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Torah in the Mouth, Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE - 400 CE Jaffee, Martin S., Samuel and Althea Stroum Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Washington Print publication date: 2001, Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003 Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-514067-5, doi:10.1093/0195140672.001.0001 end p.69 pouring it into his cooking. [The disciple] said to him: What are you doing? He replied: I am [behaving as] 23 a High Priest who eats his heave offering in a state of purity! [The disciple] asked: This stove-range—is it in a state of impurity or purity? He replied: Do we have a case in the Torah in which a stove-range can become unclean? Rather it speaks of an unclean oven, for it is said [of an earthen vessel]: “everything inside it shall be unclean” (Lev.11:33) [and we don't put things inside a stove-range]! [The disciple] replied: Just as the Torah has spoken about an oven that has become unclean, so has it spoken of a stove-range that has become unclean, for it is said: “Everything on which the carcass of any of them falls shall be unclean: an oven or stove- range shall be smashed” (Lev.11:35)! [The disciple] continued: If this is how you conduct yourself, you've never eaten food in purity for a single day of your life! Here the unfortunate pietist has misunderstood one scriptural text and overlooked another, with grave consequences for his efforts to live at a high standard of cultic purity. What has led to his imperfect grasp of the simple text of Scripture? His failure to see the scriptural commandment embodied in the practice of an authoritative teacher. The point of the tale is that, while the text of Scripture is certainly there for all to read, it is understood only in the context of the teaching of the Sage whose repeated teachings bring the written text to life. A toseftan passage nicely illustrates the distinction between “reciting” Scripture and “repeating”mšnh as well as the status equavalence of the recited and repeated curricula as sources of religious knowledge. At issue is a person who has suffered a form of bodily discharge that normally conveys a degree of impurity that, in the time of the Temple, would have barred the person from entering the sacred precincts. In the present era, shall the impurity disqualify the victim from uttering holy words during the period of contamination? The text distinguishes between persons whose impurity is insufficient to disqualify them from sacred study and those whose status is too virulent to permit the utterance of holy words (T. Berakhot 2:12): 1. A male with a genital discharge, and a female with a genital discharge, and the menstruant, and the parturient are permitted to recite We shall not be detained here by the text's surprising assumption—surpressed in later versions of the passage—that women would be reciting from Scripture or repeating rabbinic traditions. 24 The point here is that the Toseftan tradition assumes a rather reified curriculum of rabbinic learning, all of which is mastered in some sense through verbal repetition, and all of which should not be sounded through unclean lips. While it is not clear precisely how this passage draws its distinctions between, say, repeated tradition [ mšnh] on the one hand and halakhic tradition [hlkh] on the other (especially unit 2), it is certain that both are subsumed under the nonscriptural category of learning that is the unique domain of the Sage. What seems to concern Rabbi Yose is that the person with the emission should be excluded from the fullest participation in the life of learning until his impurity is cleansed. Thus he might repeat his traditions, but he may not engage in dialectical explanation of the details. The specific verbal details, in fact, seem to have been important. While the occasional claim that Sages memorized their teacher's words and reported them verbatim is without real foundation, 25 it seems clear that the shapers of Mishnaic and Toseftan traditions valued the ability to report repeated traditions in relatively fixed verbal formulas. 26 As is clear from the following example, involving the early second- century circle surrounding Rabbi Aqiva, disputes about legal substance could end p.70 from [lqrwt b- ] the Torah, the Prophets, or from the Writings and to repeat from [lšnwt b- ] repeated tradition [mšnh], from exegetical tradition [mdrš ], from halakhic tradition [hlkh], and from homiletical tradition ['gdh]—but those with a seminal discharge are prohibited from all of these. 2. Rabbi Yose says: But [the person with the discharge] may repeat his customary halakhic traditions, as long as he does not amplify the repeated tradition [but merely sets it forth verbally]. at times be grounded in divergencies in the memorization of formulaic patterns of speech. At issue is a detail of the Second Temple sacrificial cult, about which there was apparently no eyewitness testimony. When deputations of priests from local villages were called up for rotation in the Temple sacrificial cult, local townspeople would recite the Torah in their villages in correspondence to selected moments of the Temple service, while others would travel to Jerusalem with the priests to act as witnesses to the offerings. At issue in the present passage is the precise wording of a repeated tradition regarding variations of the activities of the nonpriestly delegation. All authorities have mastered a list of at least three liturgical activities (the singing of the Hallel psalms, the Additional Sacrificial Offering, PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2003 - 2011. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use (for details see http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/privacy_policy.html). Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 20 September 2011
Torah in the Mouth, Writing and Oral Tradition in Palestinian Judaism, 200 BCE - 400 CE Jaffee, Martin S., Samuel and Althea Stroum Professor of Jewish Studies, University of Washington Print publication date: 2001, Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003 Print ISBN-13: 978-0-19-514067-5, doi:10.1093/0195140672.001.0001 and the Wood Offering) at which no delegation of nonpriests need be present. These activities serve as fixed terms for the list. Rabbi Aqiva and ben Azzai differ, however, on precisely how the qualifiers of these terms are attached (M. Taanit 4:4): The core issue is at units 2–3 versus 4. Both Rabbi Aqiva and ben Azzai (a student of Rabbi Yehoshua) agree that tradition transmits a ruling that a certain delegation is abandoned on days in which the Additional Offering and the Wood Offering are made. But the two Sages have transposed the specific facts of the matter. Rabbi Aqiva has memorized the pattern: Additional Offering—Gate-Closing Wood Offering—Afternoon. Ben Azzai, by contrast, has preserved the order of the protases but reversed the apodoses: Additional Offering—Afternoon Wood Offering—Gate-Closing. It is unclear from the Mishnah whether Rabbi Aqiva concedes to his colleague on logical grounds or because his memory has been corrected. His response, nevertheless, is to revise his own version of the tradition and to henceforward repeat it in Rabbi Yehoshua's formulation so that the correct version might be transmitted. There are other passages as well in which the correction of memory leads to the revision of that which is thereafter repeated as tradition. 27 Thus the colleagues of Isi the Babylonian are portrayed as requesting him to recite repeatedly certain traditions end p.71 1. Every day in which Hallel is recited—there is no delegation of witnesses [reciting Scripture] at the [time of the] Dawn Sacrifice. 2. [And on days requiring] the Additional Offering—there is no [delegation] at the Gate-Closing; 3. [and on days requiring] the Wood Offering—there is no [delegation] at the Afternoon Sacrifice: the words of Rabbi Aqiva. 4. Said to him ben Azzai: This is how Rabbi Yehoshua would repeat it— “The Additional Offering — there is no [delegation] at the Afternoon Service; the Wood Offering — there is no [delegation] at the Gate-Closing .” 5. Rabbi Aqiva then began to repeat in accord with ben Azzai. of his teacher in order to correct a doubtful teaching that has contaminated the tradition (T. Zevahim 2:17). Sages, we find, could even be imagined as requiring their disciples to remind them of their own teachings. According to M. Ohalot 16:4, a person who has examined a graveyard for contaminating corpse matter and found none remains in a presumption of purity sufficient to enable him to eat food preserved in a state of sanctification. The Tosefta adds a supplementary narrative (T. Ahilut 16:8): 1. Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai's students asked of him: One who has examined—shall he eat [without purification]? He replied: He doesn't eat. They said to him: But you taught us that he eats! He replied: Well said! A thing which my own hands did and my own eyes saw, that I nevertheless forgot—it is all the more appropriate that [I should recall it] now that my ears have heard it! 2. It is not that he didn't know! Rather he wanted to arouse his students. . . . 3. Rabbi Yehoshua says: One who repeats traditions but does not labor [to master their content] is like a man who sows but does not reap; and one who learns torah and forgets is like a woman who gives birth and buries. 4. Rabbi Aqiva says: Sing me constantly! Sing! This passage is of remarkable interest for its attitudes toward memorization. First of all, (1) Rabban Yohanan's disciples remember what he himself, despite his own actions in accord with his teachings, has forgotten. I cannot explain why it would seem plausible that Rabban Yohanan had forgotten “what his own hands did and his own eyes saw,” but it is significant that the appropriate jog to his memory is hearing his own words repeated to him by his students. We are asked to understand that the experience of hearing his own teaching reported to him sets in motion a train of associations that help him reconstruct the experiences upon which his original ruling was PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2003 - 2011. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use (for details see http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/oso/public/privacy_policy.html). Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 20 September 2011
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