I will deal with our belief in the Torah here because this book would be lacking without it. However, I can only address a small part of this subject here. For more on this topic, check out Project Chazon’s reading list (www.ProjectChazon.com). I also recommend Rabbi Lawrence Keleman’s lecture entitled “A Rational Approach to the Divine Origin of the Torah,” available for free download from www.SimpleToRemember.com.
This section is culled from the aforementioned lecture by Rabbi Keleman, his book Permission to Receive, published by Feldheim Publishers, and the lectures of Rabbi Daniel Mechanic of Project Chazon.
Our knowledge that the Torah is true stems from the amazing event when our forefathers received the Torah at Har Sinai about 3,330 years ago. Hashem appeared before three million of our ancestors — the entire nation at the time — and spoke to them. He told our nation that He is the God who took us out of Egypt and that we should not serve any other “gods.” He then informed us that Moshe Rabbeinu was His prophet, and that He would convey everything He wanted to tell us through him.
It is impossible for this event to have been an invented tradition. It would be impossible to get three million people to claim that they all heard G-d speak and to dramatically change their lives had it not occurred. It would be impossible for one man to convince so many people that they heard G-d speak if they hadn’t. Even a single individual would not accept someone telling him that he experienced an event that never took place. An audience of three million would certainly never accept it.
The only alternative suggestion is that some persuasive man convinced a large group of people that he rediscovered their long-lost tradition. He would have to claim that the tradition was forgotten because otherwise, nobody would believe him. If the entire nation had experienced an event of such magnitude, it would have been told over through the generations. He would have had to somehow convince the people that due to some disaster, the event had been forgotten, and he was the only remaining person who knew about it.
Clearly, there are many problems with this. First, there is no reference in any Jewish tradition to the Torah being lost and rediscovered, which is the message that would have been passed down had that been the case. There also is no mention anywhere in the Jewish tradition of the identity of this important man who supposedly rediscovered the lost tradition. And there are many known direct chains of teacher to student that extend all the way back to Har Sinai with no gaps. Clearly, there is no tradition that the Torah was temporarily forgotten. On the contrary, the Jewish tradition is that the Torah was passed down from generation to generation without fail. We would not believe in an unbroken chain had there been a gap, which disproves this theory.
Another problem with this suggestion is that the Torah itself states that it will never be forgotten: “. . . for it will not be forgotten from the mouth of their offspring” (Devarim 31:21). How could a group of people have believed someone claiming to have found their forgotten tradition, a book allegedly written by G-d, which states within its own text that it will never be forgotten? It could never have happened.