Lesson number six. Now, lesson six, this is a very fundamental lesson, and it's fundamental firstly because the entire course was really based on the premise that the Torah was given by God at Mount Sinai to the Jewish people. And that was a major assumption we were riding on. And you know, if you build a whole course on an assumption, and then that assumption is problematic, that takes the whole course down with it.
So we better hope that this lesson actually gets us somewhere. It's a very important lesson because it drastically, it has major implications, this lesson. And I'm going to say this, okay?
I'm not making a political statement, okay? I'm making a statement of clarity, okay? People ask, they want to know what the difference is between the different so-called denominations in Judaism, okay?
which I don't really subscribe to, but there is one fundamental clear difference, and I want to make that clear just for information. It's actually very good to know this. It's not for right and wrong, it's just good to know. The difference between what people call orthodoxy and what people call conservative, reform, reconstructionist, and whatever other denominations there may be, is one very simple difference.
The difference is that Orthodoxy believes that the Torah is the word of God. That means it was given by God to Moses, word for word, at Sinai. And the other denominations do not believe it was given by God, word for word, at Sinai. Perhaps divinely inspired, etc., but not actually from God to Moses at Sinai.
And that has many ramifications, okay? We're not going to get into all of the ramifications, but obviously it changes the value of what the Torah means. And we're going to be discussing tonight where this idea comes from, that the Torah was given by God at Sinai.
I mean, how do you believe that 3,328 years ago, God came... and told Moses these words and he wrote these very words down and every word in the Torah is the word of God. How do we know this? And what would make someone believe such a thing?
So actually tonight what we're going to discuss is this. We're going to discuss not believing. We're not going to discuss believing.
Believing is a hard thing to discuss. Because belief is something that evolves. It's not as clear cut.
It's a little bit more fluid, belief. Right? There are things you believe that I don't believe, there are things I believe you don't believe, you know, about many different things.
Right? Religious, not religious, doesn't make a difference. We're going to talk tonight about whether there is any actual logical evidence that the Torah was given by God at Sinai. So we're not going to even be talking about belief, we're going to be talking about a historic event.
Did this event happen historically or not, and is there evidence? for us to be able to see whether it did or did not happen. Okay, do you see where we're going here? Okay, no, without a no? Okay, so that's one person's version of the mountain.
Okay, so we learned until now all about the oral law. We learned that there's the received oral law. What is the received oral law?
God telling Moses orally the meaning of many things. that are written in the Torah from God. That's telling us that God spoke to Moses at Sinai.
That actually happened and we know exactly what God told Moses. There is the derived oral law, which are the principles God gave Moses to use in order to derive information, extract information embedded into the Torah. Again, God giving Moses very clear information. And then we talk about how the Torah tells us God tells us in the Torah that the rabbis can legislate laws, okay? And customs can be developed.
So all of the oral law really is an outcome of the Torah. And so now we have to verify now whether the Torah, in fact, is authentically the word of God. And that's what we want to get to. So let's begin like this.
Let's go to page 188, okay? And let's ask this question. Do you find it important?
to logically prove and establish that God revealed himself to our ancestors at Sinai. Now, there could be many. This isn't a right or wrong, by the way. There should be a number of us in each category here.
Do you find it important to logically prove? Maybe you don't even care. I'm fine. I believe the Torah was given by God. Leave me alone with all the logic.
I don't need to prove it. I just believe it. That's the way I was raised, and that's it.
Don't confuse me with the facts. And what's your reason? So let's start with A. How many of you feel it's very important to logically prove that the Torah, that God revealed himself at Sinai? Very important?
Okay. How many of you feel it's somewhat important? Somewhat important. Okay.
How many of you feel it's relatively unimportant? Okay. How many of you feel it's completely unimportant? Okay. Very good.
It's all good. So we're going to discuss a number of people, okay, of categories of people and explaining like who we're addressing over here in tonight's class, okay? Because for example, if it's really completely unimportant to you, then you may think, you may think that this class is not necessary, okay? If you feel it's very important, you think, wow, I'm so happy I'm here.
So let's start with someone who is a non-believer, okay? Someone who's a non-believer, okay? They don't believe in God.
Is this class for them? Well, it's for them, but it's not going to get too far because if you don't believe in God, who's revealing themselves at Sinai, right? So we understand we're beginning this class with another premise, and that is that there's a God.
And I'm assuming that everyone in this room believes there's a God. For some reason, I have that assumption, okay? And it's more than an assumption.
So we know that we have to have that as a premise, number one. Number two. Someone may say, well, you know, I'm not really ready for this whole class and this whole discussion here.
I don't even want to go there. You know why? Because sometimes I'd rather not find out whether God gave the Torah at Sinai or not. I'd rather not find out if God actually revealed himself to the Jewish people at Sinai. Because that's going to create what we call a cognitive dissonance.
Which means my mind is going to understand something, and my heart's going to want something else, and I'm going to be pulled, and my life is going to be ruined. Right? Like the story I told you about the rabbi with the long beard, and someone asked him when he was like 98 years old, when he goes to sleep, if he keeps the beard above the blanket or below the blanket, and then he can never fall asleep again. Right? Because he got into bed and he's trying to figure out, well, it's not comfortable this way, not comfortable this way.
He never thought about it before, right? So, like, you know, don't bring up this whole subject and then start, you know, telling, you know, demonstrating something to me one way and then I see that there are certain things in my life that aren't consistent with that. So, you know, and I would say that to some extent this is true for me because I don't think anyone is 100% consistent or nearly close to 100% consistent and aligned with the Torah.
Right? However, I think it's important for us to know that leading a Jewish life is not about being right or doing right all the time. I mean, it would be nice, but I think there's hardly a person who can say that, right? But it is about first having an honest discussion and saying, okay, let me see.
I'm going to do my best with this, right? Sort of like Lachanik HaManoah, right? How does Lachanik HaManoah work? You're like one the first night, two the second night, three the third night.
You actually continuously grow in holiness. That's what our life should be looking like. No one's expecting that their life should be all eight candles when they're 20 years old or 50 years old or 70 years old or 80 years old. You know, life is a process.
And so we don't need to be... I'm encouraging you not to be concerned about any cognitive dissonance. It's fine to understand one thing and see areas in your life which are different. That's fine.
Every single one of us has that in our lives. It doesn't make us a hypocrite. It makes us a human being that's growing. That's all it makes us. And that's the way we should be.
Let's say someone says, I'm a major believer. And so I'm not interested in this whole discussion. I just believe.
I don't need proof. I don't need evidence. I don't need this whole sophisticated way of demonstrating that the Torah was or wasn't given by God or God did or didn't reveal himself.
I just believe it. So that's a beautiful thing. However, that's a little bit short. for a Jew, because God did give us a brain and intelligence, and God actually wants us to internalize, and when we understand something, we internalize things in a different way, as much as we can, understand as much as we can about the Torah and about God. So we actually have an obligation to understand as much as we can, even if we already have the belief.
So it's not enough to just believe. Okay, blind faith is not the Jewish way. We have blind faith that rides on a lot of understanding, but it's not just blind faith that rides the Jewish life.
Lastly, there may be someone who is what we're going to call a beauty seeker. Interesting name. But a beauty seeker is someone who looks for meaningfulness and beauty, nice messages.
relevant ideas that we can draw out of the Torah, but not necessarily, you know, being so concerned about the Torah in any very deep way, but just what I can draw out of it for myself in my own life. Now, the challenge with being a beauty seeker is that what ends up happening is if someone shows us beauty is somewhere else in the world or in another body of thought, then we will simply drop. what the Torah has to offer and go somewhere else.
And in some respects, you know, that's done quite commonly. You know, Jews are seekers, I think. And we seek, and sometimes, you know, a lot of Jews somehow ended up in India. They usually make it back, but somehow they ended up in India for some time, right? And they find they're looking for meaning, and they end up, you know, studying other things, Eastern religions or whatever it is.
So it's important for us to understand how deeply anchored and rooted the Torah is with the primal source of all existence, right, with God, so that we don't look at the Torah as just a possibility and as something that can just, you know, is a nice book that I can turn to to enhance my life, but to see it as something much more valuable than that. And that's why this discussion would be very important. Okay? We're good so far?
Any objections yet? Okay, great. So we're going to begin with a passage from a letter that Maimonides, who we've been quoting a lot in this course, wrote to the Jews in Yemen during his day, which is, I think, the 12th century.
The Jews in Yemen were confronted with a lot of turmoil during that time. The first was there was a fanatical Muslim cleric who became the ruler of the land, and he decreed that all Jewish subjects have to convert to Islam. There was a major problem for the Jews in Yemen at that time.
A lot of them converted outwardly, remained Jews inwardly. You know, we've had this in history at different times. In addition, there was a Jewish apostate who embraced Islam at the time as well. And he was preaching to the Jewish communities that Muhammad was, you know, really the divine prophet. Okay?
And that became a very big... you know, pressure again on the Jews and probably on the younger Jews. And then on top of all of that, some imposter showed up and announced that he's the Mashiach, which happened many times throughout our history, right? And so they were suffering spiritually and being very heavily challenged and weakened. So Maimonides, and they actually wrote to Maimonides, and Maimonides wrote back some counsel.
And one of the things that he discusses in this letter is anti-Semitism. the claims of Christianity and Islam and the idea of this false messiah, okay? We're going to take just a few lines from this letter, which is relevant to our discussion, in where Maimonides discusses the claims of Christianity and Islam versus the claim of Judaism in regards to the word of God, okay?
Let's read text number one. We're going to go to Candy. Can we start with you? Maimonides makes a very bold statement.
He makes a very bold statement. Let me ask you this question. Does anyone know what Maimonides'occupation was? He was a physician.
Okay, what? He was a philosopher, excellent. And he was, of course, a rabbi, right?
The leading scholar of his generation. How many of you think that Maimonides'IQ was... much higher than the average person, if you have to guess.
Probably, right? We can assume so. He was a physician, right?
He was a tremendous philosopher. He also wrote, I mean, I study his works every single day. It's part of my daily study ritual.
I study my monotheist works. He had a vast knowledge of Judaism. I just try to understand his basic writings.
That's all I'm trying to do, right? And he was a philosopher. and he was a rationalist. This is very important to understand.
He was a rationalist. That means there are different rabbis. Some rabbis take mystical approaches, and some take rational approaches.
Because he wanted to combat the philosophers of the day, which some Jews were being attracted to, he specifically focused on Judaism being explained in a rational way, not in a mystical way, to demonstrate that Judaism has deep philosophy and you don't need to go elsewhere, okay? Now, this same Imanides makes this statement that... that the fact that this unique historical event at Sinai is attested to by the best of evidence, the best of evidence. And he's a scientist. He's a man of medicine and a philosopher.
And he says, never before since has a whole nation witnessed a revelation from God or beheld his splendor. Okay, that's a major statement. Why did he say this? Did he say this out of belief?
Or did he say this because he was able to verify factually that this was true? Maimonides being a rationalist was actually, would make such a statement not out of belief because it's just like a bold, you know, like people of faith can get up and say all these major statements, right? But if you can't back that statement, it's just a statement of faith. It's a statement of belief.
It doesn't really help the person who doesn't believe, right? Maimonides is making a statement here, which we're going to see is actually a factual statement, a factual statement. And that's a very bold statement to make.
So we need to understand how all of this works. Here's the reality. The reality is.
I am 99.9% confident that every one of us had great-great-great-great-great-grandparents who firmly held the Sinai event to be true, okay? There's no question if we all go back about three or four generations, about just over 200 years ago, all of us had ancestors that believed that God gave the Torah to the Jewish people at Sinai, that God revealed himself at Sinai. Now, I, you know, I have a brain, I think, you know.
I don't know how to measure my intelligence, but I'm intelligent. We're all intelligent, right? Because we can all think.
We're human beings, right? I'm sure that my grandparents, my great-grandparents, I mean, my grandparents who I know, great-grandparents who I knew, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, some of them were scholarly, were very intelligent, thinking people. I don't think they would ask any fewer questions than I would ask.
And so I think, why did they believe that God revealed himself at Sinai? Based on what did they come up with this? And we know that Christianity tried to convert Jews for hundreds, we can say thousands of years, by the sword, Muslims as well, We all know that throughout history, many people have changed their beliefs. On rare occasion, Jews have as well, but people have changed their beliefs for wealth, for power, for influence. There are many reasons why we'll change our beliefs, right?
We trade them in because we have a higher value, money, right? But Jews, there were literally, over history, millions of Jews who had a choice between giving up their life or choosing another faith. They said, you know... accept Christianity or die.
And the Jews gave consciously, right, gave up, they chose to give up their life, right? Meaning that their belief in the revelation at Sinai was so strong that they were ready to give up their life. And we need to ask ourselves, where is that coming from?
You know, it's one thing to have a nice, you know, to have a nice belief, you know, I believe that a, um, that Maserati is an amazing car. But if you're going to kill me if I believe that, I don't believe it anymore. It's not a problem.
It's not the most amazing car in the world. It's fine. So I said earlier there were some Jews who did.
I think I said that. But millions of Jews have not. So here's the thing. I don't want to get too sidetracked, but here's the thing. When one person even gives up their life for something, that is the shocker.
For someone to trade in is not a shock. For someone to give their life for something is a shock. Now, if millions of people do that as part of a people, not all of them, but millions of them do that, so we have to raise the question, what is driving these people?
They didn't do it out of hostility, out of anger, out of a passionate belief that they're going to go to heaven and get some reward, some whatever that other people claim they're going to get. They did it simply because it was a deeply rooted belief. So that means there's a deeply rooted belief.
So we want to understand for those people who did that, where was that coming from that it was so deeply rooted, right? Okay. And, okay, so I'm going to make another statement here. It's one of my statements. The greatest growth opportunities in life is wherever we find the greatest resistance.
Okay? So just remember that as we go through the class. You with me?
This is actually very true and I experience this myself all the time. When I see myself resisting something strongly, I'm asking myself, why am I resisting this so strongly? I'm not saying that we shouldn't question it strongly, but I'm just saying if we have this fierce resistance, And I know that this class is going to bring up resistance by, you know, a good bunch of us, okay?
So I'm letting you know that I'm putting things on the table tonight, which are going to make us a little bit challenge our, you know, the way we were thinking until now. But that's a very healthy thing to do. I'm not saying you should accept what I'm saying. I'm just saying that you should hear it, pay attention to your resistance and to what I'm saying.
All of that at once. Okay. So the question that we're asking here is what led Maimonides and others to the conclusion that the event at Sinai is attested to by the best of evidence? Where did Maimonides get this from? Okay, and if the people who died don't do it for you, let's talk about Maimonides.
Whatever works for you, we'll work with that. So let's talk about this. This is very important to talk about when we have this discussion.
How do we evaluate truth? How do we evaluate truth? Okay, how do you evaluate whether something is true or not? This is very important to discuss before we get into the discussion of the revelation at Sinai. So let's go to learning exercise number two, okay?
The first, what standard of evidence do you generally require to regard a historical report as credible? Any measure of evidence. Does any measure of evidence work for you? Just like anything. I just, you know, no, right?
Of course not, right? Any measure of evidence doesn't really tell us much. Let's see what we get over here. No, we don't want to go there yet. More likely true than false?
If something sounds more likely true than false, does that help you a little bit? Okay, it doesn't help Stan, it helps some of us. Okay, that's good.
We all need, some of us need more evidence, less evidence. There's no question. Beyond a reasonable doubt, how does that work for you?
Okay, we get some more hands. Definitely a lot better, right? A lot better, okay?
Beyond the shadow of a doubt, as in absolute vodka. The vodka is not going to help you determine things. But the absolute, well, absolute, you're all good with absolute? Okay, very good. Okay, so here's the reality.
The reality is it's virtually impossible to prove anything absolutely. And there's almost nothing you do in your life that's based on an absolute. Okay, that's the reality. I mean, we would love to have empirical evidence. There's almost nothing that you can have empirical evidence for.
I'll demonstrate that in a minute. Okay, any measure of evidence we all agree is pretty much insufficient. Right?
I mean, you know, give me something, you know, substantially. So let me first discuss irrefutable evidence, okay? A person can always be skeptical, and there's always room for skepticism.
That's why skeptics thrive. Because no matter what you tell them, and that's why there's no point in... If you know someone's a skeptic, you can just go on and on. It will never end. Because they will demand absolute verification, empirical evidence, and you can never give empirical evidence for almost anything.
I'll demonstrate this. First of all, ask people who saw Stalin if they saw Stalin. Do you know if they saw Stalin?
You can't know if they saw Stalin. You know why? Because Stalin had ten impersonators.
So you don't even know if you saw Stalin. You know, I shook his hand, right? You don't even know if that is actually true. There is a philosophy, there is a field of philosophy called epistemology.
Anyone ever study epistemology? Okay, don't bother with it. But it's about how we know things exist. And here's a very interesting thing.
And if you're a philosopher or you like studying philosophy, this is a very good and valid question. question. Okay, hear this. It's possible that nothing actually exists.
It's possible that you don't exist. And I can stand up here and argue this. Okay? And you are just a figment of an imagination that you exist.
And everything that's going on over here is all part of an imagination. Okay? Now, if someone is crazy enough, this can be argued.
Okay? Because there's no way to absolutely prove that you are reality. Maybe you're just in a dream state.
When you have a dream, do you have sensations? Did you feel like you were falling down from the building when you did? Yeah, but that wasn't reality.
When you pinch yourself, it's also not reality. You feel that pinch, it's not real. Okay, I know I'm being ridiculous, but what I'm trying to demonstrate is that there is nothing that can be proven empirically, okay? So it's impossible to determine anything 100%.
How many of you flew on a plane? How many of you verified that the pilot has a license? Nobody, right? You're putting your life at risk.
I mean, that is crazy. If you were flying the plane, would you get on the plane? And you're a reasonable, I mean, you know, you're an intelligent person, but you don't know how to fly a plane.
Why are you getting on a plane without knowing if the pilot knows how to fly the plane? And we've had some stories recently. Am I getting you nervous? Okay, my point is, almost everything we do is based on a certain level of knowledge, but without empirical proof. How many of you, anyone wearing a hard hat here?
No one walked in here tonight concerned that the ceiling is going to come crumbling down, right? Because you're quite sure that the pillars holding up this building are sturdy. Did you verify that? Do you even know who the engineer of this building was?
Do you know how old it is? Do you want me to tell you what those pillars actually look like? I'm not going to...
Again, we don't need, in order to function very well in life, we don't need empirical evidence, and we cannot get empirical evidence for anything that we experience. But what we can get is more likely true than false. That we can get.
In other words, we can get some information that tells us, well, you know, planes are flying all the time. They're not crashing every single day and they have a good track record and the company has incentive to make sure that the people behind the, is it a wheel? Whatever it is, you know, knows what they're doing. So that's somewhat reasonable.
So a small dose of evidence, while it's not very convincing, it can help. The thing is with a small dose of evidence, you know what you have? You have conspiracy theorists.
They thrive in a realm where there's a small dose of evidence. Right? Like, how can you 100% know who flew into the towers on 9-11, right?
It was the Jews, right? Like, all of this crazy stuff that comes up. And you can, if that entertains you, YouTube has plenty of this nonsense.
But what we have is when we have a little bit more than just, you know... any measure of evidence more likely true than false. We already have something that's a little bit substantial. Beyond reasonable doubt is even more substantial.
And guess what? And the lawyers can verify this for me. But in our court of law, there's something called preponderance of the evidence, which essentially means that the defendant is more likely than not liable, okay, in civil cases. And that is enough evidence to argue that the person is guilty. When it comes to criminal cases, then we want something that's beyond a reasonable doubt.
Beyond a reasonable doubt means, by way of example, if I'm wrong, tell me, lawyers, but if someone was just stabbed in the chest, right, and there's someone that's walking out of the room with a bloody knife, would we say that's beyond reasonable doubt that this is the person who killed? Not necessarily. What else do we need? Someone help me out, John.
Save me. Is there a way that we can make that be unreasonable now? What's that?
Without witnesses. Is there any way without witnesses? If we see two people walk into the room. There's no other way for someone to come into the room.
We saw the room was empty before, okay? And the person walks out. So they didn't witness the act, but they witnessed the two people going in, one walking out, one's dying, and one's walking out with a bloody knife or running with a bloody knife.
Is that beyond reasonable doubt? Close enough. Oh my gosh.
I'm not trying a case in front of you, John. You're impossible. Okay.
Okay. So you understand what beyond reasonable doubt is? Beyond reasonable doubt.
Okay. So beyond reasonable doubt, actually people are convinced when they see something that we consider to be beyond reasonable doubt. Is it factual? Did we see the person take the knife and stab the person? No, we didn't.
It's not empirical, but we don't require empirical evidence. Most people in their lives rely on preponderance of evidence to make daily decisions. That means you rely for the most part on more likely true than false when you make decisions in your day-to-day living.
And if you question that, I would just say pay attention to the different decisions that you make and you will see. At the end of tonight's lesson, I want you to decide whether the revelation of God at Sinai can be verified more likely than not or beyond a reasonable doubt. Okay, and that will be a decision that you'll make.
Okay? Or you'll say it didn't even happen. Whatever. But I think it's going to be between the two.
We'll see where we go with this. How are we doing? Good? Okay.
Stretching it? What are we stretching? Okay, okay. Let's do this, okay? Now...
Here's what we cannot do. We cannot go to the Torah, see what the Torah says about the giving of the Torah at Sinai, and then say, ah, we got proof, right? That's called circular reasoning, right?
Because the Torah itself can't prove that the Torah was given at Sinai, right? So that's not what we're doing now. But I want to bring out the historical story that we have as to what happened at Sinai.
We don't know that it's true. And actually, we're going to assume that it's not true. That's what we're doing right now. We're going to assume it's not true. We're going to assume it was a lie.
God did not... The Torah tells us that there was revelation at Sinai. Does everyone agree with that?
That's a fact, by the way. So if you don't agree with it, you just need to read the Torah. That's a fact.
The Torah says that. Now, is that true? And that's the story we've had for thousands of years.
Is it true? We're going to assume it's a lie. But let's first understand the story that...
we have, this version that we have, which we're going to assume isn't true. Learning exercise number three, read texts 2a, 2b, and 2c, and please do this for yourself, okay? Underline any word or phrase that indicates, according to the narrative, that God's revelation of Sinai was a private matter. Wasn't a private matter. Thank you.
That's very important. Wasn't a private matter limited to Moses or a select few people, but was a public display witnessed by the Jewish masses. Underline every time you see in the narrative that what happened at Sinai was in front of the entire Jewish people, in front of the masses of the Jewish people, and not just in front of a few select people.
And also you'll just have to note that the first text is from the book of Exodus, where it's written in third person, and the second and third texts are from the book of Deuteronomy, which is written in first person, because Moses is speaking. Okay, in case you get caught up in the tenses there. Underline wherever it indicates that it was the masses of the Jewish people that witnessed the revelation at Sinai. Okay, if you've gone through all of it and you've actually underlined, you probably underlined between 20 and 25 statements where the Torah continuously demonstrates that in the Torah's version of what happened at Sinai, it happened in front of the masses of the Jewish people. Let's look up here for a second.
Text 2a is just one paragraph from text 2a. All the people saw the voices, right? Whatever that means, saw the voices, but all the people, right?
And the people saw and trembled. The Lord spoke to you. Moses is telling the Jewish people, the Lord spoke to you. That means you, the Jewish people. You heard, you, the Jewish people, heard the sounds of the words.
He told you his covenant. So we see repeatedly that the Torah is very clear in its version of what happened at Sinai that all of the Jewish people at Sinai witnessed God giving, the revelation of God, okay? Do you see that? Is that a fact or am I making this up? Right, no, right, true.
They didn't see anything giving, but they experienced revelation. That's what we're talking about, that they experienced a revelation of God, okay? How many Jews were there at Mount Sinai?
So the Torah tells us, in text number three, that there were 600,000 adult males. And the Torah tells us adult males were counted between the age of 20 and 60. So if there were 600,000 adult males, let's make an estimate of how many females there were between 20 and 60. 600,000. So we have 1.2 million, right? And we're going to estimate that, let's just say if there were three kids per couple.
You end up, yes, this is a rough estimate. So don't hold me to these numbers, and I have no way of verifying it. But let's just say that there were another 1.8 million youngsters and elders, right?
From 0 to 20, and then from 60 to 120. So the rough estimate that is made generally is that there were about 3 million Jews at Mount Sinai. It really doesn't make a difference. I mean, if there were 2 million, so it was 2 million.
The number really doesn't make a difference, okay? The point is that there were... We're going to go with three million Jews at Sinai, okay? And the Torah tells us that they all experienced revelation, okay?
They didn't see God because God is not a physical entity. They experienced God through different sounds and hearing words, which clearly were far greater than a human expression. Okay.
Now, we're going to be a little bit cynical, okay? Because you need to be cynical if you want to analyze. Not cynical for cynicism's sake, but cynical in order to understand.
Let's look. There's a people, okay, a nation of people that believe that there was a revelation at Sinai, right? How do you get, and it didn't, but it didn't really happen. It didn't really happen, okay?
How do you get... a nation of people to believe that something happened when it didn't. That's what we want to know, okay?
If it didn't happen, why was it that all of our great-great-great-grandparents believed in the revelation at Sinai for thousands of years? How do we get people to do this? And there are ways of getting people to believe things, by the way, right? There are ways of getting people to believe things.
I'm not going to take your answers on this. I'm going to tell you how this is done, okay? In case you ever want to start a cult, you're going to learn.
I'm going to give you the guide to cult building tonight. You're going to get it, really, okay? So again, we're assuming it's not true.
We need to know who told the first lie and then build this up. Where did this story get invented? Yeah. Did the story happen or not?
Is it an allegory? Is it a parable? Or is it a history?
So that's what we want to clarify. We want to know, is this a historical event or is this a nice parable? It makes a huge difference. There's a difference between being true and being someone's invention.
A human invention I don't hold myself to. A godly revelation I try to hold myself to. Right? I believe I should hold myself to.
Okay, so there are two. We're going to call two approaches to how you. how you develop a lie as the present theory and the past theory, okay? Let me explain what this means. Present theory is where I, I'm going to be the cult leader, okay?
You mind? Just for another like 45 minutes, okay? So I want to propose a story to you of revelation. So I tell you, you remember yesterday when God revealed himself to us at Sinai?
You remember? Wasn't that awesome? You remember the thunder and light?
enlightening and it was just unbelievably amazing and God revealed himself to us and to no other nation and it's such an amazing thing right that's the present theory meaning that I'm telling you that you were present when that happened okay that's one approach I can take in getting people to believe that something happened then you all say yeah yeah rabbi man you are so charismatic you convinced us and we all believe you and then we write down the Torah you And we announce it's the word of God, and we teach our children and our grandchildren, and we got it. We're done. It's a done deal. Okay? If we can do that, if I can do that with you, and then we can tell our children, and we really believe in it, we have a religion going.
Okay? Now we just have to figure out how to make money off of it. Okay. That's what cults do. So the other approach is...
Yeah, of course. Okay. There's past theory. There's past theory, okay?
Past theory is that I tell you that you know about a thousand years ago, God appeared to our ancestors at Sinai. It didn't happen to us. It happened to our ancestors.
And then there was a tornado, and there was a lot of confusion. Everyone forgot about this. But I happen to know that it happened. I have inside information or maybe either because God maybe came to me in a dream last night and told me or I happen to know a secret was kept in my line of family that no one else knew and I felt that now is the right time for me to reveal this to you. Okay and now I'm telling you what God has shared with me.
Okay so it happened. It happened in the past and I'm convincing you that it happened in the past. You didn't experience it. but your ancestors did, and that's how we know that this happened at Sinai.
Those are pretty much the two primary ways that we can get a mass of people, we can attempt to get a mass of people to believe in something that supposedly happened but didn't. You with me? You know of any cults?
Do you know how they started? Anyone? What do you think a cult, if you were going to lead a cult, what would you do?
Which would you do? Would you try and convince the group that they witnessed it yesterday? Or would you try and tell them that it happened a thousand years ago and it was lost and then I'm coming back to remind you about it?
Which one would you take? Number two. Okay, so let's go to learning exercise four, okay? Rate the two theories with one indicating very weak.
And number one would be indicating very weak and highly unlikely, and five indicating very compelling and very unlikely. The present theory that I'm going to try and convince you that you witnessed revelation last night, okay? Number one would be that's a very weak approach. Number five would be very strong. What would you give it, a one or a five?
How many for a one raise your hand? How many of you for a five raise your hand? Okay.
So you're pretty convinced I can convince you that you experienced God last night. Okay. Now, past theory, right? That happened a thousand years ago.
Is that more likely convincible? If it is, give it a five. If it's less likely convincible than present theory, give it a one.
Is everyone confused? Okay, let me review this again. Can we have some extra time tonight?
I think we might need it, okay? Okay. If I want to convince you, okay, that something awesome happened, okay, something unbelievable, unbelievable, literally unbelievable, right, happened, okay, as part of our tradition, okay, I can do that by saying...
You experienced it. You don't remember? Last night it happened and you were there and you saw it happen. If I am ultra, ultra charismatic, I may be able to convince you that it happened. Do you think I'll be able to convince you?
Okay. Okay. So you would give present theory a one.
You'd say it's very unlikely I'm going to convince you, right? Or what I can do is I can say, Michael, four generations ago in Europe, there was this event that happened where there was a revelation, okay, which your grandparents and my grandparents experienced. Okay? So you say, well, why didn't I ever hear about it? I'll tell you exactly why you didn't hear about it.
Because. There was a tremendous turmoil, and therefore it was forgotten, but I happened to have been given this secret passed down just in my family. So you ask me, so why didn't you tell anyone about it until now? Well, I was waiting for the right time when the Jewish people would be settled and I can share this with you, and now I'm sharing it with the people.
Is this better than the present theory? It's better. Is it great?
Okay, I know, arguable, right? There are actually cults founded on... Past theory, okay?
Because there's someone charismatic and people can be convinced of many different things. Some people believe I'm convinced of many things, you know? So there are definitely ways, and that's because they know that people can be convinced of many different things. There's no question about that.
And that's how cults are made, okay? So it definitely can work. All cult leaders use past theory.
They never use present theory. No one's charismatic enough to actually accomplish that. That's why they don't use present theory. Okay?
Urgent question? I've never met someone, I never met someone to be able to do it to every single person in the group. What will happen, what's going to happen is this, they're going to stand up in front of 50 people and try and convince them, and I think they may be able to, if they're ultra charismatic, right, they may be able to convince 25 of them.
Maybe 30, maybe 35. They'll never convince all of them. And that is going to destroy their story because people who are present are going to walk out and say, this guy's a liar. Because he told me it happened, and I know it didn't happen.
And that's going to diffuse his story very heavily. So a cult leader wants to have as much grounding under his feet as possible. So what he says is, I had a revelation last night. You didn't have it. So you say, you didn't have it.
Of course you didn't have it. Only I had it. But I'm sharing it with you. You're part of my inner circle, and I'm sharing with you what God told me.
Okay, that's much more believable for people than to tell them that they had it. Here's what we're going to do. Okay, we're going to do a quick exercise. Join together with the person next to you. Okay, and I want you to make up a story that you went on vacation last year to Alaska.
Okay? And tell them the whole thing. Just make it as believable as possible.
You have 30 seconds to do that. Do it. Please, please do it.
It's very important. Very important. There's no way you can do that. And that's the reason why every single cult leader and every single religion builder all read the exact same How to Start a Religion handbook.
Every single one of them. Not one of them. Not one of them.
Okay? And I want you to disprove me on this one. Not one of them.
ever told their people that you experienced with me vacation in Alaska. You experienced with me a revelation of God. Never. It's Muhammad behind a rock who had a revelation.
It's Jesus, whatever, wherever he had his revelation. It's never with a mass of people. Just a moment.
It's never with a mass of people. Okay? Because you cannot convince people.
I'm not making a statement about whether they are true or not. Okay? Okay?
You can assume what I think about that. But I'm not making a statement. It's not the point.
It really is not the point. And the point here isn't who's right and who's wrong. It's not the point.
The point is every single religion or belief system that started starts with one person who has an experience and you have a choice to believe them or not. Right? Obviously, I believe in Judaism. That's obvious, right? I think there are very highly intelligent Christians and Muslims and Hindus and every other religion who are highly intelligent people, who are not just naive people.
But I don't even want to go there. It's just not relevant to the discussion. The point is, every religion starts with a person making a claim that happened to themselves. And I support that. That's a very smart way to do it, because I can guarantee them.
If they came to me for advice, there's no way they're going to sell this story, even if the story is true, right? If they say it happened to everyone else. Now, of course, if it didn't happen to everyone else, right?
Obviously, it can't happen. There is one claim, which we'll have a reading later on with Hinduism, where there was a revelation to, I think, a million Hindus. But guess what happened?
They all died. Surprise. So therefore, you can't get evidence from any one of them that they actually experienced this mass revelation because they all died right after the revelation.
So that doesn't really help us much, right? You see where I'm going. There's only one faith that's founded on the fact that all of us were present.
Where Moses came and said, you were there, you witnessed it. And he didn't say it to the Catholics, right? He didn't say it to the Muslims.
He said it to the Jews who can't agree on a single thing, okay? Not only that, he said it to three million of them. Now, you know, like I said before, there will be defects immediately saying this is utter nonsense. What are you talking about?
We witnessed it, right? And guaranteed in this room, I would bet that at least 80% of us would have walked down on Moses immediately. Immediately.
I mean, how do you go for such gross falsehood, right? That's something that is a unique claim, for sure. And this is not a theory.
What I'm telling you is a fact. It's a fact that this claim, I'm not saying that this proves anything yet. I'm only saying that this claim, it's a fact that is the most unique claim that any religion makes.
And it's definitely very, very intriguing because this... unique claim actually stuck with the Jewish people for 3,328 years. Do you see where I'm at? Yes, that's right.
The only place that you will find the present theory in all of history is with the Jewish people making this arguably ridiculous claim, right? Really, I mean, a leader to make such a claim is totally out of touch with reality unless it happened. If it didn't happen, you lost it.
You lost your people. You lost your religion. You lost everything.
You lost faith in the people. Everything is gone. Yeah. No, actually, the most important incident is one incident, and that is that they experience God speaking to Moses at Sinai. It means the entire Jewish people hear God speaking to Moses at Sinai.
That's what's important. That's called revelation, okay? The details, okay, we can talk about the details, but there's one thing we know happened that every Jew knows, right? And that is, that's what Moses is telling them.
You experienced, right? God speaking to me outside. Now, you heard God. You heard those words, right? Now, to say that to people is like me telling you, last night, right, last week, Monday night, you were here in the class.
You heard God. It wasn't me. It was God, right?
You'd never walk back in here, guaranteed. I mean, if you would, you're really crazy. Well, it depends how Jewish you are.
Yeah. Did they hear the speech so they could comprehend what the speech was? Yeah, sure.
Or the sound, because the text says... It says both. It says words and sounds. So they experienced the inexperienceable by a human being is essentially what the Torah is telling us. Okay.
And they also heard comprehensible words that God said to Moses. Okay. The only way, let me say this.
Before we continue with Mount Sinai, with the present theory, let's go back to the past theory for a minute. Because. That's what everything else is built, all other religions and cults are built on, okay?
And again, I want to be clear about something. I have no purpose or value in minimizing any other religions. I do have great purpose and value in every single Jew valuing Judaism and understanding the value of it. Truth, okay, is not being nice and hiding the facts in order to make other people more comfortable, okay?
that continues to make sure everyone continues to remain uncomfortable. We have to speak what is actually true. And this is not like any gross revelation that I'm saying here tonight. I am just saying what every other religion will acknowledge about their religion.
And that is that essentially they are all founded on a single individual making a claim. I'm not here to make a statement about whether it's right, whether it happened or didn't happen. I'll let you make that decision. I really am not making a statement about it. I don't need to make a statement about that.
I am saying it's about a person who claims something happened, and then it's a matter of whether people want to follow this person and believe their claim or not. And that's the reason why they use past theory as opposed to present theory, because that's the only possible chance that people will actually believe in the person. But even in past theory, if I say that there was a revelation at Mount Sinai 3,000 years ago, we forgot about it for whatever reason, and I am coming to tell you, that I'm going to call myself Fred because this will help you understand one of the readings here. So Mr. Fred comes and tells you that, by the way, I want to tell you what actually happened to our ancestors, which everyone sort of fell to the wayside and everyone forgot about. Let's say I come and tell you that.
What is going to be the first question that you're going to ask me? How do I know? Question number one. What's the next question you're going to ask me, which is a very important question. How do I know?
And I'm not sure what I'm going to say yet. But I'm not going to say God revealed himself to me, right, which is the way all religions are founded, or it has been passed down secretly, which to me sounds very suspicious, right? Evidence.
And why didn't anyone else hear of this? Why are you so special that only you heard of this, right? These are very, very obvious questions.
Let's go to the last paragraph in text number four. It is simply. Here is a psychological rule, okay?
Again, if you want to, this is all from the Build Your Religion handbook, yeah, okay? There's a psychological rule about getting people to believe something, especially when talking about nations and communities, to believe something, and that is the claim has to be something that the listener would expect. I'm sorry, the claim cannot be about something that the listener would expect, have been aware of previously. If it's something that the listener would have expected to have known previously, right, and they didn't, that's an indication that it didn't happen. In other words, the second you tell me something that I should have known had it happened, and I don't know, I won't trust you until I have more evidence.
So if someone's going to, if Fred's going to come and tell us, Jews, I'm here to tell you that God revealed to me, or that I have a secret document from my ancestors that tell me that there was a revelation at Sinai, over 3,000 years ago, everyone's going to say, that's something I should have known. I'm a Jew just like you. Why didn't my parents, why is it only your parents knew about it?
Why did God only come to you? And that's going to be very, we're going to be very suspect of that person. There's another big question.
And that is, let me ask you this question. Name the four most famous Jewish religious personalities. that you know of.
Moses. Next. Hillel. David.
Aaron. Okay. Avraham.
Excellent. Rambam. You know what no one said? Fred.
What happened to Fred who reminded us about the revelation that we all forgot about? If there was an individual, if Sinai, right, if Sinai happened 3,000 years ago, we all forgot about it, for whatever reason, and then someone came and showed up and said, pass theory, he comes up and says, guys, it happened, you just forgot about it. I'm coming to remind you.
Do you think he would be a big Jewish hero? Of course he would. He brought back the whole Judaism to us, right?
Yet no one ever heard of this person. So clearly Judaism is not founded on an event that someone came and told us happened, which didn't necessarily happen because we don't even know who this person is, and he'd be a famous person. So we know that this past theory definitely is not what happened, as other religions are founded on, that there's an individual that comes and makes a claim that something happened in the past and we believe it. Otherwise, we would know who that person is.
We know that wasn't Moses because Moses didn't make a claim that something happened in the past. And he has information that no one else has. Moses tells us, you witnessed what I witnessed.
I'm not here to tell you anything new. We witnessed it together. You heard God speak to me just like I heard God speak to me. That's what Moses is claiming.
So it wasn't Moses, right? So clearly, this is not... But Judaism didn't come about, and the belief in the revelation, Tzina, didn't come about because, like other religions, an individual comes up and says something happened in the past. Because we don't know who that person is. We know who Jesus is.
We know who Muhammad is. We know who John Smith is. Right? All of the leaders of these other, we know who Mooney Monk, whatever his name is. Right?
We know all these people. Right? but we don't know. So clearly that didn't happen. What did happen or what is claimed to have happened, as Moses tells us, is the present theory.
First of all, why are you believing that website? Okay, but that's a great question. So here's the thing. So here's the thing.
If you have an entire people, this is the whole point. The point is you can always get a small group of people to believe something. You can always do that.
You can never get an entire population of people to believe something. Go get every single American to believe the same thing. It will never happen, right?
Unless it's something that every American experienced together. That's the only way it can happen. And that's what is uniquely fascinating about the claim of Revelation at Sinai. That's the entire point.
You'll never find anything that's going to match this. This is the most historically verifiable event in all of history. Because it's the only event in history where the entire people actually were present when it happened.
Nothing else happened in front of an entire people. And that's why it was such an absolute belief for the Jewish people for 3,000 years. Jews denied the oral law.
Jews never denied the written law. The written law is a fact that that was given by Moses at Sinai. Not because we believe that God gave it to Moses at Sinai, but because we know that God gave it to Moses at Sinai. Because it's... You can say, it depends on how you feel about this, but you can say, is it beyond a reasonable doubt?
Well, how else do you get a people to believe this? No other person who tried to get a group of people to believe something ever made such a claim. And all of us just confirmed that if I tried to convince you that you were with me in Alaska, that's not going anywhere.
The conversation's not going past the first five seconds. How does Moses tell the Jewish people, three million people, that you experienced? Unless they actually experienced. Or, unless there was a lot of weed growing in the Sinai desert.
Truly. I mean, it's the only way you're going to get people to actually come up with some ridiculous idea that they had a revelation. I mean, if anyone in this room came to me and told me, even on your own, that you had revelation last night from God, we'd have to have a long conversation.
Okay? You know what they say, as long as you're speaking to God, everything is fine. Once you hear God speaking to you, you know there's a problem.
Yes? A what? Yes. Yeah. So I'm not...
I am not using the text of the Torah to demonstrate this. I am using the fact that my grandparents and your grandparents believed in this event, and every Jew believed in this event, and this goes back generation after generation. I'm using factual evidence. We know that all of the Jewish people believed in Revelation at Sinai until about 200 years ago when some other theories actually were able to penetrate a little bit.
Every single Jew, how do you get a nation to believe it? Forget what the Torah says or doesn't say. It doesn't make a difference.
Because you can't use that as verification. We can verify. That they all believed it.
You just go back to any books or documents and you're going to know this. Okay? How do you get an entire people to believe something?
It's either with past theory or present theory. There is no past theory. We don't even know, even if someone were to propose that there was a past theory, who was the person who brought this past theory back to us?
So clearly there wasn't a past theory. Right? There was a present theory. Present theory, you've got to be crazy to use present theory.
It never works. It never works unless it happened. That's the only way it can work. So to me, and I'm just sharing with you actually, I'm going to show you what works for me.
That's all I'm doing. I'm actually, I want to share with you what I believe. This is enormously intellectually compelling to me. Okay. Can we move on and because of time and we'll try and get some more questions in.
Okay. I'm going to try. If everyone's willing to stay, I'm going to be here if everyone leaves, but you can stick around and ask. There is another theory which I would. It's called the snowball theory.
The snowball theory. So we're going to, you see that? What page is that?
Page 200, okay? The snowball theory. Snowball theory is that it snowballed, you know, that Moses made a claim.
He had revelation at Sinai. He got a few people to believe him. Not everyone, of course, because you can't get a whole people to believe it's something that happened to you personally. And you can't convince a mass of people that something happened if it didn't happen.
So he convinced a small group. Like, that's why every group starts with a small group. And then it snowballed, okay? And suddenly the Jewish people, who were 3 million, slowly more and more of them began to believe that this is what happened, okay?
The reason why this is completely unreasonable is because We don't find anything that can happen naturally in the world will always repeat itself. Anything that can happen naturally will always repeat itself, okay? And we don't find any time in history where a belief snowballed.
That means you already have the people, okay? And the belief snowballed through the people more and more and more. You have more people joining, right? But you don't have already established people.
We have more and more people in this group. Begin to believe it more and more. We don't have this happening ever. So we find that as a human phenomenon, this actually never, ever happens.
If there's a belief that someone is trying to convince people of, okay, so let's say we're going to come to the American people and say that in 1915, there was actually a communist revolution in America. Did you know about that? Okay, we'll go to 1815, okay? 1815 was a communist revolution in America for about 30 years, and then there was a backlash.
We went back to democracy. Right? And I try and convince you of this, right? I may get a small group of adherents to believe that. It's never going to snowball and take over the entire people.
It will never turn into a belief that entire people have, simply because it's unbelievable. So I'm throwing this in, even though I don't think this is something that we need to really discuss, but that's another idea that is brought up that some people try and suggest happened. Because what happens is, here's the thing. We have an event.
Right? Which is an unbelievable event and a pivotal event, the pivotal event for the Jewish people. Because this basically makes or breaks the value of the Torah.
Okay? And when you have an event like this, the question is, how are we going to... We look at, did this happen?
Didn't it happen? If I believe it didn't happen, then why is it that so many people believe in it? Right?
Or I can choose to believe it did happen. If I believe it did happen, how do I come to that belief, right? So ultimately, there's only one way to believe that this actually happened, and that is if it actually happened. In other words, the way it played itself out that Moses said every single one of you witnessed it can only be believed if in fact that is what happened.
So Moses actually put himself into a catch-22, or I don't know if that would even be the right term, but into a checkmate. He checkmated himself. He left no option other than that this really happened, because if it didn't really happen, there is no way of him substantiating this story of Revelation at Mount Sinai.
And the reason why there's no way of him substantiating that is from the fact that we know that every Jew believed it. If only a few Jews believed it, then we understand that Moses was like all the other leaders. He had a claim.
Either it did happen or it didn't happen. Some people believed it. Okay, either you want to go with it or you don't. But the fact that every Jew believed in this story tells us that there was something...
That was absolutely compelling to them. And the only thing that that can be was that they actually experienced it. Yes.
Let me ask you a question. I don't know if you're going to want to answer this or not. How many of you believe in UFOs? Okay.
Okay, so I am sure that we're not going to get a unanimous decision on that. Okay. I'm sure if I go out in the street and I point and say, do you see over there, I will be able to convince some people.
I have some credibility. Rabbi. That works for people actually just because you have a title rabbi, so people start believing you.
It's true, okay? Does that work for lawyers too? The reverse?
Okay, right? But you go out and you say, so you're never going to get everyone to believe. Whatever you have working for you. So they would say, I experienced something, I don't know what I experienced, right? Imagine if everyone, let's say we have 100,000 people on the street.
They all experienced a... You know a phenomenon which is like an out-of-body type of an experience, right? And they all know exactly what they experienced.
They don't say, I experienced something, I don't know what it is. I know exactly what I experienced. This is exactly what I experienced. And they all have the exact same experience. They all come out and say, I experienced.
You experienced the exact same thing? Exact same thing. Right?
What would that tell you? That they experienced. Not something. Not something. They experienced something particular.
They know exactly what they experienced. That's what happened at Sinai. But they're telling you what it is. They're telling you what it is.
How can they tell what it is if they cannot comprehend what it is? Because let's say there's a voice that says, I am God, you're God. And they're experiencing it from a realm where there is no other way of describing this from a human experience. They know it's an out-of-human experience. Telling them, I am God speaking to you.
I am God speaking to Moses so that you can all hear me speaking to Moses and know that Moses is a true prophet, which is what the Torah says, right? So the Torah is only telling us what our ancestors tell us they experienced. You understand? That's why they all absolutely believed in the Torah because they had that experience. It wasn't a vague experience like many of our spiritual experiences.
It was a very defined experience and they knew what they were experiencing. Otherwise, they would not be subscribing to it. Okay, so I hear what you're thinking, actually. Can you believe that? I actually hear what you're thinking.
So, I understand. You see, we have a discomfort. This is what my understanding is.
We have a discomfort in defining something that happened 3,000 years ago. Because we suddenly want empirical proof that that happened. No, I'm addressing your thoughts in a broad manner, okay?
That's what I'm doing. I'm not addressing your particular. I'm addressing your thoughts in a broad manner. It's very hard for us.
I relate to this very well. I have the same human mind we all have, right? And the same struggles.
Because ultimately, we're always looking for the way to be able to say absolutely, right? But that's why we began the class by demonstrating that there's nothing that we demonstrate absolutely. But we do demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that something happens. And the Sinai experience, there is no way that an entire people will believe it unless it actually was something that happened. And there's no way that Moses would be able to convince them that it happened.
That is compelling. Okay, I'm not saying it's absolute. It's compelling.
Let's read text number seven. Okay, I think these words are very important to pay attention to. Who is relying on blind faith? The one who believes in the story as written or the one that claims without any historical support that it was a result of natural processes, in other words, snowballing, but only happened one time to one group in all of recorded history. It's interesting to note that the people who are assumed to have faith very often are using less faith in their belief or in what they attribute value to than others.
who are denying what the other people believe. You following what I'm saying? Like sometimes what we consider to be a matter of faith actually requires less faith than not to believe in it, which would require more faith. In other words, the fact that if we look historically and we can agree, which is a fact, that the Jewish people as an entire nation believed that the Torah was given by Moses at Sinai. Okay, and that God revealed himself at Sinai, that it was revelation at Sinai.
Okay, that's a fact that every one of our ancestors believed that, and that if you just, you know, you go back to whatever generations, all the Jews believed that. Okay, the only way to understand that without faith, is to understand that it happened, just to accept that there was a historical event of revelation, which we may be uncomfortable with because we never experienced ourselves, and it sounds, you know, so therefore it sounds abstract and unrealistic because it's outside of our realm of experience. But that's the only actually rational way to explain how an entire nation believes the same thing. It is actually irrational to start coming up with all types of theories of how all of these people believe the one thing.
Because we don't have a single event in all of history where an entire nation of people believe the same thing, unless it actually happened. And actually, the only time that happened is with Sinai. Do you understand what I'm saying? So this is actually the most rational. It's not a faith thing.
It's actually the most rational way to understand Sinai. The book of Deuteronomy is actually Moses speaking to the Jewish people. It's his last will and testament before he passes away. And this is what he tells the Jewish people.
Did ever a people hear God? By the way. When Moses passes away, how many years after the revelation is it?
Anyone know? 40 years. Because Moses passes away right before the Jews go into Israel and they got stuck in the desert for 40 years after the Torah was given, right?
Okay, so 40 years later, he's telling this to the Jewish people. Did ever a people hear God's voice speaking out of the midst of the fire as you have heard and lived? This is what God tells Moses.
Moses is telling the Jewish people. And we're going to say again, roughly there are 3 million. Maybe there are a few more now after 40 years. Right.
And he tells us to these, he's speaking to people who experienced the revelation and many people who did not experience the revelation. Right. How did they all know that they or their grandparents heard God's voice speaking out of the midst of the fire as you have heard?
How do they know that? Either because they heard it or their parents told them. No one stood up and said, Moses. They stood up to say, hey, Moses, we want meat.
We don't want manna. Hey, Moses, we're thirsty. We want water. They had no problem speaking up against Moses. Not one person stood up and said, hey, Moses, what are you talking about?
God never spoke to us. Or what are you talking about? My father didn't hear God speaking to him. They all knew that God spoke to them.
It was just a matter of fact. It's like the bread they eat in the morning. They knew God spoke. Because it was something that was not denied by a single Jew.
for one reason, because they all experienced it. That's the only way this could have been. I'm going to read text number nine, and I hope you follow along with me. This is a letter that the Rebbe wrote in correspondence.
He wrote many letters on this subject because of its centrality to the value of Judaism. The divine revelation at Mount Sinai was a fact witnessed by millions of people, all of whom reported it. to its minutest detail accurately, for the whole people of Israel stood at Mount Sinai and witnessed it. We know that this is a fact because millions of Jews in our day accepted as such, because they received it as such from their own parents, and these millions in turn received the evidence from the previous generation, and so on, in an uninterrupted chain of transmitted evidence from millions to millions of witnesses, generation after generation.
Back to the original millions of witnesses who saw the event with their own eyes. Among these original witnesses, there were many who were initiated in the sciences of those days, vis-a-egypt, many achievements of which are still baffling nowadays. Among them were philosophers and thinkers, as well as ignorant and uneducated persons, women and children of all ages.
Yet all of them reported the event and phenomena, connected with it without contradiction to one another. Where there was never a crack in the transmission of this story of millions of people who argue about everything that they believe in other than this. Such a fact is certainly indisputable. I do not believe that there is another fact which can match it for evidence and accuracy. To deny such a fact is anything but scientific.
It is the very opposite of science. Parenthetically, it is unfortunate that this basic difference between the Jewish religion and those of others is so little known, for the Jewish religion is the only one that is not based on a single founder or a few, but is based on the divine revelation witnessed by all the people, numbering several millions. This answers also so-and-so's statement that the acceptance of the Torah as being the only truth is dangerous, Since its authors were only men, and as men they could not have been infallible. Jews accept the Torah precisely because it was given by God, not by man. And it was given in the presence of millions of people who had seen it and heard it with their own eyes and ears.
That is why the Torah is the absolute truth, for God is absolute. This is food for thought, food for thought, okay? And I think it's very important to think about, because as I said earlier in the beginning of the class, this is really the core of whether the Torah is of ultimate value to me as the wisdom of God, and if it is, what a treasure for us to have the wisdom of God, God being an absolute, unchangeable entity, meaning we have information which we can use at all times and all places. in order to discover what our mission is, to live a much more productive life on a personal level.
There are many, many benefits to this, versus just seeing it as a nice suggestion or meaningful message that we can take out of it, but really not having anything that is necessarily compelling for my life. The two worlds are vast worlds and change our entire approach to Judaism.