A Response to the iGod Videos
Introduction
<
div class=”gmail_default”>
Recently a series of videos by the Christian sect known as ‘Messianic Jews’ has been appearing online, containing criticism of Jewish tradition. We feel obliged to say at the outset that their arguments are flimsy and childish and do not really require a response. It is rather embarrassing to conduct such an anachronistic polemic. Nevertheless, following requests from readers who claim that the videos have an effect and that there is no orderly response to their arguments online, we decided to post several responses here. What will be written here is intended for those who, for whatever reason, are troubled by this material.
New on the site: A response to iGod’s reply to the series of responses
A Response to the Videos of the Missionary Channel iGod – Introduction
With God’s help.
Rabbinic debates with Christianity and Christians were very common in the Middle Ages. Today the feeling is that this is an anachronism. Conducting debates with Christianity seems like a theological amusement lacking practical significance. How many Jews seriously consider converting to Christianity? Why argue with someone who will not listen to you, and whom you yourself are not really listening to either? Christian arguments do not, on their face, appear persuasive, and certainly no more so than Jewish arguments. Therefore it is doubtful how right it is to invest energy and effort in them.
Videos of iGod
Recently a number of inquiries reached the site here from people who had seen videos on a YouTube channel of Christian missionaries whose name among Israel (or among Ishmael) is iGod. Their goal is to undermine the tradition of the Oral Torah and lead people to abandon Jewish commitment and faith, and as a result to adopt the Christian religion and faith. Some of those who wrote told of the considerable influence these videos have on people, and added that there is no orderly response or discussion of them online. Some asked me to offer such an orderly response.
To understand what this is about, I chose the first video to which I was referred, which criticizes the Oral Torah and the rabbinic tradition. I watched the video, and in the following installments I will present my response. The two speakers are Israelis like me and like you, and they look like perfectly observant Jews (I understand that they are Messianic Jews, a name for a Christian sect that includes both Jews and non-Jews who pass themselves off as Jews and believe in Jesus)[1]. Apparently they really are part of us, and that is probably part of the charm of these videos. The impression one gets is that they are speaking to us from within and not from without, that is, they are trying to show us and clarify with us what our own tradition obligates both us and them alike to do. Supposedly this is an internal Jewish clarification with you, aimed at discovering what the Holy One, blessed be He, demands of all of us. This is unlike Christian preaching, which is always perceived as an attempt from outside to make us betray our religion and adopt a foreign tradition, and therefore arouses antagonism.
The video I saw is far from clever. It is superficial, full of unfounded and erroneous assumptions, with a dash of ignorance. It contains tendentious distortions, baseless suspicions, and rather speculative suggestions. The presentation is accompanied by mantras repeated again and again in order to instill the message, together with grimaces and body-language mannerisms (air quotes with the fingers) that try to convey messages nonverbally. Admittedly, such criticism picks at the margins and the peripheral, whereas substantive criticism ought to address the arguments. But the truth is that I did not see much there beyond all this. The arguments presented there are quite poor, and I find myself wondering how material of such a low level has any real influence on people.
The iGod site does not allow comments and discussion of these matters, and not without reason. I assume the speakers fear that in straightforward and fair discussion their arguments would be exposed in all their nakedness, and therefore they prevent substantive discussion of the matter. Evidence of this is the commenter on the site here who created a response video and related that when he uploaded it to YouTube he was forced to remove it under threat of a lawsuit for copyright infringement (I have not checked, but in my opinion this demand has no legal basis. To the best of my knowledge, the law in Israel, and not only there, permits one to use a composition or some work for purposes of criticism and study, and this does not constitute infringement of copyright—at least so long as one mentions the creator and the source, that is, preserves the creator’s moral rights). In any case, it is clear that this is preaching that is unwilling to place its claims up for discussion. This is doubly problematic when the speakers’ criticism is that rabbinic Judaism prevents substantive discussion of its ideas.
And yet, although it is a bit embarrassing to stoop to these flimsy arguments, I trust the descriptions that were offered here, according to which these matters do have influence and therefore require an orderly response. To my amazement, YouTube shows that the video in question has had more than half a million views, so apparently it does have some sort of charm after all.
My purpose here
As stated, the two speakers in their video seek to do two things: 1. undermine the rabbinic tradition and Jewish law. 2. cause us to adopt the Christian alternative (although this is not done explicitly in this video. It appears in other videos). As I already mentioned, level 2 does not seem especially significant, but level 1 contains critical arguments about our tradition, and these are worth addressing whether they come from a Christian source or any other, and whether one infers from them that one ought to convert or merely abandon the rabbinic tradition. Therefore in my remarks I will focus on level 1, that is, on responding to the critical arguments about the faith and the legal tradition, which are more relevant. Only on the margins will I comment on level 2 as well, that is, I will ask whether the Christian or Messianic alternative answers the difficulties presented in the videos.
A note on Jewish law and method: Is it permissible to watch and discuss these films?
I should begin by saying that people may wonder whether it is permissible to watch such a video, since it involves the dissemination of idolatry. Seemingly, one who watches it violates the prohibition, ‘Do not stray after your hearts and after your eyes.’ To that I reply in two ways:
- There is no avoiding addressing the arguments, for otherwise we leave the arena in their hands and abandon those who watch the films and find no answer to them.
- On the principled level, I do not accept any prohibition against exposure to arguments of any sort and against addressing them. An argument deserves substantive engagement, and if it is invalid that should be pointed out. Boycotting opinions and arguments is neither correct nor helpful. In my understanding, even someone who raises mistaken arguments, so long as he presents arguments and does not merely preach, deserves a substantive response, and tactically too that is the more useful course.
As a rule, boycotts are the weapon of the weak and helpless. When one boycotts someone who raises arguments, one thereby sends the message that we have no substantive arguments against him, and so we are trying to bypass the need for arguments by presenting him as illegitimate. This is done within the religious world too, and certainly with respect to elements outside it. Such a path yields short-term gains, but its long-term damage is great. In the age of the internet it is hard to believe that anyone will succeed in hiding the existence of the videos from the public by means of boycotts or silence. And if there is no substantive response alongside the boycott, the arguments remain unanswered. Therefore in our day it is all the more correct to respond substantively to every argument and every arguer.
The inability of conservative outlooks to cope with these arguments
Some of the arguments in the videos rest on problematic assumptions, but these assumptions are indeed accepted by many within Jewish tradition. Therefore people with a conservative worldview cannot provide adequate answers to some of these arguments. Thus, for example, a Jew who advocates the conception that all the details of the legal tradition were in fact given to Moses at Sinai (‘everything that an accomplished disciple will one day innovate’) will be unable to attack that very assumption head-on when it constitutes the main foundation for most of the arguments in the present video. If one proves to him beyond all doubt that there are legal conceptions that were innovated throughout history and did not descend from Sinai, he will have no answer. The conservative Jew assumes that authenticity is a condition of obligation, and the missionaries share this assumption. Therefore conservatives try to prove that everything descended from Sinai, and the missionaries prove that it did not. What they have in common is that authenticity (that the source is from Sinai) is the sole basis of obligation. But that assumption itself is problematic. The missionaries are right that not everything descended from Sinai, and that many laws were innovated by human beings throughout history, but they are not right in the conclusion they draw—namely, that there is therefore no justification for legal obligation with respect to these details.
Likewise, when they prove to us that there are problematic conceptions in the Talmud—both moral conceptions and errors in fact and science—the conservative will find himself in difficulty. He advocates the conception that the sages of the Talmud were exalted beings endowed with divine inspiration, and therefore it cannot be that they made mistakes, and it cannot be that they held outdated moral conceptions that are not valid, at least for our day. But that is precisely what the missionaries are trying to prove. In opposition, conservatives try to prove that this is not so, but in many cases they fail. Again there is a common foundation here between conservatives and missionaries, and the problem lies in that foundation itself. The missionaries are right that the Talmud errs and does not always express the most moral position, but again they are wrong in the conclusion they draw from this about the authority of the Talmud.
The authority of the Talmud is not conditioned on there being no errors or mistakes in it. The authority of the Talmud is the result of its formal acceptance by the public. Exactly as the legislature sometimes makes mistakes, and yet its words are still binding because it is the body authorized by the public to legislate. By the same token, the legislature has no authority to determine facts or moral rules, since its authority extends only to what it has received a mandate from the public to do (to legislate). So too with respect to the sages of the Talmud. Their authority exists solely in the legal sphere, and even there there is no guarantee that they did not err. On the contrary, the Talmud itself teaches us that sages can err, and they have made and do make use of that possibility. Their authority does not stem from absolute ability but from their public role, and therefore it is also limited to the fields in which they received that authority (not facts and not morality).
Another aspect that prevents a conservative response to these arguments is that the conservative will not permit himself even to watch such videos and seriously consider their arguments. From his standpoint this falls under the prohibition of ‘do not stray.’ Such a situation certainly does not allow genuine engagement with critical arguments, not even the poorest of them.
Continue reading the next part – the Oral Torah and the ‘rabbis’ schemes’
[1] Some relevant information about them, and about the techniques they use and the problems in what they say, can be found here
A Response to the Videos of the Missionary Channel iGod – The Oral Torah and the ‘Rabbis’ Schemes’: The Framework of the Discussion
With God’s help.
In the previous part I gave a general introduction to our discussion. Here I will address the main video, which deals with the Oral Torah and the ‘rabbinic conspiracy’.
Introduction to the discussion: considerations from criminal law
In this video the speakers claim that at the giving of the Torah at Sinai, no Oral Torah was given. It was invented by the rabbis in a deliberate scheme in order to gain power and influence. In essence, they wanted to remove the Holy One, blessed be He, from the picture and determine His will in His place (‘It is not in heaven’).
Before I address the arguments themselves, it is important to understand what every beginning police investigator and criminal lawyer knows: in order to prove a crime he must examine three main conditions (all of which are necessary, even if not always sufficient) — motive, opportunity, and capacity (means). In addition to these three, proof of criminal intent is of course also required. For example, suppose a theft occurred in my house. Can one arrest and accuse a certain person on the basis of the fact that he was walking around the area and is strong and thin enough to get in through the window? We have capacity and opportunity, but no motive. Admittedly, in this example the motive is fairly self-evident (the thief, whoever he was, made money), and yet no one would think of accusing someone on so flimsy a basis. Now think of a case in which an unknown person was murdered. Is it enough for us, in order to convict a certain person of murder, to prove that he was in the area and was carrying a gun? Here the motive is no longer self-evident. We have to ask ourselves what he gained from the other’s death. Without at least pointing to a possible motive, such an argument has no significance, and the claim against him is absurd on its face. There were many people there in the vicinity, and any one of them could have murdered the victim. Now think of a situation in which the ‘murdered’ person is found dead in his home. It is not at all clear whether he died naturally or was murdered. Can one convict that same person because he was there in the area with a gun? Such an accusation is already completely absurd.
The accusation against the sages of the Talmud (=the rabbis), namely that they engaged in a conspiracy in which they invented rabbinic Judaism by inventing the Oral Torah, likewise requires arguments on all these planes: first, one must prove that there was murder and not a natural death. Second, one must prove the existence of the three requirements of criminal law: opportunity, capacity, and motivation. The flimsy arguments presented in the video deal indirectly and unconvincingly with the claim that there was indeed a murder, that is, that the Oral Torah was invented and was not original. There are also arguments (problematic ones) about capacity and opportunity, but there is not a word there about motivation.
The question of motivation: what is the gain?
Let us focus, then, on the question of motivation. Why would some sage who believes in the written Torah from heaven bother to invent out of whole cloth some story about an Oral Torah, try and succeed in persuading his fellow rabbis to join the conspiracy, and afterward all of them together persuade the entire public that it was given at Sinai and that the public must accept upon itself a detailed system of commandments that has no internal logic, no source, and no meaning? And they did all this for no reason at all, simply because they felt like it, without any visible motivation. Is such a claim even worth addressing? It seems to me like someone coming to me and solemnly informing me that in fact my parents fooled me, and that my family name, theirs and mine, is Cohen and not Abraham, and that my parents are deceiving me (see Shabbat 30b, and Ein Ayah there). Now I have to be careful not to become impure, I may not marry a divorcée, and so on. Why should I believe him if he presents not a shred of evidence for his claims, and my parents have no visible motivation to do such a thing?
These ‘stupid’ rabbis did not even exploit the opportunity and capacity (see above) to make money. Some of the sages of the Talmud lived in poverty and worked for a living. Others were wealthy, but still gained nothing from this ‘invention.’ They had money even without it. What was the problem with inventing, as part of the Oral Torah, an absolute biblical obligation requiring every person to give a quarter of his money to the sages, or to build them a house? It would have been easy to expand the law of the tithe that appears in the Torah, and I can think of many very simple exegetical techniques for ‘proving’ the existence of such an obligation by means of the tools of the Oral Torah (which, after all, they supposedly invented as they wished and according to their own methods). Instead, those ‘wicked’ people, as part of their conspiracy, expand the law of tithing and establish an obligation to give a monetary tithe to the poor. That is what the whole conspiracy was for? Some of these ‘stupid’ people were even persecuted and killed by the Romans for the offense of studying Torah and law, and for ordaining sages (Rabbi Judah ben Bava), which is not mentioned at all in the written Torah. Were they so captive to the conception they themselves invented that, without the slightest personal gain, they were even willing to die for it?! That seems a bit odd, does it not?
The question of motivation: who is the guild?
Moreover, schemes are usually carried out for the benefit of the group that carries them out: a family, a tribe, a gang, or some guild. But here we are not dealing with a guild, because the position of rabbinic sage (=Torah scholar) is open to any person, regardless of where he comes from (‘the crown of Torah lies in the corner, and whoever wishes to take it may come and take it’). Whoever studies and reaches an adequate spiritual and Talmudic level will be counted among the sages and can also be appointed to the Sanhedrin. We know that there were ordinary people, sons of ignoramuses or of converts (like Rabbi Akiva), who grew and were counted among the leading ranks of the sages of the Talmud. So what sense is there in a scheme whose purpose is to grant status and power to a group of people not defined in advance, which anyone can join? What possible interest could the current sages have in ensuring the status of people who are not from their family, lack pedigree, and have no connections? Why would a normal person invest his energies in schemes to exalt the status of some anonymous other person at the expense of other anonymous people?
Moreover, the basic ethos and practical policy of rabbinic Judaism is to raise and cultivate as many knowledgeable and learned people as possible. Joshua ben Gamla is remembered for good because he built schools and brought all the children to study and grow in Torah (see Bava Batra 21a). If the rabbis’ scheme were based on a conspiracy, I would expect them to ensure the ignorance of all the other ordinary people, precisely so that they could not criticize them. Instead, they preach to them about the importance of Torah study and persuade them to join the leading and privileged class. Does that make sense?
The question of motivation: an ideological contradiction
It should also be remembered that even according to the missionaries in the video, these were people who believed in the written Torah and in its having been given at Sinai (the Messianics believe this too), and were committed to the word of God. Their claim is only that at Sinai the written Torah alone was given, and yet for some reason, on some fine day, a group of people arose and decided to add another Torah, wholly fabricated, and forcefully assert a claim that was a deliberate lie—that the Oral Torah too had been given at Sinai. How were they not afraid of the Holy One, blessed be He, in whom they believed and whom they worshiped? And altogether, what interest would they have in inventing concepts with endless details, such as phylacteries, sukkah, and the like?
One can perhaps question and wonder to what extent these details were given at Sinai (I will address this below), but the claim of the two speakers is that this was a deliberate conspiracy. The question of motivation is critical in any discussion of conspiracy, yet for some reason there is not even a hint of it in what they say. Strange, is it not?
Summary
Such a bizarre and baseless kind of accusation could be raised with regard to any movement or group on earth. I see no reason why one should not say that the left is a conspiracy, the right is a conspiracy, the Hebrew language is a conspiracy, the rules of chess or traffic laws are a conspiracy, and so forth. You know what? By the same token, I could raise the claim that Jesus and Christianity are a deliberate conspiracy that invented a religion out of nothing and without any basis. Christians do not even claim that their religion was given at Sinai together with the written Torah. So how does the Christian alternative itself provide an answer to all these strange arguments?
Moreover, suppose I accepted the claim that rabbinic Judaism and the Oral Torah are a conspiracy. How do we get from here to Christianity? Is it more well-founded? A movement that, even by its own account, began with the hallucinations of a single person who succeeded in persuading many others to follow him. They can raise speculations about a conspiracy against the rabbinic tradition? Astonishing! And I have not even spoken about the faith of Messianic Jews, which is a new phenomenon even in the Christian world. Is it really based on tradition? Is it not a conspiracy that creates a system of values and norms out of nothing and aims to tell all of us what is right and wrong to do?
Incidentally, I do not think Christianity, or even Messianic Judaism, is a conspiracy. At most it is foolish nonsense, but I simply do not see the interests and the possible motivation of those who generated it. That is precisely what I said: it is impossible to accept a claim of conspiracy without motivation and interests.
I will now proceed to examine the arguments that were actually made in the video.
A Response to the Videos of the Missionary Channel iGod – The Oral Torah and the ‘Rabbis’ Schemes’: The Arguments
With God’s help.
In the previous part I laid out the framework for the discussion of the video dealing with the Oral Torah and the ‘rabbinic conspiracy’. We saw there that in order to substantiate such an accusation, proof is required of several aspects: proof of the crime (that there really is invention here), criminal intent (that the invention was deliberate), capacity (that the inventor had the capacity and means to do it), opportunity (that he had the opportunity at the relevant time), and motivation (that he had a good reason, an interest). A well-founded accusation must prove all these together. So let us go through the arguments in the order of the video and see which of these elements, if any, has been proved.
Argument A: after the destruction, nothing remained of Moses’ Torah
The speaker explains that most of the Torah we received at Sinai deals with sacrifices and purity, and therefore after the destruction nothing remained of all this. Today we have no possibility of observing Moses’ Torah, and what we do has almost no connection with it in any way.
This argument hints at the question of motivation. The rabbis wanted to keep Moses’ Torah relevant, and therefore presumably invented the Oral Torah. To be sure, this is a somewhat nobler motive than what is actually suggested later (a self-interested move to preserve the power and status of the sages). But this argument has no basis for several reasons.
The mistake in Argument A
First, even if we do not accept that the Oral Torah was given at Sinai, there is clear documentation that it began to develop long before the destruction. In our tradition there are reports of things said by sages at the beginning of the Second Temple period (Simon the Righteous). Even Hillel and Shammai, who are the last pair among the five pairs (president and head of the court), lived while the Temple still stood (see Shabbat 15a, that Hillel exercised the presidency for about a hundred years while the Temple stood), when sacrifices were still being offered and the laws of purity and impurity were still observed. So why did they invent the Oral Torah? Hillel the Elder applies the hermeneutical rules, which are the foundation of the Oral Torah, to the laws of offering the Passover sacrifice on the Sabbath (see Pesachim 66a). The first pair, who lived and acted much earlier, in the middle of the Second Temple period, also disagreed over laying hands on sacrifices on a festival (see Hagigah ch. 2, mishnah 2, and Rashi to Hagigah 16a).
Second, even after the destruction, most of the Torah and the law written in the Torah remained completely relevant. Phylacteries, honoring parents, all the commandments between one person and another, mixed species, Sabbath, forbidden foods, sukkah, the four species, and essentially what is set out in the Rif and in all four sections of the Shulchan Arukh. It is important to understand that there are indeed many details that were innovated throughout history, and some of them truly were innovated after the destruction. But the commandments themselves already appear in the written Torah, and even after the destruction enough material remained for us to occupy ourselves with. There was no need to invent an Oral Torah in order to give us ’employment’ or to give the law meaning. Beyond that, even the laws of sacrifices that were practiced until the destruction are full of details learned by means of the tools of the Oral Torah. Only a minority of them appears in the written Torah, so it is not clear why the sages ‘invented’ the Oral Torah even with respect to the laws of sacrifices and purity. After all, according to the speaker, they did so in order to fill the void left by the disappearance of these laws.
I will only note that the Christian alternative, which holds that all the commandments were annulled once the ‘messiah’ arrived, cannot really be built on this argument even if it were true. After all, they do not recognize even the commandments of the written Torah, including those that by all accounts remained relevant even after the destruction. Therefore the course of their argument is very strange. After all, they also give up the written Torah, so why is it so important to them to attack the Oral Torah? What in this could establish the abandonment of the entire Torah? At most one could arrive at a Karaite or Sadducean conclusion, but Christianity certainly cannot be built on these arguments.
Argument B: the rabbis claim that the rabbinic traditions (=the Oral Torah) are Moses’ Torah
Now the speaker explains that the rabbinic tradition tries to claim that the Oral Torah, which the rabbis invented, is Moses’ Torah itself, even though it is a late invention (after the destruction). This argument deals with proving the ‘crime’ itself. Here lies their proof that the Oral Torah is indeed an invention, since it was not given to us at Sinai. To understand the folly of this argument, we must briefly explain the rabbinic claim against which these remarks are directed, since the speakers, like many faithful Jews, are mistaken on this point.
The mistake in Argument B
The naive conception shared by the Messianics together with many faithful Jews says that all the details of the law in our possession were transmitted to Moses at Sinai. From this it follows that all the sages of Jewish law throughout the generations are merely a hollow conduit whose purpose is to pass the Torah from generation to generation, from father to son and from teacher to disciple. This is the meaning of the traditional assumption that the Torah was transmitted to Moses at Sinai. But anyone who knows the Talmud even a little knows that this is nonsense. There are many laws for which the Talmud itself documents the process and timing of their formation, and this happens throughout the entire history of the Oral Torah. No one claims that all the details of the law in our possession were transmitted to Moses at Sinai. At most there are claims that the Holy One, blessed be He, showed Moses in prophecy what would one day be innovated (see on this the introduction of the author of Tosafot Yom Tov to the Mishnah). The Sages indeed say that the particulars and the general principles of the Torah were transmitted to Moses at Sinai (see the midrash brought by Rashi at the beginning of Parashat Mattot), or that what the scribes would one day innovate (or what an accomplished disciple would one day innovate) was shown by the Holy One, blessed be He, to Moses at Sinai (see Megillah 19b and many other parallels), but in light of what I explained it is clear that the intention is normative and not historical. That is, we are to relate to the things that came down to us in the Oral Torah as though they had been transmitted to Moses at Sinai. Their validity is identical to the validity of the laws transmitted there. So what is the historical truth? What really was transmitted to Moses at Sinai? About what did the Sages say that ‘two Torahs’ were transmitted to him (written and oral)?
When we say that the Oral Torah was transmitted at Sinai, our intention is that several basic principles were transmitted there, such as the system of exegesis,[1] explanations of words in the written Torah, and a few ‘laws given to Moses at Sinai’ (that is, laws conveyed orally to Moses and not written in the Torah). That is all. All the other laws of the Oral Torah in our possession are the result of the activity of sages, who made use of these tools and of additional interpretive tools and created an extensive legal system around the written Torah. What was transmitted and began at Sinai is only the permission and authority given to the sages to do this (in the section ‘If a matter is hidden from you,’ Deut. 17), and some of the tools by which this is done. In essence, the main part of the Oral Torah is the interpretation of the words in the text transmitted at Sinai (for without understanding the words the Torah has no meaning), some laws, and a few basic principles of interpretation. The sages throughout the generations make use of these tools and of additional interpretive tools and derive further legal details, which are added to the law in our possession and are then transmitted onward through the generations.
None of this was discovered by the Messianic missionaries; Maimonides already wrote it, along with many other fine sages of our tradition. By way of example, I will cite here the words of Maimonides in a famous responsum to Rabbi Pinhas the Judge of Alexandria (no. 355 in the Bar-Ilan Responsa Project edition), where he writes:
And in those chapters [=in the second root in the introduction to his Sefer HaMitzvot] I explained that not everything that is learned by analogy, or by an a fortiori inference, or by verbal analogy, or by one of the thirteen rules by which the Torah is expounded, is biblical law, unless the Sages explicitly say that it is from the Torah, and I brought proofs for this. And there I explained that even something that is a law given to Moses at Sinai we call rabbinic, and nothing is from the Torah except something explicit in the Torah, such as the prohibition of mixing wool and linen, mixed species, Sabbath, and forbidden sexual relations, or something that the Sages said is from the Torah—and those are only some three or four things.
Maimonides explains here (and elaborates further in his discussion of the second root) that laws learned through the interpretive rules (creative exegesis), which are most of the laws in our possession (see his remarks on the second root), are not biblical law but rabbinic law. In the second root he explains that the exceptions are laws learned from expositions where the Sages say that they were transmitted to Moses at Sinai (supportive exegesis). Here he writes that laws of this sort are only ‘some three or four things.’ That is, the expositions that create most of the laws in our possession—the overwhelming majority of them—created new laws throughout the generations, and only a minority support laws transmitted to us by Moses at Sinai. If so, Maimonides himself determines here that most of the laws in our possession were not transmitted from Sinai but were innovated throughout the generations. This is the meaning that rabbinic tradition itself gives to the Torah transmitted to Moses at Sinai.
Let us now look at Rabbi Akiva’s exposition, which the Talmud itself brings (Shabbat 64b):
As it was taught: ‘And she who is infirm in her menstruation’—the earlier elders said that she may not apply eye-paint, nor rouge herself, nor adorn herself with colored garments, until Rabbi Akiva came and taught: If so, you are making her repulsive to her husband, and the result will be that her husband will divorce her. Rather, what does Scripture teach by saying, ‘And she who is infirm in her menstruation’? She shall remain in her state of impurity until she comes into water.
Rabbi Akiva sees that the law that had long been practiced is not sensible and does not fit the values of the Torah we received, and therefore he changes it and rules the opposite. This is how we rule in practice to this day. Is it not strange that the sages of the Talmud who ‘invented’ the Oral Torah document this invention within that very text with which they are trying to persuade us of its antiquity and authenticity? As part of the attempt to persuade us that all of it was transmitted to Moses at Sinai, they themselves bring an exposition in which one of the central sages of the Oral Torah changes an ancient law that had been transmitted by tradition. Apparently they were not only wicked, but also stupid.
So where is the mistake? Seemingly the Messianics are right that the Oral Torah is a later creation of rabbis. Their mistake is that they take it to be a conspiracy. Rabbinic tradition says this openly. There is not even an attempt to present the matter otherwise. If so, the missionaries in the video are mistaken about the facts, since part of the Oral Torah (the foundations) was indeed transmitted at Sinai. In addition, they are also mistaken in the inference, since they assume that this is a self-interested ‘invention’ by the rabbis. We have seen here that when rabbinic tradition says that the Oral Torah was transmitted at Sinai, it does not mean that all its details were transmitted there as they reached us. As stated, that is nonsense. The sages indeed created (but did not ‘invent’) the details of the Oral Torah. They made use of the tools accepted at Sinai and of the permission given to them there (see further below), and these and these alone are the Oral Torah transmitted there. The details are indeed a later creation, but that is precisely why these tools were transmitted to us. Exactly because of this, our tradition determines that these matters have the same force as what was explicitly transmitted to Moses at Sinai.
The ‘invention of the Oral Torah’ is nothing but the result of using the tools we received from the Holy One, blessed be He, at Sinai on the text we received from Him, and therefore in essence what we have here is His potential will being brought by the sages from potentiality to actuality.[2] Indeed, the details are innovated throughout the generations and no one hides this, but even things that were innovated are binding just like the things given at Sinai because they were produced by means of the interpretive rules transmitted there. What does this have to do with a ‘malicious invention’? What does it have to do with ‘invention’ at all? There is here an unfounded, and in fact absurd, assumption that Torah from Sinai means details transmitted from Sinai, and it leads the speaker to mistaken conclusions.
To sharpen the point further, let us take geometry as an example. Geometry is based on five axioms (which parallel the written Torah) and a number of rules of inference (which parallel the rules of interpretation). We extract the derived propositions (theorems) from the axioms by means of the rules of inference, and therefore anyone who says that all the propositions of geometry are really included in its axioms is entirely correct. If someone were to claim that mathematicians invented the theorems and then claimed in conspiratorial fashion that they are included in the axioms, he simply would not understand what he was saying. But that is exactly what the speakers in the video claim: that sages who use rules of inference in order to derive conclusions from the written Torah invented the result of those inferences.[3]
This argument purported to prove the crime itself, that is, the most preliminary stage of criminal proof (showing that there was a murder at all is a primary condition before one begins to accuse someone). The speakers are trying here to prove that this is indeed an invention, since the entire Oral Torah was created in a period later than Mount Sinai. Factually they are almost right (with respect to the details, but not with respect to the rules and principles), but as stated, their conclusion is foolishness. If they fail so utterly already in proving the crime, that really makes the rest of the discussion unnecessary, but nevertheless let us continue onward with them.
Continue reading the next installment.
[1] I discussed this at length in the second book of the Talmudic Logic series, which deals with the development of the interpretive rules of general and particular. There we show and prove in detail the dynamic development of the law given to Moses at Sinai with respect to the interpretive rules of legal exegesis, and explain why, despite the dynamism, it is still correct to say that this is a law given to Moses at Sinai (that is, a tradition transmitted to Moses at Sinai together with the written Torah).
[2] I am not claiming that everything the sages inferred was indeed part of the original intention. In my opinion that is not so, since they were human beings and as such could certainly err. My claim is that the sages did what lay within their authority and did not ‘invent.’ What they inferred, so long as it is the authorized body (see below), is binding not because they succeeded in reconstructing the intention of the Holy One, blessed be He, but because He commanded them to do so and commanded us to heed them.
[3] Of course I do not mean to claim that legal midrash is deductive like geometry, but the principle is that of a given text that is interpreted by means of rules of inference. The structure is entirely similar to geometry, and the claim that this is an ‘invention’ points to a lack of understanding.
A Response to the Videos of the Missionary Channel iGod – The Oral Torah and the ‘Rabbis’ Schemes’: The Arguments – Continued
With God’s help.
In the first part I laid out the framework for the discussion of the video dealing with the Oral Torah and the ‘rabbinic conspiracy’. We saw there that in order to substantiate such an accusation, proof is required of several aspects: proof of the crime (that there really is invention here), criminal intent (that the invention was deliberate), capacity (that the inventor had the capacity and means to do it), opportunity (that he had the opportunity at the relevant time), and motivation (that he had a good reason, an interest). A well-founded accusation must prove all these together. In the previous part I dealt with the first two arguments in the video. We will now continue and review the rest of their arguments in order.
Argument C: the departure of the Divine Presence from the Temple – the scarlet strip
The speaker explains that in the biblical period, on Yom Kippur the High Priest would separate himself for seven days to be alone in a quiet place and prepare himself spiritually. On Yom Kippur he did not sleep, and he then entered, once and only once a year, into the Holy of Holies and engaged in the sacrificial service. First he offered a sacrifice for himself and afterward for the people. As an expression of solidarity, the people fasted. The fast was a symbolic and marginal matter, but what atoned for the people was the blood of the sacrifice on the altar, which covered the people’s sins. The fast was the way the people expressed deep remorse for their sins ‘while relying on the sacrifice that had been offered’ (I do not understand what it means to identify with something while relying on the sacrifice…). According to tradition, the people awaited the sign that testified to atonement, namely the whitening of the scarlet strip. The Gemara in Yoma 39a describes that about forty years before the destruction (30 CE) the scarlet strip ceased to turn white, which caused concern in the hearts of the people. God no longer granted approval for atonement. God stopped dwelling in the Temple, and indeed forty years later the Temple was destroyed.
At that time the rabbis had to reinvent Judaism so that it would function without divine approval. They kept the terms ‘Judaism’ and ‘Torah,’ but the content changed. This was no longer the Torah that Moses wrote. Here the ‘Oral Torah’ was created, according to which there is no longer any need for an altar and sacrifices for atonement. ‘Instead, a contribution of money to a yeshivah and skipping two meals once a year is enough,’ in his words.
The mistakes in Argument C
First, I should note that it is not clear to me why the speakers choose to rely selectively on the Oral Torah. A substantial part of the facts they describe (such as the separation of the High Priest for seven days before Yom Kippur and so on) has no biblical source, and despite their contempt for and undermining of the Oral Torah and its reliability, they rely on it and present its words as though they were the written Torah. They need to decide whether this tradition is reliable or not. What is even stranger is that when I brought historical facts from the Gemara in the previous installment (for example, that Hillel lived and operated for a hundred years while the Temple still stood), they claimed (in the comments there) that one cannot bring proofs to strengthen the Gemara from the Gemara itself. That is, they are unwilling to draw even facts from it. So why in the video do they do exactly that and rely on it in their arguments?
Now to the substance of their argument. The speakers assume, for no clear reason, that in the Bible and in the Temple period the fast was symbolic and marginal. For this one should look at the biblical verses, and then the distortion becomes immediately clear. First, the fast is of course mentioned in the Bible. At the end of the description of the Yom Kippur service (Leviticus 16), the fast appears explicitly as part of the process of atonement itself (ibid., vv. 29–31):
(29) And this shall be for you an everlasting statute: in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict yourselves, and you shall do no work, neither the native-born nor the stranger who sojourns among you: (30) For on this day atonement shall be made for you, to purify you; from all your sins before the Lord you shall be purified: (31) It is a sabbath of complete rest for you, and you shall afflict yourselves; it is an everlasting statute:
We learn from this that atonement on Yom Kippur includes three things: sacrifices (described earlier), fasting, and refraining from labor. From where did they derive the assumption that the fast is marginal? Perhaps because it appears at the end of the chapter. To understand the significance of the matter, one should examine the structure of the whole chapter, and then we will see that, if anything, the truth is the opposite.
Chapter 16 of Leviticus describes the Yom Kippur service in detail. The chapter opens with the following verses:
(1) The Lord spoke to Moses after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they drew near before the Lord and died: (2) And the Lord said to Moses: Speak to Aaron your brother, that he not come at all times into the sanctuary, inside the curtain, before the cover that is upon the ark, lest he die; for I appear in the cloud upon the cover: (3) With this shall Aaron come into the sanctuary: with a young bull for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. (4) He shall put on the sacred linen tunic, and the linen breeches shall be upon his flesh, and he shall gird himself with a linen sash, and wear the linen turban; they are sacred garments. He shall wash his body in water and then put them on: (5) And from the congregation of the children of Israel he shall take two male goats for a sin offering and one ram for a burnt offering:…
And then the whole Yom Kippur service begins, ending with the verses cited above (and a bit more).
From the verses cited here it is clear that this chapter is not dealing with the Yom Kippur service at all, but with the proper way to enter the sanctuary (as opposed to the improper way in which Nadab and Abihu entered the sanctuary and therefore died). The Bible presents this whole procedure as the service of entering the sanctuary, that is, as a condition for entering the Holy of Holies. One may not enter without first carrying out the entire complex procedure described in this chapter. Only at the end of the chapter do the verses appear (29–31) that I cited above, and in them there is an instruction to do this once a year, on Yom Kippur. That is, from the Bible’s perspective, one could perform this procedure whenever one wished to enter the sanctuary. The verses at the end teach us that on Yom Kippur there is an obligation to do it, and of course also to enter the sanctuary.
And lo and behold, it is in these concluding verses, and only in them, that the command to fast and refrain from labor appears. Why? Because it is marginal? On the contrary: because on Yom Kippur this service is not only an entry into the sanctuary but part of the atonement of the day. Therefore fasting and refraining from labor are added here as essential conditions for the atonement of the day (but not for entering the sanctuary). If so, the Bible itself says that fasting and refraining from labor are essentially connected to atonement, whereas the order of the service is actually less essential to it (it is only a condition for entering the sanctuary). For some reason, the speakers in the video decided that in the biblical Yom Kippur the fast is marginal and the essence of the day’s atonement is the blood of the sacrifices, and their reasoning is their own.
The speakers explain to us that the Oral Torah deviates from the Bible’s instructions and teaches us that ‘skipping two meals once a year and contributing to a yeshivah’ is sufficient, in their words. The impression created is as though the fast were an invention of the rabbis and of the Oral Torah, but for some reason they ignore the fact that, as we have seen, the fast is explicitly mentioned in the Bible itself, and, as we saw, it is actually an essential condition for atonement. By contrast, the ‘contribution to a yeshivah’ that they add in the name of the rabbis to the service of the day is not mentioned anywhere in Jewish law. No rabbi or sage in the world ever said to do this, and certainly not that it is a substitute for Yom Kippur atonement. This is a demagogic trick and an ugly distortion apparently intended to inflame the listener (against the rabbis who ‘rob’ him of his money). It is true that the Talmud says that repentance, prayer, and charity avert the evil of the decree (not specifically on the High Holy Days), but it is worth remembering that repentance and prayer are not exactly in the rabbis’ interest, and charity too, contrary to the ugly slander in the video, is given to the poor and not to rabbis. But in order to argue for a conspiracy, the speakers in the video must plant the interest in the mind of the listener (remember what we saw in the first installment: interest is a necessary condition for a conspiracy).
Now let us turn to their central argument itself. This is truly a peak of distortion and logical foolishness. We saw that the Bible itself requires three things of us in the process of Yom Kippur atonement: fasting (and probably repentance), refraining from labor, and sacrifices. As for whether the fast is central or marginal, we have already seen their misunderstanding. But now let us assume for the sake of discussion that all the components have equal weight, or let us even grant their misunderstanding (or misdirection) that the fast is indeed marginal. Now imagine that you, as Jews committed to the Bible (with no Oral Torah at all), are faced with an unfortunate fact: the Temple has been destroyed. I assume we can agree that the rabbis did not do this (they also did not murder Arlosoroff; they were simply busy taking donations for yeshivot). Very well—so what are we supposed to do in such a situation? It is now impossible to offer sacrifices, and Yom Kippur has been fatally damaged (at least according to the assumption of the speakers in the video). What do you think we ought to have done in such a situation, precisely if we did not want to change one jot of what is written in the Torah and did not want to invent anything מחדש? Correct: in the absence of any alternative, one must focus on fasting and refraining from labor. After all, that is what remains of the three components of Yom Kippur that appear in the Torah. And lo and behold, that is exactly what the rabbis and the law instructed in their ‘conspiracy.’ Once the sacrificial service ceased, the law focused on what remained: fasting, repentance, and refraining from labor. You may now ask what connection this ‘invention’ has to Moses’ Torah. After all, the fact that these things are simply written in the Torah does not indicate any connection to the Torah, does it?
From the words of the presenters in the video it seems self-evident that the sages invented something here, and thus they force the listener to wrestle with the question of whether this invention is credible or not. But the truth is that although the rabbis did indeed ‘invent’ quite a bit of the Oral Torah (see the previous parts), here precisely the speakers in the video chose an especially bad example. The ‘invention’ to which they point is in fact the rare example in which the rabbis were completely conservative and invented nothing at all, but simply implemented what is written (and still implementable after the destruction) exactly as it stands.
I should note that this is the example they chose to open the video with. That is, in their view this is the strongest example of the rabbis’ conspiracy, by which they invented a new Torah unrelated to Moses’ Torah (!), or in their words, ‘this is no longer the Torah that Moses wrote.’ But as we have seen, this is precisely the Torah that Moses wrote, without the slightest addition. True, the scarlet strip was no longer there, and after a few more decades there were no longer sacrifices. So one focuses on the remaining biblical components. Incidentally, contrary to what they say, this is not even ‘Oral Torah’ at all, but simply the necessary implementation of the written Torah in the situation that arose.
And again, it is worth asking ourselves where the conspiracy is here. What was the rabbis’ interest in having the people of Israel fast and refrain from labor? And for dessert I will ask: what logic is there in the conspirators themselves exposing the change they are making right under our noses? After all, those same rabbis transmitted to us both the written Torah and the Oral Torah. They taught us, and encouraged us to learn, the laws of sacrifices on Yom Kippur and בכלל, and to do so even after the destruction. But this gives away their vile plot, does it not? That way all of us can see how they invented for us a different Yom Kippur from the one in the Torah, and we will understand that the wicked rabbis are deceiving us. So what possible sense is there in their exposing this incriminating information to us?
In summary, ask yourselves what the Torah itself intended us to do when the Temple lay in ruins and it was impossible to offer sacrifices, assuming that we do not want to invent anything. We saw that the elementary and obvious solution is precisely not to add anything, but to focus on what remains. This is the only solution that is logically consistent with the Bible if one does not want to invent anything new. One thing is absolutely certain: the Torah certainly did not intend that, instead of sacrifices, we should start eating holy bread in church on Sundays, wearing a cross, or making demagogic and distorted videos on the internet. It seems to me that everyone must at least admit that the Torah certainly did not say that. The conclusion is that all these things are an ‘Oral Torah’ that Christians invented for us out of whole cloth. Well then, if someone here invented a religion out of nothing and without connection to the Torah, it was not the rabbis. Do they fast or refrain from labor on Yom Kippur? Do they do what appears in the Torah and can certainly be done even today when the Temple lies in ruins? They do none of this, but instead invent an entirely different system that is completely detached from the Bible, while at the same time accusing the rabbinic tradition of detachment from the Bible and of inventing a substitute religion unrelated to the Bible. Strange, is it not?
A Response to the Videos of the Missionary Channel iGod – The Oral Torah and the ‘Rabbis’ Schemes’: The Arguments – Second Continuation
With God’s help.
Argument D: the story of the Oven of Akhnai[1]
The speakers bring the story of the Oven of Akhnai (Bava Metzia 59a–b) as a demonstration that the rabbis removed the Holy One, blessed be He, from the picture and took the reins into their own hands by saying, ‘It is not in heaven.’ The Talmud there tells of sages who disagreed about the status of an oven that had been cut into segments and reassembled,[2] whether it is susceptible to impurity or pure (in amusing ignorance, for some reason ‘fit’ replaces אצלם the term ‘pure,’ which is itself not precise. The discussion is about whether the oven is susceptible to impurity, not whether it is impure). Rabbi Eliezer argued that the oven is not susceptible to impurity, and brought various mystical proofs in support of his claim (a stream changes its course, the walls of the study hall lean toward collapse, and more). In the end, even a heavenly voice comes forth from heaven and says in the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, that the law accords with Rabbi Eliezer in every place.[3] In spite of all this, Rabbi Joshua and the group of sages with him (nearly all of them Rabbi Eliezer’s students) allowed themselves not to accept the heavenly voice and stood by their opinion that the oven is impure. The missionaries explain that the rabbis placed themselves above the Holy One, blessed be He. More than that, in its great ‘audacity’ the Talmud reports at the end of the story that the Holy One, blessed be He, says, ‘My children have defeated Me,’ meaning that He Himself agrees to transfer the reins from Himself to the rabbis. What a heavy-handed and ugly conspiracy.
The mistakes in Argument D
First, it is important to understand that the rabbinic tradition also interprets this story in exactly this way: the rabbis did indeed take the reins into their own hands and placed their words above the Holy One, blessed be He. After all, that is what is written there explicitly, even without the innovations of the speakers in the video. The reason for this is explained in my article (and somewhat further on here). What is strange is that the rabbis themselves reveal this terrible conspiracy for all to see instead of hiding it. It should be remembered that the thesis defended by the video is that the sages present the Oral Torah, which they themselves ‘invented,’ as something given to Moses at Sinai by the Holy One, blessed be He. So why here do they present themselves as going against the Holy One, blessed be He? On the contrary, they should have built the story so that the Holy One, blessed be He, announces from heaven that the Oral Torah He gave at Sinai says exactly as they do—that the oven is susceptible to impurity. Astonishingly, these rabbis say here explicitly, and even write it for future generations so that no one will miss it, that they are going against the Holy One, blessed be He. I have never seen so sloppy a conspiracy. After all, they themselves built the story—what prevented them from building it correctly and in accordance with their interests?
Second, let us examine Rabbi Eliezer’s position. As we recall, Rabbi Eliezer is the sage whose view the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself supported. Our ‘Messianics’ see him as the representative of authentic Judaism, the one who opposes the rabbis’ takeover of the Torah and the invention of the Oral Torah. Very well, then—let us check a little what Rabbi Eliezer actually says. For example, in the Gemara Hagigah 3b there appears a double story about Rabbi Joshua and Rabbi Elazar, in which their students came to visit them (the story took place a little after the story of the oven. See my article on that). Rabbi Eliezer hears that in the study hall they discussed whether produce that grows in the land of Ammon and Moab is subject to the poor tithe in the sabbatical year. And thus he says to his student Rabbi Yose ben Dormaskith, who returns from the Great Sanhedrin in Yavneh and tells him about that discussion:
There was an incident involving Rabbi Yose ben Dormaskith, who went to greet Rabbi Eliezer in Lod. He said to him: What new ruling was there today in the study hall?. He said to him: They took a vote and concluded that in Ammon and Moab one separates the poor man’s tithe in the sabbatical year. He said to him: Yose, stretch out your hands and receive your eyes. He stretched out his hands and received his eyes [that is, he became blind]. Rabbi Eliezer wept and said, ‘The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him, and His covenant, to make them know it.’ He said to him: Go and tell them, do not be concerned about your vote; thus we have received from Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, who heard from his teacher, and his teacher from his teacher, a law given to Moses at Sinai: in Ammon and Moab one separates the poor man’s tithe in the sabbatical year…
Well, somewhere here I apparently lost the thread. Rabbi Eliezer, the man who heroically defended the original Torah against the revolution of ‘inventing’ the Oral Torah, the man of whom the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself says that the law follows him everywhere, and whom the ‘wicked and power-hungry’ rabbis ignore, the man who denies the ‘absurd invention’ of the Oral Torah—solemnly announces that the law about which his colleagues were engaged (those who ousted him and his brother-in-law Rabban Gamaliel) is a law given to Moses at Sinai (!). Did he find that law anywhere in the Torah? No. He declares that it is a tradition transmitted to him orally from Moses our Teacher and from teacher to disciple down to him. So in Rabbi Eliezer’s view, is there an Oral Torah or is there not? Incidentally, that same Rabbi Eliezer did not say anything he had not heard from his teacher (Sukkah 27b and parallels). What did he need his teacher for if there is the Torah and its verses? Are there more things that were transmitted by tradition besides the verses, such that one needs rabbis for them? After all, one who studies the written Torah knows everything the Holy One said. If this is indeed Rabbi Eliezer’s approach, it is not clear what his teachers contributed to him.
More than that, in Sanhedrin 68a the Gemara describes the day of Rabbi Eliezer’s death, and there Rabbi Eliezer says the following about himself:
He took his two arms and placed them on his heart and said: Woe to you, my two arms, for you are like two Torah scrolls that are being rolled up. Much Torah I learned, and much Torah I taught. Much Torah I learned, and I took away from my teachers no more than a dog lapping from the sea. Much Torah I taught, and my students took away from me no more than a paintbrush from a tube. Moreover, I teach three hundred laws concerning a bright spot, and no person ever asked me anything about them. Moreover, I teach three hundred laws—and some say three thousand laws—about the planting of cucumbers, and no person ever asked me anything about them except Akiva ben Yosef. Once he and I were walking on the road. He said to me: My teacher, teach me about the planting of cucumbers. I said one thing, and the whole field filled with cucumbers. He said to me: My teacher, you have taught me their planting; teach me their uprooting. I said one thing, and they all gathered into one place. They said to him: What is the status of the ball, the last, the amulet, the pouch of pearls, and the small weight? He said to them: They are susceptible to impurity, and their purification is by means of what they are. What is the status of the shoe that is upon the last? He said to them: It is pure. And his soul departed in purity. Rabbi Joshua stood on his feet and said: The vow is annulled! The vow is annulled! At the close of the Sabbath Rabbi Akiva met him on the way from Caesarea to Lod. He was striking his flesh until his blood flowed to the ground. He began and said: My father, my father, chariot of Israel and its horsemen. I have much money, but I have no moneychanger before whom to lay it out.
He describes how much Torah he learned from his teachers. Among other things, three hundred laws concerning the intense bright spot (the laws of leprosy), and another three hundred or three thousand concerning the planting of cucumbers (laws of sorcery). What Torah was it that he learned from his teachers? Where did he find these hundreds and thousands of laws and legal details? Did all of these appear in the verses of the written Torah? Where are there three thousand laws there about planting cucumbers?
Again we have found that the great defender of the written Torah, the great opponent of the ‘invention’ of the Oral Torah, the man who stands in the breach against all the conspirators in Yavneh, is himself the father of the Oral Torah. A plastered cistern that does not lose a drop (as he is described in Avot), with hundreds and thousands of laws, among them laws given to Moses at Sinai that pass from teacher to disciple and reached him. The man from whose mouth the Mishnah and the Talmud are filled with Oral Torah and masses of legal details (here I have brought only a drop from that sea), and this, according to the missionaries, is the man who proves that there is no such thing as an Oral Torah. Well, it seems I really did lose them. Did you manage to understand the argument?
Three camps with respect to the interpretation of the aggadot of the Sages
The missionaries in the video simply do not understand (here as well) the way of aggadah. This literary genre is meant to convey ideas in a complex and non-literal way, and certainly not merely to describe events. How, in any event, did the sages of the Talmud know what the Holy One, blessed be He, said (‘My children have defeated Me’)? Were they endowed with prophecy? Certainly not. They put words into the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, because that is the way of aggadah to convey its messages. But such messages are directed to people who do not have problems with reading comprehension, and who understand the ways of aggadah and know how to distinguish between historical descriptions and aggadic tales.
Maimonides, in his introduction to Chapter Helek, explains that there are three camps with respect to the interpretation of aggadah. The first camp consists of those who interpret everything, including puzzling statements, literally (as though the story describes a real event exactly as it happened), and this is due to their belief in the greatness of the sages. About them he writes:
And this unfortunate camp deserves pity for its foolishness… By the life of the Lord, this camp destroys the splendor of the Torah and darkens its radiance, and turns the Torah of the Lord into the very opposite of what was intended by it… Many preachers do this, explaining to the people what they themselves do not understand. If only they had kept silent, for since they do not understand, ‘If only you would keep silent, and it would be your wisdom.’ Or they should have said: We do not know what the sages intended by these statements, nor how they are to be interpreted. But instead they think they have understood, and they set themselves up to explain to the people what they themselves understood—not what the sages said…
The second camp likewise interprets these statements literally, but does so in order to mock them and show their emptiness. About them Maimonides writes:
They thought that the sages intended only the plain meaning of the words, and therefore they treated them contemptuously and denounced them and thought strange what is not strange, and they often mock the words of the sages. They think that they are wiser than the sages and clearer in thought, and that the sages, peace be upon them, were simpletons lacking understanding, foolish in all matters of existence, and grasping nothing at all… They are more foolish than the first camp and more simple-minded. They are a cursed camp that has spoken insolently against people of lofty rank whose wisdom is already known among the sages. Had they trained themselves in the sciences until they knew how things are written in divine matters and the like, for the masses and for the wise, and had acquired for themselves the practical part of philosophy, then they would understand whether the sages were wise or not, and the meaning of their statements would be understood by them.
The third camp is made up of those who understand the ways of aggadah:
And the third camp—and by the life of the Lord, they are very few, so few that one can scarcely call them a camp, just as one can say of the sun that it is a species—these are the people to whom the greatness of the sages and the goodness of their understanding have become clear from the fact that throughout their words there are matters indicating very true ideas. And even though they are few and scattered in several places in their compositions, still they show their perfection and their attainment of the truth… They know that the sages, peace be upon them, did not speak nonsense, and it has become clear to them that their words have a plain meaning and a hidden meaning, and that everything they said among the things that are impossible was said only by way of riddle and parable; and that is the way of the great sages. Therefore the greatest of the sages opened his book by saying: ‘To understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles.’ It is already known among the masters of language that a riddle is speech whose meaning lies in its hidden sense and not in its plain sense, as in ‘I will put forth a riddle to you,’ and so forth, because the words of all possessors of wisdom concerning lofty matters, which are the ultimate end, are only by way of riddle and parable. So why should we wonder that they composed wisdom by way of parable and compared it to lowly and common matters…
Maimonides concludes with a request to those who belong to the first two camps:
And if you, the reader, belong to one of the first two camps, do not examine my words in any matter of this subject, for nothing in it will suit you. More than that—it will harm you and you will hate it. For how can foods that are light in quantity and moderate in quality suit a man who has already grown accustomed to bad and heavy foods? They will only harm him and he will hate them. You can see this from those who had become accustomed to eating onions and garlic and fish, with regard to the manna: ‘and our soul loathes this light bread’…
The missionaries in the video, of course, belong to the second camp—that is, a camp of wicked and foolish people who do not understand the ways of aggadah, and as a result mock it and draw from it absurd conclusions, as we have seen, conclusions born of a combination of ignorance, stupidity, and malice.
The message of the story: what is tradition?
The main message of the story of the oven is very important for what follows, since this is the principal point that the speakers in this video miss. The story teaches us that tradition is not something frozen, but something dynamic that is subject to the interpretation of the sages of the generations. We saw that both Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Joshua clearly and absolutely accept the Oral Torah. No one disputes this ‘invention.’ Rather, as I explained in my article, this story sets two different conceptions of the Oral Torah against one another (this is an internal confrontation within the group of ‘conspirators’): Rabbi Eliezer advocates a traditionalist conception, according to which the Oral Torah was given at Sinai in all its details, and ever since then has passed through a hollow conduit via the sages of all the generations, who did not touch it. In such a tradition there is no place for human innovations. This is the rabbinic model assumed by the missionaries in the video and which they attempt to attack. But they are attacking a straw man, because the rabbinic model is not this. Rabbi Eliezer’s opinion was rejected, and Rabbi Joshua’s opinion was accepted: a dynamic tradition that allows innovation throughout the generations. This is the account I presented in the first part, according to which what was given at Sinai was only principles and laws that were passed on orally, while most laws were innovated by various sages throughout history through the use of tools accepted at Sinai. This is the rabbinic tradition, not Rabbi Eliezer’s traditionalist conception. But even if they wish to rely on Rabbi Eliezer, we saw that the conclusion is that there certainly is an Oral Torah. On the contrary, according to him it is far richer and more detailed than the lean picture I gave here. Therefore one certainly cannot hang on Rabbi Eliezer in order to prove that no Oral Torah was given at Sinai. That is simply ignorance or distortion.
What is the message of this story? It is not very complicated for anyone who understands the ways of aggadah. The sages wanted to clarify for us the meaning of the concept of dynamic tradition. Their intention was to tell us that tradition is not something frozen but is subject to interpretation and expansion by sages. For this purpose they use various literary devices, among them a heavenly voice issuing from heaven. After all, nobody there was a prophet and nobody heard the voice of God. So what is the heavenly voice doing there? It represents the conception that Torah is what the Holy One, blessed be He, gave at Sinai. Opposed to it stands the conception that won there, according to which Torah is the interpretation that sages give to the Torah given at Sinai. Tradition (represented by Rabbi Eliezer) has no exclusive status, and it too is subject to rational and logical criticism. כביכול the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself acknowledges that we must take the reins into our own hands. In the absence of prophecy and direct contact with the Holy One, blessed be He, when a legal question arises the sages must decide it in accordance with the interpretive tools they received and according to straightforward reason. It is not easy to accept such a conception of tradition, and therefore they created an aggadic story that conveys the message clearly. This is not taking the reins away from the Holy One, blessed be He, because all the interpretations of the sages explain what the verses of the Torah mean and what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants. Here the Holy One does not represent His own opinion but rather the conception that human beings have no role to play in His Torah—the very conception held by the missionaries in the video.
The meaning of a dynamic tradition
Questions that arose in the comments on the previous installments indicate how nontrivial this conception really is, and explain why this aggadah was necessary. This picture of tradition rests on nontrivial assumptions about the will of God. The claim is that laws can be innovated and added throughout the generations. Thus, for example, the obligation to keep the Sabbath in the Torah is not defined. What is written there is that one must not do labor. The Torah also contains a prohibition on leaving our place on the Sabbath, a prohibition on lighting fire, and on plowing and reaping. The Oral Torah innovates that there are thirty-nine primary categories of labor and their derivatives. A question arises here: what did the Holy One, blessed be He, intend at the time the Torah was given at Sinai? Does He change His mind with every passing generation? How can there be a dynamic tradition of the will of God? The answer is that the Holy One, blessed be He, intended that we rest on the Sabbath, but what the meaning of that rest is—that will be determined by the sages in each generation according to the tools they received at Sinai. So in principle there can be a situation in which in one generation people refrain from ten types of labor, in the next from twenty, and afterward from thirty, and all of them are fulfilling the will of God. His will has not changed, because what He wanted was not specifically this or that labor, but cessation from labor. The content of that cessation is entrusted to the understanding of the sages.
Moreover, it is possible that the Holy One, blessed be He, really intended something specific, but we have no way of knowing it. The Torah does not specify enough for us. Therefore questions and doubts arise in law among the sages, and there is no alternative (see my article mentioned above, which is the background to the entire story of the oven) but for them to decide on their own. Thus the content of the Oral Torah is created. It was indeed not given at Sinai, but created throughout the generations. The tools and the conceptual framework, and they alone, were given at Sinai. The legal result may be mistaken. The Holy One, blessed be He, may not have intended it. But it is still what He wants us to do, because in the absence of prophecy and direct connection with Him we have no way of knowing what He really wanted. Therefore, even if we assume that His will indeed never changes, there is no difficulty in understanding that the law does change and develop, becoming more detailed and more ramified.
From this one can infer another consequence that will be important for what follows. In the time of Moses our Teacher, the number of laws and legal details included in the Oral Torah was very small (only what is called ‘a law given to Moses at Sinai’). At that time the Torah was mainly what was in writing, and alongside it there was a very thin Oral Torah: explanations of words and basic principles of interpretation, and a few laws given to Moses at Sinai. Over the generations the law branches out, becomes more detailed, and expands. The sages use the principles and interpretations given at Sinai and their common sense in order to clarify and refine the law. In the biblical period a number of laws were added, and afterward, in the period of the Oral Torah (the Second Temple period), more and more laws were added that were not transmitted to Moses and did not exist in his time, and perhaps even the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself did not originally intend them. This is exactly the message of the story of the oven with which we have been engaged: the Torah was given over to human beings and to their interpretation—’It is not in heaven.’[4]
A methodological note: the subject of the discussion here
This picture may be correct or incorrect. Here I have not explained why I think it is correct, because that is not the subject of our discussion. In these columns I am dealing solely with the quality and validity of the arguments raised in the video. That and nothing more. My purpose up to this point has not been to argue what the correct picture is, but to describe what the rabbinic picture is, whether you accept it or not.
Now, if someone wishes to attack the rabbinic picture, he must address this picture and not invent a picture of his own and attack a straw man. As we shall see below, that is exactly what the missionaries in the video do. They adopt the traditionalist picture (a picture similar to that of Rabbi Eliezer, though more frozen), and attack it. Once one understands the rabbinic picture as it is and not as they would like it to be, the rug is pulled out from under their arguments, which are exposed as an empty vessel. We will see this below (do not worry—we are approaching the end).
Continue reading the next part.
[1] For an explanation of this important and foundational act and its historical background, see my article here.
[2] For some reason they explain there that the goal was to enlarge the oven. I do not know where they got that bit of oral lore from. As far as I know, it has no source at all. Apparently this is a conspiracy of the messianic ‘Jews’ to take control of us.
[3] It is interesting to note that the heavenly voice did not say that the law follows Rabbi Eliezer, but that he is great in Torah. It did not express a direct position regarding the oven issue. This joins all the other mystical proofs Rabbi Eliezer brought (the walls of the study hall leaned, the water channel veered from its course, etc.), all of which prove Rabbi Eliezer’s greatness in Torah, but none of which is relevant evidence to the actual subject under discussion. See my above-mentioned article on this.
[4] This is not about rabbinic laws, which are certainly the product of sages from generations later than Moses. Even the biblical laws are mostly the products of later sages, as I explained in the first part. The distinction between biblical and rabbinic law is unrelated to chronology.
Response to the videos of the missionary iGod channel – The Oral Torah and the ‘plots of the rabbis’: the arguments – continued, part three
With God’s help
Summary and supplement to the previous part
In the previous part we dealt with the story of the Oven of Achnai. There we saw the fact that all the sages agreed on the existence of an Oral Torah, even though the video tries to prove from that very episode that it is an ‘invention.’ They claimed that a conspiracy of rabbis replaced the Torah of Moses, and in effect God Himself, with the sages and with a Torah that is entirely their own creation. I will note that it seems strange to me that believers in a sect based on the assumption that a man born of a woman (and a male) who died like all human beings is in fact God, accuse the rabbinic tradition of human beings taking authority for themselves and replacing God’s words with their own. People project their own flaws, as we already said?
Introduction to the next two parts
The continuation of the video deals with arguments that belong to two issues and are presented there in a mixed-up way. One issue is the lack of testimony to the existence of an Oral Torah in periods prior to the Tannaim (= the rabbis), and in fact in periods prior to the destruction of the Temple. The second issue is the question of the source of the sages’ authority. In the next two parts we will deal with the full set of these arguments: the present one will address the lack of testimony, and the next will address the source of authority of the sages of the Oral Torah. After that I will add one more part summarizing what emerges from the whole discussion.
Argument 5: The lack of early evidence for the existence of the Oral Torah
As noted, in this part we will deal with all of their arguments that are meant to prove the lack of early evidence for the existence of the Oral Torah, and we will examine them one by one. Before that, I should note that all these arguments assume one assumption that is itself untrue. Here on the site there have already been several people who collected various pieces of evidence for the existence of an Oral Torah, both in the Bible and in the scrolls and writings of the various sects, in direct factual contradiction to the missionaries’ assumption in the video. In order not to overload the discussion with details, I will not bring all that here. Anyone interested can see the material here (in M’s very detailed messages) and here in Rafael’s discussion (though see my comments there). Rafael went even further by showing in his comments here that even Jesus himself recognized the tradition of the Oral Torah.
The doubts of Moses our teacher
One of the claims in the video is that in several places in the Torah, Moses our teacher is uncertain about a certain law, and then turns to the Holy One, blessed be He, to receive an answer about what to do. If he had an Oral Torah that he received at Sinai together with the Written Torah, he should have used it to find the relevant law, just as the sages in generations after him (= the rabbis) did.
This argument is completely absurd. First, there are very few examples of this in the Torah (the examples they refer to there are only three). Second, the sages of the Talmud also remained in doubt regarding quite a few legal questions and left them unanswered for later generations (the Talmudic expression for this is ‘teiku’—that is, the issue and discussion remain as they are. We have no answer). If this is all an ‘invention,’ what prevented them from inventing answers to these questions too? After all, do they not present them as all-knowing and all-powerful? Third, if even when there is an Oral Torah doubts can remain unresolved, then what do Moses’ cases prove? It is entirely possible that he had an Oral Torah, but it did not provide an answer to those few questions, and therefore he referred them to God. Fourth, I have already pointed out that the Oral Torah develops and becomes more sophisticated over the years. It is possible that in Moses’ day there were not yet sufficient tools to deal with those questions. Moses’ greatness was that he was the source who encountered God and learned the Torah from Him. In questions of Talmudic and legal inference, he was not necessarily greater than the generations that came after him. The Talmud itself expresses this idea in the passage in Menachot (29b), where it is told that Moses comes to Rabbi Akiva’s study hall and does not understand what he is saying. He fears that this is a new Torah, and is calmed when they tell him there that it is a law given to Moses at Sinai. The missionaries will of course see in this yet more proof for their view, but see the previous part as to why that is nonsense (just as in the case of the Oven of Achnai). For anyone who knows how to read and understand rabbinic narrative, the message is quite clear: Rabbi Akiva and his colleagues had powers of inference and analysis that Moses did not. Moses’ superiority was in knowledge and in his connection to God. That inference and analysis are used by the sages of the Oral Torah to draw legal conclusions in cases that are not clear from the Written Torah and the already existing tradition. By the way, this phenomenon continues to our own day. Alongside the assumption of the decline of the generations (that the sages of earlier generations were greater), anyone familiar with halakhic and Talmudic literature knows that the sages of the later generations possess analytical and logical abilities incomparably more developed than those of their predecessors. In my book Two Carts I explained that analytical ability developed as compensation for the loss of halakhic intuition, which decreases over the generations.
Critiques of the Sages’ expositions regarding the existence of two Torahs: a didactic introduction
The video brings several arguments criticizing the Sages’ expositions that were meant to show the existence of an Oral Torah. They are careful there to present, again and again like a fixed mantra, the ‘historical’ background to the whole discussion. Again and again they repeat a completely baseless claim about the despair that supposedly seized the Sages because of the loss of the sacrificial and purity laws (which, according to their absurd assumption, are the whole Torah and all Jewish law), and from this it is ‘self-evident’ that the rabbis now set out to invent an alternative out of nothing. But this background, which accompanies the video throughout, is entirely baseless speculation. Not a shred of evidence is brought for it, and that is hardly surprising, because there is not a shred of a hint of it anywhere.
If we return to our criminal analogy (see part two), this is a case of planting an absurd premise in the listeners’ minds that colors the whole picture with a false tint. It is like a prosecutor who explains to you that so-and-so’s sister works in a certain profession, and from that point it is enough for him to show that she walked down the street in order to ‘prove’ that she was looking for a client. From now on there is no need to prove that, because once we know what her profession is, where else could she be going? But the claim that this is indeed her profession is pure speculation, and there is not even a shred of evidence that a sister exists at all. So now go prove that you do not have a sister.
After it is ‘clear’ to all of us that the whole Torah and all Jewish law were irretrievably lost because of the destruction, and ‘clear’ to all of us that the sages were in despair because their standing was shaken and they needed to invent a new Torah in order to reestablish it—all these ‘clear’ things, of course, without any evidence and without any basis—now it is enough to bring any act or exposition of the sages, innocent as it may be, and it will immediately be interpreted conspiratorially against that background. This collection of absurd and unfounded assumptions colors the whole picture as a conspiracy born of despair, and the listener does not notice that all this was planted in his mind without any argument or evidence. Now when the sages make a decision, that is an ‘invention.’ When they focus on prayer, repentance, and fasting on Yom Kippur (exactly what the Torah commands; see part 3)—that is a deliberate deviation from the Torah. When they declare ‘It is not in heaven,’ that is part of the same conspiracy to replace the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Torah. Every act the sages perform, even if it can be interpreted in several different ways (and even acts that cannot be interpreted their way at all), is automatically interpreted as part of the same conspiracy. This is true even when their interpretation is only one of several possible ones. But the matter becomes even sharper when, as we have seen up to now and will see further on, we are dealing with an interpretation that is distorted on its face and in itself. As is well known, demagoguery is a tool used by the preacher when he is left without arguments or reasons. If you cannot prove that so-and-so is a murderer, plant a smoking gun in his hand without anyone noticing, or make a photomontage showing him holding one, explain to everyone that he is evil and seeks honor, power, and money, and then you are exempt from bringing evidence.
Critiques of the Sages’ expositions regarding the existence of two Torahs: the role of Rabbi Akiva
So let us now examine those expositions with an unprejudiced eye. The speaker explains to us that the rabbis invented a new system called midrashic interpretation, and that Rabbi Akiva invented it. He sharpens the point by saying that Rabbi Akiva was not even Jewish, but the son of converts (a descendant of Sisera). And here the son asks: so what? Why is a person’s origin relevant to our issue? Only the missionaries can solve that mystery. According to him, should Judaism be racist and relate to a person through his ancestry? On the contrary, it is to its credit that it accepts a person for what he is and gives him the standing he deserves. Had they not done so, he would certainly have accused Judaism of racism. It is worth remembering that we are dealing with a conspiracy of a ruling class whose goal is to gain power, status, and money. And now it turns out that the father of the conspiracy is a shepherd, the son of converts, from a low social standing, who attained status by virtue of his Torah and personality. But in a missionary holy war, anything goes.
Our illustrious presenter in the video further informs us that Rabbi Akiva is to blame for our exile, since he crowned Bar Kokhba as the Messiah, and in the end his revolt failed and the results were disastrous. First, Rome conquered the Land of Israel and destroyed the Temple long before Bar Kokhba and Rabbi Akiva acted against it, of course. Second, even if Rabbi Akiva erred in his assessment of Bar Kokhba—and indeed most sages of that generation disagreed with him on this point (and opinions about that decision remain divided to this day)—what does that tragic mistake have to do with his method of exposition? Is no sage allowed to make a mistake? Perhaps it is worth reminding our missionary cousins that, unlike someone else in their system, our rabbis are not presumed to be God.
Now to the heart of the matter. Where did they get the idea that Rabbi Akiva invented or founded the system of midrashic interpretation at all? That claim, which is the basic claim here and is supposedly a ‘historical fact,’ is presented without any source or basis. On the contrary, the Talmud (Shevuot 26a) shows the development of Rabbi Akiva’s interpretive system, which he received from his teacher Nahum of Gimzo (and Rabbi Ishmael received his system, which was somewhat different, from Rabbi Nehunya ben HaKanah). In addition, I already mentioned that at the beginning of the Sifra (a halakhic tannaitic midrash on Leviticus) and in the Tosefta Sanhedrin, seven interpretive principles are brought that Hillel the Elder used much earlier, deep in the Second Temple period. One may of course argue that all these are fabrications invented by the Talmud without historical basis as part of the conspiracy. But what evidence is there for that? On what basis do they claim it? Is there any other source at all? I am not even speaking about the fact that throughout the video no good evidence was brought for this—not even bad evidence. The speaker does not bother to bring any proof for it, absurd as it may be. He presents the ‘fact’ that Rabbi Akiva (the wicked gentile) began and founded the whole world of midrashic interpretation, but without any source or basis. At the next stage he will probably accuse him of murdering Arlosoroff. Had evidence been brought that Rabbi Akiva was the one who began this mode of interpretation, we could discuss whether it is an ‘invention’ or not. But as long as the claims are thrown into the air, I could just as well claim that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, or Martin Luther King, began it. That is about equally well grounded.
Critiques of the Sages’ expositions regarding the existence of two Torahs: first exposition
The first exposition brought in the video is from Exodus 34:27:
And the Lord said to Moses: Write down these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.
The claim is that only the Written Torah appears here and there is no hint of an Oral Torah. The Sages forcibly pushed their ‘invention’ into the verse by taking the Hebrew phrase that ordinarily means ‘according to’ and reading it literally as referring to the mouth. In other words, there is here a Written Torah and an Oral Torah. The speaker brings several examples from the Bible that show that the meaning of that phrase is ‘according to’ or ‘in accordance with.’
This sophisticated interpretation was surely known to all Israel, since the Written Torah lay before everyone. So how did everyone buy this line? Here again there is a failure to understand the ways of Talmudic aggadah (see the end of the previous part). First, it is important to understand that this rabbinic interpretation is a midrashic reading, not the plain meaning. According to rabbinic tradition, any verse can be interpreted in several independent ways. The midrashic interpretation is not bound by the rules of plain-sense reading and the literal meaning of the verses, but by a different system of rules called exposition. Midrash is not meant to offer a different plain meaning for the verse. No one claims that the literal meaning of ‘an eye for an eye’ is that one pays compensation for the injured eye. That is a midrash accompanying the plain-sense interpretation of the verses. In rabbinic tradition these are two independent readings. To attack the midrash because it does not fit the literal meaning is simply a misunderstanding.
One may of course deny the existence of this mode of exposition, and challenge its reliability or its divine origin, but one cannot logically beg the question. The speaker assumes there is no such thing, and then proves it by assuming that the midrashic interpretation does not meet the standards of the plain meaning. This is genuine logical folly, one among many of course.
Beyond that, the meaning of the phrase in this verse is indeed exactly as the speaker said: ‘according to’ or ‘in accordance with’ (those are his proposals verbatim). When you tell someone to act in accordance with a certain rule or book, do you mean that all the information is found in the book or rule? Do you mean that no interpretation of the rule or book is needed? Certainly not. When the legislator tells us to act according to the law, does he mean according to the literal words in the statute book? Or does he mean according to the statute book as interpreted in the accepted way by the authorized institutions (the courts)? When one says to act according to the law, one obviously means the second sense. If I acted according to the interpretation the court gave the law, can it be said that I did not act according to the law? That is itself acting according to the law, is it not? If so, what God says to Moses is that the covenant made with him is according to the Torah he was now to write. How will we know what the Torah says? What are its practical instructions in actuality? We will go to the Oral Torah. Even in our own language, the term ‘according to’ or ‘in accordance with’ means that this is the binding framework by which one proceeds. But of course what counts as proceeding according to it and what does not depends on interpretation. No wonder that together with the Torah there were given principles of interpretation and exposition that instruct us what to do in order to make sure we are indeed acting according to the Written Torah. When the Torah says ‘according to these words,’ it means that when we proceed according to the Oral Torah, we are not following something else, some ‘invention,’ but the Written Torah itself. The Oral Torah only interprets it (it does not offer an alternative to it).
The wordplay that takes the phrase as referring to the mouth merely expresses this idea. There is no intention to derive anything from it. That is the essence of midrash. Just as the midrash that reads the verse as ‘let sins cease’ and not ‘sinners’ does not offer a literal interpretation, but uses wordplay to express the correct and binding interpretation. To see the midrashic wordplay as the source of a legal rule learned from it is a glaring failure to understand the whole world of exposition. Once again it becomes clear that in order to attack something, one must first understand it היטב, and only then raise arguments against it.
By the way, the missionaries in the video propose an explanation for how the people bought this line after all (since it is so ‘absurd’ and unacceptable, right?). Very simple: everyone except the rabbis was ignorant and illiterate, and therefore subject to rabbinic interpretation. Well then, if that is so, I would expect the rabbis to preserve that situation in order to maintain the masses’ dependence on them and their own status. So why do they preach and work so that every child and every person should learn to read and study Torah all the time? Why shoot yourself in the foot and lose the status for which you schemed and labored all your life together with your friends? And in general, if truly only the rabbis knew how to read and write, what is surprising about the fact that the tradition is found specifically with them? Who else would hold it—the illiterate? This explanation undermines the already nonexistent ground beneath the conspiracy theory from within. The sages are the source of the Oral Torah because it is found only with them. It is like asking why Newton specifically invented mechanics or Einstein specifically invented relativity (what conspirators they were). Simply because they were gifted physicists and only they understood what others did not. And why is it specifically the courts that interpret the law? Simply because they are the ones authorized to do so.
So is there another option for explaining why the public accepted this exposition? Quite simply: because they understood it was correct and it fit very well with the tradition they knew. They received the truth from the sages who held the tradition. Truth is also an option, no? In fact, not when conspiracy propaganda is operating in the background. As stated, against the absurd and unfounded background they planted in the listener from the beginning, every act and every statement is immediately interpreted as part of the great conspiracy. The demagoguery tries to ensure that the most obvious and most plausible interpretation is not even taken into account.
Critiques of the Sages’ expositions regarding the existence of two Torahs: second exposition
The next exposition is based on Leviticus 26:46:
These are the statutes and the ordinances and the Torahs which the Lord gave between Him and the children of Israel on Mount Sinai by the hand of Moses.
Here too the great conspirators expounded that the ‘Torahs’ are two Torahs: written and oral. The speakers explain that the plain meaning is completely different: the ‘Torahs’ are the laws of the sin offering, the guilt offering, the plague of leprosy, and the like.
Here too it is important to return and explain the nature of midrash. As we saw above, it does not come to replace the plain meaning but to add to it. Beyond that, from the biblical context there it is clear beyond any shadow of doubt that the verse is not referring to the laws of sacrifices and impurity. Those laws appear in the first sections of Leviticus, and for some reason the Torah waits several sections and then returns to refer to them without any detail at all. Is that not strange? When one examines the immediate background of these verses (Leviticus chapters 25–26), one immediately sees that the reference is not to the sin offering or the plague of leprosy, but to the Sabbatical year, the Sabbath, and idolatry. But here it is not clear why the Torah uses the plural, ‘the Torahs.’ This is the Torah itself. Beyond that, what do we have besides the statutes and ordinances in the Torah? What exactly are these ‘Torahs’? Moreover, why do the verses emphasize that all this was given at Sinai? After all, the whole Torah (including these verses themselves) was given at Sinai. If one does not assume that these verses were given at Sinai, then what force is there to their statement that the ‘Torahs’ were given at Sinai? Therefore the Sages expounded (not interpreted) that the intention is to the details that accompany these commandments in the Oral Torah, and the Torah comes to say that it too was given at Sinai. This is probably not the plain meaning of the Torah (as we saw, on the simple level it refers here to idolatry and Sabbatical years and the like), but rather a midrashic reading that comes alongside the plain meaning. But the Torah’s own wording hints to us that here one should use the tools of exposition alongside the ordinary tools of plain interpretation. So it is with the whole realm of midrash generally.
By the way, around the Sabbatical year and Jubilee there are quite a few legal details, and therefore at the beginning of the section Behar the Torah also says that everything was given at Sinai, and there too the Sages expound that its general rules and details were from Sinai. In other words, the Sabbatical year is a clear example of the principle that the Oral Torah has its source in Sinai. And I repeat here again: the point is not that the details themselves were given to us at Sinai, but that the principles by which we derived the details were given there.
Absence of early evidence: the Written Torah
The speakers argue that if the Oral Torah was given to Moses at Sinai, a reader of the Torah and the Hebrew Bible would expect to read about it thousands of times in Scripture. Here again there is a mistaken assumption about what the Oral Torah is. We are not speaking about thousands of legal details, but about a few basic principles of interpretation, meanings of words, and a few laws given to Moses at Sinai. That is all. Which of these was supposed to appear in the Torah? Was the Torah supposed to write, ‘They shall be as frontlets between your eyes,’ meaning: put on black, square phylacteries containing such-and-such passages from the Torah, with such-and-such straps? But that is simply the meaning of the word ‘frontlets,’ together with some other legal details that were transmitted by tradition from Sinai. Since when is any text supposed to include within itself the meanings of its own words and the principles of interpretation by which one must approach it? A text assumes that it is accompanied by interpretive rules and that the language is known to the reader. A book by Shakespeare or Dostoevsky does not end with glossaries and principles of interpretation. Does that mean that the English reader has no better understanding of Shakespeare than the Chinese reader? The English language itself is the Oral Torah that accompanies that text. The interpretive envelope, which includes word meanings, connotations, and cultural and interpretive principles—that is the Oral Torah, and it was certainly transmitted together with the text at Sinai. Without it the text has no meaning at all. Without an Oral Torah, what am I supposed to do in order to fulfill the commandment ‘They shall be as frontlets between your eyes’? What are the fringes that I must place on my garments? Is Scripture itself supposed explicitly to insert those explanations? By this logic, the Talmud should have included all the commentaries of the earlier and later authorities, and the Shulchan Arukh all the commentaries surrounding it. That is absurd, of course. There is no reason to expect the Oral Torah to be mentioned, and certainly not to appear, in Scripture. Scripture assumes it as an obvious accompaniment that passes from generation to generation alongside it.
Later the speaker brings the following argument. The Torah does not detail the laws of the sukkah, and therefore it is clear that this does not interest it. It asks that we sit in something like a sukkah on Sukkot, and it is not really concerned with how we make that sukkah. The Oral Torah, which defines those legal details, is an invention. On the contrary: if the text does not spell them out, that is a sign that the details do not interest it.
This is a truly dazzling case of begging the question. After all, the alternative assumption is that together with the Torah there passes an Oral Torah that helps us define those legal details. If so, that too can explain why the Written Torah does not specify them: because it takes it for granted that we will turn to the Oral Torah. Indeed, it is possible that the explanation for the silence is that the Torah is not interested in the details—but it is also possible that the silence is because it is taken for granted that we will turn to the Oral Torah. The sages tell us that the second possibility is the correct one, and that is our tradition. Now the missionaries come and assume the first possibility solely from a textual consideration (the argument is the text’s silence regarding the details). The question is what basis they have for their claim against the rabbinic tradition. Merely that they assume something else? It is indeed possible, but the rule is that someone mounting an attack cannot simply assume the opposite; he must bring reasons against the position he is attacking. These fellows assume there is no Oral Torah and infer from that that… there is no Oral Torah. Magnificent, isn’t it?
They claim that the Torah’s silence about the details is meant to make us focus on the essential and not the incidental. Does Christianity focus on the essential? What do they do on Sukkot? In what sukkah do they sit, and when? People project their own flaws, as we already said?
After that they bring the following example: the head of the village sees a young man working hard on the Sabbath and orders him to stop working and rest on the Sabbath. That young man concludes from this that he may not tear toilet paper on the Sabbath, drive to visit Grandma on the Sabbath, barbecue on the Sabbath, and so on and so forth. This is supposedly a bizarre interpretation of the command he received. Indeed it would be, if the command were merely to keep the Sabbath and nothing more. But if that command is accompanied by an Oral Torah that details it, the situation is different. Here too they simply return to the same begged question as in the sukkah case: either the Torah was satisfied with forbidding labor because the details do not interest it, or it did so because the details are already created in the Oral Torah, whose existence it takes for granted. Our missionaries, of course, remain faithful to the logical method of begging the question. And they are right, since it has one notable advantage: it always leads to the correct conclusion (the one you assumed).
By the way, the Torah itself explicitly says, ‘You shall kindle no fire throughout your dwellings on the Sabbath day,’ meaning that it forbids barbecuing on the Sabbath. And indeed the Karaites, who interpret it literally without an Oral Torah, truly do not kindle fire. But our brave missionary sees the conclusion that one should not barbecue on the Sabbath as a deviation from the plain meaning of the Torah (while he himself of course does light fire on the Sabbath, with exemplary adherence to the verses of the Written Torah). The same applies to driving to Grandma’s, for the verse says, ‘Let no man go out of his place on the Sabbath day.’ The plain meaning of Scripture is indeed that one may not go to Grandma, and that is indeed how the Karaites practice. But our missionaries see all this as a deviation from the plain meaning. And for dessert I will again ask how Christians fulfill this commandment. Do they keep the Sabbath in any sense? Do they refrain from work on the Sabbath (as the Torah commands, according to them, without the rabbinic details)? Or perhaps the Torah really means Sunday and we have missed something here? It seems they are once again faithful to their method of projecting their own flaws and begging the question.
Absence of early evidence: the Hebrew Bible
Immediately after that they move into the territory of Christian exposition. From Joshua 1:7–8:
(7) Only be strong and very courageous, to observe to do according to all the Torah that Moses My servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, so that you may prosper wherever you go. (8) This book of the Torah shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it; for then you shall make your way successful, and then you shall prosper.
From here they infer, by way of a kind of exposition parasitic on the literal meaning, that there is only a Written Torah and not an Oral one, because the verse says ‘according to all that is written in it.’ I return again to what we saw in the previous sections regarding the question of what counts as going ‘according to the Torah.’ To do according to all that is written in the book of the Torah is like doing according to all that is written in the law book of the State of Israel. There, as here, interpretation is required, and following the interpretation is itself following what is written in the book. I must add that without that, there is not much to meditate on in the book of the Torah. All in all, it is not very complicated to do what is written there. We are dealing with a few undeveloped commandments that anyone can interpret as he wishes. Why would that require that it not depart from our mouths day and night, and that we meditate on it day and night? Therefore it is more reasonable that the verse is referring to legal details and principles of interpretation that accompany what is written in the book.
They then add that the prophets and kings of Israel do not mention the Oral Torah even by hint. On that I refer the reader again to the links brought above, where the places are detailed in which such legal details and practices of the Oral Torah are indeed mentioned. So this is a distortion. But even if that description were accurate, we should ask: do they mention the Written Torah in any detail? Only in a very general way. So why would they mention a legal detail or an interpretive principle, when the books of the Hebrew Bible do not deal with those matters at all? The references you will find are incidental, because that is not the topic. But those references prove that there certainly was an oral tradition that passed along with the Written Torah.
And beyond all that, I have already explained that in the biblical period the number of legal details that had already been created was very small. Most laws were created in a later period (the period of the Oral Torah). So what is surprising about the fact that this or that legal detail is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible? The speakers ask there why it is never mentioned that the people of Israel, or anyone else, was punished, accused, or rebuked for not keeping a law from the Oral Torah. To that I ask: how many punishments for details of Written Torah law are mentioned in the Hebrew Bible? Almost none. Punishments are imposed only for idolatry, Sabbath observance, and a bit for problems in the Temple service. Those are the grave and public issues, and therefore only they are mentioned and only for them are punishments given. Are details of Written Torah law themselves mentioned in the Hebrew Bible? Phylacteries, redeeming a firstborn donkey, the blessing after meals, the prohibition of wool-and-linen mixtures—are they mentioned there? And what about the punishment of a Sabbath desecrator by the court, which is explicitly mentioned in the Torah?
It is true that it is not entirely clear which parts of the halakhah we possess were practiced in the biblical period, but that is not because there was no Oral Torah then. It is because it was still very limited, and also because the Hebrew Bible deals with punishments for central sins of the public as a whole (especially idolatry and social-moral sins).
The speaker mentions that the term ‘Oral Torah’ itself first appears only 1,500 years after Moses’ death. But that is entirely obvious, since in Moses’ time and in the biblical period there was no ‘Oral Torah’ as such. There were agreed-upon principles of interpretation and meanings of words that simply accompanied the Written Torah. Only when the system branched out, became more sophisticated, and was conceptualized, was it recognized as a system worthy of a name of its own. Precisely for that reason, the Tannaim who faced this new system had to explain to the public that all this was not an invention, but the use of tools that were given to Moses at Sinai.
At the end of the video it is said that traditions of the sages are mentioned in the Bible, but always negatively. That in itself already contradicts their assumption throughout that these traditions were created out of nothing after the destruction of the Second Temple. But even the example (the only one) that they bring is the verses in Isaiah 29:13–14:
(13) And the Lord said: Because this people draws near with its mouth and honors Me with its lips, while its heart is far from Me, and their fear of Me has become a commandment of men learned by rote; (14) therefore, behold, I will again do a marvelous work among this people, a marvelous work and a wonder; and the wisdom of its wise men shall perish, and the understanding of its men of understanding shall be hidden.
Where do they see here a critique of oral traditions? The gates of creative interpretation have not been closed.
Interestingly, the background that appears just before those verses speaks about blindness and the inability to read written books:
(10) For the Lord has poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep, and has closed your eyes—the prophets—and covered your heads, the seers. (11) And the whole vision has become to you like the words of a sealed book, which one gives to a man who knows books, saying: Read this, please; and he says: I cannot, for it is sealed. (12) And the book is given to one who does not know books, saying: Read this, please; and he says: I do not know books.
That is exactly what the Oral Torah is for. The book by itself is sealed and unreadable. If anything, what we have here is a critique of clinging to books that are sealed without the interpretation of the Oral Torah. Then come the verses above that speak about the loss of the wisdom of the wise and the understanding of the discerning, perhaps because of ignoring the Oral Torah and imagining that the book by itself is open and intelligible on its own. Fine, perhaps this too is a homily—but it is certainly better grounded than what they offer here, and as I said, the gates of creative interpretation have not been closed.
Absence of evidence in extrabiblical literature
At the end of the video they move to the claim that the Oral Torah is not mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls or in the various kinds of extrabiblical literature. Here too I refer the reader to the links brought above, where several references to the Oral Torah in extrabiblical literature are presented. But I cannot refrain from noting that the claim itself is very strange. After all, these were sects that broke away from the rabbinic tradition, so why would they mention the Oral Torah? It is not mentioned in the New Testament either. So what? What does that prove?
He cites Dr. Finkel, who explains that the Jewish identity of the Babylonian exiles (several centuries BCE) was only internal. It had no external markers. First, one must remember that in that period the Oral Torah was quite limited, and therefore it is reasonable that most of the details we have today were not practiced then. But beyond that, his words do not fit even the Written Torah. After all, it tells us to wear fringes, not to work on the Sabbath, not to wear wool-and-linen mixtures, not to plow with an ox and a donkey together, to honor parents, to bless after eating—and none of this is externally visible? Did they plow and rest on the Sabbath in their hearts? As a rule I do not like relying on this or that scholar (especially in these fields, which are full of speculation and careless hypotheses that are worth very little), but when such people are presented like the Oracle of Delphi, whose words I am supposed to accept on authority without arguments, it becomes clear that what we have is demagoguery or distortion.
The same goes for Ethiopian Jews, who returned to the land after having been in exile since the First Temple period. The speaker in the video claims that they had never heard of rabbinic traditions. First of all, Ethiopian Jews do have laws and interpretations beyond the Written Torah, so this is a distortion of the facts. True, the Oral Torah then was limited, and therefore that is all one could expect to find among them. In any event, it is fairly astonishing that although they went into exile from the land in the First Temple period, before the rabbinic traditions had even begun to take shape (they took shape during the Second Temple period and developed mainly after its destruction), they nevertheless had not heard about them! Truly a brilliant argument.
Contradictions between the Talmud and the Bible
The speakers explain that there are hundreds of contradictions (which they do not present) between the Talmud and the Bible. The claim is that it is impossible for the Holy One, blessed be He, who is perfect, to inspire logical incoherence in His sages, and therefore it is clear that the Talmud was not written under divine inspiration.
This is a very strange argument. First, even if the Talmud were written under divine inspiration, there would still obviously be a human touch in it (after all, it is full of disputes, so which of them did God intend?). So perhaps the mistakes are a result of the human component? Divine inspiration does not mean that God Himself uttered the Talmud. But all this is beside the point. The more basic question is: who says the Talmud was written under divine inspiration at all? It is a human creation, entirely produced by human beings and by their rational judgment after the end of the age of prophecy. Contrary to their tacit assumption in the video, the authority of the Talmud does not derive from its divine inspiration, just as the authority of a court does not derive from the fact that it never errs. A court was authorized by the legislator, and from that come its authority and the obligation to obey it. So too the Talmud was authorized by the halakhic and rabbinic public as the canonical and binding corpus of Jewish law and the authorized interpreter of the Torah, and from that comes its authority. The contradictions between it and the Bible can stem from several sources: 1. Midrash versus plain meaning (as we saw above). 2. Mistakes of the sages of the Talmud (every human being can err). 3. The contradiction is only apparent (that is, it is rooted in the missionaries’ mistake in understanding the sugya).
But as noted, commitment to the words of the rabbis in the Talmud is not connected to the question of whether they were right or wrong, or whether the Holy One, blessed be He, intended at Sinai what they said. In many cases I assume not. The episode of the Oven of Achnai (see the previous part) teaches us exactly that. Just as in many cases judges do not hit the legislator’s intention. Does that mean their authority does not exist and one need not listen to them? Anyone who knows even a little legal thought knows that a court’s authority to interpret the law does not derive from its absolute ability to hit the legislator’s intention, nor from inspiration flowing from the legislator to the judges. A judge’s authority stems from the need for an authorized interpreter for the system of law and justice in our society, so as to prevent anarchy. Moreover, today it is already accepted that when the court approaches the interpretation of a law, it does not even try to descend to the lawmakers’ intention, but interprets the law from within according to the judges’ own understanding. Moreover, even if the legislator himself were to come and explain his intention, they are not supposed to listen to him. Once the legislator has finished his work, the law has left his possession and now belongs to the public and its interpreters (‘It is not in heaven.’ Sound familiar?).
Continue reading the next part.
Response to the videos of the missionary iGod channel – The Oral Torah and the ‘plots of the rabbis’: the arguments – continued, part four
With God’s help
In the previous part we dealt with the collection of arguments in the video that rely on the lack of early evidence for the existence of an Oral Torah. In this part we will deal with the collection of arguments concerning the question of the sages’ authority.
Argument 6: The source of the sages’ authority
The speakers’ principal claim in the video is that there is no source in the Torah for the rabbis’ authority to determine Jewish law in its various areas. At most, one may find in the Torah the appointment of judges and officers to enforce the law, protect people, and prevent injustice.
To understand the meaning of this claim, we must distinguish between a judicial establishment and a legislative institution. A judicial establishment enforces existing law, but does not create new law. They argue in the video that nowhere in the Torah can one find any authority for rabbis to issue instructions and determine what we must do. That authority belongs only to the Written Torah. It is important to understand that in their view the sages have no authority to legislate (that is, to create rabbinic laws), but also no authority to interpret and expound (that is, to create biblical laws). They merely enforce the law as part of the judicial system of the people of Israel, but they cannot shape that system (whether through legislation or through interpretation).
The speakers add that the Sages, as part of the conspiracy whose purpose was to gain control over us and create all of our dependence on them, presented a false appearance as though there were a source in the Torah for their authority to legislate and interpret the Torah. The Torah sources discussed in the video are the following:
A. Exodus 23:2:
You shall not be after the many to do evil; nor shall you answer in a dispute so as to incline after the many.
According to the Sages in tractate Sanhedrin, they took the three words ‘be after the many,’ pulled them out of context, ignored the ‘not’ that appears before them, and determined that there is an obligation on all of us to follow the many (= the majority of the sages), whereas the plain meaning of the verse is not to be swept along with the many to do evil (apparently with no connection at all to judges and a court).
B. The verses in Deuteronomy chapter 17:
(8) If there arises from you a matter too difficult for judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between affliction and affliction, matters of controversy within your gates, then you shall rise and go up to the place that the Lord your God will choose. (9) And you shall come to the Levitical priests and to the judge who will be in those days, and you shall inquire, and they shall tell you the matter of judgment. (10) And you shall do according to the word that they tell you from that place that the Lord will choose, and you shall be careful to do according to all that they instruct you. (11) According to the Torah that they instruct you and according to the judgment that they tell you, you shall do; you shall not turn aside from the word that they tell you, right or left. (12) And the man who acts presumptuously, not listening to the priest who stands there to minister to the Lord your God, or to the judge—that man shall die, and you shall remove the evil from Israel. (13) And all the people shall hear and fear, and shall not act presumptuously again.
From here one sees that the role of the court is only to solve disputes—that is, to judge between people and do justice. The Sages, as part of their conspiracy, learned from the expressions ‘do not turn aside, right or left’ and ‘according to all that they instruct you’ that the sages have authority to determine laws and that we are obligated to obey them. From this they grounded their authority to legislate, interpret, and expound the Torah. But the truth is that the verses only say that there is an obligation to obey the court when it issues a judgment and settles a dispute between people. One should not see in them a source giving the sages authority to determine how we are to live (to legislate).
The mistakes in argument 6: the discussion of source B
The first question that arises in light of their suggestions is: what is the law that the judges enforce? If only the Written Torah determines the law, then according to what do they judge people? What is written in the Torah is very general: one may not steal, injure, murder, and the like. But what counts as theft or murder, and when one who causes damage must pay—all that is not written in the Torah. If they have no authority to interpret these concepts and principles, it is hard to see how they can judge the people. Think of a judge sitting on a case in the State of Israel who has no authority to interpret the statute book. Would he be able to judge anyone? This is a positivist conception of law, which sees the judge as a kind of logical computer deriving conclusions from the written law (the law enacted by the Knesset). But ask any beginning law student and he will tell you that this is impossible. There is not a single ruling without interpretation of the law. If the judges do not have authority to interpret the law, they cannot function as judges.
Fine, perhaps they do have authority to interpret the law as they see fit, without an Oral Torah? That is certainly possible, but here we are not dealing with the existence of an Oral Torah. That was the subject of the previous parts. Here we are dealing with the question whether the rabbis took for themselves powers that were not given to them.
One can think of another excuse: that the authority to interpret the Torah was given to them only regarding disputes between people—that is, only with regard to the judicial part of the Torah’s law and not to the rest of it (such as the laws of the Sabbath, forbidden foods, and the rest of the ‘religious’ part of Jewish law). But that is hard to understand. Why would they have authority to interpret only one part of the Torah and not the rest? After all, difficulties and problems can arise in the other parts too. For example: what counts as kosher food? When have we honored parents properly? When are Sabbath desecrators or idol worshippers liable to death? The Torah itself imposes death and other punishments for several offenses. Who is supposed to carry out the punishment? Presumably the court. How is it supposed to know whom to punish and for what, if it has no authority to interpret the laws of the Sabbath or the laws of idolatry?
It is interesting to note that the previous verses in Deuteronomy 17 deal with precisely this:
(2) If there is found among you, within one of your gates that the Lord your God gives you, a man or a woman who does what is evil in the eyes of the Lord your God by transgressing His covenant, (3) and he goes and serves other gods and bows to them, or to the sun or to the moon or to any host of heaven, which I did not command, (4) and it is told to you and you hear it, then you shall inquire diligently; and behold, it is true, the matter is established, this abomination has been done in Israel, (5) then you shall bring out that man or that woman who did this evil thing to your gates, the man or the woman, and you shall stone them with stones and they shall die. (6) At the mouth of two witnesses or three witnesses shall the dead one be put to death; he shall not be put to death at the mouth of one witness. (7) The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people; and you shall remove the evil from your midst.
All of these are instructions to judges and the court to execute idol worshippers. The Torah also sets out the procedural and evidentiary rules according to which they are to proceed. Is it conceivable that the judges have no authority to interpret the laws of idolatry? How would they know whom to execute and for what? And the same applies to one who curses his father and mother, one who desecrates the Sabbath, or one who eats some of the forbidden foods. All of these are liable to death penalties or other punishments, and it is the judges who must carry them out. I will remind the reader that immediately after these verses come the verses quoted above about the authority of the sages.
Let us now look at the beginning of this foundational section. What are the subjects regarding which we are supposed to go up to the court? Between blood and blood, between plea and plea, between affliction and affliction, and matters of controversy. ‘Matters of controversy’ and ‘between plea and plea’ can certainly be interpreted in accordance with what the missionaries suggest in the video. That would mean resolving disputes between people. But what is ‘between affliction and affliction’? That apparently speaks of the laws of skin afflictions—that is, ritual impurity and purity (leprosy). If so, these verses speak of authority to rule on plainly nonjudicial questions and to interpret the Torah passages that deal with them. And what is ‘between blood and blood’? Rashi brings the Sages’ exposition that this means between blood that is impure and blood that is pure. Someone here on the site wanted to interpret those expressions too as dealing with disputes, where ‘affliction’ sometimes means injury in Scripture and ‘blood’ means some sort of wound or murder. But that interpretation is difficult, not only at the literal-linguistic level. The duplications in the verse are not clear. Why repeat the same thing in four different expressions: ‘between blood and blood,’ ‘between plea and plea,’ ‘between affliction and affliction,’ ‘matters of controversy within your gates’? Do all of these mean the same thing? That is unlikely. Therefore it is very reasonable to interpret them differently. Here I would not even call such an interpretation midrash. This is the plain meaning.
But above all, think about how the section begins: ‘If there arises from you a matter… then you shall rise and go up to the place.’ We are supposed to go up to the court when a matter is beyond us. What does that expression mean? The literal translation (see Rashi there) is that the matter is covered from us. In other words, when there is something we do not know, we are called to go up to the court and ask. But if the court only resolves disputes, then going up to it is not a result of legal bewilderment or lack of knowledge. This verse explicitly says that we do not go up to the court only when we need it to resolve a dispute, but also in order to ask questions of law. Those questions can concern judicial matters (‘matters of controversy’) as well as other legal areas. On the speakers’ view in the video, the expression ‘if there arises from you’ is not understandable at all. The verse explicitly tells us that the role and authority of the sages is to answer questions of law and determine what the binding law is.
Let us go further. Later in the verses the Torah imposes the death penalty on one who does not obey the judges. Is it reasonable that Reuven, who was ordered to pay 100 shekels to Shimon and did not obey the judges, should be liable to death? Send officers and collect the money from him. That is precisely what we learned in the video itself—that judges are appointed to determine the judgment in a dispute and officers to enforce it. The Sages understood that this refers to a rebellious elder, that is, someone who halakhically disputes the ruling of the Sanhedrin. Here again we see that these verses deal with questions of interpretation and legal decision, not only with resolving disputes between people.
The mistakes in argument 6: the discussion of source A
Up to this point we have dealt with source B. But their discussion of source A is no less problematic. First, I could not find, poor as my search may be, any exposition in tractate Sanhedrin that takes the three words ‘be after the many’ out of context (and ignores the word ‘not’ that precedes them). I doubt that such an exposition exists at all (for some reason the video departed from its usual practice and did not bring the quotation here). The Gemara derives the rule of following the majority דווקא from the words that conclude the verse, ‘after the many to incline’ (see Hullin 11). Beyond that, if one should not follow the many for evil, it follows that ordinarily one should indeed follow the many. And indeed the Gemara (Sanhedrin 2a) expounds: ‘From the implication of ‘You shall not be after the many for evil,’ I hear that I should be with them for good.’ If so, there is certainly here a source for following the majority. Moreover, the expression ‘after the many to incline’ is interpreted as inclining a judgment, meaning that the verse is speaking about judges and instructing us to follow the majority of judges (unless of course they are perverting justice).
The speaker in the video explains to us that from these verses we learned that there is an obligation to follow the rabbis blindly and without criticism, and he sees in this an expression of a conspiracy born of lust for power and domination. Where did he get the blindness and lack of criticism from? The idea is apparently drawn from the exposition in the Sifrei on this verse:
Even if they seem in your eyes to say about left that it is right, and about right that it is left, obey them.
At first glance, absolute authority is described here—even when they are mistaken. But the wording is that this ‘seems in your eyes,’ meaning that one may interpret it as a warning not to be hasty in rejecting the Sanhedrin’s ruling merely because it seems to us that they are mistaken (quite simply because if all the greatest Torah sages think one way and you think otherwise, it is likely that you are the one who is mistaken).
And yet in the Jerusalem Talmud, Horayot 1:1, we find:
One might think that if they tell you regarding right that it is left and regarding left that it is right, you should obey them. Scripture therefore says ‘right and left’—that is, when they tell you regarding right that it is right and regarding left that it is left.
Here it is already clear that the sages do not have full authority. The conclusion is that what is written here is actually a limitation on the sages’ authority. For some reason, the Sages themselves forget their lust for power and domination and the whole goal of the conspiracy, and explain to us simpletons that their own authority is not complete. In all their ‘foolishness,’ they tell us that even the Sanhedrin cannot do whatever it wants, and that where it is clear that they are mistaken, they have no authority and there is no obligation to obey them. Moreover, the Gemara in Horayot 2b explicitly writes that there is no obligation to obey the sages when they are mistaken, and it defines one who thinks that there is such an obligation as ‘mistaken regarding the commandment to heed the words of the sages’ (!). So where is the pursuit of power and the invented authority of our wicked rabbis?
End of the video: a peak of demagoguery
At the end of the video they summarize: if there is no Oral Torah, then there is no rabbinic law and no need for rabbis. And if there is no need for rabbis, there are thousands of people who lose power, authority, and salaries. An industry into which we all pour billions of shekels will be abolished.
This is of course a heavy-handed hint to our own day, when it is common to portray rabbis as millionaires who exploit the public’s money. I share part of the criticism of the rabbinate in our day, but the Chief Rabbinate is a corrupt institution that operates under the sponsorship and support of the secular government. And indeed there are also other corrupt ‘rabbis’ (who usually are not rabbis at all, and are light-years away from Torah and Torah knowledge. They were ‘appointed’ as rabbis by ignoramuses who buy their nonsense). But to move from this to slandering rabbis in general in our day is a distortion and falsification of reality. Many of them live modestly and frugally, and do not seek domination over anyone. And even if this were true of all rabbis today, what does the present situation have to do with the Sages or the rabbis of the beginning of the Oral Torah? What does it have to do with rabbis throughout the generations who lived in poverty and faithfully served their communities? Were rabbis generally the wealthy people in the community? Is it plausible that this whole conspiracy was carried out for money, when in almost every other profession people live at a higher economic level? Is it plausible that this conspiracy was carried out by the Sages so that after two thousand years rabbis whom they never knew and never dreamed of would make money from it? On the site I have already remarked on the transhistorical conspiracies of this kind that arise from the missionaries’ words in the video. This is nothing more than yet another demagogic attempt to ride the wave of hatred toward rabbis in our day in order to promote claims about entirely different people in a completely different period, without a shred of evidence. In the absence of arguments, they turn to demagoguery.
It is worth remembering in this discussion that the Sages themselves established the law forbidding the taking of money for teaching Torah, issuing legal rulings, and sitting in judgment. Thus says the Mishnah in Bekhorot 29a:
One who takes payment for judging—his judgments are void; for testifying—his testimonies are void; for sprinkling and sanctifying—the water is mere cave water and the ashes are mere stove ashes. If he was a priest, one may make him impure from his terumah, feed him, give him drink, and anoint him; and if he was old, one may seat him on a donkey and give him the wages of a laborer..
And likewise the Gemara in Nedarim 37a:
As it is written: ‘And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you,’ and it is written: ‘See, I have taught you statutes and judgments as the Lord commanded me.’ Just as I did so for free, so you too must do so for free.
These rulings are codified as law in all the halakhic books (Maimonides and the Shulchan Arukh and others).[1]
Again our ‘foolish’ rabbis ‘forgot,’ for some reason, their fundamental purpose and the conspiracy they are supposedly advancing all their lives. After finally attaining status, domination, and power, they deny themselves the fruits. The money they could have taken, they forbid taking. Above we saw that they even give up, in the end, the very authority they supposedly seized by force, lies, and inventions. So they themselves systematically destroy all the fruits of the conspiracy they themselves initiated and carried out. In the end they leave themselves neither authority nor money, so what was all this for? Very strange, is it not?
Continue to the next part (summary).
[1] See a survey in the responsa Hevel Nachalato, vol. 2, no. 54 (also appears online here).
The Oral Torah and the ‘plots of the rabbis’ – summary
With God’s help
In this series of columns I tried to offer a systematic critique of one of iGod’s missionary videos. In the introduction I explained why this is necessary and why it is halakhically permissible.
The video I chose to focus on attacks the rabbinic tradition and the Oral Torah. They present it as a conspiracy of a group of people hungry for power, domination, and money, who invented a Torah out of nothing in order to gain all these things. I chose this video both because it is apparently the most popular (more than half a million views on YouTube) and because it at least deals with arguments on the ground concerning the Oral Torah, and not with bizarre interpretations of various biblical chapters and attempts to persuade us that Jesus is God and that the moon is made of yellow cheese (my feeling is that responding to such nonsense would already be beneath my threshold of patience and absurdity. After all, one Jew too many has already been crucified in history).
I opened the series by sketching the framework of the discussion, using an analogy to a criminal investigation of a crime such as murder. I explained that in order to substantiate and establish a charge of murder, the prosecution must first prove that it actually occurred (that a person died and that this was not a natural death). After that it must prove that the accused committed it. To convict him as a murderer one must prove both the act and criminal intent. To prove that, one must point to motive, means, and opportunity. And from this to the analogue: in order to prove their basic claim about the ‘crime’ of the ‘self-interested invention of the Oral Torah,’ they must prove that a crime indeed occurred—that is, that the Oral Torah really is not ancient but rather a later invention from the period of the Sages (the end of the Second Temple period and after the destruction). In addition, they must prove criminal intent (that it was self-interested). To prove the guilt of the Sages, one must identify the guilty parties and prove that they in fact did it. A necessary condition for that is pointing to motive, means, ability, and opportunity that they had.
Throughout the various columns I examined all of their arguments one by one, and I will summarize what we saw:
- There is not a single argument that deals with motive. They kept claiming all along that the motive was status, money, and power, or alternatively concern for the Torah after the destruction (a completely different motive and one that contradicts the first). But throughout the entire video not even one shred of evidence, however weak, was brought for any of this.
- As for proving the crime itself (that this is a later invention), the situation is better. There at least several arguments were brought (that was almost the entire discussion), except that it turns out that all of them are completely baseless.
- What remains are a few trivial arguments about means and opportunity. But it is obvious to all of us that the Sages indeed had the ability and opportunity to do such things. That is not what the dispute is about.
Are ability and opportunity enough to prove guilt? As I explained in the opening column, this is like a situation in which we found so-and-so dead inside a house, and now we arrest and accuse another man who passed by there only because his build would allow him to get in through the window and he happened to have a gun. That is without showing that the death was not natural but murder, without pointing to any motive (interest) that this other man had, and of course without proving criminal intent on his part. We arrest and accuse him only because he had the opportunity and ability to commit the murder (which it is not even clear occurred).
By that logic, we should put every prime minister, minister, or bank clerk in prison, because each of them has the ability and opportunity to steal. Likewise, we should imprison every soldier or police officer, since they have the ability and opportunity to murder (they have licensed weapons). I do not think it is necessary to explain why all this is ridiculous. Without motive and without proof that a crime was in fact committed, such an accusation is science fiction—or, in plainer words, slander and defamation.
I will not repeat here all my claims and the absurdity of their arguments, since the material is written out and every reader can see it in the eight columns I wrote here. Therefore I will only summarize a few of the main points. Among other things, I showed that the Oral Torah began long before the destruction and before the Sages. I also showed that, contrary to their speculation, the Torah and Jewish law were certainly not lost with the destruction, and therefore there was no need for ‘inventions’ to save them. I showed that there is in fact a clear source in the Torah for the authority of the sages to interpret the Torah and legislate, and not merely to judge and settle disputes as they claimed. I also showed that the supposed architects of the conspiracy—those ‘hungry for power, money, and domination’—publicly announce and determine, by virtue of their own (‘conspiratorial’) authority, that it is forbidden to take money for issuing legal rulings, for sitting in judgment, and for teaching Torah; and they also announce and determine no less forcefully that rabbis have no authority where it is clear that they made a mistake. In other words, these ‘fools’ in effect gave up all the fruits of the ‘conspiracy’ to which they devoted their lives. If so, it appears clearly that the Sages were not only wicked but also foolish. I explained that this description leads to a ‘conspiracy’ that is supposed to grant power and status to an undefined group that is open to anyone. That is of course highly implausible (I cannot imagine a scheme of that sort). I showed that Rabbi Eliezer, whom they claim was the greatest fighter (together with the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself) against the ‘conspiracy’ of the Oral Torah, also believed in it. I showed that they do not contend with the rabbinic conception of the Oral Torah, but with a fictional conception—albeit one widespread among the public—that they put in the mouths of the rabbis, according to which all the details of the Torah and Jewish law that we have descended from Sinai. That conception is absurd on its face, both from rabbinic sources and from common sense. Therefore throughout this video they set up a straw man and put false claims in his mouth, and then attack him, in the finest demagogic tradition.
From time to time I remarked that the Christian alternative they offer itself fails—powerfully—in exactly the same ways in which they accuse the rabbinic tradition. Throughout we saw that they project their own flaws. This sect preaches on behalf of a religion that is itself an invention with no real basis in the Torah—that is, an Oral Torah invented out of nothing. That in itself is of course legitimate. A person is allowed not to believe in the Torah and not to continue it. But there is one thing he cannot do: base that very move on accusing the alternative of not continuing the Torah. We saw that the Christian religion itself proposes an identification between a human being and God, and the speakers, with immense audacity, accuse the Jewish rabbis in the name of that religion of replacing God by taking for themselves powers that belong to Him. They also accuse the rabbis of self-interested accumulation of power, which in the Christian context needs no elaboration.
But all that is not central to the discussion, because I believe in confronting arguments rather than arguers. As I explained in one of my replies to a commenter on the site, even if one can show that they are inconsistent, lying and distorting, demagogic and corrupt, all that may be true but it is not relevant. If their arguments were correct, then we would have to abandon the Oral Torah because good arguments point that way, even if the people making them are corrupt, distorters, and liars. And if the arguments are not correct (and that is indeed the case), then it is better to show that rather than focus on the people making them (although one may of course point to serious flaws in their conduct).
But here in the summary, after I have exhausted the discussion of the arguments themselves, I will nevertheless allow myself to relate a bit more directly to the people advancing them. From the summary here one can see that we are dealing with smooth-tongued people who voice coarse distortions and think that repeating them confidently and quoting partial quotations is a substitute for the quality of an argument. People who, by hook or by crook, harness the anti-rabbinic sentiment prevalent today—sadly with some measure of justification—in order to persuade innocent people of conclusions about periods and phenomena that have not the slightest connection to what is happening today, and to which what is happening today has not the slightest connection.
I would say that this video demonstrates creatures endowed with a rare and impressive combination of stupidity, wickedness, and distortion. On second thought, I would send it to National Geographic; that is the place for videos describing rare natural phenomena.
All this leads me to wonder how this Neanderthal combination manages to win such a number of views (as noted, more than half a million views for a talking-head video—not a song or some other hit—that is in Hebrew. To me this is completely unreasonable). Either our state as a society is very poor in terms of critical thinking and good taste, which sadly is not implausible on its face (see all my posts here on the site). But because of the scale of the phenomenon, I suspect that perhaps it is manipulation (or perhaps, more accurately, a conspiracy). Maybe these people send a link to the video to millions of their Christian brothers around the world and urge them to generate traffic (even though they do not understand the language), in order to ‘bring back’ the erring Jews. As is well known, this is a very important goal in Christian theology (the submission of Jews—the supposed Antichrist—to their bizarre ideas is an essential part of redemption). One email to the Bible Belt in the United States could easily yield several million visits from enthusiastic believers. Perhaps that is how this strange phenomenon of a patently irrational number of views for a work whose quality cannot compete even with reality television, and whose interest level is far below that of a mediocre basketball game, came to be.
Of course, what also does not hurt in this regard is a very large financial investment in search promotion, as every internet user can see. These foolish videos are shoved everywhere crudely and almost violently, and it is clear that a fortune is being invested in it. Perhaps this is the imaginary (and fictional) capital that the rabbis earned in the conspiracy they carried out, and that the Christians took from them in their great goodness in one of the many acts of kindness and morality they have done for everyone around them (especially for Jews) throughout the generations.
Beyond all this, one can get the impression that these missionaries also use ugly methods online. On their YouTube channel they do not allow readers to comment and open discussion (though there is certainly also fear of abuse). Here too on the site these missionaries come in like trolls and repeatedly try to divert the discussion into other and irrelevant territories under various pretexts, apparently in order to spare themselves a substantive discussion of their failed claims and to distract readers from the discussion and from their failures in it.
In the course of the discussion I showed that they interpret all rabbinic sources and all the verses they bring in a distorted way, which undercuts the ground beneath all their arguments, and incidentally also shows us just how much someone who does not use the Oral Torah fails in understanding the Written Torah (although tendentiousness and agenda certainly did not hurt this magnificent failure). Throughout we saw that, lacking arguments, in their despair they slide into cheap demagoguery and distortions.
The part I liked more than anything else is the quotation brought at the end of the video; that is probably the punch line. The speaker ends his sermon with a pathetic face of mournful seriousness, as though this were the Sermon on the Mount, by quoting Isaiah 29 about ‘the wisdom of its wise men shall perish,’ with the background assumption that anyone who hears or reads those verses immediately understands what is at stake and that they essentially make the whole video unnecessary. His aim is to leave us alone with our thoughts while those verses (against dramatic music) echo in our heads, as the knockout blow to the whole rabbinic tradition. The speaker solemnly informs us that those verses are an example (one of many) that there are in fact references in the Bible to rabbinic traditions transmitted orally, except that the Bible specifically condemns them. I rub my eyes in amazement and look for what I missed. Where in those verses is there even a hint of such a claim? In my poverty I really did not find it. This passage is truly a symbolic and fitting ending to this wretched video.
I will now offer them a golden piece of advice for free. You should put out a revised edition of the video. No, no, it is perfect; don’t fix anything, except for one small correction at the end. The revised edition should end with both of you, wearing pathetic and grave expressions, reciting in chorus the verse: “And Timna was Lotan’s sister.” Do not add a single word of explanation (only dramatic music, preferably liturgical), because every intelligent listener will immediately understand that the verse actually unites quantum theory with relativity, and from that clearly shows that Jesus atoned for us all through his suffering and death, was born from God’s impregnation of a virgin, walked on water, and in his goodness revealed himself to us at Sinai and there delivered to us in writing the theology of Messianic Jews and orally the Written Torah. Oh, and also declared that at the same time he has no Oral Torah whatsoever.
True, I do not really understand who even bothers to watch such pitiful material, but to my astonishment there apparently are a few such people. It reminds me of materials by various Jewish “return-to-religion” preachers, who unfortunately are on about the same level. I hope these columns will reach as many of them as possible (here in Israel, not in the Bible Belt), although unfortunately I do not have the capital needed to promote them online. Maybe I’ll think up some kind of conspiracy…
In closing, I must say that this video did not make me particularly eager to go on and critically analyze additional videos on the iGod channel. In fact, I have no desire even to watch them (many thanks to you for quieting my evil inclination, which always feels an uncontrollable urge to watch every heretical thing and every forbidden piece of material). This video did not even raise any points worth thinking about, or benefit me in any way. Just conceptual garbage, full of stupidity and distortions. I hope I will not have to wade through trash like this again, and that what I have shown regarding this video is enough for people to understand what the other videos are about as well.
Continue reading the response to iGod’s reply to the series of critiques