Don't ask dumb questions on Chazal. Don't answer dumb answers either.
DYK and Marty Bluke fight it out.
Post too long for email - read in your browser.
Imagine if someone told you he didn’t believe in Christianity. I think you would understand him. But what if you asked him why, and he said “Well, I don’t think Jesus knew how to make chocolate milkshakes”. I think you would understand that is a stupid reason not to believe in Christianity. Then imagine if a dedicated Catholic tries showing in the New Testament exactly how Jesus knew how to make a chocolate milkshake, but also banana splits and razzles, and if the recipes don’t work nowadays, then its because people changed. I don’t think you would find it very convincing. Jesus is Sundays, not sundaes.
Yet when it comes to Chazal, frum people still think they need to defend everything that chazal ever said. Take a look at R DYK’s latest post, and the comments therein, especially the debate between Happy, I, Marty Bluke, Flourish and Blatts, and R DYK:
(As an aside, its shocking that R DYK thinks its a good thing that Chazal believed in holistic medicine. More on that later in the post).
Here is what really frustrates me: Both sides here - lets focus on the extremes, R DYK and Marty Bluke - seem to take positions that make no sense. R DYK thinks its a theological issue that Chazal didn’t know science (more accurately, allowed mistaken science to be included in the Gemara):
This assumes a) chazal published the talmud and b) Hashem ‘allowed’ them to and c) its a theological problem. All assumptions, in my opinion, are incorrect - the Talmud was closed naturally, was not finally edited by chazal, and Hashem can allow mistakes to happen. (This is probably a good discussion for a later post).
So R DYK resorts to nishtane hateva - an answer, which while answered by many rishonim, relies on evolution more extreme and more quick than any that has happened contemporarily and should be scientifically impossible. (Or, as R DYK calls it, “micro-evolution”.) Worse, its not going to convince anyone! If someone actually believes Chazal knew all science, he isn’t going to be bothered by a simple thing like a fact - he will just trust chazal. And if someone is bothered by a question, nishtane hateva - while a good answer in tosfos’s time1 - is not going to convince anyone contemporary.2
In contrast, we have Marty Bluke, who, if I may, as this gets me very upset - runs a blog called “A Jew With Stupid Questions.” I know your rebbeim said there is no such thing as a dumb question. They were wrong - they should have seen this blog. He generally takes Chazal as literally as possible, assuming they were (cha”v) illiterate idiots.
Here’s a question from him in the comments:
Do you think that eating rotting fish was ever a good idea?
אָמַר רַב אֲמַר לִי אַדָּא צַיָּידָא כְּוָורָא סָמוּךְ לְמִיסְרְחֵיהּ מְעַלֵּי
Now, if you look at Tosfos, he says Nishtane Hateva. Which is possibly a good answer for him. But Happy points out that this is not the only possible interpretation of that Gemara.
the Gemara never says eating rotting fish is a good idea, but rather eating fish before it rots. סָמוּךְ לְמִיסְרְחֵיהּ doesn't mean when it rots, but rather before it rots.
Instead of using Happy’s interpretation, Marty continues the line of questioning, because it cannot be that Tosfos were wrong! Instead, he assumes that Chazal were idiots who would never have noticed that eating something rotten makes you sick. That doesn’t mean that Chazal didn’t know science, it means that they were dumber than the earliest cavemen who said ooog and who figured out rotting food is bad - all just because Marty has a question. (Look at the exchange yourself).
Here are other questions from the blog:
He asks about the practical impossibility of Korban Pesach and Melika, ignoring the fact they were actually done - with eyewitness testimony to that fact by Josephus. Him and Simon Furst - no big believer - fight it out in the comments and Simon destroys him.
But this is the real whopper of a dumb question:
How many Jews were slaves in Egypt?
The Gemara in Sanhedrin (111) makes a startling statement about the numbers of Jews in Egypt. It says only 2 out of every 600,000 made it out, all the rest died. When you do the math (600,000 actually came out) it comes out to an unfamothable 180,000,000,000 (180 billion) Jews were slaves in Egypt. Given that the world population in 2017 is only 7.6 billion and the population only reached 1 billion in 1804 this number is so ridiculous it is silly.
I’m sorry, but this is just dumb. The Gemara goes through a few different shitos (1/5, 1/50, 1/500 etc). The fact that this number is expressed in equal growing fractions shows that this discussion is allegorical! It is clearly not meant to be taken literally. Does anyone think for a second that Chazal were having an archeological argument and all the numbers all just happened to be multiples of 5? It is ridiculous. And the purpose of that blog is to demonstrate internal questions on chazal and orthodox Judaism. If anyone actually thinks that this is a good question on Judaism’s validity, he is probably patur min hamitzvos in the first place.
This whole topic frustrates me. The OTD side seems to think that if Chazal didn’t know science, that means that Judaism isn’t true. Worse, they come up with convoluted ways to make Chazal look dumb even in situations they clearly weren’t. In contrast, the frum side thinks they have to have Chazal know not just science, but also pseudoscience, like Zamir Cohen-stuff or holistic medicine. This whole thing is unnecessary. Chazal were not neviim, not scientists, not diviners. They were talmidei chachamim. We don’t need to keep making things up to defend (or if you are an OTDer, attack) them.
UPDATE: as I was about to hit publish, R DYK posted a new post where he explained and doubled down on his Chazal belief. You should read it.
I think all of what I wrote is still valid, but I do think R DYK helped me understand one thing. He writes:
When it comes to medical treatments and remedies for illnesses, I think it makes no sense for Chazal to accept something—and then publish it in the Talmud—if they could have easily found out that it is in fact useless—let alone harmful—by doing a little checking first.
It really pushes the limits of credulity to suggest that Chazal were so deeply influenced by the “science of their times” that they couldn’t eke out a little independence of thought and skepticism to first try and see if something works—in their own times and circumstances—before they recommended it. Nope, they just went along with every primitive and superstitious belief and practice even though it was easily verifiably false.
This was my euraka moment. You see, R DYK is a pretty intelligent guy. He was the Happy before Happy. Why was he so insistent on this Chazal being always right about science stuff (something Happy has no issue conceding)? This paragraph helped me figure it out.
You see, R DYK is a (I am slightly exaggerating) holistic antivaxxer hippie essential oil medicine believer. He thinks that scientists are wrong when it comes to common descent, that big pharma is out to kill everyone, and that COVID19 was a conspiracy by Bill Gates to inject us all with MRNA to nishtane hateva us all. He is in short, a skeptic of modern science and medicine.3
Thus it is unfathomable to him that Chazal would take the Chazal-era ‘scientist’ equivalent of their time at face value. It would be the height of disrespect for him to think Chazal were unskeptical. If nowadays, medicine is a farce and he can see through it, al achas kama vekama could Chazal see through their ridiculous Chazal-era science cures. Chazal must have done ‘research’. Thus, the cures brought down in the Gemara must have worked, as Chazal would not have blindly trusted ‘the experts’.
In contrast, I, Ash, am a gullible science believer to a fault. I tend to believe wholeheartedly every mainstream consensus theory. The following are all true: I believe global warming is real, I think that the 2020 election was not stolen, I think that common descent and evolution is true, outlandish as that may seem. I personally was vaccinated THREE TIMES for COVID19. (I don’t know how I am still alive). I believe that lockdowns were a decent first response for COVID - though they should have ended once it was realized they didn’t help - and I still think wearing masks was a good idea. I also actually thought Biden was not senile - something that was clearly wrong in retrospect. (And I now think Trump is). In short, I tend to trust expert opinion on most things.
Thus, for me, it is the height of disrespect for me to think Chazal were skeptical. Surely, they were like me, trusting expert opinion and the science of their time, which nowadays we know sucked. But back then that was the right thing to do. Thus for me, saying Chazal ‘trusted the science’ actually increases their respect in my eyes, far more than saying they knew holistic medicine.
And that is the crux of the disagreement between R DYK and me.
Related posts:
The teva changed and Tosfos’s answer was once good but now its not
To be fair it is far far better, and far more intelligent - R DYK is an intelligent guy, even If I am blasting him here - than “Afrum Rabbi” who actually says in the comments, quote: “The physical science is just a circumstantial manifestation of essential truths and does not have to be effective at all times and place, and could be dependent upon other factors.” - i.e, the science changes by the minute do to the changing truths, as I understand that sentence. Although I think he is actually trying to say that Chazal were using the contemporaneous scientific understanding to teach a different, essential deeper truth, he gets stuck on that he doesn’t want to say Chazal were actually mistaken, so he keeps using different, convoluted “outs” that fail. Look at the full comment section there. This of course ends up ruining the true gadlus of the Maharal as an answer.
This has nothing to do with intelligence. My cousin is antivaxxer and he’s probably the smartest person I know (except that he’s an antivaxxer).
From what I understand, I think the consensus is that, before the modern era, folk medicine based on tradition was very much superior to elite medicine based on quasi-scientific theory. It worked a bit better, but mostly it was much less likely to kill you. The 'trust the experts' shittah was actually wrong for most of history.
“He’s probably patur min hamitzvos in the first place”
I’m using that 😂