The Written Torah was delivered to the site of the Second Temple by Ezra the Scribe in the middle of the fifth century BCE. It was received by the people of Israel as the transcribed word of God, revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai in 1285 BCE. From the time of Ezra’s arrival, it was accepted as a sacred scripture which told the story of the origin of the people of Israel and their committed relationship with their God. Until the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D., it constituted the established law of the land.
By its own prescription, in Deuteronomy 4 (2), the Torah is immutable. It cannot be altered, enlarged or diminished. Those to whom the Torah granted the right of judgment were entitled to apply the law as long as their judgment complied with the spirit and intent of the Torah. In that sense, the Torah has survived as a cherished, and studied, living document to the Jewish people for 2500 years.
While singing its praises, both liberal (Reform) and traditional (Orthodox) Jews have distanced themselves from the governance of the Torah, albeit in different ways. Today’s liberal Judaism resembles in many ways the Judaism of its more traditional brothers. However, it eliminates those practices of Rabbinical Judaism which it deems excessive and grants its membership the right to ignore, with impunity, biblical laws deemed incompatible with modern lifestyle. Traditional, or Orthodox, Jewish practice has involved overt rejection of portions of the Torah, creation of their own competitive Oral Torah, and expansive interpretation of the Written Torah’s provisions and practices. To avoid the discomfort of their own enlargement, they often employ fictional or shameful devices.
During the latter part of the Second Temple, Judaism, as a religion, was awash with scriptural controversies and faith-based political challenges. It was an era in which many sages like Hillel and Shammai, under the auspices of “The People of the Great Temple” (Anshe Hakeneseth Hagadol), ruminated over the Written Torah’s real meaning and interpretation.
Politics and Religion
In the Second Temple itself, there was a schism between the Sadducees, who took the view that “The Torah says what it means and means what it says”, and the Pharisees, who were significantly more expansive in their interpretations. The Sadducees were resolute in their rejection of Conversion, the concept of an immortal soul and the existence of an afterlife.
Ultimately, the Pharisees politically sought to eliminate the voice and authority of the Sadducees in the Temple. This was effectively undertaken by Shimon Ben Shetach, the brother-in-law of King Alexander Jannaeus. When King Jannaeus appointed Shimon as the head of the Sanhedrin, Shimon skillfully maneuvered the removal of the Sadducees from the priesthood. On April 14, 70 CE, the Romans laid siege to the city of Jerusalem. The siege ended on August 30 of that year with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple. By the time of the Temple destruction by the Romans in 70 A.D, there were no Sadducee priests left in the Temple.
The Birth of Rabbinical Judaism
After the destruction of the Second Temple, Jews began to assemble communally to read and learn the law. But that was not enough. Individuals had a need to tell their God about their anxieties, express their love, and request God’s help on behalf of their families and their people. These communal sessions were generally conducted under the direction of the Pharisees, remnants of the Temple personnel. Personal prayers were often replaced by prepared communal prayers. Pharisees eventually became the rabbinate, who served instead of the Levites of the temple. The communal assembly became the synagogue of Rabbinical Judaism.
In the latter part of the second century CE, Yehuda ha-Nasi (Judah the Prince), a revered scholar, together with a number of Associates, undertook the project of codifying the multifarious opinions of the sages of the Second Temple. The group was known as the Tannaim and the product of their efforts, called the Mishnah. It was the first, and perhaps the most significant work of Rabbinical Judaism and was the inspiration of other efforts, including the Midrash and the Gomorrah. Together, they constituted the Talmud.
Like the Pharisees, Rabbinical Judaism’s proponents felt unduly constrained by the four corners of the Written Torah. Rabbinical Judaism ultimately unbridled itself from the Written Torah in a unique way, by totally altering the biblical origin of who is a Jew, from the child of the father (patrilineal) to the child of the mother (matrilineal).
The creation of the Jewish People and their relationship with their God was expressly designed in the Written Torah. Without the Written Torah’s design, the Jewish people and Judaism did not exist. The Talmud’s Tannaim expressly rejected the Jewish father as the origin of Jewish people and substituted instead the Jewish mother. Effectively, that created two separate and distinct genetic peoples. There were genetic Jews, children of Jewish fathers according to Torah design, and there were persons born of Jewish mothers who the Rabbis, on their own authority, declared were the only Jews.
Until modern times, virtually all Jewish marriages were between Jewish men and Jewish women. Such marriages, of necessity, bred Jewish children. However, with the advent of modern times, as in 21st Century America, where 58% of Jewish men marry non-Jewish women, matrilinealism identifies the issue of such marriages as Gentile. With its Rabbinically designed population of “Jews”, Rabbinical Judaism loosened itself from the tether of the Torah requirements and granted to itself the authority to add to, modify, or reject Torah provisions. In essence, Rabbinical Judaism generated a people of its own, on the periphery of the Torah.
Rabbinical Judaism was, and is, remarkably successful. However, success is not a measure of authenticity. Rabbinical Judaism, also known as Rabbinism, is the faith practiced by the vast majority of Jews worldwide. It purports to offer Rabbinical Jews the existence of an immortal soul, life after death in a world to come (l’olam Habah), and reward and punishment in that afterlife. Indeed, it offers even more: a plethora of rules, regulations, laws and interpretations not contemplated by, nor reasonably deduced from, the Written Torah. It provides a second and competitive Torah known as the Oral Torah (Torah Shel B’al Pe) comprised of Rabbinical writings derived from the Talmud, which is, not infrequently, at odds with the original Written Torah.
One cannot deny the vast success of Rabbinical Judaism, or of the other religious disciplines, such as Christianity, that find their origin in the original text of the Written Torah. Couldthe Jewish people have continued to exist for 4000 years without the modificationsengendered by Rabbinical Judaism? That question appears to be answered in the affirmative by the current existence of Karite Judaism, the Samaritans of Israel, the Beth Israel Jews of Ethiopia, and members of remote and exotic Jewish communities that remain unknowledgeable of, and or unbound by, the Talmud.
The real questions are: Is Rabbinical Judaism the same Judaism as that faith which arose out of God’s covenant with the Patriarchs? Is the Written Torah immutable, as its text requires in Deuteronomy 4 (2)? Or, are its provisions amendable by man? If it can be amended, who has the authority to do so? If it cannot be amended, is Rabbinical Judaism a true and honest Guardian and custodian of its immutability? Is Rabbinical Judaism’s totally redesigned matriarchal “People of Israel” the same nation to whom God promised the land of Israel? If not, under what authority do we claim title?
The Birth of the Reform Movement
In the ghettos, as in the shtetls of Eastern Europe, the communities fell under the authority of the Rabbis who governed every aspect of human behavior including, administrative, religious, social, marital, commercial and holy relationships.
With the advent of liberalism brought on by the Napoleonic Era with its notions of liberty equality and fraternity, ghetto doors were opened. In Eastern Europe, ghettos gave way to the shtetls, where Jewish life changed little. However, the horse was out of the barn, and many Jews found themselves living and working in the cities and engaging commercially and socially with their Gentile neighbors. For them the religious restrictions of the ghettos and shtetls were no longer relevant. In Germany, liberated Jews felt a need for a new kind of Judaism, one with fewer restrictions and one which resembled more closely the religious institutions of their new neighbors. That impetus led to the creation of the Reform movement in Judaism, which began in 1819 in Germany. Members of the movement did not wish to abandon their heritage as Jews, but sought to tailor Judaism to their new and more liberal lifestyle. By 1842, Reform Judaism was formally adopted in Great Britain. By the end of the 19th Century, with Jewish immigration from Germany, Reform Judaism found itself firmly rooted in America.
To Eastern European Jews, the United States had the image of the “Goldena Medina” (the land of golden opportunity). Most brought with them the religious training, mindset and paraphernalia of traditional Jewry, and went about creating traditional synagogues wherever they settled. However, a significant number could not wait to cast off the poverty, fear and subjugation of shtetl life, adopt the American lifestyle, and therefore, they left their Judaism at the port of entry.
By the mid-Twentieth Century, Reform Judaism, and a variation on its theme called the Reconstruction movement, represented the liberal wing of Judaism in America. Traditional Judaism was vested in Orthodoxy and by the Conservative Movement, which although traditional in policy, sought to temper some of the more extreme elements of the Orthodox position. Though liberal and traditional movements were significantly different from each other, they were all part of Rabbinical Judaism. Their members felt the burden of the many rules, regulations, practices and laws which early Rabbinical Judaism imposed upon the Jewish community and the Written Torah. Each movement undertook to alleviate itself of that burden, but in significantly different ways.
Liberal Judaism’s Early Policy of Abandonment
Reform Judaism in the United States established itself with many of the same structures and concepts which came over with the early migration of Reform Jews from Germany. Reform services in Berlin held prayers without phylacteries, prayer shawls, head coverings, or the blowing of shofar.
In the United States, two day festivals were abandoned in favor of the one original day. Services were conducted in English with just a smattering of the Hebrew, which was transliterated for those who could not read Hebrew text. Many Reform synagogues discouraged the presence of head coverings or prayer shawls during the temple service. Musical instruments found their way into devotional services. Not only did early Reform Judaism eliminate many of Rabbinical Judaism’s classical proprietary religious practices, but it specifically rejected a large part of the basic Torah obligations. The extent to which the early Reform movement distanced itself from the normative Jewish religious practices of that day is best told by segments of the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform of the American Reform Movement in Judaism adopted by the Union of American Hebrew congregations, which is provided herein only in paraphrased pertinent part:
- The Bible reflects the primitive ideas of its own age, and at times clothes its conception of Divine Providence and Justice dealing with men in miraculous narratives.
- We recognize Mosaic legislation as a system of training the Jewish people for its mission during its national life in Palestine, and today we accept as binding only its moral laws, and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such which are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization.
- We hold that all such Mosaic and Rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness, thus their observance in our days is apt to obstruct, rather than to further modern spiritual elevation.
- We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship unto the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish State.
Though couched in flowery language, the 1885 platform seems to retain little more of Judaism than a vague allusion to its moral precepts, which it does not identify. It eliminates the existence of a Jewish national identity with the concomitant right to independent statehood. The Platform envisions a Judaism that can only exist as a religion. Under this Platform, the Torah and Rabbinical Judaism are equal opportunity amputees. ClassicalJudaism’s effort to emulate its Christian neighbors appears to have derived its name from the Christian Reformation Movement on the Continent which challenged the primacy of Catholicism.
As young children start to grow into maturity, so too did Reform Judaism. In 1937, Reform Judaism issued its Columbus platform, modifying and restating the principles of Reform Judaism. It inched its way back into Rabbinical Judaism by supporting traditional customs and ceremony, the use of liturgical Hebrew and the recognition of both the Written and the Oral Torah. More significantly, it affirmed the obligation of all Jewry to the upbuilding of a Jewish homeland as a center of Jewish culture and spiritual life. However, it acknowledged that significant changes made in modern science and social innovation of lifestyle authorized Reform Jews to ignore those portions of the Torah that appear to be prohibiting those activities. Specific laws were not mentioned.
In San Francisco in 1976, Reform Judaism issued what they called a Centenary Prospective. Essentially, it was a 100 year update of Reform Judaism in America. More than acknowledging that the Jewish People were entitled to their new national existence in Israel, it demonstrated Israel’s important contribution to Jewish culture and religion. The Prospective acknowledged the plenary role of women in Reform Judaism. It acknowledged a parity between those who were born to the Jewish faith and those who came to it through conversion. Finally, it touched vaguely on the right of Reform Judaism to interact with modern culture in such a manner as to reflect the contemporary aesthetic.
In 1999,the central conference of American rabbis issued a Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism. In a very real sense, it moved Reform Judaism away from the radical Pittsburgh platform of 1885 and towards centrism in the American Jewish community. It affirmed the oneness of God and that every human being was created in the image of God. It acknowledged that Reform Jews respond to God daily through public and private prayer and through study and performance of Mitzvot (sacred obligations). The Statement affirmed that the Torah is the foundation of Jewish life and acknowledged the truths revealed in its text. For the first time, it affirmed the importance of studying Hebrew, the language of the Torah and of Jewish liturgy.
The Statement committed to an ongoing study of the entire array of Mitzvot. It emphasized the importance of the Sabbath as the culmination of the work week and as the concept that ended the work week with both rest and holiness. It emphasized the importance of charity and the Jewish obligation of tikkun olam (the repair of the world). The Statement opened the doors of Reform synagogues to all regardless of sexual orientation, those who have converted to Judaism and those who have intermarried. Finally, it affirmed that both Israeli and Diaspora Jewry should remain interdependent and that those who reside outside of Israel should strive to learn Hebrew as a living language.
Today’s American Reform Judaism has, in many ways, positioned itself closer to the liberal wing of the Jewish Conservative movement in that it embraces classic Jewish values which have become more inclusive and liberalized over the years. It avoids stressing principles of core beliefs and focuses more on personal spiritual experience and communal participation. What it does not have, and appears to scrupulously avoid, is a statute book of do’s and don’t’s, rules and regulations found elsewhere in Judaism. It is a faith that acknowledges the importance of contemporary scientific and social lifestyles and allows the avoidance of guilt when those lifestyles violate the express tenets of the Torah. Each and every modern Reform Jew carries the authority and responsibility of how far his allegiance to Modernism will take him from Torah rules and laws. In a sense that means that there are as many versions of Reform Judaism as there are persons who practice it and that infuses ambiguity in its practices.
Orthodox (Traditional) Rabbinical Judaism
Rules of law, civil or religious, standing alone are static and do nothing until they are applied to a specific factual situation. However, laws can be subject to multiple interpretations. That was the case with the Written Torah when it arrived at the site of the Second Temple. In order to apply that law, those charged with application are obliged to extract the intent and spirit of the law, the process called interpretation. When, however, an agency charged with applying the law defeats the intent of the lawgiver by inserting its own extraneous agenda into the process, then that is known as interpolation. Deuteronomy 4(2) prohibits any addition or modification of the express language of the Torah, howsoever it may occur. Yet, on multiple occasions, Orthodox Judaism appears to arrive at interpretations of the Torah that defy rational reasoning.
Conversion an Artificial Byproduct of Rabbinical Judaism’s Matrilinealism
The Rabbis did not understand that abandoning patrilinealism would delegitimize as Jews: 1. four of the sons of Jacob (Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher, originators of four of the Tribes of Israel), 2. the children of Joseph, 3. the children of Moses, and 4. a large number of the children of King David and King Solomon, all of who had Gentile mothers.
Because of the change to matrilineality, a cottage industry has developed within the rabbinate of converting Gentile wives to Judaism so that the Jewish fathers can maintain that their children are Jews. It is worthy of noting that in addition to matrilineal origin, Reform Jews have now also accepted patrilineal origin only if the children are reared as Jews — whatever that means. Jewish identity is a function of genetics and birth and is vested at the instant of conception. It takes a special kind of audacity to suggest that one can change a person into or out of being a Jew. Jewish identity is more than just a faith.
Rabbinical Judaism’s Allegation that the Written Torah Cannot be Understood Without the Benefit of the Talmud and its Transfiguration into the Oral Torah
An additional assault on the Written Torah took place when Rabbinical Judaism maintained that the Written Torah was incapable of being understood without the benefit of the Talmud and its multiple conflicting views, as articulated in the Oral Torah. It is that same Oral Torah that claims origination from Mount Sinai almost 1500 years before the appearance of the Written Torah, and that was not completed until almost a thousand years after the Written Torah.
Separation of all Meat from all Dairy
In three different places in the Written Torah (Exodus 23 (19), 34 (26) and Deuteronomy 14 (21)) the following simple repetitive statement appears:
“thou shalt not seethe (boil) a kid in his mother’s milk”.
It was a simple statement that should require no extraordinary interpretation. The relationship between the two animals was that of mother and child who were, of necessity, of the same species.
Rabbinical interpolation, however, expanded a simple parental directive so that it included the meat of all animals, with the milk of all animals, regardless of relationship or species. What was it that the Rabbis did not understand about a mother and child relationship in the animal kingdom? Did they believe that God was incapable of prohibiting the consumption of all meat with all milk, if that were his intention? Into the mix was added an additional non sequitur by including chicken in the meat category when, in fact, chickens do not give milk. It then allowed chickens and their eggs to be consumed in the same meal. This inscrutable ideological interpolation, which is frequently a subject of “Rabbinical supervision” has, for generations complicated kosher food preparation and induced Jewish women, to maintain four sets of dishes silverware, pots, pans, and towels.
Sabbath, a Day of Rest (The Sabbath Mandate)
The concept of a seven-day week, wherein the seventh day is a day of rest, is uniquely Judaic. It surfaced out of God’s description of his creation of the world as recounted in Genesis and appears over 100 times in the Torah. The thesis is that people should engage in their normal work activities for six days but, on the seventh day, work is to cease and to be substituted by a day of rest. The Sabbath, as a day of rest, is a vital part of Judaism. A frequent refrain is that “more than Israel has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Israel.” Christianity, sourced in Judaism, also provides for a seven-day week ending in a day of rest. Emperor Constantine, on March 7, 321 CE, for reasons that are not totally apparent, changed Christianity’s day of rest from Saturday to Sunday.
While the Ten Commandments, and other relevant provisions of the Torah, require rest from work on the seventh day (the Sabbath mandate) nowhere in the Torah is there a description of what activities constitute work. Did the Torah contemplate the word “work” to be defined as those activities which each individual performed during the previous six days? In that case, there are as many definitions of “work” as there are persons to whom it applies. Or did “work” mean any activity which required unique and described effort? In God’s infinite wisdom, He recognized that people support themselves by different kinds of work activities and that it would be impossible to enumerate every effort that people do during six work days of the week. The clear intent of the Sabbath mandate was to stop doing what you do during the workweek and go home and rest.
During the second century CE Rabbi Akiva and his students, seeking a way to accommodate the law, came to the ungodly conclusion that they had to list all kinds of work to comply with the Sabbath mandate. They prepared a list of 39 Melochot (activities) which they believed constituted work. The list was derived from the description of the kinds of work done in constructing the tabernacle in the desert hundreds of years earlier.
By way of point of reference, the list includes: 1. Carrying 2. Burning 3. Extinguishing 4. Finishing 5. Writing 6. Erasing 7. Cooking 8. Washing 9. Sewing 10. Tearing 11. Knotting 12. Untying 13. Shaping 14. Plowing 15. Planting 16. Reaping 17. Harvesting 18. Threshing 19. Winnowing 20. Selecting 21. Sifting 22. Grinding 23. Sorting 24. Combing 25. Spinning 26. Dyeing 27. Chain-stitching 28. Warping 29. Weaving 30. Unraveling 31. Building 32. Demolishing 33. Trapping 34. Shearing 35. Slaughtering 36. Skinning 37. Tanning 38. Smoothing 39. Marking
While some activities might universally apply, a quick glance at the 39 Melochot work activities listed above should be sufficient to inform that its relationship to today’s American Jewish community is so distant as not to be useful or relevant. It obviously relates to skills and occupations of a project in the desert which occurred more than 3000 years ago. However, interestingly enough, inasmuch as rabbinical and cantorial services are not listed, pulpit personnel like rabbis and cantors can get paid for working on the Sabbath since their activities are not listed as work.
The Jewish community of America, and that of most of the rest of the world, are not farmers or involved in animal husbandry. Two thousand years in the diaspora changed the focus of Jewish livelihoods from agriculture and animals to portable occupations in medicine, law, finance, commerce, and other occupations and skills that can be brought to the next place of refuge. The skills of the Sinai Desert no longer are relevant and apply.
Fault does not lie with the Torah, which never sought to articulate individual acts of work that violate the Sabbath. It does not even lie with the sages of old, who needed a list of possible violations over which they could ruminate. It lies at the doorstep of the contemporary traditional Rabbinate and its professional organizations, which are committed to tradition over relevance. The Written Torah is a living instrument, and in each generation must be nourished with the relevant data necessary so that it may be interpreted in a way to keep its people spiritually alive and in tune with the God of Israel. The spirit of the Torah is broad enough to accommodate every generation.
For traditional, Orthodox Jews, there are two additional Torah provisions which come into play in conjunction with the basic rule against working on the Sabbath. Exodus 17(29) obliges every man to abide in his place and not to go out of his place on the seventh day. Exodus 35 (3) instructs that no fire should be kindled throughout one’s habitation upon the Sabbath day. Collectively, the message seems to be simple. On the seventh day you can do no work, you must stay home, and you can have no fire in your habitation. However, what appears simple develops enormous complexities with the advent of remote synagogues, electricity, and the internal combustion engine.
Thou Shalt Not Leave Your Place on the Sabbath (Exodus 17(29))…The Eruv
It helps to realize that when Sabbath provisions were inscribed in the Written Torah, synagogues did not exist for another 600 years. In fact, there were no Rabbis or prepared devotional prayers.
For access to offsite synagogues Rabbinical Judaism was obliged to create a solution, and it did. After all, one was not permitted to leave one’s habitation on Sabbath and carrying outside of one’s household fell under the definition of work. Witness the creation of the “Eruv,”. The Eruv is a way of extending the perimeters of the habitation to include, amongst other possible destinations, the location of the temple. That is done by identifying or creating a wire, or physical perimeter, from the habitation that includes the Temple or other desired site. Usually telephone or electric wires installed by the local utilities will serve. In the event of a hiatus monofilament can be used to connect the open spaces. The Eruv on Manhattan Island is 18 miles long.
While truly the invention of the Eruv was masterful and ingenious, one has to wonder as to God’s response to such a patent sham devised to avoid his Sabbath gift of rest to the Jewish people.
Thou Shalt Not Kindle a Fire Throughout Your Habitation on the Sabbath Day Exodus 35(3)
Electricity plays a pervasive role in all aspects of modern human life. It: 1) allows us to see in the dark, 2) preserves our food, 3) cools our homes, 4) enlightens and entertains us via radio and television, 5) provides the media of our communication by telephones, smart phones and computers, 6) does our laundry, 7) is essential in our motor vehicle, 8) lifts us to the top of the tallest buildings, and 9) functions in a host of other critical aspects of our daily life. The Orthodox Jewish community early on confronted the role of electricity in relation to the Jewish Sabbath and its constraints. Unsurprisingly, there were a number of different opinions.
Some Rabbis took the position that electricity itself was tantamount to a form of fire and, therefore, prohibited on the Sabbath. Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, when asked “is electricity fire” replied that it was not because electricity is not a chemical process, while fire is. Other Rabbinical scholars took the view that electricity, per se, is not violative of the Sabbath, but to the extent that it operates equipment that is violative, it makes it prohibited.
A more complex question arises with the use of devices calculated to get around the conclusion that electricity is prohibited on the Sabbath. If electricity is really violative of the Sabbath, then what about timers or thermostats which allow the user, on Friday afternoon, to turn electrical appliances on after sundown. In what way does that not violate the spirit of the Torah?
Most, if not all, civilized legal systems do not allow one to do indirectly that which is directly prohibited. Sadly, it is a principle not highly regarded by Rabbinical Judaism:
Feigned Compliance
1. Witness the Eruv which enlarges one’s habitation by miles of telephone and electric wires.
2. Until about 500 CE, the households of the Hebrew nation were dark on Friday evening. During the sixth century CE, the Rabbinate created the Friday evening blessing over candles which provided that God had commanded Jews to light candles in their home to welcome the Sabbath. The resulting benefit was that people had light in their home on Friday evenings. There is no evidence in the Torah or elsewhere in the Holy Scriptures that God ever uttered such a command. Worse of all, it is a classic example of taking God’s name in vain in violation of the third of the Ten Commandments.
3. It is a common practice in religious Jewish homes and synagogues to employ the services of a “Shabbos Goy” to turn on lights, stoves, air-conditioners or other appliances. In that way, the person who makes the request believes that he or she has avoided violating the Sabbath. In every civilized community, the act of the agent is imputed to the principal. For instance, one cannot direct an agent to take the life of another and then walk away with impunity. The act of the Shabbos Goy is the act of the person who made the request.
4. Some entrepreneurs whose business is required to be open on the Sabbath enter a contract for sale and purchase of the business with a Gentile. The business is sold and delivered before sundown on Friday evening and repurchased on Saturday night or Sunday morning. In that way, the Sabbath observing vendor claims that he did not own and operate a business on the Sabbath.
5. In the Torah, along with the requirement that the Jews must cease all work on Sabbath, God created a seven year agricultural cycle called Shmita, which required that all agricultural land must be left idle every seventh year. It is a law that is still in effect in contemporary Israel. However, segments of the Israeli Rabbinate authorize the “selling” of the agricultural land for the year of Shmita to Gentiles, thus giving the owners the income without the technical sin or a violation of the law. What it does do, is to deny to the land the rest and regeneration granted by God in the Torah.
6. There is the entire industry dedicated to producing products that may possibly comply with the letter of the law while still avoiding the spirit of the law: Sabbath elevators, kosher lamps, kosher clocks, Shabbos-safe hot plates, Shabbos switches, precut toilet tissue to avoid tearing, and other similar products.
Conclusion
This review concludes with an imaginary dialogue between Rabbi Ezra Omniwitz, Executive Director of the Institute for the Preservation of Rabbinical Judaism, and God.
Rabbi: God! God! Is that you?
God: Yes, my son. Oh! Please don’t consider the word son in the genetic sense.
Rabbi: I’ve been anxious to get in touch with you so that I can report on how well your people are doing with the lessons that you provided in the Torah.
God: What can you report that I don’t already know?
Rabbi: First, we have done a remarkable job in distributing your Torah throughout the known world. It now appears, together with the Prophets and Scribes, as the Old Testament in the Bibles of 2.2 billion world Christians. That is, of course, in addition to its presence in most hotel rooms in the United States.
But, to be brutally frank, we have been obliged to make a few alterations. While I am an Orthodox Rabbi, our Institute does include a sizable liberal wing called Reform Judaism. They view the Torah as a magnificent instrument more in tune with the era in which it was created. While they have not added to or modified the Torah, they feel comfortable in ignoring those provisions that they deem out of context in modern existence. I have tried to explain to them that this approach generates a form of anarchy in Judaism inasmuch as there is no uniformity as to which laws apply. Frankly, God, they don’t appear to be convinced by that argument.
But I am happy to report that the Traditional, or Orthodox, wing of Rabbinical Judaism has been incredibly in support of the Torah, with the exception of a little fine-tuning. For example:
1. While you designed the Nation of Israel to come from the direct lineal descendents of the male semen (seed) of the Patriarchs, we felt that it would have a more nurturing context if the mother were identified as the origin of Jewish children. However, I must admit that we ran into a problem when we switched from patrilineality to matrilineality. Jewish fathers, married to Gentile women, could no longer have Jewish children. With a little ingenuity, we resolved that problem by converting Gentile women into Jewish women. Admittedly, it did provide a little extra revenue to the Rabbinate. You may want to try that yourself. We are hopeful, of course, that the change in the origin of the people of Israel from male to female will not affect your promise of the land of Israel to the seminal descendents of the Patriarchs
2. God! In regard to your creation of the world, most of our congregants felt that you stopped too soon. You should have continued on, or started again after the Sabbath to create an additional world to come, (a Leolum Habah or a Gan Eden). With such a plan, human Jewish existence would not terminate with death, but would continue on in the form of a surviving Spirit, available for rewards in the world to come. Their suggestion was a beautiful and practical thought so we incorporated it into our Talmud. I hope you don’t mind, but we were reluctant to ask you to do that for us.
3. Frankly, God, your Written Torah, the Five Books of Moses, is virtually undecipherable, but with the Mishna, the 63 tractates of the Midrash, the 38 volumes of the Gomorrah and an infinite number of volumes from interpreters such as Rashi, the Rambam, and other scholars, we finally got a handle on it. Just in case we may have missed something, our Rabbis have created a Second Torah which we call the Oral Torah, which we cherish. I know that there are some significant differences between the two Torahs, but we plan to work that out in the future.
4. We Orthodox Jews so love your law that we are inclined to enlarge it at every turn. For instance, we have taken your provision about not consuming the kid in the milk of its mother and expanded that to require that milk from all animals be separated from meat from all animals. In that way, our Jewish people will have to think about you, God, every time they reach for something to eat.
By the way, we have generated a lovely Friday evening candle lighting prayer to welcome in the Sabbath. Frankly, it was our idea, but we attributed it to an imaginary command by you so that we could give you the honor. Incidentally, it does provide light in our homes on Friday night, but may be subject to the criticism of taking Your name in vain, in violation of the Ten Commandments.
I don’t want to appear critical, but you never defined the kind of work that is prohibited to be done on the Sabbath. Because of that, we conjured 39 activities necessary to build the Tabernacle in the desert and designated them as the prohibited work activities. Unfortunately, they are a bit dated today, but they do have the advantage of omitting occupations such as Rabbi and Cantor, thus allowing pulpit personnel to get paid for working on the Sabbath. Ultimately, to be safe, we declared virtually every activity on the Sabbath to be prohibited. However, that got a bit restrictive and even prohibited people from attending Temple. So, we utilized some of the marginal workarounds that we learned during our 2000 years in the Diaspora: the Eruv, the Shabbos Goy, and pretending to sell our business for the day of Shabbos so we did not appear that we were in violation. In Israel, they followed a similar tactic of leasing their land during its seventh year to get the income without the sin.
I trust, God, that you appreciate our efforts on your behalf.
God: Take your shoes off in my presence! You are on holy territory. But, keep them near you as you may really need them soon. Are you a direct lineal descendent of my servant Aaron in whom I have entrusted all of my religious affairs?
Rabbi: No, God.
God: By whom were you elected from amongst the people of Israel?
Rabbi: I was not elected. I was chosen as an Executive Director of a religious organization.
God: Then, what authority do you have, or pretend to have, that would authorize you to change my Holy Torah? The Torah which I gave to my people was a universal living document, never subject alteration or amendment, because its truths applied in all generations. How dare you, or those you represent, to maim and distort that Holy document. Your lack of trust in it is a manifestation of your lack of faith in me. If you took the time to read my Torah you would learn that I am a jealous and vengeful God.
When you elevate the writings of the Rabbis of the Oral Torah to be of superior or equal dignity with my Torah, you create a different world in which there is perpetual human existence beyond death. You distort the origin and composition of my people. You demean my laws and degrade my plan for the descendents of your Patriarchs. In fact, you depart from me to another God of your own making. You have turned your face from me. I warned you not to be lured from me by the gods of other nations. I never considered that you would generate your own from within. I should have learned from those who followed Jesus out of the camp of Israel.
Mark these words and convey them to your principals: more than 70 years ago I forgave my people for their transgressions and returned them to the land of Israel for a new beginning. They have incredibly succeeded in the human fields of endeavor such as medicine, agriculture, engineering, electronics, science, and a host of other categories. What they have not done is to change their loyalty to the rules of those who have altered and desecrated my Torah. What they need to do is to return to the teachings of my Torah, refine its spirit, versatility and authority and through honest interpretation apply it to the ethos of their contemporary lives. Remind them that I am not known for infinite patience.
Douglas Kaplan
excellent! I learn so much from your essays.
Doug, this is fantastic! The only thing more outstanding than the article is its author!