Let me start with a little bit of the forest and then we’ll hopefully get to some of the trees. For a Torah observant Jew (I’m not offended by the term orthodox, it’s just too broad), nothing starts and ends with Scripture. The written Torah is akin to the notes given/taken at the greatest lecture ever given. Our life is guided by both the written and the oral Torah. This really opens up a lot towards understanding Jews.
With an oral Torah, we have to have a great dedication to scholarship. It can’t be a one-time learning of the rules; it’s ongoing. It explains a bit of our dedication to family. My mother/father connect me to the Sinai experience, and I am intensely focused on continuing it through my children. That is best done with a combination of love and seriousness.
The information of there being such a central oral Torah will also help you to begin to understand some questions that many people have about the rabbis and the rabbinic laws/traditions. One of the ideas that I realized that helped me to really “get it” is the centrality of peer review. People are generally very skeptical of “The Rabbis,” as if they are a group of (G-d forbid) demonic misogynists with nothing better to do than to control the Jewish people.
I’m inside. I promise (and can show anyone) that nothing could be further from the truth. It is a very open world that all Jewish men are encouraged to enter. In the ideal, we are all to be scholars. The best and brightest and most righteous rise to the top. Their rulings and ideas must stand up to the most rigorous scrutiny.
So . . . that’s a beginning to an essential introduction to anything that I may write from here on. To answer any of your questions, I’ll try to root my answer in Scripture. However, for me to understand a law or an idea, it must connect to rabbinic source. Excuse my sounding blasphemous, but I don’t get the great fascination with the written Torah on its own. It is filled with seeming contradictions and laws which seem antediluvian and backwards. With the oral tradition, I can see the Divine within.
