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Is contradiction a bad thing?

The Rav Name: Rabbi Yitzchak Arad

Rashi, in his commentary on the tenach, says that Isaiah 53 is about the people of Israel, but in his commentary on the Talmud says it’s about the messiah. Is it possible to reconcile these contradictory interpretations?

Is contradiction a bad thing?

 

Shalom and thank you for your question! You are concerned about two seemingly contradictory interpretations by the same classic commentary on the Torah.

There is no need to be afraid of apparent contradictions in the Torah. There are alot of cases like this in the Torah and there are reasons for it. The Torah is not a history book, despite the fact that it details certain events, nor is it a literary work, although there are many beautiful and poetic passages. That is only the most external aspect.

 

The Hebrew word ‘Torah’ comes from the root ‘horaah’ which means instruction – teaching. The Kabbalistic book of The Zohar, section 2 161:1 teaches that G-d “looked into the Torah and created the world”, meaning that the Torah served as G-d’s blueprint for creating the world. In down to earth terminology, what this means is that G-d created the world in order that we human beings use our free choice to live according to the rules and structure of the Torah, and thereby elevate physicality and rectify it, gradually making the world a rectified place where G-dliness is totally revealed. So the Torah is something holy, it is G-d’s wisdom and will, and far beyond our human attempts at ‘Bible criticism’. The Torah was handed down to Moses and the Jewish people, together with thirteen principles of exegesis which enabled sincere Torah scholars throughout the generations to understand how to arrive at the correct conclusions about what the Torah is trying to tell us. There are four specific levels of depth in the Torah. These are Pshat = the plain meaning of the text. (The commentary of Rashi is usually to understand the plain meaning,)

Remez = a deeper level that is hinted at in the text.

Drush = a still deeper level, and

Sod = the inner or esoteric dimension.

Aside from that, it is also written that there are seventy ‘faces’ – facets, to the Torah. A concept which has relevance to a certain phenomena in one era, may have additional relevance to a different situation in a different era, and thus there will be different commentaries on that one concept, and they may appear contradictory, while in fact they are actually just different aspects of the same idea. A woman may be someone’s mother, she is for sure someone’s daughter, and she may be someone’s wife, or sister. The same sentence can mean different things at different times, but there is an essential connection.

 

There is a similar case to the one that you bring, which the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Shneerson, resolves in the following manner, revealing the message that the Torah hints at.

There is a verse which states “and the spirit of the L-rd shall rest upon him,” and it refers to the King Messiah. However, in the prayer services for the three pilgrimage festivals, we request at the reading of the Torah that this statement about the spirit of the L-rd should be fulfilled in us, meaning that the spirit of G-d should rest on each and every Jew. The Rebbe queries how we can ask for such a thing since it refers to the King Messiah? The Rebbe goes on to answer this by saying that in each of us there is a spark of the soul of the Messiah, we each have a task of helping bring the Redemption closer by strengthening ourselves in the ways of the Torah and adding on  good deeds. Therefore there is no real contradiction here. Thus we learn from true Torah scholars how to understand the messages of the Torah – the instruction manual for the world.

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