It is "common knowledge" that all of Halakhah was given at Sinai but also that great scholars in each generation add to the received Halakhah. Similarly, it is "common knowledge" that Halakhah is compatible with the highest ethical standards but also that no ethical standards exist other than those defined by Halakhah. Although the tension inherent in each of these pairs of statements is rarely made explicit, it lurks uneasily in the back of every serious student's mind. Or at least it should. Nevertheless, the search for answers to questions concerning the nature of Halakhah itself -- what I am calling "meta-Halakhah" -- often goes unrewarded. The classical works which discuss such matters often appear forbidding and, for better or worse, tend to sound dogmatic to the modern ear. Modern apologetic texts tend to be not at all forbidding but doubly dogmatic (more out of caution than conviction). And scholarly works are typically content to dispassionately enumerate and organize the "well-known" solutions to each problem without showing the slightest indication of real engagement with the problem itself. Jargon abounds.
In this essay, I attempt a fresh look at the most basic meta-Halakhic problems. My main interest is to provide a unifying framework which incorporates and reconciles the many disparate trends within meta-Halakhic thought. Consequently, I do not dodge hard questions by ascribing conflicting views to different schools of thought. Regarding fundamental questions, it is preferable to find a common underlying framework broad enough to subsume disparate prevailing views. This essay is "unscholarly" in other ways as well. Although I cite relevant meta-Halakhic Talmudic statements in support of my theory, I do not subject the texts of these statements to philological or historical scrutiny since these texts are not in themselves the subject of this essay. Moreover, I do not question whether the historical content of these statements is meant to be, or can be, taken seriously as history, since I am interested more in how the Rabbis understood the development of Halakhah than in reconstructing historical events. The methodological contribution of this essay to the ongoing discussion of meta-Halakhic issues lies in the use of certain concepts borrowed from mathematical logic. These concepts facilitate a more precise formulation of certain meta-Halakhic problems and consequently also point the way to the solutions to these problems.
Having said that, I feel compelled to issue several disclaimers. First, the use of modern concepts in order to explain ideas expressed by ancient sages does not imply the anachronistic notion that the ancients were in conscious possession of these ideas any more than the use of differential equations to explain flight implies that birds can solve differential equations. Moreover, I am not suggesting that the concepts borrowed from mathematical logic are necessary for an understanding of the meta-Halakhic issues I am trying to explain. Since I find these concepts interesting and intuitive, they serve for me as useful analogies and metaphors. Others may have a sufficiently well-developed intuition for Halakhah itself that the analogy with mathematical logic does more harm than good. Finally, I want to dispel at the outset any notion that by invoking mathematical logic I am promoting a technocratic view of Halakhah as some kind of grandiose computer program. In fact, one of the main purposes of this book is to repudiate this view. Thus, the ideas I will be borrowing from logic -- in fact, these have been the central ideas of logic over the past sixty years -- concern not the power of formal systems but rather the limitations of such systems.
The book is divided into three parts. In the first part, I show that the meta-Halakhic problems mentioned above are special cases of the "problem of autonomy". I use the theory of computation to show that (at least the formal aspect of) this problem is illusory and arises from the erroneous conflation of two distinct concepts: definability and computability. Finally, I demonstrate how this same distinction can be used to reconcile apparent contradictions concerning the origin and development of Halakhah. In the second part, I consider in detail a somewhat idealized view of the various early stages of the development of Halakhah. In particular, I argue that each stage in this development might best be understood as a more formal and less intuitive version of the previous one. In this context, I consider the significance of Halakhic disputes and contrast their proliferation and resolution with related phenomena in evolutionary systems. Finally, I consider some important ideas concerning the development of Halakhah which are implicit in the Rambam's works. In the third part, I show how the same formal concepts used to handle the problem of the origins of Halakhah, can be used to firm up certain ideas in existential psychology which can, in turn, be used to shed light on the problem of the purposes of Halakhah. I then consider some of the logical problems concerning the formulation of "principles of faith" and propose a unifying theme that underlies the various formulations of these principles. Finally, I consider some applications of the ideas raised here to the current state of Halakhah.
The present volume, Meta-Halakhah: Logic, Intuition and the Unfolding of Jewish Law, by Dr. Moshe Koppel, is, to my knowledge, the first attempt by a Talmudist-mathematician to understand the development of Halakhah from the point of view of mathematical logic. This is a pioneering effort to apply the insights of a complex and often arcane discipline to the understanding of Torah. As such, it is an engaging volume, and can be followed even by those with no background in mathematics or logic but with a healthy curiosity as to how scientific thinking can be harnessed in the service of Torah.-Norman Lamm