An Overview
I. Master Plan Of Creation
God created the world from a plan and for a purpose. His plan was the Torah* which preceded the world (Shabbos 88b), and His purpose was that man find the meaning and the goal of creation in the Torah: “He looked into the Torah and created the world’ (Midrash).
Torah was the blueprint of creation. It is commonly thought that, following the failure of the human race and the emergence of Abraham and his descendants as people worthy of bearing the privilege of becoming God’s chosen people, God decided upon the commandments which He transmitted to the Jews through Moses. Nothing could be more wrong. The Torah and its commandments were not designed in response to the demands and needs of early life. The Torah pre-existed earth; and the universe as we know it was designed to conform to the requirements of the Torah.
*The word Torah has a range of meanings. It can most specifically mean the first five books of the Tanach (the Old Testament) and it usually includes the rabbinic commentaries. The term Torah means “instruction” and offers a way of life to those who follow it.
II. Gates of Understanding (Gates of Wisdom)
Indeed, it is true that Torah is the blueprint of creation, but that is only a small part of the total truth: Torah remains the key to all the secrets and resources of creation. When Adam was created, God placed him in the Garden of Eden ‘to work it and guard it’ (Genesis 2:15), upon which the Midrash comments ‘to work it’ through the performance of positive commandments, and to ‘guard it’ through the observance of negative commandments. Man in his most exalted form can grasp that the true essence of all this earthly life is the extent of his service to God. Let us attempt to understand – at least imperfectly – how Torah permeates every molecule of the universe. If we succeed, we will have found the first marker on the road to fulfillment as the Creator intended it.
‘Fifty gates of understanding were created and all were transmitted to Moses except for one (Rosh Hashanah 21b)’
What were these ‘Gates of Understanding’? Ramban explains that each order of the universe was created according to a plan, and its contents, growth, function, and all other of its aspects are determined according to it. To enter into the mysteries of this plan and to comprehend it is to be admitted into its ‘gate of understanding’. The lowest order of creation is the inanimate objects like rocks, sand, water. Above it comes simple plant life, trees; the various living creatures until, as one goes higher and higher on the ladder of the universe, he reaches man – the only creature possessing the power of intelligent speech and a human soul. The knowledge of man is the forty-ninth gate of understanding, the ability to know the complexities of the human mind and personality.
Above that gate, is the fiftieth – the knowledge of God. Forty-nine gates were presented to Moses; the fiftieth was denied even him, for no mortal being can attain the understanding of God. Thus, in the truest sense, Ramban continues, the fiftieth gate was never ‘created’, for the term creation implies that it was part of heaven and earth – part of the handiwork of the Six Days of Creation that is within the realm of human understanding. But that gate, the ability to comprehend and understand the essence of God, was never created in the normal sense, because it is beyond the scope of man.
Another viewpoint however comes from Chidushei HaRim. He suggests that not only was the fiftieth gate created but it was given to Moses! The very fact that a human being can conceive God’s greatness to the extent that he can say ‘ if all the seas were ink and all the heavens parchment and all the trees quills, I could not begin to write Your greatness’ – this in itself is a glimmer of the glories within the fiftieth gate of understanding. This barest breath of the last gate was transmitted to man; otherwise how could he ever imagine that the unimaginable exists, how could his soul soar in futile yet fruitful quest of the infinite riches of God’s wisdom and spirituality?
With mastery of the forty-nine gates, Moses could understand the complexities of every aspect of creation and the workings of every human mind. He could look at a person and perceive his sins and merits, his flaws and virtues.
Thus the wisdom of the forty-nine gates was more than a theory. It enabled its possessor to know all the secrets of any aspect of creation to whose ‘gate of understanding’ he was privy. He could unlock the high recesses of the human mind as Moses could, he could even know the workings of animal life and the earth. The master of terrestrial understanding could know without Geiger counters and divining rods where mineral deposits were located and what veins of land were suited to the production of exotic plants. He could know the ‘speech’ and behavior of animals and the secrets of human healing.
According to the Sages, King Solomon was the possessor of all wisdom, but the wise king did not request encyclopedic knowledge – he asked only for the wisdom of Torah so that he could judge his people wisely and justly.
For the forty-nine gates of understanding are all in the Torah. The man who can decipher the depths of the Torah’s wisdom knows the secrets of agriculture, mining, music, mathematics, healing, law – everything! – because nothing was built into heaven and earth unless it was found in the Torah, The question is not whether Torah is the source of all wisdom, the question is only how one interprets the Torah to unseal its riches.
Every aspect of the wisdom transmitted to Moses and presented to Solomon – and shared by the great figures of ancient Israel – is contained in the Torah. One need only know how to find it.
III. – Treasures Within Torah
“Uncover my eyes that I may behold wonders from Your Torah” (Psalms 119:18)
“Open my eyes to see the miracle-wonders hidden in Scripture – your law” Passion Translation Bible.
The wonders are there, it is we who fail to see them. The eyes of the ancients were free of the material veils that so cloud our vision today.
Ruach Chaim explains that the seeming secrets and mysteries of the Torah are actually clear, but our eyes are covered and cannot see. Even in the Torah’s open, revealed teachings, a man may sometimes struggle over a difficulty, and when he grasps it he wonders why he had to toil so hard. However, when someone immerses himself in Torah study for its own sake, the Almighty lifts the veil from his eyes and allows him to perceive the solution to mysteries of the Torah. Thus, David prayed “Unveil my eyes, that I may perceive wonders from Your Torah.”
Zohar observes: Woe to those who study the Torah superficially and consider it no more than a simple book of stories. Such people never delve beneath the surface; they notice the outer garment but not what lies beneath it.
IV. The Oral Law
Even a cursory study of the Torah proves that there must be an unwritten law, that there is much more to Torah than the Five Books of Moses; much more even than the entire twenty-four books of The Old Testament.
Exodus 17:14 – “Write this as a remembrance in a book and place it in the ears of Joshua…” It is plain that, in addition to the written verses of the Torah, something else had to be written for and told to Joshua.
Exodus 21:24 – “..eye for an eye..” yet never in Jewish history was physical punishment handed out for an assault. Instead the verse was always interpreted to require monetary compensation.
Deuteronomy 12:21 – “You may slaughter from your herd and your flock which God has given you as I have commanded you.” Moses clearly states that he had “commanded” his people concerning Shechitah (the slaughtering of certain animals and birds for food according to Jewish dietary laws), yet we find no where in the written text of the Torah even one of the intricate and demanding rules of kosher slaughter.
Countless similar questions could be raised. The implication of them all is clear beyond a doubt: there is a second Torah, an Oral Law, without which the first Torah is not only a closed book, but without which the written Torah can be twisted and misinterpreted beyond recognition, as indeed it has been down the centuries.
As Rambam says in his introduction, Moses had three primary disciples: Joshua, Eleazer, and Pinchas, but it was to Joshua ‘who was Moses’ disciple’ that he transmitted the Oral Law and whom he commanded in it.
Moses was commanded to designate Joshua as his successor. He was commanded: instruct him concerning the ‘Talmud’. This Rambam interprets as a clear reference to the Oral Law. This would explain why Israel was so incensed when Joshua forgot three hundred laws following the death of Moses, that there were some who threatened to kill him (Temurah 16a)! Why the wrath against Joshua alone when there were myriad other scholars and elders in the nation who were equally guilty? Because, as leader of the people, Joshua had been made responsible for the preservation of the Oral Law.
The Oral Law was taught in its entirety to Moses during his forty days and forty nights in heaven. When one considers the origin of the hundreds of thousands of volumes that constitute only a fraction of the total body of knowledge that we refer to with the all inclusive name Torah, the phenomenon of Moses knowing it all is not surprising. In essence, Torah is the wisdom of God, His own thought, the ultimate in spiritual greatness.
V. Survival of Torah
Proverbs 6:23 – “For a commandment is a lamp and the Torah is light”. Illumination is the last of three important steps taken by God in communicating His Word to us. The first step was revelation which occurred when God spoke to the bible authors. The second step was inspiration, that process whereby God guided them in correctly writing or uttering His message. Now a third step is needed to provide understanding for men and women as they hear God’s revealed and inspired message. This vital step is illumination, that divine process whereby God causes the written revelation to be understood by the human heart.
The Person behind the illumination is the Holy Spirit.
God’s wisdom dictated that in our human existence, the way to ascend the spiritual ladder is through – and only through – the commandments of the Torah, just as the lamp is the means to attain light. Man’s highest privilege and loftiest attainment is in the study of Torah itself.
After the Torah was given, the Oral Law enabled Jews to properly understand the written Torah, to derive from the laws the principles that should be applied to new situations. That human intellect is capable of divining a degree of God’s wisdom is one of His greatest gifts to man. That man can sometimes give a logical explanation of one or another law is no proof whatever of the validity of Torah; the Torah does not need to be legitimized by man’s approval. Rather it is a tribute to the brilliance of human intellect that it is capable of understanding an aspect of God’s wisdom.
The blossoming of the Oral Law in all its intellectual brilliance and glory – as we find it recorded in the Talmud and other books – did not begin until the period of the Second Temple. The Shechinah, the Divine Presence, was not to rest upon the Second Temple as it had upon the first, a loss that caused the people enormous distress. The Men of the Great Assembly, one hundred and twenty great men that included many prophets and leaders such as Ezra, Mordecai, Daniel and others, beseeched God for a divine gift to compensate for the losses. During the entire period from the Giving of the Law at Sinai until the opening generations of the Second Commonwealth (530 BC – 70 AD), the Oral Law was handed down intact and free of dispute. During the Second Commonwealth, however, the historic intensity of study began to decline ever so slightly, with the result that disputes began to arise among the Sages.
In addition, during the long and cruel period of harsh Roman persecution, Torah study became virtually impossible except with the most extreme self-sacrifice. The result was a further tragic decline in knowledge and an impairment in the transmission of the oral tradition. Without the totally reliable teacher-to-student chain of Oral Law, ways had to be employed to regain what was being lost.
The principles of Biblical interpretation were taught to Moses at Sinai together with the rest of the Oral Law. The Talmud teaches us the Thirteen Hermeneutic Principles through which the Torah is interpreted. The Talmud makes extensive use of these principles, in fact they form it’s heart. Through their use, it was possible to find within the Torah, laws from the oral tradition which had become forgotten or confused.
Following the death of Moses, a substantial body of orally transmitted law was forgotten as a result of the people’s grief over the loss of their teacher. The leader and sage, Asniel, applied the principles of Biblical exegesis, a critical explanation or interpretation of a text, and restored the lost knowledge to Israel. How did he do it? The laws were not concoctions of Moses. They were taught him by God as part of the Oral Law which, in turn, is the authentic interpretation of the Torah. During Moses’ lifetime, the people found no need to derive the laws from Scripture itself, because the oral tradition was intact.
Asniel made use of established principles to regain knowledge that had been forgotten. In this sense, God promised the men of the Great Assembly that He would reveal to them the secrets of the Torah. They took the eternal tools of exegesis and used them to reveal the secrets that had always been locked within the words of the Torah, secrets that Moses had taught Israel and that, in turn, had been transmitted orally for over a thousand years until the oral tradition began to crumble due to a lack of diligence and outside persecution. They did nothing new and certainly made no changes in the Torah; they merely made use of hermeneutic principles that had not been needed while the tradition of study was still at its high point.
The highest levels of spirituality attained by human beings were those of the Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They obeyed the laws of the Torah before it was given. Who told them the laws? No one. Their own spiritual greatness combined with the holy emanations of the Land of Israel to create within them the instincts that dictated which deeds had to be performed and which were forbidden. God and Torah form one unity; when the Patriarchs attained the lofty heights that brought them as close to God as human beings can become, they simultaneously became human manifestations of Torah and understood how it was to be clothed in human deed (Rambam).
Following the giving of the Torah, the Oral Law enabled the greatest people among Jews to see the total concept of a commandment.
This ability of man to use his human intellect to add to the store of Torah knowledge is surely one of God’s greatest gifts to man.
The written Torah and the Oral Torah are indivisible halves of a sacred whole.