Faith – Lesson 40
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- The witness argument, the Kuzari, and Hume’s critique
- The continuity of tradition versus claims of breaks in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)
- Sin, prophets, and recognition of a binding framework
- Selective reading and “we split the statement”
- The framework of revelation versus the details of Jewish law, and Professor Turkel’s comment
- Rejecting the thesis of “deliberate implantation” and the argument from interest
- Judges chapter 2 and the expression “they did not know the Lord”
- II Kings 22: Josiah’s Torah scroll
- The Written Torah, the Oral Torah, and the authority of interpretation
- Nehemiah chapter 8: the Torah reading and the discovery of the commandment of Sukkot
Summary
General Overview
The argument attributed to the Kuzari presents a tradition passed down from generation to generation as proof of truth, but it is claimed that the argument is weak when it stands alone and is examined apart from a broader philosophical context. David Hume’s critique is presented as a choice between two imperfect options: either the tradition was invented, or there really was a miracle that contradicts the laws of nature, and he chooses what seems to him “less bad.” The speaker rejects that framework of decision and argues that the argument becomes stronger only as part of a larger whole that includes a philosophical conclusion about the existence of God, a purpose to creation, the need for revelation, and the special history of the Jewish people. He then focuses on the claim of continuity of tradition in the face of biblical episodes that seem to show breaks, and argues that precisely the descriptions of sin, rebuke, return, and recognition of a binding framework testify to traditional continuity even when details are forgotten or distorted. He distinguishes between the existence of the “framework” of revelation and a binding Torah on the one hand, and the precision of halakhic details on the other, which he says were mostly formed over the generations and may even include distortions. He especially rejects the thesis of “deliberate implantation” as a weakening claim, as if it were a conscious conspiracy.
The witness argument, the Kuzari, and Hume’s critique
In its simple formulation, the argument says that parents do not lie to their children, tradition is transmitted that way from generation to generation, and therefore its content is true. David Hume offers two interpretations of a tradition about a miracle: either it is an invention—possible, though rare—or it is an actual miraculous event that contradicts the laws of nature, and he argues that one should choose the “less bad” option. The speaker argues that the discussion cannot be isolated, and that when the argument is examined on its own it is weak, but within the context of philosophical belief in God, purpose in creation, the necessity of revelation, and the special history of the Jewish people, the overall picture “holds water” much more than the witness argument by itself.
The continuity of tradition versus claims of breaks in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)
The speaker describes a traditional picture of continuity, detailed with names and generations, up to the end of the First Temple and the beginning of the Second Temple, and afterward the Oral Torah through Tractate Avot and the chain of medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) down to the present. He presents claims that seek to undermine that continuity through episodes such as Ezra and Sukkot, the book of Judges, and Josiah finding a Torah scroll, and says these seem to point to the possibility of “invention” or a late beginning of the Torah. He argues that the multiplication of alleged breaks creates a logical difficulty: you cannot claim that the tradition was “reinvented” at every break, and if a break can occur even within an existing tradition, then the very existence of a break does not prove invention. He argues that deviations such as idolatry are described as departures from a known path, and therefore they themselves take place within a framework of continuity, while prophets, rebukes, and punishments add proof that the people understood the obligation even when they sinned.
Sin, prophets, and recognition of a binding framework
The speaker argues that the fact that the people cry when they are rebuked proves that the rebuke is perceived as a real moral threat and not as the words of some eccentric. He compares the idol worshippers described in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) to a “traditional population” that recognizes the core framework but departs from it out of impulse or weakness, similar to contemporary traditional Jews who recognize the binding force of Jewish law but still desecrate the Sabbath or give up full observance. He interprets Elijah’s phrase on Mount Carmel—“wavering between two opinions”—as preaching to an audience that knows what is right even if in practice it worships idols. He maintains that a human understanding of weakness and deviation is preferable to seeing people as creatures who always act according to their stated beliefs; therefore even severe deviations are not evidence of a break in the framework but, on the contrary, evidence of a stable framework within which deviation is defined as deviation.
Selective reading and “we split the statement”
The speaker argues that a reading which accepts only the verses of deviation as “authentic” but attributes the framework of tradition to later editing is a selective method that allows one to “prove anything.” He says that if one accepts the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) as a description, it presents in a sharp way a tradition from Sinai, and whoever denies that “is not reading the Bible.” He distinguishes between a discussion of the authenticity of the entire Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and an internal discussion that assumes its description is accepted, and argues that within that assumption the emerging picture clearly supports traditional continuity.
The framework of revelation versus the details of Jewish law, and Professor Turkel’s comment
The speaker clarifies that he is not claiming that all the details of Jewish law are an unbroken tradition from Sinai, and that some laws were created over the generations while some are natural distortions of a “broken telephone” over thousands of years. He brings an example from Tosafot, which explains that something called in the Talmud a “law given to Moses at Sinai” is actually a rabbinic law phrased that way in order to strengthen it. He presents the view that “everything that an accomplished student will one day innovate was shown by the Holy One, blessed be He, to Moses at Sinai” is a normative statement rather than a historical one, and argues that anyone familiar with Talmudic discussions knows that laws are formed by the sages over the generations, including Torah-level laws, and that “ninety-nine percent” of the laws we have were created over the generations. He emphasizes that the issue here is the very existence of the framework: the revelation at Mount Sinai, the transmission of something binding, and the continuity of a system that recognizes the interpretive authority of the sages—not the historical precision of every detail.
Rejecting the thesis of “deliberate implantation” and the argument from interest
The speaker argues that the claim of a deliberate implantation of tradition is less plausible even than the thesis of a myth that arose naturally. He says that anyone trying to implant a falsehood would have erased from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) the episodes that make persuasion harder, so leaving them in weakens the conspiracy idea. He argues that there is no clear motive for someone who would want “to make me put on tefillin” or “not eat pork,” and compares this to legal thinking about opportunity, motive, and means, while claiming that motive is especially lacking here.
Judges chapter 2 and the expression “they did not know the Lord”
The speaker quotes Judges chapter 2 as an explicit description of the Exodus from Egypt, covenant, command, deviation, punishment, the raising up of judges, and cyclical return. He argues that the chain of judges who repeatedly bring the people back does not look like repeated inventions but like continuity of the same traditional claim. He interprets “there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord, nor the deed that He had done for Israel” as meaning “they were not connected to God” and not that they lacked intellectual information, explaining that “to know” in the Bible means connection, as in “And the man knew Eve his wife.” He adds that “they did not remember” God’s deed means they did not acknowledge the good or live the memory in a binding way—not that they had never heard of the Exodus or the Sinai framework, because otherwise it would be hard to understand how later rebukes were accepted and repeatedly had an effect.
II Kings 22: Josiah’s Torah scroll
The speaker quotes the story of finding the Torah scroll in the House of the Lord in the days of Josiah, its reading before the king, and the tearing of garments, and interprets this as proof of a known background of a binding Torah scroll rather than a new invention. He argues that if the scroll had been invented, there would be no meaning to tearing garments and trembling over “what our fathers did not heed concerning the words of this book,” whereas the description fits a situation in which it was known that there had once been a Torah scroll and it disappeared or was hidden, while the oral tradition continued partially even without it. He adds that perhaps the scroll that was found was only Deuteronomy, according to common interpretations, but even then the Sinai framework remains intact, and the discussion of which part was transmitted and when is a detailed question, not a framework question. He uses analogies such as the Ben Ish Chai’s story about rounded tefillin in Baghdad that were recognized as invalid after persuasion, and Professor Menachem Friedman’s remarks about the acceptance of the Chazon Ish’s measurements in Bnei Brak versus the Jerusalem tradition, in order to argue that an existing tradition limits the acceptance of “innovations,” and that persuasion is easier when the knowledge exists in the background and has only been partially forgotten.
The Written Torah, the Oral Torah, and the authority of interpretation
The speaker states that the Written Torah was written down, and presents the dispute in the Sages about whether the Torah was given scroll by scroll or as a whole, distinguishing this from the Oral Torah, which was not written down until Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi. He argues that the obligation to follow Jewish law does not depend on the Holy One, blessed be He, having said every detail to Moses at Sinai, but rather on the Torah itself granting authority to the sages through “do not turn aside” and “make a safeguard for My safeguard,” and from that follows that accepted laws are binding as part of the interpretive tradition. He leaves aside the question of why this is “religion” and not “culture,” and defines it as a separate discussion that is not part of proving the historical framework of revelation and transmission.
Nehemiah chapter 8: the Torah reading and the discovery of the commandment of Sukkot
The speaker quotes the story of the public reading of the Torah of Moses on Rosh Hashanah in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, the people’s reaction in tears, and the discovery of what was written about dwelling in sukkot and actually building them. He interprets “for the children of Israel had not done so from the days of Joshua son of Nun until that day” as possibly meaning not a total absence of the commandment, but that it had not been celebrated on such a scale and in such a comprehensive public way since the days of Joshua—especially against the background of the return to Zion after seventy years of exile. He argues that the immediate response of fulfilling the commandment points to recognition of a binding framework rather than invention, because the people perceive it as “the Torah of Moses” and integrate it into an existing tradition. He concludes that these episodes may point to distortions and breaks in details, but they do not indicate a “big bang” in which the framework was invented. On the contrary, they point to an ancient and continuous tradition in which components are occasionally forgotten and then restored through reading, rebuke, and renewed observance.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Up to now we’ve been talking about the witness argument and the objections to it. In its simple formulations, it’s basically an argument that says—yes, people attribute it to the Kuzari; in the Kuzari it’s maybe two sentences—but it’s an argument that says parents don’t lie to their children, the tradition gets passed down like that from generation to generation, and therefore obviously it’s true. This argument has been hit with various objections. Hume’s objection—I focused at the end on David Hume’s objection—not specifically about Mount Sinai, but about religious tradition or traditions about miracles in general. He says there are two ways to interpret the tradition that reaches me: either it’s an invention, or it really happened and the tradition is reliable. He says that it being an invention may be rare, but it’s possible; whereas if it really happened, then it’s a miracle, and that contradicts the laws of nature. So between two bad options, you have to choose the less bad one—that was basically his claim. I explained in several ways why I think that’s not the right claim. But in the end, the overall picture is that you can’t examine the witness argument in isolation. Meaning, you can’t just look at it and ask whether it’s true or not. In isolation, it’s quite a weak argument in my opinion. But if you look at it within a context—in the context of reaching the philosophical conclusion that there is a God, and understanding that in principle He has a purpose in creating the world, and that the purpose can’t just be morality or some natural rules or another—then some kind of revelation is called for. I add to that the special history of the Jewish people. This whole package together, yes, I think it does hold water, unlike the witness argument when you look at it by itself. So now I want to focus a bit on this continuity of tradition, which is one of the central building blocks in the picture I described. And here we come to several arguments that are raised regarding this assumption that there was a continuous tradition. People point to a few episodes in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), mainly, where it seems that even according to the testimony of the Bible itself, there was a break in the tradition. Even before all the debates about how authentic the Bible is at all, or whether it’s some late text that only tries—I don’t know what to call it—to consolidate traditions, or legends, myths, or whatever, into some canonical text. Rather, let’s assume for the moment that I accept this text as is, and still people claim that within it there are several episodes that indicate there was a break in this tradition. This is in contrast to the picture usually described, that we have a continuity even with names. I talked about this last time—we even know the names in every generation, who was there, and who came after him, and who came before him, up to the end of the Bible or the end of the First Temple, the beginning of the Second Temple. After that, the Oral Torah is Tractate Avot, and basically the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) down to us. All in all, this is a pretty impressive tradition in terms of the detailed picture it presents before us, including actual details of individuals, what was created at each stage, according to what rules this whole thing works. Overall it seems to me this is a pretty well-grounded tradition. I don’t know—I don’t think there’s another one, really—traditions that are so detailed and whose content, at least, looks quite reliable or authentic. So I want to discuss—let’s assume this is indeed the tradition. Now the question is whether within the structure described to us by the tradition, there are still gaps, fissures, breaks in the tradition. So people bring up—yes, in the book of Ezra, with Sukkot, where suddenly they discovered; the book of Judges has evidence of gaps; Josiah of course with the scroll he found in the Temple courtyard. Various episodes of this sort, which basically say there was some kind of break here, and at that stage they definitely could have invented everything, or this indicates there wasn’t really continuity. At some point somebody came and said, look, we have some Torah, something like that, everybody accepted it, and the whole thing could have started there. Now, I’m only just thinking of this now—it’s not something I intended to say—but you have to understand that if there were three breaks, it’s a little problematic to use the break. The third break. Meaning, if there were three stages in history with years of interruption, then after the break—in the very first break—they already invented this tradition, so the second break is really a genuine break in an already existing tradition, and likewise the third break. You can’t say the tradition was reinvented three times over at all three breaks. You can say it was invented in one of the three. Meaning, the fact that there are three breaks increases the likelihood a bit, because if by chance the first one didn’t invent the thing—sorry, if the third one didn’t invent the thing, then maybe the second one did; if the second didn’t, then the first did. The reverse, of course, can’t be. If the first one invented it, then the second can’t be one that didn’t invent it. Therefore this very description of a chain that has several periods of interruption in it is a problematic description. It’s problematic because it basically means that even within an existing chain, breaks can arise. Right? Suppose the tradition was invented at the first break—before that there was nothing, that’s the first break, that’s where they invented everything. Fine? Let’s say in Josiah’s time, when they found the Torah scroll, they invented everything. So what happened in Ezra’s time?
[Speaker B] He found the
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Torah scroll and read it to them, and then they had to sit in sukkot, and Rosh Hashanah, and all sorts of things, and foreign women, and all these issues. Now, did Ezra also invent that? But Josiah already invented it. Meaning, no—so Josiah invented it and Ezra continued it. Fine, so if Josiah already invented it, that means that even an existing tradition can have a break in it. Because in fact a break happened after they had already invented this tradition. So if that’s true, then even regarding the first break, who told you that it must have been an invention? A break can happen even when there is an existing and ancient tradition. Therefore these theses about breaks in tradition seem to me to be very problematic theses. The very fact that people point to several such cases points exactly to the problem with these breaks, and I’ll expand a bit more on this claim. I’m saying the following: when there is a break of this sort, like—I don’t know—let’s say the people of Israel worship idols. Fine? They abandon commandment observance, worship idols—Manasseh, in Manasseh’s time, the king, for 55 years. His son Amon another two years, in II Kings. Now the whole people of Israel are worshipping idols for 57 years—that’s two generations. So there’s a very significant break here, but clearly this whole break takes place within some framework of traditional continuity. Meaning, that’s why the break is noted. Meaning, because they deviated from what came before and what came after. There’s some distinct enclave here. So precisely that enclave says there really is some continuous process here. More than that, during those years there are rebukes, prophets, sin, and therefore punishment comes, and all things of that kind. Meaning, we’re constantly standing here in the face of some tradition from which we—or the people of Israel—are deviating. Therefore the deviation itself actually testifies to the fact that this is indeed taking place within a framework of tradition. Rather, the people of Israel sin—urges, idolatry, and all things of that kind—but the whole description of this as sin, deviation, following impulse, basically means there is some desired track and the people of Israel are deviating from it. And by the way, that was clear even to those who deviated. Think about prophets who come and rebuke the people of Israel for worshipping idols. Now think—if today some prophet came, I don’t know, and rebuked some old HaShomer HaTza’ir kibbutz that had no connection to Judaism at all—if a prophet came and rebuked them, what would they do? They’d hospitalize him for observation, I assume, to see what was going on with him. Meaning, it wouldn’t be perceived as something that really threatens. When the prophet has some standing—people persecute him, get angry at him, don’t listen to him, sin even more—that means they understand he is bringing the word of God here. Meaning, it bothers them; they understand he’s placing them in a very problematic light, because they too agree that they are not okay. Meaning, they too understand that this is some kind of impulse, but they understand what is right and what is not right. The whole biblical description works this way. Even when the people of Israel sin, and even worship idols and everything, it always stands against the alternative—what should have been, or why we are not okay and why we deserve punishment, and there’s a prophet and they fight against the prophet—but it is always standing against something, and that something is always there, and in that something there is no break. And therefore I think this description is a description that actually, in my view, strengthens the continuity of the tradition. Think, for example, about traditional communities—or not communities, even traditional people today. What do traditional people do? They go to synagogue and afterward drive off to a game to watch soccer, or to the beach, or to go for a trip, or to watch television, all sorts of things of that kind. Now, many of these people—these days there’s already some kind of traditionalist ideology—but many of these people, if you asked them, would say: certainly, Mount Sinai, there is Jewish law, it’s binding, everything is true, but it doesn’t suit me, I don’t have the strength right now, I don’t know exactly—everyone with his own explanations—but it’s not that they deviate from the halakhic details of the tradition, even from very central things in the tradition. Sabbath observance is not some marginal detail. But they still do it within the framework of recognizing that there is a tradition here and that it is binding; it’s just that it doesn’t suit me right now, or I have an impulse, or whatever. I think the idol worshippers as they are described in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) are really a traditional population. Today’s traditional population maybe doesn’t worship idols, but that doesn’t matter—the impulse has simply changed. In my view it’s exactly the same phenomenon. These are people who basically understand what is right, and therefore the one who reproves at the gate—the prophet—threatens them. He always puts a mirror in front of them, and that’s why they get so angry at him. Meaning, if he were just some oddball talking nonsense and making up theories for himself, nobody would get angry at him. Fine, they’d say he’s crazy, what can you do? They’d throw stones at him and drive him away. What?
[Speaker C] But all that is with regard to the general framework. If we get into the details—there’s Sabbath and the thirty-nine categories of labor and so on.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll get to that comment in just a moment, one more second, I just want to finish what I want to say here, I’m already getting to it. So the claim is that the fact that people deviate even from central commandments really does not explain a break in the tradition—on the contrary. It explains that there is a tradition and we are human beings, and human beings have impulses, and they don’t always do even what they themselves think is the right thing to do, and so they deviate, and sometimes they deviate on very fundamental points, no matter, but still I don’t think it’s right to view human beings as some kind of pure philosophical creatures, such that what they do is really what they believe in. When Elijah on Mount Carmel rebukes the people of Israel, he says to them, “How long will you keep hopping between two opinions?” What does he mean to say? You all worship idolatry, but you know what is right, you yourselves know what is right. I didn’t come to teach you what is right, I came to preach to you. You already know what is right, you’re hopping between two opinions. “If Baal is God, go after him; and if the Lord, go after Him.” Meaning, he is speaking to an audience that knows what he is talking about, even though they are all worshipping idols. לכן I think these descriptions of periods in which they worshipped idols, became disconnected from the tradition, and all things like that—these are, in my view, descriptions that not only do not weaken the tradition, they strengthen it. They strengthen it because it is constantly standing there in front of them. Now of course many times there is selective interpretation. What do I mean? The deviation from the tradition we accept as an authentic description; the rebukes and the traditional framework within which the whole business is taking place—that, the literary editor inserted just in order to convince us that there is a tradition. We split the statement. Fine. That you can’t deal with, meaning with every verse you don’t like you take it out of the game and say no, that’s a later addition, and you remain only with the verses that do fit what you want—then you can prove anything. You know, you can say, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was chaos and void,” meaning I can do whatever I want with the verses. In other words, if I decide that I can use the verses selectively, you can prove anything from them. So you can say, I don’t accept this whole story at all, I don’t accept the whole Hebrew Bible. Fine, that’s a claim I’m not talking about right now, we dealt with it earlier, but I’m now talking about the question: I accept the biblical description. What does the biblical description say? There is a tradition from Sinai, period. Anyone who disputes that is not reading the Bible. That is clear, there is not the slightest shadow of doubt when you read the Bible. All these ridiculous descriptions are simply bizarre in my eyes. Again, I’m not talking about those who say the Bible is not true or say it is not authentic—that’s another discussion. I’m talking about those who say, okay, I accept the Bible, but let’s see what it describes. Okay, now in fact here I want to address Professor Turkel’s comment. When I speak about tradition here, I definitely do not mean to say that all the details that reached us, including details of Jewish law, including the most fundamental details of Jewish law—the thirty-nine primary categories of labor—are a continuous tradition from Sinai, without distortions having crept in and so on. Some of them are not even a tradition from Sinai, but were formed over the generations. Not invented, let’s say, but formed over the generations. Another part consists of distortions, obviously. There are many. We talked about the game of broken telephone—broken telephone always creates distortions, and a broken telephone lasting four thousand years certainly creates distortions, no question about it. But I am talking about the fundamental question: does the framework exist? Not the question of every detail inside it, and that is always a problematic discussion. It may very well be possible to point to this or that detail that got distorted, or that is not correct, where people decide it is a law given to Moses at Sinai and it is not a law given to Moses at Sinai. There is a Tosafot who says about something already written in the Talmud that it is a law given to Moses at Sinai; Tosafot says it is really a rabbinic law altogether. They called it a law given to Moses at Sinai in order to strengthen it, to say that it is as strong as a law given to Moses at Sinai. Meaning, obviously over details you can argue, you can say this or you can say that. Right now I am speaking only about the framework as a whole. As far as I’m concerned there may not have been 613 commandments and there may have been nothing, but there was a revelation at Sinai, something was given to us that is supposed to direct us or command us what to do. What exactly that included, how many commandments, which principles, what, which verses from the Torah were there, whether the whole Torah was transmitted there—I don’t think so, at least certain things look like later additions, at least a few individual verses. It doesn’t matter to me. My discussion right now is about the question whether this framework is an existing framework. What happened inside the framework, what the details of the framework are—that is an entirely different discussion. And I think we have talked about that more than once in the past. I am definitely not one of those who thinks that everything an experienced student will one day innovate was shown by the Holy One, blessed be He, to Moses at Sinai—and certainly not what an inexperienced student will one day innovate or not innovate. The Holy One, blessed be He, showed Moses none of that at Sinai. These are statements—I once defined it this way—they are normative statements, not historical-factual ones. Meaning, we are supposed to relate to innovations of the Oral Torah as though the Holy One, blessed be He, had shown them to Moses at Sinai. This is not a historical statement that they were actually shown to Moses at Sinai and he passed them on. I think anyone who knows even a little of the passages of the Talmud knows that this is not true. Jewish laws are created by the sages. Even Torah-level laws, of course, are created by the sages over the generations. The overwhelming majority of the laws we have—overwhelming, overwhelming, I’m talking about ninety-nine percent—are laws created over the generations. Including Torah-level laws I’m talking about, not only rabbinic laws, that’s obvious. Torah-level laws I’m talking about. Therefore I am not talking right now about the details of the tradition, and certainly in those things distortions could have crept in. Distortions in the tradition; mistakes could have happened in the very formation itself, not only in its later transmission. Some interpreter made a mistake and created a certain law. Who says that is what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended? Not at all. We are human beings, human beings can make mistakes. No matter. But we are inside some kind of framework, and I’m talking about the existence of that framework. Within it, you can argue. It may be that someone has a better suggestion, so I’ll throw away an accepted interpretation and adopt another interpretation. And if not, then I’ll say okay, that’s the accepted interpretation, I don’t have strong enough evidence, so I can’t reject it, even though I also agree that it may be wrong. But the framework within which this whole story is taking place—that is my subject here. In my view, that is really the important thing. And maybe one last remark, yes: the claims that this tradition was deliberately implanted—not some myth that formed naturally, yes, there are two possibilities—that is even less plausible. It is even less plausible because if that were the case, then specifically I would not leave in the Bible all these passages that cast doubt on the very thing I myself want to implant. Meaning, if I myself want to implant the idea that there was an ancient and binding tradition from Sinai and all that, then I would have to be an idiot to produce a lie that doesn’t stand on its own two feet. Meaning, if I’m already producing a lie, then let’s erase all the things that interfere with that lie being convincing. Therefore I think the claims of deliberate implantation are really very weak claims. I’m not talking about them at all. I’m talking about the question whether this could be a myth that formed the way myths form among many peoples, or Hasidic groups, I don’t know, all kinds of things like that—some myths are formed and somehow become implanted over the years and receive some canonical status. The matter of deliberate implantation is nonsense in my view. I also don’t see the interest. I mean, you know, in the legal world, in order to—yes, when investigators are instructed how to look for a suspect, they are told to look at whether he had opportunity, motive, and means. Right? So motive means interest. The question is: who has an interest in making me put on tefillin? Or I don’t know what, or in making sure I don’t eat pork? What does anyone care? Was someone competing with pig farmers and therefore had an interest in forbidding pork consumption? It sounds very unconvincing to me. Therefore I am currently not talking about a deliberate crime with a motive. But perhaps opportunity and means are relevant. Opportunity and means meaning, yes, to implant things, not with some intentional conspiratorial motive, but something that developed over the generations. So let’s now go into three passages that are, I think—at least from what little I’ve looked at—I think these are mainly the passages people bring as passages that testify to a break in the tradition, and again I’m talking within the biblical perspective. I’m not talking about whether the Bible is reliable or whether this whole story is fake, forged. We will now discuss it on the assumption that I accept the Bible as a historical source—again, reliable in general, I’m not entering right now into the details of whether every detail in the Bible has to be factually correct, I don’t think anyone claims that. But in principle I accept this source and I want to understand what emerges from it when we look at it. So let’s see three passages. One passage is chapter 2 in the book of Judges. I can’t believe I’m studying Bible. Sometimes you have to get to even that. Fine. “And the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said: I brought you up out of Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to your fathers.” Yes, the Exodus and Mount Sinai are mentioned in the Bible quite a bit, so it is clear that throughout the biblical period there was an ancient tradition about the Exodus and the revelation at Mount Sinai. That is completely clear. “And I brought you into the land that I swore to your fathers; and I said: I will never break My covenant with you. And you shall not make a covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars. But you have not obeyed My voice. What is this you have done? And I also said: I will not drive them out before you, and they shall be thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you.” “And when the angel of the Lord spoke these words to all the children of Israel, the people lifted up their voices and wept.” You see what I spoke about earlier—that even when the people stray from the path, someone comes and rebukes them and the whole people cry. Why are you crying? Hospitalize him. I mean, it is pretty clear that even when they sin, they understand that they are sinning. It is like when you rebuke people for sinning—if they themselves understand that they are sinning, the rebuke enters the heart. It is hard for them to withstand such a rebuke because they understand that they are in the wrong. If he does not understand that he is in the wrong, he looks at you as some kind of oddball; nobody starts crying because some oddball starts rebuking him. “And they called the name of that place Bochim, and they sacrificed there to the Lord. And Joshua sent the people away, and the children of Israel went each man to his inheritance to possess the land. And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work of the Lord that He had done for Israel. And Joshua son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died at the age of one hundred and ten years.” Yes, the last remnant of the desert generation. “And they buried him within the borders of his inheritance at Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. Now here is the sentence I emphasized here—wait, the highlighted part here, yes. “And also all that generation were gathered to their fathers, and there arose another generation after them, who did not know the Lord, nor the work that He had done for Israel.” They knew nothing. “And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served the Baals. And they forsook the Lord, the God of their fathers, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other gods, from among the gods of the peoples around them, and bowed down to them, and provoked the Lord. And they forsook the Lord and served Baal and the Ashtarot. And the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He gave them into the hands of plunderers who plundered them, and He sold them into the hands of their enemies round about, so that they could no longer stand before their enemies. Wherever they went out, the hand of the Lord was against them for evil, as the Lord had spoken and as the Lord had sworn to them; and they were greatly distressed. Then the Lord raised up judges, who saved them out of the hand of those who plundered them. Yet they did not listen even to their judges, for they prostituted themselves after other gods and bowed down to them. They quickly turned aside from the way in which their fathers had walked, obeying the commandments of the Lord; they did not do so. And when the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge and saved them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the Lord was moved to pity by their groaning because of those who oppressed and afflicted them. But whenever the judge died, they turned back and behaved more corruptly than their fathers, following other gods to serve them and bow down to them; they did not abandon their deeds or their stubborn ways. So the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and He said: Because this nation has transgressed My covenant that I commanded their fathers, and has not obeyed My voice, I also will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died, in order to test Israel by them, whether they will keep the way of the Lord to walk in it, as their fathers kept it, or not. So the Lord left those nations, without driving them out quickly, and He did not give them into the hand of Joshua.” This is the introduction to the book of Judges, Judges chapter 2. And it basically describes the whole course of what is going to happen in the book of Judges after Joshua’s death. But you see that the introduction I gave here is visible here very clearly. First of all, the Bible itself certainly speaks of an ancient tradition even before the whole story. Moses at Mount Sinai received the Torah; with that we entered the land; the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded us and we strayed from the path. The Bible certainly presents it that way. If you want to say that the editor stitched that tradition in here, inserted, planted that tradition, when in fact the people of Israel just happened to worship idols, they did not deviate from any path, there was no path—fine, but the Bible describes it this way. That is completely clear. Beyond that, we see that when they are rebuked, they cry, they take it to heart. We see that there is a chain of judges; each time the judge rebukes them, they return; the judge dies, they go back again; another judge comes. This is not a collection of inventions. I mean, when judges like this come in a series one after another, and each of them succeeds in bringing the people back to repentance, and then the land is quiet for forty years, and then the people go back again—what does that mean? It means there is a continuous tradition here, that all these judges are not a collection of inventors each inventing something of his own, but rather he continues what his predecessors did. The people of Israel, with their impulses, as Leibowitz said, at Mount Sinai we had only just received the Torah and immediately we made a calf. Meaning, people have impulses, people do not always do even what they themselves think is right, but the whole description here is a description, in the strongest possible way, of a continuous tradition from Sinai. And the fact that the people of Israel deviate and sin and have impulses and all that—yes, of course. And opposite that there are the rebukes, through which the people of Israel keep repenting and then going back to their rebellion. This ping-pong, this back-and-forth—that is not a feature of inventions. If someone invented something, then what, immediately after he left everyone abandoned it, and then another inventor comes who also invents the same thing? He continues in the name of the same demands; after all, it’s just someone else, but in the name of the same demands. More than that: why is the Holy One, blessed be He, angry that they strayed from the path and therefore are punished? From what path did they stray? There was no path, what’s the problem? So they’ll say, well, the editor inserted that in order to implant the idea of tradition. So I don’t understand—so the fact that the people of Israel worshipped idols, those verses are authentic verses. The Bible describes that, and that’s true. The whole surrounding framework is later editing just in order to show me that there really was an ancient tradition. So again, the splitting of the statement that I talked about earlier. You accept this text, you want to discuss what emerges from the text—what emerges from the text is a very clear picture. You can tell me the text is no good, I don’t believe it, it’s not true, it’s not authentic, fine, then don’t rely on it for anything. So put the text aside, throw it in the trash. But you can’t use the text selectively in a way that constantly justifies what I want to justify, because that way of course you can reach any conclusion you want. It seems to me that if you look at this passage without bias, then this passage says very clearly that the people of Israel were basically sitting on some track that comes from Mount Sinai and keeps continuing all the time, and they keep veering off to the side, and they have impulses here and impulses there, and they are rebuked and they return to the path and then again deviate. Clearly there is a path here. Each time, those deviations are deviations relative to some path that keeps continuing forward. I think this is a very clear description. Now the sentence I highlighted—I occasionally disconnect just so I can see you, because if this is on then I can’t see the people. Look: “And also all that generation were gathered to their fathers”—here, the highlighted part—“and there arose another generation after them, who did not know the Lord, nor the work that He had done for Israel.” Here it already says they did not know the Lord, nor the work that He had done for Israel, and this is a whole generation—so ostensibly, yes, a first-class break. Now I only want to draw your attention to the fact that “to know,” in the Bible, does not necessarily mean to know in the sense of possessing the information. “And Adam knew Eve his wife”—what does that mean? To know is connection. When I say “who did not know the Lord,” the meaning is they were not connected to the Lord; “did not know the Lord” means He was not present in their consciousness, they were not connected to Him. It does not mean that they did not know in the intellectual sense. On the contrary, if they did not know in the intellectual sense, then what is the claim against them? They were like captured infants—what do you want from them? Why the great punishment? “Nor the work that He had done for Israel”—they did not remember the work He had done for Israel; what does that mean? They did not remember in the sense that they did not feel gratitude for what He had done for them. Not that they did not remember intellectually, that the information was not in their heads. Because if the information was not in their heads, and then some judge or prophet came in later stages and said to them, listen, there was Mount Sinai and the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded—“we don’t remember anything about that”—what, somebody comes and starts telling us stories, and now suddenly we will accept it? And then of course after he goes away we again won’t accept it, then the next one comes and again we’ll accept it. This description is simply completely implausible. It’s not that I’m offering an excuse that says well, but you haven’t proved there was no break in the tradition, maybe there was—no, from the verses themselves it is simply absurd. Clearly there was a very clear tradition that everyone was also aware of. Therefore I think these verses are verses that say very clearly that there is a tradition; not only do they not say there isn’t one. And the second break, which is perhaps the most famous of all, is the passage in II Kings 22 about Josiah’s Torah scroll. “Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned thirty-one years”—also not an insignificant period—“in Jerusalem; and his mother’s name was Jedidah daughter of Adaiah of Bozkath. And he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, and walked in all the way of David his father, and did not turn aside to the right or to the left. And in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, the king sent Shaphan son of Azaliah son of Meshullam, the scribe, to the house of the Lord, saying: Go up to Hilkiah the high priest, and let him total the money that has been brought into the house of the Lord, which the keepers of the threshold have gathered from the people. And let them deliver it into the hand of the workmen who are appointed over the house of the Lord, and let them give it to the workmen who are in the house of the Lord to repair the breaches of the house—to the carpenters and the builders and the masons, and for buying timber and hewn stone to repair the house. But no accounting shall be required from them for the money delivered into their hand, because they act faithfully.” “And Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe: I have found the book of the Torah in the house of the Lord.” I have found a Torah scroll in the house of the Lord. “And Hilkiah gave the book to Shaphan, and he read it.” Amazing—they find a new book, a Torah scroll, not known to us until now. “And Shaphan the scribe came to the king and brought back word to the king and said: Your servants have emptied out the money found in the house and have delivered it into the hand of the workmen appointed over the house of the Lord. And Shaphan the scribe told the king, saying: Hilkiah the priest has given me a book. And Shaphan read it before the king.” Even the king didn’t know it. Shaphan reads it before the king. “And when the king heard the words of the book of the Torah, he tore his clothes. And the king commanded Hilkiah the priest, and Ahikam son of Shaphan, and Achbor son of Micaiah, and Shaphan the scribe, and Asaiah the king’s servant, saying: Go inquire of the Lord for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that has been found, for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers did not listen to the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us.” This reminds me—there is a responsum of the Ben Ish Chai, where he tells a story that happened with his grandfather, who was also a rabbi in Baghdad. Some emissary from the Land of Israel arrived there, apparently a Torah scholar, and this emissary is looking around while praying in the synagogue, and he sees that the tefillin of the entire community there are rounded. Their corners are not sharp, and that is invalid according to a law given to Moses at Sinai—it invalidates the tefillin, they have to be pointed, they have to be cubic. So he comes to the rabbi, who was the Ben Ish Chai’s grandfather—the Ben Ish Chai tells this story in the name of his grandfather. He comes to the Ben Ish Chai’s grandfather, who was the rabbi of the community, and says to him: Listen, the tefillin here are not right. They sit and discuss it and look at it, and yes, he’s right; the rabbi of the community, the Ben Ish Chai’s grandfather, says: The young man is right. Fine. So in the end we are talking about generations who had produced tefillin this way in the glorious Baghdad community, yes? For generations they produced invalid tefillin there, tefillin with which one does not fulfill the obligation. It’s a “skull that did not put on tefillin.” Fine, in effect generations of people never put on tefillin in their lives. So they corrected the tefillin, of course, and made kosher tefillin and everything came to rest. So there the Ben Ish Chai discusses whether indeed all those from previous generations before this correction arrived count as “a skull that did not put on tefillin,” and he argues that they do not. He has a very interesting and far-reaching approach: a person did not perform a commandment, but in his view he did perform it—meaning, if he thought that in this way he was fulfilling the commandment, then he has fulfillment of the commandment; compulsion is treated as if one had acted. This almost goes against the ruling of the Talmud. But for our purposes, what is interesting here is that when that emissary from the Land of Israel arrived, the Ben Ish Chai’s grandfather did not say to him, What nonsense are you talking about? Here, these are our tefillin from time immemorial, and you in the Land of Israel invented some innovations for yourselves that tefillin need to be pointed—don’t bother me with this nonsense. No, he sits and discusses it with him and is convinced that he is right. Meaning that the information that tefillin were supposed to be cubic already existed even then. They ignored it, it disappeared from them, they forgot it, I don’t know exactly what—but the fact is that when they sat together, he became convinced that this emissary was right. You can’t do that if you come with an invention. You can’t invent the idea that tefillin have to be square if for generations we have been saying tefillin have to be round—and here, we know how—yes, I once read a nice article by one of the sociologists of the Haredim, Professor Menachem Friedman, about the halakhic measurements. He explains there why the halakhic measurements, why the Chazon Ish’s measurements were accepted in Bnei Brak and not in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem they generally follow Rabbi Chaim Naeh. I’m not talking about Ramat and those places, which are basically Bnei Brak; I mean Jerusalem, the old settlement, Jerusalem. So his claim is that Bnei Brak is a city of immigrants, founded in the 1920s I think, something like that—it is a city of immigrants. There was no existing tradition there. So communities arrive, or even individual people, not communities—individuals arrive, and in the end what is accepted there by force of the Chazon Ish’s charisma, whatever it may be, basically becomes the binding practice in that place. Practice meaning the binding Jewish law, yes, not a custom of measurements. In Jerusalem there was an ancient tradition; it is a veteran settlement. No one can tell me that my grandmother did not fulfill the commandment of matzah on Passover. Yes, the famous story about the Chafetz Chaim’s kiddush cup. There is to this day—I even saw a picture—there is a picture of the cup with which the Chafetz Chaim made kiddush, and it is this tiny little cup, it does not hold a revi’it. That’s what he used for kiddush. Now that always raises eyebrows, because how can that be? It’s impossible according to Jewish law and so on. Fine, but when there is a certain tradition that this is how we practice, no pilpul will move us from there. And therefore in Jerusalem, where there was a tradition with Rabbi Chaim Naeh’s measurements, which are basically the earlier measurements, when the Chazon Ish’s innovations arrive, they wave them away down all the staircases. Nobody is going to tell us that for generations already we have not been practicing correctly. Meaning, to return to the Ben Ish Chai’s grandfather: if that emissary managed to convince them that their tefillin were not kosher, that means that apparently in some form the sources existed there, the information existed, whatever it may be, and people didn’t do it for all kinds of reasons. In this case it apparently wasn’t impulse but some kind of inadvertent error. But still, the fact that he managed to convince them means that they understand that such a thing exists. Meaning, they were convinced there was such information that had disappeared from them, that they had erred about, whatever. The same thing happens here. Yes, they find the Torah scroll, and then he immediately tears his clothes and says, how can this be, we have not obeyed everything in this Torah scroll and we haven’t done what it says and so on and so on. You understand that if we have an old established practice and you speak with the king—yes, from time immemorial this is what we have done, there is here—all this is happening inside the Temple of the Lord. To say that the Torah was invented now sounds very strange to me, because there was a Temple, they served in it all the time, they renovated it. But never mind—even if all of a sudden they found a Torah scroll and everyone tore their clothes and said we didn’t fulfill it. Now if they invented this Torah scroll, why are you tearing your clothes? If someone invented something, do you tear your clothes because of that? Surely it is completely clear that when they found this scroll—and I am speaking now in the broadest and most expansive interpretation—they found the whole Torah, because according to many accepted interpretations it was only the book of Deuteronomy. But let’s say even that they found the whole Torah—so didn’t they have any Torah scroll before that at all? How did they run the Temple? How did they offer sacrifices? Don’t ask me, I don’t know exactly, but the Torah scroll disappeared. Okay, and then they found this Torah scroll. Now the claim is that they invented this Torah scroll, that that is where the Torah was born in Josiah’s time, okay? They invented the Torah scroll. If that were true, then why is everyone tearing their clothes? “And we have not obeyed everything in the scroll”—what are you talking about? It didn’t exist, there was no such scroll; where did you bring this folk tale from? Clearly, even when the scroll was not there and was hidden away somewhere inside the Temple, still the people of Israel knew that there had been such a scroll. And they continued to keep what was written in that scroll; only the scroll itself had been lost. For some reason, I don’t know, maybe someone hid it, I don’t know—they lost it. Okay? But this whole story is taking place inside a Temple, with worship, with everything, with prophets and so on. How can you ignore this whole story? And therefore when they find this scroll, it is clear to them that it fits into that same tradition well known to them, that there had been a Torah scroll we received from Sinai, it passed through the generations, it was lost to them, and suddenly they discover that there are a number of things they are not doing because they didn’t have the scroll. They did keep many things, because the oral tradition continued even if there was no scroll; they did what their fathers had done. But suddenly they discovered there were things they had not fulfilled. So they tear their clothes and this is not okay and they repented and all is well. This cannot happen if this scroll was an invention. It almost cannot happen; it is simply completely implausible. Clearly this comes against the background of the fact that everyone knew there was a tradition that we had received a Torah scroll from Mount Sinai; right now we do not have it, we lost it, and therefore the information in our hands is partial information. We fulfilled what we were accustomed to; there were apparently quite a few things we missed, that we were not used to and did not do, I don’t know exactly what. And suddenly we discover that this scroll demands more things of us, and immediately everyone tears their clothes and all that, because it is clear to them that this is the scroll that reached their ancestors from Sinai. So if this passage does not prove the continuity of the tradition—not only is it not true that it refutes it, this passage shows very clearly that there was an ancient tradition of a Torah scroll and that the scroll was not invented there. So I do not understand how one can read this thing differently.
[Speaker D] But such a central Torah scroll, so important and essential to the identity of the people, just gets lost?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All of it or part of it? In such a reckless way?
[Speaker D] It sounds like something—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s not certain that it was reckless. It could be that they hid it because they feared that idol worshippers or various others would harm it.
[Speaker D] What, there was only one Torah scroll? There wasn’t just one copy in the whole nation, was there?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, the Torah scroll of Moses our teacher. If there wasn’t only one Torah scroll, then what was the issue with what they found there? There were other Torah scrolls, so what do I care what they found there?
[Speaker D] But it doesn’t sound likely that there was only one copy of the whole Torah scroll?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know what sounds likely; I know what emerges from the passage. In the passage here, that’s what is written. I’m saying on the assumption that it was the entire Torah scroll and not just Deuteronomy; it doesn’t matter, let’s say it was only Deuteronomy and there was only one copy, no matter. But this is what is written. Now you can say it is plausible or implausible; those are the facts. Now let’s see what those facts say.
[Speaker D] So how can one rely on the whole tradition we receive if there is such a break?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Like you said earlier, this is basically the majority.
[Speaker D] That’s what—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I explained on one of the previous occasions: precisely because of that, you can rely on it. If there had been many Torah scrolls like there are today, do you think that would be more convincing? They are all copied from one another. Why is having a hundred Torah scrolls more convincing than having one? They all copied from that one. In the end, the basic source was the scroll of Moses our teacher. That was the source, the scroll that sat in the Temple—that is the source. All the rest copied from it.
[Speaker D] Right, but there was a break, a break in the receiving of the tradition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, of course. A break in Jewish law. But the question is whether this scroll was invented by Josiah or only lost in Josiah’s time. I claim it is completely implausible that it was invented there. It was lost, yes, it was lost, there was a break in that sense, but that is exactly the meaning. A break means the tradition exists, gets interrupted, and returns. That is called a break. Someone who claims the scroll was invented there is saying it was not a break; they simply invented it there. And that is completely implausible.
[Speaker D] But commandments are passed from father to son, father to son, father to son, all the commandments throughout all the generations, and suddenly—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not all the commandments at all. No? Obviously not. How many of the commandments do you think you observe out of the 613?
[Speaker D] No, fine, today there is no Temple anymore and there are many things that no longer exist, but I’m talking about—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not only what was in the Temple was observed, but there are many things that were not—like, I don’t know, Hakhel is once every seven years, maybe they didn’t do it, forgot it, there was, I don’t know, a period of conquest, some period when they couldn’t do it, and it was forgotten—things are forgotten. In a moment we’ll get to the Sukkot of Nehemiah, there in Ezra and Nehemiah. Things are forgotten. Now I’ll say again, many of the things they did do—that is exactly the point. There were only things they found in the scroll that they had not done, and over that they tore their clothes. So if that does not testify to a continuous tradition, I don’t know what testimony could. We once talked about errors in textual versions, when you find a contradiction between versions of a Torah scroll, yes? Scrolls are written differently. So Jewish law says that you go according to the majority of scrolls. You collect scrolls and see whether the majority are in favor of one version, and that is the binding version. It’s not certain that’s correct, but that is what Jewish law says, because you follow the majority. But Jewish law itself also says that if these are scrolls copied from one another, then that is not called a majority. You need to find scrolls that have some kind of ancient independent tradition. Scrolls copied from one another are not a majority. Scrolls copied from one another do not testify; the fact that there are five like that does not testify that they are more correct than the one. The same thing in a religious court: a master and his students are not counted as separate voices in a court, at least not in capital cases. That is one voice.
[Speaker E] In what form was it written, that it could be preserved for hundreds of years without fading, without being erased? In what language?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Like a Torah scroll, like our Torah scroll. Our Torah scroll can be preserved a long time, at least—
[Speaker F] Under reasonable conditions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but—
[Speaker F] Sorry, but at some point I’m losing the basis of what I always learned—that in fact the Torah was never written down until Rabbi Judah the Prince edited it; it was forbidden to write it down.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Oral Torah, the Oral Torah.
[Speaker F] No, the Oral Torah is everything.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, what are you talking about? The Written Torah was certainly written down—what do you mean? What was in the Ark?
[Speaker F] What did Moses bring to the people of Israel? Did he bring them written things?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, they wrote it down. The sages have a dispute over whether the Torah was given scroll by scroll, or whether it was all given at Sinai. By Joshua or by Moses, “in tears,” yes, two opinions in the Talmud. The Written Torah was written down. The Oral Torah was not written down until Rabbi Judah the Prince.
[Speaker F] But if the Written Torah was written down—just the Torah that exists, that we know, the Five Books of the Torah maybe—then in fact all the laws that Rabbi Judah the Prince later edited, all the details of the laws and the fine details, all of that basically passed on—after all, we know—from generation to generation.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not only from generation to generation. Part of it was transmitted, and part of it was invented or formed over the generations.
[Speaker F] Okay, so we are in a situation—and you also said earlier that 95% of the things are things we don’t know whether that is what was said to Moses, or whether later everyone innovated them, and so on. Right. So we are in a situation where in fact a large part of the things people observe today and are careful about do not necessarily have to be the word of God. Right. Okay, so why can’t we relate to that as culture and not as religion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is another discussion. Meaning, the question why it is binding even though it does not come from the Holy One, blessed be He, is another discussion—we can discuss it, I won’t mind—but I don’t want to get into it now. My claim here right now deals only with the framework. Was there a revelation at Mount Sinai, was something given to us there? What did we do with that something? What is the connection between that something and what we have in our hands today, the Shulchan Arukh and its commentators? That is an entirely different question. And the claim—I’ll say it in one sentence only—is that these things were formed as interpretations, expansions, and expositions of the Written Torah, and the Torah itself says, “Do not turn aside from all that they instruct you,” “Make a safeguard for My charge.” The Torah itself says that the sages have authority to expound, interpret, and so on. And therefore for us, once this has been accepted as Jewish law, it is binding—not because the Holy One, blessed be He, said it to Moses at Sinai, He did not say it—but because this is our tradition, and part of the tradition is to expound the Torah and interpret it in the Oral Torah. But of course once that is so, I can also argue and say that this is not correct and offer my own interpretation, and that—absolutely, completely—I accept. Right now I am speaking about the question of the authenticity of the framework, not of the details within it.
[Speaker F] So I have just one problem with the framework—or I have many, but I want to emphasize one thing. The giving of the Torah is constantly marked as this dramatic event that we all talk about, and they assume—let’s say for the sake of argument okay, it happened there. But everything Moses brings afterward, we no longer have witnesses to, because Moses is sitting alone with the Holy One, blessed be He. And I have no idea what he brought down, what he delivered.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Holy One, blessed be He, reveals Himself at Mount Sinai and says to us: Friends, I am now giving you a Torah. Then He calls Moses and gives the Torah through him. It sounds reasonable that this is simply the continuation of the Torah that the Holy One, blessed be He, is giving. He Himself said that He is now giving us a Torah through Moses, so what difference does it make that it comes through Moses? Fine, true, it comes through Moses. Part of the Torah was given in the Tent of Meeting according to Rabbi Ishmael, because Rabbi Ishmael and Rabbi Akiva hold that it was given in the Tent of Meeting to Moses our teacher, who sat there alone quietly. And the sages also describe that Moses our teacher taught Joshua, and afterward Aaron and his sons, yes, in four such sessions, and then the whole people. Clearly the Torah is given through Moses. But the event that established the framework is the one that said: Listen, what Moses tells you is what I gave him. And that is why the initial revelation was necessary. The initial revelation says: Know that I cannot now stand here on the mountaintop and read the Five Books of the Torah out loud to everyone. I only tell you from the mountaintop: I am giving you the standing, know that now there is an interaction; the rest you will receive from Moses our teacher, I am handing it over to him. That is the claim. So that is regarding the Torah scroll. Okay, but another question.
[Speaker C] My understanding was that the claim of academia or whatever is that there were stories and so on—call it tradition—but in Josiah’s time they said, let’s write all this Torah down, say all of Genesis; there were stories, but the writing and so on was only in that period, there was no Torah scroll before that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I say, first of all, if there was an oral tradition, I don’t care, then there was an oral tradition from Sinai and let’s say Josiah wrote it down. Okay, so what? He wrote down the tradition, and until then it had been transmitted orally. But that still means he did not invent it; he wrote down a tradition that was already older. That’s one thing.
[Speaker C] Second, people keep saying “obviously,” but the transmission of the tradition, as we said, was over very many years, so the tradition too would have changed.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course, of course, that’s obvious.
[Speaker C] But obviously—that’s what I said. I said I’m not talking about the authenticity of the interpretation, but about the framework. I return—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, I’m not talking about the authenticity of the details at all. I’m not talking about that. It could be that all of it is full of distortions. I’m not talking about that at all. I’m talking about the framework itself: was there a revelation at Mount Sinai? Did we receive something there? It doesn’t matter right now what exactly, and afterward we can discuss what of it is authentic, what isn’t, and what we do with what isn’t. That’s a different discussion. If I had some indication that a certain thing was not authentic or was a later addition, it could be that I would relate to it differently. I’m not getting into those questions at all. Right now I’m speaking only about the general framework. Now, the claim that there was an ancient tradition—whether it was transmitted orally or in writing, you can argue about that. But I think from the verses themselves here it’s clear that they did not write the Torah book; rather, they found a Torah book there. They found a Torah book. Not only that, they found a Torah book that the people already knew from before was such a book. And what was written in that book, they understood, was also binding on them. So what more do I need? I mean, that’s it. Everything else is conspiracy theories. To me this sounds like the simplest reading of this passage; I don’t feel that I’m engaged in apologetics at all. I mean, this is ABC. Therefore these claims seem to me really strange claims. There are of course additional descriptions, some of them apologetic, doesn’t matter, that this book was really only Deuteronomy and not—there are also a few indications, some articles were written saying it was only Deuteronomy, and then there’s nothing to talk about at all: Josiah invented Deuteronomy, fine, for the sake of argument. But there was a revelation at Mount Sinai, we received four books, there was a tradition. Fine, that’s all. Now everything else is details. I’m not getting into the question now of what to do with the details. My claim, my question, is whether there was a continuous tradition of interaction with the Holy One, blessed be He, in which He conveyed His will to us—conveyed something to us. It’s on that minimal level. The last passage that I also want to manage to get to is the Torah reading in the days of Ezra, yes, in the book of Nehemiah chapter 8. “And all the people gathered as one man into the square that was before the Water Gate, and they said to Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the Torah of Moses which the Lord had commanded Israel.” Yes, notice: the Torah of Moses. Ezra brings it, and it is the Torah of Moses. People think Ezra wrote this book. “And Ezra the priest brought the Torah before the congregation, both men and women, and all who could understand what they heard, on the first day of the seventh month”—yes, that’s Rosh Hashanah. “And he read from it before the square that was before the Water Gate from daybreak until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the Torah. And Ezra the scribe stood upon a wooden platform which they had made for the purpose; and beside him stood Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maaseiah on his right, and on his left…” and so on. “And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, Amen, Amen, with uplifted hands; and they bowed their heads and prostrated themselves before the Lord with their faces to the ground.” By the way, you see lots of names—again, the tradition is very detailed in these matters; look how many people’s names there are here. “And they read in the book, in the Torah of God, distinctly, and gave the sense, and they understood the reading. And Nehemiah the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people, said to all the people: This day is holy to the Lord your God”—this is Rosh Hashanah—“do not mourn and do not weep, for all the people were weeping when they heard the words of the Torah. Then he said to them: Go, eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks, and send portions to anyone who has nothing prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. And all the people went to eat and drink and send portions and make great rejoicing. And on the second day the heads of the fathers’ houses of all the people, the priests and the Levites, gathered to Ezra the scribe in order to gain insight into the words of the Torah. And they found written in the Torah”—here, this is the point—“which the Lord had commanded through Moses, that the children of Israel should dwell in booths during the festival in the seventh month.” There—suddenly they discovered a new commandment: in the seventh month, this is a continuation of the month of Tishrei, they have to dwell in booths. “And that they should proclaim and spread the word in all their cities and in Jerusalem, saying: Go out to the mountain and bring olive branches, branches of oil trees, myrtle branches, palm branches, and branches of leafy trees, to make booths, as it is written. So the people went out and brought them, and made themselves booths, each on his roof and in their courtyards and in the courtyards of the house of God and in the square of the Water Gate and in the square of the Ephraim Gate. And all the congregation of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and dwelt in the booths, for since the days of Joshua son of Nun the children of Israel had not done so until that day. And there was very great rejoicing. And he read in the book of the Torah of God day by day, from the first day until the last day; and they kept the festival seven days, and on the eighth day was a solemn assembly according to the law.” So here it already says that they had not done this since the days of Joshua son of Nun—they had not celebrated Sukkot. But on the other hand, I’m already moving straight to the main difficulty with this text: on the other hand, it’s quite clear that once again, after they understood that there was also the commandment of Sukkot, they… understood that there was such a commandment. They did not invent it at that time; rather, they understood that there had been a long break in connection with the commandment of Sukkot. By the way, I’m not at all convinced that they did absolutely nothing, that they didn’t dwell in booths at all since Joshua son of Nun. Rather, there had not been a Sukkot like this one—so festive and comprehensive and large—perhaps since the days of Joshua son of Nun. You have to remember that we’re talking about the beginning of the return to Zion after a period of exile. In exile, I don’t even know what they observed and what they knew, and there were communities here and communities there; I have no idea exactly how things were conducted during the exile. They return after seventy years to the Land, and then at the beginning of the return to Zion they read from the Torah, return to the tradition that had already been here before, and they see that they’ve been missing Sukkot and maybe a few other things. Again, the same thing we saw in the earlier passages applies here too. It could be that Sukkot really was new to them, and even that is evidence that when they were told about it, they immediately understood that it was apparently part of that same tradition that had slipped away from them, and therefore they suddenly decided to observe this thing. So to say that this is where they invented the Torah book—not even this specific section about Sukkot; let’s say they added a few verses about Sukkot, suppose so. I said I’m not dealing with the details. But to conclude from this that here there is some beginning, or that here the Torah book was written, that here they invented the Torah book—that’s simply ridiculous; it means exactly the opposite. All the time they understand that there was a tradition from Moses, the Torah of Moses, and that since the days of Joshua they had not done booths like these. Why since the days of Joshua? Because in the days of Moses our teacher there were booths, because “I made the children of Israel dwell in booths in the wilderness,” right? Therefore the intention is apparently the days of Joshua. What do you mean? Because in booths in the wilderness all the people of Israel dwelled in booths, and now here too, after they read in the Torah, all the people of Israel dwelled in booths. And this sort of event, where all the people of Israel dwell in booths and it’s celebrated publicly and all that, maybe had not happened since the days of Joshua; that could be, I don’t know. But even I would not conclude from here that they had not observed the commandment of the sukkah since the days of Joshua—even that, in my opinion, is not written here.
[Speaker C] But here it says myrtle branches, palm branches, leafy trees—that’s part of the sukkah, not like the way we take the four species or something.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So they apparently understood that this too had to be done for the sukkah, like in Naomi Shemer’s song, right? “He won’t forget to put in a lulav and myrtle branches”—“Shlomit Builds a Sukkah,” right? What does it mean, “he won’t forget to put in a lulav and myrtle branches”? You don’t put a lulav and myrtle branches in the sukkah; you take them as the four species. There’s some kind of, I don’t know, popular folk custom like that, that people also put the four species in the sukkah. I have no idea. So they apparently did that in the sukkah too. But again, I’m not getting into the question whether the details we observe today match the details that were there. I’m sure that at least partially they don’t, even without reading this passage. Broken telephone is a law of nature; I don’t need passages in the Hebrew Bible for that, it’s obvious. The question, though, is whether that means the framework itself was created in some big bang at some point along the timeline. I think not—very clearly not. All the claims I made earlier ultimately come back here as well. First of all, this is only about Sukkot or about certain things, but there was a tradition with a Torah book; otherwise they would have thrown Ezra down the stairs. What they say—that it had not happened since the days of Joshua son of Nun—is entirely plausible, even more than plausible: there had not been something on this scale. Because the fact is they say since the days of Joshua son of Nun, not since the days of Moses. In the days of Moses all the people of Israel dwelled in booths in the wilderness, because “I made the children of Israel dwell in booths.” So on this scale it had not happened since the days of Joshua son of Nun, because now suddenly all the people of Israel had returned to observing the commandment to dwell in booths; that was something new, certainly after seventy years of exile, now that they had returned from there. Therefore this passage, again, not only does not refute the existence of the tradition, in my opinion it testifies once again to the fact that there definitely was an ancient tradition—and again, I’m not entering into the details. It is absolutely possible that there were distortions in the details, including major details too; I have no principled problem with such a claim. But I think that if I look at the framework itself—yes tradition or no tradition—these passages show very clearly that there was indeed some ancient tradition here. And the details are details, and if you want maybe we’ll talk another time about how to relate to the details, but that’s a topic that would require a whole series of its own. Okay, I’ll stop here. If there’s any comment or question? So, Happy Hanukkah. They didn’t celebrate Hanukkah there in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah either.
[Speaker B] Happy Hanukkah, happy Hanukkah to you too. Shalom, bye. What? Bye bye.