In this episode of Hebrew Voices #219 - Halakhic Purist Rabbi: Part 1, Nehemia brings on “Halakhic purist” Rabbi Asher Meza to discuss the distinction between Jewish law and traditional folklore and how true Rabbinic ordination ended in the Mishnaic period, in some respect making all modern Rabbis “fake.”

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Rabbi Asher Meza: When these stories were written, if you weren’t already sensitized by the Torah of Moses, you were essentially a pagan. And pagan back then was almost synonymous with unethical barbarian. So, it was easy to fall into the trap of seeing the world as us versus them. It’s a little hard to understand now, with the rise of Islam and Christianity, which are essentially offshoots of, like, of the Torah’s ethical system, and make the same claim. A Gentile back then wasn’t as civilized as a Gentile that has been sensitized by Torah values, which is what we have today.

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Nehemia: Shalom and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m here today with Rabbi Asher Meza. He works in Jewish outreach; he’s a Bible enthusiast and a self-described halakhic purist. He’s the founder of Torah Judaism International. Shalom, Asher. How are you doing?

Asher: Hi, hi. Thanks for having me. Thank you, Nehemia.

Nehemia: Well, Asher, I like putting labels on people because it makes me feel more secure in myself. I like to put people in a box. But not everybody fits in a box, right? I’m saying that half-jokingly. What box can we put you in? Are you an Orthodox Jew? Are you… like, what’s the box? Just like, off the bat, so people can kind of have a shorthand of where you’re coming from.

Asher: I think people in the Haredi community cringe every time they have to describe themselves as Orthodox. Just because I think, traditionally, that’s a role invented, or a title invented, by Reform, to in some way, make us look backward and primitive. So, I’m Orthodox, I guess. I’m an observant Jew. I keep Jewish law. I believe in what we now call Oral Law; I believe in the written law. So, I think that checks all the boxes for Orthodoxy, minus Kabbalah. But I guess nowadays you don’t have to be Orthodox to accept Kabbalah.

Nehemia: I’m actually presenting in a conference in a couple of weeks on a rabbi named Shadal. Rabbi Samuel David Luzzatto, who was in Italy in the early 1800s, and he was an Orthodox rabbi, and he wrote an entire book against Kabbalah.

Asher: One hundred percent. A big rationalist, big student of the Rambam. Yes.

Nehemia: Yeah. That was one of his focuses, that the Kabbalah is pseudepigraphical. That it wasn’t really written by Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, because it has all these anachronisms. So, you could be anti-Kabbalah, or not. Let’s say, maybe a Kabbalah minimalist? What would you say? So, talk about Kabbalah… or maybe… let’s not start with Kabbalah. Look, I’ve seen videos of you where you travel to India and stuff like that, and tell people about… what does it mean that you’re in Jewish outreach? What did it mean in the past? And what does it mean today?

Asher: We’re global, baby! So, from that perspective, my organization is called Torah Judaism International. If someone really wanted to confront actual idolatry, le’maisa, what’s done today? Where else would you want to go but India? That being said, the majority of our students there are former Christians than actual Hindus. But yeah, we try to kind of fill a void. The state of Israel has outlawed conversions in 98% of the world, which includes Latin America, Africa, India. That means if anyone from that part of the world wants to become Jewish, they would have to travel to Israel. So, what are you left with? With essentially thousands of people who’ve been living like Torah observant Jews for decades, who get ridiculed by Israelis when they go to India. That’s the only reason why there’s a Chabad there, to cater to Israelis. They’re called Gentiles who are, in some way, misappropriating Torah.

So, my organization fundraises in their behalf. We’ve taken, so far, two sifrei Torah. We’ve built mikvahs. We’ve taken tefillin, books of all sorts, and we converted them, absolutely free of charge, from their perspective. I mean, it costs us money, but we fund raise for that. And that’s what we try to do all over the world. We’ve done it in Ecuador; we’ve done it in parts of Europe. Really to sort of just fill that void. We really don’t like getting involved in conversions, but people who have no other option, right? You know, because no one says, you know, “Don’t go. I’ll go.” Right? I mean, from that perspective, I’ll step in and perform a conversion. According to Jewish law, anyone could perform a conversion. I am a rabbi, but you don’t need to be a rabbi to perform a conversion. And that’s how we found ourselves in India.

Nehemia: So, there’s a lot to unpack here. You mentioned you brought them Torah scrolls and phylacteries… I’m just translating here, and you built a mikvah for them, which is for ritual immersion. I suppose, particularly for women, or in general as well. Meaning, like practically, I suppose it’s for the women. Or is it for the conversion specifically, you built the mikvah?

Asher: Well, it’s for both. It’s for the conversions.

Nehemia: Okay.

Asher: I mean, a mikvah, for it to be kosher for conversion, it has to be, like, kosher for women.

Nehemia: Okay. All right. And I say… well, okay, let’s not get into those details. So, let me ask this. So, wow, this is… So, what do you mean that the state of Israel has outlawed conversions? If there’s a Jewish community in India, what is the state of Israel… How could they have any say in the matter, right? I mean, they don’t have sovereignty over India. So, explain that. What does that mean?

Asher: Well, these aren’t Jewish communities by heritage or pedigree. These are people who’ve come to the realization that they no longer want to be Christian or Hindu or Muslim, and they’ve embraced Judaism as a religion. Not B’nei Menashe or any other group that was in some way imported into Israel. So, this is one reason organizations in Israel really don’t want to deal with them. Like, there’s an organization called Kulanu that sort of helps them out a little bit if they remain Noahides. So, there’s many Israeli organizations that will help…

Nehemia: What is a Noahide? Explain that for the audience.

Asher: So, a Noahide… okay, in the Talmud, there… It’s a developed idea that there’s a different standard for Gentiles than there is for Jewish people. It’s tied more to the notion of a ger toshav. So, a ger toshav is the idea that Gentiles were allowed to reside amongst Israel, and they were not adjudicated by the same laws that Jews were adjudicated by because they never formally accepted Torah. So, the question arose, how do you adjudicate people within your borders who don’t have to keep Shabbat? Who don’t have to keep…

Nehemia: What do you mean by adjudicate? What is… I’m not sure what that means.

Asher: So, in terms of the Sanhedrin. Right? Checks and balances, moral checks and balances… how do we “enforce” laws that aren’t applicable on certain people? For example, the Torah talks about nevela; animals that die on their own, and how we’re able to give it to resident aliens, people who live amongst us who aren’t technically part of us. So, this in some way opened up another world of thought that there must be some sort of standard for Gentiles to be adjudicated by, to be, you know, sentenced by… like a standard for them to adhere to that’s different from the Jew. Right?

And this is thinking that appears in Mishnaic-slash-Rabbinic literature. So, there’s a debate on how many laws these individuals should keep. That means, resident aliens, people who are non-Jews, non-Israelites who didn’t accept the Torah but happen to live within our borders. So, they theorized that it might be seven laws. There’s another opinion that it might be 30 laws. There’s another opinion that they might have to keep everything. I think, essentially, because Maimonides, being the most influential codifier, mentioned the seven, everyone sort of followed suit. And, you know, those he learned from also liked the writ. So, we believe that the seven Noahide laws, at least according to Rabbinic literature, is the bare minimum that Gentiles are adjudicated by in terms of our legal system if they choose to reside amongst us. Alright?

Now, this is… agada aside, folklore and legend aside, because folklore and legend crept in and… like it does with most things that are dry and boring, it gave it some sort of mystical twist. And now they teach that six laws were given to Adam, and the seventh law was given to Noah, and they’ve even begun to reward people who’ve adopted such an existence with the world to come. Right, that…

Nehemia: Wait… who rewarded them? God? Or whoever made up these stories?

Asher: Whoever made up these stories. Now…

Nehemia: Okay!

Asher: I know it sounds a…

Nehemia: That’s very generous of them to offer the world to come, which they don’t have authority over, but…

Asher: Correct, correct. Now…

Nehemia: Or maybe you believe they do. I don’t know.

Asher: This is where me being a halakhic purist comes in. I mean, for me, the only part that’s obligatory to believe, right, is halakha. And these portions, these embellishments, what we call midrash and agada, have nothing to do with halakha. So, then I have no issue saying that these stories were essentially invented. Right? But the average Kabbalist elevates these stories to the same level of Torah, and I think they violate, you know, ve’lo tosif olah, velo tigra mimenu.

Nehemia: That’s Deuteronomy 4:2 and 12:32, “Don’t add and don’t take away,” or 13:1 in the Hebrew versions. Okay. So, you’re saying by adding these stories and kind of making them a requirement to believe in the stories, they’re adding to the Torah. Is that what you’re saying?

Asher: Correct. I don’t think that there’s an official requirement to believe in the stories. Maimonides, who in some way represents both sides of the fence, says that if you toss them all away, you’re somewhat of an idiot. But if you believe all of them are true then you’re also an idiot. So, I think…

Nehemia: Is that Maimonides who said that? Why did I think it was the Yechiel of Paris or… Who’s the one who said that “If you believe all the stories, you’re a fool. If you believe none of them, you’re a heretic?”

Asher: Yeah. So, I think that’s regarding the teachings of the Ba’al Shem Tov. I mean, sometimes they recycle these sayings. I think the son of the Rambam, like, Avraham ben Harambam, also made a similar statement. So, it’s some sort of an unwritten rule. However, I think the nicest way to put it is that they’re optional to believe. But…

Nehemia: So, let’s… this is a really important point that I want you to dwell on here, because a lot of our listeners are Christians. And in Christianity, belief is… let’s say historical Christianity, for most of the centuries, what you believe is more important than what you do. And you’re saying… So, explain what you’re saying here, that there’s a distinction in your understanding of Judaism between what you believe and what you do. So, talk about that for a minute.

Asher: Well, somewhat. I think Judaism stands out because we have the idea of optional beliefs within our liturgy… within our Holy Scriptures. I mean, something could be holy and not necessarily come from God, just set apart. So, I don’t think this is so pronounced in Christianity and in Islam, the notion of optional beliefs. I think if, for some reason, some pastor had some theological-slash-metaphysical difference with the pastor across the street, that he would begin probably condemning him to hell just because they don’t agree on the metaphysical.

While in Judaism we get along. I mean, a misnaged, let’s say. I mean someone who’s against Hasidut, would still consider a Kabbalist, a Chabadnik, still a member of the tribe and a member in good standing. But they just feel that perhaps they have, in some way, stunted their growth spiritually. But they still include them as part of the club because they view these extracurricular ideas as optional beliefs. It may be true for them, right? I mean, their rebbe, their leader, might be their rebbe, you know, but only because you don’t accept their admor, their teacher, as your teacher doesn’t mean necessarily that they’re putting you outside of the fold. And that’s the realm of optional beliefs that exists in Orthodoxy. It’s not so well pronounced today in the Jewish world. I consider it’s more like the dumbification of Judaism, because they try to deify every legend, every tale as absolutely true.

Nehemia: Explain the difference between agada and halakha, because I think most of my audience will have no idea… because there’s an implicit categorization that you have here that you’re not… I think it’s important to explain.

Asher: So, anything in Rabbinic literature that’s not of a legal nature is considered agada. In Aramaic, agadata. Right? Anything that’s prescriptive is considered halakha. And, like the phrase midrash has now become to mean agada, but the word midrash doesn’t agada mean unless…

Nehemia: Agada is something like legend, stories…

Asher: Right. Folklore and legend, essentially, is how I like to translate it into English. And these stories… they’re helpful when they’re wrapped around a halakha, when they’re preparing you to, in some way, absorb a halakhic, a legal requirement, reality. Right? They’re typically giving over… They’re in some way bundled within a story. And that’s the way people used to teach back then, until the age of the Rishonim.

So, the age of the Rishonim is when we first saw complete codifications of Jewish law, which was essentially a way to extract, with a scalpel, halakha from agada. Because they realized that the only people who were capable of making the distinction are people who studied for many years, people on very high levels, and the average person couldn’t pick up a Talmud and tell the difference. Right? I mean, I’m pretty sure most people who’ve attempted to do Daf Yomi, I mean, give up after the first week because of so much agada, so much folklore and legend, that they can’t see a do and a don’t, you know, within like, all these, in some way, descriptive ideas. So, what books like Mishna Torah and Shulkhan Arukh did was, they extracted the actual halakha from what I would like to call “the fluff;” things that could be considered like the frosting.

Nehemia: So, for you agada is fluff. Is that what you’re saying?

Asher: Correct, yes, yes. But the first way it’s labeled in Rabbinic literature is midrashei agada. And this is versus midrashei halakha, which typically… Midrash means, like, from the drash, like from the actual Torah. And it’s basically legends and folklore based on the Torah, which is what we call midrash nowadays. And sometimes it’s not so much based on the Torah. And midrashei halakha is actual halakha that’s extracted from the Torah, which only makes up a very small portion of what people call Oral Law today. Yeah.

Nehemia: Can I… let me see if I’m getting this right, and we’ll have the editor put this up on the screen if you agree with it.

Asher: Sure.

Nehemia: So, midrash is something like interpretation of Scripture. Would you accept that definition? Or it’s based on Scripture, or at least…

Asher: Like, not how it’s used today, but originally what the term actually means. It means mi-drash, like, from the drash. Yes.

Nehemia: Okay. Lidrosh is to seek, to investigate. So, midrash agada is legendary derivations of information from Scripture. Midrash halakha is practical legal applications. So, would you say… let me try to think of an example here. So, midrash agada, this legend, folklore… So, Moses comes down from Mount Sinai with a scroll, with the five books of the Torah, and it includes his own death in Deuteronomy 34. Is that agada? Or is that something you’re required to believe?

Asher: That’s agada, for sure.

Nehemia: Okay. And so, if you don’t believe that Moses wrote Deuteronomy 34 in tears, then you’re still within the fold, according to what you’re saying.

Asher: Well, it depends who you ask. If you ask me, yes.

Nehemia: I’m asking you.

Asher: However, it’s been accepted like a creed that the Torah that Moshe Rabbeinu had is the same Torah we have nowadays. Even though when Maimonides made such a statement, like, he also said that the Aleppo Codex is the most accurate rendition of the Torah, so he acknowledged that, even amongst the Jewish people, there’s different renditions of sifrei Torah, you know? So, like, sometimes we have to make the distinction between creed and historicity, you know? So, even Rabbinic historicity. In the Talmud, they always made a distinction between agada, halakha, what’s from the Torah and what’s from the rabbis. Today, not so much.

Nehemia: Wait. So those were four categories, just to be clear. Agada is legend, halakha is practical implementation of Jewish law, or Rabbinical law, and then what’s from the Torah and what’s from the rabbis… So, among agada you could have what’s from the Torah and what’s from the rabbis, and among halakha you could have what’s from the Torah, and what’s from the rabbis. Is that right? We have four categories there.

Asher: No. Well, first, when I use the word midrash, today it’s used interchangeably with agada.

Nehemia: Okay. Yeah.

Asher: But there is midrashei agada, from the actual Torah, and there are some agadot that have no Torah roots at all. Like anything…

Nehemia: So, what’s an agada from the Torah that you’re required to believe?

Asher: Oh, well, you’re not required to believe any of the agadot. Right…

Nehemia: Even the ones from the Torah?

Asher: Correct. Well, I mean… Okay, so agada doesn’t… it wouldn’t need, like, the prefix or the suffix, like if you’re just reading the Chumash. Like, if it’s from the Torah, like, why would you need to call it, like midrashei agada? Like, you would just call it the Chumash, right? It’s folklore and legend built around stories that don’t… that doesn’t literally appear in the Torah. You know, for example…

Nehemia: Ah, that doesn’t literally appear in the Torah…

Asher: Correct.

Nehemia: So, that there was a man named…

Asher: … Erev Rav, right? Like everyone knows, Rashi brings down the midrash.

Nehemia: What is the Erev Rav? Explain that for the audience. They may not know…

Asher: Okay. So, in Exodus chapter 12, it talks about a mixed multitude of peoples that exited Egypt alongside the Hebrews. Folklore and legend, agada, stepped in and said, “Well, these people, Moses converted outside of the advice of God. God told him not to convert them, and he took it upon himself to convert these insincere converts.” And they basically scapegoat these individuals, blaming the incident of the golden calf on them, and other incidents, to the point that they all fell away, because they were either un-alived for their misbehavior or they left. Now, this is agada on a Torah narrative. It’s in some way adding to the story. Now, there are some agadot that come out of nowhere, right? I mean, the Zohar is essentially like a book of agada, like, tales that don’t literally appear… like, for example, there’s a tale that the sons of Yaakov would create women, procreate with them and unalive them. Right? Like the whole notion of a golem.

Nehemia: And by the way, for the audience who’s like, why does he keep saying “unalive”? It’s because he’s a content creator on… and so he uses these… We literally have… what’s the word I’m looking for?

Asher: Censorship.

Nehemia: We literally have censorship today. It’s pure, absolute censorship. Instead of “kill”, he has to say unalive, or he’ll be censored. So, it’s probably just a habit you’ve picked up. But anyway, all right. So, go on. And it’s funny because somebody ten years from now will not understand why you’re saying unalive, because we’ll have different censorship.

Asher: I mean, it’ll probably be absorbed into the language and become, you know, common speech.

Nehemia: Maybe, I don’t know.

Asher: Yeah. So, that’s one example of how we, in some way, threw the Erev Rav, the mixed multitude, under the bus when there’s another midrash, by the way, like in Shmot Rabbah, that says that they were the best and the finest, like of Egypt. But for some reason…

Nehemia: So, wait. So, that there’s a mixed multitude who originally have… not descendants of Jacob that came out of Egypt. That you have to accept… I’m asking. That you have to accept because it’s explicitly in the Torah?

Asher: Right.

Nehemia: But that they were converted against God’s advice by Moses; that’s the agada part, the legend part.

Asher: Correct. And that they were wicked, essentially. I mean, now Erev Rav is a negative term when used against people.

Nehemia: Right. Gotcha. Okay. So, there’s a distinction between things that are legendary, and I’ll use the word, let’s say story, there are stories from the Tanakh and those you’ll believe. You say you have to believe them, or there’s no reason not to believe them, maybe you want to say? I don’t know. I don’t want to put words in your mouth.

Asher: You mean stories that literally appear in the Torah, I believe, as a fundamentalist, that…

Nehemia: Okay, great. All right. Whereas things that are agada, which are maybe derived or based in the Torah, that are taught by the rabbis, you’re not required to believe that, is what you’re saying.

Asher: Correct. It’s optional.

Nehemia: Okay.

Asher: As a matter of fact, one way to really dissect this idea with many rabbis who teach midrash and agada, is asking, “What criteria do we have in the Orthodox world to determine a binding midrash from a non-binding midrash or agada?” I mean, it sounds like Islam already, you know, like an accepted hadith versus an unaccepted hadith. And they’ll never have an answer to that question, right? You know, because it depends who your rabbi is, right? But it’s a common phrase in the Jewish world. “We don’t hold, like, this midrash,” right? I mean, it’s a common… I mean, they use it all the time. Which means that they use midrashim that are convenient to push any narrative that they’re touching on on that day.

Nehemia: Let me give you a story from my own life, and I’ll ask you to comment on it. So, I was raised Orthodox, and one of the teachings is that every soul of every Jew who was ever born, even converts, were literally at Mount Sinai. They were physically… not physically, because they were spirit, right? But their spirits were present. And this was such a prevalent idea that… there was a dating website, which was an alternative, or was; I don’t know if it exists anymore, I’m married. There was an alternative to JDate called Saw You at Sinai. And implicit in that is, if I want to be on that site, I self-identify as Orthodox. And I accept this doctrine that my soul was at Sinai and so was yours.

So, when I heard this, I thought it was utter nonsense. And I openly said this, and I was rebuked as an evil heretic by a rabbi, an Orthodox rabbi, in front of a bunch of other people, specifically for denying that my… I said, “My soul wasn’t at Mount Sinai and neither was yours.” Now, how do I know that? Well, that’s what I believe, right? But really, it was that I thought, this is… I mean, what a ridiculous thing. It doesn’t say that anywhere in the Tanakh that my soul was at Sinai. I mean, it seemed… it’s adding information that isn’t in the Tanakh and can’t even be implied in the Tanakh, and it was made into a core doctrine. Now, you might say it’s not because it’s an agada, right? But that I was rebuked and called an a epikoros, a heretic, for denying this doctrine… Comment on that. If you were my rabbi, maybe I’d still be Orthodox. That’s… I don’t know. But… so talk about that.

Asher: So, that’s the difference between what we do and what mainstream Orthodoxy slash Kabbalistic Jews believe. I’ll tell you a little bit about my history. You know, so I learned in Israel. I was in Aish HaTorah. I used to learn in Ohr Somayach some… I went to the yeshiva system. I didn’t really understand Orthodox Judaism in a systematic fashion until I started learning with Yemenites. So, I mean, Yemenites, Teimanim in Israel, at least baladim, typically are very into Maimonides. And they’re not big fans of Kabbalah as something authoritative.

And what made the Rambam “the Rambam” is that he laid down a systematic theology for Orthodox Jews. Why do we believe what we believe? The distinction between agada and halakha. Minhagim. Right? The Rambam became the Rambam because he put his knowhow into trying to explain something which was never really meant to be a science, because Orthodoxy as it exists today is really not a science. Mainly because the Talmud itself doesn’t give you enough. The Talmud itself doesn’t tell you how to interpret the Talmud. So, the Rambam teaches on the importance of having smikha, this thing that I think, Orthodox Jews, that we believe in faith, is something that was passed down throughout the generations from teaching.

Nehemia: So, hold on, let’s… I’m… I apologize for interrupting.

Asher: Sure, sure.

Nehemia: So, Maimonides is called Rambam, Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon, not to be confused with Nachmanides, who is RambaN. He was approximately 1138 through 1204, born in Spain, and then fled as a refugee from Islamic persecution to Egypt, where he was then a doctor. Actually, he was Saladin’s personal doctor. Okay. So, he creates this systematic system, and he emphasizes the importance, you’re saying, of smikha, which is something like ordination, although maybe you have a different definition.

Asher: Yeah, ordination is fine. Passed down from teacher to student. And this is essentially the authority to judge in Israel. And this authority, like, sat in a court that went by different names: the shoftim, zkenim, anshei hakneset hagdsola, and eventually the Sanhedrin. But it was the great court in Jerusalem. Or wherever they happened to be. Like, the beit… The place that God chooses is the place where this court resided.

Nehemia: So, when it moved to Tiberius, you’re saying that was the chosen place?

Asher: Well, see, the truth is, like, when do we know that God chooses something? He typically chooses through hachamim. Whether it’s the high priest, whether it’s, like, the judges of that time, to decide that “You know what? Like, the Mishkan is going to move from Shiloh to Gilboa” or to some other location. So, this, of course, all this takes faith. But the idea that the sages of Israel first decided, like in Yavne and Tiveria, that we believe that the Sanhedrin still had some understanding of authority, but not the same authority that they would have in front of the Mishkan, or what later became known as the Beit haMikdash. For example, in Tveria, they still couldn’t unalive people, so there were distinctions made between smikha, like in the lishkat hagazit, in the room of hewn stones, and smikha when it was already on its way out, in places like Tveria and Yavne. And…

Nehemia: Just to make it clear, you’re saying that, from the Sanhedrin’s own perspective, not having anything to do with Roman law, but from their own perspective, they didn’t have the authority to execute people once they reached a certain stage of their history. Is that what you’re saying?

Asher: Well, in the Talmud it says that, like, 40 years before the destruction of the Temple, they chose to move rooms, where they cease to adjudicate from the lishkat hagazit, which took, according to what the Talmud says, took their power away to execute people. Now, that’s a limited form of smikha, but they still had smikha. Once smikha ceased to exist, and this is already after the destruction of the Second Temple, around the 4th century of the common era, that’s when Rabbinic authority ceased in the Land of Israel. This is why Orthodox Jews studied the Talmud so much, specifically the Mishnah, because those are laws that are, in some way, set in stone, so we’re able to create a new Sanhedrin that could remove nonsense and add more practicality to our daily life. Yeah.

Nehemia: Let me ask this. So, ordination, smikha. So, you’re saying the faith that you have, the belief, is that… and correct me if I’m wrong here, Moses… I mean, this is in Avot 1:1, right? Moses ordained Joshua, and Joshua the elders, and it was transmitted… Look, Christians have a similar idea called, I want to say it’s called something like apostolic succession or something like that.

Asher: Right.

Nehemia: Right? Like, Peter was the… Catholics would say, Peter was the first pope, and then there was… well, there might be a bit different because maybe Peter was dead when the second pope was elected. I don’t know how it works in Catholicism. But basically, smikha is literally, or maybe metaphorically, they put their hands on the head of the next rabbi, and they transmit that authority. Is that what smikha is?

Asher: Yes, yes. Now, of course…

Nehemia: Okay. So, your smikha goes back in an unbroken chain to Moses, according to your belief. Is that right?

Asher: Oh, no. No.

Nehemia: Oh.

Asher: Every rabbi today is a fake rabbi.

Nehemia: Wait. What? Yes. Every rabbi today is what?

Asher: Now, with the more knowledgeable…

Nehemia: Wait, wait. Say that again. Every rabbi today is what?

Asher: Is a fake rabbi. Okay. I mean, I have to use a little shock, you know, to get the point across.

Nehemia: That is shocking!

Asher: So, I believe in 1536 in Tzfat, there was a rabbi called the Mahari Beirav, who came up with the idea, right, or the initiative, to reinstitute smikha. Now, the truth is, the Talmud itself doesn’t tell us how to reinstitute smikha. However, the Rambam writes, he says, “Nir eli,” it seems to me, “that if you got the hachamim of Eretz Yisrael to give one…” like the wise men in Israel “to give one person this ordination, that person can then give it to another person and on and on.” And we could reinstitute this procedure. The truth is, the Rambam said “it’s his opinion,” because there’s no source for this. And this individual, the Mahari Beirav, the rabbi Yaakov Berab, he didn’t get the support of all of Israel. He still gave smikha over to Rav Yosef Karo, to those popular individuals in Jewish history living in Tzfat at the time, and that’s the smikha we have today. It’s a ceremonial smikha.

That means the real rabbis were the rabbis who sat on the Sanhedrin. They were the only individuals in the Jewish world that actually had authority. Anything a rabbi could do today, it could be done by any of the hediotot, like, any of the laymen in the Jewish world could do anything a rabbi could do. Like, you don’t need to be a rabbi to perform conversions, you know, to be meshadekh kidushin and perform a marriage, or give over a divorce. Anyone could do these things.

So, the rabbis today only have the authority their community gives them. So, for some reason, if you’re Chabad and you’re fed up with the teachings of Ba’al HaTanya, you can become Sephardi, you can become Bukhari and you can become Puerto Rican. There’s no central authority in Israel anymore, since the absence of the Sanhedrin. And their rulings are binding on all of Israel, and their rulings are set in stone until you have another Sanhedrin. This is a statement in the Talmud that you can’t modify a ruling, add or change a ruling, unless you have a Sanhedrin of greater number and greater wisdom. Which means that they would vote everything into existence, which means they would have to have more voting for something than not voting for it. And yeah, that puts us in the dilemma we’re in today.

Nehemia: Wow! So, I want to dwell on this for a minute. So, you know, there’s… I’m going to use the word agada. There’s a legend in secular history that the last Sanhedrin was 359 A.D or C.E. under Hillel II. I say that’s an agada because I’ve looked for the sources for that, and that’s not entirely clear. There’s a letter from the Roman Emperor Julian to Hillel II, and he was emperor 361 to 363. So, 359 is probably not exactly accurate, but it’s close. Close enough.

So, you’re saying, from the time of the end of the Sanhedrin in the 4th century, whenever that was, until 15… whatever year you said…

Asher: 1536, I think, yeah.

Nehemia: 1536? Something like that. That there was no, even, claim that rabbis were ordained, that they had smikha?

Asher: Correct. For example, Maimonides…

Nehemia: So, Maimonides didn’t have smikha?

Asher: Maimonides didn’t have smikha. He wasn’t even called the Rambam in his lifetime. Right? But we know it’s an acronym for Rabbeinu Moshe ben Maimon, but even Teimanim, like for the last hundred years, or before the last hundred years, before they got, like, absorbed into mainstream Jewish life, they would call their teachers hacham or mori. Right? But they would never call them “rabbi” because they understood that rabbi meant that you had smikha and you sat on the Sanhedrin. As a matter of fact, even in Babylon they didn’t have smikha. So, what do we do with the other half of the Talmud? Which is essentially a commentary on the Mishnah… Which are the rabbis that didn’t have smikha? Well, this is why, you know, we accept some statements as a true explanation of a mishnaic statement, and others we, in some way, toss to the side because it’s just commentary.

Nehemia: Wait, wait a minute. There’s parts of the Talmud that you don’t have to believe? Explain that.

Asher: Eighty percent of it. [Laughter] All right. So… Well, there are two Talmuds, right? The Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud. They both contain the same Mishnah. The Mishnah is what was either written or compiled by Rabbi Yehudah haNasi. It’s a debate if, like, he just gathered notes, or, like, if he actually codified it. That is essentially what is the Oral Law. And I dislike the term Oral Law. As a matter of fact, the term Oral Law never appears in the Mishnah.

Nehemia: Okay.

Asher: It first appeared in Babylon. It doesn’t appear in the Jerusalem Talmud either. Now, there’s other words for it, like halakha le’Moshe mi’Sinai, “laws that were given to Moses on Mount Sinai”, Divrei Sofrim, or, like, just halakha. So… what was I saying?

Nehemia: We were talking about the Mishnah, and how…

Asher: Oh right, right. Yes.

Nehemia: How the Mishna’s binding, but the Talmud, 80% of it’s not.

Asher: Correct. Alright, so, the Talmud is made up of two books. The first part is called the Mishna. Now the second part we call now the Gemara. So, the Gemara are rabbis who lived once smikha was abolished and there was no more Sanhedrin. So, all they’re doing is commenting and expounding on what tenaim, the rabbis who had smikha that appear in the Mishnah, how their laws apply according to their understanding. Because even in Babylon there wasn’t one path. There were different schools, and people understood it different ways. And it wasn’t later till we have codifications of Jewish law, that you have the Jewish world in some way moving in the same direction.

But regardless, they were always basing their decisions off of the Mishnah. So, that means the majority of the Talmud is commentary on the Mishnah. But the Mishnah is the actual law. So, the majority of the Talmud is, like we said, midrash and agada, and only the legal portions are the ones that we take seriously. And some we take less seriously than others. So, I would say that the bulk of the Talmud is agada. The rest is amoraim. So, amoraim are the rabbis that appear in the Gemara arguing on what they think the Mishnah is trying to say.

Now, these rishonim, rabbis of the Middle Ages, had a mesora; they had a tradition on what the final ruling was, because we didn’t know which amora to go by. Right? As a matter of fact, even in the time of the amoraim in the Gemara, they didn’t know if they should go by Hillel over Shammai. They came up with the notion in, like, what the amoraim did, that we go by Hillel over Shammah, except in 18 or 14 instances, right? Because the Mishnah never said it. So, the role of what we call a posek nowadays, I don’t think it’s a real position, you know, without smikha…

Nehemia: A posek is somebody who decides Rabbinical law. A “deciser” I think is the translation.

Asher: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, for making a “stop”. Like, they’re putting an end to the argument. The tools they use to actually decide law, or how it’s applicable today, is by making distinctions of, “Okay, I know there’s a legal statement said here. Who said it? When was it said? Was it a tana? Was it an amora? Is it a breisa? So, a breisa is a mission statement that never made it into the Mishnah, which carries less weight. I mean, there are many breisas that are tossed away. And this is how they decide Jewish law, practical Jewish law, for the average religious Jewish person. They take all these things into account.

Nehemia: So, I just want to… and I’ll have my editor put these terms up. So tana’im are rabbis up until around the year 200. Amora’im are from around 200, maybe 210 or whatever, up until around 500. And then you mentioned rishonim, which is actually a period of history which begins after the gaonic period around in the 11th century, something like this.

Asher: All right. Well, these terms are… this nomenclature is quite new, with the only term we know in terms of tanaim; that actually appears in the Mishnah. But amoraim… you have amoraim, soboraim… gaonim… rishonim… and now you have achronim. And some say that achronim ended after, like, after the Shoah. But it’s all hearsay, right? I mean, who’s to say. Like… I don’t think when the Rambam was alive, he knew that he was a rishon… until much, much later.

Nehemia: That might be. But, you know, when we… I mean, look; I study history, and we’ll say things like “the Middle Ages”. Well, what are the Middle Ages? Well, it actually kind of depends. If you’re talking about Jewish history, you know, in the Christian Middle Ages, it’s 476, which is the first… or the last Roman emperor is deposed. And then it goes up until the Renaissance. Well, that has no meaning for Jewish history because nothing happens in Jewish history in 476, and nothing significant happened in the Renaissance. Right? Jews were essentially living under medieval rule until the fall of the Russian Empire in some regions. Right? And if you go to Yemen, they were effectively in the Middle Ages up until 1950, when they came to Israel. And I don’t mean that in a negative way.

Asher: Yeah, no problem.

Nehemia: Meaning, nothing fundamentally changed, right?

Asher: I mean, the Gemara was in and around that time period. The rabbis in Babylon which came after the amoraim, I mean, like in Israel…

Nehemia: Right. So, the big events in Jewish history are things like the ending of the Babylonian Talmud around the year 500, give or take, right? There’s stuff that’s later in it, whatever. And then you have the gaonic period, right, where you have these people who do have some kind of… or they claim authority over other Jews with this institution of the gaonit, in Babylon. Right? And then that ends, I want to say, around the year 1040, something like this. And it’s ending had to do with, you know, political developments outside the Jewish world, right? Basically ending it.

So, I hear what you’re saying, right? Did Leonardo da Vinci know that he was in the Renaissance? I actually don’t know the answer to that question. But did Rashi know he was in the Middle Ages? No. Rashi was in exile, right? That’s what he knew, right? And so, did Rashi know he was a rishon? I don’t know, but he almost certainly… I don’t know… you tell me if I’m wrong. He would have distinguished between tanaim and amoraim, because an amora… I think even in the Talmud you have that distinction where the tana… well, you said tanaim appears in the Mishnah, right? So… But I think you do have that distinction, like one amora is allowed to disagree with another amora, but he has to have a Tanaitic source to disagree. And I think we’re probably losing the audience. Let’s get back to our topic here. So, wow. So, I’m going to ask you this, a very controversial question. There’s a whole lot of anti-Semites out there who will say, “You know, there are these horrible things in the Talmud. And here’s what the Jews say about us, because it says this in the Talmud.” And look, I’ve looked up some of these sources. Some of them don’t actually say what they claim it says, or they don’t understand the context in which it’s said. But let’s leave that aside. What would your response to that be? Let’s say it does say something horrible about Christianity or non-Jews in the Talmud. What would your response to that be?

Asher: So, I would start off by saying that I, in some way, distance myself, and I denounce any irrationally hateful statement that appears in the Talmud. Okay. Because remember, we don’t have to believe in these agadot. Those who go off on a ledge and try to die in a mountain trying to defend, you know, some agadic statement doesn’t really… Most people who do that don’t study Judaism, are typically not religious. They don’t understand. You don’t have to defend every abrasive statement that appears in the Talmud.

That being said, it’s quite easy for, let’s say, a religion like Islam to claim to be tolerant when essentially the Torah world had the hard task of civilizing this planet. When these stories were written, if you weren’t already sensitized by the torah of Moses, you were essentially a pagan. And pagan back then was almost, almost synonymous with unethical barbarian. So, it was easy to fall into the trap of seeing the world as us versus them. It’s a little hard to understand now, with the rise of Islam and Christianity, which are essentially offshoots of, like, of the Torah’s ethical system, and make the same claim. A gentile back then wasn’t as civilized as a gentile that has been sensitized by Torah values, which is what we have today.

So, I would almost have to agree with the rabbis in the Talmud because they’re referring to individuals who weren’t Christian, who weren’t living up to the ethics recycled in the Quran from the Torah. So, by the simple fact that I’m convinced that the rabbis in the Talmud believed in proselytizing, it says in… like, in Pesachim Pei Zayin [87], it says that the reason we’re in exile is in order to acquire converts. It says in Berakhot that the whole world is going to convert to Judaism. They didn’t see the world as essentially “genetically us”, right? And these inferior individuals over there… But I think every time they saw a Gentile, they saw a potential Jew.

So, from that perspective, if you’re judging people based on merit, right? On what they’ve chosen to do or not to do… I mean, we do this all the time. The Torah does this, right? However, I think, post Kabbalah, we define being Jewish differently. Kabbalah defines being Jewish as merely having a Jewish mother, and this mother in some way transferring some soul in you, some Jewish soul. Which the notion of the Jewish soul was invented by Kabbalah. It doesn’t appear in the Torah. It doesn’t appear in the Talmud.

Now, the idea of a soul does, but not a particularly Jewish soul or Gentile soul. So, according to the modern-day nomenclature, I could see why people get offended. Because people are born special, from a Kabbalistic perspective, and a non-Jewish person didn’t have the luxury of being offered a Jewish education when they were young. Okay, so from that perspective, it could seem bigoted.

But if, from the outset, we told them, “No, no, no, we want you to join us.” Okay. What they’re calling out in the Talmud is behavior, and collective responsibility on people who were outside the covenant. It makes it a lot more approachable, a lot more ethically reasonable, than saying, “Well, I’m Jewish because I have a Jewish soul. And you’re a Gentile, and you’re not allowed to keep the Sabbath. And, like, if we allow you to convert, that you’re lucky.” From that perspective, I see how it could build resentment.

However, if the only thing that separates a Jewish person, a Torah-keeping Israelite, from a Gentile is Torah observant, right, you just give the Gentile Torah… you just duplicated your numbers. Then there is no issue, there’s no resentment. So, this is typically how I try to give it over.

Nehemia: So, what you’re saying, if I’m understanding, is that every time it mentions, let’s say like aku’m, which is… roughly gentile, but it actually means oved kochavim umazelot, “somebody who worships stars and constellations.” Right? Meaning, like, that’s the normal term in the Talmud.

Asher: Right.

Nehemia: So, whenever it’s talking about Gentiles, it’s talking specifically about idolaters, and it may not apply to Christians and Muslims.

Asher: For sure. Well, ovdei kochavim umazelot is specifically talking about behavior, right? I mean, they’re worshipping stars and constellations. It’s not talking about… I mean, just saying the word “goy”, which is not a bad word… Israel is called a goy kadosh.

Nehemia: What is goy mean? Because I… I have, let’s say, someone in my wife’s family who, every time he says the word goyim, which he seems to think is a singular form. He thinks that that means animals or something like that. What does goyim mean from your perspective?

Asher: So, I strive to be painfully honest. So, it means something different today than what the word literally means in the Torah, or even how it’s used in the Talmud, which is not derogatory, essentially.

Nehemia: So, it’s not derogatory in the Talmud.

Asher: Of course not. So, goy means nation. It just merely means nations, just like Gentiles, right? In Spanish we say gente, “peoples.” Right? Am. Goy. It means essentially a group of people. An ethnos. It’s not derogatory, it shouldn’t be derogatory. However, if you believe that Jewish people are intrinsically superior, right, they’re born special, what you’re basically saying is that everyone else is not. And if everyone else is technically a goy, that’s when people get this false understanding of what the word actually means. Okay. The word just means nation. Israel is called a holy nation, a goy kadosh. There’s nothing from a Torah perspective that’s derogatory from the idea, or, like, from the term, but at a time when people are being discouraged from converting, and at a time when eighty percent of Jewish people solidify their existence on some secular pursuit like Zionism, socialism, every other “ism” but Torah, I could see how people could view it as derogatory.

Nehemia: So, I think there might be some people who watch this interview and say, “Asher Meza is getting together with this Karaite, and he’s badmouthing Orthodoxy, and you shouldn’t air out your dirty laundry in public.” And so, I want to elicit from you some sort of a statement. Why is it that you’re being so critical of… and look, I do the same thing with Karaites. People will be like, “Why are you criticizing Karaites?” Well, because that’s the perspective I’m coming from. Why are you criticizing Orthodox Judaism? I don’t know anything about, you know, Lutherans. So, I have nothing to say about it. Right?

But what would you say to somebody who criticized you and said, “You shouldn’t be saying critical things about Orthodoxy when you know there’s going to be non-Jews watching this. There’s going to be, you know, maybe Reform Jews watching this.” I have a bunch of Reform Jews watch the program, a lot of Conservative Jews. What would be your response to that, that you’re kind of maybe airing out the dirty laundry in public in a way that you should only be… like, you should be criticizing me. I’m the heretic, right? And that’s a fair critique, maybe. What would your response be?

Asher: Well, sure. I’m promoting Orthodoxy, and I’m calling out the misbehavior of many Orthodox Jews. I think that Judaism today is heading towards a downward trajectory. And I blame Kabbalah, mainly, because of this. I think the birth of the secular Jew, the birth of a secular anything in the name of Judaism, was invented by Kabbalah. The idea that people could misappropriate our religion, say all they want to say in behalf of, not just Orthodoxy, but about Judaism, when they don’t believe in God. But they think they have the authority to say just because they happen to have a Jewish mother, right, is a kabbalistic idea.

The birth of our problems essentially arose during a time called the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment. What gave birth to the Jewish Enlightenment was the Kabbalistic movement. I acknowledge that the maskilim, the members of this movement, didn’t necessarily even believe in God. However, growing up in a time that told you that what made you Jewish and special to God was not what you believed in, or how those beliefs guided your behavior, but the soul within you, got Jews to say, “Why did I have to keep mitzvot to begin with? I’m in some way going to solidify my Jewishness in other pursuits, whether it was socialism or whether it was poetry, you know, like bringing shtetl life up on the stage of Broadway. Okay, I’m going to solidify my Jewish Torah existence by every other concept minus Torah.”

This gave birth to left wing Judaism, this gave birth to irreligious Zionistic Judaism, right? And it has made Judaism what I’ve always argued it is not, and that’s an ethno religion. Judaism is only a religion. There is an ethnic component to the Jewish people. However, if you don’t believe in or keep Torah, you should not be able to speak in behalf of Torah. And I think that the secularists have not only hijacked our Torah, they’ve hijacked our language. They’ve hijacked our land, right? And everything is given over from an ethnic perspective, which makes Judaism all the more less welcoming.

I see the Torah as humanity’s vaccine. I think the world is dying morally, and I happen to live in a moral well of prosperous ethics. I believe it’s unbecoming of a good Jew to keep that vaccine to himself. And I think that the biggest obstacle to bringing converts into Judaism, or spreading Judaism to whoever’s looking for an ethical outlet in life, is these Kabbalistic ideas.

Now, I promote Judaism. I promote Orthodoxy. I teach Orthodoxy. I teach Halakha. However, if I don’t mention what’s wrong with our people, by definition, we would never improve. And being that I’m the only, at least online, I’m one of the only people mentioning this, means I can’t stop. Unfortunately, I’d rather just sort of go with the flow. But there are too many good people that I know that have been rejected or made to feel like a second-class citizen by Judaism being so ethnic nowadays that I can’t stay quiet.

One of my main goals in teaching Torah online is to de-ethnicize Judaism. Yes, the Jewish people, there’s an ethnic component to that. However, Torah is for anyone who wants it.

Nehemia: Mmm.

Asher: And this is the main reason I do what I do.

Nehemia: And where can people find you on the internet?

Asher: Torahjudaism.com.

Nehemia: All right, thank you Rabbi Asher Meza. Shalom.

Asher: Shalom.

Nehemia: We’ve had a lot of terms here that I want you to try to maybe define. Kabbalah. What is Kabbalah? You… we’ve talked about it repeatedly and haven’t really defined…

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VERSES MENTIONED
Deuteronomy 4:2, 12:32
Exodus 12:38
Compare Midrash Shemot Rabbah 18-19 to Midrash Shemot Rabbah 42; Midrash Sifrei Bamidbar 87; Babylonian Talmud Beitzah 32b; Zohar 2.191a; Rashi on Exodus 32:9
See Midrash Tanchuma, Nitzavim 3; Akeidat Yitzchak 99:1
Talmud Sanhedrin 41a; Avodah Zarah 8b
Mishnah Pirkei Avot 1:1
Talmud Sanhedrin 14a-b
Mishneh Torah, The Sanhedrin and the Penalties within Their Jurisdiction 4:11
Mishnah Eduyot 1:5
Talmud Pesachim 87b
Talmud Berakhot 57b:20

BOOKS MENTIONED
Mishneh Torah (1180)
by Maimonides

Shulchan Aruch (1563)
by Rabbi Joseph Karo

Tanya (1796)
by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi

Mitpachat Sefarim (1767)
by Rabbi Yaakov Emden

Sefer HaIkkarim (1425)
by Rabbi Joseph Albo

The Limits of Orthodox Theology: Maimonides' Thirteen Principles Reappraised
by Marc B. Shapiro

Medical Aphorisms Treatises 1-5
by Moses Maimonides, Gerrit Bos

Medical Aphorisms Treatises 6-9
by Moses Maimonides, Gerrit Bos

Medical Aphorisms Treatises 10-15
by Moses Maimonides, Gerrit Bos

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Support Team Study – True Torah Judaism: Part 2

OTHER LINKS
Torah Judaism International

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