B'nai Mitzvah: Torah

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יהוה אֱלהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעולָם אֲשֶׁר קִדְּשָׁנוּ בְּמִצְותָיו וְצִוָּנוּ לַעֲסוק בְּדִבְרֵי תורָה:

Blessing for Torah Study

Barukh Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melekh Ha'Olam Asher Kideshanu Bemitzvotav Vetzivanu La'asok Bedivrei Torah

Blessed are you Adonai, our God, Sovereign of Eternity, who has made us holy through Your sacred callings and called upon us to immerse ourselves in the words of Torah.

David Ariel

According to Jewish tradition, the Torah is the written expression of God's message to the people Israel. The Torah includes the Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The Hebrew Bible is a more extensive collection comprising the Torah, the prophetic books (Neviim), and additional books called the Writings (Ketuvim). Jews have traditionally believed in the sacred myth of the divine origin of the Torah—that "the Torah is from heaven" (Torah min ha-shamayim). By this we mean that God himself announced the Ten Commandments to Moses and the 600,000 Israelites who stood at Mount Sinai. After Sinai, God communicated the rest of the Torah to Moses as Israel traveled through the Sinai wilderness, and Moses wrote it down for all Israel to hear.

The Authority of Torah for Liberal Jews
Jacob Staub

If you don't believe that the oral Torah and the 613 mitzvot are literally divine commandments, then why would you continue to read and interpret the Torah and observe some if not all of the mitzvot?

Tradition. Reconstructionists believe that belonging to the Jewish people is the basis for all other aspects of Jewish civilization. Belonging precedes behavior and belief--not only for Jews, but also for all communities and nations. What you share with all other members is citizenship or membership. In our community and our family, we become acculturated. We learn the language that shapes the contours of reality. We acquire beliefs and values. We are rendered culturally specific. The Jewish people's narratives rituals and practices shape us and become our spiritual home. When I fast on Yom Kippur, I'm doing what my parents and grandparents did, even if I interpret the practices differently from them, and even if I modify them or change the words. That's okay--they were interpreting the same practices differently from their grandparents. Traditions are the constants that allow for continuity, even as they change over time. Even when we don't want to live as our parents did, we still want to acknowledge our connection to our origins.
Accrued sanctity. Using my grandmother's Shabbat candlesticks and my grandfather's tallit (prayer shawl) is not only meaningful and emotionally powerful. These material objects convey an accrued holiness because of the prayers and aspirations they have expressed over the decades. This is also true of a newly purchased tallit or pair of candlesticks because they are ritual objects that have been used to express the yearnings of countless millions over the centuries. The same can also be said of the rhythms of the Jewish calendar, liturgical blessings, colloquial expressions, melodies, recipes, and texts. The Torah, however we define it, is a sacred heritage. This is the case not because it is God-given, but because it was and is produced by people who have sought to experience the deepest and riches levels of reality.
Limiting autonomy.It is good to belong to a community that expects its members to show up sometimes on Shabbat mornings. I am not compelled by that expectation to show up ever week, but I am somehow rendered accountable; I need to think about what I'm doing (or not doing) to celebrate Shabbat this morning. I am grateful to belong to a community that adopts Jewish texts, values and practices as a starting point, rather than to a group of individuals who are starting from scratch. In short, nonhalakhic Jews can enrich their lives by regarding the Torah as a sacred inheritance worth celebrating.
Practice as an instrument of revelation. Studying sacred texts, practicing rituals, and working to effect prophetic values may be activities in which we engage because we believe them to be divinely revealed--or they may be the instruments by means of which we are able to experience what we might call revelatory moments in which we are transported beyond ourselves and connected to a presence that is divine.

Rabbi Arthur Green
Radical Judaism: Rethinking God and Tradition

The Hasidic masters insist that the Torah must have new interpretations in each generation, in accord with the generation's spiritual character. Only in this way, they clearly state, does Torah, eternally belonging to God, historically belonging to Moses, become our Torah...

As a community still committed to a sacred canon, we privilege those texts to bear, and to transport us to, infinite other realms of meaning, the “inner palaces” of Torah. We thus make the same claim for Torah that we make for the natural world itself: remove the veil of surface impressions, go deeper, and you will find there something profound and holy... In doing this, we should realize that we are using the text as a pathway to insight that leads beyond text, and ultimately beyond language itself.

Only by digging deeply into the outer Torah, its sometimes harsh “shell,” spurred on by the pain it causes us, will we find our way into the secret places where the experience of generations tells us that insight into God's presence will be found.

בבא מציעא נ״ט ב:ב׳-ה׳

אמר להם אם הלכה כמותי חרוב זה יוכיח נעקר חרוב ממקומו מאה אמה ואמרי לה ארבע מאות אמה

אמרו לו אין מביאין ראיה מן החרוב חזר ואמר להם אם הלכה כמותי אמת המים יוכיחו חזרו אמת המים לאחוריהם

אמרו לו אין מביאין ראיה מאמת המים חזר ואמר להם אם הלכה כמותי כותלי בית המדרש יוכיחו הטו כותלי בית המדרש ליפול גער בהם

רבי יהושע אמר להם אם תלמידי חכמים מנצחים זה את זה בהלכה אתם מה טיבכם לא נפלו מפני כבודו של רבי יהושע ולא זקפו מפני כבודו של ר"א ועדיין מטין ועומדין חזר

ואמר להם אם הלכה כמותי מן השמים יוכיחו יצאתה בת קול ואמרה מה לכם אצל ר"א שהלכה כמותו בכ"מ

עמד רבי יהושע על רגליו ואמר (דברים ל, יב) לא בשמים היא מאי לא בשמים היא אמר רבי ירמיה שכבר נתנה תורה מהר סיני אין אנו משגיחין בבת קול שכבר כתבת בהר סיני בתורה (שמות כג, ב) אחרי רבים להטות

אשכחיה רבי נתן לאליהו א"ל מאי עביד קוב"ה בההיא שעתא א"ל קא חייך ואמר נצחוני בני נצחוני בני

Bava Metzia 59b:2-5

A group of Rabbis in the Beit Midrash (study Hall) disagreed over a matter of halakha (Jewish law).

After failing to convince the other Rabbis logically, Rabbi Eliezer said to them: If the halakha is in accordance with my opinion, this carob tree will prove it. The carob tree was uprooted from its place one hundred cubits, and some say four hundred cubits.

The Rabbis said to him: One does not cite halakhic proof from the carob tree. Rabbi Eliezer then said to them: If the halakha is in accordance with my opinion, the stream will prove it. The water in the stream turned backward and began flowing in the opposite direction.

They said to him: One does not cite halakhic proof from a stream. Rabbi Eliezer then said to them: If the halakha is in accordance with my opinion, the walls of the study hall will prove it. The walls of the study hall leaned inward and began to fall.

Rabbi Yehoshua scolded the walls and said to them: If Torah scholars are contending with each other in matters of halakha, what is the nature of your involvement in this dispute? The Gemara relates: The walls did not fall because of the deference due Rabbi Yehoshua, but they did not straighten because of the deference due Rabbi Eliezer, and they still remain leaning.

Rabbi Eliezer then said to them: If the halakha is in accordance with my opinion, Heaven will prove it. A Divine Voice emerged from Heaven and said: Why are you differing with Rabbi Eliezer, as the halakha is in accordance with his opinion in every place that he expresses an opinion?

Rabbi Yehoshua stood on his feet and said: It is written: “It is not in heaven” (Deuteronomy 30:12). What is the relevance of the phrase “It is not in heaven” in this context? Rabbi Yirmeya says: Since the Torah was already given at Mount Sinai, we do not regard a Divine Voice, as You already wrote at Mount Sinai, in the Torah: “After a majority to incline” (Exodus 23:2). Since the majority of Rabbis disagreed with Rabbi Eliezer’s opinion, the halakha is not ruled in accordance with his opinion.

The Gemara relates: Years after, Rabbi Natan encountered Elijah the prophet and said to him: What did the Holy One, Blessed be He, do at that time, when Rabbi Yehoshua issued his declaration? Elijah said to him: The Holy One, Blessed be He, smiled and said: My children have triumphed over Me; My children have triumphed over Me.

Rabbi Barbara Penzner

In Jewish tradition, study is considered a form of worship. Torah is not a static text, but a source of ongoing revelation. Torah lishma, study for its own sake, can lead to a meditative experience or to an ecstatic one of connection to words and ideas espoused by those who came before us, as well as to our own creative thought.

Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi

In their encampment about Mount Sinai, the entire nation saw the sounds (Exod 20:15), and God spoke to them face-to-face (Deut. 5:4), which is not the case when an individual studies Torah by himself. But the matter should be understood as written above, that every individual’s study of Torah, at all times, is actually the word of God spoken to Moses at Sinai. Thus, he who studies Torah will experience fear and awe as though he had received the Torah this day from Mount Sinai.

Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld

Recently,
I met a colleague who said to me:
We must be absolutely clear.
Do you or do you not believe
That God gave the Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai?
...

I thought back to a panel in Jerusalem in the winter of 1988
When someone demanded an answer to the same question.
My friend Daniel said:
Well, it depends what you mean by God
And it depends what you mean by Gave.
It depends what you mean by Moses
And it depends what you mean by Sinai.
But yes.

We all laughed
But I knew he was serious
Not only about "it depends what you mean"
But about yes.