Q&A: A Perfect Torah
A Perfect Torah
Question
Hello, honorable Rabbi.
If God really gave the Torah,
shouldn’t the Torah be perfect—clear to everyone in its commandments and in its details, without deficiencies, contradictions, difficulties, or problems?!
That’s how I would expect it to be if it were a divine Torah.
Does the very fact that it isn’t clear that this is the same Torah that God gave show that there is no such Torah?!
Since I would expect a Torah given by God to be clearly recognizable as such?
Answer
There are a few other things I don’t understand either. Why not eat pork? Why take a lulav? What about ritual impurity and purity? Couldn’t He have explained all this to us? It turns out that He does not always act according to what seems logical to us. As I told Yaron Yadan, my conviction that the Torah is from the Holy One, blessed be He, is not based on its content or its structure. Therefore, problems in the content and structure also do not carry much significance for me.
Discussion on Answer
The same question also applies to nature: if the Creator created nature, why isn’t it perfect and logical?
Apparently the Creator has His own logic (maybe part of it is the desire to conceal His presence). This answer is valid regarding the Torah as well.
Ami, indeed.
Rabbi, I’d also be glad to know: if so, does the Rabbi think that perhaps one can infer from the way He wrote and gave the Torah (for example, in a hidden and not entirely clear form) to His way of operating in other things in the world, or is it possible that it’s hopeless to try at all to “discover” the way God thinks or acts by analogy from one thing to another?
I don’t know. I assume that if you make a concrete claim about the world because of something in the Torah, I won’t accept it unless I’ve been convinced independently that this is indeed so.
I’d be glad if the Rabbi could be more precise. Is the Rabbi essentially saying that there really are deficiencies in the content, structure, and manner in which the Torah was received, and that there really are many problems and contradictions there that we would not expect from a divine Torah? And nevertheless, the force of the evidence from tradition, together with a few other smaller proofs, is stronger than the many problems in its content and structure? Thank you.