כשהארכאולוגיה והתורה סותרות זו את זו (חלק 2)

00:01 This is Icarus. We are not looking at letters from exactly fifty years ago right now, as we have discussed for the rest of this week. I think this might be our last one where we're, uh, off the beaten path. What we've been doing the past few times, since we are a little bit ahead of schedule for our letters from exactly fifty years ago, is we're jumping around Icarus and finding anything that we've found interesting that we haven't gotten a chance to really dive into. So something that we kinda left on the cutting floor, I don't know, uh, twenty classes ago, thirty classes ago, was the Dead Sea Scrolls. We came across them briefly, and we read the letter, but it was only kind of as an aside. We, we wanted to get into it properly. So yesterday, we began exploring the Rebbe's approach to archaeological findings. Our overall question was: What do we do when new information, research, excavations, documents, whatever, become available that seem legitimate and suggest the documents that we've ha-- that, that we have, uh, were corrupted over time? That's definitely what most people think when they find, for example, a Torah scroll from two thousand years ago that has different words than what is in our scroll. It's also a standing assumption, I guess, that whatever we find in the ground is authoritative and more authoritative than what we find on our bookshelves or in the Aronkidesh. So sort of a standing conceit when it comes to stuff we find in

01:05 archaeological discoveries, that that's probably the way things really were, and we probably got messed up over time. Uh, and that's the way the world sees things. How does the Rebbe see things? And we looked at that a little bit yesterday. It's safe to say from what we saw yesterday that the Rebbe does not agree with that way of looking at things. Uh, as we saw yesterday, the Rebbe adopts an assumption found in Bach, actually. It's found in the Bach on Tour, that any text that we find buried in the ground was probably put there on purpose. It was probably discarded and put in the ground because it was inaccurate. Meaning that if we find ancient tefillin, like in the Bach, or Dead Sea Scrolls, and they're not the same as what we have right now, odds are that some amateur wrote them. He did a bad job, he wrote them incorrectly, and so he had to bury them, and we're finding things buried or in a Genizah because they're not that good in the first place. Uh, it's noteworthy that this sheet that would call all Genizah findings into question. You know, we, we rely heavily on things that are found in various community Genizahs as authoritative. The Rebbe says, "I'm not sure why you would, given that we only put things in Genizah that are no good, or frequently put things in Genizah that are no good." The Rebbe reminds us in some of these letters to pit the uncertainty of archaeological discoveries against

02:06 the near certainty in mere logic, that a people who's passed something down without interruption probably did it faithfully. Uh, we then looked at the menorah that's depicted on the Arch of Titus. The Rebbe makes almost the exact same point when it comes to the Arch of Titus. We don't know how accurate the drawing was meant to be. We don't know that they were drawing the main temple menorah instead of some other side lamp that they plundered from the temple. So given the uncertainties inherent in archaeology and the certainty of the Torah, uh, plus the fact that logically it makes sense that a oral transmission is probably more reliable than things we find in the ground, we side with Torah every time, both, I guess, religiously and logically. It makes sense to side with the Torah over archaeological findings. I wanted to add just as an aside, this has nothing to do with Icarus, but I'd feel bad not mentioning it. Uh, this approach that the Rebbe's taking is way ahead of its time. The Rebbe was saying this in the nineteen sixties. He was saying that we should consider a culture's oral history or the documents it's written down and take that into account as historical fact, uh, over anything that we find while we're digging around archaeologically. This was not at all what people thought in the sixties. A bunch of European and American white people would go into these native communities or these Arab communities, and the Arabs or the natives there, or

03:08 the Africans or whatever, would tell them, "This is what happened throughout our history." And they would say, "You're ridiculous. You don't know anything." They'd dig in the ground and come to their own conclusions. And this was the way that archaeology was done until about ten years ago. About ten years ago, there was a new movement in archaeology that said, "Hey, we're finding stuff in the ground. We're not sure exactly what those things say. And these people, they very seriously have guarded their traditions and histories. Maybe we should figure that into the studies." And now there's a new school of archaeology that's doing exactly what the Rebbe said to do with our work. So it's very interesting. The Rebbe was way ahead of his time, as usual, when he was saying that, uh, just in the science itself of archaeology, it doesn't make sense to discard our constant tradition that we've been defending because we found something in the ground. Anyway, that's all yesterday. Today, we're going to look at something slightly different. We wanna say-- we wanna find out what the Rebbe does when we find hisveyad, old manuscripts that are considered reliable, and these manuscripts suggest that our Torah and our Tanakh might not be the most reliable version. What if I dig in the ground and I find a Torah scroll, and we can date it, and that Torah scroll is two thousand years old, and it has, uh, an aleph where the beh should be by Bratius? Who do I trust? The

04:08 Torah that I have now in the Aran or a reliable Torah that I found from two thousand years ago? Now, if I find it in the Genizah, we already kinda know the Rebbe's answer from the Dead Sea Scrolls. What if it's not found in the Genizah? What if, for example, we discover the Aleppo Codex, which is something that ha-- we do have. We have the Aleppo Codex. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about it today. But the Aleppo Codex was, uh, was safely-- was, uh, carefully guarded by the Syrian Jewish community for many years. We have about a third of it now in Israel in the libraries. It is the manuscript that Rambam used to figure out where you make the breaks in Torah, in the Torah. So if you know in Mishneh Torah, that really, I don't wanna say boring part, but you know, it's a slightly boring part. A Mishneh Torah where he just lists exactly where all the paragraph breaks should be when you're writing a Torah. He pulled that from the Aleppo Codex, something that he had a chance to look at. It's a very old text. We've kept track of it for a long time. And when we sit down and look at the Aleppo Codex, and we put it right next to our current Tanakh, it doesn't say exactly the same things. It's not major differences. There's nekuda differences. Also, most of the Torah isn't found, so a lot of these problems are in Nach or in Nevi'im

05:05 and Ketuvim. But what does the Rebbe do with these things? When the Aleppo Codex becomes available, does the Rebbe say we should update our Tanakhs or that we should stick with what we've had when we find legitimate old sources? So that's what we're looking at today. Uh, first we're gonna look at the letter, letter fr-- to, uh, Rabbi Zevin. I told you yesterday, Rabbi Zevin is, like, always the one asking the Rebbe about archaeology. This is one of his things. And at the time, he was working on a new comprehensive Tanakh, and the project that he was working on, he wanted to take, uh, traditional commentaries and sort of mix them in with modern commentaries, along with data that had been found from old codices that had been brought to libraries in recent years. They wanted to bring in de-- uh, different, different pieces from the Aleppo Codex, from the Leningrad Codex, another, another reliable, fairly reliable text that shows what the Torah, uh, was written like a couple thousand years ago. He wanted to in-- he wanted to put these into sort of a modern/scientific/archeological commentary on Tanakh, and he wrote to the Rebbe asking for a berakh. And the Rebbe told him basically, "Yeah, go right ahead. It's a good idea. Depend as long as you do it right." So this is our first letter. We're looking at this letter is From volume Chaf. It's from the year Taf Shin Chaf Alef, and, uh, I didn't-- Oh, there we go. It's letter Zayin

06:13 Taf Peh Ches. I only brought you the middle of the letter because this is the part where the Rebbe talks about, about the-- his concerns. BeDi'egel et haMefal, regarding the actual act that you wanna do, writing this commentary on Tanakh, that will incorporate more recent archaeological textual findings. Dat Ish aDavar Nahon Hu. The Rebbe says, "I think it's a good idea. Go for it." Aval Ach VeRak, but there are rules. Only Be'im Ya'aseh Al Yadei Anashim Ne'emanim Le'achri Za, Ve'achri Za Biker Shalom VeKam BeNei Sa'am Chashei SheLo Ne'emanos Be'achri Be'inyan HaM'chigeh Nei Hu. He says, "Only if good people are involved in the project." The conditions are the people who put it together need to be trustworthy, and after that it needs to be looked over by people who are also trustworthy to make sure that it's done properly. "So if you do this properly," says the Rebbe, "if it's done in a respectful way, in an intelligent way, it makes a lot of sense to take legitimate old codices and try to interpolate them into modern commentaries." The Rebbe is not against using the stuff that we find that seems reliable. Ach Be'Etzem HaDavar. Ach SheBe'Etzem HaDavar. Efshar BeParash Yo'az, excuse me, Parash Yo'az. I'm gonna explain myself, the Rebbe says. Ach SheBe'Etzem HaDavar, when it comes to the fundamentals here, Ni'asparsh DiVe'ha Tanakh, iDi Mefarshim Shenim VeShalosh Ahacheim, Ma'aseh Parshan Dasa, Hu Peh Desh Rashi, Ve'ad HaMitzvos Davar MiTzdas Tzion Asher Sam Chos MiYuchades Lam. When you're doing, putting these commentaries together, the

07:20 Etzem Davar of putting together old commentaries and new commentaries, beginning with Rashi and continuing in the Mitzvos Davar and in the Mitzvos Tzion, who we're gonna see in the next letter the Rebbe specifically wants incorporated into this commentary, Esher Sam Chos MiYuchades Lam. They have particular reliability, these sources, the early sources. I'll just note, I didn't know what Parshan Dasa was. Parshan Dasa is apparently what Rashi on Nach is called. I didn't know this. It's a great-- It's a funny name because Parshan Dasa, you remember from the, from, uh, from Megillas Esther. "Ve'yes Parshan Dasa." All right, so it's Parshan Dasa. Anyway, 'cause he's the Parsh-- whatever. Parshan and Dasa. KiYaskhu Hu Peh Desh haTanakh Matim Le'inyanah. When we deal with these commentaries, we know we're safe because they worked on interpreting Tanakh, uh, that fits according to its context. Zeh Emet. What do I mean by that? Malacha HaKodesh. They understood what they were doing. They were not trying to figure out what the words mean, they were trying to do Avoda. This was their Avodas Hashem when they were translating. ShePesha Torah SheHashem, they knew that they were translating, that they were, that they were commenting on the Torah SheHashem. Sefer Sefarim, the book of all books. Ve'Ali Koh P'niyas VeNegias. They didn't have any, any side goals. They didn't have any, um, any biases. Af Al P'niyas Ruchnias, they didn't even have spiritual biases. Ve'Achas Kam VeKama B'li Tshukah La'amira Das Atzmo LaReish En Kol Davar Ne'elev Min Esther. They also didn't

08:29 have any particular need to show off how much they knew, that they, that they know everything, and that there's nothing they're missing. Kol Ashar Nashim Kam VeKam Es. Want proof? What Rashi says in a lot of places, "Le'odati, I have no idea." So clearly their goal here is not to show how smart they are. Ve'Ki Tzedek. So the Rebbe says, "One of the reasons why the old commentaries-- You're writing a new commentary, and that's great, but the, one of the reasons why the old commentaries are so reliable is because they weren't trying to prove anything, and this was their Avoda. For them, this was like davening. They weren't really even trying to translate words and say exactly what the Torah means. They were trying to do Avodas Hashem. And their Avodas Hashem, the Malacha HaKodesh without any biases, was just to get the Torah to say the truth. Ve'Od BeZezet MeGeshes Hasam Choshe Lehem, this, uh, further emphasizes how reliable they are. Be'Yes Lamasorah Medir Devar Peh SheKesuv Lamitasam. Another reason why they're so reliable is because they had a Masorah. They weren't just-- Rashi didn't just write his commentary based on what popped into Rashi's head. He had a tradition going back from generation to generation when explaining the Kesuv Lamitasam and how to explain verses according to their proper meaning. BeKarov L'vadei, the Rebbe says, "It's almost certain that many of the Perushim that Rashi uses came from generations even before the writing of the Sifrei Tanakh." That a lot of the things

09:30 that Rashi writes down are things we got at Sinai or before any of the Sifrei Tanakh were written down. Vi'Yudim DiVe'er Am MiNegeh Lashon HaKodesh. The Rebbe really flips this one on its head, this last line here. Vi'Yudim DiVe'er Am MiNegeh Lashon HaKodesh. Rambam, when it comes to Hebrew, often says, Esher Bnei Rico Kades and Shaku Kaminiyanu Pratim Shezem Makshé Bavan HaLashon, that sometimes over time we've forgotten what certain words mean in commentaries, so that would sound like a weakness of our tradition. The Rebbe says no, that's a strength of our tradition. She'Ayin Masorah BeZe. That means there was a Masorah for them, meaning that if I have a commentary that makes it to my hands and I don't understand what some of the words mean, that means the commentary is older than my usage of the language. So the fact that we have some very old interpretations of Chumash that have words in it we don't know isn't a def-- isn't a proof that we've lost something. It's a proof that we still have very, very old things, so old that we've forgotten the language. So the Rebbe here is making a case that although you're gonna write something new that's gonna interpret, that's going to include these new findings, you have to keep in mind there's something really special about the old, about the old information. The old information is way more reliable. Aval Pi, the Rebbe says even so, Ki VeChi Shenom Mesignen, Kamadeem SheLifnei SheLivnim, Hayah Pe'esh Pashut VeAchshav LePashut Keitz

10:32 BeZe. Since there's been a change in style and a lot of things that used to be very simple, Rashi wrote something and everybody understood, nowadays maybe it's not so simple anymore. L'achen Ten Shiar Pe'esh Ha'amor. So it's good for you to put together a Pe'esh that will help us understand what some of the older commentaries are really talking about. Ve'are, Ish Lamishana Mashligbeili Selbder SheKedmei, Hirshu La'atik Mefarshim Min Lashon Yiddish, Ivrit Aitch. So if you can look at what prior generations did, they allowed translation into Lash-- into Yiddish, into Ivrit Aitch. V'ishdad La'ach Pitzam Ben Eilu SheLo Ya'alu Ne'ezeh Sivash Tiana, Nimah Pe'esh Rashi SheLachrav. This is not a new idea. This n-- Taking the old commentaries and brushing them up so a modern audience can understand them is not new. So if what you're telling me you wanna do is sort of update the commentaries and make them more understandable, absolutely go right for it. I think it's a good idea as long as the right people are involved in it. Ela ShePashut Shnai Cardu Chalom Mifal, SheYehi Kolashan Chazal Ya'an Yashav Raka Kan Kan Zeh Emet, Rak Signan Lashon Ye'achadash. Says the only rule is the same rule that Chazal always set up, which is that you can have new wine, uh, you can have, excuse me, uh, you must, you can have a new vessel as long as the wine is old. That is, as long as you keep the same wine in the barrel, you can certainly update the barrel. So

11:37 as long as you make sure that you are still, uh, that you're still saying what the old commentary said, feel free to update it using the language of science, using the language of archeology. If you wanna update what Rashi says using the language of modern science and modern thought, that's fine, but make sure you're still saying what Rashi says. Because you're not allowed to update Rashi according to science, you're allowed to update the way we describe Rashi to the world according to scientific discoveries, according to changes in language, according to changes in understanding. So their goal here had been to make a sort of scholarly commentary on Tanakh, and the Rebbe goes, "You can do that, but only if you keep the same commentaries and update them in, in Signa, and update them in style." These are the same these are the same commentaries that, uh, the have relied on for generations, uh, in past many previous generations. Once again, he mentions the big three that he wants to see in this commentary on Tanakh, Rashi, Mitsuda Staven, Mitsuda Tsiyon. Okay. Um, we don't need anything else here. So the Rebbe's saying basically, "I'm okay with you in ter- in, in including new findings, but only if they don't change anything about the old findings." Now, Rabbi Zevin clearly misunderstood this letter a little bit, uh, because Rabbi Zevin took from this that as long as he had good people involved on the team, he could basically bring in Bible criticism. He could basically bring

12:57 in, um, uh, modern archeology. He didn't-- I, I don't think he understood what the Rebbe was saying because the Rebbe, I don't have his letter, but I know what the Rebbe wrote back to him, and the Rebbe says, "You completely misunderstood me." So we have the next letter here in the series, and the Rebbe writes, the first part of the letter, I'm sorry, this is labeled Zion This is from the year and the whole intro is about him becoming chief rabbi. But down here on Gimli says, regarding the commentary on Tanakh, professor dot dot dot. It sounds like you want to do some sort of a scientific commentary from Professor So and So. So that's what they, they, they told the Rebbe, "We, we picked a certain professor. He's gonna take a academic approach to our commentary, and, uh, we'll do it your way." And the Rebbe says, you're, you're speaking like I told you this was okay. I'm shocked to hear this. I'm very surprised to hear that you think that I approved this. This is, uh, it seems to me this is the first time I'm hearing about this commentary. Obviously, the Rebbe had heard about his idea earlier, but the Rebbe did not understand that he was going to be infusing Bible critics, that he was going to be using, uh, scientists, secular archeologists. He did not think that. He thought that like Rabbanim were going to just, you know, explain Rashi in a mod- in modern terminology. The Rebbe says ,

14:08 "It's possible that I didn't remember it because it was so insignificant to me." Also according to the points in your letter, Uh, based on what you've told me in the letter, this person is not at all fit to be putting together a traditional commentary on Tanakh. We do not want this professor, whoever he was, putting together this commentary. That which I told you earlier, and I don't think we have this in the in the letter. This must have been another conversation. We don't have it in Igris anywhere. That which I told you that'd be a good idea to incorporate different that we might have found maybe in the Aleppo Codex or maybe in the Leningrad Codex and maybe different versions. At the time, I did explain what I meant, Professor Kittel. I want you to do it like Professor Kittel did. Now, you should know Professor Kittel's a goy, uh, although his name sounds super Jewish, Kittel. Professor Kittel was a Protestant, I believe, and he was one of the first Bible critics to publish an entire Tanakh, and, uh, in his Bible criticism Tanakh, he was very careful, as the Rebbe's gonna say here, to never change the actual text, just to write around the text. He would keep the text in its original and then say, "I think this should be like this." So he was a, he was, he was, he was a kofer, but he was a kofer in the margins. He was never a kofer in the text. In the

15:20 side notes, in the footnotes on the sides of the page, he brought other versions that were in other Sifrei Torah that have been printed or other Certainly, I was not giving you any permission to be involved in Bible criticism. That's That's Bible criticism. God forbid. I was, I was not expecting you to, uh, to do what you're planning on doing. So the Rebbe completely rejects the proposal that we should be able to take other, other, other prints, other Sifrei Torah and fundamentally change the text. The Rebbe was saying that if somebody who's wants to incorporate into the modern commenta-- into the existing commentaries, other and maybe footnotes, that might be a nice idea, but certainly not to change anything. Uh, the Rebbe then says here in Dalet, This is just an interesting note here. He says, "Why do I mention Mitsuda Staven, Mitsuda Tsiyon?" And he says, "These are particularly powerful commentaries. They're mentioned in Hasidim a few places, and, uh, these are also the main commentaries that were taught in Chadarim throughout the generations to make a So just for people who are interested in Tanakh, you should know the Rebbe has a particular love for the Mitsuda Staven and the Mitsuda Tsiyon in addition to Rashi as two major commentaries on Tanakh. The Rebbe continues, When you write, why can't I put out a new Perush? 'Cause it sounds like they wanna be Mekadesh a little bit, put out the original commentaries and some novel ideas. Says it sounds like people put-- I

16:37 mean, people throughout the generations have been putting out new Chidushim. Why can't we get a bunch of rabbis together and put out a new commentary on Tanakh? And here the Rebbe says that it says by the, uh, that the, that the, that the Alter Rebbe says this is brought in Ayin Beis, that every-- I didn't-- I, I, I think I heard this once, but I totally had forgotten it. If you wanna know when Ruach Hakodesh stopped being in commentary, it was the Taz and the Shah. The Taz and the Shah were the last two people to get Ruach Hakodesh in their commentaries, and from that point on, people who write commentaries do not do so with Ruach Hakodesh. Obviously, this doesn't apply to Hasidism, which is But for everything else, if anybody else is writing Chidushim, uh, after the Shah and Taz, they don't have Ruach Hakodesh anymore. So based on this, he doesn't want him writing a new commentary on Tanakh because he won't have Ruach Hakodesh. Down in Bave he says, I also wanna point out, the real shock is on people who don't wanna rely on the old interpretations. at least the Pshat ones. I understand if some people say they don't wanna rely on old Midrashic interpretations, but why are people so upset with the, with the, with, with Rashi's Pshat? Even if you bring in recent discoveries, that's certainly fine to put in a-- i-it should be a, a good enough to put in a footnote. We certainly don't need

17:56 a completely new commentary to be built on recent findings. If you have something new that you wanna tell us, put it in a quick footnote that here there's a different Girsah, that in Syria we found a different Girsah. This certainly doesn't justify a new commentary. When you think about the situation that our generation is in, I think there's an et cetera, et cetera. I think it's just kind of we're, we're already pretty weak spiritually or weak in our Emunah. The last thing we need is a new commentary saying that the Masorah's wrong. God forbid. The Rebbe here says, "I'm not gonna read this bit inside, but I'll tell you what it says outside." It's very interesting. He says here that, uh I really, you know, I'm gonna read it inside. It's too good to miss. We might just not get to our last letter, uh, because this is-- it's too good to miss. Something surprising you might find is that the new generation wants the primary sources. They wanna see the old sources. They don't want to, they don't want you to bring in new ideas. They wanna know what Rashi said. Those who in their youth fought the Maskilim, fought the people who were back then were pushing against Torah. They think the new generation wants to fight too, and there's no reason for them to fight anymore. He's saying that, uh, the reason why you're putting out this commentary, why are you putting out a scholastic academic commentary, a bunch of Haredi Rabbanim?

19:02 And the answer is that you're still fighting a fight that isn't being fought anymore. You're still trying to convince intellectual academics to be on your side and to, and to embrace some aspect of Torah. Says the Rebbe, the new generation is not a bunch of academics who hate Torah. The new generation actually would like to know what Rashi says. They're not-- So you're fighting an old war. Uh, and those who in their youth fought the Maskilim are using the old strategies of trying to convince them, use some of their texts. Uh, look, we're scientific too. Look, we're archeological too. This, this isn't necessary anymore. The new generation, says the Rebbe, doesn't need to see that you come from a professor's background. The new generation wants to hear the primary sources from the Jews. They wanna know Rashi. They think that the new generation wants to fight with them too, and they're wrong. And therefore, they are grabbing onto weapons and strategies that are unneeded. So you're trying to bring in these, these new commentaries to try to capture the new generation. The new generation doesn't want this style. Since a, a unneeded weapon is considered not beautiful. When it comes to, uh, spirituality, It's also damaging to be using weapons, uh, in spirituality that are not needed. I guess. Apologitia, apolo-apologetics. Um, We have-- We've had... And the Rebbe then adds that when it, it-- that this new way of doing things, uh, where we, where we say, "No, really, we're bringing in the archeology

20:24 and the science and things like that," uh, it's nowadays called apologetics. It's called apologizing, essentially, for the Torah or making excuses and, uh, It's, it's given us, uh, it's given us suffering until this day. And then he lists some of the famous apologists of the Jewish people who have tried to appeal to their generation in order to get them back on track. And all it's done is cause problems for us nowadays. And he lists some of them. The Rebbe said, This is one of the Rebbe's favorite/least favorite. This is the one where the, um, the Drush Or HaChaim of the Perush Israel is one that most modern Orthodox Jews quote when they say that the universe is in fact several billion years old because he says that you can really reconcile billions of years with six days of creation. The Rebbe says this is one example of someone who tried to meet science halfway and caused trouble for us 'cause now we have to contend with people saying this is real Torah. The books of Rav Hirsch. Rav Hirsch, uh, was, uh, Shamshon Rafael Hirsch was a big Very special person. But also he was incred-- he was deeply involved in apologetics. He was deeply involved in claiming that really secular philosophy matched Torah, and it did all sorts of damage to us 'cause now we have to deal with these problems. Actually much earlier than that. Which is Yezdi Alexandri. That's Philo the Alexandrian. Philo the Alexandrian was a Hellenist Jew who was a

21:36 philosopher who tried to reconcile, uh, Greek philosophy with Jewish philosophy. Oh, look, it says it. He wanted-- They, they all wanted to, they all wanted to, uh, make Torah match the prevailing ideas of the time, archeological, scientific, philosophical. And even though they had good Kavanah, They wanted to make things better. It's just not true, and all it's done is cause problems for us. Okay. So we have here a really good idea of what the Rebbe says when we have new information on how to incorporate it into our old books. The Rebbe's telling us in a footnote, great, tell me the other Girsas, if they're legitimate, if they're not from a Genizah. But if we're finding other Girsas from other countries, sure, throw in another Girsas in a, in a footnote. Throw in another Girsas on the side of the page. But absolutely don't make a new commentary. Absolutely don't have Bible critics and professors and academics involved in making commentaries on Tanakh. And, um, really most of all, recognize that you're fighting the wrong battle right now. You're still trying to play this game where Torah says to the secular world, "Look, we're secular too, like us." And the modern generation of Jews who are leaning secular, they actually don't even want that anymore. You're fighting a war that has already been fought and won by our side, and, uh, and now what we're dealing with is trying to teach people things that they don't understand, things like Rashi that needs a new-- needs an

22:45 update. So I'd much rather see, says the Rebbe, an update of the way that Rashi And the classic commentaries written with Were written, rather than you trying to bring in new scholastic, new academic ideas. I did wanna show you one more thing. Although it'll put us way over time. Now I'm gonna do it anyway, and if you have to leave, please feel free to leave. But let's do one more thing 'cause I, I can't do this as its own class. Uh, we have one more on this topic, and this was written to excuse me, to Shazar. The Rebbe writes to Shazar, the President of Israel. Um, and the reason why he writes to Shazar, uh, i- I mean, he writes to Shazar a lot. The reason why I'm surprised he wrote to Shazar about this is he's telling Shazar to shut down an academic project at Hebrew University. They're in the middle of doing something at Hebrew University, a line of research, a book, and the Rebbe wants them to stop and says it'll be terribly damaging for the Jewish people, and he ca-- he tells them to call it off. Try to get a little more of this water, see if I can talk. Okay, wish me luck. The Rebbe says down here, the letter is, excuse me, the letter is Heh Taf Shin Peh Heh. It's from Taf Shin Chaf Daled. And the Rebbe writes, Something has come to my attention that if it ends up happening, if it comes into action, The

24:09 Rebbe says, "It's come to my attention that there's a, that, uh, if-- that something might happen, and if this happens, we're gonna create a new Machlikess, and it's going to create a new, uh, a new, um, a new light for the Yintahara, and, uh, specifically among those who are coming closer to Yiddishkeit, it's going to find-- it's going to, uh, it's going to push them away." So the Rebbe says, "I'm seeing something that could be really counterproductive." I'm gonna skip this, uh, paragraph and go right here. What is the thing I'm talking about? As I've been informed. I've been informed that the university, that the Hebrew University in Yerushalayim is planning to put out a new version of the Torah Shebeksav. They wanna put out a new Torah. Not a new commentary on the Torah, a new Torah. They want to base this on, uh, recent discoveries and on recent Kisvei Yad that have shown up. For example, among them, the Kisvei Yad that is called the Alepo Codex, which is the Casutera. That's the one that was found in the-- that was kept carefully in Syria, that now we have in Eretz Israel. They wanna take these old ones, Alepo Codex and the like, and they don't just wanna write a new commentary in the footnotes. Well, first of all, they don't just wanna write footnotes, and they don't even wanna do what Rabbi Zevin wanted to do, which was write a commentary. They want to put out a newupdated Torah that they

25:16 say is correct, the implication being that our Torah is wrong. Now we have more science. We know what the Torah really says, . But, uh, uh, not only that, . The Rebbe says even prior generations that didn't like the Torah and that pushed back against authentic Yiddishkeit, uh, even when they're, even when their yetzer hara has trapped them and made them do horrible things to Torah, things like Bible criticism, things like non-literal interpretation, things like saying God didn't write the Torah, God forbid. Even those people, they never changed the actual text of the Torah. This is the first time that people are saying that they're gonna actually change the Nosach of the Codex itself. They the Rebbe says, "I'd like to add that a good deal of the Codex is missing. As far as I hear, we are missing at least a third of it." So they plan on filling in a third with random other codices, anything but our Torah, and the Rebbe says that they are, uh they're planning on, they're planning on, um, a- basically making a new Torah. Rebbe says it should be understood that this would cause an incredible storm, uh, and, uh, make a, make incredible dividers between Benei Yisrael when it comes to Torah sheBechtav. And he writes in this paragraph, we're running out of time even on our Zoom call, so now I really do have to speed up, that, uh, that although we've had differences as Yidden throughout the past, the big diff-- the big thing

26:34 that's always united us is at least the words on the Torah scroll we all have. That's been the only uniting factor. Even people who didn't believe in the words at least had the words. So this is gonna create a division that we never had before. You really wanna cause an enormous division in the Jewish people, give us two separate Torah scrolls so you don't know which one's the proper Torah. What adds to this sakana, the Rebbe says, Another thing adds to the sakana, The Rebbe says another problem is they're going to be calling this the, uh, the pure science edition of Torah, that this is what happens when we do When pure science is followed, we get this text, that we've done the work, we've done the archeology, implying that their new edition is one that, uh, is, is the, is the pure scientific edition. This is the Rebbe making a joke, says that, uh, well, it, it, they're, they're saying this as though, as though our Nosach, our Torah was made up by some guy, and that they're putting out an edition that was made up by the best scientists in the world. Um, but that's not at all the case. So i also, it also is, uh, disparaging to our existing Torah. Now, the Rebbe says even though some of these changes, as I've been informed, are not really the Aleppo Codex is pretty close to the Torah. We're not talking big changes. We're talking basically a couple of vowelization changes to the

27:48 Masoretic text, not major stuff. Sometimes a word is written with an extra word or a missing word. It's not big differences. The Rebbe says, "I don't care. I don't care that they're very minor changes, because the big problem here is that we're dividing the Jewish people and separating hearts from Hashem." Now, the Rebbe says down here, this is important for us, and with this we'll probably have to conclude, excuse me, The Rebbe says, "I am not in my letter saying to discard Kisvei Yad." This is a lot different from what we saw last time. What we saw yesterday was the Rebbe saying things like the Dead Sea Scrolls, we can discard them completely. They were put in a Genizah. They probably were simply wrong. The Rebbe says, "I'm not saying that here. Here I'm not dealing with Genizahs. I'm not dealing with things that we think are not reliable. I'm not saying these Kisvei Yad are not reliable. I'm not saying the Aleppo Codex isn't a reliable text. I'm not saying that." Opposite, the Rebbe says I'm just saying don't touch the text we have. Use the Nosach, use the text we've always had specifically. And then I want you to make notes and footnotes and side notes and put the different versions that exist because the more you put that out, the better. The Rebbe says the, the more of that, the better. I want that. So the Rebbe does want us to take these old Kisvei Yad, these other versions, and put them

29:09 in the, in the footnotes of the text, put them in the notes on the back of the text to note that other versions exist. The Rebbe is not afraid of it at all. He doesn't think that's gonna cause are gonna cause Sfeikas Ananona. The Rebbe wants us to, if we find legitimate new editions of the Torah or old editions of the Torah, but legitimately different ones, to put them in notes, but don't you dare touch the text. And then the Rebbe says in this paragraph over here, "As is the way of scientists nowadays, I'm not allowed to get into this discussion unless I quote a certain professor." That's what the Rebbe says here. Uh, and although this isn't really my field, nonetheless, I can quote a professor who did this this way. And who does he quote? Same one he quoted in the previous letter. The German, the German, uh, philos-- the German writer Kittel, when he wrote his commentary, even though he was going after the Torah in a lot of ways, he, uh, he nonetheless did not touch the original text and kept it as footnotes. The Rebbe says, "What I'm saying they should do here, that they should only put these in footnotes and not put out a new edition. If you're gonna make me quote my sources, I will. There are great professors who have done this as well, and I'm, uh, I'm completely in safe territory." The Rebbe goes on to speak about how important it is to, uh, to

30:13 make sure this doesn't happen. The Rebbe says, "Even if the Aleppo Codex was totally complete and not missing most of m-- not missing a third of its information, I would say this especially given that we're missing a lot of the Codex, we don't even know how reliable it is exactly 'cause we are missing a good version of it. They're using extra Kisvei Yad to fill it in. It's not the most reliable text anyway," says the Rebbe, "but even if it was reliable, I would be saying this, never touch the text itself." So in summary, what we have today is a slightly different version of what we had yesterday. Yesterday, we talked about how things that we don't know the provenance of, we don't know where they came from, we can't really use in our tradition at all. When we see a picture of a menorah and it has rounded branches, we can't say therefore our menorah branches are rounded 'cause we don't know how reliable the person drawing the picture was. We don't know what they were drawing a picture of. When I find, uh, a different version of the Torah in a, in a trash pile, I can't say that that's a different version of the Torah that existed once. Might be they threw it out because it was wrong. However, what we looked at today is more legitimate sources, things like the Aleppo Codex, things like the Leningrad Codex, different versions of Tanakh and, and of Torah, Sifrei Torah that have been found

31:17 throughout the ages, that now that we're analyzing them, we're seeing slight differences. How did these slight differences come up? Unclear. Somebody's not right, that's for sure. But does it make sense for us to know about these? The Rebbe says yeah. The Rebbe says The more you publish these, the better. However, don't publish them in the text itself. The original text of the Torah must remain unchanged. The one that we all have, that we're using right now, the one we passed down from generation to generation, that's the primary text. And if you want to incorporate, uh, modern findings, make sure you put them in footnotes and keep them away from the major discussion. As an aside, though, what the Rebbe said to Rabbi Zevin really also applies here, which is I'm not sure why we need this. Uh, the current generation does not necessarily want this. We're fighting a war that we won a long time ago. Uh, there was a generation once that simply wouldn't look at a Tanakh that was not academic and scholastic and using the most recent findings. We don't have those people so much anymore nowadays, and this is absolutely still true. Um, when I was on a, when I was on a college campus, when I talked to college students, you just don't have a lot of them saying, "I really wish I had a legitimate analysis of Torah in front of me." They wanna know what our religion says according to our religion, not what our religion says according

32:16 to scientific discoveries. So the truth is, I'm not sure that this is necessary at all, neither is the Rebbe. But if you wanna do it, as long as you're incorporating legitimate sources and those legitimate other versions are not in the name of the text, they're put in the footnotes or in side notes or in notes at the end of the book. Okay, I know we went super long today, but I think we really covered this topic, uh, almost completely in the Rebbe Shita on what to do with, uh, old discoveries. Thank you all very much.