MindFlex - Why Do We Have to Listen to the Rabbis? - Rabbi Yerachmiel Milstein: Rabbinic Authority

i want to thank the amazing people of project inspire for giving me the opportunity in fact the privilege of coming to you tonight to talk about a very difficult topic and that is the concept of the oral torah in judaism now there's much talk but very little understanding about the role of the rabbis in judaism and in the next minutes we're going to attempt to provide some much needed background to understand what authority the rabbis actually possess and what difference they make in the practice of judaism classical judaism is known to have two torahs the bible or the written torah authored by god and the oral law authored by the rabbis both play a key role in the understanding and the actual observance of judaism so now then how does it work exactly and isn't it strange for any people to rely upon an oral work for their day-to-day religious practice and here's another question from where did the rabbis derive their authority to compose the oral law and why isn't it enough to have a written bible why do jews even need an oral torah and finally the oral law consists primarily of two well-known works called the mishnah compiled by the judah the prince in the in about the year 200 of the common era and the talmud in 500 ce both are very much written works so what are they called the oral law let's start with the very concept of having an oral law is that unique to the jews interestingly enough having an oral tradition is certainly not unique to judaism at all in fact virtually all societies and cultures rely upon all representations for their cultural practices their history and traditions here's an example remember the name betsy ross she's been credited with having sown the first american flag and how do we know this to be true well history.com reports that in 1870 betsy ross claypool's grandson whose name was william canby when he was already an elderly person presented the family tale to the historical society of pennsylvania and that's it we have no reason to doubt the veracity of camby's claim but that's the way history and tradition works it depends often entirely upon someone's oral representation but you know what it goes far deeper than that i'm going to draw a letter in the air and ask you to name that letter yes it's the letter a now why did you call it that because that's what your teacher taught you way back in preschool no doubt now let's look at a similar story from the talmud tractate shabbos page 31a a heathen once came and asked hillel how many tours do you have he answered two one a written torah and the other an oral torah the man responded the written one i believe in but not the oral convert me on the condition that you teach me only the written torah hillel accepted him on the first day they studied hillel taught him the letters of the hebrew alphabet aleph baez gimel dalid the next day he taught him the hibra alphabet but in reverse order the man asked him hey yesterday you taught it to me the other way around he answered him if you relied on what i taught you yesterday regarding the letters you should rely also upon me today for the oral law hillel is making the exact point that in fact we rely almost entirely on oral traditions and culture not only to know our letters but to pronounce all of our words and to understand what they mean and how to use the words and expressions in contemporary writing and conversation but with the torah it's even more than that in fact we find large portions of the written jewish torah could not possibly have been observed at all were it not for the oral law let me preface an example i'm going to give you by sharing with you that according to the greatest medieval scholars including maimonides keeping shabbat is the single most central commandment of all of the torah in that it flies in the face of those who believe the universe have been a constant meaning that the universe always was it had no beginning and no creator it's then quite interesting that there is universal acceptance of the seven day week in that it has no other source other than that god created the world in six days and rested on the seventh in any case the rabbis tell us that celebrating shabbat is testimony that god created the universe and violating shabbat in antiquity was a capital offense for this reason interestingly the torah repeats the law to keep shabbat under the penalty of death multiple times but what it actually prohibits in shabbat literally is or work okay so what constitutes work well the answer to that important question is only provided by the rabbis of the talmud not the torah without dissenting opinion they specify that there are 39 categories of work on with literally many hundreds of derivative prohibited actions capital offenses all so for the hundreds of years between when the law was given at sinai and the time the talmud came into existence how was malacha or work defined let's try to imagine the scene of moses teaching god's words to the minions don't work on the sabbath he thundered and what if we do ask the wise guy you'll be put to death says moses with a flourish okay okay we'll observe the sabbath what exactly is it that we can't do i have no idea says moses but i know for sure if you do it you'll die obviously when the torah was given to the jews it already came with what was accompanied with an oral explanation that gave the details although those details weren't committed to writing they were nonetheless carefully taught by teachers to students and by parents to children for about a thousand years here's another great example the torah specifically commands us to have certain biblical passages bound to our arms and placed upon our heads now just about every jew the most basic knowledge of judaism knows this to refer to to fill in however the torah never uses the phrase to fill in which is only to be found in the oral law it simply tells us to bind to something in our arms and to force between our eyes without even giving us a smidgen of additional information so what did the people do at that time did everybody interpret this on their own and there were thousands of different filling created of different sizes shapes and colors in fact we have quite a number of ancient film that were on earth over the last many years and they all sport the same specs they're black square on top oblong on the bottom they're made of hardened leather use straps to tie them on our hands and heads and they contain the same texts inscribed on the same types of scrolls inside the boxes obviously the instructions were delivered at the same time as the command to don those to fill in moses said in the name of god dawn to fill him the jew said how and moses obviously provided them with the answers and the details these examples are not exceptions in fact it could be safely said that the vast majority of details regarding how to keep kosher observe the holidays get married build the family mourn our loved ones and even pray are only stated in the torah as concepts without any details about the how the laws we possess regarding ritual slaughter of animals are voluminous and complex to say the least but the torah actually says in deuteronomy in the event you would like to eat meat you must prepare it in the way that i have commanded now the problem is that nowhere else in the torah does it so much as mention the laws of ritual slaughter it doesn't make much sense to have the written law requiring ritual slaughter without an already extant body of oral information so you can actually eat that steak and so it fell to the rabbis to faithfully collect these oral instructions and teach them to the people not merely as volunteers but as fully mandated by the written torah to teach the law decide the law based upon torah judge the people enforce the law and enact new laws as necessary to help observe the torah in fact the rabbis maintain a very disciplined adherence to a constitutional process to settle dispute and enact new laws the torah states in leviticus or smart this marty therefore shall you keep or watch over my charge this is intended to caution the court regarding the fact that they must enact or legislate new laws to protect the laws of the torah and regarding judging and enforcing the law of the torah it states in deuteronomy in a portion that will be read in synagogues this very shabbat in deuteronomy it says judges and officers shall you make thee and all thy gates which the lord thy god gives you and they shall judge the nation with true justice they're mandated by torah to perform these functions we should note that the torah's replete with new cases for which moses could not provide rulings those of you who are somewhat familiar there's the story about the wood gatherer the one who blasphemed against god the concept of the pesacheni the daughters of tilakkad and if you don't know what i'm talking about ask your local rabbi it might be a very good launchpad to start learning the torah so moses was presented with situations he had never seen before so he had to try and derive the answers from the written torah and when he could not he went back to god for additional information the jews required answers and moses was obligated to research those answers and provide them with the ruling in these cases so here's an important question why does all this vital knowledge reside in oral form and how did it come to finally be recorded the jews are unique as a wandering yet eternal people which begs the question how have we in fact maintained our unique identity for thousands of years of exile under the worst of conditions and the answer is through our bible the torah which scholars have called the portable homeland of the jewish people and now if every detail of every law were included in the written torah it would be extremely unwieldy and not very portable at all the written torah in effect became the cliff notes of religious practice and the oral law provides the details now another reason for having an oral law is that the immutable laws of torah must transcend the ages and contemporary case law for example the laws of property damage as they appear in the torah involve what would happen if your bull destroyed your neighbor's vegetable patch now how would you apply that to when your f-150 pickup truck ran someone else's prius if all property damage were recorded and reduced to writing at that ancient time they wouldn't seem to remotely pertain or apply just a generation or two further down the road instead we prefer to explain the operative concepts behind the example given in the torah orally from teacher to students so that judaism remains an eternally living and breathing religion where the immutable concepts come alive as they are taught right from teacher to student and they can then be practiced faithfully in each new generation with its own case history and with the exception of many scholars and teachers who kept their notes and journals privately their oral law remained oral for thousands of years during which time the all-important rabbi student relationship was the paramount central feature of jewish life so now how do we get to the point where we have a very much written 60 volume talmud right behind me and thousands of or other publications of jewish law that today comprise what is still ironically called the oral law well when it became obvious the jews were going to be exiled and the rabbi student bond would be disrupted the rabbis exercised a great leniency and a departure from tradition recorded the oral law first in a compilation called the mishnah as we said before in about the year 200 ce and then again in 500 c with a far more detailed record of rabbinic discussions of the mishnah called the talmud and many of the far-reaching oral teachings since that time many thousands of oral works have been published and they all have the status of what we call torah shabbalpe which translates into the oral torah not surprisingly the charge has been made and it is indeed a fact that the talmud contains thousands of disputes between the various talmudic sages going back a thousand years so what's served by recording disagreements and it's not like there are just a few disputes here and there when you open just any bad any page of the talmud the rabbis seem almost like they have to argue about everything however there's another charge which is made at the same time people complain that the rabbis argue over the most minute and trivial hair splitting details okay well which is it are they arguing over everything or only over the tiniest of details this kind of reminds me of the time that my late mother who was a gourmet chef returned from visiting israel how was your flight ma i asked her and she couldn't stop praising the ll pilots for their smooth flying but she added that airline food was beyond awful poison it was and she said pausing to further reflect upon the experience such small portions what a contradiction if you hate the food you should be thankful they come in small portions well this same complaint applies to the criticism of the talmud well which one is it are they always fighting or only over the most insignificant differences well it turns out that regarding the everyday practice of judaism there are few disputes at all and an overwhelming 99 of agreement however due to the advent of new cases never before considered and the small percentage of inevitable human error and forgetfulness a disagreement may arise on how to apply jewish law in a given situation however the very fact that the rabbis argue stubbornly over seemingly infinite insignificant things teaches us a great deal about the integrity of the rabbis and the entirety of the order of the oral torah what they don't argue over what is not recorded as an argument the talmud means that they universally agree upon that so let me give you an example through which we will actually study a bit of talmud ourselves the talmud attracted condition opens with the laws pertaining to jewish marriage and its ceremony it is accepted without dispute that a jewish marriage in order to occur must have a ceremony in order to be a jewish marriage there must be a ceremony people just can't get married in what's called a common law marriage it is further required that the ceremony be witnessed by two qualified individuals of character it also requires that the groom has to obligate himself contractually to his bride via a written and duly executed or marriage contract furthermore in order to be a valid marriage it requires that the groomers give a gift of value to the bride but how much value is required here we define a dispute between the houses of shamai and the houses of hillel at the house of hilo the former believes that the gift must possess the value of in modern terms at least a dollar but the latter says it can be the equivalent of a penny now how practical is this dispute when as a groom you'd be in big trouble for even attempting to give your beloved bride a wing a ring worth a penny or even a dollar but for the last thousands of years this dispute remains on the books of the talmud does this seem to you to be a power grab by the rabbis as some would claim it's their effort to control the jewish people or are they serious about establishing what was god's intention even on a minute level to answer this question let's play devil's advocate here and imagine a group of less than honorable rabbis and reality power grabbers meeting at an oral law convention to fill in the seeming missing or incomplete information in the written torah that we discussed earlier and they will claim afterwards that their decisions on these topics was the will of god of course okay here goes amid overflowing platters of gefilte fish and chopped liver the evening's chairman arises and asks gentlemen we have never discussed of what shape that filling should be any ideas the chair recognizes the gentleman from jericho i believe the tops of the villains should be square and the bottoms should be oblong do we have a motion to second all in favor say aye and at that point it passes unanimously because as we know there is no dispute in the oral law regarding the shape of this villain and now gentlemen what about its color they decide unanimously on black the fabric no problems here either hardened leather the text inside the box is unanimous agreement on four different texts from the torah next topic how many forbidden categories of activity on shabbat will define the torah's ex word of work malacha 39 thunders the crowd in unison yes comments the chair 39 is a nice round number unanimous how to slaughter an animal so that it's kosher after all the torah left that one out too 12 421 detailed laws sounds about right no argument on that what about is there a heaven an afterlife and purgatory moses seemed to have left that one of the torah too unanimous in the affirmative everyone says sure now gentlemen the chairman continues the last item on the agenda is regarding the value of the gift in the wedding ceremony rabbi shamai stands up and confidently says a dollar at which point pandemonium breaks out on the convention floor rabbi hiller yells hey i was with you on heaven i was with you on hell and i didn't say boo about the 39 privet categories of work on the sabbath but this is where i put my foot down absolutely not the value should be a penny other soon joy in the fray and cries of dollar and penny dollar penny dollar and petty are heard over the voice of the chair who pleads with the delegates to compromise at 50 cents and call it a day but to no avail so did those rabbis argue about the gift because they were seeking power is it a decision that involves power or is it rather a sincere search for truth regarding the intent of the creator judaism does not compromise on truth in fact we refuse to sacrifice our truth for the sake of power here's a case in point how many political parties are there in the united states of america well basically two how many in canada four a fracticious people england five italy wow they're even more fractious nine major political parties then we come to israel where there are 17 significant political parties including three communist parties what is going on here the united states has 300 million people and it only needs two parties to pretty much contain all points of view israel a tiny country of some i don't know 8 million people has 17 political parties most nations are okay sacrificing their truths for political power the jews are stubbornly opinionated to the point where we will not compromise on our truths for the sake of power in the torah itself god calls jews a stiff-necked people with good reason and so it's quite ignorant to say well sure the rabbis just got together made all this up and agreed on everything except for these little details the truth is that the power of the rabbis in the oral law if they had any power is in their relentless pursuit of truth rather than political expediency so that even the smallest matters of jewish thought and practice accurately reflect the will of the almighty oh and there's another significant benefit to be had by recording disputes in the talmud defining and quantifying the precise areas of dispute and disagreement serves to narrow and contain the breach of the unknown and the forgotten details of the oral law in our case it is forever decided that if a groom provided a gift of less than a penny both the houses of shami and hillel would agree it is not a valid ceremony and if it was worth more than a dollar all agree that it is valid so the exact area of doubt has been defined for posterity and we can in fact move on perhaps this is what the talmud refers to in massachusetts that's the very first volume of the babylonian talmud rabbi elezar said in the name of rabbi khanina tami deja khamim increase peace in the world okay how by defining recording and thereby limiting the areas of dispute limiting the areas of uncertainty in the practice of judaism and now i'd like to end with this amazing story in almost every hellish ghetto during the german nazi genocide of world war ii a story similar to this repeated itself the accursed ss would ask all the jews in a particular ghetto to assemble outside the local maine synagogue and force them to watch as they set it ablaze and despite the machine guns trained on the synagogue entrance some jew couldn't hold himself back broke from the crowd and ran into the burning edifice emerging moments later carrying a torus coral that he was attempting to save from the flames the nazis were ready for him and unleashed a furious salvo of bullets that pierced his body in a hundred places inconceivably as he fell dead there would always be another undeterred jew who had emerged from the crowd grab the torah in a futile attempt to save it and more often than not there'd be a few more braving certain death to save that torah are we even permitted to give up our lives to save a torah scroll ironically our rabbis in the talmud tell us that we are not but fighting to preserve the torah and its laws seems to be imprinted on our jewish dna whether it's the ghetto jews sacrificing themselves to protect the written word of god or the rabbis who courageously battle on to go on record to contain the chasm of disagreement and stubbornly refuse to compromise on even a mere 50 cents i want to thank you all so much for watching and i'd really appreciate your feedback which will always be cherished have a great night