Halakha as Elaborated Upon by the Aggada and Kabbala

A digital-only edition of notes prepared by R. Yaakov Homnick, on a course Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik taught at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies in 1946–1947. These lectures, “Concepts in Halakha as Elaborated Upon by the Aggada and Kabbala,” present a sustained argument for the preeminence of Halakha within Jewish tradition, over and above the realms of Aggada and Kabbala.

Download the digital publication here.

The Rav argues that the centrality of Halakha served to shift the balance of Judaism away from other modes of practice: “The greatest contribution of the Halakha was its purging Judaism of all magical, mythical and ceremonial elements. . . . The mitzvot are all intellectualized, thereby severing them from all mystical rites.” Like math or science, Halakha is about the relationship between items or agents, and it does not seek to interpret but rather to model the relevant data and determine how they are to interact with one another. As in science, “Halakha does away with essences and substances. It formalizes and abstracts them.” Hilariously, and anticipating a now-prevalent comedy routine, the Rav exemplifies this point by considering how Judaism would approach the Christmas tree through a halakhic perspective:

We have the Four Species. What if, le-havdil, we had a mitzva of a Christmas tree? There would be a massekhet dealing with it. What is the hallot? Is it a mitzva of netila or of hanaha, of hakafa? What are its measurements? What are the pesulim? Does it require hadar? At the end, it would no longer be a tree, but rather a complex of concepts. The tree itself loses its significance!

Co-Published by TRADITION with the Revel Graduate School, and with contributions by Daniel Rynhold, Jeffrey Saks, and Shlomo Zuckier.