The Nature of Midrash and Ben Azzai's Comment on Eichah

I started going through Midrash Eichah Rabbah, in preparation for Tisha B'Av, and I found something very interesting: (Eichah Rabbah 1:1)

שאלו את בן עזאי, אמרו לו: רבנו, דרוש לנו דבר אחד ממגילת קינות, אמר להם: לא גלו ישראל עד שכפרו ביחידו של עולם, ובמילה שניתנה לעשרים דורות, ובעשרת הדברות, ובחמישה ספרי תורה, מנין" איכה". 

They asked Ben Azzai, saying to him: Our teacher, homileticize something for us from the Lamentation Scroll. He said to them: Israel was not exiled until they denied His unity, and of circumcision that had been given for 20 generations, and of the 10 commandments, and of the 5 books of the Torah, the numbers in "Eichah" (Alef - Yud - Chaf - Heh = 1-10-20-5). 

It is worth noting at the outset that Ben Azzai is known as a master darshan. See Genesis Rabbah 5:4, where he is explicitly called a darshan, and see Leviticus Rabbah 10:16. So it is no surprise that he is asked to make a derasha.

But doesn't this one seem so trivial? A play on the first word of Lamentations? They ask him for derasha from anywhere, and he picks the first word, like a lazy rabbis on Friday night who desperately needs a sermon for the next morning? I kid, but the sentiment is real. What's the message here?

For that, there's an interesting suggestion taken from the Jewish Encyclopedia on Wikipedia:

 Ben Azzai's symbolic interpretation of the first word of Lamentations (איכה) is also polemical and probably directed against Pauline Christianity. He holds that in the numerical value of the four letters of this word is indicated that the Israelites did not go into exile until after they had denied the one God (א), the ten commandments (י), the law of circumcision, given to the twentieth generation after Adam (כ), and the five (ה) books of the Torah (Lam. R. i.1).

I'm guessing that this is supposed to match up with Christianity's denial of God's unity through corporealism and the trinity, Christianity's denial of the importance of circumcision, and the replacement of the Old Testament with the New Testament. The ten commandments one has me puzzled, as I'm not sure if there is a denial of the ten commandments in early Christianity... Anyway, if true, Ben Azzai is claiming that Christianity caused Judaism's downfall, a very interesting claim if he was indeed claiming that.

The Eitz Yosef suggests a more compelling answer (in my mind at least) as to what it means. He suggests that Ben Azzai was saying that the writer of Eichah was using the word on two levels - its normal way by asking a question, but also within the question is its own answer. "Eichah does the city lie deserted?" - "By doing Eichah (denying God, the Pentatuech, etc) does the city lie deserted." A lesson to be learned that it is only when we phrase our questions wisely will we find solutions to the problems we have, very often within the questions themselves.

However, I am using this medrash as an example of something that on its own, without some interpretation and wiggling, seems almost "cute", a medrash you teach to kids in school if it weren't summer. It is important that when we come across midrashim like these, we realize that the concept exists according to many medieval sages (although definitely not all, including Rashi and Tosafot, but see here for an interesting list of sources) that homiletics are as the Ramban said, "sermons", nice little message-packed pieces that can be accepted or not, depending whether you like the message or not. What I mean is that we can simply look at this as if Ben Azzai was asked to make a drash, and he made up a cute one. It was not a tradition, or an in-depth analysis of the word "eichah". It was something that he anchored into a word from a verse, to make a statement, a message.

Getting back to what I said about the Ramban: The Ramban literally calls them sermons, like, the actual transliteration of sermons in Hebrew, in his response to Pablo Christiani in Vikuach HaRamban. Pablo asked if he believed in the aggadic statement that the Messiah was born on the day the Temple was destroyed, and the Ramban responded by classifying the different types of books a Jew learns. "האחד הוא הבב"ליה, וכולנו מאמינים בו אמונה שלמה." - "One is the Bible, which we all believe in completely. "והשני הוא נקרא תלמוד, והוא פירוש למצוות התורה, כי בתורה יש תרי"ג מצוות ואין בה אחת שלא נתפרשה בתלמוד, ואנחנו מאמינים בו בפירוש המצות. " - "The second is called Talmud, which explains the mitzvot of the Torah, for the Torah has 613 mitzvot and there is not a single one that isn't explained in the Talmud, and we believe in that in terms of the explanations of the mitzvot." Lastly, there is:

עוד יש לנו ספר שלישי הנקרא מדרש, רוצה לומר שרמ"וניש. כמו שאם יעמוד ההגמון ויעשה שרמון (אחד), ואחד מן השומעים היה טוב בעיניו וכתבו. וזה הספר מי שיאמין בו טוב, ומי שלא יאמין בו לא יזיק

We have a third book, called midrash, meaning "sermons". Just like if a bishop would get up and makes a sermon, and one of the listeners likes it and writes it down. If someone believes in this book, good, but if not, no harm.

This is an important line. It's possible that the Ramban doesn't actually believe it, and was just using it as a debating tactic, but that's difficult because he responds according to those who believe in it anyway. The salient point is that sometimes midrash aggada is making a very profound point about the text. But we are free to reject it, if we prefer. We find this in many places in the gaonim, see also Mavo Letalmud in the back of Gemara Berachot by Rabbi Shmuel Hanagid on "hagaddah", which denied the importance of believing in aggadata that had nothing to do with understanding the mitzvot.

Another source pointed out by my rebbe, Rabbi Jeremy Weider, is found in the Talmud Sanhedrin 106b:

Mar the son of Ravina said to his son: “Regarding all of them (the individuals mentioned in Sanhedrin 10:1), do not try to expound (to place them in a more negative light), except in the case of Bilaam, where whatever you can find (against him), expound."

What we see is that the rabbis understood derasha as, partly, coming up with new ideas and theories on the characters in the Bible, something that we search for in understanding them In Bilaam's case, we should look to pile on him more and more bad character traits. Perhaps, then, the rabbis of the Talmud knew full well the nature of midrash aggada, and somehow that was lost from us.

Ben Azzai may have had very deep and important message here. And it is equally important for us to spend time attempting to unravel it. But we shouldn't think it an attack on Rabbinic Judaism to ignore or dismiss a medrash that we feel is just "cute". And so, to someone like that, Ben Azzai made a nice little drasha, and nothing more.