[Avodah] R Tzadok-TSBP

[Michael Makovi]

Thank you for this; I found it fascinating.

I am reminded of Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, in Jewish Wisdom, quoting
Hyam Maccoby regarding the tanur achnai, to the effect that G-d gave
us the Torah, but that like all fathers, He wants us to grow up and
develop the Torah ourselves.

Cf. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in To Heal the World: G-d, like a parent,
wants us to learn ourselves, and so, like all parents, He doesn't tell
us everything He knows. G-d has His own secrets on high, but we are
not concerned with this; we are concerned with human justice here on
earth. Rabbi Sacks quotes Rabbi Nahum Eliezer Rabinovitch, that Moshe
didn't want to see G-d at the burning bush, because he didn't want to
see why the suffering deserve their punishment. G-d has His reasons
for the travails of the suffering, but this is not our concern; we are
here on earth, and our concern is with solving that suffering, not
understanding it and reconciling ourselves to it. In this way, Rabbi
Sacks refutes Marx that religion is the opiate of the masses; whereas
the Babylonians and others indeed said that social hierarchy reflects
G-d's will, the prophets of Israel were rather inspired by their
religion to combat injustice.

We often say that the meraglim preferred the ascetic lifestyle of food
direct from G-d over trying to infuse the real world with holiness in
Israel. Rabbi Tzadok's applying this to the Written Law (in the
desert, i.e. halakhah straight from G-d to Moshe) and the Oral Law is
fascinating.

My mother always taught me that G-d cut off prophecy from us, because
He wanted us to grow up and be able to survive without His constant
express guidance. (When I say that my becoming observant was the
direct and logical result of my mother's teachings, I mean it!) I was
then amazed to see that Rabbi Tzadok similarly says that in the Second
Temple, prophecy ceased because we were ready for the higher and
fuller and most authentic form of the Oral Law, finally cutting
ourselves off from express Divine guidance.

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Professor Marc Shapiro, in "The Brisker Method Reconsidered"
(Tradition 31:3, Spring 1997), writes,
The story of the "oven of Aknai" (Bava Metsia 59b) teaches that as far
as Torah interpretations are concerned, original intent is not the
decisive factor. It is the conclusion of the sages which is central.
Even when God Himself reveals His intention, we do not listen to Him,
for it is God's will that after the  Torah was given, it be explained
through human intellect.

Professor Shapiro's article is largely concerned with the fact that
even though the Brisker method fails to explain what the historical
Rambam actually intended, the Brisker method nevertheless succeeds in
creating hiddushim that are authentic in their own right. Says
Professor Shapiro:
However, one must not conclude from this that because these hiddushim
are not historically correct explanations of Maimonides' view, that
they are not "true." They are indeed true and as much a part of Torah
study as are all other hiddushim. Presumably, R. Hayyim knew that his
hiddushim, even though they were consistentwith the words of
Maimonides, did not reflect the historically accurate position of the
latter. However, uncovering the historically accurate teaching of an
author is the work of an historian or a commentator who concentrates
on the peshat. It is not the realm of the interpreter, who, by all
available measures, produces hiddushim, however much he denies that
his interpretative endeavor should be characterized as such. Such an
expositor is only concerned that his ideas be consistent with the work
he is commenting on, the work he is using as a springboard for his
hiddushim. He is not interested in original intent. In his mind, a
book has a life of its own and can be interpreted on its own terms.

Last night, Rabbi David bar Hayim taught Rav Kook's hakdama to his Ein
Ayah. There, Rav Kook distinguishes between perush - the original
intent of the author - and biur - expository drash beyond what the
original author intended. Rabbi Bar Hayim says biur is perfectly
legitimate and true, as long as one realizes that one cannot claim the
original author's authority is attached to your drash. Similarly, says
Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, as quoted by Professor Shapiro, one cannot
claim that his Brisker-style hiddushim have the authority of the
Rambam himself behind them.

Professor Wyschogrod, reviewing Professor Marvin Fox on the Rambam, in
Tradition 28:2 (1994) says,
Contemporary French and German philosophy is particularly aware of the
complexity of the interpretive enterprise itself. Fox seems to think
that the criterion of a correct interpretation of Maimonides is
Maimonides' intention and almost nothing else. The author is the
sovereign owner of his work and the task of the interpreter is to try
to fathom, as best as he can, what the author meant when he wrote. But
once a work is written, it embarks on a life of its own. The author is
not a privileged interpreter because an author may be quite unaware of
significant issues lurking in the margins of his work. The midrashic
method is so interesting because it frees itself from searching for
"the" meaning of the text because it understands that interpretation
is an interplay between text and interpreter with the interpreter
sometimes playing a more important role than the author. The very
notion that a text is created by a sovereign author is itself
questionable. Often, the author is the instrument through whom complex
linguistic, structural and symbolic systems express themselves. The
simple search for the "intention" of the author is an unreflective
stage of interpretation.

Professor Shapiro (ibid.) notes,
Furthermore, it is possible that an author is not aware of all the
wisdom contained in his work. This idea is well established in
literary circles, which stress that the most reasonable interpretation
is not necessarily identical with the position of the author. Although
the notion that an author understands his words better than everyone
else would appear to be self-evident, and most intellectual historians
still operate in this fashion, modern literary and philosophical
thought argue that even the author does not recognize all that is
found in his work, both in terms of backround and motivation as well
as content.

Professor Haim Kreisel applies all this to the Kuzari:
http://hsf.bgu.ac.il/cjt/files/electures/kuzari1.htm
Similarly, Professor Adam Shear's book The Kuzari and the Shaping of
Jewish Identity, 1167–1900, says similarly in his introduction.

R' Rich Joel once ([Avodah] What is Midrash?
http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol25/v25n366.shtml#04) brought us
http://www.vbm-torah.org/archive/midrash69/01midrash.htm, saying:
Underlying all of these rabbinic reading strategies is a common
underlying assumption about the biblical texts, and perhaps texts in
general, that is quite different from modern conventional wisdom. We
tend to think of texts as containing specific meanings. The act of
reading a text is then the process of decoding this meaning and
revealing it to ourselves and others. The rabbis do not understand the
process of reading the Bible in this way. For them the text contains
only the potential for meaning. In their view, in reading the biblical
text we actually generate meaning from out of the raw material that is
the Bible. In principle any given verse can produce infinite meaning.
Indeed, Chazal tend to seek as much meaning as possible from each and
every verse. This does not of course mean that the biblical text may
mean anything we want it to. Quite the contrary, only rabbis who are
trained in the traditions and ways of Midrash know the proper way to
“grow” the meaning of the text.

Michael Makovi