[Avodah] The 93 Beit Yaakov Martyrs: A Modern Midrash

[Micha Berger via Avodah]

On Wed, Jul 26, 2017 at 01:34:24PM -0400, Zev Sero wrote:
: On the contrary, I think you are misrepresenting him.  Using your
: own translation, he explicitly criticises those (on both sides) who
: imagine that Chazal's words are *only ever* meant literally, and
: have no meaning *but* the literal...

The first kat are criticized for believing the literal version.
Not for believing it to the exclusion of a deeper meaning, but for
    understand[ing] the teachings of the sages only in their literal
    sense, in spite of the fact that some of their teachings when taken
    literally, seem so fantastic and irrational that if one were to
    repeat them literally seem so fantastic and irrational that if one
    were to repeat them literally, even to the uneducated, let
    alone sophisticated scholars, their amazement would prompt
    them to ask how anyone in the world could believe such
    things true, much less edifying.
Even the uneducation should know they're not literraly true. No? And
he attacks them for
    expound[ing] the laws and the teachings of our sages in such a way
    that when the other peoples hear them they say that this little
    people is foolish and ignoble.

"Yeish lahem dibah veharichuq min haseikhel..."

When it comes to the 2nd group, yes, they could reach the same dismissive
attitude whether the problem is their believing that Chazal taught us to
believe the absurd, or that Chazal taught us stories rather than anything
of depth.

However, the Rambam doesn't criticize their assuming that the literal is
silly. He criticizes their assuming that Chazal meant the literal and
therefore that their teachings are silly.


But the third kat, like the first, is more clearly about the need to
sometimes abandon the litaral:
    The members of this group understa nd that the sages knew as clearly
    as we do the difference between the impossibility of the impossible
    and the existence of that which must exist. They know that the sages
    did not speak nonsense, and it is clear to them that the words of
    the sages contain both an obvious and a hidden meaning.

If the literal is impossible or nonsense, which the Rambam believes is
a meaningful category -- and not "anything is possible to G-d" -- then
this third kat rejects it. To resume where I left off:
    Thus, whenever the sages spoke of things that seem impossible, they
    were employing the style of riddle and parable which is the method
    of truly great thinkers.

And he adds further down:
    But if you belong to the third grou p, when you encounter
    a word of the sages which seems to conflict with reason, you
    will pause, consider it, and realize that this utterance must
    be a riddle or a parable.

Unreasonable literal readings point to maamarei chazal that have
only nimshal meaning, and the Rambam would not want us to believe the
fantastic, irrational or unbelievable.

Nor is the Rambam alone; RDE's Daas Torah has pages of sources about the
historicity or ahistoricity of medrash. RDE posted a summary here years
back.

R/Prof Y Levine would shortly be pointing us to RSRH's position,
if this didn't forestall him:
    http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/faxes/hirschAgadaHebrew.pdf
    http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/faxes/hirschAgadaHebrew.pdf

-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Zion will be redeemed through justice,
micha at aishdas.org        and her returnees, through righteousness.
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