Rabbi Dr. David Gottlieb - Jewish Philosophy: The Oral Tradition

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Dovid Orlofsky’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

okay we were talking about the oral tradition last time we talked at length about the accuracy of transmitting such a large body of information over more than a thousand years and i went through that in great detail there's a question that comes up very often and i want to deal with that at length because it's an important question in its own right and also touches on other issues when the rabbis create a law and they create a law for a purpose and they tell us we made this law for this particular purpose and circumstances change and the law doesn't serve that purpose anymore should the law still be binding does the tradition regarded as binding and if so why does it do so i'll give you two examples now this may break your hearts but there's a law that you're not supposed to ride horses on shabbos okay make sacrifices for good things why shouldn't you ride horses on shabbos well it was common when you ride a horse to pull down a branch from a tree and use it to guide the horse as uh animal rights people would say no you're beating the horse and desperately depriving the horse up and so on okay fine fine not fighting that political battle at the moment and pulling down a branch from a tree is a biblical prohibition on shabbos so don't ride horses lest you pull down a branch or medicines for any non-threatening condition

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1. 0:21okay we were talking about the oral tradition last time we talked at length about the…
2. 5:48but all that's history there's plenty of gasoline the prices have come down there's no more…
3. 11:43but suppose your view of how history works is different suppose your view is that the…
4. 17:01present in our habitations and therefore we can drink such water we're not bound by the…
5. 22:46we know that because later the talmud says 200 years ago we made this law we…
6. 28:02the majority of them say no we're not doing this then it's not binding so only…
7. 33:47it's no more difficult than judging expertise in any other area of life who are the…
8. 39:04join the debate join the debate look up the sources analyze them check the commentaries and…
9. 45:03god now listen again to the statement of the talmud it said bow to the right…
10. 50:17so again the purpose is to enter into discussion with him but if you don't read…

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