Posted March 3 2008
Being a Heretic, or, How to Disagree With the Talmud
This is the third in a series of articles promoting the idea that people should feel free to come up with their own ways of interpreting biblical verses and Talmudic reasoning. Don’t feel limited just because you don’t have a fancy name like “the Ditz.”
-Daveed Yoel Tzvi
The 71 Sided Die - Why should you want to have your own interpretation of Torah?
Esther vs. Kermit - Why does the Gemara say Esther was green?
The Gemara has a concept of “Gezera Shava” which allows the association of concepts between two verses based on the same word used in each. However, such associations must be based on a “tradition” - we can’t make up new ones (this was true even in Talmudic times). The association also does not need to be logically sound. If you would ask a rabbi for an explanation of how the Gezera Shava works, you are most likely to be met with an answer that sounds like “it is what it is [and if you don't accept it you are showing a lack of faith in the rabbis and are therefore a heretic].”
You won’t get that from me. I think I understand the concept very well, when used right. For example, in Esther 9:29 we are told that that Megilla was written. The rabbis have a very simple question: if we wanted to write a Megillla, how should it be done? The rabbis use the concept of Gezera Shava to connect the ambiguous use of the word
“writing” here in Esther 9:29 to a much less ambiguous use of the word in Yirmiyahu (36:18). In Yirmiyahu it says, “I will write in a book using black ink.” The rabbis (Megilla 18a) tell us that they now know (at least one method of) how to preform the process of writing. You do it in a book using black ink. The Gezera Shava connects the ambiguous usage of a word to a clarified usage of a word to answer a question. The question here is how. The question somewhere else could be when or where or why. It is possible that two different verses could come to clarify the same word. In that case, either a distinction would have to be made (one type of writing is used for documents, and the other is just to make a mark) or one would could say that both methods are valid.
My understanding of the power of the Gezera Shava might not sound as heretical as my title would suggest. There are two ways (in my mind) to use a Gezera Shava. The right way (see above) and the wrong way (see below).
The Gemara (Megillah 2a) starts by questioning the reasons for the rules stated in the Mishnah. After establishing the reason that walled cities (or cities) read the Megilla on a different day than unwalled cities (or suburbs and villages; “Arei Haperazot”) and the days on which each read, the Gemara (2b) asks another question on the Mishnah. The Mishnah states that the rule of walled cities applies to those cities that were walled at the time of Yehoshua’s conquest of Israel. The Gemara asks how the Mishnah came to this conclusion.
Obviously, if there is a distinction between walled and unwalled cities made in the Megilla, it would apply to the cities in existence at that time unless there was a reason to believe otherwise. The Gemara brings a Gezera Shava on the word “Prazi” which for our purposes means unwalled cities. It is used in Esther (9:16-17) to talk about when the Jews of the suburbs fought and when they rested. The same word is used in Devarim (3:5); the verse there talks about what kind of cities are in Israel and it tells us that aside from strong, tall, walled cities there were also many unwalled cities.
If the Talmud used that comparison to tell us that the word “Prazi” referred to all unwalled cities, I would embrace this connection. The verse in Devarim talks about walled cities and claims that all the other cities were Prazi cities. This could certainly teach us the meaning of the word Prazi in terms of its form, but this does not answer the question of the Gemara: “when?”
I reject this Gezera Shava’s validity (which is why you might call me a heretic). But as someone who likes to figure things out, I wish to push further and try and figure out what the rabbis were trying to accomplish by pretending that this verse comparison could be valid.
Interestingly, I am not the only one who rejects this Gezera Shava as valid. The Gemara does present other options and goes on to say that if you accept the Gezera Shava you have to make an exception for the city of Shushan. The city of Shushan was not walled at the time of Yehoshua, but since it is where the story took place it would be inappropriate to exclude it. This leads me to believe that the argument that claims that we should consider construction from an earlier time period isn’t really answering a question of “when” but of “where.” It is my belief that the Gezera Shava was invented (yes, invented) as a method of validating a wish to have Jerusalem counted as a walled city. (I won’t go into detail, but this connects to Zecharih 2:8.)
There are a few times when Halachic reasoning is diluted by emotion. The rabbis wanted to include Jerusalem, so they found an excuse to do so. Many times one can point out that a rabbi’s life stories reflect his position on an issue. It is my belief that only through thorough research and an attempt to find the truth can we accurately understand the thought process of our sages. Taking things at face value only instills in us and our children the concept of blind faith. If blind faith is the veil on all religious practices and it is ever poked, everything behind it will be broken. My opinion is that a much stronger system is built with a few axioms of faith (God, for one) and then a construction based on those axioms.
Postscript: While I came to the conclusion that the Gezera Shava was made up for emotional reasons to include Jerusalem, it struck me as strange that no one else thought as I did on this issue. After studying other things and then coming back to this issue curiosity got the best of me and I opened up the Jerusalem Talmud to read its version. In there Rabbi Symone says that the reason for the Mishnah saying that the issue is dependent on which cities were walled in the time of Yehoshua is to “allot honor to the land of Israel which was destroyed at that time [of the writing of the book of Esther].”
Even though I like to think of my own answers, it’s always nice to find that someone agrees with me.
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2 Comments currently posted. 
Moshe Glasser says:
Jewneric » Being a Heretic, OR, Holy Unfathomables, Batman says:
[...] your own interpretation of Torah? Esther vs. Kermit - Why does the Gemara say Esther was green? Disagreeing with the Talmud - How to find meaning in fuzzy, fluffy [...]
Your desperate attempts to be heretical seem to have failed.
It always seemed to me that there were a number of exegetical devices designed to explain things we already knew to be true through tradition. The discussion in Massechet Succot over what truly is an Etrog comes to mind. How could it be that more than a thousand years after Sinai, we didn’t know what an Etrog was? Obviously, we knew, but were looking for a textual proof that would validate only the fruit we knew to be the right one - after all, how could there not be textual proof?
This occurs in the Gemara all over the place, and is more a matter of putting together mnemonics for record keeping than arguing over law. If you notice, the law is never under discussion; only the verse which proves the law we already know to be correct is questioned. In some cases, we know there was a text to justify the law, and we are trying to figure out what it was. In other cases, we have the law and want some text to justify it so we will have more to tell our children than “we remember when…”
In either case, it is not heretical to question process. It is heretical to reject law because process makes you uncomfortable (something I have often seen - “How can we run a religion like this? It’s stupid!”). If you are more comfortable saying you accept a law because of tradition, this verse thing doesn’t do it for you - fine. That isn’t heretical, it’s a matter of preference. It’s not heresy to have a hard time with the Gemara. Nowhere in anyone’s lists of articles of faith (Maimonides has the most famous list, but many other rabbis do, too) is absolute faith in the Gemara a factor. Some of the stuff we do, we do because we have traditions. Look at the law you are talking about - celebrating Purim on the right day was not an option, so we move it. Immediately, we think of bringing Jerusalem into the discussion. We find a parallel and make it work. It’s a little fuzzy - okay, no biggie. We use Jewish legal logic to come up with conclusions (which is not the same as Boolean or mathematical logic, of which we are so fond here in Western Civilization). The idea is what counts.
Please keep it up, David.