Q&A: Do Not Believe There Is Torah Among the Nations
Do Not Believe There Is Torah Among the Nations
Question
“If someone tells you there is wisdom among the nations, believe it; if he tells you there is Torah among the nations, do not believe it” —
A. What is the definition of Torah?
B. What does it mean when they tell us not to believe? Belief is not a black-and-white choice, because belief is a deep internalization of a certain idea. Right? If so, how does one choose whether to internalize? It is simply a process that happens when you study and connect to something; it is not binary.
Answer
A. A difficult question. I dealt with an attempt to define Torah in the second book of my trilogy. Simply put, Torah is the will of God.
B. It is just a rhetorical turn of phrase. The meaning is that among the nations you will not find Torah, that is, an understanding of the will of God. By the way, belief here (and in general as well) is not internalization, but simply accepting something as true (as in believing someone).
Discussion on Answer
Regarding B: it is like, “If you labored and did not find, do not believe; if you labored and found, believe.”
As I understand it, “wisdom” means understanding the written text (of the Torah), whereas “Torah” means the Oral Torah that is transmitted by tradition from one person to another. Therefore, one may believe (accept, think) that a non-Jew succeeded in understanding the written text and that I have something to learn from him, but one should not believe that there is a Torah transmitted by tradition through a non-Jew—that is, that it was forgotten by Israel and we received it only from the nations.