Intuition, Oral Torah and Blank Spaces Bava Basra 76-78

The Oral Torah and Blank Spaces

There are certain conventions in the Talmud that are difficult for the new learner to comprehend. Frankly, they would be difficult for many seasoned lamdanim as well, but after years and years of seeing the same phrase being used, I suspect that some have ceased to become curious or troubled by it. Yet, I am unsure if they became particularly wiser as to what it means and how it works – just more accepting of it. One of the most troubling conventions is the concept of chasurei mechasrah. Chasurei mechasrah comes up when there is a difficult passage in the Mishnah, either because it contradicts a tradition or that there is an intrinsic illogic and/or a seemingly missing phrase. Usually, when confronted with contradictions in teachings, subtle distinctions are drawn between the two discrepant teachings in order to harmonize them via the Talmud’s finely honed dialectical method. On occasion, when there is no resolution to the conflict, because they believed their practical tradition to be so strong, the Gemara will take the dramatic step of declaring the teaching to be shabeshtah, an incorrect distorted teaching. Since the teachings (that is the beraysos) were memorized scripts of didactic and casuistic codes, a line or two could have been jumbled. The first resort is to try to harmonize the discrepancy via reinterpretation and drawing distinctions, so that the contradiction was only an apparent one. But if all else fails, the Gemara would rely on the stronger tradition of the two (whether it is a known practice or comes from a more credible and dependable tradition or student), and then assume the other teaching is mistaken.

Sometimes, instead of declaring the teaching to be shabeshta, the Gemara offers a different answer: Chasurei mechasrah. This means to say that there is missing text, and by adding a strategic word or line, it becomes comprehensible. The hard part to accept is that sometimes these insertions drastically change the original meaning, and one wonders could this really be the intention of the author or source of teaching? It has a feel of legal sophistry, and seems less compelling than the usual razor-sharp deductive logic of the Gemara. The simplest way to understand this is that if they had no choice and no way to answer the contradiction, and so they were left with either ruling the entire teaching as corrupted or just amend a small strategic portion. One might say it’s a migo of sorts, (a legal argument that a claimants otherwise unsubstantiated argument should be believed per force that he could have prevailed in the case based on a different claim, that if he were a liar, would have technically worked.) Here too, since (migo), we could have declared the entire teaching as shabeshta, we will just edit a small portion. (This can be supported by Rashi Sanhedrin 10b, “v’Haibur”, and Rav Yosef Karo, Kellaley Hatalmud.)

However this simple answer sacrifices a degree of veracity for overall tradition. Though rare and as a last resort, we are still declaring and accepting a possibility of corruption in our legal cannon. This is why Rabbenu Bechaye (Ki Tissah 34:27) rejects this idea. He says the lacunae lie in our knowledge and not the text of the teaching. Since we have less understanding, somehow a text that was sufficient to describe the law clearly enough for the Tannah is no longer so for us. We then add text, but it is an addendum, not an amendment.

Still, in many cases, such an approach is hard to understand because the text does not even seem close to being interpreted that way without the amendment. Rabbenu Bechaye’s argument works technically then, but it isn’t always satisfying. However, part of that difficulty comes from our 21st century perspective that is extremely text-based. A culture that had less technology to allow easy and cheap storage of the written word, relies heavily on memorization and brief index-like sentences, which were intended to jog memory and not serve as perfectly edited documentation. Every technology shapes language. When space is at a premium, the language evolves to suit. We have seen this occur in modern times. You might recall when the original SMS texting became available, only 160 characters were allowed. This organically led to new slang words, acronyms and emoticons, such as “:-)”, LOL and IMHO. Like many linguistic developments, they transcend their original purpose, and now that we have the ability to text much larger amounts, the acronyms and emoticons persist. Even more fascinating, they migrated into everyday speech via speaking out the acronym or using a hand gesture for the emoticon. Taking into account those cultural and historical phenomena, it becomes easier to see why a shortened partial text might have seemed perfectly acceptable to the ancient sages, who lived in a semi-oral society. They had enough technology to write down the most important ideas, but without a printing press they still treated the written word as reminders and indices rather than a full record. This is why you’ll see ancient Greek engravings without spaces between the words. They didn’t use the carved sentences as full recordings but rather reminders of known sayings. It’s as if someone wrote, “As the saying goes, a stitch in time …etc.” The et cetera is way to conserve space because everyone knows how to finish the sentence.

Tiferes Yisrael (Arachim 1:4 Boaz) offers a different explanation for the origin of chasurei mechasrah. In order to aid memorization and retention, the Mishnayos and Beraysos were taught with a sing-song chant, and as with various songs and poems, you might have to leave out certain words to meter the prose. Other oral cultures used song as well to preserve their history, such as the West African Griots and the Hindu Vegas and Upanishads.

A final intriguing explanation is that of the Vilna Gaon (see Mas’es Melech, Ki Tissah.) Since the Oral Torah was originally prohibited to be written down (Gittin 60b), even when it was written as a concession, portions were kept oral. This still begs the question as to why do that? If there was a concession made because the sages saw that the ability to remember and transmit had become weaker, why use incomplete language. If anything, that would lead to more confusion. We could simply answer that if writing oral Torah is forbidden, but necessary, the sages sought to minimize the violation. This is similar to giving an ill person on Yom Kippur lighter foods first, as discussed in Yoma (83a).

Yet there is a deeper way to understand the reluctance to write more than necessary. The sages knew that the deepest truths of the Torah could never be captured in writing. The underlying nuances, attitudes and contexts represent millions of bits of data that can only be transmitted in an intuitive manner through learned experience and grasping the mentality and totality of the mentor. Most sciences and arts still to this day are probably taught experientially, despite having a large corpus of instructional text. Surgery, music, martial arts and even psychotherapy really cannot be learned from textbooks alone. All the books in the world cannot fully convey everything that is contained and transmitted via mimicry and apprenticeship from the master. The sages therefore wanted to make it clear that even if they wrote everything in the fullest and most precise terms, there still would be so much missing.

Money Can’t Buy Everything

Our Gemara on Amud Beis rules that ein matbeya nikneh be-chalifin coinage cannot be acquired via chalifin (a legal symbol exchange of a minor object, that in Jewish law, affirms an agreement or acquisition of property or goods.) We can intuitively understand why this might be so. Money is symbolic, especially paper money, as it has no intrinsic worth. In ancient times, when a precious metal was used, there was some actual value to the coin, based on its weight. Nevertheless, it still is heavily symbolic as it serves no utility, unlike an item of jewelry made out of precious metals. Even a raw lump of the same precious metal is less symbolic because it’s function is anticipated, that is, it will be formed into an object. However, coinage that is minted will never have a functional or practical use.

One cannot hold an entire field or even cattle in his hands, so how is possession demonstrated? The legal mechanism that affirms and enacts transactions and transfers is via a symbolic action such as a handshake, signature, payment or downpayment of the value, in order to render the abstract idea of acquisition more concrete. It then follows to reason that too much symbolism could dilute the significance of the action, and thereby not make it effective. If chalifin is a symbol, and coinage is symbolic, there might be too little that is concrete to allow chalifin to demonstrate transfer and ownership of coinage.

This is also true from a mystical perspective. Likkutei Moharan (23) speaks of the transient nature of money, and because of that, love of money it is not just metaphorically idolatrous, but it actually IS idolatry. After all, what is idolatry if not the poor substitution of the true Deity with a moraly lazy and concrete projection? The abstract, unified omnipotent God is substituted with a pantheon of fickle gods, represented in various forces of nature that seem to act independently. A refusal to burden the brain with the idea that one Creator has a unified purpose and plan to everything that happens, which by definition makes the world morally accountable. Instead, the idolator chooses to explain the complex and incomprehensible by accepting the warring forces of nature at face value. If the forces of nature are at war, then man can engage in psychological splitting and not hold himself accountable. If Mommy and Daddy don’t agree, and undermine each other, then the child has little incentive to believe or respect either parent.

Money is the arbitrary placement of value on something that is intangible, therefore Likkutei Maharan says the sages are reminding us that ein matbeya nikneh be-chalifin coinage cannot be acquired via chalifin. Meaning that the true value of the world we live in cannot be exchanged or imagined superficially; we cannot allow our wish fulfillment needs to project a distorted reality onto the spirituality of the world. The actual value must be fully ascertained and acquired.

The Psychology of Intuition and Rashi

Our Gemara on Amud Aleph describes a certain saddle used for women, known as a Kumni, which presumably functioned in a manner that allowed a woman to ride side-saddle and more modestly.

This brings to mind the famous Rashi (Shemos 28:4) that describes the form of the Ephod. The Ephod was one of the garments that the high priest wore, composed of cloth and had the breastplate attached to it. Apparently, there is no explicit teaching about what this item of clothing looked like. Rashi describes it as similar to a riding apron worn by women of his time. One can imagine the function of an apron shaped garment to preserve the modesty of the woman rider, without her having to wear pants. How Rashi comes to this idea is significant.

He introduces his thought and description of this vestment by saying, “Though I have not heard a teaching or tradition that describes this garment, my heart tells me it is shaped as follows…” Rashi is reporting that he had an intuition and insight into the Ephod’s shape, based on having seen a woman’s riding apron.

Rashi’s experience is reminiscent of a number of great thinkers and scientists who described their breakthroughs as coming from imaginative visions. For example, Dimitri Mendalev is said to have first seen the Periodic Table in a dream, and August Kekule saw the Benzene molecule in a daytime reverie, while Einstein described himself as imagining riding a light wave. (Lois Eisenman, Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Spring 1997, 40, 3 “Toward an Understanding of Intuition”.)

But there is a second time that Rashi uses the phrase, “My heart tells me” in his discussion in Shemos. The second usage is perplexing. He says, “My heart tells me it is an article of clothing based on the following verses…” If Rashi had proof texts that it is a kind of garment, and indeed if you look up his sources they are compelling, why then did he say “my heart tells me?” This second usage seems unrelated to intuition, as he had ample proof.

To answer this, we must study the phenomenon of intuition. We can define intuition as a process by which the symbolic part of the mind discerns a pattern or meaning in totality, without a linear step-by-step deduction. Our consciousness is divided between things we isolate by intense focus and scrutiny, versus background noise. Consider the example of a party where there is a cacophony of noises and conversations which your ears hear, but your mind only processes deeply what your friend is telling you. Still, all of the sudden, if someone mentions your name across the room, your ears perk up. A less conscious part of your mind must have been sorting out and listening to all the noises, and it only flagged the noise of relevance, when your name was said. Since this part of the mind is crunching much larger amounts of data, it has to rely on a different mechanism than scrutinizing each stimuli in detail. It must rely on some kind of data sampling method, which lacks precision but gains breadth to allow for filling in the blanks with suppositions.

So too, even with ideas, a part of the mind may have grasped a pattern but your conscious thought might only notice it via a symbolic image, thought or feeling. We all have had the feeling that we are being followed, even though we do not have eyes in the back of our heads. Somehow, a collection of subtle cues (echoes, shadows, reflections, or the way in which local animals slink, vegetation rustles, or even an uncanny quiet) signal to us that something is off, just beneath our conscious perception.

Similarly, everyone instantly knows that a circle cannot be a square, though it might take time to construct a logical proof that this is so. What is happening cognitively? Apparently, there must be enough general data to strongly support the truth of this, but there is not enough linear step-by-step proof. The mind uses general points to identify the overall pattern. This is also why we can understand God through what’s known as Via Negativa. It’s a way to understand God by focusing on what God is not, rather than what God is. We can never understand what God really is, but we can understand what He is not. We know he is not physical, not weak, not unwise, not uncompassionate. When we do say he is wise or compassionate, those are inaccurate borrowed human terms. If God were compassionate, he would then be subject to physical bounds, as something (His emotions) would influence Him. Only physical objects change, which makes them subject to time and entropy, and having a beginning and an end. Even to say God is mighty or wise is not accurate, because wise means to “know something” or to be strong “means to contain a certain power”. But if it is something to have or to contain, then it is a quantity, and therefore physical and not infinite. God’s wisdom and power is infinite so calling Him wise or powerful is not anything like human wisdom or strength. All this is explained in Rambam Yesode HaTorah, Chapter One. Yet, by knowing what God is not, we get an intuitive understanding of what He is, just as we know about the square and the circle, even though we did not fully connect the dots.

This is how intuition works. Without fully worked out logic, the quick and general processor in your mind picks up a pattern which then becomes subject for possible rational analysis. Now we can understand Rashi’s choice of words for his second assertion. True, he found a proof text that the Ephod was an article of clothing, just as Einstein ultimately did the math to prove his intuition, but Rashi realized that the inspiration to notice those verses and the ability to link them together to prove the point came from his intuition.