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22.3.16

Here is part of a letter I got:

"Would you be able to help me look at some questions regarding the Talmud and the New Testament?  I know that you really respect the Talmud and grow inspiration from it.  Would you say that all Halacha is inspired by the Holy Spirit?  
If so, does the Halacha and the inspiration of it include the statements in the Gemara and in the rest of the sages that seem to refer to Yeshua/Yeshu?  Yeshua affirms the people sitting on the seat of Moshe and says about the Prushim to do as they say, but not to do as they do.  If so, Yeshua would confirm the command of heeding to the sages also in regard to their statements about himself?  Do I have to accept them?  Are they really talking about him?  What do you think?  Do you accept them like the rest of the oral Torah, or would you consider these statements as human additions produced in a different spirit than the rest of the Gmara?  Do you regard it as binding?  Yes or no? Why or why not?"


My answer--


The major thing I find important about halacah is the idea of looking at the Torah in a rigorous painstaking way, plus the idea that morality can be known by reason. The main point of the Talmud is to understand how to keep the written law.  Not every word has to be understood to be divine. But inside of the Talmud is the "Oral Law." In any case reason does have a place in understanding how to keep the Torah. The Rambam has that even Avraham the patriarch only understood natural law after it was revealed. Reason also is a kind of revelation.
The human attempt to greet God's word I think evokes a response from Him. So when I was at the Mir and also in my first yeshiva I felt there was some kind of amazing spirit. But I admit this can depend on the individual.


I am thinking mainly that reason can know morality. 


The critiques in the Talmud would have to be about a different individual according to the time line given there. Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Perachia was around 200 BC. He would have had to been a drop too old to have been the teacher of Yeshua. 
The pairs start at the beginning of the second Temple and go up until the end. And Rabbi Yehoshua ben Perachia was in the middle.

As you can see in the above letter I was trying to hint at the Kantian school of which the Rambam was clearly an early predecessor. But it was late and I did not want to make the letter too long.

I am also thinking about the fact that we give different weight values to different midrashim in the Gemara itself. For example pairs. זוגות, at the end of Pesachim. No one pays the slightest attention to that Gemara even though the Gemara itself is explicit. Also cures.

The idea of how much weight to give to different values seems important to me. Thus in the Torah we have the Ten Commandments which clearly have most of the weight. yet often one or more are ignored because of something that clearly has less weight. And moreover- even among the  other 613 the Torah gives weighted values to different functions. To love and fear God and to be attached to Him are the stated purpose of all the other mitzvot, The verse says in Deuteronomy do the mitzvot in order to love and fear God and to be attached with him.  This is one reason why Musar and the books of the rishonim on the philosophy of the Torah are important to learn. They indicate the weight of each value in Torah. Without them one can mix this up.
 Mainly when people want to pervert the Torah they start with this. They change the order of what is considered more important in Torah.  To make cults they take some doctrine that is either not in Torah at all or something trivial and make it is be of super importance as if it was some secret teaching.