In this episode of Hebrew Voices #217, True Torah Judaism: Part 1, Nehemia brings on Israel Horowitz to discuss how religious corruption in Judaism has influenced the beliefs and practices of Jews away from the original meaning of the Torah.
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Hebrew Voices #217 – True Torah Judaism: Part 1
You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.
Israel: But just read the Torah. Start from the beginning, read it without commentary, and see what happens. Two thousand years of Rabbinic literature has been 2,000 years of Jewish exile. And so…
Nehemia: So, I once had a friend who wasn’t Orthodox, but kind of gravitated towards that. He’s like, “You know, you’re probably right, Nehemia. But, you know, they have all these communities that I want to be part of.” And then here’s something he said I can’t get past; this is what he told me. He said, “You know, the rabbis kept us for 2,000 years in exile.” And I said, “You’re right.”
Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m here today with Israel Horowitz. He was raised an ultra-Orthodox Jew, trained in strict Talmudic discipline to become a rabbi. As he matured into adulthood, he realized the man-made corruption that existed in Judaism… ooh, we’re going to talk about what you mean by that… pulling people away from the Torah and prioritizing the rabbis’ teaching over God’s. Since then, Israel has dedicated his life to teaching the Torah correctly, giving everyone access to the eternal revelation in the five Books of Moses. Shalom, Israel.
Israel: Shalom. Thank you for having me.
Nehemia: Israel, I saw some of your videos on TikTok and I said, “Who is this guy?” This guy sounds a lot like me, in some ways. In other ways, you know, no. Maybe he sounded like me 20 years ago. And I spoke to you for the first time about a week ago; about an hour we spoke. And one of the surprising things that came out for me is, you weren’t really aware too much about what I do, and, you know, I was very… let’s say, had a limited understanding of what you do. And so, we kind of came to the same conclusions independently. So, I find that fascinating.
So, tell us a little bit about… like, you were kind of startled when I said I’m a Karaite. And you said, “Wait; you’re a Karaite?” And you have to understand, like for people who know me and who follow what I’ve been doing since the ‘90s, that would be like, I don’t know, saying that… I don’t know… “Donald Trump is a Republican,” right? You know, like, that’s what he’s known for. So, yeah. So, tell us a little bit about your… I read that, you know, three-line blurb that you wrote about who you are, but tell us in your own words, in a sense, you know, how’d you get to where you are? Where are you now? Yeah.
Israel: Okay, for sure. Well, yeah. I mean, I was shocked when you said you’re a Karaite because I’ve just never actually met a Karaite, which is pretty cool. You know, I mean, I live in Los Angeles, so, you know, there’s not really a very big Karaite community here. I don’t know if there’s a big Karaite community anywhere. I heard the biggest it gets is in Israel or something. There may be…
Nehemia: So, the number they give is something like 35,000 in Israel. There are some pretty large Karaite communities, like with synagogues with, you know, lots of people going to them in Ashdod, Ramla, Be’er Sheva and a few other places, mostly in southern Israel. And most of those are people whose ancestors were Karaites for many generations. You and I are different in that you were raised Orthodox; I was raised Orthodox…
Nehemia: …so we came to be Karaites, and there are lots of people like that. But the large communities are mostly of Egyptian descent. There was maybe a few hundred whose ancestors came from Iraq, and by ancestors, I mean in the 1950s and ‘60s, when the Jews were ethnically cleansed from Arab countries. That’s what I’m referring to. So, most of them have been Karaite for many generations, but that’s… you were raised ultra-Orthodox, you said, so tell us about that.
Israel: Yeah, I will. Well, it’s funny, because I did speak to a gentleman a couple of months back, and he said he actually met a Karaite in Israel. And the story was that he had read a passage in the Talmud that was extremely disturbing. And there are numerous such passages in the Talmud; countless, actually. And so, he was walking down the street of Jerusalem looking perturbed and like, anxious, like something had just happened. And he’s walking down the street, and a guy comes and looks up at him and says, “Hey, like, what happened? Did you read the Talmud or something?”
Nehemia: Are you serious?
Israel: That’s actually what he said.
Nehemia: Like out of the blue, huh? Okay.
Israel: Yeah. And he’s like, “Yeah, actually I did.” And this guy just proceeds to tell him that he’s a Karaite. And, you know, as you said, many generations. I think his family actually has been living in Israel for many generations. And he just wanted to reassure him that he wasn’t alone in this realization that, you know, the Talmud, and traditional Judaism, is greatly disturbing. And I think that that’s really… my story, is that, you know, I was raised in the heart of it, in the depth of it. I was on track to be, say, a yeshiva prodigy. You know, leader, rabbi, in that world. But just increasingly I started to realize just how disturbing the religion that they were pushing was. And, you know, it only makes sense within its own framework. As in, like, only when you’re part of the system and you’re in the community and they simulate this reality where this is just the only truth. That’s the only place that it makes sense.
But then, once you start to look at it from an outsider’s perspective, you can’t help but see the problems that exist there, the hypocrisy, the contradictions. Ultimately, it boils down to blind faith in rabbis, and really borderline worship. You know, they like to claim that they’re not worshipping them, but they usually are in some capacity or another. Even if they don’t outright call them God, they’ll pray to them, they’ll obey their every command. And so, you know, I just had to go on a journey of just questioning everything that I was taught, you know, down to the foundation of God and the Torah being the Five Books of Moses because that’s the foundation of Judaism, no matter which sect you are. And personally, you know, I think the sect thing is crazy. I think we all have one law; we all have to follow it.
Nehemia: You know, I’m going to ask you… we’ll come back to that, because the word sect is not something everyone will be familiar with. But let’s go on, let’s… I want to hear what you have to say.
Israel: Sure, let’s talk about it.
Nehemia: I’m Israeli, so I interrupt people. So, just get used to it. Yeah.
Israel: No problem. But yeah, just to conclude; essentially, I did even question the basis of the entire religion being the existence of God and the revelation in the Five Books of Moses. And, I was at a point where, you know, I just didn’t have any guidance. Because if you don’t have a divine revelation, you’re essentially dependent on your own personal beliefs and opinions. And so, at that point, I met an older man who’s the father of my friends, and he told me… you know, he actually had a fascinating past. He converted to Judaism through Orthodoxy, and then actually left Orthodoxy after seeing the corruption. And now he just follows the Five Books of Moses, just the Torah, and he told me, he’s like, “Look, you know, I understand all the problems that you have, but just read the Torah. Start from the beginning, read it without commentary, and see what happens.”
And that’s what I did, you know. I sat down with his son, my friend, and we just started reading the Torah from the beginning. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” And I realized that I had never read the Torah without commentary. You know, growing up as a child they say, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” and then immediately look at Rashi: “God looked into the Torah and created the world for Israel.” You know, like he starts launching into some nonsensical tirade, you know. And when you can just read the narrative clearly and you can actually see the words and see what we’re being told, see the history that’s being conveyed, see God reveal to you, progressively through the text, the story of the Israelites, all of the commandments, the laws, that’s it. You realize that is the Torah, and everything that has been added after that is quite literally added by man. And the source is their own authority and their own opinion and their own tradition, which is not reliable. Definitely not reliable to deviate from the Torah itself, where, of course, as any good Karaite or Sadducee knows, Deuteronomy 4:2, Deuteronomy 13:1, “You shall not add or subtract to these commandments” couldn’t be clearer. Every great prophet and king, from Joshua to David to Ezra, who was worth anything, said, “Follow the Torah of Moses.” And that’s what we need to be doing as Jews.
And, I think, you know, as you told me, when you were raised Orthodox, they would reference the Karaites as like some punchline, you know, some joke. Like, “Could you believe there are these morons who actually only believe in the word of God?” So, I believe we need a revival of this philosophy, because it is what Judaism truly is, and we definitely need that. So, that’s what we’re here to do.
Nehemia: So… wow, I have so much to unpack here. So, let’s just go in order. So, you mentioned something about a sect, and I don’t know that everybody listening will understand that term, how it’s used in, I would say in Orthodox Judaism. Not sure, outside of Orthodox. I haven’t found that used as much. I grew up with that term. In England, “sect” is what we call in America a cult. You’ve got to be really careful with those terms. So, what do you mean by sect? And what is that?
Israel: I mean, it is somewhat cultish. So, you know…
Nehemia: Yeah, but is that what you mean?
Israel: No. What I mean is, in Judaism, there are multiple… it’s like in Christianity, denominations, right?
Israel: In Judaism they have Reform, Conservative, Modern Orthodox, Orthodox, ultra-Orthodox. Right? And then we have this group called the Karaites, you know, which is its own group. And my point was that, when you look at all of the sects of Jews, the Reform deviate from the Torah in one way, the Orthodox deviate from the Torah in another way. So really, just what we need to be doing is following the Torah. So, I don’t really believe that there should be different denominations of Judaism because there’s just one law for the native, for the convert, for everyone. It’s just one law.
And, you know, there’s nothing wrong with having communities, and people could be doing different things. But like, it’s like the tribes, right? There’s 12 tribes, and they all have different personalities. They all have different land, but they have one law, and one Torah, one God. So, I think that’s what the Jewish people need.
Nehemia: So, you’ve used the word “Karaite”, and you sort of used it interchangeably with Sadducee, which I think will be surprising to some of our Christian listeners. Because in their mind, a Sadducee has a very narrow definition that they’re getting from, really, I suppose, from the New Testament. So, here’s something I’ll just explain to the audience; that, in medieval Rabbinical literature, which it seems like you were very much exposed to, the term Sadducee is used as another term for Karaite. And it’s used in a sense, in a derogatory way, because Karaite means “followers of Scripture,” from the word miqra or qara. And Sadducee is, in Rabbinical literature, kind of this trope of someone who’s a sellout. Who collaborates with the Romans and denies the Oral Law. Because that’s what happens when you deny the Oral Law; you end up collaborating with the Romans. Which is kind of a strange…
Israel: The rabbis never collaborated with the Romans, yeah.
Nehemia: Right. Well, did they? Let me ask that question. Give me an example where they did.
Israel: Well, I mean, the story of Jesus seems to imply that the rabbis…
Nehemia: Okay, so I’m not sure what you’re referring to there of how they collaborated. Oh, you mean… so, tell me what you mean by that.
Israel: Didn’t the Pharisees collude with the Romans to kill Jesus? I mean, that’s the story. Unless it’s…
Nehemia: So, the one that comes to mind for me is Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakai, who, during the siege of Jerusalem, snuck out of the city in a coffin, and… well, and he then literally went over to the Roman side. And as a reward, they gave him this little Jewish enclave in Yavne where he was able to set up a Sanhedrin after the war. And we’re talking here about the great revolt in 66 to 73, thereabouts. So, that’s one that comes to mind for me.
So, I mean, there were different people who collaborated with the Romans who were, you know, both Pharisees, Rabbinical Jews, and let’s say, a type of Karaite, in a sense. So, here’s how I… well, let me let me ask you your definition of Karaite. I’d like to hear that.
Israel: Okay. But I’m just curious; where did the Sadducees get involved with the Romans in Scripture?
Nehemia: So, all we know about the Sadducees is from Rabbinical sources, and the Rabbinical sources are definitely very critical. And there were Sadducee high priests. And the accusation was that, in order to be a high priest you have to bribe the Romans, and you have to collaborate with them, basically. Now, there were also Pharisee high priests, that makes it a little bit more complicated. But…
Israel: Of course there were Pharisee high priests. And they claim that, like, only the Pharisee high priests were righteous. Not to mention the Sadducees were just part of, like, the royalty, as far as I know. Like they were the priests and the nobility.
Nehemia: Well, and let’s not rehash 2,000-year-old debates between different groups who are dead. What does it mean to you today that you… I mean, do you self-identify as a Karaite? And then, what does that mean to you?
Nehemia: I like putting people in boxes. It makes me feel more comfortable.
Israel: Yeah. Sure, sure. Yeah, I mean, I self-identify with the Karaites in the fundamental belief. As in, like, I know the Karaites have lots of their own interpretations or traditions. I don’t ascribe to that.
Israel: But the fundamental belief is what I share, which is that it’s only the written Torah which is the actual Torah from God. Now, I know you were telling me that the Karaites expand the definition to all qara, all of Scripture, and so you would have this sort of belief in the entire Tanakh. Is that accurate?
Nehemia: Definitely, for sure. So, by definition… the original terms, if we go back to like the 9th century… original terms… the terms of the 9th century would have… Like, in the 6th century, nobody was saying they were a Karaite, there were just Jews around the world who did different things. And then you have the rise of Islam, and the Muslims are like, “You Jews, you take care of your own affairs.” Okay, well, who’s in charge of that? The rabbis in Baghdad, because that’s where the Islamic Empire was based.
And then, other Jews are like, “No, we don’t follow these talmudists. We don’t believe in the Talmud. We just…” “Well, what do you guys do then?” “Well, we just follow Scripture.” And that wasn’t always true. Like, I think I’m mature enough today to say that there were people who called themselves ba’alei miqra. That was the term, followers. Or bnei miqra as well, “sons of Scripture” or “masters of Scripture” who, in opposition to the authority of the rabbis coming out of Baghdad under the Islamic sword, I would say… Right, the Muslims are like, “Look, you guys collect your own taxes. You judge your own people.”
Israel: By the way, I mean, that’s another example…
Nehemia: “And you figure it out.”
Israel: That’s another example of the rabbis colluding with the government of their time, which I believe has always been the rabbis’ strategy. They’ve never actually had political or legal power in any real sense. They’ve always just been operating under… it’s like a shell government, under the government that they lived in, whether it was in Europe or the Middle East or in America, right? But they’re just colluding with the government of their place in order to have control over their community.
Nehemia: I mean, there’s definitely some truth in that. When the emancipation came about in the… or started to come about in the 18th century…
Israel: All the Jews ran away.
Nehemia: Well, no it wasn’t that the Jews ran away, it was that there were rabbis… So, the emancipation was… So, here’s how it was under Islam, and to some extent under Christianity: you weren’t a citizen of the Islamic Empire, you were a Jew. And, okay, well, so who pays taxes? The Jewish community. Who collects those taxes and enforces law upon Jews? Well, the rabbis, because they’re… Like, if you’re a Muslim ruler and you say, “Okay, who’s in charge here,” and you’re in Baghdad, which is the center of their empire, well, the rabbis are in charge in Baghdad. That wasn’t even a question, right? That’s where the Babylonian Talmud was written, right, in that region.
And so, in Christian lands, it was very similar to some extent as well. You were, you know, the personal property of the ruler. You weren’t a citizen. And the emancipation was, they said, “Oh, you know what? Prussia is going to make… Jews will be citizens just like Christians.” And it was the rabbis who were opposed to that because it took away their authority.
Israel: Which, by the way, it completely destroyed their power base. As of today…
Nehemia: A hundred percent.
Israel: …the majority of Jews are not observant. Like, they…
Nehemia: Well, but they were open… they openly opposed it. This isn’t like a conspiracy theory. They openly opposed emancipation, because they said, “Wait a minute. Right now, if a Jew says, ‘I don’t believe in the Talmud,’ we excommunicate him. He’s forced to convert to Christianity because he’s no longer part of the Jewish community that we control.” If everyone’s a citizen of Prussia… that’s where it really began, in Prussia, which later became the German Empire, ironically. So, then what happens is, “We have no control. We can’t excommunicate them because they’re not under our authority. They’re voluntarily under our authority.” And that was actually the rise of the Reform movement. Meaning, the rise of the Reform movement said, “Wait. We’re not subject to these rabbis anymore? Why are we doing all these things?”
Nehemia: Now, you could say they went too far, right? That’s a conversation we can have. But at first, I think they were completely on the right track.
Israel: Yes, I think the original Reform movement, in the attempt to just go along with the emancipation, as in, like, “If we’re no longer subject to living in a ghetto under the thumb of a tyrannical rabbi…”
Nehemia: And literally a ghetto, guys. Literally there was a gate where every Jew had to be at sunset, and they would lock the gate. And if the rabbi said, “You’re not allowed to come into the gate,” you had no choice but either convert to Christianity or get executed. Those were your options.
Israel: Absolutely. No, I mean, I’m very aware of that as well, having grown up ultra-Orthodox. You know, I went to a Hasidic elementary school and, you know, they always praise the days of the shtetl, the ghetto. You know, “If only we can go back to just living like that.” And in fact, wherever they go now in the world, they try to replicate that structure. Whether it’s in London or in New York or in, you know, Jerusalem, they create their… they immediately have their kosher butcher, their kosher supermarket, their shul, their… you know, and they create their ghetto wherever they go.
But what’s crazy is that the Reform movement was not wrong when it started off, but it just got to a point where it became a question of, like, man’s opinion, as opposed to just following the Torah. So, that’s why I think they really lost their way.
Israel: Pretty quickly, obviously.
Nehemia: All right. So, talk to me. You mentioned, you know, how I am of the view that… well, I mean, it’s pretty clear, that I believe in the entire Tanakh. Do you not believe in Isaiah? Or do you think that’s not the word of God? I guess that’s really the question.
Israel: Yeah. So, I think that it’s not that I don’t believe in the rest of the Old Testament. I do think it’s some of the greatest literature in the world, some of the most important history points, especially for the Jewish people, along with prophecy and prayer and Proverbs and all that. So, I’m very much a fan of the Old Testament, for the most part.
It’s just that I think there needs to be a distinction between the Torah and the Tanakh, and the nakh, and the rest of the Old Testament. Because the Torah just stands head and shoulders above the rest of the Old Testament in terms of content, in terms of revelation, in terms of the writer being Moses. Versus, you know, the books coming later, having anonymous writers or compiled by like, you know, over time and we don’t exactly know who wrote them. As well as the fact that they’re not here to establish law. They’re here to really just establish an understanding of Jewish history, of what the Land of Israel looked like.
And really, if you can compound the entire message of the Old Testament past the Torah, it’s, “The Jewish people didn’t follow the Torah.” And that was their problem. And that was the history. That was the prophecy. It was all in relationship to the Israelites not following the Torah, which is the Five Books of Moses.
So, I just think that, as far as the law is concerned, that’s the Torah. As far as what we need to really know, the vital information, that’s the Torah. And again, like, the reason why I’m wary about the rest of the Old Testament is because, if we were to get too focused on that… first of all, it expands the reading like, I don’t know, not tenfold; more. Like, the Old Testament is so much bigger than the Torah. If that was part of the necessary information, Judaism just became a whole lot more difficult.
So, I just believe that the Torah is a much better standard for determining, what is Judaism? What is the law? And not to mention that, you know, because of the nature of the prophets, that there are metaphorical statements, and there are things that could be interpreted very differently. People who believe in the Old Testament as like, you know, it’s the word of God, like, as if it was from, you know, God to Moses in the Torah, they end up creating entire doctrines based off of some metaphorical vague verse in the Old Testament. Which I don’t think is helpful for practice. Because, again, we need to go back to the foundation. We need to know what the laws are and just follow that without…
Nehemia: Yeah, people do that based on the Torah, too. I’ve seen it.
Israel: Yeah, it’s true, but…
Nehemia: In other words, they’ll take some obscure verse and they’ll… this is what I say jokingly all the time. What I say jokingly all the time, but it’s not really a joke, is that you find the most obscure, unclear verse, and that’s where you need to start your own denomination. Because if it’s a clear verse, we don’t need our own denomination, everybody agrees on that, right? And people really do that. I mean, you see it more in Christianity, where they’ll take some, you know, I don’t know, some verse from Paul in particular that nobody… well, I don’t know. I guess they think they understand it, and that’s the basis of their doctrine. And they’ll be like a 4 Point Calvinist instead of a 3 Point Calvinist, based on their specific interpretation of something in Paul, or a few things in Paul, right? So, I kind of joke about that, but people really do it. I suppose Protestants do it more than Catholics, because Catholics don’t really care what it says, necessarily, and, like…
Israel: It’s what the Pope says.
Nehemia: Well, it’s interesting. So, when the Reformation happened in Europe… it started in 1517, right? So, you had this vast literature between Catholics and Protestants, and they used the term, they themselves used the terms. The Catholics accused the Protestants of being Karaites, and the Protestants accused the Catholics of being Pharisees, or Rabbanites. And neither of them meant it in a complimentary way.
Israel: They used those terms?
Nehemia: They use those exact terms.
Nehemia: And then at one point the Protestants said, “Okay, yeah, we’re Karaites. But what are Karaites? We better go find out.” And I suppose to some extent, it’s over this question of, is it Sola Scriptura? Which is what… I want to say it was Luther, but I’m not an expert. I think Martin Luther said Sola Scriptura. And then the Catholics say, “No, it’s not just what the Scripture says, it’s tradition.”
Nehemia: Right? This Scripture is informative, but…
Israel: The institutional power base. Yeah.
Nehemia: And part of tradition is the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, right? For them. Now, there’s a difference, because the rabbis don’t have a pope, right? They don’t have a centralized authority. Maybe they did at one time in the Sanhedrin, but today they don’t. So, it makes things a little bit more complicated. Every rabbi, to some extent, was a pope, let’s say, 500, 600 years ago. It’s a bit different now.
Israel: Yeah. I’ve noticed something interesting; tell me if you agree, in the Orthodox. So, in the history of the Orthodox rabbis, there was a lot of warring between like, you know… they like, excommunicated Maimonides or like, Luzzato or the Ramchal. They were like, you know, “He’s a bad guy.” You know, and there’s like, you have the Baal Shem Tov and the Vilna Gaon fighting. Or like, “You’re not a Jew,” you know?
And then nowadays, I just noticed that the Orthodox Jews have just become a collection of all of their rabbis. So, like, the modern-day Orthodox Jew doesn’t even care about the infighting within Orthodoxy because they just have created, like, a unified Orthodoxy where it’s like, okay we all just… it’s all just rabbi worship, essentially.
Nehemia: Tell me what you mean by rabbi worship. You mentioned that before. You mentioned praying to rabbis, which is one thing…
Nehemia: Which people don’t realize, some of the listeners may not realize, that’s literally true. That’s one thing. But then, that’s not all what you mean when you say rabbi worship. What do you mean?
Israel: Well, I mean, just imagine that you center your entire culture, your entire… the fascination of your life is the rabbis, right? And you’ll always be reading their books. You’ll always be reading their ideologies. Remember, I mean, I don’t think people understand the extent of Rabbinic literature. We’re talking about thousands and thousands of books written by thousands of rabbis over thousands of years, you know. And their claim is, “Look how great we are. Look how vast our literature is. You need to spend the rest of your life reading our books in order for you to even have a chance at being wise.” Right? And that’s actually the model of the yeshiva movement, which is centered around studying Talmud and all of the commentaries for an indefinite period of time for the rest of your life.
In fact, the rabbis that they honor the most are the ones who did that their entire life. And, you know, they have stories of, like, these rabbis who stayed up till four in the morning just reading Talmud, you know, until like, they passed out on the floor, and they’re like, “Oh, he’s amazing,” right? And, you know, they’re not following the Torah. You know, they’re not reading the Torah. They’re not even living… they’re not even living life. Which is insane because the whole point of the Torah is to teach us how to live.
Nehemia: So, part of the problem here is, what is the definition of Torah? Right? They have a definition of Torah that includes anything any rabbi ever taught or will teach.
Nehemia: So, they’ll say, “I’m studying Torah,” and what they actually mean… or “I’m learning Torah,” they’ll say… is what they really mean is the reading…
Israel: Reading rabbinic commentary…
Nehemia: Reading all these numerous books. I have this database that I paid a whole lot of money for my research, put together by Bar-Ilan University. And it’s a searchable database with over, to date, the latest number I was given, it has over 250,000 Rabbinical works. And it’s not everything. So, it has almost nothing from Kabbalah. Right? It’s mostly halakhic literature and Talmudic literature. So, imagine if you added Kabbalah to that, you might double the size of that.
And there is this interesting idea, now that I’m thinking about it, it’s kind of this authority of the learned, right? Meaning, one of the things I was told when I was growing up was, “You know Nehemia, you think you know better than all these rabbis? You have all these rabbis in your past. Your great-grandfather that you’re named after was a rabbi, and you can’t even read the book that he wrote. So how could you question his authority and his knowledge? You think you know better how to understand the Torah. You can’t even read what your ancestors wrote about the Torah.”
So, I made it my objective in life, one of my objectives, to know more than my great-grandfather and my other ancestors. My seventh great-grandfather, who was a student of the Vilna Gaon… I had to know more about the Tanakh, at least, than he did.
Nehemia: And, I have a PhD in biblical studies, so… I don’t know that it wasn’t too hard, but certainly, you know, they were very knowledgeable people.
Israel: It would be accurate to say that Orthodox Jews really do not know the Tanakh.
Nehemia: No, but let’s say the average Orthodox Jew, that’s true. But there are very knowledgeable people, let’s acknowledge that. So, I need to know as much or more than they did, and that was my objective. And I don’t know on every specific point… they might know more about, you know, I don’t know, certain laws of kashrut that… you know, they might know a lot more about things that are made up, let me say that. But when it comes to the actual Torah and Tanakh, my objective was that I need to at least know what they knew, if not more. And I feel like I accomplished that.
And one of the things I learned is, a lot of the stuff they just made up, right? So, I remember when I was a little kid, my father hired this tutor at Telshe Yeshiva in Chicago. And I would go to Telshe Yeshiva, and I would sit with this yeshiva bucher, and he would teach me Rashi. And I remember thinking, “It’s amazing! Rashi was brilliant!” That’s what the guy was telling me, right? So, I believed it. Rashi was brilliant. How did he come to these conclusions? I read this pasuk, this verse, and I don’t understand. Rashi must have known so much more than me, because I come to that verse and I just don’t see it.
Nehemia: And years later I realized, Rashi just made it all up! It’s really easy to… maybe not easy, but… it’s much more difficult to understand what the verse says, then to just make something up. Right?
Nehemia: Anybody can make something up. And then you say, “Well, how did you get to that conclusion? You must be so smart.” No, he just made it up.
Israel: By the way, you know, that is the entirety of Rabbinic literature… is questioning, why did the rabbis come to their conclusions, right? The rabbis say something outlandish, absurd, obscene, and then you have another 10,000 rabbis commenting on it. Well, how did they come to this amazing conclusion? And that’s what I realized in yeshiva, was like, you can never question the premise, though. You can never be like, “Well, why did that original rabbi say something that is completely wrong?” Right? Like, why do we even have to accept that premise? Right? And so, the whole thing is exactly as you said. It’s based off of the authority of the rabbi before you. And so, if the first rabbi, you know…
Again, like I had a podcast with an Orthodox rabbi, and he wanted to read the Talmud together. Right? And he… the Talmud in Bava Kamma is talking about a fire, right? You know, if you… the Torah says, “If your fire goes out and burns a field, you have to pay.” Right? And the rabbis are like, “Well, why do you have to pay for your fire? Is your fire your arrow, or is it your money?” And I’m like, “Well how in the world is that relevant?” Right? The Torah says, “your fire”, which is, fire is fire, you’re obligated for fire, period. Right?
And he’s like… No! That’s the greatest question that all the rabbis ask, and now we have to understand why they said that. It’s like, “No, you don’t have to spend the rest of your life understanding why someone said something that made no sense and was unwarranted to be said.” You know, so they’ve completely just gotten rid of their own personal accountability in this, as if they’re not adults who have the ability to choose.
You know, my friend put it very well. He’s like, “This authority that they’re following is invisible chains,” right? They’re not actually bound to this authority. They bind themselves to this authority for no other reason other than the fact that they want to sit before the rabbi and just be told what to do. You know, that’s why it is extremely cultish and, you know, yeah. So, that that’s…
Nehemia: We’re talking about worshiping rabbis, and you’re saying that if you spend all of your energy studying the words of a rabbi, in a sense you’re worshiping those rabbis.
Israel: Yeah. And if you trust their judgment blindly, right? It’s like, oh…
Nehemia: That’s a different issue.
Israel: Yeah, yeah. That what I’m referring to, and…
Nehemia: So… yeah. I’m sorry, go ahead.
Israel: Just one more thing because, sorry, it occurred to me. The first Mishnah in Pirkei Avos, the Mishnah “Ethics of our Fathers”, Moses got the Torah, he gave it to Joshua, and Joshua gave it to the judges, and the judges gave it to the prophets, and the prophets gave it to the men of the Great Assembly. And the men of the Great Assembly gave it to the rebbis. Right? And it’s like, well, don’t you see the issue here? Is it that the Torah is given from one authority to the next? No, that’s not the story. The story is that Moses received the Torah from God and gave it to the Jewish people, gave it to the entire nation. And then we’re all commanded: You should read the Torah and be aware and speak of the commandments and teach it to your children. Right? That’s the true story. The true story is that the Torah was given to the people. And they try to revisionize history and say, “No, the Torah is given to the elites. It’s given to the rabbis, and we’re the ultimate authority.” And it’s, you know, it’s shocking.
Nehemia: So, you’re bringing up here something, ultimately, that we have to discuss. Do you have a Tanakh there that you can crack open?
Israel: Yeah, right here.
Nehemia: Deuteronomy 17. Open up my little Bible software here. Looking at the computer while we’re doing this. Starting in verse 8 is really, in a sense, the crux of the Rabbinical-Karaite debate.
Israel: It’s a very simple response to them, by the way.
Nehemia: Yeah. Oh, so I think we should understand what they say, and we should understand what it actually says, which is another way of saying what I say! Let’s acknowledge that. Or what you say, in this case, because it seems like you’ve come to your own conclusions. So, their claim is that, yes, the Torah was given to every individual. But the authority to interpret the Torah rested with a supreme authority, which is them. And they base that on Deuteronomy 17:8 through…
Israel: Eight through 20. Sorry no… Eight through 12.
Nehemia: Yeah. Through 13, even. Do you want to read that?
Israel: Read all those verses?
Nehemia: Yeah, let’s read it and discuss it. I don’t know. We don’t have to read the whole thing, but…
Israel: Yeah. Well, I mean, what it says is, if a matter is beyond you in judgment, whether it’s between one blood to another, one judgment to another, one affliction… like, you know, they have the leprosy. “There are matters of dispute in your gates. Then you shall arise and go up to the place that God chooses, and you shall come to the priests, the Levites, and to the judges in that time. You shall inquire, and they’ll tell you the matter of the judgment, and you shall do in accordance with what they tell you from that place.” And this is the argument, by the way, this is why they’re complete liars. It’s because the high court that’s referenced here is contingent on the place that God chooses. Which we all know is the Temple, which doesn’t exist. And so, your local rabbi in Babylon or in, you know, Chicago, is not this, not the High Court. Right? But nevertheless, it’s telling us that there is this Supreme Court authority, that you should act in accordance with what they tell you from that place which God chooses. “And you shall observe to do as all that they guide you according to the law which they guide you, and the judgment that they tell you, you shall do. Do not turn to the right or the left, and…”
Nehemia: And an important point here is that “guide” here is the word yorukha, which is the root of the word Torah.
Nehemia: Right? So, you could translate this if you kind of wanted to be cute, “And you will diligently do according to all that they Torah you, according to the Torah, that they Torah and the judgment that they tell you shall do,” right? So, what the Torah…
Israel: Yeah. That’s another thing; people don’t know what Torah means. I mean, Torah means…
Nehemia: Well Torah is instruction, right? So, it’s…
Israel: It’s instruction, yeah.
Nehemia: Right. So, the instruction that they give you, meaning the Torah that they teach you, you should do. And so, the rabbis say, “Well, this is us. You have to obey us.” And there’s a midrash that says… verse 11 says, “You will not turn from the matter which they tell you to the right or left.” And it’s really interesting what the Midrash says. It says, “If they tell you right is left or left is right, you have to obey them.” What’s profound about that is it doesn’t say you have to…
Israel: Actually, Rashi actually brings that down on the verse.
Israel: I mean, that’s insane. They’re literally telling you, “We are here to lie to you. We’re here to distort reality in your face, and you still need to listen to us.”
Nehemia: Well, I think it’s more nuanced than that. I think I would have said that 20 years ago, when I was your age, but now I feel like I have a more nuanced approach. But fair enough. I hear what you’re saying. So, I do think it’s more nuanced, because they don’t say you have to believe the rabbis, you just have to obey them. And then there’s the famous incident in Masekhet Rosh Hashanah, I want to say it’s chapter 2, Mishnah 8 and 9, but someone can correct me in the comments. And it talks there about… tell me if you’re familiar with this, if this is ringing a bell, if you’re familiar with this. There’s the… what is his name? I think it’s Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Dosa, and he’s hearing the new moon witnesses testify in the court of Rabban Gamliel, and Rabbi Yehoshua says, “they’re wrong”, or “they’re lying”, he says, but Rabban Gamliel accepts their testimony that they saw the new moon. Does this ring a bell?
Nehemia: Okay. I mean, there’s a lot of Rabbinical stories, right? But this is actually a really important one for Rabbinical theology. So, Rabbi Yehoshua says, “Okay, I’m going to keep Yom Kippur based on what I know to be true,” which is that there’s no true witnesses who saw the new moon. But Rabban Gamliel has accepted the witnesses.
Israel: I’ve heard this story, yeah.
Nehemia: So, it’s ringing a bell, okay. So, then Rabban Gamliel orders Rabbi Yehoshua to appear before him, it says, “with his staff and his money bag in his hand.” Which is a way of saying, it’s not Yom Kippur, because you wouldn’t be carrying your money bag, according to the rabbis, or your staff, on Yom Kippur. That’s carrying, right? That’s part of their… they’ve defined what work is, and one of the things is carrying a staff, right? Whatever. Okay.
So, Rabbi Yehoshua is in this quandary. What does he do? Like, on the one hand, is he going to disobey Rabbi Gamliel? Is he going to disobey God? And what the rabbis say, the nafka mina, the takeaway from all this, is that you have to obey the Rabbinical authority. And it says, in three conditions. Whether they’re… and it’s based on the word atem, which they read as… or otam which they reread as atem in Leviticus 23. Right? It says… I won’t go into all the details. I’ve talked about this before.
The point is, it says, “You have to obey them, whether they’re accidentally wrong, whether they’re deliberately wrong, or whether they’re deceived.” And the point was, it could be that the witnesses lied, but Rabban Gamliel accepted their testimony. So, even if those witnesses… So, maybe Rabban Gamliel knew they were lying and said, “But I want it to be today.” That’s possibility number one. Maybe Rabban Gamliel just made a mistake. Maybe he was deceived by them. It doesn’t matter. You still have to accept the authority of the rabbis because, by definition, truth is what they say. What’s binding for you as truth is what they say it to be, even if it’s factually wrong. That’s the point of that story.
Israel: The Pope? No, I mean, but isn’t that, like a terrible, terrible idea which completely absolves corruption… absolves the ruling class from corruption, which is an unjust system. Whereas the Torah says everyone should be treated with the same stick of justice. So, it’s really disgusting, in my opinion, that they would have that. Not to mention this idea of witnesses for the new month is not in the Torah either, right? Like, the moon is in the sky, folks. Like, I don’t know where this insanity came from that you need witnesses riding into Jerusalem so the rebbi could proclaim the new month. That’s not a law in the Torah, at all.
Nehemia: I spent 20 years on that topic. I’m going to leave that for now.
Israel: Well, because they haven’t actually created Second Day Holiday, which is a terrible, a terrible thing.
Nehemia: Tell people what that is. I think some of our listeners don’t know what that is. Meaning, there’s something today that’s done by Orthodox Jews. What is that?
Israel: So, essentially, the rabbis created a law that you need witnesses to proclaim the new month. And then, they also said that those witnesses need to come to the court in Jerusalem in order to proclaim the new month. Now, what happened when the Jews were living in Babylon, which is quite a horse ride’s away from Jerusalem? Well, they couldn’t proclaim the new month based off of the moon in the sky in their own eyes, because they needed to hear witnesses and a proclamation from Jerusalem. So, they’d have to wait for messengers to send a message all the way to Babylon through… they had, like, fires on mountaintops and messengers to tell them when the new month started.
Now, because of the delay in this communication, they’re like, “Well, we might be a day off here, so we just have to practice all of the holidays,” which, every holiday in the Torah is one day, right? The first day of Passover, one day, the last day of Passover, one day. Shavuot, the holiday of the harvest, is one day, Yom Zikaron, Zichron Teruah is one day. Yom HaKippurim, the day of Atonement is one day. Everything’s one day. Yet they do everything two days, except for Yom Kippur, ironically, because it’s not good for business to make people fast for two days. But regardless, they have completely distorted all of the holidays, and they keep double holidays, which is crazy, when the Torah explicitly says not to.
Now, modernly, they admit that there is no doubt in the calendar. There’s a universal calendar which exists, and everyone knows the date. Which means that the concern from back then, which is based off of their false law, is not even applicable. Yet they will not change their practice, because they say it would be nullifying the decree of the great rabbis of 2,000 years ago. Even though, as I had a conversation with an Orthodox man, that is not nullifying, it simply just doesn’t apply. You don’t even have to nullify their decree; it’s just their decree doesn’t apply anymore.
But no, they can’t. They can’t let go of, you know, again, bowing down to the rabbi’s authority, even when it makes no sense, even when it’s deliberately deceptive and wrong. Which is just so harmful, you know? And what I want to point out about this passage here, which, by the way, I’ve seen Maimonides quote this passage to be like, “Yes, you must listen to the rabbis. Do not go to the right or the left from what they say.” This is not talking about the rabbis, it’s talking about the High Court and the Temple. The High Court in the Temple doesn’t exist. It hasn’t existed for as long as the rabbis have been around.
And so, what’s insane is that the rabbis who existed after the destruction of the Temple want to claim the authority of the Temple judges and priests, who do not exist. So, they do not have this power, they do not have this authority. As it says explicitly, “you should listen to what they tell you from that place.” And the whole point is that, if we had that place, if we had a place where God actually chose and His presence was among us, we would be in a much better shape than we are right now.
But finally, what it says in verse 12 is, “The man who shall act with malicious intent to do the wrong thing and not listen to the priest who stands to minister Yahweh at that place, then that person shall be put to death.” So, it’s actually a death penalty for someone who doesn’t listen. However, the whole point is, this man is acting maliciously. He’s acting with the desire to do the wrong thing. But if you’re standing up to the authority, because even the High Court could become corrupted, if you’re standing up to the court in righteousness and you say, “There is a clear contradiction with what you’re saying and what the Torah is saying,” that’s not malicious intent. That’s not someone who deserves the death penalty for pointing out the corruption that exists in the court.
And so, what we’re doing here, (a) is not challenging the High Court, because the High Court doesn’t exist. (b) We’re not acting maliciously; we’re acting righteously to point out where the religious authorities in Judaism have completely corrupted God’s word.
Nehemia: Okay. Let me ask a question here. Like, I don’t even know… you know, they say you should never ask a question you don’t know the answer to, but I don’t know the answer. So, were you aware that I had involvement in the calendar in the past? Have you any idea about that?
Israel: No, I didn’t know that. That’s fascinating.
Nehemia: So, guys, he came to this conclusion all by his own! Certainly not with any involvement from me, or even awareness of anything that I’ve done. So, that’s pretty cool. This is a fascinating conversation. I feel like I’m talking to a younger version of myself. Although I’m sure there’s big differences, too. And look, guys, I’m actually doing something here a bit unusual. I’m interviewing someone where I have no idea what he’s going to say. I don’t know anything about him, almost. I’ve seen a few videos on TikTok, and I don’t know if he’s going to come out, you know, in five minutes and say, “Well, you know, there’s actually the aliens who…” I hope you’re not, but, right? I mean, there might be some surprises here I don’t know about! So, I’m kind of going out on a limb here, but I just find you so fascinating that I had to have you on the program. And I was satisfied from the hour-long conversation we had last week that there weren’t going to be alien surprises. But maybe there will be, I don’t know! You know, it’s fine.
Israel: Well, Ezekiel definitely saw something, you know.
Israel: I don’t know what Ezekiel was witnessing there, but, you know… [Laughter]
Nehemia: Okay, well, I’ll… I’ll make a joke about, you know, well, ever since the voices started, right?
Nehemia: That’s one of my favorite jokes. All right, wow. So, we looked at this passage. I’m not sure I interpret verse 12 the same way as you. I think they’re deliberately acting against what the Kohen says, the high priest says, as opposed to accidentally. I mean, the opposite of zadon is shogeg, and to do something shogeg is like, “Well, I didn’t know what he said,” or “I didn’t understand what he said” or “I wasn’t aware of it.” And zadon is like, “I don’t think he has the authority to say that. I don’t accept his authority.”
If the rabbis truly are sitting in the authority of Deuteronomy 17 verse 8, then I am a hundred percent acting be’zadon, deliberately contrary to what they say. Because they tell me all kinds of things, I don’t accept their authority. And, you know, when I eat a cheeseburger… let’s say, certainly when I was much younger, and somebody says, “Well, you know, why not just not eat the cheeseburger? Because, you know, maybe the rabbis are right.” I literally had a kabbalistic rabbi say, “What if we’re right?” And my response to him is, “What if I’m right?” And he literally said, “I never thought of that.” So, when I was eating a cheeseburger, when I was in my 20s, I was doing it be’zadon a hundred percent. I was like… you know, we say, I don’t know if you know this term… I was doing davka, right?
Nehemia: So, to do davka is to do, “They say I’m not allowed to do it? That’s exactly what I’m going to do!” I’m going to take a piece of meat; I’m going to take some American cheese, which maybe isn’t really cheese, and I’m going to eat that.
Israel: It’s not the mother’s milk. It’s not the mother’s milk.
Nehemia: Right. Because it says, lo tevashel gdi be’chalev imo, “Don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” And I believe God when He said not to do that. So, is that me doing be’zadon against the rabbis? I accept that. If you want to say yes, I would accept that accusation. I just don’t think they have the authority of Deuteronomy 17. Look, this…
Nehemia: Sorry, go ahead. I want to hear what you have to say.
Israel: Yeah. No, of course not. Of course they don’t have the authority of Deuteronomy 17. It’s explicit that it’s contingent on, you know, an organized priesthood and court system in the Temple, none of which exists. So, it’s utter absurdity to pretend that the rabbis of the Talmud have this authority. But even so, I do think the zadon has an implication of malicious intent, right? Like, if I’m doing something be’zadon, it’s willful intent to do the wrong thing, right? Like you don’t say that, be’zadon, he gave charity, you know, like, that’s not zadon…
Israel: Be’ratzon maybe, you know.
Israel: The idea here is that someone is opposing the court, to spite the authority, even though they’re right. But if they’re wrong, and you can demonstrate that they’re wrong, you know. I think a righteous court should actually accept someone who is challenging them from a righteous place. And I don’t think we should live in a tyranny where we just have to obey authority blindly. That’s not at all the message of the Torah.
Nehemia: So, this raises a really interesting question. Now, let’s go back in our Tardis, in our time machine, to the 1st century BCE, and there’s a Temple. And according to Rabbinical lore, I don’t know if it was true, but they claim that they have a court that meets in lishkat ha’gazit, in this Chamber of the Hewn Stones, which is part of the Temple, and they say, “Look, we’re at the place.” Right, we are… You know… they were called at the time Pharisees, or at least some of them were Pharisees. Some of them maybe not; they were just sages.
So, these rabbis, who are in the Second Temple itself, in the Chamber of the Hewn Stone with their court, right? Because later they were kicked out of that chamber. But, when they’re still in there in the 1st century BCE, do you think that at that point they had the authority of Deuteronomy 17:8?
Israel: Yeah, to some degree. I mean, again, if you can demonstrate obvious corruption within the court, I think that that’s a real thing. You know, like the idea that the court is immune to corruption is ridiculous. And by the way, just to point out, it was destroyed. And every time, like…
Nehemia: What was destroyed?
Israel: The Temple, right? In Israel and…
Nehemia: No, we’ve traveled back in time to the 1st century BCE. We’re in 30 BCE, and Shammai is there in Beit Hamikdash
Israel: I get it, yeah. At that point, they were sitting in the chair of the High Court. However, you know, the rabbis, in their self-indulgent nature, talk about “the Second Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam”, because we hated each other too much. “And now if we all loved each other, then Mashiach would come,” right? Except that’s not ever the truth. The truth is that we rebelled against God, and we’ve worshiped other gods, and we haven’t followed His commandments; that is the source of our downfall. And part of God’s commandments is to “love another like yourself”, so let’s be clear. But the point is that it’s not some sort of “we weren’t nice enough” nonsense. No, it’s actually the fact that the Jewish people were not following God, so God destroyed them and exiled them again, right? And so, you know, the proof is in the pudding. Two thousand years of Rabbinic literature has been 2,000 years of Jewish exile, and so…
Nehemia: So, I once had a friend who wasn’t Orthodox, but kind of gravitated towards that. He’s like, “You know, you’re probably right, Nehemia. But, you know, they have all these communities that I want to be part of.” And then here’s something he said I can’t get past; this is what he told me. He said, “You know, the rabbis kept us for 2,000 years in exile.” And I said, “You’re right. They kept us for 2,000 years in exile.”
Nehemia: Just, I’m putting a comma in a different place. Meaning…
Israel: Oh, oh, he’s saying, like, they kept us…
Nehemia: They kept us as a people. And here’s what he really means; where are the vast Karaite communities that have thousands of members, or let’s say tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of members? No. You have Chabad around the world, and you have various Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities, and the Karaites are very small. So, it was the rabbis who kept us, right? That was his argument. And my response was, “Well, maybe we wouldn’t be in exile if we had just followed what the Torah says,” right? That’s kind of a counterfactual. Meaning, you’re saying, “What would have been if something else had happened?”
Israel: If you believe in the Torah, it necessitates that understanding. The Torah could not be clearer. God gives a promise to Israel that “If you follow My decrees, you will live with blessing and abundance and peace and health and unity, like the days of heaven on earth.” And “If you disobey and you rebel, you’ll be exiled and tortured and cursed,” and all of that. And so, it’s literally black and white in the Torah. So, either you don’t believe in the Torah, or you actually take God at His word and understand that…
I think one of the primary messages of the Torah is that God created everything good, and man has created problems. And man has chosen wrong, you know, and that’s really the story of history. And so, if at any point we decide to choose right, then we will see the change that we’re looking for, and that we want. And so, you couldn’t be more correct to point out to this man, who’s like, “Oh, the rebbe kept me in exile.” Exactly. The rebbe kept you in exile. And by the way, they did not manage to keep the majority of Jews observant. The majority of Jews are not observant. The minute the rabbis lost their power structure, as we discussed, and the emancipation, the Jews took a run for it. And now we live in a time where the vast majority of Jews, 80-plus percent, are not observant or affiliated with Judaism. So, Orthodox Judaism is still a tiny minority. So, the idea of numbers, you know, the fact that they have vast numbers, they don’t have such vast numbers.
And again, just to point out one final point, the Torah says, in Exodus, believe it’s chapter 21… 22… “Do not follow the majority for evil… Do not follow the majority to pervert the law.” Right? So, the majority…
Nehemia: So, it’s Exodus 23 verse 2. In some English translations it might be a slightly different verse. It says, “Lo-tihyeh acharei-rabbim le’ra’ot.” “Don’t be after the majority to do evil.” And then it’s “ve’lo-ta’aneh al-riv lintot acharei rabbim lehattot.” “And don’t testify in a strife to incline after the majority to pervert justice.” But do you know how that’s interpreted in Baba Metzia 59b?
Israel: Yeah, I know. They take the last three words out of context, and they say, “After the majority you should turn.” No…
Nehemia: This is the story of the Oven of Akhnai. Can you tell your version of the story of the Oven of Akhnai? And by your version, what you understand from it. I’ve literally given lectures talking about it. I don’t want to rehash it. Tell me what your version of the story, as you understand it.
Israel: Is that the one with the tree…
Nehemia: Rabbi Eliezer, who… and it’s called the “Oven of Akhnai” because they’re debating about whether this certain type of oven, a modular oven, or some stupid thing…
Israel: Yeah, that’s the thing. I don’t even know the debate.
Nehemia: Right. So, whether it can contract ritual impurity or not because it’s modular. Whatever. But the voice comes out from heaven, that’s the story. That’s…
Israel: Yeah. Well, I mean, there… Look, I don’t even know the debate. As you point out, it’s most certainly about nonsense. If they actually knew the Torah, they would know the answer. But the point is that there’s this one rabbi, who’s Rabbi Eliezer, who’s disputing the chakhamim, the wise majority. And he says, “If I’m right, then the walls of this synagogue should cave in.” And, you know, they immediately lean in. And then he says, “If I’m right, this tree should be uprooted.” “If I’m right, this river should turn around and flow the other way.” And then finally, he says… and they didn’t buy any of it, right? And then he says, “If I’m right, then a heavenly voice should come out and say that I’m right.” And then this heavenly voice comes out and says, “I’m right.” And the rabbis say, “Well, the Torah is not in the heavens, so we don’t have to listen to any of this.”
And look, personally, fair enough. Like, if someone practices magic, or, you know, miracles, that doesn’t mean they’re right, you know? At the end of the day, I think…
Nehemia: But the accusation wasn’t that this wasn’t a heavenly voice. That wasn’t the claim. They could have said, “Oh, this is black magic, or it’s divination.” They could have said… that’s not what they said.
Israel: Right. They said the Torah is not in the heavens, right?
Nehemia: And then they quoted this verse, Exodus 23 verse 2.
Israel: They quoted this in that scenario.
Nehemia: Which says, “go after the majority”. They just took out the word “don’t”.
Nehemia: Right. So, that’s literally what they did, right? And so, they said, “You might be a very learned rabbi, and you might be factually right. But we’re the majority and you have to follow what the majority says, otherwise you’re doing evil.” That’s their twisting of the verse, right?
Israel: I mean, that’s… they couldn’t be clearer. Like, when someone… that’s basic integrity right? You can see that someone is a fraud if they take things out of context for their own purposes, which is exactly…
Nehemia: Well, but so, they… Well, let’s come back to the taking things out of context. So, if you… and I encourage everybody to go read this. You can read it on Sefaria. It’s Baba Metzia 59b. We’ll put a link on my website at nehemiaswall.com. And the story continues, right? Most people know that part of this, like it’s a very well-known story. You’ve heard the story, right? But what most people don’t know is it continues, and according to the continue… what’s that?
Israel: They excommunicate him.
Nehemia: They excommunicate him. But even there’s… what they call, there’s the epilogue. In the epilogue, Rabbi Natan is wandering through the forest, or something like that, and he meets Eliyahu Ha’navi, Elijah the Prophet. Do you know this part?
Nehemia: And he says to Eliyahu, who, according to Rabbinical ideas, is up in heaven, alive, right? Physically alive in the heavens, or something like that, or spiritually, whatever. And Rabbi Natan says to Eliyahu, “What did God say when we said the Torah is not in heaven?” And Rabbi Eliyahu supposedly told, and I don’t believe this happened, but… they don’t believe it happened, probably, but they believe it’s spiritually true. So, you know this, what God said.
Nehemia: You’re smiling, so you obviously know it.
Israel: Yeah. So, something like, God was happy or something, right?
Nehemia: So, God laughed and said, “banai nitzchuni, banai nitzchuni”. “My sons have defeated Me. My sons were victorious over Me,” literally. “My sons have been victorious over Me. My sons have been victorious over Me.” Right?
Israel: A war with God, right?
Nehemia: So, here’s really the takeaway of the story, right? What is the point of the story? I don’t believe it happened, right? Maybe there was a debate of some kind. I don’t believe voices came out from heaven. That’s not… you don’t have to believe that’s literally true to take away what their principal is. Their principal is: the rabbis have wrested (wrested with a “wr”) the authority from God and claimed it as their own. And it’s really a pivotal event in Rabbinical history to some extent, right? Because, when does it take place? It takes place around 89 or 90 CE, the so-called Synod of Yavneh. There wasn’t a synod; they were in Yavneh. And so, the Rabbinical Sanhedrin has been reconstituted after the Temple is destroyed. We don’t have the authority, the claim of the Temple anymore, which I don’t believe they had it during Temple times, but that’s a different discussion. And now they’re in Yavneh, so, do they even have the authority, is the question.
And so, they grab that authority away from God and say, “Yes, we have it. Because the Torah is not in heaven. So, what we say as a body, as a Sanhedrin, the majority of the Sanhedrin, whatever we say, is binding.” My father was an Orthodox rabbi, and I would have these discussions with him. All kinds of discussions. One of them is, “Why don’t you believe in Jesus?” And you think he’d bring this argument and that argument about, you know, is it a virgin? Or is it a young woman? None of that interested him. The majority of rabbis did not proclaim Jesus to be the Mashiach, so by definition, he wasn’t the Mashiach. That was my father’s answer. Doesn’t matter what Isaiah said, doesn’t matter what Deuteronomy 18 said. None of that is of any interest. The majority of rabbis… right? You go after the majority. There was a Sanhedrin; they didn’t accept him as the Mashiach. So, by definition, he wasn’t the Mashiach. It’d be like saying, “The electoral college didn’t confirm whoever, therefore, he’s not the president.” That was his way of thinking.
Israel: Yeah, it’s so easy. I mean, it’s so easy to just surrender your own ability to think, for someone to think for you, you know? I mean, that’s like human nature. So, you know, what’s so funny is that in Orthodoxy it’s presented as some sort of virtue. And it’s really a flaw of human nature, you know? And I mean, you’re absolutely right. That is the Rabbinic turning point where they are saying, “We fight God,” you know? And what’s funny is, I didn’t even make the connection because, you know, technically, as you said, they could have pointed out, “Oh, this was black magic.” Right? Or “The voice that called out from heaven wasn’t God.” No, it actually was God, right? That’s the epilogue of the story.
Nehemia: Or an angel, right? But an angel sent by God.
Israel: It was an angel. It was another god. It was a demon. I don’t know. You don’t have to listen to him, right? But, no, no, no, it was God, and God is saying, you know, “They won Me,” you know. Like, again, it’s insane. Like, if God Himself came to you and said something, you’d have to follow that. And God told Abraham to kill his son, and Abraham was ready to do that, even though murder is forbidden by the same God. So, God absolutely has the authority to tell us what to do, even to change something that He said.
But only God has that authority. Yet they come and take God’s power from Him in a dramatic victory over God, which, again, just looks a lot like atheism or, you know, just some sort of this rebellious instinct. You know, one of the funny ones is, I was having a conversation. The Torah says if someone is deserving of lashes, you can give them lashes in accordance with the number, but do not exceed 40, right? And the rabbis come in like, “No, no, no, 39.” Right? And it’s like, “What is wrong with you?” You just have to say something different than God, right? Like, “Oh, no, it’s 39!” Right? And it’s like… That’s really what they’re here to do. They’re just here to constantly divert people from the Torah.
When you read Rashi, and when I read the Chumash, the Torah, as a kid, it was always with Rashi. And they would tell us, “If you didn’t read Rashi, you didn’t read the Torah.” Right? And what Rashi does is, on every verse, you read the verse and then you go look at Rashi and he says something completely different. Or brings up a random midrash that has a made-up story or like a crazy law, you know, and it’s impossible to come out with a cohesive narrative because the whole narrative has been destroyed. The law has been confused, you know, and…
Nehemia: You know what it reminds me of? So, there was this thing a few years ago on Twitter, where somebody would post something, or on other social medias as well, right? And then the authorities would come and there would be a comment that would say, “You know, you shouldn’t believe what you’re reading here. Here’s where you can find the truth.” Right? And then sometimes it was the truth. Sometimes it wasn’t. Sometimes, years later, they’ve now admitted, “Well, we were wrong about that,” or “We shouldn’t have taken sides, because nobody really knew about certain issues,” that I won’t go into.
And in a sense, every… So, you couldn’t read the tweet without having this narrative pushed on you, and that really is how I was, at least, raised with the Torah. You can’t read a single verse of the Torah without reading what the rabbis have to say about it, particularly Rashi. But if you’re more advanced, Ibn Ezra and Rashbam and others, right? You have to see what the rabbis say. And I was told, you know, this would lead to apikoros. It would lead to heresy. And I like to say, “I’m living proof it’s true.” Because I read what God had to say in the Torah, and I actually believe it.
Israel: Exactly. No, a hundred percent. That is what they’re worried about, right? Like, they’re worried about you questioning their authority and relying only on the word of God, because it works. And the minute you see what they’ve been doing, the minute you expose their lies, it couldn’t be clearer, you know? And so, they do have a valid concern, and I noticed that myself, is that… all I had to do was question one rabbi in yeshiva. Like, he wasn’t even a rabbi of the Talmud, just one of my rabbis in yeshiva. I saw a breaking point, where I was like, “Okay, that’s wrong behavior.” And I was like, “Well, if he’s capable of that, then that rabbi is capable of that, too, and that rabbi is capable of that, too.” And then the whole thing just falls down like a house of cards. Because if you don’t have this implicit faith in the term rabbi, in the person who has the ordainment that he is part of that tradition, then what gives them any authority? Again, it’s an invisible authority. It’s not stemming from the Torah at all. It’s…
Nehemia: So, that’s why the story of Rabbi Eliezer is so important. The Oven of Aknai… or Akhnai; where do they get the authority from? They wrested it from God, and they claimed it as their own. And God acknowledged it, according to them, by saying, “My sons have…” “I’m defeated. I’m beaten. “They’ve been victorious over Me. Nitzchuni.”
Nehemia: Right? Now, if God didn’t really say that and they’re lying… oh, boy, that’s scary. There’s a verse, and I know you like to focus on the Torah; there’s a verse in Proverbs chapter 30 verse 6, I want to say it is. And it says, “Do not add to His word, lest He reprove you, and you be found a liar.” And I say, “I don’t want God calling me a liar.” And that, of course, adds, or is part of the whole story of Deuteronomy 4:2 and Deuteronomy 13:1, which, by the way…
So, just to go back to that. So, I would say the historical Karaite approach, if I can call it that, let’s say… Let me rephrase it: my approach is to say that there can’t be something in Amos that God didn’t command in the Torah. Because it says, “Don’t add and don’t take away.” So, Amos’s job was to tell people to repent. It doesn’t mean there aren’t ideas that maybe, “You know, God didn’t have occasion to tell us that before, but now there’s a new circumstance,” right? Like, there’s a famous thing in Isaiah 45 where God says He’s the creator of good and evil. Well, why didn’t it ever say that in the Torah? There was no reason to. Because… what’s that?
Israel: No, I just think that’s obvious, you know. It’s just expressed very well by Isaiah.
Nehemia: Well, but the reason Isaiah is saying it in the context is, he’s talking to King Cyrus, who’s a Zoroastrian who believes there’s two different gods, one who created good and one who created evil. So, now we’ve got to bring this up. In the Torah, nobody thought otherwise, right? But now there’s a new circumstance…
Israel: …God created everything in the beginning, and He created the serpent, and He created the…
Nehemia: It’s obvious to you and me, but to the Zoroastrian it was blasphemy.
Nehemia: Right? So, that was the place…
Israel: Isaiah is not contradicting the Torah by…
Nehemia: No, for sure, I agree. But anyway… So, the point is that I don’t think Isaiah is going to bring a new commandment, that’s for sure. Right? If Isaiah brings a new commandment, then Isaiah is a false prophet, or you’ve misinterpreted him. One of those two. And I think that I choose the latter interpretation, rather, that you’ve misinterpreted him. If somebody wants to say he’s a false prophet, all right. Look, there’s this really interesting guy on TikTok who you should meet. He’s a fascinating guy. He’s an Israeli who was an atheist for many years, and he only believes in the first four books of the Torah.
Nehemia: Like, if nothing else you say about him, he’s an original thinker. Not that original, but kind of an original. To follow that, kind of something that comes out of Bible criticism. It’s not important, but maybe I’ll do a podcast with him. He’s a really interesting guy. So, I’ll quote him some verse from Dvarim, from Deuteronomy. He’s like, “Oh no, I don’t accept that. That’s a false Torah.” Okay.
Israel: No, I think that it could become self-indulgent pretty quickly, like, “Oh, like, no, not that.” You know, one of the very bothersome ideas that I heard recently is that, according to the Samaritans, the 10th commandment is not “do not covet”, it’s “build the temple on Mount Gerizim”.
Nehemia: A hundred percent. That’s their 10th commandment.
Israel: Actual joke. First of all, it’s so clear that, due to their coveting of Jerusalem, they changed the Torah to say that.
Nehemia: So, let me challenge you on that. And I agree with you a hundred percent. See, I’m a Karaite, so I believe in the entire Tanakh. And in II Samuel chapter 7, I want to say, and a bunch of other passages, God chose Jerusalem for all time. But from the Torah itself… what’s that?
Israel: That’s in Samuel?
Nehemia: It’s… there’s like three different verses where he says, “I’ve placed my name here for all time.” Le’olam.
Israel: Jerusalem, in… oh, in Samuel.
Nehemia: Yeah. I want to say it’s II Samuel 7, but I could have the wrong chapter. There’s a number of verses…
Israel: …prior to the Temple in Jerusalem, the Tabernacle was in Shiloh, right?
Nehemia: Right. So, this is before the Temple was built.
Nehemia: It’s when God chose the Temple according to the second book of… according to Samuel. There’s no second Samuel, the chapter of II Samuel, right? According to the Book of Samuel and Kings and II Chronicles, God chose Jerusalem for all time during the time of David, and it came to its full fruition in the time of Solomon, okay? Now, if you don’t believe in the authority of… or let’s say “the truth”, because it’s not really authority, right? God has the authority; it’s just written down. If you don’t think those are reliable books, then you could… and you only believe in the Torah, then how would you know it’s Jerusalem? That’s my challenge for you.
Israel: Yeah. I think it’s a historic claim, right? It’s not a faith claim. As in, historically speaking, the Israelites did… if it was true that the 10th commandment… which again, I just cringe even just to hear this nonsense, but the 10th commandment is “build the temple on Mount Gerizim”, then that should have been the first thing that Joshua did when he came to Israel, right? Except that’s not what happened. The Tabernacle was in Shiloh, which means the Jews never fulfilled the 10th commandment until the Samaritans in the time of Ezra, right? Which is ridiculous, right? The Jews never fulfilled the 10th commandment, so…
Nehemia: Look, the Samaritans have this whole elaborate narrative where they say that, you know, David was a sinner who rebelled against God and turned people away from the true temple in Mount Gerizim. Right? They have a whole story, right? I mean, it’s not like they…
Israel: Yeah, it’s alternate history, right? Because in the Tanakh it says that Yeroboam built two golden calves…
Nehemia: Right, but they don’t believe in the Book of Kings, or they think that’s just false history written by the Jews to divert people away from them. Look, and I have the same view of them! I think they have a false history they wrote to justify their temple on Mount Gerizim.
Israel: So, yeah. The problem is, though, that their history is not true. There’s zero evidence for their history. As in, like, there’s plenty of evidence that David actually built the Temple and that Jerusalem was the place. And again, the history is, the Tabernacle was in Shiloh, and then Solomon built it in Jerusalem. And it was there, right? And then the first instance of a Samaritan temple that’s actually historically documented, not just what they claim, is like 300 BCE. So, that’s like the time of Ezra, essentially…
Nehemia: It’s even more complicated than that, because they claim there was never a physical structure of a temple in Mount Gerizim, which is contrary to what Josephus says. But they say, “We never had a temple. It was because it was a tabernacle. Temple is a Jewish idea from…”
Israel: A tabernacle, sure, yeah.
Nehemia: So, they say there was a place where there was an altar, and there was never a physical structure of a temple. Even though archaeologists claim they found the temple that was destroyed by John Hyrcanus. But anyway, let’s not get too bogged down into those details.
Israel: My only point I wanted to make was that, like, when people get, I don’t know, I just… I don’t like it, because it’s like the Torah has a cohesiveness that’s so important. And for people to get rid of the 10th commandment for their stupid political gain of like where the Temple should be, is just… it’s upsetting, you know. And when you look at the fifth book of the Torah, it’s so clearly imperative to have the fifth book of the Torah as part of the canon, because it’s Moses recapping everything for the Israelites, and a lot of it is from God. Like, not all of it is just Moses talking, right? It says, “God told Moses, say this, say that, and complete all of this work.” And so, it’s vital to have Deuteronomy as part of the picture…
Nehemia: I mean, I’m in full agreement about that. So, Deuteronomy repeatedly talks about the place where God, or Yehovah, or you said Yahweh, let’s not argue about that for now, the place where God will choose to place His name, or “to cause His name to dwell” is the variation of it, in the Samaritan version they changed the verb from “will choose” to “has chosen”. And their argument is that, when Deuteronomy was written, He had already chosen it as Mount Gerizim. That’s their claim. I don’t believe their claim. I think they corrupted the Torah.
Israel: Yeah. No, they claim in Exodus… I mean, they literally claim that’s the 10th commandment. It’s insane. And by the way, I find it so ironic, because I was thinking about this yesterday, is that they got rid of “do not covet” as a result of coveting.
Nehemia: They didn’t get rid of it; they just count them differently. They still have “do not covet”.
Nehemia: They just count them differently. And if you look at Protestants and Catholics, they actually argue about how to count them. And then Rambam has a version of how to count. It’s not obvious how to count them.
Israel: You’re saying they just added a commandment.
Nehemia: A hundred percent they added a commandment. Where Moses said, “do not add and don’t take away,” they added.
Israel: Yeah, so, they didn’t get rid of “do not covet”.
Nehemia: No, they didn’t get rid of anything; they added stuff. Their process was additive. They added a lot of things to the Torah. Whenever there’s something that appears to be a contradiction, let’s say Numbers, and then there’s a different version of it in Deuteronomy, they’ll take the words from Deuteronomy and stick it into Numbers and say, “Look, it said it both ways.” Which is exegetically kind of what we do, but…
Israel: It’s comical because they’re clearly just trying to establish, you know, Mount Gerizim. Because even though the Torah mentions Mount Gerizim, it has nothing to do with the Temple. It has to do with, like, the mountains that you give blessings and curses on. So, the Torah talks about…
Nehemia: So, they changed that too, by the way. You know, so, one of them is the Mount of Blessing, Har Ebal, and the Mount of Curse is Mount Gerizim, and in their version of the Torah it’s the opposite. Har Grizim is the Mount of Blessing.
Israel: Yeah, it goes deep, you know, like, again, the thing is…
Nehemia: They’re systematic about their corruption of the Torah, let’s put it that way.
Israel: I mean, it’s so trivial, though. That’s what really proves that it’s wrong is because, like, if we’re sitting here arguing… like the Torah doesn’t even mention where the place is, because God, “God will show you.” You know, like the place really is the Tabernacle. And then…
Nehemia: And it was mobile! It was lots of places.
Nehemia: Until the time of David.
Israel: And then, you know, again, if you believe that David was a righteous king who was informed by prophets and prophecy, and God actually gave him the right to build the Temple in Jerusalem, and then, you know, Solomon builds it, and God actually brings the cloud of glory when they have the Temple. So, I think that’s all reliable. I think that, you know, if we don’t have even an understanding that King David was our king and he was a great man, you know, we’re in trouble. And by the way, the Samaritans didn’t exist in the time of King David, that’s another thing. There was no…
Nehemia: According to II Kings 17, they claim they did.
Israel: Yeah. I mean, they’re insane. Because there was no Northern Kingdom until after…
Nehemia: I’d like to have some respect for them. They have an internal narrative…
Israel: …I mean, but how do you respect that? Like, the Northern Kingdom didn’t exist until after Solomon. Right. And so actually, all of the history prior to the Northern Kingdom…
Nehemia: Guys, I have an interview with a Samaritan scholar. I don’t want to rehash all the Samaritan issues.
Nehemia: I’m a Jew, and I believe what it says in the Tanakh. And I’m a Karaite, so I believe what it says in the Tanakh. So, if anybody listening wants to say I’m biased because I don’t accept the Samaritan narrative, I accept the Tanakh narrative. You’re right; I’m biased a hundred percent.
Israel: Yeah, and look, I…
Israel: That’s far better established historically and…
Nehemia: By the Tanakh, right? Let’s acknowledge that, right? In other words, let’s acknowledge that our main historical source for this is the Tanakh, right?
Nehemia: Meaning, you could say there’s archaeological evidence… without the Tanakh, I don’t know that we would know specifically where the Temple was built, that it was… I don’t know, we would. There’s some kind of evidence, sure, okay, but the Tanakh completes the picture.
Israel: Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, look, as you believe in the Tanakh, I do as well. I think that that is the right history. I think it comes to bear on life and so… Yeah, but you’re right. We shouldn’t go down the Samaritan rabbit hole.
Nehemia: Guys, I want to… I want to, or, Israel, I want to turn over to what I’m going to call, like the… I want to get to some deeper issues, and so we’re going to go over to my website, nehemiaswall.com. Before I end there, before I end this part of the discussion, I’m going to ask you to do something you’re comfortable with. Would you end in a prayer? Would you be comfortable doing that?
Israel: Okay. Well, dear God, Yehovah, the Lord who is the Lord of all lords, the God of all gods, who revealed Himself to us through our ancestors, through our history, through the Torah, yet He is the God of the present moment. He’s here right now, and we still need to follow Him now and forever. He has given us His decrees, His commandments, and if we follow it, we will receive the blessed life that we all long for and yearn for. And we will not have to pursue after the emptiness of all the manmade lies and transgressions, because we can just come close to God, each and every one of us, as individuals, and God willing, as a nation as well.
Nehemia: Amen. Beautiful. Thank you so much for that prayer.
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VERSES MENTIONED
Mishnah Pirkei Avot 1:1
Deuteronomy 17:8-13
Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 2:8-9
Exodus 23:19; 34:26; Deuteronomy 14:21
Leviticus 19:18
Exodus 23:2
Talmud Bava Metzia 59b:5
Genesis 22; Exodus 20:13; Deuteronomy 5:17
Deuteronomy 25:1-3
Talmud Makkot 22b
Proverbs 30:5-6
Deuteronomy 4:2; 13:1 (12:32)
Isaiah 45:7
Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 11.8.2
Deuteronomy 11:29
2 Kings 17
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