Judaism- An Introduction, page 7
Nezikin
–
Damages
Kodashim
–
Holy Things
Tohorot
–
Purities
Each order (seder, plural sedarim) is subdivided into shorter units known as tractates. Altogether these tractates number 63.
* * *
LOVING YOUR NEIGHBOUR
We have already seen some examples from the order (Nashim) ‘Women’ but examples from the order (Nezikin) ‘Damages’ might further exemplify this expansion of the written Torah. We noted in Chapter 1 the summary attributed to Hillel: ‘That which is hateful unto thee do not do unto thy neighbour’ (Shabbat 31a). This relates to a crucial passage:
You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; … You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself.
(Leviticus 19:17–18)
Christian sermons too often attribute the last phrase to Jesus, as if he originated the concept of love of neighbour rather than quoted it (Matthew 22:39). Alternatively, they acknowledge the quotation but stress a Jewish interpretation of the Leviticus passage which limits love to fellow Jews and argue that Jesus uniquely widened this to include non-Jews, even enemies, making a point about the inadequacy of Judaism’s humanitarianism.
Christian preachers, and more frequently the media when reporting some trial, have been known to do similar things to another passage in Leviticus, i.e. 24:17–24, which says that ‘one who kills a human being shall be put to death’ and anyone ‘who maims another shall suffer the same injury in return: fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth’. (Compare Exodus 21:23–25 and note the concession already surfacing if the killing is ‘not premeditated’.) There is much complex discussion of the principle (the lex talionis), first in the Mishnah (in the first tractate of ‘Damages’, Bava Kama 8:1ff.) and then in the Talmud (Bava Kama 83b–84a). It has never been a matter of literal ‘eye for eye …’ but rather one of establishing compensation for an injury to a neighbour. The concern with liability for injury, for pain, for healing, for loss of time, for indignity suffered sound remarkably enlightened. (See Talmud extract below.) It is a pity that the text is so often cited as encouraging revenge. Love of neighbour in the sense of acknowledging that he is ‘a man like you’ or in the sense of ‘putting yourself in his place’ is of the essence here. Nursing hatred or anger ‘to keep it warm’ (as Robert Burns tellingly puts it in his poem, Tam O’Shanter) is precisely the sort of dangerous precursor to violent conflict discouraged by the injunction to behave towards others as we would like them to behave towards us. The sort of love commanded in Leviticus 19:17–18 is dependent not on liking but on this capacity to remember everyone’s common humanity.
A fascinating exploration of what love of neighbour amounts to in practical terms is found in the third tractate of ‘Damages’ (Bava Batra 2:1–5). Here the other person to be considered is literally a neighbour:
None may dig a cistern near his fellow’s cistern; nor may he dig a trench, vault, water-channel, or washerman’s pool unless it is three hand-breadths away from his fellow’s wall; and he must plaster it with lime … None may open a baker’s shop or a dyer’s shop under his fellow’s storehouse, nor [may he keep] a cattle-stall [near by] … A man may protest against [another that opens] a shop within the courtyard and say to him, ‘I cannot sleep because of the noise of the hammer’ or ‘because of the noise of the mill-stones’ or ‘because of the noise of the children.’ … If one man’s wall adjoins his fellow’s wall he may not build another wall adjoining it unless it is at a distance of four cubits … A man’s ladder must not be kept within four cubits of [his neighbour’s] dovecot, lest the marten should jump in. His wall may not be built within four cubits from [his neighbour’s] roof-gutter, so that the other can set up his ladder [to clean it out]. A dovecot may not be kept within fifty cubits of a town, and none may build a dovecote in his own domain unless his ground extends fifty cubits in every direction …
Apart from the words of the translation (by Danby), this all sounds strangely modern in days of dispute over people keeping smelly or fierce animals in spaces which are too small or too near to the house next door; running a noisy business from their house; and building extensions which take the neighbour’s light, spoil the view, or make access difficult. The concrete cases which form the heart of the Mishnah offer not hair-splitting distinctions, but ones which are vital to social co-existence.
The ninth tractate of ‘Damages’ provides further examples of down-to-earth advice. Though untypical of the Mishnah in its character and style, Pirke Avot (‘Sayings of the Fathers’), is the most accessible and most quoted section, some of its phrases having passed into folklore:
If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?
(Avot 1:14)
… do not judge your neighbour until you come to his place … do not say when I have leisure, I will study – perhaps you will not have leisure … In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.
(Avot 2:5–6)
Discussing the Mishnah – the Talmud
Though not collected together in published form until 200 CE, the Mishnah represents the discussions of sages on the written Torah from a long period. Hillel and Shammai, both late first century BCE and early first century CE, are much cited. Though the historical Hillel may be rather elusive, many prevailing views are attributed to him, as are all the sayings from Pirke Avot just quoted. The collection we now have in the Mishnah was edited by Rabbi Judah the Prince (Ha-Nasi), who lived from 135 to 217 CE. Other discussions (especially of the Tannaim) which did not find their way into the Mishnah, are called Tosefta (‘addition’). The Tosefta is divided into the same six orders as the Mishnah.
THE COMPLETION OF THE MISHNAH
Rabbinic discussion for the purposes of clarifying the Torah for new and specific circumstances did not end here. ‘Oral’ is indeed an apt description of the Torah which followed the written Torah because it was essentially a record of oral discussion in courtrooms and academies. Between 200 and 400 CE, the Rabbis of the Palestinian academies, chiefly at Tiberias, Caesarea, and Sepphoris, discussed the teaching of the Torah, largely in the form of case studies. These discussions also eventually came to be written down. They were printed alongside the section of the Mishnah being discussed and were known as the Gemara (Hebrew for ‘completion’ and Aramaic for ‘learning’). These explorations of the Mishnah, often running to several pages, were thought of as completing the Mishnah. The written record of the Mishnah and the Gemara combined was called the Talmud (from the Hebrew ‘to learn’). Compiled in Palestine by about 400 CE, this work is commonly referred to as Yerushalmi, the Jerusalem Talmud (though the academies were situated in northern rather than southern Palestine). It covers 39 of the 63 tractates of the Mishnah.
Even more detailed discussions of the Mishnah went on in the Babylonian academies of Sura and Pumbedita. These were eventually edited (according to tradition, by Rabbi Ashi and his disciple Rabbi Avina by 500 CE, though many think that the process went on well into the next century) to form the Babylonian Talmud, known as the Bavli. Though it contains Gemara on several fewer tractates of the Mishnah than the Jerusalem Talmud, the Babylonian Talmud is very much longer, each discussion being longer than its Palestinian equivalent. An English translation of it, published by the Soncino Press, runs to over 15,000 pages. The outcome of three centuries of rabbinic scholarship, its vastness and depth have led to its being compared to a deep sea. When the Talmud is quoted or cited without qualification, it is the Babylonian Talmud which is meant. Attracting the best commentators and the most intelligent and comprehensive interpreters, it has come to be the principal source of authoritative law and theology.
THE LAYOUT OF THE TALMUD
The text printed on Figure 3.1 is folio 83b, the opening page in the Talmud of tractate Bava Kama. The Hebrew text of the Mishnah begins with the word in heavy type at the top right of the central column. This paragraph is itself called a mishnah, as is each paragraph of the Mishnah. After the two letters printed in bold type (which transliterate into GM for Gemara), in the middle of the sixteenth line, the Aramaic Gemara text on this mishnah begins. It occupies the rest of the centre of the page. The text of the Mishnah (as in the Soncino Talmud, ed. I Epstein, 1938) reads:
One who injures a fellow man becomes liable to him for five items: for depreciation, for pain, for healing, for loss of time and for degradation. How is it with ‘depreciation’? If he put out his eye, cut off his arm or broke his leg, the injured person is considered as if he were a slave being sold in the market place, and a valuation is made as to how much he was worth [previously] … if he has struck him, he is under obligation to pay medical expenses. Should ulcers [meanwhile] arise on his body, if as a result of the wound, the offender would be liable, but if not as a result of the wound, he would be exempt.
The much longer Gemara text begins:
Why [pay compensation]? Does the Divine Law not say ‘Eye for eye’? Why not take this literally to mean [putting out] the eye [of the offender]? Let not this enter your mind, since it has been taught: You might think that where he put out his eye, the offender’s eye should be put out, or where he cut off his arm, the offender’s arm should be cut off, or again where he broke his leg, the offender’s leg should be broken. [Not so; for] it is laid down, ‘He that smiteth any man …’ ‘And he that smiteth a beast …’ just as in the case of smiting a beast compensation is to be paid, so also in the case of smiting a man compensation is to be paid.
The Gemara goes on to differentiate between loss of a limb or organ and loss of human life. No compensation but only the death penalty is possible for murder.
To the left (or to the right on folio ‘a’ rather than ‘b’) of the Mishnah and Gemara text comes commentary by Rashi (Rabbi Shelomo ben Yitzhak) who lived in France, 1040–1105. Rashi is a towering figure in the history of Judaism, composing immensely influential commentaries on the whole of the Bible and the Babylonian Talmud. His talmudic commentary is lucid and very concise, showing both the process of argument and the conclusion. To the right on this page come additions or supplements to Rashi’s commentary, the Tosafot (not to be confused with the Tosefta, the supplement to the Mishnah). These begin where Rashi’s comments leave off – the first Tosafists were, in fact, his sons-in-law and grandsons. This work spread from France to Germany and ended in the early fourteenth century.
Figure 3.1. Bava Kama 83b.
Figure 3.2. The layout of Bava Kama 83b.
As is evident from the extract printed above, the Talmud is concerned with the commonplace (e.g. the consequences of physical injury) as the place where the divine may be discovered. Its unifying truth is holiness and so its concerns are not solely ethical. As Jacob Neusner (Invitation to the Talmud, revised edition, Harper and Row, 1984) writes:
To the Talmudic way of thinking a person is liberated, not imprisoned, by reason, which opens the way to true creativity, that is, the work of finding, or imposing, form and order upon chaos. The wherewithal of creativity is triviality … and what is to be done with triviality is to uncover, within or beyond the simple things of chaos, the order, the complex structure, the coherence of the whole … to the Talmudic rabbi, the most interesting aspect of reality is the human and the societal: the village, the home, the individual. Talmudic Judaism, because of its stress on what and how one eats and drinks, has been called a religion of pots and pans. And so it is, if not that alone, for its raw materials are the irreducible atoms of concrete life.
The Talmud thus represents the climax of the process of interpreting the written Torah. Over time, it has come to be seen as a kind of law code, whose main thrust is practical direction. Initially, however, the many instances of case-law and decisions found in the Talmud were more theoretical than practical. It seems that it was the argument that mattered most, both to the Amoraim themselves and to the editors. The fact that whole sections of it related to Temple worship, while the Temple was, in fact, destroyed centuries before the Talmud was compiled, demonstrates this. Study of the sacrificial system was, by the time of the Amoraim, thoroughly academic. Even where the subject matter of the Talmud is severely practical, the discussion is often conducted in an academic way, as if the stages of the argument are of more significance than its conclusion. Even where Rabbis are named, it is not important whether their arguments are real or imaginary. What matters is their methods, as they ask the meanings of words and phrases, compare one set of laws with another and find the underlying principles of each.
* * *
Insight
The term mishnah can be used of the recorded discussions of the Rabbis in the first two centuries CE or of a paragraph within it. The root meaning of the word is ‘repetition’ and the suggestion is that what is repeated (not just by rote, but explored) is truly learned.
* * *
Legal traditions (halakhah) and narrative traditions (aggadah)
At the same time as the Mishnah was being expounded, so was scripture itself, resulting in the midrashim (works of biblical commentary) mentioned in Chapter 2. Rabbinic literature may, therefore, be classified into mishnah and midrash. There is, however, a second way of classifying rabbinic literature – according to its literary genre. The written Torah itself includes both legal material and narrative material. As the oral Torah developed, the traditions also took the form of both law and story.
HALAKHAH
The name given to the legal traditions is halakhah. This is usually taken to derive from the Hebrew verb ‘to go’ or ‘to walk’. Hence halakhah means ‘the way’. The English rendering of ‘Law’ is inadequate for two reasons. First, halakhah includes everything that regulates human conduct, far more than would be dealt with, say, in an English court of law. Second, it is descriptive as well as prescriptive. It describes ‘the way’ things are done by God’s people, using the form: ‘One does this; one does not do that’, rather than the imperative: ‘Do this; do not do that!’ Through halakhah (plural halakhot), the Rabbis try to guide the Jewish people to live life, form society, and serve God in the ways they think right. The laws are presented with a look to the future. Thus, even if they are not entirely practical (as the laws of the fifth order of the Mishnah which dealt with Temple purities when by 200 CE the Temple had been in ruins for more than a century) they describe how in an ideal world things are to be done.
AGGADAH
The name given to the narrative traditions is aggadah. From the Hebrew verb ‘to tell’, aggadah is essentially story. It still expresses the main themes of Jewish religion, but in the form of legendary or historical encouragement and enthusiasm. Aggadah also includes science, folk wisdom, and the theoretical subjects of theology and ethics as they have a bearing on behaviour. In the Talmud, most of the material is halakhic, though some aggadic material is included. Nearly all midrash, on the other hand, is aggadic, though a little is halakhic. The imaginative nature of aggadah can be seen in the way in which a number of second-century Rabbis interpret the phrase ‘the spirit of God’ in Genesis 1:2. One takes it to mean ‘wind’, another ‘Adam’ and another ‘Messiah’. All three interpretations are included with no attempt to adjudicate. The test of their ‘rightness’ lies entirely in their poetic force. Thus aggadah is important for providing what lies behind the practice, not in the sense of formal doctrine, such as theological belief behind Christian practice, but in terms of vitality and inspiration. Sometimes the story is lengthy, but three very brief talmudic extracts (as found in A Rabbinic Anthology, ed. C.G. Montefiore and H. Loewe, Meridian Books, 1963) may give some idea:
Rabbi Hanina ben Idi said: Why are the words of the Torah likened unto water, as it is written, ‘Ho, every one that thirsts, come ye to the waters’ (Isaiah 55:1)? In order to indicate that just as water leaves high places and goes to low places, so the words of the Torah leave him who is haughty, and stay with him who is humble.
(Taanit 7a)
The Emperor asked Rabbi Joshua ben Hananiah, ‘What gives your Sabbath-meat such an aroma?’ He replied, ‘We have a spice called Sabbath, which is put in the cooking of the meat, and this gives it its aroma.’ The Emperor said, ‘Give me some of this spice.’ He replied, ‘For him who keeps the Sabbath, the spice works, for him who does not keep it, it does not work.’
(Shabbat 119a)
Why was man created on Friday: So that, if he become overbearing, one can say to him, The gnat was created before you.
(Sanhedrin 38a)
* * *
Insight
The term aggadah is used of the narrative portions of Talmud and Midrash (biblical interpretation). The term Haggadah, also derived from the Hebrew verb ‘to tell’, refers to the book read during the Passover meal, narrating the exodus experience.
* * *
THE GEONIM
It is halakhah, the legal tradition, which provides the chain from antiquity to the present. As a living tradition, it is subject to a continuous process of adaptation in response to the changing needs of real people. Where study is made of topics which seem to have little direct relevance to contemporary life, its purpose is to see how the original laws can be applied. Links with the ideal world of the Talmud continue to be forged. The list below indicates the titles given to those passing on the tradition from age to age:
