It is written in the Talmud, in tractate Eruvin 13B: “Rabbi Abba reported that Shmuel said: For three years, Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel disagreed. These (Beit Shammai) said: Halacha is in accordance with our opinion, and those (Beit Hillel) said: Halacha is in accordance with our opinion. Finally, a Divine Voice arose and proclaimed: Both these (those of Shammai) and those (those of Hillel) are the words of the Living God.”

Rabbi Shlomo Luria, known as the Maharshal (1510–1574), explained his approach to study and teaching thus: “I always strove to seek out, down to the last source, the origin of some halacha, a search which I used to discuss with my colleagues and students. I would sometimes spend up to a week in deep research and reasoning until I found the root of the matter, finally to write it down in my book. And I always had the habit of citing all the opinions of the sages who preceded me, according to their rank of authority, in addition to the decisions and rulings of those who compiled the responsa, in order to avoid suspicion of plagiarism or the reproach that I had overlooked the opinion of some great authority.”

And Luria said, without fear, publicly: «Do not pay attention to the decisions of those who dare to define the laws, when most of them have only read the Tur Orah Hayyim of Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, as if the opinion of this rabbi had been transmitted to him directly from the mouth of Moses on Mount Sinai.» In this sense, Luria went so far as to question the opinions of his own father, Rabbi Jehiel Luria. And Joseph Caro himself, the creator of the Shulchan Aruch, was not spared from his criticism, whom he accused of having occasionally expressed superficial opinions in his effort to harmonize conflicting laws, as well as of having sometimes based his decisions on the reading of texts that were not faithful to their original.

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo tells us: “One of the Talmud’s greatest contributions to Judaism is its indeterminacy, its frequent refusal to establish a single law. Talmudic discussions consist mainly of opposing positions, often without a clear decision as to which point of view is correct.” And Luria said that the Kabbalists explained the origin of these differences of opinion in the fact that every Jewish soul was present at Sinai and that each understood the Torah from its own perspective, according to its intellectual capacity, its nature, and the uniqueness of each.

Lopes Cardozo comments: “For the past five hundred years, great rabbis have questioned the overwhelming authority of Yosef Karo’s Shulchan Aruch and the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah. They felt that these works do not reflect authentic Judaism and its halachic tradition. The reason is obvious: These great codes of Jewish law go against the spirit of Judaism. They present Halakha in ways that oppose the heart and soul of the Talmud and Judaism itself. They deprived Judaism of its halachic tradition of being multifaceted. The problem is not the works themselves, but rather this desire to codify and finalize Jewish law, to present a Judaism with a single face.”

By Marcos Gojman.

Bibliography: The Jewish Encyclopedia, Nathan Lopes Cardozo: “The In-Authenticity of Codifying Jewish Law.”