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Speaker 1: Greetings friends, and welcome to the podcast of Jewish Ideas

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a Torah in motion production i'm jj Kimrie. Over the

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last thousand years or so, much of the intellectual creativity

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of Jewish scholars has been spent writing on matters of

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Halachah or Jewish law. Oceans of ink have been spilled

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on the endeavors of explaining and expanding Jewish law, which

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continue unabated to this day. Halaric writing comes in various forms,

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and in the past centuries has been rather dominated in

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certain respects by two specific forms. One is halaric codes,

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in which the author lists the bottom line of the

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law as he sees it, whereas the other is halarchic

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responsor a lot truvat, in which the scholar seeks to

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apply the law to specific cases. These two genres represent

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two entirely different ways of analyzing, applying, and conceiving of

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Jewish law. And there's these fruitful differences between these genres

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that shall be capturing our attention today. With us to

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talk about these genres of halahi writing is him Seman,

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a professor of law and chair in Jewish Law at

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Villanova University as well as a dian on the bed

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Din of America. He has published widely on topics in

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both American and Jewish law, including his acclaimed work Halacha,

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the Rabbinic Idea of Law, published by Princeton University Press

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in twenty eighteen. It is a pleasure to welcome Professor

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Simon to the Podcast of Jewish Ideas today.

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Speaker 2: Welcome sir, Thank you, thank you, jayj. It's great being

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with you. Although usually we have some scotch and charllt

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when we meet after Kiddish, during Kiddish after sure, but

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we'll make do today with the virtual interface.

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Speaker 1: I agree. It's usually usually conversations are greatly improved by

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scotch and challenge, So today we'll have to have to

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see what we could do without it. So I'm interested

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in discussing these these two types of halakk writing. And

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so let's start a little bit with with halaki responsor,

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because I think they are slightly older, and just ask.

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I mean, firstly, how would one define halaki responsor slats

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of true VOTs? What exactly are they? When did they emerge?

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What are their principal characteristics? Give us a little of

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an overview of that.

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Speaker 2: Sure, So as the as the name that we use

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shlotin shoe vote indicates they kind of can include anything

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in which somebody asks a rabbi a question and the

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rabbi provides an answer in truth. Already in the Gamarah

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there are examples shall right so so so in some

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sense the genre of shlotin shoe vote is already found

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in the Gamara, where questions are asked either and shallhoo

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sounds like they're sending some sort of writing, perhaps an

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oral message, hard to know, and they're getting a response back.

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But usually we don't think of something in the Gamara

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as prior to part of shaylatan chewe vote. So therefore

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the next phase or the gonme have have their own

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shayload to chew vote. Some of them are incredibly short.

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What does this word mean? Is one of my favorites

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right this. They're living in a world before Rashi, certainly

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before arts girl, so people would ask what does this

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word mean? Or what is this idea? And sometimes they

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are they are more complex. Over time, Shane Loan Tchubote

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has come to be identified more with sort of questions

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on concrete particular cases that have come up. Those could

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be cases that come up in real life those can

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be kind of hypotheticals that are thought about, but something

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with a specific set of parameters. There are shaylotan Chu

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votes from the ear of the reshow name and there

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she looked to vote from the era of the early

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afroyme and as you said, up to including to this day.

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So it's a very you know, it's it's a very

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it's a little bit of a catch off phrase because

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it could be, as I said, as it's come to

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mean a kind of specific and relatively kind of crete

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ALACKI question. But some of the older ones certainly aren't

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like that at all. They're literally things that people ask

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rabbis whatever they.

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Speaker 1: Are, right, Okay, good, So now we've gone over that.

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And the truth is, as you mentioned before, it's it's

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one of the oldest poems I like writing we have,

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but of course continues very much to this day. It

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is arguably probably the most enduring vehicle of halak writing.

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Every year another volume, many more volumes are produced in

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this in this genre.

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Speaker 2: Sure, and and this point of volumes I think I

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think is important. In other words, and maybe we could

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is that it's I think today when someone says I'm

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going to write Shaylo two. They know that they're going

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to publish them, and they're going to be in the collections.

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But certainly as we go back, it's not clear. And

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this is one of the big differences between the the genres.

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When someone writes alach code or alak commentary, right, they

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sort of know what they're doing, right, and you know,

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certainly at some point they understood that this would be

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disseminated and later published in print. Right. If you think

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of your own correspondence, right, you correspond by orally by text,

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by email, sometimes by email where you attach a PDF, right.

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And these are various layers of formality which are sort

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of like your assumptions about how much is this like

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an answer of the moment, like your wife says, hey,

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when are you coming home? And you say, you know,

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six point thirty, and then you know even if you

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may email it, but the fact that you may put

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it into a document in a PDF, like you're signaling

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that this is something kind of more permanent, more important.

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And those are a range of things, and I think

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Shout and Chubaut sort of work the same way, at

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least when they're produced. Right. Some of them are very

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quick and dirty things. Of that moment, and some it's

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very clear that the author understands that he is writing

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some thing for the ages. Sometimes whether it's for the

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ages or not is not understood until some ages have

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happened in past. I think as we move in time,

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people have a better sense of what they're going to

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do with them, at least the ones that are published.

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But any important Rabbi is going to have lots and

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lots of communications with you know, we'll call them his audience,

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right to varying degrees of formality. And therefore what shows

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up in a in a volume of de Vote and

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how it's published sort of you know, is a little

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bit sporadic, but changes our assumptions about what it is. Something

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clearented in a volume called Child to Vote we read

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as sort of being written for the ages, so it

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may not have been intended that way.

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Speaker 1: Right, Okay, thank you for that that brief overview, and

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I'm going to ask you to do the same for

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al codes. Explain what you mean by that again, what

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is the scope? What do they intend to do? And

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I suppose again that's sort of a brief history of

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when they arise and whether they're still being written.

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Speaker 2: Sure, So let's start with the word codes. And as

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you mentioned, I'm a law professor and the law professor

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and me uses the term but doesn't love the term

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because to the modern ear, a code is something produced

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by some governing institution. Right, so we think of the

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you know, we're sitting here in the state of Pennsylvania

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or the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It has a code. The

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United States has codes, et cetera. And what makes those

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authoritative is that the governing body is thought to be

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the sovereign in one sense or another that can produce those.

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In Halaha, it doesn't work that way. I don't know

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if the soun hedron ever published a code, but we

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don't have it. So the codes that we have, and

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I think maybe a better way to think about them

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as a word that lawyers use and non lawyers don't.

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It's called a restatement. We'll use codes. But what a

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restatement means is that somebody trying to restate what the

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law is, and therefore it's authority comes from people accepting it,

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as in the case of you vote. So they're not

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codes in that sense of the modern usage. In as

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long as the listeners understand that I'm happy to use

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the word so codes start with. I would say a

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certain type of problem is anyone who's learned Gamara knows

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that if you now want to make this massive work

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the basis of practice, gosh, that's very hard because there's

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so much going on in there, some of it relevant,

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some of it not relevant, some of it relevant to

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other parts that it needs to be pared down. And

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the earliest thing that's in the kind of code tradition

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this is called the most famous one of those is

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al Hote Alfassi, also known as the Riff Riff standing

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for Rebusk that Alfasi e fez right in North Africa,

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who basically what he does largely is he he has

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all imagine, he has all the talmlet on a computer

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and he largely uses his cut function. So he takes

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out all the kind of back and forth all of

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the ad a looted to the dress shownk and focuses

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more or less on the bottom line, occasionally adding in

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his own voice. Although the vast bulk of the text

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is simply the Gamar's text, it preserved as to what

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he understood was like normative binding Hallja Bismann Haase and

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this era in other words, in the post temple, post

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monarchy era of what we probably call goblut. In fact,

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if one takes the new editions, you know, printed in

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the last ten to fifteen years, they very usefully will

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highlight in when one looks in the riff the parts

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that are in his voice, which is a super useful feature.

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And you see it's not the majority of it at all,

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so that it's not the first. There were precursors to that,

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but that's sort of the first thing in that tradition. However,

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it is in the Gamar's language and in the Gamar's order,

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and therefore lack of order. The first thing we might

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call a code is of course the rambam, which is

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to some degree in some sense has not been surpassed.

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In some sense it has right. What the Rambam does,

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he does a couple of very important things. First of all,

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he creates his own structure in Taxonomy fourteen books, right,

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something that maybe you could say there's some reference to

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in the mission, but largely a thing of his own creation,

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and takes every alatan the talmud. And here he is

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following the riff, usually in the sense of which bits

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in the Talmud he thinks are normative and which opinions are.

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Except it's broader than the Riff because he covers everything

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the Gamar talks about the riffs if it's not applicable,

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Bisman hasaid, the Riff generally doesn't have it. The Rambam

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has everything. He also changes the language. It's not in

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the Talmudic language, but it's in something that's pretty close

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to modern Hebrew or close ish based on the shne Hebrew,

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and therefore it's an easy read to the modern reader.

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And he creates a conceptual structure for it to some

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degree to how he views a laha and to what

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he views as the mitzvote rita in each topic. So

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that's the Rombum. There's more to say. What he doesn't

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do is he doesn't retain any of them a cloak it,

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any of the various opinions that are found in the Gamara,

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and he largely does not pay attention to post Talmudic developments.

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I don't want to say never, but that's certainly not

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a feature of the Rombum. So you could think of

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it as what he says, he's trying to summarize the

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rules in the Tumul now it is ingenious. And you know,

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even today, if we have all the databases and all

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the ais and all the computers, it's it's it's mind

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boggling how we did this even with our technology, how

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Vahlmer with basically very very primitive technology. So it's it's

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truly a master work. And in some sense, nothing like

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this has really been attempted to that scale since obviously

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there's some asterisks to that point. That's Rombumb the next

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probably most famous code. There are others, but the one

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that really kind of takes up central space is known

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as the Arbaturim, written by yakovman Usher or the son

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of the Rush, and it is known today commonly as

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the Tour. The Tour is different from the Rhmbam in

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a few different ways. First of all, it doesn't have

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fourteen books, but four. And importantly, it only deals in

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this sense. It follows the Riff more closely in only

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dealing with those laws that are applicable in what we

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call bisman Haze right in this era or in the

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era that they lived in. So it does not have

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laws of the temple and laws of the sacrifices and

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laws of purity largely and even only a little bit

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of laws that applied to the land of Israel, because

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they're asserving they're living without it. Drop in there, but

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basically not. The Tour is also different in that he

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is he retains some debates, and he is much more

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interested in post Talmudic applications, so he will cite frequently

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from the toast Slot and the other reshow Neme that

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are talking not just what the law of the Talmud is,

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but how it became instantiated in practice in the various

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communities in which people lived. So the Rambomb is much

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more classical in the sense is much more driven by

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the Talmud, whereas the Tour begins to fill that gap,

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and he's writing at the end of the period of

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the reshiow Nme and largely collects not everything, but a

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lot of that material in there. The four sections I

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assume are fairly well known are highm right, which actually

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is an ingenious arrangements. It's three cycles. It's the cycle

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of the day starting with waking up, It's on the

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cycle of the week i e. Shabas and Aravin, and

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on the cycle of the year yaridaea, which is a

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little bit more of a grab bag is largely kosher,

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and then other ritual laws evan As is about marriage,

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family and divorce law and closi mishbud is, you know,

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procedure and substance of the civil law, and the sort

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of halachic court system. That is the tour. That and

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then after that comes the Shokanauch, which has an interesting

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sort of story because the Lano basically adopts the tour's structure.

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So his four main books and the chapter divisions in

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between them are taken from from the tour. Now the

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is written BYO raviosv. Cairo, who really begins by writing

254
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a Betjo Seth right, his sort of encyclopedic compendium slash

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commentary written as a commentary on the tour. And if

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we had the bay, if we had Joseph Cairo here

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on the podcast, he would say, that is my work.

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That is how be remembered, That is my by it right,

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that is my estate. I think people trys to his house,

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but if you look at how he writes it, I

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think like, sort of the estate of your states is

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probably the way I would say it. Then later on

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he said, you know what, that's a very long and

264
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complicated work let me try to summarize the main points

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from it. And he did that, and he called the

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shikhanaruch like I'm sending the table for you. This is

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the kind of head notes of it. And that's the

268
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way it reads. But you know, whatever revosif Cairo intended

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history had it, or Hashkeetha had it, maybe those are

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the same thing that that became the work that we

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call colloquially the code of Jewish law. And therefore that

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then becomes, since that's published with the commentary of the Rama,

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which we'll come back to in a second, that becomes

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the main sort of framework of apply Jewish law really

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to this day. We might talk about more contemporary innovations

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in a second. Just a word on the Rama. So

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Ravos if Cairo is from the Spardik tradition and was

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largely very influenced by the Rambam and is somewhat less

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influenced by the ballets vote and the Ashkenazic tradition. The

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Rama who's re of motion is who lives in the

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crackout at roughly the same time that Ragulosa Kiro was

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writing in Spot sees this work and then adds his

283
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own glosses to it, reflecting more of the Ashagnasok school

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of thought, and many scholars say that the success of

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this work is precisely because it combines both of these,

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and basically since the very first printing of the bait

287
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of the Schoharu, which was just him, from the second

288
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printing on it has always been published with the Hagota rama,

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the commentary or the editions of the rama, and together

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those are sort of known as the shukan.

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Speaker 1: Right, and so those are as you outlined it with

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admirable sucinctness. I think the three major ones have there

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been codes ever since because one could argue possibly, but

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since the shukar there is only commentary. Is that is

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that plausible?

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Speaker 2: So I would say yes, and no, you know, there's

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one could say that. And really the tour they sort

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of have to be taken together because structure they basically

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displaced the Rambam. So, you know, I think as a

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artistic manner, the rambum is a superior work. It's conceptually organized,

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language is clear and beautiful, it's an ingenious structure. But

302
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basically the while the Rambam as his Halakic sock, becomes

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super important. His wave of organizing and conceptualizing Halaha. Doesn't

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that really belongs to to the tour? And then I

305
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would like to say the tour because I think he

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gets short terped He came up with the structure. Others

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built on it in part because the rama deals with

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everything and the tour really deals only with practice Tamaha. Now,

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since then, as you said, there's there's then in the

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generations after, there's waves of commentaries on it, some written

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directly as commentaries in terms of new codifications. The one

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that I think everyone would point to Isan and one

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will notice the wordplay there, which doesn't cover every single thing,

314
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but most of it. And it's a sort of assimilative

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commentary code. In other words, it's written with the same

316
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chapter headings and as the Shokhan Ruch, and it tries

317
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to kind of retell the Sugia if it starts with

318
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Pukim from Sukim, if it starts from the Gamar from

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the Gamara, and kind of fold in all the various

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kind of commentaries that have come on along the way.

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It's very influential because it's very well written. The other

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famous one is only on Orsiam is the Mission of Brewer,

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which you know, takes a large space, particularly on issues

324
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that it relates to. But it, as you noted, is

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really written as a commentary on the Shokran Ruhe, although

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you know, it's a little bit of its own thing,

327
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but at least that's the way it's graphically written, and

328
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that's the way it's meant to be read. It is

329
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it is on the Chican roof. You know. In more

330
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recent times, certainly certain areas of Alaha, particularly areas that

331
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are not well covered in the Chokan, have seen various

332
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kind of codes and treatments to them, but none have

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reached the sort of level of the ubiquitous uh both

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popularity and authority as the as the But for example,

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I have on on matters of hoshin Mishbat, there's a

336
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ten volume treatise called Pitre Fochen or Peture Fosian, written

337
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by a rabbi who lived in New Shilaim in the

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latter half of the twentieth century, which for anyone involved

339
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in that world is very influential. One's doing Arevin or Micava,

340
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door Trumant de Mastro. You know, there's there's there's various

341
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sort of areas, specific things that have become very important.

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But in terms of this sort of monumental thing that

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everyone understands the code, I think it remains with the Chikan.

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I would say one fairly interesting and new development is

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Rabbail Lazar Malhammad in Israel has been writing a series

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of books called nine Hawaja, which is a kind of

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modern recasting and has become very very popular in sort

348
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of the datilu me community in in Israel, and of

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course hasn't replaces, but I think it might be replacing

350
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the mission of Brewer. It's more modern Hebrew, it's it

351
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has also theological framework to it, finishing work that's worth

352
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study itself. So that's sort of the way I see

353
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the lay of the land at the moment.

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Speaker 1: Okay, fair enough, Now let's uh, I do to ask

355
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a little bit more about codes. But before I do,

356
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I mean the sort of I think crux the central

357
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question I really want to ask here is, you know,

358
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what are the advantages or disadvantags of writing in these

359
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two genres, because in some senses, of course, they are opposite.

360
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And I'll let you elaborate on that, but sort of

361
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what can one do in a code that one can't

362
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do in response and vice?

363
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Speaker 2: Vice?

364
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Speaker 1: And what would push one to write or read or

365
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adopt a code like a way of writing halaa? What

366
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would push one towards a responsor manner of writing and

367
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reading an application of halaca?

368
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Speaker 2: Sure, so let me start not in the Halaki tradition,

369
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but in the Western tradition. So the common law, which

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is the system that is from England and this sort

371
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of the basis of American, Canadian, Australian and all the

372
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English speaking law, has a very different view on this

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from from the systems emerging in continental Europe, which typically

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called the Romanist systems. The common law believes that that

375
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that really it's the reality of a case with its

376
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specific facts and the pressures of coming to a determination

377
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that sort of produces the ideal law right, and it's

378
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only and that law must be forged within the context

379
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of a decision that will be actuated, that has that

380
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is sort of coming from a particular case. And sometimes

381
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it's called law in action, or at least it tells

382
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that way, and it is a little bit suspicious of

383
00:21:45,200 --> 00:21:48,440
more academic projects what it calls law in the books

384
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that are sort of dealing with sort of abstract principles

385
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but not forged within the sort of reality or the

386
00:21:56,279 --> 00:22:00,039
you know, the potentiality of being effectuated the Roman in

387
00:22:00,079 --> 00:22:03,480
this systems. Think the opposite is that the only way

388
00:22:03,480 --> 00:22:05,400
to do this right is to step back and have

389
00:22:05,440 --> 00:22:08,880
a plan and have your concepts, and have that kind

390
00:22:08,880 --> 00:22:12,319
of carry through each and every bit of the law

391
00:22:12,640 --> 00:22:16,319
creating or law writing enterprise, and that every specific case

392
00:22:16,440 --> 00:22:19,119
is too tied to the quirks of its facts or

393
00:22:19,160 --> 00:22:21,880
any kind of particular things that come up there, or

394
00:22:21,920 --> 00:22:26,160
any pressures of the moment or any exigencies to trust it.

395
00:22:26,200 --> 00:22:28,839
And also so that is again that we have not

396
00:22:28,880 --> 00:22:30,839
talked about Jewish law yet. But this is kind of

397
00:22:30,880 --> 00:22:33,559
like there are two broadly speaking, and I'm a little

398
00:22:33,599 --> 00:22:36,319
over dramatizing, but there are kind of two schools of

399
00:22:36,480 --> 00:22:39,680
thought about this, and I think you see these reflected

400
00:22:39,680 --> 00:22:42,119
in the Halachic literature as well. If we start with

401
00:22:42,160 --> 00:22:44,000
the round bomb, right, if you want to kind of

402
00:22:44,079 --> 00:22:47,640
give you a map of what is Halatha, the only

403
00:22:47,680 --> 00:22:50,240
way to do that is to write a book where

404
00:22:50,279 --> 00:22:52,440
you know what you're doing at the outset and you

405
00:22:52,519 --> 00:22:55,720
understand the plan, and the round bomb is the master planner. Right.

406
00:22:56,079 --> 00:22:59,480
You have your divisions, you have your conceptual categories, you

407
00:22:59,559 --> 00:23:02,079
start each book and then each chapter and then each

408
00:23:02,119 --> 00:23:04,640
halaca with an idea of where it's going and how

409
00:23:04,680 --> 00:23:08,920
it goes right, and that gives you that overview. In addition,

410
00:23:09,400 --> 00:23:12,400
as we said, when you're writing a book, you know

411
00:23:12,480 --> 00:23:14,519
you're going to publish it, you know what you're doing

412
00:23:14,599 --> 00:23:17,480
with it. Right by contrast, right, if we're going to

413
00:23:17,519 --> 00:23:21,160
take that perspective, as we all know, sometimes you know,

414
00:23:21,960 --> 00:23:24,559
rabbis have to answer questions really quickly. They kind of

415
00:23:24,599 --> 00:23:26,960
give an answer, am I saying that this is an

416
00:23:26,960 --> 00:23:30,279
answer that like for generations is quote the halacha or

417
00:23:30,279 --> 00:23:32,759
am I like just answering a question here and now

418
00:23:33,599 --> 00:23:35,599
if one reads the true of literature, you'll see last

419
00:23:35,640 --> 00:23:37,720
of ways, I'm in a hurry, I don't have time,

420
00:23:37,799 --> 00:23:39,400
I don't have access to all my books. You know,

421
00:23:39,440 --> 00:23:43,319
these sort of catchphrases repeat throughout, So that would be

422
00:23:43,400 --> 00:23:45,720
sort of you know, the sort of why the codes

423
00:23:45,759 --> 00:23:48,279
are the actual halaka and an idea of that like look,

424
00:23:49,599 --> 00:23:50,680
you know and I get it too. This in my

425
00:23:50,680 --> 00:23:53,119
book a little bit like the true halacha is these

426
00:23:53,200 --> 00:23:56,920
like more abstract principles and ideals that are stated generally.

427
00:23:57,480 --> 00:24:00,559
And we shouldn't confuse that with like specific applays that

428
00:24:00,599 --> 00:24:05,519
are always attentive to the moment. Revlustenstein has this effer

429
00:24:05,559 --> 00:24:09,000
sing what he calls stock and Sika. Right. So, SOACA

430
00:24:09,079 --> 00:24:12,240
is the sort of the enduring halak An efficiency is

431
00:24:12,279 --> 00:24:14,920
a localized application. And you could take the opposite view

432
00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:19,279
that no, exactly, it's that when all those pressures of

433
00:24:19,799 --> 00:24:22,680
both what the sources say, and there's a critique would

434
00:24:22,680 --> 00:24:26,279
be that it's too classical, it's too source driven, it's

435
00:24:26,319 --> 00:24:29,279
too driven by the kind of abstractions and not about

436
00:24:29,359 --> 00:24:32,359
real life. And that really when you want to see

437
00:24:32,400 --> 00:24:36,519
when all the pressures come together and precisely within those contingencies,

438
00:24:36,599 --> 00:24:39,960
within those places, because that's where life happens. That how

439
00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:43,240
that emerges from there is the sort of the more

440
00:24:43,559 --> 00:24:46,359
authentic products or the sort of better way to understand

441
00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:49,559
how the system works. Again, this debate exists outside of

442
00:24:49,599 --> 00:24:52,200
Alosa and exists within Alaha. Right.

443
00:24:52,480 --> 00:24:58,480
Speaker 1: And and do you think that the mapping of this

444
00:24:58,599 --> 00:25:01,880
difference between common law or case law and let's say

445
00:25:02,160 --> 00:25:04,200
Roman or constitutional law havings that you want to put it?

446
00:25:04,640 --> 00:25:07,720
Does this how accurately does this map on to the

447
00:25:07,759 --> 00:25:10,079
code's response issue within Jewish law?

448
00:25:11,079 --> 00:25:16,039
Speaker 2: I think it maps on to some degree. The codes

449
00:25:16,200 --> 00:25:20,880
also tend to be what I would call they're quite

450
00:25:20,960 --> 00:25:24,359
classical in the sense of their their they're responding to

451
00:25:24,440 --> 00:25:28,160
the tamuk sugia and the way that that is organized. Right,

452
00:25:28,279 --> 00:25:30,960
this is certainly true of the rambamb. It's true in

453
00:25:31,000 --> 00:25:33,559
the tours, slightly less true, but they're too so in

454
00:25:33,640 --> 00:25:37,000
other words, what cases they're talking about, right, what are

455
00:25:37,079 --> 00:25:40,359
their examples, what are their paradigms? Are a function of

456
00:25:40,519 --> 00:25:42,519
the mission and the talmud to some degree, and then

457
00:25:42,640 --> 00:25:45,559
some of the commentary of the reshowing that becomes standard.

458
00:25:46,319 --> 00:25:48,359
You'll see in the tour, for instance, it's very clear

459
00:25:48,440 --> 00:25:51,000
he'll always start with like the mission and then the gamar,

460
00:25:51,079 --> 00:25:54,079
and then occasionally he'll say certain things came up in

461
00:25:54,079 --> 00:25:56,920
a certain to vote right. This is another point that

462
00:25:57,000 --> 00:26:00,319
they also intermix. So the rush, his father is one

463
00:26:00,319 --> 00:26:04,599
of the well known uh meshivin of his era and

464
00:26:04,720 --> 00:26:08,319
especially in holocient Mish. But he'll Evanezer, he'll bring a

465
00:26:08,359 --> 00:26:10,839
lot of stuff from the rush and the rush, but

466
00:26:10,960 --> 00:26:13,200
in various things, right, But those will be at the

467
00:26:13,440 --> 00:26:15,799
end and they'll be sort of like there, and then

468
00:26:15,880 --> 00:26:18,920
that'll kind of feed into itself, which will often kind

469
00:26:18,960 --> 00:26:23,759
of retain this structure. So therefore, you know, what they're

470
00:26:24,119 --> 00:26:27,680
less responsive to is like what's happening in the world. Okay,

471
00:26:27,720 --> 00:26:30,519
but you know, to take the example anyone who's studied

472
00:26:30,519 --> 00:26:33,079
babakama with a kid, but we don't have oxen, but

473
00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:35,559
all the examples there have oxen, right, and then like

474
00:26:35,640 --> 00:26:38,960
that's or boor or ash. In other words, the codes

475
00:26:39,160 --> 00:26:43,920
tend because they are they're assimilating talmudic information in the

476
00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:46,400
way they're mapping the sudiya based on how they see

477
00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:49,200
the tama. They tend to be very classical, where a

478
00:26:49,279 --> 00:26:52,200
chuva is going to start with the facts that happen

479
00:26:52,359 --> 00:26:54,480
in the world, in our world or the world of

480
00:26:54,599 --> 00:26:57,160
the writer, and then say, okay, now let me go

481
00:26:57,359 --> 00:27:00,720
and see which are the relevant sudio that to bring

482
00:27:00,799 --> 00:27:04,319
in here. So you have that process of translating both

483
00:27:04,359 --> 00:27:08,960
the language and the conceptual architecture of the classical sources

484
00:27:09,279 --> 00:27:12,640
into the real world in which the the may sheave

485
00:27:13,480 --> 00:27:14,480
is operating in.

486
00:27:16,559 --> 00:27:20,559
Speaker 1: Right, And it seems, at least from an immediate look,

487
00:27:21,000 --> 00:27:24,359
that one can one can apply quite a bit more

488
00:27:24,799 --> 00:27:28,519
creativity or wiggle room within a response that than one

489
00:27:28,599 --> 00:27:32,519
can in a code. I mean, is that the case?

490
00:27:32,920 --> 00:27:35,920
And secondly, you know, is that simply a function of

491
00:27:36,720 --> 00:27:39,039
the way that genre is exists.

492
00:27:40,400 --> 00:27:42,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's let's let's talk about I think the

493
00:27:42,279 --> 00:27:46,039
I think the CEO in different ways. The one let's

494
00:27:46,119 --> 00:27:52,480
remember that what we call the essay, right, is not

495
00:27:52,960 --> 00:27:56,599
a known genre of as you said, I think you

496
00:27:56,640 --> 00:27:59,400
said this in the outside. There's basically three genres of

497
00:27:59,480 --> 00:28:05,839
classical There is commentary rashi post quote right, usually following

498
00:28:05,920 --> 00:28:09,759
the order of the Talmudic trac date. There are these codes,

499
00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:13,680
and then commentaries on the codes, and then there's a

500
00:28:13,799 --> 00:28:16,480
chew vote the response. The response is the most open

501
00:28:16,640 --> 00:28:18,400
ended of those. So, in other words, if one wants

502
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:21,960
to publish a Halakic essay right, so today already you

503
00:28:21,960 --> 00:28:24,440
can write an article and publish it in a Halakic journal.

504
00:28:24,559 --> 00:28:28,200
But that's a fairly new sort of thing. It's really

505
00:28:28,279 --> 00:28:31,119
the chuva is the vehicle for that. So in that sense,

506
00:28:31,200 --> 00:28:35,640
it's the most flexible form. You don't have to pretend

507
00:28:35,839 --> 00:28:38,319
that it's a commentary on something. You could just say,

508
00:28:38,440 --> 00:28:41,000
here's what I want to say. Now, there's a history

509
00:28:41,039 --> 00:28:43,119
to this too. If you think of the names, and

510
00:28:43,519 --> 00:28:45,720
you know, if we think let's say that you vote

511
00:28:45,759 --> 00:28:49,759
of the rishi name, right, they're called the Chuvashirashba, the

512
00:28:49,839 --> 00:28:53,480
Chuvashi rush, et cetera. In other words, these people are

513
00:28:53,680 --> 00:28:58,519
known as typically tumudic commentators or codifiers or quasi codifiers.

514
00:28:58,839 --> 00:29:02,559
And then we also have their tew vote. They're on uh.

515
00:29:02,880 --> 00:29:06,400
I think a little bit later, the very famous ones,

516
00:29:07,759 --> 00:29:13,039
the Hahamsi, the no Huda, that's tm Sofer, the Massa

517
00:29:13,079 --> 00:29:15,720
bin Yemen. Those are the names of the Chubas farm,

518
00:29:15,799 --> 00:29:19,119
the Sagotari, right, and we know them by by dint

519
00:29:19,160 --> 00:29:21,799
of their Tubas farm. And then oh, they also wrote

520
00:29:21,839 --> 00:29:24,480
these these other things. And part of what's happening there,

521
00:29:24,480 --> 00:29:26,680
I think is that I think this has to probably

522
00:29:26,720 --> 00:29:28,799
do with printing and with other developments, is that the

523
00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:32,559
tuba can now become the primary vehicle through which a

524
00:29:33,279 --> 00:29:38,240
rabbinic author is no and they're right, they become to

525
00:29:38,359 --> 00:29:42,799
some degree essays on halahik topics, whether the questions were

526
00:29:42,880 --> 00:29:45,359
asked to them or whether they ask themselves the questions

527
00:29:45,400 --> 00:29:47,440
and things like that. So I do think that in

528
00:29:47,559 --> 00:29:51,240
that sense it's a more flexible form which allows for

529
00:29:51,359 --> 00:29:55,160
greater creativity, greater literary flair, right, there's often they start

530
00:29:55,240 --> 00:29:57,279
with kind of poems and things like that, things that

531
00:29:57,400 --> 00:30:01,039
in a code and in so much more mode of discourse.

532
00:30:01,039 --> 00:30:04,559
In other words, yes, there are shacks that run for

533
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:07,480
three pages, but basically they're very tight and focused on

534
00:30:07,640 --> 00:30:09,960
what the specific thing. So think of this as as

535
00:30:10,039 --> 00:30:13,160
your way to do an essay. If you're a binic writer,

536
00:30:13,279 --> 00:30:15,440
you're going to use the tube of form. The other

537
00:30:15,559 --> 00:30:17,359
thing is, and this is you know, something that in

538
00:30:17,440 --> 00:30:20,680
legal philosophy we talk about about is that the very

539
00:30:20,880 --> 00:30:25,799
active ap application two concrete facts is what generates kind

540
00:30:25,839 --> 00:30:29,400
of creativity. Right, So I always say, if one looks

541
00:30:29,880 --> 00:30:33,960
at the laws of bore and ash hit and fire

542
00:30:34,079 --> 00:30:37,759
liability in the rob bumb and then a couple hundred

543
00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:40,759
years later in the Chanch, they're basically the same. And

544
00:30:40,839 --> 00:30:45,119
what that tells you is those were not applied, those

545
00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:48,319
are not applied them. Therefore they it's just basically copy paste.

546
00:30:48,359 --> 00:30:50,839
By contrast, if one looks at he'll hoach star rote

547
00:30:51,240 --> 00:30:55,680
or he'll hotel vote debts, negotiated instruments, of which in

548
00:30:55,759 --> 00:30:59,359
the ear of reshowing them, there's tremendous creativity. The world

549
00:30:59,440 --> 00:31:03,920
of the tour look completely different than the realbum. So

550
00:31:04,079 --> 00:31:08,079
the act of applying law two concrete situations changes it

551
00:31:08,200 --> 00:31:10,599
and molds it and modifies it. And in that sense,

552
00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:14,319
I think that is at least the first cut is

553
00:31:14,400 --> 00:31:18,240
done in chew vote. Later chew vote may become part

554
00:31:18,319 --> 00:31:21,160
of the kind of canonized law. Right. Like we said,

555
00:31:21,519 --> 00:31:23,759
the tour contains a number of chew vote of the rush,

556
00:31:24,559 --> 00:31:28,359
the shah schite site, chew vote, et cetera. And there's

557
00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:32,680
this interesting interplay of how these different genres commentary code

558
00:31:33,240 --> 00:31:37,920
and Cuba influence and impact each other. I see.

559
00:31:39,400 --> 00:31:41,640
Speaker 1: I mean focusing back on the codes for a moment.

560
00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:43,960
You claim something quite interesting in your work, which is

561
00:31:44,039 --> 00:31:48,119
that that the code, the Halai code, at least can

562
00:31:48,279 --> 00:31:51,759
never fully achieve its purpose. And that struck me as

563
00:31:51,759 --> 00:31:55,799
a very interesting and thought provoking claim. Could you elaborate

564
00:31:56,000 --> 00:31:58,599
on that for us? What is it about the laha

565
00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:04,160
that frustra rates the composition or the ultimate aim of

566
00:32:04,200 --> 00:32:05,359
a composition of a low code?

567
00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:09,519
Speaker 2: Sure, so let's start with that. Lasting if you think,

568
00:32:09,640 --> 00:32:11,440
and there's an if here, that the point here is

569
00:32:11,480 --> 00:32:16,759
to tell you clear and unequivocal rules, right, So, I

570
00:32:16,839 --> 00:32:19,799
think there's a few things going on, some relevant to

571
00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:24,079
Halaha specifically, and some possibly found in various forms in

572
00:32:24,119 --> 00:32:26,440
all legal systems. So one of the themes of my

573
00:32:26,599 --> 00:32:31,319
book is the idea of Tamutah right, that the study

574
00:32:31,400 --> 00:32:35,720
of Torah is its own goal, right, it's its own

575
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:41,319
self standing, self justifying practice, and that anyone who is

576
00:32:41,920 --> 00:32:46,519
sort of known as a alahk authority sort of subscribes

577
00:32:46,599 --> 00:32:50,839
to some version of this idea. Okay, there were different

578
00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:54,160
in different times, in different eras Ashkin aspired, etc. But

579
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:57,839
something like that, and therefore very different than any other

580
00:32:57,960 --> 00:33:03,039
legal system in which the production of law its goal

581
00:33:03,279 --> 00:33:08,680
is ultimately to regulate the social and political sphere. In Halaha,

582
00:33:09,839 --> 00:33:12,519
because of this idea of tomatoa that is so central

583
00:33:12,599 --> 00:33:15,839
to the rabbis of the Tumutin exerts a tremendous influence

584
00:33:15,880 --> 00:33:18,640
on everyone after. Is that no, there are what we'll

585
00:33:18,680 --> 00:33:22,160
call spiritual purposes in the study of law. Now again,

586
00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:25,319
these change over time and in different places, they're not consistent,

587
00:33:25,400 --> 00:33:29,440
but that idea is there, and therefore I think that

588
00:33:30,039 --> 00:33:32,319
you even I would say not it's not that these

589
00:33:32,359 --> 00:33:34,359
what the codes are, but they even in the codes

590
00:33:34,400 --> 00:33:37,000
which in sum sets are trying to just get to

591
00:33:37,079 --> 00:33:41,319
the bottom line. But the authors also have another investment,

592
00:33:41,359 --> 00:33:45,559
the investment in Thura study in explicating the Tamudik studia.

593
00:33:45,880 --> 00:33:49,599
In other words, that instinct of Tubdi commentary is there too.

594
00:33:50,279 --> 00:33:53,359
And therefore I think one of the reasons that it fails,

595
00:33:53,680 --> 00:33:57,079
so to speak, is because there are While there are

596
00:33:57,119 --> 00:33:59,680
some works that really do try to just tell you

597
00:33:59,759 --> 00:34:02,720
the rules, inevitably the commentaries are going to say, oh,

598
00:34:02,799 --> 00:34:05,640
but what about this talmudic ciay, what about this tostboon,

599
00:34:05,720 --> 00:34:07,839
and what about this other thing? And they'll they'll they'll

600
00:34:08,000 --> 00:34:11,239
just kind of re enter it into that toal munic dialogue.

601
00:34:11,679 --> 00:34:14,039
Perhaps the most dramatic example of this is not in

602
00:34:14,079 --> 00:34:17,280
the In the Rambam, the ram Bumb says that he's

603
00:34:17,360 --> 00:34:20,880
trying to end the kind of need to consult the talmad,

604
00:34:20,960 --> 00:34:25,480
and therefore presents its very clean. It's long, but it's

605
00:34:25,519 --> 00:34:27,880
sort of given where it's coming from, it's ultimately short

606
00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:31,559
compared to the tamud tight text. The he says, now

607
00:34:31,599 --> 00:34:33,880
you could just look at this and know the rules,

608
00:34:33,920 --> 00:34:36,480
and you don't need to do that. You don't need

609
00:34:36,559 --> 00:34:38,360
to work your way through the tamad. And as you know,

610
00:34:39,079 --> 00:34:42,440
almost immediately when that starts happening. People then write commentaries

611
00:34:42,480 --> 00:34:48,039
and they basically start reintegrating the rambamb into the Tummunk discussion,

612
00:34:48,079 --> 00:34:50,079
so much so that in the nineteenth century and the

613
00:34:50,519 --> 00:34:54,880
Brisker school, the ram bumb was, you know, the kind

614
00:34:54,920 --> 00:34:57,679
of source material from which they did the exact opposite

615
00:34:57,719 --> 00:35:01,119
of what he intended. They they made it the basis

616
00:35:01,199 --> 00:35:04,639
of their very analytical and very creative but very not

617
00:35:04,800 --> 00:35:07,960
bottom line discussions, right, And I think like the fact

618
00:35:08,000 --> 00:35:10,159
that they're at checking the ram bomb are there are

619
00:35:10,199 --> 00:35:13,000
reasons for that, but it's one cannot but laugh that

620
00:35:13,159 --> 00:35:15,599
it basically turned what the rama was trying to do

621
00:35:15,719 --> 00:35:18,719
inside out. I think with it's less dramatic. But if

622
00:35:18,719 --> 00:35:21,199
we think it's some of the main commentaries again learned

623
00:35:21,199 --> 00:35:24,000
in Yeshivai, So so it's a hot the the Cebos,

624
00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:27,920
to some degree, the Shah, they are all involved in

625
00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:32,440
this process of sort of expanding the Talmudic dialogue outwards.

626
00:35:32,480 --> 00:35:34,800
Now there's also commentaries that go the other way, but

627
00:35:35,320 --> 00:35:38,599
but there's that push and pull between those and therefore

628
00:35:38,880 --> 00:35:43,000
to some degree, the codes themselves. And if you look

629
00:35:43,039 --> 00:35:46,360
at just the page of the standard Skan's it's it's

630
00:35:46,519 --> 00:35:49,280
literally dizzy. So's so that you know, about twenty years ago,

631
00:35:49,480 --> 00:35:51,320
thirty years ago they started reprinting it to make it

632
00:35:51,400 --> 00:35:54,800
a little more and it just became another focus of

633
00:35:55,039 --> 00:35:59,000
tourist study with a slightly different entry point at the

634
00:35:59,119 --> 00:36:02,360
same time having this other goal of the bottom line rules. Now,

635
00:36:02,400 --> 00:36:04,400
I think that that's true of the Mishtah, that's true

636
00:36:04,400 --> 00:36:06,159
of the tumud that started through all the way down

637
00:36:06,159 --> 00:36:08,280
this right right book. That's one of the central tensions

638
00:36:08,559 --> 00:36:11,079
within the Holarism as a whole is that we use

639
00:36:11,119 --> 00:36:14,000
the same body of materials to do different things with it.

640
00:36:14,119 --> 00:36:16,800
And I think the literature reflects that that is something

641
00:36:16,880 --> 00:36:20,119
you don't really have in other systems. Now, I think

642
00:36:20,159 --> 00:36:21,960
in other since you do have this that you know,

643
00:36:22,039 --> 00:36:26,599
as soon as something becomes codified, there's always wrinkles to it,

644
00:36:26,639 --> 00:36:29,599
there's always new developments that that sort of complicated and

645
00:36:29,719 --> 00:36:34,920
that you have everywhere. The Marshall in the sixteenth century

646
00:36:35,559 --> 00:36:38,800
gave a kabbalistic sort of reason for this is drawing

647
00:36:38,840 --> 00:36:42,159
on earlier sources, but he's criticizing the then Code of

648
00:36:42,280 --> 00:36:45,480
Fying movement, and he says he says it's sort of

649
00:36:45,559 --> 00:36:48,000
about the nature of ala has the encounter between the

650
00:36:48,119 --> 00:36:51,280
infinite God and the finite man, and it is not

651
00:36:51,480 --> 00:36:55,480
something reducible to a finite code, is one of his claims, right,

652
00:36:55,599 --> 00:36:57,800
So he says, it cuts to the very nature of

653
00:36:58,239 --> 00:37:01,840
what Halifa is as a meeting between an infinite mind

654
00:37:01,920 --> 00:37:04,239
and a finite mind, and the finite mind is going

655
00:37:04,320 --> 00:37:06,280
to try to kind of limit it to some code,

656
00:37:06,320 --> 00:37:09,960
and it's never going to work because there's always more there.

657
00:37:10,320 --> 00:37:12,760
Speaker 1: And the little bit ask a slight procketive question about that,

658
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:16,360
which is that is that necessarily the case? In other words,

659
00:37:16,480 --> 00:37:21,199
could you imagine, even in theory, the construction of such

660
00:37:21,679 --> 00:37:24,920
a detailed or such a such a flawless code that

661
00:37:25,199 --> 00:37:29,639
no further commentary would be possible or necessary or meaning.

662
00:37:29,840 --> 00:37:32,719
And thords the enormous amount of commentary that has been

663
00:37:33,159 --> 00:37:37,079
precipitated by the rama by others, one could say that's

664
00:37:37,079 --> 00:37:41,119
because either there were you know, in some area's lack

665
00:37:41,159 --> 00:37:45,760
of clarity, or questions that arose, perhaps internal inconsistencies, or

666
00:37:45,840 --> 00:37:47,440
you know, any of the things that would spur on

667
00:37:47,519 --> 00:37:53,119
commentary if somehow a supercomputer were to create a perfect code.

668
00:37:53,159 --> 00:37:56,920
I mean, it's such a thing possible at all? Or

669
00:37:56,960 --> 00:37:59,400
are you saying no. The very nature of the system

670
00:38:00,440 --> 00:38:03,639
demands extra writing for me. I know this is a

671
00:38:03,719 --> 00:38:06,239
rather upset question, but one that's fun to think about it.

672
00:38:06,320 --> 00:38:08,480
Speaker 2: Well, it's not so so I think there's a few

673
00:38:08,519 --> 00:38:10,400
things going on here. So first of all, I think

674
00:38:10,719 --> 00:38:13,599
I think the Marshall in his way is asking your

675
00:38:13,679 --> 00:38:16,960
question saying no, it's about the essence amount. I do

676
00:38:17,159 --> 00:38:21,360
think another point has to do with finality, in other words,

677
00:38:24,039 --> 00:38:26,400
and how you view sort of what is the ultimate

678
00:38:26,519 --> 00:38:31,039
Alachic authority, because we tend to say that the Talmud

679
00:38:31,519 --> 00:38:35,679
retains precedence even after the rambamb and even after the

680
00:38:36,480 --> 00:38:39,119
and even after the mission of Burua, right, ultimately, if

681
00:38:39,159 --> 00:38:43,199
you can resort back to the talmudik sugia right, which

682
00:38:43,639 --> 00:38:46,360
is written in anything but a linear, clear sense. So

683
00:38:46,440 --> 00:38:50,519
therefore that's always out there. And while it's true that

684
00:38:50,639 --> 00:38:53,559
we say we possibly like X, but why but not why?

685
00:38:53,920 --> 00:38:55,880
But then a new case comes up and they say, yes,

686
00:38:55,960 --> 00:38:58,800
we possibly like X, but limited to cases one, two

687
00:38:58,840 --> 00:39:01,039
and three, not the four or five and six we do.

688
00:39:01,800 --> 00:39:03,519
Now we've got to go back to the TOMUDXU. Yeah,

689
00:39:03,840 --> 00:39:08,119
I just describe basically howevery you know, this isn't super common. Right,

690
00:39:08,639 --> 00:39:12,719
so that even when we accept the authority of the shukanaru,

691
00:39:13,599 --> 00:39:16,400
much of the interpretive process saying I, yes, but that

692
00:39:16,800 --> 00:39:20,360
was here, not here, and my proof is this, Tommy Dixu. Yeah,

693
00:39:20,360 --> 00:39:23,039
and then we're back off to the races. So I

694
00:39:23,280 --> 00:39:26,599
think it would be more possible in let's say, a

695
00:39:26,679 --> 00:39:30,320
modern system which once the court, the High court says

696
00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:32,280
this is what it is. I don't want to say

697
00:39:32,320 --> 00:39:35,039
that solves all questions, but that then cuts off at

698
00:39:35,119 --> 00:39:38,320
least certain avenues. One of the things that is typical

699
00:39:38,400 --> 00:39:43,559
of halakha is that we never, at least in certain traditions, right,

700
00:39:43,760 --> 00:39:46,519
certainly in the sort of traditions that comes from the

701
00:39:46,719 --> 00:39:49,639
you know, Lithuanian yeshibas, we never cut ourselves off from

702
00:39:49,639 --> 00:39:53,039
the tamudxu. Yeah. This goes back to discussions and astized

703
00:39:53,039 --> 00:39:56,079
and because that's always available, and because the tumatif any

704
00:39:56,199 --> 00:39:59,880
is anything but univocal, I think you cannot escape it.

705
00:40:00,320 --> 00:40:02,400
And again I said before also, I think that people

706
00:40:02,559 --> 00:40:06,039
who write these things are living in a world where

707
00:40:06,119 --> 00:40:09,760
Taurus study has this sort of mayan haabet or the

708
00:40:09,840 --> 00:40:13,400
overflowing stream nature to it, and to under we are

709
00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:16,880
attracted to that now, I think there are schools of thoughts,

710
00:40:17,199 --> 00:40:19,440
typically to be more spartic, that tend to be more

711
00:40:19,480 --> 00:40:21,880
bottom line rules. Here's what they are. We can reduce

712
00:40:21,960 --> 00:40:24,920
them to this. But then stuff comes up, and then

713
00:40:25,039 --> 00:40:27,840
but that's not exactly consistent here, it's not consistent here.

714
00:40:28,159 --> 00:40:30,599
Wait a minute, there's this new idea or that maybe

715
00:40:30,679 --> 00:40:33,159
only covers this case, and then we're back to this

716
00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:38,440
sort of diological Talmudic process with maybe our starting point

717
00:40:38,559 --> 00:40:42,239
not the Talmud but different code provisions or different sections

718
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:46,480
in the commentaries. But analytically it's that process. So I

719
00:40:46,679 --> 00:40:50,519
think the answer is no. One can give a metaphysical account.

720
00:40:50,599 --> 00:40:54,119
One could say it's no for all legal systems, but

721
00:40:54,199 --> 00:40:59,880
it's certainly in Alaha because of the lack of definitive finale.

722
00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:03,440
There's no governing body. It's just a kind of consensus

723
00:41:03,480 --> 00:41:05,880
that emerges over time, so there's always going to be

724
00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:08,360
gaps and being able to resort backward, and then you're

725
00:41:08,440 --> 00:41:13,639
back into the the analytic discussions, right. I see.

726
00:41:14,119 --> 00:41:16,480
Speaker 1: And I want to drill a little bit on one

727
00:41:16,559 --> 00:41:18,360
element that we've been touching on, which is the role

728
00:41:18,480 --> 00:41:21,840
of the commentaries on the codes, because this is interesting

729
00:41:21,840 --> 00:41:24,320
because of course these individuals are not themselves involved in

730
00:41:24,360 --> 00:41:29,360
writing codes, but they are, and but they do have

731
00:41:29,400 --> 00:41:31,920
to certainly play a role in the development and dissemination

732
00:41:32,119 --> 00:41:35,760
of the code itself. So you know, certainly one possible

733
00:41:35,800 --> 00:41:38,480
functions you mentioned the kind of brisk approach approach to

734
00:41:38,559 --> 00:41:42,000
reading the Ramba on others, is to almost reverse engineer

735
00:41:42,960 --> 00:41:45,159
the thinking process that goes into the writing the code,

736
00:41:45,159 --> 00:41:47,280
because of course the code almost by definition is quite sparse,

737
00:41:47,559 --> 00:41:50,280
you know, sparing in its in as these and elaborasm

738
00:41:50,360 --> 00:41:52,599
show it's working as it were, and therefore it's an

739
00:41:52,639 --> 00:41:54,840
exercise for the code to kind of crack that open.

740
00:41:55,599 --> 00:41:59,719
What else are the nose aklim the great commentaries on

741
00:41:59,800 --> 00:42:04,039
the major codes, What else are they doing and in

742
00:42:04,159 --> 00:42:06,360
what in what way do they I don't know, do

743
00:42:06,440 --> 00:42:10,039
they bring the code closer to other genres such as

744
00:42:10,079 --> 00:42:13,239
responso or commentary or other other forms for lack of writing.

745
00:42:13,519 --> 00:42:17,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely so. So first let's just start with this word.

746
00:42:17,440 --> 00:42:19,400
So this is really and I recently had to write

747
00:42:19,440 --> 00:42:23,239
something in English and you realize that there's no equivalent

748
00:42:23,400 --> 00:42:26,679
in in the in the Anglo American system to this

749
00:42:26,880 --> 00:42:30,360
idea of no say kleen right, So literally, they if

750
00:42:30,400 --> 00:42:33,840
we translate the word they are arms bearers right now.

751
00:42:33,960 --> 00:42:37,280
It's interesting to think about this phrase because I think

752
00:42:37,280 --> 00:42:40,320
it even changes over time. What is an arms bearer?

753
00:42:40,920 --> 00:42:43,440
Speaker 1: Well, I mean the biblical sense, it's quite literal. It

754
00:42:43,559 --> 00:42:46,159
is someone who you know, goes into battle with someone

755
00:42:46,400 --> 00:42:50,920
as their second or as the person who holds their

756
00:42:51,079 --> 00:42:54,559
their weaponry. And probably you know. I imagine the closest

757
00:42:55,440 --> 00:42:57,440
modern analogy I can think of as a golf caddy,

758
00:42:57,639 --> 00:42:58,079
And that's.

759
00:42:58,039 --> 00:43:02,719
Speaker 2: Exactly what I say, I caddy, right, the caddy. Now,

760
00:43:02,920 --> 00:43:05,639
so that way, the caddy is like on your team,

761
00:43:05,800 --> 00:43:09,760
he's helping you, right, But over time that turns to

762
00:43:09,840 --> 00:43:12,639
be no say kalim. They're doing battle with you, right.

763
00:43:12,800 --> 00:43:15,480
In other words, And I think that this idea of

764
00:43:15,519 --> 00:43:19,719
the no say kilem starts as they're going to help

765
00:43:19,840 --> 00:43:24,280
you make your arguments, right, but immediately then they also

766
00:43:24,400 --> 00:43:27,639
are battling you. So it's interesting that there's no such

767
00:43:27,840 --> 00:43:29,880
when when I have to describe this to people don't

768
00:43:29,880 --> 00:43:33,800
know Jewish law, I cannot rest on anything that is known,

769
00:43:33,880 --> 00:43:37,400
even to a lawyer, because such a literature doesn't really exist.

770
00:43:37,559 --> 00:43:39,719
You can write your own book, you can attack that, right,

771
00:43:39,760 --> 00:43:42,239
but you but this idea that you're you're both a

772
00:43:42,360 --> 00:43:47,360
commentary that's supportive but also undermining the sort of finality

773
00:43:47,440 --> 00:43:50,360
of the text of the code is sort of unique,

774
00:43:51,000 --> 00:43:53,960
at least within the legal world I'm aware of. So

775
00:43:54,079 --> 00:43:57,199
this no say kilem, and it's most dramatic on the

776
00:43:57,199 --> 00:44:00,320
Shukan uh because it's printed they have you in the

777
00:44:00,400 --> 00:44:02,320
in the in the nineteenth century when they were the

778
00:44:02,440 --> 00:44:05,199
various publishing houses sort of each try to outdo each

779
00:44:05,199 --> 00:44:08,519
other by how many commentaries they have, which which makes

780
00:44:08,559 --> 00:44:11,559
the page very very difficult to the uninitiated to summat

781
00:44:11,599 --> 00:44:15,679
for voting. But we can sort of categorize them into

782
00:44:15,760 --> 00:44:19,280
different functions. So some we can maybe start at the extreme.

783
00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:22,159
Some really bring it back to the Talmudic dialogue and

784
00:44:22,239 --> 00:44:24,960
are not super interested in what the bottom line rule is,

785
00:44:25,199 --> 00:44:27,800
but are using the shukanas. Okay, he said, this is

786
00:44:27,880 --> 00:44:30,599
a principle. Let's test it here. Let's see right, So

787
00:44:30,679 --> 00:44:33,599
that would be the soat this under the shah uh,

788
00:44:33,960 --> 00:44:36,599
are are are on that extreme. At the other extreme,

789
00:44:37,559 --> 00:44:41,880
you have people who will then bring the Chuva literature

790
00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:44,840
and maybe we should talk about organ maybe we'll make

791
00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:48,719
sure we talk about organization, uh. And they say okay.

792
00:44:49,039 --> 00:44:52,000
These are the cheu vote that speak on the topic

793
00:44:52,599 --> 00:44:55,000
that is the subject matter of the code. Section of

794
00:44:55,079 --> 00:44:59,519
the Piskechuva and the dark Chuva are famous for this,

795
00:45:00,239 --> 00:45:02,599
and in other words, that is how you'll connect the

796
00:45:04,079 --> 00:45:07,079
Charlotte tan Chubat literature to what's going on in the

797
00:45:07,119 --> 00:45:09,599
Shahan roof. And then you could think of most other

798
00:45:09,679 --> 00:45:14,960
ones being somewhere in between of explicating qualifying, right, the

799
00:45:15,079 --> 00:45:18,679
sma the shot. They're constantly qualifying the hukan roos, oh,

800
00:45:18,800 --> 00:45:22,440
yes he said this, but here, and typically point to

801
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:25,159
another place where, well, you see, there's some tension between them.

802
00:45:25,599 --> 00:45:28,079
So there's a lot of lawmaking that goes on in

803
00:45:28,159 --> 00:45:31,800
these codes as they refine and define what's going on,

804
00:45:32,000 --> 00:45:35,440
whether it's between the ramada chi or contradictions or just

805
00:45:35,559 --> 00:45:39,280
new stuff that comes up. So it's interesting because in

806
00:45:39,360 --> 00:45:42,519
some ways they would never say. Very the early early

807
00:45:43,280 --> 00:45:47,559
layer is willing to outright disagree with the shoch ama.

808
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:50,760
Later on they become much less so, but they disagree

809
00:45:50,800 --> 00:45:53,920
by qualifying and saying oh only here, but not here,

810
00:45:54,079 --> 00:45:56,880
or introducing a new series of distinctions, very much the

811
00:45:56,960 --> 00:45:58,800
way that the talma does to the mischilon or you

812
00:45:58,800 --> 00:46:00,719
showed them due to the talma, and that's why I

813
00:46:00,800 --> 00:46:04,400
see this as very much a part of the same process.

814
00:46:04,679 --> 00:46:07,880
So right, when we refer today, when someone says chokin,

815
00:46:08,599 --> 00:46:13,320
they typically don't mean the language of Joseph Caro. They

816
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:16,400
mean yang the jose kiro plus rama plus at least

817
00:46:16,480 --> 00:46:19,480
some of the canonical commentaries, and you can argue which

818
00:46:19,559 --> 00:46:22,840
ones are. So we really say, you'll see sometimes abbreviated

819
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:27,159
venose kalem shan meaning the whole kind of web of

820
00:46:27,360 --> 00:46:29,679
literature which you know to a story, and is somewhat

821
00:46:29,719 --> 00:46:32,480
maddening because we're referred to this book, but we really

822
00:46:32,559 --> 00:46:35,440
mean the book is printed and received, not the words

823
00:46:35,800 --> 00:46:39,280
of any any specific person. I do want to say

824
00:46:39,679 --> 00:46:42,079
a word about organization, because I think this matters a lot.

825
00:46:43,360 --> 00:46:46,199
Perhaps the greatest success of the shokranuch is that it

826
00:46:46,320 --> 00:46:51,880
became the way we conceptualize alaka certainly practice alaka. And

827
00:46:51,920 --> 00:46:55,320
this way, though the Rambam system is more can comprehensive

828
00:46:55,360 --> 00:46:58,519
and more elegant. I think that the chikan wins the day.

829
00:46:59,119 --> 00:47:01,440
And then what starts having is that you will see

830
00:47:02,000 --> 00:47:07,199
works of cheu vote are organized according to the section

831
00:47:07,480 --> 00:47:09,480
of shokhan. Right because One of the main problems with

832
00:47:09,559 --> 00:47:12,880
you vote is they have no natural order, right. I

833
00:47:12,960 --> 00:47:14,559
mean you could have like the order that they were

834
00:47:14,599 --> 00:47:17,719
written in, but that's not super helpful, right, So part

835
00:47:17,960 --> 00:47:20,400
the big the big downside of chew vote. We talked

836
00:47:20,440 --> 00:47:23,000
before about their analytic character, but just as practice, how

837
00:47:23,039 --> 00:47:24,920
do you find them? How do you know if something

838
00:47:25,000 --> 00:47:26,800
is relevant to what you're working on? So every once

839
00:47:26,800 --> 00:47:28,920
in a while you'll have a gono vilna or vaduo

840
00:47:29,000 --> 00:47:32,320
sense it just like knows everything, okay, But if you're

841
00:47:32,360 --> 00:47:34,440
not that, how do you find them? So today we

842
00:47:34,519 --> 00:47:36,920
have computers and things like that, but in the inter

843
00:47:37,159 --> 00:47:41,119
interstitial period, what we see is that the code chapters

844
00:47:41,480 --> 00:47:44,840
then become like the sort of headings of halaka, so

845
00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:49,000
we know, oh, this is Simon Sanivov okay, and therefore

846
00:47:49,280 --> 00:47:52,760
the true vote will be written or published I should

847
00:47:52,760 --> 00:47:56,360
say not written published in in a way of like

848
00:47:56,519 --> 00:48:00,159
the rough order of the Shokanara. Now, of course, chew

849
00:48:00,199 --> 00:48:02,480
bote can draw from many different places, so sometimes they

850
00:48:02,519 --> 00:48:05,480
have to be split in parsed, and therefore indexes in

851
00:48:05,559 --> 00:48:08,000
the back of chew vote, and sometimes even the way

852
00:48:08,000 --> 00:48:12,480
they're organized are in accordance with the orders. So if

853
00:48:12,480 --> 00:48:16,079
you to me, one of the most enduring influences of

854
00:48:16,159 --> 00:48:19,280
this is beyond what the Schardrok paskins, is that it's

855
00:48:19,320 --> 00:48:22,519
the way we now frame and think of Halakha. So

856
00:48:22,800 --> 00:48:25,960
and therefore you see this as I said both earlier,

857
00:48:26,239 --> 00:48:29,000
people like the Shakh will already start quoting chew Vote,

858
00:48:29,000 --> 00:48:30,840
but then like the dark tube of the Pistley Cuba

859
00:48:31,199 --> 00:48:35,159
on the page citing chew Vote, and then Chewbote themselves

860
00:48:35,280 --> 00:48:37,199
become published. I think the most interesting example is the

861
00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:39,920
bach who's one of the commentaries on the tour. The

862
00:48:40,000 --> 00:48:43,360
first edition is published in a fairly random way, and

863
00:48:43,440 --> 00:48:46,000
then they republish it scramble the order, so now it

864
00:48:46,119 --> 00:48:49,719
matches the order of Schuchhan. What's super interesting is that

865
00:48:49,840 --> 00:48:53,920
in modern times rofessal Weis's Chubas have this, but he's

866
00:48:53,960 --> 00:48:56,159
not the only one. They will publish them in the

867
00:48:56,320 --> 00:48:58,599
order of the four volumes of Chukhrana Ruche and then

868
00:48:58,639 --> 00:49:03,400
a fifth one Lakah who are medicine. So they're saying that,

869
00:49:03,880 --> 00:49:05,280
I say, like, what you see is like this like

870
00:49:05,360 --> 00:49:08,360
fifth value should earth sort of happening before our eyes

871
00:49:08,639 --> 00:49:11,159
because people realize there's no great place to put this

872
00:49:13,039 --> 00:49:15,719
kind of its own thing and not really reflected. So

873
00:49:15,760 --> 00:49:18,119
I think it's very interesting. It'd be a great practice.

874
00:49:18,239 --> 00:49:20,599
Who's the first to publish it this way? But so

875
00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:23,519
to me, it's interesting even when you're deviating Falk, you're

876
00:49:23,519 --> 00:49:25,920
still using that as as the structure.

877
00:49:26,480 --> 00:49:30,239
Speaker 1: Okay, there's much to say that I want to drive

878
00:49:30,360 --> 00:49:33,039
us a little bit in love direction because time is

879
00:49:33,079 --> 00:49:36,679
running a little bit short, which is similar to what

880
00:49:36,760 --> 00:49:39,679
you're seeing before. There is of course yet another genre

881
00:49:40,199 --> 00:49:42,519
of I like writing, which we haven't really mentioned thus

882
00:49:42,559 --> 00:49:47,199
far so much, which is we continued attempt at talbuted commentary,

883
00:49:47,519 --> 00:49:49,440
and in fact, even some of the great writers of

884
00:49:49,599 --> 00:49:52,199
codes or of response and many of them are also

885
00:49:52,199 --> 00:49:55,800
at the same time providing commentaries on the talmud itself,

886
00:49:55,800 --> 00:50:01,559
which seeks to explain, perhaps apply, perhap perhaps you know,

887
00:50:02,000 --> 00:50:05,679
make update or make relevant, sudden secure certain discussions of

888
00:50:05,719 --> 00:50:09,039
the talbut and that exists side by side with these

889
00:50:09,039 --> 00:50:11,280
other genres like writing, And I guess my question is,

890
00:50:11,480 --> 00:50:15,159
you know, to what extent do they interrelate? And are

891
00:50:15,199 --> 00:50:19,519
these talmulive commentaries, so to speak, better friends of the

892
00:50:19,599 --> 00:50:23,679
writing of responsor or better friends of writing of codes?

893
00:50:24,199 --> 00:50:28,000
And how does it fit into this, this rather this

894
00:50:28,159 --> 00:50:31,519
constructed kind of opposition between the response and the code.

895
00:50:32,679 --> 00:50:36,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I would say, I'm not sure everyone would

896
00:50:36,000 --> 00:50:38,159
agree with this, but you know a lot of people.

897
00:50:38,679 --> 00:50:40,199
Speaker 1: Why else would we have you on? Please, If you're

898
00:50:40,199 --> 00:50:43,199
going to say something I would agree on, then I would.

899
00:50:43,000 --> 00:50:48,960
Speaker 2: Say that that kind of page by page chamudic commentary

900
00:50:49,159 --> 00:50:52,159
is something very very dominant in the Reshow name and

901
00:50:52,239 --> 00:50:55,320
maybe the earlier name, and has largely leveled off. In

902
00:50:55,400 --> 00:50:58,719
other words, it's hard to think they exist, but it's

903
00:50:58,760 --> 00:51:03,639
hard to think of an influentyal page by page commentary

904
00:51:03,800 --> 00:51:06,320
on the Talmud of the last one hundred or two

905
00:51:06,400 --> 00:51:08,800
hundred years. Now someone's going to say, what about this,

906
00:51:08,920 --> 00:51:10,519
And I'm sure there's one there, right, But like if

907
00:51:10,559 --> 00:51:14,960
we think of them, obviously Rashi Tosos, you know, the Rashon,

908
00:51:15,119 --> 00:51:20,760
sard rambamb Rashba Ron, etc. Son others, they exist and

909
00:51:20,800 --> 00:51:22,639
they're still I'm sure you could go to a sparm

910
00:51:22,679 --> 00:51:26,440
shop and find a fairly new thing on Bubba atsierb

911
00:51:26,480 --> 00:51:29,679
of a Comma or something like that. But largely the

912
00:51:30,320 --> 00:51:32,800
in the modern era, I think it's been codes and

913
00:51:32,880 --> 00:51:36,239
response that have been and then like sort of various

914
00:51:36,320 --> 00:51:42,039
rabbinic essays that have been more more influential than kind

915
00:51:42,079 --> 00:51:45,559
of daff bay daf commentary. Now, what has happened is,

916
00:51:45,599 --> 00:51:47,039
as they said, I mentioned this word a few times.

917
00:51:47,280 --> 00:51:49,480
I think what has emerged, let's say, is the idea

918
00:51:49,519 --> 00:51:53,599
of the essay or article on a topic, right, something

919
00:51:53,639 --> 00:51:56,199
that you don't really have in the earlier writings. In

920
00:51:56,280 --> 00:51:59,920
other words, the ram Band's Cuntristadina de Garmi is exceptional

921
00:52:00,360 --> 00:52:02,239
because it's one of the only examples of in the

922
00:52:02,320 --> 00:52:04,920
year of the reshown in of someone saying I'm going

923
00:52:05,000 --> 00:52:06,960
to write on this topic and try to cover it

924
00:52:07,159 --> 00:52:11,320
in some sort of introduction, thesis, conclusion. Right. In general,

925
00:52:11,440 --> 00:52:15,840
I would say rabbinic writing doesn't have that structure. It's

926
00:52:15,880 --> 00:52:18,039
really hard to think. And I'll say something that is

927
00:52:18,039 --> 00:52:21,920
a little provocative. What is the that there's not many

928
00:52:22,000 --> 00:52:24,840
Hoboutic books and you're gonna say, what are you talking

929
00:52:24,880 --> 00:52:27,199
about it? Walking Indy based mentors. There's a gagillion of them,

930
00:52:27,280 --> 00:52:30,440
And by book I mean a thing on a single

931
00:52:30,559 --> 00:52:34,119
topic that has a thesis that is pursued from beginning

932
00:52:34,280 --> 00:52:39,719
to end. This is a monograph exactly. There aren't many

933
00:52:40,760 --> 00:52:43,119
more recently sure in the last to say, hundred years,

934
00:52:43,159 --> 00:52:45,559
you see more of these, but but there really aren't many.

935
00:52:46,280 --> 00:52:48,719
So the monograph we've been talking about genres and also

936
00:52:48,760 --> 00:52:52,440
worth thinking what genres don't exist, And I think therefore

937
00:52:53,480 --> 00:52:55,800
the word commentary does a lot more work there in

938
00:52:55,800 --> 00:52:58,079
the same way the gomar is quote commentary on the MISSIONA.

939
00:52:58,360 --> 00:53:01,000
I mean yes and no right, and the same is

940
00:53:01,079 --> 00:53:04,000
true right, so and therefore the and we're talking and

941
00:53:04,079 --> 00:53:05,639
the chew vote wind up doing this. But I saying

942
00:53:05,880 --> 00:53:08,920
more recent thing is the sort of article and or

943
00:53:09,039 --> 00:53:11,800
the book where you can take a topic and kind

944
00:53:11,840 --> 00:53:14,119
of pursue it consistently. I think one of the first

945
00:53:14,800 --> 00:53:16,559
maybe the on m you could count them, but I

946
00:53:16,639 --> 00:53:20,360
think the shim and schup Shario share. There's some predecessors

947
00:53:20,400 --> 00:53:22,960
to ship Schmid, but in others it's pretty thin in

948
00:53:23,280 --> 00:53:26,559
that sense. So I think today the type of person

949
00:53:26,599 --> 00:53:28,679
who would have written a page by page to munic

950
00:53:28,719 --> 00:53:32,039
commentary is more likely to write sort of essays or

951
00:53:32,039 --> 00:53:34,679
maybe a book on a given topic. It's more fitting

952
00:53:34,760 --> 00:53:37,320
with the way that we write today and that we

953
00:53:37,400 --> 00:53:40,800
think today. And therefore I think that that genre is

954
00:53:41,519 --> 00:53:44,239
while I agree it's been continuing, but it's not. It's

955
00:53:44,239 --> 00:53:47,599
hard to think of very influential page by page commentaries

956
00:53:48,280 --> 00:53:52,800
since the kind of midachronin. Maybe the ark Lanaire is.

957
00:53:53,000 --> 00:53:55,880
But again you can't compare that to the earlier ones.

958
00:53:55,920 --> 00:53:59,159
For example, him his chewbot Binanci and is the alcavette

959
00:53:59,199 --> 00:54:02,800
linger I think are more influential than his tem me

960
00:54:02,920 --> 00:54:07,480
to commentary routhlynaire now where if it's in certainly of

961
00:54:07,599 --> 00:54:10,239
the reshown him, it's just considered primary loss. So in

962
00:54:10,280 --> 00:54:12,599
other words, that fits you know, what the past leots say,

963
00:54:12,760 --> 00:54:15,440
fits into codes all over the place, and fits into

964
00:54:15,480 --> 00:54:18,960
response all over the place as we move on somewhat less.

965
00:54:19,360 --> 00:54:23,480
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, fair enough? It is interesting to note the

966
00:54:24,199 --> 00:54:28,000
influx of of the the optic, let's say, of the

967
00:54:28,039 --> 00:54:30,920
phenomen of the Halak monograph and Hala essay and really

968
00:54:30,960 --> 00:54:34,000
honestly the Hallakic footnotes. There's also something that did not

969
00:54:34,559 --> 00:54:37,199
exist much in previous centuries. But I suppose you know,

970
00:54:37,400 --> 00:54:39,679
has you know, writing has taken on the track.

971
00:54:39,880 --> 00:54:42,039
Speaker 2: I think I think the missioner Brewer, I don't want

972
00:54:42,039 --> 00:54:45,079
to say the first, but the mission brewer writes footnotes

973
00:54:45,119 --> 00:54:47,280
on the missioner burah right. In other words, he might

974
00:54:47,400 --> 00:54:50,360
be his missioner. Burgh is itself some sort of footnote

975
00:54:50,360 --> 00:54:52,559
slash commentary, right, But then the shared Sea, and he

976
00:54:52,599 --> 00:54:55,599
has like footnotes on his text. But yes, this idea,

977
00:54:56,039 --> 00:54:58,679
this modern way of writing of text and footnotes and things,

978
00:54:58,719 --> 00:55:00,800
which is now you know, you could find certainly in

979
00:55:00,840 --> 00:55:02,480
the Monera sex world. I think when we were in

980
00:55:02,519 --> 00:55:06,599
the Hibi world. This is a fairly new phenomenon. But

981
00:55:06,760 --> 00:55:08,719
by the way I think this is I wrote in

982
00:55:08,800 --> 00:55:10,559
my book, I think this goes all the way back.

983
00:55:10,639 --> 00:55:14,000
In other words, if we go to before the world

984
00:55:14,079 --> 00:55:16,960
of Hazal, it take us to the first century. So

985
00:55:17,079 --> 00:55:19,679
we know of Joe Ciphis, and we know of Filo,

986
00:55:20,119 --> 00:55:23,039
who write what we would call monographs. Right they write

987
00:55:23,280 --> 00:55:27,440
one person writing in their own voice about a topic

988
00:55:27,559 --> 00:55:31,039
that is definable. And then once you get to Razal,

989
00:55:31,519 --> 00:55:33,400
they don't do that. First of all, they don't write,

990
00:55:34,159 --> 00:55:37,000
by which I mean like a written product. It's all tbalpe.

991
00:55:37,320 --> 00:55:41,159
We should remember that though we engage to pe as books,

992
00:55:41,320 --> 00:55:43,360
that's not the way haza did. It's all about Peh

993
00:55:44,320 --> 00:55:50,960
and all the collections. Mishna Medrisha, Medrisha, Gada Damarabavla Murisli

994
00:55:51,039 --> 00:55:56,800
are collections of inter multi generational works that don't have

995
00:55:57,000 --> 00:56:00,719
a very clear structure and conceptual structure. And that goes

996
00:56:00,800 --> 00:56:03,400
all the way from the earliest hazal until you get

997
00:56:03,440 --> 00:56:05,920
to the own meme that begin to kind of write

998
00:56:05,920 --> 00:56:08,320
a single people in their own voice. You know, there

999
00:56:08,320 --> 00:56:11,480
writes some essays pias is mecha memcar and commercial ar

1000
00:56:11,679 --> 00:56:13,679
shar go, and you know, then you begin to have it.

1001
00:56:13,760 --> 00:56:15,559
But I think it's I think part of what's driving

1002
00:56:15,599 --> 00:56:18,039
this is, you know, not only Talmud Tara in the

1003
00:56:18,320 --> 00:56:21,239
idea that to study, but also the form that tore

1004
00:56:21,320 --> 00:56:24,320
study has taken for Hazau, I think bears a huge

1005
00:56:24,400 --> 00:56:26,239
influence on everything after.

1006
00:56:26,880 --> 00:56:30,280
Speaker 1: Right, okay, and and let me let me move a

1007
00:56:30,320 --> 00:56:34,000
little bit into sort of an analysis of these of

1008
00:56:34,079 --> 00:56:38,599
these different codes, sorry, the genres, codes and response as

1009
00:56:38,679 --> 00:56:41,920
it pertains to the education of rabbis or you know,

1010
00:56:42,039 --> 00:56:45,679
the syllabi in Yeshivat and other and lot of those places.

1011
00:56:45,920 --> 00:56:47,840
And you know, it is very interesting to think about that.

1012
00:56:48,079 --> 00:56:50,679
You know, there is quite a clear prioritization where you

1013
00:56:50,840 --> 00:56:53,920
have the talm wood and its commentaries as the major aspect,

1014
00:56:53,960 --> 00:56:56,400
and then a kind of distant second is the learning

1015
00:56:56,440 --> 00:56:59,000
of the codes and their commentaries and then are really

1016
00:56:59,119 --> 00:57:03,199
really distant. Third is the study of responsor, which comes

1017
00:57:03,320 --> 00:57:06,920
which is very infrequent, let's say, in your average tumbletic

1018
00:57:06,960 --> 00:57:09,760
training and general training, which most rabbi still to this

1019
00:57:09,880 --> 00:57:13,039
day undergo. And the question that becomes, firstly, why is

1020
00:57:13,119 --> 00:57:16,280
this the case? And secondly, I mean is this wise?

1021
00:57:16,360 --> 00:57:21,639
I mean do we ought there be a reconsideration, recalibration

1022
00:57:22,239 --> 00:57:24,440
of the educational focus of some of these places.

1023
00:57:24,920 --> 00:57:29,840
Speaker 2: Sure, so what you're saying is certainly true of the

1024
00:57:30,119 --> 00:57:33,440
tradition that emerges from Valajen, which has a huge influence

1025
00:57:33,519 --> 00:57:37,440
on yeshivas of all stripes today, and that, like you said,

1026
00:57:38,239 --> 00:57:41,800
the subject matter is still a famitic masecta and it's

1027
00:57:41,920 --> 00:57:45,199
main reshowname and you might look at the schuch to

1028
00:57:45,239 --> 00:57:48,079
see what he does with it, or particularly if there's

1029
00:57:48,119 --> 00:57:50,559
a well known shock or exos and you kind of

1030
00:57:50,599 --> 00:57:52,800
gotta find your way in there. But that's not what

1031
00:57:52,880 --> 00:57:55,360
you're focused on. And that is certainly true for the

1032
00:57:55,440 --> 00:57:58,079
way we you know, when you're young, we learn the

1033
00:57:58,119 --> 00:58:01,280
gamura itself. As you go on, you learned the gamara

1034
00:58:01,480 --> 00:58:03,400
shown him, and that's what it means to understand the

1035
00:58:03,519 --> 00:58:05,880
sud yeah, so I think that's very much driven by

1036
00:58:05,920 --> 00:58:08,360
how the talmat itself works and by this idea that

1037
00:58:08,559 --> 00:58:11,000
talmut toa again to me this kind of say, because

1038
00:58:11,000 --> 00:58:14,480
that is sort of its ideal form. Now. Of course,

1039
00:58:14,599 --> 00:58:18,000
when you go to study Smicha, which is typically after

1040
00:58:18,119 --> 00:58:21,360
several years of this, you will change your focus to

1041
00:58:21,519 --> 00:58:25,079
the shukan uh and the things around it. And depending

1042
00:58:25,159 --> 00:58:27,360
on where and how you studied it, how much are

1043
00:58:27,400 --> 00:58:29,719
you really going back to the talmud and working down

1044
00:58:29,840 --> 00:58:31,679
or how much are you starting from these kind of

1045
00:58:31,719 --> 00:58:35,000
codes and working forward. But you're certainly right that in

1046
00:58:35,079 --> 00:58:39,360
the classical is Shiva chuvote are almost non existent. I

1047
00:58:39,559 --> 00:58:42,480
can speculate that this is part of the ideology that,

1048
00:58:42,480 --> 00:58:44,199
in other words, that very much comes from a legions.

1049
00:58:44,239 --> 00:58:46,719
There's the pure Tora and the pure Toa is in

1050
00:58:46,840 --> 00:58:49,159
the Gemara and the chu vote are kind of already

1051
00:58:49,280 --> 00:58:53,480
sullied by the complexities of human interaction in the world,

1052
00:58:53,559 --> 00:58:56,840
and I think the g Sevagic says things in this direction.

1053
00:58:56,920 --> 00:58:58,400
I'm not sure you would say it quite in the

1054
00:58:58,440 --> 00:59:00,159
way I'm saying now, but I think he's reflecting this

1055
00:59:00,280 --> 00:59:04,519
sort of idea as one moves to Smicha in more

1056
00:59:04,559 --> 00:59:08,039
practical things. There is definitely more emphasis on these later

1057
00:59:08,119 --> 00:59:10,440
works on more modern questions, and of course don't come

1058
00:59:10,480 --> 00:59:13,199
up in the kamara. You know, certainly, if you're studying castus,

1059
00:59:13,239 --> 00:59:15,000
you got to know how factories work and all these

1060
00:59:15,039 --> 00:59:17,880
sorts of things. And you know that stuff is obviously

1061
00:59:18,199 --> 00:59:22,320
in the in the much more contemporary literature. And you know,

1062
00:59:22,440 --> 00:59:24,760
in my in my job or part of my job

1063
00:59:24,840 --> 00:59:29,639
of interviewing various day anin you know, rabbinical court judges,

1064
00:59:30,159 --> 00:59:31,840
and they will all say that at some point they

1065
00:59:31,880 --> 00:59:34,119
had to start learning again. In other words, they learned

1066
00:59:34,119 --> 00:59:36,519
in yeshiva in this classic way, and then when they

1067
00:59:36,639 --> 00:59:39,039
decided to try to, you know, go to the day

1068
00:59:39,159 --> 00:59:42,920
a new track to be a sort of practicing a

1069
00:59:43,039 --> 00:59:46,159
diane they basically sort of they'll have this story where

1070
00:59:46,159 --> 00:59:48,239
they like start over and now I got to learn

1071
00:59:48,320 --> 00:59:51,119
to learn again and learn differently, which is always interesting.

1072
00:59:51,920 --> 00:59:55,559
But of course you don't get selected into a dianute

1073
00:59:55,639 --> 00:59:57,639
program unless you're really good at doing the other thing.

1074
00:59:58,320 --> 01:00:00,320
And I would say, sitting on these cases in my

1075
01:00:00,400 --> 01:00:02,480
other job, you can see the influence of this that

1076
01:00:02,639 --> 01:00:05,400
some of them are very classical and and you know,

1077
01:00:06,039 --> 01:00:08,679
are very wedded to how this is kind of constructed

1078
01:00:08,719 --> 01:00:10,599
in Yeshiva and less so into sort of okay, what

1079
01:00:10,679 --> 01:00:13,639
are we actually going to do here? And now? So

1080
01:00:13,760 --> 01:00:15,719
I think that that is going And now I think

1081
01:00:15,760 --> 01:00:18,239
there are changes too. You know, there's what you described

1082
01:00:18,360 --> 01:00:21,079
is certainly true of the Balasian tradition. But you know,

1083
01:00:21,199 --> 01:00:25,400
even in my lifetime, you see a change towards different

1084
01:00:25,440 --> 01:00:28,679
ways of studying. Certainly once you enter kind of mifha

1085
01:00:28,800 --> 01:00:31,960
tracts where there's going to be more emphasis on you vote,

1086
01:00:32,000 --> 01:00:35,239
and certainly you know the true boative emotion find seeing

1087
01:00:35,280 --> 01:00:38,599
that everyone quote has to know right and things like that.

1088
01:00:38,719 --> 01:00:40,840
So I do think there is a change. But I

1089
01:00:41,440 --> 01:00:45,119
also think that the centrality of the gamara to the

1090
01:00:45,280 --> 01:00:48,599
process of talmatara and therefore everything that flows from it,

1091
01:00:48,719 --> 01:00:51,079
even if you're trying to do something quote practical, still

1092
01:00:51,159 --> 01:00:53,519
exerts a tremendous influence and under That's one of things

1093
01:00:53,519 --> 01:00:55,320
I tried to talk about my book, that this goes

1094
01:00:55,360 --> 01:00:57,239
back to well, what are we doing here? Is this

1095
01:00:57,400 --> 01:01:01,400
a legal system? Yeah, it's that this has this other dimension,

1096
01:01:01,480 --> 01:01:04,159
and it's understood that that is captured kind of most

1097
01:01:04,280 --> 01:01:07,800
essentially in the Gamura and the commentary around it, and

1098
01:01:08,000 --> 01:01:10,519
less so in its practical orientation. Now, I will say,

1099
01:01:10,679 --> 01:01:13,239
sitting here in a law school, some aspects of this

1100
01:01:13,519 --> 01:01:16,440
exist in the American legal academy, and I suspect in

1101
01:01:16,599 --> 01:01:21,320
graduate education throughout. We don't teach in law school much

1102
01:01:21,360 --> 01:01:26,679
about which forms to file in the trial court in Pennsylvania, right.

1103
01:01:26,719 --> 01:01:29,519
We tend to think about more theoretical discussions. There are

1104
01:01:29,559 --> 01:01:33,880
far more classes on constitutional law and constitutional theory than

1105
01:01:33,920 --> 01:01:38,239
there are on Pennsylvania civil practice, even though in reality

1106
01:01:38,400 --> 01:01:40,280
most of the lawyers are not going to be arguing

1107
01:01:40,760 --> 01:01:44,159
questions of first impression of constitutional interpretation. They're going to

1108
01:01:44,159 --> 01:01:46,960
be doing the daily work of lawyers. My wife went

1109
01:01:46,960 --> 01:01:50,800
to architecture school, and similarly, the sort of model project

1110
01:01:51,000 --> 01:01:54,159
was you know the museum commission, which is some sort

1111
01:01:54,159 --> 01:01:57,840
of conceptual statement made through a building, rather than you know,

1112
01:01:57,960 --> 01:02:00,880
how to do you know a supermarket in the strip mall.

1113
01:02:01,239 --> 01:02:05,320
So I do think that there's something about educational systems generally,

1114
01:02:06,239 --> 01:02:10,079
or power professional education systems generally, where the kind of

1115
01:02:10,519 --> 01:02:12,800
there's a sort of ideal type of study that is

1116
01:02:12,960 --> 01:02:17,039
prized by the kind of educational establishment, which is that

1117
01:02:17,400 --> 01:02:20,960
some gap between what the graduates actually do in practice

1118
01:02:21,000 --> 01:02:24,119
is certainly true inneshiva, certainly true in law school, you know,

1119
01:02:24,199 --> 01:02:29,480
and I know by analogy in architecture school. Although in

1120
01:02:29,599 --> 01:02:31,400
law school I know that there's a yin and yang,

1121
01:02:31,440 --> 01:02:33,639
and these things change do We're now in a more

1122
01:02:33,719 --> 01:02:36,199
clinical route, and so these things go back and forth,

1123
01:02:36,760 --> 01:02:38,559
you know, the fads kind of go back and forth.

1124
01:02:38,599 --> 01:02:42,119
And I suspect the same is true in rabbinic education

1125
01:02:42,280 --> 01:02:45,079
and also as instead we've been talking a lot about

1126
01:02:45,079 --> 01:02:47,320
the volution tradition. If one comes from a kind of

1127
01:02:47,320 --> 01:02:51,039
Spardic tradition, I think the world does look somewhat different, right.

1128
01:02:51,199 --> 01:02:55,159
Speaker 1: And the final point that I wanted to raise is

1129
01:02:56,440 --> 01:02:59,239
sort of the threads of thought that is woven throughout

1130
01:02:59,280 --> 01:03:01,840
your work on which this question of these two different

1131
01:03:01,880 --> 01:03:05,840
genres of Halaic writing bear, which I think is is interesting,

1132
01:03:06,239 --> 01:03:09,760
which is on what is halaha? Which seems to be

1133
01:03:09,840 --> 01:03:14,440
a strikingly a question that is deceptively or appears simple,

1134
01:03:15,000 --> 01:03:17,880
but is deceptive in that particular appearance, and in fact,

1135
01:03:18,079 --> 01:03:21,079
as you have articulated over now, regain is actually a mutal,

1136
01:03:21,119 --> 01:03:25,599
complex question. And of course you have these opposing or

1137
01:03:25,920 --> 01:03:29,719
I'm not sure opposing these strikingly different ways of writing

1138
01:03:29,760 --> 01:03:32,760
halaa and trying to develop it and expand it, and

1139
01:03:32,840 --> 01:03:35,440
and and further it, advance it. And the question becomes,

1140
01:03:35,519 --> 01:03:39,000
how does a consideration of these different forms of Alaric

1141
01:03:39,039 --> 01:03:42,760
writing bear on the major question, which is how does

1142
01:03:42,840 --> 01:03:45,280
one define alaa? The term?

1143
01:03:45,480 --> 01:03:47,719
Speaker 2: Okay, so we were ending with the with the question

1144
01:03:47,800 --> 01:03:50,000
maybe with correct but.

1145
01:03:50,519 --> 01:03:52,880
Speaker 1: I think now that we have a better appreciation of

1146
01:03:53,039 --> 01:03:55,760
what what is involved in this question, now we can

1147
01:03:55,840 --> 01:03:57,880
sort of set the table if yeah.

1148
01:03:57,840 --> 01:04:01,119
Speaker 2: So so as your as youre as you say. So.

1149
01:04:01,480 --> 01:04:03,840
That is something I've been thinking a lot about over

1150
01:04:03,920 --> 01:04:07,880
the years, and my book, which is called the Rabbinica,

1151
01:04:07,920 --> 01:04:10,480
the Rabbinic Idea Law, is trying to kind of articulate.

1152
01:04:10,679 --> 01:04:13,559
So let me just kind of pose where we went into.

1153
01:04:13,639 --> 01:04:18,519
I would say, both codes and response that would broadly

1154
01:04:18,679 --> 01:04:23,559
be considered under the rubric of halahalam se right applied halakha,

1155
01:04:24,159 --> 01:04:27,719
and therefore, you know, kind of not not already a subset.

1156
01:04:27,840 --> 01:04:30,960
Now I tend to say that there are actually three terms.

1157
01:04:31,039 --> 01:04:36,239
There's halakah, there's hala halamas, and there's halaka lamas lemis

1158
01:04:37,320 --> 01:04:40,679
meaning there is halaha in the sense of this kind

1159
01:04:40,719 --> 01:04:44,639
of broad system of ideas, we could say, largely captured

1160
01:04:44,679 --> 01:04:49,800
in the talmudiness related literature in which minority opinions. You know,

1161
01:04:49,880 --> 01:04:52,280
be Shami is part of alaha, even though we know

1162
01:04:52,360 --> 01:04:55,400
we don't poscu in that. Robbie Mayer is halaja, even

1163
01:04:55,440 --> 01:04:58,239
though we of course don't post in that, and halaha

1164
01:04:58,360 --> 01:05:01,280
about all sorts of things that no bearing you know,

1165
01:05:02,079 --> 01:05:04,400
the various discussions in the talma that sort of end

1166
01:05:04,519 --> 01:05:07,719
inconclusively or end or are all picking up on ashita

1167
01:05:07,800 --> 01:05:10,159
that the tama knows from the beginning it's not going

1168
01:05:10,239 --> 01:05:12,079
to right, So that's haw aha sort of in its

1169
01:05:12,239 --> 01:05:16,719
broadest sense. Right, then we have what we would call halakalama,

1170
01:05:17,679 --> 01:05:19,840
which I say is the stuff that if we go

1171
01:05:20,000 --> 01:05:22,039
back to our discussion of the riff, the sort of

1172
01:05:22,079 --> 01:05:24,679
stuff that is within the riffs bar another legal term

1173
01:05:25,079 --> 01:05:27,639
rule of recognition, in other words, within his rule of

1174
01:05:27,719 --> 01:05:31,199
what we kind of is the applied normative alaka. But

1175
01:05:31,400 --> 01:05:35,079
even there, if one studies shikhana uf, there's vast tracts

1176
01:05:35,119 --> 01:05:38,000
of it that is not what we actually do in

1177
01:05:38,199 --> 01:05:41,960
observant communities today. So for example, we mentioned this already

1178
01:05:42,519 --> 01:05:46,039
tambdic torte law right, so bor and ash and sure

1179
01:05:46,840 --> 01:05:50,320
and regel. All these things are in shohan uch and

1180
01:05:50,880 --> 01:05:53,800
are not at all reflective in the practice of observant

1181
01:05:53,880 --> 01:05:57,599
communities today. By contrast, something like the laws of Krishma

1182
01:05:58,440 --> 01:06:01,320
do so I would say, we typically say ala Kalama,

1183
01:06:01,480 --> 01:06:03,719
say is that which is kind of codified by the

1184
01:06:03,840 --> 01:06:08,840
riff you know, rush tour Chilgrenarre. But even there I

1185
01:06:08,880 --> 01:06:12,679
think there's a further distinction between what our actual practices

1186
01:06:12,800 --> 01:06:15,079
are and what's stated in these books. So therefore I

1187
01:06:15,199 --> 01:06:16,840
tend to think of it that it's probably best to

1188
01:06:16,880 --> 01:06:18,920
think of it in three ways. The sort of rawest

1189
01:06:19,039 --> 01:06:22,679
is roughly that which is in the tale. Then we

1190
01:06:22,760 --> 01:06:25,559
could say that which is understood to be normative in

1191
01:06:25,719 --> 01:06:28,360
some sense in some place. By the way, there's another category.

1192
01:06:28,480 --> 01:06:31,000
Or what do we do with the Rombam's codifications of

1193
01:06:31,119 --> 01:06:34,199
the of the laws of the Beta mkdash right, which

1194
01:06:34,199 --> 01:06:36,480
are like they are halaja in the sense of these

1195
01:06:36,480 --> 01:06:39,320
are the correct rules occurring around them, but they're in

1196
01:06:39,400 --> 01:06:42,679
no way sort of part of our functional lives, and

1197
01:06:42,840 --> 01:06:44,639
sort of a layer below that is the sort of

1198
01:06:44,760 --> 01:06:48,039
everything is chicano, which includes things that are extremely relevant

1199
01:06:48,360 --> 01:06:50,519
and things that are not and things that we do

1200
01:06:50,639 --> 01:06:53,039
somewhat differently, et cetera. And then there's like the actual

1201
01:06:53,119 --> 01:06:55,960
practices of Jewish communities which are found in she voked,

1202
01:06:56,000 --> 01:06:58,159
which are found today, and like you know, the letters

1203
01:06:58,280 --> 01:07:01,639
rabbis send their congregants before pass you know, this year

1204
01:07:01,800 --> 01:07:05,519
was so that which the rabbi wrote to the shows,

1205
01:07:05,599 --> 01:07:09,000
and sometimes that's the actual thing that we do. Here's

1206
01:07:09,039 --> 01:07:10,639
how we're selling the comments. Here is how we're doing this.

1207
01:07:11,079 --> 01:07:12,679
So I think that we have to think of it

1208
01:07:12,960 --> 01:07:15,360
as in a variety of levels. I would say my

1209
01:07:15,519 --> 01:07:18,599
own finish, if you will, or my own point of

1210
01:07:18,679 --> 01:07:22,599
emphasis into the discussions. Actually not at the bottom end,

1211
01:07:22,679 --> 01:07:25,599
but at the top is the range of things that

1212
01:07:25,760 --> 01:07:28,239
halaja can cover. And this is a lot of what

1213
01:07:28,320 --> 01:07:30,960
I talk about my book is that what what rabbinic

1214
01:07:31,039 --> 01:07:34,480
discourse does is it uses legal language to talk about

1215
01:07:34,599 --> 01:07:38,199
all sorts of questions and issues that may not be

1216
01:07:38,639 --> 01:07:42,119
thought of as legal in other contexts. So I always say,

1217
01:07:42,599 --> 01:07:46,280
you know, in our culture, we have poetry, we have film,

1218
01:07:46,599 --> 01:07:49,760
we have literature, we have art. We have high brow

1219
01:07:49,920 --> 01:07:51,920
versions of the things, we have low brow versions of

1220
01:07:51,960 --> 01:07:54,880
these things. We have Facebook, we have podcasts, right, and

1221
01:07:55,079 --> 01:07:57,639
lots of lots of ways to communicate and lots of

1222
01:07:57,679 --> 01:08:00,320
lots of ways to frame ideas, and we tend to

1223
01:08:00,400 --> 01:08:05,719
think about law as fairly narrow, bound to the state

1224
01:08:06,719 --> 01:08:10,719
right and bound to prescriptive behaviors. So halaka has that.

1225
01:08:11,239 --> 01:08:14,000
But what Rabinic literature doesn't have is all these other

1226
01:08:14,119 --> 01:08:17,159
modes of discourse, or if it hasn't, they're all smushed together.

1227
01:08:18,279 --> 01:08:20,680
You know, it has agada, it has drush out, but

1228
01:08:20,880 --> 01:08:23,720
they all kind of tend to sort of revolve often

1229
01:08:23,800 --> 01:08:26,760
around legal concepts. And therefore the idea is that the

1230
01:08:27,000 --> 01:08:30,680
legal takes up so much space and therefore does a

1231
01:08:30,720 --> 01:08:34,439
lot of work. And the challenge is, you know, now,

1232
01:08:34,520 --> 01:08:36,479
maybe going back to the bottom line, is that we

1233
01:08:36,680 --> 01:08:39,319
use the same body of texts in the same sort

1234
01:08:39,319 --> 01:08:41,399
of set of concepts both to do our kind of

1235
01:08:41,479 --> 01:08:44,560
big thinking about the world and to do our regulating

1236
01:08:44,800 --> 01:08:47,680
and that could be hard because those are designed different things.

1237
01:08:47,720 --> 01:08:51,079
I think the process of creating halahala myset from Hallaha

1238
01:08:51,359 --> 01:08:55,640
is complicated precisely because it has to traverse this distance

1239
01:08:56,000 --> 01:08:58,640
and the lines are not always clear and open for debate.

1240
01:08:59,079 --> 01:09:01,640
Speaker 1: Fair Enough, that was the kind of answer that has

1241
01:09:01,840 --> 01:09:06,640
was both detailed and complex enough but also irreducible enough.

1242
01:09:06,960 --> 01:09:10,479
I think we have to expect that you cannot reduced

1243
01:09:10,640 --> 01:09:13,119
to a thing or another thing. It is somewhat like

1244
01:09:14,239 --> 01:09:17,560
like law, and somewhat not, and inclusive of some aspects

1245
01:09:17,600 --> 01:09:20,640
of it, but also ranges vastly beyond it. And I'm

1246
01:09:20,680 --> 01:09:24,159
afraid that time has forced us to draw this conversation

1247
01:09:24,199 --> 01:09:26,960
to a close. And I thank you very much for

1248
01:09:27,000 --> 01:09:28,880
as a high samon, for joining us today on the

1249
01:09:28,920 --> 01:09:31,279
Podcast of Jewish Ideas. This has been a lot of

1250
01:09:31,319 --> 01:09:34,760
fun and we look forward to your future publications, whatever

1251
01:09:34,960 --> 01:09:37,119
and whenever they may they may be.

1252
01:09:37,560 --> 01:09:37,840
Speaker 2: Thank you.

1253
01:09:39,920 --> 01:09:42,359
Speaker 1: This has been the Podcast of Jewish Ideas by Tora

1254
01:09:42,439 --> 01:09:46,640
in Motion, produced by Alisha Kellman and myself Jjkimbri, edited

1255
01:09:46,720 --> 01:09:49,159
and mixed by Alisha Kelman. You can stay up to

1256
01:09:49,239 --> 01:09:52,000
date by subscribing in your favorite podcast app. To support

1257
01:09:52,119 --> 01:09:54,720
more thoughtful Jewish content like this, please visit Toro in

1258
01:09:54,760 --> 01:10:01,319
motion dot org slash donated then then thet them me