Part II
The first part of this essay discussed the heart of what
it means to learn and understand a part of Torah: acquiring a
grasp of what Chazal call the tzurso deshmayteso. This
is something that is difficult and important, as the author
illustrated from halachas about beis din deliberations
which show that the information can be written down but the
grasp that the dayanim have of the tzurso
deshmayteso may still be lost. He also cited some
anecdotes from the work of the Chazon Ish which discuss the
way he grasped a sugya while learning it and how he
related to this later, for example by reviewing his written
comments before issuing rulings on those matters on
subsequent occasions.
The author called this grasp the form of a sugya in
contrast to its matter, which is the collection of the pieces
of information involved.
Valid Questions and Valid Answers
This also gives us some insight into the nature of a yeshiva,
and the vibrant atmosphere of the learning that goes on
inside it.
A talmid chochom is characterized by the way he grasps
the form of the wisdom, as we explained. The task of a
beis hamedrash is to educate, nurture and increase
such talmidei chachomim. The purpose of a yeshiva, in
essence, is to transmit the methods of attaining Torah, not
just the actual texts, but also their form, quintessential
content and brilliance.
Rav Sherira Gaon in his Epistle, after completing his account
of the transmission of Torah from generation to generation
until his time, reverts to a description of his yeshiva, the
number of students, the syllabus and so on. When summarizing
the method of learning at his yeshiva, he chooses a
surprising point. We would have expected him to state that he
teaches his students the whole of Shas, and
familiarizes them with the whole of Torah shebe'al
peh. Instead, he writes that he teaches them "21 ways of
asking questions and answering them!"
In the yeshivos of the Geonim they learnt the whole of
Shas, from beginning to end and he also mentions that,
but his main concern when it came to transmitting Torah to
his students was to teach them the techniques of
distinguishing valid questions and answers from invalid ones.
Rav Sherira, wishing to produce a generation of great
rabbinical personalities, found it necessary to stress in his
yeshiva the methods of acquiring the wisdom of Torah in all
its depth, because the main purpose of a yeshiva is to
elucidate and transmit the methods of limud from
generation to generation.
An experienced daf yomi maggid shiur told me the
following: "I'm in the middle of the third cycle of daf
yomi shiurim which I give to a group of baalei
batim every evening. Some of them have been attending my
shiurim for over sixteen years, from the day they
started. They have already made a siyum haShas with me
twice.
"One of the baal habatim was already middle-aged when
he joined my shiur, and had managed to complete the
whole of Shas twice before. In addition to having
finished Shas four times over by now he has, over the
past few years, since going on an early pension, been
participating on a regular basis in morning shiurim at
a local kollel baalei batim. Since he is also an
intelligent person, you would expect him to have become
somewhat of a talmid chochom by now -- but this is not
the case! His questions have always been to the point, but on
the whole they are `baal batishe' questions!
"The most surprising thing is that the questions he comes up
with are identical to the ones he put to me fourteen or
fifteen years ago! I already answered them once or twice in
the past to his satisfaction, but this does not deter him
from repeating the same question for the third time! When I
remind him that he has already heard this answer from me in
the past more than once, he seems amazed and quite confident
that I must be wrong, and that I must be mixing him up with
someone else. But I'm not! This phenomenon has become a
regular feature of my shiurim and I have stopped
making any more comments about it."
The reason for this is that this baal habayis, even
with thirty years' recent learning experience behind him, has
yet to apply himself to the tzurso deshmayteso of a
sugya. He does have a good grasp of the text itself.
This Yid most probably can cite a lot of
gemoras very well, and may consider himself quite a
scholar. Sometimes he may even smile at the lack of erudition
shown by younger scholars not as well-versed in gemora
as he is, but he has never absorbed the "seichel," the
tzurso deshmayteso of the Torah.
"This is because his learning has a haphazard nature about
it. Even though he makes a point of reviewing the daf
every day, his efforts are only concentrated on understanding
the words. He has not applied himself to gaining a mastery of
the `ways of asking questions and answering them.'
Facial Expressions
We are now coming closer to understanding what it is that
cements the chain of Torah transmission from generation to
generation. It has been established so far that a student
learning Torah from his rov is not only learning the actual
text. If this were the whole purpose, it would usually be
enough for the student to consult books in his library. The
main aim of learning from a rov is to attain the form of
wisdom.
We would add an additional point: it is only possible to
acquire the inner content of wisdom, its roots and form, by
means of the student-rov relationship. This involves a face-
to-face and peh lepeh communication, the same way that
Moshe Rabbeinu learned mipi haGevuroh (see also the
introduction to the Ksav Vehakaboloh on the Torah).
The outer shell of wisdom can be put into writing, but a
man's heart cannot be. It would be hopeless to try to convey
the depth of a sugya in writing, however much effort
is put into expressing one's ideas. Even a cassette or
videotape cannot achieve this. Fragments of active
kedushoh can only be communicated through a living and
accessible medium.
"Rebbi said, `I have only acquired Torah by virtue of having
seen R. Meir's neck from the back.' R. Yochonon and Reish
Lokish both said, `We have only acquired Torah by virtue of
having seen Rebbi's finger come out of his sleeve.' "
(Yerushalmi, Beitzo 8:2). Nowadays, it has become
generally recognized that a person does not only express
himself through his speech and diction. A person's deepest
inner messages are only expressed through his body language:
the way he "sings" his words, the way he wrinkles his face,
the various ways he moves his eyes and blinks, his facial
expressions and gesticulations, the way he twists his body,
spreads out his hands and waves his finger. Torah texts are
very deep and cannot be grasped fully just by reading them or
hearing them from a teacher without experiencing all the body
language that accompanies them. As it says, "Let your eyes
see your teacher."
Chazal, whose entire personalities were molded by the oral
traditions of Torah received from their rabbonim, were not
only fully aware of the phenomenon of body communication,
they could even pinpoint which particular body motion of
their rov was responsible for their insight into the
sugya that was being taught at the time. Rebbi was
certain that if he had not absorbed R. Meir's expressions
(just from the back!), he would not have understood anything
of his Torah.
R. Yochonon and Reish Lokish were amongst the youngest
students of Rebbi. They sat in his yeshiva in the seventeenth
row. From such a distance they could not make out his facial
expressions, but they could see the movements of his fingers,
and how he used them to clarify his words. It was Rebbi's
thumb that made them wise!
Conclusion of Shas
The Rambam in his introduction to the Mishne Torah,
describes at length the chain of Torah transmission
throughout the forty generations from Moshe Rabbeinu until
the days of Ravina and Rav Ashi. He says that after their
generation "the Jewish people dispersed all over the world,
reaching faraway corners and islands. There was an increase
in disputes, travel on roads was disrupted by armies, there
were less Torah studies, and the Jews did not congregate in
their multitudes to learn in yeshivos as they had done
previously. Instead, individuals gathered together, remnants
whom Hashem summoned in every city and country, who learned
Torah and have a mastery of all of Chazal's teachings and
know the laws from them."
From that time onwards, every Gaon and talmid chochom
is entitled to differ from his predecessors. "If one of the
Geonim decided that something was the halocho, and it
is clear to a beis din of a later generation that this
is not the right ruling according to the gemora, we do
not follow the earlier ruling, but the one which is the most
reasonable, be it the earlier or the later." (See also the
Ramo's note on Chosen Mishpot 25:1).
We must try to understand what exactly changed after Ravina
and Rav Ashi. Why does every rov from that time onwards have
the authority to differ from his predecessors on the basis of
proofs from the Talmud, but is not under any circumstances
authorized to disagree with the Talmud itself?
If it is because the chachmei hatalmud were
concentrated in one place, but subsequently rabbonim were
spread out everywhere, then why should it be that if we would
now gather the majority of the world's talmidei
chachomim in one area, as they were in the time of the
gemora, and they use their pilpulistic skills to
disagree with Ravina and Rav Ashi, they would have no
authority to do so? The reason for their lack of authority
cannot be the absence of a direct tradition going back all
the way to Moshe Rabbeinu, since everybody learns the methods
of the Talmud from Ravina and Rav Ashi's writings, so that we
may all be considered their students, and if Rav Ashi can
disagree with the rulings of R. Yochonon and Reish Lokish,
why can we not differ from them as he did, or disagree with
the decisions of Ravina and Rav Ashi themselves when they
concluded the Talmud?
In between the lines of the Rambam's quote above, we find an
answer to this question. We have made the point that it is
impossible to absorb the Torah of a rov from his writings,
but only and specifically by being physically in his
presence. This means that we cannot at all consider ourselves
as students of Rav Ashi, because even if we spend a lot of
time striving to understand his words and methods, this is
not enough for us to be reckoned among his students.
We have not even had the merit of seeing his fingers from a
distance! Consequently, we cannot come anywhere near an
accurate understanding of even one of his statements. "The
contents of a man's heart cannot be put into writing!" Our
hearts are not capable of perceiving even a fraction of the
heart of those Amoroim who concluded the Talmud. We have no
connection to their hearts, we are not their students, and
our perception of their teachings is only a light reflection,
a shadow of the original Torah taught in their beis
hamedrash. On what basis, then, could we possibly differ
from them?
This leads us to a startling point implied by the Rambam.
Even after the Jewish people were dispersed all over the
world, the process of transmission of the Torah from teacher
to student never ceased, and each student was totally
dedicated to observing and transmitting the teachings of his
rov. The Savoroim and Geonim did not keep their teachings to
themselves: the transmission of traditions from rov to
talmid continued during their time and has been going
on continuously until the present day.
However, you cannot compare an individual who receives
teachings from another individual to a large group of people
receiving traditions from another large group. The Torah's
depth is unfathomable, and one individual, or several
individuals however great their stature, cannot on his own
attain a perfect comprehension of divrei Torah in all
their multifarious aspects.
The inner essence of Torah could only be transmitted in its
totality in the yeshivos of the Tanoim and Amoroim, where the
majority of all the chachomim were concentrated in one
or two mesivtos, and many thousands of students
absorbed the teachings of the chachomim. For Torah to
be transferred in its entirety, there have to be a large
number of students looking at a large body of rabbonim,
watching their faces during the shiurim, their
clenched fists and other body language during the heat of the
Talmudic debates. Thousands of students listening eagerly and
observing their teachers' every movement. Once we became
scattered all over the world, this situation came to an
end.
Of course, the Torah continued and will continue to be
transmitted from rov to talmid until Moshiach
comes b"b, but the fervor of Torah and its tzurso
deshmayteso have necessarily been impaired over the
generations.
To Make Them Forget the Torah
Let us return now to our opening question. We asked why
Chazal made a point of singling out the category of
lehashkichom Torosecho from the general category of
decrees affecting religious observance. In the light of what
we have discussed here, and taking note of the term
hashkochas haTorah as opposed to mere bitul
Torah, the answer should be obvious.
Chazal, when formulating the al hanisim, had in mind
the Greek prohibition of public Torah study in botei
medrash. Other anti-religious edicts were going to be
cancelled sooner or later, with no long-term aftereffects,
but the termination of Torah study in yeshivos posed a very
serious threat because that would have necessarily resulted
in a weakening of the living tradition of Torah, as we have
explained.
If Antiochus had, choliloh, succeeded in his
machinations, the Torah would have become hidden already at
that time. The frightening spectacle of the disruption of the
living chain of tradition from the time of Moshe and the
consequent weakening of halachic decision-making powers which
we witnessed with the closure of Sura mesivta at the
beginning of the Savoroic period, would have occurred already
during that earlier period.
Whereas the chachomim left us an organized Mishna and
Talmud, from which we draw our sustenance until
Moshiach comes b"b, in the time of the Greeks
there was no trace of anything arranged in writing. Were it
not for the Creator's kindness in nullifying their evil
plans, who knows how we would have coped?
Now we can understand why, of all the decrees imposed by the
Greeks, it was this one that posed the main danger to our
spiritual well-being. " `And darkness' -- refers to the Greek
exile; [it was the Greeks] who darkened the eyes of the Jews
with their decrees." (Bereishis Rabboh 2:4). There is
no greater blindness than forgetting the Torah. This is why
Chazal formulated lehashkichom Torosecho as a separate
category of praise.
The miracle of the Menorah symbolized this victory,
because the main result of our triumph over the Greeks was
the restoration of Talmudic study to its rightful place. The
Mesivtos were revitalized and the succeeding
generations of Tanoim, who would enrich the Torah tradition
and disseminate it throughout the nation, could develop
undisturbed.
The pure Menorah represents wisdom. "He who desires to
become wise should turn to the south [when praying]. The
symbol [by which to remember this] is that the Menorah
stood in the south." (Bovo Basra 25b). The lone
jug of pure oil which remained -- the thin wick of tradition
secretly-adhered to -- burst forth, multiplied, and
illuminated the eyes of the Jewish people for eternity.
HaRav Moshe Sh. Mayernik is rosh kollel of Tiferes
Shraga, Yerushalayim.
