Untranslating Maḥloqet: Halakhic Pluralism and Halakhic Censure

Abstract

This article offers a conceptual and historical analysis of the rabbinic term maḥloqet, arguing that it functions not merely as a descriptor of disagreement but as a culturally embedded legal category with shifting meanings and purposes across rabbinic history. The article traces maḥloqet through two key moments: its institutionalization in the Mishnah and its attempted elimination in Maimonides’ legal writings. In the Mishnah, maḥloqet is presented as a legitimate and even constructive feature of halakhic discourse, enabling pluralism, preserving dissenting voices, and fostering a collective sense of legal authorship. By contrast, Maimonides views maḥloqet as a symptom of a dysfunctional legal system and seeks to eliminate it through his codificatory project in the Mishneh Torah. Drawing on both legal and philosophical writings, the article argues that for Maimonides, the eradication of maḥloqet is necessary for halakhah to fulfill its unifying social function. The article concludes that the term maḥloqet cannot be fully translated into terms like “dispute” or “controversy,” as it carries distinct legal, political, and epistemological valences unique to rabbinic culture. Its layered function across time highlights the complex interplay between law, authority, and dissent in the Jewish legal tradition.

1. Introduction

What is a maḥloqet? The term is frequently rendered in English as “dispute,” “controversy,” “disagreement”, or “debate.” Yet none of these translations adequately conveys its semantic density or its functional role within rabbinic literature. Each evokes the notion of disagreement, but maḥloqet is not simply a disagreement—it is a cultural and epistemological structure and a conceptual marker of rabbinic legal thought. As I will argue in the pages that follow, maḥloqet is not only central to the rhetorical and halakhic logic of rabbinic texts; it is also a lens through which we may observe the deep mechanics of those texts at work.

In this sense, maḥloqet is untranslatable. It is a term embedded in a specific legal culture and worldview, for which no single English equivalent can capture its discursive significance. It marks not merely disagreement over outcomes but a mode of legal reasoning—a structural feature of rabbinic law that in some cases balances stability and openness, consensus and dissent, while in other cases is used in order to censure dissent and to enforce legal uniformity.

To begin with a basic definition: a maḥloqet is a disagreement among rabbinic authorities concerning halakhic matters. Such disagreements may occur at any level of legal discourse—from the fine details of ritual performance to the broadest meta-halakhic principles. For the benefit of the uninitiated reader, consider an illustrative example from the very first passage of the Mishnah, the foundational rabbinic legal compilation redacted in Roman Palestine in the early third century CE.

From what time may one recite the Shema’ in the evening? From the time the priests enter to eat their terumah until the end of the first watch—these are the words of Rabbi Eliezer. But the sages say: until midnight. Rabban Gamaliel says: until dawn.1

This opening maḥloqet addresses the appropriate time frame for the recitation of the Shema’, a central declaration of Jewish faith recited morning and evening. All parties agree on the basic obligation to recite the Shema’ in the evenings; their disagreement concerns the precise interpretation of the Torah’s command to recite it “when you lie down” (Deuter. 6:7). Rabbi Eliezer defines “evening” as the first third of the night, the sages extend it until midnight, and Rabban Gamaliel permits recitation until dawn.

It must be stated immediately: this mahloqet was chosen as a representative example. The Mishnah, the midrashic texts and the Talmud are replete with examples of disagreements such as these. In almost every chapter of the Mishnah one will find at least one, if not more, disagreements over legal points. In the first chapter of the Mishnah alone, the opening of which was quoted above, we find a mahloqet in four of the five mishnas which comprise the chapter.

At first glance at this mahloqet, it appears to be a conventional legal disagreement over liturgical timing. Nothing to write home about. Yet this framing overlooks the deeper challenge this phenomenon poses: the Mishnah presents itself, in significant measure, as a legal code—a prescriptive text designed to guide halakhic practice.2 A legal code, however, must guide action; it must tell the reader what to do. To preserve three competing opinions, without resolution, in such a text is to court ambiguity precisely where clarity is expected.

To illustrate the dissonance, consider a hypothetical clause in a modern legal code: “Vehicles must stop at intersections. What constitutes a stop signal? A red light—so says Senator A; a green light—say the majority party; orange—according to Senator B.” Such a provision would undermine the very function of the legal code. And yet, the Mishnah not only tolerates but routinely reproduces such structures. The inclusion of maḥloqet within a text that also claims normative authority suggests a different legal logic.

This, then, is the paradox at the heart of maḥloqet: it is a form of disagreement that coexists with legal obligation; a marker of discursive tension within a system that nonetheless functions as law. To translate maḥloqet simply as “dispute” or “controversy” is to strip it of this complexity. What is needed is not merely lexical substitution, but an analysis which explicates the function of this term.

The present article offers a partial genealogy of maḥloqet as a legal-cultural term and a foundational structure of rabbinic and halakhic literature. We will consider the function and meaning of maḥloqet in two canonical texts of the halakhic tradition. First, we will study maḥloqet at the moment of the appearance of this phenomenon, in the third century text of the Mishnah. Following this, the second section of the article will explore the meaning of maḥloqet in the medieval twelfth century Code of Law of Maimonides. As we shall see, in these two distinct epistemic contexts, the concept of maḥloqet performs markedly different roles within the halakhic field. Tracing these shifts will help the reader to understand how rabbinic texts think, how they encode authority, and how they construct the relationship between law and truth.

2. The Pre-Rabbinic Heritage

In the Hebrew Bible, we do not encounter explicit legal disagreement of the sort that becomes commonplace in tannaitic literature. When an apodictic utterance is issued, it is uttered by God himself, or by a direct messenger. Therefore, there is no basis or reason to dispute it, leaving no interpretive space for dissent. Challenges to divine authority are answered with swift and often violent retribution, as in the case of Qorah and his followers (Num. 16).

On the rare occasions where conflicting views appear in the biblical corpus, they will never appear side by side, thereby masking the disagreement. For example while Exodus declares that God visits “the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation” (Ex. 20:5; 34:7), Deuteronomy tacitly argues against this “the fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers” (Deut. 24:16; cf. Ezekiel 18:4). Such contradictions are left unexplained and unacknowledged.3 Whether this silence stems from redactional oversight or an intentional rhetorical strategy is debatable; either way, the result is a lack of overt dispute. This stands in marked contrast to rabbinic literature, where disagreement is not only acknowledged but highlighted—maḥloqet is a core structural and rhetorical feature from the Mishnah onward.4

It is worth mentioning that also in Rabbinic culture—in texts probably emanating from a more ancient layer of tannaitic literature—we find an imaginary of an idealized past in which there was a pristine transmission. A notable example appears in Tosefta Sanhedrin 2:9:

Rabbi Yose said: Originally there was no mahloqet in Israel. Rather, a court of seventy-one sat in the chamber of hewn stone [the Sanhedrin] and other courts of twenty-three sat in the cities of Israel. And two courts of three each were in Jerusalem, one on the Temple Mount and one in the Chayil.

When it was necessary [to know a halakha, a person] goes to the court in his city. If there was no court [in his city, the person] goes to the court near his city. If they heard (im sham’u)—they tell him; if not, he and their most distinguished member go to the court on the Temple Mount. If they heard (im sham’u), they tell him; if not, he and their most distinguished member go to the court in the Chayil. If they heard (im sham’u) they tell him; if not these and these arrive at the court in the chamber of hewn stone [...] If they heard (im sham’u) they tell them, and if not, they vote. If the majority says impure—it is impure. If the majority says pure—it is pure. From there the law (halakhah) goes out and spreads in Israel.

When the students of Shammai and Hillel who did not properly apprentice increased, conflicts (mahloqet) increased in Israel and it became as though there were two Torahs.

According to the narrative of the Toseftah cited above, maḥloqet is a historically contingent deviation from an earlier, unified halakhic order. During the time of the Temple—and one can infer by extension, since the time of Moses and until its destruction—the people of Israel were united in their legal practice. This earlier unified halakhic order was made possible by a structure of courts which were spread throughout the land and made the law accessible to each Israelite in need of legal guidance. The courts are arranged in a hierarchical fashion, when it is understood that peripheral courts hold less authority—and probably wisdom and expertise as well—and the central courts are more authoritative. Because of this hierarchical model, when a peripheral court does not know a halakha, it may refer the question to a higher court.

A vital assumption underpinning this system, however, is that halakha is at no point a matter of innovation. This is made clear by the use of the technical halakhic term “shemu’ah” throughout this passage. In halakhic parlance, shemu’ah is the term used for a teaching of halakha received from an authority of previous generations, usually, but not always, the speaker’s direct master.5 Thus, we see that when the inquirer comes to the court, the court has only two options available to it: if it holds a shemu’ah received from previous generations—im sham’u—it may answer the inquiry. The court may answer the question if and only if, in doing so it is transmitting a tradition which one of its members has received from an authority of a previous generation. If the court has not received a tradition on the question in point, it may not answer the legal question at all, and then may only refer the inquirer onwards to a higher court. It is telling that the court itself must send a representative on the arduous journey to the court of another city and even to Jerusalem so that it may fill the lacuna in tradition from which it suffers.

None of the lower courts are allowed to present a solution to the halakhic inquiry if they have not already received that solution by authority. Even at the Great Court itself, where presumably the seventy-one wisest and most knowledgeable scholars reside, if one of them—even the least of them—holds a shemu’ah the court will answer the inquiry according to his position. Only once the entire process of searching for a tradition in the various instances of courts has failed, does the Great Court, located in the chamber of hewn stone in the Temple, use human reasoning and interpretation in order to legislate a new legal norm. This passage reflects a trend in Tannaitic Literature which shies away from any human subjectivity: God is the only author of the law, and the function of humans is only as a conduit from generation to generation of his original legislation: law is, in this view, transmissive, not interpretive. Halakhic innovation is a last resort, and even when innovation is required, it is reserved only for a centralized and authoritative body that simulates the original court of Moses and the seventy elders (ibid).6

3. The Virtue of Maḥloqet

The most famous place where we find a celebration of the phenomenon of maḥloqet in Tannaitic literature is b. Eruv. 13b. The text describes a meta-halakhic disagreement between Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel: in cases in which the two houses agree, the opinion of which house should be laid down as the law? This debate is about the general principle, to be used in all disagreements between the houses. The debate reaches an impasse, seemingly without resolution, until it is suddenly solved by the intervention of a divine voice. The voice claims that “These and these”, i.e., both Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel’s opinions, “are the words of the living God”, and then immediately goes on to say: “However, the halakha is in accordance with the opinion of Beit Hillel”.

This Baraita is the locus classicus for scholarly debate about the phenomenon of maḥloqet in both Tannaitic and Amoraic sources.7 Here I will briefly present a scholarly exchange regarding the truth-value of halakhic statements, in order to subsequently argue against the conceptual framework in which this exchange takes place, and propose an alternative. The discussion of rabbinic pluralism in scholarly literature is too broad and rich to be presented in this article, and to a certain extent I am cherry-picking here, as this particular debate allows me to make my point clearly.8 Hanina Ben-Menahem argues that certain Talmudic formulations (e.g., zeh ve-zeh asu kahogen) reflect a genuine commitment to theoretical pluralism, whereby multiple halakhic answers may be equally valid.9 David Kraemer similarly contends that the Bavli’s refusal to resolve many disputes reflects an epistemological stance that privileges dialogue and multiplicity over closure.10 Richard Hidary contrasts the Bavli’s tolerance for legal diversity with the more monist orientation of the Yerushalmi, attributing this divergence to their respective Iranian and Roman contexts.11 In contrast to these scholars, Christine Hayes rejects the claim that the Talmud embraces a principled legal pluralism, arguing that while it preserves disagreement for rhetorical and pedagogical purposes, the Talmud’s legal discourse is fundamentally oriented toward the pursuit of a single correct answer, as shown through its use of truth-language and its adjudicative procedures. In her view, the Talmud adopts a “practical pluralism”, allowing multiple legal right answers in practice, while still holding the opinion that in principle there exists only one correct answer.12

Underlying the analyses of these scholars is a shared assumption that maḥloqet should be evaluated through the framework of a theory of truth. Whether implicitly or explicitly, each scholar treats rabbinic legal disagreement as a problem of epistemology: how can conflicting halakhic opinions relate to legal truth? Their divergent conclusions—ranging from Hayes’ insistence on monism to Ben-Menahem and Kraemer’s arguments for pluralism—are all premised on the idea that halakhic statements are “truth-apt”, i.e., each halakhic statement makes a claim about what is the true, correct law. Thus, their interpretive efforts revolve around whether the Talmud affirms a single correct answer, multiple legitimate answers, or a dialogical structure in which truth is suspended or shared.

Despite significant differences in emphasis, all four rely on modern models of truth as the conceptual basis for interpreting maḥloqet. For example, Christine Hayes adopts a correspondence theory of truth, arguing that the Talmud ultimately seeks a single, correct legal answer that reflects a divinely grounded legal reality. Though the Talmud preserves multiple opinions, she insists this serves pedagogical or rhetorical purposes, not a pluralistic conception of truth. Ben Menachem, Kraemer and Hidary, by contrast, espouse a form of pluralist or relativist truth, maintaining that the halakhic system sometimes accommodates more than one equally valid ruling—zeh ve-zeh assu kahogen—reflecting a principled embrace of normative diversity.

A particularly revealing moment of rabbinic self-reflection occurs in Mishnah Eduyot 1:5–6, where the text directly addresses the rationale for preserving dissenting opinions within the halakhic canon. The Mishnah begins by asking: “Why is the opinion of the individual recorded alongside that of the majority, if the halakha follows the majority?” The answer highlights the Mishnah’s role in safeguarding institutional memory by preserving rulings that could inform future legal decisions: “So that if a court sees fit to follow the minority, it may rely upon it, because one court cannot overturn the ruling of another unless it is greater than it in wisdom and in number.” On this view, the Mishnah conceptualizes itself not as a static repository of normative rulings, but as a dynamic legal archive that preserves alternative positions for potential future implementation, provided the proper procedural authority is in place.

An opposing stance is immediately introduced in the name of Rabbi Yehudah: “Why record the opinion of the minority? To refute it! So that if one says, ‘This is the tradition I received,’ he may be told, ‘You heard it like so-and-so.’” Here, the inclusion of dissenting views serves not to preserve their authority, but rather to preemptively disqualify them. As Moshe Halbertal has observed, this is a “controversy about controversy”: a dispute over whether the Mishnah functions as a flexible legal code that preserves halakhic possibility, or as a closed canon that enshrines legal finality. The editorial attribution reinforces this polarity. The Mishnah sides with the inclusionary model by presenting it anonymously as the majority view, while relegating the exclusionary interpretation to Rabbi Yehudah. Intriguingly, the Tosefta reverses the attribution, suggesting that even the meaning of dissent and its status within tradition are themselves contested sites of editorial decision13.

Rabbi Yehudah’s position in Eduyot 1:6 exemplifies a fundamentally exclusionary logic in the treatment of dissent. By claiming that minority opinions are preserved “to refute them,” he envisions canonization as a mechanism not of potential revival, but of containment. Attribution becomes a polemical tool: by tying rejected views to named individuals, the text marks them as marginal and prevents their reactivation as normative. In this model, maḥloqet is not a space for enduring pluralism but a strategy of sectarian policing—one that enables the rabbinic community to preserve institutional unity by safeguarding the canon as a stable and unambiguous source of legal authority.

In contrast, the majority view in Eduyot 1:5 represents a politics of inclusion. It envisions the Mishnah as an instrument of communal tolerance that can accommodate and preserve divergent traditions without undermining halakhic coherence. By maintaining dissenting views within the legal record—so that “if a court sees fit to follow the minority, it may rely on it”—the Mishnah enables continued identification with the legal system even by those who adhere to minority rulings. In the aftermath of the Temple’s destruction and in the shadow of longstanding sectarian fragmentation, this inclusionary strategy serves to maintain communal cohesion while avoiding the rigidity of enforced uniformity. Rather than erase dissent, the Mishnah absorbs it, preserving a cultural memory that allows the legal tradition to remain both authoritative and adaptable. Canonization here is not merely a record of past rulings, but a deliberate political act—one that seeks to consolidate rabbinic authority by broadening, rather than narrowing, the field of legitimate halakhic discourse.

An illustration of the political and social logic underlying maḥloqet appears in Mishnah Yevamot 1:4, where we are presented with two halakhic disagreements between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai. These disputes concern questions of marriage eligibility and dietary laws—domains that carry immediate consequences for the cohesion of the community. The text recounts that “Beit Shammai permit co-wives to the brothers; Beit Hillel forbid them. If they performed ḥalitzah, Beit Shammai invalidate [them from marrying a priest]; Beit Hillel permit. If they performed yibbum, Beit Shammai permit; Beit Hillel invalidate.” Despite the stark opposition between the rulings of the two schools, the Mishnah emphasizes that these differences did not lead to sectarian division: “Even though these permit and those forbid, and these validate and those invalidate—Beit Shammai did not refrain from marrying women from Beit Hillel, nor Beit Hillel from Beit Shammai. And concerning purity and impurity—though these declared pure and those impure—they did not refrain from using each other’s utensils.”

This passage demonstrates that the major ramifications of the rabbinic willingness to preserve two opinions to a halakhic question are not in the sphere of the truth value of the halakha, but are in the communal sphere. The disagreements between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, if enacted to their full halakhic extent, would have rendered intermarriage and shared eating practices impossible. The text suggests that the schools chose not to follow through on the practical consequences of their rulings in order to preserve social cohesion. In this light, maḥloqet functions as a vehicle for managing dissent within a broader framework sectarian division prevalent in Israel in late antiquity. The refusal to allow legal disagreement to devolve into socioreligious schism marks a deliberate contrast to the sectarian tendencies that characterized earlier and contemporaneous forms of Judaism.

The backdrop to this rabbinic posture is the well-documented phenomenon of sectarian fragmentation in late antiquity, in which dietary laws, marriage restrictions, and calendrical disputes served as key boundary markers between competing Jewish groups 14 The Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, reflect the Qumran community’s strict separation from other Jews over issues such as food purity and calendar calculation—disagreements that made intercommunal cooperation impossible. Against this backdrop, Mishnah Yevamot 1:4 must be read as an intentional countermodel: it discusses the archetypal protagonists of maḥloqet in the Mishnah: the two houses of Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, but in doing so it stages the disagreement not as a cause for rupture but as a discursive form capable of containing disagreement without causing exclusion. The preservation of halakhic dissent, when paired with a refusal to enforce its divisive consequences, reflects a rabbinic political project that aims to unify a post-sectarian Jewish society while still acknowledging its internal plurality.

This interpretation aligns closely with the analysis offered by Menachem Fisch and Chaim Shapira regarding the divide between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai. Fisch and Shapira identify in the houses two opposing halakhic worldviews: Beit Shammai represents a conservative-traditionalist model that prioritizes fidelity to inherited tradition, while Beit Hillel embodies a critical-interpretive model that embraces deliberation, reasoning, and the potential for innovation. The Mishnah’s consistent privileging of Beit Hillel thus marks a fundamental endorsement of an open, dialogical approach to halakhic development.15 In this framework, dissent is not a threat to authority, but a necessary condition for its continual refinement.

This ethos is captured in the Talmudic explanation of why the halakha ultimately follows Beit Hillel, in the Baraita quoted above: “Because they were humble and modest, and they studied both their own opinions and those of Beit Shammai, even placing Beit Shammai’s before their own” (b. Eruv. 13b). The divine voice affirms not only the content of Beit Hillel’s rulings, but the method by which they were reached—a method that models inclusion and self-critical openness. From this perspective, Beit Hillel’s willingness to hear and preserve the voice of Beit Shammai is precisely what qualifies them to redact the halakhic canon in a way that is authoritative on the one hand, while being inclusive of the other parts of the Rabbinic community on the other. Their approach thus mirrors the inclusive strategy articulated in Mishnah Eduyot 1:5, which preserves dissent not in spite of its challenge to authority, but because it strengthens the cohesion and adaptability of the tradition itself.16

4. Maimonides on Maḥloqet

The discussion surrounding the phenomenon of maḥloqet in halakhah is one of the primary themes that drives Maimonides’ introduction to his Commentary on the Mishnah. According to Maimonides in his introduction, until the time of the Men of the Great Assembly, halakhic transmission occurred without disagreement, for there existed an orderly method that prevented disputes from being passed on to the next generation.

Maimonides integrates the undeniable element of halakhic innovation into his model of transmission, while also preserving the authority of tradition from being undermined. According to Maimonides’ narrative, innovation occurs in every generation, but what is transmitted to the next generation are only those elements that are agreed upon. Therefore, there is room for innovation, on the one hand; while on the other hand, a picture of unbroken and flawless transmission is maintained—free of error and free of dispute.17

Maimonides is here close in his presentation to that of Toseftah Sanhedrin 2:9 mentioned above (“originally there was no mahloqet in Israel”). He too presents a pristine, idealized past, before the appearance of the phenomenon of maḥloqet. However, Maimonides critiques the reason the Toseftah gives for the appearance of maḥloqet: “when the disciples of Shammai and Hillel multiplied, who did not serve [their masters] sufficiently—maḥloqet increased in Israel and it became as though there were two Torahs.” According to Maimonides, this statement should not be understood as claiming that the disciples of Shammai and Hillel erred in their reception or forgot part of the tradition:

This—by the life of God—is a disgraceful and bizarre claim. It is incorrect, inconsistent with the rules, and casts suspicion on the very people from whom we received the Torah. All of this is null and void.18

Maḥloqet, claims Maimonides, does not stem from a disruption in the chain of transmission, which, in his view, was never compromised. Disagreements arise not because parts of the Torah were forgotten or never transmitted, but because the “ways of study”, were forgotten. That is to say, the methods of interpretation and innovation of halakha, by which the subsequent generations could create new halakhic material, were forgotten. That is, disagreement does not pertain to halakhic content received from a prior generation, but to halakhic material that was newly generated in successive generations through processes of reasoning.

In order to defend the chain of transmission even in the period of the Mishnah in which maḥloqet is an undeniable reality, in his introduction Maimonides portrays Rabbi Judah the Patriarch as an integral part of the chain of transmission. He provides a detailed chain of transmission extending from Rabbi Judah through his father Shimon back to the prophet Jeremiah—thus reaching deep into the biblical period. Moreover, Maimonides makes an effort to describe Rabbi Judah the Patriarch’s activity as an organic part of the transmission process. He “gathered all the received traditions, teachings, and disagreements that were stated from the time of Moses our Master until his own day.”19 Significantly, the act that Rabbi Judah the Patriarch performed is described as “gathering” (jamʿ). He did not add or subtract; rather, he merely gathered the existing traditions. Gathering is not an anti-traditionalist act; it is, on the contrary, a thoroughly traditional one. Rabbi Judah the Patriarch is even portrayed as representing the pinnacle of the transmission chain, since the scope of his activity is total: he gathers all the traditions transmitted from the time of Moses to his own day.20

However, between the lines it is clear that Maimonides recognizes that Rabbi Judah the Patriarch differs in a fundamental way from the earlier stages of the transmission chain. First, according to Maimonides’ own admission, the state of halakhah in Rabbi Judah’s time differs profoundly from its condition in prior generations. From Maimonides’ assertion that Rabbi Judah “gathered all the received traditions, teachings, and disagreements (jamaʿ al-ruʾāyāt wa-l-aqwāl wa-l-ikhtilāfā) that were stated from the time of Moses our Teacher until his day,” we can infer that in Rabbi Judah’s time, halakhah was already in a state of disagreement, i.e., maḥloqet (the Arabic term used by Maimonides and translated here as maḥloqet is ikhtilāf)”.21

Maimonides does not explain how halakhah deteriorated from a state of reliable transmission to a condition of crisis characterized by maḥloqet. Nor does he indicate in which generation from the time of Joshua to that of Rabbi Judah the Patriarch this transformation occurred, and when maḥloqet entered the halakhic system. Whereas in previous times the existence of a great court in Jerusalem enabled the settling of the disagreements, the institutional state in Rabbi Judah’s day is such that once a dispute arises, halakhah is no longer institutionally capable of taking the next step: resolving the matter in a way that cancels the disagreement. As a result, in contrast to the period before Rabbi Judah, in which what was transmitted was only the parts of the halakha that were agreed upon, in Rabbi Judah’s time the dispute itself is destined to be transmitted from generation to generation and even to be incorporated into the canonical code that Rabbi Judah edits.

Nonetheless, Maimonides responds in a sophisticated manner to the necessity of acknowledging the presence of disagreement within the Mishnah. As we saw above, in the first chapter of tractate Eduyot, the Mishnah asks “Why are the words of an individual recorded alongside those of the majority, given that the halakhah follows the majority?”. In other words, the Mishnah itself questions the need to transmit disagreement as an integral part of the Mishnah. As we saw above, this question receives two answers in the Mishnah: The response of the Sages—that is, the majority—is that the voice of the individual is preserved so that it may be relied upon in the future (Eduyot 1:5), while Rabbi Yehudah offers the opposite answer (Eduyot 1:6) He maintains that the words of the minority are recorded precisely so that they cannot be revived in the future—so that future generations will know that the dispute has already been decided. Rabbi Yehudah thus holds, as does Maimonides, that disagreement is a flaw in halakhah and should be eradicated rather than preserved”.22

As mentioned above, in the parallel passage in the Toseftah the opinions are reversed: Rabbi Yehudah holds the position of what is in the Mishnah the majority and vice versa with the sages. We do not know which version of the Mishnah was available to Maimonides, and whether his copy of the Mishnah perhaps included the version of the Toseftah, but in any case, in his introduction to the Commentary on the Mishnah he presents the view of Rabbi Yehudah and claims that this is the opinion of Rabbi Judah the Patriarch (i.e., the majority voice):

Had he only recorded agreed-upon teachings about which there was no maḥloqet (ikhtilāf), and omitted the views of those whose opinions were not accepted as law, then in a later generation someone might come who received a teaching from someone who held the rejected opinion—or from someone who himself held that opinion—in opposition to the one that was established in practice. Then we would be in doubt: how can it be that such-and-such, a trustworthy person, received that a certain matter is forbidden, while the Mishnah makes clear that it is permitted—or vice versa? But if all the opinions are known to us, this contradiction is resolved. If someone says, ‘I heard that such-and-such is forbidden,’ we say: ‘You are correct, that is indeed the view of so-and-so, but the majority disagrees with him,’ or: ‘so-and-so disagrees with him, and the halakhah follows the opposing view—either because it is more persuasive or because we have another tradition that supports it.’23

Since Maimonides believes that disagreement points to a problem in the chain of transmission, he seeks to limit its scope. According to Maimonides disagreement is a late phenomenon in halakhah, one that did not exist throughout the chain of transmission from the time of Joshua until at least the Men of the Great Assembly.24 It is true, Maimonides concedes, that the Mishnah of Rabbi Judah the Patriarch contains disagreements, but Rabbi Judah’s intention in recording these disagreements, says Maimonides, was their eradication.

If so, although in the generations prior to Rabbi Judah the Patriarch there was no centralized institution capable of resolving legal disputes, it seems that in his time such an institution did exist. What was that institution? We learn—although Maimonides does not state this explicitly—that the institution was the Mishnah itself. That is, according to Maimonides, the Mishnah was meant to serve as an instrument for resolving halakhic disagreements and thereby unifying halakhah.

However, in Maimonides’ view, the Mishnah of Rabbi Judah the Patriarch failed to achieve this objective of eradicating disagreement for two main reasons. First, although it was composed in Hebrew, its terminology and language, according to Maimonides, were insufficiently clear and precise. Second, in many cases the Mishnah refrains from taking a stand between the opposing views, which leads, in Maimonides’ opinion, to halakhic ambiguity—since it is often unclear what the ruling is in any given mishnah.

Maimonides viewed the removal of these two problems as one of the central aims of his commentary on the Mishnah:

And I saw that this composition, on the whole of the Mishnah, according to the intention I will explain, would have four major goals: First, we will make known the correct interpretation of the Mishnah and explain its language [...]. Second, we will provide legal rulings: I will tell you with each explanation whose opinion is the one followed in practice. Third, it will serve as an introduction for beginners in study [...] and will be like one who has encompassed the entire Talmud. Fourth, it will serve as a review aid for one who has already studied and learned [...] and his knowledge of Mishnah and Talmud will be well-ordered thereby.25

One of the four major goals of the Commentary on the Mishnah, therefore, is the ruling of halakha wherever there appear more than one halakhic opinion in the Mishnah. However, why according to Maimonides, must maḥloqet be eliminated from halakha in the first place?

In a different study, analyzing Maimonides’ statements regarding political philosophy and their basis in Alfarabi’s political philosophy, I have argued that Maimonides’ desire to abolish disagreement and unify halakhah stems from his political philosophy.26 As Maimonides explains in The Guide of the Perplexed, there is a paradox in the human condition: on the one hand, because the human being is the most complex of animals, his food and basic needs are not found in nature in a form immediately suitable for his consumption.27 Therefore, humans must live in a society in which individuals specialize in various crafts and thereby provide one another with essential goods. On the other hand, precisely because of humanity’s great complexity, unlike other animals, man is not uniform. Within the species itself, there exists enormous variation, such that members of the human species are incapable of living together without some unifying force.28

In other words, man is by nature caught in a paradox: on the one hand, his nature draws him toward social frameworks for the sake of survival; on the other hand, the complexity of his nature alienates him from others of his kind to the point that he is incapable of forming associations. Human nature, then, is paradoxical. However, while individual members of the human species are incapable of forming associations on their own, according to Maimonides, God has implanted within the species the potential to pull itself out of its predicament by its own hair, as it were.29

As Maimonides writes in Guide II.40 (Pines, vol. II, p. 398):

It is a part of the wisdom of the deity with regard to the permanence of this species of which He has willed the existence, that He put it into its nature that individuals belonging to it should have the faculty of ruling.30

That is, within any group of people, there may arise one person who possesses the ability to unify the others. This is the leader who organizes the community by means of the law. The law is a system of actions that the leader artificially imposes, and it is meant to produce uniform behavior, which in turn conceals the natural diversity (ikhtilāf). That is, the radical natural variation does not disappear, but is artificially hidden by the law. In this way, man is rescued from the paradox into which he was cast and is able to cooperate with others for the sake of the division of labor and thereby survival.

According to Maimonides, the purpose of law—not only divine law, but any law—is to overcome this paradox. Law is meant to establish uniform behavior among all members of the human community and thereby eliminate natural difference, enabling people to live together and cooperate for their survival.

The divine Torah given through Moses functioned precisely as such a law—until disagreement entered into it. The phenomenon of halakhic disagreement explicitly contradicts the purpose of law, according to Maimonides’ legal theory. While the purpose of law is to achieve uniformity of human behavior, disagreement undermines this uniformity and reintroduces natural difference into the (artificially constructed) realm of law. Disagreement causes halakhah to fail in fulfilling its function as law.

As we have seen, Maimonides viewed maḥloqet (ikhtilāf) as a fundamental problem in halakhah already in the initial stages of his career, already while writing the Commentary on the Mishnah. His next work, the Mishneh Torah, represents the next step in this project, in that it presents halakha in absolute terms, without the differing opinions at every stage.

The Mishneh Torah constitutes an improvement over Rabbi Judah’s Mishnah in two decisive respects: clarity of language and uniformity of legal rulings. In his Commentary, Maimonides interpreted the Mishnah in light of talmudic discussion. In the Mishneh Torah, he engaged in an act of codification that treated the Mishnah as a model, but incorporated talmudic material that had been processed and resolved.

Thus, the Mishneh Torah represents Maimonides’ mature legal project: it aims to erase halakhic disagreement and replace it with a coherent, comprehensive legal system. This system is intended to restore the law’s capacity to unify, which Maimonides viewed as both a legal and a political imperative. The removal of disagreement is not only a halakhic concern but a philosophical one, rooted in Maimonides’ understanding of the law’s role in enabling human society to overcome its natural divisions and survive.

5. Conclusions

By visiting two key sites in which maḥloqet appears within the rabbinic tradition, this article has demonstrated that the term functions not merely as a description of disagreement, but as a foundational concept underpinning halakhic discourse. The function of the term is almost entirely at odds in the two examples examined: in the Mishnah, maḥloqet signals a foundational openness within the legal system—an editorial and political strategy that enables the inclusion of conflicting voices within a single community. For Maimonides, by contrast, maḥloqet is a problem to be remedied through his Code of Law. His legal project, culminating in the Mishneh Torah, aims to purge halakhic literature of maḥloqet and restore the law’s function as a clear and authoritative guide to behavior.

This analysis helps to clarify why maḥloqet resists full translation. Terms such as “dispute” or “controversy” fail to capture the way maḥloqet operates in rabbinic discourse—as a philosophical problem, a political mechanism, but also as a tool of legal censure. Moreover, maḥloqet does not merely denote a clash of opinions; in different historical periods of rabbinic culture, it signifies different things and serves different purposes within the evolving discourses of halakhah. Its role in the Mishnah differs fundamentally from its treatment in Maimonides’ jurisprudence. It is precisely this layered complexity—political, legal, and philosophical—that renders maḥloqet untranslatable, and marks it as a uniquely rabbinic concept worthy of close conceptual and historical analysis.