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Thought for the Day: Why We Believe and Observe Toras Moshe

R' Eliezer Aron, shlita, besides being a talmid chacham, has a very quick smile and is very gracious about listening to my chidushei torah.  I was very excited about the S'porno's explanation of what HaShem meant when He told Moshe that Klal Yisrael would believe in Toras Moshe forever (as discussed here) and so I made a bee line for R' Aron when I saw him.  Gracious as ever, R' Aron told me, "You must learn the Rambam, eighth perek of hilchos y'sodei hatorah.  You will not be sorry."  I did and I am not.  I figured you wouldn't mind hearing about it, either.

The Rambam there lays down a profound principle of our way of life and discusses a few of its implications.  The Rambam says that we do not believe in any prophet because of the miracles he performs nor the knowledge he possesses.  Those factors are completely irrelevant to belief.  So why do we believe in Toras Moshe?  Ma'amad Har Sinai, where we all experienced (for some brief moments) that same level of direct connection with the ein sof that Moshe Rabeinu experienced for the rest of his life in this world.  Once we all saw and experienced with Moshe, we had absolute knowledge about the veracity and clarity of the Torah that Moshe was teaching us.  Any disagreement with Toras Moshe is just silly.  Imagine you had an important discussion with your father and he wrote you a note summarizing the discussion; which you both reviewd and agreed that you had clarity on the discussion and its summary.  Then, years later, after you have been living according to that discussion, someone sees part of the note and says, "Oh!  I think you misunderstood."  Silly.

Says the Rambam, the reason we believe prophets who perform certain signs is not because of the signs, but because Toras Moshe tells us that is how we determine the veracity of a prophet.  At that point, they could be doing magic of sleight of hand; its irrelevant.  Similarly, we are willing to even kill someone based on the proper testimony of two witnesses; whether what they are saying is true or not.  Toras Moshe says to act on the testimony of two witnesses, so we do.  Even if we later discover that the witnesses could not have possibly seen the crime (as in the case of eidim zomemim) about which they testified.  (That may be why eidim zomemim upon whose testimony the court issued a death sentence, are not punished after the fact.)

That is definitely the biggest benefit of sharing divrei torah... you get more divrei torah!
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