From: hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Subject: Re: Facts and Opinions: Insights on American Jewish Thinking(?)
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department
Date: Sun, 23 Aug 1992 20:21:04 GMT

In article <1992Aug23.061838.14163@intacc.uucp> lazer@intacc.uucp (Lazer Danzinger) writes:
>Herman Rubin writes:

>>The recodifying has not been done by anybody.  The last recodification
>>of a code of ritual and taboo was done in the Shulkhan Arukh, which does
>>not, except peripherally, discuss the bases of the rules.  

>	I beg to differ. Some notable recodifications include the
>	Aruch HaShulchan and the the Shulchan Aruch HaRav.
>	As works of codification, there objective is not to document
>	the Halachic process of at arriving at the law, but to simply
>	explain what the law is.

I was explicitly mentioning this codification.  But the point which many
have made, from the prophets on, is that the observance of a detailed law
code is not the essence of any religion, and Judaism in particular.  Nor
is the learning of the details of a law code particularly helpful in
understanding the reasoning behind the code.

One of the problems which students at all level have in understanding
mathematics and statistics is that they have learned rules without the
meaning behind them.  I am not exaggerating when I state that it would
be much easier to teach understanding at the age of 6 instead of 16,
because they have not learned how to do without thinking.

>>I cannot imagine a curriculum in which a student would be expected to
>>even look at these original works, rather than getting them placed in
>>context in presentations in the vernacular.  Even at the research level,
>>knowledge of other languages is primarily so that the investigator can
>>read the current literature before it is digested or translated.  While
>>I can read the mathematicians of the 17th and 18th century in Latin, I
>>only do so to find out if they used a trick which has been removed from
>>the current textbooks, not for the theorems.

>	A secular lawyer must be able to study legislation in the original.
>	Can you imagine a lawyer presenting an argument in court based on
>	a deduction made from a translation? If one is going to argue
>	that a particular law is or isn't constitutional, for example, one's
>	argument will understandably be more firmly based if grounded
>	on one's examination of the constitution in the original.

This may be relevant for a law code.  But even if the original laws were
in a different language, translations can be used.  But I repeat that I
do not consider Judaism primarily a law code; it is what is behind the
laws which counts.

>	Moreover, precedent is very important in law. So, too, precedents
>	in Jewish law are accessible only in the original Hebrew.

Not much is lost in translation, at least if explanatory material is given. 
As much may be lost in knowing the idiom of the time than in translating from
one language to another.  We have evidence that at least one phrase in Exodus
had already lost its original meaning by the time of the earliest known
commentaries.

And in reading the Creation account according to the Big Bang view, it is
necessary to alter the usual meaning of some of the Hebrew words, and in
some cases the new meanings required, while they would have been understood
by Hillel and Aqiva, could not have been thought of by them.  This is quite
usual in the sciences.

Precedent is also overturned in law whenever it conflicts with Constitutional
or legislative enactments.  In other fields of learning, it is almost
daily overturned.
-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)  
{purdue,pur-ee}!pop.stat!hrubin(UUCP)
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