Authority of the Bible

The Why! A Short Meditation on the Events of October 7

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Why am I in Israel? This painful question haunts me and others and has done so ever since October 7 of last year. My thoughts about the purpose of the land of Israel and what this land is supposed to be confuse me. Is there not a purpose for Jews in the land of Israel? Is there no purpose for the chosen people other than to continually suffer? Where is the G-d of the Bible? Is it possible that people who have sacrificed to live in Israel, somehow have it all wrong?

Several of us toured some of the sites of the massacre a few weeks ago. My feelings were mostly numb throughout the tour. I learned things but my feelings were mostly shut down. Perhaps this was because of the grief I had felt ever since the event took place. I had already imagined the scenes. But it was interesting to see where the wall was breached so quickly at the Erez crossing and to learn first-hand from one of the residents who actually defended one of the Kibbutz’—Kibbutz Alumim, where not only Israelis were massacred but also foreign workers, who were shot and burned in their dormitory, some apparently while they were still in their beds or showers.

I shuddered when I saw the bullet holes and blown-up buildings. I was moved when I heard of the efforts of a local civilian who came on board to protect the police station in Sderot.

Many agree that Never Again has happened again and that it will happen over and over until we somehow get it right! But how will that play out? How is it that Jews, not only in Israel, still question, how do we get it right? How do we end the madness?

Perhaps this is the end of the world? It seems there is no hope anymore for a Messiah. Are Jews destined to extinction? Is there Nobody in the Universe watching the events unfold? Is there anywhere to hide? Perhaps the caves in the cliffs near the Kinneret are still waiting for people to find a bit of safety while enemies take over the land. But how would we survive if we were even able to get there? Will we survive? There has to be hope.

When I question the G-d of Heaven, Ha Kadosh Baruch Hu, YHVH, Elohim or however He prefers to be called, I mean no disrespect. But upon what can I base my faith in the disaster that has happened to Israel and the hatred of the nations? Somehow Biblical promises don’t seem to be holding their ground. Perhaps there were conditions for these promises. Are we back to the days where the prophets feared for their lives? Will the cycle never end?

As someone who has always believed that the answer to the world’s woes is in the Book of Books, I find little solace when I see my vision of a peaceful Israel vanish before my eyes. I realize there is much that is embraced by the Jewish people that does not line up with the Covenant that we were given on Sinai. Could it be that somehow we have turned away from the ONE who is there to save and protect us? If so, is anyone listening? Does anyone care? Can blind eyes be opened, deaf ears be unstopped? Could it be that ever since Babylon, there have been new teachings that did not come from Sinai?

I hear my Jewish friends ask over and over again? Why the Jews? Why do we continue to suffer if we are the chosen people? I would ask them—but probably won’t—Is there a condition to being chosen? Did we somehow not fulfill our end of the bargain? If so where do we find what was expected of us? Where are the terms of the covenant written down? Everyone claims that the covenant is the Torah—but which Torah? Did anything happen to add to or take away from the covenant given at Sinai? If so, who was given permission to alter it?

A Prophet Speaks:

Isa 24:4-5: “The land mourneth, it fadeth away; the world languisheth, it fadeth away: the haughty people of the land do languish. And the land is polluted under the inhabitants thereof; for they have violated the laws, changed the statute, broken the everlasting covenant.”

So what was the command about altering the words of the covenant?

G-d speaks to Moses:

“Ye shall not add to the word which I command you, neither shall ye take from it, that ye may keep the commandments of YHVH your God which I command you.” – Deu 4:2

“Everything that I command you, ye shall take heed to do it; thou shalt not add thereto, nor take from it.” – Deu 12:32

G-d speaks to Joshua:

“Only be strong and very courageous, that thou mayest take heed to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded thee. Turn not from it to the right or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest.” – Jos 1:7

The Wisdom of King Solomon:

“Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar.” – Pro 30:6

What did G-d tell Israel would happen if they changed the covenant?

The Torah:

“And YHVH will scatter thee among all peoples, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; and there thou shalt serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou nor thy fathers, even wood and stone. And among these nations shalt thou find no ease, and there shall be no rest for the sole of thy foot: but YHVH will give thee there a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and pining of soul; and thy life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear night and day, and shalt have no assurance of thy life.” – Deu 28:64-66

Moses Prophesies the Exile and Final Return in the Latter Days:

“I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that you will soon utterly perish from the land which you are going over the Jordan to possess; you will not live long upon it, but will be utterly destroyed. And the LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the LORD will drive you. … But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in tribulation, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the LORD your God and obey his voice, for the LORD your God is a merciful God; he will not fail you or destroy you or forget the covenant with your fathers which he swore to them.” – Deu 4:26-27, 29-31

So, I still am heartbroken from what I have seen, and my anxiety mounts that what was declared to never happen again will continue to happen. When I think of my friends, whose ancestors for more than 2000 years have embraced what they think is the true covenant–the Talmud and the many books written by ancient Jewish Sages, I feel hopeless to ever be able to communicate with them. I know several who have personally told me that they don’t know anything about the Bible, that they have never read it and that they think it may be too hard to understand. This all sounds like the same thing I heard from Catholic neighbors when I lived in Mexico. They told me that only a priest could explain the Bible, so they were dependent on going to mass and other things. Well, there you have it! It seems that Judaism, as it is known today, is almost a carbon copy of some things that are found in the Catholic religion. May we all seek the knowledge of the Great Book of Books and renew our covenant while there is still time. Hashem is merciful and will not allow us to be destroyed if our hearts are sincere and we are willing to learn from Him.

B’shalom

Ariella

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Rabbinic Authority—The Real Reason behind the Lie

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Or why was the Second Temple Destroyed?

Mainstream Judaism claims that “baseless hatred” between the varying factions during the era of the Second Temple was the reason for its destruction. See My Jewish Learning

“The Jewish Amoraim attributed the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem as punishment from God for the “baseless” hatred that pervaded Jewish society at the time.” Wikipedia

This exemplifies the reasoning claimed for the story of the Oven of Akhnai from the Talmud, circa 2nd century CE. The story shows the rabbis’ desire to solidify the beliefs of Judaism into one stream and avoid sectarianism in Judaism and this would be accomplished by establishing Torah Law on the studied opinion of the majority of the leading rabbis. They claim as the basis for their authority:

Deu. 17:11

“According to the sentence of the law which they shall teach thee, and according to the judgment which they shall tell thee, thou shalt do: thou shalt not decline from the sentence which they shall shew thee, to the right hand, nor to the left.”

A closer examination of this text shows that this is not it’s context—see the entire chapter. A thorough look at Deu 17 reveals:

1. The context concerns disputes -verse 8, it was not about authority over Torah Law as given on Sinai nor its openness for change by the leadership of the day.

2. The context involves the case where there is a controversy in a town over a matter that the people of that town cannot resolve without outside help, in this situation, the people of the town were to take the matter to the Cohanim and Levites, see verse 9. (Note, there is nothing here to establish the authority of Yeshiva-trained rabbis as a qualified replacement for the Torah designated hierarchy of Priests and Levites, yet strangely today, this has become the recognized authority of the Jewish people.) How did this happen?

3. The resolution to the case in Deuteronomy had to be completed “in the place that YHVH should choose” not wherever the leadership chose to work on it. See verse 9. This refers to the Holy Mountain in Jerusalem where the Temple should stand—not some diasporic location wherever there is group of recognized rabbis. So how did a chief rabbi of England or New York or any other country come to be if the Holy Mountain where the Temple stood was to be the place of Torah authority?

In the story of the famous Oven, already mentioned, the change that this sect of leadership made was that the laws of Torah not be interpreted by individual groups of Torah students nor by Heaven itself, but by they themselves whom they established as the majority at the time. And thus they claimed were given this authority by G-d Himself. They quoted the following verse:

“It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will go up to heaven for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us, and get it for us so that we may hear it and observe it?’ No, the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe” (Deuteronomy 30:12-14).

This verse as it is used here, was taken out of context. Look at the first part of this chapter in Deu. 30:

1 And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before thee, and thou shalt call them to mind among all the nations, whither the YHVH thy God hath driven thee, 2 And shalt return unto the YHVH your God, and shalt obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children, with all thine heart, and with all thy soul.

To whom should those in Exile return? To YHVH their G-d, and “obey His voice, not to a self-appointed leadership who have reinterpreted the Torah to their own understanding. (And yes they have added to and taken from the original words of Torah and have assumed the right to do this by ridding themselves of Heaven’s Voice and altering Scripture to fit their claim.

First of all those in the Exile– (the exile itself was a result of not following the voice of The LORD your GOD), these must return to listen to His voice—not that of any group. That is what we saw in Deuteronomy 30:1-2, and also:

Deu 4:30

“When thou art in tribulation, and all these things are come upon thee, in the latter days, if thou turn to the LORD thy God, and shalt be obedient unto his voice; 31 For the LORD thy God is a merciful God; he will not forsake thee, neither destroy thee, nor forget the covenant of thy fathers which he sware unto them.” (Note this does not say that they should go study with the rabbis or join a Yeshiva to know what is the correct Halakhah of YHVH, simply put: it says to turn to Him, and remember the covenant that He gave to the forefathers).

Deu 30:8

“And thou shalt return and obey the voice of the LORD, and do all his commandments which I command thee this day.” (Again taken from Deuteronomy 30, the same chapter where verses 12-14 are used to qualify the rabbinic stand against hearing Heaven’s voice. Look again! It says to “do all his commandments which I command thee this day. This is Moses speaking, right? So do we obey the voice of Moses or not?)

Rabbinic thought conveys the following:

“This idea is reflected in another well-known Midrash relating to the giving of the Torah. Moshe Rabbeinu, the Gemara (Menachot 29b) tells us, is transported to the Beit Midrash of Rabbi Akiva and is disheartened that he cannot follow the discussion. Only when Rabbi Akiva explained the source of a law as being halacha leMoshe miSinai was Moshe pacified. Note the Gemara does not say that Moshe now understood the conversation. He did not, but that mattered little; what mattered was that this law originated with him at Sinai. Just as scientific principles are developed and applied in all kinds of ways far beyond what the one who discovered such could ever imagine, so Torah ideas are developed and applied to an ever-changing world. Halacha as the intersection of an unchanging Torah and constantly changing reality can look very different in different time periods or places. Only by “changing” the halacha given at Sinai can we assure the continued relevance of Sinai.” Quoted from Torah in Motion

But this thought is a polar opposite to what the Bible says! Was the Torah as given to Moses to be eternal?

Speaking of the End Times and the final return of God’s people, Mal 4:4 states:

“Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.”

Neither is this argument–that the Torah is to be observed as the leadership of the day decides– born out in God’s instructions to Joshua when he was called to lead the people of Israel.

Jos 1:7

“Only be strong and very courageous, that thou mayest take heed to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded thee. Turn not from it to the right or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whither soever thou goest.”

And no, they do not listen to God. I refer in particular of the above incident of the Oven of Akhnai, where the majority of the rabbis clearly stated that they do not listen to Heaven. (And this became a standard from that point onward).

“Torah is not in heaven (Devarim 30:12)…and we don’t pay attention to heavenly voices.”See Torah in Motion

There are many things to be discovered about who what when and why the Rabbis came to replace the chosen priesthood of YHVH and how they now had the right to shoulder full responsibility for the definition of law and the direction of the Jewish people. How did this change in leadership which has completely stolen and replaced the direction of Heaven and God’s ordained priesthood come to be? It has been a long journey which started back in the days before the building of the second Temple. It happened in Babylon and Persia, where the Jews were exiled after having left the worship of the Eternal, schools were established in these lands of exile and the authority over the people was switched out of the Hands of God to the self-imposed leadership of Yeshiva-trained rabbis. It almost seems a direct copy of what we see in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic religion. And the question is, who copied whom? But we will save that for a later discussion.

“The Rabbis, in dramatic fashion and super hyperbole, make very clear that it is the Rabbis and not G-d who determine Jewish Law. To phrase it somewhat differently, it is the Rabbis who are authorized to interpret G-d’s Torah, even over the objections of the Divine author Himself[2]. It matters little what G-d had in mind. It sounds heretical, but such is the nature of Torah and the will of G-d.” See Torah in Motion by Rabbi Jay Kelman.

And as I mentioned earlier, it was the voice of the majority that was to rule in basic Torah Halakhah, even in the case where Heaven itself was in the minority: see following:

“In the Talmud the phrase aḥarei rabbim le-hattot was converted into a decisory canon: “where there is a controversy between an individual and the many, the halakhah follows the many” (Ber. 9a). The sages of the Talmud explained the existence of this rule as a practical necessity, for if the Torah had been given in the form of an exhaustive codex, “the world could not have existed” (TJ, Sanh. 4:2, 22a; cf. Mid. Ps. 82:3). The halakhic opinion that has prevailed is that the law is decided in accordance with the view expressed by a majority of the scholars, and this is so even if in a particular matter a heavenly voice (see *Bat-Kol) should declare that the law is according to the minority opinion (BM 59a).” Jewish Virtual Library.

One thing we see from this is the attempt to cover up the real reason for the destruction of the second Temple. It is universally believed that Sinat Chinam or “baseless hatred” was the principle reason for the destruction of the Temple by Rome. We have seen that it had a lot more to do with the desire of the rabbis to change the validity of the Torah of Moses and replace it with an Oral Torah–one that they could manipulate by popular rabbinic vote.

It is as if the Almighty got up from His Earthly dwelling, packed His bags and shook off the dust from the mountains of man made laws and left the Holy Precinct. And as if He remarked: “They want to create their own Torah, then let them, and see what happens when my Throne is no longer in My House! And that is pretty much what happened.

Ezekiel 9:8-9:

“And I fell face down and cried out, “Oh, Lord GOD, when You pour out Your wrath on Jerusalem, will You destroy the entire remnant of Israel?”

9He replied, “The iniquity of the house of Israel and Judah is exceedingly great. The land is full of bloodshed, and the city is full of perversity. For they say, ‘The LORD has forsaken the land; the LORD does not see.’ 10But as for Me, I will not look on them with pity, nor will I spare them. I will bring their deeds down upon their own heads.”

Ezekiel 5:11:

“Therefore, as I live, declares the Lord GOD, surely, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable things and with all your abominations, therefore I will withdraw. My eye will not spare, and I will have no pity.”

This is what happened which set the stage for two millennia of Jews to embrace the twisted truths that were taught—the very things the ancient rabbis who came out of Babylon used to establish their throne of leadership and replace the Seat of the Most High God. But can we make a change today?

We must!

Ariella Tiqvah