[Avodah] Ta'am of eating matzah

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 03:14:20PM +0300, Michael Makovi wrote:
: But R' Rich has a point - there are MANY cases in the Torah which
: modern studies have shown connections to ancient practices and
: knowledge that the first generations would have been very very well
: aware of. Surely it cannot be mere coincidence!

But surely that can't be the be all and end all.

I'm reminded of the Narvoni's take on the Moreh on why we have
qorbanos. It's a famous problem: In the Yad, the Rambam clearly refers
to qorbanos as ledoros (starting with their mere inclusion), but in the
Moreh he says they are to ween us from AZ, which had taqroves. According
to the Moreh, why would they be ledoros?

There are a numbert of answers, I discuss a few of them in
<http://www.aishdas.org/mesukim/5764/vayikra.pdf> and
<http://www.aishdas.org/asp/2005/03/purpose-of-qorbanos.shtml>.

The Narvoni (quoted by the Abarbanel at the beginning of Vayiqra)
understands the MN as saying that the need for qorbanos is an innate
human limitation. We should be able to connect to the A-lmighty without
the intangible. How do we know it's innate? Because when people didn't
have an opportunity to offer qorbanos, they brought offerings to AZ. It
spontaneously emerged.

Thus, the need for an AZ alternative is innate, and therefore ledoros.

We therefore can understand qorbanos better with historical context. But
even if you never knew that animal sacrifice was once a ubiquitous part
of worship, it would still serve to bring us closer to HQBH.


Part of the problem is that I didn't emphasize the point that I was
speaking of "osos" strongly enough for RMM or RRW to notice.

: To add more examples:
: - In the Torah we find many Semitic idioms. If one follows R' Yishmael
: that the Torah speaks in the language of men, then it means that many
: of the literary oddities we find in the Torah and try to darshon, are
: simply ordinary everyday Semitic idioms that no one originally found
: odd at all....

: - With the goring ox, we are told that the owner must pay, even if it
: gores a child. Rabbi Hertz points out that until the Code of Hamurabi
: was discovered, no one knew why goring a child ought to be
: different....

What about eirukhin? Children are assesed at less money.

But in any case, these aren't issues of understanding osos.

...
: You are taking issue with the idea that the Torah presumes knowledge
: of Egytian bread and pagan meat and milk...

I'm taking issue with the idea that we need such knowledge to get the
primary gain from the mitzvah.

Part of the problem is that the two people who disagreed with my post
have a more nomian and less ontological view of mitzvos. If you think
in contractual terms, the function of mitzvos is not at issue. But if
you think in terms of mitzvos as the means (or the tools which someone
can choose to make the means) to his-haleikh lefanai veheyei samim, then
the notion that mitzvos are based on things that are neither innate in
the human nature or recorded in the Torah becomes problematic.

(In this light, chuqim must be innate, and in some way that we don't
understand about our own natures.)

How is it supposed to refine me to avoid Egyptian-style baking for a
week when for most of my people's history I couldn't be expected to know
that's what I'm doing?

OTOH, the Torah does tell us it's the bread of poverty and of the hasty
departure from Egypt. The reason R' Gamliel holds we must mideOraisa
mention for eating matzah is recorded, and doesn't require expertise
we usually didn't have. The experience of changing diet for something
visually less puffed up doesn't even require knowing the naarative in
seifer Shemos!

I therefore am much more comfortable considering these the primary
meanings of the mitzvah. They can change the non-historian, refine
his tzelem E-lokim.

: Actually, this is in fact davka why Rav Hirsch says we must learn
: Canaanite, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Roman culture and history - he
: says we cannot understand the Torah's moral laws without knowing what
: they are polemicizing against. I will humbly suggest we extend Rav
: Hirsch's words to many ritualistic laws too.

That may be alst talmud Torah. But IMHO mitzvos ma'asiyos must conform to
"na'aseh venishmah", or "ta'amu ure'u" -- the experience itself should
be able to teach without having a backgrounder.

I throw in that repeated IMHO advisedly, since I don't think RSRH's symbol
system would require this. My stance shifted in the past 15 years from
Frankfurt toward Salant. RSRH mentions in his introduction that symbols
are a form of communication via agreed-upon semantics between Sender
and recipient. There is no demand that they have any innate function,
fitted to inevitably work given the fixed elements of the human condition.

: So you object that if we aren't aware of them, this poses a difficulty
: to their being otot. But a few points:
: 1) G-d wanted to give us 5 books, not 50. He couldn't include a
: history book to summarize all of the foreign cultures. He gave us what
: was manageable for a scribe.

This doesn't address my problem. If the mitzvah can't work because
people don't know what it addresses, then why not drop it along with
the other 45 books?

: 2) If we don't remember this things, perhaps it is simply a sign the
: Torah did its job! ...

This is subject to the problem with understanding the qorbanos as weaning.

: 3) Who knows how much Exile destroyed our memory, by disrupting
: mesorah and such? Besides the Romans killing all our rabbis, who knows
: how many rabbis and grandfathers and kohanim/leviim died under Bavel,
: and disrupted our mesorah? We know that the Torah was forgotten until
: Ezra and Hillel, and maybe this includes much history and cultural
: knowledge too.

At least this answer could work -- we broke the system. This is basically
saying the other 45 books from option one were in TSBP, and they were
tragically lost.

But as above, while it might work, I find it unappealing because it
relegates the last two millenia (or 2,500 years) to running largely on
autopilot, performing empty gestures. Unappealing enough to be unable
to believe it would be allowed to happen.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Today is the 31st day, which is
micha at aishdas.org        4 weeks and 3 days in/toward the omer.
http://www.aishdas.org   Tifferes sheb'Hod: What level of submission
Fax: (270) 514-1507                      results in harmony and balance?