Listening to Dan Klein, author of Shadal on the Torah

Last night, I had the pleasure of listening to Dan Klein, who talked about his experience translating Shadal's commentary to the Torah, what inspired him to do so, and some of the difficulties he had in that translation.

When he opened up for questions, Rabbi Pesach Sommer asked him to talk about Shadal's interesting theory that "eye for an eye", which was interpreted by the rabbis as only monetary compensation, to Shadal remained available in the pshat for the rabbis to use for rich wicked people who are sadistic, who could theoretically just pay for their crimes. Thus the rabbis could employ the pshat in exigent circumstances. Rabbi Sommer asked where Shadal got this idea from. I didn't quite understand the question, why does Shadal need a source? I suppose the question really was, are there earlier sources that have the same kind of idea, or was this a product of Shadal's creativity?

It actually triggered an answer in my mind. Because Rabbi Eliezer says in Bava Kama 84a that indeed, "eye for an eye", means a literal eye for an eye, and the Talmud works hard to figure out how he didn't mean his own statement literally. Perhaps, this means Shadal was an adept reader of the Talmud and saw that the rabbis had previous traditions that read pshat and derash for the sake of how to run Jewish society. Thus, according to this, the rabbis are not consciously lying to the people, but rather using two modes of interpretation: the pshat as it pertains to living society, and the halachic drash as it pertains to living society.

Interestingly, someone else responded to the question that Maimonides in the Guide 3:41 creates a distinction between the pshat of "eye for an eye" and the rabbinic interpretation. I have written about this elsewhere. This person thought that the bigger question on Shadal is that he casts the rabbis as completely apart from the text of the Torah. As in, their role in interpretation was takkanot and not real interpretation.

I thought the bigger question was the idea that the rabbis lied to the people about where their interpretations came from, seemingly pretending that these were the original understandings of the Torah. I asked if this was connected to Shadal's idea that lying is ok for a purpose. We see this when the Jews are asked to lie to the Egyptians to borrow their gold, yet don't plan to return them. Shadal says that this is appropriate to do because the Egyptians were wicked and it was right for the Israelites to get their money for their servitude, and it doesn't matter that they lied. So perhaps Shadal saw a right of the elite to lie for a good purpose.

Dan Klein agreed that this was an element of it. He noted that Shadal talks about how the rabbis would pretend their interpretation was the only one for the good of the people to keep the law. Someone behind me commented interestingly that we can see Shadal attributing this even to God, that God would lie in the Torah for the beliefs of the people. For example he does this in his first comment on the Torah, where he claims that the Torah will not attempt to explain higher truths of the world, but rather desires the goodness of people, and thus the Torah is not an attempt at historical or scientific truth. (A rabbi of mine pointed out that he thinks Shadal is the first one, we're talking 1800's, to say explicitly that the Torah is not written in order to relay historical or scientific or philosophical truths) Meaning, the Torah will engage in "necessary truths" that encourage a certain mindset. 

A good example that comes to mind is his comment to the purpose of the half-shekel count, where he says that the people believed in the concept of an ayin hara, and the Torah did not wish to remove this superstition completely since it encourages belief in divine providence. Therefore it made use of a contemporary belief for its own elite purposes.

I would add as well that Shadal thinks God engages in flat-out lies for the good of the people. (Of course the Talmud states that God lied to Sarah about Abraham for the sake of peace, but I'm referring to the law and the reasons for it in the Torah.) He writes at the end of Yitro that the reason provided for not using metal to build the altar in the Torah was a fake reason so that people would keep it without conditions. Because if the real reason was given, people would say, I wouldn't fall into that trap. In this, he is following in a kind of footstep of the Talmud Sanhedrin which asks why the reasons were not revealed for many commands. It states that for the few that had the reasons provided (king shouldn't have too many wives to not fall into idolatry, nor too many horses lest he go back to Egypt) Solomon fell because of them, where he felt as long as he didn't violate the reason he could have these things, and his end was that he did indeed violate the reason, and fell into idolatry.

This leads me to the point of my post.

In Genesis 37:2 Rashbam famously writes that Torah verses always have a simple meaning apart from the Talmudic reading.[1]

ישכילו ויבינו אוהבי שכל מה שלימדונו רבותינו, כי אין מקרא יוצא מידי פשוטו. אף כי עיקרה של תורה באה ללמדנו ולהודיענו ברמיזת הפשט וההגדות וההלכות והדינין ועל ידי אריכות הלשון ועל ידי שלושים ושתים מידות של ר' אליעזר בנו של ר' יוסי הגלילי וע"י שלש עשרה מידות של ר' ישמעאל והראשונים מתוך חסידותם נתעסקו לנטות אחרי הדרשות שהן עיקר ומתוך כך לא הורגלו בעומק פשוטו של מקרא. ולפי שאמרו חכמים: אל תרבו בניכם בהגיון. וגם אמרו: העוסק במקרא מדה ואינה מדה, העוסק בתלמוד אין לך מדה גדולה מזו ומתוך כך לא הורגלו כל כך בפשוטן של מקראות וכדאמרינן במסכת שבת: הוינא בר תמני סרי שנין וגרסינן כולה תלמודא ולא הוה ידענא דאין מקרא יוצא מידי פשוטו. וגם רבינו שלמה אבי אמי מאיר עיני גולה שפירש תורה נביאים וכתובים, נתן לב לפרש פשוטו של מקרא. ואף אני שמואל ב"ר מאיר חתנו זצ"ל נתווכחתי עמו ולפניו והודה לי שאילו היה לו פנאי, היה צריך לעשות פירושים אחרים לפי הפשטות המתחדשים בכל יום. 

Those who love intelligence should perceive and understand what our rabbis have taught, that a Biblical passage never departs from its plain meaning - even as the most important aspect of the Torah comes to teach us and tell us through hints found in the plain meaning of the text, the aggadot, and halachot and laws derived through lengthy words and the 32 methods of Rabbi Eliezer son of Rabbi Yossi HaGalili, and the 13 methods of Rabbi Yishmael. The Rishonim, because of their piety, busied themselves with the drashot as their focus, and because of this they did not regularly delve into the plain meaning of the text, and because the Chachamim said not to spend too much time with higayon and expressed the significance not of learning Torah but of learning Talmud as having no greater measure, they did not regularly engage in establishing the plain meaning of the text. It is as we say in Talmud Shabbat, "I was 18 years old and I learned all of the Talmud and I never knew that a Biblical passage never departs from its plain meaning. Even our Rabbi Shlomo, my maternal grandfather, enlightener of the eyes of the exile, who wrote commentary on Tanakh, set his heart to explain the plain meaning of the text, even my grandfather Shlomo was an adherent of this school; and I, Shmuel the son of Meir his son in law, had an argument with him and before him, and he admitted to me that if he had had the time, he would make new commentaries according to the plain meanings that arise each day.

And in the beginning of Mishpatim he states:

ידעו ויבינו יודעי שכל כי לא באתי לפרש הלכות אעפ”י שהם עיקר, כמו שפירשתי בבראשית כי מיתור המקראות נשמעין ההגדות וההלכות, ומקצתן ימצאו בפירושי רבינו שלמה אבי אמי זצ”ל, ואני לפרש פשוטן של מקראות באתי. ואפרש הדינין וההלכות לפי דרך ארץ. ואעפ”כ ההלכות עיקר כמו שאמרו רבותינו הלכה עוקרת [מקרא] 

Those who have intelligence should know and understand that I have not come to explain halachot, even though they are the most important, as I explained in Genesis, the halachot and aggadot are derived from extraneousness in the text, and some of these can be found in the commentaries of my maternal grandfather, Rashi. But I have come to explain the pshat of the verses. I will explain the laws and the halachot according to their plain meaning. Even so, the halachot are most important, as our Rabbis said: “Halacha can uproot Scripture.”

Fascinatingly, in his first comment quoted, he states he spoke to his grandfather about this, and Rashi in fact lamented his lack of time to engage in more pshat activities. This sounds like Rashi agreed to this distinction and wanted to do this even more than he had already. But did Rashi ever really contradict the halacha of the rabbis?

Shadal, indeed, seems to revel in such a distinction. In fact, he views the rabbis as very consciously diverting the pshat reading for the sake of halacha. He does this in a few ways. Sometimes it is just so that they don't view the Torah pshat as appropriate for their day anymore. Sometimes it is that the original Chazal interpretation was one way, which aligned with pshat, and the rabbis felt it was time to change. Sometimes the rabbis saw that the values of the Torah pushed for a different interpretation than the pshat. And lastly, sometimes the pshat remains in play so the rabbis can choose it when they want and sometimes not. I'll list some examples when I have time.

According to the Rashbam, Rashi agreed that there is a difference between pshat and halachic drash, and wished he could have done the pshat more in his work. Did Rashi engage at all in pshat separated from the rabbi's halacha?

He does, sometimes. And one just came up in Mishpatim, on Exodus 23:2, he concept of "acharei rabim lehatot". There, Rashi says something Shadal finds incorrect. Basically, Rashi declares that after having told us what the rabbis say about this verse, he will try his hardest to explain it on a pshat level. He says that part of the meaning of the verse is that if a litigant asks what your personal opinion was, don't tell him what the majority opinion was, but rather what your true opinion is.

This is incredible, says Shadal, since it goes against an explicit Mishna in Sanhedrin that a judge is forbidden to reveal his vote among the votes of Bet Din. How can Rashi go against this Mishna? And more incredibly, the Smag just quotes Rashi lehalacha, and more incredibly than that, no commentators that Shadal could find picked up on this problem in Rashi.

Shadal quotes two answers from his students. One was that the Mishna in Sanhedrin referred to proper judges who adjudicate correctly, while Rashi was referring to a context specifically of wicked and biased judges, in which case you can reveal your vote to the litigants if you are a proper judge on a wicked Bet Din. The second answer seems to be that Rashi isn't talking about a judge in this specific comment, but rather a scholar who is asked his opinion about the judgement that happened in Bet Din, which he was not a part of.

Both of these are somewhat difficult to fit into Rashi's words. I've seen some say that the Mishna in Sanhedrin means that once the votes have occurred, a judge cannot tell what his vote was. But before that point, if someone asks, he may.

My answer is perhaps also difficult to fit in Rashi. Nevertheless, I think it can fit, and is a combination of these three answers. That is, there is another Mishna in Sanhedrin that states that the court was set up that the judges sit in rows and opposite them the students listen and sometimes provide their understanding to the court. So if the Bet Din thinks a man is guilty of murder, and a student has a reason why he shouldn't be guilty, he can stand up and provide it. If in fact there is substance to his objection he gets put on the Bet Din as a vote towards innocence for the man.

Thus, it could be Rashi is describing that a litigant goes over to the students and asks if they have any way to argue to his merit. And the point is that even if a student sees that the court will not vote for him, he should stand up and tell his own opinion regardless of the majority.

The point I'm getting at is this. Shadal is upset at Rashi for two reasons. Firstly, reason demands that a judge just can't go announcing his own opinion, it would be a breakdown of the system. Second, Rashi is violating a Mishna.

This second thing is very curious. Since when does Shadal care if pshat violates a Mishna? And interestingly, Shadal never provides his own answer to this question. Instead, he gives two difficult answers of his students. Perhaps Shadal didn't really care that it violated the Mishna, only that it violated reason and pshat needs to be reasonable. Perhaps he saw that Rashi did indeed see this difference and was willing to provide the pshat of a verse that could go against the Mishnah. And in this, Rashi is a support for Rashbam's approach, and Shadal's as well.

I found a comment of Shadal that is just thickening the plot. This is on Leviticus 19:35, where he says that Rashi on Chumash explains the words, but in his commentary on the Talmud, tries to explain the passage as a whole:

ורנ " ה וייזל תפש על רש " י . ולא ידע כי רש"י גם הוא הזכיר מידת הלח והיבש , וכן הוא בכ " י ובדפוסי ויניציאה ואמשטרדם , ואם בבא מציעא ס " א ע " ב כתב רש"י ( ד " ה משורה ) משורה מידת הלח היא , שם פירש כך לפרש הברייתא , וכאן פירש אמיתת הוראת המילה בפסוק .

Does this affect our discussion? I'm not sure.

[1] Yet in Leviticus 13:2 regarding tzara'at, Rashbam declares that laws regarding these things do not have a simple meaning at all, and one must only the Talmudic reading.

כל פרשיות נגעי אדם ונגעי בגדים ונגעי בתים ומראותיהן וחשבון הסגרם ושערות לבנות ושער שחור וצהוב, אין לנו אחר פשוטו של מקרא כלום ולא על בקיאות דרך ארץ של בני אדם, אלא המדרש של חכמים וחקותיהן וקבלותיהן מפי החכמים הראשונים הוא העיקר.

It seems to me that he believes that though Chazal did not focus on pshat, there are places where they did. His definition of Chazal's midrashic/Talmudic interpretation, is when they seek to derive from the way the pshat is phrased, when there are extra or strange words or letters in the Torah. But here, they are just trying to explain what it means as pshat and not extra letters etc. And Rashbam accepts that they have it right, because, there is no way to know pshat on a metaphysical condition unless you know how it manifests and why, which Chazal claim to know.

I think its significant that that's how he defines Chazal's abilities and what they were doing in midrash. See Rashbam on Genesis 1:1

בינו המשכילים כי כל דברי רבותינו ודרשותיהם כנים ואמיתים. וזהו האמור במסכת שבת: הוינא בר תמני סרי שנין ולא ידענא דאין מקרא יוצא מידי פשוטו. ועיקר ההלכות והדרשות יוצאין מיתור המקראות או משינוי הלשון, שנכתב פשוטו של מקרא בלשון שיכולין ללמוד הימנו עיקר הדרשה, כמו 'אלה תולדות השמים והארץ בהבראם', ודרשו חכמים באברהם, מאריכות הלשון שלא היה צריך לכתוב בהבראם.