Oral Torah vs. Chinese Whispers - Rabbi Yaakov Lynn

[Music] now let's talk for a few minutes with the million-dollar question that always bothers everybody which is what about the Oral Torah good right now by the way before we do that look at the last page is actually some reason got printed in this packet twice it's the second at the fourth page right this is one of my favorite things in the world right this take a look who's number one good number one is a sham right Hashem gave the door it's a right who's number three Joshua what what was the relationship between Moshe and Joshua good Joshua was much as prime student so Moshe Moshe received the door for Michelle and then most I thought the turrets and lots of people and the primal person he taught it to with yoshua Joshua right joshua has the tent up in class we just read about him in the Torah right pimco's better than to le le best attempt to shmuel right cut to number 131 rabbi shmuel reserved ski right Rabbi Shmuel Moravsky was my rabbis rabbi right yeah which means that anything that my rabbi learned from him and then I learned from my rabbi if I would teach it to you right this room would be 133 and 134 right on this list right and there are no breaks here to the years right everything this is a a kite line going all the way from the giving up side the commands are at Mount Sinai to us the truth is are actually probably too many names on here because if you look between like number 58 right and number 94 right that only covers 100 at 230 years that's an awful lot of generations for 200 years those are names of teachers and students but there is some overlap right so we have maybe too many names here but there are no getting no gaps so there's not even fewer than 130 for generations right but this is theater student teacher student how the tour has been passed down till this very room where we're standing and talking with guitar right now that's all very nice except that right you're gonna ask oh wait a second let's say all this is true all right these people really existed which we have evidence all really existed right but who says that the Torah that motion taught to Joshua was the same Tori Tori the judge without tube in class right we've all played the game telephone right are they called Chinese whispers in England I think wit and where I was for the brown cat jumped over the yellow bucket and landed on the red truck right and it goes around the room until it comes back to me is the pink elephant fell off the green cliff into the Yellow Sea right and everybody's are clapping and says that was so funny right so isn't that what happened here so if it is and we're all in the wrong place because that means that all the Oral Torah we have today is not authentic and sounds are you had an amazing experiment that a friend of my did this is that an ncsy convention and c sy is a a youth group right for high school students so he took two rooms right it was a controlled experiment 25 people in each group 25 high school students from around America right and he said with one group he did that game and he said something to person one person one person two to three all the way 25-person 25 said it and it sounded nothing like what person number one said right and it was there laughing and said see that's exactly the Oral Torah went everything we have today is ridiculous because it's all just you know game-changing this particular broken telephone right but then he did it another experiment he took 220 another 25 people and he said okay guys if you get this right I'm going for you a pizza and ice cream party for high school students that's about the coolest thing you could ever have right so they all got very excited right then he said here are the rules i'm going to say i wanted one person number one they say 22 23 24 25 26 all the way to 25 if you get 110 right so then you'll get the pizza and ice cream party so they all groaned and said there's no way we can do it when this game right so he said wait let me tell you the rules rule number one is that when person when I see this sentenced a person number 1 i'm not going to say right here we're going to go into a separate room and i'm going to say i don't got a person number one and purrs number one and i can spend as long as we want to that room but one thing is clear we cannot come out of that room I will not let person number one president to prison number two unless I am comfortable the person everyone has become an expert it right so we go into another room and I say the brown cat jumped over the whatever was right and then they repeat it back to me and they make a little mistake I said no no no try it again I say it test them on it then I take a break of 10 minutes and distract them with something else and then I tell them to do it again and then I make them do it while they're running around the room right this is 0 right people I think actors memorize their lines this way right and keep doing it doing it doing it I'm confident I test the 10 times rotate backwards start in the middle do all kinds of things I'm cuffin you really got this right go ahead you know pass another person number two but first I'm gonna leave the room person number to come in right and then you will train person number to a person number two cannot give over to press number three until you have authorised them right now by the way when person number one does say it over person number two right in the official moment i am going to be watching and i have the opportunity correct if i see the person everyone is getting it wrong and same person reduce passing it's a person over three person number first number one can watch and correct and anything is going wrong right so when they did it that way it took a long time but guess what happened of course they got it perfectly right what's the difference between this in the game of telephone there are two differences no more in the game of telephone I don't care if we get it wrong in fact the more wrong I get it the funnier it's going to be all right this may actually care about and just like those high school kids cared about the pizza of the ice cream right but number two is that not just anybody can pass it on and it up as I go to something you heard once right you're passing uh something that you learned and studied and got tested on and until somebody said you are now qualified to go teach this and difference number three is that the person who told you is going to be listening when you say to the next person all right that's why this worked with that group now let's think about our worlds or gets passed on let's say I would say to you right now everybody I want to know there's a common misconception people think the pork is not kosher but in fact pork is kosher but imagine i was in at you right now and you're also really i see i don't worry i'm a student of this rabbi and you know don't worry about it uh you've now heard from me I'm an Orthodox rabbi y pork is kosher so you say wow that's amazing I never do that and you walk out of this room and everybody says hey let's go out for pork sandwiches so you come back and you get you know big ham sandwiches and you're all sitting in the hallway here eating your ham sandwiches and one of the teachers wats by it says excuse me what are you doing you say Oh Rita or ham sandwiches and they say listen we try to be non-judgmental you're in ave but like maybe you can go sit outside and eat that right so you say why its closure so there are always says wow these are real beginners they don't know that pork isn't kosher no problem explain it to you easy pork isn't culture you don't know a rabbi told us we could eat this so he says oh yeah which rabbi she's a rebel in so then you show up on Sunday to say hey we're driving then go right because that would be the end of me ever being authorised to teach anybody in my name would get all over the Jews world don't ever let the present in he's saying things that are not part of our tradition right so that is everybody else listening right I couldn't just show up and start teaching I meant first of all first somebody have to say okay we've trained you taught you everything you need to know they hadn't go teach and we want you to know if we start hearing weird things that we never taught you right so this power can be revoked right so that's how Oral Torah gets passed on it's not one person who heard something once trying to repeat it it's somebody who became an expert in it passing it on amongst all generation of other experts who are also pressing things on and the previous generation is there to watch it all happen right and they really care about the results right somebody comes and asks me a question rabbi towba does this in the door I mean this or that right so I care what the Torah says I care about our door gets passed on to the next generation I would think long hard about that question if I didn't know the answer i would say i don't know right because i really care about the results right so when all that happens it is very possible for things to give that's passed down perfectly right from generation to generation and so that's how all this has happened okay we will talk about that eventually the Oral Torah dick become written down right I will talk about how that happened and where we can find it today but it started orally and at this point it was teacher passing it to student which means one generation passing on to the next generation ok any questions thoughts porks not kosher just in case you missed that part right yeah ok good we'll continue next time my pleasure [Music] you