Is the Oral Torah written down? Or just passed down through word of mouth??? I’m just curios is all. There is no real Jewish community to speak of, where I live. If there was I’d be trying to take some sort of classes to learn more. I use to live in DC for years, but, now live about as far north as you can get without being in Canada and there is not much here.
The "Oral Torah" was originally that--oral. Originally it, along with the Talmudic logic that accompanied it, was passed down from father to son and teacher to disciple, often in the very same words in which it had been received. However, during the reign of the evil emperor Hadrian (rot his bones!), when the Oral Torah was literally threatened with extension, it began to be written down (which was permitted in just such a case). The first was the Mishnah, which was frozen in its modern form by Rabbi Yehudah HaNasi' (and later written down in that very form). This was followed by the two Gemara's, the Yerushalmi and the Bavli (the Bavli is the normative one). Since that time the Oral Torah has been studied in this form, known as the Talmud.
Have you ever noticed how sparse the Written Torah is? It says nothing about the afterlife, about the world to come, and contains, on the face of it, very little prophecy (though all these things are buried within it at very deep levels). For forty years in the desert the Jews studied the Torah and all its details (RaMBa"M describes the process) before the twelve tribal scrolls were ever written down shortly before Moses' death.
The Written Torah has no vowels and no punctuation. Without the Oral Torah (which preserves the correct vocalization and punctuation) it would be indecipherable.
The Torah commands that certain sacrifices be "heaved" and others to be "waved." There are even occasions when people are "waved." Yet the Written Torah contains no instructions whatsoever for just what this "heaving" and "waving" consists of. They are found in the Oral Torah, without which these instructions of the Written Torah could not be carried out.
Exodus Chapter 12 begins with the words "this shall be the first month of the year to you." Almost everyone knows that the Jewish calendar is based on the moon, yet these few words are all that is recorded in the Written Torah about the Jewish calendar. Just what constitutes the "new moon?" Did Moses use an Old Farmer's Almanac? Instead G-d gave Moses a very complicated system for reckoning the months and new moons, yet you won't find anything about it in the Written Torah.
I hope this helps to explain.