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

[Zev Sero via Avodah]

On 26/07/17 12:50, Micha Berger wrote:
> I think you misrepresent the Rambam. The original is here
> <http://www.daat.ac.il/daat/mahshevt/rambam/hakdamat-2.htm#3>  (scrolled
> to the right place in the intro to Cheileq), but given that the list
> STILL can't do Hebrew, here's a translation from Merkaz Moreshet haRambam
> <https://www.mhcny.org/qt/1005.pdf>  (paragraphing theirs). I do not know
> how you can read the following and conclude anything but his insistence
> that midrashic stories are NOT history, and that
> 1- people who think otherwise and therefore believe nimna'os are
> aniyei daas, yeish lehitzta'er aleihem lesikhlusam;
> 2- people who think these stories are meant to be historical, realize
> they can't be, and yi'agu al divrei chakhamim; and
> 3- the wise few know that all they say about devarim hanimna'im were
> said bederekh chidah umashal.

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, so that if one rejects the literal reading of any 
maamar Chazal one must reject it altogether, because there is nothing 
else.   Given this false choice, the righteous fools accept the literal 
reading even if it poses terrible difficulties, while the wicked fools 
reject the maamar altogether, and therefore also its authors.  The wise 
understand that there's a lot *more* going on in a maamar Chazal than 
just the surface reading, and therefore *if the context indicates* that 
the surface reading was not intended to be accepted one may reject it 
without rejecting the whole maamar, just as Chazal themselves did with 
pesukim.

-- 
Zev Sero                May 2017, with its *nine* days of Chanukah,
zev at sero.name           be a brilliant year for us all