 So this morning I was in the synagogue and we were reading from the Torah and we were reading from the book of Genesis and in the book of Genesis it tells us something about Abraham it's we're up to the part where God is telling Isaac that he should not leave the land of Israel he should stay in the land of Canaan and he's promised that God will fulfill all the promises that he made to Abraham with who with Isaac and God tells us in this week's pashah in Genesis chapter 26 verse 4 through 5 the reason why he's made all these promises to Abraham and it says and I will make your descendants multipliers the stars of the heaven I will give to your descendants all these lands and in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed why because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge my commandments my statues and my laws so in this passage over here we see that straight away God identifies the obedience to God's commandments as something that is very important when you look at the second reference is which is Deuteronomy chapter 26 verse 18 what we read is as follows also today the Lord has proclaimed you to be his special people this is Moses speaking over here and telling the Jewish people that Hashem has made the Jewish people the nation of Israel his special people and what is so central to them being special just as he promised you that you should keep all his commandments and in fact we find that in Exodus chapter 19 verse 5 through 6 Moses comes to the Jewish people before God actually gives the Torah and he tells them that God has given me a message to tell you it's almost like an offer he's putting out an offer verse 5 says as follows now therefore if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant then you shall be a special treasure to me above all people for all the earth is mine and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation these are the words which you should speak to the children of Israel so what we see from this is that the obedience to God to his Torah to the mitzvahs is central to our relationship with Hashem not only do we find that it's central to our relationship but we are told in the Torah about some of the things that we can be assured of if we keep these commandments in Deuteronomy chapter 5 verse 10 God is telling us that while on the one hand he will repay all those who hate him but God shows mercy to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments this again is reiterated Deuteronomy chapter 7 verse 9 therefore know that the Lord your God he is God the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generation with who with those who love him and keep his commandments and so what we see is that these commandments are actually something that God tells us will enter us into a group of people who God extends his mercy to Psalm 103 verse 17 through 18 reiterates the same idea but the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him and his righteousness to children's children to such as keep his covenant and to those who remember his commandments to do them not only are we told that God is going to extend his mercy to those who keep his commandments but we're told that the observance of these commandments this obedience is something that leads to holiness we see this in Numbers chapter 15 verse 40 in the context where we read about the tzitzit the tassels that we wear on the corner of our garments it says that when you will look at them it's that you may remember and do all my commandments and be holy for your God right and so these commandments are something that are not just central to our relationship but they are the way the path to becoming holy in your eighth reference over here Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 24 25 we're told that the Lord commanded us to observe all these statues to fear the Lord our God for our good always that he might preserve us alive as it is this day then it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to observe all these commandments before the Lord our God as he has commanded us and so we're told that if you want to be considered by God righteous the way to do it is by observing his commandments and so what this tells us is that God intended that the relationship that the Jewish people would have with God would be based upon and surround the observance of the observance of the commandment and so what this tells us is that God must have provided us with a method away with which we can know today his commandments right okay any person who tries to communicate any person who wants to write a book or speak to a crowd they obviously have an end goal they obviously have a desire that they wish to achieve by communicating and so what they obviously need to do is to take into consideration their audience who am I writing this book for who am I giving this speech to and if I'm speaking to a group of French speaking individuals giving a presentation in English is not going to be very effective if I'm trying to communicate a message to women and I have a room full of men it's not going to work and the same thing is true in any kind of communication and so if God wants to ensure that his message reaches its end goal that people could actually walk away with this message and understand it uniformly in other words in the way God wants us to understand it he must have a particular audience a target audience that he's hoping to address now anybody who's a stud a student of the Bible will just read through the Bible and understand that there's one group that God chose to communicate his message to and that is the people of Israel you see over here in Deuteronomy chapter 33 verse 4 Moses commanded us a law and inheritance for the congregation of Jacob so this was something that Moses transmitted to the Jewish people so that they would have as an inheritance to be able to pass on to their children some 147 verse 19 to 20 says something very interesting some 147 verse 19 through 20 tells us that God declares his word to Jacob his statues and his judgments to Israel he has not dealt with us with any nation and as for his judgments they have not known them praise the Lord what does this mean what this means is that the commandments that God communicated to Moses and subsequently Moses communicated to the Jewish people was done in a particular context which only those who exist and live within that context can truly understand and connect with those commandments with the understanding of the commandment now what do I mean take for example an episode that takes place an event that takes place in Pittsburgh okay we had an event that happened in Pittsburgh and somebody from China comes in and decides as a journalist to start documenting everything that happened and they write as best as they can an accurate recording of what they heard and what they saw they take that back to their country and people are trying to understand what took place so it happened to be that it was raining and I heard somebody say it's raining cats and dogs okay well somebody's reading this in Chinese and it's like what in Pittsburgh there were cats and dogs raining I mean this is ridiculous but clearly that's not what was intended that wasn't the meaning and anybody who understands slang and culture and different and idioms and the way things are expressed will say no it just means it was raining heavily that's all it means and that's just one example I'm sure you people could come up with better examples where in order to be able to really understand something you need to be a part of the culture you need to be able to be part of the experience and whenever there's a reference to a particular event people can automatically go back to that event and say I know what they're talking about I know exactly what they're speaking about so for example one of the commandments excuse me one of the events that is very often associated with many of the commandments is the remembrance of how God took us out of Egypt now what does that event really mean what does it mean that God took us out of Egypt well somebody could say well I read that story it's in the book of Exodus right I read that story and so therefore I know exactly what's being referred to that's one way how you could find out about the Exodus from Egypt but yet there's another way in which God actually tells Moses to tell the Jewish people that this event should be transmitted to every future generation and that we all know is the Pesach Seder why do we have a Pesach Seder is it because somebody thought it would be very nice and you know it certainly wasn't a woman who thought it up because with all the Pesach cleaning right no it was God God tells us and I've quoted over here a couple of places in the scriptures where this is where this is demonstrated if you go to number eight on the second sheet Exodus chapter 10 verse 1 it says now the Lord said to Moses come to Pharaoh this was actually my Bami Tsar Pasha I read this from the Torah come to Pharaoh for I've hardened his heart and the heart of his servants that I may show these signs of mine before him and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and your son son the mighty things I have done in Egypt and my signs which I have done among them that you may know that I am the Lord so what God's telling Moses over here is that one of the reasons why the Jewish people are in Egypt and Pharaoh is not letting them go and I want you to come down to Pharaoh and perform these signs and miracles is in order that the Jewish people through an experience should learn who God is and what God is doing for the Jewish people and they in turn should make sure to tell this story over to their children and so that their children also will carry on this experience and come to know God in that way Exodus chapter 12 verse 14 so this day shall be to you a memorial and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations you shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance and you go to verse 17 so you shall observe the feast of unleavened bread for on this same day I will have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as an everlasting ordinance verse 24 and you shall observe this thing as an ordinance for you and your sons forever so this is really the origins of the Pesach Seder and as I've told people when I encounter missionaries or Christians and we have a discussion about you know things that took place I tell them do you know that I found out that God took us out of Egypt before I could speak before I could read I sat and ate this horrible bitter herbs and this cardboard matzah we drank wine we got drunk we got drunk on grape juice or whatever it was but this was a living experience and this was actually the way God intended for me as a Jew to find out about God and find out about the Exodus what is very interesting to note is nowhere in the scriptures does it tell us that the way you are to communicate these things to your children is by showing them a book it doesn't say that in fact every time Moses tells the Jewish people to go and teach their children he's never referring to a book how do I know this how do I know that Moses is never referring to the book on the third page we're going to have to do a little bit of dancing around over here but in on the third page you have over here we read in one second actually some no I make a mistake it's on the second page Deuteronomy we read number seven Deuteronomy chapter 31 verse 9 we're told that at the end of the life of Moses that's when he first wrote the entire Torah and handed it over to the Levites so Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priests the sons of Levi who bore the Ark of the Covenant of the of the Lord and to all the elders of Israel what does that tell you what this tells you is that for 40 years think about this for 40 years throughout the entire sojourn of the Jewish people in the desert what happened is God spoke to Moses communicated to Moses what he wanted the Jewish people to know for living how they could live as a community the way God wanted them to live as a community and all of this was done orally Moses speaks to the Jewish people you find throughout the five books of Moses a narrative which is interwoven with laws but they're all in the context of either God speaking to Moses and communicating it to Moses orally or in the context of Moses transmitting it to the Jewish people orally and this is how a whole generation or two were raised they were raised by the guidance of Moses now it wasn't Moses alone because we know that already when the Jewish people were leaving Egypt Moses father-in-law says hey look it's too much for you this you're standing from from morning tonight dealing with it no one can handle such pressure and Moses then appointed elders to be the ones to be able to deal with matters of the law so he wasn't the only one that communicated it to the rest of the people but what we can know is that there was no body of law there was no book or scroll which people had to be able to go back and read and get their information from it was all oral and the truth is that's the most sensible way to do it what do I mean I can show you a map of Canada and on that map I can show you London Ontario and I can show you Halifax and I can show you Toronto but just because you see it on a map you don't know anything about it it's very empty void of any kind of information what are the people like what's the weather like things like that you can't know that from a map a picture a picture gives you a little bit more a video will give you even more than a picture but actually living there will give you the most when you actually live within a community within an environment you pick up things that it's not possible to pick up from a book you're not able to pick it up from a book and so therefore what that tells us is that the means through which God wanted his communication to be transmitted throughout the generation was not a dead inanimate book not that the Torah has a shalom is inanimate and dead in that sense but rather it's just a text but rather God wanted it to be learned in a living context in a live manner and so what we see over here in Deuteronomy chapter 5 verse 28 this is reference number 5 over here it says but as for you this is again this is God speaking to Moses but as for you stand here at Sinai with me and I shall speak to you the entire commandment and the decrees and the ordinances that you shall teach them and they shall perform in the land that you shall possess in other words God's telling Moses that I want you to come up to Mount Sinai and over there I'm going to communicate to you everything that I want you to in turn tell over to the Jewish people so that they will know what they need to do when they go into the land of Israel we know that many of the laws of the Torah are applicable only in the land of Israel especially those things relating to agriculture etc are mainly speaking about when the Jewish people cross over into the land of Israel and there are also myths like Chala separating Chala was something that was connected with going into the land of Israel and so on I was once speaking to a missionary about this and they said you really think that God was telling Moses the whole Oral Torah when he went up to Sinai so I asked the missionary I said I want to ask you a question have you ever read through the five books of Moses they're like yes I said how long do you think it takes to read the whole thing how long do you think God needed 40 days to read the Bible to Moses I mean that's what he did for 40 days but the truth is it goes even further than that because what we need to understand here is that when God communicates to us the mitzvot the commandments which he wants the Jewish community the community of the nation of Israel to observe they're not just technical laws they're not just laws that have technical dimensions there's a spiritual element to it there's something that is considered to be the spirit of the law and that spirit of the law was communicated to Moses and so therefore it is possible for somebody to actually keep a commandment keep the letter of the law and completely miss the spirit of the law so for example somebody has learned a little bit about the laws of Shabbat and so they've learned that they cannot ignite a fire on Shabbos and things of that nature and so what they do is they get a Shabbos clock everybody here knows what a Shabbos clock is it's one of these timers that switch on and they have the TV switching on on a timer and they sit the whole Shabbos watching TV and technically they didn't desecrate the Shabbos by lighting a fire but they completely miss the spirit of Shabbos right there's the spirit of Shabbos that God wants us to be able to adhere to and to make sure that we pass on to our children and so therefore it is not just the letter of the law that is being communicated it's the spirit of the law and so therefore if I hand you a book with all the laws of Shabbat that are articulated really well very clearly you are able to follow it step by step nevertheless if you do not go to a house where Shabbos is celebrated you won't begin to understand what Shabbos really looks like and you can try to copy what the book tells you to do but again you haven't experienced it in a live setting and so therefore a lot of what Shabbos is all about is completely missing and this is what the Jewish people had under the leadership of Moses there's no question that God intended that these things should be available not just for the first generation, the second generation or the third generation of Jewish people but rather God intended that this should be available to the last generation we read in source number 14 Exodus chapter 31 this is speaking about Shabbos right it says speak also to the children of Israel saying surely my Shabbos you shall keep for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations that you may know that I am the Lord who sanctifies you verse 16 therefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath to observe the Sabbath throughout the generations as a perpetual covenant we're told that this is an eternal covenant an eternal sign between God and the Jewish people and the fact of the matter is there's the saying that says that more than Jews kept the Shabbos Shabbos kept the Jews in other words what preserved the identity of the Jew the connection that we have with Hashem often it was Shabbos that kept that connection alive and kept this spirit alive and the covenant alive between us and Hashem in Deuteronomy chapter 30 I have it somewhere I thought I had it somewhere I do some page one number four Deuteronomy chapter 30 verse 1 through 3 now the context of this passage is right after Moses finishes giving the rebuke to the Jewish people telling them about all the terrible curses that would befall the Jewish people if they failed to observe the commandments of God we're told in verse 1 God shall come to pass when all these things come upon you the blessings and the curse which I have set before you and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God drives you and you return to the Lord your God and obey his voice according to all that I command you today let's pause here for a minute who's the you in this verse again Moses is talking to the Jewish people and he's saying you who is the you is it the you that's standing right there before him just that generation or perhaps does the context tell us something that would lead us to believe that it's not just the Israel that he's speaking to then but the eternal Israel throughout the generations so let's read a little bit further he's saying that when all the curses will come upon you the blessings all the curses and the blessings and God will drive us among all the nations and you return to the Lord your God and obey his voice according all that I command you today so the you that's returning is not the same you that's being commanded and yet there's a presupposition that the you meaning the nation of Israel at the end will be in the possession will be in possession of the same things that were commanded to the first generation and you return to the Lord your God and obey his voice according to all that I command that I command you today you and your children with all your heart and all your soul that the Lord your God will bring you back from captivity and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you in context what this is speaking about is the future redemption we know the principle that God promises that when the Jewish people return to God he will gather us back in he will circumcise our hearts and he will make us prosperous once again that's what Deuteronomy 30 tells us but what that implies is which to me is quite plain that at the end of time when God chooses to bring us back we will be in possession of God's commandments and we'll be able to return to God and to follow everything that Moses had commanded the Jewish people does that make sense you go to verse to reference number 31 we're told in Psalm 78 verse 5 that God established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel which he commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their children that the generation to come might know them the children would be born but they may arise and declare them to their children in other words what's being taught over here is quite clear that God intended that the Jewish people would be in possession of his truth to be able to pass it on to their future generations but how is that possible how is it possible that after all the persecution that the Jewish people have been through we scarcely made it out alive ourselves how is it possible that we would be able to preserve not just our identity not just our physical bodies but preserved the spirit of God and God's commandments how is that possible now while I didn't quote it here and I should have there's a verse in Isaiah 59 Jewish people around the world say it every day in Davenings part of Valetzeion right this is from Isaiah chapter 59 and God tells the Jewish people something very special this is something in fact that my grandfather who's a Holocaust survivor told me as a child he said that throughout Jewish history Jewish people sacrificed their lives in order to be able to pass on the tradition to pass on the truth of the Torah to their children but why would anybody do that with no guarantee that it would last more than a generation or two why would I do that why would I invest so much if it's going to end with me or end with my children or end with my grandchildren I can understand why I would invest everything that I myself should keep everything that God commanded why it's very simple because that relationship is important to me I can understand that I would try to encourage my children to do so but to sacrifice myself without any guarantees that this is going to really last beyond a generation or two but Isaiah 59 verse 21 tells us that God made a covenant with the Jewish people and it says and this is my covenant with them my spirit which is upon them and my words which I placed in their mouth will not be moved from their mouth and from their children's mouth and from their children's children's mouth this is my covenant with them says Hashem in other words what this means is that the preservation of the Torah not just the written Torah but the oral Torah is something that was preserved supernaturally by Hashem by God God made a covenant with us that despite everything he would make sure to preserve the integrity of the Torah with the Jewish people we are God's repository for his truth and God promises that we would have not just the words of God but the spirit of God in other words we would have both the law and the spirit of the law and we would be able to maintain it to preserve it and to pass it on to the future generations so that we could return to Hashem and ultimately God could bring us back into the land and so when we speak about God trying to get his message across there are a couple things that we need to bear in mind any two people can be given the same text and understand it very differently all we need to do is look how people have used Scripture over centuries some people read the Jewish Scriptures and saw it as a directive to despise the Jewish people to persecute the Jewish people and to try and annihilate the Jewish people other people have read the Jewish Scriptures and seen it as a directive to love the Jewish people and to honour the Jewish people Some people have read the Jewish scriptures and have walked away thinking that the most important thing to do is to deify a man. Other people have read those same scriptures and seen it as plain that this is prohibited. It's as plain as it can be. And so you can have two people reading the same text and walking away with a completely different message. What was the way in which God could ensure that the people reading the message 3,300 years after he gave it would be reading it the way he wanted it to be read? The only way, the only way to do it would be to preserve it in a living context. Very often you will find missionaries and Christians who love to quote rabbis who have died. Why do they like quoting these rabbis? Because those rabbis are no longer here to say, no, that's not what I meant. And so they will quote Rashi here and they will quote the Rambam there and they will quote the Zohar over here, etc, etc. Why do they quote them? Because Rashi is not here to come along and say, what are you doing? I didn't say that and I didn't mean that. What are you quoting me out of context? But thank God it's not just thanks to Rashi and the Rambam and the Zohar that we have the truth today. If all we had was somebody handing us down texts, then every man would have a field day saying, this is what I think it means, this is what I think it means. But because this was preserved in the living context and we go to the living leaders of our generation who have proven themselves to be well versed in these teachings and we ask them, is this what it really means? You know, many people are worried that because Judaism thrives on learning and debating and discussing, etc. that perhaps, perhaps, things that are not correct can creep in. What I try to point out to these people is that you try walking into your Shiva and suggesting something new. You don't stand a chance. They'll shoot you down in a minute with a thousand questions and they will tear you to pieces, right? But point by point by point. It's not possible, it's not possible for somebody to come and bring something radically different without it being severely challenged. The other night I was speaking with a Christian missionary and I was speaking about this point and the way I tried to communicate it was with the analogy of a stomach. Somebody who's got a sensitive stomach, they can put whatever they want in their mouth. You can eat anything but your stomach is not going to allow it to stay. It's going to be ejected one way or another. The Jewish people are God's sanctuary. The Jewish people are God's holy sanctuary and they as a nation are not able to keep within their midst something which is not true. Something which is not holy and something which is not pure. So what happens? Somebody comes along and introduces an idea and some people buy into that idea. They buy into it and they say, hey, this sounds good. And the Jewish people mull over it and mull over it and within a generation or two, what happens is if it's true and if it resonates with the rest of the Torah, then it ultimately survives. But those things which are not true and which are antithetical to the teaching of Moses never last. It's interesting the New Testament in the book of Acts tells us a story about Gamliel where the disciples of Jesus are brought before Gamliel and the students of Gamliel really want to do some violence to these followers and Gamliel says, hey, slow down, slow down. Don't do anything to them. You know why? Because if they're of God, then there's nothing you can do. You'll be fighting against God, there's nothing you can do. And if it's not of God, then it'll just fade away. It'll all just come, nothing will come of it. And many Christians turn around and say, well, hey, look at that. You see, we're still around. And so according to Gamliel's litmus test, we've passed. But anybody who knows anything about history will be able to tell you that within 150 years of the original group of Jews who followed Jesus, there were no Jews left in the church. The leadership was replaced by Greek and Roman pagans and they were the ones who became the keepers of the documents and the teachings and the doctrines of the church. And so Gamliel was exactly right. Nothing would become of it because the Jewish people ultimately stopped following the teachings of the church. And so I think to wrap up for tonight, we can say with confidence that Hashem in his kindness preserved his Torah through the living context of the Jewish people. We have a responsibility to live up to God's mission that we have. God says in Isaiah 43 verse 10, you are my witnesses. We are charged with bearing witness to God's existence and to his Torah and to make sure that we pass on, loyally, those teachings that were imparted to us by our parents and to pass them on to the next generation, not just the letter of the law but also the spirit of the law. And when we do that, we will merit to the coming of Mashiach, speedily in our days, amen. Thank you.