Rabbi Joseph Telushkin - Jewish Illiteracy

The author, Joseph Telushkin has written a book on  “Jewish Literacy”, and an extract is used in Jewish Virtual Library’s page on the oral Law.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/talmud_&_mishna.html

In that piece, Telushkin begs the question, trying to use common sense to show the need for some sort of oral law.  He raises some common points, but they are worth refuting here:

1) “Yet when one looks for the specific biblical laws regulating how to observe the day, one finds only injunctions against lighting a fire, going away from one's dwelling, cutting down a tree, plowing and harvesting. Would merely refraining from these few activities fulfill the biblical command to make the Sabbath holy?”

The above statement is fallacious, but it is also false. The fallacy is that it is begging the question, i.e. since he claims (mistakenly) that these are the only forbidden things in the Torah, it is means other things must also be forbidden!   It is factually false, because there are other general prohibitions. Thus, in Deut 5, the restatement of the 10 commandments, we see:

12 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work

13 but the seventh day is a sabbath unto the LORD thy God, in it thou shalt not do any manner of work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou.

Verse 12 already sets the scene by saying what is permitted, i.e. all our regular work.  The Torah is not a Dept of Employment Handbook, to classify every single type of work or occupation.  Cement mixing, carpet weaving, computer programming, etc are all types of work that would be permitted for 6 days and forbidden on the 7^th.

2) “the Sabbath rituals that are most commonly associated with holiness-lighting of candles, reciting the kiddush, and the reading of the weekly Torah portion are found not in the Torah, but in the Oral Law.”

Another circular argument. These rituals are all rabbinically created, so why would one expect them to be found in the Torah?

3) Without an oral tradition, some of the Torah's laws would be incomprehensible. In the Shema's first paragraph, the Bible instructs: "And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart.…. And you shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes." "Bind them for a sign upon your hand," the last verse instructs. Bind what? The Torah doesn't say. "And they shall be for frontlets between your eyes." What are frontlets? The Hebrew word for frontlets, totafot is used three times in the Torah — always in this context (Exodus 13:16; Deuteronomy 6:8, 11:18) — and is as obscure as is the English. Only in the Oral Law do we learn that what a Jewish male should bind upon his hand and between his eyes are tefillin (phylacteries).”

Here is a classic argument of rabbinic polemicists. The solution to the alleged problem raised by Telushkin, and his predecessors, is already found within the texts he cites.  He focuses on the word טוֹטָפֹת , which he claims means “teffilin”. He also claims that this word has no uncoding without the Oral law.  However, one only has to go back a few verses from Ex 13:16 to unravel the problem.

In v 9 it says the following:

ט  וְהָיָה לְךָ לְאוֹת עַל-יָדְךָ, וּלְזִכָּרוֹן בֵּין עֵינֶיךָ, לְמַעַן תִּהְיֶה תּוֹרַת יְהוָה, בְּפִיךָ:  כִּי בְּיָד חֲזָקָה, הוֹצִאֲךָ יְהוָה מִמִּצְרָיִם.

9 And it shall be for a sign unto thee upon thy hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes, that the law of the LORD may be in thy mouth; for with a strong hand hath the LORD brought thee out of Egypt.

The word used in Hebrew is “zikaron”, a memorial or reminder.

In v16 it says:

טז  וְהָיָה לְאוֹת עַל-יָדְכָה, וּלְטוֹטָפֹת בֵּין עֵינֶיךָ:  כִּי בְּחֹזֶק יָד, הוֹצִיאָנוּ יְהוָה מִמִּצְרָיִם.

16 And it shall be for a sign upon thy hand, and for frontlets between thine eyes; for by strength of hand the LORD brought us forth out of Egypt.'

The word in 16 is “totafot”. Since the meaning, form, context and structure of these verses are equivalent, we can confidently say that the 2 words,  zikaron and totafot are synonyms – they mean the same thing. Hence, we need look no further than the Torah itself to interpret the word totafot.   Now, what exactly are the memorials in the 13^th Chapter of Exodus, that remind us of the exodus from Egypt?

The first one is in v7. Unleavened bread shall be eaten throughout the seven days; and there shall no leavened bread be seen with thee, neither shall there be leaven seen with thee, in all thy borders.

The second is in v 13 And every firstling of an ass thou shalt redeem with a lamb; and if thou wilt not redeem it, then thou shalt break its neck; and all the first-born of man among thy sons shalt thou redeem.

The Matzah, and the redemption of the firstborn are the reminders/totafot.

There is no requirement to bind matzah or a firstborn ass on our foreheads.  And the same is true of the Shema, in Deut 6. It is referring to the 10 commandments of the previous chapter, which shall be reminders of our daily lives. The irony is that Rabbinic tefillin do not even contain the 10 commandments.  Indeed, the rabbis made sure we forget the 10 commandments, by abolishing them from the traditional daily prayer.  The reason was, allegedly, that Christians made them a central tenet of their religion, hence the rabbis wished to differentiate their religion form Christianity.

If rabbis encouraged people to study the Torah objectively, there would be more Jewish literacy. However, the insistence on learning Talmud, which distorts the Torah’s meaning as often as it amplifies it, renders the torah to a secondary and less important source of Jewish literacy.