Hebrew Voices #244 – Daring To Be Different: Part 1
[https://i0.wp.com/www.nehemiaswall.com/wp-content/uploads/HV-244-1920x1080-1.png?resize=584%2C329&ssl=1]
In this episode of Hebrew Voices #244 - Daring To Be Different: Part 1 [https://www.nehemiaswall.com/be-different-1], Nehemia brings on Tanakh-only teacher Israel Horowitz to discuss how ancient superstitions became the basis for Rabbinic laws, why arguments based on majority rule contradict the Torah, and how we should be overcoming the rulings of our earthly fathers rather than our Heavenly Father.
I look forward to reading your comments!
PODCAST VERSION:
Download Audio [https://audio.nehemiaswall.com/Downloads/Hebrew-Voices-244-Daring-to-be-Different-Part-1.mp3]
Transcript
Hebrew Voices #244 – Daring To Be Different: Part 1
You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting [https://www.nehemiaswall.com/support] Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com [https://www.nehemiaswall.com].
Israel: If I had to respect Moses or Rabbi Eliezer, I’m going with Moses, right? And the point is that they seem to not understand the hierarchy here, which is that you’re going to have to throw someone under the bus. Either it’s going to be Rashi or it’s going to be Noah. I’d rather throw Rashi under the bus than throw Noah under the bus. Apparently, you’d rather throw Noah under the bus than Rashi. So, I think it comes down to that… It’s impossible to maintain allegiance to the written Torah and the oral Torah when they contradict each other.
—
Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m here today, once again, with Israel Horowitz. He was raised ultra-Orthodox and found out, in his words, that the written Torah is the way to go and has been teaching and practicing written Torah ever since. Shalom, Israel. How are you?
Israel: Shalom. It’s good to see you again.
Nehemia: Yeah, it’s good to have you back on the program. We had a really interesting conversation last time, got some really good feedback. So, I think one of the big developments since we last spoke is you got married. Am I right?
Israel: That would definitely be it, yes.
Nehemia: So, what I should say as a Jew is mazal tov, but that’s a very problematic statement that we can discuss if you’d like.
Israel: Good luck.
Nehemia: Well, mazal tov is good constellation. Mazal is a constellation in ancient Hebrew. And what the alternative is, is siman tov, which is good omen. Right? You say mazal tov ve’siman tov, ve’siman tov umazal tov. Right? So, it’s good constellation, good omen. And omen meaning, like a comet, or something like that, right? So, it just goes to show how deeply rooted, let’s say, superstition is in Jewish culture.
Israel: Oh yeah. Zodiacs, everything. They got it all. The zodiac signs. Yeah. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between Judaism and eastern religions.
Nehemia: I gave an academic lecture a couple years back, and I’m writing a paper about it when I get around to it. And I cite, there, this rabbi… I want to say from the 12th century or so, maybe it’s 13th; I don’t remember, it’s been a while. And he’s discussing the question about whether the constellations actually affect us. And he says, “Well, look, if the constellations affected how you live your life, then there’d be more Jews in certain professions. Because there are Jews born every month of the year. And the fact that there’s no Jews in these particular professions,” that’s my interest there, because he’s talking about parchment making, right? So, he’s like, “How come you don’t have any Jewish parchment makers if there are Jews born every month of the year?” But he’s got to justify it, like, because to his Jewish audience he’s speaking to, it’s like these are just givens, that the constellations affect us.
And we have this passage in Jeremiah, maybe we can discuss that. It’s a very famous passage, Jeremiah 10. It’s Jeremiah 10… well, he starts in 10:1. I’ll read the JPS. Let me actually share my screen here, show people what I have here. So, he has, “Hear the word which the LORD has spoken to you, O house of Israel. Thus says the LORD: Do not learn to go the way of the nations and not to be dismayed by portents in the sky. Let the nations be dismayed by them, for the laws of the nations are delusions.” And then he starts talking about idols, you know, statues and stuff.
But, you know, Deuteronomy 18 talks about not learning the ways of the nations, the divination and such, and so, Jeremiah is directly referring to Deuteronomy 18, about learning the ways of the nations. And so, they look in the skies, and they see an omen, and they see, you know, constellations, and they think, “Oh, okay, that’s going to be bad because the bad constellation.”
Israel: Right.
Nehemia: And he said those are nonsense; they’re hevel, they’re vapor.
Israel: Yeah, exactly. I mean, you see so much of that superstition. Yeah, it’s kind of concerning. A hundred percent. Obviously, the Torah itself cautions against all forms of witchcraft, superstition, worship of the constellations and things like that. And ultimately, these ideas are not even found within the Torah, or the Tanakh, for that matter. Yet you have that as a mainstream belief in Judaism, and you wonder, “How did that development even take place?”
If we’re told this is the foundation of your religion, and you’re actually not supposed to change it. And then suddenly you look thousands of years down the road, and they’ve completely deviated and it’s been assimilated into the religion. So, I mean, one of the examples, and Jeremiah brings it up as well, with the queen of heaven being worshipped by the Israelites, and then you have on Shabbat, for example, they’re welcoming the Queen of Shabbat, the Shabbat bride. And even within the prayers, they sometimes refer to God in the feminine. I don’t know if you’ve seen that. Like, they say…
Nehemia: Give me an example of that. I don’t know that off the top of my head. I know there’s a passage in Numbers where it’s been argued that God is feminine in one verse, but that’s a bit complicated. But give me that from the prayers. I’m not familiar with that.
Israel: So, for example, they have a prayer called Modim, which is when they say, “Bless you God,” they say, “modim anachnu lakh”. So, instead of saying lekha, they say lakh. Or very often, like, they’ll use feminine ways to describe God.
Nehemia: So, I think in the original context, lakh there is just an Aramaicism. In other words, lakh is the masculine singular. So, for the audience, in Spanish they have singular and plural you, unlike in… well, in spoken English we have you and you guys, where I come from, and in the South it’s all y’all or y’all. So, in Hebrew, there’s not only singular and plural, there’s masculine and feminine. So, there’s four forms of you. So, what Israel’s referring to is, lakh is… in standard, let’s say, Biblical Hebrew, lakh is feminine. But in later, let’s say, Rabbinical Hebrew, you have a heavy influence of Aramaic, and lakh is just you for masculine as well. So, I’m not sure that… Are there people who say that that’s feminine?
Israel: Yeah, that’s why… I didn’t know that.
Nehemia: So, there’s different linguistic layers within Hebrew literature, and they’re mixing the linguistic layers. They do that quite a bit.
Israel: Okay, well, I mean, that’s good to know. It’s good to know that it’s just an Aramaic thing, because I was told, you know, sometimes we refer to God in the feminine based off of context. We’re speaking to the femininity of God, or something like that, or the Shekhinah.
Nehemia: So, here what you have is some modern rabbi who doesn’t know Hebrew linguistics. And let’s talk a minute about your upbringing, because in my upbringing, I was also raised with an ultra-Orthodox education, and grammar, dikduk, was something that women did. It was beneath men, because men were studying Talmud. And I look back, and I’m like, “Boy, no wonder they were so ignorant of language, because they didn’t consider it worthwhile. But how can you even understand the Talmud if you don’t understand the language, let alone the Tanakh?”
And here’s an example where they’re looking back, through the lens of Kabbalah, at different linguistic layers and trying to find some Kabbalistic features, like God is feminine, and coming to weird conclusions, let’s put it that way. All right, so, tell us about your upbringing. So, where were you raised? I don’t know if we discussed that last time.
Israel: Yeah, we discussed it a bit. But I was raised in Los Angeles, so, it’s not really the hub of ultra-Orthodox Judaism. But…
Nehemia: A lot of people don’t realize that Los Angeles is something like… am I wrong? There’s like hundreds of thousands of Israelis, not just the Jews…
Israel: Yeah.
Nehemia: … in the LA metropolitan area?
Israel: Absolutely. Yeah, there’s a lot of Israelis. There’s a ton of Jews here. And there’s Orthodox community as well, Hasidic community. I was raised in the ultra-Orthodox community, in the Hasidic community as well. And pretty much going through that, I saw a lot of benefits. More because of their extremism. And I say it because, for a time I didn’t value the extremism. But now I tend to value it a bit more, because…
Nehemia: You’re going to have to explain it. But let’s back up. For the audience who doesn’t know… I have to explain this to my wife sometimes. Like last week, she was like, “Wait. Hasidic ultra-Orthodox and Haredi; isn’t that the same thing?” So, let’s do some order here, la’asot seder. What is ultra-Orthodox? What is Hasidic? Which Hasidic variety were you educated in?
Israel: Yeah, I mean, again, to an outsider, these distinctions are not that significant, because they’re really not. It’s all variations of the same thing. Within the bubble of Orthodoxy, there are definitely claimed to be big differentiations between these groups. But they really are pretty much the same groups of Haredi, ultra-Orthodox, Hasidic. They’re all very tight-knit, ultra-observant of what they call the Torah, which is really the Talmud and the Halakha and the Kabbalah and all that.
But yeah, I mean, the differences, according to them, would be that while the yeshiva people put more of an emphasis on Talmudic study, the Hasidic people put more of an emphasis on the spiritual connection to God, which is through prayer and song. So, again, it’s molded itself and morphed into each other a lot. So, I really don’t see much of the difference. It almost comes down more to garb, and like, you know, the…
Nehemia: Not almost, meaning, in some cases it’s literally garb. But so, I’ll give you my understanding of the different, let’s say, persuasions. Let’s say this is how it is in Israel more; you have a broad category, which is called Haredi, which is translated as ultra-Orthodox. Haredi literally means shakers, because they quake, or shake, before God. It’s a term they lifted from the Tanakh. And they distinguish between ultra-Orthodox and modern Orthodox. And the difference is, historically, that the modern Orthodox said, “Okay, modernity, we don’t have a problem with that. We’ll embrace it and incorporate it into the Orthodox lifestyle.” And the ultra-Orthodox said, “No, everything freezes in time.” And the famous phrase was, “chadash asur min ha’Torah”, “anything new is forbidden from the Torah.” Which is kind of a pun because it’s an ancient phrase, but it’s referring to new grain that’s eaten before the Omer offering. But now they’re applying it to anything of modernity.
So, you look at the ultra-Orthodox, and they’re dressed in, like, 18th century, more or less, garb, or they’re wearing hats from the 1920s, and you’re like, “Why do you wear those hats?” And then if you go really deep into the rabbit hole, or the rabbi hole, I suppose, you’ll hear people say, you know, “There’s ancient references to Jewish garb, and the kapata, the long clothing is what Jews wore in ancient times.” Which seems extremely unlikely to me. But in other words, whenever they were coming out against what was called the Enlightenment, which the modern Orthodox embraced, more or less, and the ultra-Orthodox rejected, they’re like, “Okay, it freezes here in time. If it’s, you know, 1795,” or whatever year it was, “we have to continue to dress like it’s 1795,” with some modifications. Right? Meaning, the reality is, if you look into the fine details, fashion changes even in the last 20, 30 years. But in the broader big scope, they’re wearing the big fur hats, the Hasidic Jews, because that’s what their ancestors wore, you know, hundreds of years ago when the Enlightenment started to encroach upon their, as they saw it, upon their control. So, you have ultra-Orthodox and modern Orthodox.
And then in Israel, you have something in between, which is half-jokingly called chardal. Chardal literally means mustard, but it means ultra-Orthodox nationalist, or something like this, right? Dati leumi – national religious. So, you have national religious, which is the modern Orthodox; they wear the knit kippahs. And people don’t realize what a big deal it is, whether your kippah, your skullcap, is knitted or if it’s made of a solid piece of whatever, felt or plastic or whatever. It’s a really big deal to them.
So, the modern Orthodox are the knitted kippahs, also called national religious in Israel, and then there’s the ultra-Orthodox, and then you have sort of a mix between them, which is becoming more, I’d say, widespread in Israel now. Yeah, Israelis tend to be much more extremist than Americans. So, like, when I was growing up, I went to an ultra-Orthodox school, and there were two kids in the class who had televisions in their house. I was one of them. So, all the kids came to my house to watch television, and then condemned me for being an idolater because I had a TV in my house. But they came to my house to watch.
Yeah, so, in Israel, what I’m told by ultra-orthodox is, they have a computer, a laptop, hidden in the back room for their kids to watch videos. Right? But if the neighbors find out, the kids will be kicked out of school. Like, I could openly have a television and I was ridiculed, but in Israel you have to hide it.
Israel: Yeah. No, there’s definitely a lot of that. What’s funny about the “you cannot have new grain until the Omer offering,” I guess we won’t be able to change our clothing until they bring the Omer offering.
Nehemia: Well, no, so…
Israel: It’s all tied into the Messiah.
Nehemia: So, they’ve reinterpreted the concept. In other words, when it’s talking about in Leviticus 23, just to give people the background, is you harvest the grain, and you’re not allowed to eat that; that’s called chadash, new grain. You can’t eat it until the Omer offering is brought, and so the phrase is, “that which is new is forbidden from the Torah,” but only up until the Omer offering.
Israel: Exactly…
Nehemia: But now they apply it to their own way of life.
Israel: Yeah, but using the metaphor, there’s got to be a point in which the Omer offering is brought, and then we can change our clothes. So, I don’t know when…
Nehemia: No, see, you’re pressing the metaphor.
Israel: Yes, exactly.
Nehemia: Now, it’s a metaphor taken out of context, so…
Israel: Like all of the Rabbinic statements.
Nehemia: So, tell me about your upbringing. Did you have a television? Did you…
Israel: No, no.
Nehemia: Like, what was your…
Israel: Yeah, we did not have a television. But yeah, it’s funny that you mentioned the 18th century garb, which is really just European garb, or like, Polish, Hungarian garb, which they claim is holy in some respect. And then they also would tell us how in Egypt, the Jewish people did not change their Jewish names, and they did not change their Jewish language, and they did not change their Jewish clothing.
Nehemia: Which is, by the way, not true! Joseph had an Egyptian name, right? He kept the name Yosef, but he also had the name, you know, Tzafnat Paneach, right? And we just… we just had Purim, which we know we could talk about, and Esther was Hadassah. Esther was her pagan name.
Israel: Right, yeah. Exactly. So, obviously that’s not true. But besides that, they would claim that their, you know, shtreimel fur hat was equivalent to the Jews not changing their garb in Egypt, and whatever. And then they would give us drawings in preschool, and like, when they would give us coloring books it would have little pictures of Joseph and his brothers with long payes and shtreimels, like Hasidic Jews as biblical figures. So, it’s clearly…
Nehemia: So, I’ve shared the story that when I was a kid, we had the Passover Haggadah, and the ancient Israelites were dressed in Hasidic garb, a hundred percent. And look; how literally did they take that? Well, as a kid, you don’t know any better, right? You’re like, “All right, that must be that…” I mean, you don’t even question it, right? Like, what you see today is what must have been in ancient times. And then, this is one of, sort of, the rude awakenings that I had, and it sounds like you had, is, you’re like, “Wait a minute; what we’re being told exists today, and always existed, is kind of itself is the innovation.” Right? So, in other words, they’re against innovation; the new is forbidden from the Torah, but their whole way of life is an innovation.
Israel: Exactly. That gets to what I wanted to say about the extremism part, which is that, if you go to that point of extreme, which is, we cannot innovate beyond the point that God wants us to innovate. And of course, they claim it’s the will of God that you wear a certain hat, which is ridiculous. But if we talk about what the actual will of God is, as defined in the Torah, which you shall not add or subtract to that document, they’re actually the innovators by creating 5,000 new laws and concepts and ideologies that are nowhere to be found in the foundational text.
So, in one sense, I was attracted to that hardline stance, and I do think in many ways they’ve managed to shield themselves from the problems of secularism. At the same time, as you pointed out, it ends up coming out covertly as they hide the computer in the back room. They’re not actually able to deal with secularism because they’re too afraid of it, and they’d rather avoid it than deal with it head on.
Nehemia: So, I want to talk about secularism, but go back to your upbringing. So, which Hasidic sect were you affiliated with or educated by?
Israel: It wasn’t a particular one because there’s not enough Hasidim in LA. So, it was just like a Hasidic school with all the Hasidim in LA went there, and then there were some non-Hasidim. So, my family was…
Nehemia: Was your family Hasidic?
Israel: No, my family was not Hasidic. But this was like the most religious school in LA, because the Hasidim are obviously upholding the most high standard of, you know, insulation and all that. And it was like a smaller school as well. So, yeah, they were speaking Yiddish and everything.
Nehemia: Oh wow, so, you speak Yiddish?
Israel: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I speak fluent Yiddish.
Nehemia: Oh wow! Okay. I know like ten words of Yiddish.
Israel: Yeah?
Nehemia: Or maybe 20 or 30, right? But I don’t know a whole lot of Yiddish. So, in my upbringing, in my school, most of the people were what they call in Israel “Litvish”, meaning, they were non-Hasidic ultra-Orthodox, and I think I had one rebbe who was… no, maybe two rebbes who were Hasidic. Like homeroom teacher rabbis. One was Gur, and I couldn’t tell you what the other one was. But they were considered kind of like, well, we sort of tolerate them, but they’re kind of like the spiritual stuff.
And like you said, so, the Hasidic have an emphasis on spirituality, which we should give them some credit for, and the Litvish, which aren’t necessarily from Lithuania, but that’s the term in Israel that’s taken hold, the Litvak or Lithuanian approach, not necessarily of ethnicity, is more of an intellectual. Like my father used to say, you know, the Amaratzim, they’re kind of uneducated peasants, the Hasidim.
And then there’s an exception to the rule, which is Chabad. Which is known… well, maybe we could talk about that a little bit. Chabad, or Lubavitch Hasidim, are known for their intellectual pursuits, but they’re kind of like the exception to the rule within the Hasidic world.
Israel: Yeah. Again, from the point that I’m at, I just kind of laugh at it all because it’s so minor to me.
Nehemia: It’s six is one, half a dozen of the other.
Israel: It’s just hilarious. But… yeah.
Nehemia: I think it’s important for people to understand what these terms are. Look, I mean, it’s like you and I would… if we were to talk about, you know, the difference between Baptist and, I don’t know Southern Baptist, and American Baptist, and I don’t know the difference, I won’t lie. I know some jokes about it, but that’s all I really know. The substance there, I couldn’t tell you what… Look, I’ve spoken to pastors who are pastors of some churches, and they don’t know the difference. They’re like, “Well, there was an historic split a hundred years ago. There’s not really any…” But sometimes there are profound differences, right? But to you and me, maybe it’s not that different, right?
Israel: Right. Yeah. So, basically, pretty much, my father was of the Litvish discipline, so, the yeshiva world, but, you know, he also had, like, a feel for the Hasidic view. So…
Nehemia: Okay.
Israel: …seeing that the Hasidic school was the most insular kind of religious school in the city, he sent us there. But then, for high school and post-high school, I went to the yeshiva, the Litvish yeshivas, so relating more to Lakewood and Baltimore, and like that whole scene. Whereas, you know, elementary school was spent more among the Hasidim, like Gur and Satmer and all these different groups.
Nehemia: So, you said that one of the things you learned that was good from the ultra-Orthodox was extremism, and I want to challenge you on that. And maybe this is just, you know, I’ve been doing this for a long time, but I was definitely an extremist when I was younger and have come to not… Tell us what extremism is and why it’s a good thing.
Israel: I’ll tell you what it means. It means that I grew up my entire life as a kid always being different than everyone else. And when I walked down the street, I was a little 10-year-old boy with a kippah the size of my head, and payes coming down the side of my head, and tzitzit sticking out. And we knew that Hollywood was a shanda, and it was disgusting, and, you know, the way in which society operates with the latent pornography everywhere, and all the imagery and the culture; we knew that it was unholy and that we were different than all that.
And I find myself in my adulthood circling back to that, really, which is that, it’s not wrong, you know. Like, society is extremely flawed, and when you move past all the traditional values without any care for preserving, right, the orthodoxy… which I would just say, preserve the Torah and you have everything there. But the reality is, you do need to maintain family, and you do need to have many children. And you do need to maintain marriages. And you do need to distance yourself from the promiscuous lifestyle of the rest of the world. And you do need to be different than everyone else.
What’s funny to me is, though, I realized, well, even orthodox Judaism is not good enough, you know? Like, I have to be different than them, too. So, I kind of just find myself going to the logical conclusion, which it like; if everyone’s wrong, maybe you’re wrong too. You know, I guess that’s kind of, like…
Nehemia: Wait, wait, who’s you? Yourself? Or the orthodox?
Israel: No. The ultra-Orthodox. Because, you know, I grew up believing that everyone in the world was wrong…
Nehemia: Okay.
Israel: … except for me and my community of ultra-Orthodox Jews. And then I said, “Okay, fair enough, like, you make a good case for that.” And when I say wrong, I don’t mean that everything about everyone is wrong. I just mean that like, ultimately, the way of the world, the way of, say, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Atheism, Communism, right; all the different isms in the world, they’re not… they don’t measure up to the truth of Judaism, and Orthodox Judaism. Well, then, what if Orthodox Judaism is wrong too? And that’s kind of where I had to question, which was like, “Okay this is pretty ironclad, but at the same time I’m seeing the same hypocrisy here. I’m seeing the same corruption here, and the same immorality.” And again, as you pointed out, hiding the truth, being afraid to face the world and things like that. And so, it just kind of led me to the logical conclusion, which is, well, it seems like all institutions are corrupted, yours included.
Nehemia: So, this is something that has been sometimes called the numbers argument, and it’s a bit ironic. So, when Jews have these encounters with Christian missionaries, one of the arguments will be, and has historically been, “Well, there’s over a billion Christians and there’s only 15 or 20 million Jews. Like, you’re standing against the current of history. History is like this massive river, and how do you Jews think you have the… why would you think you’re right? Surely, you know, a billion people is more likely to be right than the 15 or 20 million.” That’s their argument, right?
And of course, the Jewish response is, “Well, there’s a billion Hindus, and you don’t worship cows. And there’s a billion Muslims, and you could argue, well, there’s two billion Christians,” or, you know, whatever. We could now start splitting hairs about what the numbers are. But the Jewish position has been, in these engagements, “Well, numbers don’t matter.” But then when you speak out, and I’ve seen this in your videos on TikTok, you’ll get people in the comments who will say, “Well, how do you have the gall, the chutzpah, to think that you’re right and all these rabbis are wrong? Their numbers prove they’re right.” And it’s not just numbers today, but numbers over time, really, is what they’re saying.
So, how do you have the chutzpah to think you’re right and all these rabbis are wrong? I’d like a real answer on that. I can tell you how I think that, but I think we probably have different approaches.
Israel: Okay, yeah, I’m looking forward to hearing your answer as well. Obviously, immediately what comes to mind is Exodus 23:2.
Nehemia: Oh, let’s read it. I love reading verses.
Israel: Yeah, I mean, that’s just one of my favorite verses.
Nehemia: Exodus 23:2. And here we’ve got to just tell the audience that I feel like in some of the translations, there’s a different verse numbering. But no, I’m looking here and King James has the same one as the Hebrew. Okay.
Israel: Good. I like when they’re aligned. Yeah, sometimes they’re like… it’s so annoying, like one verse…
Nehemia: At least according to my software they’re the same verse. Do you have, like, a Tanakh there you can pull up or a computer…
Israel: Absolutely, yeah, I got the…
Nehemia: … to read that?
Israel: I got that book right here so… yeah, let’s…
Nehemia: And this is an important one also to the Rabbinical perspective. In other words, what they do is something very clever. What they do is, they take the verse that disproves their entire position, and then they plant their flag on that and they say, “This proves our position.”
Israel: It’s the out of context verses.
Nehemia: It’s not just out of context; of all the verses you could have chosen to prove your position, you chose the one that disproves it the most. But that was, as we say in Yiddish, davka. In other words, it was very deliberate that they chose this verse, because if they don’t, it’ll be used against them. So, they’re actively appropriating the verse.
Israel: They had to reclaim it. It’s like…
Nehemia: A hundred percent, that’s what they’re doing. They’re appropriating the very verse that disproves their position. All right, so, let’s read that.
Israel: Yeah. I just… I have to give the example that came to mind. When black people reclaim the N-word, you know, it’s kind of like that.
Nehemia: Okay, I don’t know as much about that as you probably do, but okay. I might be too old for that cultural reference but go ahead.
Israel: So, we got here, Exodus 23:2. “You shall not be after the majority for evils and you shall not respond over a dispute to turn after the majority to pervert.” Right? So, clearly in the case of evil and perversion, when the majority is wrong, do not follow them. Of course, the rabbis take the last three words of the verse, turn after the majority, right? So, after the majority to turn.
Nehemia: Right. And they actually distort the meaning of lehatot, which is really something like to pervert justice, and they take it in the sense of lehintont, which appears a few words earlier, as in to incline. And they say you have to incline after the majority. And that’s the famous story of Rabbi Eliezer. Did you ever have that story thrown in your face, The Oven of Achnai and the story of Rabbi Eliezer?
Israel: Oh, of course. Yeah, I was told that…
Nehemia: So, tell that. Because I’ve shared my experience with that. I don’t think people realize how important that story is in Rabbinical thought.
Israel: Yeah, it’s extremely important. It marks the departure from prophecy to Talmudism.
Nehemia: Tell the story. Assume nobody knows it.
Israel: Yeah. Well, the story is, Rabbi Eliezer is having this debate with the chakhamim, which is the majority of sages. And they’re having an argument about this oven, whether it’s considered impure, whether you have to smash it based off of Torah law. And he’s making the case for his argument, and they say, “No, we’re the majority. We rule.” And he says, “Well, I will provide you with miracles.”
So, I don’t remember the exact order, but essentially, he has the walls of the study house cave in as a miracle. And they say, “Ah, we don’t care.” And then he goes and he says, “I’ll have this tree get uprooted.” And the tree gets uprooted and flies away. And then he says, “I have this stream. It’s flowing downstream. It’ll go flow the opposite way.” Which is, again, all these supernatural phenomenon’s that he’s performing to prove the truth of his position. And they don’t buy any of it. And finally, a voice of God calls out from the sky and says, “The truth is with Eliezer.” And they still don’t listen because they say, “The Torah is not in the heavens.” Right? Which is also a way of saying…
Nehemia: Which is another verse taken out of context.
Israel: Exactly, another verse taken out of context, which does not have anything to do with the authority of the rabbis. It has to do with, actually, the individual’s ability to process God’s will, if you actually point to the truth of that verse. But, of course, they reject God Himself. And then later on, there’s a rabbi who’s walking in the forest and he encounters Elijah the prophet, who apparently visits Earth once in a while, according to Rabbinic lore. And he says, “Well, what did God think about this event?” And he said, “Oh, God, you know, kind of laughed and said, ‘My children have won over Me.’” And God was happy. He was happy that we overcame Him with our Rabbinic rulings.
And so, yeah, that sets the stage, obviously, for Rabbinicism to be framed as virtue. For people going against God to be considered, actually, what God wants, because as long as we have the majority of rabbis in the system, the man-made system of rabbis that was created, that’s superior to God Himself.
When people hear that, those stories, outside of a Rabbinical context, religious people, they’ll shudder at such a story. You know, it’s told in Christian circles kind of as a way to be like, “Look at these people, they’re screwed,” right? But like, Jews hear it and they’re like, “Well you don’t understand.” No, I understand, that’s not…
Nehemia: “It’s a deeply profound…” And look, there are some parts of it that are deeply profound. Like, just think about the idea my sons have… b’nai nitzchuni, b’nai nitzchuni, my sons have vanquished me, or defeated me, or something like this. They’ve been victorious over me. So, you know, Freud talked about… and here I’m way out on a limb. I don’t know anything about psychology. But from my pop psychology understanding, before I talked about how there’s this idea where every child, to establish himself as a sovereign adult, needs to overcome their parents. And so, you know, the metaphor he talked about was where Oedipus slays his father at a crossroads, right? It’s one of the ancient Greek tragedies, right? Or tragedy is a type of play. Where there’s a prophecy; the child’s going to kill the father, and so, the father orders the child killed. And the person’s job it is to kill the child leaves him at a crossroads, and somebody picks him up and raises him. And then years later he encounters his father at another crossroads, and he kills the father. And so, Freud said slaying the parent is the child declaring themselves an adult and no longer subject to the judgment of the father, or the instruction of the father, but being like a sovereign adult.
And look, so, I think someone like Jordan Peterson would say there are universal truths in these stories; that’s why we keep telling them. And the Rabbinical story takes that universal truth, which is that a child, to be an adult, has to stand on their own. And they say, “Well, we did that with God. God’s our father, and we’ve defeated God, and God’s proud of us.”
And look, I’m a father. And yes, when my son stands up to me, in a good way, not in a bad way, and says, you know, “I’m going to do this thing on my own. I’m not going to have you hold my hand.” Like, his car was totaled, and he went to get a loan. And I said, “I’ll co-sign with you. You’ll save a few points.” He’s like, “No, I want to do it as an adult.” And he got his own loan, and I was very proud of him, right? He’s a bit of a friar, as we say in Israel, because he could have saved some money on the co-sign. That’s fine. I was proud of him that he stood up and said, “No, I’m going to take care of this myself.” That was him at the crossroads saying, “I’m not a child anymore. I can take care of this myself.” I was very proud of him.
So, the rabbis have taken that and said, “Look, God’s proud of us that we’ve overruled His decision!” And an outsider hears that, and they say, “It is profound; it’s profoundly perverse. You’ve defeated God? What are you even doing this for?” Look, and I’ll hear this from Ben Shapiro, who is a devout Orthodox Jew, and he’ll say things like, “Well, God gave us the Torah as this negotiation between…” which maybe there’s a bit of truth in that. But for him, it’s a negotiation by these other people, by these rabbis.
And look, people will say to me, “Who do you think you are, Nehemia, to question all of your ancestors who were these great rabbis?” And my answer is, “I’m the one who stands before God on the day of judgment. I’m the one who has to answer for my actions. I can’t say, my great-grandfather told me to do that. I can up until when I’m a child, but at some point, I have to be at the crossroads. And I have to overcome my ancestors, and say, ‘I’m a man, and I’m the one who answers for my questions in the presence of God.’”
Israel: Yeah.
Nehemia: So, I mean, I think there’s a profound truth in that. They’ve just taken it in the wrong direction. I’m not supposed to defeat God; I’m supposed to overcome the rulings of my parents.
Israel: Mm-hmm.
Nehemia: And look, there’s a prophecy in Jeremiah where the Gentiles come and they say, “We’ve inherited lies from our fathers.” Like, I hear this, and they say, “Well, how do you think you know more than your ancestors?” Imagine if the Gentiles said that. “Well, you know, St. Augustine told me to do such and such, so I’m going to do it.” Well, God expects more from you than that, right? That’s what he’s saying in Jeremiah.
Israel: Yeah. Amen. I mean, look at Leviticus 26. “Confess your sins and the sins of your fathers”.
Nehemia: Let’s look at that. Let’s look at Leviticus… ooh, I love that. That’s the tokhecha. It’s one of the two passages where there’s the blessing and the curse, Leviticus 26, if I’m remembering the right passage. And the other one is Deuteronomy 28 to 29, which is the more elaborate one.
Israel: So, Leviticus 26:40, “They shall confess their sins and the sins of their fathers, and their transgression, which they have transgressed against Me, as they went with Me in casualness.” They went with Me coldly.
Nehemia: And keri, which is… we don’t really know what keri is, but something like rebelliousness it’s usually translated.
Israel: Yeah, I can see it as being like, kar is cold, like, “you walk coldly or casually with me”.
Nehemia: Maybe.
Israel: Maybe.
Nehemia: I don’t know. JPS has hostile. King James has contrary. It’s one of those words where… So, it’s interesting. I’m doing these Bible studies every morning with my wife, and there’ll be verses where, like, I don’t know what that word means. “Oh, look it up.” “No, nobody knows what the word means.” And there are other verses where I know every single word, and I have no idea what it’s saying. Right? This is particularly in Proverbs. I’m like, “No, there’s no hard words in this verse. I know every single word, and they are common words. But I have no idea… I shouldn’t say I have no idea, right. There’s four different explanations; which one is correct? It’s anybody’s guess, right? Because when you put those words together, they’re almost like a riddle, which is like a feature, not a bug, in Proverbs. But, yeah.
So, that’s really interesting; confessing the sins of your fathers. So, this makes me think about… People have heard me talk; we want to hear what you have to say. So, tell us, how do you engage with this question? In other words, I’ve seen this in your videos, where people are constantly saying, “How do you have the chutzpah? Who do you think you are?” Right? “All these people for all these generations got it wrong, and suddenly Israel Horowitz thinks he’s got it right.” So, what is your response to that?
Israel: I’ll give you an example, right? Because you have to choose here. You either have to choose between vanquishing and defeating your father, God, or vanquishing and defeating your human fathers, right? And when it comes to the word of God versus the word of man, or God Himself versus man, you’ve got to go with God.
And so, a good example would be when it comes to Noah. Right? So, Noah, by all accounts, is an extremely righteous man. He maintains his righteousness and walks with God in the most corrupt time in world history. And God loves Noah. Noah finds favor in God’s eyes, and God saves him. It says Noah was a righteous man in his generations. And the rabbis say, or at least one school of rabbis say, that Noah was righteous in his generations, but if he was in another generation, he would be considered nothing. Direct quote from the Midrash.
And I see that quote, and I’m disgusted, because I have so much admiration for Noah, that God Himself places on Noah, saying, “This is the man that is responsible for your survival, and you all owe your thanks to this man.” And their claim about him is that, if he was in another generation, he would be considered nothing. And so, I would mention things like that. Like, I find that quote to be disturbing. I think it’s like, if I had to respect Noah or I had to respect Rabbi Akiva, I’m going with Noah, right? If I had to respect Moses or Rabbi Eliezer, I’m going with Moses, right?
And the point is that they seem to not understand the hierarchy here, which is that you’re going to have to throw someone under the bus. Either it’s going to be Rashi or it’s going to be Noah. I’d rather throw Rashi under the bus than throw Noah under the bus. Apparently, you’d rather throw Noah under the bus than Rashi. So, I think it comes down to that. It’s impossible to maintain allegiance to the written Torah and the oral Torah when they contradict each other openly, right?
Either you’re going to place the word of God over the word of man, or you’re going to place the word of man over the word of God. And to me, the answer is very obvious. So, I’m not really phased when people are like, “How dare you? How dare you?” Well, how dare you, again? As you pointed out, how dare you go against a billion Christians? How dare you go against a billion Muslims? This is not a numbers game, it’s a truth question, and we need to actually sit here and explore the truth.
And you, yourself, just admitted, as someone who claims that scripture is understandable, you don’t always understand every word. You find that there are multiple interpretations. No one is denying that. In fact, that’s really the nature of the Talmud; it’s a bunch of different interpretations and understandings and independent opinions of different rabbis. The problem with the Orthodox system is that it is saying that these particular opinions are narrowed down, and then we follow one of those particular opinions. Even though there could be other opinions, and all those opinions could be wrong, or one of them could be right.
No, we go with Maimonides’ choice. We go with the consensus of rabbis over 2,000 years. And again, to me, that’s just transparently absurd. It has no merit on its own. It always appeals to authority or faith claims, or like, how dare you, right? The great rebbies, and like, who says they’re great? Because you say they’re great because they lived 2,000 years ago. Lots of people lived 2,000 years ago, right? Just because someone lived 2,000 years ago and wrote a book doesn’t mean everything he says is true.
So, again, we just have to use our better judgment, and I love what you said. I’m the one who’s standing before God. I’m the one who has to take responsibility for my life. This is a genuine pursuit of truth, not an attempt to undermine what other people have done. They’ve done a lot of good, but they’ve also done bad. And so, when we look to our fathers, it says in Deuteronomy 32, “Ask your father and he will tell you, your elder, and he’ll reveal it to you, and remember the generations of old,” right?
So, it’s like, okay, well, you can learn from your father’s teachings. You can also learn from your father’s mistakes, right? You have to look to history not just to worship history, but to see the problems with history, of which there have been many problems. And something we talked about last time as well, which is that, look at the actual facts on the ground of the Jewish people; exile, destruction, remaining few in number scattered across the world. That’s not a redeemed people. That’s not a people who are in the good graces of God.
If you read the Torah, God promises blessings to His people when they follow Him. And based off of Jewish history, it doesn’t really look like the Jewish people are in… I mean, God has given them a lot of blessings, but still, you know, God said Israel will be like the sand of the sea and the stars of the sky. And we don’t see that, because instead, we’re few in number scattered across the world. So, there’s the blessings and there’s the curses, and it looks like we’re not accessing those blessings properly.
So, what are we doing wrong? And we have to have that conversation; we have to be open enough to question pretty much everything. But when it comes to God, that’s where we should start to humble ourselves. But instead, it’s the opposite. You know, they’d rather dismiss what the Torah says, dismiss the characters in the Torah. Like, I heard a rabbi say that, because Jacob told Pharaoh that his life was hard, he lost like 20 years of his life, one year for every word that he spoke, or something like that. It’s like, okay, so, now you’re calling out Jacob because he was an authentic person and spoke honestly. I don’t know, there’s just… also, you don’t know any of these things. All of this is completely arbitrary. It’s made up. Your source is, “trust me bro”, as they say, right. Like, no. Like…
Nehemia: Tell people in my generation what that means; your source is, trust me bro. I’m not sure I know what that means.
Israel: Like, when you ask someone, “What is your source for what you just said?” He’ll be like, “Trust me bro; don’t worry.”
Nehemia: I’m not familiar with that. But so, there’s a few different things here that… I’m not sure which direction we should take this. So, one aspect here, and I think this is important, for me at least, is to identify that it’s not just the specific interpretations the rabbis come up with, it’s the method of interpretation that they employ. In other words, you know that in my field they’ll make a difference between exegesis and hermeneutics. Exegesis is the specific interpretation. Right? “Do not boil a kid in his mother’s milk.” Is a kid a goat? Or is it any animal, and is any milk… Let’s say that’s exegesis.
But then the hermeneutic is the principle behind it. Are we interpreting based on the context, or, like you said, is it just arbitrary? And the Rabbinical approach says, on the one hand you can interpret arbitrarily, what’s called the Midrashic approach. But on the other hand, not everybody can do it. Right? And I’ll watch these videos with Tovia Singer arguing with Christians, and he’ll say, “But you’re taking it out of context.” Yeah, but he takes everything out of context. Right?
In other words, when Tovia says he’s not allowed to eat a hamburger, he’s basing that on taking it out of context. And I heard him once give a lecture at the Orthodox Union in Jerusalem, on, I believe, it’s Karen Hayesod street, and his explanation was, “Well, my rabbis have the authority to do that. I don’t trust your rabbis.” Meaning, if the gospel of Matthew takes something out of context, it means nothing to me. But if Rabbi Akiva does it, well, I trust Rabbi Akiva, so I follow him.
Israel: Exactly.
Nehemia: So, on the one hand you have an issue of the method of interpretation. On the other hand, there’s what they call an appeal to authority, openly an appeal to authority. Right? I’m not imagining it, right? When you combine the appeal to authority with arbitrariness, they can say anything, but only they’re allowed to say it.
Israel: Yeah, exactly.
Nehemia: And that’s extremely frustrating, I would say. And then they come to you and say, “Who do you think you are?” No, I’m not appealing to an authority, only over my own life, right? Meaning, like, what authority do I have over my own life? I’m a grown man who is responsible as a human being for my action; that’s the appeal to authority over my own life. And I think the Ben Shapiro reply to that, or the Asher Meza reply, I think… I shouldn’t quote him, but I think he would say something like, “Well, there’s this consensus of the community.” But what if the community is wrong?
Israel: Mmm.
Nehemia: We’ve seen that before throughout history. And look, if you look at the actual consensus of the community, if we take the majority of rabbis in the world, they’re Reform rabbis. Let’s say in the United States, for sure, the majority of rabbis are Reform rabbis, and they themselves say they really don’t have any kind of authority. Maybe over very specific things, perhaps they do, right, over communal things. But I was told by one Reform rabbi, you study a commandment, and you decide if it’s relevant for you, and then you decide to keep it or not. Well, I mean, then why would I keep any commandments? What are you talking about?
Israel: Yeah.
Nehemia: Like, life would be much easier if I could do whatever I wanted. But I do it because God commanded me to do it, right? And I do the best I can. So, here’s another important difference, let’s say, between the Tanakh, and I’ll take Islam as the example. So, in the Quran, there is this statement, or this concept in Islam, that the Quran is muban, that it’s clear and not difficult to understand. We don’t have that claim in the Torah. What we do have is that the commandments should be clear to understand, but it doesn’t mean we understand them today because we’re after thousands of years of exile. We’re doing the best we can to reconstruct what would have been obvious to an ancient Israelite. That’s my approach to it, anyway. What are your thoughts on that?
Israel: Yeah, I think that it’s very understandable in a lot of ways. I think sometimes there are points of doubt, and we can discuss those doubts. But the real problem is that the whole system of the Torah relating to the priesthood and the court system and the justice system are non-existent. So, you can’t process these things or litigate them in any sort of court with any sort of real binding authority. It really just boils down to opinions of people. In which case, why are some people’s opinions more valid than others?
And even in the context of courts, courts can become corrupted too. So, I don’t know what you think about this idea, but even in Deuteronomy 17, which is the source they always bring, it says, “Do not go to the right or the left from what the High Court in the Temple commands you.” So, first of all, obviously, they’re not the High Court in the Temple, so let’s just settle that.
But one of the things that it says in the end, it says, “The man who acts be’zadon.” And be’zadon, I think, is translated to mean with malicious intent, to do the wrong thing. The man who acts with malice, that’s the man who is punished. But if you’re acting with righteousness to challenge a corrupt court or to question a ruling, a genuine court would entertain that question. They wouldn’t just say, “we said so.” Right? You’re not God. You’re here to handle disputes; you’re not here to force your authority on other people.
So, what we should be hearing out of people in positions of authority is a voice of humility, as it says about the king. The king, by the way, who needs to be chosen by God. He needs to write himself a copy of the Torah and read it every day of his life, not be too materialistic, not abuse his power, not take too many of the resources or the women of the people. And he has to be humble and not let his heart be raised above others to think that he’s better than anyone. God put him in this position; he needs to know the laws of God, and he needs to follow those humbly and righteously and faithfully.
So, leadership is about being faithful to God and serving your fellow man. And what it’s become in all forms of government, not just Judaism… that’s why, again, once you can see corruption in religion, you can see corruption in politics. You can see corruption in medicine. You can see corruption in just about everything. Because unfortunately… this is an unfortunate fact. It’s not… it brings me no joy to say this; that people usually get corrupted by power. And the Torah is very aware of this.
That’s why, you know, Jethro tells Moses to pick men of truth who fear God, who hate greed, men of valor who have courage, right? Those are the qualifications for judges. That’s clearly not what we have right now. So, that’s the bottom line. The bottom line is like; you have to make your case. And we are an exiled people; there is no centralized authority. And even if there was a centralized authority, they would still have to make their case.
And that’s what God wants from us. He wants us to be subservient to Him, not subservient to men. That’s literally the whole story of the Exodus from Egypt; God took us out of slavery to a pharaoh in order to be servants to Him, right? Not to be slaves to rabbis. And that’s what they want; they want you to be slaves to them.
One of the crazy out-of-context ones, I think you might be aware of this, in Eruvin, is it 21b? Where they take the quote from Ecclesiastes out of context. Where at the end of Ecclesiastes, Solomon says, “My son, beware of too many books, for they weary the flesh and destroy the spirit,” or something like that. And they take it out of context, and they just say, “beware my son for the many books”. And they say, “Oh, you see? The many books of the scribes are more important than the Torah, and whoever goes against the scribes is deserving of death, but whoever goes against the Torah it doesn’t really matter that much.”
Nehemia: Oh, yeah, I’ve quoted that in the… but I didn’t remember it was referring to Ecclesiastes. Let’s have a look at that; that’s worth looking at.
Israel: Yeah, it’s actually insane. They completely corrupt this verse, which is explicitly saying not to write too many books. They take the first three words of the verse out of context and say, “therefore, only worry about all those many books that we wrote.” So, yeah, it’s just another example of this.
Nehemia: “What is the meaning of which is written? And more than these, my son, be careful of making many books.” And guys, when we’re looking at this in Sefaria, everything in bold is what it actually says in Hebrew and Aramaic, and the non-bold is their interpretation of it. Or in this case, they’re filling out a verse that wasn’t fully quoted. “My son, be careful to fulfill the words of the sages [the Sofrim], even more than the words of the Torah, for the words of the Torah induce positive and negative commandments, even with regard to the negative commandments.” And this is probably an English translation of Steinsaltz here. “The violation of many of them is punishable only by lashes, whereas with respect to the words of the sages, anyone who transgresses the words of the sages is liable to the death penalty.” Wow!
Israel: Now look at that verse in Ecclesiastes. The verse in Ecclesiastes is 12…
Nehemia: 12:12.
Israel: 12:12. And it says, “More than this, my son, beware of making too many books, because there’s no end to them, and it is a great,” like, it tires out the flesh. And here, I’ll just, “much study is a weariness of the flesh.” So, “beware of making too many books because there’s no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh,” which of course completely destroys the whole concept of the yeshiva system, if it hasn’t been destroyed already by the Torah itself, which tells you to live and support your family. But he’s literally saying the opposite, which is: watch out, all these books… you don’t want to get caught up with books and all that stuff, it just wearies the flesh. They take the first three words out of context, which says, “My son, beware more with the books.” Right?
Nehemia: So, here we have the passage in Eruvin 21b. Let me make this thing go away. There it is, okay. So, I’m trying to understand. I’m not sure I understand. Just again, what’s the hermeneutic here and the exegesis? So, what they’re saying here doesn’t… I feel like something’s almost missing, right? So, it says, “My son, beware of the words of the Sofrim.” And divrei Sofrim are a category of Rabbinical takanot, which are relatively early, so they can’t tack them on to the name of a specific rabbi, right? That’s divrei Sofrim. “More than the words of the Torah,” right? In other words, Sofrim is a period of Rabbinical history; maybe fictitious, right? But it’s the… meaning it’s… they have the anshei kneset ha’gdola, and that’s the Sofrim. Meaning, in the late Persian period, early Hellenistic period, that’s Sofrim. It’s a technical term, even though it literally means just scribes.
So, “Beware of the words of the scribes more than the words of the Torah, because the words of the Torah have positive commandments and negative commandments, and the words of the Sofrim, anyone who violates the words of Sofrim is worthy of death.” So, I feel like I’m missing something here, because for the words of the Torah he says there’s positive and negative commandments, which obviously there are, right? It says, “rest in the Shabbat”, and it says, “don’t do work”, right? That’s what they mean by positive and negative commandments.
But the words of the Sofrim, he’s explaining in terms of… if you violate them, you’re worthy of death. And the implication there, which Steinsaltz added here, or somebody added here, which is that you only get lashes for violating the words of the Torah. Meaning, let’s say anything that doesn’t specifically have the death penalty, the rabbis say you get lashes.
So, I’m not sure I understand how they tie this to the verse. Even if it’s taking it out of context, I’m still not even sure… asot sfarim harbe. Okay, so, what they’re doing is asot sfarim harbe, making many books, they’re interpreting as doing the words of the Sofrim, that’s what they’re interpreting as.
Israel: Yeah. Again, either they’re just colossally stupid and illiterate, or they’re terribly manipulative and sinister.
Nehemia: They’re not stupid and illiterate. Meaning, they’re very deliberately doing these things. So, they interpret the word sfarim as divrei Sofrim, that’s pretty clear. And so, they’re interpreting this Midrashically, deliberately and knowingly out of context. And I’ve said that before, right? Either they’re stupid or they very deliberately know what they’re doing. I think they very deliberately know what they’re doing. These are smart people. Unlike some later rabbis, they understood grammar. They just chose to ignore it.
It’s kind of like when I had a dog, Georgia, who died in 2011, 15 years… oh wow, is that 15 years ago? And I would tell her to sit, and she knew exactly what was happening. She would just ignore me, unless she wanted a treat, right? So, the rabbis are like Georgia; they know exactly what they’re doing here. So, they’re interpreting sfarim… they’re changing the vowels and interpreting them as divre Sofrim, and they’re saying, “My son, be careful to do the words of the Sofrim,” these Rabbinical takanot, or enactments from the period of the late Persian, early Hellenistic period. I think that’s how they’re taking this, it seems to me.
Like, an example of divrei Sofrim would be, when I was a kid, I said, “Well, where are we required to read the Torah over the course of a year?” I read the Torah every day. Where does this idea come from where I have to go to the synagogue and hear somebody chant it? And you’re not paying attention enough to where you can make out the words. Today I could, but back when I was a kid I couldn’t. I’m like, “It’s much better if I just sit and read it, then I can understand it.” And they’re like, “Oh no, that’s divrei Sofrim, that’s takanat Sofrim. Ezra and Nehemiah made that enactment.” “Oh, okay. So, I read the whole Book of Ezra; couldn’t find it. The whole Book of Nehemiah; couldn’t find it. They just made it up. Now, it’s possible Ezra and Nehemiah made that enactment and it’s just not recorded in the Tanakh. But how do I know that? Meaning, there’s a very common phenomenon of attributing something to a famous person, right?
Israel: Yes. Of course, yeah.
Nehemia: Without it being true, right?
Israel: Yeah, and even if they did, by the way, so what? It’s not a law. It’s not a law in the Torah. First of all, yeah, there’s zero evidence for that in the Tanakh; the Tanakh being the authoritative source here. And even if they did make that decree, you’re not obligated to follow man-made decrees. Like the Torah says, “do not add or subtract to these commandments”.
Nehemia: And what they didn’t tell me is that it’s quite clear that even if this isn’t… I mean, it is an ancient custom, right? In other words, it goes back to some relatively early Second Temple period custom. But the custom wasn’t to read the 54 Torah portions that we have today. That was the tradition of Babylon. And in Eretz Yisrael, in the Land of Israel, they read it over either a three- or three-and-a-half-year period. Right?
And then it wasn’t necessarily a fixed reading. In other words, each week, in each synagogue, they would open up the scroll, and they’d read a certain number of verses. And wherever they stopped, they would pick up the next week. It wasn’t that there was a fixed reading, let’s say, originally. And we know that because it talks about not reading less than three verses. Well, why do you need to tell me that if there’s a fixed portion? Right? Meaning, in Rabbinical literature it talks about that.
So, the point is that they’ll attribute things to the Sofrim, and that’s just their way of saying, it’s really old and we don’t know who said it so we’re going to attribute it to somebody famous.
Israel: Yeah, and hey, I mean, no one’s denying that there may be these traditions. But at the same time, your traditions are not law. So, you want to follow tradition? Okay. Don’t tell me I have to.
Nehemia: That’s an important point. We were discussing before about, where do these things go back to? And the very fact that it talks about superstition in the Torah means superstition existed. Now, it calls out the ways of the nations in Deuteronomy 18, but if there weren’t Israelites doing it, it probably wouldn’t have bothered to tell us about that, right? In other words, these were things that, either they were already doing, or they were likely to do.
And look, if you’ve ever been to the Western Wall, you’ll see the lady selling the red string. And they’ll tell you the red string was wrapped seven times around the Tomb of Rachel. Have you ever heard that? And so, it’s holy; it will bring you good luck. Ashton Kutcher, I think, like, 20, 30 years ago, he was in a movie where he refused to take the red string off, because he said, “It gives me good luck. It blesses me.” Whatever, something like that. And they had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to airbrush it out of every single scene. This is before CGI graphics were much… you know, today would be probably relatively trivial, but back then they had to go through every frame of the movie and remove it, that he was in, at least.
So, the red string is actually mentioned in the Tosefta. There’s a list in the Tosefta Shabbat, which is kind of like an apocryphal… it’s what’s called as part of early Rabbinical literature, right? It’s a debate whether it’s from the Tanaitic period or Amoreic period, but it’s probably Tanaitic. So, the Tosefta has a list of the different superstitions, which it calls Darkei Ha’amori, the way of the Amorites, based on Deuteronomy 18.
So, the Torah tells us in Deuteronomy 18, don’t follow the ways of the nations. Okay, what is that? So, they give a list, a very long list, of very specific superstitions that are forbidden, and one of those is wearing the red string. So, think about that; there’s a red string in the 21st century that you can get at the Western Wall that brings you luck, and Ashton Kutcher refuses to take it off. And as far as I know, there’s no official rabbinical source that says, “Oh, you’re supposed to wear a red string. It’s good for you, it brings blessing.” It’s a folk custom. And it’s a folk custom that was known, like, 1,800 years ago in the time of the Tanaim, these early rabbis, who are saying, “Oh, this is one of the things the Amorites did.”
So, think about that; like, these things survive for millennia. It’s very surprising. And the fact that they’re old doesn’t mean they’re valid. That’s my point.
Israel: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, that’s the argument. It’s old. It’s like… what? Literally, the Canaanites and paganism and everything predated the Torah and that… So, it’s just a very bizarre argument to say, “Oh, it’s been going on for so long, therefore, we should keep it going on.” Like, there have been so many terrible things going on for a long time that we need to stop. Now, there are some things that have been going on for a long time that we need to continue, and again, I think no book does a better job at defining what needs to be preserved and what needs to not matter at all than the Torah itself.
The Torah, which you should not add or subtract to these commandments, does a perfect job outlining what God wants from humanity, what society is supposed to look like. And anytime people deviate from that, there’s chaos, whether they add or subtract. And so, you’re not extra holy for adding, you’re just as bad as the person who’s subtracting. And that seems to be lost on Orthodox Jews because they think, “Well, how could we be doing something wrong if we’re doing so much extra? We just love God so much that we do so much more than He tells us.”
Nehemia: Wait, so what’s your Torah response to that? Shouldn’t we just, like, let’s just take Shabbat, for example, right? They’ll keep it for 25 hours, and we could talk about the whole mourning thing, if you want, but they’ll keep it for 25 hours and say, “We added an extra hour to Shabbat because we’re showing how sacred it is, and we really want to show how much we’re dedicated to God. So, we’ve added to the Shabbat. We’ve enhanced it and made it more beautiful and more expansive.” So, what’s your response? Why is that wrong, to add to the Torah?
Israel: Because the Torah says not to add to it. That’s the whole point.
Nehemia: Right. Deuteronomy 4, let’s look at i
