This short excerpt from HaRav Ginsburgh’s weekly shiur on Bava Kama explores some basic principles regarding the Mishnah, the central work of the Torah’s Oral tradition. This exploration leads to a discussion of an oft quoted phrase from a verse, “Yagdil Torah VeYa’adir.” This phrase is said just before the Rabbinic Kaddish (Kadish DeRabanan) and is used contemporaneously to refer to an innovation in Torah that might appear to be superfluous.
The full class first appeared in Hebrew in the Bamidbar 5786 issue of Nifla’ot.
The Mishnah As Torah Commentary
The Mishnah at the beginning of tractate Bava Kamma states:
There are four primary categories of damage: the ox, the pit, the grazing animal, and the fire. The case of the ox is not like the case of the grazing animal, and the case of the grazing animal is not like the case of the ox. And neither of these—which possess a living spirit—is like the case of fire, which does not possess a living spirit. And neither of these—which tend to move about and cause damage—is like the case of the pit, which does not move about and cause damage.
Rashi explains that the entire lengthy comparison in the Mishnah—“the case of… is not like the case of…”—serves to explain why all four categories (ox, pit, grazing animal, and fire) had to be written explicitly in the Torah. Because the one cannot be derived from the others. This is likewise reflected in the Talmudic discussion that follows the mishnah:
“The case of the ox is not like the case of the grazing animal.” What is he [the author of the Mishnah] saying? Rav Zvid said in the name of Rava: He is saying: Let the Torah write only one [category of damage], and the other [category] should be derived from it! Indeed, it [the mishnah] concludes that one cannot be derived from the other.
It follows that the Mishnah elaborated solely to provide a reason why the primary categories had to be written in the Torah.
What we learn from this is that the Mishnah—the primary text documenting the Oral Torah—is not merely a collection of laws passed down from generation to generation, but also a commentary on the Written Torah. From the Kabbalistic perspective, the Oral Torah is associated with the sefirah of kingdom (malchut), as the Tikkunei Zohar states, “kingdom is the mouth, that is why we call it the Oral Torah.”[1] But kingdom contains two aspects referred to by the two names: Zion and Jerusalem. Zion refers to the foundation of kingdom, the foundation [i.e., the reproductive organs, as it were, of the] feminine principle (יְסוֹד נוּקְבָא) and Jerusalem refers to the kingdom of kingdom. Now the verse states that, “For out of Zion shall go forth Torah, and the word of God from Jerusalem.”[2] The first part, “out of Zion shall go forth Torah” refers to the Written Torah’s interpretation; the second part, “and the word of God from Jerusalem” refers to halachah, based on the rabbinic statement that “the word of God,” alludes to halachah. These two aspects of kingdom, Zion and Jerusalem, also correspond to Benjamin (and his tribe), the lower tzaddik (the point of Zion), and to Judah, for Judah merits "to establish the halakhic ruling.”[3] The primary example of the connection between Judah, kingdom, and the Torah’s laws is King David (a descendant of Judah) about whom it is said, “and God was with him,”[4] meaning that “the legal ruling follows his opinion always.”[5]
“For Their Separate Laws”
However, the conclusion of the discussion in the Talmud (5b) reads: “Rava said: If you place ‘pit’ among all of them, all of them can be derived through the common denominator argument… So for what purpose did the Torah write them all? For their separate laws….” After all is said and done, the Talmud concludes that it is in fact possible to derive one category of damage from another (from the pit combined with another primary category, all the rest can be derived through the common denominator, as explained there). The reason all of them were nevertheless written in the Torah is “for their separate laws,” meaning, to instruct us regarding the particular laws unique to each primary category of damage.
According to this conclusion, it turns out, then, that the entire elaboration of the mishnah was unnecessary altogether and the distinctions between the categories are not the true explanation for why all the categories were explicitly listed in the Torah! Following this conclusion, the Tosafot (2a, s.v. ve-lo zeh) write that: “The Tanna [the author of the mishnah] elaborated in length in order to ‘magnify the Torah and make it glorious.’” Similarly, the Tosafot later (5b, s.v. le-halkhotehem) wrote: “The Mishnah taught this only ‘to magnify the Torah and make it glorious.’”
“Magnify the Torah”—Yagdil Torah VeYa’adir
In their statement, “to magnify the Torah and make it glorious,” the Tosafot are alluding to the Talmudic discussion appearing in Chullin (66b) and in Niddah (51b) regarding the signs of a kosher fish: “Whatever has scales also has fins… [If so,] the Torah should have [only] written ‘scales,’ but not mentioned ‘fins.’ Rabbi Abbahu said, and likewise it was taught in the academy of Rabbi Yishmael, [the Torah elaborated and wrote both signs]: ‘To magnify the Torah and make it glorious.’” If even the the Torah itself contains apparent redundancies whose purpose is ‘to magnifying and glorify it,’ all the more so that this might be said of the wording appearing in a mishnah.
Offering a bit of a different approach is the Shelah who wrote[6]: “Even though [the lengthy elaboration in the mishnah] seems to be superfluous and irrelevant to the subject, nevertheless something can be learned from it [the elaboration] elsewhere [i.e., in a different context].” The Shelah’s explanation is sometimes referred to using the idiom, “the words of Torah may appear impoverished [i.e., seemingly without purpose] in their own place, yet are enriching in another place.”[7]
Three Aspects of “Magnify the Torah”
Apart from our mishnah, which we have learnt is in its entirety written elaborately on account of the principle, “magnify the Torah and make it glorious,” the verse itself (“Magnify the Torah and make it glorious) appears only once in the entire Mishnah. This is at the conclusion of tractate Makkot, where the mishnah reads: “Rabbi Chananyah ben Akashya says: The Holy Blessed One wished to grant merit to Israel; therefore, He gave them Torah and commandments in abundance, as it is said: ‘God desired, for the sake of His righteousness, to magnify the Torah and make it glorious.’”
The Bartenura explains: “’Therefore He gave them Torah and commandments in abundance’—for example, the Torah passage forbidding us from eating creeping and crawling creatures, even though without the prohibition no one would have eaten them anyway, since a person is naturally repulsed by them, [God included this passage] in order to increase [the Jewish people’s] reward when they abstain from eating them. [This is] ‘for the sake of His righteousness’—to vindicate the Jewish people and grant them merit.”
This mishnah from the end of Makkot is customarily recited before the Rabbinical Kaddish,[8] and is considered a unifier of law (halakha) and homiletic insights (aggadah).[9]
As we saw earlier, in the Talmud, the concept of “magnify the Torah and make it glorious” is cited in connection with the signs of a kosher fish.
We thus find that there are three instances in which this principle is mentioned explicitly, twice regarding a passage from the Pentateuch itself and once regarding a rabbinic teaching in the Mishnah. Each of these instances reveals a different aspect and application of the principle.
The principle, “magnify the Torah and make it glorious” can be applied to when the Torah adds a word or subject in a place where it could have been understood independently, just from our knowledge of reality. This is regarding the fact that all that has scales also has fins. Another aspect of the principle is revealed when the Torah seems to dictate commandments that one would not have transgressed anyway, solely to increase our reward (creeping and crawling creatures). A third aspect of the principle, “magnify the Torah and make it glorious” applies to a lengthy passage in the Mishnah that appears purely for the sake of focusing the dialectical discourse, as we saw regarding the first mishnah of Bava Kama (the case of this is not like the case of that, etc.).
These three aspects of the principle correspond to two well-known models used in Chasidic thought. The first is the division of the sefirot into habitual, or natural (victory-acknowledgment-foundation), emotional (loving-kindness-might-beauty), and intellectual (wisdom-understanding-knowledge).[10]
The first aspect belongs specifically to one who is well-versed in the wisdom of nature. This corresponds to the natural/habitual realm of the human psyche.
The second aspect stems from the human psychology which is naturally tends to perform some of the Torah’s commandments. This aspect corresponds to the emotional realm of the human psyche.
Finally, the third aspect is applied to sharpen the intellect, as mentioned above, and thus corresponds to the intellectual realm in the human psyche.
[1] Introduction to Tikkunei Zohar, 17a.
[2] Isaiah 2:3.
[3] Based on Sotah 21a; Bava Kamma 92a.
[4] 1 Samuel 16:18; 18:14.
[5] Sanhedrin 93b; Bamidbar Rabbah 13:1.
[6]. Klalei HaTalmud 386-387.
[7] Jerusalem Talmud Rosh HaShanah 3:5. See also the 32 Principles of Torah Study, principle 17 (can usually be found in the preface to Midrash Rabbah as well as the preface to Ein Yaakov).
[8] . Shulchan Aruch of the Alter Rebbe, 54:4.
[9] . The sum of these two words, “law” (הֲלָכָה) and “homiletic insights” (אַגָּדָה) is the same as the value of “wisdom” (חָכְמָה). Moreover, when the letters of the “homiletic insights” (אַגָּדָה) are multiplied by one another, i.e., 1 times 3 times 4 times 5, the product is 60, the same as the numerical value of “law” (הֲלָכָה).
[10] For a more in-depth look at this model, see our volume, What You Need to Know About Kabbalah and search for it on our website www.inner.org.
