What is Talmud? Talmud is when there are too many questions for one answer.
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At a time when I was younger than I later became, I obeyed the commandments. Not all of them and not so consistently, but I followed them, whereas today I follow them all and very consistently – not.
Sometimes I even forget what the commandments actually are. And then I think: maybe I should take another picture…
»You Jews have so many commandments. How many are there?”
»Oh, what do I know, I have no idea. I stopped counting after ten…”
Just imagine that God’s last commandment was the tenth. That made every auctioneer laugh! That’s why we have a lot of commandments, even if you don’t count the prohibitions, which is definitely forbidden, but doesn’t count if we don’t want to count the prohibitions.
Ezzes von Was
You are Alexandera freelance Jew without a permanent address, writes so much schmontz in this column that it will make you sick to your stomach.
If you count the commandments in Scripture, you come to 248. That’s more than ten, but still less than necessary, which is why there are other commandments, but writing these commandments down is forbidden.
After all, there are 248 fewer commandments than are listed in the Civil Code. (Incidentally, paragraph 248 of the Civil Code is about compound interest. And someone is supposed to deny that German jurisprudence is anti-Semitic!)
Fortunately, one does not always have to follow all the commandments, and sometimes it is even forbidden to follow a commandment because it is necessary to follow a prohibition. It’s not in the Talmud, but you could believe it – and since it’s about questions of faith…
We Jews have our very own relationship to faith and tradition and the commandments anyway. Some of us don’t follow any commandments, except that we don’t work on Shabbos and, according to some German philosophers, on all other days either. Some people don’t study Talmud, but still talk in a confused way. What is Talmud? Talmud is when there are too many questions for one answer. Some of us no longer speak Hebrew or Yiddish, but we speak three times as much German to say everything that we would have said in Hebrew and Yiddish. Many people don’t even believe in God anymore – and are pretty mad at him because he doesn’t exist. He really could have set this up better.
“Moische, what would you actually answer if I asked you if you believed in God?”
“It depends!”
“On what?”
“Whether he’s listening or not!”
Some still almost believe in God, others almost believe again. But in the end it’s just a question of sequence: Did God create man first – or vice versa?
Either way: It’s not enough to believe that God exists, you also have to do something about it. For example, following the commandments.
“Moische, do you believe in God?”
»How can you ask! Naturally!”
“Then why don’t you follow the commandments if you believe in God?”
“Well, my wife says I’m always wrong!”
Nevertheless, everything stands or falls with the commandments, and of course that means that everything falls rather than stands. There is a firm agreement between the Jews and their God. One does not follow his commandments, the other does not follow their prayers.
“Rebbe, how could God allow all this suffering? Isn’t God all-powerful?”
»How can you ask! Of course he is – partly!”
But does God perhaps have a guilty conscience for allowing all this suffering? Maybe he has it, and maybe that’s exactly why he’s not there, because what kind of god would he be – with a guilty conscience?
He can make us feel really guilty about it, almost as well as our mothers. That’s why they have the bans. And God too. Of course, the question of the sequence arises again: Did God first create the mothers with the prohibitions – or did the mothers invent God for the prohibitions?
It would be nice if the commandments and prohibitions canceled each other out (and that sounds as unlikely as it probably is!), because then you could live as you want. Of course you can do that if you don’t want to live according to the law, but unfortunately not wanting to live according to the law is forbidden by the law.
And we have even more prohibitions than commandments, namely 365 – one for every day, so to speak. If we interpret it like that, it would mean that something is forbidden every day, but at least 364 forbidden things are allowed every day. I call this interpretation Everyday Talmud.
Some things are still forbidden all year round. For example, as I said, you are not allowed to work on Shabbos, but also on all those days when Precht is not a philosopher.
But the bans are such a thing. For example, here you are not allowed to eat pork. But we still eat pork, just with a guilty conscience. You just have to set priorities: either you have a clear conscience or you have a good roast pork. Here you are also not allowed to marry non-Jews. But we still marry non-Jews and then make them feel guilty, for example because they always give us pork.
Maybe we are almost not Jews anymore, but this almost is what defines us the most. We always leave something of the tradition behind, at least a little, at least a bißele. You can’t cut off tradition, you can only prune it – if you know what I mean. Because it says: “Now circumcise the foreskin of your heart and do not continue to be stubborn.” This is precisely why we have such a long tradition – because we circumcise it regularly.
“Happy New Year!”
»I am Jewish. That was already the case with us.”
»And what year is it now according to the Jewish calendar? 5000? 6000?”
»Oh, what do I know, I have no idea. I stopped counting a few thousand years ago…”
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