"Oral Tradition" includes the traditions and commandments given by God to the People of Israel at Mount Sinai and during the period of wandering in the desert, augmented by the interpretation and legislation of the Rabbis in every subsequent generation. However, before learning Oral Tradition, it is important to understand its unique role in the life of the People of Israel.

What does the word “Jew” mean? Most people think that being a Jew means believing in the Jewish religion, in the same way that in other religions, religiousity is based on beliefs. However, according to halachah (Jewish law), this is not so! A Jew is one born to a Jewish mother or converted to Judaism, whether one is actually a believer and /or observant or not, while one who is a believer and observant of Jewish religion but not born to a Jewish mother or converted, is still considered a non-Jew! How can we explain this?

“Jew” is a shortened form of “Judean,” meaning resident of “Judea,” the southern section of the Land of Israel which was the ancestral portion of the tribe of Judah. When the northern ten tribes were exiled near the end of the eighth century BCE, the tribes of Judah, Benjamin and sections of the tribes of Levi and Shimon remained in the southern area known as Judea. From then on, to be a “Jew” meant to be a citizen of Judea. Jewish religion is certainly an important part of Jewish identity, but it is not the sole definition of Jewishness, because Judaism is a national spiritual civilization, not only a religion.

Jewish religion itself is intimately connected to the Land of Israel. Of the 613 commandments of the Torah, two thirds can only be observed in the Land of Israel, and many of them only at given times in the Land of Israel – i.e., when the Temple is standing on its Mount in Jerusalem. The Ramban, Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman (Spain, 13th century) was of the opinion that even mitzvot such as Shabbat and Kosher laws are binding from the Torah only in the Land of Israel, and that their observance outside of the Land is for educational or cultural purposes only! Halachah is not only religious law – it was intended to be a dynamic, national legal system, operating in the Land of Israel.

The People of Israel lived in the Land of Israel according to the Torah of Israel, with several national institutions: the Prophecy, the Priesthood, the High Court of the Sages, and the Kingship. With the destruction of the first Temple in 586 B.C.E., priesthood and kingship were interrupted. Priesthood was renewed in the second Temple, but kingship was never renewed. Prophecy ended with three final prophets Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi after return of some Jews from the Babylonian exile to the Land of Israel in 538 BCE. Priesthood came to a final end with the destruction of the second Temple in the year 70 CE. The high court of the sages, also known as “sanhedrin” (“sitting together” in classical Greek), was closed by the Byzantine Empire in approximately 425 CE.

Just as the national institutions of Israel have been closed, over sixty per cent of the Torah itself is no longer observed in pratice. The Oral Tradition originally included laws for agriculture, business, military systems, and civil law, in addition to the areas of prayer, holy days and dietary laws still observed today, and it met the needs of changing times and places by ongoing legislation of the sages. The destruction of national institutions and the assimilation of Jews to foreign cultures has had a devastating impact on the application of the Oral Tradition, turning much of it into written literature instead of living law.

It is the goal of the Revadim Project to reverse this trend, by helping Jews of all backgrounds to gain the skills to learn the Oral Tradition properly. This will help to revitalize the Oral Tradition as the shared inheritance of all Jews, and effect a renaissance of interest in its essence and its relevance to the life of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel and throughout the Diaspora.

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