Hesech Hadaas

I meant to spark a theological debate. Heaven forbid that I should be one of those debating, but I had hoped to inspire the masses to bickering of a divine nature. My chavrusa at least satisfed this urge, but unfortunately I was the victim of his venting of thoughts. Listen, I love my chavrusa and everything, but I'm trying to study for a test in taaruvos here, not debate the various advantages of a/theism. Because as I told him, I simply don't know the arguments the non-believers use! Even though I tried my bestest to advocate for the devil (though of course the side I was taking doesn't believe in the devil) it was pretty pointless, because I simply didn't know what to say, so he was convinced he'd won. Then I googled a little and left him with some reading material. Because, you know, just like I wouldn't want Shmuley Boteach arguing for G-d's existence I wouldn't want myself arguing against it, because neither of us have a clue. And besides, I hate being involved in arguments of this nature. They're so utterly pointless (why then do I blog...?).

What I did learn today though was all about that mysterious Sefer Torah found in the temple in the times of Josiah. Interestingly enough, there's a machlokes between the Malbim and the Metzudos Dovid regarding the identity of the burner of all the other Sifrei Torah. The malbim says that it was Menashe, grandfather of Josiah, who burned them, while the Metzudos Dovid claims that it was Achaz, great great grandfather of Josiah, who burned them.

Don't worry, the Radak comes and makes sense of it all. Turns out that Achaz burned them all, then his son Hezekiah came around and did what was right in the eyes of the L-rd, which included writing a bunch of new scrolls of the scripture, and then Menashe his son abandoned the ways of his daddy and went after the path of his grandfather (isn't there something about genes skipping a generation?) which included a new destruction of the Torah. Terrible, I know. Some Kohanim got super scared and hid the last remaining Torah, which was written by Moses himself, and it was lost for 67 years. Why didn't Menashe locate it when he did teshuvah near the end of his long reign? The poor guy was old and tired, and he didn't have much time before he passed on.

This is of course the time to repeat one of the Rosh's favorite stories, which I have written here previously, about the Amora (Rabba? Or Rava?) who was giving shiur and said, "Menashe our colleague" and felt really proud of it. That night Menashe came to him in a dream and said, "Don't get so excited dude, if you had lived in my times you would have raised your cloak to run to worship idols!" See, the people of Menashe's times, though they were incredibly idolatrous, didn't lift up their cloaks when they rushed to serve their local getchke, which of course slowed them down (which they appreciated, though they couldn't overpower their evil inclination). Had the amora been there he wouldn't have even been able to control himself that much. Anyway, the next day in shiur he said, "Menashe our teacher".

Back to the story...

So what happens? The high priest Hilkiah (or one of his minions) finds the Sefer Torah (with a 'hey') and everyone gets really paranoid when it's seen that the Torah is rolled to the tochachah. Hulda (of the gates), female prophetess extraordinaire, predicts lots of doom and gloom, but she comforts the people that because they're so righteous they at least won't suffer.

Thence follows a period of national truth and reconciliation which includes some serious idol destruction, and thence follows the best Pesach since Samuel the prophet. Just about 35 years later the temple was destroyed and the Jewboys exiled from their land. Yeah, life stinks, eh?

So the point is that in fact the mesorah was not lost. Sure, no one had a Sefer Torah to base themselves on, but the Kuzari isn't based on the physical Torah. It's based on the mesorah, on the tradition, which was never lost, even if some people forgot about it. Heck, even in the days of Hezekiah, who Hashem wanted to make Moshiach, things weren't all banana smoothies and cheesecake. Not all the Jews jumped on the bible bandwagon.

And as the Rosh ended off many a cursing, um'sayim betov.