מסירת תורה שבעל פה א – כא

This fascinating lecture explores the Rambam's introduction and the chain of Torah transmission from Moshe Rabbeinu through the generations. The discussion delves into profound questions about how Moshe wrote 13 Sifrei Torah, the unique status of Yehoshua as Moshe's student versus the 70 elders, and mysterious figures like Eliyahu HaNavi and Pinchas who seem to skip generations in the transmission chain. The rabbi grapples with why the oral tradition couldn't simply be written down, revealing that active transmission through teacher-student relationships was essential—you can't just "hang everything on a piece of paper"—and how different communities preserved this living tradition through mnemonic devices and round numbers that made the vast corpus of Torah knowledge transmissible across generations.