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Shas Man – By Rabbi Pinchas Winston
MY ROSH YESHIVAH slowly leaned onto his desk in our direction. He had this glint in his eyes, and asked us rather provocatively, “Are you a Shas Man? Eh? Who’s going to be the first one of you to learn through the entire Talmud?”
He spoke with a New York accent, though we sat in his office in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, a long way from the States. He smiled as he spoke. We smiled as he spoke, but we also squirmed at the same time. The Rosh Yeshivah had a way of talking right to your heart, of lighting a fire under you, and we felt the heat.
He had inspired a lot of people over the years to do great things. You didn’t have to believe in yourself. You just had to know that the Rosh Yeshivah believed in you. But the entire Talmud? In a single lifetime? We were struggling just to make a laining, just to read the text and understand it!
At that stage of our learning development, just a quarter page of gemora could take us hours to understand. Wouldn’t learning 2,700 plus folio pages take at least several lifetimes? However, the Rosh Yeshivah believed we could do it, and continued to encourage us. Eventually, some of us actually “capitulated” and made it a goal.
In essence, each page of gemora is really just point form. Many words require an explanation from Rashi, the main commentator on the Talmud. Many statements are often only understood after being learning Tosafos, another commentator on the page.
And it doesn’t usually stop there. Quite often, the gemora, Rashi, and Tosafos, are only properly understood after seeing the explanations of later commentators, who may require even later commentators to explain what they have written. It is not called the “Sea of Talmud” for no reason.
What we generally refer to as Torah encompasses both a written section called Torah sh’b’ksav—Written Torah—and one called Torah sh’b’al peh, literally “Torah of the Mouth.” The former is called Chamishah Chumshai Torah—the Five Books of Torah, or the Five Books of Moshe. The latter is called the Oral Law, and without it, it would be impossible to understand most of the Written Law.
Regarding the importance and centrality of Torah sh’b’al peh, the Talmud states:
The Holy One, Blessed is He, only made a covenant with the Jewish people because of the Oral Law, as it says, “For it is according to these words that I have made a covenant with you and with the Jewish people” (Shemos 34:27). (Gittin 60b)
The Oral Law not only assists us to understand the Written Law, but it is the very basis and symbol of the unique relationship that the Jewish people have with God.
There are fundamental differences between the Written Law and the Oral Law. First of all, when it comes to the Written Law, what we have is what we got. Moshe Rabbeinu received the entire Written Law from God, book-by-book, word-by-word, letter-by-letter:
Yehoshua wrote the book which bears his name and the last eight verses of the Torah. This statement agrees with the authority who says that [the last] eight verses in the Torah were written by Yehoshua, as it is taught: “‘Moshe, the servant of God, died there’ (Devarim 34:5), [and] is it possible that Moshe, being dead, could have written, ‘Moshe…died there’? (Bava Basra 15a)
How can Toras Emes, the Torah of Truth, have a falsehood? Moshe Rabbeinu was alive when he wrote that he had died! Therefore:
Up to this point Moshe wrote it, and from that point, Yehoshua wrote it.” This is the opinion of Rebi Yehudah, or according to others, of Rebi Nechemiah. Rebi Shimon to him: “Can it be that the Torah is missing even one word [written by Moshe]? Is it not written, ‘Take this book of the Law?’ (Devarim 31:26)?
This verse was said before Moshe Rabbeinu died, the implication being that he received the entire Torah prior to his death, including the last eight verses. Rather:
To this point The Holy One, Blessed Is He, dictated [the Torah] and Moshe repeated and [happily] wrote [it down]. From this point [onward] God dictated [the rest of the Torah] and Moshe wrote it down with a tear in his eye.” (Bava Basra 15a)
Thus, Moshe Rabbeinu wrote every word of the Torah, including those describing his death, albeit sadly. What about the falsehood? Many commentators show how the word “died” can be used to refer to different kinds of death.
That was the Written Law. What about the oral one that has clearly expanded greatly since the death of the Moshe Rabbeinu? This answers that question:
These are the statutes, the judgments, and the Toros that God gave, between Himself and the Children of Israel, on Mt. Sinai through Moshe. (Vayikra 26:46)
And the Toros: A Written Torah and an Oral Torah, teaching us that all of it was given to Moshe on Sinai (Toras Kohanim 26:54). (Rashi)
and this:
God gave me the two stone tablets inscribed with the finger of God. And upon them was [it written] according to all the words that God declared to you on the mountain out of the fire, on the Day of Assembly. (Devarim 9:10)
Rebi Yehoshua ben Levi said: The text does not say, “upon them,” but “and upon them,” not “words” but “the words,” not “all,” but “according to all.” These extra words allude to Torah, Mishnah, Talmud and Aggadah. Even what a learned student was destined to rule before his teacher was already told to Moshe at Sinai. (Yerushalmi, Megillah 28a)
However, if God told Moshe Rabbeinu that it is forbidden to turn on a light bulb on Shabbos, he didn’t write it down or tell it to anyone else in his time. Nor did Moshe Rabbeinu leave instructions regarding advanced medical procedures according to halachah. Even had he tried, who would have understood what he was talking about?
But does it really matter? Though the principles of Torah sh’b’al peh, like Torah sh’b’ksav, were fixed in the time of Moshe Rabbeinu and cannot be changed, they can be applied in every generation. Even as technology rapidly advances, everything created and modified is always within a world for which the Torah was the blueprint, as it says:
There is nothing new under the sun. (Koheles 1:9)
Thus, though the principles of Torah never change, its application over the ages has incredibly expanded the body of Torah sh’b’al peh. As Jewish history marches forward, it constantly places the Jew in new and sometimes even unusual situations. This causes the poskim in each generation to decide when and how Torah principles apply given the new set of circumstances.
In the beginning, the Oral Law was, in fact, oral only. Teachers and students had their own notebooks to help keep track of what to teach and what was learned, but it was not a scroll like the Written Law that could be picked up and read. It had to be verbally taught, something that was only possible if one went to “drink” where the stream of Torah tradition flowed.
However, persecution and exile during Roman times interrupted Torah transmission, which needs to be precise. This compelled Rebi Yehudah Hanasi, known as Rebi, to break with tradition in the year 186 CE, and begin the arduous task of collecting all known oral teachings, to record them. This resulted in what is called Mishnah—the Oral Law in concise written form.
In order to maintain some aspect of its oral integrity, Rebi left the Mishnah in “point form.” This was to assure investigation and discussion for a student to arrive at the correct conclusion and halachah. Those who memorized the mishnayos would repeat them in the Bais Midrash as was relevant to the discussion, and the chachamim would then discuss them.
But over the centuries, the exile deepened and persecution intensified, until even the Mishnah was no longer enough to guarantee the survival of Torah. Therefore, Rav Ashi in 499 CE continued the emergency measures taken by his predecessor 300 years earlier, and recorded the discussions of the Mishnah in written form as well. This became the Babylonian Talmud, or Talmud Bavli.
The truth is, an earlier version of Talmud had already existed by 350 CE in Eretz Yisroel called the Talmud Yerushalmi, the Jerusalem Talmud. But it is the Bavli, which tends to be less terse than the Yerushalmi, that has become the most prominent Talmud over time, studied in yeshivos around the world to this very day.
Unlike the Mishnah, which is mostly halachah, the Talmud contains much more than just explanations of the Mishnah and halachic applications. It also records a lot of historical information, as well as many stories—called Aggadata—used for transmitting hashkofic concepts.
Rav Ashi, like Rebi before him, also maintained some of the integrity of the Oral Law, even in written form. This is why a single sugya, which can cover just a few lines, requires much thought and usually help from some of the earlier commentators, especially as we move further away in time from the giving of Torah.
Hence, though the Bavli may only occupy one shelf in the average Torah library, the rest of the shelves around the room are usually filled to capacity with commentaries on it. To learn the entire Talmud is to merely “see” 2700 plus folio pages; to know the entire Talmud is to also know the hundreds of seforim in the library as well.
That is what it truly means to be a Shas Man:
“Rebi! Rebi!” the excited student called out to his teacher. “I just went through the entire Talmud!”
“Perhaps,” the teacher answered with the wisdom of generations past, “But did Shas go through you?”
