From Sinai to Today: The Story of Jewish Tradition | Rabbi Chaim Block

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Uh, as the world around us races forward in search of tomorrow's breakthroughs, join us as we discover the insights that have shaped Jewish life for centuries. Together, we'll study with Judaism's greatest minds, exploring timeless wisdom that continues to guide and inspire. You're listening to Inside the Jewish Mind. JLI podcast. The Jewish people have kept a rich tradition alive for over 3,000 years, filled with laws, practices, and rituals. But how much of it comes directly from the Torah? In this 2015 talk, Rabbi Chaim Block uncovers the development story of humanity's greatest chain of tradition, the Torah, providing a clearer picture of how Judaism evolved from Sinai to today. [00:00:53] Speaker B: Let's dive in the Torah, an incredible manual, an incredible guide for life, and it behooves us to understand how the Torah is structured. We're not even going to get into all the laws of the Torah or the teachings of the Torah, just about the general structure of Torah. Some of this may sound somewhat elementary, somewhat on a beginner's level, but don't worry, we'll get into it slowly but surely, and we'll take you along with us as we travel into the world of the written and oral Torah. So, generally speaking, when someone says Torah, what are they referring to? [00:01:39] Speaker C: Genesis, Exodus, Bereshimot, Vayikra, Bamidbar, Devaram. Basically, you normally conjure up an image of the first five books of Moses. That's the Torah. It's also called the, uh, Chumash. Chumash comes from the word chamesh, which means five, which refers to the five books of Moses. However, that is not really the entire Torah. In fact, the written law encompasses not five books, but 24 books. So 24 books, in fact. Have you ever heard of the term Tanakh? Tanakh actually stands for Torah, Neviim, and Kituvim. Torah is the Taf, the T, Neviim is the N, and Kituvim is the K or the Ch. Tanach Neviim are the prophets, and Ketuvim are the writings. And we'll soon go over and kind of explain what is the prophets, who are the prophets, and what are the books of the writings. But it's very interesting that according to. [00:03:00] Speaker B: Jewish tradition, the Torah, the revelation to. [00:03:06] Speaker C: Moses, has a status for itself. In fact, even though it's called the Torah of Moses, we understand and we accept that the communication by God to Moses in the first four books of the Torah, not five, but the first four, is a direct revelation from God, where Moses is simply a mouthpiece for God. He's a stenographer like a court stenographer, recording events that are going on. He's not injecting his own opinions, his own commentary, his own translation. It's all about being a pure conduit from God's word. And that's why we find in the Torah that Moshe is always speaking in third person. Moses is writing the Torah, but he's saying God spoke to Moses, saying, what do you mean? He should have said God spoke to me. But he's not saying that. He says, God spoke to Moses, saying, speak to the children of Israel and tell them. [00:04:26] Speaker B: Because that is the way God is communicating to Moses. [00:04:29] Speaker C: So Moses is almost invisible here. [00:04:33] Speaker B: You don't realize. There's my handouts. Thank you. [00:04:37] Speaker C: You don't realize that Moshe is involved in the transmission of this word. It almost looks like it's coming straight from God. And that's why every letter of the Torah is important. That's why it's called the written law. If one letter is erased from the parchment of the scroll, it becomes unfit for use. And the rabbis in the oral tradition derive many, many laws from an extra letter, from a missing letter, from the unique spelling of a word, because it's. [00:05:13] Speaker B: All very, very precise. Now you come to the Book of Devarim, the book of Deuteronomy. [00:05:23] Speaker C: And it's. [00:05:26] Speaker B: On a different level. [00:05:29] Speaker C: The book of Deuteronomy begins with, these are the words that, uh, Moses spoke to the Jewish people as they were standing on the banks of the Jordan. And then the entire book of Devarium is spoken in first person. I said to you. You said to me. God said to me to say to you. Moses is totally engaged here, because these are Moshe Rabbeinu's words. These are not God's words. These are Moshe Rabbeinu's inspired words. But he's speaking as a regular prophet, which we're going to be discussing a little later, that the regular prophets receive the concept from God, but put it into their own words. So Moshe, in this Book of Devarim, it's really a lower level of revelation than the first four books. [00:06:23] Speaker B: But we've never really, um, made any differences between the four and the five. It's always been the five books of Moses, not the four. Because at the end of Moshe's life, Hashem, God instructed Moshe to include his work with the other four. [00:06:46] Speaker C: So they were blended together, they were joined. And when Moses wrote the first Torah that he gave to each tribe before he passed away, he wrote five books. So by the time it got to the first Jewish Community, which was the community in the wilderness. As a completed Torah, it was five, not four. And so the status of the fifth was elevated to become the same as the status of the other four. [00:07:18] Speaker B: So it's important to understand that even. [00:07:20] Speaker C: Though we talk about the five books of Moses, there is a difference in structure, in development between the four and the fifth. And then we come to the prophet. So historically, the first five books of Moshe take us from the beginning of creation all the way to the Exodus from Egypt, the wandering in the wilderness just before the Jewish people cross the Jordan and arrive in Israel for the first time under Joshua. So it takes us to the death of, of Moses. And then we begin the Book of the Prophets. Although not all these books are books of prophets, but they're called books of prophets because the leaders were inspired prophets of Hashem. And those books begin with the book of Joshua, as you can see, number six, then the Book of Judges, number seven, and the Book of Joshua and the Book of Judges together span a. [00:08:20] Speaker B: Period of 400 years. [00:08:23] Speaker C: 400 years from the time the Jewish people go into Egypt. Then we have a little bit of an acclimation period for the Jewish people are settling in the land. They're fighting a bunch of wars. They're establishing their boundaries. And we go through a period called the Judges. Now, this is a period before the Jewish people had an organized form of government. And the leaders that emerged were leaders that emerged unofficially as leaders of the Jewish people. For example, Devorah, the prophetess, was one of the Judges. Samson was one of the Judges. Gideon was one of the Judges. These are the more famous Judges. All in all, There were over 20 judges during this period of time. The last of the Judges was an individual called Eli. And he was the high priest in. [00:09:16] Speaker B: A temple in Shiloh before the temple in Jerusalem. And Eli was the mentor to Samuel the prophet. Now, uh, the book of Shoftim Judges. [00:09:34] Speaker C: Ends with the death of Eli, whose. [00:09:38] Speaker B: Children were not that righteous. So he never passed on his position to his kids. But Samuel becomes the successor to Eli. Now, uh, Samuel begins a brand new era. [00:09:55] Speaker C: Samuel is the one who anoints the. [00:09:58] Speaker B: King Saul, which we talked about a little bit earlier. [00:10:02] Speaker C: Saul is the first king in Israel. He doesn't do so well. So David is anointed in his stead, or all of these. The whole life of David is recorded in Samuel 1 and Samuel 2. [00:10:17] Speaker B: By the way, in the beginning, there was no such thing as 1 and 2. It was just Samuel. The Christian theologians divided it into Samuel 1 and Samuel 2. For the purpose of debate. In fact, they were the ones who put in the chapters that we use till today. Because we were impacted in the Middle Ages by our forced dialogues with Christian theologians. And in order to be able to reference in a way that was kind of uniform, we ended up accepting their divisions. There's a famous story that, um, a group of Americans were on a tour to Israel, and Israeli tour guide was taking them around, and he passes by this mountain and he says, well, there's Samuel the prophet's grave. So one of them perked up. He says, what are you talking about? Another tour guide told us that Samuel the prophet's buried in the other end of the country. [00:11:13] Speaker C: So he said, that's no problem. [00:11:14] Speaker B: That's Samuel 1, this is Samuel 2. [00:11:18] Speaker C: So basically, the Book of Samuel, um, takes us to the end, to the death, to the passing of King David. The Book of Kings, also Kings 1 and Kings 2. That takes us from Solomon's reign all. [00:11:36] Speaker B: The way to the destruction of the first temple, a total of 900 years. So the Book of Samuel and the Kings spans a period of time of around 500 years. And so the prophets include both an historical and religious narrative of those times. [00:12:05] Speaker C: What's the religious narrative that is provided by number 10, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the 12 prophets, who include those prophets that. [00:12:14] Speaker B: Are listed in your handout. [00:12:16] Speaker C: All of these prophets were the religious conscience, the religious leaders during the period of the Kings, the that are discussed in the Book of Kings. So basically, it's important to understand this. People get a little confused because Isaiah is a book of the prophets, but so is Kings a book of the prophets. But Isaiah and the Book of Kings could be talking about the same period of time. The Kings is the historical narrative of that time. And Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah are the prophets who preached, who taught, who admonished the people during the times of the kings that are enumerated in the Book of Kings. So basically, um, three, four of the books of kings overlap. Ah, three of the books of the prophets overlap with other books in the. [00:13:14] Speaker B: Same category of, um, writings. And they're all called the written Torah. [00:13:21] Speaker C: Because they were written, they were passed down in a written form, and they have the sanctity and the authority of the written tradition. [00:13:33] Speaker B: The third category of the Tanakh is the Ketuvim, which is the writings. [00:13:41] Speaker C: The writings would include Psalms, as you see in your list, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentation, Ecclesiastics, Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemia and Chronicles. Those are considered to be the writings, and they are um, not necessarily written in historical sequence. [00:14:06] Speaker B: They're just books of wisdom, books of teachings. In fact, Solomon wrote Song of Songs in ecclesiastics, Jeremiah wrote lamentations. [00:14:16] Speaker C: Esther wrote the Book of Esther, Daniel. [00:14:18] Speaker B: Wrote the Book of Daniel. [00:14:19] Speaker C: But they were never intended to be historically in sequence. [00:14:25] Speaker B: They were just books of, uh, God, of writings. So, um, in addition to, uh, the 24 books of the Torah, we have what we call an oral tradition. [00:14:41] Speaker C: In Hebrew, it's called Torah Sheba alpeh, the Torah that comes by heart. And this is very, uh, commonly thought. [00:14:52] Speaker B: To be the Rabbinic law, but it's not at all Rabbinic. The Rabbinic law is a component of, of the oral tradition, but it's not really the oral tradition. The oral tradition was. [00:15:12] Speaker C: Laws, interpretation handed. [00:15:17] Speaker B: Down by God to Moses. In other words, it has the same authoritative stature as the written law. It just was not written. It was handed down from generation to generation. [00:15:31] Speaker C: And it is called halakha le moshe misinai, a law from Moses on Sinai passed down. Let me, allow me to give you some examples of an oral tradition interpretation or elucidation of a written law. And so basically, the Torah is very concise, very abbreviated. [00:15:57] Speaker B: We would never know how to live. [00:15:59] Speaker C: Jewishly if we only had the written law. We would not. We would be lost. For example, common. A common example is in the first verse of Shema. We have two mitzvahs, two very well known mitzvot. You shall bind them for a sign upon your hand and for frontlets between your eyes. And that is the origin for the tefillin, for those boxes with the parchments inside straps. Wrap it around seven times, put it on your forehead, make sure it doesn't fall down to your nose. We had a problem this morning, but my friends, please explain to me where you find in the Torah that binding me upon your arm is black boxes. [00:16:49] Speaker B: God doesn't say anywhere in the Torah that you have to put black boxes on your, on your hand. Maybe it means you should take a piece of paper and bind God on your hand as a piece of paper or as a parchment seven times. Where does that come from? So this is not rabbinic. The Tefillin is not a Rabbinic mitzvah. It's a, it's a Torah mitzvah. [00:17:13] Speaker C: Uh, how do we know what hashem means? What God means when he says, bind me for a sign upon your hand? God said to Moses, tell the Jewish people that when I say, bind me for a sign upon your hands, I mean parchments with the Shema written On them, rolled up in a special certain way, inserted into leather boxes. The leather boxes have to be black, by the way, that's biblical, because if. [00:17:39] Speaker B: They'Re rubbed out, it's not good, it's not kosher. [00:17:43] Speaker C: And maybe some of the other aspects of tefillin, there's some room for debate because they were not clearly stated. And that is what we call an example of the oral tradition. So another example of this is the mezuzah, right? Everybody has Reform, conservative, Orthodox, everybody has something, many, not everybody, but many have something on their door. [00:18:11] Speaker B: Even if it's just a case, where does it come from? It says, write me on your doorposts and upon your gates, write me, but doesn't say anything about a parchment. [00:18:22] Speaker C: It doesn't say anything about the Shema and the Vahayim Shamoah. It doesn't say anything about placing it, nailing it on the door for all we care. It could be carving God's name on the doorpost in the wood. [00:18:37] Speaker B: How do we know that it means a mezuzah? Again, it's the oral tradition. Another very important and well known realm. [00:18:46] Speaker C: Shabbat. God says, rest on Shabbat you shall do no work. [00:18:52] Speaker B: What does that mean, rest on Shabbos? Does God get tired? Did he get exhausted? Is that why we have to rest? Because God rested? Because he got tired? So we should rest and not exert ourselves? Of course, that's ludicrous to say that God got tired. So what does God mean by rest? So here's where the oral tradition, it's not rabbinic. This is where the oral tradition explains that rest on, um, Shabbos means to refrain from doing something that God refrained from doing. What did God refrain from doing? Creating. God refrained from creating, from changing things from their natural state to their, you know, additional state that we do when we change things. So any creative type of activity is forbidden on Shabbat. But how do we get parameters for that? So the oral tradition brings the parameters that if you take a look in the Torah, every time the Torah says. [00:20:02] Speaker C: Build a synagogue or build a sanctuary. And the Torah talks about building the sanctuary many, many, many times, every time, without fail, out of context, and many, many times over. The Torah says, and you shall keep my Sabbath, build a sanctuary. [00:20:22] Speaker B: Keep the Sabbath. What's the relevance to one, to the other? Doesn't seem to be any relevance. God said already to keep the Sabbath and the Ten Commandments. Why is he repeating it again and again? And our sages explain that what God is saying is that any type of work that was involved in building the sanctuary you should not do on the Sabbath. And the. And the Rabbis identified again, Halachalamoshem y Sinai, 39 categories of work that were employed in building the temple. And these works, these types of work, we should not do on Shabbat. [00:21:03] Speaker C: And it really, at first glance, makes no sense. [00:21:06] Speaker B: I can't write on Shabbat. That's not a lot of work. But because they used to write on the beams to match one beam to the other, I can't plant on Shabbat because they used herbage to, uh, dye the curtains. I can't sew on Shabbat. I can't cook on Shabbat. [00:21:23] Speaker C: I can't use fire on Shabbat. I can't, um, sort things out on Shabbat. There are many, many different. And I can give you a whole class just going through, without getting into details, the 39 categories of work. [00:21:37] Speaker B: But that's. We're not going to do that right now. [00:21:41] Speaker C: So the oral tradition tells us there are 39 categories of work. The rabbinic tradition, and I'm going to get to this a little bit later in the Talmud, in the Mishnah, they might discuss if a modern type of activity fits the ancient criteria or the original criteria of not writing, or how many letters do you have to write. [00:22:05] Speaker B: In order to violate this commandment? [00:22:08] Speaker C: How many seeds do you have to. [00:22:10] Speaker B: Plant in the ground? [00:22:11] Speaker C: Or let's say you were drinking a glass of water in the summer on your porch, uh, and you didn't want the rest of it, so you threw it out on the grass. [00:22:22] Speaker B: Like, you wouldn't think about that at all. But that might be a prohibition of planting, because when you throw water on the grass, you're causing the grass to grow a little bit more. So nobody thinks about those things. But those are the kind of things that you might find in the Talmud. So the question is, why do we need an oral tradition? In fact, intuitively, we would consider the, uh, written manner a more accurate way to convey and transmit information. [00:23:01] Speaker C: Because we all know the stories of the broken telephone, which we can play in this room, and it might not even be the same. So why is God trusting an oral tradition with such important information? [00:23:15] Speaker B: Got you write it all down. So it'll be a little longer. Take us five years to finish. And actually, the written word is the least accurate way to, to convey a message. If you don't have a oral tradition that, uh, accompanies it. Because when you write something down, it is the beginning of confusion because when you write a paragraph, you can easily misinterpret it, you can easily read it a number of different ways. Give you an example. What would be the most clear, uh, unambiguous statement of Jewish tradition? What is the one liner that comes to mind when you say, what is the essence of Jewish tradition? Huh? Uh, I am you. God is close. [00:24:19] Speaker C: Shema Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokenu Hashem uh echad the absolute unity of God. So many of our brethren were slaughtered with these words on their mouths because they didn't want to convert to Christianity. [00:24:37] Speaker B: Which doesn't believe in one God. But Maimonides brings this down in his works. He says that is the very verse that Christians use to support the Trinity. Amazing. And how do they do that? [00:24:58] Speaker C: Shema Yisrael Hashem 1 Elokenu 2 Hashem 3 Echo. They're all 1. Three equals one. God could have written it in a different way if he wanted to actually only convey the unity of God. So they, and they believe this, that. [00:25:17] Speaker B: Our statement of the unity of hashem is actually conveying the three equals one idea. So as they say in Yiddish, how do we get away from this? We know what God means when he says hero is of the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And Rashi says it on the spot. The Lord that is only our God who ultimately will become one God for the entire world. That's the way we see it. We understand it from the oral tradition. Now I'm going to give you a more modern example of how it's easy to um, confuse the written word. Please take a look at the last. [00:26:03] Speaker C: Page of your handout and don't pay. [00:26:06] Speaker B: Any attention to the first line, okay? I don't want anybody getting upset yet. [00:26:17] Speaker C: So look at the second line. The second line you might recognize as a second amendment which is the right to bear arms. And I'm from Texas, so we were very, you know, tough on that one. So this is the language. A, uh, well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. So believe it or not, both camps, the anti gun camp and the pro gun camp, the nra, they both look at this second amendment language and they both argue this particular paragraph according to their opinions. So those who say that there is no mandate to bear arms from this will simply, uh, understand this paragraph that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is a, referencing the militia, referencing the government sanctioned military. Because look at what it's talking about a well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state and the right of those people to bear arms to protect the rest of the people. [00:27:37] Speaker B: But in the name of the government, no mandate for private citizens to carry arms. Of course the pro gun lobby will say no. This is talking about two different things. [00:27:51] Speaker C: It's the right, a well regulated militia is important, but the right of the people to keep and bear arms shifts already to the private sector and is not a commentary on the first verse, but is a verse that needs to be or a sentence in this case that needs to be understood on its own. And they believe that with all their heart and soul and will rally and will organize and will support politicians who agree with them. And this is really the debate in. [00:28:23] Speaker B: The country that we are always hearing. [00:28:26] Speaker C: It's about how you interpret these words. I'm sure that the ones who wrote these words thought they were being very clear. [00:28:33] Speaker B: And yet look at where we're at with just the written tradition. If only Benjamin Franklin would have given us an oral law, then we wouldn't. [00:28:42] Speaker C: Have any arguments today. [00:28:44] Speaker B: But with just the written word, actually. [00:28:47] Speaker C: There'S more room for confusion than having. [00:28:51] Speaker B: A written and an oral tradition passed on with it. Another reason why the oral tradition is important is, um, excuse me. [00:29:06] Speaker C: Is the human element. [00:29:11] Speaker B: That God. [00:29:14] Speaker C: Didn'T want to. [00:29:16] Speaker B: Talk to us top down, he didn't want us to relate only to a Torah that comes from him. He wanted to bring us into the picture, involve us as human beings and create a synthesis between the human and the divine. And so when God puts something into an oral form, and now we have to use our memories and our minds. [00:29:48] Speaker C: To commit that to memory, passing it down from child to child, if you have it all in the book. So there's no real imperative to learn it and study it. You can just leave it in the bookshelf until you need it, till you have to reference it. But in those days when they had to pass it down from generation to generation, the entire people were engaged in the process of transmission of law because. [00:30:14] Speaker B: They had to commit it to memory. [00:30:18] Speaker C: And another component of the oral tradition is they had to bring out and contemporize the Torah and address the Torah to modern type of situations. Which is the second part of the. [00:30:29] Speaker B: Oral tradition that we're going to discuss in just a moment. [00:30:33] Speaker C: So it really, it gives us clarity and it involves us. [00:30:41] Speaker B: And it allows, uh, think of the Torah as this piece of paper, it's notes. I don't have my whole presentation written here, I have just key points, right? And the rest I'm just referring to or filling in. So the Torah is like the notes for a long speech. And these notes in the Torah reference every word, every sentence, references another whole body of law. That is in the oral tradition. [00:31:11] Speaker C: But, but then we bring it back to how do we remember the points of the oral tradition? We have them rooted in words and sentences in the Torah. So I'll give you an example. Very, very well known realm of kashrut. [00:31:25] Speaker B: Is, um, do not mix, uh, meat and milk. No cheeseburgers, no mixing, and minimum. How do we know in Allah mix means milk is, um. [00:31:38] Speaker C: Because it says in the Torah, lo sevashel gedi bachalevimo. Do not cook a kid in its mother's milk. [00:31:46] Speaker B: That's what it says in the Torah. [00:31:48] Speaker C: So don't cook a meat in its mother's milk actually means not only are, uh, you not allowed to eat it. [00:31:55] Speaker B: But you're not even allowed to cook it. That's interesting because it doesn't say you're not allowed to cook a pig. [00:32:02] Speaker C: Go ahead, cook as much ham as you want, sell it, earn some money. [00:32:09] Speaker B: Just don't eat it as far as the Torah is concerned. [00:32:13] Speaker C: But when it comes to meat and milk, it's unique. Meat and milk, you're not even allowed to cook. [00:32:19] Speaker B: That's number one. [00:32:20] Speaker C: So the rabbis will ask, why does the Torah convey such a straightforward halacha tradition in such a convoluted way? Because it's not only the goat, it's any animal. It's not only the mother's milk, it's any milk. It's not only cooking, it's even eating. So why doesn't it just say it that way? [00:32:44] Speaker B: So that's the way the Torah works. It gives us notes. So the rabbis derive a goat and any other kosher animal. [00:32:54] Speaker C: That means to say if the animal is not kosher, there's no prohibition. [00:32:57] Speaker B: You have the other issues of not a kosher meat, but you're not violating meat and milk together. If it's not a kosher animal, mother's milk. [00:33:05] Speaker C: We learn from this that the animal has to be viable to the point where it can be a mother. If the animal is not viable, if the animal is sick or dying or dead, the milk that is found in the udders of a dead cow do not carry the prohibition of mixing that milk with meat. [00:33:28] Speaker B: Uh, don't try it because it's very unusual. And there's other prohibitions against it, but biblically, there would not be a prohibition. [00:33:37] Speaker C: And so it's just an example of. [00:33:39] Speaker B: How you can take one little sentence and many, many laws emanate from that sentence. Then, by the way, I'm sure many of you have gone to synagogue, many of you have gone to bar mitzvahs. And the bar mitzvah boy has to practice really, really hard to read the Torah, because in the Torah, there are no vowels, right? Just the words. [00:34:04] Speaker C: And in order to know how to vowelize it. [00:34:07] Speaker B: But even more than that, in order to know how to sing it, the. [00:34:13] Speaker C: Bar Mitzvah boy and all the other. [00:34:16] Speaker B: Rabbis who read the Torah on a. [00:34:18] Speaker C: Weekly basis have to memorize the cantillation notes. It's called the trop. These little notes in the Chumash, the. [00:34:26] Speaker B: Little lines and little squares and little. [00:34:28] Speaker C: Right angles and diamonds on top of all, each one of these signs represents another tune. And so since they're not in the. [00:34:39] Speaker B: Torah, it takes a lot of work and a lot of practice to memorize that stuff. But the cantillations serve more than just to tell us what tune. It's also the grammar. It's also the punctuations, because depending on how you sing it, that's how you group words. So the cantillation is actually the commas. And it makes a huge difference as to where you put the commas. Now, I want you to go back to the last page, if you're still on it. That's good. And go to the top line. And this is a statement that reads as, woman without her man is nothing. Woman without her, man is nothing. Now, that's a very sexist thing to say. Okay? But you can read it differently, right? Did you figure that out? [00:35:36] Speaker C: Woman. Woman without her, man is nothing. Right? You got it? But almost. Woman without her comma, man is nothing. Now, here you have one sentence. It could have two different opposite meanings. If you put the comma after man, then it means woman without her, man is nothing. But if you put the comma after. [00:36:04] Speaker B: The word her, it's woman without her, man is nothing. [00:36:11] Speaker C: Huh? [00:36:11] Speaker B: Huh? [00:36:12] Speaker C: It's a given. [00:36:16] Speaker B: So commas are very important. [00:36:20] Speaker C: That. Very well. So that's just another example of why. [00:36:26] Speaker B: We need the oral tradition to tell us where to put the commas. [00:36:31] Speaker C: The cantilation is oral, right? The cantilation was not written in the Torah. The cantilation is something that came to us orally. [00:36:43] Speaker B: It's pre. Talmud. [00:36:45] Speaker C: Okay, so now let's move on for a moment. And this. So now that we've established the existence of the oral tradition, let's talk a little bit about the oral tradition itself and when it became written, because the oral tradition was handed down from generation to generation. And you have in your handouts, um, 40 generations from Moshe to Ravashi. And then you have on another page the timeline of the written and the oral Torah. And so I'll let you go through these on your own in, you know, after the class. But for now, basically, for many generations, the Torah was oral. And then in around 260 BCE. [00:37:41] Speaker B: Around. [00:37:41] Speaker C: 260 BCE. [00:37:44] Speaker B: The rabbis of the time sensed that troubling times are ahead and persecution started to take place. And the rabbis with their foresight realized that the Jewish people are not going to be in one spot for that many long, that, uh, many more years. And so Judah the Prince, he authorized the writing and transcription of the oral tradition all the way up until that time. And in addition, now we're going to talk about the additional component, the second level of the oral tradition, which is. [00:38:29] Speaker C: Rabbinic law, the Rabbinic tradition. Some of these are rabbinic, um, explanations. [00:38:41] Speaker B: Of how to apply oral tradition. And some of these are new enactments that didn't exist before at all. [00:38:56] Speaker C: New fences around the Torah. Like, for example, it doesn't say anywhere in the Torah or in the Oral Torah, in terms of handed down from Moses, from God to Moses, that you're not allowed to touch money or a pencil on Shabbat. [00:39:15] Speaker B: It's called mukta, muktah, don't touch it. It's muqta, the kids, um, really into that. You're not allowed to touch money, you're not allowed to touch candles, you're not. [00:39:23] Speaker C: Allowed to touch things that are related to prohibitions. You're not even allowed to touch them. [00:39:29] Speaker B: And why are you not allowed to touch them? Because if you are allowed to touch them, you might use them. [00:39:36] Speaker C: If you're allowed to touch a pencil, you might write. But that is clearly a rabbinic tradition and not in any way related or even is there a claim that this is a Torah law. And by the way, addressing the other. [00:39:54] Speaker B: Gentleman'S, um, question earlier, that or I. [00:39:58] Speaker C: Think you mentioned this, you're not allowed to add or subtract, you're not allowed to add and claim that it's a biblical law, but you're allowed to add. [00:40:08] Speaker B: And put it in its proper context. [00:40:10] Speaker C: So the rabbis added fences, but they're clearly fences and never were claimed to be Torah law. And therefore they have a different level of authority of, of not seriousness, but. [00:40:27] Speaker B: They have different categorical rules that go along with them. So how long you have to wait is a good example. Between meat and milk. [00:40:34] Speaker C: You know that in Holland they only wait an hour, and in other communities they only wait three hours and you guys eat four. So there's anywhere between one and six, depending on what part of the world you come from, because that is up for differences. And now we're going to get into. [00:40:49] Speaker B: A very important area. If it's all coming from God, how come there are so many arguments? It reminds you of a story where a rabbi was once preparing a sermon for Yom Kippur. And this kid walks into his office, he says, rabbi says. Rabbi says, dad, where do you get all the stuff that you are sharing on your sermon? So he says, God tells me what to do, what to say. So the kid looks over at the paper, he says, what are all those things crossed out? [00:41:25] Speaker C: And so if God tells us what's. [00:41:27] Speaker B: Going on, where are the arguments? In fact, the, uh, Torah, the Talmud, is filled with arguments. It's known to be a body of law that is filled with arguments. Uh, however, there are more areas of agreement than arguments in the Talmud. It's just that the arguments get more press. And if you're not arguing, then there's not a lot to discuss. But nobody argues, for example, that you're not allowed to plant on Shabbat. Nobody argues about that. They argue about what's considered planting. [00:42:10] Speaker C: Nobody argues that you have to blow the shofar on Rosh Hashanah. What they argue about is how many blasts do you have to blow. Nobody argues that, um, you have to eat matzah on Passover. They argue about how much do you have to eat in order to fulfill your requirement. [00:42:31] Speaker B: And it's very interesting. Nobody. There's this incredible verse in the Torah that is borders on barbaric. It's an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Famous verse. And you know what? In the entire Talmud, with all its arguments, there's not one rabbi who says that it means literal. It's compensation, not literal. The Muslims take it literally, but they don't have the benefit of the oral tradition. The oral tradition dictated that this is not to be taken literal. Now, why is it written that way? Okay, there's difference. You go study the Talmud, you'll find out why it's written that way. But the point here is that don't. [00:43:25] Speaker C: You think there would have been at least one rabbi who would disagree, one dissenting opinion, not one dissenting opinion as. [00:43:36] Speaker B: To say that an eye for an eye is a literal reed. [00:43:45] Speaker C: And so. [00:43:47] Speaker B: There are so many areas of agreement. And there's another aspect that I think needs clarity. [00:43:55] Speaker C: So many times we hear from modern. [00:43:58] Speaker B: Contemporary rabbinic authorities that, listen, the rabbis argued, the rabbis came and changed this or that or the other. So why can't Reform Conservative change what's going on in the Torah as well? And it's really not understanding and appreciating the arguments and the structure of the oral tradition. The oral tradition does not change one iota from the authority of the written tradition. The written tradition and the oral law that we talked about earlier as coming from Moshe, Everyone agrees with that, with those principles. [00:44:46] Speaker C: It's again, how we apply the principles. [00:44:49] Speaker B: That there may be some disagreement. There's really an incredible respect, which is really different in the secular world. In secular academia, the, uh, more modern you are, the more advanced you are. And you look like if you take a, uh, look at Alexander Graham Bell, he wouldn't know how to work a modern telephone system, but he invented the telephone. [00:45:17] Speaker C: But we look back at him and. [00:45:18] Speaker B: Think, yeah, he invented the telephone, but he was pretty primitive. [00:45:21] Speaker C: We're way more advanced in that realm of technology, and likewise with every other realm. [00:45:26] Speaker B: But in Judaism, it works just the opposite. The older you are, the closer you are to a tradition, the more true reading you have of the Torah. And so there's a general rule that one generation of rabbis cannot disagree with. [00:45:48] Speaker C: An earlier generation of rabbis unless they have someone in the earlier generation that agrees with them. So there's an incredible respect. So when you accept these principles, then you're working, so to speak, in your. [00:46:03] Speaker B: Realm, in the modern times, so to speak. And now we will address the relevancy of how we bring Torah forward into our age. And we have to remember not to get caught up in terminology. So the Torah was written in the age of Sinai, right? So they had wagons and they had oxen, right? But so the Torah talks about one ox goring another ox. And you lengthen, you roll your eyes, and you're thinking, what relevance does that have now? But you know what? Don't get caught up in the oxen. Remember the principle. The principle is, if you have something that belongs to you, you have a. [00:46:59] Speaker C: Responsibility to make sure that it doesn't hurt or damage somebody else's property or you. So the same principles apply if you run your car into somebody's fence or if there's an accident. Different principles. There's a principle that if you light a fire in your yard and it spreads, you're responsible if you have a pet and you Let that pet out and you don't put it on a leash and it goes and it damages somebody else's house or probably property or person, you're responsible. [00:47:33] Speaker B: So the principles of the laws are very relevant. It's just the environment and atmosphere that changes. [00:47:42] Speaker C: But we're still using the ancient principles of the Torah. So basically the Talmud is. [00:47:51] Speaker B: Um. [00:47:52] Speaker C: A synthesis of. [00:47:57] Speaker B: Immutable, consistent principles with a. [00:48:02] Speaker C: Dynamic process to apply these age old. [00:48:07] Speaker B: Principles into current modern circumstances and situations. Allow me to give you an example. [00:48:15] Speaker C: Of how we can kind of look at Talmudic discussion that existed 2000 years ago and have it, have some bearing on modern dilemmas. And that's really the role of a. [00:48:29] Speaker B: Rabbi in today's day and age. [00:48:31] Speaker C: He not only has to be, uh. [00:48:34] Speaker B: Clear and fluent in the halachic principles, he also has to know how a refrigerator works. [00:48:42] Speaker C: In order to understand the dynamics of. [00:48:45] Speaker B: An air conditioner or refrigerator. [00:48:46] Speaker C: You'll know if you're allowed to open. [00:48:48] Speaker B: It on the Sabbath or not. What is, um, we have Sabbath elevators in the hotel, right? [00:48:55] Speaker C: How does that work? [00:48:56] Speaker B: Because the rabbis know the mechanics of the electronics of an elevator. [00:49:04] Speaker C: And if elevators are set up in one way, it would violate the Sabbath if you walked into one of them. If they're set up a different way. [00:49:10] Speaker B: Then it won't violate it. [00:49:13] Speaker C: So if the elevator for example, is designed to stop on every floor, regardless of your pressing any buttons, and it's going up and down anyway, you might. [00:49:22] Speaker B: Be able to get on it and take a ride. [00:49:25] Speaker C: But if you have to press the button to get there, or if, uh, it's not going to stop on the floor that nobody programs it to start. [00:49:35] Speaker B: On and it's stopping for you, then you might have an issue with that. I'm just going to give you an example, but let me give you, let me share with you a, ah, really fascinating situation. In today's day and age we have, um, the realm of surrogate motherhood. Okay. If, God forbid, you're not able to have any children. So basically, um, you bring an egg and a sperm together from parents, let's say, and you implant it in a mother who is donating her womb for the gestation of this child and will give birth to the child, the question is, who is the mother? That's a very relevant question. Because if the mother, if motherhood is determined by the biological material in terms of where that comes from, then the mother is the donor of the, of the egg. But if the mother is determined by gestation and birth, then the mother is the surrogate. So what would the impact would be is, can the child marry a sibling of one of those women from another situation? Is it incest? Who's considered the mother? Who's the real siblings of this child? And that's a real issue halachically, um, socially. And furthermore, if one of the mothers was Jewish and the other one was not. So does this child need a conversion? Depending on how you determine what is the source or what determines motherhood, is it the birth or the gestation? And the Talmud discusses different sides of this, or I'm sorry, contemporary rabbis will bring different discussions in the Talmud that you might not think have any relevance to the situation and try to prove, you know, how it goes. So there's a. There's a Talmudic discussion in, uh, the tractate of Yuma, and it talks about two, uh, cows. One of them is pregnant, the other one is not. And a farmer. By the way, this case never happened and never can happen. It's a hypothetical case like Tostfo says. And perhaps the only reason that the. [00:52:16] Speaker C: Tomba discusses this case is for us. [00:52:18] Speaker B: To be able to have a basis for this discussion. So the Talmud says that if the farmer connected the two uteruses and the baby, and the calf was born from one and went straight into the other. [00:52:32] Speaker C: And then cow number B gave birth to the calf. [00:52:36] Speaker B: So the question is, according to Jewish law, the firstborn of every animal belongs to God. So whose firstborn is this? Is this the firstborn of cow number A, or is it firstborn of cow number B? [00:52:51] Speaker C: Now, cow number B did not conceive. [00:52:52] Speaker B: The baby, but cow number B gave birth to the baby. So this, in essence, would be the. [00:52:57] Speaker C: Same discussion of surrogate motherhood. Do we consider the birth as a determining factor, or do we consider, um. [00:53:08] Speaker B: The conception as a determining factor? And the bottom line is that there doesn't exist a rabbi today that will say with clarity which one it is. You have no idea. There are ways. There are Talmudic passages that would lean one way, Talmudic passages that would lean another way. And therefore, there's still that open question. And therefore, the way you would handle this practically is you would say both m are considered the mother, and you have to make provisions to fill in whatever, um, issue needs to be filled. In other words, the child would not be allowed to marry either set of siblings, and you would probably have to do a conversion just in case. So that's, you know, and there's a number of other cases, but I think we're running out of time. So Um, I will wish you good Shabbos. I also, uh, just. [00:54:05] Speaker C: Just as a concluding remark, the study. [00:54:08] Speaker B: Of Torah in all its facets is, as I mentioned earlier, God's way of saying he really cares and is giving us his undivided attention. And so, study Torah. And the more Torah we study, the closer, of course, we get to the coming of our righteous Mashiach Tzitkeinu. And, um, may it come speedily in our day. And thank you so much. [00:54:29] Speaker A: That's all for today. Thanks for listening to Inside the Jewish Mind, a JLI podcast. Be sure to join us every week for fresh insights and timeless Jewish ideas. As always, stay curious, keep learning, and we'll see you next time.