The Development of the Torah Part 1 - Rabbi Levi Yitzchok Hillel shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to the “Lema’an Yishme’u” podcast from Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:11 Speaker 2 Good morning, everyone. There’s a story about a second-grade boy sitting in class while his teacher taught the story of the Exodus from Egypt and the Jewish people’s journey through the desert. The teacher told the children that when the Jewish people were in the desert, manna came down, and they ate manna for forty years. The manna tasted like wafers with honey. One of the children got worried and asked the teacher, “What are wafers with honey? What does that mean?” The teacher said, “What, you don’t know? The Jewish people were in the desert for forty years. Manna came down for them, and it tasted like wafers with honey.” The boy said, “Yes, teacher, but what are wafers with honey? I don’t understand.” The teacher said, “What? The Jewish people went down to Egypt with Yaakov, seventy souls. They were enslaved for 220 years, left Egypt, received the Torah, and then spent forty years in the desert eating manna, which tasted like wafers with honey.” The boy said, “But I still don’t understand. What is it?” The teacher started getting annoyed. “Do you know who Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, and the tribes were?” You get the idea. What am I getting at? Sometimes we study and study the Torah itself. We really do study Torah, and study it properly, but sometimes we forget for a moment: What is the Torah, actually? What is this thing, and where did it come from? How did our Gemara come about? It has existed for two thousand years, three thousand years. If we study Gemara today, why doesn’t it say Moshe Rabbeinu on the title page, as its editor and publisher, or something? And more generally, where did this Torah come from? How did it begin? Who, what, how? That’s why I’m here. And with Hashem’s help, in the coming classes we’ll learn

02:01 Speaker 2 what this Torah actually is, where it came from, how we received it, how it was transmitted from Moshe Rabbeinu down to us, and of course how halacha developed, along with everything surrounding it. I want to start by asking you a question. If I ask questions, you’re welcome to answer them. We know we have the Written Torah and the Oral Torah, right? What is the Written Torah? What is the Written Torah? Go ahead, answer.

02:29 Speaker 6 The Five Books of the Torah.

02:30 Speaker 2 The Five Books of the Torah. What about the other writings? Aren’t they part of the Written Torah?

02:33 Speaker 6 Tanach.

02:34 Speaker 2 What is the Written Torah? Instructions that apply to us. Someone said the Five Books of the Torah. What is the Oral Torah? And don’t get tripped up by this question. What is the Oral Torah?

02:47 Speaker 6 Mishnah.

02:47 Speaker 2 Only the Mishnah? What about the Gemara? The Gemara too. What about the Shulchan Aruch?

02:52 Speaker 6 Everything in the Prophets?

02:54 Speaker 2 So the entire Jewish library is the Oral Torah—something like more than 500,000 books. Does it seem reasonable to you that people were always studying all 500,000 of those books? Even if you read a book every day, that’s half a million days. I don’t know exactly how many years that comes to, but it’s about half your lives—without eating or drinking. What defines the Oral Torah? And another question for you: Why did Hakadosh Boruch Hu decide to give us a Written Torah and an Oral Torah? Take tefillin, for example. You’re all familiar with tefillin, right? Have you ever seen a Jew next to you putting on different tefillin—orange tefillin, or wrapping the straps around his throat, I don’t know? Have you ever seen that? Why not? Have you ever thought about why everyone’s tefillin are suddenly the same? A mezuzah: apart from differences in size, or maybe slight differences in the shape of the script, have you ever seen someone write a mezuzah in English? Have you ever seen someone make a mezuzah by drawing it on the doorpost himself? No. All mezuzos are the same. Right? Tell me if I’m wrong. These mitzvos—tefillin, mezuzah, and so on—are all the same. Why? Then there are other mitzvos where, all of a sudden, everything gets complicated: how to do them, what to do, how much to do, and it turns into a whole commotion. What happened? Mitzvos like mezuzah and tefillin are, seemingly, mitzvos written in the Torah, right? “You shall bind them upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes,” and “You shall write them upon the doorposts of your house and upon your gates.” Simple enough, right? Good. Why did Hakadosh Boruch Hu have to complicate things for us with an Oral Torah? Think about the game of broken telephone. What do they call it nowadays? I don’t

04:39 Speaker 2 know. One person says something to another, who tells a third person, who tells a fourth, and then you have to guess what the first person said. When you finally find out, you realize how many changes it went through from one person to the next. The second person changes the sentence the first wanted to say a little, and the third changes it a little more. At the end, you discover that the first person meant A and the third ended up at H—something completely different. Why would Hakadosh Boruch Hu complicate things for us with an Oral Torah? What do you think? Think for a moment and tell me.

05:10 Speaker 7 Probably so it wouldn’t pass to the non-Jews.

05:12 Speaker 2 So it wouldn’t pass to the non-Jews? But couldn’t they take a Jew, torture him, and tell him to recite the entire Oral Torah? What do you say? Any other ideas?

05:25 Speaker 7 Each person knows a little.

05:25 Speaker 2 Each person knows a little. If each person knows only a little of the Oral Torah, what’s most likely to happen? One person doesn’t know this part, and another doesn’t know that part, so Judaism would be forgotten. What do you say? But in the end, everyone would know the entire Oral Torah by heart, right? So why not give it to us in writing and be done with it? Wouldn’t that be simpler? Take a Torah scroll, for example. Have you ever seen a Torah scroll with a different parsha in it? A Torah scroll that came from Ashkenaz, Tunisia, Yemen, or Morocco—have you ever seen a different parsha in one? There’s no such thing. All Torah scrolls are the same. There are differences in a thin stroke on an alef or a hei, and certain customs affect the shape of particular letters. But there’s no change in meaning. Wouldn’t it be simpler to give us the Oral Torah in writing? Write it all down, and that’s that. When your mother sent you to the grocery store, how did she do it? She gave you a list: buy eggs, milk, fish, this and that—and remember two more things by heart. Why not write those down too? Wouldn’t that be simpler? Write it down and I’ll remember everything. Why make things more complicated than they already are? [unclear] Some of you suggested answers. Let me read something to you. A Midrash in Shemos Rabbah tells us that when Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave the Torah, Moshe said, “What should I do now?” He said before Him, “Master of the Universe, write it down for them.” In other words, Moshe Rabbeinu received a Torah scroll from Hakadosh Boruch Hu—the Written Torah—and at the same time he received the Oral Torah.

07:06 Speaker 2 Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives instructions. For example, He says, “You shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.” Right? What are we supposed to bind? Tefillin. What are tefillin? Where does the Torah mention tefillin? The word “tefillin” doesn’t appear in the Torah. The word “strap” doesn’t appear in the Torah, and neither does the word “black” in connection with tefillin. Nothing. The only source in the Torah for tefillin is that verse: “You shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.” How would anyone arrive at the tefillin we have today?

07:33 Speaker 7 From Idan.

07:34 Speaker 2 So there is something called halachah leMoshe miSinai—a law given to Moshe at Sinai. Moshe Rabbeinu says about it: I received the Oral Torah from Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and that’s that. “You shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes”—this is what it means: tefillin, with straps, made in such-and-such a way, and so on. Moshe Rabbeinu says to Hakadosh Boruch Hu: You’re telling me the written verse, “You shall bind them as a sign upon your hand,” and so on, and You’re giving me the rest of its explanation orally. Let me write it all down for them, and that will be that. Hakadosh Boruch Hu said to him: I do not want it given to them in writing. Why? Because it is known to Me that idol worshippers will one day rule over them and take it from them, and the Jews will be held in contempt by the idol worshippers. Hakadosh Boruch Hu says: I’m concerned that the nations will take the Torah from the Jewish people and use it to disparage them. So I give them Scripture in writing, but the Mishnah, Talmud, and Aggadah I give them orally. Why? So that if idol worshippers come and subjugate them, they will remain distinct from them. In other words, imagine you have a private language in your class. What does the whole Talmud Torah know? That two kids from your class walk around speaking their own private language. That’s what you call a closed circle. A closed circle. Even when you’re at the Talmud Torah with everyone around you, you could walk right past the principal and talk about him—I don’t know—or about anyone else, in your own private language. How do you feel? Ah, we’ve got it made, right? Nobody can touch us. We have our own little circle. That’s what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wanted: for the Jewish people to go among the nations and have the Oral Torah. The Written Torah—you can read it on the Temple Mount; they can treat a Torah scroll disrespectfully and read it. But you

09:14 Speaker 2 won’t understand a thing. There is an Oral Torah that you can’t get at. And who speaks the Oral Torah? In the shul, Jews talk among themselves and feel distinct from the other nations. That’s the first reason. The second reason is that when you put something in writing, a problem can arise. What problem? Anyone who wants can come and read it, and anyone who wants can interpret it. Then what happens? People start interpreting things in a distorted way. Hakadosh Boruch Hu says: I’ll give a Written Torah, fine, but I’ll also give an Oral Torah, whose interpretation will be entrusted only to Torah scholars who sit and learn. That way, all kinds of unlearned people, non-Jews, or people like Reform Jews and the like, who might want to twist the Torah, won’t be able to. They won’t understand or know anything, because the explanation of the Written Torah is in the hands of the sages. That’s the second reason. Here’s the third reason, and I’ll start with a question: Has anyone ever asked you—or have you ever asked someone—“What’s your phone number?” That happens, right? You ask for someone’s number. What do you do? You write it down immediately. But if you don’t have a pen or anything to write with, you have to remember the number by heart. So what do you do?

10:28 Speaker 8 Repeat it.

10:28 Speaker 2 Repeat it. And how many times do you run that number through your head?

10:32 Speaker 8 Five.

10:32 Speaker 2 Again and again and again and again, until it sticks. Right? Why?

10:37 Speaker 8 So you remember it.

10:38 Speaker 2 So you remember it? Good. Now, if you have a pen and paper, what do you do? You write it down. Will you ever remember that number?

10:47 Speaker 8 No.

10:47 Speaker 2 What happens when you need the number? What if that piece of paper disappears?

10:52 Speaker 8 Simple.

10:52 Speaker 2 Figure it out. You’ve lost your phone. You’re out on the street. Whose number was it? I need so-and-so’s number. You don’t have it. You look for it and can’t find it. Hakadosh Boruch Hu says: I want the Torah to be imprinted in every Jew’s mind. What will I do? I’ll give them the foundation in writing and everything else orally. What have I gained? They’ll have to review it day after day, hour after hour, because otherwise they’ll forget it. Imagine a teacher gives a test and asks: “The amora who gave such-and-such an explanation in the Gemara—does his word begin with a hei or an alef?” Is that a fair question?

11:36 Speaker 8 No.

11:36 Speaker 2 Why isn’t it fair?

11:37 Speaker 8 Because we don’t remember.

11:38 Speaker 2 Because why should I remember whether it begins with a hei or an alef? But if I gave you a text to memorize and warned you that I’d test you on it, you’d review it and review it and keep reviewing it so you’d remember it. That’s why Hakadosh Boruch Hu gave an Oral Torah: so the Jewish people would constantly review it and not rely on saying, “It’s written in my book.” By the way, that’s what happens today, right? A person doesn’t feel he has to learn the halachos. He’s perfectly comfortable with that, because if he has a question, what does he do? He takes out his phone and calls the rabbi: “Rabbi, what’s the ruling?” Boom! He isn’t even interested in why. Right? Or he looks it up in a book. He might have the same question next year, but he won’t remember the answer. Last year he had that very question and resolved it by looking in a book. Why won’t he remember? Because it’s written in the book. He saw the answer, and that was the end of it. Next year, when the question comes up, he’ll open the book again. That’s what Hakadosh Boruch Hu wanted to prevent. So those are the three reasons there is an Oral Torah. First, so that idol worshippers wouldn’t gain control of it; it was kept with the Jewish people, who review it by heart. Second, so that even Jews themselves—let’s call them problematic Jews, Reform Jews and the like, or various movements that have existed among the Jewish people throughout the generations—wouldn’t interpret the Torah in a distorted way. Its interpretation was kept with the sages, who teach the people. Third, so people would make an effort to learn the Torah and remember it. If they didn’t have to make that effort, if it were all written down, they wouldn’t try to remember it. That’s why it was given

13:00 Speaker 2 to them orally: so they would always work to remember it. A question for you: What did we say earlier? We talked about this before.

13:09 Speaker 9 Tefillin.

13:11 Speaker 2 Tefillin. You know what? Let me tell you something else first. Open any page of Shas and test me. Any page of Gemara you open—we know how the page is laid out. Here’s the Gemara; look at this page. Open any page of Shas. Look: up here, in Rashi and Tosafos, do you see? There are four lines at the top. Rashi always starts four lines down, and Tosafos does too. Open any page of Shas. This one happens to be Berachos, page 15; it’s the same thing. Open your Gemaras now and test me. Look here, do you see? Here, for instance, there’s a short Tosafos, so they put it here. Above it they put four lines of Rashi. Why couldn’t you put, I don’t know, ten lines, one line, or none at all? Wherever you find Rashi and Tosafos—and again, where neither Tosafos nor Rashi is too short—you’ll always, always see four lines. See? Always. Have you ever thought about that at the top of the page? Well, you’ve never noticed it before, but think about it. Why? If someone has an answer later, I’d be glad to hear it. Open wherever you like: four lines at the top of every page, always. Now back to the question I wanted to ask. You see people putting on tefillin, right? [unclear] We’re all Chabad chassidim; we all have four-by-four tefillin and so on, so ours are all pretty much the same. But look at the tefillin of other people around you, not necessarily Chabad chassidim. You’ll see tefillin that are three by three centimeters, two by two, smaller or larger. The only difference between the tefillin is their size. You won’t see different kinds of tefillin among the Jewish people, and you won’t see a different kind of mezuzah, as I demonstrated at the beginning of the lesson. Why is that? Do you know why, when it comes to these things

15:02 Speaker 2 With other things, suddenly everything is different? It’s not all the same. How is it that tefillin are the same, mezuzahs are the same, and a Sefer Torah is the same? Some things are the same, while others have somehow acquired a reputation for being different. In any case, I’m telling you an important principle. You need to know it, because it’s the basis of your confidence in what you learn day to day. There are five principles, five rules, on which the entire Oral Torah is built. Very simple: five principles. I don’t know if you’ve encountered this on mivtzoim, but sometimes you meet people who come up and say: “You religious people—each one has something different, each one has a different Torah. This one says one thing, that one says another. Ashkenazim, Sephardim, the Shulchan Aruch, the Rema—each has a different story. You have a thousand different Torahs. You’re not even the original Jews.” Have you ever heard that argument? Maybe you haven’t made many home visits, but I’ve made a lot of them. You hear people say: “You’re not the Jews of old at all. Back then, that was Judaism. Today you’re just a jumble of people, each bringing his own customs and his own ideas.” Maybe they’re right. Maybe they’re right. Yesterday a woman was at my house, a good woman and so on. She’s starting to become a bit more observant, as they say. She, too, tells me: “Judaism today isn’t like Judaism used to be.” So I told my neighbor Penina—since I had to prepare this class, I already had a ready-made lesson to give her—“Neighbor, there are five principles on which the Oral Torah is built.” Five principles. What follows from them is supposedly more for the experts, but I’ll explain. First, there is a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai. I’ll

16:43 Speaker 2 tell you the story of how Moshe Rabbeinu taught the people, how the Torah first came down to the Jewish people. How did it begin? There’s a Gemara in tractate Eruvin, in the Mishnah, that explains the order very well. Hakadosh Boruch Hu would tell Moshe Rabbeinu, “You shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes”—the mitzvah of tefillin. He would teach him the verse about the mitzvah of tefillin, “You shall bind them,” and so on, and tell him the entire oral explanation. What did Moshe Rabbeinu do with it? How did it reach the Jewish people? At the very first stage, how did it reach them? Moshe Rabbeinu went into his tent and called Aharon. Aharon came in, and Moshe Rabbeinu taught him the verse and its explanation—the word-by-word oral explanation. All right? Aharon heard it and sat to Moshe’s left. Who came in next? Aharon’s two sons, Elazar and Isamar. Moshe Rabbeinu recited the entire verse and its explanation from the Oral Torah to them. He explained the mitzvah of tefillin and so on, and they, too, sat to Moshe Rabbeinu’s right and left. Then the elders came in, the older men, the leaders of the people. Moshe Rabbeinu recited all the verses and their explanations to them as well, and they sat at the sides. The fourth time, all the people came in to Moshe Rabbeinu, and he recited the Written Torah to them—the verse and its oral explanation. How many times did Moshe Rabbeinu teach the Torah? How many times? Four. Aharon, Aharon’s sons, the elders, and the people. All right? Good. He finished. All right? He finished. Aharon—Moshe Rabbeinu went out, and Aharon stood up and recited it all to everyone. Aharon went out. Aharon went out, and now Nadav and Avihu, his sons, stood up and recited the same things once again to all the people: the same verse, “You shall bind them as a sign upon your hand,” and so on, and everything about the mitzvah of tefillin, including that tefillin need black straps

18:45 Speaker 2 and square boxes, and so on. When Aharon’s sons finished reciting it, the elders came forward, stood up, and recited it to the people as well. After the elders recited it, everyone dispersed—both the elders and the Jewish people. Then there were officers, meaning people sent around among the people to teach them. They repeated the verse and the teachings once again: the Written Torah and the explanation from the Oral Torah that Moshe Rabbeinu had heard. They went over it again and again and again and again, each person reviewing it with another. And what did everyone do? They took pen and paper and wrote things down. What did they write down? Everything they had learned?

19:28 Speaker 10 No.

19:28 Speaker 2 Only the verse. All right? They wrote down only the verse: “You shall bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.” Good. And they learned that verse again. They memorized it, ran through it in their heads, and repeated every detail word for word: the tefillin must be square, they must have black straps, they must be bound on the arm, positioned opposite the heart and at the hairline. Everything Moshe Rabbeinu had taught them, they reviewed again and again. So Moshe Rabbeinu learned the mitzvah four times, because he recited it four times. Aharon’s sons—Aharon HaKohen recited it four times. Nadav and Avihu recited it four times. The elders also recited it four times, and all the people reviewed and memorized it, going over it at least four times too. From this, one of the great sages of Poland says that when a Jew wants to study something in depth and understand it well, how many times must he review it?

20:17 Speaker 10 Four.

20:17 Speaker 2 Four. That’s why they gave you Rashi and Tosafos. You see that you have four lines. If you reviewed the material four times, you learned it properly; if you didn’t review it, you may have learned the basics, but not properly. That’s one of the teachings about those four lines in the Shas that I showed you earlier. That was the order of learning; that was the procedure for every mitzvah. Every mitzvah the Jewish people heard from Moshe Rabbeinu was taught by Moshe, Aharon, Nadav and Avihu, and the elders, each four times in the order I described. Then everyone dispersed and wrote the verse on the—on the—on the—on the parchment, sorry. They wrote it on parchment, recited it to themselves, and constantly reviewed the Oral Torah. Who said it had to be this way? I showed you the Midrash earlier, but it’s also written in a verse. The verse says, “And I will give you the stone tablets, and the Torah, and the mitzvah.” Notice: “And I will give you the stone tablets, and the Torah, and the mitzvah.” What does that mean? The stone tablets—what are they? The Tablets of the Covenant. What is “the Torah”? The Written Torah, a Sefer Torah. What is “the mitzvah”? The Gemara says that “the mitzvah” is the Oral Torah, because it has the sense of an instruction that people pass on to one another orally. As I mentioned earlier, the entire Oral Torah is built on five principles, and I’ll list them now. The first principle is halachah given to Moshe at Sinai. That means everything Moshe Rabbeinu brought down from Mount Sinai and stated outright, without explanations, without reasons, without any proofs from verses—nothing. That is a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai, pure and simple. It isn’t based on reasoning, and therefore there’s no dispute about it. Do you understand? It isn’t based on reasoning or logic. That’s how Moshe Rabbeinu received it from Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and therefore there are no disputes. For example, what is a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai that has no dispute about it, no proofs

22:07 Speaker 2 for it, nothing of that sort? Tefillin. Tefillin must be written on parchment, with square boxes and black straps. All of that is a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai, so you won’t see differences among Jews. Why? Because with a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai—the first category, the first type—there’s no reason given, no logic to debate, and no one disputes any part of it. And many things belong to this category. Among them, for example—do you know where else we use a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai on Sukkos? Do you know where else? When building a sukkah. You need a minimum of three walls; if you’re Chabad, four. How high must a wall be? In principle, ten tefachim. People don’t have walls ready, or the strength to carry them and so on, so what did they do? They found a solution: lavud. What is lavud? They start the—everyone sees this on Sukkos. They take metal poles; say the wall is two or three meters long, and they stretch strings across it, right? With less than twenty-four centimeters between one and the next. They run either metal bars or pieces of wood across—it doesn’t matter. They put up three or four strips so that together those three or four strips reach a height of eighty centimeters. All right? And what makes it valid—someone says, “What do you mean? There’s no wall here. Where’s the gap? I can put my hand through.” They tell you, “No. There’s less than three tefachim between one string and the next, meaning less than twenty-four centimeters, so it’s considered closed.”

23:37 Speaker 10 But there’s fabric.

23:39 Speaker 2 Huh?

23:39 Speaker 10 Fabric.

23:40 Speaker 2 Even if there’s no fabric, it doesn’t matter. Even if there’s no fabric, you just put up a square frame and run strips of string, metal, or wood across it. Do you understand what I’m describing? You know these sukkahs, right? We’ve all seen them, yes? Understand what I’m saying. Now tell me: suppose someone who isn’t religious is staying with you. He asks, “What’s this sukkah? You’ve put up a few strips here.” You tell him, “No, my friend, as far as I’m concerned, it’s enclosed.” He’ll say, “What do you mean, enclosed? I can put my hand through here. What are you telling me? I can put my hand through! What are you making up?” You know, one of the most beautiful “inventions”—and I’m putting that in quotation marks—one of the most beautiful “inventions” of religious Jews is something you recite every morning in Shacharis, right? Imagine you arrive in class to daven, and the teacher is sitting there. You ask him, “Sir, when do classes start here?” “At a quarter past nine.” But it’s already nine-thirty. You’re fifteen minutes late, right? That’s not okay. You say to the teacher, “Look, I can fix that for you. It’s already nine-thirty? What do you mean I’m fifteen minutes late? Sir, don’t read it as nine-thirty; read it as a quarter past nine.” Would that work or not? I’m asking you. “Don’t say nine-thirty; say a quarter past nine.” Who would accept that? The teacher says, “What’s this supposed to mean?” So what do you answer him? Tell me now—let’s see what you’d say to the teacher. What happens in Shacharis?

25:02 Speaker 11 You—

25:02 Speaker 2 At the very end of Shacharis, before Aleinu: “Rabbi Elazar said in the name of Rabbi Chanina: Torah scholars increase peace in the world.” Who says they increase peace in the world? As it says, “All your children shall be taught by Hashem.” What does “all your children shall be taught by Hashem” mean? It means all your children are Torah people, people who have studied Torah. “All your children shall be taught by Hashem”—they study Torah. Then suddenly they pull out this astonishing rabbit: “Do not read ‘your children’ but ‘your builders.’” What does the verse say? What does the verse say—“your children” or “your builders”?

25:34 Speaker 11 Ah, yes.

25:35 Speaker 2 What does the verse say?

25:36 Speaker 11 It says “your builders.”

25:37 Speaker 2 “Your children.” What does “Do not read ‘your children’ but ‘your builders’” mean? Go to your boss at the end of the month and tell him, “There’s a mistake in my salary. It says ten thousand shekels. That’s not right; it should be more.” Right? Sorry, I gave a different example. Go to the teacher—sorry. You get to the teacher at nine-thirty instead of a quarter past nine. You tell him, “Sir, don’t read it as nine-thirty; read it as a quarter past nine.” What do you think of that line? It’s a great change. You know, you could use it anywhere, anywhere. You go to the bank: “Don’t read ‘debt’ but ‘credit.’” Don’t read this, read that—whatever you want. What does “do not read” mean? What does it mean? But that’s what it says! What do you think? Haven’t you thought about it? You’ve read this text at least—I’m exaggerating—at least a thousand times. You’ve said it: “Do not read ‘your children’ but ‘your builders.’” What does “do not read” mean? But that’s what it says. What does “do not read” mean? What do you think?

26:30 Speaker 11 Interpretations.

26:32 Speaker 2 Huh? Interpretations? Then say, “We interpreted it this way.” Why say “do not read”?

26:37 Speaker 11 They attach it to the word.

26:38 Speaker 2 What do you mean, attach it? Can I just come along and attach something? For example, the Torah says about the seventh year, the Shemitah year, right? “You shall not sow your field; you shall not prune your vineyard.” So I can put in commas and question marks wherever I like, right?

26:52 Speaker 11 In the seventh year, everything.

26:53 Speaker 2 “You shall not sow your field; you shall not prune your vineyard.” Sure, go ahead and prune and sow. Yes? What is that? Then you could change half the Torah that way. You could change the whole Torah. “You shall not kindle fire in any of your dwellings on Shabbos”—sure, kindle it! Think logically for a second. Isn’t that a little strange? Say “Do not read ‘your children’ but ‘your builders’” to someone who isn’t religious. He’ll say, “Tell me, are you normal?” I’ll tell you, this came up for me once, because I was sitting with a Jew this past Shavuos. I studied Gemara with him at two in the morning. He came to learn Gemara with me. We sat and learned together, and then the Gemara said, “Do not read this, but that.” He looked at me—he’s a religious person with [unclear] roots—and asked, “What does ‘do not read’ mean?” If you said it to someone from an ordinary religious home, even one who isn’t Chabad, “do not read” would be familiar to him too. But this man asked me, “What does ‘do not read’ mean?” So I explained it to him simply: don’t read it this way, read it that way. Then he said something to me: “You realize that if you said that to someone who isn’t religious, he’d hit you over the head with a chair.” Those were his words. “What do you mean, ‘Don’t read it this way, read it that way’? Are you all right?” So why? Why do we say it? This brings us to the second principle of the Oral Torah. The second principle is also a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai, which they learned. First—sorry, I’m still on the first principle, sorry. A halachah given to Moshe at Sinai, we said, has no proof and no reason, like this lavud. Right? The lavud we mentioned. What is lavud? He says, “I can put my hand through.” “No, no—

28:22 Speaker 2 it’s enclosed here.” Lavud is a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai. The Sages learned it from Sinai; it has no reason, no logic, and no proof from a verse. None! Okay? It doesn’t. So why? Because, to remember the Torah, the Sages would sometimes take various instructions from Moshe Rabbeinu—about tefillin, for example, which are a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai with no proof from a verse, or about lavud and the like—and connect them to verses. When they say, “Do not read it this way, but that way,” they don’t mean, “Let’s change the verse.” They mean that the straightforward meaning of the verse is “your children,” but we say “do not read”—in other words, let’s offer an additional interpretation alongside the straightforward meaning and say “your builders” as well. Why? I won’t get into all the details of why the Sages decided to do that. Sometimes they did, and there’s a lot of reasoning behind it. In any case, that’s the first principle: halachos given to Moshe at Sinai, laws that have no proof from a verse. That’s simply how they are. The second is also a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai. There’s no dispute about it either; everyone agrees. But here there is already support from verses. I’ll give you an example: an esrog. Who said what an esrog is? How long ago did Moshe Rabbeinu live? When was the giving of the Torah? We’re now in the year 5784. The giving of the Torah was in the year 2448, more than—how long ago is that, roughly? I don’t know, about three thousand years. Maybe more or less than three thousand years, a little less. Who says that the esrog Moshe Rabbeinu saw is the same esrog we have today? There’s an interpretation of the verse that explains what an esrog is. Moshe Rabbeinu came down from Heaven and said, “Gentlemen, we need to take an esrog on Sukkos.” You need to take an esrog. What is an esrog? How do we know

30:04 Speaker 2 what an esrog is? Of course Moshe Rabbeinu showed them an esrog, but they also learned it from the verse. The verse calls an esrog “the fruit of a beautiful tree.” What does “the fruit of a beautiful tree” mean? They interpreted the Hebrew word hadar as related to dwelling, like dirah, a home. It’s a fruit that dwells on its tree from one year to the next. It’s a fruit that can grow with all kinds of water—it isn’t fussy and doesn’t require one particular kind of water, and so on. It’s not that we figured this out from the verse. Rather, the halachah given to Moshe at Sinai told us: we need an esrog, and this is an esrog. There is also support from verses. Okay, there’s support from verses and so on. So again, the first principle is a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai alone. It has no reason, no verse, no explanation, though the Sages sometimes attached various allusions and supporting verses to it. But those aren’t the basis for it. Second are halachos given to Moshe at Sinai that do have support from verses. What’s certain is that when something is a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai, there’s no dispute about it. When you study a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai in the Gemara, whether it’s like the first principle, with no support from verses, or like the second, with support from a verse, always, always, always—everyone agrees on a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai. The third category—and here the big mess begins, when people always ask you, “How many religions do you have? Every one of you is something different: Chabad, Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Religious Zionist, whatever”—the third category is laws that weren’t received from Moshe Rabbeinu but were worked out through reasoning. I’ll explain. Once I was out on mivtzoim in Moshav Naveh, a nearby moshav, Moshav Naveh. Sorry, has this ever happened to you? Has anyone asked you a scholarly question while you were on mivtzoim? Has that happened? And not someone religious. Very good. I knocked on the door of a certain family. The father opened it; we had a good conversation, and I was getting the tefillin ready. Suddenly

31:45 Speaker 2 A seventeen-year-old boy comes up to me and says, “I have a question.” Seventeen, sixteen—I don’t know how old he was. He was taking his matriculation exams, and in Gemara or Mishnah, whatever they were studying there, they asked him a question. What was the question? He says, “It says in the Yerushalmi”—first of all, this is a religious young man, okay?—“It says in the Yerushalmi: ‘If the Torah had been given as a fixed set of rulings, we wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.’” What do you think that means? Again: “If the Torah had been given as a fixed set of rulings, we wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.” Do you know what it means? No. If the Torah had been given as a fixed set of rulings. What does that mean? [unclear] So I really didn’t know what it meant. I told him, “Listen, you’ve taught me something. Wait.” I went to the yeshivah, came back, checked it, and the following Friday I returned. I gave him the answer. The meaning in the Yerushalmi is this: If the Torah had been given as a fixed set of rulings—meaning, if it had been given only as a list of rules: A, B, C, do this and this; if this and this happens, do that and that—do you know what would happen? We wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. We wouldn’t be able to live by the Torah. Why? Did the Torah speak about cars? No. Did it speak about smartphones? It didn’t—who said you can’t use a smartphone on Shabbos? Who said you can’t drive a car on Shabbos? Who said so? It isn’t written in the Torah. None of the things we encounter today are written in the Torah. That is why Hashem did not give us the Torah as nothing but rigid rules, but as general principles. And you say those principles every morning. Do you know where? In the thirteen methods by which the Torah is interpreted. You say it every morning before

33:24 Speaker 2 “Rabbi Yishmael says: The Torah is interpreted through thirteen methods.” What are these thirteen methods? Kal vachomer. What is kal vachomer? An inference from a lesser case to a more serious one. I’ll give you an example, just so we understand. If a thief who stole money goes to prison for twenty years, then how long should a murderer go to prison for? At least twenty years. At least. From the lesser case we move to the more serious one—that’s kal vachomer. It makes sense. Then there’s gezeirah shavah. What is gezeirah shavah? It says “on” here and “on” there, so the two mean the same thing. Think about it: how does that make sense? How could you go to a teacher and say—one day classes start at eight, I don’t know—“It says nine here and nine there, so both must mean nine”? What kind of strange comparisons are those? Here’s the explanation. The Torah was given with rules, and that’s the first principle. Not everyone can come along, read the Torah, and say, “I understand it.” No. The Torah was given with rules for how to interpret it. Those are the thirteen methods by which the Torah is interpreted. And that’s the second principle: when you want to derive rulings about other matters that aren’t stated in the Torah, or weren’t known about, and so on, what do you do? You use those thirteen methods. But then a serious problem would arise. Why? One person makes a kal vachomer one way; another makes it the other way around. One uses gezeirah shavah; another uses the rules of general and particular cases. With all the rules there, everyone comes up with something different. How do you reach a decision? Hakadosh Boruch Hu says in the Torah: “Follow the majority.” So what does that mean in practice? There’s a disagreement among the sages. Of course there is; each one understands the rules differently. Fine, you’ve finished arguing, and everyone

35:08 Speaker 2 has dug in his heels. Fine—now raise your hands. The Sanhedrin. There’s a Sanhedrin of seventy-one people. Each one raises a hand: “I find him liable”; “I exempt him.” And on that basis they decide whether he is liable or exempt. That produces a halachah: someone who does such-and-such is liable, and someone who does such-and-such is exempt. Ah, but some rabbis disagree. They can disagree, but once the Sanhedrin has voted and reached a decision, it can no longer be disputed. That is how the Jewish people conducted themselves over the generations: decisions were made by a vote. Tell me, can you put a halachah leMoshe miSinai to a vote? You don’t put a halachah leMoshe miSinai to a vote. Whether it’s the first kind, with no supporting proof, or the second kind, with supporting proof, makes no difference. A halachah leMoshe miSinai is settled; it’s a rule everyone agrees on. What is put up for discussion? Matters decided through the thirteen methods—things that didn’t exist in Moshe’s time. Now think about it: in the times of Moshe, Yehoshua, the elders, and the judges, new questions arose in every generation and had to be discussed. And by the way, the situation back then was exactly like it is today. A question comes up now about—I don’t know—all kinds of new devices: can you use them on Shabbos or not, or if they have various... I’ll give you an example. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this, but today people grow vegetables in water. Have you heard of that? What do they grow? What brachah do you say over it? What do you say? Not “borei pri ha’adamah”—it grew in water. There’s no soil there. Maybe you say “shehakol.”

36:40 Speaker 12 Its nature is to grow in soil.

36:42 Speaker 2 Good, so I’m putting forward a good argument: its nature is to grow in soil. Most produce grows in soil, so even if this grew in water, you say “borei pri ha’adamah.” Naomi wants to make the opposite argument. What is it—that you say “shehakol” over it?

36:53 Speaker 12 Maybe.

36:54 Speaker 2 Because in practice it grew in water. Excellent—you have a disagreement right here. You’ll start bringing proofs: “What do you mean? You don’t judge each item on its own; you go by its general category, and tomatoes grow in soil. Clearly the brachah is ‘borei pri ha’adamah.’” And you’ll bring proofs for what? That you go by the particular item. Now there’s an uproar in the beis midrash. All right, that’s how it worked: arguments, arguments, arguments. At the end of the day, or the week, or the month, when they had finished debating, what would they do? Vote. Gentlemen, raise your hands... The Sanhedrin. Good. What does the majority of the Sanhedrin say? That’s how the halachah was established, and so on and so on. That’s how all these rulings were decided. This is the third principle, perhaps the most significant one. What does the whole Gemara, the whole Mishnah, and everything you know revolve around? This principle: gezeirah shavah, kal vachomer, and how to interpret the Torah using those thirteen methods. Okay, that’s what all the debate there revolves around. Because a halachah leMoshe miSinai—are you going to start arguing about that? What other two principles do we have?

38:29 Speaker 2 So look, here are the things you need to know: there are decrees of the Sages, and there are enactments and customs. The fourth principle is the decrees of our Sages. What are those? I’ll give you an example. In principle, it’s permissible to eat bread made by a non-Jew. The Torah doesn’t say, “Don’t eat bread made by a non-Jew.” The Sages came and said: No, if you eat his bread, you’ll become too close to him, and eventually you may marry his daughter. That isn’t good, so they decreed that you shouldn’t eat bread made by a non-Jew. And the same goes for wine. There’s wine used for idolatrous libations—that’s wine poured out in the service of an idol. But ordinary wine that a non-Jew touched isn’t called wine used for idolatrous libations. Wine used for idolatrous libations is forbidden by the Torah because it involves idol worship. But ordinary wine that a non-Jew touched doesn’t involve idol worship; he didn’t worship with it. The Sages came and said: No, no, no, don’t drink that wine. It’s a rabbinic prohibition. Why? Because you might drink together, and then something could happen... Sharing a drink brings people close. You’ll enjoy each other’s company, and you might end up marrying his daughter too. Okay, those are called decrees of our Sages. What other things do you know that the Sages decreed? There’s a decree we encounter almost all day, every day: poultry and milk. Let me explain. By Torah law, it’s forbidden to eat beef with milk. The Rabbis came and said: Yes, but people tend to get confused. People might confuse poultry and milk with meat and milk. So they said: We also forbid eating poultry—chicken—with milk. Why? So that we don’t come to confuse it with meat and milk. And this prohibition is treated very seriously. But when they first introduced this prohibition two thousand years ago,

40:13 Speaker 2 it wasn’t so simple, okay? Because people were used to eating that way. It didn’t suddenly become more and more—well, a little less, really a little less—but they were used to eating that way, and the Sages forbade it. So I’ll give you an example of what the Sages would do when they issued a decree. When they issued a decree for the Jewish people, they wouldn’t reveal the reason. Did you know that? What does that mean? They would say: “You may not do such and such.” Why? Everyone asks why. Shh—they wouldn’t say. When would they reveal the reason for the decree? Do you know? A year after issuing it. A year after they made the rule, they would reveal the reason. Why? Exactly—so people wouldn’t challenge the decree. If you say, “Listen, the Sages decreed not to do this because of such and such,” someone who thinks he knows better might say, “No, I don’t think that’s right. I think that’s an exaggeration. They went too far this time.” Right? To prevent that, they said: We’ll issue the decree, give it a year, and then you can challenge whatever you like—by then people will already be used to it. That’s the principle behind the decrees of our Sages. The fifth principle is enactments and customs, which are more about, let’s say, regulating life in society. All kinds of enactments in monetary law, in matters between one person and another. For example, someone says, “You know what? You’re making too much noise. Your work is filling my house with a bad smell; there’s smoke; the work you do makes noise.” All kinds of enactments the Sages established to regulate how people live together. I just want to sum up the conclusion. These are the five principles underlying the Oral Torah. Whenever you study Gemara,

41:50 Speaker 2 Mishnah, or anything else, it belongs to one of these five principles. The first principle is a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai, with no explanation or derivation. That’s simply how it is. We gave the example of leather and tefillin—what tefillin look like. The second is also a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai, but one that has support from a verse or is derived through the thirteen principles of Torah interpretation, like the esrog. The third is laws that weren’t received from Moshe but were derived through the thirteen principles, through reasoning, and decided by the Sanhedrin. The fourth—the fourth principle—is decrees of the Sages to keep a person away from transgression, like bread or wine made by a non-Jew and the like. The fifth is enactments and customs of our Sages concerning matters between people, so that life here doesn’t descend into chaos. Before—we’re nearly finished—I just want to give you a brief overview to complete the account of how the Torah was passed down. We spoke about this at the beginning: Moshe Rabbeinu would teach, right? Moshe, Aharon, Aharon’s sons, and the elders would teach the people. What happened when Moshe Rabbeinu was about to pass away? On Rosh Chodesh Shvat, thirty-seven days before his passing, Moshe Rabbeinu stood up and said: “My friends, I’m about to pass on to another world. So go ahead—anyone with questions, ask.” And they did ask questions, more and more questions, clarifying the entire Torah with Moshe Rabbeinu. Everything was in order. Just before Moshe passed away, he came to Yehoshua and said: “What would you like to know? Ask me questions. Ask me questions.” Yehoshua said: “It’s all right. Everything is in order.” Why? It says of Yehoshua, “And Yehoshua bin Nun, a young man, would not depart from the tent.” He was Moshe Rabbeinu’s beloved student. So he tells him: “Listen, I’ve been with you all my life; I remember everything.”

43:40 Speaker 2 Do you know what the Rambam wrote? Very good. Three hundred halachos were forgotten by him, and seven hundred questions arose. When were those laws recovered? Who recovered them? Now you’re stuck, huh? Because—what, did you leave earlier?

43:57 Speaker 3 Two classes ago.

43:59 Speaker 2 You left earlier. When were they recovered? Two generations after him, after—no, one generation later.

44:05 Speaker 3 In short, exactly.

44:07 Speaker 2 Kalev ben Yefuneh’s brother, Osniel ben Kenaz, recovered them. He worked through a whole process of analysis and managed to recover them, restoring the Torah to its previous state. And that’s how things continued over time: Moshe Rabbeinu, Yehoshua bin Nun—sorry, after Moshe Rabbeinu came Yehoshua bin Nun, then the elders and the judges. How did they all study the Torah? In two ways—perhaps three. First, they reviewed the Written Torah, of course. Second, what did they do? They reviewed all the teachings and the halachos given to Moshe at Sinai that they had received from Moshe Rabbeinu. Third, they tried to resolve the problems of their generation using the thirteen principles through which the Torah is interpreted. They debated new issues; disagreements arose; they voted and reached a decision. And what happened when they reached a decision? What happened? They would go and write it down. Write what down? Aha, and here’s where this comes in: they would write down the Oral Torah. What does that mean? Let me explain. You’re sitting comfortably now, listening to a class, right? You should know that from the days of Yehoshua bin Nun, Moshe Rabbeinu, the elders, and the judges, until the time of Rabban Gamliel, people studied Torah only while standing. They didn’t sit while studying. Think about when you usually study. At nine? Nine-fifteen? From nine-fifteen until five-thirty, they stood, apart from breaks. After Rabban Gamliel passed away, they began studying while seated, but generally they had studied standing up. The leader of the generation, the head of the Sanhedrin, would arrive, and they would make a ruling. Do you know what they would do? They would sit down and write it for themselves in a scroll called a “hidden scroll.” What does that mean? The heads of the academies and the leaders of each generation had special scrolls that they didn’t distribute. Those scrolls contained all the teachings and halachos decided in previous generations. Now notice how it worked: the Written Torah was in the aron kodesh; they studied it, no problem. In the study hall, they discussed the laws orally. And there were hidden scrolls, kept out of sight, and in them

46:11 Speaker 2 All sorts of teachings, laws, and matters that had been discussed and decided in earlier generations were passed down from father to son, from one nasi to the next, from one Torah scholar to another. They would write them down: new insights emerged in the beis midrash today, they reached a particular ruling—wonderful. Someone goes home and writes it down. But wait, how is he allowed to write it? It’s the Oral Torah, and Hakadosh Boruch Hu does not permit it to be written. The Rambam understands, as it seems from his words, that the prohibition against writing down the Oral Torah is against producing a work for the entire people. You cannot produce a written work of the Oral Torah, but you may independently write down points from these laws for yourself. That is what they did throughout the generations—Moshe Rabbeinu, Yehoshua, the elders, the judges. They would take a law from the Written Torah or a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai, and use the thirteen principles by which the Torah is interpreted to work through the laws that arose in their generation and rule on them. Where does the halachah begin to change? Not when does it begin to change, but when does the great confusion begin? The great confusion begins in the time of—where does the confusion begin? What? No, a little earlier. When did the Jewish people begin to come apart a little? Not come apart, but experience some upheaval. After the destruction—at the beginning of the building of the Second Beis Hamikdash.

47:34 Speaker 4 The beginning?

47:35 Speaker 2 The beginning. Why? The Jewish people were with Moshe Rabbeinu in the wilderness; Yehoshua bin Nun brought them into the Land. Everything was orderly. They were in the Land, with elders and judges, and then a king arose. Right? King Shaul, King David, King Shlomo. Four hundred years of the First Beis Hamikdash—and then the exile after the First Beis Hamikdash begins. They go into exile in Bavel for seventy years and return, but things will never be as they were. The Jewish people have spread farther into other lands, and the Men of the Great Assembly begin to sense that things are starting to fall apart, okay? From the Men of the Great Assembly onward, a kind of decline begins. Note that there is still a Sanhedrin, decisions are still being made, everything is fine, okay? The Sanhedrin continues for almost three hundred years after the destruction of the Second Beis Hamikdash. But—oh, long before that, from the beginning of the Second Beis Hamikdash and the great exile, and later, in the next period, a hundred years before the destruction of the Second Beis Hamikdash, Hillel and Shammai appear. By the way, how many disputes are there between Hillel and Shammai? How many disputes between Hillel and Shammai do you know?

48:35 Speaker 5 Between Hillel and Shammai.

48:36 Speaker 2 Between Hillel and Shammai.

48:38 Speaker 5 Three.

48:39 Speaker 2 Three. Three disputes between Hillel and Shammai. All the other disputes you know are between Beis Hillel and Beis Shammai. Those were their students who disagreed. Why? Because Hillel and Shammai had sons. The students no longer learned sufficiently from their teachers; that is, they weren’t in close enough contact and didn’t learn enough, because there were so many troubles. Then disputes began. So you might say, “Wait a minute, let’s decide them. There’s a Sanhedrin—why not? Let’s decide. There are disputes; fine, there have always been disputes. Let’s reach a decision.” No. Because of all the troubles, the Sanhedrin could no longer gather and could not decide the matter. Okay, and then Rabbeinu Hakadosh, Rabbi Yehudah Hanasi, comes along a hundred years after the destruction of the Second Beis Hamikdash and says, “Gentlemen, we need to put things in order.” He decides to compile the Mishnah, which we’ll discuss in the next class. But just notice: for hundreds of years, the Mishnah wasn’t needed. Even when there were upheavals in the observance of the mitzvos and in the life of the Jewish people in the Land, with the destruction of the First Beis Hamikdash and so on, they still didn’t need the Mishnah. The Mishnah, as a formal compilation of the Oral Torah, appeared only after the Second Beis Hamikdash. Once the Mishnah appeared, an entirely different style of learning developed. Until then, people had studied the Torah itself and the teachings they had received—the halachos from Sinai, from Moshe Rabbeinu—and had themselves used the thirteen principles by which the Torah is interpreted to derive new laws and so on. From the Mishnah onward, the style of learning changed. From then on, they studied the Mishnah—the Torah and the Mishnah—because the Mishnah brought together all the rulings and all the halachos from Sinai. Everything was gathered into it. Next week, we’ll talk about how the style of learning developed from there onward.