A Mirror of Rabbinic Hermeneutics

Studies in Religion, Magic, and Language Theory in Ancient Judaism

Giuseppe Veltri

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9783110368376
• eBook ISBN: 9783110437782
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ancient Religion

Rabbinic hermeneutics in ancient Judaism reflects this multifaceted world of the text and of reality, seen as a world of reference worth commentary. As a mirror, it includes this world but perhaps also falsifies reality, adapting it to one's own aims and necessities. It consists of four parts:
Part I, considered as introduction, is the description of the "Rabbinic Workshop" (Officina Rabbinica), the rabbinic world where the student plays a role and a reformation of a reformation always takes place, the world where the mirror was created and manufactured.
Part II deals with the historical environment, the world of reference of rabbinic Judaism in Palestine and in the Hellenistic Diaspora (Reflecting Roman Religion);
Part III focuses on magic and the sciences, as ancient (political and empirical) activities of influence in the double meaning of receiving and adopting something and of attempt to produce an effect on persons and objects (Performing the Craft of Sciences and Magic).
Part IV addresses the rabbinic concern with texts (Reflecting on Languages and Texts) as the main area of "influence" of the rabbinic academy in a space between the texts of the past and the real world of the present.

Part I: Officina rabbinica

1 Impertinent Students vs. Sagacious Rabbis: The Art of Learning

The argumentation of Talmudic texts appears somewhat peculiar for the modern reader. There are no premises, no discussions of methodology, and especially no consistent chapters or books which eventually might reveal a characteristic style.4 The styles delivered to posterity in its brevity sometimes overwhelm or even anger the students of Jewish Studies. The transmitted sentences and fragments of speech are sayings and statements which likely had evolved in the framework of a discussion whose historic and geographic context is not known to us (any longer) – if they had ever entered into the awareness of the tradition. They are, perhaps, merely condensed teachings that are, at best, exemplified through stories. Sometimes, there is not any reference detectible – neither to the contemporary context nor to the text on which the discussion is based.

To the uninformed student, the reading of rabbinic texts might appear like a stage play by Eugène Ionesco: as a seemingly absurd composition of assertion following assertion, formulae following formulae, styles following styles. In the end, there is only an assertion.5 The unfamiliar reader thus is overwhelmed and the rabbis certainly were not unaware of this. They referred to the secrets of the Torah they were not willing to reveal as is explicitly mentioned in the rabbinic commentary Pesiqta Rabbati § 5. There, it is asserted that the Torah is now also available to the non-Jews, the ummot ha-‘olam, in the form of the Greek translation. Only the oral Torah, the Torah she-be-‘al peh, remained God’s secret he shared exclusively with his people, as a special characteristic of his unique relationship with his son Israel.6 Even if this text of the Pesiqta is a polemic stroke targeted both against Christians as well as the Karaite movement,7 it can be emphasised that the structure of Talmudic styles required a form of esoteric approach known only to insiders. Bearing that in mind makes understandable the following Orthodox joke in which a rabbi explains the afterlife: There is no purgatory or hell, but only paradise. After their deaths, the righteous ones (Ṣadiqqim) as well as the evildoers (Resha‘im) get to go to paradise. Moses awaits both groups with the Talmud in hand, which will be a joy and blessing for the righteous ones, but the true and tormenting hell for the unrighteous ones and the evildoers.8

Perhaps not because of this prospective end of their ignorance of the Talmudic joy, many non-rabbis turned to the study of rabbinic texts. For some these texts constitute religious customs and beliefs, for others a challenge that is only manageable through studying and the love of hermeneutical tradition. The teachings of the rabbis are an intellectual impertinence that is only accessible by impertinent means. This is my hypothesis as outlined in the following discussion.

The rabbis have handed down to us sketches or fragments of discussions – a literary form like the canovaccio of the commedia dell’arte – in which only the key points are noted. The redactor, who had chosen the binding assertions and had noted them as anonymous maxims, offers the authoritative reader the opportunity for further debate. The argument is the driving engine of the tradition. Without discussion’s soulful impetus it is impossible to hand down the tradition.

Effective learning does not consist of repetition – despite the fact that the word “Mishnah,” the name for the canonic work that had developed in the earliest phase of rabbinic literature, means precisely that: “repetition.” According to the Babylonian Talmud, Soṭah, fol. 22a, the student/teacher9 of a rabbinic academy (a Tanna’) is not dissimilar to a Magush,10 since both mnemonically repeat what they do not comprehend (or, in Aramaic, raṭen magusha we-la᾿ yada’ ma᾿y amar tane tanna we-la᾿ yada‘ ma᾿y amar).11 In essence, teaching is learning, not repeating.

The concept of the master in the understanding of rabbinic interpretation is not what we understand today.12 The master is not a mercantile “service contractor”13 of society, but the one who helps formulate questions. The master’s maieutic function is unique and prominent. He has no past he is expected to share, but is only supposed to use one method with which the past and the present might be brought into harmony. The learning of the word “how” instead of “what” is important, even crucial as we learn from the Ernst des Einsatzes (“earnest character of engaged effort”) as defined by Reinhard Neudecker.14 Even the marital obligations might be ignored for a while (up to three years!) in order to pursue one’s studies.15 The reason for this is that one does not learn contents which might be repeated, but rather methodology, the hermeneutics of life itself. The master does not sell goods but transmits the ways and means of how to “move” in life (and, yes, Halakhah does philologically mean “the way of walking”). Because of this idea, the rabbinic quote from Pirqe Avot 6:4 is extremely important: “This is the way of the Torah. Eat a morsel of bread with salt, and drink a measured amount of water. Sleep on the ground and live a life of hardship and labour in the study of the Torah.”16

In addition to the physical effort, which already contains a goodly portion of asceticism, the student is supposed to be nourished by what is really “tasty” and stimulating; salt and labour. We also have to understand Jesus’s word in this context, saying that his disciples were the “salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13). It is not a coincidence that the Hebrew word ṭa‘am refers to “taste” as well as “reason,” and that ṭa‘ame ha-miṣvot (“reasons for the commandments”) might also refer to a sensual perception of the commandments. Thus, one has to taste the wisdom of the Torah by putting effort in it. The result of such training is not an examination of knowledge – not a final exam – but the certificate that one is capable of “walking” on their own. The aim of training is to “make wise one’s master” (Mishnah, Pirqe Avot 6:6).

1.1 The Student

To understand the criticism of rote memorisation, let us try to place ourselves back in the times of the disciples, the talmidim, the sages or teachers, and the ḥakhamim. Surprisingly little literature is available on the students in the Talmudic era.17 It has to do with the fact that students generally were only briefly noted in the tractates on the teacher. It also has to do with the core of rabbinic assertions that the whole body of the halakhic and aggadic literature of Talmud and bible exegesis was quintessentially concerned with education.

I would like to emphasise in this context a contribution in the secondary literature. In 1924, an article appeared by the Hungarian rabbi Isidor Goldberger, who had thoroughly researched the matter, entitled “Der Talmid Chacham.”18 The article is structured according to the classic method of philological/cultural-historical scholarship, and only describes the texts in which the word or the concept of “student” (talmid) appears. The article is a treasure trove for future readers, since it is deeply imbued with and characterised by a period of scholarship that still awaits the appreciation it deserves. The student is generally addressed by the word talmid as well as the common ben (son) or na‘ar (young man). It is contrasted with the expression av (father), which might be understood as “rabbi,” as the exegetic work Sifre Devarim § 34 explains: “The teacher is called father.” There are still some differences between rav (rabbi) and av (father), as we learn frorm Tosefta Megillah 4:41 (see Babylonian Talmud, Qiddushin 49a):

R. Yehudah says: He who translates a verse according to its literal meaning is a liar; he who adds is a blasphemer. The translator (meturgeman) who stands before the ḥakham (sage) is not allowed to leave out, add, or to change unless he is his av (father) or his rav.

The meturgeman (translator/the one who explains) at the school of the sages has to follow in his rendition the guidelines of the sages. The prohibition of alteration is, of course, not valid, if the meturgeman is the father of the sage or his rabbi. The student cannot alter the text according to his own will because he cannot harmonise the past and the present.19

The aim of a rabbinic school is to have students, as the maxim of the Men of the Great Assembly reads in Pirqe Avot 1:1: to “raise up many disciples” is one of the obligations of the rabbi and stands alongside the thoughtfulness of speech and adding fences around the Torah (ibidem). There are no specific numbers referring to students: Rabbi Hillel was said to have 80 students; Rabbi Yoḥanan ben Zakkai only five.20 It is speculative whether or not this small number indeed included only the exceptional students as Goldberger concluded. Yet it is a fact that Rabbi Yoḥanan praised (or reprimanded) his sons for the virtues just like the patriarch Jacob had done when Yohanan said: “Hyrkanos is a sealed cistern that does not spill one drop; Yosi ha-Kohen is a righteous one, etc.” (ibidem) The rabbinic literature not only contained praise for the virtues which were supposed to develop in the students, but also (and this to my mind especially) the intellectual acuity that developed through engaged discussion.21 The student was praised who made his teacher a wise man.

The curriculum of the student was oriented toward the chain of tradition, which clearly formed a kind of trivium and quadrivium of rabbinic origin: Sifre Devarim § 161 presents a circle of thought which is supposed to lead from the fear of God through the Bible, Targum, Mishnah, Talmud and ma‘aseh (activity/work) back to the fear of God. The post-Talmudic tractate Soferim 16:6 uses the same chain of tradition that is described in Sifre Devarim § 161 for a curriculum vitae of Rabbi Yoḥanan ben Zakkai, as do Avot de-Rabbi Natan, Version B § 28 and Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 28a. The fear of God stands at the beginning and at the end of learning in order to preclude the student’s self- interest (Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim 62a) and his arrogance (Midrash Tanḥuma Yitro 15). “The purpose of scholarship is repentance and the doing of charitable works” (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 17a).

One could extend almost without limits the list of virtues, or moral rules for the students and the disciples of the rabbis. Goldberger’s article is a treasure trove of quotes and allusions, ethical rules and everything connected with them. One cannot resist the impression that the rabbinical literature is simply rabbinical and marks the end of a process which only one group had managed to survive: the rabbis. Other groups which used to have some influence clearly moved into the background and allowed the rabbis to celebrate themselves. The costs of teaching in relation to the priesthood stands out, as is noted in Mishnah, Avot 6:6. The passage is worth quoting it in its entirety:

Torah is greater than priesthood or kingship. For kingship has thirty characteristics and priesthood twenty-four, but Torah is acquired through forty-eight things. These are: study, attentive listening, orderly speech, an understanding heart, discernment of the heart, awe, reverence, humility, cheerfulness, purity, attendance on the wise, attaching oneself to colleagues, argumentation with students, sedateness, [knowledge of] Mishnah, moderation in commerce, moderation in derekh eretz, moderation in pleasure, moderation in sleep, moderation in conversation, moderation in laughter, patience, a good heart, faith in the wise, acceptance of sufferings, that knows his place, that rejoices in his portion, that makes a fence to his words, that claims no merit for himself, beloved, loves the Omnipresent, loves mankind, loves justice, loves rectitude, loves r...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Documentation style, transliteration and references
• Part I: Officina rabbinica
• Part II: Reflecting Roman Religion
• Part III: Performing the Craft of Science & Magic
• Part IV: Reflecting on Languages and Texts
• Endnotes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index of Primary Sources