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Masechet Keritot Daf 5
Aug. 30th, 2019 10:21 amDaf 5
Everything on this daf was interesting, but I don't have much time so I'll only talk about one of the interesting things. But also on this daf:
-the math, measurement theory, and mysticism of the incense offering
-the politics and the actual ritual mechanics of coronation and anointment of kings of Israel
-the distinctions between wheat, flour, dough, and bread
But the most interesting thing on the daf was a discussion of the use of gezeirah shavahs. What's a gezeirah shavah? It's a hermeneutical tool of Torah interpretation that says that if two unrelated passages use the same word, you can connect them and learn that an interpretation that applies to one applies to the other. It's a particularly powerful and dangerous tool as I think one can imagine, because you can easily use it to connect things in seemingly arbitrary ways.
When I first learned about gezeirah shavahs as a teenager I was kind of outraged. I am less outraged now. I learned them in the context of perhaps the most famous gezeirah shavah, the one where we learn that a minyan requires ten Jewish adult males. Wikipedia's explanation is fairly straightforward. It's a double gezeirah shavah, and the whole thing seemed tenuous to me, but as I have learned more Torah I understand that gezeirah shavahs are doubly backstopped.
First, they are backstopped by mesorah. I can't just make up a gezeirah shavah, it has to be something that I learned from a tradition of Torah transmission. This principle goes to extremes in some cases- there was a gezeirah shavah we learned in Masechet Chullin in regards to the laws of shechitah... but the laws of shechitah are halacha l'moshe misinai, so the Rishonim say that yes, this is a gezeirah shavah, but we don't actually learn the halacha from it, it's just a remez, a hint in the Torah confirming what was actually transmitted by tradition.
Second, they are backstopped by Torah reason. I can't articulate this backstop as clearly, but after many years of learning Torah, the minyan gezeirah shavah now makes sense to me. It's consistent with the way we think about Jewish community, so the pieces of the gezeirah shavah don't feel arbitrary. Of course, in order to learn about how Judaism thinks about the size of a community required to sanctify God, we would look at a place where community failed the Jews, the story of the spies. Even though the passages are entirely unconnected narratively, there is a reason behind the choice of connecting the verses.
In Keritot, gezeirah shavahs are extremely important because not all the sins that incur karet explicitly mention karet as the punishment. In some sense none of them do... the Torah never says "And for this sin, you incur the penalty of karet." At best, it says "And for this sin, you will be cut off from the people." But a lot of punishments prescribed are even vaguer. "If you do this, your blood will be on you." "If you do this, you will bear the consequences of your sin." Etc... In some cases, the Gemara learns by Gezeirah shavah that since one sin that uses such vague language of punishment incurs karet, any other sins that use the same language incur karet. It's one of the most fundamental ideas of the sugya.
This leads you to ask again what exactly karet is. Part of the answer that follows from these gezeirah shavahs is that it's a philosophical mystery. Karet is the punishment that doesn't have a form, it's purely about yirat hashem. A sin that causes karet is a stain on your soul. All this vagueness is intentional, because this is about a qualitative, just, divine punishment.
But that sits in an ungainly way, it seems to me, against the other half of the Masechet, the stuff about chatat, which is all about form and process and leads the Gemara again and again to investigate how many chatat offerings one has to offer for any particular sin or set of sins. This is incompatible with karet, there's no way to conceptualize double karet.
Everything on this daf was interesting, but I don't have much time so I'll only talk about one of the interesting things. But also on this daf:
-the math, measurement theory, and mysticism of the incense offering
-the politics and the actual ritual mechanics of coronation and anointment of kings of Israel
-the distinctions between wheat, flour, dough, and bread
But the most interesting thing on the daf was a discussion of the use of gezeirah shavahs. What's a gezeirah shavah? It's a hermeneutical tool of Torah interpretation that says that if two unrelated passages use the same word, you can connect them and learn that an interpretation that applies to one applies to the other. It's a particularly powerful and dangerous tool as I think one can imagine, because you can easily use it to connect things in seemingly arbitrary ways.
When I first learned about gezeirah shavahs as a teenager I was kind of outraged. I am less outraged now. I learned them in the context of perhaps the most famous gezeirah shavah, the one where we learn that a minyan requires ten Jewish adult males. Wikipedia's explanation is fairly straightforward. It's a double gezeirah shavah, and the whole thing seemed tenuous to me, but as I have learned more Torah I understand that gezeirah shavahs are doubly backstopped.
First, they are backstopped by mesorah. I can't just make up a gezeirah shavah, it has to be something that I learned from a tradition of Torah transmission. This principle goes to extremes in some cases- there was a gezeirah shavah we learned in Masechet Chullin in regards to the laws of shechitah... but the laws of shechitah are halacha l'moshe misinai, so the Rishonim say that yes, this is a gezeirah shavah, but we don't actually learn the halacha from it, it's just a remez, a hint in the Torah confirming what was actually transmitted by tradition.
Second, they are backstopped by Torah reason. I can't articulate this backstop as clearly, but after many years of learning Torah, the minyan gezeirah shavah now makes sense to me. It's consistent with the way we think about Jewish community, so the pieces of the gezeirah shavah don't feel arbitrary. Of course, in order to learn about how Judaism thinks about the size of a community required to sanctify God, we would look at a place where community failed the Jews, the story of the spies. Even though the passages are entirely unconnected narratively, there is a reason behind the choice of connecting the verses.
In Keritot, gezeirah shavahs are extremely important because not all the sins that incur karet explicitly mention karet as the punishment. In some sense none of them do... the Torah never says "And for this sin, you incur the penalty of karet." At best, it says "And for this sin, you will be cut off from the people." But a lot of punishments prescribed are even vaguer. "If you do this, your blood will be on you." "If you do this, you will bear the consequences of your sin." Etc... In some cases, the Gemara learns by Gezeirah shavah that since one sin that uses such vague language of punishment incurs karet, any other sins that use the same language incur karet. It's one of the most fundamental ideas of the sugya.
This leads you to ask again what exactly karet is. Part of the answer that follows from these gezeirah shavahs is that it's a philosophical mystery. Karet is the punishment that doesn't have a form, it's purely about yirat hashem. A sin that causes karet is a stain on your soul. All this vagueness is intentional, because this is about a qualitative, just, divine punishment.
But that sits in an ungainly way, it seems to me, against the other half of the Masechet, the stuff about chatat, which is all about form and process and leads the Gemara again and again to investigate how many chatat offerings one has to offer for any particular sin or set of sins. This is incompatible with karet, there's no way to conceptualize double karet.