The Development of the Torah Part 3 - Rabbi Levi Yitzchok Hillel shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to “Lema’an Yishme’u,” a podcast from Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:10 Speaker 2 Good morning, everyone. In the last class, we learned about the beginning of the development of the Oral Torah—or, more accurately, the continuation of its development. We spoke about Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi, the Mishnah, how it was compiled, the Gemara, and so on. And we said that after the period of the Tannaim—the Zugos, the Tannaim, and the Amoraim—after the period of the Gemara, which Ravina and Rav Ashi brought to a close, they sealed the Gemara, as it’s called, and spread it throughout the Jewish people. Then came a relatively short period called the Rabbanan Savora’i, the Savora’im. They were not Tannaim, of course, and they were not even Amoraim. They were Savora’im, from the word sevara, reasoning. They refined the Shas, edited it a little, and added various important additions. We gave examples at the beginning of the Gemara in Kiddushin and in Bava Basra, which you’re learning now. So they gave the Talmud a few finishing touches, so to speak; they polished it up a bit. That period lasted a relatively short time, about 180 years. After it begins the period we’ll discuss today: the period of the Geonim. What was the period of the Geonim? It lasted roughly 400 or 500 years. The Geonim continued in the path of the Tannaim and Amoraim, and they were in Babylonia, in the same yeshivos in Sura and Pumbedisa. You’ve presumably learned in the Gemara about Rav and Shmuel: one was in Sura, the other in Nehardea. I won’t go into the details. The Geonim’s yeshivos in Babylonia continued in the same places where the Amoraim, and then the Savora’im, had been. But their approach—no, not their approach, the literature they produced—was a little different, and I’ll explain. How do we know when the period of the Tannaim ended? Because the Mishnah was sealed. Someone included in the Mishnah is considered a Tanna; someone who wasn’t is not. And how do we know who is considered an Amora? By the Gemara. Someone who

02:17 Speaker 2 was included in the Gemara is considered an Amora; someone who wasn’t is not considered an Amora. What kind of literature did the Geonim produce? They created a new kind of literature that had not existed among the Jewish people before: responsa, literature of questions and answers. I’ll explain. The Geonim saw no need to write any works. Do you know why? For a simple reason: they knew everything by heart. I want to read you a passage by one of the great Torah scholars, the Meiri, Rabbeinu Menachem HaMeiri. He lived in France long after the Geonim, but he describes how they studied. He says: “And you should know that until this point”—meaning through the time of the Geonim—“the yeshivos were large and distinguished, the students were numerous, and those ordained as Geonim would not leave the tent day or night.” And pay attention to the next part. You’re doing a campaign to learn all of Kiddushin by heart, right? So can I test someone here at the end of the year on Kiddushin word for word? Word for word—meaning reciting the whole of Kiddushin. Listen to what the Geonim knew: “They knew the entire Talmud by heart, or nearly so.” In other words, they knew all of Shas by heart, word for word, or at least most of Shas. That was their way. “And the words of the entire Torah were arranged in their mouths like the Shema passage.” Think of how we say Krias Shema before bed, right? What is Krias Shema? It takes no time. You know it by heart; you can practically say it in your sleep. That’s how they knew all of Shas. Just as we know “Ve’ahavta” and “Ukeshartam,” and so on, that’s how they knew all of Shas. For that reason, they saw no need to write books. What books did they need? Everyone in the beis midrash knew all of Shas. That was

04:12 Speaker 2 fine. Every Shabbos we say Yekum Purkan, right? We say it before Musaf. If you look at the words for a moment, what is Yekum Purkan? It’s a blessing for the heads of the yeshivos, the allufim, the roshei kallah, and the Geonim. And if you look a little more closely, you’ll see that Yekum Purkan describes the whole period of the Geonim. Let me start with this: why were they called Geonim? Do you know why? Any ideas? Why were they called Geonim?

04:42 Speaker 3 They knew everything by heart.

04:42 Speaker 2 Because they knew everything by heart? Those who came after them knew no less, but they weren’t called Geonim. Today, wherever you go, people call everyone “Harav Hagaon,” “Harav Hagaon.” Right? Why were these people in particular called Geonim? Yes?

04:56 Speaker 3 What we just said—that you could tell they were Geonim because they were geniuses who... Why is the mind today more...

05:02 Speaker 2 Okay. What is the gematria of gaon? Quick calculation.

05:08 Speaker 3 Sixty.

05:09 Speaker 2 Sixty. How many tractates are there in Shas?

05:11 Speaker 3 Sixty.

05:12 Speaker 2 Sixty. A person who knew the tractates of Shas by heart was considered a gaon. But the gaon who headed the yeshiva also bore the title Gaon because the yeshiva was called Gaon Yaakov. You’re going to move up to yeshiva, right? Tomchei Temimim. What will you be called? Temimim. Why? Because the yeshiva is called Tomchei Temimim, and the boys who study there are called Temimim. In the period of the Geonim, the yeshiva was called Gaon Yaakov, so its heads were called Geonim. There were various kinds of Geonim: Geonim in Eretz Yisroel and Geonim in Babylonia. I won’t go into all the details; let’s just keep the general picture of the period in mind. In any case, most students in the Geonim’s yeshivos knew all of Shas by heart. Think about studying in yeshiva today. What do you learn? One year Kiddushin, one year Bava Basra, Bava Kama, maybe Pesachim. They knew all of it by heart all the time. That was the level of learning in the past. They had less need to write books, and less need to use them. I’ll explain. You may know some examples of works by the Geonim. Well, you probably know the books. There’s a book called She’iltos D’Rav Achai, and I’ll explain what it is. It follows the order of the weekly parshas, and for each parsha he wrote about various mitzvos and laws. Who did he write it for? Do you know? He had a son who didn’t like to learn. This Gaon’s son didn’t particularly connect with learning, so he wrote him a book of laws arranged by parsha. Each parsha might contain five or six laws, or however many

06:56 Speaker 2 he wrote for him. That way, each week his son would come to shul for Shabbos and learn a little about the parsha and its laws from the book.

07:08 Speaker 3 A kind of Sefer HaChinuch.

07:10 Speaker 2 It’s like Sefer HaChinuch. Sefer HaChinuch covers all 613 mitzvos; this has fewer. But he would learn the mitzvos he needed to know, and that was it. His son did not go on to become a great Torah scholar. Halachos Gedolos is another book written by the Geonim. It, too, contains definitive rulings—practical halacha. But again, these were not laws covering every aspect of Jewish life. They dealt with very specific matters: small, appealing works like that. Why didn’t they need books? Because everyone knew everything. For example, if someone came to the shul or beis midrash with a question, do you know what they would do? They would run through Shas in their heads. Say a question came up about a bird that fell somewhere, something happened to it, and it got mixed with milk. They would immediately run through the relevant discussions in the Gemara in Chullin and give a halachic ruling. Today, if you ask a rabbi to rule for you straight from the Gemara, that’s not how it works. In the past, that was the normal way. Why? Because they studied the Written Torah, the Mishnah, the Gemara, the Toseftas, the Baraisos, and the Midrashim of the Tannaim we mentioned in the last class—Sifra, Sifri, and the like. And that was it. From those sources, they would rule on halacha. They had minds broad enough to absorb it all, identify the essence of a question, and find an answer on the spot. As the generations went on, the generations declined further and further, and things became harder. There were many difficulties with learning, so people needed summary works more. One of the best-known is the Shulchan Aruch. Why is it needed? It’s a summary of all the practical laws for our time. Another summary work is the Rambam’s. The Rambam compiled a summary of the entire Oral Torah. What did he do? He distilled into practical halacha the

08:56 Speaker 2 All the laws, even laws that were not applicable in his time, such as the laws of the Beis Hamikdash, sacrifices, and so on, and he produced a series of fourteen books for us. In the time of the Geonim, none of this existed. What did exist? Questions and answers. The Geonim would sit in Babylonia and... wait a second. The Geonim sat in Babylonia, received questions, answered them, and all those answers were published in organized volumes. There are about ten thousand responsa from the Geonim, and that was it. That was how people learned. You wanted to learn? You sat down and learned everything from the beginning: the Written Torah, the Gemara, the Mishnah, all of it by heart. Over time, throughout those four or five hundred years, Torah study spread and spread and spread. And think about it: all the students who finished learning went back home and established yeshivos of their own, which grew too. That was how Torah kept spreading among the Jewish people at the highest possible level. Okay, did you want to ask something?

09:55 Speaker 4 About the Shulchan Aruch.

09:58 Speaker 2 We’ll talk about that in a moment. The two best-known Geonim are Rav Sherira Gaon and Rav Hai Gaon. Let’s start at the end. Rav Sherira was the father; he passed away at ninety-nine, an exceptionally old age in his time, and of course in ours too. His son was called Rav Hai Gaon. To give you an idea of the stature of Rav Hai Gaon and Rav Sherira: when Rav Sherira passed away, on 8 Tishrei, they read a special Torah passage to mark the occasion, a section of Parshas Pinchas: “May Hashem, the G-d of the spirits of all flesh, appoint...” They read that passage, and for the haftarah they read, “The days of David drew near for him to die.” Why “The days of David drew near for him to die”? As a symbolic gesture marking Rav Sherira’s passing, they read the haftarah about King David’s passing from this world. And how does the haftarah end? It ends with the coronation of King Shlomo. The last verse goes: “And Shlomo sat upon the throne of David his father, and his kingdom was firmly established.” In other words, the verse describes how King David passed away, and then Shlomo sat on the throne of David his father and his kingdom was firmly established. He became king in a big way. Rav Hai Gaon was there in shul when they read the haftarah for his father, you know. And how did they read it? They read: “And Hai sat upon the throne of Sherira his father, and his kingdom was firmly established.”

11:30 Speaker 4 That’s what they said?

11:32 Speaker 2 They changed the verse in Tanach instead of reading the end of the haftarah as written. Instead of “And Shlomo sat upon the throne of David his father, and his kingdom was firmly established,” they read it about Rav Sherira and Rav Hai. Rav Sherira died, and so on, and Hai sat upon the throne of David his father—upon the throne of Sherira his father—and his kingdom was firmly established. Rav Hai really was the last of the Geonim. He effectively closes the period of the Geonim; it ends with him. Now, what does “ends” mean? There wasn’t a book they compiled, like the Mishnah. The Mishnah marked the end of the Tannaim, and the Gemara marked the end of the Amoraim. With the Geonim, there wasn’t a book that brought the literature—the period of the Geonim—to a close. That’s it: up to this point, someone was a Gaon. Whoever wrote that book was a Gaon, and whoever didn’t, wasn’t. Huh?

12:14 Speaker 4 Until today?

12:16 Speaker 2 Ah, so where did it end? That’s a whole debate. I won’t go into too much detail. The Rambam actually understands that the Geonim continued on and on, even though the institution of the Geonim itself... You have to understand that the yeshivos in Babylonia were prestigious institutions. Their heads were practically kings, like kings, with tremendous authority. The problem was that Torah centers began developing elsewhere—in France, Tunisia, Ashkenaz, Germany. Other yeshivos developed, grew in stature and became strong, and then the Babylonian yeshivos lost some of their standing. Why? Imagine a yeshiva opens in France, right? All the students who used to come from France to study in Babylonia stop coming. That’s it; now they study in France. That took a lot of strength away from the Babylonian yeshivos, and their influence kept declining. Okay? It kept declining. But the Rambam says: Fine, their influence declined, but as far as he is concerned, those in France and Ashkenaz are all Geonim. That’s how the Rambam sees it. Many of the halachic authorities see it a little differently. Geonim are Geonim. Rav Hai, Rav Sherira—that came to an end. The institution, so to speak, closed, even though it didn’t technically close. But the period of the Geonim had ended, and from here we move into another period in which Torah study once again declines. Until the Geonim, people studied the entire Shas by heart. From this point on, things deteriorated. There are yeshivos that testified about themselves—this appears in one of the responsa from around the end of the Geonic period—that in their yeshiva, for example, they had not studied Tractate Nedarim for nearly a hundred years. For a hundred years, nobody had touched that tractate. Go back two or three hundred years, and every student would have been proficient in the entire tractate, because every student considered it his duty to know the whole Shas by heart. But things kept deteriorating, kept deteriorating, until the centers and strength of Torah study

14:17 Speaker 2 had already shifted elsewhere. And here we enter the next period, called the period of the Rishonim. To sum up what we’ve covered so far: Moshe Rabbeinu was at Mount Sinai, right? Moshe Rabbeinu received the Torah; from Sinai it passed to Yehoshua, then to the elders and the judges. Everyone studied Torah as we explained, learning it by heart: the Written Torah, yes, and the Oral Torah, based on the five principles we mentioned in earlier classes—halachos given to Moshe at Sinai, decrees, ordinances, and things derived through the thirteen principles by which the Torah is expounded. That was how everything worked from the time of Moshe Rabbeinu until the time of Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi. In Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi’s time, he wrote down the Mishnah: “It is a time to act for Hashem; they have made void Your Torah.” The Mishnah had to be written down. Things were difficult; people were no longer managing to learn. So he wrote the Mishnah. Three hundred years later, the Gemara was written. After that came a brief period of the Savoraim and a five-hundred-year period of the Geonim. And again, what were the Geonim mainly doing? Studying the Written Torah, Mishnah, Gemara; the Written Torah, Mishnah, Gemara; and, of course, other works of the Tannaim: Sifra, Sifrei, the braisos you know, and the Tosefta we discussed. They reviewed them constantly. The period of the Geonim ended, there was a transitional period, and from there we move into the period of the Rishonim. At this point, Torah study changed completely. People understood that knowing the entire Shas by heart belonged to the time of the Geonim. It’s true that even today, and in the days of the Rishonim, there were people who knew the entire Shas by heart. That’s true, absolutely true. But you should know that there had already been a significant decline in study. Let me tell you a story. As you know, the Rambam wrote his book without citing sources, right? He wrote the Yad Hachazakah without sources. In a letter, he describes something that happened to him. He says: “Rabbi Yefes the judge came in and asked me a question. He said, ‘You wrote such-and-such in your book. What’s the source for it?’”

16:12 Speaker 2 So the Rambam says, “I sat there astonished and thought, Wow, what really is the source? Where did I get that from? Where did I write it?” He tried to remember but couldn’t. Rabbi Yefes the judge became very upset and left angrily. And the Rambam says, “I sat there astonished for an hour. Where is the source for this?” Now think about it: the Rambam, an extraordinary genius who had the whole Torah at his fingertips, didn’t know the source for a law he himself had written in his book. After a little while, he remembered where the source was in Gemara Yevamos, ran after Rabbi Yefes the judge, and told him: The source is in such-and-such a place. Then the Rambam went home and said to himself: Wait, if I, the author of the book, don’t know where the source is, what will happen to people reading my book a hundred years from now? Do you understand? Torah study had reached a point where only the great rabbis could really have the whole Torah at their fingertips. Ordinary people could no longer manage to learn it. People had to start writing summaries and commentaries for them, explaining what was written. I’ll give you an example. Think back to when you were in fourth or fifth grade. How long did it take you to get used to learning Gemara? Or sometimes you’re learning Gemara and get stuck on a word. I can tell you that when I was young, as a yeshiva student, I was learning Gemara Megillah, and it said “ve-tanna tuna.” What does “ve-tanna tanna tuna” mean? No, here. What is “ve-tanna tuna”? What is “ve-tanna tuna”? So I went around asking lots of people in shul, and nobody knew. No, no, the Schottenstein edition wasn’t so common then; it had only just started coming out, and... at least around here, we didn’t have it. And we got stuck on what “ve-tanna tuna” meant. What does that mean? Think about it: people compiled the Gemara

18:03 Speaker 2 Where? In Babylonia, where everyone spoke Aramaic. So what language did they write the Gemara in? A mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic. The Mishnah was written in Eretz Yisroel, so what language was it written in? Only in Lashon Hakodesh, in Hebrew. The Gemara was written in Babylonia, and there they also wrote in Aramaic. Suddenly the Gemara reaches France, reaches Ashkenaz, reaches all sorts of places where people didn’t speak Aramaic. Suddenly they have to learn a new language, just as we have to learn a new language today. And it starts here with—once I was sitting in—yesterday I was sitting in a Torah class, and someone offered a line of reasoning. So I said to him, “Ein hachi nami.” What does ein hachi nami mean as an expression? Right, you’re correct, that’s also the case. So he said, “Wait, wait, what did you say? What’s that?” He didn’t understand ein hachi nami. And I thought to myself: it’s an expression we use, but all its words are Aramaic. If he doesn’t know the expression, why would he know what I’m talking about? Okay. A problem arose: the language of the Gemara was difficult, the difficulties kept mounting, and it became all too easy not to succeed in learning. So the commentators said: we have to write commentaries. Who wrote the first commentary on the Talmud? What do you know? There are two: Rashi and Rabbeinu Chananel. Rashi is better known; his commentary is right alongside the Gemara itself. Rabbeinu Chananel appears a little to the side of the page. Anyone who has a Gemara can open it and see Rabbeinu Chananel’s commentary on the side. Rabbeinu Chananel sat down and wrote a commentary on the Gemara. Now, note that he didn’t write commentaries on everything. Not everyone wrote a commentary on the entire Gemara. Even Rashi didn’t write a commentary on the entire Gemara. And since you have the Gemaras here—

19:49 Speaker 2 In Bava Basra, open to page 29a. Look in the middle; it says here, “Rashi z”l passed away.” You don’t have to open it, but anyone who has the Gemara can look. On page 29 of Bava Basra it says, “Rashi z”l passed away.” Why? What happened? Rashi wrote his commentary but didn’t manage to finish it on Bava Basra. Rabbeinu Chananel, too—I believe his commentary doesn’t cover the entire Talmud. But why were these commentaries produced in the first place? Because without the commentaries of Rashi and Rabbeinu Chananel and all those early authorities, we wouldn’t understand the Gemara. Try learning Gemara sometime without responsa, without anything, without even Rashi. Sometimes it’s very, very hard. You don’t understand what the Gemara is getting at, and you want to study it more deeply—then you really don’t understand what the Gemara is getting at. Just look closely at Rashi and you’ll see how much depth there is in his words. Okay. Rashi’s aim was to explain the Gemara. What happened two generations before Rashi? How did they manage? They managed. Why? Because they studied; they spoke Aramaic and learned it extensively. Over time, Torah knowledge declined. People didn’t know Aramaic. A commentary had to be written. So Rashi wrote a commentary. Rabbeinu Chananel wrote a commentary, and there’s another commentary by Rabbeinu Gershom Me’or Hagolah. Okay, Rabbeinu Gershom also lived in Ashkenaz, and he too wrote a commentary on the Gemara. Who else wrote a commentary on the Gemara? The Tosafists. And here I want to tell you an interesting story. Rashi sat in France and wrote his commentary on the Gemara, as you’d expect. Who were Rashi’s grandsons? Who were Rashi’s sons, by the way? Who was Rashi’s son?

21:27 Speaker 5 Rashi didn’t have any sons.

21:29 Speaker 2 Good. Rashi didn’t have sons. Rashi had only daughters. He would learn Torah with his daughters. His daughters would write down his commentary when he couldn’t write. And Rashi had grandsons—male grandchildren—who were tremendous Torah scholars. Which of them do we know?

21:45 Speaker 5 Rabbeinu Tam.

21:46 Speaker 2 Rabbeinu Tam. Who else do we know?

21:48 Speaker 5 The Ri”d.

21:48 Speaker 2 The Rashbam. The Ri”d wasn’t a grandson. What other grandson do you know? The Rashbam and Rabbeinu Tam. Right, those are the two prominent grandsons, let’s call them that. What other grandson do you know?

21:58 Speaker 5 Rabbeinu Meir.

21:59 Speaker 2 Rabbeinu Meir. Who else? Good. There’s another grandson called the Ribam—the Ribam. The two best known are the Rashbam and Rabbeinu Tam. And here I want to tell you about the Tosafos commentaries. How do you think Tosafos were compiled? Do you know how Tosafos came about? How did Rashi write his commentary? He sat in the beis midrash, wrote the commentary, and that was that. How did the Tosafists write their commentary? Do you know how they wrote it?

22:24 Speaker 5 Why...?

22:24 Speaker 2 I’ll tell you a story. What do you mean, several people? How? I’ll tell you a story. Rashi had a great-grandson—not a grandson, a great-grandson. His name was the Ri, Rabbeinu Yitzchak the Elder. So they called him the Ri. The Ri had a very unusual beis midrash. He wanted to use Otzar HaChochma, but it didn’t exist. He wanted to use Google, but it didn’t exist. So what did he do? He created his own private Google. How?

22:48 Speaker 5 With students.

22:48 Speaker 2 He seated sixty Torah scholars, his students. Each one knew one tractate of Gemara by heart. Think about that. One knew Megillah by heart, literally from beginning to end. He knew the whole thing perfectly. Another knew Eruvin. The third knew Shabbos, the fourth Bava Basra. Each one knew a different tractate of Gemara by heart. Sixty students—that’s the entire Talmud. The Ri would sit there and throw a question out to the room, raise a point of halachah. What happened with all sixty of these fellows? Each started looking for where it came up in his tractate. And often there are repetitions in the Gemara: the same statement appears here and there, or you can bring a proof from one sugya to another. All sixty scholars’ minds would get to work, okay? And each one would start calling things out: “I think it’s like this.” “I think it’s different.” “There’s a sugya here; there’s a sugya there.” And then, as the Maharshal says, Tosafos rolled the entire Talmud around like a ball. What does it mean to roll it around like a ball? They turned it from side to side and made connections from one sugya to another. Rashi explains the sugya right where you are. How does Tosafos begin?

24:04 Speaker 5 “And if you say.”

24:05 Speaker 2 “And if you say”—I have a question. After all, the Gemara in Eruvin says such-and-such. Or such-and-such appears elsewhere, or there’s a different line of reasoning in another place. How were they such geniuses? First of all, they were geniuses. But second, the Ri’s beis midrash was, let’s call it, extraordinarily creative. Sixty fellows—imagine one bringing a proof from Megillah, another refuting it from Bava Basra, a third bringing support from Eruvin. It all became one big simulator. They managed to put together a commentary on the entire Talmud and created this commentary called Tosafos. That’s how Tosafos came about. All right? Now, I won’t go on at length about Tosafos itself, because that’s a subject in its own right. The Tosafos on some tractates were produced in other batei midrash. In other words, there’s a general rule about Tosafos: you don’t raise a contradiction between Tosafos on one tractate and Tosafos on another. Why not?

24:56 Speaker 5 Different people wrote them.

24:56 Speaker 2 Because different people wrote them. Who wrote the Tosafos on Yoma? One of the later scholars whose name you know. He spent fourteen years in prison.

25:06 Speaker 5 Rabbi... Rothen[unclear].

25:08 Speaker 2 Maharam of Rothenburg, good. Maharam of Rothenburg came at the very end of the era of the Tosafists. He wrote the Tosafos on Tractate Yoma, so you can’t raise a difficulty from Maharam of Rothenburg against the Tosafos on Tractate Bava Basra, who lived some two hundred years before him. They’re different people. So sometimes you’ll see different Tosafos disagreeing with one another. But the general approach of all the Tosafists, over roughly three hundred years, was to explain the Talmud analytically—not just to explain the passage itself, as Rashi does, telling you what it says, but also to test whether everything fits together from one passage to another. Okay, so those are the commentaries that began to emerge in the era of the Rishonim. Again, we mentioned Rabbeinu Gershom, Rashi, the Tosafists, and so on. We mentioned the Rashbam earlier. I should point out that the Rashbam was the eldest grandson—or, rather, the older brother of Rabbeinu Tam. Yes, there was Rabbeinu Tam and his older brother, the Rashbam. And the Rashbam actually burned his own commentary on the Talmud. I don’t know if you knew that. Did you know? The Rashbam burned it; some say he only wanted to burn it. What happened? Why did he burn it? He had worked on it for years. The thing is, the Rashbam saw that his commentary was getting far too long. If you’ve had a chance—or, with Hashem’s help, if you get a chance later—to study Bava Basra in yeshiva, you’ll see that Rashi is very brief, while the Rashbam is very, very, very long. One reason Tractate Bava Basra has 176 folios, making it the longest tractate in the Talmud, is that the Rashbam is so long. The Gemara itself may be quite short, just a little bit of Gemara on the page, and all the lengthy text isn’t Tosafos—it’s the Rashbam. He writes and writes

26:59 Speaker 2 and writes. Someone once said to me, jokingly, that Rashi writes briefly because the letters of his name stand for “He wants everyone to understand.” Right? So he explains things to you briefly. But the Rashbam—as someone told me about fifteen years ago—stands for “He wants everyone to be absolutely sure they understand.” So he goes on at length, explaining and explaining. And it really is like that. The Rashbam, Rabbeinu Tam’s older brother and Rashi’s grandson, completes his grandfather’s great commentary. Wherever his grandfather didn’t finish, the Rashbam steps in and completes it through the end of the tractate. A question for you: Why was Rabbeinu Tam called Rabbeinu Tam? Actually, hold on—what was Rabbeinu Tam’s name?

27:47 Speaker 5 Rabbi Yaakov ben Meir. Rabbeinu Yaakov.

27:50 Speaker 2 Rabbi Yaakov ben Meir. So why did they call him Tam? Rabbeinu Tam? Have you ever called a friend of yours by another name?

27:57 Speaker 5 Yes.

27:57 Speaker 2 You give him a nickname that fits his name. If his name is Yaakov, you call him Yanky. Menachem Mendel becomes Mendy. So how did Rabbeinu Tam come to be called Rabbeinu Tam? Have you ever thought about that? [unclear] Why Rabbeinu Tam?

28:12 Speaker 5 “Yaakov was a guileless man.”

28:12 Speaker 2 “Yaakov was a guileless man,” good. There are two reasons he was called Rabbeinu Tam. This is something worth knowing. The first is the verse, “And Yaakov was a guileless man, dwelling in tents.” Rabbeinu Tam was a scholar who sat in the tent all the time, studying Torah. They called him Rabbi Yaakov, the guileless man—hence Rabbeinu Tam. The second reason is more interesting, in my opinion. Listen: In the past, hygiene and living conditions were very, very poor. If there was an epidemic, people died in great numbers. Why? Because there were no vaccines. Think about it: When was penicillin discovered? When were antibiotics discovered? A hundred years ago? A hundred, a hundred and fifty years ago. Before antibiotics were discovered, someone who had pneumonia, G-d forbid, could die from it. If the pneumonia was severe, they could die. Why? Because it’s a bacterial infection. Of course, even today, G-d forbid, if an infection is very severe and antibiotics don’t work, a person could, G-d forbid, die from it. But in the past, the death rate was higher. Why? Sometimes because of poor nutrition, or even a lack of hygiene and cleanliness—and certainly because they didn’t have all the vaccines we have today. So Rabbeinu Tam comes along and says: What happens when someone gets married? Imagine a man gets married, and suddenly his wife passes away six months later, G-d forbid. What happened? Complications, various troubles—she fell ill and passed away. Now, we know the principle: What a wife acquires, her husband acquires. So he got married, they hadn’t had children yet, barely six months had passed since the wedding, and she had brought a lot of money into the marriage. Her father had given her a lot of money, clothes, and other things. After six months she died. Her husband takes all the money, all the clothes, and everything else. He’s pleased—he got it

30:02 Speaker 2 for free. He’s sorry his wife died, of course, but he received a lot of money. Now imagine he married a wealthy woman whose father gave her a house and a field as a wedding gift, as the Gemara records happening. She passes away, and her husband gets the house and field. In an instant, he becomes wealthy in real estate. His father-in-law—or rather, his former father-in-law—comes to him and says, “Sir, how can you be so brazen? Give the money back.” He replies, “Why should I give it back to you? I married her. I was supposed to live with my wife for a hundred years, fifty years. She passed away. What can we do? We’re all grieving, but the money belongs to me. I inherit her.” So Rabbeinu Tam came along and said—oh, and what would happen then? People would get very angry about this. Rabbeinu Tam said, “I’m instituting an ordinance.” What was the ordinance? If a man’s wife died during the first year of their marriage, he would not inherit her. The money would go back to her father. If she died a year or more after the wedding, her husband would inherit her. If she died during the first year, her husband would not inherit her. And about this, the verse says, “And your strength shall be spent in vain.” One of the curses that Hakadosh Boruch Hu, G-d forbid, warns the Jewish people of if we don’t conduct ourselves properly is, “And your strength shall be spent in vain.” What does that mean? The fruits of your labor—your money—will go to waste. How will it go to waste? Your daughter marries someone and dies within a year—or dies after two years, for that matter—and her husband takes all the money. So Rabbeinu Tam instituted an ordinance that if she died within a year of the wedding, the money went back to her father. In other words, he made sure the father’s hard-earned money returned to him. That’s why they called him Rabbeinu Tam, after the verse “And your strength shall be spent in vain”: he did away with that curse. That’s

31:51 Speaker 2 an aside, as they say. So those are the commentaries. Commentaries on what? On the Talmud. But besides the commentaries—okay, people sit and study Menachem HaMeiri, Tractate Megillah, Bava Basra, Eruvin; they study with Rashi’s commentary, and it all makes sense. But wait: What do you do when you need to rule on a point of halachah? You need to know that sometimes, when ruling on halachah, a topic appears in four or five places in the Talmud, or in two different places. What rabbi can say, “I know the entire Talmud, and whenever anyone asks me a question, I just run through it all in my head. What’s the ruling? Here, this is the ruling”? Do you know what kind of mind that takes? Someone asks you a question about the laws of Shabbos, and you have to bring all of Tractate Shabbos to mind, really know how the issues were decided, and be thoroughly familiar with every detail of every passage—so that if one tiny detail in the question changes, you know exactly how to rule correctly. There were hardly any people who could do that; it’s very difficult. So the commentators, the halachic authorities, come along and say: “We’ll write books of halachic rulings.” Who wrote the first such book? Who knows? Not the Rambam—before the Rambam. No, earlier. No. The first book of halachic rulings. You’re holding it in your hands right now, in your copies of the Gemara. You have a Gemara here; I’ll show you.

33:12 Speaker 6 The Rosh.

33:12 Speaker 2 No, before the Rosh.

33:14 Speaker 6 The Rambam.

33:14 Speaker 2 Earlier. Who said the Rif? The Rif, Rabbeinu Yitzchak Alfasi, wrote the first book of halachah—but that answer isn’t right. If you heard me, you may be asking: What do you mean it isn’t right? It is right and it isn’t right. I’ll explain. What does it mean that the Rif wrote a book? What did he do? The Rif said: “People can’t learn the entire Shas by heart and know every discussion. So I’ll do this: I’ll take the entire Shas, remove the material that isn’t relevant to halachah, and leave the text and the pages as they are, but without the theoretical discussions. I’ll keep only the practical halachah—not the aggadic passages or anything unrelated.” What did he actually do? He took Bava Basra, which has 176 pages, and turned it into forty pages. Let’s say forty—I’m just throwing out a number. Why forty? Because he removed everything that wasn’t relevant to halachah and left only the halachic material. Then you could come to shul and say, “I want to learn Gemara and know how to rule in halachah. What do I do?” You read the Rif. The Rif’s work is a practical halachic condensation of the Gemara. So for each tractate, if you learned Eruvin, you would learn the Rif’s condensed version of Eruvin. If you learned Shabbos, you would read the Rif for the practical halachah. That was essentially the first book of practical halachah. The second book—we’ll discuss two more books, and then we’ll finish for today—was written, as someone mentioned here, by the Rambam. The Rambam did something different. Do you know what he did?

34:58 Speaker 2 He came up with a new recipe. He didn’t write a book of halachos on Shas itself, the way the Rif did—taking Shas, removing what wasn’t relevant to halachah, and leaving what was. No. The Rambam took the entire Oral Torah—the Gemara, the Mishnah, the works of the Tannaim, the Midrashim, everything—put it all in a blender, and produced a new halachic work. Understand that the book the Rambam wrote had never existed before in Judaism. The closest thing to it was the Mishnah, because the Mishnah too was composed of halachah after halachah. The Rambam did something entirely new: fourteen books arranged by subject. Notice—by subject—and they cover the entire Torah. That is why he includes laws of offerings and similar subjects that other halachic authorities did not write about: they wrote only about laws relevant in their own times. The Rambam was unique in this respect, so wherever other authorities do not explicitly disagree with him, the halachah follows his ruling. He was the only one who wrote a work covering all of it. He arranged fourteen books by subject. For example, there is Sefer Hamada, dealing with belief in Hashem and the laws of idolatry. There is Sefer Mishpatim, with laws concerning judges and so on, and Sefer Nezikin, with the laws of damages. All right? There is, of course, tremendous genius in the Rambam’s work. But what the Rambam wanted was to tell you: “Take this book and study it. That’s enough; you’ll know all the practical halachah you need.” Now notice: the Rambam did not include differing opinions in his book, only the practical ruling. Once in a while he says, “The Geonim said this, and I disagree,” or “My teachers said

36:47 Speaker 2 this, and I disagree.” But you will hardly find that. Most of the time it is halachah, halachah, halachah. Why did he do it? So people would know what to rule in practice. The next halachic authority to do this, as you correctly said, was the Rosh, Rabbeinu Asher. He lived in Ashkenaz and was a student of the Maharam of Rothenburg. The Rosh said: “I won’t do what the Rambam did and write a separate, new book. And I won’t do what the Rif did and make, let’s call it, a condensed version of the Gemara.” The Rosh drew on the Rif, the Gemara, and the Tosafists, and wrote rulings of his own in the order of the tractates. It isn’t a commentary; it is his rulings. For example, you can open to the back of Tractate Berachos, and the first work you’ll see is the Rosh, Piskei HaRosh. He’ll write, “First chapter of Tractate Berachos. Mishnah.” He’ll tell you what the Mishnah says and what the halachah is on this law and that law. He included many other laws and many new rulings. Essentially, he made a new recipe from the Rif, the Gemara, and the Tosafists. So if someone wants to learn Gemara together with practical halachah that is relatively close to the later authorities, he needs to learn the Rosh. The Rosh brings together the Rif, the Gemara and Mishnah themselves, and the Tosafists. People still found this difficult. It wasn’t enough. Why? Because when you studied the Rosh or the Rif—and all the more so the Rambam—it was very hard to reach a practical ruling that way. The Rosh and the Rif both write in the order of Shas. Now suppose I’m looking for the law about whether I may chop cabbage on Shabbos. Where am I going to find that in Tractate Shabbos? I have to read through all the chapters, searching in the Rosh and the Rif. Of course, I could find it in the Rambam.

38:39 Speaker 2 But the Rambam is a self-contained work that gives only the ruling. I don’t know what his sources are. He didn’t cite sources; you can’t tell from the text. Then came the Rosh’s son, Rabbeinu Yaakov. He said: “I’ll create a new arrangement so people can find a law according to the area of life it belongs to. Looking for a law about Shabbos? It will be in a particular section. Looking for laws about getting up in the morning, prayer, or the Shema? I’ll make a new arrangement.” That is what the Rosh’s son, Rabbi Yaakov Baal HaTurim, said. “I’ll make a new division.” As we’ll see later, he divided the Torah into four sections: Orach Chaim, Yoreh De’ah, Even Ha’ezer, and Choshen Mishpat. Then he divided those into further subjects. For example, what laws did he put in Orach Chaim? What is Orach Chaim? Our daily way of life. So he starts at the beginning: laws of getting up in the morning, tzitzis, tefillin, prayer, Torah reading, the shul, and so on. Jewish life, all the festivals—Rosh Hashanah, Pesach—everything is in this section. So if you have a question about the laws of Pesach, what do you do? You don’t go to Tractate Pesachim and start leafing through it, or leaf through the Rif or the Rosh to find the law. You open the Tur to Orach Chaim, because the festivals are part of our way of life. You open the laws of Pesach and look in the appropriate section for the source. You wouldn’t look in section 451, which deals with kashering utensils, for the laws of the Seder night. He made it much, much easier to focus on the practical halachah

40:19 Speaker 2 and find the exact section you need. In other words, ruling in halachah became fairly simple. A rabbi has a question and doesn’t remember the exact law. He opens the right part—Orach Chaim—then the laws of Pesach, then the section he needs. Good, he has his answer. If he has a question about marriage contracts, he opens Even Ha’ezer and looks in the appropriate section. That, briefly, is the Tur. With Hashem’s help, we’ll go into more detail next week. Notice what happens from the time of the Rif, the Rambam, and the Rosh. Halachah stops being transmitted in the raw form of Shas, where you study Shas and derive rulings from it. It takes a new form: halachic literature. People begin writing books of halachah and commentaries. As I said, this did not exist before the period of the Rishonim. Going back through the Geonim all the way to Moshe Rabbeinu, it did not exist in this form; it began with the Rif and those who followed him. During the time of the Geonim, it had begun to some extent with various small books. But the Rif, the Rambam, and the Rosh established it as a regular practice: writing organized books of halachah, rather than Shas itself. With Hashem’s help, we’ll expand on this next week.