22 August, 2025 16:45

You know, the there’s these, digital world things, or just maybe, in general, there’s this idea of a cheat code, you know, some way to kind of go around the system the rules, you know, cheat the game, you like, figure it out, and then you’re like, I could get to the end stage and then, or you can win the game, but you have to win the game. You cheat so and then you’re like, feel good about it even though you cheated. You’re like, see how smart I am. I figured out the cheat code. So Torah, not Torah, exactly, but Oral Torah has kind of like these cheat codes. We could call it a kind of cheat code to call hard, nearly impossible questions.

So one of the cheat codes of the Torah, or teaching Torah, is that the Torah is written in the language of man. I think that’s one of the most ancient oral teachings. We’re speaking specifically of the Five books when I say the Torah, that the Torah is written in the language of man. So, whenever there’s, a difficult posuk, I don’t know, whenever the Torah is talking about God having arms or legs or being jealous, being angry, and all these anthropomorphisms, all these like human traits that the Torah itself puts on God. You can always have this kind of cheat code, and say, Oh well, the Torah is written in the is written in the language

of man.

The whole can’t really take the Torah literally, but yet we believe every word, all the Torah is true, and every letter is the secret of the universe, and all these heavy, big topics. When the Torah says, you know, these things, but we’re not supposed to take it completely literally, such as an eye for an eye burn for a burn, but you know, then we have these, I guess you can’t really call the oral traditions a cheat code, but it’s kind of a cheat code to say, well, the Torah doesn’t really mean that, and there has to be two witnesses, and has actually meant monetary punishments. And you could see by these other verses that it actually meant

monetary punishments.

The punishment of an eye for eye, burn for a burn, should be monetary. And isn’t it kind of obvious that you would never cut off a person’s hand? Because how could you really, even though we have a slave system, and on the slave box, you could get to the value of a person. And even in modern terms, of course, we have actuary tables in the insurance industry, which puts monetary values, and if, of course, you get injured on the job, that you could sue for monetary damages. Let’s say I trip and fall on my job. And sprained my knee. I could sue my company, and they’d have to come up with some sort of payment. How much is my payment due to being injured on the job? We do know that there are payments, and there is a payment system for injuries. Lt’s say I twisted my knee at my work. I l tripped over a chair or somebody slipped down the stairs. So I wouldn’t push another person just to get back at them. An eye for an eye .. someone would argue to take that literally and teach that I should push somebody else down the stairs, but that’s not what we do. We don’t push other people. You know, just because I got injured doesn’t mean I should injure somebody else. But the Torah itself says, an eye for an eye burn for burn. So, if somebody pokes my eye, I could poke their eye. And we don’t do that, and we shouldn’t. Why does the torah even do that? So again, you can have these little cheat codes. I’m not really saying it’s a cheat code, it is sort of like a cheat code that, oh well, we have this oral explanation, but the Torah doesn’t put the oral explanation inside the Torah itself. So I don’t know, like having slaves, you know, but the Torah really, as you could see from the oral explanations, that really it’s super difficult to have a slave, and that you have to treat the slave, and if you take out a slave’s tooth, you have to let it free. But it’s really only talking about Canaanite, non Jewish slaves and not a Hebrew slave. There’s different rules for Hebrew slaves. Of course, the Torah doesn’t go into all these differences between Hebrew slaves and non Hebrew slaves. It’s what the oral tradition tells us. But you’d have to read all the commentary, all the Talmud, in order, to know. And then you have to be well, only a rabbi could teach you that. So there’s all these little, not so little, concepts inside the Torah that we could only, quote, unquote, know. If you go to some you have to go to some expert to tell you what the Torah really means, but then, like, wait a minute, but doesn’t the Talmud itself argue with itself? And aren’t there 1000s of opinions, and how do you know who the real opinion is? So again, you have this cheat code, another cheat code, inside of Judaism. Well, you know, you don’t really follow one opinion you know, you have these Torah halachic authorities, and you’re not really supposed to follow, the the rule of one person, except, of course, Rabbi Mayer, Rabbi Meir, is this exception. So there’s all these little things inside of the Yeshiva system, or you go to seminary, and then they kind of say these things, and you don’t really, it doesn’t really sink in. And then you read the verses of the Bible, and you’re. Well, I don’t understand, wait a minute, the Torah says such and such.

You know, sometimes there’s these quote, unquote, weirdos in Sefad, where they lmarry more than one wife at the same time. And then their whole explanation is, well, the the, the Torah, al pi din, I’m allowed to have more than one wife … but wait a minute, the rabbanut doesn’t allow even in Israel, you can’t marry more than one woman. And then the guy’s like. Oh, I don’t follow the Rabbinate. I have my own rabbi, you know, and see this specific postik and my community, he married me so and also in the Torah says I’m allowed to have more than one wife. You say to the guy but listen, you know, there’s a takana against having more than one wife, and all of Ashkenazi Judaism accepted it. And then the guy will say, well, but that takana kind of ended, and that’s his whole excuse, so he’s already rationalized this decision to have more than one wife, and there’s actually real, true stories of this. Apparently it only happens in Sefad. It’s probably not only Sefad. Now, people who came to Israel from countries like Yemen or Iran, or, you know, basically the whole Sephardi, Mizrahi, North Africa, Iran, you know, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and they had more than one wife. Um, they were allowed to keep their wives. They didn’t have to divorce when they came in the 40s, 50s and 60s, they weren’t, they didn’t have to divorce those wives that they had. It probably wasn’t that many people with more than one wife, because it’s really hard to maintain more than one wife, The Torah allows it. I mean, you could always make the argument, hey, I can have more than one wife, and the Torah says it. Aren’t we supposed to believe that the Torah says it? So how do you know when to take the Torah literally and when you’re supposed to follow oral traditions that were written down?

I’m supposed to believe the Torah is true. So again, so then the rabbis, or the, you know, whoever you’re talking to, always have this counter argument. Well, we have oral explanations, but the oral explanations are not inside the Torah. They’re not even the Tanakh and well, but see you getting learned from this pusuk over here and this pusuk over there, and then, you know, and somebody will pull up the Talmud and they’ll explain to you. But the Talmud, of course, has those people in the Talmudic times still had multiple wives. And in fact, everybody had was allowed to have multiple wives until it was banned in the Ashkenazi world. You can obviously tell that it wasn’t really meant to stick around, because all of Ashkenazi Judaism, which includes all the men, just were hey, you know what this sounds like a really good idea to only have one wife. And they basically accepted it across all of Europe. And they didn’t have WhatsApp, you know. So, how did the message get around and somebody could say, somebody could make the argument well, but like that goes against my minhag, My father, had more than one wife, and all of a sudden, one day, like the whole, the whole Jewish community, just stopped? How long did it take not having more than one wife, to actually sink into all of European Judaism? We’re talking like 40 countries in Europe, you know, it’s not, it wasn’t just in like one little shtetl and and like Eastern Europe, or wherever the, you know, Gershwin of Worms, I guess, is the center of Germany. So, does that only apply to Jews from Ashkenaz, which is you know, Ashkenaz is like central Germany or France. No, the ban was accepted across all of Europe. And at the time of the 900 when this Tekken was stated, it wasn’t, there was no such thing as, like, you know, Hasidim, you know. So it’s just, I mean, there were, but not in the way that we think of it. There were actually Hasidim. It’s written about in the year 1000 or whatever. Of course, they were in Germany, they roll around the snow, and they would try to cure themselves of their sins by like, kind of these, like strange and unusual punishments that they would do to, like, be or, you know, they jump up and down, and they do all these things that it’s written about, you’d have to, like, look into it, do your own research.

What I’m trying to say, is there’s these little like cheat codes to understand the Torah, but you can only know them, like, if you’re just this, like, regular everyday Jew, and you’re, like, growing up and, like, I don’t even, how do you even teach that to elementary kids. you know, like this whole thread and on X about how do you teach the problem of evil? The problem of evil, how do you teach that? How do you teach God, really, to children, like little children. I’m talking like, you know, first I don’t know, cheder kids, or like, first grade or second graders, third graders. I mean, even somebody as young as 10 or 11 years old kind of knows that there’s bad things that happen, like mommy or daddy could die or get cancer or, their aunt or uncle or their grandmother.Maybe a little younger doesn’t fully understand death, and doesn’t only fully understand evil, but like, all of a sudden your grandmother, great grandmother, is not around anymore your grandfather. I don’t know, you’re in first or second grade, and your grandparents die, or a great grandparents, you know, passes away, or somebody you know passes away.

I remember my great grandmother died when maybe six, seven or eight years old. I guess I could look into it. But the point is, all of a sudden this person isn’t in your life anymore, and your mom has to explain to you what death is. And so how do you teach God, how do you teach? How do you teach big concepts to little children? And so, you know, it’s kind of just something. So, what is it? The cheat code. The whole system of teaching children religion with, you know, that has gigantic concepts of problems of evil. Like, the problem of evil is like, I mean, almost – it is. Impossible to understand because we can’t comprehend God. So how do you teach an incomprehensible idea to little children? And then you end up making God into a person. You end up making God into a man or him. You know, always refer to God as our Father in heaven. And you kind of paint this picture of like, this person that sits up in heaven is like, as if God, like sits on it, and God sits on a throne, and the throne of glory and, and you have yom Ha’din. You’re five, six, if you go to the cheder system, they are teaching these concepts to like, they’re, you know, inside of the gans and the mishpatim using these songs that they sing to little kids. And then the thing is, these ideas stick with you your whole life, you, stuck with these ideas that God’s like this person that sits up in heaven and is a man, and God has anger, and God and what are we supposed to do to not make God angry? Well, we have to do the mitzvot. And if we do the mitzvah, we make God happy. Like God’s this slot machine in the sky, that if we just put enough quarters in it, we pull we pull the lever enough like then everything’s gonna work out. And then when things don’t work out, when your mom gets sick, your dad gets sick, your aunt, your uncle, your sister, your sister in law, people get sick. Their little babies get cancer, leukemia. There’s all these horrors in the world. You know, a nuclear bomb gets dropped on Nagasaki. And you grew up in the United States in the 1950s and 60s, and they tell you that a nuclear bomb is going drop on your school, the Russians. And how do you so, you teach that the world is this truly horrible place, yet God is All Good?

And yet you’re like, you’re still like, but God, you

know, if I just believe in God, if I just pray to God, just enough, you know, if I do these mitzvah all these bad things won’t happen, but bad things still happen. Bad things are real. There really is evil in the world. Hitler really did exist. Doesn’t matter how many mitzvot I do, people were murdered in the Shoah. They did plenty of Mitzvah and davened plenty of times, and put on tephilan. They went to the mikvah, plenty of dati Shomer, Shabbat, quote, unquote, Haredi Orthodox people died in the Shoah. So how do you explain that? Where was God? How do I believe in a God? So that’s why you need these kinds of cheat codes, right? So you need, a secondary message that’s almost a primary message that gets around

the hardest problems inside of religion