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rhuFor a while, I've been grappling with the question of whether the Talmud is actually the foundational book of Judaism, rather than the Torah. I want to write an essay exploring that subject, but yesterday my rabbi, in his words introducing the Torah portion, touched on this very issue. By focusing on the words "כִּי עַל-פִּי הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה" (Ex. 34:27) he reminded us that the Torah revealed at Sinai had two parts: the written Torah and the oral Torah.
The written Torah is fixed, but the oral Torah (which later became the Talmud) was designed to evolve with the Jewish people while still being true to the principles of oral tradition and exegesis that God laid out at Sinai.
So now I don't have to write the essay. But I also now have a pithy way of summarizing that message:
In the halachic legal system, the will of God is represented by two separate yet equally important corpera: the bichtav, which provides the unchanging foundation texts, and the b'al peh, which applies them in each generation. These are their studies: Torah and Shas ("Law" and "Orders")
The written Torah is fixed, but the oral Torah (which later became the Talmud) was designed to evolve with the Jewish people while still being true to the principles of oral tradition and exegesis that God laid out at Sinai.
So now I don't have to write the essay. But I also now have a pithy way of summarizing that message:
In the halachic legal system, the will of God is represented by two separate yet equally important corpera: the bichtav, which provides the unchanging foundation texts, and the b'al peh, which applies them in each generation. These are their studies: Torah and Shas ("Law" and "Orders")