[Avodah] Halachic who is right from "The Lost Scotch"

[Daniel Israel]

On Wed, 28 Mar 2007 13:45:35 -0600 Micha Berger <micha at aishdas.org> 
wrote:
>Then there is Hillel's kol haTorah kulah al regel achas, 
>"De'aleikh sani..." Somehow, assuming infinite knowledge and 
intellect, 
>all of halakhah can be derived from this simple rule.

It's a beautiful vort, and a fascinating philosophical jumping of 
point, but I'm not convinced that you have to read the Gemara that 
way.  Is "kol HaTorah kulah" meant literally, or, given the fact 
that this was an answer to a perhaps unanswerable question, can't 
we say Hillel was giving a closest possible answer, but without the 
deeper ramification you are suggesing?

--
Daniel M. Israel
dmi1 at cornell.edu