Experience: The Basis Of Our Faith
Part 6: Is It Knowledge or Is It Opinion?
 In Judaism, Orthodox Jews have been accused by non-Orthodox Jews of being pontifical, authoritative, fundamentalists, sanctimonious, and opinionated. The position of Orthodox Judaism is reduced by these groups of Conservative, Reform, etc., to just
"one opinion;" that is to say, that while the Oral Law by which Orthodox Judaism lives,
sees Torah in one way, they have another view, in rejecting the Oral Law, as equally valid as the view of Orthodox Judaism.
Can Orthodox Jews accept such a position, under the concept of liberalism and
freedom of opinion? Can an Orthodox Jew truthfully acknowledge that his neighbor, the
Conservative or Reform Jew does, in fact have a valid point... that no one has an
exclusive claim on truth?... that Torah is the property of every Jew and he can
interpret it as he pleases?
I think not!
Orthodox Judaism is based on a premise of Torah Mi'Sinai... that Hashem is the source
of both the Written and Oral Torah. While the combination of both is the record of the
events experienced and the Law bequeathed to the generation who received them,
without the Oral Torah, the written, five Books of Moses would be a closed, ambiguous,
cryptic, often contradictory set of scrolls. The Oral Law is so fundamental to the
understanding of WrittenTorah that even the non Orthodox Jew, unknowingly lives by its
teachings.
Because of the Oral Law we know how to perform schita, how to build a succa, what an
esrog is. Because of the Oral Law we know that an "eye for an eye" always meant only
monetary compensation, and nothing else. Because of the Oral Law we know what tfillin
should look like and where they are to be worn. We know what the bris of circumcision
should be. We know how to construct the Jewish calendar.
Because of the Oral Law we know the source of patrilineal descent in the case of
intramarriage between a Jew and a Jewess, and we know the source of Matrilineal
descent in the case of intermarriage between a Jew and a non-Jew.
None of the above are explicit in the Written Torah, yet every Jew, Orthodox, Conservative,
Reform, Reconstructionist -- non comformist -- knows what the succa should look like and that an esrog is a citron-- not a lemon! -- and what kosher slaughter means, and he
does, in fact, observe these practices in varying degrees, often without even being aware
that he is practicing Torah according to the Oral Law.
What is the source of this knowledge?
For those who would attack Orthodox Judaism's premise of the Oral Law and deny its
validity, as the source, they must answer that question with intellectual honesty. Offering
responses like "it's a tradition," a "folk myth" are lame excuses, because then we shall
ask... from where did that tradition begin?... and again they must seek a source. There
is a source, Sinai, but there are those who will use circuitous routes to avoid recognizing
it and the chain of transmission of this body of Torah, and the accuracy of that
transmission that has reached us this day.
For a non-Orthodox Jew to say that the Orthodox view of Torah is just one view, among
many, is for him to incriminatingly suggest that his own view is just as a speculative,
educated guesswork, as the next! He has no choice but to maintain that position,
because he will not accept the anchor of Sinai as the source, and he is left floundering
in a sea of speculation, battered by the waves of time and fashion to determine his attitudes
towards Torah. What was fashionable yesterday is out of vogue today; what is current
today will be passe tomorrow. A changing Judaism is his only constant.
Orthodox Judaism rejects that approach in toto. Because Sinai is an historical event,
documented and preserved, the experience of Sinai is not the product of speculation.
The Revelation at Sinai was never questioned by those who lived through it, and the
Law, Written and Oral were never challenged at the time of its granting. Had they been a
forgery, surely there would have been an outcry from at least a segment of that over three
and a half million people who, reputedly, were there and who supposedly witnessed
and experienced that majestic moment, and who were concurrently given that document
describing the purported epoch. After looking at it they would have screamed: "It's a lie.
We never experienced what is written in it!..." and it would never have been able to
survive a transmission down the generations.
Why didn't they scream, why didn't they protest? The didn't scream nor protest because
there was no need to. What happened was true, and both the written and Oral Laws
were part of that drama and traditions that emanated from the Revelation at Sinai.
Can the Written or the Oral Law be reduced to opinion, then, when millions of people
corroborated each other with no protest? Can we attribute our current acceptance of the
Oral Law as opinion, when the practices of Jews, spread over the entire world have a
commonality, despite the wide separation in time and distance... and the precision
with which that ancient document has been preserved to this day?
Orthodox Judaism, rooted in an historical experience, cannot tolerate
the attempt to reduce its view as "one opinion." Only those who choose not to be linked
to the past delegate to themselves the right to create their own past and strive to
embellish it with legitimacy by reducing the basis of Torah, the experience at Sinai, to an
opinion.
Knowledge differs from opinion, in that knowledge is an awareness of information, facts,
of an experience. Opinion is the product of the thought process that produces an
evaluation, a shikul ha'daas, based on that knowledge. To maintain an opinion without
the raw material, the basic information, is to spout nonsense. Orthodox Judaism is
rooted in the history, experience and the precise preservation of the record of our past,
and is supported by the network of the commonality of that knowledge through the
annals of time, space and the continued survival of the subject of that document, the
Jewish people.
The view of Orthodox Judaism is not opinion; it's knowledge!
Return to Part 5 / Continue to Part 7
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