🇮🇱 ISRAEL VIDEO UPDATE
⏳ Week #22
📆 January 25, 2026 → January 31, 2026

Week 22 In Israel:
I’ve been in Israel for a while now, but this week hit something much deeper than travel and scenery. I went straight into a question I’ve been carrying for a while now… a question I’ve always seem to never really be satisfied with the answers I have been given.

Is the Torah actually divine?
Not “is it meaningful,” not “is it powerful,” not “is it beautiful or wise,” but is it truly the word of G-d given to the Jewish people… or what is the alternative?
Could it be the most extraordinary human system ever created?
Is the Torah evidence of divine revelation… or of the highest possible expression of human genius under existential threat?
When survival is at stake, humans can create systems that feel timeless, authoritative, and endlessly meaningful. Does the Torah’s complexity reflect G-d’s exact words… or the absolute limit of human brilliance pressed into permanence?
Humans have shown that under extreme pressure… they are capable of producing astonishing levels of creativity, structure, and meaning. Like the Jewish people in this case… during exile, survival, near-extinction… Is it possible that the Torah’s immense complexity, depth, and seemingly endless interpretive layers are the result of a civilization fighting to preserve identity and purpose?
Or does its depth exceed what even the greatest human effort could realistically produce?

I already believe in G-d. That part isn’t my struggle. What I’m wrestling with is whether the Torah I’m studying, living, and potentially committing my life to is actually what G-d wants from me and the Jewish people… or is it just what we believe G-d wants from us?

This week I went all in! I spent hours and hours of deep study & research. I had deep, long 1 on 1 conversations with different Rabbis, watching Rabbis debate scientists, historians, philosophers, and other religions, and then watching the counter-arguments push back just as hard. I am not looking for comfort. I am not looking for blind faith. I am looking for the truth… even if it makes things harder.

What I found on the “Torah is divine” side. I first went deep into one of Judaism’s main arguments around the mass revelation. Judaism doesn’t rest on one man claiming G-d spoke to him in private. It rests on a claim that an entire people stood at the same moment, heard the same event, and were told: you are all witnesses. Not “trust Moshe because he’s holy,” but “you yourselves saw, you yourselves heard.” That alone puts Judaism in a category no other religion even attempts.

The Torah also builds its authority in the most dangerous way possible. It tells every future generation: If this didn’t happen, your parents lied to you. It commands parents to tell their children, and children to ask their parents… not as symbolism, but as verification. No priesthood monopoly. No secret knowledge. No spiritual elite guarding access. The claim only survives if it was already believed by the people themselves.

But then I pushed back….

What if the mass revelation is not as literal as I always assumed? Chazal say the people didn’t actually receive everything directly. According to the Talmud (Makkot 23b) and Midrash, the Jewish people only heard the first two commandments directly from G-d… “I am Hashem your G-d” and “You shall have no other g-ds.” After that, they were overwhelmed by the intensity of the divine voice and begged Moshe to act as an intermediary, fearing they would die if G-d continued speaking to them directly. The remaining commandments… and ultimately the full 613 were heard by Moshe and then transmitted to the people, while the entire people only heard two of the commandments themselves. Some Midrashim even say all ten were spoken simultaneously in a single divine utterance, something only Moshe could later unpack and translate into human understanding.

That raised a hard question for me: if so much of Torah ultimately comes through one human messenger, how much different is that from other religions built around a single prophet? And if Moshe is the necessary translator between G-d and the people, how do we know where revelation ends and human interpretation begins? So the argument I was given about the mass revelation actually pushed me even further. What if the Torah isn’t divine legislation in the way I understood before…

Could the Torah be the most brilliant human response to exile and near-extinction ever created? A system designed to survive diaspora by freezing law, enforcing boundaries, turning memory into identity, and making the law itself the highest authority instead of kings or priests. A masterpiece of survival, meaning, and moral vision. Or is it really the direct words from G-d?

It is true that Chazal say the people could only withstand the first two commandments directly, and the rest came through Moshe. But the counter arguments that I discovered say that this actually would strengthen the claim, not weaken it. Because the foundation wasn’t Moshe’s interpretation of G-d… it was the people’s direct encounter with G-d before Moshe ever became the messenger. They didn’t trust Moshe instead of G-d… they trusted Moshe because they had already experienced G-d. Moshe wasn’t the source of authority… he was its servant.

So if this were human invention, it’s not such a great strategy. A fabricated religion survives by limiting witnesses, concentrating power, and discouraging questions. Judaism does the opposite. It distributes authority, embeds doubt and argument into its core texts, humiliates its own leaders, and dares every generation to ask: Did this really happen?

A system built on one charismatic figure would collapse the moment that figure is questioned. Judaism survives precisely because it never allows that collapse… it doesn’t rest on Moshe’s personality, miracles, or charisma. It rests on a claim that we were all there.

To invent that after the fact wouldn’t just require brilliance… it would require convincing an entire population that their grandparents experienced something none of them remembered, and then successfully locking that belief into a living culture without recorded rebellion, alternative origin stories, or competing “founding myths.” Not for decades… but for millennia.

The mass revelation claim isn’t powerful because it’s dramatic.
It’s powerful because it’s structurally suicidal if false.

And yet it survived.

That doesn’t prove divinity by itself.
But it forces an uncomfortable question:

Did humans really pull off the most audacious psychological and historical gamble in history… and win?
Or is Judaism strange because something genuinely strange happened?

That’s a question I can’t walk away from.

And yet, the deeper I went, the more conflicted I became.

The Torah doesn’t behave like blind faith. It doesn’t tell Jews to stop asking. The Rabbis have told me that it will not collapse under scrutiny and if it truly is divine that should hold up. It invites questioning, debate, and even doubt… and somehow remains standing. And the life it creates, the families, the communities, the sense of purpose and responsibility I see here, feels priceless. I want that life. I want that meaning. But I refuse to build it on something I haven’t examined honestly. This feels like the final wall in my Jewish growth. Not fear of commitment… I’m ready to give my life to G-d if that’s truly what He wants from me. The only thing holding me back is knowing whether the Torah really is His word… or humanity’s greatest attempt to reach Him.

That’s where I’m at right now. Still searching. Still questioning. Still refusing to live with blind faith… but also refusing to walk away from something just because it’s demanding. If Judaism is true, it can handle this process. And if the Torah is divine, it won’t need me to protect it from hard questions.

I’m not here for comfort.
I’m here for the truth.

And I’m going to get to the bottom of it!

This Week Also Includes:
🎂🕯️🧱Celebrating my Papa Eddie’s birthday in Jerusalem
🕯️🍞🕊️ An insane Shabbat in Ramat Eshkol — deep conversations, unreal food, real presence, and taking in the holiness of Shabbat and Jerusalem.
📖🌊🔥 Going through Parashat Beshalach
🌅🏙️✨Enjoying the beauty of Jerusalem — walking these streets knowing people have searched for truth here for thousands of years✨
🐱❤️🍼 Continuing to raise my cat, Georgy
🎧🎥🌃 Crazy edits and footage from my old roommate’s DJ set in Tel Aviv