Question

In Professor Frankel’s analysis of the tradition of the Sinai revelation, he argues that the Sinai revelation was a fairly esoteric tradition in the early history of the Jewish people, and only returned to center stage in the Second Temple period. He presents it as opposed to the prophetic tradition, in which the development of divine law takes place through individual prophets who are not committed to the Sinai revelation or to a canonical national text, which also allows for the existence of contradictory traditions. It seems to me that this description matches the disagreement between you and Rabbi Kula: whether the binding validity of living a Jewish way of life can be grounded only in the Sinai revelation, or whether one can propose an alternative model in which validity is established anew in every generation by charismatic figures with spiritual intuitions. Does the Rabbi accept Frankel’s conclusions, and if so, also their implication for the discussion with Rabbi Kula? https://thetorah.co.il/article/judaism-without-sinai/