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Simon the Righteous was one of the last members of the Great Assembly. He was wont to say: The world stands on three things: on the Torah, on the Ritual, and on Acts of Kindness.
Today' shiur is dedicated to as many of your messages as possible. The first message comes from Henry Jasen and is concerned with a phrase that appeared in the first mishnah of this chapter.
Make a fence around the Torah – This admonition has always troubled me. It seems at odds with Moshe's words in Devarim not to add or subtract, not to turn to the left or to the right. Moshe also told the B'nai Yisrael that it was not out of reach ( or words to that effect, I don't have a Tanach handy at this instant). It seems like the sages are negating this instruction from Moshe. I also wonder what the purpose of the fence is. It can either keep intruders out, like the security wall Israel is now building, or it can keep prisoners in like the Berlin wall. Neither of the purposes make much sense to me. Shouldn't the Torah be accessible? It shouldn't be more burdensome than God already made it, should it? If the fence is keeping something from escaping, what is that something? And why should we want to keep it from escaping.
I respond:
It is almost uncanny, but the two verses that Henry quotes from the book of Deuteronomy as being for him in direct contradiction to the urging of the sages to 'fence the Torah in' are the two verses upon which the sages base their right (and duty) to do just that! As we have noted on several occasions, the Unwritten Torah (rabbinic law) is, in essence, developmental – dynamic and not static, and is a living continuation of the Written Torah. Torah she-b'al-peh is the means whereby Torah she-bikhetav is made constantly relevant. Should rabbis abdicate this duty, Torah is in grave danger of becoming outdated and irrelevant. This, of course, is one of the major differences between Conservative Judaism and Orthodoxy. Sometimes we are so concerned with the primacy of the Written Torah that we forget that without the Unwritten Torah, the Oral Tradition whose Mishnah we are studying, the Written Torah would have no more relevance for us than any other document. There is nothing intrinsically holy in the Written Torah: there are many other books held to be sacred by many other religions, and their adherents claim them to be sacred. What gives the Written Torah its sanctity for Israel is the Unwritten Torah: we accept the Torah as holy and binding because the sages say it is. The Written Torah is the ideological basis of Judaism, but in its details it was never intended to be a 'once and for all time' statement. Built into the very mechanism of the Written Torah itself is an assumption, a demand for interpretation.
When any case … is too difficult for you, go to that place which God shall have selected, and approach … the judge that shall be at that time, and ask your question: they will tell you what the law is… According to the Torah as they teach it to you and according to the law as they tell it to you, so shall you do. Do not depart from whatever they tell you to the right or to the left. [Deuteronomy 17:8-11]
Here it is quite explicitly stated that the Written Torah is not exhaustive, but at various times in the future will have to be supplemented and expanded by "the judge that shall be at that time". So, in fact, as they see it, the sages are not 'negating this instruction from Moshe' but giving effect to it: God (not Moses!) gives explicit permission to "the judge that shall be at that time" [i.e. any time in the future] to explain and expound the law; and Israel is required not to observe the Torah, but to observe the Torah 'as they teach it to you' and 'as they tell it to you'.
The other verse quoted by Henry is Deuteronomy 30:11-14. Here, Moses, nearing the very end of his life, exhorts the people to observe Torah:
Surely, this Torah which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in heaven, that you should say, "Who among us can go up to heaven and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?" Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, "Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?" No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.
In one of the most famous 'purple passages' in the Gemara [ Bava Metzi'a 59b], Rabbi Yehoshu'a quotes back to God, as it were, the words "it is not in heaven" so as to deny God himself the right to interfere in how the sages determine what halakhah is. Rabbi Eli'ezer claimed that the law required a certain oven to be declared not kasher, the rest of the sages disagreed and Rabbi Eli'ezer refused to accept the majority decision. He invokes several 'signs from heaven' to prove that God approves his version of the law and a heavenly voice tells the sages that 'the halakhah is according to Rabbi Eli'ezer'. Rabbi Yehoshu'a stands up and tells God not to interfere! He quotes the verse "It is not in heaven" which is explained as meaning that once the Torah was given from Sinai God relinquished any right to expound it any further. According to the passage in the Gemara God nods his head, laughing, and exclaims, "My children have bettered me, my children have bettered me!"
The sages did not feel that that were making Torah more difficult (and in many cases they were deliberately trying to make it easier to observe).
Adam Frank writes:
Based on your presentation of Rambam's explanation for the sacrificial cult during the times of the Beit HaMikdash and based your supporting reference to Rav Kook's concurrence of a weaning from the use of animals for spiritual and physical purposes, is it your opinion that observant Jews should be constantly striving to reduce the amount of animal flesh consumed in the human diet?
I respond:
Yes. (Many famous rabbis, past and present, have been vegetarian or vegan, for those reasons. Their reasoning is not that the Torah forbids us to eat meat, but that it is nearer the Divine will for mankind if we refrain from doing so, thus hastening the messianic age.)
I have not yet exhausted all the mail that has reached me, but the rest must wait until after Pesaĥ.
The Virtual Bet Midrash is now going into its traditional recess for the festival of Pesaĥ. The next shiur will be on April 14th next. I wish everybody a happy and kasher Pesaĥ.
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