Dear Danny,



Your strange words appear even in the medrash: “R’ Judah the son of Shalom said: When G-d said to Moses ‘Write for yourself these things’ Moses asked that the teaching be in writing. G-d foresaw that the nations of the world would in the future translate the Torah and read it in Greek and would say ‘We are Israel.’ Up until then the scales were balanced [there was no way to make a distinction between Israel and the other nations]. G-d said to the gentiles: ‘You say you are My sons, but only those who have my secrets are My sons.’ What is this [secret]? The teaching which was passed down orally” (Medrash Tanchuma on the portion of Ki Tisa, section 34).

G-d wrote a revealed Torah but implied something hidden and secret. To illustrate the strangeness we will bring an example: G-d wrote in the Torah “they will make a count of 40” but meant 39. All this was just to keep the nations of the world from claiming that they are the true sons of Israel. Ibn Ezra wrote about this strange manner of writing (Daniel 1:1), saying that it is insane.

I have a question for you. Why does G-d hide His supreme intentions from all of humanity? Why does G-d keep the gentiles from knowing and recognizing His secrets?



Sincerely,



Daat Emet

Dear Shimon,



The rabbis were aware of this strange thing, that the Torah goes on at length about irrelevant matters like “The sister of Lotan was Timna” (Genesis 36:22). They asked, “Did Moses have nothing better to write than ‘the sister of Lotan was Timna’?” (Sanhedrin 99b).

Similarly, the Torah takes pains to tell of the foot-washings of Abraham’s servant and his men (Genesis 24:32) while fundamental commandments practiced in day-to-day life are not detailed in the Torah. In the Mishnah it is written (Chagigah 1:8) “The laws of the Sabbath are as mountains dangling from thin strands, for there is little Scriptures and a great deal of commandments.”

Even Ibn Ezra (on Exodus 12:2) raised this question: “It is to be wondered about this greatly. The Torah details all the commandments of those contaminated with leprosy, which is for a single person and not for all time, yet neglected the matter of festivals and holidays, which all Israel are obligated to celebrate for all time, including the punishment of karet for the eating of leaven food on Passover and of any food at all on the Day of Atonement.”



There are many explanations for this odd phenomenon. We will bring two of them:

Rav Acha learns from this phenomenon that that irrelevant stories are more beloved to G-d than the body of the commandments. It is written: R’ Acha said: preferable is the rinsing of the feet of the servants in the homes of the forefathers than the teachings of the sages, for the rinsing of the feet had to be written while the body of the laws are learned from the multiplicity of the Scriptures and are not written explicitly (Bereshit Rabbah parasha 60).

According to Nachmanides (in the introduction to his commentary on Genesis) the whole Torah is made up of the names of G-d written in black fire on white fire, contiguously, without spaces between words. He means to say that the Torah is a Divine book which contains secrets and combinations. All questions and doubts can be solved in this manner; everything is a secret which no mortal can comprehend.



This teaches you that men of faith can live in peace with things which any reasonable person would consider odd and strange.



Sincerely,



Daat Emet