There is currently a growing interest in Torah, and in broad circles there is a feeling of a need to return and connect to the roots and sources.
However, one of the common mistakes is the prevailing perception that since there are "seventy faces to the Torah," everyone can interpret the Torah as they wish.
This mistaken assumption stems from another error, which sees the Oral Torah as a type of 'late interpretation.'.
If the sages of the Mishnah and Talmud are allowed to 'interpret' the Torah, so can I. These statements reflect a lack of understanding of the essence of the Torah.
What is a 'craft'?
The Oral Torah was not born in a 'late' period, but immediately upon the giving of the Torah.
Take the Ten Commandments, for example. Is the written text clear enough for you to know exactly what you are to do? For example, the commandment to "remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.".
How do you keep the Sabbath holy? And what is the prohibition "You shall not do any work" - who defines what work is forbidden on the Sabbath? One will say that 'work' is work in a factory, while another will claim that even cutting vegetables for a salad is 'work'.
When the Torah was given, the Israelites were required to keep it immediately. If they had heard at Mount Sinai that it was forbidden to do work on the Sabbath, they should have immediately known what 'work' was. They could not wait for 'later interpretations.'.
The Torah is written in great conciseness. Many commandments were actually stated in codes. Let ten people interpret the commandment, "And bind them as a sign upon your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes," and you will get ten interpretations. But the Israelites were to put on tefillin immediately, so it is clear that along with the written commandment, they were given a detailed oral explanation of how to fulfill the commandment.
This is actually the Oral Torah. There are no 'interpretations' here, but rather the Torah given by God at Mount Sinai.
. One part of the Torah was given in writing, and another part was delivered to Moses our Rabbi orally. For this purpose, Moses ascended Mount Sinai and stayed there for forty days. There, while on the mountain, he received from God the Oral Torah and the rules by which the Torah should be studied. When he came down from the mountain, he conveyed the words to the people of Israel, and thus the Torah was passed down from generation to generation – the Written Torah and its interpretation given orally.
Why did they write?
The Oral Torah was passed down from father to son and from generation to generation. It was not written down due to the principle "What is spoken by mouth you are not permitted to put in writing." It began to be written down out of necessity, when the decrees of the Roman Empire increased and a gap began to form between the generations.
Rabbi Yehuda the President feared that the Torah would be forgotten, so he wrote the Mishnah, which summarizes the main points of the Torah that had been transmitted orally until then.
But the Mishnah was also written very concisely, with the assumption that its interpretation would be passed on orally. Over time, it became clear that here too there was a concern that the words would be forgotten, and so the Gemara was written.
The Oral Torah is therefore the authoritative interpretation of the Written Torah, and contains the rules by which it must be studied. Within this there is room for 'seventy faces,' but they must be faithful to the rules of the Torah, and then a person is entitled to lay a true foundation in the magnificent edifice of the Torah of Israel.
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