Wrestling With the Origins of the Torah

A year after Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles ignited an international furor by publicly questioning the biblical story of the Exodus, Jews are still arguing.

This week, five rabbis from each of Judaism’s four major movements came together for the first time in Los Angeles to debate the timeless question of who wrote the Torah, the first five books of the Bible that include Exodus. The rabbis agreed: No one knows.

After that, however, they did what rabbis do famously well. They questioned and questioned, argued and argued over everything from whether God or people wrote the sacred Scripture, whether all of it is historically true and why any of this even matters.

Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben, a Reconstructionist Jew and president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, quoted one of his confirmation students as saying the question of who wrote the Torah is less important than why it was written. But many of the other rabbis--who were asked to base their discussion on the book “Who Wrote the Bible?”--disagreed.

“The question of revelation, of who wrote the Torah and what happened at Sinai, is the core issue for the Jewish people,” said Conservative Rabbi Mark Diamond, executive vice president of the rabbinical board, which sponsored the event. “Depending on your answer, it has to inform your Jewish beliefs and practices.”

Reform Rabbi Steven Z. Leder of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles told the 350 people gathered Wednesday at Valley Beth Shalom in Encino that he could not be a believing Jew if he thought that God had literally dictated the Torah. He said the Scripture contains too many exhortations he rejects: that people suffer because they sin, that homosexuals and rebellious children should be stoned, that slavery and concubinage are permissible.

“If you attribute all of this to God as opposed to human beings, I would feel shackled to a theology that I would reject,” Leder said. He made a distinction between the Torah’s supposed facts, some of which he doubts, and its truth, all of which he said he embraces.

Leder’s remarks drew a sharp dissent from Orthodox Rabbi Elazar Muskin of Young Israel of Century City.

Muskin said traditionalists believe that God did dictate the Torah to Moses; but they also believe God handed down an oral tradition that eventually became the Talmud to help believers make sense of the written law.

Although the Torah’s literal passages may exhort the stoning of a “rebellious son,” he said, the oral tradition as compiled in the Talmud says the practice “never was and never will be.” The Deuteronomy passages are meant to teach parenting responsibility and how to avoid raising such a child, Muskin said.

“The traditionalist position is not one of blind faith,” he said. But he added that if he did not believe the Torah was divinely authored, there would be no reason for him to observe its laws.

Although Jews have debated the Torah’s origins for 1,500 years, questions of its historicity exploded last Passover, when Wolpe told his congregants that most modern archeologists agreed that the Exodus did not occur precisely as described in the Bible. The bombshell sermon reverberated around the world, prompting more than 1,000 e-mails, letters and calls to Wolpe.

The impact of that single sermon lingers today. Among other things, Diamond said it opened the door for more rabbis to discuss the issue of the Bible’s historicity with their congregants. Although most non-Orthodox rabbis are trained not to view the Bible as literal truth, Diamond said, they did not often present this to their congregants--mainly because, in his words, such sermons were often “duds.”

“People don’t generally come to synagogue to hear rabbis pick apart sacred Scripture,” he said. “They want to be inspired.”

Conservative Rabbi Mimi Wiesel of the University of Judaism said some of her rabbinical students get upset by her textual analysis, complaining that she is taking God out of the Torah. “What is this that makes us afraid?” she asked the crowd. “What would be missing if we said this book is indeed a compilation of humans?”

That is a question that Wolpe himself says he intends to pursue. The rabbi did not attend the Torah discussion but said in an interview that he remains “unrepentant” about his views.

“I believe in the inexhaustible spiritual richness of these stories and the God who inspired them,” said Wolpe, who is Conservative. “But the insistence on their factuality is, at this point in history, just untenable.”

The rabbi, who is just completing a yearlong Bible study on the issues raised by his sermon last year, said he intends to explore, possibly in a book, why the debate touched such raw nerves in people’s spiritual psyches.

“Something very deep and important was touched on in the whole debate,” he said. “It’s the belief that if the historical claims of their faith aren’t entirely factual, the spiritual claims of their faith cannot be true. That’s what I was arguing against.”

He added that he won’t be preaching on the Exodus this Passover, which starts Wednesday evening. Instead, he’ll be pleading for major humanitarian aid for Israel and the mounting toll of victims of the current Mideast violence.

At the Torah event, which was sponsored by KOCHAV, a rabbinical board initiative that promotes trans-denominational programming, the Exodus was not discussed either. Instead, both the rabbis and the small-group discussions focused on the biblical flood story.

At one table, six Conservative members of Temple Aliyah in Woodland Hills, one Reform Jew and two unaffiliated Jews agreed that the story seemed to have at least two authors. Among other things, noted Debby and Norman Frank of Tarzana, one part of the story said God asked for one pair of each creature and another part said seven pairs were called for.

Leder told the crowd that even his 9-year-old daughter, Hannah, knew that God didn’t actually get all those animals on a boat. When she first asked about it, he says, he told her that even if the facts of the story weren’t true, its truth was: the need to assume responsibility for all creatures on Earth.

In remarks after the panel, Muskin said anyone who understands Hebrew would see that the story bears no inconsistencies. The single pair of animals came to the ark, according to the Hebrew, but the seven pairs were taken.

Therefore, he said, Noah took seven pairs and allowed the others to come of their own accord. Somehow, everyone managed to squeeze into the ark.

“Miracles happen,” the bearded and bespectacled rabbi said, shrugging.

It is safe to say they will keep arguing.