Rough Draft - (work in progress) [and would apprechiate any feedback]

I've been pondering stuff to do with language, interpretation and abstraction with regards to rabbinical interpretation of biblical texts.

For Contemporary Judaism the Mishna, Talmud and more recent codifiers of Talmudic law strongly define the nature of religious thought, life and practise.

There is a culture that saturates Orthodoxy which honours and glorifies the rabbis of old. It matters only marginally how long they have been dead, it matters more how accomplished, devout and esteemed they are remembered and recognised to have been.

This culture is very selective about the nature of any criticism pointed towards any rabbi or indeed any logic, hermeneutical rule they may or may not have used to interpret the biblical or other text and its impact on actual religious observance.

There are far too many elements to describe accurately the nature of this culture and far too many issues to aim criticism at, to fairly give them all the attention they need to be described within their larger societal context.

The one point that I would like to focus and aim my criticism at is the prevalent use of abstraction throughout Rabbinic thought and interpretation.

One may argue that by definition ‘all thought is abstract’ and therefore any discussion and interpretation of text, that is anything but absolutely literal, is going to by necessity need to employ abstraction to sensibly interpret the text.

There are different approaches to the interpretation of any text, but with a text of greater significance it’s ‘correct’ interpretation becomes increasingly important.

A simple example might be, a piece of text in a Health and Safety handbook. It needs to speak to it potential audience in a way that communicates clearly and precisely, where there is little room for ambiguity and overly abstract interpretation that may in fact lead inaccurate medical treatments or first aid procedures.

So there is a responsibility on the author of any given text to communicate effectively whether this be in a style that allows for clear and literal interpretation or a more ambiguous, open ended and multiple interpretation, and many varieties in between.

But there is also a responsibility on the reader to judge accurately the nature of the text and choose the interpretation and response that is appropriate. This choice depends largely on what the reader wants to get from the text.

It is this dependency on the readers own personal and cultural worldview that leads to a variety of possible interpretations of any one given text.

However it is the actual worldview and choice of interpretational styles of the Talmudic characters that both puzzles and interests me.

The Bible is the primary text that the Mishnahic and Talmudic discussion use as their source text.

But if I may continue, my interest comes in part from my current religious irritation. The biblical text Deuteronomy 6:4–9 the ‘Shema’ speaks of the Oneness of God and the commandment to Love God with all your souls, hearts and being etc…

However the Mishnah and Talmud which uses the Mishnah as it’s core text seems to be more interested in the technicalities of actually when, where and how one is obliged to utter the ‘Shema’.

The original text as I understand says;

“Listen Israel, God Yourgod God is one!
And you shall love God Yourgod with all your hearts, with all your souls and with all your being. And these things, which I command you this day, (put them) on your heart, repeat them to your children, and speak about them when you sit in your house, and when you travel on the way and when you go to sleep and when you wake up. Bind them that they shall be on your hands and they shall be a meditation between your eyes.”

And just in case the reader was not sure of what the intention of the author of the bible means, the second paragraph continues:

“And behold if you listen, you will hear the commandments that I command you (plural) this day to love God Yourgod and serve, with all your hearts, with all your souls.”

For me it is obvious that the main commandment and content of the text is asking it’s audience to Love and to Serve God Yourgod with all of their hearts, souls etc…

However and this is where it gets interesting, the authors of the Mishna and the Talmud don’t seem to focus on the poetic and inspirational element of the biblical text but rather on its prescriptive, formulaic and utilitarian directives.

The classical discussion in the Talmud (Mas. Berachoth 10b) focuses exclusively on the second to last line of the first paragraph.

“and when you go to sleep and when you wake up.”

See here for the text http://www.jewcy.com/node/11468#

Beit Hillel and Shammi seem to be arguing on the when and how of saying the ‘Shema’.

They both implicitly agree that it is a biblical command to say it – although ‘saying the Shema’ isn’t a clear directive from the text as far as I’m aware. In fact later on the Talmud a rabbi says that there is not biblical commandment to say the formal words of the Shema, but rather the text was referring to the entire Torah, which Moses had repeated that day as seen the preceding Deuteronomy text.

The point that I’m interested in, is why the rabbis and editors of both the Talmud and Mishah, chose to interpret and understand this clearly inspirational text as merely a formulaic directive to repeat it, and why they chose to focus on whether or not one stands or lies-down in the morning or evening etc…

Clearly they saw the text as being something like an instruction manual and not a work of inspiration.

But in doing so, they actually ignore and seem to miss the entire message in the text.

Obviously there are problems with my assumptions, firstly that the text existed in its current format in the time of the Mishna?

Also logically, if they understand the text to be a proscriptive direction of how and when to say the Shema, and nothing to do with Loving God, why do they ignore the direction; “speak about them when you sit in your house, and when you travel on the way”. And abstract that particular directive ‘away’, because it doesn’t seem practical to focus on exclusively on the Shema and also sit in your house or walk by the way?

My problem is that I don’t understand what type of intellectual culture and philosophy of interpretation would make sense of such an outcome? To move from a work of inspiration and learn something within that text which is so utterly devoid of inspiration but fully of prescription?

The only idea that I have come up with is that the culture of rabbinic Judaism as we have it documented seems almost obsessed with the details and at times looses sight of the bigger picture. This I am told was one of Jesus’ arguments with the Pharisees.

It feels that in the above example of the Shema that the rabbis involved in the discussion and by default much of the Mishna and Talmud must have been written and populated by the ancient version of today’s lawyers and accountants.

It is all about the law, to such an abstracted extent that the internal logics of rabbinic law not only interpret biblical text but make redundant laws that are explicit within the biblical text or they make halachically prescriptive laws which those allusions to are at best vague and in most cases completely lacking any biblical source and rather conform to a prevalent societal belief or mythology.