Chaptzem Blog!      

Oh so she isn't leaving because she is sorry for her deeds. She planted the seeds and is letting others continue her work how generous. To allow and to offer other people to go of the derech away from Klall yisroel whose families will suffer for generations to come in both universes. Sad extremely painful and doesn't she realize that there is the one above. Hopefully she will merit to do tshuva in this world. May Hashem bring Mossiach soon.

 

I don't understand. She works to help people leave a Torahdik lifestyle, yet she is going to an Orthodox-run law school. Smells like opportunism to me. Cardozo should not have admitted her. (I am Modern, by the way, and I feel that she is a pernicious influence).

 

This is a strong argument against Charedi Orthodoxy and in favor of Modern Orthodoxy. If the people accessing this organization would have had the opportunity to be Orthodox and yet worldly, they would still be frum today.

 

she's not leading anyone from the derech. These are disenchanted kids who want help with education, and might otherwise end up on drugs and alcohol or worse. I'm happy for her because I know that she must have struggled to get to where she's at today. Good Luck Ms. Schwartz.

 

Number 3 that is a poor excuse there are many opportunities in this Golden America to stay firm and frum at the same time. This isn't the late 1800 or early 1900
hundreds the yetzer hora is still around and kicking strong. This is the easy way out and they don't have to be chassidish at least let them be yiddish let them have responsiblity and deal with it. Thank you CHAPTZEM for telling us about this because your site is the only one so far to discuss it. Keep up your excellent work. Ilove your phots and your clips. Thank you for keeping a picture clean site all the time. Make lots of money and have fun doing so.

 

If she is going to law school in this economy, she is a moron. The supply of lawyers is incredibly above the demand. And to graduate with $150,000 in debt, and facing no jobs, especially from a lousy law school like Touro?

"All reports are that business is completely dead in the Big Apple. The record number of New York bar passers last testing - over 90% - has flooded the already saturated market to over 100,000 lawyers. They are willing to do anything and to put up with any working conditions.

I applied to work at Target and Starbucks many times, but did not get hired. I figured that at least I would have a permanent job and some life and benefits. But neither I nor my friends ever got a job. Because the law school scam put us on the wrong track.

You can't talk people thinking of going to law school out of it. Even at $200k they still see it as a great path. But it's actually disqualifying them for a job at WALMART."

I am a lawyer, who baruch hashem was lucky to inhabit a niche (which I will not reveal). But so many of my friends, lawyers with real experience, sometimes decades, are pounding the pavement. Even bottom of the barrel document review jobs that pay $30 an hour are being outsourced to India.

 

Before demonizing her why don't you have a look at the work she does ?

If you do have an accusation to make, please support it with FACTS.

 

We aren't demeanozing her she herself has done that at the Zev Brenner show. He has apologized for having her on he also got her to admit that she has her meetings at traifa resteraunts and encourages our people to try it. I heard her myself and it was really sad to listen to it. I have a feeling she is becomming a lawyer to defend her organization and everything that goes with it. I hope she does tshuva and with some miracle all the members she introduced to the traifa world will do so as well.

 

Fact's
a)how about teaching evolution is this part of helping people in need. or is this Denying g-d
Yes Foot steps is offering courses in evolution
SHAME ON YOU !

 

the org only services those over 18...so they dont work with kids, only adults who have made a choice.

cardozo may be run by yu, but it is a secular institution as it gets federal funding...it cannot discriminate against anyone.

to those who think that what malkie has done is horrible, please explain how it would be better if the adults who have gone off the derech would be better served with no support at all

 

They don't need to being misled they help in the opposit direction.

 

Chot'ah umachti'ah es harabim.

The rule that one must judge everyone favorably does not apply to a mesis. In the case of a mesis it is forbidden to find a tzad zechus, and one must look for every possible tzad chovah.

 

I have nothing against her opening up a place to help people that went off the derech to get their lives together.What I do have a problem is that she is kind of inviting people to go off the derech/making people that are off the derech become worse.If she wants a place to help people of the derech fine.But leave religon out of it.Don't encourage people to go to treif resturaunts.The only reason whay her grandmother gave her money is because now that her granddaughter has left this life style that she does not support she will gladly support her grandaughter and her orginization financially.I know the deal because I have not-frum relatives who would gladly give me an excellent paying job and would suppoort me financially if I stopped being frum.I however am going to remain frum! My frei relatives especially my uncle would get the biggest joy if I ever chas vashalom became frei!

 

The Evolution lectures at Foo-steps are like the 'icing on the cake' or the 'cherry on the pie' desert, the 'finally' its time to roll down the rollup gates and shut foo-steps doors.

 

Footsteps DOES discriminate here is how, if someone who wants to get a GED but wants to remain frum, they will not allow him or she to attend the GED courses, I believe footsteps has some sort of Government funding I one should question this discrimination is their going to get Government funding.

 

HERE IN THIS WONDERFUL COUNTRY B"H M'DARF NISHT SH'MADN YIDDISHE KINDER NOT FOR a G.E.D.& NOT EVEN FOR A COLLEGE DEGREE. B"H there are OTHER fine ORGANIZATIONS that help teenagers in need!

* Be carfull kinderlach, taking the first STEP into the big world. It may be very dangerius out there!

 

I knew her 20-25 years ago, and she was ALWAYS a kook, a flirt, b'klal NOT a very frum & tzeniusdige woman. I am sorry for her family, esp. in Crowm Hts.

 

I am familiar with many people who were helped to leave shmiras mitzvos through this organization. Support may be fine, but not when it legitimizes anything that is kineged halacha. This news does not affect me much. The organization is probably continuing its activity with its own momentum. Her absence will not mean that fewer people are helped to leave Yiddishkeit. Same old, same old.

 

To the commenter of 6:56pm:
You wrote, "I knew her 20-25 years ago, and she was ALWAYS a kook, a flirt, b'klal NOT a very frum & tzeniusdige woman."

The linked article says she is 27. If you can describe her that way based on an acquaintance of 25 years ago, she must be incredibly precocious. Or maybe you are thinking of a different person entirely.

 

What a Reshanta,not enough that she herself is not religious,but to be mechtah Es Horabim,she is as bad as the guy in Monsey with the treife chickens. Hope (if they dont do teshuvah)they both end up the same way.

 

I wish an organization like Footsteps had been created 30 years ago. It would have delivered my mind from the rancid chumra-obsessed doctrine that has become today's chareidi standard.
30 years wasted with useless pietistic drivel !

 

TO THE FACULTY OF-CARDOZO COLLEGE, WE ASSUME THAT YOU ECCEPT STUDENT FROM ALL WALKS OF LIFE & BACKGROUNDS, BUT NOW BE CARFULL DONT LET A SNAKE WRANGLE YOUR YIDDISHE STUDENTS!CHAZAK!

 

inavaem"Foot-Steps" Take off the "star of david" from your home page you are not a jewish org.

 

YAD-L'ACHIM FROM ERETZ-YISROEL WE NEED YOU HERE IN AMERICA TO FIGHT OUR OWN MISSIONARY'S 'H'YISHMERENU

 

Footsteps doesn't make anyone leave frumkeit. Our ridiculous frum world is what makes people want to leave. All the chumras, mishugasen, hypocricy, and corrupt rabbonim are what turn people off. All the molesters and the yeshivas that protect them are what makes people want to leave.

Footsteps only helps people adjust once they've left so they don't end up on drugs or with an unhealthy crowd. Yes, it's takeh sad that people leave, but we have only ourselves to blame for turning so many precious yiddishe neshamos away from Hashem yisbarach.

Malkie created this organization not so that people should leave, but that people who are unhappy and suffering should be allowed to live a satisfying life on their terms. If you have a problem with people going off the derech, turn your rage to all the chillul Hashem and gashmius in our 'heilege' community before blaming those who aren't responsible.

 

Cardozo Law School is a religious place? Hmm... I guess that should explain why the mezuzas were found to be empty there :-) Ask around or go look for yourself.

And did you know that 60% of the students at Cardozo are NOT JEWISH AT ALL!!!

 

Anything that can be seen as a threat to your religious jewish communities is considered to be a busha etc. Whatever. Malkie is one of the most amazing people I have had the FORTUNE to have met. There isnt one rabbi I could say that about. I can tell you of all the sexual and physical abuse I received from your pious rabbis and good upstanding community members. You would sooner defend the child molesters to prevent a "busha". How sad you all are. Why don't you all go back to your shtetls and shut off your internet - because people like myself are pumping it full of shtus that you might chas visholom see. Footsteps actually offers an education and resources that your frum communities feel are unimportant and offers people who want to go to them help that has no hooks or conditions in the name of god - a real shot at a prosperous and fulfilling life - you have no choice but to live by your halachos and holy torah - no one is stopping you - so many of you are miserable and cant admit it to yourselves - live and let live. They do not recruit people like the lubavitchers do - missionaries recruiting non-religious jews to live a life they will never be fully accepted in anyway as outcast baal tshuvas - you people are so skewed. Go deal with the serious issues you refuse to accept within your communities and leave the real tzadikim alone.

-NG

 

shaya,

i agree with you 100% i left the community way b4 footsteps was created. i was hurt, beaten,abused and neglected in the frum community. footsteps only helped me with getting into college, and have a great community that support me. if you guys want to blame anyone blame yourselves.
how many wrong doings go on in your communities that you ignore. you say nothing. you just blame the people who cant take it anymore and leave the fold. WAKE UP.

 

Guys, help me out here. I see everybody complaining how she shouldn't do that or this. She should only help a little but not help them leave yiddishkeit. What I don't get is, who the hell asked you. I mean if I want to leave, why should you have any say in how I lead my life. Nobody is bothering you so why do you think you should have a say in what someone else does???

I'm not trying to be offensive, but I left the community and I don't see why you should decide how I lead my life. This IS America after all.

The other thing, it's quite obvious that you guys are angry, and maybe I can understand that. But what I don't understand is how you feel that that gives you a right to spread lies and say things about her when it's obvious you don't really know her. Wouldn't you think that it'll be more effective if you can come up with a factual complaint instead of regurgitating what you read on a general pashkevil??

I also happen to know that people who come to them are encouraged to do whatever they want, i.e. if they still want to be religious they won't try to make them leave. Granted, most people who come want to leave, but those people come from their own will. Once I decided that I wanted to leave, would you rather I live on the street or that I go to college and do what I would like to do. And to stress the point, why should I or they care what you'd like for me to do, it's my life after all...

Now instead of making general claims and doing lushen hura, I would suggest you only say things that you "actually' know instead of just assume, if anyone here wants to be taken seriously.

 

You people are pathetic! You have absolutely no idea what Footsteps stands for and what they do. Your priorities seem very clear, you only objective is for someone to be frum, even if they are unhappy, even if they suffer! So long as they follow the Torah, you are content.

Let us say that you the reader made the decision to leave the frum community, were would you turn? How would you begin to get around the secular world? How would you find a job without anyone supporting you and/or telling you what to do or how to interview etc. How would you write a resume? (Sorry, the frum community does not address any of the above mentioned needs).

Footsteps addresses a very very important need. The need is for those adults

-I'm not now and never was "at risk". I never did and never will take drugs! I am extremely insulted when people repeatedly imply and say that big propaganda lie that everyone who is a "ugefurehneh" or "freis out" is "at risk" or "has problems" (I am insulted but you don't really care, because I am NOT FRUM, I'm worthless in your eyes) anyway-

adults who choose to leave the frum community, and are seeking to create a normal regular life for themselves.

Making up stories about Malkie, such a kindhearted and caring person, is simply showing that you only want to condemn people who leave and you will never even address any issue within the Frum community itself.

 

"The rule that one must judge everyone favorably does not apply to a mesis. In the case of a mesis it is forbidden to find a tzad zechus, and one must look for every possible tzad chovah."

If she's a mesis, I'm Donald Duck. She's just another confused little girl, who still hasn't found herself. I wish her the best of luck in her endeavors.

 

MAY Be "JEWS FOR JUICE" HAS A POSITION FOR THIS SWEET AND EVIL MALKA=QUEEN

 

I would like to publicly thank Malkie Shwartz, Michael Jenkins and the Footsteps organization for:
1. Helping me with my GED (getting me three separate tutors)
2. Explaining to me what college is and helping me apply.
3. Helping me with my resume and cover letter, so I can get a normal job.
4. Telling me how to act in a professional manner in an interview.
5. Setting me up with a therapist I can afford
6. Helping me, yes, make peace with Yiddishkait (which hasn’t been such a positive experience growing up.)

Keep up the great work guys and Malkie, lots of luck with your future endeavors!

 

SHE IS THE "LAVAN HARAAASHA" of our TIME-BIZMANEINU,& IT WAS PROVEN!

 

I find the senseless allegations about the frum community offensive and reflecting of the shame of the commenters. The issue is not really Malkie. The stated goal of having supportive services for those who have chosen to leave frumkeit might well be laudable. My personal experience with way too many individuals is that this organization made the departure not only comfortable but inviting. That there are problems in the frum community is true, but Torah and mitzvos are not the problem. Shabbos and kashrus are not the problem, nor are the restrictions about arayos (negiya, taharas hamishpocho, etc.) or tzniyus. To hold functions in places where treif food is served is a powerful message. To guide people to abandon their families, leave their shuls and communities, mingle with crowds who find Yiddishkeit distasteful is a clear message and goal.

Yes, we have molesters and abusers, we also have others who break rules. We do not have the resources to manage these problems successfully, though efforts to do so are increasing. You commenters are simply bitter, and equate Hashem with the faults of mortals. How dare you. That is rude, baseless, and smacks of what the Chazal tell us: Yidden never worshipped avoda zarah except in order to permit arayos for themselves. The mission is self-serving, not lishmo. I am happy for those who achieved their GED and admission to college. I am sad for those whose connection to Torah and mitzvos was uprooted and the disconnect encouraged by this misguided organization. I daven for all those who have been the victims of this movement – may HKB”H shower them with his brachos of saichel and love so that they return to Him.

 

I like footsteps bec they are not a cult like every other community out there.

 

All the pro footsteps posts and the footsteps classes in evolution are Le, eeloy nishmas Sender Deutsch who was volunteer and helped out footsteps then committed suicide.

 

The more I read the arguments most of the religious people here present, the more I realize how futile it is to appeal to you with logic. I hope one day most of you will take the emotional blindfolds off and take hard look at your actions.

How can I argue with people who judge and assume things about what/who they do not know?

How can I appeal to people who use the freedoms granted in the U.S. to restrict the freedoms of others?

How can I view favorably those who view others unfavorably (and make disparaging remarks) solely based on observance of a specific religion?

So go, placate your religious feverish emotions. Curse and judge us who dare to think.

 

" Curse and judge us who dare to think."????

Only judging those who make a mockery of their ancestors who died rather than eat non-Kosher. Only judging those who consider our Torah outdated. Only judging those who stab their mostly well-intentioned parents in the back. They are pioneers of what?

 

"Da Ma Sh'tashiv L'apikoress"
the TORAH is here to stay, was here for generations before these-----were born and will stay here forever, long after these------- are gone!

"Malaa Haaretz KEVOD 'H'
Ma Rabu Maasecha 'H'

 

That is called appealing to emotion. Look it up (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_consequences) . There is only one reason why you'd do that. You think we're logically right to leave but not emotionally, so you appeal to emotion. In which case, you just agreed with me that's logical for me to leave. If you think it's illogical to leave, than please state your reasons.

Either way the parents argument is hypocritical. I don't see you saying the same thing when a non religious person becomes religious or when a non-Jew becomes Jewish. If your only concern was our parents than you wouldn't allow anyone to do anything different than what their parents did. Have you never done something different than wheat your parents wanted you to do? If so, you agree that one must do what one sees fit, even of their parents disagree.

The fact that our ancestors died for their beliefs only makes my argument stringer. Since you agree that one must follow their beliefs no matter the consequences - even death, you support me that I need to stick to my current beliefs even if you all and my parents are against it. You wouldn't ask me to do something different from what I believe is best, now would you? By the way, what's wrong with considering the Torah outdated, if that is how I see it? You didn't give a counter argument.

 

" what's wrong with considering the Torah outdated, if that is how I see it?"

Because you haven't created the world, G-d did. And in another life, when YOU create the world and miraculously give YOUR Torah to hundreds of thousands of witnesses, I'll be on YOUR line. He he

Hafoch ba v'hafoch Ba, d'kula ba!

 

What if I don't believe in god. What's your evidence than. If all your evidence is from the Torah, than if I don't believe in the Torah, your evidence isn't acceptable. If you'd quote the Torah to a Buddhist, he'd never accept it as evidence, so why do you expect me to accept it?

So far you haven't given a single logical justification why it's acceptable to spread these lies!

 

Well, there's the classic answer, if I dont see, feel, hear and touch and believe you have a brain, does that mean you don't have one?

 

"My Realty" , Do you really believe that millions of Jews today are lying that their parents told them that our ancestors heard "Anochi hashem elokecha"? And if they are not lying, are their grandparents lying? and so on till the generation that were after the one that witnessed it? Could 600,000 people (at the very least) have lied to their children (the ones that weren't born by the time of har sinai)???

I'm not saying I know it's true because the Torah says so, rather I know the Torah is true because our parents said so, all the way back to har sinai.

Just like we know that George washington lived not because of the history books, but rather because our parents (and/or teachers) told us that they know (from their parents/teachers) that the history books about George Washington is true.

Testimony of an event by thousands of witnesses (like those that lived in the times of G. Washington) which is transmitted to others, is certainly more proof then even Finding his house and his name written on paper which who's to say weren't made up by some guy writing a novel. Rather we believe the story because of the tradition of the facts of the event. Same to about Matan Torah.

A quick note about the other faiths, similarly we believe that father told to child what his father told him... but where did it start with 1 to 12 people? Certainly thousands of people are more reliable then them. Also miracles are not proof that it's performers are divine, so you can even believe that those miracles (of other faiths) occurred, but to conclude that this or that one is a deity, that's matter of opinion, not a mater of fact.

Conclusion: Did you really check all the facts before you left? Here's a place to find some of them http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/111581/jewish/Mind-Over-Matter.htm

 

It's true, you can never be hundred percent sure of anything you didn't see yourself. But that would mean I shouldn't believe China exists since I didn't see it myself. Therefore, it's logically acceptable to believe something for which there are many "independent" sources confirming the same event. I believe in George Washington, because there is much evidence that he existed, and for one thing, it's the many "independent" historical writers that wrote about him 'at the time'. Now I wouldn't believe in someone just because I found their name on a paper, but I would believe if there was physical archeological evidence of it. If you'd know anything about the science of archeology, which I do, you'd know that that's how it works. They claim something after there was much 'physical' archeological evidence. There is much 'physical' archeological evidence that George Washington existed.

Therefore, the simple fact that our parents said so, doesn't constitute as evidence for a rational observer unless it comes with many independent physical observations. Besides, most of the historical claims for which there is only weak evidence, doesn't make a difference one way or another, so weak evidence is enough. Now evidence for a god, would require stronger evidence.

Now to the Sinai claim. The story says that many Jews saw it, however, there is no archeological evidence that this happened except the written books of believers. This is not acceptable independent evidence for such a claim - that they saw god. I'm not denying that there were that many Jews at Sinai, but that the event there happened. Secondly, even if it's true, why should I believe that they saw god? Maybe it was a magician or something else. How did they know it was god? You said miracles are not evidence, than what evidence did they have to conclude that they saw god?

Even if they saw god, there is no reason to accept their judgment. Just because many saw an event, doesn't mean it's true. Even you accept that, since you don't believe in UFO's or Jesus or other religions that have mass eyewitnesses. There are many examples of current mass UFO sightings http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-470579/UFO-sightings-bring-town-standstill.html and I wouldn't say they lied, but I just don't accept their judgment as don't you. Therefore, the fact that many claim to have seen an event doesn't make a difference. People can be easily mislead, and a mass even more easily. Eyewitness account have long been scientifically shown to be suspect http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/zaid.htm So it's safe to say that I wouldn't accept eyewitness accounts as evidence for anything major, especially, for something that there is independent reasons to question anyway.

Consequently, without any independent physical evidence or observations, and due to the unreliability of eyewitness, I cannot accept a such a story to be used as evidence for anything such as the existence of god and the truth of the bible. You'd have to give me something stronger in order for me to believe in god and the amount of people claiming an event does not count as it. After all, anything you can claim another religion usually claims just as well.

As for the link, I'm not going to respond to everything that has been written there, and you cannot expect me to do so. I can give many links to different sites that answer all these questions. You can find them on Google easily. If you want me to respond to something, you'd have to give me a specific debating point. However, for me personally, I did read through at least one part, the part about evolution - since I studied that. And I can tell he has no idea what he's talking about. In other words, he's talking about science, but from what he's saying, he apperently doesn't know anthing about science. I'll illestrate here a little.

He says "In a chemical reaction, whether fissional or fusional, the introduction of a new catalyzer into the process, however minute the quantity of his new catalyzer may be, may change the whole tempo and form of the chemical process, or start an entirely new process."

Fission and fusion has absolutely nothing to do with chemical reactions, they are nuclear and not even in the neighborhood of chemical. http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/story/chapter13.html

It is small wonder (and this, incidentally, is one of the obvious refutations of these theories) that the various scientific theories concerning the age of the universe not only contradict each other, but some of them are quite incompatible and mutually exclusive, since the maximum date of one theory is less than the minimum date of another.

This is absolutely not true, http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html

If you are still troubled by the theory of evolution, I can tell you without fear of contradiction that it has not a shred of evidence to support it. On the contrary, during the years of research and investigation since the theory was first advanced, it has been possible to observe certain species of animal and plant life of a short life-span over thousands of generations, yet it has never been possible to establish a transmutation from one species into another, much less to turn a plant into an animal. Hence such a theory can have no place in the arsenal of empirical science.

I don't know how to say this more strongly, but the person who wrote this paragraph has absolutely 100% no idea what the theory of evolution or its evidence are. To say that "it has not a shred of evidence to support it" is an absolute lie, since I have seen with my own eyes much evidence for it. In fact I have studied fossils as well as genetics. And you can see here evidence http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_3.htm
The claim that we have never seen one species turn into another is false as well, see #5.0 on http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
And him saying that we haven't seen a plant turn into an animal again shows that he doesn't know anything about evolution because no scientist has ever ever claimed that was possible.

In conclusion, that link was written by someone who doesn't know a thing about science or the evidence for it, so I can't see a point for me to debate claims made by such a person. It would be like debating you about events that happened in China.

 

And now with this pandamic staring at us, in our faces! and the only remedy is Wash your Hands, and wear your Masks.

Its time you "mitgemachte Kinder" wash your Hands,Take off your APICORESS Mask and get real! may be a TFILAH of yours can heal, and prevent from such a horrible plague to befall, this fall on mankind!

 

Mr/Mrs/Miss Reality- if your parents are observant, do you believe anything your parents or grandparents told you in reference to G-d, Judaism and the beauty and advantages of its observance?

Any good memories? or is it all nonsense and falsehood and you know better.

 

> rather I know the Torah is true because our parents said so,

Actually, I hate to break it to you, but you can't trust your family when it comes to what they tell you about what happened in the past. According to prominent torah opinions, one should not be honest when teaching history. So if they are the kind of people that try to follow what gedolim say, you can't really trust that anything they are telling you about the past really happened.

 

MR(My reality), this intellectual search for truth can branch off to many subjects, so instead of trying to incorporate everything into one post, and confusing each other as to our points, let's focus on one thing at a time. It'll be easier for me to bring out my points as well as for you to bring out yours.

I have tried writing my original post very specific to prevent certain notions. So if it seems like I'm repeating myself it'll be because I'm trying to rearticulate my point where it may have been misunderstood before.

Now to the key issue, I'm just going to discuss your first point now - Independent Sources.

It's most definitely logical to rely on independent sources then on one source. But let's define that, here's what independent sources mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_sources .

Now,I don't like to make conclusions, I'll just present the facts. Let's look at the claim of a deity (not it's miracles) of Christianity (for example)- J is god (aka one part of the trinity) because he said (after a quick google search) in John 10:36 "I am the Son of God" so now we know how it started, this guy said he is god. Let's say there many witnesses to him saying it, still if you ask as many independent people if he is god and they say yeah, are they really independent or are they all relying on the testimony of ONE person, namely, J. And a person is susceptible to the studies that you mentioned in the link regarding the JFK episode, namely that his testimony about himself that he is the son of god may have been distorted. Same can be said of every other deity claim.

On the other hand Har Sinai, is completely different. Here's how, and please read carefully.

Though indeed eyewitness account is very unreliable, especially when (even if there are more then one witness to an event) each witness has a slightly different account of what happened.

But what if it had happened, that everyone of the witnesses of JFK's shooting recounted the same exact sequence of events, would you say that all their memories got distorted in exactly the same way? After all in the actual testimony there is one thing they all agree on: that he was indeed shot (true there are videos to support that claim, but if everyone would have said that the video was made in hollywood and there was in fact no shooting would you still believe only the video? Obviously it's the independent testimony of the fact).

About UFO's, actually I won't deny that these people saw flying vehicles that they couldn't identify, all that I would doubt is that it's driver's are aliens, since that is an opinion, not a fact. But don't get me wrong, if people claim that they were abducted by aliens, that I'm not obligated logically to believe, since each person's account is of his own personal testimony, and the next guy's testimony is of his own story, they're not sharing the same event. As opposed to, if, say the entire population of New York city, were to testify to a story that happened to all of them as a group (like that they were all abducted by the same alien spaceship together) as much as I would find it hard to believe, logic dictates that is very probable that it happened. Since it is less likely that they all made it up.

So Matan Torah, the way I understand it (of course I'm open to other perspectives) is the definition of being an independent account of events. I'll explain how with this example: Imagine someone came to your city and gathers thousands of people and tells them this message "I was walking in a field and I met guy who told me thus: "I will give everyone a million dollars if they come to me here by tomorrow". This I'll say is like J; no one knows if he is really the son of god, they just depend on what he said. I would even say that that's comparable to Moshe telling the Jews that such and such is what g-d told him to tell them.

On the other hand if you were told by thousands of people, that yesterday they were all together in a field and all of them saw a guy get up and make the proclamation "I will give you all a million dollars if you return here tomorrow" what would you say now? If the definition of independent sources is, and I quote "...two or more people or organizations which attest to a given piece of information. For example, two people who witness a traffic accident first hand would be considered independent sources." wouldn't you say that this case (of the million dollar guy scenario) will be considered testimony of independent sources?

Now that is comparable what happened at Har Sinai where everyone testified to their children the same exact thing that they all experienced, till today, as many arguments you may have in halacha and so on, but the even of har sinai you'll never find anyone that has a different tradition of what happened. To be sure, you may find deniers, but you won't find anyone that can say that they received a tradition that their great ancestors going all the way back that something else in fact happened).

Please reply to these points.

I have yet to discuss and hear from you (again I really learn as I go so anything you tell me I'll greatly appreciate and look into) the issue of how they know it was g-d, evolution and etc... but let's focus on one point at a time.

On a side note (i.e. I don't want to bring this yet to the table), it's very interesting that your comment about "Fission and fusion" was addressed in a later letter. Search for the words: "4) Your remark about the misuse of the terms fission and fusion" on the page you were discussing and you'll see what he wrote there in reply.

 

For all you folks who folks, who are so anti footsteps, I have some great news for you. Shortly down the road, organizations like footsteps will be closing their doors, because OTD'ers will have become the majority, and thus will not be in need of any special support group....

 

if you don't believe me, compare the state of OTD'ers now to what it was a few years ago- much stronger, no longer a few sorry individuals hiding terrible secrets, but a growing underground movement, writing books, making movies and yes, starting organizations.
The frum, on the other hand, have got so defensive all they can do is run and hide behind chumras, mechitzas, separate buses, and lipa bans.

 

@Dovid I have a few exams in the next two days, so I won't be able to respond well, before Friday. Maybe, I'll find some time tomorrow, but definitely Friday.

 

To Shortly down the road, organizations like footsteps will be closing their doors, because OTD'ers will have become the majority, and thus will not be in need of any special support group....:

Not a problem- "Tzaischem l' Shalom- they'll either die off because of close to zero population growth in their midst, and many of the remaining, will have children and grandchildren who come back to their roots, bec. of "missing something in their lives". :)

 

To sara maimon:
Are you the SAME sara maimon who posted this elsewhere?

"I made a big mistake to leave the upper west side, davka because that was the richest most active most fulfilling religious life I’ve had".

 

Well good luck on those exams. I'll check back to see when you reply.

 

@MR,
Good luck on your exams.

 

This comment has been removed by the author.

 

"Tzaischem l' Shalom- they'll either die off because of close to zero population growth in their midst, and many of the remaining, will have children and grandchildren who come back to their roots, bec. of "missing something in their lives". :)"

Such anger, nebach. Hey I bet you are mikarev people and smile to them while in your mind you are looking at them in utter contempt and condensation.

 

Dovid,

Regarding your claim of independent sources for the testimony of the Sinai event, can you please clarify precisely who those independent sources are? Certainly, the multitudes of Jews today claiming the event as true do not qualify; for each and every one, the reason they believe in the event is because the Torah says it happened, therefore they are all dependent on a single source.

If the thousands of Jews claimed to have been there are to be the independent sources, all we have is a single source (the Torah) claiming they all witnessed it.

The fact that the Torah had been widely accepted hardly counts as indicative of independent reliable sources. The Torah could have been written hundreds of years after the event purportedly occurred, and those living at the time would not be first-hand (or even reliable) witnesses. Furthermore, widespread acceptance of an official account does not imply that all fully agreed with it.

 

"for each and every one, the reason they believe in the event is because the Torah says it happened, therefore they are all dependent on a single source."

I am not Dovid,

But like Dovid already stated Jews believe the Event because their parents and the ancestors of their parents told them about that Event on Mt Sinai, so you think our parents and ancestors are liars?.

 

To "Such anger, nebach. Hey I bet you are mikarev people and smile to them while in your mind you are looking at them in utter contempt and condensation":

No way. There's good and bad in everyone. We're all shades of gray, with very few black and white among us.

BTW, what's with Condensation? Is that a new phenomena coined by pioneering OTD's?

 

Take one look at this discussion. There is a news item about someone leaving the Footsteps organization. The discussion that follows is about apikorsus. How interesting!

 

Menashe,
Your argument works great for the (so called) New Testament, since its claim is that J was (son of) god, and even in his generation the only one who could verify that is himself. So anyone wishing to follow the New Testament certainly did so because they relied on the book being true. Which is where you have the great "logic" of circular reasoning: The book is true since it came from god since it says so in the book and what the book is true, since it came from god (ad infinitum).

How is our Torah different? Like this: Let's take the first generation after the giving of the Torah, their acceptance of the Torah wasn't because they decided to believe what it says, rather they believed what their parents said about it. Namely, that they witnessed the voice of g-d telling them that it was him who took them out of Egypt. That it had been all transcribed into the Torah that Moshe wrote as a record of events and instructions to the Jewish people. So can you really say the source is the Torah itself?

Let me explain a bit better with this example: Imagine no one had witnessed the events of 9-11, and only one security camera happened to film the planes. This video is then handed from generation to generation as a relic and record of history.

Many generations later there's a debate as to the origin of this widely spread and accepted video. Mr. A says "the video is true since our parents (going all the way back) told us it was true and they couldn't all have lied". Mr B. uses your argument: "Thousands of people confirming it doesn't prove anything since even they all say that the original source of it is this one video that the first generation saw." Now that argument works great here. Case closed.

But if (like in reality) thousands of people did see what happened (at least the second plane) and the events are recorded on video. Now let's go many generations in the future where Mr B. would claim that all you have as proof are the videos. Mr. A's claim would now be: "The videos aren't the source of proof, it's the testimony of the thousands that saw it that told their children that they each saw the planes and that what is portrayed on the videos is what they saw live (not that they only saw just the video like in he previous scenario)".

If you can understand the difference of the two cases then you understand the difference of our tradition and all other religions.

About fooling the masses: If someone today wrote a history book about the city of new york a couple hundred years ago with "facts" like that "NYC used to be be home to thousands of kangaroos, and our great great grandparents used to hunt them" would anyone believe it? First question would be how come I never heard about this and that fact before from my parents or teachers. And even if some people accept it, certainly others would be completely opposed to it and they would tell their children that these "facts" originated by this and this author at this and this date. At the very least, generations later you would have at least two traditions as to the facts.

If I would want to lie, I would do it in a way that people couldn't verify. Like I would say "I had this vision from god etc." either you'll believe me or not, I haven't provided a way to verify. But if I were to say "Your great grandparents had a revelation about this and this" now you can check it out. Did your parents ever hear about it from their parents? if not.... would you even consider believing him? and if they had indeed heard it from their grandparents then 1: You would have already heard about it from them and 2: Would it be logical to not accept it?

Could the Torah perhaps be the greatest unbelievable conspiracy ever created, that wasn't unmasked yet?

 

yeah, that sounds like something i would say. what of it?

 

not that a whole generation of people are lying (even though that has been known to occur), just that stories as they get passed down from one person to the next tend to become more exxaggerated as they go along.

this was especially common in ancient times, when the emotional import of the story was more important than the actual facts, and history and fiction tended to overlap much more than they do today (though they still do somewhat)

the mistake you folks are making is that you thing that thousands of years ago, people thought exactly like you.

שבת שלום לכולם

 

Ok, I'll try to respond to both posts.

Firstly, how is Sinai different than Jesus claiming he's the son of god or whatever. You're saying that the difference is that Jesus made the claim therefore, he is a single source and not to be trusted. However, at Sinai, many people saw the event - as a group, and so are independent observers. If we accept for the moment that they are independent, your whole argument hinges on the assumption that whatever happaned at Sinai is differnet than Jesus claiming he is God and showing off some miracles. I know you said you didn't want to discuss yet how we can distinguish between a God and miracles, but this whole argument hinges on the assumption that the people witnessing it could and that there was something significantly different from Jesus's miracles. Right now I think that the events at Sinai is just like Jesus doing miracles and since both were in front of many people and both were handed down from parents to children I question them equally.

If you'd make the distinction saying that Christens don't claim that their parents saw it but take it from the testament. That's not really true since they claim that their parents heard it from the many people that saw it. So if you follow your logic and accept what was passed on from our parents we should accept that their parents paresnt heard it directly from a great many people who saw it. Consequently, we know that many independent observers saw it.

So if I consider something that was passed on between generations as independent if the claim is that independent people saw it many generations ago, than I accept also that independent observers saw Jesus performing miracles, since according to Christian claims that is what their parents told them. So you first need to clarify what exactly Jesus did different than Sinai.

Will continue in next post...

 

Sara M., how would you explain Judaism/Torah/existence of G-d to a small child, based totally on what you have full proof of?

 

Dovid,
Thank you for your response. Allow me to address your two points in turn:

Regarding the independent sources: You are suggesting that aside from the Torah, there are father-son traditions in Judaism that are independent of the Torah. However, I don't believe that is the case. To illustrate: suppose your father were to tell you a story that occurred during biblical times, one that is not found in the Torah or any other Jewish source, but he claims to have a personal family tradition of it. You would likely not believe it, nor should you -- actual oral traditions are rarely accurate after a few retellings.

While we like to think that our traditions are passed on by means of a mesorah -- a continual chain of father-son transmittals, the fact is that a father can talk to his son until he's blue in the face, but at the end of the day, whatever is clearly documented in written form by the accepted Jewish sources is part of the belief system, and what isn't isn't. So, in essence, the Jewish traditions are no more a mesorah than the Pythagorean Theorem is a mesorah. Sure, we put on a big show each Pesach of the father retelling to his son the story of the exodus, but in actuality they're both just reading out the same Hagaddah.

So: since no Jewish tradition can exist independently of the Torah (or other Jewish sources), they are all dependent on the Torah (i.e., dependent on a single source).

To borrow your 9/11 analogy: Suppose the hyphothetical fake video not only showed the attacks, it also showed thousands of people witnessing it. And suppose it had gained widespread acceptance as being authentic (bear with me on this -- I'll address it in the next point). The story that would result from the video would be that terrorists attacked the towers, and thousands witnessed it. So, if, generations later, person A were to tell person B to believe that the attacks happened because thousands witnessed it, B can rightly respond that the claim of witnesses can itself be traced to the video. Even if many are claiming their own ancestors saw it, this would not constitute very strong proof. Since later generations would have no way of knowing who was in that video, no doubt many would assume that some of their own ancestors were among those present, and would pass that on. So, the claim of ancestral heritage can itself be traced to the video as well. The fact that all are saying exactly the same story is meaningless; sure they are -- they all saw the same video.

Now, about fooling the masses: I am NOT suggesting that anyone was ever "fooled", nor did anyone at any time intend to fool anyone. The Sinai story could have predated the Torah by hundreds of years as an oral legend, and the authors of the Torah would be nothing more than perfectly well-meaning people whose only agenda was to record what they believed.

There is no doubt that something happened at Sinai. Something extremely significant, at least in the eyes of those who were there and those who subsequently carried the tale. As you rightly assert, you can't make something like that up. But, once an event of that magnitude does occur, it can be greatly exaggerated and aggrandized over time, and when its only record for a considerable length of time is through oral retelling, it inevitably is.

If I had to venture a guess as to what originally happened, this would be it: The early Jews, a large group of escaped slaves from Egypt, had a leader named Moshe, whom they believed to be an awesomely great, supernatural and powerful man who spoke directly to God. One day (no thunder, no lightning -- just an ordinary day), perhaps with much ado and pomp and circumstance, Moshe got up on top of a mountain and delivered the Ten Commandments, or some variant thereof. His followers believed that he was transmitting to them that which God was speaking. This day went on to become legendary as the most crucial and spectacular day of the nation's history -- the day when God, through Moshe, personally gave the ten most fundamental commandments of their existence.

Now, I'm sure you can appreciate how a story like that can easily be exaggerated and embellished when retold. Suppose, generations later, if it were to emerge that the event was accompanied by thunder and lightning and fire, do you really think people would reject it? "Sure, I believe that the all-powerful creator was personally there delivering the most important message of all time, but thunder and lightning? Nah, that's too big a stretch." With that basis for a story, anything is plausible. No doubt some would claim their ancestors heard the voice of God, and that would become part of the story as well.

But you don't need to take my word for it that this scencario (i.e, Moshe talking with his followers believing him to be delivering God's word) is a likely basis for the Sinai story. Just look at Devarim/Deut. 5:4: "Face to face God spoke with you on the mountain from within the fire. I [Moshe] stood between you and God at that time, to tell you the word of God, for you were too afraid from the fire and did not ascend the mountain, saying: I am Hashem your God..."

 

SM,
It's very simple to make a such a general statement like that. But if you give it more then a few moments' thought you would see how complicated it really is.

Allow me to digress.

Exactly how would have this historic distortion occurred? If the final story is that we had a revelation of g-d at Har Sinai, what was that an exaggeration of? What really happened that exaggerated into that story?

Also if exaggeration is the case then how come in every account we have of Matan Torah it's all exactly the same? Wouldn't Jews in Yemen have (at the very least) a slightly different story then the ones from Germany? Haven't they been rather isolated enough to have their own exaggerated details added to the story? And if exaggeration occurred between the time of what "really happened" and a few generations later, how come for at least the past 2000 years the story of Har Sinai hasn't changed a bit? As a matter of fact any change to any part of the Torah (like what Islam and Christianity did) was quickly rejected.

Even if history tends to mix with fiction, I would imagine that happening to small events or things that no one really cared about, but to completely reinvent a history of a people, that, I think a rational person should find hard to believe.

If it is so natural that history could be exaggerated so much to the point of having stories of the origins of a religion that begin with a revelation of g-d to thousands of people, how is it that the Jewish tradition is the only one with that claim? No other religion could pull off the same shtick?

Certainly a story of mass g-dly revelation is more believable then a story of g-dly revelation to one person. So if I wanted to start a religion I would try to go with the better story. Yet in actuality we only have one such story of a g-dly revelation to the masses and many stories of g-dly revelations to one (or few) people. Since obviously if I was making up a lie (or adding a new detail to a story) I would add one that no one could check up to see if I was lying (like to say I had a revelation about...) but to add a detail about what happened to everyone's ancestors no one would believe (as I've elaborated about in the post above).

In other words whatever is natural to happen, can be repeated and does repeat itself. So too in reverse; if it's natural it will repeat. So we see a lot of times trough out history things being slightly twisted as to what really occurred. But if indeed history and fiction could be so twisted to produce a story that would convince a generation of people that their ancestors all witnessed this g-dly revaluation, then it begs the question of how come this "natural twisting of history" hasn't been repeated again in history since? Instead every other claim of g-dly revelation is limited to one or a few people.

If people truly had their reasoning so distorted those days as you propose, then how come we don't have many (or even one other) such story?

To conclude: Maybe they didn't have computers and e-mail back then, but intelligent they may have had if not equal then even more then us today. Maybe not as much knowledge about gravity and subatomic particles, but common sense they sure they had. And if they were naive enough to fall for such a grand exaggeration of history, certainly it should have happened again.

Have a wonderful week.

 

Now to question your claim that we should consider our parents as independent observers.

Firstly, Sinai happened many years ago. If you look at this timeline http://www.aish.com/literacy/jewishhistory/Crash_Course_in_Jewish_History_68_-_Timeline_From_Abraham_to_the_Founding_of_the_State_of_Israel.asp it happened in 1312 BCE. The destruction of the first temple happened in 422 BCE. This gives about 900 years in which Jews lived in relative prosperity. Consequently, it’s logical to assume that at least in those years they received many converts – garim. Now, you say that every Jewish parent claims that their parent told them they were at Sinai up until the event; however, if we have converts it means that some of their parents weren’t, which means that today not everyone can claim they were – and if they do it means that some of them are lying – so why not assume all are lying. Since we know for sure that at least a few are lying, how do I know that it wasn’t my parent that lied or the parents of my whole community or the whole Jewish community?

I remember the saying that garim’s parents were at Sinai but didn’t accept the Torah at the time - so they would not be lying. However, to accept this saying, I’d have to assume the Torah is true, since the saying if from the Torah – hence circular logic - and I Hope you won’t use this saying in your answer.

To lead off from this, tell me what is wrong with this alternative interpretation of the events at Sinai. There was a group of people about 3000 years ago that got together and decided to write a bible. Lets say there was someone like Jesus – Moshe, that felt he found a new god and was able to convince the other 10 people that it was true. This shouldn’t be hard to accept, since http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown should show you that some people would accept and swear they saw something when nothing was there. Than Moshe presents them with a Torah and is able to convince them that they saw a God on Sinai while all they saw was some tough thunderstorms. Then slowly with time the religion gathers believers and with time they say that their parents were at Sinai, just like we do with garim today. Meanwhile, the number gets inflated from ten to many thousands. You could bend this hypothesis many ways, by saying that these 10,000 people already believed in God and then Moshe decided that they go out somewhere and after some tough thunderstorms told them they saw god and they accepted that they did and so you now believe that they did.

Your comparison with Kangaroos in NYC is not equal because when it comes to people to that believe, in my experience at least, you can usually get them to believe anything. I’ll give a contemporary example. We hear many stories of rabbis that do miracles, even today, and when I was in community I believed them all. However, now, I know that these miracles were not miracles but either didn’t happen or were natural, just like psychics and the rest of the fakes. After all, there wasn’t yet a single psychic that did a miracle in lab conditions where it’s testable.

I remember first hand many miracles that was claimed our rabbi was able to do. Now consider the children of our generation, if I was to continuously tell my children about these miracles, it’d be easy for them to claim that their parents saw amazing miracles, while objectively I know I only believed in them while I was not objective. After all my parents told me the same tales – yet we’re only the second generation. Haven’t we all heard these tales about the Baal Shem Tov? This leads me to believe that yes, parents do lie to their children, they might not realize they lied, but independently parents will tell their children lies when they themselves are fooled into believing.

The point of this is that you cannot consider each member of a group as an independent source even if they claim that their parents told them so up until Sinai. I would consider them as one source, since I don’t know the truth of what happened more than two or three generations above. For me to consider sources as independent, they would each have to present physical evidence that the other did not use.

For example, one would be the house where George Washington lived, another would be the library of congress talking about G.W. and so on. Indeed, if all the evidence for the civil war was the claims of soldiers written in a book, in many generations ahead, I should not accept that as evidence without additional physical evidence. By the way, the wiki article about independent sources relates only to when you can actually speak to the witnesses, however, if you cannot than you have to consider the circumstances as I did.


As an aside, when I looked through the link you gave me, I found a couple more of his claims that are outright wrong. Especially in gravity and relativity. I know you said to stick with one subject but I couldn’t resist, especially since he’s contradicting clear experimental data.

Anyone who studied physics at a deeper level knows that energy is not a real thing but is simply a concept that helps in the bookkeeping of physical concepts. It’s used like an invariant that helps relate one event to another. Here is his claim

Anyone in the exact sciences who wonders whether the existence of the Creator can be reliably proven should consider another “standard” concept, derived from the realm of physics. This idea is so intellectually challenging that after many decades of study, even the experts admit it is beyond their comprehension. Nonetheless it is accepted by all exact scientists as a reality, and it is a proven fact in the eyes of the public. The idea referred to is that matter is nothing but a particular form of energy, and that it is possible to transform matter into energy and energy to matter. Superficially, it may be hard to see what is so difficult about this notion of relativity. However if one takes a moment to consider the degree of similarity between the light now emanating from his bulb, and the shoe on his foot, and then tries to imagine converting one into the other and back again, the problem becomes crystal clear. Everything in our experience leads us to think that matter and energy are as fundamentally different as two things can be. Therefore, to say that they are equivalent does not even sound, say, reasonable-but-difficult; it simply sounds ridiculous.The problem is that the energy of a photon is just a number attached to the photon and doesn’t really mean anything physically. Either way, his claim that converting energy to matter it doesn’t sound right and is beyond comprehension is off the wall because currently most high energy labs take a particle for mass 1, give it a very high energy, collide it with another particle of mass 1 and out comes 4 particles of mass 1. This is done daily in physics labs and you can see with your own eyes how “energy” is converted to mass.

He again has it wrong about gravity. Firstly, the concept of an ether was developed because of Maxwell’s electromagnetic equations and not gravity as he claims. It was also abandoned due to evidence of relativity and not because it had many contradictory properties. In fact relativity uses some of the same equations that was developed for the ether i.e. Lorentz transformations. Anyway, gravity was explained by Einstein as the curvature in space-time. In fact machines are now being build that can should be able to detect gravity waves.

 

Yemenites and Germans share the same torah- because a standardized written version came out during the second temple period. That says nothing about what happened generations before that.

you ask how such an exxaggeration might have taken place. there are all kinds of plausible scenarios. just takes a little unbiased imagination.

why hasn't any one else attempted such a mass deception? because as I've been saying it wasn't a mass deception to begin with. It was a development that occurred
gradually over time. And contrary to your assumption, it HAS been repeated in history. Many peoples have national origin myths uncorroborated by history.

Anyway, if god did reveal something to our ancestors, and I hope, that if he exists, he might have and might even do so again...

but it sure wasn't the ten commandments that he revealed. The ten commandments aren't worthy of a divine revelation. Every freakin society has laws against stealing and such. (and some, unlike the 10 commandments, even have laws against rape! and with no divine revelation to boot!) And some lawmakers, like Hammurabi, also claimed their laws were given to them by god.

Anyway go back to my previous statement. If it happened once, why hasn't it happened again? Do you think it could happen again? How would you react if it did?

 

I'll try to address everyone's comments as much I can.

@MR (9:15),That's a valid point you raised so I'll try to explain: J, said he was god and performed miracles. The Jews of Har Sinai saw g-d.

At the end of the day, by J people witnessing his miracles would use their judgment to accept that it's performer is what he claims to be, but there still leaves room for doubt. Which is why it wasn't enough that Moshe leads the Jews out of Egypt, splits the sea and do various other miracles, G-d decided to revealed himself to dispel all doubt.

So how do they know they saw G-d? Simply because they said so. If G-d wanted to reveal himself to you, what do you think you'll see? A heavenly hand? A blindingly bright light? Of course not. Those are all defined realities which g-d isn't, since he is beyond definition. Rather you would just know you saw g-d, it would come from your essence, since it is one with his essence for he is the essence of reality. So if they said they saw this or that figure then we wouldn't have been sure they saw g-d.

So by J, at the best people said they saw a person of flesh and blood that said he was god so you have this one statement made by this person which everyone chose to believe. However by Har sinai we have the statements of thousands of people that all say they saw G-d.

@Menashe,I think if in a hundred years we had this video of 9/11 which captured the thousands of spectators and everyone confirms it to being true, with thousands of people saying that their ancestors were in the video, where's there room for doubt? How indeed could this formulated if it were untrue? As a matter of fact how do you suggest we protect the authenticity of the events of 9/11, if not by the testimony and records being handed down from our generation to the next?

So how much of our history is indeed authentic? were we slaves in Egypt? Were we just one day freed? We came to a mountain? and then it got all distorted for ever?

How could a nation, a rebellious and "stiffed-necked" one, come to a unified agreement on something which they all knew didn't happen? Switching from "Moses spoke" to "They saw g-d" is rather drastic enough that even if some people would just accept it, certainly most people would oppose it and would have written about it and transmitted this "opposition" to their children, yet we've heard of no such tradition.

About the verse you mentioned, without the oral tradition (which itself is worthy of discussion) I find it hard to understand. First it says "Face to face God spoke with you..." implying it was direct communication, then it says "I [Moshe] stood between you and God" implying that it wasn't face to face. So how could you bring this puzzling statement as proof that it was just Moshe telling the Jews what he heard from G-d?

@MR (11:52),1. About converts we can say simply that they heard what everyone told them about what their parents heard from their parents. Also I think it's reasonable to say that along the line these converts married into the rest of the nation so their children can surely say that they heard so from at least one side of their parents...

2. Sure it's possible that a few people will completely be convinced or willingly conspire to testify to something that never happened. But again, how indeed would 10 lead to 600,000, and if it can, how come it didn't go to 600 million? At least we should have many varieties of the story with different numbers in each one. How come in every scroll we've ever came across we've always seen exactly the same number? and every Jew we've came across claims the same story?

Also, how indeed do you know that George Washington lived in that house (I actually visited it once) and that the Library of congress didn't make it up? Of course you'll tell me that's ridiculous. Why? Is it not because everyone confirms that the artifacts and documents proving GW's ownership of the house and history in the books are indeed authentic, since they know it from others who heard it from others going back to GW himself? Also because not one person ever denied that he existed based on what he knows from his ancestors going back.

3. Regarding your Independent sources comment, my point was to bring out how Judaism originated - as opposed to other religions - thereby passing down the testimony of each individual witness.

4. Though I'll admit I'm not quite the physicist (so please correct me if I'm off) I think his point about energy-mass is this: Though we can see that a particle of a particular mass creates more particles of mass when it collides with another at high velocity, our only sound theory is that the energy itself is converted into the "new" mass, even though without the effect of it happening I would never have assumed that mass and energy are interchangeable.

About gravity, if you're referring to the Large Hadron Collider, I for one would love to see the discoveries it may find. Even if it does find the Higgs boson (which ironically is called the God particle) at least till then gravity will be the most accepted phenomena that it's force can't be seen, only it's effect.

 

@SM (2:06),

1. If there were really many accounts of what happen, how indeed did a standardized written version come about? Did the thousands (if not millions) of Jews living then all decided to accept that account and reject all others? Then you should equally doubt that men landed on the moon 1969 (which suffers even more since only three people could tell you that they were actually on the moon). If you won't accept that the moon landing was a conspiracy then certainly you can't reason that thousands of people decided to adapt to one version of a legend unanimously without even hearing about one opposition. At the very most that group of people that formulated the "standardized version" should have been celebrated yet we have never heard of such people, we've only heard of Moshe being the first one to pass on the Torah.

2. Sure you can come up with a story of how the Torah came about, but you would have to have such a wild imagination, that for it to have happened that way would be even more miraculous then the tradition itself.

3. My point wasn't that Matan Torah would happen again. My point was that a tradition like Matan Torah should have crept up throughout the ages. Can you find a similar claim in history that has the criteria of Matan Torah? Namely: 1. Revelation of G-d to a nation (not a miracle, but a revelation g-d himself, and not a revelation to a select few). 2. A people that can say today that it was their own ancestors. If not, then what proof do you have that such a tradition can happen naturally through distortion of history?

4. That's a wonderful question, why indeed should the greatest revelation on earth be to teach us the (seemingly) obvious? There are many insights to the depths behind the Ten Commandments, here are some places to look:
Shouldn’t a good person know not to steal or kill even without the Ten Commandments?,
Inside the Ten Commandments and
Understanding the Ten Commandments to name a few...

 

Dovid,
If in a couple hundred years from now the only evidence of 9/11 is a single video of unknown origin and a large group of people claiming their ancestors were there, and we know that all those people are shown the video in grade school and required to believe that it is authentic, as were their parents and parents' parents (not to mention that they're also taught that their ancestors were there and required by their society to believe that as well, regardless of what their parents may tell them), I would not say there is a very strong basis for 9/11.

And no, going from 'Moshe spoke' to "they heard god' is not a very drastic logical leap so long as they already fully and wholeheartedly believe that God (who is certainly capable of speaking, and much more) was personally there. Even now, I recall that there is a machloket/dispute as to whether God spoke the first two and Moshe spoke the rest or God spoke all ten, and today's students regard both possibilities equally without discerning much difference between them. If there had been a third possibility that Moshe spoke all ten with God at his side, we'd accept that just as readily. (Of course, those familiar with the proof you are presenting wouldn't, since the whole proof hinges on God speaking, but this proof is relatively recent.).

Here's another example of how even us 21st-century sophisticated Jews suspend our disbelief in similar ways: There's a Midrash, but not a very widely known Midrash, that says that when the Jews crossed the Red Sea, fruit trees spontaneously sprouted up and they ate the fruit off those trees. Now, as I said, it's not very well known and there are many Orthodox Jews well into their adult lives who have never heard it. Yet, upon hearing it for the first time, (e.g., from a Rebbe at a Tish or Shiur), they'll instantly believe it (and retell it to their kids) without even bothering to look it up -- this despite that it is a story of a mass miracle occurring to their own ancestors, and they've never heard it before. The Rebbe could have just as easily thrown in another equally plausible sounding story (e.g., angels descended from heaven, diced the fruit and served it to them on golden platters), and the listeners would believe that as well (and tell it their kids, who'll retell it to their kids, etc.) No one will challenge the story saying, "I've never heard that before," because, hey, there are many Midrashim you haven't heard; plus the Rebbe said it. (Of course, in today's day and age, a story like that wouldn't get very far, because eventually someone will scour the Midrash and discover that the story isn't there. But imagine a world with no written Midrash and only oral tradition to go by.)

No, I don't mean to suggest that frum Jews are more naive or gullible than anyone else. It's just that given preexisting belief in a highly supernatural 'basis story' (in this case, the Red Sea), anything is plausible and believable. So too with Sinai; if people already believed that God personally was present to deliver the Ten Commandments, that would be a highly supernatural event on the level of the Red Sea legend, even if not as visually spectacular.

And I do not agree that the verse 'Face to face...', necessarily implies the listeners heard God directly and without an intermediary. Assuming human authorship, and taken together with its following verse, this would refer to the fact that for this communication God was present before the assembled, and addressed the message directly to them and in real-time. (As opposed to the others, which were communicated to Moshe first in private who then gave it over to the masses.) Just imagine this verse written by people of a different religion and you'll see what I'm talking about.

To be sure, there are other places where the Torah does say God spoke; in fact, there are many cases of a single story repeated multiple times in the Torah with contradictory details, including the Commandments themselves (repeated, but with different wordings). Assuming human authorship, this would indicate multiple authors presenting different variations on the story. So, if you're looking for the different variations and lack of unification that should be present with exaggeration and embellishment of a story through oral retelling, there you go.

 

Dovid, you wrote, "That's a wonderful question." That was not a question, that was a statement. Thank you for the links but I am fully capable of understanding what I read myself. (In addition to having studied numerous traditional commentaries).

This attitude of yours which is characteristic of frum people bothers me. You wish to always place us in the role of the questioner, the one who doesn't know, and yourselves, the frum, and the ones who know it all.

Well, guess what? We are as fully capable of drawing conclusions as you, if not more so.

 

2. how did the standard written version come about?

I have my own speculations but I'm a lay person. There are plenty of more legitimate scholarly sources. Hit your local library if you are interested.

 

By the way Dovid, you are mistaken that all of Bnei Yisrael have the same Torah today.

The Samaritans have their own Girsa, which differs somewhat from ours. And wouldn't you know, their Torah has an eleventh commandment?

No problem however, we can solve that problem quite neatly by declaring that they aren't Jews!

Presto, now all jews have the same torah!

 

You asked for an example of an origin myth that was said to have been experienced by an entire people- I reccommend the Hopi creation and flood myth by Frank Waters. It's very inspiring reading. (although I can't vouch that waters faithfully transcribed the myth from the Hopi).

You want a more modern day example?

The Ethiopian Jewish community, which has a very strong oral tradition, stood up to christian persecution for centuries and trekked for miles in dangerous territory, jailed and enslaved by the sudanese, to rejoin their people in their homeland jerusalem, all based on the tradition of their jewish origins they had received from their parents for centuries.

However, the Ashkenazi Rabbinate declared their tradition that they had received form their parents was insufficient to declare them jews and thus required them to undergo giyur.

Thus, the Ashkenazi Orthodox Rabbinate themselves, believe that it is possible for 60,000 people to pass down a tradition that is false.

There's also the question of whether the original generations understood the stories literally, as we do today... perhaps they were more sophisticated than we are and understood the mythological significance.

To quote the late Sioux prophet Black Elk (hope i got my source correct)"I can not say whether it actually happened, but I assure you every word I've said is true."

 

Menashe,

1. In your 9/11 scenario let me bring out two points you made, 1. The video being of "unknown origin" 2. "required...to believe... regardless of what their parents may tell them".

Are any of these fact true of our Torah? We clearly know it's origin, and no ones parents have ever told their children that they know from their parents going all the way back that it never really happened. (They may deny it, but can't say that their parents denied it going all the way back).

Even in the analogy, if indeed it was well known that the video was of "unknown origin" then that would certainly cast doubt. However if everyone can say what it's origin is, and they all say the same thing... then to who is it's origin "unknown"?

Therefor the Torah must be compared to having this video everyone knows everything about it (where it came from and and whether it was filmed by hand or automatically from a security camera etc.) and that no one denies it's origin based on tradition.

As I've asked before, how do you expect your great grandchildren to believe the events of 9/11? By just showing them numerous videos and exposed steel from the buildings and other various artifacts? Certainly if all their friends said that their parents told them it never happened, no amount of "physical proof" would convince them. Rather it's not thinkable that such would be the case, instead everyone will have confirmed it's truth and that's why they would believe it. Same too by us.

2. Concerning "Machloikes of g-d saying all ten, or just two" that's a perfect example of a detail getting lost, but would be quickly corrected if you'd asked anyone. Whether he said two or ten is no "Machloikes", everyone agrees (and you look and ask whoever you want) that the Jews only heard from G-d the first two commandments and that G-d said all Ten commandments at once which is incomprehensible to the human ear. The only argument is if those two were heard when G-d said them all at once, and those were the only commandments that were comprehensible, or if after saying them all at once he repeated just the first two clearly. Now that's just a small detail of exactly how they heard the two. But that it was two is no argument.

See here and scroll to the Title called "From the Wellsprings of the Parashah".


3. Concerning believing what someone said was a Midrash, point well taken. However you're talking about a miracle, I'm talking about a revelation of G-d. A miracle can be easily believed since there are so many stories of them, but if ever someone said that there was another mass revelation of G-d that would surely be questioned since everyone only knows that that happened only once.

Even about Miracle stories there's this saying about stories of the Baal Shem Tov "If you believe all of them you're a shoiteh (idiot) but you can't deny them all either" Great line. Point being that with Miracles sure everyone has their stories. So even though it would be harder to get a story like fruits growing in the Yam Suf (which I have heard before and I think everyone I know has heard it too) since it was a mass witnessing, it's still only another Miracle added to the package.

Also, even if people back then didn't have so many books, so they had to rely on the Teachers. Still it would be very hard to get a new miracle added to the collection without it being cross examined sometime later by what was indeed written.

So in conclusion, to go from Miracles (and certainly from non-miracles) to G-d being revealed, must be a very big jump. As you can see that it was only said to have happened once, and if it was so natural as you suggest then how come no other stories of our history mutated into another g-dly revelation to the nation? Not even the story of going around the Jericho wall blaring trumpets and it's miraculous collapse got the detail that g-d revealed himself to them all. And not only in our tradition, but can you find any other tradition today that claim such a g-dly revelation to it's nation? All this goes to show how unnatural and unthinkable it would be to happen, if it weren't true.

4. About the text of the Torah, here are two points: 1, That's why G-d gave the oral Torah to explain the written Torah, and he gave certain rules of how to deduce the laws and meanings of the Torah so we shouldn't just go reading through crossing out lines saying this sounds like this and that sounds like that. 2. G-d dictated the Torah exactly as he saw fit, with all the apparent contradictions and nuances, and he gave with that the Oral Torah to be able to build many halochois specifically from the wording of the Torah, and not despite the apparent contradictions but using them as well.

Last thought: People think they know so well what G-d should be that if they see a contradiction in his Torah, they say "nah, only man can write so". Like I heard say, that some people philosophize that G-d is so great and beyond this world, that they make him useless. Rather g-d is the essence of reality, he is both infinite and finite at the same time since he is beyond both. So what can seem as an apparent contradiction from our view can be seen by him as the ultimate perfection. That's why he created us, a being that could blatantly deny his existence, in order that we have choice and can decide to reveal his essence down here in this world, and see how our essence is really him.

I know I got a bit off topic there, but I couldn't resist, it was so cool to write about.

 

You wrote: "My point wasn't that Matan Torah would happen again."

I know that wasn't your point; you're Orthodox aren't you?
Much like Muslims believe Muhammad was the last prophet, Orthodox Jews believe that har sinai was the last revelation. And I offer the same criticism to both: If they really believed deep down in a god that communicates with humans, they'd expect it to happen again, and again. If they thought it was so essential to humanity they'd be screaming for it. The fact that they instead seek god's will in vain, from stories of amoraim bragging about their sexual exploits, shows me that frum people don't really believe it's possible, or that it's not important.
Thus, the story and the revelation itself is not so important to them, its what people believe about the story and the system that grew up around it is whats important. And that is pretty much the same theological position as your friendly reconstructionist koifer rabbi.

 

1. Sorry if my language was a bit imprecise, but what I meant by "unknown origin" was that we have no knowledge of its origin through any source other than the oral tradition. (Obviously, the oral tradition would be making claims as to its origin). And that is exactly the case with the Torah.

Regarding your "reverse" 9/11 scenario, yes, if I were living in the 23rd century and were shown the physical evidence for 9/11 (videos, independently written first-hand accounts, artifacts, etc.); but, my parents, friends, teachers, etc. all tell me it didn't happen; and -- here's the kicker -- I know that all those people live in a society that believes (and requires all its members to believe) that it didn't happen (thus making them not independent traditions but just parts of a single group/mass tradition), yes, I would at least strongly suspect that the event did occur and some kind of cover-up is at play. And the same is true in the reverse -- given only the video, and an oral tradition by a society as described above, I would not have strong cause to believe in it.

Your challenge to find a tradition of a different account (or a denial) going back to biblical times is completely unreasonable. This is because actual independent traditions never last long! They only survive and carry on as group/mass traditions. Do you know anyone who can give you a purely personal family account of the Revolutionary War, or even the Civil War? Even those with ancestors who fought in those wars know about them like everyone else -- from school, reading the standard-curriculum history books. Even if a major error were made in the history books, and a number of families knew the truth, after a few generations it would likely be forgotten and their descendents would just go with the flow.

Allow me to skip ahead to point #4, since it relates to this topic. I did not mean to claim that the contradictions in the Torah should imply human authorship. I am fully aware that there can be philosophical rational for why a God would write in such a manner. What I said was that assuming human authorship (which, for the purposes of this discussion, we must assume -- otherwise we'd be begging the question, since you are trying to prove divine authorship and I am challenging the proof), the contradictions would indicate that different authors had different accounts of the events. So, this meets your challenge -- if you're expecting that at some time there should have been lack of unity and multiple variations of the events, the evidence of it is right there in the Torah.

2. Apologies if I was wrong on that point. Thanks for pointing it out, and I will research it further (although, from the link you sent me it doesn't seem like I was so off base -- one of the opinions he cites actually does have the Jews hearing and understanding the other eight Commandments from God, albeit in that 'indirect' manner he describes). However, the point I was making was to counter your claim that the transition from 'Moshe spoke' to 'They heard God' is a drastic leap, by demonstrating that even today's students of the Torah will not consider different variations on who spoke what and how to be such dramatic differences in the story, and I still think that is valid. You'd be hard-pressed to make the case that Jews back then were more skeptical and critical than Jews today.

3. Expecting to find another culture with a story about a mass revelation of God is like expecting to find another nation with an American Revolution. Firstly, not every culture even believes in this kind of God that has any interest in making contact with and/or commanding masses, so such a story wouldn't even fit in. Secondly, even for one that does, as described in my prior posts, you'd need a 'basis story' for it, which, at the very least would require a known time when a nation's entire ancestry was at the same place at the same time, which, far as I know, didn't happen often. Thirdly, even this idea you have that a 'revelation from God' is leaps and bounds different from an 'ordinary' mass miracle is itself just a premise of Jewish tradition -- we happen to have an explicit tradition that it is a supreme event that happened once. Otherwise, don't know about you, but I'd consider seeing a major water body split into 12 and fruit trees grow a pretty darn big deal, and would not consider it all that much different from hearing the voice of a God.

Why didn't Jericho morph into a revelation from God? I don't know; it just didn't. It happened to morph into a different major miracle story.

[By the way, I didn’t catch your argument about not being able to add new miracles to the collection. If there are only limited writings and most of the tradition is oral, and a new miracle is added, and it is not inconsistent with prior established tradition, how would anyone be able to cross-check it later?]

 

its could be that the reason we left yidishkiet whereas our parents did not, is because, our parents were persecuted by the goyim whereas the OTD'S were persecuted by out own community.

 

I was a bit busy these past couple of days, but I'll respond shortly.

 

@SM (11:13),
I really apologize for misinterpreting your statement as a question. You commented that "The ten commandments aren't worthy of a divine revelation" I was only trying to point out that who are we to judge what is "worthy" to be a commandment. But do point out if I appear to be condescending in any way, I certainly want to keep this as a logical discussion and not let any so called "frum attitude" get in the way.

@SM (11:19),

I can say the same thing, any answer that I can give you and even better ones can also be found in many books or by legitimize Rabbis who are scholars in the subject, so what kind of argument is that?

 

You misunderstood my intent. I am not referring you to scholars as authorities. As I said, I have my own speculation which differs from some scholarly opinions myself. They themselves will admit their responses are speculative. They welcome debate between themselves too- there are the minimalists, and there are the maximalists.

My point is that there are plenty of opinions, plenty of possiblities, enough to fill up shelves in the library, on how it COULD have evolved.

The fact that I wasn't there, and wasn't taking notes and therefore don't know exactly how it DID happen, doesn't mean I that the frum party line is right.

 

"I can say the same thing, any answer that I can give you and even better ones can also be found in many books or by legitimize Rabbis who are scholars in the subject, so what kind of argument is that?"

The difference is that I've already read them ;)

This being the case, let me explain my point. I am not appealing to scholars as authority figures. I'd tell you straight off without beating around the bush, that I don't know, and neither do they. I simply don't know how exactly it happened. Neither do they. We weren't there, we weren't taking notes.

So what's the point of getting bogged down in my own amateur speculative approach? Instead I point to scholarly opinions to show that there are myriad of well possibilities of how it COULD have happened.

Leaving scholars out of it, instead of my uneducated opinion, I leave you to develop a response.

I assume you do not believe in the 11th Samaritan commandment. How did someone come fool the descendants of the ten tribes of Isreal one day, whose ancestors had heard the very words from god himself and passed it down from generation to generation, that there was actually one more commandment that they had been missing?

Answer this question and I'm sure you will come up with something that could just as easily be applied to the Torah of the descendants of Judah.

 

@SM (11:30 and 7:09),

The development of the Samaritans is well known. They were originally pagans that after being brought into the northern empire of Israel converted but weren't accepted by the mainstream Jewish population, one of the reasons are since they didn't follow any of the Traditions but just relied on the literal translation of the text. Their changes of the girsa was obviously deliberate, since they have completely different idea's about Judaism, and they weren't our best friends either see here. So even if they may be considered Jewish converts, they can't be relied on at all as passing down the correct Girsa. They basically did similar to what the Christians would do minus the "son of god", and no one would claim that the Christians just have a different girsa that happened to evolve from an earlier one, rather their changes were deliberate. Though on the other hand the sages declared that the customs that the Samaritans do, that we do too, like Matza and so on, we can rely on that it's kosher see here, but since they have distorted the tradition, we can't at all rely that they have an accurate Girsa, but rather it sports some deliberate changes.

So attached to the history of the Samaritans is the idea that they diverted from the original Torah. Whereas no such thing is ever found in our history that at one point the Torah changed from what is was before. All you can bring is speculation and conspiracy, where we have actual history. In fact part of our tradition is that if even one letter is missing the Torah is posul which shows how careful the scribes would be in it's writing. Yet as soon as the Samaritans (and anyone that changed the text) came around everyone knew about it, and distanced themselves from them. At the end of the day the Samaritans themselves havn't made up a mass revelation, they only modified it, and that disqualifies them. So you ask "How did someone come fool the descendants of the ten tribes of Israel one day...?" they weren't from those tribes! They were converts. So Just like the formulation of any religion where it's holy text is put together at it's conception so too was theirs, except they didn't need to work so hard on it, they just changed ours a bit.

Also, if there had been a division in the Jews since Har Sinai. If it was known that the Samaritans (or anyone) were a separate group of Jews from the time of Har Sinai, then would be begged the question of how that could've happened. Yet even they claim that "the split occurred after the Jews had returned from Babylon" see here.


@SM (11:45),

1. Maybe you can enlighten me about the details of this Hopi myth. Was there a g-dly revelation? Do they all concur about the same event? Are they around today?

2. About the Ethiopian Jewish community, who declared them as being for sure non Jews? in fact many Rabbi's have declared them completely Jewish. The one's that argue don't doubt their claim of tradition, rather they suspect some intermarriage. The tradition doesn't become false if that happens, it's just that we can't be certain that it wasn't passed down through the natives who intermarried with them.

3. About literal understanding of the Torah. If indeed it was first learned allegorically at what point would everyone just adopt to a literal interpretation? Also, the Oral Torah explains how to understand the Torah, and it declares when the Torah is literal and when not, for example "an Eye for an eye" means for monetary value, and it was never understood to mean actual infliction of the damage that was done to you.

@SM (12:07),

"If they really believed deep down in a god that communicates with humans, they'd expect it to happen again, and again." I'm not sure where you're taking your facts from, but that's far from it. In fact every Jew believes that any moment G-d will reveal himself to us all with the coming of Moshiach. To say the story of Matan Torah is irrelevant is like saying that the American war of independence is irrelevant. It's only irrelevant to those that don't care, and as great as logic is, it can't make a person care.

@Menashe (12:56),

1. A.Thanks for clarifying, but my point still remains. As much as physical artifacts of an event give it support of authenticity, it is only with the validity given by the story associated with the finding. For example, if we find shields and swords laying around broken down houses, we can only guess that a battle happened but who fought who and for what cause, we couldn't know. But if there was a story handed down about a battle taking place in that area we can match up the artifact to the event, though it may have actually been from a different battle. Even carbon dating won't help that much since there may have been many battles within that period that it dates to, yet we can't be certain that the story happened with those shields and swords. So an artifact can only support the story it can't prove it happened, and lack of artifacts doesn't prove that it didn't happen.

B. About being in a society that requires belief. We can't possibly say that this requirement started in this generation, since our parent undoubtedly heard it from theirs, going all the way back. So if this "requirement" came into being, it must have been imposed by someone, yet that is again saying that there was a generation that everyone decided to impose this belief onto their children - a massive conspiracy, unlikely for the same reasons mentioned above about how Matan Torah couldn't just become a spontaneous belief.

So too in the reverse 9/11 scenario there would have to be such a cover up that even the greatest conspiracy theorists wouldn't be able to put together without it being completely ridiculous.

C. My point was that just like associated with Houdini's history is the fact that he was a illusionist and associated with Christianity is that it began with one person (or a few at most), associated with Islam is Muhammad, with Buddhism is Gautama and so on, with every religion is the information that gives understanding as to how it could have developed without being actually from G-d. Yet with Judaism there's absolutely nothing that one can point to to say that that is how it naturally formulated.

D. If we had declared that Chumosh Shemois was true, and not the others, you point would be well taken as how could we have all five books as one Torah that contradict each other if only one is True. Likewise on the other hand if there were 50 variations around the world of the Torah, and all the Jews say that all 50 variations are from G-d, that he split the Jews into 50 and gave each one it's Torah that wouldn't pose a problem. But if all the Jews say that there is one Torah, now if we were to find one variation in Brooklyn and another in Germany and so on, that would pose a big problem since we all agree that only one of them is True (just like the example about the five books). That was - as you call it - my challenge, to find Jews that we acknowledge as being Jews, with a variation of the story.

2. If there would have been an opinion that only Moshe spoke all the Ten Commandments then the entire Judaism will be based on a Machloikes, wouldn't that be the first thing brought up by any conversation about Judaism?! The whole point point of Matan Torah was to reveal the Truth. Matan Torah is the one thing that distinguishes us from every other religion, for if it was just Moshe that said the commandments then that wouldn't be different then J speaking about is visions or Muhammad speaking about his. Yet by J or Muhammad no one ever said that it wasn't Muhammad that spoke but G-d, at most the claimed that G-d spoke through Muhammad... So how would such a great and vital detail - that it was really Moshe that gave all the Ten Commandments - been lost? Where some of the nitty gritty details have been retained?

3. My point wasn't to find another culture with the same account as Har Sinai, but with an account of a mass g-dly revelation, and it doesn't even have to be an entire nation. Maybe we can't find another nation with an American Revolution but there are certainly many nations with their own Revolution wars. Also, if mass g-dly revelation is so easy to work in to a religion wouldn't everyone have done it? it would be their best proof of it being true. Yet, you can't find it anywhere...

Also, you admit that at least the basis story - that we were all together at some point in the dessert - must be true, why do you assert that? And however you know that happened is exactly how I know that g-d spoke to them then too.

Thirdly, if water splitting and fruits growing from it's walls is enough to assume that G-d spoke at har sinai, then all the miracles of J should be enough to assume that he was god too. Miracles never prove g-d.

[True, but we would know at what time the miracle was added, since it hasn't appeaed in any literature before hand, then we would have to verify the authenticity of the author etc.]

@kisarita and SM (7:09) ,

Then I challenge you to find a possibility that is more probable then the tradition we have. But is that a way to live? We have a tradition that's rock solid from father to son, but because there might be a possible explanation of how its all just a conspiracy then you'd cling to that with everything you got and consider yourself logical? Tell me you don't like Judaism - fine. But no logical argument has been presented here.

[SM, the second point I addressed above]

 

Dovid,
"The development of the Samaritans is well known." Well-known by whom? The story you are presenting as fact is Judaism's version of the origins of the Samaritans. Ask an actual Samaritan, on the other hand, and they'll give you a whole different story: they believe themselves to be the descendents of the tribes of Joseph, and their Torah to be the original Torah as given by God, and of those claims they have a tradition just as "rock solid" as Judaism's -- passed from father to son, through the generations, all the way back (or so they claim) to biblical times.

So, your toeing of the Jewish party line here only strengthens Sara's argument; now, you'll just have to explain how someone convinced an entire generation of Samaritans, who must have known that their ancestors were nothing more than pagan lion-escaping converts brought from Assyria, that they were in fact direct descendents of Ephraim and Menashe. And that their Torah, which they must have known was just a newfangled deviation of another nation's scripture, was actually what their own ancestors heard from God, including that extra commandment.

Then, take that explanation and apply it to the traditions of Judaism.

[I've been busy, but I'll respond to your other comments when I get a chance.]

 

Menashe,

Your point is well taken. I'll clarify my previous post.

My point about that "The development of the Samaritans is well known" is this: If a tradition has been developed that essentially was fabricated, especially if it was a tradition involving hundreds of thousands of people then there would almost certainly be a tradition that it was fabricated as well. Since a secret can't hold for so long with so many people. So it is possible for a tradition involving myriads of people to be fabricated, but there would also be a tradition going back to that time that it was fabricated.

Just to add in some contrast; A secret between one or a few people can hold for a very long time. As we see that every other religion leads back to one or a few people that very well may have hidden the secret.

So here are two points in verifying a tradition: 1. The more people concerned in the tradition (concerned meaning that its origin began with them), the more credible it is. But the greater the number of the origin the greater the chance there would be an opposition tradition if it were fabricated. 2. A tradition originating with a few people has hardly any credibility, yet it likely wouldn't have any opposition, since if I claim to have had a vision you can't say I didn't, but if I say we all had a vision then you can spread the word that you didn't have a vision.

So now, let's look at the tradition that g-d revealed himself at har sinai. We have a few million people as its base number (600,000 are the just males ages 20 to 60), also there are absolutely NO tradition opposing the fact that g-d revealed himself (I'll get to the 11th commandment thing in a minute, but the initial tradition is the same). So we have a very credible source (myriads of people) and no opposing tradition to give any support of it being fabricated.

Also, the Samaritans also accept that tradition (that g-d revealed himself at har sinai) all that they've done is added a commandment. So let's analyze their tradition: They claim an unbroken chain of tradition since har sinai, that there was also a commandment about sanctifying har grizim. But is there out there in the world a opposition to their tradition? Sure, US. Ok, so we have one tradition vs. another, how do we know which is right? Now, if our tradition had it that they indeed descended from the generation of har sinai, and then we split (like their tradition has it) then it would indeed be a tough situation. But our tradition is that not only wasn't there an 11th commandment (which btw they claim is the 10th and that we only have 9!) but that their ancestors weren't even there! In other words they don't invalidate our tradition (so we have no opposing tradition to the claim of revelation of sinai) but our tradition invalidates theirs!

[It seems there's a cap of 4,096 characters, so I split the post into two.]

 

[continuation from above]

Now, add on to the equation that we are millions spread across the globe, and were never fewer than millions. The Samaritans, however, are today only about 700 and there was even a point that their grand total was a mere 146 people (in 1917, as you can read about their fascinating history in their Education Guide (including some complete distortions of what they think our tradition is).) So even if I would say that at a point that they declared themselves to be decedents of the tribe of Yoseph (which was most likely when we rejected them - which leads to a good motive too), that they really knew themselves to be "pagan lion-escaping converts" it's very plausible to say that it was forgotten being that their entire population dwindled to so few and they were basically always located in one place. Yet by us we are millions spread out throughout the globe with all having the same story!

So, as you wrote, "take that explanation and apply it to the traditions of Judaism", let's see:
1. Jews: No tradition denies that our ancestors were at har sinai. Samaritans: A tradition exists which denies that they were even there.
So however they became convinced that our history was theirs too and that there was a commandment about har grizim, is irrelevant since there exists an opposing tradition that strongly affects their credibility of even being there. However, there are no traditions that say that our ancestors were not at har sinai.

2. Jews: Numbers in the millions and is spread across the globe. Samaritans: About 700 in one place, and at one point were even less than 150.
Which emphasizes point one, that in spite of the fact that we are so many and spread about, there doesn't appear a tradition that denies our ancestors being at har sinai, which if it were really fabricated would be a miracle in itself that no one (not even the Samaritans) let the cat out of the bag. But regarding the Samaritans, how much can you even rely on the samaritan tradition itself being that its bearers so few?!

 

Dovid,
On the topic of Samaritans: Your argument, as I understand, is twofold:

1. While you concede that it is possible for a tradition involving many people to be fabricated, you contend that there should be an opposing tradition. The more people a tradition affects, the greater chance of an opposing tradition. The Samaritan tradition has an opposing tradition, while ours does not.

2. Since there is a known point in history when the Samaritans dwindled to 150, their tradition should not be credible.

To address each in turn:

1. While I agree that if a tradition were inaccurate (or outright false) there would be opposing traditions, you must admit that it is at the very least possible for a tradition to be lost over time -- so, it is possible that the opposing traditions were present at some time, but ultimately lost.

In fact, traditions being lost are highly probable -- even Jews often tout the unlikelihood of the Judaic traditions having lasted so long. So, for example, if the Jewish traditions had fizzled out and been completely lost over time (as is claimed were the overwhelming odds), the Samaritan tradition would have remained uncontested. But would that be any reason to believe them?

2. True, they numbered 150 at one point, but it is also known that earlier on their numbers were far greater (as many as in the millions), and there are plenty of Samaritan texts dating back to those periods of their history that survive today. So, if I understand correctly, you are suggesting that, after having carried a tradition for a thousand years of being descendents of pagan converts, suddenly, upon finding themselves conveniently few in number, they rewrote their past, making themselves the lost Israelite tribes, and purged any contrary evidence. I find that highly unlikely, and it seems even wilder a conspiracy theory than anything I had proposed.

 

Dovid,
Now, just to back up a bit and address the other points in your prior post, let me reiterate a point I made a while back (sorry if this post runs a bit long):

I do not see cause to believe that there is any such thing as a "mesorah", nor that any accurate, long-standing "oral traditions" are ever likely to exist. At any era, whatever is clearly documented in written form is retained over time, and what is not is distorted or lost completely. It is just the nature of the human condition that while we are capable of retaining texts over time, and are also capable of retaining self-identification with a lineal group over generations, we have no reason to suspect that people are capable of accurately retaining undocumented oral traditions over any significant length of time. If you wish to maintain otherwise, please give an example (outside of Judaism) of where we believe anything to be true solely on the basis of the purely oral traditions of a people, or where a centuries-old oral tradition, sans firm documentation backing it, has been proven to be accurate.

To extend that a bit further: even where there is written documentation, the correct interpretation of the writing will similarly be distorted or lost so long as there is any room for interpretation, unless the interpretation is itself clearly and authoritatively documented.

Take the Talmud for example. Whatever is clearly stated in the Talmud is agreed upon by all self-identified Pharisaic Jews (i.e., Jews who accept the Talmud) of all of the Diaspora, be they in Europe, the Middle East, the Americas, etc. That is actually no surprise at all -- they all have the same book! (more or less). So long as: a. they identify with the people that accepts the Talmud, and b. they have the text of the Talmud, their 'traditions' will be those of the Talmud's. There is no 'preservation of traditions' at play here; it is merely a combination of preservation of self-identification and preservation of text.

However, wherever there is any slight unclarity or ambiguity with regard to the intent of the authors of the Talmud, you will find (what seems to be) every conceivable position taken up by some commentary (the 'ten-Jews-holding-eleven-opinions' phenomenon in full force).

[As an aside, the Christians have no such unity with regard to their beliefs; it seems there are nearly as many denominations of Christianity as there are Christians, and they vary wildly even on their most basic tenets. This is because the last document all Christians agree to be binding is the New Testament, which is very wishy-washy and leaves a great deal for interpretation. So, it's not that the Jews have been better at preserving their traditions than the Christians; it just so happens that the [Pharisaic] Jews' last universally binding document, the Talmud, is far more detailed and descriptive, therefore far more rigidly inflexible.]

So: yes, I know that the beliefs of contemporary Judaism did not originate in this generation or my parents generation. I can do you one better and tell you with high certainty that they have been around for at least nearly two thousand years; NOT because my parents told me, or because of any 'tradition', but because we have documented evidence that Jews have held these beliefs since Mishnaic and Talmudic times. Before that, however, things get murky. With no known authoritative document before the Mishnah since the Torah, we really can't know for certain what the religion was like. It's often argued that because we know Jewish tradition has been preserved largely unchanged for two thousand years it stands to reason that it is a continuous unchanged chain from Sinai, but that is a fallacy -- for the past two thousand years the religion had the Talmud to preserve it, which is relatively insusceptible to variance in interpretation; before that, there was only the Torah.

[cont'd in next post]

 

[continued from previous]

Given that premise, here's a hypothetical rough timeline of how the Sinai story (and other Jewish traditions) developed: [Note I don't claim to know that any of this happened; this is just to illustrate how it could have happened].

I. [A long time ago]: Moses founds the religion with a large group of escaped slaves from Egypt. A basis story for the Sinai event occurs, such as the one I described in my previous posts. The religion then continues with scanty or no documentation for some time, and, as can be expected, the stories become exaggerated, distorted, and varied over time. However, the common threads that form the basis of the religion are: a. They worship a God named Y---. b. They had a leader named Moshe, who gave them commandments from this God. c. On Mount Sinai, God communicated to them the ten most fundamental commandments of their religion. Now, the important part of (c) is that God gave them the commandments. The precise details of 'who spoke what' and 'how they were given' don't make or break the religion, so long as they all believed they were a communication from God (much like today, when the precise details of Matan Torah are of little importance and are only of scholarly interest).

II. [Some hundreds of years later]: The Torah, in its current form (or something close to it), is written and edited. Since there are multiple authors involved, and there is overlap in the stories they write, the redacted Torah contains conflicting accounts of stories as the authors present varying accounts. Among those are differing accounts of the Sinai story, one which has God speaking through Moshe, and another which has the people hearing directly from God. The people are unlikely to care much one way or the other, since that detail (at that point) is not the foundation of the religion. All they care about is that the commandments came from God, in a spectacular event.

[continued in next post]

 

[continued from previous]

III. [Some time later, probably during the Babylonian exile]: Some time passes, and study of the teachings of Moshe and general observance of the religion dwindles. The overwhelming majority of the nation is preoccupied with the hardships of daily life (having been exiled and all), and the preservation of the text of the Torah is left to a scholarly few.

More time passes; the people become more settled; the religion experiences a resurgence. New Yeshivas are set up, new students are recruited, and study of the Torah begins again. Of course, by now the context of the times in which the Torah was originally written is virtually lost (having been many generations prior, and, as I asserted earlier, oral traditions don't last). All they have at this point is a text, which they are trying to reinterpret.

In the course of their reinterpretation, what is essentially a new religion is created (most probably, unwittingly); let's call it Judaism 2.0. Among the many changes between the original religion and the new one, two are important for this discussion: 1. Rather than the Torah being viewed as merely a written record of a religion, it is turned into a key component of the religion itself, with the idea developed that it itself was authored by God and handed to Moshe. 2. It followed that there could be no contradictions in the Torah, so, with some creative interpretation and imagination, they 'resolved' them all.

Judaism 2.0 gains a wide following (of course, they didn't call it 2.0), and, over time, is developed and recorded in the Mishna and later the Talmud, which become the 'New Testament' of Judaism 2.0. (No, they didn't claim them to be scripture, but they did claim them to be unalterable and binding to their adherents, which is the same effect as scripture). These documents form the basis of and preserve the new religion for the next 2000 years.

Again, I don't claim to 'know' that any of this happened. All I'm doing is presenting a plausible (I think) scenario of how it all could have developed. If you wish to challenge it with any question that begins, "Shouldn't they have had a tradition that...?" my answer to that would be "no", unless you can demonstrate that an unwritten tradition is likely to survive through generations, especially one concerning details that have little practical relevance to the average person's daily life, and especially when in conflict with an authoritative document.

 

Menashe,

Concerning your reply about the Samaritans:
1. Certainly traditions can be lost, even full religions became lost. My point was to show how there's absolutely no support to saying that the story of Har Sinai was fabricated. For not only can't you find an opposition today, but never have we found any documents, archaeological finds or whatever to point to an alternative history. I'm not saying that not finding evidence is proof that it never happened, but there's certainly nothing to base the theory of an alternative history of our tradition, other then our amazing imagination.

Had there been today only the Samaritans, or had we not opposed their origins, there would certainly be more reason to believe them, but not much, since they are so few today. Which brings me to the next point.

2. Forgive me for not being so clear, but I didn't mean to suggest that at the point when they were only 150, did they drop their previous traditions and and took ours. I meant that there's a great chance that for the better part of the lifetime of their tradition they were indeed aware of a different version of their history within their own people, but certainly it was more popular to declare their Torah to be true since that is what they followed, and perhaps if they were around in abundant today it's very likely that there would be various versions of their history. But being that they are so few today we can hardly declare their claim so reliable. They're perhaps only slightly more reliable then if they didn't exist at all today and all we have is their Torah and some history books claiming the story of the Samaritans.

So all we see from the Samaritans is that one group of people are able to adapt to another nation's history and claim it their own. The reason why it was so possible in their case is twofold: 1. Once they all accepted the Torah (as per our tradition of how it happened), they would teach to their children what it says, and the history it teaches. 2. It's not a story that one would ask "How come I never heard about it?" since they can point to the rest of us (authentic Jews) and say "Ask anyone of them if they heard it from their parents". When you put both points together it's very likely how they adapted to thinking that also their ancestors were at Har Sinai.

But in no way can we apply that to our tradition since neither points are true. 1. We have never heard, found, had a tradition that we accepted writings from some other religion and certainly we don't have any reason to even say so. 2. If someone later would introduce a history of our ancestors that no one's ever heard about (whether from their own parents or others) it would certainly spark the question of "If it happened to 600,000+ of our ancestors how come you're the only one that knows about it?".

So in no way can the Samaritans pose any problem to our tradition being authentic.

[Continue below]

 

Regarding Mesorah:

1. First of all, indeed a specific tradition, especially an insignificant one, I agree is very likely to be forgotten. But imagine a tradition such as the American Revolution or 9/11, things that changed the course of history and of a nation, do you really propose it can be forgotten? the odds must be hugely against that happening. Certainly it would be recorded and written down by the nation that experienced it and the people will say that they recieved the records from their parents, which is likewise why we have the Torah - a recording of the events that happened and transformed us as a nation. So indeed you most probably wouldn't find anywhere millions of people just passing something orally, certainly they would have written it down. And the reason why it's so unlikely that it would get distorted is for many reasons, amogst them: 1) It's a major significant event that would affect everyone witnessing it 2) it was recorded in the Torah and we passed on that what is said in the Torah is true (which is like the video of 9/11 which attached to it, is the claim by everyone that it's recording is true to what happened.) 3) From all the thousands of Torah's around the world, in all are written that G-d revealed himself at har sinai.

True, exact details of the event may be forgotten (like by the American Revolution, it may not be remembered what they ate for dinner) but the core event can hardly be forgotten.

2. You claim that the reason it makes sense that we our traditions go back at least 2000 years is because we had the Talmud. Well that may explain (at the very most) all our minhagim and interpretations of the Torah, but the core story that G-d took us out of Egypt, and revealed himself at har sinai is written clearly in the Torah, which goes back (without any substantial objections) to har sinai, from father to son, and since we have no variation of that story anywhere, there's absolutely no support, and it's very improbable to to say it changed.

[continue below]

 

3. I. Your (c) is the most fundamental part of any religion, every religion claims as their core, that it's origin is that someone had a revelation of G-d. And who the commandments were given to are just as fundamental, whether it was given to one guy (as every other religion claims) or millions.

II. As above, weather just Moshe heard it or the whole nation makes a ton of a difference. As soon as someone would introduce the notion that it was heard by the entire nation and not just by Moshe, there would be a staggering question as to how come only he (the guy / author) who introduced it knew about it and no one else. Would it be anything less then the best remembered fact about a religion. Imagine someone coming today (or even hundreds of years ago) and telling the Muslims that it wasn't just Muhammad that had the vision, his whole generation had it, would anyone fall for it? Even you find it highly unlikely that a nations' history could just be re-written.

III. Even if the study and the observing of the Mitzvois would dwindle, still as you said earlier, the self-identification of being a Jew, and what it means to be a Jew (that G-d took us out of Mitzayim revealed himself at har sinai which is the source of the Torah) should hardly be forgotten.

How can you suggest that the text of a religion could have ever been viewd anything less then it's key component? Look at any other religion.

As your last point you write that an unwritten tradition, "especially one concerning details that have little practical relevance to the average person's daily life, and especially when in conflict with an authoritative document" is very unlikely to survive through generations. I say, can the revaltion of G-d be anything but the most significant event of a nation, esepcailly when it completely changes the way we behave, like keeping Shabbos for example?

I would suggest you read this document, which delves more deeply into the implausibility of something so significant being forgotten.

 

Boruch Hashem I read about her,found it peculiar that very shortly after she left Judaism her relative , who helped her to leave Judaism got cancer and died.Obviously it didn't bother her,but it told me something I think she is incapable of hearing.That there is more to life than what we see or hear. I will n ever for give her for helping to take children from their parents,especially Avinu Sbashomaiym.

 

Rueven

You're a typical frum rosheh!