Dear Anonymous,



Due to the importance of the matter I will cite our words from Pamphlet 9.

Then the high priest Hilkiah said to the scribe Shaphan, ‘I have found a scroll of the Torah in the House of the Lord.’…When the king heard the words of the scroll of the Torah, he rent his clothes….The king commanded all the people, ‘Offer the Passover sacrifice to the Lord your G-d as prescribed in this scroll of the covenant.’ Now the Passover sacrifice had not been offered in that manner since the days of the Judges” (II Kings chapters 22-23).

The great lights of Israel have already testified about what happened. The Radak says (on II Kings 22:8), “Menashe was king for a long time, for he reigned 55 years, and he did evil in the eyes of G-d, following the disgusting ways of the gentiles. He built altars to idolatry in the house of the Lord and he made the Torah be forgotten by the Jews. None turned to it, for all turned to other gods and the laws of the gentiles, and in 55 years the Torah was forgotten.”

Thus wrote the Ramban (Numbers 15:22) in his explanation of how it is possible that the whole nation sinned, “And en masse, that is, they will think that the time of the Torah had already expired and it would not be eternal…or they would forget the Torah. In our sinfulness, this has already happened in the days of the evil kings of Israel, such as Jeroboam, that most of the nation completely forgot Torah and the commandments, and the instance in the book of Ezra about the people of the Second Temple.” He actually refers to what is written in Nehemiah 8:14, “And they found written in the Torah that the Lord had commanded Moses that the Israelites must dwell in booths during the festival of the seventh month… and they dwelt in the booths — for the Israelites had not done so from the days of Joshua Bin Nun, to this day.”

Even the Cuzari asked (article 3, section 54) “I only know that the people of the Second Temple period had already forgot the Torah, and they did not know the commandment of booths and the commandment of ‘Let Ammonites and Moabites not come into G-d’s community.'”

And though the Sage answered him, “When it says, ‘They found it written,’ it actually means that the common people and the mass heard [these words] and hurried making the booths, but the select few had forgotten neither small nor great commandments.” Look again at what we have written above and in other places, that when those who make excuses are confronted by a difficult question and they must make excuses about something none had earlier known, they hang their excuse on some “secret of the few” through the generations. These are the traditional few who alone knew, as it were, what the majority of the Jews had forgotten. But alas, there is neither hint nor note about these “select few” anywhere. Maybe they never existed, and that whole time the nation had no Torah and no commandments.

If we follow the history of the Jewish people, using the approach of religious people themselves, we will find that they freely admit that the Torah (both Written and Oral) was forgotten because of the troubles and had to be re-established. With this sort of history, who can promise that it was indeed preserved? Anyone who looks at the sources, as we have shown in our essays which cover the breadth and depth of Jewish literature, will draw the same conclusion: the Jewish people managed to preserve its religious unity despite the revolutions and changes in the religious content. The words of G-d were forgotten and are irrelevant. To make them significant and realistic the words of the “living” G-d had to be changed to suit the time and place. And who makes these changes? The sages in each and every generation!!!

During the time of the First Temple the Torah was forgotten during the era of Menashe, as we noted above.

After the destruction of the First Temple, the Torah was once again forgotten and re-instituted by Ezra. The Talmud states: “Reish Lakish said, ‘at first the Torah was forgotten by Israel; Ezra came from Babylon and established it'” (Sukkah 20a).

In the Second Temple era, until the age of the Hashmonaim (some 400 years) there was darkness and we do not know what was happening with the Jewish community. This era is called by Chazal the era of the “Men of the Great Assembly” (Avot 1:1). Who they were and what they did is hidden from us.

Towards the end of the Second Temple period King Yannai killed all the sages and the Oral Torah was forgotten. The world was a mystery until Shimon the son of Shetach came and returned the Torah to its former glory (Kiddushin 66a).

And then, again, disagreements multiplied during the era of Hillel and Shammai, as Rashi writes. “Since the students of Hillel and Shammai fought, there have been many disagreements about Torah to the point that it has become as two separate teachings for all the burdens of subjugation to the Heavens and edicts which they placed upon the Torah” (Bava Metzia 33b).

After the Bar-Kochba revolt (135 CE) the Jewish community suffered a body blow and Rabbi Judah, who was the leader, decided to create order out of the chaos and edited the six volumes of the Mishnah. Rashi writes: “In his days Rabbi, whom G-d gave grace in the eyes of Antonius king of Rome, and so troubles abated, gathered all the sages of the Land of Israel. Until his days there were no organized volumes; each student had a version of what he had learned from his teacher” (Bava Metzia 33b).



After the era of Rabbi the situation was still worrisome, to the extent that legend has it R’ Chanina and R’ Chiya, students of Rabbi Judah the Nasi worked so that the Torah would not be forgotten by the people. When they argued with each other R’ Chanina said to R’ Chiya, “Are you fighting me?” If, G-d forbid, the Torah were forgotten by Israel, I could bring it back through sophistry. R’ Chiya responded: I, too, could act to ensure that the Torah is not forgotten by Israel. I would write the five books of Torah for five children, and the six orders of the Mishnah for six children, ask each to learn his section, and then have each teach the other (Ketubot 103b).

In the Talmud it is written: “The [Torah] was once again forgotten; Hillel the Babylonian came and re-established it. It was once again forgotten and R’ Chiya and his sons re-established it” (Sukkah 20a).



You see that Jewish leaders found it acceptable to “return” the Torah to its place through sophistry or, as is said of tradition given to Moses at Sinai and then forgotten, “they were forgotten and re-established” (Sukkah 44a, Megillah 3a).

See also our answer Laws which disappeared after Moses to see how Otniel the son of Kenaz restored through sophistry laws which had been forgotten after Moses.



Another, no less important, thing is that from the end of the Amoraic period (the fifth century) until the Gaonic era (ninth century) there was once again historical darkness, and we have no notion of what was happening to the Jewish community. So you see–there is more hidden than revealed.

From all this you can see that even the Jewish sages admit the Torah has been forgotten, but they found it acceptable to re-establish it through sophistry. If you look carefully you will find that the Torah (that is, the opinion of the sages) is a revolutionary sword which does not pretend to represent G-d’s word as given at Sinai; it is meant to set out their notion of rules by which we should live our lives, spoken as though in the name of the Lord.



Sincerely,



Daat Emet