Q&A: Torah from Sinai
Torah from Sinai
Question
Hello Rabbi, I saw two quotes from you on Wikiquote:
- "Regarding the belief that the Torah we have in our hands was transmitted in its entirety at Mount Sinai, I take that as a normative statement, not a historical one. I believe in the word of God that was given at Sinai. The Holy One, blessed be He, who created the world, was revealed at Sinai and gave us the Torah. Not all the Jewish law in our hands was given there, but we need to relate to all of it as though it was given at Sinai." ~ from an interview in the newspaper Makor Rishon, October 11, 2013
- "I believe that at Sinai there was some sort of revelation, in which the Holy One, blessed be He, conveyed to us the core of His commandments, and from there on it is a matter of expansion, 99 percent of which consists of things that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not think of, nor did Moses our Teacher, but it is an expansion of what was given at Sinai. If I did not believe that some core was given at Sinai, I would not be able to feel bound by the Torah." ~ from an interview in the newspaper Makor Rishon, October 11, 2013
Regarding 1: why do we need to pretend and relate to something not as it really is?
Regarding 2: why should we treat expansions that are supposedly Torah-level / of biblical origin as Torah-level / of biblical origin if they were not given by the Holy One, blessed be He, or by Moses? (There may even be an issue of "do not add" here.)
Answer
It is not pretending. It is a manner of speaking. All the expansions have the same status as the laws that were given to Moses at Sinai. Like the Hebrew expression "given from the mouth of the Almighty," which is only a metaphor.
The expansions are derived from what is written by means of the rules of the Oral Torah, and therefore they are included in what is written. It is like a conclusion being included in the premises from which it is proven. There is no violation of "do not add" in saying that something that is Torah-level / of biblical origin really is Torah-level / of biblical origin. Only rabbinic expansions that are presented as Torah-level / of biblical origin would be a violation of "do not add."
Discussion on Answer
I did not say that He did not know. I said that He did not transmit them to Moses, and Moses in turn did not pass them on through the tradition. The author of Tosafot Yom Tov, in his introduction to the Mishnah, distinguishes between the things that were transmitted to Moses at Sinai (in order to pass them on further) and the things that were shown to Moses at Sinai.
Beyond that, the incorrect things, of course, even the Holy One, blessed be He, does not know and did not know, but we do not know which of our conclusions are correct and which are not. Therefore everything has the presumption of being correct so long as we arrived at it using the accepted tools of Jewish law and interpretation.
You wrote that it is like a conclusion that is included in the premises from which it is proven. Fine, if we say that Moses did not derive all these conclusions, that is understandable, but how can one say that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not know the conclusions latent in the premises?