Chasidut for Megillah 30:15

Consider the way our Torah predecessors gave great honor to the unique among them, even though they were all holy individuals. We find a certain agadata in the Talmud (see Megilla, 15b) is interpreted in nine different ways, and Eliyahu haNavi agrees that all of them are true. “Raban Shimon ben Gamliel said, ‘still, we need the Moda’ii.’ “ Though the interpretation of Elazar HaModa’ii was different from the rest, he still found it essential to honor him and include his words. This being so, how could anyone in our generation have the audacity to do away with the opinion of Rabbi Elazar haModa’ii? I will give the order to punish those guilty of this rebellion and trespass. They do not know the great implications of their sin. Suffice that the heavens shall reveal it, and the earth below will rise up against them. It is a grave offence. He is like one who waits to ambush others, but in the end he will afflict his soul with pennitentiary fasting until his teeth turn black. We find this in the Gemara (Chagiga, 22b), where Rabbi Yehoshua once claimed that he was ashamed that a certain opinion of Beit Shammai concerning the laws of purity had ever been stated, claiming that it did not make sense. After Beit Shammai’s opinion was properly explained, Rabbi Yehoshua threw himself on the graves of Beit Shammai to beg forgiveness, and it was said that in the coming years his teeth turned black from penitential fasts he endured for this incident. In another passage concerning the laws of purity Rabbi Akiva taught that coming into contact with two halves of a revi’it of blood from two separate dead bodies imparts ritual impurity. The Sages disagreed with this opinion, claiming that only a complete revi’it of blood from one body departs impurity. Rebbi taught in the name of Bar Kapara, “do not count the ruling about the revi’it of blood among the rulings that Rabbi Akiva retracted.” Rabbi Shimon then jeered at this by saying, “as long as he was alive he ruled that it makes one impure, but whether or not he retracted it after he died, I am not sure.” The Gemara says that eventually Rabbi Shimon’s teeth turned black from fasting, and that he would fill his eyes with clods of earth from the floor of Rabbi Akiva’s house of study. [However, when the Gemara says (Chullin 24a), “even if Yehoshua bin Nun had said it, I would not have accepted it,” – it is a case where the law had been accepted a certain way, and no opposition can change it. This is how the law is established in the Shulchan Aruch (Yore Deah, 242:36), “One who says of his fellow, I would not accept the law from him even if he was like Yehoshua bin Nun, is worthy of niddui (excommunication, shunning). This is not so when he says this of an opinion contrary to a law that is universally accepted.” (The Rambam explains this his introduction to seder Zeraim, part 2.)] The disregard for the words of any of the sages is a result of a limited understanding and an insufficient tenure in the house of study. This is as the Zohar say (Balak, 193b), “When one praises himself, it is a sign that he does not know anything.” Such misguided people err in the very method of the sages of the Gemara. They are mistaken in that they believe that each sage would explain as he saw fit and however his spirit moved him. They do not know that our holy predecessors did not say anything from their own minds, but only taught that which they had received in the tradition from a faithful source. Who would have the audacity to offer his own opinion in a place where he does not understand their words? “For I am more boorish than a man, and I do not have the understanding of a man. I have not learned wisdom,” and I do not have the understanding of the holy. (Mishlei 30:2) Furthermore, the words of Rabbi Elazar HaModa’ii are also found in Targum Yonatan (one of the Aramaic translations of the Torah), and the Targum claims that when one thinks he is doing a great service to explain difficult passages with contrived solutions not based on tradition he is only making them more incomprehensible.