How Computer Logic can Help us Decipher Unclear Rabbinic Texts

• In Event: Methods in Jewish Studies

Abstract

The purpose of my talk is to introduce to the Jewish Studies community a new tool for reading rabbinic passages. As a mathematician this method is natural to me but I have not seen it described or put into practice in any Judaic Studies publications. This tool has its roots in symbolic and propositional logic which may be used to suppress the content of a language text in order to expose its structure. In recently published work, I have applied this tool in the service of Rabbinics, to give the first-ever coherent (and uncontrived) account of R. Akiva’s famous responses in M. Pesahim 6:12, and to clarify what it means to render the SHERETZ pure in Y. Sanhedrin 4:1, 21a, and to weigh in on authorship of certain passages in the Midrash Halakhah, and to recover a lost type of tannaitic argument. The method is powerful and I have exposed just the tip of the iceberg.

My published work is written for an audience of Talmud scholars who have some professional training in Analytic Philosophy. The methods I use were adapted by Bertrand Russell from mathematics and became standard in Analytic Philosophy. In this talk at the AJS, I aim to step back and make explicit the mechanics of this tool, so that any scholar or student of Rabbinics can put it to work for him/herself. This background that I will present and how it relates to rabbinic texts has not yet been published. Through a short tutorial and examples I aim to equip the Rabbinics scholar with yet another tool to illuminate rabbinic texts, one that for some rabbinic passages succeeds where all others fail. It will become clear that neither Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto nor Louis Jacobs had this technique though the works of both would have benefited from it.

Author

• Amelia Spivak