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

[Zev Sero via Avodah]

On 26/07/17 14:31, Micha Berger wrote:
> The first kat are criticized for believing the literal version.
> Not for believing it to the exclusion of a deeper meaning,

He explicitly says *yes* for believing it to the exclusion of a deeper 
meaning.  It's right in his words.

"They accept the teachings of the sages in their simple literal sense 
and do not think that these teachings contain any hidden meaning at all. 
[...] They, therefore, believe that the sages intended no more in their 
carefully emphatic and straightforward utterances than they themselves 
are able to understand with inadequate knowledge. They understand the 
teachings of the sages only in their literal sense".

That's *why* they're so attached to the surface meaning that they can't 
let it go even when the context indicates otherwise -- because they're 
unaware there *is* any other meaning, so they think if they reject it 
they'd be rejecting the maamar itself ch"v, and they don't want to do 
that.   The third group understand that there is more going on, and 
therefore it's acceptable, *when the context calls for it*, to say that 
a specific maamar *has* no surface meaning, and thus trying to make 
sense of its words as a straight narrative is futile.


> 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. 

Nonsense is nonsense; one cannot make sense of it.  If a passage appears 
on its surface to be a mere word salad, and one is aware that it has 
deeper levels, then it's easy to conclude that it has no surface level 
at all.  But if one is unaware of the possibility of deeper readings 
then one will strive to find sense on the surface and come up with all 
sorts of strange interpretations, because ones mind is imposing order on 
something that has none.

"Unreasonable" does not mean "requires miracles".  It is the very 
attitude that regards the supernatural as inherently unreasonable that 
I'm calling apikorsus.

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