[Avodah] Tartei dSatrei

[David Riceman]

RMB found my previous post obscure, so I'm trying to write out an argument
in full. I'm visiting relatives and have limited internet access and no
library access so l'm citing minimal sources.

Usually the Mishna quotes psak halacha -- case law. Often the amoraim
construe the psak to be an example of a legal principle. I'll use the
term ta'am. "Ta'am" can mean different things in different contexts,
but it's used for legal principles in the examples I intend to cite.

In an ideal world we could identify a ta'am from a psak, but often
amoraim disagree about which ta'am generated the psak they're
discussing. Sometimes even tannaim argue about this. <examples?>

Leaf through masseches Eduyos and you'll see that the very strong
bias of the mishna is to preserve piskei halacha without preserving
ta'amim. This bias is recognized in halacha; a beis din will record a psak
din routinely, but when asked to record ta'amim they will individuate
the record ג€" one dayan said X, two dayanim said Y, and two more said
Z.(source?)

Let me introduce a bit more terminology. A "pure psak" is one that can
have been motivated by only one ta'am, and a "mixed psak" is one that
have been motivated by more than one ta'am. I wonder if there's a third
type ג€" one that could have been generated only by a vote. If I come
up with an example I'll add another term here.

Let's pause to consider Tshuvos Noda B'Yehudah II HM 3. The case is
this (he gives few details). Reuven sues Shimon for $100, $50 for grama
(indirect damages), and $50 for the cost of a failed attempt at recovery
of the first $50. One dayan rules against both claims, one rules in
favor only of the first, and one rules in favor only of the second. If
there had been two votes, one for each claim, Shimon would have won both
claims, but the vote was on total monetary damages, and the court ruled
that Shimon owed Reuven $50. Rabbi Landau upheld the ruling. In summary,
RYL ruled that battei din vote on psak, not on ta'am.

It's hard to learn anything definitive about grama from this claim because
we have the details neither of the case nor of the individual dayanim's
reasoning. Observe, however, that no dayan voted for both claims. Can we
conclude that the claims are contradictory? I don't think so. But if we
impute ta'amim to piskei dinim, as one of my rebbeim often did to the
tshuvos cited in Pischei Tshuvah, and as the amoraim seem to do when
citing the mishna, we might end up drawing that conclusion.

I want to expand this point. PT on SA usually cites the psak but not
the ta'am. My rebbi of the previous paragraph grew up in a poor town in
Poland, where he did not have access to the original tshuvos, but even
in America, where we had an ample library, his preferred methodology
was to impute ta'amim to the cited psakim rather than look them up. That
seems to have been the expectation of the author of PT as well.

So what's my problem? I was trained to pasken based on ta'am. Certainly
the gemara assumes something like that. The standard question "may
kasavar?" is predicated on "doesn't this imply that the author accepts
two contradictory ta'amim?" But if a psak is mixed how can I get a ta'am
from it? Why does halacha use a methodology which increases uncertainty?

This is more of a problem now than it used to be. The life portrayed by
the Shulhan Aruch is not very different from the life portrayed by the
Mishna, so psakim can easily be followed for generations. Nowadays we
have stainless steel pots and limited liability corporations, and we can
decide their halachic status only by imputing ta'amim to presumptively
mixed psak.

So RJR worries about mixing "methodologies", because they may somehow
contradict each other. He doesn't give details, but I, obsessed as
I am, can't but wonder whether the "methodologies" are proxies for
ta'amim. Do two poskim who accept the same ta'amim necessarily use the
same methodology, or are our problems generally distinct?

RMB wonders, in my terminology, if the Sanhedrin gives only pure psak,
and I respond by saying that in some circumstances they can't -- the
decision of RYL requires a mixed psak, and the Sanhedrin can't just
refuse to pasken. How, according to RMB, would they avoid this problem?

So how do I justify the methodology I grew up with? Why does the PT not
cite ta'amim? What's really going on?

David Riceman