How
the Rabbis Teach Torah
Imagine that you are, I dunno, a Spanish nobleman and your Name is Juan Carlos Fernando Jorge Rodrigo Salvador Alfonso Alfredo.
Imagine that you are, I dunno, a Spanish nobleman and your Name is Juan Carlos Fernando Jorge Rodrigo Salvador Alfonso Alfredo.
But
they call you Rodrigo. They only call you Rodrigo and have never told you that
you have other names.
Your
Family, Friends and everyone around you also only call you Rodrigo.
They,
like you, are only called by one name.
Now
here's where it gets weird as hell: Everyone talks about Juan Carlos Fernando
Jorge Salvador and Alfonso as though they were other people who lived long ago
and far away. Sometimes they use the Female forms of those names too.
They've
told you that Jorge and Salvador were very great saints and you can never so
much as hope to be anything like near their stature in greatness.
They've
also told you that the name Alfredo, which they mispronounce, is God's Name and
you must never, ever pronounce it or the mountains will melt.
They've
told you that Alfredo, which they mispronounce so as to protect you, only talks
to people as great as Jorge and Salvador. Only they can be close to Alfredo.
What
state of mind would you be in?
That
is exactly how the rabbis teach Torah to their students. And that is how they
learn Torah. And that is how they translated Torah. And you get to read a 4th
generation translation of total schizophrenia and think it's the gospel truth.
Know
too that the Hebrew word for Names is also equal to the Hebrew word for Place.
Names generate a world, a locus. So when someone tells you you have only one
name and calls you only by that one name, they isolate you into one place and
identity as well.
