There are certain conventions in the Talmud that are difficult for the new learner to comprehend. Frankly, they would be difficult for many seasoned lamdanim as well, but after years and years of seeing the same phrase being used, I suspect that some have ceased to become curious or troubled by it. Yet, I am unsure if they became particularly wiser as to what it means and how it works – just more accepting of it. One of the most troubling conventions is the concept of chasurei mechasrah. Chasurei mechasrah comes up when there is a difficult passage in the Mishnah, either because it contradicts a tradition or that there is an intrinsic illogic and/or a seemingly missing phrase. Usually, when confronted with contradictions in teachings, subtle distinctions are drawn between the two discrepant teachings in order to harmonize them via the Talmud’s finely honed dialectical method. On occasion, when there is no resolution to the conflict, because they believed their practical tradition to be so strong, the Gemara will take the dramatic step of declaring the teaching to be shabeshtah, an incorrect distorted teaching. Since the teachings (that is the beraysos) were memorized scripts of didactic and casuistic codes, a line or two could have been jumbled. The first resort is to try to harmonize the discrepancy via reinterpretation and drawing distinctions, so that the contradiction was only an apparent one. But if all else fails, the Gemara would rely on the stronger tradition of the two (whether it is a known practice or comes from a more credible and dependable tradition or student), and then assume the other teaching is mistaken. 

Sometimes, instead of declaring the teaching to be shabeshta, the Gemara offers a different answer: Chasurei mechasrah. This means to say that there is missing text, and by adding a strategic word or line, it becomes comprehensible. The hard part to accept is that sometimes these insertions drastically change the original meaning, and one wonders could this really be the intention of the author or source of teaching? It has a feel of legal sophistry, and seems less compelling than the usual razor-sharp deductive logic of the Gemara. The simplest way to understand this is that if they had no choice and no way to answer the contradiction, and so they were left with either ruling the entire teaching as corrupted or just amend a small strategic portion. One might say it’s a migo of sorts, (a legal argument that a claimants otherwise unsubstantiated argument should be believed per force that he could have prevailed in the case based on a different claim, that if he were a liar, would have technically worked.) Here too, since (migo), we could have declared the entire teaching as shabeshta, we will just edit a small portion. (This can be supported by Rashi Sanhedrin 10b, “v’Haibur”, and Rav Yosef Karo, Kellaley Hatalmud.) 

However this simple answer sacrifices a degree of veracity for overall tradition. Though rare and as a last resort, we are still declaring and accepting a possibility of corruption in our legal cannon. This is why Rabbenu Bechaye (Ki Tissah 34:27) rejects this idea. He says the lacunae lie in our knowledge and not the text of the teaching. Since we have less understanding, somehow a text that was sufficient to describe the law clearly enough for the Tannah is no longer so for us. We then add text, but it is an addendum, not an amendment.

Still, in many cases, such an approach is hard to understand because the text does not even seem close to being interpreted that way without the amendment. Rabbenu Bechaye’s argument works technically then, but it isn’t always satisfying. However, part of that difficulty comes from our 21st century perspective that is extremely text-based. A culture that had less technology to allow easy and cheap storage of the written word, relies heavily on memorization and brief index-like sentences, which were intended to jog memory and not serve as perfectly edited documentation. Every technology shapes language. When space is at a premium, the language evolves to suit. We have seen this occur in modern times. You might recall when the original SMS texting became available, only 160 characters were allowed. This organically led to new slang words, acronyms and emoticons, such as “:-)”, LOL and IMHO. Like many linguistic developments, they transcend their original purpose, and now that we have the ability to text much larger amounts, the acronyms and emoticons persist. Even more fascinating, they migrated into everyday speech via speaking out the acronym or using a hand gesture for the emoticon. Taking into account those cultural and historical phenomena, it becomes easier to see why a shortened partial text might have seemed perfectly acceptable to the ancient sages, who lived in a semi-oral society. They had enough technology to write down the most important ideas, but without a printing press they still treated the written word as reminders and indices rather than a full record. This is why you’ll see ancient Greek engravings without spaces between the words. They didn’t use the carved sentences as full recordings but rather reminders of known sayings. It’s as if someone wrote, “As the saying goes, a stitch in time …etc.” The et cetera is way to conserve space because everyone knows how to finish the sentence.

Tiferes Yisrael (Arachim 1:4 Boaz) offers a different explanation for the origin of chasurei mechasrah. In order to aid memorization and retention, the Mishnayos and Beraysos were taught with a sing-song chant, and as with various songs and poems, you might have to leave out certain words to meter the prose. Other oral cultures used song as well to preserve their history, such as the West African Griots and the Hindu Vegas and Upanishads. 

A final intriguing explanation is that of the Vilna Gaon (see Mas’es Melech, Ki Tissah.) Since the Oral Torah was originally prohibited to be written down (Gittin 60b), even when it was written as a concession, portions were kept oral. This still begs the question as to why do that? If there was a concession made because the sages saw that the ability to remember and transmit had become weaker, why use incomplete language. If anything, that would lead to more confusion. We could simply answer that if writing oral Torah is forbidden, but necessary, the sages sought to minimize the violation. This is similar to giving an ill person on Yom Kippur lighter foods first, as discussed in Yoma (83a). 

Yet there is a deeper way to understand the reluctance to write more than necessary. The sages knew that the deepest truths of the Torah could never be captured in writing. The underlying nuances, attitudes and contexts represent millions of bits of data that can only be transmitted in an intuitive manner through learned experience and grasping the mentality and totality of the mentor. Most sciences and arts still to this day are probably taught experientially, despite having a large corpus of instructional text. Surgery, music, martial arts and even psychotherapy really cannot be learned from textbooks alone. All the books in the world cannot fully convey everything that is contained and transmitted via mimicry and apprenticeship from the master. The sages therefore wanted to make it clear that even if they wrote everything in the fullest and most precise terms, there still would be so much missing.

Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation

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