 comes the Torah and tells us if every prophet should arise and say I've come to speak to you in the name of God send him packing to plenty other nutcases that have to deal with but no he then goes and performs the sign he performs the miracle oh miracle supernatural somebody to talk to so you ask him for a sign yes he can perform miracles then says the Torah ask him what's God's message and if he then tells you God's message listen carefully to what he says if the message that he conveys to you corresponds with that which you know about revelation in our context Torah then you can say and assume that's a true prophet if however the message that he conveys to you deviates even one iota from that which you know to be true from the Torah he is a false prophet kill him and if you should ask the question the Torah continues if he is a false prophet look what he's able to do obviously has divine powers divine powers how is he able to perform these miracles and the Torah answers God is testing you do you go for the smoke and mirrors or do you go for the essence the essence what it's all about revelation divine communication is what God says and what God says the basic rules and regulations you already were told in the Torah by moses so therefore even if it's off by one word or one letter from the Torah regardless what kind of miracles he performs he may resurrect the dead he may the blame go walking may the blind go seeing he is a false prophet because the ultimate test the ultimate standard the ultimate criterion is the word of God that you know beyond the shadow of a doubt and how do we know that word of God here is where Judaism differs from literally every other religion in the world every religion in the world is based on a certain individual or two individuals appearing on the scene and claiming God has spoken to me and here is his message i can't disprove them but by the same token i can't prove them either and as i said earlier if you believe any one of them you have to believe all the others and then of course you go crazy that's impossible we do not believe in the Torah or in Judaism because of moses every religion because you first accept the prophet and then you accept the prophet's word and you have the bible and you have the religion in Judaism we turn everything upside down we first accept the Torah and because of the Torah we accept moses totally reverse then of course the question is why do you accept the Torah because the Torah we heard directly from God all we got from moses was information moses performed all kinds of miracles in Egypt he took us out from Egypt but if i want to be a skeptic the next morning i wake up now come on did you really slay all the first born did you really bring about this darkness did you really bring about the sale maybe it was a trick did you really turn the water into blood did the frogs really there maybe it was a trick maybe it was an illusion and i don't blame you for asking that you should always ask questions like that don't take anything for granted the most common fallacy that people commit back to epistemology that i mentioned i don't know how long ago theory of knowledge the most basic way that people answer theory how do i know anything they will say because i see it i smell it i taste it i touch it you rely on your five senses but each and every one of us also knows that all your five senses lie they lie at least part of the time each and every one of us has experienced optical illusions auditory illusions sensory illusions every one of your senses once you admit that your senses lie part of the time you now have a serious problem how do you know when your senses are telling the truth and then they're lying how do you know when it's an illusion or when it's real for that i need an outside standard completely beyond my senses to sit in judgment over my senses to say oh now that the correct and that of course know you and being us so your senses are not whatever you experience as such is not something you can rely on the only thing that we can really then approach get close it and keep in mind as a preliminary statement there is no such thing as absolute full proof evidence never existed does not exist never will exist does not exist all we can go by all science goes by is what is called the law of probability i devise a certain theory according to my theory i can say that if i do this or i do that certain things are going certain effects will happen i test it once test it twice test it 10 times test it 20 times depending what the consequences of such experiments are we will test it more and more and more and then once we see the theory has been proven by that we established that as a new scientific fact is it a fact no it's not a fact because the very same scientific theory 10 years later may be thrown out they have discovered something new and therefore they had to revise it they have to go into into deep aspects of it it wasn't false per se but the theory per se was false that's why science keeps changing keeps advancing keeps going ever more and more and more and every new discovery every new subtlety we make we can move so much further with regards to science but we have to learn ever more and more and more but it reaches a certain point where we say that's enough for me all of you have been in airplanes all of you have been in elevators all of you have been in cars even though that you open newspapers every soft then you hear about this airplane cashing that elevator cashing that car cashing that building collapsing which means whenever right now this very moment this very split second wherever you are sitting here now you are literally risking your life exposing your life to the greatest dangers that you can imagine there's no person on earth that can give you an absolute guarantee that the ceiling here is not going to cave in within the next five seconds or the floor is not going to cave in within the next five seconds i don't see anyone here worried nobody got up since i spoke why because you say yes it's possible of course it's possible you read it in the paper all the time but is it probable the answer to that is no after a certain point you say as far as i'm concerned the possibility is there but the probability is practically in nil and that's what scientific or building codes whatever are are about that you establish a certain safety code you say at this point this is it i tomorrow you see that it didn't work in that instance that's an unusual exception and we'll either way start examining what went wrong there must have been something wrong in the way the building was built which means even though we do not have absolute certainty about anything in life we do draw conclusions to the point that we say for all practical purposes this is reality this is a fact and that is what happened with Judaism that is what happened with revelation at Sinai the foundation of Judaism is not moses coming and saying god spoke to me if moses comes to me says god spoke to me a term to fly a kite you're no different than anybody also came in such claims what happened with moses is that he came to the jewish people he said whatever i'm gonna say to you i know you're not necessarily going to believe me or you'll believe me only because it serves your purposes but i'm going to tell you today which he did that in one year and 50 days from today exactly god will reveal himself to you you yourself will experience god you yourself will hear the voice of god not me telling you that was a year before the exodus and it's all 50 days after the exodus on the 50 day god will appear to each and every one of you so you don't have to take my word for it you don't have to believe me believe me only if and when you see this happen as the Torah puts it that god told moses all the miracles that he performed there will still be scoffers and doubters and skeptics means nothing but once this event at Sinai will happen the gam bechor ya minu loirom they will believe in you also for everlasting they will know that you are truly my boy my messenger so god first had to reveal himself to the whole nation not to one person to all the 603 thousand and 550 people which were just the men between the age of 20 and 60 not counting those young and not counting those older not counting their wives not counting all the shepherds that came along with them from Egypt which gives you a number of at least two to three million people and probably more when you have three million people standing at the foot of man Sinai exactly in that location exactly on at that time at that moment that moses had told him god will speak to you and then suddenly thunder and lightning and then total silence and suddenly everybody hears the voice of god that's it game is over if you question that you have to i haven't got my glasses or he wants me to talk about the topic next time this is all the introduction thank you it's chapter one then we come to chapter two then we can make come to absolutely conclusion um it all leads up to that because after that i will just have to say five words about the messiah but without all that introduction whatever i'm going to tell you about messiah means absolutely nothing whatever i would tell you about jewish teachings means absolutely nothing we have to know what is the foundation the foundation which we shall be celebrating next week with the festival of shavuers which commemorates the revelation of Sinai the 50th day after the exodus from egypt at mount Sinai exactly as the people had been foretold beforehand god appeared to the whole nation not to moses not to joshua not to both together not to the disti the jewish supreme court or the leaders or the elders and so forth the whole jewish nation men women children what happened at mount Sinai frankly between you i have no you and me i really i don't know i haven't got a clue all i know is that they all had the identical experience whichever way i don't know but they all sense we hear the voice of god proclaiming the ten commandments if you question that you literally have to question everything including your own existence as much as is humanly possible to determine any facts of reality that is the ultimate proof like for anything else that was the ultimate scientific test that is judeism not faith there's a difference between saying believing and knowing i do not believe in god i do not believe in the Torah i do not believe in any of these things i know these things i know these things as much as i know that i'm standing here now in front of you at us standing sitting there in front of me as much as i know anything in life as much as any scientific proof for anything because it's exactly the same criteria the same standards and here judeism Torah is unique shavuot again being celebrated next week commemorates that unique moment in history when god actually appeared and spoke not to one man not to ten people not to a thousand people but to a whole nation of three million people something which never happened before and something which never happened thereafter that and that alone is the foundation of judeism that and that alone is the foundation of our religion that and that alone is the basis for everything that we accept and for somebody to come and say yeah but maybe god changed his mind maybe god does it this way maybe god does it that way maybe but the only way that that can happen that i could possibly accept that if there's going to be a new revelation in front of all the people of israel anything else is challenging that which we know for sure with something that at best may be a doubtful experience and that's why a jew is able capable and ready to lay down his life with belief there's not another religion there's not another faith group on earth that has ever claimed a public revelation a public test for their beliefs so it's either you believe the prophet or you do not believe the prophet