Rabban Gamli'el used to say: Make yourself a master, escape all doubt, and do not tithe by estimation too often.
EXPLANATIONS (continued):
12:
In all probability, for most people the most well-known teaching of Rabban Gamli'el the Elder is a teaching of his which is included every year in the Seder service on Pesaĥ. This teaching is, in fact, a quotation from the Mishnah [Pesaĥim 10:5]:
Rabban Gamli'el would say, Anyone who has not mentioned these three items on Passover has not fulfilled his duty; they are: the paschal lamb, Matzah and Maror. The Paschal lamb – because God passed over the homes of our ancestors in Egypt; Matzah – because our ancestors were redeemed in Egypt; Maror – because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our ancestors in Egypt.
When we studied this passage in Tractate Pesaĥim I commented:
We have already seen that in answer to the child's questions the father is required to respond beginning with shame and ending with praise, and then he expounds midrashically … until he concludes that whole section. In our present mishnah Rabban Gamli'el states that this is not sufficient for the proper fulfillment of the duty of 'telling your son'. The response to the questions suggested by both Rav and Shemu'el (both of which suggestions were incorporated into our Haggadah, as we have mentioned) appeal to the more intellectual aspect of the telling: a historical survey which explains why we are celebrating. The requirement to embellish the telling of the story as much as possible provokes the midrashic exposition that is also included in our Haggadah today. However, now Rabban Gamli'el adds that the duty of 'telling your son' requires an explanation not only of 'why' we are celebrating but also of 'how' we are celebrating: an explanation of the three main items in the meal that will shortly be eaten – the roast lamb (which is still rotating on its spit before the child's eyes), the Matzah and the Maror.
The text as usually quoted in the Haggadah has been slightly doctored and reads: …The Paschal Lamb which our ancestors used to eat when the Bet Mikdash existed… The fact that in the Haggadah the Bet Mikdash is mentioned as being no longer existent led some to assume that the Rabban Gamli'el to whom the teaching is attributed is Rabban Gamli'el of Yavneh. But the original text of the mishnah makes quite clear that the Rabban Gamli'el of the mishnah lived at a time when the Bet Mikdash was still functioning and the paschal lamb itself was eaten at the Seder service. As I wrote further on in my explanations of that mishnah:
There seems no reason not to assume that it is the text as given above that is the original, which was later 'improved' when incorporated into the Haggadah by the addition of proof-texts and the historical adjustment. After all, if the passage is included in the Haggadah for didactic reasons it makes sense to explain to the child that we no longer actually have a paschal lamb to eat but only have it figuratively represented. In this case, the Rabban Gamli'el of our mishnah is Rabban Gamli'el the Elder – the same Rabban Gamli'el who is mentioned in 7:2 as instructing his servant to 'go and roast our paschal lamb on the grating'.
To be continued.
DISCUSSION:
In Avot 061, 064 and 067 we discussed the virtue of maintaining an up-to-date knowledge of Torah. Now Orin Rotman writes:
I read with interest your additional comments on adding to knowledge of Torah and the comments of David Baird that you shared with us. It is precisely the idea that a Jewish "law" can and will be continued to be accepted as "law" rather than custom when the antecedent for the derivative "law" is set aside.(" …yet it is still forbidden according to Gmara and the Shulhan Aruch…") As we try to teach our Conservative Jewish children about law and respect for law, and respect for the Conservative Movement, we must directly struggle with synthesized "law" lacking continuing integrity, but only by replacing it with law founded on integrity. The smoking/health example was therefore a very good example. A more interesting faith based contemporary issue for this dialectic on developing law might be the issue of techelet.
I comment:
The Torah [Numbers 15:38] says that the tzitzit, must contain a blue thread. Orin's last reference to techelet is to the blue-coloured dye which was used to make the blue thread. When we studied Tractate Berakhot I wrote:
In mishnaic times the tzitzit [tassels, fringes] of the tallit [prayer-shawl] still had one blue thread among the white threads. (See the words of the Torah in Bemidbar [Numbers 15:38]: "Tell the Israelites to make themselves tassels on the corners of their clothes throughout their generations, and to put on the corner-tassel a thread of blue.") The dye used for staining the white woolen tassel blue was extracted from a sea mollusk – possibly the same one from which the Romans were wont to extract the dye for their 'purpur', the dye that stained the edges of the togas of the aristocracy 'royal purple'. All we know is that the mollusk was called in Hebrew "ĥilazon", but its identity was lost very early on, and for centuries now the tzitzit of the tallit have been left pure white.
Much later, when we studied Tractate Sanhedrin, I also mentioned that
in modern times several scholars believe that they have identified the creature and the technique of extracting its dye. Probably the most prominent among them was Rabbi Isaac Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Ireland and then of Eretz-Israel, and the father of Israel's late President Chaim Herzog. Here and there one can see tzitzi'ot with a blue thread entwined round the white ones, but the overwhelming majority of people have not taken up this option.
NOTICE:
Let me take this opportunity of wishing everybody well over the fast of Yom Kippur. Our next shiur should be on Monday 27th September. In the mean time you may care to read material concerning some aspects of Yom Kippur that I wrote several years ago. It is available in our web archives.
