What is the "Oral Torah"?

And how do you know that His learning during that time doesn't do exactly that? Don't forget when you talk about an Infinite Being, & even a being that is far less than Infinite, it's possible to do things simultaneously. Reply

You speak of an Infinite Being with far less than Infinite Wisdom who wrote the Torah before forming this universe. Are you suggesting the Creator has problems remembering the total of existence? Do you think that G-d exists in daylight savings time in which He studies His infinite encrypted code of life forms with consciousness?

G-d is not a man who forgets. Reply

Humans can try performing several things simultaneously. But G-d in His infinite wisdom is not a man who forgets what he wrote in a book. Hashem's original Torah sits in the heavens and was visible to the Spitzer telescope in March 2006.

Most folks know of G-d's infinitely complex code for life in each cell of all living cell forms on planet earth. We know this code as DNA which is responsible for life and all functions in the plant, animal, and living cells. Hashem's Torah formed its appearance as a double helix with cross bars and telomers at both ends.

Take a look at His Torah. Scientists cannot accept this as God's code and for convenience's sake call it a nebula.

Google DNA nebula NASA Reply

1) The Infinite Being cannot interact with the finite without the mechanism of contraction Himself so that the finite is not blown away.

2) Learning Torah does not have to be "to remember it."

3) Tractate Berakhoth says G-d wears tefillin. What does that mean? Our tefillin are directed towards loving G-d with our hearts & minds. G-d's tefillin are directed towards loving the Jewish People "with His heart & mind." Since He is Infinite, but chooses to act in the contraction (tzimtzum) as if He is "less," we are forced to say that His actions approximates to some degree loving through heart & mind.

4) G-d's learning Torah must be parallel to His tefillin in the sense that, as it were, He's engaging His mind in the Torah.

5) What does that mean??? Reply

I don't understand this. If G-d stated something explicitly, and an assembly of men, however wise, stated something contrary, who will you follow, G-d or the assembly of men? G-d is our ultimate judge, so it makes more sense to me to follow His command, and only when His command is not clear, then it makes sense to follow the interpretation of men - if I find the interpretation agreeable. Reply

Hashem is infinite wisdom and nothing He says or does make doesn't make sense. G-d said that He spoke in riddles (metaphors and allegory) to the prophets but to Moshe Rabenu, He spoke directly with no riddles.

It always make sense to follow Hashem for these wise men apparently have little wisdom. Reply

His command is to use exegesis that He provided, those are the 13 Principles of Rabbi Yshma'el. Reply

Well I would agree with you "halfway". I believe the Sages and Rabbis who made specific rulings, either by exegesis or "fencing in" existing laws, did not do so at a whim of their imaginations - they must have believed it was relevant and valuable to their specific communities. However I question whether (1) did they intend their rulings to be followed by every Jewish community around the world even at their time, and (2) did they intend their rulings to be upheld by Jewish communities in all generations in perpetuity?
Surely there are plenty of Orthodox communities that consider these rulings extremely relevant to them, and that's perfectly fine. But I disagree when it is said that all such rulings are obligatory to any person of Jewish birth, in any community, anywhere in the world, for reasons I discussed above. Reply

check footnote 3 of this article Reply

But G-d said so explicitly in Deuteronomy 17:8-11. That's the process, it always has been. I think that YOU are uncomfortable with the results that the process can yield which isn't to different from a researcher following the scientific method (a process), but being upset with the results he discovers. This is what happened to Albert Einstein with the evidence for an expanding universe that originated with a big bang. Though he followed scientific method, it led him to conclusions that he considered bizarre & totally against the consensus of the scientific community. It took him ten years to overcome his cognitive dissonance & publish his now universally accepted "theories." The clash between Truth & comfort can be messy, but that's the price of living in reality. Reply

Rabbi Adelman

You state, " Philosophical proofs have been given. The Sefer HaIkrim points out that without an oral law, almost every sentence is subject to ambiguity."

With all due respect, you apparently are not taking into account the fact that the Rabbinim, Sages, and Prophets were only men of finite wisdom and were neither appointed nor anointed and their interpretations were ambiguous.

The rabbinic Halacha that developed granted the rabbis authority and control over every religious and social aspect in the nation of Israel, under the claim that this tradition wasn’t invented by them, but passed down to them by word of mouth all the way from Moses on Mount Sinai.

After Har Sinai, Moses himself could not answer Halachic questions. Moses had to refer questions to G-d and awaited His reply. This means that Moses didn’t have an Oral Law to refer and interpret the written law for him. (Examples of this can be found in Numbers 9, Leviticus 24, Numbers 15 and 27 and other places) Reply

I appreciate that many portions of the Torah are ambiguous, but the passage from Genesis that reads “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk” is as specific as it gets. It is not ambiguous at all. If G-d had wanted us to wait 6 hours after eating meat before eating dairy, he could simply have said: “You shall only consume dairy products 6 hours or more after eating meat”. That is no more or less specific than the actual text except it directs us to wait 6 hours. We have no reason to believe that Jews waited 6 hours to consume dairy after eating meat immediately following Sinai or for centuries thereafter. It certainly appears that this is a rule created by the Rabbi’s and does not come from G-d. Reply

Inside you, then outside you, with an adequate teacher. It takes between 3 or 5 years of study. It may take longer, such as 20 years or may even never be. The most important beside the toil, is the teacher. If this proof does not show up, then either the quality or the quantity of study is in cause. The quantity of work is relative to the free time u have: 5mn per week for one student very busy in life, may be worth or even surpass 10 hours per week, for another one who has no real working constraint, ie plenty of free time. Anyone can do it, anyone. Not that easy but breathtaking. Women who are less fragmented then men need way less more work. All the best Sara Reply

It makes no sense to me that "commandment" is synonymous with "Oral Law" in this context. This passage is certainly not a clear and unequivocal statement in Torah about the validity and necessity of Oral Law. My impression is that the justification for Oral Law was transmitted orally and not through Torah. Reply

Imagine a car. Imagine the car booklet, now, someone needs to tell us how to drive. Same with any know how: plenty books but when action time, better have someone who knows nearby, to share the related oral tradition.

The Rambam was stunned to discover the kabbalah, and the depth and shift of meanings provided by the oral law Reply

Your analogy does not alter the fact that there is nothing in the Torah that clearly and unequivocally says that there is an Oral Law. Obviously, those who reject the notion of an Oral Law don't accept your analogy that the Oral Law explains (using your analogy) how to "drive the car". Those who accept the notion of an Oral Law obviously buy into this analogy. Reply

Certainly there is no reason to believe the Rabbis made anything up. However, the Oral Torah is the equivalent of thousands of pages of text. The probability is almost zero that any group of people could have committed that much information to memory and transmitted it orally across thousands of years and many lands in a way that enabled it to remain intact from Mount Sinai. What we call the Oral Torah today must be substantially different from the original. Reply

Interestingly, there is no mention of a second Rabbinical Oral Testament given to Moses on Har Sinai. Even Moshe Rabbeinu, after receiving the Torah and Tablets was given questions by some of the Hebrews. Moshe said I will give you the answer after I speak to G-d. What, no Oral Rabbinical testament was given to Moshe? The Oral Law or second Torah was not mentioned once in the entire Torah or Tanach. I wonder why? Reply

No doubt people were much more practiced in committing things to memory in earlier times than they are today. That doesn’t mean that people ever had the capacity to commit memory thousands of pages of text to memory that had been transmitted to them orally. How many times do you figure that someone had to hear those thousands of pages repeated before they had it absolutely memorized? Once? 10 times? 50 times, 100 times, 1,000 times? Is that even possible? It is difficult enough to memorize the entire Torah verbatim, even though you can keep referring back to the written text over & over again, ad infinitum. The notion that tens of thousands of people preserved thousands of pages of oral Torah absolutely intact over thousands of years is dubious. It seems more reasonable to assume that the Rabbi's transmitted oral law as best they could and in a manner designed to preserve Judaism under often adverse circumstances. In that they succeeded admirably. Reply

Maybe not so dubious...I had a professor, Dr. Ekeechi, from Nigeria who, who explained that  pre-literate African societies, like his own Ibu tribe, had designated 'Rememberers' who were trained as young children to memorize their tribal history, verbatim. They were periodically tested by the older 'Rememberers' and tested against each other. The Ainu of Japan are supposed to have a story that takes 3 days to tell. Also, the Iliad and Odessey were verbally transmitted poems for several hundred years before they were put into writing. Reply

You haven’t provided specifics concerning how much each of the African “Rememberers” remembers, whether they remember everything on an exact word-for-word basis or how consistent their memories are with “Rememberers” of past generations. Therefore, there is no way to directly compare what they remember with what it would take to memorize the oral Torah verbatim and to pass it completely unaltered, word-for-word, over thousands of years. It’s my understanding that Talmud currently contains on the order of 2 million words. There is also no way of knowing how close the earliest written versions of the Illiad and Odyssey are with the version of these stories that existed at their first telling. Similarly, there is no way of knowing whether the Ainu tell the same 3-day story verbatim or whether at least some of the words change in each telling of the story. Reply