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There's a famous Jewish story about four Jewish sages disagreeing about something and one of them calling out to God to confirm he's right, and the voice of God
by smsm42 6y ago
There's a famous Jewish story about four Jewish sages disagreeing about something and one of them calling out to God to confirm he's right, and the voice of God actually booming from heaven and saying "yes, so and so is right!". The remaining sages retort "well, there's still three against two". The canonical meaning of this is that the sages in the majority actually were acting correctly. So the rule lawyering is not a bug, it's how it's meant to work :)
- Smaug123 6y agoI have a horrible feeling I'm Jew-splaining here, but I absolutely love the story and want to give more context for people who don't know it. Your anecdote is the last in a series, describing a debate between Rabbis Eliezer and Joshua about the kosher status of the Oven of Akhnai (a clay oven which had been ritually polluted through proximity with a corpse, but was then broken up and remade). The first anecdote has Eliezer saying, "If I'm right, let that carob tree get up and move over there!". The tree did indeed uproot itself and move a substantial distance. His interlocutor retorted "pah, what does a tree know?". In the last anecdote as you describe, Eliezer calls out to God to back him up, and indeed God booms forth, but Joshua replies, "it [the Jewish law] is not in heaven". That is, human law is for humans to interpret, not God. It amounts to an effective way to protect the system from wholesale change by new prophets who claim to be conveying the word of God. All cribbed from David Friedman's _Legal Systems Very Different From Ours_, an absolutely fascinating book which I strongly recommend.
- smsm42 6y agoI second the recommendation.