Q&A: The Precision of the Torah
The Precision of the Torah
Question
Hello Rabbi. a0
I would be happy to understand the Rabbi7s view on the Torah we have today. a0
Is this Torah the same Torah that we received at Mount Sinai, or was it written over the generations? (During the years after the generation of the wilderness.)
And were some mistakes made in it over the years (at least until the generation of the Talmud), or did it remain precise to the level that "not a single letter in it is superfluous"?
The practical implication of this is basically the entire Talmud, and our Jewish laws today.
Because almost all Talmudic learning is built on the idea that there is some extra letter, or some word that is unnecessary, and so on in the Torah, and then some derivation is learned from it. a0
And therefore, in my opinion, if we derive almost all of our Jewish laws from this, it cannot be viewed as "we go with it because it is the closest thing to what we received at Mount Sinai"; rather, it is really all or nothing.
P.S. I want to thank the Rabbi for all the lessons the Rabbi uploads to YouTube, and for the way they are explained with extraordinary clarity, even on the deepest topics.
I am sure that here on the site as well the Rabbi is doing holy work, but only today did I happen to see it for the first time. But the talks on YouTube accompany me with headphones almost everywhere I go, and I am sure that maintaining all this requires a great deal of investment, so I just wanted to say thank you for that f64f
Answer
I do not know exactly what was given and what was added. It is accepted in tradition that everything is from Sinai, but tradition is not a guarantee of truth. Beyond that, even when people say that something was given at Sinai, in some cases the intention is that it should be treated like something given at Sinai (there are already such interpretations among the medieval authorities). There are verses or words for which it is evident that they were added later ("to this very day"). Beyond that, I do not know. I do think there was a giving of the Torah, but I do not know exactly what was given there.
But none of this affects our attitude toward the rabbinic interpretations and expositions of the Sages. As I wrote above, we must treat their words as Torah even if they were not given at Sinai. The Torah was given with their interpretations in mind. The authenticity of these matters (that is, the question whether this is what the Holy One, blessed be He, intended at Sinai) is not a condition for our being bound by them. That is the focus of "It is not in heaven." As the Sages tell us in the aggadic passage, even if the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself says something, we are not bound by that, but only by what emerges for us from our interpretation of the Torah that was given at Sinai. And here, of course, the truth is certainly not with us.
With great pleasure.
Discussion on Answer
Do care*
The presumption is that what we have in our hands was given from Sinai and is binding. Evidence is needed in order to say that something is not from there. And even what was added later was added by prophets, so that too is indirectly from the Holy One, blessed be He.
The point is that all of this is valid if we know that the Torah is true and binding on us.
And then we can say that we do not care what was really intended Above, since the Torah obligates us to listen to the Sanhedrin (and the Sages), and whatever they determine is what we need to do.
But assuming the Torah is not precise, we cannot know which verses in it are precise (if any) and then we cannot know what God really commanded at Mount Sinai, which is the foundation; here we do have to know exactly what was said Above.
And therefore, to claim that "the Torah was given with their interpretations in mind" when we do not know what the Torah itself exactly said, and to bring justification for that from the Sages themselves isn7t that begging the question?