Time for Temple and Torah

My journey in the religious world often confronts me with challenges that go against a gut instinct, that for most of us defines truth. I am not saying that my gut is the standard of truth for it has been wrong in the past and has a need for fine-tuning just as a piano or navigational guidance system in planes or ships must be frequently adjusted.

But with the mind and matters as important as truth, what shall our compass be set to? What is our North Star? What IS our measure of ground zero truth? I often hear a voice in my head, the voice of my father who would say in a deep and dramatic tone: “Only those who have made the Bible their unyielding foundation of truth will be able to stand in the last battle.” And as my journey unfolds, I see many paths that branch off to one side or another, paths that seem to be right but are based on men’s assertions and interpretations of the Bible.

These paths are crooked paths and lead either to the steep cliff of unbelief or into a circling maze of religious confusion. In my study of Judaism, I more frequently than not am invited to study passages of the Talmud, the Gemara, the Mishnah—books which in themselves show the wisdom of the day in which they were written but are clearly not the original Tanakh and Torah. They are claimed to be the Oral Torah, equal to the written Torah of Moses and the true interpretation and codification of the Torah.

I have been pointed to the authority of the sages of the Mishnah and Talmud time and again and shown several passages in the Torah about the setting up of the Great Assembly, Sanhedrin, Seventy Elders, and the Shoftim (judges). What are these verses?

From the Parsha Shoftim (Deuteronomy) 16:18-19:

“Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, which the Lord thy God gives thee, throughout thy tribes: and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a bribe: for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise, and perverts the words of the righteous.”

Deuteronomy 17:8-13:

“If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between plague and plague, matters of controversy within thy gates: then shalt thou arise, and go up to the place which the Lord thy God shall choose; and thou shalt come to the priests the Levites, and to the judge that shall be in those days, and inquire; and they shall tell thee the sentence of judgment: according to the sentence of the Torah which they shall teach thee, and according to the judgment which they shall tell thee, thou shalt do: thou shalt not deviate from the sentence which they shall tell thee, to the right hand, or to the left.

And the man that will act presumptuously, and will not hearken to the priest that stands to minister there before the Lord thy God, or to the judge, that man shall die: and thou shalt put away the evil from Yisra᾽el. And all the people shall hear, and fear, and do no more presumptuously.”

Now that could be scary and is for most Jews. DO NOT defy the sages or you have a death sentence?!

But what is this really saying? Look closely! there are at least three qualifications:

“…come to the priests, the Levites, and to the judge that shall be in those days.” (1.The rabbis are not the priests and Levites as far as I know. 2. “in those days”: each time period has its own priests and Levites, not the counsel of long-dead sages. )

“according to the sentence of the Torah which they shall teach thee.” (3. most importantly! “ACCORDING TO THE SENTENCE OF THE TORAH,” the Torah is not speaking of any Torah other than the written Torah here. The Oral Torah that evolved over the centuries was not needed when this was written for Moshe was alive and understood the Torah perfectly.)

To summarize the above requirements; the group of judges, priests, and Levites compose the ultimate court which must judge from the place that Hashem has chosen (Jerusalem, and the Temple). They must be obeyed. They are present at the day when the judgment is needed and they base their judgment on the Torah of Moses, nothing more. Seems pretty simple, doesn’t it? But we don’t generally even know who the priests and Levites are in our day and there is no Temple yet, so what do we have?

But well-meaning rabbinic schools and rabbis that have been educated for many years in the writings of the sages, suggest that the Torah of Moshe had several laws that could not be understood as they are written and for this the Oral Torah came down from Moshe. (From history we know that the claim that the Oral Torah passed from Moshe to Joshua and onward is askew, we know that the Yeshivas in Babylon were where most of this started, we have the Babylonian Talmud, don’t we? And what existed before that?)

The arguments for Oral Torah base their logic on places where Elohim said to Moshe concerning a particular law, “as I have shown you on the Mount.” These included things like the slaughtering of Kosher animals for meat, the boiling of a kid in it’s mother’s milk, and the building of the Mishkan and other things.

So, let’s keep this simple; If the three guiding rules above are kept, all we need is to have a Temple, vetted and verified priests and Levites and a requirement that they make judgments based on the written Torah itself.

Is that even possible?

Deuteronomy 30:11-15:

“For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldst say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it, and do it? Nor is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldst say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it, and do it?

But the word is very near to thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayst do it. See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil;“

So if it is so simple, why do we need anything else?

Once we see that we need a temple in Jerusalem and that we need to reinstate the Levites and Cohenim to their rightful positions, then they are qualified to judge from the Torah itself any matter that concerns us and then we must be careful not to defy their judgment. We also read a warning about their decisions—they are not to be decided by majority rule if they pervert justice:

Exodus 23:2-3:

“Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil; neither shalt thou speak in a cause to incline after a multitude to pervert justice: nor shalt thou favour a poor man in his cause.”

To a lot of us, this is simple enough… Why aren’t we doing it?