[Avodah] a few questions

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Jul 11, 2023 at 07:55:08PM -0400, Joel Rich via Avodah wrote:
> The machloket between Rashi and Tosafot, as to whether kal vachomer is the
> only one of the 13 midot that one can learn on their own without a
> tradition or is gzeira shaava the only one needing a tradition seems very
> late in the game (meaning one would've expected to see this disagreement
> articulated earlier on)

It may have also happened very late in the game.

Perhaps it isn't that in principle gezeira shava (and potentially most
other rules of derashah) requires a mesorah. Perhaps it is a statement
that too much of the art of composing a new g"sh was lost for anyone to
still compose new ones.

First, derashah was an art form, like poetry.

Then, we started losing the art, so Hillel, then R Yishmael and R Aqiva,
gave them formal structures, finding categories that the set of existing
derashos fit to make rules of derashah.

In fact, that line of reasoning could even reduce the machloqes you
speak of. (It's on Shabbos 97a, no?) Perhaps they are asking about the
generations of R Yehudah ben Beseirah through R Aqiva in particular. At
that point in time, everyone agrees that we lost too many details of
g"sh to coin new ones. And today, we don't make new derashos. But when
did we lose the details necessary to make the other forms of derashah?

As for qal vachomer... No surprise that rule has longevity. The bigger
surprise is how a simple rule of logic got onto the list of derashos to
begin with.

One guess I have been harboring, but have no way to confirm or disprove:
The a fortiori itself is all logic. But there is an inductive step. To
put that another way: Once you say that X is more stringent across the
board than Y, any stringencies you find in Y must also be true of X. But
how do you established that X is always more stringent than Y? We build
it up inductively, from laws that are known to be stricter. E.g. issur
kareis vs a regular lav, or melakhos Shabbos vs those of YT.

The right to build a rule like that is, I am arguming, closer to a binyan
av from laws written in the Torah to establish that X is categorically
more chamur.

> Somewhat similar on Dina dmalchuta, why did it wait until Shmuel to be
> articulated?

In which case, it wouldn't be articulated until true.

But derashah in general went through systemization, and notably nearer
to the end of its creative life. (Which is why I built up the above
model.) From Hillel's 5 broader categories, later tannaim build up
theories involving the derashah of concepts (R Yishma'el's 13 rules) or
the derashah of words (R Aqiva's 19). Not that any of this discussion
about systemization stopped R Aqiva from making a kelal uperat, or R
Yishmael from making a ribui umi'ut.

So, discussing which rules were lost would wait for them being lost,
and for coining the terminology in which to be able to give labels for
what was lost.

Of course, if you understand the idea that derashos require mesorah mean
that each and every derashah is miSinai, you have to explain machloqesin
(perhaps the pasuq was pointed to but not the din?), how Moshe Rabbeinu
couldn't understand R Aqiva's shiur (Rashi: he was brought to visit the
shiur before he learned that sugya directly from HQBH), and the medrash
on Rus that says that "Moavi velo Moavis" was first darshened when Rus's
presence raised the quation. (And Peloni Almoni declined because he was
afraid that a future Beis Din would invalidate his children.)

> Lastly, on the Gemara in Magilla which discusses saying kriat shma lmafrea
> the conclusion dvarim hadvarim lo mashma -- how would you explain the
> disagreement to a 13-year-old as to why one party would say that is worthy
> of a drasha and the other party says no?

There was a fundamental machloqes about what drives derashah.

R Aqiva even darshened tagin. And the word "es". His ribui umi'ut rules
are based on keywords -- akh, raq, kol... He dealt in words. Aseir
ta'aseir may be normal grammar, but why would the Torah double the root
like that if not to draw our attention? Very textual.

R Yishmael held that dibera Torah belashon benei adam. The hei of
hadevarim works grammatically, as does aseir ta'aseir, or the word "es",
and there is no derashah to be made. A kelal is the nature of the meaning
of a clause in the sentence, not like ribui's categorization of words.

They established two batei medrash, from which came the medrashei
halakhah. And one can divide the styles of the medrashei halakhah by
whether they are DeVei R Yishmael or DeVei R Aqiva.

Until R Aqiva started a new way of teaching halakhah. A work passed on
to his talmid R Meir, and eventually completed by Rebbe. (See R Yochanan
on Sanhedrin 86a, Tosefta, Sifra and Sifrei also went from R Aqiva to
a talmid who ends up being the voice of the "stam", and then completed
during the first generation of amoraim.)

With the acceptance of the mishnah, R Aqiva's school "won".

https://aspaqlaria.aishdas.org/2021/08/03/midrashei-halakhah-2/

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 The mind is a wonderful organ
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   for justifying decisions
Author: Widen Your Tent      the heart already reached.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF