Answer

Indeed, a nice bit. I enjoyed it.
As for the matter itself, it seems to me that most of the details are our own inventions, but that is the interpretation that was given to the commandment, and now that is what obligates us. I don’t see the details as a reconstruction of the Holy One’s original intention, but rather as our own interpretation. It is quite clear to me that originally (when the Torah was given) He did not mean this.
Even so, these details matter in several respects: 1. Without the details, nothing would remain of the law itself. Everyone would do something different, and very quickly it would evaporate altogether. See how hard it is to shape Independence Day. On the one hand, the attempt to establish binding patterns always amused me (to bless one another for the complete redemption, or something like that, and so on), but the fact is that without that, not much remains of that day. (I personally have no problem if nothing remains, but it’s a good example of the principle that dealing with details consolidates the commandment.) 2. Dealing with details gives you a systematic way to handle Jewish law, to compare one thing to another and make decisions. Moreover, through this they transmit to us a Jewish and rational mode of relating to every topic and passage (so that there is something to analyze dialectically. And I mean that seriously, not mockingly). In fact, this connects to the question of rationality that I discussed in column 31; see there.
It’s true that such a perspective lowers our level of seriousness toward these details. It is enough for obligation, but it is hard to say that holiness hovers over every such detail as the word of God. That creates discomfort for someone educated on the holiness of Jewish law as the word of God, but I don’t think that is true, and I’m also not sure it is really necessary. Obligation can exist even without that, although the sense of holiness will be missing, and rightly so.

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Questioner:
So basically you’re claiming that the Oral Torah was not given together with the Written Torah…
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Rabbi:
The question is what counts as the Oral Torah. Certainly not all the details. Even Maimonides writes that it was not. At most, we were given a few basic interpretive methods and explanations of words. That’s all. The use of these is what creates the Oral Torah.

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Questioner:
A. Beyond the rabbinic expositions from the verses saying that the Oral Torah was given from Heaven (and on that too I would need your answer), I think this is very logical and highly plausible. One may reasonably assume that when Moses our Teacher sat teaching the people Torah “from morning until evening,” the people of Israel had questions, misunderstandings, and uncertainties about what he said, which he had to answer. How did Moses know what to answer? You might say by reasoning, but we see from the Torah that even Moses did not always know what to answer, as in the case of the daughters of Zelophehad. So at least some of the questions that were asked could not be understood from the plain meaning of the text, and he had to have learned them orally from the Holy One.
B. There are details of commandments that cannot be derived from the hermeneutical principles by which the Torah is expounded, such as the black color of tefillin, their squareness, and so on (about which it is also said that they are a law given to Moses at Sinai).
C. Also, Moses our Teacher’s stay of 40 days on Mount Sinai to receive the Torah seems more consistent with this view, because that is far too much time to receive only the Written Torah (up to the book of Exodus); it is more reasonable that details were also told to him there, and that is why it took so long.
D. Even according to your view, that the methods of expounding the Torah were given at Sinai, one of those methods is to interpret the juxtaposition of passages; and specifically regarding the question of wringing, which is a Torah-level law (wringing a rag, it seems to me, is disputed, but wringing in general is), they learned it from the juxtaposition of the section about the Tabernacle to the command to observe the Sabbath. So as I understand it, this really is a “reconstruction of the Holy One’s original intention” and not just “our invention.”
E. I would be happy to know where the Maimonides you mentioned appears.
(By the way, I do not hold the view that every reasoning and every rabbinic law written in the Talmud was said at Sinai; that really already sounds unreasonable, and perhaps it was said in order to give value to these things. But a minimal detailing of every commandment sounds logical and plausible to me.)
I would be happy for your response.
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Rabbi:

A. After all, I wrote that explanations of words and a few foundational principles were given, according to which one interprets and answers questions.
B. A law given to Moses at Sinai was probably indeed given at Sinai. Not for nothing is it called that. Although Tosafot write that sometimes the term “a law given to Moses at Sinai” is used only to say that some law is correct and well-founded, and above all binding, and sometimes it is actually a rabbinic law.
C. Forty days is not too much time to read the Torah and explain its plain meaning with some additions. It certainly is not enough time for all the details that developed up to our own day. Besides, the forty days do not have to mean continuous study with the Holy One, and perhaps should not even be interpreted literally. It is definitely reasonable that additional details were given, as I wrote.
D. The juxtaposition of passages is an interpretive method, but it is not necessary that it was given at Sinai. At least some of the methods developed over time. In particular, the tannaim disputed whether one expounds juxtaposed passages in Deuteronomy. By the way, not all opinions derive the Sabbath labors from the Tabernacle. There are opinions that derive it from the word “labor” in the Torah’s phrase “labor of Sabbath,” and Tosafot at the beginning of Bava Kamma give three methods regarding the question of importance in relation to the Tabernacle, but this is not the place to elaborate.
E. Maimonides writes that anything over which a dispute arose was not given at Sinai. At the beginning of the laws of Rebels, he writes that a religious court in every generation may disagree with its predecessors regarding Torah-level laws (whereas with rabbinic laws it is required that it be greater in wisdom and number). And in a responsum to Rabbi Pinchas the judge (on the beginning of the laws of Marriage), he writes that most of the expositions in our possession are creative, except for about three or four. In his introduction to the Mishnah he writes:
“When he, peace be upon him, died, after having transmitted to Joshua the explanations that had been given to him, Joshua and the men of his generation engaged in them. And everything that Joshua or one of the elders received from him contains no give-and-take and no dispute arose about it. But regarding what they did not hear from the prophet, peace be upon him, there is give-and-take in its branches, and the law is derived in it by means of analysis through the thirteen principles that were given to him at Sinai, namely the thirteen principles by which the Torah is expounded. And among those matters that they derived, there are issues over which no dispute arose, but all agreed about them. And among them are matters over which dispute arose between two opinions: this one reasoned and the law was established in his mind, and that one reasoned and the law was established in his mind, because the methods of demonstrative inference can produce such outcomes. And when such a dispute arises, we follow the majority, as Scripture says: ‘Incline after the majority.'”
And it is further detailed there later on.

When the Sages say that everything was given at Sinai, that is a normative statement (that it is binding like what was given at Sinai, since what emerged from the text that was given there through the tools that were given there is as though it itself was given there; and likewise in Nachmanides’ glosses to the second root, he challenges Maimonides: how can laws derived by exposition be considered rabbinic if the text is from Sinai and the interpretive tools are also from Sinai), but not a historical one. Some of the details probably were given, and I did not say otherwise.