Is Our Torah The Exact Same As Moshe's?

In a comment on my previous post, Nate pointed to an article on Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb's website concerning the accuracy of our present-day Torahs.  The article asserts that the Torah that we have today is letter-for-letter* the same as the Torah that God gave to Moshe on Mt. Sinai.  Nate then followed the link with the words "UNDISPUTED AND 100% TRUTH."   Sadly, the point is not undisputed nor is it 100% truth.

The article actually originated on Aish HaTorah's website and can be read here.  The main points of the article are as follows:

• Moshe wrote the Torah.
• This Torah (or, perhaps later on, others based on this Torah scroll) were kept in the Bais HaMikdash as a model and standard.
• New Torah scrolls that were written would be checked against this Torah.
• Sofrim (scribes) were very careful not to add/delete/change anything since any change makes a Sefer Torah invalid.
• The Torah has a built-in "security system" that prevents invalid Torahs from being used.
• The end result is that, as of today, the only variant that exists of the Torah is the Yemenite Torah, which has nine minor spelling variations  from the "standard" version.  These variations are all minor spelling differences (as British spelling differs from American spelling) and do not change the meanings of any words.  Otherwise, every Torah we use today is the same letter-for-letter that God gave to Moshe.
• This is very impressive because, compared with the Christian Bible (what is commonly called "The New Testament") the Torah is remarkably stable.  The Christian Bible has well over 200,000 variant letters.  We have nine.

Therefore, you can rely, with a high degree of confidence, that the Torah that we have today is *exactly* the same as the one that Moshe left for us at the end of his life.

The problem with all this is that most of those points are either exaggerations or just plain wrong.  Let's go through these points and examine them.

I'm going to grant the author of the article the first two points as given.  If we don't agree that Moshe wrote the Torah, then there is really no point in the rest of the article.  I am also going to assume that he did, in fact, leave a Torah as a standard.

However, it becomes clear that, at some point, that standard became corrupted.  For example, consider the event recounted in Meseches Sofrim.  In it, Reish Lakish recounts that three Sifrei Torah were found in the Bais HaMikdash:

One book was called "The Ma'on Book."  The reason it was so called was because Devraim 33:27 started out with the word "Ma'on."  In the other two, it started out with the word "M'onah."

The second book was called "The Zatutei Book."  It was so called because in it, the text of Sh'mos 24:5 says "And he sent to the  'Zatutei' (young men) of the Children of Israel..."  In the other two books, the word "Na'arei" replaced "Zatutei."

The third book was called the "Hee Book."  It was so called because it had one set of variant spellings of the word Hee in Hebrew, while the other two had a different set of spellings**.

In each case, in establishing the correct reading, the Sages followed the majority.  They rejected the reading of "Ma'on" and instituted "M'onah."  They rejected the reading of "Zatutei" and instituted "Na'arei."  The rejected the spellings in the Hee Book and accepted the spellings in the other two books.  Those readings became the standard and, indeed, are in our Sifrei Torah today.

There are several points that need to be made about this story.

• The first point to be made is that there was no single model text that could be used to check against.  Indeed, these three texts *were* the model texts that were used.  These were the Sifrei Torah that were found in the Temple Courtyard.  If there was an alternate authoritative text, the Sages could simply have consulted it to determine the correct text for each of the three cases.  The sad fact, however, is that there was no single authoritative text to compare these to -- these *were* the authoritative texts -- and now they were at variance with one another.  As a result, the Sages had to establish the correct text and, in each case, went with the majority.

• The second point to be made from this story is that the so-called "built-in security system" failed... and failed miserably.  It's one thing if an error creeps into a text in a backwater shul somewhere where perhaps only a few people were even capable of reading the sefer and where, if an error is found in the book, it could be isolated.  This, however, was an entirely different matter.  Here, textual variants are showing up in the model texts themselves.  And, I'd bet dollars to donuts, that these variants didn't just show up in only these three books.  I highly doubt the Sages woke up one morning and decided to check the Temple scrolls against each other just for the heck of it.  I'd be willing to bet that they were getting numerous reports of variant readings and needed to investigate.  And, furthermore, I'd be willing to bet that after an informal survey of the scrolls in their own personal libraries and in the shuls and study halls in Jerusalem (which were probably used on a daily basis), they found variant readings too -- otherwise, why start comparing the Temple scrolls against each other?  So, they went to the Temple to get the authoritative reading, and found that even there, there was no single text.  Clearly, when the authoritative texts have variants, the "security system" has failed.

• The third, and perhaps most startling point to be made is this -- at the end of the story, we find that *none* of the three authoritative model texts was kosher!  Every single one of them was invalid.  One had a variant reading in Devarim, one had a variant in Sh'mos and one had variants in the spelling of Hu/Hee.  But *none* of the three had the text that we have today!  In other words, in the end, the standard text that we have today was based on a combination of these three texts.

You might think that this settled the matter and that, at least, from this point onward, we would have a unified standard text.  Alas, such was not the case.  There are several places in the Talmud where the Gemara quotes a different text than the one we have.  One of the more famous examples is the Gemara in Sanhedrin where one of the three reading of the word "Totafos" has an extra vav -- and that extra vav is used to help determine that there are four compartments in the Tefillin Shel Rosh.  However, in the end, even the Gemara attests to the fact that we don't necessarily have accurate spellings for all the words in the Torah.  The Gemara states that we are not expert in chasser and malei (i.e. words that have "extra" letters to represent vowels).

The Rambam, in the 12th century, famously went to view the bible today knows as the Aleppo Codex (also known as the Kesser Aram Tzovah), to determine the standard text and spacings in the Torah scrolls.  It should be noted that, obviously, the Rambam did not have a scroll at his disposal which he considered authoritative enough.

Likewise, the Rav Mair HeLeivi Abulafia (13th century) writes in the preface to his work Mesores Siyug L'Torah  that in his day there were doubts as to the correct reading.  He, like the Sages in the Temple, relied on a "majority rules" principle to establish the text which he published in his sefer.  Likewise, Yaakov ben Chayim (early 16th century), who published the first edition of the Mikraos Gedolos, noted that there were variant readings in his day.  Nonetheless, with the adoption of the Mikraos Gedolos and the invention of the printing press, a standard text was finally adopted.

But even that's not the end of the matter.  As noted above, the Yemenites have a slightly different Torah than we do.  Although the author claims that the differences are only spelling there is at least one case where the spelling does change the meaning of a word (from a singular to a plural).  Furthermore, even setting aside the Yemenite Torahs, there is still at least one textual variant extant today -- the final letter of the word "Dakah" in Devarim 23:2 is spelled in some Sifrei Torah with an aleph and in others with a Heh.  But aside from these few cases, the text that we (finally) have today has been standardized.

The article tries to make the case that we can authoritatively state that our Torahs are accurate (vis a vis the Torah gave to Moshe) because of the traditions of the scribes.  For example, the article makes the point that there was a Torah in Jerusalem that was used as the model against which others were judged.  We've already seen that the model wasn't always accurate either, but let's put that point aside for the moment and assume, for the sake of argument, that the model is 100% accurate.  There are still several assumptions that are being made by the author of the article that are not, in fact, in evidence:

The first point to be made is that a model text is only good if it's actually used.  There is no indication anywhere that in the centuries after Moshe that scribes and other people *routinely* brought their Torah scrolls to Jerusalem to check them against the model.  It's not very difficult to see how an error can creep into a sefer and stay there.  Likewise, it's not too difficult to see how an inaccurate version can be copied to other texts.  In a place where there aren't very many Sifrei Torah circulating about (as you can imagine would be the situation in Israel between the time of Joshua and the Exile), it's very easy for an inaccurate text to be copied to another one.

Just consider the three variant scrolls that were eventually found in the Temple.  Do you think that they were first scrolls to have those variations?  Or is it more likely that they were copied from other variant scrolls?  I would argue the latter -- especially if you're also going to posit that scribes were generally very careful with their work.

Another assumption that is being made by the author is that the laws regarding the writing of a Sefer Torah (i.e. pronouncing each word out loud before writing, not writing by heart, etc.) were always the same as they are today AND that those laws were universally observed.  Neither of those (and certainly not in latter) can be said to be true 100% of the time.  It's certainly not inconceivable that there might have been scribes who were less than scrupulous with their work and did, indeed, introduce errors into their work.

Lastly, the author tries to make the comparison between the accuracy of our Torahs and the Christian Bible.  He states that there are only nine spelling variants extant today, while showing that there are thousands of variants of the Christian Bible.

I'm not an expert in the Christian Bible, so I can't speak to that point directly.  But what I do know is that the author is making a false comparison.  The author, in making his point, is outright dismissing any known variant text to our Bible (Yemenite Torahs excepted).  He's conveniently forgetting that there are variations of our text that do exist -- and they're still around today.  The Samaritan Bible, the Septiguant, the Dead Sea Scrolls, et al are all still extant and can be read to this very day.  By forgetting them (or, more likely dismissing them), the author is engaging in a form of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.  In short, he's claiming the to reject any variants he doesn't like as non-authoritative while, at the same time, holding Christians to task for all their variants.

Of course, Nate makes the very same error when he says "UNDISPUTED" regarding the article.  What he means is "undisputed by anyone who agrees with it," which, again, is a form of the No True Scotsman fallacy. But it's pretty clear that it can, indeed be disputed whether or not the Torah text we have today is a letter-for-letter copy of Moshe's.

The Wolf



* The author of the article does acknowledge that the Yemenite Torahs are different than ours in nine places.

** In later writings, the word "Hee" is written Hey-Yud-Aleph.  However, in the Torah, it is often spelled Hey-Vuv-Aleph, the same as the word "Hu."  However, there are a number of places where the Torah uses the first spelling.  The differences between the scrolls was in where the exceptional spelling was used.

The Kennedy Curse

As I'm sure you've heard by now, Senator Edward Kennedy from Massachusetts passed away this morning at the age of 77 after losing his battle with brain cancer.

I don't normally blog politics (especially American politics), but I do blog faulty reasoning, and so I will take the occasion to address an issue that surrounds the Kennedys, especially when it comes to Orthodox Jews.

The issue at hand is the famous "Kennedy Curse." In the threads on YWN and VIN, commentators once again brought up "the curse."

There are various stories of how the curse started. All the stories (or at least the stories that originate from the Jewish world) involve a famous rabbi who was either insulted or rebuffed by Joseph (or Rose) Kennedy. They were then cursed by that Rabbi that their family should suffer for it.

Rose Kennedy managed to live a long life and as three of her sons and one of her daughters predeceased her, the going rumor was that she was cursed that all of her children should die before her. Her death in 1995 ended that aspect of the legend.

Truth to tell, the story has all the earmarks of an urban legend. The name of the rabbi who cursed the Kennedys changes from one telling to the next (it's most often mentioned as the 6th Lubavitcher Rebbe -- but not always), as does why the curse was originally pronounced. In addition, there is no (or at least not to my knowledge) firm documented source describing the origin of the curse. In short, it sounds all too much like an urban legend.

But putting that aside, let's ask the question -- is the curse real? The Kennedys, as we all know, have lost quite a few family members in high-profile deaths. The fact is that the average age of death of the eight deceased Kennedy children (Jean is still alive) is just under 60 years -- a rather low figure in today's day and age. Of course, even that number is misleading because the average life expectancy was much lower when some of the Kennedy children died long ago.

While it's true that some Joseph and Rose Kennedy's nine children have died young, let's consider for the moment that all of them survived to adulthood. The Kennedy children are of the same generation as my grandparents. All four of my grandparents were born in the United States. Of the four of them, three lost siblings as children. I think that if most people who had grandparents growing up in the United States at that time do a little research, they will find that many (if not most) of them lost siblings during childhood. Infant and child mortality in those days was quite high and, unfortunately, losing a child was not as uncommon as it is today -- especially in families with a lot of children such as the Kennedys. So, right off the bat, I'd have to say that the fact that all of Joseph and Rose's children made it to adulthood shows that they were doing far better than many other families of the time.

That being said, let's look at the children. The Kennedys had nine children:

• Joseph Jr. -- died in World War II, aged 29
• John -- shot in Dallas in 1963, aged 46
• Rosemary -- lobotomized and institutionalized, died at age 86
• Kathleen -- died in a plane crash at age 28
• Euncie -- died about two weeks ago at age 88
• Patricia -- died in 2006 at age 82
• Robert -- shot in San Francisco in 1968, aged 42
• Jean -- still living today, aged 81
• Edward -- died yesterday, aged 77

Of the nine children, four failed to see their fiftieth birthday (although, of the five that did, all reached at least 77 years of age). One more, Rosemary, spent almost all of her life in an institution.

But let's look at the four who died young and examine the circumstances of their deaths:

Joesph Jr. was a student at Harvard Law when World War II began. He left Harvard a year early and took officer and pilot training in the Navy. He piloted 25 combat missions during World War II and was eligible to return home.

Instead, he volunteered for a highly dangerous mission which entailed flying an explosive-laden plane with a skeleton crew which would then parachute out of the plane before detonation. It was on this mission that he was killed.

Three Kennedy sons served in World War II (Edward was only twelve when the war ended) and two survived. Many families lost sons in the war and some lost more than one child (the Sullivans famously lost five on a single ship). In that respect, I would not say that the Kennedys were cursed any more than any other family that lost a son in combat during World War II.

John Kennedy went on to become the 35th President of the United States -- the youngest man ever to be elected to the office. He served from January 1961 until his assassination in 1963.

During the course of our nation's history, 43 different men have served as President of the United States. Of those eight did not leave the office alive -- four of them were killed by assassin's bullets and the other four became ill and died. Another two recent presidents (Ford and Reagan) survived assassination attempts. In other words, about 19% of the people who took the office did not survive. Clearly, being President of the United States is a dangerous job. Aside from the enormous pressures of the job, there are always people who will want to kill the president -- from foreign terrorists to partisan nutcases (on both sides) to people who are just plain kooks. The upshot of all this is that the job of President is a high-risk occupation and as with all high-risk occupations, the fact that someone dies in that job is not the sign of a curse.

Kathleen married the Marquess of Hartington (and the heir to the dukedom of Devonshire) in 1944. She married against the will of her family and aside from Joseph Jr., no one in the family attended her wedding. Sadly, the Marquess was killed in World War II after only four months of marriage. She ended up becoming involved with a married gentleman of the British peerage who was in the process of divorcing his wife with the intent to marry him once his divorce was final. That marriage never happened because Kathleen died in a plane crash in France in 1948.

The fourth of the Kennedy children to die before their seventy fifth birthday was Robert. Robert was the junior senator from New York in 1968 and was running for the Democratic nomination for President. He had just won the California primary when he was assassinated by a young Palestinian named Sirhan Sirhan. Robert Kennedy was a high profile individual (former Attorney General, Senator from New York and candidate for President) and, as such, was, like John, a high profile target.

The other five Kennedy children all survived until at least 77 years of age. Of the nine children of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, seven married and six had children -- John had two surviving children, Eunice had five, Patricia had four, Robert had eleven, Jean had four and Edward had three. In total Rose and Joseph Kennedy had twenty nine grandchildren, most of whom have since married and had kids of their own.

In addition, the Kennedys became one of the premiere political families in the United States. Three of the Kennedy children became Senators and one became the President. Their grandchildren include a former Lt. Governor, at least two members of the House of Representatives and other political positions. For a family that has been cursed, they have been tremendously successful.

There are people who will point to other misfortunes that the extended Kennedy family has borne: the skiing death in 1997 of Michael Kennedy, the rape accusation against William Kennedy Smith, the car accident in 1969 that ended Edward's chances of becoming President and the airplane crash that ended the life of John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1999.

I'm not at all certain that these events are out of the ordinary for a family as large as the Kennedys and that engage in the activities that the Kennedys engage in. Many families have unfortunately lost people in skiing accidents and many families tragically lose people in airplane accidents. However, in most cases, unless the person is famous (or belongs to a famous family) these events are usually unreported or forgotten shortly thereafter. I firmly believe that if you sample other families as numerous as the Kennedys that engage in similar activities, you will probably find similar results.

In short, the Kennedys have suffered tragedy over the years -- but I'm not convinced that it's so different from the tragedies that another family might have faced with the same numbers and similar circumstances.

The Wolf

And Just So That People Won't Say That I'm Being Unfair...

... here's a logical fallacy from the anti-frum side:

One Reason I'm an Atheist

What are the odds of a secular person killing their child for becoming religious?

Zero.

Now what are the odds of a religious fanatic killing their child for becoming secular?

Not high, but there's a chance.

That's all I need to know.

Another twenty Wolf points to the person who spots it first.

The Wolf

How Many Logical Fallacies Can You Spot?

A fellow blogger (I'm not going to give him/her the pleasure of a link) posted the following:

The fossils have lead to evolution.
Evolution has led to atheism.
Atheism has led to psychopathy.
Psychopathy leads to death, either through murder, suicide, addictions or failure to have children.

How many logical and factual errors can you spot in these thirty words? Twenty Wolf points to the person who lists more valid logical/factual fallacies than anyone else.

I've already spotted a few. I'll post my findings in the comments later.

The Wolf

The 'If Only One...' Fallacy

There is an argument that occasionally comes up when discussing communal policy. I call the argument the "if only one..." argument. The basic thrust of the argument is as follows: If only one life/soul is saved by implementing policy X, we should do so.

One of the latest examples comes from this Yeshiva World News article concerning teens and cell phones. One commenter said (bolding mine):

r’ webber is absolutely right as is the hanhala of bais shaindel but i ask all readers and comment posters if even one neshoma is lost due to texting or internet isn’t that reason enough for the small sacrafice of voice only phones for all of us and anyone saying that they know better is to blame for all future destruction caused by this epidemic

The fallacy of this argument is that it could be applied to almost anything. For example, perhaps we should outlaw the use of cars (except emergency vehicles). After all, if even one life can be saved, shouldn't that be reason enough?

The fact of the matter is that every activity that we engage in has a specific amount of risk. Every time a person gets into a car (or walks down the street, or plays baseball, or eats, etc.) there is a small possibility that the activity will cost them their life, God forbid. Yet we, as a society, determine that we're going to accept a certain number of fatalities for engaging in this activity. About 42,000 people die per year in car accidents. Shouldn't we invoke the doctrine of v'nishmartem m'od l'nafshoseichem and ban car driving (again, except for emergency vehicles)?

I don't know the number of people who die from alcohol poisoning on Purim, but shouldn't we ban it even if only one person could be saved?

Heck, perhaps we should prevent our kids from coming into contact with any other kids. After all, if even we can save one neshoma from coming into contact with a bad influence and going off the derech, shouldn't we accept that small sacrifice?

Of course, the above questions are ludicrous. The fact of the matter is that we, as a society, have determined that having the benefits of automobiles available to all of us is worth the 42,000 lives that it costs each year. We, as a society, have determined that the value of being able to drink on Purim is worth the possibility that some people may abuse the privlige and die from too much drink. We, as a society, determine that our kids having friends is worth the risk that one of them might turn out bad, even to the point where it might cost us some neshomos down the line.

Now, it should be pointed out that my argument has nothing to do with whether teens should be allowed to have cell phones or not. There are valid arguments for both sides. But the "if only one..." fallacy is not a valid argument -- and it turns up all too often in public policy decisions.

The Wolf