[Avodah] R Berkovitz

[Michael Makovi]

I am replying to this thread,
http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol08/v08n075.shtml#18, because it
interests me, and because it has some overlap with a recent thread,
viz. http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol25/v25n100.shtml#10

R' Rich Wolpoe says:
>
Plz allow me to clarify
The TSBP and che Chazal are softer, the question is HOW it got that
way Models:
1) This is ALL MiSinai. The Original Torah was designed on 2 levels.
The Chazla made up zero, they just reported what they heard. (Extreme
Sinai)
2) This was made up by Chazal out of a sense of politcal correctness or
Rachmanus. This might be {boredrline} heresy. (Extreme Historical School)
3) The TSBK was harsh and the TSBP was designed to soften it in reality.
The general MANDATE was from Sinai but the specfics evolved when Chazal
applied this mandate in reality. (Moderate Hybrid School)

My shita is #3. The seeds of Etz Chaim hi were planted at Sinari,
it sprouted forth over time.

My GUESS is that the objections to Z Frankel or E .Berkowitz were that
they said something like #2 or it at least what was pereceifed was #2..
>

He says that some may have objected to REB because he perhaps seemed
to hold number 2. This, I will try to show, is an untenable
understanding.

I will jump the gun by saying: According to shita number 2, Chazal
acted according to an un-Jewish, non-Sinaitic ideology. David Hazony
in Azure (www.azure.co.il), "Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits and the Revival
of Jewish Moral Thought", also in the introduction to Essential
Essays, he tries to show that the Conservative approach davka adopted
non-Jewish hashkafot from without, whereas Rav Berkovits used
hashkafot already intrinsic to Judaism. I will let Mr. Hazony
represent himself in this.

Now then, Rav Berkovits entire approach is nothing but number 3, I
feel. He says that the Torah was given at Sinai, but G-d left it for
Chazal, as a mandate from Him to them, to develop the Torah according
to certain means and with certain ends in mind. This is intrinsic to
his entire approach. He says that the Torah (She'bichtav) had certain
moral values in mind all along (such as not creating agunot, not
letting their be poor people, "you shall do what is good and
right...", etc.), and that the Torah itself desired that the Oral Law
liberate the Written Torah - Rav Berkovits explicitly speaks of the
Written Torah being unfolded by the Oral Torah, and he explicitly says
this is the very yearning of the Written Torah - to be unshackled from
its own confines. Hazony is not making things up when he says that
Rabbi Berkovits never intended anything other than that the exegetical
and halakhic methods of Chazal were intrinsic to Torah all along, and
that the Torah merely was waiting for Chazal to utilize the methods
and mandate already given them. He further says that the task of
Chazal and of the posek is to look into the Torah and himself and
figure out what is already intrinsic to the Torah's desires (not what
is in modern Western society that we'd like to fit the Torah to) and
make halacha accordingly. Rabbi Berkovits already explicitly said this
all himself.

I could quote sources, mostly from Not in Heaven, but instead, I'll
simply direct readers to everything in Essential Essays relating to
halakha. What I will quote is an unlikely source that most would not
think to link in: With G-d in Hell, one of his works on the Holocaust.

Chapter 9, "Now We Know", makes an unexpected veer into Chazal's
method of Midrash. I quote:

Pp 140ff:

The rabbis in the Talmud developed these teachings [of deemphasizing
warfare; REB has just quoted Samuel 2:4-9, 17:45-47; Psalms 44:7-8],
in their unique midrashic-homiletical style, through the
"interpretation" of appropriate passages in the Bible.

...

'Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O mighty one, thy glory and thy
majesty.' (Psalms 45:4)

The rabbis declared: the gibbor here, the mighty one, is the hero in
the mastery of the knowledge of Torah. (Shabbat 63a) And the "sword,"
we assume, is the sharpness of his intellect, the ingenuity with which
he is able to to prove the correctness of his teaching against all
comers. IN this alone they could see the "glory" and the "majesty" of
a Jew. Naive? Certainly not. The teachers of the Talmud knew well that
"the plain meaning of a biblical verse must never be given up." But
while they had unparalleled recall of the entire text of the Bible,
they were not "Bible scholars" in the sense that we understand that
term. They were teachers of Judaism. When they taught a biblical text
in which the term gibbor, hero, occurred, their main concern was
neither with the etymology of the word nor with its historic meaning,
but with the association that the concept ought to call forth in the
consciousness of the living Jew. For any person, the meaning of such a
word as "hero" will be determined by by the culture in the midst of
which it is uttered. Within Judaism, based on the Torah, the hero was
the great master who dedicated his life to the teaching and
transmission of the Torah from generation to generation.

...

What is significant here is that though the "reinterpretation" was a
new meaning imposed upon a much older text, it was nothing new in the
comprehensive context of Judaism. This "reinterpretation" occurs in
the following discussion: [Rabbi Berkovits summarizes the discussion
of carrying a weapon on Shabbat.] ... Rabbi Eliezer responds with the
words of the Psalmist quoted above, that the sword of the hero is his
"glory" and "majesty." His colleagues are not impressed. The hero? He
is the great teacher of Torah. This is obvious; who else could it
mean? The sword? It has, of course, only symbolical meaning. In actual
fact, Rabbi Eliezer is, of course, correct with regard to the specific
text. The rabbis know that. And, indeed, during the discussion they
quote the principle that the plain meaning of a biblical verse is not
to be given up. Still, the opinion of the rabbis is accepted as valid,
as the halakhically binding interpretation. The specific text must
submit to the "reinterpretation" demanded by the comprehensive
ideology of Judaism. The plain meaning of the specific text stands;
however, our concern here is not with text, but with Judaism, not with
"Bible scholarship," but with the life of the Jew. Because for the Jew
who lives Judaism, the "meaning" of the text is revealed ever anew as
he reads it in the living spirit of the totality of the Torah. Thus
the reinterpretation becomes quite natural and it is indeed the true
statement.

The task of reinterpretation is pursued consistently... [REB brings
further examples]

----

Now, Rav Berkovits here has been speaking of aggadic matters. But rest
assured, what he has just said here is remarkably similar to what he
says on halachic matters. I think all that Rabbi Berkovits has done,
is to conflate the aggadic and halakhic midrashic methods into one.

Moreover, we learn from many sources that:
1) Halakha can be forgotten and must be recovered by exegesis
2) Not all halakhot were given at Sinai - many were given in potentia,
and left to us to uncover as a seed sprouting and flowering.

Therefore, Chazal developed halacha, according to their midrashic
methods, when these two facts necessitated it. And they drashed in
ways to meet the new conditions of that generation, as needed - see
Rabbi Isidore Epstein [late principal of Jews' College] 's
introduction to the Soncino Midrash Rabbah, which is in striking
overlap with Rabbi Berkovits. Rabbi Epstein brings, for example,
Hillel drashing the prozbul, so as to support new socioeconomic
conditions. Hillel could just as well have said that all debts are to
be remitted, period. Instead, he sought to find a way to reconcile the
Torah's text with that generation's need to not remit debts - and
Hillel found the answer in his drash. But the drash was motivated by
need and conditions; Hillel did not coldly and analytically interpret
the text according to its pshat. He found a midrashic loophole because
he was looking for one.

Mikha'el Makovi