Q&A: A Question About Tradition
A Question About Tradition
Question
Hello Rabbi,
There is a question a friend asked me regarding our tradition-based belief in the Torah:
Seemingly, the entire belief in the Torah is based on the tradition of the Exodus from Egypt and the revelation at Mount Sinai. But in order to believe in that, one first has to accept the Torah as true, and so there seems to be a chicken-and-egg problem here, because we are relying on the Torah before we have yet proved its truth. And seemingly, by the same token, one could alternatively say that at some early period in history a person arose (maybe Moses our teacher, maybe not) and wrote the core of the Torah narratives: that there was a people who left Egypt with miracles, and afterward had the revelation at Mount Sinai, etc. — everything exactly as written in the Torah — and spread this among his people, our forefathers’ forefathers. Perhaps at first there was opposition to him, but he managed to find a small handful of believers who listened to him, and this group gradually grew and passed the matter on to its sons and grandsons, and also added more positive commandments and prohibitions, until over time it became a fully formed tradition. a0
I also heard from a university lecturer that several commandments already existed among ancient peoples even before the giving of the Torah, such as the commandment of circumcision. So it is not far-fetched that, just as Christianity took elements from the Torah, so too according to this story, that person took commandments from earlier ancient peoples and also added some of his own plain common sense. It is also important to add that the peoples of that time were ignorant, and it would be enough for one smart and somewhat charismatic person to arise in order to write the Torah’s story and spread it among a few believers who would go after him, and from there it could spread further. (As happened with Christianity and Islam, though of course there is the well-known distinction made in the Kuzari between those religions and ours, which was given before the entire people.)
Likewise, if we ask what interest that person had, one could ask the same thing about Jesus and Muhammad and other people who founded religions. Sometimes the interest is simply that people gather around something you created and follow it.
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In any case, I would be glad to hear the Rabbi’s opinion on the matter, so that I know what to answer, and so that the tradition may be verified for me in a stronger way.
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P.S. I tried to find a similar question on the site (by title) but did not find one. If someone has already asked a similar question, I would be glad if the Rabbi could direct me to the source online.
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Thank you very much.
Answer
The tradition does not emerge from the Torah. The tradition is the oral tradition that accompanies the Torah and says that it is true. By virtue of the tradition, the Torah is true, and not the other way around. Therefore, if you doubt the tradition, then indeed you do not accept the Torah, and that is that. The text that accompanies this tradition can of course contribute to strengthening it, because the oral tradition is accompanied by a text that it speaks about and from which it draws. But together they create the tradition, and whether to trust that whole complex is something you must decide.
Discussion on Answer
With all due respect, these are nonsensical things. The fact that God is great and we are fleeting and lacking is of course true, but that is not a solution for someone wondering whether God exists and whether the Torah was given. After all, I am supposed to make that decision for myself, so how does the statement that God is great help me? Anyone can claim that there is some entity that is great and beyond understanding (the Flying Spaghetti Monster) and demand that I accept it.
This is a very partial response to what I wrote.
I raised the distinction between truth and events, which can help, for one who chooses it, to believe in the truth of the Torah without demanding that every detail of it take place here in reality.
I raised the point that it is a mistake to ask to prove God, because such a proof pulls the ground out from under the concept itself and turns God into just another logical concept, and thereby into an item within the natural sciences.
And I also presented a way to uproot Him from the everyday dimension.
These, at least in my eyes, are tools that a struggling mind can use in order to make its way through the fog of faith. They helped me.
And as for the last part of your remarks — there is no demand here, only a suggestion, and it does not come out of nowhere (like the Flying Spaghetti Monster), but is anchored in the Jewish tradition over the years.
Listen, brother,
when a person says amen or true about something, he is basically acknowledging its existence and acknowledging that the event happened; it has nothing to do with the everyday dimension. It has to do with the dimension in which the event occurred, even if I wasn’t present there. For example, the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt, and so on…
It is obvious that someone who believes in the Torah believes in all the events it tells about, and in everything written in it.
You are missing the point exactly.
It is possible to believe in truth without forcing it to be an event.
Take the number three. Or any other number.
Does it exist? Is it true?
Have you ever seen three? You have seen only — and I am prepared to stake my life on it — representations of three.
Three patriarchs, three daughters, a drawing of 3 in Arabic numerals or Roman numerals or three in binary or whatever.
But three itself — you have not seen.
It is not there.
Three is truth, and its presence is felt only in the world of truth, but it has no business with the world of events, because it is not an event. Even so, in the world of events there are many, many representations of three — infinitely many, in fact.
Take this as an analogy; instead of three, put Torah or God, and it can serve you as a working tool.
Doesn’t work for you? No big deal. Maybe someone else will find it meaningful.
With God’s help,
If we did not have the Written Torah, in your opinion would there be anything left of the oral tradition? Or alternatively, what is there today in the oral tradition that adds to the Torah narratives beyond what is in writing? After all, all the Torah stories today are what is written in the Torah (aside from midrashim and the like, which are inferences from the verse itself)…
I didn’t understand the question. What else do you want there to be? The midrashim add beyond what is written, and in my estimation it is not correct that they are all inferences from the wording of the text. Nor is this necessarily tradition, since midrash does not necessarily tell about the events as they were, but uses them in order to convey messages.
I’ll try to put down an idea here; maybe it will help you, maybe others.
First, one has to understand what the truth of the Torah is, since that is the point you are asking about.
Usually people understand the concept of the Torah’s truth as meaning this: that what is written in the Torah indeed occurred in concrete reality, that is, within the space in which we live, exist, and act.
(I call this concrete reality “the everyday,” and I distinguish it from “reality,” which is far beyond the concrete, and which serves me in describing God in His totality.)
I cannot accept the matter simply at face value, because I grew up in a secular world, and my mind is unable to accept miracles as though they literally took place, nor can my soul force my mind to accept these things as though they happened in the everyday world.
Therefore I distinguish between “truth” and “events.” I am an event; I am not truth. I came into the world, did what I did, and soon I will leave the world and be forgotten. That is an event. Almost everything in our world is an event. The Holocaust is an event. It is not truth. This statement cannot cancel the immense suffering endured by millions of people, but from a certain perspective the Holocaust is a particular occurrence that is true and valid for a certain time.
Try, for example, to think whether in another 70,000 years people will sing the Partisan Song. They won’t, right? Therefore at that time, the Holocaust will no longer even be an event. Just some detail in the past, and it is doubtful whether anyone will even care about it.
But in another 70,000 years, some of the things here will still be valid there as well. For example, 2+2=4. (You could object that I do not know, and that perhaps that sum will have a different result, but that would be unnecessary and childish.)
That is to say: truth is unique in that it resonates with the eternal, whereas events, as their name implies, are temporary.
That is one thing.
The second thing is that you and I do not live in “reality.” We live in the everyday. Between the billions of years that preceded your existence and the eternity of time that will continue after your death, you are given a tiny little crack through which to glimpse being. You do not have the power to grasp all this, just as no human being has the power to grasp it.
This thought contains a kind of glimpse into reality; it reveals our limitations to us and clarifies, for one who wants clarity, that our meager and fleeting powers are incapable of judging the eternal.
In the dimension of eternity, to which we have no access, the Torah is a Torah of truth.
In the dimension of the everyday, whose miserable tenants we are, the Torah is just another written document.
But in this dimension there exists a quality that is not valid in the eternal dimension, and that is faith. This is where your choice comes in.
You can believe that the Torah is true (that is a great matter and very difficult to attain), and at the same time hold that the things told in it did not occur one by one in the everyday world. That is, if you accept the conceptual system of Judaism, and accept the concept of the soul, then in the world of souls the things occurred exactly as they are told in the Torah. But in this world, the world of falsehood (another concept from our Torah), where we are separated from the One and live as isolated individuals, it appears to us — intentionally — that things are not exactly so. And this is where faith has its place.
I hope you understand.
I will add one more idea here regarding what you wrote about proving the Torah and the issue of circularity.
The Torah cannot be proved, and neither can God be proved — not in the accepted sense, at any rate.
But I want you to understand that to ask for God to be in the category of the proven, for the matter to be within your grasp — that is a very great mistake. If that is what you want, then what you want is for God to be subject to your logic. Step outside your comfort zone for a moment, where you are a very great person, wise and important and central, and understand that you are a passing and utterly insignificant human being. So am I. If I die in another second, you will not even know that I wrote to you tonight, and even if you do know, my death will make no difference whatsoever. Can something so contemptible, temporary, lowly, and miserable think that it has the power to prove God, and moreover ask that God be subject to this tiny intellect? That is exactly — exactly — to ask that God be matter from the material world, from the everyday world. But then that is not God at all.
Many times I have said to myself that God does not exist, but He is not limited by His non-existence.
And sometimes I formulate it this way: non-existence is not a limiting factor for God.
By saying this, I create a barrier between God — absolute mystery, eternity — and things as they are perceived by the senses and processed by the mind in the everyday world, the temporary and passing one. In doing so, I place God elsewhere, in a place to which we have no access by touch, but of which we have a slight scent; and I remove Him from tiny human logic and abandon Him to His own logic, greater than all, who revives the dead with His word.
Hope I helped you, or someone.