The Jewish Story: Tradition And Authority

authority without wisdom is like a heavy accent without an edge fitter to bruise then polish well I'm not holding any axe and nor do I have an axe to grind but I do like to come out swinging because I'm Rob Mike Boyer and this is the Jewish story episode 6 tradition and authority so did you know that there are actually four holy cities in the Land of Israel and that they're paralleled to the four essential elements which the ancients and our sages believe serve at the foundation to creation so when I ask people what they are most people will get Jerusalem right away and they're pretty much equally as quick to say that the holy city is certainly a place of fire and when I push some people will come up with Heffron and with a little more thought they'll see that the graves of our ancestors are certainly in the city of Earth to Varia alludes almost everyone but then when I point out that the Mishnah was finalized there it's a quick conclusion that the waters of Torah flow from that white city by the sea and are so ubiquitous you don't even know they're there and that leaves us with only one with a city that has no biblical roots and whose place even in the great period of the Greco Roman Empire is shrouded in it's not uncertainty then certainly an unimpressive role it's a city whose mountain air had to wait until the 16th century to inspire a revolution and only then did the holy city of Swat take its place as the 4th in the cities of Israel so we here in the Jewish story are still in the episode of the dispersion in the wake of the destruction of Spain and the ripple effects it sent out across the world we're following the footsteps of the exiles as they spread out across the globe in the last episode we spoke about the attempt by Gracia Mendes and her nephew Yosef to revitalize Jewish economy and recolonize the land actually around to the area essentially an attempt at the physical revival of the shattered parts of the nation which was apparently premature two episodes ago we spoke about the challenges that early modernity opposed to Jewish consciousness and in particular about that hallmark of modernity the uncoupling of knowledge from tradition and now over the next couple of episodes we're going to talk about the exiles who made their way to spot because though relatively few in number they sparked a revival of Jewish spirit whose energy continues to feed us to this very day the golden age of spot that Dawn's in the 16th century is going to open up a whole new phase of our story so as I said spot is not in the Bible and though the Jerusalem Talmud does name it as one of the mountaintop points from which signal fires were lit to mark the new moon it remains more or less an enigma all the way down through through Seder times we do know that at least one important mystic migrated there from Spain in the early 14th century apparently he found it the ideal location to attempt to prove that the ROM Bombs works were actually Kabbalistic in their intent not so sure he succeeded at that but he tried in traveler's reports from the coming centuries to tell us that there was a thriving Jewish community in spot by the mid 15th century but smart really awakens in the aftermath of the Ottoman conquest of 1516 he goes from a city with perhaps two to three hundred Jewish households at the beginning of the sixteenth century till its peak at the late 16th century it boasted as many as 1800 Jewish households and the key to this growth was not simply the mystics and rabbis who found shelter there after escaping Spain nor was it simply the attraction of the graves of the prophets and sages including the attritional author of the Czar rebbi shimon bar yohai which dotted the hills all around the city to this very day if you haven't been there it's worth a trip the sois was actually the center of a thriving textile industry whose economic value was so high that the Sultan Sudan magnificent ordered that a wall be built around the city in 1549 that was only a few years after the walls which surround the old city of Jerusalem were constructed so in the wake of the Ottoman conquest mystics and sages did indeed gather from across the Empire in order to re-enter the Land of Israel in general and spot in particular now somewhere toward the end of the last series we spoke about the messianic fervor that was sparked by the Ottoman defeat of the Byzantine Christian Empire and the conquest of Constantinople in 1453 that's when it became Istanbul don't get confused the gates of the Holy Land were now open in a way that they had not been while they were dominated by Christianity and who was to say that the Messiah was not far from entering them and the cult all those who so long for Redemption seemed to be going out from the Holy Land every single day on the night of shipload perhaps in the year 1533 the brotherhood of mystics gathered in the city of Salonika they have to know that the Jews of Salonika were experiencing a Golden Age of their own if you're not familiar where the city is in Greeks look it up it's 2017 use Google the Jewish population of that critical port city the Ottoman Empire had served - after the expulsion at this point in the early to mid 16th century Jews made up almost 60% of the population of the city as a whole to present at every level of the economy in a fashion actually there would be unparalleled for a Jewish community until the rise of the modern State of Israel and furthermore Jews so dominated the shipping and trade in Salonika that though it was a key port it was closed on Sabbath this Sheva were full the study of the Talmud and Lazar were booming what more could a mystic one apparently redemption because among this Kabbalistic Brotherhood which had gathered that night to say the tycoon the cosmic fixing which the Tsar recommends specifically for the night of ship world were a lush long alphabets who's best known to Jewish world as the author of the liturgical poem the Hado D come my beloved which we say to greet the sabbath queen and the young rabbi yosef karim whose fame as a Holika thority had already begun to spread throughout the jewish world but whose true greatness was still yet to come now joseph karl was also an exile he was born in Spain and 1488 and heading out into exile with his parents at the tender age of four and like so many others his family sought refuge in the Ottoman Empire and by 1520 the now Ravi Joseph Karl had settled at Adriana Pole and he had an interesting life because it's likely here that he encountered the Messianic enthusiast slow mo mo ho I hope you recall him from a previous episode whose fiery sermons about Redemption and mystical teachings ignited within the young Commodus a long for demson that his legal mind could not satisfy and when Moho died at the stake in 1532 after his failed attempt to convert the holy roman emperor and perhaps the pope himself his young student recorded in his spiritual journal the book maajid bashar him that he was filled with the longing to be quote consumed on the altar as a holy burnt offering and to sanctify the name of God through a martyr's death but the young ralph joseph karl shared something with mohel beyond that longing for redemption like Moho he had dreams and visions actually the visitations in fact his mug heed the reason he called his spiritual journal mug admission the mug ITA's the one who speaks it was a voice which spoke to and through him and which he perceived to be nothing less than the Mishnah itself personified giving him guidance because he had so devoted himself to its service and so one has imagined this was not the first time that the mystic Brotherhood of Salonika had gathered on Shavuot night to say the teaspoon of the Zohar and further I can probably imagine it wasn't the first time that the Alka bets and Rob Yosef car were there together but this night something was different because I'm this cheveux tonight the Megiddo pr2 of Carl and his voice was so strong that Rev al kibbutz heard it as well and the message which the Mishnah itself came to deliver was recorded by The Alchemist in a letter that he sent on to his brothers in Salonika go up to the Land of Israel for not all times are opportune there is no hindrance to salvation be it much or little let not your eyes have pity on your worldly goods for you eat of the goodness of the higher land if you will but harken of the goodness of that land you shall eat they hast therefore to go up to the land where I sustained you here and I shall sustain you there awake o drunken ones for the day comes when a man must cast away his gods of silver worldly desires and his gods of gold the lust for wealth go up to the land of Israel which you would be able to do were you not trapped in the mud of worldly desires and vanities so I said he recorded it in a letter because within a year alka bets had gone up to the land in less than a year later it seems that the Rev Joseph Karl followed and they met again in swamp so when the young rising star of the Jewish law arrived in spot he found not only home but also a master Ravi Yakov a Roth was also from among the exiles born near Toledo Spain in 1474 he was a student of rock above known as the last cone of Castile the inheritor of hundreds of years of wisdom and after the expulsion robbed era of led to Fez in North Africa and from there to Tillamook in the Jewish community there actually appointed him as their rabbi despite the fact that he was only 18 years old by 1520 - he'd made his way to Jerusalem but life was hard in the holy city and reversing the momentum of the biblical story he went down with his students to Egypt but the call of the land was too strong and sometime after 1533 and right before ravi oh so Karl robbed a Roth settled in Swat and it was here that he conceived the revolutionary idea that would make him fame in a figure of controversy for the rest of his short life nothing of had felt the suffering of the Jews of Portugal and Spain in his own flesh and I'm not just talking about the trials of Inquisition of exile of martyrdom he was also intimately familiar with the many who had survived the persecutions of the church through feigning Christian practice or holding fast to the God of Israel in their hearts these conversions the Unruh seem the forced ones have come into our story already in many forms and they're not going away but we haven't really begun to touch their inner dilemma of a split and tortured identity it's going to play a very important role in in this context what we're not there I particularly thought was the pain of the conversos who had actually managed to escape the lands where they could physically return to Judaism but remain spiritually haunted by the sins of their previous life in their eyes Christianity was idolatry and even under duress it might just be that their decision to bow to the cross rather than burn was a sin punishable by correct spiritual excision worse than physical death and though they had become true ballet chuhwa truly returned to the faith of their fathers overcoming barriers that I can't even imagine they lived in fear of their ultimate day of judgment and Rivera came up with an original solution to their problem the Mishna in tractate my coat right at the end says Kol hi Vic we thought Sherlock ooh nice truly a day Rita Tom that anyone who is liable for the punishment of Kirit spiritual excision who receives the lashes from the court has actually been excused from their punishment of curry so all he needed to do was constitute a big D in a religious court that would carry out the punishment of malkos of lashes and presto change-o alakazoo these conversos would be free of their fear and their spiritual punishment there's just one hitch in order for court to administer such a punishment corporal punishment you need diamine mousse machine judges who've received ordination as part of the unbroken chain which stretches back to Moshe of Boehner and that chain had long ago been broken no rabbi for over a thousand years had received Smita in this sense I don't know if you know it and as a rabbi perhaps I shouldn't tell you but I'm not really a rabbi nor is anyone else out there with the title not in this sense not in the sense of having the authority to truly adjudicate the taurus intentions and so there was a broken chain but Rathbun Rob was not one to be thwarted by history after all the gate to the Holy Land were now open history was changing the children of Israel were returning to their borders the dream of rebuilding the temple was not just a dream any longer under the Muslims rather than the Christians in his eyes the Messiah would be greeted and confirmed by the Sanhedrin the Jewish High Court which in its days of glories had sat on the Temple Mount and that Court would certainly be made up of truly ordained rabbis and how could a technical historical phenomenon like a broken chain of transmission block the redemptive force of the Messiah and besides there was always the Rambam to rely on because their Amba Maimonides that great say to the 12th century says in his commentary on the missions and Hedren first first paris third Mishnah i believe that if there were agreement of all the students and sages to appoint one person in the area shiva to make him the head so long as this occurs in the Land of Israel then the Achieva has established that individual as ordained and afterwards he may ordain whom he pleases this must be so says the Rambam because if one does not say so then there will never be the possibility for the reestablishment to the High Court ever again and God has already promised that they will return as it says and I will restore your judges as at first and your counselors as in the beginning that's from Isaiah 1:26 look perhaps you will say that the messiah will appoint them even though they're not ordained but I believe continues the Rambam that the Sanhedrin will return before the Messiah is revealed and that this will be one of his signs without a doubt this will be when God prepares the hearts of humanity and they grow in good works magnify their desire for God in his Torah and increase the rectitude before the coming of Messiah as the verses explain well it's clear that Rivera wasn't just looking for a technical solution to the problem of the conversos he felt the pressure of the coming of redemption and he there in the holy city of spots surrounded by the mystics and sages who we will describe over the next couple of episodes also felt that gahan is indeed prepared the hearts of humanity and they were growing in good works certainly their desire for God and His Torah had increase unless you think by the way that the ROM Baum's statement here is just commentary and not law he makes a similar assertion in his major legal work the Mishnah Torah fourth chapter law 11 in Sanhedrin but there he ends on a more ambiguous note with the phrase the question whether ordination can be renewed requires havre ah it needs a decision and that was a decision Ralph a Roth was willing to make and so he began to gather mminton amongst all the sages of spot for his plan to return Smita true ordination as a step which would bring personal salvation to the conversos and might even be the trigger for redemption itself and of course Ravi Joseph Caro was an enthusiastic supporter of his teachers plans and that was no small vote of confidence because at this point he himself was well on his way to becoming the preeminent halakhah thority of the Jewish world he had already begun his great work to beit yosef the house of Yosef which earned him the title of the beit yosef we called him the beit yosef back in 1522 and it wasn't finished until well after he arrived in Swat 20 years later now a word on the beit yosef the book and not the person it's nominally a commentary on the arbiter I hope you remember this foundational work of Jewish law broken into four parts and presented in a systematic codified fashion by Rob Yaakov and usher in 14th century Spain if you don't remember go back to the last series and look it up but in reality the video safe is far more than a commentary on the tour's work it's a massive exploration of rabbinic literature from the Talmud all the way down to contemporary times by unearthing and articulating the foundations for the tour's terse legal decisions the beit yosef not only proved himself to be veha logic master of his day he provided a legal digest a resource which had no parallel in his day and in the introduction interestingly enough but the also cow explains his reasons for undertaking such a massive projects the two primary reasons were the expulsion from Spain and the invention of the printing press which he felt endangered the stability of allaha he says that in the good old days back in Spain and Portugal questions were largely decided by local rabbis according to customs of the country there's something that we call a mimetic tradition it's a tradition which is learned and passed down through generations but when the exiles began to find shelter in various communities from east to west the question quickly arose whether the newcomers who were often of greater learning than the members of the communities which they joined should be ruled by the local custom as they've done back in Spain or should they follow their own understanding of the law this was a messy process which is left big footprints all across the history of Holika literature but in general there was a short and somewhat brutal process of cultural colonization of the local customs by the incoming Farnham furthermore the beit yosef mourns the fact that printing had created situation in which half educated people who had in their possession legal books felt perfectly justified in following any written authority according to their will instead of doing the work to figure out which one was actually right and so the beit yosef was meant to return tradition to its proper form by critically analyzing the opinions of all previous authorities and placing them back in the context of the wholeness of the halacha discourse it did so amazingly and in so doing established its author of Yosef cow as be supreme authority of his day so when in the year fifteen thirty eight on the basis of his understanding of the Rambam Roth burov convened the sages and students of spot certainly the beit yosef was among them because spot at this time was indeed the largest community of Torah scholars in the Land of Israel and perhaps in the world in solemn ceremony he had all in attendance ordained him Roth burov as the first real rabbi in over a thousand years he then in turn ordained four of his students with this new Smitha and in light of the beit yosef it's no surprise that they included at their hand rob Yosef Karim now Rob Arab also sent a letter of ordination to the rabbi of yerushalaim of Jerusalem the holy city of lady even habib who's also known as the mahabhava isn't it great that I really get such fun acronyms and he assumed that this sage would be delighted to receive such a fantastic gift I mean after all he was the first generation of reviving Smitha and he assumed that the mahara bach would share robbed Arabs excitement about their role in bringing salvation to the conversos and in moving Redemption forward from Israel in the whole world well he was wrong yamaha bach was not at all happy with his gift in fact he returned it along with a letter in which he took strong issue with the entire project of reviving smith in their day because the chief rabbi of jerusalem read the Rambam entirely different those closing word this matter requires a final decision in his eyes were proof that the Rambam had not decided on the question and therefore one could not upon his statement furthermore he points out those are interesting that there on man na commodities disagrees with the Rambam and says Samia can't be reinstituted until after the Messiah arrives and finally there was the matter of that phrase all the sages of the Land of Israel because even if he accepted the Rambam as meaning his ruling to be definitive the sages of spot had blown it by not bringing the rabbi's of Jerusalem into the decision-making process and in the end the Mohabbatein sister that Smita wouldn't bring messiah but rather that the messiah would bring back smith huh now never one to back down from a fight them Rob Arab did not accept the Mahara box criticism he read the Rambam as definitive not theoretical or suggestive and felt that a simple majority of the sages living in Israel was sufficient to create Smith huh a long and bitter correspondence in suit and it's known as Contras Hass me huh right the the notebook or the compilation of ordination you can look it up if you're interested send me an email but on the surface of things it would appear that the morrow buff won the day well bear I've died three years after this mija project began ravio Civ karo had received this meat huh and he in turn actually ordained RAV moshe alseif the author of the algae commentary on tomorrow but he appears that he never served his authority as a moose ma has an ordained rabbi in any other way and he certainly never convene debating to begin administering corporal punishment conversos but there are two ways in which the revivals Meachem may have had a subtle but profound effect one is in the person of the student of the allah chief rob high me tom we're gonna discuss his importance in the coming episode the second is through reviews of cows literary work because in his Batio safe he's loyal to his teacher and records as law throughout mom's opinion that smith i can be renewed but the beit yosef was not the work by rebels of Carl which was destined to redefine the nature and practice of Jewish law nor was it the work which earned him the title of meringue which saw understand as a cream for my time mama named nice MA Wanda was ordained by 200 rabbis so there's a particularly challenging cross-current in telling this chapter the Jewish story and it is that somehow while we weren't looking an era ended and of course that means another began it's not the transition from the medieval to the early modern though we've gotten a sense at least a little bit of how profound and messy that move has been trust me it's not over yet I'm talking about the end of the regime of the early medieval authorities and the rise of the anima of the later ones now before we nail down exactly what that is we've got to touch the fact that we've spoken about the problem of periodization in history before periodization is categorizing the past into discrete named blocks of time in order to facilitate study and analysis now the need to break history into manageable chunks is understandable without named periods our story of the past just becomes scattered events without any frameworks and periodization can be simply an act of organizational convenience it's really hard to talk about anything we don't have a common terminology or it can be a more deliberate narrative structuring for instance if I place an event or an idea in the modern era it gives it a very different understanding than when I call it medieval either way the labels that we give to the chunks of the past is and especially the dates we use to differentiate those periods deserve a healthy dose of skepticism and that's because periodization is never neutral as with any act of framing where one locates the beginning of the modern era for instance we'll teach you a lot about what they believe the substance of modernity to be progress is of course good and better to be modern than ancient or primitive just remember this periodization always reflects the priorities and values of the person who's breaking up what is essentially a continuous and unbroken flow of time so then with that warning aside and you've heard it before who were the rich owning the early authorities and who were governing the later ones when did one era end and the other begin and of course why does it matter for our story first things first when did the era of the regime end well like most things that depends on who you ask and not only who but where let's go easy we'll start with Spain since if we have to find a neat dividing line in the flow of time for better or worse the history of Spanish jury has certainly provided us with one we could easily say that the sages and teachers pre expulsion belonged to the air of the reshow name of the early ones and those who followed to that of the aho name the latter ones now that's useful and I think will stand with it but just know we can't push this dividing line too far for instance what Aaron's is robbed on yitzhak of Rothman el belong to I hope you remember him if not go back to the previous series and look it up but for now we just need to know his commentaries on the tour and Tanakh are vast and important and they were written before during and after the expulsion now whether the Abravanel was a Rishon or an our own really just depends on who you ask at this point and in my eyes remains a relatively academic question precisely because his famous due to his biblical commentary and not his role in the development of Jewish law reveals of cow on the other hand is known for his legal works and he too was among the exiles but we're not there yet so I'll take 1492 as a provisional dividing line for the culture of Spanish jewelry on to Ashkenazi I sure hope you recall the trials and tribulations of Ashkenazi jury I mean I think about them at least every Shabbat and truthfully they began way back in the 11th century with the first crusade when the smile went out of Ashkenaz but in particular things got bad from the Black Plague in the mid 14th century through the Oh site Wars of Central Europe in the mid 15th century this was a hundred years of chaos disruption and suffering in migration to the east right toward that polish refuge that the German lands dreamed up and I hope you also remember the maha real rout Yaakov Ben Moshe lady Mullen right he was the 15th century Ashkenazi rabbi who he named as master of min ha Ashkenazi of Ashkenazi custom and whom we also named as the bridge across which this custom passed from central to Eastern Europe and it's clear in the maha reels writings remember mid 15th century the in his eyes his generation was already not worthy of disputing decisions of the reshow name as he calls them the earlier ones in this self-judgment along with a number of similar statements from some of his contemporaries leads many scholars to place the dividing line between roshaniya and Mahoney in Ashkenazi at the beginning of the 15th century almost a hundred years before the expulsion from Spain now that's fine and if timing we're a major focus we can move on to Italy we could start to read behind etc but really as I'm sure you've done descents by this point in the series in general unless interested in when then why in regards to our question what I really want to know is why is someone a Rishon and not in our own and what role does that difference play in shaping the Jewish story so let's back up a minute and ask what is this notion of the former ones and the latter ones come from anyway now the most obvious answer in Jewish history were at least the last 2,000 years of it is the difference between the Mishnah and the Gemara you can revisit the full extent of this question by going back to the first season around about episode 13 but for now you should know there's a general textual principle that the ohm or ìiím the authors of the Gemara do not argue with the Tana M the authors of the Mishnah and this textual principle is expressive of a larger aspect of Jewish thought known as Yuri da Dada wrote the dissent of generations life in context is a downhill ride basically the further we go from Sinai the lower our spiritual level and therefore the less our ability to grasp the truth of the Torah as the Kumari and Shabbat says Alma Rosaire Amara rob a bar Z muna every Zahra said in the name of our evolved are Simona in machining the name Allah came a new banana Shing the mousseline banana Shimano chicka Maryam if the earlier ones were like the children of angels then we are like the children of men and if the early ones were like the children of men then we are like donkeys keep this in mind when we get to Darwin this his assertion that our ancestors were monkeys plays an important role in enshrining progress as the sacred drive of modernity but for now we have a piece of our definition the latter authorities are those who definitionally do not argue with the earlier so between the Gemara and the Mishnah this was a transition that was also enshrined in a textual transformation from the Mishnah to the Gemara and as we heard from the maha real thats transition can also be the product of a self-evaluation we simply don't have what it takes and sometimes the text becomes authoritative and provides our dividing line right the Masters of the Gemara accepted the mission as inviolate the governing accepted the Gomorrah as inviolate whereas rusher of the own said way back in the 10th century one who opposes a single word of the teachings of the Talmud is like one opposing God and His law for the words of the rabbis are the words of the Living God and sometimes times of trouble and disruption like the expulsion from Spain in the 14th and 15th centuries for European jury destroy a sense of lived continuity in religious practice which in turn leads to a judgment that were just not up to snuff and the two can also work profoundly in tandem a last piece as Rafa Israel is earning also known as the true method dashing a later contempor and mario says no one has the right to contradict the Rabbinical works that have been accepted by the majority of Israel this notion that certain tax gained their status through their widespread acceptance adds a new element to our question of authority in an era of transition identity what Jews have agreed to do defines who the Jews are and therefore if you change what you do we have to ask are you still a Jew that question is going to be quite pressing as an unprecedented pace of change begins to define the experience of humanity as a whole much less on Israel in the modern era but for now I think we have it the transition between periods in our case between the regime and the economy is bound up with a self perceived loss of mastery over Torah and therefore a diminished Authority and this can be both cause and result of an act of codification which leads us back to Mehran the beit yosef robbed Yosef Karl in his most well known work the shoe hung are wrong anyone who's even dipped a toe in the study of allaha and Jewish law has seen the Shahana rule the set table which ravio Sekou finished toward the end of his life was actually first printed in Venice in 1563 it was arguably the last and certainly the most popular of his works and the genre was an attempt to once again reduce the complexity of the beit yosef to a simplified form it was the cliffnotes of challah ha in the beit yosef every opinion from the Gemara on was considered and put in its place and clear-cut halakha decisions were the exception rather than the rule in the Shahana rule ruff Carl Wade the opinions of his three great masters the riff laroche and the Rambam and gave us his definitive opinion as to who was right that tradition says that he himself saw the work as a CliffsNotes as useful for students in layman who couldn't access the depth of video self nevertheless within a hundred years of its publication who Shahana roof became the decisive basis for all subsequent halakhah decision and foremost a text which was not to be disputed in a fashion that hadn't been seen since the Gemara itself there were many reasons for this one of them by the way was the printing press not just the fact that this was one of the first major works of law to be published on a printing press in the lifetime of an author an author whose living Authority was accepted by the entire Jewish world but also because the rapid spread of the book with the printing press allowed nevertheless and perhaps even needless to say such a revolution in law and authority was not without controversy now I hope you also remember of Moshe isolus also known as lira ma who was the BIOS as contemporary over in Krakow the leading light of Polish and Ashkenazi Jewry now back when the beit yosef that first work of reveals of carrot appeared the roma quickly wrote his dark camel chef the paths of Moshe a systematic criticism of that great work and in particular the Roma wanted to sublimate rough cows three standard authorities with the rishonim the early authorities of ashkenaz because of Yosef being of the exiles from Spain leaned heavily toward the Sephardic authorities but really the great difference between these two was in their vision over the importance of min hug of custom in the legal discourse an element that was largely left out of the show Helena certainly the customs of Ashkenazi were left out and it was really that that drove the Roma to write his gloss to the Shahana a systematic addition more or less to every single comment as a show on RF mix it's called the mapa we mentioned it in a previous episode right the mapa is the tablecloth which he placed over the set table in order that the men hung koshkin has the custom of European Jews would be recognized and not just fall by the wayside in the wake of the great reputation that the videos have commanded and ironically the result was that the Ashkenazim accepted the Chiron arc as an authority because they assumed that once the Romano had gone over it and added and corrected it was now unquestionable so in addition to the printing press it was the very publication of the mapa which gave the show heart its universal power well I say Universal but it was really most of the Ashkenazim that accept it because you might also recall Ralph slow-mo Lauria the mehar shall be keeping all these acronyms straight he was the Roma's relative and critic in their fight over the proper role of science and Jewish thought you can go back to episode 4 to do a little review now the marshal was the most important of amongst the small but vocal group who opposed the show hunt off upon its publication and not on essentially cultural grounds like their Imam but actually for its basic premise of Lauria attacked the underlying assumption that any scholar could create a self-sufficient work that could resolve all Hollow disputes he said that the nature of language in particular as you apply it to complex legal questions is such that no text can ever be completely clear and therefore what will happen is such a code he's just gonna complicate things by creating a new text which we're now gonna have to divine the intent of and debate over and he says EF sha Chi LOI post PHA code machine nuit it's just impossible that the questions and changes won't happen and he goes on to say that basically each commentary is going to necessitate a further commentary which will itself a necessity a firmer commentary the aim da ba England of our soap there's no end mehar sha actually points to the mission is failure to resolve all dispute right as in direct opposition to this type of definitive codification that the Shahana represents and it's worth noting in that light that both the Rambam who was actually the first to attempt the definitive and final codification of law and the beit yosef they point to the mission as the president for the work I think unbeknownst to him the Mahara Shah was already feeling the first rumblings of one of the primary issues post-modernism has with the written word because once it's detached from live discourse it can be read as saying almost anything and so the mehar Shah was committed to the Tumlin the Gemara as the central factor in her logic decision-making the central factor combined with an intense engagement of the scholar right as he says hamana hamana it is the Gemara which is decisive variety brought its the coup V New Eden and clear proofs will justify themselves and give their own testimony and as Lamar's how testifies in his great work Yama shall the sea of Solomon he would spend days upon days on a single section until his understanding of it reached his satisfaction and perhaps that's why it was never finished and certainly never became a foundation for much further discussion but the shoe hunt earth did over the protest of those who fought against it nevertheless in the coming century we will see that it becomes the foundation for all further discussion and therefore technical issues aside and with all due respect to the authorities and historians I think it's reasonable to place the transition between the researcher named the earlier authorities and the later authorities now her name at the Chohan era because it's a definitive act of codification that divides between them and kind of on an end note it's worth noting the codification of this type flies in the face of the momentum that we described in a previous episode and that we mentioned even in the beginning of this one modernity is characterized by the uncoupling of knowledge and tradition the Shu Han Ark is a monument to tradition as the ultimate source of knowledge and of authority tradition properly analyzed and presented but tradition nonetheless in the Shu Han Ark is the basis of authority and not only does it fly in the face of the larger Ultra momentum which is a problem that will spend quite a bit of time with as the Enlightenment approaches the Gemara itself warns us coat Liholiho kasoori futur a-- vahanam mm ain't no no telstra right someone who writes down the law is as if they burned the torah and one who learns from that written version receives no reward that's by the way in Tamura and 14b if you want to look it up meaning that there's something trinsic ly problematic about codification on some level codification is calcification it's a freezing of authority in text about past decisions and I want to end with the words of our master and teacher of album the italic Owen cook that great thinker of the turn of the 20th century he says I quote and when Israel stands at the highest level there's power in the hands of the wise to uproot something from the Torah when there is both a proof and a need but to the degree the nation has fallen from this state so the heart is more likely to produce a distorted judgment this is why episodes of codification of hakima occurred as is written in isaiah 816 buying this warning seal hitomi the torah amongst my disciples and really this whole discussion takes us back to a further part of the Gemara in Yoma 9b when Rebbe Oakland says that the fingernails of the former ones of the roshaniya are preferable to the belly of the ladder and Rachel Aki says back in other on the contrary the latter ones were superior because even though there's subjugation by the kingdoms they're still engaged in torah study you hear the echoes of our question is it like the mario who says I look back and I see that I can't even grasp the thought of those that came before me or is it that the exiles from Spain or the exiles who made their way to pull in the Ashkenazi despite the tremendous suffering that they had to overcome are still learning Torah well if you want to decide between them the Gemara conveniently goes on when Rebbe Oakland says back to race latkes the temple will prove as it was stored to the former it was not restored the latter because of course the old Federation Lucky's were in the Land of Israel in late third early fourth centuries and so it was all well and good to think that despite their suffering they were succeeding in learning but the temple had not been rebuilt however just as we said there was a momentum of what's called you adopted or out that the further we get from the Sinai the lower our spiritual level and therefore the last I grasp of Torah nevertheless the further you get from Sinai the closer you get to the Messiah and both Roth kook statement about the power of the wise when Israel is at its highest level and the ryokan ons demand that the final proof that the temple will be the indicator of who is greater have a clear and potentially explosive implication that the counter forced the codification to the descent of the generations is becoming close of redemption and we're going to see that the gold n'ajjer spot had far more to offer than decisive legal texts because there's another figure on our horizon who in his two years in spot will revolutionize Jewish mysticism and will send waves out through time that are still rocking our boat he will bring the power of experience back into play as a legitimate source of authority but the story of the Holy rizal will have to wait until next week I just want to thank a few people I want to thank people give their hard-earned money to help make this show happen make it free and make it widely available I want to ask you to join them do you want to know how you can check out my Rob Mike Feuer on Facebook you can send me an email throughout my career at gmail.com or you can go to [Music] patreon.com/crashcourse I want to thank folks at the Land of Israel Network could give me a platform to reach so many people across the world I want to thank the partes Institute that's PA rdds org that il for giving me the opportunity to touch the hearts and minds are so many wonderful young Jews I want to thank Soumya Cove cuts my home I want to thank you for listening Tom Rob my choir and this is the Jewish story