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January 21, 2011 5:50 pm at 5:50 pm #594386alwayswonderingParticipant
Is there any concrete proof that everything the Meforshim and Mussar Seforim say is directly from the Torah? Can we live our lives based on the ethics we glean from their writings if we are not sure they are directly from Hashem/the Torah?
January 21, 2011 6:13 pm at 6:13 pm #730503WolfishMusingsParticipantThis ought to be interesting…
I’m going to hold back for a bit and see what develops.
The Wolf
January 21, 2011 6:13 pm at 6:13 pm #730504watermelonMemberWidely accepted seforim are verifiable.Others require verification(example:Women and Kabbalah)
January 21, 2011 6:28 pm at 6:28 pm #730505alwayswonderingParticipantI know Rashi (for example) is right. Its true he was way smarter and had a better grasp on Torah and what Hashem wanted than we can ever imagine. But I want to know with definitiveness that what he said is 100% directly from Hashem.
January 21, 2011 6:57 pm at 6:57 pm #730506☕️coffee addictParticipantyoure 1 step away from being a tzadoki
January 21, 2011 7:22 pm at 7:22 pm #730507hudiParticipantIt’s very likely that the earlier meforshim had some kind of ruach hakodesh. (This is definitely true of Rashi)The more modern meforshim and mussar sefarim based their hashkafah on the earlier meforshim.
Either way, shiv’im panim l’torah. Torah doesn’t only exist for people to follow. It’s there to be discussed and questioned.
Even if there isn’t any “concrete proof”, there is proof enough that they are ethics we should follow because these people represented Torah and lived through torah in all aspects of their lives. Therefore, we can assume their ethics are the torah’s ethics as well.
January 21, 2011 7:41 pm at 7:41 pm #730508charliehallParticipant“Is there any concrete proof that everything the Meforshim and Mussar Seforim say is directly from the Torah? “
No.
In fact, one can seriously argue that there is disproof because different Meforshim often explictly and emphatically disagree with one another. For example Rashi and Ramban can’t both be right about the sequence of the Torah narrative.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t take all of them seriously, even the inconvenient ones.
January 21, 2011 8:05 pm at 8:05 pm #730509ItcheSrulikMembermbachur: define tzadoki and say what the step is. If the OP is one step away from a tzadoki, you’re one step away from a Bandersnatch.
charliehall: I second that 100%. We can take it slightly further and point to the fact that according to some Rishonim (e.g. RaMBaM) others (e.g. Raavad, Radbaz, many baalei tosfos, practically all mekubalim) would be heretics.
January 21, 2011 8:20 pm at 8:20 pm #730510oomisParticipantNo there is no concrete proof, as such. There is emunah that what they said was Divinely inspired. But as was pointed out there are shivim panim laTorah and two meforshim who are diametrically opposed to each other cannot both be correct, if one says black and the other says white. The idea is what lessons we learn from their peirushim, not whether or not those peirushim are the absolute emes, because their is an emesdigkeit in their meaning, if not a factual accuracy. So it doesn’t matter to me whether Odom and Chava ate an esrog, a piece of wheat, a grape, or whatever the Eitz Hadaas was, as is argued amongst the meforshim. What matters is the global truth that Man can be given everything under the sun by the R”SHO, so what possible reason could he have for taking the one and only thing that is forbidden to him? Why is the Yetzer Hara that strong ?
January 21, 2011 8:23 pm at 8:23 pm #730511truth be toldMemberWho was it who said: To the one who believes, there are no questions (of this sort); to the non-believer, no answer will ever suffice.
Would you trust the Beis Yosef, the auther of the Shulchan Oruch as being honest? He transcribed many conversations he had with a malach/magid in a book/sefer called Magid Maishorim. He mentions that the angel told him to learn Chovas Halvovos every day for his yiras shomayim. Is that a good enough approbation? To a believer in G-d’s Torah, yes!
(If you’re reffering to every new sefer published, then true, if the auther hasnt stood the test of time, it may be not be true.. The ones who stood the test of time…)
January 21, 2011 8:29 pm at 8:29 pm #730512truth be toldMemberSacridlge: are you calling this one?
January 21, 2011 8:54 pm at 8:54 pm #730513chayav inish livisumayParticipantalwayswondering- stop wondering
January 22, 2011 5:06 pm at 5:06 pm #730514Derech HaMelechMemberI agree with hudi. We might not be able to point to every single ethic and say with certainty that this was derived from that posuk or was passed down through this chain, but we know that the Rishonim were completely immersed in Torah. If we hear stories of later achronim who wouldn’t lift a pinky without some kavanh l’shem shamayim how much more so the earlier generations.
Also, I guess unsurprisingly, I disagree with charliehall and ItcheSrulik. Just because different meforshim disagree with each other and perhaps sometimes their opinions are mutually exclusive- doesn’t mean that one is wrong and one is right. Eilu v’Eilu divrei Elokim Chaim- ie. the machlokes on chanuka lighting with Beis Hillel and Beis Shammai. We know that both are right and generally it is only because we can’t understand Beis Shammai because his understanding was on too high a level that we don’t abide by his opinion now.
Similarly, I once showed my Rosh Kollel in the Shomrei Emunim HaKadmon where he brings that at the end of the Rambam’s life he finally learned kabbalah and said that if he would have learned this before he wrote his seforim he would have changed certain things. My Rosh Kollel told me that this means we are left with a machlokes on the Rambam against the Rambam- and not that his first opinion on the subjects were void.
January 22, 2011 5:11 pm at 5:11 pm #730515Derech HaMelechMemberAlso the speeches by Rav Keleman on SimpleToRemember.com on these types of topics are really great.
January 22, 2011 11:49 pm at 11:49 pm #730516OfcourseMemberHow can you prove to a non-believer that Krias Yam Suf really happened any more convincingly than proving J_ _ _ _ was a child of _ _ _? Answering that anything that has been handed down from generation to generation all these years has to be true, could be an answer to the question of “How do we know that J_ _ _ _ was a child of _ _ _?”.
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