[Avodah] History

[Michael Makovi]

>  the members of Chazal who derived halakhos from such stories could still have
>  not assumed they were historical. One assumes a rule of the system is
>  that one does not besmirch a role model by attributing actions to them
>  that are today (at the time of the retelling) considered assur. Then,
>  the survival of a story into the corpus would imply that there are no such
>  issurim contained therein. It's a way to pick the brains of the previous
>  generations who brought the story down to the one drawing the conclusion.
> R' Micha

We could generalize this to say that any story of a gadol, in which he
is depicted as doing such-and-such, we can learn that such is a
legitimate way of behaving. Even if he didn't really do it, the fact
that he is thought of having done it, lends it legitimacy.

I'm reminded of mesechet Shabbat, about where we learning carrying in
the mishkan. We learn that Moshe's command in last week's parsha, to
stop doing melacha and bringing to the mishkan, was on Shabbat. But
the Gaonim and Gaonic Rishonim (Rabbenu Chananel, Rif, etc.) delete
this last part about its being on Shabbat; they say that just by
calling carrying a melacha, we learn that it is one of the 39, and it
doesn't matter whether it was on Shabbat or on Tuesday.

Similarly, the Gemara says that no one actually planted dyes for the
mishkan; we brought dyed thread with us out of Egypt! But the Gemara
says, were you to build your own mishkan from scratch today, you'd
plant your own dyes. Based on this, the Sefat Emet solves a riddle:
the Gemara says kosheir u'matir was in the nets for catching chilazon.
But where did they catch chilozonim??!! No, says the SE; they brought
techelet thread out of Egypt, but were you to build your own mishkan
today, you too would catch the chilazon!

Of course, there are many questionable stories of gedolim depicting
things they definitely would not have done. But hopefully we can agree
that Chazal did not tell such stories.

As my rabbi might say, you have to drink a lechaim to the hava amina.

I'm reminded of a story of the Chofetz Chaim: he was in court as the
guarantor for a loan, and his lawyer testified to his character with a
story: a thief robbed the CC, and the CC ran after the thief yelling,
"It's yours now! It's yours now! You have not stolen!" The judge very
skeptically asked whether the lawyer honestly believed such a story.
The lawyer replied, "I don't know, but I do know that they don't tell
such stories about you and me".

Mikha'el Makovi