The Issue:
When I was younger, I used to marvel at the beautiful intricacy of the Torah. Chazal and the meforshim had built this dazzling edifice of logic and reason that was so awe-inspiringly complicated that it took my breath away.
As I began to question, my perspective changed. I realized that the entire edifice of learning was built on a single lie, namely, that there is no room for human error. The human mind is designed to solve problems, and if every contradiction and inconsistency NEEDS a solution, human ingenuity will provide an answer. But, because the human mind is fallible, these new solutions breed further inconsistencies and complications. These complications demand new answers and explanations which in turn largens the corpus of Jewish thought, creating a sprawling hodgepodge of ideas that circle around each other with endless loose ends that cannot be unraveled without making the knot more intractable.
It starts when the Gemara pointing to a contradiction between two Mishnayos and formulating a legal theory to harmonize them. Tosfos asks an obvious question and postulates a distinction that splices the legal theory into pieces. The Rosh points to the implications of another Gemara that contradicts the conclusion of this Gemara. He codifies an approach that attempts to straddle the fence. The Taz invents a simple approach that avoids the Rosh's contradiction, but, in deference to the Rosh, explains why his seemingly simple approach must be incorrect. Everyone starts spinning around each other, explaining, expanding, and justifying the approaches that came before them - and, before you know it, everything is lost to the confusion.
A Harry Potter Example:
To give an example, let's assume that J.K. Rowling was God and the Harry Potter books were her bible. Consider the scene that occurs in the graveyard in Goblet of Fire, where Harry forces Voldemort’s wand to expel the shadows or echoes of its previous spells – including his own dead parents. In that scene, James and Lily emerge and comfort Harry in an emotionally gut-wrenching scene, giving Harry the strength to defeat Voldemort.
Comes Tosfos and asks a question: How is it possible that James came out of Voldemort's wand before Lily, despite Lily having been killed more recently. How can this be if wands discharge victims in reverse chronological order?
Tosfos answers: Although Lily may have died more recently, spiritually, she "died" earlier when she watched Voldemort kill her husband James, and in that sense, her death was "first." Tosfos brings a proof to this idea from the Gemara in Baba Basra that says that a woman only makes a covenant with the husband of her youth.
Comes along Rav Akiva Eiger and asks a question on Tosfos: Why didn't Tosfos provide a far simpler explanation, Voldemort's wand was made from "yew with a phoenix feather core." Throughout the Potter series, it is clear that wands with a phoenix core are erratic and do not conform to the standard rules of magic. Why did Tosfos have to resort to creating two distinct categories of death and avoid giving the more simple explanation, that Voldemort's wand behaved erratically?
Rav Akiva Eiger answers: Tosfos understood that Voldomrots wand was actually made out of dragon heartstring and not a phoenix feather. This is obviously difficult because the book writes explicitly that Voldemort's wand was 13½" long and "made from yew with a phoenix feather core." The explanation is that Tosfos believed that, in this specific instance, "phoenix feather core" is actually the name of a particular type of dragon heartstring, the "phoenixfeathercore" variant of dragon heartstring. The proof to this idea is that Voldemort was considered the most powerful dark wizard, and it is only sensible that he would use the most powerful core for his wand, namely, dragon heartstring - and NOT the far weaker phoenix feather core. Because of this, Tosfos was unable to explain the discrepancy in Lily and James's appearance based on the unpredictable nature of phoenix feather wands – Voldemort's wand was a dragon heartstring wand that happened to be called "phoenixfeathercore." As such, Tosfos was forced to create two conceptions of death to explain the discrepancy.
Comes Rav Chaim Brisker and questions Rav Akiva Eiger’s approach: How is it possible for Rav Akiva Eiger to say that Voldomorts wand was dragon heartstring core and NOT a phoenix feather core – the Potter books explicitly write that Voldemort’s phoenix feather core was from Fawkes, Dumbledore's phoenix, and Harry Potter's and Voldemort's wands were both made from feathers from Fawkes. It was manufactured by Garrick Ollivander and was the "brother" or "twin" of the wand of Harry Potter, as their wands share cores.
Answers Rav Chaim: Of course, Rav Akiva Eiger did not mean that Voldmorts wand was made out of dragon heartstring – as we just noted, that would blatantly contradict the "Fawkes verses" and disrupt the entire timeline. Rather, it is important to realize that there are “two denim” in wand cores. Namely, the function of a wand core is to harness the magical energy invoked by the spell caster and then to coalesce that raw energy into the specific form of the spell that is being cast. However, dragon heartstring and phoenix feathers perform these functions differently. Because dragon heartstring comes from the beating heart of a dragon, the way it accesses magical energy is by tapping into the “Coach Ha’Gavra” of the spellcaster – drawing from his or her elemental energy to summon the spell. However, the phoenix feather, an ethereal element, draws upon the “Cheftzas Ha’dibur” of the spell incantation itself – using the enunciated sound waves to summon magical power. The same end result, but by two very different processes.
With this in mind, says Rav Chaim, it is possible to explain Rav Akiva Eiger: Rav Akiva Eiger did not actually mean that the physical material core of Voldemort's wand was a dragon heartstring – after all, it is clear from the books that it is a phoenix feather core taken from Fawkes, Dumbledore's phoenix. Rather, what Rav Akiva Eiger meant was that although the physical core was a phoenix feather, the method that Voldemort's wand tapped magical energy was through the “Coach Ha’Gavra” of the spell caster, just like a dragon heartstring. The reason for this is because Fawkes, as Dumbeldore's pet, possessed the courage of a dragon and his feathers had the same properties as a dragon heartstring. Fawke’s unique courage becomes clear when reading the verses describing Fawses bravery in attacking the Basilisk :
"As Harry trembled, ready to close his eyes if it turned, he saw what had distracted the snake. Fawkes was soaring around its head, and the basilisk was snapping furiously at him with fangs long and thin as sabres — Fawkes dived. His long golden beak sunk out of sight, and a sudden shower of dark blood spattered the floor."
Consider these verses. Harry, himself the paradigmatic symbol of courage, was trembling, “ready to close his eyes,” yet Fawkes was right there, brave and ready to risk his life and save Harry from certain death.
Circling back, everything is resolved. The original verses were puzzling because James came out of Voldemort's wand before Lily, despite James dying first. Tosfos explained that really Lily “died first" when she watched her husband get killed. Rav Akiva Eiger was bothered why Tosfos did not offer the simpler explanation, namely that Voldemort's wand was made with a phoenix feather core, a notoriously erratic wand. Now, based on Rav Chaim, Rav Akiva Eige’s answer to that question is that although Voldemort's wand was indeed a phoenix feather core, since the core came from Fawkes, who was very courageous, it functioned using the “Coach Ha’Gavra” of the spell caster, just like a dragon heartstring and not the cheftzas Ha’dibur” of a typical phoenix feather core. A such, it was not prone to the erratic behavior rampant in phoenix feather cores, and therefore, Tosfos had to resort to the less simple answer to explain why James came out before Lily, namly that Lily “died first" when she watched her husband get killed.
My Thoughts:
The truth is that all this is insanity. As someone succinctly put it on Facebook, The excierse of gemara study is "gymnastics to make things that don't shtim, shtim." There are two approaches taken to explain how this pursuit is justified, the Yeshiva approach and the Modern Orthodox approach:
The Yeshiva approach:
The way that this is explained in the Yeshiva world is that, back in the olden days, all the complicated ideas in the Achronim used to be clear, and the Rishonim wrote concisely, not feeling a need to explain the brilliant logic underpinning thier words. However, as the generations advanced, things became less clear and the Achronim are disambiguating what the Rishonim actually meant in their coded brilliance.
The problem with this approach is that it is essentially a leap of faith. There is no evidence that the Rishonim and Chazal were coding all sorts of deep knowledge in their remarks that they did not spell out clearly. This is the very definition of a post-hoc explanation. This approach also leads to absurd results. If the Rishonim and Achroim were so much smarter than us, then whatever logic we use to answer their issues is necessarily incorrect. After all, they asked "question X," so they must have considered "answer Y" we are going to propose. This leads to the famous story of the fellow who wrote a Sefer proposing answers for all the unanswered questions in Rav Akiva Eiger's chiddushim, except three questions that he had no answer for. He approached a Rav for a haskama only to be told that his entire accomplishment was that, baruch Hashem, he was able to fully comprehend three questions of Rav Akiva Eiger. From the Litvish perspective, it is simply impossible to consider that perhaps this man possessed a spark of creativity that Rav Akiva Eiger, for all his brilliance, did not possess. No. That cannot be, otherwise, all the mountains that we spend our day building in the bais midrash are in vain.
When I was in Kollel, the craziness often went even further. Every time an Acharon or Rishons asked and answered a question, and you found the answer to the question compelling, you were forced to turn around and justify the question. The logic was: Rav Akiva Eiger could never be wrong, yet his answer is so compelling, so what was he thinking when he asked the question. The only explanation is that he must have been thinking an even deeper thought when he asked his question, one that precluded his own answer. This led to a ping pong of insanity that never ended in resolution.
The Modern Approach
When the Modern Orthodox people were forced to confront the fact that their mesorah was full of holes, punched in by science, biblical criticism, archeology, and common sense, they launched their "nuclear option," the one answer to rule them all - postmodernist obscurantism. nothing means anything and anything can mean anything else and who knows what truth is anyway and everything is subjective, ergo, consider your question deflected. My warning to readers is that these MO thinkers have absolutely mastered the craft of using big words to hid silly ideas. Alarm bells should go off in your head the moment you see someone puffing up their language (or, commonly, making voluminous references to ideas that are not spelled out but simply referred to based on the last name of the person who said them, e.g., If we use a Wittgensteinian outlook blended with the Guattariian framework to examine the Spinzioan paradigm of Rawlsian ethics, as explained by Nagelin exploration of meaninglessness, we discover an almost Kantian level of flatualtory personhood. You get the idea. Don't fall for it. Just keep asking yourself, "what is the effing point?! The question was X, how is he or she answering the question, damn it!"
After all the fancy words are finished, When these thinkers confront the mountain of turtles created by the assumption that no one in our mesorah ever made a mistake, they adopt the position that, sure, the Ramam never meant Rav Chaim's pishat, but it doesn't matter. All that matters is that we derived a meaningful idea and have some words that we can hand our idea on. How we got it is irreverent. What the Rambam meant when he wrote those words doesn't matter.
Just to be clear. This is postmodernist bull****. It just is. Words have meaning. There is nothing wrong with creating your own meaning in something, as long as you acknowledge that the meaning is your own work of fan-fiction and has nothing to do with the primary source that inspired us to make up your own idea. As one poster put it: "The goal is not to get to the original meaning. It's to derive meaningful ideas." But, whether these thinkers are willing to admit it or not, that is not what is happening in our mesorah. When Rav Akiva Eiger explains a contradiction in the Rosh, he actually thought that he was explaining the Rosh's thought process. He did not think that he was creating his own meaning, and that, of course, the Rosh never intended his creative interpretation.
Another issue with this approach is that it is rarely able to explain exactly what is so meaningful or wonderous in these contrived answers to non-existent questions. When R av Chaim comes up with a seven-sided chakirah in how to view Meleches Machsheves, the only reason his ideas are meaningful is because they possess explanatory power. If there is no underlying questions that demand an explanation, then his ideas are not beautiful, they are teenage sophistry. For example, I remember my amusement when reading about how the great Christian philosophers endlessly debated and deconstructed the meaning of a Trinitarian god. Is the Son simply another aspect of the Father, when viewed from our perspective, but from a Godly perspective, they are one? Is the Holy Ghost simply an underlying foundational element of godliness that unifies the other two elements, or does the Holy Ghost possess its own Godly manifestation? These questions are not meaningful because there is no element in reality that demands their existence. Since there is no Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, these lumdish chakiros do not have any explanatory power. So too, if the Rosh, for all his vast brilliance, had simply made a mistake, all Rav Akiva Eiger's endlessly brilliant resolutions are as useful as ruminations about the nature of the divinity of the Holy Ghost.
I personally believe that the only reason these MO thinkers are able to get away with saying such inane ideas is that they use such flatulent language that they intimidate most people into acquiescence. Do not fall for it.