Within the bounds of Orthodox Judaism it is axiomatic that God gave Moses “two Torahs” at Mt. Sinai: first, the written one, recorded on the scroll we read from during our services and second, an oral “instruction manual” that teaches us how to apply the 613 laws given in the former. According to tradition, Moses conveyed these “keys” to Joshua who handed them down to the Elders, then to the Prophets, and so on in an unbroken chain until documented in the Talmud. To take one prominent example, the fourth of the Ten Commandments requires us “to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,” but apart from the prohibition on “work,” we are given no further directions on what additional activities are prohibited. Nevertheless, the Talmudic rabbis enunciated a long list of such required abstentions, purportedly based on the Oral Torah.
I argue in chapter 1 of my Come Now, Let Us Reason Together that the most compelling understanding of the narrative portions of the Torah is as supremely great literature that provides the blueprint for living a spiritually uplifting and moral life. Hence, while I regard all the books of the Tanakh as divinely inspired, I reject the idea of a real-life Moses and the biblical account of a revelation at Sinai. Accordingly, I also don’t accept the existence of an Oral Torah existing side-by-side with its written counterpart. Rather, I believe that following the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, that terminated Temple-centered worship and cultic sacrifice, the religious leaders (the “Pharisees”) and their followers devised new practices through which Jews could connect with the Almighty. In doing so, the scattered Jewish communities of the diaspora developed diverse traditions and customs that evolved largely independently. This continued until the Talmud was finally redacted in approximately the early 7th century of the common era, following which religious leadership shifted from the Talmudic rabbis to the leader of the Babylonian academies.
This pluralism is recognized and endorsed in the Talmud. One example is the famous story recounted in b. Yevam 14a that reports that two of the great early sages, R. Eliezer and R. Akiva had contrary legal opinions regarding the activities that were permissible on the Sabbath. It relates that when Eliezer visited Akiva he would obey Akiva’s rules and vice-versa. The Talmud than notes that this example was selected because:
one might have thought that the permission to tolerate diverse customs in different places applies only to other prohibitions, whereas the prohibition of Shabbat is so severe that it is unacceptable to allow different customs, as this might lead people to disrespect Shabbat. Therefore, the baraita teaches us that even in the case of Shabbat there can be different customs in various locales.
In other words, the Talmud wishes to emphasize that different traditions are acceptable even in expressing the most important aspects of Jewish practice.
At some point during the Talmudic era, probably some two centuries after the fall of the Second Temple, the notion of the Oral law from Sinai, began to be articulated by the rabbis. This idea implied that these traditions were the word of God and thus mandatory and infallible. However, modern scholars hold that this concept is not inherent in Judaism, and was in fact was grafted on in response to the rise of Christianity because the rabbis wanted to brand as heretics any potential Christians who believed they were not required to conform to tradition. Nevertheless, this impulse did not cause the final editors of the Talmud to retreat from their bold embrace of pluralism.
The upshot of this analysis is that there is no single, right way to express one’s Jewish identity through ritual and that our classic texts grant us permission to find the path that is most meaningful to us. I explore the history and significance of the Oral Law in much greater depth in chapter 4 of the above-mentioned book.