Nitzavim: Torah was meant to be uncomplicated, then along came the Talmud

Devarim/Deuteronomy 30:10-14

דְּרָכֶ֥יהָ דַרְכֵי־נֹ֑עַם וְֽכל־נְתִ֖יבוֹתֶ֣יהָ שָׁלֽוֹם׃
Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.ֿ
Mishlei/Proverbs 3:17

The great 20^th Century Talmudist, Saul Lieberman when asked if there was any humor in the Talmud, replied, “of course” citing the following:

תלמידי חכמים מרבים שלום בעולם
Torah scholars spread peace in the world||
ברכות סד:א / Berakhot 60:a

Nothing, of course, could be further from reality. The Talmud is the consummate repository of contention and disagreement. Walk into any Kollel today and all one sees are a mass of men arguing, often to the point of apoplexy. Indeed, Torah – Talmud style – is a contact sport without contact, drawing the line at verbal violence in a game of perpetual one-upmanship.

Does the study of Talmud sharpen the mind? Absolutely. But to what ends?

Indeed Talmud, and the mountains of halachic verbiage, decisions and counter decisions that continue to emerge from its practitioners flןקד in the face of what the Torah itself tells us.

What has become a Talmudolatry is an industry of opaque obfuscation that upends the Torah’s dictum in this week’s parsha which states unequivocally that observance of mitzvot is not pie in the sky.

Yes, Torah is not meant to be inaccessible to the ordinary mortal. It is not beyond the sea. (At least it wasn’t until there came along the notion of ״ים התלמוד״  (the ocean of Talmud) which effectively made Torah – as the rabbis would have it – opaque, inaccessible, a private domain to which only they would have access.) And by extension, since ordinary mortals could no longer understand the true meaning of the Torah, there would be a total dependence on rabbis for every aspect of our daily lives.

It wasn’t just women who were disenfranchised from the exclusive Torah/Talmud club. The overwhelming majority of straight-thinking, normally functioning Jews were as well.

Hassidism emerged in the 18^th Century as a reaction – long, long, l-o-n-g overdue to the arrogance of Talmudic scholars and their monopolization of power (shared only with the very wealthy, because rabbanim – with a few notable exceptions – always liked to live well). Indeed, enter the home of any of the chief rabbis and their myriad sinecures who feed off the public trough and you’d have to wonder how they manage so well on a government paycheck.

Was halakha meant from the onset to be a power grab by rabbis, or did this just happen over time? Indeed, was Talmud ever meant to be written down and canonized or was it supposed to continue to flow as an organic and open-ended conversation in order to make Jewish life viable under shifting diaspora circumstances?

In all likelihood it was a combination of the two. There were sages more inclined to accommodating the people, and there were those who were more interested in consolidating their power.

Yet there are times when the latter were so over the top, that they clearly considered themselves more important than the Torah itself.
The most egregious example of this is the utter perversion of the phrase from our parsha לֹא בַשָּׁמַיִם, הִוא.   Rather than reading it literally, they turn it on its head and declare that Torah is no longer in the domain of Heaven, and they can interpret it as they see fit.  And this despite the numerous declarations in the Talmud itself that אין מקרא יוצא מידי פשוטו;  that regardless of whatever flight of fancy a rabbi may have, the literal understanding of a verse in Torah is sacrosanct.

The arrogation of such absolute power into the hands of self-anointed rabbis – to this very day – is astonishing, especially as it denies ordinary mortals any agency, and robs them of free choice (בחירה חופשית), and of a share in the ownership of our legacy from Sinai.

In past generations, halakhic decisors were men who had at least some connection to reality. The sages of the Talmud, Rambam, Rashi etc all worked for a living and knew what lesser mortals were contending with. More recent rabbinic decisors were community or municipal rabbanim who had at least a cursory understanding of normal human beings and human psychology. Hence one might find a measure of empathy in their rulings.

Today the monopoly is held by roshei yeshiva, men who have never worked a day in their lives, are totally disassociated from normative reality, and who are incapable of issuing a ruling that is anything but stringent. (Exceptions are of course made to accommodate the very wealthy, but this has always been the case.)

The fact is, nearly every mitzvah in the Torah makes sense to even the most average man or woman. Shabbat? We understand quite clearly what it means not desist from labor on Shabbat. Kashrut? The Torah is crystal clear regarding which foods are permitted and which are not. How to treat the stranger, the widow the orphans the convert – our parents?  Who can argue with their elegant, simple beauty.

There is nary a mitzvah in the Torah which requires much intellectual rigor in order to understand and embrace it. Even the prohibition against homosexuality, which is proscribed in specific clinical detail, can be understood as a hygienic caution rather than a blanket proscription on human emotions. AIDS wasn’t transmitted by a hug.
So how did it come to be that today one is not considered truly shomer Shabbat if they open a can of tuna fish or container of orange juice in the normal way? Is this what Torah means when it tells us to desist from our labors because God rested on the seventh day? What was the celestial version of opening a can of tuna by first poking a hole in the bottom of the tin and then prying the lid only partially in order to gain access to the contents? Is this what Shabbat was meant to be?

How did it come to pass that a posek (rabbinic decisor) would publish a halakha column in a popular New York Orthodox journal cautioning one not to flush a toilet on Shabbat if there is a fly in the bowl which might be killed en passant? And this sage then goes onto tell the reader that he may flush if the contents would disgust others who would be needing the toilet. But such a determination could only be made by calling in a rav to inspect the situation and decide if it is indeed sufficiently disgusting to allow flushing,

And the ultimate irony would be that even if such a rabbi could be found he would never deign to make a decision on the spot, saying he would have to consult with his rosh yeshiva after Havdalah.

From a purely practical standpoint, this should not have much of an effect on the behavior of normative religious Jews. As for those who like being tethered to their rabbanim and enjoy pestering them with questions, God bless them.

Where it becomes a problem – indeed a huge problem – is right here in Israel. Because no modern society can function if it adheres to halakah as it is understood by the Talmudocracy. And the goal posts are forever shifting further to the right, with thousands of ostensible Torah scholars busy day and night coming up with new nuances, new minutiae, new prohibitions, new limitations.

We have finally reached a point where haredi society admits that its insistence on avoiding army service has nothing to do with Torah study, as many, if not most, haredim cannot, and do not, spend their time learning Torah. Rather, their issue with army service is that it does not offer conditions which conform to haredi Orthodox interpretations of Jewish law. The kashruth is not good enough. A woman might be seen or heard. Knowledge of math or English might be needed. Indeed, their notions of what is and what is not permissible in the defense of the nation would render a haredi soldier useless under any circumstances. He wouldn’t be able to make a move without first calling his rav.

Yet, in virtually every instance, there is no Torah prohibition against serving in the IDF and no halakic reason not to. But there is a Torah prohibition against NOT serving. Justifying the refusal to serve is made possible by an industry of halakhic ‘research’ by those who claim “Toratam umanutam’ Torah is their craft. A labor, one might add, which does not pause for Shabbat.