Improvising on Oral Torah

I occasionally surf over to Reform Jewish sites to see what stuff they're putting out. They represent our modern-day "Hellenists" and we have to nudge these good people over to Torah truth ever so carefully and gracefully, lest we shove them further away. Usually my comments get censored out. (Reform "bouncers"). Here's one that made it through.

I responded to a commenter, who knew some Hebrew, who said the following:

"There are no vowels in the Torah. Thus, את השמים ואת הארץ ( heaven and earth) can also be read as, “At hashamaim ve at haaretz”, meaning: "You are heaven and you are earth."

I wrote back:

You can say the same thing about ויהי ערב ויהי בקר יום אחד, "And it was one day and one night; Day one." (Gen. 1:5); You can say, since vowels are missing, what it really says is, "There was a crow and there was cattle, one day". Because crow and evening, and cattle and morning, contain the exact same letters, respectively!

There's obviously a problem here. Vowels are a part of oral Torah! The problem is - that part of oral Torah you do accept, as when you accept ויהי ערב ויהי בקר יום אחד to mean, "And it was evening and it was day; Day one," but another part of oral Torah you unwittingly deny - by creating your own "oral Torah" - namely, "You are heaven and you are earth."

That's not to say Torah cannot be explored in unique ways, but it must be done under certain guidelines, otherwise you "short-circuit" perfect code and make preposterous sense. This happens when we leave it to our own machinations, instead of relying on our sages.

You cannot twist text where it suits you and leave the rest intact. There are 13 particular ways to expound Torah, as our sages specify. (We read these specifications in our daily morning prayer.) In fact, even our sages carefully trod where no one trodded before. You see this often in Talmud where one sage says something by quoting another sage, in the name of yet another sage.

The very first premise to expounding, however, must be a complete respect for the original as being perfect, otherwise, like I said, you build castles in the air. With that premise in tow, we can cautiously look for our own secrets in Torah. But how wise would it be to look for these secrets if, like yours, they negate Jewish sensibilities (confining an infinite Hashem into finite physical entities)?

Such inventiveness actually denies oral tradition rather than adds to it.

During the Mount Sinai experience and in the aftermath years in the desert, God gifted the Jewish people with TWO Torahs - a written one and an oral one, later transcribed to constitute the Talmud.

If one TOTALLY denies the Talmud, as did the Saduccees in early Jewish history, that's bad enough. But to PARTIALLY accept Talmud is even worse! How can this be?

When Elijah the Prophet rebuked the Jews (during the "competition" he held with false prophets at an ad hoc altar), he declared, "How much longer will you straddle the fence? If you want to worship Hashem, then do so; And if you want to worship the foreign god, then do that!" (Kings 1, 18:39)

Note his precise words. Eliyahu was telling the Jewish people that even idol worship is better than straddling the fence! But why are fence straddlers worse than idolaters? Why does Elijah unleash such contempt for straddlers more so than for idol worshippers?

"Fence straddlers" dip into oral Torah, when and as it suits them, and into their own whimsical terrain, when and as it suits them. Such people seek convenience or self-aggrandizement more than they seek truth. For them spirituality plays second fiddle to self-satisfaction. They delude themselves into thinking they are "Torah Jews" because, after all, much of what they do is congruous with Judaism, and as for what they do otherwise, their love of self easily rationalizes away these "imperfections". Logic cannot budge such people. Much like a sick person who doesn't recognize he's ill.

Worse still is another effect straddlers have. They may influence others who lack insight or knowledge. For straddlers cannot be easily identified for what they are as easily as total deniers can be. A Jew knows enough to realize idol worship clashes with Judaism, but he may not detect the attitude of one who compromises his Judaism, as does his straddler friend. It is for this very reason gentile missionaries often prey on targets among this group of weak Jews by portraying a Jewish facade. A good lie always starts with a bit of truth to it! Rashi (13:27)