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Introduction
RABBENU NISSIM BEN REUVEN GERONDI (c.1310–76) raises a question concerning a well-known midrashic comment on Deuteronomy 17: 11. The verse reads: ‘You shall act in accordance with the instructions given you and the ruling handed down to you; you must not deviate from the verdict that they announce to you either to the right or to the left.’ On this last expression, Sifrei on Deuteronomy (paragraph 154) comments: ‘Even if they tell you that right is left, and left is right.’ Rabbenu Nissim asks:
There is place here for further investigation, to wit: it is fitting that this [position] follow from the view of those who think that there are no reasons for the commandments of the Torah at all and that all of them are consequences exclusively of [God's] will alone. According to this, the thing itself is neither ritually impure nor ritually pure, for example, but what makes it ritually impure or pure is a consequence of [God's] will alone.
Were this the case, Rabbenu Nissim points out, and since the Torah commands that we follow the decision of the sages of each generation, no damage could occur to the soul of the person who follows the decision of the sages of his generation, even if they mistakenly tell him that right is left, or left is right, or, more to the point, that it is permissible to eat something which, in fact, is actually not kosher. Rabbenu Nissim rejects this position:
But … we choose not to adopt this position, but believe that all that the Torah forbids us harms us and leaves an evil impression in our souls, even if we do not know its cause. According to this view, then, if the sages were to agree concerning an impure thing that it was pure, what will be? For that thing will harm us and cause what is in its nature to cause, even though the sages agreed that it is pure. (p. 437)
Ingesting something unkosher actually harms the Jew. The forbidden food is forbidden because it is in itself harmful (at least to Jews).
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