The aggadic schism between the schools of R’ Akiva and R’ Ishmael acts to distinguish between accounts of past events that may seem largely irrelevant to modern-day observance, but tends to form the underpinnings of how we are trained to relate to Judaism nonetheless. R’ Akiva, the maximalist, does not hesitate to generally promote an exceptionally marvelous version of events far exceedingly that which is supported by the biblical text, while R’ Ishmael, the minimalist, generally interprets biblical narratives as is, and more often than not, the events described in the generation of Moses are explained as having been thoroughly ordinary. What one expects from biblical narratives is wholly dependent on how one has been trained to expect, and two individuals originating at opposite corners will be equally as surprised to hear what the other side has to offer — it just happens to be that the last few hundred years have been so saturated with Akivan mysticism that the trend is to be utterly taken aback by Ishmaelian rationalism when one first hears of it.
The past few weeks of Torah portions have afforded the Akivan with much to elaborate on. What with Moses’ initial encounter with Pharaoh and his eventual escape from Egypt as the leader of the fleeing Israelites, not to mention the 10 plagues, splitting of the sea, the manna and the events surrounding the momentous occasion that comprised the experience of Sinai, I don’t think my 6-year-old daughter has learned any actual Torah in the last four weeks. Before I’m jumped on, allow me to qualify: sure, one can complete entire talmudic tractates without learning too much Torah, and by Torah I refer to the written text of the Five Books of Moses, but my daughter is not in a high school level Talmud class. One might suppose that parsha as taught in the 1st grade might consist of come actual parsha, but not in the yeshiva where mysticism rules. It’s too bad they’re not as mystical about where their funding comes from — no, they’re quite rational about that.
This week might be the turning point, though, ladies and gentlemen. What’s so mystical about slaves and murder and ox thieves and bribery and widows’ rights? Alright, so there’s some witches mixed in, but it’s only three words!
And then we get to the sixth section of Mishpatim (Exodus 23:20), where we sort of fall off into a parallel universe, wondering how we seem to move so smoothly from festivals and kosher to angels that share God’s name and before whom we must comply with the laws so that God will bless us — quite the oddity. But perhaps we’ll speak about Metatron another time.
Similar to so many other accounts in the biblical text, the divine encounter at Sinai is repeated from multiple perspectives and although we got one glimpse of it last week, Mishpatim closes with another. Moses is described as involving the priestly first-borns (for the priestly status of the tribe of Levi had apparently not yet been established) in some form of sacrificial activity and Moses is described as halving the blood of the offerings into two parts (Exodus 24:6) and depending on who you believe, the blood was either sprinkled on the nation (Rashi) or poured on the alter (Onkelos).
In ordinary form, there’s a scramble by the commentators to explain how it was, exactly, that Moses was able to divide the blood perfectly in half. R’ Yehuda bar Ilai, profoundly influenced by his Akivan upbringing, explained that the blood divided itself. R’ Nosson HaBavli claimed something else no less miraculous: half of the blood turned black, making the perfect division a simpler task, although how exactly this made it easy (or even easier) for Moses remains somewhat unclear, but that’s not the point. R’ Yitzchak asserted that a heavenly voice came to Moses, pinpointing the moment at which half of the blood had been removed. Shimon Bar Kappara invoked a more concrete form of heavenly intervention, stating that an angel appeared in the likeness of Moses and divided it. Why exactly that would matter raises an interesting point — does it matter than the angel appeared in Moses’ likeness rather than looking like, umm, I don’t know…Wade Boggs? Apparently, the thrust of Bar Kappara’s statement is that although it appeared as though Moses was the one dividing the blood, Moses had actually been replaced by an angel and it was actually the angel dividing the blood, and the Torah merely reports that it was Moses because it appeared to those observing the sacrificial rites as though it was Moses, but it really wasn’t. This is quite interesting, for in leaning so far in the direction of Akivan mysticism, Bar Kappara seems to overreach the Akivan mandate by claiming that the verse says it was Moses but that it truly wasn’t, which is decidedly not very Akivan at all, in fulfillment of the general Ishmaelian notion that one who adds will end up detracting.
R’ Elazar, another ardent Akivan disciple, explained that it was the archangel Michael who held Moses’ hand told him when to stop. Rashi, quoting Leviticus Rabbah (6, 5) , simply states that an angel came and divided the blood, in line with comments made by the Mechilta of R’ Shimon bar Yochai, authored by the the disciple extraordinaire of R’ Akiva himself.
R’ Ishmael, however, stands nearly alone in his naturalistic explanation of the verse: Moses determined the proper quantity himself. In similar form, a rare tradition brought from R’ Judah was that Moses brought out scales, weighed the blood to determine the half point and then proceeded to use one of the two collections.
Much like R’ Akiva’s magnification of the plagues that ultimately affected the Egyptians at the sea to way beyond anything anyone could have imagined, the Akivan penchant for extending biblical events far beyond the manner in which they appear in the text has become so accepted that reading of the opposing views sometimes strikes one as offbeat, but perhaps it is time we reclaim our children’s parsha notes from the realm of the abundantly fanciful.
Check out the mystical and the rational at 4Torah.com.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice try. Our generation is not capable of finding HaShem in the mundane, everyday course of life. People need “shtick”. I like what you wrote. However, as you pointed out, your “garden variety” frum Jew of today would suspect you of “kefirah” for daring to suggest that Moshe Rabbenu did anything as “secular” as using his own powers of observation to measure out 1/2 of the blood. CHALILAH!! that you might even be suggesting that it was not EXACTLY 1/2, but rather an approximation.
Perhaps it’s just me, but describing the common person as garden variety conjures up vivid images of snails. But perhaps it’s apropos, seeing how slow people are in changing the way they think.
So it’s not astounding that people resist hearing new ways of thinking, but for those who are, I offer this. To those who are not, perhaps a realization that some of the most fundamental tools of biblical exegesis emanate from the school of R’ Ishmael will help remedy that hesitation.
Don’t R. Akiva and R. Yishmael also argue over whether our succos are a zecher for Ananei HaKavod or Succos Mamash?
You are correct — and the sages sided with R’ Ishmael. See Mechilta D’Rabbi Ishmael (pischa 14) and Shir HaShirim Rabbah 1:8 for further elaboration.
Please indulge me. Please explain why there had to be 1/2 & 1/2. I always thought when the torah or in anything Jewish talks about 1/2 it is not meant to be taken literally. For example when it is stated 1/2 Hallel it can be seen by everyone that we are only talking about 2 paragraphs.
You make a great point — the term chatzi (half) is very often used as a colloquialism for partial, as in reference to ‘half of the tribe of Menashe’ (Numbers 32:33) residing with the tribes of Reuben and Gad, which was most certainly not meant to convey that there were exactly as many Transjordan members of Menashe as there were those intending on taking up residence on the west of the Jordan, as well as a number of other uses, such as in Hallel (as you indicated) and in such halachic examples as chatzi shiur assur min haTorah (“partial volumes of prohibited items are biblically prohibited,” despite the lack of punishment for being of lesser quantity than that which is deemed a punishable quantity. An example of this would be consuming less than an olive’s bulk of rabbit meat — although one would have only been eligible for court-administered flogging for eating an olive’s bulk, it is not to be understood that consuming less is permitted). It appears, then, that this instance was never taken to mean anything but literally half and I was merely responding to this.
Nice catch!
This reminds me. Last week there was a blood drive in the place where I daven. In the room where we daven.
So I went and gave blood. And commented to the phlebotomists that even though it is in the “shul”, we really don’t use the blood in our matza. Really, I’m a rabbi, and I know that we don’t.
And we aren’t really bloodsuckers either.
So glad you are back. this was excellent. Rational Judaism, man. The few the proud.
This is probably no Orthodox day school in America that teaches R’ Yishmael’s philosophy. The great irony is that we recite his 13 methods of exegesis in shacharit everyday, but hardly use them. They are found as the intro to the Mechilta (of RSBY), yet not actually used in the text (which is a R’ Akibian document).
Hey, since when is a frum guy allowed to learn this mechilta stuff? Did you crack open a Saul Liberman? Lauterbach? Klausner? Lumdish, man.
If it’s good enough for R’ Ishmael, it’s good enough for me.
And thanks for your support!
> In ordinary form, there’s a scramble by the commentators to explain how it was, exactly, that Moses was able to divide the blood perfectly in half. …
The methods proposed read like the worst kind of fan speculation. They’re just making stuff up.
It’s odd that they feel the need to invoke Divine help. Had none of them ever seen someone bake? Were they completely unfamiliar with measuring liquids?
According to the likes of the Maharatz Chayes, these proposals were meant to add pomp and circumstance rather than reflect any sense of tradition or documentation of historical events — according to this view (which I would be inclined to subscribe to) the more dramatic, the more captivating and the greater the multitude tuning into the Shabbos afternoon shiur in which these scholars proposed their respective legendary tales.
These scholars felt the need to expand and magnify and did not feel the need to limit the scope of their elaboration for the time was one of belief. People did not comprehend the universe as we do now, and so their suspension of disbelief was a default to some extent, and it probably didn’t matter how likely the stories were, because the notion of likelihood was itself poorly developed.
As such, your attack is well taken, but perhaps misdirected. According to Maimonides, these views were meant to be taken seriously, but never as factually accurate — they were, as he says, written as parables, riddles and allegories. R’ Ishmael and his followers, however, certainly didn’t take that road — they slammed R’ Akiva and his followers for their preposterous and farfetched interpretations, which leaves us with a dilemma as to how to really approach such fancifulness from a contemporary perspective. I thus straddle the fence between Maimonidean tolerant reconfiguration of intent and Ishmaelian overarching impatience every moment of evaluation.
Please, Please, Please read haRambam’s “Introduction to Perek Chelek.” In it, he describes three types of people, classified by how they view midrashim and aggadot on Rabbinic literature.
1. Those who take everything said literally, and anything said by any Rabbi must be absolutely true, no matter how far-fetched or contrary to human intellect it might be. (Pretty much the schools described here.) These people detract from the wisdom of our Torah, and lack knowledge.
2. Those who think that the Rabbis meant everything they said literally, and because some of these things are contrary to common sense, ridicule those Rabbis for thinking so. (What it seems is happening in the above article, correct me if i’m wrong.) Now this category of people is NO BETTER than the first, and haRambam describes them as having neither wisdom nor knowledge in their simple-minded interpretation of the wise words of our Rabbis.
3. There are very few people in this category, but they know the truth. They are able to understand the true genius of the authors of these midrashim by uncovering the latter’s meaning by way of parables and metaphors when they contradict common sense. (see Proverbs 1:6, equating “mashal umlitzah,” parable and metaphor, to “divre chachamim,” the words of the wise.) As the proper interpretation of midrashim and aggadot is no easy task, not many people are familiar with it. (haRambam then says that he will in the future compile a book containing explanations to all the midrashim, but unfortunately it seems he never got to it.)
Thanx for bringing that to the reader’s attention — I’ve outlined it before, such as here (6th paragraph).
It’s a venerable thing that both Maimonides and the Maharatz Chayes attempt to do by explaining things as they do — I don’t get sense that it’s a retcon, but at the same time, it’s certainly not the purist Ishmaelian approach, and we can see this clearly and without bias from the likes of R’ Ishmael himself, who ought to possess credibility as one with a true Ishmaelian perspective. He and his immediate entourage (both literally and figuratively) expressed such distaste for the wild and fantastic interpretations of R’ Akiva and did no with such harsh verbal criticism that supposing that R’ Ishmael himself took this Maimonidean approach is quite beyond the pale of suggestion.
Now I am not a personal and direct disciple of either R’ Ishmael, R’ Akiva or Maimonides and I haven’t met any of them (and neither is anyone else, for that matter) — I, like so many others, am merely one who reads what they wrote and what others wrote about them, and you make an exquisitely decisive point in bringing up this Maimonidean classification of midrashic interpreters, as it were — but no problem is really solved, for the non-rationalists (such as the Vilna Gaon) refute either the authenticity and/or the binding nature of such a classification and the super-irrationalists (like the garden variety yeshivish person, who, again, reminds me of snails, and his or her rabbinic authority endorsing such a view of his follower, including but not limited to all those who disputed my remarks in the aforementioned link to our discussion last year about midrash + metaphor) upholds a literal understanding of R’ Akiva, which fits in quite nicely with the manner and magnitude of forceful rejection by R’ Ishmael himself. Why would the sages cast such aspersions upon R’ Akiva when all he was doing was bringing enthusiasm to and building a buzz around the weekly parsha? So it wasn’t the classical approach — it would have been like what Whoopie Goldberg did to the tired old choir songs in Sister Act. It would have been fine if the other sages acted like Mother Superior, initially finding fault in R’ Akiva’s methods but eventually coming around to see how increasing excitement about the Torah and perhaps attendance at the shiurim was ultimately a good thing. But that’s not how they reacted — the Ishmaelian school utterly rejected the Akivan newfangledness to the end, which suggests that R’ Akiva was not then and there merely espousing merely an interpretative liberty in the hopes of stirring up passions, but was actually suggesting that this manner of interpretation was meant to be taken at face value in all it’s irrational and fanciful glory. R’ Akiva, therefore, would have likely disagreed with Maimonides himself, then, and we are left to wonder how to settle this ourselves between, as I said above, the Maimonidean tolerant reconfiguration of intent and the Ishmaelian overarching impatience with literal fancifulness.
Reading what you wrote in connection with the other post you directed me to, it seems you would agree wholeheartedly with haRambam’s position. (Meaning I owe you an apology for suggesting you were part of the 2nd group).
However, regardless of whether any midrash did in fact happen, I don’t think they were meant as a history lesson– in anyone’s opinion (back then, at least). Whether or not the event described actually occurred, it was told over to make a specific point, or to teach a lesson. Maimonides’ view (which he received as mesorah directly from the Geonim, who continued the tradition of the Babylonian Yeshivot) is that a midrash necessarily has deeper meaning to it, and its rational or physical plausibility is irrelevant.
In this vein, the dispute between R. Ishmael and R. ‘Akiva could easily be explained as one over educational methods (education being the main point of the midrash)– whether it’s better to use fantastical and mystical allegories to illustrate a point, or instead to demonstrate it in an everyday, easy to relate to manner. (They can also be possibly explained as R. Ishmael seeing any number of flaws in the specific symbols R. ‘Akiva uses, on a case by case basis, but I don’t have any evidence yet to support that– just a suggestion.) In the course of your comment above, you asserted that R. Ishmael could not have possibly held Maimonides’ view, and that it was likely R. ‘Akiva didn’t either. This would mean that Someone along the line between the Mishnah and Maimonides invented the idea that most midrashim are to be read metaphorically– a conclusion I refuse to accept. I don’t assume that all Rabbis are infallible, (especially not modern-day rabbis,) but I do believe the Tannaim and Emoraim were highly intelligent and educated men. To suggest that they thought such irrational and fanciful stories to be historically accurate is simply unacceptable.
I can’t exactly define categories of attempt levels for midrashic historicity, but I suppose we can look at a bunch of similar midrashim for starters: there’s a fairly popular midrash brought by Rashi from Genesis Rabbah (6) that the moon was initially as large as the sun but that after quarreling about the sky not being expansive enough for “two kings to share one throne,” it was reduced in size as a consequence and provided with the stars for consolation. This sounds somewhat similar to another midrash:
Alright, I’m kidding — that was not a midrash, but rather from The Last of the Mohicans (30:45). But it sounds just as allegorical, as does the midrash of the stones fighting under Jacob’s head (Bavli Chullin 91b) and the mountains arguing over which should receive the Torah. Does anyone really posit that any of this took place? I’m sure there are many people who will say that at least some of these are historically accurate, not to mention any number of other midrashim, such as Mount Sinai being separated from the surface of the earth’s crust and hung over the head of the Israelites. Where do they get such an odd perspective? I hesitate to say that all of these people are merely living maladjusted adult lives, never having been told by their rebbe that the stories they were told as children were not meant to be understood literally — no, there are rabbis out there who tell their followers that these stories reflect historical reality. Even R’ Mordechai Becher will tell you during the shiur in which he presents this Maimonidean classification that the Vilna Gaon was very against such a manner of explaining midrashim. One of my closest rebbeim refuses to agree with Maimonides, instead relying on the fact that, “for so many generations, these midrashim were seen as literal accounts of historical reality.”
Your suggestion that R’ Ishmael meant to castigate R’ Akiva over his methods of teaching rather than his methods of historical interpretation are interested, but I don’t think its compatible with the actual extent of the disputes. It certainly does seem as though R’ Akiva meant most of what he said to be taken literally.
Deeply hinging on this point are the following two links (to be read in order):
1) R’ Sebrow on R’ Meiselman
2) R’ Slifkin’s response