Oral Torah
The Beta Israel, isolated from the rest of world Jewry for many centuries, also lacked Rabbinic texts until they made Aliyah in mass in recent years.
The Jewish Encyclopedia divides the Oral Torah into eight categories, ranked according to the relative level of authoritativeness, which are found within the Talmud, the Tosefta and the halakhic Midrashim.
[5] Many of these practices were advocated by the Pharisees, a sect of largely lower- and middle-class Jews who stood in opposition to the Sadducees, the priestly caste who dominated the Temple cult.
[6] The Sadducees rejected the legitimacy of any extra-biblical law or tradition, as well as increasingly popular notions such as the immortality of the soul and divine intervention.
[6][7] Danby notes the following: It is a reasonable hypothesis that a result of this controversy—a controversy which continued for two centuries—was a deliberate compilation and justification of the unwritten tradition by the Pharisean party, perhaps unsystematic and on a small scale in the earlier stages, but stimulated and fostered from time to time both by opposition from the Sadducees and by internal controversy (such as, e.g., the disputes between the Houses of Hillel and Shammai) within the ranks of the Pharisees, culminating in the collections of traditional laws (Halakoth) from which the present Mishnah draws its material.
Following the fall of the Temple, it appears that the Pharisaic leader Johanan ben Zakkai (30–90 CE) settled in Yavneh, where he established a school that came to be regarded by fellow Jews as the successors of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin.
[5] Upon this Council of Jabneh fell the duty of administering and interpreting religious law, conserving tradition, and solving problems that arose by the past dependence of numerous observances on the existence of the Temple and priesthood.
[5] Thus, from 70 to 130 CE, when the Bar Kochba revolt further decimated the Jewish community, the Oral Law experienced a significant period of development and an unprecedented level of legal and religious authority among the populace.
[8] Some authority suggests HaNasi made use of as many as 13 separate collections of Halakhot from different schools and time periods, and reassembled that material into a coherent whole, arranged it systematically, summarized discussions, and in some cases rendered his own rulings where alternative traditions existed.
"[10] Just as portions of the Torah reflect (according to the documentary hypothesis) the agenda of the Levite priesthood in centralizing worship in the Temple in Jerusalem and legitimizing their exclusive authority over the sacrificial cult, so too can the Mishnah be seen as reflecting the unique "program" of the Tannaim and their successors to develop an egalitarian form of Judaism with an emphasis on social justice and an applicability throughout the Jewish diaspora.
[17] Jewish tradition identifies the unbroken historical chain of individuals who were entrusted with passing down the Oral Law from Moses to the early rabbinic period: "Moses received the Torah and handed it down to Joshua; Joshua to the Elders; the Elders to the prophets; and the prophets handed it down to the men of the Great Assembly.
Many terms used in the Torah are left undefined, such as the word totafot, usually translated as "frontlets," which is used three times in the Pentateuch (in Exodus 13:9 and Deuteronomy 6:8 and 11:18) but only identified with tefillin in the Mishnah (see Menachot 3:7).
Another example: the blue string of tekhelet on the tzitzit is to be dyed with an extraction from what scholars believe to be a snail; a detail only spoken of in the oral Torah.
[25] Note also that the interpretation as "monetary compensation" is borne out by Num 35:30–31, implying that only in the case of murder is Lex talionis applied (per logic of following paragraph).
[28] Likewise, the structure and placement of ritual baths at Masada appears to be consistent with the rabbinic requirements per the Mishnaic tractate Mikvaot, although they were constructed approximately 120 years before the Mishnah was compiled.
The Qumran Halachic Letter,[32] which records approximately a dozen disputes regarding the application of halakha, also testifies to the evolutionary process of the Oral Law.
The era of the Rishonim sees the Oral Law incorporated into the first formal Torah commentaries, where the biblical text is discussed and / or analysed based on the various Midrashic and Talmudic traditions.
This work clarifies the "simple" meaning of the text, by addressing questions implied[34] by the wording or verse or paragraph structure, by drawing on the Midrashic, Talmudic and Aggadic literature.
[40] Karaite Judaism or Karaism is a Jewish denomination that began in eighth century Baghdad to form a separate sect that rejected of the Oral Torah and Talmud, and placed sole reliance on the Tanakh as scripture.
Influenced by the Haskalah, and under sociological pressure to assimilate to the Protestant and secular culture of European and North American urban elites, Reform Judaism came to reject the binding authority of the Oral Torah and systematically stripped its liturgy and practices of Rabbinic tradition.
[45] Conservative Judaism (also known as "Masorti" outside North America) takes an intermediate approach between the Reform Movement and Orthodoxy, claiming that the Oral tradition is entitled to authority, but regarding its rulings as flexible guidelines rather than immutable precepts, that may be viewed through the lens of modernity.
[46] Jewish scholar and philosopher Ismar Schorsch has postulated that Conservative Judaism is tied to "sensing divinity both in the Torah and in the Oral Law," but not in a literalist manner.
[47] Rabbi Zecharias Frankel, considered intellectual founder of Conservative Judaism, was respected by many Orthodox until writing in 1859 that the Talmudic term "Law given to Moses at Sinai" always meant ancient customs accepted as such.
