It is written in the Talmud, in Menahot 29b: “Rav Judah said in the name of Rab: At the time when Moses ascended to heaven, he found the Kadosh Baruchhu (God) sitting and placing crowns on the letters (of the Torah). And he said to him: Teacher of the world, what is holding back your hand? And God answered him: There will be a man who will come at the end of several generations with the name of Akiva ben Yosef who will investigate every point and every form of the letters (of the Torah) and will bring forth mountains and mountains of laws (halachot). Moses said to God: “Teacher of the world, teach me” and God said to him: Turn around. And Moses went and sat in the eighth row (of Akiva’s academy) and could not understand what was being said. His strength failed him. When they reached a certain point, the students said to him: Rabbi (Akiva), how do you know this? He replied: It is the Law of Moses from Sinai. This calmed his mind. Moses returned to God and said: With a man like this, you chose me to give us the Torah? God replied: Silence. That is how I thought it.”

This is the basis of the development of the oral tradition of Judaism. When Moses asked God why He continued to work on His Torah, God replied that Rabbi Akiva, one of the leaders of the tradition in the second century, was going to decipher these ornaments and discover new laws and interpretations in them. This explanation arouses Moses’ curiosity and he is transported twelve centuries ahead to Akiva’s academy.

Moses is confused by his lack of familiarity with rabbinical law, or rather, with the rabbinical interpretation of the Law of Moses, and his uneasiness makes him feel alien to the very Judaism that he founded. His mind is put at ease when he learns that the rabbis attribute the origin of their laws to him. Although this comforts him, he seems to have no idea how this works.

This legend is a masterpiece in the world of rabbinical explanation of how our laws and traditions can be innovated without violating what is written in the Torah. The rabbis made the belief in the divine origin of the Torah elastic enough to allow innovation but at the same time rigid enough to prohibit radical departures from the original text. They claimed, paradoxically, that they were not introducing anything new, since their laws were inherent to the written Torah, while at the same time accepting that their system of interpretation would be difficult to understand, even for someone like Moses himself.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: “What do Jews Believe? by David S. Ariel.