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You’d be surprised how often I meet someone who when hearing what I study asks, “What is the Talmud? Mishnah? Midrash?” Or maybe you yourself are unsure, and so you may not be all that much surprised. Nevertheless, I thought I’d offer a brief overview of Jewish Oral Law, followed by WHY non-Jews should care.
In the beginning of Pirke Avot, a tractate of the Mishnah, we read:
Moses received Torah from Sinai and passed it on to Joshua. Then Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, then the prophets to the men of the Great Assembly. They (the Great Assembly) had three sayings: Be deliberate in judging. Educate many students. Build a fence around the Torah.
According to the legend, when Moses first received the torah, he received the written torah (torah shebikhtav) as well as oral torah commentary (torah she’bal peh). Further, this oral commentary did not remain simply in oral recitation from God, but the giving of oral law transferred the authority of interpretation over to Israel, as we see in the image of Moses reciting God’s instructions to the elders and in the appointment of judges to “interpret” law (Ex. 18:20, Deut 16:18, Deut. 17:8-11). With these two distinctions, the written legal codes of the Hebrew Bible (d’oraita) as well as the documented sayings of the rabbinic community (d’rabbanan) are held in equal status, expressing what Safrai calls “a sophisticated consciousness of the dialectics involved in the creative interpretation of a fixed, written text” (56-57).
Within the documents of Oral Law, the rabbinic community is concerned with constructing a cultural and religious identity following the destruction of the Temple (70 C.E.). The rabbis’ main priority was how to make an ancient legal code applicable and relevant to their communities’ lives. In areas where a law was uncertain or held the potential to be easily broken, the rabbis instituted new laws (d’rabbanan) in addition to the biblical law (d’oraita). In other cases where biblical law was too harsh or inapplicable to their society, the rabbis adapted the law.
Further, the rabbis developed a two-tiered system for observance of law. They understood that every person was different, and some would be more inclined to strict observance than others. Thus, they categorized law in two ways: first, ”observance of duty” or laws expected of all Jews, and second, “observance of aspiration” or laws that displayed God’s ideal.
So what merit does Oral Law have for non-Jews?
*Picture me standing on my chair waving my hands wildly* LOTS!
In order to appreciate both the oral and written torah, the genre as a whole should be considered as more than a flat set of rules. Barry Wimpfheimer writes, “Law is a cultural discourse or a language through which a culture makes meaning” (Narrating the Law, 3). Suppressed in the legal narrative are the emotions, social implications, and lived experiences of practitioners that determine the nature and function of the legal statute.
As a Christian, the rabbis were often portrayed to me in “negative” terms, as “adders” to God’s law, which ironically Christians don’t follow anyway. However, I think there is much a Christian can learn and appreciate in the discourse of Jewish law. Within these texts we find authors seriously considering the implications of tradition, God’s ideal, and the current social questions and situations of their community. And what do the rabbis do? They actively attempt to bridge these camps and fashion a divinely inspired yet workable model of legal discourse.
I admire this tradition. I admire the rabbis because they are brave enough to see when “God’s law” is not workable for their world. Oral law conveys the sense that God has released control of “law” and wants it to be adapted and interpreted variably through time. Currently, many modern rabbis are working to modify inherent problems with rabbinical law for modern communities, such as in gender issues and disability rights. Women are now ordained as rabbis in many communities. Marriage vows have been rewritten to accommodate same-sex marriage.
The message from oral law is this: To adapt biblical law (d’oraita) is not to devalue it or God. Rather, the cultural adaptation infuses divine legal discourse with relevance and gravitas. Perhaps one day the Christian community will discover and embrace such a perspective.
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