I deeply appreciate the opportunity accorded to me by the editors of the AJS Review to reply to Azzan Yadin-Israel's critique of my article on “Rabbinic Polysemy and Pluralism Revisited: Between Praxis and Thematization,” as well as his generosity in sharing with me an earlier version of his critique.Footnote ¹ It is not often that a journal article receives such a detailed response, in effect a second article. My initial response would be to urge the readers of this journal to read (or re-read) my original article, with particular attention to my careful definitions of the terms “polysemy,” “pluralism,” “praxis,” and “thematization,” and to how I seek consistently to apply them to the thirteen passages from rabbinic literature which form the core of my article. Having done so, the reader will find most of Yadin-Israel's arguments to have been either anticipated by me in my textual analyses or not germane to my broad definitions and to their detailed application.

Nevertheless, Yadin-Israel is a very accomplished scholar of rabbinic literature, both legal and exegetical, whose arguments raise interesting and important methodological challenges that have broader implications for the study of early rabbinic literature (and much more). They deserve, therefore, and will repay the benefit of close attention. It is on these larger questions that I would like to concentrate, with reference to most, but not all, of the texts that I marshal in my original article, most of which are also commented upon by Yadin-Israel. The alternative, to respond to each of Yadin-Israel's arguments for each of the texts treated, would require of our readers to read three articles, when one, carefully read, should have sufficed.

To set the stage, it is important to remind the readers of this journal that my original article was a critique (“polemic” according to Yadin-Israel, p. 129 n. 3) of only one chapter of Daniel Boyarin's Border Lines (151–201), in which Boyarin argues, in my words (Fraade, p. 2),

The purpose of my article was to demonstrate that both the praxis and thematization of interpretive polysemy and legal multivocality are already well evidenced, even if not as robustly thematized as in some later rabbinic texts, in “tannaitic” sources, which incorporate tannaitic teachings, but were anonymously edited in their extant forms, we must presume, in early amoraic times in Palestine.Footnote ³ I made no claims, nor have any interest in the present context, in what the Tannaʾim themselves did or thought in this regard, and only needed to demonstrate the existence of interpretive polysemy and legal multivocality as both praxis and thematization in texts commonly understood to have been edited in the third century CE, without needing to extend them back to “first-century Yavneh.”

It is important, therefore, to note that Yadin-Israel, in defending his teacher's (by his “disclosure,” p. 129 n. 3) argument seriously misrepresents it. For example, he speaks of my objection to “Daniel Boyarin's claim that rabbinic polysemy is a relatively late, post-tannaitic, phenomenon” (Yadin-Israel, p. 129, emphasis added). Yadin-Israel makes reference here to Border Lines, 155. But a check of that reference reveals that Boyarin clearly locates the “mythopoeisis” of rabbinic pluralism “somewhere in the fifth and sixth centuries, the time of the redaction of the Babylonian Talmud and also when ‘Nicaea’ was finally ‘taking effect.’” On the previous page (154) Boyarin explicitly speaks of “their redactional (post-amoraic) character.” As any student of late-antique Jewish history knows, there is a significant difference, for present purposes especially, between “post-tannaitc” (Yadin-Israel), with which I can easily live, if we are speaking of redaction, and “post-amoraic” (Boyarin, who would add “Babylonian”), with which I cannot. Even stranger is Yadin-Israel's statement (p. 136) that “All scholars agree that polysemy is attested in post-tannaitic strata; Fraade claims to show that this is also the case for tannaitic sources.” The gap between “tannaitic sources” (all redacted no earlier than the third century) and “post-tannaitic strata” (beginning at around the same time and place), assuming we are speaking of Palestinian collections, is hardly worth arguing about, since by those datings and locatings Yadin-Israel and I are in far closer chronological and geographical proximity in our views to one another than he is to Boyarin's. If, indeed, Yadin-Israel truly means “post-tannaitic strata,” then Boyarin is the singular exception to “all scholars.” However, throughout his treatment (or dismissal) of specific texts that I adduce, he reverts back to Boyarin's “stammaitic” (Babylonian and post-amoraic) argument, adding himself, it would appear, as the second solitary exception to “all scholars.”

Let us proceed to the question of definitions. I offer for “polysemy” a descriptive definition that is both literal and concords well with what is found in standard English dictionaries and common linguistic usage: “By ‘polysemy’ (many significations), I mean, in the present context, the claim that a canonical text contains or can legitimately yield multiple meanings” (Fraade, p. 3).Footnote ⁴ Yadin-Israel does not like my definition, as it “denudes the concept of its analytic force” (Yadin-Israel, p. 130). However, he does not explain how it does so nor, more importantly, does he offer an alternative definition. Without an alternative definition, he is also unable to provide any textual examples (presumably from the Babylonian Talmud) that would satisfy the putatively forceful definition that he fails to provide.Footnote ⁵ It is only by working through all of his objections to the texts that I present that we can deduce (as I shall here labor to do in the absence of his having done so) what would be included (very little) and what could be excluded (very much) from his unstated definition. We can take a cue, however, from his approving citation of Boyarin's reference to the “theological principle of the undecidability of the divine language” (Yadin-Israel, p. 130, citing Boyarin, Border Lines, 189).Footnote ⁶ That is, the incorporation of multiple interpretations of a scriptural verse, phrase, or word (satisfying the common literal, descriptive definition that I explicitly employ) is insufficient in the absence of a claim that polysemy in practice be accompanied (in each case, and if not, how often?) by the articulation of a “theological principle.” But this is to conflate what I consistently, carefully, deliberately, and explicitly differentiate between as “praxis “ and “thematization,” with the former appearing ubiquitously throughout the tannaitic corpora, and with the latter appearing, as we might expect, only occasionally , as is true of the later rabbinic midrashic and talmudic corpora as well. Let us turn now to the former and return shortly to the latter.

Speaking just of the praxis of polysemy, I had assumed that the most elementary reader of early rabbinic midrash would recognize that on virtually every “page” of the tannaitic midrashim, of both the “school” of R. Akiva and that of R. Ishmael, we find multiple interpretations of single scriptural words or phrases.Footnote ⁷ Sometimes one of these might be preferred by the anonymous editorial hand or voice to the others, but often not. Sometimes one might be rhetorically proffered, only to be exegetically or logically rejected. Some are simply set alongside one another, while some are placed in dialogue, whether explicit or implicit, with one another. Some employ one set of hermeneutical rules and principles, while others employ another. Since they all meet any descriptive definition of polysemy, I thought that two randomly chosen examples, one halakhic and one aggadic, both from the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, would suffice to illustrate a phenomenon so ubiquitous and before our open eyes as not to require further examples of the praxis of polysemy (as I define the term and as it is universally defined).Footnote ⁸

Perhaps it is the very ubiquity in the tannaitic midrashim of the praxis of interpretive polysemy, in the common use of the word, that leads Yadin-Israel to consider it to be too prosaic to be of serious significance. In comparing the midrashic interpretation of Scripture to the interpretation of the United States Constitution by the Supreme Court judges, he says (p. 130),

I will leave it to scholars of the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court to determine what they wish to call the practice of publishing minority alongside majority opinions, while clearly differentiating between the two, propounding thereby alternative interpretations of the Constitution's language. However, I am told by such colleagues that this practice was not always the norm for the U.S. Supreme Court, and that it is not necessarily the practice of lower courts or supreme courts in other countries.Footnote ⁹ In other words, it is not a “natural” practice that can be taken for granted. Which is not to say that in former times the Supreme Court justices were of one mind in interpreting the Constitution (or the cases before them), but that they considered it more important to present a unified public face than to air publicly their dissenting opinions. I shall return to this important distinction with respect to ancient Jewish sources. But first, I should note that once again we find Yadin-Israel conflating practice with thematization (here requiring a “doctrine” in order to include a practice of multiple scriptural interpretations under “polysemy”).Footnote ¹⁰ Such doctrinaire statements, as much as Yadin-Israel would like to find them, are rarely, if at all, to be found in rabbinic literature of all strata, including the Babylonian Talmud (especially if weighed in proportion to its textual bulk), at least not in anything that Yadin-Israel has cited or would satisfy his definitional strictures.Footnote ¹¹

As useful as the Constitutional comparison might be for its familiarity, it is not as apt as others and is, in any case, anachronistic. The midrashic commentaries attend to a text understood in some sense as being divine revelation, whereas the Constitution is, as Yadin-Israel states, the product of the “Founding Fathers,” which is why, I presume, we do not have from the Supreme Court judges a running “verse” by “verse” commentary to the Constitution into which a variety of interpretations to each word or phrase are incorporated. In other words, multiple interpretations in principle are not the same as multiple successive interpretations in practice. We might posit the possibility of multiple persons or groups interpreting, that is, assigning meaning to, in multiple ways a variety of types of texts (Scripture, Constitution, restaurant menu), each broken down into its smallest textual components, without presuming the institutional practice of collecting, editing, and “publishing” them as running attachments (commentary) to that atomized text. This is separate from the question of how such practice might be justified and/or received. But in any case, it cannot be presumed to be a normal cultural practice of any legal society.

For this reason I stress (Fraade, p. 11) that the most historically apt comparisons, for reasons of both chronological and geographical proximity, are with the textual practices of Jewish writings of the late Second Temple period, and of Christian and Greco-Roman writings of the first three centuries C.E., where we find very few analogues to the ubiquitous rabbinic textual practice of juxtaposing multiple scriptural interpretations with one another in attachment to their scriptural lemmata (polysemy as I descriptively define it, in keeping with its literal meaning and dictionary definition).Footnote ¹² Again, this is not to claim that other such ancient authors, editors, and interpretive communities were unaware that Scripture could be variously interpreted, but that their own textual practices tend, by and large (with some important exceptions, most notably Philo of Alexandria, mutatis mutandis), to favor, in Yadin-Israel's words (p. 132), “editorial practices [that] tend toward univocality.” However, even in the context of oral, unrecorded study, we should not necessarily presume that the Qumran interpretive communities, for example, in their nightly study sessions (1QS 6:6–8), generated multiple, alternative interpretations of Torah or Prophets (or of their own sectarian laws), which the editors of the sectarian Dead Sea Scrolls have imperiously and inconveniently (for us) hidden from textual view. In other words, we have no reason to expect with Yadin-Israel (and we have many reasons not to), that the teachings or interpretations of the Teacher of Righteousness, or subsequent teacher/interpreters, would naturally have cohabited some discursive space alongside those of other members of his community (whether in agreement or not).Footnote ¹³

Yadin-Israel brushes aside such more historically responsible (and, for his purpose, inconvenient) comparisons for a canonically determined lens that views the Palestinian tannaitic corpora with the retrojective and teleological hindsight of the Babylonian post-amoraic (stammaitic) stratum of the Talmud, against which, in his view, they come up sorely lacking in interpretive polysemy. Note well his own words (Yadin-Israel, p. 134 on Text 6): “For an investigation of ‘Talmudic’ polysemy in tannaitic sources, the operative comparison is to the Babylonian Talmud, and here the contrast is stark.” As I have shown and will continue to show, the contrast, while significant, is not all that stark after all. But why should we be looking for “‘Talmudic’ polysemy in tannaitic sources” any more than tannaitic polysemy in relation to its own, more immediate cultural and historical contexts? Of course, both types of comparison are of value, and I have pursued in detail the relevant inner-rabbinic comparison elsewhere.Footnote ¹⁴ But why privilege the diachronic canonical over the synchronic historical? I shall return to this question with respect to specific texts shortly.

Turning to the specific midrashic texts from the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, one halakhic and one aggadic, that I adduce as random examples of multiple interpretations set alongside one another, we see Yadin-Israel adding innovative qualifications so as to disqualify them from inclusion under a simple descriptive definition of polysemy. The first is that when the midrash rhetorically raises alternative interpretations, only to be rejected on the basis of exegesis or logic, this is not polysemy since the alternative interpretations are not of equal standing or validity. That is, when the anonymous redactor (singular for present heuristic purposes) has assembled a variety of interpretations (minimally two), he may not show any preference between them (e.g., marking one as the view of the “majority” and one as that of the “minority”). However, this condition was not part of my definition nor of any others (except as that not explicitly stated by Yadin-Israel) of which I am aware. In fact, such a definition would disqualify the only talmudic example that Yadin-Israel explicitly cites as characterizing “talmudic polysemy” (by which he means legal multivocality) the “these and these” passage in B. ʿEruvin 13b,Footnote ¹⁵ since the “heavenly voice” expresses preference for the halakhic views of the House of Hillel, declaring the halakhah to agree with their opinion, taken elsewhere to be a judgment on all halakhic opinions of the House of Hillel.Footnote ¹⁶

However prosaic and unremarkable this rhetorical strategy of invoking an alternative interpretation, only for it to be rejected, might appear to the most elementary student of tannaitic midrash (and even more so of later talmudic dialectics), it is highly unique, certainly in its ubiquity, and I would argue strikingly innovative, among other forms of scriptural interpretation from the proximate time and place of these early midrashim (with partial antecedent in the scriptural commentaries of Philo of Alexander). The non-rabbinic exegetical exemplars of Hellenistic and Roman times generally do not, to use Yadin-Israel's language (p. 131), “make explicit the interpretive path not taken.” And why should they? They would risk thereby undercutting the monological, revelatory authority of their textual interpretations and legal opinions. Similarly, they do not evince, again in Yadin-Israel's words (p. 132), “an inclusive editorial practice that recognizes the empirical existence of controverting views and chooses to record them” (emphasis in the original). This “empirical existence of controverting views” is mainly only known to us by virtue of the “editorial practice” which was chosen to preserve and transmit them, as we find in the tannaitic rabbinic corpora, but as a textual practice largely (but not entirely) without immediate antecedents or contemporaries.

Again, I must stress that thus far I am adducing the praxis of interpretive polysemy and legal multivocality in early midrashic texts and not their theological / hermeneutical justifications, to which we will soon turn. Here I simply re-emphasize the methodological necessity of not conflating and confusing the two (at the expense of the former), as does Yadin-Israel, both in his evolving, but unstated, definition and in his dismissal of clear examples of the ubiquitous tannaitic textual practice of both interpretive polysemy and legal multivocality. That being said, I would argue that the widespread tannaitic textual practice of interpretive polysemy (even if at the redactional level), that is, the running attachment of multiple interpretations to the words of what is rabinically understood to be divinely revealed Scripture, is itself theologically significant (and not to be cavalierly dismissed), even if not explicitly thematized and theologized (and problematized) as such, as it is in other passages in the same corpora, soon to be (re)considered. Viewed in historical perspective, both diachronic and synchronic, this textual, editorial practice of interpretive polysemy (and legal multivocality) is hardly “weak” (Yadin-Israel, pp. 133, 134), but quite the opposite.

If we look more fully and carefully at the Mekhilta's commentary to Exodus 21:6 (on the Israelite slave, who, when entitled to be freed has his ear pierced in order to remain with his master) (Text 1, Fraade, pp. 7–10), we find that in addition to the first set of rhetorical alternatives that are posed (right ear v. left ear) only for one (left ear) to be rejected, our midrash preserves several legal interpretive alternatives between which the midrash does not decide or show a clear preference: through the earlobe v. through the cartilage; a priest may be pierced through the ear v. may not by pierced through the ear; a priest may be sold into slavery v. may not be sold into slavery, pierced with any instrument v. with a metal instrument. If this is not interpretive polysemy and legal multivocality in their simple descriptive senses as textual praxis, I do not know what is.

It is precisely this editorial practice of combining rhetorical alternatives, in which one is advanced only to be denied, alongside the juxtaposition of interpretive alternatives that are allowed to co-exist on the same “page,” without a necessary preference, often separated by the common instrument for such purposes, davar ʾaḥer (another matter/interpretation), that is equally evident in Text 2 (Fraade, pp. 11–12). Here the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, commenting on the linguistically ambiguous phrase “house of bondage” (literally, “house of slaves/servants/worshipers”) of Exodus 20:2, adduces three interpretations, one of which (the Israelites were servants to servants, and not to kings) is rhetorically raised only to be intertextually and dialogically rejected (with help from Deuteronomy 7:8), but leaving two standing, without any expressed preference between them: house of slavery = slaves to kings v. house of idolatry = worshipers of idols, based on the dual meanings of ʿavadim/ʿovedim as slaves/worshipers.

Yadin-Israel dismisses this example based on a careless misreading of my argument. He says (Yadin-Israel, p. 132): “But the derashah in question is a poor example of such a dialogue since davar ʾaḥer marks the juxtaposed interpretations as distinct, editorially demarcated statements.” What I refer to as “the textual practice of setting multiple interpretations and legal opinions not simply alongside one another but in rhetorical dialogue, whether explicit or implicit, with one another” refers to the midrash as cited as a whole, which includes both dialogical juxtaposition (“You say … Perhaps it is not so, but means …?”) in what I label section 1, and multiple interpretations (here two) that are set alongside one another (separated by davar ʾaḥer) in what I label as section 2. To what extent the phrase davar ʾaḥer hermetically and hermeneutically separates the alternative interpretations on its either side from one another is not so clear as Yadin-Israel asserts it to be.Footnote ¹⁷ But for now, accepting Yadin-Israel's characterization of the phrase only strengthens my argument for its signifying interpretive polysemy in the simple descriptive sense that I (and dictionaries and linguists) use to define it: one scriptural phrase yielding multiple meanings.Footnote ¹⁸ In sum, both Mekhilta texts combine, at the editorial level, two types of polysemy: dialogical and paratactic combinations of alternative interpretations (and legal pronouncements). That is, within a single interpretive unit they both choose between one pair of alternative interpretations and choose not to choose between another. They are, in short, rhetorically ambidextrous.

Yadin-Israel characterizes such editorial polysemy, the work of anonymous editors on virtually every “page” of every rabbinic text, to be “weak,” since it does not explicitly “valorize” its praxis. However, I see no reason to characterize this editorial work as “weak” any more than to do so for the editorial construction of legal multivocality produced by equally anonymous redactors on every “page” of the Babylonian Talmud. Once again, Yadin-Israel conflates praxis with thematization (for him, “valorization” and “celebration”), which is one of my prime purposes to differentiate. Here are his words (Yadin-Israel, p. 134 on Text 6): “Multivocality inheres to a collection of rulings that preserves many positions—and even then only in a weak editorial sense that has long been recognized as a hallmark of rabbinic literature.”Footnote ¹⁹

Before turning to a selection of those texts that I adduce as exemplifying the thematization of interpretive polysemy and legal multivocality, I wish to consider three such texts that Yadin-Israel has sought to exclude entirely from consideration. Wishing to argue that his exclusion of them is more revealing of his misreading of my purpose than if he had considered them.

Yadin-Israel is correct that Texts 5 (from Midrash Tehillim) and 10 (Pesikta de-Rav Kahana) are “not ‘drawn from the earliest stratum of rabbinic literature,’ but rather from Amoraic or later strata” (Yadin-Israel, p. 130, citing Fraade, p. 5). However, he is absolutely wrong in stating that “Fraade includes them because they cite tannaitic figures, but to identify citation with composition ignores the overwhelming evidence that later rabbinic sources regularly reworked earlier strata . . .” (Yadin-Israel, p. 130, emphasis in original). I say nothing of the sort (that is, include these texts because they cite tannaitic sages, which, in any case, Text 10 does not do), revealing at best his careless reading of my article. Rather, this is pure fabrication on Yadin-Israel's part. What I do say of Text 5 (Fraade, pp. 15–16) is that it is “more amply and explicitly thematized, both epistemologically and theologically” (than is Text 4 from Sifrei Devarim) in its treatment of the search for a “clear rule” amidst the conflicting and competing legal opinions and interpretations of the sages, tracing this interpretive polysemy and legal multivocality all the way back to Moses's receiving of each and every divinely revealed utterance/command (presumably at Sinai). Similarly, in introducing Text 10, I explicitly state that it illustrates how an earlier, tannaitic tradition found in the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael (Text 9), which links multitudinous “voices” at Sinai with the diversity of human interpretation of revelation, “is exegetically and rhetorically filled out in the amoraic midrashic collection, Pesikta de-Rav Kahana” (Fraade, p. 25).

My clearly stated purpose for including these texts, despite their falling outside of the chronological bounds that I set for my textual sample, was to show how the thematizing of scriptural polysemy and legal multivocality begun already in tannaitic texts continues more fully and explicitly well into amoraic times, but neither as the products of the post-amoraic (stammaitic) stratum of the Babylonian Talmud, nor as late responses to post-Nicaean Christianity, as Boyarin argues and with which, we must assume, Yadin-Israel concurs. To set the record completely straight, I cite my own words (Fraade, p. 38), from the conclusions to my article, for readers who might not have read it to the end:

Yadin-Israel's reason for excluding one other passage (Text 8) from consideration is equally revealing. The text is T. Ḥagigah 2:9, which begins by narratively describing an original lack of controversy through the orderly handling of opposing legal opinions regarding purity and impurity, up through a series of referral courts, until a vote is taken in the highest court and the decision is promulgated (and presumably accepted by all). This is contrasted with the situation after the disciples of Shammai and Hillel had so multiplied, as had their controversies, that they came to constitute “two Torahs,” that is, two irreconcilable systems of divinely revealed law, but Torahs nevertheless. The “before” scene is not one of complete legal accord, but of multiple legal opinions that, while at odds with one another, could be successfully managed through a consensual process of adjudication and promulgation. Whether or not such a golden age of relative lack of controversy (but still marked by disagreement) ever existed, of course, is irrelevant. Our text imagines it as an alternative to the present state of intense legal controversy, to the point of the two sides inhabiting, as it were, alternative nomian worlds (“two Torahs”). This is clearly an example of tannaitic thematization of legal multivocality, both as it might have been and as it is. Yadin-Israel, however, will have no part of this: “Fraade cites Text 8 as a reflection of rabbinic discomfort with the existence of multiple legal positions and not intended as a countertext [to Boyarin's argument], and is thus not germane to this discussion” (Yadin-Israel, p. 131, emphasis added).

Besides the text being more complexly and profoundly dialectical than Yadin-Israel allows, his exclusion of “rabbinic discomfort with the existence of multiple legal positions” precludes him from examining the ways in which such early tannaitic texts thematize that very subject, both for its upsides and its downsides. This is one more occasion of his heaping on disqualifications that are not “germane” to my project as I designed and defined it. My very definition of thematization allows precisely for the inclusion of such problematizing. Here is exactly what I said: “By ‘thematization,’ I mean in the present context, passages, often narrativized, that portray rabbinic polysemy or pluralism not simply as textual practices but as ideologically upheld (i.e., theologically justified) values, even if simultaneously problematized” (Fraade, p. 4, emphasis added). In other words, problematization is a vital part and parcel of the thematization, not its disqualifier, as Yadin-Israel would have it. From the very beginning of my article,Footnote ²⁰ I explicitly distance myself from the “celebratory” approach taken by others to rabbinic interpretive polysemy and legal multivocality, since the thematizing texts that I include dialectically acknowledge both their bright and dark sides, but to varying degrees.Footnote ²¹

Returning to Yadin-Israel's parade (and only explicit) example of rabbinic legal multivocality, B. ʿEruvin 13b, “these and these” (Yadin-Israel, pp. 130, 134), there too we find an expressed rabbinic “discomfort” with (alongside valorization of) the disagreements between the legal opinions of the Houses of Shammai and Hillel. The story clearly implies that had it not been for the intervention of the heavenly voice, the two Houses, having debated a particular point of law for three years without resolution, would never have been able to move on to anything else. For those who do not accept the role of the heavenly voice in deciding halakhic debatesFootnote ²² (or who cannot expect it to resolve all others) the specter of halakhic paralysis, due to irresolvable differences, remains, as implied by this story, very much an ever-present danger.Footnote ²³ Thus, if Yadin-Israel will only be satisfied by a “doctrine” (“or, manifesto”) of purely principled, fully valorized and celebratory theological thematization of absolute rabbinic interpretive polysemy and legal multivocality, without a trace of dialectical doubt, then he has painted himself into a corner where he will not find it, or at least has not produced any examples thereof, in his critique of my article.

Since my space is limited, I shall not revisit in similar fashion all of the textual examples that I marshal in my original article in support of my argument (but encourage the ambitious reader to do so), all of which Yadin-Israel disqualifies from such consideration, but focus rather on four such texts that will, I hope, prove symptomatic of both the soundness of my analyses and the methodological flaws of his demurrals, not to mention his misrepresentations of my arguments. They all both project rabbinic interpretive polysemy and legal multivocality back to Mosaic / Sinaitic revelation, and justify its present textual practice therefrom. Thus, in Text 11 (Sifrei Devarim 313 to Deuteronomy 32:10), we find as follows:

Clearly, in light of the plural forms employed, and as Yadin-Israel readily acknowledges, the multiplicity of later rabbinic interpretations of each divine utterance / command are being projected back onto the originary moment of revelation, with the text crediting Israel as a whole with the prescient ability to discern in each utterance its (rabbinic) polysemic potentialities, a sort of vaticinium ex eventu (prophecy after the event).Footnote ²⁴ Yadin-Israel provides two specious qualifications to any normal definition of polysemy so as to disqualify this text: The first is that, quoting me, “Although those methods[, or the results of their application,] are expressed in plural forms, there is no suggestion here that they are in discord with one another or arise in the context of debate” (Yadin-Israel, p. 136, citing Fraade, p. 27, with emphasis added). It is not sufficient for Yadin-Israel that multiple interpretations of single divine utterances/commands are projected back to Sinai as being present at and in revelation, that is, that polysemy (in the literal, descriptive dictionary definition that I employ from the outset) is theologically grounded in divine revelation (and its human reception), which elsewhere he demands. However, now he adds the additional requirement that such a multitude of interpretations be pitched in opposition to or debate with one another.Footnote ²⁵

As if this disqualification is insufficient for the task, Yadin-Israel adds a second one (but without a davar ʾaḥer to separate them). In his own words:

Of course, one could argue that all rabbinic interpretations of the revelation of Torah at Sinai seek to “efface the historical chasm” by projecting rabbinic ideas of Torah and its reception through study and interpretation, that is, the very rabbinic textual practice of midrash, with which we are presently engaged, onto the originary and authorizing scene of revelation.Footnote ²⁶ However, one could equally argue, without much exaggeration, that such historical chasm effacing is the work of all scriptural interpretation (if not more). But that does not preclude our asking what precisely is being projected onto revelation, as if there all along, and here it is clearly the multitudinous character of rabbinic interpretive praxis, here being said to be the very substance of divine revelation itself and its earliest human (Israelite) reception. If that is not theological valorization of said textual practices, I do not know what is. Once again, should we doubt that such texts can “walk and chew gum at the same time”? These progressively heaped-on, ad hoc disqualifications begin to strain credulity. But there are more to come.

We turn next to Text 9, the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael to Exodus 20:15 (not reproduced by Yadin in his appendix of sources), which interprets the plural of “thunderings” (kolot) as signifying the multiplicity of voices heard at Sinai according to each person's capacity to understand, these multiple “voices” originating in God's singular “voice” (according to Psalms 29:4) at revelation. Yadin-Israel (p. 135) finds two reasons to disqualify this text, the first being, again, that the multitudinous voices of revelation are not portrayed as being in conflict or debate with one another, as is lacking in the previous example (Text 11) that we just considered, and which disqualification we easily dismissed. However, his second reason for disqualifying this text is more serious, but also more misleading, that is, that the multiple divine voices do not represent multiple textual meanings produced through human interpretation.

Here Yadin-Israel completely ignores what I label as part 2 of the midrash, joined directly to part 1 by the anonymous redactors of the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, and which constitutes the key to my interpretation of the passage as a whole. The second part, without an intervening davar ʾaḥer in the oldest manuscripts, and attributed to Rabbi (Judah the Patriarch), states: “This is to proclaim the excellence of the Israelites. For when they all stood before Mount Sinai to receive the Torah they interpreted (mefarshin) the divine word (dibbur) (as soon) as they heard it. For it is said, “He compassed it, he understood it, and he kept it as the apple of his eye” (Deuteronomy 32:10), meaning: As soon as the divine word came forth they interpreted it.” Since this statement has no immediate connection to Exodus 20:15, it must come to supplement or complement the preceding interpretation to that verse, linking thereby the multiple “voices” heard at Sinai to the people's immediate interpretive engagement with each divine utterance as it issued forth. Thus the multiplicity of voices emanating from the single divine voice are either responsive to or revealed through all of Israel's interpretive engagement with the divine words of revelation at the very moment of their being uttered.

It is safe to presume, that the midrash presumes, that all of Israel did not produce identical interpretations of each divine word any more than each person's “strength” was identical to that of her neighbor. Once again, what might be thought of as the belated activity of interpretation is now immediately originary to revelation, joining multitudinous divine voices of revelation to multitudinous human voices of interpretation, divine revelatory polyphony to human interpretive polyphony, the one, we may presume, responding to, if not producing the other. While this is not quite multiple interpretations of each divine word (as in the previous example) it comes very close, requiring only a modicum of midrashic license to close the circle. As I have argued, this is achieved at the anonymous redactional level by combining two otherwise unrelated interpretations so as produce something greater than the sum of its two parts. Of course, this is entirely missed if one conveniently cites only the first half of the redacted midrashic unit and ignores (without notifying the reader) its complementary second half.

Since Yadin-Israel says of Text 13 (T. Soṭah 7:11–12; Yadin-Israel, p. 139) that it “may well represent the closest thing to polysemy in the tannaitic corpus” (high praise indeed!), and since, I have treated this text more exhaustively elsewhere in comparison to its parallel in the Babylonian Talmud (Ḥagigah 3b),Footnote ²⁷ I shall here be brief. First, Yadin's reluctance to acknowledge this text as an excellent tannaitic example of thematized legal multivocality (and not of interpretive polysemy), is because “the Tosefta by no means celebrates this state of affairs” (Yadin-Israel, p. 139). Certainly, it does problematize the existence of multiple legal opinions for the confusion it can cause the uninitiated (as does its later parallel in the Babylonian Talmud, at what Boyarin and Yadin-Israel consider the post-amoraic editorial stratum). And yes, it does contrast former times of legal consensus with the present times of potentially confusing and seemingly irresolvable dissensus (as does Text 8: T. Ḥagigah 2:9). But the thematizing of polysemy and legal multivocality need not be uninhibitedly celebratory and can well be problematizing, and more importantly can be dialectically both, and still satisfy the normal definitions of those terms, unbridled celebration being Yadin-Israel's requirement, not mine (or, so far as I can tell, anyone else's).Footnote ²⁸

The penultimate conclusion of the text is quite clear and unambiguous in deriving / projecting the many conflicting voices of legal dissensus, via two scriptural citations, from / onto a single divine creator via a single prophetic transmitter: “All of the(se) words [of halakhic dispute] ‘were given by one shepherd’ (Ecclesiastes 12:11). One God created them, one benefactor (Moses) gave them, the Master of All Deeds, blessed be He, spoke it (them).”Footnote ²⁹ This may not be “celebratory” in any facile, monological sense, and it may represent a fall from a prior imagined state of legal harmony, but it certainly is scripturally and theologically justificatory of legal multivocality, no matter what the intellectual and social challenges it both faces and poses. In this sense, notwithstanding important editorial differences, this text is for the most part one with its much later Babylonian talmudic parallel (Ḥagiga 3b), which asks instead of the existentially fraught “why?” of our text the more practically concerned “how?”Footnote ³⁰

Finally, I wish to address Yadin-Israel's critique of my employment of Text 12 (Sifrei Devarim 343 to Deuteronomy 33:2), which I was very careful to differentiate from the other textual examples, as it speaks of polyglossia of revelation rather than of polysemy, that is, that revelation issued forth simultaneously (the simplest understanding) in multiple (here 4, but elsewhere 70, both denoting completeness) languages. Nevertheless I asserted in my article, and wish to reaffirm here in my response, that the two are closely related (but not identical!) to one another: linguistic plenitude (polyglossia) and semiotic plenitude (polysemy). Of course, I am not the first to associate the two, as can be seen in the Talmudic parallel texts of the “hammer on rock” midrash: B. Shabbat 88b and B. Sanhedrin 34a, which are editorially related to one another, regardless of which is thought to be predicated on the other. The former speaks of each divine utterance dividing into “seventy languages,” while the latter speaks of each scripture issuing as “many meanings,” clearly understood as kindred (but not identical!) ideas.Footnote ³¹ Closer to home, the two places in which the Mishnah employs the expression “seventy languages” both associate it with verbs for interpretation.Footnote ³²

More troubling, however, is Yadin-Israel's argument that since the passage is responding hermeneutically to a scriptural challenge (four stiches that all seem to describe God's self-disclosure at revelation), it cannot also be thematizing the multivocality of revelation. In Yadin-Israel's words (p. 15), “The invocation of four languages (not polysemic in any case) is an exegetical attempt to account for a perceived redundancy in one verse, not a statement of principle about the nature of divine speech or the biblical text, as such.” In other words, exegetically addressing a scriptural crux precludes thematization (or hermeneutically denuded principles). But this should not preclude our asking why solve the problem of scriptural redundancy (or, more positively conceived, semiotic plenitude) in this way and not some other (the redacted commentary providing simultaneously, as it were, several alternative and similarly unweighted and unprincipled interpretations, of which this is but one). Once again, why presume that a midrashic text cannot do two or more things at the same time?Footnote ³³

We can now, finally, assemble Yadin-Israel's alternative definition of polysemy (and legal multivocality) in the absence of his having done so for us. It is not sufficient that a rabbinic text, whether at or below its editorial stratum, attributes multiple meanings to a single verse or part thereof (the simple, literal, and dictionary meaning, which I consistently employ), or that it juxtaposes multiple legal opinions, whether they are ranked or are unranked.

To this simple definition must now be added the following disqualifying qualifications: 1. The multiple interpretations or legal opinions must be in direct contradiction to or debate with one another. 2. The text's editor(s) cannot express a preference (“right” or “wrong”) between those interpretations or opinions. 3. The text must absolutely and completely celebrate this polysemy and multivocality and not problematize them at all. 4. The text cannot be responding exegetically to a scriptural crux, but be expressing a distilled “principle” alone. 5. The text cannot be seeking rhetorically to collapse the gap between biblical and rabbinic times and circumstances. Needless to say, those were not conditions that I imposed on the texts that I assembled, nor, I suspect, would anyone else. Had Yadin-Israel forthrightly and coherently said at the outset that this was his definition and these were his conditions, then we could have asked him for (presumably, post-amoraic, Babylonian) rabbinic textual examples that satisfy that definition and meet those conditions.Footnote ³⁴ In the end he provides neither coherent counter-definitions nor, consequently, compliant counter-texts.

In conclusion, Yadin-Israel is desirous of a monological rabbinic “doctrine” (or “principle” or “manifesto”) of pure polysemy, while I am appreciative of rabbinic dialectics that defy a desire for such discursive purity. He yearns for unbridled “celebration,” while I revel in the messiness of problematization. In the end, it is less a matter of “early” or “late,” Palestinian or Babylonian, attributed or anonymous, as important as these differentiations are, or of competing definitions, than of understanding how rabbinic texts of all times and places “(commonly) practice what they (occasionally) ‘preach’” in ways that are both dialogically complex and rich, and resistant to definitions that are unnecessarily constrictive. Better yet, we need to appreciate how they “preach (and problematize) what they practice,” since, as I hope to have multiply demonstrated, it is in the nature of thematization that it lags behind praxis in its discursive development, and is rarer to find at all stages, but well worth the methodological effort and attention.Footnote ³⁵

Finally, I hope to have complemented Yadin-Israel's many insights and critical reception of my article by paying him (as he paid me) the highest scholarly compliment of a critical response. While I stand ready to be proven wrong, my best guess is that (in the spirit of the subject of our exchange) we will continue to agree to disagree, as we are driven, as we must be, by different scholarly agendas.