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Session Three
The Way of Imagination: Midrash
What is it? 1) The Torah often leaves out information, or appears to contradict
itself. An example: Sukkot rules First, let's explore a Midrash Halakhah text a little. When you're done, continue with Midrash Aggadah Important Terms Midrash Halacha Aggada Talmud
"Midrash" means "imaginative interpretation of Scripture." The
word comes from the Hebrew "darash" which means "to search for"
or "to seek out". Midrash is about searching in the words of the
Bible to find meaning for ourselves.
There are two kinds of Midrash, because there are two kinds of
Jewish teaching in general: "halakhah" and "aggadah". "Halakhah"
is connected with the word "halakh" which means "to walk". "Aggadah"
comes from the word "l'hagid" which means "to tell." So "halakhah"
can be translated as "walking the walk" and "aggadah" can be translated
as "talking the talk". More prosaically, "halakhah" is the guidelines
or rules of Jewish living -- "Jewish law", and "aggadah" is everything
else -- ethical teachings that go beyond specific practical rules;
wise sayings; advice of various kinds; and especially stories.
(In modern Israeli Hebrew the meaning has narrowed, so that "aggadah"
is used to mean "legend", but we will use the wider, classical
meaning.)
So there is Midrash Halakhah and Midrash Aggadah.
Midrash Halakhah
Midrash Halakhah was once extremely important in Judaism. It is
a process of reading the Torah very very closely to work out the
rules of Jewish living in great detail. This was the specialty
of the Rabbis who created Judaism as we know it (beginning, very
approximately, 2000 years ago in the land of Israel).
The Torah is full of rules and instructions, but you couldn't
just read them and follow them, for two reasons:
2) Various ways of doing things were well-established as traditions
but weren't actually mentioned in the Torah.
A good example concerns the rules of the holiday of Sukkot. The
Torah says (Lev. 23:39) to live in a sukkah, but there is no indication
of what a sukkah should look like; it says to take branches and
fruit and be happy, but it's very unclear what kind of branches
or fruit, or what to do with them. However, people certainly were
building sukkahs and waving branches; traditions had developed
about how to do these things.
The Rabbis studied the Torah to "search out" ("darash") ways in
which the traditions of how to do things were already hinted at,
and answers to questions they still had about the right way to
do things. By reading closely and carefully, they found answers:
for example, the Hebrew letters of the word "sukkah", Samekh,
Khaf, and Hei, tell us that a sukkah can be completely enclosed,
like a Samekh, or have three walls and an open side, like a Khaf,
or have two full walls and a partial wall, like a Hei.
The Decline of Midrash Halakhah
As more and more halakhot (plural of "halakhah", "rules") were
worked out, Midrash Halakhah became less important. It wasn't
necessary to do it -- searching the Torah for answers to halakhic questions --
because the rules were already established, and it wasn't necessary
to study it because it was more important to know what the rules were
than how they could be found in the Torah. For many centuries
now, rabbis have essentially stopped using Midrash Halakhah to
work out halakhah.
Finding halakhic answers today
Today, if a question arises, a rabbi will look first in the Shulchan Arukh, and if the answer is still unclear, at other rule-books of halakhah
and at responsa of earlier rabbis, looking for precedents. The final stop will
be the Talmud [the subject of the next module], which is the authoritative
source for halakhah.