Skip to main content

Thought for the Day: A Source for Halacha, A Source for Agada

שיר השירים פרק ב:ה

סַמְּכוּנִי בָּאֲשִׁישׁוֹת -- רַפְּדוּנִי בַּתַּפּוּחִים:
Literally: "Sustain me with flagons of wine, provide me a couch of apples" The medrash says, "flagons of wine" refers to halachic authorities; "apples" refers to agadic authorities.  R' Shlomo Zalman Auerback, z"tzl, explains that the medrash was precise in it's choice of these associations.

Fine wines improve with age, so to halachic authorities.  Chazal refer to young rabbis as "tzurba d'rabanan", referring to their tendency to be rough around the edges.  It takes time and experience to come to a proper conclusion.  While halacha itself is pretty cut and dried for simple cases, any real case has a multitude of mitigating factors.  For example, I have a friend who became a ba'alas tshuva in her 50s.  She had a minor stroke and for a few years was unsteady on her feet, so she used a cane outside.  She asked her rav if she could use the cane on shabbos to walk to shul.  She told him that she didn't use it in the house, so she thought there was probably no heter.  As they were discussing the issue, though, it turned out the reason she didn't use a cane at home was because she had installed railings!  It was only because the rav had enough experience to ask the right questions given her age, level of observance, community, etc that a proper halachic conclusion could be reached.  (She was able to use the cane to walk to shul on Shabbos while she needed it.)

The mark of a good apple, on the other hand, is its freshness.  The purpose of agada is to draw ones heart and emotions to avodas HaShem.  Every generation needs to be approached in a way that "sings" to him.  Agada (or drush) needs to be fresh and tailored to the generation.

An additional dimension that R' Auerbach expresses is that a wine jug loses its status as a vessel with even the tiniest hole.  Other vessels retain their status even with much bigger holes.  A vessel that holds groceries or laundry works just as well with a hole in it as without.  A wine jug, on the other hand, has no value once it has a hole of any size; letting air in ruins the wine.  So to halacha, letting in outside (non-Torah) influences, does nothing but distort the whole halachic process.

No big mussar lesson here; I was just interested to see that even the most poetic medrashim have a precision I hadn't imagined.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thought for the Day: Love in the Time of Corona Virus/Anxiously Awaiting the Mashiach

Two scenarios: Scenario I: A young boy awakened in the middle of the night, placed in the back of vehicle, told not to make any noise, and the vehicle speeds off down the highway. Scenario II: Young boy playing in park goes to see firetruck, turns around to see scary man in angry pursuit, poised to attack. I experienced and lived through both of those scenarios. Terrifying, no? Actually, no; and my picture was never on a milk carton. Here's the context: Scenario I: We addressed both set of our grandparents as "grandma" and "grandpa". How did we distinguish? One set lived less than a half hour's drive; those were there "close grandma and grandpa". The other set lived five hour drive away; they were the "way far away grandma and grandpa". To make the trip the most pleasant for all of us, Dad would wake up my brother and I at 4:00AM, we'd groggily -- but with excitement! -- wander out and down to the garage where we'd crawl
Post a Comment
Read more

Thought for the Day: אוושא מילתא Debases Yours Shabbos

My granddaughter came home with a list the girls and phone numbers in her first grade class.  It was cute because they had made it an arts and crafts project by pasting the list to piece of construction paper cut out to look like an old desk phone and a receiver attached by a pipe cleaner.  I realized, though, that the cuteness was entirely lost on her.  She, of course, has never seen a desk phone with a receiver.  When they pretend to talk on the phone, it is on any relatively flat, rectangular object they find.  (In fact, her 18 month old brother turns every  relatively flat, rectangular object into a phone and walks around babbling into it.  Not much different than the rest of us, except his train of thought is not interrupted by someone else babbling into his ear.) I was reminded of that when my chavrusa (who has children my grandchildrens age) and I were learning about אוושא מילתא.  It came up because of a quote from the Shulchan Aruch HaRav that referred to the noise of תקתוק
Post a Comment
Read more

Thought for the Day: David HaMelech's Five Stages of Finding HaShem In the World

Many of us "sing" (once you have heard what I call carrying a tune, you'll question how I can, in good conscience, use that verb, even with the quotation marks) Eishes Chayil before the Friday night Shabbos meal.  We feel like we are singing the praises of our wives.  In fact, I have also been to chasunas where the chasson proudly (sometimes even tearfully) sings Eishes Chayil to his new eishes chayil.  Beautiful.  Also wrong.  (The sentiments, of course, are not wrong; just a misunderstanding of the intent of the author of these exalted words.) Chazal (TB Brachos, 10a) tell us that when Sholmo HaMelech wrote the words "She opens her mouth Mwith wisdom; the torah of kindness is on her tongue", that he was referring to his father, Dovid HaMelech, who (I am continuing to quote Chazal here) lived in five worlds and sang a song of praise [to each].  It seems to me that "world" here means a perception of reality.  Four times Dovid had to readjust his perc
Post a Comment
Read more