Torah from Sinai
Hello Rabbi, I saw two quotes from you on Wikiquote:
- "Regarding the belief that the entire Torah in our hands was received at Mount Sinai, I perceive this as a normative statement, not as a historical statement. I believe in the name given at Sinai. God, who created the world, revealed Himself at Sinai and gave us the Torah. Not all of the law in our hands was given there, but we should treat it all as if it were given at Sinai." ~ From an interview in Makor Rishon newspaper, October 11, 2013
- "I believe that at Sinai there was some kind of revelation, in which God, the Blessed One, conveyed to us the core of His commandments, and from there on it is an expansion, 99 percent of which [things] that God, the Blessed One, did not think of, nor did Moses, but it is an expansion of what was given at Sinai. If I did not believe that some core was given at Sinai, I would not be able to feel committed to the Torah." ~ From an interview in the Makor Rishon newspaper, October 11, 2013
Regarding 1: Why do we have to pretend and treat something as it is, not as it really is?
Regarding 2: Why should we treat the expansions that are supposedly from the Torah as the Torah, if they were not given by God, the Holy One, or Moses? (There may even be a Bel t'add in this).
This is not pretending. It is a form of expression. All the expansions have a status like the laws given to Moses at Sinai. Like the Hebrew expression "given from the mouth of the mighty," which is nothing more than a metaphor.
The expansions are derived from what is written by the rules of the Toshba, and therefore they are included in what is written. It is like a conclusion being included in the premises from which it is proven. There is no extrapolation in saying that something that is from the Torah is truly from the Torah. Only expansions from the rabbis that are presented as from the Torah are extrapolation.
You wrote that it is like a conclusion contained in the premises from which it is proven. Well, if we say that Moses did not draw all these conclusions, that is acceptable, but how can we say that God, the Holy One, did not know the conclusions inherent in the premises?
I didn't say he didn't know. I said he didn't pass them on to Moses and Moses passed them on in the tradition. The author of Tosafot Yot on the Mishnah in his introduction distinguishes between the things that were passed on to Moses at Sinai (to pass them on) and the things that were shown to Moses at Sinai.
Beyond that, of course, God does not know and did not know the things that are not true, but we do not know which of our conclusions is true and which is not. Therefore, everything is presumed to be true as long as we arrived at it using the tools accepted in halakha and interpretation.
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