MindFlex - How Do We Know the Torah Is True? Did the Rabbis Make It All Up?

[Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello everyone welcome to today's presentation of did the rabbis make up all these laws meaning the torah the alpe the oral law within judaism where is it from is it the rabbis of the talmud made it up is it has a sinai origin what is it so let's start off with everybody understands we have a torah sheba sab we have a written torah that's the five books of moses commission torah given to the jewish people at sinai there are classes on that and you could view them today we're going to go to the next step the torah shabba al pai the tarnish of the written torah uh five books of moses what they call and part of that written title would also be the books of the prophets and the writings naveem and the kasufim like yoshua shaiftim shmoel tahil and michele five megillas etc 24 books altogether and those 24 books were already in their final concluded form um five books of moses from sinai itself and from the time of moshe rabbenu and the others during the time of the first temple all the way to the beginning of the seventh second temple period then we have the oral lord the taurus first before we talk about the origins of tyreisha balpair we'd have to just define exactly what it is so people are very aware of the main books of judaism besides the torah nivea maksuvim we have a seifer a book called mishnah or plural mishnayose written by rabbi yehuda nossi called rabbeno which are six sections which deal with jewish law we have the vast gigantic commentary written by uh and a lot of rabbis together and edited by rav ashi all those rabbis are not rabbis of our time they're the great gigantic talmudic scholars of over 1500 years ago and they wrote the gemura the vast commentary on the mishnah the mishnah and its vast commentary gemara are published and written today in one huge volume set of volumes and the collective name is talmud the talmud being not particularly easy because it's many volumes long and the subject matter is arranged in a way different than our thinking patterns and it's an aramaic and it's difficult so there have been numerous attempts successful ones at sort of putting together the talmud's laws in an easier to understand way first and foremost among them would be the rambam maimonides where he takes all the laws of the talmud puts it into topics chapters in simple hebrew others did too the most famous collection is what's called shokhan written by rabbi yes of cairo in the in the 1400s and they have been swarm written right right to our time all of them going back to the same source the talmud rearranging the content distilling the content building on the content all going back to the talmud and the talmud all going back to our source taurus of alpaca oral law or allah it's called because until rab yehuda hanasi came along and wrote down the mishnah and the subsequent gemara into this talmud all of that body of knowledge was oral means it was transmitted from moshe moses our teacher throughout the generations for hundreds and hundreds of years until the time of yahudah no see and at that time yehuda nasi felt that despite the advantages of oral law meaning forcing people to study and memorize and remember it and it shouldn't be just books on a bookshelf but there was difficult times for the jewish people and he felt that islam at this point we can't rely on the transmission orally and by memory we have to now start writing it down and that was actually a concession to the reality of the time and it was written down now the mishnah and the gemara collectively called the talmud deals with everything meaning they correct understanding explanation and application of all the torah laws all 613 mitzvahs added mitt's voice that the rabbis of those eras added based on events that happened like the miracle of chanukah to light candles and the miracle of purim to read the megillah those things actually were not from the time of moshe rabbano obviously but based on the torahs giving the sanhedrin and all the great rabbis of each era the leeway to institute new things enhancements based on events of magnitude to the extent of purim and hanukkah they have added those mitzvos to and they also of course sometimes made fences around the torah's laws for example the torah has a prohibition on shabbos of writing so the rabbi of of the talmud made a ghetto fence around it and said you know what we're afraid you're right so we want you to not even lift up a pen or a pencil it's muktsa don't lift up a pen or a pencil because if you're going to lift it up you're going to end up writing writing would be the biblical prohibition and muktsa lifting it up holding it is already a rabbinical add-on to prevent somebody inadvertently from doing the biblical prohibition and they have that right and not only right but that obligation to do that which you'll soon see based on actually um torah itself so that's what the oral law is what evidence do we have that the oral law is not just an invention of the rabbis of the talmudic era or any other time that's simple if somebody looks at the torah and they want to observe the mitzvos based on just the verses of the torah they're going to be very disappointed okay i want to put on fill in today so the torah says you should bind them for a sign on your hand and put them as total foss whatever that obscure word means between your eyes on your hand where's on my hand is is that the palm of my hand is is that the back of my hand is it the left hand is the right hand is it biceps forceps where am i putting it on my hand and what am i putting on my hand the whole torah i have to take the whole torah and put it on my hand what what am i doing here taitre fais being an echo what's title voice who knows what even that is it's an odd word between your eyes i have to put something here maybe it's here maybe it's here and what am i putting so the details of twilight are not there another simple mitzvah mezuzah you could write that you should write them on the doorposts of your house what am i writing what exactly am i writing the whole torah part of the torah this chapter of the torah these verses and do i write it on the doorpost do i write it on a parchment and also the doorways of my house well is that just my front door is it all the rooms uh what happens if there's a closet what if it was a tiny closet what happens if i live in a basement and there's no really door it's just like a cave i dug out what happens if i have an igloo or a tent and what's defined as my house if i rent a motel room for the night does it need a mezuzah is that my house for that night ah i don't know what do i do i want to eat kosher i have to know how to slaughter the animal so i looked in the toilet thought of the animal kashatsevi as you've been commanded okay must be somewhere else where it says the details how i've been commanded i looked through the whole torah voracious disease all the five books of moses is not there so what's going on how could this be the answer is obvious there's clear evidence that what the torah basically is is virtual cliff notes virtual main subjects written very concisely almost like somebody would be in a a college class and taking notes and the professor says a whole topic and the person writes down two sentences which is basically his reminder of the topic but when he reads the two sentences it reminds him of all the details that the professor said about that particular subject so that's the oral law the oral law tells us when it says that it means these four partials these four sections of the torah in boxes and the me see now the tradition for moses that signing is they have to be black boxes with the straps how they're tied and baine is up here not right between your eyes and uh the your your the um doorposts of your house have specific definitions of how long you have to be there what about a renter what about various things so and kashua same thing so the details were given to moses at sinai kosheros is the biggest pointer to that kashitsy vc code even use the words as you've been commanded and that was handed definitely that was passed down generation to generation all jews to the next generation and forward going some might ask why do i need an oral law what do i need it orally for why didn't they write down everything instead of just writing you should put it as on the mezuzah on your doorposts why didn't they specify your door pose each door each room if the room is this size it has to have a mezuzah if it's more than that size it doesn't have to have a mezuzah if it's a closet it doesn't need a mezuzah if it's this it doesn't need if it is it doesn't need this way it doesn't need if you're renting it only for a night it doesn't need if you're renting it for more than 30 days then it depends if it's your place for permanent if it's something they can move you out of that i think you understand already from what i'm saying that it can't be written everything because all the circumstances are beyond possibly writing it in our times we understand that the best and now at times uh with no applications of things electrical does that fit into the category of building does that fit into the category of of of of kindling a fire of extinguishing a fire for things that have to do with shabbos so i couldn't give you i can give you 39 rules of shabbos then you have to apply it there's no way i could write everything same way as a mezuzah i can't write all the details new kinds of dwelling places new kinds of buildings new kinds of rental agreements basically the torah can only give you the mitzvah and the application of the mitzvah has to be applied as it goes down the line the rabbis of the talmud gave us as many details as possible to actually implement application the application of each one in its place in time but right down till this very day when something new comes along technologically or something we're taking the same thing and building upon it um i i'd hate to use a secular example but i mean the supreme court in the united if something's st what does that mean constitutional the constitution was written in 1776 or 1789 or whatever year it was written and what does it mean constitutional the constitution has anything about the details they're talking about no they're supposed to apply the original constitutional law and how does that apply to this new case well have they so to speak the rabbis are doing the same thing today does this how does this apply to that if i'm not allowed to carry in a public domain and that's the law of the torah okay when i have something new is that something i'm carrying there was no wrist watches in the time of moshe rabeno if i'm wearing a wristwatch outside on shabbos is that carrying or is that no different than my shirt or my pants and it's a garment that's in the oral law and it might not even be a talmudic or a apply to the situation these eyeglasses they didn't have eye glasses like these even 200 years ago if i wear them outside on shabbos is this part of my mal bush my dress or is this an external thing that i'm carrying on my face how could they have written about that thousands of years ago what they've written about it is here's the application of what's called a garment and what's called a thing you're carrying what's a jewelry ornament which can be worn on shabbos and what isn't and we apply it and that's why the oral law wasn't actually written down now there are those who will say okay fine from sinai it's clear that there is i mean any mitzvah i don't have enough details in the torah without a teacher teaching me the oral law and i even understand that these are not interpretations of the law they're actually explanations and applications interpretation starts becoming i'm interpreting i'm adjusting or something no they're applying it without my personal feelings or adjustments but still at the end if i study the talmud and even if i study the later talmudic codifiers like maimonides etc i find so many arguments and so many differences of opinion so how could that be if it's all from sinai and the oral law is from a sinai so how could there be such differences of opinion how is it possible so let's start off by answering that question in the most simple form there are not too many differences of opinion the differences of opinion are generally insignificant there's no difference of opinion that shabbis is the seventh day of the week there's nobody saying shabbos is wednesday there's no difference of opinion that shabbos starts at night for friday till nightfall shabbos there's no difference of opinion there are 39 categories of work on shabbos and there's no difference of opinion what those 39 categories of work are there's no difference of opinion regarding kidus regarding havdalah regarding the three meals on shabbos regarding the prayers on shabbos regarding the prayers of the weekdays there's no differences of opinion of putting on twillon that we put on children weekdays and not shabbos there's no opinion coming along that a mezuzah has to be knocked into your desk or your your kitchen cabinets so in essence 99 of jewish law and jewish practice has no difference of opinion it's in minor areas that there could be somehow a slight difference of opinion and that somehow slight difference of opinion is actually most of the time for a past one or of one of a few possible reasons one could be that the law was actually revealed at sinai there was an actual law revealed at sinai and somehow along the way it was actually forgotten um [Music] sometimes it's a little bit of a law which was obscure so it ended up being forgotten because of it not being a particularly uh prevalent law example in the time of the base amicus of the temple if a person did a sin they had to bring a carbon hatos a sin offering if they designated a particular animal for a sin offering they had to bring that animal they couldn't substitute it with a different animal if that animal got lost before it was brought as the kobankatos as this sin offering sacrifice we have to replace it with a different animal that animal got lost the man has to have his or the woman has to have her atonement we need an animal for the atonement so we're gonna have to get a different animal the first one was lost no problem no arguments what happens though if after we brought the second animal for the carbon catus for the sin offering and the man or woman had their cappara their forgiveness for doing the sin and then we find the first animal what now we can't bring the first animal for a sacrifice because there's nothing to bring it for he or she already had their atonement from the replacement animal we can't just say okay forget it put it back into the herd because it's already been consecrated and made kodaish and made already designated for a carbon cartes for a sin offering for that sin offering but that sin offering has been done already this halacha was at sinai and it was forgotten we even know when it was forgotten it was forgotten very early on it was forgotten in the time when the jewish people were mourning for moses after his death but that is very logical that it could be forgotten because basically how often does it happen a sacrifice for ajatos and it got lost very odd the animal got lost whether it's a grasshopper it got lost okay it got lost so we brought another animal and now we found it it's such a rare thing so it's understandable that being it's rare and being that the law was forgotten it becomes a dominic dispute there's another example which may be closer to home the gemara says we have on the end of shabbos the same way we have kiddish on uh friday night we have dolo on saturday night the two half dollars we have one half dollar is in the shmona esri and the prayer on matsai shabbos at the end of shabbos in myrief we add a certain section of words into the shmaina ashrae in the bracha and on the atrocity we say you have given us the wisdom to differentiate between shabbos and the weekdays between holiness and profanity and we say that in the shema esri we also afterwards come home and we say the habdullah a very similar barakah of wine on a cup of wine with the basamine and with the ace as everybody's familiar with now the gemara has a question where do we say abdullah in the shema esri i just told you what we do every single week once a week every week when it comes to myrib the evening service after shabbos we say abdullah separately on a wine but that's where we say it but the gemara has a difference of opinion the governor says says no it has its own it does it's not within us it has its own rock or ending with barack obama's look similar to what we say in abdullah but it's in this mine then rabbi elias right there but oh rabbit says you have to say atakanantanu as part of the bracha of moidim in shmayna esri that's this 17th bracha shmayna yesterday in that bronco you say the atacainantoro question arises how could this be how could there be a macholicas how could that happen what we forgot since last month's shabbos since last saturday night everybody forgot what'd you do last saturday night how could you forget yeah i can understand you know when pesach comes out on on after shabbos and shabbos is the day before pesach and it didn't happen for four years or for 14 years and you don't really remember what to do i mean this is last saturday night what's going on how could this be so the answer is and the gemara says it in the beginning the half dollar was in a specific designated place in the myriff service that everybody knew and that's where it was when the jews at a certain period in history became more well to do the rabbis of the talmud said you know what instead of it being our original place where we originally put it they originally put it somewhere in china s ready the rabbis and the talmud said you know what we originally designated it should be in the shmona s ray in the known place inch monastery and now we're moving it and we're designating it that it should have its own blessing on wine everybody now has thank god enough money to buy wine for abdullah not just for kiddish so now the bracha of is going to be a separate bracha on a boy red priha gophen on a on a a glass of wine and no more inchmonda esri good and that went on for years and then came an era in jewish history where again people were impoverished and buying wine was not so easy and people didn't have wine and the rabbis of that era said okay we got to go back to the original enactment of abdullah that it should be in the shema esri in the prayer service and at that point it was so many years before that they didn't remember if the original place to say it was it modim or was it by itself so it wasn't that they forgot what they did last saturday night if they forgot what the original enactment was all the way back so there we have a possibility on 99 of the torah laws it's very very clear and there's no mach locus and there's no differences of opinion but here's an example of how something can be forgotten either a biblical law like the khatos or a rabbinic law like the artakhon antonu and it has it needs to be reestablished but it's understandable and it's normal and it there's nothing out of the ordinary there's another possibility and this is not just a possibility but really a reality that not everything was told to moses at sinai again i mentioned this earlier moses at sinai is giving this the rules the framework how to build on it how do you derive a law but certain laws was left with a particular era we can understand that certainly today the laws of of using a refrigerator on shabbos wasn't given to moses at sinai but the root of how that law is applicable about if it's bonaire if it's mavir if it's machiavellish or whatever the particular shabbos classification it is was at sinai and yet not 20th century rabbi has to understand how it's applied not in his whims or nonsense but based on solid torah knowledge that concept is clearly understood from the talmud where moshe bainer was shown a vision of rabbi akiva and rabbi akiva was saying things that even moisture beno hadn't heard how's that possible so the answer is like qibla not dying he didn't get those halachus yet klum and the madras rapper says because moses was given the general law the general rules and he taught them to the jewish people and when rabbi akiva's time came hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years later rabbi akiva basically was applying moses laws to the situation at that time fine also sometimes we find mach locus what appears to be discrepancies where both ways or a number of ways are halachically acceptable for example we blow shai for rosh hashanah we blow the longer sounds the shorter sounds maybe it's this sound maybe it's that sound according to uh rav hai going when the torah says to blow the shai for rosh hashanah it could be svarims it could be what we call truas it could be what we call shwarim through it could be the shwarim the nine short blasts the true i'm sorry the true or the nine short blasts the schwartem the three medium blasts or a combination of swarm through three medium and nine short either one of them is fine no fighting and repair going in his time and before his time it was instituted that everybody should blow all three kinds so that there's a standardization in halacha but actually all three were fine so we see that this idea of that there's different interpretations or different understandings or things are in some kind of chaos is totally untrue that the oral law is from sinai its application is in each generation the talmudic rabbis are giving us the explanation of those laws and sometimes putting certain fences around as protection to those laws when the talmud rabbis are not sure of something because the tradition somehow has been somehow muddled or it's unclear jews went through many eras of terrible persecutions where it was hard to transmit torah and the time of the romans and other times and you know sometimes things got forgotten and needed to be reconstructed the rabbis of the time would go to tremendous great lengths to have talmudic debate to clarify what the actual halacha is what the torah intent is what hashem's desire is and that the authentic understanding of the should be what's done and they spare no effort to go through difficult talmudic logic and an inspect scriptural sukim [Music] basis for everything they talk about after having said all that let's add one more thing is there the possibility of error f slight as the chance may be okay 99 of everything there's no mach locus there's no disagreements wherever there was disagreements they went to great lengths to make sure it's clarified that it's halachically under the line bottom line correct so that a jew can sit in jerusalem or new york or new jersey or wherever in 5 7 8 1 19 2021 and know that his halacha is the same as sinai it's what was all the generations and when he opens up his kitsur khanara his code of jewish law he knows he's looking at basically the torah of moses at sinai as it is applied down the line what happens though if somewhere the tamudic rabbis as great and as superb as they were debated brought biblical proofs but in the end somehow they're only human and they made an error at sinai they meant the application of this particular thing is different when they said the myths for uh you should write them on the mezuzah's of your doors it meant this kind of door this kind of door this kind of door this kind of door this kind of door just like you have it but that other kind of door that you're saying it needs a mezuzah it's an archway with only one wall going out the other side doesn't have a archway and it doesn't have a door on it and it's this high and the rabbis at a talmud said it needs a mezuzah but really the original intent was that doesn't need amazon vice versa okay i'm picky nevertheless what do we do with that possibility of error be happy don't worry number one there's a torah mitzvah it's actually mitzvah 496 of the 613 mitzvahs of lysosomes not to deviate from anything that the sanhedrin the great sages of israel of the talmudic times and others of that stature teach you and the mitzvah is lysosome and it says in the torah do not go right or left from what they say the question is why does it say right or left don't do what they say don't deviate or don't deviate right don't deviate left so the extra words are to tell you that even if they say left is right and right is left or you're sure that what they're saying you is inaccurate your conclusions based on your torah knowledge says to you they're making a mistake says the torah and hashem and is giving a mitzvah your misfires to follow them yeah your logic says they're making a mistake how do you like that maybe you're wrong and maybe you're right it doesn't matter your misfit is to follow them because we don't want the torah pulled apart we want the tire to stay whole so nothing's going to happen from the small possibility of a particular mitzvah having some of its application not sinai original intent but a little different because that's the way the sages understood it and we live with that and we don't have everybody doing their own thing because of chaos fine and hashem told us the stamp of approval ahead of time i'm giving you a mitzvah to follow them even when they're not what i originally intended how do you like that fine and good i could end the class now but i won't because i'm going to tell you that there's even another mitzvah which makes the case stronger there's another mitzvah which is mitzvah 78 in the torah of lahatos to follow the majority in legal decisions when we say the majority we don't mean the majority of the popular vote in a democracy or charlatans that play rabbi and can tell you you can drive on shabbos and do whatever you want and other nonsense we're talking about the real thing so we're talking about achara rabin lahatuis a mitzvah to follow the majority in legal decisions the majority again i'm telling you is the majority of real bona fide rabbis the same way lahav do you know if it's a legal issue it's not you know vote on a legal issue by layman's it's a vote on a legal issue by real lawyers and it's a medical issue it's medical doctor opinion not harmonium opinion and if it's has to do with the mechanics of your car and we're trying to figure out how to put the carburetor together with the accelerator or something it has nothing to do with what somebody in the street is going to say and that's to do what the most that the mechanics think is right and we're going by that without all my mundane examples to follow the majority of legal decisions basically means that the torah is saying that what they decide is my will says hashem i'm giving you a mitzvah that what the majority say is my will it's not a concession okay the torah is handed to humans humans apply it the best they can and that's it and it's fine and we accepted that it imperfection no once it's achilles it's actually perfection and i want the halal to be and the loch is supposed to be like they say because torah basham i mean it's not in the heavens anymore it's given to you to apply it and with that we can actually understand the famous harmonic statement that aylov the base base sharma embess hillel the house of hillary and house of shama had a disagreement about hanukkah candles should we light them first they won second day two third day three fourth day four up to eight or should we light them the other way eight the first night seven the next night six the next night five the next night down to one logically well one way makes sense because we make the mids for bigger and bigger and bigger one to eight the other way makes sense too because the oil burned less and less and less less oil each night ate the first night seven six down to no oil after eight days so the gemara's conclusion is [Applause] both of them are the words and the will of the living god but the halal is like basil that we do one two three four not eight seven six five so how can you say eila both of those are acceptable by hashem but is like this the answer is yes exactly what we're saying both of them are accepted by hashem hashem wants to know what the conclusion of the talmudic rabbis is going to be that's my will the other opinion was fine good before there was a logic decision both of them are acceptable to me hashem both of them are acceptable in practice it's what the decision is here so we have actually a very very solid understanding of the oral law being messinai as we have clear evidence of it from filling and casteros and the 939 categories of work on shabbos mezuzah across the board hundreds and hundreds of mitzvahs and as far as the oral law it's 100 sound 99 sound without any kind of differences of sorts and even the one percent hashem has already anticipated that and said you go ahead you that little area of some doubt you go ah and if we still find today sometimes where there are differences in practice those knowledgeable entire will usually be able to tell you that those differences in practice are relatively insignificant and either one will admit that what the other one is doing is halachically fine also if you're a svaradi and you make one bracha on the tooth fillings the hand and the head or you're in ashkenazi and make two broccolis it's because the tama didn't specify the talmud says understanding of that without the details of uh of the brochures so the application of it is understood differently by this farther community as far as the ashkenazi community neither one is going to say the other one is in error both are fine ayla real quick i have my minute i have my custom we have our way as ashkenazim or i smarted them but in actuality it's not in areas where it's god forbid making a a a period or tearing us under the torah in any way and finally there's also sometimes where the modern application of something and applying something in the modern setting using the same torah principles can have a different shikula das a different understanding among different rabbis and in that area there may be room for legitimacy i give the simplest example i talked about a wrist watch on shabbos is a rish watched an ornament and can be worn or is it a maso is something that's basically you're carrying it on your wrist so the general idea is well if it's a gold wrist watch or a silver or a bracelet kind of wrist watch which you would probably wear even if the watch isn't telling the right time because it's a nice thing get into gold and it has a nice band and you probably aren't wearing it for its functionality you're wearing it mostly as jewelry then it's okay and if it's being worn mostly as a timepiece and if it doesn't tell time you would take it off then it's really not a piece of jewelry now exactly the fine line if it's gold or it's fake gold or it's this or is that there's room for differences of opinion without it being any kind of halachic problem and the fact that one rabbi looks at it like this and one rabbi looks at it like that is not some kind of hey what's going on here in the torah just the opposite they're using the same principles and could be that the application which everybody is applying it also this is a tax shelter this is a masso is it an ornament or is it a the thing that i'm carrying is something that has room for aid led the reality hashem should help us we should be able to learn the torah understand the torah observe the torah and understand that the torah is tyra's ms tyresha begsav tyresha barpad the written torah and the tyra and its complement complementary oral torah aylava elodira like and hashem should give us happiness and somehow long life to observe the torah and to be happy doing the mitzvos thank you everybody [Music]