Lending out my Midrash Says (article summary)
A recent article for masechet Shevuot in the Jewish Link was Lending Out My Midrash Says. You can read it here on Substack, on the Jewish Link website, and as a flipbook. A brief outline of the article contents after the image:
Establish the principle that Oral Law should not be written and Written Law should not be transmitted orally.
A theory of why Oral Torah shouldn’t be written — it turns opinions and interpretations into fixed unassailable truths. For instance, which fruit grew on the Tree of Knowledge?
Yet, Oral Torah was written, invoking עֵת לַעֲשׂוֹת לַה׳ הֵפֵרוּ תּוֹרָתֶךָ. This isn’t an open-ended permit to change the Torah whenever a rabbi, or group of rabbis, feel that it is for a good cause. See how Rava explains it, that the verse is to be read simultaneously in order and in reversed order. So, there is a time for positive action in the act of annulling what is formally required. But that is where it is itself a corrective action to הֵפֵרוּ תּוֹרָתֶךָ, the Torah being abolished.
Books of aggadah were written down, even in Chazal’s era when Oral Law shouldn’t be written down. This was therefore controversial. Let us trace it through various generations in the Land of Israel and Bavel, and observe an increasing acceptance of these books.
A text about what Rabbi Yochanan did, and what Rav Nachman did, when they were holding a sefer of aggada or had tefillin, and needed to use the bathroom. Go in with it or not? A look at manuscript variants, and whether both indeed held books of aggadah.
In our sugya in Shevuot 46 (and two parallels), Rava returned sifra de’agaddeta and zuga desarbela which were in the orphan’s hands. These are things that are lent out, so it makes sense that it was indeed in the possession of the previously established owner. That shows even greater acceptance, in the time of fourth-generation Rava.
Except, I wonder if the text really should read barber’s scissors.
This is very appreciated.