The Torah in Modern Judaism

Abstract

For centuries Jews have maintained that the Torah was revealed by God to Moses on Mt Sinai. Such belief ‘guarantees’ that the Five Books of Moses including history, theology, and legal precepts are of Divine origin and have absolute authority. In consequence Orthodoxy refuses to accept any modernist interpretation of the Pentateuch. As Zwi Werblowsky explains: ‘Jewish Orthodoxy has … always staunchly upheld the theory of verbal inspiration in its extremist form — at least so far as the Pentateuch is concerned. Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch is flatly rejected and is considered a major heresy. The underlying assumption is that the whole fabric of traditional Judaism would crumble if its foundation, the notion of Divine legislation to Moses, were to be exchanged for modernist ideas about historical growth and the composite nature of sacred texts’.¹ This clash between the Orthodox understanding of scripture and the modern liberal perspective has been and continues to be the central theological stumbling-block to inter-Jewish unity. Recently this irreconcilable conflict was highlighted in a notorious debate between Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks, the designate Chief Rabbi of the UK, and the distinguished scholar, Rabbi Dr Louis Jacobs. Their disagreement and the subsequent public reaction illustrate that the traditional and liberal conceptions of Torah inevitably preclude the possibility of religious reconciliation.