25 September—As we were self-checking out of Stop & Shop yesterday at adjacent registers (or whatever those self-checkout stations are called), a faithful non-Jewish Monitor reader fortunate as not to depend on AT&T for her email and having a tangential acquaintance with popular Judaism asked me if not flushing colored water on the sabbath and using a plunger with the weaker hand were pilpuls.

Absolutely, I assured her. And now I, the unimpeachable anti-religion expert on religion, assure you, faithful readers. The toilet perplexity isn’t a pilpul in its original meaning, of course; but these days in the real world a pilpul is nothing but hair-splitting and essentially worthless disputation—in other words, a waste of time. Pilpul, פלפול in Hebrew, comes from פִּלְפֵּל, pilpel, meaning pepper. (Read the Hebrew from right to left and notice the vertical line in פלפול. That’s the versatile letter that makes pilpel into pilpul.)

Pilpul started out as a method of studying the Talmud (the primary interpretive source of Jewish religious law as laid down in the Torah) in order to explain differences or reconcile contradictions in the various readings of different texts by divergent authorities. Two Jews, two interpretations; a dozen Jews, a dozen interpretations.

As I said, hair-splitting and worthless disputation. But that’s what religion is all about. That’s why there are so many religions and sects purportedly worshipping one alleged god. They’re all Jews and that’s precisely why they aren’t.

Brings to mind not only what professional philosophers and philosophy professors are paid for doing, but what lawyers and judges are paid even more for doing. And that naturally brings to mind reading and interpreting not only the Bible, but the Constitution.

In simple terms, then, that takes us to exegesis vs. eisegesis. Exegesis, a.k.a. textualism and originalism, looks into the original historical context of a document. For instance, just what did James Madison and the others who drafted the Constitution and Bill of Rights mean by opening the Second Amendment with “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”?

On the other hand, eisegesis is the interpretation of a document so as to introduce one’s own presuppositions, biases, and/or agendas by reading them into the text for a political, religious, or other purpose. For instance, the anti-gun lobby insists that “A well regulated Militia” in the Second Amendment means that only the military has the right to own and bear arms without (some) infringement. Because that interpretation suits their (narrow and misguided) purpose.

Thus, exegesis tends to be objective while eisegesis is by its very nature always highly subjective.

The pilpul for anti-gun eisegetes, then, would be, is it permissible for a non-military person who cannot have a military person the dirty for him or her to fire a gun with his or her weaker hand?