A fundamental principle of Judaism is that God taught Moshe a comprehensive oral explanation of the Torah along with the written text. God taught the Oral Torah to Moshe on Mount Sinai, repeated to him in the Ohel Moed, and again in the Plains of Moav. Moshe passed this tradition verbally to the people, who in turn taught it to the subsequent generation, and so it was passed on by word of mouth from teacher to student for over one thousand years. Eventually, it was preserved in writing in the form of the Mishnah, Talmud and the Midrashim. We thus speak of two Torahs: the Written Torah (Torah SheBiKetav) and the Oral Torah (Torah SheB’Al Peh). In this class we will focus on the general content of the Written and Oral Torahs and how they relate to each other.
