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Our Rabbi's Message
February 1st 2008
By Rabbi Aaron KriegelRevelation, for the Jew, means that God gave us the Torah. Many believe that that Torah was revealed to Moses in exactly the same form that we have it today. Many accept biblical criticism which allows for the slow development of the Torah through the process of generations. There is however a different interpretation which we must consider. Torah might very well be the word of God according to either of these definitions.
Yet the words of Torah do not have the same meanings today that they had when the Torah was revealed according to either theology. Words change in meaning with every generation and words in one language can never be adequately translated into another language. That means that the Hebrew words of the Torah can never mean in English what they originally meant in Hebrew. What is more, the Hebrew words spoken in 1200 BCE have different meanings today than they had back then.
For example, the first law that we concern ourselves with in the Parasha which we read tomorrow is about slavery. That is if we define the word "eved" to mean slave. If, on the other hand, we interpret the word too mean indentured servant and not slave the whole text takes upon itself a new meaning.
And if we define the word in terms of the rights that the "eved" has in comparison with his "master", the word speaks more of the equality of all people before the law.
What the actual meaning of that first term, "eved" is must be determined by every generation anew. Even if the revelation goes back to Sinai, the interpretation of the revelation must be current. It cannot be petrified into meaning that is irrelevant to the generations in which we live. Obviously, no matter how we interpret Torah, our understanding of the revelation cannot go back thousands of years, but must be current if revealed religion and specifically Judaism is to survive.
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