Acceptance of the Torah sheBaal Peh
The real issue at stake in the Torah and Science discussions
On my last post, I received a reply from a reader named Reouven (I will not disclose his last name or nationality), who was an unfortunate victim of Natan’s disinformation. He sent me a document responding to my entire post point by point. With his permission, I attach it here, for your interest.
As you can see, this Reouven fellow is far more intelligent and learned than Natan (who in a recent fit of verbal diarrhea asserted that anybody who calls an exterminator to deal with a rodent problem thereby demonstrates that he doesn’t believe in Hashem’s help, and then tried to justify this idiocy on the grounds that uh, maybe it’s not racist) such that it is astonishing that he fell for such a scam artist. However, I think anybody who read my post could agree that he misunderstood the general idea as well many of the specific points. For your edification I attach my first response to that document:
Subsequently, we exchanged several emails where he questioned me further and asked me to clarify my position, which I was only too happy to oblige, but I wouldn't want to bore you with such details.
Instead, I want to focus on a point that I think is missing from these discussions, and that is the truth of the Torah sheBaal Peh. One of the things that Reouven was interrogating me about was the idea I mentioned of "principles of the Torah sheBaal Peh", as if he had never heard of anything like that. But I'm sure he has, as I will explain.
Torah sheBaal Peh can mean many things. It can refer to the independent halachos l'Moshe m'Sinai, such as Nisuch Hamayim. It can refer to the basic understanding of the Mitzvos, such as the commandment of the bride who is found to not be a בתולה. It can refer to the myriad rabbinic enactments, including Chanukah. It can refer to the י"ג מדות שהתורה נדרשת בהן. But perhaps the most common manifestation of Torah sheBaal Peh that we encounter in the course of learning is the overall understanding of the Torah possessed by the Tannaim and Amoraim, whether of the mitzvos in the Torah, the hashkafos of the Torah, the Rabbinic enactments, or the Torah's comprehensive legal system.
The Torah is not just the sum of the individual mitzvos in the Chumash, the individual halachos l'Moshe m'Sinai, the individual statements of various Tannaim and Amoraim, the individual Rabbinical enactments, but is a vast, interconnected system that is supposed to, in theory, be internally consistent and coherent. This is obvious from the many branches of halacha, such as the melachos of Shabbos, brachos, muktzeh, zikka of a yavam, tumah and tahara, each with myriad details, each of which the Gemara spends countless pages attempting to reconcile and make internally consistent. Not only that, but it is also clear from the Gemara's use of binyan av that there is an overall unity to the Torah, sometimes even among totally unrelated halachic subjects. For example, the Gemara expects the laws of esrog to be similar to the laws of treifos of animals, the Gemara expects the splitting of a zimun to be similar to splitting of a bed for the purposes of tumah, the Rishonim understand the shiur of salting to kasher meat should be one mil, just like the shiur of salting hides for the melacha of Shabbos. In other cases, the Gemara makes no such comparisons, or explicitly distinguishes between different halachic subjects.
All of this points to the fact that there is a system to the Torah sheBaal Peh, it is not something that the Tannaim and Amoraim simply invented, but is an understanding that they received through Mesorah. Of course, that and everything else I said should be obvious to anybody with learning experience, but it is important to repeat for the purpose of this discussion.
Another very important fact is that Chazal understood this system far better than we do. Anytime somebody engaged in serious learning encounters a halacha in a Mishnah or a sevara in the Talmud, he wonders where this halacha or sevara came from. He wonders why they understood this way and not some alternative or better way. He wonders why they sometimes compared different halachos and sometimes distinguished between them. He may especially wonder about the many thousands of drashos that are usually extremely difficult to understand or seemingly completely arbitrary (such as deriving a particular halacha from an extra letter ו).
Many times, after much difficulty, he attains some comprehension, which is like seeing the light of the sun after emerging from a cave, or uncovering a treasure at the bottom of the ocean. This is our primary labor in the Bais Medrash. But very often he must chalk it up to Chazal's superior overall understanding of the principles of the Torah which lead them to that halacha, sevara, or derasha, which he is simply not on the level to fathom. This isn't necessarily because Chazal were smarter than us, but because they were 2,000 years closer to Matan Torah, and had the literal Torah sheBaal Peh, rather than the mostly frozen text format that is in our hands.
One of the things that Reouven asked me is whether I would be willing to admit that Chazal were ever wrong. To which I replied yes (and I already made that clear in the original post), but it wouldn't be specifically about science, but about anything. See how open-minded I am? I’m so open-minded, I probably have the status of a treifa according to Talmudic science.
I told him, for example, that who knows?- theoretically, they could have been wrong about kesef koneh or meshicha koneh (of course, I assume they were correct). He responded that he did not understand this, since kinyan is just a human consensus, and there is nothing “correct” or “incorrect” about it. An innocent-sounding objection, right? But that innocent-sounding objection conceals a deadly mistake, probably unintentionally on his part. He was assuming that the kinyanim are just a "consensus". That is, there is no inherent truth to them, the Torah itself doesn't care one way or the other, but the Rabbi needed to come up with some form of acquisition, similar to any other legal system. But the problem is that I was referring to the dispute in Bava Metzia (46b) regarding which kinyan is d'Oraisa, that is, from the Torah of Moshe. A human consensus? I think not. But even if I was referring to d'Rabanans, most d'Rabanans were not enacted by the Tannaim and Amoraim who discussed them, but were instituted long before (for example, Shlomo Hamelech instituted Netilas Yadayim, Ezra instituted the nusach of Tefila and brachos) and thus the Tannaim or Amoraim could hold correct or incorrect opinions about them.
Reouven’s deadly mistake was going with assumption (that he may not realize) that the Torah sheBaal Peh was chas v’shalom invented by the Rabbis, and therefore there is no “right” or “wrong” about it, but just what we choose to follow… or not. But as mentioned before, this is empathetically not the case; rather, the Torah sheBaal Peh represents the preservation of a living Mesorah and a coherent, truthful, unified system. This is the point that is missing from these discussions, and a vital one. As a great person once wrote in a certain letter
It also seems that historically the weakest link in torah, in terms of emunah was chazal. There are three levels of emunah: G-d, torah shbksav, and torah shbal peh. The latter one was the easiest to mock, and chazal give us a description of this phenomena…
Which takes us to the science part. Does it make sense to suppose that the bearers of the Torah sheBaal Peh had no way of knowing whether it is permissible to kill a lice on Shabbos? Or at least to know that they were lacking the tools to pasken, and to leave the matter as a safek? If you assume that the Rabbis invented the Torah sheBaal Peh, including the Melachos of Shabbos, out of whole cloth, then of course it makes sense, since there is no right or wrong, but just whatever the Rabbis fabricated based on whatever false information was fed to them by Aristotle or the “the science of their times”. This is the position that Reouven (I believe unintentionally) was taking.
But if you believe that they did not invent it, that they were continuing a Mesorah, that there is a proper approach to the Melachos of Shabbos, then who understood the Melachos better than them, the holy Tannaim and Amoraim? Certainly not us. We definitely should assume that they had the comprehension and competence to pasken correctly, using the principles of the Torah as they understood them. The fact that they would arrive at the same conclusion as Aristotle regarding this is not coincidental or surprising in any way, considering that the Torah that was given 3,000 years ago should not depend on access to microscopes.
Now, after all that, can they still be wrong? Sure. But by the same token, they can also be wrong about ta’am k’ikkar, or yiush shlo m’daas, or kesef koneh, or meshicha koneh. The same way we assume their correctness regarding these halachos, we should assume their correctness regarding the Melachos of Shabbos. This is the way Torah is learned and paskened, by all the Rishonim, Acharonim, and Poskim, until this very day.
One thing, however, is clear. The idea that Chazal simply ruled based on Aristotle or "contemporary science" certainly seems like it was taken from academic Talmud. The kofrim in the university Talmud Department reject the whole idea of a “system” or “principles” of the Torah sheBaal Peh discussed previously, and constantly try to show how the laws in the Mishna and Talmud stemmed from the surrounding Persian, Greek, or Roman cultures, or were invented by the Rabbis for various mundane or deceptive purposes. The big tzadikim among them graciously agree to continue observing this non-Divine halachic system as a concession to Jewish culture… except when they don’t. The idea of Chazal simply basing their halachos on contemporary science seems like a shallow attempt to sneak this rejection of the Torah sheBaal Peh in through the back door.
כִּ֤י לֹ֪א יָנ֡וּחַ שֵׁ֤בֶט הָרֶ֗שַׁע עַל֮ גּוֹרַ֢ל הַֽצַּדִּ֫יקִ֥ים לְמַ֡עַן לֹא־יִשְׁלְח֖וּ הַצַּדִּיקִ֨ים בְּעַוְלָ֬תָה יְדֵיהֶֽם׃
The scepter of the wicked shall never rest
upon the land allotted to the righteous,
that the righteous not set their hand to wrongdoing.(Tehillim 125:3)
Very important post!
One comment- not all faculty and students in every Talmud Dept. are כופרים.
Some (and in at least in one Talmud Dept. - most) are מאמינים בתושבע"פ completely, and would certainly agree with your post.
Great post! (and great title;) Really well said.
A way I like to put it is that we don't know why an Aleph is shaped as it is, or why Tefillin are black with a four-headed Shin on one side. Chazal *did* understand these details (and no, they are not just arbitrary constructs). When we know all that they did and still have these questions - which at that point, presumably we won't - then we'll be able to say that they erred. But in my limited experience, as well as the experience of those far greater than me, the likes of Rashi and the Gra, the opposite ends up happening: the more we understand truth and what the world is really about, the more enlightening Chazal's words become to us.