כשהארכאולוגיה והתורה סותרות זו את זו (חלק 1)

00:00 This is Igres, and as discussed, for the next couple of days, we are not doing letters from exactly fifty years ago because we're ahead of schedule. We are going back through interesting letters that we left on the table, either letters that I saw in my research that I didn't get to show you, or letters that we sort of skimmed over in the middle of other classes, and now we're going to unpack them and do them completely, even if they don't come from our year. The letter that we're going to unpack is actually one that we did look at very briefly in one of our previous shiurim, uh, but we didn't really get to unpack it properly. I'm hoping to unpack it today. The goal of today is to understand the Rebbe Shita on archaeological discoveries. That is, somebody digs in the ground, or they find an old Genizah, or they find an older version of something. Um, when we find older and, in theory, more, um, authentic or more, uh, I guess, uh, authoritative. What seems to be more authoritative, excuse me, sources for some of the things that we believed for a long time. Do we, excuse me, do we update our beliefs, or do we, uh, do we update our beliefs to match the archeology, to match the science, to match the history that we're unearthing, or do we stick to our guns? The example that we saw of this last time, I'm gonna bring it back up on the screen, is this

01:04 letter from the year Tav Shin Tes Vav. The letter is labeled Gimel Tes Heih. And this is a letter to Shlome Yasav Zevin, to Rav Zevin. And what I found is that a lot of the letters between Rav Zevin and the Rebbe are about archeology. Rav Zevin was apparently very interested in biblical archeology. He wrote a lot to the Rebbe about it. About half the letters we're gonna look at today about various topics in biblical archae-archaeology and how to square that with our tradition are going to come from Ra-Rav Zevin and be answered to Rav Zevin. So Rav Zevin is a major character in this story. Uh, the letter is labeled Gimel Tes-- Gim-Gimel Tav Heih, and we're gonna scroll all the way down to the bottom. Ɣbeger l'megilas hagenuzos. So I have this on your screen. Regarding the Dead Sea Scrolls. He'd written to the Rebbe asking about the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls have a bit of a story behind them, a longer one than I plan on telling today. But the simple version of it is, is that some kids were playing with stones, they threw it into a cave. They expected to hear the sound of stone hitting cave, I suppose, but that's not what they heard. They heard the sound of broken pottery. Uh, they went in and found a whole bunch of old scrolls, and one thing led to another, and eventually we discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls. The scrolls are supposed to be about two thousand

02:09 years old. They're preserved because of the super salty air and very dry air that we have down there, perfect for preserving old manuscripts, and they have a lot of Tanakh. The problem for us is that they have a different Tanakh. There are some major differences. There are differences in versions of things, differences in the way the words are written, differences in stories entirely in some cases. There's things missing, there's things added. It, uh, it really would suggest a more fluid Tanakh. Now, the easy answer to this question that doesn't require much work from us, Chidim, the Rebbe, anybody, is the archeological answer, which is if you ask any scientist, "What is the Dead Sea-- What are the Dead Sea Scrolls?" They'll tell you they were the works of a group of Jews called the Essenes. The Essenes, uh, Josephus writes about them, that there were three groups that existed around the destruction of the second, uh, Beis Hamikdash. The first group is the one that we come from, the Pharisees. There were the Sadducees, those, the Tsdukim that you always hear about in the Gemara, our antagonists, the bad guys who rejected the oral Torah. And there was a group of, like, really mysterious mystics who lived in the desert, who Josephus apparently claims to have spent a little time with, but he's not the most reliable when it comes to first-person narratives. He also claimed to have been at Masada and somehow survived it. In any event, he claims to have spent some time

03:11 with the Essenes. It was a third group of Jews who lived in the desert, had mystical way about them, and didn't absorb the normal traditions of the Jewish people. So the easiest answer to this is that the Dead Sea Scrolls are not ours. They're from a renegade sect of Jews who did not represent the alt-- the original tradition as received at Sinai, and therefore had their own version of things. However, that is not the tact the Rebbe takes. Uh, we're gonna read very quickly the Rebbe's letter on how he addresses the Dead Sea Scrolls and their apparent discrepancies with the Torah that we have in front of us. The Rebbe writes, Ɣbeger l'megilas hagenuzos, when it comes to the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ḧadei lo hayah yetesi be-bidi, uh, le'ayen besichsach sh'ben ha-chekemim be'zeh. The Rebbe says, "I haven't really had time to look in-depth into the arguments between various researchers on this matter." So the Rebbe's admitting he hasn't really looked into it at this point. Kayedua shemochalokim ein katza ala katza, but it is known, at least-- it, it's at least clear to me and as is well known to everybody, that they really do disagree. There's a lot of disagreement about the provenance of these scrolls, details of these scrolls. So the Rebbe says, "I haven't looked into the debate, and I know that there's a lot of opinions." Ava, but, Ma shiniri li matech priesh dachis, vedai yas ezets lum. The Rebbe says, "I've just skimmed it and I've seen a couple

04:16 photocopies." But what seems to me, based on having skimmed it and seen a couple photocopies of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Shekanira meshitas hakasof, Ɣbeger lemaleim hula, and when it comes to how they wrote certain words, certain words were written out full rather than in a, in a smaller form, male and kasu, the way the words were written. Zem iksav yad amarit. This is the Rebbe's conclusion. This must be iksav yad of a person who was very simple, a simpleton, a non-educated individual. So the Rebbe's theory is that the Dead Sea Scrolls, because of all the mistakes in them, uh, some scientists want to say these are not mistakes, they're alternate traditions. The Rebbe says, "I don't think so. These mistakes are pretty glaring. I think this was just somebody practicing learning how to write." This is like the way, uh, I, I, I hate to call out my poor, my poor Menachem, but my Menachem, uh, one of his activities right now is that he sits with a piece of paper, and he copies from the Chumash just for fun. And, uh, he makes a lot of mistakes when he's copying from the Chumash. The Rebbe says, "This is some, this is some kid's work. Some kid was copying Torah, and he made a lot of mistakes, and we're finding, uh, not an official document. We're finding a poorly written document." Alul etays ba takhis b'mehisari yedia, someone who didn't know a lot about writing words, somebody who was very junior in their knowledge of,

05:17 uh, of, of authentic texts w-- miswrote this. V'lech en ziris iser drush m'begel lasam kaso megilah. So we really need to be very careful when we talk about the reliability of the Dead Sea Scrolls because the Rebbe thinks it's very likely that the Dead Sea Scrolls were never an authoritative text of anybody. The current prevailing theory is that they were an authoritative text of a strange side sect of the Jewish people. The Rebbe says, "I'm not even sure they were an authoritative text." As the Rebbe says in that fi-- in that last, uh, parenthesis, Mi yadias tifus genizah sam. Who knows why exactly they were hidden in the first place. When you throw something in a, in a Genizah, it's not always because, it usually is not because this was an amazing work. This is sometimes you throw something in, in a Genizah 'cause it has God's name on it, but it was written very poorly, it was a series of mistakes. So the Rebbe's conclusion, his preliminary conclusion, he says himself that this is only through a, uh, through a cursory glance of the s-- of the texts. But the Rebbe's chush, and the Rebbe's chush when you're a Rebbe is pretty, pretty good. The Rebbe's instinct is that the Dead Sea Scrolls Are not a problem we have to contend with because they're not authoritative at all. They were written by amateurs, and that they represent what a mistake looks like. Now, at, at the time, I didn't know this. This letter was

06:21 written in the year Tushin Tesuv. We have a Sikha here from the year Mem Gimel, many years later. So many years later. Now, that, that was written in, uh, fifty-five, fifty-six. This letter, th-this Sikha was published in, uh, eighty-three. So the Rebbe had a lot more time to think about this between the intervening decades. And decades later, the Rebbe, in a published, edited Sikha, talks about the Dead Sea Scrolls and says almost exactly the same thing. So whereas this letter is representing the Rebbe's preliminary ideas about what to do with the Dead Sea Scrolls, we really have like thirty years later, the Rebbe saying, "I've looked into this now in depth, and I have a real opinion on the Dead Sea Scrolls." And this is in a Sikha from Parashat Tetzaveh. Uh, it's the second Sikha Tetzaveh. Um, I actually have no idea. I didn't bring the volumes right. It's from vol-- There we go. It's in volume twenty-six. Look at the Sikhas volume twenty-six, the second Sikha Tetzaveh. It's the last paragraph. The Rebbe says, based on everything we've talked about in the Sikha, which obviously we're not doing right now, not a Sikha class. Come on Monday nights for the Sikha class. Uh, based on everything we talked about before, we are now going to talk about something that is relevant in our days. In recent generations, in a recent period, there has been a revelation of hidden scrolls, scrolls that, uh, deal with Inyanim, that have to do with Tanakh. And they've

07:39 written differently. The Masorah is written differently. Some words are written full, and some words are written short. And when it comes at least to, to the, to, um, Mikra, to the Torah itself, this is an enormous problem, that some letters would be written differently. If we have a single letter in the Sefer-- If my Sefer Torah has a letter in it that's wrong at all, the entire Sefer Torah is pusel. And now we're finding old documents that are hidden in caves telling us that we're writing the whole thing wrong. The Rebbe says we should know. It looks to some people, to simple people, it looks like these Genizahs, these hidden things that we're finding, are Eidos Raya. These are, these are good proofs, proofs of the way things used to be. It would seem that archeology is a good, is good evidence of the way the world used to run. The Rebbe then says, "Ach, lamah le'zeh?" Despite that, It doesn't match our Masorah. So it sounds like our Masorah is against good evidence of the way things used to be. The Rebbe says, We never know who wrote these Genizahs. We don't know who wrote them. We don't know whether these were great, wise people, and we're seeing original texts, or whether we're seeing the work of some amateur. Furthermore, Certainly it could be. It could be that these Megillahs were put in a Genizah specifically because they were written incorrectly, not according to Halakha. On the other hand, However, the tradition that we

08:57 have about how to write a Torah scroll and what should be in the Torah, that was handed down person to person, From generation to generation, Going all the way back to Moshe. It's certain that it's true. So the Rebbe here is using a very logical, a very scientific, a very archeological argument, saying on one hand, we have a, we have, we have a tradition that has been passed down orally generation to generation with no interruptions from Moshe Rabbeinu, that this is what these words look like, that this is what this text should look like. On the other hand, we found something in a hole. Now, when you find something in a hole, what, what leads you to conclude that that is more authoritative than an oral tradition? It could be the thing was put in a hole intentionally because it was written by somebody who wrote it incorrectly. It could be that the person who wrote it was an amateur, and it later on got buried. You have no real reason to re-- to find these things reliable. So the Rebbe is sort of punching a hole in what I think is an enormous Yetzer Hara. We certainly encounter this Yetzer Hara a lot, is that there is a, there is an enormous Yetzer Hara that if I find something, if there's an archeological finding, that must be definitive to some degree. It's some sort of proof. And the Rebbe here says, "I don't know why you would consider archeology definitive when you don't know

09:55 who put it in the ground in the first place or why it was put there." We're finding things. These things definitely existed. They were true to some degree, but the truth could be that these were mistakes, or the truth could be these were written by people who didn't know what they were doing. Whereas, on the other hand, we have a tradition person from person. The Rebbe in this Sikha is Nitzayan to a, to a Bach. Down here, he says, "Check out the Bach, who's written on Torah Shebechav, uh, in Siman lamed daled at the end of Masseket Sanhedrin." I did look it up, and, uh, I'm a little bit curious that the Rebbe's Nitzayan to the Bach. I guess he just wants us, us to see the thing in the Bach 'cause the Bach actually doesn't agree with the thing the Rebbe wants us to see. But I highlighted a few. It's really interesting. I've never, I ne-- I've never seen this before. Says in the Bach, Apparently, the Smag and the Mordechai both wrote, That they received a letter from Eretz Yisrael. They knew where, uh, Yechezkel was buried, the prophet Ezekiel. They knew he was buried. And the Bima that was on top of his grave, it fell over. And when it fell over, They found Tefillin, and the Tefillin that they found there were written like Rabba and Rashi and not like Rabbeinu Tam, not like Shmuel and Rabba. They were written like Rashi's. That would seem to be a proof that

10:58 Rashi's Tefillin are correct and the other versions are wrong. If we're having a debate over what is the right order of the Parshiyos, it would seem that Rashi's are the right ones. There's no reason to get all worked up about Rabbeinu Tam. And, uh, And then they push that away. They say, "No, we don't find that compelling." He says, "Because it's totally possible that the reason why they were placed in a Genizah, in a gravesite, is because what do you put, uh, what, what do you put in Genizah? What do you bury in the ground? Sifrei, Sifrei Torah, things with God's name on them that are incorrect." So just because the Tefillin that they found buried near a gravesite, near a famous gravesite, uh, are like Rashi, that could be a proof that Rashi's right. It could also be a proof that Rashi's wrong, right? It could be a proof that somebody wrote it according to Rashi and that that was a mistake, and therefore, they buried it. However, the Bach actually does not find that convincing. The Bach says, It's a good point. The Bach says, "I'm not sure why they would have had to bury Rashi's Tefillin. If the Tefillin are written like Rashi, they're not written differently. They're just in a different order, so they wouldn't have had to bury them. They would have just had to rearrange them." So the Bach actually doesn't find this argument compelling, but the, but the Yesod is there. The Yesod that we're finding in Rashani,

12:01 it's a Smag, it's a Mordechai, that, uh, that when we find things hidden in the ground, when we find things that have been buried, we don't necessarily find them authoritative because usually things get buried specifically because they're not authoritative. So for us to be relying on the authority of stuff that people intentionally put in the ground is a dodgy practice at best. We actually have a lot of this from the Rebbe, and I really don't know if we'll be able to finish everything today. This might turn into a two-parter. Um, and the other two slash three places that I was able to find the Rebbe engaging on this subject is the very famous discussion of the menorah, where there seems to be a lot of archeological evidence that the menorah was shaped in a, in a curvy half circle shape, as opposed to the menorah as Rambam describes it, as the Rebbe strongly defends, straight branched. That's one area where the Rebbe goes up against archeology and explains why he doesn't find the archeological findings compelling. There are all sorts of things, um, chief among them, the Arch of Titus, that appears to show a menorah that is not according to our tradition, and the Rebbe discusses that. We have, um, considerable back and forth with Rav Zevin about writing a Tanakh according to, uh, archeological findings, adding archeological findings to a Tanakh commentary. And we have a long letter that the Rebbe sent, um, let me just make sure I... Shazar. Yes. A long

13:13 letter that the Rebbe sent Shazar, where he was complaining, complaining is the wrong word, but he was warning Shazar that something terrible was about to happen, that a university in Eretz Yisrael was about to publish a new kind of Torah, that they were going to take all of the archeological findings about different versions, like from the, um, from the, uh, the, what's it called? I have to peek at the letter. Uh, this famous Genizah. I can't remember where they found it from. Um, here, the Aleppo Codex. The Aleppo Codex that was found in Syria. So based on the Aleppo Codex, they were going to print a new Torah that was going to say that the Torah we've had for generations is wrong, and the Rebbe discusses that. So we have, uh, those are the ones I was able to find where the Rebbe kind of goes up against archeology. I think with the time we have left, we'll address the menorah one, and then maybe if we have time next time, or maybe we can sneak it in at the end of this one, we'll try to look at some of these Tanakh examples. Let's do the menorah first. Uh, you're probably familiar, I think almost everybody is familiar with the idea that the Rebbe very strongly defends the menorah being straight branched, not curved branched, despite the fact that on the Arch of Titus, where there's a picture of the menorah being carried out of the Beis Hamikdash by Roman soldiers, the way that

14:14 they drew it was with a curve. Now, that would seem to be pretty strong evidence that the menorah in the Beis Hamikdash was curved. So the Rebbe has two answers to this, both in Sichas. I have them from Shocher Menachem on the screen. This one is, first of all, this first point the Rebbe makes is simply that the Arch of Titus was there to beat us down, it was there to destroy us. It was, uh, it's a Shaar Nitzachon, it's a victory arch that was created to humiliate the Jewish people, and it makes no sense at all for us to base our religion on something like that. So this is sort of an emotional response. Let's read the emotional response. So the source we have for the curvy menorah is, like, a couple minority opinions, and most of all, the fact that a great enemy of the Jewish people, uh, who wanted to destroy us, in order to upset us, drew it that way. When Titus, Titus, when he destroyed the Beis Hamikdash, he commanded that they take all the vessels of the Beis Hamikdash and bring them to Rome. To honor this particularly wicked person, they created a gate of victory, and they p- called it after his name. They called it the Gate of Titus. And on this gate, they put, uh, pictures of the vessels of the Beis Hamikdash that they had captured, and they included the menorah. And in the menorah, it looks like it's got curvy branches. The Rebbe adds,

15:30 First of all, the Rebbe says, "Look closely at that gate, at, at that, at the sha- at, at, at, at the, uh, Arch of Titus. Look at the arch. The menorah in the arch is not drawn correctly according to anybody. For example, it's missing its legs. The Torah is very clear that the menorah in the Beis Hamikdash had legs, and the menorah in that one stops at a, at a branch. It doesn't have any legs on the bottom. So clearly, the artist who was doing the work was not being particular to make sure he got all the details right." "So first of all, I'm not so sure about the de- about how detailed this drawing is," the Rebbe says. Uh, but in addition to that, he says, uh, in many places, it talks about the captivity of the Yidden, and there were times when Yidden were forced to go to this place and to, uh, and to look at it in front of the Romans in order to humiliate them. The Rebbe says, "This sh- this adds a dimension to our debate. When I see a curved branch menorah, this should, uh, this should break me a little bit. This should upset me. I should find this upsetting because this is, in addition to the fact that it is against the shit of the Rashi and the Rambam, it is also reminding me of one of the lowest points in Jewish history, the way that an enemy of the Jews drew a caricature of a

16:32 menorah, then made me stare at it." Uh, so the Rebbe says that it's important for us, instead of receiving from the non-Jews this negative experience of a menorah that's not ours, to reclaim our own menorah, to be a light to the nations, and to switch the menorah back to the way that it should be. So this first one is an essentially emotional response. How dare we take, uh, how dare we take a truth of our Torah from our enemies, from somebody who tried to destroy us? But also somewhat of an intellectual response, which is that if you look carefully at the arch, it doesn't look like the menorah is drawn very precisely, so there's no reason for us to believe that its precision also extends to the shape. The Rebbe has another argument here that's mentioned in a separate Sicha, that the, where he talks again about the Arch of Titus. And here he says that, uh, let me just get the right page for you. He uses the same lashon here. It would seem to be perfect proof. We have proof of what the menorah used to look like. Our enemies drew a picture of it, so it would seem that that would be good archeological evidence. And the Rebbe now explains, we know for sure, as he said previously, that it's missing some parts of it, so it clearly isn't an accurate picture. The Rebbe says there are multiple details that are missing from the picture, so we know the picture is not

17:44 exact. So one conclusion, which is the one the Rebbe had in that prior Sicha, is that since the picture is not exact, it was an estimate, and we don't have to take any details of it seriously. Here, the Rebbe takes a slightly different angle, says, "Since it's not exact, ." Says, here's another possibility. The Beis Hamikdash was full of lamps, and not all of those lamps were the official menorah. When they were carrying out some of the Beis Hamikdash's giant lamps, they might have taken a, they might have, uh, drawn a picture of that. So the Rebbe's other possible conclusion is that this was a menorah that was around the Beis Hamikdash that they plundered, but it wasn't the menorah, and one of the proofs for that is the fact that it sure doesn't look anything like our original menorah. So the Rebbe's two answers to the archeological question Where people who support archeology will come to the Rebbe and say, "We know the menorah was round-shaped. We have the Arch of Titus." The Rebbe has essentially three answers. Answer number one is, the Arch of Titus is a source of incredible emotional distress for the Jewish people, and for us to take our religion from people who tried to kill us is really, uh, sort of, sort of gross and should really shake you up a little bit. Thing number two, it doesn't look right in the arch. We know it's missing some details that everybody agrees on, like the feet, uh, like the,

18:47 like the base, that it's supposed to have a base. And since it's missing that, perhaps the entire picture was drawn, uh, sort of haphazardly and not being-- without attention to detail. And a third possibility, since we see that it is missing so many details, maybe it wasn't drawn haphazardly. Maybe it wasn't drawn without attention to detail. Maybe it was drawn in a very detailed manner, and it is in a very detailed manner, not the menorah from the Beis Hamikdash. It's one of the many other menorahs that would have been plundered along with the plundering of Jerusalem. So we have here again, the Rebbe coming up against archeology. On one hand, the archeology appears to be saying that our Masorah is wrong, God forbid, and the Rebbe coming back in and saying, "I, uh, I'm questioning the basis of it. I don't know why you're looking at this archeology and finding it authoritative." What we're noticing here, and I think we're gonna conclude with this and have to pick up the Bible stuff a little bit later. What we're noticing here is sort of a theme in the Rebbe's approach to archeology, which is I have not yet seen the Rebbe put his foot down and say, "Archeology says one thing, Torah says the other thing. We trust Torah over archeology." What I am seeing him say is that archeology is, uh, is a, is a real wobbly science. We go back to the Dead Sea Scrolls. When I find something in the ground, I don't

19:47 know why it was put there. And for me to believe for some reason that because it's in the ground it's authoritative is kind of funny because a lot of times you put things in the ground that are not authoritative. So the Rebbe is not challenging the finding. He's saying, "Yeah, I believe they found scrolls that say something that the Torah doesn't say, but I'm not sure I believe that it comes from a valid source. Maybe somebody who didn't know what they were doing wrote it, wrote it." And you're seeing something very similar in the menorah discussion. The Rebbe is not disputing that the Arch of Titus shows a curved menorah that doesn't look like the shita in our Masorah. But at the same time, the Rebbe's saying, "What makes you think that the, the people drawing it were doing a good job? And second of all, what makes you think that they were drawing the right menorah?" And this is inherently one of the problems with archeology in general, is that, uh, we're looking into the past, we're finding artifacts, and we're trying to tell a story. But, uh, to believe for a moment that we can tell that story while missing so many details is sort of silly. And I think that's the Rebbe's overall approach to archeological findings. Uh, I'm hoping next shiur-- Yeah, we'll do this tomorrow. Tomorrow, we'll continue. We'll talk about what the Rebbe does when, uh, versions of the Bible show up, versions of the Torah and Tanakh show

20:42 up that don't seem to match our Masorah, and we'll see the Rebbe's take on that. But that's it for now. Thank you all very much.