Contrast With Earlier Halakha
The wide divergence between the simple exegesis of the older halakha and the artificiality of the younger is illustrated also by the difference in the method of explaining the Law, cited above, in regard to uncleanness. Both halakot regard it as self-evident that if a man is unclean, whether it be from contact with a corpse or from any other cause, he may not share in the Passover (Pes. 93a). The younger halakha, despite the dot over the ה, reads "reḥoḳah" and makes it refer to "derek" (English "road" or "way") even determining how far away one must be to be excluded from participation in the feast. However, to find a ground for the halakha that those who are unclean through contact with other objects than a corpse may have no share in the Passover, it explains the repetition of the word "ish" in this passage (Lev. ix. 10) as intending to include all other cases of defilement.
Despite this difference in method, the midrashim of the older and of the younger halakha alike believed that they had sought only the true meaning of the Scriptures. Their interpretations and deductions appeared to them to be really contained in the text; and they wished them to be considered correct Biblical expositions. Hence they both have the form of Scriptural exegesis, in that each mentions the Biblical passage and the halakha that explains it, or, more correctly, derives from it.
Read more about this topic: Midrash Halakha
Famous quotes containing the words contrast with, contrast and/or earlier:
“In contrast with envy, which usually occurs between two people and is focused upon another person’s qualities or possessions, jealousy occurs when a third person becomes a threat to a dyad. Jealousy involves the loss or the impending loss of a relationship that one wants to hold onto, a relationship that is vital to personal fulfillment and claimed as one’s own.”
—Carol S. Becker (b. 1942)
“In contrast to the flux and muddle of life, art is clarity and enduring presence. In the stream of life, few things are perceived clearly because few things stay put. Every mood or emotion is mixed or diluted by contrary and extraneous elements. The clarity of art—the precise evocation of mood in the novel, or of summer twilight in a painting—is like waking to a bright landscape after a long fitful slumber, or the fragrance of chicken soup after a week of head cold.”
—Yi-Fu Tuan (b. 1930)
“Kitsch is the daily art of our time, as the vase or the hymn was for earlier generations. For the sensibility it has that arbitrariness and importance which works take on when they are no longer noticeable elements of the environment. In America kitsch is Nature. The Rocky Mountains have resembled fake art for a century.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)