Dear one who ponders,



The point of Pamphlet #8 was to prove that most Halachic rulings decided in the Talmud are according to the reasoning of the Sages, and even the 13 methods are based on their reasoning. It does not matter if the principles behind the 13 methods were given at Sinai and the Sages debated these methods from their reason and knowledge or if the 13 methods are principles which the Sages developed based on their own reasoning. These two possibilities lead to a single conclusion; Halachic rulings based on one of the 13 methods are Halachic rulings based on human reasoning. You can learn this from Nachmanides, Maimonides’ antagonist. According to Maimonides (in the second root) the laws which have been concluded through one of the 13 methods should not be counted as part of the 613 commandments because they cannot be considered the word of the Torah. Nachmanides disagrees with Maimonides and wrote, in his novella, second root: “But it is a fundamental principle of the Talmud that anything developed in the Talmud through one of the 13 methods is the word of Torah and this is the meaning of ‘Torah was given to Moses’.” So you see that according to Maimonides laws which were ruled through the 13 methods are considered laws concluded through the opinion and reasoning of the Sages and not tradition given at Sinai.

So that our words will be properly understood, we will cite our own words in Pamphlet #8:

Most of the halacha is based on the 13 ways in which the Torah is elucidated: gzeira shava (analogy), kal va’khomer (an inference from minor to major), etc. But from where do we learn them? Did Moshe give them to us or did Chazal learn them on their own?

The Rambam, in the Laws of the Disobedient, chapter 1, wrote: “The great religious court in Jerusalem is the main part of the Oral Torah and they are the pillars of instruction; law and judgment come from them for all of Israel, etc. Either those things were taught to them by the Divine, and they are the Oral Torah, or those things they learned on their own according to one of the ways in which the Torah is elucidated and it seemed to them that thus was the matter,” end of quote. And so wrote the Rambam in chapter two, “In the great religious court they used one of the ways in which the Torah is elucidated, according to what seemed to them appropriate, that the law is this way, etc.,” end of quote. He wrote also in the Second Root of Sefer Ha’Mitzvot that one should not count as part of the 613 commandments the things one learns using any of the thirteen ways of elucidating the Torah, and therefore in the Laws of Interpersonal Relations, chapter one, halacha two, he ruled that consecrating a woman with money is from the words of the soferim, even though it was learned through the elucidation method of gzeira shava (analogy). And in his introduction to Seder Zeraim the Rambam wrote that anything which is controversial [in the Oral Law] is from the laws deduced through rational inference, to the point that he became a bulwark against those claiming that everything was given to Moshe at Sinai, and these are his words: But anyone who thinks that the laws on which they disagreed were also gotten from Moshe and think that there was a disagreement because of a halachic error or forgetfulness or that one had the correct received tradition and the other was mistaken, etc., all these are the words of one who has no sense and has no principles and damages the people from whom the commandments were received, and all this is for naught and is nullified, etc., for they [those in error] say that every acceptable interpretation is from Moshe and is true, and they did not differentiate between accepted principles and the history of the issue which brought them up for discussion,” end of quote. It is clear that the Rambam saw the 13 methods through which the Torah is elucidated as received from the sages, and all that is interpreted according to the 13 methods are the words of the soferim, aside from those few places where the sages explicitly said they were from the Torah. And so you see again that most of the laws which came from the Talmud are from the sages’ rational deduction, the words of flesh and blood.

N.B. To understand Maimonides’ opinion on the issue of “tradition given to Moses at Sinai” well, carefully read what we wrote on the portion of Bo.



Sincerely,



Daat Emet

Dear Chen,



We will bring support for your words from Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz OBM: “The Jewish religion creates the faith upon which it is based. This is a logical paradox, but it is not a religious paradox” (Judaism, the Jewish Nation, and the State of Israel, pg. 20).



Halacha is a human creation like any other human creation.



Sincerely,



Daat Emet