[Avodah] Lying to protect the simple of faith

[Michael Makovi]

> Tosafos is a hapax legamenon, and its translation was lost. Chazal used
> comparison to other languages to try to recapture its roots, and got
> "two pairs", ie four. Pulling in another language isn't on anyone's list
> of middos shehatorah nidreshes bahem, but it is a tool used by linguists
> to decode words.
>
> R' Micha

The linguistic analysis of R' Micha is interesting. Rav Hirsch,
however, has a different take:

In volume five of his collected writings, Frankel (or maybe his
follower, whose name I forget) rhetorically asks Rav Hirsch if he'll
trust Chazal's etymology of things like "prozbul" and "totafot". Given
that Rav Hirsch studied some linguistics (both Semitic and classical,
I believe), I'm sure this opponent thought he'd have Rav Hirsch in a
crunch between his faith in Chazal and his secular knowledge.

Rav Hirsch replies very simply that we don't really care if Chazal's
etymology is accurate - it doesn't really matter if "totafot" has any
relation to Afriqi and Kaspi; and while "prozbul" is obviously Greek
and not Aramaic despite Chazal's etymology, we actually don't care.
For really, we are concerned with what the institution of "prozbul"
means to Chazal, not what it means etymologically. So too with
tefillin, we are concerned first and foremost with the halacha (which
isn't disputed), and any etymology is asmachta. So folk etymology is
absolutely fine, and it doesn't trouble us, for halachic/aggadic
meaning is true even if the etymology isn't.

This is all the more interesting, given that Rav Hirsch was very
staunch in his method of Hebrew etymology, and refused to use
comparative linguistics to determine the definitions of Hebrew words
(for they are from heaven and do not originate from Aramaic or
Akkadian or whatnot), except for when the Aramaic corroborates what he
has already derived from Hebrew. (For example, with the division of
Babel, Rav Hirsch goes into a whole analysis of how the division
occurred due to social dissension that caused parties to split up, and
not a giant swat from G-d, he then notes that in the Gemara, peligei
means to argue.)

Mikha'el Makovi