The survival of the Jewish people is a mysterious and wonderful phenomenon demonstrating that the life of this nation is governed by a higher special process transcending the processes of adaptation expanded by materialistic interpretations. To paraphrase Professor Nicholai Berdyaev (The Meaning of History, London, Moscow Academy of Spiritual Culture, 1936), the Jewish people and the Jewish Torah’s survival seems absolutely inexplicable. All of this points to the particular and mysterious foundations of their destiny. Scientific criticism applied to traditional Biblical history can neither discredit the universal role played by the Jews nor offer a satisfactory explanation of their mysterious destiny. Nor does this criticism grapple with their extraordinary intense feeling for history.
As Blaise Pascal said, “This people are not eminent solely by their antiquity, but are also singular by their devotion, which has always continued from their origin, until now. In spite of all the endeavors of many powerful kings who have a hundred times tried to destroy them, as their historians testify, they have nevertheless been preserved (and this preservation has been foretold), their history comprehends in its duration all our histories.”
Ellis Rivkin points out in his The Dynamics of Jewish History, “In any given century, Jews would be living simultaneously in as many as three or four radically different societies, each of which demanded a distinctive form of Jewish adaptation if survival was to be sustained. Not only was this challenge met, but it was met without annulling a distinctive Jewish identity.”
This continuity was made possible by the unique combination of meshing of the Oral and Written Torah. “YOU ARE THE ONES WHO HAVE BEEN SHOWN SO THAT YOU WILL KNOW,” says the Torah, “THAT G-D IS THE SUPREME BEING AND THERE IS NONE BESIDES HIM” [Deuteronomy 32:40]. The same chapter links this personal G-d with a practical transmission.
You might inquire about times long past, going back to the time that G-d created man on earth, exploring one end of the heavens to the other, see if anything as great as this has ever happened. G-d related and relates to His people within history and through His Torah. A living process of transmissions highlighted here and there with miracles. “REALIZE IT TODAY AND PONDER IN YOUR HEART G-D IS THE SUPREME BEING IN HEAVEN ABOVE AND ON EARTH BENEATH – THERE IS NO OTHER. KEEP HIS DECREES AND COMMANDMENTS THAT I AM PRESENTING TO YOU TODAY” [Deuteronomy 4:39-40]. Decrees and commandments that are to be kept in a real time practical way; the only way was, and is, with a living Oral Torah explanation enabling us to do so.
Rabbi Tuvia Singer’s insightful tapes point out that folk who have not had the opportunity to learn about the Oral Torah sometimes say it’s an invention of the Rabbinic Sages. To say the holy sages have invented something foreign and have no authority regarding the Bible, is like saying the Jewish Israelis occupying Jerusalem are foreign and invented their authority over the city. Jewish Israelite presence in Jerusalem is an expression of Biblical truth and G-d’s desire. Just as the elders, Rabbis, scribes, and sages of the Oral Torah express Biblical truth and G-d’s desire.
Groups arose and disappeared who rejected Judaism and its guardianship of the Oral Tradition. Still, they were at their wits ends to apply the written law without the Oral Law and had to invent their own version. They did indeed, and each and every one of them admitted to the absolute necessity of the Oral Tradition, but merely rejected the age old commitment, devotion, and transmission of the sages.
The Christian world lost complete contact with the Oral Law for a host of reasons. Firstly, because the early Church, after the council of Niece had no access to the Oral Tradition in terms of their total lack of schooling and experience. Hence, since they were lacking access, they demonized it and rejected it. They also never even tried, according to their theology, to fulfill the Written Bible. Without an attempt to keep the written laws, there arose no need to understand in depth how to apply the various written laws. We can go one step further and deeper; even in times of the Messiah, non-Jews will not be obligated in the 613 commandments of the Bible, but rather the 7 universal commandments given to Noah at the revelation of the rainbow, 10 generations before the first Hebrew, Abraham. Gentiles, even in messianic times, won’t need as thorough a comprehension of the Oral Tradition as your average, Bible keeping, religious Jew. The Lost Ten Tribes however according to tradition and the Bible will return and will keep the law even though at present they may not be obliged to do so.
Chapter Five
THE JEWISH PEOPLE SURVIVED
THROUGH THE WRITTEN AND ORAL LAWS