The Hebrew term pilpul (Hebrew: פלפול, from "pepper," loosely meaning "sharp analysis") refers to a method of studying the Talmud through intense textual analysis in attempts to either explain conceptual differences between various halakhic rulings or to reconcile any apparent contradictions presented from various readings of different texts. Pilpul has entered English as a colloquialism used by some to indicate extreme disputation or casuistic hairsplitting.
Contents
Narrow definition
In the narrower sense, pilpul refers to a method of conceptual extrapolation from texts in efforts to reconcile various texts or to explain fundamental differences of approach between various earlier authorities, which became popular in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries: its founders are generally considered to be Jacob Pollak and Shalom Shachna. Pilpul was defined by Heinrich Graetz as "the astonishing facility of ingenious disquisition on the basis of the Talmud."
Opposition
Many leading rabbinic authorities harshly criticized this method as being unreliable and a waste of time, and it is regarded by some as having been discredited by the time of the Vilna Gaon. A frequently heard accusation is that those who used this method were often motivated by the prospect of impressing others with the sophistication of their analysis, rather than by a disinterested love of truth. These students typically did not apply appropriate standards of proof in obtaining their conclusions (if any), and frequently presupposed conclusions that necessitated unlikely readings of "proof-texts". As such, pilpul has sometimes been derogatorily called bilbul, Hebrew for "confusion".
The Maharal of Prague in a famous polemic against Pilpul (Tiferet Yisroel, pg. 168), stated: "It would be better to learn carpentry or another trade, or to sharpen the mind by playing chess. At least they would not engage in falsehood, which then spills over from theory and into practice..."
Current methods
In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, pilpul in this narrow sense was largely superseded by the analytic methods pioneered by the Lithuanian school, in particular the Brisker derech. However, many people consider these methods too to be a form of pilpul, though the practitioners of the analytic method generally reject the term. Before World War II, both the old and the new kinds of pilpul were popular among Lithuanian and Polish Jews. Since then, they have become prominent in most Ashkenazi and many Chassidic yeshivas.