Secrets in the Scroll of Esther

Good copying protocols in order to carefully preserve G_d’s written Word is not the same thing as ascribing “meaning to sizes, shapes, crowns, or to derive that the names of letters are loaded with infinite meaning”.

We're not talking about "copying protocols." We're talking about rules and regulations for transcribing the Torah that include what it may be written on, what kind of ink may be used, AND the sizes and shapes of the letters. If a letter is written larger or smaller than usual, if it has a certain number of crowns, it is because that is precisely the way G-d wanted it written and to remove a single crown or to fail to transcribe the letter at the right size completely negates the whole thing. It isn't a kosher Sefer Torah unless it is written 100% in conjunction with all of G-d's (oral) laws for doing so.

Again, I can understand why you as a Protestant object to this. To you the Bible was written only for "salvation" and thus can have no hidden meanings whatsoever. Its meaning must be simple, clear, and practically self-evident. As a Protestant once put it "Scripture hath only one sense, and that is the plain sense." What your beliefs will not let you do is to recognize that the Torah wasn't given to the whole world to teach them about "salvation" but to Israel to observe and keep and to study at ever higher levels. And because the Torah (and not J*sus) is the "logos," it contains the entire creation in miniature. It preceded the creation and was the model for creation.

If you reject the hidden meanings of the letters, then I suppose you also reject the idea that Mordekhai and 'Ester could have possibly written about the executions of the ten Nazi war criminals 2300 years ahead of time?

Are you aware that the original Biblical text has no vowels or punctuation but that these come from oral tradition? Are you aware that before the printing press Torah Scrolls and other Biblical books had to be written by hand in accordance with ancient rules that are nowhere to be found in the Bible itself? By your logic, the very transmission of the Biblical text is invalid since it involves rules not written in the Bible. I do understand that the Hebrew letters have numerical values and that there are apocalyptic meanings given to some numbers - but, other than that, I don’t see what you are describing as ever practiced by Moses or the Prophets.

Rusty, the Oral Law (part of the Talmud) was given by G-d to Moses on Mt. Sinai - that's why he was up there for 40 days. The Oral Law (or Oral Torah) is, essentially, the regulations for the written Torah (i.e. The Law), and is every bit as much a part of Jewish law as the written Torah. Here's one simple example of why it is necessary: Jewish men are commanded to wear tefillin (phylacteries) in the Torah. However, nowhere in the written Torah is there a description of what - exactly - those are, how they are made, what prayers are said when putting them on, awhen they cease to be good, etc. However, the Oral Law has just such a series of instructions. FYI, the multitude of commentaries to the Oral Law were efforts by rabbis, over the course of many centuries, to fully understand and implement those rules while being faithful to G-d's law.

Similarly, the EXACT meanings of the words and letters (with crowns, etc.) isn't apparent from the words of the written Torah itself - but there is nothing present in the Torah for no reason - though we may not understand it. More to the point, there is a very good reason why every single Torah must be faithfully copied with no additions or subtractions - because G-d commanded it and He did so because there was/is hidden meaning there.

The Hebrew Scriptures are far more complex than anyone who hasn't studied it in depth can fathom. I do not pretend to have studied them in depth, but I have a good idea of the complexity and fantastic amount of detail involved. The fact that the Vilna Gaon (the Genius of Vilna) studied the Talmud and other writings for his entire life is some indication of the complexity involved. FYI, the Vilna Gaon was a very famous rabbi of the 18th century who had memorized both the Torah and the entire Talmud - the Oral Torah plus its multitude of commentaries - by age 3. Yes, he was a genius, almost beyond our comprehension, and is widely considered to have been the greatest Torah scholar of modern times. Also FYI, Leonard Nimoy was one of his many thousands of descendants.

The words you see in English in a Bible that was (mis)translated from Latin, which in turn was (mis)translated from Greek, which in turn was (mis)translated from Aramaic, which in turn was (mis)translated from ancient Hebrew - those words are not reflective of the true message of the 5 Books of Moses or the Prophets or the Psalms. Even if they were, the meaning you or I see is only the very top layer. As mentioned above, brilliant men have studied this subject for a lifetime and not scratched the surface. Why? Because the mind of G-d cannot be limited or understood by us mere humans.

So, my question would be then, if nothing we read in an English translation is reliable, and really, even if one studies Hebrew and attempts to translate it into another language that that too, is also going to be misinterpreted - how do you know if someone, including a rabbi, isn’t just making stuff up?

What is the standard by which to identify counterfeit “messages” from G_d from His true Word? Which, by the way, He does command us to do.

I see no difference in this from extreme Pentecostals who give supposed “revelations from G_d” to scripture passages without regard to the historical context, or to the context within the Scriptures themselves. It also sounds like Muslims who say no one can truly understand the Koran because the very letters in Arabic have meaning that we cannot understand.

Leaving aside hyperbole, the traditional Jewish explanation for a text must come from an accepted authority, the more ancient the better.

Many texts have more than one traditional meaning attached to them, or are acknowledged as unexplained or incompletely understood.

No one gets to claim the Holy Spirit gave them a previously unknown meaning.

Personal interpretations that are meant to reinforce some moral point are in the category of homilies and not intended to delimit a text’s meaning. People do sometimes mistake homilies for doctrine; it seems to happen in a lot of religions, Judaism included.

Being at home in the language and utter familiarity with the Talmud and rest of the Oral Tradition and the rulings of the Gedolim. I'm afraid you're imposing your Protestant worldview on Orthodox Jews.

What is the standard by which to identify counterfeit “messages” from G_d from His true Word? Which, by the way, He does command us to do.

What makes you think that a translation is "His true Word?" Do you believe all Bible translations are inspired? Or perhaps just some of them? How do you know which ones are inspired?

re: “What makes you think that a translation is “His true Word?”

I don’t believe that a translation is “His true Word”. But, you are saying that ancient Hebrew is “untranslatable” to English (or any other language) and that it is impossible give any real understanding of the text with a translation?

Re: “Do you believe all Bible translations are inspired?”

I don’t believe that ANY translations are “inspired” - only the original text is inspired (which we don’t have - so we have to rely on the best manuscripts available). I do believe that some translations are more accurate than others. I have to rely on the critical reviews of the scholarship of the translation committees that produced a given translation. I understand that there are some translations that try to be more “word for word”, and others go for more flowing readability.

I think it is unreasonable to assume that all translations are bogus. I speak and write English, but I also studied German and became quite fluent in it (many years ago). When translating from one language to another one must take into account a lot of things: time period in which it was written, grammar, the region the German text came from, idioms, colloquialisms, context, etc. One can produce a fairly accurate translation of German into English - which usually must be updated as English itself changes over the decades. Isn’t that the same with Hebrew? I realize we are talking about an ancient language, and I do understand the importance of the Oral Tradition - especially in regard to the vowel points being added centuries later after the originals were made. In addition, you have the same issues with Hebrew as with any other language - idioms, historical context, grammar, etc.

Re: “How do you know which ones are inspired?”

As I said, I don’t believe any of the translations are inspired, only the original manuscripts - but, that doesn’t mean that there are not reliable manuscripts (thousands of Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, manuscripts with which to compare) from which accurate translations can be made.

In a way, all languages are mutually untranslatable. But this doesn't prevent people making do. The Bible, however, as a Divine book, is a special case. It's not just a newspaper article or a cookbook. Furthermore, all a translation can give you is the surface meaning. There is far, far, far more to the Bible than the surface meaning.

First of all there are the four senses: peshat (plain), derash (homiletical), remez (allusions in the letters), and sod (secret). Every one of these is important. And more than this, since the Torah contains at some level the blueprint of the entire created universe, including the details of the life of every human being, animal, and "all that grows or is inert" (Vilna Ga'on).

Then you have the sizes, shapes, crowns, and numerical values in the letters. Then you have the spaces among the letters. You can't get all this by machine-printing a translation. This is a book which G-d wrote and dictated letter-for-letter, and every letter is there for a reason. A change in a single letter invalidates and entire scroll.

A fat lot of good it does to have the only inspired transcriptions lost to history for over 3000 years! In fact, the Oral Torah contains all the laws for correctly transcribing and copying a Torah Scroll so that all its letters are correct in identity, size, shape, etc. This, and not some medieval pointed text, is our authentic link with the original scrolls Moses wrote at G-d's dictation. And as I have pointed out, none of these laws are in the Written Torah. So if there's no Oral Torah, the only Written Torahs in history would be the ones Moses wrote personally and which decayed millennia ago.

Now the point you are trying to make in objecting to the idea that the Torah/Na"KH contains all this information is your Protestant insistence that the Bible has only one purpose: to get folks "saved." This is why you must insist on the perspicacity of Scripture and its easy apprehension by a sixteenth century German milkmaid. Since this is what your religion dictates, of course you are going to believe this and insist that any deeper message is unnecessary or even "unfair." But the fact is that the Bible was not written to instruct in chrstian "salvation" at all. Chrstianity has appropriated the Hebrew Bible and insisted on eisegeting chrstianity into it. As a matter of fact, the translation of the Torah into languages other than Hebrew is one of the things mourned on the fast day of `Aseret Be'Tevet.

Bottom line: None of this information G-d put in the Hebrew Bible communicates any secret information about how to "get saved," so you have nothing to worry about there. That being the case, why are we even arguing? Why is it so important that someone who rejects the idea that the TaNa"KH is a chrstian book at all thinks it contains information that you don't? It simply doesn't make any sense.

Re: “Now the point you are trying to make in objecting to the idea that the Torah/Na”KH contains all this information is your Protestant insistence that the Bible has only one purpose: to get folks “saved.” This is why you must insist on the perspicacity of Scripture and its easy apprehension by a sixteenth century German milkmaid.”

I do believe that if G_d has given us His Word, then I would also assume that He does want it to be understood. I don’t see any reason to assume that that understanding should be limited to only a few highly educated people. Isn’t it a teaching in the Torah that G_d is not just the G_d of Israel, but of the whole world?

The people of Israel are His chosen people, but He also created all human beings and the judgements described against the pagan peoples were because of their refusal to acknowledge Him. My point being, that I don’t believe that it is just my Christian worldview that would have me believe that G_d wants His Word to be understood by anyone who revered Him and wanted to know Him.

Re: “But the fact is that the Bible was not written to instruct in chrstian “salvation” at all. Chrstianity has appropriated the Hebrew Bible and insisted on eisegeting chrstianity into it. As a matter of fact, the translation of the Torah into languages other than Hebrew is one of the things mourned on the fast day of `Aseret Be’Tevet.”

Now we arrive at the crossroads - who is Jesus of Nazareth? If Jesus was who the Gospel accounts claim - not only Messiah, but also G_d in human form, who took on the sin of all mankind and died as the Lamb of G_d as a propitiation for that sin - both Jew and Gentile alike, then yes, absolutely the Torah, the Law and the Prophets, the Psalms do indeed, as you say, have a salvation message.

However, if Jesus is not who the Gospels claim, then you are right, Christians have “appropriated the Hebrew Bible and insisted on eisegeting chrstianity into it.” But, that’s the million dollar question, isn’t it.

re: “Care to continue this volleyball game?”

I do not believe the Bible is only about “christian salvation”. I believe the Bible was written by G_d to reveal who He is - His nature, His character, His holiness, His justice, His love, His judgement, His will for all mankind - to know Him, to worship Him, to serve Him, and yes, to “save us”, Jew and Gentile from our sin nature.

As to a volleyball game, not really. But, I have enjoyed discussing this subject with you. I admit I did not know that there your view was a common one among Orthodox Judaism. I appreciate your candor and respectful conversation. I pray all G_d’s blessings and peace on Israel and Jerusalem.

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