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From: smb@ulysses.UUCP (Steven Bellovin)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: Fence around the Torah
Message-ID: <786@ulysses.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 27-Feb-84 22:43:28 EST
Article-I.D.: ulysses.786
Posted: Mon Feb 27 22:43:28 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 28-Feb-84 14:29:02 EST
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Andy, I think you're deliberately misusing John's phrase "a fence around
the Torah".  Surely you know what the rabbis mean by that!  (And I assume
that John does, since he used quotation marks.)

For those who don't know, the phrase refers to the philosphical principle
the rabbis followed when compiling the detailed rules of behavior.  Their
attitude was that it is absolutely essential to prevent any of the explicit
commandments in the Torah from being broken; thus, they promulgated rules
that went considerably further, to guard against ambiguity, accident, etc.
If you followed their rules, you were *safe*.  The best example I can give
of this is the origin of the prohibition against eating milk with meat.
The Biblical verse cited says (approximately) "thou shalt not cook a kid
in its mother's milk".  Well, OK, clear enough -- but how are you to know?
Ah, but if you don't eat *any* milk product with *any* meat product you're
sure to avoid an inadvertent violation.  Well, what about chicken?  No
milk to worry about there....  (When I related this to Byron Howes (unc!bch)
once, he replied "what about eating eggs with chicken?"  I don't have an
answer to that one.)  Although this was the subject of much debate in
Talmudic times, the decision finally reached was that chicken was "too
close" to meat, and that permitting chicken to be eaten with milk might
confuse people.

Given this, the fence might be "too high" (or, more accurately, too far
out) if the rabbinic laws are far too strict.  According to Orthodox
traditions, the "right" interpretation is covered in the Oral Law, which
was handed down to Moses at the same time as the Torah, and passed down
through the generations.  This seems unlikely, especially given the recorded
debates on many of these topics presented in the Talmud.  Surely Rabbis
Hillel and Shammai couldn't have heard *that* different versions of the Oral
Law.....  (Hillel was what one might call a liberal; Shammai was a strict
constructionist.)


		--Steve Bellovin