How to Explain the Oral Torah to the Uninitiated

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Artwork: Jüdische Szene, by Carl Schleicher

How to Explain the Oral Torah to the Uninitiated

Whenever I get into Torah discussions with non-Jews or unaffiliated Jews, I often find it necessary to introduce them to one of the fundamental premises of the Jewish religion - namely, that Hashem gave us two Torahs at Sinai: Torah she'bi'Chsav (the Written Torah) and Torah she'baal Peh (the Oral Torah). Although I have successfully explained this premise on a number of occasions, I'm always on the lookout for clearer, more efficient explanations.

It's difficult enough to explain this to someone who has no background, but it is even harder to explain this to someone who has preconceived notions and biases which impede clarity. I'm referring to those who might say things like: 

• "Oh, so you're telling me that when the Torah says 'don't do work on the Sabbath,' that means I can't turn on the light, or carry change in my pocket, or sign my name on a receipt? C'MON! The Rabbis CLEARLY made that up!" 
• "Are you saying that just because the Torah repeated a word or used an extra letter in this verse, I'm supposed to believe that this is teaching us a dozen laws? That is CLEARLY ridiculous! C'MON!" 
• "You think that 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' only refers to monetary payments? That is CLEARLY post-hoc apologetics. C'MON!"

Of course, if someone is really saying things like "CLEARLY" and "C'MON" in all caps, then he or she probably isn't really interested in the truth. But if someone raises these objections from a place of healthy skepticism and is open to hearing an explanation, then we had better be prepared to provide a clear and convincing answer!

I'd like to offer two analogies that might prove to be useful in explaining Torah she'baal Peh to the uninitiated. In my opinion, the second analogy is superior to the first.

Lesser Analogy: Humpty Dumpty

For my high school students I used to use the analogy of Humpty Dumpty. For those who aren't familiar, Humpty Dumpty is a popularly known English nursery rhyme that goes something like this:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the king's horses and all the king's men

Couldn't put Humpty together again.

Ask any child who is familiar with this song, "Who or what is Humpty Dumpty?" and the response you'll get is: "He's an egg!" But the fact remains: nowhere in the text does it explicitly state that Humpty Dumpty is an egg! For all we know, he could be a vase, a Christmas ornament, a human being with a case of osteogenesis imperfecta (a.k.a. "brittle bone disease"), or any other fragile entity.

So how do we know he's an egg? Because the written text of the nursery rhyme is accompanied by an oral tradition which informs us that Humpty Dumpty is an egg. Is it possible to interpret the text differently? Of course. But although such interpretations would be feasible, they would be wrong, since they contradict the authoritative interpretation that has been passed down through the ages as part and parcel of the nursery rhyme. 

Although this analogy works well for high school students, it is clearly an imperfect one. Unlike our actual Oral Torah, there is no unbroken chain of transmission for the "correct interpretation" of Humpty Dumpty. 

Greater Analogy: Short Notes on a Scientific Lecture

I came across a superior analogy made by Rav Hirsch in his commentary on Chumash [1] on this very topic. He writes. 

The Written Torah is to be to the Oral Torah in the relation of short notes on a full and extensive lecture on any scientific subject. For the student who has heard the whole lecture, short notes are quite sufficient to bring back afresh to his mind at any time the whole content of the lecture. For him, a word, an added mark of interrogation, or exclamation, a dot, the underlining of a word etc. etc., is often quite sufficient to recall to his mind a whole series of thoughts, a remark etc. For those who had not heart he lecture from the Master, such notes would be completely useless. If they were to try to reconstruct the scientific contents of the lecture literally from such notes, they would of necessity make many errors. Words, marks, etc. which serve those scholars who had heard the lecture as instructive guiding stars to the wisdom that had been taught and learnt, stare at the uninitiated as unmeaning sphinxes. The wisdom, the truths, which the initiated reproduce from them (but do not produce out of them) are sneered at by the uninitiated, as being merely a clever or witty play of words and empty dreams without any real foundation. 

To anyone who has received a typical high school or college education, this analogy ought to ring true and provide a familiar intuitive category for understanding the relationship between the Written Torah and the Oral Torah. Of course it would be impossible to reconstruct an entire 90 minute scientific lecture from 10 pages of personal notes in shorthand! Of course the meaning of the underlined phrase or the abbreviated annotation or the parenthetical question mark can only be accurately expounded by the person who heard the lecture and took the notes, and would be cryptic or meaningless to others! Of course it would be ludicrous to treat the notes as the primary document and judge the entire scientific lecture on that basis alone! 

Anyway, I find these two analogies to be helpful in explaining Torah she'baal Peh to the uninitiated, and I hope you will as well. And if you have your own ways of explaining this topic, please share them in the comments!

[1] Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, Commentary on Sefer Shemos 21:1