Excellent.
Their “response” is simply pathetic and so characteristic of their style, to the point that their answer no. 2 made me laugh out loud.

Could you attach this responsum to the discussion of the videos? It would really help readers see the attempt to respond to your words.

I asked Oren to do that. He probably hasn’t had time yet.

In my humble opinion, relating to their nonsense gives them some legitimacy, and unnecessarily so.
See how on their site they highlight in huge letters: “Rabbis attack — messianics respond.”
It creates the feeling that there is some real threat here and the rabbis are rushing to attack them.

Can the Rabbi respond regarding “a commandment of men learned by rote,”
in a somewhat more concrete way? Assuming the plain meaning of the verses is as they claim—which is not at all clear…

I also caught them in a lie a few weeks ago. I decided not to publish it because I thought it wasn’t of public interest, but since we’re already on the subject…
(let’s stress: the argument itself is not interesting. What is interesting is the lie.)

The messianics claimed that a certain scholar said the Talmud is from the 12th century. That really sounded odd to me (after all, there are manuscripts from the 9th century, etc.), and it was clear to me there was some lie in the background. The problem is that, unlike what they expected, I personally contacted that scholar and asked him his opinion firsthand, as I usually do in such cases.

And lo and behold!
He does indeed hold that the *basis* of the Talmud was committed to writing later than is commonly accepted, but even that is *centuries* earlier than what they claimed. Don’t worry, it’s only by 300 years—nothing major. (In fairness, he does think additions were still being made in the centuries afterward, but that, of course, was not their claim.)

As I said, these are experienced liars. They simply hope that no one is able, or will bother, to check their lies. They are incapable of dealing with intelligent and knowledgeable people.

Again, the argument itself doesn’t interest me. As far as I’m concerned, one scholar can think the Mishnah was written in the 19th century. I simply had a feeling they were lying and putting words in people’s mouths. And that is indeed what turned out to be the case.)

Hello Avi.
I don’t know what exactly I’m supposed to address. Indeed, “a commandment of men learned by rote” is a deficiency. Who disagrees with that? But what does that have to do with tradition? Or with the Oral Torah?

Honestly, I don’t know exactly what it is. Innocently, I thought it meant tradition—but a tradition that was invented, because it says “men” and not someone with authority. But it says “men” in the plural, so apparently there is some prophetic anger here if it’s a deficiency. My problem is that if people study the Torah because it says “learned,” and there are teachers of Jewish law, then if those people are outside “the Great Assembly and the sages,” it seems they rooted something in the nation. Maybe it’s also talking about the Sadducees, and perhaps the Rabbi can explain… the actual intent of the verse.

“A commandment of men learned by rote” means keeping the commandments only because God commanded them and because that’s how they taught us.
And that’s not what God wants!

Oh, come on. How much can one keep chewing over this nonsense?
“A commandment of men learned by rote” means observance without thought. But tradition is not observance without thought. Does someone who accepts testimony from someone else thereby suffer from lack of thought? When you weren’t present somewhere, you rely on witnesses or on tradition. One can argue about the tradition—whether it is reliable or not—but identifying tradition with rote learning is simply begging the question.

The missionaries’ words are poor in one place and rich in another.
In another video they explained what they meant, and said that the Hebrew Bible always refers negatively to traditions and commandments of men or sages.
As in this verse, where the Holy One complains that the people are following learned men rather than His true command.
Obviously the conclusion is foolish, but I’m not sure that isn’t the plain meaning of the verse.
In Judaism they use “a commandment of men learned by rote” to mean observance of commandments without heart, but perhaps the plain meaning is a commandment of learned men (and not the commandments of God), meaning “rabbinic laws.”

I wouldn’t have understood it on my own as you do, Rabbi, because “from doing it not for its own sake, one comes to do it for its own sake,” and also “prayer without intention is like a body without a soul”—so clearly intention is needed.
Rabbi, when you say they observed without thinking, do you mean they observed without intention and understanding?
And also, “learned” is specifically a word that suggests study and depth. It seems to me that according to your approach it should have said “a commandment of men not learned by rote.”
(I’m not coming with complaints and I’m not arguing with you; I’m only saying what I would have thought, or not thought, Rabbi.)

Dear L—I think you’re mistaken. There is no such thing as “rabbinic laws” in that sense, because they are permitted by “you shall not turn aside” and “you shall do according to what they instruct you,” so surely you are mistaken. And I said it’s not talking about sages or halakhic decisors, but about ordinary people. By the way, the sages did not add commandments at all on the Torah level, I mean. (That’s a different issue, it seems to me—you drifted into the matter of “you shall not add to it and you shall not subtract from it”; you mixed things up.)

L, for there to be proof from the verse, it is not enough to say that you’re not sure this isn’t the plain meaning of the verse. Especially since in my opinion it has nothing to do with the plain meaning of the verse.

To everyone who wrote here regarding “a commandment of men learned by rote,” I think you didn’t understand the intent of the verse.
It doesn’t say “the commandment of learned men,” but “learned by rote” in the feminine singular, meaning the word “learned by rote” matches in gender and number the word “commandment,” and therefore refers to it. This is what it says: “and their fear of Me became like a commandment learned by rote from men.” That is, the fear with which they fear Me is like a decree—like when the authorities impose some law on us and we keep the law only because we have to. And that is the meaning of the word “learned by rote,” from the same root as “goad,” like an ox-goad. For example: “Ephraim is a trained heifer that loves to thresh,” or “the calf does not learn”—what does it mean, a calf doesn’t learn? A calf that is not trained, that was not struck with the cattle-goad. And a calf that does “learn” does what its owners tell it only so as not to get hit with the cattle-goad. And that is the criticism of the people of Israel: they keep the commandments without intention, without the heart, only because of the goad. A trained calf versus a commandment learned by rote. Of course, the criticism is not directed at all Israel; there were always righteous people.

It is also said:
“All of them holding swords, trained in warfare, each man with his sword on his thigh because of fear in the nights.” (Song of Songs 3:8)
“And their number, with their brethren who were trained in song to the Lord, all who were skillful, was two hundred and eighty-eight.” (I Chronicles 25:7)
And also, “which their fathers had taught them,” as Malbim notes there, that this is a term meaning accustomed.

In any case, the claim is not about the actual performance of the commandments, which they indeed performed properly, and no one mentioned that their keeping the commandments was itself a disgrace to them. The whole claim is about the fear / intention, as it says: “and his heart is far from Me, and their fear of Me is a commandment of men learned by rote.” What they lacked was the intention of the heart in performing the commandments. That is, the dissonance between observance of the commandments and inner intention is the problem. Not the observance, but specifically the lack of intention.
(By the way, Rabbi Eliezer of Beaugency offers an interesting interpretation there.)
In any case, even in the words of the Sages there is a dispute whether commandments require intention or not. And even according to the view that they do not, simply speaking, that still absolutely does not mean that the ideal in observance is not to intend….
The prophet’s claim is of course directed at the Jewish people, not at “the rabbis” and the like, as stated at the beginning of the verse: “And the Lord said: Because **this people** draw near with their mouth and honor Me with their lips, while their heart is far from Me…”
And the matter is simple and clear. The criticism is directed at whoever needs to hear it. (Or perhaps everyone needs strengthening?)
In any case, it is said in Hosea: “Who is wise, and he shall understand these things? prudent, and he shall know them? for the ways of the Lord are upright, and the righteous shall walk in them, but transgressors shall stumble in them.”

To Yochai and Safi,

You tried nicely to clarify things, but that’s not how it is, my brothers.

This verse is saying that the people—which includes the leaders of the people—are going and being led by improper leadership; that is the meaning of “draw near.”
And when it says “and his heart is far from Me,” it means they ignored the correct plain meaning that God commanded them—meaning it looks as though they are doing God’s will, but no: they are doing the will of people who taught them the commandments in a way that does not fit the plain meaning. The word “learned by rote” does not refer to the men but to the commandment.

And this is an explanation that points in only one direction.

“Remember the Torah of Moses My servant, which I commanded at Horeb”—and nothing else.

To Safi,
I did not claim that the root lamed-mem-dalet does not appear in the Hebrew Bible in the sense of knowledge. But I did claim that it is unlikely, as Eitan and Moti argued, that the meaning of the verse is “commandments of learned men,” since the word “learned by rote” does not match the word “men” in gender and number, but rather the word “commandment.”
And this is, in my humble opinion, the plain meaning. In any case, there is no disagreement between us about the overall meaning of the verse.

To Benny,
Your interpretation is not persuasive.
The plain meaning certainly does not say that someone taught them incorrectly how to keep the commandments. Where did you get that from? What is the proof for that? Even if I were to say that the word “learned by rote” here really does mean from the language of knowledge, where is the hint here that someone taught them the commandments incorrectly?
“His heart is far from Me” means they distanced themselves from the plain meaning of the verses?? Explain. Very far-fetched. It seems you already have an opinion prepared in advance and are trying to force it onto the verse.
“With his mouth and with his lips they honor Me, but his heart is far from Me”—
what does that mean? They honor Me only outwardly. And that is exactly “a commandment of men learned by rote” according to my interpretation.
There is no hint here at all that the people of Israel distanced themselves from the plain meaning of the commandments.
Certainly the criticism was also directed at the leaders of the people. No one said otherwise. There were always corrupt leaders, but never were all of them corrupt. In general, it seems that the Holy One was very severe in His criticism of Israel, presumably in order to bring them back to the straight path, and it is reasonable to assume that many expressions of criticism are a form of hyperbole. For example, Jeremiah prophesied, among other times, during the reign of Josiah. Throughout almost the whole book of Jeremiah one finds hardly a single good word about Israel, even though in Josiah’s time the people were righteous because of the king. The point is that there were always righteous people and always wicked people, both among the common folk and among the leaders.

I assume Benny’s claim is that part of the chapter speaks about the prophets who cause misunderstanding, and later about the wise men.

Well, I disagree with him. “A commandment of men learned by rote”—what does that mean? That the commandment is learned by rote? “Learned,” active/passive form, meaning the commandment receives the action—the commandment is the thing learned by rote? What does that mean? It just doesn’t seem reasonable to me. Even if I accept this interpretation, it certainly does not mean that the commandment was learned incorrectly, from a mistaken Torah. Notice that the verse is talking about the manner of the people’s fear of God—how they fear Him. To me it is much more logical to say that they fear God in a trained, conditioned way, like a calf that is trained: they act without thinking, without intention. That, in my humble opinion, is the criticism against the people.

Yochi — (I don’t understand why you have an aleph in your name)
You’re saying nice things, but listen: if “with his mouth and with his lips they honored Me, but his heart was far from Me” is an explanation of “and their fear of Me became a commandment of men learned by rote,” then please, think a bit without getting stuck in one mold. I beg you. And you’ll discover that they honored God without the correct way and without the plain meaning. And about that the verse cries out and says, “Because this people draw near,” etc., etc.—meaning they were listening to things that were not the commandments in their plain sense, and that brought troubles upon them…

It seems to me that the average reader can’t read it the way you do, Benny. It’s probably just a different thought pattern, if that really is how you understand it.
In any case, from a verse that so clearly does not imply your reading, and that has several other interpretations as well, there is no reason at all to see it as proof against tradition…

That’s the point, Safi.

Tradition is always correct so long as it does not contradict the Hebrew Bible.

For example, in the Torah portion Emor it is written that a priest may not marry a woman who is not from his people, but the Samaritans “suddenly” decided that their priest is allowed to marry a gentile woman, and that is what they did. Is that tradition just because that’s what they “suddenly” practiced?! Certainly not.

By the way, the Torah has seventy facets, and therefore there is no such thing as a different thought pattern. Connect every stone in the sentence with the context and the intent of the verse, and you will understand that the prophet rebukes the people because they went blindly after a “tradition” that had somehow changed, and clearly there were opponents to that tradition, including that very prophet himself.

1. Have you ever seen anyone write the name Yochai without the letter aleph? The answer is simple. The source of the name is Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who lived in the Land of Israel during the period of the Tannaim. In that period, to write the vowel sound “ai,” they wrote the letter aleph before the yod. That was the practice in the Land of Israel; in Babylonia they wrote it with two yods. My name is Yochai, not Yochi.

2. I didn’t understand your response. Basically you didn’t say anything except: don’t be stuck, think and discover. I’m not stuck; I thought and I discovered. Your claim is really, really not the simple meaning of the text. It could be an interesting homily, but not the plain meaning. In fact, you brought no proof from the verse for anything. “A commandment of men learned by rote”—explain on the basis of the verse how that means they were not following the plain meaning. If you have no convincing explanation beyond “don’t be stuck, think and discover,” then it’s a waste of time. Again, I’m not saying your interpretation can’t be interesting or even nice, but it is not the plain meaning of the verse, in my humble opinion.

“By the way, the Torah has seventy facets, and therefore there is no such thing as a different thought pattern. Connect every stone in the sentence with the context and the intent of the verse, and you will understand that the prophet rebukes the people because they went blindly after a ‘tradition’ that had somehow changed, and clearly there were opponents to that tradition, including that very prophet himself.”

It seems, dear sir, that we connected the stones of the sentence and still did not understand it as you do. You keep repeating the strange argument of “think, open your eyes, discover, connect the cornerstones, understand,” etc.
That is not a serious argument. Explain your position according to the plain meaning of the verse. You can’t just say something like “get out of your fixed mindset and you’ll understand,” because I could just as easily say the same to you—but that kind of claim has nothing to it.

By the way, do you have proof that Samaritan priests married gentile women? It seems to me that at least today the Samaritans certainly do not claim that this is what they did in the past, and of course this is not what they do today.