Reviving a Sense of Community: Learning from the Jews of Europe

Zohar, Bereishit 54a

“And Adam knew Eve his wife.” Rabbi Abba discoursed in connection with this verse, “Who knows the spirit of man which goes upwards and the spirit of the beast which goes downward?” (Kohelet 3:21) He said: “This verse can bear many constructions, and so it is with all the words of the Torah, they can all bear several meanings, and all good, and the whole Torah can be expounded in seventy ways, corresponding to seventy sides and seventy wings. We will however expound thus....”

Or HaChayim commentary on the Torah (Rabbi Chayim ben Attar) on Genesis 1:3

You should know that God has granted permission to interpret the meaning of the verses by using our intelligence, even if on occasion, the conclusions we arrive at seem to contradict the traditional interpretations of the mental giants of earlier generations. This is the meaning of the rule that there are seventy ways to interpret the Torah. As long as our interpretations do not result in halakhic rulings which run counter to our traditions we are perfectly within our rights to pursue our own path. This is the reason that the teachers of the Talmud were not at liberty to interpret the Torah in such a way that their halakhic rulings would conflict with those of the teachers of the Mishnah. When it comes to interpretations of the meaning of the written text of the Torah, you find that Talmudic rabbis frequently disagree with the Mishnaic rabbis.

Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 88b

Rabbi Yochanan said: Each and every word that issued from the mouth of the Almighty divided itself into seventy languages. Accordingly, citing the verse “As a hammer that breaks the rock into pieces.” (Jeremiah 23:29) the school of Rabbi Yishmael taught: Just as a hammer that strikes a rock causes sparks to fly in all directions, so each and every word that issued from the mouth of the Holy One divided itself into seventy languages.