by Avi Feldblum

Parshat Bereshit opens the Torah at the beginning — the creation of the world, the garden, the first humans. In October 1985, Avi Feldblum — a researcher at AT&T's Engineering Research Center in Princeton — used the occasion to introduce newcomers to the net.religion.jewish D'var Torah project he coordinated: a weekly scholarly commentary on the Torah portion, addressed to whoever might be reading on the still-new Usenet.

This essay opens with the Ramban (Nachmanides, 1194–1270) and his famous image of Moses not writing in the first person, but as a scribe copying from a text that preceded creation itself — letters of black fire on white fire. Feldblum then traces the Ramban's teaching that all knowledge, including the 49 gates of understanding, is encoded in the Torah's letters, their forms, and their numerical values.

The heart of the essay is a Talmudic story from Menachot 29b: Moses ascends to heaven, finds God attaching crownlets to the letters, and is shown Rabbi Akiba teaching in the future — mountains of laws derived from those very crownlets. Moses sits in the eighth row, unable to follow the discussions, and is deeply grieved. Then a student asks Akiba the source of his teaching. "This is a law given to Moses on Mount Sinai," Akiba answers — and Moses is content.

Feldblum uses this medrash to address two attitudes toward the Oral Law that recur in every generation: the belief that one can figure everything out from the Torah alone, without tradition; and the belief that the tradition is outmoded and irrelevant. Both, he argues, miss what the story is showing. The chain runs from Moses to Akiba whether or not Moses can follow it — and it is precisely because it runs there that Akiba's most daring derivations are valid.

I would like to take this space (as we are at the first Parsha of the Torah) to make a few comments about the Dvar Torah project to those who may have joined the net this academic year. The Dvar Torah project is a joint effort by several individuals coordinated by myself to put a Dvar Torah based on the weekly Torah reading on the net each week. Anyone who has comments or questions is invited to send me email. I will try to respond in some reasonable time frame.

As this is the beginning of the Torah, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss the Ramban's introduction to the Torah. The Ramban's commentary to the Torah is one of the classic commentaries on the Torah, and has been translated into English by Rabbi C.B. Chavel (published by Shilo Publishing House, 1971).

The Ramban's Introduction

The Ramban in his introduction to his commentary on the Torah begins with the following statement concerning the authorship of the Torah:

Moses our teacher wrote this book of Genesis together with the whole Torah from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He.

The Ramban then comments that the Torah did not begin by saying "And G-d spoke to Moses all these words, saying." Moses did not write the Torah in the first person, as opposed to the prophets who did (see e.g. Ezekiel 3:16, Jeremiah 1:4). The book of Deuteronomy appears to be the exception, where Moses does speak about himself in the first person. But if one looks at the very beginning of the book, it starts "These are the words which Moses spoke unto all Israel." Thus Moses is like one who narrates things in the exact language in which they were spoken.

The reason for this is that the Torah preceded the creation of the world, and our tradition is that it was written with letters of black fire upon a background of white fire. Thus Moses was like a scribe who copies from an ancient book and therefore wrote anonymously.

The Ramban then says that G-d informed Moses of all things, starting with the creation of the world. The Sages alluded to this saying that 49 gates of understanding were transmitted to Moses. All of this is also included in the Torah, either explicitly or by implication in words, in the numerical value of the letters or in the form of the letters.

Moses in Rabbi Akiba's Classroom

The Ramban brings as illustration the following Medrash (found in Menachot 29b):

When Moses ascended to heaven he found the Holy One, blessed be He, attaching crownlets to certain letters of the Torah. He said to Him, "What are these for?" He said to him, "One man is destined to interpret mountains of laws on their basis." Moses said to G-d, "Show me this man." G-d showed him Rabbi Akiba sitting with eight ranks of disciples. Moses sat down in the eighth rank but was not able to follow the discussions, a fact which deeply grieved him. But then he heard the disciples asking Rabbi Akiba, "Whence do you know this?" He answered them: "This is a law given to Moses on Mount Sinai." Now Moses was content.

While it is easy to sort of read this medrash as an "interesting" story, I think that there are some important concepts that we can better understand from it. There are two attitudes that some people may develop toward the Masorah (tradition) and the Oral Law that the medrash may be targeting.

The first is that "I" am smart enough to figure everything out from the Torah by myself without the guide of the Oral Law. The second is that the Law is outmoded and no longer relevant to today's world.

Taking the first attitude: Rabbi Akiba's fame was his ability to derive things from understanding. Yet he answers his disciples that the source — "Whence do you know this?" — is the unbroken link of tradition that goes back to what Moses received on Sinai.

The second is a somewhat more speculative interpretation of the medrash. It is based on my understanding of Moses, who was taught the Torah by G-d, not understanding the discussions of Rabbi Akiba and his disciples. In each period, there are issues and problems that may be literally incomprehensible to someone of a far earlier generation. The strength of the Oral Law is that even if a Moses cannot understand what a Rabbi Akiba is talking about, the principles used and the source of validity of the law is traced back to — "This is a law given to Moses on Mount Sinai."

Wishing everyone a Shabbat Shalom.

Colophon

Written by Avi Feldblum (A.Y. Feldblum), AT&T Engineering Research Center, Princeton, NJ. Posted to net.religion.jewish, Thursday, October 10, 1985. Article-ID: erc3ba.158. Feldblum was the coordinator of the net.religion.jewish D'var Torah project, which produced weekly Torah commentary throughout the 1985–1986 academic year and beyond. This essay introduced the project to newcomers at the start of the annual Torah reading cycle.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected].

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