58 Azzan Yadin-Israel
Th e Sifra here points to a typical hermeneutic marker, namely, the apparent
redundancy of describing the off ering as “from the fl ock” and then adding
“of sheep or of goats.” But how, precisely, does the arguably redundant ad-
dition of the phrase “of sheep or of goats” introduce the slew of sacrifi ces
and legal cases cited by the Sifra? Th e problem is similar to the one we
encountered in discussing ’ish ’ish — how can a single phrase give rise to
a variety of legal conclusions — but perhaps more visible here because the
conclusions are introduced in a single derashah. Can Leviticus 1:10 be said
to generate all the possibilities mentioned in the derashah? Unlikely. But
more important, the Sifra does not appear to be making this claim. Noth-
ing in the derashah just cited, or in countless derashot like it, suggests that
the Sifra is attempting to bridge the gap between the biblical verse and the
legal decisions it seeks to affi rm or reject. Far from yielding a clear sense of
the Sifra as an interpretive text, then, our discussion has laid out a series
of diffi culties that arise in the attempt to understand the midrashic prac-
tices of this text: the Sifra is oft en obscure regarding the precise scriptural
elements that putatively give rise to its interpretation; even when these are
explicitly specifi ed, the Sifra does not engage the marked word or phrase
regularly (as when instances of ’ish ’ish do not elicit interpretation); the
same biblical element can be used to introduce or reject a long list of diff er-
ent legal conclusions. Overall, the Sifra maintains a tenuous, at times even
arbitrary, relationship with the biblical text.
What are we to make of such a midrash? To my mind, the most plausible
explanation (already suggested by earlier scholars, albeit in too sweeping
statements about “the rabbis”) is that the Sifra is an ex post facto engage-
ment of Scripture, a sustained attempt at fi nding biblical “hooks” on which
to hang already existing extrascriptural traditions. Th is suggestion carries
a certain risk since it may be born of nothing more than the modern inter-
preter’s inability to uncover (and subsequent frustration with) the herme-
neutic rules that underlie the Sifra’s interpretation of Leviticus. However,
this risk is mitigated by a series of derashot in the Sifra that deal explicitly
with the relationship between midrash and extrascriptural traditions (ha-
lakhot) that consistently represent the former as handmaiden to the latter.
Th e Sifra, in other words, lauds its interpreters for their ability to produce
midrashic arguments that support existing halakhot.14 Here is a brief syn-
opsis of the passages in question. In the Sifra’s interpretation of Leviticus
11:33, Rabbi Akiva off ers an innovative reading of the verse, proving that
a ritually impure loaf of bread transmits impurity to other objects. Upon
hearing this interpretation, one of his teachers, Rabbi Yehoshua, states,