Talmudic Reasoning: From Casuistics to Conceptualization (review)

The actual scope of Professor Moscovitz's book is far narrower than the title might lead one to believe, while its significance for our understanding of the history of both rabbinic literature and rabbinic culture is far greater than would appear from his rather modest conclusions. Moscovitz freely admits at the outset that "the present work does not consider all phenomena in rabbinic literature which may formally be defined as concepts" (p. 5). Rather, it "is generally more concerned with metaphysical concepts such as causation and potentiality than with mundane, physical concepts such as doors and spoons (although we discuss concepts of this sort where relevant.)" Though most talmudic reasoning admittedly deals constantly, and almost exclusively, with such "mundane" issues, Moscovitz's eye is always gazing toward the horizon—looking beyond the particular to the universal, beyond the concrete to the abstract. He is self-

consciously investigating the origins of a certain kind of broad and abstract legal thinking, which he sometimes calls "metaphysical" or "ontological," elsewhere "significant" and "sophisticated." Most importantly, he wants to analyze the roots of those forms of reasoning that display "creativity," which he defines as entailing "the association of disparate and unrelated notions: the more unanticipated and surprizing the association, the more creative the idea of conjoining the notions" (p. 9). Throughout his work Moscovitz employs the term "conceptualization," without any further qualification, to refer to this kind of synthetic and creative intellectual process. It is in this specific and limited sense that the title Talmudic Reasoning should be understood.

At the same time—perhaps as a result of this somewhat artificial delimitation of the notion of rabbinic conceptualization—Moscovitz's actual claims for the role of conceptualization in the history of rabbinic law are quite modest, indeed overly modest. Toward the end of his work Moscovitz concludes: "the impact of rabbinic conceptualization was rather limited. Due to the generally dialectical character and explanatory function of rabbinic conceptualization, the influence of rabbinic legal principles on the history of the halakhah, on actual legal prescription and adjudication was relatively restricted . . . The principle impact of conceptualization, at least explicit post-tannaitic conceptualization, seems to have been literary and didactic" (p. 364). The casual reader might therefore be puzzled why one would dedicate such a brilliant and exhaustive work of meticulous and critically informed talmudic scholarship to what would seem to be a topic of only peripheral interest. Moscovitz, however, does not leave the reader either in suspense or in doubt as to his motivations. He continues: "Nevertheless, rabbinic conceptualization might have had a delayed impact, which finds expression in a later period. Certain post-talmudic commentators, especially the members of the so-called analytic school of traditional Talmud study, adopted a conceptualist approach to the study of Jewish law which shares important features with some of the more sophisticated types of rabbinic conceptualization. Indeed, for many traditional students of the Talmud today the principle focus of Talmud study is the conceptualized Talmud." With these concluding remarks, Moscovitz returns to a theme which he emphasized in his introduction to the work: "The analysis of rabbinic conceptualization also has important ramifications for the study of post-talmudic legal thought. Similar modes of conceptualization are occasionally found . . . especially in the so-called analytic school of Talmud study established by R. Chaim Soloveitchik of Brisk, which raised legal conceptualization to heights hitherto unattested and perhaps unimagined" (p. 11).

Thus, while Moscovitz's work is rigorously historical and critical in execution, it is at the same time thoroughly modernist in conception. That is to say, its overall plan, and the list of issues to be included (and excluded) in it, are dictated primarily by a contemporary agenda: the mode of conceptual Talmud study practiced in the Brisk school of Talmud study, established by R. Chaim Soloveitchik and continued into the late twentieth century by (among others) his grandson R. Joseph Soloveitchik and his disciples. Despite the common phrase "modernist fallacy," a modernist bias is not...