Q&A: The Oral Torah
The Oral Torah
Question
With God's help
To the honored Rabbi, hello,
I would be glad to hear your opinion about something I wrote in the past:
We encounter Jewish law transmitted orally even before we encounter written law. The Torah was given orally, and everywhere we find the observance of the Torah, things are done according to oral laws. Starting already in the wilderness years, when a doubt arose regarding the laws that Israel had, the judges did not derive a ruling from the existing written law; rather, they needed a new oral ruling. I mean, of course, the case of the wood-gatherer: when the Israelites found a man gathering wood on the Sabbath, they placed him in custody, “for it had not been clarified what should be done to him” (Numbers 15), even though the death penalty for desecrating the Sabbath had already been stated at Sinai: “Whoever desecrates it shall surely be put to death.” The Israelites did not know by which form of death he should be executed, until it was clarified to them: “The man shall surely be put to death; the entire congregation shall stone him with stones,” where “stone him” explains the already stated “shall surely be put to death.” Here we have an example of doubt in Jewish law, a case that the judges of Israel did not know how to adjudicate, and they brought it before Moses and Aaron. Moses did not try to derive the ruling from the existing law known to him; rather, he needed a new ruling that at that time was oral. The same is true in the case of the daughters of Zelophehad. If we move on to the period of the Judges, we find in the prophetic books a number of actions based on Torah law, but with additional laws clearly present as part of the way Torah law was observed. For example: the redemption of the field in Ruth chapter 4 follows the law of Leviticus 25, but in Ruth various details are added that are not in the Torah, such as taking ten men from the elders of the city in order to carry out the act. Likewise the mode of acquisition: “Now this was formerly done in Israel concerning redemption and exchange, to confirm any matter: a man drew off his sandal and gave it to his fellow, and this was the attestation in Israel.” In the days of the First Temple, the New Moon was celebrated like one of the festivals, with cessation from labor, as the verses testify: “New Moon and Sabbath, the calling of assembly” (Isaiah 1:13). Amos rebukes those who say, “When will the New Moon be over, that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath, that we may open the wheat market, making the ephah small and the shekel great, and falsifying deceitful balances?” (chapter 8, verse 5), and Hosea says, “And I will put an end to all her mirth, her feast days, her New Moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her appointed seasons” (chapter 2, verse 13). None of this has a source in the Written Torah. The New Moon does not appear at all in the section “These are the appointed times of the Lord, holy convocations, which you shall proclaim in their appointed times.” It is mentioned only in the book of Numbers in the list of additional offerings, and even there all the listed festivals are emphasized as holy convocations, except for the New Moon. In Jeremiah chapter 17, the prophet rebukes the people for carrying burdens from their houses in Jerusalem, yet the Torah nowhere explicitly mentions a prohibition of carrying in the public domain, and according to the accepted Jewish law there is no Torah prohibition within a walled city (and Jeremiah also explicitly distinguishes between carrying and labor). The Sages as well attributed the enactment prohibiting carrying in an enclosed area to the early First Temple period. Thus from Nehemiah’s covenant it emerges that commerce in Jerusalem was completely suspended on the Sabbath, and all that was needed was to reinforce the prohibition on bringing in products from outside. Amos too (as quoted above) teaches that in the Kingdom of Israel as well there was no buying and selling at all on the Sabbath. When Ezekiel lists those disqualified from serving in the Temple, he adds the uncircumcised and one with untrimmed hair (chapter 44), as a rebuke over a violated law, not as a new enactment. And so in many places in the Prophets. All these things are not explicit in the Torah and were practiced by force of the Oral Torah.
In addition, the Oral Torah has quite a few external sources; here are some examples:
– In the Book of Tobit (1:7) the halakhic term “second tithe” is mentioned, and later on (chapter 7, verses 13–14) marriage “according to the law of Moses” is mentioned as being effected through writing a document and signing it—apparently the marriage contract or a betrothal document, both of which were explained only in the words of the Sages.
– In the Letter of Aristeas (146) it is mentioned that the non-kosher birds are birds of prey (a sign of purity mentioned only by the Sages). And regarding the commandment of phylacteries he says: “Thus the lawgiver clearly commanded to bind the sign around the hand.”
– In the books of Judith and Ben Sira, seven days of mourning are mentioned. In Judith (8:6) the prohibition of fasting on the Sabbath, a Jewish holiday, and the New Moon is mentioned, in accordance with the Jewish law (Rosh Hashanah 19).
– Ben Sira (23:9): “Do not accustom yourself to invoking the holy Name,” in accordance with the Jewish law.
– In Maccabees (2, verses 12 and 38) the custom of Israel to purify themselves before the onset of the Sabbath is mentioned, in accordance with the Jewish law. In Maccabees (2, verse 45) circumcising by force the sons who were uncircumcised is mentioned, in accordance with the Jewish law (Kiddushin 29). The order of the fast described in Maccabees (1, chapter 3) matches the words of the Mishnah in tractate Ta'anit.
– The blessing on seeing a rainbow is mentioned in Ben Sira (43:11): see the rainbow and bless its Maker. Ben Sira (42:4) mentions wiping the dust from weights, in accordance with the Jewish law.
– In the Sibylline Oracles (64:24), a blessing before food is mentioned.
– In the Elephantine papyri, the Jewish law of a bill of emancipation for a maidservant is mentioned (Leonstein, Encyclopedia entry on Elephantine).
The claim that “the Oral Torah is the invention of the Pharisees” just makes me laugh; all one has to do is check and investigate.
Answer
Good. A few details should be noted. A few examples:
When Moses turns to the Holy One, blessed be He, with a question about a law that had been hidden from him, that is not the Oral Torah. In the video they claim to prove from here that there is no Oral Torah, because otherwise Moses would have known how to derive the law on his own.
Carrying a burden on the Sabbath can be interpreted as a specification of the prohibition against doing labor on the Sabbath. It is something strenuous, and one should rest. Beyond that there is also the verse, “Let no man go out from his place.”
The redemption of the field in Ruth also does not necessarily prove the existence of the Oral Torah. It is possible that this was simply how they conducted acquisitions, but there is no necessity that this was a tradition coming from Sinai.
Thank you for your remarks.
Discussion on Answer
By the way, why was the people of Israel bothered by the wood-gatherer in the first place? Meaning, it was clear to them that he had sinned; they just didn’t know his punishment. Do you think it’s really so clear from the Torah that gathering wood on the Sabbath is forbidden?
Even moving a table and chairs out to the balcony on the Sabbath—especially if the house is big—is hard work, but it’s not forbidden, and it isn’t mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as something God is angry about when done.
In my view, and as you noted, Moses received certain things at Mount Sinai, but not everything.
And that’s why the Torah hints, in the case of the wood-gatherer, that as long as the people of Israel are in the wilderness, if there’s an unresolved problem, they ask the Creator of the world. From here there is proof of the Oral Torah, because Moses knew that his sentence was death, since at Mount Sinai it had already been said that the Sabbath must be kept—but exactly which death, that he did not know.
In this case the Torah comes to show us that not everything is written down. From here there is also proof that the Torah scroll was not written in its entirety at once, but only that Moses wrote it before entering the Land of Israel.
People think that every time Moses received an instruction from the Holy One, blessed be He, he told Him: “If possible, just slowly please, so I can write it down.”
Suppose someone again went out gathering wood. There would no longer be any need to ask the Creator of the world what exactly should be done to him; rather, what Moses received orally in the case of the first wood-gatherer should be done to wood-gatherer number two.
It’s not as if Moses walked around with a blank parchment scroll and kept writing down whatever the Holy One, blessed be He, said.
That is, wood-gatherer number two would be executed by stoning, on the basis of what was said orally to Moses!