How can we understand the significance of midrashim?
Rabbi Hershel Schachter was once asked how one should relate to the more difficult-to-believe stories in the Midrash. He responded with a Mashal [parable]. Imagine that archaeologists one thousand years from now find an old newspaper from our generation. The headline reads “Yanks Bomb the Red Sox”.
Or consider the pre World War I headline "The double headed eagle stretches its wings to cover all of Europe"
These things are perfectly understandable to the people of that time.
Consider the statement "with one drop of ink millions of people were killed".
One must be careful to maintain the mesora [oral tradition] in all circumstances and to understand which medrashim [explications --my translation] are "literal" and which are "allegorical" as well as which use an understood idiom.
Source? One who believes that all midrashim are literal is a fool. One who believes that all midrashim must be allegorical is an apikorus
References:
- midrashim significance - https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/70895/can-one-keep-all-possible-halachot-and-still-be-a-heretic
- apikoros definition https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/apikoros
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