Dear Revital,



One of the fascinating things about nations’ internal revolutions is the “silent revolution.”

This is the sort of revolution which took place within the Jewish nation between the Biblical religion and the Talmudic religion. Chazal succeeded in negating the “Divine” Scriptural text and elevating the new text of the Mishnah and the Talmud without the masses feeling a thing.

One of the claims used to silence critics who argue that Chazal uprooted the words of the Torah is that all Chazal’s words, interpretations, and exegeses were given by G-d to Moses at Sinai. But since it is the way of Chazal to debate and discuss, and from the discussion to generate laws, they had to strengthen the validity of the discussion, as though through it one could arrive at the laws which were given to Moses at Sinai.

In the Talmud it is written:

Three thousand laws were forgotten during the mourning over Moses’ death…It is taught: 1700 analogies from minor to major, analogies by equivalent words, and obligations derived from a meticulous scrutiny of the Scriptural text were forgotten during the mourning over Moses’ death. Otni’el son of Kenaz restored all of them through his discourse (Temurah 16a).

An example of laws which were forgotten is the manner of writing terminal letters. In the Hebrew alphabet there are five letters whose forms change when they appear at the end of a word: mem, nun, tzadi, pay, kaf. In the Talmud it is stated that they forgot how to write the terminal and non-terminal versions of the letters, and then decided on the forms we use today. As the sages wrote:

Prophets taught [the additional forms of] : mem, nun, tzadi, pay, kaf… This is something new, prophecy may not teach it! The prophets merely reminded us of something which had been known and was forgotten (Shabbat 104a).

Even though there is a rule which forbids the innovation of anything not said at Sinai, things can be recalled through discourse or any other means available, and the conclusion will be considered as having been given at Sinai.



For more details, see our words on the portion of Shemot.



Sincerely,



Daat Emet