Were our Avot Perfect? (part 1)

Often we limit the Torah.   We project onto it our own ideas and feel it can not defend itself or be of value as it is.  We fashion seatbelts for Torah that ultimately detract from it.  We limit Torah by projecting onto it what we think we already understand, what we think it should be teaching us.   

One example is how we see our Avot.  (I won’t even go into the Artscroll illustrations of them wearing schtriemlach.)  Instead of taking the Torah at its word, we remake the peshat (textual meaning) of the Torah into descriptions of the Avot as perfect tzadikim (righteous people).  In fact it often seems most of the stories of the Avot are just the opposite- stories which depict them as lacking in midot (Yosef and perhaps one story about Avrohom is the exception to this rule).   

[Prove this]

The notion that our ancestors were righteous and kept the whole torah is taken as pishat by our day school educated children.  After all, if they are our examples how could they be anything but superhuman tzadikim?   If they are not then what?  Such ideas seem to threaten people’s faith.   

The Torah has many faces and many understandings and to see the torah as black and white, to say it has one explanation, is to remake it in our image instead of letting it teach us.  Torah is holy and Divine and can protect itself.   It does not have to fit neatly into the theological molds we make for it and our religious comfort zones.  

There are actually conflicting notions in chazal (our rabbis, may their memory be for a blessing) in regard to the questions of whether our ancestors kept the torah.   

 שמות רבה (וילנא) פרשה ל

מגיד דבריו ליעקב חקיו ומשפטיו לישראל לא עשה כן לכל גוי אלא למי ליעקב שבחרו מכל העובדי כוכבים ולא נתן להם אלא מקצת נתן לאדם ו' מצות, הוסיף לנח אחת, לאברהם ח', ליעקב ט', אבל לישראל נתן להם הכל

According to this opinion in the above Midrash Noah kept 7 mitzvot, Avrohom 8, and Yaakov 9.  That’s it.   

Here we see the radical opposite Midrash brought in the Talmud.

תלמוד בבלי מסכת יומא דף כח עמוד ב 

 אמר רב: קיים אברהם אבינו כל התורה כולה, שנאמר +בראשית כו+ עקב אשר שמע אברהם בקלי וגו'. אמר ליה רב שימי בר חייא לרב: ואימא שבע מצות! - הא איכא נמי מילה. - ואימא שבע מצות ומילה! - אמר ליה: אם כן מצותי ותורתי למה לי? אמר (רב) +מסורת הש"ס: [רבא]+ ואיתימא רב אשי: קיים אברהם אבינו אפילו עירובי תבשילין, שנאמר תורתי - אחת תורה שבכתב ואחת תורה שבעל פה. 

According this this piece of Talmud Avrohom kept not only the written torah but even the oral tradition and even rabbinic fences such as Aruv Tavshilin, a rabbinic commandment that was put in place to allow cooking from Yom Tov for Shabbat, which according to most is probably only a rabbinic limitation itself.   

But how are we to understand this opinion that our Avot kept the Torah, indeed it was not yet given?

The Nitivot Shalom explains how we can understand the Mirdashic idea that our ancestors kept Torah even if it was not commanded to them as follows (Hakdamah 3):

“With regard to all things we must ask not only is this permitted or forbidden by law but is it- “Good in God’s eyes.”  Even if there is no clear source in the torah from which to infer what is good or bad in the eyes of God, the human soul can teach us the truth of it.  

It is in this way that we can understand what the Midrash says, that Abraham fulfilled the entire Torah before it was given.  For if it was not yet given how did Abraham know it?  One could say he knew it through the Holy Spirit, but in truth he knew it through the meaning of, “You shall do what is good and right in the eyes of God”.

This means we must do what brings us close to God.   How do we know what that is (if one does not have the torah as Abraham did not, or if it is not all written in the Torah)?  The human soul can teach us how.  The soul within us that is a true part of God above can sense what is good and right in God’s eyes, and, conversely, what will make us distant from God.  This is how Abraham fulfilled the entire torah before it was given.”

The Nitivot Shalom here is saying that through he human soul and conscience we can intuit what is good and right in the eyes of God.   This is how Abraham understood the Torah and by extension, since we all have a Divine soul, can we.   We must not only keep the laws but go beyond the letter of the law to do what is good and right, with the Avot as our (less than perfect) guides.