[Avodah] The nature of the flow of Torah

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 7:15pm GMT, rabbirichwolpoe at gmail.com wrote
on the thread "When did Judaism begin?":
: This dovetails with the "split" between Ashkenazic approach to Halachah
: and the Andalusian-Sephardic approach

I'm not sure one can speak of "the Andalusian-Sepharadic" approach.
Reasons to follow...

: Ashk'naz - Torah is treated like "common law" and is based upon precedent,
: etc.
...
: Rambam holds Torah is legislated
: First @ Sinai
: Then Bd Hagadol in Y-layim
...

I think this is uniquely Rambam. As I already quoted a few times
recently, the Rambam explicitly says he is breaking from someone --
probably the Rif -- on this very issue. The standard approach, taken
by the Rif and R' Avraham ben haRambam, aside from people not on either
side of his chain of mesorah (eg Rashi) is that a the most relevent
element of a tanna's statement is how it's developed by amora'im,
which in turn is binding in terms of how it was understood by the
geonim. The Rambam himself explicitly states that he used to do the
same (following someone who isn't named; probably the Rif)
but changed his mind before the Yad. For the rest of his life, the
Rambam aspired to understand maamarim from a clean slate.

But that's distinctly Rambam, not Andalusian in general.

Just as neither the IE nor R' Avraham b' haRambam were rationists,
regardless of their being no less Sepharadi than the Rambam. (The IE
was an astrologer from Tudela, in Narvonne, but he too fled the Almohads
and spent most of his life in Northern Africa, Egypt and EY.)

Personally, I think it all flows from his Aristotilian attitude toward
the role of knowledge, and thus Truth. The Rambam sees ethical perfection
as secondary, a side-effect of man's primary quest of yedi'ah.

And so it's unsurprising that he concluded that TSBP is something to be
known, with a single Truth, rather than a redemptive process for
creating law.

But I think he was a daas yachid, and it wasn't too long after that even
the Andalusians were ripe for adhering to the SA, written by a mequbal
no less, rather than the Yad.

: It's top-down. Authoritarian.
: More Sinai like
: 
: EG You don't see a lot of "yeish omrims" in Mishnah Torah, because there
: is ONE way.

OTOH, the Bavli is sevara oriented, but has less of a variety of shitos
than the Y-mi. And the Y-mi tends to resolve things based on who had
meqoros in tannaim instead of that sevara. I think it's because the
Rambam isn't about Authority -- that would be establishing law, not
finding truth. "Qabel es ha'emes mimi she'omro" gives reason to defy
authority in a quest for emes.

The reason why there is only ONE way is again because he is seeking
truth. Law or technique could have multiple right answers. That is
harder to say about Truth (particularly when you only have classic
logics).

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             I always give much away,
micha at aishdas.org        and so gather happiness instead of pleasure.
http://www.aishdas.org           -  Rachel Levin Varnhagen
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