4 What We Believe

2. What we believe

Until now, I have understood what Yiddishkeit teaches as typified by the assertions below. I have chosen to weave together various statements and arguments. This is how our beliefs were communicated to me. If I am in error, please do not hesitate to correct me:

1. G-d, who created the Heaven and the Earth 5762 years ago, chose the people of Israel, saved them -- 600,000 adult males, their wives and children -- from Egyptian slavery and revealed His glory to them on Mt. Sinai. Such a thing -- Divine revelation to a whole nation -- was an event unique in human history, and no religion except Judaism claims or has ever claimed to have such a revelation at its foundation.

2. During the Sinai Revelation G-d gave us the Torah -- that is, He told some of the commandments to the whole people and the rest to Moses, who later on taught the commandments in all their details to the people.

3. After the Sinai Revelation, the Israelites were to enter the Land of Israel, but they sinned, so G-d sentenced them to 40 years of wandering in the Sinai desert. During those 40 years, G-d dictated the entire Torah to Moses. The Torah was completed at the end of the 40 years, when the Israelites encamped on the east bank of Jordan, ready to enter the Promised Land.

4. The Torah, being the word of the Living G-d, is totally and absolutely true in all its details, and, needless to say, internally consistent.

5. Each and every word of the Torah was dictated by G-d, and nothing was changed in it through the successive ages -- the Torah which we now have is exactly the same as dictated by G-d to Moses in the Sinai desert.

6. Besides the Torah, there are also books of Prophets and Writings in the Holy Writ. These books, though not dictated by G-d letter by letter, were nonetheless written under Divine inspiration; they contain moral instructions to bring people closer to G-d's will, clarification of certain matters of the Torah, and description of the history of the Jewish people, from which one can learn of the eternal covenant between G-d and the People of Israel. Needless to say, all the doctrines and historical details described in these books are absolutely true.

7. There are predictions for the future in the books of the Holy Writ ("for the future" is relative to when the books were written). All of these predictions have come true except for those whose time has not yet come. The fulfillment of the Scripture's predictions is proof of G-d's supervision over the world and of the Divine authorship or inspiration of the Scripture itself.

8. It is not only the Written Torah that was given to Moses by G-d, but the Oral Torah as well. It is the Oral Torah which contains the details of fulfilling G-d's commandments -- the Halachic laws. Some of these laws, including all the laws derived through interpretation of the Scriptures, were given to Moses at Sinai and handled down through tradition until they were written in the Mishnah and in the Talmud; others were established by the Sages in order to make a fence around the Torah, to keep people from violating the Torah laws. But even when the Sages established rulings of the latter category, they acted based on the absolute authority the Torah gave them to issue Halachic rulings obligating all of Israel. Thus, it is ultimately the Divine imperative which obligates us to observe all the details of the Oral Law.

9. The Sages were very wise and intelligent men; all of their statements in the Mishnah, the Talmud, and the Midrashim testify to it. They knew, in their great wisdom or by tradition handed down from Sinai, many things of which the wisest gentile scholars of their time were unaware. While the whole world was wallowing in ignorance the light of wisdom shone from the Sages over the whole Israel.

10. The Sages -- and the Halachic arbiters in all subsequent generations -- were not only wise, but also highly moral men; all their rulings and lifestyles testify to their supreme morality, and these rulings, as well as the Torah commandments, are intended to teach us the true moral virtues.

Unfortunately, as it will be detailed in this letter, if we submit these points to rational inquiry they don't seem to hold up. This is a source of endless agony and confusion to me. I continue to practice Orthodoxy, but it is as if the ground beneath me has been swept away. I have no bases for my actions. The weight of evidence points away from our faith. Rabbi, I am stuck -- a doubter amongst the faithful, a skeptic amongst true believers. I do not wish to live this confusion.

Please help me.

I shall try to.

I will re-word below the beliefs that you list, in the manner that I believe is more truthful to Judaism’s beliefs, even though that these points are discussed later at more length. In a sense, this may be the root of the confusion, as Judaism’s beliefs were originally presented to you slightly wrong.

1. G-d, who created the Heaven and the Earth 5762 years ago (by now 5774, for those who completely reject evolution), chose the people of Israel, saved them -- 600,000 adult males, their wives and children -- from Egyptian slavery and revealed His glory to them on Mt. Sinai. Such a thing -- Divine revelation to a whole nation -- was an event unique in human history, and no religion except Judaism claims or has ever claimed to have such a revelation at its foundation. (It would be surprising to understand as a core belief of Judaism, that Moses told the Jews that there will never arise a time in the future that people will (even falsely) come up with a similar claim.)

2. During the Sinai Revelation G-d gave us the Torah -- that is, He told some of the commandments to the whole people and the rest to Moses, who later on taught the commandments in all their details to the people.

3. After the Sinai Revelation, the Israelites were to enter the Land of Israel, but they sinned, so G-d sentenced them to 40 years of wandering in the Sinai desert. During those 40 years, according to some opinions, G-d dictated the entire Torah to Moses, while according to others, G-d taught the whole Torah to Moses already at Mt. Sinai. The Torah was completed at the end of the 40 years, when the Israelites encamped on the east bank of Jordan, ready to enter the Promised Land.

4. The Torah, being the word of the Living G-d, is totally and absolutely true in all its details, and, needless to say, internally consistent.

5. According to most opinions, each and every word of the Torah was dictated by G-d, and nothing was changed in it through the successive ages -- the Torah which we now have is exactly the same as dictated by G-d to Moses in the Sinai desert.

6. Besides the Torah, there are also books of Prophets and Writings in the Holy Writ. These books, though not dictated by G-d letter by letter, were nonetheless written under Divine inspiration; they contain moral instructions to bring people closer to G-d's will, clarification of certain matters of the Torah, and description of the history of the Jewish people, from which one can learn of the eternal covenant between G-d and the People of Israel. Needless to say, all the doctrines and historical details described in these books are absolutely true.

7. There are predictions for the future in the books of the Holy Writ ("for the future" is relative to when the books were written). All of these predictions have come true except for those whose time has not yet come, or those prophecies that G-d reconsidered, as clarified in Judaic teachings. The fulfillment of the Scripture's predictions is proof of G-d's supervision over the world and of the Divine authorship or inspiration of the Scripture itself.

8. It is not only the Written Torah that was given to Moses by G-d, but the Oral Torah as well. It is the Oral Torah which contains the details of fulfilling G-d's commandments -- the Halachic laws. Some of these laws, including all the laws derived through interpretation of the Scriptures (this is a messy one – I’ll go with ‘including all the methods through which many other laws are derived through interpretation of the Scriptures’), were given to Moses at Sinai and handled down through tradition until they were written in the Mishnah and in the Talmud; others were established by the Sages in order to make a fence around the Torah, to keep people from violating the Torah laws. But even when the Sages established rulings of the latter category, they acted based on the absolute authority the Torah gave them to issue Halachic rulings obligating all of Israel. Thus, it is ultimately the Divine imperative which obligates us to observe all the details of the Oral Law.

9. The Sages were very wise and intelligent men; this can also be seen from some of their statements in the Mishnah, the Talmud, and the Midrashim. They knew, in their great wisdom or by tradition handed down from Sinai, many things of which the wisest gentile scholars of their time were unaware. While the whole world could be called relatively ignorant, in comparison to their wisdom, the light of wisdom shone from the Sages over the whole Israel.

10. The Sages -- and the Halachic arbiters in all subsequent generations -- were not only wise, but also highly moral men; this can also be derived from some of their rulings and lifestyles which testify to their supreme morality, and these rulings, as well as the Torah commandments, are intended to teach us the true moral virtues.