Did Judaism Get It Right? - Rabbi Benzion Klatzko - Library of Torah Thought

[Music] hello everyone last class we spoke about the the argument for a creator versus randomness and we really went heavily into the sciences and we are now moving on to the question of religion now we started with god because without god religion would be meaningless honestly meaningless uh i i once heard a uh a sort of a very liberal rabbi saying well i don't know if you know if the ten plagues ever happened or the jews ever split the sea but even so the morals the lessons it teaches us are really valuable i was in l.a and this rabbi said this and like what are you talking about if it didn't happen then the torah made it up so then the torah can't be trusted because when you make up myths when you make up legends and they didn't happen so then you lose your reliability you lose your credibility so first there's god create creator and then we're up to religion now what i'm going to do this is going to be a very sort of academic presentation so follow it's not going to be difficult to follow but there are steps so step number one uh if there is religion remember we said last week either believer agnostic or atheist we said atheist is the non-logical choice because if you're an atheist it means you know how to prove the exist the lack of existence of something and that's impossible agnostic means i'm not sure it's proven and a believer said the burden of proof has been met according to my standards and therefore i believe and that's as valid as dating is like the burden of proof that this person would be a good wife for me would be a good husband i don't know for sure but the burden of proof i dated enough i've seen them enough i'm ready to make my move that's what a believer says okay so once you believe in a creator versus chaos so now we have to approach it with an interesting exercise and the exercise is imagine you were a free agent you know basketball baseball they're free agents different teams can bid on their services imagine you're the free agent and the teams that are bidding for your services are the different religions out there okay it's just a thought exercise imagine you had not been born jewish you just came down from wherever from mars you know the humans on mars you came back down you came down and you're convinced that the world is created and now you want to say okay so i want to get to know this creator how do i do that so if i'm a free agent i am going to look at all the religions of the world and there they're about 2 000 of them okay many religions and i want to figure out so which one should i subscribe to and that's where we're up to in this talk which one i'm a free agent which one now all religions in the world are divided into two categories there is uh philosophical religions and historical religions it's good to know that philosophical religions don't make a claim to a historical truth they're just philosophies there's a philosophy about our place in the cosmos our our connection to earth our connection to each other their philosophies and some of those philosophies may speak to us we may meditate on them they may ring true to us but there's no way of knowing they're a philosophy and taoism a great example really buddhism is another example it's literally a philosophy you you have sarihur he sits underneath a tree and uh and and he after seven days he's enlightened and he goes out there and he spreads his enlightenment to the world did anything happen i don't know it's a philosophy now philosophies are okay like we all have our philosophies in life however when i have a philosophy about something it may speak to me today but ten years from now it doesn't speak to me like right now where i am uh imagine a student and he's a backpacker and he's backpacking across europe and then he ends up in asia and he ends up in tibet that ends up in ashram and he hears his philosophy on life and he's feeling good he's meditating he's feeling tingly he's feeling connected maybe in 10 years from now when he's got a family and kids the philosophy's not going to do it for them the danger of a philosophy is it doesn't have a truth to lean back on so if i am looking for truth in religion all philosophical religions are always come in second place because there's no way of knowing if it's true now what's the other category how would i know that that's true so the other category of religions are called historical religions and those religions work like this every one of them makes a claim now they all start off with four steps and we're gonna get to the claim claim is gonna be step four so listen carefully every every historical religion has four steps step number one that we are created we're not a random accident we're a product of creation that's step number one step number two we're created by a creator it makes a lot of sense if we're created then something had to do with the creation that they're creating so we're created by creator step number three were created by creator for a purpose we weren't created for no purpose we weren't created just on a whim there was some purposefulness there was some goal that the creator had in mind when the creator created and by the way that is it's a logical step because everything that we at least we know it could be would say the deity works differently but everything that we understand about the creative process is that creativeness usually comes from someone or something trying to accomplish something so even if you for example take a jackson pollock painting which it just looks like spritzes on the canvas if you ask me to say oh wow my kid can do that right why is that worth you know 40 million dollars no your kid can't do it there's something going on here he has a purpose whether it's rage or love or the blues there's something there when i see something there's a purpose so every religion islam christianity mormons you name it everyone agrees to the first three steps that we just mentioned now come step number four and here's where the whole thing falls apart step number four is we're created by a creator for a purpose and at some point in time the creator told the creations what that purpose is that's the number four at some point in time the purpose was told now by the way that's also a logical step because when something is for example gifted to someone else usually if the thing is a difficult thing to understand you'll explain exactly what the purpose is so for example if i am going to donate a computer to sort of a a more primitive country in some backwater place in in africa and they've never seen a computer i'm not just gonna say here you go guys enjoy i'll say no you know what this can do this can help you could connect you to the internet this can actually figure out how many people you have it could take consensus there's a lot of things that it could do and the the creator or the gifter will tell the creations or the bene the people who are benefiting what the creation is all about and that's step number four all religions agree with the first three all historical religions agree with the first three and the step four of historical religions that's where it all blows apart every religion that differs with every other religion is differing on the step four and you my dear friends who are watching today the free agents that you are all you have to do is figure out whether the step four is plausible or probably not plausible that's all you need to do is the step four likely or does are there other explanations for the step four if the step four is not so likely the religion falls apart it falls apart and i don't have to read their holy books and i don't have to practice their holy customs all i need to do people say oh rabbi how am i ever going to know what the correct religion is after all there are so many out there i think i'm gonna spend all my life trying and testing i say no you don't need to not necessary look if it's philosophy relegate it there's no way to prove it even if i'm even if i built a time machine that i just said before you can't build even if i did and i went back i would see nothing in a historical religion if i went back in the time machine i would actually see the step four at what point did the creator tell the creations what it's all about there was an incident that's why they called historical they're called historical religions because there's an incident that took place that told the creations what the creator is there was a handoff and that's the step four and the question is is the handoff uh is it convincing or is it not so convincing if it's not convincing i don't need to read the holy books i don't need to there's nothing to see if i'm not convinced and by the way the fact that something happened thousands of years ago makes it worse not better because people are more primitive then right they don't understand how science works so i'm gonna look at the step four so what we need to do is something that can be viewed as as not politically correct so don't view it that way this is a very very important exercise that we need to do because i'm giving you a tool that you're going to give over to your friends and that you're going to give over to your kids my kids all know this i'm giving you the tool of how to analyze the step four of each religion and i'm not gonna i'll just take a few of the more popular ones and as free agents you and i will see whether uh whether the uh conclusion that they came to is one that is that mandatorily uh obligates us to say wow that's truth or whether there are other explanations let's take the mormon religion you're going to tell me whether you're convinced of the step four that's all you need to do so the step four in mormonism basic story uh there is a fellow he's joseph smith and he is at home he's uh he sees a great light an angel comes to his house angel's full of light and the angel says that he has a message from jesus that he is the last gospel and he's the this gospel is given over for from jesus to the american indians that came from the tribe of dan the israeli tribe and therefore he should go and spread the idea ideas of this last gospel that is being given over to joseph smith by the way that's in the 1800s 1830s 1840s so we're going back now about a little less than 200 years so where is that gospel that joseph smith that the angel angel moroni where is angel moroni telling to go he said go to uh go to mount kimora it's a mountain upstate new york and you're going to be able to dig up and you'll find a gold plate or gold plates and the gold plates are the solid gold they're going to be written in a form of ancient hieroglyphics and this um these ancient form hieroglyphics will be impossible for you to read but luckily says angel moroni where you dig up these gold plates there's also going to be something called a seer stone and that's your stone if you look through this here stone it will translate the words to you so joseph smith finally is convinced he goes to this mountain digs up the gold plates and the seer stone he he calls over a friend he says wow i just got the last gospels of jesus i'm going to read them to you you write it down but the the angel commanded me don't show these gold plates to anyone now let's show them to anyone so he takes a he takes like a basket and he puts these gold plates in it he covers himself over with a towel looks to the seer stones and he begins to dictate to this neighbor the new the last gospels of of jesus the neighbor comes home with all these papers that he we were just dictated to him he says it to his wife is wow our neighbor just came back with these gospels from angel moroni and his wife says blasphemy she takes the papers throws them into the fire he comes back to joseph smith and said i don't know how to tell you this but my wife burnt them up he said no worries we'll do it again no worries and as he's doing it again the dictation's coming out different than the first time it's not the same words so the the the neighbor who's dicta who's writing it down says this is different so so um joseph smith says well because your wife sinned so the words have reconfigured themselves anyways he ended up having to uh destroy the gold plate so uh he said his father's father's brother saw them if you look at the beginning of the book of mormon his mishpache saw them but no one else was allowed to see them and based on that the mormon religion came out now that's the step four so could it have happened perhaps could angel moroni whoever that is have come over to joseph smith and given him these things and given the gold plates that no one was allowed to see and he destroyed them beforehand maybe it's we it's it's one of the possibilities you and i as free agents we're not buying i i don't i don't see anything that corners me into believing it i didn't see the gold plates and even by the way even if i saw gold plates would i be convinced even if i saw gold plates with scribbles on them would that convince me that it was god and believe it or not i'm not even this is not even what we call bashing mormons because i'm going to be doing this to everyone everyone's fair game today uh all all i'm doing is i'm saying there's step four that revelation that handoff the handoff that the entire religion relies on for its truth is not um it it's not its veracity is not uh beyond reproach there are other possibilities even if i saw gold plates maybe uh gold plate gold exists writing exists even if there were gold plates maybe he wrote them it wouldn't prove it and therefore i'm not going to change my life based on this guy joseph as joseph smith saying that angel moroni came to him the step 4 is weak that's the point let's uh let's go to islam okay our our dear cousins our dear wonderful cousins okay islam what's the step for muhammad goes into a cave and in the cave angel gabriel appears to him and says this is the prophecy from god there were many prophets before you musa who's moshe ibrahim abram and you are the final prophet says uh angel gabriel go and spread my word okay and then that's it now that's step four that's a very easy to understand step four probably one of the easiest in all of religion uh did that happen maybe it's a possibility um am i for am i cornered into believing that this he was illiterate in his own words he was illiterate uh that this illiterate person was the the that angel gabriel appeared to him the way that he says it and from now on you have to eat halal meat and sharia law is in place i do am i convinced that he had a vision in a cave it's possible he did it's possible but again those same possibilities maybe he was delusional you know maybe he ate a spicy burrito and then fell asleep and had a funky dream you know maybe he smoked hashish i mean there's so many there are so many possibilities that i am not going to invest in my life because your step four is rife with question marks that's the step four grand total billion and a half muslims rely on the vision of a man in a cave that's the step four i'm not convinced is anyone here convinced if that happened today a guy came out of the cave and said wow angel angel kukariku came to me and said america has to start uh you know no more electricity are you is everyone gonna like turn off their computers you say angel cucarico like the fact that it happened the fact that it happened uh 1400 years ago doesn't make it any better okay so let's just put it aside now maybe there's nothing better out there maybe that's just how we have to leap maybe we have no choice but we're still looking at the step four let's take christianity because that's another big one and then we'll flip to judaism and then we're gonna have some sort of an eye-opening idea of what a step four is supposed to look like okay uh what's the step four in christianity now it's a strange thing because you know i grew up in i was born in cincinnati ohio grew up in cleveland ohio lived in l.a lived in new york and i am surrounded by christianness i'm surrounded uh and un unfortunately so is everyone that i know and then and we know so much about christianity you know if i've done this with my students and say okay so santa where does he live and we know where he lives and we know who works for him who works for santa and what's his wife's name and what's his mode of transportation and how does he enter our home and what does he know what kind of list does he make on and i like we know all this stuff it's just like bubbling in our heads but then if we were to ask okay so who who is moshe's brother and sister well we could be a little foggy about that but we know all about santa that's what it means to be literally surrounded in a christian culture that's where ashkenazi comes from by the way sfardim came as a result of opposing islam to offset islam and ashkenazi came as a as a as a way to offset christianity because it's it's everywhere it's everywhere wherever we go so what's their step forward interestingly enough christianity step four is among the weakest out there it's just gone it's like their step four is so non-uh conclusive uh and so non-convincing that um i'm gonna tell you something that'll blow you away blow you away in about 500 years 500 years there's no recorded case of an of a religious rabbi you know a rabbi was actually religious a knowledgeable rabbi ever converting to christianity 500 years you'll find people convert people don't don't know much so then they but once you know but there are many many documented cases of christian and priests converting to judaism including one who's a dear friend of mine in israel who is a priest in germany and he converted so what is it about their step four that's on shaky ground so my my goal here is not to get into all christianity uh there's a lot i have to say i give classes on this but let me just cut to the chase christianity today is not regular it's not the cr even even if jesus existed and it's very not clear that he did i know that may come as a surprise to you but there there's many many scholars who say that an actual person named jesus never existed he was an amalgamation mo most of the stories in the new testament about him are our stories from earlier books uh some taken from torah books you know the the king wanted to kill all the kids and therefore the baby had to be hidden outsmoshed that's exactly the same story as motion a lot of the stories are really just uh well-known stories uh from our earlier books but even let's say there was a man named jesus that existed although there's no archaeological evidence at all that jesus existed never there's never been found there have been some false leads but even if he did exist that he was a very insignificant person who later on was was was uh promoted but in his lifetime he was nothing today's christianity is called paulian christianity it's not it's not christianity the way early christianity was promoted there was a great battle between the early church fathers and a fellow by the name of paul or soul of tarsus and they totally disagreed with each other the early christians actually were regular religious jews they kept chavez they studied talmud they did everything we did except they also believed that jesus was uh was the messiah they didn't believe he was the son of god that came later later on there was a fellow by the name of of uh paul or soul of tarsus who never even met jesus he never even met jesus and yet he was so influential that he pretty much destroyed the regular christian church and all of christianity today comes from paul so paul is the great prophet of of jesus if you want to speak to me more about it i can speak at length about it if you want um to go online and just hear loads about it i'll give you the name of somebody who is the greatest world scholar on the subject jew christian alike there's nobody like him his name is tovia singer uh rabbi tovia singer and uh you will have the funnest time watch him debate online he's just gonna like it's just it's just fun anyhow today's christianity is paul paul and christianity and most of the books of the new testament were actually written by uh paul eight we know for sure and perhaps as many as 13. so if paul didn't meet jesus so how did paul know anything about jesus how is he giving over jesus word and law the answer is ready for this everyone he was walking to damascus and he saw a vision of a face with a crown of thorns meaning the step four of christianity is one man's vision walking through a desert he probably didn't wasn't hydrated properly and he had a mirage on all of christianity yes santa baby and easter bunnies and you know holy night right the whole thing is based on the vision of one man who was actually a known liar paul is a known liar he he he fabricated fabricated his his uh um his resume he said he was a student of rabbi yochanan he was never never stood there cannot like that's what he used to to prop himself up like just and that's all christianity pauline christian today the step four is one guy's vision on the road to damascus falls there's nothing there the emperor had has zero clothing okay now again this may sound like oh boy rabbi's bashing all the religions that's not politically correct no i'm a free agent i want to know it's true you know what sometimes when we try to figure out truth it it can um ruffle feathers but i think truth is is so important it's so so important um maimonides the man his name is rambam the rambam actually speaks about monotheistic religions like islam and christianity and he says they have a very important purpose in the world the world cannot be at its complete state unless uh the world believes in a single creator there's a really important reason for that monotheism equals ethical monotheism uh hard to get into that now but uh modern monotheistic religions by their very nature are going to be more humane because if there's one god then human beings become the purpose of creation and then it's on us to be moral but if there are many gods then the purpose of the world the universe is for the gods and human beings are glorified animals so it's a really important point that uh there are other monotheistic religions in the world however this point of finding truth and figuring out okay what step four pass the the test of logic is incredibly important and it's even more important today i'll just explain to you why because we are so outnumbered in this world and you know i'm a campus rabbi i was rabbi ucla for many years there is a very very very strong christian presence on campus and i've had students who really get confused they'll have campus crusades for christ they'll have um the missionaries on campus uh where when i used to set up shop in ucla there was a missionary who always used to plant himself right next to me and when i would say something he would try to pull my students away so in our generation more so than ever we have to walk with a little bit of a strut in our step and understand why do we believe what we believe versus the other options out there okay and i don't go around like wagging my finger at other religions but for myself and for my students i feel it's very important and i hope you appreciate how important it is to be able to know why you believe what you believe versus the other options out there okay now we are up to judaism what is judaism step four when the jewish people left egypt and we went to a mountain called mount sinai and we stood around the mountain and god spoke to who god spoke to the nation the entire nation that's the claim let's just hold on to the claim a moment the claim is that god spoke to the entire nation to give the ten commandments now how many people were in that nation so there were between two and a half and three million people at that time we're we actually have the numbers uh pretty clear because we know um it's listed the men who have to go to war and it's listed every single tribe every single father of each segment of the tribe and all the men between 20 and 60 were able to go to war and then you just extrapolate the same number of women half the number of children so it comes out to about two and a half million so the claim is two and a half million people stood around mount sinai and heard god speak now there's something before we even get into how can you verify such a claim because i'm not going to go back in time there's something really unique about that claim what's unique is that no other religion makes such a claim of a step four where the creator came to more than one of the creations maybe a handful maybe usually it's just one paul joseph smith muhammad usually it's the one to one and then they told their disciples theirs their disciples told their disciples and eventually you got a lot of people believing sometimes it's by force sometimes by sword sometimes it's uh it's convincing through charisma judaism is the only religion that actually claims that the step forward to millions of people now let me just get into the claim before we first before we try to verify let me explain to you why the claim itself is a bizarre claim and i'm going to use a thought experiment you know i'm in my kitchen one day taking you know putting in some microwave popcorn and god comes to me really like god really comes to me and he says to me my name is ben sian this has been seon i got a new world order and i want you to promote it and i want you to convince everyone that you got it right and that you spoke to me so i'm going to turn to god and i'm going to say it's 2022 no one's going to believe me they're going to lock me up they don't lock people up anymore but that's the expression right they're going to they're they're going to uh they're going to check me into uh the psych ward right crazy you think you speak to god i said god what am i supposed to how am i how am i supposed to prove to them i know i spoke to you because you're actually god so god says what would you like me to do so i say to god if you want me to get the word out there i need a miracle and i need a miracle that's clearly a miracle and god says what kind of miracle you want so again thought experiment i want um i'm on a school bus and i want in front of people i wanted to levitate in the air flip over 50 times in the air roll over all over and then softly land on its wheels god says no problemo i could do that okay this is going to be interesting the floating yellow school bus so how many people am i going to get at that event how many people do i want to see the floating school bus i want 30 people don't want 300 000 people how many people do i want uh the answer is as many as i can get you know why because it's really god and a miracle is really going to happen of course if i was delusional then i'm going to come there and i'll have egg in my face but if it really is god and it's my job to promote his word i'm going to need everyone to see this as many people as i can i'll call all the news stations i'll call the newspapers everyone come and they may come to mock me but that's okay the joke's gonna be on them because they'll see how amazing this miracle is okay experiment number two god never came to me but i want to tell people god did because i'm a little power hungry or i'm a little maniacal or i want to you know whatever motivation i have and not only that since god didn't come to me i can't ask him to make a bus levitate and spin but i got some tricks up my sleeve so i'll take out a few of my best ones how many people am i going to do my tricks in front of and the answer is simply in front of a curated audience probably not a ton of people because it's a trick and there'll be some smart people in the audience and they'll say oh that's nothing they'll put on youtube with the explanation the more people the more the chance that you're going to be exposed as a fraud so if i got a curated group and i do something in front of them and then they're like whoa how did you do that wow do you believe spread the word you saw it with your own eyes and they spread they spread they spread and then the word gets out there it turns out that the equation works like this really god real truth real miracle as many as i can get not so sure myself uh god didn't come to me i got a little trick i want to convince people keep it small small small small and then pyramid system it shockingly enough even though the far more convincing claim is that i did in front of a ton of people and i can name you their names i can tell you who they are even though that is a much better claim every religion that's out there except for judaism does it the way that you would expect a religion that is not based on authenticity does it they all do it with the pyramid system now i'm just about to claim i'm not even speaking about how to figure it out why wouldn't they claim that you know angel gabriel came to you know 10 000 people and there were people there and here are the names they were witness and you know why because such a claim such a claim would never hold water you would be able to debunk it very very quickly and very easily so if you're gonna if you're gonna spread the word about a miracle that's not a miracle you'll get one person or a few disciples and you'll just get them to spread the word that's the claim itself judaism's claim is quite the opposite judaism says the claim that every single person in the jewish people had to have been there at the foot of the mountain no one was allowed to be absent from the mountain because no one should say well i wasn't there i couldn't make it the torah even says something amazing listen to this the story even says those who were blind hashem healed them they were able to to see those who were lame they couldn't i can't make it to the mountain they're able to walk because no one should say that they couldn't make it and that's why my friends hospitals around the world are called mount sinai you ever hear of a mount sinai hospital mount sinai hospital is called mount sinai because that's where everyone was healed because no one was allowed to not be present so mount sinai became synonymous with healing to make sure that everyone is there that's why they call mount sinai so the claim is that every single person was there now why is that more powerful well it's simple if you got a pyramid scheme then you got one person few people many people many many until you got many until you have millions all of the truthfulness or the the the belief depends on the ground zero person that first person out of that person for whatever reason whether delusion or whether malice for whatever reason if the claim that they claimed didn't happen then that's the step four that's when the creator tell the creations what the purpose is it falls apart the pieces now we know that when it comes to religion and truth you only have two choices only one got it right or none got it right those are your only two choices you cannot have multiple religions getting the getting the truth because they would have to say say the same thing about key moral issues there's no religion in the world that that that lays one on top of the other more immorally either it's jihad or it's murder it's not both and that applies to everything within a religion there are enough contradictions out there if you want to read a really good book on the subject there's a book by a woman named rose marin called judaism and christianity the differences 22 differences uh uh and and we think oh judeo christians the same thing completely not completely not outside of monotheism and certain ethics like don't kill don't steal and even in those even of those there are all sorts of issues so you either have one got a right or none got it right and the fact that a million or 2 million or 100 million or 200 million or a billion christians believe a certain way doesn't shake my belief well a billion people can't be wrong well a billion people are muslim and they disagree with each other so either way a billion people got it wrong either way a bill so whether it's christians or muslims either way a billion people got it wrong and don't forget how many buddha buddhists live out there in in china and beyond how many hindus live in india so we know that the chances are most people got it wrong most nations got it wrong that's not that's not a politically incorrect statement that's just the reality is that they disagree on moral issues so does god want a or does god want b he doesn't want a and b especially when they contradict each other so judaism's claim is that god came to the jewish people on mount sinai and gave them the torah two and a half million people from the word go and then something amazing happened god said okay listen to me everyone every single year every parent has to tell every child that this event occurred that i took you out of egypt i split the sea and i gave you the torah every parent every child every year every parent every child every year so now instead of a pyramid scheme you've got millions to millions to millions to millions when does that occur every parent to every child every year that's called passover that means from the very first year after the event already parents are saying remember what happened last year remember and then 20 years remember what happened 20 years ago and every parent tells every child every year and that's where it comes from now i'm going to make the case a little bit stronger let's say mount sinai never occurred maybe the whole event of the jewish people hearing from god was invented a thousand years later now the event of mount sinai according to judaism happened 333 years ago yeah it's like it's really cool it's like 11 11 you know when you look at the caucus 11 loan this happens to this it's not going to be the same as this year for another 111 years right uh this this year happens to be three three three three it's a really cool year that you are in but let's say the event didn't happen let's say a thousand years later a guy made it up we'll call him fred because we don't know his name right because supposedly it was given by god at mount sinai let's say fred made it up can we play out what would happen if fred tried to make up such an event could we play that out okay watch what's going to happen so fred comes to um to michael and says michael how about that god giving the target sinai and the red sea and he split the sea and the you know and gave us the torah and all the plagues and michael says fred i don't know what you're talking about i apologize i don't know what you mean you know oh don't you know you and and and fred is very convincing so fred convinces michael now these events occurred and after a few hours michael said wow wow that's really interesting so michael says okay so where is this torah that god supposedly gave so fred knew this question was coming obviously it was an obvious question so he prepared a torah for michael to read so he takes out the terrorists right here you see in black and white it says in the torah god took us out of egypt gave us the torah mount sinai and michael is very impressed michael said wow well i guess it must be true it's in writing but then michael reads the following line in the torah ready for this the line goes like this therefore every parent will tell every child every year and it will never be forgotten yes those are words in the torah every parent every child every year and it'll never be forgotten so michael says one second my parents never said anything to me i don't know give me a moment i call my dad hey dad you've been holding on on me you said every you you didn't tell me about sinai you didn't tell me about splitting the seat and my dad's i don't know what you're talking about ask grandpa grandfather are you talking about so i come back to i come back to fred and i say one second the the same torah that you said that had the events in it of us receiving the torah signing that same torah says therefore every parent will tell every child every year and will never be forgotten and i never heard of it how is that so essentially the torah hasn't built in a fail-safe and the fail-safe is rather than have one figure who goes into a cave or has a vision who spreads it to disciples and they all have to rely on the initial person's vision like christianity like islam my mormon is like baha'i like so many others rather than that rather than that it has every single jewish person getting from their parents who got from their parents got from their parents all the way back to mount sinai and it's built in a way that even if a few people were delinquent in telling their children there are so many who did that it will correct it's a self-correcting mechanism because so many people are passing it so if one train of one chain actually breaks it right away gets rescued by all the others that's pretty amazing how many how many uh links in that chain well three three three three is about 120 links that's it we're not talking about that many it's about 120 generations going back that's the jewish claim interestingly enough christianity actually says judaism got it right they do they just say we are the new testament islam actually says judaism and christianity got it right as a matter of fact according to islam even they call even called jesus a prophet so according to islam judaism and christianity got right but we are the latest and greatest prophecy of god according to baha'i judaism christianity and islam got it right but we are that latest testament there's only one group that everyone agrees got it right and that's judaism that's bizarre every all historical religions believe that judaism got it right even though really it's to the detriment of christianity to say judaism got it right because the judaism got it right there are many many questions about jesus that are hard to answer because the new testament old testament disagree on so many things but since the claim of what we call i'm going to give you the term for it national revelation that means god revealing himself to the entire nation since that claim is so strong everyone piggybacks on the jewish national revelation there was a professor named david gottlieb who is a professor of mathematical philosophy at john hopkins university and he heard this argument and he said there's got to be a hole in the argument and i'm going to find it and he wrote a big dissertation on national revelation and today david gottlieb is a rabbi in jerusalem it was such a convincing argument now there's many many points that i'm not mentioning here it could take an entire semester for me to hammer hammer out those points you could you could actually find david god was one of the smartest people i've ever met in my life uh you could go to uh you could you go online uh put it in the words living up to the truth david gottlieb or david d-o-v-i-d and you can read more about this argument we're going to end with one just mind-blowing point okay you all hear you all hear the argument right national revelation to many versus the pyramid system it's both the jewish claim and it is the jewish history and it's a claim that would be the better claim if you'd be able to back it up but since other religions do not can't back it up they don't make the claim even though it is the claim that would hold much more water it would seem like more more real more true if i can look back and say so many people were able to witness um someone actually said to me but what about uh what about jesus feeding the fish to to the masses like 500 people there uh the the problem with that with that is we don't know who those people are so you could say somebody did a miracle in front of 500 people but you don't know who those people are so not those 500 the other 500 part of the point is to have your parents give it to your kids parents to kids so we could trace ourselves back and i'll tell you something that you could believe me or not but i'm not the only guy who could do it i could actually trace myself up all 120 generations easily i could actually go all the way back um many jews can by the way because since the jewish people are smaller people you just have to find some key people that you're related to so i happened to be a grandchild of the maharal uh who's a very famous person a very famous writer and the morale did his own tracing back to rashi uh arash was a great commentator about a thousand years ago raj he trades himself back up to king david and we have that line and king david uh king david was before the first temple so it's a very easy to trace trace ourselves back so i can go back uh easily all 120 generations to the advent of mount sinai and so can many many people who i've met it's not a difficult thing so that's another problem with having fred because if there was a fred who invented it he'd actually be a very historic figure and we don't have a figure named fred or any person who sort of unveils torah from obscurity uh and such a person would be a significant figure instead we could trace ourselves straight back up to when the jews left egypt i could do it and some can many other but let's look at the last thing archaeology okay let's just get into archaeology we're going to end with this we have a toru today how can i trace myself and my religion back to the honesty of national revelation how do i do that so here's how to do it how old is the oldest torah in existence today the oldest torah in existence is two thousand years old two thousand years old they are known as the dead sea scrolls they were found in the qumran by a bedouin shepherd very very interesting they were written by a group called the essence who lived in israel and they were during the barcok for revolt so going back 2000 years so fred could not have existed within 2000 years because torahs were well known at that point so i can go back 2000 years but listen carefully i could actually go back another 1000 years because that's 2000 years that was the end of the second temple but we have remnants archaeology writings from both temple periods both temple periods first temple that was destroyed by the babylonians and the second temple is destroyed by destroyed by the romans we have measurements as said in the torah that have been measured like the base of temple mount so archaeology we have going all the way back to first temple period and the beginning of first temple period we have what's called a steely which is a an embossment from who is the the king of assyria who exiled uh the jews during the first temple period we have the hole in the israel museum the whole steele is there we can literally go back another thousand years with the veracity of the torah so you know what you're talking about over here you're talking about about three and a half hundred years where fred would have to live to create a torah because we know the torah was a living document for the past 3000 years but you don't even have 300 years you don't because there are are there there's archaeological evidence to mishkan was the temple that existed before the permanent temple there is that that exists there are steelies of pharaohs who went in to fight the jewish people and he mentions about the jewish torah there's the tale done stone which mentions king david again predating first temple period you would literally have to make up the entire jewish religion 200 years at most but you don't even have 200 years you know why because the first hundred years the people were were actually at the event itself or their parents were or their grandparents were so you're not going to tell somebody hey remember what grandpa saw i never heard grandpa say that so with the first hundred years the guys would have still been alive so you have about a hundred years to convince an entire nation that they received a torah hearing god speak which included things like circumcision which you could be sure they weren't all that excited about doing laws of sexuality which also there was some pushback about 613 commandments with tons of history when when religions evolve especially when it goes from parent to child if the event didn't happen and there was a fred uh you're never gonna have that it's never gonna happen it's a very very short amount of time and the truth of the matter is that we actually have archaeological evidence that goes back to mount sinai and even pre-mount sinai if you want to do more research into this you could look up the ipo or papyrus which is a papyrus that the egyptians wrote that describe the ten plagues in the egyptians accounting there were the bones that were found uh when joshua on the two mountains grieved them in the abel uh the the bones of the sacrifices were found that was literally at the time joshua was there during national revelation we could really go back all the way so as far as a historical religion goes there's a reason that jewish people didn't convert there's a reason that we said we believe and you may torture us you may even crucify us he may try to kill us to change but we're not going to because we can't live a life that we believe is not true and if i have to rely on one guy's vision on the road to damascus i'd rather believe in no religion at all than to believe in some guys some guy's vision if my parents tell me and their parents tell them and even if my parents don't understand the implication of a passover seder they may not understand the ramifications but it's still been transmitted faithfully it's a very powerful argument that i'm presenting the national revelation is so it's such a powerful argument it's what judaism rests on so god existing that was last week this week how do we know judaism got it right philosophical religions no claim to historical truth historical religions pyramid scheme relying on one person the one exception is judaism the claim itself is astonishing it's an extraordinary claim history backs it up and even other historical religions piggyback on your judaism powerful stuff very powerful so i guess that's the end of the presentation thank you all for coming it's been a real pleasure [Music]