(Adapted from “Two Worlds, One Chance” by Rabbi Ben Tzion Shafier)
The eleventh century Kuzari, one of the great works of Jewish thought, makes an important observation about the difference that distinguishes Judaism from other religions. Every religion starts with one man claiming to have experienced a dream or a religious experience. It might be backed up by a tight-knit band of his disciples saying they witnessed a miracle, but in the end, it’s based on an event that is difficult to substantiate and easy to falsify. Maybe it did occur as we are told, but maybe it didn’t; there’s no way to know. It may well have been a way to gain support for what one man thought would be a worthwhile spiritual ideal, but we have no way of verifying that the event ever happened.
Judaism’s claim is of an entirely different nature: an entire nation of more than three million people of all ages heard Hashem speaking to them. An entire huge assemblage heard Hashem telling them the Ten Commandments, instructing them in the basics of Jewish belief. This is a claim that is impossible to falsify and easy to substantiate.
In Shemos 19:9 and 19:11, the Torah describes the giving of the Torah: And G-d spoke to Moshe, saying, “I will appear to you in the thickness of cloud, so that the nation should hear Me speak to you, and so that they will trust in you forever... Tell the nation to prepare for three days, for on the third day G-d will appear to the entire nation, on Mt. Sinai.”
These verses tell us that the entire nation of Israel was gathered at Mt. Sinai when Hashem Himself spoke to them.
Now, let’s think about this. This event happened three months after the Jewish nation had been taken out of bondage. The Torah states that six hundred thousand men between the ages of twenty and sixty left Egypt. Add the women, and we are now dealing with a group of 1.2 million. Add those older than sixty and younger than twenty and you have at least three million people witnessing an event. The claim Judaism makes is that Hashem appeared to the Jewish nation in the most public manner imaginable. The question is: Can something public be falsified?
Did you ever hear the expression, 'Ask two Jews, you'll get three opinions'? We are known to be a very opinionated people. From the moment the Torah was given on Mount Sinai until today, we have been a questioning people - we don't merely accept things. The Torah itself calls us 'a stiff-necked (i.e., stubborn) people.'
The Jewish nation spent forty years in the desert preparing to enter the land of Israel. We tend to have this glorified view that every Jew during that period obeyed the word of Hashem unquestioningly. While it's true that the nation on a whole was on an exalted level, still, there was quite a bit of dissension, particularly against their leader Moshe. Some were jealous of Moshe, as he now occupied what they viewed as a throne of glory. He had been chosen to be the one to go up to heaven and bring down the law from Hashem Himself, and he was now the teacher of the nation – certainly enough to engender jealousy in some Jews.
On a number of occasions, the Torah tells us that groups formed to oppose Moshe. When there was no water, there was dissension against Moshe. When the people were tired of eating manna, there was opposition. When Hashem told him to appoint his brother, Aaron, as the high priest, Korach and his adherents staged an outright rebellion against Moshe.
So, I have one simple question to ask. Why don't we read that even one person questioned the entire story of the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai? If there was even the slightest inaccuracy of any sort when they were reading about that event, someone would have gotten up and said, ‘Hey, this stuff is a pack of lies! I was there, and it never happened that way.’
Now let us properly understand the central role that the Torah has played in our nation’s history. To our people the Torah isn’t some obscure law book stored away to be read only by scholars. For thousands of years, it has been the foundation of our people. Wherever we went, to whichever country we were exiled, the Torah and its study came with us. From antiquity, we have been known as the People of the Book. Long before there was a printing press, long before books became something found in every person’s home, Jews acquired that accolade. Our reputation has always been that of a studious people, and throughout history what we studied was the Torah.
Every Jewish child began his education with the Torah, and continued this study throughout his life. The same Torah that is read weekly in our shuls has been read for thirty-three hundred years – read, studied, discussed, and analyzed. The Torah has been the center of Jewish life throughout the ages; it was taught from father to son, mother to daughter, teacher to student in an unending tradition. How does one falsify such a document?
For millennia, the mark of the Jewish man and his standing at home and in the community was based on his Torah knowledge and scholarship. All you have to do is to enter a Beis HaMedrash and observe a Rosh Yeshiva deliver his lecture. Usually, afterwards some of the senior students stand around discussing points raised during the class. It sounds like a heated debate. It isn’t a discussion; it is more like a battle – they tear apart the lecture: ‘How do you know?’ ‘Maybe it was that way!’ ‘You have no proof!’ Point, counter point. Point, counter point. Jab, duck, jab, duck, counter punch. A number of the students defend the lecture, others attack it; back and forth, back and forth. The speed of the arguments and the power of the reasoning can be quite amazing. And this is the seminal point: the study of the Torah, specifically the Talmud, is an extraordinarily intense, rigorous mental process, where nothing is taken for granted.
The Talmud is the Oral Law given to Moshe by Hashem at Sinai along with the Written Law – is all about logic, logic that leaves no room for assumptions, no room for lazy thinking, no room to say, ‘Well, it must make sense or the rabbis of the Talmud never would have accepted it.’ Rather, it’s a most demanding, critically honest procedure of analysis, through the process of questions and answers: ‘How do you know?’ ‘Maybe it was that way!’ ‘You have no proof!’ Questions, questions, questions, and then finally some more questions all focused on arriving at the truth. Nothing is taken on faith, nothing is taken for granted.
I often wonder what the scene would look like if a Catholic priest were to would walk into one of our rabbinical seminaries, walk to the back of the study hall, and observe what goes on there. He would hear discussions, arguments, positions refuted, alternatives offered, but most of all he’d hear questions, questions, and more questions. “How do you know?” “What is your proof?” “Maybe it’s the opposite!”
And that’s how learning takes place – questioning not only peers, but also teachers, senior rabbis, and even the head of the seminary. No one is sacred, no one is protected from questions, questions, and more questions. Frankly, in the scenario I suggested, I think that priest would faint. In fact, I’d expect him to blurt out, ‘What is all this questioning, probing, and more questioning? Just accept the answers, have faith. The head Rabbi said this is the way it is, just accept it. Just believe!’ I would expect him to walk out shaking his head and muttering something like, ‘Those guys really have no faith.’
And the priest would be right. But it isn’t that we don’t have faith; it’s that Torah study isn’t about faith but rather about knowledge. We don’t have faith that the Torah is G-d given. We know it! And it’s our job to understand it.
Judaism isn’t based on blind faith; it’s based on knowledge. While it is true that each word of the Torah is accepted as absolute truth, as it is the word of G-d and emanated from Him on Mount Sinai; our job is to understand every word, to delve down into its depths. The Torah was given to us to explore, to probe, to grasp as deeply as we are able. There is no faith here; there is utter knowledge, intellectual probing to the maximum depth of our understanding.
When the Jews from Yemen came to Israel in the 1950s, they brought their Torah scrolls with them. This was a segment of our people that had been isolated from mainstream Judaism for over a thousand years. For all of that time, there had been no known contact between that community and the rest of the world’s Jewish population. Needless to say, there was great curiosity to see the differences between the Torah scrolls in Israel currently, and the ones that had just been brought from Yemen. When they compared the newly arrived scrolls to those that existed in the Western world – ones that had come to Israel from Germany, Poland, and Russia – in all the scrolls there was only one letter in one word that was different (the pronunciation of the two words was the same, it was only a question of spelling).
Keep in mind that Torah scrolls are handwritten. There were no photocopies or printing plates – a scribe sitting down to write a scroll would take as long as a year to complete the task. Yet there was only one letter in the entire work that was different from the ones that came from communities from which they had been separated for centuries! One letter in one word! One Torah scroll copied from another, generation after generation, over a span of more than a thousand years, and there is less deviation than even one complete word, even though there was no cross-referencing, no way of checking, and certainly none of the computer programs that are now available to verify accuracy. The transmission was so reliable that it remained perfect and intact. The reason for this is that the Torah plays a hugely important role in the lives of our people, and the exactness of every word is part of the tradition that we have from Mount Sinai.
So, to summarize, if you ask me, do I believe that the Torah was given by Hashem to the Jewish people on Mount Sinai? The answer is no, I don’t believe it, I know it.
