Taking Judaism Seriously Again

Jonathan Zasloff’s article “WhatAre You Doing for Asarah B’Av?” might have come as a shock to somereaders of the Jewish Journal. Opening with the provocative summonsto have a Jewish hoedown on the 10^th of Av (a day, not incidentally,when our Temple continued burning, for which reason certain halachicrestrictions remain in force on the morning of the 10^th ofAv), Zasloff writes: “The time has come for us to acknowledge thedirty little secret of Tisha B’Av: The destruction of the Temple wasone of the best things ever to happen to the Jewish people.”

He adds: “Had the Temple actually survived,it would have meant the destruction of the Jewish religion. Our religiousand spiritual practices would have centered not on Torah, but ratheron bloody sacrifices,” when Judaism was a cultic worship propagatedby a “priestly cult,” making Tisha B’Av “not a tragedy but moreakin to our people’s bar mitzvah.”

There is nothing in these sentimentsthat should surprise anyone; they reflect the well worn beliefs of progressiveJudaism and its outlook on the Torah, i.e. the idea that the Torah isa fraud that is not what it purports to be. For roughly 200 years therehave been just two mutually exclusive perspectives regarding the Torah.(1) The Torah was written by Moses; or (2) the Torah was originallywritten by multiple authors who never met each other, who contradictedeach other, who even hated each other, and who invented their storiesfor political purposes.

The first perspective is generally acceptedby Orthodox Jews and the second perspective is believed by academicsin universities throughout the Western world and liberal Jewish rabbiswho teach or are taught that the Bible is an amalgamation of contradictorysources and myth, jam-packed with ancient and outdated practices.

So which of these competing views iscorrect? The answer to this question matters a great deal to religiousand secular Jews, and to anyone who loves truth. If the Bible had multipleauthors, there is no reason for anyone to take it seriously since, ata minimum, multiple authorship would establish that the Torah is untruthfulabout its own claim that Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, ledthem to Mount Sinai where they heard the Ten Commandments, and thenwrote the entire Torah over a 40-year period.

And if the Torah is not the book thatMoses wrote (by Divine dictation), but rather a book that Hebrew politicians— or members of a priestly cult — wrote to feather their ancientnests, why should you or I live by its onerous demands? Let Zasloffand his friends chant Rambam in Arabic (as he proposes) to the tuneof Kumbayah. We (who are Orthodox Jews) will take off our kippot anddrive to the beach on Shabbat, or catch a movie, or something otherthan sit in shul all day and learn difficult texts in a foreign language— if Judaism is nothing but a bunch of made up fairy tales

The destruction of the Temple was a greatnational tragedy. The great leaders and Torah sages of the time institutedobservances that would help us focus on the underlying reasons for thedestruction — the baseless hatred, the failure of our peopleto love our fellow Jews as ourselves (news flash to Zasloff: our religion was based on Torah, not “bloody sacrifices,” as his own citationof Rabbi Akiva’s scholarship makes abundantly clear). Zasloff wouldbe closer to the mark if he said only that we can derive good from thistragedy by learning these lessons and uniting according to Torah preceptsand values.

The biggest barrier to doing so todayis the fact that many, if not most, Jewish religious leaders no longerbelieve in the Torah’s authenticity. If progressive Jews, followingthe academic view of the multiple authorship of the Torah, are correct,then the Torah is fictitious, unreliable and unworthy of the demandsit makes of us. Caught in the crossfire are synagogue members and collegestudents who trust in their leaders (clergy or professors) a littletoo much, fearing to delve into esoteric concepts and make up theirown minds.

Contemporary American Jews owe it tothemselves to investigate whether or not the Torah is a fraud, and toask their religious leaders their answer to this question. Then theycan decide for themselves whether they want to gyrate to the Kaddishd’Rabbanan with Jonathan Zasloff, or take Judaism seriously.

Eyal Rav-Noy, director of the JewishLearning Academy, an outreach center in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood,and journalist Gil Weinreich are authors of the new book Who ReallyWrote the Bible: and Why It Should be Taken Seriously Again. Theycan be reached at www.WhoReallyWroteTheBible.com.