חדש באתר: NotebookLM עם כל תכני הרב מיכאל אברהם

Q&A: Oral Torah

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This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

Oral Torah

Question

Shalom!!
Does the Rabbi have a column that talks about the definition of the Oral Torah?
I heard in one of the Rabbi’s lectures that Moses our Teacher didn’t actually know what the thirty-nine primary categories of labor were, and I’d be glad to understand what the Rabbi meant. Does that mean Moses selected and wrote on the Sabbath but didn’t gather wood?
How much of what is in the Talmud is from the Amoraim, and how much was really given at Sinai? Is it possible that even “totafot” were not the tefillin familiar to us in the time of Moses our Teacher, or for example in the First Temple period? Why was the Written Torah given without interpretation, and how did people manage for thousands of years without an agreed-upon interpretation, with each person having his own interpretation, and then suddenly the Talmud wrote down all the explanations?
 
After all, our usual claim against the Karaites is: how can it be possible to observe the Torah without an accompanying interpretation of the book? And now I’m discovering that even for us, these things were not really received together with the Torah, but developed over the generations?
What did they observe when Moses our Teacher came down from Sinai??

Answer

I have a series on dynamic tradition (column 622 and onward). You should read there. The tradition that accompanies the Torah is a conceptual framework, not details, and therefore the interpretations and details can change and develop over the generations. The overwhelming majority of what we have was created after the giving of the Torah. By the way, it is דווקא the Karaites who cling to what seems to them authentic (what was there originally), and the claim against them is precisely in favor of dynamism. The opposite of what you wrote. Something similar exists with the Shiites versus the Sunnis in Islam, and the Catholics versus the Protestants in Christianity. (The Sunnis and the Protestants are roughly like the Karaites.)

Discussion on Answer

Caleb son of Jephunneh (2025-03-04)

Michi,
are you claiming that rabbinic Judaism = you = Catholic?

Michi (2025-03-04)

Didn’t you read what I’m claiming? Do you want me to write it again?

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