Skhakh Supports

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

Dear Rabbi Klapper,

I go home to my parents for Sukkot. They have an old sukkah with a frame built out of PVC pipes, and they put the sukkah mats directly on the frame. But my boyfriend Pinchas Dovid ben Qalonymos insists that I have to take off the roof, put wooden slats across the frame, and then put the mats back on top of them. That seems silly to me – don’t the slats just become part of the roof, in which case the roof is still resting on the frame? Or if the slats aren’t a valid part of the roof, why are they better than the plastic pipes? But he said he won’t come eat with us unless I correct this. Tell me who is right?

Single On Sukkot

Dear SOS,

A key message of Sukkot is that we owe our housing to Hashem now just as we did in the wilderness of Sinai. That’s one reason that the custom of Ushpizin has meaning even for those not kabbalistically inclined. So you should certainly do anything within practical reason to make potential guests feel comfortable in your sukkah, even if their requirements seem to you beyond halakhic reason. Spouses of course should do this reciprocally, and not treat themselves as guest and their spouse as host.

In this case, your friend’s position has a basis in rishonim, and that basis has expanded to the point that someone could apply it to your case. But he has given it far more weight than is proper. He is insisting on what is at most an unlikely extension of a minority understanding of a minority position, which may also be incoherent. I’ll try to explain briefly.

Nechemiah 8:15 reports that the Jews built their sukkot out of olive, date, and hadas branches, (and perhaps two other species). Talmud Sukkah 36b understands Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehudah as disagreeing whether olive and date branches were used for the roof, or only for the walls. Rabbi Yehudah held that the roof must be made from the Four Species, thus not from olive or date branches, while Rabbi Meir held that even the roof can be made of any species. They agree that the walls can be made of any species.

Mishnah Sukkah 11a reports an apparent consensus position that a sukkah must be made out of things that are “not receptive to tum’ah and grown from the ground”. Amoraim discuss the source of this position on 11b. Rav Chisda cites Nechemiah 8:15, which he understands as defining a sukkah as something made only from this sort of material. 

If Mishnah Sukkah 11a follows Rabbi Yehudah, according to whom the verse relates only to the walls, then Rav Chisda must understand that Mishnah to require that sukkah walls be made of things that are “not receptive to tum’ah and grown from the ground”. However, if Mishnah Sukkah 11a follows Rabbi Meir, then Rav Chisda’s interpretation of the verse relates only to the roof, and we have no basis for disqualifying any material for walls.

Yerushalmi Sukkah 1:6 quotes Rabbi Yosa in the name of Rabbi Chama bar Chanina as stating explicitly that the walls of the sukkah may be made of things that are receptive to tum’ah. His evidence is that Shemot 40:3 refers to the entrance curtain serving as skhakh for the Ark, when actually it formed a side wall. “From here (derive) that walls may be called skhakh; From here (derive) that we make walls from things that are receptive to tum’ah”. Since the curtain was receptive to tum’ah, and it is called skhakh,it is valid as a wall for a sukkah (although not as a roof, presumably since we know from Mishnah Sukkah 11a that at least the roof must be made of materials not receptive to tum’ah).

However, Or Zarua (Sukkah 289) cites the Yerushalmi as taking exactly the opposite position: “From here (derive) that walls may be called skhakh; From here (derive) that we make walls (only) from things that are NOT receptive to tum’ah.” Or Zarua learns from the verse that walls may be called skhakh, but does not see the specific material of the curtain as relevant to Sukkot. In other words, he understands the Yerushalmi as making a linguistic observation (gilui milta) rather than a legal interpretation (derashah).

Or Zarua’s position is rejected by just about all subsequent halakhists other than Bayit Chadash (“Bach”). The simple reason for this is that the Bavli never mentions any restrictions on materials for sukkah walls. At least two pieces of direct evidence can also be offered. First, a beraita on Sukkah 37a derives Rabbi Meir’s position from Vayikra 23:42 as follows: “In the Sukkot you must dwell seven days” – Sukkot made of anything (kol dvar)”.  Second, Sukkah 23a affirms that both Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehudah allow animals to serve as Sukkah walls (at least as a matter of Biblical law). Animals are generally not considered “grown from the ground”; therefore neither Rabbi Meir nor Rabbi Yehudah uses the verse in Nechemiah as a basis for excluding materials from use in sukkah walls.

It seems reasonable to say as a default that sukkot are constructed by placing roofs on walls. Therefore, if walls can be made of any material, it follows that roofs can rest on any material. This brings us to the text generally seen as the heart of the issue.

Mishnah Sukkah 21b states:

הסומך סוכתו בכרעי {ms. Oxford 366 = לכרעי} המטה – כשרה;

רבי יהודה אומר:

אם אינה יכולה לעמוד בפני עצמה {ms. Munich 95 = מעצמה} – פסולה.

One who supports his sukkah with (alt: leans his sukkah against) the knees of the bed – it is valid.

Rabbi Yehudah says:

If it is unable to stand on its own (alt: of itself) – it is invalid.

Yerushalmi Sukkah reports that Rabbi Immi understood Rabbi Yehuda’s issue to be that the distance from the bedding to the roof was less than the minimum height of a sukkah (10 tefachim). Thus if the Sukkah cannot stand on its own, the bed is considered its floor; if it can stand on its own, the bed is just an object inside it, and the sukkah is valid. However, Rabbi Ba understood the issue to be that

אין מעמידין על גבי דבר טמא

We do not stand (the sukkah) up on something (receptive to becoming) tamei.

It is not clear what Rabbi Ba means by “standing (the sukkah) up”. Regardless, the Yerushalmi rejects his position and sides with Rabbi Immi on the basis of a beraita recording that the people of Jerusalem in fact used to make sukkot by roofing over their beds.

The Bavli cites a dispute between Rabbi Zeira and Rabbi Abba bar Mamal. One of them held that the ground of Rabbi Yehuda’s position was that such a sukkah אין לה קבע = is not established.  The other held that the Rabbi Yehuda objected to standing the sukkah up on something receptive to tum’ah. A practical difference between them is if one inserted four metal poles and roofed over them; the sukkah would then be established, but it would still rest on something receptive to tum’ah. Abbayay then comments:

לא שנו אלא סמך,

אבל סיכך על גב המטה – כשרה.

The mishnah was only taught regarding a case where the sukkah is supported by/rests against (the bed)

but if he roofed over the bed – it is valid.

The Talmud explains this to mean that if he roofed over the bed, the sukkah is valid according to either explanation of Rabbi Yehudah’s position. But what is the case of the Mishnah then? Where is the roof of the sukkah, if not over the bed? Recall that in the Yerushalmi, Rabbi Immi thought that the issue was the space between the bedding and the roof!

The only way to validate your friend’s objection to your sukkah, aside from following Or Zarua, would be to

1. Rule like Rabbi Yehudah in this Mishnah
2. Understand him in accordance with the position that the issue is “standing the sukkah up on something receptive to tum’ah” (even though the Yerushalmi rejects an apparently parallel position)
3. (Since the pipes your frame is made of are plastic) understand that position to ban standing the sukkah up on materials that are not “grown from the ground” even if they are also not receptive to tum’ah
4. Understand that position to apply only to roof supports and not to walls, since animals can serve as walls, and animals are not grown from the ground. Also because of all the evidence cited above that wall material can be made of anything.

It seems to me that any such validation must also produce positive evidence that roof supports are a recognized halakhic category at least potentially subject to regulation, whether Biblical or Rabbinic. (END PART 1)

In Part 2, I expect to show how this burden of proof can be met, although (in my honest opinion) not in a way that poses an actual halakhic concern.

In the interim, let me also note here two positions about sukkahs that may be helpful to those to whom my opinion matters:

Fabric sukkah walls do not need to be taut. No one holds that “waving” of less than 3 tefachim (minimally 9 inches) has any halakhic significance. So long as the walls remain within 3 tefachim of the ground and reach above 10 tefachim from the ground at all times, the space that is enclosed by the walls at their minimum enclosure remains a valid sukkah even if the center of the walls blow in and out.

Bamboo mats do not need to be manufactured with specific intention to be used for skhakh. Any intended purpose other than to be used as a surface to put things on is generally fine, e.g. as a windowshade or fence, both of which are placed vertically.

Wishing everyone a chag sameiach!

Rupture, Repentance, and Reconstruction

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

Does repentance require regret? Rambam Laws of Repentance 7:3-4 introduces a form of teshuvah that seems not to.

Don’t say that repentance is only necessary from sins that involve an act, for example sexual transgressions, theft, and robbery.  Rather, just as a person must repent of those, so too he must search out his bad characteristics and repent of anger, hate, jealousy, mockery, pursuit of money and/or honor, pursuit of food, et al.  From all he needs to repent, and these latter sins are harder than those involving actions, as when a person is entrenched in these it is very hard to separate from them, as it says “let the evildoer abandon his path”.

Let a person who is a baal teshuvah not imagine that he is distant from the level of the righteous because of the sins and transgressions he performed in the past, for it is not so – rather he is beloved and dear before the Creator as if he has never sinned.  Furthermore, his reward is great, for he tasted sin and separated from it and conquered his inclination.  Said the Sages: “In the place that possessors-of-repentance stand the absolutely righteous cannot stand”, meaning that their spiritual level is higher than those who have never sinned because they conquer their inclination more.

Rambam contends that there is a form of teshuvah that does not relate to any specific transgression, nor to any spiritual decline. Rather, teshuvah for character imperfections relates to one’s ideal potential. Every bat mitzvah girl and bar mitzvah boy can become a baal/at teshuvah the moment after adulthood. What matters overall is the level one achieves, regardless of one’s starting point.

Rambam’s character-teshuvah seems not to require regret. Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik takes this position to its logical extreme: Ish HaHalakhahp. 94 (translation by Aryeh Klapper from Halakhic Man by Lawrence Kaplan)

Here appears the primary difference between the concept of repentance in Halakhah and the concept of repentance held by universal religious man (ish hadat hakelali).

The latter grasps the idea of repentance from the perspective of atonement, in the role of a shield against punishment, in the role of fruitless regret that creates and renews nothing. His soul bewails its wounds and mourns for yesterday, because it is past; for time, that has already sunk into the realm of oblivion; for deeds that have evanesced like shadows; over facts that cannot be changed or exchanged for others. Therefore, he needs much grace, miracles and wonders, great mercy, etc.

Not so Halakhic Man! Halakhic Man does not surrender himself to weeping and grief, does not lacerate his flesh nor flagellate himself. He does not engage in compensatory repentance nor surrender himself to bodily mortification or spiritual affliction. Halakhic Man is engaged in self-formation, in creating a new “I”. He does not regret an irretrievably lost past but a past still in existence that winds its way into the present and future . . . There are phenomena that begin in sin and iniquity and end in mitzvot and good deeds, and vice versa. The future alters the trends and tendencies of the past…

Here I want to raise a chicken-and-egg question. In “Rupture and Reconstruction”p.38, Dr. Haym Soloveitchik describes a change in the character of Yom Kippur:

I grew up in a Jewishly non-observant community and prayed in a synagogue where most of the older congregants neither observed the Sabbath nor even ate kosher . . . Indeed, the only time the synagogue was ever full was during the High Holidays. Even then the service was hardly edifying. Most didn’t know what they were saying, and, bored, wandered in and out. Yet at the closing service of Yom Kippur, the Neilah, the synagogue filled and a hush set in upon the crowd. The tension was palpable and tears were shed.

What had been instilled in these people in their earliest childhood, and which they never quite shook off, was that every person was judged on Yom Kippur, and, as the sun was setting, the final decision was being rendered, in the words of the famous prayer, ‘who for life, who for death, who for tranquility, who for unrest’. These people did not cry from religiosity but from self-interest, from an instinctive fear for their lives. Their tears were courtroom tears, with whatever degree of sincerity such tears have. What was absent among the students in Ponevezh and in other contemporary services – and, lest I be thought to be exempting myself from this assessment, from my own religious life too – was that primal fear of Divine judgment, simple and direct.

This description seems to mirror a shift from the teshuvah-experience of the ish hadat hakelali to that of the ish hahalakhah. My question is: Do we think that the Rabbi Soloveitchik’s influence was a major cause of this shift, or rather, was he articulating – just in time – a conception of teshuvah that could resonate with American-born Jews who simply did not have the capacity to cry courtroom tears?

This question matters for those who want to reverse the shift. If it resulted from intellectual influence, then counter-influences can do the job. But if the old model would have failed regardless, we need to consider whether reversing the Rav’s influence will leave us with nothing.

In the 1980s, someone told me a story about being traumatized by hearing a young chazan-friend practicing crying before Yom Kippur. That probably dates the shift fairly well, to when a crying chazan was still expected by a significant percentage of the congregation but was not natural to many potential chazanim. I suspect that no outcome would be worse than the cynicism of tears that everyone knows are fake.

Deborah Klapper points out, however, that there are still real tears at unesaneh tokef. People remember past prayers that were or were not answered as they desired, and some people have specific reasons to feel the presence of death. Maybe those tears can be generalized through profound empathy.

Moreover, maybe society has undergone another tectonic shift. Post-WW2 America was a forward-looking, confident place. I remember a Time magazine poll to which 90% of Americans replied that they believed in a Hell, but fewer than 1% thought they would be going there. This sort of optimism, however strange it would have seemed to Calvin, badly undermines courtroom tears. But that is no longer the reality of America, and I really don’t know anything about the Yom Kippur atmosphere in the Israeli circles that have so much contemporary influence on American Orthodoxy. Maybe the time has come to build a new communal “We” in which universal religious man has much more expression.

We can dream of a perfect combination: perhaps a spiritually optimistic, meticulously observant laity that nonetheless feels inadequate to survive Judgment and cares as much about the spirit as the letter of the Law, and understands that spirit in a way that expands human empathy. These heroes are not paralyzed by regret and do not shrink from the hard work of gradual spiritual progress, and emerge from their tearful Yom Kippur each year determined to be deserving of every moment of life Hashem grants them. Kein yehi ratzon.

Leshanah tovah teikatvu veteichateimu.  

The Hobgoblins of Little Souls

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

Emerson writes in “Self-Reliance” that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines”. Let us try to understand precisely what he meant, and whether we should agree.

Our first question is what distinguishes wise from foolish consistency. Emerson stated several paragraphs earlier:

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency;

a reverence for our past act or word,

because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts,

and we are loath to disappoint them.

We feel a need to appear coherent over time to others, to live our story in such a way that it makes sense to them. In this way, we are bound by our past. This is certainly a vice to those who esteem authenticity as a prime value. It is worth exploring the extent to which it is also a vice for those who strongly value teshuvah, and if so, how it might be overcome.

Emerson identifies three sorts of people who are afflicted by the hobgoblin: little statesmen, philosophers, and divines. Great statesmen, philosophers, and divines each overcome it. Statesmen represent action, philosophers represent intellection, and divines represent experience. In each of these areas we are afraid of seeing incoherent to others.

Emerson adds a second prong to his definition:

In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.

Here there is no concern for an external audience. Rather, we stand embarrassed before an intellectual mirror: can I, a devotee of Maimonides since my teens, act as if unconscious of the limits on G-d’s knowability? Theory, like clothing, can be a shield against experience. The naked mind leaves the soul exposed to temptation just as much as the naked body. But there are times and places for bodily intimacy, and perhaps the same is true for the mind.

This prong unifies the three characters. Whatever we have invested our sense of self in – deeds, thoughts, or experiences – we are profoundly reluctant to contradict.

There are two sorts of teshuvah – the kind which distances ourselves from our past, and the kind that transforms our past.

The first kind certainly comes up against the Emersonian hobgoblin, because we are in fact contradicting our past selves. How can I walk away when a conversation turns to lashon hora when yesterday I shared the latest gossip? Or: How can I publicly call out a prominent wrongdoer today when yesterday I denounced his/her critics as lashon-hora-mongers?

In other words, consistency is a defense against the charge of hypocrisy.

I often advocate for “sustainable hypocrisy”. It is often – although not always – unwise, unconvincing, and counterproductive for a defense attorney to become a prosecutor overnight, especially to those who believe in psychological displacement. In general, one should project a public image slightly better than one’s actual self, and then seek to live up to it. If one’s actual self suddenly leaps beyond one’s public image, it’s ok to manage the perception of that growth so that it appears more gradual.

An alternative strategy regarding the first Emersonian prong is to shift one’s social group completely, so that one has no externalized past to be consistent with. That is more viable if one sees people as wholly virtuous or vicious, or if one’s repentance is laser-focused. It’s much harder if one sees vices and virtues widely distributed across individuals and communities. What if I treasure my community’s support for my virtues, and yet recognize that the personal vices I wish to overcome are endemic within it?     

The relationship between the second kind of teshuvah and the Emersonian critique is harder to figure.

Emerson argues that character is fixed, and therefore genuine inconsistency is impossible.

I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza – read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.

In apparent contrast, Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik understands the highest form of repentance as the self recreating itself, as an expression of the soul’s absolute indeterminacy.

I say “apparent contrast” because there may be a path to reconciliation, if the recreated self can take ownership of the past by giving it new meaning. The question is whether identity can genuinely survive that sort of transition, whether it is coherent to say that one has changed the meaning of the past but not the past itself. (I hope that question asks for a wise rather than foolish consistency.)

Here is a possible analogy within Torah.

In Laws of Rebels 2:1, Maimonides writes:

If a Great Court interpreted via one of the middot (exegetical tools for deriving law from Torah) as it seemed them that the law was, and made the law,

but another court arose after them, and a different rationale seemed correct to them that contradicted the previous court’s ruling –

(the second court) may rule in contradiction (to the past ruling) as seems correct to them,

as Scripture says: to the judge who will be in those days –

you are obligated to follow only the court in your generation.

Rambam can be understood in at least two ways.

The first is that because absolute truth is unknowable, every generation must make the law in a way that accords with its perception of truth, even though that contradicts the previous court’s perception of truth, even if the previous court was greater “in wisdom and number” and every other relevant way. The only consistency we demand of Torah authority is procedural. We don’t need extreme circumstances to say that our predecessor’s interpretation was wrong, and that their mandate or prohibition contradicted the intent of Torah, and we know that they would say the same about ours.

The second way of understanding Rambam is that the Torah can mean different things legally in different times, that it can sustain its identity through that shift, and that one is entitles to look for different meanings because of a sense that the law ought to be different. The recent Taking Responsibility for Torah episode “An Unexpectedly Revolutionary Meiri” argues that this second way is explicit in a position cited (and perhaps adopted) by Meiri to Berakhot 21a.

I suggest that this way of understanding Rambam can provide a model for teshuvah as a way of reinterpreting one’s life to date as preparation for one’s life going forward. May we all be inscribed in the Book of Life, and then live as our best selves.

Shanah tovah!

Why G-d’s Semikhah is Meaningless

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

Perfect communication, my father a”h liked to say, requires a transmitter and receiver calibrated precisely to each other. For example, enunciation is an imperfect art. We distill meaning from speech not just by hearing the right sounds but also by filling gaps, resolving ambiguities, and ignoring or emending phonemes that seem out of place. The perfect Torah leining is an artifact of human signal processing; it allows us to hear what we want to hear, and only what we want to hear.

What happens when G-d is the Enunciator? I often argue that interpreting His speech and writing doesn’t require ignoring anything; rather every possible pun or mishearing or apparent grammatical or semantic infelicity contributes to meaning. Professor Yaakov Elman used the term “omnisignificance” for this approach to Divine language. It provides a way to appreciate the literary methods of certain kinds of midrashim that otherwise seem outlandish.

The Rabbinic concept of ein mukdam umeuchar baTorah (= “there is no earlier and later in the Torah”)seemingly contributes to an omnisignificant approach. If the Torah’s narrative is not chronological, then the Torah’s order must convey some other form of meaning.

However, this week I learned an alternative understanding of ein mukdam umeuchar that may fundamentally reject omnisignificance. On this understanding, “earlier” and “later” are literary rather than temporal categories; the Torah must be read on the assumption that it has no order of any kind. Each unit of Torah (however defined) has exactly the same relationship to every other unit. Like a dictionary or encyclopedia, the structure of Torah has no essential relationship to its content. Like a John Cage speech, its elements can be rearranged at random.

Here’s the kicker. This assumption may not apply to Sefer Devarim, because – unlike the rest of Torah – Mosheh Rabbeinu played a role in its composition. Order is presumptively meaningful in human language but presumptively meaningless in Divine language. Sometimes human language signifies more than the same language would if G-d were writing.

Let’s root that astonishing claim in the Talmud and commentaries.

Two Talmudic passages cite a statement of Rav Yosef claiming that Rabbi Yehudah was doreish semukhin (= “interpreted juxtapositions”) in Sefer Devarim but not in the rest of Torah.

TEXT 1

Devarim 22:11-12 juxtaposes the obligation to wear wool fringes on four-cornered garments with the prohibition against wearing wool-and-linen garments. What about a four-cornered linen garment? Yebamot 4a derives from the juxtaposition that one wears it with wool fringes.

Why not derive instead that linen garments may be worn fringelessly? RASHBA explains:

The Torah must have juxtaposed them in order to permit shatnez fringes,

as if the intent were to prohibit shatnez fringes,

let Scripture say nothing, and I would know (that it is prohibited),

since a DON’T is more severe than a DO.

Nonetheless, the wool-fringed linen garment becomes paradigmatic; when a DO and DON’T unavoidably conflict, the halakhic rule is that the DO pushes aside the DON’T. Perhaps because this seems counterintuitive – after all, a DON’T is more severe than a DO! – Yebamot 4a seeks to establish it as universally accepted. The proof is astonishing and byzantine. It begins from a statement by Rabbi Elazar:

What is the Biblical source for the meaningfulness of semukhim/juxtapositions?

Scripture says:

“Semukhim infinitely and forever, made with truth and integrity”. (Psalms 111:8)

A cursory glance at Psalms makes clear that the verse is describing G-d’s works not His words, and that semukhim in context means “supported” rather than “juxtaposed”. This seems weak evidence at best.

The Talmud next cites Rav Sheshet in the name of Rabbi Elazar in the name of Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah – a chain of tradents oblivious to geographic and temporal barriers – as follows:

From where in Scripture do we know that we don’t muzzle a yevamah (who does not wish to marry her brother in-law, i.e., we do not force her to marry him)?

Scripture juxtaposes “Don’t muzzle an ox in its threshing” with “when brothers dwell together …” (Devarim 25:8-9)

The analogy seems incongruous for many reasons. An ox is male; it is muzzled to prevent it from eating, not from speaking; and in what sense is the widow “threshing”? etc. But Rav Yosef comments:

Even a person who doesn’t generally interpret juxtapositions (as meaningful) –

does interpret them in the Book of Devarim

as witness that Rabbi Yehudah, who doesn’t interpret them generally,

does interpret them in the Book of Devarim.

It follows that Rabbi Yehudah must agree that the juxtaposition in Devarim of the law of shatnez with that of tzitzit is meaningful. (Ok, it doesn’t actually follow, as Rabbi Yehudah is under no obligation to accept every interpretation of every juxtaposition in Devarim. But I digress…)

Rav Yosef’s claims about Rabbi Yehudah are then rooted in beraitot.

Ben Azzai says:

Scripture says: “A witch – you must not keep alive”,

and Scripture says: “Everyone who lies with a beast must surely die”.

These laws were juxtaposed to teach that

just as one who lies with a beast is executed by stoning, so too a witch is executed by stoning.

Rabbi Yehudah said to him:

Because of a juxtaposition, you will take this one out to be stoned?!

Rabbi Yehudah’s protest seems a tad melodramatic, as he makes clear that the witch will be executed regardless; the juxtaposition determined only the method of execution. But precisely because the stakes are not so high, we can take his statement as a general rejection of the meaningfulness of juxtapositions.

However, in another beraita Rabbi Yehudah bans a man from marrying a woman raped or seduced by his father, and Rav Gidal in the name of Rav explains this position as derived from the juxtaposition of the law of rape and the ban on marrying one’s father’s ex-wife!  Rav Yosef concludes that the relevant difference is that the law of the witch is in Exodus, while the ban on marrying a father’s ex-wife is in Devarim. He further contends without evidence that no one is more skeptical than Rabbi Yehudah about the meaningfulness of juxtapositions. Therefore, everyone must concede that DOs trump DON’Ts, because that rule is derived from a juxtaposition in Devarim.

Let’s grant all that. Why would Rabbi Yehudah think that juxtapositions are meaningful in Devarim but not elsewhere in Chumash?

Yebamot provides two answers for Rabbi Yehudah, “mufneh” and “mukhach”.  Most commentators plausibly understand these as related exclusively to his derivation of the prohibition against marrying the father’s rape/seduction victim. In other words, they present Rabbi Yehudah as evaluating juxtapositions by their specific features rather than by what book they appear in. This seems to undermine Rav Yosef.

TEXT 2

Berakhot 21b begins from Rabbi Yehudah’s statement in the Mishnah that a baal keri (= “one who emitted semen”) may recite the blessings before and after saying the Shema. The Talmud understands this to mean that he may recite the Shema itself out loud, whereas the anonymous first position in the Mishnah held that the baal keri can only think the words.

The Talmud challenges this understanding of Rabbi Yehudah. Devarim 4:9-10 reads in relevant part:

… and you must convey knowledge of them to your children and your children’s children.

The day on which you stood before Hashem your G-d at Chorev …

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi reads this as juxtaposing the obligation to learn Torah with the Reception of the Torah at Sinai/Chorev. He derives that just as a baal keri was excluded at Sinai (thus married couples separated three days in advance), so too a baal keri may not recite words of Torah aloud.

Given this derivation, how can Rabbi Yehudah allow the baal keri to recite the Shema out loud?!

The Talmud at this point interjects the unit from Yebamot about Rabbi Yehudah on juxtapositions, concluding with Rav Yosef’s statement that Rabbi Yehudah

did not interpret juxtapositions in the entire Torah,

but in Sefer Devarim he did interpret them.

This leaves Rabbi Yehudah with no principled objection to the method used by Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi to derive his halakhah. So why does he allow a baal keri to recite the Shema out loud?

The Talmud concludes that Rabbi Yehudah simply preferred a different interpretation of the juxtaposition. This leaves Rav Yosef’s claim about the uniqueness of Sefer Devarim unchallenged.

Can the two sugyot be reconciled  RITVA to Yebamot 4a makes a valiant attempt. He accepts the conclusion of Yebamot that Rabbi Yehudah interprets juxtapositions whenever at least one element is “mufneh”, meaning unnecessary, or “mukhach”, meaning out of context. However, he explains, the concept of “mukhach” does not apply to the rest of Torah, since

It has no earlier or later and is all like one unit

whereas Mishneh Torah (=Sefer Devarim) he understands as having been written in order

The underlying rationale is spelled out by Shitah Mekubetzet:

The reason is that Mishneh Torah is the words of Mosheh,

even though all (the books of Torah) were said from the Mouth of the Gevurah,

nonetheless, since they were originally said in one order, and now he returns to say a different order,

certainly when he juxtaposes matters – this was done to be interpreted,

since they are not ordered as in the first order

In other words, the text of Devarim signifies more as human-influenced language than it would as purely Divine language. I’m still trying to wrap my head around this idea; your thoughts about its implications are welcome.

Shabbat shalom!