Turning to external circumstances is always allowed. Farnsworth writes:
The overarching principle of contract interpretation is" that the court is free to look to all the relevant circumsta To ascertain the meaning to be given to the language, there should be no nces surrounding the transaction... Since the purpose of this inquiry is Farnsworth, supra, requirement that the language be ambiguous, vague, or otherwise) " uncertain before the inquiry is undertaken .(255-256) Asimilar process has been undergone in Israeli law. During the Mandate period, we absorbed the English rules of interpretation in the interpretation of a legal text (law, regulation, contract, will). With the establishment of the State of Israel, we continued this tradition (see: High Court of Justice 15/56 Sofer v. Minister of the Interior [37], at p. 1221; Civil Appeal 161/59 Balan v. The Attorney General's Office of the Will of the deceased R. Litvinsky [38], at p. 1916). With the passage of time, the laws also changed. There was a growing feeling that "the time has come to remove thorns from our vineyard" (Justice Silberg inHigh Court of Justice 163/57 Lubin v. Municipality of Tel Aviv-Jaffa [39], at p. 1065; see also G. Tedeschi, Studies in the Law of Our Land (M. Newman, Ma Dora 2, 5719). Israeli rules of interpretation have been developed, reflecting the basic concepts of Israeli law. As far as the interpretation of the legislation is concerned, it seems to me that the prevailing approach is that a law is interpreted according to its purpose. The interpreter may learn about the purpose of the legislation from any reliable source:
"Every interpretive question begins with the law, but does not end with it. The human mind must absorb any information that is relevant and give it weight according to its credibility" (High Court of Justice Judgment 47/83 [20], supra, at p. 175).
A similar trend should apply to the interpretation of the contract. A contract is interpreted according to the intentions of the parties. "The intentions of the parties can be learned from any reliable source" (The Ata case [1], at p. 304). We must not return the circles of interpretation to those that were accepted in England in the nineteenth century.