose in that they help to associate pre-established laws with the Torah’s text. In support of this position are lengthy lists of derashot which seem contradictory and the great degree of flexibility and discretion seemingly accorded to the sages in formulating such hermeneutical readings.

Talmud Reclaimed cites numerous case studies and arguments in support of each of these contrasting positions, noting in the process how they can both legitimately claim to be strongly sourced within the Talmud. In light of the strength of the arguments boosting each of these positions, the book attempts to plot a middle path which integrates elements of them both.

Drawing upon several examples, we suggest that the numerous examples that we explore in the book highlight the extent of rabbinic discretion in implementing these principles, it would seem that derashot cannot be seen as a rigid set of divine instructions that bind the rabbinic legislators to formulate specific details. Instead, they may be best approached as looser indications from within the text, guiding the sages in how to make use of their discretion when establishing these details of Torah law. Ultimately, however, the authority to legislate these details lies with the Sanhedrin, which can choose how to make use of the interpretative and hermeneutical principles to produce such laws. Those principles merely establish certain parameters and guidance to the Sanhedrin.

Also posted to Facebook, here.