We (my wife and I) went to the Western Wall for a bar mitzvah this past Monday morning & I felt the nothing that I have felt there previously. I didn't touch it & didn't feel the slightest inclination that I should. I said the IS prayers that I say every day & recited the Shma in IS mode as I now do. What an irony - the would-be Israelite Samaritan praying at the Western Wall.
The Shabbat afternoon before last, at the lesson that the Rabbi always gives over the third Shabbat meal at our synagogue, we discussed this classic Chassidic text, specifically the last paragraph. Where the English in the link uses the word "level", the original Hebrew (the lesson was in Hebrew) uses the word madrega, which can mean "level" but it is also the modern Hebrew word for "step" as in to go up or down steps (but not to take a step). An insight just came to me & I said that the problem with that text is that the Torah never talks about steps, only ramps. True Torah spirituality is not akin to going up (or down) steps, but a ramp. I cited Exodus 20:22 (see parallel Hebrew & English texts): "Neither shalt you go up by steps to Mine altar, that your nakedness not be uncovered thereon." From this, the Rabbis taught that the priests went up to the altar via a ramp. (Click here.) What "nakedness" is the Torah talking about here? It cannot be, I said, actual nakedness because the priests wore short pants (i.e. "linen breeches", Exodus 28:42) specifically to cover their nakedness! I said that I heard once that Exodus 20:22 must be referring to spiritual nakedness, i.e. that of going up a step and stopping as it were on one's spiritual journey to get closer to God. When it comes to such a spiritual journey one is either ascending or descending, going forward or going back, there is no standing in place, which steps would allow you to do. And standing in place on a ramp is much more difficult than on steps (try it without a pronounced lean). I said that the Chassidic text's use of a steps analogy is faulty; it should have used a ramp.
Why am I telling you all this? What I didn't say at the lesson at the synagogue is that I think classical rabbinic (orthodox) Judaism is like steps but that the Israelite Samaritan (version of our) faith is like a ramp and, therefore, closer to the Torah. One can rest, possibly for a long time, on steps as one climbs. There can be landings on the way. These stops & halts can facilitate change. Look at how classical rabbinic Judaism has changed and evolved over the centuries and millenia. Extra books (the non-Torah parts of the Tanakh, which is what we call what Christians call the "Old Testament") were added on. We built Temples. Then we developed a non-priestly clergy (i.e. the rabbis), then we articulated an Oral Torah, which eventually gave rise to the Mishna & Talmud. Then the Chassidic movement was born. All of these developments were made possible, or at least facilitated, through classical rabbinic Judaism's step-by-step (every pun intended) progress up historical/spiritual steps. (And remember, steps are alien to the Torah.) The Israelite Samaritan (version of our) faith has, by contrast, changed but very little over the centuries. Because its spiritual journey has been up a (Torah-true) ramp, where it is much harder to stand in place to stop and refit for long, its history has been marked by an enduring sameness. There's a famous rabbinical legend in the Talmud (Tractate Menachot) that God plopped Moses down in Rabbi Akiva's study hall one day & Moses was quite bewildered & didn't understand what Rabbi Akiva & his students were talking about. I would venture that if, say, Moses, as the ISs understand him, or Baba Rabba, were to visit an IS synagogue today, they would fit right in.
Ramps vs. steps.
The two Jewish Temples, of course, had steps but the Temples are a post-Torah development. The Torah itself talks only about the Tabernacle, in which there was no steps, only a ramp.
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