[Avodah] How game theory solved a religious mystery

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 09:49:24AM -0400, Rich, Joel wrote:
:> ... the great Gaon... Rav Eliyahu... I
:> heard from his holy mouth that according to what a person is lacking
:> in knowledge of the "other wisdoms," correspondingly he will be
:> lacking one hundred portions in the wisdom of the Torah, because the
:> Torah and the 'other wisdoms' are inextricably linked together ..."
:> (From the Introduction to the Hebrew translation of Euclid's book on
:> geometry, Sefer Uklidos [The Hague, 1780] by R. Barukh Schick of Shklov)

: So I've often wondered if the GRA thought this way (and I agree-not
: that that means anything), and he thought the Rambam was philosophically
: way off base (Aristotle and all that) , why wouldn't he not have accepted
: the Rambam's halacha as being deficient due to this inextricable link.

I must confess I personally feel an estrangement from shitas haRambam
for this reason.

The Rambam treats halakhah as a science not a legal system. Ironically,
the elimination of the idea that a law is open to multiple
interpretations, and thus is not subject to Aristotle's Law of
Contradiction (that A cannot be both true and fale), means means that
leshitas haRambam more things are rabbinic enactments. He can not say
an idea is miSiania but our interpretation of the idea changed; and so
the Rambam is compelled to give the halakhos derived from derashos a
later date.

And so, the Rambam can not have a concept of multiple correct
interpretations, since Aristo is so black-and-white in his logic, with
no grays.

Also, Aristo is a source the Rambam invokes when associating redemption
with acquisition of Truth. And so Torah must be to him a search for
Truth, not a search for a redemptive path -- where redemption includes,
but isn't defined as Truth.

For the same reason the Rambam, between the Peirush haMishnayos and
the Yad, dismissed the notion of relying on later sources to interpret
earlier ones -- he instead confronts the texts themselves with a clean
slate, trying to reach original meaning. Even WRT mishnayos vs amora'im;
although the letters I'm referring to (Igeros haRambam, Silat ed. pg
305, 647) were about approaching Chazal only through the primary sources
without the tradition of interpretation of the ge'onim.

Googling, I found this English translation of the aforementioned igeros
by R' Marc Shapiro:
    This confusion that people have with regard to the Perush HaMishnah
    is entirely due to the fact that I corrected it in places. The Creator
    knows that most of my mistakes were due to my having followed Geonim,
    z"l, such as Rabbeinu Nissim in his Megilas Setarim and Rav Chefetz,
    z"l, in the Sefer HaMitzvos, and others whom it is difficult for me
    to mention. (pg 305)

    That which is codified in the chibbur [i.e. the Yad -mb] is
    undoubtedly correct, and so we wrote as well in the Perush HaMishnah,
    and that which is in your hands [an early version of the Peirush
    haMishnayos -mb] is the first version which I released without proper
    diligence. And I was influenced in this by the Sefer HaMitzvos of
    Rav Chefetz, z"l, and the mistake was in his [analysis], and I just
    followed after him without verifying. And when I further evaluated
    and analyzed the statements [of Chazal], it became clear that the
    truth was what we recorded in the chibbur and we corrected the Perush
    HaMishnah accordingly. The same happened in so many places that the
    first version of the Perush HaMishnah was subsequently modified, tens
    of times. Each case we had originally followed the opinion of some
    Gaon, z"l, and afterwards the area of error became clear. (pg 647)

This focus on primary sources rather than an acnkowledgement of the
Torah's inherent orality and fluidity means that the Rambam isn't using
a halachic process that remotely resembles the ones "everyone" else does.

If we buy into the Rambam's model of what halakhah is -- which, again,
has Aristotelian foundation -- not only did the chassidim bend the
halachic process into a pretzel, there are NO observant Jews today.
And thus the contrapositive, if we accept the halachic process as
practiced by acharonim and arguably most rishonim, then what do we do
with what the Rambam describes?

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "And you shall love H' your G-d with your whole
micha at aishdas.org        heart, your entire soul, and all you own."
http://www.aishdas.org   Love is not two who look at each other,
Fax: (270) 514-1507      It is two who look in the same direction.