In this book, I prove that the Oral Torah is not Divine in origin.
Most Jews today, whether they see themselves as religious or not, believe that the Oral Torah — the vast body of Rabbinical laws and traditions — is inseparable from Judaism. I myself think that this view is extremely flawed. Regardless of the intentions of the Rabbis, I see the Oral Torah as a great burden, created and imposed by humans, and never sanctioned by God. I hope that free from this man-made burden, more Jews will come to appreciate and follow the Teaching that God actually did give to us through Moses and that this will reinvigorate the people. As Moses said, "Then YHWH your God will open up your heart and the hearts of your offspring to love YHWH your God with all your heart and soul, in order that you may live" (Deuteronomy 30:6); and also, "[B]y loving YHWH your God, heeding His commands, and holding fast to Him — thereby you shall have life and shall long endure upon the soil that YHWH swore to your ancestors..." (Deuteronomy 30:20).
What
The Hebrew word Torah (תורה) is translated as Law, Teaching, or Instruction. It refers to the Divine Teaching that God gave to the Jewish people through Moses about 3,300 years ago. Orthodox Judaism holds that God gave two Torahs, or that He gave the Torah in two parts. The first part, which it calls Written Torah (Torah she-bi-khtav - תורה שבכתב), is the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. In broader usage, the term can also refer to the entire Jewish Bible. According to Orthodox Judaism, Moses wrote down all of the Pentateuch, or almost all of it, letter for letter, exactly in accordance with God's will. The second part of the Torah, it calls Oral Torah (Torah she-be'al peh - תורה שבעל פה). The Oral Torah was not written down but was transmitted by Moses in spoken form. Since those times, the Oral Torah has been transmitted orally from teacher to student in an unbroken chain that leads back to Moses.
What precisely is included by the term Oral Torah depends on usage. Some people use the term to mean only the Teaching that God gave to Moses and that allegedly neither he nor Joshua, his student, wrote down. This, for example, is how Maimonides, one of the greatest Rabbinical scholars, uses the term. In the Introduction to his most famous work, Mishneh Torah, he writes
All the commandments that were given to Moses at Sinai were given together with their interpretation, as it is written "and I will give thee the Tables of Stone, and the Law [torah], and the Commandment [mitzvah - מצוה]" (Exodus 24,12). "Law" is the Written Law; and "Commandment" is its interpretation: We were commanded to fulfill the Law, according to the Commandment. And this Commandment is what is called the Oral Law. The whole of the Law was written down by Moses Our Teacher before his death, in his own hand. He gave a scroll of the Law to each tribe; and he put another scroll in the Ark for a witness, as it is written "take this book of the Law, and put it by the side of the Ark of the Covenant of YHWH your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee" (Deuteronomy 31,26). But the Commandment, which is the interpretation of the Law—he did not write it down, but gave orders concerning it to the elders, to Joshua, and to all the rest of Israel, as it is written "all this word which I command you, that shall ye observe to do . . ." (Deuteronomy 13,1). For this reason, it is called the Oral Law. (Introduction to Mishneh Torah 1-3)
Notice that Maimonides uses the word interpretation when referring to the Oral Torah — this is common Rabbinic usage. The reason that it is important is that this usage of the word interpretation differs greatly from the common usage of the word. The common meaning of the word, at least as I understand it, is the act of clarifying meaning that is already present. That is, interpretation does not add any new information, it simply points to information that is already there when it might not be readily apparent. Yet the Rabbinic meaning of the word interpretation, as is seen here, is additional information that is not already present in the text of the Written Torah. For example, a rabbi might say: "The commandment 'do not boil a kid in its mother's milk' is repeated three times in the Written Torah. The interpretation of this is that one is forbidden to eat meat with dairy." What the rabbi means when he says this is that according to the alleged command that God gave to Moses at Sinai, we are forbidden to eat meat together with dairy. But to people who do not understand this Rabbinic redefinition of the word interpretation, it sounds as if there is some logical rule according to which the rabbi has deduced, based on the text, that the eating of meat with dairy is forbidden. Thus, again, Rabbinic "interpretation" is no interpretation at all, as the word is used by everyone aside from the Rabbis.
The Oral Torah allegedly contains rules using which Rabbis have the authority to create new laws, called Rabbinical laws. I say "allegedly" because it is not clear how these rules are applicable in practice, or how they were applied to create many of the existing Rabbinical laws. At any rate, Rabbinical laws are also often called interpretation because they are, allegedly, derived using these rules from existing laws, Oral or Written. This, again, is not interpretation in the conventional sense of the word. The term Oral Torah is often used to mean the Oral Torah proper, discussed above, as well as this vast body of post-Sinaitic Rabbinical laws. The Jewish Encyclopedia writes:
In a wider sense, however, "Torah shebe-'al peh" includes all the interpretations and conclusions which the scribes deduced from the written Torah, as well as the regulations instituted by them, and therefore comprises the entire traditional teaching contained in the Mishnah, the Tosefta, and the halakic midrashim, since these were taught only orally and were not committed to writing. In later haggadic statements, however, the complete body of rabbinical doctrine is said to have been revealed to Moses on Sinai; so that R. Joshua b. Levi declared that all the rabbinical teachings, even those which the scholars found and promulgated later, were given to Moses on the mountain.
These passages, on the other hand, are by no means intended to be taken literally, or to be supposed to imply that God imparted to Moses the entire rabbinical teachings as they were developed in the course of time ... the substance of these teachings either was deduced from the written law by means of exegetical interpretations and logical conclusions—being therefore contained by implication in the written law and so given to Moses—or it consisted of statutes which the Rabbis promulgated according to their own judgment, as they were justified in doing according to the traditional interpretation of Deut. xvii. 10-11....
In other words, in this usage, the term Oral Torah includes all the many Rabbinical laws, even those created in our times. The logic behind this usage is that all of the Rabbinical laws came out of the Oral Torah that was given to Moses. They are either "interpretations" of the Written Torah, where, as discussed, interpretation really means Oral Torah proper, not logical interpretation. Or, they are laws created under the authority supposedly given in Deuteronomy 17; but that Biblical passage only gives this authority according to the Oral Torah, and not according to the plain meaning of the text, as I will discuss in a later chapter.
While Rabbinical uses of the word interpretation to refer to Oral Torah abound, and while this leads many people into the error of thinking that the Oral Torah actually is interpretation, in the conventional sense, at the same time, Rabbinical sources do confirm that Oral Torah is not interpretation. For example, Aish haTorah, a large Orthodox outreach organization, writes in one of its articles:
It's important to clarify a common misconception many have about the role of the Oral Torah in Judaism.
The Oral Torah is not an interpretation of the Written Torah. In fact, the Oral Torah preceded the Written Torah. When the Jewish people stood at Mount Sinai 3,300 years ago, God communicated the 613 commandments, along with a detailed, practical explanation of how to fulfill them. At that point in time, the teachings were entirely oral.
In other words, the article reiterates the words of Maimonides above, but clarifies that the Oral Torah is not interpretation, in the conventional sense of the word.
I have discussed two parts of the Oral Torah: Oral Torah proper, which was allegedly literally given to Moses on Sinai, and Rabbinical laws, which, while not literally given to Moses, were allegedly derived in accordance with Oral Torah proper. There is also a third part of the Oral Torah, which is rarely recognized as such. There are some Rabbinical laws which, according to the Rabbis, are stated in the Written Torah, but which, in reality, are not present in the text. That is, the Oral Torah claims that it is Written Torah. Yet, without knowledge of the Oral Torah, simply from analyzing the text of the Written Torah, one would not know that such a law exists. Since the information that the law exists is contained in the Oral Torah, the law must be counted as part of the Oral Torah, not withstanding Rabbinical insistence that it is Written Torah. A good example of this is the Rabbinical claim that the commandment to put on tefillin is in the Written Torah, though no such commandment exists in the text. I will discuss this matter in a later chapter.
Rabbis can create new laws, but existing laws cannot be abolished. This is certainly true of Oral Torah proper, the part claimed to have been given to Moses at Sinai. It is also true of the alleged Written Torah part, since Written Torah cannot be changed either. As for the Rabbinical laws, Rabbis say that in principle, later Rabbis can overrule the decisions of earlier Rabbis. However, in practice, this has been impossible for many centuries and is impossible for all foreseeable future. This is because the caveat is that only a Rabbinical court of greater authority can modify decisions of a Rabbinical court of lesser authority, not the other way around. According to the Rabbis, until a far-off and unforeseeable future, Rabbinical courts in each generation are of lesser authority than courts in previous generations. This means that for all practical intents and purposes, Rabbis can only create new laws, but cannot modify existing Rabbinical laws.
Some people have the misconception that, while the Oral Torah was originally transmitted orally, it has since been written down in the two Talmuds and perhaps related Rabbinical works. This is not so. As I have mentioned above, the term Oral Torah includes all the many Rabbinical laws. Since new laws can be created after any particular book has been written, no book can contain them all. Also, the Oral Torah is said to be too vast to be written down. That is why it was not written down by Moses, and that is why it can never be written down in full, even when important portions of it are committed to writing. Indeed, it is said that some of the more esoteric portions of the Oral Torah have never been written down, but have been transmitted orally from teacher to student. In other words, the Oral Torah only exists in the mouths of the Rabbis. This is seen as an advantage too, as it makes the Oral Torah immune to the manipulations of outsiders. Also, according to Orthodox belief, the Written Torah can neither be understood nor followed without the Oral Torah. Since the Oral Torah is in the mouths of the Rabbis, whatever the Rabbis say, one must do, regardless of what the text of the Written Torah says or seems to say. In this sense, the Oral Torah overrides the Written Torah — if the text of the Written Torah says one thing while the Rabbis say the opposite, it is the Rabbis who must be obeyed. I give examples of this in the book.
Now that I have briefly explained what the term Oral Torah means, I state the subject of this book. In this book, I prove that the Oral Torah is not of Divine origin. In other words, I prove that all the Teaching that God gave to Moses was written down either in the lifetime of Moses, or shortly thereafter, and that there was no other Divine Teaching. This also means that all of the many Rabbinical laws, which are premised on the belief in this Oral Torah proper, do not have any Divine authority behind them. And finally, as in the case with tefillin, just because the Oral Torah claims that a Written Torah law exists, does not make it so. Instead, all of Oral Torah, from beginning to end, including all the many Rabbinical laws, is man-made and non-binding.
Why
Why write such a book? There are plenty religions in the world, and since they all disagree with each other, most of them cannot be true. Why should I pick on Orthodox Jews? Why should I create discord, division, and animosity within the Jewish people? Can't we just practice regular Judaism, or, if not practice it, then leave it alone?
Many people think of Jews as a "people of the Book". Yet, most of what we think of today as Judaism comes from the Oral Torah, not from the Jewish Bible. Just think of a few things that you associate with Judaism — black suits, thrice daily prayer, constant blessings, tefillin, separation of meat and dairy, sabbath candles, head covering for men and hair covering for women, separation of genders, Kabbalah, cloistered communities, elevation of certain leaders to semi-divine status — all of these are from the Oral Torah. The number of Oral Torah rules is vast, and no matter how well one performs them, there are always more rules to be performed.
Rabbinical Judaism is filled with these many exhausting man-made rules. This has two tragic consequences. First, because the rules that God actually did command to us through Moses are much fewer in number and much easier to follow, the practitioner loses sight of them. The Divine religion revealed to Moses is thus marginalized in favor of a man-made religion. That is why Moses said
You shall not add anything to what I command you or take anything away from it, but keep the commandments of YHWH your God that I enjoin upon you. (Deuteronomy 4:2)
and
Be careful, then, to do as YHWH your God has commanded you. Do not turn aside to the right or to the left: follow only the path that YHWH your God has enjoined upon you, so that you may thrive and that it may go well with you, and that you may long endure in the land you are to possess. (Deuteronomy 5:29-30)
The adding of laws is thus itself is a contradiction of the Written Torah. Besides this, there are some Oral Torah laws that actually contradict other Written Torah laws, as I will discuss in the book.
The second tragedy is that so many Jews have been lead to believe that Orthodox Judaism is the only valid form of Judaism. As a result, when they reject Orthodox Judaism, they, in their minds, reject Judaism as a Divine religion, and either completely turn away from it, or explicitly turn Judaism into a man-made religion. The justification of many laws in the Oral Torah is that they promote the observance of the Written Torah. Yet, the exact opposite is often true — the burden of the Oral Torah is causing many Jews to forsake the Written Torah.
Thus, the primary reason for writing this book is that the religion of Moses and the prophets has been severely obfuscated by the more recent man-made invention. I hope that showing that the Oral Torah is an invention of men will help people separate it from the Jewish Bible, and consequently see the full beauty and power of the commandments that God actually did give to Moses. I hope that this will lead to a renaissance of Jewish thought and a renewal of Jewish life.
I love the Jewish Bible. I love all aspects of it: the system of Law, the histories, the philosophy. The books of the Bible cover different topics and are written in different styles, and in that, each one adds something unique to our understanding. They are very direct, simple to understand, and pertinent for all times. Sadly, some people do not see things this way. Whenever they find a marginally difficult passage, some people throw up their hands and say that the Jewish Bible is impossible to understand without the aid of the Oral Torah. This is one of their arguments for the Oral Torah, that the Jewish Bible is lacking! To my mind, this is rather an attack on the Bible, and I feel that someone should defend it.
But it goes beyond simple zealous "defense of the faith". I hope that this book shows how simple, straightforward analysis can be successfully applied to the Jewish Bible. I discuss many passages that, according to the Rabbis, are supposed to show that the Jewish Bible is lacking. By discussing these supposedly difficult passages, I hope to illustrate how simple things really are, and perhaps even inspire others to take a closer look at the Jewish Bible, rather than relying in every single thing on one's local Orthodox rabbi*. In other words, this book is not so much against the Oral Torah, which it is, but even more so for the Jewish Bible.
* Local Orthodox rabbi or LOR is a standard Orthodox expression.
I would like to make it perfectly clear that it is not my intent to pick on Orthodox Jews or on anyone else. I do not have any ill will or ill feelings toward Jews who believe in the Oral Torah. Debate and hate are two very different things. The only reason I write this is to help people come back to the Written Torah. To borrow a Rabbinical expression, this is a "dispute that is for the sake of Heaven" (Avot 5:20). As the Bible says, "You shall not hate your kinsfolk in your heart. Reprove your kinsman but incur no guilt because of him" (Leviticus 19:17). Reproving is a good thing and is different from hate. If we did not debate with one another, how would a person who makes a mistake ever find out about it? Arguing with someone can help them. Also, avoiding debate, and bottling up the issues, can actually lead to hate. Debate is a way to the truth because through it, we test each other's positions.
It is true that not all debate is good. There is Proverbs 9:8: "Do not rebuke a scoffer, for he will hate you; / Reprove a wise man, and he will love you". This is exactly why I think that this particular debate is good and appropriate, because it is aimed at the wise, not at scoffers.
As for "creating divisions", that is a common refrain made by some people who do not wish to address criticism. When a rabbi says this, he means that all Jews should practice Orthodox Judaism and, even if they do not practice it, they should at least acknowledge it as the "correct" form of Judaism. Well, I do think that Orthodox Judaism is wrong. But I do not wish to create divisions and I am not writing this book to do so. Rather, divisions already exist. I do not have data for Jews worldwide, but according to the National Jewish Population Survey, in the United States, 8% of Jews self-identify as Orthodox, 22% as Conservative, 30% as Reform, 17% as "Just Jewish", and 8% as all other; 15% are secular or of unknown self-identification. Divisions already exist — I am writing this precisely in the hope that Jews will come back to the straightforward Judaism of the Jewish Bible, which will heal these divisions.
To the reader
I anticipate that some people who are interested in this book might be classified into one of a few groups. Before we begin, I would like to say something to readers from each of these groups.
Orthodox Jews
I understand that me disagreeing with your religion might be unpleasant. While I do disagree, as I say above, it is not my intent to personally attack anyone. My attack is on ideas, not on people.
I have read many Orthodox proofs of the Oral Torah. I am sad to say that most of them, including those proposed by famous Rabbis, are severely lacking and can be easily debunked by anyone, including a simple person such as myself. It is my sincere hope that this book will increase the level of scholarship on both sides of the Oral Torah divide. I would be happy to see proofs of the Oral Torah that, even if they turn out to be false in the end, have some substantial merit to them.
Reform Jews
In my experience, many lay Reform Jews study the Jewish Bible while at the same time largely ignore the Oral Torah. I see this as a positive. At the same time, in the minds of these Jews, the Jewish Bible and the Oral Torah are both parts of one whole. This prevents them from completely setting aside the Oral Torah and from discounting the Jewish Bible. I do hope that once Jews realize that the Oral Torah has nothing to do with the Jewish Bible, they will be able to evaluate the latter on its own merits, without the distortions of the former.
Secular Jews
Many secular Jews have some affinity for Judaism. Yet, because they mistakenly equate Orthodox Judaism with all of Judaism, they feel that following Judaism is too burdensome. I hope that by reading this book, these Jews will realize that there is another way. The truth is that the Judaism of the Jewish Bible is very simple, powerful, and direct. I do believe that many Jews, secular and otherwise, will find it appealing if they only realize that it exists.
Christians
According to Christianity, the New Testament is a natural and logical extension of the Jewish Bible. It has therefore been puzzling to many Christians for many centuries why the Jews, who already accept the Jewish Bible, do not accept the New Testament and Christianity. One proposed explanation for this has been that the Oral Torah prevents Jews from seeing the supposed truths of the New Testament. According to this logic, if Jews would only abandon the Oral Torah, they would readily accept Christianity. Therefore, many Christians have spent a lot of time attacking the Oral Torah.
Since the subject of this book is proving the falsity of the Oral Torah, some Christians might find it appealing to use it to try to bring Jews into Christianity. This, however, would be wasted effort, since the premise that Jews reject Christianity solely on account of the Oral Torah is absolutely false. In particular, I turn your attention to a wonderful book called Faith Strengthened by Isaac ben Abraham of Troki. The book, written in 1594, is a classic. In the book, the author clearly shows the New Testament to be false. The reason that I bring it up is that none of the arguments in the book have anything to do with the Oral Torah, as the author himself rejects it while accepting the Jewish Bible. It is thus clear that the rejection of the Oral Torah and the acceptance of the New Testament are unrelated.
What's more, in my opinion it is easier to reject the New Testament if one also rejects the Oral Torah. This is because acceptance of the Oral Torah means reliance on the words of the Rabbis, which can lead one astray. But following the Jewish Bible to the exclusion of the Oral Torah means reliance on reason, which reason one can also use to reject the New Testament. As evidence of this, consider all the false messiahs that have appeared among the Jews throughout the ages. I do not know whether the followers of Jesus, who was probably the first false messiah, believed in the Oral Torah or not. But the followers of all the subsequent false messiahs did also believe in the Oral Torah. This includes Rabbi Akiva, one of the greatest Talmudic Rabbis, who in the 130's declared Simon bar Kokhba to be the messiah. And this includes the followers of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who have declared him to be the messiah upon his death in 1994.* The followers of all these false messiahs follow the Oral Torah. In terms of idolizing their leader, the followers of Schneerson are similar to Christians. For example, they pretend that he was perfect, above all faults, whereas we know that all humans make mistakes — the Jewish Bible specifically makes this point even in the case of Moses. And they also refer to him as "King Messiah" and as being alive, even though it has been over a decade since his death.
* See Melech Jaffe's article for an excellent exposition of this movement.
Antisemites
Various Jew-hating sources quote the Talmud to illustrate just how evil the Jews really are. Some of these Talmudic quotes are completely fabricated, some are real but are taken out of context. At any rate, an antisemite, seeing the subject of this book, might think that it contains more of such quotes. I am sorry to disappoint, but this book contains nothing of the sort. Rather than obsessing about the evil Jews, why not attempt to improve oneself instead?
Acknowledgements
There are many people to thank. First, I thank Nehemia Gordon and the late Mordecai Alfandari, whose writings have given flesh to my existing thoughts that there is something very wrong with the Rabbinical religion, and that it conflicts with the much more vital religion of Moses. Second, I thank Rabbi Gil Student of the AishDas Society for writing a thorough defense of the Oral Torah, which became the impetus for me writing this book. There are many people who have helped along the way, through providing encouragement, through giving new ideas, through disagreeing in a civil manner, by which I have also gained new insight, or simply through having thought-provoking positions, whether I agree with them or not. Among these are Shlomo Aronovitz, Eddie Vitesk, Josiah Draper, Ron Aaron, Mira Devries, and others.