[Avodah] Truth and the Rambam

[Zvi Lampel]

On Wed, Sep 08, 2010 at 02:46:24PM +0200, Arie Folger wrote [not really,
RZL only quotes RAF quoting myself -micha]:
: RMB wrote:
:> 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?

On 9/13/2010 5:02 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> [I]n the Rambam's perspective...[t]he goal of life is to apprehend the 
> Truth....

> In all this he is very Aristotilian. ...[a]nd so, I find it unsurprising 
> to assume the Rambam views pesaq as a pursuit of truth rather than as a 
> legal process.

Thank you Micha for cc-ing me this post. If I understand you correctly,
you are suggesting the following:

(1) The Rambam, in explaining talmudic texts and poskening therefrom,
originally practiced in principle a "legal-process approach"
of uncritically following the Geonim's decisions and explanations
of talmudic passages. Rashi and all other familiar commentators also
followed this principle:

(2) However, between writing the Payrush HaMishnayos and writing the
Mishneh Torah, in his unique Aristotelian-influenced pursuit to reach
a one-and-only-one truth about things, he developed a new principle
of independent analysis of the talmudic texts, to determine their
one-and-only original intent, and at times found himself at odds with
what the Geonim said.

I seriously question this. The Rambam did not say he formerly held in
principle to ignore original intent in favor of some legal process. I
only see that he regretted a former lack of sufficiently testing the
Geonim's interpretations against the text to which they were applied.

Rashi, too, many times differs with his predecessors' interpretations,
based upon analysis of the original text. There is, for example, the
famous Rashi that differs with his teacher regarding the status of a law 
(whether it's d'oraiisa vs. d'rabannan)derived through a gezeyra shavva. 
To say that Rashi is more prone than Rambam to uncritically accepting 
earlier interpretations would require a great amount of study.

You wrote, "As I already cited from the two igeros RMShapiro translated 
... the Rambam consciously chose to understand the gemara as it read to 
him, and abandoned his previous approach, which he credits to his 
predecessors as well, of reading the gemara through the prism of the 
Geonim...."

However, I cannot find anywhere in these iggeros the Rambam attributing 
to others uncritical reading of the Gemora through the eyes of the 
Geonim. (I have the Mosaad HaRav Kook Rav Sheilat edition.) I see no 
indication from the Rambam's writings that he thought that previous 
poskim were any less focused than he was on the goal of determining what 
a talmudic passage's original intent was. As far as I can see, and as I 
would naturally think, the other poskim and commentators who came before 
and after the Rambam, in agreeing to the Geonim's interpretation of the 
contra Rambam's, held that the Geonim's take was indeed the original 
intent of the Gemora. They did not hold that there is a principle of 
"legal process" that discounts original intent.

I have a wonderful resource, the sefer "HaMachlokess BaHalacha" (Inst. 
Of Jewish Law, Boston U. School of Law and The Israeli Diaspora Inst.), 
which on pages 294 ff. quotes Rishonim in addition to the Rambam who 
maintain that those qualified with sufficient learning and stature were 
not bound by the commentaries or pesak of the Geonim when the source 
texts do not bear them out. These include the Sefer HaMaor, Hakdama (R. 
Zerachia HaLevy b. Yitzchak), HaMaspik L'Ovdei Hashem (R. Avraham ben 
HaRambam, 2:25, p. 176), Shu"T HaRashba 2:322 (note his qualification), 
the Rosh (Sanhedrin 4, siman 6; HaSh'eilos u'Teshuvos, 55:9), Meiri 
(Besi HaBechira, Bava Basra 130b, Sanhedrin 33a) Shu"T HaRyd 1, pp. 6-7; 
62) Shu"T HaRAm, 76), Shu"T Avkas Rochale R. Yosef Karo, 155, Sht"T Beis 
Yosef (Din Mayyim She'ain lahem sof, 1 [pp. 343-344]) Yam Shel Shlomo 
(R. Shlomo Luria, BK 141, Hakdama and BK 2, siman 5), HaGahos HaRama 
(Choshen Mishpat 25:1)--and I am only listing those Rishonim explicitly 
addressing differing with bona fide Geonim; still others deal with the 
broader issue of later Rishonim and Acharonim differing with earlier and 
greater Rishonim.

I therefore question the entire endeavor of distributing Rishonim into 
pigeon-holes of more or less obsequience to the Geonim. My understanding 
is that they are all each determined to find the original intent of the 
discussants in the talmudic texts, utilizing the learning of the Geonim 
as a major, but not exclusive, factor in doing so, working on a 
case-by-case basis.

For me to accept the extraordinary claim otherwise, you would have to 
show me where a rishon says, "We don't care about the truth; we are only 
interested in the formality of uncritically following the Geonim's 
conclusions." I only see indications that they were intensely concerned 
with the original intent of the gemora's passages.(I trust you do not 
accept a unique twist of the futile approach some use with the Rambam, 
and suggest that the Rishonim spoke esoterically and with a wink, not 
really meaning what they said.) All I can see is that when they did 
follow the Geonim's decisions, it was with the conviction that this was 
a means of determining the truth.

You also wrote:
> Similarly, there are numerous cases in which Rashi explains the mishnah
> as understood by the gemara, even if it's not the most straightforward
> read, whereas the Rambam explains the mishnah kipeshuto. (Rashi fits the
> mishnah to the gemara, the Rambam is more likely to fit the gemara to
> the mishnah.) One example we discussed here in the past is chatzi nezeq
> tzeroros .... where the Rambam is willing to place his dochaq -- on the 
> interpreter, not the primary source.

When I called attention to the different takes in the "chatzi nezek
tsruros" sugya Rambam and Rashi have on the relationship of the Gemora
to the Mishnah, I said that whereas Rashi understands the Mishna in
light of the Gemora, Rambam understands the Gemora in light of the
Mishna. But I see no reason to deny the natural default assumption that
both Rashi and the Rambam believed that their takes represented what
the Gemora understands to be the genuine original intent of the Mishnah.
Their methodologies differed in how we are to understand what the Gemora
meant to say the Mishna's original intent was---influenced by whether
we are to bend the otherwise apparent meaning of Mishnah's words to
conform to the Gemora's otherwise apparent meaning, or vice versa---but
they both believed that the Gemora was indeed reporting on the Mishna's
original intent.

RMB:
>Halakhah is an oral tradition -- the intent is for a checked evolution,
> for progressive interpretation.

> Rather than original intent or final encounter, we take a historical
> flow, a middle path. And it's the weight of that momentum that should
> impact the reader.

>This is valid because the pursuit of pesaq is the interpretation of law.
> And law allows for multiple valid interpretations that the decisor must
>select among.

> The Rambam, OTOH, is a classicist. He learned texts looking for
>original intent.

The idea that in transmitting the mesorah, the legal status of objects,
actions or thoughts should conform to a single original Intent predates
Aristotle and goes back to Moshe Rabbeynu and beyond. The entire
enterprise in the Gemora that pits one Mishnah or speaker against another
and concludes either that the later speaker is in error or that one of
the statements must be modified so that they conform, assumes that there
is a single original idea that must be complied with.

Zvi Lampel