 I'm very impressed with a lot of the things you said today. I just wanted to ask, I personally have been born into a messianic Jewish family with parents who believe that you're sure is a messiah. And what my question is, I've heard it said, and please forgive me if I'm wrong because I don't know that of the Hebrew scriptures, Christians interpret it through the lens of the New Testament. But I've also heard it said, I've thought that with what the shoe days and there's the oral law, which gives authority to the interpretation of people like yourself. And I was wondering, because I've read the whole scripture and studied it for many years now. And I was wondering why do you give such authority to the oral law as you do to the writings of Moses? Good question. Let me speak about the written Torah. That does not really refer to the whole Bible. The written Torah is the whole Bible. It's part of the written Torah. These things are recorded. But the essence, the beginning and the end of everything is the five books of Moses. No one, the greatest prophets on earth, can add one letter or one iota or diminish one letter or one iota from the five books of Moses. Judaism begins and ends with Moses. And if you look at the various other prophetic books, they really don't say anything. They don't say anything. In terms of religion being divine revelation, divine inspiration, divine code of conduct, the only rules of conduct appear in the five books of Moses. The prophetic books, what are they? They're sermons. They're prophecies. But basically, sermonic prophecies, where the prophets lambast the people, they chastise them, look what you have done and it isn't that. And because of your way of life, silence was these and those things are going to happen to you as punishments, prophesying all these things, also prophesying the bliss, et cetera, et cetera. But none of the prophetic books, not one of them, adds anything to the moral life, the conduct, code of behavior, that the five books, the 613 Mitzvot, they're all in the Hommish, all in the five books of Moses. Now, let's look at the five books of Moses. Let's look at these 630 commandments. There is not one single commandment in the Torah, practically. Maybe one, a couple of exceptions. That the way it is written in Torah makes any sense. That the way it is written in Torah would instruct me what I have to do and how I have to do it. For example, the Torah says not to work on the Sabbath. Right? What is called work on the Sabbath? The Torah doesn't give me a definition. Just you shall do no form of labor on the Sabbath. If I were to pick up this podium, it's pretty heavy. And I put it on my back. And I run from here to the front of this campus and run back 10 times. By the time I get back here, probably way before, I'll have collapsed and lying the floor out of it. Did I violate the Sabbath? Answer is no. On the other hand, I don't know if you have here on this campus and these buildings, sensor lights. Once upon a time, you want light, you still knock the two socks together, you rub the sticks together. At the very least, modern times, you flick the switch. Today, I don't even have to flick the switch. I just walk in front of the sensor light the way I walk. Anyway, I'm not doing anything and the light goes on by itself. Now, if I know there's a sensor light over there and if I walk in that proximity to that sensor light and I do so and I can walk it all day, Shabbat, as I please, I have violated the Sabbath. Have I violated Shabbat? Let's take another line, the Torah. Circumcision, do you know what circumcision means? I'm talking circumcision of the heart. Circumcision, the commandment in the Torah to circumcise. Yes. The Bible. What does it mean? Physically, you cut the foreskin of the penis. Interesting. And where do you get that from? One, and a few days after the baby came home. Where do you get that definition from? I have a good point. It's not in... You'll not find it anywhere. Ex... You'll not find it anywhere. No where in the Torah, no where in the prophets, no where in the Scriptures. If anything, when the Scriptures and the Bible speaks about circumcision, it uses a very ambiguous word. Like you just mentioned, the circumcision of the heart. For that matter, the Hebrew word for the foreskin is Oralol. Oralol does not mean foreskin of the penis. Doesn't mean that at all. Oralol is a word which is applied to fruits the first three years of its growth. Oralol is simply a covering which could apply to X number of things. There's also the covering of the heart. Are you talking about the foreskin of the heart that you have to circumcise? What is circumcision? You look from Genesis 1, 1 all the way to the end of the Bible. You know where you're going to find the definition for circumcision. And yet this becomes so fundamental a principle in Judaism. So fundamental an idea that even the least religious people somehow observed that as well. They may eat a ham sandwich with a glass of milk on Yom Kippur, but somehow the children will circumcise. It's somehow something which goes even beyond their own mind. But where do you get it from? It's a fundamental, the very first Jewish practice. The very first act that is identified specifically with Jewish identity going all the way back to Abraham, the first Jew. Where do you get the definition of circumcision? Maybe it means the tip of your nose, maybe your ear lobe, maybe the tip of one of your fingers. Where do you get it from? The Torah speaks about the filling, phylacteris. What does the Torah say? We say it on every day in the Shmah. Tie it for a sign upon your hand and for frontlets between your eyes. Tie what? Tie where? Tie how? I understand. There is practically not a single commandment in the Torah which makes any sense. If you just take the Torah as the written word of God that you have in your hands. Moreover, in the Torah there's a dietary loss which is not only the allowed, the permitted animals and the forbidden animals, but also once you have an animal, how animals have to be slaughtered. And there's a very special way how animals have to be killed and slaughtered. Very special way. What does the Torah say about the animals have to be slaughtered? Which in Hebrew is called shachita. The Torah says, and you shall slaughter the animals, your cattle, as I have commanded you. I have searched the whole Bible from beginning to end and from end to beginning and I found out one single passage anywhere that should tell me how to slaughter an animal. Not one. Not even coming close. And so it is with practically every single law and commandment in the Torah. But these laws were given to be practiced. These laws were made mandatory. Either you observe the laws salvation or you negate and ignore the laws, barbecue. But I don't know what to do, when to do, how to do. How would the Jews know? How did Moses know? How did anybody else know? Obviously then, quite explicitly stated in the Torah, they got these commandments not only as commandments but with the explication and explanation and interpretation, what each commandment means. That is what we call the old Torah. Why was this kept all? Why was it not recorded? That's a separate subject. But there is proof in the Torah itself, right from the very beginning, that the written code came accompanied by an oral code. And therefore if anybody, anybody on earth wants to understand what the Torah, the Jewish Bible is talking about, there is only one on earth, one on earth, that can possibly tell you what the Old Testament is talking about. Namely who? The Jew. No one else. You cannot have suddenly 2,000 years after the giving of the Torah, after the Torah has been practiced, after the Torah has been taught, somebody's suddenly showing up and say, you know you guys, you are the only ones who haven't got a clue what the Torah is talking about. I will tell you what the Torah is talking about. I will tell you what this passage in Isaiah, this passage in Jeremiah, or this passage in the Torah, or this passage in Exodus, what it is talking about. Can you imagine anything more stupid, more incredible, that a Johnny come lately who hasn't got a clue, hand-hold the Jewish Bible right side up, is going to tell me what my Bible, which I have kept for three and a half thousand years, which I preserved, which is written in my language, given to me by my prophets in my Hebrew tradition, if not for us, would they have the Bible? Would they know anything about the Bible? What did people do before? Because, Johnny, they came along. One and a half, one and a half thousand years before they came along, there was already a living Judaism, practiced Judaism. And now they come one and a half thousand years later and say, hey, you guys, you got it all wrong. You haven't got a clue what it's talking about. I will tell you what Isaiah is talking about. I will tell you what Moses is talking about. I will tell you what Jeremiah is talking about. Can you imagine any more stupid argument than that? For the original tradition, you have to go to the original people. The people who got it, the people that this was given to, the people that were given both the text and the interpretation of the text, the people who practiced it throughout the years. According to Christian tradition, what they are saying in effect is that for one and a half thousand years, the Torah and the biblical prophets were meaningless, worthless, junk. It was not even a comic book because the meaning of it was revealed only some two thousand years later. I'm simply telling you where I come from and where you would see that from our angle. There's no way that you cannot understand why we reject it.