Rabbinic Judaism as Explained by a Rabbinic Rabbi

Most Jews today are rabbinic Jews, and most people today think today’s rabbinic Judaism is based on the Jewish Torah.  It isn’t. Rabbinic Judaism didn’t really come into being until after the destruction of the Second Temple.  But even before that, early first century Pharisees and scribes had already started to replace the written Word of God with their own human traditions. 

In Mark 7:6-8, Jesus told a group of scribes and Pharisees that “‘Isaiah prophesied correctly about you hypocrites, as it is written: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. They worship me in vain, teaching as doctrine the commandments of men.’ Having no regard for the command of God, you hold fast to human tradition.’” ( Mk 7:6–8 NET Bible)

Born in 1935, Rabbi and Brigadier General Israel Drazin is a graduate of (and received the first of his three rabbinic ordinations from) Ner Israel Rabbinical College, a Haredi Orthodox yeshiva in Pikesville, Maryland. He is also a retired attorney and a prolific author. In the preface to his 2014 book Mysteries of Judaism (the first of a 5-part Mysteries of Judaism series)  Rabbi Israel Drazin says this:

The purpose of this book is to illustrate how Judaism today is radically different from the Judaism described in the Torah. Jews today observe rabbinical Judaism, not Torah Judaism. We will examine some of the history and practices of the Jewish holidays and see that none of the holy days observed today are as mandated in the Torah. We will also look at why the rabbis had to change the way the days were celebrated and, in most instances, totally eliminate the biblical concept to develop a new one.

In the second section, we will look at some concepts that many Jews consider basic to Judaism and see that they are not in the Hebrew Bible. Some were even taken from pagan cultures. The rabbis speak of seventy faces to biblical interpretation, and by using the number seventy they are suggesting that there are many different approaches, and that while some ways of thinking about Judaism are far from conventional, they are worth considering because they make us think, and by thinking we improve. We will also look at the imaginative midrashic method of explaining what the Torah is saying, a clever and fascinating approach to the Torah, which fails to reveal the plain meaning of the Torah text.

In his Times of Israel review of Professor Lawrence Schiffman’s book From Text to Tradition, Dr. Drazin says:

Professor Lawrence H. Schiffman of New York University’s “From Text to Tradition: A history of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism” is an excellent comprehensive and readable history of Judaism during a span of over a thousand years. It tells how and why Judaism accepted the hegemony and authority of the Babylonian Talmud over that of the Bible. It is the history of Judaism from Temple to house of study and synagogue, from Torah to Talmud, from priest to rabbi, from holy text to tradition. (Source: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/judaism-today-is-not-biblical-judaism/