Torah and Jewish Idea > Torah and Jewish Idea
Gentiles and Mitzvahs
Dissenter:
--- Quote from: jdl4ever on May 21, 2007, 02:44:32 PM ---1. Both Gentiles and Jews who are Righteous will go to heaven. However, Jews have a higher potential than Gentiles since they are special since they have a special gift from G-d (the Torah) which has many more times the commandments and restrictions that Gentiles have. It is logical that if someone is able to fight against his evil inclination and undergo more restrictions, he is rewarded more than someone who has less restrictions. Does that mean that all Jews will have a higher place in heaven then Gentiles? No. It all depends on the individual. Some Gentiles who are excessively righteous will reach a higher level in heaven than a righteous Jew.
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So does that mean that here on earth, Jews in general are by definition more righteous than Gentiles in general, even though the Talmud states that a Gentile who keeps the seven laws is no less righteous than the Jewish high priest?
In other words, when it comes to fighting against the earth's evils, does a Gentile have an easier time of it than a Jew?
Now that you mention it, I do remember Chaim saying once that when a Jew is righteous, he's better than the best of the Gentiles - and that when he's evil, he's worse than the worst of them.
--- Quote from: jdl4ever on May 21, 2007, 02:44:32 PM ---2. You don't understand a fundamental concept in Judaism about disagreement. In Judaism, we believe that G-d wants the Torah to grow (there is a Biblical verse that says this but I forgot the source). What does this mean? It means that the Torah is infinite meaning that infinite amount of information can be derived from it using logical rules of derivation. These logical rules of derivation are expounded by the sages. Therefore, we don't look at argument as something bad, we look at argument as a wonderful thing that G-d delights in since it makes the Torah grow. When two authorities argue over a Biblical or Halachic concept, after the argument is over, the Torah grows exponentially since the Sages expand the Torah when they are engaged in strengthening there own argument, trying to disprove the other argument with Biblical sources, uncovering brand new concepts in the Torah to strengthen there argument etc. Most of the Talmud is actually long arguments that go on for dozens of pages. Through these arguments, most of the Talmud was written and much of the Oral Law was recovered. If we all had prophesy and everything was perfectly clear and simple, most Jews would have no reason to spend days on end trying to uncover new concepts in the Torah since everything would be clear. This is why G-d made argument, to expand the Torah. G-d loves when people are engaged in the Torah.
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I've got nothing against argument, as you can tell by my user name. But if the Talmud was compiled some 1,400 years ago, does that mean that no brand-new concepts of any major importance have been uncovered since then? And if they have been uncovered, then what process was used for validating and enshrining them, as the next best thing to prophecy?
--- Quote from: jdl4ever on May 21, 2007, 02:44:32 PM ---3. As for "How can we decide the law with arguments"; The answer is simple, we go with the accepted ruling. For all the Talmud arguments we have an accepted ruling on who is correct. You don't understand what the Rabbis argue about in the Talmud. They usually argue about minor points. Most of the time they agree on major issues but only argue on the fine concepts of a Biblical commandment or a Rabbinical commandment.
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I assumed from the first that the Talmudic debates were on fine points "most of the time." But what about the rest of the time? If there are major disagreements some of the time, doesn't that tend to throw everything into a cocked hat, at least to the dispassionate observer?
Basically, what you've been saying is that nobody can understand the Bible but the Jews, and that "some of the time," even the Jews - for all of their special powers - can't understand it, either.
jdl4ever:
You are correct. The Talmud is not the end of the oral law. After the Talmud was written, the Rabbis have uncovered new things many times over the volume of the Talmud. I myself have uncovered new things too. The problem that you see is correct, how do we know the validity of such claims? That is why there are Jews who believe in different Rabbis as authorities, since they accept certain viewpoints and not others. This is why you have Kahanists, Lubovitchers, Yeshiva University people, Charedim, Chassidim etc.
The general rule is the older the commentary, the more universally accepted it is. Everyone accepts the Talmud since the Rabbis in the Talmud were immense Torah Giants and had the collective wisdom above any future commentary. Everyone accepts at least most of Maimonities (1100's), and Rashi (900's) since these were brilliant ancient commentaries. The closer you get to modern times, the less universal the commentaries are since the wisdom of the generations generally declines. Even though the modern commentaries are not universal, their are still brilliant discoveries in each of them even if you don't agree with most of that commentary.
--- Quote --- Basically, what you've been saying is that nobody can understand the Bible but the Jews, and that "some of the time," even the Jews - for all of their special powers - can't understand it, either.
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Exactly. Tradition has it that even Moses didn't comprehend all of the Torah even though no one understood more of the Torah than Moses our teacher. Only G-d himself understands the Torah in its entirety since keeping the Torah and understanding it is a way of emulating and understanding G-d and only G-d himself fully understands his oneness.
--- Quote ---I assumed from the first that the Talmudic debates were on fine points "most of the time." But what about the rest of the time? If there are major disagreements some of the time, doesn't that tend to throw everything into a cocked hat, at least to the dispassionate observer?
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Usually the Talmud states outright which opinion won the argument and which one is correct on the major arguments. If it doesn't state which one is correct and it isn't obvious which Rabbi won the argument then the ancient commentaries tell you which opinion the Rabbis accepted.
This is not to say that everything is crystal clear in our generation. There is still massive debate among Rabbis on a lot of major things in our generation (as you can see) but this is mostly due to the decline of the generations since they should not be debating obvious things that ancient commentaries saw as clear cut. 800 years ago there wasn't anything close to this much debate on obvious things like the land of Israel and defeating our enemies. (I don't want to say this, but many Rabbis today are not anything close to what a Rabbi should be and would be stepped on by a Rabbi such as Maimonitites. R' Kahane Zs'l is an example of what a Rabbi is supposed to be. If all the Rabbis were like him, they wouldn't be arguing about obvious things.)
Lubab:
--- Quote from: jdl4ever on May 21, 2007, 03:13:09 PM ---Lubab, the Talmud Megilla 9a is opposed to your viewpoint that Moses wanted to translate the Torah into 71 languages (where is the source; who is "Rashi Bar Hetav"?). The Talmud says that the Torah can only be translated into Greek and no other language because of the incident with Ptolomy. Which implies that without this incident, it would be forbidden to even translate the Torah into Greek and the Talmud says the Law is like this opinion. This proves that I am correct.
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He did not "want" to translate it, he DID translate it in 70 (not 71) languages.
See Rashi on Chumash Parshas Devorim 1:5 entitled "Beer Es HaTorah Hazos". I think there is another Rashi somewhere called "Beer Hetev"-i.e. "well clarified" and I was referring to that one.
I looked this one up for you, but I'm afraid I won't have the time to do this most of the time and you will have to take my word for it or ask your own Rabbi for the source if you don't trust me. But for the record, I won't say something if I don't know it's backed up, though I might not know the exact source always.
I think what you're saying about the gemarah is right, but in later generations all the Rabbis agreed that we now translate the Chumash freely and the gemarah too.
genteelgentile:
Thanks so much for your responses!! Thank you for your patience. As I write this, I am amazed that my question got so much response. I will have to go back later to read in full, as I have to eat dinner. :) Oh by the way, JDL, I mean no offense by the signature. I was inspired by a Chassidic hip hop group called Ta Shma. There is a line in one of their songs where they say, "You think the Torah's just for Jews, but you got it confused." And I of course, tried to put a little fun twist on it.
kahaneloyalist:
--- Quote ---So does that mean that here on earth, Jews in general are by definition more righteous than Gentiles in general, even though the Talmud states that a Gentile who keeps the seven laws is no less righteous than the Jewish high priest?
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Dissenter, the Gemara was being very precise in its words, for the Cohen Gadol is not the most righteous Jew of his generation, that honor was generally held by the Nasi of the Sanhedrin.
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