Our Gemara on Amud Aleph discusses why we do not judge capital cases on Erev Shabbos:

“And if we say: We should judge him on Shabbos eve, conclude his verdict on Shabbos, and kill him on Sunday, you are found to have caused a delay in his verdict, as the accused will have to wait overnight knowing he is condemned to death. 

And if we say: We should judge him on Shabbos eve and conclude his verdict on Sunday, the judges will forget their reasons for their positions in the interim. 

And even though two judges’ scribes are standing before them, and they write the statements of those who acquit the accused and the statements of those who find him liable, and they write that which emerged from the mouths of the judges, i.e., their tentative verdict, the hearts of people [enashei] are forgetful [inshei], and they will forget the reasons. Therefore, it is not possible to begin deliberations in cases of capital law on a Shabbos eve or a Festival eve.”

The Gemara makes a distinction between what is written down and what is understood internally, in the heart. This is a fascinating idea: even when the court’s transcribers faithfully record the arguments and proceedings, we believe the nuanced reasoning behind the arguments is not sufficiently memorialized. Therefore, we are concerned that if the verdict is delayed by a day, one of the judges may not fully recall the details of the argument in favor of acquittal, potentially leading to a conviction prevailing.

Resisei Layla (12) explains that there are two parts to Torah: Chochma and Bina, which we can translate as knowledge and insight. Chochma refers to the bare facts that can be recorded, while Bina represents an understanding or wisdom that deduces broader purposes, implications, and underpinnings. This allows the sage to extrapolate and apply principles of the law to novel situations and cases.

As an interesting linguistic side note, Pri Tzaddik (Nasso) quotes the Ishbitzer’s observation that the Talmudic phrase for “opinion according to…” is “aliba de-mar”, which literally translates to “on the heart of the master.” The idiom uses the heart rather than the brain, because the deeper understanding of the Torah principles by which the opinion is formulated remains a matter of the heart.

There is a vast literature regarding how scientists and researchers intuit ideas or hypotheses before testing and evaluating them. We can define intuition as the ability to deduce a pattern without full data. The Rambam, in the Guide for the Perplexed (II:36), understands the imaginative faculty as an important tool of the mind to grasp matters in their totality and to translate them into symbolic terms and patterns. For him, intellectual comprehension and insight are part of a continuum leading to prophecy, which utilizes imagination to piece together an experience that cannot be fully understood by our rational faculties initially, and must be decoded broadly via our imagination, and then applied by the intellect. The Noda BeYehuda (EH II:62) also speaks of the imagination’s function in grasping and perceiving something, which is then processed by the intellect. However, imagination is necessary first because it processes the larger sphere and intuitively identifies what is important, avoiding extraneous data.

Michael Polanyi, in The Tacit Dimension (1966), argues that scientific knowledge often involves tacit knowledge—knowledge that cannot be fully articulated but is essential for scientific discovery. This tacit knowledge often manifests as intuition or a “hunch” that guides scientists toward new insights. Robert S. Root-Bernstein, in Discovering: Inventing and Solving Problems at the Frontiers of Scientific Knowledge (1989), discusses the role of aesthetic intuition and imaginative processes in scientific innovation, illustrating how many major scientific breakthroughs were preceded by a non-verbal, intuitive understanding of the problem.

Based on this, it emerges that when we use the term Oral Torah (Torah Shebaal Peh), it encompasses two aspects. The usual understanding of the Oral Torah refers to the accompanying laws and traditions that explain and modify the Torah, such as details in the laws of Succah or kashrus. However, Rav Tzaddok (the author of both Pri Tzaddik and Resisei Layla quoted above) explains Bina as an aspect of the Torah that is not quantifiable in words but develops internally, creating an understanding generalizable to other situations not explicitly stated in the law. When our Gemara suggests that transcribers may not record arguments sufficiently well to recreate them later, it speaks to the non-verbal aspect that is ever-present in Torah thought. This is what we might also call Das Torah—the idea that a great Torah sage, through submission to God and immersion in Torah over years, has a deep instinct about Torah morality and expectations, allowing him to apply principles to life situations beyond the letter of the law.

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

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