The art of Rabbinical spin

Rabbinical Spin - I’m sure you’re familiar with the act of “spinning” when it is related to the way some news channels report the news. (It is also a well known public relations technique) Some news channels have been known to go WAY beyond reporting the news. (FOX) They attempt to fill in the gaps with assumptions, speculations and usually adding a particular slant to the overall picture of the news story.

All those talking heads on CNN, MSNBC and FOX are all spinning a particular news story. (What does this really mean? How does this effect society? What was he thinking or feeling? What are the overall consequences?)

This is what I believe Rabbis do; and they have been doing this for hundreds of years. You have a simple scroll; the Torah; pretty basic stuff. It said what it was supposed to say, to the people who were supposed to get the message. And that’s all there is.

The Rabbis answers to all “problematic” questions is spin because the Torah does not give us this information. One must make inferences, twist and wring the text and basically make up stuff that isn’t there in order to give the Torah the illusion of uniformity. – Not to mention relevance for the modern man.

When you read the Noah story, it is glaringly obvious that there are two different names for God, the verses overlap, are repetitive and the details contradict one another. i.e.: sending out a raven and a dove.

I am sure that they have some elaborate justifications that explain this and each and every “problematic” passage in the Torah. This is an example of Rabbinical Spin. How so?

Well, does the Torah tell us WHY the names Yahweh and God are used at different times in the Noah story? Wouldn’t this be important? The Torah is, after all, all about God and his covenant with his people. Wouldn’t it behoove us to know the NAME of this deity?

Does the Torah even acknowledge the two different set of instructions regarding the pairing of animals in the Noah story? Two or Seven? Shouldn’t Noah have been confused?

No, the Torah (itself) does not explain these glaring contradictions nor even acknowledge the inconsistencies. But we, modern man, can see them and we DO have the desire to understand how these and many other inconsistencies wound up being composed into this allegedly holy scroll.

All the Shabbat laws? Where did they come from? They are not in the Torah. The list of 39 forbidden actions which are listed in the Mishnah are nothing but spin from Ex. 31:14-16. The Torah only mentions NOT WORKING. That’s it.

Throughout the years, Rabbis have extrapolated from this verse that “work” is defined by these 39 acts associated with creating a sanctuary, since that was the “work” which they were doing at the time of the biblical writing. i.e.: sowing, plowing reaping. . .

The rules and laws of the Jewish tradition have been changed and altered throughout the centuries by Rabbis (in the subsequent Jewish writings) in order to make them relevant to modern society. After all, how could you keep the Sabbath and make it holy (God’s orders) without instructions on how to do so? Especially since the punishment is DEATH. And the Torah just doesn’t provide those instructions. Hence the need to just make it up.

No longer do we concern ourselves with winnowing, shearing wool or weaving etc. . . So, modern Rabbis needed to spin it again to continue to make it relevant for the modern era. This is spin upon spin.

The Torah mentions nothing except DO NOT WORK ON THE SABBATH. It was the Rabbis that chose to define what was considered work. It was the Rabbis who chose to codify it into 39 prohibitions and it was the Rabbis who deemed modern inventions such as driving a car as work.

When the Mishnah instructions about how to observe the Sabbath became irrelevant due to the modern industrial era Rabbis must now search to find hidden meaning and wisdom in the text that just isn’t there.

The same spin applies to the kashrut laws. There is nothing in the Torah that instructs the people about the elaborate rituals that orthodox Jews adhere to nowadays. All it says in the Torah is that you can’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk. From that passage, the Rabbis have used SPIN to create an entire tome of kashrut laws applicable to modern times. It is spin because it is extrapolating additional meaning from a simple sentence which, on its face, is quite clear.