The Torah is for Everyone

The very first mitzvah commanded to the children of Israel immediately before entering the land was to set up giant stones, inscribed with God’s teaching and to set up a stone altar:

And Moshe and the elders of Israel with him charged the people, saying… “on the day that you cross the Jordan… you shall set for yourself great stones and coat them with plaster. And you shall write on them the words of this teaching (divrei Torah) when you cross over, so that you may come into the land that the Lord your God is about to give you… And you shall build there an altar to the Lord your God, an altar of stones… and you shall write on the stones all the words of this teaching very clearly (be’ar heteiv). And you shall heed the voice of the Lord your God and do his commands and His statutes which I charge you today.” (Deuteronomy 27:1-10)

Several questions come to mind when reading this passage. Among them: What was written on these giant stones, how was it to be written, on the stone directly or on the plaster, and for whom was the message written on the stones intended?

J. Tigay (US, 20-21 century) asserts that the stones likely contained the legal content of Sefer Dvarim and perhaps, Moshe’s discourses, as well. (Devarim, Mikra L’Yisrael, p. 651) Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra (11^th century Spain, Europe) presumed them to contain the entire Torah, while Rabbi Saadia Gaon, assumed they contained a “Sefer Mitzvot – a listing of the commandments. (Quoted by Ibn Ezra) Josephus, the Jewish historian from the time of the destruction of the Temple, thought they probably contained the blessings and curses quoted in the parashah. (See Tigay)

The Children of Israel were the obvious audience for the message on these stone, since their settlement in the land was conditioned on the observance of God’s commandments. (Tigay) However, an alternate audience is inferred in Rashi’s commentary:

“be’ar heitev (teach very carefully) – in seventy languages.

Rashi suggests, based on the Mishnah, that the Torah was written on the stones in all of the languages of the world. (See Mishnah Sotah 7:5) In other words, the Torah was written on these stone tablets for a broader audience, namely the nations of the world. This interpretation is obviously the product of the rabbinic sages who struggled over the question of whether the Torah was intended exclusively for Jews or was its message universal.

The following Baraita from the Talmud suggest one of a number of versions of how this storyline played itself out:

Our Rabbis taught: How did the Israel inscribe the Torah [on the stones]? Rabbi Yehudah says: On the stones they inscribed it, as it is stated: ‘You shall write on the stones all the words of this teaching etc.’ (27:8) After that they plastered them over with plaster. Rabbi Shimon said to him: [According to your explanation], how did they [the nations of that world] learn the Torah [then, since the words were covered over with plaster]! He replied to him: ‘The Holy One, blessed be He, endowed them with exceptional intelligence; and, so, they sent their scribes who peeled off the plaster and carried away [a copy of the inscription]. On that account, the verdict was sealed against them [to descend] to the pit of destruction, because it was their duty to learn [Torah] but they failed to do so. Rabbi Shimon says: ‘They inscribed it upon the plaster and wrote below that the Torah teaches you not to do like all [of the abominations of the nations]. (See Deuteronomy 20:18) And so, one learns from this that if they repent (teshuva), they are accepted. (Sotah 35b)

Before discussing the meaning of this passage, a word or two on ancient technology is in order to understand this Talmudic discussion. The whole discussion of writing and plastering on stone perplexed the sages. Did one write on the stone and then plaster or plaster the stone and then write? Writing on plaster made sense if you lived in Egypt because there was little rain, but writing on stone and then plastering over it also made little sense because then the message was hidden. (See Hagrash Lieberman, Tosefta Kifshuta Sotah, pp. 699-700)

This technological question opened the door to a number of interesting debates which were apparently percolating in rabbinic times. Whereas the Torah’s pshat or plain meaning identifies these stones as intended for Israel, this Talmudic discussion claims that their purpose was to educate the non-Jewish world to the wisdom of the Torah. On this point, both parties in the Talmud seemingly agree.  Rabbi Yehuda, however, seeks to hide it from them, perhaps because he was wary of what they may do with it (use it for heretical purposes). God, according to his telling, gave the nations the discernment to seek out wisdom and recover it. According to Rabbi Yehuda, though, they rejected it and doomed themselves. For Rabbi Shimon, however, the Torah written on the stones was readily available to them, but included a “bottom line” which made it clear that their commitment to idolatry made them unacceptable until they repented and joined the community of believers.

Obviously, this rabbinic vignette was written within the context of a polemic against a competing tradition which sought to usurp the Bible (Tanakh) from the Jews. This accounts for Rabbi Yehuda’s reticence and Rabbi Shimon’s warning. Nevertheless, this teaching demonstrates, that for the rabbinic tradition the doors of Torah study are open to all those, Jews and non-Jews, seeking to develop a closer relationship with God.